The Big Reap Read Free Page B

1945.”
    â€œBut only moments passed for me.”
    â€œConsider yourself lucky, then. Your time was spent in the vast, formless Nothing of the In-Between, while your fate was being debated. If you remembered it, you’d wish you didn’t.”
    â€œDebated?”
    â€œYes. It seems someone on high – or perhaps on low – has taken quite a shine to you. There was much discussion as to your ultimate fate. Perhaps that’s why you were assigned to me, rather than simply to a demon, as are most Collectors. I confess I was surprised. My last foray into supervising your kind was not the smoothest of endeavors. Truth be told, I’m not sure if our pairing is intended to punish you or me or both.”
    â€œA demon,” I echoed, disbelieving. “Like Dumas?”
    â€œThat’s right. Though understand, his human appearance was a projection, nothing more. He chose it to better pass among your kind. Most like him make no attempt to mask their true natures – and though they often walk unseen among the living, the dead such as yourself do not have the luxury of such blindness. The monsters at the edge of the map are, in fact, quite real. The sooner you come to grips with that, the better.”
    â€œYou’re not a demon, though,” I said. “You’re human, like me?”
    â€œI fear my ontological status is somewhat more complicated than that, but I was once human, yes. Though it was so long ago, I remember little of my life.”
    â€œHow did you wind up here? Did you make a deal, like me?”
    â€œWould that I were given such a choice. No, I was cast out of Paradise for sins that, until I committed them, were as yet undefined, by a Maker as petty and mercurial as a poorly socialized toddler.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said.
    â€œNot nearly so sorry as you will be when you reach my age,” she replied.
    Her age. Funny, she didn’t look a day over thirty. And that body hardly conjured images of shuffleboard and bingo. Stunning as she was, I found it hard not to ogle her.
    She caught the meaning behind my lusty stare and raised an eyebrow. I blushed and looked away. “So,” I said, “this is what I’m going to look like from now on?”
    She laughed then. Sweet Lord in heaven, did Lilith have a laugh. It curled toes, straightened other things, prickled my new flesh with goose pimples. I felt the color rising in my cheeks. “Don’t be ridiculous, Collector. You’ll be here long after this vessel’s dead and gone. His grandchildren, too, should he survive long enough to have them. No, you’re just borrowing his body for as long as it suits your purposes. By assignment’s end, you’ll learn to take another at will, and to tamp down the thoughts of the individual inside.”
    Realization dawned. “This goddamn radio I’m hearing – it’s no radio at all.”
    â€œNo,” she said. “The city’s been without power for at least a week. There’s not a radio to be heard for miles. Those are your vessel’s thoughts.”
    â€œYou’re telling me I hijacked a Kraut?”
    â€œ Jawohl ,” she said. “A rising member of the Hitler Youth, in fact.”
    â€œHis chatter’s pretty goddamn annoying.”
    â€œI would expect so. I imagine he’s not pleased with your sudden occupation of his body. The irony is delicious.”
    â€œAnd your body,” I said, “is it borrowed too?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “Like Dumas, I look this way because I choose to. I’ve no need to drape myself in meat. Unless, of course, I find that meat desirable enough, and even then, I prefer to be on top.”
    I’d never heard a woman make so frank an innuendo. And I’d never seen a woman as beautiful as Lilith in my life – not even on the silver screen. The combination was enough to take my breath away. Lilith seemed to delight in