Page 41 of Reaper's Quest

I pressed my lips together in a tight line. Was my taskedacquisition the one above or below… or another yet to be identified? Damn the faulty precision of my reaper navigation. Guess that could explain Mr. Aldine’s response. Maybe the magical barrier, or other mystical energies at play, caused interference.

The names on my arm throbbed, signaling me to move and reap the souls. But those souls—the names of those in need of reaping—hid inside, or under, the building. Nearby but out of sight.

Not that something like walls and locked doors will stop me.

Before I could put a plan into action, a piercing scream cut through the cold night.

I spun toward the sound and caught the fading light from a reaper tool’s flash up the street. Chace, already in motion, ran toward Mr. Aldine and the two people he pursued.

The door to the angled church structure anchoring the fork in the road now sat wide open. Black smoke in the shape of humanoid creatures slithered free.

One of the shadowy creatures darted after the local man, chasing him up the street. As for the woman, she crumpled to the ground and screeched. The blackness leered over her, with its long fingers outstretched, clicking and clucking, clicking and clucking.

The sound rattled my bones and frightened the hairs on the back of my neck straight.

“What the…” I mumbled and lurched a step forward.

My heavy feet willed me not to move closer. Whatever I beheld…nothing about it could be called natural. It seethed of despair and misery and…

The shadow creature evaporated, and the woman’sscreams stopped. She flopped and fumbled then finally pushed to a tilted stand.

Her attacker might have departed, but she had become monstrously wrong. Her movements jerked, and she held her head at an odd angle, as if too heavy for her neck. She had become a zombified version of herself. Like Earl, she had transformed into an MD—a mostly dead.

The change happened so quickly, so?

Several more shadowy monsters burst free from the open door, clicking and clucking.

I forgot to breathe, even as my heart accelerated into overdrive. An average reaping was one thing. But this…

I came one hundred percent unprepared for this. Whateverthiswas.

The moon pressed upon me, and the ground swelled, leaving me unbalanced. I steadied my breath and channeled all my will to remain standing. My world had become smoke and shadow.

If those dark monsters touched a reaper, would they become equally affected? I needed to know, yet I didn’t care to become the test subject.

The dark, opaque, long, fringy creatures charged. Charged at Mr. Aldine, at Chace, at me.

“Run. You’d better run,” whispered tiny voices from the shadowed windows beside me. They joined with another?deeper, masculine?coming from an unseen source. “They are drawn to the most powerful in the vicinity, andthatwould be you.”

Reaping hell.

A desert anchored in my throat. My feet unglued andkicked into action. One, two, three steps backward and I spun (got slapped in the face by my ponytail) and raced in the opposite direction.

My actions didn’t make sense to my logical thoughts, and yet… Somewhere in the chaos of my mind, Chace yelled my name. I shouldn’t have run away but rather runtothe problem. Somehow fixing the issue with a reaping.

Only I had no clue what those things were or if I could reap them. And I had zero desire to become zombified in my first few hours on the task. Plus, I’d listened to the voices, and as much as I didn’t want to admit the truth, fear strangled me.

I would not end up like that woman—monstrously wrong.

No. I would survive so that I would have time to formulate a better plan for the wretched situation. A more successful plan.

The clicking and clucking grew ever closer. Clearly faster than me, the dark specters licked at my heels.

“Raven,” Chace called again.

Did I hear panic in his voice? Panic for me? For him? The situation?

Let’s face it, Chace could be a jerk, and my father was adamant I not trust the guy, but for this job, we were coreapers. If for no other reason than the success of the task, I needed to learn to trust him. Somewhat.