Reaper's Revenge (13 page)

“I wish the honor of taking the life of the one called Cree,” Otaktay said. 69

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Acklard’s lipless mouth pursed. “Why should I grant you such a boon, savage?” he demanded. “You ran away, striking out on your own. It was not yet time to make our presence known to the Terrans.”

Otaktay raised his chin and gave the Ceannus leader his most brutal glower. “I gutted the Reaper but—”

“You gutted
a
Reaper,” Acklard cut him off. “It was not Cree. Cree was locked in battle with the ghorets. One can only hope he will succumb to the poison injected into him.”

Shock shifted over the red man’s face. His black eyebrows clashed together over the hawklike prominence of his nose. “I do not understand. There was another Reaper?”

“There are two more Reapers,” Acklard snapped. “Why do you think my cabinet and I brought more
balgairs
to this backward world?” He snapped his fingers at Jaborn, ordering him to come forward.

Kasid Jaborn had been chosen by Lord Acklard to lead the rogues and he stepped forward, angry at the red man for having left but not pleased that he had returned, either. To Jaborn’s way of thinking, Otaktay was a loose cannon and barely controllable—if at all. “Aye, Your Grace,” Jaborn said, lowering his head to the high lord.

“This fool wishes to take Cynyr Cree’s life. What say you?” Acklard asked. Jaborn shook his head. “Cree is mine,” he stated. “No other will kill him.”

Otaktay’s eyes flared. “He sullied my woman!” he shouted. “He turned her!”

Acklard’s large black eyes blinked once then a sickening green glow seemed to emanate from the ebon depths. “He transferred a parasite to a female?”

“It is my right to punish Cree for what he did to my mate!”

Isuan and Yborl began chattering to one another, their strange voices like those of an angry swarm of bees.

“You mated with the white woman?” Jaborn demanded. “With Cree’s woman?”

“She is mine!” Otaktay bellowed at the top of his lungs. “She was mine long before the Reaper forced himself upon her!”

Acklard snaked out his thin arms and grabbed the Jakotai around the neck, lifting the brawny red man from the ground until they were nose to nose. “You mated with the woman?” he queried, the skin of his gray face mottled with black stains of anger.

“You mated with her since becoming a
balgair
?”

Otaktay was choking. The fierce grip around his neck had closed off his windpipe and he was struggling to break free, his legs kicking, his fingers plucking at the delicate wrists of the seven feet giant holding him in an attempt to pull the Ceannus’ hands from his throat.

“You mated with her?” Acklard screamed, his voice shrill.

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“Yes,” Otaktay managed to say only a moment before he was thrown across the clearing. He landed painfully against a rock and lay there gasping, desperately dragging ragged breaths into his depleted lungs.

“He must be put down,” Isuan said and Yborl agreed.

“Afterwards,” Acklard insisted. “When all three Reapers are no more, I will personally see to the savage.”

“What of the woman?” Yborl asked. “We cannot leave her.”

“We will find her,” Acklard said. “And we will remove the parasite and its fledglings from her body. We will leave no Reaper’s whore alive to cause problems for those who are coming after us.”

From the top of the mountain, Morrigunia sat perched on her haunches, her membranous wings tucked around her body. The giant triangular spade of her head was twisted to one side as she listened to the Ceannus high lord. Delving quickly into his mind—hiding her entrance as casually as she would flick a flea from her paw—she saw hundreds of ships lined up within a gigantic space station, the docking harnesses prepared to drop away as the ships took to the heavens and headed for the portal between this galaxy and the next. Probing deeper, she ventured into the bellies of the ships and saw rogue after rogue, beaker after beaker filled with revenant worms, awaiting their trip to Terra. It would be an infestation the likes of which Raphian, the Destroyer of Men’s Souls, had yet to undertake.

“No,” Morrigunia growled deep in her reptilian throat. “It will not happen.” Her slit-pupils gleaming a menacing red spark, she rose up until her sharp talons were digging into the crust of the mountain’s crag, her powerful back legs tensing in preparation for springing. Her long tail twitched once, twice, and then thumped upon the stones with such force the entire mountain shook.

Acklard looked up at the thunderous noise. A landslide began tumbling down the mountain but it was the creature who soared from the highest peak that caught the Ceannus high lord’s eye and he shrieked.

* * * * *

Aingeal found she was weaker than she thought as she stumbled from the cave. In her hand, she carried a burning brand that had lighted her way from the place where Otaktay had left her. It had taken her what seemed like hours to follow the trail of pebbles someone had dropped at intervals against the craggy walls of the cave. When she had started out—praying the pebbles led to the outside world—she had been careful to search the rocky floor of the cavern for scuff marks. As bright light had speared into the darkness ahead of her and a fresh wave of air hit her, she knew the cave entrance was in reach.

Now she looked out across the barren desert and whimpered. Nothing but mile upon mile of inhospitable sand stretched out before her. Here and there a twisted cactus 71

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lifted its spiny arms up to the heavens, but there was nothing else to break the brutal desolateness that awaited her.

The heat was nearly unbearable with no hint of water in sight. All she had on was a tattered silk gown and a pair of slippers that would be useless across such desolate terrain. There would be no protection from the merciless sun beating down upon the wavering sand or from deadly reptiles that might lay in wait. Feeling helpless, hoping against hope the brand would not go out in her hand and pitch her into unremitting darkness, Aingeal returned to the underground lake deep in the Cave of the Winds, her feet dragging across the natural bridge over the still waters. She fed the campfire another small piece of cottonwood and stared at the smoke lazily drifting toward a hole high above her—a natural flue that sucked the thick smoke upward. Idly she wondered if anyone would notice the smoke escaping from the mountain and come to investigate. Sighing deeply, for she was very tired from her trek to the cave entrance, she stretched out on the scratchy blanket that smelled of mildew and dry-rot and turned on her side, her knees drawn up.

Otaktay would return. She refused to believe otherwise. She was his wife and he obviously had feelings for her, although when she searched her heart, it held nothing but fear and distrust of the red man. She felt soiled when he held her—almost as though he had abused her in some secret, alien way that had left an impression upon her soul. Lying there staring up at the rippled ceiling of stone above her, she wondered who the man was Otaktay hated so strongly. Had this man actually raped her? Been the reason she had lost her child?

Images flitted through her mind of being held tenderly, stroked lovingly, cradled in strong arms that kept the world at bay. Her fingers had memories of silken hair—not greased by animal fat nor smelling of that strong odor—but smooth and clean. Amber eyes gazed back at her from far away when she closed her lids. Her hand went to her belly where once a child had been growing. Grief welled up inside her and threatened to choke off her breath. Had it been a girl? No, her mind denied. It would never be a girl. It would always be a boy. A boy like its stalwart father. What name had she picked for her child? she wondered as she continued to stroke her flat belly. The memory came speeding out of nowhere to hit her full force.

“Ranger,” he said.

“Briton?” she countered.

“Too stuffy.”

“Ranger,” she said, trying out the word. “Just doesn’t do it for me.”

“Aincyn,” he said.

“And the next son will be Briton,” she told him.

“When do I get to use Ranger then?” he asked

“After our seventeenth child. We’re going to found a dynasty of handsome Cree boys.”

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Aingeal sat up, the whispered memory of that conversation strong in her mind. “It was his child,” she said, her eyes wide. “It was Cree’s son I carried, not Otaktay’s!”

Why had the red man lied to her? She asked herself. If he were truly her husband, why had she been with Cree? Why did she not feel threatened by the vague thought of the man Otaktay had referred to as a Reaper?

There was impenetrable darkness in her mind—a swirling, bubbling cloud that kept memory and history from being snared. As hard as she tried, she could not dredge up her past except in flashes of dark brown hair and amber eyes, a smiling mouth that made her insides ache, a sensual voice that brought tightness to her heart. Trying to reach out and pluck old memories from her mind made her head hurt and brought queasiness to her stomach. It was too hard and she lay back down, feeling the weakness once more that made her want to close her eyes and sleep.

The fire crackled, a log collapsed in upon itself to send showers of glittering sparks up toward the distant hole in the ceiling. She followed the progress of a glowing ember until it was lost among the darker spears of rocks above her. Had he really raped her or had she given herself willingly to him? She wondered. Surely such gentle eyes that gazed out at her from the blackness in her mind could not belong to a man who needed to force himself upon any woman, nor did the sultry voice that whispered through her chaotic brain hint of such vileness. Yet she had no doubt Otaktay was capable of that to which he had accused Cree. She had seen rage in his black gaze and his words had been filled with unrestrained fury. Putting a hand to her throbbing head, Aingeal closed her eyes and tried to remember, to look back in time, but the harder she tried, the darker the clouds grew in her mind. At last she gave up and allowed sleep to slip gently over her, locking her in comforting arms.

* * * * *

Pandemonium reigned in the mountain camp as the Ceannus scampered toward their craft. Blood sprayed through the air alongside body parts as the gigantic beast dove in for its attack, gripping rogues with brutal talons and tearing them apart in midair, shrieking horrifically as it rent and destroyed everything within sight. The mechanical cybots scurried about, running into things, until the beast dove down to pick them up then smash them to the rocks below.

Otaktay hid behind a rock outcropping and stared in horror at the savagery swirling about him. The creature hovering above him was something so beyond his ability to understand he could do nothing else save squat where he was and tremble. He spied Jaborn running down the mountain road and after one last look at the beast swooping down to pluck the remaining rogues from the ground, followed suit, keeping low to the ground and hopefully out of sight of the flying fiend. Halfway down the mountain an explosion rocketed through the air and knocked the brave from his feet, slamming him into a boulder so hard he felt something give in 73

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his shoulder. Scrambling up, he cast terrified eyes to the gigantic plume of smoke billowing from the craft where the Ceannus had fled in their useless attempt to escape. The stench of disintegrating metal was horrible but the stench of burning flesh of the Gray Ones made the Jakotai gag. It was an odor unlike anything he’d ever encountered and it washed over him in waves of putrescence.

Kasid Jaborn looked back to see the red man staggering after him, a hand clamped to his opposite arm as he moved. Beyond them—at the mountain camp—a few feeble shrieks were drowned out by a tremendous roar of fury as the creature devoured in a burst of fire what was left of the
balgairs
.

“What is that beast?” Otaktay asked, his eyes wild as he came to hide beside Jaborn.

“A dragon,” Jaborn replied, never taking his eyes off the beast as it soared over the camp in a lazy circle—as though searching for survivors—then winged its way toward the town of Haines City, releasing a peal of sound that shook the ground beneath his feet.

“Did the Reapers call that demon?” Otaktay questioned. His face was pinched with pain as he braced his arm against his side.

“If they did, they are more powerful than the Ceannus led us to believe,” Jaborn replied. The creature was no longer in sight—having made its gliding descent to the settlement. He looked at the red man. “Your shoulder is dislocated?”

Otaktay could not move his arm and the pain was spreading to his fingers. “I do not know your meaning.”

Jaborn stood up from his crouched position. “I can pull it back into place.”

The Jakotai studied the man whose skin was as dark as his own and nodded. It took but a moment to take care of the brave’s injury and Jaborn marveled that Otaktay made no sound as his dislocated shoulder was repaired. Though there was a sheen of sweat on the Jakotai’s upper lip, he never even blinked when the shoulder went back into its socket.

“If the Reapers are that powerful, how will we win against them?” Otaktay asked as he flexed his throbbing arm.

“There are three of them,” Jaborn said, “and two of us. If Cree is ill and unable to fight us, that narrows the odds a bit, but we will need to attack two to their one, separating the other Reapers so we can take them out.”

“I care nothing for the other Reapers,” Otaktay said. “I care only that I take the life of the man who dishonored my woman.”

“I have pledged to take Cree’s life,” Jaborn said. “He killed my brother.”

Otaktay lifted his chin. “The killing of a brother is more important than a woman’s honor, I will grant you that. You may have the kill but I wish to make the white man suffer for what he did to my mate.”

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Jaborn suspected Cree had mated with the woman as well, and if that were the case, she would be precious to him. He would be sworn to protect her. “Where is she?” he asked the brave.