Nightfall

by Elizabeth Hartwell

  Lance laughs softly. I still call him ‘self-proclaimed,’ even though by now, I know that all of us have godly bloodlines. Or divine. Or whatever. My mind still swirls with the idea that gods exist at all. Let’s just call them super-powered. “Maybe so. Listen, all I’m saying is that the next time you decide to work your light goddess magic on someone and reincarnate them, can you maybe pick someone who’s a bit more chill? Preferably, a busty nymphomaniac?”

  “Oh, and here I was thinking you were content with what you’ve been getting in me,” I reply, upset until I see Lance smile. I don’t know if he knows it, but that easygoing grin melts my heart, and I find it pretty impossible to stay mad at him when he’s like this. Finally, I shake my head, holding back my own smile by the slimmest of margins. “Can you just help me get some damn food? We’ve got a chance to actually eat here.”

  “No problem, Cerena,” Lance says, his grin not dimming. “But seriously, though, it’d be fun to watch you get it on with a hot chick. You know, there were rumors that the Hunter Academy encouraged lots of team bonding . . . any truth to that?”

  “You’re a pervert, and no, I’ve never been with a woman,” I reply, both statements completely true. I don’t get upset with Lance. I know for him, sexual comments are as necessary as breathing. Ever since we first met, he’s been tossing off comments toward me . . . but also just to me. It’s how I know him. “Now shut up before I don’t let you get down on your knees between my legs and have your turn.”

  “Hmph . . . you know you can’t resist my cunning tongue,” Lance says, his voice dropping just enough to tell me he’s dead serious . . . and dead right. Each of my newfound lovers seems to have something special about them. Whether it’s Lance’s hands and tongue, which should be declared illegal it’s so thrilling, or Tym’s massive strength and huge cock that feels like it splits me apart with each stroke, pounding me with his strength and size until my spine crackles, or Brandon’s nearly feral brutality that leaves my body aching afterward, combat that we can win only by submitting to each other, each of them fully satisfies me and completes me.

  It’s strange. Before this last mission, I was your standard Huntress. Yeah, I worked solo almost all the time and didn’t play well with other Hunters, but that wasn’t so far out of the ordinary. At least five percent of the Hunter Corps prefers solo work.

  I was even engaged, even if it was a relatively chaste, loveless engagement, to another Hunter, Crassus Phoenix. He was respected, from a good family, and a senior Hunter, a team leader who guaranteed me a stable, secure future.

  Of course, all of that got turned on its head in a single mission. In the course of a month, I met two men who ignited a lustful passion inside me that I’d never felt before, causing me to break every genetic purity law that the Hunter Corps has, and rescued another whom I also ended up sleeping with, and then went face to face with the creature that killed my parents. I nearly killed him, too.

  Then to top it off, I learn that every truth that I’ve built my entire life upon is a lie and that the gods and goddesses of myth are based in reality, that paranormal beings are just the twisted offspring of these gods, and that I have to defend the world against the return of the god of death himself, Bane.

  The final kick in the cunt, of course, was finding out that Crassus was in league with Bane, armed with dark magical powers, and that I had to kill him.

  Just to add the mindfuck cherry on top, the man I went to Bane to rescue was killed and has come back to life, apparently with a few powers that he didn’t have before.

  Now I’m on the run with all three of my lovers, framed for treason by the very Hunters I swore my life to . . . and I’m blood-related to Sulis, the goddess of light.

  It’s more than a girl should be able to take.

  Lance seems to notice and steps closer, wrapping me in a hug. Despite his smart mouth, his perverted sense of humor, and his often tasteless jokes . . . the man does give the best hugs I’ve ever had, and he just seems to know when I need them. “Shh, sweet cheeks. We’ll get through this. Tell you what, next target we see, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Promise?” I ask quietly, hugging him back. It feels so weird showing anyone that I’m anything more than an ass-kicking machine, the only female Hunter who not only insisted on but was automatically called THE Huntress. But I’m learning more every day, and not just with Lance.

  “I promise,” Lance says, rubbing my back. “And I won’t even demand a sweet dessert afterward.”

  I laugh, pounding him lightly on the chest. “I haven’t bathed in three days, Lance. You don’t want any of this.”

  Lance grins, his eyes smoldering with desire. “I always want some of those juicy buns you keep in those pants. And just to let you know, I happen to find your natural scent and odor after a full day of exercise to be so sexy you’ve got my cock iron hard from a single whiff. As for your taste . . . mmm, sweet cheeks, I didn’t give you that name just because of the shape of your ass.”

  “You really are okay with this?” I ask, and while he nods, I can see that he’s still a little unsure. Looking around, I see a patch of what looks like very soft moss, and I pull him over and to the ground. “Talk with me, Lance. Because I’m still trying to wrap my head around everything that’s happened over the past two months. Believe it or not, I’m not a slut.”

  “I know,” Lance says, chuckling before he relaxes next to me. “I could tell the first time you and I were together. I guess I should be grateful. I mean, if you’d had Tym before me . . . my poor dick would have been slapping between walls and feeling the breeze.”

  “You’re not exactly tiny. You make me smile and have curled my toes too,” I remind him. “Don’t ever think yourself a lesser lover than he is. Or less important to this team, or to me.”

  “Yeah, well . . . a little more one-on-one time is nice, too,” Lance says. “You really think I came out here with you just to get away from Jesus Christ back there? Even walking through the woods looking for dinner, I enjoy having some alone time with you.”

  “I . . . I guess I still have to figure out how I’m supposed to do all this,” I admit. “The few times I worked in a Hunter team, it was easy. Everyone did everything together. About the only time you had privacy on a mission was when you toileted. We’d fight as a group, eat as a group, sleep as a group, and no, not in that way. It was part of the reason I hated being on the teams. Until you guys, I didn’t play well with others.”

  “I happen to like the way you play with us,” Lance says, chuckling. “I guess I could use a little more alone time that’s verbal, not just . . . physical.”

  “I’ll remember that and try my best. As long as you’re willing to be flexible, you know, with Hunter teams constantly searching for us and harassing us.”

  Lance chuckles and leans over, giving me a kiss on the cheek. “I promise I’ll bend over backward if it means I get to spend a good, long time with my tongue buried in your heavenly gates. I’m not all verbal.”

  I bite my lip, the image of Lance doing a back bridge while tonguing my pussy both hilarious and sexy at the same time, and I turn to kiss him back, tasting his lips and cupping his face. Unlike Tym and Brandon, he’s not scruffy at all. In fact, he’s still as smooth-cheeked as ever, and it’s nice to run my fingertips over his jawline, feeling the hard edge, devoid of any beard.

  “Instead of bending over backward,” I whisper in his ear, “when it’s time, just keep that cock of yours nice and hard, and I’ll do my best to suck your brains out through your dick. Then we can talk all night.”

  Lance grins, nodding before holding a finger up. Suddenly, he ‘flashes’, as he calls it, disappearing from beside me so quickly I can feel the wind rush in to fill the space his body used to occupy. I look around in surprise before I see Lance again, nearly a hundred yards away and holding one of his knives. At his feet is a tusked mountain boar, its body bleeding out on the pine needles from a deep, fatal cut across its throat. “Sorry, but I figu
red you’d be more impressed with my finding food than in a fresh demonstration of my sexual prowess.”

  I laugh, jogging over and seeing the beast. Smaller than their plains cousins, mountain boars can still cause plenty of problems for those who aren’t prepared. With hide thick enough to deflect most minor weapons, a compact, muscled body that can weigh upward of two hundred pounds, and the nastiest attitude this side of a vampire with a toothache, they’re bad news.

  And Lance just took one down singlehandedly.

  “I’m impressed,” I compliment him. “I’ll go get the others, and we’ll help you carry back whatever we can butcher. You did well, Lance. We’ll eat well for days with this.”

  I turn to go, but before I’ve made it five steps, Lance stops time again, this time catching me in an embrace and pulling me in for a tight kiss that literally takes my breath away. “Before you do that . . . I’m eating my dessert first,” he growls in my ear, urging me down to the forest floor. “I’m thirsty, and your juices are just what I need.”

  I bite my lip, nodding. “Quickly. If you take more than five minutes, I’m not going to play nice next time.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Lance says, leering up at me as he sinks to his knees in the rich, loamy turf between my legs, bending down to kiss my upper thighs. Reaching for my belt, he uses his teeth to undo the first part before letting go and licking his lips. “Five minutes . . . I’ll make you come twice.”

  Everyone’s got their special skills. For Lance, my particular favorite has to be the way he can set me on fire with just his mouth and tongue. With feather-light kisses to my belly, he draws me up, so eager to feel his touch that my hips are up in the air just enough to slide my pants down before I even know it, exposing my pussy to the cool afternoon air.

  “Mmm . . . you know just how to tempt me,” Lance says, gazing down on me. “You know how soft and feathery your pussy hairs are?”

  “No . . . never licked myself,” I tease, biting my lip. “Bet you’d like to see that?”

  “Mmm . . . your boobs would probably get in the way of trying,” Lance says, smiling. “Thankfully, you’ve got me to pick up the slack.”

  “That I—” I begin before the words are torn from my lips as he plants a long, wide lick on my pussy lips, dragging up to my clit.

  “You taste amazing.”

  His mouth is electric, alternating feather-light touches with deep, stabbing licks and circling around my clit until my body is rocked. Sensing my need for more, he reaches up, sliding his hands under my shirt to massage my breasts, kneading them in time with his tongue.

  I don’t know what to expect next, but I need more, more . . . always more of Lance. I wrap my fingers in his hair, pulling him in deeper and grinding my pussy up into his eager mouth.

  “Fuck, Lance . . . fuck me with your tongue, baby,” I moan, tugging on his hair. Lance moans in response. He loves when I command him, and I love doing it. Never have I felt so much control over, but at the same time, so much trust in a lover before him. He knows what I need, gives me what I want, and my orders are just an indulgence that we both enjoy.

  His tongue speeds up, thrusting inside me before he starts sucking on my clit. Fire follows, a hot burn of sparks that starts in my belly before shooting up and down my body, hot tendrils of ecstasy that have me deliriously begging for more.

  “Lance—”

  “Come for me, Cerena.” He hums against my clit, and I can’t hold back any more. My body explodes, and I cry out, my juices gushing over his mouth.

  Lance sucks them down, drinking deeply from me before flicking the tip of his tongue over my clit again and again until my thighs clench and I fall apart, coming hard on his face. Lance moans as he drinks me down, utterly happy until I sag and he pulls back, his face shiny and his devilish smile wide.

  “Well . . . three minutes? Four?”

  I grin, shrugging. “Fast enough. But you—”

  Lance looks down at the bulge in his crotch, smiling. “This was about you, sweet cheeks. Not me.”

  I lie back, butterflying my knees wider. “Yeah, well . . . maybe I’m not satisfied yet. You’d better get up here and pleasure me. Or else.”

  Lance grins and reaches for his belt. “This is going to take more than five minutes.”

  “Then you’ve gotta make me come three times.”

  Lance’s smile grows even wider. “I’m sure I can figure something out.”

  He most certainly does.

  Chapter 2

  Brandon

  The plain is wide, stretching from horizon to horizon, a huge valley framed on two sides by towering mountain ranges that slouch out of the ground like the broken teeth of a dying monster, a maw rising up to swallow everything and everyone caught in the massive bite.

  Not that the two armies care. Facing each other, they number more than I can count, maybe more than any mortal being can count. They’re arrayed in their armor, leather and bright steel on one side, a twisted darkness of materials I cannot even put a name to on the other.

  I’m in the middle, looking back and forth as the armies stand paused in their innumerable ranks, waiting for someone to make the first move, to tip the balance one way or another and let slip the dogs of war upon their opponents. They roar, trading insults and thundering war chants, screaming no matter the language for the blood of their enemies.

  Both sides are wary, however, not quite willing to take the first step, because they know that whoever survives this battle will be changed forever . . . and that nine out of ten who stand on this field today aren’t going to leave.

  “What is this about?” I cry out to the still, fetid air that already reeks with the coppery stench of blood. It seems to come from the very ground beneath my feet, as if the earth were a rotting corpse upon which the two forces are locked in struggle, their own deaths only adding to the decomposition of the very fabric of reality around us. “What is this?”

  “There have been many names for this moment . . . Armageddon, Ragnarok, although I think the Hindu were perhaps the closest with their interpretation,” a rich baritone voice says from behind me. I try to turn around, but other than a feeling of a shadow, I can’t see anything. Sensing the presence behind me, I whirl back around, but again the shadow seems to move just as I start to see it.

  “Stop playing fucking games,” I growl. “Tell me who you are.”

  “You know who I am . . . my boy,” the voice says again, this time sending a shiver down my spine. The voice chuckles, amused at what it senses. “Yes, Brandon, you do recognize me.”

  “Bane,” I growl, looking back and forth between the two armies. I realize what they are now, light and darkness, ready for the final titanic struggle. And the shadow behind me is the cause of it all. “Don’t call me your boy. I’m not a dog, and you sure as hell aren’t my father.”

  “No. No, you’re right. I’m not your father,” Bane muses, not upset though. “You are seven generations descended from the first seed that I scattered among the poor bastards left over after the war. And your lineage sprang forth from my loins to spread out upon the Scorched Earth. Never doubt that. If it weren’t for me, your ancestors would have died puking their teeth out and feeling their brains rot through their nostrils before their light winked out, not with a flash but a whimper. You owe me your life.”

  “Considering that you wanted to take my life from me, kept me a prisoner, and then tried to have Tsavo recapture me, I don’t think I owe you anything but a kick in the balls if I get the opportunity,” I reply, my eyes darting left and right. “You wanted my blood. Oh, and let’s not forget what that asshole, Crassus, did to me.”

  “You can’t blame me for that idiot,” Bane says, sighing. “I’m sure you’ve heard from those other fools you’re hanging around with that I can influence, but even I cannot control people like they’re puppets.”

  “Seems you’ve gotten pretty good at playing people. So don’t worry if I don’t believe you.”

  “I suppose th
at’s understandable, although I never intended that. Honestly, Brandon, I was hoping to just take what I need and leave you alive. There’s a way I could have even joined with you. I was certain that once you saw the power and the positives of being with a living god on this planet, you’d be on board.”

  “A living god of death and destruction,” I spit, shaking my head. “What good is a king of corpses?”

  “It is death that brings forth new life, my child,” Bane says, his voice low and persuasive. “I would only seek to burn away the remnants of those who placed this realm in such danger and to rule over a stronger, better breed until they are ready to rule themselves.”

  “In what, ten or twenty thousand years, I assume? You just want to be a tyrant.”

  “Sooner or later, humanity always seeks a tyrant. If you had their history, knew it like I do, you’d be able to see that for yourself,” Bane scoffs. “I could list the names, but they’d mean nothing to you. And now, unfortunately, it’s too late for you to be my vessel.”

  “So fuck off and let me stop this madness,” I growl. “You know I can. This balance is too precarious. Even you cannot predict who’d win this right now.”

  “No, I know,” Bane says. “Nobody. Right now, with a drop of my hand, we can witness the death of every human being, normal and paranormal, on this planet. A proper finish to the job your ancestors did so long ago. But if you join me at my side . . . it would tip the balance, Brandon. Your powers are just now awakening, but when they fully reveal themselves, you will stand second only to me in might.”

  I look back and forth between the two armies, horror slowly creeping through me as the weight of what he’s saying slowly sinks in. Suddenly, a twinkle of light flashes off something on the ‘light’ side of the valley, and my heart drops into my stomach. There, in the front of the light army . . . Cerena, with Lance and Tym at her flanks, clad in full armor. She looks at me, her eyes beseeching. She doesn’t want to die. None of my people do. They’ll fight if they have to, and they’ve fought before.