The Reaper

The narrator is a killer who has made a career of delivering justice from the shadows, and who has never once been the target. Then an ambush against the narrator fails, and everything the narrator believed about their own safety comes into doubt. Finding whoever ordered the attack becomes the only goal.

The search brings the narrator to Father Saint James, a vagabond priest who drifts from one mission to the next while looking for a place to call home. He seems innocent and devout, and he is not. The narrator, used to taking whatever they want, becomes hooked on him.

The attraction is forbidden, and it pulls hard in both directions. Saint James pushes the narrator to face their fears, and the narrator answers by holding nothing back, down to the darkest secrets. Among them is an underground society whose moral compass is questionable at best.

The story is told in the first person by a narrator who describes themselves as a ruthless hunter. It is dark in tone and built on a romance between a killer and a priest. The final line leaves a single grim problem: the narrator has told Saint James too much, and now has to kill him.