Page 139 of Finders Reapers

Ollie clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Really, Vallie? I’m themaster of metamorphosis. I can be any demon I want to be.”

He kept saying those words, by rote and with inflection, as if it was a title that someone had given him and he had clung to as part of his identity.

I got that. It still wasn’t my problem, though.

His skin shifted and smoothed, stretching like taffy, until it was no longer Ollie straddling me but a demon dog. The same rotting skeletal demon had haunted my dreams for the past week. Needle teeth dripping with saliva.

“Why?” I tried to speak, but my vocal cords were shot. Even though the muscles in my body were knitting together, with strange clicks and squelches, I wasn’t fine. Not at all.

“You might be a contracted soul, honey, but you’re also part Drude.” He stated plainly. “I knew the moment I saw you. Your mother must have been possessed when she became pregnant with you.”

I rocked my head from side to side.

Ollie leaned forward, and a drop of saliva landed on my cheek and burned. The canine head he had adopted slurred his words. “Her cancer got her in the end. The host and the demon. Your father sold your sold so that he could get a demon into heaven. How fucking pathetic is that?”

I felt the tears bead in my eyes as I gasped for air. Darkness threatened the end of my vision.

“You won’t ever be a true Reaper. You won’t ever have a scythe. You’re part-demon, and you belong in hell with the rest of us!”

I was slipping away.

Oriax sat back, allowing me a single gasp of air, as his face changed back to the one I recognized. “I been changing the souls contracted to the devil into an army big enough to take hell from its rulers. Drudes were overlooked for so long. But I knew. I was there when the devouring beasts shattered the goddess of death into a million pieces.”

“I’m not a drude,” I gasped out. “I’m not a demon.”

I tried to remember what Maddox had said about Drudes, and Mara, the day we had spoken in the car, but my thoughts felt like an hourglass running out of sand.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

“Only Mara, the Goddess of death, can rule over hell. The other thrones are just placeholders. Mara is dead, but now that I have a drude. I’ve got the next best thing.”

Ollie extended his arms as he straddled my hips and held me down. His fingers hooked, and one of them grew until it resembled a claw. With his new appendage, he drew a long down the inner side of his lower arm. Blood began to spill, and each drop sizzled against the skin of my stomach where my shirt had ridden up.

“You’re going to join my army, and I’m going to watch every single one of those false Kings burn.” He said through gritted teeth.

Squeezing the flesh to encourage more blood to flow from the wound, Oriax held his arm over my face. I closed my eyes against the smattering blood, like raindrops on my face.

I dare not open my mouth; in case a drop went inside. Remembering that Gorge, the drug, was made with demon blood. If Oriax was the one providing people with Gorge, it must have been part of the process of changing someone into a member of his army.

Oriax growled in frustration, and his fist reared back as he punched me in the stomach. My mouth flew open, gasping and wheezing as the air left my body. I felt a single burning drop of blood land on my tongue. “I’ve got an army of souls. I’ll have a Drude on my side, and I’ll rip hell from the control of the ferryman. Then I’ll fuck your boyfriends too. I’ll look just like you, and they won’t even know. Because you’re so fucking pathetic. Wide-eyed and stupid. Running around the afterlife like an innocent lamb while there’s a war brewing on your front porch!”

My body was on fire.

Too hot.

Too close.

Too much.

Oriax sat back smugly. “Lie still. This won’t hurt. It won’t take long. Soon, there won’t be anything there. Just my will and your desire to follow it.” My own face stared back at me. My old one. From my life before.

He sounded far away.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t feel.

The world sharpened to a pinprick and exploded as I felt something rise inside of me. Something dangerous and made of jagged edges and darkness.