“No.” Johnny shook her arm off with a snarl as he glared at Mason. “I’m not being told what to do by a f**king human. We’re the top of the food chain man, and no one can stop us. We’re gonna eat your heart and laugh while we chow down.”
Mason didn’t bother with any more dialogue. His dad had always said, when you face down a man with a gun you’d better hope that man is a bad man. A bad man will keep you talking before he shoots you so, if you’re smart, you can find a way to escape. A good man though…he won’t bother chatting you up, he’ll just shoot you without a word. He wasn’t sure his dad had gotten those definitions the right way around, because he sure as hell wasn’t a good man.
His rifle was on his shoulder, and the Ghoul in his sights within a heartbeat. The next a blackened rose spread over the kid’s forehead as Mason’s double tap blew out what was left of his rotten brain.
The bar erupted into gunfire. Bullets and shotgun slugs tore into the small group of Ghouls without mercy, making them dance like marionettes. It wasn’t a shooting. It was an execution.
“Cease fire,” Mason yelled over the noise. The Ghouls were done for. The guys had all received double taps to the head courtesy of Mason, and Johnny had pretty much gotten shredded.
His footsteps were light as he approached, to check if the Ghouls were dead. Of course, with their kind, dead was a relative term. He needed to make sure they weren’t the snacking-on-your-guts kind of dead.
“Fucking hell, just the stink’d put you off.”
Fred was right by Mason’s side as he reached what remained of the lead Ghoul, Johnny. Just as he suspected, the thing was old and rotten to the core. Rifle trained on the mass of torn flesh and rags, he kicked the leg nearest to him.
“That’s Ghouls for you. Corpses too dumb to die.”
There was no resistance. If the thing was playing possum it was good at it. He took one last look at the sightless eyes and moved his attention. The other two males were just as bad. From the sheer amount of damage, Mason figured they’d copped at least half the payload from the townsfolk. The girls, by comparison, looked almost untouched.
He scooted around one side of the bodies on the floor as Fred went the other way. They both saw movement at the same time. An arm twitched and then one of the girls, the one who had spoken earlier, groaned.
“We got a live one.” Mason barely heard the end of his own sentence over the sound of rifles and pistols being cocked.
His world shrank to what he could see through his sights. Gaze firmly fixed on the girl’s face, he watched as her eyes fluttered open and she slowly turned her head to look at him. Black blood covered one side of her face, and he didn’t want to think about the thicker fluid oozing out from behind her ear.
“Please…” she begged, her pale eyes fixed on him. “I didn’t want this. Make it quick…please.”
She held his gaze, the moment stretching out. In that instant she ceased to be a monster, and became just a young girl wanting the nightmare to go away. Throat thick, he didn’t trust himself to speak so he just nodded.
“Thank you,” she whispered. He pulled the trigger and sent her into the afterlife.
Chapter Two
Ten years, three months and four days. That was how long it had been since the worst day of Andy’s life. Of course, since that date coincided with the Apocalypse—Doomsday, Armageddon or whatever you wanted to call it—it had been a pretty shitty day the world over.
Things hadn’t got much better. She settled her backpack more securely on her shoulders and studied the road ahead. She’d walked these roads since that day, always on the move, never stopping for more than a night or two. She’d tried to in the beginning, but she was just too different to hide amongst humanity for long.
She trudged along the road, the tightening in her calf muscles telling her she was heading up an incline. She wouldn’t have known otherwise, after a while everything looked the same. Dust and fuck-all else leading into foothills and mountains in the distance. Apart from yesterday…yesterday she’d passed a tree. It had provided hours of entertainment.
Reaching the top of the incline something new caught her eye. Pausing to rest her booted foot on the bumper of an abandoned car, she shielded her eyes and squinted. Despite her dark glasses the bright sun foiled her vision, making the dark smudge on the horizon dance and waver.
She growled under her breath. Why the hell couldn’t she have gotten useful abilities like some other paranormals? The ability to change form and run like a Lycan, or the night vision of a Vampire…either would have been useful. At least, far more useful than what she did have, dangled on the end of a chain at the disposal of fate, chasing silver threads only she could see. It sucked, big time.
Of course, most people would tell her to look on the upside—she couldn’t die. Would’ve helped if she’d known that before she’d tried to commit suicide. Three times. That had been the year after the war. She’d been way unstable back then. Mind you, when you were forced to kill your family, friends—hell, everyone you knew, then it was bound to knock a few cogs loose upstairs. Since then she’d come to terms with what she was, somewhat, and just did her job.
The smudge on the horizon resolved itself into a plume of smoke. Five silver lines, the sort only she could see, flickered and lit up in the corner of her vision. They headed off straight towards the smoke.
She sighed. Another job. No rest for the wicked.
The small black mark on the horizon grew larger and larger as she walked. Eventually it became a small town. Andy studied it as she trudged closer. Most humans lived in places like these. Towns fortified against any sort of attack—be that attacks from other humans looking for supplies, or attacks from any of the paranormal types.
This one had particularly good defenses. The person who’d put them together had really known what they were doing. She passed an outer redoubt of steel and iron barricades, nodding at the stony-faced guard stationed at the lookout post.
The silver lines she was following didn’t lead into the town. Instead they branched off to the right. Like a good little puppy she followed them. The skin between her shoulder blades itched as she walked. Within seconds more armed figures appeared on the main wall, silent and watching. She was impressed. These people were on the ball.
Turning the corner she found what she was looking for. A funeral pyre smoldered away, billowing black smoke high into the air. The wind changed direction for a second. Wrinkling her nose she tried to breathe through her mouth. Humans smelt bad enough when cremated, but Ghouls were even worse.
She didn’t need to count the bodies on the pyre. Five silver lines fed straight into what she was looking for. Five souls, the ones belonging to the remains on the pyre, stood waiting for her. Standing in a nice little line, ready and waiting for her to reap them.
Used to the drill Andy took a deep breath, and let her spirit slip into the Shade. The layer between life and the afterlife, it was where the souls waited for a Reaper to come along and send them into the afterlife.
The world changed hue, painted in shades of black and grey. There was no color here, no life to speak of, and the truly alive couldn’t enter this place. She looked over her shoulder at the figures on the wall watching her. To them she would appear to be looking at the pyre. She could step bodily into the Shade if she had to, but figured that would freak them out too much if she just disappeared.
As it was, they wouldn’t see her reach around and under her pack, drawing the twin sickles sheathed there with practiced movements. A good thing, because she didn’t fancy being hit with enough lead to drop a rhino. She’d only had this jacket a couple of weeks, and the last thing it needed was ventilation.
The weapons filled her hands, their well-used handles as smooth as silk under her callused palms as she walked towards all that remained of the Ghouls. Twirling the twin blades around, she sliced her way through the souls with ease.
With the souls already separated from their bodies, it was easy. They only put up a fight when she had to both kill them and reap their souls at the same time. She could understand that, most people were kind of attached to breathing. Sometimes she caught a break—death by old age or something like that—but most went down fighting, all the way.
As soon as her blades touched them the souls shattered, disintegrating like smoke blown away by a stiff breeze. As the last soul broke up, a tendril separated itself and wrapped around Andy’s wrist for a moment. A surge of relief and gratitude filled her, welling in her chest and bringing dampness to her eyes. She smiled, knowing it was the soul’s way of saying thank you.
“You’re welcome.” She flicked her blades back along her forearms and sheathed them with a small snick under the pack again. “I hope you find the peace you’re looking for.”
Job done, Andy returned to the spot she’d entered the Shade. It was easy to spot. Behind her, stretching back into the world of the living was her own lifeline. It wasn’t the silver of the Ghouls, or the gold of humanity, or any other color that marked a creature that was truly alive…instead her lifeline was black as pitch.
She snorted in amusement as she stepped back between the worlds. Twin sickles, which when you looked at them were just very small scythes, black on black clothing and a black lifeline… All she needed was to become anorexic, wear a black cloak and she could really rock the Grim Reaper image.
She ignored the watchers on top of the walls as she headed back towards the main gates. Like every other town she’d visited there was another guard on the gate.
“Morning, ma’am, what’s your business in Sanctuary?”
The greeting from the guard was polite enough—even if the smile didn’t extend to his eyes and there was absolutely no way he could hide the threat in the casually held shotgun. To his credit he didn’t even try.
“Just a quick stop off to trade for supplies and water. Perhaps a night’s sleep without having to keep one eye open.”
The guard nodded. It was a familiar story, probably one he’d heard countless times. Still his eyes swept her in a quick but thorough assessment. Without asking, she knew he’d be able to describe her from the weaponry she was carrying but wouldn’t be able to remember her hair color.
Black. Fitting for a Reaper.
“Okay, step under the arch please, ma’am, just there on the red cross. Thanks.”
With a frown she did as she was told, standing right in the middle of the crude cross sprayed in red on the rough concrete. A shiver ran down her spine as magic surrounded her. The guard’s gaze flicked up, so Andy followed suit. There was nothing on the underside of the arched gateway. Frowning, she flicked her vision back into the Shade, and was almost blinded by the devil’s trap painted up there.
Clever. Someone here knew how to mix holy water with PVA glue to make paint invisible to the living eye but capable of use in a spell. She kept her expression level and slightly puzzled, as though she wasn’t sure what the kid was looking at. No need to alert anyone to the fact she wasn’t homo sapiens.