The Reaper's Kiss Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Entangled Select Otherworld titles… The Red Lily

  Drakon’s Prey

  Unthinkable

  Saving Her Angel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Abigail Baker. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 109

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

  Select Otherworld is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Tracy Montoya

  Cover design by L.J. Anderson

  Cover art from Deposit Photos

  ISBN 978-1-63375-322-8

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition August 2015

  For Grandma.

  “Here’s to you as good as you are,

  And to me as bad as I am;

  As good as you are and as bad as I am,

  I’m as good as you are, as bad as I am.”

  Chapter One

  “It is important to know that every single human being, from the moment of birth until the moment when we make the transition and end this physical existence, is in the presence of guides or guardian angels who will wait for us and help us in the transition from life to life after death.”

  —Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

  12 April, Present Day

  I kill people with my tattoo machine.

  The machine doesn’t send out waves of lethal electricity or poisonous ink. Nothing sneaky like that. The moment a client requests a skull in any form, he or she will die within days.

  That’s what it takes—ask me for a skull, and you’re on the fast track to your death.

  My boss, Gerard Bastille, and I do not have a following of devoted regulars from across the province like other tattooists. If it’s not their time to die, people tend to instinctively stay away from us, with the exception of a few who are good at ignoring subconscious warnings. But the customers who come to Salon de Tatouage in our quaint little corner of Québec City never have a chance to continue building their skin art collection.

  Obviously, Gerard and I are not run-of-the-mill tattoo artists. We are Scriveners from the world between life and the hereafter that we call Styx. Scriveners are harbingers of death, augurs of looming demise with tattoo machines. Our respective Deathmarks—Gerard’s pinups and my skulls—help the Grim Reapers responsible for ferrying souls to the underworld zero in on elusive souls whose time has come, so they can satisfy their quota lists for the Head Grim Reaper.

  If we were to get soft and reveal our identity to our human clients, or try to warn them off, we’d incur a lethal Level Eight Offense and face judgment by Head Grim Reaper Marin, the Big Bad King of Doom, who looks like an ordinary human with a penchant for black turtlenecks and fascism. He was in charge of the business of Death, but he ruled like a tyrant king. Any level of offense above five is guaranteed eternity in Erebus, the torturous and unforgiving Afterlife that humans prefer to call Hell. Ask any one of us and we’ll tell you we’d prefer eternity in the paradise that is Elysia instead, our version of rainbows and sunshine in the afterlife.

  I wasn’t interested in committing even a minor infraction, since I have a preference for sunshine and rainbows and not misery and hell. With shoulder-length brunette dreadlocks and ripped denim jeans, I am a rebel of high fashion, not politics.

  That day, like every day, I was flagging one more human soul for a Reaper to take to the hereafter. I hadn’t met this Reaper. I never meet any of them who benefit from my Deathmark. I simply leave my skull on a human so his assigned Grim Reaper could find him in the sea of souls on Earth.

  Moose the Noose, an American tourist from upstate New York, was today’s Deathmark.

  With a proclivity for bone-rattling motorcycles, unwarranted hostility, and inappropriate pillow talk, Moose was a cliché bucolic American, bloated around the midsection and surly from a lifetime of well drinks and bar fights. Or so I assumed. His smack on my ass and lusty, “Thanks for taking me on such short notice, sweetcheeks,” was inspiring one of my best Deathmarks yet.

  “Why a skull?” I said in my French-Canadian accent, an inflection that Moose referred to as “frog speak.” But I have never eaten frog legs. I’m not French. I’m Canadian. Alas, teaching advanced astrophysics to a toddler would be more rewarding than explaining the difference between Canadians and Frenchmen to this client.

  “Skulls mean death. No one fucks with death,” Moose grunted from his tanned neck the size of my thigh. Those lusty brown eyes were fixed on my cleavage, thinly veiled by the scooped collar of my black tank top.

  “It’s a good conversation starter, too.” I feigned interest in his choice of artwork as I wiped ink and blood from the outline I’d just completed on his bicep. With my toe on the pedal, ready to bring life to my machine and imminent death to my client, I glanced at my salt-and-pepper-haired boss sitting in the rear corner of the shop.

  From his perch behind his drawing table, the Scrivener’s gray eyes were set on his artwork as his right hand danced over the paper. Gerard looked like any other fifty-something man with black-rimmed glasses. He had once been handsome, but after his years of smoking, his skin had lost what was left of his youth, and the tattoos that ornamented his legs and arms had faded into forgotten landscapes.

  Gerard’s demanding gaze rose to meet mine. “Mind your heat,” he said, like he did every morning. And every morning his warning amounted to very little, because I was not particularly savvy at controlling my power. When giving a Deathmark, my hands grew hot like irons on a fire. It was an anomaly, and I was trying to learn to control it. In the meantime, to avoid burning my clients, I always wore opaque black latex gloves while working.

  As for Gerard, well, he never became hot when giving a Deathmark. He never showed signs of anything. He was calm as Québec’s arctic weather, his temperament in contrast to my shifty, fiery hands. I often wondered how we could possibly be of the same grim profession.

  As I tried to mind my heat, already feeling the intensity as I filled in the skull’s jaw, I spotted Moose rub his groin as he said, “Gotta take a piss.”

  The skull’s chin on his bicep needed another pass of ebony ink. Its vacant eyes stared, awaiting a gray wash to add
depth to its lethal gaze. As much as I wanted to finish this Deathmark and get on with my day, I gave a clipped sigh, killed the machine, and pointed to the door at the end of a hallway.

  Moose lurched toward the restroom, leaving Gerard and me sitting quietly in the shop. The only sound was the radio softly playing in the background. I was grateful that Gerard didn’t start to lecture me on how to improve my skillset, but I would’ve taken his mentoring over having to listen to Head Reaper Marin’s voice. His tenor monotone overrode AC/DC’s “Hells Bells,” which was playing on our radio. Whenever Marin had an announcement, all he had to do was get behind a camera and microphone, and any Stygian’s radio, computer, phone, or television would broadcast his message. Humans didn’t hear his ramblings, which was probably for the best since he was no Tom Brokaw or Jon Stewart.

  “Good afternoon, Stygians. I am disappointed to report that one of our own has betrayed us,” said our overlord of death. Shivers ran up and down my spine. I feared Marin more for the violence he authorized than for his emotionless noon reports. Today, like every other day, he was speaking to us for one reason only—threats of eternal damnation. “Last evening, Grim Reaper Violet Magby was sent to Erebus for failing to meet her soul quota for the fifth time this year, and for her possible involvement in a rebel cell in Buffalo, New York. With no soul payouts, Magby resorted to petty crimes and an illegal sugar addiction.”

  Gerard and I sighed together.

  Another one of us down. Who would be tomorrow’s tragedy? Who would Head Reaper Marin seek out next on his decades-long mission to crush Styx’s morale for a fucking quota?

  A flushing toilet and jingling bell hanging over the shop’s door were enough for Gerard to flick the radio off, ending the Head Reaper’s speech on not following the example of Violet Magby and the others.

  “What can we do for you?” Gerard asked Salon de Tatouage’s newest guest, as Moose shuffled back to my station.

  His hairy bicep returned to my field of vision.

  “I want a tattoo,” said a girl with a thick French-Canadian accent. “My boyfriend’s name wrapped around my arm.”

  Before beginning again on Moose’s Deathmark, I observed the spiked green-haired girl in a heavy metal T-shirt itching to make a permanently bad decision. Although she appeared somewhat hardcore, I noticed a glint of uncertainty in her brown eyes. She hadn’t asked for a skull or a pinup. She was in the clear. For now.

  “There’s a saying in the industry, kid—friends don’t let friends get armband tattoos,” Gerard said with harsh authority. He pointed at the appointment book we left out as a decoy. We didn’t take appointments. Death doesn’t need them. Besides, this soul didn’t ask for one of our Deathmarks, and for that reason, she was off the list. “We are both booked out for the next four months. Go see Tattoo Universe across town. They take walk-ins.”

  I wasn’t thrilled about Gerard perpetuating the misconception that tattoo artists are hard-ass pricks in order to chase away souls not yet ready for death. But this girl deserved to dump her boyfriend and find another Hot Topic toy, not a coffin and a tombstone.

  The bell jangled again.

  She was gone, thank Hades.

  “You’d make more money if you tattooed punks like her, old man,” Moose said to my boss, and then turned his lusty attention on me. “You’d make even more money if you made this pretty thing sprawl out naked over the counter instead of letting her tattoo. Should leave tattooing to the men.”

  “Gotta wonder why you’re sitting in my chair then, Moose,” I hissed through my teeth. “Why didn’t you go to the old man here?”

  Of course, the question was rhetorical. Moose didn’t know why he’d asked me for a skull tattoo and not Gerard. He might very well conjure some reason, like letting me tattoo him gave him a chance to be inches from my boobs. I didn’t even know why our customers chose me over Gerard, or vice versa. But in Moose’s case, it meant death had finally called him, and he’d had a lucky near miss with his assigned Grim Reaper. Just to be sure he didn’t get away again, the power embedded in my skull would identify him for that Reaper. The best consolation I would get from this session was that death would get the final jab at Moose. The snarky comment about my skills as a female artist was wasted air.

  The empty eye sockets of the skull beseeched me to put the last touches on this Deathmark and begin the fatal countdown. With a smirk, I drove the needle deeper and with more ferocity than necessary. Moose failed to mask a “motherfucker” under his breath.

  “Ollie,” Gerard snarled, eyeballing my hands. “You’re running hot. Take a break and cool down.”

  “I’m fine, boss.” And I was.

  “Remember what we’ve been talking about…for months now.”

  “Get yourself under control, kiddo,” I mocked as I continued my work.

  “Doesn’t look like you’re controlling anything.”

  “You know, maybe if you didn’t hound me day in and day out, I would have more headspace to think about controlling my work instead of listening––oh, shit!” I jumped from my chair, threw my machine onto the metal table covered in inkwells, and darted behind Moose before he could swing around and spot me.

  As the black latex gloves melted, they revealed my fire engine red hands. The sudden stink of burning rubber was nauseating. The sensation wasn’t subtle. Considering that my raging, uncontrolled heat was a common occurrence nowadays, I should’ve noticed long before Gerard had had to point it out. In this case, irritation overrode reason.

  Had Moose noticed, before his Grim Reaper could ferry him, he might have told somebody about the freak-show artist at the tattoo shop in Old Town.

  “What the hell is with her?” Moose addressed Gerard because, evidently, I wasn’t capable of speaking for myself.

  “She doesn’t like obnoxious clients. Best not to tick her off, or you’ll wind up with your tattoo stretched from your chin-butt to your puckered asshole.” Gerard raised a disapproving brow at me. “It’s something Ollie needs to learn to control.”

  I darted into the back room after rolling my eyes at the elder Scrivener. My boss’s timeworn lecture on discipline was inevitable. I needed to find my serenity first.

  I flicked on the tap and ran my hands underneath. Cool water tempered the heat as I focused on the springtime mountainside tableau hung above the sink in the back of the shop. The idyllic landscape made my frustration recede, starting in my face, down my neck, chest, arms, legs, and pooling at my feet. Tranquility came as rapidly as anger. I was hot and cold. Manic possibly. Something Zoloft would never fix.

  Quickly, my hands were back to pale white, cool and benevolent.

  The shop’s bell rang again. Salon de Tatouage was on a quiet street off the bustling thoroughfare in Québec City. Two visits a day translated to a busy day. Maybe that teenager decided she wanted a different guy’s name on her arm. But hopefully not a pinup or skull.

  I waited silently in the back room for Gerard to send her away for good, or for Moose to make a pass and scare her off. Instead a heartbeat, faint and then growing louder, consumed the silence. This was not a regular, healthy cadence. It pounded faster and faster.

  Bump. Bump. Bump. Bump.

  The heartbeat reached fever pitch and then quickly decelerated.

  Bump… Bump… Bump…

  I burst through the beaded doorway of the back room, my own heart racing, to see a Grim Reaper standing at Moose’s side, one hand clamped around Moose’s left arm and the other pressed to his chest. This Reaper was an average-looking man with light brown hair and a well built physique.

  Death’s employee was not carrying the stereotypical scythe or wearing a black robe. Not that Moose noticed the Reaper feigning concern. Even though Reapers look like everyday humans when they’re not ferrying souls, the humans who are passing into the Afterlife never realize the Reaper is there at the moment of the heart attack, the fiery car accident, the plane crash, or the random mugger who shoots them in the face over twenty bucks. Bu
t there’s always one waiting. Picking off seedy humans like Moose was their preferred job, the cherry on top of a grim sundae.

  But here’s the thing: a Deathmark always has to be finished to have the power to call a person’s Reaper. But the one on Moose was only partway done.

  This Reaper’s eyes were gold, the warning that he was angry, horny, having a sugar craving, or ferrying a soul. In this case, it was the latter. Had a human seen him and understood what he was doing, he would’ve seemed callously unemotional, but he was focused on the task of transitioning the living to the Afterlife. The work was as important to him as the removal of a cancerous tumor was to a surgeon.

  Moose’s heartbeat slowed. His lips blanched and eyes locked into a familiar vacant stare. Gerard, who had obviously not seen an unfinished Deathmark with the ability to call the human’s Reaper happen before, stared at me, broadcasting a stern, “I can’t believe this shit is happening in my shop” look.

  The surly American’s heart stopped. Between Moose’s dead lips appeared a silver coin. The Reaper plucked it from his victim, gave it a discriminating inspection, and then stuffed it in his pocket. Humans support our industry with their lives. Gives another meaning to blood money. Today that Reaper made enough to feed himself and his family for a week. And he’d have another week safely out from under Head Reaper Marin’s watchful eye.

  Job completed, the Reaper stepped away from Moose’s body as it slumped and toppled to the floor with an undignified smack. The Reaper’s yellow gaze faded into brown and met my shocked, wide eyes. His lips pulled into a smile full of perfect teeth.

  “Thanks for making this an easy one, Scrivener,” the Reaper said with a wink.

  “Y-you’re welcome,” I stuttered.

  He gave a nod, said “Bonjour,” and exited our studio.

  The little bell tolled another lost soul.

  “Calisse!” I swore and threw my wadded paper towel across the room.

  “I said mark that human gently!” Gerard roared.

  “I did!” Well, obviously I didn’t, but I wouldn’t admit to that now. Or ever.

  “That Deathmark called his Reaper before you’d finished the fucking tattoo, Ollie.” Gerard stalked to my newly dead client, who sprawled indignantly on the white tile floor. He stared with confusion. “I’ve never had a client die in my shop.”