All at once, the fog lifted, and Rhiannon stood alone and shivering in the little clearing. She glanced about, but all she saw in any direction was ground-creeping mist ghosting over unfamiliar terrain. Where had the forest gone? Where was the ancestral oak she’d leaned against? Gone—all gone!
Rhiannon sank to her knees sobbing, as the last of the fog drifted away showing her what lay beneath her. Tethers of a different nature held her now. These would not be so easily removed. The wily wood nymphs had tricked her. They had led her to a place where Gideon might never find her, for she sat in the middle of a faery ring. Once a human entered into one and become captive of the fay, it was said they would never return, that they would live forevermore in Otherworldly captivity.
Rhiannon raised her face to the heavens and screamed her heart dry. Spread out wide around her in a ragged circle, was a ring of mud-brown, lace-edged toadstools. Their earthy scent rushed up her nostrils, mingled with the forest smells of mulch and bark and rich fertile soul. Forest smells? Had she brought some of Marius’s world with her into this Otherworldly limbo? Was there hope she might escape?
Rhiannon surged to her feet, her eyes riveted to the toadstool ring, but in a blink it was gone, carried off on the last wisps of mist as they fled over the thicket like living things.
“Nooo!” she cried, groping the ground. Sobbing in spasms, she stepped outside the place where the faery ring had been, but doing so changed nothing. It was too late. She had crossed over.
11
It was full dark when Gideon stirred awake under a lush canopy of leafy boughs that cradled him, soothing and nurturing him deep in the forest. This had been a particularly painful encounter with the watchers; he didn’t usually have to battle them, three against one. They would have killed a mortal, or a lesser form entity, with their lightning bolts. Consciousness was returning slowly, and with it, arousal. He groaned. It wasn’t the gentle petting of the leafy boughs that made him hard. Their ministrations this time were purely therapeutic. It was the wood nymphs.
They were purring like a litter of contented kittens as they danced around the tree that had embraced him, their familiar hands flitting over his naked skin through the opening they’d rent in his eel skin. They seemed in a celebratory mood as they stroked and caressed and fondled him. Despite the ancient tree’s attempt to keep the nymphs at bay, a rogue wind ruffling its foliage made a hissing sound that bespoke warning. Cracked and twisted branches were the ancestral oak’s reward for that, and the hissing soon changed to something more akin to cries of pain.
Vina had hold of Gideon’s penis, while the others stroked his wings despite Gideon’s protests and the tree’s valiant attempt to prevent them. These vixens of the wildwood had mastered the art of seduction. They had no compunction about mauling Gideon when he was conscious. It was no surprise that they would take advantage of him in a vulnerable state. It had happened thus many times before.
Rubbing up against him until she’d trapped his cock between her legs, Vina took his face in her hands. “Awake, my lord!” she whispered, her voice sultry and urgent. “We hunger for you…favor us…”
Gideon struggled toward consciousness. What was that scent, that sweet, musky herbal redolence ghosting past his nostrils? He’d smelled that scent before. It had overtones of sweet clover that set his heart racing. His dry lips parted, emitting a soft moan.
The nymph, quick to seize the opportunity, ran her hand along the angular planes of his cheek and slid her index fingertip into his mouth. It tasted familiar, evocative, and mysterious, and he moaned again.
“R-Rhiannon?” he murmured, for it was her savory-sweet juices he tasted and her essence he smelled.
Gideon’s eyes snapped open, but not to the sight of Rhiannon. Instead, he looked into the iridescent green cat’s eyes of Vina, whose rage was palpable as she withdrew her finger from his mouth and lowered the flat of her open palm hard across his face.
“Rhiannon, is it?” she shrilled, backing the other nymphs up apace. She flung his turgid member aside. The motion stung, and Gideon quickly covered his sex with his hand to prevent more damage done. “So that is her name, your human!” the wood nymph snapped. “No wonder she was reluctant to tell it! A mortal—a piddling human endowed with the name of a deity of the forgotten realm? Sacrilege! I am not sorry now!”
“Sorry?” Gideon queried, shaking his head like a dog in a vain attempt to clear his head. Voices were mumbling inside it again. “Sorry for what? What have you done? Where is Rhiannon?”
The name seemed to send Vina into a blind fury. The moment he uttered it, she began beating him about the face and chest with her clenched fists and shrieking like a banshee. When she began pummeling his wings, Gideon let go of his cock and seized her upper arms shaking her to a standstill. That left his erection unprotected and the wood nymph seized it in a savage hand and gave a tug that doubled him over in pain.
Well? said an all-too-familiar disembodied voice in Gideon’s mind. Do we step in now, then?
No, the other voice he’d heard before said, almost angrily. It is begun, his rite of passage. It must play out as it is designed.
Even if…?
No matter what…if we are to save him…
The voices faded then, swallowed by the vibrating pain in Gideon’s bruised sex. White pinpoints of blinding light starred his vision. His head was still reeling from the lightning strikes. That Vina had attacked him when he was aroused had nearly cost him his consciousness again. Seizing her hand, he raised it to his nose and sniffed it through flared nostrils. Recognition drew his scalp back, and his jaw muscles began to tick. It was Rhiannon’s essence. There was no question.
He seized the wood nymph’s wrist. “Where is she,” he demanded, wise enough not to call Rhiannon by name. There was no need. Vina knew exactly who he meant. “What have you done with her?”
Trembling with rage and the still lingering effects of the watchers’ missiles, Gideon didn’t feel the tremor in the ground beneath his feet. He didn’t hear the clopping of heavy horse’s hooves approaching either, but Vina evidently did, for she wrenched her hand free and vanished in a blink, evaporating in the mist as if she had never been there, her sister nymphs with her.
Gideon knew she’d been there, however. The taste of Rhiannon’s juices still lingered on his tongue from Vina’s fingers. “Come back here!” he thundered at the absent nymph, but his words echoed back emptily.
Marius crashed through the underbrush and ranged himself alongside. “What is it?” he asked.
Gideon spun to face him, raking his hair back roughly. “Rhiannon,” he said. “Is she at the lodge?”
“No,” the centaur said, “I was hoping to find her here with you.”
Gideon stared. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “I counted upon you keeping her safe while I could not!”
“And my priority was keeping you safe from the watchers,” Marius defended. “I left her with Sy, while I made a search to be certain those damnable harpies weren’t lurking somewhere about, ready to hurl down more lightning bolts. Yes, yes, I know he is simpleminded, but I had no choice. She tricked him into going on a foolish errand so she could slip away and go in search of you. She wasn’t too thrilled with the nymphs’ ministrations. Where have they gone? I could have sworn I heard their voices when I approached just now.”
“I was hoping you could tell me!” Gideon said darkly. “They just vanished before my eyes. They’ve done something with her. Her essence was all over Vina. I have to find her, Marius!”
Gideon unfurled his wings, and the centaur halted him with a quick hand. “No,” he said. “Where they have gone, you cannot follow, my impetuous friend. They have crossed over.”
“Get them back!” Gideon raved, spinning in all directions, as if he hoped to make them materialize out of thin air.
“I cannot,” Marius said. “I have no dominion over the nymphs; you know that. They do not dwell on my island. They frequent it, yes, but they live in the
Otherworld. They are creatures of the wildwood. They come here to play…and to catch a glimpse of you. If they have fled from you, you haven’t a prayer. What did you do to anger them?”
“Anger them?” Gideon trumpeted. “Haven’t you heard me? Rhiannon’s sexual essence is all over Vina. How could you let this happen? You know how jealous the wood nymphs are. You never should have let Rhiannon out of your sight!”
“That’s gratitude,” Marius bellowed, rearing back on his haunches as Gideon’s wingspread threatened to knock him down, for unfurled, the dark lord’s wings were massive and strong. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?” the centaur shouted, for Gideon was already in flight. “You cannot follow them. The Otherworld is entered by invitation only. You cannot storm those bastions. Wait, I say!”
“If she returns, keep her here!” Gideon thundered back. “Lock her in if needs must. Do not leave her side until I return.”
Marius said more, but Gideon paid him no mind. The centaur’s voice was bleeding into the disembodied voices that had begun mumbling in his mind again. He couldn’t make out any of it, but that didn’t matter. There was no time for chasing shadows. He needed answers, and there was only one who could supply them…the rune caster.
Gideon approached the rocky little islet on the edge of Outer Darkness on the cusp of midnight. His instincts told him that. It was still moon dark, and there wasn’t a star in the sky, dense cloud cover had swallowed them.
A stiff wind had risen, ruffling the feathers in his wings, making him hard, when he shouldn’t be hard, bringing him to turgid arousal, when he needed his wits about him. There was no help for it. This was his curse. He had learned to live with it, but not to like it.
He touched down on the rocks in a cottony fog bank too dense for the wind to chase that challenged his intuition again. Gideon’s sense of direction was infallible. Over the ages, his aerial observations had carved indelible maps of the Arcan terrain in his mind, automatically updating them as the geography changed over time. None in the hemisphere had such an advantage. Often he was sought for his navigational skills. He tapped them now, for he could scarcely see a handbreadth of distance ahead of him.
Stepping down off the rocks, he started in the direction of the rune caster’s cottage, when her voice assailed him at close range—so close, he made wide circles in the fog ahead of him expecting to touch her odious, misshapen form, or the comely seductive image she presented him with on occasion. He felt neither.
“Back so soon, Lord of the Dark?” Lavilia said, her voice a curious meld of seduction and mockery.
“Where is she?” Gideon blurted out. “Where are the nymphs? Where have they taken her?”
“Take care, dark one,” the woman warned. “You have but two questions left. Are you certain you want this to be one of them? Ah-ah! Take care! Do not speak too soon. You have posed three questions. Choose!”
Gideon raked his hair back wildly. This was no time for her games. “Where are you? Show yourself! I have no time for this. There are enough voices echoing about in my brain. I do not like jousting with shadows!”
Lavilia cackled. “I am here,” she said. “And I am wise enough to keep my distance when such a madness takes you, dark one. Choose, but remember, once you speak it, you will have but one question remaining.”
Gideon needed no reminders of that. He was in a blind passion with worry over Rhiannon, but she was right, he had posed three questions, and he wracked his brain to decide upon the most frugal one.
“Where is Rhiannon?” he finally said.
“Well done, Lord of the Dark!” Lavilia said. “The wood nymphs are of no use to you. She is not with them. They have abandoned her to the Otherworld.”
“How do I get there?”
“Is that your final question, dark one?”
“Yes…no…wait…you are confusing me!”
“I am not the one who has confused you,” she warbled. “But take your time. It will not count unless you say it. I will not trick ye, dark one.”
“That would not be wise,” Gideon said, his voice like edged steel.
He gave her directive thought. Marius said he could not cross over unless it was by invitation. That wasn’t likely. But how had Rhiannon been invited? And how had the wood nymphs abandoned her? The rune caster said they’d abandoned her to the Otherworld, not in the Otherworld. Could it be that they had not gone with her after all? And should that be his last question? He was reluctant to ask it. Who knew but that he would need that final precious question in the future? The way things were going, he was loathe to ask it. Could he trick her into telling? It was worth a try.
“No,” he said, “I shall save my last question if you please. Besides, being overanxious I’ve already wasted one. Marius told me she had crossed over.”
“Marius told you the nymphs had crossed over. You drew your own conclusions, dark one. If you’ve wasted one of your questions, credit love madness, it is no fault of mine.”
“No, not,” Gideon said. “But I shall be more careful with my last one if you please.” He still couldn’t see her for the fog. That made him uneasy. He always held that fog hid deep secrets. What secrets were Lavilia holding back from him, for she surely knew all. “How did you know the Lord of the Forest told me the nymphs had crossed over?” he asked her, a light having gone on in brain. It was as if the fog had seeped inside and clouded that as well. “And that is not a question, sly one. It is a clarification.”
“I know much, dark one,” she said smugly.
Praying that mind reading was not one of her talents, he took another tack. “Marius also said one cannot cross over into the Otherworld unless it be by invitation,” he said as casually as he could manage with a screaming need playing havoc with his loins, and a hard cock begging to be relieved, to say nothing of the madness she so rightly diagnosed in him.
“It is so,” she returned.
“I’ve also heard that one could be tricked by the fay and taken captive,” he said cautiously. “I’ve heard that if one tastes fay food, or blunders into one of their land traps, they could be lost in the Otherworld for all eternity. Rhiannon is a strong entity for a human. She has come through shipwreck, faced the watchers’ lightning bolts, and me. She is no fool. They would have to have tricked her in some way or used force in order to cross her over. I need ask no question to come to that conclusion, but…”
The rune caster sighed through his hesitation. “I tell you one thing for free,” she said.
Gideon scarcely breathed. Had she taken pity upon him? He could only hope. “Tell it, then!” he said, with as much restraint as he could muster without diving into the fog and throttling her.
“They did trick her,” she replied. “I will tell you how, but that will cost you, and you will still have your final question in reserve. What say you, Gideon, Lord of the Dark? Are you game?”
“Name your price!” Gideon said without blinking.
“It is what you thought my price would be on your last visit, dark one, that cock of yours inside me again. I have a need, and you have the means to fulfill it.”
Gideon was silent apace. Her image at their last meeting ghosted across his mind, and he shuddered. Sight of her halo of foul-smelling, matted hair and gap-tooth grin, of her sagging breasts and faded nipples poking through the flimsy shift of stringy seaweed was enough to make his cock go limp as a noodle despite the curse.
“Come now,” she said through his hesitation. “Does she mean that little to you, then, your Rhiannon, that you cannot suffer your cock in the likes of me for a brief blink in time’s eye? It isn’t as if I am a human—a threat to her. I am not even real by your standards. We are all of us cursed by the gods, doomed to our different fates. Think of me as spirit, with no more substance than one of the Forest Lord’s trees if it eases your conscience. And being spirit—and feared—the watchers will not strike you down for penetrating me…in case you have forgotten. It has been a long time, Gideon.”
“
I have no conscience, old one; the gods have driven it out of me with their lightning bolts. I do have self-respect!” That was wishful thinking, for he dearly regretted that the gods hadn’t taken his conscience, too, or that it evidently couldn’t be driven out of him; for in spite of everything he’d lost in all the eons since his fall, he hadn’t lost that.
“As well you ought, but it will not buy you your Rhiannon. Decide! Embrace me and have the means to find her, or be gone and bungle about on your own. The choice is yours.”
“You drive a hard bargain,” Gideon growled.
“You will accept it, then?”
“How do I know you will keep your part of it? I’ve not had much good fortune with bargains of late.” He was thinking of the pact he’d made with Rhiannon to stay inside the cave.
“If I tell you beforehand what proof have I that you will keep your part of the agreement?” she countered. “Foreswearing is no good. You have renounced the gods you would swear upon.”
“I have not renounced them, old woman, they have renounced me.”
“So we are at loggerheads?”
“We have a bargain,” Gideon conceded, with more than a few misgivings. “I will take you at your word.”
The fog parted then, but the wizened old hag of recent memory did not emerge from it. Instead, a specter from the past stepped forward, young and voluptuous, with hair like spun gold that teased the firm, round globes of her buttocks.
“Your reward for trust,” she crooned, sidling up to him until her body heat radiated against his damp skin. She seized his cock. “Remember how it was the last time, dark one?” she crooned as she ran her soft, warm fingers the length of his shaft, tracing the distended veins and bulging mushroom tip. “Remember, I am but spirit, a succubus,” she soothed, pumping him rhythmically, meanwhile running her free hand over his torso through the open front of his eelskin. He’d forgotten it was open thus. When had that occurred? He had to be mad. “Coitus with me,” she went on smoothly, undulating closer, “holds no more stigma than a wet dream in the night, dark one. Take me, and I will tell you how to find her…if you dare…”
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