“He’s not sleeping,” she’d told Dr. Judson, the Exchange’s primary physician. “He’s not eating enough to keep a bird alive. I catch him staring into space and the least sound makes him jump.”
“That’s natural, Laci,” he said. “His body has healed but his mind hasn’t.” He’d put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Give him time. Let him mend on his own schedule.”
“I’m terrified that he won’t be the man he once was,” she said.
“He won’t be, Laci. You don’t go through what he did and remain the same. There will always be shadows in his eyes. There will be times when the memories of the torture will come out of nowhere to cripple him. Those things are givens. A Reaper’s recall never fades. It never dies. The memories will always be there.”
Twice in the last five days he had woken from a restless sleep to sit bolt upright in the bed—eyes wide, body shuddering, covered in sweat. He hadn’t made a sound and when she put her arms around him he had sagged against her. When she’d asked if he wanted to talk about it, he’d said nothing. On Dr. Judson’s advice she would not ask again.
“He may never be able to talk about it, Laci. If he wouldn’t discuss it with the Supervisor or Agent Fallon, he most certainly won’t discuss it with you. Don’t press. That’s the very worst thing you can do.”
The helo lifted into the air and she turned her attention to the window where the man who controlled her life stood with his hands behind his back watching her. There were times she hated John Doe more than anything or anyone in the world.
* * * * *
Taylor took the monorail back to the apartment he shared with Laci. He still had his own place because the Powers Who Were at the Exchange insisted each agent have a separate residence from his Extension. He assumed it was because they knew there would be times when a Reaper needed space, needed solitude. At that moment in his life space and solitude were the last things he needed.
He needed his woman. He needed to be with his woman. That the Supervisor had given her an assignment on her own both angered and terrified him. While he knew there would be agents watching her at all times—ready to jump in to protect her back—they weren’t Reapers. Each of them had psi powers but nowhere as potent as his. Only he or one like him could adequately protect her against whatever it was she was going to meet.
“He singlehandedly destroyed an entire encampment of Taliban,” the Supervisor said. “Butchered them like cattle in a slaughterhouse. There were men who were literally torn in half. I cannot begin to imagine the strength that took.”
As he stared out the window of the monorail something Viraiden Cree had once told him pricked at his mind.
“The only thing a Shadowlord fears is a Deathlord. The only thing a Deathlord fears is a Ridge Lord. I’ve never met one but I’ve heard they have even more powers than we do. The Supervisor at Tearmann is a Ridge Lord and I get the fucking creeps every time I have to deal with him.”
Could the Rogue be a Reaper-Ridge Lord hybrid? He wondered. Or was he something even more powerful than that?
He shot out his leg and dug into his pocket for his cell phone. He thumbed through the numbers until he came to Fallon’s personal cell.
“How you doing?” Fallon asked.
“Okay,” he replied. “Listen. Is there anything higher up in the food chain than a Ridge Lord?”
Fallon didn’t reply for a second or two. “Why?”
“Have you heard about the vigilante taking out terrorists in the Middle East?”
“Yeah. The Exchange sending someone to look into it?”
“Laci.”
“Fuck,” Fallon said. “And you?”
“I’m in Iowa.”
“And that asshole prick sent her by herself?” Fallon snarled.
“She’s got backup,” he said. “Is there anything higher than a Ridge Lord?”
“I don’t think so but I can ask Coim. He’d know.”
Taylor nodded to himself. The Big Gray Man knew most everything there was to know and he wished he had a way to directly contact the supernatural being as Fallon did.
“I’ll have him watch out for Laci,” Fallon said, reading his mind. “If there are mountains near where she is, he will be there. That’s the best I can do. I assume there was a reason the bastard sent her alone.”
“The Supervisor thought the balgair—if that’s what he is—would get spooked if he sent a Reaper with her. Darkyn Sorn discovered him and the Rogue completely closed his mind off to him. Apparently he erased even his scent.”
On the other end of the phone Fallon whistled. “That’s not good.”
“No,” Taylor agreed. “And Laci is going up against whatever this man is.”
“I’ll contact Coim,” Fallon said. “Hang tight.” He ended the call.
It was nearly two hours before Fallon called. Taylor had paced a pathway into the carpet by then.
“What did he say?” he demanded when he answered.
“Here’s the thing,” Fallon said. “When I told Coim about the Rogue he started cursing in whatever the fuck his native language is. He said he’d been getting odd jibes all week and should have already looked into it.”
“Jibes?”
Fallon sighed. “Sorry. I meant vibes. His mishearing is starting to rub off on me. At any rate he says until now there have been only three kinds of what he calls Superlords—Shadowlords, Deathlords and Ridge Lords.”
“Until now,” Taylor echoed and sat down heavily on the sofa. “What does that mean?”
“Hold on. I’ll get to that. If there’s one thing I learned early on in my association with Coim it’s that he is one of the most inquisitive creatures you will ever meet. He absorbs information like a sponge and whatever intrigues him, catches his imagination, he will scour every available source until he learns all there is to know about that subject. The existence of this new Rogue not only intrigued him, it set a fire under his big, hairy ass. He doesn’t like anything preternatural coming into this world without his knowledge.”
“And?” Taylor said, spinning his hand around and around in a mental effort to get Fallon to hurry up.
“He jumped on the Rogue with both feet.”
“He found him?”
“In the Galgala region of Somalia,” Fallon said. “He’d just massacred a group of Al Shabab. When I say massacre, I mean completely annihilated. There wasn’t one of the fighters left intact. The Rogue had squashed them like bugs. Squashed, Reynaud. Like bugs.”
“I get the picture,” Taylor said.
“Coim caught the whiff of the bloodbath before he saw the Rogue. The bastard was so engrossed in what he was doing he didn’t sense Coim until it was too late and the Vainshtyr slipped under his guard and straight into his mind.”
“And?” Taylor demanded.
“And spoke directly to the hellion.” Fallon paused. “You sitting down?”
“Just get on with it, will you?”
“All right, already! Hold your water. The good news is he is only going after those who would destroy the Earth with war.”
“The hellion said this? And of course a hellion wouldn’t lie,” Taylor scoffed.
“Not to Vainshtyr An Fear Liath Mor,” Fallon reminded him.
“No, I guess not,” Taylor said, a bit relieved. “What’s the bad news then?”
“The bad news is there’s a new boss in town,” Fallon said. “A new kind of Superlord. The first of his kind. Part Superlord and part Panthera.”
Taylor got slowly to his feet. “So he really is a hybrid?”
“Aye, and with all the power and lethality that implies. He thinks of himself as a god. How fucking pretentious is that?”
Chapter Eight
Dixon slammed his fist into the wall. His introduction to Vainshtyr An Fear Liath Mor had been horrifying. The Big Gray Man—whom he had no idea existed—had literally scared the shit out of him when he suddenly appeared amidst the wreckage of the Al Shabab camp. The overwhelming fear with whi
ch the presence covered him had put a serious dent in his belief he was the most powerful entity in the neighborhood.
“You are nothing compared to me,” the giant creature had snarled, looming over him like a mountain. “You are a flea. No, lower than a flea. You are flea shit!”
The huge face pressed so close to his he could feel the rasp of the creature’s whiskers started an avalanche of feces trekking down his pant leg.
“You stink,” the monster said with a growl. “What to call you? What to call you?” It put its muzzle against Dixon’s nose. “What do you call yourself?”
“I am a Gr-Gravelord,” Dixon stammered.
“So your hellion says. I want your name, flea shit!”
“D-Dixon C-Coulter,” he said and felt another trickle of offal plop from the cuff of his pant.
“You’re a pussy boy too,” the hairy beast said with disgust. “What is this world coming to? It is being overrun by pussy boys!”
The creature pulled back and unrolled its immense body to its full height. It stared down at Dixon with its black lips peeled back over long fangs.
“Toe the line, pussy boy,” it commanded. “I will be watching you!”
The last thing Dixon remembered, heard before he collapsed to the ground in a trembling heap, was what he thought was the creature singing the old Queen song We Will Rock You but the lyrics were skewed.
“You’ve got mud on your face, front disc brakes…” the creature sang off-key.
He hit the wall again, welcoming the pain of his knuckles breaking, the flesh splitting, blood welling. He looked down at his hand and watched it repair itself before he could take another breath.
Instant healing was another blessing of being a Gravelord.
“That thing knows me,” he said aloud. “It can track me.”
“An Fear Liath Mor poses no threat to you, Gravelord,” the hellion whispered. “As long as you do only good, he will leave you be.”
“But it knows me! He could derail my plans.”
“It does not know your intent. I hid that from him. He was looking only for your motive in relieving the world of bad men. He had no reason to look deeper into your personal agenda.”
“So it knows nothing of my woman?”
“There was no reason for him to seek such information.”
“And I can find her now?”
“She will find you,” the hellion said.
“When?”
“Two days hence.”
“And the other?”
“He will not be with her. She will be alone.”
“Good,” Dixon said. He felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from him. He rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and then went over to retrieve his duffle bag. He slung it over his arm. “She will find me, you say?”
“She will.”
He looked around the room to make sure he had left nothing in the seedy Yemen rat trap that passed for a hotel. He wanted to be somewhere nice, picturesque for his first face-to-face meeting with his mate and not in a piece-of-shit room that smelled of things he didn’t want to consider.
Exiting the hotel, his psi senses picked up on two women who had a modicum of psychic ability but ignored them. He saw them glance his way then scurry out of sight. They had just enough aptitude to sense true power when they felt it.
He smiled.
It was good to be omnipotent.
* * * * *
The Big Gray Man was about to contact Fallon to tell him what he’d learned when an urgent call came from one of his wives. He sighed. The pretty one was about to deliver another child—her thirty-first—and An Fear Liath Mor wanted to be there for the delivery. He weighed the choices and decided a mate came before the Hound. Shrugging, he willed himself to his home world without another thought of the trouble brewing on Terra.
* * * * *
“Greece?” Laci repeated. The Gulfstream was on route to the Aden Abdulle International Airport in Mogadishu when the copilot came back to tell her there had been a change in the flight plan.
“We were told that’s where the target has surfaced,” the pilot said.
She sighed. “Okay. Greece is a helluva sight better than Somalia.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” he asked.
“Do they know where he showed up?”
“Santorini. We’ll be there in three hours.” He put a finger to the bill of his cap and headed back for the cockpit.
She liked Greece. Greece was one of her favorite places. She and Taylor had spent some quality time on the Greek island of Santorini in the safe house owned by the Exchange. When she closed her eyes she could see the windmills, the houses built on the edge of the caldera, the beautiful beach where Taylor had once asked her to marry him.
Now she wished she had said yes for she doubted he would ask her again.
Going back to the last place they had visited before their world had been torn apart by the bomb would not be easy. The memories would be there to underscore the heartache.
A slight headache pushed at the spot over her right eye where most of her migraines began. She put her fingers there to rub it and wondered if she should take a Vistaril before it got any worse. Deciding that would be the best course of action, she reached across to the empty seat across the aisle and grabbed her purse. She laid it in her lap and unzipped it, fished around inside for the little amber bottle of pills.
Her fingers touched cold metal and she plucked a small picture frame from the purse. It was a plain bronze frame with a half-inch satin metal finish. Covering the photograph inside the frame was a piece of plexigon shielding instead of glass. The plexigon material would not scratch or crack like the thermoplastic of Plexiglas.
She trailed her fingers over the smiling face in the photograph. Taylor’s beautiful green eyes were sparkling, crinkling at the corners for he’d been laughing when she took the picture with her cell phone. He had such an engaging smile and it lit up his entire face.
“You are such a handsome man, my love,” she whispered and ran her fingers over that smile.
Her eyes locked with those in the photograph and she frowned. His eyes were no longer green. They were amber now like Fallon’s. Like Viraiden Cree’s. Lupine and Hell-hound eyes were amber. Panthera Reapers had green eyes though all three Reaper species’ eyes turned blood red when they were angry.
She liked her mate better with the emerald green eyes that had stared lovingly into hers. The amber eyes that looked back at her now were filled with terrible sadness and insecurity. They were a stranger’s eyes.
Her headache suddenly intensified and she winced. That was never a good sign and especially not when she was flying. She laid the photograph on the seat beside her, found the bottle of medicine and opened it to shake three capsules into her palm. She took them with a swig of cherry Pepsi then returned the re-capped bottle to her purse. She zipped her bag and tossed it back to the other seat, picked up Taylor’s photograph and pressed it to her heart as she closed her eyes and rested her head on the back of the seat.
It didn’t take long for the Vistaril to lull her enough for the headache to begin to fade. As it always did, it gave her a slight buzz that she had never found enjoyable. She hated the feeling it gave her but it was an evil byproduct of the med. It was better to let it take over than try to fight it so she allowed the effective sedative and analgesic properties of the drug to do its thing. Within ten minutes she was sleeping.
And dreaming vividly and in detail as she always did after taking the med.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
He was lying on his back on the beach towel with his knees drawn up, his arms crossed beneath his head. The dark Ray-Bans that covered his eyes reflected the bright sun overhead. He was the darkest she’d ever seen him and there were sun streaks in his dark brown hair. The suntan oil he’d slathered over his chest had matted the hair and left two very intriguing swirls over his pecs. The swirls were fascinating for one curled clockwise and the other counterclockwise. The tiger
line dipping down to the low-riding waist of his black swim trunks fanned out like a tree trunk—the roots seemingly disappearing beneath the waistband.
“Are you letching on me, woman?” he asked, his lips twitching.
“I was just thinking.”
“The gods help us,” he said.
She was on her back, her upper body raised on her elbows as she observed the steady rise and fall of his chest.
“I was thinking if I were to slide onto you, I’d slide right off,” she said. “You’ve got enough oil on you to sink the Exxon Valdez.”
He smiled and his bright white teeth flashed in the sunlight. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
“Maybe later,” she said, stretching out beside him on her belly. She lifted her legs and crossed them at the ankles as she stared at the dunes behind them where sea oats swayed in a light breeze.
He turned his shades-shielded face toward her. “Want me to rub some oil on your back, babe? You’re getting a bit pink there.”
“Sure,” she said and lowered her legs.
He sat up, reached for the bottle of suntan oil, flung one of his legs over then sat down gently on her rump.
“Sweet Morrigunia, you’re getting heavy there, Tater,” she complained as he untied the string of her bikini top.
“Too much baklava,” he replied. She could hear the squishing sound of his palms rubbing together as he coated his palms with the oil.
“How come you tan so easy?” she asked, sighing when he began rubbing the oil over her back.
“Simple male superiority,” he said.
“I’ll buy the simple male part of that explanation and reserve judgment on the superiority part.”
“Takes a simple mind to think of simple things,” he countered.
“I guess that’s why you thought of it, huh?” When he snorted she smiled.
“You know what I want to do when we get back to the beach house?” he asked, expertly working the muscles of her shoulders as he applied the oil.
“With you, there’s no telling,” she replied. “It could be anything from clipping your toe claws to painting my toenails. Which will it be today?”
A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) Page 10