Niki barely managed to muffle a shriek of surprise, and he couldn’t help grinning. If Niki was surprised by this…well, she hadn’t seen anything yet.
Niki knew he was gloating, damn the man. But hell, she’d just seen two people appear out of thin air! Though she was no stranger to the paranormal herself, she was by no means used to seeing other people perform such feats right before her eyes as if they were as commonplace as a sneeze.
“Niki, this is Grimm and Emily. They will go in your place to find your daughter and bring her back safely.”
Emily, a small woman with striking black hair and a peaches and cream complexion, visibly started. “You have a daughter?” she asked.
“Why are you all so damn surprised at the mention of a daughter?” Niki exploded, feeling more and more like an oddity in their midst. Who were these people anyway? Better yet, what were they? “Yes, I have a daughter. She’s waiting on me at the airport right now and if I don’t show up soon she’ll think I’m dead in that crash—”
“We will find her,” the tall man in the black cloak—Grimm—told her calmly.
“Do you maybe have a picture of her on you?” Emily asked, moving closer.
It was only when the woman stopped about three feet in front of her that Niki noticed the color of her eyes. Or the lack of color…Emily’s eyes were completely black! With some effort, Niki answered the woman’s question.
“I’m afraid I didn’t remember a purse.”
“There is no need for sarcasm.” Emily smiled a little as she said it.
“We’ve no need of a picture either.” Grimm came towards her too, but he did not stop as Emily had. He reached out and took Niki’s head in his hands, gently enough, but when she tried to pull away—his touch and his presence were too overwhelming, too intimidating—he held her still. “Let me see her,” he whispered for her ears alone and she stilled, entranced.
There was such power in that voice…she had to obey him. The feel of the cool skin of his hands against her temples made her shudder, but not entirely from fear. He was too much, this Grimm. Too much of everything. Power, might, sensuality, danger, and cold-blooded calculation, he was all of that and more.
A second and it was over, but in her mind his touch had lasted an eternity. Her head ached for a moment, that old familiar pain from too much psychic exertion, and then eased.
“A young one, no longer a child but not yet a woman,” Grimm murmured. “We will find her.”
“Let Emily approach her,” Tryton warned. “You might frighten her away.”
Emily grinned. “No shit.”
And with that, the two disappeared without a trace.
It took a good minute to recover, but she managed, despite Tryton’s heavy stare. “What the hell just happened here?” Niki demanded.
“They are my Travelers. My couriers, if you will, at least in this case. They will find your Jada for you.”
“But how will they know where to look? How will they find her?”
Tryton smiled, revealing a dazzling set of perfect, white teeth. Her gut clenched tightly and her heart raced. God, he was gorgeous.
“Grimm learned all he needed from you. Don’t worry, Jada will be found and kept safe from harm.”
“What is happening here?” She felt a wave of worry and panic. “Who are you people and what do you want with me?” She put her hands to her head, exactly where Grimm had put his before, as if she could squeeze the answers out herself. “I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I just wanted to help people—I just wanted to help her, and what do I get for it? Powers I can’t understand and nightmares that will last me the rest of my life. Damn it, it’s all her fault!”
“Whose fault?” He frowned. “Jada’s? I don’t understand.”
It was just too much, all of it. Niki growled and shook her fists at him. “No! This—all of this—the healing, the headaches, the nightmares, the monsters, the deaths, all this is because of that woman!” She growled and stomped her foot, giving vent to the impotent rage she’d never before allowed herself to truly, fully feel. “If it weren’t for her driving in that goddamn blizzard, none of this would have ever happened, none of it. If I hadn’t been on duty that night I never would have been there. But I was and I tried—oh, I really tried—to save her. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
“Now I’ve got these powers, I can do the most amazing and the most horrible things. There have been so many times when I’ve almost lost it completely. I had to send my daughter away to a boarding school just to keep her safe—if I lose control, I might kill her as I did the others. I have to move all the time so people won’t discover my secret. I can’t hold a normal job, I can’t have a home—I can’t have a relationship with anyone! I’m tired of the headaches, tired of the magic and the nightmares, all of it. I just want things back to the way they were before that night…damn it,” she finished on a hoarse whisper.
Tryton eyed her strangely, something serious and calculating in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and it alarmed her.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a shudder. “I’ve never exploded like that before. I don’t really feel sorry for myself and don’t normally complain or pitch fits like that. It was uncalled for and you didn’t deserve to witness it. It’s just,” she faltered. “I just feel like…” She couldn’t find the words.
“You feel out of control,” he offered.
Yes, she did. But she wouldn’t admit it to him.
“Tell me more. How is it that you gained these powers, this magic of yours, if you were not born with them?”
Niki shook her head, ashamed that she’d been so loose with her emotions in front of this stranger, unwilling to share more. She started when he jerked her chin up with his fingers—she hadn’t seen or heard him approach.
“Look at me,” he commanded.
How could she not? He was holding her captive with his bright, glowing eyes as easily as he did with the fingers holding her chin in a gentle vise.
“Tell me everything,” he said softly, too softly.
She wanted to say no. She wanted to refuse him. She didn’t know him from Adam and wanted nothing further to do with him. But to her complete, utter surprise, she told him everything he wanted to know. For the first time she told him what she had not told another living soul, not even her daughter. And heaven help her, she held nothing back.
* * * * *
“There she is.”
Emily looked over the sea of people to see for herself. “She’s not at all how I would have pictured her,” was all she could manage.
“You should make the first move,” Grimm instructed quietly.
He stayed in the background as she walked forward to do just that. The girl—more a young woman than a child—watched her every step as though, despite the crowd, she knew that Emily was coming toward her specifically. Jada was her name, or so Grimm had told her in the endless moments it had taken for them to arrive here.
Despite what everyone thought, Traveling took a long, long time. At least it seemed that way to the Traveler doing it. Emily hadn’t understood just how Traveling worked until after her shift from human to Shikar, when she’d awakened as one of the Traveling Caste. Now she felt she knew far too much about it, despite the fact that she was still “in training”.
Travelers, contrary to popular belief, did not just disappear and reappear at will. No. It was far more complicated than that. Travelers were the vehicles by which others could disappear and reappear at will. Unlike other Castes, Travelers had the ability to fold space and dimension. But it was not at all easy, and when “folding”, time became skewed. It passed by very, very slowly.
What might seem like a two-second trip to a non-Traveler, to Emily felt more like several hours. When she was in that state of in-between, Traveling from one space and time to another, she was moving over incredible distances. And with each trip, she felt the toll of those distances weighing heavier and heavier upon her.
She knew
now why Grimm was so still and so silent. He existed apart from everyone else. There was no one who was not a fellow Caste member who could understand the immense weight resting upon his shoulders. He was truly alone. Now she, too, was much the same, though her husband Edge kept her from getting lost in that lonely place of unbelonging. Grimm, however, had no one. And he’d had no one for several thousand years. Emily could not imagine so desolate an existence, growing greater and greater each and every time Grimm Traveled for his beloved Shikars.
There would come a day, she knew, when she grew too tired to go on. It was then that she would leave to that far-off place of nothingness, to die or to live forever as only a spirit or vapor…she wasn’t sure. But that’s what Travelers did—they simply left. Never to return.
Edge vowed she would not go into that place alone. He promised that he would join her in that dim and long-off future. And for that she was eternally grateful.
Grimm however, would go alone. For the woman he loved—everyone by now must know he loved her sister, Raine—was dead and gone from him. Far beyond even his long reach. There would be no ever after with a heart’s love for him. There would be only emptiness—and an eternity of it at that.
Looking at Niki’s daughter now, something about Jada reminded Emily of just such a vast emptiness. An aura or air about her that proclaimed her lonesome existence within this sea of unconcerned, preoccupied strangers.
“Where is my mother?” the girl asked without preamble.
Emily tried not to fall into the depths of the girl’s deep brown eyes. She felt certain that if she looked too hard there, she would drown. “She’s waiting for you. My name is Emily and I’m a friend of hers, will you come with me?”
Jada rolled her eyes. “Mom has no friends. Tell me what she looks like, then I’ll come with you. Maybe.”
It was hard to hold back her grin, but somehow Emily managed. The girl was so serious, Emily knew better than to make light of her caution. “She’s tall, with long, curly black hair, dark eyes like yours, ebony complexion, pointed chin, long-fingered hands. Oh,” she’d almost forgotten, and a good police officer—which she’d been in a former life—never forgot the important details. “And she has a scar on the back of her right knee from when she was burning brush in the backyard when you were seven and an ember caught her.”
“I was eight,” Jada said smartly, but her smile was easy and accepting. “How’d you know about that? Mom doesn’t tell anybody about that—she’s embarrassed by it. She hates being clumsy.”
Emily smiled. Niki certainly hadn’t told her, but Grimm had, and Grimm had a way of knowing all the right things at all the right times. “Are those your bags?” She motioned towards the two duffle bags piled haphazardly on the seat behind Jada.
“Yeah.” Jada picked them up now, slinging one over each shoulder, brushing aside Emily’s offer of aid. “I heard there was a plane crash and I was afraid it was Mom’s.”
“Didn’t you know what flight she was on?”
“No,” Jada snorted, looking far older than her thirteen years should allow. “Really, I wasn’t sure when Mom would get here, but I knew she would come. She always comes when I break out of school.”
Emily nearly choked on her surprise. “Break out of school? What do you mean?”
Jada’s large, dark eyes rolled again. It was a look fast becoming something Emily expected from her. “Break out, escape, run away, does that spell it out for you? I left in the middle of the day, the dean called her in a panic because she couldn’t find me, and Mom knew I’d be here waiting for her. We’ve done this several times before—hasn’t she told you that? No, she’s probably ashamed of that, too. Hell, she’s ashamed to even come here to get me this time. But what does she expect? This is the only way I get to visit with her. My ‘acting out’ as everyone likes to call it, is probably just a cry for her attention or whatever, yeah, but it’s her attention I want. This way I get to spend a few weeks with her while she tries to find another boarding school that will take me, and I’ve got a record for truancy now so that’s getting harder and harder to do. Shit, maybe this time she’ll give up and send me to a normal school with all the normal kids so I can go back to living with her.”
“That was a lot of words for someone so small, and I don’t think you should be swearing,” Emily said sternly. “It’s not ladylike.”
Jada plopped one of her bags on the ground unceremoniously and eyed her. “Are you telling me that you don’t swear? Because I won’t believe it—I know things, and I know you swear.”
Emily didn’t know what to say to that. “Come on,” she said at last, snatching up the fallen bag herself before Jada could. “Your mom did want to come,” she led the way to Grimm, who stood out like a sore thumb in the crowd with his dark robes and towering height. “She just couldn’t make it.”
“Where is she then? Are you taking me to Savannah, is she still living there? Or are we going to Biloxi, or Tallahassee or any of the other cities she’s lived in for the past five years?”
They came to a halt next to Grimm.
“Holy crap,” Jada said, looking up, up, and up into Grimm’s cowl. “Are you a basketball player?” she asked bluntly.
“No,” he answered.
“Why’s your face covered?”
He ignored her and turned to Emily. “Are you prepared? We must time this perfectly.”
Emily nodded, it was best to be at their most careful now. They appeared in the airport at the best moment to avoid detection and they must leave in the same manner. It would not do at all to have people see them simply disappear as if by magic.
“Fine, don’t talk to me then,” Jada snapped at him. She turned as if to leave them. “Tell Mom I’ll be waiting here for her to come fetch me herself.”
“Girl,” Grimm reached out to snag a handful of material at Jada’s shoulder.
For the first time, Emily got a clear glimpse of Grimm in an unguarded moment. Indeed he appeared almost flustered around the girl. She wondered, with a sense of awe, if he’d ever really interacted with human children before, for indeed it seemed that he had not.
Jada swatted at his hands, unafraid and belligerent as a thirteen-year-old could be. “I’ll scream and say you tried to snatch me,” she threatened. “The security around here is tight as hell. I doubt you’d have time to get away.”
Grimm growled—he actually growled—and reached for Jada’s hand. A second later—at least for the girl—they were underground, in the world of the Shikar, in the living room of Emily’s apartment.
“Neat,” Jada said, looking around, as comfortable now as she’d been in the airport, as if she’d Traveled a thousand times before. “Now what?”
“Now I’m getting out of here,” Grimm said hurriedly and disappeared.
“Boys,” Jada said trenchantly, rolling her eyes again. “They’re so totally chicken.”
Emily only smiled.
“So, wanna tell me what’s going on?” Jada smiled back, with an all too knowing, all too mischievous glint in her eyes. “’Cause that was no ordinary plane ride we just took.”
“Well duh,” Emily said with a smile.
Chapter Seven
Tryton watched over her as she slept, for the second time that night. Niki’s face was streaked and marred by tears, but even so, it was more beautiful to him now than it had been even a few hours before.
How had things come full circle like this? Was it fate? Was it chance? Or was it on purpose, all of it, some as yet undiscovered machination that he simply hadn’t even suspected all this time?
He hated surprises. Such surprises shouldn’t even be possible to one as old and jaded as he, but there it was, staring him in the face—the hidden connection, the truth, the reality of it all.
How could he not have known?
How could he not have seen?
Niki had told him everything and yet she had no idea just how explosive her tale had been to him. To the Shikar Alliance as a whole. It was a
stounding.
She had told him. She had wept. His mind and his soul had wept with her. And when she finished she had slept, as if the revelation of her secrets—even to one who was as yet a stranger to her—was a burden that had sapped her of all remaining strength. Niki slept deeply now, dreamless—he’d seen to that personally with but a light touch upon her mind—and he was loathe to wake her. But wake her he must, for time was not in their favor and rest would soon prove a luxury for them all.
There was so much to do and the window of opportunity in which to see it all done right was closing fast.
He nudged her gently, and called her name until she stirred. Gods, she was beautiful, soft and dazed with sleep and exhaustion. It took all his control not to reach out and take what he wanted.
It was the second time she’d awakened to find herself in his bed, and she was fast becoming used to such a wicked comfort. As she fully roused, Niki’s vision was filled with the overwhelming sight of his exposed torso. Dark and bronze—a true golden-bronze hue—he looked like a wet dream come to warm and breathing life. For those first few moments between sleep and wakefulness, she forgot all her worries, all her sins. Nothing concerned her but him. And she made the decision that would, inevitably, change both their lives.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, reaching for him.
His eyes flared wide with surprise. But he willingly came to her embrace, bending his leonine head and pressing his hot, hard mouth to hers.
Desire flared instantly to life within her. A need and a yearning so great, it made all others before it pale in comparison. It felt as though perhaps even her most explosive orgasm in the past had been but a dim shadow, a mere preparation for this moment, this kiss, this man.
His hand smoothed her hair away from her face and neck, coming to rest pressed against her throat in a purely dominant way that had her heart performing somersaults within her breast. He held her jaw in his powerful fingers, turning her this way and that as their kiss deepened into a thoroughly passionate exploration.
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