Reapers Novels & Stories

I anticipated his question and produced my phone, showing him the app I used. “It’s called a drone, Charles,” I replied. “It’s got small cameras and they use it to film or take pictures from the air. Wanna see it?” “Yeah!” Then I opened the SLS app and looked around with it until I caught the sticks of the twins running toward Ted. Ricky covered his mouth, his eyes jumping up and down from my screen to the garden before us. “Charlotte and Charles Blotter. They died in their late seventies, but came back as children.”

he murmurs. Rolling my eyes I cross my arms leaning back in my chair, “care to share with the class?” He presses his palms together and asks, “son, have you ever heard of the Reapers?” I frown, “No. What is a Reaper?” He leans over, “so when you die, the Reaper is the one who severs your bond from this world that lets you move onto the next. For us back to the Moon Goddess. They are curious beings and only those who have seen traumatic death can see them. I’m sure there is one in our pack right now, waiting for someone to die. They are nearly untraceable and hold no allegiances to anyone but their task. Sever the bond, let the soul move on.”

I scrambled away, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. The water-Reaper took a step onto the bank, its form solidifying as it left the river, becoming a figure of sculpted darkness, its surface shimmering with trapped moonlight and crawling filaments of black-gold code. It didn’t look at me. It looked at Marcus. >Asset: Marcus. Designation: Infected. Protocol: Reaper. Directive: Assume control. Marcus stood his ground, his head cocked. “Directive conflict. Primary target: Thorn.” >Thorn is mine, the water-Reaper intoned, its voice the sound of a rushing river and grinding stone. >You are recalled.

And right in the middle of it all—he waited. Jax. They called him Reaper—because death followed him like a shadow, a silent, inevitable companion. The kind of man who could kill with a glance and leave no trace but silence and a cold void where a life once was. The instant his eyes, obsidian chips of ice, sliced through the noise and landed on me, the world shrank to that frozen moment. My breath caught, a jagged shard in my throat. I knew—without a doubt—that I was standing in the eye of a storm, and I was the fragile thing about to be torn apart.

Figures were emerging from the fog. At first she thought they were ghosts, but their forms held too much weight, too much presence. They moved like shadows wrapped in tattered remnants of armor, scythes and chains hanging limp at their sides. Some had masks, some didn’t. All of them carried the same mark she once bore — the faint silver scar where the tether met the chest. “Reapers,” she whispered. One turned toward her, its face gaunt and pale beneath a cracked helm. “Once,” it said, voice soft as dust. “Not anymore.”

Reaper I made good on my promise. I turned the entire southside into a slaughterhouse. For the first twenty-four hours, the Midnight Reapers moved like storms. We kicked in the doors of every known Skulls trap house, every front business, every warehouse by the docks. We broke bones, shattered teeth, and dragged their bleeding lieutenants into the mud.

The old world was dying, its systems collapsing under the weight of its own greed, leaving nothing but the raw, unvarnished truth of the road. I resting my hand over my stomach, feeling the steady, calm rhythm of my own breath. We weren't a project anymore. We weren't a corporate investment. We were the anarchy that had survived the harvest, and as the first thunder of the incoming mountain battle began to echo through the valley, I knew the Queen wasn't going to hide behind the stone for long. The Reaper was in the shadows, but the Montague name was already written in the iron of the gates, and we were going to make sure the dark learned exactly who owned the dawn.

"The machines realized the power spike came from here. They’re sending a 'Maintenance Crew' to fix the leak." She looked back at us, her expression grim. "And they don't use drones for maintenance. They use the **Reaped**." "Who are the Reaped?" Rowan asked. "The people who didn't survive the de-compiler," she said. "The ones who lost their souls to the simulation. They’re coming to put you back in your boxes." A sound echoed from the sky—a long, low horn that sounded like the Earth itself was crying.

There was something in the presence of him that made everyone around him seem diminished, uneasy. I should have looked away. I knew that. But I couldn't. Something I couldn't name, a pull held me in place, my gaze fixed on him. Even from this distance, I could feel the cold, hard aura around him. Broad shoulders beneath a dark coat, the fabric stretched taut over his chest. The light traced the contours of his face—sharp, handsome. Godness, how could I use such words to describe The Reaper? Darius spread his arms wide. "Alpha Kael. Welcome. My pack is honored beyond—"

The Reaper disappeared in a puff of smoke. Around him, Cutter saw Keepers of the Light flashing their power in streams of blue and white as masses of black charged in shapes and sizes he’d never encountered. The wind picked up as Keepers of the Wind created tornadoes and wind gusts to carry off screeching demons. Plants sprung up from otherwise dead and cracking ground, entangling Reapers as they closed in or tripping up the demons who sought to destroy them.