The Reaper's Ruin

CHAPTER THREE

Ryker came up with a gasp, clutching his chest with one hand, and bed sheets in the other. That was, by far, the strongest Call he'd ever gotten—and while he was asleep, no less. Lovely. Because he just loved being woken up from a cat nap.

He forced himself to calm down and rubbed his temples. He'd had the premonition in his sleep. Since when was it that important? Normally, they'd wait until he woke up. The fates wouldn't be so mean as to disturb him...unlike this time.

And with this rude awakening, came the horrible, pounding headache from hell. And until he was closer to the Caller, it wouldn't go away. It was a kind of "insurance". Meaning, if he didn't get off his ass and work, he'd just suffer. And the longer it took him to get to the job, unless another of his brethren did before him, the more drastic the fates would take his pain.

Headaches. Then a bloody nose. Then stomach pains. Then vomiting. Then going blind—and he didn't really understand the last one, because as far as he could tell, it would be impossible to do anything if you were blind and relied solely on your vision to get the work done.

The fates were twisted bitches.

He stepped out of bed, clothes appearing on his body as he willed it, and stretched. As if telling him to hurry up, the space behind his eyes throbbed.

Okay, seriously. The one big downside to his job was the pushiness of it. He had literally hundreds of brethren, but that didn't mean he wasn't always on call. At least the fates were generally nice enough to let him finish a nap before making him work.

This time...whoever it was that he was seeing was going to get it. Big time. He'd make them go out in a flame of glory for this crap. He didn't bother taking the McLaren this time. His last premonition had been the car scene, with the track the main focal point—so he'd done the sensible thing and brought the McLaren. Why not? The premonition hadn't been that urgent, and it had been a race track. It had only made sense.

As he thought back to the premonition, he urged his body to follow where it had come from. In a puff of smoke, he was gone. One second, he was in his bedroom, and the next, he was...standing on someone's front lawn, headache miraculously disappearing.

He turned in a circle, frowning. It was night still, and the moon was full. Of course his premonitions were hitting hard, he thought. Everyone knew all the idiots came out when there was a full moon.

Ryker looked around.

This was the sucky part.

Actually finding the person. Sometimes he had to break into a couple houses. Other times he had to climb a few buildings. And others, he just had to stay still for a bit and the person would come right to him. The fates hadn't made it so easy on him that he didn't have to work a little bit, but that was all part of the fun, right?

Not. This wasn't fun.

He wanted to be at home, sleeping—but instead, he was in some janky little neighborhood in South Side Chicago, waiting for a murder to happen.

But for once, it was oddly quiet. And in this area, at this time of night, the quiet could mean one of two things. The first being that all the thugs and gangsters living over here had finally learned their lesson and were going straight—or some serious shit was about to go down.

It was most likely the latter.

Great.

He hiked up his sleeves, sparing only a glance at the tattoo on his arm.

The Scythe. All of his brethren had it. It was a sign to them, a badge. It was the highest honor to wear The Scythe on your person—at least, that's the crap everyone else thought but him. To him, it was just a damn tattoo.