Charlotte Boyett-Compo- WIND VERSE- Hunger's Harmattan Page 7

  “We have not mated yet,” Ailyn said.

  “Aye, but you have,” Tariq said, and when Ailyn would have protested, the Prime Reaper moved his hand from the younger man’s shoulder to over Ailyn’s heart. “You have mated here, my friend. She is yours and you have claimed her as such. You will no more allow another man to touch her now than you would willingly put your neck in the lunette of a guillotine.” He patted Ailyn’s chest twice then removed his hand, got up and headed back to his pallet and the woman whose sweet body waited for his.

  Ailyn was still sitting there beside the waterfall as the first fingers of dawn stretched toward the heavens. Weary and no closer to making a decision than he had been during his vigil beside the waterfall, he went back to Tariq’s hut and entered the room set aside for Shanee and him. His lady was lying with her back to the door as he slipped onto the pallet beside her and put his arm over her, drawing her to him. The moment her body touched his, the decision was made.

  “I missed you,” she said. “I don’t like being apart from you.”

  “Nor I from you,” he said, his warm breath tickling the hairs at the base of her neck.

  “Then what are we going to do about it, ehemann?” she asked.

  “We,” he said, yawning before he could continue, “are going to go back to Riezell.”

  She turned over beneath his arm and met his gaze. “Truly?”

  He reached up to cup her cheek. “I can’t fight this feeling growing inside me, ionúin, and I don’t wish to. I sat out there all night thinking about what Tariq must have gone through when he was separated all those years from Bahiya and I knew I’d never survive such a parting without losing what little mind I have left.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. “So you will have to be content to keep me in the style to which I intend to become accustomed.”

  A slow, happy smile stretched over Shanee’s face and she caught his thumb between her teeth. “Aye?”

  “Aye,” he said, “but…”

  Her smile wavered. “But?”

  “I don’t do housework.”

  She giggled.

  “And there’s the problem of my mother,” he said, all traces of humor gone from his amber eyes. “She’ll learn I’m there and she’ll do everything in her power to get to me.”

  “With any luck, she’ll have gone into the arms of the Gatherer before we get back,” Shanee said, hoping that would be the case.

  He yawned again.

  “You get some sleep,” she told him, sitting up. “You don’t get enough as it is.” She’d slept beside him every night and he’d tossed and turned, mumbled in his sleep, and gotten up in the middle of the night to sit outside the cave more than he’d slept.

  “My kind doesn’t sleep very well,” he told her.

  “Well, try,” she ordered. “If you’re to beat Tariq in a swimming contest, you need to be at your best!”

  * * * * *

  Ailyn sat down on the shore of Lake Briza and shook his head. After five tries, he now knew there was no way he’d ever be able to best the Prime Reaper in swimming or diving. Tariq was a veritable dolphin with the grace and power of that commanding creature.

  “Cheer up, ehemann,” Shanee told him as she laced her arm through his and leaned against his shoulder. She lowered her voice. “Your cock is bigger than his.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time I get into a pissing contest with him,” Ailyn grumbled, petulantly tossing a stick into the bubbling waters of the lake.

  “And there is something else to remember.”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “You have me and he doesn’t.”

  Ailyn glanced at her. “Aye, well, there is that,” he conceded, and lay down on his back with his knees drawn up, his breechclout covering that part of his anatomy Shanee knew he kept hidden from everyone else’s eyes.

  The sun was warm and most of the villagers were cavorting in the lake. Those men from R-9 who had yet to test Tariq’s reassurance that the water would not harm them lazed about the shore looking longingly out over the dark blue depths of the lake.

  “What is it again they call going naked?” Shanee asked.

  “Sky clad,” he replied. He had laced his fingers over his taut belly and was staring up at the leafy branches above them. “Why?”

  “They are so beautiful,” she said. “So stunningly perfect.” She was watching the men and women who were not self-conscious about their nudity. Many of the concubines who had come to Theristes to mate with the Reapers had embraced the habit readily.

  Ailyn lifted his head and looked in the direction his lady was staring and grunted, lowering his head once more. “Stop looking at that warrior’s cock or I’ll relieve him of it. He won’t be so beautiful or perfect then.”

  “Jealous?” she teased, stretching out beside him.

  “Of that puny dangly?” he scoffed then snorted. “Not gods-be-damned likely.”

  “Isn’t it true that it isn’t the size of the weapon but how a man wields it that matters?” she countered as she trailed her fingers up and down his bare arm.

  “I suppose so if you prefer a blunt paring knife to a well-honed dagger,” he replied.

  They were quiet for a moment then he turned his head to look at her. “I am nearing my time to Transition, ionúin. When the day draws near, I will go back to the cave and you will stay here.”

  “Why can’t I go back with you?”

  His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Because I never want you to see me like that, Shanee. Never. I hate what I am with every fiber of my being. I loathe this demoness within me. Every time I feel Her move, another part of my soul dies. It is an ugly, evil thing I am and I will not have you seeing me in that way.”

  “You are not evil,” she said, her fingers wrapping around his biceps. “You are not what is inside you, Ailyn.”

  “You have no idea what I am,” he said. He sat up to plow a hand through his wet hair. He grimaced, tugging at the length he was beginning to hate with a passion. He said as much to her.

  “All right,” she said with a sigh, and scrambled to her feet.

  “Where are you going?” he called out.

  “For a pair of scissors,” she muttered.

  He tossed his wet tresses behind him, circling his knees within the perimeter of his arms as he watched Tariq and Bahiya playing in the water. He wished he could be as carefree as Tariq and many of his fellow Reapers, but he could not seem to find the solace they had discovered on Theristes. He turned to look at a few of them.

  Cristiano was an artist and he was painting a canvas of two lush women reclining naked beneath a tree. Damian was also an artist but he worked in wood, carving the most intricate and realistic figurines Ailyn had ever seen. Both men did superb work and were much sought after by the villagers.

  He looked the other way at Gregory who loved to entertain the children—all little boys—with his sleight of hand that amazed even the adults. Joshua was an acrobat and never failed to have a crowd of spectators cheering his nimble moves. Marcus was an artist like Cristiano and Damian but his expertise was in fashioning complex knotwork that was truly spectacular.

  Ailyn sighed. The men he was watching had something they could do, some contribution they could make to the village. He—on the other hand—had no skills other than his swimming abilities and the warrior tactics that had graduated him at the top of his class at the Academy.

  “Okay,” Shanee said as she came back and plopped down behind him. “How short do you want it?”

  He mentally shook himself, burying his thoughts and the memories of his first Transition. “What?” he asked.

  “How much do you want me to cut off?”

  “To here,” he said, putting a hand to the nape of his neck. He twisted his head around to give her a warning look. “You aren’t going to butcher it are you?”

  “You never know,” she said, and put her hand on the top of his head to turn it away so she could put the scissors to
the heavy, wet mass.

  “I don’t want to look like Jared,” he said, staring at the man whose hair looked as though it had been frothed with an eggbeater then pomaded with glue.

  “Then you’d best be nice to me this eve, warrior,” she told him.

  “I’ll stick my fingers so deep inside you…”

  “Hush!” she said, her face flaming for two men were walking close by and had heard him. They turned to give her an appraising look.

  “Eyes ahead or you’ll lose them!” Ailyn growled at them. He flinched as the scissors clicked together and he felt his shorn hair fall down his back. He swallowed, hoping she wasn’t going to take her embarrassment out on him. As more hair fell—one long tress over his shoulder—he picked it up and looked at it, twisting it this way and that like a switch.

  “Sorry I’m cutting it?” she inquired.

  “I’ll let you know when I see what it looks like,” he replied.

  “Hey, I like it, Ailyn!” Jared called out and stuck his thumb into the air.

  “Shanee!” Ailyn gasped. He tried to turn around but she swiveled his head straight again.

  “Oh be still or it won’t be even,” she warned him.

  He muttered beneath his breath but when she thrust a mirror in front of him and he saw what she’d done, his eyebrows shot up.

  “Well?” she prodded when he said nothing.

  Ailyn turned his head to both sides. “I look just like my father,” he whispered.

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  He stared at his reflection. His mother had always insisted his hair be shorn military fashion, close to his scalp, and he had hated that skinhead look. On R-9, he didn’t see a mirror for close to twenty years but his jailers kept his hair trimmed close to his ears for sanitary reasons. When he’d arrived on Theristes, he’d let it grow—just because he could. But seeing himself now and realizing just how much he looked like his father, he wasn’t sure how he felt.

  “I don’t know, Shanee,” he answered honestly. “A little of both, I think.”

  “Go take a dip in the water to get the stray hairs off you else they’ll be prickling you all day,” she told him.

  He didn’t question her order but got up—running both hands through his shortened hair—and waded into the lake.

  “You are very good for him, Shanee.”

  She looked around to see Tariq. Thankfully he had a towel wrapped around his privates as he squatted down beside her. “I wish I could take the shadows from his eyes,” she admitted.

  “That will come in time,” Tariq said. “He is nearing Transition. Did he tell you?”

  “Aye,” she said, nodding. Her eyes were on her lover as he did a powerful butterfly stroke through the water. “He said I was to stay here.” She let out a long breath. “He won’t even let me see him take Sustenance or the tenerse I know he injects each morning.”

  “It is because it shames him that he must do that in order to thrive,” Tariq declared. “He sees it as a weakness and he does not want you to view him in that light.”

  “I don’t care about him being a Reaper,” she said, stabbing the scissors into the ground. “I don’t.”

  “I understand that but he doesn’t.”

  “He won’t try,” she snapped.

  Tariq shrugged. “Shanee, to him being a Reaper is a foul, evil thing. He cannot see past the creature he becomes to the soul within the beast. He cannot see the good that could come from having powers such as his. He struggles with it but until he learns to accept what he is, not to rail against it but acknowledge it, he will never know peace. Of all the men who have had this done to them, he is the only one who is fighting it so fiercely.”

  Tears filled Shanee’s eyes at her lover’s pain. “How can I help him accept it?”

  “I don’t think you can. I don’t think anyone can. He must do that on his own.”

  Ailyn looked up to see the Prime Reaper sitting close to his woman and a sharp dart of fury pierced through him. With his jaw flexed, he struck out for the shore, his eyes blazing.

  Tariq shook his head. “Be understanding with him, Shanee. He is about to let loose a portion of the beast he tries so hard to contain.” He got up and walked away before Ailyn could leave the water.

  “Tariq!” Ailyn bellowed, and every villager stilled, every eye turned their way, every breath—especially so Shanee’s—held.

  “Aye, my friend?” Tariq asked, stopping and turning to face him.

  “I am requesting a Ceangal on the day I return from my punishment,” Ailyn stated.

  Tariq frowned. “It is not a punishment, Ailyn, and well you know that.”

  “I want the Ceangal!” Ailyn insisted. “It is my right and I am demanding it!”

  “What is a Ceangal?” Shanee asked as she looked from one man to another.

  “It is what my people call a Joining,” Tariq said. He locked gazes with her. “Is that what you wish as well, Shanee?”

  “I wish it!” Ailyn shouted. “And I will have it!”

  “Unless your lady agrees to it, there will be no Ceangal, Ailyn,” Tariq snapped.

  “And until you ask her in the correct, time-honored way,” Bahiya said as she came to stand beside her mate, “I will advise her not to agree.” She lifted her chin and folded her arms over her chest.

  Ailyn’s hands were opening and closing at his sides. His face was hard with fury, his eyes sparking amber fire. His breathing was shallow and quick and a vein throbbed in his temple. For a moment he glared at Bahiya then expelled a long, irritated breath out through his nose. “What do I need to do?” he asked.

  “You need to get down on your knee, take her hand and ask her in the way she deserves to be asked,” Bahiya told him. “She needs to hear the words from you that you will love, honor and protect her.”

  Other than the roar of the waterfall in the background, there was not another sound being made there at the lake. Every villager was staring intently at Ailyn, awaiting his response to the Prime Reaper’s lady’s demand. Though he was well-liked by the villagers, none knew him as well as Tariq did and most were wary of his refusal to embrace what he had become.

  Shanee met Ailyn’s gaze. Her lower lip was tucked between her teeth. This was something she had never thought would happen to her. Joining with a man—not even Rory Quinn—had not been on her list of things to do in her lifetime. Though she had loved the Phantom, he had broken her heart and she had never thought she would give that heart to anyone else. Yet with Ailyn it was different. It seemed right to Join with him. It seemed natural. It was something she found she wanted very deeply.

  “I love you,” Ailyn told her.

  “If you do, then humble yourself before her,” Bahiya said, “else those are just words and they mean nothing.”

  “Bahiya,” Tariq said in a low voice that only his lady knew was a subtle, gentle warning.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Ailyn came to stand before Shanee. He held his hand out to her and helped her to her feet. When she was standing—her hand in his—he dropped to one knee and brought her hand to his heart.

  “I love you, ionúin,” he said. “I want nothing more than to spend my life beside you. I vow that I will love and honor you, protect and care for you all the hours of our lives. I will stand beside you in good times and in bad, I will respect your goals and your beliefs and I will honor them as I honor you. I am asking you to be my life-mate, my help-meet as I pledge I will be those things to you.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Will you Join with me, Shanee Iphito?”

  Shanee’s heart was trip hammering in her chest and her throat was clogged with unshed tears, making it impossible for her to speak. She could only nod.

  “Aye?” he asked, his face hopeful.

  She nodded again and when she got the one word out, her voice broke. “Aye.”

  Ailyn shot to his feet and swept her up in his arms, slanting his mouth across hers in a kiss that practically sizzled.
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br />   A resounding cheer went up from the villagers and Bahiya breathed a sigh of relief. She cast her mate an arched look then turned away.

  Two days later Ailyn left the village to go back to the cave alone. For the first time since his first Transition, he did not fear the change but looked forward to it. He wanted it over with so he could return to Shanee and the Ceangal that awaited him.

  Trudging deep into an underground portion of the cave to which he’d never taken Shanee, he was aware of the chill that flushed over his naked body. He had removed his breechclout—his one concession to propriety—for when he shifted into his beastly form, the small strip of clothing would be torn asunder anyway. Barefoot and shivering as he moved farther below the surface, the distant drip of water and squeal of bats caught his attention. He knew the bats would be fleeing his arrival, streaking out through the vents only they could fit through.

  With him he carried a small satchel that contained a vial and vac-syringe of concentrated tenerse and four quart-sized bottles of blood. The blood would keep chilled in a small pool fed by an artesian well whose bubbling waters were ice cold.

  When he reached the seven-foot-round hole that opened into what appeared to be a bottomless expanse, he was beginning to feel the itch, the heat infusing his body that signaled the onset of Transition.

  He took the satchel and set it down beside the incandescent pool. He took out the Sustenance, put the bottles into the water and then went over to squat at the opening of the cavern with its slick, steep walls that were as smooth as glass. He waited until his bones began to pop, his sinews to stretch, his joints creak then he jumped off into space as the first wiry hairs began to sprout on his elongating body. By the time he hit the bottom of the lava tube—landing lithely on his feet—he was more animal than man. By the time he let loose the howl hovering in his throat, he was no longer human and would not be for nearly a week.

  * * * * *

  Shanee hesitated as Bahiya stood cooking their midday meal. She had read the reports of what Transition was like for the men who had been turned into Reapers but reading of it and hearing of it firsthand were two separate things. She ached to know what it was her mate was experiencing at that moment.