by Unknown
“Sounds like this may be an issue for the God Squad,” I observed and then glanced up to see Kirill come into the room from the hallway. “Hey, Honey,” I paused to give him a kiss. “Have you met Yemanja?”
“Nyet,” Kirill held his hand out to the lwa. “I am Vervain's husband, Kirill.”
“Yes, I know,” Yemanja smiled and shook his hand. “I'm Yemanja, Lwa of the Sea.”
“It's pleasure to meet you,” Kirill nodded and went to get himself a cup of coffee.
“Oh, the pleasure is mine,” Yemanja gave him a quick smile. “But back to the souls, Vervain.”
“The souls?” Kirill returned to the table with his coffee and took the seat between Yemanja and Trevor.
“I'll fill you in after,” I waved a hand at him and he nodded. “Do you have any more information, Yemanja?”
“Yes,” she ran an elegant hand through her long, ebony hair and then ended up nervously playing with the strings of silver beads around her neck. “I don't know if you know this but I am a cross-over deity. I am both a lwa of Haitian Vodou and an orisha of Santeria.”
“No, I didn't know,” I confirmed. “Are the Vodou lwas and the Santeria orishas like Roman and Greek gods?”
“Yes, it's very much like the Roman and Greek pantheons,” she agreed. “We have similar religions and similar gods but most of our deities are separate individuals. I am one of the few who connect the two.”
“Is the main god the same?” I thought about how I'd just discovered that Jerry held sway over the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religions.
“Yes, our Bon Dieu is the same god,” she grimaced. “And just as with Jehovah, Bon Dieu doesn't bother with humans much.”
“Ah,” I nodded. “So you can't go to him for help.”
“No,” she rolled her eyes. “He would tell me not to interfere, to let the humans determine their own fate. But I can't abandon my children to these evil doers, Vervain... and I come on behalf of several lwas.”
“So this has happened to more than just you?” Trevor asked.
“Shango, Oshun, Erzulie Freda, and Erzulie Dantor,” she listed. “I could go on and on. We've all lost people. All but a token few of us, including the Baron.”
“Baron Samedi?” Kirill asked and I looked at him in surprise.
“Yes, the Baron of the Cemetery has not come forward to report any victims,” Yemanja's jaw hardened.
“So you think he's behind this?” I concluded.
“It's possible,” she closed her eyes briefly. “I don't want to believe it of him but I think he may be guilty. He doesn't have the highest morals to begin with and then he hangs out with that group of miscreants, the Gede.”
“The Gede?” I lifted a brow.
“A family of lwa whom Baron Samedi leads,” Yemanja explained. “They can be kind but also very cruel. In fact, one of them is called the Master of Murderers.”
“That doesn't sound good,” I sighed.
“But isn't zere also Papa Gede?” Kirill asked.
“You know Vodou,” Yemanja said with delight. “Yes, Papa is among them and he is said to never take a life before its time but he is rather outnumbered in that group and as fickle as the rest of them.”
“So we need to talk to this Baron,” I surmised.
“It would have to be done delicately,” Yemanja frowned.
“How does one delicately accuse the Lord of the Graveyard of murdering and betraying his own people?” Trevor rolled his eyes.
“With tact,” I smiled and my men groaned.
“Do you have tact, Godhunter?” Yemanja lifted a doubtful dark brow at me.
“Maybe we should send Hades,” I sighed. “We'll have to talk to the God Squad anyway. Can you stay awhile, Yemanja? We have plenty of room for you.”
“If you don't mind having a mermaid in your moat,” she smiled.
“I don't mind at all,” I chuckled. “As long as you don't mind being chased by a bunch of randy werelions.”
“We'll just see how fast your cats can swim,” she laughed.
And if you like The Godhunter Series, you may like The Twilight Court Series, a fantasy romance series by Amy Sumida.
Keep reading for a sneak peek into the first book:
Fairy-Struck
Fairy-Struck: Several types of conditions such as paralysis, wasting away, pining, and unnatural behavior resulting from an enchantment laid by an offended fairy.
Chapter One
Once upon a time, isn't that how all fairy tales begin? Except this isn't your average fairy tale. There are no charming princes or wicked witches within these pages and the fair maidens are more deadly than any big bad wolf. This is a fairy tale in the truest sense of the words; a story about fairies... the real story.
My name is Seren Sloane and I'm an Extinguisher. That will mean nothing to you, I'm sure, so let me go back a little further. No one knows the true origins of the fey, I don't think even the fey themselves remember, but theories abound. One theory has them evolving alongside us but where we advanced in groups, banding together to become stronger, the fey morphed out of those outcast predators who were too wild for a pack. Those who don't believe in evolution, think instead that the fey stem from divine creations, angels fallen from God's grace. Yet another tale insists they were gods themselves, or demi-gods, led by a mother goddess named Danu.
A final theory suggests they were not gods or angels or outcasts, merely nomads from an advanced civilization. The Scythians or Sidheans, from which the word sidhe originates. Myths tell of these talented Sidhe coming to Ireland where they flung about their magic and generally wrecked havoc until the aggrieved locals fought back and forced the fey to retreat into their raths, holy shrines now known as fairy mounds. History has disguised the raths as burial mounds even though originally, they were thought to be royal palaces for portal guardians. Although I cannot validate the rest of the tale, I do know this; the fey don't live under mounds of dirt. The original descriptions strike closer to the truth. The raths shrouded portals not corpses. Hidden paths to the fairy world, a realm laid parallel to ours and not at all underground.
Anyway, we did just fine living side by side with them until humans started destroying the environment around those entrances to Fairy. Fairies don't like it when you mess with nature and when they stroll from their magical abodes to find that mess strewn all over their backyard, they get even more pissy. So they began to fling the mess back. All those old stories about fairies stealing babies and striking people with wasting diseases, stem from this time period. Things got real bad, so bad that those of us who had the gift of clairvoyance and could actually see fairies, joined together to defend the human race.
The first Human-Fey war erupted across Eire, now known as Ireland, and the losses on both sides were staggering. After the third war, a grudging truce was finally attained and councils were created to mediate between the races and support the truce with laws approved by both sides. A good start to be sure but laws flounder and fail if they can't be enforced. Both councils conceded jurisdiction over their people to the other, agreeing upon the penalties to be meted out should someone be found guilty of a crime. Rules for determining guilt and administering justice were set into place and military units were sanctioned to carry out the verdicts of the councils.
The fairies created the Wild Hunt. They gathered the fiercest, most terrifying of their people and trained them to stalk the shadows of our world, watching us like guardian angels until one of us breaks the law. Then the angels become devils who do much more than watch. Trust me when I say you don't want to ever meet a member of the Hunt.
To police the fey, we created the Extinguishers. Formed of the five great psychic families who originally defended humanity, the Extinguishers inspire a fair amount of fear as well. Armed with clairvoyance among other talents which varies by person but can include; telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and psychometry, we also have some serious combat skills. Most humans don't have the ability to see a fairy
unless that fairy wants to be seen, so both council members and Extinguishers must at least possess clairvoyance. The Council keeps an eye out for humans with exceptional psychic abilities so they can recruit more into their fold but Extinguishers are born into the job. I'm one of those lucky few.
Kavanaugh, Teagan, Sullivan, Murdock, and Sloane. The first five psychic families of Ireland. Over the centuries we've become a secret society so big it spans the globe, gaining strength by breeding only within the five. This has virtually guaranteed powerful psychic gifts in our children. I'm the product of a Sloane and a Kavanaugh. Over thirty generations of contrived breeding(not inbreeding, thank you very much) has given me abilities which rank me as one of the top ten Extinguishers of all time.
I was trained from childhood to become what I am; an Extinguisher, a hunter of fairies, remover of the light of the Shining Ones. Childhood wasn't horrible for me but it was definitely not what most would consider to be normal. Bedtime stories were non-fiction accounts of Extinguisher heroism and instead of receiving platitudes that monsters weren't real, I was told most emphatically that they were and that when checking beneath my bed at night, I should always have an iron blade in hand. My only friends were children from other Extinguisher families and every game or toy had an ulterior motive behind it. Like the dolls my mother made me which showed what each type of fairy looked like... and had their weaknesses written on their backs in red ink.
Still, I was a child and I knew nothing else. Life seemed magical to me, not just in the way that life is magical to all children but in a literally magic way. I was taught to move objects with my mind, create fire in the palm of my hand, and make things materialize anywhere I wanted them to(that's called apportation in case you're curious, not teleportation which is a thing of science fiction). When I got older, I was taught to fight and finally, to kill.
Despite all of that, I wasn't raised to hate fairies. Quite the contrary, I was taught to care for them and protect them if need be. The job of an Extinguisher exists first and foremost to protect the peace. We kill fairies only when they disrupt that peace and then we do it in the most efficient and merciful way possible... after we receive a warrant of execution approved by the Council. We are, essentially, peace keepers.
That changed for my family when my mother was torn to pieces by a pack of pukas. I know, it sounds funny, doesn't it? A pack of pukas. In reality a bunch of fairy dogs the size of ponies, with teeth sharper than a shark's, shredded the flesh from my mother, gobbled down every last bit of it, and then gnawed on her bones till they could suck out the marrow. That reality killed all the mercy in my father and a lot of the compassion in me as well.
We immersed ourselves in the job, taking every warrant issued for criminal fey we could get our hands on until the Head Extinguisher himself finally noticed and called us to heel. We were sent to a small territory where very little fey crime occurred and where we were supposed to get our shit together. Most humans would love to live where we do now and when I tell you where we were put, I'm sure you'll roll your eyes but let me assure you that this place becomes a slow death for an Extinguisher. Peace keepers need a certain amount of action to keep us sane and Hawaii has very little of that on the fey front.
Yes, I've been exiled to paradise and for someone with my fair Irish skin, Hawaii imitates Hell in so many ways. Sure beauty abounds and the people here embody that tropical temperament of almost Gaelic hospitality but when you're itching for a fight, you don't want to be scratching at your peeling, sunburned skin too. Plus, the only fey to be found, the little local variety called menehune, frolic about causing mischief but never mayhem. Yep, Hawaiian fairies exist. Does that shock you? It shouldn't, I've already mentioned how the Fairy Realm lies parallel to ours. Mounds connect more than merely Ireland to Fairyland, they form bridges between Fairy and places all over the world. The fairies who frequent these paths seem to be influenced by the culture they cross over into.
And the fairies don't just visit. Ever since the creation of the Councils, a lot of fey have moved into our world in an effort to support the peace. There was also the issue of the numerous entrances to Fairy which needed to be guarded. So several fey council members have very human jobs with very powerful positions. I think you'd be pretty damn surprised if I told you which companies secretly belong to the fey.
We don't have any of those powerful companies here in Hawaii because, as I mentioned before, this place isn't all that important in the whole fey-human interrelations department. So my life has become a constant preparation for a battle it doesn't look like I'll ever be allowed to join, in a place whose beauty only feels like salt in my wounded heart. I will admit that my anger has lessened over my time here, as the memory of who my mother was slowly overshadows the memory of how she died, but for my father, this exile has only served to make him even more bitter, more vicious, and more intent on killing the entire fairy race.
About the Author
Amy Sumida lives on an island in the Pacific Ocean where gods can still be found, though there are very few fairies. She sleeps in a fairy bed, high in the air, with two gravity-defying felines and upon waking, she writes down everything the voices in her head tell her to. She aspires to someday become a crazy cat lady, rocking on her front porch and guarding her precious kitties with a shotgun loaded with rock salt. She bellydances and paints pictures on her walls but is happiest with her nose stuck in a book, her mind in a different world than this one, filled with fantastical men who unfortunately don't exist in our mundane reality. Thank the gods for fantasy.
You can find her on facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Godhunter-Series/323778160998617?ref=hl
On Twitter under @Ashstarte
On Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7200339.Amy_Sumida
On her website:
https://sites.google.com/site/authoramysumida/home?pli=1
And you can find her entire collection of books, along with some personal recommendations, at her Amazon store:
https://sites.google.com/site/authoramysumida/home?pli=1