A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) (9 page)

But there was from another.

“What the hell are you doing trying to
contact Laci Albright?”

Fallon’s head came up. “That’s my fucking
woman!” he snarled. He rounded on Taylor. “What the fuck do you think you
are…?”

“I was calling Laci,” Taylor snapped,
tugging at his hair. “Not your woman.”

“
Fallon?
” Keenan’s voice was filled
with anger.

“
It wasn’t me
,” Fallon sent to her
but he knew immediately that the psychic bond between them was no longer there.
He gave Taylor a brutal glower.

“
Agent McCullough, it’s Taylor Reynaud,”
Taylor said, eyeing the Alpha whose lips were drawn back over his fangs.
“We’ve got a situation here.”

“How can you be sending to me?”
Keenan demanded.
“And in Misha’s voice?”

“That’s part of the situation,”
Taylor replied.

“I’m on my way down.”

“No!”
Both
Reapers bellowed in unison.

“Tell her to stay where she is,” Fallon
said. “Order her to!”

“Stay where—” Taylor stopped. “We need to
know where she is before I go ordering her to stay there. What if she’s near
the containment cells?”

Fallon shot him an annoyed look. “You’re
not as mentally restricted as you look. Find out where she is.”

“
Agent…
”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Fallon snapped.
“Call her Keenan!”

Taylor ground his teeth. “
Keenan, where
are you right now?”

“In the cafeteria.”

“Tell her to go to our quarters and wait
there until we send Laci to fetch her,” Fallon said.

“
Go to your quarters and stay there,”
Taylor
said
. “I can’t run the risk of seeing you.”

There was silence and both men exchanged
looks.

“Keenan?”
Fallon
tried again and hissed when there was no answer.

“Keenan?”
Taylor
tried for him.

The silence played out.

“Tell her it’s because of something Lily
may have set into motion,” Fallon said.

“
Misha says to tell you it’s because of
something Lily may have done
,” Taylor repeated.

Again there was a long silence. Finally
there was an answer.

“I’m not even going to ask,”
she said at last.
“I’ll be in our quarters until further notice.”

Both men sighed at the same time.

“Tell her to call the nurse’s station and
have Laci turn the intercom back on,” Fallon said. “We need them to get us the
fuck out of here.”

“
Keenan, contact Laci for us, please.
She’s at the nurse’s station here in the trauma unit. Ask her to turn the intercom
back on
,” Taylor instructed. “
We need out of lockdown
.”

“I hate my mother,” he heard Keenan say
before he felt her pull out of his mind.

“Not as much as I do,” Fallon grumbled.

“Tay?”

The sound of Laci’s voice over the intercom
made Taylor’s heart ache. “Yeah, babe. We need you to unlock the door.”

“Is everything copacetic?” That was the
Supervisor’s voice.

“No,” Fallon replied. “We need two con
cells activated. We’ve got issues.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” they heard
the Supervisor ask.

The carnage surrounding him was to Dixon
Coulter as a masterpiece was to a connoisseur of fine art. Blood and flesh and
entrails were stuck to the walls and fragments of bone crunched underfoot as he
walked slowly and purposefully down the gore-slick corridor. The sour stench of
spent life fluids and spilled entrails filled his distended nostrils. It was a
full-bodied perfume that made him smile showing red-stained fangs that had yet
to retract.

He had a destination in mind and was in no
hurry to get there. His quarry wasn’t going anywhere. Let the terror build. Let
the bastard breathe for just a little while longer. He couldn’t go anywhere and
help would not arrive in time. Dixon had used his powers to make sure no
transmissions had left the facility. That all exits were locked and barred so
no one could enter.

More importantly, no one could leave.

He chuckled thinking of how stunned the
outside guards would be when they learned of the slaughter inside.

“You can run but you can’t hide, asshole,”
he called out. “And there is not a fucking thing you can do to stop what’s
coming for you.”

Sheik Sharif Hassan had emptied a .9 mil at
the naked juggernaut coming toward him. Every bullet had stopped just short of
its target and fallen like copper-clad snowflakes to the floor. A thrown knife
had frozen in midair, turned slowly and sped back toward its thrower. Hassan
had twisted away but the blade had sliced through his upper arm. Fingers
wrapped around the gushing wound, the most dangerous and feared man in the
world had fled—shrieking like the coward he was.

He chuckled again when the stunned face of
the Fiend flitted across his mind.

“What
are
you?” the Fiend had asked
when Dixon opened the titanium doors of the containment cell and strolled
toward him with a grin that looked like the rictus of a corpse dead many days.

Dixon could not tell the bastard what he
was because he, himself, did not know. The powers he had begun to develop on
his twelfth birthday had descended upon him without warning or explanation.
They appeared as mysteriously as an overnight pimple and were just as raw to
the touch. He discovered he could look at a page of written material and
memorize it in the blink of an eye. Not only memorize it but understand it—no
matter how complicated or esoteric.

It wasn’t just the sudden ability to
memorize massive amounts of information at one sitting. He had total recall and
anything he saw he could bring back to mind hours, days, weeks and months
later—no matter how intricate. Building plans, schematics, map coordinates were
stored into his memory like the melody of a song that gets stuck there. He
could bring up the plans and schematics at will.

He suddenly had the ability to learn any
language he wanted to speak in a matter of hours and speak it with the correct
accent, inflection and grammar as though it was his native tongue.

But there were other powers that were as
dark as the night he realized he possessed them. He had feared those powers.
Trembled each time his anger got the better of him and he accidentally used his
mind to mentally or physically push another person without even touching them.
He’d hurt boys on the playground and in the gym when he hadn’t meant to because
he had yet to learn to control that one ability. He had to be careful because
he knew there were other powers—possibly more lethal ones—lying dormant in his
mind.

Before an hour ago, he had not known he
could levitate objects and stop them from touching him. He could see the shades
of the dead walking the corridors where they had died and knew he could
converse with them if he desired. He could now read minds and use his own to
influence others, bring them to him, make them put a gun to their head and blow
out their brains. With little effort he had disengaged the lock on the
containment cell door with focused concentration so he knew he could manipulate
inanimate objects. The most surprising ability was that of making himself
completely invisible to those around him, walking past guards who never knew he
was there until it was too late to do anything about it.

Though he had yet to attempt it, he somehow
knew he could send his thoughts as well as his corporeal body over long
distances without much effort at all.

He had giggled like a schoolboy when he
realized he could levitate his body so that he moved along without his feet
touching the floor.

And he could transform into a savage beast.

“How neat is that?” he asked. “What the
hell can do that?”

“
A Gravelord,”
the thing inside him
whispered. “
That is what I will call you
.”

“Gravelord,” he repeated, liking the sound
of it.

“
I have enhanced the abilities you came
into when the Black Ascendency settled upon your shoulders
.”

“Cool,” he said, not knowing what the Black
Ascendency was or how he came to have it bestowed on him. There would be time
to ask questions of the thing inside him.

He was nearing the place where Sheik Sharif
Hassan was hiding. He had no need to see the man. He could smell him and his
fear.

And hear the wild beating of the man’s
thundering heart, the quiet whimpers that were pushing from his constricting
throat.

His hands—which now had the strength of
twenty men—curled into fists. The flesh was sticky from the blood he had shed,
the organs he’d torn out, the bones he had snapped in twain.

The Fiend had been the first to die when
the cell door snicked back into its track and Dixon came sauntering out as
though off for a morning stroll. Once again in human form, though double in
body mass, he had taken hold of the man who had tormented him, showered such
terrible pain upon him for months and literally ripped him limb from limb
before thrusting a fist into the man’s body to pluck out his intestines.
Screams of agony had brought two guards running to the Fiend’s aid. One guard
had been lucky. He died of a broken neck. The other—who had done brutal things
to Dixon that were worse than physical pain—left the world in a haze of
savagery that left the former SEAL covered in gore.

Thirty men later, Dixon stood outside the
barricaded doors of an office and smiled. Behind the door was a man who had
doled out torture, dismemberment and death as casually as he took a piss each
morning. His infamous cruelty had made him a legend in the Islamic world. The
power he wielded in the Dhaween was about to come to a screeching halt but not
before Dixon dredged from Hassan’s mind the names and locations of other
terrorists.

* * * * *

“
Who the fuck are you
?”

Dixon stilled, shocked to hear the angry
voice stabbing through his head.

“Who the fuck are
you
?” he answered
before realizing that had not been the smartest thing to do. He completely shut
down his mind yet still felt something buzzing at it, clawing at it, trying to
gain entry.

He looked around him but saw no one staring
back at him. Just to be on the safe side, he did what he had done in Hassan’s
torture palace. He turned himself into a fine wisp of smoke, but unlike at the
Dhaween encampment where he had drifted under the door to the locked room where
Hassan had hidden, this time he wafted away on the hot Somalian wind.

Floating above the crowds in the bazaar he
searched for the likeliest candidate to have mentally shouted at him. The
moment he found the culprit, he hovered above him—watching the prick searching
for him.

“
You’ve a creature inside you, too
,”
he thought.

He studied the tall, dark man pushing his
way through the crowd. Though he didn’t lean that way, he had to admit the man
was strikingly good-looking with thick black hair and emerald eyes far too
sensuous to be found on a male.

“A mere Reaper,”
the creature told Dixon
. “Panthera, though. The same as you.”

“But not as powerful?”

“No, not as powerful,”
the creature replied.
“And as yet without a life-mate thus not
as dangerous as one who has a female to protect.”

“Such as me.”

“Aye, Gravelord. Such as you.”

“I want my woman,”
he told the creature.

“And you shall have her.”

“When?”
he
demanded.

“Soon.”

Not soon enough to suit him. The mere
thought of the lovely woman from his beastly dream made him hard, made him
ache, made the beast inside him claw and twist and growl with need. He longed
to hold her, touch her, sink deep into her sweet body. He wanted to experience
the honey of her kisses, the slide of her silken flesh under his. His heart
hurt just thinking of tasting the nectar between her thighs.

But there was one more camp to destroy
before the creature would let him leave the hellish heat and stench of Somalia.

“Pirates,”
the
creature had advised
. “Very bad men who prey on travelers and military ships
alike. Their leader is almost as bad as was Hassan.”

So there was another dangerous target that
needed extinguishing.

“You are doing the goddess’ will,”
the creature whispered
. “Stand fast, Gravelord. You will have
your woman soon.”

The Exchange two weeks later

“We’ve got a situation,” the Supervisor
told those gathered.

“What kind of situation?” one of the
directors asked.

“There is a very powerful
balgair
wreaking havoc all over the Middle East,” the Supervisor said. “He is going
through al-Qaeda, Taliban Hamas and Hezbollah installations like a hot knife
through butter. The kill count of terrorist leaders is now over fifty and
climbing. Not only is he assassinating the leaders, he is destroying their
compounds. And he isn’t just going after terrorists. He annihilated an entire
band of Somalian pirates this morning.”

“How do you know he’s a Rogue Reaper?” the
same director, Gilbert Charles, asked.

“Darkyn Sorn sensed him,” the Supervisor
said then held up his hand to forestall the director asking another disruptive
question. “Sorn went to Somalia to capture an
asoon puksa
causing
mischief over there and caught a whiff of the Rogue. He tried to triangulate
his whereabouts but the bastard shut down completely, hiding himself from the
Prime. That’s how we know he’s powerful and that he’s Reaper.”

“Sorn is the Alpha at Tearmann?” another
director wanted clarified.

“Yes,” the Supervisor said with an annoyed
sigh. “He is Panthera.”

“
Asoon puksa
?” Director Charles
queried.

“For the love of Alel!” the Supervisor
snapped. “The creature has the upper body of a giant and the lower body of a
bird of prey! It devours large animals and the occasional human. Satisfied? Now
stop interrupting me!” He swiveled his eyes around the table. “All of you!”

“Our apologies,” Director Charles mumbled.

“We need to find this
balgair
,” the
Supervisor stated. “We need to find him and question him. On the surface it
looks as though he is fighting for our side but he may have some nefarious
agenda of his own.”

“In other words we need to know if he’s a
good witch or a bad witch,” Director Nealson quipped.

“Or just a flying monkey,” Director Charles
said with a chuckle.

“Are you finished being stupid?” the
Supervisor bellowed.

Chastened, the two men looked down at the
table with their lips tightly compressed.

“Sorn told his Supervisor the man is very
powerful. If he can shut out a Prime Reaper as commanding as that Alpha, he is
a force with which to reckon,” the Supervisor turned his attention to Taylor.
“I know you don’t want to go back into the field again but I need to send Albright.”

Taylor’s forehead creased. “We no longer
have a psychic link available to us,” he said, glancing quickly at his mate. “I
don’t know how effective we would be together.”

“You wouldn’t be going,” the Supervisor
told him.

“You want to send me alone?” Laci asked.

“Hell no!” Taylor snapped. “She isn’t going
on any missions without a backup!”

“Then send Darkyn with me,” she suggested.

“That’s not going to happen, either!”
Taylor said. “He’s not mated.”

“No, but I am,” she reminded him.

Her mate snorted. “Apparently not at the
moment.”

“I am
mated
,” she said firmly. “To
you.”

“The
balgair
has already had a
run-in with Darkyn,” the Supervisor said. “He managed to hide from our man so
sending Tearmann’s Alpha is out of the question. Apparently he had no trouble
homing in on a fellow Reaper but he won’t sense you coming, Albright. You
aren’t hosting a hellion so he won’t be able to scent you in that way. All we
need to find out is if he’s what he seems or if he’s got something evil in
mind.”

“Will she be able to discern that?”
Director Charles asked.

“She’s a very talented cognitive empath,”
the Supervisor said. “Of course she will.”

“What makes you think he won’t recognize
her for what she is?” Director Hallicun inquired.

“There are psychics of myriad varieties all
over the world. I’m sure he recognizes each of them when he comes into contact
with them. He won’t be expecting one to be more interested in him than any of
the others who sense he is one of them.”

“If he is as powerful as Darkyn says,
wouldn’t he shut down the psi signals he’s giving off in order to hide from
those able to sense him?” Taylor asked.

“He can’t keep powers that intense hidden
all the time,” the Supervisor said.

“And especially not when he’s going after a
target,” Laci put in.

“Precisely,” the Supervisor said. “I
understand you are concerned for her safety, Reynaud but we don’t need Albright
to interact with him. We just need her to evaluate him from a distance. If she
believes he’s on the up and up, then she can safely approach him and let him
know we want to speak with him.”

“What if he tells us to go screw
ourselves?” Taylor asked.

“We have a large network of people at our
command,” the Supervisor reminded him. “We have facilities all over the world.
We have tons of data on terrorists and criminals intent on setting this world
on fire. Considering what he is doing out there, it seems he wants to eliminate
such threats. Surely he would want to work with us to have our vast resources
at his disposal. Right now he’s a one-man army. Joining with us would be to his
advantage.”

“And ours,” Laci said.

“Yes,” the Supervisor agreed. “And ours.
There is also an advantage to bringing him here to work with us.”

“What advantage?” Director Charles
questioned.

“Since Reynaud has resigned as the Alpha, we
need someone to replace him,” the Supervisor replied. “If this man is one of
the good guys and is willing, we could turn him into the next Viraiden Cree.”

“That’s a scary thought,” Director Nealson
said. “One of Cree is more than enough.”

“This man could be an invaluable asset to
the Exchange,” Laci said. “We won’t know though until we talk to him. I believe
it’s worth a try.”

Taylor turned his full attention on his
mate. “Are you sure about this,
chere
? Do you think you can handle the
situation?”

“I will be careful,” she told him.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “Not one damn
bit.”

“I will be careful,” she repeated then
reached over to lay her hand on his arm. “You know I’ll have people watching my
back.”

“She will be safe,” the Supervisor said.
“No Reaper would hurt a woman. You know that.”

“No, but he’s a
balgair
,” Taylor
said. “They’ve been known to kill women.”

“There have been women at the camps and
installations he’s attacked. He’s made sure they weren’t hurt but he did put
them out of commission,” the Supervisor told him.

“How?”

The Supervisor glanced at Laci then back to
Taylor. “He wiped their minds. In some cases all the way back to childhood.
Their minds are clean slates upon which the evil they were taught can be
overwritten.”

Taylor’s eyes widened. “And you want me to
permit my woman to come up against a man who can do that?”

“Those women didn’t have psi abilities,
Tay,” Laci said.

“You don’t know that!” he flung at her.
“What if he gets control of your mind, Laci? What then? By the gods, no!
No
!”
He shook his head vehemently. “I am not going to allow you to go!”

“Allow me?” she questioned, her eyes
narrowing. “
Allow
me, Taylor?”

He raised his chin. “You heard me, woman.”

She stared at him for a long time as
silence spun out in the room then she slowly nodded. “Screw you, Reynaud,” she
said then turned to the Supervisor as she shot to her feet. “When do I leave?”

“I think you two should go to your room and
discuss this,” the Supervisor ordered.

Laci shook her head. “I’ve no need to
talk—”

“We’ll talk,” Taylor snapped and snaked out
a hand to grab her arm. “Come on.”

“Now wait just a damn minute! I’m not your
fucking bluetick coonhound,” she said but he was already pulling her toward the
door even though she dug in her heels like a stubborn mule.

“Woman, do what I say!” he told her.
“That’s a fucking order if I need to make it one!”

She looked helplessly to the Supervisor.

“He’s still your Extension and thus in
control of you,” the Supervisor said with a hunch of his shoulders.

“Stop yanking on me!” she spat as he tugged
her from the room.

He ignored her as he dragged her behind
him. She clamped her mouth shut not wanting those they met in the corridor to
be privy to their argument. They were getting curious looks that turned to
heads being put together and whispers susurrating as they passed.

“You don’t have to hold my arm so tight,”
she said through clenched teeth.

“You gonna try to run in the opposite
direction?” he countered.

“No.”

He took her at her word and released her
arm. She matched his long-legged stride until they reached the room they
shared. He slapped his hand on the ID panel and the moment the door shushed
open, he waved her in.

“I am going,” she said as the door closed
behind her.

“No you are not!”

She opened her mouth to argue with him but
before she could he had her over his shoulder and was carrying her—kicking and
beating the hell out of his back—into the bedroom, his every step jarring her
belly. He tossed her onto the bed. She tried to scramble away but he snagged
her ankle and jerked her back.

“Where you think you going,
chere
?”
he asked through gritted teeth.

“Fucking me isn’t going to change my mind!”
she hissed.

“Maybe not but I guarantee you I’d be
remiss for not trying!” he snapped. “I hope you ain’t all that fond of this
blouse.”

She almost giggled for his Cajun accent had
come out thick on the “gair-rohn-tee you” as it always did when he got good and
riled, but the moment he grabbed the lapels of her blouse and rent it open, she
lost all desire to laugh.

“Fuck you, Reynaud!” she shouted. “That
cost me a month of credits!”

He didn’t answer for he was reaching for
the waistband of her skirt. She batted at his hands but she knew—just as he
did—that this wasn’t a fight she could win. He had superior strength and was
quicker and was apparently madder than she was. It didn’t take him long to have
her naked beneath him with his body pinning her down, both her wrists clamped
in his left hand and his right hand cupping her sex.

“You wanna argue with me,
chere
?” he
asked ominously. His hand tightened between her legs, his middle finger digging
in.

“I am going,” she stated, chin up, eyes
narrowed.

“And I say you ain’t.”

“It’s my job,” she said.

“It ain’t if I say it ain’t.”

She was going to play dirty and the moment
she made the decision to do so her entire soul ached for it but it had to be
done.

“You’re no longer a field agent. I still am
and I have a job to do.”

The moment the words left her mouth he
flinched and his face turned pale for a split second before high color invaded
his cheeks. A muscle flared in his jaw and she could hear his teeth grinding.
His eyes were fused with hers and the vein in his neck was pulsing rapidly. He
didn’t say anything for a long time then he drew in a breath, let it out
slowly.

“That was a low blow,
chere
,” he
said softly, his voice filled with hurt.

“It’s the truth.”

“You gonna go whether I like it or not,” he
said, taking his hand from her crotch and reaching instead for his zipper.

“I am,” she replied.

“Then you’re gonna go with me inside you,”
he snarled. He released his cock and moved over her, brutally shoving her
thighs apart.

It was rare for them to have gentle sex.
She preferred it hot and heavy for he was her ragin’ Cajun but this was
punishment sex.

And that was okay, she thought as he rammed
his hard cock into her. She didn’t mind it at all. The force turned her on. He
jacked his hand under her rump and lifted her with an ease that made her body
quiver.

“He’ll smell me on you,” he said, thrusting
hot and heavy into her. “He’ll know you’re mine!”

“Works for me,” she said. “Let go of my
hands.”

He did and she arched her fingers into
claws and jammed them into the muscles of his back. He shifted slightly against
the sting then increased the speed of his thrusts. She raked her nails down his
back—drawing blood—then dug them into his ass.

“You’re playing with fire,
chere
,”
he cautioned.

“You want the honey,
cher
, you gotta
endure the sting.”

He chuckled, pulled out and flipped her
over in one fell swoop. Swiping his arm under her waist, he jerked her up, kneed
her legs apart and entered her from behind.

“Let’s see how you like my stinger,” he
countered a second before his head came down and he sank his fangs into her
shoulder.

She cried out but he was already coming
inside her the moment he drew his first taste of her blood. His cock thickened
and hardened even more—filling her, stretching her to the point it almost hurt.

But it felt so good. So right. And when he
snapped his hips forward one final time she came around him like moths to a
flame.

“And that’s how it’s done,” he said, laying
the side of his face on her back.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “You gonna help me
pack?”

* * * * *

The Supervisor sat with his hands folded,
staring down the long table at Taylor. “I understand your worry,” he said.

“Do you?” Taylor asked. He was pissed that
he had been ordered to stay behind after the others had been dismissed. He sat
slumped in his chair, glaring at the man he held responsible for Laci’s mutiny.

“You are having trouble sensing her, aren’t
you, son?” the Supervisor asked in a fatherly voice that surprised the Reaper.