Reaper

Sawyer grunted as he shoved his opponent’s shoulders into the ground with a thud.

“Boys,” a female voice chastised from the dirty, dingy couch in the warehouse. “Playtime is over – right now, I’m watching my shows. Shut up.”

Sawyer rolled his eyes as he got up, offering a hand to the man he had been wrestling. The boy grabbed it and yanked himself up, brushing himself off and running a hand through his brown hair.

The boy huffed. “Saphira, we were only joking –“

A small, slender hand appeared over the back of the sofa. Her middle finger was raised in the air, a universal sign that she had no intention of listening to what her younger counterpart had to say. The boy sighed again and looked at Sawyer, who was studying his hands intently.

“Best two out of three?”

Sawyer looked up, jolted out of his thoughts. “Uh, maybe later, Forrest,” he mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. “Why not ask Simon?”

The aforementioned man looked up quickly from his recliner, where he was currently engrossed in a newspaper, doing the crossword puzzle. “Because I prefer more intellectual pursuits,” he muttered, giving them only a few seconds of thought before returning to his activity.

Sawyer rolled his eyes. “Perhaps later, then.”

With that, Sawyer retreated to his makeshift bed in the corner of the vast room, separated by a few hanging sheets and some possibly empty boxes. He sat down on the greasy mattress and pretended he didn’t notice when an insect crawled out from under it, finding refuge under a nearby box. He sighed, examining his arm for bruises that Forrest had given him and running a hand through his curly, black hair.

Sawyer had felt off since the subway incident.

He wasn’t entirely sure why – it was a routine feeding, albeit a little more massive in scale than most feedings. He recounted the people in the subway, the delicious fear that had risen from them. He had savored it in the moment, but the more he thought about the act, the worse he felt about himself.

After a few moments lost in his thoughts, he was snapped to attention when Hunter strode into the room.

The man towered over the rest of the members of his pack. His face was grimaced – he was clearly angry. Sawyer eyed the scar that marred his face, healed over but still a persistent reminder of who Hunter was, and how he lived his life.

Sawyer lived with his pack, six Reapers who inhabited Manhattan, finding their home in the dark, abandoned corners of the city. There were two women: Lina and Saphira, a pair of twins who were notorious for their seductive manner of hunting. Sawyer was one of four men in the pack: himself; Simon, the smartest of the group; Forrest, the youngest; and finally Hunter. Hunter was the pack’s fearless leader. He made all decisions, had the final word on all matters. He ruled with an iron fist, letting only a few people into his thoughts, his mannerisms.

That person was his second-in-command, Sawyer himself.

Sawyer had travelled with Hunter ever since he could remember. He hadn’t known what he had done before he had known Hunter, only that he was young, naïve, and constantly in search of the emotions that he so desperately craved in his core. Sawyer had grown up as a normal human, became a normal teenager, but something in him had changed when he met Hunter. He became more than himself, a better version of himself that he hadn’t known was possible. He had been an outcast as a child, small and unwilling to fight back. Hunter had given him the ability to be strong, to be intimidating, to be feared.

Sawyer wasn’t human anymore – he was a Reaper.

There was a part of him, however, that Sawyer couldn’t seem to shake. While the other members of his pack were ruthless, calculating – he somehow felt differently about how he hunted. He found himself recalling the faces of those whom he had fed from, ghosts of his past. He was troubled by them. They haunted his nightmares. But his biggest difference from his pack wasn’t something that had to do with Sawyer at all.

It was Charlotte.

He wasn’t sure what it was about Charlotte that intrigued him so much. He had thought it was her hair, flaming red in a sea of browns and blacks that he had grown accustomed to – Reapers were never redheads, and very few were blonde. He was drawn to her by some unknown force, a force that drove him insane with curiosity. When he had first seen her a month ago at work, he had avoided interacting with her at all costs.

But soon, he had become obsessed with her. It was a pet project he had taken upon himself. He began to follow her, watch where she went at night, found out where she lived and with whom. Wherever she went at night, he was only a few steps behind, easily picking out her unique scent and bright hair.

Sawyer knew, however, that there was something more to her than just her hair.

He experienced it in the subway tunnel, after she had deliberately ignored his note of warning. Now that he thought about it, perhaps she had no reason to heed it. And yet, when he had grabbed her by mistake, he had discovered something about himself and about Charlotte that he couldn’t seem to shake. It wouldn’t have irritated him so much if he hadn’t witnessed the same reaction in Saphira when she had tried to feed from Charlotte.

He found, to his alarm, that he couldn’t.

Hunter stormed into the room, put off by something that Sawyer didn’t know anything about. He knocked a beer can off of a nearby table, which clattered loudly to the floor. The five others all looked up from whatever they were doing, startled by the echo.

“Whatever the hell you all think you were going to do tonight,” he growled, eyeing his pack members. “Forget about it. No one leaves tonight. We can’t risk being caught like we almost were last night.”

The second woman on the couch sat up from her lounging position, disturbing Saphira. “But, sir, we’re still hungry – “

Hunter narrowed his eyes at her. The girl closed her mouth and said nothing more.

He grunted. “Am I clear?”

A chorus of responses came from his pack members. “Yes.” “Sir.” “Fine.” “Whatever.”

Sawyer was the only one not to respond. Hunter noticed this, and raised his normal eyebrow in an expectant expression. He looked down, away from his leader, unable to ignore the nagging thoughts in the back of his mind. There was a reason that he couldn’t agree to stay in for the night. He had something to take care of.

Hunter took notice. “Sawyer, may I see you outside?”

He set his jaw and clenched his fists, unwilling to say anything that might condemn himself in front of the rest of the pack. Particularly Forrest, who looked up to Sawyer in a way that he hadn’t known. He followed Hunter out of the room, his hands still clenched.

Once outside, Hunter whirled on his companion, the anger prominent on his mangled face.

“Care to explain?”

Sawyer wasn’t sure what to say. He obviously couldn’t tell his Chief about Charlotte – he would find her and take care of her before the night was out. But he also couldn’t just stay put and watch as the Manhattan’s rival pack sought out Charlotte for what she was. Whatever she was. He was faced with the problem of having to weasel out from beneath Hunter’s penetrating stare.

“Sir…” Sawyer scratched his neck. “There is something I need to… investigate.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with care.

Hunter was unimpressed. “And what is so urgent that you feel the need to risk your safety and the safety of your pack?”

Sawyer flinched. “That wasn’t my intention, Hunter, you know that-“

“I also know,” the elder man growled, “That Isis is on the move, and the first person whose head will roll will be yours. Watch yourself.”

Sawyer shut his mouth, unable to argue. Isis was the leader of the rival group of Reapers which inhabited the other end of the island, but it was hardly far enough away for them to have a wide berth of space. They couldn’t be called a pack, necessarily, because they didn’t have the same hierarchy structure that his own pack had in place. But they were banded simply by the fact that they were different from Hunter’s pack at the very core of their being.

There are three types of Reapers which roam the shadows. There are Alphas, creatures which feed off of positive emotions – excitement, joy, happiness, gratitude, etc. Likewise, there are Omegas, which feed off of anger, fear, surprise, lust. However, the most controversial and most unique type of creature were Gammas – half-Reaper, half-human. Gammas could be capable of anything. Their powers are determined purely by their genetics, purely by chance.

No Reaper that Sawyer had ever come in contact with had met a Gamma. Reapers were too cautious to interact that way with humans.

Most creatures, when faced with emotions that they don’t feed on, are pained by them. Omegas do not do well around happy people, while Alphas are harmed by anger and fear. Thus, they avoid contact with the human world as much as they can, preferring to strike and leave with as much haste as possible.

Hunter and his pack were Omegas. Isis controlled Alphas.

The tension was paramount.

Sawyer fixed his eyes to stare between Hunter’s two eyes, trying not to look directly at his scar. “Sir,” he began. “Hunt. Trust me when I say that I understand what I’m getting into. But there is something I need to find out on my own first, before Isis discovers it. It could be to our advantage.”

Hunter’s eyes softened, if only slightly. “And what is it that you need to know so badly?”

Sawyer shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not sure,” he lied, hoping silently that his brother would believe him.

After a few painfully long moments, Hunter finally looked Sawyer in the eyes. He nodded slowly, once, but it was enough permission to give him the world.

In truth, Sawyer’s answer was not completely false. He really wasn’t sure what was different about Charlotte, only that she had the remarkable ability to make him question everything he knew. Sawyer was unable to feed from her, and Saphira as well. He set his mind, then, to seek the answers to the many questions darting about in his head.

He suspected, having observed Charlotte, that she would have a few of her own.