Free A Reaper's Love (WindWorld) by Charlotte Boyett-Compo

to itch. His entire body ached from
the flood of alien chemicals emanating from the evil thing. His head throbbed
unmercifully and he was sick to his stomach. He began to writhe against his
bonds. He drew his lips back from his teeth and growled.
    “Release him,” Sharif ordered, raising his
voice for the first time. “Take him back to his cell. Quickly! ”
    Fingers fumbled at his restraints but Dixon
was rapidly losing all sense of the here and now. He was shivering
uncontrollably and his body was one giant pulse of energy and need.
Comprehension began to set in as he was dragged into his cell and thrown to the
floor. His body was rapidly changing. Fur was sprouting from his naked arms.
Claws shot from his fingertips as his hand became a giant paw. The guards were
scrambling to get away from him. One almost reached the door before Dixon
sprang on him and brought him down, burying newly erupted fangs deep into the
screaming man’s neck.
    “Close the door! Close the door !” The Fiend shrieked.
    Dixon tore at the guard’s neck—shaking his
head like the deadly feline he was fast becoming—and tore off a huge chunk of
the man’s flesh as blood gushed from the wound. The guard continued to scream,
to thrash and for the first time Dixon heard the strange hissing-snarl coming
from his own throat as he bit harder into the guard’s neck until he heard bone
break. There was one last wet, gurgling sound and the guard went limp beneath
him.
    Throwing back his head, Dixon released a
long scream of rage then snapped his head to the glass window in the cell door,
blood flinging from his whiskers. He bared his bloody fangs and hissed.
    Dixon Coulter was even less human than he
had been before the Conversion.
    He had become a new class of Panthera
Reaper, the first of his kind.
    * * * * *
    Sheik Sharif Hassan had graduated with
honors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With a doctorate degree
in chemical engineering he had gone home to command the Dhaween, the Somalia -based militant group.
    Though he hated the Transitional Federal
Government of Somalia—using guerilla and terrorist warfare in an attempt to
destroy it—he had an even stronger loathing for the United States and its
allies, the British. Like most of his fighters, he had little desire for global
jihad. What he wanted most was to bring the U.S. to its knees. In that effort
his army of clan-based insurgents and terrorists had one major objective. They
wanted to capture American Christians, aid workers, journalists, and military
personnel and execute them. They would then leave their tortured, mangled and
beheaded bodies as a warning to those who dared oppose the Dhaween. He was
waging a war against his enemies that was meant to destroy morale and cause
embarrassment as well as anger. An angry man was a careless man and the angrier
the enemy, the better the chance he will make a mistake.
    “Spectacular,” Sharif said of the savage
animal glaring at him from the cell. He never flinched when the animal threw
itself at the door and the snarling, hissing creature clawed furiously at the
titanium panel. “What made this man different than the others into whom we
transferred Reynaud’s hellion?”
    “I do not know,” The Fiend replied.
    “Find out,” Sharif ordered. “If we are to
build an army of Reapers, we must have the blueprints, don’t you agree?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then see to it,” Sharif snapped. “We know
the creature is immune to poison. See if the man is. I want to know how
powerful he is as a Reaper.”
    “I will need to wait until he is out of
Conversion,” The Fiend said.
    Sharif gave the scientist a look he hoped
conveyed the ridiculousness of the statement.
    “As you wish, Your Excellency,” The Fiend
said with a slight bow.
    Leaving the odious man at the cell, Sharif
headed for his quarters. For the first time since capturing Taylor Reynaud, he
could see some light at the end of the tunnel. He had known it would