Free Angelfire by Courtney Allison Moulton Page A

Lucifer and God—the Apocalypse. The reapers are immortal and come in many forms; they are most effective killing machines.”
    â€œI don’t understand how there can be creatures that big and no one knows about them. How come I’ve never seen any of them until last night?”
    â€œThe reapers don’t like to be seen,” Will explained. “They spend most of their time in the Grim, where they hide from human sight. Powerful psychics, however, can sense them like the ground rumbling as a train passes by and can enter the Grim at will. Beings within the Grim can see and even interact with objects and people still in the mortal world, but they cannot be seen or heard through the veil. The reapers have had many thousands of years to perfect their hunting. They’ve been seen a few times by ordinary humans, but these sightings are rare and usuallyhappen only because the reaper is being careless. It’s even rarer for reapers to intentionally allow a human to see them and not kill them, but some like to do that for sport. There are legends about them in virtually every religion, with all the legends identifying them as harbingers of death. But instead of guiding people to the afterlife, the reapers eat them, and their souls get one-way tickets to Hell.”
    â€œSo there are no studies of them, even though there have been sightings?” I asked. “Never? People believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, and I see documentaries about expeditions to find them on the History Channel all the time—not that I watch that channel much or anything. There’s no proof that either of those exist. Yet the reapers leave bodies behind like Mr. Meyer’s and no one ever stops to wonder?”
    â€œReaper attacks are usually blamed on animals or psychotic humans. Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster aren’t real.”
    â€œThe reapers obviously are! Why hasn’t there been some hysteria over sightings?”
    Will took a breath and spoke slowly. “There’ve been many reported sightings of reapers. The most famous are the ones that resemble humans, hence the legend of the Grim Reaper.”
    My eyes shot wide. “There are human reapers?”
    He nodded, watching the ground. “Yes, there arehuman-shaped reapers, called the vir, and they are the most powerful. They’re also the cockiest and the most likely to show their faces to humans. The other forms, like the ursid, the lupine, the nycterid, and others, have been mistaken for other monsters, because the humans don’t know what they’re seeing. Like your Bigfoot, dragons, or even werewolves. The reaper you just fought was lupine.”
    I remembered my daydream about the snowy forest in France. I remembered that I’d been in the Le Gévaudan region, a place where the villagers were ravaged by a wolflike monster. Historians blamed the hysteria on moldy bread, but I knew better. I felt like I had really been there.
    â€œYou keep talking about the Grim,” I said. “What is it?”
    â€œThe Grim is a dimension parallel to the mortal plane,” he explained. “Supernatural creatures live there unseen by mortals and are able to cross over into this dimension. Most humans cannot enter the Grim, unless they are true psychics or creatures like you and me. Last night, you entered the Grim unwittingly so you could see the reaper hunting you, but you did that by pure instinct.”
    â€œHow was I created?”
    â€œWe don’t know what you really are. Your body is human, but your power…it’s something very different. There are a lot of things about you that we still don’t understand.”
    â€œBy we, do you mean you and me? Does anyone else know about me? Is there another Preliator?”
    â€œNo, you are the only one.”
    â€œAre you my only Guardian?”
    â€œYes, but before me, there were others who protected you.”
    â€œWhy don’t I have any