Realm Book One - To Tell of Darkness
Page 15
In tandem, like a synchronized dance, they wound my body into a wild frenzy until I was writhing beneath their knowing touch. Then they changed places, and I watched as Jade’s eyes briefly lighted on mine, a smile of delight dancing in their clear luminous glow before he ran the warmth of his tongue across my swollen nub and sank his finger into the engorged heat of me.
I could taste myself on Kieran’s lips as he kissed me deeply, and lost myself in the heat of his exquisite lips. Too soon, he moved on to my neck and I, knowing what was to come, anticipated the sharp-tinged pain of his canines. Waited anxiously, all the while dying just a little as Jade continued to stroke me harder and deeper, inserting a second finger inside of me, flicking and sucking my swollen lips as he fucked me with his agile fingers.
My body was on fire as the currents of another massive orgasm started to seize through my limbs. My stomach clenched as the rush tore through me, and Kieran chose that moment to sink his teeth, not into my neck but into my breast, the pull of his mouth and lips as they closed around my aching nipple causing me to yell out.
Jade found my erogenous zone with his thumb, circling my swollen nub, and simultaneously swept a finger into my ass and his tongue deep into my slit, and I exploded into a thousand pieces of light. They held me to the table and feasted as I writhed, my body shaking with the enormity of my orgasm. Kieran satiated himself on my blood and my lust while Jade drank the wetness from my body as though from a well that ran over at his well-versed ministrations.
I lay on the table, gasping and spent, uncertain at the passage of time when Kieran’s warm touch at my shoulder made me open my eyes. “Are you okay, lass?” he asked softly.
“I think you’ve killed me,” I replied, my voice shaking from the aftermath. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to move again. So much for ‘a little taste’, I thought as I wondered what the hell a normal taste meant to him.
Kieran’s small laugh echoed through the silence of the kitchen. “Though I’m sure you would like to remain as you are and savor your pleasure,” he said, reaching for me, “I’m afraid that it is time that we must be going.”
He pulled me up to a sitting position, and I was seated directly in front of Jade, silent where he’d been during our tryst. I looked at him in the darkness, his pale eyes glowing and thoughtful, his lips glistening from my body. He slowly ran his tongue along his lips and smiled at me.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said to Kieran to cover the silence. He handed me my shorts so that I could get dressed.
Jade stood up, leaned towards me and kissed me on the check. “Thank you,” he said, his voice rough with an emotion I didn’t understand.
I blinked at him in surprise, staring into the need that washed over the rough contours of his face and then was gone so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “You’re welcome,” I said. It was the first time I’d been thanked for a liaison. Call me skeptical, but I had the feeling this meant far more to him and his brothers than Kieran had let on.
What keeps you from awakening, my heart?
That thing that works upon your vanity --
Whatever face it wears, I will agree
To meet it, if you show me.
From The Inkishafi by Sayyid Abdalla Bin Ali Bin Nasir
Translated from the Swahili by D.H. Tracy
Chapter Twenty-One
Out the door and down the stairs; I felt like the Pied Piper with my flurry of furry creatures following in my wake, except we were off to meet our doom. And doom had a name--Her Royal Highness, Queen Corral. You wouldn’t think that six inches of small, bright, and beautiful could be such a deadly thing, but there you go.
We’d made it as far as my truck when the lights bouncing down the drive caused the four of us to turn towards them. As the black Yukon tore to a stop in my drive, gravel pitching in every direction, including bouncing off my paint job, I’d managed to lose my cool.
Stomping towards it as the window whirred down, I was already spewing obscenities. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Cage?” I yelled as he opened his door, jumped out of his truck and grabbed me by the arm.
“I’ve no time for your shit, Rihker. Get in the goddamned truck. We need you.” His voice was raised in panic, and he had his gun drawn on me.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, taking in his eyes, large and white with emotion.
“Inspector,” Gimlit said, his calm voice dark with warning as it carried across my drive.
Adam’s eyes lighted on Gimlit, and he waved his gun at him as well. “I don’t have time for this tonight, Ogre. I need her help, and I need it now. Just tell her to get in the truck. In fact, you get in the truck too,” he said, jacking a round into the chamber of his gun.
Cage carried a Colt 45 caliber semi-automatic handgun, black matte so it didn’t gleam in the darkness. By the steady grip he had on it, I was pretty certain he would shoot one of us if we didn’t do what he said. It’s too bad Adam didn’t realize his little gun wasn’t going to kill us.
The humans were so stupid sometimes. It wasn’t like Cage to forget that a tiny little bullet wasn’t going to do any real damage to creatures like us. Part of being born from magic was you needed magic to kill us, although iron wasn’t a real good friend of mine. Or if he was packing silver.
“All of you get in the fucking truck. Now!” he yelled, pointing his gun at no one and everyone. His hazel eyes had glazed over, and there was a sheen of perspiration above his lip. His shoulders were stiff with anxiety as his eyes darted to each of us.
“Cage, if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on, I swear you’re going to have to put one of those bullets in me before you get me in that damned truck.” I pushed away from him.
“Fine. Fine. God, you are such a bitch!” he swore. “That fucking creature from Pretty-boy’s Night Club is cornered down about two miles from Gray Caverns. It’s already tore through four of my men like they were paper dolls and if I don’t get your ass down there to help me stop that thing, a lot more people are going to die,” he said, gasping, his ire rising through the darkness. “Now get in the fucking truck!”
We got in the truck. Jeez, all the guy had to do was say so. Was it really that fucking difficult working with me?
Don’t answer that.
We peeled out of my driveway as though the gates of hell had opened and Satan’s minions were clinging to our bumper. Somehow we’d managed to squeeze two Vampires, three Werewolves, a Wereleopard, and a seven-foot Ogre into the back of Cage’s Yukon.
“Where the hell were you off to, anyway?” Cage asked as we bounced over yet another pothole. He’d managed to avoid the worst of them, but my drive was so riddled with them and at the breakneck speed he was barreling down the driveway, we’d be lucky not to get whiplash before we found the main highway.
“I had a summons with my Queen. And, speaking of,” I said, turning in the seat to look at Gimlit. “You’d best be calling to tell them we’re going to be late.”
Gimlit nodded in response and pulled the small cell from the clip of his belt. I’d bought him a Razor when they first came on the market and the small, sleek phone looked so tiny in his mammoth hands. Lucky for him, it was voice activated and speed dialed at his command. The low timbre of his voice was soon rumbling through the hush of the vehicle.
“Yes, my Queen. I understand,” he said, his tone respectful. “Inspector Cage is right here, Majesty. As you wish.”
He shoved the phone in Cage’s direction, his eyes meeting mine through the darkness. “My Queen wishes a word with you, Inspector.”
“What? What the hell for?”
“It is not my place to ask,” Gimlit said, like a good subject. I still didn’t understand how a Pixie Queen could become ruler to an Ogre, but I guess it wasn’t my place to push the Other World demographic lines. As long as Gimlit was willing to allow it, who was I to argue? Besides, he was big enough and bad enough that when he got tired of it, he could argue for himself.
“Inspector, you had best have a very good reason for intruding on an appointment with my Court,” my Queen said as the rich octave roll of her voice carried over the phone for all of us to hear.
“A very good reason, Majesty. I’m afraid one of the Other World minions has gotten out of control, and at the prior command of your Silent Court, Rihker’s presence is commanded by local law enforcement.” Cage was plying his words carefully, using our own rules as a guide.
There was no way my Queen would go against our own laws or the laws set up by the humans. If my presence were needed for legal means, then she would allow it. For now.
“So be it, Inspector,” she agreed, and I could hear the angst in her voice as it echoed through the SUV. “Now put Rihker on the phone.”
Cage shoved the phone in my direction, obviously glad to be rid of it.
“Good evening, Majesty.”
“I will grant you this reprieve, Rihker. But it will cost you,” she said, and there was delight and darkness lacing each word, causing a chill to rush through me.
“Of course, Majesty.” I tried to keep the sigh of annoyance from my voice, but apparently failed.
“Do not mock me!” she yelled, and my body froze as the soft glow of light began to escape my skin and fill the truck.
“Jesus Christ, Rihker!” Cage swore, swerving across the centerline into oncoming traffic as my glow took him by surprise. The blaring of the horns from the passing drivers as they swerved to avoid us shook him from his reverie and he quickly righted us, jerking the Yukon back into our own lane.
Gimlit reached for my seat belt, unhooking it as he pulled me from the front seat and into his lap. He wrapped his large hand around mine where I still clutched the phone, my Queen still shouting into my ear, “Do you hear me, Rihker?”
Gimlit’s comforting touch as he wrapped himself around me, enfolding me in the calm warmth of his arms, brought me back to myself. “Yes, my Queen,” I finally croaked, my head nestled in the safety of his shoulder against the steady beat of his heart.
“I know he holds you, Rihker. That he keeps you safe from my wrath,” she growled, her voice resonating through the center of my body like nails on a chalkboard. “The question is: how will you bind him to you so that he is the one with you when you are alone? For mark my words, Rihker Tennai, there will come a time when you will be alone. And when you are…” her voice trailed as the phone clicked dead in my hand.
Gimlit held me in the darkness of the SUV, gently stroking my hair as my breathing and my Light returned to normal. I had no idea how my Queen did it, but she had the ability to call my Pixie Powers. I guess it was a perk to being Queen. She could, at will, call any of my powers of Light and use them against me. As long as she had a connection to me, whether by sight, touch, hearing or scent. If I was anywhere in her Realm, I was her creature to command.
But only to an extent, I thought as I considered the darkness--my Darkness, to be exact. Since I’d been coming into my Tells, I was only partially controlled by the Light. I was a child of both the Light and the Darkness, and I wondered what that really meant the next time my Queen tried to use my Light against me. Could I call the Darkness within? Would I dare?
You bet your ass.
I sighed against Gimlit and nestled into the warmth of his embrace. How was I going to make sure he was always with me? It’s not like I could attach him to me at the hip. Something else to ponder in my difficult life.
“We’re here,” Cage said, interrupting the chaos of my thoughts as he slammed on the brakes, gravel from the road spitting up from beneath the tires.
We all piled out of the truck, and I was already tired of this evening. I wanted to go home, curl up on my couch with a blanket and forget about the whole damned thing. Somehow, the gunshots ringing out through the darkness quickly changed my mind.
There were about fifteen other squad cars, some marked, some unmarked, but all of them were thinly spread out over the side of the road as we took off in the direction of the bullets. Cage was on his hand radio, screaming into it for stats as we ran.
We were about a mile away from the scene, running through an overgrown soybean field on the outer edge of some farmer’s land. Gray Caverns ran perpendicular to Old River Road on the other side of the river. According to the squawking coming from Cage’s radio, they had the creature cornered near the farmer’s barn, and another officer was down.
“Shit! Son of bitch!” he was yelling, all but tripping over his feet as his anger blinded him. He stumbled in the bramble of overgrown beans, and Kieran picked him up off the ground.
“Come, Inspector, your anger will keep. But I’m afraid the creature will not,” the Vampire told him. Cage shook off his hand and started to run after us, Kieran easily passing him as he came astride of me.
I could hear the rupture of rage spear through the darkness like a burst of wind beating through the foliage, as it carried past the border of the farmer’s property and the scattered tree line that edged his home to ring madly through my ears. Gimlit pulled the sword he carried in the sheath at his back, his stride increasing as he turned on a burst of speed.
“Hurry,” he said and he was gone into the darkness like a rustle of wind.
“Jesus,” Cage remarked. “I had no idea he could move that fast.”
“Yeah, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” I told him over my shoulder, trailing in Gimlit’s wake.
We rolled up onto the back side of a rickety, rundown barn; the paint so weathered and battered you couldn’t tell it was supposed to be red. The locals had the floodlights blaring as they gleamed on the glistening, bloody hide of the Ogre, causing each of us to stumble to a halt as we took in the sight of its grotesque form.
“By the Prophets,” Mercy exclaimed as she stopped beside me. “That came out of Kieran’s club?”
“‘Fraid so,” I told her as I pulled my blades free of the sheaths at my back.
“Sweet Father of Darkness,” she stated, her brogue thickening as she looked on in disgust.
The cops had it cornered by a rusted-out old tractor, the tires flattened either from gunshots or age--I wasn’t sure which. But by the scream that tore from the creature’s throat, you could definitely tell it was pissed.
“How the hell do we kill that?” Ien asked, coming to a stop beside Kieran, who stood just to my right. The halogen lights made Ien’s hair all but glow in the darkness. I turned and caught a glimpse of Kieran’s face, noticing the stillness that washed over him. His eyes had become drowning black pools of darkness to match the ink-black sky. He turned that cold, dark glare towards me, and I could feel the emptiness deep inside my bones like a long-lost hunger for battle. Waiting its moment of release.
“Only its true master can return it to the Shadow Lands,” I said and those around me, including Cage turned as one, a question--the same question--marring each one’s face.
“Only the source of the evil, the bringer, can return it from whence it was called. To send it back, you must be of the Darkness to return it to the Darkness.” My voice rang out like an epitaph, a harbinger of the death and justice.
“Then you must call the Darkness,” Gimlit said from behind me, his large hands resting on my shoulders.
My sigh was like a letting go of some small piece of my morality. I knew deep inside there would come a time that I would voluntarily have to call my father’s magic--the Darkness within--that I would have to use that piece of me that I despised most. I avoided the Darkness within me, even though I knew it was there, like a sleeping demon, waiting for its moment of awakening.
But a small part of me thrilled at the prospect.
Resigned, my voice empty of emotion, I looked on as the creature clawed at the darkness, screaming its anger to the wind as I asked, “What do I do?”
Gimlit and I talked quietly for several minutes, making a strategic plan before advising Kieran and the other
s. It was going to take all of us to draw the creature out into the open. And, like as not, I was going to have to get up close and personal with it.
Kieran did not like our plan, and openly stated so. “Ogre, you had best know what it is you are doing,” he told him, his eyes dark with menace, and his voice low with warning.
“I’ve far more to lose than you, Death Stalker. And I’d not so readily put her in harm’s way, had I thought she would not be able to handle it.” They stared at each other across the small circle above my head, their warnings not lost on anyone. Especially me.
“Boys, can you stifle the macho shit so we can go bag a bad guy?” I rolled my eyes to the heavens and turned to walk away. We needed to get on with this shit.
Gimlit reached for my arm and pulled me to him. Then, lowering his massive frame, he cupped my face gently in his hands and for the first time in my existence, kissed me. Deeply and passionately.
The feel of his lips on mine was like the softest of evening breezes, gentle and warm against my lips. It was so unexpected that when his tongue swept into my mouth and he drank my startled sigh, I felt the warmth of it thrill through my entire body before he softly and reluctantly released me.
I was completely and utterly shocked, as was everyone around me. I think I heard Kieran mumble something about fucking Ogres before I actually heard him walk away. Which registered as odd, since he usually made it a point for me not to hear him.
I blinked up at Gimlit, who was still standing before me, a calculating look swarming behind the brightness of his turquoise eyes. I wondered what it all meant. But there wasn’t time to sort through it. The creature’s soul-wrenching scream broke the silence and my thoughts, and had us all turning, running after it before it could reach Cage’s men.
Time points out with its admonitory finger
What opens up ahead is a windy, cavernous mouth