by Ann Gimpel
She and the other Shifters arrayed in front, beside, and behind her had moved closer, spreading into a single line, while Eiocha talked with the fallen half-god. Not that Tantalus viewed himself in that light.
Leif had been working his way through their ranks. He drew near, talking low. “At my signal, give this everything you have.”
“Last chance.” Tantalus leaned toward Eiocha, oozing a raw sexuality that made the air shimmer with lust.
Desire thrummed hotly between Moira’s legs. The part of her that had wanted to throw herself at Tantalus’s feet changed direction. Now she wanted to jump into his arms and wind her legs around his waist, so he could plunge into her body. A shudder racked her. She might be aroused, but it felt sick, wrong. She experimented until she found a weave that muted Tantalus’s sinister come-fuck-me vibes.
“I feel it too,” Ketha said, her tone sharp.
“You’d have to be dead not to.” Moira extended power until it included Ketha. “This should help you disregard his seductiveness.”
“Thanks.” Ketha blew out a jagged breath. “I figured we’d be fighting, not sitting ducks for whatever he’s dishing out.”
“Look at the demonspawn.” Moira jutted her chin at the collection of abominations, many of whom were stroking erections. “They’re in thrall. Apparently, his spell snared them too.”
“So long as they’re beating off, they’re not hammering us.” Viktor smirked.
“Small favors, eh?” Moira kept her gaze on Eiocha.
“First chance, or last or middle.” Eiocha tossed her hands skyward. “You weren’t worth much as a lover two thousand years ago. I don’t imagine you’ve improved with time.” She brought her arms down until both index fingers pointed right at him. “Move aside.”
“Or?” Tantalus sounded amused.
Red-tinged lightning bolts left Eiocha’s outstretched hands. They blew Tantalus backward before they augured into his chest. Blood spurted, and he clutched at his wounds.
The blood flowed faster, geysering onto the ice coating everything. “Why aren’t I healing?” he screeched, clawing at himself.
The griffon padded lazily to where he lay and pecked at the wounds, tilting its head back to swallow the blood. Tantalus tried to bat the creature away, but it sank its beak into his chest, chewing and swallowing as fast as it could tear strips of flesh from its erstwhile associate.
Moira snorted. “No loyalty in the nether world.”
“Why would there be?” Viktor countered. “Friendships require generosity, empathy.”
“You’re not healing,” Eiocha yelled over Tantalus’s screams, “because my magic overshadows yours. It always did. You’re only half a god. I won’t repeat the mistake we made last time where we didn’t kill you and merely locked you away.”
“What does that mean?” His imperious tone had morphed into a high, thin wail, riddled with fear.
Eiocha shrugged. “What do you think it means? Your creature will finish what I began.” Dusting her hands together, she moved aside.
“Now,” Leif shouted and ran for the fissure, power blazing from his hands.
Moira linked with Ketha and Viktor. They repeated their actions from the previous day and let magic from the ley lines roll through them. It strengthened their destructive power as they planted themselves right in front of the fissure. Magic blasted it from all sides. Shifter power married with Fae magic into a pulsing canopy that coated the opening from top to bottom and side to side.
Dark power bombarded them, but their wards were holding so far. The air thickened, the stench of sulfur adding to the rot and decay already present. A horned demon pressed against the fabric they’d plastered across the gateway. Its horns punctured the weave, and Oberon flew forward on his winged steed. Bending he sliced a shining, silver blade across the horns. They fell to the ground, amid howls from the demon who was trapped in Hell, minus his horns.
Moira hoped the fucker would bleed to death or be banished or whatever the hell happened to demons who’d been dehorned.
“Give me more,” Oberon bellowed. Magic billowed from him as he added another layer across the gateway. His working glowed a faint blue, and he chanted in an ancient form of Gaelic.
Titania flew near, adding her own sheet of sealant over the hole. At least it had stopped pulsing. She slid from her horse and joined Eiocha off to one side of the fissure.
“Everyone!” Eiocha screamed. “Draw fire, mix it with earth and let’s finish this.”
Moira called fire from the Earth’s core. It jumped to her bidding as if it understood how high the stakes were. She directed heat and smoke to sear the fissure, burning it from the inside out. The net effect of their combined magic was formidable, and the edges of the gaping hole began to draw closer.
“Keep it coming,” Leif cried.
She felt him inside her magical center. When she reached a little farther, she felt the other sea Shifters too, just as he’d said. Despite her grim surroundings, she smiled faintly. A family. She had a family after long years on her own. Maybe the departing vulture wouldn’t leave as deep a scar as she feared.
Her breath came fast. Drawing this much magic was hard work. Whenever she gulped air, it was so tainted with evil, it burned her lungs and made her eyes water, but she had to breathe.
The fissure continued to fold in on itself. Moira asked for earth power and threw it after the fire in great handfuls, as much as she could heave. Around her, Shifters were panting like racehorses who’d been ridden hard. When the opening had been reduced to a small rectangle, Eiocha nodded to Oberon. He slid from his horse and joined her and his consort in front of the fissure.
Eiocha placed the flat of her hand in the center of what was left of the portal to Hell, chanting in harsh tones. Oberon laid his hand over hers, and Titania followed suit. With the three gods joined, they exhorted the rent between worlds to not only close forever, but to trap whoever remained within its folds.
The words were simple, punitive, uncompromising.
Smoke rose from where Eiocha’s palm was flattened against the fabric they’d made with their combined magic. Her face contorted with pain, but she didn’t move her fingers. Moira wanted to send healing energy but was afraid anything she added would dilute sealing the portal.
The skin on Eiocha’s hand blistered. Bone showed through, but the goddess didn’t move.
Leif ran to where the gods stood and focused a beam of magic above where their hands were joined. Power flared blue like the sea, and the wound scarring the frigid air vanished.
Moira felt like cheering, but she didn’t have either breath or energy. Magic still ran through her like high voltage electricity, leaving her wrung out, drained.
Eiocha tried to move her hand, but Oberon held fast. “I shall heal your hurts.”
“No time,” she protested. “The gateway is sealed forever but look around you.” She pointed with fingers where bone showed through charred flesh.
Moira followed the line of Eiocha’s singed fingers. Hell’s minions had sloughed off Tantalus’s sex spell and begun to fight again while the gateway was closing, their blows bouncing off the Shifters’ wards. Fury rained from them as they charged, clearly having identified the Shifters as a weak link in the chain of magical beings who’d thrown a clod in their plans to take over the world.
“Damn, but there are a lot of them,” Viktor muttered.
“Be grateful there aren’t more,” Ketha countered.
Moira refocused her power. “Take out one at a time,” she yelled. “It’s efficient, and eventually, none will be left.”
A bloodcurdling screech was followed by, “Noooooo.”
Heart pounding, Moira bolted toward the scream, but Viktor hauled her back. “We keep to our groups.” His tone was grim.
“What happened? I have to know what happened.” Moira twisted until she saw Zoe lying on the ice-coated ground, a black arrow protruding from her chest. Recco was bent over her, his face twisted into a mask
of pain and fear.
Resignation beat a gritty path through Moira. So far, they’d gotten off cheap. Apparently, their run of fair weather had just ground to a halt.
Eiocha ran to Zoe and bent, patting the ground. Shining lines jumped to her call, winding around Zoe’s inert form. Her coyote hovered above her, visible in the chill air. Moira recalled Rowana’s death. Her eagle had shown itself when the Shifter died, so the presence of Zoe’s coyote had to be a harbinger of doom.
I cannot think that way. I have to believe she’ll survive.
Moira gave herself a robust mental slap, so she’d have the will to keep fighting.
Eiocha whinnied, the sound contorted by her human vocal chords, and two faeries ran to her, throwing their small bodies across Zoe, presumably to potentiate the ley lines’ magic.
“We need your attention here not there,” Ketha said, her tone sharp and riddled with anguish.
“Got it,” Moira bit off the words. If the ley lines couldn’t cure Zoe, there wouldn’t be much she could do, either. Focusing on a particularly loathsome goblin carting a bow and a quiver of black arrows, she loosed magic to stop his heart. Before he’d even fallen to the ground, she picked another target.
Now was a time to fight, not to think or to mourn. Both of those would come later.
21
Old Scores Settled
Leif was relieved he’d guessed right when he inserted his power into the mix at the fissure. Blending magic with the gods was always a crapshoot, but the gateway had been not just shut but annihilated. He’d been poised to cut the flow of his magic fast if it had clashed with the gods’ and pushed the fissure farther open. He expelled air through his teeth. They’d accomplished their first step, but they were a long way from done. When Zoe fell to a goblin’s arrow, his magical center went on high alert. That one of theirs had been hit after the gateway was sealed was a bad omen.
Ridding themselves of the portal to Hell should have lessened the demonspawns’ power, but it hadn’t had much effect.
Recco knelt next to his mate, hands around the arrow’s shaft. A cudgel whistled past Leif’s head, thunking against his warding. He spun to face a giant. Formed from stone, they were impervious to most magics, but nor could they heal themselves. Leif focused his third eye, hunting for the giant’s heart. They were never in the same spot. Whichever dark mage created this abomination had formed it to their own specifications.
Harpies flitted past, spewing poison, but it slid off his ward unable to penetrate it. He needed to get to Recco and Zoe. To hell with the giant. It swung its cudgel. Closer now, a blow from it could do more damage. Leif ducked, intent on out-maneuvering its clumsy efforts.
Oberon was back on his winged steed. Flashing hooves connected with the giant’s head, severing it from its neck. Leif jumped sideways to avoid the hefty stone orb. It hurtled to the ice next to him, wide fissures spiraling out from where it landed.
He glanced up intent on thanking Oberon, but the king of Faerie had moved on. Leif skidded across the ice to where Recco squatted next to Zoe. Her coyote glided above her, whining softly.
“How is she?” Leif asked.
Recco shook his head. “I want to remove the arrow, but it punctured one of the big vessels feeding her heart. It’s all that’s keeping her from bleeding to death.”
Ley lines had threaded around her ankles and wrists. Another, larger line was snaking around her torso. At least they weren’t burning her where they touched her. Perhaps Eiocha’s summons had a modulating influence. Grabbing hold of the lines had signed Rowana’s death warrant, but they weren’t harming Zoe. Not that he could see, anyway.
Karin ran to them and then dropped into a crouch. Power flared as she scanned Zoe’s inert form. After a lengthy pause, her eyes fluttered open. “Sure and ’tis you. I’d know your magic anywhere.” She coughed; blood bubbled from her mouth.
Recco blew out a tortured-sounding breath. He knew what the blood meant.
Karin thinned her mouth into a grim line. “Zoe. I have to get the arrow out, and then I’ll use magic to repair the aorta.”
“Not a sure thing, eh?” Zoe rasped around more blood, turning her head to spit out a mouthful.
“No. Not a sure thing at all, but if I do nothing, you’ll bleed to death slowly. The main things holding you on this side of the veil are the lines.”
“I’ll help,” Recco gritted. “Tell me what to do.”
Zoe clutched at his hand. “If I doona make it, I love you.”
Her coyote howled once, a desolate, mournful sound.
“I love you too,” he told her, “but goddammit it, you will survive. You have to.”
“Do you need me?” Leif asked Karin.
She shook her head. “No. Too many cooks. Go kill something.” She addressed Recco. “Watch out for the Harpies. They’re soul snatchers, and Zoe is vulnerable since she’s so near death.”
“Will my magic kill them?”
“No, but if you make them miserable enough, they’ll leave us alone. Aim for their wings. They don’t like it overmuch when they can’t fly. Strengthen your warding so their poison doesn’t touch you. They immobilize their prey with poison and then suck out your soul through your mouth.”
“What a nasty image,” Recco muttered. Power flared around him as he added to his ward and draped it around Zoe as well.
Leif bent and kissed Zoe’s forehead. “You have courage, coyote Shifter, and you are well loved. Your bond animal is watching over you.”
She trained her dark eyes on him, the pupils so dilated, they covered her irises. “I will do my best.” Her words slurred.
“No one can ask for more than that.” Leif straightened and took in the field. At least twenty varieties of demons ranged over the frozen tundra. He tallied over a hundred goblins, giants, demons, and things he didn’t have names for, before he quit counting. This far north, no trees grew. At least there wasn’t much to hide behind beyond columns of ice and rock.
The Shifters and Fae were killing one abomination at a time. They should have made more of a dent in the demon population than they had. A creeping wrongness beyond the evil that permeated this place jabbed him. He knew that energy source.
Recognized it.
After checking on Moira, who was well shielded and killing methodically, Leif ran toward where he felt evil squatting in a concentrated mass. It wasn’t in plain view but hidden behind invisibility spells. Was this a secondary gateway into Hell? One far more subtle and closed to all but a select few? Was that why the Harpies were still here? Out of all the creatures, they had ways to teleport back to the island in the Aegean they’d called home for millennia.
Heedless of running through his magical stores, Leif trained a prodigious blast at the suspicious spot. It shimmied, skittered first to one side, and then the other. He hit it again, harder this time, and it fell aside. Amphitrite rose to her feet, offering him a sunny smile.
“Ye always were too smart for your own good,” she crooned.
“Where’s Poseidon?”
Her face twisted into a derisive grimace. “That old bastard? He’s a craven. A coward. He wanted nothing to do with anything that smacked of a fight. Or with me. Told me I was a faithless slut and that he might look me up later. Ha! I told him not to bother.” She tilted her head, adopting a seductive pose. “Now that I’m free, dear boy, your reasons for turning me down have gone away.”
Leif decided to play along for a short time. She’d never dealt in artifice, and maybe he could get information out of her. “A second portal?” he narrowed his eyes. “Who would have guessed?”
She stood tall, hands on her hips. “That other one was too large. Too obvious. Tantalus was convinced we needed a superhighway, while I argued for a back alley.”
Leif didn’t bother telling her about Tantalus’s demise. If she’d been paying attention, she’d know. “Who else was behind this portal-from-Hell plan of yours?” He moved slightly closer, smiling.
“I know what
you’re up to,” she snapped.
Leif shrugged. “You want to share my bed. Lovers hold no secrets—”
Eiocha galloped up, back in horse form. One of her front legs showed scarring from where she’d been burned, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“You!” Eiocha tossed her head, whinnying. The word came out garbled but understandable.
“There’s a second portal,” Leif told her. “It’s behind Amphitrite.”
“I never corroborated your second portal idea.” Amphitrite sounded nervous.
“Doesn’t matter.” Eiocha steamrolled toward the other goddess. Rearing back, she drove her hooves into Amphitrite’s chest, shoving her to the icy ground.
“I am your liege.” Amphitrite must have been addressing her words to him. “I command you to protect me.” Leif felt a flutter in his magical center. Once upon a time, he’d been linked to her and Poseidon, but that had been before the Cataclysm. He’d taken care to dismantle his connection to both sea gods once they’d let his people die in droves.
Leif stood back as Eiocha reared again, and then brought her powerful front feet down on Amphitrite’s chest to the accompaniment of cracking bones. Not that the goddess couldn’t heal herself, but Eiocha had no intention of offering her a chance. He’d lost his chance to pry information out of Amphitrite, but sealing the portal was more important.
“Find the portal,” Eiocha screamed into his mind.
Leif extended magic, hunting for another fissure, this one small and well concealed. While he searched, Eiocha continued to flatten Amphitrite with her hooves. The sea queen grunted and cried piteously. Leif enjoyed every squeal. Amphitrite couldn’t suffer enough to suit him.
“Help me. I’ll give you anything you want.” More words burbled from Amphitrite’s crushed lungs, but Leif tuned her out.
One place soaked in his power, not giving it back. He probed deeper, pushing ice aside until a small throbbing opening, not unlike the entrance to a womb, grew visible.
“Got it.” Eiocha punctuated her words with a ferocious equine scream. Bending, she closed her squared-off teeth around Amphitrite’s head and dragged her to the opening, pushing the broken body through with her hooves.
