by Sumida,Amy
He turned his wolf snout towards us and rumbled, “Bare your claws and teeth, my friends. It time to for blood.”
My dragon perked up. We had a taste for blood, and vengeance was already blooming in our heart. It looked as if I was going to betray my promise to Lugh, and instead of helping the Tuatha, I would hinder them. In fact, I intended to hinder one particular Tuatha Dé Dannan very badly.
“You just said the magic words, Dad,” I growled, my vocal chords already beginning the transformation into dragon.
My body seemed to explode with pleasure. The beast within me bursting free in jubilation. It had been far too long for her, trapped within my tiny body. I stretched my wings like I was waking from a long sleep, and then strode to the front of the line, taking up a position beside Fenrir. Fenrir looked up at me with approval and just a hint of jealousy. His clawed paw gave my thick, golden scaled leg a pat, and then he nodded to the castle.
“Clear the way for us, Frami,” his gravely voice made me grin. He'd dropped the little from my nickname. Now I was only Courage, and Courage was a good name for a dragon.
I took to the sky with a surging leap, and breathed deeply of the crisp air. Freedom at last. And under a flag of war, no less. It was our lucky day. That gloomy castle was toast. Toast for some Morrigan jam. Was it wrong that I started to salivate?
I reached the castle in no time, disrupting the crow circle, and sending them flying in all directions. With a terrible screech, I spewed fire over the worn stones, but there was nothing within the courtyard to give fuel to my flames. I roared in frustration, and set down on the battlements, crushing rock with my claws and sending debris tumbling over the side as I found purchase. Then I jumped down into the courtyard with a boom. I crawled over to the gate house, and reached in with one claw, knocking the lever which held the gate in place. The metal bars clattered up into the gate house, almost as loud as my arrival had been. I screeched again, a challenge for the Morrigan, but no response came.
There was no way she didn't hear that. I scowled at the castle, narrowing my dragon eyes.
“Perhaps she's left for Tara already,” Teharon observed as he came through the gate behind Fenrir.
“She only delays the inevitable,” Fenrir snarled, and headed for the first doorway he saw. “Search the castle, and meet back in the courtyard when you find her.”
Emma chased after her husband, shooting me a wide-eyed look as she went.
I frowned at the bustle of my men and friends splitting up to check the building. I'd barely had any time in dragon form, and if I changed back now, I'd be naked. Damn my modesty. If I'd only undressed I shifted, I'd have clothes to put on. But I didn't, and I couldn't navigate the narrow passages in my dragon form. What to do? What to do?
“Minn Elska,” Trevor tossed a bag down on the stones near my feet. “I brought us a change of clothes.” Then he shifted into his glorious werewolf form, the remains of his sweatpants falling around him.
My inner wolf howled in approval of her mate. Trevor was a thing of beauty, a piece of art really, in his werewolf form. Okay let's be honest, in all his forms. But in his werewolf guise, his thick fur was so very silky, and it flowed over his bulging muscles that were nearly too large to be attractive. His back was straight, but corded to weightlifter status, his shoulders curving upwards with their mass. His thick legs bent in the wrong direction, but it looked right on him, and both sets of paws were tipped in lethal looking claws. He bared his teeth at me in a smile of acknowledgment. Trevor knew exactly where my thoughts had been taking me. But then, we were bonded mates.
He gave a chilling howl that made me shiver in delight, and then loped off into the castle. I waited till everyone but Kirill had left the courtyard before I shifted back to human. He helped me get into some sweat pants and a T-shirt quickly. Then we were running, me barefoot, through the dank stone hallways of Morrigan's creepy castle.
The chill was seeping through the soles of my feet, and it wasn't just the cold that was bothering me. The place felt wrong. It was too empty. Like a movie set. A shell waiting to be filled with props and actors. It was even empty of dust and debris, I didn't see a single cobweb. Didn't all creepy castles have cobwebs? The only things that seemed reasonably appropriate were the torches, hung on the walls every twenty feet or so. But even they seemed off. Torches were an odd choice to light a god's castle. Usually there was simply light coming from some unknown, magical source.
I stopped and sniffed the air, Kirill doing the same, but neither of us could smell the Morrigan or the captured froekn. I couldn't even scent the others from our group. There were no odors, in fact. Just a void around the scents of Kirill and myself. Where was the smell of the stone? Or smoke from the torches?
“I don't like this,” I said in a low tone as I stared at one of the archaic lighting implements. My lioness was frozen still inside me, fear lifting her fur and transferring to me. Something was very wrong. I went over to the nearest torch and lifted my hand.
“It feels like trap,” Kirill said just as I ran my hand through the flame and felt nothing.
“Bravo,” the sound of someone clapping jerked our heads around. The stone wall to our left brightened, and then disappeared completely as a woman with blazing red hair stepped through it. “You're correct, little lion man,” she snickered. “It is a trap, and your friends are running through the cage, never realizing that it's closing tighter around them.”
“Who are you?” I snarled at her.
“I am Macha,” she purred. “But you may know me better as Morrigan.”
“Doesn't that make you a little insane?” I looked her over, “that whole multiple personality thing?”
“Not at all,” she laughed hysterically, making a lie of her words. “I'm very sane, sane enough to trap the Godhunter and all her little Godhunter minions. Honestly, I'd hoped you'd have more of your men with you, but this one will do.”
“What do you want?” I eased closer to Kirill.
“I told you already,” she huffed. “I need you to fight for me. You held me back when I could have killed the Formorian King, and now you must make up for your error. You and your man will fight for the Tuatha Dé Dannan. You thought you could rescue the wolves. Now you see that you can't. And now I have much more than wolves trapped within my walls. So you must decide, fight and free them or die here with them.”
“I'll take option C, kill you and free them all,” I growled, pushing Kirill behind me as I called up my fire, and blew a stream over her.
Macha stood there, her clothing burning away as she laughed and luxuriated in the flames. She began to moan, running her hands over herself as if she were caressed by a lover instead of dragon fire. I pulled back my element, and stared at her in horror. She posed for us, outlining her impressive nudity with her long fingers and talon shaped red nails.
“I'm a fire goddess,” she laughed at me. “All you're doing is exciting me.”
“Dang it,” I swore, and Kirill growled a second before launching himself at her. “No!” I shouted, but it was too late.
Macha grabbed him by the throat, holding him aloft easily, even though he had originally towered over her. In the brief moment it took him to reach her, she had grown, and as I watched, her hair darkened to black and her laugh deepened. She pulled my husband tight to her naked curves, her free hand going between his legs to stroke him through his jeans. Kirill snarled and twisted, both of his hands pulling at her single one, but she held him tight.
“And I'm a sex goddess,” Morrigan licked Kirill's snarling lips.
He shuddered, his arms dropping to his sides as his eyes closed against the pleasure she forced on him.
“You're going to pay for that,” I said in a low voice.
It was the worst sort of attack for Kirill. He'd been sexually abused by his last lion goddess, and it haunted him still. It haunted me still.
“How will I pay, Love Goddess?” she winked at me. “We share many traits, you and I. Why don't we sha
re lovers too? Hmm?” She looked back at Kirill, and lowered him to his feet. He just stared blankly at her. “Get on your knees,” she whispered to him. He fell forward as if he'd been pushed. “Now lick me, lion.”
I was across the space separating us in two seconds flat, dropping her to the ground with good, old fashioned street fighting. I punched her in the face. She kneed me in the stomach. We rolled, grunting and spitting at each other in the worst cat fight ever. She clawed at me and I bit her. Then she kissed me.
Oh hell no.
Her magic pushed its way down my throat and came up short against my own. But I was so much more than a fire goddess or a love goddess or even a sex goddess. I was the Star, and she was about to find out that there was more than one way to burn. Starlight began to fill me, rising up my throat to push out her magic. No, not just push it out, incinerate it.
Before the light could fully shine, Morrigan slipped away. Suddenly, I was being strangled by a giant snake. My starlight sank as my throat was constricted. I struggled against the coils, the snake tightening with every move I made. The reptilian face lifted to mine, and a forked tongue flicked inside my ear.
“I know your tricks,” it hissed with Morrigan's voice. “I even know what that little light of yours is capable of. I'm a seer, remember? I've prepared for this fight, foreseen every angle and possible outcome.”
Prepare: to cut away. Why was that word ringing through my mind again?
“Yeah? How about this angle?” I shifted into my dragon form, free to do so now that the walls had fallen back, and she burst apart, her body separating into a flock of crows.
The walls around us shifted even further way, and I realized that the whole castle was an illusion. The crows plummeted at me, razor-sharp beaks stabbing at the vulnerable junctions between my scales with unerring accuracy. I screeched in pain and fury, swinging my head and wings around to bat the birds away. They kept coming, and I couldn't even try to fry them, not with Kirill paralyzed nearby. I wasn't sure fire would hurt them anyway. The Morrigan's multiple forms probably shared magic. She was technically a single person after all. The power of three goddesses rolled into one.
I snapped my jaws rapidly, but missed the crows every time. They were simply too fast for me. Or perhaps they knew precisely where I would bite. And I was beginning to bleed. Blood was pooling the ground beneath me, and golden scales were falling to float upon its surface. My dragon was losing. It was a horrifying and unbelievable thought. Against a flock of crows! No. Impossible.
“Banana!” I screamed. “Banana! Banana! Banana!”
The crows coalesced into Morrigan, who was wearing a cloak of crow feathers. She stared at me like I'd gone mad. “Why are you screaming 'banana'?” She asked in a careful voice.
“Because it's my safe word, bitch,” I growled, and snapped out at her with my jaws, trying to bite her head off.
She exploded into crows again. Damn I hated that trick. But the shift had given me some breathing room. Every time she shifted, it took her a few seconds to reform. I used the moment to call upon my star once more, and it shifted me back into human. I fell into the blood puddle and slipped, struggling to my feet. At least the shift had healed my wounds, but the attack had still taken its toll, and I was weakening.
As Morrigan had declared, she had prepared for this and every other possibility. Fog swirled around me, thick and menacing. I held my arms out in a panic and tried to listen for her, tried to scent her. But there was nothing. The fog concealed her completely. I was blind and naked in the mist.
Then I heard a howl.
No way. She wasn't a wolf too, was she? Maybe we were more alike than I cared to admit.
A slash of pain burned across my thigh, and I fell to my knees. In my human form there was nothing to protect my flesh against the tearing teeth which lurched out of the fog for me. No scales or fur for a barrier. Why had my star transformed me into this form? It didn't make sense.
I tried to shift into a lioness, but a bite seared into my shoulder and disrupted the change. I swung my head in the direction the attack had come from, but still caught no glimpse of her. I felt her fur and fangs, claws and breath, but saw nothing. It was like a cloak of invisibility. And I knew suddenly that she would win. I would die there if I remained. There was only one option left, to flee.
I reached blindly through the fog, centering in on my connection to Kirill until I found him. I made my way to him, taking slash after slash along the way. Finally, I reached him. I grabbed him with panting desperation and shook him.
“Kirill, wake up,” I snarled as I pushed energy down the cord that bound him to me as an Intare and my husband.
He flinched and took a deep breath, but right as he was about to speak, something snatched him from me, yanking him into the fog.
“Kirill!”
“Run, Tima!” his voice echoed back to me.
“The hell I will,” I stumbled forward, and heard his grunt of pain. “Kirill!”
I was shaking now, quaking from fear alone. Adrenaline had long since deserted me. No, Kirill couldn't die here. I had already saved him. The threat had passed, and Morrigan wasn't the one who'd been after him in the first place. This was wrong, all wrong.
“Run, Tima,” a female giggle tickled my ear, mocking Kirill. “Run away. Give me something to chase or I'll finish your husband right now.”
Kirill growled in pain.
“Stop!” I ran. It hurt deeply to leave him behind, but to save Kirill, I ran. Hopefully, she'd follow me and leave him alone.
I couldn't see anything, just that damnable fog. It seemed to coat my skin and fill my nose. I stumbled and fell, rocks cutting into my palms, and the clamminess of cold mud splattering me. I was outside, earth beneath my feet. Had the castle disappeared entirely or had I escaped it? No, not escape. She was chasing me, herding me. But where was she chasing me to?
I kept running, and the fog faded away, revealing the moss covered trees of the forest we'd passed by earlier. Except now the woods appeared menacing, and harsh laughter echoed behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and saw the fingers of that vicious fog reaching for me, clawing its way along the ground like a monster made of mist.
I ran onward, my heart pounding in my ears, my feet flying over the earth with surety. At least there was that. My beasts and my faerie blood both gave me fleetness of foot in the forest. Fleetness the Morrigan couldn't match. I slipped through the woods as if I were a part of them, and soon, the looming laughter receded completely.
But it didn't matter, did it? I had to go back. For Kirill and the others. I had to save them from the trap we'd walked into. And I had no idea how to do so.
I dropped to my knees and sobbed, feeling more alone and helpless than I had in many years. There I was, fully restored to my glorious power, and yet I couldn't defeat one goddess. Why did they choose me? Obviously Faerie and Alaric had made a mistake. I didn't even know how to wield the star in my chest or what exactly it could do. I had tried to use it against Morrigan, and she had simply outmaneuvered it. Was that it? Could it do nothing against a seer? Had the future betrayed us again?
“Shh now, little one,” a deep voice rolled over me as a hand stroked my bowed head. “Why have you come here to weep? Do you need my help? I am here. I offer it freely. My forest will be your sanctuary.”
I looked up, and saw a pair of hooves before me. They were cloven, tapering to elegant points, and a translucent ebony in color. Blinking in shock, I followed the cloven hooves up a length of sleek, white, fur-covered legs, much too thick to belong to a deer, but nonetheless reminding me of one. Then the fur faded into tanned skin, and I came face-to-groin with the speaker. Thankfully, there was a bone and leather loincloth there, to preserve both of our modesties. I hurriedly sent my gaze further up, finding a solid chest and wide shoulders, strong hands open in welcome, a thick neck, and a beautiful face with kind eyes the color of sun-kissed leaves. Oh, and on his head were a pair of impressive antlers which any hunter woul
d have been happy to hang on his wall.
“My green men told me of your arrival,” the stag guy held a hand out to me, and helped me to my feet. “They sense something in you, a kinship.”
He waved a hand around us, and out of the verdant shadows, men appeared. Their skin was patchy, several shades of green, and their faces were edged with leaves. Ropes of slick hair were actually branches with leaves sprouting off them, but their bodies were human in shape. The men smiled at me warmly, and I felt it too. A little tingle of recognition.
“Are they faeries?” I whispered.
“Faeries?” the horned guy laughed, and it was beautiful and booming. “No, they're closer to elves I suppose. But they're honored that you thought so. We do love the Fey.”
“I'm a faerie,” I said immediately. Hey, I needed help, and I wasn't above throwing some faerie weight around to get it. “My name is Vervain Lavine, I'm the Queen of Fire.”
“The Queen of Fire,” the man's eyes went round. “Naked in my forest, and crying on her knees? What events have brought about such an appalling turn?”
“I came to free my family,” I spoke rapidly, glancing over my shoulder. I saw the fog creeping up on us and spoke even faster. “My family through marriage that is. The Morrigan trapped them to try and coerce me into fighting for her against the Formorians, and then-”
“Whoa, easy now,” the man said gently. “That's enough for me, Queen Vervain. Do you require my assistance?”
“Please,” I breathed in relief.
“Then it is yours,” he bowed to me. “I am Cernunnos, the Horned God, Lord of the Wild Things.”
“You sure are,” I whispered.
He gave a little chuckle and added, “And the Morrigan is no match for me here.”