“Rough night?” Troy slid his partner a sideways glance and pulled the car out of the lot. Not much traffic this early in the morning, but that wouldn’t last much longer, particularly if the north road was closed.
“Eh, you could say that. Margie’s back pain kept her up all night, so sleep and I…” He shrugged, concern for his wife apparent. “Let’s just say we’re fleeting acquaintances at the moment. Hell, I need a bucket of this stuff.”
He took his nose out of the mug long enough to glance at Troy. “Hear you had trouble yourself last night. Heard the guys talking earlier, something about hauling a dead werewolf outta your place?”
Troy hissed between his teeth as he turned onto the northward road. “Yeah. It must have tracked me from the scene of the attack last night. I didn’t think you’d be able to catch it. Those fuckers are fast.”
Not that he’d hung around to check last night after John returned from the chase. He’d been too busy chatting up the victim, then taking her home… But then, he hadn’t expected to need to check. Just like he hadn’t expected the damn thing to follow him home. He’d never heard of one doing that before.
“Nah, not a chance to catch it. I got off a couple of shots, but you know what they’re like. Too frigging quick for their own good.” John’s mug must have been empty, because he kept talking. “You did well though, taking that one down on your own. Lucky you were awake as well… they like to sneak up on you. Did you get back late from the hospital?”
Seeing the emergency vehicles up ahead, Troy didn’t answer, his cheeks red. He wasn’t sure if he wanted John to know that the hospital was edged out in favor of taking the gorgeous victim to his home. Or about his ‘date’ with her. He felt his partner give him a sharp look but ignored it as he braked, looking for a place to pull over. After parking behind the fire truck, the two men got out the car.
One look at the scene told Troy that no one walked away alive. Two vehicles had been completely totaled, bits of bodywork and chassis all over the road. He nudged a twisted license plate with his booted toe. What force did it take to twist metal like that?
“High speed collision.” John’s voice was controlled, same as Troy’s would have been if he’d spoken. That’s what they did. Buried the emotion and got on with the job. Didn’t get involved. Troy had seen the fallout when cops did. They burned out. Quickly.
At least this looked to be a normal job, and he released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. That was the big ol’ elephant in the room these days. Each time they were called out… would it be a normal kind of crazy or a non-human kind? And the latter could get real crazy, real quick.
Like last night. One minute he’d been eyeing up a hot chick in a bar, the next she was beating the snot out of a werewolf in his kitchen. Well, there had been some rockin’ the sheets in between. Some really
hot
rocking to boot. And by the time she’d finished the werewolf off, Troy had been head over heels in love, but before he could say anything, his love interest had split.
He grumbled under his breath, still assessing the scene even though half his mind was someplace else. He still had no clue what Laney was, apart from the fact she wasn’t human, and had declared she was the only hope Liberty had. Worst thing about it was, he had a niggling suspicion she might be right. Burying that thought in the back of his mind, Troy tried to concentrate.
“Looked like they were racing.” Ignoring Troy’s lapse into silence, John kept up the dialog as they walked the scene. Uniformed officers kept civilians back, but there wasn’t much detecting to be done. Thick black tire marks slashed across the asphalt, showing where the vehicles had gotten into trouble and the crash area itself was pretty self-evident.
The bodies had been left where they were, in all their bloody glory. Neither man flinched. Troy learned long ago that if a man sees enough death, he learns not to put all the pieces together. To see the bits of bodies as just that, a part in the puzzle rather than a human being taken apart in some of the most brutal ways possible. The human brain learns to take that step back, to protect itself. Working homicide in the big city does that to a man quickly. It certainly had Troy. Longer on the force, John acquired the ability over years.
“Yeah.” Troy looked over his shoulder, working out how the crash happened from the evidence scrawled over the road. “The first one lost control around here, spun, clipped the second one and it all went to hell in a hand-basket.”
“Agreed.” John motioned an officer over. “We’re done here, get them covered. They’re still human beings. Did you pull anything from the plates yet?”
The sound of the conversation drowned out behind Troy as his gaze locked onto a figure in the growing crowd behind the cordon—mainly drivers stopping to have a good look.
Laney. His hot date from the night before. Petite and curvy, the leathers were a dead giveaway that she was a non-local, and on a normal day would have gotten a few glances before the officers dispersed the nosy.
As soon as he saw her, he knew he was the only one who could. Her appearance wavered between the badass biker chick and nothing, the same as it did in the bar last night, between biker chick and modest business woman. Hell, she was sexy. The dangerous woman thing never worked for him, but she wasn’t human so all bets were off.
Keeping the frown off his face with some effort, Troy pretended to look at the tire marks again. All the while he kept her in the corner of his eye. Why he could see through whatever magic or illusion she was pulling he had no clue. He hadn’t managed to get out of her what she was doing in the bar last night, but one thing was for sure…if she was here now, then the possibility that this wasn’t an ordinary accident just racked up about a thousand notches.
A chill hit him, running rampant down his spine. Had she
caused
the accident?
“John,” he called out to alert his partner and waggled his cell when John looked up. “Got something I need to check out. You okay to wrap here and ride back with one of the guys?”
He nodded and turned to the uniform he was talking to. Troy headed the opposite direction, locking gazes with Laney to let her know he could see her. Only an idiot wouldn’t pick up that he wanted to talk to her, and Laney was no idiot. She nodded slightly and turned, walking through the crowd to a big black monster of a motorcycle. Troy’s breath caught in his throat at the sight. He’d had too many friends killed on the back of those things to be entirely comfortable with her riding one. His jaw clenched.
Either way, it was another part of the conversation they were going to have.
I mingled with the crowd against the cordon and watched Troy and his partner get out of the car. My breathing caught in the back of my throat as butterflies decided my stomach was ground zero for a head-banging concert. The man looked just as good, better in fact, in the daylight. How the fuck did he do that?
He walked beside his partner, looking all sexy and not disheveled, but a little… mussed and tired. The dark shadow on his jaw made my fingers itch to stroke it, and the rest of him. I bit my lower lip as memories from last night rolled through my mind. Damn right he should look tired, the stamina the man had was awe inspiring. So much so, I had to check his timeline several times to ensure he was just human.
Yup. Just human.
Coffee mug in hand, he barely looked at the scene. Instead he was scanning the crowd. When his eyes met mine, my heart leapt. Stupid thing. Despite the Grimm’s current silence, I knew things between us couldn’t go anywhere. Reapers were always on the job, day and night, and how the hell was I going to explain that to a normal? Worse, to a cop.
Hey, sweets, I kill people for a living. We cool?
Yeah, that would fly like a lead balloon.
Then it hit me. He could see me. Again. He didn’t break eye contact as he headed to his car. No words, but I got the message. Nodding, I turned and headed to my bike. We needed to talk and it wasn’t the kind of talk we could have with an audience.
I set off up the road, making sure to keep him in my mirrors as I went. The little devil on my shoulder urged me to take off, break the speed limit. Anything that could get me arrested. A hot shiver whispered through my body. Cuffs and Troy, now there’s an explosive situation waiting to happen. I couldn’t wait.
A quick twist on the throttle sent the bike roaring away, and I caught sight of his surprised face for a moment in the mirror before distance rendered him indistinct. I could almost hear the frustration as he put his foot down, chasing me but there was no way he’d catch me when I was on these two wheels. Let’s just say, you won’t find a model like mine from any dealer or manufacturer anywhere in the world. Hell, even
I
wasn’t sure what its top speed was.
I sat on a picnic table off the road a little way ahead when he skidded to a stop. He got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him to stalk over to me, anger rolling off him in waves.
“Just what the
fuck
was that?”
Concerned-Troy from last night had been cute. Sweet-Troy patching up my injuries…sexy. Angry Troy glaring down at me like that? I’m a twisted bunny because that was as hot as all the hells. Yeah, I said hells. Plural. Way plural. Oh, you thought there was just one? That’s cute.
“What?” I looked at the road with a look as innocent as I could manage.
“You know exactly what I mean!” he growled and slammed his hands down on either side of my hips. I swear I felt the wood crack but kept my eyes level to his. He was strong for a human. Most wouldn’t have moved the wood at all.
“That little ride?” I couldn’t help it, the snark always managed to escape. If I tried to hold it in, I’d explode or something. “You might want to get your car checked out. It’s a bit on the slow side.”
He snarled a curse dirty enough to make a marine blush. “You could have been killed. Doesn’t that
bother
you? Because it sure as hell bothers me!”
I already had my mouth open to throw something back when his last words registered. I shut my mouth with a click and looked at him. He cared. He actually cared. About me. The emotion wrapped around him like a cape as he glared back.
Fuck. Me.
There is a moment in every reaper’s life when we have to make that decision. A crunch moment. The moment we have to come clean and tell someone not in the life what we are and what we do. My grandpop told me about his crunch moment. The conversation when he’d told my nanna, before they were married, what he was and what he did for a living. Her reply has been family lore for decades. “Well, Jack, there’s death and taxes and I’m sure as damnation not marrying a taxman.”
This was my moment. I knew it as sure as eggs were eggs and grass was grass. It was a soul-deep knowledge that clanged with finality. I knew if I made some snarky comment and walked away, I would never tell a non-reaper what I was. Who I was on the inside. I couldn’t do that. It would be tantamount to shutting myself away and never reaching out again.
“Laney? Are you listening to me?” His demand brought me back to the present, to face the frustration, anger, and fear etched onto his face. Whoa, I was responsible for dragging all that depth of feeling from him?
“No.” I shook my head, realizing I’d answered his questions out of order. “Sorry, I mean, yes. I’m listening. But no, I’m not worried about being killed.”
He started to speak, then stopped with his mouth half open. A frown drew little furrows in his forehead. “You’re not? Why the hell not? What do you think you are, immortal or something?”
I choked back a laugh. He was serious, and I shouldn’t find his concern so amusing but I couldn’t help it. It was sweet.
“Not immortal, no. I can die. I just can’t be
killed.”
He looked at me as though I was one nugget short of a happy meal. To be fair, in his shoes, I’d be calling the men in white coats to bring out the latest model of hug-me jackets.
“What do you mean, you can die but not be killed? That makes no sense at all.”
Birds tweeted in the trees behind us, sounding way too happy with life as I debated how to answer. No doubt the more scholarly amongst the Reaper families would have found an eloquent way to explain it, but I’m a blunt kind of girl. I kill things for a living, so my social niceties aren’t the best developed.
“Can’t kill something that’s death.”
“Dead?” Anger flirted with Troy’s expression, his lips drawing tight. “Do you think I’m stupid? I know you’re not human, but you’re not dead, you’re breat—”
I put my fingers over his mouth. They were soft and instantly my memory provided sensory recollection of what they’d felt like against mine, and other places.
My voice was soft when I spoke. “I didn’t say dead, Troy. I said death. I am Death. A collector of souls. That’s why I was at the accident… I was there to send their souls to the afterlife.”
Her words stopped Troy dead. The anger rolling through his body drained as he tried to process what she was telling him. He’d been so worried—No, that was the wrong word. He’d been scared out of his damn mind—when she’d taken off on that monster bike of hers. Lean, low and deadly-looking, it was some kind of superbike, but not one he recognized. Like her, it slipped in and out of focus if he tried to look directly at it.
But all that slid away in the face of…this.
Death. Collecting souls.
Somehow that didn’t mesh with the image she presented to the world. Sexy, pixie biker chick. Her hair was pulled up into a messy pleat his fingers itched to drive into, and pull free. The memory of her silken hair running through his hands the night before hit him hard, precipitating a very typical reaction down below. From her tousled hair, to the bee stung pout of her lips and curvy little body, she looked about as dangerous as a wet kitten.
Appearances were deceptive though. Last night had taught him that. She’d taken on the werewolf in his kitchen with nothing more than those blades of hers, the ones that even now hid in the back of her belt, and dangerous didn’t cut it. Lethal was nearer the mark.