Read Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) Online

Authors: Lisa Medley

Tags: #Reaper, #Urban Fantasy

Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (2 page)

BOOK: Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3)
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The only ones who didn’t seem to mind the accommodations were the couples. Deacon and Ruth lived together in one trailer, and Kylen and Olivia shared another. The other reapers lived with their partners.

Nate lived alone.

Though Maeve was officially his partner, he couldn’t imagine her agreeing to live with him even if she were here. Upon initiation, each member of the Authority had been partnered with a reaper who complemented their abilities if not their personalities. Maeve had clearly drawn the short straw when she was paired with Nate. Even now, he wondered why they had been partnered at all when they’d immediately been given separated mandates. Nate was to use Bo to track the demons for the Authority and Maeve was to protect the home front. That had been the plan, anyway.

Still, the compound had become his home. He’d given up his apartment months ago. It wouldn’t do to have demons, imps or worse things following him back to endanger his neighbors after a night’s work.

Before becoming a member of the Authority, he had been an EMT. Now he wasn’t sure what he was other than a glorified babysitter when needed. Since Temperance, a guardian angel, had been sent to watch over Ruth and her unborn, he wasn’t even needed for that job anymore. After Maeve’s abduction, he’d switched from being lead demon tracker to fallen-angel tracker. Now he spent all of his time in the field with his hellhound doing just that—tracking Maeve.

What he thought he was going to do with his limited powers once he found her, he didn’t know, but he was driven to find her. Obsessed, even.

Laughter and the smell of bacon wafted from the kitchen. His heart felt like a stone in his chest as he made his way to his trailer, bypassing the breakfast crowd. Bo had other thoughts and loped toward the sounds of food activity. It wasn’t Nate’s day to cook and he wasn’t up for a debriefing. He needed rest, rejuvenation and…retribution.

Sooner would be better than later.

For them both.

Chapter Two

Maeve was biding her time.

Camael had finally laid her body down to rest for a few hours inside a cold, silent crypt where she doubted she could have slept under normal circumstances. This situation was far from normal. While her physical body needed rest, her mind was busy. She felt her body and Camael’s consciousness shut down, but her own mind raced in the quiet expanse.

It was not an easy task for a reaper, accustomed to unrestricted freedom, to be a prisoner inside her own body. Not only had she given up possession of her physical self when she’d invited the fallen angel into her shell, she’d also given up her free will. She had no physical control of her own body. She’d tested the limits endlessly in those first few days. Like a bird trapped inside a house, she’d flung herself toward the plate-glass window that separated her from the outside, from freedom.

Even her thoughts were no longer her own—she had to be careful to keep them buried from Camael. If she worried on any particular reflection for too long, he took notice. She didn’t want to risk leading him back to someone she cared about.

He already knew where Ruth’s home was located, but the reaper compound was out of his reach. Camael sensed the newly reinforced boundaries, which meant Maeve was also aware of the changes. The one blessing of the situation was that she could examine Camael’s thoughts just as easily as he could hers. Since he was so supremely confident she’d never survive his departure, he rarely bothered shielding his thoughts from her at all. In his overconfidence, he’d laid himself open to her mentally.

The constant struggle between them was exhausting. Physically, he’d nearly run her body into the ground the first few weeks before he realized he would lose his primo ride if she were to fall into a reaper coma. While he could bail out of her at any time, leaving her to deteriorate and eventually even die if she wasn’t replenished and healed with light energy, she knew he wouldn’t. Because then he’d be back to riding humans if he wanted to walk the Earth.

And oh, did he want to walk the Earth.

Camael didn’t plan to abandon his host anytime soon. His stripped-bare angel essence was venomous to human hosts. Even more so than demonic energy, as it turned out.

The glee he’d felt about successfully blackmailing her into this possession was eclipsed only by his hubris. He honestly thought he was invincible now that he had such a strong earthly body. As he’d learned, there were only two rules for riding a reaper.

Rule number one: fuel up.

Rule number two: keep your head. Literally.

As long as a reaper kept her energy and her head, she could live indefinitely. Indefinitely was beginning to feel way too long to Maeve. The past three months had been excruciating. How Kylen had survived more than a hundred years of being ridden by a demon, she had no idea. She wasn’t sure she would last six months.

Her one consolation and the thing that drove her to survive was the fact that she’d learned enough of Camael’s inner workings to know how to defeat him. She simply had to live long enough to do it. But given how firmly he was controlling her, her prospects didn’t seem very promising.

You think too much, my dear.

Maeve cringed. How had he snuck up on her like that? She needed to be more cautious.

Only of ways to destroy you, Camael.

No. Not only of that. You dream, as well.

You can’t know my dreams. My unconscious mind is closed to you.

Are you so sure?

Yes.

What makes you believe so?

Because if it wasn’t, you’d already be dead.

Ah, such brave words. Be careful what you wish for. If I die while inside you, you die, as well.

An outcome I am more and more willing to accept.

Hmm, we shall see.

She refused to dwell on anything even remotely usable by Camael with her conscious mind. She filled her head with eighties’ song lyrics and recitations of the Lord’s Prayer, which she hoped caused him equal amounts of pain and discomfort.

***

Nate pulled off his boots, stripped down to his boxers and made his way to the tiny trailer bathroom to brush his teeth. A narrow strip of morning light sliced through the edge of the blackout curtain across the bathroom skylight. It hadn’t been all that difficult to adjust to working nights and sleeping during the day. Hell, as an EMT, most of his shifts had been nights. Somehow, as exhausting as that job had been, this one was worse.

Traveling through the consecrated subway was taxing on all reapers. Each trip burned hundreds of calories, and if they carried souls or passengers, they burned even more. Deacon’s woman, Ruth, had nearly died in a reaper coma during her first week of training. It wasn’t unheard of for a reaper to become so depleted that human doctors would pronounce him or her dead.

Nothing good happened from that point onward.

Nate shuddered. The thought of being buried alive until he
did
finally deplete was horrifying. He didn’t know how long the actual depletion might take. Hours? Days? Years? Perhaps they could remain dormant indefinitely. He had enough problems to worry about without borrowing trouble. Besides, he wasn’t a reaper. Not really, anyway.

His thoughts turned to Maeve. Kylen had survived a century of possession. He knew Maeve was still alive because Bo continued to pick up her trail every time they went back to Meridian. More than that, though, he could
feel
her. They were bound to each other in an inexplicable metaphysical way. Ever since she’d saved his life by sharing her energy with him, he could sense her, like a bright light in the back of his mind.

Since that night at St. Mary’s Hospital, he’d felt more alive than ever and, like an addict, he craved another hit of her reaper mojo. He doubted she would have given it to him even if she could. Deacon had later explained that she had feared her energy would kill Nate instead of healing him. The strangest thing about it was that she had not shared it willingly—it had leaped into Nate like lightning to a metal pole…

Nate had lived.

And now? He’d give anything to be able to return the favor.

His connection with Maeve wasn’t the only thing that had resulted from that night. Since then, Nate’s eyes had been opened to all things reaper. He could see human auras now, though thankfully not his own…at least, not unless he was extremely agitated. Another by-product was that he could see the true forms of the supernatural creatures that walked the planet hidden from mankind. It was enlightening to say the least.

The reapers searched for and were drawn to humans with white auras. White was the aura of death. The other colors held clues to a person’s emotions, thoughts and personality, and were helpful in dealing with them, but white was the color that mattered most to a reaper. A white aura meant that a soul would need reaping soon.

And now Nate could see auras and so much more.

He dropped his toothbrush into a cup on the thin ledge of the bathroom sink, then walked to the end of his trailer and crawled into bed. The original white window blinds had been covered by blackout shades all around the trailer. Even now, in the full daylight, his Airstream trailer was cavelike, save for the thin sliver of light from the bathroom skylight. He wished he’d shut the door before lying down. Instead, he pulled a pillow over his face to block it out and let his body sink into the downy mattress, another upgrade he’d splurged on with his new reaper income. Even though he wasn’t a reaper, the powers that be in Purgatory compensated him the same as they did the others at Deacon’s insistence.

Welcoming the silence and the darkness, he struggled to turn off his worries and the niggling sensation he should—
could
—be doing more to find Maeve. Discovering where she had been wasn’t getting the job done. What he needed to know was where she was going to be next. He fell asleep pondering that impossible task.

Maeve was awake. And alone. At least briefly. The smooth concrete floor was hard beneath her stretched-out body and he could barely make out the concrete walls and ceiling of what he recognized as a cemetery crypt. All of this he saw in her mind, not from her eyes. Her body was asleep, but her mind churned on.

Maeve replayed the night’s events in her consciousness, horrified by what she’d been forced to do. Nate watched remotely, as silent and helpless as Maeve had been while the events unfolded.

Camael had used Maeve to kill two humans on their way from the cemetery to the bar. He’d snapped their necks and left them dead in the street—a distraction to attract the attention of the human officers of the law who were becoming an increasing nuisance.

He felt her further abhorrence as she realized what Camael intended to do when he walked her into the smoke-filtered lights of a bar. It was a rough clientele, which suited Camael just fine. Weak souls were more malleable, and nothing made a soul weaker than an overabundance of alcohol and hard times. It was like taking candy from a baby. Or in this case, a soul from a drunk.

Camael himself didn’t harvest the souls. Even though he was capable of extracting a soul if necessary, there was no need for him to dirty his hands. He had minions for that. As he pushed his way through the crowded dance floor and up onto the small stage, a cadre of his demons flanked the entrance and exit on both sides. No one would leave this bar intact. He’d summoned plenty of demons, nearly a dozen, to make sure of that.

His appearance on the stage, or more Maeve’s appearance, stunned the crowd briefly and brought all eyes forward as the band stopped playing. A hush fell over the bar as they waited in anticipation to see what was about to happen. A few whistles sounded from the corners, then hisses and boos as Camael continued to survey the room silently through Maeve’s eyes. She felt a slow smile cross her face as Camael spread her arms wide, closed her eyes and tilted her head to the ceiling in expected triumph.

“Yes!”

Then the room fell to chaos. The demons swept through the bar, tearing souls from the patrons’ pitifully weak bodies in dark gray torrents, the empty bodies slumping to the floor. The sounds of skulls and bones cracking against the hardwood sickened Maeve.

Some of the humans clamored back to their feet after a few moments, others stayed down. Herding the screaming, still-souled bar customers toward the center of the room, the demons worked their way inward. Panic grew, but since the demons carried no visible weapons and weren’t physically assaulting them, the patrons were confused about what the exact threat was. The fallen weren’t bleeding or visibly injured, but many were obviously dead, and the others…

The clientele couldn’t see the souls of their fellow revelers. What they could see were the vacant eyes of the afflicted staring back from the faces of the still-living victims.

It happened in a matter of minutes. Too quickly even for help to be summoned.

BOOK: Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3)
10Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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