Lord of the Deep Read online

  LORD OF THE DEEP

  An Ellora’s Cave Publication, July 2004

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

  PO Box 787

  Hudson, OH 44236-0787

  ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-84360-720-4

  Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

  Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

  LORD OF THE DEEP © 2004 SHERRI L. KING

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Edited by Heather Osborn.

  Cover art by Darrell King.

  THE HORDE WARS:

  LORD OF THE DEEP

  Sherri L. King

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  About the author:

  Also by Sherri L. King:

  For Darrell, my one.

  Thanks to Crissy and to Mark, who saved me from the depths of those dark waters with a life jacket and a turkey sandwich.

  “And of Amphitrite and the loud-roaring Earth-Shaker Poseidon was born great, wide-ruling Triton, and he owns the depths of the sea…an awful god.” – Theogony 930

  Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war. – Loren Eiseley

  For whatever we lose (like a your or a me),

  It’s always our self we find in the sea. – e.e. cummings

  You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. – Desiderata

  Prologue

  Her name is Niki Akitoye. No matter what happens, you can’t let her be taken. She’s far too powerful, far too dangerous to let slip into enemy hands. It’s my fault I didn’t tell you sooner but…it’s so hard to think clearly here…

  Grimm looked around, puzzled. Those words…they’d been spoken in Raine’s voice. But where was she? And where was he? He couldn’t see anything through the blasted fog that surrounded him and flooded his vision.

  Reaper, are you listening to me? Raine sounded impatient now.

  “I can’t see you,” he murmured softly, almost afraid that if he dared to speak any louder, the dream might end and Raine’s ghost would be lost to him again.

  You don’t need to see me to hear me, stupid. Besides, I don’t have the energy to spare you a vision just now, but what I have to say is very important so listen, really listen to what I’m saying. You have to reach Niki before the Daemons do. If you fail, the Shikars are very likely fucked.

  Grimm’s heart lurched and he squared his shoulders against the weakness, straightening to his full height, an imposing six feet ten inches. If Raine wanted this woman Niki Akitoye found, he would find her. If Raine warned that the Shikars’ safety was at stake should the woman not be found…he would turn the world upside down to save his people, reach into the very heart of Hell to find Niki before the Daemon Horde could.

  Don’t get your back up just yet. You’ve still got time to get to her before the Daemons do. But first—this is very important—you must find Tryton. I don’t know why, but he really needs to be there with you when you find her, and you need every advantage you can get, whatever that may be. If you hurry, you can just catch him—he’s on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska. Find him and save the girl. Do it as fast as you can, everything depends on this.

  Grimm caught a faint whiff of her light floral scent in the damp, stagnant air of the psychic-world that surrounded him. He tried to track it, track her, but no matter how he concentrated, how much of his considerable power he used, she remained elusive. Either she didn’t want him to find her, or she simply wasn’t there to be found.

  Quit wasting time, Grimm! I’m not the one you should be concerned about just now. She is. Her name is Niki Akitoye. She’ll be on an airplane crossing the Mississippi in less than twenty-four hours. After that, it’ll probably be too late. Go. Find her and save her. Please.

  So many times this woman had helped the Shikars in their fight against the Daemons. For whatever purpose, her heart was with the Shikar Alliance now, and she protected them whenever she could. Who was he to refuse such an ardent request from one such as she? There was nothing Raine could ask for that he would not move heaven and hell to give.

  “I’ll find Tryton and I will save Niki,” he vowed solemnly. “But how will I find you again?” He had to know.

  She laughed abruptly, but the sound was lacking all warmth and amusement. Instead it was dull and lifeless. Bereft of all hope. It chilled him to hear so desolate a sound from her. Made him shudder down to his very bones.

  Her laughter ceased as quickly as it had begun. I’ll find you, Reaper. Never fear about that. I’ll find you when I need you.

  The fog began to dissipate, and blackness took its place in his vision and his heart. The presence that was Raine was leaving, and with it went all the light and warmth in his world.

  “Damn you, woman. What if I need you?” he roared, all the pain and rage he felt echoing in his cry.

  You don’t need anyone, Grimm. You never have. You never will…

  But he did. Desperately, tragically, he did need someone.

  He needed her. He needed Raine. More and more, with each passing night.

  But Raine was dead. And nothing, not even his own considerable power, could ever change that horrible, tragic fact.

  Chapter One

  “Keep your eyes closed, Miranda. It won’t be much longer.”

  “I feel so warm,” the ailing woman sighed, and at last the suffering eased from her strained face.

  “But do you still feel the pain?”

  “No,” her voice was full of wonder. “No, I don’t.”

  Niki grinned, but it was more a baring of teeth than a real smile. She focused all her energies on Miranda’s stomach. It was being eaten away by cancer, just as her doctors had diagnosed. But soon…soon, it might not be anymore. If she could just focus a little while longer.

  Miranda jerked on the daybed where she was reclined, and Niki moved in to make the last strike that she hoped would end her patient’s suffering. This final, great push should decimate the invading cells that ate at Miranda’s body like a hungry monster. A monster that never slept, never rested, and always fed its endless appetite.

  Niki pushed that last thought aside, shuddering at the lapse, losing a tiny bit of her control.

  “Ooooh,” Miranda moaned. “That hurts.”

  “Not much longer now.” Niki refocused and pushed her healing magic into the woman’s frail body once again.

  How she had this power w
as a mystery to her. But she had ideas, ideas that terrified and shamed her and made her wake up in a cold sweat each night. Niki would probably never know the real answers, and that was fine enough by her, they were no doubt just as terrifying as her nightmares. This power was both a gift and a curse, one that had nearly ruined her life and the lives of those around her.

  But now she believed that she had some sort of handle on the situation that had once been so desperate and dangerous. In the beginning, when she’d first discovered her empathic talents, she’d been unable to control them. Years had passed since then, painful, desperate times, but she’d developed some small measure of self-possession that now enabled her to keep the power in check. So long as she didn’t encounter situations that evoked any great passion or anger, she was fine.

  And everyone around her stayed alive and well.

  “So warm,” the woman sighed again, easier this time.

  Niki felt the heat herself. Felt and saw the soft, golden light that flowed in a thrumming current from her to her patient. “Keep your eyes tightly closed, Miranda,” she warned. It wouldn’t do to have Miranda see this strange phenomenon. It wouldn’t do at all.

  Niki had learned early on that her patients tended to freak out completely when they saw this golden glow infusing them. They could accept her miraculous healing powers—but only in a very limited capacity. They could somewhat accept the unexplainable success rate she had with numerous other clients—despite the laws of science and medicine. They could even, to some degree, overlook how impossible such a thing should be, her ability to heal even the most hopeless cases with but a few visits like this one. But none of them could ever accept that what she did was, undeniably, magical.

  Miracles were common enough to be believed apparently, especially medical miracles. It was almost a triumph, for most patients, to be able to tell their overpriced doctors that their death march was finally over and it had nothing to do with their medicines or their outlandish treatments.

  But one whiff of anything supernatural, genuinely supernatural that is, and everyone panicked. Seeing was believing, it seemed, and the sight of such things like the healing light in Niki’s hands terrified everyone—even Niki herself in the beginning. Better no one saw the proof of the magic. Better they keep their eyes closed tight against the light. It had taken Niki several abrupt relocations, fleeing from one incredulous town to another, to figure that one out.

  The majority of her clients held on to the desperate belief that, though Niki claimed to be a psychic healer, it was mostly luck that she ever succeeded in what she did. When asked, most of them would say she was an eccentric quack—no matter how horrible a disease they had survived with Niki’s help. Deep down, no one really wanted to believe the truth. In fact, they were afraid to.

  Niki knew this was merely human nature, to discard any proof of the supernatural so that they didn’t have to face the reality of—and therefore the problem of dealing with—its existence. Niki accepted this. Hell, she wanted to deny her own powers most of the time…oh, if only she could.

  Miranda, the woman she tended to now, would be no different from all the rest. She would be so grateful at first, once she knew for certain that the cancer was gone. But soon after would come the doubts. And after she’d spoken to friends and family, she would firmly believe that it was either God or fate or simply chance that had enabled her to beat the odds allowed by her awful illness. She would try her best to forget the strange warmth of Niki’s touch. She would look away whenever she passed this house in her car. And if ever Miranda should see Niki in public, she would pointedly ignore her and walk away from any chance of meeting or confrontation.

  Such things used to make Niki sad, or even angry. But now she just accepted them and moved on to the next patient, the next miracle, the next alienation.

  Miranda sighed again, her breathing slowing even more as she easing fully into a trancelike state that Niki had come to expect. This odd trance, this restful hypnosis, meant that the healing session should end very soon. If Niki were to feed too much more of her power into the ailing woman, it might very well reverse any progress she had made. The human body could only withstand so much of this kind of healing before it rebelled.

  Sometimes Niki saw this as an affirmation that her powers were not necessarily a good thing, no matter how hard she tried to use them in positive ways. If the human body rebelled against it—did her powers not then stand outside the very laws of nature? But at other times, Niki almost believed that this meant nothing. Nothing, perhaps, but that the human body was somewhat frail, and that maybe her power was just too strong for such delicate creatures to withstand.

  It would explain the deaths.

  No.

  She refused to think about those just now. She spent far too much time dwelling on them as it was.

  With a few final waves of heat that washed from her hands and straight into Miranda’s distended stomach, Niki eased her patient from her trance with gentle words. Miranda blinked rapidly, her breathing still deep, but no longer slow, no longer halting. She awoke with a soft, vacant smile on her lips.

  “Did I sleep?” the woman asked, still dazed.

  “Yeah,” Niki lied easily, “I think you did.”

  * * * * *

  Niki sat on her front porch long after her patient had driven away. Miranda had been in a euphoric haze of wonder and relief that the horrible pains she’d endured for so many months now had abated. Niki knew that soon, eventually, the wonder would change to skepticism or even a mild sort of horror.

  Oh well.

  Niki hugged her bent legs tight, resting her chin on her knees, a grim tight line about her mouth. Her body hurt a little bit. It sometimes did after a healing session. But the aches weren’t bad enough to inspire any effort on her part to get up and go take a couple of aspirin for it. The sultry heat and perfume of the swamp that flanked her property lulled and relaxed her in a way that no medicine ever could as she sat and brooded upon her porch deck.

  The house was small and a rental, but it felt like home. More than any house, apartment, or trailer ever had in the past few years. This was where she’d been born and raised after all, here in the lush overgrowth of Savannah, Georgia. She felt an affinity for this place, for the land and for the climate, and she felt welcome, as if the very earth called out a soothing melody to her aching soul, asking her to stay for a while.

  This land could keep its secrets. This seemingly stagnant stretch of swamp and weeping willows and Spanish moss had no memory of a time without ghosts and regrets. It was ripe with decay…but each rotting bough, each algae-eaten pond, each heavy secret kept for a hundred years or more was a symphony of new creation and life and fertility. Even the ghosts sought rebirth, in some form or fashion, through contact with the living. Niki often felt exactly the same way.

  She loved it here. Always had. Always would—and she knew it. No matter how many times she moved away, no matter how far she strayed, she would always come back here, sooner or later. To recharge her spirit. To reinvigorate her soul. Savannah was her haven, when all other harbors of safety were spent.

  But she’d eventually have to move again, and soon. Niki was almost certain that the year she’d spent here healing the sick and mending the injured was far too long a time to stay in one place. People talked. Rumors flew, as well as the truth—which was almost as damning as any fictitious story. It wouldn’t be long now before the modern day witch-hunt began.

  Fucking media. Inevitably it seemed they always caught wind of her and her accomplishments. Then one thing would lead to another and all her past encounters with reporters would surface and all her patients’ lives would be interrupted by interview after interview and then the circus would be back in town. Niki wasn’t naïve enough to believe that she could escape it this time if she stayed, any better than she had all the previous times she’d spent too long in one place.

  Savannah was a bigger city now than it had been when she’d been a little girl.
But it still possessed a small-town mentality, enough for talk of Niki Akitoye and her healing hands to spread far and wide amongst the people who lived here.

  It was time to think about where she should go next.

  Niki hugged her legs tighter, eyes painfully dry and wide. She’d spent all her tears by now. She was so tired of the race. So tired of the running. She felt like crying, felt like sobbing her problems into the deep, dark earth of the swamp’s muddy banks. But the tears could not come. Her secrets were hers to keep still. The land here had enough of its own to sustain it until she returned. Again. And again. Until she was an old woman, too frail to run anymore. She’d always come back here.

  Unless she got lucky and died along the way…bah. She was immediately ashamed of that thought and shook it from the cobwebs in her mind.

  The phone rang shrilly, the call of it piercing through the screen door of her kitchen. With a slow, heavy sigh, she unfolded her body and went to see what bill collector was calling this time.

  Chapter Two

  The waves that lapped against the bow of the boat fascinated Tryton. Hypnotic and endless, they danced in countless different patterns, each a work of art and magic that rippled on into infinity. He wanted nothing more than to step off the ship and sink down, down, down, into the blue-black depths of the sea. To let the waves and the water envelop him like a warm, wet lover that would never stray, never die, never let him go. Let him sleep in peace beneath the sun and the moon and the wide expanse of sky.

  The sun was sinking low upon the horizon, casting a blanket of molten gold and crimson across the water. Oh how he had missed the sun. It had been far too many years since he’d basked in the warmth and the light, and he’d forgotten how incredible, how magical the day could be. He’d dwelled in darkness for so long…but now, for a short while, he was free to join the day once again.