Beta. Reaper

PROLOGUE

It was like a scene from a movie, watching, as if paralysed, as my twin brother fell to the ground. Blood spread through his baby pink T-shirt like ink on paper and for a single second, my heart seized its steady pounding. I saw red and it was my brother’s blood and the blood rushing to my head, roaring in my ears, like a huge wave that made me dizzy.

“No,” The word wrenched out from the depth of my soul as my feet propelled me forward.

The first bullet caught my left side and pain like I’d only ever heard of spread from that single injury and started to worm its way into my system. The pain blurred my vision but I was on a mission. I had to get to Ken. My sole thought was to shield him from the bullets that kept raining around him. The people he arrived with had long taken cover away from the red zone while himself and a few others lay in the line of fire, unmoving.

The second bullet caught me in my calf and paralysis hit. I managed to drag myself through the few short feet that separated me from Ken and then I was falling. Blood rushed to my head but I was still able to grab unto Ken’s hand.

“Ken,” I whispered through the intensity of pain and emotions choking me. I squeezed and squeezed his palm, yet I got no response. Not even a small twitch. “Ken,” I whispered again, already feeling tears trailing into my ear. I did not want to believe it. I could not believe it. 

If the whole world fell into disarray and people started to be found dead in various places, if rogues and hunters swarmed our pack in their thousands, if a plane crashed and Ken was on it, he wouldn’t die. He just couldn’t die.

I had seen the strength bristling in him. I had seen him train and I knew how smart he was. He was the one who found solutions to problems that killed others. He was the one who held people after their loss, looking straight ahead even if pain was eating him up. Ken could not die just like that. Ken was strong and smart and a single bullet was too small to take him out. We were going to grow old together, not die before we even got to our prime. He had to be sleeping.

Yes, he was asleep and I would go to sleep with him. When next I opened my eyes, I would see it had been a dream. A bad dream. My Luna would not have poisoned me with wolf’s bane and my Alpha would not be shooting at me. I would be at home, in bed, having a nightmare.

I had nightmares, I was used to them. Ever since my parents were killed fourteen years ago by rogues, ever since I had run out to see my friend with his head spilt open on a sidewalk and a rogue eating his flesh, nightmares had become my dreams.

Yet, this nightmare felt realer than any I had ever had. The detailing was too accurate, the pain spreading through my body, too intense. My grip on Ken’s arm was starting to get colder with each passing moment and there were no screams. There were screams in all my nightmares. The screams of my pack and of my friend. Why were there no screams in this nightmare?

A sudden chill spread through me and if I wasn’t paralysed by this dream, this nightmare, I would have shivered. ‘Is this not a nightmare?’ I wondered in my spirit. Was it possible I was dead? If so, where was the white light? The only thing I could see was darkness and within this darkness was cold that made my bones ache.

“Kelly Black, your time is up,” A voice said. It was cold and eerie, sounding from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. I felt my heartbeat stop and that’s when I heard the scream. It was just one and not at all what I expected it to be. The screams I was used to were loud and piercing. They echoed from every corner of our houses as around us, warriors were slaughtered and those that had been out early for a run met their death in the hands of a hundred rogues.

“Kelly, please, “ I heard a whisper. Somewhere in my tired mind, I recognised the voice of my friend, Remi. “Ken? Ken, please answer me. I can’t loss you guys,” She was shaking me and she was shaking Ken. The grip I had on him almost gave way but I wouldn’t let it.

I wanted to yell at her to stop – to stop disturbing my sleep. I wanted to tell her to leave Ken alone to sleep because I was the only one who knew how hard he struggled to fall asleep every night. He was finally getting some sleep now so she shouldn’t disturb him. But I couldn’t yell when she sounded so distraught.

The darkness swirled and parted and I saw him. His cloth was the darkness around and his eyes glowed a bright red. It wasn’t like the red of an Alpha. It was the red that signified danger and blood. His face – His face was out of this world. I was staring in the face of death and fear gripped me. I had to do something. I had to tell someone!

“I can see him, Remi,” I told my friend, pulling up the last shred of strength in my bones. Fear was still spreading through me and the thing – Death – it was still gazing into my soul.

“Not today, Kelly. Tell him!” She pressed and I couldn’t understand what she was saying. Why not today? I couldn’t feel any part of my body and I was so tired.

"I’m tired. I just want to sleep," I whispered as the fear suddenly seized. My heart stopped pounding an erratic staccato as the fear slowly drained from my system.

"No, no, no!" I knew it was Remi crying so wretchedly.

“It seems like you’re in luck, Kelly Black. I will see you in a few short hours,” The thing – Death. Death. Death – said and the chill in my bones slowly began to evaporate.

I felt pressure on my side and my leg and without the cold that made me numb, I could feel the effect of the silver bullets in my system. They burned and as the silver spread through my blood streams, I could feel the fire spreading. The pain was intense enough for me to lose feeling and thought.

The next time I regained consciousness, it was to a dark and cold place. I couldn’t tell how long I had been out for, but my body felt like jelly and fear was starting to spread through me again.

“You bought yourself a few hours, Kelly Black and now it is time for me to do my duty,” The same voice, the voice of death, echoed around me. I felt his presence before I heard his words and both made my soul quake.

He was carrying a scythe and an hourglass, like the movies portray, and around him swirled the darkness as he took form right out of this darkness. His eyes were sunken and there was no white or black within their depths. There was only red and pain and suffering.

The hands around his scythe and hourglass were white like leprosy had eaten at them and left behind long limbs consisting of only bones and no flesh. His face too was the same, white as a corpse with flesh that had been eaten off by time. Staring into the eyes of this creature, there was no mistaking what was coming for me. Death was a bony framework clothed in utter darkness and his hour glass that gleamed as if recently polished showed grains of sand that were speedily emptying from the top to the bottom.

I could see my life flash before my eyes and as the hourglass that was my lifespan slowly emptied, I knew I didn’t have anytime left.

As I tried to fight this force of nature that I knew was inevitable, I heard the soft whisper of Remi's voice calling me from a faraway land.

"Please, Kelly. Don't go," I heard. I felt the tightening of an arm around mine and I knew it shouldn’t be possible. I was on the verge of death and if anything should have my attention, it should be the looming darkness before me.

The grains of sand at the bottom of Death’s hourglass emptied and I felt myself float on a silky cloud. For a split second I could hear the voice of Ken and my parents as they joyously welcomed me to their midst but it was fleeting.

A few grains rose from the bottom to the top and I had a little life left. The creature in front of me contorted its features into what can best be described as a frown as gravity worked in reverse within his magical instrument.

“No, Kelly, no!” Remi’s voice called again. The creature paused his peering into his hourglass to look at me. I knew he heard the voice and he was waiting to hear what I would say.

“I can see him, Remi.” My voice whispered and it echoed all at once. 

“He can’t have you, Kelly,” From a distant part of my existence, I felt pain explode in my left hand as it was clenched within another.

Death looked at me and again another emotion passed through his horrifying physique.

“I can and I will have you,” The echo of his voice made me shiver and as he looked into my soul, there was mockery in his red eyes.

"Sing to me,” I whispered. I remembered she had a nice voice and if I was going to go along with death, I wanted the sweet symphony of her voice to be my escort through the cold darkness.

Her sonorous voice filtered into the darkness as she made a melody. It was her choice of song that made Death laugh and the sound was even colder than his looks. His teeth were cracked and incomplete and as he laughed, mist rose up into the void of darkness I was trapped in and a shiver began deep in my soul.

“Death has come for me. I don’t think I can escape him,” I managed to communicate to my friend. Again, the hourglass was a few seconds from emptying and there was a calculated sort of amusement in the eyes of the thing that gazed intensely at me.

“I can't lose you, Kels, especially not today!” My friend’s voice echoed in panic. A memory surfaced and then I knew. I knew that I wasn’t going with this thing. His scythe would not cut my soul. His hourglass would not dictate my life.

“Not today,” I whispered and more than a handful of grains filtered upwards. The calm calculation in Death’s eyes morphed into surprise as he gazed from me to his instrument.

“Yes, Kelly. Tell him he can’t have you. Not anytime soon!” Remi’s voice no longer echoed around me. It was in my head and it was prompting me to action. The only action I could take.

“I'm not dying anytime soon,” I said again with all the strength I had left in me.

“Yes. He can’t have you, Kels,” She said

“You think I haven’t heard that before? I have, countless times and it has never made a difference." The voice of death thundered with anger and the cold around me intensified yet, I knew it was working. The top of the hourglass was no longer empty and not a single grain slipped out.

“Not today, babe,” I said and if I wasn’t so cold and slightly terrified, I would have found the look on his face comical. There was anger and then there was surprise. There was confusion and ultimately, there was shock. The hour glass had tipped and where the glass was once empty there was almost a full glass of grain and below it, only a few.

“How dare you?” Menace hung on those words. “I am the Grim Reaper, the bringer of Death. I work with time and time does not work in reverse. What sorcery have you used to alter time as you have done?” He demanded but I was no longer in his clutches.

"Definitely not today," I answered him and my eyes opened to a world of warmth and brightness.