Milla
“Where are we?” I looked around the field Marie had somehow managed to shazam us to. Why did I have to agree to this? I mean, true, I hadn’t understood what she’d meant, but she was a reaper, and asking questions before agreeing to shit was probably a good idea.
“Look around. You tell me.”
Wrapping my arms around me, being not in the proper attire for the chill that was in the air even with the sun high in the sky, I looked again, this time twirling in a complete, yet slow circle as I did so. What I’d initially thought was a field turned out to be more of an overgrown vacant lot set away from the city. Shit, we were back home. No, not home, but where I had moved from, although I didn’t quite recognize the location.
“A vacant lot near the city?” I knew there was more I should know by the squinted eyes Marie was giving me, but that was all I could muster, given the clues.
“Do you not know why I brought you here?”
“No.”
“Hold my hand.”
I hesitated. No. More than hesitated. She might be my friend’s dead grandmother, but she was first and foremost a reaper, and I still had no grasp of her power.
“You won’t die if you touch me. You youth and your lack of understanding. That’s not at all how reapers work.”
“Fine,” I conceded. I needed to figure out how she did work since it was becoming abundantly clear that she was going to become an integral part of my life when I tied myself to Justice with my mating mark.
As she grasped my hand, I watched a scene unfold that I prayed was in the future so I could stop it, but my gut told me it was in the past. The recent past.
Louie was standing right where I was, his car nearby, still running, two of his henchmen standing beside it. In front of Louie, on his knees, was a young man, his hands tied behind his back with one of those plastic zip ties, his face a bloody mess, the ground around him wet, the probable culprit his urine. In Louie’s hand was a gun. It was like the scene out of any mob movie ever created, only this was real. The blood was real. The urine was real. The fear was real.
I tried to pull my hand back, but Marie held on tightly. She wanted me to see this. Needed me to see this. I so very much had seen enough.
“I like you, Jerome, I really do. You understand that, don’t you?” Louie asked with zero emotion in his voice. Damn psychopath.
“Hjkh,” was all the man could get out, his words so muffled by fear, swollenness, and the blood that still seemed to be emanating from where his teeth once sat.
“So, you understand, it is nothing personal.” Louie carried on as if they were having tea. Bastard. “If I don’t show the rest of the guys what happens when you disobey, they are going to walk all over me. I need to be pragmatic.” And, with that, he raised his gun, and Marie mercifully dropped my hand, my body collapsing on the ground as the sobs came.
When I finally pulled myself together, Marie was standing there, waiting. She allowed me to wallow in the fear and sorrow of watching the man, who couldn’t have been more than a boy. Marie wasn’t cruel, not from anything I’d witnessed or anything any of the guys or Tansy had ever said or hinted at.
“Do you know why he was killed?” Marie asked when I finally stood up.
I shook my head.
“He missed a meeting with his boss because his grandmother had a heart attack and he was on the ambulance with her as she took her last breath.”
And, with that, the sobbing began again. How could someone be so cruel? The sorrow morphed from sobs to anger and, eventually, rage. Louie needed to be ended. He might be human by DNA, but he was twice the animal of any shifter I’d ever known or even heard tell about.
“Is that man in a better place?”
“He is with his grandmother. I brought him there myself. But he wasn’t a man. He turned eighteen last week.”
“Louie is less human than I am,” I growled, my gator pacing, begging to be set free, yet staying put. Damn broken shifter self. “Why did you bring me here? I already knew he was cruel, not this cruel, but cruel.”
“And you can put an end to him.”
I didn’t see how she was right. I might have an inner gator, but being able to shoot someone, someone with henchmen who never left his side, seemed less than probable, bordering on impossible.
“Can’t you do that? You are the reaper.”
“And that is not how reaping works.” She shook her head, almost amused which, given the situation, felt out of place, yet comforting at the same time.
“I need the reaper job description, then, because I was sure you went around touching people and they died.”
“You, watch too many movies.”
Which to be fair, was exactly how I’d gotten 99 percent of my reaper knowledge.
“Why me?” It made little sense, given that Louie had more enemies than I could count. They had to be lining up to kill his sorry self.
“Because you are in the unique position of being able to shut him down before chomping on his neck and ending him for all times.”
She might be wrong on the chomping part, but I could shut him down. Before, I had inconvenienced him, did enough to make his life miserable without getting myself killed. But I could take it further, destroy all his avenues of financing, cause his “business” to collapse.
The question was, was I brave enough to do so, now that it wasn’t just me involved, now that I had a mate?
Shit. That wasn’t even the right question. Because I’d already stirred the pot with my computer meddling. If I didn’t do anything, my mate was going to be in danger, and that was just not going to be allowed on my watch.
“Tell me what needs doing.”
“That’s my girl,” Marie said before bringing me home.