Max pulled his bike to the side of the highway and killed the engine.

The sun shone brightly, the road was clean, and dry, and smooth. There wasn't an exit or entrance ramp anywhere in sight. No one would expect to die on this stretch of road. And yet, someone was about to--a twenty-seven-year-old mother and her five-year-old son.

A sleek black Mercedes with dark tinted windows pulled up behind him. Apparently, the woman and child wouldn't be crossing alone.

Humans were too careless. Whatever was about to happen would be the result of someone's bad judgment.

He thought of Lily's long, smooth legs wrapped around his waist. Her hands, flung to the sides and clutching the sheets, a position that put her perfect breasts on display for him. He could be there with her, instead of here, waiting for disaster to strike.

This reap needed to end so he could go home.

Two men stepped from the Mercedes, dressed in identical black suits with crisp white shirts and silk ties knotted at their throats. They approached him with smiles, reaching to shake his hand. "Maximus Metit! We haven't had the honor of working with you in a long time."

"Aspectus. Similis. You look well. Both of you."

They laughed, simultaneously.

Aspectus slid his hands into his pockets and tapped the toe of his flawlessly polished wingtip. "No sign of anything, eh? Less than two minutes to go."

"Not a thing." Max let his eyes glide across the flowing river of traffic. If the Termination Twins, as Daniel called them, were there, that meant there would be at least half a dozen dead.

"Oh, my!" Similis exclaimed.

Max followed his gaze to the little yellow Volkswagen Beetle pulling up behind the Mercedes. The man behind the wheel blended into his vehicle. His yellow hair hung shaggy around his ears, his pale skin had a ghostly appearance behind the glass. He hopped out and strode across the gravel shoulder toward them. "This is going to be quite a pile-up," he declared.

"So it seems," agreed Aspectus, shaking hands with the new-comer.

"Max! I heard something about you," Lux exclaimed, his trademark charming smile stretched across his white-skinned face.

Max glanced at his watch. Less than a minute to go. "That's me. Talk of the town," he replied.

"Oh, the town is talking, brother."

Similis raised an eyebrow. "We haven't heard any good gossip in ages. Just grumbling about the breaches."

"Breaches?" Max asked.

At the same moment, Lux said, "Max married a human."

The twins gasped and, as one, turned toward him, mouths hanging open, but Max was saved from answering. "Look out," he said, pointing at a school bus that was drifting in and out of its lane. Even at this distance, it was easy to see the driver hunched over his phone, but the bus passed by without incident. Just as it disappeared into the river of cars a little white sedan came from the opposite direction. With a terrible bang, the back tire exploded.

The car next to the sedan weaved hard to the right, taking two other vehicles off the road with it in a clatter of screeching metal and then, somehow, the sedan was airborne, upside down and flying toward the concrete median. Bits of the low wall exploded into the road at impact and the battered vehicle flipped into an upright position, landing in front of a tanker truck that ran three-quarters of the way completely over it before tipping onto its right side, crushing a little black Ford under it. The vehicle behind the truck slammed into the tank, and a domino chain of five more vehicles crumpled into one another in quick succession. Four cars went into the grass on that side of the road in the instant before a fireball erupted from the toppled semi.

Similis clapped his hands together. "Well! Time to get to work!" He led the way and the other three reapers trailed along behind him.

Max headed toward the mother and a little boy passing through the fire hand-in-hand. "Hey there," he said. "I'm here to help you."

"I'm a little confused," the mother said, frowning.

He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I know. It's OK."

The truck driver was sitting on top of his cab, looking around.

"Come on down, buddy," Max called. "Time for your next great journey."

The man beamed at the idea.

Max absolutely loved reaping the ones who were ready to move on. Death was almost always a devastation for the living, but for the righteous deceased, it was like the first day of retirement after winning the lottery; a freedom the soul had longed for since the day it was trapped within a body of flesh.

The man shifted to climb down, putting the toe of one boot on the edge of the broken windshield. So much black smoke wrapped around the site of the crash that Max almost didn't notice the darkness reaching up from the asphalt.

"Bloody earth." He shouted in warning to his brothers. "Shadow crawlers!"

Lux reacted in an instant, throwing himself over two women who'd risen from near the median. They disappeared in a flash of light.

"Run!" Max said, holding the woman by the shoulders. "Run into the woods. I'll find you."

She watched the blackness wrap itself around the now screaming trucker's leg.

"Run!" he shouted again.

Clutching her son's hand, she ran.

Lux had reappeared and was trying to herd the souls toward the twins who were shielding them with their bodies. Shadows boiled up from the earth. Five of them. Seven. Eight...

Max launched himself at the trucker, now being pulled across the pavement.

"You have no quarter here, demon! Be gone!"

Hissing laughter rose up all around him. The man was nearly enveloped in darkness now.

Max threw himself on top of the demon, bracing against the chilling horror of Hell. The monster slid through his body and away, leaving the man weeping on the ground. Max pulled him across the divide and dropped him at Azrael's feet. "He'll help you," he shouted, even as he willed himself back toward the fray.

In his absence, the shadow had refocused its attention on a young couple still sitting in their vehicle.

Seven souls were now huddled together with the twins, who were grasping hands, stretching their other arms wide trying to form a barrier between the dead and their attackers.

Lux lifted an infant from a car seat lying sideways near the grass. A flash of light and they were gone. Another and he was racing toward the car with the couple.

Black forms slid across the ground, rose up, and wrapped themselves around the young reaper. He stumbled and strained to push through them, matter flying away from his body.

In the car, the woman was shrieking.

The twins couldn't risk taking anyone across. Neither one of them were strong enough to hold seven at bay without the other.

By the particles of light drifting up to the sky through the smoke and, they were barely managing as it was.

Lux screamed, the sound of an angel cast into Hell. He fell on the pavement under the weight of three demons.

A fourth crawled toward the couple.

"Get out of the car!" Max shouted at them, racing in their direction.

The woman locked eyes with him. He saw the resolve form. She jumped up and grabbed her husband's arm, but he sat, frozen as the form poured through the window, into their car.

Max leaped toward them and, the second he made contact he forced the Gate open and fell through with them.

In the void, Azrael gathered them. "Go!" he shouted, as though Max needed to be told.

On the street again, struggling to maintain focus with the stinging residue of crossing back and forth clinging to him, he raced toward the twins, now little more than two pillars of light separating the dead from their destroyers.

"Be gone!" he shouted as he threw his arms wide. He threw himself between the twins and the demons, a second layer of shielding for the human souls.

The black grief of separation from Light wracked him. The lament of the damned wrapped around him, a suffocating smog of regret. Agony wrenched screams from the depths of his being as he suffered with those whose flesh melted from their bones in the lake of fire. "Be gone!" He wailed through gritted teeth before collapsing to the pavement.

Silence.

Awareness of the world returned.

Not silence, but sirens. The shouts of humans. Weeping souls not far away.

Pavement bit into his cheek. Tears spilled from his eyes. He still had form.

With trembling hands, he pushed himself to his knees. Similis lay nearby, staring up at the sky. Blood trickled from his nose and ears, a thin line of it from his mouth.

Max crawled to him. "You stood strong."

"I am devoured," he rasped.

"No. You will stand another day."

He gave a small nod. "Help me?"

Max rose and held out a hand to help his brother do the same. Together they lifted Aspectus to his feet. His form shimmered, barely retaining its shape.

"Where's Lux?" he asked.

They all looked toward the shattered white car. A dark stain marred the pavement, stinking tendrils of smoke rising up from it.

"God, have mercy," Similis whispered.

"He will," Max said. "The retrievers will help him." A shudder ran through his body. He believed his own words. The retrievers would rescue the young reaper, but he would suffer the fire of Hell until they found him--the pain Max had just endured, magnified by infinity.

Firefighters and paramedics raced, unseeing, around them, toward the bodies in the vehicles. A helicopter sped toward them, the noise and wind a tornado in the midst of a hurricane.

"Can you carry these over? There are others in the woods."

The twins reassured him they could. Already Aspectus' form was reasserting itself, becoming more solid. They would be alright. Max clapped him on the shoulder and jogged off toward the trees to find those who'd run at his command.

The woods stank of sulfur, but the woman and the little boy huddled together, unharmed.

"You did well," Max told them. "Come now. I will show you rest."

Grasping their hands in his, he crossed over.

Azrael waited alone on the other side.

Max nodded to the woman with a reassuring smile. "Go with him, now. He'll take you on."

She clutched his hand with an iron grip. "On, where?"

Azrael stepped forward. "On toward what's next. There's nothing more to fear now. Not ever." To Max, he said, "The warriors assemble."

Max nodded. "It seems prudent."

"Take care, son. Your work is more important than ever."

Max raised his chin a fraction of an inch. "I did my duty today, did I not?"

Azrael held his gaze and said nothing.

Gritting his teeth, Max returned to earth.

The Mercedes was gone. The Volkswagen sat on the shoulder of the highway. He placed a hand on it. "A hasty safe return, brother," he whispered.

Throwing a leg over his bike he kicked it to life and drove in the direction of Dearborn Heights. He was due at an office building there in less than twenty minutes. Death would not wait for him to rest and heal.