Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan (11 page)

Shanee sucked in a surprised breath. “He
won’t automatically become like his father?”

“Not in Ailyn’s sub-generation or the
sub-generation of any of the men from R-9,” he replied. “Sons born of my race
however, are born Reaper. They are born with a single parasite imbedded in
their kidneys. That is the way the goddess created our next generation of true
Reapers.”

“See, now that’s something else I’m curious
about because it wasn’t in the file on Reapers,” she said. “Ailyn told me you
said Reapers came about because Morrigunia and a demon were at war.”

“Raphian,” Tariq said. “The Evil of Evils.
It was His tainted seed that birthed the first Reaper and Morrigunia’s wisdom
and compassion that gave us humanity.”

“How?” she asked.

“Raphian is a vile thing,” the Prime Reaper
said. “He is loathsome and depraved and for reasons that are His own. He
despised the creation of the first human. He set about to destroy humanity, to
wipe it out of the megaverse by transforming it into creatures like Himself. To
do that, He ejaculated His contaminated seed into the Winds and those abhorrent
kernels of evil traveled to wherever there was life. They fell upon many lands
across the megaverse, attracted by an irresistible chemical compound contained
within a certain plant that drew the kernel like a magnet. The kernel and the plant
bonded in an obscene parody of human fertilization and from that union a spore
was created. When the spore was taken into a living body—human or otherwise—it
became a parasite and the parasite, which is called an obligate, grew into a
revenant worm queen, infecting the body that had absorbed it.” He met her gaze.
“Have you seen a hellion?”

“Aye,” she admitted. “It is disgusting.”

“Then you know what Raphian looks like. The
revenant is a miniature mirror image of the demon.”

Shanee grimaced at the thought.

“It is said the goddess had heard the voice
of a revenant worm, a hellion calling out to Raphian, and followed that call to
a planet where a deranged woman was trying to kill a very handsome warrior. The
hellion was inside the woman. Being the all-knowing goddess that She is,
Morrigunia could tell the hellion had great power—the power to make a warrior
invincible. Morrigunia took the woman’s life and allowed the hellion to enter
the warrior’s body, thus granting him the power and the abilities hinted at by
the hellion.”

“Surely the warrior used his powers on the
side of good,” Shanee said.

“It is said he made many Reapers before
Morrigunia allowed him to rest. Whether that is good or not, who is to say? My
people would not be here had he not created the first Reaper.”

“So while Morrigunia was using the Reapers
for good, Raphian was making them for evil?”

“She realized Raphian had deliberately laid
plans to exterminate the human race by infecting them with His sperm. When
Morrigunia saw what Raphian had done, She set out to undo His evil. She could
not keep those infected with the parasite from changing but She could instill
human traits in them to hold at bay the evil Raphian had unleashed. It was my
people She granted Her benevolence. Our tribe is spread throughout the
megaverse on planets such as Theristes and we are not allowed to leave those
worlds. Morrigunia made it a law, a Greas, an obligation with which we must
abide.”

“Something else bothers me, Tariq. When you
were captured, people like the Burgon before Ryden Bakari saw the advantage in
having nearly invincible warriors and set out to make more like you.” She
frowned. “How did they know how to do that? Surely you didn’t tell them. I read
where you were tortured horribly but I can’t believe you would have given them
the means to make more Reapers.”

Tariq shook his head. “No, I did not. I
could not have told them because I didn’t know such a thing was possible until
the first prisoners were brought to the complex. Remember, children of my race
are born Reaper. We do not make them. When they took the first hellion from me,
when I realized what they were going to do, I cried for the first time in my
life. The only explanation I can give you for what happened on R-9 is that
Raphian was involved. He influenced the Alliance to create the hell that was
Riezell-Nine.”

“Why didn’t Morrigunia intercede?” she
asked. “Why didn’t She stop what was happening there?”

“I don’t know, Shanee, but there is a
legend that says She has a place somewhere in the megaverse where She breeds
Her own very special Reapers, sons of Her body called the
guirt
. We also
know She creates them in Her guise as the Triune Goddess coming to a dying
warrior on the battlefield.” He shook his head. “Why She does this, no one
knows, but I do know there are men like Gabriel Leveche who are Her creations.
If She is making men like him elsewhere in the megaverse, Her purpose cannot be
evil.”

Shanee let out a long breath. She was
reeling from the information Tariq had given her—far more than she had expected
him to impart. “No, I suppose not.”

“That is enough for you to think on for one
day,” he told her, taking one of the gold strips out of the bucket and over to
his workbench. He sat down. “Your man is well and he is relatively calm—at
least as calm as his Transition will allow him to be. When it is over, he will
be back in the beat of a heart. I would not put it past him to fly here on
wings his mind will create.”

“He can really do that?” she asked, her
eyes wide.

“If he so desires,” Tariq said with a
smile. “And it is a sight to behold.”

Chapter Six

Ailyn stared up at the smooth glasslike
wall of the lava tube. He was bone-tired, hungry for Sustenance and his body
was itching, on fire, for want of the tenerse waiting for him. He had chosen
this dark place, this makeshift containment cell, because when he was in
Transition, he could not scale the sheer walls nor could he spring up to the
top rim that was at least two hundred feet above him. He could—however—shift
into a raven at will and fly out of his self-imposed prison when the Transition
had run its course. At that moment though, he was too weary to rearrange his
molecules and make the change. He had to wait until he had a bit more energy
before he could shift.

He sat down on a low ledge and reached out
to touch the silica-rich lava flow from centuries earlier that constituted the
slick walls of the cone-shaped hole that was his prison cell. The solid sheet
of obsidian glass that encircled the room that was rich in iron and magnesium
had been formed when the molten lava had cooled too quickly to crystallize and
had created this mysterious chamber, the floor of which had bubbled up to form
little ledges around the base.

“I want you to see this chamber one day,
ionúin
,”
he said as he trailed his fingers over the smooth surface.

Though the chamber was pitch-black with no
light casting upon the chill walls, he could see well enough with his enhanced
vision. The only illumination came from the top of the chamber and that was a
mere glow from farther back in the cave.

A half-hour passed and his addictive need
for the tenerse pushed everything else out of his mind. He knew he had to have
both the blood and the tenerse as quickly as possible, and the longer he
waited, the harder it would be to push aside the craving. He got up, closed his
eyes and willed his body into the form of a raven, taking flight as easily as
taking a breath, and when he landed, shifted once more into human form.

As always, the vac-syringe of tenerse was a
fiery agony as he injected the thick drug into a vein in his neck. Even after
all this time he had not grown accustomed to that stinging, burning pain and
knew he never would. With trembling hands he reached for the first bottle of
Sustenance and drained it in three gulps before reaching for the next one.

His addiction assuaged, his hunger fed, he
fanned his hand over his hips to settle a new breechclout in place then headed
back to the chamber he called his home.

* * * * *

Shanee saw the raven sitting in the mango
tree looking down at her and she smiled. “Hello, little thief,” she greeted it.
To the Amazeen, ravens were sacred and a symbol of wisdom. It was also a
legendary shape-shifter.

As that thought flitted through her mind
she stared at the bird, glanced around her then whispered, “Ailyn, is that
you?”

The bird turned its head to one side
inquisitively then made the
cur-rak
sound that was its trademark call.
It took flight and disappeared behind the hut the villagers had helped Shanee
build.

Sighing with disappointment, Shanee turned
away from the tree.

“Where are you going,
ionúin
?”

He was there behind her, walking toward her
from the rear of the hut. He smiled when she whooped and rushed him, throwing
herself into his arms and wrapping her lovely long legs around his waist before
she plastered her lips to his. She was holding his face between her hands as
she devoured his mouth, totally oblivious to the villagers watching them.

“Whoa, wench!” he said, pulling his lips
from hers. He was supporting her shapely ass in his hands. “Much more of that
and I’ll be tempted to take you up against the gods-be-damned tree I was
sitting in.”

Shanee grinned. “That
was
you!” she
said. “You were a gorgeous little fella!”

“I am an engorged big fella,” he said, and
pushed her bottom down on his hard erection. “Is that our hut?”

“Can you thrust into me now?” she countered
as she gazed intently into his amber eyes.

“With as much power and speed as you
desire, little Amazeen,” he replied.

“It’s our hut,” she stated.

He carried her over to it, ducked down with
her still clinging to him and carried her over to the pallet some of the other
women had helped her stuff. Practically falling atop her, he took her to the
soft surface—pulling one hand free of her ass to fan away her clothing in the
blink of an eye.

“A damned fine ability you have there,” she
said, aware his breechclout had also disappeared.

He lay paused above her, his eyebrows drawn
together. “Seeing me as a raven did not disturb you?”

She wriggled beneath him. “Hell, no! And I
want to see you as a wolf,” she said. “Are you as handsome as a lupine as you
are as a corvine?”

“You amaze me,” he said in a near whisper,
his eyes roaming over her beautiful face.

“Why?” she asked. “Because I accept you as
you are?”

“You have not seen me in Transition nor
will you but…”

“But I will see you as a wolf,” she said,
“and anything else you care to show me.” She nipped at his lips. “But for now,
you will show me how much you missed me,
ehemann
.”

For the first time in over a week Ailyn
Harmattan felt at peace. There in the arms of his woman with their
Ceangal
—their
Joining—on the horizon. He knew tranquility, a harmony with his nature that he
had never experienced.

Her breasts were pressed flat against his
bare chest, her swollen nipples burning his flesh. Those long, silky legs were
still wrapped around him and she was rubbing the cleft of his rump with her
heel. She held him to her, arched her hips up in invitation to his plunder and
ground herself against him.

“Ah, wench,” he said, unable to hold off
any longer.

For the first time in Ailyn’s life, he
thrust his aching, stiff cock into the warm, wet channel of a woman. But it was
not just any woman whose body he impaled with that hard shaft but
his
woman,
his
companion,
his
life
-
mate.

The sensation rocking his lower body was
glorious as he withdrew and thrust into her again. The silky moistness that
enveloped him, the feel of her sheath, the heat that flowed along his rod was a
heady awareness that made him shudder with delight. He shoved his hand back
under her hip and lifted her to him to better penetrate that luscious heaven
that tightened around his turgid flesh.

He slammed his mouth down over her, thrust
his tongue deep between her lips and began pumping his cock in and out of her
willing body so fast and with such power, the sound of their bodies slapping
together made him that much lustier.

Shanee was digging her fingernails into his
bare back and her arms were so tight around him he was having difficulty
breathing. Her mouth was fastened to his, her thighs squeezing his waist. She
was as attached to him as any of the moles that peppered his back.

The itch was beginning high up in his belly
and fingering its way down through his cock. Her honeyed warmth was milking
him, drawing upon his rigid length, and he could feel the first faint wave that
started somewhere near her womb then rippled down.

She cried out—her voice lost in the
recesses of his mouth. She tensed—her body pushing up to meet his.

He grunted as the first spasm shook him and
he felt her climax begin. It was such an intense, overpowering feeling wrapped
around his cock that increased the speed of his thrusting.

The moment the release washed over her, she
felt the first spurt of his juices spilling into her, the jerk of his cock, the
hard power in his thighs as he strained against her. As wave after wave of
pure, concentrated pleasure undulated through her, she felt his shaft pulsing
hard.