Undercover

I am coming.

That’s what her boss had told her after she had informed him that there was a problem with the prerogative. Since reapers could communicate telepathically, they seldom ever met face to face. In all her 7 years on the job, Lisa had only ever seen Zadkiel twice and that had been for less than a minute in both instances. Now he was coming, the thought made her shudder with trepidation.

It was rare for there to be any problems with prerogatives, and even in the event that there were, reapers were equipped to deal with them on their own. In the rare cases that problems occurred; it was usually just some soul refusing to move on and deciding to haunt the living. Those cases were called Spector protocols and more often than not, the reapers would just let the soul become ghosts.

There was no protocol for what Lisa had just seen. She had never heard of anything like that happening in all her time as a reaper. Humans were born, they lived and they died, the end. That was the iron law of the universe that every human was subject to without exception. Of course, some could get lucky and survive fatal incidents but no one was so lucky that their wounds instantly healed. Something was definitely up and Lisa had a feeling she wouldn’t like what came next.

Zadkiel landed silently behind Lisa, she was only alerted to his presence but a slight ripple of displaced air. While lesser reapers like Lisa looked no different from humans, archangels were another story. Zadkiel stood tall, almost 7 feet with lean muscle and massive white wings, brighter than snow. His skin was the same shade as his wings, but there was an ethereal glow to its alabaster hue that made it painful to look at him for too long. The archangel wore a pair of black jeans, black boots, and a plain black t-shirt along with a silver pendant around his neck, the mark of his office.

Zadkiel could never pass for human and that was mostly due to his face. He was handsome enough, in a way that would make any woman swoon but there was something alien to his beauty. He had stony eyes with red pupils; milk-white hair growing past his shoulders and full lips that would have looked sensuous on any other person. Looking at his face felt like gazing into the abyss or the venomous maw of a serpent. His cold gaze exuded death; even other reapers could feel the heavy darkness that lay behind his crimson eyes. Lisa wished she could sink into the floor because that same gaze was leveled at her, like headlights transfixing some hapless deer.

“Lissariel, report,” Zadkiel spoke softly, an echo of power in his voice that made chills run down Lisa’s spine. She kept her eyes on the ground, afraid to meet the archangel’s gaze.

“I flew here and found the prerogative; he was only second from crossing over so I waited. Instead of crossing over, his body started healing right before my eyes until I could no longer sense him.”

Zadkiel started walking around the office, his eyes missing nothing.

“The wounds were fatal?”

“Yes archangel, by the time I got here he had bled enough to kill a human two times over,” Lisa responded, gesturing to the pool of blood with her thumb.

Her response was met with silence; Zadkiel had hunkered down next to the blood, dipping his index finger. When a prerogative crossed over, reapers would instantly know everything about the soul, from the moment they were born to the moment they breathed their last. Archangels could get all that information from the living as well, all they needed was a possession of the person. The blood would tell her boss everything he needed to know about their irregular human.

Zadkiel stood up and faced her.

“This man is human, that much I can ascertain but there is something in his blood I cannot place. It reeks of power, like the bright rays of the waxing moon and the scrape of claws on the earth as a predator hunts.”

His voice had a trancelike timbre and his eyes were distant, as though he could see that which he spoke of. Maybe he could, Lisa thought, archangels were as alien to her as a human would probably find her.

“What are we going to do about him?”

The archangel remained silent, his lips pursed in contemplation. Lisa really wished her boss would just tell her to forget about the prerogative and go back to her regular work. Things had been going so well for her; she did not need a blot on her immaculate record. If only reapers could actually kill humans, she mused darkly. Dropping the pesky human from the clouds would solve the problem in a second. Reapers weren’t actually death itself like most humans assumed in their stories, they didn’t cause it, they only came for the souls. She could almost picture herself following the problematic prerogative and yanking his soul…Her reverie was interrupted by her boss’s voice and the look he gave her made her think that he knew what she had been thinking. I wasn't seriously considering it…

“There is a need to investigate further. This human must be observed at close range, scrutinized, every little detail documented until we understand how it is that he can cheat death.”

“Oh, so how do we get in touch with the investigations department?”

Zadkiel didn’t respond, he just gave her a pointed look.

Why is he looking at me like I’ve said something stupid? Lisa wondered, and then it dawned on her and her eyes widened.

“You mean me! But…but I know nothing about investigating,” she wailed.

“Reaper Lissariel, need I remind you that this is officially your prerogative, the responsibility for its resolution falls to you,” Zadkiel spoke, his face impassive.

Lisa was panicking, she felt like the walls of the office were closing in around her.

“To learn anything I’d have to follow him around, what about my duties…”

“Your duties will be taken care of, this is of greater priority,” Zadkiel interjected.

The protests died on her lips, there was no way she could argue against him and hope to change his mind.

“Okay. I’ll fly after him right now and begin watching him,” Lisa said, resigned.

“Reaper Lissariel, I’m afraid you don’t understand the nature of your assignment. You are to interact with this human, earn his trust and get him to divulge his secrets. You cannot achieve this by hovering over his shoulder while invisible so you will have to pretend to be human.”

“What!” Lisa exclaimed in disbelief. Her boss had to be joking. She didn’t understand the first thing about humans beyond their deaths, the idea of pretending to be one terrified her. “Surely there has to be another way,” she pleaded. She imagined being stuck following a human around, unable to fly or use any of her powers and the thought almost made her scream in frustration.

“No there is not. Your prerogative’s name is Lucas Black; he is the billionaire who owns this building and most of the businesses in this town. Yesterday he put out an advertisement for a personal assistant, that will be your way in. I will make the arrangements.”

As soon as the archangel finished speaking, he flapped his wings and flew out the hole in the roof, apparently, archangels didn’t believe in goodbyes. Lisa was left gazing up in his wake, her fists balled tightly.

For the second time that morning, she found the same words escaping her lips.

“What the fuck!”