Page 24 of Reaper's Pack

Despite the constant pressure between my shoulder blades, her hand never once abandoning its post, panic sliced through me. While the darkness came and went in a matter of seconds, it felt like an eternity, a trudge through the deepest pits of Hell—pits I’d been dragged down a few times in my life, collared and leashed, sneering demon trainers at my heels and unimpressed former packmates always a breath away from snapping at me.

As quickly as the black took hold, it vanished. The world came back into startling focus, a little too bright, a little too sharp on the celestial plane. A looming grey building replaced familiar cedar trees, a dozen new scents assaulting me at once. We stood on uncomfortably hard ground now—cement, concrete, something. A fountain occupied the center of the courtyard, a handful of humans loitering around it, cast in both shadow and light, cloaked in night, illuminated by the trio of white lights atop metal poles.

Trembling, I looked up, and huge green letters blazed back.

St. Bartholomew’s Children’s Hospital

Right. Hazel had said… She had told me…

I couldn’t remember. Couldn’t think. Sirens wailed in the distance. Human chatter and night creatures and rubber squealing over roadways and the hum of a dozen nearby lights, all varying in intensity, paired with cigarette smoke and body odor and unnatural smells—

“It’s overwhelming,” Hazel murmured, and once more she calmed me. Her hand massaged the thick base of my neck, and her voice washed over me with the firm constancy of a rushing river. I nosed at the unwelcoming ground, hard like the front steps of our home, and then looked back at her—for support, for guidance, for reassurance that unlike every fucking scenario I’d faced in the past, there wasn’t an enemy just waiting to jump out of the shadows and tear into me.

She shuffled closer, scratching behind my ears. “Take a minute and calm down. The human world is… a lot. Lunadell is big, and big cities are busy. Sensory overload. I get it. We’ll go when you’re ready.”

The only figure in my life who had ever successfully calmed my frayed nerves with a firm touch and a few softly murmured words was Knox.

And now Hazel.

Focusing on the lines of her porcelain face, somehow both soft and sharp, a dichotomy of clashing beauty, settled my thundering heart. Examining the streaks of gold in her eyes, twinkling in a sea of warm brown, stilled my racing mind. Her hand on my back, her touch gentle and constant, grounded me in the moment. Slowly, our surroundings became clearer, and the storm of noise dimmed.

Finally, I could see Lunadell for what it was—chaos, sure, even in the dead of night, but organized in its own way. Towers soared all around the hospital, the lights muted, the stars hidden. The figures smoking by the fountain appeared half-dead, staring blankly, the lone coupled pair muttering to each other in strained whispers.

“Are you ready?”

Her voice was the sweetest music, yet it possessed an edge here. Reaping was her life now—her duty. From all I’d seen and heard, she took said duty very seriously; yet another trait I admired in her. I glanced her way, then managed a gentle woof to let her know I was, in fact, ready for this. Her smile sent a rush of heat from my heart to my belly, threatening to drift lower the longer she touched me.

“Good.” My reaper stood and pointed her scythe toward the main doors. “Let’s go collect our soul, then. She’s just passed on.”

The differences between the celestial plane and the mortal realm were few and far between, subtle in their own ways. Besides the fact that we could walk amongst humans totally invisible while on the celestial plane, one key variant was the doors. All doors were open to us here. Walls and other structures held their integrity. We were still forced to climb stairs, but whether a door was open or closed, bolted shut with every imaginable lock, it didn’t matter.

Hazel and I passed through the revolving main door of the children’s hospital without the panels so much as shuttering. Inside stretched a long corridor, freshly brewed coffee in the air from a nearby vendor, the overhead lights whiter than reaper’s flesh. We bypassed a desk for inquiries, the woman behind it in all pink reading a worn paperback. Shops stood empty to the left, one filled with books and plush toys, another with snacks and clothes. Not a human in sight, though I could sense them throughout the five stories of the massive, albeit drab, building.

On the celestial plane, humans had a strange vibration. Almost that of a soul, but much duller.

Hazel stopped just before we reached a blue metal door, upon which was plastered a sign with black stairs and a strange humanoid figure walking up them. Her thin brows furrowed, body tensing, and I stiffened when her delicate fingers coiled tighter around her scythe’s staff. Another soft, inquiring woof had her shaking her head, and she strode back down the hall, her little heels clicking with every hasty step.

“I just… I felt something,” she said distractedly, scanning the corridor with a frown. “Like a ripple in the plane. I… I’ve never felt it before. Did you…?” The reaper glanced back at me, her confidence noticeably shaken. “Did you feel something?”

I felt everything here, but probably nothing unusual for my first time out of our secluded territory. So, I shook my head, and she turned away with a curt exhale, then marched back down the corridor like she was searching for something. I padded after her—then stopped, dead still, heart in my throat, when I heard it.

The wretched wail of a newly departed soul.

Every muscle froze as the sound skittered across my body. It settled between my ears, in my heart, calling me home with a stronger pull than Hazel’s training orbs ever had. A newly exposed soul vibrated with the intensity of the sun, crashing over me, dragging me into its orbit so that I couldn’t ignore it even if I tried. It shuddered and shook, the air alive and crackling all around us, an explosion of sweetness ripening in the air. Orchids, Hazel had said. New souls smelled like orchids.

My reaper still seemed distracted with whatever had caught her attention; a new soul must have been old news for her by now anyway.

But to me…

It was brilliant and potent, crying out to me despite the fact I couldn’t see it anywhere nearby.

She had done an exceptional job training us, our reaper. Over these last weeks, Hazel had produced orbs for us to hunt and track and corral. In the here and now, instinct took over. I knew what I was supposed to do: hunt, track, and corral.

But Hazel was distracted with something concerning enough that it still bothered her. I should probably follow, stay at her heels, assist in any way possible.

Only I couldn’t tear myself away from the soul’s cry. Both soundless and deafening, it swelled and swelled and swelled, threatening to burst inside me if I didn’t do something.

So I did.

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