Chapter 4
“I don’t regret asking to come back, or even making the bargain. I wish I knew what I was getting into beforehand. Sometimes I lose control and its hard coming back.”
His voice had gone quiet and he was leaning closer to her. She was transfixed by his deep baritone that had she had fallen in love with growing up. As he finished talking she realized that only about a couple inches separated them, and if she were to lean forward she could kiss him.
He seemed so sad that she wanted to soothe him, and help him through what he was going through; but at that moment his phone beeped and his face darkened giving her a glimpse of the monster inside. He excused himself to go to the bathroom.
This was why it was so hard being with JB, it was because at the end of the day, he was a monster… nightmare reincarnate; a Reaper who collected souls. She was part panther and cold at best – unstable at worst; it was impossible. She closed her eyes and leaned back putting on Breaking Benjamin’s Dear Agony.
Every single time he wanted to get close to Eryn, his phone went off. While Eryn was still in a plane on her way to Iceland, he had to go collect someone’s soul and send them on to the next stage. He appeared in a well-kept home; with the lights off it made everything seem eerie and spooky. JB shivered as chills ran up and down his spine.
Normally he didn’t feel temperature or anything, but there was something incredibly evil in this house. Walking through slowly he made his way up to the bedroom where his target was. The person had already died and it didn’t make sense for there to be this much evil in the house; after all she was just a little old lady who’d had a heart attack.
He removed the soul from her body; and then opened the doorway to the next stage.
“In the next stage, you will be seen by a judge. If you are deemed worthy, you will be sent to heaven, if you are deemed unworthy you will be sent to hell. Fare thee well soul.” He said beckoning her into the doorway.
The ground lurched beneath his feet sending him careening sideways into a dresser. Cursing at being slammed against it, he flashed out of the room and watched as the house became engulfed in flames from the ground up.
He’d never seen anything like this; an inhuman scream pierced the air making him cringe and cover his ears. Police sirens could be heard in the distance and people had started coming out of their homes to see the commotion and carnage. He watched as the roof exploded before the entire building collapsed in on itself. There was something deeper going on here. He hadn’t felt a demons presence but there was definitely some inherently evil at that house. When he didn’t receive any more information about the topic he decided to head back to where Eryn was. Disappearing into the shadows he wandered down the street to an alley behind the old woman’s house. Turning into the alley he could hear a low growling sound coming from further in.
This wasn’t the growl of a cat or a dog, or any animal found on earth. The next thing he knew, a massive animal came flying at him out of the shadows. Putting his arms up to protect himself, the animal hit him square in his chest knocking him flat to the ground. If he had been human and mortal, it would have killed him instantly. As it was, it was merely pissing him off. He struggled to get his dagger out from under him, the animal kept digging it’s talons into his belt, he fought as best he could one armed.
Hell hounds came in many different forms with many different abilities. This one had huge bird like talons that ripped his jacket, shirt, and shoulders to shreds; a barbed tail that whipped viciously from side to side and his massive head had a double set of teeth, inside its mouth which was getting a little too close to JB’s head. To a normal person it would have looked like a giant wolf creature.
Finally getting his dagger free, he brought it up to the underside of the dog’s belly, sinking it in to the hilt in the dog’s heart. When the animal’s dead weight fell on top of him, he had about five seconds before the animal disappeared taking him back to hell with it. He hadn’t panicked in a long time, but he was panicking now, until he finally pushed the animal’s carcass off his body and crawled the few feet away. He set the body and alley on fire with hellfire.
With the last ounce of his strength, he flashed himself to the hotel room where Eryn was staying at. A shiver went down her spine a moment before JB appeared in her hotel room; bloody and barely conscious. He collapsed before she could reach him.
She had his shirt and clothing off, which exposed the nasty wounds to his shoulders and upper chest. She hated blood, and hated cleaning people’s wounds; it brought back memories she had buried from years before. The gashes to his shoulders were deep, but clean for the most part. Worried that he would die from blood loss, she kept checking his pulse. Once cleaned his breath evened out and his pulse steadied; he still looked ghostly pale. She disposed of the sheets and asked for new ones, and then snuggled up beside the sleeping JB. “What am I going to do with you?” She whispered as she covered him with blankets.
JB opened his eyes to find himself in a decorative hotel room; and he was warm. He didn’t remember coming here… the last thing he remembered was lighting the hellhound on fire before it exploded. He jerked, hissing in pain as his wounds reopened; that was when he noticed Eryn sleeping beside him. He would have been more surprised had he woken up in a circus full of chainsaw wielding clowns.
He shifted so he wouldn’t disturb her; odd that he could still remember how to move so he didn’t wake her when they had fallen asleep together, but he couldn’t remember other things about her or his previous life.
