A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) (7 page)

He batted them down and slid up her so
quickly she gasped. His thumb still impaling her, he rammed his cock into her
heat and rocked forward with enough force to make her grunt. She quickly
repositioned her legs until they were clamped around his waist tight enough
that it was hard to draw a deep breath. That didn’t matter. He was hurrying her
toward a climax that would do more than take her breath away.

He pushed hard. Pulled back. Pushed deeper.
Held it. Buried his face against the side of her neck. His fangs took her vein
at the very moment the first hard quiver of her vaginal muscles began to
ripple. She arched her head and he was afraid he would tear her flesh but he
moved his mouth with her and drank deeply of the honey sweetness of her blood.
The warmth of it flowing down his throat was like the seed that had flowed down
hers. The thought made him shiver as wave after wave of pleasure undulated
through his woman.

Her hands relaxed in his hair for only
second before he came hard. He rammed savagely into her willing body as her
pulsing muscles milked the cum from his rigid shaft. His last spurt came at the
end of the last little tug that faded into stillness inside her body.

Exhausted, they fell asleep with him still
inside her.

It was the nightmare that tore them apart.

He bucked as though something scalding had
been poured down his back and rolled off her with a wild cry. He hit the floor
facedown and curled in on himself, scuttling into the fetal position, pushing away
from the bed to jam himself as close to the wall as he could get.

Laci shot to a sitting position with her
lips parted, her eyes wide as she watched him flailing on the floor.

The door opened and the sound of crepe
soles sliding across the tile came at him. He crossed his arms over his face
and heard the pitiful sounds coming from the very depths of him.

“Fifty milligrams of
trastacáin
,”
someone yelled. “Stat!”

He was kicking out at whoever was leaning
over him but they grabbed his legs. The wild bellow of rage and terror
resounded through the room and someone else grabbed his arms. He snapped his
head at them—trying to snag them with his fangs—but they pulled his arms over
his head.

“Don’t hurt him!”

That was a voice he knew. A voice filled
with tears and horror and so much hurt it made his heart ache.

“We’re not trying to hurt him, Agent
Albright, but we can’t let him hurt himself, either.”

Running footsteps.

Someone flipping him over so his face was
pressed tight to the floor.

He could see Laci standing beside the
bed—naked and trembling—as the held him down and slammed a vac-syringe against
his neck. The hot payload made him cry out but then his world shut down.

He came to five hours later with Laci
sitting beside his bed, holding his hand. He struggled to push the numbness,
the floating feeling from his head. Her pretty face kept skittering away each
time he blinked.

“Hey,” she said when she realized his eyes
were open.

“Hey,” he mumbled.

“Could I talk to you a minute, Laci?”

He turned his head to see the doctor
standing on the other side of his bed.

The doctor smiled at him.

She squeezed his hand.

“I’ll be back, okay?” she asked as she got
up. She leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead, released his hand
then skirted the bed, following the doctor out.

Alone, Taylor turned his face from the door
to the ceiling. All expression faded away and he began to tremble. Though she
had smiled at him, her eyes were filled with dark shadows that he knew would
become tears as soon as she was clear of those who might see.

“You know I’m not whole, baby,” he
whispered. “I may never be whole again.”

He doubled his fists and pressed the backs
of them tightly to his eyes. He was struggling not to release the scream that
was building in his chest.

The hellion was whispering to him, had been
since he woke with Laci in his arms. It was warning him that Laci no longer
belonged to him and hinting there was another female available to satisfy his
needs.

He knew very little about hellions, the
alien creature known as the Revenant Worm. Residing in the kidney of its host,
the hellion had a symbiotic relationship with the Reaper. It gave him
longevity, psychic powers and the strength of ten human males.

He knew the one that had been taken from
him three years earlier had been male. All Panthera hellions were male. Lupine
and Hell-hound hellions were female and could produce a nest of fledglings
within the host’s body. A fledgling or—under some critical conditions the
queen, itself—could be harvested from a Reaper’s body to be transferred into
the body of a Reaper whose hellion had been destroyed. Fledglings were kept
stored on the Island in case they were needed.

Lupine and Hell-hound hellions could either
be transferred into the body of its host or transferred through Reaper sperm at
conception. Only male children were conceived from Lupine and Hell-hound
matings. Females as well as males were conceived from Panthera coupling and the
children were born with a hellion that was part of their DNA, but only male
Panthera had Reaper powers.

There were other differences as well. Where
the male hellion would not heal scars on the body of its host, the females
would. They wanted their male to be as perfect a specimen as possible. In his
case, he still had a few scars from before he was turned—childhood injuries the
hellion overlooked for it obviously did not find those imperfections offensive.

Where the Panthera hellion would allow its
host to mate with more than one female, the Lupine queen would not. She was a
very jealous and demanding queen. The Hell-hound queens were ambiguous about
the one-mate scenario and more lenient with their Reaper hosts. The mate of a
Hell-hound could conceivably mate with another male but to his knowledge no
Hell-hound had—or ever would—allow such a thing to happen. All Reapers were
extremely territorial with their mates.

What he wanted to know but was almost
afraid to ask was which category of hellion had been transferred into his body.
He knew the hellion given him had been harvested fresh. He suspected the donor
might be Misha Fallon, which would mean the hellion was of the Hell-hound
variety, thus female. If that was the case, Taylor feared the female to which
his new hellion referred was Misha’s Extension, Keenan McCullough.

Dixon Wayne Coulter had been born into
abject poverty in the Florida Panhandle. His first memories were of rainwater
falling from the ceiling into chipped enamel pans littering the kitchen floor.
The smell of rat feces, mildew and stale cigarette smoke permeated the dirty
place where he lived. There were orange crates filled with empty paregoric
bottles his grandmother had stored under the porch. Chickens roosted in the
hard scrabble yard and an old rusted-out Ford pickup minus its tires was jacked
up on wobbly cinder blocks near the dirt street.

Brought up in that ramshackle shotgun house
just outside East Milton, he grew up grubby and hungry and lost. The only good
thing to happen to him came when the State of Florida Department of Children
and Families took him and his six siblings away from their whore of a mother
and her succession of abusive pimps and johns. He had been lucky to land with a
foster family who had tried to do their best by him.

Eleanor and Ned Branch had been good folks.
Religious, fair-minded Methodists, just strict enough to get the full attention
of a rebellious young boy of eleven, the Branches had given Dixon a better
start in life than he had been destined to have otherwise. They had taught him
respect for his elders, given gentle discipline and had instilled in him a love
of God and Country. By the time he graduated Milton High School in June of 1998
he had already been accepted into the Navy and signed the SEAL Challenge
Contract.

Highly intelligent and motivated as well as
street smart, he aced the ASVAB—Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery—with
flying colors. Strong as an ox, determined and twice as stubborn as a Missouri
mule, he then successfully passed the PST—Physical Screening Test. After being
interviewed by a Naval Special Operations Motivator a request for Dixon to
enter the Naval Special Warfare—BUD/S—training pipeline was submitted.

Honor. Courage. Commitment.

He had them all in spades and though the
path was hard, the road littered with those who dropped out, men less motivated
who rang the bell, Dixon stayed the course. The proudest day of his life came
when he received his SEAL Trident and was welcomed into the elite brotherhood
of the SEALs.

Another skill—or as he viewed it, talent—he
had was one the Navy knew nothing about. He’d had it since puberty and had
learned all he could about his newfound ability. Quietly, he had honed that
skill, cultivated that talent, until he had mastered it. The ability had held
him in good stead until the day it failed him.

On November 22, 2012—midway through his
fourth four-year hitch—Dixon’s world came to a screeching halt when he was
captured and sent to the Dhaween camp.

The pain was getting to him and he shifted
to his side. No matter how hard he tried to get comfortable, he couldn’t. The
twisting, burning shift of the creature that had been inserted into his back
was an agony he was finding hard to endure. No training he’d ever had could
have prepared him for the pain shooting through him.

Seven other men—including the news reporter
Jack Donnelson—had died after having the creature inserted in their bodies.
Donnelson had gone insane—as had the other men before him—and had to be put
down.

For nearly three months the sick thing had
lain still inside Dixon—coiled inside his kidney in what The Fiend said was
hibernation.

Until this morning when it began to shift
and turn inside his body.

“Son of a bitch!” Dixon tried to stretch
the pain away but it was still bunched in his right kidney. It hurt so badly he
felt moisture building in his eyes and sweat beading on his forehead. “Leave me
alone you evil fuck!” he snarled as he sat up on the bunk.

“I want my woman!”

Suddenly hearing the alien voice shouting
inside his skull sent Dixon into a tailspin. It made him cry out and flatten
himself against the titanium wall of his cell. The very real fear that he was
going insane like Donnelson and the others came unbidden to his startled mind.

“Find my woman!”

“Woman?” Dixon said, completely bewildered.
“What fucking woman?”

“
My
woman
!”

Pain lanced through his side, doubling him
over and he went to his knees. Outside the window of his cell door he could see
The Fiend staring in at him, could hear him speaking excitedly to someone
standing with him though he was in so much torment he couldn’t concentrate on
what was being said. The cell door opened and two burly guards came at him with
the same mean, excited expressions that heralded torture was high on their list
of things to do that day.

Unable to resist because of the crippling
pain in his back, he felt himself lifted by his arms and was dragged from the
cell, The Fiend walking hurriedly ahead of them, white lab coat flapping.

They took him into one of the two
operatories where many men had been tortured and killed. He was flung on the
stainless-steel exam table and the guards went to work lashing him down.
Ashamed he could not fight back, could not resist, all Dixon could do was curse
the men in Farsi, using every insult he knew.

The Fiend leaned over him and in flawless
English asked, “Is it speaking to you?”

Dixon was in the middle of a terrible burst
of agony and couldn’t answer even had he wanted to. As a result, The Fiend
slapped him brutally then took Dixon’s face in a his grip and asked the
question again.

“
Do not answer!”

Unable to prevent the scream from escaping
as the evil creature inside him sent wave after wave of exacting agony through
his lower body, Dixon saw The Fiend’s eyes widen.

“It
is
torturing you,” the bastard
said. “I know it is! And it is speaking!” He leaned over the exam table. “What
is it saying, infidel?”

“Fuck. You!” Dixon managed to gasp.

Drawing back his arm, The Fiend grunted as
a hand shot out to cup his fist before he could strike Dixon.

Through his pain Dixon recognized the other
man who came into his view and his blood ran cold. As fearful of The Fiend as
he was, the other man instilled terror in him for not only was he the most
wanted man on the face of the earth, he was the most dangerous.

“This is the first time the hellion has
spoken to a recipient,” Sheik Sharif Hassan said in the quietly modulated tone
he always used. “Do not damage the American before the creature has a chance to
fully wake from its hibernation.”

“But he needs to be tested!” The Fiend
protested. “We should—”

“I have told you to wait,” Sharif said with
a finality that made The Fiend move away from the exam table.

“
Protect my woman and I will protect you
,”
the hellion whispered in Dixon’s mind. It stopped writhing and lay still. “I
will
not hurt you if you obey
.”

At that point, Dixon would have done
anything the revenant worm demanded of him. His kidney was on fire. He was
burning from the inside out. He began to realize a craving was building within
him and at the moment he understood what it was his body was crying out for,
demanding, he shuddered and licked his lips.

“I am hungry.”

“He needs Sustenance,” Sharif said and
there was deep satisfaction in his voice.

“Sustenance,” The Fiend repeated. “Yes.
Yes! Kasid, fetch the Sustenance!”

The hunger was escalating to the point
where he was shuddering with need. For what seemed like an hour but could have
been no more than a minute he saw the face of one of the guards appear at The
Fiend’s side.

His head was lifted and a cool glass placed
against his lips. His lips parted of their own accord and a salty, slick
substance flowed into his mouth. It was the most delicious taste to ever burst
upon his tongue. He drank greedily, drawing the rich, warm fluid down his
throat with relish. The moment it hit his stomach, he trembled with pleasure.
When the glass was empty, he growled, wanting more. He was starved for more,
hungry in a way he never had been before.

“He wants more,” Sharif said. “That’s a
good sign.”

“At last,” The Fiend exclaimed.

Something other than intense hunger was
growing within him. He skin was beginning to itch. His entire body ached from
the flood of alien chemicals emanating from the evil thing. His head throbbed
unmercifully and he was sick to his stomach. He began to writhe against his
bonds. He drew his lips back from his teeth and growled.

“Release him,” Sharif ordered, raising his
voice for the first time. “Take him back to his cell.
Quickly!
”

Fingers fumbled at his restraints but Dixon
was rapidly losing all sense of the here and now. He was shivering
uncontrollably and his body was one giant pulse of energy and need.
Comprehension began to set in as he was dragged into his cell and thrown to the
floor. His body was rapidly changing. Fur was sprouting from his naked arms.
Claws shot from his fingertips as his hand became a giant paw. The guards were
scrambling to get away from him. One almost reached the door before Dixon
sprang on him and brought him down, burying newly erupted fangs deep into the
screaming man’s neck.

“Close the door! Close the door
!” The Fiend shrieked.

Dixon tore at the guard’s neck—shaking his
head like the deadly feline he was fast becoming—and tore off a huge chunk of
the man’s flesh as blood gushed from the wound. The guard continued to scream,
to thrash and for the first time Dixon heard the strange hissing-snarl coming
from his own throat as he bit harder into the guard’s neck until he heard bone
break. There was one last wet, gurgling sound and the guard went limp beneath
him.

Throwing back his head, Dixon released a
long scream of rage then snapped his head to the glass window in the cell door,
blood flinging from his whiskers. He bared his bloody fangs and hissed.

Dixon Coulter was even less human than he
had been before the Conversion.

He had become a new class of Panthera
Reaper, the first of his kind.

* * * * *

Sheik Sharif Hassan had graduated with
honors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a doctorate degree
in chemical engineering he had gone home to command the Dhaween, the
Somalia
-based militant group.

Though he hated the Transitional Federal
Government of Somalia—using guerilla and terrorist warfare in an attempt to
destroy it—he had an even stronger loathing for the United States and its
allies, the British. Like most of his fighters, he had little desire for global
jihad. What he wanted most was to bring the U.S. to its knees. In that effort
his army of clan-based insurgents and terrorists had one major objective. They
wanted to capture American Christians, aid workers, journalists, and military
personnel and execute them. They would then leave their tortured, mangled and
beheaded bodies as a warning to those who dared oppose the Dhaween. He was
waging a war against his enemies that was meant to destroy morale and cause
embarrassment as well as anger. An angry man was a careless man and the angrier
the enemy, the better the chance he will make a mistake.

“Spectacular,” Sharif said of the savage
animal glaring at him from the cell. He never flinched when the animal threw
itself at the door and the snarling, hissing creature clawed furiously at the
titanium panel. “What made this man different than the others into whom we
transferred Reynaud’s hellion?”

“I do not know,” The Fiend replied.

“Find out,” Sharif ordered. “If we are to
build an army of Reapers, we must have the blueprints, don’t you agree?”

“Of course.”

“Then see to it,” Sharif snapped. “We know
the creature is immune to poison. See if the man is. I want to know how
powerful he is as a Reaper.”

“I will need to wait until he is out of
Conversion,” The Fiend said.

Sharif gave the scientist a look he hoped
conveyed the ridiculousness of the statement.

“As you wish, Your Excellency,” The Fiend
said with a slight bow.

Leaving the odious man at the cell, Sharif
headed for his quarters. For the first time since capturing Taylor Reynaud, he
could see some light at the end of the tunnel. He had known it would be
impossible to turn the Reaper, to make use of him for Dhaween purposes as long
as the hellion resided within him. The creature governed the Conversions,
administered the strength and controlled the Reaper’s psychic abilities.
Harvesting it from Reynaud had left the Exchange agent defenseless and
vulnerable.

But it had not rendered him susceptible to
the intense indoctrination of the psychological pharmaceuticals that were
administered. Neither physical nor mental tortures—no matter how severe—could
sway Reynaud. Breaking him became a game Sharif intended to win. When it became
apparent a win was not possible, destroying the handsome young American’s mind
and body became the next best thing.

Sharif believed American men were vain,
egotistical, soft. They were cocky and arrogant and believed they had been put
on earth to plunder as many women as they could get their infidel hands on. To
take greedily what belonged to another. He had lost the love of his life to an
American man and for that they would all suffer.

“I don’t want Reynaud dead,” Sharif had
told The Fiend. “I want him alive and suffering every day for as long as
possible. I want him to know I have complete power over his worthless life. I
want him to know he will never see his woman again because of me!”

To that end, Taylor Reynaud had been
horribly disfigured then installed in a cell in which the floors, walls and
ceiling were made from highly polished stainless steel. No matter where he
turned his eyes, the prisoner would see his reflection.

And remember what he had lost.