Reap & Repent (28 page)

“Now!” Ruth cried.

Nate struck a match and lit the edge of the engraved ring on fire. The flames flared up, and then raced in a whoosh as they made their way around,
kindling each symbol. The demon wailed, plunging both clawed hands into Kylen’s chest, laying open skin and exposing ribs. He dragged his claws down the entire front of Kylen’s body.

Kylen’s head snapped back, and the demon rolled out of his chest in a stream of black sulfurous smoke. Ruth watched as the stream of black smoke congregated, and then rose up to her ceiling and into a wooden box fixed in place above it. The smoke filled the box, condensing inside its walls. Nate leaped onto the hearth and reached up, slamming the box shut. He wrenched it from the ceiling, bringing a good-sized chunk of the plaster with it. Kylen’s body crumbled into a bloody heap in the center of the circle, his head hitting the floor with a sickening crack. The flames snuffed out.

Nate chanted over the box and lowered it into a small iron safe covered in glyphs and symbols similar to the ones that had been burned into Ruth’s floor. He closed the safe by sliding the open door down onto some notched grooves on the other side. As soon as it was in place, the edges of the opening merged together to form a solid cube. There was no key or combination lock. It appeared to be one solid and continuous piece of iron. If she hadn’t seen it open to begin with, she would never have guessed that it
could be
opened or that there was anything inside of it. Nate placed the box on the hearth and turned his attention to Kylen.

Ruth was already tending to the bleeding reaper, trying desperately to put pressure on his gushing jugular wound. A large pool of blood spread across the floor as the color drained from Kylen’s face.

They were a long way from a hospital.

“Keep the pressure on his neck wound, or he’s going to bleed out,” Nate said, pulling equipment and bandages from his bag. “I can’t fix him here. I’m an EMT, not a surgeon. He’s never going to survive an ambulance ride.”

Ruth leaned over Kylen and placed her hands on his exposed chest, near his heart, pushing healing green energy into him. It wasn’t enough. His injuries were too great, and she wasn’t strong enough to heal him alone.

“We have to get him to St. Mary’s, Nate.”

Nate nodded and Ruth wrapped her arms around Nate and Kylen, summoning what energy she had left. She felt the pull, but without any help from Nate or Kylen, it took forever before they began to leave. Finally, she felt the three of them being drawn toward their destination. She prayed that they weren’t too late.

Chapter Thirty-Three

They landed in the chapel, Ruth still holding pressure on Kylen’s neck wound.

“Nate, you have to leave the chapel. Get out, and then come back with the others when I call for help. It’ll look too suspicious if they know you’re here with me. As soon as he’s stable, we’ll bring him back home.” Nate hesitated. “Go!”

“Shit.” Nate ran to the door, peered into the hallway and then vanished down the corridor.

Ruth gave him a good forty-five seconds before she started screaming for help.

Covered in Kylen’s blood, she must have looked more like the patient than the rescuer when the first three nurses arrived and jumped into action. A code blue was called over the intercom and Nate and the E.R. team arrived with a gurney and a crash cart. Their medical parade clattered down the hallway in a rattling and clanging procession through the chapel doors. A large puddle of bright red blood had pooled across the floor between Kylen and Nate, and Ruth felt sick to her stomach. She wasn’t sure how much more he could have in him to lose. Sure, Deacon had told her that the only sure way to kill a reaper was beheading, but still …

Nate fell into EMT mode. “He’s down at least four units, maybe more from the looks of the chapel floor. Puncture wound to the jugular. Multiple
lacerations over his neck and chest, exposed ribs.” They grasped Kylen and lifted him onto the gurney.

Nate gently pushed Ruth aside, holding the pressure on Kylen’s neck wound in her stead. The techs and Nate raced back to the E.R. suite and into a room. A nurse hoisted a bag of O-negative blood onto a hook while another fished around Kylen’s inner elbow for a vein to tap into. They had trouble finding an un-mutilated area to administer the blood. Finally, the E.R. doc came into the room and the techs got him up to speed on Kylen’s condition.

“You can take your hand off the wound,” the E.R. doc told Nate. Nate pulled back and the blood erupted from the wound once again. Ruth’s stomach churned as she stood against the wall, trying to become invisible. She wanted to know what was going on, but she also didn’t want to answer too many questions. This was one situation in which she’d be more than happy to benefit from reaper anonymity. She had no idea what she was supposed to say about how they’d come to be in the chapel, but she wanted to keep Nate as uninvolved as possible. There was a lot of potential danger in this situation, legal and mortal.

She didn’t want to leave Nate hanging, but these were his people, and if anyone’s presence here was going to be interpreted as suspicious, it was hers. At least Nate was an EMT at this hospital. Making eye contact with him, she made a silent plea. He gave her a subtle nod in the midst of all of the chaos, and she slipped out of the E.R. room, making her way out into the labyrinth of the hospital before anyone could talk to her.

They hadn’t considered this turn of events, but Kylen was in good hands, and Nate was fully capable of handling himself. He’d figure something out. Now, she had to do the same.

But where should she go?

She couldn’t go back to the chapel. The police were already there by now. Working her way toward the exit, she walked out into the predawn summer morning. The cicadas buzzed in the few trees around the hospital. The air was thick and palpable—a storm was brewing.

Her hair curled up tighter and clung to her neck from the humidity as she walked down the sidewalk.

At any moment, she expected hospital security to come bursting out after her, but no one came. She kept walking.

As she made her way down the street, away from the hospital, she became aware of just how many cemeteries, funeral homes and churches there were along her path.

While doing the research for where she and Deacon might find some loose souls, she’d discovered that in Meridian alone, there were a dozen funeral homes, twenty-eight cemeteries and two hundred and sixty-five officially recognized churches with brick-and-mortar buildings. That was a whole lot of consecrated ground, which in turn meant a whole lot of entrances to the consecrated subway.

She’d also found out that there were more religious institutions per capita and acreage in Meridian than in any other city its size in the world. Banks and
Chinese restaurants were second and third on the list. The people of Meridian loved their God, their money and their Cashew Chicken.

She walked nearly eight blocks before it began to sprinkle down a light rain. Spotting St. Agnes Cathedral, she headed that way. It was a Catholic church, and it was most likely locked up tight at this time of the night, but she had to give it a try. She was ready to go home. They’d done all they could for Kylen at this point. Right now, his care was beyond their abilities. He needed his physical injuries to be tended to by professionals, and then they could bring him back home and help him recover more quickly. The quicker the better.

Nate would call her when he could, and they’d make a plan to retrieve Kylen.

The church was well lit. Not wanting to draw any attention, she didn’t linger out front. Steady traffic cruised by, and she prayed that no one would take notice of her.

Peeking through the glass doors, she wondered how much of the property was actually consecrated. Inside the building? The whole block and grounds? She found herself wishing again for an instruction manual for reapers.

She walked around to the back of the church and down a side alley until she reached an interior courtyard in the center of the church complex. A beautiful little garden with a fountain sat behind a locked iron gate. Several spotlights illuminated the grotto in a buttery yellow light. Unfortunately, spotlights likely also meant surveillance cameras.

Since she wasn’t planning on vandalizing anything, she prayed there would be no reason for anyone to review those recordings.

She climbed up and over the gate, holding her breath in anticipation of setting off a motion alarm. She landed on the other side and let out a deep sigh of relief. No alarm.

Calming herself, she concentrated on home and slid through the consecrated subway, alone again.

* * *

Deacon woke to the unwanted ministrations of a woman who was attempting to unbutton his jeans with her teeth. He jerked awake to realize that there was another woman behind him. Both were beautiful, one with long, flowing red hair and the other a natural blonde. Yeah, they were both naked.

Shrugging them off, he scurried off the bed and reached for his blade. After Camael’s transformation, he didn’t trust anything down here to be as it appeared. No telling what these two really were.

“Come back to bed, lover,” the redhead cooed, writhing against the blonde.

“Tempting,” he said, putting some more space between them.

“Isn’t that the point?” the blonde purred.

“Look, we brought you sustenance.” The redhead pointed to the table.

“Of all kinds,” continued the blonde, sliding her long legs off the bed in one fluid motion and prowling toward him. He didn’t want to have to kill them, but if they got much closer… He didn’t trust their intentions. At all.

Puzzled by how they had gotten into the room, he ignored them and explored the walls again, looking for an entrance. Camael must have flashed them in. Otherwise, the only way in or out appeared to be the red fog surrounding the balcony. He wasn’t quite that desperate yet. He pondered how he could possibly learn the secret to flashing here. Maybe all he had to do was give up his soul.

The women fawned and rubbed up against one another before him, entreating him to join them. Deacon stood his ground, his body not even bothering to betray him.

When it was clear to them that he couldn’t be enticed, the women pouted and began to thrash about, pulling their hair in frustration. Their skin began to discolor and their beautiful faces melted away, revealing the raw white bones beneath.

They were hideous and fearsome and yet pitiful at the same time. As they wailed, begging him to come to them, Deacon stayed just out of their reach. At last they began to dissolve, disappearing in a flurry of strangled cries and screams. He was alone again, but he was hardly relieved by that knowledge.

He cringed, wondering what would come next. Gazing at the repast that lay on the table, his mouth watered, but the last thing he wanted to do was partake of anything that might make his situation more than temporary. Camael had said he wanted him to know what he had to offer. Well, if this was any indication, he’d have to do a whole lot better.

Deacon only had eyes for Ruth.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Once again, Ruth found herself waiting at home while drama played out elsewhere. Deacon was in Hell. Kylen was in critical condition in the E.R., and Nate was at the hospital looking after him. She did the only things she could manage while she waited to hear from Nate: she ate, she slept and she cleaned. And then she ate some more.

She was not going to be a victim of reaper depletion again. There was too much at stake.

Even though she only managed a few hours of sleep, she felt much, much better than she had in the past few days. If not for the constant gnawing in her gut urging her to speed things along, and the fact that the two people she cared about most in the world were in great distress, everything would be swell.

She grabbed a box and headed to the junk room to start cleaning and sorting.

* * *

The junk room closet was more updated than she’d expected, with a wire storage system instead of the typical rod and shelf. While it was mostly empty, the uppermost shelf was stuffed to the ceiling with old bank boxes and other flotsam and jetsam. Obviously, this was a place to stow the things that had no other home.

She dragged over a chair, climbed on and reached up to pull down the boxes to sort through them. As she removed the last one from the shelf, the rotten bottom fell out of it, and the contents scattered across the floor. Cursing, she
grabbed the empty box from the futon and sifted through the documents as she tossed them into it.

A thick binder caught her eye. It was from a law office in Meridian. She pulled the binder out of the pile. Her heart clenched in her chest as she read the cover.

“Herrling, Gratz and Saltzman, Attorneys At Law.

Adoption & Child Placement.

Mary and Charles Scott. 1985.”

Her palms started sweating. The dustiness of the box made her feel confident that no one had been through it for a long, long time.

Clutching the binder, she walked over to the futon and sat down. There was no telling how this information might complicate her already complicated situation, but she couldn’t resist the pull. She’d never pursued knowledge of her birth parents. She and her mother had already had so many problems… But now?

She flipped open the first page and spent the next hour consuming and memorizing the contents. The four words that made the biggest impression on her?

Elaina Carter, Birth Mother.

She wrote it on a sticky note and stuck it to the front of the folder.

* * *

Nate waited in Kylen’s hospital room. Monitors and machines buzzed, wheezed and beeped. He had managed to arrange for a private room for the reaper, which helped. Quick and skillful, Nate checked all of Kylen’s stats. While
he had been pronounced stable, he looked terrible. He’d survived the surgery to patch him up and had received multiple transfusions. He still looked like hell. Despite his muscled mass, he wasn’t healing like Ruth and Deacon had.

Covered with a thin blanket, he was still an intimidating man, his fierceness only slightly diminished by all the gauze and bandages covering him.