Iron Serpent Chronicles

Chapter 5 - Kiema

Well, there goes the ten days. I hoped my contact could move up the schedule. Of all the contingencies I'd thought through, I hadn't foreseen this happening.

Nodding, I emptied the glass once more. Turning, I set the glass in the sink and turned toward my suite. "I'll call the front gate and let them kno - "

A feral, pain-filled sound had me whirling around so fast I had to grab the back of a chair to keep from falling over.

Ransom was leaning on the kitchen island. Arms locked, muscled rigid and twitching. Head thrown back as pain etched a grimace on his face. His legs shook like limbs on a tree in a tornado.

I tried to harden myself against his suffering, his anguish. I turned back to my rooms. He'd chosen to walk away from the ritual. From the healing. I was now free to do the same. I made it two more steps before another yell sounded from behind me.

Sneaking a look over my shoulder, the severe angle of his body, arched backwards in torment, clamped its sweaty fist around my heart. I felt the keen edge of understanding. I knew pain. Knew how mind-consuming it could be. Until every breath became a knife through the throat, every heartbeat a spike through the chest. Close enough to death to feel its sting, but without its sweet release.

I couldn't walk away, not when I had the ability to help him. To ease his torture.

Not that the little s**t deserved it. But he didn't deserve this pain as a life sentence either.

Another quake of his body, another raw-throated scream shot to the ceiling. I hurried over. Before I could stop myself or even attempt any of my own rituals, I touched him.

Just one hand against the trembling steel of his arm.

Shit, s**t, s**t. Kiema, you i***t.

Immediately I was pulled into his body. Kiema Rosalinda Feuer was gone. No body. No self. No thoughts. I was a being of senses and magic.

His body was a morass of pain I'd never before experienced. It ripped through every muscle, seared every nerve, thrashed every tendon. Bones ached and ground to dust, only to rebuild themselves and start the process all over again.

Organs twisted and rolled into shapes that reminded me of a turning kaleidoscope. With every shift of the wheel, his insides morphed into another cringing shape that tore through his body.

Something new washed through the magic that was me. Colors danced and spun in ever-tightening circles. The magical landscape had always been a muted gray, much like the life I lived.

Ransom's spirit was every imaginable color and some I'd never thought to envision. Threaded through each color was a throbbing fiber of black.

Pulsing.

Beating.

Pumping.

Even though I had no lungs and no breath, I stilled.

That pulsating black felt like it was breathing. Like it was sucking the life from Ransom and feeding itself from his spirit.

Not knowing what else to do, I encased the black with my spirit. Like dipping my hands into hot sand, it pulled and tugged, sucking me deeper into its center.

The fucker has magic of his own. I'm going to kill him.

Shit! s**t! s**t!