The Gathering

by Jennifer Ashley

  Tain snarled. “Sorry to spoil your plans.”

  Tain lunged at him again, but Kehksut spun him away. “It’s your own fault,” Kehksut said, his tone conversational. “Demons used to walk tall and proud, our race ancient and strong. Then the Immortals came, and we were treated like shit, tolerated only because the world needs enough death magic to hold everything in check. We diminished, when we once controlled the world.”

  Tain held his swords ready, breathing hard. “You say control, I say enslave. You weren’t strong. The goddesses and Immortals kicked your asses. That’s why most of the Old Ones are dead.”

  “The goddesses aren’t here anymore,” Kehksut pointed out. “You’re on your own. They don’t like to interfere with human problems, silly girls.”

  “They are here. They’re in the witches my brothers love.”

  “Love,” Kehksut rumbled. “You of all of them should have learned that love only makes you weak and stupid.”

  “It does if you’re weak and stupid to begin with. My brothers have discovered love, and through their love, the goddesses manifest.”

  Kehksut saw a movement out of the corner of his eye. The witch called Amber, who had so cleverly rescued Adrian from the tower room, floated across the dead grass to Kehksut, her body haloed in a white glow.

  “The goddess Isis has leant me her powers of Earth.”

  “I bring Water, infused with the power of Uni,” Christine Lachlan said, she too floating toward him. “Mother goddess of the Etruscan peoples.”

  Next, the hated werewolf with the gray eyes. “I bring Fire, enhanced by the goddess Sekhmet.” Lexi blinked once and grinned. “This feels cool. And you know . . . she’s really pissed off.”

  The last witch—Leda—glimmered toward him, surrounded by fire. “And I have air magic, infused by the mother goddess Kali. And that means . . . Destruction.”

  Leda let out a shrill, primitive cry, only one like it heard before, at the dawn of time when Kali and her lover Shiva danced the world into being.

  Leda sent a tornado-like wind at Kehksut, which was followed by a stream of fire from Lexi. The earth undulated and opened at Kehksut’s feet when Amber pointed to it, dirt climbing his gigantic legs and sucking him downward. Clouds built into intense proportions above, and rain poured down in torrents, infused with powerful water magic.

  And the fifth goddess? Kehksut, fighting to regain control, barely saw the half-demon girl rise, her broken body propelled by another force.

  “You used my son,” she breathed, and fire came from her mouth. “You tortured him until he was lost to me, and he kept crying out. The fifth element is infused in me, Akasha, all and one, with the power of the universe. Death magic, life magic, all is the same to me.”

  She sent her power at him, the fire-sharp power of Cerridwen, goddess of the darkening moon, made even stronger by the death magic residing in this demon-child. The other four witch-goddesses smote Kehksut again, and then came the combined power of the Immortal warriors, their life magic hitting him at the same time.

  They confronted him, all five Immortals together—Adrian, Darius, Kalen, Hunter, Tain—each raising their weapons with a whirl of sound, eyes narrowed in grim concentration. The flame-sword, the cobra, the spear, the blood-bronze swords, Darius with knives and the Bocca demon he called Fury, infused with Darius’s magic once more.

  Over that came the roar of a mighty dragon, his incandescent fire washing over Kehksut’s side.

  “Just die already, will you?” Valerian snarled as he swooped past.

  Kehksut began to feel a tinge of fear, something he hadn’t experienced for a long, long time. Not since fighting his first Immortal, Adrian, long ago in the searing heat of the Egyptian desert had he felt anything akin to fear. From that day to this he’d determined the Immortals would pay for making him vulnerable.

  Tain loved him; Tain would help him. Kehksut had made Tain his slave, treated him as a son, as a lover. He’d trained him, made him strong and able to take massive amounts of pain. Pain made you strong—that was the answer. Pain, not love.

  Kehksut deflated from his true demon form into the shape of a woman, the one Tain liked best. Her hair fell over her lush breasts, but her body was still scaled like a serpent’s.

  “Tain, honey,” she said, but her voice was gravelly and wrong. “Don’t hurt me. You know you don’t love her.” She pointed at Samantha, who glared at her with Cerridwen’s eyes. “You love me. We’ll go somewhere, just the two of us, and be together like before.”

  She reached out a hand, alarmed to find it a claw. “You know you like it rough,” Kehksut said, at last able to insert the sultry note into her voice. She dragged the hooked nails down Tain’s chest, trailing a line of blood.

  With the other hand, she blasted Samantha with a final wave of death magic. The magic tore through the fire surrounding Samantha, obliterating it. The light left Samantha’s eyes, and she crashed to the ground.

  Tain roared and lunged. Kehksut looked down in surprise at the two gleaming bronze swords stuck between her breasts, the twin blades penetrating her black heart.

  “Tain, honey . . .” And then there was nothing.

  “Get down!” Adrian shouted.

  The body of the dead woman morphed back into Kehksut’s true form, the huge, ancient demon of the kind that had walked the land when Egypt and Mesopotamia were struggling to eke out an existence, humans putting forth their first tendrils of civilization.

  Hunter hit the ground, pulling Leda beneath him as the death magic Kehksut had unleashed now imploded. Everything Kehksut’s magic had created—the horde of demons, the pockets of non-reality, the wash of darkness—tore back into the body of the demon. Blackness poured across the land with terrible intensity, the force destroying everything in its path. Trees uprooted and fell, the ground opened, the wind grew to hurricane strength.

  Hunter protected Leda the best he could, shielding her from the worst with his body. He tried to use his magic to help, but the dense concentration of death magic wouldn’t let a flicker through. He couldn’t lift his head to see what happened to everyone else, but he felt a warm weight land on his back and a frustrated sound of man trying to growl—Mukasa, dragging himself over to protect Hunter.

  “I love you,” he heard Leda say through the noise.

  “I love you too, baby.”

  There was a sharp explosion of sound, complete darkness, and then a pall of utter silence.

  Samantha swam to consciousness to the finest sensation she’d ever experienced. Warmth pulsed through her body, sweet and whole, and she responded. Her breasts tightened, and arousing heat darted between her thighs.

  She smiled. Great dream. She hadn’t had time for relationships lately, but none had been as good as this. She was going to climax on imagined feelings alone.

  Sharp pain cut through the glorious dream. Her arm jerked, then her torso, and memories flooded back to her. Rising through the air, her body already broken from her hard fall, she throwing incredible goddess magic at the huge, hideous demon. Then another fall, down, down to the flat earth, her arm and ribs cracking anew. Stunning pain, then nothing.

  Samantha groaned. No. She preferred the erotic dream.

  Which returned. The agony eased, heat seared her body, and the beautiful arousal came back to her. Her body relaxed, pain ceased, and Samantha came all the way awake.

  Blue, blue eyes stared down at her from a hard, dirt-streaked face, the only clean place being the pentacle tattooed on his cheek. His hair was unruly and red, sunlight burning it. One large hand rested on Samantha’s abdomen, fingers along the ribs that had hurt so much.

  “Tain?” Samantha’s whisper came out cracked and wrong, barely sounding like a word at all.

  He stared down at her a moment longer, his eyes like the summer sky. The madness had gone, but every bit of hurt he’d endured, every hour of loneliness, was etched on him. Samantha’s heart ached.

  “Tain.” She reached shaking fingers to tou
ch the back of his hand, realizing what the erotic dream had been. Tain’s magic was healing, and he’d healed her. Her arm was whole, her ribs no longer throbbing.

  Tain’s brows slammed down, and he snatched his hand from her and stepped back.

  “No,” Samantha said, or thought she said. “Don’t go.”

  A flare of wanting leapt into his eyes. For a moment, Samantha thought he’d return to her, place his hand on her again, give her back the healing warmth.

  Then the shutters came down, hiding what was inside him. Tain turned away, containing the wash of life magic that crackled through him, and strode out of the room.

  Samantha sank back down to the bed in whatever guest room she’d been carried to, relieved to be out of pain, and bereft.

  Hunter opened his eyes to quiet sunlight. He lay face down in dappled shade, a cooling breeze wafting across his back. Wind chimes shimmered in the distance, and he was alone. He tried to raise his head, but pain seared through his skull, and he groaned and fell back to the mud.

  After another few minutes he heard footsteps, and then a pair of worn, old-fashioned hobnailed boots stopped in front of his face. He looked up stumpy legs and a gray, coarse skirt to a formidable bosom over which the ugly countenance of Pearl glared at him.

  She had a pair of blue jeans in her hands, which she shook out in front of his face. “You’ll be wanting to put these on. I washed and pressed them. And these.” She held up a pair of boxer shorts studded with large red flowers.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Hunter croaked.

  “Only thing left in your size at the corner store. Breakfast is ready, and you’re not coming into my kitchen in your altogether.”

  She dropped both jeans and gaudy shorts on a clean patch of grass then turned around and marched back to the house.

  Hunter finally turned his head, worth the pain to not have to look at those godawful boxers. He saw Leda sitting not ten feet from him, clad in jeans and tank top, her knees drawn up to her chin. Mukasa lay next to her, restored to his lion form, watching Hunter with accusing eyes.

  Leda’s smile was like the sun breaking through a cloudy day. The most beautiful thing he’d seen in his life.

  Hunter pressed his hand to the back of his neck. “Hey, darling. What hit me?”

  “A tree.”

  Hunter tried to laugh, and broke off with a groan. “I believe it.

  Leda came to him and helped him sit up. While he waited for the world to stop spinning he thought it a very good idea to put his arms around her and rest his head on her shoulder. “Mukasa is a lion again, I see,” he said.

  “Adrian did that—reversed the morph spell. The poor guy was miserable as a human being.”

  Hunter chuckled, remembering the anguish in the man-lion’s golden eyes when he realized he was a lion no more. Mukasa rumbled slightly under his breath, his nose wrinkling.

  Hunter’s amusement deserted him as he thought over the dark battle they’d just fought. “Kehksut is really dead, isn’t he?” he asked. “I think I remember Tain killing him.”

  “You do.” Leda’s smile dimmed. “Scary stuff.”

  “And you flying around, letting loose destructo-magic. Very sexy.”

  “A gift from your mom.”

  “Well, she knew you already had a boat.”

  The smile returned. “Stop it.”

  Hunter slanted her a wicked grin—as much as he could through the pain in his head. “Where is everyone?”

  “In the house. Or the hospital. Depending on how bad things were. Pearl said you’d be fine, and we shouldn’t try to move you.” Leda paused. “All right, what she really said was that she didn’t fancy lugging your carcass over her shoulder, and she was the only one strong enough to do any lugging. So she left you to sleep it off.”

  “What a sweetheart. Where does Kalen find these people?”

  “She’s devoted to him.”

  “Figures. What happened to the groth demon? I wanted to kill him, but I had more important things to worry about at that second.”

  “Gone.” Leda smiled a little, and Hunter saw the dark taint of death magic the groth demon had left. “If it makes you feel better, the battle scared the shit out of him. He never wants to see me again, never mind any payment or compulsion spell on me. He popped out into his hell dimension, cursing the day he answered my summons.”

  Hunter had looked forward to punishing the groth demon, but he rubbed the back of his neck again. “Thank the goddesses for small favors. I looked forward to making him pay, but I guess he did.”

  Leda nodded, the groth demon a lesser matter now. “Want to go in?”

  “Sure.” Hunter glared at the bright cotton boxers. “But I’m not wearing those.”

  “Why not? I bet you’d be cute in them.”

  Hunter sent her an evil look and reached for the jeans. It took him several tries to stand up, and Leda had to assist him. With her arms around him, her sweet body pressed to his, Hunter wanted to forget all about the stupid underwear, the jeans, the people waiting inside for them, and the demon. He just wanted her.

  Leda gently broke his embrace and waited while Hunter slid the jeans over his bare buttocks. He worked the zipper upward and struggled to close the button that had been loose before.

  “Washed and pressed,” he grumbled. “Is this Kalen’s idea of a joke?”

  Hunter started to put his arm around Leda to walk back to the house, but she stepped in front of him, her eyes grave.

  “What?” he said in alarm. “You have bad news, don’t you? Give it to me straight.”

  Leda rested her hands on his arms, her thumbs stroking his skin. “Tain got a huge dose of death magic when he killed Kehksut. At first he seemed fine, and he helped heal some of us, but then he collapsed. Adrian’s with him.”

  “Shit,” Hunter said softly. He turned abruptly, catching Leda’s hand in his, and strode back toward the house.

  Behind them on the green, the red and white boxer shorts rippled faintly on the breeze.

  Inside the house Leda found chaos. She and Hunter moved through a kitchen filled with brownies washing and stacking dishes, Pearl chopping vegetables like a mad woman, Valerian trying to get around the brownies to get himself coffee. A refreshed looking Mac, his arm in a sling, was digging into a stack of very American pancakes and syrup.

  “Good grub,” he said around a sticky mouthful. “I see you made it, Hunter.”

  “Where’s Tain?” Hunter growled.

  Mac pointed to the ceiling with his fork. “Upstairs in Amber’s bedroom. Your brothers are with him.”

  “He’s in a bad way,” Pearl said, thumping a bowl to the counter. “But he’s Immortal, inn’t he?”

  Even so, Pearl looked worried and so did Mac and Valerian. Hunter left the kitchen in long strides, and Leda quickened her pace to keep up with him. They went upstairs to a large sunny bedroom, which was now crowded with Immortals and their witches.

  They had dressed—Darius with his duster wrapped around him, Kalen large and handsome in a tartan kilt, Adrian in sleeveless shirt and jeans. Amber, Lexi, and Christine each stayed close to their Immortal, but Samantha was notably absent.

  Tain lay on the bed, covered in blankets, his eyes closed in a waxen face. His hands twitched restlessly, but he was clearly unconscious. Hunter crossed to him and touched Tain’s forehead, while Leda held back and watched, her heart beating swiftly.

  “He’s out,” Darius said. “Has been. He seemed fine, then he went down.”

  “He tried to help us all,” Leda said. “He spent so much of his magic healing everyone that he didn’t have anything left for himself.”

  Hunter brushed his fingers over Tain’s tattoo, stark and blue-black on his cheek. “Did you try pooling your magic?”

  Adrian nodded. “He’s too far gone. Kehksut dosed him good.”

  “One last thing to remember him by, I guess,” Hunter said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Damn demons.”

  “I’m
not going to lose him now,” Adrian said stubbornly. “Not after all I went through to find him.”

  “Ravenscroft,” Darius said. “That’s the only place that will heal him.”

  Hunter swung around to him. “So why is he still here?”

  Kalen broke in, his voice deep and rumbling. “We were waiting for you.”

  “For what? To draw straws over who gets to take him?”

  “We all have to go,” Adrian said. Leda saw Amber quietly reach for Adrian’s hand.

  “Why?” Hunter demanded.

  Adrian shrugged. “The goddesses want us. Isis came to me and told me we all had to meet in Ravenscroft. Just us five.”

  Hunter folded his arms. “Screw that. If we answer a goddess summons, they’ll have some new, earth-shattering task they want us to run off and do for them. Too bad we have our own lives now.” He looked straight at Leda. “I plan to keep busy for a long, long time.”

  “Then Tain stays like this.” Adrian gestured to the bed and Tain’s body.

  “We can open the way and shove him through,” Hunter said.

  Leda broke in. “Do we get a say about what we think you should do? Or have you decided for us?”

  The other brothers exchanged uncomfortable glances. Amber smiled at Leda. “Oh, we argued about it already.”

  “And?” Leda asked her.

  “We told them that they’re going,” Amber said firmly. She exchanged looks with Lexi and Christine who both nodded.

  Hunter scowled. “I say no. Let the goddesses do their own dirty work. They haven’t exactly always been there when we needed them.”

  Leda threaded her fingers through Hunter’s and rubbed the inside of his wrist. She liked touching him, the strong warrior who’d been through so much. The scars on his skin reminded her of what he’d suffered, lines of pain, and also that he was still alive.

  “Go, Hunter,” she said. “Help Tain. He needs you.”

  Hunter looked down at her, his green eyes hard. “And if the goddesses contrive it so we can never come back?”

  Leda swallowed, hating to think of that. “I had a pretty uneventful life before you came into it.” She gave him a faint smile. “Groth demons notwithstanding. It was quiet, even. Maybe I could learn to live like that again.”