Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

rough hand across my forehead and through my hair. His face blurred, but I could see his shoulders jerk in a big sob. “Buddy boy?”

I couldn’t stop shivering. I tried to tell him I was fine and to watch out for that guy because I didn’t know if he was actually knocked out or just kind of dazed, but my face was starting to go numb. I couldn’t move my lips. It felt like everything inside my chest was freezing solid.

Gramps pulled me into his lap and hugged my head.

Red and blue lights flashed through the kitchen windows, but I didn’t hear any sirens. I couldn’t hear anything.

A beautiful woman with long white hair and skin so pale it made the lightbulbs in our kitchen look dim was standing right behind Gramps, staring down at me.

A little bit at a time, black crept in from the sides of my vision. Then everything was gone.

You’re Dead

WHEN I OPENED MY EYES again, all I could see was stars. Galaxies and galaxies of stars all around me.

“Gramps?” I looked around. The only person there was that beautiful woman from the kitchen. Her skin seemed to glow against the blackness of the sky surrounding us. I took a step toward her, but I didn’t get any closer. “Where’s my grandpa? Is he all right?”

She didn’t answer me. “You’ll be Hank O’Grady, twenty-nine years of age, career criminal...”

“Hang on, that’s not my name. My name’s Hake, Grady Hake, and I’m sixteen, not twenty-nine. And my grandpa’s name is Carl Hake. Is he all right?”

“I wasn’t assigned to a Carl Hake.” She shook her head, that mass of white hair sliding over her shoulders. “I was sent for Hank O’Grady, human, multiple counts of murder and theft. You.”

“But that’s not me,” I said. “I’m Hake, not Hank. And I’ve never committed any crimes. I mean, I speed sometimes, but that’s not even close to murder.”

A file appeared in her pale hand. She flipped it open and started scanning the pages inside.

“Is that about the guy you were looking for?” I reached for the file, but apparently it was farther away than it looked, because I couldn’t stretch far enough to touch it. “There’s got to be a picture or something in there that’ll prove I’m not him. I’ve never even drank or smoked pot. The worst I’ve ever done is mouth off to somebody. And they usually deserved it. I know that’s not an excuse, but...”

I saw the exact moment she found the picture. Her silvery eyes flew open wide, and she looked from the file to me and back.

I relaxed. This was going to be okay. Now that the mistake was established, we could fix it.

A slice of light appeared to my left, like a door opening, and a guy with the same pale glowing skin and white hair stuck his head in.

“Everything all right in there, Reaper Eleven?”

“Of course,” she said, slapping the file closed. “Just another routine reap.”

“Wait, what about—” I started.

The guy nodded at her. “Carry on.”

Then the door closed.

I turned back to her. “Why didn’t you tell him about the mistake?”

“Reapers never take the wrong soul,” she said. “We’re very careful.”

“Obviously not.”

“You listen to me, you little—” She stopped for a second and smoothed out her face into something serene and beautiful again. “You are dead. You’ve been reaped from your body on Terra—”

“But I shouldn’t be dead,” I insisted. “Where’s God? He’s your boss, right? He can fix this.”

She blinked. “He’s...out of the office.”

“When will He be back?” I asked. “I’ll wait.”

Her eyes were narrow shards of mirror in her face.

“You are dead,” she said, enunciating each syllable. “You can’t go back to where you came from.”

“But my grandpa...” I shook my head viciously. “I’m not dead. You screwed up. I’m not this Hank O’Grady guy. That was probably the tweaker with the knife who you were supposed to take. Grady Hake is my name. I’m a high school sophomore, not a criminal. You made a mistake.”

Her full white lips pressed into a thin line, and her nostrils flared.

“Reapers,” she growled, “do not. Make. Mistakes.”

Then with a flick of her wrist, she threw me through the void of stars into nothingness.

Transportation

I DIDN’T FEEL MYSELF land. One second I was falling through stars, the next I was motionless in empty blackness.

A metal baseball bat hit me in the gut. I folded over, clutching my stomach.

“I said you’re in me spot, grav,” someone snarled. He sounded Irish or maybe some kind of English. “Move yer bleedin’ carcass!”

I opened my eyes just in time to see a boot swinging at me. I curled up and took the kick on the shoulder. It made that same metallic clunk as the hit to my stomach had, and pain spread through my back. Weirdly, that was the only part of me that hurt. Not the cuts from the paring knife, not the bruises and scrapes from my fight with Blaise. Those were all gone.

“Geez, dude.” I winced, climbing to my knees. “What’s your leg made of, metal?”

The dude in question was a kid my age, tall and wiry, with a nose that looked like it’d been broken more than once and a cauliflower ear. One of those gingers where at first glance you can’t tell whether he’s got light brown hair or dirty orange. You don’t see many redheads who look like they could beat the tar out of somebody, but this one did. He grabbed the cuff of his pants and pulled it up, revealing a lower leg made out of dingy greenish metal with grungy brass-looking circuitry running through it.

“Yeah, it is metal,” he growled. “Need it upside yer head, do ya?”

Movement behind him caught my eye. We weren’t alone.

Aliens. Everywhere. This whole metal room was full of them. A guy with pointed elf ears and cat eyes was talking to a chick with zebra stripes and this rubbery white-and-black curtain hanging around her shoulders instead of hair. A mostly