by Hazel Hunter
“Our finest warriors were sent into the mountains to attack the Pritani,” he said as he helped her over the vine-covered log of a fallen tree. “They found the village deserted, and set fire to it. When the men returned they declared it a great victory. The Pritani had fled Skye, they said, and the island was ours. They didnae know that our enemy had gone to a sacred place on the island to bury their chieftain, who had just died. The new chieftain had wanted to make peace with us, but there was no greater insult than to inflict violence on those in grief.”
Jema cringed. “Oh, no.”
“That night our men drank, and our women danced,” he said softly. “All the while the Pritani waited and watched from the shadows. At dawn the next day, they put our village to the torch. My mother bade me take my sister to my father’s dory, and leave the island. Later I learned that my mother died with my father, trying to save our stock from burning.”
Jema tugged him to a stop, and put her arms around him. “My parents died together, and without Gavin I might not have survived it. I’m so sorry, Tormod.”
He held her close for a time, and then drew back. “I did save Thora, but only by distracting the Pritani long enough for her to run to the boat. I was captured and made a slave, but my sister escaped. Ten more years would pass before the Romans came to Scotland hunting the druids. When the Pritani tribes all came together to fight for the magic folk, my master allowed me to stand with them.”
Jema frowned. “I don’t understand. The Romans came to Scotland in the first century. That was…twelve hundred years before this time.”
“Aye. Twelve centuries past, we were killed by the Romans. They threw our bodies into Loch Sìorraidh, where we lay until the magic folk worked a mighty spell, and brought us back to life.” He gently nudged her jaw so that her mouth closed. “The druids took vengeance for our slaying by casting our deaths on the legion. We became immortals, and they were made undead blood-drinkers. We’ve been at war ever since.”
Hot tears blurred her vision. “You’re twelve hundred years old?”
“And more. I was a man when the Romans ended me.” He rubbed her shoulders with a soothing caress. “’Twas how I wished to die, as a fighting warrior. I thought Freyja would choose me from the slain to join her guard, as I was the only Viking among the dead. She wouldnae wish the Pritani to spend eternity protecting Asgard and the Aesir.”
“But instead you joined the McDonnel clan,” she said quietly. He was either the most forgiving man she’d ever known, or the craziest. “After what they did to you and your tribe, how could you bare it?”
“My slavery allowed my sister to be free. I wasnae treated badly, and my people had burned their village first. I wanted my life to have meaning, and that the Pritani gave it.” He saw her reaction and smiled a little. “What we endured at the hands of the Romans saved the magic folk. Awakening together as immortals made us brothers.” His mouth hitched. “I havenae a drop of Scots blood, but I chose to make the clan my family. I dinnae regret it.”
That reminded her. “You were half-right about my ancestors,” Jema said. “Master Flen performed a spell to read my bloodline. It seems that I’m descended from an illicit love affair between a druid herbalist, and a Viking shaman named Eryk Fire Blade.”
His brows arched high. “Eryk Fire Blade was our shaman. I thought him killed in the burning.” Tormod smiled. “’Tis good to learn he survived it, and found a new life with his druidess.”
“You know what that means.” Though the connection might be a coincidence, it still made Jema shiver. “You are my tribe.”
“Aye, there’s no avoiding it, lass.” He kissed her brow. “Now we’ll go and get back our brother.”
Chapter Fourteen
THORA FELT THE unfamiliar gnaw of hunger, and reined in her mount as she took in the landscape. Returning to Midgard had come with the uncomfortable price of occupying the form of a blood-drinker, but she paid it without complaint. There was much to admire about her new form. Its strength and speed were far superior to what her own had been in mortal life.
Gavin guided his horse alongside hers. “The sun will rise soon. We have to find shelter.”
Thora nodded, her eyes narrowing as she spotted the cultivated fields of a small farm. “There,” she said, pointing at the neat rows of ripe oats. “The house will have a cellar or store room where I may rest.”
“And you must feed,” Gavin said.
Thora’s insides shriveled. She knew from Fenella’s memories what her life would have to be like. But where Fenella relished feeding on the life-blood of mortals, it revolted Thora. Her jaw tightened but at last she nodded and rode with Gavin to the property.
The farm boasted a house and barn, and from the look of the penned livestock enjoyed much prosperity. Thora didn’t wait for Gavin to help her dismount but vaulted off, her cold body suddenly thrumming with hunger. She watched a thin, haggard-looking male emerge from the house, a cudgel in one hand and a dagger in the other.
“What do ye want?” the mortal demanded.
“My lady is weary, and there are no lodgings for miles,” Gavin said in a thicker version of his own accent. “We can pay for a room.”
The farmer cursed him and headed back inside, coming up short when Thora intercepted him. “Ye cannot stay here,” he whined. “We’ve death in the house.”
“I’m afraid we must,” she said and swatted the weapons from his hands. The pulse of the old man’s jugular quickened and she stared hard at it, licking her lips.
“Thora,” Gavin said, his tone stern and warning. She forced herself to look at him. “If you want blood, you can drink mine.” He gestured toward the house. “Go inside while I tie him up in the barn.”
“Blood?” the old man gasped, trying to back up, but Gavin grabbed him, easily picking him up, and headed toward the barn.
Yes, blood, Thora thought grimly as she watched them go. Only when they had disappeared could she make herself turn away.
Inside the farm house Thora saw a shrouded body in a crude coffin, and a second, much smaller bundle tucked in a basket. The scent of old blood painted the air, and when she tugged down the edge of the shroud she saw the lifeless features of a young mortal female. When she unwrapped the bundle in the basket she found a dead fetus no bigger than the palm of her hand. She pulled back the shroud over the mother and tucked the dead infant against her breast.
“You should have chosen another life than this.” She heard the front door close.
“Is that why you became a warrior?” Gavin asked as he joined her. “You feared childbirth?”
Thora fixed him with gaze. “I fear naught, McShane. I became a shield-maiden so I might kill with my own hands the Pritani scum who murdered my tribe, my parents and my brother. I couldnae see it done as a mortal. ’Tis been twelve centuries since my death, but with the help of Freyja’s Eye I will soon see justice done.”
Gavin gave the dead woman and child a long, sorrowful look before he covered their bodies.
“I see no sign of a cellar,” he told her, “but they’ve a bed chamber without windows.”
Thora followed him into the adjoining room, her fangs stretching out painfully into her mouth. The hunger that coursed through every fiber of her was threatening to sweep away reason. But when Gavin turned to her she saw him plying his blade against his wrist.
“As I promised,” he told her and offered her his arm.
Thora inhaled sharply as the coppery scent of his blood filled her nostrils. Though she tried not to hurry, she gripped his powerful forearm and placed her cold mouth on his warm flesh. She drank from the wound, but only enough to stop the ache of the hunger. Then as Fenella would have done, she used a drop of her blood to heal the cut, and met his gaze. They had never stood so close and for the first time since she’d met him she felt as though she actually saw him. Perhaps the hunger had clouded her mind more than she’d known, but Gavin McShane had gray-blue eyes the color of the winter sea. His rugged features matc
hed his massively muscled body, which all but glowed with the vibrance of a life that was now forever lost to her.
His eyes searched hers now, then drifted down to her lips. For a moment his gaze lingered there and she wondered if there was blood. Quickly she swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, but there had been no blood. She looked at him quizzically, only to find that his broad hand now cupped the side of her face.
“You were beautiful in form and figure before, but now…” He gently wrapped his arm around her and brought their faces close. She could feel his warm breath on her lips. “Now you are more lovely than a pale goddess of the moon, and I see the sunset in your eyes.” He touched his lips to hers.
Thora had never kissed anyone. Her mortal kin had avoided the practice, and among her raiders it would have been decidedly reckless to show such preference for any man. But Gavin was not any man. Fenella had once enthralled him, but Thora knew that was ended. He was responding to something more than the prefect’s body. And she found that her mouth was responding to his.
He gathered her against him and she could feel the long bulge of his manhood, stiff with desire. He meant to fack her, and that made an odd pleasure rise up in her. She had coupled with some of her fellow warriors, mainly to work off nerves before a battle.
Fenella, on the other hand, had loved facking.
The blood-drinker’s memories of romping stretched far back into her mortal life, when she had eagerly spread her legs for the comely cowherds and pretty milk maids at the dairy. She would lay down with anyone willing to kiss and touch and penetrate her, it seemed. Once enthralled by Quintus Seneca, Fenella had happily whored herself for her undead master. Since being turned and made prefect, however, Fenella had devoted herself to facking and then murdering her partners, mostly enthralled mortals but several undead Romans as well.
Though Thora abhorred the prefect’s penchant for killing sex, Fenella’s endless lust seemed to be infecting her. She slipped her hand between the press of their bodies, and freed Gavin’s rampant cock. Another tug and she opened her trews, dropping them out of the way. Gavin moved her backward toward the bed and when she fell on it, he removed her trews, then pulled her shirt and vest off over her head. He ripped off his own clothes, revealing his magnificent male body, before he came over her.
“Thora,” he ground out through a clenched jaw, “say now if I must stop.”
In response, her cold fingers explored the hard ridges of his stomach and chest. “Put yourself inside me,” she whispered.
He fisted his shaft and brought his thick cockhead to her opening.
Thora stared up into his fierce eyes as the hot, broad head of his shaft pressed into her cool sex. The heat of him spread through her belly, awakening new desires. The stretching sensations of her gloving him sent a jolt of excitement that she felt in her fangs.
Gavin’s jaw tightened as he went deeper, and he gripped her shoulders once he’d filled her completely. “I knew you’d feel like heaven around me.” Carefully he drew out of her, and then forged back inside, the slick friction making her gasp. “Oh, aye, there, now you feel it, don’t you? I’m inside you, Thora. I’m loving you.”
He thrust again, faster and harder, making the bed shake from the pumping force.
Suddenly her breasts came to painful life, and puckered at their tips until they felt like pebbles. That had never happened to her.
“How can this be?” she gasped.
“It’s what you need,” he breathed. “It makes you feel everything you’ve forgotten from your life. It makes you alive again. It makes you mine, Thora.”
Gavin never looked away from her face as he fucked her, his deep, hard shafting fueling the desperate ache inside her. Thora was astonished over the climax building inside her, but the delight soon threatened to swamp her.
“But I’m no’ a mortal,” she said, her voice trembling as she thrashed under him, battling this new hunger within, even as he plowed into her with more passion.
“You will come, my sweet lass.”
Gavin bent his dark head to her small breasts, fastening his mouth on one nipple to suck it with firm, deep tugs. He lifted his head only to do the same to her other mound before he reached down to draw her legs up and drag her hips down to the very edge of the bed.
He stood on the floor, and gripped her hips as he pounded into her. As his thrusts grew faster, it felt as if his hard, thick cock had turned into a blunt iron sword. Soon Thora cried out and shook all over as the burning pleasure inside her threatened to burst and shatter her into pieces.
It was at that moment that Gavin drove deep and clamped her nipples between his fingers, pinching them gently as he said, “Let go, sweetheart. Let go and give yourself to me. I’ll never betray you, Thora. I’ll always be your man.”
A dam hidden inside Thora gave way as the pleasure poured through her, sweeping away everything but the delight of Gavin mastering her senses as well as her body. Dimly she heard him groan, and felt the spurting warmth of his seed bathing her clenching insides. It pushed her through that orgasm and into another, and she shook helplessly in his arms, her body contracting tightly around him. She felt his shaft hardening again inside her, and Gavin make a strange sound.
Thora moaned softly as she felt him jet inside her a second time.
“I’ve not been with a woman for years,” Gavin gasped as he withdrew and fell beside her. “You make me come like I’ll never stop.”
“Imagine if ’twas centuries, McShane,” she chided, snuggling up against him.
Thora held him as their bodies cooled and relaxed. She stared up at the tightly-thatched ceiling, her sex sated but her fangs throbbing anew with hunger. But she lay with him until he had fallen deep into slumber. Then silently she rose from the bed, dressed, and went to the barn. In the back she found the farmer dozing atop some grain sacks, his wrists and ankles bound by rope.
He stirred as she knelt down beside him, and then cowered as soon as he opened his eyes. “No, dinnae touch me.”
“I wish I didnae need to,” she said, thrusting his head back as she bit his neck.
Unlike with Gavin, she drank her fill. But it wasn’t just her blood-hunger that needed to be satisfied. Fenella’s memories had found a way to deliver Thora’s vengeance more quickly. She looked down at the marks she had left in his neck. Thora bit her finger and ran it over the wound.
As soon as the punctures closed the farmer’s expression grew bright with joy. “How may I serve you, my sweet lady?”
Thora smiled but without joy. “You will take a horse and journey west to the Isle of Skye.”
“What do ye wish me to do on Skye?” the farmer asked.
“There is a man you must find and reward for me. His name is McDonnel.”
Chapter Fifteen
DIANA LOOKED UP from her gomukhasana as her husband unlocked her dungeon cell, and began to unwind herself from the yoga pose. “Hey, sweet.” She released the handhold behind her back and untwisted her entwined legs. “I wasn’t expecting conjugal visits when Evander threw me in here.”
Raen’s gray eyes looked almost black as he regarded her. “You put yourself in there, Wife. Twice.” He reached down and helped her to her feet. “We’re leaving.”
She feigned shock. “You mean we got kicked out of the clan, too? Holy crap. Does that mean we have to go live with Grandpa Bhaltair and his merry band of druids?”
“No. We’ve formed a warband to go after Tormod and Jema. You’ll be our tracker.” When she would have replied he shook his head. “You’ll track the facking Viking, and naught else.”
“No, I’m just not interested.” She dropped back down onto the floor and stretched out her long legs. “You can go. Unless you want to have dirty dungeon sex with me, in which case, baby, bring me some shackles.”
“Diana, we need your help,” Lachlan said. He came around Raen to look at her. “I am persuaded no’ to punish Tormod for concealing the woman, but we must find them before they run afo
ul of Fenella Ivar. You ken how dangerous she is.”
Diana blushed, and pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment to cover it. “Two conditions: you kill Fenella so this girl’s brother doesn’t become an undead lackey.” When the laird nodded she said, “And you forget what you just heard me say to Raen about the dungeon sex. Immediately. Please.”
The laird grinned. “Done and done.” He glanced at her husband before he added, “We leave within the hour.”
Diana cradled her knees as she watched Lachlan depart, and then looked up at her very unhappy highlander. “You can yell at me, you know. I did bad things for a good reason. “
Raen made a nasty sound, and looked around the cell. “For Tormod, you did this. Tormod, who isnae your husband. If you forget, I am.”
She’d been expecting this conversation for a while, so it wasn’t entirely rattling her. She just wasn’t sure if someone as well-liked as her husband could understand it. Better they she start out simple, Diana decided.
“He’s like my brother, Big Man. That’s all. There’s nothing going on between the two of us.”
Raen muttered to himself in Pritani as he paced back and forth outside her cell. Occasionally he also slammed his fist into something unbreakable. Diana watched him, feeling just a little worried now. One of the main reasons Raen never held a grudge was because he was basically invincible. If he fought another man in earnest, he wasn’t going to lose.
Finally he came into the cell and crouched down in front of her. “You’re my wife, no’ his. Your loyalty belongs to me.”
“I think he’s in love with Jema,” she said. “While I’m in love with you. But I’m loyal to whoever I choose. Actually I’m kind of flexible on loyalty. Whoever earns it at the moment, gets it.”
Raen rocked back onto his heels. “I dinnae understand this bond between you and the Viking, but I havenae challenged it. After what you’ve said and done, Diana, I begin to think that I should.”