Death has a Daughter (DHAD Series) (5 page)

My hands began to sweat as I anxiously awaited my assignment at graduation.  Ten years of training had led me to this moment.  So much waiting, so much ridicule and debate if I would ever make it to this day.  Here I was, first in my class, and I was ready. 
Soon I would have the power to end a life.  To watch the light of a soul slip from is shell into my scythe.  I wanted that moment, I’d been craving it for sixteen years, and finally I would be able to silence the aching.

The entire realm seemed to be able to make it to the stadium for our graduation ceremony today.  After what felt like forever
, hearing name after name called, Herald finally stepped in front of me, and I took a deep breath.

“
I know you, out of all these Grim Reapers before me, have been awaiting this day the most….  Cendall, on this scroll are two-hundred souls that I expect to be collected by the end of the year.  Go quickly, watch for Guardians, observe your souls, and remember to always be alert.  Remember, also, that every second counts towards a win or a defeat.  Nice uniform, by the way.”

“
I’m ready…and thank you,” I said with a smile.  Since I was the first female, they hadn’t known what I should wear.  Dave’s mom made some custom outfits for me that were amazing.  One was made of black, flexible leather that felt like another layer of protective skin—to guard against the Guardian’s blade.  It had belt loops already placed in it for my scythe and knife that I would always carry on me for protection against Guardians.  The mask completely covered my face, leaving only my eyes visible.  We thought this was best, since the Guardians didn’t know that a female existed among the Reapers.  Some of the men did the same with the mask, for extra protection.  Drake was also in uniform but, of course, he wore no mask.  He once said in training that he wanted Guardians to see who was defeating them.  Such a cocky asshole.

Herald handed me my scroll, and he moved on to address the audience.  My eyes looked down at my list
—two hundred souls that were mine to collect.  My lungs let out a deep breath, and I felt a slight pain in my chest.  The wound from the Reaping still hadn’t quite healed, but I smiled.  It had been worth it to get the first place win.  The scroll gave me locations and DOBs for all of the souls.

Their ages were varied, but I found that most of them were typically older, which was fine.  It was my first run.  They weren
’t going to give me all the difficult ones first.  That came with talent and reputation.  Once I proved I could collect these souls, I would definitely be on the fast track to the big leagues.  I wouldn’t ruin my family’s reputation.  If I had it the way I wanted, I would be a high-profile Reaper in two years tops.

“
You got a lot of oldies?”  Dave whispered to me as Herald began giving a boring final speech.  He had already put the crowd to sleep with his introduction.

“
Yeah, about half of my list,” I whispered back, just as Herald ended his rant to the crowd.

“
Before your eyes are the new Reapers who will bring much high praise to this realm,” Herald said, ending his speech.  The crowd erupted in applause. Part of me thought they were just grateful he had finally stopped talking.

“
That’s better than my list,” Dave replied, after the applause had died down.  “I think I have three under the age of sixty.”  He laughed. Dave wasn’t too disappointed, although his parents might be. He was only a Reaper because of birth.  Truthfully, he would have preferred to be a claimer or a researcher, but he would never admit that to anyone but me.  He always said he found honor in those roles, but I thought they seemed boring, especially the claimer role.  All a claimer had to do was take a soul to wherever it was going to lie in hell.  Of the two, a researcher sounded a bit more interesting, because they at least had some say in where a soul could potentially reside.  A researcher’s job was to investigate a soul’s entire existence.  They were meant to find evidence to support that the soul shall reside somewhere in hell.  That, at least, seemed challenging and would have some reward.  If they could unfold more evidence than heaven’s claimers, the case was usually won in our realm’s favor.  It was also a stepping stone to get into our judicial system, as researchers had the potential to eventually become prosecutors and judges.  More roles I didn’t have any interest in. They weren’t busy enough for my liking, due to the fact that the decision regarding a soul’s final resting place was usually pretty cut and dry.  If they were good, they went to heaven; if they were bad, hell. Depending on how bad determined what level in hell they would reside.  But, because the decision was not cut and dry for every soul, we had to have a judicial system.

In the judicial system, a prosecutor who would argue for the soul to go hell, and a defender from heaven would argue for the soul to reside in heaven.  Once they pled their cases from
the information given to them by the researchers, eight judges would decide.  Four were from heaven, and four were from hell. One of the four from heaven was the Executive Guardian Judge, which would give the final say from the upper realm.  It was the same way with our four judges.  One Executive Underworld Judge would give the final decision from our realm.  If it ended in a split decision, the soul went to purgatory.  According to Dad, it was all politics, and something in which I had no interest.

“
They just want us to prove ourselves,” I said, giving him an excuse to throw at his parents later.

“
Yeah, that and because you weren’t even in the top five, so why would they delegate higher-risk souls to you?” interrupted Drake, who apparently decided he needed to be in the conversation.  “What’s yours look like?” he asked, looking in my direction.

“
Don’t worry about it,” I snapped.  Who was he to make Dave feel like shit?  The Drake who was mature at the battlefield was gone now. 

“
You should be focusing on your list.  Because if you don’t, when I finish mine, they might want me to help you out with yours!”  I shouted.

“
Ha, that’ll be the day!”  Drake responded.  “You got lucky at the Reaping.  Soon enough, everyone will know who truly deserved that number one spot.”  He stormed off the stage and ported into the stands, probably in hopes of getting his ass kissed by the rest of the realm.  For many reasons, the realm assumed he was the next big thing.

“
He’s such a freaking prick.”

“
Yeah, but he’s good, Cendall, so that’s why you have to finish your list before him.  Then maybe he’ll lay off of the rest of us.”

“
I will, but damn, I thought that winning first place would have hit his ego a little bit and he’d lay off.  But it seems it’s only made him into a bigger, more competitive jerk.  He was so different right after I won on the field though.  He was like normal, for a second, Dave.”

“
Normal, no, he’s crazy. Maybe he was just having a lapse of sanity,” Dave said with a laugh.

Okay, so any moment now, she should be walking out into this cool, fall day.  Fall was my favorite season of the human realm—the time of year when the wind seems to speak to you, softly whispering while spreading falling leaves over the horizon; the only season that wasn’t too hot, wet, or cold.  The season was easy to relate to, because it reminded me of what I did for a living.  It brought death to living things so that more could be created in the spring.

I
’d stayed up all night researching my list.  All the research pointed to this first soul being the most difficult one to grasp.  My dad said that was the best way to go about my list.  “The first step is to always figure out where your souls will rank in difficulty.  Make sure you rank them first, so then you can spend most of your day on the hard ones, which leaves the easy ones to take right before you head home.  Worked amazing for me.”  I definitely was going to take his advice.

This soul was the youngest on my list
, so she would probably be the most difficult.  According to the profile, her DOB indicated she recently turned sixteen.  She would surely have a Guardian protecting her, but she was probably really sick, since she was on my first list.  I watched as the door to her home finally opened and she stepped out.  The profile I had when researching her seemed to be correct.  She looked to be about sixteen and was about 5’1” in height.  She had long, wavy, blonde hair and bright blue eyes.  A small rounded nose sat in the middle of her high cheek bones above her thin, pink lips.  She was skinny, but not sickly thin like I’d expected.  She had more of an athletic build and I could sense that she was in perfect health. 
What the hell?
  Something had to be wrong with her, or why would she already be on my list?

As I checked out the scene, I spotted a Guardian.  He sat across the street from her house
, by a tree.  The thin, gold bands on his wrists let me know he was high-ranking.  He appeared to look about the same age as my dad—was I dreaming?  Surely they wouldn’t put someone on my list that had high-ranked Guardians.  Sure, I had been learning how to fight against a Guardian for sixteen years now, but to start with a high-profile one was suicide.  Maybe they were testing me.  We learned in class that we wouldn’t have to face high-profile Guardians until our fourth or fifth list.  Maybe looks were deceiving and he was the same level as me. He looked strong though.  My stomach twisted at the possibility of him being a higher-level Guardian.  All Guardians were lethal due to their strength, speed, and electric current that they had at their fingertips’ disposal.  The higher-ranked ones were rumored to yield magic, along with their current.  I’d need to see what I was really up against.

As the girl walked up the street
, I saw her wave to the kids that were down the road at the bus stop.  She was too caught up in waving that she hadn’t bothered to look both ways.  She walked up the street and started to cross, unaware that there was a huge, gray pickup truck coming her way at high-speed.  The kids, now noticing this, started to scream, forcing her to look at the truck that would soon make her road-kill, if she didn’t run quickly across the street.

She picked up her legs and looked like she was about to run, but in her panic
, tripped over her own feet and fell in the middle of the road.  Today had to be my lucky day.  I crept closer to the scene that was taking place.  The Guardian was, just now, running from the bus stop of kids who couldn’t see him.  If I moved quickly enough, I surely could snatch her soul before the Guardian got there to protect her. 

The screaming of the
truck’s brakes rang in my ear drums, as the truck finally noticed the girl lying in the street.  To my fortune, he had noticed too late; there was no stopping the collision.  The trucker wailed on his horn to no avail. I concentrated, waiting for the impact.  I would have to be fast and accurate with this Guardian coming at full-speed towards her; I would only have one chance.

The Guardian let out an odd whistle
, and I froze in my tracks as I saw four more Guardians come out of nowhere and place themselves in front of the girl.  A large blonde one was in front, throwing out his arms and bracing the force of the truck as it slammed into all of them.  The truck hit the Guardian’s long, tight, muscular arms, then stopped dead in its tracks.  The man came running out of his truck with wide, worried eyes.  He’d probably assumed his truck had stopped from hitting the girl.  Humans couldn’t see Guardians, unless they revealed themselves to them, so this guy had no idea that four huge Guardians had just stopped his truck.  He had no idea that the front of his truck had just been smashed in from the sheer strength of their forearms.

The trucker ran to the girl
, who sat dumbfounded a few feet from his truck, and helped her up, apologizing over and over.  The blonde Guardian smiled as he congratulated his other brothers and pulled pieces of the truck’s grill out of his skin.

My mouth began to water and a shiver went up my spine as I watched him laughing with his colleges at this brush with death.  The Guardians in my textbook never looked like this one
; they always looked so dull.  Come to think of it, their faces were never really clear.  In class, we focused more on what specialties they each could have, not on what they looked like. 

Then I noticed my heart thumping
in my chest.  Is this what attraction felt like?  No way…but what the heck…I couldn’t possibly be attracted to...no...  My heart was probably pounding because I’d just missed out on this opportunity.  And if I had moved a second earlier, these Guardians would have probably broke me into a million pieces, like the truck’s shattered windshield, and sent me back to the underworld.

Good thing I
’d waited.  This girl being on my list was definitely a mistake.  No way would they put a first-year Reaper on a soul this high-risk.  She had five Guardians that came to her aid!  If she’d had a bigger threat of death, who knows how many more would have come.

By myself
, I would have been a goner.  Father had to know about this; he would surely have an explanation.  I took one last look at the scene so I could give my dad a full description, and readied myself for my teleport.

My eyes glanced at the girl
, who happened to be staring in my direction as the trucker was at her side still saying how sorry he was.  She seemed to be staring at something behind me.  I looked, but no one was there. Was she just staring off into the distance?  I looked back to her and, still, her eyes seemed to be locked on me.  Then she smiled and winked before turning to face the trucker. 

What the heck?  No way could she see me
!  Must be something I wasn’t seeing. I know, for a fact, I hadn’t revealed myself. Strange girl.