Redeemed: Bitter Harvest Book Five

by Ann Gimpel

  “Before you leave,” Leif called after her, “have any of you checked the ley lines lately? Last time I looked might have been New Zealand, and I’d like a more recent comparison if anyone has one.”

  “I drew power from them during the Kelpie attack,” a whale said. “Didn’t notice much of anything other than the augmentation I needed was there for me to tap into.”

  Leif glanced at a sea of shaking heads. “Thanks for trying. See you in a little bit.”

  It wasn’t cold, but a shudder tracked down his body, his earlier arousal forgotten. Who could be sabotaging their magic? The damaged ley lines couldn’t be accidental, and whoever was behind the problem had clearly been chipping away at them for a long time. Months from the sound of things.

  He hunkered beneath a bulkhead near the door his pod had taken as they filed inside. Five minutes would give him time to think. Besides, with everyone crowded around their clothing locker, he wouldn’t be able to get close to it anyway.

  He catalogued what he knew, which wasn’t very damned much. The assault on their magic had been subtle, so subtle it had mostly gone unnoticed until today. Rowana, the eagle Shifter he’d never met, may have sounded a muted alarm, but the other women hadn’t been worried enough to check the lines regularly.

  Balling one hand into a fist, he brought it down on the deck. Pain had a stabilizing effect, forcing him to narrow his roiling thoughts. The way they were bouncing around, he’d never make sense of anything, let alone figure out what he needed to do next.

  One fact smacked him squarely between the eyes. It would take a hell of a lot of magic to erode the ley lines—even more to do it so delicately as to go largely unnoticed.

  Could Poseidon possibly be behind such an undertaking?

  Leif played the possibility through his mind, but it seemed remote. Poseidon had magic to burn, but it was an in-your-face kind of power. The sea god had never been a cloak-and-dagger type, mostly because he lacked the incisive elegance required for subterfuge. When he’d gone after the Kelpie, staff swinging, it epitomized his approach to almost everything. Hit fast and hard and ask the tough questions afterward.

  If there was an afterward.

  If not Poseidon, then who?

  Leif slumped lower, resting his naked butt cheeks on the deck. When the answer came, it was so obvious, he cringed. Amphitrite. In her own way, she was far stronger than her consort, and her magic held both grace and refinement. She was more than capable of taking a chink here and there out of the ley lines, siphoning power to augment her own while leaving less for Shifters and others who relied on the lines for their ability.

  Soon after Leif had entered into the bargain with the Witches that was almost his undoing, Poseidon had cuffed him, cussed him out, and called him things far worse than stupid without offering to cast even one spell to aid the sea Shifters so they could nullify their pact.

  Furious at his liege’s patronizing condescension, Leif had hurtled out of the royal dwelling intent on losing himself in the sea. He’d no sooner found his dolphin form than Amphitrite joined him. Nereids swam next to her, sending glowing contrails through the sea’s murky surface.

  He ground his teeth together, the memory of that day still engraved in his memory. The queen of the sea had apologized for her consort, but once she was done, she’d invited Leif to share her bed. Nonplussed, he’d blundered through a refusal. He hadn’t totally given up on Poseidon coming to his senses and aiding the sea Shifters. Sleeping with his wife would certainly put the kibosh on any possibility of assistance.

  With a knowing smile on her ageless face, Amphitrite said her invitation was open-ended, and she’d encouraged him to give it some thought. The Nereids had flashed breasts and tails his way before the whole convoy disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived.

  Fury swept through him. Had Amphitrite been skimming power even then? Or was this something new? A little trick she began experimenting with after the Cataclysm struck?

  He raked wet hair out of his face. If it was Amphitrite, he had an idea. One that would send a nasty magical shockwave boomeranging back in her face the next time she had the temerity to dabble in what didn’t belong to her.

  “Magic belongs to all of us.”

  His dolphin’s voice reverberating through his mind shocked Leif, and he shot to his feet. “You never talk with me when I’m human. And you’re using English. I had no idea you spoke anything but our sea tongue.”

  A low chuckle tickled the corners of his consciousness. “How could I not know your human language after sharing your mind for centuries? When we spent most of our time in my body, there was no need to speak during the rare occasions you were human, but we seem to have reached a turning point.”

  Leif sent warm thoughts winging inward. “I agree about magic belonging to us all, but what would you have me do to stymie her?”

  “If you set a trap, it will snap shut no matter who’s meddling. Right?”

  “Maybe. If it’s someone from the darker side of things, it might roll off them without much effect, but it should protect the ley lines from further degradation.”

  “It might be enough.” The dolphin paused. “We must do everything we can to ensure Poseidon and Amphitrite survive. Our power is rooted in theirs, and if they fail…”

  The dolphin stopped there, but it didn’t have to say any more. Leif understood. Suddenly, the task stretching before him grew far more complex. Cutting the sea gods off at the knees wasn’t an option. No. Somehow, he had to convince them to return to their proper roles. Protection, rather than extracting what they needed without a thought to their subjects.

  Weariness crashed over him as he made his way inside. The lower corridor was empty, and he dressed fast. The sooner he laid his thoughts out for the others to pick apart, the sooner they could come up with a plan.

  Regardless, they had to move fast, before magic to summon even the simplest of castings ran through their fingers like sand through an hourglass.

  2

  Someone Wants Us Dead

  Moira Miller flew through the porthole she’d left open and shifted back to human in a deserted cabin. Arkady was large enough to house around seventy passengers and fifty crew, which meant a whole lot of unoccupied space. After storming out of the thwarted tarot reading on the bridge, she’d run down two flights and picked the first empty cabin she came to on Deck Four.

  Ketha had been absolutely correct about her clothing lying in a heap. Clucking imprecations to the air, Moira sorted through the tangled mess, hunting for her panties. Her fit of pique had run aground, and worry eclipsed fear. She’d heard the conversation play out between Ketha and the sea Shifters. Their conclusions about the ley lines made perfect sense and sent ice chips skidding down her spine.

  She finished dressing and left the cabin, intent on doing as Ketha had requested and getting a meal together. Her stomach knotted painfully. Food was the last thing she wanted, but everyone else was probably hungry, and a meal would do her good. She shouldered into the dining room and crossed to the galley door, entering the compact space with its gleaming stainless-steel surfaces and appliances.

  Her vulture grumbled, squawking incoherently. Bad moods were its norm, and she didn’t bother to question it. After a side trip into the pantry, she worked mostly on autopilot as she grabbed things for supper. Guilt burned. She’d known about the damaged ley lines, but had she bothered to check them?

  Moira dumped dehydrated food into bowls, covering the desiccated bits with water to plump up. “None of us checked,” she muttered, but spreading blame beyond herself didn’t make her feel any better. After she poured far too much salt into one of her bowls, she dragged a stool close to the counter and sat.

  She had to find a balance point, a place where her usual equanimity would return. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d survived a decade in Ushuaia by living in the moment, not getting too far ahead nor wallowing in what they should have done the moment the Cataclysm hit.

  Turn
ed out they would have been well served to locate transportation and drive north before the barrier became impenetrable, but they’d guessed wrong. Thrown the dice and lost. Not that sitting out the Cataclysm would have been any easier even if they’d managed to traverse South America to its northern coastline. She gripped the edges of the wooden seat beneath her, squeezing hard to force a different focal point.

  Like many of the other female Shifters, science was her home base. A geological engineer, she’d spent years working hotspots around the globe where she predicted how earth materials would behave under stress. Her job had encompassed geology, mining, and civil engineering with its emphasis on building sound structures. Ones that wouldn’t collapse the first time a stiff wind blew.

  Lured by a generous offer from an international mining corporation, she’d ended up in Wyoming. Once there, she’d discovered the resident Shifter packs and extended her stay for a month because she enjoyed the other women so much. When they’d invited her along on a junket to harness the power of an eclipse in Ushuaia, she’d been delighted and informed the company waiting for her in northern Tibet she’d arrive a week later than expected.

  They’d groused, but she had skills they needed, so they’d told her to come as soon as she could… Moira untangled her fingers from the stool and went back to her dinner preparations. She sampled the over-salted bowl and grimaced before tossing its contents in the garbage and starting over.

  What would have happened if she’d been in Tibet when the Cataclysm hit? The whole country was plagued by deep, unstable fissures, some extending into magma bubbling beneath the Earth’s crust. It was why she’d been hired. To come up with a fix before huge chunks of the landscape fell prey to quakes or slides, taking expensive infrastructure along with them.

  Her trip backward in time settled her. She couldn’t do much about Tibet. Who knew if it was anything beyond a pockmarked landscape rivaling the moon at this point. But she could do something about the ley lines, beginning with checking them a few times each day. Between her and the other women, they’d come up with a fix, a way to repair the damage to their primary source of magic.

  Shifter power—her brand, not what the sea Shifters tapped into—was linked to the Earth. Ley lines fused with earth at every vertical juncture. While magic’s precise mechanism defied efforts at quantification, she’d always assumed the lines extracted what they needed from the Earth. Precisely how that worked in the middle of the Pacific Ocean was murky, but the lines probably extended to the sea floor.

  If they did, perhaps the sea Shifters did tap into their magic. She’d have to ask one of them about it.

  A casserole and flatbread took shape as she tried out possible approaches to the ley line problem, recognizing they’d have to pick one and run with it. If they did anything as sophisticated as A-B split testing, they might run out of magic. And then they’d be screwed and at the mercy of whatever had them centered in its metaphorical crosshairs.

  “Maybe not so metaphorical as all that,” she mumbled and pushed pans into the waiting oven.

  “Feeling better?” Ketha strode through the swinging galley door.

  “Not really. I heard that part about the ley lines crumbling. Or their magic, anyway.”

  “It’s kind of one and the same.” Ketha narrowed her eyes. “When we limited ourselves to a single tarot run, it did yield information.”

  Moira’s stomach lurched, and she turned to face Ketha. “Are you planning to tell me? Or did you make the trip down here to ensure I understood my negativity was what ruined the cards?”

  A shocked look etched into Ketha’s face. “I know I can be a bitch, but—”

  Moira waved her to silence. “Don’t mind me. We’re all edgy. Hell, I had to throw away an entire batch of beef stroganoff. Enough to feed twelve. Because I stood over it pouring salt into the water while I stewed about the ley lines.”

  “Eh, it’s okay. We have plenty of food after all the raiding we did in Invercargill.”

  “Not the point.” Moira ground her teeth. “We can’t make any mistakes. We have to get this right.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” Ketha sucked in a noisy breath, her nostrils flaring.

  “The cards?” Moira crooked two fingers Ketha’s way.

  “Yeah. Them. Nothing unexpected. Not really. We head into great darkness, our future uncertain, yet there were a few rays of hope.”

  “Any clues on timing?”

  “Soon.”

  Moira crossed her arms beneath her breasts and resisted an urge to tap her foot. “Soon as in?”

  “Who knows?” Breath whistled from between Ketha’s clenched teeth. “We need to get a handle on those ley lines. See if we can repair enough damage to ensure we don’t run out of power mid-casting.”

  “It’s what whoever is behind this wants. I figure they’ve been planning a strike for a long time. Maybe years.”

  “But how could they have even known we’d be slogging through the ocean?”

  “Too literal, sweetie. Take a few steps back and look at the big picture. Unless we’re dealing with a malevolent version of Merlin, with his soothsaying skills, all they did was lay the groundwork, figuring the Cataclysm would yield at some point. When that happened, they wanted to be ready. Didn’t aim to deal with any further threats.”

  “So they hunted down every source of magic they could find and began whittling away its integrity?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But what if the ley line problem is linked to wickedness loosed by the Cataclysm? It’s kind of my working hypothesis.”

  Moira considered it as she trudged to the oven and opened the door. A quick peek told her dinner was done, and she transferred the pans to the counter and met the other Shifter’s intense golden eyes.

  “I was assuming there was a third entity in play, but I could be way off base. We’ve run into so many different types of evil since we left Ushuaia, and none of them were related to one another.”

  “Isn’t that the truth? Vampires march to their own drummer. So did that dark mage who’d taken over King George Island.”

  “Don’t forget the Sirens or the sea dragon or the Kelpies or Ceridwen.” Moira tilted her head to one side.

  Ketha rolled her eyes. “What are you? The scribe of doom?”

  “I want to make damn good and sure we never forget any of what we’ve run up against.” Moira closed her teeth over her lower lip. “Sooner or later, we’ll find a pattern, and it will help us plan. So we’ll be stronger and more effective when we get to Wrangel Island and the main event.”

  “Mmph. Hope you’re right about that pattern. When I left the bridge, Leif was deep in conversation with the other sea Shifters and Viktor. He sent me down here to see if dinner was ready.”

  “Vik wants to pick through the possibilities and select our course over dinner, huh?”

  Ketha twisted her hair behind her head, knotting it into a loose bun. “My guess too.” She tilted her head sideways, and magic shimmered. Not much, though, and not for long.

  Moira rolled her shoulders back. “You just told him to come on down, right? Using as little magic as possible.”

  “Hey. Maybe you could be our Merlin stand-in,” Ketha joked and picked up one of the pans with a hot pad. “I’ll help move our supper into the dining room.”

  Moira ferried food and silverware and plates, so everything would be ready. Her mind spun a million miles an hour. Viktor was their captain, but did it give him power to make decisions that extended beyond Arkady and their nautical route?

  What if she didn’t agree with the group consensus? Moira chewed her lip. This was why she’d preferred working alone in a consultant capacity. She drew her own conclusions, wrote up her reports, and let the chips fall where they would. By the time the government or corporation that had hired her chose a path, she was long gone, and she never heard how things had gone unless they went very well—or very badly.

  She glanced around the empty din
ing room and skirted tables on her way to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Ketha called.

  “Bar,” she replied over one shoulder. “Want anything?”

  “An entire bottle of Scotch would be wonderful, but ill-advised. How about one of those nice red wines from Invercargill?”

  “Sure thing.” Moira pushed through the door and started up the stairs, expecting to be like a salmon swimming upstream, but no one blocked her way. They might have taken one of the ship’s other stairwells, but the one she was on provided the most direct route to the dining room.

  Taking a hard left once she reached Deck Four, she traversed the long corridor leading to the bar. A cozy space, it consisted of several table-and-chair combinations, all of which were bolted to the floor as a stopgap against rough seas.

  Karin was already there, in search of her own bottle. Or more likely, one she could share with Daide, her fiancé. The other Shifter straightened, and Moira got a good look at her. The corners of her mouth twitched. “You should have shanghaied that faery. We could keep her in abeyance for kisses as a hedge against growing older.”

  Karin laughed. “I don’t believe it works that way. Dryad kisses must be spontaneous and freely given or they won’t erase the ravages of age.”

  Moira crossed the bar and gave Karin a quick hug. “You look amazing. I’ve never seen you with black hair, and your skin is perfect. Damn if it doesn’t glow.”

  Karin rolled her copper eyes, about the only part of her that hadn’t changed. “I cut Daide off when he waxes enthusiastic about my dip into the Fountain of Youth, and I’m cutting you off too. I feel exactly the same.”

  “Yes, but it’s so rare when something good happens—”

  “Stop.” Karin’s voice was stern. “Don’t tempt fate by inviting it to make your observation a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Moira rooted in a crate and withdrew two bottles of ten-year-old Cabernet. “Do you actually believe that?” she asked after she’d straightened.