My Reaper's Daughter (17 page)

the greasy smear you leave behind. You…” He stopped with a blink of his amber eyes.

“I’m a growing boy, Ari,” Bevyn snapped.

“You thought of something, didn’t you, Ari?” Cynyr asked.

“How did you, Glyn and Owen find the graves of the
Drochtái
victims up in the

Northlands
,
Iden?” Arawn asked.

“The Shadowlords sent one of their drones up to seek out graves around which all

the surrounding grasses had been destroyed and could no longer grow,” Iden answered

then relaxed in his chair with a grin. “That’s what we should do! Lord Naois can send a

drone out to look for heat sigs different than that of normal humans. The drone could

detect what we aren’t able to and take them out like that!” The young Reaper snapped

his fingers.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“Take out what we are being blocked from detecting,” Cynyr said, and when his

fellow Reapers looked at him, he nodded. “Whatever screwed with our abilities might

also have screwed with our powers of detection.”

“Altered them in some way,” Bevyn suggested.

“Makes sense,” Iden said.

“Makes perfect sense,” Arawn agreed.

Iden looked to Arawn. “What did Lord Kheelan call the stuff inside us that makes

us human?”

“DNA,” Arawn replied then grinned broadly at Iden. “Every living organism has

DNA. The drone could run a program to detect human DNA and if anything that looks

like a human is moving on this world but doesn’t have DNA we will know it’s a ’bot.”

“If the drone can take out ghorets and graves from up there,” Cynyr said, “why

can’t it take out a gods-be-damned ’bot?”

“It can,” Arawn replied.

“That’s all well and good but that doesn’t tell us how we would find these so-called

super humans if that’s what the ’bots are creating,” Bevyn reminded them.

“We can gather samples of tissue from the bodies of the dead men for the drone to

catalogue,” Arawn suggested.

“We’d have to dig the dead men up to do that,” Bevyn put in.

“Aye, that we would,” Arawn agreed.

“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Bevyn complained.

“Could the drone do a search for anyone with that DNA and home in on him?”

Cynyr asked.

“Wouldn’t it have to somehow take a sample?” Bevyn countered. “How could it do

that from up there?” He cut his gaze toward the ceiling.

“We won’t know until we ask Lord Naois,” Iden replied. “That’s his bailiwick. But

if the drone has that kind of capability or can be programmed to have it, it can find and

take out the super human then and there.”

“The sooner the better,” Cynyr quipped.

“Finish your meal, gentlemen,” Arawn said, pushing his chair back. “I’m going to

take a walk outside and contact our friendly Shadowlord Lord Naois!”

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My Reaper’s Daughter

Chapter Eight

Glyn struggled to get up the stairs but with Kasid’s help, he was determined to

make it on his own without having to be carried like a child. His legs were wobbly but

made it to his bed without falling flat on his face. Collapsing onto the cool sheets, he

buried the side of his face in the pillow and gave in to his weakness.

“How’s your head?” Kasid inquired.

“Better,” Glyn replied.

Kasid put a hand to the other man’s forehead. “Temperature is down, thank the

goddess.”

“The buzzing has stopped in my ears too,” Glyn said.

“Try to speak to me,” Kasid told him.

Although Glyn’s head still hurt, it was with nowhere near the intensity that it had

been and he closed his eyes, concentrating on sending a mental thought to Jaborn.

“I’m hungry.”

“So am I,” Kasid said with a broad grin, and laughed when his teammate sighed

with relief.

“I was beginning to worry.”

“I’ll go down and get us some lunch since we missed breakfast,” Kasid said. “How

hungry are you?”

“I could eat a horse.”

Kasid frowned. “I hope that isn’t on the menu,” he said, and headed for the door.

Once Kasid was gone, Glyn tried contacting Phelan but there was still no answer.

He tried the Shadowlords.

“You sound weak, Lord Glyn,”
the High Lord answered.

“I am, Your Grace,”
Glyn said, even more relieved that he could get in touch with his

masters.
“Has there been any word from Phelan? I can’t seem to reach him.”

There was a slight pause.
“Neither can we nor can we raise the goddess. Get down to

Charlestown as quickly as you can. Something is very wrong.”

“We’ll leave first thing in the morning, if it’s all right with you,”
Glyn sent.
“I’m still

feeling a bit under the weather.”

“Understood and please be careful, Glyn. Things are afoot that has my fellow Shadowlords

and me concerned.”

* * * * *

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

Phelan stared at the constable. “How many?”

“Six in the Sewell Township and four in Beaumont,” Constable Vernon Locke

answered. He stood with his wet hat clutched in his hand, rolling the brim around and

around as rainwater dripped upon the porch floor. He flinched as lightning stitched

across the heavens. “That makes a total of fifteen in the last two days, milord. Now

we’re missing a newborn what arrived just last evening. His mama and daddy are

frantic.”

Phelan shot a hand through his tousled hair, distressed by the news. “Come on in,

Vern,” he said, and turned his back on the pot-bellied man. “I need a strong cup of

coffee.”

Dawn had just stretched its fingers over the horizon when Locke had pounded on

the Reaper’s door, rousing Phelan from the first decent sleep he’d had in weeks. There

were dark circles under the shape-shifter’s eyes and a haunted look in his amber gaze as

he went to the stove and lit a burner.

“I hate to tell you this, milord, but I got word from Constable Hartman two counties

over that he’s been finding the carcasses of steers scattered all about the countryside

and he’s missing three young men.”

Phelan was pouring coffee into the pot’s strainer when that news struck him like a

bolt out of the blue. “Steers?” he said, thinking of the dead animal beside which he’d

awakened a few days earlier.

“According to Hank, the meat had been stripped clean down to the bone but them

bones had gnaw marks on them like a big grizzly got to them.”

“When was the last time there was a grizzly seen around these parts?” Phelan

queried.

“Ain’t been none in many years as I remember it,” Locke answered. “Big cats, aye,

but from what Hank told me, it weren’t no cat what got them steers. It was something

bigger and…” He looked down at his hat. “More than one of ’em.”

That news staggered Phelan and he nearly dropped the pot as he placed it on the

burner. “He thinks it was rogues gone rabid then?”

“That’s what he suggested, but if that’s the case, milord, we got some real trouble.”

The constable took the seat Phelan offered him at the table and asked the question that

had been on his and Hank Hartman’s minds. “You reckon you could handle a couple of

rabid rogues all by your lonesome, milord?”

Phelan knew he was in no condition to handle one rogue much less two and if the

bastards were rabid, he was in deep shit. He also knew he had to find a way to contact

the Citadel, hoping they’d tried to get in touch with him and when he hadn’t replied,

was sending Glyn or Kasid or both his way. He didn’t think Locke needed to know how

concerned he was with his own ability to handle the situation on his own.

“As soon as I get some coffee in me, we’ll head out to cabins where all these people

have come up missing, the child’s home first. The steers I’m not worried as much about

right now but I’ll look into that too. With any luck at all, the Shadowlords will send me

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My Reaper’s Daughter

some help but we can’t count on that. For the time being, call in every deputy and

volunteer you have and ask Hartman to do the same. You might as well have Constable

Tolbert over at Danton come too. I want to meet with them in the church at Ellis

Corners at two o’clock today, rain or shine.”

“By the looks of this storm, it ain’t gonna let up no time soon,” Locke told him.

“Old Lady Wilson says this is like them hurricanes what used to batter the coast back

when she was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“Didn’t she just celebrate her hundred and fourth birthday last month?” Phelan

asked.

“Oldest woman in the territory to hear her tell it,” Locke answered, “though Aunt

Zettie, that woman of color who used to be Mr. Simmons’ mammy, says she’s older

than Missus Wilson by six months.”

“Those two are a pair,” Phelan said, staring at his coffee pot, wishing the thing

would perk. He desperately needed the caffeine but he needed something else even

more.

“That they are,” Locke agreed. His eyes widened as the Reaper reached into the

icebox that sat beside the back door and took out a bottle of red liquid. The overweight

lawman swallowed hard, nearly gagged and looked away as Phelan Kiel drank his

morning ration of Sustenance.

Wiping his lips on the back of his arm when he’d finished, Phelan barely glanced at

Locke as he picked up his vac-syringe and prepared it. Thankfully, the coffee pot took

that time to begin chugging away.

“Pour us a cup, will ya?” Phelan asked as he put the needle to the thick column of

his neck.

“Aye, milord,” Locke said, studiously avoiding looking to see what else the Reaper

was doing.

Pain radiated from the fiery drug and filled Phelan with spreading warmth as he

shuddered once then put the vac-syringe aside. He rubbed the injection site, grimacing

at how it never got any easier to take the drug his kind had to have in order to live as a

human. Without the tenerse he had to take every morning of his life, he would revert to

the wolf-like creature that instilled terror in the heart of almost all Terrans.

“Thanks,” Phelan said as Locke brought him a cup of the strong brew and handed it

to him. He wrapped his hands around the tin vessel and took a sip of the scalding

liquid. He looked over the rim, blinking against the steam, and asked Locke to tell him

everything he knew about the disappearances that had been taking place in the last

week or so.

Locke scratched the side of his pudgy face. “Well, it started when Mr. Simmons

asked me if I’d ever heard of a thing called a zombay.”

“Zombie,” Phelan corrected.

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Charlotte Boyett-Compo

“Ah, aye, right,” Locke agreed, nodding. “Zombie. He said one of the other

planters—the gentleman what owns Burnt Pine—told him there had been a rash of

flesh-eating ghouls digging up out of their graves and wandering about at night. Didn’t

make no sense to me and when we went looking, we didn’t find nothing.”

“No blood or evidence of someone being killed?” Phelan pressed. “No desecrated

graves?”

“No, milord. None of that. If a corpse got up and staggered around during the

night, he went back to his hidey-hole and pulled the dirt in over him. Did talk to a guy

named Richardson who swears on the Cross of the Slain One he saw one of these

undead things chewing away on a corpse. The dead don’t up and move about like that,

do they?”

Phelan thought of the
Drochtáis
Glyn, Owen and Iden had encountered in the

Northlands but he had no intention of telling Locke that such things existed. “I can’t

imagine what it was the man thought he saw,” he said.

“Me neither,” Locke admitted.

“According to Tony’s housekeeper, these zombie things are men who are being

controlled by some kind of strong drug,” Phelan told the constable. “She says it was

used to make the one given it a better, more focused worker. We’re talking living,

breathing men here, Locke. Not a rotting corpse. As to the flesh-eating part of it, that

seems a bit farfetched to me. Why would something dead need to feed in the first

place?”

“You got a point, milord,” Locke replied.

“Well, let’s get a move on,” Phelan said. “As much as I hate venturing out in this

bad weather, we’ve missing folk to find.”

“Let’s hope they’re alive when we find ’em, milord,” Locke commented. “Especially

that little baby.”

“Aye,” Phelan said, thinking of Cyn and Aingeal’s son, the twins due any day from

the union of Owen and Rachel. “By the grace of the gods, I pray so.”

* * * * *

From the window of the schoolroom, Mystery watched the driving rain sheeting

down the pane. The only two children in the one-room building were a little boy who

was cowering in the corner with every flash of lightning and Valda, who was trying

valiantly to talk the child into playing with her.

“You’ve got yourself a little diplomat over there,” Miss Laverne said from beside

Mystery. “That one is going to be a stateswoman one day.”

“Poor Philippe. He wouldn’t let me anywhere near him and he’s trembling so hard

with all this noise and bright light,” Mystery said.

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My Reaper’s Daughter

“Valda will handle the situation,” Miss Laverne stated. “Since I don’t believe we’ll

be getting any more students today, let’s go into the kitchen and make us a spot of tea.