“What are you doing here?” she asked him again.
“I just wanted to check in on you.”
“Why?” She was bewildered.
“I do not know why.” That black magic voice sounded much aggrieved, as if he truly didn’t understand his own motives. “But I feel as if I should look out for you. You have not the added advantage of psychic power that the others do. It makes you vulnerable.”
“I can take care of myself.” She rolled her eyes. Did all Shikars think humans weak and helpless?
“I know. I know you can,” he murmured. “But I needed to reassure myself.”
“You are so weird.”
He chuckled ruefully. “Perhaps.”
“You said I remind you of someone.” She prodded him to continue.
“Yes. You do.” His voice was growing more and more faint, as if he were moving far away from her. Far, far away.
“Who?” she asked, raising her voice for him to hear her across what felt like a swiftly growing distance between them.
“A woman I knew once. She died. I could not save her…but perhaps I can save you.”
As silently as he’d come, he left her with those words in the darkness of her room. What had he meant by that? She couldn’t begin to guess.
It was a long, long while before Emily fell asleep again.
* * * * *
“Wow. I’d kill to have a body like yours, Emily.”
“You make me sick, Steffy. As if you have any room to complain—at least your hips aren’t as wide as a barn like mine are.”
“Actually I’d love wider hips. I look too much like a boy as I am. I’d love a few curves here and there.”
Cady snorted.
Steffy harrumphed.
Emily tried not to laugh at the by-play between the two friends. She didn’t know them very well—they may not take kindly to her laughter. And it seemed inappropriate for the moment. Here she was, standing naked before two virtual strangers, who were preparing to paint her with some kind of liquid body armor.
“You’re going to have to shave that bush,” Cady said, pointing to Emily’s pubic hair. “This stuff hurts like hell when you pull it away from body hair. For now, I guess you can put some panties on underneath it. It won’t be as pretty but…”
“I don’t see why I have to wear this. Liquid latex isn’t as much protection as a Kevlar vest.”
“It’s not liquid latex,” Steffy said adamantly. “It’s applied and removed like LL, but after that it’s not similar at all. This stuff is awesome—Agate designed it. Well, I have to boast it was my idea that it should work like LL—for easy application and removal—but other than that this is Agate’s creation. This armor is so strong, not even a bullet can get through it. It’s made from the dung of Horde Canker-Worms—nearly impenetrable stuff when it’s dry.”
Emily knew better than to ask what Canker-Worms were and tried her best to ignore the disturbing word dung.
“Not that I’d suggest stepping in front of any bullets, even with this armor on,” Cady quipped. “They bruise like hell.” She grinned.
“But I’ve seen Edge cut through it like tissue paper.” Emily’s breath hitched at the memory of why he’d cut through it.
Cady and Steffy looked at each other and burst into laughter.
“Yeah. We heard all about that,” Cady got out between guffaws.
“Heard about what?” Emily felt her cheeks heat with a blush.
“How you and Edge went at it like two teenagers in the back of an alley,” Steffy said.
“You know about that?” She swallowed hard against her embarrassment, gritting her teeth. How could they know about that? Was nothing sacred to the Shikars? Was nothing secret? She donned her underwear and watched in trepidation as Cady advanced on her with a pot of the liquid armor and a thick paintbrush.
“Yeah. So. Was he any good?”
“Cady! Have some tact, girl.” Steffy winked at Emily. “Well, was he any good?”
Emily laughed—she couldn’t help it. “I’m not telling you anything. You’ll just blab it.”
“Don’t worry that we’ll tell Edge. We women keep our secrets amongst ourselves. Now tell all—leave nothing out.”
“Yeah. Tell us everything.” Steffy sat and watched as Cady applied the first strokes of ‘paint’ to Emily’s outstretched arm.
“How did you find out?” Edge didn’t seem the type to brag of his conquests to others.
“We have our ways.” Cady whistled out the opening theme of The Twilight Zone. “Now spill the beans, chick.”
“It was good, I guess.” She laughed self-consciously. She’d never shared such secrets with other women, but these two were so friendly and genuinely infectious with their enthusiasm. She liked them already. “I’m not sure what you want to know.”
“Everything,” the two women said in unison, then laughed.
“He was…” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “He was rough. But it was nice. Very nice.”
“Shikars can be such rough and ready lovers. But they can be tender, too. If you want them to be.” Steffy smiled dreamily.
“You only know that your Shikar lover is like that,” Cady reminded her.
“Are you saying that Sid is always tender and soft with you?”
Cady blushed and her eyes glazed over. “No. You’re right. Shikar men are rough—but they are soooo good when they’re rough.”
“Yes. I thought so, too, at the time.” Emily chuckled at the two obviously love-struck women.
Steffy sobered. “At the time? But not now?”
Emily stiffened. She hadn’t meant to reveal so much.
“What changed your mind?” Cady pressed, stroking the paintbrush over the last patch of exposed skin on Emily’s forearm. A thick, black coat of the liquid armor enclosed her arm from shoulder to wrist.
“Nothing.”
“No, no, no. You have to share now,” Steffy prodded.
Cady was silent, studying her with those yellow-orange eyes of hers. Emily tried not to fidget under the Shikar woman’s intense regard.
“Edge changed my mind.”
“What did he do?”
“Well last night—the night after we were…you know.” She faltered. Confiding was uncomfortable work. She’d never been able to do it with her sister or mother before their deaths. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to now, with these women who were still virtually strangers to her.
“Go on,” Steffy urged, bouncing with eagerness to hear more. “Don’t clam up now.”
“Last night he offered to pay me for my services. He practically called me a prostitute—and threw what we’d done together in my face.”
“What a jerk!” Steffy gasped.
“What did you do?” Cady asked softly.
“I beat the snot out of him. Or I tried to, anyway,” she admitted with a grin.
Her audience roared with laughter.
“I wish I could have seen his face. Edge is so stoic…I can’t imagine him being laid low. And by a human woman. It must have really chafed him good.”
“I wonder why he treated you that way?” Cady murmured. “He’s usually so courteous—to a fault, even. I didn’t know he could be so rude.”
“His temper can be pretty nasty. Especially during training—he’s a real drag sometimes. I’ve noticed, if he gets too mad, his mouth tends to runs away with a mind all its own. He can be pretty venomous sometimes,” Steffy informed them. “Don’t take it too hard Emily. Edge is just…edgy, I guess.”
“Just when you think you know all there is to know about your teammates,” Cady muttered.
“Did he apologize after you knocked some sense into him? Please say he did.”
“Yeah. But that doesn’t make it right,” Emily defended.
“Why not?” Cady frowned. “Didn’t you think he was sorry?”
“I guess so. But he shouldn’t have said such horrible things. He tried to hand me a wad of money, for God’s sake! How can
I just let that go?”
Steffy laughed. “Girl, not that I blame you for being angry—you’ve every right—but you’ve got a lot to learn about men. Especially Shikar men.”
“Yeah. They can be incredibly tactless sometimes. We women have to just let that go, or else the world would be a mess. Not a day goes by without Sid saying or doing something that just makes me want to wring his stubborn neck. But I have to get over it—or else kill him, which would really only make me sad once I’d gotten over my upset.”
Emily gritted her teeth. Surely they weren’t taking the sides of the men against her? She should have expected as much. They were Shikars after all and blood, as they say, was thicker than water. She kept silent and let them continue.
“Cinder’s no better. Half of the time he thinks he being cute or funny, when he’s really just being a total pain. But I love the guy—so I try to ignore his faults and forgive him when he gets too out of hand. After I make him do something he hates, of course. Like eat a hotdog—he can’t stand those things—but all I do is tell him how much I miss my human food and he lets me take him out for his punishment.” Steffy laughed wickedly.
“Wait. Your human food? I thought you were a Shikar?” Emily looked into Steffy’s undeniably Shikar eyes, forgetting in her curiosity to give the two women the silent treatment.
“I am now. But I wasn’t always.”
“We both used to be human, just like you,” Cady confirmed.
“I don’t understand.” Emily was stunned by her words.
“We were changed.”
“How?”
Cady and Steffy exchanged meaningful glances. “Are you sure you want to know?” Cady asked, turning back to her.
“Yes. Tell me,” Emily stressed.
“Well. It’s going to sound really weird.”
“Tell me.”
“Our husbands changed us. Through unprotected sex. Their come is like a poison to humans. It can kill us.”
“What?” Emily exclaimed.
“Let me explain, Cady. You’re scaring her.”
“I’m not scared,” Emily said indignantly. She really wasn’t. Was she?
“Look. It’s like this,” Steffy explained. “Shikar men, when they lay with a human, have to use a condom. They absolutely have to, because their semen can be deadly, if ingested in any way by their human partner. It will kill them—just like that.” Steffy snapped her fingers for emphasis. “But with Cady and I, it was different—”
Cady interrupted. “All finished with your arms. Now your boobs. Suck in a deep breath so they’re as full and perky as possible.” She laughed.
“As I was saying.” Steffy glared at Cady, who merely shrugged and began slathering paint all over Emily’s chest. “Cady and I are different from most humans. We were psychic. And Tryton says that it’s because of this that we didn’t really die.”
“I still don’t understand,” Emily admitted.
“You’ve met The Traveler?” Cady asked.
“Yes.” She remembered the man’s strange visit to her during the middle of the night and shivered.
Cady thankfully seemed oblivious to her reaction. “Well, when the time came that we were exposed to our husband’s semen, The Traveler was there to keep us alive. He’s like the Grim Reaper. He can travel back and forth between the realms of the living and the dead. So when we ‘died,’ he Traveled to the afterlife and kept us from going into the light that waited to take us—wherever. Heaven, Hell, I don’t know.”
“What does being psychic have to do with it, then? If The Traveler was the one who saved you?”
“Tryton’s theory is that it’s psychic power which helps to actually sustain the soul once it is returned to our bodies after our human death. Without that power, our soul would just go back to the other side, unfettered, and our bodies wouldn’t have the strength to change into that of a Shikar.”
“It is our psychic energy which fuels the change and locks our soul to our physical form,” Cady clarified.
“That’s messed up,” Emily said incredulously.
“Yeah.” Steffy laughed.
“But that still doesn’t explain why you changed into a Shikar. Or does it?”
“Shikar semen is the catalyst. It causes the change, the change causes death, and when we’re brought back the transformation is complete and we are no longer human,” Steffy answered.
Emily thought it over, pensive.
“So. Why didn’t you forgive Edge? Was he not a good enough lover to forgive?”
Emily sighed. It was obvious that Cady wasn’t going to let the issue die a quiet death. “He was a good lover, I suppose. But I don’t know him very well and…I think its best we just leave it at that one fling between us. Especially if we’re going to be working together.”
“What does working together have to do with anything?” Cady asked.
“Everything. I do not have relationships with my co-workers.”
Cady rolled her eyes. “Co-workers. Sheesh. We’re not on a job here. We’re living. Things are different here than they are in the human world.”
“Well whatever the case may be, I wasn’t myself when Edge and I were together. I would never have done so foolish a thing if I’d been in my right mind. I didn’t even know his name at the time!”
“What do you mean you weren’t in your right mind?”
“I’m an insomniac. When Edge and I met, I hadn’t slept for so many days I’d lost count. I was in hyper-reality mode. I wasn’t thinking clearly at all.”
“And now that you’ve had some sleep, you’re not attracted to Edge anymore?” Steffy asked.
Emily had to be honest. “I wouldn’t say that. He’s very appealing. But he’s not my type at all. He’s so…arrogant. Stubborn. Cocky.”
The two Shikar women laughed.
“Arrogant, stubborn, cocky men are the best mates for arrogant, stubborn, cocky women,” Cady said in between chuckles.
“I’m not any of those things.” Emily frowned.
They laughed again, clearly disbelieving in her words.
“I’m sorry to have to break it to you but if you weren’t, Em, you wouldn’t be here.” Cady’s paintbrush had finished with her front and was now moving to her back, starting at her shoulders. “Lift your hair.”
Steffy grinned. “God, I love your hair, girl. Is it permed or natural?”
“Natural.” Emily squirmed uncomfortably. She’d never been able to accept compliments with any real grace.
“My hair would probably just frizz if I cut it like yours.” Cady shook the long, fat braid trailing down her back like a rope.
“It used to be shorter, about chin length. But it made me look so young.”
“What’s wrong with looking young?”
“Nothing. But my job is a hellluva lot easier if I look a littler older.”
“Well amongst the Shikars you’re not judged on age or looks. You’re judged on your skills, your honor, and your loyalty.” Steffy smiled.
“It sounds divine.” Emily giggled as Cady painted the small of her back, tickling her. She blushed upon hearing that sound come from her own lips—she never giggled. Neither of the women seemed to notice her lapse, however, and she was grateful for that.
“It is.” Steffy sighed. “You’ll love it here. I just know it.”
“You’ll do well here, Emily. Don’t worry about a thing. You’re one of us now. Nothing else matters.”
Chapter Eight
Emily smoothed her hands down over the jeans and T-shirt that covered the risqué liquid armor that was painted on her skin beneath them. “I don’t see how this is going to protect me any better than my vest,” she admitted.
“Trust me, it will,” Steffy assured her.
“Well, we’re all set. Sundown is in an hour or so. Tryton will want to brief us before we go above, no doubt. But before then I want you to come to the armory and pick out some weapons.”
“Oh, the armory is so great, Emily! It’s Cady�
�s addition to the Shikar world, of course, and just about every weapon you could possibly imagine is in there.”
“What’s a girl to do without easy access to some guns?” Cady said with a deceptively elfin smile. “Getting a stocked armory was my first priority when I came here.”
“Besides birthing your son, of course.” Steffy smiled at her friend.
“You have a son?” For some reason Emily hadn’t given much thought to the possibility of Shikar children. She certainly hadn’t seen any.
“Oh yes. Armand.” Cady’s eyes took on the warmth that only a mother can have for her beloved offspring. “He’s three years old now and already the spitting image of his father, heaven help me.”
“How can you…?” She couldn’t think of the best way to ask, so she said it bluntly. “How can you go off to fight if you have a child? Don’t you worry about not coming back some night?”
Cady sobered and laid a gentle hand on Emily’s shoulder. “You’re a cop—or were—so you know perhaps more than anybody the answer to that question.”
And she did. “You have to fight. For him, more than anybody else.”
“For everyone,” Steffy added. “What we do is for the good of everyone.”
“I wouldn’t be worth a salt if I didn’t go out with my team and fight the threat of the Daemons. I take a risk, it’s true. Every time I leave Armand there is the chance that he won’t see me again. But I’d rather die in defense of my people—both Shikar and human—than sit at home doing nothing just to play it safe. Armand deserves better than that. The world deserves better than that.”
“What if something should happen to you?” Emily pressed.
“The Shikars take care of their own. He would never want for anything, love or material or otherwise.”
“We’ll take care of you too, Emily,” Steffy added. “You’ll always have a place here now. No matter what happens. We’re a family.”
“A very big, very cool family,” Cady said with a grin. “Just wait and see. Now. Would you go and fetch Edge, please? If I have to beat him I’m going to make him take a weapon out there with him tonight.”
“Edge won’t do it, Cady,” Steffy warned her knowingly.
“He will. I don’t care how good of a warrior he is, he needs to have some kind of weapon besides those blades of his. It’s just the wise thing to do. Everyone else on our team carries at least a side arm now. Everyone but him, that is, the stubborn ass.”
Razor's Edge, Book 3, The Horde Wars Page 7