Earth's Hope

by Ann Gimpel

  Nidhogg screamed, “Fall back. Meet in back of the house.” Just to make certain everyone heard him, he followed the command with the same one in mind speech.

  “What are you doing?” Aislinn shrieked at Dewi.

  “Following orders,” the dragon said. “’Tis something you don’t do terribly well. Nidhogg is right. We need a strategy. For that, we must be in the same place. Otherwise, we’ll be here a week from now still fighting these bastards.” She spread her wings and flew fifty feet above the manor house yard.

  “Protect Rune,” Aislinn said, her voice shrill. “We just left him alone down there.”

  “Fuck!” Dewi wheeled until she was over the wolf. Power exploded and a snapping, snarling Rune dropped into Aislinn’s lap.

  “I had no idea you could do that,” Aislinn said, struggling to contain the freaked-out wolf.

  “I have a lot of other tricks up my sleeve you haven’t seen, either, Missy. Don’t forget it. See to your wolf, he’s tearing holes in my back.”

  “This won’t take long.” Nidhogg shouted across the air between them.

  Moments later, the five dragons and three Celts ducked behind the bulk of the manor house. Humans trickled in, joining them.

  Rune still hadn’t calmed much. He vaulted off the dragon’s back the second she touched down. It was tough to understand him between snarls and growls, but he faced off with Dewi and said, “Never again. Do not do that to me ever again. Do you understand?”

  Aislinn picked her way to the ground and wrapped her arms around her wolf. “It was just magic,” she protested. “I asked her to save you.”

  “I didn’t need saving. And that magic felt like a red hot poker from my shoulders to my ass. I’ll be lucky if my balls don’t fall off.”

  “Ingrate,” Dewi muttered.

  “You’re making it worse.” Nidhogg shot a pointed glance at his mate.”

  “Enough.” Gwydion faced the group. “If Nidhogg wouldn’t have ordered a retreat, I was verra close to it.”

  “Where are they?” Aislinn glanced over her shoulder. “Why didn’t the Lemurians follow us?”

  “They’re communing, plotting their next move too.” Bran pinched his lips into a sour expression. “That hive mind deal they have going isna verra efficient.”

  Aislinn let go of Rune and strode to Corin and Daniel, nodding solemnly. “Thank you so much for helping. Losses?”

  “Not too bad.” Corin dragged a hand down her face, leaving a grimy streak. “Three dead and two injured. None of the bond animals were hurt.”

  “Excellent.” Aislinn hugged her.

  After a surprised moment where she stood stiff and still, the other woman hugged her back.

  Watching the exchange, Nidhogg nodded to himself. Perhaps Aislinn held the key to mitigating the hatred that flared from the humans’ eyes every time they looked at a Celt. Rather than viewing her as a turncoat because she’d mated with Fionn, they might come to view her as a symbol of possibilities…

  He turned his mind to their current dilemma and said, “The only way to take the Lemurians out is one by one. Problem is there are more of them than us, so some of us need to keep them busy while the rest of us pick them off.”

  “That will take too long,” Gwydion countered. “We’ve been at this for an hour, and Dewi only killed one of them.”

  “I killed one and then another, and then one more, and disabled a bunch,” Rune said.

  “My cat and some of the other bond animals saw what Rune was doing,” Eve said, “but it’s damnably hard to get close enough to those bastards to damage them.” She eyed Rune appraisingly. “You have steel balls, wolf.”

  He skinned his lips back in a snarl. “If I have any left.”

  Arawn bent and patted his head. “Too bad we all canna simply bite their ankles, laddie.”

  Rune growled. “Do not patronize me.”

  “Sorry. I dinna mean to.”

  “Listen up!” Gwydion sounded hard-pressed. “This may not work, but I say we focus the unmaking spell on a group of them. It should blow through their wards and smear them to kingdom come.”

  Bran eyed him as if he’d lost his mind. “If it works. That was what we were tampering with when ye and I ended up on Perrikus’s borderworld—trapped.”

  “’Twas the strange energy in that house,” Gwydion grunted. “It sat on psychic fault lines and perverted my magic.”

  “Quick tutorial,” Timothy barked. “Is that the one where you mix mostly fire with a bit of earth and stoke air in once it’s percolating?”

  Gwydion jutted his chin upward. “Aye. ’Tis the air part that’s tricky. If ye add it too fast, the whole thing can blow up in your face.”

  Aislinn bolted upright and trotted to where she could see around the corner of Fionn’s house. Rune stuck to her like a dark, furred shadow.

  “Holiday’s over,” she called. “They’ll be on us before I can count to three. Son of a bitch,” she muttered and Nidhogg felt her summon power and anchor herself within in.

  “Are you with me?” Gwydion asked.

  “We’d be fools to quit now,” Corin said.

  “Who do we target?” Royce asked.

  “The first bunch that shows their nasty, reptilian snouts.” Arawn’s voice held a flat, dead tone. “I tire of this.” He raised his voice in a chant, and Gwydion and Bran joined in.

  It took a moment before Nidhogg recognized both the language and the incantation. It was Enochian, a perversion of Celtic mixed with Hebrew, but the combination held massive amounts of power. He added his magic to the mix, as did Dewi. The humans picked up the chant and magic jumped to their command.

  Kra took to the air with Dewi, Royce, and Vaughna. The four engaged in an aerial ballet, dive-bombing the Lemurians to divert them from what the Celts were cooking up. Nidhogg was impressed. The dragons other than Dewi may have been absent, but they’d maintained their intuitive edge during their lengthy exile. Power blasted from the Lemurians. So much power, it shocked Nidhogg. They hadn’t been this strong just a few moments before.

  Truth chewed a hole in the back of his mind. “Hurry,” he urged. “One of the dark ones must be close.”

  Gwydion focused his gaze on the dragon, blue eyes pulsing with tension, and nodded, but never stopped chanting. The air developed a shimmery hue, and cracks formed in the damp earth as power oozed upward. Between them, Gwydion, Bran, and Arawn shaped the energy as it rose to their call. When it became an amorphous, pulsing mass, they heaved it at the nearest group of six Lemurians.

  Nidhogg held his breath. Would it bounce off, just like his fire had done? For a long, wrenching moment, nothing happened, and then audible cracks, piercing as gunshots, rose in a rapid tattoo that pounded his sensitive hearing. As if it were sentient, the mass pressed forward, coating each Lemurian once its warding dissipated.

  The timber and pitch of the Celts’ and humans’ chanting escalated. All of them were shouting, and sweat streaked their faces, creating runnels in the soot and grime that smeared across their flesh. Their muscles bunched into hard knots as if they fought a physical foe. The Lemurians were slow to respond, but then they always had been. It was probably why their race was dying out. Just before the first one exploded in a shower of red and greenish blood, sinew, bones, and bits of grit, its kin recognized their doom and tried to run, but the unmaking spell had them in its grip and they couldn’t get away.

  One by one, the six lead Lemurians shattered, splattering everything within reach with gore. Rune and the other bond animals were in their element, lapping up blood and guts. Nidhogg would have smiled, were their situation not so tenuous.

  “Do it again,” Gwydion shouted. “Borrow power from the Earth if you need to.”

  Breath hissed through Aislinn’s teeth. “At this rate, it will take days to knock off these sorry sons of bitches. Can’t we hurry it up?”

  “Ye should thank the goddess we found something that works,” Arawn panted.

  The threatening sen
sation that had bothered Nidhogg earlier rose to the fore. He smelled the dark god before he saw him and stepped forward, fire flashing from his mouth. “Perrikus, you old dog. I know you’re here. Come to gloat? Oh, wait a minute. I’m not under your dastardly thumb anymore.”

  Looking as fresh as if he’d just stepped off a New York runway, the dark god sauntered around the corner of Fionn’s manner house. Auburn hair swirled around him, falling in waves to his waist, and his golden skin glowed. He turned sparkling green eyes Aislinn’s way and reached for her, but she jumped aside.

  Rune launched himself at the dark god, but before he got within three feet, Perrikus waved a lazy hand, and the wolf’s arcing jump ended with him falling hard into the dirt.

  Aislinn thrust herself between her wolf and the dark god. “Leave him alone.”

  “Just as feisty—and desirable—as ever, I see.” The dark god licked his chiseled lips. He turned his nose upward, scenting the air. “What? Your Celt boyfriend doesn’t seem to be here. Excellent.” He rubbed his hands together. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, eh?”

  Aislinn turned away, but Nidhogg caught the scent of her arousal. The dark gods were sex incarnate. No one could withstand their pull.

  Dewi landed and pushed to Aislinn’s side. “She is bound to me as well, scum-sucker. You’ll have to go through me to get to her.”

  “Us too.” Timothy and Daniel flanked Aislinn.

  “Och, you’re easy,” Perrikus said to Dewi. “All I have to do is dredge up Slototh’s Minotaur to keep you occupied.”

  “Dewi,” Nidhogg bellowed. “You didn’t.”

  “Later,” she shot back. “Next time you think I’m dead for a few hundred years, let’s see how long you stay faithful.”

  “That’s hardly the point—” he sputtered, puffing fire-laced smoke as fury roared through him. Dewi was his. His. No other creature had a right to touch her.

  “It’s exactly the point,” she countered, spinning to face him. “I thought you were dead. Dead. You hear me? What? Was I supposed to live out my next few thousand years in celibacy?”

  “Stop it!” Aislinn shrieked. “This is how they win. By turning us against one another.”

  “She has a point.” Dewi tossed her head, fire streaming from her mouth. She skewered Nidhogg with her dark gaze. “If you must dissect this, I say we do it later.”

  Nidhogg turned away, recognizing wisdom in his mate’s words. But a small, wounded place burned deep inside him. Maybe they’d hash it out. Maybe they wouldn’t. Balanced against what they faced, its importance dwindled. He spewed fire at Perrikus, recognizing it as displacement for his anger and hurt.

  The dark god screwed up his impossibly handsome face and laughed, sidestepping the flames with the grace of a dancer.

  Chapter Seven

  Aislinn shrank away from Perrikus, hoping to lose herself among the Celts and humans. Her breath caught in her throat, and her body was primed for sex, nipples achingly hard and pussy awash in liquid heat. Damn the dark gods to Hell. They all had that effect, at least on her. As if they’d cast her in a porn flick where all she could think about was spreading her legs for the first man to show up with an erection.

  “Steady.” Timothy spoke low into her ear.”

  She forced deep, even breaths, but it didn’t help. An arm latched around her shoulders from behind and she shoved it away, hissing and spitting like a scalded cat, before she realized it wasn’t Perrikus.

  Bran’s touch was cool, measured. He came around to the front and leveled his copper gaze at her. “Doona fash, lassie. But I fear the plot thickens.”

  Dewi glowered at Perrikus, and blasted him with fire, but it crackled against his warding and sloughed off. “Mind your own affairs,” she ground out. “Too bad I didn’t injure you worse when I had the chance.”

  He tilted his chin with a jaunty smile. “I’ll give you points for boldness, dragon. I never would have suspected you’d pull your mate out of my prison.” Perrikus waved a hand. “At first, I was more cautious, but when centuries passed, I assumed—”

  “Got lazy, more like,” Nidhogg broke in. He blasted the dark god with fire too, which spoke to his level of frustration, since he had to know it wouldn’t do any good.

  Aislinn closed her teeth over her lower lip until she tasted blood. Pain had a salutary effect. It couldn’t have been easy for Nidhogg to hear about Dewi’s dalliance with the Minotaur. Aislinn winced; she’d been stuck inside Dewi’s body during that particular fall from grace, and the murky kinkiness of it still gave her nightmares.

  Rune slunk to her side, still growling and she asked, “Are you all right? Did the fall hurt you?”

  “My pride. What I wouldn’t give to sink my teeth into that bastard.”

  “I heard that,” Perrikus called and danced from side to side in a macabre parody of a prizefighter. “Come and get me, wolf. I could use a bit of sport.”

  Aislinn lunged for Rune’s neck and held him back. “He’s baiting you.”

  “But…” The wolf whined a protest.

  “No.” Aislinn’s conscience smote her. Rune was bonded to her, so he couldn’t challenge a direct command. She didn’t play that card often because it was so inequitable. Rune snapped his jaws millimeters from her face, and she realized he hadn’t forgiven her for the last time she’d pulled rank.

  Gwydion, Bran, and Arawn advanced until they formed a line between Dewi and Perrikus. “You want something,” Gwydion growled. “What is it?”

  Perrikus smiled and was transformed into such a profanely beautiful creature that his golden skin actually glowed as if illuminated from within. Aislinn took a few steps toward him before she understood she was caught in thrall and forced herself to halt. The dark god had noticed, though, and leered knowingly at her from in between the Celts and Dewi’s bulk.

  Damn him!

  Much as D’Chel had done on one of the borderworlds, Perrikus latched his gaze onto hers and ramped up the sexual energy pulsing from him until an orgasm coursed through her, leaving her legs weak and shaky.

  “Go in the house.” Gwydion’s voice rang with command, but Aislinn ignored what was probably a prudent suggestion.

  “I’m stronger than that,” she panted.

  “Like hell, ye are,” the master enchanter said.

  Pain shot up her leg. When she looked down, Rune’s jaws were around her calf. She sank a hand into his thick neck ruff and said, “Thank you.” The wolf didn’t answer, just bit harder. He’d done the same thing before to keep her mind clear enough to reason.

  “I asked you a question.” Gwydion stared at Perrikus. “If ye’re not planning to answer it, we may as well get back to wiping out your Lemurian sacrificial sheep.”

  “Hush,” Perrikus said in a stage whisper and grinned engagingly. “Once they find out, the gig will be up.”

  His supercilious attitude blasted past Aislinn’s cautions, and she wrenched her leg out of Rune’s jaws and scurried forward. “They know. They’re not stupid. It’s just that they think differently than we do, and they were desperate. Only the truly hopeless would hook up with the likes of you.”

  “You’re defending them?” Perrikus’s cultured tones rang with incredulity. “They would have killed you.”

  “So would you,” she countered and crossed her arms over her chest. Lust shivered through her body, and she shook herself all over. “Stop that.”

  “But you’re so desirable. D’Chel and I have created some particularly rich fantasies with you as the star.”

  “I’ll just bet you have,” she ground out, surprised her back teeth didn’t crack from pressure.

  “Enough,” Gwydion huffed and cut through the air with his hand. “I’ve dealt with you longer than I want to. You want something. Either spit it out or move aside.”

  “Fair enough.” Perrikus shook hair behind his broad shoulders. Rather than his usual translucent robes, he was garbed in battle leathers, much like Bran and Arawn. The beige skins clung to him
, outlining every nuance of his magnificent build.

  Aislinn felt her gaze being drawn downward and was unable to interrupt its trajectory until Rune clamped his teeth onto her calf again. Thank fucking Christ he timed his bite before she laid eyes on a cock she remembered all too well.

  “Hurry this up.” Arawn rolled his eyes. “Even the dead in my kingdom move quicker than you.”

  “It’s simple, really.” Perrikus spread his hands in front of him as if he were at the head of a boardroom table in an upscale business preparing to present closing arguments. “Give me the girl, and I’ll take my reptiles and leave you in peace. I’ll even see that the Harpies let Fionn go.”

  Aislinn lurched forward, intent on scratching out Perrikus’s dancing, green eyes. Gwydion caught one of her arms and Bran the other. “But he’s behind the Harpies snatching Fionn,” she shrieked, so furious the pull of the dark god’s sexuality shrank to nothing. “He just said so.”

  “Get yourself together.” Gwydion spoke into her mind. “Now.”

  “At least that explains why Harpies showed up after all this time,” Dewi spoke up. “Let me guess. You rousted them, promised them a taste of your body, and they jumped to do your bidding.”

  “Close.” Perrikus licked his well-shaped lips and rearranged his body until each muscle stood out beneath his leather clothing. “D’Chel and I entertained them. It was a bit odd and extremely…unconventional, but we’re good at pleasing women, no matter what species they happen to be.”

  “And did ye promise them peace?” Arawn inquired.

  “Of course.” Perrikus’s smile widened.

  Aislinn closed her hands into fists and forced a rationality she was far from feeling. “If I go with you, you’ll free Fionn?” she asked, barely recognizing the strained voice that issued forth as her own.

  “Silence,” Dewi shouted. “You’ll do no such thing.”

  “No kidding.” Timothy spat into the dirt. He and Daniel moved close and poured power into her to augment her own.

  “It makes sense,” Aislinn argued, frantic to get Fionn away from the Harpy with the seductive silver eyes who had such fond memories of him in her bed. “Once Fionn is back, you can rescue me. I’ve held my own against that one”—she smirked and flicked her fingers at Perrikus—“and against D’Chel too. Don’t forget, I’m the one who took Slototh out of the game.”