A Shadow in the Reaping by Brynne Weaver

Chapter 31

My eyes are sticky. My lids pull apart and I blink the film of blood from my vision. Smoke and dust clog my lungs. I try to cough but the sharp points of broken ribs press into my chest. Thick, dark blood flows from the innumerable cuts and punctures in my skin. I see something shining in my arm, metallic and foreign in my flesh. I shift and pull my other hand from beneath my body. My fingers tremble with shock as I grip the bloodied metal and pull. A nail slides free from a deep hole between my bones.

"That's just swell," I say to myself, but I can't hear the words I make or the sound of the metal as I flick the nail onto the broken bricks.

There's a weight across my body that presses my ribs into my lungs with every breath. I groan and cough as I try to sit up, but the most I can manage is to roll onto my back. The smell of blood is suffocating. My own. Jessie's, dried and coated with dust. The Reaper's.

I look down at my body. The weight across my torso is Ashen.

I grit and growl and fight the pain as I push Ashen's heavy frame to my side. His arm rolls away from me and hits the debris that lies scattered around us. I can't see his face. His head is turned away from me. I drag myself closer, calling his name over and over. I can't hear the desperation in my own voice. But I can feel tears that cleanse the cuts on my cheeks with their salty sting. I lay my hand beneath Ashen's face and turn his head toward me.

His eyes fix their unseeing gaze toward the sky.

"Ashen... Ashen wake up."

I caress his blood-streaked skin with broken fingers.

"Ashen..."

I lean my ear against his chest, hoping to feel the rise and fall of his bones, the evidence of movement in his lungs. He is still. My shaking fingers touch his neck and his lips, searching for any sign of a heartbeat or a breath. There is nothing. I wail in frustration and despair, but the sound that escapes from the very center of my soul is little more than a muffled cry in my own ears.

My fangs slide from their sheathes and I bite into my wrist, holding my dripping blood over Ashen's parted lips. It flows into his mouth just as I see the first grey flake peel from his skin and lift toward the sky. There's another, and then another, and then more, and more, until I can't count them. They lift around me and drift away on the breeze. Then a light, cinders and smoke, sparks that take flight. The features of Ashen's face dissolve beneath my hands. His flesh turns to dust and I close my eyes, tears flowing across my skin as I weep.

I don't hear it coming. A crack of blinding pain hits the base of my skull, and the world and all my sorrow disappear.

I smell antiseptic. Alcohol. The adhesive of bandages. The PVC of intravenous tubes. More faintly: clay. Kiln dust.

The brickworks.

A sharp and unrelenting pain pierces through my brain and muddies my thoughts. It takes a moment to realize I can hear again. The beeping of a heart monitor plays an inconsistent beat to my left. The pace is getting faster.

Memories surface like the broken planks of a sunken ship. The weight of Ashen's body on mine. An image of his lifeless eyes, pointed to the sky. The cinders that collapsed beneath my hand and drifted away in the breeze. Tears streak across my temples before I even open my eyes. I look down at my left arm, bound with silver handcuffs to the rail of a hospital bed. I turn my forearm in the light, but the tattoo is gone.

I close my eyes and my shoulders shake with silent sobs.

"Tears for a Reaper? What kind of koroleva piyavok are you?" a man says from my right, his accented voice thick with mockery. I look toward the open door of the room.

The Alpha.

Semyon Abdulov leans against the threshold, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His dark hair is slicked back. He wears a burgundy suit, the black shirt and silk tie beneath shimmering in the lights that shine too brightly above us. His glowing, snow-blue eyes crinkle at the edges with a smug, triumphant smile.

"Although, that might just be why you have survived so many years while your kin have not. You are unique. You make unpredictable choices. Most of the time." Semyon pushes away from the threshold and walks a few steps into the room, casting his gaze around the space before it lands on me once more. "Except the human. I figured you couldn't resist another chance to kill him. And we needed you to feed in order to survive. Most of your injuries have healed, no?"

Semyon walks closer and prods my ribs with his finger. The bones shift beneath the pressure and I hiss my fury at him.

"Most, not all," he says as his smile broadens. Semyon turns away and walks toward a stainless steel table along the far wall of the room, obstructing my view of the contents spread across its surface. "You know, the first few hybrids were a mess, quite frankly. We tried with several vampires before we found Arne Larsen. He was more ancient than the others we had experimented with. Not that he turned out very well."

"I noticed. I saw him in the Shadow Realm. Huge dick."

Semyon laughs and looks over his shoulder at me. "Interesting observation."

"Why did you put him down, couldn't stop him from humping the couch cushions?"

Semyon laughs again and turns to face the table. Glass jars clink in his hands. I hear the pop of a cap pulling free of a syringe. "No, we didn't put him down, koroleva piyavok. He died of his own genetic instability."

"But I smelled Angelwing poison."

Semyon turns to face me, a syringe clasped between his fingers like a cigarette. He gives me an assessing stare, his crystalline eyes roaming across my skin. A slow smile stalks across his face.

"That was his own venom."

The realization pulls me under like a rip tide tearing me away from the shore. I smelled the poison close to the hybrid's mouth, but I had assumed they must have given it to him. It never crossed my mind that his body could have made it. The implications... the power... Semyon would have a limitless supply of the deadliest poison to fell immortals and Reapers alike.

The cadence of the beeping from the ECG speeds as adrenaline surges through my heart. Semyon smiles.

"Where is the other ancient one you took? Where is Zara?" I ask.

Semyon raises the needle and looks with pride and determination at the thick silver fluid in the body of the syringe. "Safe. Far from here. She turned out much better. The older the vintage, the better the result, you see. That was the key." He turns his back to me once more to tinker with his vials and syringes. "You will be our best. A vampire from the original source. You will be our ultimate weapon. And when your Reaper comes back to find you, he will deliver you like a trojan horse to the Shadow Realm. And then you will slay the Reapers until none are left to stand against us as we take power over the Living Realm."

"He's dead," I whisper as fresh tears pool in my eyes. "The spell that binds us is gone."

Semyon tisks at me and shakes his head. "Now, now. You know that a Reaper cannot be killed for good so easily. After all, you've done it yourself. I imagine it took great effort, even armed with a Reaper blade and Sarno’s spell. We did not use anything that would stop your Reaper from coming back, however. We need him, after all."

I blink in disbelief. Hope ignites the center of my chest. My heart pounds until the sound of it thrums in my ears. Semyon glances over his shoulder at the monitor and gives a chuckle before looking back down at the table.

"I will not help you."

"You won't have a choice. What the Alpha says, the pack obeys. It will be built into your new genetic makeup."

Well, fuuuck. Hard pass, because that sounds super lame.I strain against the handcuffs, but the silver keeps my strength at bay. The harsh metallic sound of the shackles sliding against the railing fills the room.

"Don't bother fighting, koroleva piyavok. It will make it easier on you." Semyon turns around with a butterfly needle for drawing blood and another syringe in his hand, this one half-filled with black liquid. "Andrei. Bring him in," he calls out in a booming voice.

A moment later I hear footsteps approaching from the corridor. They follow the sound of rubber biting the polished floor. I watch the door as an elderly man with fierce black eyes is rolled into the room in a wheelchair. He impales me with a sharp glare, not acknowledging the tall Russian who brought him in as the man departs.

"Do you know who I am?" the old man asks. His voice is low and thick, like it's filled with fluid. He growls a rumbling cough. His body is failing, I can smell it in the scent of living decay. Organs that ooze their poison. Skin that rashes and blisters and peels. I smell ointments and witchcraft, time and suffering.

I shake my head. I have no fucking clue who he is.

"I am Adamen."

Oh shit.

"Adamen Sarno. Barbossa’s father."

This is super not good.

"I thought you were dead," I say, looking at the lines that etch his face and the whisper of white hair that flows across the flaking skin of his scalp.

"You and I have something more in common than just my son." Adamen grasps the wheels of his chair and rolls himself closer to my bed. His progress is slow and laboured. He coughs and grumbles with the effort. "I faked my death when my enemies closed in around me. I stayed hidden. I helped Bobby acquire power among the covens. And as society evolved around us all, I helped him run his businesses, make his money. Build his connections. Grow his empire. And then you took my son from me."

I scoff. I know Bobby was his son and all, but he was no guiltless angel. And he certainly was at the centre of enough trouble that someone was bound to come for him eventually. "He sold me out to the Reapers. He told them where to find me. And then he watched as I burned. He got what he deserved," I snarl, biting the words out at him.

Semyon steps closer, stopping at Adamen's side. The old man rolls up his sleeve and holds his arm out. Adamen's eyes never leave mine, not as Semyon ties off his arm, not when the needle pierces the thick vein at his elbow, not when the vial fills with blood.

Semyon removes the needle and twists the vial free, then uses the half-filled syringe to draw the fresh blood in with the black fluid. He passes it to the old man to hold as he takes the syringe of silver liquid and taps it free of bubbles.

"I have willingly given my power and my youth and my health for this moment," Adamen says. He coughs, spitting phlegm into a tissue. I can smell the blood. It's as though his body is breaking down before my eyes. And then something changes in his face. It morphs, from aging man into something cat-like, changing back again before I can be sure of what I saw. He does it again with a wicked smile, and this time I know it was not my imagination.

“A shapeshifter,” I whisper.

"That’s right. The last of my line. The magic in my blood will bind to the magic in yours and strip you of what you are,” he says, his menacing smile deepening the wrinkles in his skin. “And now I will watch as you get what you deserve."

I erupt with fury, twisting against the shackles, hissing and growling into the man's weathered face.

"Be calm, little leech," Semyon says as he grips my throat and presses my neck down on the bed. He climbs onto the mattress, using the weight of his knee to keep my chest still. "I made something special just for you, as a thank you to Adamen here for giving his blood and his power to our cause so willingly. Anything you'd like to say before we begin?"

"Fuck you," I snarl. I spit in Semyon's face and he laughs.

"Very well then," he says. A needle pierces into my throat and Semyon pushes the plunger down. Liquid fire burns in my neck. He smiles down at me. "Just a little silver. Not enough to kill you, but definitely enough to kill your siren song. I hope you are happy with your last spoken words."

I twist and writhe and burn in Semyon's grip.

But those are not my last words.

My last words are a whisper of hope. My last words are Ninmen Eslal.