WesternWind 4 - Tears of the Reaper (27 page)

“Oh my Owen,” he heard her say. “I really liked that!”

He opened his mouth to speak but her giggle stopped him.

“Can we do it again, now? Please?”

Chapter Fourteen

He gently eased the covers back and was preparing to rise when he felt her hand at the small of his back. He twisted around and looked down at her in the faint glow coming from the window. Dawn was just spreading its rosy fingers against the midnight blue velvet of the sky. They had slept little and he was exhausted, but it was a good exhaustion that had left him in a rosy glow that made his heart content.

“You are leaving now?” she asked.

He took her hand in his and brought her palm to his lips, turning his head to place a soft kiss on her flesh. “Aye. Go back to sleep, y chree. I’ll see you in New City.”

She wanted to protest his going but she knew this was something he felt he had to do. “You will be careful?” she asked.

“I swear,” he stated, kissed her palm once more then released her hand. He stood and walked over to the chair to retrieve his pants.

Rachel lay there on her side with her hands tucked beneath her cheek and watched him dress. He was an uncommonly handsome man with a body with which any woman would be tempted to sin. His chest was broad and matted with a pelt of soft hair that made her breasts tingle just looking at it. The striated muscles rippling down his belly and the dark line of hair that pointed to that most glorious part of his anatomy that had given her such intense pleasure the night before brought a sigh to her lips. He was tugging the tight leather pants over his lean hips—covering up that long, thick instrument of bliss—and she couldn’t stop from giggling.

“Something funny, milady?” he asked, cocking a dark brow at her.

“You wear nothing beneath that leather,” she said. “Doesn’t the matter get cold?”

“Reaper body temperatures are high and inside the leather, the matter stays comfy warm,” he said, grinning. He sat down in the chair to draw on his boots. “That’s not to say the matter wouldn’t welcome further warming at your tender hands when we’ve the time to spare.”

“Ah,” she said, her toes curling beneath the covers at the thought. “So long as he doesn’t get a head cold.”

Owen rolled his eyes as he stood and plucked his silk shirt from the back of the chair. “I think I’ve created a sex fiend.”

“Most likely you have,” she said on a long sigh.

She liked the way he flung the shirt around his shoulders while thrusting one muscled arm in a sleeve. The tensing of his biceps and pectorals made her womb contract and she ached to run her tongue over his nipples.

“Milady,” he groaned, intercepting that wayward thought. He had felt his paps harden.

“You caught that?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillow.

“Aye, I caught it,” he said in a gruff voice as his fingers sped through the buttons.

“Um,” she said and laid her head down again. “I’ll have to be careful of my thoughts, huh?”

“On occasion,” he agreed as he began tucking the tail of his shirt into his pants. “Most times it won’t be necessary.”

Rachel was filled with pride as she watched him button the cuffs of his shirt then sling the gun belt around his hips, positioning it low before buckling it and then leaning over to tie his holster into place at his thigh. He was every inch a warrior, every inch a man, and he was hers.

“And mine,” a voice whispered in her head.

A small frown appeared at Rachel’s lush mouth. She knew he also belonged to the goddess—as did all the Reapers—but she did not want to dwell on that.

“You will protect him?” she asked silently.

Owen looked up. He had intercepted his wife’s thought. She didn’t know how to shield such things from him yet. He knew Morrigunia was intruding. He knew the Triune Goddess had said something to garner Rachel’s attention though he hadn’t heard it. He listened for the reply but heard nothing—just as Morrigunia no doubt intended. He saw Rachel relax.

“Did She reassure you?” he asked, coming over to the bed.

“She did,” Rachel agreed, and held her arms up to him. He was dressed except for his hat and duster, and ready to leave her. She wanted one last kiss, one last moment of holding his body to hers before she sent him on his way.

Owen bent over her and took her into his arms, pressing her tightly to him. “I’ll be all right,” he said, smoothing the hair back from her forehead.

“I know you will. She told me,” his wife said.

He kissed her then, and within that kiss was all the pent-up fear for her he had experienced when he thought her lost to him for all time. He did not thrust his tongue between her sweet lips for to have done so would have been a torment he could not withstand at that moment. There would be plenty of time left when he’d punished the man who had nearly taken her from him.

Rachel kissed him back and in her kiss was all the promise of days and nights to come. When he released her, she stared hard into his eyes. “I love you, my Owen,” she said.

Owen blinked, the words going straight into his heart. He couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak for he had been unprepared for them.

“Go,” she said, pushing away from him. “Go while I’ll still let you.”

He straightened up and stared down at her for a long moment, wishing he could say the words back to her but they were caught in his throat. At last he turned away, snatched up his hat and duster and fled the room, not daring to look back for fear he would be tempted to stay.

* * * * *

High Elder Chamberlain Lawrence slapped the maid as hard as he could and the poor woman hit the pie safe and slid down it, the sharp wooden edge of the corner gouging into the flesh of her cheek and splitting the fragile skin open.

“I told you to have my breakfast ready when I came down those stairs, Daphne,” he shouted at her. “Can you not do anything right, you bitch?”

Daphne was trembling like a leaf in a stiff breeze. The entire night he had kept her in his bed doing things that shamed and degraded her and yet she had been expected to be up before first light to prepare him a hale and hearty meal. Her body was sore in places that made it impossible to move easily and the lacerations on her buttocks were a living hell as the blood seeping from them stuck to the material of her coarse gown. Painfully she pushed to her feet, sliding her back up the wall beside her, her bare feet burning from the cold floorboards. She flinched when he raised his hand to her again, intending to hit her. Instinctively she lifted her arms to cover her face from his heavy blow.

“Why don’t you try that on a man, Lawrence?”

The low, brutal voice surprised the high elder and he spun around, his arm still raised. When he saw the Reaper standing in the doorway of the kitchen, he staggered back.

“What are you doing here?” High Elder Chamberlain demanded, but the authority in his voice was missing and in its place was fear.

“I’d have been here sooner but I had to direct the Shadowlords to the Drochtáirs’ lair,” the Reaper replied.

The high elder let out a ragged breath. “The evil is dead then?”

Owen Tohre’s smile was poisonous. “Either dead or about to die.” He turned to Daphne. “Go. Put on your shoes and coat and wait outside for me.”

“She’s going nowhere!” the high elder snapped, lifting his head as he lowered his hand. Some of his bravado began to surface.

“Do what I tell you, wench,” Owen said softly.

Daphne knew which of the two men to obey. One might have the look of the devil about him but the other one was the devil himself. She skittered out of the kitchen without a look back.

“I asked why you are here,” the high elder stated. “You took your whore and left New Towne. Our business is finished.” He licked his lips, a bit encouraged the man standing across from him wasn’t armed.

Owen almost smiled. He’d left his duster and gun belt in the hallway when he’d entered. He knew he wouldn’t need them. He folded his arms over his chest and stared hard at the Communalist. He cocked his head to one side. “Who sent the poleen after her?” he asked.

There had been no word from the Electorate concerning Rachel and as far as the elders of New Towne knew, the situation had been taken care of behind the protected walls of the Colony’s headquarters.

The high elder glanced at the back door, no doubt gauging how long it would take him to reach the exit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“The poleen went to Saint Marie and abducted Rachel,” Owen said. “They took her to the Electorate.”

A shimmer of true terror scratched down the high elder’s backbone and his blood ran cold. For the first time he saw death hovering in the Reaper’s eyes and he took a step toward the back door. “I know nothing of that,” he lied.

Owen smiled slowly and that smile was savage, filled with a hatred so virulent, had it been an airborne bacteria, it would have infected the entire province. “They branded her and they mutilated her and they stoned her at the Electorate,” he said, his gentle, soft tone belying the fury glowing red in his amber eyes. “And they killed her.”

High Elder Chamberlain’s eyelids flickered at the news. If there had ever been any affection, any link to his daughter, it showed in that slight movement that acknowledged her death but it was gone in a heartbeat to be replaced with a stony glower meant to quell the Reaper. “I was not there,” he stated. “I would not know what went on.”

Owen unfolded his arms and began to unbutton the cuff of his left sleeve. “The thing is, she didn’t remain dead,” he said.

The high elder’s eyes flared. “W-what do you m-mean?”

The Reaper unbuttoned his right sleeve, tugged his shirttail from his pants and then put his hands to the buttons at the front of his shirt, flipping them carelessly open. “You know about the parasite, don’t you, Lawrence?” he asked.

“P-parasite?” the high elder took another side step toward the door.

“The revenant worm,” Owen told him. “That which makes me what I am.”

The high elder shook his head.

“It’s a vicious little beast,” Owen said. He flicked open the button on the waistband of his pants. “It has spiny barbs that pierce the flesh inside your body while it sinks its fangs into your kidney to draw blood. Sometimes it moves around inside you and it hurts so bad you wish you could lie down and die but you can’t. One of the things the revenant worms do is to make sure you live a long, long life with it inside you.”

“I don’t see…”

“The parasite not only gives you long life but the strength of ten men,” Owen continued. “It grants you the ability to change from human to wolf or bird form. Can you imagine what a golden wolf might become in bird form, Lawrence?”

The high elder shook his head. He was sweating profusely and when he lifted a trembling hand to wipe at his face, he grunted with fear.

“I can’t begin to imagine what a golden wolf would become,” Owen said, pulling the zipper down on his pants. “What do you think of a golden eagle?”

“W-what of it?” High Elder Chamberlain asked, taking another step.

“Of course eagles are a bit larger than most female Reapers get.”

“What are you babbling about?” the high elder demanded.

“I’m telling you about the parasite, Lawrence. In the right hands, that parasite can return the dead to the land of the living,” Owen said. “It took two of those parasites to put life back into Rachel.”

The high elder stilled as though he’d turned to stone. “S-she’s alive?” he asked.

“Alive and unmarked and unaltered in any way,” Owen snarled as he shrugged off his shirt and tossed it aside.

High Elder Chamberlain was like a snake-hypnotized rabbit—unable to move, unable to speak—as the Reaper kicked off his boots and unbuttoned his pants, pushing them down his legs. The high elder whimpered at seeing the man’s nakedness but could not look away.

“Unaltered in any way,” Owen repeated as he stepped out of his pants and kicked them to one side. He had wanted no drain on his powers to affect what he intended to do.

It was the purely evil smile that spread over the Reaper’s lips after he had spoken that caused the slight trickle of something dark to appear at the crotch of the high elder’s blue trousers.

“No,” High Elder Chamberlain managed to whimper as the Reaper took a step toward him.

Hellfire shot from eyes that glinted scarlet red and in that last instant before Chamberlain Lawrence fell headlong into that everlasting realm of damnation, he let loose a horrified scream that lasted but a second before it was extinguished in a gurgling rush.

Chapter Fifteen

Rachel had been pacing the platform as the train huffed and puffed, sending steam out on both sides of the track as the engine idled. She was wrapped in a long fur coat that Glyn had provided for her and warm fur boots Iden had thought to conjure. The air was colder than it had been in weeks and the sky looked threatening, snow hovering in the gray expanse, but she wasn’t all that cold. Despite the sleek coolness of her black leather pants, she was warm enough. She thought of what Owen had said about Reaper body temperatures and half smiled.