Dark Kiss Of The Reaper (2 page)

Maybe she should get a cat. Something soft and warm to come home to. Of course, if she couldn’t keep houseplants alive, what made her think a mammal would be any different?

She rubbed a tender temple with her free hand and exhaled. Another day, another aching head. The headaches were a product of her over-dependency on caffeine, but such was life. Working part-time at a coffee shop was bound to have its drawbacks.

She finished her first cup, went back to the bedroom to change into her running clothes, and hit the street. She loved nothing more about her morning run than getting it over with. The adrenalin boost was an added bonus and helped kick out the pain in her head.

The slap of her sneakers on the dewy sidewalk faded into thoughts of last night’s odd visitor, her Caribbean dream, clothes for the day, her two work schedules for the week, which bill needed to be paid, which bill could wait. She turned back into the apartment complex’s parking lot with a mental to-do list.

After a quick shower, she dressed, grabbed a change of clothes for her hospital job and headed for Grounded. Already, her body craved another hot cup of caffeinated goodness. On her way in, she left another message for her attorney to get on Ray’s case about the alimony he owed.

At the end of her morning shift at Grounded, she went straight to the hospital, changed in the locker rooms and dove into work. The hours went by without incident, a blur of paperwork and tasks completed. The night shift would come on soon, visiting hours would end and a few hours after that, she could head home. In truth, the later it got, the more she liked the hospital. It was quiet at night, the dimmed lighting making it almost peaceful. Or as peaceful as a hospital could be. The emergency room was a different story, but her work rarely took her there.

She approached the nurses’ station, her rubber-soled shoes making little noise. The night nurses were a dedicated bunch, and she respected them more than she could say.

She smiled at the familiar dark head bent down in concentration. “Hey you. How’s your evening going?”

Manda, the senior staff nurse, looked up from a patient’s chart and returned Sara’s smile. “Hey girl. Quiet as can be expected.” She checked her watch. “You off already? Seems early.”

Sara wrinkled her brow. “Early is a relative term. I’m off in a few, then home and…” She sighed. “Sleep and I used to be so well acquainted. Now, not so much.” She shrugged.

Manda shook her head, her dark ponytail swinging. “Honey, try working my hours sometime. Sleeping when the sun’s shining is wrong on so many levels, but you get used to it after a while.” She winked, grinning in a way that spoke volumes about her dedication to her job and where her heart truly lay.

“You’re a better woman than I am.” Every time Sara thought her two-job schedule was rough, she thought of Manda. Graveyard was a killer, especially when you had a family.

The nurse stood and headed for the office. “See you ‘round, girl.” She wiggled her ample hips and tapped an imaginary cigarette. “Tell Mr. Sandman I said come up and see me some time.”

Sara laughed. “Will do.” She waved and walked away. A dark form moved past the corner of her vision as she turned the bend in the hall. She whipped around. Nothing. She rubbed her eyes. It was nothing, wasn’t it? Probably. Maybe. Maybe not.

She backtracked to the nurses’ station. Manda was still in the office, going through files.

She looked down the right hall, but it was empty. She checked the left. Edna Metzger’s door was silently swinging closed. She marched down the hall toward the old woman’s room. If that nut job had returned, she was definitely calling security this time. Her hand stopped the door just before it clicked shut. She pushed it open.

Mr. Angel of Death was back.

“That’s enough.” She reached forward, brushing against one surprisingly warm wing, and grabbed his arm. Corded muscle bunched beneath her fingers. She tried to spin him around, but he was solid and hard to budge. “I told you yesterday, you can’t be in here.”

Again, those soot-hued eyes peered into hers a little too deeply. “I gave you one night, Sara Donovan. That was all. Now, I must do my work.”

Sara grimaced. “Your work?” How much were they paying this guy? “Look, I don’t think you get it, but visiting a terminally ill woman dressed like that doesn’t fly here. Or in any hospital, I would imagine. You need to leave.” She picked up Edna’s bedside phone and dialed security. “I need somebody up here now.”

“What I do is for the best.” He turned back to Edna and embraced her, drawing the elderly woman against his chest. Her eyes fluttered open briefly, a soft smile lit her face, then her body went limp in his arms. He eased her back onto her pillow. The monitors in the room flat-lined.

Sara’s jaw slacked. “What did you do?” She dropped the phone. “What
did
you
do
?”

He tipped his head in her direction, staring at her harder than he’d done before. “I told you who I am and what I am here for.”

“What you are is a...” She wanted to say psychopath, but telling a nut job he was nuts rarely ended well. A bead of sweat iced her spine. She searched her brain for one single move from the self-defense class she’d taken last spring. He probably outweighed her by a hundred pounds, but she might be able to delay him long enough for security to get here.

He turned, the full width of him blocking her view of anything else. “I am Azrael, the Angel of Death. What you mortals call a grim reaper.” His brows angled down, adding to the increasingly ticked off look on his face.

“I’m sure that’ll go over big in lock down.” Her heart pounded against her rib cage. She fisted her hands and lifted them in front of her, aware of how absurd a move it was. What was she going to do? Box the guy into submission?

He shifted, causing the side of his robe to slip back and reveal a small silver scythe dangling from his belt. The edge gleamed even in the room’s dim lighting.

Her blood chilled. Who ever he was, he had definitely done something bad to Edna and now she knew he had a weapon.

She glanced at the old woman’s lifeless body then back at him. “You killed her,” she whispered, a mix of anger and fear edging her words. “You’re not going to get away with that.”

He sighed and moved toward the foot of the bed, putting a little more space between them. “The cancer killed her. Or would have in time. I simply reaped her soul before the pain made her life more unbearable than she deserved. Her death was merciful, painless.” He glanced at Edna. “As it should be.”

Reaped her soul? Sara mentally raised his crazy alert level to orange and stepped back, keeping her hands up. Foolish or not, the stance gave her a sense of protection.

The door swung open and knocked her forward as the requested security guard barreled in. She hit the IV rack, sending it crashing into the wall, and landed on all fours beside the bed. Her knees stung from the impact of the hard linoleum floor. She cursed softly under her breath.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Donovan. You all right? I didn’t know you were in front of the door.” Oren, the guard, bent to help her.

Over 6’3”, he outsized her by almost a foot, but he’d make a good match for the guy with wings.

He lifted her to her feet. “What’s going on in here? You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Somehow she’d sliced open the side of her hand. She held it up so the blood would run down her arm instead of onto the floor.

“We need the police. I think this guy just killed Mrs. Metzger.”

Oren looked over her shoulder, then back at her. “What guy?”

Chapter Two

Sara swung around. The wacko was gone. Gone. How on earth... “There was a guy in here, dressed like an angel. He must have run out when you came in.”

Oren shrugged. “I didn’t see any—”

“He must be in the hall.” She rushed past him and looked in both directions. Oren followed her out. Nothing. Where had he gone so quickly?

Oren put his hands on his hips and looked at her like her brain was on vacation. “I think I would have noticed a guy in an angel suit.”

Sara scowled. She was not the crazy he needed to be concerned about. “Call the police. Edna Metzger is dead and I don’t think her cancer is the reason why.”

He nodded without commitment. “Yeah, you better get that hand looked at.”

“I’m serious. Check the halls,” she commanded and ran for the nurses’ station. “Manda, you see anybody come by here?”

“I thought you went home?” Her eyes widened at the blood dripping down Sara’s arm and staining the cuff of her white blouse. “What did you do to yourself?”

“Did anyone run by here? A guy in an angel costume?” She grabbed a few take-out napkins from the desk behind the counter and pressed them to the gash on her hand. He had to be here somewhere. Would he take the elevator or the stairs?

Manda raised her brows. “Honey, what’ve you been putting in your coffee? Oren came by, but he said he’d been called. You feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” she answered as Oren loped up behind her.

He leaned against the desk, his chest rising and falling with exertion. “Looked everywhere. I can’t find anybody, Ms. Donovan. You sure there was a man in that room?”

“Positive. He was wearing a robe and he had wings and some sort of curved blade strapped to his belt.”

Oren pursed his lips and shot Manda a look. Manda clucked her tongue like a mother hen and came out from behind the desk. “You sure she didn’t hit her head?” she asked Oren as she put her arm around Sara. Manda led her to a nearby wheelchair and pushed her onto the seat. “I’m going to fix up your hand, get a doctor to check you over, maybe give you a little something to calm you down. It’s going to be all right, you’ll see. Poor child.”

Sara struggled a little against Manda’s hold on her forearms, but the woman had too much leverage and too much experience dealing with uncooperative patients.

She slumped into the chair and gave up. “You don’t understand, he killed her somehow with his grim reaper powers. I’m sure of it.”

Manda looked over her shoulder at Oren. “Seriously, she didn’t hit her head on anything?”

“Not that I saw.”

Manda sighed. “Edna dead?”

“Looks that way.”

“Let me take care of her,” Manda pointed her chin in Sara’s direction, “then I’ll get the paperwork started. Find one of the other nurses to go in and confirm, would you?”

Oren nodded. “You got it, Manda. Feel better, Ms. Donovan.” He headed down the hall.

“I feel fine,” Sara huffed.

Manda shook her head and stared at Sara, her chocolate eyes full of concern and motherly compassion. “Girl, you’re going to wear yourself out working these hours. You need a day off, you hear me? This place isn’t going to burn to the ground just ‘cause you don’t show up one day, and that coffee shop can spare you for a day.”

“Manda, you don’t understand—”

“I do understand. You’ve got bills to pay. Plus, you’ve given a lot of your time and effort to this place and you feel like it needs you. Well, you know what? It doesn’t need you to be making yourself sick. I know you’re stressed about this mess with Ray, too.” She sighed and shook her head. “How many sick days you got built up, honey?”

Sara studied the gold cross hanging above Manda’s ample cleavage. “Some.”

Manda snorted. “Some must mean like a month or two. You take tomorrow off, you understand?”

“I can’t, I have—”

“You take tomorrow off from both jobs or I’m going to take you to the psych ward, you dig?”

Sara frowned. “You’re a bully, you know that?”

Manda laughed. “Where I come from it’s called tough love. Besides, someone’s got to mother you since you don’t have enough sense to take care of yourself.” She released Sara’s hands but took hold of her wrist. “Now, let’s get that cut looked after.”

* * *

Clouds drifted past the estate’s expansive limestone balcony. Flowering vines wrapped its banisters and spilled perfume into the air. Carved columns flanked the house’s arched doorways, but curtains of milky gauze blurred the rooms beyond. The sound of running water lilted from an unseen fountain. Meant to soothe, Azrael supposed. It wasn’t working today.

His jaw tightened.

“Why does she see me? How is this possible?” He knew his tone carried more edge than the Fates had ever heard from him. So be it. They owed him an explanation.

Klotho, the Virgin, set her distaff down and looked up from her golden spindle. The most beautiful of the three, the ever-youthful blonde spun the thread of life. Her shapely brows rose above her sparkling blue eyes, her delicate mouth curving in a subtle smile. “Perhaps she’s a Shade.”

Normally, facing such beauty made his mind wander. Today, agitation kept his thoughts sharply focused. He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured Sara. “She’s flesh and blood, I assure you.”

“And you know this because?” Lachesis, the Mother, kept her eyes on her work, measuring life threads against her silver rod. He could barely see her profile through the faded Titian curls surrounding her mature face. From the inflection of her voice, he knew her sea green eyes crinkled with mirth.

“She touched me.” Heat flooded him at the memory. Unlike his brothers Kol and Chronos, he had kept himself from the lure of mortal flesh. Sara’s touch had aroused an instant desire to lose that control. He could not allow it again. He would not become like his brothers.