by Ann Gimpel
“Excellent.” Dewi’s bottomless eyes reflected light from half a moon. “Get your things, ward the house against intruders, and we shall depart.”
“I’ll get Rune and the travel packs.” Aislinn disappeared behind the door.
“I doona have a good feeling about this.”
Bella landed heavily on his shoulder. Her taloned feet dug into his battle leathers.
“Nor do I,” Dewi concurred. “Yet, we have little choice.”
“What was that? I didn’t catch it.” Aislinn backed out of the house, dragging both packs. She hefted hers. “What’d you put in these? Rocks?”
“Water. The conversation wasn’t important. Ye dinna miss much.”
Fionn buckled his pack around his body and then helped Aislinn with hers. He cast a protection spell around the house that was a combination of warding and illusion. Hopefully, a casual passerby wouldn’t even notice the house was there. Marta had warded it similarly. As he hurried through small, familiar tasks, he swallowed ambivalence over and over again. His intuition was rarely wrong, and it blasted him with klaxon horns. Each one said Aislinn should stay behind.
He glanced at the wolf. Rune felt something because his hackles were at half-mast. “Mayhap we ought to rethink this—”
“If rethinking translates to leaving me here, forget it.” Aislinn hurried down the steps and stood next to Dewi. Rune followed her.
“Leannán—”
“We need to leave right now,” Dewi said. “The time for talking has passed. Now is the time for action.”
Air currents shifted around Fionn as the dragon called magic. Bella jabbed him in the neck with her beak. “You heard Dewi. Unless you plan to use our own spell—and maybe come out in a different place—I suggest we join the others.”
“Since when do ye call the shots?” The bird could be impossible. He recalled how much effort he’d expended ignoring her over the centuries. Fionn unclenched his jaws, strode down the steps, and placed an arm around Aislinn, taking care to position himself so Bella couldn’t reach her. The bird had made every woman in his life miserable. Tara Lenear still hated the raven—and she was dead.
That’s not important now. I need to focus.
Dewi’s magic intensified, and he added some of his own to the mix. He wasn’t certain what they’d find and wanted to make the transition as easy as possible—and as safe, if such a thing were even doable.
“Thank you,” sounded deep in his mind from the dragon.
A portal edged with flame opened in the air. Fionn tried peering through, but all he saw on the far side was darkness. For just a moment, he wondered if Dewi was engaged in some treachery of her own, but he put a lid on his reservations. If I canna trust the dragon, I canna trust anyone.
“I will hold the gate,” Dewi announced. “Hurry. This is taking more magic than I thought it would.”
Keeping a firm hold on Aislinn, Fionn jumped through into absolute darkness. He felt Rune next to his leg. Bella clung to his shoulder. Rather than anger, the bird’s death grip transmitted fear. They fell through an airless void that was so cold, icicles formed on his eyelashes and in his hair. He fanned warming magic to encompass them all, but he couldn’t create oxygen where there wasn’t any to begin with.
His lungs burned. If they stayed in this in-between place for very much longer, they’d all be dead. Aislinn’s hand tightened on his. He wanted to reassure her, but there wasn’t enough air to talk. He couldn’t divert magic to use mind speech; there wasn’t any to spare.
Fionn was just starting to conjure a counter spell to, hopefully, return them to Earth, when the darkness developed gray streaks. He sucked in a breath, gratified oxygen was returning to the atmosphere. It had a way to go, but at least his aching lungs eased a little. Gravity tugged and he fell faster. Fionn diverted the magic he’d called for his counter spell into a casting to weave air molecules together. The lower they got, the more substantial the cushion of air felt.
“Thank Christ I can breathe again,” Aislinn murmured low.
“Mind speech, mo croi.”
“Do you think Rune is all right?”
“I doona know. What happens when ye feel for him through the Hunter bond?”
She made a disgusted sound. “I’m not thinking here. Just a moment.”
His body touched something solid, but softly, as if gravity were different here. The border worlds were never the same two trips running. Fionn hated them. If he spent too long on any of them, they perverted his magic and made him not care—about anything. He avoided them whenever he could.
“I am here.” Claws clicking over granite sounded unnaturally loud nearby.
“Walk softly,” Fionn urged.
Aislinn blew out a breath. “Shit! That was much harder than I expected. Way worse than where Rune once took me.”
“’Tis likely because he dinna take you to one of the dark gods’ lairs. There are border worlds other than the ones controlled by the dark.”
Fionn looked around them. As Dewi had promised, it was night in this world, too. Dual moons rode side by side in the sky, casting the landscape in an eerie greenish glow. He stood on the edge of a hard-packed dirt plain with deep fissures in it. Behind them was a forest, but most of the trees were either dead or dying. The air held an unpleasant smell, rather like road kill left in the sun to rot.
Aislinn leaned against him. She trembled slightly and reached a hand to welcome Rune. The wolf shook himself, his amber eyes reflecting moonlight.
“Where’s the dragon?” Bella asked.
“Hmph,” Fionn snorted, his earlier suspicions racing to the forefront. “Good question.”
“Look behind you.”
Fionn spun. It was Dewi’s voice, but he hadn’t heard her land. “I doona see how—”
“Spell of absolute silence. It was why I had so much trouble with the gate and why it took so long to transit the boundary betwixt the worlds. When did you stop trusting me, Fionn?”
He recognized truth in her words and winced. “Probably after ye coerced Aislinn into fucking the Minotaur. Doona fash, Dewi. I can lay it aside. We must be united, or we shall fail.”
“Agreed. I will shift the silence casting to one of invisibility with Aislinn at its core.”
“What’s that?” Aislinn sounded terrified. She twisted her head from side to side.
The ground vibrated beneath him about the same time he heard Aislinn’s panicked mind speech. “Quick,” he sent. “Into the trees. Invisibility spell or no, we canna hide on this plain.”
CHAPTER NINE
Aislinn swallowed, but her throat was dry and scratchy. It was one thing to fight with just her and another human. Or just her and Rune. Fionn had been right when he’d made a bid for her to remain on Earth. They were too many. She didn’t see how the five of them could do anything but fall over one another—and end up dead, or worse, captured. She remembered too late how she’d sent Fionn, Rune, and Bella packing so she could face D’Chel alone. It was easier that way. If she made any mistakes, she’d be the only one to suffer.
She tried to walk as noiselessly as possible, but it wasn’t easy. The forest, such as it was, was full of dead, dry branches and choked with dense, crackly undergrowth. She had no idea what Dewi was doing. The dragon was far too large to wend her way through the path Fionn set for them. Aislinn wondered just how far the dragon’s invisibility casting could reach.
Visions of Perrikus, with his waist-length auburn hair and green eyes, taunted her. Like all the dark gods, he was so beautiful that it was hard to look at him. D’Chel’s chiseled features cropped up next, as if to inquire, what about me? I’m beautiful, too, aren’t I? He’d killed her father on that long-ago night in Bolivia. Silky dark hair flowed around well-defined muscles and bronzed skin. Copper eyes leered at her, and she realized her imagination had cast him naked; his substantial erection rose to mock her with its perfection. Against her will, her body started to respond.
Just like in the forest t
hat day… Aislinn shoved the memory away. She’d come within a hairsbreadth of succumbing to D’Chel, and more than once. Shaken by how close she’d come to being lost forever, she focused on how cold he’d been and the nearly-too-late knowledge she’d freeze from the inside out if he touched her.
“Ooph.” She bit off a string of curses and dragged her foot out of a tangle of roots. It throbbed and she knew she’d twisted it. Rune nosed her hand, urging her forward. That’s what I get for not paying attention. She limped after Fionn and Bella. The pain was welcome because it drove D’Chel’s sneering face—and perfect body—out of her mind.
Aislinn glanced around, grateful her hair was tucked under a hood. Dead branches were thick, and the forest had a rotten smell that hinted of dead things layered beneath her feet.
“This way,” Fionn hissed. “Pay attention.”
She stared through the murk. Fionn wasn’t ahead of her anymore, and her throat tightened. “Where?”
“Half a dozen paces back, then hard right.”
Aislinn knew how to follow a track, and she dunned herself for carelessness. Feeble light from the moons illuminated telltale pebble patterns and branch breakage. It was easy to see where she’d deviated from Fionn’s route. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked Rune.
“I did. It was like you couldn’t hear me. I was getting ready to bite you.”
Great. Something about this place has me in its grip already. She shuddered. “Fionn, wait.”
She slid under a thicket, trying to keep long thorns from catching in her clothing. The ground sloped downward until she entered a narrow fissure in a rock wall. The moonlight disappeared. Darkness enveloped her, and she inched forward by feel, hoping she wouldn’t fall off the edge of something. She heard water dripping nearby, and the air felt heavy and damp. Fionn had led them into an underground cavern.
The faintest of lights flared ahead, illuminating Fionn with Bella on his shoulder.
“Where are we?” She covered the few feet to stand at his side.
“’Tis a route I took once before. The air feels cleaner to me down here. We needed a place to regroup. I sensed something untoward happening to you, but there was naught I could do out in the open.”
“Where’s Dewi?”
Fionn shrugged. “She can take care of herself. What happened back there?”
“My mind was suddenly full of Perrikus and D’Chel. They were all I could think about…”
Fionn pounded a fist into his hand. “Damn it all to hell. I was afraid of that. They know ye are here. Something about you draws them.”
“You don’t know that. Not for sure.” She felt unaccountably defensive. “They probably figured we’d come after Gwydion and Bran.”
“All right. Then they see you as the weakest link. So ye are their target. Either way, ’tis far from good.”
“I thought Dewi made me invisible.”
“She probably has her own set of problems. Look…” He drew her close. “’Tis every person for himself on these worlds. The dark gods twist things so ye can scarcely believe your senses.”
Aislinn pulled away. “The less time we spend here the better. Have you figured out if Gwydion and Bran are even here?”
He shook his head.
“Our best bet is to split up. We can cover more ground searching that way.”
“Nay.”
“I didn’t insist on coming to have you babysit me. Rune and I will be fine.”
The wolf nipped her hand. “Not so sure about that. You didn’t hear me when I tried to tell you something.”
Aislinn ignored him. “Did we ever figure out what I felt just before we took off into the woods?”
“Yes, a perversion of the Cŵn Annwn. The Wild Hunt. ’Tis likely where Dewi is. Drawing them off.”
“But I felt the ground shake.”
Fionn blew out an irritated breath. “And just where do ye think the Hunt stays when they are not in the air?”
“Oh.”
“This is why ye canna go off alone. Ye doona know enough—” His blue eyes sparked in the dim light. He looked like he wanted to pick her up, toss her over one shoulder, and have done with any further discussion.
“Okay. Okay.” She repressed her aversion to being ordered about. “We’re not accomplishing anything here. Let’s get moving.”
“Aye, and we must hurry. Keep me in sight and keep up.” Fionn turned and walked deeper into the cave, paying out just enough light for her to follow.
“Where are you going?” Aislinn demanded. She felt unaccountably peevish, maybe because her ankle ached. “If you don’t tell me, I’m not—”
Bella cawed; the sound bounced off the cave’s walls. “We have been here before,” the bird said. “Trust Fionn. He will not lead you astray.”
It would be easier to trust him if he’d talk to me. Aislinn stalked after Fionn. She understood that part of her rotten mood was a manipulation of this place. Maybe Fionn was having the same problem.
She helped jimmy Rune through a narrow gap in the rock. It took her pushing at his hindquarters and him scrabbling at a rocky shelf with his front paws to get him past the barrier. Fionn must have turned sideways to navigate the slender arched opening, and even then it would have been tight.
His light flickered far ahead. She grasped the sides of the fissure, intent on following while she could still see something.
“Got you.” An intransigent grip settled around her waist.
“Fionn!”
“Go ahead. Use your real voice. I’ve muffled your magic and made you invisible to him. He won’t be able to hear you.” A man chuckled menacingly.
Fear catapulted through her. She writhed against her captor, desperate to turn around so she could see who held her.
Rune howled. She heard him running toward her.
“Hmph. Hadn’t counted on that creature of yours.”
Hands lifted her; Aislinn flew through the air. She landed hard, breath knocked out of her. Gasping, she lurched to her feet and half-ran toward the opening Fionn and Rune had gone through. A man stood between her and it, faced away from her. His broad shoulders blocked her view, but the long black hair was unmistakable. D’Chel. This must be his world.
Rocks ground against one another as the gap closed. Her skin tingled unpleasantly while D’Chel pulled magic, and she hurled herself at his back. Aislinn clung like a wild thing, scratching and biting. She had to keep Rune safe. The dark god could kill her wolf with a thought. She’d just reached around and dug her fingers into D’Chel’s eye sockets when the man’s body began to change beneath her.
D’Chel, god of illusion, was shucking his human form, probably in favor of something with scales or a thick coat she couldn’t injure. “Noooooo,” she shrieked. “Nooooooo.”
Reptilian scales thick with slime cut her hands. Aislinn ignored the pain, but slick muck coating the scales did her in. No matter how tight she held on, she still slipped backward, hitting the rocky floor of the cave hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs—again. Since stealth didn’t matter anymore, she leapt to her feet and threw her magic wide open. Despite what D’Chel had said, it burned bright within her. She called up a mage light and set wards about herself. Something that looked like a cross between a smallish dragon and a dinosaur spun to face her. Its scales were black, its whirling eyes copper, just like D’Chel’s.
On the other side of the rock wall, Rune howled mournfully. Thank Christ he’s still alive. One less thing to worry about. She squared her shoulders and tossed her hair back. Magic pummeled her ward, but didn’t come close to breaking it.
“Not possible,” the dragonesque creature snapped. The air shimmered and the reptile turned into D’Chel again. “I muffled your magic.”
Aislinn cocked her head to one side. “Well, it appears you didn’t do a very good job. Now, what do you want with me?”
His perfect face broke into a smile, displaying very white teeth against his bronzed skin. “I’m not quite ce
rtain. Though with your spirit and your magic, you’d make a most excellent mother for my children.” He snorted. “Once we abort the one in your belly, that is. Last thing we need is more Celtic god scum mucking up the works.”
Her hands flew to her stomach. Shock roiled through her. “Y-You’re mistaken,” she stammered. “You’re just saying that to throw me off guard.”
He furled perfectly arched brows. “Since your magic is obviously intact, why don’t you check for yourself?”
Aislinn’s hands shook from more than fear. Was this why Fionn had asked about children so casually the other day? If what D’Chel said were true, no wonder Fionn hadn’t wanted her to come along tonight. She girded herself and sent a tendril of Mage magic snaking inward. Tears flooded her eyes. A son. I’m carrying Fionn’s son. He must have known. Why didn’t he tell me?
“Ah.” D’Chel’s copper eyes stared right through her. “So you’ve discovered I speak the truth.” He laughed in a macabre parody of mirth. “I don’t always, but in this particular instance…”
“Shut up. Just shut up,” she moaned.
He inclined his head. “As you will. I do not require talk. You have two choices, human woman. Come with me willingly, or I will bind you with magic and bring you along anyway.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“That is none of your concern. Nor is it up for discussion. Your choice?” A flat coldness lay beneath his words, and his tone told Aislinn now was not the time to try to bargain. No, she’d be well served to keep her options as open as she could.