Tarnished Journey: Historical Paranormal Romance (Soul Dance Book 4)

by Ann Gimpel

Together. Stewart savored the sound of it.

  Yara had always been strong, but whatever Rhiannon did made her formidable. They hadn’t discussed strategy. There hadn’t been time, but she was gathering a cadre to fight demons. He was proud of her, awed by her strength and courage, and he vowed to be a worthy mate.

  Stewart blinked against wind and ice pellets pummeling him from above. Believing in the power of their combined magic was paramount, and he surged forward, summoning fighters to coordinate their offense against the vampires headed their way. The rotten, decayed blood smell of them was thick now, and Stewart sorted silver stake wielders from those with amulets.

  “I’m immune to them,” Aron reminded him, shouting over the din of the wind. Fear sheeted from the young Rom, but he held himself proud, ready to do his part.

  Stewart divided the shifters and Rom into groups of three. Thanks to Meara, they had a preponderance of shifters of all persuasions. Wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes, and birds.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. “At least one person in each group has to be human to wield the silver stake.”

  Amid snarls and grumbles, several naked men and women emerged from their animal forms, snatching up stakes from the pile in front of Stewart.

  Blackness bore down on them in a choking miasma that stole his breath. Vampires stank. They toned it down when they were luring their next meal, but now their full power was focused on destroying the puny group of shifters and Rom standing in their way. Who knew if they were even aware of the faerie folk?

  Stewart shook a fist at the black cloud settling over them, choking out everything pure and honorable. “Ye willna win,” he screamed and joined one of the groups armed for vampires.

  A swarm of them converged from all sides, each one beautiful in an unholy way. He’d never understood how something so profane could catch the eye and tease the soul with unmet promises. He felt the same way about demons, but most of them lacked the vampires’ striking features.

  None of that mattered. Vampires were a scourge. They should have been wiped out by the priests in Egypt. That any had escaped, existing in some subterranean well only to resurface in Hitler’s Reich, infuriated him.

  His eyes burned and his throat stung. He held a silver stake high and drove it into one vampire chest after another. The third one, a woman with stunning copper curls, emerald eyes, and a lush figure, wrapped a long-nailed hand around his arm.

  “Druid.” Light was fading from her eyes, but the older vampires took a while to die.

  He glared at her. “Aye. ’Tis what I am.”

  She smiled. Slow, lazy, seductive in stark contrast to the black ichor pouring around the silver stake protruding from her chest. “Remove the silver. I can gift you with immortality.” A fat, black beetle slithered around the stake and onto Stewart’s hand where he held the silver in place. Three more bugs raced after the first.

  Stewart vaporized them with magic. “Save your beasties,” he snarled. “I know what they do.” He didn’t waste his breath telling the abomination twisting in death throes that the same beetles had almost been the death of Elliott when another of the master vampires tried to hijack his body so it could keep on living.

  “Immortality.” The vampire tried again. Black blood burbled from her mouth, staining her chin and marring her otherworldly splendor.

  Stewart didn’t bother to reply. More beetles crawled out of the vampire, mouths opening and closing hungrily. She must be one of the truly old ones. After a quick glance around himself to make certain none of the bugs had glommed onto anyone else, he killed the ones he could see and summoned fire to immolate the vampire before she could harm anyone.

  She was still alive, and her screams joined the howl of the storm as magic-driven flames consumed her. He pulled out his stake before it turned into a useless pool of molten metal. The vampire reared up. Not dead enough. Not yet. Stewart worked fast, winding cords of magic about the undead abomination. He wouldn’t have to immobilize it for long. Good thing, because it was strong.

  The vampire shrieked curses while she struggled and fought her bonds. Black ichor flew everywhere. Her head whipped from side to side, but at least the cavalcade of beetles had stopped.

  “Die!” Stewart exhorted and fed more magic to the flames. “Faigh bás.”

  The fire completed what the stake began, burning with a vengeance until nothing was left but a pile of charred bones. It had taken a continuous infusion of magic to keep it going in the midst of constant, punishing sleet that left a coat of ice over everything it touched.

  Stewart straightened, assessing where he could do the most good. Vampires still poured out of the murk surrounding them on Ben Nevis’s summit. Fae and Dark Fae had joined each of the groups of three fighting them. A pair of vampires converged on two shifters, a Rom, and three faeries to Stewart’s left. He started their way to add his silver stake to the mix when the Fae and Dark Fae extended their hands. Power jetted from them in a river of green and gold. The vampires saw it, but discounted its significance.

  So did Stewart until the green-gold river formed a long chord that knotted itself around one of the vampire’s necks. The Dark Fae barked one word in Gaelic, and the rope turned into a guillotine severing the vampire’s head from its body. The second vampire’s eyes widened, and he spun, intent on escape, but the rope followed him and repeated its lethal act.

  Blood spurted, thick, black, noxious, from the two severed heads. Stewart grinned—vicious, grim, feral. For the first time, he truly believed they’d rid Earth of the vile creatures for once and for all.

  “What the bloody hell?” Cadr pushed next to Stewart.

  “’Tis the power of the two estranged halves of Faerie. The Fae split ranks so long ago, I’d forgotten what they could do when they combined their ability.”

  “I’m not sure I ever knew,” Cadr muttered and joined a nearby group battling a lissome, blonde vampire pleading for her life in a voice that would have done a Siren proud. Fortunately, no one was taken in by her silken tones.

  Stewart hunted for Yara, but she and the others who’d been battling demons weren’t anywhere in sight. Between the punishing storm still pounding them and the dark cloud obscuring anything more than a few feet away, his eyes were almost useless.

  He deployed magic, hunting her and her cadre. Nothing pinged back in reply to his seeking spell. Panic coated his tongue with a sour, metallic tang, and he ran, threading his way between the groups fighting vampires that were scattered across the mountaintop.

  Magic hadn’t found her, but maybe one of the demons—or more than one—had deployed wards, obfuscations. Aye. That had to be it. His circuit of the battleground didn’t take long. By the time he returned to his starting spot, he couldn’t escape the fact that Yara wasn’t here. She’d vanished along with about twenty Rom and shifters who’d been fighting alongside her.

  Stewart balled his hands into fists so hard his nails cut into his palms and shrieked, “Nay! I’ll not let you have her.”

  Rhiannon snapped into view right in front of him. No shimmers this time. She was just there, her eyes glittering dangerously. “What?” she demanded, her voice shrill and edged with something that sounded suspiciously like alarm. “Ye let those bastards make off with my daughter.”

  Stewart choked back an entire string of words. Excuses had no place. Not in front of a Celtic god. “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Where else?” Rhiannon’s beauty contorted into a sneer. “In Hell.”

  Ice spilled through Stewart’s blood until he felt as if he’d turned into the storm still ranging about them. He’d never been to the netherworld. Its portals were closed to mortals. “Quick! How can I get there?”

  Rhiannon shook her head. “Ye canna.”

  “But I must.” An idea formed. “Ye altered something within Yara. Do the same for me.”

  “Ye’re not my blood,” she protested. “’Tisn’t possible.”

  “Ye doona know that. Not for sure.”
Stewart closed the short distance between himself and the goddess. “I have a piece of Yara within me. It might be enough for you to work with.”

  Hope flared in Rhiannon’s golden eyes, sharp and painful. She laid her hands on either side of his head and began to chant. Pain shot through his skull, and the worst headache imaginable burst behind his eyes. Aching, throbbing, burning. Nausea twisted his guts into fiery knots, but he stood still. Pain was a small price if it gained him entrance to Hell.

  Scorching, raging agony tracked from his head through his chest. Bile rose, splashing the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back. Threads of prickling anguish attacked both his legs, and the soles of his feet burned with exquisite torture.

  He stared at Rhiannon. “Nothing left to torch, goddess.” When he swallowed, he tasted blood and figured he’d bitten through something. The battle raged around them filled with screams and the stench of blood, entrails, and vampire. Smoke from multiple pyres joined the rest in a stinking mélange, but his entire attention was focused on Rhiannon. Had what she’d done been enough?

  She dropped her hands to her sides and angled her head, casting a speculative glance his way. “I do believe that will work, Druid.”

  He rolled his eyes, surprised his body responded to any command after the punishment it had just taken. “Fine. Where’s the portal to Arawn’s world?”

  “I’ll do you one better. I’ll show you.” Power flashed around her.

  Stewart latched onto the tail end of it, not wanting to lose her. The faerie folk, shifters, and Rom were drilling huge holes in the vampire population. They didn’t need him here, but Yara did.

  He should never have left her side. Maybe if he hadn’t…

  Nay, I’d be trapped in Hell with her. I needed whatever Rhiannon just fed into me.

  In a distant corner of his mind, he was curious just what that was, but experimentation with his newly augmented power would be tested soon enough. Contrails of light marked the goddess’s passage, and he jumped through a black void. The air seared his lungs, and the reek of sulfur and ozone scraped his nostrils raw.

  Hell had to be on the other side.

  He rolled out onto hard-baked, cracked red earth that stretched as far as he could see. Fumaroles bubbled all around him, making him wonder just how stable the clay beneath his feet was. Heat buffeted him from all sides. Dry, relentless, it would suck the life out of anyone human damned fast. The air scorched his lungs, and the sky was a sickly yellow-green. Incessant brightness was almost worse than the heat. It seared his corneas, already raw from Rhiannon’s intrusion.

  A loud, cracking noise battered him, and Cadr popped out of the ether next to him, followed by Vreis. Both men hit hard and rolled to their feet. Stewart blinked hard, thinking maybe he was hallucinating, but his fellow Druids didn’t disappear. “How—?” he began.

  “Not easily,” Cadr replied.

  “Aye,” Vreis walked over, dusting himself off. “We saw you with Rhiannon, and suspected something was up. The Fae and their dark cousins had the vampire problem well in hand, so we borrowed on an old magic.”

  “The one where we hide in each other’s essence,” Cadr clarified. “Neither Vreis nor I were sure it would work, mostly because we had no idea where ye were bound, but we dinna want you to face danger alone. So we snuck along. If ye’d been paying closer attention, ye’d surely have noticed.”

  “’Tis Yara, right?” Vreis narrowed his eyes. “She and the ones fighting demons are missing, so my guess was ye’d forge a path into Hell.” A smug smile crossed his face. “For once, I was right.”

  Stewart punched each of them in the upper arm. “Ye brave, crazy sods. Damn my eyes, but I’m glad we’re on the same side.”

  “Be glad enough to help us out of here the same way we got in,” Cadr countered. He shielded his eyes with a hand and turned in a circle gazing out at the dead landscape. “Any idea which way we’re headed?”

  Stewart sent magic zinging outward. Yara’s unmistakable energy pinged against his seeking spell, loud and clear. “That way.” He pointed, and then set off at a lope, avoiding areas close to the smoking fumaroles that spit red-hot rock.

  “What happened to Rhiannon?” Vreis asked. He flanked Stewart on one side with Cadr on the other.

  “I have no idea. She did something to make me strong enough to follow her, and then vanished in a haze of light. If I hadna been quick, I’d never have been able to track her.”

  “Aye, well, she was certain ye’d be motivated.” Vreis chuckled. “So this is Hell. I’ve always wondered what it looks like.”

  “Not me,” Cadr muttered. “Figured I’d find out soon enough. Ye know, at the tail end of things.”

  Stewart elbowed him and ran faster. He had no idea what they’d find, but he’d deal with it, and then craft some way to extricate them from Hell. This wasn’t like annihilating vampires. Creatures born of night, they resulted from a blood pact between the devil and Sekhmet, Egyptian goddess of death and slaughter. As Stewart remembered the story, the goddess parlayed with Satan in exchange for something that would immobilize her enemies and offer her endless power.

  Aye, not so different from Hitler after all. No wonder the vampires dinna overthink his offer much. ’Twas familiar territory for them.

  His thoughts tracked back to demons as he ran. They’d always existed. An army of evil, counterpoint to angels, who jumped to a brighter call. He rolled his mental eyes. The Christian god might have overshadowed his earlier prototypes, but the Celts were real, as were the Greco-Roman pantheon. The Norse gods as well. Today’s humans had definitely missed the mark in their choice of a deity, but Stewart learned a lesson when he’d been tossed out of the British Isles. No one wanted to hear his opinions about which gods had the most power.

  Or any power at all.

  He angled more to his left. Yara’s energy drew him like a lodestone. She might be under siege, but goddamn it if she wasn’t still very much alive.

  “I count fifteen with her,” Vreis said. “Two dead, thirteen still alive, although one of those is weakening.”

  “Aye,” Cadr concurred. “Mostly shifters, but a few Rom.”

  Stewart pushed himself to run faster. He’d been so focused on tracking Yara, he hadn’t done a nose count of her companions. They’d be there soon. “We need a plan. Odds of killing those bastards in the middle of their own realm are nil.”

  “We’ll have to give them a good enough scare they scatter like the cowards they are,” Vreis retorted.

  “Aye, and one look at your smarmy visage should do the trick,” Cadr jibed.

  “Och, if mine doesna manage it, yours certainly will,” Vreis shot back.

  Jagged, red cliffs came into view in the distance. Yara and her crew were backed up against them. Stewart offered her kudos. Out of a dearth of possibilities, she’d chosen a defensible position.

  He made hand motions to cut the flow of their magic and circle around behind the gaggle of demons that had Yara and her people pinned against the cliffs. At least so far, no one had noticed them. He wanted to maximize their element of surprise. The reek of sulfur had expanded into a choking miasma as they drew closer, and the sky had developed streaks of red in defiance of every natural law.

  He wanted to rush into the midst of the demon horde that was scattering lethal magic—except it would be a waste because it wouldn’t kill them.

  Yara was outlined clearly now. A circle of pure, white light surrounded her, and she’d clearly worked to extend it to shield as many others as she could. Lines of strain carved into her face, but magic blazed from her, and it was keeping the demons at bay.

  For now.

  Jagged bolts of red and black lightning flew from the demons’ outstretched hands. An even dozen of them surrounded Yara and the others who’d been sucked into Hell along with her. Stewart ground his teeth together. His guess was they’d only wanted Yara because of her Celtic blood. Everyone else had been standing too close.

  Aye. Collate
ral damage. Poor sods.

  He was close enough to marry his magic with Yara’s. Her head snapped up at the contact, and her mouth stretched into a grim smile. The coruscation surrounding her brightened still more.

  Stewart hurried forward, no longer worried about concealment. Cadr ran on one side, Vreis the other. They wove their power into a barrier that should deflect an elephant. It was second nature since this was how they faced off against evil. That they’d followed him without question warmed him. They were his family. Them and Yara.

  He raced into the thick of things with a bloodcurdling Scottish battle cry intent on standing by Yara’s side with his companions. Strike fast. Strike hard. Once the demons were falling over each other’s pikestaffs and cudgels, they’d marshal their magic and forge a path back to Earth.

  He hoped.

  Remaining in Hell wasn’t on his agenda. Everything about the place was an affront to his senses. No wonder demons were such bastards.

  Aye, no wonder they’re in a right hurry to escape this place. Earth must look fair decent to them after a span of time biding here.

  Chapter 20

  Earlier on Ben Nevis’s Summit

  Yara felt quietly pleased. At least so far, demons hadn’t gotten close enough to kill anyone, and her ward was prevailing with magic to spare. Not that she’d had much breathing space, but the few times she’d glanced Stewart’s way, his group was more than holding its own against the vampires. She was nonplussed when more kept coming, but what worked for the first batch would surely continue to mow through new arrivals.

  A burst of green light caught her eye, and she looked up in time to see a magical noose that had Fae stamped all over it choke a vampire to death. No silver needed. She felt like whooping for joy. Plenty of Fae stood with them today. Enough to eradicate vampires for good.

  Yeah. Right. Once those fuckers lose enough men, they’ll go to ground just like they did when priests threatened their survival in Egypt.

  Yara analyzed her thought. She had very little knowledge about vampires, so that pithy little tidbit must have arrived in her head courtesy of Rhiannon’s infusion of power. She shrugged and shored up her warding where a constant barrage of black-tinged flames had weakened it. Even if they only crippled vampires enough to drive them into the shadows for a few centuries, she’d consider it a victory.