Page 352 of Cheaters: A Dark Romance Anthology

“That I’m having a conversation with Death? Yes, I understand.”

“Interesting. Yet you’re not pleading for your life, for a second chance, and you’re not running away again. Mortals are supposed to quiver in fear before me, although I suppose it’s possible you’re the exception to the rule, given that you can see me,” he mused quietly, stroking his jaw thoughtfully. “This is an unprecedented event. Not only have you managed to dodge your scheduled appointment, you continue to intrigue me.”

“Dying needs an appointment? Like a manicure, pedicure, bikini wax appointment?”

“Life and death works on a balanced system, grasshopper,” Seth intoned in a deep, monotonous voice. He found he enjoyed toying with her, especially when she fired back with wit. “In order for life to flourish, I must do my job. Every person in the world is a tiny, tiny cog in the machine. Some last for seconds, others a century or more, but every cog must be removed and replaced. A soul is assigned a time and place to be born, and a time and place to die.”

Her eyes narrowed into slits of green suspicion. “Assigned by whom?”

He grinned. “Wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for you, would I? Let’s just say I’m skirting the line by telling you that everything you’ve been taught about Mother Nature, God, evolution…well, honestly, there are as many lies in them as there are truths. Someone with more wisdom than the earth’s population combined switches and changes the cogs as needed, and I’m afraid you cannot be the exception.”

Lara straightened her shoulders, shrugging them lightly as she breathed heavily through her nose, evidently expecting him to strike her down where she stood. “Ooops, what can I say?” She swallowed nervously. “I seem to have missed my appointment. Maybe we can reschedule for, oh, fifty years from now?”

“Fifty minutes, if you’re lucky. The wise one won’t allow a mistake to go uncorrected for long.” Which was a shame, really. He’d have liked to have taken the time to explore her, find what made her tick. “It really would have been easier if you’d just been where you were supposed to be when the stones fell.”

Her chuff of derision was stark. “I’m sure it would be a lot easier if my blood and brains were smeared all over the sidewalk. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s a very nice ending to a short life. I’m going to have to put in a written complaint and wait for a response from the appropriate higher-ups before this can be taken any further.”

Now he did laugh. A dark, rusty sound coming from somewhere that hadn’t been used for a long time. “I’d be amused if I wasn’t convinced you were serious about doing just that.”

“Oh, I am,” she fired back fiercely, puffing up her five-feet five-inch frame to its maximum curviness. “This mortal isn’t going down without a fight. I mean, you’re Death, right? The big, bad reaper of souls. I’m sure you don’t fawn over material possessions, but I don’t have any to negotiate with anyway.” Her fingers stroked her breast through her jacket. “I can offer you sex, but I’m not sure if your job title comes with a touch of…impotency.”

Oh, Lara enjoyed playing with fire. In his experience, pyromaniacs often forgot themselves, losing their attention in the power and beauty of the flames they set free until they were wrapped tightly in the raging furnace of their making.

“Bartering with Death?” He smirked, resisting the urge to adjust his rapidly hardening cock. He was tempted to let her raise the stakes, just to see her face when she saw how impotent his life’s work made him. “Are you brave or desperate?”

“Neither. I’m a woman with a high sex-drive who hasn’t gotten laid in far too long, facing imminent death and a Grim Reaper whose eyebrows twitched at the mention of sex.”

“The Grim Reaper,” he corrected.

“I don’t see what I stand to lose by propositioning you. You’re preparing to strip me of everything I’ve got, take me away from everything I know.” Her lips curved in a sly smile. “We could play a game. If I win, I get to keep my life and live it how I choose until the next time I see you—a minimum of fifty years from now.”

One thing he did take great delight in was a challenge, and she was tossing a hefty gauntlet at his feet. “I see. And what would I win if I succeed in being the victor?”

“Removing a pesky cog from the system you love so much.”

“That’s not a particularly fulfilling reward for me, is it? You get to live for another fifty years, while I just get to do the same thing I always do, day in, day out.” He shook his head.

“Maybe the reward is in playing the game.”

He pursed his lips as though bored, yet he was far from it. “What game do you propose?”

“Guessing your real name,” she replied innocently. “Strip version.”

“Like I’m going to fall for that one,” he snapped with a roll of his eyes. “How do I know your crazy old bitch of a psychic hasn’t divulged it to you already? A surefire way to piss off Death is to try and cheat me, Ms. Townsend. I dislike being mistaken for a fool.”

Tension was building quickly between them. Part fear, part temper, part strange chemistry. Every beat of her heart, each unsteady breath, pumped more of it into the air around them, blanking out everything but each other.

A dangerous situation, given that his life revolved around being punctual without fail. His ability to control time, slow it down to his specifications to get where he needed to be to perform his duties, only went so far. If he remained here with her, losing himself in this game, the backlog of death had the potential to be catastrophic, requiring drastic measures to fix.

Natural disasters weren’t just Mother Nature flexing her muscles every now and then to remind the human race who was actually in charge. Oh no, they were utilized as a method of cleaning house when the system became too clogged with souls scheduled for collection but never retrieved, or when the scales tipped from evenly balanced to the side of life.

“Death has hundreds of names over the span of every language in the world. Humans like to name things, especially things we don’t understand, but we can never agree on agreeing. Every country, every religion, feels it has to designate its own label for it to be valid.”

That was true enough, he could admit. “It doesn’t change your psychic’s interference.”

Lara laughed and played anxiously with the braid over her shoulder, her fingers running up and down the neatly tamed golden hair as though she played the flute. “My psychic is a ninety-year-old, chain-smoking, half-blind lady who wears a pink thong on her head claiming it channels the angels. She told me that when the dark angel dressed in silver appeared beneath the spotlights, an old face from the past would come to take me home. No names, no cheats. Just a warning that you were coming for me.”

Aware that his orders were likely on their way from above, Seth sighed deeply and weighed up his options. The first, of course, was to ignore the lure of the challenge and simply strip her soul from her body once her appointment was back in the pipeline, then move on and try to forget her as he caught up with his responsibilities.

---