I bent low over him, dragging my breasts lightly across his chest, our faces framed by the midnight tumble of my hair. Barbas nipped at of my breasts, both in turn, one of his hands coming up and taking a handful of my curling locks in his fist. I reached back and ran a hand over his thin shorts, feeling how hard he was, how much he wanted me. He groaned again, and his other hand slid down between my legs. I slipped my hand and took a hold of him, and we tortured each other, each of us teasing little rising bursts of pleasure out of the other before the pace of our movements dropped into agonizing, tantalizing slowness. He was warm in my hand, his fingers warm and slick inside me, and for a moment I just basked in the radiating heat of our desire. He wanted me, wanted me so badly, and I could feel that desperation in every stroke of his fingers, every spasm of his hips, as we crawled closer and closer to climax.
Both of us lost all control at the same time. Barbas withdrew his fingers from me and let go of my hair so that he could get those ridiculous shorts out of his way. I planted with one hand on his chest, and with the other, I tore the ruined dress off of me completely, flinging it off to the side. He gripped my hips hard, and I dug my nails into his muscled chest, both of us sucking in deep, shuddering breaths as he pushed into me. I was more than ready for him, and I arched my back into a bow, forcing my hips all the way down onto him so that he was driven deep inside of me. We writhed together in frantic urgency; my nails leaving trails of red from his pectorals down to his abs, his strong hands clamped hard over my waist.
We raced to the peak of the mountain of our desire, all our restraint thrown overboard into the dark ocean, and our mingled voices rang out over the still waters. When he climaxed, it was in a sudden wracking surge, and his fingers dug painfully into my hips as he spent himself inside me. A shout ripped its way out of his throat, and he suddenly relaxed beneath me. But I wasn’t done. I rocked my hips and rode his exhausted body, forcing him into me over and over again until finally he pushed me over the edge. I screamed as the orgasm blasted through me, writhing atop him until every last delicious spark of sensation burned its way through me. I slipped off of him and collapsed to the warm deck, panting and staring sightlessly up into the picturesque sky.
We lay there, content, curled together, and watched the sun dip down to the horizon as the sky gradually shaded from blue to violet and red. “Thank you,” Barbas whispered, “for coming to find me.”
“You said it yourself,” I said, chuckling. “Without you, I would probably go insane out here, and quickly.”
Barbas ran a hand lightly over my bare leg, and I shivered. “I’m not so sure of that, Jo. Sure, you need to see- and feel- another human sometimes, but besides that I’m not so sure that you need me as much as I need you.”
I nuzzled my face into his shoulder, and then kissed him lightly on the cheek. “I need you plenty, ‘Bas,” I murmured in his ear. “If you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have made it out of that attack alive, and even before that, there’s no way I would have been able to set everything up we needed to survive that first storm. This job really would be impossible alone. I’m glad they sent you.” I traced my hand down and took a hold of him again. “Besides, the sex is really good.” He laughed, though the sound caught in his throat as I moved my hand.
We were just starting again when we heard it, a deep thrumming sound from out in the gathering dark, a deep, atonal bellow emanating from the waters like the song of some colossal monster whale. We froze, the giggling, teasing atmosphere of a moment before evaporated in an instant. “Barbas? Are you doing this?” But his eyes were just as wide as mine as he wordlessly shook his head. We got to our feet, shakily, and I was suddenly very aware of my nakedness. The strange call repeated, and goosebumps rippled all across my body as a cold wind hissed across the deck of the boat in a bitter salt spray, carrying with it a foul, rotten, sulfurous stink. The boat began to rock beneath my feet, and I stumbled, clinging to Barbas’ shoulder for support. We couldn’t see what was out in the dark, the sun was long gone. I could hear waves beginning to roil around us. What was happening? “Barbas!” I shouted, over the rising howl of the wind. “We need light! Bring back the sun!”
The stench of the bucking sea made me gag, and I dropped to my knees, unable to stand anymore from the motion of the boat. A moment later, Barbas cursed. “Dammit, I can’t do anything to the weather. The sun won’t come up. I’m no longer controlling the dream!”
“The boat!” I hissed, desperately. “Does this thing have lights?”
“It should!”
“Good, let's go!” We made our way across the tossing deck to the pilothouse, wrenching the door open and scrambling inside just as a brackish, sizzling rain began to come down on the boat in sheets. Green-white lightning lit the sky in flashbulb brilliance, and all I could see around us were great mounds of storm clouds, the ocean thrashing all around us in the grip of a terrible gale. The black water wasn’t just tossing us around randomly, however. Our boat was caught in a great twisting spiral, drawn towards a great dark hole in the water with inexorable force.
We stared at the approaching maelstrom with helpless horror. I lunged for the boat’s wheel, hoping to steer us out of the trap, away from certain destruction. If I died here, in the dream, I could suffer a massive brain hemorrhage out in the real world, and there was little chance I would survive such a trauma. I wasn’t ready to die just yet. Barbas seized me by the shoulder and yanked me back from the wheel, taking a hold of it himself. He glared at me, the glitter of his silver eye was all I could see as the crashing lightning faded and we plunged back into darkness. “Joanna! You need to wake up! Save yourself and wake up!”
“No!” I screamed back. ‘Bas, you said the dream still exists when I’m gone! If I leave, you’ll die!” I dove forward, trying to get my hands on the wheel.
“If you stay, we’ll both die!” Unexpectedly, Barbas’ hand came out of the darkness, striking me across the face and sending me sprawling back away from him. His voice was sharp, choked with terror. “Go! Get out of here while you still can!”’
I screamed in frustration, but he was right and I knew it. I clenched my eyes shut and clamped my hands over my ears, muffling the racket of the storm. I focused on the thought of my body, asleep inside my armor in that icy cave, safe for the moment. I reached out and tried to seize that reality, to crawl through it and pull myself to safety by sheer force of will. And for a moment, I could feel the armor around me, feel my own unconscious tears on my face, feel my helmet automatically sponging the sweat from my face- but then it slipped away, and I was still on the boat, in the storm. “Barbas! I can’t! I can’t wake up!”
Lightning split the darkness into boiling pieces again, and I could see Barbas staring back at me, panic writ large all across his scarred, pallid face. The boat began to list, hard, to port, and I could see through the pilothouse windows the dark pit in the water, drawing us in, gaping wide to receive us. Jagged shapes broke the smooth fall of water into the abyss, and I realized with an icy stab of horror that they were teeth, and the whirlpool swallowing us was actually the wide open mouth of a colossal monster, lurking in the depths to devour us. Barbas and I screamed together, and we both seized the wheel, forcing it to the side, trying to heave the boat out of the deadly spiraling current. The boat listed even further, and water started pouring onto the deck with the rain, tilting us further and further out over the black jaws. I clung to Barbas and squeezed shut my eyes as the boat came free from the water and we plunged down into the dark, as the great horrible thrumming roar of the beast shook spray up from the surface of the writhing waves- and then, as suddenly as it had all begun, everything stopped.
I opened my eyes. Barbas and I lay tangled together on the warm, sun-kissed deck of the dream yacht, still sweaty and panting in the afterglow of lovemaking, forgotten margaritas spilled on the wood beside us. Carefully, I got to my feet and stared out at the ocean. It was calm and smooth as glass as if it hadn’t been disturbed in a hundred y
ears, untouched by tide or life. It was completely and utterly still. The sun lingered at the edge of the horizon, spilling bloody light out into a darkening sky that was empty of clouds. “What,” I whispered, my throat rough from screaming, my heart a slamming thunder in my chest. “What the fuck was that?”
“Nowhere is safe.” Barbas croaked, his eyes wide and hollow, his dark face turned a mottled gray in his fear. “They are Beneath. They are even beneath the dream, and they can reach up and touch us here. They are Beneath!”
…
Volistad
It turned out that Nissikul made a much better mage than she made a ranger. Even slowed as I was, carrying the dead weight of the wounded Thukkar, it only took me a single day to find her. She had made her passage beneath Ravanur’s skin easy, using her power over the ice and air to create rungs and steps to help her descend into the crevices and cracks, and as a result, she had left me with an easy trail to follow. I supposed it made sense. She didn’t expect anyone to be following her- everyone assumed she was dead- and besides, if someone was trailing her, she probably assumed that they would be working towards the same goal as she was. I walked in her footsteps, once quite literally- during a memorable climb up, a nearly sheer slope of ice had melted and flash-froze.
When I finally caught sight of her, Nissikul was crossing a narrow bridge over a chasm, the ice beneath her feet was dark as her pitiless eyes. I clambered over the ledge I had just scaled, and just stared at her for a moment. Thukkar had told me she had lost her arm, that she had made another of the Stormcaller-summoned black ice that was the tool of their trade- but I didn’t believe him, not entirely. Sure, I had seen the crushed, severed arm that he had said she left behind. Sure, I had seen the trail of splashed blood leading away before it abruptly stopped, but on some level, I thought, or perhaps hoped that he had been confused. But now I saw that he was right- and he might have understated it a bit. Nissi’s body was a mottled patchwork of bruises, streaked with smeared blood that had dried or frozen on her skin. Her right arm was missing from the shoulder, and where the muscles and bones had been brutally torn away, a new limb had been attached in their place. It was black as any Stormcaller summoning, and it glittered with a cold power I thought I could sense even at this range. She was naked, apparently not bothering with the frozen armor that her kind usually summoned for battle, and I could see that her injuries were far more extensive than even Thukkar had said. One of her legs was twisted at an odd angle, and the distorted skin around one of the bruises on her flank, told me that she most likely had a broken rib or two. She leaned heavily on a black frozen spear, but even so, I had no idea how she had managed to make it this far at all. It was small wonder I had caught up with her, she shouldn’t have been able to walk at all. The fact that she was hobbling along, lent witness to a depth of inner strength I hadn’t known she had possessed- or perhaps all it indicated was a level of madness I had never seen, even in a Stormcaller.
“Nissikul!” I yelled, and my own voice echoed back from the hundreds of facets of the crevice, mocking the desperation in my shout. Thukkar stirred, wakened from his feverish sleep, and he lifted his head groggily from my shoulder, which he had been using as a pillow. “Nissi!”
Nissikul turned swiftly, deftly, moving with far more grace than anyone with her injuries should have been able to. She raised the spear up by her ear in preparation to throw. She saw me and froze, and for a moment we just stood there, staring at each other in shock and disbelief. Then the cold fury and iron determination seemed to leak out of Nissi, and she slumped to the black ice of her own bridge, the spear rolling out of her nerveless fingers and tumbling away into the abyss below. Her voice was a dry rasp as she choked out, “Vol-Volistad? Is that really you?”
“Nissi!” I ran toward the bridge, heedless of the danger, and without a sparing it a thought, I stepped out onto the length of black, glittering ice. That was a very bad idea. Pain like nothing I had ever experienced blasted up through me, searing up through my foot and climbing my leg in wires of a cold so deep it seemed it should freeze the very air inside my lungs. The horrifying glacial power surged into me, questing through my veins and reaching out for my heart- the new, magick champion’s heart that the Deepseeker had given me. I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear my own voice, only the thundering metronome of the heart in my chest as it began to slow. Something hit me, lifting me up off my feet and sending me flying backward away from Nissikul, but I couldn’t see anymore. My vision had turned a darkening red, as my eyes froze beneath the horrible power of a Stormcaller’s witch-ice. I struck what must have been a cavern wall, and I dimly winced in sympathy for Thukkar, who was still strapped to my back, and must have taken the full impact. The beat of my heart slowed further and further… and stopped.
…
I burst back into consciousness all at once, gasping for a ragged breath through a raw, abused throat. All I could see was the icy ceiling of the cavern, the ragged scar of the great crevice that bisected it rising into unseen darkness. Nissikul’s face appeared before me, abruptly, her mad black eyes were wide and rimmed with red. “Vol? Brother? Palamun above, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
I retched, hard, and flecks of blood speckled Nissi’s face. That wasn’t good. I tried to put on a brave face. “It’s alright, Nissi. I should have remembered not to touch that black stuff. Palamun’s teeth, that hurt.”
Nissi touched my face with trembling fingers, and then held them up before her bottomless abyssal eyes. They were stained with my blood, dark and red. I tried to say something, but Nissikul put a hand over my mouth and frowned, lifting her reddened fingertips to her nose and inhaling deeply. “Deepseeker magicks.” All the fear drained out of her face, replaced with cold suspicion. “You’re healing. What did that old goat do to you?”
I laughed hoarsely. “More than your master did, Nissi. He healed me, replaced my heart, and told me to go find the god that you and yours just tried so hard to kill.” She was right about the Deepseeker’s magicks. I was healing. My heartbeat was once again strong and steady in my chest, and the horrible cold that had shot through my veins was being slowly forced back. I could feel my arms and legs again. They hurt like I had just experienced my ranger initiation again, but I could feel them, and that was progress.
Nissikul hissed at my words, recoiling from me as if I had gone feral and lunged for her throat. “Palamun above, the Elder was right. You have been corrupted by the false god!” Tears welled up in her empty eyes. “She killed you, and there’s something else in you, wearing your body.” She raised her hands, and this time, they didn’t shake. A wicked, razor-edged dagger of that same terrible ice grew in her grip, the impossibly sharp point aimed down at my heart.
“Nissi,” I said quickly, desperation plain in my voice. “The Dark Ones have corrupted the Elders. Only the Deepseeker escaped. You’re confused. You have been lied to. I’m your brother- the Deepseeker saved my life!”
My sister snarled, baring her delicate, curving fangs, and raised the dagger above her head. A sinister light began to glow from somewhere deep within the shard of dark ice as she summoned more of her horrible power into the weapon. “The Deepseeker was taken long ago. My master has been aware of his corruption for some time. The old madman probably called down your god, the Dirt-Eater, to help him free the Dark Ones from beneath the ice.” She spat in my face and the saliva burned cold against my skin. “Don’t you lie to me, demon. My brother is dead, and the Deepseeker sent him to his death.”
“Your master sent me to Joanna!” I screamed in her face, my fear and desperation melting away before a powerful rage that had begun welling up from deep in my stomach. “You took me to him, remember? And he told me to investigate her, that he didn’t believe Vassa’s claim that she was a false god. And she did no harm to any of us, but for the Stormcaller that he sent to kill her while I was imprisoned!” I surged forward, the strength coming back into my arms, and I seized Nissikul by the wrists, holding her dagger up a
nd away from me. Her false arm was cold to the touch, but this time, the cold did not bite into me. The magickal heart in my chest surged and pushed it back. I would not be killed by a Stormcaller again, not even my own sister. “In fact, all the death that has come since Joanna fell to Ravanur has been the fault of Lot and the other masters! Your sister Stormcaller, who was sent to kill Joanna and failed, all the brave warriors who died when you brought down the tower, and me-” I let go of one of Nissi’s wrists and unstrapped one side of my breastplate, pulling back the armor and the furs beneath, displaying the ugly mess of scars where Lot’s spear had exploded from my chest. “Your master called me home to report to him, listened to what I told him, and then he stabbed me in the back and left me to die. The Deepseeker is the only reason I’m alive. Tell me which one of those people sounds more like one of the Dark Ones?”
Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3) Page 46
