Page 30 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

30

MAREENA

Present day

T he trip to House of Lust was an uneventful one. Danvers had given the okay to send four cars—one of them Claude’s—and, in addition to me and Rina, ten other Wrath recruits were coming along to rescue Sora. Of course, the rescue mission was really only a priority for me and Rina. The others mostly seemed excited by the unexpected, hastened opportunity to escalate the conflict with one of their biggest rivals. As long as the mission resulted in Sora’s safety, I decided it was best to ignore the dubious intentions of the others. The stakes were too high, and there was every possibility that I was running out of time.

Of course, Kieran and Thorne hadn’t exactly given me much information to go on. I was either going to die tonight or I wasn’t—same two options that everyone faced. And though I tried not to let myself linger on the possibility for too long, I couldn’t help but let the smallest trace of hope leak into my system at the possibility that maybe Kieran was right—maybe the fates would change their mind.

Death and I had been moving through this intricate dance for as long as I could remember, maybe this was just the next level.

The mysterious Danvers, who, from my understanding, was not one of the ten recruits in our current arsenal, had spent the few hours leading up to dawn conducting an elaborate plan with Rina. It included leaving Claude’s SUV just outside of House of Lust’s entrance, with the added hope that when the vampire finally came to retrieve it, any connection the vehicle had to traipsing through Wrath territory would be severed.

I’d raised concerns about showing up at daybreak, but Rina assured me that House of Lust lived a more nocturnal lifestyle, and most of the compound would be turning in just before we arrived, spent from the evenings more exhausting activities. In this sense, their lifestyle worked heavily in our favor.

As did the fact that Danvers had provided a pretty comprehensive floor plan of their compound, which included his best guess of where they might be keeping Sora. The location he marked was in one of the compound’s older, lesser used buildings—close to the perimeter, and in what seemed to be an abandoned animal shelter.

The thought they might be keeping Sora cramped in a dog cage made my stomach turn, but that was infinitely preferable to how Wrath often dealt with their prisoners—death and dismemberment.

Rina filled me in on the plan on the drive over, and it honestly seemed . . . achievable. Which was strangely terrifying. But if it went as she and the others hoped, we’d be back in the cars, Sora in tow, in under thirty minutes.

Most of the recruits would create a diversion by sending some sort of message to Lust.

I didn’t much care about the details on that end—their ridiculous turf wars and contrived ideological battles were of no interest to me. If they were going to use this as an opportunity to escalate things, I knew there was very little I could realistically do about it. Best choice for me was to ask as few questions as possible where that part of the plan was concerned, and hope that nobody got hurt, on either end of the situation. There’d been enough talk of death tonight for my taste.

While that was going on, two of the recruits would go with me, where we’d use their distraction to find Sora and get out as quickly as possible. Of course, unbeknownst to them, we’d also be shadowed by two broody reapers. Both of whom had spent the entire twenty-minute drive in sullen silence, crowded awkwardly in the back seat, Thorne sitting half through Rina, half beside her.

When we left the cars and made it to the split point, Rina turned to me, grabbing my arm.

“This is where we leave you,” she said.

“What?” I asked, fighting to keep my surprise contained to a whisper. “You’re not coming with me? You’re going with them?”

Sora was her twin for fuck’s sake. Why the hell would she trust two randos with her safe retrieval? Especially when the members of Wrath were not known for their discretion or compassion.

Her face contorted with indecision before she shook her head. “I think it’s best to save the reunion with my sister until after we’re done here. Don’t want the . . . shock of it all to add an extra layer of unknown to how this all might unfold. There are too many contingencies already.” She nodded to two dark figures at my back. They’d both been packed into our car on the way over, but neither had uttered a word the entire trip. “Ben and Jason will go with you. If things go bad and you run into anyone on your way in, they’ll take care of them. I don’t want you or my sister to get involved in a fight. The boys are trained for this shit.” She gave my arm a gentle squeeze, before adding, “It’s better this way. Just get in, get out, and don’t get distracted by the chaos we’ll be causing on our end of the compound, okay?”

I nodded, biting back my disappointment that I’d have to rely on two strangers to help me find and break Sora out safely.

After a moment of hesitation, she handed me the switchblade she’d been fidgeting with earlier. “You know how to use one of these?”

“Stabby end into flesh.” I deadpanned.

With a wry grin, her eyes cut to mine, a flash of the old her peeking through again. “Be careful, Mareena.” Then the corner of her lips dipped, small lines of tension forming around all of the things still unspoken between us. “Get her out, okay? She’s there because of me, and if something happens to her, I . . .” She shook her head, her teeth tugging on her bottom lip. “I won’t forgive myself.”

Sensing that no words could ease her fear, I only nodded once before we parted ways.

Ben and Jason were silent as we started on the route Rina and the others had laid out for us. It was perhaps unadvisable, but I kept closer to my reapers than the human boys, feeling oddly safer with them nearby . . . even though they were technically here for my death.

Maybe, after all these years, I was simply more comfortable with Death. My entire life was measured through the moments that he pierced into my world. I hated him, but the devil you know, I supposed. Ben and Jason were strangers.

Lust’s compound was fenced in, but it wasn’t as heavily guarded as Wrath’s. Danvers’s information pointed to a weak point in the perimeter, and when the shouts of conflict echoed from the opposite end—no doubt part of the recruits’ ruse—we climbed and made it over the fence with relative ease.

Thorne and Kieran, of course, simply walked through the brick wall.

The politics of the Seven Sons never made much sense to me, but it was strange to think that House of Lust was the strongest rival of the militant group I’d spent the last few hours with. Everything I’d learned about this compound had been centered around hedonism and freedom—a less intentional or safe version of Incendiary in some ways. Hard to see how their strength could match up to a house like Wrath. Or why Wrath would even be interested in picking a fight with them of all the Sons.

Then again, maybe a perceived lack of security was its own power move; the illusion of confidence did wonders sometimes.

Our path to the building where they kept their prisoners was quick and vacant. Rina was right—other than the distraction playing out on the other side of the compound, the entire place seemed to be mostly asleep, and the building where Sora was likely being kept was isolated far from the rest of the buildings on their grounds, which meant that we didn’t run into anyone on our hike towards it.

When we reached the main door, it was locked. Ben, or maybe Jason, I honestly wasn’t sure who was who—got to work picking it, but after a few seconds, Kieran shot them a tired look and passed through the door.

There was a soft click, and the door swung open.

It was Kieran’s doing, of course, but one of the boys congratulated the other on a new personal record, by roughly punching his shoulder.

We made our way through the corridor, eyes peeled for the staircase from Danvers’s notes.

Strangely, navigating our way through the building in the dark was the most difficult part so far. We didn’t want to use a solar flashlight on the off chance that it would draw attention to our presence. When I tripped over a worn area of carpet, Kieran caught me before I fell on my ass. Wordlessly, he grabbed my hand, guiding me through the labyrinth with comparative ease, leaving Ben and Jason to scramble after us in a hushed rush. Apparently, reapers could see in the dark no problem.

Clinging to him, I did my best to ignore the fact that I still felt safe with him. He wasn’t my guardian, but he still felt like it. Which meant that, once again, my brain wasn’t on my side. The bitch was allergic to logic and reason.

But as angry as I was about, well, everything, I couldn’t shake Thorne’s words.

This situation we were in—none of it was Kieran’s fault. And, if I was honest with myself, most of the anger I’d been taking out on him was probably just my way of edging out the blazing fear that had been clawing at my lungs since the second reaper’s arrival. Hell, since Sora’s disappearance. Kieran was an easy punching bag through which to filter it all.

“I don’t like this,” he whispered, even though Thorne and I were the only ones who could hear him. “This is too easy.”

I didn’t respond, because unlike the reapers, my voice could actually be heard, but I held onto the hope that maybe this would actually turn out okay—end well, even. It had been a long ass night. The last twelve hours truly felt like twelve years. Maybe we’d earned easy at this point.

We’d get Sora, we’d all survive to see her reunite with her twin, and we’d go from there. Wilder things had happened. Tonight, alone.

“On the plus side,” Thorne said, shooting an annoyed look at the two recruits we’d been saddled with for help, “demons don’t particularly like fraternizing with the Seven Sons. If these dimwits were the best the girl’s friends could spare, I assume we won’t be contending with any particularly impressive sheep here either.”

“This is it,” I said, squeezing Kieran’s hand to get him to stop.

We were in the basement, and a single lightbulb illuminated the otherwise vacant hallway. We stood outside of a giant room, the walls surrounding it made up of giant windows. And inside the windowed room was a winding labyrinth of cages where they used to keep animals up for adoption in the Before.

There, in the far corner, was a small, curled up lump.

“Sora!” My chest lightened at the sight of her. She looked like she was sleeping, cowered in a cage with only a bucket and water bowl for company, the door latched with a padlock.

When I tried to open the main entrance into the room, the knob wouldn’t budge.

Ben and Jason got to work on their lock picking, but I nodded to Kieran when they started bickering over who was better at it. From here, I could see a ring of keys hanging inside the room, on the opposite wall.

Kieran turned to me, brow arched in disgust at Jenson’s antics, then nodded. “I’ll get her out.”

A moment after he disappeared through the other side, a loud bang pierced the silence. Almost like a door had been swung open too harshly and crashed into the adjacent wall, the crash echoing through the empty floor.

“Hey, what are you doing down here?” A loud voice barked.

My neck pinched when I jolted it to the side. Three guys were running down the far end of the hall, all carrying blades of various sizes.

“Fuck.” I nudged the two Wrath recruits, and they sprang to life at the sight of them, both taking off in their direction, lock-picking instantly abandoned. Clearly more amped for the chance to break some bones.

The hall itself was long, which meant that we had a good thirty seconds for Kieran to unlock the door and let me in, assuming Jenson could handle their primary job.

I glanced at Kieran.

He held up the keys, a crooked grin twisting his lips, but that grin melted into a look of horror as he made his way back towards the door and saw the commotion.

When I spun around to follow his stare, I found Ben and Jason trading blows with only two of the armed men. The third guy was gone.

Until a fraction of a second later when he, quite literally, rematerialized next to me. He took advantage of my shock, knocking Rina’s switchblade across the floor before I even had a chance to open it, the clang of its echo on the linoleum floor, an ominous addition to the soundtrack down the hall.

The guy was magic-touched. And with a damn powerful ability. I didn’t even know teleportation was actually possible.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

This was very much not in the plan.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Kieran rushing towards me, his eyes wide with panic, but just as I raised my fists hoping to defend myself against the man’s very large blade, my attention snagged on Thorne.

He stood just behind the man, his eyes darting between me and Kieran. He muttered a quiet, almost begrudging, “Bloody hell,” then, with a frustrated groan, he shoved his ringed-hand through the magic-touched man’s chest, just as the blade cut deep into my right forearm.

The man dropped to the ground, as if stunned, his knife pulling back from my flesh before clattering on top of him.

With trembling fingers, I quickly swiped up both his and Rina’s knives, but one look at the wide vacancy in the man’s eyes, made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t be using either of them against me any time soon.

He was dead.

How was he dead?

And when I turned to look behind him, I saw that Thorne had collapsed to the ground as well.

My stomach clenched. Was he dead, too?

I side-stepped the corpse, then folded to the ground, trying to find the reaper’s pulse, but I wasn’t sure if he’d even had one to begin with. As I shook his shoulders, and tapped his cheeks, trying to rouse him, I did my best to ignore the sharp pain in my arm and the deep splatters of blood I was trickling all over his pale face.

When I glanced up, I found Kieran hovering above me, his eyes sparkling with an emotion I couldn’t decipher, the lines of his face simmering with tension.

He crouched down, his eyes quickly cataloguing the blood on my arm, then every inch of my body, his eyes frantic and mouth pinched into a tight line.

“Agony, are you okay?” he asked, a low growl riding his tone.

“I’m fine, but?—”

“Thorne will be okay,” he muttered, though it sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself of that as much as he was me. His stare darted briefly to the reaper, before finding me again to continue his assessment. “He’s not dead. I mean, he is, but no more dead than he was two minutes ago. It’s just . . . he fecking killed the human.”

My thoughts flickered to my conversation with Thorne only a few hours ago, and I turned to Kieran, trying not to panic. “Doesn’t that mean . . .?”

Down the hall, it appeared that Benson had finally incapacitated the other two guys, though it wasn’t clear if they were dead or just unconscious, as they made their way over to me.

“Yeah,” Kieran nodded, “it does.” He cursed, then let out a frustrated sigh. “When Thorne wakes up, his memories—from both his life and his afterlife—will all be gone.”