Shadow Reaper (Shadowlands Series) (15 page)

“Please, let me help.”

He stopped nursing his foot and glowered at me for a long moment, and I honestly thought he was going to tell me to take a running leap. Instead, he strode off ahead down the corridor to the right of the stairs, leaving the trolley behind him. I sighed and followed, pushing the trolley with ease. A quick peek inside showed me nothing but clothes, black shirts, and black trousers—the human staff uniform.

He didn’t utter a word as we wandered down that corridor, all crimson, dim, and claustrophobic. We passed several doors—solid and painted cream—with fancy numbers and knockers. Were these the rooms to rent?

The little orange-haired man stopped outside a door painted black. He reached for the handle, then thought better of it. Instead, he turned to me and shooed me away from the trolley.

“You can go now,” he said.

I tucked in my chin, raised my hands, and stepped away. A thank-you would have been nice, but, well, I guess you didn’t need to thank a cockroach for scuttling out of your way. From everything I’d seen and heard, that’s all we humans were to the Shadowlanders.

His mouth worked for a moment and then he said, “Names Remus, jack of all trades and domestic manager.” He pressed his lips together and turned back to the black door.

“Wait!”

His shoulders tensed and he slowly turned to face me. “What?”

“Can you tell me what button I need to press to get to the staff quarters?”

His shoulders relaxed. “Second floor.”

I frowned. “Oh, I didn’t see any numbers on the buttons when Cal took me up last time, so . . .”

His brow furrowed. “Really? What did ya see?”

I shrugged. “Weird squiggles and symbols?”

Remus’s eyes widened a fraction before he lowered his lashes. “Look for the numbers, lass, and you’ll find ’em. Off with you now.”

Was it my imagination, or had his tone toward me softened a fraction? I turned and made my way back down the corridor to the lift. I pressed the call button and stepped inside when the doors slid open, and sure enough, when I looked at the button pad, they were all neatly numbered.

***

The lounge was a bright, colourful space, with plenty of cushioned seating, three tables surrounded by padded chairs and a kitchen area. I had to admit that these Shadowlanders knew how to take care of their staff, even though they did consider us inconsequential.

I scanned the room, searching for Freya among the men and women sitting on the padded seats, or leaning casually against the smooth, clean kitchen counters.

Several of them looked my way, offering small smiles or nods of acknowledgment, but there was a group of women who completely ignored me and continued to chat among themselves.

A woman broke away from a small gathering in the kitchen and wound her way toward me. She was a petite, mousey thing with kind eyes, freckles, and a cute little nose that turned up just a little at the tip

“Hi. I’m Julie. You must be Ashling.”

“Yeah, wow, news travels fast round here.”

“Yeah, it’s that kind of place, ya know? You want coffee?”

“Coffee . . . real coffee?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had coffee. We’d run out about two years ago.

Julie’s eyes lit up. “Ahuh.”

“Yes, please.”

She indicated an empty table, and I took a seat and waited. She was back a moment later with a steaming mug. It smelled so good I wanted to eat it. I accepted it gratefully. After blowing over the top, I took a sip and closed my eyes as flavour exploded on my tongue.

“Good?”

“The best.” I opened my eyes and smiled.

She took the seat opposite me and placed a glass of water on the table in front of her.

“You don’t want any coffee?” I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to drink this divine stuff.

Julie shook her head. “It makes me jittery. When I first got here, um . . . six months ago, I think, I drank it by the bucket. It had me bouncing off the walls. I didn’t sleep for two days straight. It was awful. So, no, I steer clear now.”

Okay, good reason.

“Anyway, I heard what happened to you, about your friend. I’m so sorry. If you need anything, ya know, you can ask me. I know this place ya know, and I can help you get settled.”

I didn’t want to get settled, I wanted to leave and find Bernie, but I wasn’t about to tell her that. For all I knew, she was pals with Cal, or someone who had Avery or Jiva’s ear. If they found out I was still looking to leave, they may not give me so much freedom. It still confused me why they wanted to keep me here so bad.

The group of four women on the sofa behind Julie erupted into laughter.

Julie’s shoulders tensed a fraction.

“You okay?” I asked.

She smiled tightly and nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

Something had obviously bothered her, but I didn’t know her well enough to pry, so instead, I changed the subject to one I really needed answers on. “Freya was chatting to me the other day about how this place works. I’ve met Avery and Jiva, but she mentioned a third owner, someone called Daemon. Have you seen him?”

Julie shook her head.

“What about his . . . girls?”

Julie looked over her shoulder at the sofa piled with women. “You’re looking at them.”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting when Freya had mentioned Daemons ‘girls,’ but it wasn’t these women.

“They’re kinda their own group, since they’ve, ya know, been there, with him.”

I really didn’t know, but I nodded and smiled, encouraging her to continue.

“Yeah, once a month, they get to go down to him to, ya know.” Julie ducked her head and sipped her glass of water.

I glanced over her shoulder at the girls. Not really girls but full-grown women whose black shirts fit way too tight across their busts and whose legs seemed to go on forever. I counted four of them chilling out on the brown sofas, sipping tall glasses of clear liquid, and talking in smooth, sultry voices. It was like they were slightly skewed copies of one another. They all had the same dirty-coloured blonde hair, the same pouty lips, and the same figures.

I leaned in slightly so Julie’s body would obstruct me when I spoke, not that the girls were interested in little old me.

“Are they related to each other?”

Julie shook her head. “No, just carefully selected. Daemon has a type. He takes them once a month for forty-eight hours, one after the other. They think it makes them special.”

“Takes them where?”

Her brows snapped together. “Ya know.”

I decided to bite the bullet. “No, I really don’t.”

She sat back, her mouth a silent ‘o,’ and then leaned in again. “He has sex with them, all of them, for forty-eight hours, once a month.”

Sex? Ah, now it made sense. Man, I was so naive sometimes. When Freya had said Daemon’s girls, I’d assumed they were like his special pets—maybe a few girls he had taken under his wing. Sex had been the last thing on my mind.

“All four?”

Julie shook her head.

Yeah, I didn’t think so—that would be too much.

“There are twelve in total.”

My mouth dried up and I quickly took a sip of hot coffee and then spat it back into the mug, biting my singed tongue. “Shit! That’s hot!”

“Yeah, that’s what everyone thinks.”

“No, I meant the coffee.”

“Oh.”

“But that . . . Daemon, that’s hot too . . . I think.”

Julie snorted. “The way the girls tell it, Daemon is some kind of sex god. Only thing is,” she licked her lips and leaned in conspiratorially, “no one has actually seen him.”

“Yeah, Freya mentioned that, but surely if they’re, um, having sex with him, then they would have seen something.”

“Nope.” She shook her head. “Blindfolded, every last one of them.”

“Strange.”

“Kinky.”

I looked over her shoulder once more and caught one of the girls staring at me with pretty blue eyes. Her lips curled as our eyes met, and then she dismissed me with a flick of her hair.

“So, what do they do when they aren’t . . . you know?” Shit, I was doing it now.

Julie sipped her water. “They work like us, ya know, cleaning, kitchens, serving.”

Yeah, that I did, that I did, but what I needed to know was how I could get to Daemon, what I needed to be was one of those girls.

“So, how do I apply?”

“For what?” Julie blinked blankly.

“To be one of the girls.”

She looked me up and down and then sniggered. “Huh, you’re funny.”

I let her finish her little snigger while keeping my expression deadpan. She finally clocked that I was deadly serious.

“Oh . . . I . . . you don’t. Daemon has his girls. Remus picked them out ages ago. There is no vacancy. Even if there was, I don’t think you have the necessary . . .” Her eyes fell to my chest. “Qualifications.”

Great, shafted by my small tits.

I hung my head, seething with impotence and irritation. The longer I swanned around here playing bar keep and drinking delicious broth and swoon-worthy coffee, the longer Bernadette was out there being hurt, beaten, or worse.

Dammit! There had to be a way. I wasn’t giving up. I’d find it.

“It’s the day after tomorrow, ya know, the sex thing. It’s the full moon. That’s why they’re all so excited. It’s the only time anyone, aside from Remus, goes down to Daemon’s lair.”

The only time in the month—once a month. This was my shot. I had to find a way to sneak down there. That was it. I had to come up with something and fast.

I didn’t have another shift that day. The clock in my room told me it was 5:00 p.m., but my body told me it was closer to 10:00 p.m. I needed a wash, clean clothes, and a long sleep. Tomorrow I was down for two shifts, and I needed to find a way to get into Daemon’s lair. Lair—what a strange word to use. It made him sound so . . . sinister.

I stripped off my clothes in the washroom and turned on the tap to fill the tub. Back in Shelter, water wasn’t an issue, but heating it was. We were lucky to get one hot shower a month. Mostly the water was either tepid or downright freeze-your-nipples-off cold. As the scalding hot water gushed from the taps and splashed into the tub, I was torn between euphoria and anger. The euphoria was pretty self-explanatory. Hot water, soothing bath, yay me! But the anger came from somewhere deep inside, a simmering pot into which I’d been piling every injustice, every mark against this place since I’d arrived. They had so much and it was all meant to be ours.

I swallowed down the bitter taste of injustice and allowed myself this moment to languish in the heat my body sorely craved.

I lost track of time in that tiny wash room, lost track of the number of times I topped up the tub. But when I finally stepped out and towelled my body dry, I felt truly clean for the first time in my life. When I looked in the mirror at my shiny, pink skin, I noticed the blonde highlights in my red hair for the first time, highlights that had been coated in muck and filth for too long. It was almost pretty. I wondered what Clay would make of this place. He was probably going crazy, worried about me, but then I remembered what I’d asked Blake to do. If he’d followed through on his promise to me then Clay would be saying his goodbyes to his dead sister.

He thought I was dead.

The reality of what I’d done hit me full force for the first time.

I was utterly and completely on my own.

Clay sat on his bed, an open Book of the Word in his lap. He hadn’t read from it in a few weeks and the guilt sat heavy on his soul.

The Word was always a comfort, had been back when his parents had died and he’d first come to Shelter. It was different this time around.

He read a passage from Chapter VIII:

Death punctures a hole in the heart. It leaves behind pain and darkness. Yet do not yield to death, for death is a journey for the dead. The Mother will be the shelter in the rain, the hand in the dark. She will guide, she will love. The journey of life will continue while the dead set sail on the seas of the next life. This ship awaits us all. Until that day, the Mother grants a warm embrace. Death may take, but the Mother loves.’

It didn’t make him feel better.

The black Robes of Mourning, worn by those closest to the deceased, were frayed at the edges and the material scratched his skin

Clay closed the book. The room was so still. He was alone until Blake returned from doing whatever he had to do first. Ash was dead. It was over, life as he knew it was over. He was empty inside. He hadn’t cried, not a single tear. He had none to give.

Empty.

He had no family.

Blake was his world, but Ash was his universe. How was he supposed to go on? What was the point? Day after day without her around, without her voice, wasn’t something he could comprehend. But there it was, all real and cruel. So he was empty. He couldn’t be anything else.

The door opened and Blake walked in.

“Are you ready, Clay?”

“No.”

“Take your time.”

Clay stood up. “What’s the point?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything.”

Blake hugged him. Clay couldn’t muster the energy to return the embrace.

“I love you,” Blake whispered.

The hug broke.

“I’m here for you,” Blake said. “Every step of the way.”

Clay closed his eyes. “This isn’t real.”

Blake rubbed his back. “I know how you feel.”

Rather than hurt his boyfriend by telling him that he had no idea how he felt, he said nothing.

“Take your time,” Blake said. “We’ll leave when you’re ready. The Order can wait as long as you need them to.”

“Let’s just go,” Clay said. “I can’t stand being in this room.”

The sacred chamber was lit by candlelight. It looked warm, yet felt cold. There were six rows of wooden pews, battered and worn after years of use. But they remained sturdy and as constant as the Mother.

Ryder and Nina were seated near the front, as were Fred and George. Sarah and Simon sat a few rows behind them. All of the first family were there. Sympathetic eyes watched his every move as Blake led him to the front.

The coffin was laid on a podium where members of the Order, in their crimson robes, gathered in a semicircle around it, each holding a candle.