Page 3 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

D idn’t I tell you I was gonna rip your head off and shit down your neck if I ever saw you again, Harker?”

“I’m pretty sure you said you were going to rip my arm off and beat me to death with it, Saint,” I replied, hoping I looked a lot more relaxed than I felt.

I wasn’t relaxed, not at all. I didn’t think Saint could kill me, but I definitely didn’t put it past him to make a hell of an effort.

If you asked somebody to draw their prototypical werewolf in human form, Jason St. Laurent would probably be how most people saw it.

He was taller than me, and I’m a few inches over six foot.

He was broad across the shoulders and thickly muscled, with wavy dark hair and a grizzled beard.

If it sounds a lot like I’m describing Joe Manganella from True Blood , it wouldn’t be the first time someone has drawn that parallel.

Not me, though. Not more than once. Saint backhanded me right off my barstool the first and last time I made the comparison.

Saint was ostensibly the leader of a motorcycle club called the Caswell Howlers, a social club with a headquarters staggering distance from Presbyterian Hospital.

I guess he really was the leader of the Howlers, but the Howlers were also his pack.

Shifters, all of them, and I don’t mean transmissions.

Most of his pack were wolves, but there were a few bears, jackals, panthers, and at least one red-tailed hawk named Cindy.

Cindy was the reason Saint threatened my life.

Not because I slept with her, although I did.

But because I wasn’t a lycanthrope and I slept with her.

Why that all fell on me, I didn’t know, but I’ve learned that it’s better not to ask too many questions when somebody wants to murder me over a sexual encounter.

And yes, it’s happened often enough that I have rules for that sort of thing.

Cindy and I had a fling a little more than a decade ago, and Saint informed me that I was under no circumstances to see her, speak with her, and certainly not screw her again.

Being a sober individual known for my good judgement and skills at conflict avoidance, I did all three.

Did I mention Cindy is also Saint’s niece?

So I knew when I walked into the clubhouse that I was taking my life, and my arm, into my hands.

But the full moon was a couple weeks away, so at least Saint wasn’t going to be moon-crazy when he tried to murder me.

“You making jokes now, Harker?” Saint demanded, stepping out from behind the bar with a baseball bat in his right hand. I guess he had thought better of beating me to death with my own arm.

“I remember you used to think I was pretty amusing,” I said with my best “let’s not ruin your floor with a lot of blood and brain matter” smile.

“That was before you banged my niece then disappeared on her.” It’s really hard for humans to actually speak in a growl.

The best most people can manage is a Clint Eastwood rasp.

But Saint, he had the growl down pat. It was a rumble that sounded like it originated somewhere around his kneecaps and rattled around his entire intestinal tract before bubbling out of his mouth, coated in a thick layer of threat.

“For the record, you were responsible for the disappearance,” I said. “You told me to get lost and stay lost. So I did.”

“Except now I’m looking at you in the middle of my clubhouse.” Two steps forward and he was officially looming over me.

I don’t like being loomed at. It makes me feel short, and I don’t like feeling short.

I also don’t intimidate easily. Something about staring Lucifer in the eye and basically telling him to go fuck himself makes it a lot harder for mere mortals to scare me.

I decided it was time to stop playing at being Quincy Harker, nice guy who doesn’t want to get in a fight, and time to be someone a little more true to myself.

Time to remind Saint that when demons and monsters whisper stories about me they don’t call me Q, or Harker, or even Quincy. No, the monster under the monsters’ beds is only called by one name.

Reaper.

I looked into Saint’s eyes, something I try to avoid doing because they really are the windows to the soul, and my soul is not something most people can handle looking at for very long.

I channeled a little bit of magic into my orbs and let them glow with a purple fire flickering just behind my pupils.

“Back the fuck up, Saint,” I whispered. “Or everyone in here is going to see their Alpha turn into my beta in a hot second.”

I didn’t try for a growl, just kept my voice very low and steady.

“You know who I really am, who I am when I’m not having fun drinking and chasing skirts.

You got to see a little bit of what I can do when those Hell’s Angels rolled up on us in Richmond that night, and you saw a little bit more when that trio of wolves came into your clubhouse looking to step to the Alpha.

But you’ve never seen all my tricks, or even a quarter of my power, and I’ve had ten years to get better and stronger. ”

“And I’ve had ten years to become a better shot,” came a female voice from behind me, followed by the sound of a cocking pistol.

Okay. I guess it was gonna be the hard way.

I drew in more energy, siphoning magical energy from everything around me to augment what I kept stored.

I wrapped my entire body in a hazy shield of purple energy, then spun around, bringing my left hand up to snatch the barrel of a Colt 1911 out of the hands of a very startled young woman with long auburn hair and a smattering of freckles that I knew full well traveled down far past the neck of her Harley-Davidson t-shirt.

I put my right hand in the center of Cindy’s chest and gave her a gentle push, which of course sent her flying back a good ten feet because of the magic coursing through my muscles.

I turned back to Saint, dropping to one knee as I did.

His massive fist swished through the air over my head, and I stood up, landing a magically enhanced uppercut on the point of his jaw.

His eyes crossed and he staggered back a couple steps, but he didn’t go down.

He always was a strong mother. He shook his head to clear the stars from his vision and grabbed the baseball bat with both hands, ready to take my head off with one swing. I wasn’t having it.

I called power and shaped it into a purple sphere, then flung it right into the center of his chest with a shouted “ Forzare!” The ball of kinetic energy caught him square, flinging him back to crash into, then backward over, the bar, taking out the bottom shelf of liquor.

I felt a little bad about that. Kicking Saint’s ass was one thing, but there was really no need to destroy perfectly good booze.

“You wanna cut this shit out now, Saint?” I called. “Or am I going to have to break a sweat?”

“I think I’ll break your spine instead,” said a massive Black man with a shaved head and a goatee.

I mean, really? Where did this guy get his fashion advice, Luke Cage ?

All he was missing was the tinfoil tiara.

He was close to seven feet tall and four hundred pounds if he was an ounce, and as I watched, his skin thickened, he grew even taller, and a pair of ivory tusks sprouted from his jaw.

Great , I thought, a fucking were-elephant.

And me without my silver anything. This was probably gonna sting.

He took one step forward and lashed out with an enormous fist, easily the size of my head.

My only saving grace was that he was too big to be fast, so it was more like fighting Andre the Giant post- Princess Bride than back when he was doing cartwheels all over Europe.

I ducked and slammed a fist into his left kneecap, sending it sideways and putting the big shifter through two tables on his way to the ground.

Another, much smaller, man leapt at me, wrapping long skinny arms around my face and neck while screeching like some kind of deranged monkey.

He bit my ear, and I reached up over my left shoulder, grabbed a ponytail, and flipped him across the room.

“That’s not the kind of howler you’re supposed be, Monkey-boy.

” A pale white arm came up from the collapsed chair he landed under, middle finger extended.

I turned back to the bar where Saint had regained his feet and found myself staring down the barrels of a very large shotgun. “You know that won’t get through my wards, right?” I asked, the smirk still on my face.

“I know this is a mix of cold iron and blessed salt, so I’m willing to give it a shot,” Saint replied. “Are you?”

I wasn’t. I didn’t think cold iron or salt could screw with my shields on their own, but together they might be disruptive enough to put me down.

Besides, I really wasn’t there to fight.

And I certainly wasn’t there to slaughter a group of relatively harmless biker lycanthropes.

I raised both my hands and said, “You win. You beat the Reaper. Now can we talk, or do you want to see if I’m really immortal? ”

A wave of whispers and muttering rippled through the bar like a fart in an elevator. “Reaper?” “ That’s the Reaper?” “I thought he’d be bigger.” That kind of stuff. I’m used to it, mostly.

Saint put the shotgun down and grabbed an unbroken bottle of Wild Turkey, then stepped out from behind the bar and stalked past me to a door marked “OFFICE—FUCK OFF.” He turned back when he noticed I wasn’t following. “You comin’?”

I followed. After I grabbed a pair of glasses. I don’t really get sick, but I really prefer to drink like a civilized Reaper when I can.