Her Reaper's Arms Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Her Reaper’s Arms

  ISBN 9781419911149

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Her Reaper’s Arms Copyright © 2007 Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Edited by Mary Moran.

  Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.

  Electronic book Publication August 2007

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written

  permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 443103502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales

  is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  HER REAPER’S ARMS

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Prologue

  At Críonna in the Aneas Quadrant

  All living things must die, he thought as he looked up at the bright blue sky. It was a

  shame his existence was ending on such a beautiful day when life was burgeoning all

  around him. Birds were singing sweetly in the trees and a soft, gentle wind was

  caressing his face. The scent of the ocean wafted beneath his nostrils and he inhaled

  deeply, knowing it would be his last unsullied breath this side of heaven—wherever

  and whatever that was.

  Remanded to the Execution Mound, his hands had been chained above his head to

  the concrete pillar at his back. They had piled the dried branches thickly at his feet and

  had sprinkled oil upon the wood. Before him, the people of the keep were gathered to

  watch him die and there was not a tearful eye among those who glared hatefully at him.

  He had—after all—unwittingly caused them grief for when their mistress was angry,

  her people suffered.

  Only one face in the crowd bore a smile and it was a brutal, vindictive smile

  awaiting revenge. It did not help that the face was the loveliest thing he’d ever been

  allowed to see in his lifetime or that her face had once gazed upon him with heated

  passion—albeit one that held no resemblance whatsoever to normal desire. Now her

  eyes bore into him as fiercely as the flare of the torch waiting to set the rushes afire,

  burning into his flesh a pathway of hatred.

  Taking one last look at the brilliant, calming sky, he lowered his head and found

  those savage eyes, locking gazes with the Countess Kennocha Tramont. Her red lips

  glistened in the sunlight as she swept the tip of her pink tongue across them in

  anticipation. In the regal ianthine robes of her ancestry, her milk-white complexion was

  framed perfectly, her lush cleavage above the low neckline of the bodice drawing the

  eye of every male among those assembled. Sweeping almost to the ground, the

  crowning glory of her midnight black hair shimmered with blue highlights in the sun

  and was held in place by a golden circlet upon her forehead.

  For over a month he had endured the worst kind of hell in the dungeon of Rathlin,

  the imperial seat of the Tramont clan. During that time, he had been subjected to the

  most evil and perverse torments ever devised. The inquisitors had beaten and burned

  his body, torn his flesh, broken fingers and toes, stretched his limbs until the joints had

  been dislocated, driven wood slivers under his fingernails, repeatedly held his head

  under water until he was forced to drag the liquid into his lungs—all under the guise of

  eliciting a concession he was unwilling to make.

  “Will you give yourself to me now?” he had been asked over and over again, but

  refused to answer.

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  Her Reaper’s Arms

  “Submit!” they had screamed at him.

  “To what?” he had pleaded. “An evil I care not to embrace?”

  The one responsible for his imprisonment had been there in the dungeon, seated in

  her soft, comfortable chair, eating food he could not have, drinking water he was not

  allowed, watching as his body had been broken and his spirit crushed, that enigmatic

  smile hovering on her full lips.

  “Give in,” she had whispered to him.

  “How will I live with myself if I do, milady?” he had pleaded, barely able to speak.

  When at last she grew bored with the torture, she had calmly ordered his death. By

  then he longed for the surcease of the agonies being inflicted upon him and did not care

  that his life would soon be forfeit. He embraced the sentence, knowing the final anguish

  of the bonfire would put an end to his suffering. Learning that he would not be allowed

  the humane reprieve of being strangled before the fire was lit had only marginally

  dampened his eagerness for death. When it was done, it would be done.

  He smiled sadly at his tormentress as she stood on the balcony of Rathlin Keep, her

  slender white hands resting on the stony balustrade, elegant jewels flashing in the

  sunlight. Despite what he was—or rather what he had been—he knew he should

  forgive her for what she was doing to him but he could not dredge up the energy or the

  will to do so. Perhaps he was not the man he had believed himself to be after all for

  there was anger in his broken heart, vengeance of his own seething in his tired mind.

  He would die cursed for the sins weighing heavily upon his battered soul—the sin of

  desiring revenge, the sin of anger.

  Tearing his gaze from her, he looked out across those assembled.

  “Heretic! Degenerate! Sinner!”

  What lies had she told them? he wondered. What evil accusations had she flung?

  How badly had she sullied his name? His honor?

  The inquisitor had called him many things with the passing of blades and barbed

  scourges across his bound body, but he knew himself to be guilty of none of those

  things. Now he would pay for sins he had not committed, be made to atone for

  unspecified evils he had never entertained.

  His eyes were drawn to the executioner as the squat man dressed in black, his face

  hidden beneath a hood, came toward the branches with the torch. Through the twin

  slits in the ebon mask he could see spite gleaming back at him. As the man’s arm

  lowered the fire to the oil-soaked sticks and twigs, he thought he heard a sinister laugh

  from beneath the thick hood.

  “Die, you worthless bastard,” she called out from the balcony. “Die and spend

  eternity in the Abyss!”

  Smoke rose up in spiraling columns to burn his eyes. It clogged his nostrils, was

  sucked down his throat to gag and choke him. Long before the first lick of the flames

  touched his body, his lungs were seared and he was gasping for breath. The pain leapt

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  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  up his legs—the fabric of his robe going up with a whump of sound. He tried not to

  scream as the agony ate at him but he was not that strong a man.

  He writhed in the flames as the burning torment moved up his chest and flicked at

  the underside of his chin. The reverberation of his howls echoed over the courtyard as

  he struggled wildly and in v
ain to break free of the chains binding him to the upright.

  But as the flames fanned across his face, the sunlit day grew dark, forbidding as

  gunmetal gray clouds came out of nowhere to block the sun. The air grew chill. The

  wind whipped the flames, helping them to consume him. A mighty rhythmic whomping

  began and vaguely he heard the people screaming. He could no longer see for the fire

  had taken his vision but in the periphery of his anguish, he thought he heard the

  thunder of running feet. Lightning zinged across the heavens and rain began cascading

  down in thick sheets, putting out the flames, turning the ground beneath his ruined

  body to a smoldering pile of steaming ashes.

  He felt his arms falling away from the chains, felt his body being lifted. Cold wind

  flowed over and around him.

  In the arms of the Gatherer, he thought as he soared through the air to the

  accompaniment of mighty flapping wings.

  Pain engulfed him from head to toe. It was an agony that not even the chill streams

  of air could assuage. He felt the agony all the way to his bones and when he took his

  last breath, he drew that fierce torment down into his very soul.

  If he had thought the pain of his death had been bad, the pain of his rebirth was a

  thousand times worse. That pain would last him through eternity.

  In his nightmares he would remember the feel of rough ground beneath him as he

  was lain down, his ravaged body screaming in protest though he no longer had vocal

  cords with which to make sound. He would remember the taste of something thick and

  cloying trickling down his gullet, remember swallowing convulsively as a scaly hand

  massaged the charred flesh of his throat. He would remember being turned to his belly

  and the godawful agony that had come after his back had been slit open.

  Overwhelming anguish, staggering agony had invaded his body and what had come

  from that invasion of his being would forever be his rebirthright.

  Though he would not remember what had happened to him after the Transference

  of the Revenant Worm—the parasite that would give him the strength and longevity of

  ten men and heretical abilities beyond his ability to imagine—he would remember the

  face of the white-haired hag who had gazed down at him with a snaggle-toothed grin

  when he could see once more.

  “You have given me your seed, now reap the benefits I will bestow upon you!”

  He could not move as She pressed Her odorous mouth to his. The feel of Her slimy

  tongue thrusting past his lips had sickened him as Her hands had roamed over his

  body, touching him in places he found repellent.

  “You are Mine, boy and you always will be! I will have you as I desire you to be!”

  She had stated and then he was once more flying through the air. Looking up, he had

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  seen a huge creature with bright copper scales that glistened under the glow of the

  moon, its wings rising and lowering with a soft, pounding sound.

  He would never know where She had taken him or how long She had held him

  there. When next he was fully aware, he was lying in a strange room on a strange world

  with three unknown men hovering over him. His burned flesh was whole again except

  for the myriad scars that were testament to his torture.

  “Welcome to the Citadel, milord,” the tallest man said. “We are pleased you have

  joined us.”

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  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  Chapter One

  Armistenky Territory, 3473

  Reaper 2-I-C Bevyn Coure hated remembering how he’d been introduced into

  death. For days afterward he would be moody and bleak, his eyes filled with

  alternating strata of rage and despair. When he could sleep, his dreams would be filled

  with swirling smoke, the odor of burning flesh, the residual pain still carried deep

  within his consciousness. He would wake sweating profusely—as though still trapped

  in the heat of the conflagration—and his throat would be parched, his lungs feeling

  seared. When he was forced to relive that horrendous day, his flesh crawled, his body

  shuddered, his belly ached, and today was such a day.

  The Cherchocreechi medicine man raised his buckskin-clad arms skyward, the

  fringe on his sleeves waving in the wind, and called out to the Great Spirit to look with

  favor upon the warrior who had passed from this world into the Land of the Ghosts.

  Chanting the merits of the deceased warrior, the didanawisgi bid He Who Listens and

  She Who Waits to take into account the good things the dead man had accomplished

  and to overlook that which did not please Those Who Judge.

  Beneath the scaffolding upon which the warrior had been laid, his family and

  friends piled oak branches and bundles of sweet grass as the didanawisgi continued his

  recitation of the warrior’s glories. As the People worked, they softly sang the burial

  song that would hasten their loved one on his way. Wrapped securely in a gaily

  decorated blanket tied with rope, the feet of the warrior faced south where his journey

  would begin. Around him were his most prized possessions, which would accompany

  him into the afterlife.

  Standing apart from the mourners, Bevyn marveled at the mix of religious beliefs

  that had been incorporated into the Cherchocreechi tribe’s rituals. He knew at one time

  there had been four distinct tribes but the Burning War, disease and myriad other

  calamities had struck to devastate the People until only a hundred or less were left from

  among the Four Nations. Some of their customs had been abandoned, forgotten,

  morphed from one belief into a new one that better served its worshippers. He knew

  that had happened for many of the natives of Terra.

  “You look very sad, danitaga,” Chief Amaketai said as he came to stand beside the

  Reaper. “You should rejoice for Onisca. He will soon be with Those Who Have Gone

  Before.”

  “Although I am saddened by your son’s passing, that is not what haunts me this

  day, oginalii,” Bevyn replied. “It is the sight of the pyre that disturbs me.”

  “Ah,” Amaketai said. The old man had sat many hours with the Reaper before the

  campfire, hearing tales of lands far beyond the green hills of Armistenky. He knew how

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  Her Reaper’s Arms

  the young man had met his end in that alien world so unlike his own. “It is the burning

  you dislike.”

  “Only because it brings back memories,” Bevyn admitted.

  “I understand,” Amaketai said. He gave the man beside him—the man his people

  called danitaga, blood brother—a gentle look. “Life has not been kind to you, has it, my

  son?”

  “Life has kicked my ass, old friend,” Bevyn said with a faint smile. “Many times

  over.”

  Onisca’s widow was given the honor of lighting his funeral pyre and she placed the

  burning sweet grass sheaf to the bundles intertwined with the oak branches. A loud,

  trilling ululation rose up from the throats of the mourners as the fire took hold and the

  flames rose. The bitterly sweet odor of burning flesh rose in the air.

  Bevyn turned away, unable to watch the body catch fire. The stench was more than

  he could bear as well and his hands were trembling, his shoulders hunched as though

  he
expected the fire to reach out to ensnare him. Bidding a hasty farewell to Amaketai,

  he strode purposefully to his horse, grateful the chief did not try to stop him. Grabbing

  a handful of Préachán’s thick mane, he swung up into the saddle and dug his heels into

  the horse’s black flanks. He needed to put distance between him and the burning man

  who had been like a brother to him.

  He needed a drink, he thought as he raced his mount across the plains. He needed

  something strong, something that would numb the memories, something to erase the

  feeling of impending doom that had reached out to entrap him. Sometimes the only

  way he could make it through a week of loneliness, the isolation of his job, was to

  drown himself in whiskey and attempt to sleep it off.

  The trouble with his kind was they had trouble sleeping. Even with a full bottle of

  rotgut sloshing in their bellies, the nightmares always hovered close by to claim them

  and to torment their rest, to drag them hissing from the land of Nod. Past deeds rose up

  to jeer at them and the cries of the dead they had dispatched haunted their restless

  slumber.

  It was a hell of a way to live.

  As Préachán—his big black stallion—raced over the ground, Bevyn thought of the

  balgair, the rogue, he had executed for murdering Onisca. He had hunted the bastard

  down, driven him to ground and had used his laser whip to slice off pieces of the

  rogue’s body a little at a time until there was nothing left but mush on the blood-soaked

  ground. He had reveled in the man’s screams, had inhaled his fear and agony as though

  they were perfume. He had taken out his wrath in painful increments that had lasted

  for hours until his whip arm grew numb and heavy and his energy flagged. Still he had

  slashed at the body—long after he had sliced the head from the corpse with an expert

  flick of his wrist—until the killing rage had finally passed, and he had been stunned to

  see what he had wrought.

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  Charlotte Boyett-Compo

  “I have avenged you, diganeli,” he had offered up to Onisca’s ghost, calling him his

  blood friend.

  But it had been more than vengeance he had meted out upon the rogue. It had been

  frustration and disappointment and an attempt to alleviate the bitter loneliness that was