Dead Harvest

  Eleven hours they'd left me here, sitting alone in this holding cell without so much as a word. In fact, these past two hours I hadn't even warranted a glance from the officer standing watch. Not that I was surprised – it had been written all over their faces as they led me back here: I was a crooked cop. A traitor. I guess they figured they could leave me to stew awhile, see if maybe it loosened my tongue a bit.

  Well, if they wanted me to stew, they sure as hell got what they wanted.

  I sat there in that dank fucking cell, my meeting with Merihem playing over and over in my mind. Any demon coulda taken this chick out for a spin, he'd said, but she'd be lit up like a Christmas tree for anyone who knew to look. No way she gets marked for collection. No, a con of that magnitude would take some serious clout – not to mention one hell of a death wish. You couldn't begin to understand the world of shit that would rain down upon us all if one of our kind was caught damning an innocent soul to rot in hell for an eternity. So assuming I was right, why set up the girl? And who the hell had that kind of power?

  More importantly, if someone was going to all this trouble, what was going to happen once word spread that I'd failed to collect her?

  I had more questions than answers, but there was one thing I did know – I had to get out of this cell, and fast. Whoever or whatever was after Kate, they'd come too far now not to give chase, and I meant to be there when they found her. The problem was, this skin-suit wasn't apt to play nice – he'd roll on me the minute I let him up off the mat, and my little plan to save the world would be over before it had even begun. Of course, there was one other option, but it didn't exactly fill me with warm fuzzies.

  But on the balance, what's one innocent life, when weighed against the Apocalypse?

  Truth to tell, I'd known for hours that there wasn't any other way, but it took a while to find the nerve. Just the thought of it set my hands shaking, and filled my stomach with angry, crawling things. I mean – yeah, I take lives every day, but only those that are mine to take. This, though, this was something else entirely.

  This was murder.

  Still, it wasn't like I was taking his soul. Just extinguishing his mortal flame. He'd be better off without it, really. He'd be free to, I don't know, frolic through the fields of heaven or whatever. That's what I told myself, at least.

  From the screaming in my head, I'd say neither of us much believed it.

  The bed frame creaked in protest as I tipped it on its end and wedged it against the wall beside the toilet. They'd taken my belt and laces, of course, but my uniform shirt looked strong enough, and the sleeves were more than long enough to do the job. I stripped to my undershirt and knotted one sleeve of my button-down around the top of the bed frame. Then I climbed atop the toilet and tied the other sleeve around my neck.

  Death, as a Collector, is a strange experience. For one, it hurts like hell. I mean, I suppose dying is never all that pleasant, but we Collectors seem to get a little extra in that regard. Whether it's a header off a bridge or a handful of pills, the agony is always the same. Kind of a stupidity bonus, I suppose. Still, we all try it a time or two before we catch on. The first time you take a soul, the experience is a little rough – most rookie Collectors think death the better option. And every once and a while, you see something that you just can't shake, and you get to thinking maybe this time it won't be so bad – maybe this time, they'll just let me fade to black.

  Believe me, they never do.

  Then there's the simple inconvenience of it all. See, a Collector's not like a demon – we can't exist outside a vessel. And when a vessel dies, any invading soul is expelled. So when we die, we get automatically reseeded somewhere else. If there's a rhyme or reason to where we end up, I sure as hell can't figure it. It could be around the block; it could be around the world. Both of which, I was forced to admit, would be better than my present accommodations.

  Still I hesitated, whether from guilt or some nagging sense of self-preservation, I knew not which. I caught a glimpse of my vessel's reflection in the polished steel mirror bolted to the wall beside me: though his hair had silvered at the temples, and his face was welllined, he couldn't be more than forty – a baby, by my reckoning. His eyes, a piercing blue, seemed to beseech me not to do this. I wondered if I even could.