Reaper II: Neophyte Read online

  As for my mother, Lillian – Lil to her friends – she was completely horrified by the prospect of me becoming a police officer. Since she was always fearful for me, this news was of course nothing new. My mother was constantly terrified for me and had been my entire life.

  I finally had a nuance of her support when I decided to start taking Tae Kwon Do, three to four times a week, at the martial arts training and fitness center near our home. Mom was of course worried that I might injure myself or someone else in pursuing the sport, but she was even more worried that someone would attack me again – and so, taking martial arts lessons was the lesser of the two evils, in her eyes.

  I, for one, enjoyed my Tae Kwon Do lessons.

  It was definitely a challenging sport and I was passionate about learning the different patterns, strikes and kicks that could be done. I thoroughly enjoyed the hand-to-hand one-on-one sparring that we did under the watchful eye of our Master, who was always ready with guidance of one kind or another.

  Master Kim pushed us hard, but I pushed myself even harder.

  I think he recognized my dedication to the sport and I believe that I was one of his favorite students, because of it. My dedication and enthusiasm didn’t matter to my mother because I’d often come home with bruises from sparring against someone more skilled than I, which would also upset her.

  She was oft to say, “Samantha Lian Bennet, I fear for you – really, I do.”

  Despite her many fears, I left Master Kim’s two years later with a black belt and graduated from high school at the top of my class, still intent on becoming a police officer.

  I applied to the City’s police academy immediately after graduation, but they rejected me because of my young age and lack of what they referred to as life experience.

  Their career counselor told me not to be surprised, since applicants under twenty had to fight tooth and nail to be taken seriously, due to their lack of life experience. I was told that those who actually made it past the testing and interviews were put on a waiting list until they were twenty-one, anyway.

  It seemed like sheer ageism to me.

  If they only knew how well I could fight tooth and nail – or talon and blade, for that matter – I was certain that they would have felt differently about their decision…

  So, I went to college, which had been my back up plan anyway, taking Criminology, much to my mother’s disdain.

  She had been hoping that I would give up on my law enforcement goals. Paul still had hoped that I would go into law school if I wanted to be part of the justice system, but a lifetime perusing thick legal texts wasn’t really for me and the idea of spending day after day in court bored me.

  While I excelled at school, I was not passionate about it.

  My true passion remained elsewhere, in my excursions with the Dark Thing…

  How many nights had I snuck out of my bedroom and hit the shadows of the City, answering the call of the Dark Thing?

  Its hunger for evil blood seemed insatiable.

  Together, we made quite the team…

  We punished, we avenged, we retaliated against the malevolent denizens of society.

  Together, we were unstoppable.

  At twenty-one, I finally moved out of home upon securing a job as a bartender.

  Three years of college had been enough of a post-secondary education for me, for the moment.

  I was out to get that life experience that the police academy had been so intent on and I figured that bartending was a great place to begin.

  Surely I’d find my share of low lifes there, connections to the underworld that I sought to exploit for blood to feed the Dark Thing.

  Surely bartending could help me learn of ways to liberate our fine City from the criminals who plagued it, tainted it.

  When I told my parents that I was ready to move out of home, my mother had quite the fit.

  “You’re leaving me, just like your birth father did,” she sobbed to me one night, after perhaps one too many glasses of red wine.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  My mother hadn’t brought up the topic of my birth father since I was a child, since before she met and married Paul Bennet, the man to whom I could attribute my last name and sound upbringing.

  Before Paul, Mom had spoken of my birth father often, frequently reminding me that he had left her all alone in the world as a single parent to raise me.

  A single parent who had the support of a great family who helped her in every way that they could with the raising of little Samantha, but a single mother all the same.

  “He told me that he loved me,” she reminded me. “But you don’t leave the ones you love. You don’t just leave them behind!”

  Sometimes I do think about my birth father. The rambling man my mother claims left her after their last intimate encounter together. This, I had learned from the tale she had told me as a young teen about how my birth father had loved her and left her, all in one night.

  Sometimes, I wondered if I had inherited the Dark Thing by way of genetics, of birthright.

  I wondered if my biological father was the one that had given me this gift.

  I had never seen such supernatural phenomenon from my mother.

  Although, I did keep the Dark Thing a secret from her, so perhaps it was possible that she kept it a secret from me as well. I had dropped a lot of hints around her though. Subtle hints that anyone who shared my predicament would have picked up on and responded to.

  I wondered which it was – a gift from my mother, who didn’t seem the type, or my birth father, who I had never known?

  I used to wonder a lot about my father, when I was a child.

  What was he like?

  Who was he?

  Why did he leave my mother, pregnant with me, to raise his child alone?

  What was he running from?

  Why was he hiding from us?

  What was he hiding from us?

  Where the Hell was he?

  Now I wondered if maybe he was the one who had left me the Dark Thing as a legacy and if that was the case, why hadn’t he warned my mother that his child might have shared his supernatural traits?

  Again, if that was the case, how many people were there out there like me and why wasn’t it common knowledge?

  With a head full of questions and no answers presenting themselves of their own volition, I moved out of my parents’ home and into a small apartment over Charlie Friday’s, the bar where I worked.

  For three hundred dollars a month, heat and water included in the price, I occupied the bachelorette suite and was free of my mother’s fears – unless she called me on my cell, or I went home to visit, of course.

  She didn’t like that I lived downtown and she liked my mode of transportation even less.

  The first big purchase I made with my bartending tips was a used motorcycle – a six year old Buel Blast 500. The horrified look on her face had somehow made me more satisfied with buying it.

  You’d think my mother would at least have been relieved that I wasn’t riding the bus anymore with the freaks and weirdos as she would say.

  If only she had known what a weird freak her daughter had turned out to be...

  Mother didn’t like my job either.

  She was afraid that I was going to waste my life away working as a bartender.

  She worried constantly that I was going to starve on my low wages, even though I made great tips. With a fit but curvy body like mine, dressing like a ho bag pretty much guaranteed a full tip jar, night after night.

  Mother worried that because I liked my job, I was going to be a bartender forever, even though I reminded her, time and again, that the job was just my pit stop while I waited to get into the police academy.

  Which in her eyes was the worse of the two fates, of course.

  I liked working as a bartender – there were times, in fact, that I loved it.

  The quick-paced social atmosphere, the good natured regulars, the anthropological
and sociological quirks, Charlie Friday himself – there were many things to like.

  However, there were also some things that I did not like, such as the long thankless shifts on my feet. There were also the drunken idiots to consider, with their heckling when they outdrank their welcome. The occasional bar brawl.

  Then there were the young customers who would get in with their fake identity cards and spend a good portion of the evening testing their limits – and ours.

  Thanks to the college crowd, I was well-versed in how to remove vomit from stainless steel, tile and porcelain.

  We’d cut those kids off and kick them out and even then, we’d still end up having to call an ambulance every once in a while, because one of them would get carried away with their reckless abandonment.

  By power drinking in the parking lot with liquor stashed in the trunk of a friend’s car, more than a few of them ended up with bouts of alcohol poisoning.

  Many a time at the end of another long night I’d end up sweeping the broken glass from the floor of Charlie Friday’s, cleaning up the puke in the bathrooms, wondering to myself – should I be doing something else while I wait to become a cop?

  Nevertheless, remembering the decent pay and the life experience I was accumulating, I decided it best to stay put.

  I applied to the police academy for the last time during the fall of my twenty-second birthday. I took the Civil Service exam and then the Police Officer’s exam with hundreds of other hopefuls, had my fingerprints taken and submitted the information for my character check.

  I took the psychological exam and attended an oral psychological exam the same day as my medical. I attended a physical fitness exam of continuous physical exertion and passed that demanding obstacle course in the required time.

  I had done everything asked of a potential candidate.

  Now I had to wait.

  A few months later, I was sent notice, through the mail, that I was on the Police Officer’s list!

  However, I couldn’t celebrate just yet…

  The letter reminded me that it could be up to four years before they accepted me in training as a police officer—if I was selected at all.

  Being on the eligibility list was not an offer or guarantee of employment. They also told me that roughly one out of every eight candidates on the Police Officer’s list actually became hired recruits.

  Now, I had to sit back and wait for the call telling me I was the lucky one out of eight.

  I had been bartending for just under two years and didn’t expect to hear back from them for some time.

  As fate would have it, one day in April, just after my twenty-third birthday I checked my mail box at the post office and was surprised to find a letter from the police academy.

  It was an acceptance letter, slating me for training in September of that year.

  “It’s about fucking time,” I had said, to no one in particular and left the post office with my prize in hand.

  I should have been more thrilled – and in a way, I was – but I was also frustrated with the long wait that I had endured.

  At work that night, I told Charlie Friday the good news.

  “Aww, we’re gonna miss you, kid.” The big bald proprietor gave me a brief hug. “Congratulations. When are you done here?”

  “Not until September,” I told him.

  “Great,” he laughed. “I can work you like a slave for half a year yet!”

  “Gee, thanks.” I replied glumly, returning to my post behind the bar.

  It was one of our quietest nights – a Tuesday – but I got the feeling that something was about to happen.

  The Dark Thing was restless inside of me, to the point that it was making me feel anxious and jumpy, but I couldn’t make sense yet of what it wanted.

  Lizabeth, one of our regulars, came up to the bar and sat down, right in front of me.

  I had seen the bleached blond woman come into the bar many times, usually in the company of a sleazy-looking man in his early thirties.

  I had never seen her wearing shades like this, at night.

  I realized she wore the shades to cover her black eye.

  Sleazy boyfriend. Black eye. Sunglasses.

  It was quite the cliché.

  “What can I get you?” I asked her, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  The Dark Thing’s hunger pulled at me intently.

  It had a great thirst tonight.

  A thirst it wanted to quench.

  Who was tonight’s unfortunate soul?

  It wasn’t Lizabeth… I could sense that much.

  “Jack and Ginger,” she replied over the music, implying a Jack Daniels and Ginger Ale.

  I prepared her the drink and dared to ask the question, “Liz, don’t you usually come in here with that guy, Jimmy?”

  I remembered his name because the Dark Thing had taken an interest in him, just as it had taken an interest in many of the shady characters that came through our bar.

  Some of those interests, I acted on.

  Some I didn’t…which seemed to frustrate the Dark Thing at times, but if I acted on all of its compulsions, I would never have a moments rest or live a semblance of a normal life.

  “Not tonight,” Lizabeth replied. “Actually, not ever again.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I finally worked up the guts to break up with him.”

  “Gave you a hard time, did he?”

  “A hard time?” She gave a humorless laugh and lowered her glasses so I could see her black eye. “He’s the one who gave me this. Last night.”

  “The fucker.” I handed her the beverage.

  “If I ever see him again, I swear I’ll…I’ll make him pay for it.”

  “Has he ever been rough with you before?”

  Lizabeth laughed another cold laugh. “Rough? That’s all he’s ever been to me. That’s why I left the son of a bitch.”

  “Well at least he’s out of your life now.”

  “So I hope.” She took a sip of her drink. “That asshole scares the shit out of me.”

  I got the feeling that I should follow this woman home, a feeling brought on by the Dark Thing’s subtle encouragement.

  She left the bar stool in search of the video lottery terminals and as she played away at the video games, I kept an eye on her for the rest of her stay.

  When she was finally ready to leave, the Dark Thing stirred intently within me, urging me to leave with her.

  She left through the back door and I gave her about a minute’s head start before I left through that same door, after her.

  “Aw shit,” I called to Charlie, “I think I left my oven on at home. I’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t want to shit where I eat as the saying goes, by engaging in risky activities in such near proximity to my place of work or life, but the Dark Thing was insistent that I let its darkness spread over my body, my face, my hair.

  There was no one around.

  It was safe to do it.

  And so – I did.

  Armed, I followed her through the shadows of the back alley and saw Jimmy long before she did.

  He was hiding, waiting for her, at a break between the buildings, in the darkness there.

  “Out whoring around already, eh Lizzy?” He asked, holding something plastic in his outstretched hand.

  “Jimmy, what—” He was upon her in an instant and I saw him deploy his weapon – a taser.

  The sizzle of an electrical charge cut through the air.

  As she fell to the ground, spasming from the electroshock, I advanced upon him, growing fine points out of the tips of my fingers.

  “Nobody says no to Jimmy Blair.” He spat at her. “No one makes a fool of Jimmy Blair. No one-” He was halfway through his sermon when I tapped him on the shoulder. “Wha—”

  He turned toward me, eyes widening with shock.

  “Jimmy Blair shouldn’t hit girls.” I grabbed him by the throat, lifting him off his feet with the Dark Thing’s su
pernatural strength. “Jimmy Blair should know better.”

  I wanted to scratch the surface of his skin, to see why the Dark Thing wanted him so.

  The fine points at the tips of my fingers drew a small amount of his blood – small, but enough for the Dark Thing to show me his crimes and the plans he had made for the tasered woman who lay at our feet.

  Through his blood letting, the Dark Thing showed me the tortures that he had planned for her.

  The fresh grave dug out at his uncle’s cabin, next to an older one, the shallow grave of Sarah Andrews, the last girl who had dared to tell Jimmy Blair no.

  At my will, the Dark Thing jutted thick probes of razor sharp exoskeleton into his neck, a multitude of them, sucking the corrupt blood from his body as I held him there, his feet barely touching the ground.

  Lizabeth stirred on the ground, regaining consciousness.

  I had to finish him off, quickly and so, upon crushing his throat, I willed the Dark Thing to contort into a thick rope around his neck. With a sharp twist, I snapped it.

  Willing the cord back into my second skin, I dropped his body and left at a full run before Lizabeth regained complete consciousness…

  I heard Lizabeth scream long after I retreated around the block, willing the Dark Thing to sink back into my body, dormant.

  I went back into the bar, through the rear entrance, no trace of the Dark Thing on my skin or in my hair.

  Wherever the Dark Thing had come from, whatever it was, at times like these, I was grateful for its presence, its power, its ability to identify the wolves amongst the sheep…

  “I knew I left the oven on,” I said to Charlie, before taking my place back behind the bar.

  I was taking drink orders from a group of rowdy construction workers when Lizabeth ran through the rear door, crying, “He’s dead! Oh my God, somebody – help me! He’s dead! Jimmy’s dead!”

  A few minutes later, with the cops on their way and Charlie Friday checking out the crime scene for himself, I was pouring Lizabeth a shot of Jack Daniel’s straight up when I decided to engage her in conversation.

  “Well… He can’t hurt you anymore,” I told her, knowing better than she did what he’d had in store for her that night.