Soldier: 76 Reaper Novels & Stories

Probably not. I’m hissing and spitting like only an actual threatened feline can. Then I notice my backside has been charred and there’s this small matter of a flame on the small tip past my ball tail. A hyperactive skeleton races to put the tremulous fire out. It runs screaming and dragging what looks like giant innards but turns out to be a fire hose. I’m struck by a jet of foul swamp water like a street demonstrator or an unwashed prisoner of war. More laughter from Septimus and his Helter-Skeltals. The sound the reaper makes is that of grinding tectonic plates transformed into a voice.

The man had finally managed to produce a child and he wanted me to stand in a hall and applaud. "Small man," I said. "Large occasion." Gary said nothing. That was the correct response. My throne had been built on the bodies of my father and my brothers, taken in the year I turned twenty-four, held through five years of war that hadn't fully ended. I had killed more men than I could name. The packs called me The Reaper and stayed out of my borders and prayed their treaties held. The elders said Moon Godness herself had cursed me, no fated mate, no heir, no future beyond the violence I was good at.

“Be gentle.” Reaper lifts his hands in mock surrender. “Always.” He turns to me. “Name’s Reaper, vice president of the Rogue Legion and an Alpha panther.” His green eyes gleam faintly. “If I look like I’m stalking you, I probably am but only to make sure no one else does.” I don’t know whether to be comforted or terrified. Asmodeus steps forward next and floor seems to creak under his weight. “Asmodeus,” he says, voice deep and steady. “I am the Sergeant at Arms also an Alpha bear.” He gives me a small, careful nod. “I guard what’s mine.”

I yelled, sprinting toward the first soldier who cleared the inner threshold. The soldier turned toward me. His face was a mask of scar tissue and titanium implants. His eyes were not silver or violet; they were a dull, dead grey, fixed on me with a terrifying lack of recognition. He didn't see a woman or a doctor. He saw an obstacle in a path of pre-programmed coordinates.

He grabbed Demetri under the arms, hauling him backward. Demetri fought him, teeth gritted, blood soaking through his bandage. “Let me go—” he rasped. “You’re dying,” Torres snapped. “Shut up and move.” Reaper watched all of it with calm, clinical interest — like he was observing a chessboard, not a battlefield. He didn’t raise a weapon. He didn’t give orders. He didn’t need to. His men moved like they were wired to his pulse. I dragged Maya through the doorway as another burst of gunfire hit the ground where she’d been standing seconds before.

Our youngest, little Dante — named after the inferno we had walked through — toddled between us, oblivious to the stakes but sensing the tension. This was the night the compulsion was supposed to activate. The night The Eclipse had promised our children would turn on us and walk willingly into their shadow empire. We had come to end it where it began. Damien stood at my side, the Reaper in full armor — black tactical gear, guns holstered, knives ready. His hand never left the small of my back, possessive even now. “If they come, we finish this,” he said, voice low and lethal. “No mercy.”

Fuck you, Ryan," I muttered. With resentment running in my capillaries, I dipped at him. However, he stopped my attack with his palm, held my fist then twisted my hand. Before I could make another move, he hit me on the chest with his leg, sending me a few meters backwards. Coughing out blood, I rose to my feet. I scrutinized him again but he is no longer on the spot. Surrounding us now are the reaper's soldiers, their bodies emitting black smoke. The black hood that is covering their face makes them look scary, copulating with how they are gritting their teeth together like a wolf. They had equine's soles instead of normal human limbs, long scarves like hijab, and a metal gauntlet in each h