DarkWind: 2nd Book, WindDemon Trilogy by Charlotte Boyett-Compo Read Free Book Online

came.
    And that time came sooner than we expected.
    The very next night, with the help of the Princess Raphaella, Khiershon Cree, Iyan McGregor, and three members of the crew that had crashed on Amazeen nine Solar Passings earlier, escaped on board a Diabolusian transport bound for its home world. It would be morning before Cree would be missed and another day before the warrant for his arrest was issued. By then, he and his entourage, including the princess, were long gone.
    It has been five years since last we saw him, but word has come to us that he has taken the bait we set for him. He will journey to the old abandoned FSK-14 where he has been told he will find one of his bloodbrothers, Kaelan, who was transported to the space station and left there to die. (Note: We have not yet found the other five Reaper survivors: the two sets of twins, Sajin and Aidan, Rylan and Braiden, and the youngest Kaelan, but we will and we will dispose of them in the same manner planned for the eldest, Khiershon.)
     A bounty party is being dispatched to take Khiershon. We will take with us a generous portion of triso, known in our world as tenerse, to control him, for that is the only way now that he has reached his full power as Dearg Duls.
    Once we have him under our authority, he will be taken to the Land of Shadows and there questioned as to the whereabouts of the Princess Raphaella and the others. If he will not tell us, he will be decapitated, his body burned and the ashes scattered to the Four Winds upon the plateau, but not before we have taken from him forcibly the seed needed to create life. Between the twelve of us, at least one is bound to breed the warrioress our Queen envisioned.
    Tomorrow will see us at FSK-14 and I will write no more until he has either given us what we seek or is dead.
     

Chapter Four
     
    Caitlin leaned back in her chair. “He made them take the hemlock,” she said. “Somehow he used his psychic ability to make them drink the poison.”
    “Looks that way to me,” Atherton responded from her place beside Khiershon Cree. She stared at the livid bruises on his handsome face. “They got what they deserved.”
    Caitlin looked up, staring blindly at her computer monitor. “They tortured him and he made them commit suicide.”
    “Do you blame him?”
    Caitlin shook her head. “No, I don’t blame him.” She drew in a long breath, and then exhaled slowly. “I don’t blame him at all.”
    “Did you notice the tattoo on his left pectoral?” Atherton inquired. She was lightly tracing the stylized Reaper image with a fingertip. “It must have been burned into his flesh with a laser.”
    “I saw it,” Caitlin answered.
    “Dr. Kelly?” the voice on Com-Link inquired in an urgent tone.
    “Aye?” Caitlin responded tiredly.
    “You’d better come to the bridge ASAP, Ma’am,” Dixon told her.
    Caitlin sighed. “On my way.” She looked around at Cathy Atherton and frowned sharply. “Do you think you can keep your hands off him, Catt Le?”
    Atherton grinned at her. “Nope.”
    “Try, okay?”
    “No guarantees, lady.”
    On the way up to the bridge, Caitlin found herself acutely uneasy. There was an underlying nervousness that had been building for several days and it concerned her. She knew the sleeplessness had something to do with it, but she suspected the majority of the edginess had to do with her patient.
    The bridge was alive with activity when the titanium doors of the elevator shushed open. Crewmen were rushing about, their faces pale and tight. Caitlin was about to stop one and ask why when the warning klaxon began to sound. She stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth sagging open.
    The Captain began barking orders for weapons system activation. “Shields up!” he yelled, his lips trembling. “Torpedoes lock on target as soon as they are within range!”
    “Who is within range?” Caitlin managed to ask a passing yeoman. “What’s going on?”
    “We were told to stand down,” the