Daide had dropped into surveillance mode back on the beach. Watching closely and gathering data had been a hallmark of his professional life. It shunted him to a detached, observational place where he could think clearly. While he hadn’t expected Ceridwen to deal fairly with them, he’d been shocked and infuriated when Karin made it clear the goddess planned to use their bond animals to snare them.

We don’t know that. Not for sure, he reminded himself, yet the evidence pointed in that direction, and he’d be an idiot not to prepare for it.

He focused his attention inward. “You caught all that, right?”

“Of course. I hear everything you say.” The coyote’s tone was testy.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Daide sent warm thoughts along with his words.

“I’m sorry as well. The best strategy is for all of us bond animals to retreat to our borderworld.”

“Why?” Daide wanted his coyote next to him in the upcoming battle.

“You’re weak.” The coyote didn’t mince words. “I can force you to shift. Once you do, you’ll be vulnerable to the bleak one’s power.”

Daide winced at the truth in his bondmate’s statement. “I can see why you’d want to retreat, but what about the women’s animals? They’ve all been bonded for a long time.”

“Doesn’t matter. If we’re pressed, we can force you into our form.” The coyote yipped, harsh and strident. “I will tell the others, the older, wiser ones. If they agree, we will depart for a while.”

The gray fog around Daide had thinned to almost nothing, but he still couldn’t see through to what lay on the other side. Karin had run ahead to where Ketha trotted at Viktor’s side. He lengthened his stride to catch up with her, intent on communicating what just happened.

He slotted a hand beneath her elbow. She looked askance at him and flashed a quick half-smile. “Good work,” she said. “Having the animals leave is so obvious, I should have come up with it immediately.”

“See? Complacency has us in its crosshairs.” Aura gritted her teeth. “We have to question everything.”

“Why didn’t it impact me?” Daide raised one eyebrow.

“Maybe she wants the men lively and chipper,” Karin muttered. “Not lost in zombie-land.”

“I don’t care for the sound of that,” Daide said.

“Yeah, me either,” Viktor cut in. “Do you have any idea why she shanghaied us?”

Aura shrugged. “She was bored? No men to fuck? No one to venerate her?”

“Aye, there ’tis.” Zoe jumped on Aura’s ideas. “Not the fucking, but the goddess worship.”

“You might be onto something.” Karin creased her forehead in thought. “When we raised her from Arkady’s deck she said something like ‘All of us remain as long as there are those who believe in us. Once that goes away, we fade into memory.’”

“If that’s true, she must be hanging on by her fingernails,” Aura mumbled.

“Look!” Daide pointed at a vista spreading before them.

The mists had parted, revealing something he’d only seen on television and the Internet. A green, verdant land marked with hills, barrows, and standing stones stretched to the horizon. Bubbling brooks fed a good-sized lake rimmed with tussock grass. It wasn’t raining here. Fluffy clouds swam across a deep-blue sky. On a nearby hill, a castle stood, complete with turrets, spires, an outer wall, and towers. When he stared closer, he even saw a moat and a drawbridge.

“Christ on a fucking crutch,” Viktor snarled, followed by a flood of cursing in German.

“Do you suppose a dragon guards the moat?” Juan asked.

Daide narrowed his eyes, attempting to alter his perspective, but the landscape didn’t change. “I’m not sure what I’m asking here, but is any of this real?”

“Real enough,” Karin replied, but even she sounded unsettled, and it gave him pause.

Zoe snorted laughter. “If ’twas truly real, ’twould be pouring. Apparently, Ceridwen built this world to her specifications, and she was as sick of the rain in the U.K. as the rest of us who’ve lived in that part of the world.”

“Now there’s a conversational opener,” Aura said acidly.

“Aye, sure and I’ll keep it in mind,” Zoe retorted.

The creak of wood and iron chains reached Daide as the drawbridge moved slowly downward. He closed his other arm around Karin, wanting to shield her from whatever would emerge from the castle courtyard.

She leaned into him before breaking loose. “Thanks for the thought, but we may have to fight. I can’t do that if you’re hanging onto me.”

“Can you find your way back?”

She shot an incredulous look his way. “You’re not telling me to leave?”

He gripped her upper arm. “I want you to be safe. More than anything.”

The forbidding lines of her face softened. “Doesn’t work that way.”

“I will protect you. Even if you don’t want me to.” He leveled his gaze at her.

Karin laid a hand over his before extricating herself from his grip. “How about we protect each other? And everyone else too. Before today is over, we’ll need everyone’s gifts and wish we had access to more still.”

“Damn it, Karin. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Emotion clotted in his throat. She’d finally said the words out loud, and he wanted to pick her up and bully his way through whatever spell held them captive on this alien world. Once they were free, he’d spirit her back to Arkady, strip her naked, and lick and kiss every single inch of her—

Ketha barked once, shrill and sharp. A warning bark that ripped Daide’s attention back to the drawbridge. Garbed in the same robes as before, Ceridwen walked across it, taking her time. Five Witches flanked her, two on each side and one behind. He recognized the ones from earlier, but they’d been joined by one more blonde and two redheads. All of them were naked except for colorful lengths of fabric sashed about their waists. Perky, bouncing breasts fed into the sexual fantasy he’d spun about Karin.

Daide pushed desire aside, bolting it behind what he hoped were bombproof gates. Karin loved him. No matter what seduction gambits the Witches offered, he’d rise above all of them. Leif may have succumbed, but he wouldn’t. He hadn’t been a willing participant in a trade offering sex for power. It might be enough to allow him to resist if a Witch—or god forbid, Ceridwen—came on to him.

Leif had said there were other Witches. Daide was relieved to see only five. After their last go round in Invercargill, he’d expected more. The intoxicating scent of the Highlands intensified, and the ground stretching between them and the castle undulated.

Daide squeezed his eyes shut, certain he was hallucinating. When he opened them, the earth was still heaving, rippling, and creating swells where flat ground had been a few moments before.

“What the fuck is going on?” Recco lurched toward the unsettled ground until Zoe latched a hand around his arm.

“We’re about to meet the Fae and faeries who constructed the channel from Malaita to here,” Zoe said.

Questions bounced from one side of Daide’s head to the other. He knew less than nothing about faeries, and the sum total of his knowledge about Fae was they came in dark and light varieties. The air took on a glistening, shimmery aspect, and beings popped from a series of gleaming gateways. They all glowed as if lit from within, but that was where any similarities ended. A dozen looked the way he’d always envisioned faeries, tiny with quick-beating wings and wands and clouds of hair in pastel shades.

Next to them, regal beings stood. They had to be Fae. All were robed in gold and silver with jeweled circlets around their brows. Mostly blond, a few had silver hair. Perhaps twenty of them in all, but Daide was too fascinated by the alluring magic billowing from them to do anything as prosaic as counting. He felt as if he’d dropped into one of the old tales he’d read as a boy; disbelief vied with wanting the moment to last forever.

One of the silver-haired Fae floated to where Ceridwen had finished crossing the drawbridge. “Have ye lost your mind?” he demanded, anger evident in his straight back and the taut set of his shoulders.

“I’ve brought visitors,” she responded. Power oozed from her, thick as honey and as sweet and cloying.

“Aye. Nothing wrong with my eyes,” the Fae shot back. “Ye had no business bringing humans here. ’Tis our world. Ye promised sanctuary once we built the illusions for ye.”

“So that was the inducement,” Karin muttered.

“Och, but they’re not humans.” Ceridwen lingered over the last word. “I’ve brought Shifters. Magical beings to entertain us.”

A low, hissing growl emerged from the other Fae, and they turned as a group to face the plain where Daide and the others stood. “Why do they hate us?” Daide asked Zoe, assuming if anyone had the answer, it would be her.

“Not us, but the Celts. They trapped the Fae within the hills and barrows of the Highlands.”

“The distrust is more by inference,” Karin added. “We allied ourselves with the Celts, and the friend of my enemy—”

“Is my enemy as well,” Aura finished for her.

“Ceridwen must have freed them,” Daide mumbled, thinking out loud.

“Aye, and made promises in exchange for labor,” Zoe agreed.

“Have your sanctuary,” Ceridwen was saying. “I tell ye, they’re merely visiting.”

“Send. Them. Back.” The Fae stood tall and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Or?” Ceridwen skewered him with the full force of her gaze.

“What we created, we can destroy,” the Fae replied.

“But it’s your home too.” Ceridwen smiled with a mouthful of teeth and zero warmth.

“We created a separate pathway out of here.”

“Aye, and ’tis sealed to ye,” a second Fae who’d joined the first spoke up. This one was female with clouds of fair hair.

The buzzing of wings grew louder as the faeries closed on Daide and the others from Arkady. Their faces were screwed into fury, and small arrows rained from bows clutched in their chubby, upraised hands.

Karin stepped between the flying horde and the rest of them. Raising her hands, she spoke in old Gaelic. Daide would have asked his bondmate to translate, but true to his word, the coyote was gone.

“She’s greeting them,” Aura said. “Telling them what an honor it is to lay eyes on them.” A surprised look flickered across her green eyes as Karin continued speaking. “I had no idea she’d met them as a young woman.”

“Aye, or that she frolicked with them at moonlight revelries,” Zoe added. “I was about to join her, but she’s doing fine without my assistance.”

Daide curled his hands into fists, battling helplessness. He wanted to do something, goddammit, not stand around useless as tits on a boar. Without taking the time to engage in his usual pro-and-con arguments, he strode to Karin’s side. Facing the faeries, he bowed low and was greeted by hisses and a flood of the small arrows. They stung where they pricked him.

A faery with green hair and bare breasts flew so close Daide felt the breeze from her wings. “Ye’re mine now,” the cherub announced.

“No. I’m hers.” Daide pointed at Karin.

“Not anymore.” The faery sounded pleased with herself. “I shot ye.” She flew in figure eights around Daide’s head, whooping and squealing until the temptation to swat her out of the sky was hard to resist.

* * * *

KARIN HAD BEEN SPLITTING her awareness between the tableau playing out between Ceridwen and the two Fae and the faeries—until Daide showed up. Reluctantly, she turned her full attention on the faeries and tried for a compromise. “He doesn’t know your customs,” she informed the faeries, sticking with Old Gaelic.

“He’s mine,” the green faery crowed. “Mine. I shot him fair and square.”

“Doesn’t count if he didn’t understand what it meant.” A crimson-haired male faced off in front of her.

“Does too count.”

“What can I trade for him?” Karin tried another tack. Faeries loved to bargain.

“English,” Daide said, sounding nonplussed. “If you’re deciding my future, I need to understand.”

The green-haired faery fluttered to the ground, her miniature bare feet leaving prints in the damp grass. “How is it ye doona speak the one true tongue?” she inquired and placed her hands on her hips as she stared up at him.

“Because I’m from Argentina.”

“Where is that?” the faery demanded.

“Across the shiny sea and many leagues to the south.” Karin switched to English.

“How many?” The faery tilted her chin up.

“Ten thousand,” Daide answered.

The cherub held up both hands. “Here’s ten,” she announced. “How many is a thousand?”

Daide crouched so he was nearer her level. He flashed his fingers open and closed and said, “If you do this ten times, you’ve counted to a hundred. Nine hundred more, and you’ve reached a thousand...”

The faery shook her head. “It’s enough. Ye come from too far away. I relinquish my claim.”

Karin squatted too and extended her fingers. “Thank you, fair one. I promise I shall take good care of our mate.”

The faery batted her wings until she was airborne and planted three kisses on Karin. One on each cheek and another on her forehead. Karin grinned despite herself. “Let’s hope you don’t have the dryad’s gift.”

“Even if I do, and I’m not admitting one way or the other”—the faery waggled a finger beneath Karin’s nose—“I’ve barely made a dent in your two hundred sixty-eight years.” Laughing merrily, the cherub joined her companions.

Karin rolled her eyes. If Daide had any doubt about her precise age, the faery had just obliterated them.

“Thank God that’s done with,” Viktor said. “Things are heating up down there.” He angled his gaze to Ceridwen, the Witches, and the Fae. Where there’d been two Fae, now ten lined up against the goddess and her minions.

Karin aimed her words at the faery who’d claimed Daide. Lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “I hear there’s another way out of here back to the island. Do you know where we can find it, so I can keep our mate out of harm’s way?”

The faeries buzzed and hummed as they debated her question. Karin recalled they had their own, secret language, separate from Gaelic. Magic swelled from where the Fae stood toe to toe with Ceridwen, along with raised voices. One of the Fae made a slicing motion, and lightning forked from his fingertips. A Witch shrieked and clutched at her throat before crumpling to the ground. The other Witches turned as a unit and dashed across the drawbridge.

“Goddess save me from Witches,” Aura growled. “Faithless sluts, one and all.”

Karin snorted derisively. Ceridwen had been a Witch. If anyone was familiar with their perfidy, it should be her. Chains creaked and clanked as the Witches raised the drawbridge.

“Serves her right,” Aura said.

“Aye, better to trust a scorpion than a Witch,” Zoe chimed in.

Karin eyed the faeries. She needed them to hurry while Ceridwen was engaged in arguing with the Fae. Fury blasted from the goddess until the air around her developed a reddish tinge. In this mood, she was likely to mow down everything in her path.

The crimson-haired cherub who’d told Greenie she couldn’t have Daide whistled once, shrill and piercing. Karin took it as a summons and said, “Follow him.”

“How do we know where he’s taking us?” Aura ran after her.

“Do you want to remain here?” Karin countered.

She had to project confidence, but was she leading them into something worse than where they were? She’d forgotten how childlike the faery folk were until Greenie had begun counting on her fingers. Fae were the ones who delighted in playing nasty tricks on humans. Faeries had never harbored any fondness for the Fae, but put up with them in exchange for protection from the Celts and others.

Sick of their internecine squabbling, the Celts had taken the lot of them—Fae and faeries alike—and imprisoned them beneath the Highlands early in the twentieth century.

Mist rose, eddying about them, and the Scottish Highlands disappeared. So did the argument unfolding in front of the castle. The trip back to the beach was fast. Far quicker than their journey the other way.

“Where’d they go?” Daide turned in a 360-degree circle, clearly hunting for the faery folk.

“Back to their dens on the borderworld, if I were to guess,” Zoe said.

“If I were them, I’d hide too,” Aura spoke up.

“Ceridwen will be furious.” Leif emerged from the silver-gray fog with everyone else strung out behind him. “We need to get out of here.”

“What about your missing whale Shifter?” Karin asked.

“He’s closer to Wrangel Island than we are,” Leif replied. “When I hear from him, and I will, I’ll wish him good hunting and tell him we’ll meet him in good time.”

Karin did a nose count. All of them were accounted for except for Viktor and Ketha. She fumed, anxious to leave. “What happened to Vik and Ketha?”

“They were right behind me,” a whale replied.

Karin bit back a tart rejoinder that she’d asked where they were now, not a few minutes before. Shitting all over the whale, who’d only tried to be helpful, would be a mistake.

“Come on,” Juan said. “We can pile into the Zodiac and motor back to this part of the beach so we’re in position to leave when they show up.”

“We’ll shift and be in the sea,” Leif said. Power shimmered as the dolphins and whales ran into the surf. Once they got deep enough, their magic grew brighter still as they took their sea forms.

Karin ran back along the wet sand, calling for Ketha and Viktor with her mind voice, but neither answered. The second Zodiac was still in place, so the humans from Arkady hadn’t left yet, either.

“There you are,” Boris cried and bolted their way from the other direction.

“Jesus. You fucking vanished,” one of the McMurdo scientists yelled. “We searched and searched when we were ready to leave. Just to make certain you were all right...” His voice ran down, and he gulped air.

Karin glanced in the rafts. A smallish wild pig had been dressed out and lay in the bottom of one along with bunches of taro root and sweet potatoes. If she hadn’t been so worried about Ketha, she’d have been thrilled at the prospect of food that wasn’t powdered, freeze-dried, or canned.

“Go back to the boat,” Juan ordered.

“What are you going to do?” Boris asked and readied the raft with the pig.

“Wait for Vik and Ketha,” Juan replied. “Now get moving.”

“Do you need this?” Boris raised the Remington.

“I don’t believe so,” Juan replied.

“You’ll tell us everything, right?” The McMurdo scientist had finally caught his breath and vaulted over the pontoons and into the Zodiac.

“Most of it,” Karin reassured him and watched the raft edge away from the beach. Once it hit deeper water, Boris swung the bow around and opened the throttle.

“Damn it. This is my fault,” Daide said. “If I hadn’t played Sir Galahad, we’d have been able to focus on Ceridwen and the Fae.” He looked away. “I’m sorry. I wanted to save you, not make your job harder.”

“In a backhanded way, you did save me and all the rest of us.” Karin climbed into the Zodiac. She’d been touched when Daide crouched next to the faery, explaining arithmetic to her.

“How?” He slogged through surf with the anchor rope, tossing it over the stern before he scrambled aboard.

“When the green faery claimed you and you were kind to her, they began to trust us, not view us as Ceridwen’s guests. They’ve always hated her and her kind. And they abhor Witches.”

“Everyone hates Witches,” Zoe muttered.

“If it weren’t for the Cataclysm, I doubt Ceridwen could have enticed the Fae or the faeries to do anything for her,” Aura said.

“Isn’t that the truth.” Karin shielded her eyes with a hand and scanned the beach. “I don’t understand how Vik and Ketha could have gotten stuck in that pathway. It was short, clear of illusions.”

“If they’re not back shortly, I’m going after them,” Daide announced.

Karin was impressed. Even though his magic was raw and untrained, one step up from an unknown element, he had spirit and determination—and courage.

They floated about a hundred feet offshore, staring through rain that hadn’t let up. The day was mostly spent, which meant they’d spent hours on the borderworld, but time passed differently on each of them. The sea Shifters’ energy fanned out fifty yards behind them as everyone waited.

“There’s Vik!” Juan pulled the ignition rope. The engine sputtered to life, and they headed for shore.

“Ketha!” Karin screeched in mind speech.

“Coming!” echoed back to her.

Rather than facing them, Viktor hovered near the spot they’d emerged from the faeries’ track to the borderworld. Juan ran the raft onto the sand and leapt over the pontoons.

“Where’s Ketha? For that fact, where were you?” Juan yelled.

Before Juan reached Viktor, he opened his arms and Ketha, a very human Ketha, burst out of the ether. Rather than appearing relieved and happy, she grabbed one of his outstretched arms and dragged him toward the raft.

“Hurry,” she cried.

Karin didn’t have to dig too deep to understand why. “Join your power to mine,” she exhorted and threw her magical well wide open.

Sure enough, malevolent energy hurtled toward Viktor, Ketha, and Juan, but from the direction of the original portal. Made sense. The Fae had told Ceridwen their escape route was closed to her.

The goddess burst into sight, her long silver-and-black hair curling around her head like a nest of snakes. She pelted toward them but then switched course. Clearly intent on catching them before they reached the ship, she headed for the sea.

Ketha threw herself into the raft, followed by Juan and Viktor, who gunned the engine. For a moment, the propeller churned up sand from the ocean bottom, but it freed itself, and they sped toward Arkady.

“How’d you manage the transformation?” Karin eyed Ketha.

“Long story,” Ketha replied. “If we’re lucky, we’ll live long enough for you to hear it.”

Karin gathered power from the others. She let it simmer and build until she couldn’t hold it any longer. Ceridwen skimmed over the surface of the sea, intent on doing maximum damage. Wind skinned her hair back from her face, and her timeless features were twisted into a rictus of rage and hate.

“Leif!” Karin called.

“We’re here.”

“Keep the path between the Zodiac and Ceridwen clear.”

“Understood.” His telepathy was tense. Perhaps he and the sea Shifters had something in mind, but didn’t want to tip off the goddess.

Unsure if she commanded enough magic to dissuade the angry goddess, Karin took careful aim and hit Ceridwen with the full force of their combined power. The goddess shrieked in pain and outrage. Rather than holding her position on the water’s surface, she sank a few feet, floundering.

Waves from whale tails hitting the ocean’s surface crashed over her, but she fought past them.

“Damn! She’ll track us to the ends of the earth,” Daide muttered as Ceridwen clawed her way upright once again.

Lightning bolts shot from the goddess’s upraised hands, striking all around the raft. One of the pontoons sizzled as it deflated.

“We can lose two or three more air cells,” Juan said tersely. “More than that, and we’ll sink.”

“I’ll ward the raft,” Ketha screeched.

Karin had established battle lines and couldn’t back down now, so she gathered another volley and heaved it at the goddess. Without Ketha’s magic, they were weaker, but Ceridwen still flinched when she was hit. Four more salvos and they’d nearly reached Arkady. Fortunately, the water was smooth. If Ceridwen had known more about ships, she’d have sent twenty-foot swells to make it impossible for them to board.

Undeterred, the goddess was closing on them. Karin gauged the distance, wanting the goddess closer before she struck again. She hadn’t conserved their combined magic, and not much was left. Leif and his pod were moving nearer. If Ceridwen was aware of them, she didn’t give any indication.

Boris stood at the bottom of the gangway. Not bothering with anything as elegant as tying off the raft, he held onto the rope while the Zodiac emptied until Karin, Daide, Viktor, and Ketha were the only ones left aboard.

“Hurry,” Boris urged.

“One more blast.” Karin was so wiped out she could barely talk. She marshaled her power, wishing her wolf was there to help.

“We’ll take over,” Leif said. “Move inside to safety.”

“Thanks, but I have to see this through,” she told him.

The air thrummed with another brand of power, and she groaned. Now wasn’t the time to deal with another enemy. Not when she was about to fall on her face. Daide wrapped an arm around her shoulders, feeding power into her. “We’ve got this,” he said.

“If not,” she mumbled, “you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Ye canna run from us,” a menacing voice boomed out of nowhere.

Karin whipped her head around in time to see a phalanx of Fae advancing on Ceridwen. “Och, leave off. Ye’re my subjects.” The goddess waved a dismissive hand, but the Fae kept right on coming, skimming the water’s surface.

“In your dreams, Witch.” A blond Fae hastened toward her.

“Aye, we’d never offer allegiance to one such as ye.” A second Fae joined the first. “At best, ’twas a convenient alliance. No more. No less.”

The silver-haired Fae who’d first accosted Ceridwen floated a few feet from Karin. “Go.” He jerked his chin northward. “Close the gateway. Restore our world.”

“How’d you know about that?” Karin sputtered, too exhausted to find a subtle way to ask.

“Ceridwen has a big mouth. Now, go.”

Behind him, Ceridwen shrieked epithets in old Gaelic.

The Fae kept talking. “Doona hold concerns about her. She’ll bother ye no more.”

“Are you certain?” Leif had swum close to the Fae.

“Aye, sea Shifter. We doona require your aid, but we thank ye for offering.”

The air turned liquid, electric with power. Shades of silver, violet, and blue turned into a horseshoe-shaped opening that inhaled the Fae and Ceridwen along with them. It vanished so fast, Karin blinked. Had she hallucinated the whole thing?

Daide tightened his hold on her. Good thing because she slumped against him as consciousness fled.