“I cannot fathom human stupidity nor will I try but that does not matter. I will erase the memories she wishes to keep. The dangerous one made no such vow in regard to me.”
“I see,” the Triune Goddess aid. “Smart move on Cree’s part.”
“Actually, it was Panthera Darkyn who suggested I be brought into the fray.”
“Cute boy. He needs a woman.”
“And one is being provided,” Bastet told her. “What of this thief? What are Your plans for him?”
“He will be punished,” Morrigunia assured Her. “I will see to it in such a way he will not be tempted to interfere with the purview of the gods ever again.”
“He is arrogant and needs chastisement. I slipped into his mind,” Bastet said.
“I’ve done the same though he was unaware of it.”
“There is evil therein.” The an Éigiptian goddess’s top lip arched. “Reptile evil.”
“Raphian,” Morrigunia supplied. “Akin to the one Your people call Apophis.”
“Ah yes. The serpent of darkness, storms and destruction. He who was born in the waters of the primordial swamp. I defeated him.”
“As I will one day defeat Raphian,” Morrigunia stated. “For now, He serves His purpose. When He ceases to do that, I will crush Him.”
“As well You should,” Bastet replied. “Will You rid the thief’s mind of the evil?”
“In time,” the Triune Goddess answered. “I will let him suffer awhile first. I have a true life-mate in mind for him who will—as the Terrans say—fuck his shit up.”
“A goddess after My own heart,” Bastet said, Her amber eyes glittering. She turned to go but looked back over Her shoulder. “Should You need assistance with one of Mine, feel free to call upon Me. Light a green candle and say My name. I will come when I can.”
“Understood,” Morrigunia agreed, having no intention of ever calling upon the goddess.
“Do not make the poor man suffer too greatly,” Bastet said. “He does love My Panthera’s life-mate.”
“Aye, I know,” Morrigunia said. “All the more reason the punishment I hand to him will never be forgotten.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dixon felt her long before he caught the intoxicating scent of her gardenia perfume. He drew in a long breath and with it a hint of fear.
He frowned.
He didn’t like her being afraid of him. He’d been very careful not to hurt her when he’d lain with her. He’d tried to only give her pleasure and he knew he had succeeded in that department. That she feared him made his heart ache. If it came down to giving his life for her, he would gladly hand it over to the Gatherer. Hurting her in any way was not something he ever wanted to do.
Her light knock at his door made him take a deep breath to center himself before he could answer.
“Come in.”
The door opened hesitantly and the moment he saw her, he could not stop the smile that pulled at the corners of his mouth.
“Are you busy?” she asked in that sweet Southern drawl that set his juices to flowing.
“No, love,” he said.
She came into the room and closed the door behind her. His gaze traveled down the soft curves of her body beneath the halter-top sundress. The sight of her painted toenails peeking from beneath the hem widened his smile.
“Sit,” he said, sweeping a hand to the sofa. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Pop?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.” She went to the chair that flanked the sofa and sat down.
No, he corrected in his mind, she perched there like a frightened doe ready to bolt at the least sign of danger.
He walked casually to the sofa and sat, stretching one arm along the back and crossing his ankle over his knee. He tilted his head slightly to one side. “What’s bothering you, sweeting?” he asked.
Her hands were clenched in her lap and she looked down at them. “I came to talk to you about being assigned as your Extension.”
“How do you feel about that?”
She shrugged and he thought the motion made her look tired, weary of it yet resigned. “I believe I can work with you.”
He couldn’t stop his foot from wagging with irritation. “I know you can,” he said.
“I’m not sure Taylor can or will.”
“Taylor won’t be in the field,” he reminded her. “He’ll be here doing whatever it is they decide suits his abilities.”
She flinched. “He’s a good agent,” she stated, her chin up.
“I’ve never said otherwise but he is no longer the Alpha here.” He picked at a piece of lint on the arm of the sofa. “It was his decision to leave the field, Laci.”
“And you know why,” she stated.
“Yes, I do and I don’t blame him. Had they done to me what they did to him, I suspect I wouldn’t be as keen on going back out there.” He sighed. “Laci, I am deeply sorry about what they put him through. No man should have to endure that kind of agony.”
“Yet you are more than willing to heap more agony on him,” she accused.
He raised his eyebrows at that. “In what way am I doing that?”
She looked away from him. “By claiming me as your life-mate when you know I belong to him.”
“He’ll just have to learn to share,” he said. “If I am willing to compromise, he should be, too, else—”
Her attention leapt back to him. “Else what?”
“The Supervisor will send him to Tearmann or Baybridge.”
He saw the color leach from her face and could have kicked himself for upsetting her. “But that’s not going to happen,” he said. “I believe he and I can work something out.”
“Don’t hurt him, Dixon,” she said. He watched her straighten her shoulders as though she’d come to a decision. “Don’t hurt him and I will accept the Extension.”
“And all that it entails?” he asked softly.
She took a deep breath then released it slowly. “And all that it entails.”
He lifted his hand from the back of the sofa and extended it toward her. “Come here, sweeting.”
For a brief moment she hesitated then rose gracefully from the chair and came to the sofa. She sat down beside him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him.
“I love you,” he said, running the palm of his hand up and down her arm. “Do you know that?”
“I know you think you do,” she said.
“There is no thinking about it, love,” he said. He turned so he was facing her and put his other hand to her cheek. He fanned the soft skin under her eye with the pad of his thumb. “You are everything to me.”
She didn’t stiffen as he brought his mouth to hers. She did not pull away or flinch. His heart soared when she opened her lips to allow him to slip his tongue inside the sweet, warm cavern. Her tongue dueled with his as he deepened the kiss and when he leaned into her—pressing his chest against her breasts—he heard her moan. That one little concession gave him hope that she would eventually accept him, but when she pulled away his heart sank.
“I need to…” She looked around. “I have to…”
She was looking toward the bathroom and he felt the sudden clinch in his gut release and removed his hand from her face. He watched her get up and walk to the bathroom door. She turned and gave him a hesitant smile.
“I’ll take that glass of tea, now, if you’ll join me,” she said then tucked her lower lip between her teeth.
“Sure thing,” he said, pushing up from the sofa. When he returned with two glasses of iced tea, he handed one to her then took a sip of his as he sat down.
Laci frowned.
“Something wrong with the tea?” he asked, his forehead furrowed.
“No, I’ve just got a bitching headache.” She set the glass on the table to rub a small spiral on her left temple. “Do you have any ibuprofen handy?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He put his glass on the coffee table and headed for his bedroom.
“It’s not a migraine, I hope,” he said. He dropped two caplets into her outstretched hand.
“No, just a bad headache,” she said. She swallowed the caplets then washed them down with a couple of swallows of tea, staring at him over the rim of her glass as he took a hefty pull on his own tea. “This is good.”
“My mama’s only claim to doing anything in the kitchen was to make iced tea,” he said.
“My mama made a mean Brunswick stew,” she said, then held out her glass. “To mamas.”
He smiled, clinked glasses with her then took another large swallow. The moment the glass left his lips, a deep crease formed across his brow. He looked down into the glass then slowly lifted her eyes to hers.
“What did you do, Laci?” he asked. The glass slipped out of his fingers and he tried to stand. His legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed—sliding off the edge of the sofa seat onto his knees. “What did you give me?”
Laci felt sorry for him. The look in his bewildered eyes cut her to the quick. He was struggling to get up, scratching at the fabric on the sofa but his legs kept sliding out from under him.
“It’s all right,” she said. She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the thin iron choker and wrists bands, making quick work of binding his psychic powers.
“What have you done?” he whispered and she hesitantly laid a hand on the top of his head. He was panting—having difficulty breathing—and suddenly shuddered hard. “Laci?” he pleaded.
“Just relax. Let it take you. It won’t hurt you.”
She prayed that was true and made a mad dash to the intercom beside the front door. She punched in 872 then hurried back to the sofa. She knelt on the floor beside him just in time to catch him as he pitched forward. She was cradling him in her arms, stroking his cheek when Cree and Sorn came to get him.
* * * * *
“We miscalculated the dosage it would take to knock him out,” Dr. Hesar said. “If you’d been a minute or two longer in getting him here, he would have suffocated. The drug was shutting down his respiratory system.”
“He was in no danger of dying,” the Supervisor said.
“Thank the goddess for that,” Laci said, giving her boss a hard look.
“We’ve got the room ready,” Hesar said. “Taylor’s already prepped and ready to receive the Transfer.”
“You can be there if you like,” the Supervisor told her.
She shook her head. “No.” She looked down at Coulter lying so still on the gurney. “I feel bad enough about it as it is.”
“It’s your life-mate in there, Laci,” Cree said from across the room. “Don’t you want to be with him?”
Laci didn’t answer him. She pushed through the swinging doors of the med unit and all but ran down the hallway to get away from the guilt she didn’t understand.
“Is she here?” Taylor asked as Cree came into the prep room ahead of the gurney.
“Nah,” Cree replied. “She’s a bit squeamish, bro.”
Taylor stared at the man lying belly-down on the gurney being wheeled into the room and bit back the questions rolling around inside his mind. The hellion within him writhed—causing intense pain in his left kidney—but he barely noticed. His eyes were locked on the still face of a man he wanted dead. Glancing down at Coulter’s hands, he frowned. Those hands had been on Laci and that infuriated him.
“Get his T-shirt off,” Hesar told one of his assistants and the woman went to work cutting Coulter’s shirt from his back. The moment his back was exposed everyone there saw the hellion beneath Coulter’s skin bunch.
“It knows it’s about to be harvested,” Sorn said.
Hesar frowned. “I’ve got to get the one in Tay out fast before the one in Coulter breaks through his skin.”
“Let it,” Taylor said. He had his jaw clenched tight, his hands curled into fists around the edge of the table on which he lay in order not to spring up and beat Coulter to a bloody pulp.
“Why do Tay first, then?” Sorn asked.
“Because his hellion is being fairly docile. When I take out Coulter’s, it’s gonna fight me. With Tay’s back already open, hopefully it will dart inside the wound and not try wriggling away.”
“The minute you begin to remove it from him, he’s going to wake,” Cree warned and when every eye flicked to him, he shrugged. “Trust me. It’s going to happen. You might better lash him down with iron restraints before you cut into him.”
No one questioned how Cree knew what was going to transpire. They simply did as he suggested, lashing Coulter to the gurney with thick links of iron chain kept on hand for Reapers who transitioned outside a containment cell.
“Ready?” Hesar asked.
“Yeah,” Taylor agreed. He was lying on his belly with his head turned toward Coulter. The desire to completely destroy the man’s face, to turn it to mush, was so strong he was shivering.
“He never hurt her, Tay,” Cree said quietly. “Keep that in mind.”
Taylor looked over at the Alpha Prime. “How would you feel if it had been Bronwyn he assaulted?” he demanded.
“The same way you do. I’m just telling you he didn’t hurt her.”
“Okay, here we go,” Hesar said.
The cold, clammy feel of disinfectant was swabbed over the lower right quadrant of his back. There would be no anesthesia to dull the pain of the scalpel that was about to make a six-inch incision above his right kidney because Taylor had declined it. He wanted to feel everything. It was his own brand of punishment for what had happened to Laci.
A thin burning line traveled diagonally across his back and the stinging pain made him draw in his breath. The hellion was rolling and tumbling inside him, not wanting to be removed. The creature liked where it was.
“You’re not going back in a jar,” Hesar said and he prepared himself to reach inside the incision to find the hellion. “We’re putting you into another Reaper so quit squirming.”
The beastlet was going to bite him, sting him, rake at him with its barbs but Hesar knew that. It wasn’t his first Transference and though he hated doing them, he was the only one allowed to perform the operation at both Tearmann and the Exchange.
“Son of a bitch!” Hesar snarled with a gasp as he closed his fingers around the wriggling hellion and it sank its teeth into his thumb. He pulled it out of Taylor’s back and dropped it into a beaker. He grinned hatefully. “I lied, you filthy little shit. You’re gonna be in that jar for a while just to teach you a lesson.” He sat the beaker on Coulter’s gurney.
Staring at the hellion that had been inside him, Taylor knew it was looking back at him. The creature was enraged as it whipped and jackknifed inside the beaker, leaving a greenish-gray slime on the glass. He’d never seen one up close and it was an ugly thing that resembled a tomato hornworm with sharp red spines on its segmented back.
“Ugly little bastard, huh?” Sorn said. “No wonder they hurt us when they move around inside us.”
“When they hurt you, they do it on purpose,” Cree said. “It’s their way of keeping us in line.”
“All right,” Hesar said, moving over to Coulter. “This will be a bit hairy.”
Coulter flinched when the disinfectant was applied to his back. His eyelids fluttered.
“He is aware of everything going on around him,” Cree said. “Like a horse dosed with ketamine.”
“More like a donkey’s ass,” Taylor mumbled and saw Coulter’s lids flutter again. “Yeah, you hear me, fuckwad. I’m talking about you.”
Sorn exchanged a look with Cree, who was trying not to laugh. It was very rare for Taylor to use vulgar language.
The moment the number-ten blade cut into Dixon Coulter’s back, the Gravelord bucked—coming up from the table, straining the shackles binding h
is body to the gurney. A yowl was torn from his throat and his eyes flew open.
“Hey there,” Taylor said as Coulter’s glare meshed with his own. “Fuck you and the turd you rode in on.”
“Ain’t that sweet? Our little boy is growing up, Pa,” Sorn said with a nudge to Cree.
“‘Bout gods-be-damned time,” Cree said with a grunt.
“Don’t do it!” Coulter bellowed as Hesar began to insert his fingers into Coulter’s back. “I’m warning you. Don’t you fucking do it!”
Hesar rolled his eyes at the command but once the healer’s fingertips were inside the Gravelord, the hellion attacked—clamping down with brutal, vicious force to shear off the four fingers to the first joint. Shrieking in agony, Hesar snatched his hand out and stumbled back, his free hand clutching the wounded one.
Cree had been standing at the foot of the gurneys with his arms folded over his broad chest. When the hellion struck and Hesar let out that piercing screech he straightened up, amber eyes turning scarlet red.
The hellion poked its triangular head from the incision in Coulter’s back and hissed, a noxious slime jetting from its slit of a mouth. Its red eyes swung from Cree to Sorn in challenged.
“You fucking little shit,” Cree said. He shot the assistants—who had backed away in horror—a quelling look. “Give me some forceps. Now!”
The male assistant spun around and snatched open an instrument drawer. He pulled out a pair of forceps in sterilized wrap and tossed them to Cree—obviously not wanting to get any closer to the gurney.
“Look at me!” Taylor yelled and the hellion twisted its upper body around. The moment it saw Taylor, it froze.
Coulter was struggling violently against the iron shackles and cursing in a language no one understood. He was foaming at the mouth with fury and his eyes were bulging. Cree ignored him as he advanced on the table, tearing the wrap from the forceps as he went.
“You know me,” Taylor said. He was staring into the hate-filled eyes of the beastlet.
“The hellion is mine!” Coulter shouted.
“You know me,” Taylor repeated, ignoring the man thrashing on the gurney and cursing him.
A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) Page 18
