Page 26 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

26

MAREENA

Present Day

I t was a strange feeling, knowing that after all this time, Death was going to win.

Of course, I always knew that was how my story would end eventually. It was how everyone’s story ended. But there was something about the incontrovertible promise of it, the nowness , the confirmation that I was going to die soon—probably already should have died, from the sound of it—that had my head spinning like a top before finally fizzling into a steady, sobering clarity.

Kieran was in front of me, saying something. His lips were moving, but all that I could hear was the rush of my own blood through my veins.

I was going to die. And I had two reapers haunting me to prove it.

“No,” I said. Not yet. Not until I helped Sora. If Death was going to take me, he would have to wait until I finished what I started. I wasn’t giving up until I was certain she was safe. I owed her that much.

Fueled by the kind of raw conviction I suppose only came with the acceptance of one last hoorah, I shoved away from the wall and started walking back in the direction I’d come running from.

Fingers gripped my wrist, but I tugged my arm away, flinching at Kieran’s touch. “No. You don’t get to touch me.”

“Agony—”

“And you don’t get to call me that ridiculous name.” I spun around and faced him. “For fuck’s sake, Kieran, a few hours ago your head was buried between my legs. Last night, you slept in my bed—” I winced, then pressed the heel of my hand into my chest, as if that might somehow rub away the ache that bloomed there, “and this whole time you were lying to me. Is that what this was? A quick fuck while you were casually just waiting for me to die? Do you have any idea how irredeemably fucked up that is?”

“Jesus, mate,” Thorne winced. “That is low, even for you.”

I shot Thorne a glare, but he only held up his hands in surrender. My jaw was clenched so tightly that I was certain I was going to crack a tooth. Not that it mattered. Dentistry was the least of my bodily concerns at the moment.

“Mareena,” Kieran started again, his eyes flashing with emotion that I had no interest in dissecting. When I ignored him, continuing my path back towards House of Wrath, I heard him rush to follow me. “You have to understand, I’ve been doing this forever.”

I snorted. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? Do your other charges thank you for their pity fucks?”

“No.” He let out a low, frustrated sigh. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’ve never had a charge who could see me before—let alone one who remembered my face. We aren’t built for this world. We’re not meant to have any kind of foothold or tether to the living. And then I saw you, and you recognized me, and I— I fecking panicked, okay? It seemed way kinder to let you think that I was here to protect you.”

Ignoring him, I picked up my pace, trying to focus on the sound of my steps on the pavement, and not his words.

“It seemed kinder,” he continued, “to help you spend whatever time you had left doing the things that you love—the things that make you feel alive. To help you enjoy your life—revel in it. Isn’t that better than looking around every corner, waiting for whatever the fates have planned? Spending the rest of your life wasted in a panic?”

“Bloody hell, just put her out of her misery,” Thorne muttered behind us. “It’ll take two seconds, just reach through her chest and end it. I don’t understand why you’re still carrying on about this, we have places to be.”

Fucking hell, this guy was a dick. I rounded on him, my sudden stop so unexpected that he nearly walked right through me. He wasn’t like Kieran, didn’t feel solid in the same way. The few times he’d drawn close to me, I didn’t even feel him. But however much I hated Thorne, I didn’t want to waste any of the time I had left on him. It was pointless.

Infuriating as he was, he didn’t matter.

Instead, I turned my ire where it had been truly earned—towards Kieran.

“No,” I snapped. “It isn’t better. If I’d known that this was it—that I was dying —I wouldn’t have chosen to spend whatever time I had left with you—a guy I fucked once in a dark alley. I would’ve spent it with the people who actually matter to me.” Kieran’s face was sapped of all emotion, his eyes hard and unyielding as if I’d just slapped him. “With Sora. And Frank. And Jo and Aidan. The people who’ve given me a purpose—my family. Not gallivanting around Seattle with a virtual stranger while he butts his nose into my life making snarky judgments about it.”

When he didn’t respond, his stare vacant and unyielding, I started walking again.

“Wait,” he reached for my shoulder again, but when I shot him another glare, he pulled it back, “you’re not seriously going back there?”

The fuck did it look like? “Of course I am.”

“Mareena. Just—” His eyes narrowed, and this time he ignored my death stare, grabbed both of my shoulders and turned me towards him. “You literally just learned that you’ve been slated for death. You could die at any second.” I shoved his hands off me and kept walking. He let out a frustrated groan. “And your response to that information is to charge head-first, back to the people who just tried to drive an arrow through your chest?”

“Yep,” I said, letting my anger burn so hot that it ebbed the tendril of fear the truth of him had revealed.

He stepped in front of me, his expression dark, angry. I realized then, under the full force of it, how ridiculously naive I had been to think that the man in front of me foretold anything but death. “No.” He shook his head. “I won’t allow it.”

I snorted. “You can’t stop me.”

This was the mortal realm; he wasn’t of this world. Yes, he could touch me, but he didn’t have the same stronghold here that I did. And the flicker of frustration in his expression confirmed the truth—I was right.

“Honestly . . .” Thorne’s condescending voice cut through our battle of wills. He’d given us a wide berth for a minute or two but, like Kieran, he didn’t seem capable of leaving me alone altogether. “The girl runs into danger with all of the grace and intent of an elephant in an operating room. It’s a miracle that you’ve managed to keep her alive for as long as you have. Just let her get on with it and we’ll find you a nice dead girl to fuck when we get home.”

Kieran rounded on his friend. Then, in one fluid movement, buried his fist into his nose.

I didn’t know much about the physics of the dead, but it seemed like a pretty good strike.

Thorne’s head knocked back, and he nearly fell over from the force of it. When he steadied himself and looked up, blood streamed from his nose. I expected him to shout or swear, but he only grinned, his expression feral and bloodthirsty as red seeped between his teeth. Then, he charged forward, and the two reapers tangled together in a whirlwind of fists and grunts.

I left them to it and continued on my way back towards House of Wrath.

But when I turned the final corner, just next to where I’d left Claude’s car, I found myself surrounded.

A dozen figures, all masked and dressed in black—wielding weapons, from guns, to long knives, to the bow and arrow that had nearly taken me out earlier—formed a cage around me.

Fuck. Apparently, the time between learning that I was going to die and actually dying was going to be a very small gap.

“Where is he?” A deep voice asked to my right.

“Um,” I said, raising my hands up as someone came forward and started patting me down for weapons. “Who?”

“Claude,” the voice barked, “the vampire. You arrived in his vehicle, did you not? Where is he?”

Kieran and Thorne made their way over to me, both looking tousled and bloody and angrier at me for ditching them than they seemed to be at each other.

“He’s not here.” I licked my lips, hating the tremble in my voice as someone shoved what was undoubtedly a gun between my shoulder blades. Though when I considered the other options, I supposed that a gunshot to the heart would be much quicker than most. “I stole his car.”

“You seriously expect us to believe,” the masked man behind me let out a dark laugh, “that you stole the vamp’s car?”

“Easy, Agony,” Kieran said, “don’t make any sudden movements, don’t do anything that’s going to get you killed. Just do what they ask.” His voice was low, raspy, and the way his gaze shifted over the group of Wrath’s followers, assessing each of them, his shoulders tense and jawline tight, it seemed like he was more terrified of our predicament than I was.

Which didn’t make any sense. They couldn’t touch him. He was already dead.

“You don’t need to believe it,” I said, flinching when the guy behind me shoved the gun deeper into my back, “but it’s true. He said my friend was here and I didn’t have any other way to make the trip tonight. So, when he was preoccupied, I took his car. I swear, I’m just looking for my friend. I don’t mean any trouble.”

“What are you?” Someone else in the circle asked the question this time—a woman, maybe, from the sound of it. “A vampire? Or some other demon?”

“Suppose we could find out the slow way,” someone else said, their tone taunting. “See how far her body can be pushed before it finally breaks.”

“Human,” I said, my voice cracking on the word. “I’m just a human.”

There was a chorus of laughter, then the first voice said, “We can’t afford more issues with Claude. Just kill her. But don’t waste a bullet. Then, when the moody prick inevitably shows up to fetch his car, we can offer her body as proof we’re not working with her, that we don’t want any more trouble.”

For a moment, my mind went blank at the simple directive.

Kill her.

He’d spoken the demand with the same arbitrary conviction my customers often used when choosing between breakfast options—like, in the grand scheme of things, it hardly mattered. My life came down to a decision less meaningful than over easy or sunny side up.

Someone, Kieran, I think, yelled a deep, menacing, “No.”

His voice was loud and desperate as it pierced through the strange calm, though no one else appeared able to hear him.

Another figure walked towards me, a large blade in his hand as the guy at my back locked my arms behind me, holding me still.

When the reality of the situation sank in, I tried to shake loose from my captor, to fight, but he was much stronger than I was.

Keiran stepped between me and the person approaching. When he tried to punch them, his fist simply passed through the guy’s face. When he tried again, this time going for the knife the guy held instead of the guy himself, nothing happened. He didn’t have a strong enough foothold.

It was a ridiculous thought to have in that moment, but I couldn’t help but think that Thorne had a point. If Kieran’s only job was to hasten my death, he most definitely wouldn’t be earning employee of the month any time soon.

When I caught sight of Thorne, standing just outside the circle of Wrath recruits, he watched on with only a vague interest, though his eyes were locked on mine, the emotion in them unreadable.

“I’ll make it quick,” the man with the knife said as he reached me. And when he lifted the blade to my neck, I stopped fighting, closing my eyes only when the metal pricked against the sensitive skin of my collar bone.

“Wait!” a woman called, from somewhere beyond the circle. “Hold the order, I know her.” The knife’s cool metal stayed where it was, though the pressure lessened slightly. “I mean it, Jack. Drop the blade. Now.”

My pulse thrummed an impossible rhythm against my neck, as I opened one eye, then the second.

“Bloody hell,” Thorne grumbled, “this girl’s got nine lives.”

Jack stepped back, and I sank against the guy still holding me, my knees weak with relief.

No one spoke as a figure climbed down from a roof across the street, a gun strapped to their back, the circle of recruits parting to let them in.

They were short, dressed head-to-toe in black, like the rest of them.

And when they pulled off their mask, the breath emptied from my lungs.

The same dark eyes, button nose, and face I saw every day.

“So Claude was right. Sora is with Wrath?” Kieran asked, his mouth bent in surprise as he studied her.

Her dark hair was shorn off in a pixie cut, and there was a scar through her lip that I’d never seen before.

And then, for the second time in twenty minutes, my entire world turned upside down.

“Rina?” I stared at her, unblinking, half-convinced that if I closed my eyes for even a fraction of a second, I’d open them to find this all a dream. “You’re alive?”

“Hey, Mareena,” she said, her lips curving into a harder version of her twin’s smile, “good to see you, too.”