Addictive Gloamshade

by Poppet

  Ewan clears his throat, managing to finally look a tiny bit embarrassed when the shoe's on the other foot. Quirking an eyebrow at me briefly as if to say 'we'll see about that', he swivels to stare across to Adam, “Did you want something in particular or are you just stalking Deliah?”

  “I , uh, just wanted to invite her to join us down in the beer hall. It would be nice for her to meet the crew and you know, just chill.”

  Ewan turns to me, “Well? Yes or no madam, the man's waiting for a yay or nay so he can grease his drinking elbow.”

  “Where is it?” I ask Adam, who's looking bashful and cute with his hands buried so deep in his baggy jean pockets that he looks like a pogo stick.

  “Second cavern after the mess hall.”

  “I'll meet you there,” I say, watching his face erupt in a gigantic smile.

  “Great. I'll save you a seat.”

  And then he's gone, probably to do just that. Smirking at Ewan, I ask, “Not his lap, I hope?”

  “Someone has a crush on the new damsel of the Eagle clan,” smiles Ewan. He glances at the doorway where Adam left a moment ago with a fond expression.

  It gives me that warm, aw, fuzzy feeling.

  Yes he's tough, but he's also softer than a teddy bear. It's a tricky balancing act which he manages to execute with ease.

  “So what are we doing here?” I ask him, pulling his attention back to the task at hand.

  “I'm going to touch your forehead with Odin's ash and then you will get information in the mist from the connection the tree still has to our gods. The information, by rights, should be yours alone, but you are welcome to ask me questions or ask for help.”

  “And what does this mean?” I say, staring at the charcoal vapor rising up in front of my legs.

  “It denotes you as one of our own, then all you need is the clan handshake and you'll be officially an eagle. Then we can teach you to fly.”

  “Fly?” I squeak.

  “What did you think being an eagle meant? This isn't a cheerleading squad, we're the real deal. We work for Odin and his allies in Asgard, we are 'magic' incarnate. We descend from gods, Deliah,” he says, resting his elbows on his propped up knee.

  “So when Alweada said Adam was flying, he really meant Adam was flying?” I ask.

  “Damn straight. Stick around darling and you'll soon find we're the source for every monster myth known to mankind. We're the original mothmen, our allies over in Vlaenderen are the original warlocks and supposed vampyres of legend, and just over the mountain and down the aspect we have our cousins, the draugr, who've spawned zombie stories as they are the original 'undead' race. And truth be told, fiction got it so messed up and twisted they've taken pure beauty and mutilated it into macabre blasphemy.”

  I wish he was kidding, but he's got his 'I'm dead serious' face on.

  He waves away the thought with a flick of his hand, “Enough chitchat or Adam's going to come looking for you again.”

  Leaning forward he dips his fingers in the ash, coming to me to wipe it on my forehead, when it occurs to me to ask, “I thought oak trees were the holy trees. Not yew trees.”

  “Oak trees are holy to Thor. Yew trees are holy to Odin, Thor's father. Ash trees were substituted for yew after the destruction of Yggdrasil. Plus we didn't want the fuckers burning any more of them down. It's called misdirection,” he says, his voice becoming warm and velvet, thick and sexy.

  Or maybe that's just the ash on my forehead talking?

  “Deliah, tell me what you hear, what you see...”

  Every syllable licks my nipples and flicks my clit, riding my blood and nerve endings with stimulation so seductive my legs get that warm weak feeling. I could listen to him talk all night.

  Crimson words flicker in the mist in front of me, and this time I can read them even though I know it's a language I've never been exposed to.

  It's like a user's manual for a warrior. No Norse descendant's sword or weapon can harm you if you are not an enemy, even if it strikes you. Odin ensures we remain unharmed even when armed.

  He controls our minds in battle, guiding our strikes, we are a channel for his power and we manifest his will for him. A hand presses my right shoulder and a lady whispers in my ear words of power, bravery, courage.

  Equal in everything, life and death, love and hate. No matter how big the man we have the power to smite, to adjust the balance, to destroy all who harm, the blackhearts, the soulless, the ones chosen by the female squadron who... look like me! Oh my god they look like me! More than half of them have my dark hair and eyes, their shoulders wide, their arms muscular and powerful, but they have the faces of angels, brandishing swords of light.

  The vision fades away and I'm staring straight into Ewan's sunlight eyes.

  “Liah? Baby? You okay?”

  Closing my eyes against the hallucinogenic voice, I reach out, pulling the man's head closer, whispering across his mouth, “I'm high.”

  “And how do you know you're high?” murmurs back, liquid sex thrumming up and down my legs until my hairs stand on end.

  “Because your voice is making me horny.”

  “Good thing you have bandy legs or I'd dislocate your hips if I scratched that itch for you,” whispers back, giving me a shiver as if he just rubbed his stubble down my nape to plant a hot wet kiss between my shoulder blades.

  “This is a trip right? All just my imagination...” I smile, reopening my eyes to see his luminescent, his left palm glowing yellow again.

  “No, you are really having this conversation with me. Maybe I shouldn't let you go drinking with the boys.”

  “How do you do that? How do you make your voice reach inside me like that?” I shudder as the live wire inside my body reacts.

  “It's in my blood. I am half finfolk, and that's why I'm the clan chieftan because like a siren calling to a sailor I can bend anyone to my will by using a certain tone of voice.”

  “That's cheating,” I giggle, feeling just like I do when I've had four margaritas too many with vodka jello chasers.

  I think I'm dreaming and he's just a vision in my dream.

  “You're not dreaming. You are wide awake, and when I pull away you will come out of it,” whispers in that dark and demonic midnight voice, which makes me want to maul the man and bite the inside of his thigh to mark him as mine.

  “You've already bitten me, one scar from you a day is enough thank you.”

  Blinking, staring at him standing in the middle of the room, I sit up from my slump. Bella's curled up sleeping next to me, which means I was far away in my maniacal illusion for a lot longer than it felt.

  “Ewan?” I ask, disconcerted. I feel like I'm waking up. “Did I doze off?”

  He shakes his head, strolling closer, “You were ether surfing with your kindred. Welcome back.”

  “How long? Adam's waiting. Shit!” Wiping my hair off my face, I feel lousy that I've left the poor guy hanging.

  Ewan cocks his head in the direction of the entrance, “Go, I'll babysit Bella for you. You can get her from my quarters when you go to bed.”

  “You sure?” I check, giving my baby a tender stroke to rouse her from her own dream.

  He reaches out, taking Bella, cuddling the sleepy kitty to his chest, softly scrolling his finger from her nose to the back of her head so she tilts it back to wrinkle her nose at him with that tractor purr.

  Devilishly grinning at me, he pivots to walk away, saying, “Your pussy likes me.”

  It makes me think half the things I was dreaming I said out loud. Oh wait! He heard it!

  Fuck! There needs to be a visitation clause on his telepathic gift.

  Stretching, feeling like I've been sleeping for an age, I step down off the vision platform and its deep chair, trying to get my head in the mood for beer with bandits.

  Walking down the gloomy corridor my senses prickle and sting. Slowing so my footfalls silence, I go into stealth mode. My scalp is crawling, the hairs in my nape rigid, danger instinct
ively slicing my path with dire warnings of imminent jeopardy.

  When something grips my shoulder I duck, dropping reflexively, swooping into an attack pivot, deflecting the hold and bruising my wrist with the vicious contact.

  Shoved back, I trip on an obstruction which wasn't there two seconds ago, falling hard enough to jar the bones in my behind. I catch my fall with an elbow staked on indomitable rock.

  I don't stick around for the next blow, shimmying across cold dust. My breath is accelerated, my ears blocking with the panicked gush of blood, ruining my ability to intuit the next attack with all my senses. Rolling away into a crouch, I boost off the floor as tension unleashes, anger flaring my vision into unholy glimpses of hell.

  Fingers hook inside my shirt and I go ballistic, punching, striking, smashing, stepping into the attack to bash my heel down a shin and onto the arch of a foot. Writhing in his hold I elbow below sternum, finger strike into armpit, grunting with effort as I double over to unbalance my assailant, wriggling under his arm to back strike my knuckles where I guess his face would be.

  My fist connects and I dance down again, sweeping briefly across the darkness and double punching in fast succession to where I gauge a giant's crotch to be.

  “For fuck's sake woman!”

  The dimness briefly illuminates hair and I see success in sight, lifting my knee as I thrust my elbow down in violent momentum, impacting my assailant in a double whammy.

  I'm smug enough to feel victorious, but an arm jams my waist and I'm hefted into the air, hoisted and dropped with such force my head explodes with red throbbing. Blinking rapidly I make to roll away when a knee grinds into my pelvis and I'm nailed to the floor.

  Fuck!

  The shudder of crunching rock flecks dirt into my ear and I yank away, mutilating my spine in the process.

  “Pathetic,” hisses at me. “You couldn't find your own tail in a snowstorm.”

  This isn't a fair fight, I don't even have my weapons with me.

  “If that's the best you can do, you're doomed,” he says with a gloaty holier than thou tone.

  Blinking against the choking dust he's agitated, I tilt my head, listening to the voice.

  I'm wrenched off the floor, shunted back onto my feet and dusted off with such force it hurts. I feel like the slapping dummy.

  “I'm taking over your training. You have the skill of a retarded ball of spaghetti.”

  I'm delighted and terrified. Recognizing his voice I speak to the hulking shadow, “What did you want, Gunn? Just testing my reflexes, or did you have a reason for accosting me?”

  “I didn't accost you! You're the cretin who attacked me when all I did was touch your shoulder to get your attention. Don't daydream, Deliah. It's the difference between life and death.”

  “I wasn't–”

  He leans down to hiss in my face, “Do you like suffering? You're on a one way slide to the jaws of despair. Wake up or I will slap sense into you.”

  “Fuck you–”

  I'm shut up when he tackles me, ramming me into the cavern wall, winding me and slashing my equilibrium with pain. It's enough to incapacitate me, my hands refusing to flex as I go into shock.

  He laughs, the fucker laughs when he picks me up and tosses me over his shoulder, stalking the black passages like a hellhound hunting for virgins.

  Stomping through the temple of carnage, it feels like a long way down as I stare at the floor. His sanity is clearly cracked and the albumin leaked out and left him a bit scabbed. He's not firing in every chamber because if he was he'd not be such a class A snotball. He thinks he's so badass you'd swear he had vipers for shoelaces and venom for eyedrops. But from this angle all I can see is a super hot arse in perfectly sexy jeans.

  Jeez, what the hell is wrong with me? Every two seconds I'm craving nookie.

  I'm flicked back over, my feet planted outside my bedroom door, and the grumpy man says, “I just wanted to apologize for earlier. I'll see you tomorrow morning at oh-eight hundred hours outside the dining hall.”

  And with that proclamation mister arrogant goes sauntering the way we came.

  His apologies suck as badly as his handshakes. What is his problem?

  “Thanks! I was right close to where I was headed and now you've doubled my walk!” I yell after him.

  Tosser!

  A tosser who fills those jeans really well.

  Annoyed, I stomp into my bedroom. If I'm going to meet the men of the clan I intend to have a little help. High heels are in order so I have an underestimated weapon on my feet which also gives me a better height advantage. I'm fed up with feeling short.

  Yeah, why not, look pretty for a change, and all that. Adam's waited this long, he can wait another five minutes.

  Then I remember the words... If he throws you over his shoulder, it's a done deal. Mark my words.

  Adam can consider that myth busted!

  *

  Ewan:

  Slinking back behind my entrance, I watch as Gunn stalks off, leaving Liah staring after him.

  She's ovulating and it's becoming horrendously obvious. One of us had better shake her hand and mark her before her hormones catch her ending up in someone else's bed.

  He's been single for so long he doesn't recognize the signs. She was fawning at him with lusty eyes and a tone so sublime it injects the manmuscle with a titanium rod, and yet Gunn doesn't see it, walking away while she watches his butt the entire duration until he's out of sight.

  Her brain argues, but female hormones are a law unto themselves. I'd better have a word with Adam about keeping her unmolested tonight. I'm making him personally responsible. No matter whose leg she decides to dry hump, hands off!

  Looking up, I grumble, “Odin, what did my men do to deserve this? You owe me big time Old Man.”

  The last thing I want is for Deliah to be a service provider who's more widely spread than DHL.

  Chapter 14

  Much have I to laud

  The ancient-made (though little)

  Liquor of the valiant

  ~ Skáldskaparmal

  Deliah:

  Why does he hate me? Seriously, does he think he's so Dench that he can't share the affections of Ewan with me?

  Is he some ponce favorite douche who holds Ewan's balls out the way every time he needs to take a piss or something? The male version of a BFF, or fucking what? What?

  With a liver pickled in dutch courage I toddle … that way. Time for a stand off. Face to face, man to man. Not that I can arm wrestle for Ewan, but then I wouldn't want to. Ewan's an acquired taste, a bit like capers and peanut butter with shrimp cocktail. Know what I mean?

  Yeah, exactly, he's the kind of guy I half expect to blow his nose on his used sweaty socks. Akshly, that might account for the undefined scent that lingers in his stubble.

  But this is it, no more of this mexican stand-off shit with Gunn. He always gives me that stare that suggests he would fart in my face if my eyebrows were on fire. Just to fan the flames of course. And then he'd tell me not to take it personally to cover his own arse.

  Well mister haughty, it's time we buried the hatchet. In the middle of your chest.

  Jeez, the shadows slipped in 'the wave' there. Woooo! Pompoms baby and we'd be ready to par-tay.

  What? No! No party; it's time to tell that man his dick doesn't reach to his knees so he can stop walking like a cowboy. His come hither stance looks more like he forgot the lube last night.

  I should have brought the besom with me so he can prop his chin up on it with his signature sneer and give his neck a rest. It must get cramps from looking down his nose at everyone. We can use the besom after, to sweep his shattered ego into a tidy pile under his bed. Now which room is his? I know it's here somewhere.

  I'm creeping now, in the careful steps of someone doing their best to avoid tripwire, because I damn well do want to sneak up on him and test the resilience of his heart medication.

  Arrogant jerk. I bet he's sitting on a mirror popping the
pimples on his hairy arse so he can look good for his hoss.

  There! I found you! And you said I couldn't find my own tail in a snowstorm, well bite me! I so managed this, with half my logic stuck at the bottom of my beer pitcher.

  Ha!

  Strolling into the room with the launcher propped inside the threshold, I'm stuck to the wall. It must be magnetic which is forcing the iron in my blood to gravitate thataway, or something. I can't seem to manage forwards without the prop.

  That's okay, I got this. I'll just make it look cool.

  Raising an eyebrow in my 'we're going to have a talk' stare, I clear my throat loudly, summoning the pompous ambot from the recesses of his room. I do it again when I get no response, only to choke on it, coughing with my head spinning and my eyes watering.

  Stepping back I lean nonchalantly against the wall. It's a wee bit hot in here. If he's in the sauna I will lock him in to roast his bad attitude.

  “Gunn?” I call, pushing off the wall to stagger four paces … er, that way. Yeah why not, what's to lose? Let's see what's down here. Down, gawd, if he's going down on Ewan I will fucking hurl chunky!

  Sauntering down the dark passage to the next room, my ears stuck in residual buzzing from the noise in the beer hall, I'm launched left, shunted right over a dark obstruction, doing my spastic gymnast routine as I tumble and flip, landing splayed on the floor and perfectly propped against the wall. Leaning back I try and make out like I planned it.

  “You're a bit paranoid. Do you always attack people calling your name?” I say to the dark. No wonder you're single.

  He's there somewhere. What a freak! I bet he keeps a real big gun under his pillow which he strokes to go to sleep. Who needs a teddy bear when you have twelve inches of solid metal.

  Ohmigod! Hahahaha, fuck, shut up Liah, he's going to get pissed!

  Nothing happens, so I stand, carefully, making sure to keep a steadying hand on my new bestie, the hard stern wall that witnesses everything in these catacombs.

  Stepping blindly, hands forward to feel my way, I step on something soft, the falsetto expletive makes me backstep too fast, whirling the world around again.