Read Online Reaper by Katrina Monroe - Free Book Online Page B

Oz shot
back.
    “We all have.”
    Oz removed his hands to look at Cora. Her
face was pink and her eyelids hung sleepily.
    “More or less,” she added.
    “You know, it’s funny. At The Department, my
life revolved around death. I must’ve killed thousands of people,
and in the most obnoxious, obscene ways. It was nothing to me. Just
what I did. Constantly. I don’t remember ever leaving my desk. I
was a fucking robot. And when I got here, when I got this body, I
thought –”
    Oz sat up and rubbed his face. Snatched the
bottle from Cora’s hands.
    He took a long pull.
    “And?”
    “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
    Cora placed a delicate hand on his thigh.
“You have to keep it in your mind that we do good. That without us,
Bas would have no way of moving on. We’re the good guys.”
    Oz’s eyes met hers. A static charge hung in
the uncrossable chasm between them.
    The whiskey told him it was a good idea and
because stupid people need lessons taught more than once, he
agreed. He leaned toward her too quickly. Cora dodged his face and
Oz kissed concrete. He tasted blood but the alcohol numbed any pain
that might’ve accompanied it.
    “Oz...” she slurred. There was a noticeable
annoyance in her tone.
    From the corner of his eye, Oz watched her
negotiate to a standing position and march toward the roof entrance
door in the overly stiff fashion of a person trying to appear
sober. It slammed behind her like the period at the end of a
sentence.
    Warm tears stung his eyes.
    “Fucking dyke,” he muttered and, after
throwing back one last gulp, he pitched the bottle over the
concrete rail.
    * * *
    The newbie paused.
    Bard replayed the moment in his mind
repeatedly, and in each spin of the reel, Oz paused before finally
taking care of the pilot. It was probably nothing. Nerves.
    Then why was it that Bard couldn’t stop
thinking about it, even with Victoria’s broken body shuddering in
his arms with his every step?
    She was as light as a child and her legs
draped over his arm like a cloth doll. Her face painted with blood.
Bard didn’t know if it was hers or his; he was covered as much as
she. Her neck hung over her arm at a sickening angle. Such a
delicate neck, susceptible to stolen kisses and a wolf’s jaw. He
clutched her tightly to his chest and, when he was far enough from
the lights and chaos of the airport, he said, “Ready.”
    The ground cracked and split. Bard stepped
over the edge.
    Victoria jostled in his arms as he landed,
but Bard was able to retain his hold on her slight frame. The cold
air chilled straight through to his bones and he ground his teeth
to keep them from chattering. A path of broken bricks led to a
chamber illuminated by a chandelier made up of broken bottles and
twisted iron. Torches lined the hall with green flickering flames
that sent menacing shadows dancing across the stone walls. At the
center of the chamber, a blindfolded, marble woman, draped in black
cloth around her chest, hips, and over her head held a sword,
outward in a stabbing pose, that glinted in the light of the
flames. A set of copper scales balanced on the blade.
    Bard laid Victoria in the scale to his
left.
    The chamber echoed with the sounds of
scraping marble as the woman roused. “Quite the body count you’re
developing, Bard.”
    “Can we just get this over with?”
    “Keep this up and you and I will get to be
good friends, won’t we?”
    “Fortuna.”
    “Yes, love?”
    Bard tapped the scale.
    Fortuna slid her sword from between the
scales, replacing it with her arm with such speed that Bard hadn’t
noticed the movement. Not so much as a ripple passed over the
scales as she did so.
    She touched the tip of the sword to Bard’s
forehead. A drop of warm blood dripped down the side of his
nose.
    “Don’t touch,” she said.
    “Get to it, then.”
    “I’m only making conversation, reaper.”
Fortuna lifted the sword from Bard’s face and used it to lift a
black feather from a wicker basket