Story Overview
Shannon usually prefers the dead to the living. But then running a funeral parlor offers a different perspective. Peace and escape. Or at least it did until the day she’s summoned by her sister to their Winter Harbor chalet in Maine. Now she knows the truth. The veil between worlds is far thinner than she thought. In fact, it’s so thin she and her daughter Emily slip back in time.
Of dragon blood, Matthew Sigdir has suffered more loss than most. A wife. Sister. Now, because of a vicious enemy, possibly his son, Håkon. Infuriated, determined to find his child, he heads north over unforgiving land. What he doesn’t expect is a twenty-first century little girl and her beautiful mother, Shannon, to join him on his quest. Nor does he expect Hel to show them favor. And there’s no turning away Loki’s daughter when she offers help. Now they have to navigate not only through the elements of a wicked Scandinavian winter but Helheim itself, the underworld of the dead.
While they travel, Matthew and Shannon are forced to face their pasts. What they left behind and all that haunts them. As they do, old wounds heal. Hope grows. Love sparks. Through it all, Emily leads them ever closer to Håkon. She’s the key. But is it already too late? Will they make it in time to save Matthew’s son? Or is the enemy one step ahead of them?
Series Overview
Long ago, a new tribe was born onto Midgard, or Middle Earth, via one of the Nine Worlds, Múspellsheimr, a place of fire and lava. They were a clan of Vikings who were half man, half creature. A species called dragon that was more powerful than any other. Three dragon lineages were born of the first family. Two warred with each other. One remained neutral. All except the Sigdir clan were eventually assumed extinct until a tenth-century Viking determined to keep his MacLomain descendants safe angered the gods. When that happened, old enemies surfaced and unknowing allies from the twenty-first century were forced into the open. Now war will wage as three families born of another world are submerged in an age-old blood feud.
Fury of a Viking
The MacLomain Series: Viking Ancestors’ Kin
Book Four
By
Sky Purington
Dedication
This is dedicated to the power of family.
COPYRIGHT © 2017
Fury of a Viking
Sky Purington
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of these books may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Edited by Cathy McElhaney
Cover Art by Tamra Westberry
Published in the United States of America
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Previous Releases
About the Author
Chapter One
Winter Harbor, Maine
April 2017
SHE SHOULD LEAVE. Just walk away from all this. Go home. Back to what she knew. What she was good at. The dead. Not the living.
Shannon checked her watch and frowned. Cameron should have called or texted by now. He knew she liked to be kept updated. To be assured everything was okay. Especially considering what had been happening lately.
She eyed the picture hanging on her wall as she laced up her boots. Titled, ‘Fury’ it was one of several in her sister, Cybil’s Dragons of Winter Harbor collection. An unusual photograph, it captured the full moon shining over the ocean in the wake of a bad storm. Prisms of blue, a dragon appeared to materialize out of nowhere. Anger burned in its eyes, caught by the reflection of lunar light on the water.
“I don’t blame you for being so furious, dragon,” she muttered under her breath as she started on the other lace. Though determined to ignore it, her eyes drifted back to the picture. Better yet, what had appeared in the background.
A small dragon being carried off by a much larger one.
The enemy.
A strong feeling of discontent filled her as she frowned at it and finished lacing up her boot. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to see her child taken away like that. To watch her daughter being snatched by a monster. She sighed and shook her head. There was nothing she could do for Matthew. More so, all that haunted him. Or at least she kept telling herself that.
Matthew was the last thing she needed in her life right now. He was the angry dragon Cybil captured in the clouds. And, unfortunately, the little dragon was his son, Håkon.
“You’re thinking about him again, aren’t you, Mama?” Emily said softly from the doorway. As always, she had approached without Shannon hearing. She was good at that. In fact, she was good at far too many things at such a young age.
“I’m not thinking about anyone, baby girl.” She patted the bed beside her. “Come sit. Let’s talk.”
Emily plunked down beside her. Most people thought she looked just like Shannon with her black hair and pale blue eyes. The only marked difference was that Emily had a mop of wild curls where Shannon’s hair was only wavy.
“You’re always thinking about him around this time.” Emily’s eyes went to the clock on the wall before they returned to her. “He hasn’t called yet, has he?”
Shannon pocketed her cell phone. Emily wasn’t talking about Matthew or Håkon but her brother-in-law.
Shannon kept her voice light. “You mean Cameron?”
“Yes,” Emily murmured. “Uncle Cameron.”
“Yes, uncle,” Shannon confirmed and fingered one of Emily’s curls. She knew very well why her daughter stressed the word uncle. “He’s a good friend to us both. Nothing more.”
“Then why do you talk to him so much?” Emily said. “Why do you set your watch by it?”
Shannon was careful with her words because Emily had lost her father two years ago in a car accident. Though she had been raised differently when it came to the concept of death, that didn’t make her loss any easier to cope with. Not really.
“He’s helping me run my business while we’re here,” Shannon reminded. “And we both know he’s the only one who can do it as well as mama, right?”
Uncertainty flickered across Emily’s face, but she nodded. “I suppose so.” Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think he helps the dead people cross over as well as you do, Mama?”
Most might think that was an unusual question for a little girl to ask. But then again, most hadn’t been raised by a mother who ran a funeral parlor.
“I think he does,” she confirmed then redirected the conversation. “An awful lot has been going on. How are you doing, sweetie? What do you think about all of this?”
“That I wanna be a dragon,” Emily announced, a twinkle in her eyes. “And that I’m pretty sure I already am.”
Shannon pressed her lips together and shrugged. This wasn’t the first time she had brought this up,
and it wouldn’t be the last. After all, Emily knew Matthew and his family were dragons.
But what she really wanted to focus on were the endless comings and goings of Emily’s aunts and the Viking warriors between here and tenth-century Scandinavia. A fact her daughter seemed to accept faster than most. But then she did have an overactive imagination. More than that, she was half dragon and pretty much on the verge of figuring it out.
Still, one thing at a time.
“Really, Emily.” She tilted her head until their eyes met. “How are you doing? I worry about you.”
“I’m okay.” Emily’s lips tilted down, and she sighed. “But I miss Auntie Cybil, Auntie Samantha, and Auntie Lauren.” She shrugged. “Even though I know I’ll see them again soon.”
She ignored the chill that raced up her spine. Emily was so certain they would be traveling back in time and seeing Cybil, Sam, and Lauren again. If that happened, Shannon knew her fate would be sealed one way or another.
Matthew or Kodran.
Because they were the only Sigdir dragons left and if what her sisters said was true, she was meant for one of them and her fraternal twin, Erica, was destined for the other. And based on what had happened recently, it seemed more likely that Shannon was meant for Matthew and that wasn’t good. Sure, he was handsome, and she was drawn to him, but the two of them could never be more than friends. And friends was a stretch considering what she knew.
“Of course, we’ll see your aunts again soon,” Shannon assured. “When they come home.”
“No.” Emily gave her a come-on-mom look. “We’ll see them when we finally get to travel back in time to see Sven.”
Shannon kept her expression well-schooled. Emily had taken to the teenage Viking so strongly, it alarmed her. Not because of Sven himself. He seemed kind enough. What worried her was that he seemed just as enamored with Emily. Naturally, it was purely platonic given their ages, but it concerned her. No one had gotten through to Emily since her father died. And no one had put that particular light back in her eyes. Until now. Until Sven.
She started shaking her head to deny they would be traveling back in time, but Emily grasped her hand. “You don’t have to deny it anymore, Mama. I know it’s going to happen. I’ve known for a while now.”
Shannon inhaled deeply. For months she’d tried to put this off. Emily might be young, but she was intelligent, perceptive and half dragon. She had already seen people materialize beneath the ash tree then vanish just as readily. She’d watched Samantha come and go. Watched as a hex had kept Lauren trapped in the house for three months. And, she had spent countless hours with Megan and Svala.
Megan originally traveled back in time a few years ago but had returned last summer. Because of the way time passed differently between the past and present, she was twenty-five years older. She never intended to come back, but as it turned out, her husband lay on his deathbed in Scandinavia, and she needed to seek treatment for cancer. Svala was her daughter, a spirited Viking dragon shifter who didn’t hold back when it came to the truth.
So Emily knew all of this wasn’t her imagination.
She understood exactly what was going on, and it was past time Shannon acknowledged that.
“All right.” Shannon squeezed her hand and brushed Emily’s hair back from her forehead. “Let’s talk about what you think about traveling back in time.” She cupped her daughter’s cheek and held her eyes. “What’s going through your mind? Are you frightened?”
“Not at all,” Emily said. “But you are.”
“No,” Shannon said a little too quickly. “Why would you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” Emily’s eyes drifted to the picture. “Because you were frightened when he was here.”
“I was not,” Shannon almost said but bit her tongue.
“I know you were, Mama.” Emily rested her head against Shannon’s shoulder, her eyes still on the picture. “And I don’t blame you. Viking Matthew’s a bad man.”
“No he’s not,” she said before she could stop herself. “He’s just misunderstood.”
Where Emily had taken to Sven, she’d done the opposite with Matthew. It made no sense. Yes, Matthew came across a bit sterner than most, but something like that wouldn’t sway Emily. If anything, her daughter would make it her mission to draw him out. But not this time. She was convinced he had abandoned his son and that was why the enemy had Håkon. Because Matthew wasn’t looking after him.
How Emily sensed any of it to begin with was a mystery. Maybe she knew more because her dragon was awakening while she was still so young.
“But look what happened to Matthew’s son,” Emily said. “The bad guy got him, right?”
Shannon was still caught off guard that Emily was so comfortable with the idea of dragons existing. More so, that all these Vikings were half dragon and that she wanted to be one too.
“We don’t know for sure if the bad guy has Håkon.” Shannon decided to be completely honest, though it wasn’t easy. “The enemy likes to play tricks.”
“I know,” Emily said, completely at ease with the conversation. “But I don’t think the enemy had anything to do with Matthew ignoring his son.”
Shannon agreed to an extent but kept it to herself. Mainly because she knew things about Matthew that no one else did. Things that could very well have to do with an outside influence of evil.
“Ah, there you two are,” Mema Angie said, arriving at the door with a wide smile.
A family friend with secrets of her own, Mema Angie had been a Godsend since this all began. Shannon often wondered what her real story was because it was clear that she wasn’t just a peppy seventy year old with the face and energy of a fifty-something woman. Unlike most, nothing otherworldly followed her. No spirits came or went. Nothing visited her.
She was a rarity. Someone separated from what lay beyond this life.
“Is it almost time then?” Emily jumped to her feet, all distress over Cameron, Matthew and Håkon gone. “Are they almost here?”
“They are,” Angie confirmed with a smile. “Why don’t you come downstairs and help me and Aunt Megan get the cookies out of the oven before they arrive.”
“Good idea,” Emily agreed and headed after her. “Uncle Sean always has a sweet tooth after being out at sea. And so does Auntie Warrioress Svala.” She glanced back at Shannon. “Are you coming to help, Mama?”
“Yes.” She nodded and smiled. “I’ll be there in a few minutes, okay?”
Emily’s smile faltered but not for long as Mema Angie ushered her along and her attention refocused on baking. Better yet, all the chocolaty goodness she’d soon lick off the spoon.
Shannon eyed her phone one more time and shook her head. Cameron should have checked in by now. Something was off. She sighed, tucked it back in her pocket and headed downstairs. As planned, Mema Angie kept Emily distracted in the kitchen so Shannon could sneak into the garage and make sure everything was ready to go.
Instead of being out to sea like Emily believed, Sean and Svala had been busy at Sean’s cabin working on something special. While Shannon found it strange that they had built a small boat for Emily, she figured it would, much like the boat already here, likely play a part in all of this.
She ran her hand along the Viking boat already sitting in one of the garage stalls. This vessel had quite the history. Built by Sean and Megan, it propelled Megan back in time to her Viking king. Then it became a big part of Svala’s life. A means to finally bring her together with Sean. Now here it sat with its Runic symbols and carved pictures waiting patiently for what Shannon suspected would be a boat fairly similar to it. How could it not be considering Emily’s boat had the mast and sail that used to be on this one.
She cleared everything out of the way and again wondered what Emily would think. Yes, she had developed a love for the sea and Vikings, but she knew nothing about sailing. Svala and Sean assured Shannon they would teach her all she needed to know but still. It worried her. All of this did
. Yet no one would know by looking at her. She made a point of always remaining calm.
It was the only way to handle two worlds at once.
It was the only way to maintain her sanity.
She smiled as the garage door opened and Sean backed the boat into the stall. As far as she could tell, it was the same size as the other one. Within minutes, Sean had it detached, and the door closed.
“Thanks again for doing this.” Shannon looked at Sean in question as he headed for the door to the house. “Aren’t you going to uncover it first?”
“No.” Svala shook her head, excitement in her eyes. “You and Emily should uncover it.”
“Me?” Shannon eyed them with curiosity. “But you two made it. Don’t you think you should unveil it with her?”
Neither answered as Sean opened the door. Naturally, Emily was already standing there. By the look on Mema Angie’s face, it must have been difficult keeping her away for the past few minutes. As soon as the garage opened, Emily would have known they were there. Scratch that. The second they pulled into the driveway.
“Welcome back!” Emily threw her arms around Sean before she headed for Svala and did the same, her eyes wide on the covered boat. “What’s that?”
“Something special Uncle Sean and I made for you,” Svala said, pride in her voice. “Why don’t you and your mother uncover it?”
Megan appeared at the door beside Mema Angie, a knowing smile on her face.
Emily’s eyes were wide. “Really?”
Shannon smiled and nodded. “Sure, why not?”
Thankfully, the cover was lightweight and easy to remove. The boat was beautiful. An absolute masterpiece. Like the other one, it was lovingly constructed with Runic symbols carved here and there.
“Oh, wow, look at this!” Emily bubbled with excitement as she ran around it. “It’s amazing!”
Fury of a Viking (The MacLomain Series: Viking Ancestors' Kin Book 4) Page 1