by dark wind
“His ego is large enough as it is.”
Raphaella laughed then grimaced with pain. She shifted on the bed. “I hope he makes the bitch suffer.” Caitlin shuddered, feeling pity for the female the Reaper was after. “I would not like to be in her boots.” They were deepinside the underground caverns beneath the colony. The phospho lights that were used in the corridors above them had not been strung this far down into the earth. Fortunately, the Reaper and his companion had found three bundles of tar-soaked rags wound around thick branches in a storage room. The light was meager and would not last forever so only one of the torches was lit. The Reaper carried the two unlighted ones.
“This torch is almost burned down as far as it will go,” Dania reported.
Without breaking his stride, the Reaper extended one of the remaining torches behind him. “Here.” Dania stopped. “Milord?” She reach out to take his arm.
Khiershon looked around. He was annoyed that she had had drawn him to a halt. “Aye? Can’t you light the thing yourself?”
“Look,” the Amazeen warrioress said, pointing to the cave floor.
Khiershon turned his attention to where she indicated and his amber eyes grew wide. A ghoret was moving along the base of the wall, its silver-and-green body glowing in the sputtering light of Dania’s torch. The viper did not seem to sense the humanoids so close to it. It glided to a crack in the wall, reared its ugly triangular head, tasted the air around the crack then slithered inside.
Since he did not carry any weapon save the wicked blade at his thigh, the Reaper turned to Dania. “Seal that gods-be-damned hole, woman!”
Dania thrust the torches at him and grinned as he fumbled to keep them from falling. She drew her laser pistol and fired at the hole.
Khiershon squeezed his eyes shut, his acute night vision blinded by the intense white-hot light. The smell of hot silicone drifted under his nose and he sneezed.
“That should do it,” Dania told him. She relieved him of the torches.
“Hold up a moment until my eyes adjust.”
Dania looked at him and had to bit her lip to keep from gasping as he opened his eyes and the scarlet glow from them washed over her.
“H...how close to T....Transition are y...you?” she whispered.
The Reaper’s grin was lethal. “Far enough away that you don’t have to worry, milady. The flare of light angered my parasite. It doesn’t like heat of any kind.”
Dania breathed a sigh of relief. “I remember. I was there when you Transitioned once,” she said, irritated that her voice trembled.
“Not a pretty sight, eh?” He cocked his chin. “Let’s go. The bitch isn’t far away.”
“There is a waterfalltwo levels down,” Iyan told Caitlin when he met her as she made her way back to hers and Khiershon’s quarters. “It runs the turbines that generate most of the power for the colony and the water is warmed somewhat from close proximity to the heating coils. There’s a grotto and the water is breathtakingly beautiful with milky-white stalactites and stalagmites. The women bathe there from six to eight in the evenings; the men from nine to ten.”
Caitlin looked at her watch and sighed. “I guess I missed it for today, then. It’s nine forty-five.” Iyan jammed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “If you’d like to use it, I could stand watch for you.”
Caitlin hesitated. The offer was tempting. The sonar baths on board The Orion were not conducive to relaxation. They were simply a means to an end. But a real bath with running water....
“You’re safe with me,” Iyan said, looking down at his boots. “Kheir would slit my throat from ear to ear if I let anything happen to you.”
Caitlin put a reassuring hand on Iyan’s arm. “I trust you, Iyan,” she said. When his head snapped up, she snatched her hand away. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have...”
“No!” he said, shaking his head. “You surprised me, that’s all.” He held out his hand. “Friends?” She smiled, slipping her hand into his. “Friends.”
“Whew,” he said on a long breath. “That’s a load off my mind.”
“Khier’s, too, I would imagine.” Caitlin laughed.
“For a Reaper, the man doesn’t like confrontations all that much. I think perhaps of all his kind, he is the most sensitive.”
“Lucky for me.”
“If you want to get a towel or whatever, I’ll walk with you to your chambers and wait,” he said then looked behind them. He jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. “You know he’ll be going along, too, don’t you?”
Caitlin glanced around him and sighed. “Aye, he goes where I go, don’t you, Raven?”
“‘ Let us on by this tremulous light! Let us bathe in this crystalline light!’” Raven agreed, bobbing its plastiform head.
Iyan grinned. “Can you imagine another of his kind programming a ‘bot to spout such gibberish?” He fell into step beside her. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep the A.I.U. company so he doesn’t spy on you while you bathe.”
True to his word, Iyan accompanied her to what the colonists referred to as the bathhouse and, with Raven, had taken up sentinel to either side of the entranceway.
Awed by the majestic sweep of the subterranean chamber, Caitlin stared openmouthed at the soaring limestone formations that thrust from the floor and roof of the cavern. The soft light was soothing to the eye and calming to the nerves. It lent a fantastical atmosphere to the underground room. The rush of the cascading water-a good four feet of it tumbling down the incandescent walls-drowned out all sound but wasn’t so loud as to be unpleasant to the ears.
Shedding her clothes languidly, Caitlin folded them neatly and laid them aside on a long wooden bench that had no doubt been placed there for that purpose. Wiggling her toes in the soft sand underfoot, she sighed deeply then stepped to the edge of the grotto’s pool. Testing the water, she shivered, but the lure of the bubbling water beneath the surface beckoned and she drew in her breath and waded out into the soft celadon-colored swirls, anxious now for the feel of the tumbling waters of the fall.
The first crash of the waters upon her drew a delighted laugh and Caitlin threw her arms up in surrender.
Holding her breath, she let her head fall back and took great delight in the feel of the water gently pummeling her face. She shook her long hair then thrust her hands through it, lifting the sodden thickness of dark tresses from her naked back.
The lure of the pool drew her eye. Fifteen feet or so from where she stood, she saw the edge of the rocky platform on which she was standing. She waded toward it and stood staring down into the swirling waters.
“You can swim there, too,” Iyan had told her, “but don’t let Khiershon know if you do.”
“Why?” she’d asked.
“Reapers can’t enter running water. Their parasites won’t allow them. He’d fear for your safety, for that is the one place he could never protect you.”
Caitlin was an excellent swimmer and she had no fear of the water. With practiced ease, she put her hands together and arced her naked body into the pool. When she came up from the sandy bottom, she whooped with delight for the water was much warmer than the waterfall and felt so wonderful she never wanted to leave its heated embrace. She set out with long strokes from one end of the pool to the other, her sleek body knifing through the swirling waves like a hot dagger through butter.
For more than twenty minutes she stayed in the water, luxuriating in the pleasure it afforded her. With true regret she left the seductive arms of her liquid lover.
And found her clothes gone.
“What the hell?”
“Good eve, milady,” he said.
She spun around and found Cree leaning negligently against the cavern walls, his lean body half-hidden by the shadows of a soaring pendant.
“You found the traitor?” she asked, placing her hands self-consciously over her breasts and the juncture of her thighs.
He nodded, his hooded gaze fastened on her body.
“What did y
ou do to her, Khier?”
He looked into her eyes. “I did nothing but bring her back for her princess to deal with, milady.”
“That wasn’t your intent when you went after her.”
“You are right. My intent was to slit her throat and drain her dry for daring to hurt someone close to me.”
“Someone who used to be close to you,” she corrected him with a sniff.
Cree’s slow smile made her heart beat faster. “But as I reached for the woman’s throat, your beautiful face flashed before me and I relented, granting her life, although I doubt that life will last much longer than this day.”
Caitlin shuddered. “An eye for an eye.”
“Such is the way of the Amazeen,” he replied and pushed away from the wall.
“We had a talk,” she said. “Raphaella and I.”
He nodded, but did not speak as he walked toward her.
“She understands that you and I are husband and wife and as such she knows she has no right to pursue you.”
With infinite slowness he reached up to tug at the closure of his jumpsuit.
Caitlin swallowed, her heart thundering behind the imprisonment of her ribcage. “She knows I belong to you and...”
“That I belong to you. ”
She watched him peel out of the jumpsuit and whimpered as his naked flesh...hard and demanding...rose to her view. She was vaguely aware she was quivering as he stepped up to her and cupped her face.
“And she knows...” she began but his right thumb smoothed across her lower lip, silencing her.
“She knows,” he whispered, “that his heart is taken and that his body is the sole property of the woman who is the keeper of his heart.”
He lowered his mouth to hers, covering the sweetness of her flesh with the firmness of his own. His tongue slid between her lips and probed, fencing with her own then sliding out to glide over her upper lip.
She groaned, her arms going around his waist to press his naked flesh to hers.
He molded her to him, reveling in the taut peaks of breasts pressing against his chest; the feel of her silky skin as he ran his hands down her back and cupped her buttocks to bring her firmly against the jut of his manhood.
“I am on fire with need of you, milady,” he whispered in her ear. “If I wait much longer, I will ravage you and that is not what I want.”
His words sent a tremor into the very core of her, making her womb leap with need and setting her juices to flowing as sensation flooded her lower body.
“I want to feel the weight of you on me. I need to feel you on top of me. I-”
“Talk entirely too much, Lady.” He bent down, scooped her into his arms and carried her to the soft sand at the edge of the grotto’s pond.
“You think so?”
“I know so.” He laid her down and slid atop her. “But I have a way to keeping you from doing that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
“He won’t allowme to go to Rysalia Prime,” Raphaella complained to Caitlin as they stood at the entrance to the docking bay.
“He fears for your safety,” Caitlin reminded the Amazeen princess.
Raphaella frowned. “And I have told him that I have no such worries.”
“Humor him. He’ll have his way, so you might as well not argue about it.”
“Dania will accompany you. I have told her all I know about the Titaness,” Raphaella said. She locked gazes with Caitlin. “She is sworn to protect him with her life.” Caitlin nodded. “I understand.”
Raphaella narrowed her eyes. “Do you?”
“Aye, I do.”
The two women stared at one another for a long moment and it was the Amazeen who broke the eye contact. “See he returns here all in one piece, Terran.”
“I intend to.”
“I think they’re ready,” Helen called over to Caitlin.
Caitlin acknowledged Helen’s words with a wave then stuck her hand out to Raphaella. “Wish us luck?”
“With all my heart and body and soul,” Raphaella replied and took Caitlin’s hand in hers. “The goddess protect you, Caitlin Cree.”
“May the Wind be always at your back, Princess Raphaella.”
“Raphie,” was the correction.
Caitlin smiled. “Raphie,” she echoed and turned away.
The Reaper and his men were already on board the retrofitted Orion. The exterior of the ship bore no resemblance whatsoever to the Medivac ship that had been built on Earth. The sleek primary hull of the vessel was elongated, encased in a shiny black metal alloy. The ion engines had been replaced with twin atramentium induction units that would increase the speed of the ship by 500%. The sensor and communication arrays fanned out in a mesh-like material at the aft section, resembling the tail feathers of a giant bird. The curved wings were equipped with plasma torpedo bays.
“It looks like a damned humongous crow!” Marti complained as she stared at the ship in its docking harness.
“More like a thesion,” said Iyan. At Marti’s irritated glance, he shrugged. “A Terran raven?”
“She’s a thousand times faster than anything your world can build and she’ll be able to outrun and outlast any ship in the Rysalia Fleet,” Sinjin Wynth bragged.
“You gotta a name for this hunk of junk?” Marti asked.
Sinjin’s crooked grin was infectious. “The DarkWind.”
Marti snorted. “Damned stupid name.”
“Stop insulting the man, Martha,” Lisa warned. “He’s gonna have to show you how to fly this bird of prey.”
“Raptor,” Sinjinn corrected.
“Same difference,” Lisa pronounced with a roll of her eyes.
Iyan swept his hand toward the vessel. “We’ll be leaving in less than twenty minutes, ladies, so I suggest you get settled in unless you plan on staying on Corinth.”
“And miss the thrill ride of the century?” asked Cathy Atherton. “Not on your Serenian hide, McGregor!” She winked at Barb.
Barb was standing very close to Iyan. So close that when either moved, their bodies touched. Neither seemed to mind the contact. Occasionally, they would glance at one another and the looks that passed between them did not go unnoticed.
Half an hour later, the newly christened DarkWind moved out of her docking harness.
“How long will it take us to get to Rysalia Prime?” Caitlin asked the Reaper. She was seated beside him at the captain’s console, in the seat that would normally have been reserved for his second in command.
“By your time reference,” Khiershon said, “five days.” He settled back in the command chair and braced his hands on the arms. “Mr. McGregor?”
“Aye, Captain Cree?”
“Take us out, Mr. McGregor.”
“Aye, Captain!”
Helen’s eyes grew wide as saucers as The DarkWind thrust forward. The G-force of the catapult pressed her into her seat and made her face ache. “Mother of God!” she managed to say as the acceleration increased and she momentarily blacked out. When she regained consciousness a few seconds later, she turned her head and looked at Lisa. “That wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”
“They forgot we aren’t used to that kind of pressure,” Lisa said hoarsely. “They’ve adjusted the cabin pressure and we should be okay now.”
“Not until I change my damned underwear,” Helen hissed. She plucked at the seat restraint and threw Iyan McGregor a nasty look as she stomped off the bridge.
“In normal circumstances, I would have called her back and reminded her to ask permission before leaving the bridge, but..” He grinned. “I don’t think that would have been wise.”
“Not in the least.”
Khiershon Cree stared into his wife’s beautiful face and answered her gentle smile. He reached for her hand then brought it to his lips. He placed a soft kiss in her palm. His wife’s slow inhalation of breath brought an instant reaction in his body.
“Mr. McGreg
or?” he called.
“Aye, Captain?”
“You have the bridge, Mr. McGregor,” the Reaper told his 2/IC.
Iyan looked around to see Cree helping his lady to her feet. He glanced at Barb who lifted one black brow. McGregor shrugged and went back to instructing Helen on the intricacies of navigation in that quadrant.
“We are being studiously ignored, my love,” Caitlin whispered to her husband.
“And why not?” Khiershon asked. “They know gods-be-damned well where we’re going and what we’ll be doing.”
“Really?”
In answer, the Reaper swept his lady into his powerful arms. His knowing look said it all.
Part Four
Chapter Thirty-Three
Kamerone Creewas very ill.
The ghoret bite had thrown off his Transition cycle and he knew he would be entering the first phase of a new Transition within a few hours. Before that happened, he had to put as much distance as he could between him and the Amazeens.
The trek into the interior of Montyne Vex was torturous.
Fever had reclaimed him and his body temperature was rapidly climbing. In Terran reference, a Reaper’s normal body temperature was 105 degrees Fahrenheit. During Transition, the temperature could elevate 10 to 15 degrees higher. With fever, that number would go even higher.
He sweated profusely. Not even stiff wind blowing across the desolate land was enough to dry the perspiration. It dripped down his face and into his glazed eyes. His joints stiff, beginning to hallucinate, he stumbled along half out of his mind with pain.
He knew from reconnaissance missions when he was a young ensign that Montyne Vex was a vast system of underground caves, honeycombed with lava beds to the south and glacier fields to the north.
He knew he could hide for months, perhaps years, within the subterranean complex. With his highly developed sixth sense, he would be warned of an approaching hunting party and would have time to go deeper into concealment.
With the blood inside his weakened body boiling from the ghoret venom, he turned doggedly toward the north and the cooling tunnels that would take him to the subzero regions of the planetoid.
