Page 98 of Reaper's Pack

“I don’t know you,” I said flatly, peering down my nose at him—refusing to let an ounce of fear show, “but you seem to know me. Hardly fair, is it?”

The creature chuckled, the sound making the hairs on the back of my neck rise, every gut instinct in me screaming run.

“And why is that not fair?” he rasped.

“I appear to be the guest of honor,” I remarked, each word clipped, annoyed, like this was just one big bother. “I’m seated at the head of the table, after all. Surely you owe me the courtesy of your name—and the reason for my being here.”

And maybe an explanation for why I was tied up in unbreakable twine, a binding that continued to grate into my wrists. Gold rivets dribbled over the armrest, and my heart skipped a beat at the first dull plop of a droplet hitting the stone floor.

My captor settled into his own high-backed chair, elbows on the armrests, fingers steepled together. His thin mouth twisted up and to the left, those yellow eyes never once leaving my face. Hard to read, a face that looked like faded silk stretched over bone, but something told me that if I made a wrong move—pissed him off—I’d know it. Instantly.

“The humans knew me once as the Ferryman,” he drawled. “They left coins in the mouths of their corpses to pay for passage through the beyond.”

The Ferryman?

I bit the insides of my cheeks, the fog finally lifted, my mind racing through all manner of supernatural entities who might fit the bill. Not a demon, then. Certainly not an angel. Not a shifter, not one of the fair folk. Not beautiful enough to be an elf, not humanoid enough to pass as a phoenix.

Ferryman.

Coins.

Passage to the beyond—

“Charon?”

Those yellow orbs practically shimmered in response.

A god, then.

One of the ancients.

Awesome.

One of the few species to rival angels, gods were so hit-or-miss when it came to their power.

But clearly this guy was packing.

Damn it.

From my vague recollection of Charon, he served the Greek god Hades, and like me, transported souls into the afterlife. Unlike me, the souls found him on the shores of the rivers Styx and Acheron; with the coins placed upon their bodies in death, the proper burial rite of the time, humans had once paid for passage in the Underworld.

“Yes,” the god murmured, gently touching his steepled fingers to his lips, “Charon. So seldom uttered in this age…”

“What do you…?” I shook my head. While his identity was now clear, the rest of it was still a tangled mess. Why me? “I don’t understand.”

“It’s all right, dearie,” he crooned, straightening at the sound of new footsteps echoing from the dark depths behind me. “You will—momentarily.”

The footfalls came faster, a lesser stride, shorter legs, and were accompanied by a very distinct feminine whimper. I tried to look around the chair’s back but couldn’t quite get the right angle.

And then he stepped into the light—my kidnapper, my bloody shadow. Still in the same grey suit, he strode forth with his once pristine black hair slightly ruffled…

A soul on his arm.

My eyebrows knitted, confusion and fear twisting together inside me.

She was young, the soul, no more than sixteen or seventeen. Lovely but withered, she shuffled along at the man’s side, and I noted fresh carvings across his pale flesh. Red painted his face. Black ringed his eyes. Not a demon. Definitely not.

Mouth hanging open, struggling to make sense of the situation, I watched on expecting the bastard to seat the soul in one of the table’s empty chairs. Instead, he escorted her down to Charon, who wrapped his spidery fingers around her hand and gently guided her onward. He arranged her expertly, silently, so that she sat directly in front of him on the table, her aura shivering. The soul cast a tentative look back at me, her maroon curls spilling down her back, her periwinkle-blue hospital gown missing its bottoms.

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