A Shadow in the Reaping by Brynne Weaver

Chapter 25

Iwake to a heavy arm draped down the length of my back. Ashen's fingers trail a slow progression at the base of my spine. I open my eyes and there's a dim light in the room but it's still dark outside beyond the narrow windows, or at least darker, so it must still be night.

This should feel really fucking weird, waking up in a Reaper's bed on his slick, silky sheets in the Shadow Realm. But it doesn't. It feels like pieces have fit together in a puzzle I couldn't solve until now.

I draw in a deep breath and take stock of my body. I'm a little hungry but I don't want to bother with food. I'm tired but rubbery and relaxed. I'm sore but in a way that makes me just want more of what made me feel way in the first place.

When I turn over, Ashen's hand follows the flow of my movement, settling to trace the same slow pattern on my ribs. He's propped up with pillows, a large book resting against his legs.

"No sleep?" I ask, and he shakes his head. "Was I sleep talking?"

"No."

"Snoring?"

"No."

"Singing?"

"No."

"Farting? Not sleep farting."

"...maybe." Ashen smiles so I know he's only joking and we watch one another for a silent moment. His smile fades, the pattern on my ribs slows. "We need to talk."

"That doesn't sound ominous at all," I say, my heart dropping into my stomach as I pull myself up to sit facing him. I don't cover my chest as I figure boobs can only help. His eyes linger on my breasts and I can see him try to subdue the flame of desire in his eyes as they meet mine once more and he clenches his jaw.

Note to self: Reaper likes boobs.

I roll away off the bed to retrieve my journal and pen from the floor. I give him plenty of time to take in the rest of my body before I turn around and write a note about the boobs in my collection.

Addendum: also ass.

I fold the journal closed and throw it and the pen on the edge of the bed, then stalk across the silken sheets like a predator. I hear the whoosh of blood through the caverns and crevices of Ashen's heart and I smile as I draw closer.

"Fuck," he whispers, dragging a hand through his hair as he tries to conquer his urges. I prowl past his legs and close the book, tossing it on the floor with a heavy thud. I climb up the length of tattoos that flow from his abdomen to his neck.

"You had something you wanted to discuss?" I whisper in his ear as my hand starts to trail a slow path down his chest, down the ridges of muscle across his stomach.

Ashen growls with frustration and catches my wrist. "We need to talk about Ember.”

I sigh and sit back, resting my body on his leg. I drape my arm across his knees so I can lean my head on my hand. "That is such a buzzkill," I tease.

"Ember usually is. She's had several millennia of practice," Ashen says, and sweeps some hair back from my shoulder. "What did she want?"

"To force me into helping her make a hybrid of her own, then ferry it to the Realm of Light and release vengeance or some shit," I reply, catching Ashen's hand to hold it in my lap.

"And the soul she brought, you knew her?"

"She was my sister, Molpe. Ember said she knew where Aglaope's soul was and that she could bring her back to life. Can she do that?"

Ashen's eyes darken and he looks down at our joined hands. "Yes, potentially. She could petition to bring her back as a Reaper, but she doesn’t have the power to do it herself."

I don't want to think about what Aglaope would make of that if she were still alive. Maybe it would be better than being a wandering soul trapped in this place. Or maybe it would be better for me to kill her for good, like I did with Molpe. Ashen squeezes my hand and I meet his eyes with a faint and melancholic smile.

"She said if I didn't help her, that she would bring you into it too. Something about Rosaria Wyre."

Ashen's eyes widen before he heaves a heavy sigh of dismay. He tilts his head back against the headboard. "Fucking hell. I cannot believe she knows about that."

"In the short time I've known her, I get the feeling there's not much that goes on among the Reapers that Ember doesn't know about."

"Astute observation," Ashen says, bending his head as he presses the fingers of his free hand to his forehead. His gaze is trapped in our joined palms as he loses himself in thought.

I roll his hand back and forth across my lap, drawing his attention back to me. "Tell me what happened," I say, waiting as he gathers his thoughts.

"There was discussion among the Council of reaping Rosaria. She had consolidated significant power and had a network of connections deep into werewolf ancestral packs. They felt she was becoming too political, too much of a threat to the balance of the smaller clans."

"You have a Council?" I ask, and Ashen smiles. "I thought you all just, I dunno, made shit up as you went along."

"No, that's the Council's job," Ashen says and I laugh. "They were moving to make a decision. I fabricated evidence against one of the other packs to protect her. As much as she was powerful, she kept a balance that had been hard for werewolves to maintain. She played an important role, and I felt that power did not equate to crime."

I take in a heavy lungful of air and watch Ashen for a moment. I squeeze his hand. "Did you love her?"

Ashen's eyes seem to hold onto my words as he looks to the light that reflects on the fibers of the sheets. "No. We were lovers for a while. I cared for her, but I wasn't in love with her. It ran its course. We went our separate ways a few years ago."

I watch as he loses his thoughts to memories I will never know. There's something greater buried under this loss. I can feel it, deep beneath the strata of time. I wonder if he'll ever let me in enough to see it, or if it's simply a pain he cannot bear. But I know about unbearable pain, unspeakable loss. I know better than to pry into anyone's past.

"I'm sorry that you lost someone you cared about," I say, and Ashen's eyes meet mine. He looks as though I've said something unexpected that he didn't know he needed to hear. He pulls my hand and I follow the motion, laying the weight of my body against his chest.

"Thank you," he whispers. His fingertips trace every ridge of my spine. Down and up. Down and up. "I need to find the brickworks where the last hybrid was kept and figure out what else it is Semyon is looking for. He must be stopped before he regroups and gets to Valentina or Cassian."

"Or me," I say. Ashen's hands press on my shoulders and he lifts me away so he can look into my eyes. That same fierce expression from the first time in the cauldrons is embedded in his gaze, the one that says he will tear the world apart.

"No. I will not let him get close to you," he says.

"You might not have a choice, Ashen. It’s not like you can do this without me. It's the spell that I cast."

"I'll leave you here. Imani will look after you."

"You can't. My arm will itch so badly I'll chew it off and throw it into the fire," I say with a smile, hoping to lighten the mood. It doesn't work. The light in Ashen's eyes intensifies from flame to lava. I place my palm to his cheek and lean closer. "Who knows what will happen if we're separated by realms. Besides, I would rather face Semyon with you than be left to the Shadow Realm with your sister and a slew of enemies I can't distinguish from friends. If I'm there in the Living Realm, it will draw him out, sooner or later."

Ashen's eyes watch mine for a long moment. I can feel them locked there, even when my gaze travels the curves of his face. "I don't like it. But you're probably right."

"Get used to it. Vampires usually are."

Ashen smiles and pulls me back down to his chest, wrapping his arms across my back in a worried embrace. The steady drum of his heart pounds its song to me. I trace the face of the jackal above it, imagining how many lifetimes it has been beating in its cage of bone. Every touch still feels stolen. So, I'll be the greatest thief of all time. I will take every last one that I have a chance to steal.

Ashen’s embrace fades and I feel his palms glide across my back. I hear his heart hammer a heavier beat. I press my lips to the black lines that flow through his skin and I wonder how they came to be. Who made them, how long ago. Why. Questions I wish I could ask, but I don’t think I can, and I’m afraid he wouldn’t answer if I did.

I push myself up so I can look in his eyes, their flame sparking to life. He sweeps the hair from my shoulder and a crease appears between his brows.

“What is it?”

I look at him for a long moment as his palm glides across my shoulder and down my arm. His touch is like a falling feather that leaves gooseflesh in its wake.

“I feel so much buried in you. So much that you keep hidden deep,” I finally say, my voice little more than a whisper. “I wish I could know it all. I’m afraid of what I can’t see. I’m afraid of what could reach out from beneath the layers of you to grab me and crush my heart.”

Ashen’s eyes are the warm light of sorrow and longing as he reaches up to trace the line of my cheek. His lips part as he watches his fingertips on my skin, but he says nothing.

“I can’t stop myself from wanting you, Ashen. Even though it could kill me. I’ve tried and I can’t.”

I press my chest to his, my lips to his. I lay my hands on Ashen’s face, tracing all his features as though they might live forever in my fingerprints. I feel the hard length of him against my thigh and I reach between us, centering his erection to my core. He moans into my mouth as I slowly sink down onto him, his hands coasting up my back.

“I will not deny you anything that you ask,” Ashen whispers as he pulls away to search my face. He presses a warm, lingering kiss to my cheek, another just beneath my lashes. Each kiss is held so I remember it in my skin long after his lips have moved to the next patch of flesh.

I look in his eyes, drilling my gaze into him, hunting for the molten core of the man beneath the Reaper. “I won’t ask you your secrets, Ashen. I’m an immortal. I know better than that.” I glide to the edge of his erection, my movement fluid and slow. I hover above Ashen’s body as I run one of my hands down his neck and across the dense network of ink that traverses his skin.

“But?..”

“But maybe I’m not the only one that needs to learn to trust.” I watch Ashen’s face as I push down on him once more, taking him deeply. His gaze never wavers from mine. I’m not sure what I see there. Maybe a little surprise, a little awe. A spark of hope. He folds his arms across my back and rolls us over to look down at me.

“My elemental vampire, taking out more of my defenses,” he says as I wrap my legs across his back and lock my ankles.

“Defense destruction is my specialty. I do drive a tank, after all.”

“Not a submarine though.”

“Shut up and make love to me, Reaper.”

Ashen smiles and the rhythm between us builds. I try to let go of the heat that warms my chest as his words replay in my mind. My elemental vampire.

It’s just an endearment. My is such a little word. But it’s funny how much two letters can mean to you. And I kiss him like they mean everything to me. Deep and urgent and full of fire. I want to tell him how they make me feel after being alone for so long. But I can’t tell him. I can only show him.

I grip my legs tighter across Ashen’s body and flip him to his back so that I’m straddling him once more. I push upright and roll my hips, pressing my palms to his chest. My fingers trace the black, geometric lines, the slope of muscle on his shoulders.

Ashen’s hands slide from my hips and he hooks his hands behind my back to pull me in close until his mouth is on the peak of my breast. He swirls his tongue around my nipple and then clasps it in a gentle bite. I hiss, not a sweet, breathy, human hiss but a distinctly vampiric hiss of desire.

“My vicious, elemental vampire,” he says when he releases me, and with a wicked smile he dives for my flesh again, torturing me with delicious little bites. I increase the rhythm of my hips until I feel my climax burning through my core and firing through my limbs like lightning. It’s an orgasm that keeps coming in waves to drown me. Ashen moans into my flesh as he comes, sucked under by the same consuming storm of desire.

When I gain control of my breath, I nestle against Ashen’s chest and listen to the blood that surges through his veins. “Maybe we should just stay. Let the werewolves make their hybrid. Bar the door. Have Bit Akalum deliver booze and blood and food. Watch the Mandalorian. Bask in your sex sheets.”

Ashen breathes a laugh into my hair and tightens the grip of his embrace. “I wish we could. I have my doubts that the immortals of the Living Realm would be too pleased with werewolves taking control. Nor would any humans once they realize so many of their myths are true. We should go now, before Ember is up. I would rather avoid her if possible. I might be too tempted to kill her if not," he says, but even still, we stay for a while just lying wrapped in one another and the thoughts that weigh us down.

When we finally do get up, we dress and pack in silence, not bothering to shower. We straighten things up a little in the room and I wonder if I'll ever be back here. It's a thought that hasn't occurred to me until this exact moment, but now that it has it won't leave. I know I'm not really meant for this place, regardless of what happens or how I feel. This bittersweet thought is turning over in my mind as I make the bed and Ashen finds another bag to carry the heavy books to the Living Realm.

"I'm sorry I ever doubted you," I whisper to the sheets in a dramatic soap opera voice as I smooth out the ripples and wrinkles across the surface of the bed.

"Are you talking to my sheets?"

"Yes. You were right. They're amazing," I say. I kiss my fingertips and press them to the bed. "Goodbye, lovers. Always remember me."

Ashen smiles as I turn my sly grin toward him. "I was wrong, what I said the other day."

"What's that?"

"Your mind is not a terrifying place. It's an unusual place. Sometimes a bizarre place."

I chuff a laugh as I pick up my notebook and pen. I take Ashen's offered hand. "Your sweet-talking skills might need some improvement."

"But most of all, it's a wondrous place, vampire." Ashen leans down and lays a sweet kiss on my cheekbone, letting it linger as he takes a deep breath.

We leave Ashen's room without further delay, moving in silence down the corridor and the stairs. As we pass into the grand hall there's a sound in the shadows, a scraping of claws against stone. Ashen pulls me into the darkness behind a pillar as I catch the scent of something musky and feral in the distance of the room.

"Shit," he whispers, leaning forward to peer around the column. I hear a chattering sound, recognizable for its uniqueness. Another calls back in reply from the opposite side of the room.

Hyenas.

I lean around the other side of the column, into the shadow. I see the hulking shape in profile as the creature sniffs the floor close to the cauldrons. It's enormous, about the size of a truck. Bits of fur and flesh hang from its skeletal face. The bone of a leg is visible through a tear in its skin.

Not just hyenas. Really fucked up hyenas.

I move toward Ashen behind the safety of the column.

"What the fuck?" I whisper. Ashen looks down at me and draws his sword from its sheath with a slow and practiced hand.

"They shouldn't be in here," he replies, his voice barely more than a breath of sound.

"You don't say."

He looks at me for a long moment and I see the concern in his eyes. He bends carefully to set the bags on the floor, then lets the strap of my katana slide from his shoulder. He hands the sword to me. "Do you have Angelwing on this one too?" he asks as he rolls up his sleeves. I nod and unsheathe my blade. "Good. You're going to need it."

"Great, because I'm dressed to kill," I say, glancing down at my dress, the same one he found for me at the house in Cairo. I meet Ashen's eyes and smile, giving him a wink. This is going to be great. He smiles in return.

"Ready, vampire?"

I give a single nod. Ashen leans down, folding his free hand across the back of my neck and pressing his lips to mine in a searing kiss. He pulls away and looks into my eyes. I expect he'll say something like be careful, or stay behind me.

"Have fun. Don't hiss too loud," he says. He gives me a wicked smile as he turns away.

And fuck me if I don't realize that very instant that I've fallen head over heels in love.