Her Reaper's Arms (6 page)

She came around the foot of the bed as he bent over to tie his holster in place. “And

you were serious about keeping me as your woman?”

He nodded. “Aye, I was damned serious.” He straightened to find her holding his

hat out to him. He took the cowboy hat in his left hand then stepped closer to her,

putting the palm of his right hand against her cheek. “You are under my protection,

wench.” His thumb stroked over her bottom lip. “You belong to me.”

Lea was looking into his amber eyes and what she saw there made her womb

tighten. It was an honor he had extended to her that only a very few women on Terra

would ever know.

“You honor me, milord,” she said, her heart soaring.

He slid his hand behind her neck and pulled her face up to him, lowering his lips to

hers in a soft, gentle kiss that made her toes curl in her worn-down boots.

“The honor is mine, milady,” he whispered against her mouth.

Lea slid her arms around his waist, stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his,

kissing him firmly. When she pulled back, she could tell she had shocked him for his

eyes had widened. “You will be very careful, won’t you, Milord Bevyn?” she asked.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“Aye,” he said.

“And you will hurry home to your woman?”

“I will,” he vowed.

She removed her arms from him and stepped back. “All right then,” she said with a

smile. “Be careful out there, okay?”

Bevyn backed away from her, unable to speak past the lump that had suddenly

formed in his throat. He was unaware that he was rotating his hat around and around

in his hands until she stepped forward and stilled the movement.

“It goes on your head, milord,” she said with a grin.

“Aye,” he said, grasping the black felt at the crown and settling it on his head,

tugging the brim down as was his custom.

She reached for his saddlebags hanging over the footboard of the bed and held

them out to him. “You have everything?” she asked.

“Aye, milady,” he said softly.

Lea stepped back. “May the Wind be always at your back, milord.”

Bevyn’s throat clogged with emotion and he turned abruptly away before he

unmanned himself before her. His eyes were stinging as he thundered down the stairs,

needing to put distance between him and the beautiful woman to whom he knew he’d

already lost his heart.

The sheriff was waiting in front of the saloon when the Reaper came out. “Don’t

worry about nothing, milord,” he told Bevyn. “I’ll take good care of your lady.”

Bevyn inclined his head as he took the reins and vaulted into the saddle. “I’ve a

favor to ask of you, Sheriff,” he said.

“Anything, milord. Just name it.”

“Find me some land within the scope of the town’s limits onto which I can build

our home,” he said. “An acre will do.”

“I will see to it, milord,” the sheriff agreed.

“And assemble some men to construct the place for us. Ask my lady to tell them

what she desires our home to be. No expense is to be spared in the building of it.

Understood?”

“Aye, milord!”

“You watch over her for me, Sheriff,” the Reaper instructed. He dug his heels into

Préachán’s flanks and the black stallion took off like a bat out of hell.

“I will guard her with my life,” Buford Gilchrist swore to the departing warrior.

By the time the sun set on Orson, every man, woman and child in town was abuzz

with the news that they had garnered their very own Reaper. It was an honor they all

took to heart.

* * * * *

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Her Reaper’s Arms

As Bevyn’s mount galloped over the dusty road, he kept going back to the

conversation with the sheriff.

Our home
, he had said.

A place for us.

My lady.

The Reaper’s heart did a tight little squeeze in his chest. He had never had his own

home, his own place. He had never owned anything save the clothes on his back and

the horse upon which he sat. He’d accumulated very little since becoming a Reaper and

what he personally owned could be carried within the confines of his saddlebags.

Though he took great delight in reading, he didn’t own a single book. He borrowed

them from the larger libraries that still stood and was careful to return them when they

were due. Not once had he been forced to pay an overdue fine.

“A bookcase,” he thought as Préachán’s long stride ate up the miles. “A bookcase

along one entire wall filled with tomes I have yet to read. Books I can collect, books I

can have as my own.”

It took him nearly a half hour of riding before he realized he didn’t have a clue

where he was going. Reining in his mount, he sat there laughing at the absurdity of his

actions before taking out the handkerchief and sticking the tip of his tongue to a fleck of

the rogue’s blood. Almost instantly, an image formed in his mind of the man whose

blood he had tasted and he turned his head to look back the way he’d come.

Sometimes, he thought as he stuffed the handkerchief in his back pocket, the

devilish little imp that sat on his shoulder demanded his attention when it thought he

should be concentrating on the matter at hand. It tended to rake his tattooed cheek with

the sharp, pointed little toe of its miniscule iron boot and draw symbolic blood.

“Pay attention, you fucking Reaper!”
it would seem to hiss in his ear, its vicious little

teeth mauling his earlobe if only in Bevyn’s imagination.

That had just happened, thrusting him out of his self-induced euphoria regarding

Lea and back into the sordidness in which Reapers existed.

“You’re close by, aren’t you,
balgair
?” he asked quietly. He sniffed the air, his eyes

narrowing at the stench. “Aye, you bastard. You are very close by.”

For a moment longer he sat there until his savage instincts took over and the fleck

of blood he had tasted pointed him straight toward the
balgair
’s
location. He pulled on

Préachán’s reins and turned the ebon steed, directing it back the way they’d just

traveled. The closer he got to the rogue, the sharper his lateral incisors became until the

points were raking his bottom lip. With conscious effort, he retracted them, though the

sharp claws that had sprung from his fingertips were harder to control. It wouldn’t do

for a civilian to see him in the process of Transition.

Not that he had much to worry about in that department. For as far as his sharp

eyes could see no human was about. But the vile stench of
balgair
was rife in his nostrils

and growing stronger with every yard Préachán covered.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The Reaper frowned deeply for there was another scent—an obscene one—that

washed over him the farther along the meandering dirt path he traveled. That scent was

horrendous and it made the hackles stand up on his back. Reining in Préachán, he

turned his head from side to side, drawing in the odor, trying to place it. The longer he

sat there inhaling the vastly unpleasant smell, the more he rolled his shoulders as

though something were slithering down his spine.

He inhaled deeply. It wasn’t a ghoret, he thought. That was an odor he could never

mistake for what it was. The pit viper was the most evil thing he’d ever encountered

and once in contact with one, its smell was never forgotten.

So what was the stench that made him feel as though he’d been dowsed with slime?

Walking Préachán slowly along the trail, he saw nothing that drew his attention.

Someone had passed this way recently, but not in the last day or two. The tracks

weren’t fresh and though the scent of the
balgair
was strong, Bevyn had a strong notion

the evil bastard wasn’t alive. Nevertheless, he moved carefully, his eyes whipping back

and forth across the trail, scoping out the territory, his palm on the handle of his laser

whip.

The shack was sitting in a grove of cottonwood and Osage orange trees, half hidden

by the shimmering leaves on the spreading lower branches. A horse neighed greeting to

Préachán and the Reaper’s steed snorted in reply.

Once more Bevyn halted his horse, allowing his Reaper senses to home in on the

shack, to test the vibrations that were undulating down his taut spine. His acute hearing

picked up no sounds, his eyes found no movement other than the impatient and—to

him—the nervous shifting of the other horse.

Dismounting slowly, he upholstered his laser whip—his
speal
—and advanced

quietly toward the shack, keeping his senses alert to the most minute of changes in the

air, the ground beneath his feet.

The closer he came to the rundown building with its gray weathered boards and

swayback roof pitted with missing shingles, the more the squirmy feeling along his

spine shifted. Beneath the black silk, his flesh felt wet, the shirt’s material clinging to his

back and chest as though offal had been smeared on the garment. It was a very

unpleasant sensation that bothered him intensely.

He stopped and listened for any movement at all, his gaze intent on the shack’s

door that was slightly ajar. He could detect no sounds and though his ears were

perfectly capable of hearing a heartbeat from ten feet away, he heard absolutely nothing

save the buzzing of flies.

It was the sudden sound that disturbed him more than the atrocious odor coming

from the shack. Death was inside the cabin and the stench that was now so

overpowering, so vile, burned the membranes of his nostrils.

From one of the Osage orange trees, a hedge apple fell, clunking on the dilapidated

roof and rolling down it. The light green wrinkled ball landing with a dull thud in the

dirt as it hit the ground.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

Now sick to his stomach from the smell, he took out his black silk handkerchief and

tied it over his face to filter the odor. To anyone who might have seen him at that

moment, he looked like a bank robber sneaking up on the door to the shack.

His spurs jingled against the rotting porch floor as he went to the shack’s door and

he felt a board crack under his weight. Putting his boot to the door, he nudged it open,

flinching at the piercing shriek of its rusted hinges. The buzzing sound was louder and

despite the protection of his handkerchief, the stench was overwhelming, drifting up

from beneath his chin, making his eyes water.

The interior of the cabin was dark but there was no mistaking the horrors that lined

its walls. Bevyn stopped in the doorway, staring at the awfulness that assailed his eyes.

For a moment or two he could not move, so devastating was the scene upon which he’d

come. Eyes wide, struggling to draw air through his mouth to blot out the putrid odor

permeating the air, he stumbled back and barely made it off the porch before he

whipped off his handkerchief and puked, relieving his belly of its breakfast.

Tears stung his eyes—a valiant attempt made by his soul to wash away the

horrendous sight he had beheld inside the shack. Clutching a rough upright that barely

held up the porch roof, he puked again and again until there was only bitter vetch

flooding his mouth. Wiping the back of a shaking hand across his lips, he realized his

entire body was trembling. Nothing had ever affected him as strongly as what he’d just

seen.

Staggering off the porch, the Reaper put distance between him and the shack and

made his way to a fallen log, plopping down on it, leaning forward to put his head

between his legs in an attempt to calm the fury of his body. He was sweating profusely,

his mouth watering so copiously he feared the puking wasn’t finished. After a moment

or two he slowly lifted his head and looked at the cabin, every humane instinct in his

body shuddering with disgust.

The bodies he’d seen hanging on the walls had been brutally tortured with an

instrument he had hoped never to see again and certainly never expected to find on

Terra. He’d spied it leaning against one wall, its business end coated with blood, and

had felt a shiver of cold wriggle down his spine.

No one should ever lay eyes upon what he’d just seen, he thought. The sight could

well pitch a sensitive soul into unremitting madness and a less susceptible one into a

lifetime of gruesome nightmares. What lay beyond the slivered walls of the shack had

to be destroyed, put to rest, and it was Bevyn’s job to see to it. No one should ever

suspect the vileness that had taken place in the shack.

Getting to his feet, stamping down the urge to throw up again, it took every ounce

of his courage and stamina to enter the shack again. He had to make sure the rogue was

dead as Roy English lay on his cot, his face bloated and black from the rabies that had

infected him. Using his laser whip, Bevyn had severed the
balgair
’s head from his neck

and incinerated the weak revenant worm that flopped out upon the floor. The creature

was dying but still it opened its maw of a mouth and hissed at the Reaper, the redtinged spines along its segmented back bristling feebly. The stench from its pale green

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

body as it burst into flames was even more sickening than the odors coming from the

horrors lining the walls of the shack.