BlackWind (25 page)

“Don't fret, dearling. You won't be here all that long. Just until we are sure he has gone back to his lair.”

The word “lair” sent a shudder through Bronwyn. “Then it's true? There really is a Nightwind?”

“Hush, child!” one of the older nuns cautioned. “Do not say the word!”

“He is an incubus, Bronwyn. Every twenty years or so one of his kind comes to test us,” Mother Mary Joseph told her. “He comes for the lonely girls, those he feels he can tempt to his side. So far, we've only lost one to him.”

“What happened to her?” Bronwyn asked, her voice quivering.

The Reverend Mother made the Sign of the Cross. “She hung herself from the balcony rail.”

“He...sp...spoke to me,” Bronwyn confessed.

“We figured as much,” Mother Mary Joseph replied. “The poltergeist activity witnessed in your room this evening and the chaos he caused in the main hall was a sure sign you had more than a passing acquaintance with him.”

“Oh, God,” Bronwyn cried, burying her face in her hands.

“It will be all right, now. Father O'Malley will see to it.” She smoothed the hair from Bronwyn's forehead. “Just place your trust in us and all will be well.”

Bronwyn made her home in the cramped cell for a little more than two weeks, and at the end of the time went with some trepidation back to her room. It took all her courage to go to the window that first night back, pull aside the curtain, and look up to the crest of the hill. Though she willed him to appear, the Nightwind did not show. Neither did his phantom voice and ghostly hand reach out to soothe her.

When she took to her bed that night, she wondered where Sean was and when he would come for her.

This was to be his first assignment. He had been placed under the watchful eye of Alistair Gallagher, the oldest of the Reapers. Sitting in the sedan car, waiting for their target to come out of the Dublin pub, Sean felt nauseous, more nervous than he had ever felt in his life.

“Killing ain't hard,” Alistair commented as he ratcheted a hollow-point bullet into the chamber of his .45 automatic. “After the first one, it's all a piece of cake.” He eyed Sean, sitting in the passenger seat. “Ye will more than likely puke, though, and if ye feel like ye be gonna, don't ye dare do it on me shoes or I'll plug ye ‘tween them pretty blue eyes. Ye get me drift, laddie?”

Sean nodded. He didn't trust himself to speak for fear his voice would break like a pubescent boy's. His palms were slick with sweat, his mouth dry. The Russian-made machine pistol sitting across his lap trembled from the quivering of his jittery legs.

“What did ye think of her when ye first saw her?”

Sean looked at the man who had been assigned as his partner. “What?”

“The Queen, laddie,” Alistair snarled. “What did ye think of her?”

Realizing the Reaper was talking about the creature in the Room, he shook his head. “I nearly shat my britches.”

Alistair hooted with laughter. He slapped a hand on his bulging thigh. “I reckon that be what most of us felt!”

Sean looked at his watch, wondering how long the Englishman was going to stay in the pub. He wanted to get this over with. His nerves were stretched so fine, he thought he well might start screaming and never stop.

“What did she do?” Alistair asked, his eyes narrowed. “When ye waltzed in there?”

Sean knew the details of what happened when Brian had taken him to see the Queen revenant had been bandied about at Fuilghaoth within moments of their occurrence. There wasn't a soul at the complex that didn't know what had transpired in that sickening room.

“I don't want to talk about it, okay?” Sean grated.

Alistair twisted in his seat until he was facing Sean. “Why not?”

Mustering a courage he truly didn't feel, Sean looked at the other man. “Just let it drop.”

Shaggy red brows rose into the sparse bangs plastered limply to Alistair's wide forehead. The pockmarked face with its deep craters and thick blackheads hardened. “Don't forget who ye be talkin’ to, laddie,” he threatened. “Ye don't want to go makin’ an enemy of me just yet.”

Sean looked away, his jaw clenched, a muscle working in his cheek. He stared out the window, trying to calm his frazzled nerves, but the more he tried not to think about what had happened inside the Room, the firmer the image became etched.

Brian had come for him right after Dr. Dunne left, the doctor's threats still heavy in the air. Sean was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, his stomach a twisted knot of misery. He was trying desperately not to cry, to give in to the hopelessness he was feeling. When the door opened, he didn't even look up.

“Come with me,” Brian ordered, his voice a bit gruffer than usual.

Sean lifted his head, letting his hands fall between his knees. He stared up at the man who had fathered him, a man he didn't think he would ever understand, then stood. He didn't ask where they were going.

He didn't really care.

Walking beside Brian down the corridor, he felt warm, too warm. He ran the back of his hand under his chin.

“We have to stop in the lab first,” Brian told him, and they detoured down a long, windowless corridor.

They were waiting for him in the lab. The technician stepped forward, hypodermic in hand, and told him to remove his shirt. Sean did as he was told.

“Sit here,” the technician said, indicating a gurney.

The alcohol on the cotton swab was cool against his flesh, but the sting of the needle penetrating his neck was excruciating, and it was all he could do not to cry out. He jammed his hands into fists at his side and willed the burning pain spreading through his veins to ease.

“You'll never get used to the sting of the tenerse,” Brian said.

Sean made no comment. He resisted the urge to reach up and rub the burning agony in his neck.

The closer they came to the Room at the end of the corridor on the second floor, the warmer Sean got. His mint green shirt was soon plastered to his back and chest. His head began to hurt, but not with the same debilitating pain he had experience the day before.

“As I told you, the tenerse will help lessen the severity of your Transitions,” Brian commented. “Believe me when I say you wouldn't want to try changing without it on hand.” He shuddered. “I know from experience that can be brutal.”

Sean kept his attention locked on the black door at the end of the white corridor. He sensed a faint vibration beneath the soles of his shoes and could hear an electronic hum that rasped along his nerve endings.

“This is the first thing new recruits see when they come to Fuilghaoth,” Brian was explaining. “Most men...”

Sean tuned out the words. He was feeling nauseous again. His face was so hot, he felt as if he was inside an oven. An irritating itch had developed along his shoulder blades and along the nap of his neck. One he scratched; the other annoyed him, but he would not ask his father to relieve the sensation.

“One thing, though,” Brian said. “Don't stare at it too long. It does weird things to you.”

They were at the black door. There was no handle. On the wall was a palm print sensor, its opaque surface in sharp contrast to the stark white walls.

Brian pressed his palm against the PPS and the door slid open on silent pneumatic rails. He held out his hand. “After you.”

Sean felt the hair stir along the base of his neck and wanted nothing more than to turn and run as fast and as far from this place as he could get. But the steady look emanating from his father's stern face made him all too aware of his predicament. He wouldn't get ten yards before being captured.

“You know better than to even try,” Brian whispered.

Walking into the 12 x 14 room was like walking under water. The pressure was severe, pushing down on Sean's shoulders like an invisible weight. He found it hard to lift his feet. Light played along the shiny walls in undulating waves, reflecting from the muted milky glow coming from a large glass case sitting in the room's center. There was a strong smell of sulfur and the room was so hot it was hard to breathe.

“How's your head?” Brian asked.

“It hurts.”

“How bad?”

Sean shrugged. “Just a dull ache.”

“Good. That means the tenerse is working.” Brian put out a hand. “No closer.”

Sean was looking at the eerie glow inside the glass case. The liquid inside it was perfectly still. As opaque as it was, he could see nothing at all.

“She knows you're here,” Brian commented, shifting his shoulders as though something were perched atop them. He reached behind and massaged the area over his right kidney.

Sean became aware of a nagging ache in the small of his back. It wasn't painful, simply irritating. But the longer he stood there, the more intense the ache became until he realized he was acutely uncomfortable.

“Your parasite is waking,” Brian told him. “The tenerse put it to sleep, but the call of its mother is too strong to resist. When it wakens fully, you'll wish it had stayed asleep.” He rubbed his back. “I wish I'd had a shot of the drug myself!”

The pain grew until it became an agony that threatened to buckle Sean's knees. He moaned. When he did, the thing inside him squirmed under his flesh. He screamed and dropped to his knees as though he'd been poleaxed.

“Steady as she goes, lad,” Brian said. Sean heard the pain in his father's voice. The older man was suffering, too.

From his servile position on the floor, Sean thought he saw movement behind the glass. When the liquid appeared to ripple, his parasite bunched under his ribcage, then slithered over his spine and pushed against his left kidney.

“God!” Sean yelped, falling sideways and curling into a fetal position.

“Not good,” Brian hissed.

The next thing Sean heard was the door opening and closing, and he knew he was alone in the room.

And the Transition began.

Now, looking back on it as he sat in the car with Alistair, he could think about it objectively. At the time, he had been too stunned, horrified beyond words. The pain had been unbelievable, the agony worse than anything he could have ever imagined. The sight of his fingernails arching into thick black talons had shocked him to the depths of his being. The howl that had issued from his throat as human speech fled and the animal inside him took over had been enough to freeze the bloods in his veins. But it was the hair on his arms multiplying, thickening, spreading into a coarse brown fur that sprang from his flesh like wiry tentacles; the shriek of his nose elongating into a wet black muzzle, the nostrils opening and dripping copious snot; his teeth sharpening, dropping into wicked fangs that cut his pebbly tongue; his eyes turning into rabid slits that cast a crimson glow on the milky fluid beyond the glass; the sound of his body bulging in places it shouldn't have, ripping his clothing to shreds as his spine arched, elongated, then fanned into wide haunches attached to powerful legs and long furred paws, that turned his world inside out.

Inside him, the parasite had tried to break free of his flesh. At one point as he lay writhing on the floor, his body a mass of agony, he wished the vile thing would pop free. He could do nothing but lie there at the mercy of the creature and allow it to change him into a nightmare no sane mind would ever entertain.

The horror was almost more than he could take. When the pain grew so intense he thought he would be ripped apart, he passed out, his blood so hot it bubbled in his veins and his panting so loud it echoed off the stainless steel walls.

When he awoke, the milky liquid inside the glass had turned a sulfurous yellow. The stench was so vile, so overpowering, he thought he would pass out again from lack of air. Weakly, he pushed himself up, ashamed of his nakedness, looking about for the remnants of his clothing and realizing there was no scrap large enough to cover him.

The room had turned ice-cold. He was shivering, his breath pluming in the air. He sat up, wrapped his arms around himself, thankful he had returned to human form. He shivered uncontrollably.

And She had come to the glass.

At first he wasn't sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. From everything he had been told about the revenant worm found inside Viraidan Cree's bog-preserved body, it was a hideous, satanic viper with sharp fangs, slit tongue, and scaly skin. What he saw undulating behind the glass, though, was a long, willowy creature with stubby wings, a face like a cat, and a tail curled up like a sea horse.

“My son,” She purred and her voice was soft, seductive, sultry, and low-pitched.

He pushed up from the floor, aware he was no longer cold, but embarrassed at his nudity. He put his hands to the juncture of his thighs to cover himself.

Her laughter was like the rippling in a pond. It washed over him, soothing him, making him smile.

“Come, my lovely,” She bid.

He walked closer, his gaze fused with her soft green eyes, chatoyant as they peered from the yellow liquid.

“Mine,” She said.

At her silent command, he dropped his hands to his side. He felt her heated scrutiny sliding over his manhood, yet was not in the least ashamed of the hard erection that came unbidden.

“I have waited so long for you to come home, my child,” She whispered. “Now all my children are home with me.”

He closed his eyes as an unseen hand stroked down his back and over his bare flanks. He swayed as that ghostly appendage spread over and cupped his member, assessing.

“I am well pleased,” She said and the erotic touch slid from his body.

Sean moaned, but did not move. His eyes were locked with her lovely green ones and he became lost inside their velvety depths.

“You are Reaper,” She said. “And perhaps something even more. Come to me, my child...”

When he left the room an hour later, both Brian and Dr. Dunne were waiting for him in the corridor. They stepped back, looking him over for any sign he might not have fared well from his first Transition.

“You did well,” Dunne said, then turned to Brian. “Does he bear Her mark?”

Now, Sean touched the tattoo on his left shoulder. He had no recollection of the symbol being burned into his flesh that day more than two weeks ago, but with all the pain he had experienced then, a brand such as he now possessed would have been a minor thing.