TravelersKiss

by Sherri L. King

  She was choking on the fire of her own vitality.

  Raine pitched over and fell to the ground, retching, trying and failing to suck air through her teeth between each heave. Grimm gripped her shoulders, calling her name, but her head was echoing with the chaos of fading screams. She couldn’t hear much past the last dying thoughts of all those Daemons, all of them wasted like reams of paper confetti and for what? She had to know.

  “Help me up, Grimm.” Her voice came out as if her vocal cords had been sandblasted with diamonds.

  Grimm lifted her as if she weighed no more than a bundle of twigs and set her gently on her feet. She held on to him, shaking, and looked through tears of suffering and rage at the blurred image of the last person she’d expected to see.

  “Daemon.” She would have started toward him, but her vertigo and Grimm’s strength held her at bay.

  The Leviathan was oddly subdued—its charge across the sea had slowed. If it recognized its maker, this was its only acknowledgment. The water now frothed around it like an angry mob, but it no longer posed a deadly threat to those on the beach with its towering waves. Steffy and Cinder darted to and fro, clearly on the hunt for any sign of the dreaded Cankor worms, but if there were any about, they remained hidden for now.

  “What did you do?” Cady screamed at Daemon, but her words were stolen by the wind, and only Raine could pick apart her words from the fury of the other notes of sound at play around them. “I gave you a chance to prove yourself trustworthy—you could have taken your place among us! Las ventas del carajo—we put our faith in you!”

  Her epithet was whipped away when one of the Leviathan’s tentacles slammed into the earth and sent the Shikars scrambling for safer ground—it seemed the creature did not like Cady antagonizing its creator.

  Daemon turned and lifted his palm up to the monster in an unmistakable gesture and the beast once more subsided, though its pendulous body was never completely still and its size alone was a constant reminder of the danger they were all in, every single moment they lingered here.

  Daemon gave the beast his back as if he felt no such danger, turning all of his attention to those Shikars gathered on the beach.

  Raine realized he had no need to feel any fear of the Leviathan. He was Lord Daemon after all, the master of this chaos, damn him. She pushed away from Grimm, the strength of half a million lives filling her, enervating her every cell.

  She would need them to make every second count.

  Raine had never experienced such a consuming anger. Suddenly she didn’t care about her own safety anymore. She wanted blood and was willing to spill her own to get at the stuff she really wanted.

  The next thing she became aware of was jumping across a wide chasm in the ground and landing at a full sprint. The Leviathan was moving again, of course, because it knew Raine and understood what she was about, now that she was broadcasting her uninhibited, glorious anger. At full speed, she slid under a flailing tentacle without breaking stride and continued running, dodging broken rocks and debris agilely.

  Behind her she heard Grimm call her name seconds before he Traveled, appearing in front of her. She dodged him, spun deftly away from his clutching grasp and sprinted on.

  The ground shook and groaned; the air turned into a gale that pressed against her very bones. Raine paid this no heed, her vision no longer seeing the mud and ruin of the terrain as she was looking through the red haze of her fury. The scent of deep, cool graveyard dirt was heady in her sinuses, banishing the stench of the Wastes. She focused with deadly intent on her target—nothing else mattered.

  She felt Grimm’s fingers brush her back and knew it was only a matter of seconds before he caught her. He was faster and stronger, but she had one advantage over him—Raine was neither human nor Shikar, and that made her unpredictable. Her strength of will could not be matched, and right now all she wanted was to reach Daemon, no matter the cost, and make him pay for what he’d done.

  This time when Grimm appeared before her, she skidded to a halt, deliberately turning her heels to the side so that a spray of sand and pebbles flew into his face, temporarily blinding him. Raine broke back into a run, focusing all of her energy on evading her pursuer, navigating the ravaged landscape and keeping Daemon in her sight.

  It was the longest flight of her life.

  Raine and her Traveler continued like this, in an earnest dance, Grimm appearing in front of her every few steps, her avoiding him with deft maneuvers and so on, until at last she arrived at the shoreline and launched herself into the air with a tremendous leap. She landed a stunning dropkick into the center of Daemon’s chest, her war cry echoing through the dense air.

  Daemon took the hit…and did not budge an inch.

  Raine fell flat on her back, the breath whooshing out of her lungs.

  She gasped like a fish out of water, gaping up at him from the wet sand at his feet. Her abrupt landing did nothing to diffuse her anger. With Grimm so close on her heels, she didn’t dare waste a second. Still unable to catch her breath, Raine nonetheless regained her feet but before she could land another blow, Daemon’s hand shot out and grabbed her by the throat.

  Raine slammed the sharp side of her right hand against his temple. He didn’t even flinch. She tried it again with both hands—again nothing. He was impervious to her blows and now she was starting to see black spots dance around in the red haze of her vision.

  “You are truly magnificent.” Daemon praised her in a voice no louder than a murmur. “Is all this passion for me?”

  Her blood boiled.

  “Release her at once,” Grimm commanded in a booming voice. Having reached them, he lunged for Daemon, his cloak billowing wildly on the air so that he looked like a raven swooping down from the heavens.

  “Don’t!” Daemon cautioned with a sharp crack of his voice, fingers tightening on Raine’s throat until she wheezed. Behind him, the Leviathan raged loudly in an echo, splashing the ocean like a child at play in the bath. But it didn’t advance upon them…for now it held its position.

  Grimm stilled at once, but his eyes promised retribution, the starlight within them swirling like a storm in deep space.

  “What have you done?” Cady, soaked from head to toe and caked with mud, screamed at Daemon. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds, kneeling in the muck. “We thought you were dead! For years there wasn’t a peep outta you and now this is how you announce yourself? What the fuck are you up to, D?”

  “Who said I was dead?” Daemon didn’t even glance at Cady. His gaze never left Raine’s face. “Was it The Traveler? I will concede his last vision of me was quite bleak—I was being swallowed by a legion of golems—but you should all have realized by now how easy it is for me to smite down those creatures when I wish to. Or was it Raine who declared me lost? If it was she, then it was a lie she spoke to you. She knew I lived. I have whispered in her mind for some time now.” He placed his free hand over her pounding heart.

  Scandalized gasps from the Shikars did not prevent Daemon from allowing his touch to linger there.

  Over the one cord that was different from the others.

  This cord was not translucent.

  It was a forbidding, dark hue and it shimmered, running from her heart to his.

  “You can see it,” he whispered for her ears alone. “Can you feel it too?”

  Let me go. She ignored his question, clawing at the skin of the hand around her throat. Raine couldn’t speak with her choked voice, but she could speak with her mind and she blasted him with her words. Let me go!

  He lowered her, bringing her in close until their noses almost touched.

  “Daemon!” Grimm’s voice was thunderous.

  “Why didn’t you tell your lover that I was in your head all this time?” His words pierced her heart, thrumming along their cord until they buzzed inside her entire form.

  Shut up, she screamed.

  “Why?” he pressed. His hand gentled around her throat and the palm over her heart se
emed to grow warmer. “Why keep it from him? Did you like having me all to yourself?” He smirked.

  “It’s not what you think.” She wheezed aloud and met his gaze, unafraid. “I didn’t hide you from him.”

  She’d kept Daemon’s whispers from Grimm because she had been afraid she was going crazy—at first. Raine hadn’t been sure Daemon’s voice in her head was real. Then, when Raine was certain that yes, he was real, too much time had passed and she was afraid of hurting Grimm with the fact she hadn’t told him in the first place.

  Before she could decide how to tell him, catastrophe had struck.

  Raine had lost her memory. She’d forgotten herself, she’d even forgotten Grimm. It had been a terrible setback.

  With her amnesia, she had of course forgotten all that she had learned about Daemon. She’d had to start her life over from scratch. Eventually she’d remembered, but it had taken a long time. And once she’d been restored, Daemon’s past interference hadn’t seemed to matter. Until Daemon once more began whispering to her in her dreams.

  And then she’d lost her memory once again. And she had healed again—but Raine had remembered enough not to make the same mistake. This time when Daemon had begun whispering to her, she had told Grimm at once. Raine would never, ever again take a chance of him not knowing something about her.

  Raine let Daemon know this, opening her mind to him fully, freely, wanting him to see. Wanting to wipe that smirk off his face, see it slide off his lips and die. She let everything she knew flood down through their connection, saw it vibrate along the onyxian thread and knew he could feel it as she did, pulsing through them.

  Daemon’s lips curled. “Ah. No secrets between you anymore, I see. Admirable.” The sneer in his tone belied any sincerity in his words. He took his hand off her heart and pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. He lowered her to her tiptoes with his hand still around her throat. “I come to bargain with you.”

  She scowled and vehemently shook her head no.

  “Help me and I will sever our bond.” He reached down and strummed the cord with his fingertip, setting off an eerie, mournful note that rang throughout her bones. “I will set you free, Raine. Is that not what you long for most?”

  The note sang along her nerves. She cried out, muscles turning to water. She would have fallen if he hadn’t held her aloft.

  Grimm released a flurry of furious curses in his native tongue. “Let her go or I swear I will tear out your testicles and feed them to you.”

  “Vivid.” Daemon’s eyebrows lifted in a look of appreciation. “But unnecessary, Traveler.” He looked at the other Shikars for effect, lingering on each one in turn. “All Raine has to do is agree and everyone may leave here without further bloodshed.”

  He set Raine on her feet and released her, pushing her away from him.

  Grimm moved swiftly. He deftly positioned himself between them, nudging Raine behind him while she wheezed and gasped for air, rubbing the bruises that were already shadowing her throat. “Help you how?” Grimm asked.

  “That is between us.”

  At that moment, the Leviathan chose to make its move. Raine sensed its intent a mere nanosecond before it struck and called out a gruff warning. “Everybody move!”

  “No.” Daemon turned to the behemoth. “Stop.”

  But the Leviathan was done with waiting. It flung its mighty appendages, darkening the sky with its towering might. A tentacle the size of a railway car slammed into the earth where Cady and Sid had been standing but a moment before—it would have obliterated them if not for Raine’s warning. The two warriors Traveled a distance down the shore, Obsidian slicing through one of the Leviathan’s tentacles with his foils the moment they materialized. Cady threw out streams of flame, lighting up the landscape with a brilliant heat.

  Emily seized Edge’s hand and disappeared at once, while Steffy and Cinder moved together as one, racing faster than the eye could follow, up the ridge of the beast’s back. They razed the Leviathan’s diseased, mottled tissues, hacking and slashing, whirling like dervishes in fits of ecstasy. Cinder burned a scorched pathway of destruction that was breathtakingly violent and Steffy sliced away ribbons of flesh that were thick as suspension bridge cables.

  Howls of torment stabbed the world like sonic booms while pieces of the Leviathan, charred and burning, rained about the land.

  Raine couldn’t wait around to see where Emily and Edge reappeared. All of this was happening within the span of a half-breath, yet the time was already pressing. Raine knew the blow was coming, sensed she had to move faster than ever before if she was to escape the doom that was coming for her and for Grimm. She summoned the last of her strength to Travel, took Grimm in her arms and jumped with all her might.

  Her hair blew back from her face and she knew if she’d hesitated any longer the blow would have landed—the wind was from the descent of a tentacle, and she heard the explosion of sound as it landed where she and Grimm had been standing before she’d even finished Traveling.

  The Leviathan bellowed its rage and the sky rent with the noise.

  Raine stumbled when they landed and a bright flash of pain made her fall to the earth. She looked down and saw the vivid red of her blood spurting freely out of the fractured bone protruding through the flesh on her shin. Her mind immediately disconnected from the pain to protect her from this new trauma—it was no small injury. She couldn’t just shrug it off; it was crippling. Panicked, her mind flipped and Raine wondered madly if any of this was real or if she was somehow dreaming it all.

  With a foul oath, Grimm bent over the broken ground to aid her, his cloak billowing about him. In all this gray, his black layers of flowing cloth and fluid bloodstone hair were stark contrasts. He was a magnificent sight no matter where he went, but here he was particularly striking—too striking to be real, surely. Raine caught her breath, mesmerized. He reached for her hand, never once thinking of his own safety, his cosmic eyes reflecting only his worry for her injury. “Give me your hand, Nightingale.”

  Raine looked at her wound and then back at him, caught in that awful suspicion of being cast back into one of her creeping nightmares when a whisper of warning flared in her mind. Her stomach dropped. A bottomless well of dread opened up inside her and there wasn’t enough time to do anything but know that she was already too slow…

  The midnight shadow descended upon them. It blotted out all light, save the glitter in Grimm’s eyes. The shadow lengthened and grew as it fell. She knew she should move, Travel, something—anything, but Raine was too weak, too injured, too dull-witted to Travel again in time to save them.

  Raine opened her mouth to sing out the loudest, most desperate plea she’d ever given. “Grimm, get out of the way—”

  But he was too occupied, busy looking out for her. He was always looking out for her. Always concerned with her safety, even before his own. Grimm had to see that shadow looming over them, but he made the choice to stay anyway.

  His jaw tightened, his lips thinned with determination. He would have thrown his body over hers to shield her, but before he could he was struck by the hammer fall, swiped away by a massive tentacle.

  In an instant Grimm was gone.

  Raine’s body numbed.

  Sound shrank away to nothing. Silence reigned.

  Grimm is dead. It was the only thought in her head that held any meaning and every time it clanged against the sides of her skull, she felt her heart shriveling smaller and smaller, until it hardly had enough strength to beat at all. Grimm is dead.

  There was pandemonium around her. Utter chaos. But Raine was disconnected from all of it, as if she were watching the violence play out on a screen from the safety of a spectator’s chair. Nothing in that moment could have fazed her—she was beyond fear, cut apart from her injury and weariness, disassociated from pain and woe. She was the eye of the storm.

  Dead inside…as Grimm was dead, so was she now too.

  The Leviathan, as massive as it was, turned itself her w
ay, focusing solely on Raine. Raine couldn’t care. She wasn’t even here…

  With something like a sigh, her mind let go and she slid into the Gray Land as easily as if she truly belonged there. And why not—she fully intended to stay forever this time.

  Yet something niggled at her mind, like a worm eating away at the fruit of an apple.

  How had the Leviathan come at them so assuredly, its strike swift and true? How had it overtaken Grimm before he’d even had time to move—Grimm was invincible, he was The fucking Traveler, for God’s sake! How had it known where they would be? It was as if the beast knew where they were going to be before Raine had Traveled there.

  Oh Grimm…

  Raine sank deep into the Gray. She’d never been so much a part of this realm as she was now. Her mind drifted until a memory scorched through her, bringing her to agonizing awareness.

  The Leviathan hides inside minds. It burrows in the leaves of dreams, lurks in the hollow of your nightmares…

  Oh sweet heavens. Of course.

  The behemoth had known where they were going to land because Raine had known. It had anticipated her move, just as she had anticipated its attack seconds before. It had read her mind.

  How could Raine have let it happen? How could she have been so careless, so stupid? To let her guard down for a second—she’d known better than to do that, yet she’d been a fool and done it anyway. Her mistake had cost Grimm his life.

  He was gone. There was no undoing what had been done. It had happened so fast she could hardly process it, but with a streak of black across the air, he’d been wiped out of her life forever.

  Had she ever told him she loved him? How important he was to her? Raine had always thought it went without saying—but now she knew better. She was a fool. Words were not just empty air—they were the most important magic any two people could ever share. She’d hoarded her words. She had never told Grimm all the secrets of her heart. It seemed there was ample time, there was always “later”. But there was never enough time, she knew that now, and now “later” would never come.