TravelersKiss

by Sherri L. King

  Steffy. Steffy… Oh God, it wasn’t safe to utter her friend’s real name, even in the depths of her own private thoughts…

  “Raine?”

  She relaxed a little, the music in her friend’s voice chasing away most of her anxiety. It was only Stefany Michanke, her treasured friend, of course she should look at her friend, but then why was there this warning sound in her head and why were her hands shaking so hard?

  “Seriously, Raine, you’re freaking me out here. Look at me. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Raine laughed. “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine,” Steffy said.

  But it was Steffy who sounded strange now. Her voice reached Raine’s ears as if it had bounced off many obstacles on its way to her from a far distance. For a brief instant she imagined that the bedroom had expanded, a domed ceiling dwarfing them from above, accounting for the strange acoustics wreaking havoc on Steffy’s voice.

  Raine started, opening her eyes wide she saw Steffy lounging catlike against the frame of the open bedroom door. “Gah! You scared the snot out of me.” Her voice was raw, as if she hadn’t had a drop to drink in forever. She cleared her throat and found her voice grew a little stronger, though it still hurt to speak. “I-I’m fine, I promise. I just had a bad dream.” Raine took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t be up so late, you know. Even an energy bomb like you has to sleep sometime.”

  Steffy nodded, just a silhouette, her body swathed in darkness—it was still the middle of the night. Raine reached for the lamp switch but at the turn of the tiny round knob there was only a clicking sound. “The power must be out again.”

  Steffy inched into the room but the shadows stretched, concealing her. “The war’s to blame.”

  Raine frowned. “Huh?”

  “The storm’s to blame.” As if to punctuate Steffy’s words, there was a crack of thunder beyond the walls of their apartment. “It’s been raging like this for a while.”

  Raine sighed and ran a still-trembling hand through her sleep-knotted hair, fingers catching in the mass at her nape where she always managed to produce the worst tangles. “Well, I’m wide awake now so I’ll go get us some candles. I’ve had more than enough rest for tonight, thank you very much.” She laughed, stepping out of bed, her feet turning to ice on the freezing floor. “Woof, it’s cold. I’ll start a fire in the hearth too.”

  Steffy was at the window, holding back the bed sheet that served as a makeshift curtain. Lightning rent the sky, blinding Raine, bleeding light through Steffy’s bleach-white, green-tipped spiky hair. Brilliant spots danced in her vision when the flare died down. Another arc of electricity spilled skyward—she traced its progress from land to sky, and marveled. She saw the jagged edges of the bolt form, could make out the fibrous tendrils at the end of the lance reaching like malevolent talons.

  Her lids squeezed shut against the glare. Steffy’s silhouette was there, looming behind her lids.

  A loud hum made the back of her teeth vibrate. Nausea rose and she cleared her throat around it. Ozone stung her nose, a blade in her sinuses. Tears pushed like cold stones out of the corners of her eyes. She awkwardly wiped them away, wincing at the sharp pain in her forehead. No longer blunt, that invisible finger was now an icepick, stabbing with increasing, relentless pressure into her brain.

  Raine blinked her eyes open, trying to will away the ache. The lightning gone, the room was black once again, but her vision was cleared enough to see the outline of Steffy’s shadow still at the window.

  “Grimm’s out there,” her friend murmured.

  Grimm…murderer…Grimm the killer, The Traveler, the Legend returned to kill us all…

  “What?” Raine heard her own voice snap, an explosion of sound to rival the thunder. “What did you say?”

  “I said it’s grim out there.” A frown edged her friend’s tone. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Sorry.” Raine’s tongue grew thick and slow, a dead thing in her mouth. “I’ve got a massive headache—maybe that’s my problem.”

  “Let me get you something for it. I’ll take care of the fire too, just get back under the blankets.”

  Steffy moved to the door, never turning, her back somehow always toward Raine. For a desperate moment Raine imagined that her friend had no face. That instead of a lush mouth, straight nose, stubborn chin, Steffy had only eyes. Eyes all over her face. Murky, slick fish bellies wriggling behind unblinking lids devoid of lashes or brows. Lidless eyes judging her, sizing her up…

  Raine had to force herself to look away, her gaze falling desperately to the floor while her lungs choked around a scream.

  There, she saw something so terrifying that her scream finally did escape, but it only achieved the low, rumbling vibration of a moan past her vocal cords.

  Steffy’s feet weren’t where they should be.

  They weren’t there at all.

  Raine’s gaze shot back up and saw Steffy standing at the door, now facing her at last, head bowed, tilted in silent query, though her face was still hidden away like an awful revelation.

  Wait.

  With a tide of relief, Raine realized her friend wore a long nightgown, that her feet here hidden beneath the hem. The darkness of the room between flashes of lightning had created an illusion of an empty floor where her friend stood

  It was the nightmare still pulling at her, just the nightmare, that’s all. Why then did she still feel as if she were dreaming?

  “Oh man. Whoa.” She laughed at herself, but even in her own ears the tone was half mad. “I really need some aspirin.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she forced air into her starving lungs. “My head hurts so bad I think I’m seeing stuff.” The flowers on Steffy’s gown, little sunflowers with faded yellow petals, winked in her vision. Such a long gown—and such an uncharacteristic look for her rave-loving friend. All those flowers from top to bottom. Yellow petals like the orange irises of alien eyes…

  Her gaze focused on one spot on the floor that didn’t move.

  The spot where Steffy’s hem should rest but didn’t.

  No hem.

  No feet.

  Now Rain shrieked and reared back. Steffy instantly appeared but a few inches away, back turned once again, but too close and after having crossed the room too fast. It was an obscene movement, impossible and alien.

  Don’t let her turn around.

  Raine saw her own hand reach out against her will and touch her friend’s shoulder.

  Please don’t let her turn around…

  Her muscles moved against her screaming instincts.

  Don’t do it, they’ll see her face!

  Raine’s hand tugged on the hard, cold rigidity of Steffy’s shoulder.

  Steffy savagely shrugged off Raine’s touch and swiveled, her face still camouflaged by the stubborn night. While Raine valiantly struggled to maintain the feeling that all was right and as it should be, she was immediately, fiercely glad that her friend’s features stayed hidden in the gloom.

  “You look so scared, Raine.” Was that an undertone of insidious ridicule in Steffy’s words?

  Raine knew her thoughts were crazed, erratic, and was instantly ashamed. She was also very frightened—but of what? “It was a really bad dream,” she said by way of apology.

  Now Steffy’s fingers reached out in the darkness.

  Raine fearfully flinched away.

  Those fingers curled. They were too long; there were too many joints. Thin and bony, like a giant crab’s legs. Steffy made a fist of all but her index finger. At its tip there was a sharply pointed fingernail, needle sharp. That many-jointed finger pointed in a blatantly accusatory gesture that made Raine want to shy away, hide. The finger tapped mercilessly against the aching point in the center of Raine’s forehead.

  “Ow!”

  Something wet dripped down. Something warm and cool at the same time. It fell over her nose, paused, trembling with her breath. Raine clenched her own fingers tight into fists and felt the
damp of her earlier tears, but she knew it wasn’t a tear that made her skin crawl like this. Knew it wasn’t sweat that dripped on her face. It was blood. It was her blood, red like garnets in bright sunlight, and it welled up around Steffy’s stabbing icepick finger.

  It was Steffy who laughed now, but the laughter wasn’t formed with her friend’s vocal cords. It didn’t clang in Raine’s ears, it rang inside her mind and it was deafening.

  Raine screamed, lashed out, kicking hard to protect herself. Steffy flew backward an alarming distance, shattering the window as her elbow struck the pane. The breaking glass made a noise like the brittle crunching of dry bones in her ears. Blood gushed from Raine’s brow, down over her face, burning her eyes, salty in her mouth. Thunder roared. Lightning flashed and at last, in a bright spotlight, Steffy’s features were revealed.

  There were no horrific fish belly eyes.

  No army of staring, lidless orbs as Raine had feared.

  There were no eyes at all.

  No eyes. And no nose.

  Beneath her friend’s short, spiky hair, there was only the thin seam of a mouth. A wide line sliced a merlot wound across Steffy’s face from ear to ear. Hundreds of sharp, tiny teeth flashed behind the wet lips. The lips curved, the mouth opened and shut, the jaws working, snapping as erratically as a cheap set of plastic wind-up teeth. The gnashing of those teeth was startlingly loud and sharp in the air.

  Steffy had the face of a monster with biting jaws and baby teeth and it was hungry.

  Chitter, chatter, I’m mad as a hatter, Raine thought hysterically.

  Thunder detonated like a sonic boom—

  With that deafening percussion, the dream abruptly ended and Raine was once more thrust back into her living nightmare. She had come fully awake with the pounding rhythm of the Horde’s hearts in her throat, their cries of triumph in her head as they readied to act on the information they had pried out of Raine’s dreaming mind. They prepared for an incursion into the Territories, only this time it was worse than anything Raine had ever been forced to endure because this time they were hunting someone she loved.

  The beasts had Steffy’s name. They would peruse her until they found her and when they did, they would consume her. Though Raine had somehow still been wily enough in her dreaming state to hide her friend’s face behind that of a monster straight out of a horror film, Raine was sure Steffy wasn’t safe anymore.

  The Horde knew enough about Steffy to succeed in their dark quest. From past snippets of information plucked out of Raine’s own memories, they knew plenty of places to start looking for her. It was only a matter of time.

  What could Raine do?

  She was trapped here, with this thing feeding on her. Raine let herself look up at the pulsing appendage sweeping up from the center of her head and nearly lost her mind to a rush of insanity. It was a near thing, but she managed to hold on to herself with the tips of her fingernails, desperation imbuing her with preternatural stamina. Whatever it was, this heinous thing was attached to something even more horrible, something beyond her line of sight, lurking in the darkness. It drew on the flesh just above the center of her eyes, but reached deeper than the surface. It was sucking the life out of her, consuming the raw energy that the Horde needed to fuel their numbers and keep them strong.

  She was food for the Hive. This contraption attached to her head was part of the process by which the Horde fed on her. It was crass and it was soul crushing and there was no way out of it.

  The cavern’s fluid flowstone had dripped down while Raine slept. All the time she’d drifted, unconscious and in denial, it had been busy forming a prison to entomb and immobilize her. It was so effective she was barely able to draw breath in the small space allowed her.

  Raine didn’t want to know how she was managing to pass waste in this cocoon of solid rock. The stone covered almost every inch of her. She could move the fingers of one hand and most of her left leg, but what good did that do her? She was utterly useless in this position—completely at the mercy of her captors.

  Steffy was in mortal peril. All of Raine’s loved ones, perhaps even every person she’d ever met, was now in danger from the monsters that kept her. If the creatures picked even one glimpse of a face out of her head, they would hunt that visage down with the intention of swallowing every last spark of the owner’s life force.

  Raine didn’t know much, but she knew enough by now to understand that it wasn’t the meat the animals craved. It was the vitality in sentient creatures, humans almost exclusively, that the monsters lusted after and fed on. Maybe it was the Chi that nourished them, or the soul itself. Call it by any other name, a rose was a rose. Some people—special people—tasted better than others. Raine knew Steffy, with her witchy ways, would be one of those people.

  In the end, Raine would find out firsthand just how special her friend was. Because every time the Horde killed a victim and consumed their energy, she felt it happen as if she were right there with them. It was an indescribable ecstasy of horror she was forced to live through again and again.

  It was as if she wasn’t just Raine in her own skin anymore but a shared consciousness in hundreds of other forms. They began as quick flashes of color that intensified over time to longer, lucid visions that haunted her. Now, she had only to wait and let down her guard for a moment before she would find herself actually inside the head of one of those things, those monsters.

  Raine felt what they felt. Smelled the fear of their victims. Tasted the blood they shed. The lives they stole.

  It was terrible, being a part of that. Worse still, glorying in it. Because there was no way to separate herself from the experience of her “host”. In those moments she became the monster.

  She was a monster.

  Raine couldn’t stop them—her will was to feed, to exist, just as it was the Daemons’ wills. It was simple but beyond her control. She couldn’t make it end, she couldn’t undo the damage once it was over and she couldn’t keep it from repeating. The only truth she knew was that it would be worse each time they fed and she would lose herself a little more every time.

  The beasts not only absorbed the lives of the people they killed. They stole some of their memories. Their thoughts. It was pure hell for Raine, who had to go on living with all these strangers’ lives existing alongside hers inside her mind. At times she wondered if an errant memory was hers or someone else’s, someone who had died only to find a strange immortality inside her head. These ghostly visitations reminded her often of the role she played in the world and the guilt she carried for all she’d witnessed and done nothing to prevent.

  What would Steffy’s last moments be like? Raine couldn’t bear finding out. She couldn’t escape this prison, but she perhaps could do one thing to protect her friend. For once she had to try to intervene, just once.

  The dream may have given them Steffy, but it had also reminded Raine of something. Someone. She’d forgotten in all this pain and suffering, but now she remembered and by all that was holy, she’d use it—him. They Horde had been afraid of him—she’d felt it through the fog of the dream—and they feared nothing.

  Raine closed her eyes to the grisly tableaux around her, the creatures and their implements of torture, the baleful thing sucking away at her head. She shut her ears to the sounds of woe and torment that never quieted here in this dungeon deep beneath the planet’s surface. She went to the still, calm eye in the center of her mind and waited for the gray haze to descend. She didn’t have long to wait and quicker than ever she found herself navigating the misty halls of the Gray Land, manipulating it to suit her immediate and pressing needs.

  She could see the souls passing by her, clearer than on any previous visit, as if her urgency had sharpened her senses. Raine knew she could interfere with those souls’ journeys, guide them, even turn them back and use them as messengers. And there were the pathways for her to consider using as well, open tears in the fabric between realms that would let her Travel between here and there f
or precious moments. Crucial moments that might make or break the fate of a lot of people she cared about.

  This time was different than all the others though. She was faster, more efficient. Far less afraid. Much less cautious than all the other times she had come here. Raine didn’t know why it was happening now, but she sensed a fundamental truth that opened up a new realm of possibilities.

  She was getting stronger.

  With a little practice and a lot of patience, perhaps Raine could make that strength count. Whatever the cost, she meant to give it a try.

  Chapter Nine

  Now…

  Turning her face like a swimmer taking a breath, Raine surfaced once more in the present, leaving the land of memory far behind. No time had passed, or very little of it, because occasional tremors still quaked through her body and Grimm still held her to him, tight, his mouth hot on the pulse in her throat.

  The return to herself had never been so welcome or such a relief. Pleasure returned tenfold, pleasure at finding herself once more safe, in Grimm’s arms, and still quaking with her orgasm.

  She was spent in both body and mind for very different reasons, torn between her two selves of present and past. The anticipation of Grimm’s touch, coupled with the dread and pressing need for further contemplations on the revelations of her past, made her feel like two very different people at war with each other. She had to find a way to reconcile her two states of being soon. How could she enter into a meaningful relationship with this man if she didn’t understand who she was?

  Wait, what?

  Meaningful relationship? Man? Okay, so the latter wasn’t strictly applicable. But the former…

  Was she jumping the gun? Was he that in to her? Raine put her hands in his hair and lifted his head. She met Grimm’s gaze and found it sweltering with carnal heat.

  Nope. No gun jumping here.

  Oh geez Louise.

  “Grimm,” her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been shouting. Cripes, she probably had been. Her sex was still throbbing with every beat of her heart, wet and aching for more serious play.