Chapter Four
AMIT
Lars stumbled into my living room. Since I was pouring a shot of whiskey in the kitchen, I didn’t see the foot-tall creature, but I heard his clumsy entrance.
“Sire,” he called out as I leaned against the counter and listened to his uneven steps approaching.
“Why are you just now getting here?” My tone was neither disapproving nor mean, yet it was a trick question. I knew where the little gremlin had been all night. He went where I wanted him to, but he didn’t necessarily do things I liked. He often repeated the same mistakes over and over, especially when it came to the thorn in my side.
I’d never worked so damn hard for a delicious meal in all my two hundred and seven years of life.
“I fell asleep, Sire.” I could hear the fear in his voice. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
“Hmm.” I pushed off the counter and moved so I could get a better look at the gremlin. He was an ugly little bastard. Putrid green saggy skin, chartreuse-yellow eyes, jagged beige teeth, and if I didn’t force him to wear a cloth over himself, his tiny green pencil dick would be right there for me to see, and I didn’t want to see it. He already humped everything coming and going. There wasn’t anything he didn’t try to stick it in. Gremlins were nasty little creatures which was why I didn’t like him getting too comfortable around her. He would never betray my trust, but it was best to keep up with him than to just let him be.
I stalked toward him, and he nervously clasped his hands together in front of his chest as he looked the other direction. Bending down, I grabbed him by the arm and tossed him onto the counter. “You slept beside her again, didn’t you?”
He scooted back slowly as I pinned him with my icy stare. “Sire, I cannot help it. She gives the best belly rubs. It always puts me to sleep.”
He had no idea how much his honesty pissed me off sometimes. I wanted him to watch her, not have her touching him. I blew out a breath. “Do you realize it’s her dog that she loves, not you? You’re possessing her dog to keep an eye out for her while I’m stuck,” I glanced down at my tie, grabbed it, and yanked it off, “stuck here doing all this unnecessary shit.”
“I agree with you on the unnecessary shit, Sire, but I have to point out that you did this to yourself—all for one soul.”
Did this creature intend to engage my temper? Had he forgotten what I could do to him? “Did I ask for your opinion?”
“Also, Sire,” he continued—seemingly unaware that I was seconds from sailing his ass into the next room with a bruised head. “I’ll have you know that she doesn’t give her dog as much attention as she does when I’m possessing it, so she does actually care when she’s stroking my stomach. I see the difference even if you can’t. She likes him better when I’m the dog.”
I smacked him with the back of my hand, sending him crashing into the wall next to me. He hit the floor with a thud. “I deserved that, Sire. She’s yours.” He scrambled to his feet.
“How is she?” I asked him, my voice more reserved as I did. I hadn’t seen her in a few days. I’d been stuck in my human form with all this tedious company work. In two short months, I’d be glad to let go of it. It kept me from watching her as much as I normally did when I was in my reaping form.
“Restless and uneasy even if she doesn’t acknowledge it.” His putrid-colored eyes blinked up at me, almost as if he were studying me.
“Spit it out,” I hissed, knowing he had something more to say.
“I think it’s best for you to eat her soul now while it’s still vibrant and happy. With each day you draw nearer, she’ll become unhappier and all these years of feeding her soul would have been for nothing.”
He was right. Ruth’s soul had been at its peak for years now, and I’d never smelled and seen a more delectable soul in a creature before. She was losing that peak as her time shortened. She knew I was coming for her. I made it clear the day I let her go she’d only have ten years, but in those ten years she got what she wanted.
“Grab a book,” I barked just as my phone started going off. I pulled it out of my pocket, tempted to chuck it out one of the windows. I had no need of it, but ever since I targeted Ruth Thomas I had stooped to many things I didn’t wish to admit. Seeing who it was, I hit ignore and tossed it on the counter.
“Who was that?” Lars tilted his head at me as he limped around in search of a book.
“KY. They’ve been trying for weeks for us to help them out with contacting Ruth. When Jayne informed me, I told her to send them my way. Apparently, Liz James wants to collaborate with Ruth.” I poured another shot of whiskey and tipped it back. “There’s no way I’m letting anything mess with her soul, not after I’ve spent so much time helping it blossom.”
“Sire, you’re not well. The last ten years have been tedious and pointless even to me. All this trouble to make a soul taste better? Aren’t you exhausted doing all this for one soul?”
I hated when Lars spoke the truth. It rubbed me the wrong way. I was exhausted and strung out and restless. When I first took over the company, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. Luckily, I was an asshole so humans were too frightened to ever realize how clueless I was. I left my work to everyone else every chance I could. Of course, now I knew a lot and could do a lot. I just didn’t want to do it.
Lars was still waiting for my reply when I finally chucked the shot glass at him. He ducked, and it shattered against the wall. “Yes, Lars, parading around as a human doing shit I don’t want to do all just to tear into her vibrant soul is exhausting. I want her soul happy. So I’ll do all this unnecessary shit to sink my teeth into her tasty soul.” Taking a deep breath, I asked, “There? Does that make you happy? Did you find the book?” He slipped it out from behind him and nodded. “Let’s go hunting.”
_______
“This one?” Lars asked as we walked down a street completely unseen to the eyes of humans in broad daylight. I ditched my human form for my truest form—feeling more in tune with myself. I hated how much being a human made you feel human. Soul reapers and human desires were vastly different.
I eyed the blonde female he walked behind and followed the sway of her hips and the ice cream in her hand. She was young, clean, and innocent.
I shook my shadowy head, and Lars moved onto a different target. This time he pointed to a fat-bellied man in a suit, wheezing as he walked across the street against a red light. His soul reeked of decay, corruption, and greed. If I had a mouth in this form, it would have salivated. Wicked souls were a treat.
Seeing me move toward the man, Lars sprinted ahead and jumped onto a woman’s back. As she passed the target, Lars conveniently tossed the book before the man darted into the street. It was an age-old ploy that always worked to perfection.
I felt my hunger pangs increase tenfold when the old man took the bait and bent down just as the light turned green. “Here, you dropped your book.” The second he touched the book, his soul belonged to me. I moved in, claimed what was mine, and devoured it all. A few seconds later, he was hit by a bus.
Lars jumped down and met me with a grin.
“Good job.” The ugly thing loved it when I praised him. “Go pick up the book underneath his body.”
“I’ll get run over,” he screeched.
“Then you better be careful.”
I couldn’t leave it when I needed it. I only had two, and the other stayed with Ruth all the time like a good little pest. No matter how many times she tried to leave it somewhere, it always followed her. She hadn’t tried to escape it in years now though.
The books were something I had a witch make for me years ago. My species of demon was on the verge of extinction. Grim and his Reapers were the cause as well as ourselves. I didn’t need a book to take a soul. I could eat any soul I wanted, and that was the problem. Eating without a care came with a price though. If you got too carried away and killed more than you were supposed to, it placed you in deep shit with the Reapers who were in charge of keeping the balance between life and death; good and bad, blah, blah, blah.
Our nature, something we couldn’t change, was the very thing getting us killed.
It’s why I came up with the books. A spell—a contract within a book was placed upon the person against their will—giving me rights to their soul the moment they touched it. Was it devious and wrong? Yes, it was. Could the Reapers do anything about it? No. A contract was a contract no matter how crooked. They were junkies for rules, and mine was one that guaranteed me protection from them.
I wasn’t about to be hunted and killed like most of my kind. I happened to be smarter. And I happened to like to live and wanted to for a long time to come.
And apparently, Lars did as well with the way he zigzagged and jumped and wobbled through the traffic. He might have been invisible, but that didn’t make him invincible.
I applauded his loyalty and told myself that was why I let such a nasty demon close by my side.
He was panting by the time he reached the sidewalk and handed me the book. “To Ruth’s now?” he panted. My habits were his habits. He knew exactly where I planned to go.
I glanced at the chaos going on in the middle of the four-lane road one more time, catching sight of the man’s mangled body before I departed with Lars.
_____
“Oh, my God!” Jayne gasped as she plopped down next to Ruth on the tan sofa. Ruth’s legs were tucked underneath her as she watched the TV with silent interest. “I swear people are just not careful anymore. How much you want to bet the driver was texting? I mean, no other drivers continued on when they saw the man keel over.”
Ruth didn’t say anything, instead her arm roamed over into her tub of Red Bird Peppermint Puffs sitting on the side table beside her. She tore into the wrapper and popped one into her mouth. I only knew the name of those because Ruth ate them like they were going out of style. I couldn’t remember a time when the human didn’t have a bucket of them with her.
I moved closer, letting my gaze run over her out of habit. Humans could only see my reaping form if I allowed them to, which was why neither of them were freaking out right now. Ruth was carrying one of the brightest, most yearning souls I’d ever come across, but her body was the complete opposite of bright. She was darker than a night sky, every bit as black as my reaping form. Her legs were tone and bare, her white shorts only covering the most private part of a human. She was curvy, yet stronger than her body looked. I knew how much she worked out in the gym, but it didn’t take away from the softness that I’d never touched but knew was there. The whites of her eyes stood out in contrast to her skin color, which made her the most fascinating human I’d ever seen. The most beautiful woman worthy of the soul she carried.
When soul reapers mated, we used our human forms. It didn’t mean we liked our human forms, we just had no solid form in reaping form. We were, more or less, souls who ate souls. We could dance and mesh with one another, but it wasn’t what we needed to breed. We needed a human form for that.
Even so, most of us—including me, loathed our human form. It felt like it went against our nature to have to be something else in order to carry on our species. Yet we did it.
I’d never bonded with another soul, but I’d carried out the act many times before. After all, we were a species that lived on emotions like desire and lust. We just didn’t let it overcome us or control us like humans did. We were far more reserved. Well, most of us anyway. You couldn’t count the ones who were getting themselves killed.
As much as I disliked a human form and its shape, mine was useful and we all needed a release. My fascination with Ruth’s body had to be the very fact that I craved her soul to the point of madness, and in the process, I developed an unwanted response to her body.
Her soul was unlike any I’d ever craved before. I sought and thrived off the wicked—greed and exploitation—just absolute filthy humans. The aroma from them was ten times sweeter than that of someone good. Bad was delicious for a soul reaper.
But Ruth… Her soul was bright and full of yearning—passionate and beautiful—all the things I’d never gone after before, and yet, there was still something different about hers that placed it apart from all others. Something mouth-watering, heart-stopping, and impossible to ignore. The moment I caught whiff of her ten years ago, it was all over. Cherry blossoms in bloom. That was the closest thing I could get to her scent, but even then, I could only think, she smelled better. There was nothing more hypnotic to me than her soul.
She wiggled her bright green-painted toenails as she shifted on the sofa. Her legs splayed a second—but that was all it took for me to see the tight press of her shorts outlining her pussy before she closed them and got comfortable again. My shadowy form quivered.
Maybe there were other enthralling things about Ruth Thomas besides her soul—the very reason the human was driving me to the brink of my undoing.
Still in my reaping form, I turned toward the TV to see that my food incident made the news today. Lars stood next to me, and it didn’t take a minute being there before the dog spotted us and started growling which had Lars laughing and teasing him.
“What’s he growling at?” Jayne whispered as she scooted closer to Ruth’s side of the sofa.
“Probably nothing,” Ruth responded tiredly as she rubbed her eyes and rested her head on the arm of the sofa. “He barks at his own shadows.”
“Seriously, he scares me all the time.” Jayne visibly shook as she latched onto Ruth, causing her to grin. “You should let me hire someone to stay around the mansion when you’re home.”
“No. This is my time for privacy.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Come here, Moose,” Ruth called to her dog as she patted her leg.
Lars ran and jumped inside the dog. Then he ran to Ruth and flipped onto his back, waiting for Ruth. She wasted no time hooking a leg around him as she rubbed underneath his chin. “Look at that face.” Jayne laughed, then petted him too.
I’d imagined the damned gremlin really loathed watching over Ruth, even as going as far as putting in extra hours away with her. I guess that was in the past now. Years ago, he would get so angry that I was forcing him to stay with her instead of by my side. Now he leaped at the chance with no hesitation.
Eventually, I was going to murder him since he was determined to test my patience every day.
“You look tired,” Jayne observed Ruth as both of them gave Lars a good rub down.
Ruth closed her eyes. “I am. This always happens when I get home from a tour, or just home in general. I want to sleep. I don’t ever get enough of it.”
“Then sleep.”
Ruth opened her eyes and sighed. “I don’t want to sleep, not when there’s so much I want to do.”
Lars was right, her impending death was weakening the soul I spent years nurturing. She was supposed to be my most delicious meal. My biggest reward for going so far to take care of it.
I brought it to its peak. It was mine to devour.
I gazed at Ruth Thomas.
A deal was a deal. She had two more months. Even though she was hurting what was mine, I wouldn’t change my word.
For I knew, a soul like Ruth’s was a rare treat I would never find anywhere else.