Page 30 of Reaper's Quest

Mr. Aldine stepped closer to Aoes and pulled a few items from his pack. The two of them discussed and assessed the offered trade items while I checked on the guarded gate at the citadel’s entrance.

The guard, Fen, still stood at attention. He remained too far away to discern the true direction of his focus, but I would bet he kept a close watch on us and our activities.

“Come on.” I swung my hand, motioning for our party to relocate several feet beyond the nearby corner to better hide our dealings from further evaluation by the individual meant to keep us out.

The four of us moved, then they decided and agreed upon a price?a tin of fresh ground coffee, several packaged snacks including jerky and dried apricots, an old mystery novel, a silver lighter, and two premium cigars. All things provided by Mr. Aldine.

With our guide into the Citadel of Veritas hired, we followed him into the cover of the trees.

Could we trust this Aoes guy? For all we knew, he planned on delivering us to a slave trader, or worse, a butcher. After a century of being cut off from the rest of the world, the trapped citizens could be famished to the point of…well, to the point of horrid actions I didn’t want to consider.

Still, we followed in silence.

Our job waited on the other side of the wall?both physical and magical.

And reapers gotta reap.

9

The weight of a tomb pressed into my gut. The pressure had existed since I’d witnessed the creation of the creature on the bridge…and relived a memory I’d, apparently, forgotten long ago.

One moment, I was internally chuckling at Raven’s stance and the way her movements reminded me of a flustered bird…a flustered bird with really nice curves…and the next, I was a small kid discovering a wicked, winged beast in my father’s dark laboratory. I still considered him my father back then, as our relationship had yet to crumble into radioactive dust.

I squeezed my hands together and slowly shuffled forward. A big, dark being…something I’d never seen before…floundered within the cage set in front of me. I stared at neither a bird nor a bat. Maybe some sort of out-of-water, flying stingray?

Clearly agitated, the thing’s fleshy body slammed andthrashed against the iron bars, depositing smears of blood on the surroundings of its enclosure. The only sounds it made?the flapping of its plump wings and the hits of its body against the metal box.

Bam. Thump. Bang.

I flinched but held myself against the desire to tremble. Gnawing on the inside of my lip, I glanced over my shoulder, confirming the door to Father’s lab remained closed, and the stern reaper was nowhere in sight. If he discovered me amongst his “projects”…

Beep. Zeehe. Beep.

On a nearby computer screen, a video played on repeat?a scene of the creature’s creation.

“Not always a monster,” I muttered.

A wet cough snapped my head past the computer and winged creature. Another caged surprise awaited deeper in the room.

Wringing my hands, and with my heart crashing against my ribs, I shifted sideways to better see past the cage set before me. Several yards back, something moved within one of the prison’s confines.

Crash!

I jolted, and a small yelp leapt from my lips. The flapping beast in the cage directly in front of me slammed into the front bars again, as if trying to force its way through the tight spaces to reach me.

A face on the underside of the thing blinked at me. I had the undeniable sense that the creature pleaded for release. Maybe it did, for I had seen…

I sucked in a deep breath.

The being…whatever it was…wasn’t right.

The winged creatures outside of the train had sparked afaint familiarity. An inkling of the memory. But watching one coming into being…

I swallowed the too-large lump in my throat.

Why hadn’t I listened to Raven when she said the creatures had faces on their underbellies?

Damn Ubel Badden and his experiments.