Prime Reaper (21 page)

“
Hold on tight, my Reaper
,” She had laughed in his stunned brain. Soaring along faster than he ever could have imagined, Bevyn knew a fear unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Barely able to draw breath as they sped along, he was trembling from head to toe. Her forty-feet wingspan pounded powerfully at the air to send them careening across the night-darkened land so rapidly, everything below them was a blur.

Hearing a vile curse, he looked up through his fingers to find the goddess in Her human shape pacing back and forth. She was so beautiful his groin ached with a fiery burn that made him groan with helplessness.

“What is taking them so long?” Morrigunia snarled. Her red hair floated around Her shoulders like seaweed on the surface of the ocean. The pale green gown She wore was diaphanous and did nothing to hide the lushness of Her shapely body. Even the pale gleam of reddish curls at the apex of Her thighs was visible. For once Bevyn hated his ability to see clearly without light and turned away from the sensual sight of Morrigunia’s long legs and ample bosom. He shuddered violently, clutching his arms around him.

“Oh here!” the goddess snapped and Bevyn’s uniform—complete with six-shooter, laser whip, dagger, boots and hat—appeared on his body. “How, may I ask, did you think you would enter the fray naked as the day your dam birthed you and weaponless, Coure?” She threw at him.

Bevyn hadn’t thought that far in advance. He’d simply wanted to be with his teammates. Shivering from the cold that had lashed at him as he had clung so desperately to the goddess’s back, he was grateful to have his nakedness covered.

“T-there’s a Reaper in deep trouble,” he managed to stutter.

“Aye, I know,” Morrigunia growled, and the sound sent prickles of terror through Bevyn Coure. She continued to pace—whipping around vigorously with each circuit, Her nails digging furrows into her palms. “Come on, Jaborn. Come on!”

Bevyn looked up. “Jaborn is the one in trouble?”

“Tohre is,” the goddess replied.

Bevyn liked Owen and the news made his heart ache. “Will he die?”

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Morrigunia spun around and fixed Her Reaper with a look that would have killed a lesser man. “Aye, he will die,” She thundered. “And he will die in agony!”

* * * * *

Owen lay on his belly, his wrists and ankles pinned down by four gruesome beings he knew must be the Ceannus. Above him stood a fifth Ceannus—a female—and she was smiling at him with such hatred he felt the hair stir on his arms. When she bent over him to rip his shirt down the back, he knew what she was about to do but when the deep cut bit into his flesh, he forced himself not to make a sound.

“Take them all,” the female said, “but be especially careful of the Queen. Harvest her gently.”

One by one, in twos and fours, in clumps, a sixth Ceannus pulled the hellions from the Reaper’s back and dropped them into a large beaker held by the female. It was an excruciating agony that brought a bloody sweat to his body. Nothing else save the drawing of his organs from his body could cause such devastating pain as spread over him when his Queen was pulled from him. His jaw was clamped tightly shut, his eyes as equally closed and his hands were clenched into fists as the torment continued until he could feel the Ceannus’ hand fishing around inside his back.

“I believe I have them all, Your Majesty,” the being said.

“You had best have them all!” the female growled.

“I do,” the being stated. “I am sure I do.”

“Good,” the female said. “Now turn him over.”

His black blood was all over the wooden table to which they had pinned him and as Owen was flipped over to lie on his back, he could feel the congealing slickness of that blood. But even knowing he was about to die—his Queen removed along with her offspring—the hideous form leaning over him put stark horror in the Reaper’s amber eyes.

The female Ceannus was seven feet tall with arms and legs as thin as rope and equally as flexible. She had thin hands with bulbous sucker-like pads on the exceedingly long and spade-like fingers while her thumbnails were wickedly long and sharpened to a point. No hair grew on her pale, gray warty body and she wore no clothing to cover that vile expanse. Her oversized slanted eyes were black in color and lacked pupils, appearing as evilly faceted as those of a housefly. She had no lips—only a thin slit of a mouth behind which small, barbed teeth could be seen in the stark white orifice. Her chin was sharply pointed and her wide nose was vented with triple rows that served as nostrils. The only clue he had to her sex was the mesmerizing voice that came from her pencil-thin neck and the fact she had introduced herself as Alalexisa Acklard, daughter of the martyred High Lord and Chosen Consort of Raphian Himself. 114

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Owen was dying, his strength rapidly fading. He was bleeding out from the massive cavity that had been opened in his back. All he could do was lie there and stare up in to the loathsome face of his executioner.

“How many came with you, Reaper?” she asked. “Where are they now?”

When he did not give her the information she sought, she bid the two beings holding his ankles to remove his boots.

“Perhaps a cut up each instep will loosen your tongue,” she told him, and nodded at one of her helpers.

The Ceannus holding his right ankle easily held down Owen’s leg with one hand as he used the wicked thumbnail of his other hand to cut a deep furrow along the bottom of the Reaper’s foot.

Pain lanced through Owen but he kept his lips firmly closed though he panted from the effort of doing so.

“No?” the female asked, making a tsking sound. She rested the pads of her fingers on his cheek for a moment. “Should I have Tragel gouge out an eye instead?”

Owen turned his face away from her touch.

Cringing from the repugnant sweep of her fingers down his face and along his neck, he grunted when she ripped the remainder of his black silk shirt from his body and tossed it aside, trailing those disgusting appendages over his flesh.

“I like hair on a man’s body,” she said, swirling her fingers over his thick chest hair. She idly rested one sucker-like pad over his pap and the bulbous mouth of it closed like lips on his shrinking flesh to suckle him.

“Get your fucking hands off me, you ugly bitch!” Owen bellowed, unable to bear the sickening feel of her finger on him.

The female tilted her oversized head to one side. “You do not appreciate my touch, Reaper?” she asked, and the slits of her nostrils flared. It was then Owen felt something wriggling under his skin and realized it had to be one of his fledglings. One was left inside him and it was gnawing into his kidney with a vengeance! The pain was fierce and he was hard-pressed not to show it but the very agony gave him hope that he just might survive to pulverize the bitch tormenting him. From the corner of his eye, Owen saw Kasid Jaborn enter the room. The Ceannus did not notice the Akhkharulian’s arrival for they were absorbed completely in the man they held pinned to the table. He saw Jaborn discover the two devices Owen had been about to activate sitting on another table. He knew he had to make sure the Ceannus did not realize Jaborn was in the room and give his fellow Reaper a chance to shut down the Net.

“I’d rather have a ghoret in my britches than have you put your foul hands on me, you cunt!”

Fury hissed from the female’s mouth and she put her hands on the waistband of Owen’s leather uniform pants and with a strength that stunned him, ripped them as 115

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easily from his hips as if they were made of tissue paper. “Let’s see how much you’ll enjoy this then!” she shrieked at him.

The slimy feel of her fingers wrapping around his cock sent waves of nausea through Owen Tohre. There was some kind of acid oozing from her palms and it was stinging him so brutally, he howled with the agony of it. It seemed to be eating through his flesh. His balls were on fire and he shuddered, jerking forcefully beneath the fierce hold of the Ceannus. She was twisting his genitals, jerking upon them. He could hear the males laughing at him and it was a hideous sound that brought shivers to his spine. Between their braying laughter and his trills of agony, none of them heard the twin pops that disabled the Net and shut it down.

It was the head of one Ceannus flying across the room that alerted the female danger had found her. Her head snapped up and she glared at the Reaper who—even as she watched—took the head off a second and third Ceannus. Owen bucked in the horrid grip of the female. Her hand was still wrapped around him, the pads of her fingers sucking against his sac so forcefully he couldn’t move even when the two Ceannus who had been holding his ankles slid heedlessly to the floor and the one holding his right arm followed close behind.

Jaborn snapped the laser whip and the Ceannus holding Owen’s left arm lost his head, his body whirling around like a top as it pitched to the floor. The female spat like a cornered cobra and with a speed Jaborn could not have imagined, grabbed the arm of the only surviving Ceannus—the one holding the beaker in which Owen Tohre’s hellions were housed—and shot out of the room in a blinding blur.

Owen screamed so hideously that Jaborn staggered back, appalled at the sound. He barely noticed the other Reapers crashing into the room behind him as Tohre flipped off the table to land facedown on the floor among the headless bodies of the Ceannus.

“The Net is down and Morrigunia is coming after the
guirt
,” Arawn managed to tell Jaborn before the Prime Reaper hurried over to Owen.

Glyn was right behind Arawn and the two of them carefully lifted Owen up. Owen was unmoving. His body was covered in his own black blood.

“Get him on the table,” Arawn snapped and as soon as they’d laid the still man on his stomach, the Prime Reaper had his dagger drawn. He flipped the blade around and extended the hilt toward Glyn. “Take my Queen from me now!”

“No,” Glyn said, refusing the blade. He ripped his shirt open. “You take mine.”

Iden and Phelan pushed a table over beside the one on which Owen was lying and Glyn stretched out on his belly. From his place at the door with Jaborn, Cynyr looked out to see a bright flash of light shooting away from the compound.

“There was another ship,” Jaborn commented.

“Aye,” Cynyr said in disgust.

The two men moved closer to where Owen lay.

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No one spoke as Glyn’s Queen was harvested from his back and placed inside Owen. They could hear the voices of children outside but none of them went to investigate for they were waiting, hoping, praying, the cut on Tohre’s back would close. Every eye was glued to the long incision. They didn’t even notice when Bevyn walked in.

“Come on, Owen,” Arawn said. “Don’t give up.”

Glyn was holding Owen’s hand and the ragged cadence of Kullen’s breathing was loud in the room.

For what seemed like hours the men stood there beside their fallen teammate. Now and again they could see the Queen buckling under the still man’s flesh as though she were looking for a place to burrow. Once, she poked her scaly green triangular head from the slit on his back and glared at them then slithered down inside him once more.

“Someone go get Her,” Arawn said, his jaw clenched.

Cynyr turned to do as the Prime Reaper commanded, saw Bevyn and blinked.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

The others turned to look. “
How
the hell did you get here?” Arawn demanded.

“She brought me,” Bevyn said. “I’ll go get Her.”

“I don’t think you’ll have to,” Glyn said quietly.

The men gathered round and watched in silence as the incision in Owen’s back began to slowly close. For a full torturous minute the flesh knitted itself together—

tendrils wrapping around tendrils, filaments of flesh bonding—and when the strain became almost more than the Reapers could take, Owen Tohre took a quick, ragged breath, his lungs inflating with a sharp wheezing sound.

* * * * *

Arawn sat down on the edge of the water trough and ran a tired hand through his thick hair. His men were still in with Owen for none of them wanted to leave the stricken man. The sight that had greeted them as they had turned him over had ripped through them all like a heated sword.

“They castrated him!” Glyn had howled.

As Owen lay there breathing shallowly, as pale as death, Jaborn had explained to them what the female Ceannus had done.

“She must have torn off his genitals when she left,” Jaborn said. Arawn was sickened by what had happened and though he knew Owen would live, it was a hideous fate the Prime Reaper knew Tohre faced. He hung his head, closing his eyes to what the future held.

“
Dia duit, mo athair
.”

The young voice greeting him as father surprised Arawn and he looked up. 117

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Six feet away, a young boy with dark hair and amber eyes was standing beside Morrigunia, whose hands lay lightly upon the lad’s shoulder. A lump rose up in Arawn’s throat for looking at the child was like going back in time. The boy was a carbon copy of Gehdrin at the same age.

“
Dia duit, mo mac
,” Arawn managed to return the greeting to his son. He looked up at Morrigunia.

“His name is Guaire,” the goddess said. “He has yet to learn any language other than the old one.”

“
Conas tá
, Guaire?” Arawn asked his son how he was doing. The boy shrugged and the mannerism was so like his own, Arawn felt tears gathering in his eyes. “
Táim go maith
.”

Morrigunia bent down and whispered something in the child’s ear. Guaire nodded gravely then lifted his hand in farewell. “
Go raibh an Ghaoth go brách ag do chúl
,
mo
athair
,” he said gravely.

“
Go raibh an Ghaoth go brách ag do chúl
,” Arawn said in a choking voice, bestowing on his son the Reaper blessing of the Wind.

“There was a single fledgling left in my Owen before that bitch took his manhood,”

Morrigunia said. “Have no fear for him, Arawn.”