WesternWind 4 - Tears of the Reaper (32 page)

* * * * *

In another suite of rooms down the hall from Daphne, the Dayton family was doing the same, little Jonas—the boy whose life the Reaper had saved—leading the prayer.

Epilogue

The Reaper dove to the ground and rolled around the side of the building to avoid the bolt aimed at his forehead as the deadly missile thumped past him to bury itself up to the fletch in the wall. His hand clutched the obsidian dagger he held at his thigh as he continued to roll until he came up against the ramshackle building behind him. Pushing his back up the splintered wall, his grip tightened on the dagger. It was his only weapon and it had served him well over the years.

Taking a quick peek around the side of the building, he saw the man with the crossbow slipping another bolt onto the arrow shelf.

“Son of a whoring Matanuskan bitch!” the Reaper snarled. In that one look he’d spied nine archers and every one of them was after his hide. The odds were not in his favor but what the hell did he care? It wasn’t the first time nor would it be the last.

Gritting his teeth, he glanced down at the jagged hole in his leather britches. Though the vicious wound beneath the hole had closed, he was pissed that his britches were ruined. Such things annoyed him more than he cared to admit and at the moment, he didn’t have the energy to fashion a new pair. Every ounce of his strength would need to be conserved to fight the Matanuskans intent on separating his head from his shoulders. That wasn’t the way he wanted things to end.

“Where are you when I need you, you fucking bitch?” he called out to the heavens, hoping the Triune Goddess heard his snarled words.

She did.

In a glinting flash of coppery scales She soared down from the heavens, breathing fire upon the archers from Her snarling muzzle. Her leathery wings beat the air, fanning the flames as the screaming archers went scurrying—their burning bodies sending out reeking odors.

He sat where he was for a moment as the charcoaled archers finally fell and lay still, burning to a crisp in the cool morning air. Finally sheathing his dagger, he got to his feet and dusted off the torn sleeve of his black silk shirt.

“You took your fucking sweet time getting here, Morri,” he grumbled.

The dragon goddess’s claws hit the ground and the earth beneath his feet rumbled. Huge mandibles snapped at him, streams of steamy saliva dripping from jagged fangs.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You’re a bad ass, wench. I got that long ago.”

Morrigunia threw back Her long neck and roared, the sound echoing across the valleys. Her gleaming green eyes bore into the Reaper as She strode forward, the ground trembling in Her wake.

He held still and craned his head to look up at Her. She didn’t frighten him—hadn’t in centuries—and if truth were told, he wished She’d lift one giant paw and squish him like a bug.

He knew She wouldn’t. She liked to torment him too much.

That sulfurous muzzle was only inches from his handsome face as the Triune Goddess lowered Her spade-like head. He stared into the horned eye ridge where the elliptical green eyes were consigning him to hell and smiled.

“What’s up, gorgeous?” he asked, folding his arms over his torn and dusty shirt.

The huge head tilted to one side then the Reaper staggered as a rush of hot, sulfurous air hit him directly in the face as the goddess changed, taking on Her humanoid form.

“You are a prick!” She screamed at him.

“So sue me,” he said, yawning. “You’ve known that all along, babe.”

It was within Her power to reduce him to ash but She rather liked the miserable bastard. He was Her only Reaper in that part of the galaxy and he did his job as well as could be expected, though more times than not She had to extricate him from situations he’d hurled himself into with careless abandon and an obvious death wish.

“You have insulted Me one time too many,” She flung at him. “It is time you learn who owns you, Reaper!”

He shrugged. “I’m all atwitter to learn what You’re going to do to me now, Morri.”

One moment he was standing on the soil of Matanuska and the next he was clutched in Her scaly paw and being hurled across space. It wasn’t the first time he’d traveled that way and he was fairly sure She wouldn’t allow it to be his last though his own death was something he longed for more passionately than a woman to slake his sexual aches.

Trusting Her as he never had another, he curled up in Her grip and went to sleep. Who knew how long the journey would last this time?

It was the brutal stinging that woke him with a gasp as She plowed through some vibrating obstacle that nearly took the hide from his bones. He yelped but almost immediately his parasite healed the raging agony that rippled through him.

“Where the fuck are you taking me, bitch?” he yelled at the copper-colored dragon.

“Where you will behave for a change, Reaper ,” She whispered slyly in his mind.

“Evil bitch,” he mumbled as they dropped down into some place he did not recognize.

Bright light—so intense he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the incapacitating glare—made him stagger as She took on Her humanoid persona once more. His arm was tightly in Her grip as She marched him along and he knew there would be no way to escape that punishing hold. He’d tried that once and She’d broken every bone in his body before it was all said and done.

“Where are we?” he grumbled.

“Cease speaking or I will rip out your tongue,” She warned him and he knew She would. She’d done that on more than one occasion and it had hurt like hell.

His jaws clamped shut, his eyes watering from the brightness of the light surrounding him, She drew him up short and slammed him against a wall that was as slick as silk but had the strength of steel.

“Open,” She demanded, and a piece of the wall slid back to reveal an opening into which She thrust him.

The Reaper fell to his knees with a grunt, cursing Her as She came to stand behind him.

“Behold your executioner, my Reaper!” She said, grabbing the Reaper by the hair and jerking his head back.

“Damn, woman, that hurts!” he yelled. He forced his eyes to open and it was at that moment he saw the man sitting on a shelf across the room. “Oh hell no,” he whispered, his eyes going wide.

In a far-away galaxy, in a land that was more dream to him now than reality, Owen Tohre had known the man Morrigunia had brought into his cell. He stared at the newcomer with stunned surprise at first then shock then with growing, bitter hatred that peeled the lips back from his teeth. With a roar, he flung himself at the man on the floor only to find his arm in a brutal grasp from which he could not break free though he struggled like a madman to break that hellish grip.

“Come, my Reaper.” Morrigunia tightened Her hold on his arm and hissed at Owen, pulling him from the cell, the door sliding shut behind him to lock the other Reaper in.

Up through the Net She took him, poo-poohing his shriek of agony as the barrier tried to snatch his life from him, dissolve his very flesh. She drew him up so quickly the Net did not have a chance to kill him, the parasite within him hurrying to heal the damage already done by the Net. Completely unharmed by, undetected by, easily able to come and go as She wished through the deadly protection barrier, the goddess took him higher and higher into the black reaches of the megaverse.

And in con cell number three, Owen Tohre’s identical twin brother Eanan sat with his legs splayed out in front of him, his mouth open and his heart hammering painfully in his chest.

“How?” he questioned. Owen should have been dead all these many years. Should have been—at least—for it had been Eanan who had murdered him.

And yet here had sat Owen in this strange place, on this strange world, as astounded by his twin’s appearance as Eanan had been to see him.

“What happened?” Eanan questioned. “How can Owen be alive?”

You are alive, Eanan , he reminded himself. Why should it surprise you that Owen is? If She made you a Reaper, She could have made Owen one as well and obviously had.

“Why is he imprisoned here?” Eanan asked, turning fearful eyes to this alien space into which he’d been thrust. “What did he do?”

Was he to take Owen’s place in this jail—and that was surely what this was? And if he was here, where had She taken Owen?

A horrible thought slithered through Eanan’s head and he shuddered violently.

“You killed for love,” She had once told him as She forced Herself upon him. The memory of that rape had stayed with him like a bitter brew oiling the tongue. He had relived it many times over the ensuing years though She’d not laid a hand on him since.

If She had made him because he had taken a life in the name of love, had She created Owen because he had died for the same love? Would She do to his twin what She had done to him?

“The gods help you, Owen,” Eanan said. “You don’t deserve such evil, my brother.”

Eanan had had centuries to atone for the crime he had committed against his twin. He had spent every moment regretting his actions—the perfidy that had taken Owen from Siobhan.

“Siobhan,” Eanan whispered.

It had all started with that beautiful lass with the bewitching smile.

Eanan Tohre had lusted after Siobhan O’Shannessey since puberty and though he was identical in looks to Owen, there had been spitefulness, cruelty and a decided lack of morals in Eanan that had been absent in his twin. Where no one else could tell them apart—not even their own mother—Siobhan could take one look at them as they stood side by side and give that precious smile to Owen. Her sun rose and set in Owen.

Years of wanting her, pining for her, had taken their toll on Eanan and on the eve of his Joining day to the woman Eanan loved more than his own life, Eanan had run his blade across Owen’s throat and hidden his twin’s body where he thought no one would ever find it and know what he had done.

But Siobhan had known. She had taken one look at him as he stood there pretending to be Owen and had known. Her grief was more than she could bear and on what should have been her Joining night, she jumped to her death from the Cliffs of Radeen.

Heartbroken, grieving beyond his ability to bear it—not because he had been responsible for Siobhan’s death but had murdered his other half—Eanan had followed her over the high embankment, but as he took his last breath, his broken body smashed upon the jagged rocks, he had looked up into the merciless eyes of a giant being who snatched him up and away and who meted out a life sentence from which there was no escape.

“It is time you learn who owns you, Reaper!” She had told him.

“No,” he said, feeling the despair of the incarceration to the pit of his being.

As full realization of what he would soon be experiencing hit Eanan Tohre, he threw back his head and howled.

* * * * *

The two technicians went over the graphs again but could not find what had caused the two strange spikes in the fabric of the Net. It seemed something had come through the deadly filter but had gone out again soon after, leaving nothing behind in its wake.

“Should we inform the Shadowlords?” one of the technicians asked.

The senior technician ran through the data banks of the large machine no one but the Shadowlords and their gatekeepers knew was buried deep beneath the ground under the Citadel. He had scanned the DNA of everyone in the fortress and all were accounted for except for the three Reapers out on assignment.

“No,” the senior technician said. “They are all here.”

“Including the prisoner in con cell three?”

“Aye,” the senior tech reported. “He’s there, the gods help him.”

About the Author

Charlee is the author of over thirty books. Married 40 years to her high school sweetheart, Tom, she is the mother of two grown sons, Pete and Mike, and the proud grandmother of Preston Alexander and Victoria Ashley. She is the willing house slave to five demanding felines who are holding her hostage in her home and only allowing her to leave in order to purchase food for them. A native of Sarasota, Florida, she grew up in Colquitt and Albany, Georgia and now lives in the Midwest.

Charlee welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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