Reaper

“I just don’t understand,” Saphira bit angrily, turning sharply on her heel. She had been pacing for hours. Jesse was surprised she hadn’t worn a hole into the ground with the pacing she did. “We should be able to track Sawyer, to find him, I-“

Lina sighed. “You know we’ve tried, Saph. It’s been a month, the trail is cold, and those wolves will have masked the scent anyway.” She looked hopefully towards the younger Reaper he knew to be Forrest, whom he had met once they met up with the rest of their ‘pack’.

Jesse sat in the corner of the large warehouse on a mattress. It had some sheets on it that were somewhat clean and somewhat comfortable, which was at least a step up from what one might expect from an abandoned factory in Chicago. They had holed up here after Sawyer had gone missing – unwilling to return to the vampires’ control, but also unwilling to go back to New York. Jesse and Charlie were missing, and the search would be harder to avoid there than here in the Midwest. Not only that, but they didn’t want to leave behind any possibility of Sawyer still being here.

It was now January. The warehouse was drafty and freezing, but Jesse and Charlie were the only ones affected by it. They curled up in the corner with the mattress and a small fire, but Jesse still felt the chill to his bones. He pulled up the scarf around his chin and hugged his arms closer to himself.

Forrest, the younger of the two new Reapers, who had just arrived about a week ago, was sitting at the makeshift table a few yards away. He was quiet, almost shy, and rarely spoke unless he was spoken directly to. He had some scars on his face that made him look otherwise tough, but the rest of him screamed anti-confrontational. Hunter, the other one, was the opposite – also covered in scars, this was one guy you did not want to meet in a dark alley. He sat next to Forrest, concerned for the younger boy’s well-being, but was also somewhat more reserved in front of Charlie and himself. As much as he was suspicious of them, Saphira had asked them to come once Forrest’s health was well, and they had come at her call. She trusted them, so he trusted them.

And he was still alive, so there was that.

They continued to talk. Jesse glanced down at Charlie, who lay curled up under a mountain of blankets. She was sleeping. It was a rare sight nowadays. She mostly stared mutely into space, her face pale and her eyes dead. It was as if the life had been sucked out of her. And, as far as Jesse was concerned, it probably had. Losing Sawyer was probably the toughest on Charlie, but the whole pack had been affected by his absence.

Jesse frowned as Charlie shifted slightly in her sleep.

When she moved, her sweater pulled down from her wrist slightly, letting him see the skin around it. He realized that her hand was pale, and very frail-looking. Charlie had been at a healthy weight when they had begun their journey, but now, she was a shadow of herself. Her skin was grey and lifeless, and her face was sharp and gaunt where it had been warm and soft before. When she was awake, her eyes were sunken and dark, like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

His heart swelled for her. Even if Charlie didn’t love him the way she loved Sawyer – and he could tell, she really, really cared about Sawyer – he still cared for her as a friend. He hated to see her like this, so broken and unlike the Charlie he had known. She had kept to herself before, but Sawyer’s disappearance had caused her to build up a whole new set of walls that had yet to be broken down.

I woke up to the feeling of someone running their hands softly through my hair.

I didn’t move for a moment, breathless. Was it…? My eyes shot open and I turned to look up suddenly.

Jesse stared back at me, his face full of concern. His hand was raised away from my head, where he had been petting my hair.

I tried not to be disappointed. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered falling asleep on Jesse’s lap. We did that for warmth – it was below freezing, and the Reapers were mostly unwilling to come near us, so we kept to ourselves to keep warm. And Jesse made a good pillow.

But I could feel my heart sink in my chest when I realized it wasn’t Sawyer. It shouldn’t have, to be honest. I should know better by now not to get my hopes up.

I closed my eyes and relaxed into him, at least grateful for the company.

“Charlie?” he said quietly, after a few moments. I could hear the sound vibrate through his chest.

“Mmm?”

“Are you alright?”

I stared into space at a dark spot on the warehouse floor.

For an entire month, I hadn’t cried. I had steeled myself from crying because I knew, I knew that if I cried, it would mean that I had given up hope. As stupid as it was to think, I believed that as long as I believed Sawyer was still alive – out there, somewhere, even if he didn’t want to see me – that I would be able to hold myself together. I needed to be strong for him, and for myself.

I watched as the hope began to dwindle from the others. Simon first – he was rational, calculating, and knew that there was a high chance that a lone Reaper, even one as strong as Sawyer, could be overtaken in a foreign city by local werewolves. Then it was Lina – she thought like Simon, and she knew Sawyer wouldn’t willingly stay away from his pack for so long. Then Jesse. Then the others who had met up with us from New York.

The only people with hope were, ironically, Saphira and me.

It was freezing in there. We had little food, little heat, and no running water. I hadn’t showered since I had been back at the hotel.

I was miserable. Day in, and day out, all we could think about was whether or not we would see Sawyer again. The thought consumed me – there was never a conscious moment that wasn’t taken up by Sawyer or by trying to find him. I closed my eyes and saw his face, angry and hungry like he was when he had left. I would have given anything to have told him how I felt about him before he had left. I would have given anything to stop him from walking out the door.

With Sawyer gone, a part of me – and I didn’t know just how big a part of me it was – was gone, too. And I felt like I couldn’t be whole without it.

I looked back up at Jesse. My voice shook as I spoke, and I could feel the unfamiliar sting of tears at the back of my eyes. I willed them back as I looked at his face, full of love and concern. But as they began to fall, I couldn’t hold them back anymore.

I don’t know how long I cried. It could have been hours. Jesse held me close to him, whispering that it was going to be alright and that he was there and that everything was fine. I knew he meant well. The others were quiet as I wept, softly at first, then with loud, choked sobs.

After what seemed like an eternity, I felt myself beginning to fall asleep again, fatigued. Just before that happened, I spoke up.

“Jesse?” I sniffed, glancing up at him.

“Yeah?” he replied, separating himself a little from me so that he could read my face. “What is it?”

“I want to go home.”



“Look at me when I’m speaking to you!”

The guard gave Sawyer another sharp slap on the cheek.

He barely had the energy to look up. Sawyer was so weak he had ceased to be able to hold up his own bodyweight. His wrists were tied to a pair of iron bars, one on each arm, so his arms were extended and his chest exposed. He was vulnerable this way – the wolves could whip him or bite him or whatever they pleased.

He stared at the werewolf, a vacant expression on his face.

The guard’s companion, a younger wolf, seemed taken aback by the severity of it. He cleared his throat nervously. “You have a visitor… again.”

Sawyer gave him no acknowledgement. He continued to stare intently at the younger werewolf, his eyes blazing. This one was new, and not yet fully aware of how dangerous Sawyer could be if provoked.

Like clockwork, Isis glided into the room. She was a little late today – normally she visited at five minutes after midnight, on the nose, but it was almost ten after when she arrived, according to the small clock in the corner of the room. It was the only source of light Sawyer had when he was alone – once the guard left to post outside the room, he turned off the light, leaving Sawyer in the unforgiving dark.

She smiled a knowing smile at him, and carefully folded her hands over her lap. The guard quickly pulled up a rusty chair for her to sit on, facing Sawyer with the utmost interest. She didn’t seem fazed by the fact that Sawyer had been in her grasp for over a month and had revealed nothing. In fact, he hadn’t spoken a word, just stared angrily at the wall. She knew he would break – everything has a breaking point, a weakness that could be exploited.

And, luckily enough, she knew just what Sawyer’s weakness was.

“I brought you a present,” she said cheerfully. She snapped her fingers, and one of her henchmen brought in an unconscious woman. She was bound at the wrists and her head lulled back, but it was clear that she was still alive.

Isis nodded toward her. “See? I’m sure you’re Hungry, Sawyer. It’s been… a while, hasn’t it?” She smiled an evil smile. “Since you’ve Fed?”

Sawyer’s expression was unchanged. He stared at Isis with cold, dead green eyes.

She huffed. “Fine. It was a peace offering.” She waved the henchmen off, and he left the room. “I just thought it might help you… brace yourself.”

Sawyer tried his hardest to remain unaffected, but his curiosity spiked. He had been beaten to the edge of death and back by his guards. He had suffered torture, both mental and physical, at the hands of his captors for the last month. What could he possibly have to brace himself for?

Without speaking, Isis pulled a phone from her pocket. With a few quick taps, she pulled up a video. With a smirk, she held it out in front of Sawyer’s face so that he could watch.

“We are live from Chicago with breaking news,” a familiar news anchor said sullenly into the camera, bundled up in a bulky winter coat and scarf, bracing herself against the sharp wind. “We have received word there has been a development in the case of the two missing twenty-year-olds from New York, a story that we brought to you back in November. It appears that two bodies have been discovered here in Chicago that match the descriptions of these missing people, 22-year-old Charlotte Scott and 23-year-old Jesse Murphy, victims of weather and animal scavenging. While it is uncertain at this time that these bodies are in fact those of Charlotte and Jesse due to their condition, authorities are believed to be conducting a DNA comparison and believe that these are, in fact, the two missing New Yorkers. Details are beginning to emerge…”

Isis leaned back, pulling the phone away. “Well, that seems unfortunate,” she mused, still looking at the screen as the news anchor continued to talk. “I was hoping this story would have a happier ending.”

Sawyer was still. No, it had to be a mistake. Charlie… They were with the others. They had to be, the others would never let them out of their sight alone, not with such a high threat to their safety.

Wouldn’t they?

“It’s a pity, Charlie would have been so useful to me.”

Sawyer couldn’t help it. His arms flexed and he breathed hard out of his nose, suddenly enraged.

Isis smirked again. She had gotten a reaction – she had gained some leverage. “Oh, well. Minor setback. She was just a tool that I could have used to get what I want… you do know what I want, don’t you, Sawyer?”

Every bone in his body wanted to ignore her. He wanted to fight her, to spit in her face, to watch as her neck snapped beneath his hands. She was everything he could hate in this world. And, if this story on the news was true… then he knew, without doubt, that Isis had been responsible. If that was true, then he knew.

She had won. She had taken everything from him, including the one thing he valued more than his own life and loyalty – Charlotte.

He had been beaten.

“What do you want?” he asked, hoarsely, his body tensed.

She smiled. Victory. “I want Hunter’s head on a fucking platter.”