Sentinel Of Khoth

by Brenda Trim

  “Is that the ground shak­ing?” Finn called out.

  Blaine glanced to­ward Mt. Ba­tia, and nod­ded. “It is, but it’s not from the vol­cano.”

  An­other hard jolt rolled through the ground be­neath them, mak­ing sev­eral knights land on their asses while Finn stead­ied him­self with a widened stance. “What the fuck would cause this if not the vol­cano?”

  “I have no idea. Could Cyril be cast­ing a spell?” Blaine asked as his am­ber eyes scanned their sur­round­ings.

  “Any­thing’s pos­si­ble where Cyril is con­cerned. Ques­tion is, what does he hope to ac­com­plish? Ev­ery­one stay in­side the pro­tec­tions un­less we come un­der at­tack,” Finn or­dered then reached for his com­mu­ni­ca­tor. Tap­ping the screen, he barked, “Leg­ette. It’s Finn. Some­thing is hap­pen­ing in the prac­tice arena.”

  The im­age of Leg­ette on the small screen looked over his shoul­der be­fore turn­ing back to face Finn. “We’ll be right there. Re­main on guard. It’s pos­si­ble that Cyril is try­ing to knock out the pro­tec­tions.”

  “We fig­ured as much. You and An­gus stay in­side the cas­tle. Keep a con­tin­gent with you in the event we should fail.”

  Leg­ette nar­rowed his eyes. “You will not fail, Finn. Re­port as soon as you know any­thing.”

  As soon as the trans­mis­sion ended, Finn met Blaine, Slate and Caleb’s gazes. Walk­ing to the op­po­site edge of the area, they scanned the for­est for any sign of move­ment. On his way back Finn’s foot sunk into the soft­ened ground.

  Lift­ing his boot into the air, Finn re­al­ized it was cov­ered in mud. “What the fuck?”

  “Where is all this wa­ter com­ing from?” Slate asked. Clos­est to Finn, the knight was shak­ing his head as he shook his foot. His boots and an­kles were cov­ered in mud, as well.

  “Doesn’t seem like this is Cyril,” Caleb added. “Per­haps a busted pipe some­where in the cas­tle?”

  “Maybe,” Finn replied as he once again scanned their sur­round­ings. There was no move­ment in the for­est be­yond their lo­ca­tion. If it was Cyril surely there would be ev­i­dence of an im­pend­ing at­tack. “I guess we need to find out if there’s flood­ing any­where else.”

  Finn turned and started across soggy ground when dirt be­gan boil­ing to the sur­face in small mounds. Stop­ping in his tracks, Finn kicked one of the piles and re­vealed a small hole un­der­neath.

  Bend­ing down, Finn peered into the open­ing. It wasn’t very deep or wide, but there was wa­ter at the bot­tom. Ex­tend­ing a fin­ger to see if the wa­ter was hot or cold, Finn yelped when a small crea­ture burst through the wa­ter and lunged for him.

  “Fuck,” Blaine barked. “It’s a trap.”

  The crea­ture was no more than six or seven inches tall and had brown­ish-black wiry hair cov­er­ing its body. At first the crit­ter looked slick, but Finn as­sumed it was be­cause it came out of the wa­ter. The mus­sel was long and there were sharp teeth fill­ing its mouth. All he could see were gleam­ing white, sharp dag­gers per­fect for rend­ing flesh. It stood there coiled and ready to pounce on four paws.

  Two small, beady, black eyes peered at him. As a Cuele­bre dragon shifter, Finn was faster than most species, but not faster than what­ever popped out of the ground. It leapt through the air and Finn dis­cov­ered pre­cisely how sharp those teeth were as they sunk into his hand.

  Shak­ing his arm with as much force as pos­si­ble, Finn dis­lodged the snap­ping dog-like crea­ture. Ris­ing to his feet, Finn ig­nored the blood drip­ping from his palm and jumped into the air, aim­ing his boots at the dog.

  As soon as blood burst from un­der his chunky soles, the area was swarm­ing with the lit­tle beasts. They popped from the ground with a high-pitched wail then scur­ried in ev­ery di­rec­tion. The sound was deaf­en­ing, and he was shocked how loud the small crea­tures were. Pain erupted in his lower calves, but Finn was too busy be­ing stunned im­mo­bile by the fact that the en­ergy sig­na­ture he was now able to de­tect was in fact Un­seelie.

  How the hell had Cyril man­aged to pull this off? Where was the alarm? It should be screech­ing a warn­ing through­out the area. “There are hun­dreds of these fuck­ers,” Blaine called out.

  Sev­eral pained yelps echoed around the area as Finn took off to­ward the side lead­ing to the cas­tle. The mag­i­cal pro­tec­tions slowed the crea­tures, but didn’t dis­pel them like Finn had hoped.

  “Form a bar­rier in front of Tate­nen,” Finn called out. “We can­not al­low these fuck­ers to get past us.”

  “I’m call­ing Pema and Isis. Maybe they can add a con­tain­ment cir­cle around us,” Blaine replied as he pulled his com­mu­ni­ca­tor from his pocket.

  While Blaine told the Rowan sis­ters what they needed, Finn con­cen­trated on stomp­ing the lit­tle bug­gers into the ground. Their bod­ies splat­tered, and red liq­uid squirted across his boots and leathers.

  Blaine was over­run by the small beasts and Finn reached out to swat them off his friend’s back. The ground was now a mass of chomp­ing, hairy bod­ies less than a foot tall. They were rel­a­tively easy to kill which con­fused him.

  One kick of his leg sent the four that clung to him sail­ing through the air. As soon as they clam­bered up his back, he eas­ily knocked them away. He was cov­ered in tiny (and not so tiny) bite marks that burned like a bitch, but it was noth­ing too chal­leng­ing.

  Why would Cyril pour so much ef­fort into cre­at­ing crea­tures that did not pose a big threat? Their vast num­bers were the only thing putting the knights at risk. It made no sense.

  Finn snatched one off his shoul­der and re­al­ized their skin be­neath the hair was slick and wet. These fuck­ers must re­pro­duce by the dozens with each cou­pling, he thought as he squashed the one he was hold­ing be­tween his fin­gers.

  Noise on the cas­tle wall be­hind them made him turn around. He watched Isis and Pema stand­ing there with their mates. They held crys­tals and a po­tion in their hand. It was im­pos­si­ble for him to hear what they said over the wail­ing crea­tures that sur­rounded them.

  White light spread from the pow­er­ful witches. As soon as it hit the dirt it im­me­di­ately shot into the air and arched over them. The crea­tures dashed to­ward Tate­nen but bounced off the in­vis­i­ble shield bar­ring their progress. This was one plan that was go­ing to back­fire on Cyril.

  The thought made Finn laugh as he stomped on the small beasts. His boots and pants were now coated in Un­seelie blood, as well as, his own. The in­juries their claws and teeth in­flicted on him seeped blood slowly.

  Finn stomped, hit, and smashed with­out pause and within sec­onds he found him­self get­ting tired. Their sheer num­bers were their big­gest as­set. He had un­der­es­ti­mated the dam­age these things could do to a be­ing of his cal­iber.

  It was such a rookie move Finn wanted to kick his own ass. From the time he was a lit­tle drag­onette his fa­ther taught him not to take any­thing for granted and not to dis­miss any en­emy.

  The long years spent train­ing as a Maa­hes and hon­ing his skills should’ve drilled that mes­sage into his head. There was a spi­der in their woods that wasn’t much smaller than these beasts, and yet the spi­der was ca­pa­ble of caus­ing great dam­age with a few bites.

  A shout from his left made his head swivel in that di­rec­tion. Bane was com­pletely cov­ered and try­ing to bat­tle the beasts but wasn’t hav­ing much luck. Finn watched Bane fall to the ground, and all that was vis­i­ble was the swarm of hairy Un­seelie.

  Rush­ing to his friend’s side, Finn picked up sev­eral at a time and brought his palms to­gether. Sev­eral small cuts opened on his palms where their claws sliced his flesh. Thank­fully, when he yanked his hands apart the beasts were dead.

  As fast as he could with count­less crea­tures crawl­ing up his legs, Finn brushed them off Bane in great sweep­ing mo­tions. They s
creeched as they flew, and blood sprayed into the air.

  Finn’s body was on fire by that point, and his vi­sion wa­vered. He won­dered if it was blood loss or fa­tigue mak­ing him dizzy. The in­juries com­pounded and oc­curred too fast for his body to heal.

  Shak­ing his whole body, Finn winced as he no­ticed large patches of the ground­cover with­er­ing and dy­ing from the poi­soned blood soak­ing the soil. From the cor­ner of his eye, Finn saw sev­eral crea­tures try­ing to dig un­der the in­vis­i­ble bar­rier.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, moth­er­fuck­ers,” he growled as he stomped to­ward them. Af­ter no more than three steps, Finn’s foot hit one of the holes the crea­tures sur­faced from.

  He lost his foot­ing and fell to the ground, twist­ing his an­kle. A shout left his throat at the ex­act mo­ment his body hit the ground. Pain trav­eled from his in­jured leg and all the way up to his head where it bounced off sev­eral crea­tures. His large frame pounded Gods-only-knew how many beasts be­neath it.

  Lev­er­ing him­self onto his hands he de­cided it was time to call up the fires in his belly. Get­ting to his feet, he kept his weight on his un­in­jured leg and ac­cessed his flames.

  Af­ter cen­turies of fight­ing through the pain it was easy for him to ac­cess the heat in his core and spit fire­balls at the Un­seelie scur­ry­ing about the clear­ing and at­tack­ing Maa­hes.

  Fol­low­ing his lead, sev­eral of the knights un­leashed their flames on the beasts. Blaine’s neck was bleed­ing from count­less scratches while he con­tin­ued to help Bane. Caleb came up on his right and to­gether they put their backs to the shield the Rowan sis­ters cast. The en­ergy from the spell tin­gled along his back while he and Caleb kicked the Un­seelie away.

  They were in­cred­i­bly fast and had man­aged to dig sig­nif­i­cant sized holes. Finn had no idea if there was a way to dig un­der the spell, but he didn’t waste time find­ing out. “You keep at­tack­ing the ones out there,” Finn told Caleb. “And, I will get these try­ing to dig un­der.”

  Not both­er­ing to make sure the knight fol­lowed in­struc­tions, Finn rapidly spit fire­balls into the deep holes. Shrieks echoed around them. Need­ing to make sure he reached the bot­tom of the pile Finn low­ered his hand into the flames and snatched the Un­seelie on fire and tossed them over his shoul­der.

  As a Cuele­bre dragon he was im­mune to dragon fire. Un­for­tu­nately, some of the crea­tures con­tin­ued bit­ing and claw­ing his hands. Ig­nor­ing the dis­com­fort, Finn quickly cleared the beasts and turned to help Caleb and the oth­ers.

  By the time they scorched the last Un­seelie sev­eral min­utes later, Finn was breath­ing heav­ily, and his stom­ach was churn­ing as bile rose up his throat. Bane and Blaine kicked flam­ing car­casses aside as they made their way to Finn and Caleb.

  Leg­ette and An­gus joined the Rowan sis­ters on the wall above them. “Smells aw­ful, doesn’t it?” Finn asked when he met An­gus’s light green eyes.

  “Shite. That smells worse than rot­ting an­i­mals,” the Cuele­bre King said with a curse.

  “I can’t de­cide if it’s more fish or more torc,” Finn added. “The skrote is re­sort­ing to at­tack­ing from un­der­ground now. Is there a way to keep that from hap­pen­ing?”

  Finn’s head swayed as he looked up and stum­bled a step be­fore catch­ing him­self. An­gus’s mouth turned down at the cor­ners. “Get your ar­ses in­side now. The mundunugu are on their way to the throne room,” the king barked then turned to the witches. “Can you ex­tend the pro­tec­tions be­low the sur­face?”

  Finn missed their re­sponse as he and his fel­low Maa­hes limped through the doors and in­side the cas­tle. Thank fuck An­gus called the heal­ers. He was tired and felt like ass. His en­tire body felt like it was burn­ing from the in­side out. No doubt it was the ef­fect of hav­ing Un­seelie blood in­fil­trate his sys­tem.

  He thanked the Gods for his sturdy dragon na­ture. His wounds would heal in no time and his body would force out the tox­ins at the same time. With a lit­tle rest, he would be good as new. He would feel much bet­ter if he could find a fe­male to fuck.

  Like many Maa­hes he en­joyed re­leas­ing the ten­sion and adren­a­line af­ter a fight. There was no bet­ter way to do that than to take a fe­male to his bed.

  The urge to shower and seek out Talysia hit him hard. Hav­ing the sexy siren nurse him back to health would speed that process up ten­fold. He had no idea what his re­la­tion­ship with Tal meant or if there was any­thing be­yond sex­ual at­trac­tion be­tween them, but he wanted to ex­plore it fur­ther. Finn ac­knowl­edged he craved the siren more than he thought pos­si­ble, and it thrilled him as much as it scared the shit out of him.

  * * *

  Chap­ter 8

  For the first time in longer than she could re­mem­ber, trep­i­da­tion rose in Izzy’s chest, nearly chok­ing her. She loved ad­ven­ture and, bet­ter yet, do­ing some­thing her mother would deem reck­less. Such as hav­ing Phineas, the Stoor­worm King, take her down to Saqara, the city be­neath the sea, where he ruled.

  “Hey, you.” Dono­van said as he nudged her shoul­der with his.

  He was so much big­ger since mov­ing to Khoth with his fam­ily. He was born eight years be­fore Izzy, but be­cause she moved to Khoth be­fore he did, they were now the same age. Yeah, the way time moved so much faster on Khoth messed with her head too.

  “Why so glum?” he added.

  “Huh? Oh, I’m not glum,” she replied. “Just ner­vous.”

  Dono­van gasped and his hand flew to his chest. “The in­fa­mous Iso­bel Tarakesh, no­to­ri­ous thrill seeker, is ner­vous about a lit­tle deep-sea div­ing?”

  She couldn’t help but chuckle at the mock hor­ror in Dono­van’s tone of voice. “It’s just that it seems like too much of a risk for us to be do­ing this. I mean, An­gus wouldn’t even al­low Blaze to come and he can swim with­out one of Pema and your mom’s charms.” She held the neck­lace the pow­er­ful witch sis­ters im­bued with a spell that would cre­ate a bub­ble of air around their heads so they could breathe.

  “Who are you, and what have you done with my Iz? You look like her, smell like her, and dress like her, but you don’t sound like her,” he teased with a wink. “But, se­ri­ously, we can go back if you don’t want to do this.”

  Heat flushed through Izzy’s face and her throat tight­ened. It had been years since she dis­cov­ered sea drag­ons ex­isted and lived in the oceans of Khoth. From the mo­ment the Cuele­bre Queen, Keira, told Izzy about Saqara she wanted to see it for her­self.

  “No. I don’t want to go back. I have begged An­gus for years to let Phineas take me to his world. No way am I go­ing to miss it,” she told him.

  Dono­van graced her with one of his wide smiles. The af­fec­tion was clear in his blue eyes. His brown hair was get­ting long, and the curls weren’t as no­tice­able at this length. Fe­males loved the care­less style he sported most days. She knew it was be­cause he barely ran his fin­gers through it af­ter his shower, but she’d over­heard count­less fe­males coo­ing over his locks.

  “Do you think we’ll see mer­maids?” Dono­van asked ex­cit­edly.

  Dono­van’s en­ergy was con­ta­gious, and Izzy found her­self smil­ing and re­call­ing what Talysia told them about mer­maids from her home realm of Ca­lypso. “I think it’s pos­si­ble, but I’m not cer­tain. The siren from the food shack at the beach said she knew mer­maids trav­eled here be­fore the por­tals closed. I for one have al­ways be­lieved they are real.”

  Dono­van glanced at her side­ways. “So that’s what Talysia is? Makes sense. Her voice was some­thing else. You know, I never thought about it be­fore but maybe you’re a seer, like your mom.”

  Izzy cocked her head, look­ing at Dono­van. He was swing­ing a large branch in front of his body in an easy mo­tion. “No one usu­ally calls my mom a seer. She hates the term.
Says it puts too much pres­sure on her, but that’s ex­actly what she is. As for me, I don’t think so. It’s the same with my Dad. He can dream share, but I can’t. I don’t have pre­mo­ni­tions. Who knows? Maybe once I tran­si­tion, that will be a power be­stowed on me. But for now, my be­lief in mer­maids is sheer hope.”

  “Well, we’re about to find out,” Dono­van replied as he kicked a rock that was in his path.

  Izzy nod­ded her agree­ment as she felt her ex­cite­ment build. Smoke and an acrid scent filled the air as they got closer to Ray­nah Beach. De­bris im­peded their progress af­ter an­other few feet. Dono­van stopped and picked up the branches be­fore toss­ing them out of the way.

  Jump­ing in to help the process, Izzy picked up large items and cleared even more of the path. When they broke through the trees, a gasp es­caped her. The dam­age to the soft sand was un­mis­tak­able. Sev­eral feet were miss­ing from the top and there was now a three-step stair­case lead­ing from the trail to the beach area.

  Thank­fully, the dam­age to the board­walk and busi­nesses was min­i­mal. Izzy skipped down the steps and raced across the sand when she saw the sea dragon in the wa­ter. “Phineas,” she called out and waved.

  “You’re the only per­son I know that would call a king by his first name,” Dono­van said un­der his breath so just she could hear.

  “What? I’m not be­ing dis­re­spect­ful. Do you think it up­sets him?” she asked as she con­tem­plated if Dono­van was right.

  “No. I don’t think it up­sets him, and you do it be­cause you have a vastly dif­fer­ent view of rulers than any­one else. Your dad is a king and you are his heir, so it makes sense that you see them as equals.”

  “I never thought of it like that. My mom hates when sub­jects call her High­ness. I tend to think like she does,” Izzy ex­plained and kicked off her shoes as they reached the wa­ter.