somewhere.”
“Do you need help with this? Lord Arawn is available.”
“I’ll let you know,” Bevyn answered.
“Stop them, Lord Bevyn,” Lord Kheelan said. “No matter what you have to do. Stop them
from transporting any of our people off-world.”
Bevyn knew the Shadowlord had withdrawn.
“Call on me if you need me, Lord Bevyn,” came another voice close on the heels of the
Shadowlord’s departure.
“I will, milord,” Bevyn replied, knowing it was the Prime Reaper who spoke.
Lawler set in the midst of a small vale with lush, green rolling hills cupped around
it. It was a pleasant little burg that was well kept and fairly prosperous. A serpentine
river ran to the east of the small settlement that was fairly new by Terran standards. The
town had come into existence a few years after the Burning War had all but destroyed
the entire country, therefore the clapboard buildings wore adequate coats of white paint
and the wood had yet to begin deteriorating in the harsh winters the land was now
growing accustomed to.
Tying Préachán beneath a stand of beeches, Bevyn got down on his belly and
scooted to the rim of a hill overlooking the center of town. He was being careful to block
his approach from those in the town, spreading a wavering mist around him that would
make it impossible for the rogues to pick up on his presence.
Surveying the deserted streets, he saw nothing to alert him and wondered if the
rogues were also cloaking themselves. There appeared to be no guard posted to keep
watch, no movement from any of the windows to indicate anyone was watching. The
church was boarded up and he knew that had to be hell for those inside for the day was
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Her Reaper’s Arms
sultry, little wind blowing to cool the humid air. Spying the jail, he stared at it for a long
time. Casting his senses to both buildings, he was a bit surprised that no one was
speaking although everyone inside both places was alive and well. He could pick up on
their heartbeats and was a bit concerned those beats were slower than they should be.
Shifting his attention to the saloon, he heard the slap of what had to be cards hitting felt,
but not one word from the mouths of the rogues.
He picked out the barn he figured the young men had been kept in, but in scanning
it, he could not find a single female and especially not the body heat of an Amazeen,
which was nearly as high as his own and the rogues. He strained to hear even a single
heartbeat but there was none inside the barn. The situation was getting stranger by the
minute.
The Reaper knew he could not contact the Shadowlords, for to do so would alert
the rogues to his presence. It took a great deal of energy to cloak himself and his
thoughts so he tried to expend as little physical and mental agility as possible as he
pushed to his feet and began skirting the rise, looking for an easy pathway down into
the vale.
Careful to keep from disturbing even one pebble as he moved toward the town,
Bevyn constantly swept his eyes back and forth over the town, but knew there was no
way he could know if he was being watched from the air. He had no doubt the
Amazeen had taken the young men up into a craft of some kind—most likely a Long
Range Cruiser—and those men were lost to them at this point in time. If the bitches
were on Terra to gather stock for their breeding farms on Amazeen and this was their
first batch, they could be hovering up there waiting to snatch up more and that made
the hair stir on the back of his neck. They could be watching him as he stealthily made
his way toward the saloon.
Glancing skyward, he narrowed his eyes, but there was nothing but unrelieved blue
above him, no cloud cover whatsoever. That didn’t mean the craft wasn’t there. It just
meant it was far enough away that even his supernatural eyesight could not detect it.
Crouching low, feeling as though unfriendly eyes were boring into his back, he ran
behind the saloon, pressing himself close to the building, listening intently for any
movement inside. Once more he heard the near-silent slapping of cards to baize but
nothing else, not even a single heartbeat, which told him the rogues were cloaking
themselves as he was and that they were expecting him.
Easing his six-shooter from its holster, he crept around the side of the building,
glancing down at his boots. The spurs would give him away on the boardwalk in front
of the building the moment he stepped up on it. With a concentrated blink, he rid
himself of the footwear, annoyed that he had forgotten to put on socks that morning but
unwilling to expend another fragment of his energy to materialize a pair. He winced as
a stone cut into his instep before he could step up on the boardwalk that ran the length
of the buildings flanking the saloon.
Moving as quietly as a feather floating on the wind, the Reaper advanced slowly
toward the saloon’s large window. The base of it was set high enough to the floor that
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
he could bend over and pass beneath it without being seen from inside the shadowy
confines of the room. He knew he had two choices—rush past the window while
maintaining his body cloaking then burst through the batwing doors, taking aim at the
rogues and hitting them between the eyes before flicking the speal, the laser whip, to
shear off their heads, or crash through the window, taking a chance at cutting his own
head off with shards from the glass.
“Batwings,” he mumbled, and sped past the window in a blur of speed, diving
under the batwings as bullets flew over his head, rolling along the floor and coming up
to shoot three times in rapid succession—fanning the hammer with the edge of his
palm—and making neat black holes between the eyes of two of the rogues. The third
bullet went wide of its target and
