chapter 2
Frenzy heard the screams first before he smelled the stench of blood. Fire ripped down his left side, burned the flesh off his hand, turning it to nothing but bone. The bumping sound of a heartbeat in distress slammed into his consciousness.
Sucking in a sharp breath, sweat coating his frame, he gasped as he turned to look at the dilapidated buildings towering around him.
Thanks to Cian’s betrayal of The Morrigan, the queen of the fae sithen, Frenzy had been forced back into reaping souls—a task he did not want. He hated humanity and all it represented.
The greedy corruption of their souls had nearly infected him once centuries ago. No, not nearly—it had poisoned him. A betrayal by one had turned him into a monster. Frenzy had become someone of dark legend, an avenging demon of death. It’d been a black time in his long life and many had died. For the sake of the world, The Morrigan had yanked him away from the humans, made him serve her whims only, and he’d slowly begun to heal.
Now she’d thrust him back into this world, and there were no words to describe the absolute agony of being permanently returned to a place he wanted to see burn to the ground. They all deserved to die and to be forced back into their lands; to have to carry out the duties of a grim reaper all over again made a fury burn through his soul.
The bones of his hand throbbed, made bile roil through his gut. The only way to ease the ache was to drag the soul to its resting place.
A black alley cat screeched, arching its back as it peered up at him with angry yellow eyes.
“Come here, kitty cat,” Frenzy drawled, wiggling his finger at it, then laughing when it jumped behind a Dumpster and scampered off with its thick tail tucked between its legs.
Gods, he hated this world.
Following the stench of blood, he slowly made his way toward an abandoned building, in no hurry to get there. The maggot could wait a while longer; not like he/she/it was going anywhere any time soon.
Frenzy rolled his eyes as he continued to snap and crack the bones of his left wrist. As the screams raged down the mostly deserted alleyway, he gazed at the abandoned houses with wooden boards hammered against the windows and bullet holes riddling the walls. Humans. They destroyed all they touched.
Kicking a glass bottle hard enough to shatter it against a set of crumbling cement steps to alert whoever was snacking on whatever that someone was at present, he waited and listened.
“Did you hear that?” something snarled. The voice came from the house directly in front of him.
The house had at one point been painted robin’s-egg blue, but now it was mostly just patches of paint interspersed with long slivers of ragged wood poking out. The door was gone, and yellow crime scene tape marked the entryway.
A man’s voice growled. “Go check it out. We’ve come too far.”
Frenzy rolled his eyes. What the hell had he walked into this time? Another rape, murder, mugging? Only more of the same crap as always.
He could just sit out here, drape himself in essence, and become invisible until they finished whatever the hell it was they were doing, but he was bored and all he wanted now was to get back home. This would be his final harvest of the night, then he’d tell Morrigan he was done. Period.
She could flay him, skin him, rip him limb from limb—frankly, he didn’t care. But he was done being death’s bitch.
With a loud sigh, he opted to get it over with quickly. “I’m outside, dumbasses,” he growled.
Suddenly the voices grew hysterical.
“Get the hell away from here. She’s ours,” a deep masculine voice rumbled before a pair of bright blue eyes locked onto his from the doorway. Instantly the ripple of other pulsed against Frenzy’s body. It took barely a second for him to peg the monster. Werewolf killings were much gorier; the creature standing before him was clean, which meant he was a vampire. His jacket and jeans were spotless, but Frenzy’s nose was as good as any bloodhound’s. There was blood soaking into the floorboards of the old house.
The vampire cracked his knuckles, taking an advancing step out the door. “I said go. She belongs to us.”
Snorting, Frenzy nodded, making sure to keep his hands hidden inside his black leather jacket. “Yeah, sure, dip weed. Finish her up, whatever. I’m patient.”
Leaning against the ramshackle house, he bent his knee and yawned.
The vampire full-on growled, making a sound like an angry pit bull in the back of his throat. “Vanity, get the hell out here,” he called over his shoulder, never stopping his slow, menacing glide toward Frenzy.
“Seriously, man, go finish.” Frenzy waved him on, still trying to appear at ease while the muscles in his legs began to reflexively tighten up. “I’ll wait.”
Another vampire joined the first one—this one a female, with short black hair and intense amethyst eyes. The two began a slow convergence on him and Frenzy might have laughed, if he weren’t suddenly annoyed.
“I don’t think you heard me the first time,” the male spoke up again, opening his mouth wide to expose the long canine fangs.
“I’d listen to Gabrielle if I were you.” Vanity’s full red lips curved up at the corners as she eyed him slowly up and down. Her fingers began toying with the collar of her pristinely white shirt.
The sexual heat in her eyes was obvious; so was the bloodlust. Her irises were a deep, bloody red. She’d recently fed on the human still inside the house.
The wind kicked up then, dragging the scent of blood, but mixed in with it was the unmistakable odor of vampire hormone. It was metallic and spicy and tickled the inside of his nose.
Frenzy chuckled, pushing off the wall as Gabrielle came within five feet of him. Unlike Vanity, the electric-blue-mohawked male was definitely posturing, ready for a fight.
“You should have left when you had the chance.”
If the chuckle was intended to terrify Frenzy, it missed the mark. “Really?” He shook his head. “You’re really doing this? I told you to finish, I’m not gonna stop you.”
Gabrielle narrowed his eyes, his jaw clicked, and then a second later his nostrils flared. “You’re a faerie.” He spat the name like it offended him. His grin was nothing but teeth. “Fairies aren’t welcome ’round these parts.”
Vanity straightened up and where there’d been heat in her eyes only seconds ago, now there was the flickering flame of pure hate. Suddenly there were knives in her hands and she was standing by Gabrielle and they both knew they were going to kill him.
At least that was the attitude they were giving off. Goddess, he hated how stupid others were sometimes. Did they really just assume because he was a “faerie” he was an easy mark?
Being a faerie wasn’t very popular these days. Not after the Great Wars, not after the way his kind had nearly caused the rest of the supernatural world to go extinct. But he didn’t care about any of that; whatever hatred they still held on to, that was their own drama. He was only here to pick up the pieces of their meal.
If they wanted to fight, well, then…He smiled, more than happy to oblige them.
“Look, c’mon.” He held up his hands. “Can’t we all just get along?”
“Don’t worry, sexy,” Vanity purred, “I promise you won’t feel a thing.” She licked her fangs.
He snorted. “Yeah, sure. One more chance, guys. I’d really rather not kill you tonight.”
Not that he cared one way or another whether he killed them, but he’d like to not get dirty. He hated the stench of vampire blood. It was a noxious odor, much more metallic than the norm and usually always black. Why, he had no idea. But getting the stench out, not to mention the stains, it was hell.
Gabrielle pounced, hands outstretched and fangs ready to sink into his neck. Vanity was suddenly at his back, and he rolled his eyes.
Vampires moved fast, but death moved faster. In less than a blink, he had Gabrielle pinned up against the rotted wood, which was groaning as the board bent inward, threatening to snap in two at any moment.
Vanity stopped moving, looking between him and Gabrielle’s face with eyes as wide as saucers. Gabrielle was clawing at Frenzy’s wrist; thing of it was, his wrist was nothing but bone. He didn’t feel a damn thing and just chuckled as the vampire’s eyes began to slowly pop from their sockets with his efforts to take a breath.
“What the hell are you?” Vanity hissed, still holding her knives in both hands, but they were now hanging past her waist, and there was a definite trickle of fear sliding from her pores. It was a thick, greasy substance that made Frenzy gag.
Spitting to the side of Gabrielle’s booted foot, trying to get the nauseating taste from his mouth, he grinned. “Impressed yet?”
Her black Chinese bob bounced around her face when she yelled, “Lucian!”
This was really getting old. Frenzy debated whether to spare Gabrielle’s life or not, then decided it really didn’t matter one way or another to him. He’d given the goth bastard a chance to finish his prey. He’d wanted the fight. So…
With a smile full of teeth, he inhaled deeply and then, blowing out, pushed a jet of death down Gabrielle’s throat. A rim of frost first coated the vampire’s lips, turning them a deep shade of arctic blue, moving slowly but relentlessly down his tongue, his throat, the icy grip of death traveling through every nerve, vein, and muscle.
Within seconds the hands grasping his own began to slacken, and a moment later the vampire dropped like a sack of stone, shattering into a thousand pieces when his body hit the pavement.
There was no soul to gather from within the pieces of vampire; the fanged freak had died long ago.
But before Frenzy had a chance to gather his thoughts, claws raked fire down his back, and now he was pissed. He’d been ready to let the vampires have their prey, ready to wait them out.
Roaring, he twirled on his heel. There was another vampire in front of him, but this one looked wrong. His face reminded Frenzy of melting wax, the way it slid down one side. But the eyes were a glowing shade of blue.
Something about the vampire seemed familiar. A nagging thread tried to worm its way through his consciousness. Something about the intense neon blue of those eyes…about the iris that looked more like a teardrop than a circle. He’d seen those eyes before. But then the vampire was shoving his fangs out like a serpent ready for the strike and Frenzy stopped thinking.
The incisors literally seemed to leak a fluid and there was a sickly sweet smell, almost like raw almonds.
Lucian kicked Frenzy straight in the gut, shoving him against the wall. Seeing her buddy kick his ass must have spurred Vanity into action, because she was back in the fray. Slashing and moving her knives in a dance that was as beautiful as it was deadly. He’d blink and a new cut would appear, almost like magic, she moved so fast. But they were shallow slices, not even enough to leave scars. Blood slicked down his arms and sides. He needed to end this tiresome charade now.
“I gave you”—Frenzy slammed his bony hand against Lucian’s cheek, every vein in his face standing out in bright green relief against the lily-white starkness of his flesh—“a chance to escape.”
The press of death’s hand to the vampire’s cold flesh instantly immobilized him, but the trance wouldn’t last long: maybe thirty minutes or so. And there was also the brilliant little side effect that while he lay in a catatonic stupor, the vampire’s entire body would feel as if it was boiling in liquid ice. That knowledge shouldn’t make Frenzy smile. But it did.
Two down, one more bloodsucker to take care of. Pivoting just as her curved blade descended for yet another stab, Frenzy thrust his fist through Vanity’s chest.
Her entire body jerked, spasmed on his arm that had gouged a large hole through her abdominal cavity. The blades clattered uselessly to the ground and he tsked.
Vanity’s mouth opened and closed in an ugly pantomime of a suffocating fish. He shook his head.
“So tell me, vampire.” He cocked his head, peering up at her unusually pretty violet eyes. “What was so damn important back there that you were willing to tangle with death to get it?”
Her nostrils flared and a slight tugging pulled at his lips as the knowledge that she now realized exactly who he was expressed itself in her pain-filled gaze.
“Ah yes, my little prickly petunia, I am a grim reaper. Perhaps you should have thought of that before attacking me, eh?”
Again she said nothing. Grabbing her jaw, he moved her face up and down. “The correct answer is yes, Frenzy, I should have thought of that. Well, no worries.”
Yanking his fist out of her, he let her slip to the ground. Her fingers shook as she grabbed at the gaping hole, which had very little blood coming out of it. Obviously she hadn’t fed enough back there. Vampires could not produce their own blood; much like a mosquito, they had to suck their sustenance out of others in order to pass as mostly human.
Which begged the question, if she wasn’t feeding on the human who was still obviously inside the house, what had she been doing? Vampires weren’t known to run in packs unless they were on the hunt.
Breath rattled from her lungs. “The woman is ours,” she managed to finally wheeze out.
He shrugged. “I do not care at all what you do with the carcass. The soul, however, belongs to me. You know how this goes, mosquito. Just business.”
“You can’t leave me this way,” she gasped.
“I can do whatever I want.” His smile was pure poison. “But since you’re asking so nicely…” Leaning in, he pressed his palm to the side of the house.
Every reaper had a talent for killing, but not all reapers killed the same. Some could transform their bodies into killing vapors, literally shooting themselves like an arrow into their prey and ripping them apart from the inside out. Frenzy’s preferred style was much more romantic.
Using his free hand, he feathered his fingers across her cold marble skin. Hissing, she twisted her face to the side.
“Shall I kiss it better?” he whispered as the power of death filled him, stretched him until he vibrated with it. The cadence of his voice lulled her gaze back, ensnaring her. Entrancing her.
Frenzy had always been more of a lover than a fighter. Tipping her face up to his, her breathing ragged from the pain and a sexual wave of intense longing for his touch, she melted into his lips.
But touching him while ridden by death was like kissing a volt of lightning. His mouth tingled as his power transferred to her. Death’s kiss sank its tentacles deep inside her, rushing through her veins, her pores.
She gasped, pulling away as her body began to freeze from the inside out. Already pale ivory skin turned an alarming shade of arctic blue, and then cracks slid in large grooves down her face, her neck, her arms.
“Good-bye, vampire. It’s been swell.” He gently flicked the tip of her nose, and she shattered like a pile of broken marble at his feet.
Sighing, he stood, refusing to acknowledge that the knife wounds in his sides and back actually hurt like a mother. He licked his teeth, kicked the still-catatonic Lucian in the gut, just because he felt like it, and followed the sounds of wet gurgling inside the house.
The smells were the first things to hit him. A blast of spring, the scent of newly turned soil and seedling sprouts. Humans smelled of this. The good ones anyway. The ones who went to the light.
Not that he considered any of them good; as far as he was concerned they all deserved to be thrown into the fiery pit that reeked of sulfur. But whatever, not his decision.
The squeaking chirp of mice and rats rang like a melody all around him, almost in sync with the wet rattle coming from a few feet in front of him.
“Bloody freaking vampires,” he growled, fully expecting to find a partially dismembered human with barely a torso attached and full of fang marks. Vamps could be a lot like sharks when in a frenzy, ripping off and sucking clean. The myth that they killed with a love nibble was rarely the case.
He now knew why their eyes glowed. Vampires could only pass as human when they fed properly. Only by being the parasites that they were could they attain the rich shade of healthy, pinkened skin and the natural eye color of what they once knew when alive and mortal.
But when a vampire didn’t feed, they began to resemble the monster of legend. The pale-faced, glowing-eyed freaks whose looks gave them away as something other than human.
The vampires he’d fought tonight had been half-starved. Maybe they didn’t care to appear human because San Francisco was the one city in the world that allowed any monster, be it vampire or zombie, to roam free and unmolested. A vampire did not need to hide his truths if he did not wish to. There were even clubs where humans and vamps went to hook up for those few but rare mortals who enjoyed being a vampire’s snack for the night.
Times were so different from when he’d first roamed Earth, and a part of him missed the day when mortals had sense enough to fear others, when they worshipped the beauty of nature and the fae. But those days would never return again. Humans had adapted, just as the monsters had.
The black inside the ramshackle house of crumbling wood did not hinder his ability to see. The walls were covered in scratch marks, profanity-laced phrases written upon them with red and black spray paint. Decaying leaves and used needles littered the floorboards.
More than likely the vamps had stumbled upon a user too doped up to realize the type of danger she’d been in to flee in time.
Moon filtered in through cracks in the paned kitchen window. The female was bathed in shadow and weakly clutching onto her white robe, now stained a deep shade of crimson.
Standing in the doorway, Frenzy took his time studying the pathetic creature. The vampire, likely Lucian, had done a number on her. Her legs were splayed apart in an unnatural position. The feet were pointing in the wrong direction, but not only the feet: the hips were no longer even aligned.
Her chest cavity had been cracked open. Not unlike what he’d done to Vanity, but unlike the walking dead, the woman before him was a mortal and her very essence pooled around her in a large band of red. Pale fingers clutched almost spasmodically against the edge of her robe.
What must have once been a stunning face was now ribboned open at both cheekbones, the eyelids having been sliced off. There wasn’t much in death that offended him; death was simply a fact of life. He’d killed many in his long life—vampire, shifter, witch, and human. But the savagery of this attack made the muscle in his jaw tick. A strange sensation filled his limbs, one he was not used to feeling often.
The emotion was pity. Much as he despised the mortals, the act of violence against this woman was an atrocity. Kindness was not an emotion inherent in him. So as much as he felt…something, it didn’t change what he’d come here to do.
“Look at me, mortal.”
A horrible snuffling sound, like she was trying to draw breath through a ruptured nose, issued from between her cracked lips.
Her head began a slow roll in his direction.
“What in the hell did those vampires want with you, little one?”
Flexing his bony hand, he placed it over her broken form, ready to harvest the soul from her body, when a pair of eyes stole the very words from his tongue.
Eyes the color of sun-warmed honey, a golden brown so rare he’d only ever seen the likes of it once before. Jerking his hand away from her chest as if burned, he sat back on his heels.
“Who are you?” he growled, as a strange sort of numbness infiltrated his limbs and brain.
Adrianna was the name running like a mantra through his head. His Adrianna. The only woman in the world he’d ever loved, ever needed, wanted, desired, adored…
A horrible grinding sound emanated from her as her lips flopped open, as if she was trying to speak. Disbelief kept his feet rooted to the spot. He needed to finish this, to get away from her and the memories surfacing like a bitter friend.
But he couldn’t look away; the vision of his Adrianna kept merging with the battered face of this nameless woman. She was gazing at him with pain and fear, with hope. But not the hope that he would save her; she wanted death. He read it clearly. Her eyes were shrouded, angry, and screaming at him to hurry. To end it now.
“Who are you?!” he roared, even in his fury careful not to touch her with the bones of his hand.
Her eyes kept boring into him, accusing him, but there was something else in her eyes: pain. She was shrouded in it and barely hanging on to any last vestige of sanity.
“Kill…me,” she croaked.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
He moved his hand, circling her head.
“Cannot…become…that.”
Her broken voice scraped his nerves, set his teeth on edge, made a blanket of fury creep like a shadow across his mind. Fury at her for reminding him of a long-dead ghost, fury at the vampires for destroying her the way they had.
“It’s too late, mortal. You already are that. Me taking the soul will not negate it. They’ve envenomed you.” And they’d gone to great lengths to do it. She was covered head to toe in bite wounds.
Her head shook painfully slowly. “Then finish,” she gasped, body shuddering as she tried to speak around the pain, “what…they…started.”
Her eyes rolled back, and he could think again, because she didn’t look so much like his Adrianna anymore. She was just a woman, a nameless, faceless woman. A human who’d destroyed and hated and lied and cheated and stolen…She was the worst of all creation.
Flexing his fingers, he flung them over her chest, ready to harvest the pulsing blue orb that was her soul, when there was a blinding flash of light followed by the unmistakable sharp and biting scent of frost.
Shielding his eyes against the brilliance, he turned to the side, but knew instinctively who’d intruded.
“Lise?” He jumped to his feet when the light finally turned down.
Lise was always a surprise. None knew of her true form or who she really was, always referred to as the Ancient One. All he did know for a fact was that even The Morrigan had to do what the old battle-ax said, which in his book meant that she wasn’t one to mess with.
Dressed in a gown of sparkling sheer white, she reminded him of the frost he still felt shivering through the air. Strange, luminescent eyes hooked his, making him wonder all over again what she was.
After what Lise had done with Cian, all of faedom wondered what she was and why she’d taken such an interest in death. He narrowed his eyes.
“To what do I owe this honor?”
Quirking a snowy brow, she simply shrugged. “Must I have to have a reason to visit?” A vein of ice skated across the floor with each step she took.
“Do not tell me you’ve taken an interest in me now, Ancient One,” he said with a thread of sarcasm.
A prim and small smile curved the edges of her petal-pink lips. “And if I have?”
“Good goddess”—he cast his gaze heavenward for a brief moment—“I’m not in the market, so if you’re trying to get me to play patty-cake with a human the way you did with Cian, I’m not interested.”
She was no longer looking at him. Lise was studying the woman, whose breathing was now a faint wisp of air.
“She hasn’t got long in this world.”
“Obviously.” He knelt again. “Which is why I’m here.” Extending his hand, he made to snatch up the glowing blue orb that was her soul, but a surprisingly warm hand latched on to the bone of his finger.
Brows gathering into sharp slashes, he shook off Lise’s hand, surprised to note her skin still gleamed, almost glowed, like moonlight was trapped and filtering through her pores from within.
“You should have fallen to your knees in agony from touching that.” His tone was accusatory. What bothered him most wasn’t that Lise was unaffected by his touch, but that none were immune to death. Especially not an other, as indestructible as they sometimes seemed. Everything died. It was the continued mystery of who Lise was, why she interfered in the lives of the reapers, and what she could possibly want with him that really irritated him most.
“Do not try to make sense of me, boy. You never will.” There was no malice in her words, merely amusement.
It made his teeth gnash.
“You must not allow Mila to become a vampire or to be taken by one of them.”
Now that the real purpose of her visit was revealed, he still found himself just as confused.
“O-kay. She is covered in bite wounds. The venom has spread through her system. Are you suggesting I drive a stake through her heart?” He pointed at her still body; the bump of her heart was barely discernible now. She had literally milliseconds before human death occurred, at which point she would become the walking dead.
Crossing her arms she pinned him with a glacier glare. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
His lips twitched despite himself.
Then everything stopped. Literally halted. The squeak of mice, the hollow scraping of a door creaking open and shut in a gentle breeze. The world was quiet and still, except for him and Lise.
The human was no longer breathing, but she wasn’t dead either. She was in stasis along with the rest of the world.
Lise wore a smug grin. “Now then, as I was saying, she must not become one of them.”
“And how do you plan to stop the inevitable, Ancient One? Keep her catatonic for the rest of her life?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Of course not. I already thought of that, but it really doesn’t work for my endgame.”
Nodding, he leaned against a fridge that’d been partially moved away from the wall. “What is it with immortals and their endgames?”
“Like you’re one to talk, reaper. And what were you planning to do? Hmm?” The whites of her eyes glowed as she tapped her finger against her chin. “Tell the queen you were through being master of death? Is that not an endgame? Though a minor one, still an endgame.”
He remained silent, refusing to rise to the obvious baiting.
“We are all the same; we all have a goal in mind. My goal involves you and this woman.”
“No.” A swift shake of his head didn’t stop her from nodding as if he’d agreed.
“Oh yes.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Frenzy licked his front teeth, counting slowly to three before speaking. “I do not think you heard me correctly. I’m not in the market for an Eve, especially not a human one. Cian at least got a witch. This…” His nose curled as he pointed to the broken shell lying before them.
Rolling her eyes, she looked at him as if he were merely a bug under a microscope and not the creature in whose hands rested life or death. She had no fear of him whatsoever. It was rather novel, and slightly off-putting.
“Well, as you succinctly stated just moments ago, she’s no longer really human, now is she?”
“What?” He winced, trying to make sense of her nonsense. “You just said she couldn’t be allowed to become a vampire—”
“Yes. And?”
“Aaaannnd…” He dragged the word out as he rolled his wrist, looking to her for a cue, some sign that she might have realized she’d spoken in riddles, but she was giving him a wide-eyed, totally innocent stare. “You confuse me.”
She laughed. “I confuse them all, do not worry. Now, you and I will get along just fine if you listen to everything I tell you to do.”
“Even if I agreed to this, whatever it is, it doesn’t mean that The Morrigan would. She nearly killed Cian last time and—”
“Yes, yes, I handled that one. The kitten has been declawed; you work for me now. An arrangement the queen and I have made, if you will.”
“What?” He jerked off the fridge, glaring at her now. “When did this happen? I work for the—”
“Not really. No.” Her smile was laced in sugar. “You work for me. Memos may not have been handed down yet, but ownership has been overturned. Now listen up because we haven’t much time.”
And just like that all humor vanished from her face; she was intensely serious. The air between them shivered with the rawness of her power, like getting caught outside during an electrical storm. Waves of heat and ice and suffocating magic gripped him so tight he could do nothing but take a stuttering breath around the sudden pounding of his heart.
“From the moment that I release time she will have half a second before death. She cannot become a vampire, which is why you will not take her soul.”
“Lise”—he shook his head—“I have to take her soul. If I do not, my hand will remain this way indefinitely.” The dry bone clacked together as he opened and closed his fist.
“Then it shall. You are death, Frenzy.”
Trying to breathe around the suffocating anger choking him, he willed himself to calm. Raging at Lise would only get him killed, in a likely gory and horrific manner at that.
“Point being that if it remains bone I will have—”
“A minor inconvenience. Wear a glove, not that it will matter around her anyway. She will die.”
Again with the riddles. Trying to rub the sudden tension headache creeping up the back of his neck, he sighed. “So she is going to die?”
“Of course, death.” Her eyes bugged and she was staring at him as if he was beyond stupid.
Smothering the growl that desperately wanted out, he settled for taking a deep breath instead. “When she dies I must take her soul. That is the way of things in my world, Lise.”
She shook her head. “Not this time. I will make it so that no matter how often you touch her, she will never suffer death’s caress. She will be immune to your charms.”
He frowned. Was that even possible? But with Lise he supposed anything was possible. There was so much about her that was a complete mystery. “What am I supposed to do with this human?”
“Guard her, protect her.”
“No.” There wasn’t even a point in thinking it over. There was no way he’d be saddled with guarding a human being.
“And honestly, stop thinking of her as human. She will no longer be once I wake her up. But you’ll have to teach her how to survive what she will soon become, and I doubt she’s going to enjoy the transition much. She’ll need your support.”
Powerful as she was, Frenzy was certain it was her mind that’d cracked centuries ago and not his. “I don’t think you heard me; I said no.”
Taking a step closer, she peered up at him with those unsettling white eyes. The Morrigan could cast glamour like none he’d ever known before, but she had the type of magic that made whoever her prey was unable to look away. To become ensnared and entranced in her predatory gaze, even while she ripped you limb from limb.
Lise had it too, but this was so much more.
Unease moved through his body and again his heart fluxed, banging hard against the cage in his chest. Rubbing at it, unable to tear his gaze from hers, he knew he’d never really had a choice in the matter.
She might be approaching him as a matronly figure of sorts, but the power in her seemingly frail body was vast and far superior to his own. She’d never had any intention of making this a democratic decision.
“Are you done sassing me, reaper?”
The sweetness of her voice did not hide the edge of steel buried inside the words. This was an ancient, a being of such terrifying power that she would get what she wanted one way or another.
Nostrils flaring, knowing he was bested, he clipped his head.
“Good. You must take her to George.”
His lip curled up. “George is an outcast.”
She shrugged. “I’ve run through all scenarios, and it’s really the only way. If I send her to Lootah, king of the shifter clans, his bite will reveal the truth of her, causing her to be in more danger than she is even now.”
Truth of her?
What exactly was this human? Was that why Lise was taking such an interest? Because she was more than another mere mortal? Turning, he glanced back down at the body. She was still frozen, limbs distorted, face a repulsive mass of bruises and slits, and he couldn’t fathom the importance of her.
“Vampires have obviously figured her out. They tasted her blood. They already know; in fact, you’ll barely have a minute to escape before they return in bigger numbers.”
“I put down all but one of them. And that one should still be stunned for a while yet.”
She rolled her eyes. “Frenzy, how long has it been since you’ve been out in the world and not suckling at the queen’s teat?”
He clamped his lips shut.
“The world has progressed, child. What you think you know about others, humans, all of it…it’s all so very different now. The vampire was merely stunned, apart from the one you shared death’s kiss with, of course. That one is definitely d-e-a-d.” She laughed and then shrugged, as if not in the least bit bothered by the death of a vampire. “And the one who shattered too”—she flicked her wrist—“you really should have destroyed the leader. Getting a little sloppy in your old age, death.”
Lise ran Club X, a club that catered to all others. Be you witch, vampire, shifter, demon…She was Switzerland in a city overrun by monsters; she did not judge and she did not take sides.
Usually.
But she seemed to be doing so now.
“What’s in this for you?” His voice dipped, because trying to make sense of this thing was going to give him a massive headache.
“Balance. Order. Same as you, reaper. The powers she possesses, they must not be manipulated by any other. To prevent another Great War, you must protect this woman.”
“By taking her to George?!” He couldn’t hide the disbelief from his voice; a low chuckle spilled from him. “Is the bastard still hiding out in the same cave I found him in all those centuries ago?”
She nodded. “He is.”
Snorting, he shook his head. Might be good to visit George. It’d been a millennium at least. But honestly, wasn’t death better for the woman than what Lise was suggesting? It had to be.
“No, it’s not,” she said, obviously reading his thoughts. “Her role in history is vital. In fact, my sisters and I have considered grooming her for future duties, but we haven’t had enough time to study her lineage. In order for us to have that time, she must be protected. There is none more powerful than death to perform that duty.”
There was definitely more to the story than what Lise was sharing. He knew that. He also knew she wasn’t likely to give him more than she had.
“Who is she?”
She shrugged. “Just a woman.”
That was a lie of epic proportions and he knew it; if she’d really been just a woman Lise would have let him reap her soul a long time ago.
“And why must I be the one to see to her? Isn’t there another reaper available? Tariq, or Aeidin? Anybody?”
“Feral” was the word that immediately came to mind when her lips split into a wide grin and, licking her front teeth, she shook her head. “None have the history you do.”
“Falling in love with a mortal? A mistake I will never make again.”
“Oh no, my dear death.” She slid her hand up his arm. “No, I mean the wake of destruction you left behind after her death. To protect this mortal, you’ll have to channel that baser side of yourself.”
Scrubbing his jaw, knowing how pointless it was to argue, but needing to try anyway, he said, “And it nearly killed me. I went mad, absolutely insane for a quarter century. The Morrigan had me chained and locked up for the safety of those around me. I cannot become that monster again.”
Clamping her hand over the spot of his heart, she shook her head. “That was because you had no focus. No point of reference to keep you grounded. Mila is that. Make her your point and you’ll own the beast.”
“Why?” He grabbed her hand. “Why is she worth protecting? What could she possibly know or have that makes every monster want her? What is so dangerous about that woman?”
“There are some mysteries in life that must be discovered with time. Only then can you truly make sense of them.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“Meaning”—she held her hand out as a bright bolt of power crackled from her palm into Mila’s prostate body—“you’ll find out.”
The bolt of power picked the woman up off the ground and she floated toward Frenzy on a glowing, crackling bed of lightening. Her amber eyes stared sightlessly at him, eyes so similar to Adrianna’s.
“Take her in hand, Frenzy.” Lise talked to him like a mother reprimanding a recalcitrant child.
“I’ve got her,” he snarled, yanking the body into his chest. “So when you wake her up, how exactly do you plan to prevent the transformation from occurring? If she’s got a nanosecond, this all seems rather pointless.”
Face deadpan, she couldn’t have said more clearly how much of a fool she thought him than if she’d spoken the words aloud. “Obviously she will remain in stasis until the moment she is given to George. Then and only then will she reanimate.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her how she’d know to unlock the woman from her current status of human popsicle, but he found he didn’t really care one way or the other. Lise had yet to convince him that allowing a lone woman to die was really as dire as she was making it out to seem. Problem was, he barely knew the Ancient One; to have someone come and tell him that grave danger would fall upon the world if he let one pathetic human perish seemed a tad melodramatic.
“The moment I release time, the vampires will attack. They’re right outside the door. They want their prize. You cannot let them have it. Do you hear me? No matter what.” She leaned up on tiptoe, standing nose to nose with him now. “Ever. Should you fail, I’ll kill you.”
“As if that frightens me.” He scoffed.
“Oh, death”—she laughed, patting his cheek before taking a step back—“you foolish, foolish man. Find your soul again, reaper; it is your only chance.”
The rushing howl of wind pierced his skull as the bubble of time she’d trapped them in evaporated. In the muddle, he stood locked in place and slightly disoriented. It took him a second to realize what he’d initially assumed to be wind was actually the cry of vampires converging.
“Shit!” he snarled and, turning his back on the group of six leaping in the air, he swiped his hand opening the portal between the here and there. With barely a second to spare, he stepped through with his precious cargo and sealed it shut.
Breathing hard, he stared at the woman, who still hadn’t awakened. Lise had obviously kept her word.
He needed to talk with the queen, find out what was really going on. He’d known The Morrigan his entire life; that she would willingly hand over the reins of one of her most powerful elite to some stranger smacked of the ridiculous.
He felt the press of Mila’s amber eyes. Though he knew she was not conscious, she did not see him, he felt it all the same. A mocking, scorn-filled gaze that seemed to scream at him, accuse him that he would fail as he’d always failed.
Turning Mila’s head to the side, he cursed his pathetic bleeding heart and headed toward George’s cave. The queen would just have to wait.