“So that’s a Crom.…” Medea felt her jaw go slack as she caught sight of the massive glowing horseman. At first, he appeared headless. Until she realized that his head was formed by mist at the end of the spiny whip he wielded as he rode. The white horse was giant in size … almost as large as a Mack truck. An awful stench of sulfur permeated the cavern, choking her and sticking in her throat as if it had been created from thorns.
Even more disconcerting, the baying horse made the sound of twenty echoing beasts. And its hooves were thunderous—like an approaching train. The sounds reverberated through her, rattling her very bones.
“I won’t do it!” Brogan shouted. “I refuse you!”
The horse reared as the Crom cracked its whip in the air. Fire shot out from the whip’s tip as more thunder echoed.
Unfazed and with fists clenched at her sides, Brogan stood stubbornly between them and the Crom. “Beat me all you like. I will not give you that power. Not again! Not over my newfound friends!”
“What’s going on?” Medea asked.
Brogan kept her gaze locked stubbornly on her master. “He wants the ability to speak. But if I give it to him, then he can call out your name and claim your soul to take it with him to hell. And I will not allow it.”
With a long, bony finger, he pointed at Brogan.
She shook her head at him. “Then take me, if you must. I’m all you’ll be getting today! I won’t let you have them! You hear me? No more!”
He charged at her.
In an act of absolute bravery, she stood her ground without flinching.
Blaise caught her an instant before the Crom would have mowed her down. Lifting her in his arms, the mandrake whirled her past the razor, blood-encrusted hooves that were mired with the remnants of the Crom’s past victims.
Falcyn and Urian went charging in to cover them.
Rolling her eyes at their brave stupidity since none of them were armed, Medea joined their cause. She manifested her sword and twirled it around her body. Falcyn unleashed his fireballs while she watched the fey creature turn around for another pass.
It started for them.
Until it saw her sword.
With one last shrieking cry, it vanished in a puff of pungent green smoke.
What the hell was that?
“Okay … that was effing weird. Where did he go?” She glanced around, half expecting him to manifest behind them. “What just happened?”
Brogan inclined her head to Medea’s sword. “’Tis the gold of your blade and hilt. It’s his weakness. With that, you could have maimed him.”
Medea gaped at her. “You couldn’t have told me that before he charged?”
“Wasn’t allowed to say it until you found it on your own. I’m forbidden to.”
“Well that just sucks!”
Brogan smiled. “For me more than you, my lady. Believe me.”
She had a point.
And Blaise had yet to set her back on her feet. In fact, he seemed reluctant to let her go.
“My lord?” Brogan blushed profusely.
Blaise hesitated. “Not sure I should let you down. You seem to keep finding trouble whenever I do.”
Medea looked away as a strange tenderness went through her at how adorable the two of them were. Especially when Brogan wrapped her arms around his neck and snuggled against his chest as if content to stay right where she was.
But Falcyn wasn’t so kind. “Blaise! Set her down! Now!”
Medea popped him on the arm as Brogan appeared stricken by his sharp tone. “What is your problem?”
Falcyn gestured at Brogan. “He doesn’t know where she’s been.”
Was he serious? “Oh my God, Falcyn! He’s not some two-year-old child and she’s not a piece of candy he found on the floor that he stuck in his mouth!”
“Well, that’s how he’s acting. He looks at her like he could eat her up.”
“And you’re acting like a baby. Get over it. He’s a grown dragon. He’s allowed to be nice to any woman he wants to. Without your permission or approval, you know?”
Falcyn’s nose actually twitched and flared. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he groused like that two-year-old she’d just mentioned.
Blaise rolled his eyes and shook his head. “He always acts like an old woman. I’m used to it. He’s the same way with Illarion. Max is just as bad, if not worse. At least they no longer try to burp me after my feedings. Or check my nappy.”
Brogan laughed as Blaise finally set her back on her feet, but he kept her tucked by his side.
And yet there was a profound pain deep inside Falcyn’s eyes that Medea didn’t miss. What was that dark shadow that haunted him so?
Before she could ask about it, Brogan drew their attention to the stones that, when they stepped back, Medea realized formed a half-broken demonic face suspended on pedestals over a deep, fiery abyss.
“Well, that’s different.” And the dais was impossible to reach.…
Medea arched a brow. “I take it that’s the portal we’re looking for?”
Brogan nodded. Her mood now was subdued and quiet. Gone was any hint of the playful sprite she’d been a few seconds ago.
Medea cast a dry stare to Falcyn. “This is when having a flying dragon would come in handy.”
Falcyn snorted. “So would rope … and a gag.”
Before she could stop herself, Medea swept a hot, seductive glance over his long, lush body. “A rope and a gag come in handy for lots of things, princess,” she said suggestively.
“Ew! Hey, brother over here, and I do not approve of this entire line of conversation with my sister! Back to a G rating, folks.”
Laughing, albeit a bit nervously, Brogan started toward the platform.
She’d only taken a step before a light flashed and smoke exploded in front of them—this realm seemed to like that a lot. Apparently, the entire place seemed to be rigged for a heavy metal concert tour.
The peculiar portal in front of them churned into action, spinning and turning like a rusted nickelodeon. Light shot out from the demon’s mouth and eyes, with a blinding intensity. Symbols twisted around it in a frenetic ballet that was painful to watch.
And out of that madness came more smoke and mist. As if an angry beast snorted at them with a furious hatred. Spiraling up and dancing to a jerky beat, the mist solidified into the shape of a tall hooded beast.
No, not a beast.
A man.
At first, Medea thought the emerging figure was a wizard of some kind. Or shaman. Indeed, his flowing feathered robes and chains, along with the braided black hair and the huge elaborate raven skull headdress, would have lent themselves to that assumption. Especially since bells chimed as he moved and he held a bloodred torch staff in his left hand. One that belched more fire and smoke as it shot arcing balls of light upward around his head.
Yet there was something more to him than that. Something powerful and ancient.
Timeless.
As he turned to face them, she saw that he’d painted a thick black band over his golden eyes that made their unusual color more vibrant. He stepped down from the dais with the grace of a man half his age. And when he neared them, he flexed his dark gray gloved hand that held the staff, digging the wooden claws that were affixed to his fingertips into its leather-wrapped shaft. His gaze bored into them with the wisdom of the ages, and with the sharpness of daggers. As if he were cleaving secrets from their very souls.
“Kerling,” he growled in the gruffest of tones. “What is this?”
Brogan curtsied to him. “They were brought here against their wills, copián. They don’t belong in this realm. I seek to send them on their way.”
A deep, fierce scowl lined his brow. The red light of his torch flared again, and turned blue.
Confused, Medea leaned toward Falcyn. “What’s a copián?”
“Hard to explain, exactly. Lack of a better term, they’re time wardens and keepers of the portals.”
That only confused her more. “Why don’t we have one for the bolt-holes in Kalosis, then?”
“You do,” the copián said. “Braith, Verlyn, Cam, and Rezar were the first of our kind. They set the perimeters for the worlds and designed the portal gates between them. It’s how they trapped Apollymi in her realm—by her own blood and design. It’s why her son is the only one who can free her from her realm where she was imprisoned by her own sister and brother for crimes they imagined, that she never committed.”
Ah, finally she understood. Because Apollymi was the ancient goddess Braith. One of the very gods who’d first set the gates.
Medea gaped. Holy shit … literally. No wonder the ancient Atlantean goddess was so pissed off all the time.
Now it made sense. That was how Apollymi had been able to open the portal originally and bring Stryker through it. How she controlled it to allow the Daimons to come and go, while keeping everyone else out.
Apollymi was one of the creators of it.
Medea had always wondered about that. No wonder Apollymi spent hours in her garden at her mirror pool, watching the human realm.…
She was one of the first portal guardians.
Brogan gestured toward them. “As you can see, their presence disturbs the balance. This isn’t their world and they shouldn’t be here. We have to return them before they’re discovered by the others and chaos ensues.”
Two lights shot out of his torch. They streaked up like the stray magick blasts had done earlier, and circled around the old copián to land on each side of him. There they twisted up from the floor to create two tall, lean, linen-wrapped plague doctors. With wide-brimmed cavalier hats, they stared out from their long-beaked, black linen masks from shiny ebony eyes. Soulless eyes that appeared to be bleeding around the corners. Even the linen was stained with their blood.
It was an eerie, macabre sight that made the hair on the back of Medea’s neck rise. And given the creepy Charonte and gallu demons and Daimons who called her realm home, that said a lot.
“What are those?”
“Zeitjägers,” Falcyn whispered to her.
Another term she’d never heard before. “What do they do?”
“Guard time. But mostly they steal it.”
Was he serious?
“How do you steal time?”
Falcyn laughed. “You ever been doing something … look up and it’s hours later and you can’t figure out where the time went ’cause it feels like you just sat down?”
Yeah, of course. Everyone knew that feeling.
She nodded.
“Zeitjägers,” he said simply. “Insidious bastards. They took that time from you and bottled it for their own means.”
“Why?”
“So that we can sell it.” The copián glanced to his companions. “Time is the most precious commodity in the entire universe. The most sacred. And yet it is the most often squandered. From the moment of our births, we’re only allotted so much of it. And for even an hour more, there are those who are willing to give up anything for it.” An evil smile curled his lips. “Even their immortal souls.”
A chill went up her spine at the way he said that.
The copián stepped down to approach Medea. “Surely a child of the Apollite race can understand that driving desperation better than most.”
He was right about that. Nothing like being damned to only twenty-seven years for something you didn’t do to make someone realize just how precious life was.
Even more so while watching everyone around you die long before their time.
For one more breath, her people were willing to take human lives and destroy their immortal souls. Her one saving grace was that her mother had sacrificed her own soul to save Medea from having to make that choice.
Because the sad truth was, Medea had been too much of a coward to do it. Unlike Urian and her father, she hadn’t been able to destroy a single human soul for her own salvation. She’d been content to die as Apollo had decreed. Honestly, she’d thought that it wasn’t her place to do that to another living being. That humanity was innocent and undeserving of such a horrendous fate.
It wasn’t until the humans had robbed her of the ones she held most sacred that she’d lost her own soul in the process and learned not to care. It wasn’t just her child they’d killed that day. It was her compassion and ability to feel empathy for anyone else. If they were incapable of respecting her loved ones, be damned if she’d respect theirs.
That was a two-way street.
So she’d become the monster they thought her to be. And had been on a centuries-long quest for survival ever since. Putting the good of her race above theirs. Humans could all rot as far as she was concerned.
Nothing else mattered. On that cold winter’s day, they’d become parasites to her.
No. Worse than that.
They’d become food.
The copián cocked his head in such a way that she half expected his elaborate headdress to fall off. Yet it stayed perched perfectly atop his head, as if part of his body. “You’ve heard the expression ‘living on borrowed time’?”
“Yeah.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “We’re the ones you borrow it from.”
Oh yeah, that sent chills over her entire body.
He swept his sinister gaze over them. “My price is simple. An hour from each of you and I’ll open the portal.”
“An hour?” Falcyn sputtered. “How ’bout I just rip some heads off all y’all until you yield?”
The copián smirked. “You could do that, but you can’t open the portal without me.”
“Sure I could find someone.”
“You really want to chance it?”
Falcyn’s expression said he was willing to gamble.
The copián tsked at him. “So very violent from an immortal who can spare an hour with no problem whatsoever. Think of it like those humans who donate spare change for charity. An hour is but a penny, and you have a jar full of them just sitting in your home that you’ll never use. Why not give one to someone who really needs it? Why be so selfish?”
“Because you’re assuming they’ll use it for good, when I know for a fact that most people who barter with you don’t have kindness in their hearts.”
“True, but sometimes that trash they take out on their way to the grave is a service in and of itself, is it not?” He cast a pointed stare toward Urian, whose gaze narrowed dangerously as the old bastard struck a tender nerve with the former Daimon who’d once made his meals off the worst sort of humanity so that he could elongate his life.
Blaise sucked his breath in sharply. “Word of advice when dealing with these two? I wouldn’t go for the twofers on the insults. Even with the zeitjägers as backup. I mean, let’s face it. They’re not being peaceful at the moment because they don’t know how to be violent … however, I’ll be the first to say have at it if you can get us out of here. You can take two hours from me.”
The copián scowled at Blaise. “Two?”
“Yeah. One for me and one for Brogan. I’ll pay her fee.”
She gasped at his offer. “Why would you do that?”
Blaise shrugged. “Being stuck here has been punishment enough for you. As noted, I won’t miss two hours out of my life. I’d have just wasted them in a movie theater, anyway. And this way, I get to do something useful with them and be a hero to you. That’s a loss I can live with.” He winked at her. “Besides, I don’t intend to leave here without you.”
“Suck up, show-off,” Falcyn muttered. Then louder, “Fine, take mine.”
Medea hesitated as a bad feeling went through her. She couldn’t explain it, but something in her gut didn’t like this. And the look in Falcyn’s eyes said he was every bit as suspicious.
If the others felt it, too, they gave no clue that anything was out of the norm.
“So how do you take this time from us?” Medea glanced back to the zeitjägers.
The copián laughed. “It’s already gone. As I said, you don’t even miss it. You didn’t even know we did it.”
Falcyn leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Told you. Insidious bastards.”
No kidding. The only clue was the strange slurping sound the zeitjägers made. At least, she assumed it came from them.
Maybe not.
Yeah … c-r-e-e-p-y.
The copián walked toward the portal and lifted his staff. The moment he did, the portal came alive with swirling, vibrant colors. He moved his staff through it until the mist began to mimic his movements.
Red fire shot out from the torch and was absorbed by the mist.
“It’s ready.”
Urian grinned at Medea. “Ladies first.”
She rolled her eyes at her brother. “Like you’d know if I didn’t make it.”
“You might be polite and scream … then again, it is you. Maybe Blaise should go first? I know he’d scream to warn us.”
He turned an angry glare to Falcyn. “I thought you weren’t going to tell anyone about my screaming fits?”
“I didn’t. That was Max who outed you.”
“Oh.… Remind me to kill him later.” Blaise headed for the portal. “Fine, I’ll go through first.”
Brogan took his hand. “I’ll go with you.”
Touched by the gesture, Medea headed up the platform to the strange humming beast that seemed to have a life of its own. Yet as she reached the portal, Falcyn held her back.
He quirked a peculiar smile at her. “In case my usual luck holds and this all goes to hell.”
Before she could tell what he intended, he lowered his head and captured her lips with the hottest kiss she’d ever been given. He held her as if she were the most precious thing in his world.
As if he loved her.
Stunned, she couldn’t breathe. It actually took her a moment before she could even react enough to kiss him back. But when her brain began to work, she had to admit he was exceptional at this.
More than that, he set her on fire. It’d been far too long since anyone had kissed her in such a manner. Since any man had made her feel exceptional. While she hadn’t been chaste, she hadn’t been promiscuous either. Mostly because she’d avoided any emotional entanglement with another living being, other than her mother.
It didn’t matter how much time passed. Thoughts of her son and husband forever haunted her. Nothing could chase away the memory of their smiles. The warmth that she’d once taken for granted.
Fear of losing another had kept her heart locked in ice.
Apollites and Daimons were hunted creatures who often lived exceptionally brief lives. Even their strongest were often annihilated by Dark-Hunters, sooner rather than later. And that only compounded her fears to the point that she’d been incapable of opening herself up for more heartache.
But Falcyn wasn’t an Apollite.
He definitely wasn’t a Daimon.
And when he pulled back, she was left dazed and breathless by the taste of him. A gorgeous smile hovered at the edge of his lips as he stared down at her.
Without a word, he led her into the portal and kept her steady.…
Falcyn cursed the moment he felt the energy pulling at his body.
And then it sucked them into the stinging vortex.
He’d always hated stepping through one of these gates. Blaise was a lot more used to it than he was, since he held one of the keys that enabled him to travel to and from the veil world where Merlin had pulled Avalon and Camelot to so that she could protect the other worlds and realms from Morgen’s evil. After the death of King Arthur, it’d been the only way to secure the realm of man, and the other eight worlds from Morgen and her evil Circle. Otherwise, Morgen’s fey court would have enslaved them all.
But as for Falcyn, he liked to stay planted in one dimension. This kind of hopping through nether portals crap was not his forte.
And as the colors swirled and he lost his bearings and feared his lunch would follow, Falcyn definitely understood why he’d always felt that way. This shit sucked! Give him wings and flight or teleportation any day.
Especially when he went slamming hard into a dark, damp ground a few minutes later.
Gah! That was going to leave a mark.
Groaning, he lay on his back as everything spun around like a Tilt-A-Whirl. And he hadn’t even got a funnel cake or fried Twinkie out of it.
With a grimace, Falcyn rubbed at his eyes. “Blaise? You dead?”
“No.” He didn’t sound like he was in any better shape than Falcyn, though.
“Good. I want the pleasure of killing you myself, you bastard!”
Blaise snorted.
“Don’t scoff, dragon,” Urian said, his tone every bit as peeved. “Soon as I can move again, I intend to help with your murder and dismemberment.”
Falcyn turned his head to the right, where Medea lay a few feet away from his side, unmoving on the grass. “Medea?”
She finally lifted a hand to brush her hair from her face. “Not dead, either.”
That made him feel a bit better. “Brogan?”
“Just wishing I was.” Shifting her legs, she made no move to rise. Rather she seemed content to lie on her back, staring up at the dismally gray sky. “Is it always this miserable to travel in such a manner?”
Blaise sighed. “Pretty much. Least I didn’t slam into an invisible force field this time.”
Rolling over, Falcyn pushed himself into a sitting position, then scowled as he caught sight of the dark, twisted trees around him. Trees that lined an equally screwed-up, bleak landscape the likes of which he hadn’t thought to ever see again.
Oh, this can’t be right.
Yet he knew he wasn’t dreaming. And he definitely wasn’t imagining this.
“Hey, Blaise … Why the hell are we in Camelot?”
“Whaaaaat?” He rose with a fierce scowl and looked up as if he could see the sky, which he couldn’t. But it didn’t stop him from trying.
Falcyn let out a tired, irritated sigh. “Correct me if I’m wrong.”
His white-blond hair shimmering in the fey light, Blaise paled as he sniffed the air. “Well … you’re kind of wrong.”
“How so?”
“This isn’t Camelot … exactly.”
That only made his stomach tighten with dread. “What’s not exactly Camelot?”
“Val Sans Retour.”
Ah shit … He’d rather be in Camelot. With Morgen, tied to her throne. Naked and declawed.
Muzzled even.
Sitting up immediately, Medea scowled at them both. “The what?”
Falcyn let out another groan before he answered. “The Valley of No Return. So named because no one ever comes out of here alive. Like Blaise … because I really am going to kill him as soon as I find my strength.”
“Not true!” Blaise stood and took a defensive position. “I came out alive a few years back when I was here.”
Falcyn made a rude noise at the reminder of the mandrake’s less-than-stellar adventure.
Medea rose and brushed herself off. “Did you?”
“Yeah. Me and Varian. Merewyn, too.”
His anger rising, Falcyn went to the mandrake, dreading an answer to a question no one was asking. “But why are we here now, Blaise? How did we get here?”
Blaise quirked a sarcastic smirk that really tested Falcyn’s patience and restraint. “Did you sleep through the part where we stepped into a magick portal and were sucked through a vortex?”
“Don’t make me beat you with my shoe.”
“Well, I’m just wondering. ’Cause you asked. I mean, you were there, were you not? You didn’t miss that rather large, ghastly light we stepped into, did you?”
“Yeah, but I have a head injury, right now. Maybe a concussion. Thinking some kind of serious brain damage. Definitely trauma of some sort. And a migraine the size of you.”
Urian broke off Falcyn’s tirade by jerking on his sleeve to get his attention.
Even more irritated, Falcyn barely kept himself from slugging him. But there was something in the man’s eyes that stayed his reaction.
Curious, he followed Urian’s line of sight and turned his head to where Urian was staring at something over Falcyn’s left shoulder.
The moment his gaze focused on Brogan and the man who’d materialized by her side, he scowled. “Who’s that?”
“Don’t know, but she seems to know him.”
By the look on Blaise’s face, he did, too.
And they weren’t friends.
Falcyn narrowed his gaze on him. “Blaise?”
A tic started in his jaw. “I know that essence when I feel it. It’s Brevalaer. Morgen’s pet whore.”