Her Reaper's Arms

by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  around his handsome head and draw him up. Had Antimache not overruled her, Coure

  might well be on the LRC at that very moment, though Penthe had not counted on the

  interference of the Triune Goddess in the matter.

  “But you should have,” she chastised herself. “You should have known She’d not

  give him up easily.”

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  Realizing she might well be stuck on this backward world for the remainder of her

  days, Penthe cursed fluently and sat up, slapping her wrists atop her drawn-up knees

  and glaring across the bucolic creek. Her vow to bring Coure back for punishment

  might never be fulfilled, but she would take pleasure in hunting him, causing him as

  much irritation and grief as she could.

  “I want him hurt,” Kennocha had said on her deathbed. “I want him completely

  destroyed.”

  Penthe had read the bitter memories boiling inside her great-great-grandmother’s

  head as the old woman lay there wheezing for breath. She had seen the handsome

  young priest as the flames had swept upward to devour him. She had witnessed the

  unbelievable rescue that had plucked Bevyn Coure from his just reward and had

  commiserated with Great-Great-Grandmere Kennocha that justice had not been served

  that day. Truth be told though, she couldn’t have cared less about the alleged injustices

  Coure had supposedly perpetrated against her kinswoman. She wondered at

  Kennocha’s state of mind as the old woman continued to rail so vehemently against the

  priest.

  “Pain of the highest order,” Kennocha had decreed. “Give him pain he will feel

  throughout eternity!”

  Such things came when a woman allowed herself to become obsessed with a male,

  Penthe scoffed, knowing that would never happen to her. She herself had no use for

  what she considered the weaker sex. Men were born to be used until they were used up

  and then discarded for a newer, better model. They were not meant to be kept and

  cosseted as the priest had been at Rathlin. Nothing good ever came from sheltering the

  dirty little beasts from life’s travails. To her way of thinking, Great-Great-Grandmere

  Kennocha had gotten what was due her but family obligations were more important

  than personal feelings, and she would do what was needed to avenge her great-greatgrandmere.

  Not to mention, Penthe thought as she got to her feet, she had her own personal

  bone to pick now with Bevyn Coure. Because of him, she was trapped, whether

  permanently or temporarily, on Terra and he would be made to pay for his part in the

  problem. Dusting off the seat of her jumpsuit, she bent over to retrieve her Dóigra,

  thinking of the one that had been taken from Asteria Kleite, the Amazeen who had

  accompanied Penthe to Terra to retrieve Coure.

  Asteria and Penthe had been more than partners. They had been lovers for over

  eight years and Penthe intensely mourned her loss. The rabid rogue who had brought

  Asteria down had savagely bitten her, tearing Asteria apart. The balgair had died for his

  sins but Penthe had been so devastated at Asteria’s death, she had not thought to

  retrieve Asteria’s weapon and had been careless in not making sure Roy English could

  not rise from his rabid state to kill more women. When she had gone back to the shack

  where Asteria had met her end, dreading to see once again the atrocities English had

  committed, Penthe had found it burned to the ground, the Dóigra destroyed along with

  the deplorable contents of the shack. A scan of the area had brought Coure’s scent. She

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  knew he had finished what she should have seen ended and that irritated her beyond

  acceptance.

  It was just one more thing for which Coure would be made to answer when Penthe

  had him in her clutches.

  * * * * *

  Leaving Lawler behind, Bevyn drummed his heels against Préachán’s flanks,

  urging the steed into an easy gallop. He rode with his right hand on the reins, his left

  braced on his thigh, his uneasy thoughts drifting back to the Blackwind. He knew he’d

  have to go after the Amazeen, take her down, but for now there was nothing he wanted

  more than to find his woman and hold her, lose himself in her sweet scent.

  The memory of what he had found in the shack had come back to haunt him and

  was sitting heavily on his soul. He knew it always would for such things were an

  abomination—once seen, never forgotten. He suspected the Triune Goddess had

  clouded his mind for a few hours of brief relief but now the sights were sitting in his

  mind’s eye like a canker. That too would be Her doing.

  “Lord Kheelan?” he asked, reaching out to the High Lord.

  “We are here,” the Shadowlord replied.

  “Were there any survivors of the crash?”

  There was a long pause. “No, Lord Bevyn. Unfortunately not.”

  “How many men died?”

  “Fifteen.”

  Bevyn closed his eyes. He wanted to ask how many had been married, how many

  had fathered children, but a part of him didn’t want the burden of the knowledge

  weighing down on his shoulders.

  There were no more words from the Citadel. He knew the Shadowlords would be

  discussing him still again and another tick would go on the healer’s chart—one more

  thing about which to counsel Coure when he came to the bastion.

  He reached up to take off his hat, armed the sweat from his brow and then pulled

  the hat back on low over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sinking sun. Once

  more his head was throbbing with pain. He needed the cool strength of his woman.

  His woman, he thought as Préachán dug its hooves into a hill and climbed

  effortlessly. It felt good to know there was someone so special waiting for him, someone

  who wanted him, who loved him. Her bright smile, her open arms were like a beacon

  toward which he traveled.

  Another smiling face flashed across his memory and he frowned.

  “Kennocha,” he whispered fiercely.

  Her false smile and clinging arms were a curse from which he had fled, only to find

  himself caught in an unbreakable trap.

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  The past rose up before him to blot out the last of the sun’s dying rays, casting him

  into a bleak landscape he had never wanted to travel again…

  “You will go to Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had decreed. “There you will assume

  the position as junior prelate for that district.”

  There had been much talk of Rathlin at the monastery and the talk had not been

  good. Over the years, the keep there had gone through priests like a sharp blade

  through hot butter. Those assigned had simply vanished, never to be heard from again.

  Where they had gone was the stuff of wild speculation—much of it centered on the

  mistress of Rathlin, the Countess Kennocha Tramont.

  “They say she is a witch,” the brothers whispered among themselves.

  “The count holds his lady-wife hostage at Rathlin,” Archdeacon Janus had

  explained to Bevyn. “They say he captured her in battle and keeps her chained on the

  third floor of the keep.”

  “Is that not wrong, Your Grace?” Bevyn had asked.

  “What a man does with his lawful wife is no concern o
f the Brotherhood,” the

  archdeacon had replied. “Our only mission is to tend his mortal soul. If he is true to the

  Teaching—and Count Culbert is—that is all that matters in this life. What do we care

  what he does with his woman?”

  Completely unaware of what a man and woman did within the confines of their

  marriage, Bevyn had pushed aside any worries he might have pertaining to Count

  Tramont’s lady-wife. It was the man and his knights whose souls would be the thrust of

  Bevyn’s interest and attending.

  But upon arriving at Rathlin Keep, Bevyn had found great turmoil and strife.

  Tramont was at war with a neighboring duchy and the lord of the keep had been sorely

  wounded in the fray, lying on his death bed with wounds too numerous to heal. His

  body as white as the sheet upon which he lay, he had weakly grasped the front of

  Bevyn’s robe and drawn the young man nose to nose with him.

  “She set this ill-begotten war into motion,” the dying man whispered, his voice

  hoarse, blood gurgling in his throat. “She is the cause of it.”

  Culbert Tramont had taken one last wheezing breath and had lain still, his eyes

  wide, mouth ajar, drawing flies to the mortal cuts and holes that peppered his corpse.

  Every knight sworn to Rathlin had been slain in the battle, their squires as well.

  Only the foot soldiers who had turned and fled the melee escaped the hacking deaths

  that had turned the fields around Rathlin crimson.

  With no captain of the guard left to countermand the order, the countess had

  demanded she be set free from the imprisonment her husband had forced upon her.

  The household staff had responded quickly, afraid of what the countess would do if she

  were ignored.

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  “She’s a witch!” the chief steward had told Bevyn in a shaky voice. “A daughter of

  the Abyss!”

  Upon meeting the woman who was now mistress of Rathlin, Bevyn had seen the

  fires of hell gleaming in Kennocha Tramont’s gaze. He had felt a shiver travel down his

  spine the moment her hand had touched his cheek, her pale pink tongue sweeping

  across a thin upper lip as she assessed him.

  Despite his vehement protests, she had put her hands to his arms, his shoulders, his

  thighs, had ordered him stripped naked, staring avidly at his utter humiliation as he

  was held steady for her perusal.

  “Good legs,” she’d remarked, walking around him. “A goodly sized staff.”

  “Milady!” he had gasped, his face flame-red.

  “You’ll do,” she’d declared, and turned her back on him, going back to the chamber

  in which her husband’s still body lay upon its death bier.

  He would learn a few days later that she had taken a war ax and had chopped her

  dead mate into a hundred pieces, venting her rage upon him until his bedchamber was

  a sea of gore.

  Held captive in the dungeon for over a week—as naked as the day on which he had

  been born—Bevyn had finally been brought before the countess and once more she had

  put her hands to him. This time it had been his staff she had wrapped her fingers

  around.

  “Give yourself freely to me and I will let you live,” she had told him. “Deny me and

  you will meet your doom in the bonfire.”

  Bevyn had reminded her he was a priest, a man of the cloth who had taken vows of

  poverty and chastity, but she had merely laughed at him.

  “If you want to live, Bevyn Coure, you will give yourself to me and service me as I

  wish to be serviced. Unlike your fellow priests, you will be mine and not Cul’s.”

  The whole of the tale would be told to Bevyn on the night before his torment began.

  Those who had come before him had been nothing more than playthings to the lord of

  the keep. Count Culbert had sodomized and tortured the men then murdered them to

  keep the news of his atrocities from reaching the ears of the Brotherhood. The dead

  were dropped into the moat to feed the denizens that slithered and snapped there, all

  traces of their existence wiped away in the scaled bellies of the crocs.

  “You will meet the same fate, boy, unless you give her what she wants.”

  “I am a man of the cloth,” he had protested. “I can not—”

  “Make her yours,” the jailer had cut in. “Please her and you might live a day or so

  longer.”

  “I will not do that,” Bevyn had sworn.

  “Then you’ll die a terrible death,” his jailer had declared.

  For weeks on end he had been tortured, and at the end of each session had come the

  question—“Will you give yourself to me now?”

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  The answer had always been the same no matter how much had been inflicted

  upon his body, how much blood he had shed. He would not forsake his vows to satisfy

  the lust of a crazed woman, for it had become a test of wills—his and hers.

  She had taken delight in pouring and rubbing salt into his wounds. She had

  laughed at his screams of pain, his tears and his trembling body. She had enjoyed

  watching him barely able to crawl from the rack to his pallet where he would lie

  senseless until the next session began.

  “And now, Bevyn?” she had whispered in her silky voice on the morning he had

  been condemned to die. She caressed his genitals, stroking him suggestively. “Will you

  forego the agony of the flames and take my body unto yours?”

  “No, milady, I can not,” he had forced himself to say, and thought for just a

  moment he saw respect in her insane gaze before she pronounced his death sentence.

  “Take him out and burn the little bastard! I will show him who is mistress of his

  useless life!”

  Too weak to speak, in too much pain to do anything save draw shallow breaths in

  and out of his lacerated chest, he had been taken to the courtyard to meet his fate. There

  he had been lashed to the column and Kennocha had come out to watch him die.

  “But I didn’t stay dead, did I, milady?” he asked aloud.

  Ahead of him was Orson and the sweet arms to which he would ride for as long as

  the goddess allowed him, and then in a sudden bright burst of awareness—reining in

  Préachán because that awareness hit him squarely between the eyes like a ton of brick—

  he realized that at last he had something, someone, to live for.

  “Sweet, merciful Alel,” he whispered as tears gathered in his eyes.

  He sat there trembling as that realization took hold of him, wrapping him in

  warmth he had never known, soothing him with a peacefulness he did not know could

  exist. He swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “Lea.”

  Her name on his lips was the sweetest sound, the most glorious feeling. He ached to

  see her, to hold her, to hear her gentle voice.

  “My Lea,” he said, and a smile broke across his handsome face.

  Putting heels to his mount, he raced down the hill and into town, striving not to

  whoop like a wild man as he drew his horse to a skidding stop and vaulted from the

  saddle, running up the little fieldstone walkway to Cornelia’s front porch, taking the

  four steps two at a time and snatching open the door.

  “Lea?” he called out, and when he saw her at the top of the stairs, he grinned like an

  idiot.

&nbs
p; “You’re home,” she said, hurrying down the steps.

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  “I am home!” he said. He opened his arms and she threw herself in them, laughing

  gaily as he swung her around, set her down for a moment then picked her up in his

  arms.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he headed for the door.

  “We’re going to Mable’s where a man can show his woman he loves her,” he said

  determinedly.

  “All her rooms are taken,” she said.

  He paused at the door, swiveling her back and forth in his arms, his forehead

  puckered with agitation. “Where, Lea? Where?” he demanded.

  “Oh for the love of Peterson! Take the girl upstairs, son,” he heard Cornelia say

  from the parlor. “Just this once, mind you. You ain’t gonna make a habit of it.”

  Practically taking the stairs two at a time, Bevyn didn’t question their landlady’s

  reprieve. He took his lady straight to his room, bumping the door open with his hip. He

  carried her to the bed, plopped her down, rushed back to shut the door and with a

  wave of his hand, eliminated the clothing Lea was trying desperately to remove as she

  sat up on his mattress.

  “That is a wonderful talent, milord,” she said with a gasp.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, wench,” he told her, flying onto the bed and landing

  atop her.

  “You goofy oaf!” she complained with an oomph of air escaping her laughing

  mouth.

  His mouth slanted down on hers and his tongue thrust wickedly between her lips.

  His arms went under and around her, and he wedged his lower body between her legs,

  holding her so tightly she could barely breathe.

  Lea loved the weight of her Reaper lying atop her. Her hands were clutching his

  hard biceps and that too was a glorious feeling that made her feel safe, protected and

  loved. His tongue was thrusting in and around hers, and those sweet, firm lips of his

  were making warm heat flow between her thighs.

  “I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. “With all my heart I love you!”

  Bevyn’s cock was stiff, the tip moist. It was wedged between them along her belly

  as he held her. When she slid her hand from his arm to run it between them and grasp

  that hard shaft, he drew in a quick, shuddering breath.

  “Show me how much, milord,” she said, her fingers wrapped around him.