Reaver of Souls Read online

  * * * * *

  “What do we know about this place?” Nello asked as she watched her husband rise from his bed, staggering a bit, but firm on his feet.

  “I know that my son is there and it’s time I brought him home.”

  “Terror, you can hardly stand!” Nello gritted out between clenched teeth. “You are in no condition to lead this party into the great unknown! I will go instead.”

  “I am in this condition, mate, because my son is in this condition or far worse! He needs me, and damn it, I will be there for him. I may be a bit late, but better than nothing!”

  “Who are you trying to prove that to?” Nello asked finally, ready to pull her hair out in frustration. “Torn loves you, no matter what. He understands your standoffishness and loves you just the same!”

  “My son needed me, Nello, and I was too wrapped up in my own guilt to see to him properly. Now he is lost, alone, and hurting. Do you know how I know this, Nello?”

  “No,” she said quietly, reading a mixture of frustration and self-anger on his face.

  “I know because it feels as if my heart is being torn from my chest! I know because I can feel part of me wilting away, dying, Nello! I know because I am a part of him, and he of me. No matter what. We are not two halves of the same coin, Nello, but damn it, if I am the core, he is the imprint. And I can feel his imprint being washed away from me. I will be there to help him, no matter what!”

  “Will you die for him, Terror?” Nello asked, her purple eyes flashing curiously at him. “Because you just may!”

  “A son is supposed to outlive his father,” he groused, turning his back to Nello, turning inward, following the pain that was lessening a bit, but still felt critical.

  “Then I shall tell the guards to prepare extra provisions.”

  “One guard, Nello.”

  “But Terror! You are the ruler! If anything should happen to you…”

  “Then the rulership will revert to you. But nothing will, Nello! Nothing until I see for myself that my child is safe. One guard is sufficient. We have no idea what type of people we will meet. They may be spooked by our warriors and seek to do us harm.”

  “It is nature to destroy what we cannot have or understand,” Nello sighed, remembering Zultha and her parents.

  “And I will not see my son savaged more because of me.”

  “Terror!” Nello protested, but he cut her off with a wave.

  Turning to face his mate, Terror had only finality and determination on his face. His mind was set, his course clear.

  “I will go to fetch my son, to protect my son. And may the Creator help any who harms him or stands in my way.”

  This was the legendary warrior standing before her, the man whose exploits needed no embellishment. The man with no equal and no rival. This was Terror, the man whose name made the denizens of evil and injustice quake with fear. This was a father, a father protecting his only child. This was a man.

  “Yes, Terror,” Nello agreed. Nothing would stop him, and she would rather be an aide to him than a hindrance.

  “And I want Overton to accompany us.”

  Again, “Yes, Terror.”

  “Woman, I love you,” he said suddenly, walking over to his wife and running the back of one hand down across her face. “I never stopped, and I always will.”

  “Yes, Terror,” Nello grinned. “And I love you as well.”

  “Good. I know that, but it’s good to hear.”

  * * * * *

  By the door, a servant cowered, listening, but finding nothing worth bringing to her mistress. Maybe better luck with the guards, she thought as she scurried away from the door. But she had to hurry; her time was running out.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Why, Sam I am?” Torn asked, his deep rumbling voice showed confusion as he stared at Sable. “Why not, I am Sam? What green eggs and ham?”

  In the three days since he had awakened, Sable had done her best to teach him this backwards, confusing language. And it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

  He still could not pronounce all of the words correctly; instead of a monotone he was used to, the words were pronounced with emphasis on either the beginning or the ending. And of the men, Jill spoke even stranger, his words almost lilting, almost sung.

  He sighed deeply, but gamely squared his shoulders and faced his teacher. If she wanted him to speak this language, then he would learn. Besides, he needed to communicate while in his new home. For as long as it was safe for him to be there.

  “Because it is,” Sable sighed, brushing her hair off her forehead.

  In the three days since he had awakened, she had begun to doubt her sanity.

  After mumbling in some strange language, he had fallen asleep again and dozed for a few hours, long enough for Jack and Jill to be reassured and to make a trip home. They both had business to attend to, but Jack made sure to drop off a few more articles of clothing along with a stipulation.

  If Sable didn’t want two permanent roommates, she would keep Torn in the house until they could figure out what was to be done.

  Jack still refused to believe the fairy thing, but what other possible explanation could she have for the sudden feelings that she felt around him? It had to be Faeroe glamour.

  “Horny,” Jill told her when she again explained her belief that he was a Faeroe. “Pure horniness. He is a well-built hunk of man,” he sniggered at the dark look on Jack’s face, but laughingly continued. “Not as perfect as Jack, but still nice in his own long-haired, purple-eyed way. He makes you feel lust, lass. So jump on him, ride him to a lather, and we can all go on about the business of finding out what is going on with him.”

  Jill still kept any opinions on Torn’s origin to himself, but just said that the man was one of the good guys and needed to be protected.

  Now as Sable looked at the overgrown baby, he decided Torn needed the protection. From her!

  “Dr. Seuss wrote these books to help children with language…and things like that. And you are learning the language, so he must be right!”

  First, Torn wanted to get up and explore, but he was too weak to do more than stumble around breaking things. Second, he wanted to eat meat.

  He kept trying to sneak off to the cold food holder called a “fridge” when she wasn’t looking, but she always caught him.

  Refrigerators apparently haven’t made their way into the land beneath the hill just yet, Jill decided after the second accident. Torn either ripped the door open, knocking around the glass jars in the door, or slammed it as if the big bad wolf was peeking his head in, trying to take a nip out of him.

  Every time he got caught, Sable had to take the meat away.

  She would not have the crime of corrupting a vegetarian fairy on her hands. It was fresh fruit and vegetables for Torn.

  Then he persisted on learning how to speak as if he were driven by something she couldn’t understand.

  Just earlier, he burst in on her while she was sitting on the toilet, Green Eggs and Ham in hand, and demanded a new lesson.

  Sable kept the stack of children’s books in her house for the pleasure the simple verses and uncluttered illustrations brought to her. But they were also a useful learning tool. Problem was, Torn learned too well.

  Already he had grasped the rudiments of speaking English, how to write the language was something else entirely. But then speaking it was more important than writing it well at this point, speaking and reading.

  Now he sat in the bed where she forced him to stay and blinked down at her with innocent violet eyes, waiting for her to answer his questions.

  “Oh,” he replied, one of her favorite words. “Torn, I am!”

  “Oh dear,” she sighed closing the book as she felt a headache flair up behind her closed eyes. “That’s enough for now, Torn. You need rest.” And I need a break!

  “Neyt…no rest. Learn! Torn, I am, want learn!”

  “If you must,” Sable sighed as she looked around to find something t
hat would occupy his fertile and annoyingly quick mind.

  Then she shook her head. There was no help for it

  “Come on, Torn. Let’s go to my studio.”

  The only way she could get some work done, pay some bills, buy fresh fruits and veggies, buy gas—uh, petrol—for her Harley, was to get to work.

  She watched as he tossed back the blankets and rose to his feet.

  As usual, he was wearing a pair of Jack’s sweats; the pants almost looking like spandex on his muscular body.

  Come to think of it, they looked that tight on Jack! Maybe it was one of Jill’s favorite outfits, she thought with a smile.

  He was wearing a large T-shirt and straining the seams as he moved, but he was decently covered.

  He tilted his head to the side and quietly followed her.

  Sable was always teaching him something new, always teaching him, always the teacher.

  He paused as he remembered that it was her voice that called him back from the brink of destruction as he plummeted through the abyss. Her voice, the one that could teach him how to save himself.

  That thought in the back of his mind, he hurried to follow her, feeling stronger on his legs than ever before, even he had to wonder why.

  With all of the grass that she was feeding him, it was a wonder that he recovered without real meat!

  Running his hands through his tangled curls, he followed Sable as she marched out of the room and traveled down a hall that he had not been through before.

  She paused to open the door, then led him into paradise.

  Paradise had tall sloping ceilings made of glass, letting in the watery light of another Scottish summer day.

  Around the walls were high shelves, shelves stacked with books and strange-looking metal tools.

  There were no rugs on the floor, just the same slippery surface that made up the food room, kitchen floor, he corrected himself.

  There was also a couch and small table towards the back of the room, both sitting on a wonderfully colored rug.

  Then in the center of the room the thing that drew attention, was a large table.

  On this table sat a wide assortment of strange machines. The explorer in him had to find out their uses!

  He hurried past Sable into the room and paused a scant foot away from her worktable.

  There was a wheel of some kind on one side, a tall seat beside it.

  On the table itself was a large covered piece of something, with various sharply pointed tools beside the mass. There was a tall seat in front of the table too, but this had a back to it and was lightly padded. Jars of liquid were off to one side and a stack of cloths on the other.

  “Welcome to my studio,” Sable said quietly, watching Torn examine everything with curious eyes.

  “Studio?” he asked, turning to face her on his socked feet.

  “Studio,” she affirmed. “The place where I work.”

  “Work?” he asked.

  This was the tricky part, how to explain the meaning of the word when he would not understand a word of the explanation.

  “What I do,” she attempted to explain.

  “Sable breathe, do?” he asked, placing his hand on his chest and inhaling deeply. The way she explained the simple bodily function.

  Other functions had been explained by the guys, and took the hands-on approach that they were more capable of giving. Well, that’s what they told her, when the water bottle as substitution for the penis during urination idea was nixed, stomped on, and kicked to the curb.

  Jack, because Jill was unceremoniously denied the pleasure of this trip, took Torn into the bathroom and showed him how to use the facilities.

  Blushing deeply, Torn exited the room with a formal understanding of toilets and bodily functions in this realm, which he was happy to see were not much different than the practices at his home.

  “Just like showing a child,” Jack said to the disappointed and quite put-upon looking Jill. “Only he picked it up on the first try.”

  Jill harrumphed and went to stand beside Sable, where he was trusted to behave, he declared, swearing that Jack had to make his dismissal up to him at a later date.

  Jack and Jill had left with huge grins on their faces, and looking lighter and happier than Sable had ever seen them.

  “Not quite,” Sable said pulling, herself away from that, uh, interesting memory and facing Torn. “Neyt,” she said, remembering his word for no. It almost sounded Russian or German.

  “No?” he asked, raising one eyebrow and tilting his head to the side.

  “I sculpt,” she tried again, but noting the deeper confusion on his face.

  Shrugging, she pulled the cloth off of her most recent work, and smiled as he took in a deep breath of air, awe written all over his face.

  BLAM!

  She screamed as his fist came plunging down on the clay, destroying a week’s worth of work!

  “Torn!” she shrieked, as she lunged for his arm to stop the horror, the destruction, the total annihilation of her sculpture, but alas, she moved a bit too late.

  “Nevina!” he called out. Demon!

  “Torn!” she wailed, wrapping her body in desperation around his plunging arm, trying to stop him.

  But with one arm he swept her behind him and kept on with the total annihilation, as if it was Carthage and nothing but total destruction would appease.

  “No, Torn! Stop!” Sable wailed, almost in tears as she watched her masterpiece, her baby being destroyed.

  “Sable.” Torn gasped as he finally stopped beating the lump of funny flesh that the nevina was forming from and backed her to safety.

  Unleashing a tendril of energy, he probed the mass for any lingering signs of magical life.

  Finding none, he turned to Sable, a wide smile on his face.

  He had smote the evil nevina, had saved untold lives from the free-flowing bit of wild demon magic that sought to consume the flesh of those around it.

  He never even saw the punch coming.

  In an instant, Torn found himself lying flat on his back on the cold tile floor. Surprise written clearly on his face, he looked up at the furious red-haired woman.

  Twice, he thought. Twice, I have been felled by a red-haired female, and it has got to stop!

  “Sable?” he asked, a look of confusion and hurt on his face as he tried to blink the stars out of his eyes.

  For a little thing, she sure did pack a wallop!

  “My work!” she screamed as his eye turned red and the tender skin surrounding it began to throb and puff up. “My work is destroyed, you…you, long-haired idiot! What did you do that for?”

  She stood above him, arms akimbo, chest heaving with the force of her anger. Her eyes flashed down at him, daring him to move, least she plunge another fist into his to his other eye, decorating it like the first.

  “Nevina?” he asked, nodding to the rubble that was once a half-formed sculpture. “Bad?”

  Another one of the words that he still struggled with.

  “No!” she bellowed, tossing her head back and glaring at the not quite sun that tried to shine through the glass. “Sculpture! My work!”

  Striding over to a bookshelf, she pulled down a small stature of a woman cradling a child.

  “I make!” she said, pointing to the wreck of her masterpiece, then to the small sculpture in her hands.

  “Sable make?” he said, confused.

  Sable was calling forth nevina? That just didn’t seem possible. She had no ability to pull that type of dark magic. If she had, his senses would have picked up on it.

  He turned a small probe in the direction of the small woman in her arms and felt…nothing. It wasn’t real.

  “Sable make!” he said suddenly as comprehension dawned.

  Then he turned to the table in horror.

  “Sable make! Torn, I am…no make.”

  “Destroy!” she corrected. “Torn destroyed it!”

  Then she felt the beginnings of guilt seep its way int
o her anger. He was still sitting on the floor, looking so horrified and embarrassed, that she felt her anger begin to melt away.

  “It’s okay, Torn,” she sighed as she replaced the statue and walked over to him.

  He looked wearily up at her, expecting nothing less than a full thrashing for destroying her work. If she had been making another person as skillfully as the small woman on the shelf, he deserved nothing less.

  Pulling himself to his knees, he bowed his head and waited for the punishment to begin.

  He had not taken this stance before, not since he was a child with his tutor, but he remembered how to make his penance.

  “Torn?” Sable asked as she watched him prostrate himself before her, tensing his muscles as if waiting for a blow. “Torn, get up!”

  “Neyt. Torn, I am, make…bad. Sable…fix?” he questioned, ready to take his punishment.

  “Torn. Get up.” Sable urged, reaching down to grip his arm and tugging.

  Now she really felt bad. Did he expect some sort of corporal punishment from an honest mistake? Mistake my ass, part of her mind wondered. He destroyed a week’s worth of work!

  Mistake, the other half, the glamourized part, argued. Because there was no way she would have forgiven even her own mother if she had willfully destroyed one of her pieces. It had to be Faeroe glamour, but he was sincere in his apology. Hell, he was offering her a pound of his flesh. Not the flesh she would have liked to pound, but he was offering.

  Maybe the glamour was not of his doing. Maybe he really was sent for her, her responsibility, the…answer to her prayers?

  Watching him, she realized that she had never been happy with that particular piece. She had a show to put on soon, but she was dragging her feet when it came to the work itself. Maybe he was sent to be her inspiration, her muse!

  The more she thought of it, the more the idea had merit. He was sent forth for her to sculpt.

  Hey, the theme was mythical creatures, and she had her very own breathing myth standing, uh, kneeling before her.

  “Torn, I could kiss you!” she shouted as she dropped to her knees beside him and grabbed his face between her hands.

  He cocked his head to the side, wondering when the punishment would start, when she clamped her lips to his and laid the most powerful, the most energetic, the most arousing kiss on his mouth.