Quick Summery because i dont like the word limit on the front page:
Waking up in the unfamiliar bed of the hottest man she's ever met, Faye is naturally a little confused. But when the man turns out to be a grim reaper who's just saved her life from gangsters, Faye feels like she needs to repay his kindness. However Cale never saw it as kindness; she was a girl who fell naked into his arms and has screwed his life up royally from the first moment he met her. He has spent the last 1700 years virtually alone; so why can't he stop thinking about kissing her? And why can't Faye stop doing exactly the same? Demons of the london underworld are literally out to get their blood; this is not the time for love!
Prologue:
"The past may be the windows into the future but sometimes it's better to keep them closed with heavy planks nailed across them."
They were raping her. He could hear it, though his face was turned away and his eyes screwed up against the noise. He tried so hard to block out the sounds. He didn't want it to be true, and opening his eyes would be admitting it was real. He just wanted to wake up, but he knew that was impossible. This wasn't a dream. None of it had been.
"Hey, boy!" came a deep, rasping voice uncomfortably close to his ear.
Someone hit him hard in the gut. He coughed, tasting blood well beneath his tongue.
"Look at your sister. Look at what a whore she really is! To be honest I think she's enjoying it!" the voice laughed. Brina's screams split the air again and tore his heart asunder. She was screaming for help, his help. Help he could not give her.
"Look, boy!" came the voice again, now angry.
He felt someone ball a fist in his hair forcing his head around. He opened his eyes and saw what he had prayed not to. Brina was on the ground, naked, arms pinned behind her as four men took turns in raping her. Her beautiful face was tear stained and stricken; her hair knotted from all the times they had pulled on it. Cuts marred her back and legs, gashes from the whip one of the men held aloft or otherwise from the claw marks their vicious, demanding hands had made. Then there was the blood trickling from between her legs, that was dripping sickeningly into the mud.
It made him want to wretch and gag.
"Brother! Brother… Please!" she screamed. Her voice was so terrified, so scared and pained it made him want to die. Their eyes met for a moment before she was blocked from view again.
"Let her go!" he yelled. "She's just a girl, she's barely fourteen. Please have mercy!"
"Mercy?" the voice questioned, slick with amusement. "Kallen, you all about done with the whore!" the stranger called. He still could see no face to match it.
"Yeah, just give me a second." yelled one of the men from the group, his voice coming in short sharp gasps. He was at Brina's back and quickened his thrusts before sighing in ecstasy while his sister screamed. Then everything went quiet.
"BRINA!" he yelled, though all he got in response was a kick to the groin that left him handing limply in his bindings.
The man called Kallen withdrew, straightened up and let Brina fall to the ground in a dead faint.
"Stupid girl fainted on me." he said nonchalantly, kicking her motionless form aside.
"Doesn't matter; but let's show this boy what our 'mercy' looks like shall we?"
Kallen sneered and began to walk slowly towards them. "Boy, we're going to make you wish you had never been born."
Cale sat bolt upright in bed, shaking. Sweat was pouring from his brow and the black silk bed sheets clung to his naked skin with it, like static. Breathing fast and deep he searched the dark room around him for a sign, a glimpse of the hut or the sea or the girl. He saw nothing but the familiar sights of his sleek, modern apartment; the white kitchen with black granite surfaces, the lounge with the plasma TV on the wall, the tall Victorian windows covered in black drapes separating his domain from the cold, snow-covered London streets beyond.
Gaining control of his breathing he lay back down and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes 'til it hurt. It had been centuries since he'd dreamed about the night he'd died, and as the memories washed over him so did all the fears and anxieties of his younger self. He remembered the pain. There had been so much pain, in his soul and in his flesh that night.
Laying there he tried desperately to hold onto the details that in his sleep had been so close and so vivid. But now he was awake, and as he tried to gather them like drops of water they trickled away, back into the blurred and inconsistent nothingness of his mind.
He tried to see the faces of his family; his mother, his brother, his sisters. However each existed only as a blank face, no eyes, no lips nor even voices. Nearly seventeen hundred years past and now he couldn't even remember their voices. But he remembered the words.
"Brother!"
Brina.
Cale thought her name silently over and over in his mind.
I'm so sorry.
He cursed himself silently before throwing the sheet off him onto the floor and swinging his legs off the bed.
He forced the emotion into the blackness with what few horrific memories he had left and let his mind glaze over. Work; he had work to do tonight.
The wooden floor beneath his feet was as cold as the air that swirled in spiralling tendrils from the open window by the bed. The curtains fluttered gently, bleached yellow by the artificial light outside. But the chill didn't bother him; growing up in the north he was used to winters much colder then this.
Cale put his head in his hands and rubbed sleep from his eyes before reaching for the alarm clock. It was half past midnight and his alarm was going to go off in five minutes. God he hated it when he woke up before he needed to, but there was no point going back to bed, especially knowing what would be awaiting him in his dreams. Instead he stood, gathered the bed covers, threw them haphazardly onto the mattress, and headed off to shower and pull on some clothes.
Once washed and dried he entered the closet adjoining the bedroom. He flicked on the light and squinted in its unfamiliar brightness for a few seconds before he began pulling clothes off hangers. Most of what he owned was black, not because he was a Goth or depressed but just because he liked black things and they suited him well. He pulled on a pair of black leather trousers, a black short sleeved shirt and his favourite leather jacket. It too was, surprise surprise, black and had red trim round the shoulders, cuffs and collar with 'Grim Reaper' embroidered in red on the back in large fiery letters; A funny idea of his friend Seth's creation, who believed that putting their occupation in plain sight would convince people that it was exactly what they weren't.
In most cases Cale found, on the whole, it didn't work, unless he snuck up on them, which he preferred not to (he was a sick bastard that got some small pleasure out of watching his clients die.)
Now dressed with damp brown hair sweeping his eyes he picked up his black Doc Martens, an apple and his car keys and headed out, psychically locking the door behind him.
He smiled inside his head in a jaded sort of way as he took a bite of the fruit.
In all fairness there were some perks to being an immortal Soul Reaper. It was just that the disadvantages always outweighed the advantages.