Reaver of Souls

by Stephanie Burke

  As the music changed again to Lenny Kravitz’s version of “American Woman”, Torn’s eyes began to glint with challenge. He would show Sable his skill with body movements, and then he could kiss her.

  Kiss her? Yes, kiss her, he decided as suddenly as if the taste of her lips was sweeter than any orange that he had tasted here.

  A wicked smile pulled at the corners of his lips as his eyes narrowed in sudden desire.

  The men, noticing a different feel to the air, hooted and called out encouragement, knowing that something big was about to happen.

  Taking three steps back from her, Torn suddenly threw back his head and chest, and thrust his whole crotch in her direction.

  It was a blatantly sexual move and the crowd loved it. The tension in the room increased suddenly, and a few men found themselves growing hot as well, not to mention a shocked Sable.

  Coming out of the powerful arch, Torn threw himself forward on his knees and slid a few inches to stop in front of her.

  Somebody screamed a wild hoot of excitement, as Torn began to wind his body to the beat of the music.

  Shoveling both hands through his hair, he shoved it back off his face as he rose high on his knees before her, lightly brushing her with his heaving chest.

  Sable was entranced and mystified as she watched the innocent man, the calm and demure Faeroe who lived in her house, turn into this sexual dynamo who packed each move with more testosterone than a triple shot of the most potent aphrodisiac that man had ever thought of.

  He oozed sex and the forbidden erotic arts. His every gyration screamed of the pleasure one could find in his bed, and she was not the only one affected.

  Torn gripped her hips, encasing them in his hot flesh as he rose to his feet, slowly dragging his hands up until his thumbs rested just beneath her breasts. Her breathing caught as her eyes widened at the feel of fire spreading along her body from contact with his heat.

  But Torn was not quite done.

  Pushing back from her, he gripped her hand and placed it low on his rippled eight pack of a stomach he possessed, rolling his abs as he held her hand to his body, letting her feel his strength.

  Sable gasped and someone screamed, “Owwwww!” before he released her hand and suddenly dropped to one knee.

  In a series of quick moves, he ducked an invisible attack, turned and threw up his hands as if warding off a blow, threw himself backwards, his legs flying out in front, then behind him as he executed a neat backflip, landing on bent knees.

  Then just as quickly, he lay back on the gritty floor, oblivious to the scratchy wood that coated its surface, and pulling his legs up, threw himself to his feet. His long body quickly pulling out of the arch and rising to his full height.

  There was loud clapping and hooting as he executed this move, usually seen in Kung Fu movies, yet he did it with ease and skill.

  Tossing his hair in her direction, he threw out one arm, hand extended in a question, as his chest, coated in a light sheen of sweat, heaved with his breaths.

  Dumbfounded, Sable stood there, his shirts clutched in her hand, not knowing what to do.

  “Take his hand!” Jillian hissed, suddenly appearing behind her.

  “If she won’t, I will!” another man called out as the room grew silent except for the heavy beat and Lenny’s voice listing all of the reasons that he should walk away.

  Without even realizing it, the whole room had become entangled in this courtship of sorts. They were now holding their breaths in anticipation, waiting anxiously to see the outcome of this tableau.

  “Sable? You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jack said. He had come up behind Jill and placed his hand on his partner’s shoulder, he too was drawn into this drama being played out on the dance floor of a biker bar, somewhere in the middle of Scotland. He too waited to see what his friend would do next.

  Hands trembling, Sable reached out slowly, tentatively, wanting to touch this man and share in the wonder of him. Her eyes grew wide and her nostrils flared as she inhaled his essence. The clothing dropped unnoticed to the floor as her feet took those first steps toward her destiny.

  Torn stood there, arm extended, his heart still beating heavily in his chest. Would she accept his invitation? Would she touch him again, like she did before he drained his energy? Would she take him as he was?

  Their fingers touched, just a light brushing contact, and an almost visible heat flared between the two. The room, as a whole, drew in their collective breaths as those fingers slid together, mingling, becoming one.

  Then the front door slammed open.

  “Well, looks like we have ourselves a problem, boys,” a loud voice sneered. “I want to party, and the place is filled with wankers!”

  “Garth!” Jase bellowed as he stepped forward. “I thought I told you never to come back here.”

  “I didn’t come alone this time, Jase, old buddy,” the man sneered, his British accent sounding odd in a room filled with Scottish men. “This time, I brought me pals.”

  Three warrior-sized men entered the bar, all carrying a small, but efficient weapon of minimal destruction, sending a ripple of unease through the crowd.

  Suddenly, all of Torn’s senses went on red alert, the creature inside him began to gnash its teeth and fight for an opening.

  These men smelled like evil, smelled cold and dank. They smelled like prey to the Reaver. The only question was to either cleanse their souls, to take their evil into his abyss, or to reave their souls.

  “Torn?” Sable asked, but he had already pulled away from her. He pushed his way through the crowd, almost on automatic pilot as he pushed to the front of the group of suddenly tense men to stand beside Jase.

  “What’s this?” the intruder asked in sarcastic tones. “You got yourself a pet, Jase?”

  His cronies laughed. But they got real quiet as Garth’s words rang out loud and clear.

  “Which one to kill first?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Torn,” Sable whispered as she tried to work her way to the front of the crowd.

  “Leave him alone,” Jillian urged. She had not even noticed the slim Scotsman make his way to her side. On her other side stood Jack, looking menacing as ever.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked Jase as he looked at the bar owner.

  Jase’s brother calmly made his way from behind the bar to stand near his brother and Torn.

  “Mason,” Jack said, acknowledging Jase’s silent brother. He nodded once.

  “I think you blokes had better leave,” Jase said, not backing down from the man and his two friends who had invaded his bar. “I want no trouble with you, Garth.”

  His words were deadly cold, and all who heard him knew that the playful Jase meant every one of them.

  “Who’s your new girlfriend?” Garth sneered, recovering himself a bit and glaring at Torn.

  “I wish!” Jase said loudly. “Or better, you wish. You were always a size queen, Garth!”

  “You calling me a poofter?” Garth roared, his face turning bright red in the face of this new insult. “Why you…”

  “You didn’t complain last year, friend,” Jase returned, trying not to laugh as Garth’s two buddies lost a bit of their outrage and glared at their ringleader.

  “That’s a bloody lie!” Garth roared, his anger spurring him on despite the fact that he was outnumbered by the men in the bar.

  “Breakups can sometimes be so nasty!” Jase said in an aside to anyone, who would listen, which basically was the whole bar.

  “I thought you said that he owed you something?” one of Garth’s friends said, backing away from their fearless leader.

  Seeing his backup abandoning him drove Garth to actions any normal, sane man would have avoided.

  Roaring with rage, he barreled towards Jase, pipe raised above his head. Even if he got the snot beat out of him, he would at least mess up the pretty smile on Jase’s face first.

  His action, although expected, was so swift th
at everyone was caught off guard. Everyone, that is, except for Torn. One of the hallmarks of his father’s training was to always be ready for the unexpected.

  Garth racing towards Jase’s unprotected body was something that Torn had hoped would not happen, but expected it nevertheless.

  Jase turned again and was only able to step back, the pipe momentarily stealing his ability to move. The bar-goers all drew in a gasp, sure that they would see blood fly.

  But the pipe never connected with Jase’s shocked face.

  It slammed into the open palm of Torn, who threw out his left arm, just as the metal was about to make contact.

  It hit his hand with a meaty thump and caused him to wince in pain.

  At the force which Garth swung his pipe, with his considerable weight behind the blow, the pipe should have broken Jase’s nose, or worse. But it stopped dead at the bare-chested man’s palm, his hand not moving an inch.

  “You hit me,” Torn said as his eyes began to glitter and glow.

  “What the fuck?” the man uttered as his body began to shake with fear.

  “You hit me,” Torn said again. “I do not like you.”

  “My God!” Jase said, the color draining from his face as he saw how close he was to several painful days in a hospital if not a morgue. “You saved my life! Garth tried to kill me.”

  Then his face turned a molted shade of red as he realized what he just said. “Garth tried to kill me. You bloody bugger. I’ll have your head for this!”

  With a roar, Jase launched himself at the still shaken Garth, determined to put an end to his miserable life.

  But Garth’s two buddies were not about to see their friend get pounded into a bloody pulp. With chains swinging and bats raised, they went after Jase, who was trying his best to get around Torn to reach Garth.

  “Damn it!” a voice roared, as Mason leapt into the fray, protecting his brother. Jack dove at the third man, bringing him to the ground, as Jillian grabbed Sable by the arm and pulled her to safety behind the bar.

  “Torn!” she screamed, trying to fight her way through the rowdy bunch of bikers to reach his side. “Torn! Jillian, let me go! I have to help Torn!”

  “Help him by staying out of the bloody way!” Jill yelled as he pushed her head below the bar, just as a large beer mug flew past her head.

  “Torn!” Sable screamed again, then turned to Jill. “This is all your fault!”

  But Jill could not answer; he was busy pummeling an unfortunate who decided to make this fight a free-for-all and hop over the bar to get the ones he saw as weak.

  Jill’s fist was neatly connected with the unfortunate’s jaw when Sable began to rail at him.

  “What harm can happen in the pub, you said,” she screamed, ignoring the man who collapsed to the other side of the bar with a helpful shove from Jill, only to be replaced by another eager contestant. “He’ll be safe, you said.”

  She picked up a full bottle of Canadian Mist; she never liked the stuff anyway, and broke it over the head of a man who was trying to get around her to get to Jill’s back.

  “This is all your fault.”

  “Fight now, get hormonal later,” Jill shouted as he ducked a punch and hit the fighter with an uppercut to his stomach. The winded man was then promptly tossed over the bar as Jill prepared for the next combatant.

  “Hormonal?” Sable screeched as she picked up a half empty mug of Busch beer and poured it in the face of some unfortunate who got too close to her. An unfortunate someone because as soon as the bottle was empty, she smashed it over his head.

  “Hormonal!” Jill repeated as he ducked a flying mug of Guinness. He bowed his head for a moment at the tragedy of the spilled brew, before yanking Sable out of the way as a body came crashing over the bar. “Anything that bleeds for days on end and doesn’t die is just too damn weird to be anything but hormonal!”

  He reached down and heaved the loopy man back to the other side of the bar and leaned back to take a breather.

  All around them, the pub erupted into violence as the fighting rose to melee proportions. Around them, men yelled and cursed, threw punches and knocked heads together. It was a scene out of the old western saloon brawls, but worse. It was almost a good old-fashioned Scottish Riot.

  Soon the fight would be spilling out into the street, and the Bobbies would be called in.

  “Jillian! I have to do something about Torn. He could be getting hurt!”

  But at that moment, Torn was delivering a roundhouse kick to some man’s chest, spinning on the balls of his feet, to come around and throw a punch at another man’s face.

  Roaring in outrage, he lifted one man bodily over his head and tossed him into a pile that had seemed to gather around Jack and Jase.

  Mason had taken some man’s bat and was lining up his head for a swing, while Garth struggled to his feet to make a rush for the front door.

  Torn saw him leaving, and using the back of a stumbling man, launched himself across the room; his brass torque glowing like the swinging pub lights, as he dove at Garth. He landed on the man, taking him to the peanut shell-encrusted floor, landing on his back.

  Garth twisted around as best as he could and started swinging. He never wanted this to escalate into a riot. He only wanted to pay Jase back for making him gay. He never knew that the man was gay until Jase told him over a few beers. And that led to that night when he…

  Feeling betrayed, he vowed to pay the man back for making him waste his time with a queer, although secretly Garth felt an attraction for the large man. That fear of his own sexuality had egged him on to prove that he was the better man, that he was superior, that he was not gay.

  He had never expected this when he came here. Now he only wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, before something else went wrong.

  But now, there was the shirtless pansy on his back!

  “You hit me!” Torn said again as he rose to his feet, bringing Garth along with him, lifting him to his toes by the front of his jacket, then off of the ground as he forced him to meet his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to!” he stammered. “I meant to hit Jase!”

  “Why?” Torn asked, shaking the man a bit. These people were a bit hard to understand and erupted into violence so easily. He wanted to understand, before the kill.

  “Because he kissed me!”

  That didn’t feel right.

  Taking a chance, he opened the hold on his powers a bit, and felt a tendril leap out of control and wrap around the struggling man.

  “My GOD!” Garth screamed as he felt the power pulsing through him.

  But everyone was too busy brawling to pay attention to what was going on at the front door. No one noticed the faint glow that surrounded two men in the excitement and violence that swirled around them.

  Torn stared into Garth’s eyes and found the truth.

  “You kissed him!” Torn said calmly. “You kissed him! You think him…pretty.”

  “That’s a lie!” Garth screamed, struggling against his hold.

  Holding back the tendril with some effort, Torn broke contact with the man and stared at him.

  “Tell the truth,” he said. There was something good left in this man’s soul, but he felt no need to cleanse him.

  If Jase wanted him dead for his insults, then he would kill the man outright, but Torn felt there was something worth salvaging.

  “It’s a god-dammed lie!” Garth yelled as he struggled to break free of Torn’s hold.

  Torn shook his head at the falsehood that kept pouring out of the man’s mouth. He felt an overwhelming sense of fear coming from him and wondered why.

  Jack kissed Jill and they didn’t lie. Sable, his teacher, had never lied. Jase didn’t lie about being attracted to him. Why would this man lie about being attracted to Jase?

  “I not lie!” Torn said calmly, the eyes of truth staring into his soul. He felt his power began to pour through the man, easing the fears and allowing him to see with unfettered vision wha
t he was doing to innocents.

  “Let me go!” Garth pleaded, seeing his own soul and not liking truth. “Please, man! Leave me with my dignity!”

  While Torn was trying to piece together the meaning of the word dignity, there was a shout from behind him.

  “Let him go, freak!” the man called, and Torn reacted just in time to duck under the chain that was headed in his direction.

  Dropping Garth, he turned to face the man who wielded the chain.

  “Let it go, Robbie!” Garth yelled as he hit the floor on his backside and saw who was attacking the man. The same man who was trying to force him to see the truth that he had already known. “Just leave off!”

  “Bugger off!” Robbie yelled, the battle heat flaming in his eyes. He swung the chain again, only this time, Torn threw his arm up to deflect the blow, then sucked in his breath as the hard chain wrapped punishingly around his forearm, bruising the bone with the force to its blow. “That bastard’s unnatural!”

  Robbie had seen the glow shoot around his friend, and now he wanted this devil gone and away from this place. He was a demon. No mortal man could fight like that!

  Gripping a portion of the links in his fist, Torn gave the chain a heave, ripping it from the man’s hands, leaving him defenseless.

  “Leave off!” Garth yelled again, climbing to his feet and rushing by Torn. “This was a mistake. Let it go!”

  But the man was not listening! With a roar, he plowed into Torn, knocking him through the doors and into the street.

  “No!” Garth yelled, racing after them.

  He didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and Robbie was a bit of a lunatic when it came to fighting.

  Seeing Torn get knocked out of the door, Jill and Sable raced from around the bar, dodging struggling bodies to follow.

  Seeing his partner and his friend rush out, Jack knocked out his opponent with a quick jab to the face, and raced out after them.

  It happened just as Torn shook off the crazed man, knocking him into the alley beside the pub and following him in.

  Garth, Jill, Sable and Jack quickly followed them, only to hear the man screaming, “I have a pistol!”