Captive By Night: A Dardanos, Co. Taken Collection

by Calle J. Brookes

  She stayed up late each evening, staring at the stars. He could just make out her soft form stretched across her bed through the ether of his sieve. He spent much of his day watching the girl responsible for his captivity. He spent much of his day plotting how he would make her pay for her actions so long ago.

  But now that the days were fast approaching when he could act upon those plans, he found himself reluctant.

  Her people were almost completely gone from the face of Gaia. And from what he had heard out of the other deities, and what he could see through his own sieve, they would not last much longer.

  What more of a revenge could there be for a goddess who felt her people’s pain as deeply as Kennera did?

  He fought a smile of satisfaction.

  He had not suspected so many years ago that his words would wreak such pain upon his feminine enemy, or that the curses he flung at her around the barrier Erasomophus, Lothonos, and Acastia had created years ago would hit her so deeply.

  She had yet to retaliate against him. And that continued to puzzle him. Why would she not? He tried daily to get her to react to him. She had yet to do so.

  His torment of her began the moment she would awaken and continue until one of the other deities visited her. Most often it was Nelciana. Sometimes it was Lothonos, who came to worship her without her knowing.

  The god of knowledge and science was a fool where Kennera was concerned. Eiophon could often hear him lusting over the girl. He may not have been able to see the girl clearly in his sieve, but he could sometimes hear her conversations with the other deities.

  Acastia, Domustri, and Levakoran visited her occasionally though she spoke little to those three. Mostly, the older gods and goddess just lectured the girl goddess on her foolishness. She never contradicted them. Just ignored them until they left. Their visits had waned in frequency over the last fifteen hundred years or so.

  All but Nelciana visited him on a regular basis. They would play games, drink, and eat fine meals. No such gatherings occurred in the girl goddess’s part of the palace.

  She spent most of her time at her sieve, watching her people. He rarely watched his. How could they learn to be independent if he monitored their every move?

  “Girl.” He never called her by name; names contained power. He always called her girl. She had never answered. That, more than anything, angered him the most. He was the most powerful deity of Gaia, yet she refused to acknowledge him.

  Once his confinement ended, he would see to it that she did just that before she died. The last sounds on her lips would be his name and the words necessary to transfer her powers to him. By rights, it was what she owed to him for taking the last three millennia of his life from him.

  Chapter Five

  Kennera

  It was him again. Calling her. Wanting to goad her to fight with him. The first few years of her confinement, she had done just that. She always lost. She was not as mean hearted or as ruthless as the male deity. She could not think of the vile curses as fast as he. Would not. Though he had done much to her people, she could not wish the same upon his. They were innocent of the war between their deities.

  She had once believed that all the Kinds could freely be with one another. That love — like the humans said — had no true boundaries.

  She had been stupid where he was concerned, her attraction to his physical perfection and strength overshadowing the truth of his character. How could any god condemn a people to the suffering that hers had endured?

  The females and babes lost were heartbreaking. She had a list of their names, those lost since his vicious curses first rang down. She looked at it sometimes, a reminder of how she had failed as a goddess.

  She would make it up to them, somehow.

  With her death, Nelciana would assume leadership of the few Dardaptoans that remained. As goddess of families and relationships, the other deity would strengthen the bonds between Dardaptoan and Witch. And Nelciana’s sense of loyalty would have her protecting the Dardaptoans fiercely. They would survive. Thrive.

  And with what remained of Kennera’s powers, Nelciana would almost be as strong as Eiophon. If she could convince Lothonos to join with Nelciana, they would be stronger than the Lupoiux god. Strong enough to protect her people in the war the beast would wage the instant the walls containing them came crumbling down.

  “Girl. I know you hear me. Do you think ignoring me will make me go away? I have gone nowhere in three thousand years.” His voice was insidious, filling the entirety of her half of the palace. It was a trick he had used since their first week together. His voice in her entire world — another way for him to overpower her.

  He so liked showing her how powerful he was.

  But she would show him, would win the final battle. It meant her death; that she could not deny, nor would she.

  Her people deserved no less.

  Chapter Six

  Eiophon

  The girl continued to ignore him, but her time would come. He would have her helpless beneath his hands. She would beg for his forgiveness and his leniency.

  He had not decided if he would grant her request or if he would punish her for even longer. Maybe he would tie her hands above her head, teach her to bow her head submissively before one more powerful than she. Maybe he would keep her as slave for several years.

  He could take her somewhere, someplace where the other deities would not think to look for them. What he would do with her once he had her there, he did not know. But she would be his to have in any way he wanted.

  And once he was done with her, he would begin searching Gaia for his mate. As Lupoiux, he knew he had one somewhere. He had felt her presence often over the past three millennia. She was somewhere, and he had been kept from her for far too long.

  That would change in only a matter of months. He wanted to go to her immediately, but it would not be fair to her if she had to wait, to vie for his attention with the damned girl goddess. With his need for vengeance.

  He would finish with the girl goddess and then hunt his mate.

  He tipped his head back and howled, the sound a call to his mate, designed to pull her to him, to let her know he was coming for her. To let her know she needed to be ready.

  As soon as he was done with the girl goddess, she was his forever.

  Chapter Seven

  Kennera

  The wall separating Kennera from the Wolf god would come down in less than two hours. Kennera took one last look around the home she had been kept in for so long.

  It was both a haven and a hell for her, and the thought of leaving it frightened her in ways she had never felt before. As a young goddess, she had never thought to be frightened of the world. But much wisdom came with three thousand years.

  She had packed her belongings with a simple wish, keeping only what she would need to complete the plan she had worked so meticulously on. Those items, she hid in a bag she had fashioned herself many years ago.

  Her plan hinged on her taking the bag and disappearing into the Gaian world the moment the walls came down. If she did not, the wolf would take her, and she would not have the time to implement what she must.

  He would follow her, find her — of that she had no doubt.

  All the hope she had was to move quickly and elude him for only three days. In three days, she could transfer her powers fully to the Nelciana. She could speak with the top elders of her people, explain to them that their allegiance must shift to the goddess of family.

  Once the Wolf God caught her, she would have only moments to finish her plan and put a barrier of protection around her people.

  It was the strongest act a deity could provide for her followers. None had ever attempted it before — the consequences being too great.

  Chapter Eight

  Eiophon

  The blood in his veins hummed, power and anticipation mingling within him. He would have her. Would make her pay. He could just imagine the fear and worship that would be in her citrine eye
s as she stared up at him. He had not seen those eyes in three thousand years.

  He flexed his fingers; he could almost feel the flesh of her shoulders beneath his palms, the softness of blonde hair twisted in his hands. He would use that hair to hold her in place while he explained to her exactly what she was going to do to atone for her sins.

  Erasomophus watched him, and Eiophon dropped his hands. “Is she alone?”

  “She asked to be.” The elder god nodded. “Said she needed the time to reflect. Nelciana awaits her outside. She has volunteered to help Kennera as she adjusts to this time.”

  That was good for his plans, and what Eiophon had expected. Nelciana was nearly as young and foolish. Only her sense of loyalty was redeemable.

  Eiophon, as god of beasts, understood those kinds of bonds very little. Instinct fueled him and his kind and had long before the girl goddess had cursed them.

  In truth, and he had long admitted it to himself, her curses changed his people very little.

  Made them stronger. Made them more determined to get what they wanted. Increased their senses, their desires. Increased their… appetites for their mates and mating in general.

  Had Iastucia not visited his half of Levia routinely through the centuries…

  But now he would not have to make do with the lusty goddess of carnality. Her abilities had waned in the last two centuries though he still participated in her visits.

  But now he was almost free to find his mate. He could smell her near; the scent of her blood was strong on the air.

  She was immortal; that he had no doubt. She had been too close to him over the millennia to be anything but immortal. Other than that, he had yet to identify what she was.

  It was as if something separated her from him.

  He had no doubt it was the god-tight barrier Erasomophus and the others had placed around him and the girl goddess. But once it came down, she would be revealed to him.

  Chapter Nine

  Kennera

  The barrier came down and Kennera dissolved immediately. It was a skill she had worked on in the times the Wolf god was occupied with the base Iastucia. It was a skill she knew the Wolf god could not match, and one she did not want him to know she possessed.

  It was the only way she knew to escape him, and she would use it until he found a way to stop her.

  The air was heavier than it had been the last time she had been free, what the Gaians called smog choking up her lungs.

  Still, she was free to walk among her people once again. For the next three days that was what she would do.

  She would gladly trade her life at those three days’ end.

  First, though, she must make her way to Dardanos. The place in Colorado was where she would make her last sacrifice and was the place where her people waited for her.

  Chapter Ten

  Eiophon

  The girl goddess was gone, her scent all that remained. Eiophon cursed Lothonos’s interference. The other god had deliberately delayed him in leaving the Levian palace. Now he knew why.

  Eiophon contorted his body into that of his favored hunting beast, the wolf. Though she thought her little trick hid her from him, her scent was all he needed to find her anywhere in Gaia.

  He loped off into the mystical woods on the edge of the lake that surrounded Levia. He would find her. The hunt just made it that much more interesting.

  He tracked her faster than the speed of wind, through the Canadian wilderness and south into the country below. Snow, sleet, rain, and sun — he experienced it all in his path.

  Only when he had reached the land called Colorado did he stop. She was near. The girl goddess would soon be his to punish, as she so deserved.

  He went incorporeal, drifting above the trees as the girl goddess’s scent grew stronger. She had always smelled of orchids, and it was a fragrance he had grown more than accustomed to in the last three millennia.

  He rematerialized on the side of a mountain, lifted his face to the moon, and howled, both a threat and a triumphant. His call was answered, an acknowledgment of one of his people.

  Eiophon headed in that direction. It was time his people knew what he expected of them.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kennera

  Kennera fought tears. The wolves surrounding her had one plan for her, and with her reduced strength, she could provide little resistance.

  They did not know who she was and she was not about to tell them. They would turn her over to their god and her plan would be finished before it actually began.

  The wolves of the Redd Gothan pack were dirty and they had mean spirits that she had no trouble seeing. They had not recognized her, and for that she was so grateful. But that made her angry on her people’s behalf; they thought her a young Dardaptoan female, theirs for the taking. Vulnerable. Unprotected.

  Once she regained some of her power — turning to mist drained her so drastically and she had not fed in three thousand years, so it was far worse — she would show them what a goddess could do. Even a Dardaptoan one.

  But first she had to get free of the ropes they had used to bind her. Her hands were tied behind her back, her feet together at the ankles. They had gagged her with something, too.

  She watched for several long moments, learning of them what she could.

  Redd Gothan was filthy. Had she ever seen a wolf so dirty, even in the ages before her confinement? She had watched many of his Kind through the centuries — those whom she had paired with her people through the years. Those wolves had been exemplary of character, strong and loyal. Loving to their mates, even.

  Redd Gothan and his wolves seemed more like monsters and criminals, and for the first time, Kennera felt actual fear of Gaian subjects.

  Before, she had only felt fear of other gods. Iastucia and Eiophon, mostly. And if these wolves did not release her soon, Eiophon would find her, and all of her planning and all of her work would be for naught.

  Kennera closed her eyes and summoned every bit of her flagging power. With it, she could dissolve herself almost incorporeal. It would leave her vulnerable to the Wolf god if he found her, but she had little choice. In an almost incorporeal state, she could slip her hands and feet through the bonds the wolves used against her. She tested with her ankles first.

  The sharp bite of foreign bindings slicing through her skin had her eyes burning and her breath stuttering. She had not known it would hurt so much. And she still had her hands to free.

  A cry slipped out from beneath the gag.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eiophon

  The wolf he watched was a handsome specimen though Eiophon knew he was once a mere human. Strange that one of the girl goddess’s early curses granted his people the ability to convert others to their Kind while her own people had such difficulty completing the same task.

  Randall Taniss showed little signs of his human ancestry. The male was tall and strong. He stood on the mountain overlooking the home of several of the girl goddess’s people.

  He had a desolate expression on his face. Despite his mission, the wolf sparked Eiophon’s curiosity. He approached the wolf stealthily, but the other much younger wolf tensed as if he sensed Eiophon’s presence.

  “Hello, Wolf Taniss. I mean no harm.” Eiophon stepped from the shadows so the other male could see him. “I am merely tracking a female this night.”

  “Good luck with that.” Taniss eyed him with caution. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “No, that we cannot say, can we, wolf? I have not met many of my people in… recent times. I have been occupied for some three millennia.”

  “Is that so? That would make you the god, then.” Taniss tensed even more though he did not step away.

  “Eiophon Lupoi, yes.” Eiophon nodded, impressed with the thirty-year-old wolf’s courage. “What seeks you on this hill this night?”

  “My mate.” Taniss stared down at the city lights in the distance. “She is there.” He pointed toward a brighter light in the cent
er of the city. “She hides from me. Keeps from me.”

  “Unacceptable. What reasons?”

  “She is Dardaptoan, and I terrify her. And at first I did not want her. And I said as much.”

  “Dardaptoan? How is that possible?” Had he missed so much in the last centuries? How often did such a crossing occur?

  “Ask their goddess. All I know is that she is mine. And I want her. Now.”

  “Did the mating occur, then?” His Kind had to mate within thirty-six hours of finding each other or no children could ever be born. It was one of the girl goddess’s early curses. She had originally cursed his people to be sterile if mating did not occur immediately upon meeting. But immediate mating was often not practical, and for two hundred years — the time it took him to realize what the girl had done — his people’s new pairs had dwindled drastically.

  He had been able to modify the curse to give his people a thirty-six hour stretch of time to consummate their pairing.

  “It occurred. And now she carries twins. And fears me even more because no Dardaptoan female has safely carried twins in over two thousand years.”

  A particularly potent curse of Eiophon’s — retaliation for one of her early curses — had been to make the Dardaptoan females nearly as weak as humans. A later curse had prevented the Dardaptoans from having medical care even as sophisticated as the humans. Had he so cursed some of his own people to lose their mates or their pups, then?

  Before he could respond, a feminine cry of intense pain sounded from less than a mile away. A feminine cry he recognized as hers.

  His mate.

  Chapter Thirteen