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  SOUL GUARDIANS

  * Book Seven *

  REAPERS

  KIM RICHARDSON

  Reapers, Soul Guardians Book 7:

  Copyright © 2013 by Kim Richardson

  Edited by Grenfell Featherstone

  www.kimrichardsonbooks.com

  All rights reserved by Kim Richardson. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the written permission of the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Fourth edition: April 2015

  For Rosy,

  Books by Kim Richardson

  SOUL GUARDIANS SERIES

  Marked Book # 1

  Elemental Book # 2

  Horizon Book # 3

  Netherworld Book # 4

  Seirs Book # 5

  Mortal Book # 6

  Reapers Book # 7

  Seals Book # 8 —(Coming soon)

  MYSTICS SERIES

  The Seventh Sense Book # 1

  The Alpha Nation Book # 2

  The Nexus Book # 3

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 – The Deception

  Chapter 2 - The Needle

  Chapter 3 - Back with a Twist

  Chapter 4 - Transparency

  Chapter 5 - Metatron

  Chapter 6 - Leap of Faith

  Chapter 7 - Lord Beelzebub

  Chapter 8 - Crimson Massacre

  Chapter 9 - Reapers

  Chapter 10 - A Losing Battle

  Chapter 11 - An Old Enemy

  Chapter 12 - The Visitors

  Chapter 13 - Keeper of the Key

  Chapter 14 - Attack of the Imps

  Chapter 15 - Wings

  Chapter 16 - On with the Search

  Chapter 17 - First Flight

  Chapter 18 - Eden

  Chapter 19 - Augura

  Chapter 20 - Into the Streets

  Chapter 21 - Battle of the Scythes

  Chapter 22 - A Ring in the Sky

  Chapter 23 - An Unlikely Alliance

  Soul Guardians Book # 8

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  The Deception

  The sky outside the bookstore was blood-red. The hot air was thick with electricity, the kind right before a thunderstorm, and yet there were no storm clouds.

  Kara moved from the window and pushed off with one foot. The rolling library ladder sped across the wood floors, which creaked and popped under her weight like the rumbling of thunder. Using the ladder was her favorite chore in the bookstore. She loved the way it made her feel like she was almost flying. If only she had wings. She could fly up to the highest bookshelf without a ladder and get her work done faster. The sooner it was done, the sooner she could be with David.

  She missed him. She missed his voice, his sense humor, and even his arrogance. Yes, he was insufferable at times, but she could never stay angry with him for long. He would always make her laugh in the end, no matter how much she wanted to punch him in the face. It was in those moments in his company that she came alive. When they were together, she could be herself. It just felt right. They fit.

  The ladder skidded gently to a stop against a large bookshelf at the other end of the store.

  “I’ll never understand why he puts the cinematography books so high,” she said, exasperated.

  With the book It’s only a movie: Alfred Hitchcock, A Personal Biography between her teeth, she climbed to the top. She leaned out from the side of the ladder, suspending herself dangerously from one foot, stretched out as far as she could, and squeezed the book between The Making of Psycho and The Stanley Kubrick Archives.

  “One of these days you’re going to fall and break your neck,” warned Mr. Patterson as he polished a crystal ball the size of a grapefruit.

  Instead of his usual colorful Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, he wore a brown plaid suit with a red bowtie that looked like it had been in the back of his closet since the 1970s. Kara could smell the mothball stench from the top of the ladder. She wrinkled her nose and tried hard to keep a straight face. His thin white hair was combed over awkwardly, as though he had dressed in the dark. The only things that were not so out of place were his bare feet. They poked from under his pants as usual. Her boss never wore any shoes.

  Kara bit her lip and tried hard not to laugh. He had obviously made an effort to make himself somewhat presentable. But why?

  Maybe Mr. Patterson had a date later? Could there be a potential Mrs. Patterson in their midst? But that didn’t make any sense. During all the months she’d been helping him out at the bookstore, he had never mentioned any female friends. Then again, he had never mentioned any friends. She always thought of him as a loner, stuck in his old ways, like many older folks. He kept to his shop.

  “Don’t worry,” said Kara after a moment, “No one’s going to die today.”

  “You say it like you know for sure, but you don’t.”

  Mr. Patterson spit on his crystal and rubbed it gently, eyeballing it like it was a large precious diamond.

  “Mortals cannot foresee the future. They don’t have the acquired skill and gift that is foresight. Only oracles—”

  He caught himself and peered over at Kara through his bushy white eyebrows. He watched her as though he had said too much, as though he had revealed some great secret.

  Kara watched him with increased interest. It wasn’t the first time she had heard Mr. Patterson refer to himself as an oracle, whatever that was. She had gotten used to the way he sometimes spoke in the third person. It was almost as though he had a secret identity and lived two different lives, like a spy.

  It was a ridiculous notion of course. He was just old and a little confused. Most likely, his identity crisis was the result of spending night and day reading books about clairvoyants and the great beyond. He was obsessed with anything supernatural. Maybe he perceived himself as a connoisseur of the paranormal, a modern-day Ghostbuster.

  Kara smiled. She cared deeply for the man. He was like the grandfather she had never known, and he felt like family to her.

  But there was something different in the way he had just looked at her, as if he had gone too far this time and had said too much and wished he could take it back.

  Mr. Patterson frowned and avoided her eyes. He mumbled angrily to himself as he buffed the crystal ball so vigorously that he looked as if he were trying to light a fire.

  “Keep her safe,” Kara heard the old man say. “That’s all I have to do. Well, easier said than done. Thank you very much. If only they knew…”

  Kara laughed uncomfortably. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to me. I know what I’m doing. It’s just a ladder, no harm done.”

  “You kids these days,” said Mr. Patterson. Kara could see sweat on his forehead. “Always living on the edge, always looking for new ways to hurt yourselves. Tell me, why is that? Why are you all in such a hurry to kill yourselves?”

  “I don’t know,” answered Kara as she slid down the ladder and landed with a thud. “Guess we feel our lives are boring. Maybe we’re looking for some adventure to spice things up a bit. Weren’t you ever young? Don’t you remember what it was like?”

  “You think your life is boring?” Mr. Patterson looked up from his crystal ball.

  Kara shrugged. “I don’t know…maybe.”

  She looked into Mr. Patterson’s blue eyes.

  “Didn’t you ever get the feeling that something was missing in your life? That strange empty feeling, like you’re supposed to be doing something, but you just don’t know what it is? Sometimes, well actually al
l the time, I get this weird feeling that I was meant for something greater—like I have a purpose in life, but I just can’t figure out what it is. Not yet, I guess. You know what I mean?”

  Mr. Patterson stopped polishing his crystal and watched Kara with his mouth slightly open. He looked worried, like she had discovered some dark secret. He frowned and watched her without blinking. Kara could see fear flicker in his eyes, as if he knew that something bad was going to happen to her.

  Kara squirmed uncomfortably under his stare.

  “Uh…so…what are you all dressed up for?” she looked away, hoping to change the subject quickly before Mr. Patterson burned a hole in her forehead with his laser-beam eyes.

  “Do you have a date or something?”

  Mr. Patterson looked at Kara for a while before he answered.

  “Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” He waddled over behind the counter and placed his crystal carefully inside a glass case. “It’s the annual Festival of Spoken Word at The Couch café. I’ve been invited to read my poetry—”

  “You write poetry?” Kara smiled, glad not to be the center of attention anymore. “I never knew that. That’s awesome. Something tells me that you’re a fantastic writer. Can you read me some?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  “Because I said so, and don’t try to change the subject.”

  Mr. Patterson looked at Kara with such intensity that it forced her to look away.

  “What did you mean by saying you feel that you have some sort of greater purpose in life?” he pressed. “What exactly is this feeling? Can you tell me more about it? Can you describe it?”

  Kara shrugged. She wasn’t sure why her boss would be so interested in that. Didn’t everyone feel like their lives were empty at some point? She was sure she’d read that somewhere.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a feeling I get sometimes. It’s just like I said.”

  “Humor me.”

  Kara exhaled heavily, a little annoyed by Mr. Patterson’s strange questions and peculiar behavior. She pursed her lips and contemplated how best to explain her feelings so that he would be satisfied once and for all.

  “It’s like,” began Kara, “it feels like…like that feeling when you’ve forgotten something, or someone’s name, and you just can’t remember what it is. It’s kinda like that. Like I’m supposed to be doing something, and I just can’t remember what - but I know it’s something important. And it’s always there with me, in the back of my mind, and I just can’t figure out what it is.”

  Kara looked directly at Mr. Patterson.

  “It feels like I’m about to see a glimpse of my destiny, but then it fades away. To tell you the truth, it’s getting to be really annoying. I just wish I knew what I’m supposed to know or remember.”

  Mr. Patterson looked troubled.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that? What did I say?”

  Mr. Patterson pressed his fingers on the counter. “And you get these feelings often, you say?”

  He was questioning her as if she were in an interrogation room at the police station, just before she was about to get roughed up. She wished she’d never even mentioned that stupid feeling she got, whatever it was.

  Kara rubbed her fingerprints off the glass on the counter with the sleeve of her gray cardigan. She didn’t look at her boss.

  “Why are you interrogating me like I’m a criminal? Did I do something wrong? If not, then I wish you’d stop. It’s as if I’m failing some kind of test.”

  Mr. Patterson leaned forward. His voice was tense.

  “You did nothing wrong. But this is extremely important.”

  Kara hesitated. “Why?”

  “Because these feelings might mean that you—”

  BOOM!

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and Kara turned toward the sound. When she realized she was holding her breath she let it go.

  “It came from the window,” breathed Kara shakily. She frowned. “I think those delinquents are back again. I’m going to kill them for scaring me like that.”

  Before she could stop him, Mr. Patterson pulled out the baseball bat he kept hidden behind the counter.

  “They’re going to answer to me this time!” his voice rumbled with rage, and for a moment Kara was glad he had temporarily forgotten about her strange feelings. That interrogation had been awkward enough for an entire month.

  As Mr. Patterson moved from the counter, his bat swinging above his head, Kara grabbed his elbow and steered him away.

  “Let me check first,” she said.

  She lowered his bat with her hand.

  “I think clobbering kids to death with a bat is a capital offense. We don’t want you to murder anyone just yet,” she laughed. “You have a poetry reading tonight, remember? Let’s focus on that, shall we? This is just a classic case of child boredom.”

  She pointed a finger at him. “You wait here.”

  Kara made her way across the room, bracing herself before telling off the ten-year-old boys who had been vandalizing the stores along the street since the beginning of the summer.

  “We called the police!” she cried as she stepped out of the front door. Her face had reddened with the sudden rush of blood.

  “The police are on their way—”

  But there was no one there.

  People from across the street stopped and stared at her like she was crazy. She blushed and looked away.

  She walked along the front of the store inspecting it for broken glass or any signs of vandalism. But there was nothing. No kids. No broken glass. Nothing.

  “That was weird,” Kara brushed her hair from her eyes.

  And just as she started to walk away, something small and black caught her eye. She turned around and looked back.

  Below the bay window was a large black bat. Its neck was twisted awkwardly, and its black leathery wings were limp. It wasn’t moving.

  Kara rushed over to the bat and gently scooped it up in both hands. With tears in her eyes she pressed on its belly gently, but there was no movement. The bat lay limp in her hands.

  “This is bad,” came Mr. Patterson’s voice behind her.

  Kara whirled around.

  “I know it’s bad. The poor thing is dead. I think its neck is broken. But I don’t understand why a bat would be out now in the middle of the day. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  She paused.

  “Okay, what’s the matter now?”

  Mr. Patterson was eyeing the bat like it was a bomb about to go off.

  “It is a bad omen to see a bat in broad daylight, and worse to have one hit the window and die. Day-bats are unnatural. It is a sign that the balance of things has shifted. Something unnatural is near—something not from this world has entered.”

  “I’m so confused right now.”

  “Bats, like birds, are messengers. Something terrible is coming—something dark and evil and not of this world.”

  Kara had had about enough of Mr. Patterson’s strange behavior.

  “I think you’ve been cooped up in this bookstore for too long. I don’t get why people are so afraid of bats. I mean they’re so cute and smart. Think about how clever they are to use their echolocation to help them find their meals in the dark.”

  Kara felt sorry for the little creature as she rubbed its fur with her thumb.

  “I think a night off reading poetry might do you some good.”

  She stared at the bat. Its black eyes were half closed. “I’m going to take it to the park and find a place where I can lay it down at peace. It just doesn’t feel right to put it in the garbage. It should be with nature.”

  But just as Kara turned, Mr. Patterson yanked her back.

  “No. Leave the bat. I’m telling you—this is bad.”

  He glanced up into the sky like he was expecting something dark to come from the clouds and
kill them.

  “Ooookkkayyy,” said Kara, as she wiggled out of the old man’s iron grip. “It’s only a dead bat, not the Ebola virus.”

  She wondered if Mr. Patterson was showing the first signs of dementia. His eyes shone bluer than usual. Was that a sign? She wanted to bury the bat properly, whether or not the old man objected.

  Before Mr. Patterson could grab her again, Kara bolted across the street.

  “I’ll be right back, just give me five minutes!” she called back and headed for Maple Park at the end of the block.

  Mr. Patterson’s cries echoed in her ears, but she ignored him and ran harder. She needed some space, and the park would give her that. She would find a nice place to lay the bat. It was the least she could do. It did die because of their window.

  When she turned around, she caught a glimpse of the old man hurrying after her. His mouth and eyes were wide, but she was too far away to hear what he was saying. As she ran faster she tried not to look at the bat. The more she looked at it, the worse she felt.

  She entered the park and slowed to a walk. She searched the grounds for a spot and found a great crabapple tree. Its deep burgundy leaves rustled in the breeze, almost like it was summoning her.

  “Perfect.”

  Kara strolled across the lush green grasses and knelt at the foot of the great tree. Carefully, she nestled the bat between two large gnarled roots that peeked from the earth. It looked like a cradle, and it seemed to be made for the little furry creature.

  “There.”

  She leaned against the tree, satisfied that she had done the right thing.

  Kara sat by the tree. She stared at the bat and stared out into space for a long time. The mosquitoes started to bite, and the sky turned a dark blue. She knew she had stayed too long.

  Mr. Patterson would probably be furious with her. She had expected him to show up at the park, red-faced and sweating, but he never did. Weird. He seemed so certain that something bad was about to happen. He seemed to believe that whatever it was, it was going to happen to her. So why wasn’t he here?