by Unknown
“It's made from a special seaweed found in the Water Kingdom,” I explained. “The trace amounts of water magic within it counteract the excess amount of fire element within me.”
“Helps stop fire,” Kirill nodded.
“But on eggs?” Trevor asked in a horrified tone.
“It's not a sweet jam,” I shrugged. “It kind of reminds me of Vegemite.”
“Oh, gods no,” Trevor cried. “You can have your jam but do not bring Vegemite into this house.”
“Vegemite is good for you,” Azrael said as he came down the stairs that led up to his tower room.
“No, not you too,” Trevor shook his head in denial.
“What are we talking about?” Az smiled as he came over and gave me a good morning kiss.
“My strange food cravings,” I laughed. “You want some coffee?”
“I'd kill for a cup,” he nodded and went to pour himself one.
“Maybe not best phrase for you,” Kirill observed dryly.
“Hey, just because I'm the Angel of Death doesn't mean I actually kill people,” Azrael chuckled. “I just carry the souls.”
“Whatever,” Trevor scoffed. “I saw you at the monkey palace. You were doing more than just carrying souls.”
“I was defending the mother of our child,” Azrael huffed.
They were all still calling the baby theirs, even though we now knew that it was Arach who had fathered my son. I was a little worried about what would happen when the baby was born. Arach and I had counted on having a true dragon-sidhe heir, which meant a child that was one hundred percent dragon and therefore could rule the Fire Kingdom. We'd also thought this meant that the child would remain in Faerie and never be a part of my world in the God and Human Realms.
That all kind of changed when I gave our baby a god soul. See, I'm what you call a triple trinity. It's been a complicated path to get me here but basically, I have three magics, three beasts, and three races... of which I am one hundred percent of each. I know, confusing but trust me, it's true.
So when I first conceived, my child was in a state of imbalance. I had to choose another soul for it but I hadn't known who the father was at the time. So I'd waited until it became a little too late. It was in the midst of battle and I kind of lost control of the situation when I saw my friend Ull killed. Alaric, my trusty guardian and the consciousness of the Void(the place where human and god souls are created) helped me out and took my spirit to the Void so I could have a chance to recover... which is where I found Ull. It was pointed out to me that I could give my child two souls if I chose too, making him one hundred percent dragon-sidhe and one hundred percent something else. Such as one hundred percent god, if I gave him Ull's soul. This meant that if he ever died, his elemental essence could live on, bonded to his god soul... and could be reborn again.
Rebirth is not unknown to the fey, in fact it happens all the time, but not reincarnation. When a fey dies, their essence is returned to the fey source, which is basically a big soup of elements. The essence is dispersed back into the mix and then a portion of this is dished out again to create a new fey. So they are reborn but not as the same essence.
This possibility of being reborn again assuaged the hard feelings Arach had over having a son with a god soul but the fact that I'd chosen Ull's soul in particular, complicated things. It meant that Thor and Odin, and probably all of our friends, would want to be a part of this child's life. It also seemed to make my other men think that it was a given that they would help raise the child. That was a problem since this child needed to be raised as a faerie prince.
Something would have to be worked out but I'd yet to tell Arach about these issues. It had been hard enough to tell him I'd bonded my friend's soul to our child's essence. Like I mentioned, he'd been happy in the end but I hadn't wanted to wreck that happiness by telling him this also meant people who loved Ull would feel a need to know him again in his new life, even if he wouldn't remember them.
I also didn't think Arach would like my other men claiming parentage of his child. Dragons can be a bit possessive.
Then there was the one thing that Ull was likely to remember eventually, despite his memories being washed away through reincarnation. His love for a human woman named Kaitlin.
This hadn't seemed like a problem for me at first since it didn't look as if there would be other dragon-sidhe for my son to mate with. I'd gladly helped convince Kaitlin to eat an apple of immortality so she could wait for Ull to get old enough that a relationship with him wouldn't be gross... or criminal. Then King Rowan and Queen Liatris of the Dark Kingdom had become the first dark dragons and it was discovered that their union would produce children who could breed with mine. Except that my firstborn was already in love with a human. Another fact that I'd yet to tell Arach about.
“What is it?” Az asked as he took a seat at the table beside me.
“Nothing,” I smiled.
How could I be disapproving over his desire to be a father to a child who wasn't even his, just because that child happened to be mine? It was rather romantic actually and I couldn't bring myself to chide him over it. I'd have to think of a compromise.
“It is something,” Az lifted a brow over one light blue eye.
“Just maybe don't call the baby yours in front of Arach,” I gave him a little smile. How was that for compromise?
“Alright,” he laughed. “I hadn't even thought of that.”
“Oh damn,” Trevor started to laugh too. “That really would piss off Puff, wouldn't it?”
“Don't call him that,” I chided.
“You were the one who started it,” Trevor reminded me.
“That's before we were married,” I sighed. “Now I'm about to give birth to a baby Puff.”
“A puffling,” Kirill chuckled and I groaned.
“Speaking of weddings,” Azrael smoothly slid into his favorite topic of late. “My mom wants to go dress shopping with you.”
“I have to take my mom dress shopping with me,” I reminded him.
I'd told my mother we were having a wedding for me and all my men and she nearly fainted from happiness. I think she assumed I'd never get married because of my weird situation. Of course then I had to tell her that the wedding would need to wait until after I gave birth to a dragon baby and she nearly fainted from shock.
“Can't you take my mom too?” Az asked hopefully.
“I guess,” I blinked.
Take the Holy Spirit shopping with my mother the witch, to find a wedding gown for me; a triple trinity being who was pregnant with a dragon baby and was marrying four men at once. Yeah, that's something that doesn't happen everyday.
“Thank you,” Az gave me another kiss. “It means a lot to her. She really loves you, you know.”
“I love her too,” I said distractedly.
“Eat your seaweed eggs,” Trevor nudged my plate.
“Your what?” Azrael finally noticed what was on my plate and his eyes went round. “Please tell me we're all not eating that for breakfast.”
And now, another sneak peek into a new series
by Amy Sumida
Fairy Struck
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 fae but there are several theories. One is that they evolved alongside us but where we advanced in groups, banding together to become stronger, the fae evolved from those outcast predators who snubbed the idea of a pack. Another theory is that they simply showed up in Ireland one day, flinging about their magic and causing general mayhem for the natives until they were finally tricked into r
esiding within the fairy mounds. I don't know if either of those theories are true but I will tell you this; the fae don't live under mounds of dirt. Those are merely entrances to the fairy world, which is in a realm 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. Fairies don't like it when you mess with nature but when you mess with nature right outside their backdoor, they get particularly pissed. That's when they really started messing with us. 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 great Human-Fae war was fought and the losses on both sides were staggering. A truce was finally called and councils were made to communicate between the races and help keep that truce going. Diplomats can't accomplish anything without someone who can enforce their decrees though and so each side also created groups to patrol the other. The fae enforcers are called the Wild Hunt and they're the badest of the bad. Trust me when I say you do not want to ever meet a member of the Hunt.
To keep the fae in line, we created the Extinguishers. Made up of the five great psychic families who originally defended us, the Extinguishers are nothing to sneeze at either. Armed with talents such as telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, psychometry, and the standard clairvoyance that all Extinguishers have, we also have some serious combat skills. Most humans don't have the ability to see a fairy unless it really wants you too, so clairvoyance is a prerequisite to being either on the Council or in the Extinguishers. The Council keeps an eye out for humans with exceptional psychic talents 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 years we've become a secret society, gaining strength by breeding only within the five. This has virtually guaranteed that any new children are born with great psychic gifts, the least of which is the ability to see fairies. I'm the product of a Sloane and a Kavanaugh, and my abilities are impressive enough to 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. We didn't celebrate standard holidays for one thing. Instead of Christmas, it was Yule, instead of Easter, it was the Spring Equinox. My only friends were children from other Extinguisher families and every game or toy had an ulterior purpose to it. Like the dolls my mother made me which showed me what each type of fairy looked like... and had their weak spots drawn on with red Xs.
Still, I was a child and I knew no better. Life seemed magical to me, not just in the way that life is magical to all children but in an actual 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). 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 is 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. 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. The reality is that a bunch of fairy dogs the size of ponies with teeth sharper than a shark's, shredded the flesh from my mother, ate 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 fae 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 fae 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 is like 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 fae front.
Yes, I've been exiled to paradise and for someone with my fair Irish skin, Hawaii can become Hell in so many ways. Sure it's beautiful and the people here are real nice but when you're itching for a fight, you don't want to be itching at your peeling sunburned skin too. Plus, the only fae we ever see are the little menehune, which are the local variety. Yep, there's Hawaiian fairies. Does that shock you? It shouldn't, there are all kinds of fairies, all over the world and although they mainly live in their own world, that world exists parallel to ours, with a whole lot of paths connecting them. The fairies who frequent those paths seem to be influenced by the culture directly outside of them.
Now when I say they mainly live in their own world, that may be misleading. Ever since the creation of the Councils, a lot of fae 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 protected. So several fae council members have very human jobs with very powerful positions. I think you'd be pretty damn surprised if I told you which companies are actually fairy owned.
We don't have any of those powerful companies here because, as I mentioned before, Hawaii isn't all that important in the whole fae-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 pride. I will admit that my anger has lessened over the years here, as the memory of who my mother was slowly overshadows the memory of her death, 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. She sleeps in a fairy bed, high in the air, with two gravity-defying felines, and spends her days lost in the fantasies of the Godhunter's world. She, like Vervain, has no filter but has been fortunate enough to find friends who appreciate this... or at least tell her they do. She aspires to someday become a crazy cat lady, sitting on her rocker 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