Penthe looked up and locked gazes with the gambler. “What’s your name?” she
asked.
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
“Riley,” he answered. “Riley Butler.”
She looked back down as she probed for the bullet that lay beside his heart. “You’re
not afraid of him biting you, Butler?”
“He’s not going to turn me into one like himself, ma’am,” Riley replied. “There’s a
sight more to it I’ve heard than that.”
“You have to have one of the worms what’s inside him,” another man spoke up.
“That’s what makes him a Reaper.”
“You a female Reaper?” someone else asked.
“Going to be,” Penthe stated. “We are on our way to the Citadel for that very
thing.”
“More power to you, dear,” one of the elderly women said. “If’n I was a day or so
younger, I’d do it myself.”
Penthe smiled at the brag. She handed the knife to Riley then stuck her finger inside
the Reaper’s chest. Her frown slipped away. “I can’t quite get to this last one and it’s too
close to the heart for my liking.”
“Can you just leave it?” the pregnant woman asked. “Won’t his creature maybe rid
him of it somehow?”
“I don’t know,” Penthe answered. She removed her finger and sat back on her
haunches, wiping her arm across her brow.
“Will you look at that?” a man asked in a voice filled with shock.
Three of the wounds on the Reaper’s chest were already closing, the flesh sealing
itself as though there had never been a hole there. The fourth had ceased to bleed and
the red striations around it were fading.
Riley glanced around at a couple of the men. “Find us something we can lay him on
as a stretcher. We need to get him to bed.”
“Right away,” one of the men agreed, and he and another passenger left in search
of something on which to carry the Reaper.
The gambler gave Penthe a hard look. “Are you gonna keep on trying to take out
that last slug?”
Penthe shook her head. “I should but my fingers are too big. I can’t get…”
“I got little hands,” the pregnant woman said, and shushed her husband when he
tried to get her to be quiet. “If’n you tell me what to do, I’ll try it.”
“Eloise!” her husband gasped. “Don’t—”
“Come on down here, Eloise,” Penthe said, picking up on the name. “There’s no
way you can hurt him any more than I already have.”
Riley and Eloise’s husband helped the very pregnant woman to her knees. Penthe
instructed her and without so much as a qualm, the young woman leaned forward and
put her index finger into the wound.
“Holy Merciful Alel!” Eloise exclaimed. “I can feel his heart beating!”
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Her Reaper’s Arms
“Can you feel the bullet?” Penthe asked to keep the girl on track.
A thoughtful expression filtered over the young woman’s face and she pursed her
lips as though in deep thought. “I think I feel it,” she said, and gently slipped her
middle finger into the hole. “Aye, I feel it.”
“If he were a normal man, we’d have sure as hell killed him by now,” one of the
elderly women commented.
Penthe looked up at the woman. “Lucky for us he isn’t normal.”
“They are good men, those boys,” the woman said. “Hard men, I reckon, but good
men. Don’t know what we’d do without them.”
“Treat them a sight better so they’ll keep on being good men,” Riley said softly.
“Too many’s the time I’ve seen how they are shunned. Got to be a lonely existence for
them.”
“This one’s got a woman,” Penthe said.
“You’re a lucky girl,” the older lady said.
Penthe didn’t correct the misconception.
“Got it!” Eloise said, and gently, slowly and very carefully brought the slug up out
of the wound. “Felt like one of his little critters was helping me push away from his
ticker.” She grinned. “Little bugger was a’ticklin’ my fingers.”
“You touched one of those things?” her husband gasped. “Dear lord, Eloise! Go
wash your hand!”
“Oh hush up, Earl!” Eloise snapped. “I ain’t gonna turn into a she-wolf and bite you
on your scrawny ass tonight!”
Everybody laughed at poor Earl’s expense, the young man’s lean face turning
bright red.
The men returned with a stretcher they’d found in the baggage car and lowered it
down on the floor beside Bevyn.
“Let’s get him up and to bed, men,” Riley said. He helped them lift the unconscious
Reaper onto the canvas sling, being careful to lay Bevyn’s hands over his belly and not
his healing chest, the last bullet hole closing nicely.
“Train’s about to move on out, folks,” the steward came back to tell the passengers.
“Engineer wants to know how our Reaper is.”
“He’ll be all right,” Penthe said.
Lea jumped up from her seat. She was trembling, her face drawn and pale, and her
eyes swollen from crying as the men carried Bevyn down the aisle. “Is he…? She
couldn’t finish.
“He’s okay,” Riley said. “Got all the bullets out.”
“We need to put him to bed,” Penthe stated.
Lea ignored the Amazeen. “Milord?” Lea questioned, twisting her hands in front of
her, aching to touch him.
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
“Can you show us to your compartment, ma’am?” Riley asked. At Lea’s nod, he
indicated with a sweep of his hand that she was to precede him down the corridor. The
others followed them.
Lea opened the door to the compartment and stepped aside. Her anxious eyes were
locked on Bevyn’s still face and tears hovered in her eyes.
“Ease him down, men,” Riley said, taking Bevyn’s feet and helping to swing him
from the stretcher to the bed. “Ma’am, you need to take that shirt off him.”
Lea moved around Riley and wedged herself in between the other two men. She
was grateful the Amazeen hadn’t accompanied them into the compartment. Her eyes
were on Bevyn’s chest and was stunned to see no wounds other than those that had
already been there.
“Looks to me like he’s had a right hard life,” Riley commented. “Somebody ran him
through a gantlet of pain, I’d say.”
“Could you get his boots, please?” Lea asked. “He hates wearing boots.”
“It would be my honor, ma’am,” Riley said, and began tugging on Bevyn’s boots.
“You need anything else, little lady?” one of the two other men in the compartment
asked.
“Some warm water and rags to bathe him and
