A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) (17 page)

“Why the hell not?”

Fallon shrugged. “I don’t know, bro. They
don’t tell me fuck.”

“I have to talk to her, Misha,” Taylor
said. “I
need
to.”

“I’ll talk to Cree,” Fallon said. “Between
us, maybe him and Sorn and me can convince them to let you see her. Just hang
tight, okay?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said. He turned away, went
back to the bunk and sat down heavily. He lowered his head. “Yeah, man. Do what
you can.”

He could feel Fallon staring at him for a
moment longer and then the Hell-hound was gone.

For a long time, Taylor sat as still as a
statue, barely breathing. He felt moisture gathering behind his eyes but willed
it away. His heart hurt so badly he thought it would stop beating.

When an hour had passed, he slowly lifted
his head. Anyone who saw the rage building in his stare would have backed away.
Wise men would have run from that angry red glint.

“I am going to kill you, Dixon Coulter,” he
said quietly.

“
You can try
,” came the immediate
reply.

It didn’t surprise him the bastard was
listening, observing him. He’d expected it. Could feel it. He knew no one else
could hear what Coulter was saying to him. The man might be in a room full of other
men but his words were meant only for Taylor Reynaud.

“
I’m not your enemy, Taylor
.”

Taylor looked up at the camera in the
corner of the cell. He stared at the opaque gray plexigon dome.

“
They are going to need us to work
together. You here and me in the field.
”

“With her as your Extension,” Taylor said
through clenched teeth.

“
Yes. With her as my Extension
.”

“You go to hell.”

“
Like you, I’ve been there
.” There
was a slight pause. “
I endured the pain too
.”

“You don’t know what pain is, asshole,”
Taylor said with a snort of derision. “But trust me. You’re gonna find out.”

He felt Coulter withdrawing from his mind
but continued staring at the camera as though he could see right into the
bastard’s eyes.

“I can bring him around,” Coulter told the
three men standing in the observation room with him.

“It may not be as easy as you think,”
Alexandru told him.

Coulter smiled. “You need to have a little
faith in me, sir. You’d be surprised what I can accomplish when I set my mind
to it.”

* * * * *

Laci needed time to herself to process what
she’d learned that morning. She didn’t need to be around anyone. She didn’t
need to see worried faces staring at her or listen to encouraging words telling
her everything was going to be all right.

They weren’t.

What was more, she knew they knew that too.

The news would shatter Taylor’s already
fragile world. It would hurt him, crush him and the timetable of his
recuperation from what had been done to him would be set back.

“Damn you to hell, Dixon,” she said as she
stood on the roof of the Exchange’s main building and stared across the rolling
hills of the Iowa landscape.

What made things worse was she knew Dixon
hadn’t done any of it to hurt her. The man had an agenda and whatever it was
involved her.

He wanted her, she thought. From the moment
the hellion had come out of stasis and spoken to him, Dixon had wanted her. He
had confessed to her she had become an obsession before he ever knew her name.

“I could not ignore my desire for you,
sweeting,”
he’d told her
. “I had to have you or
die in the trying. It didn’t matter if you loved someone else. I had to—needed
to—make you mine.”

Had it been Raphian’s idea or was the
hellion what put the notion in Coulter’s mind? Was she bonded with the hellion
as she was bonded with Taylor?

“The hellion is the first to make the
connection between life-mates,”
Dr. Hesar had told
her as he escorted her to her quarters
. “It brings the Reaper’s attention to
the female. In essence, it is the imperative given to the hellion by the
goddess that sets everything in motion.”

“I understand that about the Triune
Goddess but what of the goddess Bastet? Is it the same with Her as with Mo
Regina?”
she’d asked
.

“That I can’t tell you,”
Hesar admitted
. “Little is known of the an Éigiptian goddess. However,
the ancient Egyptians worshipped Bast, the cat goddess. In researching that
deity I discovered She had three husbands so obviously monogamy was not high on
Her list of qualities a woman needed to embrace.”

“So cheating on a life-mate wouldn’t
matter to Her.”

“Probably not,”
Hesar agreed
.

“Well, it matters to me,”
she’d told him.

A red-tailed hawk soared above her and she
could have sworn the bird was watching her.

“Keeping an eye on me, Dixon?”

The whisper came to her on a gentle ripple
of wind. “
Always, my love
.”

She watched the hawk riding the thermals.
“Does the goddess speak to you?”

“
No but I am glad you still do
.”

“I can’t hate you, Dixon,” she said with a
weary sigh. “As much as I want to, I can’t.”

She could feel him smiling as the bird
disappeared from sight.

As much as she disliked the idea, she knew
in her heart Dixon would be a good Alpha—if the other Reapers allowed him to
continue drawing breath. He had the necessary skills and determination to get
the job done and she suspected he’d let nothing stand in his way. He was
ruthless enough and dangerous enough to take on the world’s most dogged
terrorists and put them down.

Hard.

“There are no redeemable terrorists,
sweeting,”
he’d told her in Greece.
“Only dead
ones, and I intend to see they meet those fictional virgins much sooner than
they expect to.”

How the other Reapers and the Supervisors
would handle, control Coulter worried her. She sensed a deeper well of powers
within him than she had yet to experience. He’d wielded absolute control over
her with such ease she’d been unable to resist. Even though she knew precisely
what he was doing to her, she was helpless to prevent it.

That he had made it so she had no doubt yet
still she could not hate him for it. He was being controlled too, though she
wasn’t sure if he realized to what extent.

“I am aware of it though It doesn’t
think I know,”
he’d said.

He thought he had a handle on the
situation, had Raphian fooled and contained, but she worried that wasn’t the
case. The demon had been around since the dawning of time and had tricks up Its
sleeve Coulter might not sense.

“
I can handle Him
,” he told her as
the hawk landed on the top of the pyramid-shaped glass roof of the atrium.

“I hope so, Dixon,” she said, looking right
at the hawk.

“Laci?”

She turned at the sound of Misha Fallon’s
voice. “What did they say?” she asked.

“You can see him tomorrow,” Fallon said.
“That was the best Cree could do.”

“Have you been to see him?”

“Just came from there,” he replied and
glanced at the bird. He stared at it for a long moment then snorted. “Why do
you never have a slingshot when you need one?”

“You don’t like birds?” she asked.

“I don’t like spies,” he answered. He took
her arm. “Let’s go to the break room and talk.” He gave her arm a couple of
hard squeezes.

“Okay,” she said. She cast the hawk one
last look then went with the Reaper.

Once inside the building, waiting for the
elevator to take them to the lower level, she turned to Fallon. “How is he?”

“Prowling the con cell like the big cat he
is,” he replied then shrugged. “He’s okay. If Coulter would leave him the hell
alone.”

“Dixon has been to see him?” she inquired
as the elevator doors opened.

“No, but he’s been sending to him. Smug
bastard,” Fallon grumbled. He waited for her to enter the elevator.

Laci raised her eyebrows when he pressed
the button for the second sublevel. That was where the containment cells were
located.

“No,” he said at her silent question.
“We’re not going there.”

She frowned then realized where he was most
likely taking her. She’d never been to the Suppression Chamber, only knew of
its existence. It was where the Supervisor and Reapers went for maximum
secrecy. The walls, ceiling and floor of the room were made of two-foot-thick
solid iron. Iron blocked the use of magic and physic ability as well so the
room was a safe zone where no outside force—not even a god, goddess or
demon—could be privy to what went on within its walls.

There were no cameras or microphones in the
room and those who entered were required to put on a slender iron choker that
would further block any psychic transmissions.

When the cage settled and the doors opened,
she wasn’t surprised to see Cree and Sorn waiting for them. Sorn opened the
door of the Suppression Chamber.

“The Cone of Silence awaits, milady,” he
said with a grin.

Laci laughed. Sorn had a wicked sense of
humor neither Cree nor Fallon—or even Taylor, for that matter—possessed.

Once inside the room, Fallon locked the
door behind them and flipped on a switch.

“Signal scrambler,” Cree explained. “Just
one more precaution.”

“He’ll know you brought me here,” she said.

“Aye, but he won’t know why,” the Alpha
Prime said and handed her one of the chokers that hung on pegs on the wall.
“Keep this on until further notice.”

For all its thinness, the collar was heavy
and unsettling as she latched it around her neck. “Ugh,” she said with a
grimace.

“Ain’t the smell lovely?” Sorn asked.

“I love the smell of iron in the morning,”
Fallon muttered.

There was a circle of nine chairs sitting
in the center of the room. Each chair was made of iron—yet another precaution
taken.

“Take a seat, Laci,” Cree ordered as he
reached into the pocket of his black jeans and removed something. He sat down
across from her then extended his hand. Nestled between his thumb and index
finger was a small glass vial. “Take it.”

She did as he instructed, looking down at
the amber-colored vial. “What is this?”

“A very strong mixture of
trastacáin,
pairilis
and
státúil
combined with full-strength
triso,”
Cree
replied.

Laci slowly lifted her gaze from the vial
to his dark amber orbs. “Mother of the goddess,” she whispered. “Is this stuff
safe?”

“Certainly not for humans but it should do
one helluva number on a Reaper or an asswipe Gravelord,” Fallon said with a
smirk.

“We don’t know what—if anything—can bring
Coulter to his knees and if that cocktail doesn’t do the job, we’re screwed,”
Cree told her.

“And just how am I supposed to administer
this?” she asked.

“Duh. You need to drop it into his drink,”
Sorn said.

“Without him knowing it,” she said.

“Well, you’ll have seduced him by then and
he won’t be expecting you to roofie him,” Fallon replied.

“You think not?” she said, shaking her
head. The vial felt like ice in her hand.

“We hope not,” Cree said.

“After he goes down—which I pray he
does—you need to bolt one of the iron chokers and two iron wristbands on him
before we come in,” Fallon said.

“Leave yours on,” Cree warned. “Don’t take
it off. He can’t get into your head, can’t see what we’re planning if you keep
that choker on.”

She nodded. “What then.”

“Go to the intercom and punch in 872. No
need to say anything. That just alerts us that everything is good to go,”
Fallon replied. “We’ll come to his apartment, pick him up and take him to the
med unit.”

“Where Taylor will already be,” Sorn told
her.

“Dr. Hesar will open the two of them up and
swap the hellions,” Cree said.

“You really think it’s going to be that
easy?” she asked.

“The man is obsessed with you,” Cree
reminded her. “Use that, Laci. Play him. He may be a powerful Superlord but
he’s still a man.”

“A disgustingly horny man at that,” Sorn
groused. “Put it in his face and he’ll take a bite. Believe me.”

“Ugh, Sorn,” Fallon complained. “That’s a
sick analogy.”

“She gets the point,” Cree said.

“Let’s hope not,” Fallon snapped and glared
at Cree when the Alpha Prime shot him a nasty look.

“What if this stuff doesn’t work on him?”
she asked. “What then?”

“Only the gods know,” Cree said, returning
his gaze to her. “If Morrigunia were here, She could take him down but who the
hell knows where She is. We just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that
shit puts him out.”

“And that he doesn’t suspect anything,” she
added.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about if
he does,” Fallon said. “He’s not going to hurt you, Laci.”

“I hope not,” she mumbled.

“He won’t,” Cree stated emphatically. “He
believes he is your life-mate. He is incapable of hurting you.”

“And there’s the added benefit that he
believes he’s slept with you even though he hasn’t,” Sorn put in.

Laci nodded. “Yes. There is that,” she
replied softly. She got to her feet. “Anything else I should know?”

“Yes,” Cree said. He leaned forward,
bracing his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped between his spread legs. “The
goddess will erase all memory of your time together with Coulter so—”

“No,” she stated.

The Alpha Reaper blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said no,” Laci repeated, her chin
raised. “I don’t want my memory wiped.”

The men stared at her. Cree glanced at
Fallon then slumped in his chair. “Why not?”

“Those who forget the past are doomed to
repeat it,” she said.