Page 4 of Guarded By the Reaper

He stopped pacing, turned to face me, and even though he had no eyes, I could feel his gaze burning into me.

“Fourteen days for what? You think you can outrun them? Outsmart them? You can’t. No one can.”

It was true. I knew it was true. Ma-Vasha held all the cards. But I clung to that sliver of hope, that maybe, just maybe, there was something I could do. Something I hadn’t thought of yet.

“Fourteen days,” I repeated, my voice cracking with desperation.

He was silent for a long moment, and the wind whipped around us, tugging at his cloak, at my hair, at the frayed edges of my sanity.

Then finally, he spoke. “What do you need fourteen days for, Ms. Aster? “

“My sister’s cat.”

The words tumbled out before I could stop them. And suddenly, I felt foolish. Childish. Here I was, bargaining with a creature of death, and for what? A cat?

“What?”

“My sister’s cat, Lady Mews. She dragged herself into the kitchen, just as I was about to… You know. Drink the…” I couldn’t even say it. “The poison. She must’ve been hit by a car. Her leg was broken.”

The poison. I shuddered at the thought of it. Ma-Vasha had given it to me the night I agreed to her terms – a tiny glass vial filled with a viscous liquid the color of blood.

“A concoction of my own design,”she’d purred, her voice like silk.“Drink it as soon as your doctors confirm that your sister is healthy. Don’t let yourself be carried away and remember to hold your end of the bargain.”It was odorless, but I imagined it tasted metallic.

“And?” He sounded impatient now, like I was wasting his time.

And maybe I was. It wasn’t as if Grim Reapers had time to kill. Their work literally never ended. Though I supposed that if my job was showing people to the other side, I wouldn’t be too keen on sticking around for small talk either.

“And I had to take her to the vet. She had surgery three days ago. The vet said she needs exactly fourteen days to recover.”

He froze at my words. From pacing like a caged animal, he stilled completely, looking like a statue instead. Silence fell between us, and I didn’t know what it meant.

Chapter Three

Grim

She stood there, a fragile figure silhouetted against the clouds, her hair whipping around her face like dark flames. And for a moment, I saw her not as a client, not as a mark on Death’s to-do list, but as a woman willing to sacrifice everything for love. A fool’s errand, sure, but there was a purity to it that startled me. In all my years, I’d seen the best and worst of humanity, had witnessed their petty jealousies, their insatiable greed, the way they clung to life even as they withered and decayed. But this… This was different.

This was a love that defied logic. And in that moment, something shifted inside me. Something dark and cold and ancient, something that had been frozen solid for decades, began to thaw.

And it terrified me.

“I asked the… soul-eating creature… for an extension,” she said, her voice barely audible above the wind. “Begged her. On my knees.” She swallowed, her gaze fixed on some point beyond the horizon. “But she… she just laughed. Said Lady Mews was nothing but a ‘flea-ridden distraction.’ That I’d already failed to hold up my end of the bargain.”

A gust of wind slammed into us. The city sprawled below us, a concrete jungle teeming with the living and the dead. I wanted to fly away and lose myself in it, because listening to this woman was too much. I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Words felt useless. My hands, however, itched to reach out, to wrap themselves around her throat, to feel the life pulsing beneath her skin. To end this here and now, to spare her the torment that awaited, though that wasn’t how I reaped souls. It wasn’t in my power to take her life, even if it would’ve been a mercy at this point.

The only answer I had for her was to turn and stride towards the roof access door. “Follow me.”

She hesitated for a moment, then hurried to catch up.

We descended the stairs in silence, my boots thudding against the concrete, her footsteps light and quick behind me. We were an odd pair, I knew, the Grim Reaper and the damsel in distress. Except this damsel was trying to save her sister and her cat while fully accepting she could never save herself.

“What should I call you?” she asked, her voice small in the silence of the hallway.

“Grim,” I said, not breaking stride.

“You can call me Millie,” she said, then hesitated. “Does that mean all Grim Reapers are named… Grim?”

If I still had eyes, I would have rolled them. Humans.

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