Page 4 of Paris and the Reaper

This tree-lined street of single-family cottages did not exist in YB. And nowhere in his world was the sky above, the buildings around him, and the ground beneath his feet varying shades of violet.

Violet.

Something clicked. Like that instant in his favorite jazz tune when the first instrument on stage made itself known. A single spotlight on the piano, its notes high and lilting, calling to him.

For what, he wasn’t sure yet.

He followed the street to the next intersection and glanced right—more houses—then left, spying what looked like a strip mall just up the street. They had those—and houses like thosearound him—in the suburban areas outside of YB, especially south in Portola.

Was that where he was?

He picked up the pace as he approached the shopping center. It was brighter than on the tree-lined street, but the violet hues persisted. They gave the pale bearded man in the grocery store apron a pale eerie glow as he shagged carts in the parking lot.

A shiver raced up Paris’s spine. Another instrument joined the piano, a bass guitar with its deep, dark rhythm—a counterpoint.

A warning.

Paris hung back at the corner of the building, watching as the bearded man initiated a conversation with one man, then another who passed him in the parking lot. When a young woman approached the car he was closest to, he didn’t speak. He just glared at her, his blue eyes burning with thinly veiled malice.

Worried for the woman’s safety, Paris moved to step forward.

She whipped her gaze in his direction, and the boom of drums on Paris’s mental stage drowned out his gasp.

Blond hair fell around the woman’s bruised and battered face—her nose broken, her lip split, one eye bloody around a brown iris.

Human, then.

Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

That didn’t matter; Paris could hear her in his head. Her two words like the final instrument joining a quartet—the trumpet wailing.

Help me.

Paris woke with a start, in full-on panic mode, choking for breath, ears ringing, scrambling to push himself upright. His hand landed on something wet. Slipped. Then he slipped too, his limbs failing to hold him, the pain that shot through them too much to fight the tangled sheets and the gravity dragging him off the side of a padded table to the floor.

His elbow hit something metal on the way—a bucket that went skidding across the wooden floor—and Paris howled. Clutching his elbow, he flopped onto his back, unable to do anything else, and stared up through tears at a ceiling that wasn’t his, the plain white drop tiles a far cry from the dark and starry night he’d painted above his own bed.

Footsteps rushed toward him, their vibration and sound finally cutting through the ringing in his ears. He twisted his head, found the door, and scurried as fast as he could on his back the opposite direction, grabbing the metal bucket as he went. He rammed against the far wall and twisted onto his side, clutching the bucket in front of him, the only protection he had against the bearded monster coming for him.

Only it wasn’t the monster of his nightmares that appeared in the doorway. “Oh, hey!” said a stranger with tan skin and black hair. His wide eyes were black too. “You’re awake.” Something about him seemed familiar, the sharp nose, the thin-lipped smile, the long lanky limbs. If not for his height and black eyes, Paris might have mistaken him for Kai, but that wasn’t right either. He approached cautiously, hands up, palms out. “I’m a friendly,” he said as he kneeled in front of him. “How’d you get all the way over there?”

“Where am I?” Paris gritted through clenched teeth as he tried to use the wall to lever his torso upright.

The other man clasped his shoulder, steadying him and helping him the rest of the way to sitting. “I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you.

“The raven,” Paris croaked, the similarity clicking into place, the words reminding him of his rescuer. “Where is he?”

“He had somewhere else he needed to be.” The stranger eased the bucket from Paris’s white-knuckled grip. “He asked me to stay with you.”

Hands free, Paris crossed his arms over his chest and came into contact with the bandages covering his arms. He glanced down at his legs peeking out from the sheets still tangled around his waist. Bandaged too.

All of it rough.

Like the woman’s face from his dream.

Like the past however many hours of his life.

---