Darkwind

This document was generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter program

This story copyright 2001 by Charlotte Boyett-Compo. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Cover Art by: Dirk A. Wolf

Published by: Hard Shell Word Factory.

PO Box 161 Amherst Junction, WI 54407 [email protected] www.hardshell.com

Electronic book created by Seattle Book Company.

eBook ISBN: 075993598X

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatever to anyone bearing the same name or names. These characters are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

Part One

Chapter One

On Board the United Space Alliance Medivac Ship, The Orion

Dr. CaitlinKelly sighed deeply as she sat up and swung her legs from the bunk. She was tired-more exhausted than she could remember being of late-and wished she didn't have to get up. She sat there for a moment, staring blankly across her cabin and sighed once more, closing her eyes against the lassitude that made her want to lie down again. She rubbed her aching eyes then forced herself to stand and stretch, feeling the pull of stiff muscles as she did.

“What you need,” she mumbled, “is a tall, dark, handsome space pirate to come along, sweep you off your feet, then...”

“Dr. Kelly?” the Com-Link clicked on with a soft, pleasant male voice that had been designed to soothe.

“Aye?”

“Captain Wellmeyer requests your presence on the bridge, Ma’am.”

Caitlin pursed her lips in annoyance. “Tell the Captain I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Understood. Were you able to sleep, Doctor?” The Com-Link was also programmed to be solicitous of Caitlin’s well being.

“Afraid not, Coni.”

“I am so sorry,” the Com-Link replied with an almost-human sigh. “Perhaps you should seek a med for the problem.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary. Thank you for you concern, Coni.”

“You are most welcome, Dearling,” was the reply.

Caitlin winced. Lately, the A.I. inside her Com-Link was beginning to show human male traits she had not included in its programming. The term of affection was one such trait that-should anyone else hear it-could cause a raised eyebrow among the crew. She made a mental note to make a few adjustments to Coni’s programming.

But as tired as she was, re-programming affectionate Com-Links wasn’t high on her list of priorities. Heaving another weary sigh, Caitlin stripped off her outdated and threadbare flannel gown and stepped into the sonic shower, wishing she could bathe under a cleansing, refreshing hot water cascade instead.

When she was dressed in her dark blue medical jumpsuit, she rode the elevator up two decks to the bridge, nodded politely at the Com Officer, Helen Bryan, as she passed and went to Captain Wellmeyer. “You rang?”

Captain Herb Wellmeyer scowled. “We’ve got a problem with the oxygen scrubbers and I’ve sent two crew members to sick bay.” His frosty gray eyes slid from Caitlin’s dark cinnamon hair to the tips of her polished boots. “While you were getting your beauty rest, I had a crisis.”

Caitlin didn’t bother to comment on his remark. Herb Wellmeyer’s definition of a crisis could be anything from a lack of sufficient coolant in the warp drives to a lack of sufficient foam on his glass of replicated beer. With his stubborn neo-German pragmatism, anything that didn’t fall directly in line with his way of thinking and his conception of an orderly universe was a matter of utmost importance in his mind even if it was nonsense to everyone else.

“What does engineering say about the scrubbers?” asked Caitlin.

“Did you hear what I said?” Wellmeyer snapped. “I sent two crew members-”

“To sick bay,” Caitlin interrupted. “Aye, I heard you, Sir. I assume it was with minor headaches and dizziness due to insufficient oxygen levels in their work stations?” She locked her dark green eyes on his narrowed gray orbs.

“Naturally!”

“And I also can assume they are feeling better or you would have had Coni wake me earlier?”

The Captain clenched his jaw. “I have told you before that I did not approve you giving your Com-Link a name. It is-”

“They are all right?” she stressed, cutting him off again. She heard his teeth grinding and didn’t need to look down to know Herb Wellmeyer’s beefy hands were clenched into fists at his chubby side.

“They will survive,” he acknowledged.

A slight smile tried to escape Caitlin’s tight control over it and she had to turn away.

“That’s good.” She arched a titian brow at him. “Is there anything else?”

Wellmeyer’s chin jutted out. “Your lack of respect is starting to wear thin, Caitlin,” he said beneath his breath. “And I am beginning to...”

“I’ll be down in sick bay if you need anything else, Captain.” She saw a flare of irritation dart across Wellmeyer’s face, but she ignored it. Turning away, she winked at the Com Officer who tried unsuccessfully to hide her own amusement.

Taking the elevator down to the fourth deck, Caitlin walked to the computer and punched up the med notes on the two crewmen who had been admitted for observation. As she suspected, neither had been in any immediate danger and both were sleeping peacefully beneath pure-oxy domes. Nevertheless, she checked their vitals.

“I spoke with engineering,” Jax Vance, one of her four corpsmen, explained to her. “A simple malfunction in an o-ring. It’s been taken care of.”

“Thanks,” Caitlin replied then asked if he would get her a cup of black coffee.

“Still not sleeping?”

“Nope.” Caitlin sat down behind her desk and leaned back in the formfitting chair. “I jolted awake at oh-three hundred sweating like a big dog.”

Jax grinned at the Southern expression that always brought back fond memories of visiting the Americas when he was on leave two years earlier. “Another bad dream?”

“I guess so,” Caitlin answered, shrugging. “All I remember is sitting up with a gasp, my heart pounding. I

was trembling so it must have been a real doozie.”

“Perhaps you should speak with Counselor Rema.”

Caitlin shook her head. “I don’t believe in that headshrinker crap. It’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Besides, Rema is an idiot.”

Jax couldn’t argue with the doctor. He felt the same way toward the psychic from Old France. “You should talk to someone, though,” Jax told her. “I hate to say it, but you’re starting to look a little...well...” He blushed. “Rough around the edges,” he finished, his blush deepening.

“Hell, Jax. Don’t mince words!”

“I just hate to see you...”

The sick bay Com-Link clicked on. “Dr. Kelly, report to the bridge immediately!”

“On my way!” Caitlin responded.

“What’s going on?” Caitlin asked the Com Officer when she reached the bridge.

“We have a medical distress signal from Sector Nine,” explained Helen.

“Sector Nine?” Caitlin questioned. “Isn’t that in the middle of the Sinisters?”

“Right near the edge,” the First Officer, Linwood Dixon, reported from his console.

“But there shouldn’t be anyone in the Sinisters. A downed ship, maybe?”

“Bryan?” Wellmeyer demanded. “Try hailing them.”

“There is no answer to my hail, Captain,” Lt. Bryan informed him, giving the Captain a look that said he should have known she’d already tried that.

“Damn!” snapped Wellmeyer, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t have time for this!”

“We are a Medivac ship, Captain. If we get a distress call, we are obligated to investigate and render aid,” Caitlin said needlessly and was rewarded with a glower from her commanding officer. She smiled brutally. “The Directive states-”

“Shut up! Plot a course to wherever that distress beacon is coming from, Dixon,” the Captain ordered. He narrowed his eyes at Caitlin. “You’re about one insult away from having a note put in your jacket, lady.”

Caitlin’s smile became hateful then she turned around. “I’ll be going down with the away team,” she announced. “Where exactly will we be going, Lieutenant Dixon?”

“It’s a small planetoid just inside the Sinisters, Ma’am.”

“Completely out of our territorial assignment,” Wellmeyer complained. “Who the hell knows what kind of situation we’ll run into beyond the No Man’s Land boundary!”

“What’s she like?” Caitlin asked, ignoring Wellmeyer’s statement.

“Breathable atmosphere and sufficient gravity. No need for anything special.” Dixon typed in some numbers. “I’ve done a diagnostic and there doesn’t appear to be any problem with going in.”

“Life forms?”

“I’m only reading two: very faint. According to the data I pulled up on this hunk of rock, there is no indigenous life. There is water, but very sparse vegetation. She’s just a big old piece of granite lolling there.” He looked at Caitlin. “There’s never been any life reported in the Sinisters, Doc. A mining transport ship from Gemini Prime was by there this morning at oh-three hundred and didn’t report anything out of the ordinary.”

“Somebody’s obviously there now!” grumbled Wellmeyer. His face paled. “Or something.”

“Something evil, maybe,” Bryan said beneath her breath.

Ensign Thommy Loure’s big eyes lit up. “Remember that old video we saw last week? The one with the alien that gets inside people’s stomachs and-”

“Stow that kind of talk, Mister!” Wellmeyer pointed a finger at Loure. “There are no monsters in outer space.”

Loure and Dixon exchanged glances then looked away, both trying to hide their amusement.

“Dixon, Loure, you’ll accompany Dr. Kelly to the surface,” the Captain ordered, “since you find this so damned amusing!”

“Aye, Sir,” the two crewmen agreed, eager for adventure.

“How far away are we from our target, Dixon?” asked Caitlin.

“Ten minutes, Ma’am.” The lieutenant’s fingers moved like lightning over his keyboard. “You’ll just about have time to get your little black bag before I get us there.”

“I’ve told you before,” Bryan chastised, “she doesn’t make house calls.”

“Knock it off!” Wellmeyer shouted, his patience almost at an end. He hated this ship; he hated this assignment; but most of all, he hated his crew who were loyal to Caitlin Kelly and most of the time ignored him, though he outranked the female doctor. The crew-to a man-believed Kelly should have been given the command and their attitudes were beginning to wear thin.

“Eight minutes to target, Dr. Kelly,” Dixon said formally.

“Get your asses to Transport,” Wellmeyer ordered his away team. “And don’t dawdle down there. We have to be in Sector Four by twenty-one hundred tomorrow with that shipment of antibiotic!”

Caitlin shook her head and walked to the elevator, went inside and waited until the two men joined her. When the titanium doors slid shut, she turned to Loure, her face perfectly solemn. “In case we encounter eggs or pods of any kind while down there, don’t go poking at ‘em, okay?”

“No, Ma’am,” Loure replied, shaking his head. “I will not.”

“And keep your big mouth shut,” added Dixon. “Can’t get in if your mouth is shut.”

“Avoid vines as well,” Caitlin put in.

“And siren calls that might make you want to wander off in search of strange kitty,” Dixon added, wagging his brows lewdly at Loure.

“Kitty?” Caitlin echoed, knowing full well what Dixon meant.

Dixon shrugged. “Never know about alien critters, Doc.” He swiveled his head toward her and locked gazes. “Their anatomies may be different from ours.”

“Understood,” she replied.

The elevator settled at the Transport deck and she preceded the men from the cage. She nodded politely at the Chief Engineer, Thom Christopher, and then took her place in the Transport modules, Dixon and Loure flanking her on the pedestal.

“Ready, Doc?” asked Christopher.

“As I’m gonna be. What are you registering down there, now, Pete?”

“Two diminishing life forms.”

“Humanoid?”

Christopher shook his head. “Can’t tell.”

“Pod people,” Loure said softly. “I knew it.”

“Just our luck,” Dixon sighed. He rubbed his stomach and belched.

“Engage,” Caitlin ordered, her lips twitching but her eyes wary.

Chief Christopher watched as the away team faded from his view, their molecules flung toward the barren planetoid where no life had been reported before.

Barren, Caitlin thought, wasn’t a sufficient word to describe the gray plateau on which she and her away

team formed. The sky was a darker gray; the vast wisps of fog that defined the interior of the Sinisters obscuring what light could pass from the distant sun. Massive, jagged rock formations jutted upward like hands reaching toward the gods; the rocks gave off a faint milky glow that suggested veins of embedded quartz. A wind skirled over the vast plain below them where only a few mounds of tumbled scree littered the miles upon miles of wasteland.

“A real hospitable place, huh?” said Dixon.

“Hope you brought your vid-cam, Linwood,” Loure responded. “This would make a nice postcard.”

“Yeah,” Caitlin agreed. “A postcard from hell.”

She saw nothing to indicate a landing site or-for that matter-a crash site. Behind them was a sheer cliff of wind-beaten stone and off to one side was a succession of what could pass for steps leading down to the plateau.

“Just where in the blazes are we supposed to be going?” She reached up to touch the small Com-Link unit attached to her jumpsuit. “Matheny?” she said, irritation clear in her tone. “Where are our patients?”

“Below you, Doc,” Matheny reported. “Chief couldn’t get you inside the plateau. Some kind of interference.”

“Okay.” Caitlin headed for the weather-carved steps. The steps didn’t look treacherous, but she cautioned her men just in case.

He was barelyconscious, his life force almost drained, but he picked up the scent of a female. His nostrils quivered and his fingers flexed. The heart inside him struggled to keep beating; to force life through his veins. He tried desperately to lift his head, but could not. He was too injured, too weak, and with the last ounce of his remaining strength called out to her.

First OfficerDixon plowed into Caitlin’s back as she stopped on the last step before reaching the black sand floor of the wasteland. He saw her look around, her forehead creased. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what, ma’am?”

Caitlin shook her head. “Imagining things, I guess. Must have been the wind.” She moved off the last step and grimaced as her boots sank ankle-high in the powered sand.

“Volcanic ash,” Loure told them.

“Oh, this is just getting better and better.” Dixon pointed off to their left. “There is a cave entrance over yonder.”

Caitlin turned to look in that direction. There was indeed a gaping hole that was more than likely a cave entrance. Being claustrophobic, she wasn’t all that keen on venturing inside, but considering the fact that no ship, no building, no nothing was out here in this windy desolation, it looked as though the cave was their destination. She touched her mini Com-Link again.

“How far inside the plateau, Matheny?”

“Nine hundred yards, Ma’am,” the science tech reported.

Caitlin winced. “Swell.” She hissed turned to Loure. “Did you bring a lamp?”

“Yes, I did,” Loure, replied, his face solemn. He and Dixon both had known Caitlin a long time and knew her fear of enclosed places. “Want us to go in alone?”

She grunted. “No. I gotta get over it sooner or later.”

“It can just as well be later,” Dixon said gently.

“I can do this,” Caitlin snapped and struck out for the cave entrance.

His breathingchanged when the female scent became stronger. In his mind, he could see her, but her form was unfamiliar: delicate and dark, smaller than he. But she was a female and it was a female he needed. He tried to call out to her again, but found he had expended what little energy he had left. If she were to find him, it would have to be from the mental call he had been generating for weeks now in the hope he would be heard.

Loure led theway into the cave. The interior was stygian dark so he turned on the mercury light. He glanced at Caitlin and noticed she was trembling and her face was glistening with sweat. If there were anything either he or Dixon could do to help her, they would have. As it was, the big man was suffering right along with her although the cave held no special horrors for him.

“What kind of atmosphere does it look like we have in here, Matheny?” Caitlin asked her Com-Link. She was trying to hold on to her nerve, forcing herself deeper inside the maw of the cave.

“Breathable oxygen. A little thin, but sufficient,” the science tech told her from the Orion. “No sign of contaminants.”

“It smells,” Dixon observed.

“Corruption,” Caitlin told him, putting a hand to her mouth. “Rotting bodies.”

“Ah, yes,” Loure grunted. “I had forgotten what that unique odor was.” Both he and Dixon had been newbies in the med corps during the last Middle Eastern conflict. They had seen many dead bodies in that war.

“Where’s the smell coming from?” Dixon asked, swallowing against the nausea creeping up his throat.

“Over there.” Caitlin pointed to a sweeping archway of stone.

Loure swung his lamp that way. There were two women lying face down on the cave floor. Clothed in deep green robes, they gripped some kind of staff-like weapon in their hands. Obviously they had been guarding the entrance when they died.

“Run a diagnostic,” Caitlin told Dixon.

Dixon walked to the bodies, grimacing at the intense odor. He thumped the scanner, tried again then looked around. “It’s not registering.”

“Matheny?” Caitlin called up to the Orion.

“Aye, Ma’am?”

“Do you have a fix on the bodies we’re viewing?” She turned so her Com-Link could pan the corpses.

“Aye,” was the reply, then a short silence until the tech had his sensors locked on the bodies.

“Cause of death?” Caitlin asked, impatiently.

She could almost hear Matheny’s mental shrug. “Poisoning of some kind.”

“Race?” she queried. “They’re humanoid females, but extremely large specimens.”

“Don’t have a clue what race they are, Ma’am,” Matheny reported. “Not in our data banks.”

“Oh, hell,” Caitlin sighed. “I was afraid he’d say that.”

“I see light,” Dixon said.

“You see life?” Wellmeyer barked and the surgically implanted receivers behind the left ears of the away team vibrated painfully, causing each of them to put a hand up to cover that ear.

“Light,” Caitlin corrected, annoyed with the interruption. “He sees light!”

“You’d better hurry or there won’t be any life,” Wellmeyer reminded them, equally loud. “The readings are dismally low.”

“Don’t shout when you are speaking to us, Sir,” Caitlin snapped. “We can hear you perfectly well!”

“Then hurry up!” Wellmeyer groused.

“Butt wipe,” Caitlin murmured under her breath and motioned for the men to advance.

The away team moved further back inside the cave toward a faint source of light about a hundred yards away.

Her scent wasstronger now: a hint of lavender; a touch of citrus. He inhaled as best he could for the pain was terrible and the very movement of his chest nearly caused him to blackout again. Ashamed, he heard himself whimper with the agony exploding inside him and strove with iron-hard control to keep awake.

“Just a moment longer, Khiershon,” he told himself. “Just hold on a moment longer. She will hear you. She will come for you.”

There were ninefemale bodies lying side by side-hands clasped-at the entrance to a large, circular chamber. Their faces were bloated and blotched with a crimson rash that had spread down their necks. Their lips were blue; their eyes wide and staring. Ranged in a semi-circle, the women were clad in identical black robes with bright blue sashes.

“These women are giants!” Dixon whispered. “Look at their hands! Them hands are bigger than yours, Loure.”

“Big mamas, huh?” Loure knelt by the closest woman and ran a diagnostic. He looked up, surprise on his beefy face. “Conium maculatum poisoning.”

“Speak Alliance, will you?” Dixon grumbled.

“Hemlock,” Caitlin translated. “They ingested hemlock.”

“From the looks of these gals, they are some kind of religious order. Maybe they use in it their rituals.”

“Rituals,” Caitlin repeated. “You think they were performing a ceremony?”

“Maybe they’re celebrating National Socrates Day,” Dixon observed. He pointed to a large goblet sitting atop a flat stone that could have been used as an altar of some kind. “I bet if you run a scan, you’ll find hemlock in there.”

Loure moved over to the goblet, passed the scanner over it and nodded. “That’s exactly what it is and in high concentrations at that.”

“We got two alive somewhere in here,” Dixon said. “We’d better be finding them fast then.”

Caitlin nodded and they moved into the circular chamber. She opened and closed her left fist to keep from screaming as the walls around her began to close in. She was having difficulty drawing air into her lungs and could hear her heart pounding dangerously fast in her ears.

It was becomingharder and harder to breathe. The pain had all but taken control of what mind he had left. He could hear her voice now: it was soft yet strangely hollow. And she was not that far away. His mind shut down for a second or two and he panicked, thinking she would never find him if he lost consciousness again. He had to stay alive just a bit longer.

“Here I am,” he whispered, his cracked lips bleeding. “Find me.”

“Here’s one more,” Dixon said and knelt down. “She must be a guard, too. She’s got the same kind of staff we found with the two other women.”

“Matheny? How much farther?” Caitlin asked, wiping a hand over her sweaty face. They had found eleven bodies yet there was still a reading telling them there were two faint blips of life somewhere inside the cave.

“Looks like about twenty feet, Ma’am,” Matheny responded from the Orion.

Caitlin looking about them. “Which way? A dozen passageways lead off this central chamber!”

“The scanner can’t be any more specific, Ma’am, I’m sorry. We are getting some odd interference up here, Dr. Kelly.”

Caitlin let out a discouraged breath. They were four corridors straight ahead.

“I am here, Lady .”

As soon as the words registered, Caitlin turned, facing aft. “Back there,” she said. “He’s back there.”

“He?” Loure questioned, exchanging a look with Dixon.

But Caitlin was already moving down one of the dark stone corridors, Loure’s light casting a wavering glow on the sharp walls as he bumbled along in her wake.

They found a twelfth woman sitting on the ground, her head against a closed iron doorway built into the rock wall. In the woman’s lap was a long rod with a bulbous projection at one end that flared out like the points of a star. She watched them coming toward her with a look of incredulous dismay. “How did you get in here?” she said.

Caitlin reached the woman first and saw that her lips were already turning blue from the poison. She knelt beside her. “I have an antidote.” The woman shook her head.

“Too late,” the woman told her. “Far too late.”

“Why?” Caitlin asked. “Why did you...?”

“You must not let him out,” the red-robed woman said and with her last bit of strength grabbed Caitlin’s arm and held it with unbelievable power. “Just let him die. When his earthly body is drained of life, you must remove his head.”

Caitlin looked past the woman to the locked hatchway. “I am a Healer. I am sworn to save lives. Let me help you.”

“We have done all we can do.” She tugged painfully at Caitlin’s arm. “If you release him, you will live to regret doing so!”

With the last word, the woman’s hand dropped from Caitlin’s arm and fell into her lap. Her head tilted to one side as though she was contemplating, then her eyes closed.

Caitlin looked past the dead woman and saw there was a heavy wooden plank barring the door. She stood. “Dixon, pick her up. Thommy, get that door opened, now!”

He heard thedoor of his cell opening, but he could not lift his head. He could not see the face of his savioress but her scent was strong in his nostrils. He could feel the heat her body radiated and longed to touch her, to draw her to him.

“Sweet Maryand Joseph!” Loure exclaimed as he held his light up so the room into which they had ventured could be illuminated.

Caitlin felt her knees grow weak at the sight she and her men beheld and she recoiled for a moment, unable to believe her eyes.

He was hanging spread eagle from thick chains embedded in the cave walls, his feet barely touching the ground, his manacled wrists flung wide to either side of his sagging head. His bare chest was a riot of cuts and welts and star-shaped burns that glistened with each shallow breath he took. The black leather britches he wore were torn at one thigh, ripped along one cuff.

“Is he...?” Caitlin swallowed, bile rising in her throat. “Is he alive?”

Dixon moved past her and ran the scanner. “Aye,” he said. “Barely.”

“Move aside,” Caitlin ordered.

When her fragilehands touched him, he whispered a sigh of relief that his prayers to Alel had been answered. He forced his eyes open and found himself looking at her slender legs then his vision was moving up her shapely body as his head was tipped away from his chest.

“Oh, dear God,” Caitlin groaned as she saw his face. She was staring into dark amber eyes filled with unspeakable agony. She reached out her free hand to stroke back the limp black hair which fell across his face: a face scored with savage bruises and vicious cuts, but a face of such striking male beauty, it took her breath away.

“I knew you would find me, milady,” she heard him whisper and his sad amber eyes closed.

Caitlin knew enough about torture to know this man had been hanging like this-crucified against the stone wall-long enough to restrict his breathing. He could barely draw air into his collapsing lungs.

“Get him down,” she ordered, her mind racing. “Get him the hell down!”

Dixon flicked open his laser and made quick work of the clasps that banded the prisoner’s wrists. Loure moved into position to catch the unconscious man as Dixon lowered the brutally abused arms. With his powerful physique and well-honed strength, Loure swung the unconscious man into his arms and headed through the cave, Dixon walking ahead to light the way.

“Take us up!” Caitlin ordered as the away team and their patient exited the cave. “Hurry!”

Captain Wellmeyerwatched from the doorway as Caitlin and her corpsmen worked on the unconscious man. He was unnerved by the physical condition of his passenger and ill at ease with the twelve dead bodies now residing in his cold storage compartment. When, two hours later, Caitlin stepped away from the gurney and went to her desk to sit down, the captain followed. “Is he gonna make it?” he asked.

Caitlin nodded, so tired she didn’t feel like answering. She leaned back in her chair and put her hands up to rub at her eyes.

“We took a sample of the DNA from the bodies. They aren’t anything like us,” reported Wellmeyer. He shuddered. “Never thought I’d ever see a being from beyond our galaxy.”

“Neither did I,” Caitlin replied. “Our patient is more of an anomaly than the women. His anatomy is acutely different from our own. He’s got organs I can’t even begin to guess the function of.”

“I had them bring up everything we could find in the cave,” Wellmeyer told her. “There wasn’t that much. A few religious-looking things, a scroll, a book that might be someone’s journal, and the four weapons.”

“What was on the scroll or could we decipher it?” asked Jax as he joined them.

Wellmeyer shrugged. “Atherton says it looks similar to ancient Viking runes, but she isn’t sure. She’s gonna work on it later this evening.” He was referring to Cathy Atherton, the Systems Operating Officer who maintained the ship’s computers. “Once she’s finished with the scroll, the computer should have enough data to translate whatever the hell is in the book they found.”

Caitlin blinked. “Has she scanned it into the system?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Wellmeyer replied and watched as Caitlin swiveled around in her chair and called her computer online.

“Access scroll scanned in by Lieutenant Atherton,” Caitlin said. She waited until the screen popped up on her computer then sat forward, the better to see the strange characters.

“Well?” Wellmeyer grunted. He leaned over her, peering at the screen.

“It’s definitely runic-based,” Caitlin answered, irritated at his breathing down her neck. She used her mouse to highlight one particular word. “This looks almost Arabic, though.” She frowned deeply, and then told the computer to analyze the scroll with perimeters set to the ancient Arabic language. Almost at once, the computer screen split into two windows: the scroll’s writing on the left, the translation into Arabic in the right.

“Bingo,” Jax said quietly.

“Computer, translate right window to Alliance Speak,” ordered Caitlin.

The screen split again until three windows stood side by side.

“Maximize right window.”

The right window filled the screen and Caitlin leaned farther toward it. She scanned the short document. “It’s a Death Warrant,” she told the men.

“For him?” Wellmeyer snapped, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“It appears so,” she replied, staring at the word that was undoubtedly her patient’s name.

“Does it say why it was issued?” Jax asked.

“Crimes against womanhood,” Wellmeyer snorted as he read the document over Caitlin’s shoulder. “His name is Khiershon Cree, son of Kamerone.”

“What does that mean, I wonder? His crimes against womanhood,” Jax questioned. “Rape? Murder?”

“It could mean anything,” Caitlin replied and turned so she could look across the sick bay to the unconscious man. “Whatever he did, they hated him enough to want to hurt him badly before they killed him.”

“The question is,” mumbled Wellmeyer, “what stopped them? Why kill themselves before they carried out his sentence?”

“Maybe they thought he was already dead,” Jax put forth. “I mean, they were obviously involved in some kind of religious cult. Swilling down a cup of hemlock is not something any sane person would do.”

“I think they were questioning him,” Caitlin said and when they asked her why she felt that way, she couldn’t answer. It was a gut feeling and one that had been nagging at her.

“Trying to find an accomplice, maybe?” asked Wellmeyer.

“Or accomplices,” Caitlin corrected. “Maybe he’s a warrior and his people are at war with those women.” She drew in a long, tired breath. “Who the hell knows?” She covered her face with her hands. “Until he wakes up and we can question him, we won’t know.”

“If he doesn’t speak Alliance, how will you communicate?” asked Wellmeyer.

Caitlin pulled her hands away from her face and stared up at Wellmeyer. That idiotic question was just one more reason she detested Herbert Wellmeyer, and another reason the bureaucrat had no business being in command of a Medivac ship.

Jax hid his amusement by ducking his head and when it became apparent Caitlin wasn’t going to answer, he replied, “He spoke to her when he was found, Sir.”

“Oh,” Wellmeyer grunted. He realized he should have known that, but hid his embarrassment by maintaining a bored look. “Then perhaps she’ll be able to understand him.”

Jax rolled his eyes and turned away. He wished-not for the first time-that Caitlin had been assigned CO of the Orion.

Wellmeyer looked around, found no one paying any attention to him and turned to go. “Report to me as soon as you learn anything concrete.”

“You’ll be the first to know, you sanctimonious bastard,” Caitlin muttered. She watched him leave then turned to catch Jax’s eye. “That man couldn’t pour piss out of a gravity boot with the instructions stamped on it.”

“Now, now,” Jax said, wagging a finger at her. “That isn’t nice.”

Caitlin smiled. “And could probably be classified as insubordination.” She couldn’t stop the yawn that

came and gave in to it.

“Why don’t you go lie down and try to sleep, Doc?” Jax suggested. “I’ll let you know if there’s any change.”

Caitlin was dead tired. Her weeks of sleeplessness were beginning to take its toll. She knew she wouldn’t be any good to anyone if she didn’t get some rest. Getting wearily to her feet, she put her hands to the small of her back and stretched, rolling her head from side to side. She looked at her patient, knew he’d sleep on for a while yet, and told Jax she was going to her quarters. “Call me the moment he even bats an eyelash,” she ordered.

“And a thick, luscious eyelash at that,” Lisa Mahon, one of the med techs, sighed wistfully, then gasped at her indiscretion. She blushed. “I’m sorry, Doc. I don’t know why the heck I said that!”

Caitlin grinned. “You’ve been on the Orion far too long, Lisa,” she replied. “I think you need to take a much-needed shore leave, lady!”

“We all do,” Lida, one of the other med techs, agreed.

As she took the elevator to her quarters, Caitlin could not stop thinking about her patient. It was more than the brutal physical abuse the man had suffered making her unable to get him out of her mind. Or the unstable condition he was in that could go either way: back to health or into cold storage alongside the women who had tortured him. She just could not seem to force her thoughts away from him.

Or get his face from her mind’s eye.

Or his voice from some deep responsive part of her.

“I knew you would find me,” he’d said.

“How did you know?” she asked, unaware she had spoken aloud until the elevator Com-Link asked if

she needed anything.

“No,” Caitlin replied. “Just a good night’s sleep.”

“May I suggest a Temparest, Dr. Kelly?” the Com-Link asked. “I could have Counselor Rema-”

“No, thank you,” Caitlin said forcefully. “I don’t need any sedatives.”

There was a slight, irritated pause, then: “As you wish, Doctor.” The Com-Link cut off with a click.

Her quarters felt confined and Caitlin asked Conar to spray the room with a mist of lavender. “And I’d like to hear a gentle rain with thunder in the distance,” she added.

“I shall do as you ask, Dearling,” her Com-Link acknowledged.

Caitlin opened her mouth to instruct her AI unit to cease with its affectionate-and to her ear, intimate-sobriquets, but she closed her lips again. The Com-Link’s soft words and sensual voice was as close as Caitlin had been in several months to a lover’s voice.

She stripped, put on her old flannel gown, frowning at the rent under the left arm and the threadbare condition of the bodice. She made a mental note to order another gown when she got to Fealst. It would be months before it was brought up from Terra, but at least she’d know it was on its way to her. There was nothing as comforting as sleeping in a warm, flannel gown two sizes too large.

Except maybe in the brawny arms of a tall, dark haired, amber-eyed man with....

Caitlin paused as she was about to crawl beneath the covers and wondered where the hell that thought had come from. She probed at it-much as one would an aching tooth-then decided she was too tired to dwell on the matter. She plumped her pillow into submission, lay down, wiggled comfortable beneath the covers then gave her Com-Link two final instructions.

“Lights out and access mainframe language translation of runic scroll, duelize, and begin downloading data as soon as I am in REM sleep. I want to know how to speak that language.”

“It will not disturb your sleep, Dearling?” the Com-Link asked in a caring tone of voice laced with just a touch of admonishment.

“Just do it, Coni,” Caitlin ground out. “And stop questioning my orders.”

There was a brief pause, then: “Aye, love,” the Com-Link sighed, giving in to her wishes.

As REM sleep took over Caitlin’s tired brain, the translating of the strange language into ancient Arabic, then into Alliance language, began its transmission into the surgical implants behind Caitlin’s left ear. Within half an hour, she had assimilated the new language-which she learned was called Rysalian High Speech-and would be able to speak it like a native.

“Rysalia,” Caitlin whispered in her sleep.

“Aye. That is my world. ”

Caitlin frowned as she slept and turned jerkily to her left side, out of the normal right-sided position in which she slept. Her heartbeat began to accelerate as she began to come out of sleep.

“Caitlin, rest .” The command was as soft as a feather across her troubled mind.

“Khiershon,” she mumbled. She turned to her back, one arm flung over her eyes and gave a hitching breath. Once more, she tried to wake, but the soft voice intervened.

“You must sleep .”

A soft, gentle fog came over her mind and she fell through it, going into a deep, soothing sleep.

She did not feel the gossamer touch upon her brow nor feel the heat of the soft green pulse of light that spread over her forehead for a moment before vanishing.

CommunicationsOfficer Helen Bryan had gone to bed about half an hour after Caitlin and was already sound asleep when the dream came. She smiled, turning to her side to draw her pillow into the harbor of her arms. Pressing her face tightly against the soft material, she sighed deeply and let the dream take her where it would.

There was a soft, pink glow on the hills overlooking her North Georgia home. The air was resonant with the smell of honeysuckle, Wisteria and gardenia. A soft rain had washed the pollutants away and clung to the grass like diamonds. Among the kudzu clinging to the old pine trees, fireflies flitted, vying with the raindrops to add sparkle to the dying day.

He was standing beneath the sweeping majesty of an ancient live oak tree as she topped the rise. The wispy beards of Spanish moss wafted behind him and a gentle breeze ruffled his dark hair. He was smiling, his teeth glowing in the advancing night.

“Helen,” he whispered and his voice was like silk running over her body.

She came to him, looking up into eyes the color of topaz and smiled shyly.

“You have come of your own desire?” he asked.

Helen could do no more than nod. She could not find her voice as she stared hungrily at his sensual lips, aching to have him kiss her, touch her, ply her body with his own.

“Do you like what you see?” His voice was low, deep, and infinitely mesmerizing.

“Aye,” she whispered.

“Do you want what you see?”

Helen’s body throbbed for a moment. “Aye, more than I have ever wanted anything!”

He smiled: a knowing, ancient look as old as time. His hand came up to cup her cheek and his thumb eased over the flesh of her lips.

The need began in the very pit of her belly and spread. Moisture oozed between her legs, making her knees weak. She reached out to him, clasping his waist, and then pressed against him, her cheek to his wide chest as his hand slid from her head to the nape of her neck. She could hear his deep, rumbling voice vibrating against her ear as he spoke.

“What would you have me do, Helen?” he asked.

She pulled reluctantly away from the heat of his body and looked into his eyes, drawn deeply into the vortex of his gaze. “Take me,” she whispered. “I want you to take me.”

His hands were on her shoulders, moving her gently back from him, then pushing with firm strength until she began to sink to her knees before him.

Lisa walked outinto the cooling desert of her Texas homeland to find him.

Marjorie swam through the North Atlantic’s cold waters to reach the island where he waited.

Jillian gathered heather in the English mist to take to him in a rose-draped bower.

Cathy climbed the rolling hills of her Midwestern farmland.

Shirley ran to him along the teeming banks of the Irish countryside.

Nicole danced for him in the moonlight beneath a lowering Welsh sky.

June read poetry to him as a gentle rain fell on the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean.

And the others-all the women onboard-each found him in her own way, in her own homeland, each searching in her own way for the gentle hand he held out to them.

All except Caitlin, who slept soundly for the first time in weeks.

Chapter Two

“There’s been nochange, Doc,” Lisa told Caitlin the next morning. “He’s barely breathing.” She laid a gentle hand on the patient’s leg. “Brainwaves are erratic, though.” She looked up. “That suggests he’s dreaming, doesn’t it?”

“It would appear so,” Caitlin replied as she read the EEG report. She went over her patient’s chart and shook her head. “He’s not improving at all, is he?”

“No,” Lisa sighed, unaware that her hand was moving up and down the unconscious man’s leg from knee to ankle and back again.

Caitlin drew in a long, deep breath, and then exhaled slowly. “Has Jax done the autopsy on the women, yet?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him this morning.” Lisa shrugged. “I didn’t sleep all that well last night.”

“I sure did,” Caitlin replied. “Like the dead.” Her gaze went to her patient and she reached out to stroke a lock of tumbled black hair from his face.

“We can’t seem to stop touching him, you know?” Marjorie mumbled from her workstation. “Have you noticed that?”

Caitlin looked around. “What do you mean?”

Marjorie blushed. “All of us,” she answered. “Every woman who comes in here...”

“And I don’t think there’s been a single woman on board the Orion who hasn’t had a lame-ass reason to come traipsing through here this morning,” one of the male med techs complained. He got up from his

workstation and carried a wire basket of vials to the sink, a look of disgust on his florid face. “They all have to touch him,” he grated. “You’d think he was a god or something the way they’ve been carrying on.”

“We’re concerned for him,” Lisa protested.

“Yeah, right,” the med tech snorted. “I want you to tell me how bending down and kissing him helps him recover!”

“Kissing him?” Caitlin echoed, her mouth sagging open.

“Aye,” the med tech grunted. “Every last one of them has bent over and kissed his forehead like they were bestowing some kind of blessing on the bugger!”

Caitlin looked up at Marjorie. “Is that true? Has that really been happening?”

Marjorie shrugged, embarrassment plain on her face. “Aye, it has been, but it probably has something to do with the fact that every last one of us dreamed about him last night. Look at him, Caitlin: doesn’t what those bitches did to him just stick in your craw? Don’t you want to, well, hell, kiss him and make him better?”

A look of pure astonishment flowed over Caitlin’s face before she snapped her gaping mouth shut and turned away. “You let those women know that sick bay is off limits to them unless they work here,” she ordered.

“Did you?” Lisa asked.

“Did I what?” Caitlin snapped, put out for no apparent reason she could understand.

“You know,” Lisa replied. “Dream about him?”

“Most certainly not!” Caitlin denied.

“Then you’re the only one,” Marjorie informed her.

Caitlin fixed her two female med techs with a scathing look. “Do you women have work to do or would you like me to make work for you to do?”

Marjorie and Lisa exchanged looks and shook their heads. “We’ve got plenty to do,” Marjorie admitted.

“Then go do it!” Caitlin commanded.

The rest of the morning, both Marjorie and Lisa walked on eggshells around Caitlin while surreptitiously darting uneasy glances toward the Healer. Neither woman could understand the dark scowl on Caitlin’s normally open and inviting face nor the nervousness that seemed to have taken hold of her. By the time their shift was over, both women were anxious to leave sickbay and the brooding woman who had not spoken to them in over three hours.

“What’s got her tail feathers all ruffled?” Lisa asked as she and Marjorie made their way down to the galley.

“Did you see the way she kept looking over at him?” Marjorie asked. “You’d think she half expected him to jump up and attack her!”

Caitlin glanced upas June de Angelo and Jenna Kyel came into the sick bay. They would be the med techs on duty through the night shift. She nodded to the women, then went back to the research she was doing on the computer.

“How’s our boy doing?” June asked. She turned at the low growl of annoyance that came from Caitlin.

Caitlin swiveled away from her computer. She seemed to be trying to hold on to her temper. “How would you two like a night off?” she asked through her teeth.

“We’re scheduled to work through Friday,” Jenna answered.

“I’ll be here all evening working on this,” Caitlin said, flinging a hand toward the computer. “There’s no need for all of us to be in here. Take the evening off. If I need you, I’ll call.” She cast a quick look toward her patient. “I don’t think he’s going to be giving me any trouble tonight.”

June faced the unconscious man and her eyes became dreamy. “I’d rather stay and look after him.”

“Me, too,” Jenna agreed. “I don’t-”

“You are dismissed, ladies!” Caitlin snapped.

June backed away from the anger she saw on Caitlin’s face and held up her hands to ward off another shout. “We’re going!” The women made a hasty retreat.

For a long moment, Caitlin sat where she was and stared blindly across the sick bay at the unmoving man, wondering what had came over her.

What the hell set me off?She ran a shaky hand over her face. She could not remember ever having shouted at one of her med techs before and that concerned her. Trying to shake off the anger and the uneasiness that had gripped her, she got up and walked to the workstation where the blood and fluid samples taken from her patient had been placed. Staring down at the thick black substance that was Khiershon Cree’s blood made her shiver.

It was not the first time she had seen blood this color. As a matter of fact, blue and green blood was not

uncommon among the United Space Alliance allies. But Cree’s blood was alive with strange parasites that defied analysis. Who knew what those parasites were and what harm they could do?

“I would never allow anything to harm you.”

Caitlin jumped, hearing the voice as clearly as though the lips were at her ear. Her attention flew from the blood specimens to the man lying on the table and she gasped, her eyes flaring with shock.

He was watching her, his sad amber eyes steady. There was such unspeakable loneliness, such heart-wrenching need, in that intense gaze, she moaned with pity.

“I have waited a lifetime for you,” he whispered, his cracked lips barely moving. Painfully, he lifted his hand and his trembling fingers reached out to her.

For a reason she could not explain, Caitlin backed away from the contact. She found herself breathing heavily as though having run a long way. She stared at him, watching his hand fall limply to his side when he realized she would not allow him to touch her.

“You cannot deny me, Caitlin,” he told her, his eyes closing wearily. “I have already marked you as mine.”

His head fell gently to one side and she knew he was unconscious again.

Caitlin stood where she was, her breath heaving against her ribcage. When at last she could move, she put as much distance between her and her patient as the quarters would allow. Stumbling back to her stool, she sat down heavily, keeping her eyes on Khiershon Cree.

“What the hell are you?” she asked, shuddering with her own question.

“Computer whiz of the first order, I’ve been told.”

Caitlin swung her head toward the voice and let out a long breath. “And very modest, eh, Catt Le?” she snorted at Cathy Atherton.

“Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!’ the computer tech grinned. She held up her hand. “I thought you just might want to take a look at what’s on this disc.” She sailed the plastic disk toward Caitlin like a Chrystallusian throwing star, chuckling when Caitlin snatched it out of the air with ease.

Caitlin looked down at the pale blue plastic disk. “What’s on it?”

Atherton shrugged. “The translation of that little journal that was retrieved along with Pretty Boy over there.” She turned her head and smiled. “They really did a number on him, didn’t they?”

“He woke up a few moments ago,” Caitlin said offhandedly. She swiveled around and popped the disc into her computer’s CPU.

“Did he say anything?”

Caitlin pretended she hadn’t heard. She adjusted the font size on the screen when the data came up, then leaned forward, ignoring Atherton who had walked over to the patient.

“You’ll find that fascinating reading,” Atherton remarked as she stopped at Cree’s bedside. She smiled at his sleeping face, and then reached out to push a lock of hair from his forehead.

Caitlin was so engrossed in her reading, she did not see Atherton bend over the patient and kiss him softly on the forehead. Nor did she see the light touch of the other woman’s fingers on Cree’s cheek. Had she been a witness to the strange intimacy, she would have thrown Atherton out of sickbay. As it was, she became lost in the translation of the alien language that told the tale of Khiershon Cree.

Chapter Three

The Journal of Kaelia Kahmal

I have createdthis missive to record the events leading up to the Ritual of Alluvia that is to be carried out in the Land of the Shadows at the waning of the Lunar Phase, two days hence.

In the year now known as the Year of the Reaper, our sonar network picked up the heat signature of a ship of our Rysalian enemies. The ship was very close to our restricted air space and therefore suspect. We learned the ship was on a training mission from Instructional Camp D-9, the home base of the Rysalian Fleet Command. (It is there that their warrior elite was trained.) The ship was hailed and it was learned the Rysalians were having navigational problems. We warned them away, but they ignored our warnings, arrogant males that they were. After crossing into Amazeen air space in violation of our repeated warnings, the ship was shot down and landed not far from the Veil of Chloe in the Asarat Valley. A patrol of nine Alpha warrioresses was dispatched to see if there were survivors.

Our patrol found nine dead and five so severely hurt, it was a blessing to them to put them out of their misery, which we did with dispatch. It would have been a blessing for us had we slain them all on the spot, for among the twelve crewmembers that were taken into captivity that day was a Ry-Chalean boy.

From the moment our Guardress saw him, she knew him for what he was and immediately rendered him unconscious, taking no chances that he might be old enough to Transition.. He was chained hand and foot and taken to the medical facility for immediate containment and experimentation.

The other prisoners were taken to the Court of Anioch and sold into slavery to various households before the day was out. We had no problems with these males except for one. This one fought fiercely and warned us that to harm the young Ry-Chalean in any way would be dangerous beyond measure. When he spoke the boy’s name, the Court was thrown into much turmoil for it was learned he was called Khiershon Cree, son of the Prime Reaper Kamerone.

(It must be noted here that Kamerone Cree is much feared even among the Amazeen, though he is a mere male. Until the uprising of the Resistance that began on Frontier Station Khamsin-14, he was our enemy’s greatest warrior: their Prime Reaper. Even after his escape from our Rysalian Sisters, his name is spoken in hushed whispers and with much horror on Rysalia Prime. An arrest warrant was issued for the Bloodsire. It is known far and wide that Kamerone Cree is the most wanted man in the universe. One day, we hope to have him at our mercy once again. This time, he will not be allowed to escape the fate reserved expressly for him.)

At the time of his capture, much discussion was had concerning the fate of Khiershon Cree. Fearing the Prime Reaper would learn of his blood son’s imprisonment and come for the boy, a message was sent through the Diabolusian Ministry to Rysalia Prime informing our enemies there were no survivors of the crash for the ship exploded upon impact. The Goddesses were with us for no word ever came from our enemies questioning the truth of the matter. Apparently, young dearg duls were considered expendable by the government of Rysalia at that time.

Yet what to do with the young Reaper we held captive?

Against all warnings made by the Elders of the Obelisk and our Defense Queen, the Domestic Queen decided the Ry-Chalean male could be put to better use than as a mere slave ofa royal household or a drudge in the caravans of a bedouin. There were those who advocated putting him to the sword, but the Domestic Queen prevailed and it was under her own aegis she took the young male, whom we learned was of eleven Solar Passings. It was Queen Rhia’s intent to breed this demon-beast when he reached puberty to her own daughter, the Princess Raphaella, in order to produce a superior female offspring.

(It must also be noted here the Domestic Queen, who, at the time of her capture by the brutish Rysalia Retrieval Team, was quick with child. Her arrival from Terra in that condition engineered heated debate on FSK-11 and it was only through the Grace of Alluvia that she was not slain then and there or the child aborted. No doubt the Shepherd responsible for her capture was put to death for his oversight. Thankfully, our future Queen was taken into the care of Dr. Natalia Rhu and was brought through

Resistance channels to Amazeen where she gave birth to the Princess Raphaella. I must state here for clarification purposes, the Terran woman’s arrival on Amazeen was met with intense opposition. Defense Queen Moiria took an instant dislike to the woman and issued a challenge to combat. Once more the fates were with the Terran woman for when she was able to rise from her birth bed, she met Queen Moiria’s challenge well and triumphed over her adversary. She became our 93rd Domestic Queen: the first non-Amazeen to sit the Delta throne. Mother and daughter have since risen through the ranks of the Multitude to goddess status and it has been decided the Princess Raphaella will become our next Defense Queen.)

As for the Ry-Chalean boy, the Queen believed a child of the union between her daughter and the Reaper could result in a vastly superior female soldier. The child would be graceful and quick like her mother, but agile and strong in the way of her sire. She would also garner the psychic ability of the Reaper: a trait necessary when dealing with that despicable race. The Queen convinced the Elders of the Obelisk that a child born from the seed of the seed of Kamerone Cree would be invincible.

Thus it was decided the Reaper would be kept in the medical facility until he was of age (the scientists reckoned this to be eighteen Solar passings) to impregnate the Princess Raphaella and his essence taken. He was kept chained to the wall, under constant observation and not allowed to either interact with or see his keepers.

(Note: This was not a cruel punishment as some have charged. The Reaper was accustomed to such treatment on the Instructional Base. Other than the confinement of his leg shackle, we did nothing that was not standard procedure on his home world where his every move was watched by A.I.U.s.)

When the time of the male’s puberty came upon him, he underwent his first Transition. He was thirteen Solar Passings by then and strong for a male of that age. He managed to break his leg chain and escape the medical facility, but he was discovered quickly. It took five warrioresses to bring him down and capture him, but not before two of them were slain, their throats ripped open by his unsheathed claws. Thrown into a cell created well in advance of this first Transitioning, the young Reaper was left to suffer his affliction without benefit of the much-needed Sustenance his kind requires. (Note: this was an oversight that nearly drove the young one mad with hunger before one of those who had been on the ship with him was able to get word to us of what was needed.)

It must be said here that the Princess Raphaella was at no time afraid of the Reaper. Although older than he by seven years, she seemed well content to receive his essence when the time was right. She would sit for hours on end watching the monitor that was focused on his cell. He was well aware of being watched and who it was that watched him for he spoke to her oftenthough she was not allowed to speak with him. We believe the young princess to have become much enamored of the Reaper during this time. To look upon him is to understand why an impressionable female would find him so enticing: he is, unquestionably, a beautiful male specimen, though a deadly one.

And therein lay the problem...

By the time he had achieved sixteen Solar Passings, many an Amazeen began to look upon Khiershon Cree with unbridled lust. Many would make reason to stop by the monitoring room and observe him. He knew this was being done and would stare hotly into the camera of his cell, often shocking his watcher by calling her name. Now and again, those Amazeen assigned to watch him would open the Vid-Com link and carry on forbidden conversations with him. When it was discovered such behavior was occurring, the audio link was terminated. This seemed to amuse him rather than cause dismay that he would no longer have contact with his keepers.

At the time of seventeen Solar Passings, his attitude became disrespectful to the point of surliness. He openly defied many restrictions and was constantly testing his limitations. He was chastised for these actions, which only seemed to amuse him the more. Even when we were forced to punish him severely for trespasses against the laws of the Multitude, he merely laughed at the pain though the effect of it could clearly be seen in his gaze. It was not until his transgressions were punished on the person of the young man, Iyan, that we gained some small amount of control over Khiershon Cree; it was obvious he held that one in some great esteem. Threat of agonizing punishment of Iyan, five Solar Passings the elder of the two, drastically cut down on the trouble we garnered from the Reaper.

Until two days before his eighteenth Solar Passing.

That is when the dreams began.

At first, only a few of us were affected by the strange, unsettling dreams. Then more and more warrioresses began to report nightly invasions of her sleep that were so vivid, so intensely real, that it became evident this was no mere phenomenon of overly-active libidos but a calculated mental assault upon the persons of each and every Amazeen. When the Reaper was brought before the Court and told to stop this psychic rape, he laughed at the Elders and stood there, unrepentant and defiant, smiling hatefully at those who had dared to judge him. Even as he stood before the Elders, flanked by six Elite warrioresses of Adil, he was able to cause the Elders, Old Women that They are, to wax and wane with such powerful sexual releases, They cried out before us.

“Put him to the sword!” They cried, alarmed at his ability to move Them while standing many paces from the Bench. “Put him to death for he is a demon!”

Of course, this had always been known: Reapers are changelings, warebeasts, Dearg Duls from the world of Chale. But no one had guessed at the sexual powers instilled in the powerful-growing body of this young male. We knew he could read minds, but up until that time, he had not exhibited what we later learned was a very adept psychic ability to place thoughts where they should not be.

And cause intense surges of sexual longing that can best be described only as evil incarnate.

So alarmed did the Court become that the young man, Iyan, was hurriedly sent for and brought, dagger to his throat, to his knees before the Bench.

“Stop this now or you will be the cause of this man’s death!” the Chief Elder warned the Reaper.

As I write this, I can still see the fury that leapt in the amber glare of the Reaper’s eyes when McGregor was brought in. The Reaper knew what had been done to his friend and the fury pulsing from those molten eyes was lethal. I shiver at the look of hellish intent that passed quickly over his face before he dropped to his knees beside his friend and offered his own throat to the dagger.

“Kill me now and be done with it!” he snarled, “for unless you do, I will make every gods-be-damned woman on this world wish she had never been born for what you have done to this man!”

In answer to the Reaper’s rash demand, the dagger was drawn across the throat of the Reaper’s friend and bright crimson flooded over the ebony stones of the Court. With a scream of such primal agony it took us all aback, Khiershon Cree threw himself over the body of his friend. Before we could stop him, he tore the veins of his own wrist open with his teeth to allow the black blood to pulse into the gushing wound of Iyan’s throat.

Even as we watched in stunned amazement, Iyan’s crimson blood slowed to a trickle and the lethal wound began to close. Hovering over his friend, his wrist to Iyan’s throat, the Reaper began to chant in the ancient language of the Chalean priests: a Charm of Making, the Elders told us. Whatever it was, it healed the young man and brought him back from the very arms of the Gatherer.

For a long time we stood there, watching as Khiershon Cree rocked his unconscious friend against him, crooning words that we could not understand. When at last he was sure the young man would live, he turned eyes now dulled with surrender to the Elders who were gawking at him with fear and awe.

“He is all I have. Do not hurt him again and I will give you no more trouble,” he said softly. “I will do whatever you will have me do, I will humble myself to you, if you will give me your word of honor, on the Court of the Veils, that you will never lay another hand to Iyan McGregor to hurt him in any way.”

He bowed his head in what we thought was defeat and when he looked up, we were astounded to see tears in his eyes. It is well-known that Reapers do not cry. “I will do whatever is asked of me, but swear you will never harm my friend again. Swear it and I will be your obedient servant until there is no more breath within this body.”

The Elders conferred amongst Themselves and decided it was best to do as he asked if it meant he would no longer fight the destiny planned for him. It was agreed and They gave Their unbreakable vows as Elders of the Court: No harm would ever befall Iyan McGregor at the hands of an Amazeen.

How well he played us that day. How well he knew, even then, the great power within him. Looking back, we now have no doubt among us that he knew he would be able to save his friend by feeding the man from his own tainted blood: blood infected with that which makes him what he is. He staged the entire drama, sacrificed a few moments of pain for Iyan for the certain knowledge that we would not be able to stop him when the time came.

And that time came sooner than we expected.

The very next night, with the help of the Princess Raphaella, Khiershon Cree, Iyan McGregor, and three members of the crew that had crashed on Amazeen nine Solar Passings earlier, escaped on board a Diabolusian transport bound for its home world. It would be morning before Cree would be missed and another day before the warrant for his arrest was issued. By then, he and his entourage, including the princess, were long gone.

It has been five years since last we saw him, but word has come to us that he has taken the bait we set for him. He will journey to the old abandoned FSK-14 where he has been told he will find one of his bloodbrothers, Kaelan, who was transported to the space station and left there to die. (Note: We have not yet found the other five Reaper survivors: the two sets of twins, Sajin and Aidan, Rylan and Braiden, and the youngest Kaelan, but we will and we will dispose of them in the same manner planned for the eldest, Khiershon.)

A bounty party is being dispatched to take Khiershon. We will take with us a generous portion of triso,

known in our world as tenerse, to control him, for that is the only way now that he has reached his full power as Dearg Duls.

Once we have him under our authority, he will be taken to the Land of Shadows and there questioned as to the whereabouts of the Princess Raphaella and the others. If he will not tell us, he will be decapitated, his body burned and the ashes scattered to the Four Winds upon the plateau, but not before we have taken from him forcibly the seed needed to create life. Between the twelve of us, at least one is bound to breed the warrioress our Queen envisioned.

Tomorrow will see us at FSK-14 and I will write no more until he has either given us what we seek or is dead.

Chapter Four

Caitlin leanedback in her chair. “He made them take the hemlock,” she said. “Somehow he used his psychic ability to make them drink the poison.”

“Looks that way to me,” Atherton responded from her place beside Khiershon Cree. She stared at the livid bruises on his handsome face. “They got what they deserved.”

Caitlin looked up, staring blindly at her computer monitor. “They tortured him and he made them commit suicide.”

“Do you blame him?”

Caitlin shook her head. “No, I don’t blame him.” She drew in a long breath, and then exhaled slowly. “I don’t blame him at all.”

“Did you notice the tattoo on his left pectoral?” Atherton inquired. She was lightly tracing the stylized Reaper image with a fingertip. “It must have been burned into his flesh with a laser.”

“I saw it,” Caitlin answered.

“Dr. Kelly?” the voice on Com-Link inquired in an urgent tone.

“Aye?” Caitlin responded tiredly.

“You’d better come to the bridge ASAP, Ma’am,” Dixon told her.

Caitlin sighed. “On my way.” She looked around at Cathy Atherton and frowned sharply. “Do you think you can keep your hands off him, Catt Le?”

Atherton grinned at her. “Nope.”

“Try, okay?”

“No guarantees, lady.”

On the way up to the bridge, Caitlin found herself acutely uneasy. There was an underlying nervousness that had been building for several days and it concerned her. She knew the sleeplessness had something to do with it, but she suspected the majority of the edginess had to do with her patient.

The bridge was alive with activity when the titanium doors of the elevator shushed open. Crewmen were rushing about, their faces pale and tight. Caitlin was about to stop one and ask why when the warning klaxon began to sound. She stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth sagging open.

The Captain began barking orders for weapons system activation. “Shields up!” he yelled, his lips trembling. “Torpedoes lock on target as soon as they are within range!”

“Who is within range?” Caitlin managed to ask a passing yeoman. “What’s going on?”

“We were told to stand down,” the yeoman mumbled. “They are ordering us to surrender or be blown out of the sky.”

“Who?” Caitlin repeated. “Who’s out there?”

“Ask him,” the yeoman snapped, jerking a thumb over his shoulder toward the Captain. “That stupid idiot wants to fight and we barely have enough torpedoes on board to blow the lid off a trash can!” The yeoman pushed past her, hurrying to his station.

“Bring them up on screen, Bryan!” Wellmeyer was shouting. “I want to see them!”

Helen Bryan rolled her eyes skyward. “They’re cloaking, Captain, and I can’t lock on.”

“Cloaking?” Wellmeyer repeated as though he’d never heard the word before. “Cloaking?”

“Stealth mode, Captain,” Caitlin reminded him. She walked past him and went to Bryan’s station. “Have they identified themselves, Helen?”

Bryan shook her head. “No, but I believe they mean business, Caitlin.” She tried hailing the incoming ship again, but received no answer. “They don’t appear to be in the mood to discuss the matter.”

Even as she spoke, the Orion was buffeted by a shock wave as a missile passed close by her leeward side. Every one on the bridge pitched sideways, grabbing for whatever they could to keep from being thrown to the deck.

“Fire! Fire!” Wellmeyer shrieked.

“At what?” Dixon shouted. “Where?”

Once more the ship lurched in the percussive wave of a fired missile. Klaxons began going off all over ship as damage was recorded on the ship’s computers.

“Blow them out of our way!” Wellmeyer shouted. His eyes were wide, his face stark white.

“Try hailing them again,” Caitlin said in a calm voice. “Tell them we are not hostile. Ask them what they want. They’ve had plenty of time by now to monitor our language and format it into their own.”

Bryan nodded, trying to ignore the Captain’s ranting and raving in the background as he hurled ridiculous orders at his crew.

The Orion suddenly dropped a hundred yards, leaving the crew gasping as they found their hearts in their throats. The overhead lights flickered, went out, and the emergency generator kicked in, illuminating the bridge with an eerie greenish tint from the mercury lighting.

“They are responding, Ma’am,” Bryan said, glancing up at Caitlin.

“On screen,” Caitlin ordered.

There was a pulse of gray light, then the main Com-Link engaged.

He was obviously enraged, his jaw set, his eyes spearing the crew of the Orion with venomous fury. His angry stare swept over those on the bridge and settled unerringly on Wellmeyer. “I am the McGregor,” he announced.

Iyan,” Caitlin breathed and knew she was looking into the face of the man from the journal. As soon as his name passed her lips, the man’s stony attention leapt to her.

“Who the gods-be-damned hell are you, woman?” he demanded.

Caitlin had to swallow before she could answer. “I am Dr. Kelly. I am a-”

“Where is he?” Iyan growled, a muscle in his lean cheek working.

“In the sickbay. I am-”

“You will send him to us, now!”

Caitlin felt her knees growing weak beneath that savage stare. “I can’t. He’s-”

“Now, woman!” Iyan bellowed.

“I can’t!” she threw back at him with equal fire.

“By the gods, if you don’t, I’ll-”

“He’s in no condition to be transported anywhere!” Caitlin yelled and had the satisfaction of seeing the man blink, then the brutal anger returned in full force.

“Believe me when I tell you, woman, you do not want me to come get him,” Iyan warned her. “If I have to, I will make you regret...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Caitlin snapped, waving a dismissive hand. “You’ll make me regret I was ever born.” She pursed her lips. “Is that all the threat you can come up with when confronted by strong women?”

Iyan McGregor’s pale blue eyes flared. His mouth opened then snapped shut as his jaw locked and his stare narrowed viciously.

The Com-Link screen went black.

“Oh, Sweet Merciful Mary,” Wellmeyer whined. “Oh, Sweet Merciful Mother of God!” He threw his hands up to his face. “They’re going to blow us to kingdom come! They are going to...”

“Somebody shut that fool up, will ya?” Caitlin snapped. She put a firm hand on Helen Bryan’s shoulder. “Try hailing him again.”

“They won’t respond,” Helen said, her lips trembling.

“Try anyway.”

“Won’t do any good,” Helen warned. She lifted her hand and pointed to the Com-Link that had engaged once more.

Caitlin turned slowly and gasped. On the screen in front of her were five ships, ranged along the entire vista of the Com-Link screen’s expanse.

“They’ve got weapons locked on us, Caitlin,” Dixon said softly. “Enough firepower to reduce us to space lint.”

Caitlin closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly together for a moment, then opened them slowly and exhaled loudly. Very quietly she asked Bryan to try the hail again.

The screen came back up and the smirking countenance of Iyan McGregor filled the vista.

“Well?” he demanded.

Caitlin locked gazes with him. “You know where he was?” she asked.

“Aye,” came the snap. “On FSK-14 when you bastards...”

“No,” Caitlin disagreed, realizing McGregor had no idea what had happened to his friend. “He was on Montyne Vex when we found him.”

Once more the imposing blond-haired warrior blinked. He held her gaze, judging the truth of her word, and then Caitlin saw his rigid shoulders relax just a tad. “In the Sinisters,” he said, wanting the spot clarified.

“Aye, Captain McGregor,” she responded, giving him a title she wasn’t sure was his by rights, but when his chin lifted, she knew she had guessed correctly.

Now there was deep concern on the lean face. “Why was he there?” McGregor inquired, his brow creased.

“The Amazeen had taken him there.”

The slow intake of Iyan McGregor’s breath was loud over the Com-Link connection, his prolonged exhalation even louder. Caitlin saw his shoulder slump. His gaze was not as fierce, as hateful, and his voice, when he spoke, was not as hostile. “I warned him not to go to FSK-14. We all warned him.” He paused then asked, “What did they do to him?”

Caitlin not only sensed the deep concern in the warrior’s face, she heard it in his voice. “He was tortured, but he is alive, Captain. Not well, but alive. If you want to see him, you can come aboard and-”

“No!” Wellmeyer screeched, his voice loud enough to make even McGregor flinch.

Caitlin winced, too, but she ignored the outburst, still speaking to McGregor and holding that man’s attention. “If you wish to board, alone and unarmed, I-”

“Do you take me for a fool, bitch?” McGregor snarled, he looked behind him at the men ranged along his bridge and there were guffaws of sneering laughter.

“If you want to see Khiershon Cree, Captain,” Caitlin said, continuing despite his interruption, “that is the only way you will do so.”

The right portion of McGregor’s upper lip curled in contempt. “There will be nothing left of your ship-”

“Or of Khiershon Cree if you fire at us, you moron,” Caitlin said, losing patience.

The warriors on the bridge of McGregor’s ship took a step back from the tall blond man, fearful of his

reaction to the words. They had no idea what ‘moron’ meant, but they knew from the woman’s tone, it was not a compliment.

The crew of the Orion held its collective breath as the other ship’s computer accessed the Com Officer’s terminaland and the Orion’s data bank probed for the meaning of the word.

Iyan McGregor cocked his head to one side, his eyes lowered, listening to the definition of the Terran woman’s word. As the insult registered, he slowly lifted his gaze and fused it with Caitlin’s. He glared hatefully at her, his anger a sentient thing aimed straight at her heart. When he raised his chin, a muscle in his left cheek quivering, she knew she had made an enemy of this man.

“We are at an impasse,” Caitlin told him, her heart thundering in her chest. She could see his fists opening and closing at his sides and knew without a doubt that he wished he had her neck in his strong grip. “Neither of us can win. You shoot at us, you risk killing your friend. We shoot at you and you shoot back; there again, risking him being harmed.”

“And what exactly is it you want?” he snapped, his face rigid.

“We want nothing from you, Captain,” Caitlin told him. “We are a Medivac ship on our way to...”

“Don’t tell him where we’re going!” Wellmeyer shouted.

“What do you want?” McGregor repeated, flicking a disgusted look to the Captain of the Terran vessel.

“You are guaranteed safe passage to the Orion. Come aboard, judge his condition for yourself. You know his anatomy better than I. If you think he is well enough to be transported to your ship, then you are free to leave with him. I will not be the one to make that decision and unknowingly hurt him more than he’s already been hurt.”

McGregor flinched at her words. He stared at her for a long time, and then lifted a hand to wipe at his lower face, pulling on his lower lip with his thumb and forefinger, an unconscious gesture she suspected was a nervous habit.

At last, he nodded: once and emphatically. “All right, woman. This round goes to you.” He took a step toward the screen. “But the game isn’t over.”

Caitlin felt a shiver running down her spine. Even as she watched him hand a wicked-looking dagger to the man beside him on the bridge she was not relieved when he held his arms out for her inspection in an attempt to show he had no other weapons on his person. His strong-looking hands were most likely all the weapons this warrior needed.

“Well?” he prompted.

“Bring him over, Dixon,” Caitlin ordered, rolling her eyes at the shriek of denial from Wellmeyer.

“Shields down, then?” Dixon asked worriedly. There was no other way to transport the man without squeezing him into space dust.

Caitlin’s eyes were locked on McGregor’s. “Aye, shields down, but weapons on kill.” She saw McGregor’s lip quirk upward in scorn.

“Engaging, then,” Dixon mumbled and his fingers flew over his keyboard to input the transportation data.

When the tall blond man materialized only ten feet from her, Caitlin Kelly felt the instant chill dropping the temperature on the bridge. His frosty glower came straight at her and when he stalked up to her, stopping within only a foot of her to glare down into her upraised eyes, the animosity he gave off was tangible.

“When this is through, when I have him safely on board The Ravenwind, I’m going to come back for you,” he said in a low, threatening voice.

She had to swallow before she could answer for her mouth had gone dry as cotton. “I don’t think so,” she said with more confidence that she felt.

“Count on it, whore,” he returned and was shocked to the toes of his highly-polished black boots when the woman drew back a hand and slapped him as hard as she could across his left cheek, rocking his head sideways and splitting his lip.

“Don’t you ever call me that again!” Caitlin snarled, her eyes flashing green fury at him.

McGregor slowly turned his head to her and the fierce, savage look made the men on the bridge of the Orion lift their weapons and point them straight at him. Peripherally he was aware of the danger aimed his way, but from the look on his face, it didn’t matter. This man, whose throat bore a long, wicked slash, had courted death once before, had embraced it and survived its deadly kiss.

“If it is the last thing I do,” he told her, “I will make you sorry you did that.”

“You go to hell,” she flung at him in a steady voice.

“He’s been there.”

Every eye turned to the elevator where Khiershon Cree was standing, supported by Cathy Atherton who was having a hard time keeping him on his feet.

“Khier!” McGregor shouted, rushing toward him just as Cree began to pitch forward.

Chapter Five

“This is yourgods-be-damned fault!” Iyan McGregor grumbled as he placed an unconscious Cree on the gurney. The tall blond warrior had carried his friend in his arms all the way down to sickbay, ignoring Caitlin, the only other passenger in the elevator.

“Eat shit and die, asshole,” Caitlin returned.

A puzzled look shifted over McGregor’s face, but as the translation came to him from his ship, he literally growled. “Woman, if you do not stop insulting me, I...”

“Get the hell out of my way,” Caitlin told him and literally pushed the big man back from the gurney. She bent over her patient, concerned for the paleness of his complexion. “Tell me what I need to do,” she demanded.

McGregor folded his arms over his massive chest. “You tell me,” he snorted. “You seem to think you are in charge here.”

Caitlin rounded on the man and came toe to toe with him, squinting up into his sneering face with a countenance as rigid as his was condescending. “Look, you overgrown wheat stalk,” she insulted him. “I don’t know the first thing about Reaper anatomy and there are organs inside this man that...”

McGregor shook his head. “Not organs,” he stated.

“Then what are they?”

“That which makes him what he is: his parasites.”

A wave of nausea hurtled through Caitlin and her face took on a greenish cast before she turned away, hating the look of amusement that had shifted over McGregor’s lean jaw.

“He is in need of Sustenance,” McGregor told her. He cocked his head to one side, and then grinned viciously. “And it must come from you.”

Caitlin was running a diagnostic on her patient, gathering temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, but when McGregor made his statement, she stilled, turning her head to stare slack-jawed at him. “W...what?” she stammered.

McGregor shrugged. “You saved his life; his life belongs to you. The Sustenance must come from your veins.” He grinned brutally. “A single pint will suffice.”

“No,” Caitlin said, shaking her head emphatically. “That is not an option.”

McGregor said nothing for a moment, watching her go about the business of taking care of his friend. When he spoke, his tone was level.

“If he dies, every one on this ship will die, as well.” When Caitlin turned her attention to him, he nodded. “Aye, and I can promise deaths that will be as excruciating and prolonged as the pain those bitches gave my friend.”

Caitlin looked away from McGregor’s probing stare. “I am doing everything I can to keep him alive,

but...”

“Then open your veins and feed him,” McGregor told her. “That is the only way.”

There was no reason not to donate blood to save the man’s life, Caitlin thought. She had always made it a point to give plasma and blood whenever it was needed for those crewmembers that were human. Artificial blood was widely used in cases of emergency, but it was not as effective as the real thing.

McGregor sensed her wavering. He took a step closer, lowering his voice to a soft, gentle purr. “He is a good man,” he told her. “A man who should not have had this happen to him. He is also a warrior and our people need his abilities, his guidance. We are at war, Lady, and he is the only one capable of rallying all the tribes together: Rysalian, Serenian, Necromanian. Will you let us be enslaved once more for the sting of a needle?”

Caitlin stepped back, well away from the strong male presence looming over her. His natural masculine scent was very intoxicating, almost sensual, and she wondered if Rysalian males gave off pheromones like Venusian males did.

“What is it to be?” McGregor prodded. “Will you let this man die?”

Caitlin was looking down at Cree. The livid bruises on his handsome face gave mute evidence of the pain the man had already suffered. Her tender heart went out to him and she reached out to unzip the sleeve of her utility jumpsuit, rolling the sleeve up as she turned her back on McGregor and walking over to one of the med techs.

“Are you sure?” Lisa asked quietly, risking a glance at the tall blond warrior who was staring impassively back at them.

“Just do it before I change my mind,” Caitlin said.

McGregor leaned against the gurney where his friend lay. He could hear the soft intake and exhalation of Khier’s breath and knew the warrior was deep in the realms of unconsciousness, thus unaware of what was happening around him. Which was good, McGregor thought with a grimace, for he was about to

allow something he highly suspected Khier was not going to like. His keen blue eyes were intent on the two women as the Sustenance was being drawn. As the rich dark red fluid began to flow into the tubing, he turned his head and looked down at Khier. What he saw almost made him intervene in the bloodletting, but then he let his gaze drift over Khiershon’s pale face with its bruises and cuts and his jaw tightened. He stifled the urge to put an end to what he knew shouldn’t be done.

“Is he waking?” Caitlin asked as she came over to the gurney, rolling down her sleeve as she walked.

Iyan McGregor realized the woman had seen Khier’s eyes opening. He only hoped she had not seen the crimson glow from those lupine orbs. “No,” he answered, drawing the woman’s scrutiny to him lest she see what she should not. He held out his hand, holding her eyes on him. “If you will allow me, I will administer the Sustenance.”

“That’s quite all right,” Caitlin said. “I can inject...”

“Inject?” McGregor asked, and then chortled. “Woman, the Sustenance doesn’t go into his veins!”

“Then what...?” Caitlin stopped, realizing her mistake, then swallowed, trying to keep the nausea that was once more threatening to erupt from doing so.

“Hand me the Sustenance and let me feed him, Lady,” McGregor suggested. “I know what I am about here.” Inwardly, he winced for that was not the case at all. He suspected he was doing something for which he would eventually pay dearly with Khier.

Caitlin could not look at her patient. Instead, she held out her hand for the flexibag of blood Lisa was holding, took it from her and thrust it toward McGregor. She and her med tech had no desire to watch Caitlin’s blood being given to Cree so both turned away.

There was a moment’s hesitation on McGregor’s part, then his stubborn male ego kicked in and he slipped a hand under Cree’s neck and lifted his friend’s head. “Cree, shoolin.”Cree, drink.

Cree’s eyelids fluttered open at the rich scent of copper that wafted under his nose. The crimson light was bright in his eyes and his nostrils quivered.

“Shoolin, e’kael,” McGregor said softly.Drink, my brother.

McGregor watched as Cree tried to turn his head away from the offering, but refused to allow it. He forced a single drop of the woman’s blood to his friend’s lips and it was all that was needed to overcome any objection Khiershon might have. The parasite inside the man took over and the greedy thing forced its host to drink.

Iyan felt a stab of remorse as Cree’s crimson stare fused with his own worried blue one. There was recrimination and deep hurt in that wounded stare and McGregor was acutely ashamed that he had sinned as he had. He lowered his eyes, sensing the hopeless anger building in his friend. When the last drop of fluid had been consumed, he lowered the flexibag and set it aside.

“You should not have done this,” he heard Cree croak. “You knew better, Iyan.”

He could not look at his friend, but lifted his head and looked at the two women. The woman who had given her blood to feed the Reaper was staring at him. She had heard the low exchange and was coming toward them.

“Do not let her,” Cree ordered. “Not now.”

McGregor stepped away from the gurney and placed himself between the Reaper and the woman. He held up a hand. “He will Transition soon,” he told them. “I must have a place to...”

Caitlin’s eyes went wide in her suddenly pale face. “Oh, sweet Mary!” she exclaimed, cutting him off. Her attention flew to Cree then shot back to McGregor. “We have a containment cell.”

“Then have it readied,” McGregor said softly, his conscience pricking him as he looked down into the woman’s fearful eyes. Despite his dislike of her, he knew he had done a terrible thing.

Caitlin hurried to the Com-Link and was speaking urgently, giving orders to the security team. Lisa had

backed against the bulkhead, not knowing why she felt so keenly unsettled, but sensing Caitlin’s fear and taking it as her own.

“I’ll carry him wherever he needs to go,” McGregor said, slipping his arms under Cree’s shoulders and knees.

“This way,” Caitlin said breathlessly, leading the way to the elevator. She barely glanced at Cree so therefore did not see the bright red gleam from his fierce eyes as they settled on her. “I’ll show you...”

“No!” McGregor was quick to deny. “Just tell me. Believe me when I tell you that you do not wish to be anywhere near this warrior when he goes into Transition!”

From what Caitlin already knew of the Reaper, she knew that to be true. Giving instructions on how to reach the containment cell, she stood back and watched as McGregor carried his friend into the elevator and the doors shushed closed.

“I am sorry, Khier,” McGregor said, lowering his gaze to his friend as the elevator lowered.

Cree said nothing for he could feel the creature inside him beginning to stir. He had to try to keep it at bay until McGregor was out of way of any danger. He only hoped he was strong enough to do that. As angry as he was with his boyhood friend, he feared he would pulverize Iyan McGregor if given the chance.

Chapter Six

“We cannot allow them to resume their journey,” Iyan told his First Officer via the Vid-Com at his wrist. He was speaking quietly so the Terran crewmembers would not hear.

“He is going to be very angry at you, Iyan,” Nyndham Dak warned.

Iyan sighed. “He already is and when he comes out of Transition, I may be his next meal!”

Nyndham ignored the remark for he knew nothing that side of the Abyss would make Khiershon harm Iyan McGregor. “I can cripple their ship,” the First Officer said. “By our standards, it is a primitive piece of space flotsam.”

“By our standards,” Iyan scoffed. “Every ship we have has been put together piecemeal, Dak, from scrap we’ve gathered all over this gods-be-damned galaxy.” He spat out a choice Diabolusian curse. “By our standards, my hairy arse! This ship could run rings around the best of our fleet.”

“So,” Nyndham snapped, “we relieve them of it.”

McGregor was sitting slumped against the door to the containment cell. Now and again, the loud bellows of rage coming from Khiershon Cree and the heavy thumps of fury battering the door made him tense. He had a wicked headache and Cree’s howls of frustration at being confined were intensifying the pain in McGregor’s temples.

“Iyan?” Nyndham questioned. “Do we relieve them of the ship or not?”

“That was a foregone conclusion,” Iyan grated. “This is a Medivac ship and the supplies on board are

worth their weight in gold.”

“What do we do with the crew?”

Iyan shrugged. “That’s up to Khier.”

“Nice of you to let him make at least one decision, McGregor,” Nyndham commented dryly.

“She asked for it!” Iyan defended.

“No, she did not,” the First Officer disagreed. “You stepped in deep foig this time and he isn’t going to let you clean your boot off that easily, my friend.”

Iyan knew that to be a truth so remained quiet. When it was obvious to Nyndham that the Captain had turned uncommunicative, the First Officer terminated the Vid-com link and set about making plans to take over the Terran ship.

“McGregor!” Cree howled and the doors behind Iyan’s back trembled with the vibration of the Reaper’s hits.

“I made a mistake,” Iyan acknowledged and flinched as the savage pounding on the containment cell walls made it perfectly clear his friend thought so, too.

Caitlin was notpleased when she found Iyan McGregor striding toward her. He was flanked by two of the Orion’s security officers but she couldn’t help but wonder if the men would be any help if McGregor intended to attack her.

“He is awake and wishes to speak with you,” McGregor stated, his voice devoid of inflection. He wasn’t looking at her, but at a spot just above her head. “I am to tell you that I am sorry for what I did and to ask for your pardon.”

“What did you do, McGregor?”

The pale blue eyes shifted to Caitlin for a second then leapt away. “He will tell you, Lady.”

The perverse imp that lived inside Caitlin’s Celtic soul did an aggravated little hop on her temper, shrieked, and prodded the Healer with a sharp, bony finger. “Don’t let him off that easy, Cait! ”

“I am asking you what you did, Captain,” Caitlin insisted. “I prefer you tell me.” Her lips twitched. “Unless you’re too ashamed to admit your mistake. Then I’ll understand.”

Iyan McGregor-like all the warriors of his clan-considered himself to be a man of honor. When challenged, he met the contest with deliberation and steady purpose. As soon as the Terran woman’s words left her lips, his own temper soared and he lowered his heated gaze to hers.

“Reapers are highly-trained assassins,” he said, his eyes drilling into hers. “Any blood they consume is encrypted into their genetic makeup and bookmarked. This is how a Reaper is able to locate a target. One drop of the target’s blood is all it takes for him to home in on the object of termination and find her.” His lips eased back in a taunting smile. “No matter where that target goes in the universe, she will never be able to hide from Khiershon Cree. He will follow her bloodscent until he finds her.”

Caitlin paled. “And you knew this,” she whispered.

“Aye,” he whispered back. “I knew it.”

There was something in the way he said those words, an inflection, that caught Caitlin’s full attention. She stared back at him, seeing a tiny flame of uncertainty leap to life in his gaze before he tamped it. She cocked her head to one side and regarded him.

“And he is furious with you for having done this, isn’t he, Captain?” she asked.

McGregor stiffened, but did not answer.

“Isn’t he?” she prodded.

A muscle began to tick in the Captain’s jaw and when he replied, his teeth were clenched. “He is...not happy with what I did,” he admitted.

She could have humbled the man even more, making him confess that his friend was more than just unhappy; but Caitlin had dealt with prideful men all her life and had found the best way to handle them was to circumvent their egos.

“Your apology is accepted,” she stated, “and the situation, if not forgotten, is forgiven, Captain. Thank you for your honesty. We need never discuss the matter again.”

McGregor frowned, unsure of her purpose. He opened his mouth to speak, but she stepped around him and started down the corridor.

“He is in sickbay?” she asked over her shoulder.

The Captain’s frown deepened. He cast a questioning glance to one of the security men who shrugged.

“To her, the incident is settled, Captain. My suggestion would be to go forward as though nothing had happened.”

“No woman lets bygones be bygones,” McGregor snapped.

“That one does,” the security man replied and held out his hand to indicate McGregor was to proceed.

As he stomped down the corridor in the Healer’s wake, McGregor’s confusion gave way to the absolute surety that he had met a formidable enemy in the person of the diminutive Terran woman.

Caitlin was shiveringas she walked to the sickbay. The mere thought of an alien being such as Cree being able to track her across time and space was terrifying. That he was an assassin had not been made clear in the scroll they had found. The writing had labeled him a beast of some kind; but it had not stated he was a cold-blooded killer created and designed to track and terminate people.

The first person Caitlin encountered as she entered sickbay was Lisa Mahon. “I need to talk to you,” Lisa said urgently, taking Caitlin’s arm.

“What is it?”

“Hush,” Lisa warned and led Caitlin into the lab where Helen Bryan, Cathy Atherton, Pat Rasey, Barb Fuller, and Marti Holloway, the Orion’s Maintenance Chief, were already gathered.

“Did you see any of our men on your way here?” Lisa asked, closing the door to the lab behind them.

“No,” Caitlin answered, “but I...”

“That’s because none of our men are on board the Orion,” Helen informed her.

“What?” Caitlin gasped.

“All the men are gone and the seven of us are the only women on board,” Marti stated.

Caitlin’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious!”

“Serious as a heart attack! The men started disappearing about an hour ago, then the women vanished,” Cathy explained. “I’ve done a diagnostic of the entire ship and we’re it, Cait.”

“Just us and them,” confirmed Lisa.

Caitlin shook her head in denial. “No, that can’t be. There were two S.P.s with McGregor when he came to find me. They...”

“I’ll wager next month’s credits they ain’t on this ship now,” Helen told her.

“Then where are they?” Caitlin questioned.

“Maybe floating around somewhere out there,” Lisa snorted jerking a thumb over her shoulder to indicate space.

“You think they’re dead?” Caitlin shook her head. “No, I don’t...”

The door to the lab shushed open and the women shrieked, scrambling across the room and away from whatever threat had presented itself. They shrieked again as the two side doors of the lab slid back to reveal two men they’d never seen before.

“What are you doing in here?” McGregor demanded as he pushed past the unknown men who had opened the main lab door. His intense scrutiny settled on Caitlin. “Why are you not tending to Cree?”

“Where are our men?” Caitlin flung at him.

“You’re looking at them,” McGregor told her. “Now get out there and see to him!” With that said, he walked back into sickbay.

“You’re looking at them?” Caitlin questioned, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Caitlin, do something!” Helen sang, grabbing Caitlin’s arm.

Her knees weak, her heartbeat out of control, Caitlin shook off her friend’s hand and practically ran from the room.

McGregor wasbending over Cree, holding a cup to the Reaper’s lips as Caitlin stormed up to them. “Where are our men?” she shouted.

“Lower you’re voice, woman!” McGregor ordered. “He is in pain!”

“You’re going to be in a lot worse pain if you don’t tell me where our men are!” Caitlin threw at him.

“Woman!” McGregor snarled, “if you do not...”

“Stop!” Cree whispered and he snaked out his hand to grab McGregor’s wrist.

McGregor stilled immediately, but turned an angry look to his friend. “Khiershon, she...”

“Be quiet,” Cree said. His voice was little more than a breath of sound and he winced as he spoke. The pain in his throat was so great he closed his eyes to will it away.

“See what you’ve done?” McGregor asked Caitlin. “The man is in agony and you have-”

“Shut up, Iyan!”

McGregor’s mouth closed with an audible click. One look at his clenched jaw, tightly curled fists and rigid shoulders was enough for Caitlin to know the man was on the verge of committing mayhem if not out and out murder.

“I just want to know where our men are,” she said, her words directed at Cree. The Healer in her made note of the tension on his handsome face, the beads of sweat on his brow and upper lip, and the intensity of his gaze.

“They are safe,” Cree told her. “Do not worry.”

“I am responsible for their lives. I can not help but worry,” she replied.

“Do you dare question his honor, woman?” McGregor seethed.

“Iyan.” Cree sighed. “She is not questioning my honor. She is stating her position.”

“Khiershon...”

“Leave us,” Cree ordered and when McGregor began shaking his head in denial of the request, the Reaper turned the full force of his displeasure on the man. “Now, McGregor.”

Knowing it would do him no good to argue when Cree used that particular tone of voice, Iyan bowed his head for a moment in acknowledgement of Cree’s authority then pivoted on his heel and stomped off.

“He is an aneurysm waiting to blow,” said Caitlin.

“Serenians are like that,” Cree told her.

She adjusted the covers over his naked chest. “My men?” she prompted.

“They are on board The Ravenwind,” he replied.

“For what purpose?”

“We need your ship,” he replied. “Your men would have posed a threat to my crew. A threat we do not need at the moment.”

“They are under arrest?” she asked.

“They are being detained,” he said, reaching up to rub at the pain in his right temple.

“And the seven of us women?” she asked, her heart thudding. “Why did you keep us here?”

“Not for the reason your Helen is hoping for,” he said, smiling.

“No rape, ravaging, and pillaging, then?” she countered and could not keep from smiling as well.

“Not unless you ask us nicely,” he replied.

“Hostages?”

“In part,” he agreed, “but you are a Healer and we have need of a Healer. The other females have talents that are useful, as well.”

Marti was an engineer; Helen was a communications specialist; Cathy was systems; Pat was a weapons specialist, Barb was a Jill of all trades and Lisa was a lab technician. It made sense in a strange sort of way.

“No harm will come to you, Lady,” he promised. “On my honor as a Reaper I swear this to you.”

“I’m not worried about myself,” she lied for she was terrified of what might happen to her. “But I have an obligation to make sure-”

“You saved my life,” he said and would have taken her hand had she not stepped out of his reach. Hurt shifted across his face. “Why do you deny me?”

“You know why,” she said and moved further back.

“Do you think I would harm you in any way?”

“What is it you want?” she forced out. “If it’s the ship, just take it. Put us on that planetoid back there where we found you.”

“Montyne Vex.”

“Whatever it is,” she snapped. “Just leave us a communication device and enough food and we’ll...”

“I can do that. I can leave your crew on the planetoid,” he said and watched the relief flood her eyes, then snatched it away by saying: “But you I will take with me, Lady.”

Chapter Seven

Iyan pacedthe corridor outside the sickbay and glared murderously at the floor. He walked with his hands clasped at the small of his back as though he were at parade rest. When he turned, he did so in the military fashion: stopping, putting his right foot behind him, and then pivoting on the toe of his boot. For those who were accustomed to watching this display of precise marching, it was a sign the Serenian was highly agitated.

Or enraged at something Khiershon Cree had set into motion.

“You can not be his conscience, Iyan,” Nyndham remarked casually as the Captain passed him on the return leg of one of his marching circuits.

“Somebody has to be.”

“This was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Not with a Terran!”

“His Bloodsire took a Terran female to mate,” said Nyndham quietly.

“Reapers should not mate.”

“You would have him alone his entire life, Iyan?”

McGregor stopped pacing. “He has me!” he flung at the First Officer.

“Aye, and when was the last time you satisfied his carnal needs, Milord?”

Iyan McGregor’s stony silence made Nyndham arch a thick black brow.

“Not a Terran,” McGregor finally spat and commenced pacing again.

“I think he did not choose her, Iyan,” Dakin Hesar submitted. “I believe the Fates chose her for him.”

“So do I,” Sinjun Wynth, The Ravenwind’s navigator, decreed.

“Believe what you will,” McGregor decreed. “I would rather he mate with a Diabolusian warthoglet than take that Terran viper to his breast! She will be the death of...”

McGregor barely had time to move out of the way as the woman in question came running from sickbay. He slammed into the wall, staring after her as she fled. “What the hell did you do?” he shouted and spun around to enter the sickbay, shoving Wynth.

Cree was struggling to sit up, the bandages wrapped around his lower chest and belly restricting his movements. He flinched as Iyan hurried to him and grabbed his arm.

“What did the bitch do?” McGregor queried, his attention going over every visible inch of his friend.

The Reaper sighed. “Iyan, she did nothing.” He gasped as he slid off the bed and his bare feet-cut and burned as they were-touched the cold floor.

“You are in pain! Do not tell me she did nothing!” Without giving his friend a chance to reply, McGregor scooped him up and laid him down on the bed again.

“I was getting up,” Cree said.

“You are staying put!” Iyan insisted. He adjusted the pillow under Cree’s head then swiped a fallen lock of sable hair from the Reaper’s eyes. He laid his hand on Cree’s shoulder. “Give the parasite time to heal you, Khier.”

“Go after her,” Cree ordered. “Bring her back.”

“Khier...” Iyan groaned.

Cree reached up and covered Iyan’s hand with his own. “I have claimed her; she is mine. Go get her and bring her back to me. She has to be made to understand.”

“You are making a mistake.”

“My mistake to make.”

Minutes passed while the men regarded one another, then Iyan’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Is this is what you wish...”

“This is what I wish,” the Reaper said.

McGregor lifted his chin. “Then I will fetch her for you.”

“Make your peace with her, Iyan,” Khiershon Cree asked.

Iyan curled his right hand into a fist and placed it against his heart. “I will do as you ask.”

There were strangemen in control of the Orion, yet none of them spared Caitlin a single look as she walked past. The oddity of them not paying her any attention put a chill down her spine. She was reminded of an old video where a space station had been overrun with mindless automatons intent only on the task at hand. She shuddered and slapped her palm against the entry pad of her quarters.

“You are upset,” the Com-Link acknowledged as Caitlin rushed into the room. “There has been no harm done to the crew.”

“We have been taken over, Coni!” She threw herself on her bunk, drew her knees into the protection of her arms and sat there rocking back and forth in agitation. “And it’s my fault for having allowed that...that...man on board!”

“You are referring to Captain McGregor?”

“What have I done?” Caitlin breathed. “What have I set into motion?”

A delicate chime announced a visitor at her door and Caitlin snapped her head up. “No entry!” she yelled.

There was a soft thud: the sound of a security lock falling into place within the titanium structure of the door.

“Secured,” the Com-Link stated, “but you are being hailed, Sweeting.”

“Stop calling me that!” Caitlin shouted, grabbing a pillow to throw it at the offending wall panel in which the Com-Link was housed. “Don’t call me that again. Do you hear me?”

“Understood.” The Com-Link’s normally soothing voice took on a curt, cold, and machine-like quality. “But you are being hailed, Dr. Kelly.”

“No connection,” Caitlin barked. “Terminate!”

There was a click as the Com-Link was turned off.

Caitlin knew who was outside her door. She could feel him standing there, angry, annoyed, and seething with the desire to punish her for defying him. She sat huddled on the bed, her eyes glued to the door, waiting for him to respond to her defiance.

She didn’t have long to wait.

The blast peeled the door panel back on its pneumatic lock and the metal folded inward like a rose bud relaxing its petals. A carbon stain left a black ring around the opening and was still smoldering as Iyan McGregor stepped through.

Before she could scramble for the weapon in the drawer beside her bed, he was over her, pinning her to the bed, his chest pressing against her back, his long legs effectively weighing her own down.

“Do not fight me,” he said in a tired voice. “I will only have to endure another talking-to from Khiershon and I’ve had more than enough of those for one solar passing, Lady.”

“Get off me!” she hissed, hating his breath in her ear.

He pulled open the drawer, extracted the weapon then flipped off her and sprang to the floor.

“Look what you did to my door!”

“Had you not tried to keep me from entering, there would have been no harm done to your door.”

“Get out!” she screamed so loudly Iyan jumped, covering his ears to contain the ringing.

McGregor had no choice as he saw it. He did what he knew was right.

Without another word, he reached down, grabbed the Terran woman’s arm, jerked her toward him, hefted her over his shoulder and-with her kicking and screaming and pounding his back with her fists-climbed through the hole in her door.

“I am going to kill you!” she screeched, clawing at his thighs.

“No you aren’t,” he said grimly as he strode heavily down the corridor, “but you may well be the death of me!”

Helen, Lisa, Pat, Barb, Marti, and Cathy sat quietly at one of the dining tables in the mess hall. Six silent, imposing warriors who barely looked at them had escorted them here. The women had no way of knowing the males had been ordered not to make eye contact or to show interest in the women in any way.

“I heard their First Officer telling one of the men that our crew is to be taken back to the planetoid where we found him,” Helen whispered.

“And left there?” Lisa gasped.

“Aye, but with food and provisions and a distress signal,” added Helen.

“Even so, that’ll go over big with Caitlin,” muttered Cathy.

“It was her idea,” said Barb.

Marti looked at Cathy. “Why? To protect them?”

“Probably,” Pat agreed.

“Well, who’s gonna protect us?” Lisa demanded. She nudged her chin toward the warriors at the far end of the mess hall. “Would any of you like to tangle with them?”

The women turned their heads in unison and stared at the hulking warriors.

“Not me,” Marti answered.

An enraged shriek that could have come from none other than Caitlin Kelly brought the women to their feet. They would have gone to investigate, but the warriors moved like lightning across the room, barring their departure.

“Lady, sit,” the tallest of the warriors ordered Helen, the highest-ranking woman among them.

“She is my friend!” Helen growled. “She is-”

“In no danger,” the warrior insisted. “He has chosen her and she will be safe.”

“Chosen her for what?” asked Marti only to have the other women turn knowing eyes to her.

Marti’s eyes widened. “Oh, lord!”

“That can’t be good,” said Lisa.

“Maybe it is,” Helen whispered. “You know what they say about leading a man around by his...”

“Lady, be quiet,” the warrior said, but his eyes flashed with humor.

“Hearing like a bat’s,” said Cathy.

“But possessed of the love organ of a bull,” the warrior returned.

Cathy arched a thick brow. “Oh, yeah?”

The warrior merely grinned. His gaze swept over Cathy with appreciation then settled somewhere over her head.

Pat shook her head. “This ought to be interesting.”

Chapter Eight

Khiershon hurtso badly his teeth chattered, but he would not ask the silent woman sitting rigidly across the room to help him. He dug his fingernails into his palm, relishing the distraction of the pain gouging into his flesh and ignored the blood dripping onto the white sheet.

Iyan stared moodily at the computer screen before him, hissing now and then as something angered or annoyed him. There was a look on his face that boded ill for anyone foolish enough to interrupt him at his task.

Other than the occasional click of the computer keyboard as Iyan typed in his questions, the room was still. Khiershon’s groan-slight as it was-brought McGregor’s head up.

“Are you in need of something, Khier?” Iyan asked, his hands paused over the keyboard.

Cree shook his head and felt sweat running into his eyes. He put up a shaky hand to wipe away the sting.

“I think he needs more blood,” said Caitlin.

Iyan frowned. “Is that so, Khiershon?” He pushed back from the computer terminal and went to stand over his friend. “Do you need Sustenance?”

Cree knew it was too soon to take blood from the Terran woman. She would be made weak and ill if he were to drink from her at this time. His concern for her was such that he shook his head, denying that he was in need.

“What do you need then?” Iyan asked, his brow furrowed. He did not like the paleness of Cree’s flesh nor the heavy sweat dotting his friend’s face.

“He’s afraid he’ll do me harm if he takes any more blood from me,” Caitlin said and saw both men turn to look at her: one with annoyance, the other with surprise.

Iyan looked down at Cree. “Is this so? Are you concerned for her safety?”

“I am all right,” Cree forced out. He nudged his chin toward the computer “Go back to your learning, McGregor.”

“He’s lying.” Caitlin stood and walked to the gurney. “He’s not all right. I’ve been watching him act like a wounded dog.”

“Wolf,” McGregor corrected. “Dearg Duls are more wolf-”

“She doesn’t need to know that.” Cree tried to push himself up on the gurney, but the pain was too great and he had to clamp his teeth together to keep from crying out.

“Men are such stubborn creatures.” Caitlin reached for the cuff of her jumpsuit.

“No, milady.” Cree shook his head.

“You need it,” she said as she rolled her sleeve up.

“No, I do not!”

“Let the woman serve you, Cree,” said Iyan. “That is why the gods created the worrisome creatures!”

“Go to hell,” hissed Caitlin. She would have put her wrist to Cree’s mouth, but he turned his head away.

“No!” he snarled.

“You are in pain.”

“As though such mattered to you,” scoffed Iyan. “It is because of your useless hide that he is hurting!”

Caitlin spun around; her hand connected viciously with McGregor’s cheek. “Shut up, you chauvinistic pig! I am a Healer! It is my job to ease pain, not cause it!”

Iyan, staggered by the blow, stumbled against the bulkhead. He hit the titanium wall, shook his head to clear it of the ringing, and roared like a bull as he shot toward her. He had every intention of beating her senseless-and would have-had Cree not bellowed his denial.

“Touch her ever and I will tear the flesh from your bones and suck out the marrow, McGregor!”

Iyan was brought up short by the enraged threat and skidded to a halt, his body so close to Caitlin’s he could feel her heat and smell the intoxicating scent of her womanhood. His eyes flared and he stepped back, real fear on his handsome face.

Caitlin shuddered as she heard the vow in those brutal words and saw the effect they had on a man who was considered the Reaper’s friend. In that moment, she understood there would be no turning back. She belonged to Khiershon Cree whether she liked it or not.

“Go,” Cree whispered, the pain so great he was trembling from it. “Leave me. You pose too much temptation.”

The Healer’s heart within Caitlin Kelly ached for her patient. He was not of her world-and if truth were told-not even human, but his suffering was not something she could watch without trying to help. With her heart racing in her chest, she reached out a trembling hand and laid it on his shoulder.

“Lady, don’t!”

“You have claimed me,” she said in a soft voice, “therefore I am yours.”

Iyan turned to stare at her, just as Cree did.

“If that is true,” she continued, watching the Reaper’s golden eyes flicker with intense agony, “then it is my right...” She shook her head. “No, it is my duty to do all I can to care for you.” She saw the denial forming on his lips and put her fingers across them to silence him. “Just as you would care for me if the need arose.” She turned her hand so the backs of her fingers smoothed over his mouth. “Am I wrong, Cree?”

He held her gaze, searching her eyes for the disgust he’d once seen there. Looking for the fear he knew was lurking somewhere in the green depths. But all he saw was a gentleness, a compassion he had never

found in a female’s look before-not even Raphaella’s-and that one bore him some small measure of affection. “Let me help you,” whispered Caitlin.

Her flesh was warm against his lips. The smell of her skin was sweet and infinitely alluring. He wanted to taste her, to run his rough tongue over the silkiness of her arm.

“Drink,” she said on a breath as soft as down and laid her left wrist to his lips.

Cree opened his lips, flicked his tongue over Caitlin’s wrist then gently sank his teeth into her flesh.

Iyan turned away, for he had seen the defeat welling in Cree’s eyes. It was not seemly to watch a leader’s capture by the enemy. He understood well that the Reaper had just handed his life into the female’s keeping. There was in the silent gaze between them something McGregor did not understand and could not stop. He had seen that same defeat forming in the woman’s eyes and knew she was as stunned by the emotion as was Iyan.

Without looking back, Iyan left them alone.

Caitlin closed her eyes as her blood flowed into the Reaper’s mouth. Her free hand had somehow come to rest in the thick dark curls of his hair and she stroked him much as she would a loving pet lapping at her hand. She began to feel lightheaded and slightly nauseous. She swayed and a small a groan of discomfort passed her lips.

She never felt him lifting her to lay her gently beside him on the gurney. Deep in weak slumber, she lay cradled in his protective arms, her head on his bare shoulder. Her injured wrist was in his hand, her slender fingers splayed in the thick mat of hair on his chest, his thumb easing over the twin bite marks where his fangs had pierced the flesh.

She did not feel the steady beat of his conquered heart.

Nor the gentle kiss he placed upon her brow.

Chapter Nine

Caitlin woke tofind herself enfolded in the Reaper’s strong arms. His breath fanned the hair at her temple and from its cadence, she knew he was sleeping deeply. For a moment, the old fear surged up her throat but when he moaned in his sleep and his arms tightened around her in a protective way, the fear evaporated. She relaxed against his side, breathing in the scent of him and was not displeased with the sensation it caused. His male odor was very pleasant.

She raised her head so she could look at his profile and felt a strange sensation in the pit of her stomach as she gazed at him. He was extraordinarily handsome; the most beautiful man she had ever seen. With his sable hair spread out over the pillow, his thick lashes fanning the ruddy glow of his high cheekbones, he reminded her of paintings of the Greek gods of eons ago. Her gaze moved down to his thickly furred chest with the hard ridges of prime muscle and she ached to run her hand over his flat abdomen.

“Touch me in any way you wish, milady,” he said and Caitlin let out a squeal of surprise. Her gaze leapt to his face and she found him grinning.

Her face infused with heat, Caitlin pushed against him, wanting to be as far away from his knowing smile

as she could get.

“You find me only a fraction as attractive as I find you,” he said, refusing to allow her to leave him.

“Stop reading my thoughts!” She wiggled to get free.

“Keep that up, milady, and you’ll give rise to another problem,” he warned.

Caitlin stilled, knowing full well what he meant. Though she would not look at him, she felt his attention wandering over her. Her breathing became shallow, quick, and when he lifted his hand to cup her cheek, she closed her eyes, groaning at his soft touch.

“Why do you fight this attraction between us, Cait?”

“I am afraid.”

“There is no reason to fear me.”

Hesitantly, she raised her eyes to meet his. “It isn’t you I fear,” she whispered.

He searched her gaze for a long while, then nodded. “You fear the feelings growing inside you.”

“You aren’t human,” she accused and bit her lip, not having meant to hurt him or insult him.

“No,” he agreed, “I am not. I am Dearg Duls, but I am as human as I need to be, when I need to be. Is it that you fear the beast within me?”

When she remained silent, he lifted her face, lowered his lips to hers and placed a gentle kiss on her mouth. There was no need for him to ask what bothered her for her blood was singing through his veins and he knew her mind as well as he knew his own.

“The beast within me loves you as much as the man within me,” he said against her mouth.

Caitlin turned her head. How could this alien love her? With his intoxicating kisses plying her lips, it was hard to think. There were issues that needed to be settled in her own mind and with him so near, his presence so intense beside her, she could not think straight.

“What is there to think about?” he asked.

“Please don’t do that!”

Khiershon frowned. “I can no more stop reading your thoughts than I can stop the breath from entering my lungs, Caitlin. I can not control the reception of your thoughts any more than I can control the air currents.”

“Try,” she insisted, pushing out of his arms and surprised that he allowed her to break free of his hold.

He watched her as she sat up on the gurney and swung her legs to the floor. “Slowly,” he warned as she made to stand.

Caitlin felt lightheaded as soon as her feet touched the floor and she sat down again, putting a hand to her head.

“I may have taken more than I should have, milady,” he admitted and laid his hand on her hip. “Lie with me awhile longer.” He caressed her waist. “Until you are stronger.”

With a long sigh of tiredness, Caitlin stretched out beside him, shocked at the way her body seemed to graft automatically to his from shoulder to hip to thigh.

“Your body wants me even if you do not.”

She sighed again, knowing she’d never get used to him reading her thoughts. She made a mental vow to do all she could to block her thoughts.

Khiershon Cree chuckled.

“It isn’t funny.”

“Aye, it is. You are fighting a losing battle, beloved.”

“I am a private person.” She scrunch her shoulder away from contact with his chest.

“As am I.”

“Then stop reading my thoughts.”

It was Cree’s turn to sigh, but it was a breath of sound full of acceptance of her wishes. “I’ll try,” he said.

They lay there in companionable silence for fifteen minutes or so, and then Caitlin arched her neck so she could look into his face. “What exactly is it you want from me, Cree?”

Khiershon’s dark brows went up. “Have I not made that clear?”

Caitlin shook her head. “No, you have not.”

He thought for a moment then he frowned. “The gods put you here for me, Caitlin Kelly.”

“Really?” she asked in a droll tone. “That’s the only purpose I have in life?”

“That and to save lives,” he responded. “As you saved mine.”

“Anyone could have happened by and heard that distress signal, Cree.”

Khiershon smiled. “There was no distress signal, Caitlin. That was me calling you.” When she started to protest that explanation, he laid a finger across her lips. “Three hours before, a mining transport flew past, but I did not hail them. I was waiting for you.”

“You didn’t know I was out there!”

“No, but the gods did. They sent you to me, Caitlin. Never doubt that.”

She stared at him. “You were dying. You let that transport fly right past you without-”

“My body would have ceased to function, aye,” he said, “but I would not have died. The parasite would not have allowed that to happen.”

Caitlin shuddered, remembering the evil thing that was inside him.

“It is only as evil as the host will allow it to be, beloved.”

What he had said slithered in her mind. “You can’t die?” she whispered.

“Reapers live well over one hundred, Caitlin,” he told her. “The only way to kill us is by fire.”

“Those women didn’t know that?” she asked. She thought of the dead women in the hold: the women who had tortured him.

Khiershon drew in a long breath then exhaled slowly. “I think they forgot about it their rush to get me to tell them where Raphaella is hiding. Lucky for me they forgot to seal the entrance to the cave system as well else you would never have found me.”

“Raphaella. The Amazeen princess,” Caitlin said and heard the jealousy in her voice.

The Reaper turned his head so she could not see his smile of satisfaction. “She is an ally and nothing more, Caitlin.”

“That’s not what I read in Kaelia Kahmal’s journal.”

“Kaelia,” he said on a long breath. “By the gods that bitch was meaner than a cornered ghoret.”

“A what?”

“A viper,” he supplied. “The most poisonous reptile on my world.” He cocked one shoulder. “At least to humans. They call it a two-step. When it bites you, you have time to take two steps then you’re dead before you hit the ground.”

“That doesn’t give you much time for an antidote.”

“The venom is so powerful and so fast-acting, there is no antidote for it.”

“Can it hurt you?”

“Its bite only makes a Reaper wish he was dead.”

Caitlin shuddered. Snakes were a private nightmare for her. “Tell me about these women,” she said, wanting to take her mind off thoughts of reptiles.

“The Amazeen? What do you wish to know?”

“If I understand correctly the concept of Dearg Duls, your race is similar to Earth vampire legends.”

“We have a common ancestry, aye.”

“Then are Amazeen related in some way to the myth of the Amazons on my home world?”

Khiershon shrugged. “I know little about Amazeen history,” he admitted. “Perhaps they are descendants. What do you know of your Amazons?”

Caitlin tried to remember her college anthropology courses. The subject of myths and legends hadn’t interested her all that much. What little she remembered about the Amazons she had learned from her roommate who was a lesbian.

“They were women warriors so vicious the Greek army feared them. They were said to have descended from Ares, the god of war, and that they ruled their society with an iron hand.”

“Amazeens are a brutal, warlike tribe,” said Khiershon. “They enslave the males of their world, forcing them to perform tasks assigned to the women of other worlds: cooking, cleaning, caring for the female children.”

“The Amazons mated with the men of neighboring tribes but any male offspring from the union were either slain or sent back to their fathers.”

“There are no male children on Amazeen. Grown males are kept as slaves for mating purposes, but their arms and legs are mutilated to weaken them so they can not challenge the Amazeen’s power.”

“You were not treated like that,” said Caitlin, grateful such torture had not happened.

“Aye, but I was. My parasite healed me quickly. Lucky for me they never got a chance to do to me what they did to Iyan.”

Caitlin looked up, hoping to gain some insight into this man’s angry cohort. “What did they do to him?”

He pondered the wisdom of telling her; worried that Iyan would be even angrier should Caitlin have such damaging knowledge of him. For a moment, he was sorry he’d brought up the subject, then thought perhaps allowing her a glimpse of Iyan’s tormented soul would go a long way in making allies of the two.

“You are a Healer,” he began. “You know of SRY.”

“The male determining protein?” At his nod, she said, “In mammals, the primary step in male sex determination is the initiation of testis development which depends on the expression of the Y-Chromosome-linked testis determining gene, SRY.”

“Aye. Amazeen wish to prevent male births when they mate. They have found a way to do this.”

“To kill the male fetus in utero?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Despite their willingness to inflict pain in others, they are not especially fond of it for themselves. Abortion in any form might cause a degree of discomfort they wish to avoid.

The only two pains they willingly tolerate are the removal of their right breast...”

“To better wield a bow,” Caitlin put in. “Like the Amazons of Earth.”

“Aye.”

“And the other pain would be to give birth to another Amazeen.”

He nodded. “Precisely so.”

“How do they make sure they only have female children? Our world has been trying to come up with a sure-fire way for years, but we still don’t have one that is foolproof.”

“There is an injection they give their young ones before the girl reaches menarche to assure that her immune system is prepared to fertilize only those eggs with the female gene. The injection is repeated about a month before she mates for the first time and then a booster is given every ten years.”

Caitlin felt a chill go through her. “What kind of injection?”

Khiershon looked away from her. “Their immunologists take the testicles from a captive, pulverize them gently, then freeze the results. The injection comes from this pulp.”

“They emasculated McGregor?” she whispered.

“Aye,” he replied. “There have been nine females born of his essence.”

“No wonder he hates me.”

“He dislikes all women.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Nor do I, but he must learn that not all females are like the Amazeen.”

“As all males are not like the Reapers?”

Khiershon smiled. “All men are Reapers at heart, beloved. Some are just more adept at hiding the beast within them.”

Chapter Ten

“It makes nodifference,” said Iyan.

“She understands your anger,” Khiershon told him.

Iyan locked his blue gaze on his friend. “There is no way any female can understand how I feel, Khier.”

“There are tribes on my home world who mutilate their females in a like manner,” Caitlin explained. She refused to flinch as McGregor’s stare settled hatefully on her. “The girl’s clitoris is removed and her vaginal opening sewn shut. Only her husband-generally a male many years older than her-has the right to breed with her and he must force himself through the stitching. It is a painful...”

“Why are you telling me this?” Iyan demanded.

“So you will know that men are not the only ones who have suffered such evil, Iyan,” Khiershon answered for Caitlin. “There is a woman on board this ship who has suffered so.”

“Barb knows how you feel and she is willing to talk with you...”

“You keep that bitch away from me!” Iyan shouted. “I have no need of any woman’s understanding! I’ve had enough female hands on me to last a lifetime!”

With that said, he pivoted and stalked off, leaving Caitlin to wonder if they had done the right thing in speaking to him.

“He’ll come around,” Khiershon suggested. “He’ll seek out your friend before the day is over.”

“You think so?” she asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

“I know he will. If for no other reason than to see which of them suffered the most.” He chuckled. “That, too, is the Serenian way.”

Caitlin and theother women sat around the conference table. Each of them was deep in thought, their nerves stretched to the breaking point.

“How far are we from the anomaly?” asked Marti.

“He says within a day’s journey,” said Caitlin.

“If it’s out there, it’s not on any star map I’ve ever seen of this quadrant,” Marti protested.

“It’s there. It’s how the Rysalians found Earth in the first place. They use it as a portal into our side of the universe.”

“I’m assuming that’s a far piece from our little blue-green planet,” said Marti.

“Six months from their door to ours,” Caitlin replied.

“That’s all?” Pat exclaimed. “It took us over four years just to reach Pluto!”

“We don’t have their technological advances in space travel,” Lisa reminded the weapons specialist.

“Aye, we sure as hell don’t. Just what are we to do for fuel?” asked Barb. “Or has he given any thought to that slight problem? We have just enough to get to-”

“The Ravenwind will be right behind us through the wormhole. It will pass us and head for a planet called Chale. Once there, it will re-charge its engines then take on necessary fuel pods for us, bring them back to our ship and we’ll follow them to Chale.” Caitlin rubbed her forehead.

“And then what?” asked Helen.

“Then, our ship gets a major overhaul in some secret facility there,” Caitlin answered. “We will be retrofitted for a whole new fuel expulsion unit that will see us to our destination in half the time it takes for us to go from home to Saturn these days.”

“And then what?” Helen repeated.

“Then,” Caitlin said, her eyes dark with what to the others looked like worry, “we help Khiershon and his man liberate his brothers.”

“From where?” asked Lisa.

“From a place called the Titaness,” Caitlin replied. “It’s some kind of maximum security fortress on Rysalia Prime.”

“Oh, I see,” Marti said in a pleasant voice. “We go the impossible mission route, eh? Just waltz in there, extract some prisoners, weapons blasting, boogie out of there, beam back to our ship, and scat like the demons of hell are hot on our heels.” She arched a thick blond brow. “All that and never chip a nail or get a single run in our pantyhose.”

“Works for me,” Lisa said with a grin.

“This is serious, people,” snapped Caitlin.

“Seriously bizarre,” Helen commented.

“We aren’t trained for that sort of stuff, Caitlin!” Cathy protested. “Does he realize we are not a military unit?”

“He knows.”

“And is willing to risk our lives for his cause,” Pat mumbled. She was the only woman among them trained in physical combat. “How sweet of him.”

“He can’t go in there himself,” Caitlin said, not looking at the other women. “We are his only hope.”

“To do what?” Helen demanded.

Caitlin shrugged. “To save the lives of his brothers.”

“And just how are we to do that?” Marti grated.

Caitlin looked up at her and smiled tiredly. “We waltz in there, extract them, beam up, and scat.”

“Just like that?” Helen grunted.

“Just like that.”

“And what are those Amazeens supposed to be doing while we’re doing our femavenger routine?” Pat asked.

“They won’t be expecting us,” Caitlin hedged. “They don’t know about us.”

“Okay, so what difference does that make?” Helen prodded. “The telling point there is they don’t know us. How are we to get into their prison and free men I’m sure are well-guarded if we don’t have the proper credentials.”

“We will have,” Caitlin replied.

“From where?” Pat insisted.

“Leave that to us,” McGregor snarled from the doorway. When the women turned to look at him, they found him staring at Barb. “Lady, I would like a word with you.”

Having been apprised of the warrior’s situation, Barb nodded and stood. She caught Caitlin’s gaze as she turned and headed for the door.

Iyan’s right cheek jumped in what might pass for a smile for the forbidding man as Barb joined him. He stepped out of her way, indicating she was to precede him from the room.

“McGregor?” Caitlin called and found his frosty gaze locked on her. When he didn’t reply, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and then spoke to him in a soft, but firm, voice. “Treat her as the lady you called her.”

The warrior stiffened, his shoulders taut, his eyes narrowed. “I am well aware of how a lady is to be treated,” he snapped, pivoting on his heel. The women watched as he put a possessive hand to the small of Barb’s back as he escorted her down the corridor.

“That one could be a handful,” drawled Cathy.

“More than a handful could be painful.” Lisa giggled.

Caitlin laughed despite the deep concern that was making her as nervous as a green recruit on her first space mission. She slumped in the chair, closed her eyes, and shut out the crude remarks her female crew was making.

“What’s troubling you, Cait?” Helen asked, leaning toward her friend.

“This is so far beyond our experience,” Caitlin sighed. “I’m so afraid there is going to be real trouble ahead, Hel.”

“We’ve seen trouble before, my friend,” Helen reminded her.

“Not like this.” Caitlin opened her eyes and stared unseeingly across the conference room. “We were both insolated during the war, working inside buildings while our men folk fought and died. I saw the carnage of the battles up close, but I was never involved with the skirmishes.” She looked at Helen. “You were inside a bunker two miles inside the planet, protected even more so than the rest of us.”

“Pat saw some action.”

“Nothing that was life threatening.”

Helen shook her head. “No, but our lives are up for grabs every time we step foot inside one of these blazing candles.”

“I know.”

“And we gotta go some day.”

“Aye.”

“And we each took an oath to help mankind.”

“I’m afraid, Hel.”

“Yeah, well, me, too, but what will be will be.” The communications specialist shrugged. “And there’s nothing we can do to change what the gods have decreed for us.”

Khiershon Creelay listening to the conversation two decks below where he lay. He sensed Caitlin’s fear and it hurt him as no mental thought ever had. Still weak as he was, he could not go to her and take her in his arms, comfort her, and assure her all would be well. She knew nothing of the resistance forces in place on Chale as well as on Rysalia. He turned to his side, physical pain wracking his battered body, and as he did, a white-hot streak of agony shot down his spine. He cried out, gripping the cot so hard, the thin mattress ripped apart in his grasp.

“Captain?” the warrior left to guard Khiershon exclaimed as he hurried to his commander’s side. “What is it, sir?”

Cree was panting, sweat oozing from his face and chest. The force of the pain enveloping his body was so intense, he could barely draw breath, let alone answer.

The guard ran to the Com-Link. “Dr. Kelly, he’s in trouble! Hurry!” he yelled into the unit.

Caitlin’s head snapped up and she shot out of her chair like a rocket, Lisa fast on her heels.

Iyan frowned as he saw the Terran woman running down the corridor toward him as the elevator doors opened. He barely had time to move out of her way as she and another female plowed into the cage.

“Sickbay!” Caitlin shouted.

McGregor grabbed her arm. “What’s happened?”

“I don’t know!” Caitlin hissed, jerking free of his hold.

Before McGregor could ask anything else, the elevator stopped on the sickbay deck and the Terran woman shoved him out of the way and ran from the cage. He stumbled as the other woman slammed into his shoulder, spinning him around in a full circle as she made to follow the Healer. His jaw tight, his fists balled, he ran after them.

Caitlin was shocked to see the bright red infusing her patient’s face. He lay gasping for breath, his hands digging at his throat, his feet pushing against the mattress. His eyes were bulging, his handsome face set in rigid lines of agony.

“Khiershon!” she cried out, reaching for his arms. She tried pulling his hands away, sickened at the livid gouges in his flesh, but he was too strong.

McGregor shouldered her aside and grabbed the Reaper’s wrists. “Help me, Dockery!” he told the warrior. Between the two of them, they managed to drag Cree’s hands from his torn flesh. Iyan turned to Caitlin. “Don’t just stand there. Sedate him, woman!”

“I will not! It could....”

“Do it!” McGregor bellowed. “You can’t kill him!”

Caitlin flinched, but looked to Lisa. “You heard him!”

Lisa pivoted and ran to the medication unit.

“What’s causing this?” Caitlin asked, realizing she was trembling.

“N...no!” they heard Cree gasping. “N...no!”

McGregor shook his head. “I have no idea.” He was pale, his arms trembling as he and the guard kept Cree on the table. “Unless it something with his parasite.”

Lisa rushed back to the cot and slapped a syringe into Caitlin’s hand. “Domatripitol,” she reported. “100 milligrams.” Caitlin nodded and used the syringe like a dart to inject the med into Cree’s arm.

“No!” Cree screamed, then went limp, his head swiveling toward Caitlin.

She reached out to touch his cheek and gasped. “My God! He’s burning up!”

“Aye,” McGregor agreed. “I know.” He let go of Cree’s arm and looked down at his blistered palms. He lifted his hand and stared at the mark.

“How is that possible?” Lisa asked, seeing the blister.

“Burning,” Cree whispered, his voice a croaking sound.

Caitlin bent over him. “What?”

“They are burning my brothers,” said Cree.

“You can’t know that, Khier,” McGregor said softly. “You’re too far away from Rysalia to sense that.”

Cree’s words slurred as the potent sedative began to shut down his world. “Felt them, Iyan. Close by. Heat. Pain.”

“Not your brothers, my friend,” McGregor said, smoothing the hair from the Reaper’s sweat-slick

forehead. “They are all in the Titaness, remember?”

“Captain!” the Com-Link interrupted.

McGregor shook his head angrily. “Not now, Nyndham!” he ordered.

“A ship is fast approaching the wormhole, sir!” Nyndham reported from the bridge of The Ravenwind.

“We’ve cloaked both ships. Why are you worrying me with this now?” McGregor growled. “Those ridiculous Terran ships can not-”

“Not a Terran ship!” Nyndham broke in. “It’s an Amazeen LRSC!”

McGregor tensed. “Then blow the gods-be-damned bitch out of the sky!”

“Are you sure?” Nyndham asked.

“Aye, I’m sure. Blow it-”

“No,” Cree whispered, using the last of his dwindling strength to grab his friend’s arm. “Leave it.”

“The hell I will!” McGregor snapped. “And have it waiting for us on the other side of the wormhole to blow us out of the heavens?”

“Brother on board ship,” Cree mumbled then passed out.

“Captain?” Nyndham prompted. “What’s it to be?”

McGregor bit his lip. Khiershon would never forgive him if he issued the order to disintegrate the Amazeen ship and a Reaper was on board. He looked to Caitlin.

“My advice would be to let them go,” she said quietly.

“We don’t know there’s a Reaper on board her!”

“Then why was he suffering so?”

“If that is the cause of this,” McGregor said, nudging his chin at the unconscious man, “then the humane thing to do would be to put the prisoner out of his misery, don’t you think?”

“Captain? They’ve almost reached the wormhole!” Nyndham reported urgently.

“Let them go,” Caitlin advised.

The warrior and the physician stared at one another for a long moment then Nyndham informed them the decision was moot. The ship was out of range and into the wormhole.

McGregor turned away, his eyes dark. He pushed past Lisa and left the sickbay.

“I hope we did the right thing,” Lisa said.

Caitlin nodded. “So do I, sweetie.” She shook her head. “So do I.”

Iyan went upto the bridge and sat down in the captain’s chair. His gaze was locked on the panoramic sweep of the asteroids darting toward the viewing screen. The crew he had brought on board The Orion from The Ravenwind was going about their duties, monitoring the ship’s instruments and environment. He had nothing to do but sit there and watch them work. Putting a hand to his forehead, he lowered his head into his palm and closed his eyes.

The female called Barb had related to him the horrors of her childhood in a country called Nambulia on Earth. With quiet dignity, she had explained the excruciating details of her ordeal. Her acceptance of her fate had angered him at first, but when he failed to make her rail against her situation, he realized she had come to terms with the degradation and had moved on. Like him, she would never be able to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, but it did not seem to bother her a fraction of the way it troubled him.

“I can still marry,” she told him. “I can even bear my husband children. One day, I will do this. Until then, I am content the way things are.”

A deep resentment at what had happened to this petite woman brought McGregor’s eyes open. He was looking at the viewing screen, but he was seeing her pretty face. Dark as copper with thick black hair that glistened with blue lights, the one called Barbara-he refused to call her by the nickname that reminded him of torments he would not discuss even with Khiershon-had garnered Iyan’s respect and admiration in a very short length of time.

“Why should I rant against the gods for what has happened to me?” she asked. “It serves no purpose. Why allow the ones who did this to me to win? What will I gain by turning against all men for what a few misguided, foolish old ones did?”

“You are not enraged by this?” he demanded.

She had put a hand on his arm. “I asked: what purpose would it serve?”

“I am enraged for you!”

Her velvet-brown eyes had softened. “Then be my friend, Captain McGregor.”

“Friend?” The concept of a female as a friend was alien to him.

“Aye, Captain.” She held her hand out to him. “Friends are those who understand one another and respect the feelings of the other. Will you be my friend? If so, take my hand and we will seal the bargain.”

He had looked at her small palm, wondered at the pale gray color of the flesh-so different from the dark hue of her face and arms-and surprised himself by clasping that fragile hand in his callused one.

“Nice to meet you, Captain McGregor,” she said, shaking his hand.

He half-smiled at her. “Iyan,” he said, ducking his head. “My name is Iyan.”

As he sat there remembering their conversation, he was astonished to find himself grinning foolishly. As soon as he realized he was doing it, he stopped, his face returning to its normal stern, forbidding cast. But the little dark woman flitted across his mind’s eye once again and the smile returned to its lips.

“I think our captain has found himself a female,” the warrior at the navigational console whispered to the one at the communications console.

“The gods help her,” the other man sighed.

Caitlin dipped thewashcloth into the basin of iced water and wrung it out. Her attention was on Cree’s gleaming face as she folded the cloth and placed it on his heated brow. Almost instantly, his eyelids opened and she found herself staring into the Reaper’s golden depths.

“Did he...?” Cree croaked.

“No. He let the ship pass unchallenged.”

Cree sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he seemed to be looking past her. “Have we entered the wormhole?”

“Not yet. The captain was concerned about leaving the Orion’s crewmen on Montyne Vex. I believe he’s decided to bring them along so he sent The Ravenwind to fetch them.”

“Why?”

“McGregor believes if there was one Amazeen cruiser on this side of the wormhole, there may be more. He didn’t want to take a chance of leaving our men there and have them tell the Amazeen about the existence of the Orion.”

Cree grunted his approval of the idea. “Wise decision.” He reached up to take the wet cloth from his forehead. He laid it on his thigh.

“You’re feeling better?” Caitlin asked, taking the cloth and putting it aside.

“My blood feels as though it is boiling inside my body. Whatever they were doing to him, he was in terrible pain.”

“You think they were torturing him?”

He shook his head. “I believe they injected him with something that caused the reaction. They would not have killed him. They were taking him to Rysalia. I could hear their conversation.”

She pulled a chair up to the cot and sat. “McGregor told me what happened to your uncles on Rysalia

Prime. I am very sorry.”

Cree turned his head toward her. “The same thing will happen to my bloodbrothers and bloodcousins at the Feast of Alluvia if we do not reach them in time. They will have already been brought to the Titaness.”

“Will there be a trial?”

His answer was a contemptuous snort. “They were condemned the moment they were conceived.”

She nodded and looked down at her hands. Several minutes passed and she remained silent, her gaze lowered.

“What concerns you, Lady?”

She shrugged, but did not reply.

He lifted his hand weakly and touched the back of his fingers to her right cheek, smiled tiredly when she raised her head and looked at him. “You fear me still?”

“No.”

He trailed his fingers under her chin then slid his fingertips along the left side of her face, caressing her. “Yet something is bothering you about me.” He ran his thumb over her lips, reveling in the feel of her full flesh. “What is it?”

She smiled. “I just don’t understand my reaction to you,” she answered. “This isn’t like me at all.”

“What isn’t like you, Sweeting?”

“This,” she said, lifting a hand to clutch his. “This strong attachment that is forming. I don’t understand it. I’ve only known you a few hours, yet I feel as though I’ve known you all my life. That I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Perhaps you have.”

“But we’re so different,” she protested.

“Are we?”

“Yes! We are literally from two different worlds. Two different galaxies. We are different races and...”

“I suspect,” he said, threading his fingers through hers, “we are of the same heritage.”

“How can you say that?” she asked.

He grunted, let go of her hand. “Help me to sit up,” he said, pushing up on the cot.

She stood, put her arm around his shoulders and helped to lever him to a sitting position. Fluffing the pillow behind his back, she adjusted the covers over his legs. “Would you like some water?” At his nod she poured him a glass, held it to his lips. When he was finished, she sat down again.

“Many years ago,” he said, wiping the moisture from his lips with the back of his hand, “a Rysalian Fleet officer named Kyrish Brell happened on the wormhole that leads into your part of the megaverse. He eventually found Terra, as he named it, but we now know it had been called that many centuries before Brell ever stepped foot on your world. He brought back with him twenty young women of childbearing age to help repopulate our world. From that time forth until the Resistance took over Rysalia and most of the surrounding planets, women were brought from Terra and used as breeders.”

Caitlin said nothing, but her thoughts were on the hundreds of missing women about whose disappearances nothing had ever been discovered. She wondered if they could be on Rysalia.

“Most are,” he said, reading her thoughts.

“Go on,” she said, shuddering at the thought of her fellow females being abducted for such a vile purpose.

“Brell was not the first from our side of the megaverse to find your world. Apparently star travelers from another planet got there before him but never told anyone. If you compare the cultures of Chale to your Ireland you will find similarities too close to be coincidence.”

“Such as?”

“The Chalean High Speech is almost identical to the Irish Gaelic language,” he replied. “Many words have different spellings but are pronounced alike. Terra and Tara being one of them. Brell had no way of knowing this when he named Terra, which in Rysalian High Speech means land of green mountains. In searching back through the archives on Chale, we found ancient manuscripts alluding to clandestine trips to a place called Eyre’s Land. As best can be determined, Kaelin Eyre, a Commodore of the Chalean Fleet, discovered the wormhole in much the same way Brell did, but several generations earlier. His ship, The Banshee, was loaded with political prisoners from Chale, Rysalia, Serenia, and a dozen other worlds. Their destination was Ghurn Colony for most and Helios Five for a select, dangerous few. Encountering a solar storm that blew them billions of miles off course, The Banshee wound up being sucked through the anomaly. None of the worlds they passed were habitable until they found Terra or Tara as Eyre named it. Upon landing on this new world, Eyre decided to leave the prisoners there. The atmosphere was the same. There was vegetation and animal life to sustain the prisoners. Unpopulated at that time, the land seemed an ideal place to strand the Unwanteds, as the prisoners were labeled.”

“Brell knew none of that,” she said for clarification.

“No, he did not.”

“Ironic they used almost the same name.”

“The words mean the same,” he said. “Terra and Tara both mean land of green mountains.”

“So you think they both landed in Ireland.”

“We know Eyre did for he left behind cromlechs to mark his landing sites.”

“Sites?”

Cree nodded. “He and his crew went back many times to drop off prisoners.” He looked away. “Including some of their scientific disasters.”

“Reapers?” she asked, sensing that was what he meant.

“Dearg Duls,” he replied. “Aye. The generic inferiors of the modern day Reapers.” He looked up. “I would rather not discuss why these men were different.”

She let that pass. “I can see why you would think since I’m of Irish descent that I would have something in common with the Chaleans, a common ancestry, but you are Rysalian. What...”

“I am a hybrid. All Reapers are,” he interrupted. “My sire is Ry-Chalean. My dam is from Ireland.”

Caitlin blinked. “You have human blood in you?”

He smiled. “In more ways than one,” he said, reminding her of her own life essence traveling through his body.

She blushed. “Where was your mother’s home?”

“I know nothing of her save she is from Ireland,” he replied. “The records of my birth are on Rysalia Prime and I’ve never stepped foot on that evil world. The only reason I know her birth land is the symbol on my Reaper tattoo that marks my hybrid race.”

“I didn’t notice a symbol,” she said, craning her head to look at the tattoo.

“This,” he said, looking down at the stylized imprint of a reaper. He touched the image’s scythe. “The marking stands for Terra/Ireland.”

She looked closely at the place to which he was pointing and saw the strange symbols that looked like a lightning bolt and an elongated X turned on its side burned into the blade. She sat back in the chair. “That must have hurt like hell.”

“I barely felt it,” he lied.

She sighed. “So we have a common ancestry and you believe this is why I have such strong feelings for you so soon after our meeting.”

“That and the gods put us in each other’s path. I told you I knew you were coming. I let the mining ship pass because a part of me knew there was help of a different kind on its way.”

She lowered her head, unable to meet his eyes, “Did the gods tell you I would fall in love with you?” she asked.

He was quiet for so long she raised her head and looked at him. What she saw etched on his handsome face made her heart skip a beat. He was staring intently at her, his eyes dark with an emotion she could neither dismiss nor mistake. She began to tremble.

He held his hand out to her. “Come, Lady,” he bid.

She did not hesitate. She did not question. She went to him, stretched out beside him on the cot and reveled in the feel of his strong arms enfolding her.

“I will make a vow to you, Sweeting,” she heard him say. “I will love no other for as long as there is recorded time. And when time is no more, I will love you still with all that is my heart, my soul, and my body.” He placed a gentle kiss on her brow. “A Reaper’s vow is forever, my lady, and when we mate, we mate for eternity. No other woman will I allow to lay hands to what belongs only to you nor will I put my hands to another.”

A thrill of heart-aching joy rippled through Caitlin and as his palm molded around her breast, she sucked in an excited breath and clung to him, her body shuddering with delight.

Chapter Eleven

Helen lookedup as Caitlin came into the mess hall. The other women stopped talking as the woman they considered their leader went over to the molecular duplicator and poured herself a cup of coffee. When Caitlin sat down with her coffee at a table by herself, the women turned in their seats and stared at her. Several silent minutes passed as Caitlin just sat there, staring across the room, before Helen could stand it no longer.

“Well?” Helen asked. “You looked pretty damned relaxed. What happened?”

Caitlin took a sip of her coffee then put down the cup. “I believe I now belong to Khiershon Cree.” She lowered her eyes. “Body and soul.”

“Just great.” Pat got up and swung her chair around so she could sit facing Caitlin. “And what exactly does that mean, Cait?”

Caitlin shrugged. “I don’t know. He says we...” She stopped as McGregor strode imperiously into the room. She looked up at him, expecting more animosity from the man.

“We just intercepted a signal from an Amazeen ship,” he said, his eyes steady on hers. “They have just exited the wormhole.”

“Is that damned thing a revolving door or what?” Marti inquired, sitting taller in her chair.

McGregor ignored her question. “We would prefer those bitches not blow us the hell out of the heavens.”

“What do you want us to do?” Caitlin asked, coming to her feet.

McGregor said nothing for a moment then decided Caitlin-who was staring back at him with a worried look-understood the position she and her crew was in.

“Hail them and let them know you are a Terran medivac and pose no threat to them. Let them know you are a ship of women.”

“And if they want to board?” Marti asked.

“You’ll let them and we’ll exterminate every last one of them!”

“No,” Caitlin disagreed. “You’ll hide.”

McGregor took a step closer to her. “Woman, my days of hiding from the gods-be-damned Amazeen are over and done! I will never hide from them again!”

“Be cool, Iyan,” Barb warned. “We’ll handle it.”

Caitlin was shocked to see McGregor’s expression soften as he turned to look at Barb Fuller. There was grudging respect in his eyes and he nodded slightly, his only acknowledgement of the warning, then turned to Caitlin.

“Hail them, ask who they are, and then wish them gods’ speed on their journey.”

Caitlin put her hand on his wide chest and pushed gently. “Then move so I can do that, Captain.” McGregor looked down at her hand, then at her face. The right side of his mouth lifted in what might pass for a smile then he took one step back. “A softer touch than that which connected with my face, Lady.”

“A softer tone of voice than that which has connected with my ears up until now, milord,” she retorted.

The tall man shrugged then stepped aside, sweeping his arm out in an invitation for her to precede him.

“You clean up nicely, don’t you, McGregor?” she challenged as she walked past him and smiled when she heard him grunt.

“I’d better come along,” said Helen.

“I think we all had,” agreed Cathy. “Whoever is on that ship will need to see a roomful of women, won’t they?”

McGregor looked at Atherton and cocked an eyebrow in acknowledgement of her understanding of the situation. He almost smiled at the wench, but caught himself in time. Squaring his shoulders, he followed closely behind Caitlin.

“When we get to the bridge, make yourself scarce, Big Boy,” said Marti.

“I will stay out of line of the vid-com,” said McGregor.

“We call it a vid-link and you’ll stay in the corridor out of sight,” Caitlin ordered and half-expected the man to balk, but when she looked around and up at him, he only nodded in agreement.

“We’re being hailed,” the young man sitting at the communications console informed McGregor.

“Leave us,” the Captain said. His gaze scanned the bridge, hitting each male. “All of you.”

“I suggest you allow us women to take over the control of the ship, Iyan,” Caitlin told him as she took her place in the Captain’s command chair. “We know her better than you which is why Khiershon abducted us.”

McGregor’s jaw tightened at the use of his given name, but he did not reply. He stood just inside the room, watching as the women went about seating themselves at the various stations on the bridge. “You know what to say?” he asked, nervous as the hailing continued.

“Aye,” Caitlin replied. “Helen, open the channel.” She didn’t turn to make sure McGregor had slipped out into the corridor.

The screen pulsed dark blue, then an image settled harshly on the vid-link screen surface.

“Holy shit,” Pat said as the tall, titian-haired woman appeared. “Tell me that ain’t a roller derby queen!”

“Greetings,” the unsmiling woman decreed. “I am Thalia Chakai, the Captain of the LRC Alluvial. To whom am I transmitting this missive?”

Caitlin’s face was equally impassive. “I am Captain Caitlin Kelly of the United Space Alliance Medivac Command. My ship is the Orion. How may I help you, Captain Chakai?”

“You are Terran?”

“We are from many planets,” Caitlin responded. “Earth is our home base. From where do you come, Captain?”

Chakai lifted her chin in pride. “We are Amazeen!”

“Amazing?” Caitlin questioned, deliberately mispronouncing the name. Had she seen the look of horror pass over Iyan McGregor’s face, she might well have lost her nerve. “You’re a new race, aren’t you? An amazing race of beautiful women. From where do you come, Captain? I’ll bet you’re from Scorpio Five, aren’t you? I’ve never been there. Tell me: Is it true what they say about Scorpion women? Are they really-?”

“Amazeen!” Chakai snapped. “We are Amazeen!”

“Guess that’s one of the mining colonies I’m not familiar with.” Caitlin sighed. “Do you-”

“Why did you wait so long to answer our hail?” the Amazeen captain shouted.

“You are an unknown entity, Captain. We had to ascertain whether you were friend or foe. We are a vessel of women and as such prey to those more powerful than us.”

“How many males are on board your vessel?” was the waspish challenge.

“We are an all-female crew,” Caitlin answered. “How many males are you carrying in your crew?”

Chakai’s eyes widened. “We have no males on board our ship!”

“Just out for a turn about the sector, are you?” Caitlin drawled. She sat forward in her chair. “Wanna come over and play with us, Captain?” She licked her lips. “You look like a woman who could use a little fun.”

It was as though Caitlin had reached through the vid-link screen and slapped the Amazeen captain. The woman recoiled, horror filling her dark green eyes. With her chin even farther in the air, the tall woman looked down her regal nose and pure venom filled her voice.

“We,” Chakai emphasized, “are not of that bent, Lady!”

“Oh,” Caitlin said, disappointment rife in her voice. “We were so hoping you would transport over and we could have a little, ah, party. I am especially fond of redheads. I could show you some tricks I learned on Venus that would-”

“You are disgusting!” Chakai proclaimed and the link between the two ships was terminated.

“So much for the ol’ boldly going where no man has ever gone before, huh, Cait?” Helen quipped as she closed their end of the connection.

“They’re speeding away like someone put a firecracker up their butt!” Barb laughed. “They’re at warp 4 and climbing!”

“That was a very dangerous thing you just did,” McGregor said as he walked up to Caitlin’s chair.

“Did you want her to board us, Captain?”

“How did you know she wouldn’t blow you out of the sky?”

“I didn’t.” Caitlin sat back in the chair and let out a long, nervous breath. “But if what Khiershon tells me is true of the Amazeen, I took a chance they would not harm a crew of other women.”

“I pray to the gods that bitch and her crew do not take a swing by Montyne Vex.”

Caitlin hoped so, too.

Captain Chakailooked at her second-in-command. “I feel as though I should take a sonic shower to rid myself of the slim of that Terran’s lewd suggestion.”

“I, too, feel disgust, Captain,” Lieutenant Cirolia Sern admitted. “Such sinfulness is most distasteful.”

“Increase our speed, Ensign Deon. I wish to put as much distance between our ship and theirs as possible.”

“Do you think they were heading for the wormhole?” Major Akkadia Kahmal asked.

Captain Chakai shook her head. “The Terrans do not know of the anomaly.”

“But would they know of Montyne Vex?” Major Kahmal asked.

“It is on their solar charts, but that part of the Sinisters, as they call it, is strictly wasteland.”

“Do you think they will have explored the planetoid?” The Major’s voice seemed filled with concern. “Ventured into the caves on the plateau at Deckle Point?”

“Unlikely,” Chakai replied. “The caves are vast and unless you know exactly where you are going, you will become lost quickly. As for Terran exploration of the planetoid, there is nothing there to mine and the soil is not conducive for growth. If it can not be used, abused, and disposed of easily, the Terrans want no part of it.”

“I am surprised they are this far from their normal trade routes,” Lt. Sern remarked.

“They were a Medivac ship,” Captain Chakai reminded her second-in-command. “My thoughts are they were heading for the mining operation on Gemini Prime. Terran vessels do not venture into the No Man’s Land of Sector Nine.”

“Perhaps we should raise the planetoid and check on our sisters,” Kahmal suggested.

“And take a chance the Terran ship will intercept the hail?” Captain Chakai demanded. “That would be a foolish mistake!”

“We are not that far from Montyne Vex. Let us journey there and make sure...”

“And lead that loathsome crew of degenerates to our sisters?” the captain gasped. “Most assuredly not!”

“The Captain is right Major,” Lt. Sern put in. “The Terrans are sitting right where we left them, no doubt watching to see where we go. If we tack toward the planetoid, they will want to know why.”

“They will think we have a base there,” Captain Chakai stressed. “We dare not let them know there is something on Montyne Vex we wish to keep hidden at all costs!”

“What do you think she meant about the women of Scorpio Five?” Lt. Deon asked. “Isn’t that where they mine plutonium?”

“Perhaps the women there are mutants!” Captain Chakai chuckled.

“Aye, perhaps they have six teats each!” one of the crewmembers joked.

Major Akkadia Kahmal tuned out the conversations on the bridge of the Aluvial, aggravated by the joviality. She was distinctly uncomfortable about leaving the Terran ship in their wake. She was worried about whether or not the Terrans had reconnoitered Montyne Vex and if they had, what they might have found on the desolate planetoid.

“Our sisters will have sealed the entrance to the containment cell as soon as they began to question the young Reaper, Akkadia,” Lieutenant Melankhoia Chanz said as she joined her friend.

“I believe they would have unless in their excitement at capturing him, they were lax in their security.”

“They would not have been so foolish.”

“I know. It’s just that I am worried about Kaelia,” the Major said softly. “She is the last of my family.”

“My only sister is there, too,” Melankhoia reminded her.

Akkadia Kahmal nodded.

“They will be there waiting for us when we return from our mission to Terra,” Melankhoia insisted. “They will rejoice with us when they see our fugitive in chains just as we will rejoice with the information they will have to give us.”

“I pray they have been able to extract that information from the young Reaper,” the Major sighed. “I dread going home to Amazeen without being able to tell our Queen the whereabouts of her errant daughter.”

“We will have the location of the Resistance’s home base, my friend, and we will have eliminated the last remaining obstacle to total supremacy of the female race before we fly triumphantly home,” Melankhoia encouraged. “This I know to be truth.”

Akkadia shivered. She wrapped her arms around her. “I hope you are right, ‘Khoia.”

“I know I am. Now, come. We must get ready to enter the E.S.U.” She reached out and took Akkadia’s arm. “Just think, Sister! When we wake, we will be within six hours of Terra!”

Akkadia smiled. “Aye. That is all that sustains me, ‘Khoia.”

“Then dream of the glory that will be ours when we return to Rysalia Prime with our tribute to the Great Lady!” her friend said.

“Aye,” Akkadia agreed, her green eyes flashing fire. “I dream of nothing else.”

Part Two

Chapter Twelve

Kamerone Creedug his hands into the pockets of his black jeans and hunched his shoulders. The wind was brisk and blew his shoulder-length sable hair across his face. Tossing his head to rid his eyes of the obstruction, he caught sight of the woman in the gray sweats again.

He frowned and a low growl of anger from deep in his throat turned his amber eyes to molten gold.

To the jogger passing Cree at that moment, the growl was enough to make the running man veer completely off the gravel pathway and into the pine thicket rather than come any closer to the scowling man in the black leather jacket.

Cree was oblivious to the male jogger, but the woman walking behind him was another matter. He stopped, turned to confront her, and was not surprised to find she was nowhere in sight. He turned in every direction, but saw no sign of her.

“Gods-be-damned hell,” he spat. His amber gaze swept the vista before him, missing nothing.

To his left there was a family of picnickers seated on a tartan blanket. To his right were two college-age men throwing a Frisbee to their dog. Just ahead was a vendor peddling his wares to a young couple with a baby stroller. Nowhere did he see a tall young woman in gray sweatshirt and sweatpants.

But she was here, he thought as he felt once more the quiver of expectancy travel down his taut spine.

Just as she was each time he came to the park.

Or walked down by the river.

Or left the house he shared with Bridget and their son.

Within the confines of his jean pockets, his hands curled into fists. He clenched his teeth, squinting with the force, in order to keep from howling with frustration.

He turned his angry stare to a park bench and stomped over to it. With a snort of disgust, he sat down and braced his arms on the back, thrust out his long legs, and crossed his booted ankles. As though he had no cares in this world, he let his head fall back and seemed to be gazing at the bright azure sky overhead. In fact, he was scanning the wooded area behind him, searching for his shadow.

He did not see her.

Once more, she had simply vanished.

With a long sigh of frustration, he raised his head and stared across the park knowing she would not return now that he had seen her tailing him.

He clinched his hands and repeatedly rapped his knuckles on the park bench hard enough to bruise the flesh: the only outward manifestation of the rage building inside him.

What was happening around him did little to calm his fury.

He took absolutely no pleasure in viewing the scene before him. The commotion the Terrans made as they went about ‘having fun’ always managed to depress him. Here and there, families gathered at the picnic tables. Couples strolled hand in hand, stopping now and then to steal a kiss. Children played on the swings and seesaws and built castles in the sandboxes. Swans and paddleboat enthusiasts slipped gracefully across the glassy surface of the pond.

It was just an ordinary day at an ordinary park in a little Southwest Georgia town full of ordinary people doing ordinary things to amuse themselves.

And Kamerone Cree was just an ordinary shapeshifting assassin from a galaxy far, far away who could tear these ordinary Terrans apart with his bare hands and not think twice about the destruction.

The man the Rysalian Empire knew as The Iceman wondered what the people milling about would think if he went into Transition right here before them. Unaware he was smiling nastily, he remembered a scene from an old Japanese sci-fi movie he’d caught on television a few nights earlier. His active mind envisioned the families stampeding in horror, trampling the picnic baskets and overturning the tables; the couples shrieking, the children being grabbed by their terrified mothers as the S.W.A.T. teams and National Guardsmen arrived in tanks and armored personnel carriers. He looked up through the lacy branches of the live oak and imagined the dive-bombing helicopters and the loudspeakers transmitting a warning to the park’s inhabitants to “Take cover immediately.”

He laughed out loud.

“Reapers don’t laugh, Cree.”

Cree looked up. “This one does,” he stated with an arched brow.

“Laugh and you’ll lose your edge.” The man sat down. Reaching into his coat pocket, he withdrew a crumpled bag of boiled peanuts. He offered Cree some.

“Not on your life.”

Tylan Kahn shrugged. “No accounting for taste with you creatures, is there?” He shelled a peanut and popped it in his mouth then sucked on the salt shell. “Betcha don’t eat chitlins, either.”

“No more than I ate Diabolusian warthog steaks back home,” Cree commented in a droll tone of voice.

“Grits?”

“Wet sand?”

“Collard greens?”

“Grass clippings soaked in brine for a few hours?”

“Fried okra?”

“Oh, delightful,” said Cree. “I’d rather eat fried Serenian tuber worms!”

Kahn grunted. “Okay, you didn’t call me down here to discuss Southern cuisine. What the hell was so urgent you had to drag me out here in the middle of nowhere, Lieutenant?” he demanded.

Cree ignored the deliberate insult. Cree had been a Captain when he’d left what was left of Rysalia. “I’m being followed.”

“By whom?” Kahn shelled another peanut, not looking at his companion.

Cree shrugged. “My guess is an Amazeen bounty hunter.”

Tylan Kahn’s hands stilled and he turned his head and stared at Cree. “You’re joking, right?”

“Reapers don’t joke. They may laugh, but they never joke.”

Kahn let that pass. “Tell me,” he ordered.

Cree drew in his legs, lowered his arms from the bench back, and leaned forward, his clasped hands dangling between his spread knees. “I’ve seen her eight times in the last month and every time I turn to confront her, she disappears.”

Kahn was watching Cree as the Reaper stared at the ground. “You’re sure she’s not a Terran?”

Cree shook his head. “She was here awhile ago. Same woman. Tall, muscular, mean-as-hell look in her eyes.”

The peanuts having lost their appeal, Kahn folded the top of the paper bag and stuffed the addictive treat back into his coat pocket. “Have you mentioned this to Bridie?”

“I didn’t want to worry her.”

“Wise decision.”

“Glad you approve.” There were issues left unresolved between him and Kahn. Bridie was one of them.

Neither man spoke for a few minutes then Kahn turned so he was facing Cree. “You knew this could happen.”

“Aye,” Cree agreed. “I knew.”

“I had hoped they would not follow us here. I had hoped calmer heads than my surrogate mother’s would rule and they would realize you had helped their cause, not hindered it. You never harmed one of their gods-be-damned women!”

A muscle in Cree’s jaw tightened. “That isn’t true.”

Kahn’s eyes flared. “What do you mean it isn’t true, Cree?”

He had not told anyone about what had happened on board the Khamsin. Not even Bridget knew Konnor Rhye had not been alone on the starcruiser. She had been unconscious when the Keeper had placed her in the Khamsin’s E.S.U. so she had no way of knowing there had been four Amazeen warrioresses on board the ship with her and Rhye.

“Cree?” Kahn questioned, an icy chill weaving its way up his spine. “What don’t I know?”

“He would have killed her to keep her from me,” Cree said softly. “He was evacuating the oxygen supply in her E.S.U.when I beamed on board.”

“And you killed the sonofabitch. I know all that.” Kahn remembered the blood splashed across the Reaper’s torn clothing when Cree had carried an unconscious Bridget onto the Vortex. It was obvious Konnor Rhye had not died an easy death. But then you did not steal what belonged to a Reaper and survive the theft.

“He deserved what he got.”

“Aye, but he wasn’t alone.”

Kahn drew in a shallow breath. “There was an Amazeen on board my ship?” He hoped that wasn’t the case. If Kamerone Cree had slaughtered even one of the Multitude’s Elite, there was nowhere in the universe he could go to escape their wrath.

“Three were in the E.S.U.s and one was in the engine room when I beamed on board.”

“Oh, sweet merciful Alel,” Kahn gasped. “Four of them?” The blood drained from his face. “Four, Cree?”

“The one in the cargo bay came rushing in and tried to stop me from taking Bridget from the ship,” Cree said, his gaze wandering to the pond. “I knocked her out and put her in the E.S.U. in which Bridget had been sleeping, then I took my lady with me back to the Vortex.”

“But not before you punched in the destruct code to destroy the Khamsin.”

“Aye and the Amazeen along with it.”

“By the gods, Kamerone, didn’t you realize you’d just signed your own death warrant?”

Cree shrugged. “My death warrant had been signed two years before, Tylan. If I had allowed those bitches to live, they would have come after us. The Khamsin was equipped with plasma missiles capable of blowing The Revenant and The Vortex to space dust. I couldn’t take a chance the Amazeen would hesitate killing me because Bridget was on board one of the ships.” He turned his face to Kahn. “And you and the others as well.”

Kahn closed his eyes. “You did what you had to do,” he acknowledged. “I understand that, but did you have to slaughter a quartet of Amazeen? We could have beamed them on board and brought them with us. Stranded them somewhere on Terra. Did you have to kill them?”

Cree pushed up from the bench. “At the time, all I could hear were the screams of the Reapers who died in that cage, Kahn. My nostrils were filled with the stench of their burning flesh. Mercy was the last thing on my mind.” He shrugged. “At least they were asleep when they met the Gatherer. They were not

burned alive.”

Kahn shook his head. “This was not what I was expecting when you called this morning. You really know how to screw up a guy’s day, don’t you?”

“They are out there,” Cree said, watching a Terran child skipping rope. “I can feel them although I’ve not been able to pick up psychic waves from any of them. They’re being careful to shield their thoughts from me.”

“Them?” Kahn questioned, also standing. He probed the ether around them, his own advanced psychic powers coming into play, but felt no vibrations. “How many are we talking about here?”

“Five, ten I would imagine. They know it will take more than one of them to capture me.”

“They wouldn’t try it out in the open like this,” Kahn said, relaxing.

“Why not?” Cree countered. “I beamed into a church full of people on a Terran high holy day to extract a pair of nuns. Do you think if they could lock on to me they’d hesitate?” He reached inside his shirt and withdrew a small black disc that hung on a gold chain around his neck. “I don’t go anywhere without this.”

Kahn nodded. He was familiar with the device in Cree’s hand. Designed as a shield to prevent unauthorized transport, the device jammed retrieval beams. It had been standard issue for the Rysalian Fleet and, thankfully, one of the first things Kahn and his men had discarded when they had been captured by the Multitude on Rysalia Prime. Lucky for them they had else they would have met their fate alongside Cree’s Reaper cousins in the auto-de-fé cage.

Cree shoved the device back inside his shirt. “I never wore one of these gods-be-damned things before I came here,” he complained. “Now, it’s a part of me. Just as it is a part of Bridget and our son!”

“I don’t wear one, either, but I think I’ll start. There was a cache of them on board the Vortex. I’ll send Tealson to pick them up and make sure everyone starts wearing them as religiously as you do.”

“They aren’t after you or the others. I’m the one they want.”

“A little egotistical about that, are we?” Kahn asked dryly. When Cree didn’t take the bait, Kahn shrugged. “Has it occurred to you that they might snatch one of us?”

“Thinking I’d try to rescue you?” Cree stood up.

“Aye.”

Cree turned, bent over and put his hand on Kahn’s shoulder, squeezed the taut muscle there, and smiled. “If that should happen, Admiral Kahn, be assured I wouldn’t lift a hand to come to your defense.”

Kahn scowled, dipping his shoulder away from the slight pain. “I would imagine the Amazeen know you would not, but I’ll be happier knowing we can’t be jerked up into the wild blue at some slut’s whim.”

Cree shoved his hands into his jean pockets. It was a habit he’d developed of late and Kahn wondered if the man knew it was a defensive gesture; a pulling into himself and away from those around him. “You should be careful.”

“I’ll let the others know to be on the lookout for any suspicious females,” Kahn told him. “Do you want me to post a guard on your family?”

“I can protect my gods-be-damned family, Kahn!” Cree snapped. “I just wanted you to be aware there’s a threat.”

“So noted, Lieutenant.”

“Go to hell.” Cree walked away.

“Wanna try for plebe, Kamerone?” Kahn yelled after him and chuckled when Cree lifted a hand to salute him in a manner that would not have been approved by the Rysalian Fleet Command.

Chapter Thirteen

Bridget Dunne looked at the clock on the wall and wished the hands would move faster. She wanted her shift to be over so she could go home. It was always hard to lose a patient and though the man she’d lost today had been prepared for his impending death and even welcomed it, Bridie felt the emptiness more keenly than she ever had before. Her heart ached for Mr. Jenkins and his family and she bowed her head to add still another quick prayer for the repose of the old man’s soul. As she did, she reached up to touch the Celtic cross around her neck, but touched instead the strange black talisman Cree insisted she always wear.

“Wear it for me,” he had told her when he draped the amulet over her head. “As a symbol of our Joining.”

She had not questioned his explanation of what she thought of as a rune stone, not even when he produced a smaller version for their son to wear. But she had argued with him about the safety of a baby wearing jewelry of any kind.

“No harm will come to him for wearing it, Bridget,” Cree had insisted. “The chain is not long enough to get twisted around his neck to choke him. All Rysalian male children wear a similar stone.”

“What if he got his hand beneath the chain?” she had countered, shaking her head. “No, I don’t want him wearing it.”

“The talisman stays, Bridget!”

Despite her concerns for their son, she had given in to Cree’s demands. Sometimes, her Reaper was easier to live with if she gave in to his unfathomable demands and didn’t question his actions.

Dorrie Burkhart stuck her head into Bridie’s office. “You want a cup of coffee?”

Bridget jumped, surprised by the intrusion. She looked up. “It would just keep me awake.”

“Whatever,” Dorrie mumbled and turned to go.

“Dorrie?”

“Yeah?”

“Why were you late again this morning?”

Dorrie narrowed her eyes. “Why do you want to know? You going to report me?”

Bridget sighed. “No, Dorrie, I’m not going to report you. It’s just that Dr. Reynolds was looking for you and I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“Did I ask you to cover for me?” Dorrie snapped.

Bridget was clenching her pen so hard it was gouging into her flesh. “If you’re having problems getting to work...”

Dorrie swept her arm toward the Albany Memorial Hospital parking lot. “My damned car wouldn’t start again, okay? I had to get Raine to jumpstart it with a neighbor’s pickup.”

Bridie laughed, but there was no humor in her deep green eyes. She shook her head with exasperation.

“What’s so funny?”

“Not everyone has a Serenian Prince to crank their car.”

“Some prince,” Dorrie snorted. “He’s the one who ran the battery down in the first place when he left the lights on!”

“At least he can drive, Dorrie. That’s more than Kam is willing to do.”

Dorrie’s cornflower blue eyes widened. “A complaint about the magnificent Prime Reaper? Trouble in paradise already, Bridie?”

Bridie’s smile slipped. “I’m not complaining about him and, no, there’s no trouble in paradise. Kam and I are very happy.”

“Yeah?” Dorrie asked, one expertly tweezed blond brow arching in speculation.

“Yeah.” She felt heat rush to her cheeks. No matter how often she tried to get along with Dorrie, the tougher it seemed to be.

“Whatever you say.” Dorrie’s tone of voice and the look in her eyes made it clear to Bridget that Dorrie wasn’t buying the answer. “I’m going to the cafeteria. You want something?”

“No, thank you,” Bridie answered stiffly.

“Suit yourself.” Dorrie rolled her eyes then left.

Bridie threw her pen to the desktop. Ever since she’d known Dorrie Burkhart the woman had had an attitude. But Dorrie’s sarcasm had gotten worse over the past five or six months and her tendency to provoke confrontations were getting out of hand. Something had to be done and now was as good a time as any.

Bridie reached for the phone and punched in an Atlanta number. Once she was through to the main switchboard of the Center for Behavioral Studies, she gave the operator an extension number and began doodling on her desk pad as the operator re-directed the call.

“Dr. Dean’s office.”

“Ivonne, it’s Bridie. Is she in?”

“Hey, lady!” Ivonne Noll greeted her. “Long time, no hear! Whatcha up to?”

“I’ve got problems with Dorrie.” Bridie sighed.

“What else is new?” Ivonne asked with a snort. “Doc’s on another line, but she won’t be long. How’s the baby?”

“Jaelin is just fine.”

“And that gorgeous daddy of his?”

“Kam is great, too. How’s your family?”

“Alexi’s doing okay. He likes his new job.” Ivonne paused. “She’s off the line now. Talk to you later.”

Bridie cleared her throat and waited for her mentor to come on the line.

“What’s she done now?” were the first words out of Beryla Dean’s mouth.

Bridget chuckled. “How did you guess I was calling about Dorrie?”

“Because my horoscope for today said to expect a telephone call regarding past troubles with an old acquaintance.”

“Beryla!” Bridget chastised her, knowing the former Director of the Behavioral Modification Unit on FSK-14 was exaggerating.

“Itis about Burkhart, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” Bridget said on a long sigh.

“What’s the tart done now?”

“It’s her attitude, Beryla. One minute sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth and the next she’s stabbing me in the back with Dr. Reynolds.” There was a long pause then: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t work with her any longer. I thought things would get better, but they’re getting worse. I’ve also had numerous complaints from patients and staff alike. Dorrie just doesn’t seem to want to fit in. I’ve tried to be understanding and I’ve bent over backwards trying to help her but she doesn’t want my help. Everything I do gets thrown back in my face.”

There was a long exhalation of breath at the other end of the call. “I’ll ask Aurora if she can use her in the oncology lab in Houston.”

“I heard Ro-Ro’s up for some kind of prestigious award for her research.”

The woman in Atlanta understood the unspoken question. “She has impeccable credentials and deserves all the recognition she can get. You should be happy for her.” It was her way of reminding Bridie that the false papers created for Aurora Burds by the old Hunter unit would withstand any scrutiny.

“I am,” Bridie admitted, “and please tell her so.”

“We’ll handle Dorrie. Just give her thirty days notice and then send her to Ro-Ro.” There was a slight pause. “How is he?”

“He’s getting more withdrawn every day, Beryla. Sometimes he leaves the house without letting me know he’s going and is gone nearly all day. Not that it’s any better when is he’s home. He’s moody and silent. I’ve awakened in the night to find he’s left the house. That bothers me more than anything.”

“Where does he go?”

“I have no idea. If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I’d think he has a mistress.”

There was a chuckle from the other end of the line. “Not our Cree. He takes his commitment to you quite seriously, my dear.” She paused. “Have you asked him if there’s something troubling him?”

“Yes, but all I get is one of those looks and a curt ‘nothing’s wrong’.”

“I remember those looks well.”

“They’ve gotten just as bad as they were before he and I started living together on FSK-14. Sometimes I feel like he’s slipping away from me, that I’m losing him.”

“Sweetie, there’s no chance of that,” Beryla said. “That man loves you more than life itself.”

“But I’m beginning to think that love isn’t enough to hold him, Beryla. He seems restless and bored.”

“Well, that’s understandable. On Rysalia, he was a man among men. Here on Earth, he’s just a man among many men.” Beryla laughed. “That’s got to be hard on his ego, Bridie!”

“I suppose so,” Bridie said with a sigh.

“Is he spending time with the baby?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Sometimes I find him in Jaelin’s room just standing over the crib staring down at his son as though he can’t quite figure out what to do with him. He still refuses to hold the baby and when Jaelin cries, Kamerone leaves the house.”

“A lot of new fathers don’t know how to act around their infants. Cree’s reaction is no different than many I’ve seen.”

“It hurt that he wouldn’t hold Jaelin when he was born. I wanted to share that moment with him. I wanted him to be as happy as I was,” Bridget said, unable to keep the ache from her voice.

“Bridie, hewas happy and so proud!” Beryla stated. “He was also relieved that you were all right and the child was healthy. To my way of thinking, he was overwhelmed with it all and didn’t know how to react. Remember, he was never allowed to see the sons he sired on FSK-14. Cree knows nothing about children and I doubt he’d ever seen one before Jaelin was born. It must be awkward for a man like him to be confronted with hands-on fatherhood. He doesn’t know what is expected of him.”

“I understand that, Beryla. I know the situation has to be a strain for him. But when Jaelin holds his little arms up to Kamerone and his daddy turns away, it tears the heart out of me.”

“Have you tried talking to him about how all this is making you feel?”

“I’ve tried, but he just shuts down every time I bring up his reluctance to touch his son. I think he believes if we don’t discuss it, the problem will eventually go away. I know my husband is a Reaper. I know he’s more stubborn than a Missouri mule with a toothache, but I know his heart, too. He’s a good man. He’s a loving man. I just don’t understand why he isn’t connecting with his son? What can I do to make him come around?”

“I honestly don’t know what to tell you,” Beryla confessed. “How are things between you other than that? Is your, ah, personal life okay?”

“You mean the sex?” Bridie laughed. “He’s never had a problem on that score. My God, the man would do it forty times a day if I agreed!”

“Most males would, dear, and Cree is nothing if not all male!” Beryla chuckled. “Would it help if I called him?”

“I don’t know,” said Bridie. She sighed. “But I’m desperate enough to ask you for help.”

“Let me discuss this with Lares. He understands the Rysalian male temperament about as well as anyone can. If need be, he can come down and talk to Kam. Sometimes it takes a man to get through to another man. I’ll call you at home tomorrow. Okay?”

At the mention of the Necromanian Prince, whose love for Beryla was as strong as the muscles in his brawny black arms, Bridie smiled. She swiped at the tears cascading down her cheeks. “Tell him hello for me, will you?”

“Aye. And try not to worry. We’ll bring the Reaper around one way or another.”

“From your mouth to Alel’s ear.”

“There’s always my Terran version of the Be-Mod Nine unit.

“If Cree doesn’t start behaving like the man I fell in love with, I’ll bring him to your lab myself!”

Chapter Fourteen

“Aren’t youhungry?

Cree pushed his plate away. “It appears I am not.”

Bridget sipped her iced tea. “You filled up on junk food again, didn’t you?”

A slight smile tugged at the Reaper’s lips. “I discovered an amazing thing called cotton candy. I enjoyed it.”

“How much did you eat?” she asked with exasperation.

“Nine bags of it, but that was not much considering I believe there is much air spun into the mix.”

“My husband the sugar freak.” Bridget looked at the roast beef, the potatoes and gravy, corn on the cob, and lace bread and was annoyed that Cree had only had a bite or two of each. He hadn’t even touched the corn that was his favorite.

The Reaper reached out, took her hand and squeezed. “I enjoyed the cotton candy, Bridie,” he said with an apologetic tone.

“I’m sure you did,” she said, easing her hand from under his. She wiped her mouth on her napkin then stood and gathered the dishes.

“You’re angry with me,” he said, his apologetic tone turning defensive.

“I’m irritated, yes,” she replied as she stacked his plate atop hers. “No woman likes to spend her day off cooking for a man who neither appreciates it nor wants it.”

“I was hungry when I was at the car show.”

“And you couldn’t wait until you got home to eat.” She turned and headed toward the kitchen with the dirty dishes.

He winced as she kicked open the swinging door and went into the kitchen. The sound of dishes clattering and pots being thrown into the sink gave evidence of how upset his wife truly was.

Cree drew in a long breath, released it slowly, then let his head drop to his chest as though he had the weight of the world on his broad shoulders. Once more, he thought, he had given in to selfish behavior that he should have known would annoy his wife. But he was so new to this sharing life; so unaccustomed to having to take another’s feelings into consideration before a decision. He loved Bridget with all his heart-black as it was-but he could not seem to make her happy.

With another long, much-put-upon sigh, he got up from the table and followed his wife into the kitchen.

“The garbage can needs emptying,” Bridget informed him as he entered.

A pained look came over the Reaper’s face, but he went to the plastic can and opened the lid to withdraw the garbage bag inside. His nose crinkled with distaste as he spun the bag around, crimping the top to close it. He frowned, looking around for the little twist tie Bridget always placed on the counter for him.

“What are you looking for?” she asked as she began running water in the sink.

“The thing.”

“The thing.” Bridget dropped the words like rocks. When he just stood there, looking at her, the garbage bag dangling from his strong hand, she stomped to the drawer beside which he was standing, jerked it open and took out the sheet of twist ties. “Here,” she said, tearing one off and handing it to him.

“Thank you,” he said in a little boy voice.

“It is your kitchen, too. You’d think by now you’d know where the ‘things’ are kept!”

“Not part of my job.”

“You don’t have a job.” She was immediately sorry for the jibe; the hurt look that passed over Cree’s face cut right to her heart. She watched him shrug then open the garage door to carry out the trash bag.

Bridget stood at the sink with her hands on the counter, staring blindly out the window. When he came back inside, she turned to him. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged again as though the matter was of no concern.

“It’s been a rough day,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it.” He walked into the dining room.

Bridget looked at the garbage can and could have screamed. Her teeth clenched, she went to the drawer, pulled out the box of garbage bags and tore off one. She snapped it open and stuffed it into the plastic can with considerable force. As her hand went through the bottom of the bag, making a wide rip in the plastic material, she yanked the bag out of the can and began shredding it with a vengeance, growling with fury.

“I forgot to ask-” Cree poked his head around the door. When he saw what was happening, he pushed the door all the way open. “What are you doing?”

Bridget’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “Taking...my...anger... out...on...this...gods-be-damned...bag, Reaper!” she snarled.

He blinked then watched as she dropped the pieces of torn plastic on the floor and stomped on them. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “Pretending that’s me, are you?” he inquired with a trace of humor.

“Aye, Reaper, I am!” She kicked the plastic.

His gaze followed the flying plastic shreds as they sailed about the floor then smiled at his wife’s fury as she jerked another bag out of the box and started stretching it. With a snort, he uncrossed his arms, went to her and took the bag away from her.

“No,” he denied as she tried to snatch it back. “You’ve killed enough garbage bags for one evening, Bridget.” He held the bag behind him, grunting as she tried to reach around him to retrieve it.

“Gimme the bag!”

“No,” he said on a long breath. “But I’ll give you something else.”

She stilled, looked up into his hot eyes and watched the desire forming there. Her own eyes widened. “Oh, no, you won’t!” Before Bridget could move, he had her against him, his arms enfolding her. She squirmed, trying to break free, but his hold tightened.

“Be still,” he whispered, his lips against her ear.

“Bastard,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in the insult for the hardness of him was pressed intimately

against her belly.

“Bitch,” he whispered in return and ran his tongue inside her ear.

Bridget shivered, melting against him. “Is this all you know how to do?”

“No,” he replied. “I know how to do this, too.” He moved one hand between her legs.

“Oh hell..” Bridget sighed. The heat of his palm was at the juncture of her thighs and pressing against her own heat.

“How about tearing into something other than a garbage bag, Dr. Dunne?”

“Like?” she asked as she slowly lifted her gaze to his.

He grinned and lifted her onto the counter. He pushed her skirt up her thighs then wedged between her legs. “Oh, I don’t know,” he muttered. He hooked his fingers in her panties and ripped them away. “Like a bag of cotton candy maybe?”

She shrieked with exasperation then wrapped her long legs around his waist to anchor him to her. “You are a hateful man, Captain Cree!”

“I am a horny man, Doctor Dunne.”

“A condition you seem to perpetuate of late.”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I can have Troi engineer a fembot to-”

“The hell you will!” She reached out to take his face in her hands. She pulled his head toward her then slanted her mouth hungrily across his. As she drove her tongue between his teeth, she heard his answering growl of passion and felt him fumbling with the zipper of his jeans.

“Wicked woman,” he said against her mouth as he freed himself.

“Your wicked woman.”

“Aye,” he agreed as he drove into her. “Cree’s very wicked woman.”

The sun wassetting when they woke. After the mindless sex on the kitchen counter, he had taken her again when he’d carried her to their bed. Their lovemaking had been slow and sure and infinitely sweet the second time. With his lady firmly placed against his sweaty side, he had fallen asleep, listening to her gentle breaths.

Their son’s angry wails as he woke from his afternoon nap had driven them from sleep.

“He’s hungry,” Bridget said, swinging her legs from the bed.

“Give him cotton candy.” Cree chuckled.

She tossed him a look he had come to think of as one of her ‘you’re pushing it’ looks.

He heard her talking quietly, cooing to Jaelin and recognized the very moment she picked the baby up for there was a grunt in her voice. As she carried the child to the bed, he moved over so she could sit down.

“He needs changing,” Bridget told him.

“I’ll bet he does,” Cree acknowledged, but made no move to help.

A small portion of the happiness that had put a glow in her cheeks faded from Bridget’s face. She pursed her lips and reached for a disposable diaper from the box she’d brought in with her.

“You know,” she said, “it wouldn’t hurt you to take care of him once and awhile.”

“Don’t,” he asked and when she looked up at him, he was frowning.

The rest of her happiness evaporated and Bridget changed their son in silence.

“I like watching you with our son,” Cree said quietly. His heart felt huge in his chest and a lump that always formed when he watched his lady and his son together made his voice husky.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful and go fix his bath,” Bridget snapped. She was smoothing the thick dark curls on her son’s head and did not see the pain that flashed through the Reaper’s golden eyes as she spoke.

Cree closed his eyes for a moment then swung his long legs from the bed. He stepped into his jeans, leaving them unzipped, and padded barefoot from the room without speaking.

Bridget heard the water go on in the bathtub. She lowered her head and kissed her son’s forehead. He looked so much like his father...the same coloring, the same thick dark hair...but his eyes were a very vivid shade of green, deeper than her own color. For a reason he would not explain, her lover had told her he was particularly pleased that his son’s eyes were green.

Looking down into the verdant gaze looking up at her, Bridget smiled.

“He’ll come around, Jaelin,” she told her son. “Your daddy will come around.”

But a part of Bridget Dunne did not believe her own words.

Especially when she heard the front door open and close behind Cree.

“Did I tellyou about the conversation I had with the Rysalian?” Lares asked his wife as she prepared his breakfast the next morning.

“Which conversation was that?”

The darkman and his lady had been discussing Cree and Bridget. Folding his newspaper, the Necroman laid it beside Beryla’s plate. “He is concerned he will harm the child.”

Beryla turned from the pancake she had flipped and gave her husband a surprised look. “He told you that?” At her husband’s nod, she asked, “When was this?”

“On the ship,” Lares replied. “Soon after the bantling was birthed.”

A frown drew across Beryla’s face. “And you’re just now getting around to telling me?”

“He asked me to say nothing and on my honor I have not. But in light of the problems the Reaper and his woman are having, I thought now would be a good time to reveal what I know,” Lares defended.

Beryla turned off the stove and moved the griddle with the half-cooked pancake to a back burner.

“What did he tell you?”

Lares looked at the stack of pancakes that he knew would grow cold before his wife had finished interrogating him and shrugged. “He believes the Dearg Duls within him will harm the child. That is the reason no Reaper was ever allowed to see his offspring.” The darkman looked longing at the pancakes. “He aches to hold the child but dares not for fear the bloodbeast within him will strive to kill its rival.”

“Aurora thought that might be the reason he won’t hold Jaelin,” Beryla said. Taking pity on her husband, she brought the stack of pancakes to him.

“You called her?” Lares asked, rubbing his hands together before delving into the ten pancakes.

“I had to call to see if she’d take Dorrie off Bridie’s hands” She frowned. “She doesn’t want her, either, so I’m afraid Burkhart will be down in Albany awhile longer. At least until I find someplace else to send her.”

“How is Ro-Ro?”

“Fine, but she did voice a few concerns that I must admit are troubling me, as well.”

“Such as?” Lares asked as he slathered butter atop each pancake.

“She believes the suggestionaries we gave Bridget are beginning to wear off.”

“Good,” Lares proclaimed. “A woman should love her man because she wishes to, not because a scientist has made it so.”

“It proposes a problem for us, though.”

“How so?”

“Bridie loves Cree,” Beryla answered. “There’s no denying that. Given time and no interference from the Resistance, I believe she would have fallen in love with him despite the assistance of the drugs and subliminal messages in the Celtic music CDs we gave her. The two of them were destined to be together.”

Lares poured syrup over his cooling pancakes. “What problem does the lessening of the suggestionaries cause then?”

“As much as she loves Cree, she loves her son even more. A mother’s love is stronger than any other. If it comes down to choosing between the two of them, she’ll chose her child.”

“As it should be,” Lares agreed.

“Aye, but where does that leave our Reaper? If the suggestionaries were strongly in place still, there wouldn’t be a problem. From listening to Bridie’s complaints about her husband, I can tell the hold is slipping. She’s liable to do or say something she wouldn’t if the subliminals were still working.” Beryla asked. “We both know anger is always the Reaper’s first reaction to every new situation that adversely affects what he wants.”

The darkman considered his wife’s comment. His broad forehead puckered with concern. “That would not be good,” he said quietly.

“No, it would not.”

“I believe you should tell her why Cree will not interact with the boy,” Lares told her.

“I have no choice but to do so,” Beryla agreed. “I’ll call her later today.”

Chapter Fifteen

The theater wasdraining of its inhabitants as Cree sat there reading the roll of credits. He was focused on the screen, counting the names. When the screen went dark and the house lights bled the shadows from the room, he glanced down at the wristwatch Bridget had given him when they first arrived on Terra and saw it was close to the time his lady was to leave work. She would expect him to be there when she opened the door and would be angry to find he was not. In his mind’s eye, he could see her storming to the neighbor’s to retrieve their child, her face set and hard.

At the thought of his bloodson, Kamerone Cree hung his head, closed his eyes, and began the rune of protection he had spun around the infant from the moment he’d first laid eyes on Jaelin.

Although he resented the fact that Bridget had allowed herself to conceive a child during their lovemaking, he had accustomed himself to the notion while she was pregnant. He had feared for her safety, but what concerned him most was his fear of what the infant would look like. Having heard the particulars of his own birth-and the tragic end of his dam at that time-he was terrified the baby would be a miniature replica of himself while in full Transition. He envisioned the horror he would see on the faces of the women gathered around Bridget’s birthing bed and the screams of shock and disgust from his lady.

But there had been no screams-not even of pain-and the birthing had gone easily for both mother and

child.

“Your lady is designed to bear many children,” Lares had pronounced upon learning Bridget was with child. “She will have no problems giving birth.”

That there would be no other children born of their love, Cree fully intended to make certain. There were ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies and he would make sure Bridget did not conceive again. One mistake was unavoidable. Two would be unthinkable.

As relieved as he was that his lady had survived the birthing and that she had experienced no undue amount of agony in the doing of it, he was still as nervous as a green youth after the birthing. He found himself backing away from Tina Portas as she walked toward him carrying the infant.

“Would you like to see your son, Kamerone?”

For a moment, he thought of refusing, but his curiosity got the better of him and he shuffled forward, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. When Tina eased aside the blanket covering his son’s face, Kamerone Cree lost his heart to the tiny wonder.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Tina had asked.

Beautiful? No, the child was not beautiful. He was wrinkled and red and his little face was screwed up in a mighty frown of whatever sensation the infant was experiencing at that moment. His tiny hands were peeling and his thick brown hair was in spikes around his round head. But when the miniscule little lashes lifted and the bright green of his gaze appeared to go unerringly to his father, Kamerone Cree felt his knees buckle and his heart begin to pound fiercely.

“He has my lady’s eyes,” he said, his throat closing. Bridget’s gaze had followed him during his nightmarish torture in the lab of the Be-Mod Nine unit and those beautiful eyes had been his only respite from the agonies visited upon him in that hellish place. To him, Bridget’s eyes were the only saving grace in his dark-stained world at that time.

“What will you name him?” Dorrie had asked.

He and Bridget had not discussed a name for their son. Both knew what the sex of the child would be since his parasite would not have allowed a female fetus to exist within Bridget’s womb.

“Name him?” he repeated and shrugged. “Bridget will want to name him.”

Beryla Dean smiled. “She said she preferred you to give your child his name.”

Pride made Cree’s captive heart swell and his slight smile was not lost on the women gathered around him, each waiting anxiously to see how the Reaper would respond to his son.

“Name him, Cree,” Lares had demanded from the doorway.

Cree looked to Lares and to Raine McGregor, to Tealson Hesar and Tylan Kahn, to Alexi Noll and Paegan Thorne, André Arbra and Hern Belvoir: the men who had risked life and limb to make the journey to Terra so his lady and he could be re-united. He nodded then turned his attention to the women who had fled the domination of the Rysalian Empire: Beryla and Dorrie, Tina Portas and Aurora Burds, Amala Dayle and Ivonne O’Malley.

There was one word in his language he wished for them all so he spoke it as he named his son: “J’Nai, Jaelin”. In Rysalian High Speech, it meant: peace, to the child of us all.

“J’Nai, Jaelin,” the others repeated for each of them knew the meaning behind the name the Reaper chose.

“Would you like to hold your son?” Beryla had asked quietly.

He had shaken his head so hard in denial of the request, he had developed a bitch of a headache and had backed away, fearful of hurting the infant. Afraid his parasite would do harm to a male destined to replace Kamerone Cree in the order of nature, he put distance between them. Such was the way of the Dearg Duls and the beastly thing that lived inside them.

But no one there understood why he did not want to touch his son and each had silently condemned Cree in his or her own way: as a coward or as selfish or as uncaring. None knew that he dared not touch the boy or that the heart inside him was aching with the need to do so.

“There’s time,” Beryla had said, but her own eyes were unforgiving of Cree’s inability to take his child into his arms and bond with it.

So he had walked away, feeling their condemning eyes following him every step of the way.

When Lares had found him sobbing uncontrollably on the floor of the restroom, he had so shocked the dark man, Lares had been unable to express himself for a moment or two. At last, Lares had demanded Cree stop crying.

“You are bawling like a Diabolusian jackass, you Ry-Chalean dog! Cease at once or I shall be forced to squash you like the bug you are!” When Cree continued to weep, Lares had shoved him rudely. “Reapers do not cry, Iceman!”

“This one does!” Cree snapped as he turned his face to the Necromanian.

“For what purpose?” Lares asked, stunned by the misery he saw in Cree’s amber eyes.

And so the Reaper had explained why he could not touch Jaelin. He unburdened his heart and soul to his friend. Told him why it was no Reaper was ever allowed to see his children and why no Reaper was ever allowed to know a child of his loins.

“The Dearg Duls within me would strive to kill the rival male. Do you not understand that, Taborn?”

The Necromanian understood. “You must tell your lady,” Lares insisted.

“I cannot!”

“Why can you not?” The Necromanian’s deep bass voice was like thunder from the heavens.

“If I tell her there is a chance I might harm our child, she will run as far away from me as she can get.” Cree’s eyes were filled with misery.

“So you will let her think you have no love for your own child and that the mere contact between you is loathsome,” Lares stated, shaking his head. “That is not acceptable, Cree.”

“I have to protect him,” the Reaper replied. “The only way I know how!”

And so he had done the only thing he could do: pray for his child and make sure he did not touch the boy.

Even though his heart ached to know the feel of the little body in his arms and his soul cried with the need to place his lips against his son’s.

A hitch of emotion shuddered through Kamerone Cree and he began to mouth once more the rune of protection for the child.

“Like, you have to leave now, dude.”

Cree opened his eyes and turned to look at the pimply-faced boy standing in the aisle. “What?”

“You can’t like stay and watch the movie again,” said the gangly teenager. “It’s my job to roust loiterers.”

“Job,” Cree repeated as though the word had no meaning for him.

“Yeah, like I’ve got a job,” the teenager smirked. “Don’t you?”

“Go away.”

“Look, dude,” the kid sneered, “like, don’t give me any shit. You understand? I’ll call the cops on your ass. Now, scram.” He flicked on his flashlight and made the mistake of aiming it directly into Cree’s eyes.

With the speed of a weretiger, Kamerone Cree was out of his seat and the teenage boy was a foot off the carpet, his designer tennis shoes scissoring the air, his designer shirt front clutched in the hands of a man whose eyes were glowing a deep, scarlet red.

“Go...away!” Cree repeated and tossed the teenage boy like a piece of refuse into the seats across from him.

Kory Kimball’s back hit the arm of one of the theatre seats and he yelped as he slid to the dirty floor amidst crushed popcorn and spilled soda pop. But as painful and humiliating as the fall was, the sheer terror of looking up at the glistening teeth and pulsating laser-red eyes of the man who’d thrown him, kept the teenager from making a sound.

“You should respect your elders, boy,” the man advised. “Did your sire not teach you this?”

Kory bobbed his head, his mouth opening and closing like a catfish’s. He knew he couldn’t possibly be seeing the man’s ears elongating and his fingernails extending into claws, but he would later tell his friends at the arcade that the bastard who had attacked him had been more beast than man.

“Now, go...away!” Cree insisted and took a step toward the terrified boy.

Galvanized into action at the impending threat, Kory let out a high-pitched shriek and scrambled backward on all fours until he reached the far aisle. Twisting his body, he gained his feet and took off

running, not bothering to see if the man was following him.

“Fool,” Cree called himself. He knew the boy would alert the theater staff that would in turn make a call to the security force. For a moment, he contemplated leaving quietly, slipping out the exit door before any further harm could be done.

But he let the moment pass and returned to his seat.

He was still sitting there staring at the blank screen when the Dougherty County police arrived.

“Strip,” theSergeant ordered.

A muscle worked in Cree’s jaw but he said nothing. He shrugged out of the leather jacket and tossed it to one of the two men flanking the Sergeant. He yanked the shirt from the waistband of his jeans and began unbuttoning it with one hand while the other hand opened and closed into a fist at his side.

Sergeant Joe Hampton watched their prisoner carefully. The man put up no resistance when he’d been arrested at the Georgia Nine-o-Plex on Westover Road. He’d been cuffed, read his rights then shoved into the back of a cruiser. There had been no identification found on the pat down and the perp had not responded to questioning. The only time he’s shown any sign of hesitation to do as he was told was when they made him remove the necklace he was wearing. For a moment, Hampton thought the prisoner would balk at the demand, but then he’d jerked the gold chain over his head and flung it to the counter, staring at it intently for a moment before shrugging as though it didn’t matter.

Photographed and printed before being brought down to lockup, the man had ignored all attempts to learn his identity. He’d even smirked when he was printed, giving the impression that he knew something they did not.

That ‘something’ had been the fact that the perp had no fingerprints. Not one swirl, not one knick, nothing.

The pads of his fingertips were as smooth as glass.

“It’ll make it harder to find out who he is,” O’Hearn in booking had promised, “but we’ll do it. We’ve seen this sort of thing before. I’ll alert the G.B.I.”

The words hired assassin had swept through the police station and every cop within a ten miles radius had found a reason to drop by to take a look at the prisoner.

“I wouldn’t want to tangle with him in a back alley,” was the consensus of the majority of policemen.

Cree dragged off his shirt and let it fall to the floor.

“What’s that?” Brent Busbee asked, pointing at the tattoo on Cree’s chest. He unfolded his beefy arms and stepped closer to the bare-chested man. “Hot damn! That looks like it was burnt on!”

Cree stared straight ahead of him, ignoring the overweight security man standing closer than was comfortable for the Reaper. He was unbuckling his belt when Busbee reached out to touch the laser-imprinted Reaper insignia. Before anyone could react, Busbee was sailing across the room, hitting the wall with enough force to knock five posters to the floor.

“Do not touch me!” Cree’s lips skinned back.

Hampton whipped out his stun gun and zapped the prisoner who merely shrugged off the electrical charge as though it were the nuisance of a pesky insect.

“Is that the best you can do, Keeper?”

“Keeper?” Terry Akins, the third cop, repeated, drawing his service revolver. He flexed his knees, brought the weapon up, cradling his right wrist in his left hand, and flicked off the safety. “You fucking

move and I’ll fry you, mister!”

Something evil crawled through the prisoner’s heated gaze and all three policemen felt the hair standing on their arms. Quickly drawing his own piece, Busbee shook his head and pointed it pointblank at the prisoner.

Hampton increased the voltage on his stun gun and hit the prisoner again, staggering the man this time, but doing no more damage than a mosquito bite. He flicked the dial to full capacity and was relieved when the man went to his knees with the jolt.

“Cuff him!” Hampton ordered and Busbee and Akins were on the prisoner, pressing him to the tile floor.

Cree felt his arms being jerked behind him and the chill of the handcuffs encircling his wrists. He grunted as the stainless steel bracelets were clamped too tightly, but made no move to break free of the men restraining him although he could have done so with ease. He grunted again as he was dragged to his feet because the man on his left-Busbee-slammed his fist into Cree’s back, disturbing the parasite and the thing responded by pressing against a nerve along Cree’s spine. The pain was intense for a second and Cree’s knees buckled.

Thinking it was the result of Busbee’s fist that caused the prisoner to double over in pain, the Sergeant stepped forward and grabbed the other cop’s arm before he could deliver another rabbit punch to the prisoner’s kidney. “Knock it off, Busbee!” Hampton shouted. “We don’t need a brutality charge from this bastard!”

“Sarge?” Neils Tolvert spoke from the doorway. Tolvert was on duty at the desk.

“We’re busy right now,” Hampton snapped. “What the hell you want?”

“We got a man on his way down here from the office of Veterans Affairs,” Tolvert answered.

“For what?”

“This here guy is one of theirs.” Tolvert chuckled. “Escaped from their loony bin up at Augusta. Turkish War Syndrome or some such nonsense.”

“Black ops,” Busbee suggested, elbowing Akins as they held the prisoner between them. “Didn’t I tell you he was black ops?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what he is. He’s spending time with us,” Hampton replied. He jerked his chin toward the prisoner. “Get the rest of them clothes off him and throw him in a cell by himself until the VA guy gets here.”

Curiously detached from his surroundings and the rough hands on his jeans, boots and socks, Cree allowed the security men to remove his clothing, smiling nastily when one made the comment that their prisoner wore no underwear.

“Then let him sit butt naked for all I care.”

Shoved into a grimy cell a few minutes later, Cree sat down on the bunk, drew his knees into the perimeter of his arms and waited for Kahn to come get him. That it would be Tylan, he had no doubt. That Tylan would be furious was another given.

A slow, malicious smile spread on Kamerone Cree’s dark face. He liked nothing better than annoying the Admiral.

“He’s where?” Bridget asked, her eyes wide.

“You heard me,” Tylan sighed from his cell phone.

“What did he do?” She was balancing her son on her hip and Jaelin was whining, wanting his supper.

“Assault and battery on a minor for starters,” Tylan reported. “Resisting arrest has been added just since I spoke with the cops a little while ago.”

She gasped. “He attacked a child?”

“A teenage asshole according to the Hunter who called me. It seems our boy took exception to be ordered out of the theater after the movie was over. He picked the kid up and threw him into the seats.”

“How badly was the kid hurt?”

“More bruised ego than bruised Terran flesh I gather,” Tylan answered. “But Kam could have killed him.”

Bridget felt sick to her stomach. “What the hell is wrong with him, Ty?” she demanded. Jaelin let out an angry howl, making a grab for the receiver. When his mother kept it out of his reach, he howled louder.

“Like father, like son.”

“I can’t talk now. Are you going after him?”

“Yes, I have that delightful chore.”

“Then tell him not to bother coming home this evening,” she told him. “The door will be locked!”

Tylan clucked his tongue. “And that would stop him, Bridie?”

“Until he starts acting like a normal person, I don’t want him around my son!” With that said, Bridget slammed the phone into the cradle.

Kahn frowned at the abrupt end of the conversation, then tossed his cell phone to the passenger seat. “Hell, the man ain’t normal to begin with!” he complained and pressed his foot harder on the accelerator of his sports car.

Akkadia Kahmalput her foot on the fire hydrant and untied then re-tied the shoelaces of her tennis shoes. All the while, she kept an eye on the white building in which the most wanted man in the universe was temporarily incarcerated. Straightening, she lifted her right wrist to her mouth. To the casual observer, it looked as though the woman in the gray sweatshirt and sweatpants was wiping her lips on the cuff. In actuality, Major Akkadia Kahmal of the Amazeen Elite Strike Force was sending a message to a long-range starcruiser orbiting Terra.

“Have you locked in on him?” Akkadia asked.

“We are experiencing technical difficulties at this time, Major, but expect to be back online momentarily,” was the message from the LRS Aluvial.

“He will be without the blocking device. May I suggest you hurry?”

“We are hurrying Major,” the ship’s engineer shot back. “We are as anxious as you to retrieve our target.”

No, you aren’t.She saw that she was being watched from across the way by a Terran security officer and lifted her hand in greeting, smiling her welcome to him. Flexing her leg muscles as she’d seen Terran runners do, she tossed her long braid of red hair over her shoulder and began to jog down the sidewalk, glancing back with a coy look that made the security officer smile.

Bringing her hand up to her cheek, she pretended to wipe her chin. “Hurry!” she hissed into the Vid-Com link at her wrist. As she rounded the corner at the end of the block, she did not see the

midnight blue foreign sports car pull into the alley beside the Courthouse just as the sun went down.

Chapter Sixteen

“Do you haveany idea how much trouble you caused me this afternoon?” Kahn jerked open the car door.

“Do you think I care how much trouble I caused you?” Cree slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door hard enough to make the sports car rock on its chassis.

“It cost me a thousand Terran dollars to get your bail.”

“You have more money than Alel. What the hell are you complaining about?”

“Not to mention the rigmarole we’re gonna have to go through to get this shit settled!” He shoved his hand into his pocket to retrieve his car keys. “Paegan is having to hack into the VA records even as we speak!”

“Ain’t that special?”

“I should have left your ass in there.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Kahn slammed his hand against the steering wheel. “What if you had gone into Transition? Did the possibility of that ever cross your mind?”

“I’m nowhere near time to Transition.”

Kahn shuddered, putting the key into the ignition. “My god! Just the thought of you going into full-”

“There she is,” Cree said softly, but his voice was filled with hatred. He put his hand on the door handle.

Tylan Kahn snapped his head up, saw the woman standing under the glow of a mercury streetlight then reached out to grab Cree’s arm before the Reaper could leave the car. “You stay right where you are!”

“She’s mine,” Cree growled.

Before Tylan could contradict the statement, the air began vibrating and the sports car began to glow. “The disk!” Kahn shouted. “Do you have it on?”

An unaccustomed look of fear flew across Cree’s face and his normal ruddy color fled in its wake. He turned to stare at Tylan, started to speak, but before he could, the former Admiral ripped open his own shirt, snatched a chain from his neck and shoved it into Cree’s hand, molding his fingers around Cree’s.

“Listen!” Kahn ordered, his psychic talent homing in on the woman down the block.

“We can’t lock on!” the engineer shouted to Major Kahmal. “Abort. Abort!”

From her position half a block away, Kahmal glared at the two men in the sports car and knew they’d been able to intercept the frantic order. She wished she could reach into the waistband of her sweats and pull out the weapon that would disintegrate the car and the men sitting inside. But her orders had been firm: “Bring him back alive, Major. We must have him alive!”

Kahmal ground her teeth and cursed. This had been the perfect time to retrieve the Reaper while he was vulnerable and without the blocking device. From now on, he would be on his guard and the capture would be more difficult.

“If looks could kill, huh?” Kahn whispered, his heart beating so loudly he could feel the blood rushing through his temples.

“Do you know her?” Cree asked. One of the broken links of the chain Kahn had thrust into his hand was biting into his flesh, but he reveled in the pain, knowing without it, he’d not be sitting where he was.

“How would I know an Amazeen? I’ve never been on their accursed world!”

“She’s one of your mother’s friends,” Cree reminded him. “You know that as well as I.”

“And that means I should know her?” Kahn tightened his grip on Cree’s hand. “Where is your disk, anyway?”

“The keepers took it.”

“Cops,” Kahn corrected with exasperation. “They are cops on this world, Cree.”

Cree leaned back in the seat, never taking his eyes from the tall red-haired woman down the street. “You must have sent Tealson to get yours after we spoke this morning.”

“And you’d better be gods-be-damned glad I did, Cree.”

As the men watched, the Amazeen bounty hunter vanished and they knew she’d been beamed back on board whatever ship had brought her here.

“Much as I hate to suggest this,” Kahn said through clenched teeth, “we need to go in and get your disk.”

“Let go of my hand and I’ll get it myself.”

“And have them snatch me?” Kahn snorted. “Not on your worthless hide, Reaper!”

“They don’t want you.”

“Just open the door and get out,” Kahn snapped, swinging his leg over the gearshift. He kept a tight grip on Cree’s hand.

Cree stared at his former commanding officer. “Are you kidding me?” he asked incredulously, lifting the hand Kahn had such a death grip on. “You really think I’m going to walk in there with you holding my gods-be-damned hand, Kahn?”

“Get out of the car and let’s get this over with!” Kahn shouted, pushing Cree with his hip. When Cree started to protest, Kahn increased the pressure on Cree’s hand. “That’s an order, Captain!”

Cree squinted at the man beside him. “You don’t have any authority over me, Kahn.” He shook his head. “Not anymore. Not here.”

“You owe me,” Kahn forced out from between tightly clenched teeth. “I demand honor be met for the debt.”

“How do I...?”

“Where would you be right now if I hadn’t come to the jail to bail you out tonight, Reaper?” Kahn pointed to the heavens. “You owe me a debt of honor. Now get your ass out of the car!”

“I am not...”

“‘I will obediently follow the commands I am given at the discretion of my commanding officers’,” Kahn recited the Reaper’s Oath.

“You are no longer my commanding officer.”

“‘I am a Reaper’,” Kahn recited. “’I will die a Reaper’.”

“I know what I am!”

“Then you will be a Reaper until the day you die and are standing in judgment before Alel,” Kahn reminded him. “The word is your honor. You made the vow. Has your honor fled, Reaper?”

Cree stared at Kahn, consigning the former military leader to the very depths of the Abyss. Put in that light, he had no choice but to do as Kahn bid.

“Get out of the car and let’s get this over with,” snapped Kahn.

It was humiliating, but Cree did as he was told. He kept his hot eyes on the ground as he and Tylan Kahn walked back into the jail to retrieve his disk. The wait for the security man to bring it to him seemed to take forever. But the moment the disk was in his possession, he snatched his hand from Kahn’s grip and stared down the amused security men behind the desk.

“He’s not well,” Kahn said in a low, pitying voice. “Sometimes he just likes to have his hand held. Shell shock. You know how it is, guys.” Kahn tapped his temple. “Something blasted loose in here, you understand?”

The security men stopped smiling when the low, throaty growl erupted from the man they had booked earlier that evening.

“Come along, Kami,” Kahn encouraged. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it, little buddy?”

“Aye and your days are numbered,” Cree grumbled under his breath as they went out the door.

Once outside, Kahn glanced around but there was no suspicious female in site.

“Sorry they didn’t snatch me?” Cree snarled.

“Just shut the hell up.” Kahn replied. Before anything else could happen, he cranked the car and pulled into the street.

The streetlights overhead passed like giant fireflies flitting past the car as Kahn drove faster than the posted speed limit. His hand on the gearshift was firm, his foot steady on the pedal as he worked his way through the gears until the sports car was running like a weretiger through the nearly empty streets.

Slumping down in his seat, Cree turned his head and watched the passing scenery. He blinked at a flare of bright neon on the gaudy façade of a strip club and squinted as a bright yellow safety arrow pulsed and ebbed in warning at a temporary lane shift. The glare of the lights in the darkness of the night hurt his eyes and gave him a wicked headache. In the stillness of space, there had been no bright markers and he was not accustomed to the intrusion. Absently, he put his hand to his temple and rubbed, trying to ease the sudden throbbing.

“Migraine?” asked Kahn, looking at him.

“It appears so.”

“We’ll be home soon.”

Cree nodded.

Ten minutes of silence passed between the men and when it became apparent Tylan was not taking him in the direction of the home he shared with Bridget, he did not need to ask why. “She’s that angry?”

“She’s more than angry, Cree,” Kahn answered. “She’s afraid.”

Cree looked at Kahn. “Afraid of what?”

Kahn glanced in the rearview mirror as he pulled into the left lane to pass a slow-moving van.

“Afraid of what?” Cree repeated.

“You.” He saw Cree turn away, but not before the passing lights of an oncoming semi lit the pain in the Reaper’s eyes.

“I would never hurt her, Tylan,” said Cree as he stared out the window.

“I know that, but it’s not her own safety that concerns her.”

Cree flinched. “I would do nothing to harm the child, either.”

Kahn nodded. He glanced in the mirror again, then flipped on his right turn signal and nosed the sports car into the parking lot of an abandoned mini-mart.

“What are we doing here?” Cree asked.

“We’re going to talk.”

Cree sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was have Kahn lecture him. That it would be a lecture, he had no doubt. Kahn loved to hear himself talk.

Leaving the motor and the lights on, Tylan Kahn twisted in his seat and faced his passenger. “What the hell were you thinking this afternoon, Kamerone, or am I flattering you?”

Cree shrugged.

“I want an answer, Reaper!”

The sound of a jet taking off from the regional airport a mile away caught Cree’s attention and he looked up through the passenger side window and watched the slow ascent of the plane. “Do you ever miss it?” he asked softly and put his hand on the window.

“Flying?” At Cree’s nod, the ex-Admiral of the Rysalian Fleet Command grunted. “With the job I have at GaNetCo, I fly all the time.”

“I don’t mean in one of those primitive craft. I mean a real ship.”

“Hell, I hope you aren’t talking about their piddly-ass space program. They are just now venturing beyond Pluto and into the alpha quadrant. They’ve yet to find the wormhole at the Sinisters to get to our part of the universe. That’ll take them another five years at least.”

Cree leaned his forehead against the cool glass. “I miss the hell out of it, Tylan,” he said. “Not tagging along in one of their antiquated space probes, but flying in an L.R.C.” He closed his eyes. “Captaining my own deep space vessel with a crew of men as loyal to me as I am to them.”

Kahn’s forehead wrinkled. “Is that what’s bothering you, Cree? Not being able to captain a ship?”

“That and a million other things I’m not able to do.” Cree laid his head on the seat back. He put his fingers on his temples and pressed small circles against the flesh in an attempt to ease the pain in his head. His worried gaze searched the dark headliner above him. “Or to be anymore.”

Tylan Kahn drew in a long breath and exhaled slowly. He swiveled around until he was facing forward once more. After a long pause, he said, “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“You’re bored. Is that what brought on the self-destructive crap you pulled this afternoon?”

Cree turned his attention to the window once more and began running the knuckle of his right hand in an arc across the glass, his dark gaze steady on the black sky.

“I wake up in the morning and I’ve nothing to do. I watch Bridie get ready for work and leave and I just sit there. I’ve no time to be anywhere because there is nowhere for me to be. Nowhere for me to go.” The last sentence was spoken so softly Kahn barely heard the words.

“You go to the park,” Kahn countered. “You go to the zoo. You may never be allowed to go into another movie theater in Albany, Georgia, but you can always rent a video.”

“I sat there watching that movie today,” Cree said as though Kahn had not spoken, “and I couldn’t tell you anything that happened in it. Nothing caught my attention until the names starting rolling at the end.”

“Doesn’t take much to amuse you, does it?”

“Name after name after name,” Cree whispered. “Job after job after job.” He let his hand fall from the window onto his thigh. “They all have jobs. Places to go every morning. Things to do. Goals to accomplish.” He ground his teeth. “Even that shitty little twerp who tried to throw me out of the theater has a gods-be-damned job!” He turned fierce eyes to Kahn. “You have a job. Lares and Raine have jobs. Dorrie and Tealson and Alexi and...” He flung out his hand. “Everybody but me has a gods-be-damned fucking job!”

“I beg to differ, Cree. I don’t have a fucking job,” Kahn said dryly, “but I’ve often thought I’d be good at it. Pays well, I’ve heard, and just think of the variety of partners you’d have. Of course there are some things I’d prefer not to do, but for the right money, I could learn.”

Cree stared at him. “What?” he asked, his eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Kahn shook his head. Sometimes humor sailed right over the Reaper’s head and when that happened, Kahn scored an invisible tick on the list he was keeping inside his head. He chuckled to himself, striving to keep Cree from seeing his twitching lips. “We have jobs and you don’t,” he explained, “because we aren’t Reapers.”

“Aren’t you lucky?”

“I’ve always thought so, aye,” Kahn agreed. At his passenger’s intake of breath, he turned to face him. “Look. I can’t begin to know how you feel, Cree, but I do understand what you’re trying to say in your convoluted way. You were trained to do something for which there is no equal on this world.” He shrugged. “Or any other for that matter. You have talents that can not and must not be utilized here. We can’t allow you to go out there and find a job because it isn’t safe for you. Not just because of the Amazeen, either. Until now, we didn’t even know that was a threat. The problem lies in someone finding out what you are. We can’t take a chance that you’d get hurt and someone getting a look at your black blood or analyzing it. Or, Alel forbid, you Transition out of cycle.” Before Cree could say anything, Kahn held up his hand. “Don’t tell me that won’t happen because you know it could.”

Cree squeezed his eyes shut. “So what do I do with the rest of my useless life, Kahn? Do I go to the park and feed the pigeons? Do I go to the movies and choke down popcorn?”

“That may no longer be an option.”

“Or do I go to the zoo and commiserate with the other beasts who are caged and kept from their natural habitats?”

Kahn opened his mouth to insult the Reaper again-knowing sometimes that was what it took to shake the man from his morbidity-but Cree shoved open the door and fled the car.

“Damn it, Cree, come back here!” Kahn shouted, but the Reaper was striding angrily across the parking lot of the deserted mini-mart, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans and his shoulders hunched.

For a long time Kahn sat there watching Kamerone Cree pacing the cracked asphalt, staring at the ground, kicking out now and again at the weeds and grass that had grown up through the breaks. In the vapor of the lone mercury lamp that was the only security for the abandoned building, he kept vigil on a man for whom he had grown to care very deeply.

“You are hurting,” Kahn whispered. “I understand, my brother, but there is nothing I can do for you. Nothing any of us can do.”

Kahn saw Cree’s head come up and he realized the Reaper had snatched the words from the ether around them. Cree was staring at him across the shadowed parking lot, their eyes locked.

“I’m sorry, Cree,” Kahn said, but his lips never moved. “I truly am.” He saw Kamerone Cree’s shoulders slump in defeat and the Reaper hung his head.

A minute flicked past on the dashboard clock then Cree started back to the car. Without a word, he got in, shut the door, and leaned his head on the seat back.

Kahn started the car and drove home.

Since it wasSaturday morning, Bridie did not have to work.

At least not at the Albany Memorial Hospital.

Saturdays were her day for housework: washing and ironing; vacuuming, dusting and mopping; emptying the garbage and doing a dozen other chores that took most of her Saturdays and bit into the Sundays as well.

On days like today, she wished she had won the argument all those months ago and hired a maid to do the work for her. But Kamerone Cree did not want strangers in his home. Nor would he lower himself to help her with the cleaning. When she had broached the subject, he had stared at her-mouth open, eyes wide.

“Have you forgotten why I bought you?” he demanded. It seemed to her he was outraged at her suggestion that he actually turn his hand at anything as menial as dragging the garbage cans to the curb on Thursday mornings.

“Do you honestly think I believe for one minute that you bought me to do your housecleaning, Reaper?” she’d hurled back at him.

That one question had precipitated an argument that had lasted for well over an hour and had ended with Bridget locking herself in the bedroom and Cree slamming out of the house.

The matter had not been discussed again.

Overwhelmed by everything she had to do on what was ostensibly her day off, Bridget sat on the sofa in

the den and looked about her with disgust. There were candy wrappers littering the floor beside Cree’s favorite chair. Two empty soft drink cans on the end table had left white rings on the oak surface. Newspapers were folded haphazardly and stuffed into the magazine rack, which was overflowing already. The sticks from five ice cream bars-along with their paper coverings-had fallen out of the wastebasket by his chair and were covered with carpet lint. Two of his plaid shirts were lying in a heap by the patio door and one black boot was sticking out from beneath the loveseat. Muddy footprints tracked from the patio across the area rug and to the loveseat. Magazines, junk mail, and flyers were scattered across the top of the coffee table and one lamp shade had dirty smudges across the bottom, no doubt from a dirty hand reaching up to adjust it.

Bridget turned her head and looked at the kitchen where dishes were piled on the cabinets and in the sink and the garbage can was overflowing with tuna fish and tomato soup cans. There was a sticky-looking stain in front of the microwave and another darker blotch beside the refrigerator. Potato chip dust was crushed into the rug beneath the sink and one of the neon strip lights had burned out over the breakfast bar.

She swung her attention to the crusted bowl of hot and chunky salsa and the opened bag of tortilla chips. The salsa had dripped down the bowl onto the carpet, ground into the fiber in two places. There was a line of sugar ants marching into and out of the tortilla bag and carting away tiny planks of nourishment that they brandished in their mandibles like trophies of war.

And all of this destruction had occurred in the span of one day’s time, she thought with amazement.

“My husband the junk food addict,” she seethed and dug her fingernails into the sofa cushion edge.

The bedroom and bath were no less filthy-perhaps even worse-for Cree had discovered the delights of hot water and reveled in taking three and four baths a day.

“My husband the water spaniel,” Bridget grumbled.

Their utility bill was astronomical each month.

After a long inhalation and equally long exhalation, Bridget pushed up from the sofa and began unwinding the cord of the vacuum cleaner. When she had the cleaner plugged in, she started piling newspapers, candy wrappers, junk mail and anything that wasn’t part of her home decorating scheme into a green

plastic garbage bag. Her upper lip elevated with disgust, she thrust the tortilla armada into the bag and wiped her hand on her jeans.

“Do you need some help?”

Bridget shrieked, frightened by the unexpected voice behind her. She turned to see Cree standing under the archway between the kitchen and the dining area. He looked adequately tamed by his overnight banishment to Tylan Kahn’s apartment.

He also looked as though he’d had no sleep. But his melancholy expression and tired eyes cut no ice with Bridget at the moment and she turned her back on him.

“How’d you get in here?”

Cree frowned, unsure of her question. “I live here.”

“You don’t live here.” She stuffed the ice cream bar remains into the garbage bag. “You exist here, Reaper!”

He glanced about him and cringed. The place was a mess: one that he had made entirely on his own. And it smelled, too. He lowered his head and scuffed at the carpet with the toe of his boot. “I can help.”

Bridget cast him a look that said volumes. “Then go see if your son is awake,” she snapped. “His diaper probably needs changing if he is.”

Cree looked up, horror in expression. “I can’t change his diaper!” he said and knew the moment he said it that his lady had completely misconstrued the reason he could not tend to their child. “Bridget, I-”

“Go away, Cree!” she yelled at him, her patience gone and her pride putting words into her mouth she knew she’d later regret. “Just get the hell out of my life!”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I have to make you understand.”

She could not stop the venom from entering her voice or the sting of her words from striking him. “I understand everything I need to know about you, you selfish, arrogant son-of-a-bitch!” She threw the garbage bag as hard as she could across the room where it hit the bank of windows and spilled its contents on the floor. “If you want to live like a pig, Kamerone Cree, then you can live in this sty all by yourself!” She ran from the room.

Something inside Cree broke lose and he pivoted on his heel and stalked after her, his eyes glowing. He was not surprised to find their bedroom door locked when he tried the handle.

“Open the door, Bridget,” he demanded, rattling the knob. When his lady did not answer, he beat his fist against the panel. “Open the gods-be-damned door!”

“Go to hell!” she shouted at him.

Without another word, the Reaper lifted his foot and kicked the door. The wood split and the door popped up and flew back against the bedroom wall.

Bridget spun around, her mouth a shocked O as she watched her lover advancing on her. She put her hands out to ward him off and was relieved when he came to an immediate halt. Her relief was short-lived, though, for his thunderous voice cut through the room like a photon torpedo.

“Woman, sit!” he ordered, pointing to the bed.

She’d seen that look once before and remembered that tone of voice: “You are my woman! My woman! Do you understand that?”

Cree cocked his head to one side, easily reading his lady’s memories. “Aye,” he said, nodding. “And do you remember what you swore to me that day, Bridget?”

Bridget lifted her chin, refusing to do as he ordered. “I know what you made me admit to you, Cree.”

“And it was not something you were willing to do, is that what you’re saying?”

“The Resistance told me what to do and I did it!’ she said, seeing him flinch as though she’d slapped him.

“And you had no choice,” he accused, wanting to hurt her in return. “You didn’t volunteer for the assignment.”

“I know what I did, Cree. I know what you did, as well!”

“I gave you a choice.”

“You know damned well my only choice was to do your bidding!” she shouted. “It was either that or you would have slaughtered Kon-”

“Do not dare!” he bellowed, his eyes wide and flashing demonic fire.

Bridget’s lips pulled into a mocking smile. “Konnor Rhye,” she said with deliberation. She raised her chin. “The lover you took away from me!”

The Reaper didn’t move. He stood in the center of their bedroom, his heated gaze fused with his lady’s. Though he was trembling with fury, his voice was low and deceptively calm when he finally spoke to her.

“Tell me you don’t want me here. Tell me you want me to leave and I will go.”

The sound of their son’s cries turned Bridget and Kamerone’s attention to the wall that separated their bedroom from their child’s. At first the crying was more fussing than anger, but it soon picked up in volume and determination until it was a piercing shriek of frustration.

Neither parent moved. One could not; one would not, waiting to see if her lover would respond to the trilling cry of their child. When he did not, Bridget walked to him, looked directly into his eyes.

“Will you go in and pick up your son and bring him to me?” she asked, her voice rife with emotion.

He searched her gaze, knowing they had reached a point beyond which there would be no turning back.

“I can not,” he confessed, “but I will tell you why.”

“I don’t want your excuses, Cree,” she said, her voice cold.

They stared at one another for a long time, and then his words broke the silence.

“What is it that you want then?” he said. His heart was breaking for he already knew the answer. He had read it in her mind.

“I want you to leave.”

The pain was worse than any re-enforcement therapy he had ever undergone. It hurt far worse than any agony ever inflicted upon him. And it broke his spirit.

“Where am I to go?” he whispered, tears filling his eyes. “What am I to do, Bridget?”

Bridget hardened her resolve although his words were like pinpricks to her heart. “I don’t care where you go or what you do. If you can’t go in there and pick up our son, hold our son, I want nothing more

to do with you, Kamerone.”

His gaze dropped from hers, he stared at the floor for a moment, and then he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked up to find her staring at him as though he were a stranger.

“So be it,” he said softly and turned away.

He walked out of their bedroom, out the front door, and continued down the street, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his dirty jeans.

Chapter Seventeen

Dorrie Burkhartreached over to turn the volume higher on the radio. The blaring rock music hurt her ears but it drowned out the sweep of the wipers slapping at the rain pelting the windshield. Being barely able to see the road did not stop her from going thirty miles an hour over the posted speed limit as she sped down the expressway. She wove in and out of the sparse traffic and laid on the horn when another car dared obstruct her progress. Had she not felt the urgent need to relieve herself of the two Bloody

Maria’s she’d consumed after work, she would have driven past the Whistlin’ Dixie truck stop. The double shots of tequila in the Bloody Maria’s had made her a bit dizzy and the extra lime in the Bloody Mary mix had given her heartburn.

Pulling into the parking lot, she drove through a deep puddle, splashing oil-slimed water on a trucker who was climbing into his rig. She pulled alongside the restaurant side of the building and parked in the only slot available. Shutting off the engine, she grabbed her purse, threw open the door and made a dash for the restaurant overhang.

Mike Peters glanced up as the door to the restaurant chimed. The beautiful blond who rushed in made him draw in his breath. Tall and willowy with long legs that seemed to go on forever in the short black miniskirt, the woman was the best thing he’d seen all night.

Hell, the best thing he’d seen all week, he corrected as she lifted her hands to fluff her waist-length hair. He felt himself grow hard and was thankful for the obstruction of the cashier’s counter where he sat.

“Evening,” Mike managed to say, swallowing as the woman turned her lovely face toward him.

“Hey, how’s it going sweetie?” the woman replied. Her cornflower blue eyes seemed to be appraising him and she must have liked what she saw for they gleamed with teasing light. “Where’s the john?”

Unable to think of anything to say, Mike merely pointed to the rear of the restaurant.

“Thank you,” the woman sang in a cheerful tone and headed toward the back.

Mike saw her glance to the right where the booths were lined against the wall. He watched her stop, stare at the man sitting by himself in the last booth, and then continue to the restroom. A few moments later, she returned, turning to look at the stranger once more, before walking up to the cashier’s counter. She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “He alone?” she asked.

“Been alone all night,” Mike answered.

“Really?” She let the word drop like a stone, turned once more to look at the man in the booth, then smiled. “Not anymore.”

The sway of the blond woman’s ass as she headed to the section of booths brought a knowing smile to Mike Peters’ face. “Oh, baby, baby,” he said, leaning on the counter. “Gonna get you some company, huh, big guy?”

Had she known, Dorrie couldn’t have cared less that the night cashier at the Whistlin’ Dixie Truck Stop and Café thought she was a hooker. Her full attention was on the handsome man sitting hunched over a steaming cup of coffee.

“Hey, Warrior,” she called out as she slid into the booth opposite him. “New in town?”

Kamerone Cree didn’t need to look up to recognize the voice of the woman who spoke to him. “Out slumming, Dorrie?” he asked, lifting the cup to his mouth. He kept his eyes on the scratched tabletop.

“Miss Priss kick you out or did you run away from home, little boy?”

Cree swallowed the scalding coffee-his sixth cup since coming in from the rain-and leaned back in the booth, draping his arm over the edge of the red vinyl backrest. Slowly, he raised his eyes to hers. “Where’s McGregor tonight?”

Dorrie shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares?”

“Everything in this world is expendable,” he muttered.

“Especially the men.” Dorrie watched the Reaper smile, though the smile never reached his amber eyes.

“Aye,” he whispered. “Especially the men.”

“So there is trouble in paradise.” She grinned. “I thought so. You are as out of place in this world as I am, aren’t you, baby?”

“But this is your birthplace.

Dorrie rolled her eyes. “It was early 60 years ago Earth time. Everyone I knew is either dead or dying. I can never contact anyone in my family. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. Not that there is anybody I care enough about to look up in the first place. I grew up in B. F. E. Arkansas and that town sucks, you know?”

He studied her for a moment. “Do you hate Terra that much?”

“I would go back to Rysalia in a heartbeat if things were different.”

Her answer surprised him. “You did not mind the enslavement of the females?”

Dorrie lifted one shoulder in disdain. “I never felt enslaved. I had lots of friends.” She arched one tawny brow so he could not misinterpret her use of the word friends.

“I remember hearing of one or two,” he said dryly.

“I never lacked for anything on Rysalia,” she said, “and I didn’t have to worry about my next paycheck or the IRS or the rent or the utilities or if my car was going to start in the morning or not.”

“Freedom isn’t always what we wish it to be, is it, Dorrie?” he asked softly.

“No, Reaper, it isn’t,” she replied just as softly.

Lightning flared beyond the windows and both of them turned to look out across the glistening parking lot. Thunder rumbled, shaking the glass, then the rain grew heavier.

“You’d better get home to McGregor,” he suggested, “before it gets any worse.”

“I’m right where I want to be,” she said in a husky voice.

Cree looked away from the hungry look in her blue eyes. “Go home, Dorrie. You’re not where you should be.”

“What if I said I’m where I’ve always dreamed of being? Doing what I’ve always wanted to do.”

He smiled. “‘We could strip him and mount him and he wouldn’t be able to lift a finger to stop us’,” he quoted.

Dorrie laughed. “You remember me saying that?”

His smile faded. “I remember everything, Dorrie. That is part of the curse of being Dearg Duls.”

A slight shudder ran through Dorrie Burkhart. She wasn’t sure if the chill was a result of his words or the temperature in the drafty restaurant.

“How close to Transition are you?” she asked, her scrutiny moving to his left hand which was toying with the coffee cup, rocking it from side to side.

“Two, three weeks.”

“You’ll need Sustenance,” she reminded him, and then reached out to cover his hand.

Cree nodded. “Aye, I will.”

“What about triso? Do you have enough to last?” She knew the Reaper needed what this world called morphine in order to sleep each night.

“Tealson has been supplying me with the drug each month,” he answered. “Troi is manufacturing it on the Vortex.”

“Must get lonely for the old AIU hovering up there on the dark side of the moon.” She grinned. “Maybe we ought to get him an inflatable doll to play with.”

Cree smiled and this time the smile reached his sad eyes. “I thought about sending him a nice upright vacuum cleaner.” He snorted, at the picture of his cybot and the vacuum waltzing together on the bridge of the starcruiser.

“I don’t even want to know what image just popped into your perverted mind, Reaper,” Dorrie said, wondering if he was aware that she was stroking his hand.

Cree cocked his head to one side. “I’m more than aware of it, Dorrie,” he said and slowly withdrew his hand from beneath hers.

Dorrie tucked her lower lip between her teeth for a moment then threw caution to the wind. “How do you feel about being a kept man, Cree?”

“I’ve been a kept man ever since I stepped foot on this gods-be-damned world.” He relifted the coffee cup and drained it.

Dorrie licked her lips as she watched the movement of his throat as he swallowed. She ached to kiss the hollow at the base of his throat where the gentle pulsing of his blood caught and held her attention; to run her hands over his hard flesh and feel the steel of his shaft within her.

“You are a brazen slut.” He chuckled, intercepting her wayward thoughts.

“I am a horny slut. And stop reading my thoughts, Reaper.”

“Go home. Rape McGregor. It’ll make his night.”

“I would rather...”

“Go home,” he repeated. His direct gaze was stern, brooking no argument from her.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you intend to sit here all night?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll do what I have to.”

For a moment she held his unwavering stare, then arched her shoulders. “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

“Can’t condemn a girl for trying.”

“I don’t.”

Dorrie slid out of the booth, stood there for a few seconds and when she realized he had dismissed her, she walked away without saying goodbye.

“Drive careful,” Mike Peters called out as Dorrie pushed through the door into the streaming rain. Three feet from the door, he lost sight of her in the deluge.

She never made it to the car.

He came out of the pouring rain, his strong arms encircling her, pinning her arms to her sides, one hand slapped across her mouth, and dragged her with him into the shadows behind the building.

Struggling furiously to get away, Dorrie bucked in the steel-like grip that was bruising her ribs and pressing the air from her lungs. The man’s callused hand smelled of diesel fuel and stale cigarettes and his breath against the side of her face as he drew her deeper and deeper into the no man’s land behind the truck stop reeked of garlic and rampant tooth decay. She tried to bite him but her lips were pressed tightly to her teeth behind his filthy hand and when he moved his thumb and forefinger to her nose to cut off her air, true panic set in. She clawed at his thighs but her fingernails were too short to gain any purchase through the thick corduroy of his trousers. With the lack of oxygen rapidly turning her world black and bringing the stars down from the heavens, she began to pass out.

Lyle Drake had killed fifteen women since he turned 40 years of age three years before. He had celebrated his 40th birthday by strangling and mutilating a young hitchhiker he’d picked up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Two months later, he killed his second victim, a pretty college student whose car had broken down on a lonely stretch of I-80. All the women had been beautiful, young, and possessing long blond hair and delicate blue eyes. Each of them had angered Lyle Drake in some fashion.

Tonight, the woman struggling in his arms had splashed him with greasy water as she drove into the parking lot, but Drake intended to see she never angered another man this side of the grave. What the Lord God Jehovah did to her once she was at the Judgement Seat was none of Lyle’s concern.

“Whore of Babylon,” he named her as he pulled her into the woods behind the truck stop. “Witch of Endor!”

By the time he had taken his victim as far into the woods as he deemed necessary, the woman was unconscious, her limp body sagging in his powerful arms. With infinite care, he laid her down on the slick detritus of leaves and pine needles and squatted over her. He gripped the front of her blouse and ripped it open, a powerful erection leaping to life at the sound of the tearing fabric.

The jerk on her clothing brought Dorrie partially awake. She coughed, gasping for breath and then came fully awake as the man atop her circled her neck with his hands and began to squeeze the life from her. She clawed at his hands, bucking beneath him like a wild thing, digging her heels into the earth. But he was too strong, too intent on killing her. His long matted hair and ragged beard was dripping with rainwater as he bent over her, pressing his thumbs into her windpipe. She stared into his crazed eyes, saw the way his lips were skinned back from his teeth as he spouted biblical passages and knew she was going to die. With the last bit of conscious thought, she screamed for help though no sound passed her blue-tinted lips.

Chapter Eighteen

Gray light streamedthrough a slit in the draperies and fell harshly on the sleeping woman. She moaned, turning to her side to escape the intrusion. Burrowing into the soft pillow, she reached out to touch the man who always slept beside her.

She frowned as her hand patted farther away, searching for her bed partner. When she realized she was

alone, she sighed and turned to her back. Very slowly she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

She blinked and blinked again for the water-stained acoustic tiles overhead were unfamiliar.

As was the musty smell filling her nostrils.

And the scratchy roughness of the sheets beneath her naked body.

Then the night’s events came back to her in a flash and Dorrie Burkhart shot up in the bed with a shriek, her eyes wide with terror.

“You’re safe,” he said quietly.

Dorrie whimpered and snapped her head toward the man who spoke. When she saw Kamerone Cree sitting in a chair across the shadowy room, she began to shake uncontrollably.

He got up and went to her, sat on the bed and took her in his arms. “It’s all right. He’s dead.”

She did not need to ask how her attacker had died or who had killed him. Instead, she clung to Cree, burying her face against the softness of his shirt. Shuddering so badly her teeth were clicking together, she was unaware of him stretching out beside her and cradling her body against his own as he lay down with her. With infinite care, he smoothed her tousled hair and placed calming kisses along her brow.

“I...was...so...afraid.”

“I know. I heard.”

But had arrived barely in the nick of time. One minute later and Dorrie would not have survived her attack.

“W...where is h...he?”

Cree shrugged. “Gone.”

“If t...they f...find t-the b...body... If t...they tr...trace him b...back to us...”

“They won’t,” he told her. “There isn’t anything to find.”

The memory of Cree standing on the transporter pad of the Vortex, Bridget Dunne cradled in his arms as blood dripped from his hands and chin often woke Dorrie from her sleep with a jolt.

“Remind me not to make an enemy of you, Kami.”

“Go to sleep, Lady,” he told her, settling her closer to him. “We have nowhere to go and no time to be there.”

Dorrie woke tofind his hand on her breast. The heat of his palm sent shivers of delight through her body. One look told her he was sleeping soundly, his handsome face turned toward her as he lay on his belly. She ached to reach up and smooth away an errant lock of silky hair that had fallen across his brow, but she did not want to wake him. Quite content to lie beside him and watch him sleep, Dorrie wished with all her heart that she were the woman this man loved and not Bridget Dunne.

“I would never deny you anything,” whispered Dorrie, her gaze moving over his ruddy face. “I would move heaven and hell to make you happy, Kamerone Cree.”

The thick sweep of his dark lashes lifted and those remarkable amber eyes staring at her caused a

quickening in her womb and she knew he had once more intercepted her thoughts. He stared at her for a long time then the hand covering her breast tightened gently.

“Cree...” she began but he withdrew his hand and placed a finger to her lips, denying her.

“I belong to her.”

Dorrie took his hand and held it. “And if she doesn’t want you?” she asked, searching his eyes.

“She does,” he answered. “But right now, she’s angry with me. She’ll get over it.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

He didn’t want to believe that would happen so he dismissed the question. “Are you hungry?”

Knowing the subject was closed and now off limits, Dorrie sighed with exasperation. “Aye, Reaper, but not for food.”

Cree chuckled. “Slut,” he teased and turned to his back. He stretched then sat up, wincing as his hand encountered the empty vac-syringe of triso he’d used during the night.

Dorrie pushed herself up in the bed and watched him as he padded barefoot to the bathroom and opened the door. “Where are we, anyway?”

“For lack of a better word, my home,” he answered. “At least for the time being.”

She frowned as she took in the tawdry surroundings. Without having to ask, she knew the room had to be in a rundown motel. The vinyl chair sitting askew of the round Formica table, the wall hung double dresser and nightstands were a dead giveaway.

“Either you enjoy subjecting yourself to such morbid digs or you didn’t have much money last night.”

“I took all the money you had in your purse to pay for these delightful accommodations, my love.”

Dorrie grunted. “I should have known.” She swung her legs off the mattress. “So I guess that means we don’t have any money for breakfast, huh?”

“Guess not,” he replied as he walked to the chair and sat down to pull on his boots.

“You’re not seriously considering staying here, are you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”

“Aye, you do. You’re going home with me,” she challenged, expecting him to refuse.

“Good,” he said, surprising her. “I was hoping you’d say that.” Then he frowned. “Will McGregor mind?”

Dorrie turned as she was walking into the bathroom and looked at him. “Raine moved out yesterday afternoon,” she told him. “I guess he got tired of me or else he’s found a Terran woman who is titillated by his boyish charms.”

“And you’re not,” he stated.

“He’s a boy,” Dorrie said. “I prefer men.” She winked then walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

Cree sat there for a moment, staring at the worn carpet, disgusted by the smell of the place and the offensive clash of colors and fabrics.

“Have I been reduced to this?” he asked softly, remembering the elite accommodations he had taken for granted aboard FSK-14. His yearly credits could have purchased outright a dozen such dilapidated establishments such as this.

On his world, he had been at the apex of his class. He had been respected, feared, catered to at every turn. His had been an elite existence where nothing was denied and everything provided. His every wish had been fulfilled. But now....

He closed his eyes and hung his head. His heart ached and he was tired to the very marrow of his bones. He felt useless, worthless on Bridget’s world and without her he felt lost. She was his guiding star, his reason for living, and at the moment, she wanted nothing to do with him. He wondered how long it would be before her anger turned to apathy then slipped into dislike. He knew he had to make her understand why he could not bond with their son as she wanted him to.

“You ready, Reaper?” Dorrie asked.

He looked up. This woman, he thought as he came to his feet, would do anything he asked. She would care for him, she would look after him, and she would love him if he encouraged it. At the moment, her interest in him was more sexual than spiritual and he had to be very careful he did not allow her feelings for him to become anything more than physical desire.

“Aye, Lady,” he whispered, avoiding looking at her open face.

Kamerone Cree would have been stunned to know that Dorrie Burkhart had fallen in love with him the first time she saw him on FSK-14. And though the incident had such little meaning for him that he had dismissed it from his mind, she had once flirted with him as they passed in the corridor. Since he had ignored her, she’d turned her love at first sight to sarcasm when he was delivered into her hands in the Be-Mod 9 unit.

There was a light mist falling as Cree opened the door for her and Dorrie walked out of the motel room. She stared at her car-one wheel over the curb, the vehicle angled into the parking slot so that it took up three spaces-and turned to him. “You are a piss-poor driver, Reaper.”

Cree shrugged. “But give me a starcruiser and I can conquer the universe.”

Dorrie snorted and held out her hand. “Give me the keys.”

“I’ll drive,” he responded, fishing the keys from his jacket pocket and dangling them on his forefinger.

“No, you won’t!” She snatched the keys. “I’d like to live to see my next birthday.”

“Picky, picky, picky.”

“Shut up,” she ordered, but their eyes met and they smiled at one another.

To one of them, the smile was an easy giving of trust.

But to the other, it was bestowed with deepening love.

Chapter Nineteen

Major AkkadiaKahmal paced the floor of the conference room with a heavy scowl in place. For three days now, ever since they had come so close to capturing the Reaper, the team had been plotting scenario after scenario and none of the suggestions had been deemed worthy of an attempt.

With the cloaking device in place, the long-range starcruiser could not be picked up by the primitive Terran radar. But each day they were forced to cool their heels in orbit, was one less day they had before obtaining their goal: the capture and, ultimately, the execution of Kamerone Cree.

“He has become more cautious,” Lieutenant Melankhoia Chanz reminded her fellow team members. “We must bide our time until he relaxes his guard.”

“Something he will not do,” said Lieutenant Augeania Deon.

“We must find a way to make him,” suggested Cirolia Sern.

“Where is he now?” asked Thalia Chakai, the Captain of the LRSC Aluvial.

“Living with the whore, Burkhart,” replied Melankhoia.

Akkadia stopped pacing and turned to the others. “Does his woman know this?”

“We do not believe she does,” Cirolia answered.

The leader of the Strike Force came to the conference table around which sat the other four members of her team, the Captain of the ship, and the lone Healer who had accompanied them from Amazeen, and braced her fists on the tabletop.

“Then she should be told immediately,” Akkadia recommended.

“Why is this important?” the Captain asked.

Akkadia’s smile was lethal. “Because she will be as angry about her mate living with that one as the Reaper was angry about Rhye.”

“Jealousy.” said Cirolia.

“Aye,” Akkadia agreed. “We’ll use the green-eyed monster, as the Terrans call it, to catch the red-eyed Dearg Duls!”

Captain Chakai could not see the merit in making the Terran woman jealous, but that didn’t matter. At this point, she would agree to anything that might garner them the Reaper’s capture.

“Do what needs doing,” the Captain ordered, “but be quick about it. I wish to leave this godsforsaken part of the universe before the next solar storm forces us to retreat to the dark side of their moon. We dare not run into his cybot.”

The Chalean Healer who had accompanied the Amazeen to Terra said nothing. Her input was not necessary. All she need do was sit back and wait until the Reaper was delivered into her hands. Once that was accomplished, she would make the Dearg Duls rue the day he was ever conceived.

The elevatordoors shushed open and a tall, striking woman in a long white lab coat stepped on board. She nodded at Bridget then punched the fifth floor button. As the doors closed and the cage began to rise, the woman turned to Bridget. “You’re Dr. Dunne aren’t you?” she asked in a thick foreign accent.

Bridget smiled. “Yes, I am.”

“Hi,” the tall woman greeted Bridget and held out her hand. “I’m Hestia Theodopalys, the new Ob-Gyn in town.”

“Welcome to Albany, Dr. Theodopalys. How do you like it so far?”

“Please,” the woman asked, her eyes sparkling. “Call me Hestia.”

“All right, Hestia.”

“It is nothing like my native Greece, but I am sure it will grow on me.”

Bridget laughed. “Albany has a way of doing that.”

“Perhaps you can help me. I am looking for a woman named Dorrie Burkhart. Do you know her?”

Bridget nodded. “She was my assistant up until a few days ago, then she quit to take a job at Dougherty General.”

“Ah,” Hestia drawled. “Perhaps that is why I did not find her here.”

“May I ask why you’re looking for her?” Bridget asked, hating herself for being nosy, but anything that concerned any of the women who had accompanied her from Rysalia was important to Beryla.

“ I heard she might be moving out of her apartment and since I am looking for a place to rent, I thought perhaps I might-what is the American word? Sublet?-from her.”

“I didn’t know she was looking for a new place.”

“Perhaps she isn’t, but the nurse who mentioned this to me said Ms. Burkhart and her friend, Kamerone, would-”

“What?” Bridget gasped, her eyes widening. “Don’t you mean Raine? Raine McGregor?”

Akkadia Kahmal, a.k.a. Dr. Hestia Theodopalys, pretended to think. “No, I am sure it was Kamerone. Kamerone Cree. I remember the name because I know a man named Khiershon Cree back home.”

A shaft of hurt spiked through Bridget’s heart and she slumped against the wall. “I think you’re mistaken,” she said, her gaze searching the floor.

The tall woman smiled. “I don’t believe so, but I could be.”

The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the doors opened.

“Dougherty General?”

Bridget looked up. “Yes,” she said, unaware her eyes were dark with anger.

Akkadia Kahmal nodded. She had accomplished what she had beamed down to do. As the doors of the elevator closed, she wondered how long it would take Bridget Dunne to drive to the rival hospital to confront the whore.

It took Bridgetroughly seven minutes to leave Albany Memorial, get into her car and drive to the other hospital. It took her another three minutes to find out in which department Dorrie Burkhart worked and another two minutes to track the woman down. Finding her standing outside a patient’s room, flirting with an orderly, did nothing to improve Bridget’s rapidly escalating temper.

“I want to talk to you!”

Dorrie stiffened at the tone and turned away from the good-looking orderly. Her hands tightened on the tray of vials she was holding. “About what, Doctor?”

Bridget was clenching her fists in an effort to keep her voice down. “Is he staying at your place?”

“Who?”

“My gods-be-damned husband, that’s who!”

“I wasn’t aware that you were married, Dr. Dunne,” Dorrie drawled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were just living with Captain Cree, were you not?”

Bridget took a step closer to Dorrie and lowered her voice. “Don’t give me any of your crap, Burkhart. Is he staying with you or not?”

The blond woman’s eyebrows shot up. “He had to stay somewhere after you kicked him out. Where did you expect the man to go?”

She couldn’t believe that Kamerone would turn to Dorrie. “Are you telling me he is with you?”

The right side of Dorrie’s mouth cocked upward. “What you’re really asking is have we slept together, isn’t it, Doctor Dunne?”

Bridget shook her head. “I know damned well he hasn’t-”

“As a matter of fact, we have,” Dorrie interrupted. Her smile was nasty. “Slept together, that is.”

Bridget blinked. Dorrie Burkhart was a lot of things, but a liar she was not. Hearing her admit to having been to bed with Kamerone hurt more than Bridget was able to bear. Without another word, she turned and headed back down the hallway.

“Just remember,” Dorrie called to her over the ringing of the telephone at the nurses’ desk. “You threw him out, Bridget!”

The Reaper’s lady turned and looked back at Dorrie. “You,” she said, her voice low and fierce, “are a whore, Dorrie Burkhart.”

“Never claimed to be anything else,” Dorrie admitted and turned back to the orderly who was grinning from ear to ear.

Head Nurse Mary Ellen Lanier knew Dr. Dunne only in passing and had met the lab technician just a few hours earlier; she didn’t like either one. Having heard the conversation between them, Mary Ellen knew the two women were enemies and fighting over a man. More than likely it was the man she had just put on hold. Always eager to cause trouble for any doctor she could, the head nurse spoke loud enough for Bridget Dunne to hear.

“Miss Burkhart, your roommate is waiting for you in the cafeteria. He said he’d buy you lunch if you’d like.”

Bridget snapped her head around, found Dorrie’s challenging eyes mocking her and could have scratched those gas-flame orbs from Burkhart’s bleached blond head. As it was, the elevator doors opened and she stepped inside, peripherally aware of Dorrie running toward her.

Mary Ellen saw the doors closing, watched with glee as Burkhart skidded to a stop before plowing into the stainless steel panels, and hooted as the lab tech shouted. “Leave him alone, Bridget!”

Dorrie pounded on the doors then spun around and ran for the stairs. The last thing she wanted was for Kamerone to go back to Bridget.

The cafeteria wasnearly empty as Cree sat nursing a glass of iced tea. His third tuna sandwich had long since lost its appeal and he shoved it aside in lieu of consuming eight bags of corn chips, four candy bars, and two fat Kosher pickles. He wasn’t feeling well and suspected it was the kosher dill pickle he’d eaten for dessert that had caused his indigestion.

At the moment Bridget Dunne entered the cafeteria, he was stretching his leg out to get change from his pocket to buy some sherbet to settle his stomach. As he looked down at his palm, counting the coins, he was completely unaware of the advancing virago that was the love of his life.

“You son of a bitch!” Bridget hissed.

Cree jerked his head up in time to have Bridget knock the money from his hand. Coins flew across the terrazzo floor and rolled.

“How could you, Cree?”

The Reaper stared up at her, guilt staining his cheeks for he knew he was where he should not be with a woman he knew he should not be anywhere near.

“Let me explain...” he began, but the stinging slap that rocked his head to one side had enough strength in it to nearly unseat him.

“I trusted you!” Bridget shouted.

There were four other people in the cafeteria, all having stopped what they were doing to stare at the commotion. Each of them turned to the woman who came running into the cafeteria, the light of battle blazing in her blue eyes.

“Leave him alone, Dunne!” Dorrie ordered.

Cree’s eyes widened when he saw Dorrie and he groaned. “Merciful Alel.”

“You disease-ridden slut! If you don’t stay away from my husband...”

“He isn’t yours, Dunne!” Dorrie snarled, cutting her off. “I’ve claimed him!”

Bridget shrieked at that pronouncement. “I’ll pull every strand of that cheap dye job out of your head, you bitch!”

“Come ahead and try, you flat-chested hag!”

“Arghhhhh! ”

Before the two women could leap at one another, Cree shot up from his chair like a rocket and grabbed both of them, one with each hand, trying his best to keep them apart. But even with his superior Reaper strength, it proved to be quite a task. Hissing and spitting like two enraged cats, the women were clawing at each other’s arms, trying to kick one another, and shrieking like banshees.

“Shut up!” he yelled, but neither woman heard him.

So engrossed in the cat fight taking place in the center of the cafeteria, no one noticed the soft pulse of light near the entrance and the sudden appearance of five very tall, very strong-looking women in gray jumpsuits.

Bridget’s hands were curled into claws as she tried her best to grab Dorrie’s thick blond braid. Her intention was to snatch the bitch baldheaded. But Cree kept swinging them in opposite directions to keep them apart and it finally occurred to her that he was the only obstacle in the way of her beating the crap out of Burkhart. With that thought firmly entrenched in her infuriated brain, she lashed out with her foot and kicked him as hard as she could behind his right knee, knocking his leg out from under him.

Cree grunted with the pain and pitched sideways, dragging Bridget’s arm with him as he fell, but he let go as soon as he heard her yelp of pain as her arm was wrenched.

On one knee, still gripping Dorrie’s arm, he was relieved to see a stranger rush forward and grab Bridget around the waist to keep her from jumping on Dorrie.

Relieved until he looked up into the unforgiving eyes of the Amazeen woman who had been trailing him for months.

Chapter Twenty

Tylan Kahn hadbeen uneasy all morning. Although his office at GaNetCo, the Georgia Network Co-op, was about 50 miles away in Thomasville, he was getting vibes from Kamerone Cree and the uneasiness was intensifying.

Unable to work until he found out what was troubling the Reaper, Kahn had left his office at 10:45 a.m. and headed north. He was following the intense vibrations like a homing device. Just as the ruckus in the cafeteria began, he was driving into the Dougherty Memorial parking lot, looking for a place to park his sports car. When the air around him begin to throb, he knew what it meant and jumped out of the car-which was still in gear-and ran for the hospital’s side entrance.

Dorrie had gone perfectly still, staring across the room to the stern faces of the tallest women she’d ever seen. Each of the four standing behind the woman whose arm was around Bridget Dunne’s waist, held a weapon aimed at the other people in the cafeteria. Her heart pounding furiously, Dorrie gripped Cree’s arm as he came slowly to his feet.

“I will kill her, Reaper,” Akkadia Kahmal stated and from the sheath at her hip she drew a dagger, the curved blade of which gleamed evilly beneath the florescent lights overhead. She put the serrated edge of the dagger to Bridget’s exposed throat. “Take off the blocking device, Cree.”

“Don’t do it,” Tylan Kahn ordered.

Gazes leapt to the man in the business suit who had just ran into the room.

Dorrie tightened her grip on Cree’s arm. She would not willingly allow these women to take him. She put herself in front of Cree.

Akkadia smiled hatefully. “Very touching, but you will not be able to save him again.”

A beam of intense red light shot from one of the weapons and Dorrie Burkhart vanished.

“No!” Cree bellowed.

Two of the cafeteria workers screeched and flung themselves to the floor. Another panicked and ran for the entrance, only to be cut down by another pulse of the Amazeen’s weapon. The warrioress holding the weapon aimed it at one of the workers on the floor.

“Don’t!” Cree pleaded.

“Take off the blocking device,” said the Amazeen Major, “or I will kill every last one of them.” She pressed the dagger blade against Bridget’s flesh. “Beginning with this one!”

Seeing the woman he loved so perilously close to being slain, Tylan Kahn took a step forward, offering his own life for Bridget’s. The sting of the weapon caught him just above his heart and knocked him twenty feet down the hallway outside the cafeteria.

“Tylan!” Bridget shrieked and twisted against the woman holding her. Her movement caused the dagger blade to pierce her flesh and blood beaded up and ran from the nick.

“Merciful Alel, no!” Cree shouted. He tore his shirt open with both hands and gripped the chain from which hung the blocking device. He snatched it from his neck and held it out to the Amazeen leader, the broken chain swinging. “Here!”

“Throw it away,” Akkadia ordered.

“Let her go first,” he returned, his chest heaving.

“You know I am not a fool, Reaper,” the Amazeen scoffed. “Throw it away and on my honor I will let her live.”

“Kam, no!” Bridget wailed. “They’ll kill you!”

Cree’s attention cut to Bridget and he saw the pleading in her eyes. He knew she understood he had no choice, but he heard her whispered denial just the same.

“I have no great desire to harm this woman, Cree, but I will slit her throat if you do not surrender to us.”

He took one last look at his lady then threw the chain across the room.

“Kamerone!” Bridget sobbed, her love for him making the one word a plea for forgiveness.

“On your knees, Reaper!” one of the Amazeen demanded as the four warrioresses rushed to Cree.

Akkadia watched Kamerone Cree’s face and she saw the knowledge of his defeat begin to register. She raised her chin, satisfaction at having captured the most wanted man in the universe lighting her eyes. As he dropped to his knees, her eyes widened with delight. “Bind him,” she ordered her Sisters.

Cree was emotionless as his arms were dragged behind his back and the titanium manacles were clamped tightly around his wrist. Under other circumstances, he would have snapped easily the cable that ran between the two bands, but with a Hasdu dagger pressed against his lady’s windpipe, he would not.

Bridget was sobbing uncontrollably, her heart breaking, her fear a sentient life form pushing against her body. “No, Kamerone, no!”

“Let her go,” Cree asked softly. “She is no threat to you.”

“When I know you are no threat to us, Reaper.”

Once more light pulsed in the cafeteria and Cree heard footsteps behind him. He was looking at Bridget, memorizing her face for the time when he would no longer be able to see her. Nothing mattered to him save her safety and he would do whatever these bitches demanded to make sure she survived this evil day.

“I’m sorry, Beloved.” Bridget extended one hand toward him . “I love you.”

“I love you, as well, my lady.”

When he saw Bridget’s eyes flare with terror as she recognized the person walking up behind him, he knew who had joined them.

“Hello, Reaper,” the woman sneered.

“Dr. Sejm,” he said a fraction of a second before the needle was driven into his neck.

Hael Sejm staredinto the face of the unconscious Reaper and felt a thrill of anticipation shudder through her body. Everyone on board was still awake save the sleeping Dearg Duls.

Nor would he be revived until he was strapped to a restraint table in Sejm’s lab for the man was as dangerous as they came, more so than any of his kind. Although heavily manacled inside the E.S.U. and pumped full of powerful neuroinhibitors that would have caused brain damage in a normal man, Kamerone Cree was still a threat to the women on board. So careful had the Amazeen Strike Force been to ensure Cree was put out of commission for the trip, a special-built Extended Sleep Unit had been designed to house the warrior. It had been built with a device that would-should Cree wake and attempt to break free of his confinement-immediately evacuate every atom of oxygen from the unit, rendering him unconscious. As an added precaution to prevent an accidental breaking of the pressure lock should an emergency arise with the ship’s systems, the seal on the unit had been wielded shut with a reinforced titanium bond. The seal would have to be cut open with a laser torch to free the Reaper.

Akkadia Kahmal came to stand beside Dr. Sejm. There were five long gouges down the Major’s otherwise lovely face and she was pressing a handkerchief to her cheek to staunch the bleeding.

“I take it the whore is giving you trouble?”

Akkadia grunted. “I miscalculated when I beamed her aboard our ship instead of ridding the universe of her infectious presence. A mistake I will not make again.”

Hael nodded. “Burkhart is loyal to him so she must be watched at all times. I almost chose her over Dunne when making the decision of which female we would put in his path, but it was Dunne he noticed.”

The Major pulled the handkerchief from her face and looked at it. Deciding the bleeding had stopped, she tucked the handkerchief into the sleeve of her uniform. “I don’t see how any female could give” She cocked her chin at Cree. “that thing any loyalty.”

“He has a certain allure,” Hael shrugged. “Perhaps it has something to do with pheromones. Who knows? I fail to detect the fascination, but I have seen what it does to other women.”

“Not this woman.”

“That is good to know. It will make our job so much easier.” She turned her attention from the Reaper to look at the Major. “I have not expressed my gratitude that you did not kill Burkhart. We can use her as leverage with this one.”

“You think he’ll care what happens to her?”

“Oh, yes,” Hael said, surprised at the question. “He will most definitely care! I saw the look on his face when he thought she had been disintegrated. His fear for the Terrans was most amusing.”

Akkadia cleared her throat. “I apologize for having harmed your surrogate son, Doctor.”

“It could not be avoided. You did not kill him and that is all that matters.” She smiled nastily. “But he’ll be out of commission a week; two at the most.”

“A very handsome man is Admiral Kahn. Under other circumstances, I would not mind having him at stud. I would imagine he would produce superior offspring.”

Hael chortled at the notion of Tylan Kahn being at the Major’s mercy in one of her breeding farms on Amazeen. “He is needed right where he is, Major. Bridget will have need of his strong arms when she is told this one has met his fate.” She smiled at the sleeping Reaper. “Tylan will be most kind to our Bridget.”

Akkadia cocked her head to the side in query. “You are very fond of Dunne, aren’t you, Lady?”

Hael pondered the question for a moment then agreed. “Aye, I believe I am. She has spirit and intelligence. It is through no fault of her own that we chose her to mate with this beast or that the suggestionaries took a firmer hold of her mind than I anticipated. She believes she loves him and no amount of explanation could ever convince her otherwise. But...”

The Major waited politely for the second most powerful woman on Rysalia Prime to finish her thought. She was awed by Hael Sejm and, truth be told, privately feared the woman. The Chalean Healer let nothing get in the way of the Multitude’s agenda...not even her own surrogate son...and Akkadia knew anyone who went up against Hael Sejm would not survive the encounter.

“When Bridget is told this one has met his richly deserved fate on Rysalia Prime, she will turn to Tylan for comfort. He will be there-as he has always been there for her-and his comfort will metamorphose into something more...shall we say, physical?”

“Ten minutes until the wormhole, Major,” one of the crewman informed Akkadia.

“I almost feel sorry for her,” Akkadia said, extending a hand to Sejm to precede her to the Extended Sleeping Units where they would be spending the next six months.

“There is no need to feel pity for Bridget,” Hael hissed. “Her love for this beast has caused her nothing but pain. His death will release her from the hold he has over her!”

Akkadia believed otherwise. She had held the Terran against her during the standoff in the hospital and had felt the quivers of fear rippling through Bridget Dunne’s body. That fear was not for her but for the man across the room whose own terror was blazing across his handsome face.

And he was handsome, Akkadia begrudgingly admitted as she looked back at him. His face was almost perfect with high cheekbones, long dark lashes, and lips meant to be ravaged. He was a superior physical specimen with rock-hard stomach muscles and powerful arms and legs. His crop of thick dark curls invited a woman’s hand to grab it and pull as she plundered his mouth. Under other circumstances, he would have made excellent breeding stock.

But Reapers could not be used for breeding. Akkadia sighed deeply.

“We learned otherwise, eh?” Hael asked, correctly reading the expression on the Major’s face.

“Aye. That we did.”

“Live and learn.” She looked down the long row of E.S.U.s where more than five dozen Terran males were confined. “Live and learn.”

“Have you chosen which ones will be harvested?” Akkadia inquired as she, too, observed the two rows of E.S.U.s.

“Aye. The five Healers and the six scientists. When we dock, do not wake those. We might as well keep them unconscious until the harvesting is done.” She took the Major’s hand as Akkadia helped the old woman into her assigned E.S.U. “No need borrowing trouble by allowing them to know what we are about.”

The Major felt a tiny tug of remorse for what was going to be done to the eleven men she and the Healer were discussing, but then dismissed the sympathy from her mind.

After all, they were just men and as such, meant little in the overall scheme of the universe.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Warning! Systemsalert! Systems alert!”

The pressure lock on Akkadia Kahmal’s E.S.U. broke with a loud hiss and the lid arced upward along the dual tracks attached to the bulkhead. The Amazeen Major’s eyes snapped open as the alarm klaxon’s shrill blast pierced her hearing. She was up and out of the E.S.U. even as the pressure locks on the other units began disengaging.

“What’s happening?” she yelled.

“Oxygen levels are dropping, Major,” the AIU reported as it lurched into step beside the ship’s captain who was also out of her Extended Sleep Unit. “We have a hull breach in aft section, cargo bay 4.”

“Cause?” Captain Chakai demanded.

“Collision with an asteroid has ripped a four foot long gash in the starboard hull of the lower deck,” the AIU responded. “The auxiliary pressure locks have engaged to seal off that deck, but we have lost life in the holding cells.”

“Damn!” Kahmal looked at the chronometer above the view screen of a Vid-Com. “Where are we? How far from Montyne Vex?”

“Three hours at our present cruising speed, Major.”

“Computer!” the captain shouted. “Damage report!”

“The lower deck has been sealed off, Captain, but The Aluvial has lost life support systems in bays four and five. Death toll is twenty-nine. Oxygen levels in bays six through nine are at half-capacity. No immediate danger to decks two through five, but unless the breach is repaired, the ship will implode as the pressure increases. Structural integrity is deteriorating rapidly. Loss of navigation is calculated at two hours.”

Captain Chakai turned to the navigational officer. “Get us to the planetoid as quickly as you can, Tyrian!”

“Aye-aye, Captain!” yelled the lieutenant.

Captain Chakai vaulted into her command chair. “Sern,” she called out to the communications officer, “hail Montyne Vex.”

Lieutenant Cirolia Sern nodded and began hailing the planetoid.

Akkadia Kahmal took her seat beside the Captain, pressed her fingertips together and placed them under her chin. It was a habit the Major exhibited when she was troubled.

“Tell me!” snapped the Captain.

“I have been uneasy about our Sisters on Montyne Vex since we passed here on the way to Terra,” answered Kahmal.

“It was so noted.”

“I fear something has happened to them.”

“Nonsense. They are safe and awaiting our arrival to evacuate them from the plateau.” reassured the captain, but her eyes told a different story.

Akkadia Kahmal knew better, but wisely kept her counsel. She was heartsick, feeling a loss she would have had difficulty explaining to her fellow crewmembers. And her anxiety was rising along with the contemplation of a new problem.

“Do not keep me wondering why you look as though the world is coming to an end, Kahmal! What troubles you?”

“Depending on how much damage we will have sustained by the time we get to Montyne Vex, we may well be stranded there for a week or more.” The Major’s voice became husky. “Perhaps longer.”

“We have sufficient nourishment on board to last an additional four months, Major,” Chakai grated. “Our Sisters on the planetoid will have additional rations.”

“For us and for those captives in bays six through nine, aye, we do,” Akkadia replied, refusing to think about what they would find when they arrived on Montyne Vex.

“Then what the hell are you worried about?”

Kahmal turned her dark green gaze to her Captain. “We can not maintain the E.S.U.s during our downtime. We will need to route all available resources to the repairs.”

“We are not...” The Captain stopped, her eyes growing wide. “Cree!”

“Precisely.”

“You are worried about maintaining our prisoner’s life.” Hael Sejm chuckled from the across the room.

“The Tribunal ordered us to bring him back alive,” the Captain reminded the scientist.

“We’ve nourishment for our beast, Thalia,” Sejm said.

Kahmal nodded. “In cargo bays two through five.”

“Aye,” Sejm agreed.

The Captain shuddered, the thought of the dead Terran men littering the cargo bays providing food for the Reaper making her physically ill.

“But we’ll still have to extract him from the E.S.U. in order to feed him,” Kahmal said. “We have no containment cell aboard The Aluvial.”

“There is a containment cell on Montyne Vex,” said Sejm. “Or did you forget?”

“What if the young Reaper found a way to escape our Sisters and has broken free of the containment cell?” asked Kahmal. “What if he has slaughtered our kin and is even now lurking about the caves in wait for Sustenance?”

“Two Reapers,” whispered Melankhoia Chanz. “By the goddesses, the thought does not sit well with this warrioress!”

“If that is the case, the young one will be the only Reaper we will have to worry about. Kamerone Cree is no threat to us in his present condition,” observed Sejm.

“Begging your pardon, Captain,” Lt. Sern broke in, “but I ran a diagnostic of Montyne Vex and there are no lifesigns registering.”

Kahmal flinched. “Reaper heat signature?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“That means they killed the young one’s parasite,” Lt. Chanz said on a long, relieved-sounding breath.

“Praise to Aluvial for that!” Captain Chakai breathed.

“As grieved as I am that your Sisters did not survive their encounter with the young Reaper, I must say I am relieved that he did not, either,” Sejm said, “though I was looking forward to seeing the Bloodsire’s anguish as he watched his surviving bloodsons fried to a crisp!”

“You are an evil woman,” said Sern.

“I am a practical woman,” Sejm responded. “I enjoy watching Cree’s pain and knowing he is that much closer to atoning for his sins. He is helpless to keep us from exacting our revenge!”

“He is still a danger to us,” the Captain told them. “Just getting him from the E.S.U. to the containment cell could cost some of our crew their lives. He’s close to Transition, isn’t he?”

Sejm shook her head. “Time in the E.S.U. will have slowed down the Transition sequence for our bloodthirsty monster. But to be on the safe side, when we land, evacuate the oxygen from his unit. That will stop his heart and brain functions long enough to break the seal and allow me to inject him with a heavy doze of neuroinhibitor.”

“He has enough in his system now to cause potential brain damage,” Lt. Melankhoia Chanz declared. “Won’t oxygen deprivation along with another strong dose of the IH cause irreparable harm?”

“Do we care?” the Captain snorted.

“The Tribunal will care,” Kahmal replied. “They want him cognizant of what is happening to him when they send him to the guillotine.”

“If they’d done that the first time around instead of hanging him, we would not be having this discussion!” Sejm snapped. “But to answer your question, no, it will not cause brain damage. His parasite will not allow him to be so incapacitated.”

Kahmal looked at the scientist. The Major had studied Reaper anatomy and physiology extensively. She was an expert on the subject-from what could cause the Reapers intense pain to manipulations that could bring intense pleasure. There was nothing about the Dearg Duls she did not know. Because of this, she knew Hael Sejm was lying, but she did not challenge the woman’s words.

“This containment cell,” said Kahmal, “I am assuming has titanium bond shackles imbedded in the walls.”

“Titanium shackles attached to ten inch thick cormax rods that have been drilled through two hundred feet of solid bedrock and anchored with triple-reinforced krilonite cement to four foot deep iron stanchions,” Sejm said.

Chanz whistled. “Not even Cree could break free of that.”

“The cell was designed specifically for Khiershon Cree,” Sejm reported, “and I imagine we will find the ashes of that one when we arrive.”

Kahmal’s fierce eyes locked on Sejm, “What happens once the ship is repaired and we are ready to put him back in the E.S.U.? You can’t draw the oxygen out of the containment cell. You can’t expect him to hold still for you to inject him with another high-powered dose of IH this time around.”

“Why not?” asked Sejm with a nasty smile.

“You don’t have his woman’s life to threaten,” Chanz put in.

“But we have his whore,” Sejm said in a singsong voice.

Kahmal sat back in her chair. “Burkhart.”

“Aye,” Sejm agreed, “and I am wagering he’ll behave just as docilely for us with a blade to Dorrie’s throat as he did to the throat of his lady.”

The crippled shiplanded in the thick dust of Montyne Vex, causing a cloud of suffocating particles to rise up from the desert floor. As the ship’s thrusters shut off and the craft settled, a strong smell of ozone shot through the ventilation system.

“The breech must have widened with the weight of the landing,” Chanz reported. “We’re pulling in gases from the planet’s surface.”

“Even through the seal on the lower deck?” asked the Captain.

“It would appear so. I’m registering heavy concentrations of ammonia and cybrilon, but the scrubbers have come on line.”

“What that tells me is we’re going to be here awhile,” said the Captain. “Tyrian, try hailing Charon 8.”

Lieutenant Tyrian did not reply. She knew the situation was hopeless, but she tried to raise the nearest Amazeen outpost anyway. When all she got was subspace static, she turned to Captain Chakai. “Nothing, Ma’am. Not even a beacon is coming out of the wormhole.”

The Captain nodded, not having expected help from that direction, but obliged to try. “Put out a distress call on a frequency you know those piddling Terran vessels can’t intercept and cloak us. We don’t need to borrow trouble as Sejm says.”

“Aye-Aye, Captain,” Tyrian responded.

“I suggest we move the bodies to the containment cell before we take Cree there,” Kahmal told the Captain. She turned to Hael Sejm. “Will the shackle chains be long enough for him to reach the bodies for consumption?”

“Please, Major!” the Captain said, gagging.

Sejm grinned. “Aye, Akkadia. He’ll have plenty of stalking room about his cell if you don’t want him plastered tight to the wall.”

Kahmal stared at the Chalean woman, surprised to realize she loathed the scientist. As much as she, herself, hated Kamerone Cree, it would appear Sejm, his blood aunt, hated him more. She knew why, of course, but it seemed to her-and to most people who tried to reason the maniacal hatred Sejm bore the Reaper-the woman’s animosity far outweighed the crime of Cree’s existence.

“Feeling a touch of pity for him are you, Major Kahmal?” Sejm challenged.

The Major refused to rise to the bait and remained silent. The older woman’s chuckle as Sejm turned to leave set Kahmal’s teeth on edge.

“That one is to be watched,” whispered Melankhoia Chanz.

“She will kill him if we aren’t careful,” Kahmal replied in a low voice.

“Will the evacuation of the oxygen cause him irreparable harm?” asked the Captain.

“Most assuredly it will,” Kahmal answered in a matter of fact tone, “but the parasite will heal him eventually.”

“How quickly?”

Kahmal shrugged. “That can not be determined at this time.” She relaxed in the chair. “It will be to our advantage that he be incapacitated as much as possible.” She looked at the Captain. “That is why I did not protest her obvious lie.”

“She knows it will harm him,” stated Captain Chakai.

“She knows and she’s looking forward to it,” confirmed Kahmal.

Sejm stood besidethe E.S.U. and listened as the oxygen was sucked out of the unit. She turned her head to one side as the ruddy complexion of the man lying inside began to take on a bluish tint. As the alarm bell sounded-warning no air was left within the E.S.U. to sustain life-she smiled.

“Cut it open,” Lieutenant Cirolia Sern ordered and two crewwomen from engineering attacked the titanium seal of the unit with laser torches.

“How long before you will have the lid off?” asked Captain Chakai.

“Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes, Ma’am,” Sern answered.

Chakai looked up at the chronometer above the sleep unit and frowned. “Enough to kill a normal man.”

“The key word here is normal, Captain,” Sejm said archly. “It takes fire or a blade to completely destroy one of his kind.”

“Then why hang him?” Chakai asked.

“Because it will cause him pain, of course,” Sejm replied. “Suffocating pain before the guillotine lops the head from his worthless body!”

The Captain sighed. The scientist’s presence was becoming worrisome and she would be glad to see this journey to its end and be rid of the vicious hag. Her displeasure at having a Chalean on board her vessel was second only to her intense dislike of having to bide time with a member of the Rysalian Tribunal. Every female in the Quadrant knew Rysalian Tribunalists were not to be trusted.

Akkadia Kahmal watched from a few feet away as the engineering team cut through the titanium bond. She leaned against a support beam, arms folded across her chest, and never took her eyes from Sejm’s vindictive face. She studied the old woman much as she had studied ugly insects when she was a child. A part of her ached to pin Sejm’s arms to a board as she had pinned the insects’ wings and watch the crone struggle to free herself.

“Planning how you will rid us of her, ‘Kadia?” Melankhoia Chanz asked in a low voice.

“How important is she to the Tribunal?”

“I believe once she brings Kamerone Cree to his knees before them she will have lived out her usefulness,” Chanz replied. “If rumor is true.”

“What then?” the Major asked.

“She will be retired with full honors.”

Kahmal’s smile was slow. “I do not believe she will live long enough to retire with honors, ‘Khoia.”

“One can only hope such will be the case,” Chanz agreed.

“We’re almost through the seal, Captain,” Sern reported.

“Are you ready with the IH injection, Dr. Sejm?” asked the Captain.

Sejm nodded and reached into her lab coat. She moved closer to the E.S.U., a full vac-syringe clutched like a dagger in her gnarled fist. “I am ready.” The engineering team stepped back as the lid lifted then arced up the dual tracks behind the unit. Sejm moved in, aimed the vac-syringe at Cree’s neck and plunged the needle in as far as it would go.

The Reaper’s body convulsed violently and everyone in the room gasped. All but Akkadia Kahmal scrambled away from the unit and ran for the door. The Major unfolded her arms, pushed away from the beam, and walked to the unit.

“Kahmal!” the Captain shouted. “Come away!”

“He can’t hurt us. For all intents and purposes, the man is dead.” She reached into the unit to place two fingertips against Cree’s still neck. When she felt no pulse, she looked around. “Get the gurney and let’s get him to the containment cell before the parasite works its magic and he wakes, ladies.”

Cautiously, the others moved closer to the E.S.U. Satisfied the Reaper was out of commission, they worked to lift him from the unit and onto a gurney.

“These chains are heavy,” one of the security team complained as she took hold of the thick links attached to the manacles around Cree’s wrists.

“And you should be glad they are, my dear,” Sejm told her.

“Every precaution was taken to incapacitate the bastard,” Chakai muttered as she helped the security team members lay the heavy chains on the gurney.

Sejm wished they would leave her alone with the Reaper for only a moment or two. Deep in the pocket of her lab coat was another syringe filled with a lethal toxin that she was sure would kill the parasite given the chance. If not, it would most certainly stamp out any ember of life remaining inside the humanoid body of Kamerone Cree.

But she was being watched-most closely by Akkadia Kahmal-and she suspected Cyle Acet was responsible. The Great Lady had more than likely issued strict orders that the crewwomen of The Aluvial not allow her unsupervised access to the Reaper.

Though a problem, it was not a major setback for Sejm. She had no intention of allowing Cree to reach Rysalia Prime alive. Never again would she risk the chance of him surviving another execution in the courtyard of the Titaness.

“We’re ready to transport into the caves,” Chanz told her Captain.

Captain Chakai nodded. “Engage,” she commanded.

Akkadia Kahmal tensed, wondering what they would find once they gained the caves. The thought of seeing the ravaged body of her youngest sister made the heart inside the Amazeen Major’s body ache.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“No sign ofthem at all,” Lieutenant Deon told the others. “The containment cell walls are splattered with Reaper blood and tissue, but it is months old.”

“The Terran vessel,” snarled Sejm. “I’ll wager the bastard was on the Terran vessel we passed!”

“And our Sisters, as well!” said Melankhoia.

“Our sisters are dead,” Akkadia said in a soft voice. “I feel it here.” She clutched her closed fist to her chest.

“I refuse to accept that!” said Melanchoia.

“Accept it,” Akkadia demanded, her tone brooking no challenge.

The two women locked gazes and when Akkadia did not look away, Melanchoia’s eyes filled with tears.

“Eyiigh!” Melanchoia wailed and turned away, walking, then running as fast as she could from the others.

“Should I go to her?” Sern asked.

“Let her mourn in her own fashion,” Akkadia cautioned. She looked about the containment cell. “As will I.”

The Captain moved out of the Major’s way as Akkadia exited the cell, not daring to put a comforting hand on Kahmal’s broad shoulder for the look of anguish was hard on the warrioress’ face.

“Another crime for which the Reaper and his bloodsons must atone,” Sejm declared.

The Captain touched the Vid-Com on her uniform lapel. “Transport the bodies to the cell’s coordinates then send us the Reaper. I’ve of a mind to hurt him even though he can not feel it!”

Sejm grinned. “Save your anger for when he can, Captain. Why waste good torture on a mindless chunk of nerveless flesh?”

Captain Chakai clenched her teeth. “It would soothe me.”

Sejm shrugged. “Then do what you will to him.”

Light pulsed brightly in the containment cell and the heaped bodies of the dead Terran men materialized

in one corner. The smell was overpowering and the women backed away from the stench. Once again the light pulsed and the gurney carrying Kamerone Cree’s unconscious form appeared near the back wall of the cell.

“Get him chained as quickly as you can,” Sejm suggested. “I have no idea how long it will take for his parasite to revive him.”

As her security crewmembers worked efficiently to secure the Reaper’s wrists, neck and ankles to the stanchion buried deep in the walls of the cave, Captain Chakai stood at the cell’s entrance and thought of the brutal things she would like to do to Kamerone Cree.

“He arouses the beastesses within us, does he not?” Sejm inquired as she took in the savage look on the captain’s set face.

“Aye, that he does.”

“By my reckoning, he will be partially cognizant within an hour’s time,” the Chalean scientist stated.

“Sern?” the captain called out.

“Aye, Ma’am?”

“Do we have rods on board The Aluvial?”

Sern frowned. “Only the Inquisition teams have them, Ma’am, and we’ve not found their weapons of office here. The Terrans must have taken them.”

“Too bad.” The Captain smiled nastily. “But you have laser wands, do you not?”

“Aye that we have.” Sern swallowed, looking at the handsome man now lying chained to the wall.

“Then bring me one.”

Kamerone Cree satin the blackness of the cell. His legs were splayed, his shackled hands palms up in his lap as he sat propped up against the wall.

He could not move.

He could not see.

He could not hear.

He could not smell.

He could not taste.

He could not speak.

He could not feel.

He could not think for his thought processes had been severely crippled.

There were only bits and pieces left in the files of his damaged brain.

Eventually, a tiny light would spark in his partially deleted mind, then another as the parasite set about to make the repairs that were necessary to re-animate its host, but until then, the Reaper was catatonic.

The smell of burning flesh was thick in the room, but the man whose body was covered with scores of livid burns made no sound at all. Although his muscles jumped with each new application of the laser wand, he made no sound and gave no indication the excruciating pain was registering.

“You said he should be fully awake by now!” the Captain accused. She held the laser wand to the Reaper’s left biceps until the ruby light went all the way through the arm, destroying tissue, muscle and bone.

“Captain, really!” Sejm laughed. She took hold of the Captain’s hand and pulled the wand from the mangled arm. She took it out of the hands of Cree’s tormentress. “You are not accomplishing anything. The brain damage was more severe than I anticipated, but he will fully recover in time. When he does, you can play with him until your heart is content.”

“Bastard.” As the Captain watched, the damaged flesh began to heal. “It is sinful what the Revenant worm can do.” She grabbed a handful of Cree’s thick dark curls and pulled the Reaper’s head back. “Wake up you sorry excuse for a being!”

Sejm gasped as Kamerone Cree’s eyes suddenly flew open. She stumbled back, the laser wand extended toward him, her heart pounding furiously in her chest as the captain let go of Cree’s hair with a terrified shriek and rushed to join her at the door of the cell.

“Weapons on heavy stun!” the captain shouted to the four Amazeen security guards in the cell with them.

Sejm stared at the Reaper, watching as he blinked, tried to focus his amber eyes, but his eyes closed once more. She held her breath as his head fell to his chest, wobbled there for a moment before he tried to raise it. The effort failed and the helpless sound of a sigh escaped his parted lips.

“Wake up,” Sejm whispered.

Cree’s fingers flexed and every woman in the room tensed. The power in those long, tapered fingers had the strength of the hands of twenty men. It was lethal power, unforgiving, and savage.

“Wake up!” yelled Captain Chakai, her eyes flashing viridian fire.

He grunted and tried to raise his head again. They saw his eyes slowly open. They watched as his broad chest expanded then listened to the soft exhalation of his breath.

Sejm noticed his eyes moving as he took in the vicious burns on his naked chest. She saw him slowly close his eyes and as he opened them, he raised his chin until he was able to look at his captors then leaned his head against the damp stone wall behind him as his gaze slid from one woman to the next before settling on Sejm. He swallowed with difficulty and then licked at his parched lips.

“You will get nothing from us. Not one drop of water. Not one.”

They saw the Reaper’s gaze shift to the bodies piled haphazardly against the far wall of the containment cell.

“Aye, that is your feast, Iceman,” Chakai chortled, “and we wish you good appetite!”

Kamerone Cree looked away from the corpses as though the sight hurt him in some way.

“The Major has arrived,” Sejm informed Captain Chakai.

Akkadia Kahmal ducked through the doorway and when she straightened, her emerald eyes grew wide when she saw the condition of her prisoner. “Who authorized this man’s torture?”

“The prisoner has regained some of his faculties,” Captain Chakai pronounced.

As much as she hated the man she had captured, Akkadia Kahmal was sworn to protect him, to bring him safely to The Great Lady to be executed for his crimes. She pushed into the cell and stood toe to toe with Chakai.

“You were out of line, Captain, you had no authority to do this.”

“I was given a mandate within my mission statement which states I may interrogate prisoners I deem-”

“Interrogate?” Kahmal interrupted. “What information did you think you could get from an unconscious man?”

“We were trying to rouse him so we could interrogate him,” Chakai said, lifting her chin.

“Really? And just what information do you think he could provide that we do not already know?” Kahmal asked. She turned her scrutiny to the Reaper and found him looking back at her with such a pitiful expression she had to turn away.

“The sight of him disgusts me, as well, Major,” Sejm said, obviously misreading Kahmal’s reaction to the prisoner.

Akkadia Kahmal clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together to keep from taking out her skean, the double-edged ceremonial dagger at her belt, and thrusting it into the Chalean crone. As it was, she narrowed her eyes and locked gazes with Captain Chakai. “This man is off limits to you and to every member of this crew. He is not to be harmed beyond what is necessary to subdue him and keep him under firm restraint.” A muscle jumped in her cheek. “Is that clear?”

“I am in charge of this ship!”

“And I am in charge of this mission and that man is my responsibility. I was told to bring him back to Rysalia Prime in good condition and I intend to make gods-be-damned sure that will be the way of it!”

“He’s moving,” one of the guards said and lifted her weapon to point it at the Reaper.

The women turned to see Cree lifting a trembling hand to his head. The scrape of the thick iron links of his fetters against the dirt floor was a reassuring sound. It meant there was protection-meager though it seemed-between the Reaper and his captors.

“Get out,” Kahmal ordered, pushing the Captain and Sejm from the cell. “Now!” She was close on their heels, closing the cell door and dropping the thick wooden plank into place behind their departure.

“Post two guards at this door, two at the end of the corridor and two at the entrance to the chamber. I will take no chances that beast might get free,” Captain Chakai ordered.

“He can’t,” Sejm insisted. “I have injected each of the corpses with heavy doses of muscle and neuroinhibitors as well as the triso he requires to keep from going insane with blood hunger between transitions. He will stay in a perpetual groggy state for as long as the meat in that cell lasts.” Her smile was hateful. “I will take no chance where that one is concerned, either.”

The Captain and the Chalean scientist exchanged a look then left together. Two of the Amazeen guards positioned themselves to either side of the door and two more went to stand at the end of the narrow corridor.

Major Kahmal stared at the heavy iron door. Though she could not see through the thickness of the portal, she had no problem imagining the Reaper trying to make his muscles work, to stand, trying to rid himself of the fog clouding his mind. She closed her eyes, picturing him sitting there, his body scored with brutal burns, and she could see the hopeless, confused look that had been deep in his amber eyes.

“Stop it!” She turned from the door and hurrying down the corridor.

But the image of the handsome Reaper was etched in her brain and was with her every step of the way.

Full movement hadnot yet returned nor had words. He grunted now and again and made sounds much as a child who has yet to learn to speak would make. Strange sounds frightened him and he would burrow against the wall, shielding his face within the circumference of his shackled arms as the guards slid open the peephole to stare in at him.

Slowly, like a cornered animal, he would lower his arms and stare helplessly at the Amazeen. When they made no threatening move toward him, only stood there glaring at him, he would scramble hesitantly to his knees and cock his head to one side, keening in a low, hurt voice as he rocked back and forth.

“Wah?” he would ask each time, lifting his shaky hand to them in pleading, but they ignored him and the clink of the peephole panel closing brought actual physical pain for his thirst was great and growing with every passing minute.

The damage to his motor functions and mental skills were more advanced than had either been expected or imagined. What was thought would last only a few hours had now stretched into a day and afternoon and even Sejm was beginning to wonder if irreparable harm had not been done the Reaper. Obviously the damage was more extensive than was first realized and the parasite was having difficulty making repairs. The Reaper’s flesh had healed, but his mind had not.

Except for the memories-locked in his head-that his captors had no way of knowing he was reliving.

“Bridie?” hequestioned upon jolting awake from one of the strange sensations wavering through his mind.

He felt his heart pounding and knew what the organ was and what it was called though he could not seem to fashion the word no matter how hard he tried. He could not wrap his swollen tongue around the sounds. He snorted with disgust at his inability to speak and pushed up to sit slumped against the wall.

Though mentally he could put names to the things around him: floor, ceiling, wall, stinking bodies, he did not know who-or what-he was. He tried hard to give himself a name, an identity, but the reasoning would not surface. To him, it was almost as though the slate of everything he had ever learned about himself had

been wiped clean.

The frustration was unbearable.

What bothered him most, though, was the excruciating thirst tormenting him and the memories he could not keep at bay.

The memories plagued him more than the thirst for he did not understand the events he was seeing nor recognize the faces that drifted across his fevered vision.

One face tormented him more than the others: the face of a being very different from himself. More like those who watched him. With the face, came fragments of terrible physical pain, crushing loneliness, and bitter betrayal. When that face appeared, he would moan like a wounded animal and clutch his arms around his chest. His keening brought tears.

But he welcomed the tears and flicked his tongue at the saltiness, savoring the minute amount.

The face appeared in his mind-as it did more and more often as the hours passed-and with it the telling moisture.

He hung his head and let the tears fall, unable to govern his emotions. He was so engulfed in his mental misery, he did not hear the cell door open, but the flare of the bright phospho lantern flooded the dark room and he gasped.

“Cree!” a harsh voice spoke.

The light from the corridor hurt his eyes and he turned his head away, pressing his cheek tightly to the wall.

“Look at me!”

He understood the words, but it was the tone of voice, the sharpness, that garnered his attention and he turned toward the speaker, lifting a grimy hand to shield the brightness of the greenish light.

“Turn down the intensity of that gods-be-damned light!” the speaker ordered. “You’re giving me a dracking headache!”

The light no longer blinding him, Cree lowered his arm. He saw the female-aye, he thought after a moment’s hesitation that was the correct word-glaring at him with what he knew was hatred.

She was standing just inside the doorway to the cell and he knew it was beyond the limit his shackles would allow him to move had he the strength or desire to lunge at her. The guards just behind her were armed with weapons he knew could cause intense pain if they were loosed on him.

“Dr. Sejm tells me you are within hours of Transitioning,” the female said.

He cocked his head to one side, not understanding the word. He tried to reason it, but the word had no meaning for him. He turned his head the other way, questioning her with his eyes, asking in his mute way for her to explain to him what the word meant.

“Do you know what to do with those?” She pointed at the decaying bodies.

He turned his head toward the stench in the corner of the cell then looked back at her.

He shook his head.

Akkadia frowned. She turned to one of the guards. “Fetch the Chalean.”

Cree lifted his hand and extended it palm up to the female. “Wah?” he croaked. He flexed his fingers, pleading. “Wah?”

The Amazeen Major stared into his eyes, their gazes locked, and felt something twist in her belly.

“Wah,” he said again. His lips opened and closed several times, his eyes narrowed as though he were in great pain then he managed to croak: “Tuh.” He licked his lips, almost smiled.

“No.”

“Wah...tuh,” he repeated, his voice childlike.

“No.”

He groaned, knowing she would do nothing to relieve the unbearable thirst. He hung his head, the sounds coming from him like those of a hurt child.

“I can’t give you water, Cree,” she said. “You will be Transitioning soon and no one will dare get close enough to you to give you water,” she heard herself defending her cruelty.

“Make no apologies to that beast!” Sejm snarled as she came to stand in the doorway of the cell.

Kahmal stiffened then turned to face the woman. “I was not apologizing,” she denied. “I was explaining-”

“He is beyond understanding at the moment,” Sejm snorted. “You waste your breath.” Her angry gaze swung to Cree. “Just as him continuing to breathe is a waste!”

Cree understood the old woman’s words well enough to know she was his enemy and his life forfeit if the crone had anything to do with it. The venom in her voice, the deadly hatred aimed his way, could not be mistaken. But he did not know why she hated him. What had he done to make her look at him with

such...he searched his mind for the correct word...aye, disgust? He remembered. The word was disgust and she had used it earlier to describe her feelings for him.

“He has no notion what to do with that,” Kahmal said, flinging her hand toward the dead bodies.

Sejm grunted. “He’ll know what to do all right, once the hunger takes over. Our little beast will leave no bones unturned when the Transition begins.”

“Look at him! He sits there like a child, unable to comprehend what is about to happen to him and you can make jokes?”

Sejm’s sardonic scrutiny crawled over the Amazeen Major. “Are you feeling pity for that thing?” she asked. When Kahmal did not answer, the Chalean scientist arched one thin white brow. “You are! You feel sorry for him.” She threw back her head and chortled with glee, highly amused by the situation.

“There is nothing humorous about this!”

“You are right!” Sejm flung back at her. “That monster slaughtered one of your sisters. His bloodson most likely slaughtered another. How can you have anything but loathing for the likes of him?”

The Reaper flinched. Had he killed this woman’s kin? Was that why he was shackled to the wall like an animal? Was that the reason the old one named him a beast? He could not imagine himself taking a female’s life; the concept was beyond his understanding. Yet from the angry look the younger female shot him, he reasoned he must have done something sinfully wrong.

“Sah...ree,” he managed as her eyes met his. “Fer...give.”

Kahmal drew in a breath. Surely she had not heard words of apology from the mouth of a Reaper! And especially not from the Prime Reaper, himself!

“By the gods, but that is rich!” Sejm chuckled. “Listen to the fool babbling!”

Cree ached inside. He put up a hand to arm the sweat from his brow. The room had grown unbearably hot and he was sweating profusely. The chains on his wrists were burning his flesh; the band around his throat was constricting his breath and he began to pant with the effort.

“He is going into Transition,” Sejm warned, backing out of the doorway. “Unless you wish to see if he can reach you from where he is sitting, Major, I suggest you get out of his cell!”

Kahmal backed away from the Reaper. Her eyes were wide in her face as she watched the wiry fur begin to sprout from his pectorals and upper arms.

“It is not a pretty sight, but if you must watch, pray do so from beyond the safety of the door,” said Sejm.

Morbid fascination had claimed Akkadia Kahmal. As the Reaper’s fingers curled into claws, his fingernails into wickedly sharp talons, his teeth elongating to become deadly fangs, she hovered in the doorway, unable to look away.

Kamerone Cree was whimpering like a hurt animal, his body convulsing as each new change overtook it. She stared into molten gold eyes that were filled with fear and knew he did not understand what was happening to him.

“Hel...lp me,” he pleaded, lifting his hands to her. “Puh...lees, hel...lp me.”

Then he lost what few words he had been able to say as his muscles contracted, bunched then rippled along his back. His ears began to grow, thick fur shot from the nape of his neck and flowed down his back and over his legs. The horrible sounds of bones cracking and sinew tearing filled the Amazeen warrioress’ throat with hot bile. But it was the sound of the leather pants ripping as his flesh expanded that broke Kahmal’s immobility and she jumped out of the room, slamming the door as the Reaper began to howl in agony.

The Major’s hands trembled as she dropped the heavy plank into place over the door. Peering through the peephole, she was stunned to see the beast Kamerone Cree had become in the few short seconds it

had taken her to shut the door.

He was on all fours, his head thrown back, his piercing howl giving sound to the torment twisting his body. She watched him fling his head, the heavy mane spraying drops of sweat from his leathery snout and wickedly sharp ears.

Then he turned his crimson eyes to her and snarled.

“Merciful Alluvia,” Kahmal whispered as she stared at the long, pointed fangs dripping with saliva. She stared into his sanguine eyes and felt cold, a shiver crawling down her spine.

“Now do you see what he truly is, Major?” Sejm asked.

Kahmal could not answer. Her full attention was on the Reaper as he began to strain against his shackles. She watched in amazement as he twisted and turned as any dog or wolf would when trying to break free of its leash. His howls and snarls filled her with immense fear, but instead of deepening her hatred for the man, the sight of him in Transition had an unexpected effect on the warrioress.

“Keep watching,” Sejm suggested. “He’s furious at being restrained, but once he catches the scent of the corpses, he will lunge at them and begin to feed.”

Kahmal’s stomach lurched at the thought and she was about to turn away when she saw the Reaper go still, his muzzle going up. With morbid fascination, she watched his black nostrils flare and contract, then watched as he turned his head to look at the bodies in the corner.

“Oh, Cree,” she said so softly no one could hear her, but with a sickening feeling, she realized the Reaper had for he turned to look at her. His crimson eyes glowed like the fires of the Abyss and when his jaws parted, she knew he was grinning at her.

When he swung his head back toward the corpses, Kahmal backed away from the door, shut the cover of the peephole and tried to drown out the sounds coming from the containment cell.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Dorrie Burkhartlooked up at the Amazeen then away, refusing to acknowledge the bitch’s presence.

“He is in Transition,” Kahmal stated. “The corpses will sustain him.”

Dorrie clenched her teeth and dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands, but remained silent.

“You have seen this happen to him, have you not?”

Having spent the last several months in an E.S.U. and now being shackled to a wall inside a musky cave had done nothing to improve Dorrie’s temper. She ignored the question, concentrating instead on a spider crawling up the rock wall.

“I know you have feelings for the man. I thought you would like to know he is not being harmed.”

An incredulous snort was Dorrie’s answer.

“You question my word?” the Major snarled. “Woman, I do not lie!”

Dorrie turned her attention from the ugly spider to the Amazeen. “I may not be able to see him, but I could smell the burning flesh,” she hissed. “Tell me again he isn’t being harmed!”

“I put a stop to that,” Kahmal responded. “That was Sejm and the Captain’s doing. Not mine!”

“I bet you put a stop to it, but not before he was hurt!”

“My orders were to see him safely to Rysalia Prime to be tried...”

Dorrie narrowed her eyes. “Tried, hell! You speak as though there is actually going to be justice done! You are taking him back to be hanged or burned or whatever other nice little torment you have in store for the man. You bitches condemned him, but I think you forget the Resistance would not have succeeded without him. You used him and cast him aside when his usefulness to you was over. There is no honor in betrayal, Major!”

Kahmal lifted her chin. “I do not set policy. That was the decision of the Council of Elders.”

“That was the decision of Sejm and The Great Lady!” Dorrie threw back at her. “They tried to hang him before we ever left FSK-14.”

“Because they knew he would not allow them to rule,” Kahmal countered.

Dorrie grunted. “As if he gave a Diabolusian warthog’s ass about who the hell ruled the Rysalian Empire! All he cared about was his woman and Sejm had made gods-be-damned sure she was taken away from him.”

Kahmal said nothing. She had wondered why the Reaper had been summarily condemned to death during the Resistance’s takeover of Rysalia Prime. He had aided the cause-though blackmailed into doing so-and upheld his end of the bargain. But she suspected it had never been the Council’s intention to let Cree live in peace after the takeover, though they had promised him he could leave Rysalia with his Terran woman.

“Ask yourself why they want to get rid of him so badly,” Dorrie suggested, seeing the uncertainty in the other woman’s green eyes.

“I know why,” Kahmal replied. “They feared he would rally his bloodsons and annihilate the female population of the Confederation for what it did to the males.”

“That would have been hard for him to do from Earth, now, wouldn’t it? He was living there peacefully with his woman and child, no thought of ever returning here, when you came to arrest him. If he was as evil as you seem to think, why did he let you take him?”

“He did so to save the life of his whore!”

“He did so to save the life of the strangers in that room, as well, or did you forget I was there that day?”

Kahmal bit her lip then flung out a dismissive hand. “His intentions on Terra are beside the point. He killed my sister and other Amazeen when he murdered Khonnor Rhye,” she declared. “He locked them in their E.S.U.s and blew up their ship!”

That was the first Dorrie had heard about Amazeen being on the ship in which Rhye had fled, taking Bridget with him. “You go through his records and see how many women-if any at all-he ever killed. I know the number already. It is zero. If he killed your sister-”

“He did!” Kahmal shouted.

“Then he did so to protect his woman and the rest of us!” Dorrie shouted in return.

Kahmal shook her head angrily. “It doesn’t matter. He murdered Amazeen citizens and for that, his life is forfeit!”

With that said, the Major quit the room, her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared. But Dorrie had seen the uncertainty growing in the other woman’s gaze. Perhaps she was a bloodthirsty warrioress, but apparently honor seemed to matter a great deal to her.

“Right is right,” Dorrie whispered. “Let’s see if I can’t make you understand that, sister!”

Kahmal eased openthe peephole and peered into the containment cell. At first she did not see Cree and had to crane her head from side to side until she finally saw him huddled amongst the half-eaten corpses. He was sitting with the dead, his head lowered to his chest, his breathing so shallow it was hard to discern the movement in the darkened cell.

“Where is Dorrie?” she heard him ask though he did not turn to look at her.

The Major had to clear her throat before answering. “She is safe.”

“What will become of her when we reach Rysalia Prime?”

“No harm will come to her, Reaper. More than likely, she will be sent to the convent at Thiel so the Council of Elders can make sure she will cause no mischief.”

“Convent,” he said as though the word hurt him to say.

“It is a good place. I have visited there often. The nuns are treated with great kindness and respect. It is a place of tranquility and harmony.”

“But a place without men.”

“Most assuredly!” Kahmal snapped. “You can not have tranquility and harmony around men. The convent is a safe haven from male lust.”

“And a wicked punishment for a woman like Dorrie Burkhart.”

“Women do not need to interact with men to be happy, Cree.”

“Women like Dorrie do.” He raised his head and appeared to be staring through the thick stone walls. “Just as some men need the company of women to be fulfilled.” He closed his eyes. “To be happy.”

Kahmal ignored the pain in his voice. “The work on the hull will take longer than we anticipated. Will you have enough nourishment to sustain you?”

Cree opened his eyes. His gaze slid over the rotting bodies and he looked away from the torn and ravaged flesh he had attacked during Transition. “There’s enough,” he lied. “But I am thirsty.”

She watched as he moved away from the bodies and stretched out on the floor, turning his back to her. As he drew his legs up into a fetal position, she felt a stab of pity settle in her heart.

“How far will your chains reach?” she asked then repeated the question when he did not immediately reply. “Cree?”

“I can not reach the door, Major, if that’s what concerns you.”

“I will have water brought to you, then,” she said, thinking it would be another three months before he Transitioned again. By that time, he would be back in the E.S.U. and on his way to the guillotine.

“Thank you.”

Kahmal blinked. That was twice the Reaper had acted completely contrary to nature. From all she had learned of his kind, gratitude, even common courtesy, was not part of his genetic makeup. The inconsistency with the way he should react unsettled her.

“You are going to your death. You know that do you not?” she asked, wondering why she felt the need to remind him.

“I know. I am looking forward to it.”

The Major frowned. “Why?”

He looked over his shoulder, his amber eyes so full of agony she felt it to the pit of her gut.

“Because I have no desire to live without Bridget. I have no life without her.” With that said, he lay down again and buried his face in the crook of his arm, dismissing her.

When he heard the peephole cover shut, Kamerone Cree opened his eyes and stared at the mutilated bodies across the room. His stomach revolted at the sight, but he would not look away from the carnage. During Transition, he knew little of what he was doing or was capable of doing, but once the blood hunger receded, full realization returned. He often shocked himself with the savagery of what he had done during his cycle. This time, the gory evidence of his beastliness shamed him as much as it hurt him.

In the past, his consumption of bodies had been either Empire mandated as when he was ordered to terminate rogue personnel without a trace or else a matter of self-preservation. There had been a few notable exceptions like Deon Inse and Konnor Rhye who had either tortured him or taken something that belonged to Kamerone Cree or the truck driver who had almost killed Dorrie. Devouring his enemies was a given and he took delight in doing so.

But fresh kills were one thing; carrion was quite another. Never mind the vile taste of the decaying corpses. Had he not been in Transition, he would not have bothered with the corpses.

The thought of making a meal again of innocents such as the Terran men lying across the room sickened Cree. It had been bad enough forcing himself to eat the dead on board the Vortex in route to Terra. He had done that to live so he could be with Bridget. The thought of desecrating the dead filled the Reaper with loathing. Not even the terrible hunger boiling in his veins could force him to touch the bodies again.

He wouldn’t die. His parasite would not allow it. He would, however, grow weak and unable to protect himself from the viciousness he knew Sejm had in store for him. His only chance to exist on a halfway tolerable plane without the added misery of having Sejm attempting to break him was to gain the grudging protection of the Amazeen Major.

And he knew of only one way to do that.

Kamerone Cree closed his eyes, willed his blood pressure to lower, and began to expand his consciousness. Through the stone corridors, he tracked Akkadia Kahmal until he found her sitting by herself in a far section of the cave. He could see her as she sat staring at the dirt beneath her feet, her chin propped in her hand. He could hear her conflicting thoughts and smiled when he realized her mind was fully on him.

It would not be hard to invade her, but he would wait until she had bedded down for the night and her mind opened to the psychic rape he intended to perform.

Chapter Twenty-Four

In her dreams, Akkadia Kahmal was a battalion commander in Perse. The time was a thousand years earlier, right after the Massacre at Cinerary, one of the last battles between Amazeen and Rysalia, and she stood on the battlefield surveying the horrific destruction.

The air was filled with the coppery scent of blood and the onset of decay. Around her, the bodies of her fallen sisters were scattered like a child’s broken toys. Overhead, the last of the rockets were streaking toward their destinations, the deadly payloads carrying the incendiaries that would destroy the enemy positions on the rise above Migrecent Point.

She closed her dark green eyes for a moment as the rumble of machinery shook the ground under her feet. The clink of the scoop’s tracks set her teeth on edge.

“Captain Kahmal?” the young ensign questioned.

Kahmal opened her eyes, surprised to see her friend ‘Khoia. The scoops were paused a few hundred yards away, the stench of fuel thick and cloying in the air.

“Ma’am?” the ensign pressed. “What are your orders, Captain?”

Kahmal sighed deeply. “Give the signal,” she replied and turned away, having no desire to see the bodies of women she’d fought alongside pushed into their mass grave.

Ensign Melankhoia Chanz raised her hand and then lowered it as the bulldozer operators revved their engines. She armed the sweat from her brow as the machines began rolling onto the battlefield.

“Commander,” Kahmal’s field advisor said, “we have to leave, Ma’am.”

Kahmal shook her head. “Not until the dead are buried.”

The advisor frowned. “Ma’am, that is not a good idea. It could take-”

“Not until my dead are buried,” Kahmal interrupted her advisor. She turned a hard-as-nails stare on the other woman. “If you’re that anxious to get your ass on the ship, then hike it up there. I am staying until these women are properly laid to rest!”

“There isn’t anything proper about this,” the advisor declared. “There is no honor in being shoved into a hole and covered with a thousand other bodies.”

“It is the best we can do under the circumstances!” Lt. Chanz grated. “If you’ve a better way of getting rid of...”

“Getting rid of?” Kahmal exploded, turning her fierce eyes to her childhood friend. The wrath on the Captain’s lean face was awesome to behold. “Getting rid of? ”

“Ma’am, that is not what I meant,” Chanz was quick to deny.

“Get the hell out of my sight, Khoia!” Kahmal snarled. “I’ve had about all I can take of this for a gods-be-damned lifetime!”

Chanz nodded and executed a crisp salute before pivoting away.

Kahmal kicked at the light blanket covering her long legs and turned over in her uneasy sleep. She whimpered as her memories took her deeper into the agony of that long-ago day.

Her dream brought sweat to her brow and underarms.

Though their troops had won the day, Kahmal’s hard-won accomplishments had been at the expense of over a thousand warrioresses. Her company had saved the day and routed the enemy, but many women had died in the process...including three of her younger sisters and their mother, General Azulene.

“I hate the Rysalians!” Kahmal called out in her dreaming. “May the Goddess damn their black hearts to the Abyss!”

She hunkered down beside the mass grave as the scoops began pushing bodies into the deep hole on the other side. She beat her breast and began reciting the litany for the dead.

“Lady...”

At first the voice was a gentle soughing of the wind blowing across the harsh plains of the killing field. She shook it away as though it was an irritating insect buzzing about her head.

“Forgive me!” Kahmal cried to her dead as the bloody bodies fell into the gaping hole. “I tried to protect you! I failed. Forgive me!”

“There is someone else who needs your protection, milady,” the wind whispered.

Kahmal tossed restlessly in her sleep. She clutched the rough fabric of the blanket tightly in her fist.

“Only you can protect him, Akkadia. Only you,” the wind sighed.

The only sound the Amazeen Major made to that statement was the harsh grinding of her teeth.

“Help him, Lady. You are sworn to keep him safe.”

“He killed my sister!”

“She would have killed his lady-love. He could not allow that.” The wind blew harsher across the plain. “He would not allow that.”

“He is my enemy,” she muttered, dragging at the covers clutched over her shoulders.

“He has done no harm to you.”

“He is Rysalian!”

“Only half Rysalian,” the wind corrected. “He was conceived in rape. His mother knew the heavy boot of the Rysalians just as you have known it.”

“It matters not,” she answered the wind in her dream. “He is my enemy.”

“Look at him, Lady,” came the command and the horizon took on a soft ianthine hue.

Kahmal lifted her gaze to the horizon where smoke still wafted over the battleground. She came to her feet as images formed in the purple sky. She wondered who this prisoner was who sat so still in his loathsome cell. Then he turned his face toward her.

It was the Reaper.

She growled in her sleep, her body jerking.

“Can you see his tears, Lady?” the wind asked.

Kahmal waved the smoke from her vision and looked closely at the image hovering on the horizon.

She frowned.

There were tears streaking the lean cheeks of Kamerone Cree. She saw the intense misery in his eyes.

“Why does he cry?”

“He is hurting, Lady,”

“Reapers are trained to ignore pain.”

“Aye, but not pain such as this,” said the wind.

“Reapers have no emotions.”

“This one does and his heart is breaking.”

Kahmal came awake with a jolt and sat bolt upright. She was aware of her heart pounding and sweat glistening on her upper lip. She swiped at the moisture and looked about her, wondering what dream had chased her so violently from her sleep.

“He needs you,” she thought she heard someone whisper and jerked around, seeking the intruder.

But there was no one there.

“Go to him, Kahmal. You are all he has now. You are all that stands between him and the evil of Sejm.”

Flinging the covers aside, the Amazeen Major got unsteadily to her feet. She felt numb, trapped still in her strange dream of the battlefield at Cinerary. Though the massacre was long in the past-fifteen cycles ago-it seemed as though only that night had she sat hunkered on the rim of the mass grave and stared at the ghastly face of her beloved mother.

“He, too, lost a mother at the hands of the Rysalians.”

Where had that thought come from?

Running a shaking hand through her long titian tresses,she slumped against the cave wall and squeezed her eyes shut. It was unseemly to dream of her prisoner. Even more unseemly to have feelings of compassion toward him. For a long while she leaned there, angry with her wayward emotions and angrier at him for instilling the forbidden feelings.

Intent on pushing the strange undercurrents from her mind, she started down the corridor to his cell, her hands curled into fists at her side.

The guards to either side of the cell door snapped to attention as the Major walked toward them.

“At ease.” Kahmal snatched open the peephole.

The cell was black as pitch, the light from the phospho lantern left inside having been allowed to die.

“I can’t see anything. Get a phospho lantern lit, now, and open this door!”

The guard on the right side of the door whirled around and plucked the phospho light which swung from a hook embedded into the rock. The guard on the left leaned her pike against the wall and lifted the

heavy beam from the braces and pulled the door open.

He was sitting with his legs drawn up, his wrists resting on his knees. The thick manacle links were pooled around his bare feet, the neck band seeming to drag his head down for his chin was lowered to his chest.

“Wake up, Cree!”

“I wasn’t sleeping, Lady,” he replied and raised his head, squinting against the harsh light of the phospho lanterns. He half-turned his face from the bright intrusion, but not before the three women saw the chatoyance that turned his amber eyes a milky green like those of a cat.

“Look at me!”

He did as he was told.

The misery was there for each of the women to see in the Reaper’s handsome face before he dropped a mask of indifference over that telling façade.

“The ship has been repaired and we will be leaving as soon as the solar storm clears. That should be within the next three or four days.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You will never see her again.”

He nodded and his eyes filled with an unmistakable brightness. “I know this, Lady,” he said softly. “Bridget is better off without me.”

“And you?” Kahmal prodded. “Is Kamerone better off without her?”

“There is no Kamerone without Bridget,” he answered. “There is only Cree, the Reaper, who sits before you awaiting his execution and what other punishments you wish to give him.”

Kahmal took a step toward him, ignoring the warning of the guard on her left. “Are you telling me you go willingly to your death, Cree? I find that hard to believe.”

“I have no life without my lady. I have no desire to live without her, so do whatever you want with me. Turn me over to Sejm if that is your desire. She can hurt me no more than I am hurting now.”

Frustrated at the Reaper’s defeated words, Kahmal came within two feet of him. Despite the agitated warnings of the guards, she hunkered down in front of him.

“Have you any notion what agony that bitch can inflict on you, Cree? She knows as much about Reaper anatomy as do I and what she knows could turn you into a jibbering fool!”

“Then let her,” he said, his voice breaking. “What do I care what she does to me? I am a dead man. Without my lady, I am a walking corpse.” His gaze drilled into hers. “Put me out of my misery, woman, or let Sejm. Either way, it matters not.”

“Major, please move back,” one of the guards advised. She lifted her laser pike, aiming it at Cree’s chest.

“The Major is safe with me.” The Reaper lifted his manacled hands from his knees and turned them palm up toward Kahmal. “I am hers to do with as she pleases.”

Kahmal stared into Kamerone Cree’s wounded eyes and felt like weeping. The man was lost inside that agonized gaze. Odd sensations flitted through her heart and fluttered in her belly. She found herself wanting to reach out, take him in her arms and smooth the dirty limp hair from his forehead. Her lips ached to know the salt of his brow and the feel of his lips on hers. Her body strained toward him like a magnet to iron filings. She wanted to assure him all would be well and that she would do everything necessary to see he reached Rysalia safely.

As he stared into the Amazeen’s deep green eyes, Kamerone Cree was hard pressed to keep the telling smile from pulling at his lips. He had her in his hand and he knew it. He had been able to reach out and stroke her mind like a lover caresses his lady’s body. His psychic emanations had bored deeply into her subconscious and placed subliminal messages there that would take months-if not years-to fade. He could see her full capitulation in the way she licked her lips and the soft undulation of her body as she knelt before him. Had he desired it, he could-with one thought-have her naked and open to him.

Kahmal shivered, experiencing a heat in her lower body that was unlike anything she had ever experienced. She was unable to tear her attention from the Reaper’s sad face and wanted nothing more than to throw herself on him and take him there on the dirt floor.

“My lady has green eyes like yours,” Cree said softly and forced a single tear down his cheek. “It was her eyes that soothed my pain in the Behavior Modification Unit.”

The women sighed in unison upon seeing that crystal descent.

Clamping down on the whoop of victory that sigh elicited in him, Cree had to lower his head before the women saw the triumph blazing in his eyes. Despite the fact they were hardened warrioresses, they were still women. He had taken a chance they would react as Bridget often had when he spouted such foolishness and he had been proven right.

“I am not your lady, Cree,” said the Major, “but I will protect you as she did.”

He was about to raise his head, to look longingly into her eyes, but a movement near her foot caught his attention. His eyes flared and he moved so fast the three women had no time to react as he lunged at the Major’s leg.

The guard on Kahmal’s left shrieked and triggered her laser pike. The force of the blast caught Cree in the chest and flung him back against the wall. The guard on the right grabbed the Major’s arm and jerked her toward the door, her own pike pointed at the Reaper and firing before Kahmal could order the assault stopped. The second blast hit Cree in the left side and propelled him sideways and along the floor where he landed in an unconscious heap.

The sound of running footsteps scuffled to a halt outside the containment cell as alarmed voices began firing questions.

“What happened?”

“What did he try to do?”

“Is he dead?”

Kahmal was shivering, her gaze locked on the still Reaper. She had come so close to him killing her. Had the guard not reacted so quickly, the Major knew she might not be standing where she was at that moment.

Captain Chakai pushed her way into the cell. “What happened here?” she demanded, her scrutiny flicking over Cree to settle on Kahmal.

“He...he tried to grab me,” Kahmal stuttered.

“Fool! What were you doing in here in the first place?”

Sejm came into the cell and walked cautiously to the unconscious Reaper. She was about to poke him with her foot when she saw something clutched tightly in his hand. Her eyes went wide and she leapt back, knocking a guard down in the process.

“Kill it!” the Chalean scientist screeched. “Kill it!”

The guards aimed their weapons at the Reaper, but Sejm pointed at his right hand. “The ghoret!” she shouted. “Kill the ghoret!”

There was nothing these staunch warrioresses feared more than the deadly viper known as the ghoret. Nothing in their world or on any other was as lethal as the three foot long silver and green snake. The bite of the ghoret took mere seconds to kill the victim and there was no antidote for the venomous bite.

Kahmal’s military training took over. She snatched a laser pike from one of the guards, stepped closer to Cree and blew the head off the viper. The head-its needle sharp fangs dripping florescent blue venom-landed near the Captain’s foot, but duel blasts of two other laser pikes incinerated the lethal thing. Clutched tightly in Cree’s hand, the snake’s body writhed spasmodically in the Reaper’s tightly clenched fist, wrapping, unwrapping, and whipping it’s dying body around the unconscious man’s arm.

“He was going after the ghoret,” one of the guards whispered. She looked at Kahmal. “He saved your life, Major.”

“Attribution,” the guards whispered.

Sejm’s voice was a wild shriek of protest. “No!” She made a grab for one of the pike’s, intent on using the weapon on Cree, but Kahmal knocked her hand away.

“Keep away from him!” Kahmal shouted. “Do you hear me?”

Her fury knowing no bounds, the Chalean woman turned her head and hawked up a thick wad of phlegm that she turned back to spit at Kahmal’s feet.

The women in the cell stilled as the old Chalean and young Amazeen stared into one another’s eyes. The gauntlet had been flung. The challenge issued.

“So be it,” Kahmal said in a brutal tone of voice.

“So be it,” Sejm repeated before turning and shoving her way out of the cell.

Those left looked to Kahmal.

“Do you accept this?” the Captain asked. Her face had bled of its normal coloring.

Kahmal lifted her chin. “I do.”

“A grave mistake, Sister.” The Captain sighed, shaking her head. “Did it bite him?”

Kahmal stepped close to the Reaper but even before she leaned over him, she saw the two tell-tale glowing blue stains around the punctures on his thigh. “Aye. It did.”

“Then it will be up to you to care for him,” Captain Chakai responded. “I will not put any member of my crew in danger for the likes of that one.”

Kahmal nodded. She understood the rules of Attribution, but had never expected to be on the receiving end of the time-honored custom. She wasn’t sure she liked the situation.

“I suggest you shorten the length of his shackle chains,” the Captain advised. “Tighten them so that his wrists and ankles are pressed tightly to the stone. That way, he can not put his hands on you.”

Kahmal thanked Chakai for her suggestion then turned to one of the guards. “Get me whatever we have on board The Aluvial that might help him get through this.”

“You will need help with him, Major,” the guard said. She had been the one to blast Cree the first time. “I am willing to stay with you.”

“As will I,” said the other guard .

“You are sure?” Kahmal searched the women’s eyes.

“It is rare that any male risk his own life to save an Amazeen,” the guard replied. “Such a man deserves a measure of respect. He deserves Attribution.”

“Even if he’s a gods-be-damned Reaper?” asked the Captain in disgust.

“Especially so that he is a Reaper.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

In his fever-wrackeddelirium, Kamerone Cree lay beside his lady on the shores of the Flint River near their home on Terra. His head was in Bridget’s lap, her hand soft in his as he pressed it to his chest. Close by, their son, Jaelin, slept peacefully on the blanket. The small brown puppy Bridget had brought home from the animal shelter snuffled in her sleep, her paws whipping as she ran in her canine dreams. Above them, the sun sparkled through a lacy draping of Spanish moss and the warm scent of gardenia wafted on the sweet summer breeze. The sounds of the muddy river rolling over rocks and fallen logs underscored the peacefulness to the day.

They were a typical family, he thought as he lay there: happy, comfortable, secure in their love and sure

of their safety. Bridie’s swollen belly rubbed against his cheek each time she took a breath and now and again he could feel this new child kicking against his mother’s rib cage. He turned so he could place a gentle kiss on his lady’s stomach.

“Are you content, Kam?” Bridget asked, moving her free hand through his thick curls.

“Aye, milady. More content than I ever dreamed of being.” His grip on her hand tightened as he brought her fingers to his lips. He sealed his words with a gentle kiss against her palm.

Bridget smiled down at him, her beautiful green eyes his only salvation in life. “And are you happy that I am with child?”

Cree reached up to fan the backs of his fingers along her smooth cheek. “I am greatly pleased, sweeting,” he answered with a smile of his own.

His lady nodded and looked out over the rushing water. “Even though the babe is not yours?”

His smile faltered. “I do not understand.”

Bridget lowered her gaze to his. “You never touch our son,” she accused, her emerald eyes as hard as the jewel. “Not once have you held him.”

“You know why.”

“No. I don’t know why.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why won’t you hold our son, Cree?”

“Because he believes to do so would mean killing the child,” a voice spoke from the stand of oak trees beyond.

Cree sat up, his hand going to the dagger at his thigh, but relaxed when he recognized the speaker. “You take chances with your life, Kahn.”

“I will hold our son, Bridget,” said Tylan Kahn, ignoring Cree as though the Reaper were not sitting a few feet away. “I will gladly hold him.”

“I know you will, beloved.” Bridget extended her hand toward Kahn. “I am ready to go now.”

“No.” Cree shook his head.

“She is lost to you,” Kahn reminded the Reaper. “She belongs to me and it is my seed growing in her womb this time, not your evil get.”

“No,” Cree said more forcefully. He got to his feet and his hand went to the dagger hilt.

“Come, Bridie,” Kahn said, holding his hand out to Cree’s lady. “It is time.”

“No!” The Reaper drew his dagger and lunged at Kahn, the wavy serrated edged blade sparking blood-red flame.

“You will not win, Cree. This time I will have the lady and I will have her for all time.”

“Never!” Cree bellowed.

Rushing toward his enemy, the blade prepared for a lethal strike, Cree stepped from warm sunlight to the blackness of cold space. Wind whipped brutally at his long hair and blew it wildly about his head, freezing his flesh like a glacial wall of ice. The keening sound drove straight through his heart.

“Bridget!” he screamed as he began to fall through the limitless pit. “Bridget!”

He let go of the dagger and clawed at the ebony space engulfing him. His claws shot out of his fingertips, digging at the nothingness through which he passed, striving for a talon hold in the black cloth of space and gaining no purchase as he dropped-screaming in rage and despair-through the Abyss.

“Bridgettttttttttttttt!”

Dorrie jerked awakeas the scream penetrated her uneasy sleep. She bolted up from the cave floor, throwing off the thin blanket she had been allotted. “What’s happening?” she yelled at the guard down the corridor, but her words were lost in the running footsteps of the Amazeen called Chanz.

“Open her cell!” Lt. Chanz barked and the guard hastened to do the officer’s bidding.

“What have you done to him?” Dorrie accused, her hard-edged gaze boring into the Amazeen.

“I have no time to explain,” Chanz snarled. “Come with me. He needs you.” She turned and started back down the corridor.

Her heart thudding, Dorrie ran behind the Amazeen, scraping her shoulder against the rough stone corner as they turned down a different corridor.

Cree’s screams of agony made the hair stand up on Dorrie’s arms and she felt sick to her stomach, wondering what evil these women had thrown at him this time.

At the door to the containment cell, several Amazeen guards were poised with laser pikes at the ready. The door was shut; the heavy bar in place as Chanz and Dorrie skidded to a stop before it.

“Open!” Chanz ordered.

As one guard gripped the bar and pushed it out of the holders, the others pointed their laser pikes.

“Is he loose?” Dorrie asked, fearful of going inside the room if that was the case.

“He is chained but out of his mind with pain,” Chanz took time to say as she walked through the now-opened portal.

“What did you do to him?”

“We have done nothing. He was bitten by a ghoret.”

Dorrie flinched, knowing full well the destructive power of the viper. She had seen strong men die in the space of a second or two from the potent venom. She had also seen the Reaper Kullen foaming at the mouth from the bite of a ghoret as he stiffened with spasms of acute pain.

“How long ago?” She was shocked to see Akkadia Kahmal hunkered down beside Cree, helping to hold him still.

“Ten minutes.”

Cree was convulsing, his arms and legs stiff as he thrashed about the dirt floor. Though his wrists were plastered tightly to the wall and his ankles locked to the stone floor, he was bucking like a rabid dog. A stick had been jammed between his teeth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. Flecks of black blood spotted his cheeks and chin and trickled down his arching throat. His amber eyes were wild with agony, his breath coming in gasps like those of a drowning man.

“You are a Healer’s assistant,” said Kahmal. “We are in need of your help.”

Dorrie did not deny the charge though that had not been her job on Rysalia. She knelt on the ground. “You haven’t lanced the wound?”

Kahmal shook her head. “I dared not for fear I would strike a major blood vessel.”

Cree’s leg was swelling rapidly where the fangs had punctured his thigh. Even as Dorrie watched, the flesh split farther apart. A glowing blue slime mixed with the Reaper’s seeping black blood gave off a noxious smell as it dripped from his leg.

“Here,” Chanz said, handing Dorrie a pair of Healer’s gloves. “If you get the venom on your flesh, it will make you ill. Get it in your eyes or in your mouth and you’re a dead woman.”

Dorrie nodded, knowing the potency of the viper’s poison. She slapped the gloves in place and took the dagger Chanz offered her. “Move back,” she warned the others.

Kahmal shifted position, but did not get up as the other guard did. She locked gazes with Dorrie for a moment then tightened her grip on Cree’s straining chest.

“God almighty,” Dorrie whispered as she looked at the ugly crimson blotch that covered Cree’s thigh and extended under it and down his leg.

“Woman, hurry!” Kahmal snapped. “Once the venom reaches his parasite, there will be no controlling him!”

“Turn your head.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Kahmal did as she was told. The hot splash of fluid spraying the sleeves of her uniform as Dorrie slit the puncture wounds made her cry out, but she did not open her eyes. The smell made her gag.

“Get me some cloth to wipe this mess up. Unless you want venom on you.” Dorrie almost smiled as one of the guards leapt into action. She gently kneaded Cree’s swollen, fiery-red flesh, relieving the pressure of the venom and blood gathered there. She looked at Chanz. “You have a suction device?”

Chanz blinked. “On The Aluvial,” she said, among those who had not thought of needing something so vital.

“I suggest you get the gods-be-damned thing and quickly, bitch!”

Chanz spun around and pointed at one of the guards. “Go!”

Kahmal cautiously opened her eyes and turned her attention to what Dorrie was doing. It was getting harder to hold Cree down for his thrashing was increasing in violence.

“He saved my life,” said Kahmal.

Dorrie didn’t reply. She was staring at the wound that was closing even as she watched. She groaned, knowing she’d have to slit it open again the suction device arrived.

“According to our tribal laws,” continued Kahmal saying. Dorrie wished the woman would shut her mouth, “Attribution has now been declared.”

“Where the hell is that suction pump?” Dorrie snapped, glancing at Kahmal. She did a double take. Tears streaked down the Amazeen Major’s face.

“Attribution has been declared,” Kahmal repeated so quietly her words were a mere breath of sound.

“What are you talking about? You’ve found a new way to torment this man?”

Kahmal shook her head. “My life belongs to him,” she said, her face pale and strained. Dorrie realized that some of the venom from the Reaper’s wound had penetrated the fabric of the uniform and had entered the Major’s bloodstream. It was not enough to kill her, but enough to make her very ill.

“Attribution is rare,” Kahmal said. “Unheard of in this day and time.” She licked her lips. Her eyes rolled and she began to shiver. “Why do you suppose he saved my life?”

Dorrie gasped then twisted around to look at one of the guards. “Get that uniform off now! She’s got the venom on her!”

The guards rushed to Kahmal just as the Major’s eyes rolled up in her head and she began to convulse.

Kahmal had beentaken to The Aluvial and placed in sickbay. She did not return to the caves for two days. On the third day, she appeared pale and weak, her skin mottled with a pebbling of dark purple bruises where the venom had touched her arm.

“How is he?” she asked Dorrie.

“He would have died if your friend Melankhoia had not interceded on your behalf,” Dorrie replied.

“I was told she went to the Captain to remind her of the Attribution.”

“I don’t trust your Captain any farther than I can see her ass.”

Kahmal squatted beside Cree and stared into his wild gaze. “Does he know who you are?”

Dorrie shook her head. “He doesn’t even know who he is. He keeps calling for Bridget.” She smoothed

the Reaper’s limp black hair from his sweaty forehead. “When he speaks at all between the bouts of screaming.”

Kahmal looked around the cell. “The bodies have been removed.”

“The stench was overpowering. Melankhoia had the corpses burned.”

“Despite the Chalean Healer’s demands they be left here,” one of the guards said in a disgusted tone.

“They were Sustenance for him. Now, there is nothing to feed him.”

“We can feed him Sejm,” said Dorrie in a bitter voice.

Kahmal smiled. “There is more poison in that old witch’s heart than can be found in a nest of ghorets.”

“I heard that.”

Kahmal eased to a sitting position on the floor then glanced at Dorrie. “You look tired, Sister. When was the last time you slept?”

“Not since you were taken ill, Major,” the talkative guard remarked. “She feared for his safety.”

Kahmal nodded then caught Dorrie’s eye. “Go, rest. I’ll watch over him.”

Dorrie hesitated, chewing on her lip.

Kahmal waved her hand. “Go, woman. I owe the Reaper my life. No harm will come to him. On my

honor as an Amazeen warrioress, I swear this to you.”

“I trust you,” Dorrie said, getting wearily to her feet. “It’s just I don’t want to leave him.”

“We could bring in a cot or two,” the guard suggested.

“Aye,” Kahmal agreed. “Do that, then.” The hard ground on which she sat was wearing her down.

For four more days, Kamerone Cree convulsed and screamed as the poison invaded his system and warred with the Revenant worm. It had been a full week since the ghoret’s venom had entered his bloodstream and his parasite had began to produce a toxic venom of its own to combat the poisons trying to destroy the Reaper’s nervous system and major organs. As a result, Cree’s blood boiled and the flesh on his arms and legs shifted and bunched as pockets of contaminants formed under his skin and burst.

On the eighth day, the parasite began coiling and uncoiling around the Reaper’s kidneys and spinal column as it battled the last of the invading poisons. Its movements caused agonizing spasms that lifted Cree’s body clear of the floor.

“Unchain his wrists!” Dorrie demanded. “Turn him over on his stomach. Can’t you see what lying on his back is doing to him?”

“You heard her!” Kahmal watched the guards unlock Cree’s fetters then helped Dorrie ease him to his belly on the cold stone floor.

“Don’t do that,” Dorrie begged as Kahmal started to restrain Cree’s wrists once more. “Please.”

Kahmal looked down at the strong wrist she had been about to shackle and lifted her gaze to Dorrie. The two women stared at one another for a moment. Kahmal shrugged. She looked to the guards who were holding the Reaper’s ankles. “Leave the bands off for now.”

The guards’ faces paled, but they did as they were told.

“Thank you. Don’t you have a jumpsuit that will fit him? Even a pair of britches?”

Kahmal nodded. “I’ll see to it.”

Cree shuddered, his body jackknifed violently, curled into a fetal position, then his legs shot out, his foot narrowly missing one of the guards. His unearthly shriek of pain reverberated through the containment cell, nearly deafening the women.

“Sweet Merciful Alluvia,” the guard said, pointing. “Look!”

The Reaper’s back was undulating as the parasite writhed under his skin. Watching the alien thing slithering, stretching the fevered flesh of its host, the women got to their feet in a hurry and backed away. When the flesh over Cree’s spine broke open with a loud ripping sound, it brought terrified screams from Dorrie and Kahmal’s throats.

Stumbling against the wall, they watched in stunned horror as the head of the parasite oozed through the gaping flesh and began to weave like a cobra, turning its scaly triangular head to and fro as it glowered at the women.

“By all the merciful gods,” Kahmal whispered, shivering.

Dorrie stared at the parasite, sickened by its phosphoric lime green coloring and slit red eyes. Its long, leathery body bent and twisted as its gaping mouth opened and closed revealing rows of sharp, pointed teeth. A long, forked tongue flicked about, testing the air. The smell of it was ten times worse than any charnel house.

“If it would not do harm to Cree,” Kahmal whispered, “I’d lop the head off that evil thing and rid him of it.”

The parasite pivoted around within the wound on the Reaper’s back until its beady red gaze was locked on Kahmal. For a moment it wavered there, glaring at the Amazeen, putrid green slime stringing from its open mouth. Where the slime landed on the Reaper’s back the flesh bubbled and broke as though struck with acid. Then the creature darted back through the gaping flesh and disappeared, its body moving like a current under Cree’s flesh.

“Raphian,” a voice spoke from the doorway and the women turned to see Sejm standing there, her eyes as ancient as time. The Chalean Healer was trembling, one gnarled hand at her mouth. “The Destroyer has corrupted the Reaper’s body.”

“I have heard of the demon,” Kahmal said. “That thing must be one of Its offspring.”

Sejm lowered her gaze to the floor. She seemed to be seeking answers from the dirt beneath her feet. Unaware of the guards bringing in cots for Dorrie and Kahmal, the old women just stood there, lost in thought.

“The wound has closed already,” Kahmal observed.

Dorrie knew well the recuperative powers of a Reaper so felt no need to reply. She looked longingly at the cots being set up across the way then at Cree. Seeing him lying there on the dirty cave floor, writhing in pain, she could not force herself to seek the comfort of the cot.

“Cirolia?” Kahmal inquired of one of the women outside the containment cell. “Would you be so kind as to escort Dr. Sejm back to the Aluvial? She seems shaken by what she has seen.”

The Chalean Healer slowly lifted her head. Her rheumy eyes locked on Kahmal. “You will rue the day you ever laid hands on that one,” she said, nudging her chin toward Cree. “I always knew he was a demon’s spawn. Now, I am sure of it.”

“He is your nephew, you arrogant old sow!” Dorrie threw at her. “Your sister’s only son! You know gods-be-damned well who his father was. You should know. You murdered Drae Cree!”

Sejm ignored the Terran. Instead, she lifted a bony finger and pointed at Kahmal. “Take that viper to

your bosom and you will birth the same spawn that slithers within his vile body!”

“Get her out of here,” Kahmal snapped, turning her back on the crone. “And keep her the hell on board The Aluvial until we’re ready to depart Montyne Vex.”

“Is that an order, Major?” Cirolia Sern inquired.

“Aye, it is!”

Cirolia stepped into the containment and took Sejm’s arm in a firm grip. “Please come with me, Doctor.”

Though she allowed the Amazeen to lead her out of the cell, Sejm kept her stony stare on Cree’s convulsing body until she was no longer able to see him.

“Get on that cot, Burkhart. You’re ready to drop from exhaustion.”

“Let him use the other one. It will ease his discomfort.”

It was on the tip of Kahmal’s tongue to deny the request, but then she sighed heavily, too tired and still too ill to fight. She waved a hand to two of the guards and stepped back as they hefted the Reaper between them and carried him to the cot.

“Easy!” Dorrie rushed to take Cree’s sagging head as the guards lowered him on the cot. She placed his head gently then looked up at Kahmal. “Can we get a blanket to place under his neck?”

“Would you like silk sheets and a bottle of Chrystallusian plum wine to go with that, milady?”

Dorrie grinned. “I could use some Chalean brandy.”

Kahmal pursed her lips. “Don’t push your luck, Sister.”

“Bridget!” Cree shouted and it was all the two guards who had just finished dressing him in a spare jumpsuit could do to keep him on the cot.

“There are leather restraints on The Aluvial. As weak as he is, he won’t be able to break free of them,” Kahmal said. “Get them and bind his wrists and ankles. I won’t take a chance with-”

“Kam,” Dorrie said, pushing Kahmal and the guards away from him. “Kam, I’m here, my love.”

The Reaper swung his fevered gaze to Dorrie and seemed to be trying desperately to focus on her face. “Bridie?” he questioned, reaching for her.

“I’m here,” she said, taking his hands and placing them to her lips. “I am with you, beloved.”

He freed one of his hands and cupped her cheek. “Don’t leave me,” he begged.

“I am here, but you have to lie still. Don’t give the nurses any trouble, okay?”

“No more sessions, Bridie,” he pleaded. “Please?”

“No more sessions. You just rest. I’ll be right here with you.”

“I hurt, Bridget,” he whispered. “My blood is boiling.”

“I know, beloved, but the parasite is healing you. Just close your eyes...” She extracted one of her hands

and reached out to close his eyes. “Sleep now. You have to rest and let the parasite do its job.”

“You won’t leave me?” he asked in a child’s voice.

“Never.”

“I need ice. The blood is sizzling in my veins, Bridie. I need...” He stopped and the look on his face was pitiful. “Don’t go to him, Bridie,” he begged. “Don’t go to Konnor Rhye.”

“I belong to you, my love. Konnor Rhye is gone. Remember?”

He opened his eyes and looked blindly at her. “I killed him, didn’t I?”

Dorrie nodded, knowing that though he was looking at her, he was seeing Bridget.

“Aye, you did, Reaper.”

“And the Amazeens.”

Kahmal tensed, drawing in a long breath.

“I had no choice, Bridget,” he said, a tear falling down his sunken cheek. “They would have fired on the ship.”

“I know,” Dorrie replied, casting a quick look at Kahmal.

“It was quick,” he told her. “I made sure they did not suffer.”

Kahmal turned away, her face stony and set. But his next words made her turn to look at him: “Forgive me, Bridie. I had no choice. I didn’t want to kill them. I...”

“Hush now,” Dorrie said. She placed her fingertips against his lips, but Kahmal reached down and tugged them away.

“Let him speak,” the Amazeen Major demanded.

“I am so sorry I had to,” Cree finished and his eyes closed.

Dorrie was watching Kahmal’s face. When the Amazeen’s gaze shifted to her, the Terran woman cocked one blond brow. “Is he still the beast you thought him, Major?”

Kahmal did not respond to the question. She jerked a thumb at the other cot. “Get your ass to bed, Burkhart. I’ll watch the Reaper and make sure he stays put.”

Dorrie’s lips twitched. She knew it was the only acknowledgment she’d ever get from the Amazeen that the woman no longer considered Cree the enemy she once had labeled him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was an easything for him to do. His immense psychic powers had been honed over the years, augmented by the mind tampering of his Controllers and the psychotropic drugs that had enhanced his mental abilities many times over. One moment he was lying still on the cot, staring up at the jagged rock ceiling, the next he was striding confidently to the containment cell door. Around him, five women slept soundly, their minds completely under his control.

As were the minds of the two guards in the corridor who stealthily opened the door and allowed him to leave unchallenged.

“Lock it,” he ordered and was instantly obeyed. When the women turned their eager-to-please looks to him, he bid them lie down and go to sleep, which they promptly did without so much as a sigh of denial.

Though the Reaper was weak and feverish from the massive amount of poison still lurking in his body, he managed to make his way out of the cave system and onto the desolate plateau. His thinking was muddled, not as clear as he would have liked, but he had enough presence of mind to realize he was in danger if he stayed with his captors. He stared off across the barren plains of Montyne Vex for a long while, the wind whipping his hair about his flushed face then with a sigh of regret at the long descent to the desert floor, started down the steppes. As he progressed, he kept watch on the Amazeen ship that had brought him to this hellish place, making damnably sure his suggestionaries reached the sleeping women on board.

“Stay there. Do not go to the monitors,” he ordered.

Somewhere on the ship were his demonic aunt and the Captain she had enlisted in her crazed mission to murder him before he could be taken back to Rysalia Prime. He had thought of venturing inside the Aluvial and ending the lives of the two worthless hags, but he would have to put hands on them and the mere thought made him ill.

He staggered as he stepped onto the desert floor and put a trembling hand to his forehead. The fever was still high and his head ached unmercifully. He knew he had to find shelter before the delirium began again. That this would happen, he had no doubt. For the moment, he was cognizant of his surroundings, but he knew he would soon be caught up in the convulsions that had wracked his body for over a week. From what he knew of ghoret bites, the poison would not leave his body for another week and he would be subject to moments of delirium until it did. It was what he was likely to do during those unrestrained moments that concerned him more than anything else.

“Lock yourselves in,” he sent out to the women. “Do not...”

He felt his parasite shift against his right kidney and he winced, putting a hand on his back to ease the terrible pain.

“I will not harm those women,” he said, panting.

The parasite twisted brutally and Cree went down on one knee, groaning with the agony the gods-be-damned thing was deliberately inflicting. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his teeth, knowing the beast inside him was making a statement he dared not ignore: You will need to kill to sustain me.

“I will feed you,” Cree promised. “But not the women!”

There was a small lessening of the acute agony ripping through the Reaper’s body.

“I will feed you,” Cree whispered, opening his tearing eyes to stare at the ground.

Little by little, the parasite eased its painful hold on Kamerone Cree. When at last it lay still, the Reaper was able to push himself up and stagger away from the plateau.

Kahmal woke andknew Cree had escaped. She bolted from the ground and stood staring at his empty cot, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides.

“You played me for a fool, didn’t you, Reaper?” she seethed and knew it had all been an act. He had caused her to lower her defenses and then had slipped expertly under the shield.

“It was the only thing he could do,” Dorrie said.

Kahmal snapped her head toward the Terran. “It was all a lie. Everything he said-”

“Kamerone Cree would never tell a lie, Major. You know that as well as I do.”

Hissing with rage, Kahmal lashed out with her foot at one of the sleeping guards, but the women merely grunted and remained fast asleep. “Get up!” Kahmal shouted and kicked the woman again.

“That’s not going to do any good. They are under his control.”

“Then why aren’t we?”

Dorrie swung her legs off the cot and ran her fingers through her yellow curls. “Because he trusts us.”

“Does he trust my dagger?” Kahmal lowered her hand to an empty sheath at her thigh. She looked down, sputtering with impotent fury.

“Apparently not.” Dorrie chuckled.

“He took my weapon!” yelled Kahmal. “He took my gods-be-damned weapon!” She narrowed her blazing emerald eyes. “No man takes an Amazeen warrioress’ weapon and lives to brag of it!”

“I don’t think stealing your weapon was meant as an insult, lady. He needs it to help him survive out there.”

“He won’t be out there!” Kahmal denied. “He could not get past the guards!”

“He got out of here, didn’t he?” Dorrie challenged. She looked to the door. “My guess is you’ll find that door locked and the women on the other side as sound asleep as those three are.”

Kahmal’s eyes flared and she rushed to the door, pushing against it only to find it securely barred. “Guards!” she shouted, peering through the peephole. “Open this door! Now!”

“Until he releases his hold on their minds, we aren’t going anywhere.”

“Guards!” Kahmal shrieked, pounding on the door with her fists. “Open this door!”

When there was no answer from the corridor, the Major bellowed in fury and turned her anger on the cot in which Cree had laid. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Amazeen began tearing the canvas and wood appliance apart with her bare hands.

Dorrie stared at the woman, amazed at the strength in those long, tapered fingers. She watched in awe as Kahmal ripped off the top of the cot’s X-shaped legs. “What are you going to do?”

“Just watch, Terran,” Kahmal snapped as she held up one end of the cot’s leg. Thick metal bolts extended from both ends of the six foot long section of board. Taking the board in her hands as though it were a bat, she swung it as hard as she could against the door. The wood split with a loud pop.

Dorrie flung up an arm as part of the broken board went sailing past her head. “Son of a bitch!” she shrieked as the board hit the cave wall behind her. She turned furious eyes to the Amazeen. “You could have killed me with that thing!”

Kahmal grunted. In her hand, she now held a four foot section of wood with bolts at a ninety degree angle to the wood. Stepping up to the door, she stuck the wood through the peephole, pressed herself tightly to the door, and angled the wood downward, aiming for the bar keeping the door closed.

“You gotta be kidding me. You really don’t think you can hook those bolts under the bar and get enough leverage to...”

The sound of the bar falling to the ground on the other side of the door interrupted Dorrie’s words.

With a whoop of victory, Kahmal yanked open the door. She turned and gave Dorrie a smug look. “You were saying, Terran?”

Dorrie got to her feet, her mouth agape. She looked from the opened door to the Major, unable to believe what had just happened.

“Amazeens are trained to think quickly, Burkhart. Once, in recruit training, I was shown that trick.”

Dorrie whistled, then locked eyes with the warrioress. “I’m glad you were paying attention that day, Major.”

“So am I.” Kahmal smiled and swept her arm toward the door. “Shall we go find our errant Reaper?”

Dorrie hesitated. “What happens if we do find him?”

The smile slipped from the Amazeen’s face. “I am bound to him through the Attribution.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just what they hell does that mean?”

Kahmal sighed. “I forget you are not familiar with our customs. Our...” She stopped, looked at the guards. “One moment.”

The Major relieved one of the sleeping guards of a dagger then carried one after the other into the cell. She slipped the bar back into place, locking them inside. If the Amazeen’s action surprised her, the Terran woman gave no sign of it.

“According to our tribal laws, if a male saves the life of an Amazeen at great risk to his own, he is no longer subject to the same laws that govern other males in our society. If he is a captive from another world, he is given his freedom and-”

“You’re going to set Kamerone free?”

Kahmal shook her head. “You know we can’t do that. The Tribunal would never allow it.”

“But you just said-”

“Let me finish!” Kahmal glared at Dorrie.

Dorrie snapped her mouth shut.

“The granting of Attribution is extremely rare. When a male is given his freedom, he is also given a choice: Stay on Amazeen with his lady as her companion or be returned to his world where most likely than not, his fellow males will shun him.”

“Why?”

“Most captive males have been neutered unless they are assigned to a breeding farm. Most males want nothing to do with a half-man.”

Dorrie gasped. “You castrate them?”

“It is the only way to curb their aggressive natures,” defended Kahmal.

Dorrie ignored that ridiculous remark and seized upon the other part of the Major’s explanation. “So how is a free male to be a companion to his lady if he doesn’t have a...”

“You think with your iggox, don’t you, Terran?” Kahmal scoffed.

Dorrie might not have understood the Amazeen word, but she understood the intended insult. She narrowed her eyes at the crudeness.

“By companion I meant-”

Dorrie snorted. “A lap dog.”

“In a manner of speaking. The male will lead a comfortable life without the worry of being sold or forced to do hard labor.”

“For joy, for joy.” Dorrie rolled her eyes.

“Better than the alternative of being put to the sword.”

“No wonder the men of this part of the universe hate you bitches.”

Kahmal cast her an annoyed look but did not reply.

They reached the mouth of the caves. The gray sky tumbled with the threat of an approaching storm and off in the distance, forks of lightning bored the ground. The wind whipped around them, laden with dampness, and shrieked through the craggy cliffs overhead. They could barely make out the outline of the ship sitting off to their left.

“He will have made for the northern ice fields,” Kahmal shouted above the storm’s din.

“How do you know?”

“There’s water there and he will need it to survive. Reapers are like other beasts. Cree will be able to smell the underground springs.”

Kahmal started down the steppes, but Dorrie grabbed her arm.

“He saved your life.”

Kahmal nodded. “And now that life belongs to him.”

“So you will repay him for that act of selflessness by helping to take his.” Dorrie’s angry gaze pierced the other woman.

Kahmal raised her chin. “According to tribal law, I am duty bound to see no harm befalls him.”

“Really? Does that include the falling of a guillotine’s blade across his handsome neck?”

The Amazeen stared at her. “You think my Sisters and I so without honor we would ignore tribal tenets and execute him?”

Dorrie blinked. “What are you saying?” she asked, her grip on Kahmal’s arm tightening.

“The Tribunal cannot execute him now. That’s why Sejm was so infuriated.”

“But you said they would not free him!”

“Nor will they, but neither will they take his life.”

Dorrie stared into the other woman’s emerald green eyes. “Then what is to become of him?”

Kahmal eased her arm from the Terran’s grip. “There is a cage that sits in front of the Titaness. The cage where the other Reapers were executed.”

“Aye,” Dorrie said on a long note, a horrible dread filling her heart. Raine had told her of the horror that happened there. “What of it?”

“He will spend the rest of his life in that cage.”

A shaft of intense sorrow welled up in Dorrie Burkhart. “Like an animal on display for the women of Rysalia to come and gawk at? To bedevil?”

“That cannot be helped,” Kahmal said, straightening her shoulders. “He is an enemy of the Multitude.”

“That’s a crock of shit and you know it! Without him, your gods-be-damned Resistance would have failed. He is not your enemy. He is your savior.”

The storm had started in earnest, forcing the women back into the warmth and safety of the cave’s entrance. The pummeling of the heavy rain was loud and the skirl of the wind made conversation

impossible. Kahmal tapped Dorrie’s arm and pointed back the way they had come.

“You can’t let them cage Cree,” shouted Dorrie.

“What?”

“I won’t let you hurt him.”

Kahmal spread her hands. “I can’t hear you!”

Dorrie stooped down and picked up a rock. She spun around and slammed it against the Major’s temple, stunned when the warrioress dropped to the ground.

“I’m sorry!” Dorrie released the rock and watched the Amazeen’s chest for a moment, making sure the woman drew breath. Then she turned her back on Akkadia Kahmal and ran out into the thundering storm.

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Seven

On Board the United Space Alliance Medivac Ship, The Orion

Caitlin turned overand snuggled against the warm body beside her. She slid her hand through the thick curls covering his chest and tugged playfully.

“Woman, you are insatiable.” Khiershon sighed. “I think it will be necessary for me to transfer to my ship and enter an E.S.U. so I can rest.”

“Go ahead,” she said, yawning. “I saw the way some of your men were looking at me. I don’t think I’ll have any problems keeping warm, do you?”

Cree growled deep in his throat and, before Caitlin could move, he covered her body with his, pressing her down. “Try it, Lady, and I’ll warm your backside with the palm of my hand!”

Caitlin grinned up at him, smug in her capture of the warrior’s attention as well as his heart. She wagged her eyebrows at him.

“You are also incorrigible!” he complained and rolled off her.

“I am horny.”

“Too bad. Suffer the consequences of your actions.” He climbed out of bed.

“What consequences?” She propped herself up on her elbows and watched him drag on his pants.

“Arousing my jealousy.”

“I’m not to look at other men?”

“Look at them all it pleases you to look,” he replied. “Touch and I’ll take off their heads.” He looked around. “Both of them.”

She watched him button the fly of his breeches then thrust his arms into the sleeves of his black shirt. “You look really good in black.”

“Black is the Reaper color. We all look good in black.”

She clasped her hands around her knees. “How many of you are there?”

He sat on the edge of her bunk and pulled on his boots. “Not as many as there once was. Only twelve of us are left that I know about. Ten are on Rysalia awaiting execution.”

“And the other Reaper?”

“Is safe on Terra. He is my Bloodsire and the Bloodsire of five of those imprisoned in the Titaness.”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “Kamerone Cree.”

“Aye, the Prime Reaper.” He turned to look at her. “The greatest warrior among warriors and I am direct blood of his blood.”

“What is he like?”

Khiershon shrugged. “I’ve never met him, but it is widely known he is the deadliest of our kind.”

Caitlin looked down at her hands. “An assassin.”

“And one who is an expert at his job.”

She looked up. “That was what you were being trained for?”

“A portion of it, aye. I was bred to serve the Empire, but...” He shrugged again. “The Empire is no more so my job is no more.” He thrust the end of his thick leather belt through the loops of his uniform pants. “All that matters is saving the lives of my bloodkin and leaving this sector of the megaverse.”

A frown settled into place on Caitlin’s face. “And then what?” She thought of the ugliness of his transitioning and multiplied that times ten. What world would be safe with warriors such as these roaming free and unchecked?

Cree stilled and turned to face her, his gaze frosted with a definite chill. “You think we would wreck havoc wherever we go, lady?”

Caitlin flinched. She kept forgetting that her thoughts were easily read by this man. She would have to be careful. “I only know you, Khiershon. I don’t believe you would wreck havoc, but are the rest of your bloodbrothers of the same bent?”

He thought about that for a moment then folded his arms over his wide chest. “No, most likely not.

Some are less disciplined than I, but our Bloodsire can handle them.”

Caitlin’s eyes widened. “You mean to take them to Earth?”

He nodded, watching her expression. “Where else would they be safe?”

“I don’t know,” she said, horrified at the thought of rampaging shapeshifters on her world, “but there has to be other worlds where they would be welcomed.”

A sardonic smile twisted Khiershon Cree’s mouth. “Reapers are not welcomed on any world, milady. Such is the nature of ‘our bent.’ We are feared and loathed wherever we go.” He cocked his head to one side. “We cannot wait to be asked to settle on a foreign world, Caitlin. We have to do what needs to be done then worry about blending into the life on that world.”

“And you don’t think with the powers you possess you will try to mold that world to one of your choosing?”

Cree’s smile widened and became one of genuine pleasure. “Lady, I think you are borrowing trouble where none is likely to occur.” He winked at her. “And giving us far more credit than we are due.”

She bit her lip and plucked at the coverlet. “Earth has enough problems with its native warriors. We sure as hell don’t need powerful men like you and your bloodbrothers creating more for us.”

His smile slipped. “And just how would we do that, Caitlin?”

She shook her head, but did not reply.

“Caitlin?” he prodded. “How would we create more trouble for your world?”

She shrugged and looked down. “I don’t know.”

A muscle jumped in the Reaper’s lean cheek and he stalked to the bed and sat down, snaked out a hand and grasped her chin to lift her face. When she refused to look at him, his grip tightened. “Look at me, Caitlin,” he ordered.

She tried to break free of his hold, but he would not allow it.

“Look at me!”

Slowly, her eyes locked with his and held.

He stared into her troubled gaze then let go of her chin. “You believe we will breed more warriors like ourselves. You think our arrogance will eventually destroy the human race.”

“Warring politicians have tried it in the past,” she said. “Hitler in the twentieth century tried to breed a pure race of super men. What would stop you and your bloodbrothers from trying to do the same? And if even you didn’t attempt to rule Earth...if our government discovered your strength and your abilities, you could be used for the same ends, anyway.”

His handsome face turned hard. “You have seen the tattoo on my chest?” She nodded. “I was less than six summers when that was applied to my flesh. It is the mark of the Reaper caste, but it is also a brand the Empire inflicted on me as well as each of my bloodbrothers marking us as property of Rysalia. We were given no choice as to whether or not we wished to serve the Empire. Rysalia owned us, body and soul, and controlled every facet of our lives, right down to our dreams and what sexual experiences we had. It taught us how to track our victims, how to kill them in the most efficient way. It molded us into the monsters you believe us to be.”

“I didn’t call you a monster!”

“No, but in your mind, you see me as such!” When she started to deny it, he shook his head. “No, Lady. I can read your thoughts as easily as I can think my own. I know precisely how you perceive me.”

She closed her eyes. “It isn’t you I fear. It is what is inside you.” When he was silent for a long while, she opened her eyes and looked at him.

Khiershon’s face was blank, but his eyes were wounded, filled with hurt. “Do you think that I would allow my parasite to harm you, Caitlin?” he asked in a soft voice.

“I believe you’d try to keep it from doing so, but I saw you in full transition, Khier. I saw what it did to you. You were...” She shuddered. “You were more beast than man.”

He stared at her for a moment longer then stood. “You have nothing to fear from me or that which dwells within me,” he vowed, “but if you will not believe that, perhaps it is best I set you free.”

Caitlin jerked her head up. “W...what do you mean?”

“Reapers have been compared to Terran wolves. Did you know this? Wolves are called werebeasts on our world. When werebeasts mate, they mate for life. Only one of us has ever mated-against the laws of the Empire I might add-and that was our Bloodsire. I thought I had found my lifemate in you, but perhaps I was wrong. I have told you I would not allow my parasite to harm you. My devotion to you, my caring for you, would keep you safe. But you cannot believe that and there is nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.”

He took his dagger from the night table and thrust it into the sheath at his thigh. He walked to the door. “I give you your freedom, Caitlin. I will not force you to remain with me.”

Caitlin’s heart did a funny little flip and tears pricked her eyes. She stared up at him, seeing the hurt on his face, but recognizing the pride, as well. She had insulted him, questioned his ability to protect her, and offended him deeply.

“Give me time, Khier.”

“Take all the time you need,” he said, pushing the button to open the door. “I’ll not ask you to make a

decision, milady. If-or when-you want me, feel free to come looking.”

He left, the door shushing to behind him.

Caitlin stared at the door, willing him to come back, but when the panel remained closed, she lay down and curled into a defensive position on the bunk, her eyes filled with unshed tears.

Iyan recognized theangry look etched on his friend’s cold face. “Trouble in paradise, Kheirshon?”

“You will leave me alone, McGregor, if you know what’s good for you.” Cree walked to the molecular duplicator and stared at the contraption. “Chalean brandy!”

The molecular duplicator whirred then fell silent.

“Chalean brandy, I said!” Cree shouted, striking the machine with his doubled fist.

“Try asking it for Terran liquor and you might get something, Kheirshon,” Iyan suggested. He held up his glass. “This is Irish whiskey and the gods-be-damned stuff ain’t half bad.” He took a sip, winced then smacked his lips. “Not bad at all.”

Cree dug his fingernails into his palms. “Irish whiskey!” he barked and the molecular duplicator obeyed. Snatching the glass from the machine, the Reaper drained the contents in one gulp then demanded another. The contents of the second glass disappeared just as quickly.

“Uh, oh.” Sinjin Wynth whistled. The Ravenwind’s navigator, now a crewmember of The Orion, pushed up from the table and left.

“You realize what you’re doing?” Iyan asked in a conversational tone.

“Leave. Me. Alone.” The Reaper drained the third glass and ordered a fourth.

“What you are drinking can make you drunk.”

“I believe that is his intent,” Dakin Hesar remarked. He, too, got up, and left McGregor alone with Cree.

Iyan leaned back in his chair and sipped his whiskey. He kept his gaze on Cree and after the Reaper’s sixth shot of the strong liquor, McGregor sighed deeply.

“If my company is boring you, by all means, leave.”

“No. I think I’ll stay and watch you make a fool of yourself.”

Cree turned to face his friend. He narrowed his eyes. “A fool of myself?”

“Aye.”

“In what way have I made a fool of myself, Captain?”

Iyan cocked one eyebrow. “You know how I feel about the woman.”

Hot amber fire glinted in the Reaper’s dark eyes. “The woman?” he echoed, dropping the two words like hot stones.

McGregor nodded and took another sip of his drink. He locked eyes with the Reaper.

“You are referring to my mate?”

Iyan remained silent.

A sly, evil grin tugged at the corners of Cree’s expressive mouth. “Answer me, McGregor. Are you referring to my mate when you say ‘the woman’?”

“You have claimed her as your mate?”

Cree dipped his head in a quick, decisive nod.

“And has the woman agreed to the arrangement?”

The Reaper’s gaze faltered, his amber eyes flickering, but he nodded again.

Iyan grinned. “Ah, she has not. Else you’d not be trying to drown your troubles in inferior Terran liquor and breaking laws you know you should not.”

“I make my own laws!” snarled the Reaper.

The whiskey settled in Cree’s belly and burned a hole there. The effects invaded his system and he felt lightheaded. He knew if he didn’t sit down, he was likely to fall down, so he stalked to Iyan’s table, grabbed a chair, straddled it, and sat.

“Having a distinctly different feeling in your gods-be-damned head, are you, Reaper?” Iyan chuckled.

“The demons roast you o’er a slow pit, McGregor! I know what I’m about.”

Iyan’s grin widened. “No, Khier, you do not. What you are is a man starting the kind of trouble I would not have in a million years!” He finished off his drink.

“You’ve got nothing between your legs to start trouble with!” The instant Cree said it, he regretted it. He pounded the table with his fist and groaned. “Merciful Alel, I didn’t mean to say that!” He stood, wavering at the liquor rushed to his head.

McGregorclenched his jaw, a muscle working as he stared at Cree. Iyan squared his shoulders. “Will you be needing me for anything else this evening, Commander?”

“Iyan,” Cree held out his hand, but Iyan stepped back.

“We’ve both said enough. Good evening, Commander.” He pivoted on his right foot and marched from the room.

Cree groaned again, shaking his head in frustration at his stupid remark. He put his hands on his hips, lowered his head and cursed between tightly clenched teeth. He drew in a long breath then exhaled. For a long while he stood there, staring helplessly at the floor.

“You owe him an apology, Khiershon.”

The Reaper raised his head and saw Caitlin standing in the doorway. “Aye. I do.”

“I’d wait until morning,” she suggested. She came toward him, wrapping her arms around her as walked. “Give him time to get over the hurt.”

Cree flinched as though she’d struck him. “I did not mean to say what I said.”

She glanced at the glass on the table. “You let whiskey speak for you.”

He ran a hand through his dark curls. “Aye, and I’ll pay for that, too,” he said, feeling the nausea tight in his throat. He sat down, vertigo making him more ill. “There are reasons Reapers don’t drink.” He put his arms on the table and lowered his head to his crossed wrists.

“I thought about what you said,” she told him.

The whiskey had reached his parasite and the beast was rebelling against the intoxicating effect. Cree was uncomfortable, the Revenant worm shifting angrily along his right kidney. The last thing he wanted or needed at that moment was to carry on an argument with Caitlin.

“Lady, I am in no condition to discuss anything coherently with you.”

“Then listen.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that, either.”

Caitlin craned her neck and looked at his sweaty face. She gasped, her eyes widening “Are you going into Transition?”

“No,” he said in a reasonable voice. “I am drunk off that inferior liquor of yours.”

Caitlin straightened. “It’s notmy liquor. I don’t drink.”

“I wish to the gods I hadn’t, either!” he moaned. He shot his arms out to grab the edges of the table to keep from spinning off into space. With his left cheek plastered tightly to the tabletop, he squeezed his eyes shut. “Merciful Alel, what was in that poison?”

“How many did you have?”

“I didn’t count.”

She pursed her lips. “Apparently more than you should have. You can’t stay here all night.”

“Watch me.” His hands clutched the table so tightly his knuckles bled of their natural coloring.

“You’ll feel worse if you do,” she warned. “We need to get you to bed.”

He opened one eye and looked at her. “Lady, if I could walk, it would be one of the Fourteen Miracles of Alel.”

She smiled at his woebegone expression. “You make it hard to stay mad at you, Reaper.”

Cree managed to lift his head. He blinked away the vertigo and tried to concentrate on her face. “You are going to stay with me?” he asked, his heart in his soulful gaze.

“Aye. But the first havoc you wreck on my civilization, I’ll leave your ass so fast...” She got no further for the Reaper’s eyes rolled up and his head crashed to the table with a loud thunk that made her wince with the force.

“Reapers are not allowed to drink,” Iyan said as he sauntered into the room.

Caitlin turned. “I can see the reasoning behind that restriction.”

Iyan grunted. “Too bad Khier didn’t.” He squinted at her. “What did you do to him to make him do such a stupid thing?”

“You can ask him when he comes to. Can you help me get him to bed?”

McGregor clenched his jaw as he strode to the table, hefted Cree over his shoulder, adjusted the Reaper’s weight. “Show me where you want me to put his stubborn ass.”

Caitlin smiled at her nemesis. “I think he’d be a happier camper if he woke beside me come morning, don’t you, Captain?”

Iyan scowled. “Come morning, we will be near the Serenian outpost at Corinth and you will not be so smug in your position with this Reaper, woman.”

It was Caitlin’s turn to frown. “And why is that, Captain McGregor?”

A nasty grin pulled at the corners of Iyan’s mouth. “You’ll meet Princess Raphaella and I would venture to say she’ll have something to say about where Khiershon Cree spends his nights.”

The woman the Reaper had claimed as his mate answered McGregor’s evil smirk with one of her own. “What she says and what is done are two separate things, Captain.” She arched one thick brow. “Amazeen or not, no woman takes what belongs to me.”

Iyan blinked. “What belongs to you.”

“Aye, Captain. Khiershon Cree belongs to me.”

She turned her back on the Serenian warrior and proceeded him from the room. Iyan stood with his shoulder aching from the Reaper’s dead weight bearing down on it and grimaced.

But the smile that tugged at his lips was not so much vindictive as confused.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“By the gods,I hurt,” whispered Khiershon.

“Drink it all,” Caitlin commanded, holding the seltzer to his lips.

The bubbling liquid turned his stomach but the Reaper managed to down the vile contents. Wiping a trembling hand across his lips he gagged, burped, then lay back down to curl into a tight fetal position on Caitlin’s bunk, dragging the covers over his head.

“What you really need is a bit of the hair of the dog that bit you.” Realizing he wouldn’t know what that phrase meant, she added, “Another shot or two of whiskey will help you recover.”

“No!” He groaned. “Never again!”

“That’s good to know.”

“Why?”

“My father, God be good to him, each of my nine uncles, and all five of my brothers are a bit too fond of the drink. I fully intend to make sure my husband is not.”

He pulled the cover from one bloodshot eye. “Husband?” he croaked. “As in Joining?”

She nodded. “As in marriage, aye.”

He held his breath. “You would legally join with me, Lady? Become my sanctioned mate?”

Her heart in her gaze, she reached out to smooth his tousled hair. “I would if I were asked in the proper manner.”

He lowered the covers. “What is the proper manner on your world, Caitlin?”

“When you’re better, you can research the answer, Reaper. For now, you need to rest.” She started to turn away, but he caught her hand.

“Tell me.”

Caitlin sat down beside him. “Every good Catholic lass has a vision in her head of the perfect proposal,” she said. “Our knight in shining armor will first go to our fathers to ask for our hand in marriage and-”

“I cannot do that.”

“No, you can’t.”

“What else?” he asked.

“Once he receives our father’s blessing, he will then come to his lady and, on bended knee, ask her earnestly for her hand.”

Cree’s thick brows slanted together. “I must get on my knees to you, Lady?”

“On one knee.

“To abase myself.”

“To show your respect. And the devotion you are willing to extend.”

He thought about that for a moment then nodded. “Go on.”

“That’s all there is to it. You ask; I accept; and we are betrothed. If Captain Wellmeyer would agree to marry us...”

“Any captain of any ship can perform the Joining.”

“Aye, but...” she hedged, knowing where this was going.

“Iyan is my friend. If I ask, he will read the words.” He pushed up on the bunk, wincing at the pain in his head. “I assume you have words from your world?”

She looked down at her hands. “We do, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You do not believe Joining with me is a good idea?” he asked, hurt turning his mouth hard.

She would not look at him. “I would be honored to be your wife, Khiershon, but I don’t think McGregor is the right man to perform the ceremony.”

“Why not?” came the steely demand.

She shrugged.

“Why not?” he repeated.

She lifted her head. “Iyan McGregor hates me, Khiershon. The last thing he will want to do is unite the two of us.”

He looked into her eyes and saw the hurt there. He probed her thoughts and was surprised to find she had no animosity toward Iyan, only exasperation at the man’s pigheadedness. Having intimate knowledge of just how stubborn Iyan could be, Cree could find no fault in his lady’s assessment of the man’s nature.

“Computer!” the Reaper demanded, flinching at the loudness of his own voice.

“Aye, Commander?” the Com-Link responded.

“Find Captain McGregor and have him report here immediately.”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” the computer acknowledged.

“And find the woman Helen and tell her to report here as well.”

Caitlin smiled. “Stop reading my thoughts, Reaper.”

“You have your Maid of Honor.” He smirked. “What is a Best Man?”

“One of your men who will stand up with you.”

“A friend,” he said, frowning. “Iyan is my only friend.”

“If he will perform the ceremony-”

“He will!”

“Then he cannot also witness the Joining.”

Cree reflected on that for a moment. “Sinjin?”

Caitlin liked the Viragonian warrior. “Aye, he would do quite nicely.”

“Computer! Have Sinjin Wynth report to me ASAP!”

“Aye, Commander,” the Com-Link said on a long sigh. “And may I say congratulations, Sir?”

“I call him Coni,” whispered Caitlin.

Khiershon Cree smiled despite the hideous pain in his head and the sour stomach that tilted his world off center. “Find your Terran Joining rituals, Coni, and have them ready.”

“When you make a decision, you don’t let any moss grow under your boot heels, do you, Reaper?”

“I’ll not give you the chance to change your mind, Lady.”

“There is the other thing,” she said.

He sent her an arch look. “What other thing?”

“I don’t have a wedding dress or a wedding cake, but can I have a wedding reception?” Once more he delved into her thoughts.

“Coni, assemble the crew in the lounge. Have the molecular duplicator prepare whatever food stuff this lady’s people serve at a Joining.”

“You are forgetting something, aren’t you, Reaper?”

He frowned. “What now?”

“The little matter of you asking and me accepting?”

A dark infusion of blood stained Cree’s face and he swallowed. “Aye, I had.”

With a great deal of groaning at the way his world kept slipping off its axis, the Reaper crawled out of the bunk and slipped gracelessly to one knee. He steadied himself against the bunk with one arm and took Caitlin’s hand in his.

“Lady,” he said and had to force down the bile that kept rising up his gullet. He tried again. “Lady, will you do me the honor of becoming my Lady-Wife?”

Caitlin cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know,” she replied. “What do you offer me, Reaper?”

His heart was hammering in his chest and for the first time in his life, Khiershon Cree was unsure of himself. “You’re going to make me work for this, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “Am I not worth a little effort?”

The door to Caitlin’s quarters shushed open and Iyan came striding in without bothering to be announced. Upon seeing his friend kneeling before the Terran woman, McGregor stumbled.

“What is happening here?” the Serenian demanded.

Cree turned. “I am asking this lady to be my Life-Mate and to legally Join with me.”

McGregor’s lips parted and his eyes grew wide. “You are joking!”

“Reapers do not joke.”

Iyan’s shocked gaze leapt from Cree to Caitlin. When she met his look with quiet assurance, his jaw hardened. “You think you’ve won, don’t you?”

“She has won this warrior if that is what you mean,” said Cree.

“Khiershon! This is not-”

“I would like you to perform the Joining Ceremony.”

“The gods-be damned, I will not!” Iyan shouted. “I will not sanction such a thing!”

“No matter that I love him and he loves me?” Caitlin asked.

“Love!” Iyan scoffed. “What do either of you know of love?”

Caitlin looked at MacGregor. “What do you know of it, Iyan?”

That question threw the Serenian. He looked from Caitlin to the Reaper and back again, searching both faces for something he desperately wanted to see and could not find. There was no hesitation; no uncertainty; no fear on either face.

“This is a mistake, Khiershon.”

“Was it a mistake for my Bloodsire to take a Terran woman as his Life-Mate?” Cree asked, knowing how much Iyan hero-worshipped Kamerone Cree.

“You see what evil that decision caused the Prime Reaper.”

“He is happy with his lady,” Cree said. “Can you not wish me such happiness with mine?”

A groan of frustration ripped from McGregor. “This is a mistake!” he repeated.

“We don’t believe it is.”

“Woman, you do not...” The Com-Link broke into the angry words announcing the arrival of Helen Lutz and Sinjin Wynth..

“Enter!” Cree ordered.

Helen came up short when she saw the Reaper kneeling before Caitlin, but knew at once what was happening. She cast a quick look at the Viragonian warrior and found Wynth staring wide-eyed at the Reaper.

“You have always stood beside me, Iyan. Stand by me now and accept my decision as being what is right for me.”

Iyan wanted to shout. He wanted to slam his fist into the Reaper’s jaw and knock him unconscious, lock him in a containment cell until they reached Corinth, only a few hours away.

“I will be a good wife to him, Captain,” Caitlin said, drawing Sinjin’s stunned stare to her.

Khiershon turned from Iyan’s angry face to look up into Caitlin’s tearful one. “You asked what I had to offer, milady?” he said in a soft voice. “This is my answer: I have my love and respect for you. I have the might of my sword hand to protect you and the strength of my back to provide for you. My body is yours and will be yours alone until the day the Gatherer calls me to Her. I offer my shoulder for your comfort and my arms for your security.” He brought her hand to his lips and placed a kiss on her palm. His gaze lifted to hers through the thick sweep of his lashes, he placed her hand against his chest and nestled it there. “And my heart I place into your keeping for all time. I will be a good husband to you, Caitlin Cree.”

Iyan moaned, squeezed his eyes shut and let his chin fall to his chest in defeat. Putting his hands on his hips, he shook his head in disbelief. “This is a mistake,” he said for the third time.

“They are Joining?” Sinjin whispered to Helen.

“Looks that way,” Helen answered. She grinned broadly at Caitlin.

“By the gods, but the Princess ain’t gonna like this!” said Sinjin.

There were varyingdegrees of disbelief and shock at the Joining that took place in the Orion’s lounge that 10th day of July. Less than an half hour from Corinth, the ship’s engines were idled as a reluctant Iyan McGregor mouthed the unfamiliar Terran words that bound his life-long friend to Caitlin Kelly. Though he found the words he was forced to recite beautiful and touching, McGregor believed no good would come of this hasty union.

“Now, I pronounce you man and wife,” the Serenian said and looked away from the monitor.

The women of the Orion tensed, waiting for the kiss that would seal the bargain.

The men of The Revenant tensed, as well, wondering why there was such charged emotion suddenly invading the lounge.

Cree turned to the woman who belonged to him for all time and gently gripped her shoulders. “I have no Joining bracelet to give you, milady, but when we arrive on Corinth, I will procure the most beautiful, the most precious of metals to have emblazoned with my family name so all who look upon you will know you are mine for eternity.”

Caitlin smiled. The Reaper’s words might have been too possessive for some of the women gathered. She glimpsed Marti’s pursed lips and Cathy’s arched brow. But to her, the words seared her very soul and gave her a feeling of such contentment she was hard pressed not to cry.

“I have something for you.” She turned to Helen who extended her hand toward Caitlin.

Khiershon released Caitlin’s shoulders so she could take the object from her friend.

“This belonged to my father.” Caitlin took Khiershon’s left hand and slipped the wide gold band over his ring finger.

Cree looked down at the ring and lifted his hand to look at the emblem. “What is this, milady?”

“It was Da’s wedding band. My great-great grandmother gave it to her husband on their wedding day and my great-grandmother gave it to my great-grandfather on theirs. My grandmother and my mother bestowed it upon their menfolk on this wonderful day and now I am giving it to you. It is called a Claddagh.”

The Reaper turned it so Iyan could see. “What does this say to you, Iyan?”

Iyan lowered his gaze to the ring. He shrugged. “That she has placed a yoke of ownership on you.”

“Two hands holding one heart,” Cree said. He turned to Caitlin. “The crown? What does it symbolize, Beloved?”

Iyan winced at the term of endearment, so uncharacteristic of Khiershon Cree.

“The heart stands for love. The hands are for friendship and the crown is for loyalty,” Caitlin replied. “My grandmother, Idella, once wrote:

Without love a marriage is not alive.

Without friendship, a burden will it be.

Without loyalty it will never survive,

But if you are blessed to have all three,

You know your marriage will thrive.”

Cree reached out to cup his wife’s cheek. “Thank you, Caitlin. I will never remove this symbol and this I swear to you: I pledge my heart, my hands, and my loyalty to you, milady. For me, there will never be another.”

A muscle jumped in Iyan’s cheek as the Reaper drew the Terran woman into his arms and covered her mouth with his. The kiss stirred something deep in Iyan’s soul and he had to look away. A deep sense of betrayal and loss settled near his heart and the chill of it spread through his soul.

The women of the Orion sighed deeply. The men of the Revenant shuffled uneasily.

“A toast!” Lisa called out.

“Aye! A toast!” a few of the others agreed.

Glasses of champagne were brought from the molecular duplicator and handed to everyone assembled. The warriors glanced suspiciously at the bubbling liquor, but were curious to know how it tasted. The women held their glasses aloft then looked first to Sinjin, who had no idea what was expected to him, then to Helen as maid of honor.

“Khiershon and Caitlin, may God be with you and bless you,” Helen said, lifting her glass. “May you see your children’s children. May you be poor in misfortune and rich in blessings and may you know nothing but happiness from this day forward!”

“Here, here!” the women chimed in.

“May the Wind be always at your back!” Sinjin said, realizing what was needed.

“May the Wind be always at your back!” the women repeated.

As Helen and Lisa handed glasses of the liquor to Khiershon and his new bride, Iyan slipped away unnoticed. He was heart- and soul-sick and wanted to be alone with his disappointment and anger. As he walked the corridors of The Orion, he asked himself why he felt such anger, jealousy and betrayal, but could not answer his own questions about why he felt as he did. He knew he should be happy for his friend. Khier deserved happiness in his life. But the thought of the Reaper locked into a relationship with a Terran woman for the rest of his life bothered Iyan in a way he found hard to understand.

He found a secluded spot on the maintenance deck and sat down. Burying his face in his hands, he allowed his shoulders to slump and began to cry. He did not look up as the soft touch caressed his shoulders.

“Why did you leave the celebration?”

Barb Fuller sat down beside him. “I’ve been to more weddings than you can shake a stick at. But always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”

He looked up, his eyes red. “Do you want a mate?”

She cocked one shoulder. “I suppose so, but I’m not actively seeking one.” She drew her knees into the circle of her arms. “I think that’s why I signed up for these missions. Most of the time, I’m doing my thing and being left alone.”

Iyan ran his arm under his nose. “You are not lonely, Barbara?”

“Sometimes.”

“I am lonely,” he admitted, looking away. “All the time.”

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

Iyan nodded miserably. “He must never know.”

“He won’t hear it from this girl,” she vowed.

“I thought if he joined with the princess, he might turn to me eventually.” Iyan sighed. “I should have known the gods would have other ideas for a warrior such as Khiershon.”

“You want him happy, don’t you?”

“Aye,” was the listless reply.

“And I think you know he is happy with Cait.”

“It would seem so,” he admitted.

“Then learn to live with it, Iyan.”

He leaned his head against the wall. “What other choice do I have, Lady?”

“None as I can see it.” She laid a hand on his knee. “If you get lonely, look me up. We’ll take an engine apart or something.”

He chuckled then he surprised Barb by lying down and putting his head in her lap. She threaded her

fingers through his sleek curls, stroking his head, and began to hum much as a mother would to a troubled child.

“I never knew my mother.” The bond of blood between him and Khiershon Cree gave him insight into the woman’s thoughts.

“Didn’t know mine, either.”

He looked up. “Truly?”

She nodded. “Seems we got a lot in common, huh?”

Iyan closed his eyes and settled his head more comfortably in her lap. Before either of them realized it, he was sleeping soundly, at peace for the first time in days.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Ravenwindslipped into the docking harness one hour before The Orion landed on Corinth colony. Upon arrival the Terran men aboard Iyan McGregor’s ship were taken into custody by the Serenian Guard and escorted to a holding facility. The Long Range Cruiser was then camouflaged to hide it from any marauding Amazeen ship that might be lurking nearby. When The Orion was locked into the harness, she, too, was transformed from a sleek Terran vessel to a rusting deep space freighter.

“A computer program generates a holographic image overlaying the ship,” Khiershon explained to Marti. “That’s how we’ve been able to elude the patrols over the years.”

“Pretty neat program,” Marti agreed as she stared at the outside view of The Orion. To the unknowing eye, the meteor-pitted hull and cancerous rust eating away at the ship’s exterior looked far too real.

“Unfortunately, it takes a lot of system resources to maintain the image, so we use it only during down time,” added Sinjin. “We can metamorphose into the dilapidated star cruiser you see out there now, but we can’t maintain that image for extended periods of time.”

Marti glanced at The Revenant and shook her head. “You’d sure never know that was an LRC.”

“Are you planning on cannibalizing the Orion?” asked Lida.

Sinjin looked to Cree.

“We’ll be taking some parts, aye,” the Reaper answered. “When we’re through, we’ll have a ship that could pass for an Amazeen StarRaider and we’ll have the capacity to make the jump from here to Rysalia Prime.”

“You’re going to alter The Orion?”

“We will make her better, Lady,” Sinjin injected. He smiled at the tall blond woman called Marti.

Marti looked away then locked gazes with the Viragonian. A sparkle shimmered in her gray eyes and

she began asking Wynth questions about Corinth’s engineering designs.

“I believe there might be another conquest about to take place,” Cree whispered to Caitlin.

“She has a friend on The Orion. Lin Dixon, our First Officer.”

“She’d best forget about him, I would say. Sinjin has a gleam in his eye that tells me he’s staked claim to that one.”

“Can I see our men?” Caitlin asked her new husband. “I want to make sure they’re okay.”

The parasite slithered under Khiershon’s skin, a jealous prod the Reaper refused to acknowledge. “I’ll have Dak escort you over to the holding facility.”

“What am I to tell them?”

“Whatever you wish them to know,” he replied. “No harm will come to them. They’ll be safe here. As far as the Amazeen know, this is a junkyard for useless hulks from Serenia and Necroman. Each time an Amazeen ship has passed this way looking for parts, they haven’t found any. They no longer bother to look.”

“How many people are on Corinth?”

“Above ground?” he asked with a shrug. “Fifty or sixty. It varies depending on intelligence reports of the Amazeen’s movements. But below the planet’s surface is a vast complex of caverns that house close to four-thousand resistance fighters and their families. In all, we number in the five digits with representatives from the Nine Planets.”

“Which are?” she prodded.

“Serenia, Diabolusia, Necroman, Virago, Chale, Ionary, Chrystallus, The Outer Kingdom, and Rysalia.”

“You have Rysalians here, too?”

“Those warriors we could pluck from under the noses of the Multitude. There are not many but they are loyal.”

“If you give our men a chance, I imagine they’d help, too. All except Wellmeyer. He is about as helpful as an ingrown toenail and just as pleasant.”

Cree grinned. “I take it you don’t like the good Captain Wellmeyer.”

“The man’s a twerp. A mean-spirited, vicious twerp.”

“Want me to maim him for you?”

She pretended to think about it for a moment. “Nah, I’d just have to fill out a report and I really don’t want to be bothered.”

“Want me to bother you?” he asked in a low voice.

“Why, Reaper, what ever do you mean?”

He lowered his mouth to her neck and nibbled at her soft flesh. Slipping his hands around her waist, he pulled her to him, grinding the hardness of his shaft against her hip.

“Is this one of our captive Terran sluts?”

Cree jumped as though he’d been prodded with a hot iron and let go of Caitlin so quickly she stumbled back. He had to grab her to keep her from falling.

“Raphaella,” he muttered, cautioning Caitlin to silence with a stern look.

Caitlin looked at the beautiful black-haired woman who was glaring at her with enough venom to kill an army of men. Shapely and statuesque, the Amazeen princess was stunning. Her long legs were bare beneath the abbreviated hem of a white mid-thigh gown. Her lush stygian tresses fell in a thick queue to her hips over the place her right breast should have been. The thick braid rose and fell with the anger of her breath as she glowered at Caitlin.

“Princess Raphaella, may I present-”

The Amazeen warrioress stepped forward and grabbed his arm, snapped him against her and plastered her mouth over his, cutting off his introduction.

Caitlin knew all about the woman whose tongue was thrust halfway down her husband’s throat. She folded her arms and watched Cree trying to extricate himself from the woman’s embrace, his eyes pleading with her for help. She smiled sweetly at him, but made no move to assist him. When Raphaella finally removed her mouth from his, the Amazeen turned in triumph and locked eyes with Caitlin.

“This is my betrothed,” declared the Amazeen. “He may well have used you for his amusement while in route to Corinth, but now that he is home, you will be...”

“In his bed, lying naked beside him, no doubt discussing how embarrassed he was while you were manhandling him in front of his chosen wife.”

Raphaella recoiled as though she’d been slapped. She turned her hostile eyes to Cree. “Wife?” she questioned, eyes narrowed in warning.

Cree spread his hands. “You didn’t give me a chance to-”

“Wife?” The word was an explosion of disbelief.

“Aye, wife,” Caitlin answered for her husband. “And a wife who allowed you the opportunity to say goodbye to him with that last kiss, but who warns you if you put your hands on him again, I’ll carve off your other tit!”

Cree’s eyes widened. The challenge was like a gauntlet thrown in Raphaella’s direction and he jumped between the two women, knowing Raphaella well enough to know she’d leap at the change to fight.

“No!” he shouted, shielding Caitlin from the fury that erupted like a volcano. He felt Raphaella’s nails drag down his arms as she tried to get around him, clawing at Caitlin. “Enough, Raphie!” he ordered. “Enough!”

“I will mutilate the bitch!” the Amazeen vowed, kicking Cree’s shin.

The Reaper grunted with the pain of her sharp boot to his leg. He made a grab for Raphaella, but Caitlin shoved him aside and met the other woman’s challenge with one of her own. Cree staggered and fell, crashing into a docking strap that opened a deep gash in his forehead. Shaking his head to rid his eyes of the blood flowing into his eyes, he stared in disbelief at what was taking place not two feet from where he lay sprawled.

All eyes were on the deadly confrontation. No one could have predicted the outcome and bets would have been lost had there been time to make them. One moment the Amazeen had hold of Caitlin Cree’s hair, the next Raphaella was on her back with a dagger to her ivory throat, the blade digging into the princess’ windpipe.

“How did she do that?” Iyan asked Barb. He was staring at the Terran healer and was as astonished as everyone else gawking at the spectacle.

“Nine times kickboxing champion of Seventh Fleet,” bragged Barb. “Three Olympic gold medals if I remember rightly.”

“Four,” Caitlin corrected. She was sitting on the Amazeen’s chest, pressing her weight against the other woman’s throat. A thin trickle of blood seeped from the blade into the thick black braid coiled beside Raphaella’s head.

“Merciful Alel,” Cree whispered as he sat up. The gash over his eye was being healed quickly by the parasite, but black blood still dripped unheeded down his face.

“Let’s you and me be perfectly clear about something, Princess,” he heard Caitlin say. “I’ve been reading up on the customs of your race and I learned some interesting facts. That man over there belongs to me. I challenged you. You accepted the challenge, we fought, and I won By right of combat, he is mine. I have claimed him and there can be no discussion according to Amazeen law.”

“You,” Raphaella sneered between clenched teeth, “are not Amazeen and have no right to any claims of our race.”

“I am a woman and it matters not my race. According to the Laws of Alluvia, by right of combat, the Reaper is mine and if you put one finger on him, the Tribunal will not be pleased.”

“He is my betrothed!” Raphaella protested, tears filling her eyes.

“He is my husband! We were Joined legally with witnesses who will swear he got down on his knees to beg me to marry him.”

Cree groaned; humiliation flooded him at the word picture Caitlin had just painted for the Serenians milling about. He felt gazes aimed his way and could not look up. Instead, he stared at the black blood dripping on the metal floor.

“Khiershon,” Raphaella complained in a whiny voice. “Tell her you are mine!”

“I cannot,” he said. “I’ve never belonged to you, Raphaella. That is the truth and you know it.”

“We are lovers. We would have been Joined!”

“No.” He looked up. “We discussed this. I told you that I would never Join with you.”

Tears streaked down Raphaella’s temples as she stared up at Caitlin. “You are an evil witch who has cast a spell on my Reaper!”

“I am the woman to whom he has given his heart.” Caitlin eased the dagger from the Amazeen’s throat. “And I am the woman who is willing to overlook what happened today if you promise to keep your paws off Khiershon Cree. Else...”

Raphaella tensed as the dagger returned to her throat. “Else?” she echoed.

“I’ll slit your gullet and be done with it.”

“I think she means it, Raphie,” Cree warned.

“I know damned well she means it,” said Helen. “There was that woman on Venus who...”

“Hush!” Lisa hissed, looking about them. “We aren’t to discuss the dead one, remember?”

“Or what horrible things were done to her before Caitlin...” Marti injected.

“Be quiet!” Lida warned.

Barb had to press her lips together to keep from laughing. Only Iyan saw the merriment in her dark eyes and knew the other women were playacting. He schooled his face not to reveal his own laughter, but

turned his gaze to Caitlin and the look that passed between him and the Reaper’s woman was anything but angry.

Raphaella’s ivory skin had paled as the Terran women’s words slithered into her brain. She stared up at the woman Cree had Joined with and knew this woman was evil beyond knowing. For the first time in her life, the Amazeen princess lowered her gaze to another woman.

“We understand one another?”

“Aye,” Raphaella agreed in a small voice.

With a lithe bound that brought an admiring ‘ah’ from those gathered, Caitlin got to her feet and sheathed the dagger no one knew she had secreted on her person. She thrust her hand to the woman on the deck.

“I’ve no need for an enemy. I don’t wish to look over my shoulder wondering if you’re there,” she told Raphaella. “Give me your hand and your word that this discussion is at its end and I will give you my word that should the time ever come, I will stand back to back with you and fight for your honor.”

A collective gasp escaped the Serenians.

Raphaella looked at Cree. He was as shocked by the offer as she was, but he knew she saw in his eyes the deep admiration for the Terran woman. Raphie could be no less honorable than the outlander so, with reluctance, she took the proffered hand and winced as the strength in that hand jerked her to her feet.

Caitlin put her arms around the Amazeen and drew her close so that only Raphaella could hear her words. “Break the vow between us and I will cut out your heart. Do you understand?”

Raphaella’s lips were close to Caitlin’s ear. “You already have, you Terran witch, for you have stolen my heart from me!”

Caitlin pushed the Amazeen away, smiling as though they were old friends. “Good,” she said. “That’s good to hear, Raphaella.”

Raphaella bowed her head, cast Cree one last wounded look then walked away, her back ramrod straight.

“I cannot believe what just happened,” said Iyan. He stared at Caitlin.

“Cait is an Irishwoman,” Barb explained. “I’ve read that in medieval times, the Celtic women warriors were much more vicious than their male counterparts. I guess we learned today that may well be true.”

“She has made an enemy for life,” Iyan warned.

“So has Raphaella,” Barb countered.

“Are you going to sit there all day, Reaper?” asked Caitlin.

Cree stared up at his wife. He was reclining on the deck, one wrist crooked over his raised knee as he contemplated his lady. He shook his head then got up. “Woman, you certainly are more than I bargained for.”

“More than you can handle?” she threw at him with a saucy wink. “No,” he drawled. “Just more than I bargained for.”

“Disappointed?”

He grabbed her, pressed her against the stanchion of the docking harness and slanted his mouth across hers. Ignoring the shocked silence his action brought to those watching, he pressed his body against his wife’s and thrust his tongue deeply into the warm recesses of her mouth. Her small groan of desire brought his knee up between her legs so she was riding his thigh as he pressed into her. His hands went

to her breasts, molding the firm mounds so expertly, his lady-wife was barely able to breathe for the passion running rampant through her trembling body.

“For the love of Alel, take it to your quarters, Reaper!” Iyan chuckled, surprised at himself for being amused by the situation.

As those on the docking bay watched, Khiershon Cree swept his lady into his powerful arms, hefted her high against his chest and carried her down the rampway to vigorous applause and laughter.

“Show off,” accused Caitlin.

Khiershon Cree smiled.

In her quarters, Raphaella locked the corrugated steel door and demolished every breakable item she could get her hands on. Pottery was smashed against the stone walls; paper, cloth, and bedding were pulled apart and shredded; and food was strewn about the carpeted floor and ground into the fibers.

“The gods punish you, Kherishon Cree!” she shrieked as she peeled art from the walls and put her fists through the canvases, snapped the frames in twain. “You will regret casting me aside!”

Oblivious to the cuts and splinters on her hands and arms, she took her broadsword from its stand and struck out at everything she had not destroyed with her bare hands. Feathers and cloth fibers drifted on the wild currents fanned by her maniacal destruction and the stench of fruit and vegetable pulp saturated the walls.

“Damn you, Reaper!” She swung the broadsword into the back of an overstuffed chair and split the piece of furniture in half.

When at last her moment of insane rage passed, she sank her weapon onto the floor and knelt beside it,

her head on the wobbling hilt.

“Why, Khiershon?” she sobbed, her beautiful face screwed into a mask of grief. “Why?”

From the moment she had first seen the Reaper cadet many years before, she had fallen in love with the handsome Ry-Chalean warrior. Her nightly dreams were filled with his virile young body and her days spent staring at him every chance she got. She had plotted his freedom, thinking he would give his heart to her if she could but gain his release.

Such had not been the case.

Though she had been able to set him free of his captors and he had taken her with him when he fled, he had shown her nothing more than brotherly affection and none of the overpowering passion she knew him capable of exhibiting.

Had she not had the same wicked dreams her sister Amazeens had experienced when still he was captive? Had she not felt the heat of his passionate gaze when he looked at her? And had not the few times he had taken her to his cot not been among the most wondrous of hours for her?

He had been her first, his sword piercing the flesh of her body with such authority and expertise she had barely felt the pain. If anything, she had to admit, she had rejoiced in the slight sting that had branded her his woman. She had exalted at the feel of his magnificent body and the power of his desire turning her to a quivering mass of surrender. She had given him her body and had allowed him to have her heart and soul as well. He had claimed her, marked her with his seed, and she had reveled in the knowledge that she, alone, had tamed the Reaper Cree.

Thus, she thought as she knelt there on the floor, her sorrow manifesting itself in scalding tears of self-pity and betrayal, she had thought of herself as Khiershon Cree’s life-mate. But now?

Now, the dreams of a future with the Reaper on some distant world where both of them would be safe from Rysalian and Amazeen retaliation and punishment were shattered beyond fixing.

She looked about her. Everything in her quarters could be replaced, repaired, or returned to order. Not

so her life. Her life was in shambles and nothing-not even the death of the Terran usurper-could put it to rights ever again. Though the demise of the Terran bitch would bring Raphaella great pleasure, she knew it would change nothing. Khiershon had mated for life and for him there would never be another. Dwelling on that, the Amazeen princess realized another of her dreams had been shattered and her tears flowed hotter still.

Her romantic notions of her own glorified death on the field of battle, sword in hand as she protected a wounded Cree from his enemies, might yet occur; but the fantasy of him mourning her until he drew his last breath was as dead as the hopes she had of bearing him a son. And with her broken dreams, her vision of a life beside the man she loved more than life itself.

She let go of the hilt of her broadsword and slid her palms down the two-sided blade. The tempered steel sliced easily through the flesh of her palms, all the way to the bone, but she barely winced. She welcomed the pain for it meant she was still living though she knew her soul was withering and her heart dying in her breast. Her life’s blood slithered down the blade and spread like a scarlet cloak around her and she looked at it, mesmerized as the red stain soaked into the carpet.

Raphaella sat back on her heels and laid her injured hands in her lap, bloody palms turned upward in supplication to any dark god who might take pity on her. She stared unseeingly across the room at a blank spot where once a painting of Amazeen’s five moons had hung. Dimly, she heard the pounding on her door, but ignored the sound. Not even the blast of the weapon cutting through the tempered steel penetrated her lethargy.

It was not until he knelt beside her and ripped off his black shirt, tore it into bandages to wrap around her bleeding hands that she lifted her gaze to his.

“Why?” she asked, her eyes dry now but as red as the sands of Diabolusia.

He did not answer, but slid his hands under her legs and around her back and lifted her gently. He carried her to the bed, placed her on the damaged mattress and sat down beside her.

“These will take a long time to heal, Raphie,” he said softly as he checked the bandages. “You need laser stitching.”

“I need you,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “You need the thought of needing me.” His amber eyes locked on her pale face. “You knew nothing could ever come of a union between us. I told you that long ago.”

“If the Terran woman...”

He placed a finger across her trembling lips. “The gods sent her to me, Raphaella. I was a breath away from death when she found me. I owe my very existence to her and if you love me as you say you do...”

“I do,” she sobbed, tears brightening her eyes.

“Then you should be grateful to her for saving my life.”

She turned away, unable to look at his face.

“Make your peace with her, Raphaella. She is my mate and as such she should be shown the respect she is due,” he said in a voice that held a warning.

“Keep her away from me, Khiershon, and there will be no problems between us.”

Cree grabbed a chair, brought it to where she sat, swung it around, and straddled it. He braced his arms along the tall back. “I need to talk to you about the Titaness.”

Surprise widened Raphaella’s eyes. “You aren’t going to take me with you, are you?”

“No,” he answered. “It would be too dangerous for you, Raphaella. Your mother and all the members of the High Council will be there for the Feast. If we are caught, you will be given no quarter as a princess of the royal house. You will die alongside us. An Amazeen who aids a Reaper is burned at the stake. I would not have you suffer that fate, Raphaella.”

“I would rather die at your side than live without you,” she vowed.

Cree sighed deeply. “Raphie, listen to me. You helped me to escape Amazeen and for that I will be forever in your debt. We are friends.”

“We are lovers.”

“We were lovers for a short while a long time ago. It meant nothing.”

“It meant nothing to you, but it meant everything to me,” she said, angry at the tear sliding down her cheek. She batted it away.

“Let it go, Raphaella. Let me go. My honor is pledged to Caitlin Cree and my heart, my body, my very soul, belong to her.”

Raphaella snorted. “I will say a prayer for your safety, Khiershon.”

Cree stared into her eyes for a long moment then relaxed. “It was never our destinies to be joined, Raphie,” he said in a not-unkind tone of voice.

She cocked one shoulder in dismissal of his words, but did not reply.

“Listen to me, Raphaella,” he insisted. “I have never been anything but truthful with you and I do not intend to be otherwise now. You can not look me in the eye and tell me that I made any kind of promise to you about us having a future together. From the very beginning, I made it clear that if and when I was able to free my bloodkin from Rysalia, I would leave for Terra to find my Bloodsire.”

“And you said you would take me with you!”

Cree drew in a long breath then exhaled slowly. “Aye, I told you that and if you still wish to go to Terra, you may do so. I know how dangerous it would be for you to stay here and I want to see you safe. I am grateful for all you have done for me.”

“What I have done for you, I have done because I love you, Khiershon! I risked my life, I threw away my legacy to be at your side and this is how you repay me?” She jerked her hand from his grip. “To make me a laughingstock before the entire colony?”

A muscle worked in Cree’s lean jaw. “Who told these people we were betrothed, Raphaella?” he demanded. His gaze bore into hers. “It was not I who said it. It was not I who hinted of a relationship between the two of us that has never existed.”

“You did not deny it!” she shouted, her eyes flashing viridian fire.

Cree’s shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly together, a habit he exhibited when trying to keep from exploding with anger. He took in another long, tired breath then blew the air from his lungs. Opening his eyes, the look he sent her was hard and unyielding.

“I did not deny it because it suited my purpose to have people think you belonged to me.”

“Oh, really?” she crooned. “To enhance the Reaper’s reputation as a swordsman, Cree?”

“To keep your ass safe! By letting them know we were lovers, they would think twice before harming you, Raphaella. You were a Reaper’s mistress.”

“I was never your mistress!” She picked up a statue of the goddess Alluvia to throw at him.

Cree ducked the heavy stone statue and nearly tumbled from the chair. He got hastily to his feet and had to step out of the way of another object she flung his way. Before she could reach for anything else, he was on her, capturing her in his powerful arms and pinning her between him and the wall behind her.

“Stop it!” he growled, tightening his grip when she tried to break free.

“Get out, betrayer!” She spat in his face.

Raphaella watched the Reaper’s amber eyes widen with disbelief and sucked in a horrified breath at what she had done. The fury gathering in Cree’s golden orbs set her to trembling and made her knees go weak with dread.

“I’m sorry!” she whispered, her own eyes wide with terror as she watched her spittle running down his cheek. “Khiershon, I am sorry!”

He released her and put a hand to the slickness on his face. He looked at the glistening moisture on his fingertips then raised his eyes to hers.

“I should not have done that,” she said, her lips quivering.

“No,” he replied. “You should not have.” He stepped back.

Raphaella put a hand out to him. “Forgive me, Khier. Please!”

The Reaper wiped the offending wetness on his pant leg. “If you want to accompany us to Terra when the time comes, you will still be welcome to do so, but until that time, stay out of my sight, Raphaella. If you don’t, I won’t be held responsible for what I might do if you cause any trouble for me or my lady.”

She took a step toward him but he held his hand up to stay her advance. He turned to go.

“You said you had questions about the Titaness,” she said, latching on to the only thing she thought might keep him from leaving.

“There are others I can ask.”

“But I have been there many times. I know the prison like the back of my hand. You will need to know where to go and how to get inside the compound.” She reached for him.

“No,” he denied, his eyes hard.

“I love you!” she said, tears gathering.

He nodded, his gaze softening. “I know you do.”

Raphaella dropped to her knees before him. “I will do anything you want!” she sobbed. “Anything! Only don’t turn away, Khiershon. Please don’t turn away from me!”

Khiershon clenched his jaw. “You are making a fool of yourself. Get up!”

She flung herself at his legs, grabbing one booted foot and wrapping her arms around it. “I am yours, heart and soul,” she wailed. “Body and spirit. You are everything to me! Without you, I do not want to live!”

His face tight with anger, he bent down, gripped her upper arms and yanked her to her feet. He shook her roughly. “Do you hear what you are saying?” he shouted, shaking her again so violently her teeth clicked together and a thin trail of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth.

“I love you! I have always loved you.” She tried to throw her arms around him, but he pushed her away.

“It is over, Raphaella,” he said, slapping his hand against the door control.

“If you leave me, I will take my life!”

He stepped out into the corridor and stood there staring at her. “Melodramatic tantrums do not become the royal daughter of the House of Amazeen,” he told her. “And threats only serve to make you look more foolish.”

Raphaella swiped at the tears cascading down her face and lifted her chin. “I am making no idle threats, Reaper. If that portal closes between you and me, the next time you see my face, it will be still in death.”

The door started to slide shut and he reached out to keep it from closing; the portal slid back into its housing sleeve. His gaze was locked with hers and when he saw triumph beginning to glint in her emerald green depths, when he saw the victorious smile tugging at her lips, he pulled his hand away.

“Good-bye, Raphaella.”

The smile died on the Amazeen princess’ face. The triumphant gleam turned dull.

She held his gaze, knowing he would never falter from the path he had set for himself. There would be no detours on his road of life and no pleasant excursions to destinations to which he could not take his mate. For the Reaper, his course had been charted and his lone passenger ticketed.

“Go back to your Terran whore,” she said, her eyes flashing green fire. “I am well rid of you, you heartless beast!”

The door slid shut, separating the two of them.

Chapter Thirty

“Have you seenher at all since that first day?” Iyan asked as he and Cree walked along one of the subterranean corridors.

“No,” Cree replied. “I hear she keeps to her quarters and intends to remain there until after we’ve gone. I’ve had her women checking on her.”

“Why?”

Cree frowned. “Raphaella won’t take her own life, but she may well find a way to take my lady’s.”

“You have someone watching Caitlin?”

“You know I do.”

“You need to keep those two as far away from one another as possible.”

“So I’ve been reminded.”

“Your lady said as much?”

Cree nodded. “In no uncertain terms.” He cast his life-long friend a wondering look. “Did you see her that day on the docking bay?”

“I saw what Barb says is a Celtic berserker that day, my friend.” Iyan chuckled. “I count myself lucky it wasn’t me she went after with that Diabolusian blade!”

Cree frowned. “Where the gods-be-damned hell did she get that warthog sticker?”

Iyan shrugged. “I’ve no idea, but it’s good she did. That blade settled matters well enough between those two.”

“Nothing has been settled, Iyan. Given the chance, they’ll go after one another again.”

“Even with the pact made? Not even Raphie would dare break such a promise.”

“The bitch threatened to take her own life. Do you think she would honor a pact made with Caitlin?”

“Then you’d best keep your woman under tight watch.”

“I’ll keep her under me,” Cree grinned.

Iyan rolled his eyes. “You are disgusting, Reaper.”

“How goes it with you and Barb?”

“We are friendly enough.”

Cree put out a hand to halt his friend. He locked eyes with the Serenian. “You think I don’t know how you feel, Iyan?” he asked, searching the other man’s face. “I know. I knew before we shared blood.” Iyan’s face paled. “I don’t know what you are inferring.”

“I’ll tell you what I told Raphie. Let it go. Let me go.”

McGregor’s mouth dropped open, he stared at his friend then snapped his mouth shut with an audible click. He narrowed his eyes. “By the gods you think highly of your attraction to others, don’t you, Reaper?”

Cree grinned. “Get over it.”

“You are a conceited buffoon, Khiershon Cree.” He looked down at the Reaper’s restraining hand and shrugged away the restraint. “You have entirely too high an opinion of yourself.”

“Barb is a nice woman.” Cree started walking. “You could do worse, you know.”

“You could do worse, you know,” Iyan mimicked as he fell into step beside the Reaper.

“She would make a fine companion. You need someone to bunk with now that I’m no longer available.”

Iyan cast his friend a curious glance. “You know gods-be-damned well how it is with me and yet you make light of it.”

“I am not making light of it, Iyan. I am merely telling you to get over it.” Cree shot his companion a stern look. “And we won’t mention your feelings again.”

A blush settled over McGregor’s handsome face. “You aren’t angry?”

“On the contrary, I am complimented that you feel you can not live without me.”

“What?” Iyan shouted, grabbing Cree’s arm and spinning him around. “What?”

Cree’s smile was brutal. “Get over it,” he said again and snaked out his arm to wrap Iyan’s neck in a tight hold. He put his lips to his friend’s ear. “Get over me,” he whispered.

Iyan realized the Reaper was allowing him to save face; he shoved away his friend. “Ry-Chalean dog.”

“Serenian windworm.”

The two men glared at one another then burst into laughter at the same time.

“She’s been good for you,” Iyan reluctantly admitted.

“As Barb has been good for you.”

Iyan nodded. “Aye, that she has. We are becoming close.”

“Keep her at your side, McGregor. The two of you must have been cast from the same clay.”

Iyan smiled, but did not comment. He said little as they inspected the progress the Serenian engineers were making on the new StarRaider being built in the bowels of the Corinthian mountains. He listened to Cree’s questions, added a comment or two of his own, but spent most of that morning watching Cree’s

easy camaraderie with the workers and the way the Reaper’s body language told of his happiness.

“He’s easier on the ears since his return,” said one of the older Serenian workers. “The Amazeen must have torn the Black Ascendency right out of him when they had him in their evil clutches.”

“It wasn’t the Amazeen, Tarnes. It is a certain Terran warrioress who’s tamed our Reaper.”

Tarnes sniffed. “I wouldn’t say tamed is the right word, Cap’n McGregor. Calmed is a better word.”

“Calmed,” Iyan repeated. “Aye, that is a good word for it.”

“And as happy as a Diabolusian warthog in a trough of slop.” Tarnes chuckled.

“He is, isn’t he?”

“If any of us deserve happiness, it is that boy. Just thinking on what was done to his bloodkin and what might be done to what’s left of his kin if we don’t get to them in time, sends chillbumps popping up on my arms.” The old man rubbed his leathery flesh. “I’ve no desire to see any man, Reaper or not, burned in that godawful cage.”

“Neither do I, Tarnes,”

“Then I’ll be back to work. The sooner the retrofit is done, the sooner you men can be about the business of saving those men on Rysalia Prime.”

Iyan slapped the old man on his scrawny back and turned back to watching Khiershon speaking with the Chief Engineer.

Caitlin looked upas her husband entered their quarters. She had been bored most of the day, unable to find anything with which to occupy her time.

“How was your day?” Cree asked as he pulled his shirttail from his pants.

“Shitty. If I had something to do, my answer would have been fine. I’ve spent most of the day sitting in here looking at the four walls.”

Cree stopped unbuttoning his shirt. “What is it you’d like to do?”

“Don’t you have a medical facility here?”

He nodded.

“Then tell me where it is and I’ll see if I can’t be of some help.”

He put his hands on his hips and looked at her. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Cait,” he said. “Raphaella helps out down there.”

She couldn’t stop looking at his bare chest framed by the unbuttoned sides of his black shirt. For some reason, her eyes refused to leave the thick patch of hair between his paps.

Cree looked down to see what she found so fascinating and when he looked up, he caught his wife licking her lips. “Slut.” He chuckled and moved his hands to the buckle of his belt.

“You weren’t complaining last night, Reaper.”

“No, but I could barely walk this morning.”

She grinned at his exaggeration and leaned back on the sofa, crooking her finger at him.

“You are evil.” He grunted and started toward her, but the computer clicked on

“Commander Cree, your A.I.U. has arrived.”

Caitlin looked toward the door. “A.I.U.?”

“Artificial Intelligence Unit.” He the computer to admit the cybot.

Caitlin sat up and smiled as the gangly A.I.U. waddled into the room. It was a little over five feet tall with a rubbery-looking face that had a smile plastered there that she could only describe as goofy. It bowed to her, bowed to the Reaper, then came closer.

“His name is Raven. I programmed him myself.”

“Does it speak?”

“Raven,” Cree said. “You may greet my lady.”

“‘I saw thee on thou bridal day when a burning blush came o’er thee,’” the cybot said.

Caitlin turned to her husband. “Raven?” she asked, one brow arched.

“‘That blush, perhaps was maiden shame,’” Raven added.

“That’s enough, Raven.”

“‘Nevermore.’”

“Dear God!” Caitlin chuckled. “Poe, Reaper? Edgar Allan Poe?”

“About a year ago, I found an old Terran book of poetry and rather liked the words,” Cree replied with a careless shrug. “I needed a voice for my ‘bot so that’s what I chose.”

“‘Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December...’”

“I said that’s enough, Raven.”

“‘Nevermore.’”

Laughing, Caitlin thought the cybot adorable...until the next morning she woke to find it bending over her bed.

“‘The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, which is enduring, so be deep!’” Raven chanted as he poked a finger at her bare arm.

“Get out of here!” Caitlin screeched, drawing the covers over her naked breasts.

“‘The lily rolls upon the wave; wrapping the fog about its breast.’”

“Out!”

“‘Nevermore.’”

“What’s going on?” Cree asked as he came in from a trip to the sonic shower.

“Keep that piece of plastiform out of our bedroom, Reaper!” Caitlin demanded, pointing at the A.I.U.

“Raven, were you on last eve?” Cree asked suspiciously. “I thought I deactivated you.”

“‘The moaning and groaning, the sighing and sobbing are quieted now, with that horrible throbbing...’” Raven quipped with a giggle.

“Cree!”

The Reaper’s lips twitched. “Leave us, Raven, and don’t lurk about like that again. Understood?”

“‘Be that word our sign of parting.’” Raven bowed deeply and waddled from the room.

“I won’t have that thing spying on us, Khiershon.”

“I’ll make sure he’s deactivated in the evenings.”

“You’d damned well better!”

The next morning, Caitlin found Raven trundling along behind her as she left her quarters and turned to confront the A.I.U. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“‘From the torrent, or the fountain, from the red cliff of the mountain, from the sun that...’”

“Cree!” Caitlin complained, storming back into her quarters. “That piece of plastic...”

“Is there to protect you.”

“‘Wreathed in myrtle, my sword I’ll conceal like those champions devoted and brave.’”

“Enough, Raven.”

“‘Nevermore.’” Raven grinned.

“I don’t need protection,” Caitlin protested.

“If you intend to work down at the med barracks, he stays with you.” From the look on his handsome face, it was obvious there would be no discussion of the matter.

“Fine!” Caitlin pushed past the cybot and stomped down the corridor. “Keep out of my way, you goober!”

“Watch her closely, Raven,” Cree instructed. “If you need to kill to protect her, you have my permission.”

Raven’s elastic smile hardened. “‘And, in parting from you now, thus much let me avow .’”

“And keep out of her sight as much as possible.”

“Darkness there and nothing more,’” Raven promised.

Cree nodded, dismissing the cybot. He leaned over the desk, studying the schematics of the Titaness on Rysalia Prime, the prison in which the last of his kinsman from this side of the wormhole were housed.

Raven waddled down the hall, picking up speed as he lost sight of his quarry around a corner. Scooting forward in a blur of motion, he nearly plowed into Caitlin’s back as she stood at the intersection of two corridors, trying to decide which way led to the medical facilities.

Caitlin narrowed her eyes. “Do you know where the medical rooms are, you goofy twit?”

“‘The venom thou has pour’d on me-Be still, my spirit!’”

Gritting her teeth, Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Just tell me which way to go, Raven!”

“‘Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche,’” Raven replied and pointed to the left corridor.

“Making friends, are we?”

Caitlin turned to find Helen walking toward her. “My bodyguard,” Caitlin scoffed.

Raven slapped a gangly hand to his chest. “‘Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nicean barks of yore!’”

Helen’s blond brows lifted. “And who might you be?”

“‘Raven,’” The cybot reached for Helen’s hand and brought it to his rubbery mouth. “‘Ah! Ever I behold thine dreamy, passionate eyes, blue as the languid skies...’”

“Knock it off!” Caitlin warned.

Helen withdrew her hand. “How’d he know my name?”

“Cree programmed him, so I imagine he put in images of friends.”

“‘Therefore thou art not wrong,’” Raven agreed.

“Shut up, Raven.”

“‘Nevermore.’”

“How cute!” Helen laughed. “He’s quoting Poe!”

“Don’t encourage him. Come on before he starts rattling off something else.”

“‘Nevermore.’”

“Is Cree worried about Raphaella causing you trouble?” Helen smiled at Raven, who lowered his head, dug the toe of his rubber boot into the ground like a shy schoolboy and beamed up at her through his plastic eyelashes.

“I’m not worried about that overgrown harpy.”

“You handled her well enough, but...” Helen stopped, putting a hand on her friend’s arm. “Uh oh, Amazeens.”

Two Amazeen warrioresses strode toward them, their backs ramrod straight and their green eyes narrowed into slits.

“Sister, look,” one of them drawled. “It’s Cree’s whore.”

Caitlin tensed, her hand easing down to the dagger she had taken to wearing. “Helen, look,” she mimicked. “It’s the watchdogs of Cree’s castoff.”

The face of the Amazeen who had spoken turned red and her own hand dipped to the blade at her waist.

“Nuella, be still! That is Cree’s ‘bot,” the other Amazeen warned. “He’ll have programmed it to protect her.”

Nuella Amhmadad flicked her gaze over the A.I.U. She caught the penetrating look sent her way from the large black eyes of the cybot then locked stares with Caitlin. “There will come a time, you Terran bitch, when you won’t have the Reaper’s protection.”

“Perhaps. But I’ll always have his love. That’s something your friend will never know.”

With her chin high, Nuella pushed past Caitlin and her friend without responding to the insult.

“I’d be very careful of that one,” Helen warned. “I didn’t like the way she glared at you.”

“‘Death was in that poisonous wave,’” said Raven.

“Don’t worry about me. Let’s see if we can’t find something to do in the med barracks.”

Raven turned to watch the Amazeens’ departure. His rubbery lips were clamped tightly together and his stygian scrutiny sharp. Though he was as still as a statue, his data banks were flashing messages to his creator and at the receiving end of those messages, the air turned chill.

Chapter Thirty-One

Iyan stood watchingCaitlin as she and Helen helped the Serenian colonists in the medical facilities. He was leaning against a buttress, his arms crossed as he studied Cree’s woman, marveling at how the colonists deferred to the Terran woman’s authority and medical advice.

“The Terran is fast gaining friends amongst the colonists,” one of the Amazeen warrioresses who had accompanied her princess into exile remarked.

“I believe she has bewitched our Reaper.”

“I am told she is of the same race as the Chaleans,” the warrioress commented. “Perhaps she is one of the Sidhe.”

Iyan smiled. “It wouldn’t surprise me, Dania. She fights like a warrioress.”

“Aye,” Dania Constantine said in a begrudging voice. “That she does. You have to grant her a measure of respect for that reason, if that reason alone.”

“I’m changing my mind where she’s concerned.”

“He will be glad to here it,” the Amazeen said, cocking her head toward the advancing Reaper.

Iyan pushed away from the wall and intercepted his friend. “Did you gain the information we needed from Raphie?”

Khiershon shook his head. “No.”

“She wouldn’t tell you?”

“We didn’t get around to discussing it.”

Iyan grinned. “Matters of the flesh intruded in the conversation I take it?”

The warrioress laughed, but when the Reaper turned a frosty glower her way, she hurried away.

Cree stared after the retreating woman for a moment, then put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled loudly, gaining her attention.

The warrioress spread her hands in question.

“Go check on your mistress, Dania.”

The Amazeen frowned. “Why, milord?”

“Just do it, woman!” Cree snarled. He was uneasy, but didn’t know why.

Iyan turned his attention from the Amazeen to Cree. “What happened?”

Khier flung out a dismissive hand. “Nothing,” he said then turned to look at Caitlin. When she smiled at him, he answered the smile with a tender one of his own.

“The two of you fought,” Iyan said with an exasperated sigh. “Khier, you know how Raphie feels. Why do you have to antagonize the woman?”

The Reaper looked away from his wife. “Do you remember the Ionarian woman who joined us at Ghurn colony?”

Iyan shrugged. “Vaguely.”

“She worked in the Titaness for several years if memory serves. She’d be able to tell us what we should know. I’ve used Raphie enough as it is,” Khier snapped. “I wasn’t about to go plundering her mind.”

Caitlin smiled again, giving her husband a look that told him she was proud of his decision not to use his powers to take what he wanted from Raphie.

“You’re not going to tell me what happened between you and Raphie.”

“If it were any concern of yours, I would. Considering it is not, you have no reason to know.”

“Ah,” Iyan drawled. “That bad, eh?”

“Go find the Ionarian woman,” Cree ordered, “and mind your own business.”

“You are my business, Reaper,” Iyan said softly.

Cree was about to answer when a loud shriek filled the underground corridors and echoed off the walls. He turned, his hand going to the dagger at his thigh.

Dania came running into the medical facility. “The princess!” she shouted. “She has been attacked!”

Caitlin saw her husband spin around and with Iyan McGregor right behind him, run down the corridor. She snatched up the medical bag she had brought from The Orion and ran after them, Helen close on her heels.

The sight that greeted Caitlin as she stumbled to a halt outside the door of the Princess Raphaella’s chamber was one that would stay with her for as long as she lived. She watched in shock as Cree lifted Raphaella’s hand, licked at her fingertips, then scooped her up in his arms, Raphaella’s blood saturating the front of his jumpsuit.

“She’s been stabbed in the back,” Cree told her as he laid the unconscious woman on her cot, carefully turning her onto her belly.

Caitlin winced as she saw the jagged tears in the Amazeen woman’s tunic. “Who did this?”

“Anyone could have,” Iyan responded. He was blocking the doorway of the Princess’ chambers, his hand on the dagger at his hip.

“The Princess has enemies among the Serenians,” Dania said from her place beside Cree.

“Not hard to believe,” Caitlin muttered. She pushed her husband out of the way and bent over the unconscious woman. “She’s losing a lot of blood.”

“She will not appreciate you tending her,” Dania warned, looking to Cree.

“Dania is right, Lady. Perhaps you should not-”

An irate voice drown out his words. “Gods-be-damn it, let me through!” the Serenian Chief Healer demanded.

Cree took his wife’s arm and pulled her back, motioning Dania to make room for the Healer.

“You!” the Healer snarled, grabbing Caitlin’s hand. “Help me here.”

Cree bit his lip, knowing full well how Raphaella would react to the knowledge that her rival saved her life. He was about to protest, to order Caitlin to come away, when his wife turned to look him in the eye.

“I am a physician, Khiershon. I am sworn to protect life and to sustain it. That is my duty and that is what I am. To stand aside when a life is in danger would be to forsake my honor-bound oath and that I will never do. Is that clear?”

“Aye, beloved.”

“Then stand aside and let me do my job.”

Cree stepped back, taking Dania’s arm and drawing her out of the room with him. He looked at Iyan. “Stand guard and make sure no one enters.”

Iyan nodded. “Where are you going?”

“We,” Cree said, indicating Dania, “are going after the one who did this.”

“But we don’t know who it was. Where do we start?” asked Dania.

A muscle in Cree’s jaw jumped. “I follow her scent.”

Dania frowned. “How do you know it was a woman?”

“He has the taste of her on his tongue,” Iyan replied.

Caitlin turned from helping the Healer remove Raphaella’s tunic. Her husband was already out of sight. “What did you mean, Iyan?”

“Raphaella must have scratched her assailant when she was attacked. Cree smelled two different blood types on Raphie and got a taste from her fingernails.”

Caitlin shuddered, remembering the sight of her husband licking the unconscious woman’s fingers. “But how can that help?”

“It is as I told you on The Orion when you gave your blood to Khiershon. He will track the assailant through her DNA. That’s how Reapers find their target. Any blood a Reaper consumes is encrypted into his genetic makeup. It is bookmarked and stored for retrieval.”

“Like a bloodhound,” said the Healer. He chuckled at his joke. “Here, woman. Help me with the laser.”

Caitlin took the laser wand thrust at her and bent to the task at hand, but her thoughts were on her husband and the uncanny ability that made him what he was.

Dania risked alook at the infuriated man beside whom she walked. The Reaper’s face was rigid, his golden eyes narrowed. Glancing down at his powerful hands, she was not surprised to see his fingers curled into tight fists, the knuckles bled of color. Although she was a tall woman-6’10” in her bare feet-and possessed a long stride of her own, she could barely keep pace with Khiershon Cree’s heavy tread.

She dared not address him for his formidable expression made it all too clear he would not appreciate the interruption. The way his nostrils flared from time to time, she knew he was searching for the tell-tale scent that would take them to their quarry. When he stopped abruptly at the intersection of three corridors, lifting his head to sniff the air, she stilled, holding her breath.

“This way,” he growled, indicating the corridor closest to them.

Raphaella’s eyelidsfluttered open. She had difficulty focusing on her visitor, but as the face shifted into clarity, she heaved a sigh. “Has he returned?”

“Not yet,” Caitlin replied.

There was an uncomfortably long moment when neither woman spoke then the Amazeen broke the silence.

“I am told it was your blood that helped me to survive the attack.”

“We just happen to share the same rare type, that’s all.”

“You did not have to share your blood with me.”

“No, I could have let you bleed to death. No one here would have been any the wiser.”

Raphaella locked gazes with the Terran woman. “Then why not remain silent and let your rival die?”

Caitlin shoved her hands into her pants pockets. “You’re not my rival, Raphaella. I have him. You never did.”

Raphaella flinched and looked away.

“This makes us bloodsisters,” the Princess whispered. “Do you understand the implications of what you did?”

Caitlin opened her mouth to say it meant nothing at all beyond the medical ramifications, but she knew in Raphaella’s culture it meant far more so she did not reply. When the Amazeen turned around to face her, her gaze expectant, Caitlin heaved a long sigh. “Look, Raphaella, you don’t owe me anything.”

“I owe my very existence to you, Caitlin Cree.”

Caitlin drew in a stunned breath. The Amazeen was acknowledging her marriage to Khiershon. From the wounded look in Raphaella’s eyes, Caitlin knew the princess had come to terms with losing Khiershon and was ready to move on.

“I suspect we will never be friends,” said Raphaella, “but we no longer need be mortal enemies, do we?”

The Amazeen princess held out her hand.

Caitlin looked down at the other woman’s strong sword hand. She did not hesitate, but took it in her own. “No,” Caitlin replied. “We do not.”

Raphaella smiled crookedly, still gripping the Terran woman’s smaller hand. “He is worth fighting for, though, don’t you agree?”

“Aye, but he doesn’t need to be reminded of that.” Caitlin grumbled and politely withdrew her hand. “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 you 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...”

“ThatI belong toyou. ”

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. McGregor?” 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.

Dorrie paused topull the collar of her pilfered jumpsuit tighter to her neck. Assaulted by the frigid winds, she shivered, her numb lips trembling . The cold stung her cheeks and made her eyes ache. She had been following the fault line that separated the eastern and western sectors of the Vex for over an hour now. Reasoning that Cree would head into the more inhospitable region of the planetoid in the hopes anyone tracking him would be loathed to venture into the volcanic areas, she had originally headed south toward the smoking craters. But she remembered his words as he lay sweating in the grips of the viper bite and had stopped, reversing direction.

Snowflakes were beginning to fall sparsely from the thick gray sky and she could feel the moisture of it as it landed on her nose and eyelashes. Blinking away the intrusion, she ran her arm under her nose and stopped to survey her surroundings.

Ahead of her was a soaring outcropping of rock that resembled a chimney built by a drunken bricklayer. At the base of the outcropping, she could see a dark blob of a hole and it was toward that perceived entrance that she set her course. Forcing one foot ahead of the other, she started on again.

A shadow moved in the gathering darkness and she stilled, turning her head to look. She drew in a long breath, going as still as the craggy rocks looming over her.

The weretiger was ten yards away, off to her left, its gleaming teeth sharp and pointed, dripping with saliva as it grinned. Even through the skirl of the icy wind she heard its warning growl as its red eyes fixed on her. The animal was rail-thin, its ribs showing through the matting of its dark fur. As it licked its chops, its feral eyes glowing in anticipation of a meal, it lowered its mangy head and slithered a few steps toward Dorrie, its tail tucked between its spindly legs.

Dorrie began to tremble, a blossom of urine spreading across the front of her jumpsuit. She moaned, wincing at the sound, knowing the big cat had heard her. She took a step back from its steady advance.

“Don’t move, Dorrie.” His words were soft, barely audible.

“Cree,” Dorrie whispered urgently, risking a glance toward the sound of his voice, but he was nowhere in sight. “Cree, it’s...”

“I see him. Don’t move.”

The beast stopped its advance and switched its lethal gaze from its prey to the intruder. Its lips peeled back from its fangs several times in warning; it growled low in its thin throat.

“I’ve no quarrel with you, brother,” Dorrie heard the Reaper say. “But the bitch is one of mine. I will protect her.”

The weretiger’s tail swished violently and its lumpy head swung toward Dorrie.

“Mine,” Cree repeated. He materialized beside Dorrie and she flinched as his hand fell on her shoulder.

Sidling closer, the weretiger lifted its snout and sniffed the air, evaluating the scent of the prey as well as the intruder. Being upwind of the pair, it could not latch onto their smell and scuttled closer still.

“Oh, God!” Dorrie groaned.

“Be very still,” Cree warned her. “Let it sniff you.”

“Let it...?” She shut up when his hand tightened on her shoulder.

The beast sidestepped toward them, never taking its red eyes from the intruder. When it was only a foot or so away from Dorrie, it lowered its head and sniffed again.

“Mine,” Cree said once more and when the creature raised its head and locked gazes with the Reaper he put his hand out to the beast.

“Kam, no!” Dorrie hissed, fearing the feline would pounce. She was stunned when the scrawny beast tucked its tail between its legs and crouched down until its belly was resting on the sharp rocks underfoot.

Cree hunkered down beside Dorrie, laid his hand on the beast’s head and rubbed the sparse fur. “I understand,” he said. “I, too, am hungry.”

A low whine came from the animal then it began to purr raggedly. It swept out its rough tongue and licked Cree’s wrist. Its red eyes rolled and it whined again.

“I know.” The Reaper sighed. “I crave blood like you, but not this bitch’s. She is one of my pack.”

Dorrie shuddered and had to bite her lip to keep quiet.

The werebeast laid its head on the rocks and sighed as though in defeat.

“Cree?” Dorrie questioned.

“It’s sick and it’s starving,” Cree said and stood. “The most humane thing would be to put it out of its misery.”

Dorrie’s attention was riveted on the beast at her feet. She saw its shaggy eyebrows twitch, watched as

its tail thumped once against the rocks, and felt pity for the animal as it became still.

“Please don’t kill it.”

Cree took her hand in his. “It would have killed you.”

She felt the raging fever in his touch and reached out her free hand to feel his brow. “Oh, lord, you are burning up!”

The werebeast raised it head and looked up at Cree. It whimpered.

“Ghoret,” Cree responded to the whimper.

Unsteadily, the beast got to its feet and staggered to the Reaper. It rubbed its matted fur against Cree’s leg then locked its feral eyes on the man at the female’s side.

It whimpered again.

Cree nodded, seeming to understand the creature’s vocalization. He looked to the rocks ahead of them. “Shelter. I need to lie down.”

Her hand burning from the heated grip of his, Dorrie took his arm and, trying not to look at the sick animal tagging along in their wake, allowed Cree to lead her toward the crazy chimney.

Kahmal wasinfuriated.

She was also freezing.

She held up her portable transpositioner and took another reading. The screen was iced over and she had to use her thumbnail to scrape away the rime. Since night had fallen and the dark skies were black as tar around her, she could easily read the two major heat sources showing on the screen but was perplexed by a third minor heat source. The heat signatures were coming from the outcropping of crags ahead of her and it was toward this cantilevered structure that she set out.

By the time she was within ten feet of the place where Dorrie and Cree had ventured, the Amazeen Major was suffering from acute hypothermia. Her fingers and ears were frostbitten and every fifth step she took was slower than the one preceded it.

His body wasso hot there was no need for a fire. Dorrie cuddled against him, his heated breath fanning her hair, and soaked in the warmth from his flesh, the comfort of his strong arms around her.

“How soon?” she asked.

“D...don’t k...know.” Cree’s body was wracked by shudders of pain. He tightened his grip around the Terran woman. “Hour. Maybe longer.”

“Maybe less?” she whispered against his throat.

“Maybe less.” The venom infiltrating his blood made his parasite wriggle with displeasure and caused him nearly unbearable agony as the thing undulated along his spine.

The werebeast lay curled on a ledge above them, its own feverish red eyes glowing in the darkness. It seemed to be watching over the restless Reaper and the Reaper’s bitch.

Dorrie stared up at the creature, wondering if it would attack Kamerone Cree when the Reaper began to Transition.

“No,” Cree told her. “It will run away.”

As though in agreement, the weretiger raised up, shifted its position on the ledge then lay down again, its hindquarters positioned so it could spring from the ledge and propel its body deeper into the cavern in which they had taken shelter.

A violent shudder rippled down Cree’s lean body and he jerked his arms from around Dorrie and sat up, wrapping his arms around himself. She could hear his teeth clicking together.

“I w...will not h...harm you, D...dorrie,” he whispered, his voice growing thick.

Dorrie wished she could assure him that she knew he wouldn’t, but she wasn’t so sure. She knew he had once Transitioned in front of Bridget and had even been fed from Bridie’s veins without harming his lady. But that was then and that was the woman he loved. This was now and he was suffering the agonies of the damned because of the ghoret bite. Nothing was the same.

“D...doesn’t m...matter,” he vowed, his febrile eyes searching her. “I will n...never harm you.”

She reached out to stroke his arm and winced at the increase in the heat of his flesh.

“N...not long, n...now.” His words grew thicker and sounded more animal growl than human speech.

Dorrie started to speak but he sprang away from her, plastering himself against the far wall, his shriek of sheer agony making her flesh crawl. She stared at him as he peeled off his clothing and flung it aside.

She swallowed hard, her womb quivering from the sight of his rock-hard body.

One moment he was curled into a fetal position, the next he was on all fours, his back arching like that of an angry cat, his head hanging down between his arms. He shook his head angrily, his body rippling from head to tailbone with the effort like that of a dog shaking off water.

“Kam?” Her heart pounded against her ribcage.

He growled, then threw his head back and howled, the piercing sound reverberating through the cavern.

The weretiger shot to its feet and flung itself from the ledge. The scribbling of its claws on the rock as it strove to gain purchase was loud in the close quarters. It disappeared into the nether regions of the cavern with a screech of terrified protest.

Dorrie’s mouth dropped open as she took in the spectacle of the Reaper going into full Transition. The sounds alone-the splitting of his flesh as claws emerged from his fingers and toes; the regrouping of his internal organs; the snapping of his bones; the leathery growth of his snout and ears pushing out from his head-were enough to give her nightmares for years to come. But the most godawful sound was the liquid squish of fangs pushing up from his mandible and down from the roof of his jaw. The glint of the ivory canines slick with long strands of saliva would stay with her forever.

As would the vermeil eyes glowing out at her from beneath a black, leathery brow framed by thick fur.

Whimpering with terror, Dorrie scuttled like a crab to the far shadows of the cavern and hid there, her face buried in her arms. She covered her ears with her hands to cut off the horrific sounds of his changing. She curled in upon herself, drawing her knees up as close to her body as she could and turned her back to the Reaper. If he could not control his Transition and came after her, at least she would not have to see him approaching.

He growled deep in his throat as he caught the scent of the female. He lifted his snout and sniffed the air, dragging her odor into his expanded lungs. He stood, sniffing again, homing in on the pheromones that pulsed from her excited body. He sidled closer, swinging his great head, then headed toward the female. She had a sweet blood-smell about her and he stopped only a few inches away from her thick golden mane. His snout crinkled as he drew in her scent and his night-gaze moved hungrily over her slender form.

He looked about him. He sniffed the air. Satisfied he had no rival lurking about ready to pounce, he lowered his head and nudged the female.

Dorrie stiffened; her heart beat so fast she thought it would break free of her chest. She trembled as she felt his hot breath on her neck, waiting for those strong jaws to close over her and tear away her spine. She nearly screamed when his rough, pebbly tongue dragged over the flesh at the base of her neck then flicked under the restriction of her arm to lap at her jaw.

“No, Cree.”

A purr started low in his throat as he heard what to his animal ears was the soft whimper of the female’s surrender. He nudged her again, his muzzle seeking her face.

“Cree,” she forced herself to say. “It’s Dorrie. It’sme , Kamerone.”

Her words meant nothing to him. In his sickened state, the Reaper did not understand the humanoid tongue. His transition from man to beast was complete and no vestige of humanity existed within his beastly brain. All that registered was his great blood-hunger and the raging desire to rut with the female.

He nudged her again then nipped at her neck with just enough strength to sting.

“No!” Dorrie howled. She tried to scramble away, but he was on her, his forepaws locked around her hips. Terrified, she opened her mouth and screamed.

The Reaper, startled by the loud sound, shook his head, lowered his fangs to the nape of her neck-intending to snare her flesh-then quivered as a heavy blow to the side of his head toppled him from the female and pitched him into blackness.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Cree woke toa splitting headache and a trio of wary eyes staring back at him from in front of a sputtering fire. Gingerly, he put a hand to the spot on his temple where the pain seemed to have settled and drew his fingertips away dotted with wetness. He stared at his blood.

“Who the hell hit me?”

“Bastard!” yelled Dorrie. “She should have caved in your gods-be-damned thick skull!”

He blinked at the vehemence and turned to Kahmal for an explanation.

“You tried to mate with her,” the Amazeen Major explained.

Cree winced. From the prickly feeling all over his skin, he knew he had to have undergone Transition in the not too distant past, but he could not seem to recall the event. He was sick to his stomach, his head throbbing and the fever making his thirst an unbearable state.

“I was trying to mate with her?” He was amazed at this development. He already had a mate. Transition would not-should not-change that fact. He picked up his clothing and thrust his feet into the pant legs.

“I don’t think you knew what you were doing,” Kahmal told him. “You must have been trying to mark your territory to keep that one from having Burkhart.”

He swung his gaze to the weretiger who gazed back at him with a mournful expression that seemed resigned to whatever fate this superior animal had in store for it.

“She wanted to kill the poor thing and I wouldn’t let her,” Dorrie said in a sulky voice.

“We would be doing it a favor.” The Amazeen was hunched over the meager fire, her frostbitten fingertips black. She was shivering badly.

“Come here, lady,” Cree whispered hoarsely. He held out his hand.

“Not on your life, asshole!” said Dorrie. “I ain’t coming anywhere near you ever again!” She swiped at her breeches as though she could rid herself of the feel of his body atop her own.

“He meant me,” Kahmal snapped. She locked eyes with the Reaper. “What do you want?”

“My body temperature is still high. Let me warm you.”

Her teeth chattering, her body cold, the Amazeen did not think twice about his offer. She crawled over to where he lay on his side and stretched out beside him. As he enfolded her in his arms, put one leg over hers, she pressed against his chest. Almost immediately, the high heat of his body began to thaw the chill of her flesh.

“Dorrie?” he called to her, looking over his shoulder. “Let me hold you, too.”

“Are you kidding me?” She, too, was shivering, the fire providing miniscule warmth as the flames began to die.

“The transition is over,” he said on a long sigh. “You’ll freeze if you don’t.”

“Then I’ll freeze!”

Kahmal lifted her head from his chest and looked up into his tired face. “Do you want me to drag her over here?”

Cree smiled at the Amazeen, but his words were for Dorrie. “Don’t think you can keep your hands to yourself, Burkhart?”

Dorrie’s cornflower blue eyes widened. “You son-of-a-bitch!”

“There was a time you would have given yourself to me without a moment’s hesitation,” he interrupted, staring into Kahmal’s embarrassed eyes.

“That was before you tried to do it doggie-”

“Wolf.”

“What?” Dorrie sputtered.

“I’m more wolf than dog.”

Kahmal’s lips twitched and she had to look away from his amused stare.

“Get your ass over here, Dorrie. My ass belongs to Bridget and yours is safe now that I’m me again.”

Dorrie thought about that for a moment, then shrugged. “Bastard,” she grumbled but despite her anger scooted to where he and the Amazeen lay. She pressed against his back, threading her left arm around under his and between his and Kahmal’s bodies. “Don’t you turn over. Do you hear me, Cree? You keep that projectile aimed toward the Amazeen’s whatsit.”

With the combined heat of the females’ bodies and his own fever, Kamerone Cree was acutely uncomfortable, made even more so when he felt the weretiger settle at his feet and put its bony head on his ankle. He sighed, knowing he would get no rest as sweat oozed down his face, under his armpits, and down his belly.

“A kamwich,” he heard Dorrie mumble.

“What?” asked Kahmal.

“What we have here is a Kam sandwich,” replied Dorrie. “A kamwich.”

“Go to sleep, Dorrie,” said the Reaper, though his eyes glowed more from humor than the fever that made them so unusually bright.

He lay awake, staring past Kahmal’s shoulder to the frost-rimed walls of the cavern. He knew he would need to wake the women and have them help find firewood. The weretiger, one giant paw on Dorrie’s hip, was straddling the Reaper’s legs, pinning him down, absorbing his warmth as the females were. Cree shifted his legs and the beast opened its eyes.

“Is there prey close by?” Cree asked though he never opened his mouth.

The creature lifted its head and peered down the dark tunnel into which it had fled when the Reaper transitioned.

“How big?”

A visual picture passed from the animal’s mind to Cree’s. Too big for the sickly animal to bring down yet large enough to feed them all: a musklope.

“Water?”

Another picture: an underground lake.

“Get off.”

The weretiger sighed deeply and rolled off the Reaper’s legs with some effort. The creature was very ill, as close to succumbing to its lack of nourishment as it had ever come in its ten years of life.

“I will hunt the ‘lope,” Cree said. “You guard the women. If trouble comes, howl for all you’re worth.”

Kahmal had opened her eyes and was staring at the Reaper’s intense profile. She knew he was communing in some fashion with the werebeast so remained quiet and still. As she studied him, she found she was deeply affected by the handsomeness of his face so close to her own; by the scent of his body odor-wholly masculine, if a bit ripe, from the receding fever. By the movement of the pulse at the side of his throat and the steady rise and fall of his broad chest as he drew breath. She was moved at the feel of his strong arms around her body and the press of his hard length against hers. She found she could draw no other thoughts save those of the man beside her.

“How are your fingers, milady?” he asked softly.

Kahmal was not a woman for pretenses and neither was she ashamed or upset that he had caught her awake and staring at him. She brought her hand up and flexed it. She frowned.

“There is feeling, but the color is still dangerously black, milord.”

“You may lose the tips of your fingers,” he warned, taking her hand and inspecting the discoloration of her flesh.

“It can be no worse than losing a teat to the blade.”

“How ‘bout your toes?” Dorrie asked, yawning.

“I don’t know,” Kahmal answered.

Cree shifted so he could sit up. Kahmal did the same and together they removed her boots.

“Your feet are fine,” he stated, rubbing the cold flesh between his palms.

Kahmal breathed a sigh of relief for when they needed to run, she did not want to slow them down.

Cree’s eyebrows slanted upward in question.

“I will do everything in my power to keep them from taking you to Rysalia, Cree,” she said.

“Why the change of heart?” asked Dorrie.

Kahmal raised her chin. “I have my reasons. You need not be privy to them.”

Cree and the Amazeen stared at one another for a long time then he took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm. “My thanks, Lady.”

She withdrew her hand, the flesh tingling from the touch of his mouth. “I owe you my life,” she told him. “Honor dictates I help preserve yours.”

The weretiger butted against Cree’s legs, reminding the Reaper of his promise to provide food. Cree stood.

“The two of you need to find as much firewood as you can. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone but you’ll need at least enough to last until morning. And move further into the cave system. I’ll find you.”

“Where are you going?” Dorrie asked, her eyes worried.

“To get food.”

Kahmal looked at the dwindling fire. “They’ll find us by the smell, Cree.” She looked to the ceiling and shook her head at the small hole that revealed a speckling of stars. “They will see the smoke.”

The Reaper cocked one shoulder to indicate his indifference. “I doubt they’ll come looking in this weather but if they do, he’ll hear them and warn you. Go deeper into the cave system.” He turned to the weretiger. “Lead them to safety then come get me. Be careful you aren’t brought down.”

The werebeast nodded its mangy head then padded weakly to the fire and lay down.

“As hungry as that creature is, don’t you think he’ll attack us once you’re gone?” Kahmal inquired.

“No,” Cree answered. “He knows I’ll provide for him. He’s old and he’s sick and-”

It happened so fast not even the werebeast had time to scramble out of the way. One moment Cree was standing, the next he was on all fours, his body transitioning so quickly he had no time to get out of his

clothing. The jumpsuit split apart and fell to the ground.

“By the goddess!” Kahmal shrieked, grabbing Dorrie and pulling her to her feet.

“He won’t attack us,” Dorrie said.

The weretiger eased away from the fire, its tail once more tucked between its spindly legs. It wobbled toward the women as though seeking their protection, but it kept its eyes locked on the Reaper.

Cree threw back his head and howled and the diminishing light from the fire shone on the long fangs protruding from his gaping mouth. He shook his body from head to thick bushy tail, swung his scarlet gaze to the women and growled.

The werebeast whimpered and lay down, rolled to its back, presenting its belly to the superior male.

Dorrie flinched as Cree growled again, the sound as lethal as anything she could have ever imagined in her worst nightmares. She pressed against the Amazeen Major, no longer sure the Reaper would not pounce on them. When he took a step forward, she sucked in her breath.

Cree stilled, cocked his head to one side and studied the females. His gaze lowered to the insignificant male wallowing at their feet then shifted back to the women.

And he grinned.

In the space of a heartbeat, the Reaper turned and loped out of the cave, his bay of triumph resounding along the stone walls.

“He’s going after food,” Kahmal said, annoyed that her voice quivered as she spoke. “Food to provide for his harem.”

Dorrie released her frantic grip on the Amazeen’s arm. “Harem my wide-load ass,” she said in a voice as shaky as Kahmal’s.

The weretiger turned over and looked up at the Amazeen.

“As long as that venom is coursing through his blood, this could happen again,” Kahmal remarked, ignoring the beast. “He must be starving for sustenance. Perhaps when he feeds, the parasite will be content.”

A shudder ran through Dorrie Burkhart’s slender body and she hunkered down before the dying fire, holding her hands over the low flames. She barely moved as the werebeast crawled over to her and lay down at her feet. “I’m starving, too, but there ain’t no way in hell I can eat raw meat. We’d better find that firewood before he gets back.”

“I think he’s probably right,” Kahmal said. “As long as the weather is bad, they won’t come looking for us, but when it breaks, Sejm will come after us.”

“Miserable old bitch. She killed his father and tried to kill him. If she gets the chance, she will.”

Kahmal nodded. “Then we have to make gods-be-damned sure that doesn’t happen.”

Dorrie twisted her head around and stared up at the Major. “What changed your mind?” she asked. “He killed your sister but now you want to keep him from paying for it. I don’t get it.”

Kahmal sighed heavily. “Neither do I,” she replied. “Let’s find that firewood.” She held her hand out to help Dorrie to her feet.

Dorrie echoed the Major’s sigh then gripped the other woman’s hand. “He’s a good man.”

“So it seems,” was Kahmal’s reply.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Hael Sejm wasas furious as she could ever remember being in her lifetime. She paced the containment cell where the Reaper had been confined and gnashed her teeth, her fingers nails forming bloody half-moons in her palms.

“There is a whiteout beyond the plateau, Dr. Sejm. To trek into that sector would be madness,” said Captain Chakai.

“So we allow him to get away?”

“No, Dr. Sejm. We will capture him and his treacherous accomplices and while we can not execute him, we will make him watch their deaths,” said the captain grated. “And I promise you the deaths will not be easy ones!”

“We don’t know they helped him,” said Lt. Melankhoia Chanz, Akkadia Kahmal’s friend.

“You know how proficient Reapers are at mental suggestions,” Ciorlia Sern put in. “He could have...”

“They helped him!” screeched Sejm at the Amazeen warrioresses. “They allowed their hormones to dictate their actions and they helped that evil monster escape!”

Sern and Chanz exchanged knowing glances but remained silent.

“As soon as the weather clears, we’ll go after them and bring all three back,” Captain Chakai said. She turned to the warrioress beside her. “Go out to the ship and scan that sector of the Vex. See if you can locate our missing trio.”

Lt. Augeania Deon saluted and left to do her commanding officer’s bidding.

Sejm was staring at the telltale blotches of fluorescent blue venom splattered on the rocks where the ghoret was killed. “He will more than likely transition several times over the next few hours,” she predicted.

“How so?” asked Chakai.

“The ghoret bite will have thrown the cycle off and he will need to feed many times and in large amounts to satisfy the parasite.”

“Then perhaps he will make his meal of the mutinous Akkadia Kahmal.”

“Such a death for her would be easier than the one I plan to give her,” said Sejm.

Melankhoia Chanz reached out furtively to touch Cirolia Sern’s arm then looked at their captain. “Sern and I spent tours of duty in Virago, Ma’am. We are accustomed to the frigid winds of that planet. Perhaps she and I could reconnoiter near the ice plains?”

Chakai thought about the suggestion for a moment then shrugged. “If you don’t mind the cold, then go.”

Cirolia Sern bit her lip, not wanting to venture into the icelands to the north. Her gaze pleaded with Chanz, but Melankhoia looked away.

“Make sure your laser pikes are fully charged and set on incineration,” ordered Sejm. “If you encounter the Reaper, take no chances. Burn him.”

“We can not do that, Doctor,” Sern told the Chalean scientist. “He has been given-”

“Do as she says,” snapped Chakai.

“But the Attribution,” Sern protested.

“He is not an Amazeen and deserves no such honor from us,” Chakia said.

Chanz took her friend’s arm and dug her nails into Sern’s flesh. “We will do as the Captain has ordered,” she stressed, her green eyes locked on Sern’s.

“But the law states...” Sern began, but Chanz slapped her, cutting off the other woman’s words.

“The Captain said we will not honor the Attribution and that will be the way of it!” Chanz snarled. “Do you question our commanding officer’s orders, Sern?”

Cirolia Sern lifted her chin. “No, I do not.”

“Then let us be about our reconnaissance of the ice fields!” Chanz said.

Walking beside her childhood friend and fellow academy graduate, Cirolia Sern was quiet as they left the comfort of the cave and ventured out onto the plateau where the heat was worse than it had been when they’d entered the underground system.

“How can it be this gods-be-damned of an inferno and yet five miles away there is a snowstorm?” asked Chanz.

“I will not kill him,” Sern said from between clenched teeth.

“That goes without saying,” Chanz replied.

Sern stopped, putting out a hand to stay her friend’s descent down the plateau’s steppes. “Then why in the name of Alluvia did you slap me?”

“You and I took an oath to uphold the tenets of the Amazeen Council of Warrioresses. We signed that oath with our own blood,” Chanz said. “The law is the law, and Attribution is a law that is among the most sacrosanct. Do you think I would overlook my honor to appease the brutal desires of Chakai and Sejm?” She narrowed her eyes at her friend. “If you do, you do not know me, Cirolia Sern!”

“Then why this charade of looking for ‘Kadia and the Reaper?” Sern asked.

“This is no charade, Cir. I hope we do find them because if we do not, when the team is able to begin a search for them in earnest, we might not be able to save ‘Kadia. You have seen what that Chalean crone is capable of doing. I would spare our friend such a hellish end.”

“If she helped him escaped...”

“She did not. A fool could see what happened back there,” Chanz snapped. “‘Kadia was knocked out and the Terran helped free him. You know how that slut feels about the Reaper! ‘Kadia went after them, but..” She paused, shielding her eyes from the glare of the desert wastelands.

“But?”

“She might well help him allude us.”

“Why would she?”

Chanz frowned. “I know Akkadia Kahmal. I saw the look in her eye when she stared at Kamerone Cree. It was not the look of a warrioress. It was the look of a woman ensnared by the charms of the forbidden.”

“And what could be more forbidden than a Reaper?”

“One that belongs, heart and soul, to another.”

What was leftof the musklope’s blood dripped down Cree’s bare back and the greedy parasite inside him shifted wildly, plastering its slit mouth to the flesh of the Reaper and began sucking the dead animal’s congealing blood through the layers of skin. Cree grunted at the pain but continued wading through the thigh-high snow, the beat’s carcass slung over his shoulders. The Reaper stumbled, went down to one knee, but his strength had returned with the consuming of the musklope’s vital organs. With the parasite’s hunger sated, Cree knew there would be no other unplanned Transitions, and he was content.

Or as content as his broken heart would allow.

His thoughts were on Bridget and...oddly enough...Tylan Kahn. He doubted Kahn had been killed by

the Amazeen blast, but he feared the Rysalian might have been damaged beyond repair. He hoped not, for it would be to Tylan Bridget would turn and despite the jealous savagery in his heart, he wished them well. He knew he would never see his mate again.

He stopped, annoyed by the tears that froze instantly to his cheeks as they fled his eyes. “Reapers do not cry!” he said, then amended it by saying: “This one does.”

Sighing deeply, he shifted the weight of the carcass then trudged on, his thoughts flitting to Troi, the A.I.U. that had been left behind to maintain the long-range cruiser that had taken them to Bridget’s world. An image of the LRC hidden behind the protection of the Terran moon flashed across Cree’s mind. There had barely been enough power to take them to Terra after the firefight over Rysalia Prime. The men on board the LRC had understood there would be no going home for them.

“And no rescue,” Cree said softly.

The love of his life, the keeper of his heart, the savioress of his soul was beyond his reach and would remain so for as long as she lived. Her days...so much shorter than his...were speeding away like a snowflake melting on a hot stone. His would stretch out with unbearable loneliness. Without her, he was no more than the beast Sejm named him.

Ducking beneath the low overhang of the cave, he was glad to be out of the cold. Despite a body temperature as high as his own, the frigid wind on the Vex had turned his naked flesh purple with mottling and he was shivering. He could smell the women, the wood smoke, the fur of the weretiger, long before his keen vision caught the first faint glimmer of light from the fire. As he entered the opening where Dorrie and the Amazeen sat hunched over the fire, he was grateful to be out of the cold.

The werebeast pushed up from the ground, salivating at the scent of the carcass. On weak legs, it trotted forward, whining.

“I saved a treat for you, old one,” said the Reaper as he bent forward and dropped the musklope. Hunkering down beside the stiffening body, he thrust his hand into the gaping hole of the animal’s belly and pulled out its liver.

“Yuck,” Dorrie said, gagging, as Cree threw the organ to the weretiger.

“He needs the iron,” the Reaper said with a chuckle.

Dorrie looked away as the werebeast gobbled the organ, the beast’s slurping sounds making her gorge rise.

“Here,” Kahmal said as she handed her skean to Cree. “You know more about such things than I.”

Cree raised one eyebrow in challenge. “Why? I’ve never skinned an animal in my life. Why would I need to? I have what I needed from it.”

“Please!” Dorrie covered her mouth with her hand.

“Skinning and gutting are men’s work!” Kahmal said.

“On your world but not on mine or hers,” Cree pointed out. “Make yourself useful and cut a hunk off the haunch. I’ll thread it on a branch for you to roast.”

“Arrggghh!” Dorrie gagged. She hurried to the back of the cave and the sounds of her retching seemed to amuse Cree.

Kahmal clenched her jaw and squatted beside the carcass and began hacking at the hindleg of the musklope.

The weretiger sidled over to Cree and nudged him with its head. It began to purr when Cree reached out to stroke its head. “Cut him off a piece,” the Reaper ordered. “He’ll make a pest of himself if you don’t.”

“I should slit its throat,” Kahmal snapped, but she sliced off a piece of the dead animal’s thigh and tossed it to the weretiger.

“Are you all right, Dorrie?” Cree called out.

“No.”

“You’ll feel better after you’ve eaten. I did,” Cree told her.

Kahmal grinned as Dorrie vomited again. She cast the Reaper a quick look and shook her head at him. “You are an evil man, Kamerone Cree.”

“But one with a full belly,” he said and laughed aloud when Dorrie begged him to stop saying such things.

Lying on its stomach, the weretiger chewed contentedly on the bloody meat it held in its paws. His cloudy vision slid from the male to the larger of the two females then back again to the male.

“No, she belongs to me, too. You’ll have to find one of your own kind,” Cree said.

Kahmal looked up from her work in time to hear the werebeast whine. She saw the Reaper frown. “What did it say?” she asked.

Cree turned his face to the fire. “His mate was killed. He’s alone here. There are no more of his kind on the Vex.”

The Amazeen shifted her gaze to the weretiger. “Sorry,” she said, looking into its sad brown eyes.

“He’d be happy to have you to mate if you’d stop glowering at him, though.”

Kahmal blinked, realized he was teasing then pursed her lips. “Let him have Dorrie. You don’t need both of us.”

The moment she said it, the Amazeen warrioress could have bitten her tongue. She could not look at him though she knew he was staring at her. Her face was burning with shame and if there had been a hole into which she could have crawled, she would gladly have made the trek.

“If Alel is willing,” he said. “I will spend the rest of my life here.”

She refused to look up from her work. “We’ll have to make sure Chakia doesn’t find you then.”

He didn’t reply. When she risked a glance at him, she saw he had lain down beside the fire, the weretiger at his side. He was rubbing the beast’s back as it licked its chops.

“We’ll have to find you some clothes,” she muttered.

“Does my nakedness offend you, ‘Kadia?”

The Amazeen Major snorted and flung him an exasperated look. It was bad enough that he was lying there naked as the day he was born, his manly attributes in full view. Knowing he was as unperturbed about it as she was bothered added heat to the flames in her cheeks.

“We prefer to keep our men naked,” she responded. “It keeps them humble.”

“It would be hard to humble my kind, Major.”

“Yet you allowed the Terran woman to humble you, Reaper.” She wished she’d kept her mouth shut for she could see from his look that her jealousy had registered.

He stared at her for a long time then turned his attention to the leaping flames of the fire. His body had warmed sufficiently and combined with the fullness in his belly and the satiation of his parasite, he was growing sleepy.

“I suppose I will need to spit this gods-be-damned meat, too,” Kahmal said, hiding her embarrassment behind the façade of insult.

“Do you want me to do it?” he asked.

She ignored him and took up a branch and began to whittle the end into a sharp point so she could pierce the meet. Her hands were slick with the beast’s blood but she managed to keep a tight grip on the skean as she worked.

He watched her attack the end of the wood and decided he would not wish to engage this one in a test of weapons. She handled the wicked blade as though born to it and her strength was evident in the way she moved. He laced his fingers and put his hands behind his head.

“Do you have a man on Amazeen?”

“No,” she snapped and laid the skean aside to thrust the sharpened branch through the meat.

“With your rank you could have as many as you want, couldn’t you?”

She held the spitting meat over the flames. “Who said I wanted even one?”

“You want me.”

Her jaws clenched tightly, she kept her eyes on the meat as it began to sizzle.

“You are thinking of staying here,” he said softly, “but that would not be wise.”

She looked up, her gaze belligerent. “Why?”

“Because I will never be to you what you want me to be.”

“She is on the other side of the universe from you, Reaper!”

“She is right here,” he said, placing his hand on his chest. “And there she will always be.”

Tears filled Akkadia Kahmal’s green eyes then spilled down her ivory cheeks. She batted them away, smearing her face with blood. “Do you realize what I gave up in coming after you?” she said, her lips trembling.

He nodded. “Aye and if Sejm has anything to say about it, you will pay with your life for the feelings you are having right now.”

“I don’t care!”

He smiled sadly. “But I do,” he said. “I took the life of one of the daughters of your house, I do not wish to be the cause of another losing hers.”

She held her hand out to him. “Please,” she said, her shoulders slumping. “I...”

The weretiger lifted its head and growled.

Cree sat up, turning toward the cave entrance. “Company,” he said in a low voice. He got to his feet. “Two females.”

Dorrie came to the fire wiping the back of her hand over her trembling lips. “Someone from the ship?”

“I doubt there are other humanoids on the Vex,” Cree answered. He looked down at the weretiger. Silent communication passed between the two. “No other humanoids now, but several were here not long before we arrived.” A look of pain crossed his face. “One was a Reaper.” “Your bloodson,” said Kahmal and saw him flinch.

“I will lead the females away from here,” he said.

Revived by the meat but still weak from its long bout of hunger and sickness, the werebeast stumbled to its feet.

“No,” Cree said. “Stay here. Protect our women.”

The weretiger whimpered.

“Stay,” Cree repeated firmly. “You are in no condition to fight.” He looked up at Kahmal. “Protect him and he will protect you.”

She nodded, trying not to stare at the Reaper’s unclothed chest. “Don’t hurt them if you don’t have to.”

Cree said nothing and before either Kahmal or Dorrie could bid him be careful, he was gone.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Sern and Chanzfollowed the trail leading away from the cave and realized in the near-whiteout conditions, they might well be moving back toward the desert for the air was getting warmer. They stopped, cupping their mouths in order to shout at one another over the howling wind.

“Does it seem we’ve passed this rock stand before?” Sern inquired, leaning heavily on her laser pike.

“Aye and that drift looks familiar.”

“We’re going in circles.”

“Being led in circles!” Chanz corrected. She put a hand over her eyes and tried to see through the blowing snow but the glare was more than she could stand. “We might as well look for shelter and wait for the snow to pass.”

Sern agreed. She pointed off to their left. “Let’s try over there!”

Perched atop a rocky crag only ten feet away, Cree watched the women stumble toward what he knew was a steep drop off. It had been there that he had brought down the musklope. For a second or two the beast within him reigned, hoping the females would fall over the embankment and to their deaths three hundred feet below. That would mean two less captors to worry about and two less laser pikes aimed at his hide. But the humanoid part of him that had been awakened by Bridget Dunne’s love, would not allow such evil to happen.

He leapt down from the rocks and landed directly in front of the women, plucking the pikes from their hands before they realized who was confronting them. Neither had a chance to react as he threw the pikes over the embankment. But he wasn’t fast enough to still the hand of Melankhoia Chanz and the razor-sharp skean she drew across his naked belly.

Steam rose from the snow as the Reaper’s black blood gushed from the gaping slit and hit the ground. He slapped a hand to the wound, turned and sprinted away.

“By the goddess!” Sern whispered. “He was right on top of us!”

“Look!” Chanz said, pointing to the spot where they would have fallen had they continued on.

The harsh wind buffeting the women pushed them forward toward the drop off. Both scrambled back, hearts thundering in their chest.

“He saved our lives,” Sern yelled.

“Attribution,” Chanz agreed. She looked down at the skean in her hand and let it fall into the snow.

“We can follow him,” Sern shouted. Dark blotches stained the snow where the Reaper’s black blood had melted holes.

Chanz nodded and the two set out after the bleeding man.

He cursed allthe way back to the cave. The wound in his belly had healed by the time he finally ducked into the entrance, but the humiliation at having allowed one of the women to take a swipe at him was still

fresh and raw.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid! Too slow. You were too slow and not paying attention!”

He knew it was more than that, though. He hadn’t been concerned about his own safety but rather the women’s. He had allowed their predicament to cloud his judgment and he’d reacted without thinking things through.

“You’re getting soft, Cree,” he chastised himself. “If you aren’t careful, you’ll die on this godsforsaken rock!”

Muttering to himself as he reached Kahmal and Dorrie, he stalked over to the sizzling meat, grabbed it up and pointed it at the women. “Let’s go!”

Staring at the caked blood on the Reaper’s hips and thighs, Kahmal hurried to him, looking for the wound that would have caused so much blood.

“What happened?” she demanded, reaching out to him.

“I said let’s go, woman!”

The werebeast growled, its hackles raised and its fangs bared. It stood on shaky legs facing the cave entrance and let out another low, warning growl.

“Desea hunof aist! ” echoed back to them from the cave entrance.

“Wait!” Kahmal insisted as Cree took her arm and tried to pull her along. She jerked free of his hold. “That was Melankhoia’s voice!”

“I know whose voice it was!” Cree snapped. “The bitch cut me.”

“Desea hunof aist! ” came the voice again.

“What is she saying?” Dorrie asked.

“Peace be unto you,” Kahmal translated. “It is the Amazeen equivalent of begging quarter.”

“Quarter, hell! She cut me!” He rubbed a hand over his belly. “Deep!”

Kahmal spared him a look. “You’re fine now and she’s asking for quarter. She wouldn’t do that unless you...” She stared at him. “Did you save her life, too?”

“The knife-wielding bitch would have walked off the gods-be-damned cliff if I hadn’t!”

“Attribution!” Kahmal whooped and before Cree could stop her, was running toward the cave entrance.

“Looks like you did it again, Reaper,” said Dorrie.

“Shecut me.”

Dorrie looked down at the spot he was rubbing. “Not where it counts. You’ve still got your dangly.”

Cree’s face turned dark. He rolled his eyes at her crude remark and stumped over to the fire. “I need some gods-be-damned clothes to hide me from your ogling.”

“I like you the way you are, Kami.”

The Reaper was about to warn her against using that name when Kahmal and the two women who had been tracking them entered the cave.

“Fire!” Cirolia Sern exclaimed and made for the warmth of the flames. She cast a look at the werebeast but did not appear to be concerned with its presence. Hunkering down in front of the heat, she spread her hands and sighed.

“Your lives are his?” Kahmal inquired of Chanz.

“Aye,” Chanz acknowledged, “but we weren’t after him anyway. We were looking for you.” She looked into her friend’s eyes. “Chakia and the Chalean hag want your blood, ‘Kadia.”

“I figured as much,” Kahmal said.

Chanz looked Cree in the eye. “I ask your pardon, milord. I reacted before I realized you meant us no harm.”

“You sliced me open,” accused the Reaper.

“From this day forward, I will protect your life with my own.”

“I don’t want your pledges or your lives,” said Cree in an exasperated tone. “By the gods, I don’t need that kind of pressure!”

“He likes being the one in charge. Don’t insult his male ego by offering to protect his bare ass.”

Sern looked around. “Where are his clothes?” Her scrutiny crawled over the naked Reaper as she sat down. “Not that I’m complaining about the view.”

“Don’t,” he warned with a glower that made the Amazeen look away.

“What is happening back there?”

“They’ll be out when the weather calms,” Chanz reported. “Chakia sent Deon to the ship to track your position.”

“I didn’t think of that. She’ll be able to pinpoint where we are!”

“Not without a functioning transpositioner she won’t.” Sern chuckled and held out her hand out to the werebeast. “Come here, sweeting.”

Cree folded his arms and stared at Sern. The woman allowed the weretiger to sniff her fingers, even lick them. He cocked one thick dark brow when the beast lay down beside the Amazeen and laid its head in her lap.

“You sabotaged the transpositioner array?” asked Kahmal.

“Do Diabolusians smell?” Sern looked at Cree. “He’s been sick, but he’ll be fine now. He’s claimed me as his. He says you won’t mind since you have the other two.”

Cree’s eyebrows shot up. “You can understand him?”

Sern shrugged. “I have the ‘voice’ with animals.”

“If I remember the weather patterns on the Vex,” said Kahmal, “the snow in the ice fields lasts from the tenth to the fourth rotation. That means we could hide here for as long as we have food and water. When the snow stops, we can move deeper into the cave system and keep moving until Chakia gives up.”

“They won’t wait until the snow stops,” Chanz disagreed. “They want to get him back in time to see his bloodsons executed.”

The Reaper’s gaze jerked to Chanz. “Explain!”

“On the Feast of Alluvia, less than a month away, they will take what is left of your bloodsons to the cage and-”

“No!” Cree shouted, his amber eyes glowing red for a moment. He strode toward her, his hands clenched into fists. “I cannot allow that! I will not allow it!” He turned his furious stare to Kahmal. “Why did you not tell me about this?”

“I did not tell you because there was nothing you could do about it,” Kahmal said. “As originally planned, you were to be made to watch your bloodsons burn then you would have been executed. But now, with the Attribution...”

“I will not allow this!” he bellowed.

“And how do you plan to prevent it, Cree?” asked Kahmal.

The warrior part of Kamerone Cree that had lain dormant since his flight from Rysalia Prime awakened with a bloody vengeance. His amber stare was brutal as he shifted his eyes from one woman to the next.

“I saved the life of each of you,” he said, his voice eerily quiet. “Therefore your lives belong to me. Is that not so?”

Chanz nodded. “Aye, milord, that is true.”

“Then you are obliged to do as I ask, are you not?”

“Not necessarily,” said Kahmal. Cree swung his livid glower toward her and she cleared her throat. “In a manner of speaking, aye.”

“And if I can take that ship, will you help me fly her to Rysalia Prime?”

“For what purpose?” Kahmal asked, but she already knew.

“To save the lives of my bloodsons and take them beyond the reach of the Multitude.”

“There is no such place,” Chanz said.

“There is Terra.”

“They are Reapers!” protested Kahmal.

“I am Prime Reaper. I can control them if that is what worries you.”

“I am sure you can, but...”

“Help me,” he asked, his eyes filled with pleading. “These are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I can not allow them to die as my cousins died in that hellish cage.” He took a step toward her. “Please.”

It was the please that melted the last of the ice around Kahmal’s heart. “You play dirty, Reaper.”

“If we help you, we will never be able to go home,” Chanz said. “We will have to go with you to Terra.”

“That is a given. Although the men on Terra will not be as tame as what you are used to.”

Chanz and Kahmal frowned, but Cirolia Sern brightened. “Good! If that’s the case, then Deon will join us. She has no love for Chakia anyway and loathes the Chalean. My guess is Renata and Cedilla will help as well. They will honor the Attribution.”

“We can leave Chakia and Sejm here,” said Kahmal. “It would be a fitting punishment for the both of them.”

“But this one we will take with us,” Sern said, nuzzling the weretiger’s fur.

“How can you breathe that creature’s stench, Cir?” Chanz asked, fanning the air.

“Don’t listen to her, Ceatie,” cooed Sern. “We’ll have you smelling fresh soon enough.”

“Ceatie?” Cree questioned.

“C-A-T,” Dorrie chuckled. “I like it!”

Apparently the weretiger did, too, for he reached up a massive paw and playfully swiped Sern’s cheek.

Augeania Deon hadbeen working for over four hours re-wiring the crippled transpositioner. The moment she had seen the mass of pulled wires, she knew who had caused the mischief. Not that she cared. Her thoughts were identical to Chanz and Sern’s so she had no problem with what her fellow warrioresses had done. When the Captain asked her who had sabotaged the equipment, Deon had no compunction about telling her commander she believed the Reaper had created the havoc before trekking on toward

the ice fields.

“Get it fixed ASAP!” Chakia ordered.

Well, Deon thought as she fiddled with the wiring, there was the Captain’s opinion of as soon as possible and then there was her own. As far as she was concerned, as soon as possible could be a week from now.

When the footsteps behind her stopped and no one spoke, Deon didn’t bother to turn around but continued to jiggle the wires. “This is precise work and it must be done just so,” she said. Her movements were infinitely slow.

It wasn’t until the cold nose poked at her arm and she looked down to see a weretiger gazing up at her that Audeania Deon moved like lightning.

“What is thatnoise?” Sejm demanded, looking up from the plate of tasteless stew two of the warrioresses had provided for her and the captain.

Captain Thalia Chakai paused with the spoon halfway to her mouth, cocked her head to one side, then lowered the spoon. “It sounds like the engines of the Aluvial.”

The two warrioresses who had been serving table for Chakai and Sejm looked at one another. “Would you like us to go check?” one asked.

“Why are the engines being tested this time of night?” Chakai wiped her lips on her napkin. “Aye, go check and tell Deon to report to me immediately!”

The warrioresses took off at a fast walk, both aware of what was happening. Their pace increased; they did not want to be left behind on Montyne Vex.

When the floor of the cave began to shake beneath their feet, Chakai knew the ship was lifting from the desert floor. Her green eyes opened wide and she stared into the Chalean woman’s confused face.

“What is happening?” asked Sejm.

Chakai slumped on the wooden bench. “Sweet Merciful Alluvia,” she whispered.

“What is it?” When Chakai did not answer, Sejm stood. “I asked what is going on here?”

“You might as well sit down and enjoy the last meal you will probably have for awhile, Doctor.”

“What are you...?” Sejm stopped as the blast of the ship’s engines rose in volume then ceased altogether as The Aluvial soared into the heavens. Her face drained of color. “They left us?”

“It would seem so.”

“Alone?” Sejm gasped. “With the Reaper?”

Chakia shook her head. “My guess would be he is with them.”

“No!” Sejm screeched. “I want to be there when he is executed!” She reached up and began pulling at her hair, tearing handfuls from her head.

Chakia stared in silence at the mad woman flinging about the room and wondered how long it would take them to die on Montyne Vex.

“This is theLRC Aluvial. We are reporting a situation on Montyne Vex,” Lt. Deon reported to the Amazeen fleet command transport she had contacted.

“What is your situation, Aluvial?”

“We had a hull breach and were forced to land on the Vex to make repairs. Unfortunately, Captain Chakai was bitten by a ghoret and has succumbed to her wound. Major Akkadia Kahmal has assumed command.”

“You have our sympathies Aluvial. May we speak to the Major?”

“Not at this time, Command. The Major is in mourning and is in her quarters sayingkasla for the Captain. When she has completed the ritual, she will contact you.”

“Understood. Please ask her to do so at her earliest convenience.” There was a pause. “I have been asked to inquire after the Chalean scientist, Dr. Sejm.”

“It is with regret that I inform you Dr. Sejm also succumbed to the ghoret attack. In her efforts to ease Captain Chakai’s suffering, she was smeared with ghoret blood and fell into a stupor. She never regained consciousness and is buried beside Captain Chakai on the plateau at D-9.”

“A most tragic state of events,” the communications officer replied. “Did you retrieve your target?”

“Aye,” replied Lt. Deon. “The Reaper is aboard and we are bringing him to Rysalia Prime.” She looked up as Kamerone Cree laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Good, we will join you there for his termination.”

“That’s what you think,” Cree murmured.

“Aluvial ending transmission.” Deon leaned back in her chair and wondered why the touch of the Reaper did not bother her as she thought it would have.

“Because I am not your enemy,” he said, reading her mind.

“I hope you have a plan, Cree,” Kahmal said as she joined them.

“I will by the time we reach Rysalia.”

“From your mouth to God’s ear,” Dorrie said.

Cree walked to the sweeping windows that looked out into the ebon heavens through which they sped. His only chance to make it back to Terra was through the women who had vowed to bring him to justice. In the reflective glare of the windows he could see them: Kahmal, Sern, Chanz, Deon, Aegean, and the one he learned was called Cedilla. His gaze shifted to Dorrie and he knew she was looking back at him, gauging his emotions as he stood at parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back, his legs spread wide.

A thought from one of the women wound its way to him: like a king surveying his domain.

He turned and looked at Cirolia Sern and smiled.

She answered his smile as she patted the head of the weretiger lounging beside her navigational chair.

He returned his attention to the stars streaking by the ship and reminded himself that he would need to shield his thoughts around one such as Sern.

For an hour he stood at his self-imposed post then turned to Kahmal.

“Do you have a chapel on board your ship?”

Kahmal nodded. “Deck three.”

He nodded and turned away from the bank of windows and walked to the elevator, his hands still clasped behind his back.

“That has to be a first,” Chanz said quietly. “A Reaper seeking solace in a chapel.”

“If I had not heard him ask, I would not have believed it possible,” Cedilla said.

“There is a lot about Kamerone Cree you women will never know, but this much I will tell you,” Dorrie said. “He is not the beast you have been taught he is. He is a very spiritual man although he would be the first to scoff at the notion.”

He found the chapel a place of strangeness for it was adorned with the likenesses of the goddesses of the Amazeen pantheon. The faces on the statues lining the circular walls were fierce and forbidding, disquieting. With pikes and maces, swords and daggers in their hands, the statues looked down on him with milky-white eyes that set his nerves on edge. As he slid onto a bench before the image of Alluvia, the Great One, and stared up into her angry face, he felt chilled to the marrow of his bones.

“You are an evil entity,” he said. “You, Who sanction the torturous deaths of my bloodsons.”

The air grew colder around him and he knew he was no longer alone in the still room.

“A time ago, I was asked to help Your women to throw off the yoke of the Empire and I did as I was asked. I held to my bargain but Your women did not hold to theirs.”

The intense scent of lavender drifted through the room and a soft green glow pulsed at the left of the statue.

“I was told I would be allowed to take my Lady and leave in peace. That she and I would be able to live in peace. Even as those promises were made to me, those who made them were lying. There was no honor in the words of the women who made those promises and no honor in what they did to me and mine.”

A harsh wind swirled through the room, tousling the Reaper’s black hair, buffeting him, but he did not move. He kept his intent stare on the raging face of the goddess.

“I fought in honor and expected honor in return. What I received from Your women was treachery, deceit, and dishonor.”

“Be quiet!” a voice spoke from the boiling green glow.

“Your women were dishonest with me for they had no intention of holding to the bargain they made. I fought for them and in return was betrayed and sentenced to die.”

“Do not continue!”

“The truth has no meaning for You and Yours, does it, Alluvia?” he asked. “Honor is a word but not a concept. There is no honor among You and Yours!”

“We are honorable!”

“No, you are not,” he said. “You allowed Yours to lie, to cheat, to betray, and to condemn to death those who were striving to help You. Yours acted in ways that no warrior would ever condone, and as such, You and Yours are not to be treated with the respect due to other gods and goddesses in the heavens. You do not deserve to be worshipped.”

“Do not dare say such things!” The green glow rose in a violent spiral and spread along the ceiling like tentacles.

“The truth hurts, does it not, Alluvia?” he asked, cocking his head to one side as he contemplated the enraged façade of the statue. “To be called a liar, a cheat...”

“We do not lie!”

“You lied to me!” he shouted, his hands doubling into fists as he slid to his knees before the statue. “You cheated me! You allowed Your women to betray me! Was there honor in that, Alluvia? Was there truth in that?”

The glow above him sparkled with angry red forks of lightning. There was the sound of a thousand enraged female voices arguing.

“I did my best for You and Yours and in thanks for what I did, You allowed them to make me a marked man. I was labeled the most wanted man in the universe and You allowed Yours to come after me even to the other side of the universe where I was no threat to You or Yours and drag me from my home and my lady.”

The angry voices rose in volume.

“You have no honor, Alluvia, and Your women are not to be trusted or honored!”

“You tread on dangerous ground, Reaper!”

“You owe me!” he bellowed.

The female voices stilled.

“You owe me,” he said again. “I demand Attribution from You and Yours.”

A soft whispering echoed through the room then silence.

“What is it you want, Reaper?”

Kamerone Cree drew in a long breath, held it for a moment then slowly exhaled. “Do not interfere with what will happen on Rysalia Prime. Allow me to take my bloodsons and leave this part of Your universe. Allow us to leave in peace.”

Another soft whispering.

“Will you vow never to return?”

“It was never my intention to return in the first place.”

There was a long silence then the whispering came and went, died out.

“We will not interfere, but neither will we aid you, Reaper.”

“I don’t need your aid.”

“So be it,” the voice said.

He waited but there was no further communication from the statues. He looked about him, then bowed his head and prayed.

But it was not to the old gods of his pantheon: Alel and His Court. It was to the one his lady prayed to each night.

“Help me, Blessed Mother,” he begged. “Help me get home to her.”

He closed his eyes and felt the tears scalding him.

“I will come home to you, Bridget,” he whispered. “One way or another, I will come home!”

Epilogue

Tylan Khan kneltin front of Bridget and waited until her eyes focused on him before he laid a gentle hand on her knee. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

Bridget drew in a long breath and pulled the shawl closer around her. Since that terrible day when her world had ground to a screeching halt, she could not seem to get warm. “Are you feeling okay now?” she countered.

The former admiral shrugged. “The gods-be-damned headaches have tapered off but I still have a very unpleasant ringing in my ears.”

For months, Kahn had lain in a coma, his vital signs fluctuating so drastically Beryla feared he would not survive. Now, he was up and about though still weak and rather unsteady on his feet.

A low wail caught both their attentions and Khan stood, allowing Bridget to get up from the chair to go to her child.

“When you’ve fed Jaelin, we need to talk,” Khan said quietly.

Bridget’s face paled. “There’s been word of Cree?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Khan shook his head. “No, but we’ll talk about it when...”

“We’ll talk about it now!” Bridget insisted. She became aware of Lares and Raine standing just outside the door. Her heart began a wild pounding that sent pain through her temples. “Tell me!”

“It may not amount to anything but we thought you should know,” Kahn said, turning to motion the other two men into the room. “You have a right to know what we’re doing.”

Bridget looked at each man in turn. “You’ve found a way to go after him?” she whispered.

“We believe so,” Lares answered for Kahn. “Troi has been working non-stop since the day those bitches took the Reaper, and we believe the ‘bot has developed a source of fuel for the LRC.”

“There won’t be a big supply but we believe it will be sufficient,” Kahn explained.

“Sufficient to do what?” Bridget queried.

“To get us out of orbit. If we can break free of the moon’s gravitational pull and make it to Montyne Vex, we’ll refuel there and slip into the wormhole like a warm knife through butter,” Raine said.

“From here to FSK-14 takes roughly ten weeks using the wormhole. They’ve got a two month lead on us, which means they’ll be arriving on Rysalia Prime in a few weeks,” Kahn, exchanging a look with the men.

“And if you left today, it would take you those ten weeks to get there. My husband will be dead by then.”

“We don’t think so,” Lares stated. “If our calculations are correct, they will wait to execute him when there is some national holiday.”

“The more women there to see him die, the better,” Raine put in.

“The Feast of Alluvia would make perfect sense to those bloodthirsty witches,” Kahn told her. “What better time to make an example of Cree.”

“When is this feast?” Bridget asked.

“By my reckoning, a little over three months from now. That will give us time to get there and rescue him,” Kahn replied.

“Or die in the trying,” Bridget said.

“We can do it, Bridie,” Raine insisted. “I know we can.”

“Tealson, Alexi, the three of us,” Kahn said. “Between us, we have eighty years of experience in the military. None of us has any compunction about blowing those women to hell and back.”

“We refuse to let Cree remain in their hands. He took Lares and me out of prison and we owe him our very lives,” Raine said. “He is our leader but more importantly, he is our friend.”

“We can do this,” Lares said.

“We can,” Kahn repeated.

For the last two months, Bridget had spent hours sitting alone at the window, staring into the night sky. Every star that twinkled caught her eye and she wondered if that star was the ship that was hurtling her beloved husband into the void of the Abyss. She was numb, her heart broken, her only salvation the tiny being who needed her to care for him. Her tears had long since ceased to flow but the pain of Cree’s abduction was as fresh as the day she had watched him vanish before her stunned eyes.

Only after the Reaper’s abduction did Beryla explain to Bridget why Cree would not hold his son. It was an explanation that made perfect sense to Bridget even though she knew in her heart that once Kamerone Cree had held Jaelin, there would have been no danger of him ever hurting their child. Such evil was no longer entrenched in the Reaper’s soul. Bridie’s love for him had changed the very essence of Cree’s being and she understood that whether the Reaper did or not.

“Bridie?” Kahn questioned.

She did not look at him. She turned from the men and headed for the growing sounds of displeasure that came yowling from her hungry son.

“Bring him back,” she whispered as she tugged the shawl around her shoulders. “Don’t come home without him.” She turned and looked at them. “Alive or dead, I want him back.”

Without waiting for the men to speak again, she walked from the room, a small, slumped woman with

trembling hands and a voice devoid of happiness.

Charlotte Boyett-Compo

CHARLOTTE ‘CHARLEE’ Boyett-Compo is the author of over 30 award-winning speculative fiction novels. Married for 36 years to her high school sweetheart, Tom, she is the mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of two. She is owned and operated by six demanding felines for whom she must have a day job in order to buy catnip and cat litter. Her hobbies include reading, writing, and staying as far away from arithmetic as space will allow.

Other Books in the

WindDemon Trilogy

BloodWind

First Book in WindDemon Trilogy

On frontier station Khamsin-14, Prime Reaper Kamerone Cree is a man to be feared. When the shapeshifting assassin comes on board, women lock their doors and warriors shiver in fear as he passes. Garnering his notice is something no one wants, but one woman has caught the vampire warrior’s eye. Dr. Bridget Dunne is terrified of the man they call the Iceman, but it is her job to seduce him and bring Cree over to the Resistance. Will she be able to control the Reaper’s dark passions or will they destroy her?

Yet to Come:

EvilWind

Third Book in WindDemon Trilogy

From different parts of the megaverse, Prime Reaper Kamerone Cree and his bloodson, Khiershon, race against time to save the remaining men of their race from the raging inferno of the Multitude’s vengeance. With the help of a ragtag band of Resistance fighters, a band of Terran women impressed into service against their wills, and an old adversary sworn by honor to protect the mate of the woman he loves, destiny awaits the Cree men and their Earth-born ladies.

Will the be in time to save the Iceman’s progeny or will the vampire warriors meet their doom an the red planet of Rysalia Prime?

DarkWind: 2nd Book, WindDemon Trilogy by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Hard Shell Word Factory

Table of Contents

Part One Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Part Two Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Part Three Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Part Four Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Epilogue Charlotte Boyett-Compo