Page 8 of Reaper's Ruin
One minute I’d been on my couch, scrolling through Netflix after my shift at the hospital, a bowl of kettle corn balanced on my lap.
The next minute...
Fragments. Disjointed flashes.
Blood spreading across my favorite pajamas.
A strange dagger with symbols etched into its blade.
My mother screaming my name.
Pain—sharp and sudden, then nothing.
I pressed my palms against my temples, trying to piece together what had happened, but like they did every time I tried to put them together, the memories slipped away like water through my fingers.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice carried away by the wind. “Can anyone hear me? Please?”
No one looked up. No one heard me. I shouldn’t have been surprised since no one had seen me in every attempt I’d made, but still, my need for connection, for answers, caused me to try over and over again. Someone, at some point, would have to see me. Help me. Answer my questions.
Wouldn’t they?
Movement caught my eye—a flicker of darkness against the pristine white landscape. I turned slowly, dread pooling in my stomach.
He stood at the edge of the terrace below, his black cloak stark against the snow, those silver eyes still fixed on me with unwavering intensity.
He’d found me. Somehow, he’d found me again.
The man I’d just seen in the market. Equal parts terrifying and beautiful. The one person who seemed to be able to see me, and the one person I was too terrified to talk to. Every instinct in my body screamed he was dangerous. Deadly.
“Stay away from me!” I shouted across the snow and ice separating us.
He began to move, graceful and lethal as a panther, making his way up toward my ledge, that wispy shadowy veil muting his form as he moved closer.
“No, no, no,” I muttered, backing away until I hit an ice wall.
Fear tore through me like jagged ice ripping me apart inside. I squeezed my eyes shut, desperately wishing to be anywhere else.
The sensation of falling washed over me again, and when I opened my eyes, the ice mountains had vanished.
I stood in a forest of impossibly tall trees, their trunks wider than cars, their canopy so dense that sunlight barely filtered through. Flowers that seemed to pulse with their own inner light carpeted the forest floor.
Relief flooded through me. He was gone. I was safe.
For now.
I sank down onto a fallen log. Nothing made sense. Not these strange places, not the fact that no one could see or hear me, not these bizarre... jumps I kept making from one place to another.
“Think, Ray,” I muttered to myself, using the nickname Mom had always called me. “What’s the last thing you remember clearly?”
Mom.
I closed my eyes, concentrating.
We’d been at home. Ordinary evening. Mom had made her famous spaghetti, and we’d eaten at the kitchen counter, laughing about something that happened at her work. Then...
Nothing clear. Just those fragmented flashes. Netflix. Popcorn. Blood. Pain. A face I didn’t recognize.
I looked down at my pajamas again, at the dark stains around several ragged tears in the fabric. With trembling fingers, I lifted my shirt, expecting to find wounds beneath.
