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

that was now so

overpowering, so vile, burned the membranes of his nostrils.

From one of the Osage orange trees, a hedge apple fell, clunking on the dilapidated

roof and rolling down it. The light green wrinkled ball landing with a dull thud in the

dirt as it hit the ground.

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Her Reaper’s Arms

Now sick to his stomach from the smell, he took out his black silk handkerchief and

tied it over his face to filter the odor. To anyone who might have seen him at that

moment, he looked like a bank robber sneaking up on the door to the shack.

His spurs jingled against the rotting porch floor as he went to the shack’s door and

he felt a board crack under his weight. Putting his boot to the door, he nudged it open,

flinching at the piercing shriek of its rusted hinges. The buzzing sound was louder and

despite the protection of his handkerchief, the stench was overwhelming, drifting up

from beneath his chin, making his eyes water.

The interior of the cabin was dark but there was no mistaking the horrors that lined

its walls. Bevyn stopped in the doorway, staring at the awfulness that assailed his eyes.

For a moment or two he could not move, so devastating was the scene upon which he’d

come. Eyes wide, struggling to draw air through his mouth to blot out the putrid odor

permeating the air, he stumbled back and barely made it off the porch before he

whipped off his handkerchief and puked, relieving his belly of its breakfast.

Tears stung his eyes—a valiant attempt made by his soul to wash away the

horrendous sight he had beheld inside the shack. Clutching a rough upright that barely

held up the porch roof, he puked again and again until there was only bitter vetch

flooding his mouth. Wiping the back of a shaking hand across his lips, he realized his

entire body was trembling. Nothing had ever affected him as strongly as what he’d just

seen.

Staggering off the porch, the Reaper put distance between him and the shack and

made his way to a fallen log, plopping down on it, leaning forward to put his head

between his legs in an attempt to calm the fury of his body. He was sweating profusely,

his mouth watering so copiously he feared the puking wasn’t finished. After a moment

or two he slowly lifted his head and looked at the cabin, every humane instinct in his

body shuddering with disgust.

The bodies he’d seen hanging on the walls had been brutally tortured with an

instrument he had hoped never to see again and certainly never expected to find on

Terra. He’d spied it leaning against one wall, its business end coated with blood, and

had felt a shiver of cold wriggle down his spine.

No one should ever lay eyes upon what he’d just seen, he thought. The sight could

well pitch a sensitive soul into unremitting madness and a less susceptible one into a

lifetime of gruesome nightmares. What lay beyond the slivered walls of the shack had

to be destroyed, put to rest, and it was Bevyn’s job to see to it. No one should ever

suspect the vileness that had taken place in the shack.

Getting to his feet, stamping down the urge to throw up again, it took every ounce

of his courage and stamina to enter the shack again. He had to make sure the rogue was

dead as Roy English lay on his cot, his face bloated and black from the rabies that had

infected him. Using his laser whip, Bevyn had severed the balgair’s head from his neck

and incinerated the weak revenant worm that flopped out upon the floor. The creature

was dying but still it opened its maw of a mouth and hissed at the Reaper, the redtinged spines along its segmented back bristling feebly. The stench from its pale green

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

body as it burst into flames was even more sickening than the odors coming from the

horrors lining the walls of the shack.

The Reaper went back outside and began gathering fallen branches of dead wood

and piled them around the perimeter of the shack. When he was finished, when he’d

stacked as much incendiary material as he could at the base of the rotting walls, he

untied the rogue’s horse from its place on the far end of the porch and walked it out to

where Préachán stood patiently waiting. Tying the animal beside his own mount,

Bevyn took a box of matches from his saddlebags and lit the debris around the shack,

standing back as the dried wood caught fire with a loud whoosh.

It took the cabin over an hour to burn to the ground, the roof timbers caving in,

going up in tall flames to singe the branches of the green trees and wither the leaves to

blackened ash. While the fire hissed and popped and cleansed the world of the horror

housed inside the shack, Bevyn had stood with his mount and the balgair’s.

His head ached miserably and he knew one of the debilitating migraines that

plagued his kind was about to take hold. The pain was rapidly approaching. It hurt

even to mount Préachán, but once in the saddle, once sure there was nothing left but the

smoldering ruins of cabin, he kicked his mount into movement, leading the balgair’s

scrawny beast by its reins.

“Are you all right, Lord Bevyn?”

It was Lord Kheelan’s voice that broke into Bevyn’s thoughts as the Reaper rode

back toward Orson. Disinclined to answer the Shadowlord’s question, it wasn’t until

the High Lord spoke again—this time in a voice that brooked no ignoring—that he

replied.

“I’m here,” Bevyn said aloud, his jaw tight.

“We felt your revulsion, Lord Bevyn,” Lord Kheelan stated. “To remedy such things are

why you are in this world.”

“Aye,” Bevyn agreed. In his mind’s eye, he saw again the atrocities that had been

hanging from meat hooks along the walls of the shack.

“There was nothing more you could have done for the rogue’s victims,” Lord Kheelan

reminded him from the Citadel, that bastion of armed protection many, many miles

away.

“Had I known of English sooner—”