A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) (15 page)

“Accept me, Laci, and I will protect you!”
he yelled. His fingers—the only thing keeping her from descending into the
mire—were like a steel trap around her wrist. They were digging into her flesh,
grinding the fragile bones.

Unless she wanted to sink beneath the waves
of the stench dragging at her she had no other choice but to do as he bid. As
much as it shattered her soul, ripped at her heart. With the last of her waning
strength, she extended her other hand to him. Their fingers touched and he
inched his to her wrist. His grip was strong, sure, as he started to pull her
back up the slippery slope.

She grimaced as the muck clung to her. The
stench was nearly unbearable and she whimpered as it clung to her nightgown,
coated her skin. When he had her standing atop the hill, he did not seem to
notice the odor permeating her body as he dragged her into his arms.

“I have you,” he said against her ear. “I
have you now.”

Despite the overwhelming sadness and grief
welling in her very soul, she clung to him. He was her only lifeline in the
dark, stained world. She made no sound as he lifted her into his arms—cradling
her like an infant—and turned away from the sludge of the vast water basin
behind them. His boots skidded in the slurry as he carried her down the hill
but he kept his balance.

As he carried her, a hard rain began to
fall. It was cold and made her shiver but it was washing away the stench and
foulness that was stuck to her.

“You are mine,” he told her. “Nothing will
ever threaten you again.”

She looked over his shoulder at the gnarled
and twisted trees. The branches reached toward them with flexing twigs that
looked like talons—opening and closing as though they would snatch her from his
arms. She whimpered again and pressed her face to his shoulder.

Taylor sat perfectly still on his bunk.
He’d been warned if he Converted again he would spend another day or two locked
inside the imprisoning influence of the
státúil.
He wanted to avoid that
punishment for the drug had side effects that were so disturbing he had no
desire to experience them again.

“You will get her back,” Cree told him from
the other side of the unbreakable plexigon panel.

“She shouldn’t have been taken from me in
the first place,” Taylor said. He barely glanced at the three Reapers who had
come to speak to him.

“Nothing happened between them, Tay,”
Fallon said. “Every time Coulter tried to do anything, he passed out.”

“I’ll bet you he thinks he did something,
though,” Cree said with a grunt.

“You guys are not helping,” Sorn said. “We
were sent here to relieve his mind not reinforce the misery he’s feeling.”

“We’re telling him like it is,” Cree
stated. “We’re not sugar-coating it. He’s a Reaper. He can take it.”

“But you are making him feel worse in the
bargain,” Sorn grumbled.

“How do you know how he feels?” Cree asked.

“Until you find your life-mate you can’t
understand what he’s going through,” Fallon said.

“I don’t want or need a life-mate,” Sorn
told him.

Cree snorted. “I got news for you, Darkyn.
That’s not your call to make.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” Fallon agreed.

“If it’s all the same to you guys, I’d
rather you take your arguing elsewhere. Just leave me alone,” Taylor said.
“None of you are helping.”

“We came down to tell you Laci is on her
way back,” Sorn said. “The Supervisors thought you should have some company
when you were told.”

“As if that makes a gods-be-damned bit of
difference,” Cree said.

Taylor slid off the bunk. “How long before
she’ll be here?”

“
They
will be here tomorrow
morning,” Fallon said. He locked eyes with Taylor. “And no, they aren’t going
to let you out of here to see her.”

“Why the hell not?” Taylor demanded,
rushing over to the panel. He slammed his palms to the surface, searching
Cree’s stony stare.

“You know why not,” Cree said. “Until we harvest
the hellions and make the exchange—”

“
I want to see my fucking woman
!”
Taylor bellowed.

“Well you can’t,” Fallon stated in a
matter-of-fact tone. “Not yet anyways.”

“The gods damn it, I—”

“
Listen to me!
” Cree snapped and the
other Reapers stilled. They were all Alphas but each of them feared Viraiden
Cree. Not only was he the oldest, he was the most dangerous. No one messed with
the Prime Alpha and came out unscathed. “We are here in case this Coulter
asshole acts up. The consensus is he won’t but he’s being controlled by forces
he doesn’t even know about. We’ve got to bide our time until we can get him
down here to the clinic and cut your hellion out of him.”

“And clean that hellion of Raphian’s
influence,” Fallon said. “We can’t do that with it still inside him. It has to
be back where it belongs.”

“Both Supervisors as well as Dr. Hesar are
here, as well,” Sorn said. “They think it may take all of us to handle
Coulter.”

Taylor flinched. “He’s that powerful?”

“Aye,” Fallon said. “He’s that powerful, Tay.”

“Then let me out to help,” Taylor demanded.
“My hellion is almost full grown.”

Cree shook his head. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The operative word is almost,” Fallon
said. “You’re going to have to give it another day or two to reach maturity.”

Taylor pushed away from the panel. He
turned his back on his fellow Reapers, his fists clenched at his side. “Go
away,” he ordered.

“Hang in there, bro,” Sorn said. “It’ll all
work out.”

“Says the man who doesn’t know the first
thing about life-mating,” Fallon mumbled.

“Fuck you, Misha,” Sorn groused.

“You’re not my type,” Fallon smirked.

Cree cranked his head toward the exit.
“Stow that shit. Let’s go,” he told them.

“Take care of my woman, Cree,” Taylor said
without looking around.

“As if she were my own,” came the answer.

That statement rankled but Taylor let it
slide. He heard the door close behind the warriors and raked a hand through his
hair, grabbing a handful to tug brutally. He welcomed the pain.

Going back to the bunk, he sat down with
his hand still clenched in his hair. He swung his legs onto the platform and
lay down, drawing his knees up. His belly was cramping with tension, his chest
tight. He had a budding headache that he knew was only going to get worse.
Reapers suffered from savage migraines and the one headed his way was going to
be a doozy.

He let go of his hair and slid his forearm
over his face, blocking out the light overhead. He shut his eyes. “Light, off,”
he ordered and automatically whoever was observing him obeyed the directive.
The containment cell went dark but he knew the watcher could see it through the
night vision lenses located in the ceiling.

“Do you need anything, milord?” the
watcher—a female—asked.

“Not yet but I will,” he said.

“Let me know when you do,” she said. Her
voice was soft, very quiet and carefully modulated.

“Duly noted,” he agreed.

The watcher said nothing more and Taylor
tried to quieten his roiling mind, force out the images of Laci in the arms of
a faceless monster. He ached with need. He throbbed with longing. The hellion
within him stirred and began to whisper once more that there was another female
ripe and ready for his taking.

“Shut up,” he said. “Shut the fuck up and
leave me alone!”

“
She will give herself to you
.”

No, he thought, clenching his teeth. Keenan
would not. Fallon would eviscerate him, tear off his head and piss down his
throat before he allowed that to happen. He debated whether or not to tell
anyone that the new hellion—that had replaced Fallon’s on the island and that
had not belonged to a living mated Reaper—was whispering forbidden directives
to him.

Then it occurred to him that the hellion
didn’t mean Keenan.

He sat up, eyes wide. There was another
female out there of which
this
hellion was speaking.

Which meant the life-mate of the Reaper who
had willed himself to die was still alive!

* * * * *

Morrigunia smiled. “It took you long enough
to realize that, Reaper,” She said. Her green eyes shifted to the sleeping
woman who lay a few feet away on a bed of silk and lace.

Skylar McQueen had been the life-mate of
Wyndom Coure. The two had been as deeply in love as any Reaper-life-mate
pairing She had created but there had been a problem. The pairing had been the
first of its kind and had not worked out as Morrigunia had planned. Trouble
began brewing the second year the two were together and would have only gotten
worse had She allowed them to remain mated.

She studied the woman who was shifting
restlessly upon the bed and frowned.

As lovely as any of the mates She had
bestowed upon Her beloved Reapers, Skylar had set Coure’s blood ablaze with
instant desire the moment he laid eyes on her.

Just as Morrigunia intended.

It had taken a while longer for Skylar to
realize the Reaper was her fated mate.

But placing them together had been a
foolish mistake on Her part. Coure was a Prime Reaper on Fanntagh. A general in
the Fanntaghian Military, his assignment had been to end a war that had been
going on for decades. Skylar was the youngest daughter of the rival faction in
that war.

Skylar’s mother, Queen Maeve of the
Banshee, was as bloodthirsty and cruel as any warrioress to ever draw breath.
Her all-female fighting force was fierce, vicious and any male who fell into
their spiteful clutches rued the day his mother had given birth to him. A
hundred times more murderous and misandric—male-hating—as any Amazeen ever
dreamed of being, the Banshees were a brutal force with which to reckon. They
fought with savagery and won every skirmish. Rarely taking prisoners, those who
were snatched from the battlefield were harvested of their male essence then
ritualistically and horribly butchered. The essence was used to make more
Banshees. As a Reaper only produced male offspring with any species other than
a Banshee, the Banshee only produced female offspring.

Coure lost thousands of men to the
night-flying wraiths that swooped in to annihilate his troops. His men were
mortal and the Banshee were immortal. They could not be killed nor could they
be vanquished. Men were dying at an alarming rate and Morrigunia had been tasked
by Her husband
Jee An Ayr
, the Father-God, to put an end to the
butchery.

“How?” She demanded.

“You’ll find a way,” He told her.

After days of trying to do just that, the
Triune Goddess had come up with a bold plan—kidnap one of Queen Maeve’s seven
daughters and pair her with the Prime Reaper.

The Banshee queen loved her daughters with
a ferocity that bordered on insanity but of all her children, she loved Skylar
the most. Finding her, spiriting her away from the eagle eyes of her
innumerable bodyguards had been the hardest thing the goddess had ever done—and
the bloodiest—but She had whisked Skylar to the barren planetoid in No Man’s
Land known as the Sinisters and left her there.

Then She had brought Coure there, as well.
What had started out as a nasty brawl between the two when first they met
became a dual effort to remain alive while waiting for rescue. Within three
days, the Reaper and the Banshee were sharing the same blanket to stay warm in
the ice cave where She had put them. A day later, they were sharing their
bodies. At the end of a month, they were deeply, passionately in love and ready
to be taken back to Fanntagh.

Queen Maeve had been horrified at learning
her beloved daughter was now the willing property of a male. And not just any
male but the despised Prime Reaper. Ordering Coure’s death had brought about a
rift between mother and daughter that had ended in Skylar being cast out of her
tribe. The fighting between the Banshee and the men of Fanntagh had continued
but now the main focus of Banshee wrath had shifted. Maeve declared war on
Reapers throughout the Megaverse and issued a million credit bounty on the head
of each—fifty million to the one who brought her Wyndom Coure alive.

In order to protect Her Reaper, Morrigunia
brought him and his life-mate to Terra but that had not protected the
star-crossed lovers from their collective fates.

It was an experiment in pairing that went
tragically awry for Skylar when she became pregnant with Coure’s child. To
Morrigunia’s horror, the child had not been the male She was expecting, a new
generation of Reaper. The arrival of the girl child had stunned the goddess.
What should not have happened, had happened.

Again.

It was a grave mistake and the situation
needed to be resolved quickly.

The only way to do that was to sunder the
bond between the lovers with the deaths of Reaper and mate.

Unfortunately, Skylar was already dead and
could not suffer that fate again. The lovely woman was immortal, of a species
that Morrigunia realized She should have left alone. Whisking the infant away
only moments after her birth, the Triune Goddess set into motion a scenario She
hoped would remedy the matter once and for all.

Staging Skylar’s death had been easy
enough. Using Her powers to put the young woman into a deep, breathless sleep
from which only She could rouse her, Morrigunia then carried Skylar to the
mountain near the home she shared with Coure. There—atop the highest peak—the
goddess had let go of Skylar and the woman’s body had plunged tens of thousands
of feet into a rocky crevice. Coure had searched for hours until he found his
love. Believing her gone from him forever, grieving inconsolably, he had
carried her back to their cabin and had lain with her still body in his arms
for two days before finally getting up to set fire to the cabin. He had doused
himself and Skylar with an accelerant then lay down to let the fire claim them.

And claim him it did though Skylar survived
the conflagration. The Reaper was burned to ash, his remains blown away by a
brisk north wind. Skylar was taken to
Jeeoil
, the home of the gods with
all memory of her Reaper wiped from her mind as she lay in deep slumber.

The fledgling hellion of Wyndom Coure the
healers on the Island had taken from him years before the Reaper claimed Skylar
as his life-mate, had rested in stasis until it had been transferred to Taylor
Reynaud. Now—deeply surprising the Triune Goddess—it called for its mate and
Skylar was beginning to come out of her enforced sleep.

“You will have a new mate,” Morrigunia told
the restless woman. “One who I will make sure will never seed you with his
child.”

She turned Her gaze from Skylar and looked
out over the rippling waters of Her home world and sighed.

She had made only three mistakes in Her
long existence. She intended to make sure She made no others.

Taking a deep breath, She launched Her body
into space, shifting into Her dragon form as She soared over the turquoise
water, copper scales glinting in the sun. Within seconds She was digging Her
talons into the soil on
Guirrlan
, where She kept her
girt
, the
hatchery and nursery for Her Reaper offspring. There, in a land beyond time and
space, were the first two mistakes She’d made.

Once more in humanoid form, She made Her
way to the nursery where two little girls were sitting on the marble floor
playing with jackstones. They looked up at Her and smiled.

“Who is winning?” She asked.

“Pearl,” the little red-haired beauty said
with a pout. “She always wins.”