Page 14 of Paris and the Reaper

“This was in broad daylight?”

Paris nodded. “As if he’d taken Daylight. I can paint him for you.” His fingers itched to get to work, the walls of the cabin a blank canvas calling to him.

“And if you were to paint the giant, what would he look like this time?”

“Giant,” Paris said with a harsh chuckle. “He looks nothing like that in his human form.” He held his mug in both hands, close to his chest, guarding against the threatening chill. “In my dreams, he looks like he did when Dad handed me over to him. Incredibly average. You wouldn’t notice him on the street. Short, skinny, frail almost, like his arms would shatter in a strong enough wind. Brown hair and beard, blue eyes that turned red when he froze the vampire, like he did to me when I tried to run. He’s so small, the opposite of the giant he becomes.”

“He was wearing a grocery apron when you painted him before. Was he wearing the same apron when he took you?”

“Not the same one, and he wasn’t wearing any apron in this dream. He had on generic overalls, like a janitor or professional painter would wear.” He lowered his mug and cupped his warm hands over his nape, head bowed. “The exact opposite of my father’s suits. It’s my brain, swapping one monster for another, one victim for another, but they’re all me.” Abused, chased, denied the bright, promising future he wanted and damned to dark, hopeless alleyways instead. “The scene changed,” he told Mac. “From the oval to a dark alley where the vamp was cut open.” He pushed his sleeves up and turned over his arms, the scars on his forearms fading but still visible. “Exactly like I was. He asked me to help him. It was just?—”

“He’s still alive, Paris.”

His gaze shot up, along with his heart rate. “What?”

“The giant. He disappeared in that ball of magic he conjured.” Mac pulled the top file off the stack, opened it, and pushed it in front of Paris.

The blond-haired, brown-eyed woman from the Portola parking lot stared up at him from a graduation photo. “Who is she?”

“Lola Duvall. She graduated Portola University, then went to work there as a systems engineer. She’s from my stack.”

“Your stack?”

“Of cold cases. She’s been missing for over three years.”

Paris’s pulse galloped as his mind likewise raced, tying the pieces of his dreams to the pieces of the new reality around him.

To the raven sitting across from him.

“She’s one of the souls you still have to deliver.”

“Among others.” Mac’s gaze cut to the remaining folders beside him; Paris didn’t think that was even close to the entirety of his stack. “You mentioned hearing other voices when you were on the altar. You painted them carving into you and swirling around your head.”

“They were souls,” he said, recalling more from that awful night, realizing now that that was how he’d thought of the voices then too.

Mac nodded. “I don’t think you were the first being that giant sacrificed on his altar to Chaos. I want to know who he is and how many more souls he’s taken. How many more humans like you and Lola he used to channel those souls through. I want to stop him from taking more. There’s not much I can control in this war, but this—this—I can do. I need to do it. Will you help me, Paris? Will you help them?”

Help me, the vampire had begged him in that alleyway.Help me, Lola had pleaded in the parking lot.Help me, all those voices—souls—had screamed with him on that altar.

And now he had an opportunity to do just that. To make some good out of what had been the worst night of his life. To help those lost souls and to save others from being taken.

To help ease the burden of the man who’d saved him.

“Yes,” Paris answered.

EIGHT

Paris stepped backfrom his latest mural of the monster and tapped his paint brush against his hip. “I’m missing something.”

He’d been working on the painting for hours, after the hours he’d spent painting both scenes of the vampire victim, from the oval and the alley. By now, it had to be the wee hours of the morning, nothing but pitch-black darkness outside, made more so by the roaring fire inside. Mac had kept the flames going while they’d worked—Paris painting, Mac searching his case files for clues and identities. They’d taken a break hours ago to eat the lentil soup a witch had brought over and the cheese sandwiches they’d grilled on the hearth, but Paris hadn’t lingered long. Every minute away from his dream was a minute he risked losing details. Like whatever detail it was now that he couldn’t put his paint brush on.

“Trick I learned for investigating crime scenes,” Mac said as he stood. “Close your eyes and put yourself there but in the victim’s shoes. Look at it from their perspective.”

Paris recoiled at the thought. He’d lived it once himself already, had been a bystander each of the other times. Watchingit from the sidelines, there’d been a veil between his fear and the victims’, between him and the giant. He didn’t want to be in his path again, imaginary or otherwise.

“I’m right here,” Mac said as he slid a hand into the groove at the small of his back, resting it lightly there. “I won’t let him hurt you.”

Inhaling a shaky breath, centering himself with Mac’s hand and the paintbrush in his own, Paris closed his eyes and put himself back on the grassy oval, ten or so yards from where he’d first stood in his dream.

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