unmanned himself before her. His eyes were stinging as he thundered down the stairs,
needing to put distance between him and the beautiful woman to whom he knew he’d
already lost his heart.
The sheriff was waiting in front of the saloon when the Reaper came out. “Don’t
worry about nothing, milord,” he told Bevyn. “I’ll take good care of your lady.”
Bevyn inclined his head as he took the reins and vaulted into the saddle. “I’ve a
favor to ask of you, Sheriff,” he said.
“Anything, milord. Just name it.”
“Find me some land within the scope of the town’s limits onto which I can build
our home,” he said. “An acre will do.”
“I will see to it, milord,” the sheriff agreed.
“And assemble some men to construct the place for us. Ask my lady to tell them
what she desires our home to be. No expense is to be spared in the building of it.
Understood?”
“Aye, milord!”
“You watch over her for me, Sheriff,” the Reaper instructed. He dug his heels into
Préachán’s flanks and the black stallion took off like a bat out of hell.
“I will guard her with my life,” Buford Gilchrist swore to the departing warrior.
By the time the sun set on Orson, every man, woman and child in town was abuzz
with the news that they had garnered their very own Reaper. It was an honor they all
took to heart.
* * * * *
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Her Reaper’s Arms
As Bevyn’s mount galloped over the dusty road, he kept going back to the
conversation with the sheriff.
Our home, he had said.
A place for us.
My lady.
The Reaper’s heart did a tight little squeeze in his chest. He had never had his own
home, his own place. He had never owned anything save the clothes on his back and
the horse upon which he sat. He’d accumulated very little since becoming a Reaper and
what he personally owned could be carried within the confines of his saddlebags.
Though he took great delight in reading, he didn’t own a single book. He borrowed
them from the larger libraries that still stood and was careful to return them when they
were due. Not once had he been forced to pay an overdue fine.
“A bookcase,” he thought as Préachán’s long stride ate up the miles. “A bookcase
along one entire wall filled with tomes I have yet to read. Books I can collect, books I
can have as my own.”
It took him nearly a half hour of riding before he realized he didn’t have a clue
where he was going. Reining in his mount, he sat there laughing at the absurdity of his
actions before taking out the handkerchief and sticking the tip of his tongue to a fleck of
the rogue’s blood. Almost instantly, an image formed in his mind of the man whose
blood he had tasted and he turned his head to look back the way he’d come.
Sometimes, he thought as he stuffed the handkerchief in his back pocket, the
devilish little imp that sat on his shoulder demanded his attention when it thought he
should be concentrating on the matter at hand. It tended to rake his tattooed cheek with
the sharp, pointed little toe of its miniscule iron boot and draw symbolic blood.
“Pay attention, you fucking Reaper!” it would seem to hiss in his ear, its vicious little
teeth mauling his earlobe if only in Bevyn’s imagination.
That had just happened, thrusting him out of his self-induced euphoria regarding
Lea and back into the sordidness in which Reapers existed.
“You’re close by, aren’t you, balgair?” he asked quietly. He sniffed the air, his eyes
narrowing at the stench. “Aye, you bastard. You are very close by.”
For a moment longer he sat there until his savage instincts took over and the fleck
of blood he had tasted pointed him straight toward the balgair’s location. He pulled on
Préachán’s reins and turned the ebon steed, directing it back the way they’d just
traveled. The closer he got to the rogue, the sharper his lateral incisors became until the
points were raking his bottom lip. With conscious effort, he retracted them, though the
sharp claws that had sprung from his fingertips were harder to control. It wouldn’t do
for a civilian to see him in the process of Transition.
Not that he had much to worry about in that department. For as far as his sharp
eyes could see no human was about. But the vile stench of balgair was rife in his nostrils
and growing stronger with every yard Préachán covered.
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
The Reaper frowned deeply for there was another scent—an obscene one—that
washed over him the farther along the meandering dirt path he traveled. That scent was
horrendous and it made the hackles stand up on his back. Reining in Préachán, he
turned his head from side to side, drawing in the odor, trying to place it. The longer he
sat there inhaling the vastly unpleasant smell, the more he rolled his shoulders as
though something were slithering down his spine.
He inhaled deeply. It wasn’t a ghoret, he thought. That was an odor he could never
mistake for what it was. The pit viper was the most evil thing he’d ever encountered
and once in contact with one, its smell was never forgotten.
So what was the stench that made him feel as though he’d been dowsed with slime?
Walking Préachán slowly along the trail, he saw nothing that drew his attention.
Someone had passed this way recently, but not in the last day or two. The tracks
weren’t fresh and though the scent of the balgair was strong, Bevyn had a strong notion
the evil bastard wasn’t alive. Nevertheless, he moved carefully, his eyes whipping back
and forth across the trail, scoping out the territory, his palm on the handle of his laser
whip.
The shack was sitting in a grove of cottonwood and Osage orange trees, half hidden
by the shimmering leaves on the spreading lower branches. A horse neighed greeting to
Préachán and the Reaper’s steed snorted in reply.
Once more Bevyn halted his horse, allowing his Reaper senses to home in on the
shack, to test the vibrations that were undulating down his taut spine. His acute hearing
picked up no sounds, his eyes found no movement other than the impatient and—to
him—the nervous shifting of the other horse.
Dismounting slowly, he upholstered his laser whip—his speal—and advanced
quietly toward the shack, keeping his senses alert to the most minute of changes in the
air, the ground beneath his feet.
The closer he came to the rundown building with its gray weathered boards and
swayback roof pitted with missing shingles, the more the squirmy feeling along his
spine shifted. Beneath the black silk, his flesh felt wet, the shirt’s material clinging to his
back and chest as though offal had been smeared on the garment. It was a very
unpleasant sensation that bothered him intensely.
He stopped and listened for any movement at all, his gaze intent on the shack’s
door that was slightly ajar. He could detect no sounds and though his ears were
perfectly capable of hearing a heartbeat from ten feet away, he heard absolutely nothing
save the buzzing of flies.
It was the sudden sound that disturbed him more than the atrocious odor coming
>
from the shack. Death was inside the cabin and the stench that was now so
overpowering, so vile, burned the membranes of his nostrils.
From one of the Osage orange trees, a hedge apple fell, clunking on the dilapidated
roof and rolling down it. The light green wrinkled ball landing with a dull thud in the
dirt as it hit the ground.
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Her Reaper’s Arms
Now sick to his stomach from the smell, he took out his black silk handkerchief and
tied it over his face to filter the odor. To anyone who might have seen him at that
moment, he looked like a bank robber sneaking up on the door to the shack.
His spurs jingled against the rotting porch floor as he went to the shack’s door and
he felt a board crack under his weight. Putting his boot to the door, he nudged it open,
flinching at the piercing shriek of its rusted hinges. The buzzing sound was louder and
despite the protection of his handkerchief, the stench was overwhelming, drifting up
from beneath his chin, making his eyes water.
The interior of the cabin was dark but there was no mistaking the horrors that lined
its walls. Bevyn stopped in the doorway, staring at the awfulness that assailed his eyes.
For a moment or two he could not move, so devastating was the scene upon which he’d
come. Eyes wide, struggling to draw air through his mouth to blot out the putrid odor
permeating the air, he stumbled back and barely made it off the porch before he
whipped off his handkerchief and puked, relieving his belly of its breakfast.
Tears stung his eyes—a valiant attempt made by his soul to wash away the
horrendous sight he had beheld inside the shack. Clutching a rough upright that barely
held up the porch roof, he puked again and again until there was only bitter vetch
flooding his mouth. Wiping the back of a shaking hand across his lips, he realized his
entire body was trembling. Nothing had ever affected him as strongly as what he’d just
seen.
Staggering off the porch, the Reaper put distance between him and the shack and
made his way to a fallen log, plopping down on it, leaning forward to put his head
between his legs in an attempt to calm the fury of his body. He was sweating profusely,
his mouth watering so copiously he feared the puking wasn’t finished. After a moment
or two he slowly lifted his head and looked at the cabin, every humane instinct in his
body shuddering with disgust.
The bodies he’d seen hanging on the walls had been brutally tortured with an
instrument he had hoped never to see again and certainly never expected to find on
Terra. He’d spied it leaning against one wall, its business end coated with blood, and
had felt a shiver of cold wriggle down his spine.
No one should ever lay eyes upon what he’d just seen, he thought. The sight could
well pitch a sensitive soul into unremitting madness and a less susceptible one into a
lifetime of gruesome nightmares. What lay beyond the slivered walls of the shack had
to be destroyed, put to rest, and it was Bevyn’s job to see to it. No one should ever
suspect the vileness that had taken place in the shack.
Getting to his feet, stamping down the urge to throw up again, it took every ounce
of his courage and stamina to enter the shack again. He had to make sure the rogue was
dead as Roy English lay on his cot, his face bloated and black from the rabies that had
infected him. Using his laser whip, Bevyn had severed the balgair’s head from his neck
and incinerated the weak revenant worm that flopped out upon the floor. The creature
was dying but still it opened its maw of a mouth and hissed at the Reaper, the redtinged spines along its segmented back bristling feebly. The stench from its pale green
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
body as it burst into flames was even more sickening than the odors coming from the
horrors lining the walls of the shack.
The Reaper went back outside and began gathering fallen branches of dead wood
and piled them around the perimeter of the shack. When he was finished, when he’d
stacked as much incendiary material as he could at the base of the rotting walls, he
untied the rogue’s horse from its place on the far end of the porch and walked it out to
where Préachán stood patiently waiting. Tying the animal beside his own mount,
Bevyn took a box of matches from his saddlebags and lit the debris around the shack,
standing back as the dried wood caught fire with a loud whoosh.
It took the cabin over an hour to burn to the ground, the roof timbers caving in,
going up in tall flames to singe the branches of the green trees and wither the leaves to
blackened ash. While the fire hissed and popped and cleansed the world of the horror
housed inside the shack, Bevyn had stood with his mount and the balgair’s.
His head ached miserably and he knew one of the debilitating migraines that
plagued his kind was about to take hold. The pain was rapidly approaching. It hurt
even to mount Préachán, but once in the saddle, once sure there was nothing left but the
smoldering ruins of cabin, he kicked his mount into movement, leading the balgair’s
scrawny beast by its reins.
“Are you all right, Lord Bevyn?”
It was Lord Kheelan’s voice that broke into Bevyn’s thoughts as the Reaper rode
back toward Orson. Disinclined to answer the Shadowlord’s question, it wasn’t until
the High Lord spoke again—this time in a voice that brooked no ignoring—that he
replied.
“I’m here,” Bevyn said aloud, his jaw tight.
“We felt your revulsion, Lord Bevyn,” Lord Kheelan stated. “To remedy such things are
why you are in this world.”
“Aye,” Bevyn agreed. In his mind’s eye, he saw again the atrocities that had been
hanging from meat hooks along the walls of the shack.
“There was nothing more you could have done for the rogue’s victims,” Lord Kheelan
reminded him from the Citadel, that bastion of armed protection many, many miles
away.
“Had I known of English sooner—” the Reaper began, but the High Lord cut him
off.
“We did not know of it, Lord Bevyn. How could you?” came the reprimand.
Bevyn swiped at the sweat that was rolling down from the headband of his hat. He
ran the back of his hand under his chin. “I should have made my rounds of Orson long
before now,” he said, his voice harsh.
“There are many of them and few of you, Lord Bevyn. You can not be in two places at once
and you were needed in Beverton.”
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Her Reaper’s Arms
“I was needed here!” Bevyn snarled.
“Do not blame yourself for what the rogue did. You could not have prevented it, Bevyn. We
understand you need time to get over what you saw,” Lord Kheelan said. “Take a few days, a
week, and then join us here at the Citadel.”
Bevyn felt the High Lord withdrawing. He had been given an order and was
expected to carry it out. How magnanimous of his masters to allow him time for the
horror to diminish in his mind. Not that it ever would. He was sick to his very soul and
the pain lacerating his temples only added to the hell in which he now found himself.
He could imagine the healers at the Citadel sitting down with the Shadowlords to
soberly discuss their Reaper’s frame of mind. There would be much exchanging of ideas
of how best to handle him when he presented himself before the High Council, what
would be required to return him to a state of semi-normalcy—as if there were such a
thing with his kind.
If there was one thing Bevyn Coure hated more than being forced to witness the
evil perpetrated by the rogues, it was being handled. Kennocha Tramont had handled
him—gods how she had handled him!—and his body still bore the scars of that
handling.
Looking down, he took his left hand from the reins and gazed at the back of it. A
star-shaped scar stood out faintly on the tan of his skin. He stared at the old wound—
realizing his hand was shaking. His right hand bore the same scar but was even fainter
than this one. The pain that had accompanied the searing of his flesh by the Dóigra had
been but a taste of Kennocha’s revenge against him.
Where, he wondered, had the rogue found a Dóigra? From what Amazeen
warrioress’s hand had he taken the long mahogany spear with the glass-tipped starshaped laser bulb at the end? Were there now Amazeens on Terra?
That last question set his teeth on edge. If those bitches were here, if they were in
league with the rogues, Terra had been thrust closer to the Abyss and the evil that
resided there.
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Chapter Three
Lea was helping Mable and her girls do their wash when news came that the
Reaper had returned and had been seen down at the stable. She dried her workroughened hands on her apron and went through the saloon, pushing open the batwing
doors to look toward the stable. Debating whether to wait for her man there at the
saloon or to go to him, she tucked her lower lip between her teeth and nibbled on it.
Would he be offended if she met him at the stable?
At that moment, she saw him coming out of the building, his head lowered, his face
hidden behind the brim of his down-turned hat, the silver conchos on the headband
glinting in the sun. His saddlebags were slung over his shoulder and must have been
very heavy for his footsteps were slow, almost dragging, and his shoulders were
stooped.
“Look at me, warrior,” she whispered to him, wondering if he would hear though
he was a long way from her.
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