Seduced by Myths: A Mythical Paranormal and Fantasy Anthology

by C. R. Jane

  As I found that rhythm, I reached for Gunnar. My giant was still kneeling beside me, heightening the pleasure radiating through me with each stroke of my breasts. He shifted closer with a rough rumble of encouragement as I groped at his pants. My hand dipped inside and closed around his erection, just as hard but thicker than Jerrik’s. I gripped it hard and pumped it. Gunnar’s head lowered next to mine, kissing my earlobe, the corner of my jaw. His breath came ragged.

  That heady swell of pleasure was filling me again. My hips rocked, riding Svend’s mouth. He was devouring me, leaving every nerve in my body quivering for more, and more, and—

  I came with a gasp, the release shuddering through me from head to toe in a wave of bliss. My lips closed tight around Jerrik’s cock, and a second later he was following me, filling my mouth with a salty flood. Gunnar groaned. He squeezed my breast and brought my head back around to kiss me, regardless of Jerrik’s taste still on my lips. His cock twitched in my hand as I led him over the edge to his own release.

  Svend nuzzled my thigh before straightening up. The heat in his bright eyes sent a fresh quiver of anticipation through me. But before I could find out what else he might have planned, the ground tremored in a way that wasn’t pleasant at all. The smile dropped from the dark elf’s face.

  “As much as I hate to say this,” he said, “that means we’d better get going. Now, and fast.”

  Chapter 8

  We all wrenched our clothes into some sort of order and hurried after Svend out of the lodging. My skin was flushed, my nerves still giddy from the passion we’d just shared, but another rumble from far down the tunnels was enough to chill that heat right out of me. A sound like the distant scrabbling of sharp claws carried to us.

  “Come on!” Svend said. He tugged my arm in the opposite direction, and the four of us ran. The dark elf led the way, ducking down one side passage and veering the other way at the next split, following the maze of caves without hesitation. I hoped that meant he knew where in Hel’s name we were going.

  The scrabbling sound got louder. A thick smoky smell wafted over us, the sulfur of the air above mixed with a stench like the dragon’s breath. I shuddered and pushed my human legs faster, wishing for the speed my wings could have given me.

  Svend didn’t falter. He pointed to a low opening in the wall of the tunnel ahead of us and dropped down to slide through it as if he’d made an escape like this a hundred times. I dashed after him, pushing myself through the cramped space on my hands and knees.

  The walls shook, and my pulse tripped with the fear that the rock at my back would collapse on us. But we made it through to another tunnel on the other side, grit-smudged and panting but uncrushed. With a grunt, Gunnar squeezed his bulky shoulders out last.

  “This way,” Svend said in a low voice. We hustled after him through another few turns, until the stink and the scrabbling behind us had faded away. Finally, he stopped. He leaned against the tunnel wall to catch his breath. I swiped my hand through the sweat on my forehead.

  “What was that coming after us?” I said.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Svend said. “I just know it wasn’t anything we wanted to tangle with.”

  More creatures out to destroy any hint of Asgard from the place, I guessed. A shudder ran through me.

  “How far off track have we gotten now?” Jerrik asked, glancing around with a skeptical expression.

  “Not really at all,” Svend said, the corners of his lips curving up. “You could almost say we’ve taken a short cut. If we get moving, we should see the fortress in just a few hours.”

  Gunnar took my hand with an affectionate squeeze. It sent a softer warmth through me. I twined my fingers with his, and we set off for our ultimate destination.

  Even underground, the landscape changed as we approached the fortress of the giant who called himself The Blaze. The patches of crystal appeared more frequently, flooding us with an even starker red glow. The light shifted through them as if they were reflecting a flow of magma above. With them came a sharper heat that kept sweat beading on my skin. A hot metallic odor rose around us, as if we were walking into a blacksmith’s forge.

  “Here,” Svend said. The tunnel split, the branch he took us down narrowing and slanting upward. It twisted into a spiral, up and up, the floor tilting so much my feet skidded here and there. Gunnar walked behind me, his brawny form ready to steady me.

  “I assume we don’t just walk up to the fortress door and knock,” Jerrik muttered.

  Svend chuckled. “No. We’re here to get a nice overview of what we’re dealing with.”

  We finally scrambled out to find ourselves not on the regular ground but high on a cliff overlooking most of the rocky terrain. I didn’t have to ask where the fortress was. Tall walls of jutting boulders surrounded an even taller building that looked like a hill constructed out of stone slabs half melted together. The entire structure sprawled the length and width of a small village. Pits of fire spurted flames at its base.

  A moat of magma surrounded the outer wall. Dark creatures splashed in its steaming contents. A rock dragon sprawled across one end of the fortress, its eyes closed—for now.

  I swallowed thickly. “The gates out of Muspelheim are all in there?”

  Svend nodded. “The Blaze built the fortress to encompass all of them. It’s not as if he’d need a home half that size otherwise. For now it houses his ‘pets’ and all the stragglers he’s brought under his sway to act as guards—or torturers, as he sees fit.”

  What a lovely fellow. I eased to the edge of the cliff, peering down into the stretch of cracked stone that lay like a courtyard inside the fortress’s walls. “And he just sits around in there all day?”

  “He doesn’t like to leave his throne room,” Svend said. “But he enjoys giving the impression that he’s watching over everything out here, too. You see those statues at the corners of the walls? I’ve never laid eyes on the giant himself, but I’ve been told they’re a good likeness.”

  I hadn’t noticed the statues before. I bent down, squinting at the one closest to us. The boulder at the corner had been carved by someone with an expert hand, bringing out the lines of a hulking form, a bearded face with a protruding brow…

  My breath caught in my throat. My fingers curled against the stone I was kneeling on as if searching for more purchase.

  Jerrik studied me. “What, Miss Raven?”

  “I know him,” I said in a distant voice. Distant because my own memories were welling up around me, so swiftly I almost felt I would drown.

  That last battle during Ragnarok. The shouts and screams of gods and giants. Whirling darkness, flashing blades. Spittle and blood. The immense wolf rising up for Odin and Huginn and I, jaws gaping wide, and only a burst of feathers saving me from being snapped up in that maw along with the Allfather.

  I’d spun around to see a darkly bearded giant ramming his blazing sword into Freyr’s chest. As the god fell, the giant whipped around, and more fire seared from his blade. Flames hissed across the whole great plain, consuming everything in their path, lashing up to swallow me in a blink of agony.

  And then we’d woken after a time in the numbing dark to Asgard and its people reborn. To a world wiped clean of the rot Odin had seen spreading through it, ready to begin again.

  “That’s Surt,” I said. “The giant who killed Freyr. The giant who set all of Asgard burning at the end of Ragnarok. I’d thought the flames had consumed him too.”

  Maybe they had. Maybe he’d been reborn as well.

  Did Odin know? Did he realize one of Asgard’s greatest enemies had been lurking down here, as immortal as us, for all this time, acting as tyrant over Muspelheim’s outcast inhabitants?

  Did he know the blazing giant had locked away the gates? Had he sent me here with the full awareness that I’d have to face Surt to find my way home?

  The questions knotted through my chest. Why had the Allfather really sent me here so unprepared? Was this some kind of sick t
est?

  Or maybe it hadn’t even occurred to him how battered this world would leave me, to bring him whatever information it was he’d been looking for.

  I straightened up, my heart heavy. At least I knew who I was dealing with now. I knew Surt had memories I could exploit to our advantage. From there it would just be past the steel doorway set in that stone wall, into the fortress, through the gate that would lead me home.

  As I stepped back, the breeze shifted around us, picking up to a full-out wind. A wind that must have gusted straight to the dragon sleeping coiled on its master’s home. The glowing red eyes opened. Its massive head swung toward us.

  With a hiccup of my pulse, I spun around to run for the tunnels—and caught sight of a second dragon diving straight toward us.

  Jerrik gave a shout, a split-second too late. Flames exploded from the beast’s throat. I threw myself to the side, but the fire blasted over me. It might have cooked me alive if Gunnar hadn’t lunged after me, shielding my body with his bulk. A pained sound escaped his lips as the flames crackled over his arm and side.

  One of the dragons roared. Claws screeched against the rock. Svend grunted and let out a hiss through his teeth. Jerrik grabbed my arm and Gunnar’s hand, heaving us in the direction of safety. No shadows had ever looked so welcoming as the ones in that open tunnel.

  Svend spun around, tossing something at the dragons. A bit of meat from his pack. One of them snapped at it, and he darted for the tunnels, gesturing for us to follow him. He staggered a little. Blood was seeping down his leg through his trousers.

  Through the thundering of my pulse, I managed to focus my mind. To catch a strand of memory from one of the dragons and cast it down on the terrain below us. The dragon’s swung around, but they didn’t race after the prey I’d conjured like they had before. I’d only diverted them for a moment.

  I bolted for the tunnels, one hand clamped around Gunnar’s wrist, the other clasped in Jerrik’s. We stumbled after Svend into the darkness, just as another flare of fire sizzled after us. Gunnar’s burnt arm brushed the wall of the narrow passage, and he groaned.

  Down the first two spirals, Svend turned, his gaze searching wildly. The instant it met mine, he tugged me into his arms. “Lovely lady,” he murmured. “You’re all right. We’ll get you to that gate yet.”

  I leaned into him, but a cool trickle of doubt pooled in my stomach, thinking of Surt, of Odin’s mission, of my whole sorry life before now.

  Everything I’d done had been to serve someone else. To serve the Allfather. To serve Asgard. I’d wanted the three men who were here with me; there was no question about that. But how much had they wanted me?

  How much had the effort they’d put in, the passion they’d shown me, the risks they’d taken to protect me been simply because I was the one tool they’d found that might get them out of this wretched realm?

  Maybe it shouldn’t have mattered. Why should anyone bother with me except where I could be of use?

  But right then the thought stabbed through me more sharply than any dagger could have.

  Chapter 9

  We staggered down the rest of the cliff passage into the wider tunnels, leaving the dragons’ roars behind. Gunnar had left the pack he’d brought at the base of the spiral path. He hefted it with a wince.

  “Over here,” Svend said. “There’s a spot where we can sit out of the way, get ourselves patched up. Decide where we go from this.”

  He hurried us through a couple of winding tunnels to a slab of rock leaning against the wall. At his careful push, it revealed a thin opening into a room with a stone bench and a single crystal beaming overhead. When we’d squeezed in, he tugged the slab shut again using a groove in its side.

  Gunnar sank onto the bench. I winced when I looked at him. Half of his tunic was charred, and much of the skin beneath was mottled and angry pink. But his gaze had gone to my legs.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said.

  The air currents brushed my knees with a faint sting I hadn’t noticed before. I’d scraped them when I’d tried to leap out of the way of that blast of fire. A drop of blood seeped down my calf from one. They didn’t look a tenth as awful as Gunnar’s burns.

  “Never mind about that,” I said. “What have you got for broiled giant?”

  He managed a rough chuckle and dug into his bag. “If you patch these dried leaves on the burns, and then glue them down with this salve, that should heal them soon enough. And here’s the mineral paste for your cuts. And Svend’s.” He glanced past me to the dark elf.

  The slight tilt to Svend’s stance was the only sign he was feeling the pain of the gouge on his calf. “I can look after you first,” he said to me.

  I grimaced at him. “Fix your leg. I’m fine.”

  I picked up the packet of leaves Gunnar had indicated. He tugged off the remains of his shirt, putting the rest of his gentle brawn on full display. I started setting the leaves on the raw skin of his shoulder and back as gently as I could. Jerrik picked up the pot of salve and smeared it on as I went. The thick lotion hardened over the leaves with a sheen like the inside of a seashell.

  “Did you manage to get out of there unharmed?” I asked the light elf.

  “Relatively speaking,” he said. He held up his left hand, showing a thin cut across the last two fingers where a dragon claw must have nicked him. “Nothing a quick bandaging won’t fix.”

  Gunnar sighed as we finished the job, the burns now hidden beneath the shell of the salve. He glanced at his shirt and seemed to decide it wasn’t worth trying to repair.

  Svend had just finished bandaging his own cut. He knelt at my feet, the brush of his fingers as he tended to my knees bringing back a whisper of the pleasure I’d felt with him in a similar position just a few hours ago.

  Gunnar rested his hand on my waist, but suddenly his touch felt more like pressure than affection. All the dark thoughts that had flooded my head as we’d fled the dragons came back.

  They were going to ask how I could get them through that fortress now. How soon they could win back their freedom. My throat tightened.

  Then Gunnar said, in his soft rumble of a voice, “You should go without us, Muninn.”

  I whirled to face him. He gazed back at me, his gaze tender and solemn at the same time. A different sort of wrenching filled my chest. “What are you talking about?”

  “It won’t be just the dragons you have to contend with to get us to the fortress and through it,” he said. “There’s The Blaze—Surt, if that’s his real name—and his guards and Hel only knows what other monsters he keeps in the place. We have no real way of fighting most of them. That mess on the clifftop just now proves it. You have your power on your side. You can make it through. But you might not if you have the rest of us holding you back.”

  “You stopped me from getting burnt to a crisp,” I said.

  “We were taken by surprise,” Jerrik said. “When you go this time, you’ll be prepared. You’ll have your magic at the ready.” His jaw worked. “Gunnar is right. Your chances are better on your own. I don’t want to drag you down. You don’t deserve to be stuck in this place—or to face whatever Surt would do to you if he finds out where you’re from.”

  “You don’t deserve to be stuck here either,” I protested, but Svend was already straightening up, bringing his hand to my cheek.

  “You’ve been a little spot of brightness in this dim realm,” he said. “I won’t see that squashed out because of me. You tell us what we can do to help, and we’ll do it—so you can get home.”

  Gunnar and Jerrik nodded. My heart squeezed. They weren’t like Odin, just looking for how I could serve them. Of course they weren’t. These weren’t gods but men—men who cared for me more than I’d thought anyone could.

  Until recently, I hadn’t thought it mattered. But now…

  “No,” I said roughly, looking from one to the next as Svend let his hand drop. “I’m not leaving without you. I’ve been a bright spot in your lives? You�
��ve been the only real brightness in mine in centuries. The only happiness I could really call mine.”

  “Muninn,” Jerrik started.

  I shook my head. “No argument. If you won’t come with me, then I’m staying here.”

  There wasn’t much they could say to that. My gaze drifted toward the doorway, my mind tracing the twists and turns we’d have to make to reach the surface again. Remembering the looming fortress which would look so much more imposing from the ground. The roar of the dragons, the stench of their breath.

  A shiver ran through me. I might be immortal in a way, but I could still die as much as any being of Asgard could. And the three men with me were full mortal.

  “You’re right that it’s going to be hard, though,” I said. “I wish…” I clenched my hands. “I wish I could be more sure of myself. I still don’t feel this body is totally mine, completely under my control. I can’t even transform back into my usual self. If I had that control, if I knew my powers would work exactly the way I intended them to…”

  Gunnar’s fingers trailed down my back, bringing a rush of warmth into my skin. “That power must still be in you,” he said. “When do you feel it the most? What’s made you more comfortable in this form?”

  The honest answer spilled from my lips. “Having you touch me like that.”

  His breath caught. He turned me toward him and cupped my face to bring my mouth to his. The kiss was so yearning it sent a flutter through my chest. A now familiar hunger lit low in my belly.

  “Take control, then,” the giant murmured against my lips. “Take me, Muninn. However you want me.”

  In that moment, no invitation had ever sounded so enticing. I teased my fingers into his thick hair and kissed him harder. His arm came around my waist, hugging me to him, but the planes of his bare chest felt too distant. I broke the kiss just long enough to yank off my dress. Then I stepped back into his arms with a pleased hum at the sensation of my naked breasts pressing against him.