Chapter 28: Chapter 28

“So… my brother….”

Ru looked up, surprised. She didn’t expect him to tackle that topic as well, not when he was already clearly uncomfortable. Perhaps he thought it would be easier to get it all out in the open at the same time. “Leaf?”

Cutter licked his lips and then leaned back so that his forearms were resting on the porch behind him. “My siblings are much older than me. You may have noticed that with Cinder. She’s ten years older than I am. Leaf was thirteen years my senior.”

Avoiding the statement that his mother either looked good for her age or had started out young, Ru only nodded. She’d caught Cinder’s statement that she’d been doing this for a few decades when she’d barked at her the night before.

“My brother was my hero,” he continued, still not looking at her for more than split second glances at a time. “My mom did a lot of my training when I was younger, but once I was about ten, it was all on Leaf. When he was here, anyway. He spent a lot of time out in the field. No one could track down a Reaper like Leaf. In fact, he was often called in to cut down demons, too, even though he was only in his early twenties when he first started getting those assignments.”

She could see the admiration in his face. “Sounds like an amazing guy. Was he just particularly fast?”

“Hell yeah,” Cutter replied, nodding. “Fast as lightning. He just had a way of sensing their presence, too. You know how we can tell when there’s a disturbance of some sort? A portal or another being?” She nodded again. “Well, he could do that when they were so far away, the rest of us had no way of knowing they were there. Leaf could pick up on them though. And he was smart. He could trick them, catch them. Just… one of the most skilled Keepers in existence.”

He stopped talking, clearly reflecting on the phenomenon that was his brother, and it was up to Ru to break the silence. “So, what happened?” she asked, quietly, timidly.

Cutter adjusted so that he was sitting up again. He buried his elbows in his knees and rubbed his face with both hands. She wasn’t sure if he was growing emotional or if he just needed a moment. He cleared his throat. “They used me as bait.” His voice didn’t break but it was almost whisper quiet.

She held back her gasp, but she was shocked. Instinctively, she reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, Cutter… I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. I was a dumb kid. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t realize that they wanted him dead that badly.” Once again, the silence claimed him, and the wind blowing the remains of decaying leaves was the only sound Ru could hear for a long moment before he finally continued. “Anyway, there were about four of them involved. It took that many. I don’t want to get into the details…”

“No, that’s fine. I don’t blame you.” Her hand was still on his shoulder. She considered moving it but didn’t.

“We’ve managed to get all of the Reapers that were there that night. The demon, the one who was the ringleader behind it all, he comes and goes. That’s one of the reasons we need to close those damn portals.” He coughed, as if he were choking on the words, and then turned to look at her.

Ru slowly slid her hand off of him and put it in her lap, not wanting to make him any more uncomfortable than he already was. “And when you say you got them….” She was having trouble remembering what happened to whom when they were “gotten.”

“When a Reaper dies, they’re gone. There’s no coming back.”

She nodded, but she was still confused. Didn’t they still exist, though? In Hell? Like a lost soul.

“Same as Keepers,” he continued.

“Right.” That, she knew. This wasn’t a video game. There were no second chances, no multiple lives. Dead was dead. Though, she assumed being half-angel meant she’d go straight to Heaven without having to pass “Go.”

“Getting a demon is a lot harder than a Reaper.” He was still looking at her, something she decided was a positive. “It takes a highly skilled Keeper to be able to send a demon back to Hell. A Reaper, once we capture them, we can say an incantation, and they’ll be sent to where they can’t return.”

“But what about Zu?” she asked. Perhaps this was the reason for her confusion. “You said that he was being held and questioned.”

“The girls chose not to destroy Zu,” Cutter explained. “They could have.”

She shook her head, looking for clarity. “So… they just sent him to, like, Reaper prison?”

He snickered. “Something like that.”

“So, he could escape?”

“Possibly. But I doubt it. Not with Sky’s people on it. The portals would allow him to find his way back if he could somehow become free, which is one of the reasons we need to close them. We also need to prevent the demons from using them to come to Earth to make more Reapers who could be non-compliant. And… it seems every time the Reapers return to Hell, they grow more powerful.”

Clearly, he was saying all of these things as a reminder to himself as much as he was explaining them to her. It seemed like there were a lot of reasons to close the portals.

Ru had yet to meet Sky, but she seemed awfully powerful. She understood there was a whole other world of Keepers operating on another plane, but she had no desire whatsoever to cloud her understanding by attempting to tackle all of that right now. What she honestly wanted to know he had answered. Reapers could be destroyed—just like Keepers. Also, when he said that Leaf was gone, that’s what he meant. He wasn’t in some demon holding-pin somewhere where he could be rescued. The idea made tears threaten to spill over, but then, she supposed they would be reunited someday, after Cutter passed on, which would hopefully be about a hundred years from now. The idea didn’t sit well with her, and once again, she was shaking her head.

“You okay?”

He was staring at her, nothing but concern and sincerity in her eyes. “Yes,” Ru replied, though she was certain it was a lie. “Just trying to absorb everything.” She plastered a smile on her face. “Can you tell me the name of the demon?” she asked, thinking it might be good to know.

Cutter swallowed hard again, as if he didn’t want to tell her. Ru couldn’t imagine why in the world he wouldn’t just tell her. Other than Ronobe, who she knew was already banished, she had no reason for thinking differently about one demon over another, and he was only held in slightly different esteem because she was related to him. She continued to stare at Cutter, question marks in her eyes, until he said, quietly, “Azrael.”

It took her a moment to remember who that was and to understand why he thought she might care. When it hit her, the pain in her stomach returned, and she placed a hand there. “Oh,” was all she could manage. Thanatos’s father. That’s why she might care.

“Are you okay?”

“Yep, fine.” She knew he meant because she was grabbing her abdomen again.

“Are you sure?” He swiveled so that he was facing her. “Is it you stomach again?”

“I’ll be fine in a moment.”

“Ru, I think… whatever that is, it might have something to do with your demon blood.”

Her eyes widened, and she couldn’t help but stare at him in disbelief. “What’s that, now?”

He let out a sigh. “I asked Cinder about it, and she reminded me that you are related to Ronobe. Even though you’re one hundred percent Keeper, I think it might have something to do with your DNA. After all, it only happens when someone mentions demons, or there’s a potential they might be close by.”