Reaper Awakened (Hellsgate # 2) - Mina Carter
Chapter 1
Put her down now before she wakes and eats our faces off.
Those words hit me like a bullet to the brain. Before I could register the decision, I hauled myself to my feet. Every cell in my body screamed in agony, arguing that the cold concrete floor was good, excellent in fact—anything to ease the fire in my blood from the lycan’s scratch. I needed a cool plunge pool somewhere tropical, an ice-cold drink, and to become a yeti, not necessarily in that order.
None of those things were likely to happen in the immediate future (well, the yeti might be a possibility. I’ve never met one. Perhaps it’s like the werewolf thing… one bite then you go furry and drop off the grid permanently?) so I ran, tumbling into the Shade so my murderous human companions couldn’t see me. And, more importantly, shoot me.
A fucktard lycan had already tried to show me what my guts looked like, which meant I was infected. And the last thing I needed while fighting a lycan infection was a bullet through the brain. I wasn’t worried that it would kill me. It wouldn’t. I’d been shot before. That time it had only been through the heart, but it still hurt like a fucking bitch. But I really didn’t want to experience having my brains on the outside of my skull. No way. No how.
Although, with the way my grim was screaming at me inside my skull, I might have considered some ventilation if it would get rid of the noisy fucker. It’s like a hotline to reaper central, the source of a reaper’s ‘otherness’, and right now, mine was bossier than the bastard lovechild of a marine drill sergeant and an ambitious soccer-mom.
I didn’t blame it, though. I wasn’t at my best, not with the lycan infection trying to take over my body, which meant the two cops on my tail had a better than average chance of putting some serious hurt on me. Not kill me, no mortal can do that, but that was a whole level of pain I didn’t want to experience right now. Or ever. That one of the cops gunning for me was Troy—yeah, I’m not even going there without either a case of vodka or a therapist on hand. Or a case of vodka for us both... If a therapist got inside my head, they would need a three-day bender and some professional help of their own.
My bike had gotten over whatever snit it had been in and was waiting for me outside the factory. I staggered over to it, and it growled as I flopped over it. The road and surrounding buildings swam in and out of focus. I giggled as I looked down at the asphalt.
“Oh look… tiny little ants.” I reached a hand down, but the bike snarled, bringing me back to myself. The sound of Troy’s voice jerked me upright, and somehow I threw my leg over the saddle. The bike roared to life, Troy’s car appearing in my peripheral vision for a moment, but then it was gone, and the wind slapped me in the face until I hunkered down.
The ride back was patchy. Fading in and out, I only got snapshots of the town until I found myself outside the motel room door.
Grim autopilot is a beautiful fucking thing. It’s freaky as fuck the first time it happens, and you discover that your body is not your own, but it’s saved my life on more than one occasion. Remind me to tell you about the wyvern and the… yeah, that’s a story for another time.
The patchiness continued. I got flashes of the room, the bathroom, then the ice-filled bath a second before I plunged into it.
“Whatthefuckinghell!” I hissed as every cell in my body became an icicle. A Reaper icicle... A reapcicle? I shivered, still cursing through chattering teeth, and then registered the bottle of cheap whiskey in my hand.
“Well helllllllooo gorgeous...” I murmured and twisted the cap off. Three healthy swallows of fire made their way down my throat. My Grimm might be an utter pain in the ass, but it knew what to do about a lycan bite. How? Let’s just say this ain’t my first rodeo.
There are two ways to deal with a lycan infection. The first is to find and kill the beast that turned you. It’s sketchy and you have to make sure not to have turned furry between being bitten and killing the bastard that nailed