Her Reaper's Arms, Charlotte Boyett-Compo [world best books to read .TXT] 📗

of hell.

“I will guard her with my life,” Buford Gilchrist swore to the departing warrior.

By the time the sun set on Orson, every man, woman and child in town was abuzz

with the news that they had garnered their very own Reaper. It was an honor they all

took to heart.

* * * * *

28

Her Reaper’s Arms

As Bevyn’s mount galloped over the dusty road, he kept going back to the

conversation with the sheriff.

Our home, he had said.

A place for us.

My lady.

The Reaper’s heart did a tight little squeeze in his chest. He had never had his own

home, his own place. He had never owned anything save the clothes on his back and

the horse upon which he sat. He’d accumulated very little since becoming a Reaper and

what he personally owned could be carried within the confines of his saddlebags.

Though he took great delight in reading, he didn’t own a single book. He borrowed

them from the larger libraries that still stood and was careful to return them when they

were due. Not once had he been forced to pay an overdue fine.

“A bookcase,” he thought as Préachán’s long stride ate up the miles. “A bookcase

along one entire wall filled with tomes I have yet to read. Books I can collect, books I

can have as my own.”

It took him nearly a half hour of riding before he realized he didn’t have a clue

where he was going. Reining in his mount, he sat there laughing at the absurdity of his

actions before taking out the handkerchief and sticking the tip of his tongue to a fleck of

the rogue’s blood. Almost instantly, an image formed in his mind of the man whose

blood he had tasted and he turned his head to look back the way he’d come.

Sometimes, he thought as he stuffed the handkerchief in his back pocket, the

devilish little imp that sat on his shoulder demanded his attention when it thought he

should be concentrating on the matter at hand. It tended to rake his tattooed cheek with

the sharp, pointed little toe of its miniscule iron boot and draw symbolic blood.

“Pay attention, you fucking Reaper!” it would seem to hiss in his ear, its vicious little

teeth mauling his earlobe if only in Bevyn’s imagination.

That had just happened, thrusting him out of his self-induced euphoria regarding

Lea and back into the sordidness in which Reapers existed.

“You’re close by, aren’t you, balgair?” he asked quietly. He sniffed the air, his eyes

narrowing at the stench. “Aye, you bastard. You are very close by.”

For a moment longer he sat there until his savage instincts took over and the fleck

of blood he had tasted pointed him straight toward the balgair’s location. He pulled on

Préachán’s reins and turned the ebon steed, directing it back the way they’d just

traveled. The closer he got to the rogue, the sharper his lateral incisors became until the

points were raking his bottom lip. With conscious effort, he retracted them, though the

sharp claws that had sprung from his fingertips were harder to control. It wouldn’t do

for a civilian to see him in the process of Transition.

Not that he had much to worry about in that department. For as far as his sharp

eyes could see no human was about. But the vile stench of balgair was rife in his nostrils

and growing stronger with every yard Préachán covered.

29

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

The Reaper frowned deeply for there was another scent—an obscene one—that

washed over him the farther along the meandering dirt path he traveled. That scent was

horrendous and it made the hackles stand up on his back. Reining in Préachán, he

turned his head from side to side, drawing in the odor, trying to place it. The longer he

sat there inhaling the vastly unpleasant smell, the more he rolled his shoulders as

though something were slithering down his spine.

He inhaled deeply. It wasn’t a ghoret, he thought. That was an odor he could never

mistake for what it was. The pit viper was the most evil thing he’d ever encountered

and once in contact with one, its smell was never forgotten.

So what was the stench that made him feel as though he’d been dowsed with slime?

Walking Préachán slowly along the trail, he saw nothing that drew his attention.

Someone had passed this way recently, but not in the last day or two. The tracks

weren’t fresh and though the scent of the balgair was strong, Bevyn had a strong notion

the evil bastard wasn’t alive. Nevertheless, he moved carefully, his eyes whipping back

and forth across the trail, scoping out the territory, his palm on the handle of his laser

whip.

The shack was sitting in a grove of cottonwood and Osage orange trees, half hidden

by the shimmering leaves on the spreading lower branches. A horse neighed greeting to

Préachán and the Reaper’s steed snorted in reply.

Once more Bevyn halted his horse, allowing his Reaper senses to home in on the

shack, to test the vibrations that were undulating down his taut spine. His acute hearing

picked up no sounds, his eyes found no movement other than the impatient and—to

him—the nervous shifting of the other horse.

Dismounting slowly, he upholstered his laser whip—his speal—and advanced

quietly toward the shack, keeping his senses alert to the most minute of changes in the

air, the ground beneath his feet.

The closer he came to the rundown building with its gray weathered boards and

swayback roof pitted with missing shingles, the more the squirmy feeling along his

spine shifted. Beneath the black silk, his flesh felt wet, the shirt’s material clinging to his

back and chest as though offal had been smeared on the garment. It was a very

unpleasant sensation that bothered him intensely.

He stopped and listened for any movement at all, his gaze intent on the shack’s

door that was slightly ajar. He could detect no sounds and though his ears were

perfectly capable of hearing a heartbeat from ten feet away, he heard absolutely nothing

save the buzzing of flies.

It was the sudden sound that disturbed him more than the atrocious odor coming

from the shack. Death was inside the cabin and the stench