A Dirty Job (Grim Reaper 1)

"Oh! He got you, Nemain. Think about how bad he got you when I'm killing the child tonight. "

"I was talking to you," Orcus said. "Macha goes. "

She came in through the roof, tearing up the bubble skylight over the fourth floor and dropping into the hallway. She moved as silent as a shadow down the hall to the stairs, then appeared to float down, her feet barely touching the steps. On the second floor she paused at the door and examined the locks. There were two strong dead bolts in addition to the one in the main plate. She looked up and saw a stained-glass transom, latched with a tiny brass latch. A claw slipped quickly through the gap, and with a twist of the wrist the brass lock popped off and clattered on the hardwood floor inside. She slithered up and through the transom and flattened herself against the floor inside, waiting like a pool of shadow.

She could smell the child, hear the gentle snoring coming from across the apartment. She moved to the middle of the great room, and paused. New Meat was there, too, she could sense him, sleeping in the room across from the child. If he interfered she'd tear his head from his body and take it back to the ship as proof to Orcus that he should never underestimate her. She was tempted to take him anyway, but not until she had the child.

A night-light in the child's room sent a soft pink band of light across the living room. Macha waved a taloned hand and the light went out. She trilled a small purr of self-satisfaction. There had been a time when she could extinguish a human life in the same way, and maybe that time was coming again.

She slid into the child's room and paused. By the moonlight streaming through the window she could see that the child lay curled on her side in her crib, hugging a plush rabbit. But she couldn't see into the corners of the room - the shadows so dark and liquid that even her night-creature eyes couldn't penetrate them. She moved to the crib and leaned over it. The child was sleeping with her mouth wide open. Macha decided to drive a single claw through the roof of her mouth into her brain. It would be silent, leave plenty of blood for the father to find, and she could carry the child's corpse that way, hooked on her claw like a fish for the market. She reached down slowly and leaned into the crib so she'd have maximum leverage for the plunge. The moonlight sparkled off the three-inch talon and she drew back, and she was distracted for an instant by its pretty shininess when the jaws locked down on her arm.

"Motherfu - " she screeched as she was whipped around and slammed against the wall. Another set of jaws clamped onto her ankle. She twisted herself into a half-dozen forms, which did nothing to free her, and she was tossed around like a rag doll into the dresser, the crib, the wall again. She raked at her attacker with her claws, found purchase, then felt as if her claws were being ripped out by the root, so she let go. She could see nothing, just felt wild, disorienting movement, then impact. She kicked hard at whatever had her ankle and it released her, but the attacker on her arm whipped her through the window and against the security bars outside. She heard glass hitting the street below, pushed with all her might, shape-shifting at a furious rate until she was through the bars and falling to the pavement.

Ouch. Fuck!" came the shout from out on the street, a female voice. "Ouch. "

Charlie flipped on the light to see Sophie sitting up in her crib holding her bunny and laughing. The window behind her had been shattered, and the glass was gone. Every piece of furniture except the crib had been overturned and there were basketball-sized holes in the plaster of two walls, the wooden lath behind it splintered as well. All over the floor there were black feathers, and what looked like blood, but even as Charlie watched, the feathers started to evaporate into smoke.

"Goggy, Daddy," Sophie said. "Goggy. " Then she giggled.

Sophie slept the rest of the night in Daddy's bed while Daddy sat up in a chair next to her, watching the locked door, his sword-cane at his side. There was no window in Charlie's bedroom, so the door was the only way in or out. When Sophie awoke just after dawn, Charlie changed her, bathed her, and dressed her for the day. Then he called Jane to make her breakfast while he cleaned up the glass and plaster in Sophie's room and went downstairs to find some plywood to nail over the broken window.

He hated that he couldn't call the police, couldn't call someone, but if this is what one phone call to another Death Merchant was going to cause, he couldn't risk it. And what would the police say anyway, about black feathers and blood that dissolved to smoke as you watched?

"Someone threw a brick through Sophie's window last night," he told Jane.

"Wow, on the second floor, too. I thought you were crazy when you put security bars all the way up the building, but I guess not so much, now. You should replace the window with that glass with the wire running through it, just to be safe. "

"I will," Charlie said. Safe? He had no idea what had happened in Sophie's room, but the fact that she was safe amid all the destruction scared the hell out of him. He'd replace the window, but the kid was sleeping in his room from now until she was thirty and married to a huge guy with ninja skills.

When Charlie returned from the basement with the sheet of plywood and hammer and nails, he found Jane sitting at the breakfast counter, smoking a cigarette.

"Jane, I thought you quit. "

"Yeah, I did. A month ago. Found this one in my purse. "

"Why are you smoking in my house?"

"I went into Sophie's room to get her bunny for her. "

"Yeah? Where's Sophie? There might still be some glass on the floor in there, you didn't - "

"Yeah, she's in there. And you're not funny, Asher. Your thing with the pets has gone completely overboard. I'm going to have to do three yoga classes, get a massage, and smoke a joint the size of a thermos bottle to take the adrenaline edge off. They scared me so bad I peed myself a little. "

"What in the hell are you talking about, Jane?"

/> "Funny," she said, smirking. "That's really funny. I'm talking about the goggies, Daddy. "

Charlie shrugged at his sister as if to say, Could you be any more incoherent or incomprehensible?  -  a gesture he had perfected over thirty-two years, then ran to Sophie's room and threw the door open.

There, on either side of his darling daughter, were the two biggest, blackest dogs he had ever seen. Sophie was sitting, leaning against one, while hitting the other in the head with her stuffed bunny. Charlie took a step toward rescuing Sophie when one of the dogs leapt across the room and knocked Charlie to the floor, pinning him there. The other put itself between Charlie and the baby.

"Sophie, Daddy's coming to get you, don't be afraid. " Charlie tried to squirm out from under the dog, but it just lowered its head and growled at him. It didn't budge. Charlie figured that it could take the better part of one of his legs and some of his torso off in one bite. The thing's head was bigger than the Bengal tigers' at the San Francisco zoo.

"Jane, help me. Get this thing off of me. "

The big dog looked up, keeping its paws on Charlie's shoulders.

Jane swiveled on her bar stool and took a deep drag on her cigarette. "No, I don't think so, little brother. You're on your own after springing this on me. "