Death Trap (Reaper Reborn Book 2), page 1
Contents
Reaper Reborn
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Also by Harper A. Brooks
Copyright © Harper A. Brooks
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes only.
Editor: Midnight Library
Cover Design: Yocla Book Cover Design
Interior & Formatting: Red Umbrella Graphic Designs
REAPER REBORN SERIES
Afterlife
(A Prequel)
Death Wish
Death Trap
Death Match
Death Deals
Death Sentence
Till Death
Christmas Spirits
(A Holiday Novella)
100% That Witch
(A Novella)
Halfling For Hire
(Short Story Collection)
Tales of the Reborn
(An Anthology)
For my almost one-year-old son, Harrison.
Mommy wrote this book during your naps.
That’s why it took so long to finish.
Thanks for the challenge.
I love you.
There was just something about this city that drew me to it.
No matter what craziness it flung at me with all the Halflings and full-blooded demons, I couldn’t stay away.
The scents of salty water and gasoline invaded my senses. A terrible combination, but I inhaled deeply, taking it all in. It wasn’t as bad when paired with the mist coming off the bay kissing my skin and the late summer’s sun caressing my cheeks. Even a passing seagull cawed as it hovered on the upward breeze, seeming to be enjoying the view, too.
These were the kinds of things I would never get tired of, no matter how many times I visited. Being able to experience them again brought a smile to my face. Fairport really was beautiful in the warmer months, especially near the water.
To my right, a colossal Navy ship was docked, its deck bustling with crewmen and women who were readying it for their next expedition out to sea. Just another thing I loved about it here. The history. It was rooted in the city’s foundation. You could feel it the moment you stepped foot onto the downtown’s cobblestone streets.
Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t here on vacation. Work had brought me back.
I tapped my shiny new watch on my wrist to wake it up from its sleep mode, and the picture of my next assignment flashed on the screen. A young female with blonde hair and a pretty face. According to the profile, her full name was Stephanie Gail Constantine. Cause of death was murder. Shot multiple times. For supernatural ability, she was a were-fox, one of the smaller breeds of were-creatures out there and not ranked very highly on the supernatural hierarchy ladder. Being able to turn into a fox at will might be cool and all, but it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as say, a vampire or shapeshifter. But unlike the profiles of my typical reaper assignments, this one had a green dot near the name, meaning this was one of my new job tasks.
Simon had put me in charge of gathering wandering spirits—or haunts as we call them—who had managed to find a way to the living plane on their own. With the veil between worlds thinned to next to nothing in certain spots, my watch was almost always flashing with a new haunt assignment.
That’s what had brought me here today. One thing I had learned while tracking and rounding up these haunts was that they liked to return to a place that meant something to them, like a childhood home or the place they’d died. For most murder victims, it was the latter.
Poor Stephanie had been part of a drug-selling deal gone wrong. Her body had been dumped in the harbor afterwards, so this was where I expected her to be.
As I scanned the area for any ghostly apparitions, I found nothing but the water lapping against the dock and the Navy sailors shouting orders from their ship.
I tapped the search function on my watch’s screen. The green light by Stephanie’s picture flashed rapidly, telling me she was close by. But when I searched the harbor again, there was no Stephanie in sight.
Huh.
I took a few steps right, and the light on my watch slowed a beat. I went left, and it did the same, but when I crept closer to the water by the docks, the light flashed fast enough to almost induce a seizure. That’s where she had to be. In the water.
Really? I didn’t feel like going for a swim now.
Examining the murky, dark water, I debated jumping in. What were the chances she would decide to come to the surface? Minimal.
Looked like I didn’t have a choice. I was going in.
After backing up for a running start, I clasped my hands over my head and dove in. Since I was still in my spirit form, the water couldn’t touch me directly, but the chill of it still hovered nearby, making goose bumps rise on my skin.
I swam on, glancing at my watch every now and then to make sure the search feature was still flashing quickly and I was going in the right direction. Visibility wasn’t great; the deeper I got, the darker and dirtier the water became. The blinking of my watch threw green light against the haze, but it wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the gloom.
It wasn’t until the familiar spectral glow caught my eye that I knew I’d found Stephanie. Standing at the bottom of the bay, she stared at a few bricks on the muddy floor. Like me, the water didn’t touch her, but her long hair floated around her face, as if the momentum of the water was manipulating it somehow.
Interesting. I wondered why that was. Maybe it had something to do with how she died. That was the only conclusion I could come up with anyway.
Even though she was slightly transparent—as most spirits were in the living world—she wore ripped jeans, a floral-printed tank top, and a cardigan. The same outfit she sported in her profile, which meant only one thing—they were the clothes she had died in.
“Stephanie,” I called to her, my voice echoing in the strange otherworldly protective casing I was in. “Hello, Ms. Constantine?”
She peered up at me and frowned. “Who are you?”
The amount of times I introduced myself a day… It was insane. But part of the job.
I sighed. “Jade. I’m here to take you to the afterlife.”
“Like Simon did after I died?”
That surprised me. “Simon was your reaper?”
“He helped me get out of the water and cross over, yeah,” she said and glanced at the bricks again. “But it looks like someone else found my body. I used to be here, wrapped up and weighed down by bricks.”
Her sorrow radiated off her like a wave, and my chest ached for her. Even if she had been an addict or just in the wrong place at the wrong time, no one deserved to be dumped and left to be forgotten like she had been. At least if her body wasn’t here now, that meant, most likely, the police recovered her and she’d had a burial after. It was the only positive I could find out of such a shitty situation.
“Well, I’m here to get you back to where you belong.” I held out my gloved hand and offered her a small smile, an attempt to seem trusting to a complete stranger. “Come on. Let’s get out of this dirty water.”
She stared at my hand, hesitant. “Do you know Simon?” she asked me, completely out of the blue.
Well, if she trusted Simon that much, then maybe she’d trust me. “He was my mentor actually. And now he’s my boss. He’s more of the silent and mysterious type.”
And me? I can’t shut up apparently. Looked like I was still bad at these types of small-talk situations.
“But he taught me everything he knows.” There. That was better. Made me sound more like I knew my shit.
She continued to stare at me for a long moment, unsure. But finally, she gave in and took my hand. With me doing most of the paddling and pulling her along, Stephanie and I swam to the surface. I climbed onto the dock first and then helped haul her up.
Although both of us were completely dry, I had to rub the chill of the water off of my arms. My skin was crawling with goose bumps, so it took a while to make them go away. Beside me, Stephanie shivered.
After reaching into my jeans’ back pocket, I pulled out my piece of chalk. I squatted down and began drawing the spirit door symbols right there on the wooden boards of the dock.
As I continued to draw, I couldn’t help but think to myself what a quiet and well-mannered spirit Stephanie was. Most of the spirits I encountered, either newly deceased or not, were more difficult to ge
It was a relief, really.
When I glanced up to check on her, I noticed that she was standing there as rigid as a statue, her gaze focused on something ahead of her and across the street. Her brows were knitted, as if she was trying to make out what the thing was.
Looking that way briefly, I saw nothing but some bushes along the side of an old Victorian house with a For Sale sign in the window. Maybe she was interested in real estate? Who knew? But I went back to drawing the symbols on the dock.
In the next second, she was pounding on my back, panic pushing her words out in a high-pitched jumble. “Whatisthat? Whatisthat?”
I whipped my head left just in time to see two glowing red eyes emerging out of the shadowy crevice in between the bushes of the house. Slowly, it climbed out of its hole, gaining more of a form and density with every move.
When it was fully on the sidewalk, I jumped to my feet. Twisted limbs jutted out of its crooked body in odd, unnatural angles. Even its head was misshapen and too small for its Doberman-sized body.
Ah, shit. Not this again.
“That ugly S.O.B. is a Halfling,” I said, gesturing Stephanie to get behind me.
Ugly as sin and unmistakable. And believe it or not, this was the third Halfling to cross my path this month alone. They kept popping up unannounced and unwelcomed like this, and I was starting to think these weren’t just coincidences. Even with the veil thinned.
Glancing at my unfinished spirit door, I cursed. So much for a quick getaway.
As the creature charged us, I reached into my boot for my gun—the only good thing to come out of my relationship with Cole, or whatever it had been.
I pointed the thing, aimed, and shot, but the Halfling bounced side to side and dodged the bullets with ease. At least they all seemed to have the same attack method—charge like a raging bull. No strategy or clever plan I had to be one step ahead of. Just full speed ahead.
It looked like I needed to work on my aim more with moving objects. A gun wasn’t useful if I couldn’t hit a damn thing.
As the creature drew near, I spun around at the last minute and lashed out with a foot, striking it in the side of the head. It crumpled onto the ground. Sometimes old-fashioned worked the best, especially when it came to fighting. And if worst came to worst, there was always my white light power, but after my fight with Xaver, I had managed to keep myself from using it again. It left me too weak, and a deadly situation, like this one, wasn’t the time to be vulnerable. Especially when Halflings were looking to drag you to Hell and never let you out.
The only downside to not using it was that I had stayed in spirit form these last few months. Even when on the living side of the veil. My guess was that I wouldn’t go solid again until I tapped into that part of myself. A real catch-22.
“Is it…dead?” Stephanie asked, peeking out from behind me. Her question brought me back to our current crappy situation.
I looked over the Halfling’s unmoving form. “Just knocked out, I think.”
“You hit it pretty hard,” she said. “I even heard a crunch.”
“Yeah, but these things weren’t exactly alive to start with,” I explained.
So far, I knew of only two things that could take them down. My light or the blessed iron bullets Cole had specially made and gifted me with the gun.
“Let’s just get back to where we belong before he wakes up.” I grabbed the chalk I had dropped during my moment of panic and continued to draw the rest of the spirit door.
Every so often, I would glance over at the Halfling to make sure he was still on the ground. My gun stayed in my dominant hand the entire time, so my squiggles were a little extra squiggly in my left one.
“What is that thing, anyway?” Stephanie asked, watching me the entire time.
“A Hell-dwelling creature,” I said. There was no need to get into all the details, such as the whole “These ugly bastards used to be living people—half demons, like Cole—who had been fully corrupted by their Hellfire power by overusing it. Now, they worked for full-blooded demons as their soulless, mindless minions living in Hell and becoming more and more mangled as time went by.”
Yeah, that was a little much to tell a stranger.
“Hell-dwelling?” She blinked, taking my words in. “Then why’s it on the living plane?”
I shrugged to answer her question, but really, I was wondering the same thing. Xaver was dead. Unless these Halflings were looking for some kind of vengeance, they should be leaving me alone. But having three of them find me randomly whenever I crossed over for work? Highly unlikely. These monsters followed orders. Someone must’ve been calling the shots behind the scenes. But who?
I connected the outside chalk circle, and instantly, the lines glowed orange. The door was open.
“Go on through,” I said to her. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She nodded and took the final step through the circle.
After she disappeared, I stood, dusted off my hands, and put away my chalk. Thank goodness Stephanie was one of the easier spirits to track down and put back. Not like some where I had to sometimes literally drag them through the door with me.
Minus the whole Halfling attack thing.
Speaking of…
I spun around to find the spot where the demon creature had fallen now empty.
My stomach sank. It was gone.
Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I whirled around, gaze bouncing to every nearby shadowy place for the missing Halfling. My finger remained on the trigger of my gun, and I pointed it as I scanned the area.
Where are you, you sneaky bastard.
A growl vibrated above my head.
Slowly, I looked up. There it was, perched on the top of the gas lamppost, all four of its dangly legs perfectly balanced on the tippy top like some kind of deranged bird.
Before I could aim properly, the Halfling screeched so loud, my ears rang, and then it leaped at me. Claws sank into my chest. The sudden pain had me gasping, and together, we fell backward.
Orange light folded in all around me, telling me we had passed through the spirit door together.
I tried to hold the Halfling at a safe distance, but as we passed through the veil and everything melded and twisted around us, it continued to swipe at me with its oversized hands, slashing into my stomach and arms.
I bit back a cry as spiking pain sliced through me.
As we tumbled through nothingness, I fired the gun blindly. The Halfling buckled as the bullets hit it in the chest several times, but even as it burned with the iron and holy water, it didn’t slow down. The thing was relentless.
Teeth chomped down on my wrist, and I screamed, but my voice was lost to the vacuum between worlds.
I kicked out, landing another hard blow to my hitchhiker’s stomach. I hoped I wouldn’t be bringing this thing with me to the afterlife. A half-demon monster running around? We didn’t need that kind of havoc there.
My stomach roiled from the energy passing all around and through us as we changed dimensions. But as I continued to struggle with the Halfling and focus on keeping its talons away from my face, it was suddenly ripped away from me by an invisible force. With its mouth open, like it was screeching but with no sound, it was thrown backward into the nothingness.
When it vanished, I thanked whoever had designed this part of the transition between worlds. The way crossing over via spirit door normally worked was that all spirits were thrown into wherever they belonged. So, if you were a newly dead soul, you went to your orientation or judgement, then to your chosen afterlife. If you were a previously deceased soul, like Stephanie or me, then you went back to your afterlife dimension. Your home.
