Catch & Hold-Legend (Legend series)

by Conn, Claudy

  It was an awesome sound of power and sadness combined, and it actually made me want to cry. I thought the sound the two blades made upon meeting must have been heard around the world …

  And Gais, who had not heard this sound since the destruction of his beloved Danu, was nearly as awestruck as I for a moment—only a moment.

  I can’t tell you what he thought, but he leveled his glaring, hate-filled eyes at me and on a hushed promise said, “You, Radzia MacDaun, will soon join your father!” Then he shifted off.

  I thrust at him with my sword, but again those words too late hit me in the face, and now it was my time to scream! I forgot about the queen standing nearby. I forgot about the world presently in danger of total destruction … I only remembered my dad, and I started to shift off after Gais.

  Something stopped me!

  The queen had thrown a net of magic around me, or perhaps it had been there before I started to shift? At any rate I turned to her and begged, “Let me go!”

  “Yes, when you have collected yourself for the battle,” she answered me softly.

  “I am collected, and I am no longer looking for a fair fight. Please, my Queen, let me go after him.”

  “Indeed—go then. I must collect the others and meet you there at his portal in Dublin. It is where he will make his largest strike. We can advance on the other portals after we contain the one at Trinity.”

  I shifted after Gaiscioch and knew this time was the hour. One of us was going to die, and if I had to go down, he was going with me …

  * * *

  Princess Breith, or as she became when she married Z’s father, Lady Breith of MacDaun, called out in a clear voice, “Allow him to enter, my dear ones.”

  The five stern-looking but pretty Daoine Fae stepped aside, and the chamber door opened wide for me. I went inside and saw my enfant’s mother, not only out of her state of illusion but sitting up near the window on a brightly upholstered settee.

  I went to her and formally went down on one knee to present myself, but she touched my shoulder and bade me sit with her on the settee. Radzia’s mother was not only beautiful, but she had a sereneness about herself that was soothing in its soft aura.

  “You must be Danté … Radzia spoke of you,” she said as I got up and sat a respectful distance from her, at an angle so I could fully face her. “So tell me … do you love my daughter?”

  “Love her? I adore her beyond hope of ever being able to live without her, and that is why I am here.”

  “Good—then keep her safe,” she said on a frown.

  “Precisely why I am here,” I answered, now in a hurry to get on with it. I had to get to Z because I knew my enfant and what she would sacrifice to kill Gais and free the queen.

  “What do you mean?” Princess Breith’s brilliant eyes lit with concern.

  “She has gone to save the queen—” I started.

  “It is done, and Queen Aaibhe was never in danger,” she said, her face again lit by a soft, faraway smile. “Radzia called on me, and together with Queen Mab we made a connection … and—”

  “Then, why is she not here with you? I can think of only one thing that would have kept her from coming immediately to you after your long … sojourn away from her.” I knew at once that Z must be on Gais’s trail. I knew her better than myself.

  Z’s mother frowned again and stood up. “What are you saying?”

  “I am saying that she is bent on destroying Gais for his cowardly murder of your husband, and I need to know where Z is.”

  “Her scent … follow her scent and stop her.”

  “She has disguised it,” I answered.

  Z’s mother smiled proudly. “Ah, then she has learned a thing or two …”

  “And more—and they will not be enough to beat Gais. He is seventy thousand years old with all that time and battle experience to ward her attack and kill her before she can counter … she fights fairly—he does not.”

  “Then follow his scent—now! Do it now!”

  I kissed her fingers. Damn, why hadn’t I thought of that? It was an easy thing to pick up his Dark Magic scent. He wasn’t a Royal and couldn’t disguise his scent from either the Royal Trackers or me!

  And there he stood, sword raised against my Z as she stepped into his trap!

  * * *

  I saw Danté out of the corner of my eye. He was coming at Gais, flanking him, but that would put him in danger … it was wide open at his back. Didn’t he know I knew what I was doing? I couldn’t speak or send him a message because I wanted to concentrate on Gais’s movements, his steps, his shift distances. Rolo, ever hanging from my chain belt, and I had a plan.

  Not too long ago, Rolo had sent me underground to escape the Trackers’ gold net, and it occurred to him that I should do the same and come up near Gais’s legs and slice them off. Oh! I liked that!

  Go underground, track him, and up and slash hard and fast. Yes.

  But Danté’s arrival was nixing that, as now the ground thundered with the two of them going at one another. I couldn’t take the chance of coming up too close to Danté.

  At our backs, the portal had opened, and Trinity grounds were filling with hordes of Dark Fae. It was midnight and Halloween, and it was true: black magic was at its strongest on this day and until midnight tonight.

  Queen Aaibhe and Queen Mab, both heavily guarded by Royal Trackers, were working to close the dolmens.

  Breslyn and Ete were cutting down numbers of monsters too many to count, and Deimne was in the air, swooshing in with great sweeps to leave ten and twenty dead at a time.

  The others I knew were fighting at the smaller portals, so my job was to do what I had been planning and training for all the months since my father’s murder. I was going to kill Gais … in slow degrees if I could.

  Gais suddenly shifted away, and both Danté and I looked around trying to get a fix on him. Then I felt him behind me … and his sword was close, way too close, and he said, “Come closer, Danté, and I will aim my sword at her human heart and plunge it so deep she will disintegrate.”

  “You will be dead before you can move it towards her!” Danté snapped.

  “Still … I think I’ll chance it, Danté—maybe it may be worth it …”

  I turned and faced Gais, and all at once I felt a sure, overwhelming sense of completion as I told him, “Too bad … Gais, you have just made your last threat.”

  He laughed. “Yes, too bad for you, Daoine …” And then his face took on an expression of surprise and horror, and I jumped out of the way as he fell forward.

  What he had not sensed, what he had not realized, was that my mother, Princess Breith of Daoine, my father’s bride, had shifted in behind him. She thrust her death weapon into his back as she softly said my father’s name: “For Nemid …”

  I rushed into her arms, and in the midst of the battle raging all around us, and in the center of Trinity awash with blood and gore of the Dark Realm’s abominations, we held one another while my Danté stood guard.

  Gaiscioch lay dead at our feet, too easy for my liking, but dead, and I whispered my father’s name, as my mother had, “Nemid MacDaun!”

  ~ Epilogue ~

  I would like to tell you that it ended there and all was well, but that wouldn’t be quite the truth.

  Oh, with Gaiscioch dead and out of the way, we were able to (or rather the two queens were able to) hide away the portals he used to bring the Dark Fae through their Realm to ours. And then they went about the business of repairing the fissures in the Dark Realm’s Prison Wall.

  Many abominations were dispatched back to the Dark Realm; more were killed and their corpses disposed of.

  As it happened, humans thought it was a ‘movie stunt’. The people that were killed and found were said to have been killed by a serial killer, and the hunt for same began.

  Queen Mab and Queen Aaibhe found Pestale’s two brothers in a hovel with a group of five women, two of them already dead; the Dark Princes were returned to Mo
rrigu’s palace, and their portal was (we hope) permanently shut down.

  However, here is the rub—Pestale is still out there.

  He has more than the Seelie Fae to worry about, though. Chancemont of Dravo is after him, and I do believe Chance will not rest until he finds him and exacts his revenge for Lana’s death.

  Trevor, Danté’s brother, has bound himself to Chance in the search for Pestale, and they make a formidable pair.

  My mom still remains in Daoine. It is too difficult for her to return to MacDaun, where she and my dad made so many beautiful memories. She is very active though, and Queen Mab has appointed her to the Daoine Council. I know it will take time, but she will come to MacDaun more often, I hope.

  Danté and I are at MacDaun a great deal. It feels like home to both of us, although he is very prone to shifting us in the middle of a kiss to his bed at Lugh Palace.

  Rolo spends less time now hanging from my belt, as it is not quite the fashion statement I want to make, but he is always nearby, as our swords are … just a thought away.

  After my dad’s murder and my mom’s collapse … I knew she was free falling. I suppose I was as well, but now—now Danté takes me in his arms every moment he can, and he tells me that I will never fall again, that he will always be there to catch and hold me, and I know it as a truth.

  The world, however, needs cleaning up, and there are stray Dark Fae still out there … feeding. But we are on it and rounding them up, day by day, so don’t worry—because we are ever ready to say, bring it!

  Legend …

  Here’s a sneak preview of Claudy Conn’s next steamy series:

  ShadowLife—Hybrid

  (unedited)

  ~ Prelude ~

  Present Day,

  Grampian Mountains, Scottish Highlands

  He feels his tongue hanging between his sharp canines, teeth that can crush through a man’s bones, as he races with precision through the trees. The wolf in him has taken the scent from the earth and then lifts his head to the breeze to confirm the distance—a wolf can detect its prey in this manner almost two miles away.

  He can feel the cold wind whip at his thick and beautiful black fur, and he loves the sensation it tracks through his body. The last of the winter snow is beginning to melt beneath his huge paws, and he revels in the freedom of the run …

  He is at home in these woods; the scent of the sweet-smelling tall pines mingled with the rays of the new morning’s sun has a soothing effect on his frazzled nerves—as does the hunt. He has abstained long enough.

  The early scent of spring is in the air and fills his nostrils as he reaches the precipice where he can look over his valley. He shifts into human and lands naked on two feet.

  He stands a huge, muscular man, with his long, black, shiny hair blowing freely in the morning breeze. The intricate tattoos on his chest and arms catch the sun’s rays as his muscles flex and he raises his head to catch the scent of the deer off the wind. His cock is at full attention from the excitement of the hunt. There is an old stag he has been tracking …

  These woods have belonged to his family for centuries—MacAdams’ Foothills they are called. He and his father, nearly lost to him, are the last of his clan. They are neither man, wolf, or vampire, but all three.

  * * *

  He had been alone and apart from all, but at peace in his solitary existence. He was alone by his own will, alone because society and the humans no longer held a lure, alone after the murder of his dear mother …

  He hadn’t even bothered going into the village for more than a few errands: mail, supplies … now and then a piece of ass. And today that particular craving made him feel heady. He needed a woman, and the need was pushing him in that direction, if only for a night, perhaps this night? There was Anna—a willing and alluring playmate, ever ready and willing and nearly (though not quite) able to satisfy his unrelenting lust.

  He was a hybrid, able to change at will because he was born that way centuries ago. Going wolf always cleared his head and heart, but feeding—that was quite another thing; he hadn’t fed in the wild for so long, because contrary to the wolf in him, the human detested killing.

  He was immune to the weather’s biting cold against his skin. He could feel it, for it stayed cold in the Highlands until late spring, but it didn’t chill the human in him as he stood patiently awaiting the right moment, his heart pumping exuberantly with the thrill of the hunt.

  He didn’t have to hunt, as he had a fully stocked cellar at my home, but the need … drove him at times like this.

  He crunched for his lethal jump as he heard the old stag in the distance approach. He chose this particular buck because the twelve-pointer was aged and showing signs of decline. He would honor him by bringing his life full circle, and he’d make his death quick.

  The stag had not picked up his scent and slowly wandered into range. The man transformed once more into wolf and waited with infinite patience. He wanted a clean kill, one that would be as painless as he could achieve.

  All at once and with precision, he was on the stag, bringing him down. A wolf could overpower even something ten times his size. A hybrid had the strength of many wolves.

  He made a quick, clean kill, tearing at the stag’s throat to accomplish the kill in the instant.

  He needed the fresh blood for the vampire so much a part of who he was, and he wanted the fresh raw meat for the wolf. The human honored the old stag with an ancient Indian prayer.

  The human … Chase MacAdams was a hybrid extraordinaire, billionaire, and recluse, and he thought himself a pitiful being, alone and disillusioned with his lot in life. With all the power he held, with all the power his father held, they had not seen that his beautiful mother had a stalker and had been in mortal danger that fateful afternoon. They had arrived on the scene too late to save her, but they had taken on the ancient vampire—Dracula—but had lost him even as they worked to annihilate him.

  She had whispered in her last moment that she had not given up her dear friend’s secret. She had not told Dracula what he wanted to know …

  And then she had closed her eyes, and his mother, who was a hybrid, and whom he had always thought invincible, died.

  Dracula had the only weapon that could kill an immortal hybrid … had it still, and Dracula, although he and his father had tried to trace him, was off the grid.

  Chase’s father had gone off to grieve, but he had stayed on at MacAdams in seclusion and self-pity, plotting what he would do if ever he found the ancient immortal!

  Chase MacAdams was powerful beyond measure and equipped with skills that made him nearly invincible, and yet, he was a dissatisfied man and an alpha wolf in desperate need of something he could not, would not name … a mate.

  He had not in all his three hundred years imprinted on a female—he had never really fallen in love.

  He raised his head, and his dark gold wolf eyes surveyed the craggy hillside as he released a long soulful howl, one that was picked up by a nearby pack of wolves and returned with encouragement. Wolves have a deep and caring social order, and he had been accepted by the local pack a very long time ago.

  The Cairngorms had always been his home, but he had never before retreated into such severe seclusion until last year, when he needed to get away from the misery of his disillusionment, the grief of his loss, and the guilt he felt when he was unable to avenge his mother’s murder at Dracula’s hands.

  He fed now, fulfilling his physical needs, and left the remains for the stray wildlife that would surely visit when he was gone. Then he was moving again with grace and speed, a wolf reveling in the success of his hunt and the beauty of his forest.

  In the distance he could see the ruins of Strathmore Castle, a local tourist haunt. Just below and not yet visible, stood his home, a mansion of stone and logs …

  He was so tired of living this existence, for it was no more than that. He wanted more, but he believed there never would be more for him. He could not allow himself to
love, for no doubt she would be human and live a human life, and when she discovered what he was, she would be repulsed.

  Or just when he thought life had everything to offer with a mate in his arms, he would lose her as his father had lost his mate to some unexpected horror …

  So Chase ran to escape his loneliness, but it was always there waiting for him, around the bend, in the mirror … in the family home that he loved …

  And then he saw it—a strange car in the bluestone gravel courtyard of his mansion. Why was it there, and who was the beautiful, black-haired young woman knocking at his big oak front door …?

  ~ Prologue ~

  Her long, silky black hair was a gift from her mother. In her stocking feet she stood at five-five, but with her heeled boots she was a good deal taller. She rubbed her cold hands against her jeans. She shouldn’t feel the cold … she wasn’t supposed to feel the cold, but somehow she did; perhaps it was because she had turned her back on what she was, suppressed everything into non-existence.

  Her eyes were often described by the young men attempting to seduce her as exotic, but it was more than a line. It was the truth. Her eyes were almond shaped but large and green like a deep, dark lake, also from her mother, but if you looked closely and deep you would see the glitter of gold—and that she got from her mysterious Scottish father. At the moment her eyes held a wary expression and her body was tense with the anticipation of the unknown. She was about to do something she had never done before, seduce with a lie.

  Her dark gray rental car was parked in the gravel courtyard, and although she had been knocking for a few moments, it seemed as though no one was home. There was a separate garage made in the same lovely design of stone and logs, and she walked over to it, her heels twisting a bit in the gravel. Peering inside with her hand over her forehead she saw three cars inside the spacious building. One was a silver Jag, the other a jeep, and the other a truck … and she smiled because it was a Ford 250—American made, here in the Highlands.