Grim Tidings by Caitlin Kittredge Read Free Book Online

the doors shut with a soft click. No reason to make myself an even easier target for Owen and his buddies.
    The screaming had stopped, and I felt a twist in my stomach. I didn’t know if Leo could be dead again, and I didn’t want to find out.
    Thick metal doors like what I’d been locked behind were recessed into even thicker walls as the hall went on, each door marked with the symbol for a fallout shelter, the yellow faded to almost white. Knocking steam pipes ran along the ceiling over my head and water swished through thin copper lines, like I wasinside some kind of vast circulatory system, the belly of a living, breathing beast.
    Footsteps rang out and I shrank myself into one of the doorways, hunching up against the cement. A female reaper wearing a deep red dress and shoes with heels sharp enough to puncture whatever neck she was standing on opened the next door, giving me a brief glimpse of a white-tiled shower room, at least four more reapers milling around, and a figure strapped into a chair in the middle of the floor. Leo’s shirt had been pulled open to show a swath of his heavily tattooed chest, and his face was swollen and bruised on one side.
    I fell back again as the door slammed shut. How the hell was I supposed to take out five reapers in an enclosed space? I’d barely managed to get the jump on Gary, and I’d had help. I’d also had fangs and claws on my side and that wasn’t happening while I was running on no sleep and had what felt like a gallon of horse tranquilizer working its way out of my system.
    I wanted to punch the door I was standing against, but breaking my fist wouldn’t help me, or Leo. I squeezed Uriel’s lighter hard enough to leave an imprint on my palm, letting the sting even me out and make me focus. The door was marked BUILDING MANAGER , and I tried it. This place was ancient, but maybe there would at least be a broom handle or something in there I could arm myself with, since the reapers had taken everything from my knife to my hairbrush.
    The office was just as dusty and gross as the rest of the basement, but the rusted metal shelves were a treasure trove for a hellhound disarmed and down on her luck. I swept the ancient lightbulbs and a stack of nudie mags off the shelves as I fumbled through the toolkit. I grabbed the longest screwdriver and shoved it up my sleeve and tucked a box cutter in my back pocket. An old metal thermos sat next to the toolbox and I grabbed it and an armload of sloshing chemical bottles.
    People are scared of reapers and things like them. It’s a survival instinct as old as walking upright—steer clear of the things in the dark. They’re hungry and strong and they can’t be hurt. But if you’re already in the dark, if you have to live there too, you learn that monsters can bleed just like the rest of us.
    I stepped out of the building manager’s office, holding the thermos in one hand and Uriel’s lighter in the other. I carried the rusty bucket I’d found in the corner, flipped it over, and stood on it, flicking the wheel until a flame sprouted. Holding it to the star-shaped head of the sprinkler, I really hoped that the city of Minneapolis was on top of their fire safety inspections.
    For a sick heartbeat, nothing happened. Then I was rewarded with a spurt of water in my face and the tired honking of a fire alarm somewhere on an upper floor of whatever Cold War rock pile I was in.
    The first reaper to come out the door was a pudgy guy in a polo shirt and jeans. He could have been someone’s dad on the way to pick them up from practice, except for the dead-eyed fury on his face. I slipped the screwdriver from my sleeve and popped him on the bridge of the nose with the handle as he lunged at me. While he was moaning and grabbing at his crushed face I flipped the screwdriver around and jammed it into his shoulder, slipping it under the collarbone and taking his arm out of commission