Chapter Thirteen
Thane
They all stared back at me like I’d grown another head. “Think about it. If there’s someone out there with the power to kill a God, what purpose will I have? What use will I be? Hell, what if they decide to kill me? What then?”
“A world without Death,” Erebus said melodramatically.
“Hey,” Roux snapped, looking mighty even curled up on Hades’ lap. “If you’ve nothing useful to say, don’t say anything.”
The Hounds grinned at their Mistress, finding her sharp tone amusing. I, on the other hand, had quite a different reaction. One that had my blood heading south.
The Primordial slumped back in his chair as she put him in his place.
Atticus glanced at me, a curious curl to his brow.
Could he sense my sudden burst of lust through our bond?
His mouth curled into a smug little grin, which gave me my answer, and I wondered whether there was a way to shield some things from him.
Although, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I liked being able to feel all of him, but did he feel the same way?
“Thane,” Roux said sharply, dragging my thoughts back to the current issue. “If there is a God Killer, we will destroy it. Do not panic.”
“Not to rain on your parade, Red,” Magnus said as he leant towards her across the table, dropping his chin into his hand. “But how are you going to do that?”
She frowned and pursed her lips. “I don’t know.”
At least she was honest.
Atticus stood from his chair and drew all of our attention. Gods, but he was beautiful. All those sharp lines and shades of blue.
“Might I make a suggestion?” he asked, and I was intrigued to hear what he had to say.
I seemed to always be interested in what he said or did at the moment.
Was that an obsession? “Perhaps we should go back to the scene of the crime. To where the ghosts went missing and where the vampires were left. Perhaps we could start to build—”
“A murder board!” Roux shouted, and I almost chuckled.
Her enthusiasm over true crime podcasts was seeping through.
In the early days, when she’d first become my Right Hand, we’d watched everything that was about true crime.
At the time, I figured it was because she hoped she might come across her own story on there, but after a while, I discovered she liked the mystery and had a strong sense of justice.
Those traits were part of the reason I gave her the position as my right hand.
I hadn’t had one for a long time, but I hadn’t found the right person.
With Roux, giving it to her was an easy decision to make.
“Sort of,” Atticus replied, carrying on as if she hadn’t disrupted him mid-flow. “We need to find something that links all these missing people. Someone, somewhere, must know something.”
Roux clapped her hands together in excitement. “Yes, and we can—”
The musical tones of Don’t Fear the Reaper cut through the room with a sharp shrillness, and Roux pulled her phone out of her pocket.
“Seriously, kitten?” Atticus chuckled. “That’s your ringtone?”
She just shrugged and answered the call. “Hey, babe!”
Ah, that would be Lila, her handler. No doubt she was filling her in on what was happening at GRIM HQ whilst we were all still banished.
Roux’s expression dropped.
Or not.
“What do you mean? The Guild?”
What was she talking about them for?
“Right now?”
That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Fine,” she sighed. “We’ll be there as fast as we can.”
Then she hung up and grimaced as she looked at me. “You, Atticus, the twins and I need to return to GRIM HQ immediately. The Guild is waiting for us.”
My stomach dropped, the feeling alien and unnatural. But that wasn’t my stomach; that one was all Atticus.
I wish there was an internal announcement system or something to say whose feelings were whose. At the moment, our soul bond was making it impossible to work out where his feelings ended and mine began.
“What for?” Hades asked as he stroked a hand down the length of her spine.
Roux curved into his touch like a cat. “Lila didn’t say, but she sounded pissed. Apparently, they think it’s fine to just barge in and take over.”
Atticus snorted. “I think that’s just the way they work. I seem to recall doing the same thing to you.”
I turned to look at the demon. “You did?”
He smiled fondly at the memory. “Yep. I swanned in, asked for Roux and dropped the paperwork in her hand while she just stood there and stared at my pretty eyes.”
“I did not,” she replied indignantly.
“Oh please, kitten,” he scoffed. “You were practically drooling.”
She harrumphed and folded her arms across her chest. “You shouldn’t look so sexy and dangerous in a suit then.”
That he shouldn’t. He always seemed to have a pressed white shirt and fitted trousers to hand, and I wondered where he kept them all.
“You haven’t seen me in leather pants yet,” he jibed, his eyebrows waggling suggestively.
There was a collective groan from around the room, and I swear the temperature just shot up.
“What are you groaning for?” Rafe said as he leant closer to Magnus.
“Do you want to taste the pretty demon?” Rayne asked, his voice so low I could almost feel it vibrate through the floor.
Magnus blushed and sank into his chair as if he wanted it to swallow him whole.
Atticus turned to me and grinned like the devil was on his shoulder. “Should I tell them he’s already tasted me?”
My jaw dropped. When did that happen? “Stop being a shit-stirrer.”
Atticus merely smiled wider. He knew the Hounds had excellent hearing and would have heard that even if he’d spoken it from the other side of the house.
“Is that right?” Rafe said, amusement brightening his eyes.
“And you didn’t tell us,” Rayne added as he gripped Magnus’ chin and forced him to look deep into his eyes. “Naughty little vamp.”
Oomph, that tone of Rayne’s called to the masochist that lived beneath my skin. It had been too long since I’d let myself go under the thumb of someone else.
“I think we should go,” Atticus said, as he shamelessly adjusted himself in his trousers. “Thane is enjoying the view too much.”
The large glass building loomed high above us as we stared at GRIM HQ. It had been so long since I’d been here, and so much had changed since I’d last walked through the halls.
No, it was me that had changed. I’d lost my scythe and standing as the Grim Reaper, and I now had the soul bind with Atticus.
I could also feel more than I had before.
I’d lost so much of myself over the millennia that I’d lived, losing fragments of myself the longer that I watched over the lives of others, that my own life ceased to exist. I became a husk of the man I used to be; I knew that now.
If it hadn’t been for Roux dropping into my life and slowly worming her way under my defences, I’m not sure I’d have had the capability to recognise the need I had for Atticus.
I stared at Roux, her glorious red hair tumbling down her back in soft waves.
Her smile was wide as she spoke to her Hounds and Atticus despite the looming meeting with the Guild and her participation in the Games.
I was envious of her. She found it so easy to interact with people, whereas I just felt awkward and stiff.
Perhaps I’d gotten so consumed in being the Grim Reaper that I’d lost sight of Thanatos the man.
I caught Atticus’ eye, and he beckoned me over. There was a tightness about his mouth, and I could feel uncertainty eating at our connection.
“Are you alright?” I asked as I threaded my fingers through his.
He sighed softly as my skin touched his and warmth settled in my chest. “Better now.”
Roux stood in between the twins, as close as they could be without touching.
I knew I had a tendency to be oblivious to most things, but I could always see the yearning between the three of them.
It was one of the first things that started me on the path to looking at the history of Reapers.
I was a God; I wasn’t a Reaper, despite holding the title of Grim Reaper.
But Reapers as a species were strange. They weren’t born, and anyone could become a Reaper as they crossed over.
You had to die to become one, and normally you retained memories of who you were before.
When I’d found Roux, she was sitting beneath a tree and crying. She had been dressed in a gown of white, like an old chiton that was clasped at her shoulders with golden pins in the shape of snakes.
I instinctively knew that she was a Reaper, but the loss in her memories was the first sign that set me on the path to research Reapers.
She should have remembered something, but she didn’t even have a name.
Just grief. That in itself was unusual. I knew then that she wasn’t a normal Reaper.
She was something beyond that. So, I decided to keep her close to try and figure her out.
I’d picked the name ‘Roux’ for the colour of her hair, and something in me decided to look after her. I’d never been one to put myself out for anyone, but she looked at me with such innocence, with such hope, that it made something spark in my chest that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Purpose.
I just hadn’t expected her to put so much effort into trying to be my friend. She’d definitely been persistent, and it had been easier to agree just to shut her up than put up with the continuous attempts of her trying to trick me into doing something other than reaping souls.
The second thing that made me believe she was something other than a Reaper was the connection she had with her Hounds.
Normally, Reapers and Hellhounds had a built-in barrier that stopped them from developing any kind of intimate connection.
They could be friends, but it was instinctual, like they knew they wouldn’t be compatible.
Roux and the twins shouldn’t even be able to contemplate a connection beyond friendship, yet there they were pining for each other.
I had a distinct feeling that Erebus might actually be right.
Although how Roux—or the woman who existed before Roux—could contain some part of Nyx was beyond me.
Erebus needed to impart whatever magic he employed before they were separated because there was no doubt in my mind that he did something to cause all of this.
“Did Lila tell you where we needed to go?” I asked as we headed into the building.
Guards in the livery of Hades’ palace wandered around the entrance foyer, looking out of place.
There was usually so much more activity.
I’d never really noticed how busy the place usually was, but the absence of all the souls, Reapers and Hounds made GRIM HQ seem desolate.
“Your office,” Roux replied. “Well, I guess it’s still my office. When will your scythe go back to you?”
I wanted to know that too, but something was letting it remain with Roux. “Don’t you like carrying it?”
“No,” she blurted. “It’s fucking heavy.”
In more ways than one.
She fell into step with me and hooked her arm through mine. “It still feels temporary as well. I can still feel my own scythe weaved into my bones. Yours doesn’t feel like that.”
There was something easy about being in her company, and I liked that she was so comfortable around me. She had never cared that I was Death, unlike most people who just saw me as their demise. “You’ve done well looking after it, thank you.”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “I haven’t really done anything. It was fun to swing around, though.”
Rafe chuckled behind me. “And she looks badass.”
That I could believe. She normally looked intimidating in all the leather and harnesses that she wore with her long black coat whipping behind her in the wind. “Well, I appreciate it nonetheless.”
We stepped into the elevator together and rode to the top floor. Roux and I had this space to ourselves, with the rest of the Reapers spread out on the floors below and all the other departments below them.
The doors swung open, and Lila was there pacing the space in the open hallway. There was a small reception area, and then my office was to the left, and Roux’s was to the right. There were glass walls everywhere so we could all see the Guild members waiting for us in my office.
“Thank goodness,” Lila gasped. “I was beginning to think you’d run off.”
“Nope,” Roux replied as she wrapped her friend in a hug. “What are we looking at?”
Lila’s face paled, which was impressive since she was a ghost and already fairly pale. “Lazarra is here with her number two, Rory, plus three other high-ranking officials. I’m pretty sure one of them is an Incubus.”
“They’ve certainly sent the big guns then,” Atticus mused, his lips pursed and back ramrod straight.
“Whatever happens in there,” Rafe said as he rested his hand on Atticus’ shoulder. “We are in this together.”
Atticus nodded and took a deep breath, his body still clinging to the normal motions of life even when he no longer needed them.
“Come on. Let’s show them who we are,” I said as I squared my shoulders. I was Thanatos, God of Death, and I would not be intimidated by the Guild.
“Atta boy,” Roux cried out, slapping my ass as I walked past. “Let’s go get ‘em, tiger.”
“You’re such a dork,” Rayne scoffed as we all piled into my office to face whatever the Guild wanted to throw at us. Hopefully, we would come out unscathed, but only the Fates knew if we would or not.