Her Reaper's Arms (15 page)

the entire country, therefore the clapboard buildings wore adequate coats of white paint

and the wood had yet to begin deteriorating in the harsh winters the land was now

growing accustomed to.

Tying Préachán beneath a stand of beeches, Bevyn got down on his belly and

scooted to the rim of a hill overlooking the center of town. He was being careful to block

his approach from those in the town, spreading a wavering mist around him that would

make it impossible for the rogues to pick up on his presence.

Surveying the deserted streets, he saw nothing to alert him and wondered if the

rogues were also cloaking themselves. There appeared to be no guard posted to keep

watch, no movement from any of the windows to indicate anyone was watching. The

church was boarded up and he knew that had to be hell for those inside for the day was

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sultry, little wind blowing to cool the humid air. Spying the jail, he stared at it for a long

time. Casting his senses to both buildings, he was a bit surprised that no one was

speaking although everyone inside both places was alive and well. He could pick up on

their heartbeats and was a bit concerned those beats were slower than they should be.

Shifting his attention to the saloon, he heard the slap of what had to be cards hitting felt,

but not one word from the mouths of the rogues.

He picked out the barn he figured the young men had been kept in, but in scanning

it, he could not find a single female and especially not the body heat of an Amazeen,

which was nearly as high as his own and the rogues. He strained to hear even a single

heartbeat but there was none inside the barn. The situation was getting stranger by the

minute.

The Reaper knew he could not contact the Shadowlords, for to do so would alert

the rogues to his presence. It took a great deal of energy to cloak himself and his

thoughts so he tried to expend as little physical and mental agility as possible as he

pushed to his feet and began skirting the rise, looking for an easy pathway down into

the vale.

Careful to keep from disturbing even one pebble as he moved toward the town,

Bevyn constantly swept his eyes back and forth over the town, but knew there was no

way he could know if he was being watched from the air. He had no doubt the

Amazeen had taken the young men up into a craft of some kind—most likely a Long

Range Cruiser—and those men were lost to them at this point in time. If the bitches

were on Terra to gather stock for their breeding farms on Amazeen and this was their

first batch, they could be hovering up there waiting to snatch up more and that made

the hair stir on the back of his neck. They could be watching him as he stealthily made

his way toward the saloon.

Glancing skyward, he narrowed his eyes, but there was nothing but unrelieved blue

above him, no cloud cover whatsoever. That didn’t mean the craft wasn’t there. It just

meant it was far enough away that even his supernatural eyesight could not detect it.

Crouching low, feeling as though unfriendly eyes were boring into his back, he ran

behind the saloon, pressing himself close to the building, listening intently for any

movement inside. Once more he heard the near-silent slapping of cards to baize but

nothing else, not even a single heartbeat, which told him the rogues were cloaking

themselves as he was and that they were expecting him.

Easing his six-shooter from its holster, he crept around the side of the building,

glancing down at his boots. The spurs would give him away on the boardwalk in front

of the building the moment he stepped up on it. With a concentrated blink, he rid

himself of the footwear, annoyed that he had forgotten to put on socks that morning but

unwilling to expend another fragment of his energy to materialize a pair. He winced as

a stone cut into his instep before he could step up on the boardwalk that ran the length

of the buildings flanking the saloon.

Moving as quietly as a feather floating on the wind, the Reaper advanced slowly

toward the saloon’s large window. The base of it was set high enough to the floor that

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he could bend over and pass beneath it without being seen from inside the shadowy

confines of the room. He knew he had two choices—rush past the window while

maintaining his body cloaking then burst through the batwing doors, taking aim at the

rogues and hitting them between the eyes before flicking the
speal
, the laser whip, to

shear off their heads, or crash through the window, taking a chance at cutting his own

head off with shards from the glass.

“Batwings,” he mumbled, and sped past the window in a blur of speed, diving

under the batwings as bullets flew over his head, rolling along the floor and coming up

to shoot three times in rapid succession—fanning the hammer with the edge of his

palm—and making neat black holes between the eyes of two of the rogues. The third

bullet went wide of its target and he felt a piercing pain in his shoulder as the third

rogue fired at him. Swiveling his gun toward the man standing by the bar, the Reaper’s

fourth bullet hit the rogue in the heart but not before the bastard fired again, his next

bullet catching Bevyn in the right bicep, making him drop his gun.

Scrambling to his feet, ignoring the pain in his right shoulder and arm, the Reaper

drew his laser whip and took the third rogue’s head off cleanly, grinning at the

surprised look on the dead man’s face. It took less time to flick the laser to the necks of

the other rogues, whose parasites were trying in vain to heal their hosts, and dispatch

them, a bit more time to wait for the hellions to wriggle out in order to turn them into

crispy ash on the barroom floor.

“Three down,”
Bevyn sent to the Citadel just as he felt the strange humming around

him and the pull against his flesh.

“They are trying to draw you up!”
Lord Kheelan’s voice shrilled in Bevyn’s ear.

There was no need for him to ask who. It was the Amazeen and they had latched on

to him in an attempt to pluck him from Terra. The pull against his flesh was sharp but

he felt as though his feet were nailed to the floor. It was an exacting sensation and it

hurt like hell.

“Morrigunia!” he cried out in agony, feeling as though he were being pulled apart

at the seams.

The Amazeens’ ploy might well have worked had not the Triune Goddess

interceded. Her fury vast as She suddenly appeared in the saloon, green eyes blazing

with rage, long red hair floating like seaweed on a turbulent tide.

“No one fucks with my Reaper!” the goddess shrieked. She lifted Her arm, fingers

splayed wide, and inscribed a large circle in the air and then crushed Her fingers

together as though snatching something from the air, jerking Her arm downward

quickly.

Under Bevyn’s feet, the floor of the saloon shook as a loud explosion rent the early

afternoon sky and he felt whatever had been drawing him cease. He dropped to all

fours, panting with the brutal pain that had been squeezing his insides, elongating them

like taffy at a pull. Falling over to his side, he drew his legs up in a fetal position and lay

there as the debilitating pain slowly faded from his muscles and joints.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

“The gods-be-damned!” Morrigunia hissed. “There is another!”

The entire room trembled as though it were about to collapse. As suddenly as She

had appeared, the goddess disappeared in a flash of rust-colored dust, a violent wind

whipping through the wind, smelling like rotting vegetation.

Rolling onto his back to draw ragged breaths into his lungs, Bevyn stared up at the

ceiling and the violently swaying oil lights that cast flickering shadows across the walls

as the building settled down. The pain in his arm was bad since his parasite could not

close the wounds for healing until the foreign substances—the lead bullets—had been

removed. He was bleeding badly as he pushed himself up to lean against a wooden

column, fumbling with his left hand for his blade. It was going to be a bitch digging the

bullets out of his shoulder and bicep but it had to be done before he could heal. He was

trying to do just that when the goddess returned, Her beautiful face hard and set.

“There is a Blackwind out there,” She told him, coming to hunker down before him.

“I hate Blackwinds more than I hate Nightwinds.”

Though it had been many years since he had been face-to-face with the Triune

Goddess, he was still as unnerved by Her beauty and the savage glint in Her green orbs

as he had been on the day She had made him. His hand was still on the blade though it

was deep inside his shoulder.

“How goes it, my Bevyn?” She asked, taking the blade from his grasp.

“Not as well as I would have liked for it to,
mo Regina
,” he admitted, trying not to

look into Her lovely face.

With efficiency, She popped the bullets from his flesh with the tip of the dagger,

snorting at his indrawn breath as the pain hit him, and then flipped the blade over,

extending it to him hilt first.

“You are not the most careful of my Reapers or the smartest,” She chastised him,

Her ivory face with its strange dusting of freckles cocked to one side. “Perhaps now that

you have something to live for you will be more careful in the future.”

He met Her glowing eyes. “You sent Lea to me,” he said softly. “My heartfelt

thanks,
mo Regina
.”

Her smile was brief but dazzling as She got to Her feet. “Take care of your toy,

Bevyn Coure. You’ll not get another.”

With that, She was gone in a burst of swirling multi-colored flecks of light that were

so bright they hurt his eyes, and he had to turn his head away and close his eyes to keep

from being blinded by the intensity.

Stumbling to his feet, he waved away his torn black silk shirt to better view the

damage done. Already the wounds were closing, only the red edges showing harshly

against his tanned skin. Going behind the bar, he found a clean rag and a pitcher of

water to wash away the spilled blood before fashioning a new shirt for himself.

Surprised he felt so weak, he poured a shot of whiskey, knocked it back then

another before heading out of the saloon to make his way to the church. The sweltering

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heat had to have taken a toll on the women imprisoned there and he was anxious to set

them free. As soon as he’d pulled the two boards crisscrossing the set of double doors,

the women nearly ran him over trying to get out in the cooler air. As soon as they saw

him, they staggered back, clustering in a little group as though they were as afraid of

him as they were of the ones who had trapped them.

Bevyn pointed at one of the women. “You, go set your menfolk in the jail free,” he

said, and saw the younger ones turn their heads toward the barn at the far end of the

street. He did not have the heart to tell them he knew their loved ones were dead. He

just turned away, heading back to his horse.

“Milord?”

Surprised one of them would dare speak to him, he turned to find a middle-aged

woman stepping away from the little clump of women. Her lips were trembling, her

hand out to stay his departure.

“Aye, wench?” he asked.

“The young men?” she pressed, and tears entered her eyes. “My sons?”

The truth must have been stamped on his face for he watched the woman lower her

head into her hands, heard her first faint sob as her shoulders bowed beneath the

weight of her sorrow.

“It…” he began, and was keenly aware of every eye on him. “It was quick,” he

finished. “They did not suffer.”

“The explosion?” another asked.

Bevyn nodded and winced as the wailing began. He watched women fall to their

knees with their grief. There was nothing he could do for them and as their older

menfolk and young sons began running toward them, he headed for his mount tied up

on the hill.

As he reached Préachán and untied the steed’s reins, he felt eyes on him again.

Malevolent eyes. Angry eyes. Eyes that meant him harm. Though he scanned the

immediate area, he saw nothing, detected nothing, but nevertheless he knew something

was there.

That something had a name.

It was a Blackwind, a warrior woman trained for tracking and exacting revenge on

Reapers.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

Chapter Six

Penthesilea Aracnea squatted by the creek and scooped water into her strong,

capable hands. She drank her fill then wiped her forearm over her lips, studying her

surroundings for the marauding goddess from whom Penthe had managed to barely

escape. Beside her, the glass head of her Dóigra caught an errant beam of sunlight and

the grass around the star-shaped bulb shriveled, burnt to ash in seconds.

No one fucks with my Reaper!
she had heard the fire-haired termagant bluster before

destroying the LRC that had brought them to Terra.

“Aye, but that particular Reaper belonged to the Aracnea clan before You ever laid

Your hands to him,” Penthe hissed.

Having sworn vengeance for her Amazeen ancestor Kennocha Tramont, the