Manaconda
An Ellora’s Cave Publication, May 2004
 
Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.
PO Box 787
Hudson, OH 44236-0787
 
ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-931-2
Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):
Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML
 
Sacred Eden © 2004 Sherri L. King
Knight Stalker © 2004 Lora Leigh
Devilish Dot © 2004 Jaid Black
 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.
 
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
 
Edited by Heather Osborn, Kari Berton, Martha Punches.
Cover art by Darrell King.
Sacred Eden
The Horde Wars
Sherri L. King
For Darrell
 
For adventure and for romance…because we all deserve such things...every last one of us.
 
‘Where there is joy, there is creation. Where there is no joy, there is no creation. Know the nature of joy.’ – Upanishads
 
‘The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.’ – Joseph Addison
 
Prologue
 
Obsidian stroked the silken dip of his wife’s naked spine as she slumbered peacefully on her belly in their enormous bed. She was so beautiful that she literally stole his breath. He’d thought her sublime when they’d first met, fighting in the confines of her human home. But it seemed that every day since, he’d discovered something new, something even more incredibly lovely about her.
And she was his. All his. A breathtaking mate and warrior to stand at his side, his perfect match in every way. He couldn’t believe his good fortune.
He lowered his hand and stroked the downy soft seam of her bottom.
“Mmmm…,” she sighed deeply in her sleep and snuggled deeper into the mattress.
Obsidian smiled and bent his head to kiss her shoulder, nudging the stubborn coverlet, still covering Cady’s legs, down about their feet as he did so. The last barrier between his wife’s gloriously nude form and his hungry eyes was no more. Cady’s caramel-colored skin gleamed in the dim firelight, making him clench his teeth against the urge to ravish her in a wild, animalistic mating. But the time for such wanton play would come later. For now, he would seduce her thoroughly, so that she became liquid need in his arms.
Gently, so as not to wake her fully just yet, he moved to straddle her legs and palm her buttocks in his hands. Her full, rounded lushness overflowed his grasp and he nearly growled with his raging need. He’d always adored her ass.
“Sid,” she breathed. Waking, as her own need for him rose with each gentle squeeze his broad hands visited upon her. “Whatter you doin’?” she mumbled, still befuddled with sleep.
“What do you think I’m doing, baby?” he murmured, pressing a heated kiss into the crook of her neck. The scent of her thick braid of hair intoxicated him to the point of madness and he inhaled deeply, unable to fight the temptation. “So sweet,” he murmured, and kissed her neck again.
She sighed deeply beneath him, her growing arousal evident as he stroked her. “That feels wonderful,” she whispered.
“There is no need to be so quiet, love.”
“I don’t want to wake the baby.” She squirmed beneath him as he delicately probed a finger into the valley of her ass.
“Armand is hardly a baby now,” he reminded her. Their son was four years old going on twenty, and as precocious as any Shikar child could—and should—be. But Obsidian knew, no matter how old their child grew, he would always be Cady’s baby. She was a wonderful mother, this woman. “And do not worry yourself about waking him. He is with Desondra. She will be watching him for a couple of days…time enough for me to get you pregnant again, I think,” he teased wickedly.
Cady woke fully as he moved down and licked the dark crevice of her bottom. “Sid!” she exclaimed with giddy excitement.
“Baby, I love your ass.” He slapped her gently and she moaned. He sighed his own contented response. “But that special bliss can come later,” he taunted, before flipping her over neatly beneath him.
The golden-orange glow of her eyes gleamed as they roved over him, settling upon the demanding thrust of his heavy erection. “And I thought Christmas was still a few months away,” she laughed, reaching for his cock.
Even after nearly five years with this woman, her human ways still gave him pause. It took him a moment to remember this ‘Christmas’, but when he did, he gave a chuckle. “This present is one to last you the whole year long,” he grinned back at her.
“It is definitely long enough to last.” She smiled seductively, but the humor was gone from her tone. Her breathing deepened, pupils dilating, lips rosy and full. These signs told him all he needed to know about the state of arousal his mate had reached. But it was not enough. For him, for them both, it was never enough until he was buried balls deep within her dripping channel.
“Spread your legs, baby,” he commanded gruffly.
Cady’s breath rushed out shakily as she complied. Her nipples stabbed towards the sky, long and thick and hard, and her legs trembled with her aching desire. The wind was cool upon the hot, moist flesh of her cunt, and her clit was tingling and full and begging for his touch.
 Settling his weight between her legs, but careful not to give her what she wanted—the full press of his cock—his hands stroked up and over the mound of her stomach.
They burned her with their heat as they moved to cup the fullness of her sensitive breasts, and she could do nothing to contain the moan of pure need that escaped her tight lips.
“I love your nipples. So dark and so long.” He moaned hoarsely and dipped his shining onyx head down to taste her.
The full pout of her nipple prodded against his puckered lips. He slurped her in noisily, using his teeth and tongue to bedevil her until she was squirming beneath him with a crazed lust that nearly equaled his own. When she tugged on his hair, yanking hard enough for him to see stars, he chuckled against her and moved to her other tasty nipple. This one he took deep, as far as he could, sucking hard upon the full globe of her breast.
Cady keened wildly and nearly bucked him off with her excitement.
“Patience, love, patience,” he crooned around his mouthful of quivering flesh. “I have only just begun.”
Cady moaned brokenly and tried her best to prepare for the exquisite torture of her husband’s magical hands and mouth.
His teeth bit teasingly into her nipple, tugging on it. He released it suddenly and licked her from the bottom of her breast, up over her nipple, to the rapid rise and fall of her chest. He moved to do the same to the other breast, and the wet trails he left behind only served to make her skin all the more sensitive to each and every breath he tickled over her.
“You’re killing me,” she sobbed.
Obsidian’s teeth were brilliantly white in the dim light as he smiled. “You are such a baby,” he teased softly.
Cady punched his shoulder, but he only laughed. His chuckle sent his cock bobbing deliciously against the hot core of her need and she bowed beneath him, seeking him out unabashedly. With a hiss that showed her plainly just how affected he was by all this play, Obsidian jerked away from her.
It was Cady’s turn to laugh. “Turnabout is fair play and all that, you know,” she giggled.
“Just for that…” He rose, grabbed her ankles and pushed them up around her head. At this angle it was easy for him to bend his head and lay his mouth fully upon her pussy.
Cady screamed.
“So syrupy sweet,” he moaned against her. “This is my pussy, baby, all mine. And I am going to play with it all…night…long.” He pressed his lips hard against her clit, so that she could feel the firm ridge of his teeth.
She shuddered and tried to lower her legs, but he was far too strong to dissuade from his lustful purpose. The position she was in left everything bare to him, leaving her no secrets, no defenses. As if she’d ever had any where this man was concerned.
From their very first meeting she’d wanted him, just as much as he’d wanted her. Theirs was a match that had been destined from the first. She, who had never really believed in such things as happily-ever-after, was eternally grateful for the bliss she had found with her mate. Sid was everything she’d ever wanted in a man and more. He was her world. Her everything. And always would be. Even if he was the most stubborn thing she’d ever laid eyes on.
Besides herself, of course.
Cady watched, helpless, as the long, silken, black locks of his hair formed a curtain around his head as he buried it between her legs. She felt the fierce burn of his breath as he drew her scent deep into his lungs and back out in a rush. His tongue was liquid fire as it laved her in one long swipe from her clit to her hole and down to her anus.
“¡Madre mía!” she screamed, bucking wildly against his face.
“I am going to make you come so hard, baby, you won’t see clearly for days,” he promised, his lips moving over her as he spoke.
One of his long, graceful fingers probed into her, hooking and seeking for that secret place within her that he knew would push her right over the edge. He found it unerringly, and they both felt the intense contractions of her pussy as the honeyed walls clamped down upon his wriggling finger.
Obsidian let her legs down gently. One finger was replaced with two and he began thrusting his hand into her, impaling her ruthlessly as she quivered and moaned in the onslaught of her release. Deep suctioning sounds echoed in their bedchamber as his fingers moved in and out of her. The noises aroused them both even more. Obsidian thought his shaft would surely burst—it was so hard and full of need. And Cady thought she’d died and found heaven, so intense was her climax.
“I wanted to wait,” he growled, spreading her quivering legs wide to accommodate the width of his hips.
“Don’t wait,” she begged. “I need you now, please.”
“I am going to fuck you so hard,” he moaned as he sank the thick, wide head of his dick into her. “I can’t help it. You make me want to ride you until we’re both bruised.”
His words inflamed her. Her pussy quivered, her breasts tingled, and her nipples, still wet from his kisses and his tongue, felt like stars fluttering on her delicate skin. “Bruise us then. I need you hard and fast too,” she gasped.
The thickness of him never ceased to shock her. He stretched her so tight and so full, she thought she might be ripped in two. He was so incredibly big. So breathtakingly huge. His length reached up inside of her to places that were so secret and so hidden, even she hadn’t known of their existence, but Sid always seemed to know how to seek them out. How to make her feel so much each time that she feared she might die from sheer sensation.
It was her sacred Eden, here in his arms. Like this. Always so perfect and so right.
Tears filled her eyes and spilled. Obsidian bent to taste them, to capture them with his lips, sipping the manna of her emotion.
“Come on, baby,” he crooned softly. His hands stroked the fine, sweaty strands of hair at her brow. “Can you feel me? Can you feel me filling you? Stretching you?” He rocked deeply into her.
“Yes,” she breathed unsteadily, wrapping her legs and arms around him to hold him close. “Yes, I can feel you, my love.”
“I love you more than life,” he vowed, pressing a soft kiss to her lips. For all his earlier, explosive passion, he was as gentle as a summer rain with her now, and it made her heart swell.
“And I you.” She gave the vow back to him.
His hips thrust hard into her, the force scooting her upwards beneath him. She gasped and tightened her hold on him as he stunned her with his deep, swift impalement.
Sid rained kisses down upon her face. Tender, gentle kisses to her eyes and her temples and her cheeks. Hard, wet, seeking kisses to her mouth and her neck and her shoulders.
“I want you pregnant,” he growled. His lips moved back to hers and his tongue filled her mouth even as his cock filled her pussy. She was burning from her head down to her toes.
Burning…burning…burning…
The smell of acrid smoke filled both their lungs, but neither of them cared. Obsidian pulled back—but only enough to gain more leverage—and began pounding himself into her welcoming body over and over again.
They both felt it at the same time. A release so all-consuming that they could do nothing to stave off the onslaught of it. Cady bit Obsidian’s shoulder, screaming around her mouthful of taut skin. Obsidian threw back his head and roared so loudly that the sound echoed off the stone walls of their room. The burning hot scald of his seed flooded her, filling her like a shot that she felt all the way to her heart. Her body tightened, clenched, and gripped his spurting cock so that they both winced with the exquisite agony of it.
Shuddering, sweating, and breathing heavily, they collapsed into the deep down of their bed, holding on to each other for dear life.
After their heartbeats had slowed enough for rational thought, reality intruded, along with the lingering smell of smoke. Looking to the side they realized that—once again—Cady had lost control of her Incinerator abilities. The bed sheets were smoldering. Tiny tendrils of gray smoke and ash flew up into the air, and pinpoints of flickering embers still glowed in the black hole that had been singed into the bed.
They both sighed, thinking the same thing. “Agate is going to be so pissed.” Cady winced. “Between me and Cinder, she hardly has time for anything but mending lately.”
Unable to contain his mirth, Obsidian chuckled. Cady joined him after but a heartbeat of lingering chagrin at her loss of control. Soon their chuckles turned to guffaws, and then side-splitting laughter. And then all changed to sighs and moans as their love and lust took over once again.
The sheets were forgotten as desire flared as hotly as the gift of fire that lived forever bright in Cady. The knife-edge of lust that was as sharp as the blades that slumbered beneath their Shikar flesh cut them both deep as they mated long into the night.
All was perfect. All was love.
Chapter One
 
“I think that, for once, I am actually looking forward to this visit to the surface world,” Sid admitted to his wife.
“Well, now that the Daemons are reduced to nothing more than a handful of stragglers, I can see why. Without them to worry about, it’ll be a field trip for us instead of a battle,” Cady chuckled.
“This is true. But long before the Daemons began escaping into the world of humans, it was rare that I had any true interest in visiting there.”
“But that was before you had me to take you to all the fun and happening places up there,” Cady teased, buckling her Sig-Sauer 9mm P-226 pistol to her black-clad thigh. Though she didn’t expect any danger tonight—it had been almost a year since the last Daemon attack after all—it never hurt to be prepared. The long skirt of her reverend-style overcoat would hide any evidence of the weapon should she garner too many curious stares…she hoped. But no way was she leaving her new favorite weapon behind.
“Baby,” he chided, “I have my doubts that you even know of one such place. Before you became one of us, all your days and nights were spent working and fighting Daemons. You had no time for such idle pursuits as fun.”
“Ooh, that was cold. I should spank you for that one,” Cady mock-pouted, knowing that his words were true.
“Not before I spank you first,” he quipped back with an exaggerated leer.
Pulling his long, black hair into a ponytail at his nape and securing it with a strip of rawhide, Sid strode over to an intricately carved wooden side-table that stood by the door. Cady couldn’t help but admire the play of his roped muscles beneath the tight material of his black clothing. His tight, black, sexy clothing.
Tonight they wore no armor, as they might have but a year before when evil Daemons ran rampant over the earth. But they both preferred wearing dark colors so as to blend in with the night as they roamed above. Old habits died hard, it seemed, despite the lack of danger.
And they had to roam at night after all—Shikars were ultra-sensitive to the sunlight. Their race had dwelled in darkness for so long—thousands of years—that tolerance for the bright rays of daylight had been bred right out of them And though Cady had once been human herself—turned Shikar only by the powerful magic in the semen of her husband—she had not yet tested the theory that she might still be able to walk in the light.
She wasn’t afraid of the risk, not really. But Obsidian had forbidden her to even think of testing the resilience of her flesh in the rays of the sun. While she wasn’t always inclined to willingly heed a command that her beloved—yet arrogant—husband gave her, she had seen the stark fear in his eyes as he worried over the possibility of her injury, or even death. So she had, for once, decided to let her dearest have his way.
Giving up the sun was such a small price to pay for this new life she’d gained. A loving husband, a perfect son, the power to create fire with her mind and her will, and the ability to shoot deadly, poisonous blades from her flesh—without any real pain or effort—were huge boons that made the loss of daylight seem almost insignificant in comparison.
“I almost forgot, Desondra brought this when she came for Armand.” Sid’s deep, sexy voice snapped Cady out of her wandering thoughts.
She reached for the piece of folded parchment he held out for her. “Ah.” She nodded when she realized what it was. “I’d meant to ask you about this earlier.”
It was the main reason they were going up to the surface world, this piece of parchment. Or rather, what was written on it.
“Let’s see…Edge wants some peaches, Emily wants some new handcuffs—how the heck am I going to find ‘official police handcuffs’? Steffy wants some hot dogs and the new Hooverphonic cd, Cinder wants some clove cigarettes and,” she paused, incredulous, “a DVD of The Three Stooges. You gotta be kidding me. No wonder the generators keep running out of fuel…Steffy and Cinder are hooking up goodness knows how many devices to ‘em.”
Sid only chuckled and buckled up his knee-high, oxblood boots.
“Where was I? Hmm…Desondra wants chocolate, Agate wants—oh lord—fuck-me-pumps!” Cady laughed over that last request on the list. She looked up at Sid, whose Shikar-yellow eyes were wide with avid curiosity over such a request. “She actually wrote ‘fuck-me-pumps’ on here. The woman never ceases to surprise me.”
“I can only imagine where—or from whom—she learned of those,” Sid rolled his eyes comically. “Grimm bless her, she is always looking for something new to inspire her designs.” Both Sid and Cady had, on numerous occasions, taken great joy in testing out those designs.
“Yes. Our own resident sex toy and lingerie designer, dear Agate. I just know she’s going to drive one lucky man crazy someday. I’ll bet you anything, once she’s found her mate, she’ll constantly want to use him for ‘research’.” Cady’s laughter subsided into chuckles.
“If only all warriors could be blessed with a woman so seriously devoted to the joys of physical pleasure.” Sid leered wickedly at her.
Cady stuck her tongue out at him cheekily before folding up the list and tucking it into a pocket at her hip. “Well, are we ready to go?”
“Let’s get this party on the road.”
Cady laughed. “You said that all wrong. You should’ve said, ‘let’s get this party started’, or ‘let’s get this show on the road’. One of these days, Sid, I’m going to have you using slang properly, like any other American.”
“I use these ‘slangs’ plenty, but only when you are conveniently absent.” He tugged playfully on her long, dark braid.
“Jerk,” she snorted. But she couldn’t contain the warmth she knew was flooding her eyes. Goodness, but he was a handsome devil—even when he was teasing her so mercilessly.
“Yes, but I am your jerk, and that makes it all better.” He winked at her and took her hand. “Hold on, love,” he murmured, and the world disappeared.
 
When the darkness of nothing flared back into the light of substance they were standing in a wooded thicket of pine trees. Cady immediately recognized the terrain as that of the lands surrounding her former home. She had planned to come here tonight, before moving on to the nearest town in which she felt sure she wouldn’t be recognized, but now…she wasn’t certain why she’d wanted to come and see this place again. It brought with it such painful memories, this old home of hers.
The very same home that the Daemons had burned down…but that violence was done, and she hardly dwelled on the loss of the home in which her grandparents had raised her. Not anymore. She had a new family now, a new life as a Shikar warrior…but there was a suspicious pang in the vicinity of her heart as she looked about her at the land that was at once familiar, and yet so very strange now that she was no longer a part of it.
She hadn’t expected to feel so strongly about this place…even after so long a time as five years. But then, time to a Shikar—as she was now—was reckoned differently than time to a human. Shikars lived such very long lives. Five years had passed by so quickly for her, more quickly than she had realized before coming here tonight, and all the pain and loneliness she’d experienced in this place still seemed fresh and raw in her heart.
“You miss this place, despite your unsavory memories.” As always, Sid seemed easily capable of reading her thoughts. “And it pains you.”
“Sometimes,” she admitted, drawing closer to him. “But never so much as now that I’m actually standing here in person. I wanted to come and see it so badly…”
“This is the only real visit you have had here since becoming one of us. Perhaps now that the wars are over we can visit more often—”
“No.” Cady stopped him, turning and placing a soft hand upon his mouth. She looked deeply into his eyes—those glowing eyes she loved so much, since she’d first seen them shining out from the dark shadows of her living room—feeling her aching memories subside and fill with the warmth of his presence. She lowered her hand and rested it upon the steady, reassuring beat of his heart. “No. This place isn’t my home anymore. It hasn’t been for a long, long time. Even before you came for me…I wasn’t a part of this land. I’m not sure I ever really was.”
“You have always been a warrior. That kept you apart from other humans, through no fault of your own. From the moment you saw Daemons killing your parents and brother, your life changed irrevocably into a mad race of fighting and survival. But that is not so terrible or lonely an existence now, is it? Now that you belong to us, to our world? Now that you know and understand your strength and power? Now that you are not so alone?”
“Everything is perfect, and will always be perfect, so long as you’re with me,” she said at length, and meant every word of it.
Sid grunted, but despite the show of his seemingly endless male arrogance, Cady knew he was very pleased with her answer.
“And what about you?” she asked. Broaching a subject she hadn’t dared to in the past few months for fear of upsetting her love.
“What about me?” he returned. Stubbornly feigning ignorance, even though he knew full well what she meant.
Cady twisted her lips and trudged on. “How is it for you now that the Horde wars are pretty much over? You’ve been fighting your whole life, born into the war that your parents and their parents before them were born into. Now that it’s over, what will you do?”
There was a hunted look in his eyes then, a second and no more, before he masked that all-too-telling reaction to her words. He didn’t want to talk about it, it was clear by the look in his eyes. But Cady knew now what she’d been fearing for months—that Sid was indeed cut adrift, almost without purpose since the fighting had ended. He was a warrior through and through and it was in his will and in his blood to fight. To triumph over their enemies, the evil and hated Daemons. Now there was no great war to wage, no battles to engage…nothing that was familiar to him.
How could he stand it? And she, fighting the same foes since she’d turned sixteen, how would she cope now? How could either of them survive this time of…peace?
How could any of the Shikar warriors learn to live a life that no longer involved such danger and death, now that a centuries-old war was finally ending?
“I do not wish to think on such dark thoughts now,” he said flatly.
“We need to talk about it soon, Sid. You can’t just ignore this. Now that you aren’t fighting every hour of every night, you need to think about where to direct your gifts as a leader of men.”
“I know what you are insinuating, my love. But I will not join the Council. Only the older warriors, who have finished with their battles, belong on the Council.”
Cady sighed. “That’s the way things used to be. But everything has changed now. The Council will need young men like you to lead the Shikar race into a new era—”
“There are still a few battles yet to fight. It may have been almost a year since a Daemon strike, but there are still some stragglers left wandering—you can trust in that. We’ll decide what to do when all the Daemons have been exterminated—all of us. Cinder and Steffy, Edge and Emily—we are still a team, and we need to decide what to do as a team.”
“I know that, Sid.” She answered as patiently as she could—which wasn’t very much…she wasn’t known for her patience, after all. “But you need to give all this some thought before going to them. You are their leader—they’ll look to you for guidance above all things. You need to have some idea of where to go in the end.”
“Bah. Let us forget this sightseeing business and get our shopping done, woman,” he said, in desperate effort to drop the subject. He grabbed her hand once more and tugged her along behind him. She was a small woman—barely over five feet tall, compared to his nearly seven foot height—and it was all she could do to keep up with his long-legged strides as they trudged through the shadowy forest towards the town.
“Sid, slow down.” She grunted as she stubbed her booted toe on a jutting rock. “We can’t go into Lula, someone is bound to recognize me.”
He stopped so abruptly that she slammed into him. It was only his quick reflexes that kept her from falling as he reached out and held her steady. “I forgot,” he admitted with a chagrined flash of blazing white teeth.
“Well, go on then,” she said, softening her tone, knowing he was still unsettled by their conversation. “Travel us there.”
“Are you sure you want to visit Gainesville? I could take you anywhere, you realize. Paris, Los Angeles, Melbourne—anywhere you want to go.”
“Yes, but the only place I can get good—really good—dark roast coffee is at the Coffee Shop of Horrors in Gainesville. And I need that coffee, Sid. I mean I really, really need it,” she warned.
“Yes, of course. I know that, baby,” he soothed her. In fact, he knew better than anyone just how much she needed that boost of energy in the early hours when their energetic son woke them from their slumbers. Cady wasn’t a morning person in the best of circumstances, but the coffee definitely helped. He wasn’t about to come between her and her bean-juice fix.
“And I know where everything is in Gainesville, or I used to. I grew up around that city. Everything but Emily’s handcuffs should be easy enough to come by there, even Squaker’s senior formula cat food.” Squaker was her beloved cat, older now and living in the world of the Shikars, but still very picky about his brand of grub, and Cady wasn’t about to disappoint him.
“Then Gainesville it will be, my love.” Sid took her hand, brought it to his mouth for a kiss, and they Traveled for the second time that evening. And though the world disappeared around them, they held on to each other so tightly, not even an army could have separated them.
Chapter Two
 
“Sid, put that down,” Cady hissed.
“I can think of many uses for this,” he mused, fingering the long, leather whip almost lovingly.
“Think all you want, but we ain’t gonna buy it.”
“I think we should,” he insisted, piling the now coiled length of the whip onto the two shoeboxes he already held.
“Well I don’t think we should,” Cady gritted.
A look of stubborn determination filled his eyes and twisted his lips. He looked ready to do battle over the damn whip. “We are going to purchase this.”
Cady let out a whoosh of air and tried a different tactic. She let her eyes soften as she sidled closer to his side in the aisle of the only sex-toy shop in the city. “We came here for Agate’s sex shoes and I just don’t think we can carry all this extra stuff you keep piling on.”
“I only purchased Squaker a few extra toys—”
“Seven extra toys.”
Sid glared at her for interrupting. “And a couple of boxes of Godiva chocolates for us to share, and a stun baton. That’s all.”
Cady almost smiled at his mention of the stun baton—she’d wanted one of those for a while now. “Alright, we can buy the damn whip. But no way is it gonna find it’s way into our bedroom, buddy.”
He frowned. “I would never hurt you with it.” He drew closer to her and lowered his voice into that soothing, magical tone that she always succumbed to in her moments of weakness. “I would make you scream…but only with pleasure.” He leaned in so that his breath tickled her ear. “Pure…unadulterated pleasure.”
Cady shivered. “Okay,” she said shakily, “we’re definitely buying the whip.”
Sid drew back, smiled into her eyes, and moved on to an aisle full of flavored lubricants, leaving her to stare dazedly after him.
“How the hell does he do that,” she muttered under her breath, before tagging along after him.
“This strawberry oil will heat when you blow upon it,” Sid declared, brandishing the jar like a trophy.
Cady hated herself for blushing when the store’s clerk looked up and winked at her. If Sid had caught such a forward thing from another man…well, at least he could Travel them out of there if the cops dropped by.
“Hush, Sid,” she growled, drawing up next to him so that he could better hear her lowered voice. Not that he wouldn’t have heard it anyway. He was a Shikar, and all Shikars had exceptional hearing. Sid probably could have heard her loud and clear if she’d whispered to him from the farthest corner of the room. “Keep it down, will you?”
He only grinned.
Cady gritted her teeth.
“Do we have enough monies for five of these jars? They come in so many flavors, I cannot choose just one.”
“Honey,” Cady rolled her eyes, “it’s not a matter of money. Tryton supplied us all with plenty of dough before he took off for his sabbatical. It’s more a matter of how many parcels we can carry with us back to the park, where we can blip out unseen.”
“I think I can carry one more bag,” he said with affronted dignity.
“I’m not saying you can’t, but can you balance it with the dozen or more others we’ve already got? It’s not a matter of strength here, but a matter of balance.”
Obsidian snorted. “I’ve been shopping with you before, woman. I understand the mechanics of the sport.”
Cady almost laughed, but managed to choke it back in time. It wouldn’t do to give in to him so easily again…after all, he’d denied her the sniper rifle she’d so wanted back at the hunting supply store. “Just pick one flavor and have done with it. I’m ready to go back home and…” She paused for effect before she played her trump card, a trick she knew would make him putty in her hands for the rest of the trip, “snuggle.”
He visibly stilled. The bright glow of his eyes intensified, and Cady could plainly see the insistent rise of his shaft beneath the covering of his pants.
“We’re going,” he snatched the jar of strawberry oil, piled it on with the rest of his purchases, and strode purposefully up to the checkout counter at the front of the shop. He looked back at her with a blazing hot gaze as the man behind the counter rung up their items. “Well come on, love, we haven’t got all night,” he commanded impatiently.
Men, Cady thought. Shikar or human, when it all came right down to it, they were the same.
Sid’s black trousers did very little to hide his growing desire, and the ever-growing heat in his gaze was all the warning she received. His long, nearly waist length hair whipped about him, so quickly did he snap his attention back to the shop’s clerk.
“Where are your bathing room facilities?”
Cady felt faint.
“Wha-huh?” The clerk asked in obvious confusion.
“The bath, where is the bath?” Sid was clearly growing more and more impatient with each second that passed.
“You mean the bathroom?”
“Yes, yes of course. Where is it?”
“We don’t have a bathroom for public use. You’ll have to go to the gas station across the street.”
Sid reached forward just as Cady moved to get a handle on a situation she knew could easily spiral out of control. Her hand fell on his arm as his hand latched onto the collar of the poor, unsuspecting man’s shirt.
“Tell me where your bathroom is or I’ll beat the information—”
“What he means to say, sir,” Cady desperately tried to diffuse the situation, “Is that we’ll pay you three hundred bucks if you let us use the bathroom for, say, twenty minutes.”
Sid released the man, who stepped back with mixed look of relief, incredulity, and suspicion.
“You gonna mess anything up in there?”
“No, sir,” Cady hurriedly assured him, doing her best to ignore the warm hand of her husband as it fell upon her backside caressingly. “In fact, we’ll pay you five hundred dollars—and you’d better make that thirty minutes,” she blushed, from embarrassment as much as arousal, knowing the clerk—unless he was unbearably dense—must have some idea by now of what they intended.
It had to be doubly obvious, when Sid bent low and licked the corner of her mouth—he’d apparently already forgotten his displeasure with the clerk. His mind was on other, headier things. Much more pressing things, from the look of the full, heavy cock tenting his britches so demandingly.
The man grinned lasciviously, and Cady eased, knowing everything would be alright in just a few moments. “The bathroom’s in the back.”
Cady quickly handed him the money for their purchases, plus the five hundred she’d promised him.
“If ya’ll mess anything up, I’m calling the cops,” the man warned, fingering the wad of twenties Cady handed to him.
“I wouldn’t expect less of you,” Sid replied stonily, already pressing Cady towards the back of the store. “You will, of course, guard our bags while we are making use of the facilities?”
“Sure, no problem,” the man stared with blatant curiosity after them, until the closing of the bathroom door sealed them off from his gaze.
“Drop your leggings and bend over,” Sid commanded the very moment the door latched shut behind them.
“Oh baby, I fucking love it when you’re impulsive like this,” Cady panted, more than eager to comply with this particular order given her.
“You asked for this, taunting me so shamelessly. Hurry.” His hands were none too steady as he unfastened his own pants.
Cady felt giddy with excitement. Hooking her fingers into the waistband of her trousers, she quickly peeled them down to her ankles. But before she could turn away and do as he had commanded, Sid swooped down for a long, deep, soul-searching kiss.
His lips were like fire. His tongue like wet, molten lava in her mouth. She was seared from head to toe with a violent eruption of need and desire.
Long moments later, when they were both completely out of breath, Sid tore himself away and turned her around forcibly, almost too roughly, and pressed her forward over the white porcelain of the bathroom’s sink. Luckily, the room was well tended and far cleaner than the seedy hotel room they’d used during their last visit to the surface world.
“I can smell your heat,” Sid growled in her ear before biting at it playfully.
“Shhh! That guy’s probably listening at the keyhole right now.” But despite her warning, she moaned softly with her own considerable need.
“Let him listen.” Sid’s fingers probed her slick folds, so exposed to him in this position that it was easy for him to feel her syrupy arousal, proof of her desperate need of him. “It will only heighten our experience.”
And it would. They both had a seriously voyeuristic streak, loving the threat of exposure, and the risk of having eyes watching their every move as they mated. It was a spicy stimulant, one they frequently indulged in, given the right circumstances.
“I have to lick this sweet pussy of yours,” Sid breathed heavily, squatting down behind her, spreading her wide for his pleasure. “It’s so damn tasty. I could eat you out for hours.”
“You have several times before,” she panted.
“Not this time. Only a little taste of your honey for now. This time is for hard, wet fucking.”
“Quit using that tongue of yours for talking, you tease, and go down on me. Lick and suck my pussy until I come all over your mouth.”
Sid physically lifted her higher, positioning her soaking cunt over his mouth. His breath nearly burned her alive. “You tease me too much sometimes, my love,” he murmured. “This time, you’ll get exactly what you deserve.”
Any retort she might have made was lost when his tongue darted out to lap at her hot juices. His face was buried completely between her legs. And it wasn’t only his tongue that devilishly tormented her, but his lips and his teeth too. Her pussy throbbed and burned with desire. Her bottom tingled where his hands held her so tightly, lifting her as he rooted and sucked and licked and bit her.
She nearly screamed when his face burrowed deeper, her pussy and her anus completely open and loved by his hungry mouth. “Stop, Sid. Stop,” she panted.
Her pleas went unheeded. His fingers dug harder into her, his lips and teeth latching onto her clit until she moaned.
“Sid, please. I need your cock. Please, your cock, now,” she rambled, intoxicated and nearly mindless with her intense need to be joined with him.
His tongue flickered over her clit one last time before releasing her. “I’m going to fill you so deep and so hard that you’ll be feeling me inside of you for days.”
“I can already feel you,” she cried.
“You’re so wet. My face is drenched with your sweetness and your body’s exquisite perfume. I love how responsive you are, how ripe and ready you are for me.”
“Take me, Sid. Quit teasing! I need your dick inside me.”
His fingers came around her face to probe at her trembling lips. “Suck on them. Taste yourself as I taste you.”
Cady eagerly took two of his fingers deep into her mouth. Licking and laving them, sucking and biting them, in a way she knew would make him crazy.
His wide, mushroom-headed shaft slid into the wetness of her folds. Sid unerringly guided himself into her, stretching her without entering her, driving her wild with anticipation. “Hang on tight.” His free arm came around her, his hand covering one of hers as it gripped desperately onto the rim of the sink.
His cock slammed home, lifting Cady up off her feet with the sheer power of his thrust.
Tears burned her eyes with the delicious pain of his deep, hard penetration. She moaned, pressing back even tighter into the cradle of his hips, biting onto his fingers.
“Are your nipples hard, my love?” His magical voice rumbled in her ear. He was using all of his Shikar tricks against her. The power in his voice made her already hard nipples swell and elongate even further beneath her clothing. Her breasts felt heavy and full, more now than before. Her entire body flushed and tingled. She trembled from head to toe…and all the while, his cock rested deep inside of her, stretching her to the breaking point.
Obsidian’s breath thundered at her ear.
Cady twisted her head, releasing his fingers. “Stop tormenting me.” Her words shook with the force of her need.
“We torment each other,” he rasped. He pulled almost all the way out of her, waited just long enough for her to keen at the loss, and then slammed back into her. His fingers, wet from her mouth, moved now to cup her mound and rhythmically massage her clit.
“Sometimes I want to take you so hard that we become one being.” He pressed a hot kiss against the sweat-moistened tendrils of hair at her temple.
His words never ceased to inflame her pleasure.
“And sometimes…” He slid his long, thick cock out slowly and then gently back in to her heated core. “Sometimes, I want to make it soft and sweet and last for so long that we both dissolve into pools of warm, liquid light.”
“Oh god…”
“Our thirty minutes are almost up,” he panted. “Time is growing short…”
“Then hurry. Slam me. Fuck me. Slam me hard, Sid, please,” she cried.
“Anything my lady wishes,” he growled fiercely. Both their bodies shook with the force of his thrusts as he moved, pistoning in and out of her welcoming heat, catching her up in a whirlwind of excitement that made her head swim and her breasts bounce.
“I love you, I love you, IloveyouIloveyou,” she chanted like a mantra.
“And I love you more,” he said softly at her ear, pressing kisses all over her neck and the side of her face. His fingers expertly plucked at her clit. He rotated his hips against her in a way that she loved, making her see stars behind her tightly shut eyelids.
“I’m coming,” she panted on a shallow breath. “Oh god, oh fuck, I’m coming.”
“I’ll be there with you,” he vowed, tightening his arms around her and nuzzling her neck.
In fact, he was there a scant second before she, the hot wash of his release flooding her to her core. Her scream would have echoed audibly out into the store, but Sid had enough presence of mind to bring his hand down over her mouth to stifle the desperate cry. Her body clamped down like a vise, trapping them both together in a deep, hard embrace of stunning release.
It was actually thirty-seven minutes before they emerged from the bathroom, but the overly flushed store clerk and two wide-eyed customers didn’t seem to mind that at all.
* * * * *
“I told you it would be a pain in the ass to drag these bags all the way out here.”
“No one likes a braggart, baby.” Sid’s armload of boxes and bags teetered precariously with each step they took.
It didn’t help matters that the both of them still suffered from weak knees and giddy heads after their steamy visit into the sex-toy shop’s bathroom.
“We really need to buy a van or something for these excursions.”
“There is no way in the Christians’ hell that I am going to let you drive me anywhere.” Sid’s panicked shudder nearly toppled his mountain of packages.
Cady halted, incredulous. “What! Well fuck you, buddy! You’ve never even been in a car while I’m driving, how would you know anything about the way I drive?”
“I do not have to experience such a thing, to know exactly how it will be. You are a wild woman in everything you do, from fighting to fucking and everything in between. I have a hard enough time getting in a car with Cinder, who is a very careful driver now that Steffy has taught him all she knows. You, I know, would have us slinging all over the place at a velocity to rival even a Horde Canker-Worm—I know it. You simply cannot do things in half measures. It is against your very nature.”
“You are so full of shit, Sid,” Cady huffed, growing more and more irritated with his assessment of her character. “I thought you liked the way that I do things. Especially love-making—I’ve certainly never heard you complain about it—”
“Now, baby, I am not saying your wild ways are a bad thing. That is not what I meant.” He immediately backtracked.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” she barked. “I’ll have you know that I’m a very good driver. I’ve never had an accident or even come close. So I’ve had a few speeding tickets, that’s not a big deal—”
“Ah ha!” Sid immediately latched on to her last statement, as she should have known he would. “So you do drive fast. See? I do know you, and therefore I know exactly what to expect if I ever allow you to drive.”
“Arrgh! As if you could ever allow, or disallow, me to do anything. I make my own decisions!”
Sid winced. “I know that, of course I do. But please, baby, I am asking you for the sake of my sanity, do not ask Tryton for your own vehicle. I just don’t have the courage or the stomach to handle being in a small, steel machine, hurtling through the lands with breakneck speed.”
“I don’t need to ask Tryton for a car. I can buy my own,” she persisted stubbornly.
“Please, baby. I’m begging you. Please.”
“Oh, all right,” she conceded grumpily. Her arms were too tired from carrying all her packages to continue the argument just now anyway. “I’ll think about it,” she added, just to ensure that she had the last word.
Sid only exhaled a long, relieved breath and trudged along beside her.
A silent truce lasted for several minutes as they made their way through the sparsely populated residential area, which lay just outside the secluded park to which they were headed. Not so much a park, as a small clearing amidst a thick copse of maple, oak and pine trees, the area was shadowy and secluded enough for them to Travel without any risk of being seen.
At one time the small park might have been used as a family burial plot. But that had been so long ago, that the half dozen or so grave markers of stone and wood were smooth and covered with lichen. The ravages of time had also piled soil on top of the graves, so that most of the markers were also crooked or half covered with earth.
Cady had always liked the quiet, secluded spot. As a teenager, with the long-anticipated privilege and freedom of a vehicle to drive, she’d lingered here for hours—on those few days when she didn’t have to leave school and head straight for a martial arts class or the shooting range. Sitting amidst the tall weeds and grasses, she’d spent rare lazy afternoons wondering about the great mysteries of the world and her place within it. The eerie ambiance of the place had appealed to her on many levels, and the silence and the stillness were so very different from the constant ravaging pace she’d set for herself in life.
She wondered now how her life would have been if it hadn’t been for the death of her family at the hands of the Daemons. On one hand, if her family had lived, she would have had a much more normal life, filled with all the love and laughter and safety of her younger years. On the other, she would never have known of the existence of the Daemons, would never have had the opportunity to hone her mind and body into a weapon to fight against their evil threat. And she certainly wouldn’t have met her husband or any of the other Shikars whom she now regarded as friends and family. And, perhaps the most important thing—aside from meeting Sid—was that her son, Armand, would have never been born.
It served her no purpose to think on such things. Only aggravation and upset. But this was not the first time she’d dwelled on what might have been—on what could have been—and it would probably not be the last time she did so. Cady was so grateful for the happiness she’d gained in life. Happy beyond measure with her place as a warrior and a mate and a mother. But she was saddened still for all the losses, too.
A part of her would always feel such sadness. She knew this. It was her fate and it could not be undone. But still…she could wonder. And she could wish. For such was the part of her that was still human and would never change, no matter how strong the practical, fatalistic Shikar blood that flowed in her veins.
She was still as much a human as she’d ever been—in her heart and in her soul. Thankfully, her beloved Obsidian knew and understood this. It was only one of the million or so reasons why she loved him as deeply and passionately as she did.
No matter what might have been…she knew for a certainty that she belonged with Obsidian. He was the perfect mate for her soul and heart in every way. Even when they argued. Hell, sometimes, it was especially true when they argued.
Cady chuckled out loud to herself with the thought.
“What’s so funny?” Sid frowned suspiciously, as if he already suspected that her thoughts had somehow concerned him.
“Nothing,” she denied, still grinning.
“Come on,” he prodded with an impatient, almost incredulous tone. “That smile of yours plainly shows me that you are full of falsehood. Tell me what is so funny before I beat it out of you.” He grumbled the idle threat, knowing full well she wouldn’t believe it.
Cady stuck her tongue out at him.
Sid pursed his lips, but the twinkle in his eyes gave him away a second before he erupted into his own deep laughter. “You are a minx.”
“You know you love it.”
“I love you,” he said, his laughter gentling, his proud eyes softening into limpid pools of yellow-orange light.
They never suspected the attack. Not until it was far too late. It took them both completely by surprise, in a rare moment of unguarded weakness. The woods around them were dark and still. Unnaturally still, for no birds sang, no crickets chirped, and no breeze rustled the leaves and branches of the forest growth. They should have suspected something. Anything. But for the first time in both their lives, they were caught completely unprepared.
Chapter Three
 
Steffy sat bolt upright in her chair. The loud cacophonous sounds of hardcore German techno filled her ears and for a moment she was disoriented enough to think she’d dozed off during a break from spinning records at the club.
And then she remembered. She didn’t have to be at work again for at least another forty-eight hours. Right now she was at home, miles or more below ground, in the world of the Shikar. Her mate, Cinder, was off training a group of young Incinerators—those Shikars lucky enough to have the ability to create and manipulate fire. Alone and able to relax for the first time in a good while, she’d napped lightly while listening to music through a pair of headphones.
 She had just had the most bizarre dream of her life. Who was she kidding? It had been more than a dream. So much more. It had been a vision, clear and true, and she’d be a fool not to admit it. Panic rose in her heart as she recounted the details in her mind.
In it, she had floated invisible above a grisly battlefield. As an incorporeal entity, she had been afforded a clear, unimpeded view of the violence and mayhem occurring beneath her. What she’d seen had shocked and terrified her.
Cady and Obsidian fought giant, hulking Daemons that dwarfed any Steffy had ever seen before, even in the wastelands beyond the Gates. They had been caught off guard by the brutes, taken completely by surprise, allowing the Daemons to gain the upper hand from the very start of the fight. The earth shook with every step the Daemons took, and the trees had trembled in the path of the monsters’ boundless rage and wickedness.
It had been slaughter. Like none that Steffy had ever bore witness to.
Obsidian had been killed first—after amazing feats of courage and skill—slashed open across his middle, and impaled by a Daemon’s talon that had been longer than one of Steffy’s arms. Cady had fought valiantly, screaming her mate’s name as she threw fire out of her fingertips, into the eyes of an attacking giant. But in the end, though she managed to kill her adversary, she too had died, buried and crushed under the very weight of her fallen foe.
Steffy could still hear Cady’s screams echoing in her ears, mixing ominously with the passionate music that streamed forth from her headphones.
Jerking herself back to the present, she ripped the headphones from her ears. Almost tripping in her haste, she raced to the door, calling for the one person she knew might perhaps be able to interpret or understand her dream, which she felt sure was far more than a simple nightmare.
“Grimm!”
* * * * *
His eyes were black and filled with bright pinpoints of white light, like tiny stars. He had seen much with those eyes. Steffy felt sure he would have some insight to give her now, as she was still shaking with her fear of the dream. He knew so much, saw so very far…
“You must believe me when I say that this is more than just any ordinary dream. I’ve had premonitions like this before. If it hasn’t happened yet, then it will happen very soon.” She felt the hot burn of tears on her face.
Grimm’s hair was so dark a red that it looked black in the shadows of his room. Steffy was sure she’d never seen him without his deeply hooded cowl covering most of his head, and the dark, dangerous beauty of him nearly stole her breath away, despite her undying love for Cinder.
He hadn’t said one word to her since she’d entered his private sanctuary without any warning or knock upon the door. She’d known he’d be here, known too—somehow—that he’d expected her mere seconds before she’d thrown the door open and barged into the room. He was The Traveler, after all, Tryton’s right-hand man, and keeper of many Shikar secrets. A warrior of several thousand years experience, he wasn’t taken by surprise easily, no matter what the circumstances.
This man was dangerous. In so many ways. But he was also her friend, and Steffy prayed that he believed in the power of her dreams, which had so many times foretold things to come. No one, before the Shikars, had believed in her precognition. Not even she, herself. But now…now she knew for certain that Cady and Obsidian were in danger. Maybe even already dead. And she had to do something—anything—to help them.
“I do believe you,” he told her at length. His voice was quiet, but melodic in a way that was powerful and profound.
“Can we do anything to stop this from happening,” she pleaded, “anything at all?”
His black eyes seemed to be focused on something far, far away. Outside the confines of this room, or even of this world. “You are absolutely certain this was more than just a dream? You must be sure…we must all be sure…”
“Yes,” she breathed a deep sigh of immense relief. She’d known this man would be the one to go to with this crisis. “I’m positive. I could smell the blood,” she shuddered, “and I could hear their screams. I saw everything so clearly—”
Grimm struggled to gather his wits, straightening his broad shoulders in preparation for what must come next. He worried now for his dear friends, Cady and Obsidian. Steffy was a powerful psychic and it was unlikely that her vision would be false now simply because he wished it so. And he did wish it so. Damn the Horde…he was weary of this war. “Dwell on it no more, Steffy. It will do you no good to worry.” He felt like a hypocrite saying it. “Gather the others and wait for my return here. It will take me some time to find them—Obsidian and Cady are both good Hunters, and therefore harder for me to track than most.”
Steffy nodded, shoulders slumping as she hoped against hope that she’d been quick enough informing The Traveler.
Grimm rose to tower over her and placed a light hand upon her shoulder. His gaze made Steffy feel dizzy, but at the same time it was comforting in its intensity. She’d gotten his full attention—it was what she’d hoped for, what she’d wanted. If anyone could find and save Cady and Sid, he was the one to do it.
“I will find them,” he promised her, as if he’d read her very thoughts. “I will find them, this I can promise you. But…” His eyes drifted off again, focusing on that far away place Steffy could not see. “I only hope I will find them before it is too late. We must all be prepared for the worst this time…”
Without another word, The Traveler disappeared. Steffy turned and ran to find her husband…praying under her breath to all the gods she’d ever heard of that Grimm would find their friends in time.
Chapter Four
 
Cady felt the force of the blow as if it were but an echo in her body and brain.
One moment she was standing at perfect ease, staring into the loving eyes of her husband. The next, she was flying through the air with a starburst of pain in her mind.
The pain was a shock, but her alarm at being caught in such an unguarded position was even more surprising, as she flew through the air and slammed into a tree with enough force to jar it from base to tip. Dimly, as though from miles away, she heard the splintering of the tree’s mighty trunk as she hit, and it was this sound, rather than any pain, that let her know she’d been well and truly injured.
But she was a Shikar now, no longer human, and as such she healed quickly—if she but gathered her strength of will to do so. And she had a formidable will, no matter how badly injured.
She rose unsteadily to her feet and darted a look around the clearing, addled but not utterly impaired by her weakness. At first she saw nothing but a blurry haze of trees and shadows. But then, with a cold, terrified heart, she released that not all the tree trunks were as they seemed. Regarding one oddly textured trunk, she looked up, and up, and up its great height. She swallowed a shriek, craning her neck to see the largest, most horrific creature she could have ever imagined, even in her darkest nightmares, towering over her menacingly.
“Cady, run!” Sid shouted, but his voice was strained.
Cady had never run from a fight in her life, and neither had Obsidian. That he told her to flee now meant that circumstances were dire indeed.
Dire or not, she wasn’t about to meet her end with her back turned from her foe. No matter how big he was.
Her anger was like a furnace. Her blood was hot as molten lava. She felt the wash of her power like the roar of an ocean wave that rose higher and higher until it utterly consumed her. That power burned hot from her scalp to her toes, and at her fingertips the power found release. Cady shot forth a blinding stream of fire from her hands, dousing the giant’s legs in liquid flames that lit up the dark night.
The giant shrieked, its howl of pain so full of evil and madness that it made the very earth tremble in its wake.
Without a second thought for her own safety, Cady ran swiftly in the direction of Sid’s cry. When she reached him, what she saw stunned her. At the feet of yet another giant Daemon lay her husband, bleeding upon the ground. His stomach had been deeply lacerated by the monster, who was already raising its enormous, taloned hand to administer another strike.
“Nooo!” Cady screamed mindlessly, racing to reach her mate before the blow fell.
Obsidian’s eyes met hers, full of the fire and power of his indomitable spirit. Even in such a hopeless situation, he was a formidable warrior to the end. “I told you to run, woman,” he rasped, reaching for her. But it was too late.
The Daemon struck.
Cady screamed again, tripped, and fell flat on her face. She roared her anger and growing panic, struggling to rise. Her nose was broken, blood was pouring down her face, but she neither felt the pain of it nor cared. She regained her feet again at last and raced the last few sprinting steps that separated her from her husband and the Daemon who dared attack him.
With an audible snick, her Foil blades burst forth from her knuckles, and she used them to launch herself at the Daemon’s back and climb her way up it. Sinking the blades deep, viciously twisting them as she shimmied her way up, she felt a mad grin twisting her bloodied lips. “Hijo de puta! How do you like that shit, huh?”
The beast roared, kicking the body of her husband as it flailed to reach behind its back and grab her. Cady’s heart nearly stopped as Sid flew across several feet of ground, his form limp and lifeless. Her rage increased a hundred fold and with it, her adrenaline.
“You fucking bastard, you monster, you goddamned Daemon!” she roared, stabbing her Foils deep into its black, slimily-scaled hide. Over and over she stabbed it, her attack so fast and so uncontrolled that even the Daemon seemed shocked by it. “Die, die, die, pendejo! Die!”
The monster was twenty feet tall if it was an inch and packed full of strength and vicious power. It tried to shake her off its back, like a dog would shake itself free of water, but Cady held on, fueled by her rage and her terror. Her Foils were both sharp and poisonous, but the Daemon was so large and so strong that it appeared completely unaffected by the venom of her blades. Cady valiantly made her way up higher on the beast’s shoulders and, raising her arm back for a deadly swipe, she brought her blades down with the intent to stab them into the thick neck of her foe.
Perhaps the blow would have killed it, perhaps not. She would never know. For her blow never connected. She had forgotten about the other monster. And now it made its presence known to her, sending her flying through the air with but a swipe of its hand.
Cady flew through the trees once again, traveling many yards away from the clearing now, coming to a jarring rest at the base of a great, old oak. Now both of the Daemons were focused upon her, the ground shuddering with each step they took towards her. Weak, angry, and afraid—for Obsidian more than for herself, because if she died here he would be left wounded and completely unprotected—she refused to believe he was dead. She felt the bitter taste of hopeless defeat fill her mouth. In a last desperate attempt for survival, she let her power take over. Let it consume her. Let it become all that was left of her will to fight and to triumph.
Cady freely and gladly fed the flames that seemed always to lurk beneath the surface of her skin. Knowing it was madness, knowing also that she had no choice, she allowed the fires of rage and battle to consume her. She let loose all of her control, uncaring if the resulting inferno flattened her, the forest, or even the entire town, just so long as it killed these Daemons. Just so long as it saved Obsidian, and maybe even herself, from total defeat.
The fire burned. The flames roared. Her vision blurred with the heat of it, and her blood threatened to burst from her veins like a violent eruption of lava. Cady screamed with the pain. It was too much power for her to hold, to control. She had to set it free before it killed her.
From out of the darkness, Obsidian streaked forth, Foils at the ready, to hack and slash at the legs of one of the Daemons. That he was alive and whole nearly stunned Cady into losing the last desperate hold she had on her power.
“Obsidian,” she whispered in awe and relief, tasting the blood in her mouth like sweet, salty syrup.
Sid slashed his enemy over and over, drawing a river of black, corrupt blood from its vile flesh. The Daemon turned to swat at his attacker and tripped. It was a small stumble for a being so large and powerful, but it was enough for Sid to gain a brief upper hand. He moved with such speed and agility that Cady, eyes still blurred from the strain of holding her power in check for a few precious seconds longer, couldn’t clearly see him. Unfortunately, this kept her from paying proper attention to the second Daemon, who advanced upon her with surprising stealth considering how large he was.
While she watched, unaware of the danger that lurked, Sid sallied forth with his razor sharp Foils and opened a gaping wound in the chest of the brute. Another swipe of the blades. And another. And another. And finally, at last, Sid had the creature’s heart in his hands. The giant fell with a mighty crash. It echoed like a sonic boom through the clearing as it landed.
But not before taking one last swipe at Obsidian.
A talon, three feet in length and at least as big around as a man’s fist, lodged deep into Obsidian’s midriff, and then the Daemon fell still.
Sid made no sound. He merely sank to his knees, still clutching the heart of his fallen foe in his fists. As if the effort to move were took all of his remaining strength, he turned his head to lock gazes with Cady. Time stilled. Silence reigned. The light of his Shikar-yellow eyes dimmed and he fell to his side in the grass.
Cady screamed his name as her heart shattered into a thousand icy shards. The Daemon that stalked her moved to strike, but Cady saw him just in time to roll out of its reach. At last she released the fire of her rage and pain to engulf this remaining monster, who was so close now that she could have reached out and touched its tar-like flesh. The murky orange-red hue of its eyes seemed to hold some surprise as Cady’s flames shot forth in liquid streams to burn them completely out of their sockets.
Screaming again as the power seemed to burst forth from her very skin, Cady felt, rather than saw, the enormous fireball that shot from her outstretched hands into the very center of the Daemon’s chest. The release of so much power all at once made her very bones feel as if they had caved in upon themselves. She was an Incinerator, but not one as strong as this. Her level of abilities had never burned so hot or so fierce as they did now, when the hopelessness of the situation was at its peak.
Obsidian was dead. She could feel it in her heart. In her soul. He breathed no more. And without him…she had no will to fight anymore.
Her injuries consumed her. Both physical and spiritual, she was utterly and mortally wounded.
With one last mighty roar, the Daemon fell. Like a Titan cast into Tartarus, it crumbled towards the earth, knocking over trees and bracken while its chest and heart burned to dust within its own breast.
Cady didn’t care. There was no triumph in her heart. She had no more strength or will to even move, and as the Daemon at last crumpled to lie still upon the ground, she found herself pinned beneath the crushing weight of one of the beast’s limbs.
Turning her head, trapped at the angle that she was, she could not see past the destruction of the park clearing to glimpse the still form of her husband. Her body and her heart were broken. Her spirit crushed as surely as the lower half of her form beneath the Daemon’s weight. As her breath rasped in her bruised chest, she wondered, almost calmly, what would come next?
The Daemons were back. And they were stronger than ever. She would surely die here, just as Sid had. Who would find them? Who would carry the news back to the Shikar Alliance of their defeat and passing? Would they know the truth—that the Daemons had managed somehow to pass unnoticed until the last moment, when they struck?
Cady was a Hunter as well as an Incinerator. She had the gift of knowing when these monsters lurked near. So, too, did Obsidian. Why hadn’t they felt the warning of their enemies before feeling the first blow? So many questions, none of them with easy or ready answers. If only they’d been more careful. If only they hadn’t underestimated the Daemon Horde. If only…
“Oh Sid,” she whispered, tasting the bubbling blood in her mouth with every word. “My love, my heart, my life…” Her head roared. “Armand.” She felt the sting of tears, but not much else anymore. Each breath hurt worse than the one that struggled into her lungs before it. “Oh baby, I did so want to see you become the man I know you’ll grow to be…Armand.”
If only he could hear her. If only Sid could have survived the attack, to live and help their son learn the lessons only a father could teach. To remind their son every day how much his Mommy had loved him. To show him the ways of a warrior—courage and selflessness even in the face of danger or death. But Obsidian was no more. And if the fates were kind, she knew they’d be together again in the afterlife.
After all, what would any heaven be like, if she didn’t have him there to argue with all the time?
A strange sort of peace engulfed her. Like the thick warmth of a familiar blanket, long loved and used. Would she, a woman long without peace in her life, at last feel the safety of Death himself as he came and took her in his arms? It seemed so perfect, even in its irony, and Cady felt her cracked lips smile.
“I’m coming soon, my love…”
“Not too soon, I hope,” said a voice not too far from where she lay.
As if in a dream, Cady turned her head to see a tall, hooded and cloaked figure standing over the place where she felt sure her husband had fallen.
“Grimm,” she whispered in sudden, unexpected relief.
The man turned to her, reached up, and lowered the deep hood that concealed his features. The man revealed to her was a stranger with clear, deep pools of golden light for eyes and the face of a fallen demigod.
“Don’t you touch him, motherfucker!” she cried out brokenly.
He regarded her solemnly for a long, silent moment, before bending down to the ground where Sid lay. Cady could not see what he was doing, there was too much brush and disheveled earth between them.
“Goddamn it, I told you to leave him the fuck alone,” she screamed.
The stranger rose once again, and this time he stalked towards her on feet that made no sound and left no footprints. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?” he asked haltingly, as if unused to speaking so many words at once. As if the phrase, or the very words themselves were unfamiliar to him.
This stranger was no stranger to her…she realized with a jolt of surprise and confusion. This was the man who had saved her but a year ago, from a horrible wounding at the hands of a Daemon.
“Who are you?” she asked, almost fearing his answer.
The shining-eyed savior reached out to lay one of his hands upon her. A soft, warm tingle suffused her form from head to toe. It was as if he reached inside of her to fill up all her hopeless emptiness and hurt with bright, golden, healing light. All the pain and injury of her physical form faded, as if it had never been. She barely felt the weight of the Daemon on her legs now, and had no discomfort as she lay upon the hard ground.
“Why are you helping me like this? Just who in the hell are you?” She gritted out, reaching out to grip his wrist in a furious hold.
“I am who I am and that is all you need know.”
“Fucker, I hate riddles! What did you do to Sid?”
“Your mate is healed, as are you.” He rose with a graceful movement that would have shamed even the greatest Shikar, and reached out with both his hands for the gigantic form of the Daemon that still pinned her.
“Aaargh!” Foils sliced through the stranger’s middle as Obsidian streaked out of the darkness behind to attack.
“Nooo!” Cady called to warn Sid away, even as her heart and soul rejoiced in stunned disbelief that he was alive.
But she needn’t have bothered with the warning. As the Foils cleared the form of the man—slicing completely through him in a blow that should have left him in two separate halves—naught but dust flew forth from the wound and he was left completely unharmed. The stranger turned, motioned oddly with his hand, and Sid fell back onto the ground again.
“Damn you—”
“He is unharmed.” The man turned back to the Daemon’s corpse, laid his hands upon it, and closed his burning bright eyes.
The giant turned to a fine dust that immediately scattered upon a sudden, strong gust of wind. Cady choked, eyes and throat stinging from the unexpected dust storm. She scrambled to her feet, avoiding the stranger completely, and lunged for Obsidian, who was already rising from his position on the ground.
“My love, my love,” she cried over and over, raining kisses down upon his face even as the dust and her tears mingled with the blood that still covered their forms. “You’re alive!”
“Get behind me,” Sid pushed her back, eyeing the stranger menacingly.
“No Sid, he saved us. It’s okay.” She ran her hands over him from head to toe, seeking out injuries and finding none.
“Who are you?” Sid barked imperiously at the stranger, swatting Cady’s hands away and pressing her behind him as best he could. “I don’t recognize you, yet you look like a Shikar.”
Silence. The man replied at long last, but all the while his eyes were locked with Cady’s. “Love is my disguise. You’ll soon see—”
“Lazarus, my son. You linger too long.”
So many things were happening at once that Cady’s and Obsidian’s heads swam. They both turned to look at the newcomer whose voice had addressed their savior so familiarly.
A man who was so much more than a man entered the clearing, appearing from the darkness, as if made from out of the very shadows themselves. His bright blond hair shone like a star in the night and his eyes were black as the darkest pits of Hell. From his eyes shone death and damnation. While upon his face he wore the mask of Tryton.
“What is this?” Sid whispered brokenly. His confusion was as plain to hear in his voice as it was in the choking noise that issued forth from Cady’s lips. “Tryton?”
The blond-haired man—who was Tryton, and yet not Tryton—ignored them both. He held his hand out to the cloaked man. The one he’d named Lazarus. The one he’d called son. “Come,” he issued the command again.
Cady felt the hairs on the back of her nape rise. Fear and wonder consumed her. The man’s voice was metallic and terrifying. There was no life in that voice, no emotion at all, only stillness. If Death had a voice, he would surely speak forth from this man’s mouth. The cold, black depths of his eyes locked upon hers for only a brief a second, but that second stretched on into an eternity.
In those eyes she saw endless pain. Danger. Power. Power that could rival that of the very gods fabled in all of mankind’s history. His gaze held the weight of a thousand misspent lifetimes. There was madness in their depths that stretched on for eons and beyond. But there was also something else, something she couldn’t believe, and it scared her far more than anything she’d ever known.
It was regret. Endless, profound, and unguarded.
She clutched Sid to her frantically, as though afraid the dangerous blond man would take him from her.
Lazarus willingly approached the man, clearly without fear. Cady and Obsidian both knew they could not have walked so courageously towards the Tryton look-alike. Danger and insanity exuded from him like a cloying perfume.
The two men clasped hands and in a fine poof of dust, they disappeared completely. Nothing was left of them but the flyaway particles of earth that floated upon the air, falling slowly, gently to the ground.
“I think I’m going to faint,” Cady gasped, wide eyed.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“Shit. What now?” Sid growled, looking about.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The heart of the giant Obsidian had felled. It was beating, loud and strong. The Daemon was going to rise, and soon, if they didn’t burn the organ to ash right away.
“Fuck!” Cady exclaimed.
Both she and Sid dived for the basketball-sized heart at the same time. When her hands touched the sticky, black ooze of the throbbing organ’s tissue, it burst into bright, hot flames. The two of them sank back down onto their haunches and watched as the enormous heart was consumed by fire until there was nothing left but ashes.
Then Cady burst into tears.
Chapter Five
 
Cady launched herself into her mate’s waiting, open arms, sobbing as if she might never stop, clinging to him with desperate relief.
“Shhh, baby. Don’t cry,” he crooned.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she choked out.
“I thought you had too, there for a while,” he murmured. “What the hell happened? Who were those men?”
Cady felt almost sure that he didn’t expect her to reply, but she did anyway. “That man, Lazarus, that’s the second time he’s saved my life.”
Sid stilled. He held her back from him at arm’s length so that their gazes could meet. “What can you mean by that? How do you know him?”
Cady shook her head slowly, wiping inelegantly at her wet cheeks. “I don’t know him, I just…I just…I can’t explain it, but when he looks at me…”
“He has saved you twice, you said.”
“Yes. Back when Emily was leading us through New York…I might have died if he hadn’t come. And now, he’s saved us both. But why?”
“Who can he be?” Sid mused.
“And the other…” Cady’s voice shook.
“He looked like Tryton. How can he look like Tryton and not be Tryton? This makes no sense to me,” Obsidian frowned, shaking his head.
“We need to get back. To tell the others what’s happened. And we need to send for Tryton right away.”
Sid sighed deeply, wincing. “I am far too weak to Travel yet.”
“What?” Cady jerked from his hold. “Are you still hurt? I thought that man fixed you like he fixed me. I feel fine—where do you hurt—”
“Shush.” Sid put a gentle finger to her lips in an effort to stem the rapid flow of her words. “I am fine. It is merely that I am tired from the battle and from the healing. I will be right again in a few hours, perhaps.”
“But we can’t stay here, more of these motherfuckers might come back. I, for one, am ready to turn tail and run our asses out of here. I can’t handle another attack like that without some reinforcements.”
Sid chuckled and cupped her cheek in his hand. “You? Retreat? Where was this good sense when I told you to run earlier, hmm?”
Cady swatted his hand away roughly. “I’m not joking, Sid.” Her voice broke. “I can’t risk you again like that, not this soon. We have to get out of here.”
“There is no possibility of my Traveling. And we cannot go back where there are people to witness the blood and gore upon our clothing.”
“We have to do something,” she cried.
Sid put his lips to hers. It was a soft kiss, full of sweetness and tenderness and love. He parted her lips and let his tongue stroke into the depths of her mouth. His hands rose up to cup the sides of her face, tilting it just so. He worshipped her mouth with his, filling her up with his breath and his taste and his scent.
Cady had never experienced such an earth-shattering kiss. It was the very embodiment of true, undying love. It broke through all of her defenses, and filled her up with something so strong and everlasting that she was made stronger than ever before.
Her arms went around his neck. His hands moved down her back, gripping her so tight and so close that their heartbeats touched and reverberated. Their kiss grew rougher, harder. Obsidian ate at her mouth as if he wanted to swallow her whole. And Cady was just as eager to taste of him, to feel his lips and his tongue caressing hers, to breathe his sighs and give him her own, to drown herself in him.
“I love you, you foolish, stubborn, courageous woman.” He interspersed each word with a hard kiss upon her open, gasping mouth.
“Don’t ever leave me, you big, arrogant jerk.” She exhaled each word on a sigh. “I need you too damn much to let you go without following you.”
His kisses moved down from her mouth to her chin and then on to her jaw. Her fingers threaded through his long, dark hair.
“My baby, my beautiful one, my everything,” he murmured. Pressing the words into her skin with hard kisses that seemed to grow more and more desperate with each pass of his lips.
“Hold me,” she gasped. “Hold me tight. I can’t ever go through this again.” Her words trembled. “I can’t bear the thought of your death. Oh god, I love you so much. More than I would have ever thought possible before our first meeting.”
“I was nothing but a shell before you came into my life.” His hand fumbled with her clothing, pushing her shirt up to expose her breasts to his seeking, hungering mouth.
“I can’t lose you, not ever. I love you,” she repeated desperately.
“I’ll never leave you. You are everything to me.” He pressed a hard kiss to her breast, then sucked her nipple into his mouth.
“Oh god, Sid, that feels so good. Suck me hard, please,” she cried, clutching him to her breast with a mad passion. “Take all of me, so I know you’re here and this isn’t just a dream.”
“No dream could be so perfect.” His voice was strained, his control nearly at the breaking point.
Cady’s hands moved all over his broad, muscular back. She pulled his shirt over his head, tangling his hair until it was a wild halo of black shadows about them. The heat of his golden skin burned against her, his belly pressing down against hers, his hips settling into the cradle between her spread legs.
“I was so scared,” she admitted in a small voice.
His head came up, his hands smoothing the find tendrils of hair away from her temples. His orange-yellow gaze burned down into hers. “Me too, baby. Me too.”
“I need you so much.” She pulled his mouth down to hers for another, deep kiss. Their tongues slid in a dance as old as time itself, and they both trembled with need and desire.
Sid’s hands were almost bruising as he jerked her pants down to her ankles. “Kick them off,” he commanded.
“You too,” she said, when her hands fumbled at the fastening of his trousers.
When he settled back down upon her, they were pressed naked skin to naked skin. Cady’s hand moved to cup and hold the heavy, thick length of his cock. He was so hard and so hot, it was like holding a live coal in her hand.
Obsidian’s fingers stroked over the seam of her pussy, finding a burning wetness there that spoke volumes of her need for him. He pressed one long finger into her channel, thrusting gently in and out of her welcoming body until her keening cries filled his ears. She was so soft and so delicate, he feared hurting her with the force of his own passion.
He wanted to consume her. But he wanted to savor her, too.
Cady pumped him once, twice, then over and over until he trembled. His shudders wracked both their frames. A bead of his sweat trickled from his brow and fell onto her parted lips. She darted her tongue out to capture the salty taste of him.
Sid pulled himself free of her pumping hands. He spread her legs wide with his palms and rubbed his cock against her pussy with slow, languid movements. Her moisture bathed them both. Their sweat commingled. Their bodies ached to join, but still he held back.
With a cry, Cady took matters into her own hands. She rolled them, until Sid was caught beneath her weight. With a sensual undulation of her hips, she took him inside of her, sinking down onto his erection, like a sword sliding into its sheath after a long, drawn-out battle.
“I love you,” they whispered in unison. The sound of their words echoed and trailed upon the air like a tiny wind.
Their gazes met and held. Cady rocked back and forth upon him. Soft, slow, gentle movements that drowned them both in exquisite pleasure and anticipation. Her hands were anchored, palms flat, upon the bulging ridge of the muscles upon his chest. Obsidian’s hands rubbed and cupped her bottom as she rose and fell upon him.
The shuddering sound of their breathing and the soft, liquid sound of their bodies joining over and over were the only breaks in the silence of the clearing for many long moments. Cady rolled her hips in a circular movement, making Obsidian groan in bliss. Obsidian tilted his pelvis to rub against her swollen clit and she moaned brokenly with rapture.
Abruptly lifting her off of him, Sid brought her up and over to straddle his face. His mouth fastened upon her pussy, suckling her, licking her, kissing every inch of her swollen, tender flesh. Cady’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she cried out, uncaring of who or what might chance to hear her. Nothing mattered but his hot, wet mouth rooting at the core of her.
But then it was gone. She moaned from the loss of his most intimate kiss. Sid lifted her again, standing with her. He pulled her up into his arms, holding her easily with one hand, while guiding her legs around his waist with the other. Cady sank down onto his big, thick cock again, with a sigh of sweet ecstasy. Sid’s hands cupped her ass, and his hips pumped into her, bouncing her upon him.
Cady felt impaled. The soft bump and slap of his balls against her anus made her whole body quake. As if Sid knew exactly what she wanted, one of his fingers massaged firm, tiny circles into the moue of her asshole. Her nails dug into his shoulders, and suddenly their thrusts became more frantic—rougher and wilder.
They raced towards the finish together. Cady squeezed the muscles of her cunt around him. Obsidian swelled full and wide within her body, thrusting harder and harder into the heart of her welcoming body. With a shout, he pounded into her and stilled.
Cady felt her body shudder as stars appeared before her eyes, stunning her vision. Her heart thundered. Her body flushed from head to toe, and she screamed with the onslaught of her climax.
Obsidian’s thick, hot cream washed into her. Her body pulsed and clenched, grabbing at each drop of his come. Sid fell to his knees, groaning over and over again in a hoarse voice as he spurted himself into the depths of her.
They clutched tightly to each other for so long, their arms and legs went numb. Their shudders stilled, their breathing slowed, and their thundering heartbeats quieted. The cool night air intruded once again, but did nothing to dispel the moment. They were both covered in dirt and muck and sweat, but it was the cleansing of their souls that made this loving so profound. This was a rebirth. A celebration of life, and triumph over death itself.
An hour could have passed. They had no way of knowing. Neither of them wanted to move from their embrace, neither of them wanted such peace and bliss to end.
But it did. It had to, for such things are too profound, too meaningful to last forever.
“Are you unharmed?”
Cady and Sid both turned to see The Traveler standing still at their side.
“We are now,” Cady whispered, uncaring of her nudity, for Grimm had seen her nude more times than she could count. Indeed, he often watched her and Obsidian make love, with their willing and happy acceptance.
“What happened here?” Grimm asked quietly.
“We will explain everything. Just take us home for now, Traveler.”
“Yes.” Cady breathed a sigh of relief. “Please take us home.”
Without further preliminaries, Grimm reached out with his beautifully long-fingered hands, touched both their dark heads, and took them home.
Epilogue
 
“What do you think they could have been? A secret group of Shikar? It seems impossible, but after tonight, I could believe just about anything.” Obsidian rubbed at his temples wearily.
Cady snuggled up at his side, unable, even after the several hours that had passed since their battle with the Daemons, to let him out of her sight.
Edge and Emily, Cinder and Steffy, they were all here. Tryton’s own personal team of warriors. But where was their leader? Only Grimm knew the answer to that, and he wasn’t telling. They needed Tryton now, more than ever…Cady only hoped he came back, and soon.
After telling their story twice—once from Obsidian’s point of view and then from Cady’s—Grimm had said little. His face was as unreadable as ever, proud and arrogant as any Shikar’s, but shadowy and full of long-held secrets. He was perhaps the oldest Shikar in existence except for Tryton…and no one knew for certain how old either of them were. Thousands of years old at least. It was frightening to realize that someone of Grimm’s long years held such concern over the appearance of two strange men at the scene of a battle with the Daemons.
“That—that man looked so much like Tryton. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t a man, human or Shikar. That thing was something else entirely, even if it did wear Tryton’s face,” Cady said through nervously clenched teeth.
“No. He was a man, of that you can be certain,” Grimm said pensively. His gaze swept the room, resting on each of them in turn. He fell silent for a long time, his black eyes—so much like those of the strange man on the battlefield—vague and far away.
“You will speak of this to no one,” he said at last.
Steffy jerked in her seat. “What? But why not? The warriors need to be told about this—”
Grimm silenced her with a hard glance. “You can tell them all you want of the battle and this new breed of overly large Daemon. But you will—” he looked a them each in turn to bring home his point, “none of you, will speak of the two men Cady and Obsidian saw. This news must not travel beyond the walls of this room. Not until Tryton returns, at any rate,” he added.
Edge snarled, one glowing Foil shooting from his pointed, accusing finger like a blue talon. “To keep such news from the Council is tantamount to treason.”
“Fuck the Council,” Grimm barked, taking them all aback. No one made a further sound, so shocked were they. “This goes far beyond their reach,” he gritted from behind clenched teeth.
“Far beyond their reach? How can you say that, Traveler? The Council knows all—” Edge rallied.
“The Council knows nothing of this, pup.” Grimm’s voice was like a blade, cutting them all to the quick. “And they will know nothing of it after tonight. Tryton will handle this when he returns, and he will handle the Council as well.”
“Will you go for Tryton then?” Emily asked, her voice a calm anchor in the storm of emotion flooding the room. Her eyes were as black and filled with starlight as Grimm’s, though she had been a human but a year before.
“I will do what I must,” Grimm responded enigmatically.
“Why all the secrecy? Why all the intrigue? And why do I always have this niggling feeling that you know a hell of a lot more than you’re telling us, reaper man?” Cady spat angrily.
“This meeting is over.” Grimm rose and made for the door.
“Who was that man?” Cady barked, unwilling to let the matter drop.
Grimm’s gaze was fierce and angry when he swerved his head back to look at her. “Be thankful you do not know the answer to that. Be thankful your world is still unchanged. Be grateful each and every moment you have left that he passed you by.” He stalked up to her, anger punctuating his every step. Obsidian rose to intercede, as if afraid that Grimm might lay a hand upon her. Grimm merely waved his hand and Obsidian fell with a thud back onto the couch. Silence reigned again for a tense, endless moment.
The starlight in Grimm’s eyes made Cady dizzy, but she refused to look away and met him stare for stare.
And then, unexpectedly, Grimm eased back. His mouth softened and his exceedingly large shoulders relaxed somewhat.
“I have always admired you, Cady. You have a keen mind and a strong will. But let this be. For now, I beg of you, let this mystery go unexplored. Tryton will come and then we will decide the fate of all.” Grimm turned Obsidian, whose anger smoldered under a scowl. “I am sorry, my friend, for striking out against you.”
“I accept your apology,” Obsidian gritted out.
Grimm addressed the room at large one last time. “Please. You are all my friends and I yours. Can you not trust to my words and keep faith with me? All I ask of you is silence. All will be explained when the proper time comes. I promise you.”
“I trust you, Grimm. I don’t like this business, but I do trust you,” Emily offered.
“And I,” Cinder echoed. Though his anger and worry were apparent as a halo of fire glowed about his bright blond head.
The others eventually agreed, and Grimm eased further, knowing they would keep the secret he so desperately wanted them to keep.
“The meeting is over,” Grimm repeated and made for the door, leaving the group to their thoughts in his wake.
“The meeting may be over, but the war—the real war—has just begun,” Steffy predicted with a worried frown.
“I fear you’re right,” Cady sighed. She wrapped her arms around the waist of her husband and felt his slide around her shoulders to hold her close in return. “May fate and all the gods of the world help every one of us, but I think you’re right.”