BlackWind (28 page)

“We can't allow Brell or anyone else to take you,,” Brian said. “The Brits would create evidence to convict you, sentence you to death and, when they tried to carry out that sentence, you'd give them the surprise of their lives!”

Dunne chuckled. “That would almost be worth handing him over just to see the looks on their faces when they realize he can't die.”

Sean leaned back in his chair. “So what do we do?”

“Get rid of Brell,” Brian stated.

“And the source of the problem,” Dunne added. When Sean turned a heated stare on him, Dunne rolled his eyes. “Not the girl, but the father! As long as he's allowed to plot against you, he unknowingly is plotting against Fuilghaoth. We need to make sure he can
not
pose a threat to our existence.”

Sean tensed. “Are you ordering me to kill Bronwyn's father?”

“What do you think?” Dunne asked.

“I won't do it!”

“Father or daughter,” Dunne said with a yawn. “Take your pick.” When Sean said nothing, simply stared at him, the doctor cocked one shoulder. “Either the father dies or the daughter. I'll leave the decision up to you.”

Icy hatred washed through Sean. He knew all too well that what Dunne promised, happened. If he did not agree to kill Dermot McGregor, another Reaper would go after Bronwyn, and her death would not be easy.

“What's it to be?” Dunne pressed.

“Think before you speak,” Brian cautioned. He put a hand on Sean's knee.

Sean knew he had no choice. “When?”

“As soon as we locate Brell. Chances are he's nearby.”

“You want me to take him out, too?”

“We'll have Alistair do it, unless he is with McGregor. If that's the case, you can kill two birds with one bomb.”

“A bomb,” Sean repeated.

“The preferred choice of the lads.” Dunne chuckled again. “If they think you are IRA, they'll not question the manner of assassination.”

“I'll get what you need,” Brian remarked. “Plastique is the best medium for this kind of thing.”

Sean looked at Dunne. “Is that all?”

“For now.” The doctor leaned back in his tall leather swivel chair. “You may go.”

Coming to his feet, Sean turned his attention to his father. “The gods damn you for ever laying eyes on my mother.” That said, he stomped from the room.

“Such an impressionable young man,” Dunne sighed. “And growing more difficult to control by the day.” He steepled his fingers. “I hope we won't have to terminate him.”

Brian felt the gash of a warning scraping down his back. “I'll handle him, Sir. He'll come around. I'll see to it.”

“He's due for his next Transition—when?”

“The end of next month.”

“No tenerse after the third week,” Dunne ordered. “Put him in a containment cell and see what happens when he goes against his masters.”

Remembering all too well a similar lesson applied to him, Brian tried to dissuade Dunne from acting on his vengeance.

“He will be brought to heel, or terminated!” Dunne vowed. “Either way, I'll have no more trouble from that whelp!”

“Don't dawdle, laddie,” Alistair said, “and be careful ye don't blow yourself up.”

Sean ignored his partner. He got out of the car, cast a quick look around the dark street in front of the Flying Wench, then dropped beside the car Dermot McGregor had rented. He scooted under the vehicle, attaching the box with the heavy-duty magnet glued to its top to the inside of the wheel arch. After making sure the wires sticking from the end of the box were exposed, he slid from under the car. Standing, he dusted the grit and dirt from his faded blue jeans and sauntered back to the sedan, where Alistair waited. He got in.

“Good boy.” Alistair chuckled, looking down at his wristwatch. “We've got a while to wait, I reckon. Might as well take a snoozer.”

His attention riveted on the death vehicle he had created, Sean crossed his arms over his chest to still his trembling. Though he had gotten used to dispatching the occasional Parliament member or loyalist, he knew he would never be able to justify the evil he was doing. Each successive killing made him ill. He had yet to finish an assignment without puking.

“Ye ain't Transitioned enough to want to go for the blood,” Alistair had told him. “But it'll happen. Can't stop it.”

Despite the two Transitions that had turned him into a slathering, howling beast, Sean had yet to crave the taste of blood that Brian insisted he would. He had yet to desire anything other than the vegetarian meal prepared especially for him. He thought perhaps his secretive nightly excursions to the chapel at Fuilghaoth and the hours he'd spent on his knees begging God not to allow him to change into a full-fledged blood beast had slowed the process.

But he knew the day was fast approaching when no amount of prayer, no humble entreaties to his God, would stop the inevitable.

He feared that day when he would change into a creature, like the one he'd observed in a deep containment cell. The memory of that loathsome monster still gave him nightmares.

“Thinking of Johnny, are ye?” Alistair inquired.

Though he practiced trying to conceal his thoughts, Sean had not mastered the technique, and the occasional pondering filtered out for Brian or Alistair to read.

“Johnny had a right-good case of the bloodlusts, he did,” Alistair snorted. “That's the worst of a Transition when you reach that point.”

Sean looked at his partner. “Have you ever reached that point?”

Alistair grinned. “Many's the time, laddie, and passed it.” His grin widened. “As will ye. Drove Johnny mad, though. Some can take it and live with it, and some can't—Johnny couldn't.”

The thought of turning into the ravening animal he had seen in the deep containment cell set Sean's teeth on edge and brought a cold sweat to his forehead. “I pray every night that will never happen.”

The older Reaper chuckled. “Praying is a waste of time, lad. Ain't a matter of
if
, Seannie. It's a matter of
when
. Ye can eat all them filthy vegetables ye want and it won't keep the bloodlust from comin’ of its own accord. Ye be skating on thinner and thinner ice, laddie. Sooner or later, ye will break through and, when ye do, there will be no turnin’ back.”

Sean scrunched down in his seat. He turned so he could keep watch on the entrance to the Flying Wench. “The tenerse is bad enough. I can’ t begin to imagine what the blood will taste like.”

“Right salty, it is. Can't do without it on a daily basis once the bloodlust Transition occurs. Ye'll know soon enough.” Alistair reached under his seat and pulled out a pint flask. “Wanna sip?”

Sean knew what he was being offered, so didn't look. “No,” he snapped, but as soon as his partner uncorked the flask, he inhaled the metallic stench of fresh blood and his mouth watered. He unconsciously licked his lips, even though the thought of consuming the vile liquid made him gag.

“Ah, now that's a real pick-me-up, it is!” Alistair said, smacking his lips. “Sure ye don't want a taste, laddie?”

“No!”

Alistair's giggle made Sean dig his fingernails into his palms to keep from lashing out.

“Might as well relax. It'll be a while ‘fore the show begins.”

Sean laid his head against the window glass. He had felt jittery, wired as tight as the bomb under Dermot McGregor's car. A part of him was upset Bronwyn's father would die come morning, but another part of him rejoiced. It was that side of his new personality that he found the most disturbing. It bothered him to realize he was becoming immune to watching people die, blasé about ending a fellow human being's life. He worried about his lack of sympathy for the men he'd helped kill and the offhand attitude toward death that was becoming a part of his psychological makeup. He brooded over his inability to dredge up a sufficient amount of guilt over the killings. He knew he was becoming as callous and unfeeling as the other Reapers.

“Ye think too much,” Alistair mumbled. “That is the biggest problem with ye, laddie.”

“I wasn't born to kill.”

“Sorry to be the one to tell ye this, Seannie, but, aye, ye were. That is exactly why ye was born. No amount of going to that there church you kneel down in every week will help you, lad. You are marked same as us all. If there really be a heaven and hell, you know where you'll be going!”

Sean knew that was partly true. But he had yet to come to terms with the inevitability of the ways things would be for him from here on out.

“She'll hate me for this,” he said softly.

“I told ye, I'd be the one to detonate the bloody bomb,” Alistair growled. “Ye be worryin’ the situation like a dog after a bone. Forget it!”

“Not that I'll ever see her again.” Sean's voice was even softer.

“Count that a blessing, laddie. Ye'd not want to and have to worry ye might jump her and make another of us.”

Sean flinched. “That I do not want.”

“Then, like I say—count it as a blessing that ye won't be seeing her.”

Bronwyn's lovely face drifted through Sean's troubled mind. He ached with a need to hold her, press her sweet body to his. He longed to kiss her, stroke her sleek flesh, and plunge himself into the heat of her.

“That's it,” Alistair grated. “Make yourself sick with wanting her and me horny as hell with the images ye be wafting around in the ether!” He punched Sean's arm. “Cut it out, now!”

Tamping down on the thoughts running through his mind, Sean concentrated on the inn's sign—a witch astride a broom. He stared at the ugly, bulbous nose of the hag, the black pointed hat and stringy dark hair flying from under the grin.

“That's more like it. Looks just like me ma.” Alistair laughed. “Mean old hag that she was!”

Despite his turbulent thoughts and tight belly, Sean smiled.

It would be his last smile.

Bronwyn woke to find the cart in which she'd been riding unmoving. She sat up, looked around, and frowned when she did not see Cedric. She called him several times and, when he did not answer, scooted out the back of the cart. The horse was munching on a mound of hay that had been dropped in front of him; he was tethered to a hitching post before of a small, white-washed stone cottage.

Thunder boomed, drawing her eyes to the heavens. Lightning flared, stitching across the horizon. The sky was a bruised color that boded ill for travelers in open carts. The wind picked up, bringing with it a cold wash of dampness.

She looked at the cottage's closed door, tucked her lower lips between her teeth, and decided it would be prudent to see where she was and where Cedric had gone. Hitching up her courage, she walked up the short gravel path, stepped onto the shallow porch and knocked lightly on the door. When no answer came, she knocked again.

“If you're looking for the McMahon's,” a voice called to her, “they've gone to Londonderry to see their daughter. They won't be back for another week.”

Bronwyn turned to see a handsome young man standing by the cart. She came off the porch. “Have you seen the man who owns this cart?” she asked.

“I own the cart,” he replied.

Bronwyn shook her head. “I mean the man who was driving it. The man who brought me here.”

“You mean Cedric?”

“Yes! Do you know where he is?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Caught a ride home with the Daly boys.”

“He said he'd take me to Belfast. He said—”

“Cedric has never been to Belfast in his life.” The young man chuckled.

“I have to get to Belfast,” she said, tears gathering in her eyes. “I have to find my son.”

He cocked his head. “You're an American.”

“How far are we from Belfast?”

“Not all that far,” he answered, “but with a storm coming, I'd sure advise against trying to get there today.”

“Then what am I going to do?” she cried, swiping angrily at the tears.

“Well, you can wait it out with me.”

When she gave him a disbelieving look, he held up his hands.

“I am not a serial killer and I've not ravaged a pretty girl in—” He lowered his arm to look at his watch. “Oh, about twelve hours, give or take a minute of lust or two.”

Despite her nervousness and disappointment, she smiled.

“You're welcome to come in and wait out the storm. They usually pass in an hour or so. I can make you some lunch.”

Another vicious boom of thunder shook the ground. Bronwyn looked at the black sky. Lowering her gaze, she found herself staring into a pair of amber eyes that were kind and gentle.

“How often do you do your ravaging?” she asked.

He grinned as he walked toward her. “Every twelve hours or so.”

“Comforting thought.”

“Sometimes sooner,” he said, coming to stand before her. “It depends on how lovely I find the lady.”

“Naturally,” she said, oddly at ease.

He stuck out his hand. “Danny Hart.”

“Bronwyn McGregor,” she replied, taking his hand. She was amazed at the strength in his grip and the heat of his flesh.

“What's a Yank doing riding in the back of my cart?” he inquired as he opened the door for her.

“Cedric picked me up near Galrath,” she replied, casting him a warning look.

“Ah, running away from that hell-spawned school for wayward girls, are you?” He laughed, sweeping out his hand to indicate she was to precede him into the cottage.

“I didn't know the cart wasn't Cedric's.”

“A fact he fails to mention ninety-nine percent of the time. He borrows it on occasion and takes it up to Muckamore. Brings it back when it suits him. He had it about a month this time.”

“I take it you have other transportation.”

“A motorcycle and a German runabout.”

“You don't mind him borrowing it, then.”

“He's kin,” Danny sighed. “Getting a bit long in the tooth to be out and about ravishing the countryside's lovely ladies, but he can hold his own now and again.” He winked. “Like me.”

The inside of the little cottage was spotless, with a warm peat fire blazing in the hearth and candles glowing softly on the mantel and kitchen table. The smell of bread baking mixed with the aroma of a stew bubbling on the stove made Bronwyn realize she was starving.

“You can wash up through there,” Danny said, indicating a door. “Soup and sandwich sound okay?”