Chapter Ten
“ W hat were you thinking?” I paced the length of the dining hall, too angry at Zacharias to sit.
My muscles flexed and the need to do something, anything, to burn off the rage that was consuming me from the inside out.
“Calm down. You’re acting like I was trying to kill off all the collectors, rather than deal with three troublesome collectors who were sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.” Zacharias lifted his wineglass and sipped the burgundy liquid.
His nonchalance fanned the flames of my wrath.
“Troublesome collectors? Have you lost your mind?” I strode to the table to stand in front of him. Leaning down, I flattened my palms on the table. “Do you know who they are?”
Zacharias swirled the wine in his glass. “No. Should I?”
“They are the Knights Baudelaire,” I hissed.
A perverse part of me enjoyed watching the blood drain from Zacharias’ face as he realized how far the repercussions for his actions might travel.
Grabbing the wine bottle off the table, I lifted it to my lips and took a long drink. It was rare that I drank, but if anyone deserved a drink, it was me.
“Do you know if he survived?” Zacharias asked, voice tight.
Good. He finally understood the depth of the dung he’d dove headfirst into.
I shrugged, dropping into a chair at the far end of the table. “How many do you know that survive having their chest sliced open like they were being autopsied?”
The man had lived, but I wasn’t going to let Zacharias off the hook so easily. Reapers formed families just like collectors—close-knit teams that worked well together and watched each other’s backs.
Zacharias, my brother, and I had been a team. Then Philetus was murdered, and the reapers had refused to aid us in the hunt for his killer.
They claimed reapers weren’t meant to be the judges of right or wrong, and we definitely didn’t go around enacting justice. Our job was simply to collect souls and escort them to the beyond.
Unwilling to give up, I’d petitioned the court to make an exception more times than I could count, but they had denied the request every single time.
After their last refusal, I’d forced myself to accept the decision and do my job. My loyalty to my species drove me forward, helping me to survive the loss of my brother.
That loyalty vanished the instant I’d learned the truth. The reaper court knew who my brother’s killer was, and they had sealed the record away to ensure no one avenged Philetus’ death.
I’d been furious, yet no one had listened to me.
No one except Zacharias. And it was Zacharias who’d come up with a plan for us to get that file.
No one could visit the court or enter the coliseum without a summons. And even if you had a summons, you were only permitted entrance if you had an escort at your side.
But once a year, the court threw an extravagant feast and sent invitations to every reaper. For one hour, we sat and ate, strengthening the bonds between us. It was a unique experience since reapers were reclusive by nature.
This was only possible thanks to an ancient agreement with the collectors. For one night, they made sure most of their collectors were out scouring the earth for stray souls, picking up the slack while the reapers were MIA. With the collectors’ help, and long overtime hours, we could enjoy our feast and maintain order.
Zacharias had located a warlock who’d given him the recipe to make an energy explosive similar to the fireworks humans loved to include in their celebrations. It wasn’t powerful enough to harm, but it would provide the perfect distraction.
It was timed to go off during the feast, and we could sneak into the records room without an escort, because all the reapers would be at the feast or investigating the explosion.
Zacharias was risking punishment to help me obtain the files on my brother’s murder. He hadn’t given up on doing right by Philetus, and for that, he had my unquestioning loyalty.
At least I’d never had a reason to question it until today.
The Zacharias I’d watched in that chamber was one I didn’t recognize. He’d almost seemed to enjoy the violence.
Reapers had been created to be powerful. We could focus all our attention on our job because we knew no other paranormal could compete with our abilities. The reapers who had died throughout history were almost always due to freak accidents.
Our abilities were only supposed to be used for defense on the rare occasion that the need arose. Zacharias claimed he was only defending himself, but I knew what I’d witnessed. He didn’t have a ghost with him, so he could have stepped into the reaper realm and he would have been out of their reach.
Well, everyone but the female ghost who’d clung to him with the stubbornness of a crocodile who refused to release their meal. She’d haunted my thoughts since that day I’d first laid eyes on her in the library.
Decade after decade, I’d watched as humans chose a mate and then became possessive over that person. I understood the grief that came from losing a family member.
What I didn’t understand was how humans could become so enamored with another person that their happiness in life was contingent on whether they could possess the one they wanted.
They didn’t call it possessing on the marriage forms. But if you took away the flowery language, it was simple. In exchange for the right to claim their chosen mate as belonging to them, humans were willing to sacrifice the freedom to make decisions on their own, giving partial ownership of the things they’d sacrificed hours of their lives working to acquire.
All for what? The chance to have sex? I’d been called to reap countless souls who’d died during their orgasms. Nothing about the process seemed appealing or worth the effort. I’d even wondered if humans were faking their dramatic reactions.
Loyalty and friendship, I understood, but love and desire were things that never made sense.
Until her.
From the moment I’d laid eyes on her, I felt as if my soul was being called to her. I’d been called to reap millions of souls, but this was different.
It took seeing her in danger for me to grasp what my body had been trying to tell me. I wanted to protect her and destroy everyone who dared hurt her… because my body already considered her ours.
When I’d yanked Zacharias away from her in the tunnel, it hadn’t mattered that he was as close as a brother to me. My loyalty to her was already stronger, and I’d barely resisted the urge to rip his heart from his chest.
She was changing me, and we’d never even spoken to each other.
My jaw clenched at the memory of the energy Zacharias had blasted at the small group, causing my stomach to spasm and my heart to bang against my ribcage.
I’d teleported right into the path of the blast, standing between it and the beautiful ghost who was weeping over the dying Rhodes. Quickly tossing the other two Baudelaire men out of the blast’s path, I’d braced for the impact.
The amount of power he’d put into the attack would’ve destroyed much of the tunnel system and killed anyone trapped inside. I’d wanted her to survive, so my only choice was to absorb the energy.
It was over in a matter of seconds and I’d grabbed Zacharias and teleported us away before he could do any more harm to them, or to my opinion of him.
My body shook with rage and the desire to make him pay for the pain he’d caused her. Not trusting that I could resist the urge, I’d left him on our estate halfway around the world from Amberwood.
Then I’d teleported back to the tunnels, staying in the reaper realm to prevent them from seeing me.
I’d watched with awe as she’d tried to heal the collector’s wounds. Ghosts couldn’t heal, but that didn’t stop her from trying.
Pride swelled in my chest as she slowly and carefully manipulated the energy inside her and began sealing his wounds shut. She was a natural.
But one look at Rhodes told me he was beyond her abilities to heal. His soul was already pulling free of its dying vessel.
Remembering the way she had seemed to stare right at me in the library while I was in the reaper plane, I moved to stand directly behind her. When she buried her face in her hands and began to sob, I knew that was my chance to help without being seen.
Rhodes’ soul opened his mouth and began the ancient call for death. While many people considered reapers to be harbingers of doom and gloom, we were closer to agents of mercy. Our presence eased the pain, confusion and fear the person was experiencing.
But not this time.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I’d snarled, covering his mouth with my hand to silence the call. “She wants you alive, so you’re going to stay alive if you know what’s good for you.”
I’d none-too-gently crammed Rhodes’ soul back into his body. Then, not trusting him to behave, I kept my hand pressed against his chest.
It was a lot like what would happen if you shoved a ticked off cat into a cardboard box, and then attempted to keep the lid closed with one hand, while trying to tear off a strip of tape to seal the box closed with the other.
Instead of tape, I was trying to use energy to repair the damaged artery that was causing him to bleed out. Just as I’d stopped the bleeding, she’d shifted positions to lie down beside him.
Their lips met, and she opened herself to him, and I watched in a jealous rage as she let him devour her. He sucked up her energy at an alarming rate, leaving me confused about how a ghost could have stored away so much and how she could maintain a stable energy level. Ghosts faded a fraction with each passing hour after their death until they were simply gone. It was the natural order of things.
She was an anomaly that didn’t make sense. But I knew with certainty that I didn’t want her to exhaust herself. Not before I had a chance to figure her out.
The ghost’s heart was tender, and she glowed with the purest of energies. There was no doubt she’d give her all if it would save a life, and it had my teeth grinding together in agitation. We needed to work on that.
I’d settled on the ground behind her, still wishing to remain unseen by the small group. One day, I would talk to her, but that wasn’t the time. Lifting my hand, I lightly rested the tips of my fingers on her back and let my energy flow into her body.
It would’ve been more efficient if I’d sent the energy into Rhodes and healed him myself, but the grief on her face as she tried to save him told me she needed to do this herself.
For reasons I didn’t understand, I disliked the idea that she would think back on this night and remember being helpless. No, I wanted her to look back and remember that she had saved him. Because that was the truth.
Sure, some of the energy she was using had come from me. But the only reason I was sitting on a cold stone floor, surrounded by collectors, was because of her. He would be dead if not for her desire to save him.
I was snapped from my memories and back to the present by Zacharias.
“Are you even listening to me?” He’d risen from his chair and was waving a hand in front of my face.
“No. And I’m done listening.” Ignoring his pleas to let him explain, I turned on my heel and left the dining hall without another word.