Reaper III: Rookies

  REAPER III: ROOKIES

  Amanda M. Holt

  Reaper III: Rookies

  Amanda M. Holt

  Published by Amanda M. Holt at Kindle Direct Publishing

  Copyright 2012 Amanda M. Holt

  Discover other titles by Amanda M. Holt

  at Kindle Winter/Spring2012

  Kindle Direct Publishing Edition, License Notes

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  Dedication:

  “For my readers...You’re the sole reason I do this! When 25,000 copies of the first two Reaper installments moved on Amazon (this past week) I was so excited by your response – and so very humbled!

  I’m so thrilled that you had faith and interest enough in my writing to take a peek at Book III in my Reaper Series! If you love/hate the series, please leave a review on Amazon! It’ll make me a better writer, in the long run – leading to more satisfying reading! Don’t forget, I’m a complete and utter amateur, so be honest – even if the review is negative, hey it’s a learning process…

  Keep an eye on my blog at www.amandamholt.wordpress.com and my Amazon Author Page at www.amazon.com/author/amandaholt -- I will be using those two sites to advertise the 5 day promotional FREE Kindle eBook downloads that Amazon allots for each title release.

  As soon as I upload each title in the Reaper Series, that’s where I will be advertising the dates that you can download them for FREE!

  My sincere thanks!

  Happy Reading!

  Amanda M. Holt

  Amateur Authoress and Aspiring Household Horror Icon”

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  Your purchase of this eBook has allowed me to generate a donation of from the royalties that I’m collecting – a donation that I have earmarked for Siloam Mission, a non-profit organization in Winnipeg, Manitoba (Canada) that attempts to meet the needs of homeless, disadvantaged and high risk street-involved people.

  Even though they are a Christian faith-based/faith-central charity – and I myself do not identify as being a Christian (certainly not a practicing one) – their mission is one that I find admirable.

  I have been monitoring their efforts for some time now and contributing to their cause in the form of support, encouragement and donations.

  Now that I am releasing my Reaper Series as a self-published body of work, I have every intention of donating a portion of my royalties from multiple books in this series to Siloam Mission.

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  Reaper III: Rookies

  Amanda M. Holt

  -1-

  I was not without competition at the police academy.

  From the moment I crossed the threshold of the academy’s main hall, I felt constant competition with and irritation toward one character in particular.

  Dan DeMilo was an arrogant shit of a man who made a clear first impression on me from the very first ignorant remark of his that I overheard.

  “They have a quota, you see,” DeMilo had been telling one of the other recruits. “They have to hire so many of certain ethnic backgrounds and so many women. It’s called equal opportunity. I call it a shame that my own brother didn’t make the cut. He’s a Caucasian male, after all. Me… I have two college diplomas and I was on the waiting list for two years. Caucasian male, you see. It’s blatant racism and sexism, I tell ya.”

  He gave a gruff laugh, but the only truly funny thing was, the ignorant moron didn’t seem to understand that his own comments were blatantly racist and sexist.

  He continued by stressing, “Being a Caucasian male is a double whammy against us. They probably deduct ten points from the interview score sheet for that alone.”

  From that point on, I felt the pressure to excel, to prove that I wasn’t there just to fill some administrative quota or represent my gender, but because I was fit to become a police officer.

  I was out to prove myself worthy of the title.

  I was measured in many ways at the academy, but none so harshly as by the scrutiny of DeMilo, who certainly bore an old-fashioned grudge against women who dared to call themselves his equal.

  He didn’t come right out and make remarks against your womanhood, since it would be evident sexism that he could be disciplined for, but he seemed intent on making me feel uncomfortable, making me feel like I was a less worthy than he, less than adequate to be in my station as a Probationary Police Officer with the City’s police force.

  And lucky me – I got to be in his training group, along with three other women and twelve other men.

  Hooray.

  We got to hear a lot about him and his accomplishments, since DeMilo was something of a braggart, boasting often about his background, the long lineage of cops from his bloodline who had served in our city.

  His father was a cop, as had been his father’s father, one of his brothers and two of his three uncles—the third uncle being a fruit for deciding to become a nurse in DeMilo’s eyes.

  With every irresistible opportunity that he had when the Instructors were out of earshot, he made comments about the women in the group, about our suitability for the job.

  Comments that he never seemed to make about the men in our group.

  We had done nothing to deserve to be the targets of his snide remarks and skewed observations. If we did happen to make a mistake—which all beginners were prone to do—he made our mistakes well known by obnoxiously broadcasting our newbie flaws to any who would hear him.

  He was especially vocal during the times that we were training at the firing range, constantly making comments about how he didn’t feel safe around us with guns in our hands, or some other nonsense related to our use of the training equipment.

  On one of these occasions, after one commentary too many, I lost my temper with him and did something I probably shouldn’t have—I grabbed him by his shirt collar and put him up against the wall.

  I had barely put any effort into the move, trying to make it more of a warning than an assault, but I still heard the loud thud behind him as he connected with the brick. If DeMilo or any of the others noticed my supernatural strength, they said nothing of it.

  “Ooh, the rose has thorns,” he muttered, smiling down at me from the five inch height advantage he had over me.

  “Shut your stupid mouth before I shut it for you, DeMilo.” I held him by the front of his shirt, pinning him against the wall. “I’ve had it with your comments.”

  “That’s enough, Bennet,” the Training Officer warned me, sounding a bit surprised by my behavior. “Let him go.”

  Wishing that I could punch DeMilo in the face, I instead obeyed the stern order of the trainer and released him, venerated somewhat by the pallor that had appeared mask like over his ignorant grimace.

  I had shaken his cool demeanor and it showed. “Just like a woman, to fly off the handle like a-“

  “De Milo, can it already,” warned our Firearms Instructor. “Before your mouth gets you into something your ass can’t handle.”

  DeMilo snickered. “Don’t make me laugh. I could handle her, anytime, anywhere.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” I snarled at him, ready to pick a fight.

  The instructor was unimpressed with
us and made it clear with his announcement, speaking mostly to DeMilo. “The both of you are getting a written reprimand for this. You, DeMilo for being unable to keep your mouth shut and Bennet for reacting so poorly to your big mouth.”

  DeMilo glowered at me for the rest of the exercise.

  Now I had made an enemy at the academy.

  Nevertheless, by standing up to DeMilo, I had made greater allies out of the women in our group and I think even most of the men – with the exception, of course, being DeMilo himself and his little fan club of adoring assholes.

  Regardless, they all seemed to respected me more for putting him in his place, despite the unprofessional nature of the outburst.

  In fact, taking him off his feet might even have put the fear of women into De Milo.

  If nothing else, at least the comments had stopped.

  Yes, surprisingly enough, he was keeping his mouth shut around me though likely, this was not the case behind my back. Despite his apparent silence, I admit, any time he was near me, I half expected his big mouth to open again and start running off accusations about women being here only because of quotas that needed filling, or some other such garbage.

  Knowing that he despised me kept me on edge.

  I didn’t trust my temper around him, so, I was glad for his golden silence.

  I didn’t want to get into any more trouble with my instructors who, despite the incident with DeMilo at the firing range, seemed fairly impressed with me.

  I knew why they seemed pleased. I stood out from the crowd in all of our testing areas. I was succeeding in proving myself as a person fit to become a police officer.

  I was perhaps one of the most fit of all the recruits they were testing.

  In our obstacle course training, even when I wasn’t trying, I could lift and push and pull a surprising amount of weight despite my feminine form and had to be cautious not to draw attention to the presence of the Dark Thing in my augmented strength.

  The physical component was only part of my success.

  I was also doing well in all of my other classes, from Human Behavior and Criminal Law to Traffic Law and Policy and Procedures. Even in Report Writing, Crime Investigation Procedures and Safety Practices, I was acing the programming.

  I also wasn’t a bad shot at the firing range during our firearms drill. I usually shot a tight cluster in my target area. I wasn’t nervous around the firearms, even though my first time handling one at the academy was also my first time handling one at all.

  Our graduation date drew nearer and nearer, until finally, the day finally arrived.

  It was hard to believe that my time at the academy had come and gone – how quickly those four months had flown by.

  I had learned a lot about what it would mean to be a police officer, but I didn’t feel changed in any significant way. I hadn’t let my training at the academy affect the other areas of my life. I even managed to sneak out of the academy barracks on a few separate occasions to answer the bloodthirsty call of the Dark Thing, without affecting my performance in any of my classes.

  Graduating from the police academy wasn’t that much different from graduating from college.

  My parents were there with their digital camera and supportive smiles. My eleven year old brother, Darren, still thought it was cool that his big sister was going to be a cop. He had not grown out of the sentiment over the years.

  He wanted to be a firefighter, which probably horrified my mother even more than the idea of her daughter becoming a cop.

  “Fine! Be a cop. Whatever makes you happy.” My mother had finally relented, once I had told her the news of my acceptance letter, back in April. “Just don’t expect me to be too thrilled about it.”

  I hadn’t expected her to be thrilled.

  I was secure enough with my place in the world and my relationship with her, that her approval—or lack thereof—didn’t bear much weight with me.

  In fact, I wasn’t becoming a police officer to fulfill or deny any of her expectations. I was doing this to carry out my part in making our society a better, safer place and within the confines of the legal system. Not to mention, being a cop would pretty much secure my access to all kinds of resources that I could use in my fight against the evils that lurked in the City.

  Being a police officer was a noble way to fight crime. On the other hand, I could do much more in my off duty hours, as the wielder of the Dark Thing.

  Lord knew, the Dark Thing didn’t care too much about breaking the law in order to exact justice…

  We broke a lot of laws, the two of us, in our symbiotic relationship.

  I still didn’t know much about the vampiric exoskeleton.

  I knew what it could do.

  That it was a shield as much as it was a weapon.

  That somehow, it knew where to find the worst breeds of human monsters.

  That it needed to feed on the blood of those human monsters in order to maintain our shared strength, and that when the Dark Thing fed, it somehow also passed visions of the criminals crimes against society into the forefront of my mind.

  This was definitely the most frustrating, upsetting and detestable part of our conquests.

  The passage of the visions.

  I hated it.

  I didn’t like seeing what those vile bastards had done to their victims.

  I didn’t like seeing the exploitation of the weak, the infliction of all that pain and suffering.

  What I did like was the pain and suffering of our victims.

  This was also a tangible part of the bloodletting.

  Rather than fill me with dread, as the visions of their crimes did, the sensation of my victims’ suffering was a balm to my soul, a quenching to my thirst for vengeance, a nourishment to my ravenous rage, a satisfying conclusion to any violent encounter with the vermin of society…

  Sometimes, after the Dark Thing took its feeding, drawing the blood of our victims into its black reptilian skin that was second to my own, I was left feeling much less than human and a little more than damned.

  Who was the greater monstrosity, though?

  The villains I faced in the night, who seemed to be growing in number no matter how many times I hunted and dispatched of them – or the woman in the living suit of unknown origin, with her assorted weaponry, superhuman strength and seemingly limitless hunger for the blood of the guilty?

  It was a question I put to myself more often than not.

  It was a question I dared not put to another living soul.

  No one knew my secret.

  Some had seen my face and lived to tell the story…there were a few known witnesses.

  Yet I was alone in this.

  Alone and desperately wishing that I could share my secret with a sentient being.

  The Dark Thing, it knew my secret.

  It was my secret.

  But besides its nudges and pulls and pushes and impulses – and the bloodletting visions – it never so much as whispered to me.

  Would it ever tell me where it had come from?

  Would I ever know?

  Was its secret in a dusty tome on a shelf in an archive somewhere, or on the website of some obscure cult, or written in the stars, or passed along in the oral history of an indigenous people, or buried in a government filing cabinet somewhere?

  Was it alien?

  Ancient?

  Some kind of secret military weapon?

  A curse?

  A mutation?

  Secrets.

  Questions.

  It was a wonder that I had passed the psychological exam for the police force…

  Graduation come and gone, I was thrilled with the division they assigned me to in our fine City.

  Ours was the 67th precinct.

  We were one of the largest precincts, with a wide variety of services and residential areas in the geographical area of our jurisdiction. We had broad cultural appeal which included churches from several denominations, synagogues, public and private schoo
ls. Two hospitals, a number of strip clubs in what was basically a red light district, a small China Town, a Little Italy and a strong Hispanic community.

  The ratio of the residential population to the services sector was a percentile of roughly sixty to forty, or two thirds, depending on what zone you were in.

  The 67th Division itself was divided into seven different zones, which were patrolled by police on foot patrol, on motorcycle and by car.

  My first two days at the 67th were my orientation days, where they showed me to the desk in the workspace that I would be sharing with my partner – who I had not yet met.

  They showed me what paperwork went where, how to log unto the computers and navigate the various systems, how to file reports, where my locker was, where the showers were, the small gym for our use, et cetera.

  I was given a tour of the entire building – from the bullpen where my desk was, to the briefing room where we would be meeting at the beginning of every shift.

  From the interrogation rooms (of which there were six) to the holding cells (of which there were a dozen).

  From the small cafeteria with its modest menu to the parking garage, where the squad cars were kept.

  I wasn’t actually given a squad car until I was assigned to a Training Officer.

  This man would also be my partner for the first four months of my probation, if not for the duration of my time as a Rookie cop on patrol. Everybody had to start somewhere, with someone and in hindsight, I am grateful that I had Phil Conner as my partner.

  What can I tell you about Phil Conner?

  I may as well start with my first impression of the guy.

  That day in January, I was sitting in the Captain’s office, shooting the shit with her, waiting for my Training Officer to arrive when someone knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Captain Briggs called out and the door opened, her smile welcoming a tall black man in the dark blue uniform of the beat cop.

  He was at least six foot four, with a bit of grey mixed into the black of his short cropped hair. He had a small paunch on him, the kind of belly that men get when they have a wife who cooks too well or too often – or both.