Her hands pumped his shaft and cupped his testicles, plumping and rolling them until he was groaning and trembling. She looked up to see the long, clean line of his throat, his head tossed back, his chest and stomach muscles bulging with restrained ecstasy.
The water cocks shivered and disappeared, splashing inelegantly down about her legs as she knelt there on the floor. With a secret smile, that she could make him lose control where no one else could, she took his sac into her mouth, slurping and licking him greedily.
She lapped her tongue up and down his shaft, sucking on the tip as she passed it each time. Reaching around him, she played with his anus, gratified to hear him nearly scream as he thrust his dick deep into her mouth and spasmed.
One hard thrust made her see stars. And then she tasted the flood of him on her tongue as he came in a violent burst that washed clean down her throat. He was sweet and spicy and incredibly masculine. The delicious essence of him held a wealth of magic and mystery and she vowed to waste not one precious drop. She wanted all of him, filling her, flavoring her tongue, to remember forever and ever, come what may.
With a last spurt and a long, low moan, he fell upon her, spreading her legs. His phallus, still so hard and large, probed at her pussy. Niki gasped, unable to believe that he was still capable of such hardness after such a release. With a shudder, he thrust into her, and began riding her in that primal rhythm that drove her wild.
His eyes were vague, but they stared down into hers unflinchingly. With each pump and undulation of his hips, she gasped, shrieked. His body dwarfed hers, covering her, heating her, filling her up completely. The water beneath them shimmered and moved. Niki screamed as Tryton fashioned the liquid into dozens of little mouths that sucked and pulled at her skin.
From head to toe the mouths worked, while he thrust his body into hers with increasingly jarring movements. Niki felt her eyes roll back in her head. Tryton’s forehead rested on hers and the liquid mouths pulled and sucked at her nipples, clit, and anus, even the backs of her knees were pleasured by the water he commanded.
His mouth met hers, his tongue delving deep. His kiss was like a lightning bolt, a savage current that ran all through her. She screamed into his mouth, a cry she didn’t even recognize as her own.
Her body clamped down like a vise on his. He roared and splashed his come deep into her, her pussy milking him with violent convulsions that had her mindlessly writhing and arching and bucking beneath him.
Tryton collapsed heavily onto her. Niki, still feeling the strong pulses of her climaxes rushing through her, could only manage a wordless gasp. The water fell lifeless again about them, puddling under their shivering bodies.
And he’d been right, she’d never been so clean in her life. In fact she was so clean, it was only her thoughts that were dirty…
Chapter Fifteen
The Egyptian night was cool and dark but for the pale light of the rising moon.
Niki tried not to feel self-conscious in her borrowed clothes—Tryton’s—and black war paint that Cady had sworn would serve as good as any Kevlar armor as she painted it on Niki’s flesh. It was difficult, but she managed. Instead, she focused on the moment at hand, pushing away her weariness and her discomfort. She and Tryton had only managed a few short hours of sleep and her nerves were on a finite edge.
Grimm and Emily took the team—Cady and Obsidian, Edge, Cinder and Steffy, and Tryton and Niki—to the base of the Great Sphinx. One minute they were standing together in Tryton’s meeting room and the next they were here, making ready for the hardships that surely lay ahead.
That ancient and mysterious monument that had withstood centuries, baffling scientists and indigenous people for so long, seemed to be waiting for them, patient and timeless as forever.
Niki shuddered delicately and waited for the Travelers to make the first move.
“We could go in, but we don’t know what awaits us there,” Emily murmured.
“No doubt the Daemons have some idea that we know something by now,” Obsidian pointed out. “Through Raine, they have an advantage that has proven most fortuitous for them.”
“I believe you are right, Obsidian,” Tryton agreed. “We will move to a point closer to where Niki escaped. It should be far enough to avoid a direct ambush. We’ll still be walking into their midst, but we won’t be put upon so quickly, without warning.”
“Stealth and planning are our best options here,” Edge remarked.
“I don’t like this, Cady,” Obsidian told his wife sternly. “I don’t want you fighting in your condition.”
“Condition? What condition? I’m pregnant, not ailing. Shut up and stop worrying. I won’t hurt our babe.” She smiled up at him when he growled. Obsidian might not like it, but she managed to get her way just the same.
It was clear to Niki that these Shikars were well used to dealing with each other. More than accustomed to fighting side by side in the worst of conditions. She wondered what she could possibly do to aid them, and fidgeted uncomfortably. This sort of thing was completely above and beyond her capabilities. She’d never fought a battle before, not even close. How could she help them?
“Join hands.” Grimm’s voice was as dark and shadowy as his form.
They appeared, closely cramped next to each other, in the crude passageway where Niki had fled from the Daemon a little more than a day before. The Shikars looked at her for affirmation. Niki nodded, trying and failing to find her voice.
It was so dark she shouldn’t be able to see much at all, but her new Shikar eyes seemed well-equipped for just such a purpose. “This way,” she finally managed, moving to lead them deeper into the darkness.
“Wait,” Cinder and Tryton both reached to pull her gently back.
Cinder stepped forth and raised his hand aloft. A bright flare in the darkness nearly blinded her, and when the spots ceased to dance before her eyes, she realized with a start that Cinder’s hand was engulfed in flame. He was using his hand as a torch to light their way.
Tryton’s hand remained on her arm. “Stay close to me,” he whispered in her ear.
As if she was going anywhere without him.
They moved down the passageway single file. Cinder, Obsidian and Edge were in front, with Cady, Steffy and Niki in the middle. Tryton, Emily and Grimm brought up the rear. The passage was difficult, craggy and uneven. Slow going, even with the way illuminated. Niki didn’t remember the tunnel being so precarious as this, but then she’d been running for her life at the time, so it was no wonder she hadn’t noticed it until now.
The walls of the tunnel were crude stone, but smooth in places, as if it had been carved out by human hands.
Or some other kind of hands, given the circumstances. Niki shuddered.
They walked for long, laborious minutes. Niki’s muscles and lungs should have been burning from the exertion, and she was astonished that they didn’t. Three miles or more they covered and still she wasn’t even winded, despite the difficulty of the trek. It was amazing. She knew she had her new Shikar abilities to thank for it, and Tryton had told her to expect such wonders as she grew accustomed to her new form, but feeling it firsthand…Niki hadn’t realized just how different being a Shikar would be.
The tunnel veered off suddenly.
“We’re almost there,” Niki whispered, realizing where they were and fearing what might come next.
Cinder held his hand aloft for a long moment, stopping so that the entire group was made to pause. Then the flames went out, plunging them into startling darkness.
“I feel them,” Cady murmured.
Niki remembered that Cady was a Hunter, able to track the Daemons by feel alone.
Oh, shit.
“Steady,” Tryton warned them all.
“Stay close and on your guard,” Obsidian echoed.
They surged forward as one, into a much larger area of the tunnel.
Violence and noise erupted around them.
Niki froze, stunned and terrified. Her Sh
ikar eyes clearly saw what her mind and heart screamed at her to look away from. Shadowy forms, each a mockery of humanity, a grotesquery of life and existence, loped and charged at them en masse.
Daemons. Dozens of them. Perhaps—probably—more. All of them intent on one thing. Killing.
There was nothing Niki could do but watch as the chaos played out around her, though she would have traded years of her life to be able to blot out the horrific images.
“Look out,” Niki called the warning as the monsters came at them, but the warning was unnecessary.
The Shikars blazed through their attackers like a knife through butter.
A Daemon charged directly for Cady, as if it had a long-standing grudge against the woman. Cady, calm as you please, raised her hand, in which she held a mini-Uzi. She sprayed a barrage of bullets into the Daemon until it fell at her feet. She pointed her finger at it cockily and it whooshed into flame. Cady stepped over it and moved on to the next Daemon, already fast approaching.
Grimm lifted his arms out from his sides, like Moses parting the red sea, and stepped forward into a mass of Daemons. He disappeared in their swarming midst. Oddly, each Daemon seemed to pause and still. A second passed. One Daemon wavered on its crooked legs, the rest seemed to do the same, and then they were crumbling one by one, like hell-spawned dominoes.
A thick, wet sound at her back drew Niki’s attention. She looked behind her to see a mass of swollen, throbbing organs—Daemon hearts!—falling into a pile upon the ground. She gasped and stepped away, bumping into something solid. Grimm righted her easily, having appeared at her side. “Careful,” he murmured, steadying her before he was off again.
Cinder streaked by, setting fire to the mass of hearts as he passed. From his outstretched hands spewed a never-ending river of fire. He looked like a living, walking flamethrower. Whatever Daemon dared to cross him ended up engulfed in flame, burning alive. Soon the cavern was no longer dark. Instead, it was brightly lit by all the burning Daemon bodies littered about.
A Daemon made a beeline for Niki and she looked about, but there was no place to hide. She felt her power, the burn of it, the wildness that she’d always feared, as if it had been waiting for her to notice it all this time. Desperately she fed that flame within, until it was ablaze. The Daemon had almost reached her…
She flung her hands out to protect her face from its razor-blade claws…and the monster fell dead at her feet.
Niki sobbed a broken breath and stepped over the corpse, running for the closest wall and putting her back to it defensively.
Another Daemon raced to attack her.
“Niki!” Tryton cried out her name.
And time seemed to slow.
The monster slowed its headlong flight. Its murky, flame-orange eyes widened as if in surprise. Its horrible flesh bubbled and undulated strangely, alarmingly. All of a sudden, a million droplets of moisture escaped from its skin. Like a strange, watery explosion, the water splashed out and over her. The Daemon’s form remained standing only a second and then it crumbled into dust.
Tryton had removed the water from it, killing it instantly.
He was at her side immediately. “My goddess, my love, are you hurt?”
She shook her head, mute. He’d called her love.
“Stay here and don’t—” he began, but Niki saw a Daemon at his back and shoved him away.
Lashing out with her power, not even knowing how, but doing it as if she’d done the same a thousand times before, she aimed all of her strength at the approaching danger. The Daemon gave a horrible roar and died, twitching as it fell to the ground.
Her power was stronger now, far stronger than she’d ever imagined it could be.
Tryton looked down at the fallen monster, not a little stunned at Niki’s display. He turned to her and gave her a roguish wink. “That’s my girl,” he praised, kissing her mouth hard before he disappeared, back into the fray.
Niki looked about, just in time to see Edge run straight up the side of a wall before coming down with a violent swoop of his Foils, decapitating three Daemons at once.
Steffy, too, was using her foils. She was throwing them like boomerangs all about the room. They glinted blue, razor-sharp, and struck out to slice through numerous limbs, before arcing in the air and returning to her outstretched arms from whence they had come.
Obsidian was busy hacking away at a particularly large monster. It stood no less than ten feet tall, and was almost as wide. Niki stepped forward and threw her power out to aid him…the Daemon paused in its struggles and fell dead, with Obsidian’s Foil-bedecked arm buried up to the elbow in its chest cavity.
The midnight-haired warrior turned to nod her way in thanks before disentangling himself and launching himself at the closest monster, slicing its head clean from its shoulders.
Emily appeared at her side, covered in the black muck of Daemon blood. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Niki marveled that it was true.
The fighting subsided around them and as the last monster fell, brought down by Tryton’s neat water trick, Niki and Emily moved to join the group in the center of the cavern.
But no sooner had they regrouped than another, larger swarm of Daemons appeared.
“Fuck,” Cady screamed as one of the Daemons’ blows connected with her shoulder. She blazed her fire into the monster’s eyes and it screamed. With a wild cry she pounced on her enemy, ripping its heart free from its chest with naught but the strength of her bare hands.
“There are so many of them,” Steffy cried as she proceeded to cut several of the Daemons nearest her into ribbons.
“Stand away,” Tryton called.
The Shikars moved in unison, making a path for their leader. Tryton raised his hands at his sides. A sudden, violent gust of wind preceded a deafening roar…it was a river of water!
An incredible rush of it swarmed from behind and over them, blasting the Daemons all at once. It flooded the cavern, rushing in from wherever Tryton had called it forth, decimating their enemies in one fell swoop. The Shikars were safe, the only ones in that flooding torrent who were, and as quickly as it had begun, the flood ceased. Only carnage was left in its wake. A massive pile of Daemon bodies had washed up against the cavern’s walls, like a dam of lifeless driftwood.
“Burn them,” he commanded and Cinder and Cady stepped forward to obey.
Light and heat engulfed the cavern.
“Where to next? We need to move quickly before they recoup,” Tryton asked Niki.
Niki nodded to the farthest end of the cavern. “Over there. There’s a boulder or a shelf of rock, I think. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Indeed they did. It was an enormously broad boulder standing no taller than five feet, nestled into a dip in the wall. Cinder’s hand lit to torch their way again.
Obsidian stepped forward and smashed his hands into the stone and it shattered into a trillion fragments of dust and debris.
“That’s one way of doing it, I suppose,” Grimm noted. Niki wondered if it was possible that he might be a little bit petulant that he hadn’t been called upon to Travel them to the other side of it. Petulant? Grimm? No way.
He seemed to notice Niki’s attention on him and turned to face her, his features hidden by the depth of his black cowl. “What?” he asked, sounding more than a little defensive.
“Nothing.” She smiled secretly to herself and stepped through the opening behind the boulder, one step behind Cady who now led the way.
A horrible, chilling sensation washed over her.
Something slimy and oily seemed to coat her skin, as if she’d just swum through a sludgy oil slick on water. A horrible, ghastly odor assailed her nostrils and she gagged. Her eyes watered and her lungs burned. “What was that?” she asked, frightened and disgusted.
“We’ve crossed a Gate of some kind—a back door into another dimension. We’re in the Horde realm now,” Tryton told her, keeping his eyes ahead of them, focused int
ently, it seemed, on their pathway in the dark.
They came upon a crossroad. The tunnel opened up to reveal several more tunnels, each leading off into another direction of impenetrable darkness.
“Which way do we go?” Cinder asked, holding his torchere-hand aloft to light their path as best he could.
“I don’t know,” Niki frowned.
“We can’t explore all of them, and no way am I splitting up,” Emily said firmly.
Cady seemed to freeze, lifeless, where she stood. Her body shuddered and she let out a long, deep sigh. “There’s something this way,” she moved towards one of the tunnels.
“Wait,” Obsidian reached out to stop her. “More Daemons?” he asked.
She shook her head slowly as if in a fugue. “No, I don’t think so,” she murmured.
“Then what? Is it Raine?” Grimm moved like a shadow to her side.
“No, not her either.” Cady turned her head this way and that, like a hound scenting the wind or listening for prey. “But something,” she shook free from Obsidian’s hold and trudged forward into the tunnel.
“Cady, wait,” Obsidian called.
But she didn’t listen. Her footsteps echoed back to them as Obsidian sighed and moved to follow her. Niki and Tryton and all the rest followed too, and the darkness swallowed them up, despite Cinder’s brightly burning hand.
Chapter Sixteen
The air wasn’t so moist and rotten here. The stench of it was far less fetid and strangely enough, considering they were so deep underground, it suddenly felt warmer. The farther they moved, the cleaner the air seemed to become, and soon they are all breathing easily once again. Niki sighed her relief. It echoed for an eerie moment about the cramped passageway before fading into nothingness.
“We are below the Sphinx now,” Grimm murmured.
“Yes,” Tryton agreed easily enough, but Niki wondered at his tenseness as he walked by her side in the darkness. “I feel it too,” he murmured. His agitation and concentration were palpable on the air between them. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it in hopes of somehow soothing him. She gasped, alarmed at how cold his skin had gone. When she turned to ask him what was wrong his fingers clenched tight about hers, as if to warn her to keep silent for the moment.
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