Page 19 of TBR: Dead But Well Read

But I’d also been a pretty go-with-the-flow person, and rather than whining about dying, I chose to focus on the upsides. I hadn’t wanted or welcomed death, but I’d learned to accept it and enjoy the benefits.

Death didn’t scare me.

Is that so? Then why are you trembling like that time you decided to go hiking with work colleagues? Remember? You tried to score points with your hot new boss by saying you loved hiking. Then you were too stubborn to admit you’d never hiked to the top of anything higher than the pile of clean laundry you tossed on the floor at the foot of your bed?

I winced at the memory of the muscle pain I’d endured during that misadventure. Why did my inner voice have to be such a jerk? It knew how to hit me exactly where it hurt the most. I’d read some people didn’t have an inner monologue. Frankly, that had been a harder pill to swallow than being dead.

Snarled curses and shouts bounced off the walls, making it seem as though they were coming from every direction.

“Lochlan! Get back!” Rhodes ordered.

The raw terror in his voice cleared my mind of every thought except one. My guys needed me. Now.

I streaked down the tunnel at a speed I’d never attempted before. My form twisted and warped as I moved. One minute, I was nothing but inky shadows and golden light, and the next, I appeared almost human.

Without slowing or even blinking, I surged through the wall in front of me and into a larger chamber. I took in the scene in front of me, and for the first time in my indecisive life, I knew instantly what I had to do.

They said no one could stop death, but I was going to give it my best shot.

“Are you two ready? We’ll move in on the count of three,” Rhodes asked as he pulled twin blades from the hidden sheaths in his combat boots.

Lochlan and I nodded. This wasn’t our first time facing the unknown.

We could have taken the path of the other collectors and traveled from one natural disaster or catastrophe to another. The reapers always lost track of enough souls during those events to keep most of my species fed. It would be so easy. A life of traveling the world and collecting ghosts without the threat of violence or even breaking a sweat.

Instead, our circle had embarked on a far more difficult path. We tracked anomalies in the ghost plane and areas with unusually high ghost activity or locations where ghosts were acting out of character. Then we headed out to investigate what was going on.

More times than I could count, we’d found the issue and saved the lost ghosts, only to burn more energy rectifying the situation than the ghosts left behind after moving on from this plane.

I knew deep down in my core that this was going to be one of those situations. Which sucked, because it had been almost a month since I’d last eaten. Our last case had wrapped up two weeks before, and both Loch and Rhodes had been injured. They’d needed additional energy to heal the injuries that would have taken months to recover from without the benefit of our energy-fueled abilities.

I had claimed I’d already eaten and allowed them to divide the energy left behind by the ghosts. It wasn’t the first time I’d told them that very same lie. They were large men, always running into danger head first, and it was rare to have a case where neither of them sustained some sort of injury.

Because of their protectiveness, I usually made it through our investigations without being sliced open, stabbed, shot, or blasted with magic. And through my training as a youth, I’d learned how to survive on lower feedings and minimal amounts of energy. It was a skill I was thankful to have and almost made the cruelty I’d faced under my parents’ instructions worth it.

If we didn’t wrap this case up soon, I’d need to come up with some type of excuse to leave for a few days so I could feed.

“One. Two.Three!”

The door flew open, slamming against the wall. Bricks worked themselves free and clattered onto the floor. Even through the dust billowing around us, the glowing scythe was visible as it sliced through the air.

Adrenaline shot through my body, and I pulled at my dwindling energy reserves, trying my best to force my body into action. But it was as though this moment in time had slowed and I could do nothing but watch in horror as the dark-cloakedreaper swung his weapon in what he intended to be a killing blow to the two men who’d become my brothers.

If a reaper’s scythe drew blood, it also drew out the soul. Even a paper cut from the arched blade would be fatal.

Loch and Rhodes tried to dodge, but the attack was too fast and unexpected. Reapers had never attacked a collector before. And since my species weren’t human, we didn’t have our souls reaped at death. Never in a million years would I have imagined that one would be waiting on the other side of the door to murder us.

Torchlight caught the blade’s edge, and it glinted as it sang the song of death itself. I wanted to close my eyes, but my body might as well have been frozen in ice.

A woman appeared out of thin air, standing in front of us, her body wrapped in golden light. Without hesitation, she reached out, pressing her hands to the reaper’s scythe.

“No!” she screamed.

The goddess in front of us shoved hard at the blade. The reaper, having put all his muscle power into a swing meant to kill, was thrown off balance. He stumbled, giving us time to throw ourselves out of the range of his curved blade.

“What is wrong with you?” The reaper’s voice shook with fury and… confusion?

Join the club, buddy.

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