Reaver of Souls Read online

  “Yes,” he replied as she turned to leave the room.

  She never noticed the tall woman hidden just in the entrance of the room, the almost painfully thin body that scurried out of view, then made for the exit of the keep.

  The mistress needs to know, the woman thought as she raced onward. This would please her mightily!

  Chapter Nine

  “Put him on the bed!” Sable croaked as she nervously danced from one foot to the other, her eyes filled with tears and her voice catching. “And be careful!”

  “Take a deep breath, lass,” Jill said as he and Jack both struggled to get the inert weight that was Torn onto the bed. “We can handle the lad.”

  Torn had not moved since the power field evaporated, not even opened his eyes.

  Jack looked down at the face of the man who had leapt into his being, and stripped the scars from his soul. Now he knew what Jill meant by saying that he had been cleansed. Never had he felt so light, buoyant, and yes, so free.

  All of those old memories that were constantly eating at him, giving him nightmares, chasing him from place to place, were but a distant thought now, not even worthy of consideration.

  As he eased his half of the man onto the bed, he wanted to reach down and shake him awake, so that he could thank him.

  “I knew that he was allergic to meat,” Sable wailed as she watched the two men position Torn to their satisfaction. “Faeroes don’t eat meat!”

  “Nonsense,” Jill denied. “If the good Lord didn’t want us to eat meat, then the animals wouldn’t taste and smell so good and come in convenient plastic wrapping.”

  “Jill,” Sable wailed, not understanding his need to joke. “This is serious! Something is wrong with Torn!”

  “Probably all tuckered out, lass,” he replied as he stepped around the bed to envelop Sable in his strong arms. “He probably needs a rest, is all.”

  “But he looks so helpless,” she sniffed, wiping the tears from her face with both hands. “I have never seen him look this way.”

  “You’ve only known him for a few hours,” Jack added.

  “But it feels like forever,” she retorted, narrowing her eyes in the big guy’s direction.

  Jack held up his hands in mock surrender, deciding that it was better to let that line of conversation die.

  “What is wrong with him?” she asked again, pulling free of Jill to sit at Torn’s side.

  Almost lovingly, she ran her hands over his face, easing his creased brow, hoping against hope that her touch could ease the tremors racing through his body.

  “Sable?” Jack called as he settled his hands on her shoulders.

  “Why do I feel as if a piece of me is dying, Jack?” she asked. “Why does it hurt so much and I barely know him? Hell, I can’t even understand him, but I feel as if my future is slipping away.”

  “Maybe you were just meant to be?” Jack asked as he ran a hand through her tousled hair.

  “Or maybe it’s Faeroe glamour,” she sighed. “Faeroes have the ability to enslave the human heart.”

  “Torn wouldn’t…” Jill began a heated defense, but Sable cut him off.

  “Maybe it’s unintentional, Jill. Maybe it happens because they need a guide to help them on their quest. But I know that I have never felt like this about any other man that I’ve met, and that includes some that I have screwed into my mattress!”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, love,” Jill laughed as he joined them on the bed. “You just hadn’t met the right man yet.”

  “And I still refuse to believe that that man is a Faeroe,” Jack added.

  “But you felt what he did! You saw!” Sable argued.

  “Yes I did, and if he wakes up, I will thank him most graciously, but until he tells me otherwise, I refuse to believe that he is from some magical plane where seven foot immortals rule!”

  Sable sucked in her comment, knowing that she was wasting her breath with Jack. But she knew what he was. She felt it in her heart. She now knew that she had one. He had given her that, and that was truly a miracle.

  As she looked down at the pale trembling man, she was certain she had a heart.

  It was now breaking.

  Chapter Ten

  Torn swam in a sea of darkness and confusion. Where was he? He felt lightheaded and cold, the room was spinning, twisting, and he felt cast adrift. He would have been completely at ease in this world of darkness, of seclusion, but for the painful lump in his chest, burning at the core of him.

  Forcing himself to concentrate, he moaned and tried to make himself find his bearings, find a center, find a place of balance. But the room was spinning too wildly; the fall was too steep.

  He groaned as he spiraled out of control, only to be brought to some semblance of stillness as the pain suddenly exploded.

  “Why?” he screamed out as he tumbled to a sudden jarring halt.

  “Why not?” came the reply in a voice that he knew all too well.

  “You!” he hissed as he opened his eyes to find himself floating neatly in a small round room. Between him and the owner of that accursed voice, stood a deep abyss, far deeper and blacker than the one he had just journeyed through.

  “You and me!” the voice added as its body stepped into the dim light of the room, just at the lip of the abyss.

  There, in all of his dark glory, stood the Reaver. Tall and imposing with a massive wingspan and silky black feathers, the Reaver looked like some dark angel of destruction, come to reap a terrible price for the small happiness that Torn had embraced since coming to this plane. The deep purple eyes glinted as they examined his other self; his talons clicked against each other as the near midnight skin easily showcased the muscle he controlled with such ease. He stood naked, in all of his glory, as he examined the husk of the man he inhabited.

  “What more do you want?” Torn growled as he floated near his nemesis, and nearer that dark abyss that was more frightening than his sudden and unplanned freefall.

  Ignoring the question, the Reaver pointed to the abyss. “Do you know what that is?” he asked, his three-toned voice whispering around the room, filling it with a sense of power.

  “Again, I ask, what do you want? Is it not enough that you control my very existence?”

  “The pit?” the Reaver asked again. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Damn the pit!” Torn screamed, identical eyes flashing at the beast that dwelled within. “Damn the pit and damn you!”

  “It is our soul,” the Reaver replied, ignoring Torn’s outburst.

  “It can’t be!” Torn gasped, finally listening to what was being said.

  “It is,” he was assured. “The darkness has nearly consumed us.”

  “But I can take on a limitless supply of evil without turning! The only danger to me is myself!”

  “Exactly,” the voice agreed as the Reaver spread his wings then folded them neatly against his back. “You are the one hurting us!”

  “Me?” Torn asked, looking incredulously at the beast, the monster. “I caused none of this! This is the hatred and the evil that I absorb to ease the suffering of others! That is from the people who are beyond retribution, and I needs must destroy! That is what being who I am causes! This abyss should not be near to overflowing! My core is pure!”

  “Our core is tainted,” the Reaver argued. “Our core is weak. We cannot continue this way for much longer. We can not turn evil by what we have taken into ourselves, but we can cease to be.”

  “Impossible!” Torn hotly denied, floating across the abyss to get into the monster’s face.

  “Our inner core is flawed, weak, diminishing. You have caused this, and soon, we shall perish.”

  “No!” Torn hissed, glaring at the creature that he could so easily become.

  “Yes,” he countered. “Would I lie to myself?”

  “Why?” Torn finally asked.

  “We have no agreement, no accord,” the Reaver explained. “We have no love in our core.”

 
“I love many things!” he denied suddenly, but considered the Reaver’s words.

  “How do we have love, love for another, when we cannot love…ourselves?”

  Torn froze, as he stared at the suddenly sad violet eyes. “How can I love what I am, what I have become?” he finally asked, his voice ragged and torn. “How can I love what has caused me no end of grief?”

  “Maybe when we have that answer,” he replied, “maybe we can love ourselves.”

  Torn looked down at the pit, watched as the darkness grew.

  “How?” he finally asked.

  “Reave thyself?” the multi-toned voice asked as the Reaver followed suit and looked deep into the abyss.

  “Impossible!” Torn snorted. “And you and I both know it.”

  “Then find someone to show us the way.”

  Torn looked into the face of his monster, the beast that he two-fisted with daily, and all at once noticed that it was sad.

  “How?” he asked again.

  “Acceptance?” the Reaver asked, the voice sounding so very tired.

  “From who?”

  “The body grows weak,” the Reaver said, neatly avoiding answering the question.

  “The pain?” Torn asked.

  “Inconsequential,” he answered. “Yet the body grows weak. We must awaken.”

  “How?” he asked again.

  “Find someone to show us the way.”

  Then the Reaver was gone, lost in the darkness, and the round room disappeared, leaving him to float weightless once again, cut adrift in a sea of darkness.

  He groaned as he suddenly found himself again spiraling out of control. Falling deeper and deeper into a fathomless night, twirling dizzily at a high speed.

  He moaned partly in fear, and partly in surprise as he lost all sense of direction. He needed to fall, but fall up! Was that possible? Where was up? How could he make it stop? Who would show him the way? Did he care? Then he heard her, like a shaft of pure white light in his ocean of despair.

  He heard her.

  “Torn, please don’t die!”

  * * * * *

  It had been two days since Torn had lapsed into this uneasy coma. No one knew what to do.

  Jack and Jill had remained at Sable’s side, helping her tend the weakened man, turning his shivering body, keeping the blankets piled on to raise his temperature, but to no avail.

  He was slipping away from her.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jill said as he gave her shoulder a squeeze, forcing her head under his chin. “Nothing that you could have done would cause this.”

  “But I fed him meat,” she wailed, all that she could think of to say.

  “Uh, be that as it may, I doubt a little pig would lay the man this low,” Jill said, struggling to keep a laugh in.

  “What makes you so joyful?” she nearly snarled at the man, trying to pull away from him. “And let me go before I pop you one!”

  “You beating on my man?” Jack asked, walking into the room and staring at them in mock disapproval after taking a quick look at Torn.

  Still no change.

  “Only because he’s asking for it.” she sniffed.

  “Yeah, he’s a bit into pain, but as long as he is on the receiving end, I generally give him what he wants.”

  Both Jill and Sable turned to look at the taciturn—well, usually taciturn—man.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You made a joke!” Jill breathed. “In all of my days of walking with you, mon, you have never, ever made a joke! I’ll be gobsmacked!”

  Jack shrugged off the commentary, but blushed a little as his eyes met Sable’s. “I feel…good,” he admitted, looking ruefully at the bed and the man who had seemed to work a miracle.

  Sable shook her head. This had been a week for miracles. Maybe she would find one more.

  “Torn,” she said again, taking his hand as Jill rose from the bed to stand beside his partner. “Please don’t die. I think I may need you.”

  For days she lived with this fear, with this great sense of loss. She knew in her heart that if she didn’t reach him soon, there would be nothing left to reach. What caused this, she didn’t know, but how she wished she did.

  She was a scrapper, as Jill would say, a fighter. But in this case, she didn’t know who or what she was fighting. If she knew, she could have handled it better, made plans, designed a strategy. But all she had was the almost lifeless body of the man who could have meant so much to her.

  That loss, the loss of future possibilities, made her heart ache and her soul burn with regret. He had been in her life such a short time, yet she wanted…no, she needed more.

  But then, just as suddenly as he’d collapsed, his eyes flew open, his violet gaze confused and dazed.

  “Torn!” she called, and ignored the sharp gasp that came from behind her.

  All of her attention was focused on the man, the Faeroe that had suddenly become such a part of her.

  “Sable?” he asked, blinking rapidly to clear his eyes. “Johen compt opt wlaee.” Instinctively the words sprang from his lips. He really didn’t know where that had come from, but they felt so right to say.

  He gazed at her, her eyes red and swollen, her lips trembling, her precious tears running down her face, for him. She had called him back. It was her voice, sweet as a honey treat, yet strong as the Reaver, that had lent him an anchor, given him a tether line to grasp onto, to pull himself out of the deep pit in which he had fallen.

  Her eyes stared in amazed joy as he focused in on her, noticing her red hair, but for once finding the color comforting.

  He blinked weakly again, and repeated the words. This time, struggling to understand why they felt so right, but knowing that it was what he had to say. “Johen compt opt wlaee.” Show me the way.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Where is he?”

  Zultha’s low voice hissed at the servant who brought her the news.

  Torn had been found, and even better, the Lady Nello was traveling to join her son, or at least she assumed as much.

  “That, I do not know, Lady,” the cowering woman stuttered. “She spoke with her father, then she created the vortex. It leads to her son.”

  “Yes, she would rush to the half-breed’s side,” Zultha murmured as she paced the confines of her hidey-hole.

  “Lady, she appears to be distressed,” the servant added, hoping to ease the Lady’s temper. She had thought that news of Torn’s location would cheer up her mistress, but instead it made her sink deeper into…madness?

  Zultha smiled, her hair a tangled mess around her head, her clothes travel-stained and worn. She no longer resembled the grand Lady about to marry into the most powerful family in the land. She looked like an unkempt urchin ready to beg for scraps…or kill for them.

  “Distressed?” She raised one red eyebrow and peered at the trembling woman. “Why?”

  “I do not know, Lady,” the woman added, calming a bit when Zultha made no further attempt to climb the walls.

  “You do not know?” She laughed a bit, her eyes twinkling with merry laugher as she viewed the woman kneeling at her feet. “You do not know?”

  She turned and walked a few steps away.

  The servant felt a smile tugging at her lips, but was hard-pressed to say exactly why.

  “You do not know?” Zultha laughed, tossing her head back in her amusement.

  “No, Lady,” the woman sighed. The danger had passed. The Lady’s laughter had ever been infectious and now was no different. So what if her parents were locked away and suffering and she was banished to this dreary cavern. The Lady could always make those around her laugh.

  “Incompetence!” Zultha suddenly screamed, swirling around in a cloud of tattered, stained cloth to confront the suddenly silent woman. “Ignorance! Stupidity! Why am I surrounded by bunglers, idiots, and fools?”

  The servant slowly, almost as if she feared being knocked back down, rose to her feet and took a step back, trembling at the
insane fury that twisted her Lady’s face. She stumbled and ended up back on the floor.

  “You will take your skinny hide back to that castle, and I don’t care if you must screw the whole garrison. You will bring me back the information that I require, or the torture that I shall put you through will make the Magic Realm’s ruler seem like a tame kitten!”

  She crouched low and stalked the white-faced woman, who was slowly crawling backwards crablike, across the floor, away from this deranged lunatic.

  “Are my words not heard, you worthless sack of skin and hair? Find out where he is! Find out who he is with! Find out if he is still alive, so that I may kill him!”

  Her breath panted heavily in her chest as she loomed over the frightened woman, spittle flying from her mouth to sprinkle the trembling servant’s face.

  “Bring me what I require about Torn, or I swear by all the knowledge that my family holds dear, you will not survive to see another sunset! You have two days!”

  “T-t-two days?” the woman stumbled to her feet as she skirted further backwards, dignity long tossed aside in favor of salvation.

  “Two days, starting now,” Zultha growled as she turned again and stomped over to a large boulder, her new throne in her kingdom of madness and tears.

  She glanced out of the corner of her eye as the servant backed out of the chamber, even now showing her the respect she deserved as a princess.

  “I am ever a good ruler,” she muttered as she ran her hands through her matted hair, wincing as tangles twirled around her fingers. “But I do need better help.”

  Chuckling under her breath, she lay back against the wall, eyes closed and lips parted in a smile.

  “First,” she whispered to herself, “I’ll need a new traveling gown, one encrusted with jewels. Then maybe a steed to take me there in style. And I need a new hairstyle. I wonder which style works best for skinning men alive? Or beheading. No! I have it! I will cut off his wings and decorate the back of my new cloak. Demon feathers will be all the rage!”