Dead Reaper Walking Read Online Free PDF Page B

room.
    “See, I told you. Tough,” Reilly shouted over the noise, and nodded toward the other side of the room. The sight of three bodies there made the job kick in. Skirting the reaper/demon battle in the middle of the room, they rushed to the side of the fallen girls.
    Two were done for, the gray ropey stuff turning out to be exactly what Troy had hoped it wasn’t. Intestines and other organs spilled from the ruined abdomen of one of the girls, the cream carpet darkened with blood and her eyes sightlessly looked at the door. The other didn’t have a face. Troy had never wanted to see someone’s brain from that angle. He never wanted to see it again.
    The third girl though, was still breathing. Hands over her stomach, she panted each breath and looked at them with desperation. Troy dropped to his knees next to her.
    “Hey there, we got you, sweetheart. Don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.” Total fucking bullshit, he could tell from the blood pooling under her and the pallor of her skin that she wasn’t making this. No way was he letting her in on that though. That’s not what they did. Not what he did. He held their hands and told them it would all turn out okay until they couldn’t hear him anymore. Like he would have done for Jilly. If she hadn’t tried to eat his face off.
    She nodded at him, flashing a glance at Reilly as he knelt on the other side of her, gun trained on the battle raging only feet from them. Troy gritted his teeth. Bastard had left him to deal with the mushy stuff. Troy couldn’t blame him to be honest. As good as Reilly was as a captain and with the Glock in his hands, the dude was as scary as fuck. Even when he was trying to be charming.
    “You just hang in there. It’ll all be done soon and we can get you out of here.” Hands covering hers on her stomach, Troy applied extra pressure but it wasn’t going to be enough. He knew what death looked like and it was looking at him through this young girl’s eyes. She held his gaze almost desperately, like she wanted to cut out everything else going on around them. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”
    He could barely hear her whisper as she answered, “M-Mary-Beth.”
    “Pleased to meet you, Mary-Beth. I’m Troy.”
    He smiled, not missing the bellows of pain and frustration behind them. From the sounds of it, his girl was giving that demon hell. Bad pun but the only one which fit.
    Mary-Beth managed another smile, but he could feel her slipping away. A chill stole over her skin, and for a second it looked like a ghostly version of the girl was rising out of her body despite the fact she still breathed. He blinked, shaking his head to clear it. He’d seen a lot of weird shit over the last year or so, but ghosts while a person was still alive was a touch too far.
    A scream of rage caught Troy’s attention and a second later Reilly shoved him down, the two of them covering Mary-Beth as Laney flew overhead. She hit the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and dropped to the floor. Troy’s breath caught in the back of his throat. Crap, she was down.
    Fear and the need to look after her surged through him, the need stronger than anything he’d felt. The demon roared across the room, loud enough to rupture eardrums, the sound filled with rage and hatred. Gathering himself to rush to her side, he stopped when she looked up, anger on her face.
    A hit like that would have been it for a normal person, but not Laney. Instead of lying in a moaning heap on the floor with multiple broken bones, she was on her feet in a flash, blades in hands. Without missing a beat, she roared right back, her words awful ones that made his skin want to crawl off his body and hide somewhere safe. But worse was to come.
    He crouched over Mary-Beth, expecting the demon to storm them any second, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Laney. Her roar deepened, the sound reverberating through his bones, and developed into a sound he knew. It was the sound of every one