Page 41 of Reaper (Quincy Harker Demon Hunter #10)

T he bar was packed, something I’d never seen during daylight hours, and every head swung around as I stepped inside. None of them were smiling, unless you count the few that had bloodthirsty grins plastered across their faces.

Maybe you should wait outside, babe, I sent to Becks.

Maybe you should go fuck yourself. My vocabulary was obviously rubbing off on her.

I’m just saying that you’re completely human, and these monsters aren’t going to be very discriminating about who they kill in order to get to me.

Then I guess it’s a good thing I brought the big gun, isn’t it?

And she had. Becks carried a modified GForce GFY-1 semiautomatic bullpup shotgun with a ten-round magazine.

The DHS armorers had reinforced the barrel to handle the exotic loads we used, including the Dragon’s Breath rounds we both preferred for vampires.

I noted a couple extra ten-round mags on her tactical vest, along with her Glock and three or four spare magazines for that. My girl came loaded for bear.

I did, too, just less in the conventional weaponry department.

I had my pistol, and a few extra magazines, all loaded with alternating silver and cold iron rounds.

And I had a pair of silver-edged daggers strapped to my belt, plus a backup gun on one ankle.

But most of my power wasn’t going to be in bullets and blades; it was going to be in fists and fireballs.

So I had a new pendant hanging around my neck, with a big chunk of labradorite hanging from it.

The iridescent colors of the stone swirled around like a wild mosaic, spinning from one end of the spectrum to another.

I’d spent a week when we got back from our “vacation” to Manteo pouring magical energy into the stone, figuring out how to use the rock as a focus for power that I could draw upon when my own reserves ran out.

I’d also gotten my tattoos redone, but I had to empty those out in the Colosseum, so that backup power source was done until my next trip to see James, my tattoo artist in Atlanta.

Hopefully the labradorite was as mystically powerful as the books said it was, because I figured I was going to need all the juice I could draw on for this one.

“Hello, Mort,” I said. “Looks like you’ve been expecting my visit.”

Mort stood behind the bar, no longer wearing the Indian woman’s body he’d been inhabiting the last time I saw him.

Now he was in a completely unexpected vehicle—a vampire.

I’d never seen Mort hitchhike a para before, and kinda assumed he couldn’t do it, although I guess there was no reason he couldn’t.

But a vampire? A demon inhabiting a monster that already had a sliver of the demon Skyffrax inside it? This was new to me.

Mort was about six feet tall in this incarnation, with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, a chiseled jaw, and blue eyes that would make any reasonable person think he was the model for Keifer Sutherland’s character in The Lost Boys .

He even had on the long jacket, but he didn’t have the trademark grin that featured in so many of the younger Sutherland’s roles.

“Yeah, Pete called as soon as you let him go. That was sweet of you, ya know? Not killing him. Didn’t matter, of course.

He knew too much, and he blabbed about my business to the enemy, so I handled him. ”

Mort reached down behind the bar and hauled up Pete’s corpse, obviously drained. Mort held him by the hair and waggled the body at me. “This is what happens to people that help you, Harker. They end up dead. Just like Christy. Just like my baby girl, you sorry fuck.”

“Is that what this is about?” I asked. “After all this time, now you’re coming after me for getting Christy killed?

Come the fuck on, Mort! You know I didn’t kill her.

You know I felt terrible about her dying, and you know I killed the motherfucker that murdered her! What the fuck more do I need to do?”

“You can’t do anything, Harker. You can’t do anything but kill.

I thought I’d forgiven you, but then I found out it wasn’t Smith that killed my daughter, and it wasn’t Orobas.

It was you, Harker. You cut off my daughter’s head so that fucker could help bring Orobas into this world, all so you could be the big hero and send him back to Hell! ”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was honestly confused.

Mort’s daughter, the cambion named Christy that I thought was just his badass bartender, had been murdered by an asshole using the original pseudonym “John Smith” in order to bring the demon Orobas to our world and give him permanent residence here.

Mort had been with me when we confronted Smith and Orobas, and he knew exactly what went down.

“You did this, Harker! You cut off my daughter’s head, and now I’m going to cut off your girlfriend’s.

You’re gonna know what pain feels like, Quincy Harker, I swear it by every demon in every Circle of Hell!

” Then Mort leapt over the bar at us, clearing twenty feet in a single bound, and all my thoughts of figuring out what sent Mort off into Psycho-land vanished as every monster in the place came at us, and the shit well and truly hit the fan.

There were easily fifty shifters, vampires, faeries, and monsters from all corners of the magical world in the room, and I had one human standing with me.

But it was the one human I loved more than anyone in the world, so I knew there was no better backup anywhere.

Becks opened up with her shotgun, filling the bar with gun smoke and thunder, while I spun up a one-sided shield a couple feet in front of us.

It wouldn’t hold anyone back for long, but a few seconds can be the difference in a fight for your life.

The shield stopped the first wave of attackers, and Becks’ torrent of silver and iron buckshot took down half a dozen in the first few seconds.

I drew my Glock and put six rounds in faces from less than a yard away, dropping more bodies.

Then the shield failed under the pressure of three dozen angry monsters, and I dropped my pistol, holding both hands forward, palms out, and calling power.

“ Forzare! ” I bellowed, channeling kinetic energy through my hands to push the pile back.

If they swarmed us, we were done. The power coursing through my hands shoved me back a foot, but it flung ten or so of my opponents ass over teakettle backward throughout the bar.

I summoned my soulblade and stepped forward, slashing through limbs and necks with every step.

I didn’t even look at where I was swinging, just moved forward like my sword was a scythe and it was harvest time.

They wanted the Reaper, well it was my fucking time.

Becks’s shotgun boomed again and again, and every time she fired, monsters fell and the screams of the wounded grew louder.

I hacked through arms, legs, chests, and necks for what felt like forever, until my arms felt like they had anchors tied to them and my shoulders felt like knots of rusty steel cable.

The fight was short, loud, and bloody, as Mort’s hired (or more likely volunteered, given my popularity with the local monster populace) goons fell like toy soldiers.

It was barely two minutes after they charged that the only ones left standing were Becks, me, and the vampire Mort was riding in.

Mort stood at the back of the pack, just watching us and grinning. When the last of his henchmonsters fell, I banished my blade just as I heard Becks click empty on her shotgun. She dropped it to a nearby table with a loud thunk , and I saw her lean against the back of a nearby chair for support.

You okay? I asked.

My shoulder feels like hamburger, but I’m not injured. Just a little sore. You?

None of them even got a scratch on me. They didn’t stand a chance. Not sure what was up with this. If they had no shot at taking me down, why throw their lives away?

I looked at Mort, who just stood there grinning. “What the fuck are you smiling about, jackass? We just killed your whole crew.”

“But now you’re tired, and I’m still here. And this body I borrowed is almost as old as your dear uncle, so he’s one of the most powerful vampires in the world. Time to reap what you’ve sown, Harker.”

Then he sprang at us, and all the bullets in the world wouldn’t have done me a bit of good.

He slammed into Becks, shoving her roughly against the front wall of the bar, and jammed his mouth down over her throat.

In half a second, he had her head turned to the side and his fangs buried in her carotid.

Except instead of a scream and a gout of blood, we got the crunch of breaking teeth as he bit down into her chainmail choker instead.

Mort jerked his head back, spitting teeth onto the floor and glaring at my fiancée.

“Won’t save you from a broken neck, bitch,” he snarled, broken teeth making him lisp a little.

“This will, asshole,” Becks growled back, then pulled the trigger on the pistol she had wedged up against his ribs.

She slammed all fifteen rounds into his midsection in the span of a couple seconds, and Mort staggered back, shock spreading across his face.

“You think Harker’s the only one here who’s taken out monsters, you stupid fuck?

I faced scarier ish than you when I was a rookie walking a beat.

And now I know what hurts you bastards, so I can pack all the silver and fire I need. ”

Becks ejected the magazine, which must have been loaded with either cold iron or regular ammunition, since Mort was still standing, and slammed a fresh one home.

She took a solid stance and leveled the pistol at the vampire with a demon riding shotgun.

I noticed the red paint on the bottom of the magazine and knew if she hit Mort with one of those, it was game over.

“These are tipped with white phosphorous, motherfucker. You get one of these in your gut and you’ll go up like a goddamned sparkler. ”

I called my soulblade and gripped the hilt in both hands.

“You ready to call this vendetta off, Mort? Or are you ready to die for real? Because if I shove this up your ass, you don’t go back to Hell.

You just go. For once and for all. No rebirth, no waking up all comfy in a lake of fire.

You’re just done. Is that what you want? Is that what Christy would want?”

I’d hoped bringing his thoughts back around to his daughter would give him clarity, let him see exactly how fucked he was, and maybe, just maybe give me a chance to prove to him that whatever he had in his head about what happened to his daughter was wrong, and that I had nothing to do with her death.

I have seldom been more wrong in my ridiculously long life.

He didn’t gain any clarity, he just went further round the bend.

He spun around to me and charged, hands outstretched like he wanted to rend me limb from limb.

There was no plan to his attack, no strategy, just a mad rush at someone he wanted to destroy totally and finally.

Someone who was waiting for him with a very big sword.

I stepped to the left, bringing my soulblade up as I did, and sliced through his neck without the least resistance.

In an image mimicking Christy’s death years ago, his body collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, but his head rolled forward, sightless eyes fixed on me as every bit of light, of tortured soul, went out of them.

Mort’s borrowed body was turning to slurry even as it fell, but his eyes stayed locked on mine until I turned away, banishing my soulblade and walking wordlessly to Becks’ SUV.

There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to do. Mort was gone, and so was one of the last vestiges of Sanctuary in my city, and my life.