“We may have to divide our teams up into smaller units,” Tryton suggested.
“But that’s suicide,” Cady gasped.
“This war has grown too dangerous too quickly,” Tryton muttered. “I must have time to think and confer with the Council. I knew no decisions could be made here between us tonight. I called this meeting simply to let you all know, my most loyal warriors, what it is you face now.”
“We thank you, Elder,” Obsidian said with great respect for his friend and leader.
“We’ll have to bring Cinder back,” Edge said, speaking for the first time since arriving.
“I know. And I think Steffy will have to come too. She’s his woman now.” Tryton smiled.
“I knew it!” Cady said excitedly. “They were too mean to each other not to be attracted.”
“Only you would associate meanness with attraction, Cady,” Obsidian said dryly.
“Shut up, Sid. You’re just pissed because I told you so and you didn’t believe me.”
“I knew you were too much of a lady to rub it in,” he countered.
Cady snorted.
“Is it possible that she could become a Shikar?”
“I don’t know,” Tryton said truthfully. “I’m not sure what made it possible for Cady to cross over into our world the way she did. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Perhaps our seed isn’t poison to humans after all, but an elixir that can change them into our kind,” Edge said thoughtfully.
“No.” Tryton’s voice was a thunderclap that echoed off the walls of the room. “Our seed is a poison to human women. Of that there can be no doubt.”
“How do you know for certain?” Edge challenged softly.
“Once, long ago, a woman died in the arms of her Shikar lover. A direct result of lying with him. It was the first time such a tragedy had ever occurred. And over the years there have been others—thankfully only a few—to die. It’s why the Council has forbidden unprotected sex between our species.” Tryton’s eyes were shadowed.
“What about sex between Shikar women and human men?” Cady asked curiously. She’d never heard anyone speak of such a thing.
Tryton and the Traveler both turned to her. She felt the weight of their stares bore heavily into her and wondered what is was she’d said to gain such a fierce reaction.
Tryton’s words seemed guarded. Tentative. “There is no poison in a Shikar woman’s embrace.”
“Well, regardless, we have to retrieve Cinder soon. If Stefany wishes to come then the more the merrier, I say,” Cady quipped.
Tryton nodded his agreement but the deep shadows never left his eyes. Cady wondered what knowledge or memory he held that put such a look into their depths. She doubted it would do her any good to ask. Tryton was good at keeping his own counsel.
But still…she couldn’t help wondering.
* * * * *
Cady swirled her tongue over the thick crown of her husband’s cock. Obsidian groaned against her pussy and bucked, pushing himself deeper into her mouth. She pumped him with her hands as she sucked and licked and nibbled. The heavy sac of his testicles she cupped lovingly in her hands, rolling and stroking them in the way she knew would best drive him wild.
He groaned and bucked against her again.
His mouth worked on her, licking, sucking and nuzzling her until she ached. His fingers squeezed and parted her buttocks. He licked the moue of her anus and she gasped around the thick flesh that filled her mouth. Obsidian had always been fascinated with her ass, loving it just as thoroughly as he did the rest of her.
She lifted her eyes to meet those black orbs that watched them from across the room. Grimm, gloriously naked, sprawled in his favored chair at the foot of the bed, stroking himself as he watched them. It wasn’t often of late that their friend The Traveler had time to spend with them, seeking to have some small part of the love that stormed between them. Cady had, from the first, been both uncomfortable and titillated with his audience. But Grimm had never once taken liberties with her. He was content to watch them.
Grimm’s eyes watched her every sucking movement on her husband’s cock. She pulled back, determined to give him a good show, and licked the crown with dramatic sweeping motions of her tongue. She watched as Grimm squeezed his monstrously large cock and massaged his sac. She felt Obsidian’s tongue lapping at her ass, felt his hands gently slapping her buttocks until they stung and no doubt glowed a rosy red.
Cady swallowed her husband’s cock until he butted against the back of her throat. Obsidian’s chin moved against her wet cunt. She rode his face. He rode hers. Grimm breathed heavily as he watched.
Cady felt the thick fullness of the Smyl—her favorite sex toy—as Obsidian slipped it into her pussy. The weighted balls that filled the Smyl’s shaft vibrated inside of her. The toy swelled and conformed to the shape of her channel, filling her full to bursting as it trembled and shook inside of her. Obsidian’s hands moved back to her ass cheeks, his tongue licking from where the Smyl filled her to her anus.
Cady moaned around Obsidian’s cock. She was coming. She looked up into Grimm’s eyes, to let him know how close she was to fulfillment. His shining black head fell back as he watched and his pumping hand increased its tempo. She bobbed her head faster up and down her husband’s length.
They came in unison. The hot splash of Obsidian’s sweet come flooded into her throat. She swallowed every delicious drop. Her pussy clenched violently around the Smyl and she came with a gush onto her husbands face. He licked her clean with relish and a hunger that only made her come harder. She saw the thick, creamy splash of Grimm’s orgasm spurt up onto his belly before she closed her eyes against the force of her wondrous release.
Cady gave herself over to the addictive pleasure of her mate’s wicked embrace. She didn’t even notice when Grimm disappeared, leaving them as silently as he’d arrived.
Chapter Eleven
Cinder stiffened in the seat and the heat exuding from him increased exponentially. The bright glare of a flashlight illuminated the confines of the car and Cinder winced, his Shikar eyes overly sensitive to the artificial light.
Steffy rolled her window down and was, for once, happy to see the pea green of a poleizi—police—uniform.
“What’s going on here?” the man asked politely, while obviously scanning the contents of her car. “Do you have your papers?”
Steffy quickly retrieved her I.D. and handed it to the officer, thankful that the policeman hadn’t shown up ten minutes earlier. “Our car is out of fuel and my cell phone won’t work out here.” She glanced at the name on his badge. “Can you give us a lift to the nearest station, Officer Ehlers?”
“One moment, please.” He went back to his car, where his partner was waiting, no doubt with the intention to enter her personal information into his computer, in search of any warrants or violations. She thanked her lucky stars that she had none—the policeman would have assumed all of the equipment filling the back of her car to be stolen otherwise.
A few minutes later the policeman appeared once more at her window and handed her papers back to her. “We can call a tow truck for you, Fraulein Michanke but we are on patrol and cannot offer you a ride. I am sorry.”
Police and their endless rules; how Steffy despised them. “A tow truck will cost me unnecessarily. I only need to refuel.”
“I could call you a cab but I think very much that it would be just as costly all the way out here.” He said this with a helpless, apologetic smile.
“Call this tow truck,” Cinder commanded the policeman softly. “I’ll pay for it.”
Steffy sneered, knowing just how much money Tryton had given him to throw around. He wouldn’t even notice the expense. But it was the principal of the thing—the waste of time and money and effort—that irked her so. She could well afford the price of a tow truck; she was very well paid for what she did for a living, but she was also notoriously tight-fisted with her money.
“If I gave
you money and a petrol can, would you bring us the fuel so we can drive ourselves to the station?” she asked, grasping at straws.
“I am sorry, Fraulein. I would help you if I could, but my colleague and I must stay in this area unless we are called away from it. The petrol station, alas, is not in our assigned patrol area.”
“Damn it.” Stefany glared at him. “Fine, call the stupid tow truck.”
Her look was lost on the police officer as an anguished scream sounded from his waiting vehicle. So much happened at once that Steffy’s head swam. The policeman beside her drew his gun with a swift, fluid movement. Cinder’s door flew open as he exited the vehicle. Another scream echoed, faded into a gurgle and then fell eerily silent.
“Stay in the car.” The policeman’s command fell on deaf ears as Cinder stepped from the car.
“Cinder, do as he says.” Steffy grabbed for his hand and winced as her fingers burned from the heat of his skin. The policeman dashed off to investigate.
His head ducked back down into the car and his eyes glowed dangerously. “This is not good. Be on your guard and do exactly as I tell you.”
“What’s happening?” Her voice surprised her, steady as it sounded despite her sudden, overwhelming fear.
Cinder didn’t answer her, merely looked back into the night, searching their surroundings intently. “Get out of the car, Stefany,” he said, too softly, too gently.
“What’s going on?”
“Get out of the damn car.” His voice was a harsh whisper.
He couldn’t have frightened her more if he’d roared the words at her.
She scrambled out of the car the same moment she heard several booming gunshots. The second policeman emitted a horrifying scream of terror and pain from the dark, enshrouding night. “Oh hell,” she moaned helplessly.
Cinder was at her side immediately, dragging her into step beside him as he ran and crouched behind the car. “There’s no ground cover for miles.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” she asked, knowing even as she did so that she wouldn’t like the answer.
“Could be either. It’s good because I don’t see any Daemons for leagues. It’s bad because it means we can’t hide from the ones that just killed those men.”
“What makes you so sure it’s Daemons out there?” she asked desperately.
“I can feel them,” he murmured, all the while darting his eyes around, scanning their surroundings as if he feared an attack from any quarter, at any moment. He seemed to come to some decision after several seconds passed in silence. “You stay here. I’m going to try to draw them out into the open, away from that car. If you get in any trouble, scream for me.”
“I will definitely scream for you,” she said.
Cinder laughed shortly. “So it merely takes a Daemon to make you scream?”
“Scheiße,” she breathed weakly. “Let it go, will you?”
He sobered and gave her a hard look from his glowing eyes. “I mean it. Stay here.” And then he was gone.
Steffy’s breath sobbed out of her as she crouched down behind the car. She hated feeling so exposed, wanted nothing more than to hop into her car and lock herself in. But she knew Cinder had wanted her out for a reason, out here where she would have a chance to flee if it came to that.
But flee to where? There was nothing but hills, the occasional cornfield, and pasture stretching out for miles around.
Golden firelight illuminated the night around her, startling her. Cinder had found the Daemons. The light dimmed and spots danced in her vision. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of dark, hulking objects running across the median of the roadway with Cinder chasing behind them in immediate pursuit.
“Fuck this waiting crap,” Steffy muttered and raced, full speed, to the still running cop car. Her well-trained eye immediately recognized the turbo charged e-class Mercedes’ speed potential and found it to be more than satisfactory.
She almost tripped over a policeman’s headless corpse.
“Oh fucking hell!” she cried out and immediately emptied the contents of her stomach onto the road at her feet. She’d lived a somewhat hard life, seen many horrible things…but she’d never seen a mutilated body before. In fact, she’d never seen a dead body before, period. “I’m sorry, mister. I’m so very, very sorry,” she moaned piteously, knowing it was useless to apologize at this point, however heartfelt the sentiment.
Feeling the full weight of the situation upon her, knowing she was at least partly to blame for it—and all because of her stupid boredom and curiosity—she stepped past the body and jerked open the car’s driver side door.
The other policeman—Officer Ehlers—was nowhere to be found. She tried not to think about what that might mean.
She slammed the door, gunned the engine—reveling in the rumbling purr that attested to the vehicle’s power—and laid rubber as she streaked across the roadway. The car roared across the rough grass of the median with nary a complaint as she expertly steered it onto the same path Cinder and the Daemons had taken.
A black shape appeared in front of her and she screamed. Her headlights glinted off the slimy gore of the Daemon’s flesh. Instead of braking, as was her first instinct, she pushed the gas pedal to the floor. The car slammed into the monster, sending it flying up over the hood and away into the night. Steffy grunted but kept her foot on the gas.
She knew all too well by now that the Daemons couldn’t be stopped so easily.
She saw a flame on the elbow of the opposite lane and raced to it. Leaning over, but careful to keep one hand on the wheel as she drove, she threw open the passenger door and slowed her speed.
“Hurry, Cinder. Get in!”
Cinder glanced back and did a double take upon seeing her in the car. He sent a lick of fire at the two Daemons before him and without even sparing them a second look to see if he’d damaged them, he dived into the car as she passed, slamming the door behind him. A Daemon appeared directly in front of them, but Steffy wasted no time in slowing or swerving the vehicle. She simply drove through the beast, launching him over the hood of the car and high into the air.
“I thought I told you to stay put.”
“There were more than just those two. I hit one on the way over here. We’re outnumbered and I, for one, don’t want to wait around to find out just how many there are.” Her words came fast and furious in her panic.
“By Grimm, how did the bastards get out here?”
“Don’t ask me, you’re the expert on all this scary shit.”
“It was as if they just appeared. Out of nowhere,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself.
“How do they usually come up here?”
“Through portals, holes in the Earth.”
“Maybe there’s one nearby.” Her eyes scanned the roadway as she flew along it. Her mind wasn’t really on the situation at hand. She was too busy panicking over the idea that she could get into trouble with the law if they were caught now. Two policemen lay dead, mutilated, along the road behind them and here they were speeding along in the dead men’s patrol car.
No doubt about it, they were in some serious shit.
“It doesn’t feel that way to me. I’m not a Hunter like Cady but I can feel the Daemons when they’re close and it felt to me like…but that would be impossible.”
“What? What would be impossible?” Her voice rose along with her alarm.
“Cady said their presence ebbed and flowed that first night we were in Hamburg. And tonight it was the same when I felt them. Like they were there one minute and gone the next. Almost like they were Traveling.”
“So what are you saying? That these things can just appear whenever, wherever they want to?”
“They didn’t feel strong enough for that. And I just can’t believe they can Travel… Grimm help us, but that’s what it felt like.”
“Oh fuck me.” The car’s engine purred more loudly as she increased her speed. Her hands sweated nervously on the
wheel.
The car swallowed the miles easily, effortlessly.
Cinder glanced back behind them. He turned around. Then glanced back once more.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Several minutes passed. Cinder kept glancing back behind them.
“How fast can this car go?” he asked, suddenly.
“Pretty fast,” she said weakly. “Why?”
“Go a little faster,” he said gently. Calmly.
Too calmly.
“Why?” Her voice was nearly a shriek.
His eyes burned into hers, glowing fiercely. The lights from the instrument panel glittered eerily over his face. “Something’s coming. Something big.”
Steffy groaned and stomped the pedal to the floor.
Chapter Twelve
The ground shuddered and quaked, and the car would have swerved if not for her iron control upon the wheel.
“What was that?” Her voice was hoarse with the effort it took to keep from screaming.
“We must go faster,” he growled in response, darting quick, furtive glances behind them.
“I’m going 160 kilometers an hour!”
“That’s not nearly fast enough.”
“Oh God.” She increased her speed until the speedometer read 185 kph—roughly 115 miles per hour.
The ground trembled again.
Steffy looked up into the rearview mirror. “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!”
“Don’t look back!”
But it was too late. She’d seen it. The giant…thing…that was causing the asphalt behind them to erupt like a geyser. Whatever it was, it was huge. Massive. And it was tunneling through the ground, hot and heavy on their trail despite their speed.
Cinder grabbed for the mounted shotgun that was locked to the dash. A long, glowing red blade shot out from his index finger, cutting through the lock as though it were butter. The smell of burning metal permeated their surroundings.
Steffy jerked the wheel in surprise. The car swerved dangerously on the shaking ground before she expertly righted it. “What is that thing?”
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