Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
Reaper
I don’t like to think about the past. It’s pointless. Mine is full of murder. Pain. Destruction.
And Dante.
He knows me. Understands. Trusts. Never mistakes a thing about me or my intentions. Better, he knows my skills, my loyalty. My ways.
Others, like Knight, who tried to talk about the past when we first met, think I’m stupid. Because I’m not a talker. But that’s their problem. Not mine.
I thrive on being underestimated. It opens doors. Makes a man my size with my face slide into invisibility.
Like now.
Whoever’s following me is reckless. As his carelessness grows, it blooms into confidence and the bolder he gets.
Because he thinks I haven’t noticed his presence.
Male. Not female.
Females don’t underestimate in the same way.
Maybe it’s their size, I don’t know. Don’t care. They’re more cautious because they have to be .
I continue to hunt the hunter. Draw him out.
The buildings on the street, past the small apartment complex where the girl lives, cast black shadows in the yellow spotlights of streetlamps. It would be easy to disappear into that ink, slide around a building’s side, or down an alley, but I don’t want to lose them. Not yet.
There’s a labyrinth of streets, houses, stores, offices, and apartments coming up. There in the jumble are restaurants and empty places. More people, a better chance to see my hunter, slip the tether I’m allowing to tie us together, and either turn the tables or disappear.
I need to get in her place. I want to get my hands on my follower, but out here, doing that’s too dangerous. It will garner attention, even this late at night.
Not like I care about attention. Not like I give a fuck about the law.
But when I put hands on this would-be hunter, I want to be able to do it unseen. So I can extract information.
I picked him up about ten minutes after leaving Pandora’s which means someone was either watching the place, or looking for me.
Anyone who looks for me and wants to live knows not to follow. Approach without an attempt at subterfuge.
I move at a good pace, slowing at restaurants, pausing at menus to look in the wavey reflection.
At the third place, I think I see him. Average height, jeans. Black hoodie, baseball cap. I move on. Fifth place confirms it.
Same guy.
I hate amateurs.
At least I know it isn’t Ghost. Though it would take me longer to pinpoint him.
I correct my thoughts. Clearing out all the noise that’s in my head.
Tonight, it’s not Ghost physically, but it could be someone he sent .
I mark that down silently. Though Ghost would hopefully send someone with more skill.
Fucking Ghost. Nemesis, betrayer. Someone I don’t under or overestimate.
Dante should have let me kill him when I had the chance.
But he has kernels of real humanity in him, hidden deep. And Ghost had been Dante’s partner and close friend. Our partner. Not my close friend. I never trusted him. So…Ghost lives.
I pretend to peruse the latest menu once more. My stalker remains, hanging back, cap low, standing just at the curb.
I go inside.
The looks I get as I walk are things I’m used to.
People see the scars. My height. The tattoos on my neck. If they’re brave or stupid, they see the flatness of my stare, the fact that I’m devoid of warmth, a heart.
Emotion was beaten out of me as a child.
I take a seat in the back. Order coffee and whatever the third thing on the menu is. And I put the cash down. It’s habit. Something I never question. The kind of move a man who might want to turn invisible will do.
The waitress isn’t sure whether to try and eye fuck me or not. But she takes a closer look. Sees the scars. My stare. And she pulls back into herself.
The coffee, when it comes, is hot and that’s all it has going for it.
My stalker is inside now, sitting at the counter so he can watch me in the mirror behind it.
Hazel eyes, brown hair, because he takes his cap off to smooth a hand over his hair.
He’s new at this.
I’m not celebrating. Facts are facts. He’s new so he could be a pain in my ass and follow me when I leave, causing me to make my move before I’m ready, or he’ll get scared and scamper off .
Timing is everything.
I want this easy. No chase.
When I have half my coffee—a good amount of time to wait, my meal should be coming soon—I get up and go to the counter, bumping the guy, lifting his wallet in the process. I ask the girl behind the counter two things.
“I need to make a call. How long until my meal?”
“Another ten minutes,” she says, sounding all levels of nervous.
“And the bathrooms?”
She points to the back. “Past the kitchen.”
I smile, nod, and put the wallet back without being noticed.
Then I head out, just to the outside of the place, and I pull out my cigarettes, lighting one up and pretending to make a call. As I cross to the tree opposite the restaurant, I memorize his ID.
David Finch. Forty-two. He lives in one of the nicer suburbs, but not the nicest. He’s just across the water, so he may have lived there before gentrification hit.
I smoke, slide my phone away, and enjoy about half of the cigarette. Then I stub it out.
When I go in, I make a beeline to the bathrooms, dropping David’s ID right below his chair.
I don’t go all the way to the back, but I look for an exit. There’s an emergency one but it’s hooked to the alarms.
Instead, I turn left and cut through the kitchen and out into the alley, where I scale the fence separating this building and the one facing the street beyond.
I take the long, circuitous route back to the girl’s place and there I wait in the shadows, unmoving, until the outside light goes off.
Fucking cheap landlords. So many across this part of Starlight City do weird shit like this to save money. They turn off the external lights, making it unsafe for tenants and a gift to people like me.
I’m good at being still, being at one with where I am. Disappearing in plain sight.
Even with a face like mine.
One scarred.
The face of a hardened criminal.
I’ve heard the word psycho thrown in my direction before.
Maybe I am. I haven’t examined it too closely. I’m exactly who and what I need to be.
And that particular word makes most keep away from me.
This suits me fine.
Apart from Dante and even Knight…Julien and his woman, Darcy, who understand me, I don’t like people.
The women I fuck? Let’s say it’s not about forming a bond or a relationship.
It’s down in the dirt, primal play, the hunt stripped back to animalistic urges, rutting on a different scale—and never with an omega.
Most of them are bred and raised to mate and breed with an alpha themselves. They want it.
So, I keep away from them. I stick to the others, the outlier gammas and deltas. Even the betas, and the occasional alpha female.
I don’t take part in the chase with them often because there aren’t many who want to be chased.
Slowly, I let my gaze take in the surroundings. A couple walk past, holding hands, weaving slightly, soft giggles on the breeze.
They pass.
Then…nothing.
When I deem the area’s stalker-free, I walk down the side of the building, into the dark.
There’s no fence between this building and the next, only dumpsters. No lights .
I veer right and go to the back entrance of her building.
It’s old and it takes no work at all to get it open. Besides, I’ve picked the lock before.
Her apartment’s the same. Even with her flimsy locks on and inside, it’s nothing for me.
I go from room to room, making sure I’m alone, then I lower the blinds, flick on my flashlight I tucked into my jeans, and examine the back bedroom blind.
Just like I thought.
Black out blinds that fit perfectly.
I go around, turn on a lamp, and search the room.
Her father’s, I’m betting. Pristine like he left and didn’t come back. But I know that didn’t happen.
If he’s Elias Enver and not some guy who looks like him, then there’s no way he would walk out on his kid. I remember the baby he had.
An alpha taking off with the kid rather than have her stolen from him.
At the time that didn’t hit me, the significance and sacrilege of such an act.
I was more in awe that he wanted a baby so much, how he was willing to help us and blow up his life.
He’s dead.
I know it in my bones.
Next is her room, pretty without being girly, but still feminine. The clothes are dresses and jeans and T-shirts, hoodies and sweaters. Flat shoes. All of them from thrift stores. All of them to be worn for practicality and not to catch a man.
Then again, a girl who smells so fucking good wouldn’t need to catch anyone.
There’s nothing in her room.
Except…
My breath catches .
A small leaflet, and I’m betting there’s a worn one somewhere on her person or in her bag, from a city funeral.
She did it. On her own.
I can see her, standing there at the no-nonsense marker after the burial, trying not to cry.
I shove most of them back in the drawer, there’s only four, so I’m thinking if it is Elias going by Connor Roth, then others from the Hollows would have come.
He was the type of man, even way back when, who’d befriend half the Hollows.
Folding the one I took on the photo printed on the front, I call Dante, setting it on speaker.
“What?”
Okay, he’s extra snarly. Something’s happened. I don’t ask. I’m sure he’ll tell me or I’ll find out when the time comes. It doesn’t bother me.
What does bother me is what I tell Dante. “Someone’s been through her place already. Amateur.”
There’s a backpack, and I pull it to me, going down on my haunches to go through it. Clothes, not much. But I recognize it for what it is. A runaway’s prep kit.
Dante and I made plenty of those over the years. And ran plenty of times without a fucking thing.
But that’s what it is.
“She got a letter from the fucking Council,” he says. “They’re marrying her off to some schlep in Hover Valley. He’s old.”
“Name?”
I repack the bag. She’ll have money somewhere else, papers someplace on her. And the fact Dante has a letter addressed to her backs that up.
But no way a girl like her is a seasoned runner. At least, I amend, on her own.
Her father, though, if he was Elias Enver...knew how to run .
“Craig Edmonton,” Dante says, still sounding all the circles of hell pissed off.
“Haven’t heard of him.”
“Knight’s looking into him.”
Knight? The way Dante says it, the name is like a dirty word. He’s pissed at the fucking guy. “She’s not Council, as I said,” I finish.
It’s an easy tell if someone is. Closets of appropriate clothes, files sometimes if it’s a sensitive thing where paper is better over computers. Or a work computer.
None of those things here.
Just some empty booze bottles, an attempt at a nest and not much else.
“So do you think she’s being used by them?”
“Against us?” I ask.
It’s an interesting theory, but it’s not one I’ve thought about. Now I am.
“Not sure yet. The Edmonton alpha could be some way to send her our direction. Pretty little thing, untouched, in heat. She’s a time bomb.”
“They’ve tried before.”
Yes, they have. And have met with no success.
We’ve spawned a criminal empire. Dante carved up a place for us to gain control, and the Unholy Trinity are not to be messed with.
Unless we’re taken by a Council approved little omega.
Or one of us is.
We haven’t shared. Not the three of us.
Dante and I have. He likes control. And he likes free play. I want the hunt, blood, bones, elemental sex.
It makes an interesting dynamic when we throw a willing woman into the mix.
I take my mind from the image and back to the right thought track .
“Yeah, I know,” I say. “But if we take a Council omega, which they mainly are, then they’ll think they have control.”
They will. The Council’s reach is deep and once a mating with one of theirs happens…
I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but it’s got to do with registration. We’re not registered and it pisses them off.
But… “I don’t see any sign she’s registered.”
“She’s not,” Dante bites out. “Yet. But she’s meant to be.”
“So, we ban her.”
“It’s not going to be that easy.”
I wait for the bomb to explode.
He growls, then says, “Fucking Knight marked her.”
My blood runs cold, but now it turns to ice. “But he didn’t rut?”
“No.”
“I’ll be back soon.”
“Good, because we need to work this out.”
I finish my search, and then I turn off the lights, and let myself out, glad to be out of there, glad to breathe fresh air that doesn’t hold intoxication.
I take the long way back and find David Finch looking at the apartment. He’s talking to someone on the phone. “I fucking lost him, okay?”
Then, “Yeah, I hear you. But she isn’t home.”
When he hangs up, I follow him.
Idiot’s heading to the Hollows.
He’s easy—boring—to trail. And I manage to get ahead of him. Then I step from the shadows.
My adrenaline surges. I love this part.
“Looking for me?” I bark out.
The man takes one massive step back.
I’m on him so fast. In the next second, I drag him into the alley and have him face down, knee on his neck.
“I think you and I need to talk. And be honest. Or I’ll snap your neck.”
When I get back, Dante eyes the blood on my tattooed wrist.
“Not mine.”
I like to wear a little of a kill’s blood. Just for a few hours. If I can.
“Sick fuck.”
I don’t smile. “Dante. We’ve got a problem.”
“Another one?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Shit.”