WesternWind 4 - Tears of the Reaper (9 page)

He grinned at the intentional pun and when he looked up, he was a bit surprised to find Elder Barrow staring daggers at him. The Reaper’s smile slowly faded.

“I am glad you can find amusement in this, Lord Owen,” Elder Barrow snapped.

Knowing there was nothing he could say that would help the situation, Owen kept silent. He turned his attention to the men excavating the grave.

The three Communalists worked rapidly and in a short while the sound of the shovel hitting the coffin’s wooden lid rang out on the quiet hill.

Owen got to his feet, staggering a bit from the immense pain that was crushing his skull. He had to swallow against the nausea that had suddenly shot up his throat from the stench of the opened grave.

Fifteen minutes later, the same ropes that had lowered the coffin into the ground were used to pull it back up again, Elder Barrow pushing Owen aside when the Reaper would have lent his back to the task.

“He is my nephew and it is my duty,” the elder ground out.

It was an arduous task of backbreaking work to drag the heavy wooden box up out of the ground but the men would not let Owen help. It was brought out head end first at an angle, pulling soil and rocks beneath it as it moved. Once out on level ground, it was Elder Barrow who used the crowbar to pry up the nails holding the lid in place.

Owen was fairly sure of what they would find when the lid was removed and when his suspicions were confirmed, he stood there with his hands on his hips, turning to look at Elder Barrow, who had thrown down the crowbar as though it were a viper.

“This can not be,” the elder said, his hands steepled over his nose and mouth. “It can not be!”

Edward, Daniel and Brighton had taken steps back from the sight that greeted them when the lid of Landon Grimes’ coffin was pried up. Each had hastily drawn out his handkerchief to filter the putrid odor clinging to the corpse inside the wooden box.

It had been five months since Landon died but in that time his hair had gone as white as an old, old man and hung in ratty wisps halfway down his chest. His eyes were wide open—staring hatefully at those who had disturbed his grave—and the pupils, irises and even that portion of his eye which should be white were blood red. Though Healer Benjamin’s cousin Gilbreth had no doubt sewn both eyes and lips closed, the lips were skinned back in a death’s head grimace that revealed long, pointed fangs. Where his arms should have been crossed over his chest, they were at his sides, his two-inch-long fingernails crusted with dark material beneath the jagged, yellowed plates. A face that had no doubt once been handsome was now a hideous mask of evil, the flesh a sickly shade of green mottled with dark blue veins that scored his countenance and hands like a road map. His burial clothes and shoes were caked with mud and something else that had a reddish tint.

“This can not be,” Elder Barrow said through the constriction of his fingers, shaking his head and stumbling back from the coffin.

“I did not believe in vampires,” Edward told Owen. “But surely this is one.”

“What you are seeing isn’t a vampire,” the Reaper said. “Technically, I too am a vampire, a dearg dul.” He nudged his chin toward the creature in the coffin. “That is the unholy dead, something truly vile.”

Elder Barrow squared his shoulders and lowered his hands. He turned stricken eyes to Owen. “What must we do?”

“Unless you take away his power to rise, he will do so again when the sun sets,” Owen told him. “There are two ways to go about it. You can remove his head, drive a stake through his heart and then bury the head at a crossroads or you can cremate him and scatter the ashes to the wind. If it were my choice, I’d go for the cremation. That way you know he’ll not rise again.”

The younger men watched the older, waiting for his decision. When he agreed cremation would be the less invasive way, Edward turned to leave, going back to the stable for what they would need to render the creature to ashes.

“You don’t believe he’s the only one, do you, Lord Owen?” Brighton asked.

“Don’t call me that,” Owen told him. “I am not your overlord, Brighton, but no, I don’t believe he’s the only one. My gut tells me that Brother Carlton will rise come nightfall and in turn make another like him unless we destroy him too.”

“And those others who were killed in the same way,” Elder Barrow agreed. He gave Owen an apologetic look. “I am sorry I treated you so unjustly.”

Owen shrugged. He glanced up at the sun. “Not a problem but we don’t have a whole lot of time to get the other graves dug up. If you won’t let me help, you need to get more men out here.”

“I’ll go,” Daniel said. He too glanced up at the sun that was beginning to lower in the sky.

Brighton came over to his father and laid a gentle hand on the older man’s shoulder. “I am sorry, Papa.”

“How did this happen?” Elder Barrow asked, his words directed at Owen.

“Somewhere there is either a lone creature that turned this one or—the gods forbid—a whole lair of them.”

“But what is it?” the elder demanded.

“I don’t know but I’ll ask the High Lord when next I speak with him. I believe the Shadowlords know what we’re up against and that’s why they are sending two of my teammates to help me. I do know there are beings called revenants who are also vampires. As far as I knew they were across the ocean in the Old Countries. I don’t think this is one of them.”

“Drochtáir.” The word came on the breeze to Owen and he lifted his head. He had never heard the word. “It is the depraved Source from which Raphian Himself was hatched.”

Owen knew very little about the evil known as Raphian, the Destroyer of Men’s Souls and the Purveyor of Unforgivable Sins. What he did know was that the beastly god was the immortal enemy of Morrigunia and the Triune Goddess was forever at war with the snake-like entity.

“There is a nest of the vile things somewhere in Manontaque, Lord Owen. We have sought it out but there is a miasma of malevolence hiding it from our view. You and your team must find and destroy it as soon as possible!” Lord Kheelan stressed. “Glyn and Iden are winging their way to you now.”

Edward returned with two men Owen had not met. Between them, they carried six cans of some kind of combustible material and the newcomers each carried a shovel braced on his shoulder.

“Daniel told me we will need to dig up the other graves. We came prepared,” Edward said. He took one look at Owen’s strained face and told him to sit down under one of the maples. “You look bad, Owen.”

“I feel bad, Eddie,” Owen agreed. Once more he armed the sweat drenching his face. It wasn’t in him to sit back while others toiled but he knew his strength was waning fast and his hands and feet were beginning to go numb again. Reluctantly he headed for a bench and the comfort of the shade.

As Edward and Brighton took their shovels to one of the newer graves and the other two men Edward introduced as Brother William and Brother Ellison headed for a third, Daniel came back with five other men and two women carrying jugs of water for the workers.

Owen was surprised to see one of the women was Rachel. She would not meet his eyes and each time he turned his gaze to her, he saw her stiffen as though she were either watching for his attention or felt it.

“The woman with Rachel is her sister Kathleen,” Elder Barrow said. The men would not allow the elder to dig in the hot sun either so he came to sit beside Owen on the bench. “Kathleen is Brother William’s wife.”

Owen nodded. He could sense the remorse coming from the older man, accepting Elder Barrow’s earlier unpleasant attitude had been in defense of his family and perfectly understandable.

Edward was pouring one container of fluid into Landon Grimes’ open coffin and then tossed in a match. The stench was so putrid, so cloying, he and Brighton staggered back, gasping, their eyes watering.

“What has my nephew become?” Elder Barrow asked softly, the hint of great sorrow in his deep voice.

“The thing that turned him is called a Drochtáir,” Owen told him.

Elder Barrow swiveled his head toward Owen. “You have been in contact with the Shadowlords?”

“Aye, and they informed me there is a nest of those things around here.” Owen bent forward, his clasped hands dangling between his spread knees. “How many colonies or settlements are nearby, do you know?”

“A few,” the older man answered. “You think perhaps they have become infected with this evil as well?”

“It’s very likely,” Owen told him. “My teammates are on their way and should be here before nightfall. We’ll start looking for…”

The Reaper never finished what he was saying for he jerked as though hit by an arrow and fell from the bench, hitting the ground with a loud whoosh of air. Elder Barrow knelt down beside him, watching as the younger man went into convulsions.

“Edward! Brighton!” the elder shouted.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to watch as Edward and Brighton sprang toward the fallen Reaper. Elder Barrow had stripped off his belt and had jammed it between Owen’s teeth.

“Kathleen!” her husband yelled at her. “Fetch a wagon!”

Kathleen had been ladling water from the earthenware jug into a tin cup for Daniel. She foisted the jug toward him and sprinted out of the graveyard. Her sister came hurrying over, there to help if needed.

Rachel was staring down at Owen with shock and when Elder Barrow yelled at her to squat down and hold the belt steady between the Reaper’s clenched teeth, she dropped like a rock to the ground. She took hold of the belt to keep it lodged in Owen’s mouth as Brighton, Edward and the older man forced his twisting, writhing limbs against the ground in an attempt to keep him from hurting himself or them—Edward and Elder Barrow holding one arm and Brighton putting his entire weight on both Owen’s legs.

Elder Barrow turned his head toward the other men who had paused in their digging. “We must be done with this before the sun sets unless you want a visit from one of the Drochtáirs.” At their look of confusion, he told them that was what the creature burning in the grave was. “One bite from its fangs and it will make you one of them.”

The men hurried back to their digging.

“High Elder Chamberlain is preparing his root cellar for Owen for when the time comes for him to Transition,” Daniel said over his shoulder as he scooped dirt from Brother Henry Nybert’s grave.

“That is good for according to Owen there are two more Reapers who will be joining us before nightfall,” Elder Barrow stated. “We don’t know when we might need to confine any of the three of them.”

Owen suddenly stiffened then lay still, his breathing slow and regular. He had passed out.

“What is causing his illness?” one of the men asked.

“Too much of the drug he must take each day,” Brighton replied. “He has tenerse poisoning.” He looked at his father. “Healer Benjamin explained it to me when he found out what it was Owen was taking. It can cause gangrene if he’s not careful.”

“I imagine should he lose a finger or toe, it would grow back so gangrene is not an issue for him,” Elder Barrow suggested. He cut his eyes up to Rachel. “Such must have been the case when the female castrated him.”

Rachel flinched and met the elder’s unwavering stare. The Reaper’s initial reaction to her now made some sense but her immoral reaction to him did not. She lowered her head, not wanting the elder to see the shame in her eyes lest she have her back bared to the whipping post.

“Is there something you wish to tell us, Sister Rachel?” Elder Barrow asked, his eyes narrowing.

She shook her head. How could she tell the elder about the promiscuous, dirty thing she had done to Lord Owen or the liberties she had allowed him to take? Her disgrace would surely be read before the entire Colony. She would be banished, turned out to fend for herself or even stoned as Sister Madeleine had been.

“Do you find this man to your liking, Sister Rachel?” Elder Barrow pressed. “You may speak.”

Rachel had to swallow before she could and there was precious little saliva in her mouth to do so. She met his penetrating look. “He is very handsome, your honor.”