But it wasn’t until now, seeing his hunger for the woman Grimm had so long yearned for and spiritually claimed as his own, that he truly hated Daemon.
Raine felt shame that her anger might have pushed Grimm over the edge. He was betraying his honor, his friend Tryton and his people. This wasn’t like him, this was her doing. He was always in control of himself. She needed to fix this—he might never forgive her if she didn’t.
Tryton’s command no longer stayed Grimm’s hand.
Hate fueled his rage. It tasted like sand and desiccated hope.
He would kill the Lord of the Horde, right here and now. He’d offer Daemon’s head at the feet of his dreaming Raine. He would rid himself and his people of this great scourge at last. The war would be over. His woman would be saved. The world would be saved. All would be right again with the death of this one black-hearted villain.
Raine slammed back into her own body with enough of a jolt that she nearly cried out. She hurried to intervene between the two warriors before something irrevocable happened between them.
Daemon instinctively flung up his arms and deflected a particularly vicious blow from The Traveler so that it glanced off his cheek, shattering more bone, only just saving his face from complete obliteration. Grimm pummeled him again and again, until Daemon’s blood mingled with Raine’s on the semi-solid ground.
He took quite a beating, but Daemon was eternal. He wasn’t like his creations; when he bled, he healed quickly. Even as Grimm broke his bones and lacerated his flesh, the bones almost instantaneously popped back into place and the torn flesh knitted back together. It didn’t matter how hard Grimm hit him. Daemon took the punishment and then recovered.
Struggling to muster up the energy to get their attention, Raine was dismayed to hear a faint chuckle beneath the gurgle of blood in Daemon’s mouth.
And then Grimm was screaming down into his face. “Why?” It was the only question that seemed to matter to him. It encompassed everything but recovered nothing.
Raine struggled in earnest. She knew nothing Daemon said would appease any of them.
Daemon gathered his muscles and rolled them, but Grimm was faster—so much faster in his unleashed fury—and no sooner had Daemon gained the upper hand than Grimm took it from him again, slamming Daemon’s body into the ground so that the very Earth shook underneath them.
The blood-soaked terrain sent up a rich spray of sticky crimson around their struggling forms. “I killed the woman I loved, Traveler.” Daemon spat out a tooth, refuse now that another had grown in its place, perfect and whole. “I did not mean to, and I tried to take it back, but she was gone. Because I could not hold back my seed, even knowing it was toxic to her human form. I wanted to be with her in every way. Love made me weak, Traveler. It drove me mad. So I turned instead to the succor of hate, and hate is what has made me strong. Hate rebuilt me. Love betrayed me.
“Tryton should have helped me. He could have helped me save her! Your great and fearless leader, he turned his back on me. And this is what he wrought!” Daemon’s last words ended in a scream of psychotic rage.
“I know your tale of woe—you chose your consort out of pride, not love. Tryton could not have saved her, or you.” Grimm glared down into Daemon’s mad gaze. “You were doomed from the start.”
Raine couldn’t move a muscle in her tomb of translucent stone and her voice remained elusive. She had to find another way…
“I am what my family has made me,” Daemon snarled. “My brother abandoned me. He should have loved me above all others.” He roared and then seemed to calm, the rage still alight in his eyes but vacant once again from his voice, leaving it hollow. “I am what you and all Shikars have made me—treating me like a monster, forgetting my identity, my origins, seeing my failures as signs of aggression against them.”
“Were they not?” Grimm challenged. “You set your beasts against us, turned them loose like rabid animals.”
Daemon refused to comment, casting his face to the place where Raine slumbered. “Your woman is what you made of her too—would you damn her for all that she has done? Of course not.” He barked a laugh. “Look at how she sleeps in the midst of this horror, yet you would wake her and expose her to the truth of all that has come to pass at her dreaming hands. You should leave her to her slumber, you fool. The only true peace for her now is in sleep or in death. You are about to make the same mistake I made—you will love her and lose her. It is you now who are doomed to be betrayed by love. I will live on in my hatred, I will be forever strong in it—what will keep you going, Traveler?”
Grimm clamped Daemon’s body between his knees and thrust his hands wrist deep into Daemon’s chest.
Daemon screamed.
Raine was frantic now. There was no time left, she had to do something.
“Take responsibility for your sins,” Grimm raged. “This is no one’s fault save your own.” Grimm bared his teeth and punched his hand farther into Daemon’s chest, cracking ribs, tearing sinew. “Tryton did not make you a creator of monsters. He did not start this war. You did. You turned your back on him. He has loved you always.”
Daemon fell still. He lay there. Their eyes met through the fine red haze. “Don’t speak to me of love—you don’t yet understand how it can turn sour. My heart is hard with its poison.”
“Your heart is in my hand. I will tear it out and all its poison with it.”
“Yes. So you should. Have your revenge, Grimm.” Daemon’s voice faded to a whisper. His words were weary and yet still goading. Somehow beyond pain. Beyond fear. “Take my heart.” He turned his face and gazed once more at Raine. “I have no more use for it.” He chuckled ruefully.
Raine could see the entire thing playing out, and by far the worst thing was when Daemon looked at her. It made her feel at odds with herself, but stranger was the wrenching pain it elicited. It broke her heart to see the suffering in his eyes—it was a primal suffering that overshadowed her loathing of the guy. She didn’t understand it. Didn’t want to. She couldn’t bear him looking at her like that.
“It is a pity…I won’t be around…to witness your fall, Traveler.” Daemon’s voice was faint. Weak. Words spent at great cost between desperate breaths.
Let him go.
Grimm gasped as if someone had kicked him in the chest.
Raine would have smiled if she could. She hadn’t been able to speak out loud, but after several tries she had at last been able to send her voice straight to his mind. You don’t want to kill him. Death’s too easy for a guy like that. Let him go.
Daemon’s eyes went wide, his attention frozen on her supine form on the altar. Raine wondered if he could hear her too somehow. It made her feel strangely exposed.
Let him go. Leave him be now. She imagined herself putting her hands on Grimm’s broad, strong shoulders. As much as she loathed Lord Daemon, she didn’t want to see his blood on Grimm’s hands.
He cried out as if he felt her and immediately did as she bade.
“She is…magnificent.” Daemon breathed around the pain, around the looming specter of his own demise—he simply didn’t care, that much was clear. “I can actually feel her presence…” He gasped for the air to speak. “Moving through you. Into me.” His eyes blazed hot with a hunger that would have in itself forced Grimm’s hand if Raine didn’t once more tell him to leave him be. “Hers is a strength that…devastates.”
Grimm was up on his feet like a shot. Daemon followed suit, ignoring the hand The Traveler offered. His wounds closed, the blood dried on his skin and flaked away. He darted glances between Raine and Grimm. “When you try to take her, she will take you instead. She is that strong, even injured as she is.” These cryptic words were gentle and soft from the person who had, but seconds ago, been a breath away from death. “You will need your wits about you.”
The ground thundered. Enraged voices ululated out of the dark. The massive stone chamber trembled with a mighty earthquake, sending boulders cascading down from the c
eiling like a giant’s stone tears.
“The Horde is coming en masse to protect their prize, Traveler. If you are set on freeing her, you must do it now.” Daemon laid his hand on Raine’s coffin and the milky white stone began to melt away. Inch by inch, Raine’s skin was revealed and the rotted remnants of her clothing went with it.
It was one of the most difficult things she’d ever had to do, but Raine managed to open her eyes a sliver and watch the proceedings with her physical self. It was strange, seeing Grimm with her own eyes, and Raine realized with a start that this was the first time she’d technically seen him face-to-face.
His hand touched her and she felt it warm and strong on her flesh, all the way to the center of her being. Tranquility eased through her like a sweet, addictive drug.
He reached up to the offensive tube rising out of her forehead, the cuff of his sleeve brushing her face, sending a puff of his scent wafting through her nostrils. Raine had never known a man could smell so amazing.
“Wait, Grimm, no—” Daemon’s warning came too late.
Grimm seized upon the leech gorging upon Raine’s life force. He closed his fist around the protuberance and with a roar, tore it free.
A fount of thick, hot blood rained down over them all. Raine’s agonized scream split the air like a sword, transcending sound. The wave of it shattered the domed ceiling and brought a large portion of it down upon them, forcing Daemon to transform the debris into dust before it had a chance to kill them.
Once Grimm had started the removal he had to finish, because it wasn’t just a pair of lips that anchored the tube to Raine’s head. It was lodged inside her skull, kept stable by a single, wicked tooth, serrated along the sides in tiny, uneven spikes. The thing was four inches in length at least. Once freed it left behind what should have been a jagged, mortal wound, deep in her brain. The injury should have killed her, but it didn’t. Instead it gaped open like a lurid, blooming flower.
All the while Raine screamed and fresh blood welled up, filling the torn edges of her flesh, running in swift currents down her temples.
Daemon pressed his own hand over the wound, staunching the flow until it seeped through and ran past his fingers, staining them crimson. “This could have been done more gently,” he remarked blithely, scrutinizing her face.
Raine bit off her scream and averted her stare, determined to avoid his. She sought out Grimm’s like a lifeline and fell into his waiting gaze with a sigh. Her pain vanished, her body relaxed and she drifted gratefully into Grimm’s care.
The Horde’s outraged howls sundered the air, rending the fabric of the underground. A long fracture opened the ground at the base of the altar. Raine’s limp, emaciated body heaved upward upon it and then sagged as the dais broke underneath her. Daemon kept his hand on her wound as if he could keep her blood sealed away. But they all knew he couldn’t keep it staunched forever. He was barely keeping it in check as it was. Grimm tore faster at the last fragments of the sarcophagus trapping her.
Raine was beyond pain. The world had taken on a strange golden hue. She rather preferred it this way. She felt her body rise up once more. Something wrenched in the middle of her back. There was a bright, hot flash of pain and then nothing for a long while.
Nothing was good. It was so much better than pain, nothingness.
Ashen mist swelled in her head like fog. It had no taste or smell. It was simply flat and gray. Raine recognized the approach of the Gray Land and knew without feeling any emotion about it—fear or joy—that she was going to die now.
Oh no you don’t. I still need you.
It wasn’t Grimm’s voice in her head. It was Daemon’s.
Raine shied away from it, hating him for his unwelcome intrusion. But he was most insistent and there was a massive thrust of heat inside her head from where he touched her wound, one she couldn’t ignore or turn away from. The smell of fresh, moist dirt filled her nostrils so strongly Raine thought she was being buried alive.
You will live.
Raine coughed, tasted dirt and coughed again. Her fingers closed around a fistful of the debris of what might have become her true coffin, but now would not because of Daemon’s interference. Raw, electric power surged through her. It felt the same as touching a live wire would feel, if one could casually do such a thing and walk away unscathed. It was brutal but exhilarating. She was absorbing power from the minerals in the rock itself.
The gray haze faded.
Yes. You will heal. Daemon was whispering inside her head, which was buzzing like a hive of angry bees. You will leave this place. And someday you will help me as I have just helped you, Earthmover.
I will never help you, Raine snarled, but she wasn’t sure he could hear her. His mind wasn’t open to hers like Grimm’s. Touching Grimm’s mind was a sensuous exercise, soft like a lover’s embrace. Touching Daemon’s felt like rubbing against barbed wire. It was awful, scarring, but undeniably memorable.
The howls of the Daemon Horde intruded and Raine knew the army had arrived with all the numbers it could gather. She turned her head drunkenly and looked across the vast cave. Her extremities went numb with shock. It was so hard to take in the breadth and scope of it all, seeing everything through her own eyes for what must have been the first time.
The cave, for one, was large enough to fit a small city inside. Skyscrapers could have fit within it, with room to grow. Worse than the terrifying scale of it all, though, was what crowded the immense space. It was the Horde come at last—an army larger in number than any the world had ever seen. More vicious, bloodthirsty and ruthless than any force ever imagined by humankind or the gods that governed them, all come with the sole purpose of destroying the two warriors who had arrived to free their captive.
Suddenly there was a pause as the Horde looked on their sleeping princess who was no longer sleeping, but regarding them with open eyes and a fully awakened mind. An eerie silence descended.
“Grimm…” Raine’s voice was fragile in the quiet, as everyone held their breath.
Daemon hopped lithely down from the dais. The entire army moved back a single step. They moved together as one entity, causing a ripple effect that was beatific because of the scale with which it was accomplished. It was also monstrous for the same reason. So many individuals should not have been able to move together in such harmony—it looked wrong.
Toying with them, amusing himself, Daemon took a quick step forward again, and once again the army stepped away.
Watching him, Raine was afraid she might be sick.
Daemon glanced back at them over his shoulder. “Traveler, take your woman and flee. See her safe. I will hold the army here.” Before he was finished speaking the creatures had begun howling again and Daemon was forced to shout the last. The army surged forward despite their fear of their old master, but Grimm was already reaching for her.
Raine saw that his hands trembled slightly and wanted to be able to reassure him, to tell him that things would be all right, but she couldn’t. She wished their first meeting could have been under better circumstances—this wasn’t the most romantic of encounters. But with a tenderness that stunned her, he reached into her broken tomb and placed one arm beneath her skeletally thin knees, the other around her shoulders, and carefully lifted her high against his heart.
Her hair had grown exceedingly long in her captivity. It had also grown into the formation of the flowstone that had held her. When he lifted her, most of that hair broke off at her scalp in uneven chunks. Raine was covered from head to toe in gore, rags and filth. She was emaciated, pale and gaunt, battered, bruised and unable to even lift her head because her muscles had atrophied over the years. Her body was, to put it delicately, a total wreck.
But Grimm looked at her with such joy that she felt like the most beautiful and beloved woman in the world.
She closed her eyes and sighed contentedly. He hefted her, shifting so that her head was tucked safely beneath his chin. Cradling her protectively against the sea of Dae
mons that rushed them, he held fast to her. At long last she was in his arms. She would heal and they would figure out what came next. All that mattered was that they would finally get the chance to figure it out together.
“Go, now!” Daemon cried, his voice booming out from the midst of an ocean of frenzied, ravenous monsters. Time halted its forward dance. Raine had the sensation of the bottom dropping out of the cave, of her and Grimm falling through it. Her Traveler gripped her to him, the world dissolved…
“Come to me, my children.” Daemon’s voice followed them. “Come and return to me all the vitality that you have stolen!”
Chapter Thirteen
Now…
In Grimm’s home, far removed from the horror of that death chamber where thousands—perhaps even millions—of dead bodies lay stacked waiting for a breath of life, and millions more had fought Lord Daemon to keep her enslaved to them, Raine sucked in a breath of her own and returned to the present moment.
She had never been more grateful to be free of a memory in her life. For an agonizing second she had to wait for her vision to clear of that crimson haze and focus once more on her strange, alien eyes in the mirror. When it did and she could see the smooth, unblemished skin on her face again, she became aware of discordant notes clanging in the concert hall of her mind, and with this noise, sudden, stark clarity followed.
I was trapped in that cavern for years, not months or weeks or days, but years.
Clang.
I am no longer human. I can do some pretty amazing shit, some of it cool, some of it weird, most of it scary. But I am definitely not human. And I’m not Shikar either. I don’t know what I am.
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