Page 8 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

8

KIERAN

Present Day

I pressed the cigarette to my lips, wincing at the taste.

Mostly because it didn’t taste like much. A shitty facsimile of the real thing.

Everything here was a shitty facsimile.

That was the fecking point.

A shadow of the real thing kept us craving the things we couldn’t have.

It’d been a week since my little vacation in the mortal realm and I was still somehow hungover, still chasing that high.

At least today the headache had died down a bit and I was more or less able to string a thought together.

This was a dangerous world to spend so long lingering in that liminal space, recalibrating to the stench of death.

Odds were higher that one of the young, eager-fecking-beavers would see the moment of weakness as an opportunity. One wrong move and I’d be dead.

Again. But permanently this time.

Leaning back against the wall, I took a drag, relishing the memory of that night.

Fuck, I wanted to go back.

Of course, I also hadn’t wanted to leave in the first place. That was sort of the point of these little vacations, wasn’t it?

Gave us something to look forward to when everything around us was otherwise so fucking bleak?

I still wasn’t sure if it was because I cashed out all my vacation on the anniversary of The Undoing, when the barrier between our worlds was thinnest and our power the strongest, or something else about that night that made it feel so different. So real.

Maybe it was just her. There was something different about her.

It felt like I’d flown too close to the sun at the end, like I’d tapped into something I wasn’t supposed to. For a moment, I almost felt like me—the me that existed before the me in the Between anyway.

So, yeah, the hangover was shite. But it was also fecking worth it.

I pulled the crumpled lace from my pocket and pressed it to my nose—a sweet little souvenir I’d swiped at the last second.

The material didn’t still hold the vibrancy of her scent, not like they did in her world. But like with the smoke, the shadow of it was there, and that shadow would be enough to sustain me for a little while at least.

Hell, it’d been a week, and I’d wanked every day since with her panties in my mouth. Even with the hangover, they’d been the best wanks of my death.

Bit of a genius move on my part, pocketing these.

Anything we brought with us during our brief trips into the mortal world usually made its way over to this one. There were exceptions, of course, but that was part of the lure of the job. We could bring things back with us. Little reminders of what we couldn’t actually have.

Fecking masochists, the lot of us.

Groaning, I pressed my forehead against the stone wall, letting the chill soak in through my skin. In all my years, I’d never had a humanity hangover quite like this, had never been so drained from a fuck.

I hadn’t even lasted that long. Not quite a two-pump chump, but I’d been pretty damn close to earning the title.

Two hours. That was all I’d been granted in her world.

And like the dickhead that I was, I’d wasted the first one sucking down a pack of proper smokes and enough booze to burn the memory of the taste into my tongue for a few days—to sustain me until the next vacation.

Though if I’d had any fucking clue what lay in front of me for the second hour, I’d have started there. The taste of her tongue still lingered on mine—far sweeter than any booze had ever been.

I adjusted my pants, my dick hardening at the memory of it.

She’d remembered me, too, which I still didn’t get. We’d always been told that was impossible. On the rare occasions that mortals engaged with, they weren’t supposed to remember. We were kind of like the faces people conjured in dreams—snapshots of NPC’s, filler faces that weren’t grounded in the real. In the living.

Then again, I rarely spent my vacation time chasing after people I’d encountered before.

I always wanted something fresh, something new. I didn’t like lingering in the past.

Of course, when I saw her that night, tangled up between those two lusty twats, I couldn’t keep away. Couldn’t let them have her.

“Mareena.” I whispered her name, just so that I could taste its shape on my tongue again. She was just a girl, but something about her lured me in, turned me stupid. I made bad choices around her. Dangerous choices.

I still had no idea why I’d saved her the day of The Undoing. But I was damn glad I had. Maybe, on some level, I’d sensed what was coming, the strangeness in the world. The fabric of the shadow realm coming apart at the seams.

Whatever it was, it happened. Maybe some spark of the shadow magic had lodged itself inside of her that day, gave her a bit of a safeguard against the memory tug. Weirder iterations of the power had grabbed hold of the mortal world.

It hardly mattered. I’d never see her again.

The stranger, more annoying part of it all was that I wanted to. Desperately.

Futile as it was, I’d already done the math, thought about how long it might be before I’d earn another traipse in her world. It’d probably be at least a year, maybe two. Still, the brief moments of reprieve between the hangover and wanking at the memory of her taste were spent plotting and daydreaming about my next vacation. That, and trying to contrive opportunities to steal some extra power—rush the process along faster.

Of course, with the trials coming up, I wouldn’t have quite so many opportunities.

Maybe I could convince Rafi to get me out of it. He’d be glad for an excuse to get me out of his hair anyway.

“You look like shit.” Thorne stood at the opening of my little alley, his face etched with its customary look of disdain.

“Morning to you too, sunshine,” I said, forming the words around the cigarette still hanging between my lips.

“Rafi says you have two days to pull your shit together.” Thorne’s lip curled in disgust. “We’ve been summoned for the new recruits, but if anyone sees you this weak,” he nudged his chin up, “looking like this, you’re fucked.”

So was he, which was what he was really getting at. Thorne hated everything about everyone, but he hated me especially. His fate was tied to mine—a cage. And under his absurd doctrine, he owed me a debt.

Something that only made that hatred flare.

Something I enjoyed lording over him whenever I got bored. Which, in this place, was pretty often.

“New class of the dead.” I inhaled another drag. “How exciting.”

It wasn’t and we both knew it.

Time spent with the Order was dangerous.

Especially now.

If we survived the next month, it’d be a miracle.

Normally, I wouldn’t be fussed—the call of the void wasn’t usually something I feared. But if I was stripped of my power now, then I wouldn’t get another vacation. There’d be no coming back. Which meant no more real cigarettes. No more real booze. No more her.

“Stop fucking around,” he said. “I mean it. What the hell did you do last week? Spend every last ounce?”

Yep. Literally.

I’d never been pulled so violently from a stint before. Supposed I should have been grateful I at least got to finish.

But fuck, what I wouldn’t give for another thirty minutes, or a round two.

The memory of the desire in her dark eyes, hot and hungry, resurfaced.

I exhaled, grinning when the cloud of smoke made him snarl. “Worth it.”

“What happened to showing the kid around, imbibing in something briefer for the holiday, like the rest of us. Exercising fucking restraint.”

“You,” I chuckled, “imbibing?” We both knew that he hoarded his power like a dragon hoarded gold. “And I did—hung with the kid for a few minutes, brought him to the club,” the mortal spot—Incendiary—tapped into the same power we fed on, which meant that it gave us a bit of an extra boost. Useful, for a night like that one, especially with the veil between this world and theirs thinner than usual. “Then I went on my own way. Said I’d take him there; didn’t say I was signing up for babysitting duty.”

“Just,” Thorne’s nostrils flared as he studied me, about as close as he got to keeping that rage of his in check, “get your shit together. And do it quickly.”

“Yeah, y—” I hissed as a shot of pain sliced through my arm, coalescing in my veins, the sensation sharp and burning. One of the few things we could fully feel in our world—pain. Fucking figured.

Like I said, this place made masochists of us all.

I dropped the remaining inch of the cigarette to the ground, then stubbed it out with my boot.

The tattoos along my arm flared, cutting down my hand to the silver rings.

“A charge?” Thorne asked. “Figures the fates would take pity on you.”

Pity? Perhaps. Right now, my throbbing head was an afterthought, overshadowed entirely by the pain of the call. That was one form of pity, I supposed.

I shot him a sarcastic salute and then left him to his general dickishness, chasing the twisting pull towards wherever I was being called.

The Between was a strange land—everywhere and nowhere at once—and, generally, when our power was drained, we could only make our way back to the realm of the living when we were tethered to a life there.

In the state I was in, I didn’t anticipate getting another charge any time soon—and, without one, it might have otherwise been months before I could find my way back there, even in my transient form. Right now, the only way for me to leave was through a door located in the middle of a lake on the outskirts of the Order’s grounds. It was a dangerous path to carve, with so many of the dead around, but I was generally pretty decent at staying under the radar when I wanted to. When you were around for as long as I’d been, you got used to finding the small pockets of protection.

Besides, the danger was always worse upon return when the job was done, than it was when leaving.

Tethers were controlled by the fates. They weren’t transferable by theft. Not until you were paid out could the power be taken.

Still, I put my hood on—better if I wasn’t recognized by anyone while in this state.

I waded through the water, until I was waist deep, the door’s entryway in front of me. My arm throbbed as I stared at the familiar, unremarkable wood. It sensed where we were going, brought us to our charge.

My veins pulsed with the need to unite with whichever sorry shite I’d have to guide.

The door was a strange bit of magic, one very few of us understood. Then again, the Order never saw fit to allow us to understand. We were only given the barest scraps of information to survive on.

Without any pomp or preamble, I opened it, stepping into the technicolor vibrancy on the other side.

The transition was disorienting, but I gathered my whereabouts more quickly than I usually would.

Mostly because I recognized this place. A small, familiar building stood down the block, my fingers tingling with awareness that the other end of the tether was near.

It was unusual, getting sent to the same area in such quick succession—but who was I to question the fates or their games?

Maybe Thorne was right. Maybe I had earned their pity. Maybe I’d even get a glimpse of her again while seeking out my charge.

I moved through the world with ease, passing unnoticed by the handful of people walking about.

The world was so different like this than it had been when I’d actually been a part of it, gotten to interact with it—to pretend, for a moment, that it still belonged to me.

Now, I was nothing but a trespasser here, one that existed on the margins, invisible to them all.

I stopped outside the door, looking in through the window.

The place was busier than it had been last week—the small, dilapidated building that passed for a hospital in these times was overrun and deeply understocked.

I scanned the faces, waiting for the sense of rightness I would get once I spotted my charge.

And when it happened, when I locked in, I nearly choked on the shock of it.

There, amidst the chaos, was a woman.

Luxurious waves of hair that bled from black to gray. Dark, unreadable eyes. And lips that—well, they were fucking perfect. And I knew for a fact that they tasted perfect too.

Mareena.

My new charge.

Which made her officially off limits, and me officially screwed.

This was going to be fecking agony.