A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) (20 page)

Mouths fused, he pushed her onto a table
and shoved his hands between her legs to tear at her thong. She arched her hips
to give him better leverage and when the little scrap of material came away
with a snap, she groaned. His answering moan drove her hands into his hair.

Taylor shoved the waistband of his hospital
pajamas down then jerked her forward and onto the blistering hot tip of his
cock—driving deep with a harsh grunt. Hips pistoning, he thrust into her so
hard the table beneath her ass banged against the wall.

“Shh, Taylor!” she cautioned against his
invading mouth.

His answer was to growl and ram harder. He
wanted to claim her anew, wipe away all traces of the other male who had dared
usurp his territory. Frenzied lust drove him as he dug his fingers into her
sweet rump and snapped his hips forward with building force.

“Easy boy,” she said before he rammed his
tongue into her mouth to silence her.

She was slick and hot and tight around him.
The clenching muscles of her cunt tightened and released, tightened and
released as he drove into her. With each forward push her legs squeezed
fiercely around his waist to spur him on.

When he came, he came hard, violently and
with one final flick of his hips he held himself steady inside her as spurt
after spurt of hot seed pulsed from his straining cock. She was clawing at his
shoulders, moaning. She was close so he clutched her ass hard—holding her still
beneath him—and when the release overtook her, he muffled her cry of pleasure
with his mouth. While the quick little squeezes were still milking him, he
snapped his hips back and the soft barb at the end of his shaft dragged over
her clit. Inside his mouth her scream scalded his tongue as pure intoxicating
pleasure rippled through her.

Heart beating wildly, panting, sweat
pouring down the sides of his face and from under his arms, he held her there
as wave after wave of intense satisfaction continued to undulate through her
body. When the last little clench faded, he released her mouth and moved back
just enough so he could look into her lust-sated eyes.

“You belong to
me
,” he said
fiercely. “Me and only me.”

“Yes,” she managed to whisper. Her lips
were swollen from his kisses. Her face was flushed, eyes glazed with spent
passion.

“And don’t you ever forget it,” he ordered.

“Never.”

He pulled her to him to hold her tenderly
now but with firm possession. He put his chin atop her head and closed his
eyes, breathing in the sweet scent of gardenia from her hair.

Five minutes passed as he continued to hold
onto her.

Ten.

“I’ve got to go pack,” she said.

Reluctantly he released her, then put both
hands to the sides of her face, locking his eyes on hers. He lowered his head
and looked up at her through the sweep of his eyelashes. She’d often told him
it was one of his tells. When he spoke to her in that way, she knew he was
being very serious, no-nonsense serious.

“There will be twenty agents watching over
you,” he said. “We’ll be monitoring his every move through the Shadowlords.”

“It’ll be all right,” she told him.

“One sign of trouble and I’ll be there,
chere
,”
he said. “Cree, Sorn, Fallon and I. We’ll be there.”

“Please don’t worry. He’ll take care of
me.”

He searched her eyes. She remembered nothing
of Coulter’s perfidy. The goddess had seen to that. She trusted Coulter—which
was good, he guessed—but Taylor wasn’t sure if he liked that.

“It won’t be forever,” he said. “This
Extension. He’ll be assigned another female. I am told She has one in the wings
for him.”

“Will you stop worrying?” she asked with an
exasperated laugh. “I’ll be just fine.”

“I know.” He lowered his forehead to hers.
“I love you, Laci,” he said and was a bit annoyed that his voice broke just a
little.

“I love you more,” she returned.

Taylor shook his head. “Not possible.”

One last tight squeeze and he
unenthusiastically stepped back, lifted her from the table, and adjusted his
clothes and hers. With hesitancy, he went to the door and opened it. He didn’t
want to allow her out of the room. He wanted to lock her in and keep her all to
himself.

“Tater, I’ve got to go,” she said for he
was blocking her exit.

He drew in a long breath then turned.
“Yeah,” he said.

She glanced at the watch he had given her
for Christmas the year before he was taken from her. “Like now, Tay.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just be careful,
chere
,”
he told her.

“I will.”

She kissed him and then eased past. He
reached out his hand—wanting to keep her with him—then dropped it. She had a
job to do for her country, a calling, and despite his worries and jealousy, he
had to let her go. Before she turned the corner, she looked back and blew him
another kiss, her beautiful mouth stretched into a wide grin.

* * * * *

Coulter adjusted the backpack he’d slung
over his shoulder then boarded the monorail. He could hear the incoming helo
and wondered if Laci was already up on the pad where she’d told him she would
meet him. He was running late by ten minutes or so. Her and Taylor’s
lovemaking—which he had felt to the marrow of his bones—had all but crippled
him. It had driven him to his knees as tears filled his eyes.

Tears he refused to shed.

When the monorail stopped, there were
several agents and Exchange employees waiting to board. As soon as they saw
him, they stepped back. It wasn’t out of respect because he was a Reaper, their
Alpha. There was fear and dislike in the eyes they hastily shifted away from
him. He exited the car feeling lower than a worm’s belly. Apparently what he
had done had spread through the Exchange like wildfire.

“Bastard,” he heard someone say.

They loved Taylor Reynaud and—no pun
intended—by extension, Laci Albright. He had violated her and they were holding
him accountable. As he walked to the elevator that led to the roof, he could
feel their eyes on him and deliberately shut out the whisperings that dogged
his every footstep.

The goddess was making him pay in ways he
hadn’t considered.

He punched the button on the wall and the
elevator doors shushed open. The fluorescent light panels in the top of the cage
seemed brighter than they should have, he thought, then realized it was the
moisture hovering behind his eyes that was making it so. Shaking his head, he
looked down at the carpet beneath his feet as the doors closed.

There were four men standing beyond the
elevator doors when they opened. Four hard glares, four tight jaws, four tense
bodies all faced him. He rolled his shoulders, expecting trouble.

He stepped out of the elevator then halted.

“We’ll be watching you,” Cree said.

“You better keep her safe,” Sorn commanded.

“If you don’t we’ll fuck up your day,”
Fallon said with a menacing smirk.

“Your fucking year,” Sorn amended.

“Your fucking life,” Cree stated.

Reynaud stepped directly in front of him.
“Anything happens to my woman, I won’t fuck you up. I’ll fucking kill you.”

Coulter nodded without speaking.

Reynaud stared at him another second or two
then stepped away, turning his back on him.

“I’d give my life for her, Reynaud,” he
said quietly.

“You hurt her and you will,” came the
reply.

The four left him standing there staring
after them as they got into the elevator. As the doors closed, Fallon saluted
him with a stiff finger.

“Have a fucked-up day, asswipe,” the former
Alpha told him.

Sighing deeply, Coulter went to the door to
the roof and pushed it open. The moment he saw the three men standing at the
helicopter, he mentally groaned. Inside the chopper he could see Laci already
buckled in, waiting for him, but he had another gantlet of concerned and
suspicious men to make it through before he could join her.

“Albright has the mission packet,” the
Supervisor of the Exchange said when he reached the trio. “There are four
keepers traveling with you.”

“As well as the Mage,” the Supervisor of
Tearmann added.

“Leave him alone and let him do his thing,”
Neal Hesar commanded. “He will summon the demon to aid you when the time is
right.”

“Anything else I need to know?” Coulter
asked. “Any threats you wish to make before I board?”

Constantine Hesar’s left eyebrow rose. “We
don’t make threats, Coulter.”

“We make promises,” the Ridge Lord
Alexandru stated.

“And we keep them,” the human Hesar brother
added.

They left him standing there looking at a
smiling Laci through the opened door of the helo. She lifted her right arm and
tapped the face of her watch with her left index finger.

He smiled. Her beautiful face, the gentle
look in her blue eyes made him ache. He stepped forward, grabbed the edge of
the door and pulled himself inside the chopper. Even before he sat down, he
felt the weight of the Mage’s eyes locked on him. He turned, nodded to the
man—who did not return the greeting—then took his seat. He glanced at the
keeper who was about to pull the door shut and saw Them standing side by side,
staring at him.

“Really?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Laci asked.

He shook his head. He doubted anyone—save
perhaps the Mage—had noticed the goddesses’ presence. They had most likely come
to reinforce Their censure of him.

“
Watch yourself, Gravelord
,” the
Triune sent to him.

“
For
We
will be watching you
,”
Bastet amended.

“Lucky me,” he mumbled.

“Talking to yourself is the first sign of
senility, Dixon,” Laci said and he looked up at her. She winked and he smiled
at her audacious look.

“So they keep telling me but my short-term
memory is going too,” he returned.

She grinned and his heart did a funny
little flip. She was happy—ecstatically so—and it showed. Things were right
inside her world.

“Here’s the packet,” she said, handing it
over. “Those people are a real piece of work.”

“Scum of the earth,” the Mage said, his
piercing blue eyes leveled on Coulter.

“Do we know which demon they’ve been using
in their rituals?” Coulter asked but the Mage didn’t answer.

“We think Apollyon,” Laci responded. “Page
two.”

Coulter flipped the stapled top page over.
“Head of the Sixth House of Hell, Apollyon is known as the Destroyer,” Coulter
read. “King of an army of locusts.”

“Apt description of the pests from the
Neear Freewill Church,” the Mage mumbled without looking around.

“Interesting,” Coulter said.

“What?” Laci asked.

“It says here he is the Ruler of the Abyss
and that his followers believe he will be returned to Earth to reign over
Jerusalem in the final days,” he replied.

“The Supervisor believes the NFC is simply
another hatchling of Raphian’s,” Laci said. “Just one more head of the hydra
that is doing all it can to disrupt human morale and cause internal strife here
in the States.”

“By disrupting the funerals of its fallen
heroes and victims of natural disasters,” Coulter said.

“Such mischief polarizes the differing
factions,” the Mage commented. “Those who are vehemently opposed to the U.S.
being in any way helpful to other nations have found spokesmen for their
misguided protestations.”

“And those who believe natural disasters
are the punishment of God, see the protests at the funerals of the storm
victims as justice and vengeance,” Laci said. “What a crock of shit that is.”

“To desecrate the funeral of any being is a
sacrilege in and of itself,” the Mage said. “Such behavior deserves
punishment.”

“And will receive it,” Coulter said. “A lot
of good men died to give hate groups like the NFC the constitutional right to
voice their venom and show their contempt. The worthless pricks and prickettes
and their indoctrinated offspring need to be taught a lesson in true
vengeance.”

“May I ask which demon you will summon,
Master?” Laci asked the Mage.

“I have yet to make my final choice but I
am leaning toward Byleth,” he answered.

Laci frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever
heard of him.”

The Mage smiled. He was a handsome, darkly
tanned and muscular man but his smile was ugly, savage. His blue eyes turned as
black as pitch.

“He is a mighty and terrible king of
Hell
, who has eighty-five legions of
demons
under his command. More than enough demons to scare
the shit out of the NFC and their nasty little brats over the age of sixteen.
Those under that age will simply have their minds wiped clear of the teachings
of their so-called church.”

“Why this particular demon?” Laci queried.

“He has a very fierce, brutal appearance
that is more frightening than any pus-riddled hell-scare and is considered to
have the worst temper of any demon down there.” He snorted. “The thing with
Byleth is he is an aficionado of music—primarily hard rock. The louder, the
better. KISS is his favorite band.”

“Wonder why?” Coulter asked with a chuckle.

“And the NFC loathes anything rock and
roll,” Laci said. “Good choice, Master.”

“Satan’s music played at eardrum-shattering
decibels,” the Mage said. “With the visions I will ask Byleth to send to our
targets accompanied by some particularly loud, shrill guitar riffs, A over high
C organ tones, and thundering drums?” He shrugged. “Insanity will ensue.”

“Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch,”
Coulter commented.

“You reap what you sow,” the Mage said,
looking straight at Coulter.

“Yeah,” Coulter said. “That you do.”

The shrieking would have been comical had
it not been so unnerving. All around her the arrogant, self-righteous,
litigious denizens of the Neear Freewill Church outside Portland, Oregon were
fleeing from what only they could see. Though she felt the flight of beings
around her—their passing creating a hot wind that blew against her cheeks—the
Mage hid their hideous visages from her.

Women were tearing at their hair. Men were
beating their bodies against the door of the meeting house in an effort to flee
the circling, spinning, howling demons that were lashing at them.

“
Vengeance is Mine sayeth the Lord
!”
a loud, booming voice bellowed above the melee.

Scoring the shrieks of the humans and the
howls of the demons was a constant blaring music that set the teeth on edge.
The air was filled with the stench of sulfur and was superheated so both Laci
and Coulter were sweating bullets.

Not so the Mage. He stood in the center of
the storm with his arms folded, his blue eyes once again stygian and the tight
smile on his face was victorious.

“
I am the Lord thy God. Thy shalt have
no other gods before Me
!”

A terrible banging began on the walls and
roof and the floor beneath her feet swelled, pitching her against Coulter.

“Funhouse time,” he yelled above the din.

“Whoever says he is in the light and hates
his brother is still in darkness.”

“Good one,” Laci said. She looked to the
Mage but it was not he who was speaking.

“Whoever hates disguises himself with
his lips and harbors deceit in his heart; when he speaks graciously, believe
him not, for there are seven abominations in his heart; though his hatred be
covered with deception, his wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.”

“Oh, now, I like that one,” Coulter said.

And the biblical verses kept
coming—bombarding the hate group with the words of a vengeful, punishing
entity.

Soon the protestors, the muckrakers, the
willing disciples of Apollyon were huddled in one corner jabbering to
themselves while their younger children sat in an opposite corner oblivious to
the ruckus surrounding them, immune from the revenge, and wiped clean of the
wickedness that had been fostered upon them by their parents.

“I think our work here is done,” Coulter
said. “Let the news media deal with these fools.” He draped a comradely arm
around her. “Now, let’s go see about that group in Kentucky.”

* * * * *

Tired and with a headache from hell
throbbing against her temples, Laci stretched out on her bed in the Motel 6 and
closed her eyes. She hated rock music and the loud, monotonous skirling of the
electric guitars had come close to making her eyes and ears bleed. The ringing
of her cellphone made her cringe and she fumbled with it on the nightstand.

“Hello?”

“How’d it go?” Taylor asked.

“As planned,” she told him, rubbing at her
forehead. “The media had a field day as the men in the white coats brought the
NFC bigwigs out of the meeting hall. All that babbling and foaming at the mouth
made for some great footage. The entire movement lost a lot of ground I hope
now that the NFC is a laughingstock all over the world.”

“So I heard,” he said. “A lot of it has
gone viral on YouTube.”

“Makes them all look like the
laughingstocks they are,” she said. “But they are a scary bunch, Tater. Some of
the rhetoric we heard before the Mage set the demons loose on them made my
blood run cold.”

“You guys in Kentucky now?”

“Yeah, we landed an hour ago,” she said
then yawned. “Gonna go after the mother group first thing tomorrow and
hopefully shut the whole operation down once and for all.”

“They’re worse than the one in Oregon,
chere
.
Please be careful,” he told her.

“Roger that,” she replied. She yawned
loudly and heard him laugh.

“Okay, I can take a hint. Get some sleep,”
he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow night.”

“Love you,” she mumbled.

“Love you, too, babe.”

Within five minutes she was fast asleep and
never heard the door to her room quietly opening.

* * * * *

“Laci!” Coulter said and knocked again. He
and the Mage were standing outside her door in the cool breeze that was coming
off the rain sluicing down the edge of the overhang. “Come on, girl. Get a move
on!”

The Mage looked at the rental car they’d
obtained at the airfield the evening before. Laci had driven them to the motel
since both he and Coulter had been physically and psychically wiped out. She
had the keys to the car with her. “Something isn’t right,” he said.

“Laci!” Coulter turned his hand so the side
of his fist was pummeling the door. “Laci, open the damn door!”

“Hey man, give it a rest!” someone down the
way called from his doorway. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

“Break it in,” the Mage said.

Coulter didn’t need another command. He
lifted his foot and slammed it against the portal though he knew the Mage could
have simply opened the door with his mind.

As he could have but the purely male,
violent physical act released some of the building worry invading his mind.

The door flew open, banging against the
wall and would have shut again had Coulter not shouldered his way through the
opening.

“Laci?”

The room was empty.

“Laci?” he called again, barging through to
the bathroom, throwing that door open as well.

“She’s not here,” the Mage said needlessly.

“You think?” Coulter snarled with
irritation. He went to the bed, laid his palm on the rumpled sheets and closed
his eyes.

“You won’t be able to detect her
whereabouts that way,” the Mage told him. “I am sensing Apollyon was here. Even
one such as you will find her hidden to him.”

Coulter knew that was as close as he would
come to ever having the Mage admit his powers might be stronger than the
magic-sayers.

“Why would he take her?” Coulter demanded.

“Leverage,” the Mage said, calmly. “Why
else?” He put the index and middle fingers of his left hand to his temple.
“We’ve got a problem.”

“I know we’ve got—” Coulter stopped as he
realized the Mage was speaking to the Ridge Lord.

“I have no idea. Sometime during the night
is my guess. The room feels barren of her presence.”

Coulter tuned his mind into the
conversation.

“Coulter is a dead man unless he finds that
girl!” the Supervisor shouted into the Mage’s mind.

“My thoughts exactly,” the Mage said,
turning his hard gaze on Coulter.

“Get on it.
Now
!” the Supervisor
commanded.

“Why didn’t we feel the danger surrounding
her?” Coulter asked. It wouldn’t do any good for recriminations. The Mage was
as much at fault as was he but he would take the blame for it.

“Good question,” the Mage snapped. “One of
us should have.”

Coulter stepped away from the bed. “We’re
in the foothills,” he said.

“Aye, so what?”

Swallowing hard, Coulter did the only thing
he knew to do.

He closed his eyes and called on
An Fear
Liath Mor
for help.

At that moment, the Big Gray Man was
lolling in his hammock, going over in his mind the mental images of his latest
offspring. The lad had been a robust forty-five pounds of squirming, yowling
fur and
An Fear Liath Mor
had withstood that piercing howling for as
long as he could before hying himself back to Terra and the peace and quiet it
afforded.

It was best to enjoy the products of his
loins from a distance where diapering and feeding and regurgitation down one’s
back was not on the daily agenda. His big grin attracted flies but he batted
them away as he hummed the tune to
Gilligan’s Island
through his teeth.
One of his giant feet pumped in time to the rhythm. When the call came from the
Gravelord, he was not pleased.

“Go away,” he said, recognizing the voice
as that of one he didn’t like.

“I need your help,
Vainshtyr
,”
Coulter said.

“And I need my downtime,” the Big Gray Man
snapped.

“A Reaper’s woman has gone missing.”

An Fear Liath Mor
’s eyes opened and a snarl replaced his grin. “Whose woman?”

“
Taylor Reynaud
.”

“The pussy boy who is friend of the hound?”
the Big Gray Man snorted, his rubbery lips flapping. He zeroed in on the
speaker, took delight in sensing the man’s utter terror of him and probed
deeper. At least the assling had used what little brains he had to investigate
who it was of whom he was asking aid. He discovered the hybrid Superlord had
spent hours learning all he could of
An Fear Liath Mor
and his kind.

He also flung wide his search and
discovered the hound—and the hound’s fellow Reapers—did not like the assling.
“You lost her. Tell me why I should help you,” he demanded.

“
She is a Reaper’s woman and I am asking
your help as a Reaper
.
There is a demon involved. Apollyon—
”

“Enough said!” Throwing one giant leg from
the swaying hammock, the beastly entity sat up. “Come to me with something of
hers,” he said. “I will take it from there.” As silence spun out,
An Fear
Liath Mor
cursed in his native tongue. “Come into the hills, Gravelord, and
bring that pesky Mage with you.”

“Where in the hills,
Vainshtyr?”

“Anywhere, you asstwit!” the Big Man Gray
said. “I will hide myself from prying eyes but you will find me readily
enough.”

* * * * *

“I’ve never had dealings with
Vainshtyr
,”
the Mage said. He was nervously chewing on a thumbnail. “I had hoped never to.”

“I’m not keen on the idea, either, but if
he can locate her for us, I’ll do anything he asks,” Coulter said. He, himself,
was trembling at the idea of confronting the Big Gray Man. Even from a
distance, just speaking to the entity had turned his bowels to water and his
nerves to mush.

“I don’t know why he asked you to bring me
with you,” the Mage said and it was obvious to Coulter he had found the other
man’s weakness.

“Most likely he wanted to get a good look
at the great Mage,” Coulter said, lips twitching.

The Mage growled and turned his head to
look out the window. Coulter could smell the blood on the magic-sayers thumb
where he had bitten the nail to the quick.

In the backseat of the rental car Coulter
had broken into and hotwired because they couldn’t find the keys among Laci’s
things, was the shirt she had worn the day before. It had been stuffed inside
her laundry bag and still bore the unmistakable scent of her gardenia perfume.
He’d read on the Exchange’s computer that
An Fear Liath Mor
could take
one whiff of the blouse and pinpoint precisely where its wearer was. He thanked
his lucky stars he had been curious enough to learn all he could about those
who helped the Reapers with their assignments.

The drive into blue-misted Appalachian
Mountains of Eastern Kentucky would have been beautiful had Coulter not been
gripping the steering wheel with stiff fingers, his knuckles bled of color, his
eyes tearing with terror. He gnawed on his bottom lip as he drove and he kept
shifting in his seat.

As did the Mage.

The closer they got to the high rolling
ridges, the deeper his fear became until he was sweating profusely and his
breath was coming in pants. There was an overwhelming sense of dread bearing
down on him and he knew that fear was being caused by the nearness of the Big
Gray Man.

“I can smell him,” the Mage said, his nose
crinkled. “By the goddess, that is a stench I won’t soon forget.”

Coulter could smell the entity too and knew
it was a scent
Vainshtyr
was deliberately broadcasting to keep the
curious away. The scent was strong and any who took a good whiff would
experience the same terror and foreboding he and the Mage were experiencing.

“
Take that road
up ahead
.”

The booming voice made both men cry out for
it had been completely unexpected and so loud Coulter nearly drove off the road
and into the gully below. As it was he had to fight the wheel to keep control,
cursing beneath his breath.

A narrow dirt lane was the road to which
the entity referred and Coulter turned into it. So close were the branches of
the laurels and pines and seedling white oaks, the sound of them scraping
against the car added to the taut nerves of its passengers. The car bumped over
fallen rocks and down saplings to further add to the misery Coulter and the
Mage were already enduring.

“This isn’t a road,” the Mage said, his
teeth clicking together. “It’s a roller coaster track.”

The road wound steadily upward until it
ended in a clearing where trees had been stripped from the steep hillside.

“Clear cutting,” Coulter said with disgust.

“Greed is a better word for it,” the Mage
put in. “And a lack of respect for our world.”

Coulter stopped the car and turned off the
engine, sat there listening to the engine tick. The sense of foreboding was
worse here and he could feel his knees growing weaker by the minute. He wasn’t
sure he’d be able to stand when he opened the door. Beside him, the Mage was
taking short, shallow gasps of breath.

“For all our powers,” the Mage said, “if he
says boo to us, we’re going to shit our pants.”

“Speak for yourself,” Coulter said though
he felt himself close to doing just that.

“
Are you awaiting an invitation? Get out
of the contraption
!”

Both men jumped and scrambled to do as they
were ordered. Coulter felt his cheeks burning. His self-view was rapidly
deteriorating between what the goddess had set for him and now the
you’re-nothing-but-a-piece-of-shit-to-me attitude of the Big Gray Man.