With Love, Your Reaper

Chapter Two

Battered fingers traced the book's front cover. Smoothed leather soothed the abrasions on the pads of his fingers and palms. Thousands of repetitions on the bar learning to pull, push, hold, and swing his body had ruined his smooth archer's hands in which he'd always spoiled with gloves. He'd always had callouses from the free weights, bruised knuckles from the heavy bag at his father's dojo. Now his pale, sturdy hands were bruised and battered, knuckles a deep shade of black and blue that could've raised retching had it been on a larger scale. His cuticles were red, thinned from the rough wrapping and impact. The backs of his hands were also bruised, a fraction less intensely than his knuckles. 

 Ioana would kill me if she saw this... 

He stared at his battered hands, swallowing the metallic lust of her name in the back of his throat. She'd glared at his father under long lashes gifted from her mother when she caught glimpses of his knuckles under the thin fabric of this sweater or that pullover. He always pulled his sleeves down under his knuckles as to not draw attention the the bruises from the heavy bag. 

 Push through the pain! Move it, move it! Is the bag working you or are you kicking its ass?! Faster, you're  better than this! Push! 

God, he missed it now. He missed the grueling hours in the dojo with his father, where he pushed him to tears. He missed staying there late, shifting through Katas while his father and mother were off fighting the denizens of the after life bent on corrupting the newly dead. He missed the assurances that he'd be able to join them once he turned seventeen, that all the martial arts classes and lessons on how to properly stake a blood sucker would come together. That he'd one day be considered an authentic reaper of the circle, with life balanced between thin leather and the palm of his hand. He had been seventeen for almost five months, and his parents had been dead for fourteen. Nothing added up. Anaveli had finished off Noah's physical combat training, had drilled him on everything he'd been taught. And now he had to go back home. Where Ioana was, where the slayers had his back and the local revenants didn't hiss at him in fear.  

  Ioana was hurt, he knew it. There was absolutely no denying this. He'd left her without a goodbye, with nothing more than two sentences and less than twenty words explaining why he was disappearing. He hadn't even so much as called her, not that Anaveli allowed him free usage of his cell phone. He monitored all his calls and text messages before they were sent, coded his phone so it couldn't be tracked. Anywhere he went, Anaveli went too without negotiation. For five months, he'd skirted Japan with Anaveli, taking on the study of three martial arts and an entire culture and language.   

 Then they'd come back to Anaveli's house in Siberia, and he'd ground Noah down to a fine powder there, refining him like a good blade. He was ready to go home, ready to see Ioana again.  

 Ioana Rochelle Merian 

1:10:2:5:13:37:32

The numbers faded in and out as the seconds, minutes, and days passed. The ink bled in and out like letters on a billboard. One year, ten months, two weeks, five days, thirteen hours, thirty seven minutes, thirty two seconds. That was all she had left. Less time than he'd been away. He'd had nightmares about her death for weeks now, waking up writhing in cold sweat, screams raking his throat like dry rice. Death plagued him all the time, no matter the time of day. It came with horrible migraines that sank him to his knees, gasping and begging for an end. It took over his body like a fire lit to his bones. The thought of it made him quiver. The first time he'd had one, the night of his sixteenth birthday, Ioana had been there.  

 He'd collapsed to the kitchen floor, dropping his mug of tea. It'd shattered and an eerie silence had followed the noise between it and his first scream. He'd sank to his knees, screams tearing out from the inside. He'd clawed helplessly at the counter, fighting off the descending shadows fruitlessly. They overtook him, clawed at him like fiery vices. Ioana had rushed to his side before anyone else, wrapping him up in her arms and pulling him into her much smaller body. She'd rocked him while he thrashed and screamed, while all the guests stood in frozen horror. He'd screamed and writhed for nearly ten minutes before the shadows and visions had subsided.  

 And when they had, Ioana had been the only one remaining in the dining room, on the cold linoleum beside him.