Page 37 of Reaper's Reward

12

ADDIE

Fury screamed deep beneath the sea of my arcana. When it bubbled out, so did my power. It rushed in every direction like a tsunami. It hit everything, all at once, revealing every dead thing for miles all around—including the living dead men before me.

Fenrir had interrupted something important. I blamed myself for pausing our mission with my idea. Had we not stopped to have this conversation, then we would have been inside by now. We would have been signing papers, making our union legal. Fenrir was the one who decided to interrupt us, though.

And I was going to make him understand where he’d gone wrong.

I grabbed every loose fate thread fluttering in the city and pulled it to myself. There were a lot of lives ended too soon here. There were threads that belonged to spirits that no longer existed, to animals that strayed onto busy roads, and the frayed fate threads of those who chose to leave before their time.

I promised them all that this was for the best before flooding the fate threads with my arcana. The threads turned to icy chains. I raised my gaze and fixed it on Fenrir. He must have felt what I’d done because he froze for a split second.

That gave Maddox the opening he needed. Maddox swept a foot behind Fenrir’s legs and knocked him to the ground. With Maddox’s knee on Fenrir’s chest, the evil wolf demi-god could go nowhere.

His upper lip curled, and a sucking sound filled the air. I struck with the chains before Fenrir could act. Unfortunately, I was still too slow. Maddox leapt out of the way of Fenrir’s ability. My chains rushed in right as Fenrir destroyed everything around him. The chains were torn apart. Everything I put into them suddenly…no longer existed.

Fenrir drank my arcana down. I watched his eyes roll back with ecstasy like it was a flavor he’d been yearning for in the deep dark caverns of Hel’s domain. Perhaps he had been. If his lover had been like me, then Fenrir would have fed off her arcana the same way Maddox did now.

This was the sustenance that Fenrir wanted. He looked to me, and I knew I’d messed up.

Again.

I twisted to run, but my clumsy feet betrayed me. The ground rushed up to greet my face. My cheekbone skidded along the dirty pavement. Before anything living could infect the raw wound, I reached in with my arcana and sucked the life out of the bacteria. It wasn’t what I really needed, but it worked in a pinch.

“I told you to run,” Maddox grumbled above me.

He lifted me from the ground and set me back onto my feet. I scanned the parking lot, but there was no one around, not even a ghost. Hadn’t there been people here earlier? Where had they gone? They weren’t all working for Fenrir, were they?

The horrible realization that Fenrir had devoured them suddenly sunk in. My knees wobbled and threatened to drop me again. We had to run, but I wanted to stay and put up another fight.

“You’re in no shape to stand off against him.” Maddox pushed me along.

We couldn’t run forever, though. There would come a point where we had to stand and fight to keep Fenrir from devouring the world. I hated running to save my own ass if only because there would be no future for me to selfishly covet if there was no world left.

Maddox directed me back to the street. The sun was starting to dip low, and this part of the city wasn’t busy. In fact, the street was nearly empty. My heart flipped nervously. That wasn’t going to stop Fenrir the way Maddox thought it would.

Fenrir wasn’t trying to hide. He was trying to feed.

Come on, brain. Think of something. Make yourself useful!

Fenrir would eat my arcana if I threw it at him. I had to be clever. When we stepped onto the main street, I heard the chugging engine of an oncoming bus and remembered the time that one nearly flattened me. I glanced back to make sure that Fenrir was behind us.

The grinning wolf man followed at his own leisurely pace with his hands in his pockets like he had nothing in the world to worry about. However, as we darted across the street, Fenrir’s slow pace put him in the path of the bus.

Any bus driver would slam on the brakes at the sight of someone on the road. However, I plucked just enough life force from the man behind the wheel to make him black out for a moment. I really hoped that was enough—

The bus slammed into Fenrir and kept going. I heard the chorus of alarmed shouts from inside the bus. I took the lifeforce that I’d stolen and shoved it back into the bus driver. He was in for a bad night.

At least I knew he wouldn’t get charged with manslaughter. We watched from across the street as the bus driver parked and got out to see what he’d done. There was a dent in the front of the bus…but no man.

Fenrir was already gone.

I looked up and down the street, but there was no sight of Fenrir anywhere. Even if he’d vanished, the mood was already ruined. I gripped Maddox’s hand and wondered if we were making the right choice.

“I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that man take this from me,” Maddox grumbled.

My heart flipped wildly. I stared up in awe at Maddox as he tugged me towards the courthouse. After all that, he still wanted me.

---