Naomi Grim (The Silver Scythe Chronicles) Part 1

Naomi Grim

Book One of the Silver Scythe
Chronicles

(Part 1)

Smashwords Edition

Naomi Grim

Book One of the Silver Scythe
Chronicles

(Part 1)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents are either products of the author's
imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2013 by Tiffany Nicole Smith All
rights reserved. No parts of this book may be copied or reproduced
in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America.

Smashwords Edition

Cover Design by Damonza

Twisted Spice Publications

Other books by Tiffany Nicole
Smith:

Book 1-4 of the Fairylicious
Series

The Thing About Scorpions (Scorpions
1)

Contact Me:

Twitter: @Tigerlilly79

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/tiffany.smith.735944

Email: [email protected]

Visit the Silver Scythe Chronicles on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/silverscythechronicles

Look out for updates of future serials

Naomi Grim

Book One of the Silver Scythe
Chronicles

(Part 1)

Tiffany Nicole Smith

Part 1

The Assignment

Table of
Contents

Chapter l

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Screeching tires followed by the sickening
sound of metal colliding with something solid, prevented me from
almost dozing off. I peered from around the thick trunk of the pine
tree I had been leaning against to see what was happening. My
dispatching device had led me there to wait.

"Where is she? Where is she?" Haley screeched.
"Aiden, do you see her?"

I stood and prepared myself. Falling asleep
would have been a drastic mistake. After brushing the dirt from my
backside, I grabbed my scythe and watched the two.

Aiden, on all fours, felt the asphalt for his
glasses. "No. I can't see anything."

I walked out into the shadows cast by the
trees.

"Jessica!" Haley’s scream was more urgent this
time.

The girl lay sprawled on the concrete, and I
emerged. Jessica was obviously the one because she had the glow
about her. I stood over her. Her eyes widened when she saw me. I
could only be seen by the one I was supposed to take. She was
definitely the one.

"Jessica!" Haley screamed, running to her best
friend's side. But Jessica's eyes didn't leave mine. She squinted.
She was fighting hard, but it was no use. Her time had
come.

What a terrible way to die. Thrown from a car.
Bleeding to death on the road. I admired the bright red pool that
had formed around her head, soaking her brown curls. Death was a
beautiful thing. Nothing was more divine than watching a human's
last breath. Jessica's lips trembled as if she were trying to say
something.

"Call 911!" Haley yelled to Aiden as he crawled
over. I would be long gone with Jessica's life by the time an
ambulance arrived.

I had been following this trio of friends for
almost two weeks. At the time of the accident, they had been coming
home from a study group—good kids. I'd almost grown a little fond
of them. They were good-hearted and genuinely cared for one
another. The one who was to die had only been revealed to me at
that very moment.

With my scythe in my right hand, I squeezed my
left fist tight, holding Jessica's gaze. Then I finally felt it.
Her life was in my hands. I opened my palm to reveal a black stone
that looked like a lump of coal. The lifestone. I would give it to
Father, and he would turn it in to Mr. Dunningham, our ruler, for a
nice sum of money.

Haley was hysterical as Aiden yelled poor
directions at the 911 operator. My job was done. I closed my eyes
and waited to be taken back. A strange sensation flowed through me
as I became absorbed in a whirl of wind. Transportation only took
seconds. When I opened my eyes, the transporting chamber opened,
and I found myself in my kitchen. The chamber was how we traveled
from home to our assignments. It took us from the kitchen to
anywhere we needed to go and then back to the kitchen again. The
chamber also served as our pantry.

"Naomi, you were gone a long time," said my
brother, Dorian. I stood in the doorway of his bedroom. Dorian
hadn't even turned around. You couldn't really sneak up on a
Grim.

"This one took longer. She was a
fighter."

Dorian laughed as he adjusted his microscope
lens. "I don't know why they bother. You can't fight
death."

"It's in their nature, Dorian. Most people
don't want to die. There was a lot of blood, though."

"Yeah? How'd she die?"

"A deer ran into the road. Her friend hit it,
and Jessica was thrown from the car."

Dorian nodded. "Nice, I love the bloody ones.
Father will be happy with that."

I left Dorian and went to my own bedroom to
hang my scythe on its hook. I'd missed the comforts of being in my
own room, but that was the Grim life.

I tiptoed down the hall to Father's study. I
didn't want to disrupt him if he was studying. He sat at his large
oak desk, his broad shoulders hunched over a book as usual. I
watched him for a few seconds.

"Hello, Darkness. You made it back."

"Yes, Father." I walked to his desk and handed
him Jessica's lifestone.

He opened a tiny silver box and placed the
lifestone inside. "Good job. How old was she?"

"Seventeen," I answered. She had just turned
seventeen the week before. I'd had to endure a very rowdy birthday
party. By the way things were going, I was sure someone would have
gone that night.

Father smiled. "So how many years does that
make for you?"

"Four hundred and thirty-two." I was only
sixteen, so I had a long way to go.

Father made a note on my page of his notebook
so we could keep track.

That's how it worked, being a Grim. When we
brought back a life, Mr. Dunningham paid us. That was how we lived.
The younger the person or the more gruesome the death, the more
money you got. In addition to that, the person's age got added on
to our lives. For example, Jessica just added seventeen years to my
life, so it was a catch twenty-two. The younger the life, the less
years, but more money. The older the person, you got more years and
less money.

We were Grims by birth. There was nothing we
had done to earn this job and nothing we could do to escape it. We
weren't monsters. We were just doing our jobs. Death was a
necessary part of the cycle. Grims didn't cause deaths—we were just
there to pick up the lifestones, that's all. It's a common
misconception that we collect souls. Souls were different. What
happened to a human's soul was between God and Satan.

When duty called, we had to leave our families
and follow the human who was about to die. Sometimes we could be
gone for weeks or months. At that moment, my older brother Bram and
my mother were away on assignments. It was very rare that our
entire family was ever together at once.

I took the picture of my mother from my
father's desk. She had the same features as all the Grims—black
hair and black eyes. Our family in particular had pale skin, but
Grims came in all colors.

"You miss her, don't you?" Father
asked.

"I do. I haven't seen her since
forever."

Mom had been on an assignment for two months at
a military camp.

"Well, she came home last week," Father
informed me, "then she got called out again. I think your brother
will be coming back soon," Father offered, as if Bram were a
suitable replacement. Bram had just turned eighteen and thought he
ruled the world.

"Great," I muttered. I had actually been
looking forward to a Bram-free night.

Father turned his attention back to his book so
I left him alone.

Dinner that night was salmon and steamed
vegetables. Dorian was halfway through the story of how he’d
discovered yet another new life-form. According to him, he had done
an experiment with a beetle and turned it into some sort of mutant.
Dorian was pondering what he should name the mutant-beetle when
Bram came through the transporting chamber.

Bram slammed his scythe to the ground. I waited
for Father to say something about Bram's disrespect toward his
sacred scythe, but he only looked concerned. Being Father's Golden
Child, Bram got away with a lot more than Dorian and I.

"What's the problem, son?"

"It was a suicide."

Suicides were no fun. We got almost nothing for
those. When a person commits suicide, it's not really their time to
go, so we're not prepared in advance. The person took their own
life before we could get to it, so the lifestone was virtually
worthless.

"Waste of time!" Bram growled. He shook the
entire table as he sat, almost spilling my glass of
water.

"Calm down, Bram. We all get those every once
in a while," I said softly. He glared at me and I looked away. I
knew better than to talk to him when he was angry.

Bram and Father were alike in so many ways. For
one, they were both money and power hungry. They would do anything
to stay in Mr. Dunningham's good graces. All they cared about was
moving up in society and a mansion in the Upper Estates.

Right now we lived in the middle of Nowhere.
Really. Our colony of Grims lived in Nowhere, and my family lived
in the middle-class section. Nowhere was just that—nowhere. It
serves as our waiting area as we travel back and forth between the
world and home. There were three sections of Nowhere. Litropolis
was the lower end. The people who lived there were poor. Mr.
Dunningham rarely gave them assignments. They died early for lack
of earned years, and we had nothing to do with them. We lived in
Farrington, the middle-class area. I loved it. I loved our home. My
friends lived in Farrington, but that wasn't good enough for Father
and Bram. Mother once told me that a Grim man's worth was measured
by his riches and his home. That was the reason Father would never
be satisfied until we made it to the Upper Estates, where Mr.
Dunningham and all his favorite families lived. They had thousands
of years and anything they dreamed of and desired. They looked at
us like we looked at the Grims of Litropolis—like we were nothing.
Served us right.

It was a simple process. Dunningham decided who
lived and died. If he didn't like you, he didn't assign you deaths
and you expired.

Bram threw the lifestone onto the table.
Instead of the rich, black color it should have been, it was white
and crumbly. That's what happened when a lifestone didn't fall into
the hands of a Grim immediately. It dried out. If the lifestone was
left too long, it would evaporate completely. We always had to be
prepared to grab those stones. Bram shook the table again as he
stood. I forced myself not to comment. He'd begun to storm toward
his room until Father whistled and pointed toward the discarded
scythe. Bram huffed, but he picked it up.

Scythes were precious. They were given to Grims
on their thirteenth birthdays, the year we began collecting lives.
Each Grim had his name engraved on his scythe along with the words
"Long Live Death". We all had a hook in our bedrooms where our
scythes were to be hung, and we were never to leave Nowhere without
them. One of the many rules of being a Grim.