Chapter Four

Twenty minutes later, Razor was still wiping blood from his nose when Archer appeared with a grin on his face.

“You know what else arrives this quickly to the scene of a bloody death, Arch?” he said as he turned to face another of the Reapers. “Carrion insects.”

Archer laughed and gave Razor the middle finger.

Today, the Reaper looked as close to plain as he ever came. His usually brightly colored hair was a plain black. He wore a long-sleeved black T-shirt, dark jeans, heavy shit-kickers, thick leather wristbands, and a khaki cowl with straps that wrapped around his wide shoulders and underarms. Beneath the cowl, it almost appeared as if he wore bandages. He had two hoops on each side of his bottom lip, two barbs on his right eyebrow, one barbell through his tongue, and gauges in each earlobe.

“Maybe, but are those sick little bastards as pleasant and handsome as I am?” He gave a smile full of teeth.

Razor snorted. “Have you been hanging around Night lately?” he asked as he made his way out of the alley. “I would ask you what the hell you’re doing here, but I can see by the stupid smile on your face that you probably came to laugh at me.”

He wiped at his nose again. Damn her, his nose still fucking hurt even though it was already healing.

Archer released a playful sigh of appreciation and joined him on his way out of the alley. “Night is my hero. I want to be just like him when I grow up.”

Razor rolled his eyes. Was there anyone who didn’t crush on Night?

He could feel Archer eyeing his nose. He expected the Reaper to ask him what had happened. He didn’t. Instead, he asked, “So, how long have you and Sasha been circling each other now?” As if he were sure it had been Sasha who’d broken his nose.

He huffed at the question, annoyed. Goddess, had he been that obvious?

Pulling his cell phone out of his jeans pocket, Razor began typing a message to the city cleaners, giving himself time to decide whether or not to address Archer’s question.

No, definitely not.

“What the hell are you talking about?” From now on, he’d have to be more careful when he spied on her.

He stopped in his tracks. What the fuck was wrong with him? When did stalking become a normal flow of thought for him? He rubbed a hand over his face. He needed a fucking smoke, a drink, and definitely sex.

“Oh come on, Razor. You two can’t be in the same room without throwing off mad sparks.”

Yeah, right. Wouldn’t he fucking wish.

“You must have gotten the wrong memo, buddy. She and I hate each other. We can’t even be in the same room without someone going home bloody. As you can clearly see.”

Archer waved a hand dismissively. “Foreplay.”

He wasn’t going to get into this conversation with Archer. Besides, Razor himself wasn’t even sure what the hell was going on between him and Sasha.

Yes, she felt and smelled unique to him. And since scents were important to him, it was confusing as fuck that her scent wasn’t of pack or family, like his brothers. But she wasn’t enemy or prey, either. It was a strange mix of them all…but not.

Shit, was it any wonder she had him all tangled up and determined to find out what made her smell entirely too good? As their most recent encounter proved, it might be difficult to accomplish.

Frustration made him snap at the other Reaper. “What the fuck are you doing here, Archer? That little hellion already picked up the soul, so what do you want?”

“Having a bad day, Raz?” the other man inquired with a pout. His small, brown eyes—one of the traits Archer once told him he’d inherited from his Korean mother—looked puppy-dog sad. The twitch of his lips said he was just being an asshole.

Razor growled a warning. “Keep it up, and I’ll bite your face off.”

“Jeez, you need to get laid, my friend.”

Before he could deliver the punch his hand was tingling for, Archer sped up his walk, effectively moving out of reach.

“I have a message for you. Actually, Xavier has a message for you.”

Razor’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. At the mention of the Reaper leader, an image of Xavier appeared in his mind. He’d only seen the guy a handful of times, but there was something about Xavier that always made Razor…shifty. Not because the guy was a jerk or anything, but because when he’d been in the same room as Xavier, his hormones had gone all wonky. He didn’t know what type of Other Xavier was, but the guy was really good looking. Even Razor, who identified as straight, could see that.

More than once in the early days, he had questioned his sexuality around Xavier. Some awkward experimenting later had told him that, no, he was definitely straight. He stopped worrying about his reaction to the leader of Reapers, and attributed it to the fact that with his graceful and otherworldly beauty, Xavier looked like an angel from one of the books in Razor’s collection from before the Great Fires.

“Oh, and what does your boss have to say?”

“He has a job for you.”

He gave Archer a look. “Oh, really? And what exactly would that job be?”

“Let me start from the beginning,” Archer said, all business now. “Two weeks ago, I came across something that didn’t raise any red flags at the time. I was on a collection, a woman with a torn jugular—sad, but nothing we haven’t seen before—when this creature-thing ran out from behind a dumpster. Even if I’d wanted to give chase, you know I couldn’t leave the soul.”

He nodded, understanding Archer meant that literally. What he knew about Reapers included the fact that once they were called to collect a soul, it was like they were on a figurative leash being dragged through time and space. They had to get to the soul. There was no other choice. He had been on a leash before—literally—and didn’t envy them.

“I wrote it off, knowing you or Edge would catch up to him eventually if the fucker had broken any rules.” Archer crossed his arms over his chest, but looked pained and dropped his arms instead.

“I should have paid more attention, made a bigger deal out of it. But I didn’t. Then a week ago, we got reports from contacts in some surrounding areas about an alarming number of young girls that had gone missing. Xavier sent out queries to other lands, but no other Reapers had seen or heard anything remotely similar.”

His stomach churned. “How young?”

“Young, Razor.” Archer’s jaw clenched. “Under one hundred.”

Others aged at a much slower rate than humans, and although all races of Others had slightly different ages of maturity, anyone under one hundred years old was considered still a child, for all intents and purposes. They were akin to what humans considered teenagers. Most still lived at home with their parents and were protected as such.

He cursed in Vruk, his first language. The lack of use and centuries in the human realm had made Empyrean, the universal language of New Earth, his brain’s favored language. But sometimes strong emotions caused his brain to glitch, and then out came the Vruk.

“Why haven’t I heard of this?” This was disturbing on so many levels. He was the eyes and ears of this land. Underage Others had gone missing from his fucking city, and he was only now hearing about it. Add that to the melting bodies situation he had yet to solve, and it was enough to make Razor want to hang up his “judge” robe.

Archer shook his head, his lips tightening. “I blame the families of the missing. According to our source, the girls all shared a few common traits. They partied days on end, and some came from abusive homes, so they weren’t missed when they didn’t come home. Easy prey. None reported the abuse, so there would be no one checking up on them or noticing they were gone, and apparently none of their family cared enough to put out a missing person report with you or your commanders. But here’s where it gets worse.”

“Of course,” he grumbled. Why wouldn’t it be worse? It seemed like they’d been living in relative peace for so long. When shit finally hit the fan, it was to be expected that it would be a mess.

“There have been ten girls reported missing by their schools or by the clubs and bars they frequent. A few days ago, five souls were collected. They belonged to five of the girls on that list.”

“Why are Reapers getting involved in missing cases?” Razor was sure there was some rule that said Reapers were supposed to be impartial.

“Yesterday, two bodies were discovered in Sector Two. They were identified as two of the five girls still unaccounted for. But their souls never made it to any Reapers. Nor to their final gate.”

Running a hand over his closely cropped hair, he exhaled a harsh breath. “All right, I think I understand. But I still don’t get why your boss wants this investigated. I mean, I’m furious, and I’m going to get to the bottom of the missing girls, but what exactly does Xavier want from me? I don’t know anything about souls.”

“He wants what he knows you’re going to do anyway: find out what the fuck is going on.” Archer moved closer, lowing his voice. “This next part is to remain confidential. We need this sorted as quickly and as quietly as possible, because the two missing girls that were recovered weren’t destined to die. Somehow, whoever is taking these girls is beating the system. They’re killing these girls and they’ve figured out a way to pull their souls from their bodies, something only a Reaper is supposed to be able to do. And only when it’s their destiny to die. A Reaper can’t just walk up to a person and say, ‘Here, let me have that juicy soul of yours,’ and bam, it’s out. Well, they can in certain, rare, circumstances, but it generally doesn’t work that way.”

Great. So someone was fucking with the death schedule and successfully pissing off the Reapers, who were the keepers of the balance between life and death, and therefore all the magic.

What Razor knew about the balance was that Others were creatures of magic, as were some humans. While living, their bodies used up the magic in their blood and in the universe to live. It was a cycle. When they died, the magic they used up during their lives would be returned into the universe. If their soul was good, it would be taken to the Realm of Eternity where they would continue to live happy little lives producing endless amounts of white energy. The evil souls, however, took a left turn, do not pass go and all that, and went to the Pit. There, at the hands of Erummon and his minions, they suffered eternal torture, creating dark energy. Together, they were the perfect power source of energy to fuel the magic of this world. The balance needed to be maintained, otherwise the influx of magic to all the realms would be thrown off.

Someone taking enough souls out of their cycle was akin to pulling out the wrong block of a Jenga puzzle. To say that scenario could be disastrous would be an understatement.

“We believe the creature I encountered,” Archer was saying, running a hand over his jaw, “the woman with the torn throat, and these missing girls might somehow be connected.”

And possibly the melting bodies, Razor thought, but kept the suspicion to himself. No need to add more to the pile. At least not until he knew for sure. “Okay, so why is he coming to me and not directly to Edge?”

Archer smiled sheepishly. “Well, that’s the other reason for my personal visit.”

“You mean you aren’t here to make fun of my…unfortunate situation?” he said dryly, gesturing to his nose.

The other man chuckled. “No, that was just good timing on my part, and a sweet little bonus, I must admit.”

He didn’t reply, simply leaning back on the nearest wall and waiting for Archer to continue. He didn’t think it could get any worse than having souls going missing, dead/missing girls, some unknown creature running around Shadow Realm, and possibly contagious dead bodies.

“Xavier’s meeting with Edge and Night as we speak. I’m here to break the news that you and Sasha are teaming up, buddy.” Archer patted him sympathetically on the back.

He had been wrong. It could get worse.

“I don’t need a partner, Arch. I’m a big boy; I can handle this all on my own.” Although he’d delivered the words calmly, he felt anything but. Razor was suddenly hot. The heat from the day had begun to cool hours ago, so the weather wasn’t to blame.

“Yeah, see, it’s out of our hands now. Locke and I have our own assignments to handle, and the deal with Edge and Night was that a Reaper had to be in on the investigation, for many reasons. Souls are involved. This is dangerous shit.” Archer sighed, fiddling with the silver band he wore on his thumb. “Furious doesn’t even begin to describe Xavier’s mood. Someone’s messing with his shit, and he wants a name. He also has the powers above riding his ass hard, demanding answers.” Archer said the powers above as if the words tasted foul in his mouth.

Shit. Shit. Shit. It was an awful idea to pair him up with Sasha. Not because he thought they wouldn’t be able to solve the case together, but because he’d be stuck with her for who knew how long, inhaling her scent, watching her move with that cat-like grace of hers, catching those rare glimpses of a flirty, teasing Sasha… Razor groaned. Yeah, bad, bad idea. Plus, there was a possibility that touching her earlier had lost him any chance he’d ever had at a mutually friendly relationship with her.

Surely, Edge would tell Xavier where he could stick his demand and let Razor work this case by himself.

“Sorry to break it to you and Xavier, but no one tells me what to do. Edge knows how I work, and that’s alone. It’s better for everyone.”

That wasn’t exactly true since he had his Sector commanders, enforcers, and officials who reported to him. But they didn’t count since he rarely went on hunts with them. Mostly because he had a hard time cohesively working with another person for long periods of time.

Archer shrugged. “Can’t help you there, Raz. I’m only the messenger.”

“I would have gotten a call by now if Edge had conceded.”

His phone chose that moment to ring. Well, fuck, Razor thought as he looked at the caller ID.

He picked up. “Yeah, Edge?”