Reaper's Revenge (23 page)

“Aye, and us without a drop in months,” Liam complained.

“I need to get to Haines City,” Aingeal said.

“Well, we’ll hitch up the buckboard and take a little trip over there,” Liam declared.

“Just as soon as we’re finished here.”

“You can’t leave your family here,” Aingeal protested. “The man after me would harm them.”

“Don’t think on that right now,” Liam said. “You just do what you gotta do, lass.”

Peg barely flinched when Aingeal’s fangs descended. She groaned only a little as those sharp fangs sank into her wrist but her free hand was being clutched tightly in her husband’s. After Liam had offered his own arm, Aingeal wasn’t in as much pain.

“One of the heathens stole you from Lord Cree,” Liam stated. “Is that what happened?”

“His name is Otaktay and he’s a rogue,” Aingeal replied.

“Alel, help us!” Peg said, making the sign of the Slain One. “If those savages are turning rogue, we’re in for it now!”

“He’s the only one I know of,” Aingeal said, “but there could be more. I don’t believe there are though.”

“I’ll get the buckboard ready, Peg. You get the lasses ready to go,” Liam told his wife as he rolled his sleeve down again.

Aingeal had been careful not to take much Sustenance from either of the O’Rourkes. She needed more and her eyes slid to Blue. The dog wagged his tail and seemed to nod as though he knew what was needed. He turned and trotted out of the barn.

“I need to relieve myself, Peg,” Aingeal said.

“Outhouse is behind the house,” Peg told her.

Blue was waiting for her as Aingeal opened the door to the outhouse. The dog followed her in and jumped up on the wooden two-seater board.

“Thank you, brother,”
Aingeal sent to him, and bent over to push his thick fur aside. She buried her fangs into the dog’s neck, patting him gently as she fed. She took as much Sustenance as she knew the dog could afford to give but it did nothing to assuage the burning pain in her body. Only the tenerse could remedy that.

* * * * *

Otaktay had ignored Jaborn’s suggestion to wait for the woman to come back. He feared she’d been hurt and had ridden out looking for her at first light, easily tracking 124

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the wolf prints that led ever eastward. He was only a few miles from the spot Aingeal had stopped to drink water when the O’Rourkes and Aingeal—Blue trotting alongside the buckboard—set out for Haines City. By noontime, he was staring at the farmhouse, sensing its emptiness of humans. He saw the wagon wheel tracks leading toward the town from which he’d take Aingeal and let out a war cry that shattered the stillness of the day and sent birds fluttering from the branches of a nearby scrub oak. His eyes filled with rage, he spun his mount around and started back for the cave, knowing he’d need Jaborn’s help to reclaim the woman.

* * * * *

Cynyr was dreaming of his lady again. He writhed on the cot, his body aching for hers, her name on his lips. His strength was returning but he had a nagging headache that finally pushed him from sleep. His eyes snapped open, sweat running down his face, and he reached up to wipe away the salty moisture.

“Must have been one helluva dream.”

Cynyr turned to see Mick Brady standing outside the cell, his arms dangling through the bars. “Where is everyone?” he asked, sitting up and swinging his legs carefully from the cot.

“Well, as you hear, it’s raining again and the Misery is threatening to overflow its banks. Everyone ‘cept me is down at the edge of town doing some mighty fierce sandbagging.” He lifted his palms for Cynyr to see the blisters he’d obtained earlier.

“Somebody had to watch over you.”

Hanging his head, Cynyr wished the brutal headache would leave. He’d had it for two solid weeks and it didn’t seem inclined to settle down. It had taken all his selfcontrol not to let the agony show when he stood up for Arawn at the Joining.

“Bevyn filled your syringe up for me. Want me to give it to you?” Mick asked, withdrawing his arms from the bars.

“It might help,” Cynyr admitted.

“Still got that headache, huh?” The barber asked as he came into the cell with the syringe.

“I’ve had headaches ever since my turning, but this one is getting to me,” he answered, flinching as Brady injected the stinging drug into the Reaper’s neck.

“From the look on your face I don’t imagine that tenerse stuff is a piece of cake either.”

“Hurts like hell,” Cynyr told him. He pushed himself up, wavering only a little then stepped over to the chamber pot to relieve himself.

“I’ve got your Sustenance too,” Brady said.

The Reapers had taken turns supplying their blood for Cynyr, for Reaper blood was a much more powerful form of Sustenance than human or animal. It was Reaper blood that was pushing the last of the toxins from Cree’s body. Taking the jug of the precious 125

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fluid from Brady, Cynyr drank deeply, inwardly smiling at Brady’s look of disgust as he turned and walked away.

“Your lady is on her way back to you.”

Lord Kheelan’s voice eased through Cynyr’s mind like a hot knife through butter and the Reaper reached out to grab hold of the cell’s iron bars.

“What’s the matter?” Brady asked, seeing the surprise settling on the Reaper’s face.

“Aingeal is on her way here,” he said. He took a few steps forward but his head swam unmercifully and if Brady hadn’t moved like greased lightning, Cynyr would have crashed face first to the floor. As it was, the jug fell out of his hands to shatter on the wood planking.

“Easy does it, partner!” Brady said, helping Cynyr back to the cot and easing him down. “You aren’t in any condition to go looking for her yet.” He eyed the broken jug, but there wasn’t even a drop of what had been inside the stoneware container staining the floor.

“She’s out there, Mick,” Cynyr said. His eyes were full of pleading as his head pounded savagely, the room tilting to one side around him.

“Lay down. Conserve your strength,”
Lord Kheelan sent to him
. “Let the man seek her.
Tell him to be quick about it.”

“Is she in danger?”
Cynyr asked.

“She needs tenerse,”
was the answer.

Cynyr knew all too well the agony the lack of tenerse could cause. The memory of the punishment he had suffered at Lord Kheelan’s hands was all too fresh. “You have to find her for me,” Cynyr told Brady.

“Just tell me where and I’m outta here,” Brady assured him.

“East of town,”
Lord Kheelan stated.
“She is with a family bringing her back to you.”

“East,” Cynyr said. “She’s with some other people.”

“I’m on it.”

“Wait!” Cynyr shouted. “She needs tenerse. She—”

“There’s some in the desk,” Brady interrupted, and yanked open a drawer and withdrew a vial. “I don’t know how to fill the syringe.”

Cynyr motioned for him to bring the instruments to him and quickly loaded the same syringe that had been used on him. He handed both the vial and the syringe to Brady. “Hurry, Mick.”

Brady put the syringe in his vest pocket along with the vial then rushed out of the cell, grabbing his hat from the hook by the door as he pulled the portal open. “I’ll let someone know you’re here alone,” Brady said, and with that, he was gone. The excruciating pain driving through his temples, pooling at the base of his skull, brought the bile rushing to Cynyr’s throat and he barely had time to lean over the cot and puke into the chamber pot. The smell of his puke mixed with the cooling urine 126

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made his stomach roil even harder. The blood was rushing through his ears, sounding like a low drumbeat, and the room was beginning to shift again. His eyes ached as though they were about to explode so he closed them carefully. His nose felt clogged, making it nearly impossible to breathe through it. Cold sweat had popped out on his forehead and upper body.

“Gods-be-damned ghorets,” he mumbled as he lay back on the cot, clutching the sides to keep from spinning off into space. Vaguely he heard the jail door open and close, footsteps then a cool hand caressed his brow.

“Are ye sick again, lad?”

He forced one eye open—a lance of pain going through his brain—and managed to smile at the old lady. “If I was a drinking man, Moira, I’d think I was coming off one helluva binge.”

“Been there,” Moira told him. “Ain’t something I’ll ever do again in this lifetime.”

She moved out of line of sight.

Cynyr flinched when she laid a cool rag on his brow and his teeth began to chatter.

“How much longer is this shit gonna last?” he asked.

“Until it’s out of your system,” Moira stated. “Can’t be much longer now and watch that smart mouth of yours.” She gently pulled one of his hands from the death grip on the side of the cot and patted it. “I heard tell Mick went after the lass.”

“Aye,” Cynyr whispered. To his ears the one word sounded as though he’d bellowed it.

Sensing her patient was not in condition or of a mind to talk, Moira patted his hand again and put it back on the edge of the cot. She left his cell and took up residence once more in her beloved rocking chair, carefully lowering herself so she made as little noise as possible. Refraining from rocking, she took up her knitting and quietly worked the needles.

Though the coolness of the rag made him shiver, it felt good on his pounding temples. He did his best to relax but the pain kept him in its fierce grip, refusing to let up. Striving to keep his mind off the discomfort, he tried to reach out to Aingeal but was unable to make contact. That worried him, increasing the pain even more in his head.

“She is making do, Cree,”
Lord Kheelan said in a voice as quiet as a low wind
. “Once
you take blood from her, the connection between you will return. Try to sleep.”

Somewhat reassured, Cynyr willed himself to sleep, but sleep was not something Reapers did easily or for very long at a time.

“Sleep, my Reaper.”

Cynyr’s eyes flew open. It was Morrigunia’s voice that crooned to him. Before he could ask about Aingeal, he found himself drifting under heavy clouds of fleecy dark cotton, his pain subsiding.

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* * * * *

“Take ‘em!” Liam O’Rourke snarled as he handed the reins of the buckboard over to Peg. In the blink of an eye he had plucked up his rifle, cocked it and had it at eyelevel as a rider came streaking toward them. “Stop the wagon, Peg.”

Aingeal was lying in the back of the buckboard on a thick blanket of quilts Peg had been kind enough to spread for her. She was shivering uncontrollably from her withdrawal from tenerse and crying softly, careful not to allow the moans that pushed at her throat from escaping for the two young girls sitting beside her looked frightened enough as it was.

The rider galloping toward the O’Rourkes pulled back on his horse, bringing the animal to a skidding stop then stood up in the stirrups, waving his hat. “I’m looking for Aingeal Cree!” he shouted. “Her husband sent me!”

Aingeal heard Mick’s voice and tried to get up but she was in such agony she couldn’t find the strength. “Tell your pa he’s a friend,” she croaked. Lilly O’Rourke reached up to tug at her father’s coattail. “She says she knows him, Da,” the little girl said.

“Keep your hands where I can see ‘em and come on a bit closer!” Liam instructed. Struggling to get up, Aingeal was glad for the assistance of the two little girls. Grunting like old women, they managed to hold Aingeal to a sitting position. “He’s Mick Brady, the town barber,” Aingeal said, her teeth clicking together on the words. Liam lowered the rifle a tad. “Ain’t never had no use for a barber,” he said, squinting as the man came closer, “but I think I recognize him.”

Mick kept his hands away from his body. He’d seen the family several times in Haines City but couldn’t recall their name. “I’ve brought her medicine,” Mick called out.

That more than anything settled the issue in Liam’s mind and he lowered the rifle.

“Come on, then. She’s in bad shape.”

Aingeal lay back down, her body pricking with pins and needles that set her to shuddering violently. Her hands twisted in the quilt beneath her. When she felt the buckboard bed sag, she looked up to see Mick—his dear face as white as parchment—as he bent over her.

“It’ll be all right, sweetie,” Mick said, his unspoken love for her shining in his moist eyes. He eased her head to one side and reached in his coat for the syringe.

“What’s that?” Lilly asked, moving where she could see the strange thing the man was putting to Aingeal’s neck.

“It’s something she needs to make her feel better,” Mick said, and plunged the needle into Aingeal’s neck.

“Da, he’s hurting her!” Lilly shouted, and began pounding her little fists on Mick’s arm.

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“No!” her mother disagreed and reaching over the seat to snatch her daughter out of Mick’s way.

The drug hurt Aingeal for the first time and she cried out, her body stiffening as the fire spread in her blood. Realizing the strength had no doubt been made for her husband, she jerked at the quilt, the agonizing trail of the tenerse crawling through her veins far worse than the withdrawal symptoms had been. She couldn’t stop the whimpers from coming and groaned as Mick reached for her and lifted her up, engulfing her in his strong arms, holding her against him as the fiery path of the drug began to ease.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, Aingeal,” Mick said, tears flooding his eyes. Peg and Liam exchanged a look, Peg’s left eyebrow crooked.

“Cynyr?” Aingeal whispered, her face buried against Mick’s buckskin coat.

“He’s still sick but he’ll get a whole sight better soon as he sees you,” Mick said, easing his tight hold on her.

The strength of the tenerse spread through Aingeal and she slumped against Mick, knocked out from the drug’s potency.

“She’s got a Jakotai after her,” Liam said. “We need to get on to town with her.”

Mick nodded and laid her down. He made sure she was breathing easily before he swung off the side of the buckboard and climbed up on his horse. “Cyn will take care of that heathen savage,” Brady stated.