My Reaper's Daughter (29 page)

“Glyn?” Mystery called, and put out a shaking hand to touch his leg.

His eyelids fluttered open and he stared at her—past her—and he smiled.

“Milady,” he mumbled, holding his hand out. “Come to me, milady.”

Mystery looked on in horror as Leilani shed her clothing in the bat of an eye and

slithered onto the bed, sliding her naked body over the Reaper’s. His arms enfolded her,

his hips arched to meet her.

“No,” Mystery whispered, shaking her head in disbelief. She backed away from the

bed with her hand still out.

“Tell her to go away, Glynnie,” Leilani said against his lips.

“Go away,” he repeated.

Leilani twisted her head around and looked at Mystery with a gloating smirk. “You

heard him, slut. Go away so he can fuck me.”

Mystery did not see the glazed look in the Reaper’s eyes or hear the expressionless

way he spoke. She did not notice that his movements were jerky—controlled. All she

saw was the man she loved embracing her worst enemy and slanting his mouth over

Leilani’s. When he reared up and flipped Leilani to her back, shoving the whore’s legs

wide with his knees, Mystery let out a strangled cry and fled the cabin, running blindly

into the pelting rain.

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Chapter Thirteen

Glyn woke with a horrible taste in his mouth. He sat up to thrust a trembling hand

through his damp hair. Looking about him, he had no idea at all where he was but the

overpowering smell of rat droppings and dust told him wherever he was, the place

hadn’t been inhabited by humanoids in quite some time. Groaning for his muscles were

cramping, his body aching from lying on the hard, dirty floor, he drew his knees up,

trying to make sense out of where he was and how he’d gotten there. It was pitch black

inside the hovel but his Reaper night vision revealed a broken chair, a table missing a

leg, assorted debris that told him whoever had lived in the structure had long since

abandoned it.

“Where the fuck am I?” he asked aloud, and became aware of the drumming rain

upon a metal roof.

He couldn’t remember anything. Try as hard as he might, he had absolutely no idea

what had happened to him. The last thing he remembered was having coffee with

Anthony Simmons. Everything after that was a complete blank.

Getting to his feet, he stumbled for his head spun crazily for a moment. He had to

reach out and brace himself against the wall to keep from pitching forward. His

stomach roiled and sour bile rushed up his throat. He turned his head and puked, the

smell of his vomit so vile he could barely stand it. Over and over he wretched until

there was nothing left inside and he thought he might well have strained something.

His head was filled with a blinding pain that sent slivers of agony down his neck and

into his back. Leaning his head on the wall, he clung to the weathered boards as though

his life depended upon it, his fingernails digging into the wood.

“What the hell happened to me?” he whispered.

Quivering as though he were standing encased in ice, he turned his back to the wall

and slumped there with his head down and his hands clasped above his knees, hoping

the pain and the trembling would pass. His vision was skewed as well, and that didn’t

help the nausea that refused to go away even if there was nothing left within him to

dredge up. Throat burning, eyes watering and refusing to stay still—vision skittering

like an eel, head pounding, he was afraid whatever had ailed him a week or so past had

returned.

Pushing away from the wall, he stumbled to the door, and with some difficulty,

managed to pull it open. The darkness of the night greeted him amidst the silver streaks

of pouring rain.

“Won’t this fucking shit ever stop?” he yelled, and wished he hadn’t for his head

felt as though it might well explode. Slapping his hands to his ears, he gagged, the

nausea racing up his throat once more.

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At least his mount was standing stoically in the rain, though the poor beast gave

him a mean look when he staggered to it and missed getting his boot in the stirrup three

times before he was able at last to mount. Sitting astride the steed, he realized he was

not only hatless he was slickerless as well.

“Bloody fucking hell!” he hissed, and after five tries was able to fashion a hat,

though it appeared backward on his head. The slicker took more doing. By the time he

had the garment on, he was soaked through to his skin and shivering uncontrollably.

“I could gods-be-damned shoot somebody,” he mumbled then gasped.

He put a hand to his hip and was relieved to find his gun in place, though the strap

was not tied around his thigh as it should have been. The handle to his laser whip and

the dagger that was sheathed beside it were where they were supposed to be and he

heaved a thankful sigh.

Nudging the horse into motion, he hung on to the reins and saddle horn for dear

life for he feared he’d fall off if he didn’t. With every hard step the animal made, the

Reaper ground his teeth as the agony flared between his temples and the nausea kept

burning a hole in his esophagus.

By the time he reached Phelan Kiel’s house, his teeth were chattering and he was so

ill he simply slid off the horse’s back and into a waiting mud puddle.

* * * * *

“Hey.”

Glyn had trouble focusing his eyes when he woke to find Phelan leaning over him.

He grunted.

“You know my beds aren’t that hard, Reaper, that you need to wallow in the

fucking mud in the middle of a downpour,” Phelan told him. “And we really didn’t

appreciate having to clean you off before we brought you in the house.”

“What happened?” Glyn mumbled.

“You passed out,” Kasid informed him, and Glyn’s gaze shifted to another head

that suddenly appeared in his line of vision.

“From two cups of coffee?”

Kasid and Phelan looked away from him and at one another then down at him

again.

“What was in the coffee, Kullen?” Phelan inquired.

“Not a gods-be-damned thing,” Glyn said, struggling to sit up in the bed. He

plowed a hand through his wet hair. “At least I didn’t think there was at any rate.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Kasid asked.

“Leaving Simmons’ house.”

Phelan frowned. “And this was when exactly?”

“This morning.”

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Once again his fellow teammates exchanged perplexed looks then lowered their

attention to him.

“Do you realize it was after midnight when we found you snoozing in the mud?”

Phelan questioned.

“I stopped somewhere,” Glyn muttered.

“Obviously.” Phelan folded his arms over his chest. “Where might that have been?”

Glyn remembered waking in the musty cabin but he had no idea where it was

located. He remembered climbing atop his horse but he couldn’t for the life of him

picture the route he’d taken to arrive back at Phelan’s house.

“Did you go see your lady?” Kasid queried.

Glyn nodded. “Aye, but that was before I went to Simmons’.” He swung his legs off

the bed, glancing up at Phelan as he got to his feet. “I’ve no fucking idea where I was

from midmorning until just now. It was a cabin but I don’t know how I got there or

where the fuck it was.” When his teammates looked at one another, he hissed. “Stop

swapping those gods-be-damned looks. I’m not losing my mind here.” He waved a

hand to fashion a pair of leather pants to cover his nakedness.

“The people who have come up missing and lived to tell the tale couldn’t tell me

where they’d been either, Glyn,” Phelan said softly.

That sent a chill down Glyn’s spine as he plodded wearily over to the washbasin

and dug his hands into the water to splash his face. He felt detached, numb, out of it,

and though his head no longer ached and the nausea was gone, he ached all over.

Drying his face on a towel Kasid politely handed him, he scrubbed vigorously at his

face.

“You want your tenerse now?” Phelan asked, and at Glyn’s nod, produced a vacsyringe. “Can you do it or you want me to?”

“I’m not a fucking invalid, Kiel,” Glyn grumbled as he held his hand out for the

injection of tenerse.

“Mayhap we should ride over to Sagewood and see what we can find out,” Kasid

suggested.

“Did you find out anything at Fox Hill?” Glyn countered.

“There is an old woman who the workers go to for spells and medicines and the

like. I spoke with her at length about the zombie beings and she assured me such things

really exist. She tells me there are none at Fox Hill but swears both Burnt Pine and

Sagewood have more than their share.”

Glyn’s eyebrows shot up. “Sagewood?”

Phelan hooked a leg over the arm of an overstuffed chair that sat by the window.

“It’s amazing what you can learn when you ask the right questions,” he said. “I’ve been

friends with Tony Simmons for years but up until a few days ago, he’d not mentioned

the creatures to me.” He narrowed his eyes. “Then out of the blue he asks if I’d ever

heard of them. According to him, Tolliver over at Burnt Pine brought them to his

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attention, yet from what I learned from Tolliver’s people, both plantations have always

had zombie workers.”

“And now all of a sudden Simmons is bringing this to your attention,” Glyn said.

“Why would he do that?”

“Because before now, there was no problem,” Phelan surmised. “One man I spoke

with said the plantation owners have used the ceremony for making slave workers from

long before the Burning War, as far back as the Terran fifteenth century. It wasn’t

considered truly evil until bokors or dark sorcerers—priests who practiced black

magic—began to use it for their personal gain or to punish someone they didn’t like.”

“And by punishing, it is meant for the one they turned into a zombie or someone

upon whom they set the zombie,” Kasid added. “Such creatures ruled by a bokor are

truly evil and have been cursed to eat flesh because that is a grave sin among the people

of color.”

“So somewhere out there is a bokor who is responsible for the bone yard you

found,” Glyn stated.

“Aye, and from what I also learned at Burnt Pine, there is at least one houngan and

one mambo practicing their magic at Sagewood,” Phelan told him.

“Houngan being a male practitioner of the art and the mambo being a female,”

Kasid explained. “The old lady at Fox Hill is a tenth-generation mambo and proud of

her heritage. She says the one at Sagewood—whom she would not name—is from a

long line of magic-sayers.”

“Something else I learned that sure as hell didn’t set well with me is that whoever

this bokor is,” Phelan said, “he’s one of Raphian’s minions.”

“Which means he has unlimited power at his disposal,” Kasid stated.

“And has to be stopped before he makes more of these zombie things and the

territory is overrun with mindless killing machines,” Phelan declared.

Glyn glanced in the mirror, frowned at his beard but didn’t have the energy to

shave. “Well, since I don’t have the urge to snack on either of you, I don’t guess it was

the bokor who had me.” Once more the Reaper waved his hand to create socks, boots

and a shirt.

“He might have, Kullen, but then found you resistant to whatever drug he gave

you.”

Turning his head to give Phelan a steady look, Glyn felt another chill go down his

body. He thought about how his body ached and how sick he’d been the day before.

“You think someone gave me something?”

“I believe it’s highly possible,” was the reply. “I also think we need to do as Kasid

suggested and go over to Sagewood.” A muscles clenched in Phelan’s jaw. “Together

and not separately from now on.”

“There is safety in numbers, you mean?” Glyn asked.

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“If we’re alone, we might conceivably be vulnerable. Something we don’t

understand happened to you. I’d just as soon we stick together.”

“Simmons did invite us to return so we have an excuse for going back this

evening,” Glyn remarked.

“We’ll make a day of it instead,” Phelan said. “Have him take us around to the

elders among the workers and see if we can glean any impressions when they are

around him.”

Kasid started to speak then stopped, holding up a hand for the other men to be

quiet. “Aye, Lord Naois?” he said.

“Two drones have finished their recalibrations and are on their way to you. One drone has

been programmed to seek out the possible locations of cybots and destroy them. The other drone

will be searching for super beings those ’bots might have created and marking their location for

you men to go after and take out. That drone will also begin taking DNA samples from the

populace,”
said the Shadowlord.
“Do you have anything to report on the disappearances?”

As Glyn and Phelan listened, Kasid explained what had transpired the day before.

“We concur,”
Lord Kheelan interrupted.
“You should stay together. Keep us informed. If

we need to send reinforcements, we will.”

“Ask him how Owen is doing,” Glyn said.

“How is Tohre, Your Grace?”