Chapter 16

The sandwich shop mocked Adeline with its closed sign. Her own fault, given she'd not shown up to work or given anyone notice. In her defense, she'd been a tad busy—and not just fooling around with two sexy studs. Running for her life meant she'd fled with nothing, including her keys. She could have gone to her apartment to see if she could grab them unnoticed, but she lacked the energy. Not to mention it might still be watched. Heck, her shop might not be safe. She glanced around suspiciously. Saw nothing, but would she notice?

Some might wonder why she'd gone to her place of work, which her pursuers most likely knew about. However, by her logic, most people would avoid their job in a crisis, hence it made it the least likely place to find her—and a waste of time since she couldn't get inside.

Now what? She stared forlornly at the shop.

To her surprise, the lock clicked. She opened the door to see Keeble standing there. "You're late," he accused. "Your morning tea is cold."

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "It was a rough night."

His eyes widened as he took in her appearance. "What happened to you?"

She entered and locked the door, leaving the sign flipped to close. She slumped onto her stool behind the counter before answering Keeble. "Where should I start? I had to deal with a kraken last night that came up through my tub. Its guts are currently plastered all over my apartment. As if that weren't enough, I'm hiding from zombies and secret soldiers. And before you ask, I don't know why they're after me."

"Uh-oh," Keeble muttered. "The boss won't like this."

She glanced at him. "It's not like I did it on purpose."

"No. Of course not. Let me get you some tea." Before he could scamper off, she huffed, "I don't want tea." She wanted her quiet normal life back. She wanted to not be attacked. She wanted Ambrose and Orion safe.

As her emotions bubbled, a car across the street crashed into a hydrant.

Keeble pinched his lips, observing the wreck before asserting, "You definitely need some tea."

No point in arguing. She leaned her face in her hands and gave in to a bit of self-pity. Woe is me. From best night with two hotties to on the run and alone.

A nudge at her leg had her peeking down to see Smudge leaning against her. "Hey, baby. I'll bet you're worried about Fudge." Given he'd not been around for the battle, she could only assume he'd either left her for greener pastures or accompanied Ambrose.

Keeble emerged from the back with the steaming mug.

She took it from him and had a nice long sip.

Aaah. The relaxation hit instantly and disappeared almost as fast when Keeble ruined it by announcing, "The boss is coming to see you."

"Great because all this day needs to finish it off is for me to be fired in person." She sighed. How had her quiet existence turned into this chaos?

"He's here," Keeble declared.

She startled. "That was quick."

"The boss doesn't travel the usual ways." A comment that led to her frowning, but before she could ask what he meant, Keeble fled, saying, "I'll let you two talk."

The shop darkened as if all the lights went out, and yet she could see them still lit, faint spots amidst an encroaching gloom. The wisps of shadow coalesced into a tall shape, possibly a man, but hard to tell given the voluminous flowing cloak, a swath of fabric that undulated as if tugged by an invisible breeze.

The entity loomed over her, an ominous presence that left her mouth dry.

"Hello, Adeline." The deep voice sent a shiver through her.

"Hi," she rasped. Could this be the mysterious Mr. Charyx? "Are you my boss?"

"Among other things," a reply that emerged from the cowl of the cloak.

"I guess you're here to fire me for not showing up this morning." Her lips turned down. "If it helps, circumstances made it impossible for me to be here for opening." Would it be whining if she told him her troubles to try and save her job?

"You're not being fired."

"Then why are you here?" Because she'd never once seen her boss in person. Even now it almost felt as if he weren't completely there. Was he doing some kind of astral projection?

"I am here because it would appear current events require some explanation and intervention."

"Wait, you know what's going on with the zombies and soldiers?" She eyed her boss, his hood so deep she couldn't see a thing. Was he even human under there? Most likely not.

"Yes, I'm aware of everything. The saga that brought us to this moment began more than forty years ago."

"Which is before I was born, so not sure what it has to do with anything."

"Do you mind not interrupting? I am trying to explain," Mr. Charyx snapped tersely.

"Sorry. Go ahead." Adeline remained slumped, wondering what her boss's life story had to do with anything.

"It had been several centuries since my last sabbatical on Earth."

"Centuries?" Her brows arched. "Guess that confirms you're not human." She'd kind of already figured that part out. If she didn't know better, she'd say she talked to a Grim Reaper, only those weren't real. Or at least not a recognized cryptid. She'd once spent more than an hour on a Reddit question dedicated to arguing their existence, with the consensus being they were simply a story.

"Not even close to human," was his dry reply. "Anyhow, during my sabbatical, I chose to take a corporeal form and travelled your plane for several years, visiting landmarks I'd never had a chance to explore while working, tasting the local cuisine. I also met a woman."

That piqued her interest. "So this is a love story?"

"Again, not quite. I am not capable of affection such as you mortals indulge in. However, I am capable of experiencing carnal pleasure."

Her nose wrinkled. "Ew. No offense, but I'd rather not hear about your sex life."

"Are you done interrupting?" The cloaked figure undulated in agitation.

"Excuse me for trying to have a conversation," she grumbled.

"Given Felicia's attractive nature, we made plans to meet in a more intimate setting. Alas, I did not know her flirtation was a ruse. She and her cohort, using an artifact long thought destroyed, trapped me. Kept me prisoner as they ran tests and took samples." As his voice lowered, and deepened, his cloak rippled.

"But you escaped," Adeline remarked.

"I did. However, given their temerity, I destroyed the place that dared hold me captive and all those who participated. All except Felicia. She managed to evade me."

"Still not grasping why this is important." But it was kind of interesting.

"Despite my thoroughness in destroying their place of research, a stolen sample did survive. My semen to be exact."

She blinked. "Oh." She couldn't say much else because she suddenly began putting pieces together, and she didn't like the picture they formed.

"That semen was injected into human females, and through some feat of magic I thought impossible between our kind, gestation occurred."

"Is this where you tell me you're my daddy?" Not really a joke because she already guessed the answer.

The entity in the cloak shuddered. "Yes, I am your father. Not by choice."

"Gee, thanks. Nice to know." She paused before saying, "So you're saying my mom was artificially impregnated with me?"

"Yes, but I remained unaware of your existence until you were a young adult by your kind's measure."

"So you find out you're a daddy, but rather than meeting me face to face to say hi, you offered me a job. No offense, but that's kind of messed up." At the same time, the job had been a godsend. She'd had a streak of bad luck in her previous places of employment, many freak accidents leading to deaths. The sandwich shop provided the first place where her coworkers didn't die disturbingly often.

"I told you I am not capable of emotions."

"Says the guy who got pissed and demolished a place and the people working there," she pointed out.

The cloak went still. "That wasn't anger but self-preservation. My blood in the wrong hands could do terrible things. But my semen is even worse. There is a reason why humans and my kind aren't compatible. The offspring are dangerous."

"Me? Dangerous?" She laughed. "Boy, do you have me pegged wrong."

"You aren't consciously a threat. However, you are emotional, a trait inherited from your maternal side. Those emotions can have unexpected and dire consequences for the humans around you. Those fatalities are how I discovered your existence. Once I realized what had been done, I should have ended the experiment."

So much to take in. "I'm a science experiment?" she huffed. Then she latched onto the latter part of his statement. "You were going to kill me?"

"It's the usual course of action for one such as you, but I found myself oddly reluctant to end your life. Therefore I found a way to render you harmless to those around you."

"What do you mean, make me harmless? I was never a threat to begin with," she stated.

"Not true. I'm sure you noticed an abnormal amount of people dying around you as you grew."

For a second, she thought of what happened under the bridge and then all the other times she'd been witness to fluke accidents. Her mouth rounded. "Wait, you're saying those were my fault?"

"Not intentionally, however intense emotional events can trigger your power, and the result is people die."

"When you say power, what exactly do you mean?"

"The power to sever souls from their fleshly forms."

"Oh. Wow." She blinked. "That probably explains why those soldiers might want to get their hands on me. They see me as a potential threat, but what's the story with the zombies?"

"They are not zombies but immortui, thus called because they've had their souls extracted. Their bodies live, but they feel an emptiness within them, which leads to them seeking what they've lost."

"Hold on. If they're looking for their souls, why come after me?"

"Because you are anima dissecuerit , a sunderer and keeper of souls, thus a magnet for the immortui ."

"If you're my father, then does that make you the Grim Reaper?" She meant it quite seriously because, despite the missing scythe, the whole flowing-robe thing made him look an awful lot like the depictions in books and movies. But grim reapers weren't supposed to be a thing.

"That is one of my titles." The weird got weirder.

"Do you have a name?" she asked.

"I am known as Charon."

" The Charon?" she squeaked. "I thought Charon was a ferryman who took souls across the Styx to Hell."

She'd have sworn she heard him snort. "A rumor that has persisted despite its great inaccuracy. It is my task to gather souls that enter the Styx, which some humans call limbo, and guide them not to Hell, but to a new destination for rebirth."

"Wow." Because what else was there to say? She frowned. "So me being half a grim reaper is why the soulless are after me?"

"They are after you because of the souls that cling to you rather than enter the Styx."

"Wait, are you saying I'm wearing souls right now?"

He reached for her, his sleeve falling back from a skeleton of a hand. As he pinched the fingers, for a second, she saw a glowing shape that he plucked from her. "You are covered in them currently due to recent events. I didn't have the time to remove them from your aura."

It was kind of creepy knowing she technically wore dead people. "When you say you remove them… when since we never met before?"

"When you sleep. Keeble informs me when you start accumulating a few, and I pay a visit. Alas, I'd been remiss of late due to circumstances elsewhere. The accumulation of them around you is what attracted the immortui . They want you to return what has been sundered."

"How can I fix them when I'm not the one who took their soul in the first place?"

"You misunderstand. They don't want the souls clustering around you. They see you as a conduit to the Styx, where they hope to reconnect with their original souls."

"Pretty sure I don't know how to get to the river of souls. I can barely manage to get around the city without getting lost."

"You and the immortui would die if you were to enter the Styx, as it is not meant for fleshly forms."

"So if you take the souls I have stuck to me, will these soulless freaks stop seeking me out?"

"Only temporarily, as you are a magnet for the deceased who try to avoid passing on. To cease the attacks entirely, we need to prevent the immortui from being created and eliminate those that exist."

"Seems cruel to kill them for something that wasn't their fault."

"It is the only option for these unnatural beings."

"Just so we're clear, I'm not the one taking their souls. Or if I am, I swear it's not on purpose." Adeline held up her hands in innocence.

"I am aware you are not the one responsible. The tea Keeble has been giving you dulls the inadvertent use of your power."

A tea she'd only had a sip of in the last two days. "What happens if I don't drink the tea?"

Charon turned his head to eye the crashed car out front surrounded by emergency vehicles. "When your emotions become intense, accidents will happen."

It chilled her to realize how many deaths she'd caused. I'm a murderer. Not intentionally, and yet, all those people, all those fluke events that led to deaths… my fault.

"If I'm not the one making the soulless, then who?"

"You weren't the only one incubated."

"What?"

Her father, the Grim Reaper, dropped a bombshell. "You have a brother."