I felt the blood drain from my face. She hadn’t said she would break the bond between us. Her actual words had been “release him from his burden”—his burden, not our bond. I’d heard what I’d wanted to hear, not what Isfet had actually said. Which, apparently, was that she would kill Nik.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, still shaking my head. “If you died, I would die, too.” And Isfet would lose her vessel. “What would be the point?” Unless Isfet had some way to protect me from the effects of Nik’s death. If anyone could do something like that, it would be her.
My thoughts spun, my mind grasping at straws as slippery as eels. I looked at Nik. “Mei never shares what she’s seen in the future.” The only time I’d seen or heard her give any kind of a hint of what she’d seen was when she’d been walking with Nik on the trail to the beach, confirming our soul bond . . . and when she’d explained the whole magical gag order deal to me.
“She made an exception to save her dear old dad,” Nik said.
My eyes stung as his words sank in. I’d been duped by Isfet. Deceived, even if I didn’t understand why. This was The Devil card, come to fruition.
“I thought—” I licked my lips. “I thought I was saving you.” And I’d nearly killed him doing it. “I thought breaking the bond would—”
“I don’t want to break the bond,” Nik retorted.
My brows drew together. “What?”
Nik took hold of my other arm and turned me to face him fully. “Listen to me, Kat, and listen good,” he said, pale eyes burning. “I neither need nor want you to sacrifice your life to prolong mine. I’ve already lived an eternity. I thought I’d experienced all there was to life. I grew bored. I stopped caring about what happened to me—about what happened to anyone, really.” He gave me a little shake. “Until I met some half-manifested Nejeret with a bad attitude and worse judgment.” He laughed gently, his eyes growing unfocused and filling with memories. “Until I met you.”
I swallowed roughly, my throat suddenly parched.
“Before you, I lived in a world without color.” His eyes seared into my soul. “Don’t you see, Kat—I can’t go back to the way things were before. I need you.” His gaze dropped to my lips, then returned to my eyes. “I want you, Kitty Kat. I fucking love you.”
I searched his eyes, looking for some hint that this was all just some massive, epic farce. But I found nothing but sincerity in his gaze. Nothing but genuine, honest-to-god, holy-shit love.
“I—” I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think. His words were gonging around in my skull, leaving me totally overwhelmed.
He loved me? Nik fucking loved me?
I twisted my right arm free from his grip, pulled my hand back, and struck him across the face with my open hand.
He stared at me for a moment, as stunned as I was by the slap. And then he grabbed the back of my neck and leaned in, crushing his lips against mine.
We crashed into each other, two raging torrents of anger and desire. Of love and fear.
I yanked Nik’s T-shirt off over his head as he unfastened my jeans. I dropped his shirt onto the floor and went to work on his belt. He pushed my jeans down over the swell of my hips, his thumbs snagging the sides of my underwear on the way down. I toed off my boots and shimmied out of my pants as my fingers tugged at the string of buttons holding his jeans closed. And not once did we break our kiss.
Nik’s hands slid under the hem of my tank top, his fingers nearly encircling my waist. Everywhere his fingertips touched me came alive, the nerve endings lighting up like fireworks. The sensation was unreal, unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Because Nik wasn’t just touching me with his hands; he was touching me with his soul.
My heart pounded, my breaths quickening. My fingers struggled with the final button on his jeans, and I growled in frustration, giving one final yank to snap the button clean off. I pushed his jeans down, then his boxer briefs, and when I found him and gripped his hard length with my fingers, it was his turn to growl.
Nik’s hands glided lower, his fingers digging into my hips, and he spun me around with him so my back was against the wall. I grunted, arching my body into his. His hold shifted, and he gripped my ass, hoisting me up until my feet left the floor. I wrapped my legs around his hips, my ankles interlocking behind him and my hands grasping his shoulders.
He entered me in one smooth, hard motion. I gasped, my head falling back and eyelids drifting shut. The sensations were too much, like every other time I’d had sex had been shadows on a cave wall, mere reflections of the real thing, but this—Nik filling me so completely, his soul dancing along the edges of mine—this was the real thing. I’d been sleepwalking through my life until now. For the first time, I was truly awake. For the first time, I was truly alive.
I opened my eyes and looked at Nik. He wasn’t moving, save for the heavy rise and fall of his chest. I needed to know that he was here with me. Not just in body, but in heart. In soul.
His eyes were on fire, his pupils dilated to the max. Oh yeah, he was with me.
“I love you, Nik,” I breathed. I’d never said those words to anyone I wasn’t related to. It felt surprisingly right, probably because I’d been in love with Nik for pretty much ever.
Nik smiled the tiniest smile. “I know.”
I arched my back, rocking my hips, just a little, hoping he would get the hint. The corner of his mouth quirked, and his eyelids narrowed. He pulled out slowly, then slammed home once more. He got the hint.
All the times before when I’d thought about how Nik would be in the bedroom—or, in this case, the bathroom—I’d not once figured him for the tender lovemaking type. And I’d been right. Nothing about him was false advertising. He wasn’t big on holding back in the other areas of his life, and he certainly didn’t hold back here, now. Thank the fucking gods.
My lower back banged against the wall, harder and harder, but I barely felt it. The physical sensations of my body were fading away with each thrust as my ba swelled within me. I reached for the top of the broken door for support, the fingers of my other hand curling around the back of Nik’s neck, my nails digging into his flesh.
My soul was too full; it was overflowing, spilling into him as his was displaced into me. My ba swirled around his, tendrils lapping at each other, intertwining and merging, coiling tauter and tighter, like our two souls were trying to become one.
And with an explosion of otherworldly energy, my ba ceased to be mine, and his ceased to be his. In the moment between two heartbeats, we became a single being. A single soul.
The intensity of the pleasure was insane, but even that was overshadowed by the near-absolute wonder. Together, we were so much more than just Kat and Nik. Together, we were something else entirely. We were the heartbeat of the universe, connected to everything.
Together, there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do.
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Well,” I said, cheek resting on Nik’s shoulder and chest heaving. “That definitely didn’t suck.” Mind-blowing was more like it. World-fucking-changing.
Nik’s chest rumbled with a chuckle, and he pressed his lips against the side of my head. “No, it definitely didn’t.”
I lowered first one leg, then the other. When my feet touched the tile floor, I raised my eyes, meeting Nik’s for a brief moment. His smirk was out in full force.
My cheeks burned, and I averted my gaze.
Nik took a step backward and pulled up his pants, looking down to buckle his belt.
I retrieved my jeans and underwear off the floor and put them on, avoiding looking at Nik until my usual armor was back in place. Once I was all zipped and buttoned, I rapped a knuckle on the broken door. “We’ll have to get this fixed.” Nik had nearly kicked the doorknob clean through, and the doorframe was a mess of splintered wood around the lock.
“We can worry about that tomorrow,” Nik said.
I nodded. We had something way more important to take care of tonig
ht. The massacre at the school was maybe an hour away. During that brief moment that our souls merged, Nik’s and my minds had become one. We both knew what we had to do.
Something started beeping in the kitchen. The oven timer. I could smell baking dough and Italian spices. The pizzas were ready. Good; we would need as much energy as possible if we were going to have even a shot in hell at averting the pending disaster without Isfet’s help.
I scooped up my boots, carrying them as I rushed out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I dropped them on the floor by a chair at the kitchen table, then headed for the oven, grabbing an oven mitt and spatula off the counter. I pulled the oven door open and slid the pizzas out—one Hawaiian, one pepperoni—leaving them on the counter to cool while I put my boots on.
“Where did Nina go?” Nik asked as he moseyed into the kitchen, pulling his T-shirt down over black-inked scarab, hawk, and hieroglyphs covering his abdomen. I couldn’t help but stare.
“After that little show?” I snorted, finishing with my left boot and moving on to my right. “She probably locked herself in her room with headphones on . . .”
The corners of Nik’s mouth turned down. “She’s not here.”
I paused in tying my boot and cocked my head to the side, listening hard. But my hypersensitive ears didn’t pick up on any other heartbeats besides mine and Nik’s.
“Fuck,” I whispered, dread pooling in my belly. I’d told Nina not to go to the candlelight vigil at the school—but I hadn’t told her why. I’d been trying to avoid scaring the shit out of her. But she was a teenager, which pretty much assured that, given the chance, she would do the exact opposite of what anyone told her to do. I struggled with that same built-in defiance every gods-damned day.
“What?” Nik asked.
“I know where she went.” I stood and headed for the front door. “We need to get to the school,” I told Nik as I passed him. “Now.”
It didn’t matter if I was at full strength or not. I’d been planning on attempting a mass cleansing of the shadows while Nik restrained them; it required that we wait until they’d fed off enough of the mourners to become solid. Considering how many bodies had littered the field in the echo, there would be plenty of emotions going around for the shadows to feast on. But now that Nina was there . . .
I balled my hands into fists. I refused to be responsible for getting Kimi’s kid sister killed. We would have to evacuate the place. We could find another way to distract the shadow souls while I cleansed them. Maybe even fall back on the mirror plan—shoving the shadow into Aaru had erased the taint even quicker than I could.
Nik and I raced to the school in the Tesla, skidding to a stop as close as we could get to the football field. We were blocking in a couple cars, but the drivers wouldn’t care. They could thank us later. Assuming they were still alive.
I shoved my car door open and jumped out of the Tesla, launching into a dead sprint toward the field. I passed a couple portables on my left and the softball field on my right. I could hear Nik’s boots pounding the pavement behind me.
I hadn’t even reached the chain link fence surrounding the stadium by the time the whispering started. Every single hair on my body stood on end, and my breath came in increasingly dense puffs of white.
I slowed to a walk as I approached the fence, hands rubbing my bare arms. I was shivering, my teeth chattering. I couldn’t see the people on the field, despite being able to see the flickering glow emanating from the mass of candlelight. The entire track surrounding the football field was a solid wall of shadows, their whispers merging to a haunting moan.
I stopped at the fence, fingers gripping the metal links. The frozen steel burned my skin, but I didn’t pull away.
I needed to get onto that field; it was the only way I would be able to reach all of the shadows to cleanse them all at once. But there were too many of them surrounding the people on the field. I couldn’t get through, not without brushing up against them. And the second they touched me, it would be game over.
Nik slowed to a walk behind me.
“Can you see them?” I asked, hopeful. If he could see the shadows, then that meant they were solid enough for him to restrain with his trademark combination At and anti-At vines. He could make an opening for me, and we would be able to end this, once and for all.
Nik came up to stand beside me at the fence and slowly shook his head. “I can’t see—wait . . .” He squinted, leaning in as close as he could to the fence. “I think I can make out a few of them along the edge.” His jaw tensed. “Yeah, I definitely can.” He pointed to the far side of the field with one hand. “And now I can see some over there, near the goalpost.”
“Alright,” I said, releasing the fence and taking a step back. I rubbed my hands together, then cupped them and blew hot air against my fingers. “Let’s wait a minute or two,” I said as I jogged in place, trying to stay warm enough that my body worked in an even remotely effective way. “Hopefully that’ll give them all long enough to become visible to you.”
Nik turned away from the fence and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched. “How many are there?”
“They more than fill the track.”
“Jesus . . .”
A tremor shook the ground, knocking us both off balance. Someone on the football field screamed, and their voice was soon joined by dozens of others.
I rushed back to the fence, fingers hooking around the metal links. “What’s happening in there?” I couldn’t see a damn thing through the wall of light-sucking shadows.
Nik shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s too many now for me to see clearly.”
Another tremor rocked the earth, stronger this time.
“That’s going to have to be good enough.” I started scaling the fence. It wasn’t easy with my frozen fingers, but I managed. “Make me a path through the ones you can see,” I told Nik. “I’ll dodge the rest.”
The fence was maybe seven feet high. I threw my leg over the top, holding myself up with my grip on the top bar, then pulled my other leg over. I pressed the soles of my boots against the side of the fence and pushed off, stretching out my arms like I was a goddamn superhero.
I spun in midair, then tucked my legs up as the ground rushed toward me. I hit the ground rolling, the asphalt shredding the top few layers of skin off my shoulder, but at least I was on my feet and running at full speed without wasting seconds dicking around with my landing.
There was a booming crash like thunder, and a third tremor shook the ground. But this time it wasn’t caused by the shadows disturbing this reality. It was caused by Nik.
An entire forest of gleaming vines burst up from the ground beneath the track, shooting high overhead before lashing whiplike around the innermost layers of shadows. Those unbreakable vines twined around maybe half of the shadows. Straight ahead of me, Nik cleared an opening part of the way between me and the goalpost.
I was twenty paces away. My heart hammered in my chest. Ten. My breaths came in rapid bursts, the frigid air searing my throat and lungs. Five.
I needed a way to get past that outermost layer of shadows—the ones Nik couldn’t see yet. The ones he couldn’t move.
Almost without thought, I willed a long At pole into existence. I gripped it in both hands and slammed the end of it into the edge of the track in front of me. My momentum carried me up off the ground, and I swung my feet out, propelling me onward. I straight-up pole-vaulted over the shadows.
For a couple seconds, it felt like time stood still.
I could see everything on the field. Most of the people amassed there to mourn the fallen freshman girl were running around, screaming in panic, while others huddled together, crying. The shadows had fed off of these people enough that even they could see them. And if the shadows were visible to them, then they were solid, too, forming a wall around the field. These people were trapped, awaiting their slaughter.
Unless I did something to stop it.
> That moment of clarity seemed to last forever, and it was gone in a flash. I landed on my back in the opening Nik had made on the rubbery track, knocking the wind out of me.
Stunned and blinking, I stared up at the cloudy night sky. Tears streaked across my temples and bright spots danced across my vision as I lay there, waiting for my lungs to remember how to work.
I could see the restrained shadows struggling against their bindings on either side of me. Beyond my feet, the less tangible shadows drifted closer, sensing their way past their immobile brethren to the all-you-can-eat buffet within.
I coughed, and that rush of oxygen gave me the strength I needed to scramble backward on hands and feet into the fray. I rolled onto my knees, then pushed myself up to my feet and brushed my hair out of my face. Someone shoved past me, knocking me to the side a couple steps. It was sheer chaos on the field.
I glanced over my shoulder. Those unfed, incorporeal shadows were funneling in through the opening. Maybe they could pass through At like it was water, but it was clear that they couldn’t do the same with their own kind. To each other, they were as solid as this berserk crowd was to me—totally impassable.
I needed help, and I needed it now. I reached out to the soul-energy, calling it to me.
The collective’s response wasn’t a whisper through my mind; it was a scream. Even so, the connection was weak, flickering like a dying lightbulb. The shadows were devouring the soul-energy, damaging the collective, and the soul-energy was losing power. I was running out of time.
The collective may have been weakened, but they were pissed off, and they poured everything they had through our tenuous connection. My skin lit up with that brilliant, rainbow luminescence, and the air around me crackled with otherworldly energy. My hair floated around my head like I was underwater, and the soul-energy’s rage burned through my veins, giving me power.
The people nearest me stopped in their tracks. Some stumbled backward, others dropped to their knees. A hush fell over the mayhem, spreading outward until all I could hear was the collective voices of the soul-energy raging in my mind.
Kat Dubois Chronicles Page 75