by Emily Mckay
I stop in my tracks. Holy shit. He’s going to try to master it?
A faint noise rumbles across the lawn. An angry, annoyed sound.
Again, Kane says, “Cat of the Kells. If you hear my voice, reveal yourself and speak to me or find yourself banished to the void between worlds.”
Excerpt from
Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:
The Traveler Undone
When you make your living as a smuggler and a thief, it’s only natural that you don’t trust many people.
Anyone could sell you out for a handful of gold dahekuns.
On the other hand, when you work as a smuggler and a thief, you need someone to watch your back. For me, that person is Morgan.
He’s a timekeeper, with the ability to travel throughout the span of his life. Which, surprisingly, does not make him any more punctual.
Still, he is my oldest friend. I trust him with my life.
Which is ironic, since he’s an assassin.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
There’s an angry grumble, followed by a whisper-faint swishing of a tail over foliage. Something flickers in the darkness and then the Kellas cat slinks into view.
Her muscular body is low to the ground. Three times the size of a domestic cat, her coat is all black, except for a single patch of white shining on her chest. Her face is broad and flat and her eyes are wide and bright green. Her lips barely move when she talks.
“You have summoned me. Now speak. I am yours to command.”
My breath catches in my chest. Has he done it?
What am I doing out here? Why the hell didn’t I stay in the limo? What if my very presence here puts Kane in further danger?
The Kellas cat’s eyes never even flicker in my direction, but I’m sure she sees me. She’s a creature of the night and her vision is perfect in this near darkness.
Her attention, however, is focused solely on Kane, who speaks to her in steady, fearless tones. “I don’t seek to command you, but wish to strike a bargain.”
A bargain with a Kellas cat? Is he mad?
A pact with a Kellas cat will last for generations. There is no breaking that bond. Not for the life of that cat or for the nine lives following it.
The cat inclines her head just slightly. “Tell me of your bargain, grey wizard, and I will consider it.”
“I will trade you knowledge for power.”
“I’m listening,” she purrs. She slinks across the lawn as she speaks, circling Kane.
He moves in unison with her, never giving her his back. “Tell me the number in your dowt and the name of your master and I will free you from your service.”
“It would take a wizard more powerful than you to break my bonds of servitude.”
“You know nothing of my power.”
She lets loose a noise louder than her purr, harsher than her words. It’s halfway between a hiss and cackle.
I realize with a splash of icy dread that the noise is her laughter.
Jesus.
If this is her amused, I do not want to see her pissed off.
The Kellas cat is still circling Kane, and she’s close enough to me that he can see me now, from the corner of his gaze. Exasperation flickers across his face. It’s a sort of oh-great-now-I-have-to-deal-with-you-too expression.
Just then, something skitters in my peripheral. There are two more Kellas cats, slinking up the tree behind Kane. They are wickedly fast. When they reach the branch above his head, one of the cats creeps along the top, while the other skitters out along the length of the branch, clinging to its underside like a giant spider.
I have to force the words past my icy fear. “Kane! Above you!”
He looks up just as two cats drop from the tree. One lands in front of him, the other flips in midair to land, paws down, on Kane’s back. He howls in pain.
I’d be more concerned about him if I didn’t have problems of my own. The second I shout to Kane, the Kellas cat he’d been talking to whirls and throws herself at me.
I stumble as fifty-plus pounds of pissed off monster lands squarely on my chest. I go down hard, landing on my ass with her claws digging into my skin.
She’s howling madly—an unearthly, soul-chilling sound—and each swipe leaves four long gashes in my shirt and my skin.
I shove my arms up, bucking my hips as I push her over my head and off me. I roll away, desperate to get my feet under me. The pain searing my chest has me almost doubled over.
I whirl to face her, unwilling to let her have my back and equally unwilling to run away. She crouches several feet away, back arched, fur on end, bushy tail straight up in the air. Her eyes gleam maliciously at me.
The hellhound was scary. I’m not gonna lie. The teeth. The slobber. The gaping maw. None of that was exactly what I’d call peaceful. But this? This creature, with her keen intelligence and her absolute, malicious contempt… This creature is terrifying.
And I don’t have so much as a rock to throw at her.
Yeah. This was a great idea.
She makes that noise again. That bone-chilling cackle.
“This is the girl come to rescue the formidable Kane Travers? This mewling infant of a child? This insignificant Dark Worlder?”
Her glee morphs into venomous rage. She hisses and spits, arching her back even more as she scuttles sideways.
That’s when I remember.
The saliva of a Kellas cat is venomous. Her attack is no accident.
She struck first with her claws and then retreated to spit at me from a distance. If any of that spit reaches my bloodstream, I’ll be paralyzed.
Then all she has to do is perch on my chest and suck out my soul from my gaping mouth.
I clutch at the edges of my shirt, trying desperately to cover my open wounds. I take a step back. And then another.
And then I feel something against my back. Not the rough bark of the tree, but the solid warmth of Kane’s back. From the corner of my eye, I can see the glow from his blasting rod. He, at least, is not completely defenseless.
“She get you yet?” he asks.
“With her venom? No. I don’t think so. How would I know?”
I feel his shoulders move and picture him shrugging. “Searing pain, trouble breathing, near instant paralysis. You’d know.”
“Great. Sounds like fun.” The Kellas cat is still moving, circling us. Kane must have dispatched one of the cats who attacked him, because now, it’s two against two.
“I don’t suppose you have any more of that burning spray you used on the hellhounds?” he asks.
“The pepper spray? How’d you even know about that?”
“My apartment has windows. Do you have any more or not?”
“Nope.” In desperation, I reach into my pocket. Maybe I have something. A Glock would be perfect, but hell, I’d settle for a can of tuna and some arsenic.
What I find is the steel bolts I took out of the Faraday Cage back at Kane’s place. As weapons go, they’re far from perfect—especially since iron isn’t as deadly in this world as Wallace made it sound. But it’s all I have.
Keeping my hand in my pocket, I palm a nut and a bolt.
Over my shoulder, I ask, “You’ve got your blasting rod, right?”
“Obviously.”
“You think you can handle yours?”
“Yes. But I can’t blast both of them. Not quickly enough.”
“It’s okay,” I tell him.
“Just out of curiosity, how do I get out of this in the book?”
“Morgan saves you.”
Kane snorts. “Yeah. Like that’s going to happen.”
Yeah. He’s a lot less helpful than I expected.
Before I can mention this to Kane, the Kellas cat skitters closer still.
“Are you ready to die
, mewling Dark Worlder?”
“Are you?” I ask, fingering the bolt in my pocket. I know it’s a long shot, thinking this small bit of my world can save me, but it’s the only shot I’ve got.
Before I can decide if my plan is brilliant or just foolhardy, the Kellas cat pounces closer, spitting viciously in my direction. Hot venom lands on my skin, as I spin into a roundhouse kick, but she leaps back before the toe of my Converse makes contact with her head.
I might have her on strength, purely because I’m bigger than she is, but she’s so fast, I’ll never get close enough to find out.
She moves back, watching me. She’s waiting for her venom to work. So I give her what she’s waiting for. I still dramatically and then sway, trying to make it look good. Then I tumble back onto the ground, my arms falling out to the side.
She pounces on me in an instant, all fifty or so pounds of her landing on my chest with such force, she must have cracked ribs. All of the air rushes out of me. She crouches there, on my chest, her head almost as big as mine, her bright green eyes peering into mine.
“You should never have come here,” she murmurs in a purring voice.
Then with her heavy paws, she kneads my chest.
She wiggles closer, getting her mouth right next to mine. Her lips part. Purring now, she draws in one long, shuddering breath. She doesn’t exhale, just keeps breathing in.
She purrs contentedly, her eyes narrowing as my soul pulls loose from its mooring.
Then I grab the back of her neck with one hand and shove the bolt into her open mouth with the other. I slam my palm up under her jaw, forcing her mouth shut. She tries to reel back, but I don’t let her go.
She’s incredibly powerful and it’s all I can do to hold on as she tears at me. Pain flames across my skin and she shreds my flesh, desperate to break free of my grasp and spit out the bolt.
Then she stills and her eyes meet mine. I see so much in her gaze. Her hatred. Her resentment. Her anguish and her fear. The iron in the bolt is eating away at the inside of her mouth, making her blood boil.
Wallace may have exaggerated the effects of iron on the Tuatha—who are clearly closer to human than he made them sound—but Kellas cats truly belong to this fairy world. The iron is deadly to her. It’s killing her. I’m killing her.
Oh God. I’m killing her.
My hands loosen, almost involuntarily, but before she can wrench free, there’s a loud cracking noise like a bat hitting a baseball, and the Kellas cat flies out of my hands.
Morgan stands over me, with what looks like a hockey stick in his hands.
Excerpt from
Book Five of The Traveler Chronicles:
The Traveler Undone
Kellas cats obey no laws and follow no rules. They are merciless predators who suck the soul from any living being they get close to.
And they wonder why no one likes them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I crawl away from the dying Kellas cat. I make it maybe five feet before puking my guts out. Every muscle in my body is trembling.
Morgan reaches out a hand to help me up. I take it, only to jerk away in pain. Blisters are forming on my palms. Welts dot the bits of skin that aren’t covered in scratches. He bends over me, grasping my elbows, one of the few parts of my body not ripped to shreds, and helps me to my feet, muttering a string of curses under his breath.
Only after I’m standing do I realize tears are pouring down my face. I brush at them with my wrists, because the scratches there don’t seem as bad. The body of the Kellas cat who attacked me lays maybe ten feet away, her spine broken. The fur of her cheeks seems almost to be smoldering. The bolt, covered in bright blue blood, lies on the ground beside her. Her front paws are still twitching.
I did that.
I may not have delivered the death blow, but she is dead because of me.
Morgan is standing beside me, breathing hard and fast, apparently assessing the damage. A few feet away, Kane nudges the body of another Kellas cat with the toe of his boot. That cat appears to have a hole blasted in its side. When it doesn’t move, he walks over to the one I fought and points his blasting rod at it, to put it out of its misery.
I’ve read about this world, about these creatures, for years. I thought I knew them. I thought I was tough. But in the end, this beast nearly destroyed me.
And now it’s dead because of me. Because—
“Don’t,” Morgan says softly. I glance at him. “You look like someone nursing doubts. Dismiss them. Given the chance, she would have sucked your soul right out of your body and eaten it for lunch.”
I’ve never killed before. Not unless you count bugs. This isn’t some scorpion I squashed. She was a sentient creature. She had a family. A dowt. Maybe kittens somewhere.
I glance around the lawn and see the bodies of the cats Kane fought. “Are they both dead?”
Kane glances up. “One is. The other’s stunned.”
“Are you going to…?” I leave the question dangling.
“Probably,” Kane answers, at the same time Morgan says, “No.”
Morgan says, “I have a friend who deals in the animal trade. A cat like that is damn valuable. I have a crate in the garage that should hold her.”
I fight off another wave of nausea.
“You did what you had to do,” Morgan reminds me. And then he smiles. “And you were damn impressive. By the Thread, a Dark Worlder in a fight with a Kellas cat? If I’d known how it would turn out, I’d have sold tickets.”
…
Ten minutes later, I’m standing in the foyer of Morgan Geroux’s stunning modern home, holding together the tattered shreds of my shirt.
All I want is to strip off my now ruined Hello, Cupcake! T-shirt and wash my scratches.
Instead, I’m listening to Morgan and Kane argue. Incessantly.
They’re doing it in low voices, but this much I get: Kane thinks I’ll be okay so long as I wash the scratches. Morgan wants to take me to a healer.
Me? I just want to do something fast.
“I am bleeding here. Lot of iron-based, bright red blood. So unless you know a healer who isn’t going to have a problem with that, I suggest you just get me some bandages and get out of my way.”
Kane looks me up and down, his lips twitching. “She has you there, Morgan.”
Morgan doesn’t even blink. “Take her into the bathroom in the guest wing. I’ll get bandages.”
Kane leads the way and I hobble along behind him. It’s a bone-deep spasming that makes it hard to walk, and even harder to keep up with Kane’s long strides. Plus, I think I twisted my ankle, because the tendon along the outside burns with every step.
Sprawling mansions are all well and good when you don’t have to limp past forty feet of pretentious modern art just to get to the bathroom.
Kane is a good fifteen feet ahead of me when he realizes I’ve fallen behind. “You need me to carry you?”
Oh, sure. That will prove I’m a badass.
“No, I’ve got it.”
“Because you’re really slow.”
Kane Travers. Master of stating the obvious.
“I’m good,” I say through gritted teeth. I don’t want Kane thinking I’m a liability. I can’t afford to be a liability.
I’m tough. I can take pain.
Except, when I take my next step, fresh pain shoots up my leg. I pause, biting my lip to keep from crying out.
Kane starts walking back toward me.
“No, it’s okay. I was just…” I cast around for a lie, and my gaze lands on an enormous paint-splattered canvas. “Is that a real Jackson Pollock?”
Kane barely glances at the canvas but sweeps me up into his arms, Rhett Butler–style, and stalks off down the corridor.
He carries me like I weigh nothing. For someone so much taller than I am,
I probably do. Still, I am intensely aware of how broad his chest is, how hard the muscles are beneath my palm.
Oh God. Why is my palm flat against his chest?
I snatch my hand away and clench my fists.
He looks down, and it occurs to me that he might not have noticed my hand was on his chest until I pulled it away so obviously.
Okay, Edie, say something. Anything.
“Um…” Anything at all. Words. Just so long as it’s words. “Morgan really does have a lot of art, huh?”
Okay. Most of those were words.
Kane makes a grunting sound that might be agreement or might be amusement at my general inability to sound like a rational human being.
But the babbling floodgates are open.
“So do you think that really is a real Pollack? Because, I saw one in New York and—”
“Yes. It is.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t really think every private art collector is a Dark Worlder, do you?”
“I—” Honestly, I’d never thought of it before now. “I just assumed you had your own artists.”
He scoffs. “Tuatha aren’t known for their creativity. Art isn’t really our thing.”
Isn’t really their thing, he should have said. Because he’s not Tuatha, either, even though he certainly acts like he is.
I’m still wondering about that when Kane opens the door and carries me into an austere guest room that I barely have time to glance at. At the far end of the room, there’s a bathroom visible through an open door. Kane sets me down.
I step into the bathroom, but Kane tries to follow me. I hold up a hand. “Whoa, there. Where you going?”
“You need help bandaging your injuries.”
I glance down at my ripped shirt. My chest, my arms, my shoulders are all latticed with scratches. There is no way I am taking off my shirt. Not in front of Kane. Not ever.
Like, not ever.
I plant my palm firmly on his chest—you know, on purpose this time—and give him a shove. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I feel like he leans into my hand before taking a step back. Just to remind me I can’t push him around.