The Death Trials by Jonsie (rocket ebook reader txt) 📕

Saturday- 7.28 pm

The thing about mentally challenged people- or life forms- is, that you can’t have a decent conversation with them. It doesn’t matter how freakin’ long you try, you won’t get valued information from their with drool dripping lips. Except if you can understand uunnghaas

and awwrrfuuu noises. Then congrats to you. Maybe next time, I could sit in your seat, drinking hot tea and what not, while you crumble with a broken leg and almost blinded on the moody floor of a self made trap to catch this delusional maniac, but ending up right next to him. The grumbling and swearing time was long over, so you have a time frame, how long exactly I was down there. And for me to not swear anymore in a situation so crappy like this one means, I’ve been down there very, very long. Maybe even too long. Even the maniac stopped trying to eat my face of, as I still had an holy water bottle tied to my belt, after breaking the other two by falling down.
“Thirsty?”
He hissed at my polite question, scooting away even more. I just shrugged. More left for me.
So, by now I was pumped with holy water, dead tired and my favorite pair of jeans was covered in a mixture of mud, blood and puke. I would reward the dry cleaner with all the money I had (which wasn’t much), if he could get out the stains. And I would also pay the rescue team a whole bunch of my non-existent money if they would show up a bit quicker. The maniac made me nervous. It scratched around with its long nails, grunting here and there and hissing in my direction constantly.
“Would you, like, tune it down? Please?”
The demon spawn just snarled. Yeah, thanks. With a sigh I looked up, barely seeing the sky. I bet, if I were in a life dreading situation they would get their royal asses down here. Stupid aristocrats. Only because they had money, a fine villa and more than two cars they thought that I could wait forever. Well, they thought wrong. Okay, no they didn’t due to the fact, that I couldn’t literary go anywhere, but if- when – they got here, I would… do stuff to them. I bet I would even have enough time to think about what stuff exactly contained.
My ideas wondered from beheading them, to stabbing them to just cry like a little girl, when light filled the hole. The hell maniac screamed in agony by the blinding light, shielding his pig eyes with his claws. His pain made me smile. That’s what you get if you refuse a drink from a reaper.
“Reaper Eleven Six Eight- are you down there?!”
No. I magically disappeared- oh, wait. I could’ve been eaten by a hell spawn Level one. Suuuure.
“Can you throw down a rope, please? Before I really die? And this time because of boredom!”
I still didn’t know why we, as reapers, had walkie-talkies, but they served the purpose. It rustled at the other end then the familiar male voice spoke again.
“We’re sending down reaper zero one three. Please-“
I pressed the ‘end’ button and looked up instead. A few seconds later- the demon was still paralyzed from the light- a young man dropped down from the sky, his dark coat fluttered behind him. Smooth like a cat his feet made contact with the ground, smiling broadly at me. He looked even better in helicopter light than the time we met at the beach at a full moon. You know - Werwolf mission. The beast needed some privacy for doing his business and chose a public beach. I felt sorry for the poor guy, but honestly: It wasn’t that great watching a huge man-wolf pee into the ocean.
“So, ‘reaper eleven six eight’-“ he air qouted- “what is the problem?”
“This thing pulled me down into here.”
I was surprised that he even got assigned to his mission – he wasn’t my partner nor did he do level one jobs. He had enough credits to lie back most of the time. But I guess I shouldn’t be complaining. Better him than someone else (for example the Queen of Bitching).
My savior looked around, before kicking a mud rock against the wall. He whistled in astonishment.
“You made this hole?”
I nodded.
“Great job. Sadly, that still doesn’t reduce the idiocy of yours to fall into your own freaking hole.”
“Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say. At least I get jobs, Mister Richard Head.”
“Hey- so not cool.”
We both grinned. His name, before dying and undying and then becoming a member of our little group, was Richard Hallows. And everybody knows that the nickname for Richard is Dick. Now, his name was Caden. I liked it so much better.
Caden coughed slightly as he clapped into his hands.
“Alright. Let’s get you out of here.”
Without asking he grabbed me around the hip, pulling me towards him. I batted my eyelashes flirtatious at him.
“Oh Caden, how long I’ve been waiting for this…”
My rescuer laughed in delight.
“Finally, your wet dreams come true.”
Grunting, I hit his chest while he jumped into the air. Normally, we wouldn’t come high, but reapers were marked from the devil. We had powers, which doubled the ones from humans. It was really cool, to be honest. At least better than bumming around in hell. Sure, we had to capture the escaped tortured souls of purgatory which manifested themselves in this world as crazy, murderous psychopaths. If they were clever enough. Some just walked around with horns on their head or some other decided that it was quite nice to show off their lizard skin.
So, instead of bouncing on the ground again, Caden jumped up to the helicopter, grabbing it with his hand and holding me tight. Yeah- I think I have to mention that reapers got different abilities. Caden could jump high, I could run fast and another reaper could fly. Seriously fly. With wings and all. Okay, your parents had to be reapers or at least fallen angels for that ability, but nevertheless it was so damn cool. My parents had been artists, as far as I knew.
Cool hands held on to our bodies as they pulled us into the helicopter. Officers with dark blue uniforms looked down but when they saw my leg, some actually turned away. Sigh. Newbies.
“Oh, didn’t notice the little bone there.”
“Don’t touch,” I grumbled. Caden raised his hands in defeat, shaking his head.
“That disgusting thing? Never.”
Handsome as he was- and graceful- he stood up and cleaned off his coat.
“We need to get you to the meds.”
I frowned. I hated hospitals or medical wings more than hell or its inhabitants. But at least I was in a helicopter, away from this maniac. Caden wandered off to the captain, giving orders in his usual calm voice. Some of the cleansing team let themselves down into the hole to get the maniac. I could hear their cursing and sighing because a maniac job was a messy one. My leg was proof. But I drifted out, before we could actually fly off, the darkness welcoming me like an old friend. The nightmares, sadly, too.


*_*_*_*

8.17 pm

“My dear, dear reaper. What exactly happened that you wound up in the same place as your victim?”
He spoke with so fake friendliness, I wanted to puke. Henry Adams was in charge of our sector and looked exactly like a bold rat. Pointy nose, awkwardly thin and tall and incredibly huge eyes with- in comparison- small glasses in front of them. His hair was geld back, his black suit spotless. Because of his pale skin, he almost looked like he was glowing- in a sick kind of way. That was the kind of aristocrats I was dealing with.
It was briefing time. Not my favorite time of the day- like the time between the alarm clock ringing and really being awake. You have to struggle, if you’ll just ditch school and lie back down and sleep, or really getting up, showering and doing your morning business. It wasn’t all that different. I was deciding wether I should slap that man or just stay put, chew on my lip and wait for the conference to be over. It was a tight call.
“I obviously fell down with it.”
I pointed at the broken leg, which the meds didn’t have time to wrap up or smear some magical lotion on. Mr. Adams just frowned. He hated wounds and blood more than he hated me- and that was saying something. Caden and a security guard were on each side next to me, holding me tight. I wasn’t sure if it was because they wanted to steady me or hold me back, if Mister rat did something… unfortunate.
I was known to be patient. But not for very long.
“And why? Did it-“
I cut him off by holding up my leg as good as possible. That Caden had to prevent me from falling over, didn’t stop me to glare at my supervisor. He just sighed. Yeah, it must be so hard for him- all that paperwork, while I got operated on. Poor him.
“Well, then, reaper. Get… fixed and come back when you’re fine again.”
Which means I should come back as soon as the painkillers set in. Now would’ve been the perfect time to rip his throat out, but Caden stroked my hair and whispered something like ‘Not now- your time will come’ in my ear. I smirked at that one.
As soon as the door fell shut behind me, the security guard nodded his good bye and hurried off to the common room, where the TV was running and the scent of macoroni and cheese filled the air. My rescuer though stayed loyal at my side, holding me against him. Not that I had any thing against being pressed against a smoking hot, mysterious reaper, but I wasn’t the cuddling type. With a smile I broke free from his arms and stumbled down the hallway. Caden followed without questioning.
“You know that it’s the other way to the medical wing?”
“I lived here twelve years, Ca. I know.”
Silence. Our steps echoed down the sterile, white corridor. No pictures, no windows. Completely sealed off. That’s how this organization rolles, homies!
“You have to get that leg of yours checked, B.”
“I will, but since the time they messed my eyes, I don’t trust them.”
Caden grumbled, before pulling me to a halt by grabbing my wrist.
“Blake- listen to me. They didn’t mess up your eyes. They gave you sight. We reapers are lost without it.”
“Yeah, well-“ With all my willpower I could manage to bring up, I ripped my arm from his hand, “I didn’t ask for it. At least they asked you, Caden. I never wanted to be… this.”
I gestured to myself. Let’s be honest, folks: I was no better than the maniac they just tagged and were going to kill. This was no second chance, as Satan put it. This was hell on earth. Literally and figuratively speaking. My eyes met his. He had eyes like a stormy sea- always changing, never standing still. Blue and green mixed into one undefined color, leaving me always guessing. I tried to ask him once but it wasn’t a question he was willing to answer. Mine, in contrast, were silver. Pure, metal silver- well, at least one of them was.