Page 31 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

U nlike all the other bouts I’d been in at the Colosseum, this one had a bell.

An actual bell, like we were in a legitimate sporting event or something.

I didn’t know there was a bell, but I wasn’t going to move before Eleanor did because the last thing I wanted to do was to give anything away to an opponent that dangerous.

So even though I was a little caught off guard when the bell rang, at least it didn’t interrupt me trying to make some kind of fancy attack or something.

Eleanor, on the other hand, absolutely knew there was a bell coming, and the second it rang, she launched herself at me.

Apparently, she had zero interest in making a good show of things, and knew she wasn’t getting paid by the hour, so she wanted to get this shit over with as quickly as possible.

And with most opponents, just rushing at them from the left at full vampire speed would get the job done.

I bet she’d ended more than one fight in the first few seconds, leaving her opponent with his throat in her teeth before the sound of the bell faded.

But I wasn’t any opponent, and I wasn’t watching her hands, or her feet, I was watching her eyes.

So when the bell rang, and her eyes flicked to her right, I knew the attack was coming from my left.

I sprang back about six feet, letting her pass through the space I’d recently occupied, then diving at her from behind when she stopped, confused.

I tackled her around the waist, driving her face into the sand.

Normally I retain enough of my Victorian/Edwardian upbringing to be loath to strike a woman, but when the “woman” hasn’t been human since before we invented the telephone, I give my chivalry a rest. So I drove her into the ground like an NFL linebacker and slammed an elbow into the back of her head.

Vampires are just as susceptible to concussions as humans, and the best way I know to negate their speed advantage (other than decapitation) is to rattle their noggin enough that they’re too dizzy to run at top speed.

But they also heal even faster than me, so any damage I did would repair itself in minutes, if not seconds.

And a concussion doesn’t make someone weaker.

Eleanor got her hands underneath her body and shoved upward, sending me flying into the air to land flat on my back.

But she wasn’t fast enough to catch me in midair and rip my head off, so I had half a second after I slammed into the sand to roll up onto my feet and block her slashing strike at my midsection.

I glanced at her hand, seeing a gleam of metal, and saw that she had on blade-tipped gloves.

Not quite a dime-store Wolverine, it looked more like cat’s claws, only metal.

Yet another reason I didn’t want to let her get her hands on me.

I kicked at her face, and she stepped back, easily avoiding my shot.

But I didn’t want impact, I wanted separation.

I called power and flung three-inch spheres of pure energy at her, driving her back again and again.

Then I called up my soulblade and grinned at her across the floor. “Let’s dance.”

The feral smile that crept across her face matched my own, and she said, “Indeed, Mr. James. Indeed.”

I almost outed myself right then, knowing that I could get a few seconds’ advantage by telling her who I really was, but at the last instant I remembered the exploding collar around my neck.

Probably shouldn’t out myself as the Reaper until we found some way to make sure nobody could blow my head off with a garage door opener.

Eleanor leapt high into the air, her metal claws extending as she did and making me second guess my assessment that she wasn’t a Wolverine clone somebody ordered off wish.com.

I watched the arc of her leap and spun a quick glamour around myself, making it appear that I was standing perfectly still waiting to strike, when actually I stepped three feet to the left and readied my sword for a slash that would cut her in half the moment she landed.

Except you don’t get to win four Tier Five death matches by being stupid.

Eleanor must have realized something wasn’t right in me just standing there, and instead of landing in a strike, dropped all the way to her belly as my blade whistled right over her head.

She spun around and kicked my feet out from under me, making it my turn to slam into the dirt.

Again. My hands flew open on impact, making my soulblade vanish, and I brought them together in front of me, spinning a shield of energy over my chest to deflect the claws coming for my entrails.

Eleanor’s hands slid off my shield and she slammed into me, driving the breath from my lungs again.

She wasn’t very big, but solidly muscled, and she managed to drive a knee into my crotch as she scrambled off me.

Even through my shield, I felt that shit.

I rolled over and hopped up, whipping my head around to find her again, only to feel lines of fire blaze across my unprotected back as she got in a good slice.

“Fuck!” I yelled, profanity being a scientifically proven pain reliever.

“Too slow, Murray,” she almost purred in my ear.

“Time to die.” I felt her hot breath on my neck and bent sharply at the waist, getting my carotid out of the way in the nick of time.

Vampires can’t drink from me and get any nutrients, on account of my weird part-vampire DNA, but an opened artery would still kill me in seconds, and dead is usually dead, whether I’m food or not.

I kicked backward, slamming my heel into her crotch and lifting her off the floor.

That loosened her grip enough for me to break free of her, leaving bloody furrows from every fingertip along my arms and shoulders, but giving me that blessed separation again.

I spun around, put both palms out, and shouted “ Forzare! ” channeling pure kinetic energy at her to blast her across ten feet of sand.

Eleanor, as much a showman as a warrior, turned her backward momentum into a flip and landed, sliding across the floor in a perfect Black Widow pose.

“Poser,” I said with a smirk, channeling my inner Florence Pugh.

Then I called more power and shouted “ FUEGO! ” Fire streaked from my fingertips in ten narrow bands, cutting off the side-to-side escape routes.

Eleanor shrieked as a tendril of flame burned her left thigh, and sprang straight up again, apparently deciding that the best way to avoid getting burned was to murder the one throwing fire at her.

She wasn’t wrong. I dropped my flamethrower act and called my soulblade, slashing at her throat the instant she landed.

She tried to block with her claws, but I don’t know if even adamantium could stand up to pure focused magical energy, so I sliced off four claws on her left hand, along with the tip of her middle finger.

She screamed and dove at me like a pissed off bloodsucking missile, abandoning all thoughts of playing to the audience and trying to just straight murder me.

I dodged her rage-filled leap easily and said, “What’s wrong, Ellie? Surprised to find a real challenge?”

She turned her dive into a roll, continued forward onto her feet, spun around, and leapt at me again.

I dropped my magical sword and spun sideways, catching her in the midsection with a massive kick.

She let out a whoof and crumpled around my foot but was too much of a warrior to let that stop her.

She bent double but wrapped both hands around my thigh and stabbed me through the meat of my leg with her remaining claws.

Now it was my turn to scream and drop to the ground, more in an effort to shake her loose than in real pain, although there was fucking plenty of that.

I needed to get her off my leg before she severed my femoral artery and ended the fight with the wrong person still standing.

She rolled away from me and got to her feet, grinning.

“Who’s found a challenge now, Murray? Now who’s dripping their precious lifeblood onto the sand as he stares across the sand at a true apex predator? Now who’s the one without any smartass comments, just the horrible knowledge that his death is staring him in the face?”

Yeah, that was pretty much me. But I couldn’t let go that easily.

Not only because I knew I’d used my one Get Out of Hell Free card, but also because I hadn’t cracked the case yet.

I didn’t know who was behind this shit, and I didn’t know how to stop them from serving up cryptids and paras to be slaughtered for the entertainment of a bunch of rich assholes.

No, it wasn’t time to die yet. So I didn’t say anything, I just put my head down and charged, wrapping my left arm in a shield of pure energy and slamming into Eleanor, knocking her claws aside and throwing punch after punch at her ribs.

She just stood there, chuckling. I hammered fists into her midsection for all I was worth, and she just took a dozen of my strongest blows, then backhanded me almost out of my Docs.

I flew several feet and spun to the dirt, spitting blood.

Eleanor took two steps and kicked me in the ribs, sending spikes of agony through my chest and the sickening sound of snapping twigs through my ears.

I couldn’t scream, because I couldn’t draw in a deep enough breath.

But as I rolled over from the force of her kick, I kept rolling and staggered up to my feet.

“Stubborn,” Eleanor said, her eyes glinting with predatory glee.

“I like that. The fight makes the blood taste sweeter.” She sprang into the air again, this time landing behind me, but I was ready.

I knew that trick, so I spun in place and threw a punch that would have shattered her orbital socket if it connected.

Too bad it didn’t connect. She moved her head barely an inch and my fist slammed through nothing but air.

My guts erupted in fire as she drove her remaining claws into my middle, tearing even more flesh as she withdrew.

She nailed me with an uppercut as I looked down at the four neat round holes gushing blood out of my abdomen, and I flew back to flop on the sand again.

I wanted to lay there and just bleed. I’d given her all I had, and she was too tough for me.

I’d fought Luke for years, but he’d always been holding back, assuming I’d never face a foe with all his power and speed.

But I thought I had it all scouted. I thought I knew how to kick ass, how to outsmart and outfight anything.

Hell, I’d gotten one over on Lucifer , for fuck’s sake.

But now I was about to bleed out in the sand in an underground monster fight club, and nobody I cared about even knew where I was.

Well, fuck it , I thought. Everybody dies alone.

But if I was going to die, and it was looking more and more likely that I was, I wasn’t going to do it on my back.

I rolled over, slowly got to my hands and knees, expecting every second for Eleanor to come rushing in and punt my skull right off my shoulders.

But she hung back as I struggled to my knees, then one knee, then finally to my feet.

I turned to my right, spat blood onto the sand, and used the last of my stored energy to call up my soulblade, flickering now in my weakness. I was probably going to die, but goddammit, I was going to die on my feet.

Then with three words, everything changed.

On your left.

Becks knows that Avengers: Endgame is one of my favorite movies, and that the moment where Falcon flies through the portal to save Captain America’s ass is one of the greatest movie moments I’ve ever seen.

So when I heard those words in my head, I knew the cavalry had arrived, and it was time to tighten the straps on my shield and get the fuck back in the fight.

Glad you could make it.

Sorry about the delay. Traffic was a bitch. But we hacked into the building’s system and got the collars turned off. You can stop fucking around with this bitch now and show her who she’s really messing with.

You got it. And thanks.

I love you, asshole. Now end this, so we can go home.

I locked eyes with Eleanor and did the most terrifying thing an opponent can ever do when you’re in a fight for your life. I smiled at her. I straightened up, pouring a little extra mojo into my leg to knit the flesh back together, and I smiled at her.

“Oh, I’ve found a challenge, Ellie,” I said, using magic to amplify my voice so everyone in the building could hear me.

Eleanor froze, completely dumbstruck by the change in my demeanor.

Where a second ago I’d been focused and dangerous, but on the back foot and bleeding, now I stood before her grinning like a psychopath.

Something had shifted, and she had no idea exactly what it was.

“But you have no fucking idea what you’ve found.

” I reached up to my throat and pulled at the collar.

The metal resisted, but I poured a little extra magic into it, and it sprang open.

“You see, my name isn’t Murray James. James was my brother, who died a long time ago.

And Murray? That was my mother’s maiden name.

Before she married my dad and took his surname.

My real name is Jonathan Abraham Quincy Holmwood Harker, and I’m the son of Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray, nephew to Lucas Card, aka Vlad Tepes, aka Count Fucking Dracula. ”

“But you can just call me Reaper.”

That’s when the screaming started.