It darted at me with incredible speed but I dodged it just in time. There was a yelping sound when it smacked into the refrigerator behind me. I turned just in time as it recovered and prepared to jump at me again only this time I jumped first. I hammered it in the muzzle with my iron fist. It fell to the floor in a heap, writhing in pain.


I turned and walked over to the woman who lay on the kitchen floor and examined her. She had been torn apart. She lay on her stomach huddled over something that was underneath her. When I turned her over to examine her, I found it was a small child. He was probably about five or six years old and he seemed barely alive. He let out a small moan with his eyes still shut and then suddenly shot up. His eyes clouded over and white. He too was now something inhuman.

Just when I began to think that things couldn’t get any worse the dog jumped me from behind. Apparently he had recovered from the blow that I had just landed on him. I was knocked forward into the bloody mess that was the woman, my shirt and pants now stained with blood. The dog was on my back and clawing and ripping at the back of my jacket. I tried to reach into my pocket for one of my knives but the dog pushed down onto my back, pushing me further into the bloody mess. I struggled and finally freed one of my arms which had been pinned underneath me and landed an elbow into the thing’s ribs. It squirmed a little and lost some of the pressure it had on me, just enough for me to spin around and knock it off my back.

Getting back up to my feet, I pulled both of the knives out of my jacket and lowered my base, waiting for the dog to try and strike. It let its teeth show and crouched down, snarling and drooling. More of the green ooze flowed from its mouth as it circled around me. The boy still stood motionless in the kitchen with his eyes glazed over staring into nothingness.

The dog lunged again and I sidestepped it but left my hand outstretched with the knife to intercept it. The dog’s throat was cut open; it spilled dark rotten smelling ooze out of it as it hammered into a kitchen cabinet and collapsed. It was dead, well it was technically already dead but now it wasn’t moving.

The soul fragment that was inside of it drifted out and into my scythe. I went over to the woman to reap her soul but there was nothing there. This didn’t make any sense. How could it not have been there? I would have seen a reaper come in and take it. We could disguise ourselves for a reap and even make ourselves invisible at times if the circumstances called for it. The only problem with that theory was that I would have still seen him. I couldn’t worry about that now though. There was still the boy to attend to.

I walked over to him cautiously and examined him. There was definitely a soul in him still; I could see it clear as day. But he was also carrying another on top of his own, something evil and possessed. I took off my scythe and held it in one of my hands placing the other onto his chest. In an attempt to extract whatever it was that possessed him. It didn’t come without a fight but eventually I had it and the boy’s eyes returned to normal just as I disappeared from sight and the police came rushing through the door.
This just kept getting stranger and stranger every minute. How could that thing have possessed the boy with some type of inhuman soul fragment? And what happened to his mother’s soul. Souls don’t just drift away if they are not reaped. Everything pointed to a necromancer except for the neatness of the possession that he did on the dog and the boy. If it was one, he would have to be a very, very powerful one. Only why would someone so powerful destroy a family and their dog? There were too many questions and too few answers. I would have to examine the soul fragments I picked up and look for some answers there before I released them into the spirit realm.
I stayed invisible until I got outside where I walked past a couple of cop cars with their lights still on and found a quiet place a few blocks to re-appear. My shirt and pair of blue jeans were still soaked in blood. I zipped up my jacket and continued walking and hoped nobody noticed my pants. I decided to head home. I had to change and maybe figure out a few things about what had just happened. At least until I had to go take care of a few reaps.

Chapter 2
My apartment was very tidy. Book shelves stacked with hundreds of novels in alphabetical order. In the corner of the room on its stand lay my bass. Not that new bass guitar garbage that they came out with a couple centuries ago. My bass was the good old fashioned kind. The part of my sword collection that was valuable to me (sentimentally, they were all worth quite a lot of cash). Also there were some old runes and relics that I had picked up in my long, rather boring life, some of which held some interesting tricks and powers. Other than the items neatly stacked around the place, that hung off the wall and sat on the shelves, there was not much else. There was only a small kitchen, which was stocked mostly with bottled water and Cup O’ Noodles. Aside from the kitchen, there was only one other room where I slept on the couch. I had lived in more classy places but this was my home, at least it was for now.