A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) Read online

  He knew the one that had been taken from him three years earlier had been male. All Panthera hellions were male. Lupine and Hell-hound hellions were female and could produce a nest of fledglings within the host’s body. A fledgling or—under some critical conditions the queen, itself—could be harvested from a Reaper’s body to be transferred into the body of a Reaper whose hellion had been destroyed. Fledglings were kept stored on the Island in case they were needed.

  Lupine and Hell-hound hellions could either be transferred into the body of its host or transferred through Reaper sperm at conception. Only male children were conceived from Lupine and Hell-hound matings. Females as well as males were conceived from Panthera coupling and the children were born with a hellion that was part of their DNA, but only male Panthera had Reaper powers.

  There were other differences as well. Where the male hellion would not heal scars on the body of its host, the females would. They wanted their male to be as perfect a specimen as possible. In his case, he still had a few scars from before he was turned—childhood injuries the hellion overlooked for it obviously did not find those imperfections offensive.

  Where the Panthera hellion would allow its host to mate with more than one female, the Lupine queen would not. She was a very jealous and demanding queen. The Hell-hound queens were ambiguous about the one-mate scenario and more lenient with their Reaper hosts. The mate of a Hell-hound could conceivably mate with another male but to his knowledge no Hell-hound had—or ever would—allow such a thing to happen. All Reapers were extremely territorial with their mates.

  What he wanted to know but was almost afraid to ask was which category of hellion had been transferred into his body. He knew the hellion given him had been harvested fresh. He suspected the donor might be Misha Fallon, which would mean the hellion was of the Hell-hound variety, thus female. If that was the case, Taylor feared the female to which his new hellion referred was Misha’s Extension, Keenan McCullough.

  Chapter Four

  Dixon Wayne Coulter had been born into abject poverty in the Florida Panhandle. His first memories were of rainwater falling from the ceiling into chipped enamel pans littering the kitchen floor. The smell of rat feces, mildew and stale cigarette smoke permeated the dirty place where he lived. There were orange crates filled with empty paregoric bottles his grandmother had stored under the porch. Chickens roosted in the hard scrabble yard and an old rusted-out Ford pickup minus its tires was jacked up on wobbly cinder blocks near the dirt street.

  Brought up in that ramshackle shotgun house just outside East Milton, he grew up grubby and hungry and lost. The only good thing to happen to him came when the State of Florida Department of Children and Families took him and his six siblings away from their whore of a mother and her succession of abusive pimps and johns. He had been lucky to land with a foster family who had tried to do their best by him.

  Eleanor and Ned Branch had been good folks. Religious, fair-minded Methodists, just strict enough to get the full attention of a rebellious young boy of eleven, the Branches had given Dixon a better start in life than he had been destined to have otherwise. They had taught him respect for his elders, given gentle discipline and had instilled in him a love of God and Country. By the time he graduated Milton High School in June of 1998 he had already been accepted into the Navy and signed the SEAL Challenge Contract.

  Highly intelligent and motivated as well as street smart, he aced the ASVAB—Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery—with flying colors. Strong as an ox, determined and twice as stubborn as a Missouri mule, he then successfully passed the PST—Physical Screening Test. After being interviewed by a Naval Special Operations Motivator a request for Dixon to enter the Naval Special Warfare—BUD/S—training pipeline was submitted.

  Honor. Courage. Commitment.

  He had them all in spades and though the path was hard, the road littered with those who dropped out, men less motivated who rang the bell, Dixon stayed the course. The proudest day of his life came when he received his SEAL Trident and was welcomed into the elite brotherhood of the SEALs.

  Another skill—or as he viewed it, talent—he had was one the Navy knew nothing about. He’d had it since puberty and had learned all he could about his newfound ability. Quietly, he had honed that skill, cultivated that talent, until he had mastered it. The ability had held him in good stead until the day it failed him.

  On November 22, 2012—midway through his fourth four-year hitch—Dixon’s world came to a screeching halt when he was captured and sent to the Dhaween camp.

  The pain was getting to him and he shifted to his side. No matter how hard he tried to get comfortable, he couldn’t. The twisting, burning shift of the creature that had been inserted into his back was an agony he was finding hard to endure. No training he’d ever had could have prepared him for the pain shooting through him.

  Seven other men—including the news reporter Jack Donnelson—had died after having the creature inserted in their bodies. Donnelson had gone insane—as had the other men before him—and had to be put down.

  For nearly three months the sick thing had lain still inside Dixon—coiled inside his kidney in what The Fiend said was hibernation.

  Until this morning when it began to shift and turn inside his body.

  “Son of a bitch!” Dixon tried to stretch the pain away but it was still bunched in his right kidney. It hurt so badly he felt moisture building in his eyes and sweat beading on his forehead. “Leave me alone you evil fuck!” he snarled as he sat up on the bunk.

  “I want my woman!”

  Suddenly hearing the alien voice shouting inside his skull sent Dixon into a tailspin. It made him cry out and flatten himself against the titanium wall of his cell. The very real fear that he was going insane like Donnelson and the others came unbidden to his startled mind.

  “Find my woman!”

  “Woman?” Dixon said, completely bewildered. “What fucking woman?”

  “My woman!”

  Pain lanced through his side, doubling him over and he went to his knees. Outside the window of his cell door he could see The Fiend staring in at him, could hear him speaking excitedly to someone standing with him though he was in so much torment he couldn’t concentrate on what was being said. The cell door opened and two burly guards came at him with the same mean, excited expressions that heralded torture was high on their list of things to do that day.

  Unable to resist because of the crippling pain in his back, he felt himself lifted by his arms and was dragged from the cell, The Fiend walking hurriedly ahead of them, white lab coat flapping.

  They took him into one of the two operatories where many men had been tortured and killed. He was flung on the stainless-steel exam table and the guards went to work lashing him down. Ashamed he could not fight back, could not resist, all Dixon could do was curse the men in Farsi, using every insult he knew.

  The Fiend leaned over him and in flawless English asked, “Is it speaking to you?”

  Dixon was in the middle of a terrible burst of agony and couldn’t answer even had he wanted to. As a result, The Fiend slapped him brutally then took Dixon’s face in a his grip and asked the question again.

  “Do not answer!”

  Unable to prevent the scream from escaping as the evil creature inside him sent wave after wave of exacting agony through his lower body, Dixon saw The Fiend’s eyes widen.

  “It is torturing you,” the bastard said. “I know it is! And it is speaking!” He leaned over the exam table. “What is it saying, infidel?”

  “Fuck. You!” Dixon managed to gasp.

  Drawing back his arm, The Fiend grunted as a hand shot out to cup his fist before he could strike Dixon.

  Through his pain Dixon recognized the other man who came into his view and his blood ran cold. As fearful of The Fiend as he was, the other man instilled terror in him for not only was he the most wanted man on the face of the earth, he was the most dangerous.

  “This is the first time the he
llion has spoken to a recipient,” Sheik Sharif Hassan said in the quietly modulated tone he always used. “Do not damage the American before the creature has a chance to fully wake from its hibernation.”

  “But he needs to be tested!” The Fiend protested. “We should—”

  “I have told you to wait,” Sharif said with a finality that made The Fiend move away from the exam table.

  “Protect my woman and I will protect you,” the hellion whispered in Dixon’s mind. It stopped writhing and lay still. “I will not hurt you if you obey.”

  At that point, Dixon would have done anything the revenant worm demanded of him. His kidney was on fire. He was burning from the inside out. He began to realize a craving was building within him and at the moment he understood what it was his body was crying out for, demanding, he shuddered and licked his lips.

  “I am hungry.”

  “He needs Sustenance,” Sharif said and there was deep satisfaction in his voice.

  “Sustenance,” The Fiend repeated. “Yes. Yes! Kasid, fetch the Sustenance!”

  The hunger was escalating to the point where he was shuddering with need. For what seemed like an hour but could have been no more than a minute he saw the face of one of the guards appear at The Fiend’s side.

  His head was lifted and a cool glass placed against his lips. His lips parted of their own accord and a salty, slick substance flowed into his mouth. It was the most delicious taste to ever burst upon his tongue. He drank greedily, drawing the rich, warm fluid down his throat with relish. The moment it hit his stomach, he trembled with pleasure. When the glass was empty, he growled, wanting more. He was starved for more, hungry in a way he never had been before.

  “He wants more,” Sharif said. “That’s a good sign.”

  “At last,” The Fiend exclaimed.

  Something other than intense hunger was growing within him. He skin was beginning to itch. His entire body ached from the flood of alien chemicals emanating from the evil thing. His head throbbed unmercifully and he was sick to his stomach. He began to writhe against his bonds. He drew his lips back from his teeth and growled.

  “Release him,” Sharif ordered, raising his voice for the first time. “Take him back to his cell. Quickly!”

  Fingers fumbled at his restraints but Dixon was rapidly losing all sense of the here and now. He was shivering uncontrollably and his body was one giant pulse of energy and need. Comprehension began to set in as he was dragged into his cell and thrown to the floor. His body was rapidly changing. Fur was sprouting from his naked arms. Claws shot from his fingertips as his hand became a giant paw. The guards were scrambling to get away from him. One almost reached the door before Dixon sprang on him and brought him down, burying newly erupted fangs deep into the screaming man’s neck.

  “Close the door! Close the door!” The Fiend shrieked.

  Dixon tore at the guard’s neck—shaking his head like the deadly feline he was fast becoming—and tore off a huge chunk of the man’s flesh as blood gushed from the wound. The guard continued to scream, to thrash and for the first time Dixon heard the strange hissing-snarl coming from his own throat as he bit harder into the guard’s neck until he heard bone break. There was one last wet, gurgling sound and the guard went limp beneath him.

  Throwing back his head, Dixon released a long scream of rage then snapped his head to the glass window in the cell door, blood flinging from his whiskers. He bared his bloody fangs and hissed.

  Dixon Coulter was even less human than he had been before the Conversion.

  He had become a new class of Panthera Reaper, the first of his kind.

  * * * * *

  Sheik Sharif Hassan had graduated with honors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a doctorate degree in chemical engineering he had gone home to command the Dhaween, the Somalia-based militant group.

  Though he hated the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia—using guerilla and terrorist warfare in an attempt to destroy it—he had an even stronger loathing for the United States and its allies, the British. Like most of his fighters, he had little desire for global jihad. What he wanted most was to bring the U.S. to its knees. In that effort his army of clan-based insurgents and terrorists had one major objective. They wanted to capture American Christians, aid workers, journalists, and military personnel and execute them. They would then leave their tortured, mangled and beheaded bodies as a warning to those who dared oppose the Dhaween. He was waging a war against his enemies that was meant to destroy morale and cause embarrassment as well as anger. An angry man was a careless man and the angrier the enemy, the better the chance he will make a mistake.

  “Spectacular,” Sharif said of the savage animal glaring at him from the cell. He never flinched when the animal threw itself at the door and the snarling, hissing creature clawed furiously at the titanium panel. “What made this man different than the others into whom we transferred Reynaud’s hellion?”

  “I do not know,” The Fiend replied.

  “Find out,” Sharif ordered. “If we are to build an army of Reapers, we must have the blueprints, don’t you agree?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then see to it,” Sharif snapped. “We know the creature is immune to poison. See if the man is. I want to know how powerful he is as a Reaper.”

  “I will need to wait until he is out of Conversion,” The Fiend said.

  Sharif gave the scientist a look he hoped conveyed the ridiculousness of the statement.

  “As you wish, Your Excellency,” The Fiend said with a slight bow.

  Leaving the odious man at the cell, Sharif headed for his quarters. For the first time since capturing Taylor Reynaud, he could see some light at the end of the tunnel. He had known it would be impossible to turn the Reaper, to make use of him for Dhaween purposes as long as the hellion resided within him. The creature governed the Conversions, administered the strength and controlled the Reaper’s psychic abilities. Harvesting it from Reynaud had left the Exchange agent defenseless and vulnerable.

  But it had not rendered him susceptible to the intense indoctrination of the psychological pharmaceuticals that were administered. Neither physical nor mental tortures—no matter how severe—could sway Reynaud. Breaking him became a game Sharif intended to win. When it became apparent a win was not possible, destroying the handsome young American’s mind and body became the next best thing.

  Sharif believed American men were vain, egotistical, soft. They were cocky and arrogant and believed they had been put on earth to plunder as many women as they could get their infidel hands on. To take greedily what belonged to another. He had lost the love of his life to an American man and for that they would all suffer.

  “I don’t want Reynaud dead,” Sharif had told The Fiend. “I want him alive and suffering every day for as long as possible. I want him to know I have complete power over his worthless life. I want him to know he will never see his woman again because of me!”

  To that end, Taylor Reynaud had been horribly disfigured then installed in a cell in which the floors, walls and ceiling were made from highly polished stainless steel. No matter where he turned his eyes, the prisoner would see his reflection.

  And remember what he had lost.

  * * * * *

  The beast that had once been Dixon Coulter sat in the corner of its cell, dispassionately looking at the ruins of the human male it had all but devoured. It was a savage beast that stared out from the sleek black fur face. Lifting a giant paw, unsheathing its claws, the big cat flicked a rough tongue across the blood caked between the plantar pads. It swiped the wet paw over its face then turned its head toward the door. Its whiskers twitched and it bared its fangs.

  Deep inside Dixon Coulter’s bewildered brain, anger shifted. The face peering at him through the thick glass was an enemy who had tormented and tortured him for months. His body bore the proof of that torture. The agony had served no purpose that Dixon could tell for they’d asked no questions of him, demanded n
o answers. They knew who he was, what he was, but did not seem to want any information he might have. They seemed interested only in how much pain they could hand him. How much he could take before his mind shattered.

  Not that he would have given them anything, he thought as he lay locked within the black-furred body of the beast he had become. The reason for the torture was clear now—The Fiend had been trying to wake the creature. Why was equally clear. They had wanted the beast to emerge and now that it had, he wondered what they intended to do to—and with—him.

  “Protect me and I will protect you,” the creature whispered in his mind.

  “What are you?” Dixon asked.

  “I am your hellion. I am he who makes you what you are.”

  And as the big cat sat perched on its haunches, the creature inside Dixon told him everything he needed to know about what he had become and what he was to be. It also told him what his captors expected and how they planned to use him.

  “Ain’t gonna happen,” Dixon said with a snarl. “What do I need to do to get the fuck out of here?”

  * * * * *

  As he slept, the beast dreamed, its large paws flexing as it ran. Its muzzle twitched—as did its long tail—and now and then a chuff came from behind the vicious fangs.

  The beast was lost within a human dream.

  It was a strange dream for Dixon—inhabited by people he didn’t know—but a memory for the beast.

  And though it lay outside the dream, the beast could smell the scents therein. Could hear the sounds and feel the sensations that were playing across a human male’s mind and beneath his fingertips. His eyes tracked the human female whose delicate beauty was like a knife wound to his heart and he began to experience what the human male was seeing and feeling.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The long white dress floated around her slender form like a gossamer web. It was so white, made from some strange material that shimmered in the bright light of the summer sky. Running through the material were silver threads that caught and reflected the sunlight as she walked.