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Chapter 31: The Secret Weapon
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The Reaper's Pet Chapter 32: The Jam Session
Although I’m away from the band rehearsal studio, I’m still psychically connected to Septimus. It’s like having a baby monitor in the back of your skull. There’s occasionally some signal interference but you’re lulled into a false sense of comfort. For instance, I’m aware that Septimus is playing the electric guitar and performing in front of the starstruck Rina. {“Holy shit”} is the thought that keeps recurring in her head. Holy shit is right because, even though I myself failed to see it, it’s possible that Septimus is a music prodigy; that or just a hardcore OG metalhead. The promised one song has stretched into an entire repertoire because of Rina’s endless cry of “Encore!” Septimus is going through my Eve Serrated covers setlist, which is the same playlist that served as the acoustic backdrop of our lessons in Soul City, plus a slew of other songs from bands I didn’t think he knew: Scorpions, Dio, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Metallica, Slayer… As it is with most cover band m
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 33: Hell-breaker
{WHERE ARE YOU, WAMPUS?} There’s this strange feeling welling up inside Septimus’s chest. An ominous rhythm like a hundred war drums beating all together. He wants to thrust his hand inside his chest and pluck the feeling out, to stop the hurt. This pain is very curious. It borders the physical, something he can perhaps knead smaller with his hand. It makes it hard for him to breathe, makes him feel sick. He can’t understand it but he keeps recalling a scene he witnessed once on the Lachesis screens: a man getting drenched in the rain and shouting to the heavens while pounding his fist against his chest. Wampus has explained to him once that love in the human world makes someone a gentler, happier and better human being, but the sudden absence of it makes the same person feel small, turns him into something dark and nasty. Because love’s a drug and sooner or later its effects are going to wear out. Then you’ll be down on the cold, hard asphalt like an angel with sheared wings. You’
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 34: The Monster
Everything becomes so mesmerizing it’s hard to tell if they’re actually taking place. Chester rises in a fluid and graceful movement but, in reality, his body’s cutting through time like a hot knife sliding through butter. The whole place, the small universe of the band rehearsal studio – from the twitchy second hand of a wall clock to the dog-ears of facial tissues pressed in a holder as they’re cowed by the ceiling fan – all these freeze in mid-action. Or not so much freeze as slow down into a clotted tempo. Rina’s facing forward on the sofa now, stark naked and sitting primly like a very realistic wax sculpture except for her eyes, which glimmer with awareness and concentration. It’s like an isolated object (Chester) is moving at hyper-speed while leaving the rest of the room behind. Like a character in dreamland doing away with the line between point A and B while the sleeper’s mind fills in the gap. The effect is both spell-binding and dizzying. One moment Rina’s sitting on his
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 35: Master Hand
{Who are you?} I ask. {Are you certain you do not know the answer to this question?} It’s true. I feel like I’ve known all along; this rumbly yet feminine voice with its many layers overlapping. Its owner is a shadow that has constantly loomed over us, moving the pieces across the board with her three pairs of hands. She was the one responsible from the start, orchestrating all the events with cold calculation. She had created the Lachesis computers in Death’s office and sent the Raven Man, none other than thinly disguised Kharon, to the young me at the children’s home. She convinced Septimus to adopt me as his tutor and gave me my second form as a Wampus Cat. She was there too on the banks of River Akheron the moment I arrived in the underworld. She probably even influenced Sol to be at the park this very night. Spinstra. The Fate Weaver. The last piece of the puzzle, the third of the Wyrd Ones. {… she will understand the implications,} Septimus continues orating on the other en
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 36: The Mutiny of the Ravens
“Come on,” one of the muggers coos in the local language, so close to Rina’s face her senses are invaded by the sight of rotten teeth and the smell of sour milk mixed with cigarette. “Give us what we want, doll, and we’ll be outta your hair.” “Yeah,” whispers another with pupils dilated by lust and methamphetamine. “We’ll be outta here before you know it. You won’t even notice we were here.” “You have my bag, my watch, my phone,” Rina says in English through her tears. She hates herself for being this afraid. She’s just so damn afraid. “Take all of them. Just please let me go.” “You know what else we want,” the nearest one coos again and a third leers. The one who has her, apparently the leader, starts groping her. “No, please don’t…” They’re all perfectly oblivious to the swarm of weird, shape-shifting Ravens overhead, so thick now that they blot out the night sky and the top of the two rundown tenements sandwiching the half-lit and desolate street. The birds of Hell are mak
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 37: World's End
At this point, I finally get either close enough to the scene or far enough outside Spinstra’s control. I manage to reestablish two-way psychic contact with Septimus. {Fight back,} I tell him. {Use your powers and defend yourself. You’re dying out there!} {Wampus, you came back for me...} Septimus’s voice is filled with genuine relief as though loyalty and friendship are such luxuries to him. And I’m ashamed to think his suspicions haven’t been entirely misplaced. The thought of abandoning him has in fact entered my mind. {There is nothing we can do,} Septimus sends back faintly. {The moment we crossed over to the mortal realm, we passed a point of no return. In the abattoir, everyone is bound to get eaten, even wolves in sheep’s clothing.} {Fight them! You’re the Grim Reaper for Christ’s sake. Show them who you are!} {It is over. I have already lingered too long on this side. Listen, Wampus, there is something I need to tell you before it is too late.} The leader’s on Chester
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 38: The Massacre
The projected Transmigration Bureau agents charge and scatter the Ravens attacking close to the ground. Kera either slashes them apart with her overgrown talons or bites them in half with her fangs. Ankou throws a barrage of acidic blood-balls just like a rapid pitching machine. And Yama Ranger, on his creepy steed Nightmare, blasts away with his two six-shooters, a lever-action carbine in his third hand and his portal-opening lasso in his fourth. A second group of rescuers arrives at the scene. A few residents from the tenements round the corner and approach with caution not because of the invisible battle taking place right on top of them but at the sight of both Chester and Rina lying on the ground, the first bathed in his own blood and the second having fainted in terror. The gang leader responsible for everything stands transfixed above the bodies. The act of killing a man with his bare hands has finally registered with him and he flounders like a stage volunteer cut off from a h
The Reaper's Pet Chapter 39: Unholy Alliance
{Special delivery, boss,} Ankou announces in his doll-like voice which always sounds like it’s coming from a phonograph record embedded in him. The only difference this time is his head with the Cheshire-cat grin has been torn off and is tucked under his arm. {Spank these foul creatures back to our hole sweet hell.} Without warning, Ankou’s voice is reduced to gurgling, as though the doll had suddenly been thrown into a fire. At Hell’s Helm, Spinstra has just sliced his throat. Ankou’s death-wagon springs out Septimus’s guitar case and the head reaper catches it in mid-air. Ankou then stomps on the accelerator to ram the Ravens’ front lines, disappearing into an uncertain fate but buying Septimus a little more time. Septimus lays the guitar case on the asphalt and opens it, revealing an orange Gretsch Chet Atkins whose front pickup has been replaced with a black Gibson P-90. He picks up the instrument and slings its strap over his shoulder, looking every bit the goth rock star m
Latest chapter
- The Reaper's Pet Epilogue: The Bureau of Transmigration
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 39: Unholy Alliance
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 38: The Massacre
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 37: World's End
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 36: The Mutiny of the Ravens
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 35: Master Hand
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 34: The Monster
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 33: Hell-breaker
- The Reaper's Pet Chapter 32: The Jam Session
