I needed to find it. Hold it in place. If I could do that, then they could mend his body, and I could put the soul back. There was no reaper here but me, so it hadn't been dispatched yet. There was a chance.
But the soul wasn't there. I stopped in confusion, looking around. There was no way it could have slipped through the cracks that quickly. Even the Grimm was confused, and that had never happened before.
There was bustle around my physical body, a slight jostle, and I snapped my attention back to find paramedics around me. Reilly was there too, the captain's eyes sympathetic and concerned as he pulled me away, letting the paramedics have room to work on Troy.
"He'll be fine," Reilly said, but we'd both seen that look on paramedics' faces before. Reserved and professional, their voices were clipped as they traded information with each other in medical terms non-paramedics didn't understand. I might not understand the human body's workings, but I understood the tone and the look on the lead paramedic's voice when he turned around.
"Nonono," I moaned, collapsing into Reilly's arms as the paramedic said the one thing that would shatter my world forever.
"I'm sorry, Sir. He's gone."
* * *
Thank you so much for reading REAPER AWAKENED! I hope you loved this continuation of Laney and Troy’s story!
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The next book in the Hellsgate Reaper Serial is REAPERS AT THE GATE!
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Reapers at the Gate (Sample)
I’d screamed so much I’d actually lost my voice.
Troy couldn’t be dead. That one thought was all that rolled through my mind. I was the Grim Reaper for fuck’s sake, and I controlled death itself. So this couldn’t be happening. How could it be happening?
Reilly had had to restrain me, bundling me into his car even as I screamed. That took guts, even for a scary, ex-special forces soldier. He’d seen what I could do and still physically manhandled me into his car. He’d seen me face off against a demon and kick it the fuck back to hell. The problem was I hadn’t kicked hard enough. Somehow, the thing had come back, or one of its friends had, and now the man I loved was dead.
We followed the ambulance, but I didn’t remember much of the journey other than blurred scenery through the window, traffic and then the bright lights and concrete walls of Liberty General Hospital.
People spoke to me, around me, and then to Reilly, but I didn’t hear a word of it. I couldn’t force the words to make sense in my brain. Instead, I looked around. The corridors all looked the same—endless expanses of off-white punctuated by doors. Machines beeped quietly in the background and blue curtains rattled loudly on rails. Soft-shoed nurses and medical staff bustled around like ants, industrious in the business of saving lives and looking after the sick.
We were hustled into a family waiting room where the four walls and hard chairs radiated desperate hope and grief all at the same time. Pine-fresh antiseptic permeated the air, assaulting my nostrils and trying to infiltrate every pore of my skin. I analyzed the scent, knowing within seconds it had never been near a tree in its life. How did I know that? I am death after all. Where there is death, there must also have been life. But there was no life in that scent—no vitality, no throbbing pulse of animation. It was entirely manmade and chemical in origin.
I claimed the sole high-backed chair in the corner, which had a cushion seat as its thin, flat nod to comfort. Within seconds one of the buttons was digging into my ass, but since I was in a world of my own, the discomfort barely registered.
I wasn't really familiar with hospitals as I specialized in violent deaths. Except in very rare occasions, VDs didn't normally occur in hospitals. The occasional mental health facility, yes, but not normal hospitals.
So, this was only the… I had to check back through my memories. That’s one of the advantages of being a Reaper. We had excellent recall. While cool, it’s also a curse. I remembered in vivid, high definition every second of that demon impaling Troy. I shuddered and shoved that memory as far down into the back of my mind as I could.
I focused on the noticeboard by the door where leaflets from different organizations were pinned. They offered help for everything from cancer treatments to dealing with life-altering injuries. A small cadre offered grief counseling, but I looked away from them quickly. The irony of the Grim Reaper requiring grief counseling was not lost on me.
I isolated the memory. This was only the second time I’d been in a hospital. The last time I was six years old and my brother had broken his leg. Even back then I’d known about Reapers.
I’d even seen one on the ward where my brother was. She’d been older, like someone’s nana, and had been quietly knitting in a chair in the corner as she waited for her lifelines to go active. Of course, at six years old, I hadn’t realized that was what she was doing. All I saw was my grandpa give her a professional nod, and from that I’d known she was the same as pops. For most kids, that thought would have given them nightmares, but not a kid born into a Reaper family. We were taught all about the cycle of life and, more importantly, death from an early age. Our nursery rhymes are a little... different, shall we say?
But no grandmotherly reaper was here today. I was it. I was now the Reaper in the hospital. Since no other Reaper was in Liberty, I should have been paying attention to the lifelines crowded in the corner of my eye and doing my job.
But all I could do was stare at the door and wait for it to open, even though I was certain I didn’t want the news anybody would bring through it.
“They’ll bring him back. You’ll see,” Cory Andrews, the big sergeant from the precinct rumbled.
It was the seventh time he’d said it. I’m not sure if he was trying to convince himself for the rest of us at this point. The guy was built like a barn and looked like he could wrestle alligators, but genuine upset lingered in his eyes as he spoke about Troy. John, Troy’s partner, had joined us at some point and sat opposite the captain as we waited for news.
“The surgeon here is a good one,” Reilly said in a low voice as he spoke for the first time since we’d come into the room. “Troy’s in the best place.”
I could have argued that the best place was in bed with me, like this morning, which seemed a lifetime ago now. But since I’m not an emergency cardiac surgeon, that would do Troy fuck-all good at the moment, which was the only reason they’d managed to keep me in here. Troy needed the help of people who could heal. All I could do was end someone’s life.
A prickle of awareness brought me out of my self-loathing. It was just a soft whisper at the corner of my mind, and on a normal day I would have ignored it. Today, though, it made my blood run cold.