A Taste for Blood (The Godhunter, Book 6) (45 page)

I dropped to my knees, my heart breaking with the cords that had been torn from it. How had I not felt them die? Why didn't I know the moment I'd lost them. Then I remembered the pain, the trauma I'd just been through. The breaks had probably melted into the full pot of misery I'd been served. My beautiful lions, lost to me forever and I hadn't even noticed. Tears streamed down my dirty cheeks and the phooka started to whine.

“Vervain?” Arach's leather boots appeared in front of me and I looked up into his sympathetic face. He reached out a hand and I took it. He helped me to my feet.

“
How did you know?” It finally occurred to me to wonder how Arach would know I needed help.

“
I mirrored you and saw this,” he waved a hand out to indicate the battlefield. “I thought you might be able to use some help from your people.”

“
We
are her people,” Trevor growled.

“
And so are we,” Arach's hand continued its arc back to the group of fire fey that stood waiting, licking blood off talons and teeth but doing it patiently.

“
We didn't...”

“
Trevor,” I cut him off. “Please. They came to our aid. Can't you at least bend a little?”

He sighed and stretched his neck, releasing loud cracking noises while he looked over the assortment of monsters I was related to. I can imagine what he saw, probably what I'd seen at first, but what I now saw was loyalty, beauty, courage, honor, and love. I saw my family.

I waved my hand at Trevor, like I didn't have time to wait on his answer, and ran over to my fey, throwing myself into the arms of red caps and leanan-sidhe, while holding the gripping hands of the smaller goblins tight to my legs. Phookas whined and I reached out to stroke their soft heads as the fire sidhe stroked my hair. The Hidden Ones gathered close around us and I felt the connection my love magic had established with them, come blazing to life. They stood proudly beside the other fey, and though their visages were strange, I saw the glory in them and it made me supremely happy to know they saw it too. My stamp was clearly upon these fey, I was a part of them now, and I felt a fierce pride in it.

The Host who had once hunted me, had come to save me.

I felt him behind me, a warm pressure on my skin, and I finally let go of the fey who I'd missed so terribly, so I could look upon their King. He took one hesitant step forward and I leapt the rest of the way, clinging to him and burying my face in the scales along his neck. He released a shaky breath, his body sighing around me, and lowered his cheek to the top of my head.

“
Leave zem be,” I heard Kirill behind us and looked up to see him restraining Trevor.

“
I just want to talk to him,” Trevor pulled away and strode forward. Arach refused to put me down, so I faced my wolf in the arms of my dragon. “I don't like you, dragon.”

“
The feeling is mutual,” Arach growled.

“
Okay, okay,” I pushed at Arach. “Put me down.” He put me down with a resigned look.

“
Let me finish, Vervain,” Trevor reached out and took my hand. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I just can't understand the fey way of thinking. I probably never will but I do understand an army coming to fight by my side, saving my friends and family. An army who obviously loves you down to their smallest member.” He glanced at the phooka mother who was still trailing me. “The loving part, I understand completely. So although I don't like this faerie, and I don't want him in your life, I will not stand in the way of your friendship, if that's what you decide you want. As far as anything else between you goes, I don't want to even think about it right now but we'll see.”

“
I accept your truce, Wolf Prince,” Arach held out a hand, his face solemn.

“
Just don't make me regret it, Dragon King.” Trevor shook Arach's hand.

Epilogue

One casualty that hadn't been revealed to me on the battlefield was Mr. T, Tsohanoai, husband to Estsanatlehi. He'd been killed by two of Eris' children, Lethe and Androctasiai. Forgetful and Manslaughters. They'd tag-teamed him and took his head. Mrs. E had then killed them both in a furious rampage. The entire God Squad was mourning his death with the fervor of followers and my heart bled with theirs. He was our first casualty in the group and it hit us all hard but none as hard as his wife.

Mrs. E withdrew to mourn her husband, taking his body with her to bury on their land in the God Realm. She didn't want us to attend, she said it was a personal ceremony for her to perform alone, a last communion with her husband. So we let her be, even though it broke our hearts to do so.

The Intare and Froekn weren't much better. We held two funerals for our multiple losses and I cried until I ran dry. Pride Palace was a solemn place for quite awhile, lions with heavy hearts roaming the halls listlessly, no sounds of joy or camaraderie to be found, but as all things must, the pain finally ended and we were able to start to move on.

I had a talk with Thor and we've decided that he's, I mean we've, progressed enough to be able to once again work together. He's agreed to keep his women out of my club and I've agreed to not knee him in the balls. I think it might just work.

It took awhile but I started feeling normal again. At least as normal as a witch turned Godhunter, turned Goddess, turned dragon-sidhe could feel. My magics were happy with me again, now that I was no longer under a forgetting compulsion and could remember them fully... all of them.

I had spent a lot of time meditating on them and communicating my remorse over the way they'd been treated but they were surprisingly understanding and it took very little effort to appease them. What was even more surprising though, were the changes I discovered in my Nahual. Her previous visage was that of a white jaguar with golden markings. Yet now, her fur was darker, tinged red, and black claws had sprouted from her paws. The eyes she'd turned to me were bright and fiery, dragon eyes, and from her back sprouted a pair of tiny, leathery wings... useless but still pretty.

I guess I shouldn't have been so shocked. She was a representation of my true magic, after all. She was me undiluted and I knew now that the true me was both fully human and fully dragon-sidhe. Impossible but true. So it made sense that the jaguar would blend with the dragon, now that my dragon nature had been revealed.

I had a feeling that if I'd given in completely to my dragon-sidhe soul, if Arach hadn't put a restriction on it, my Nahual would have changed entirely into a dragon. Amazingly, that thought didn't scare me. A change is not a death, my Nahual would have still been there, just with a different face. Maybe that's why I felt a measure of confusion every time I looked into the mirror lately. Part of me expected to see someone else staring back. Someone with scales and yellow eyes.

As far as everyone else and their changes, Fallon and Samantha are doing well living with the Intare and I'm indeed grateful for the second female in the house. Now if I could just marry them all off.

Hades has done a great job of taking over Tlaloc's Heaven and Persephone has blossomed as a leader of Hell. I'm told that none of the souls of Heaven have even noticed the change of leadership, it went so smoothly. I almost handed over Tlaloc's glasses to Hades, just in case they might help, but at the last second, I decided against it. I had a feeling they may come in handy.

My men and I got back into a rotation that worked well for all of us. Trevor's new found friendship with Odin was helping to make things even easier. It's nice to be able to invite Odin over for visits along with our sons, less worry for me over neglecting Odin. Things fell into a nice routine, peaceful even.

We moved back down into my little house in Kaneohe but we spend more time in Pride Palace than we used to. I have to admit that the bathtub there has a lot to do with that. I love being able to bathe with both Trevor and Kirill at once. So I had half my closet in the Human Realm and half in the God and I was okay with that.

I took Roarke's advice and put Darius and Fallon in charge of forming two separate fighting units of Intare. They are currently training their individual teams but they both seem happy with the results so far and are hopeful that they'll be up for staging mock battles between the two units soon. I've already noticed a difference in the lions. They seem more self assured and there have been less disagreements to mediate lately. The only down side was having to tell Roarke he was right.

Moonshine was reopened and things have been pretty quiet there as well. We did ramp up security though and we have an attendant in the parking lot now. Even though Eris and her children are now all dead, we thought it best to use this as a wake-up call and learn from our mistakes. Moonshine was going to be the safest place in town.

Fenrir has been making comments about weddings and babies. Talk about timing. I just can't think about all that right after marrying a dragon and almost becoming mother to the hope of a species. Oh yeah, I'm not pregnant and unless you're a woman who's had a pregnancy scare before, you'll never understand the depths of my relief.

The dragon himself has fogged up my glass quite a few times since the battle with Eris. We talk for hours sometimes and I've found myself slipping back into the comfortable closeness I shared with him before I found out that he was a mind-stealing, lizard lummox. It's nice, there's no pressure from him although I know he wants more. We've discussed my visiting the Fire Kingdom, including the rest of my lovers in the discussion, and we've set a tentative date. I'll be chaperoned. By all of them.

Even with the heartaches, the loss, the confusion, and anxiety, I count myself lucky. I have four wonderful lovers, four families – two of which can get furry, and a kingdom full of faeries to worship me. Okay, maybe just be real nice to me. Either way, it's good to be Queen.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in the Godhunter series:

The Tainted Web

Chapter One

I took a deep breath of the fresh fey air and sighed. The trees seemed to breathe with me, branches reaching out to me in welcome. Inside me, something unfolded, reaching back to them. I was told close to a year had passed in Faerie since I'd been here last. In my realm, it had been almost two weeks.

A lot had changed between the gods and the faeries in that time. Both sides had worked hard toward establishing some kind of alliance. The gods because frankly, they were scared shitless of the fey, and the faeries because they wanted me.

I was the last female dragon-sidhe, a type of faerie that can change into a dragon. They're also fey royalty and in my case, a  Queen. Technically I was still married to King Arach, even though I'd disavowed him and left in a huff when I'd found out how he tricked me into marrying him by stealing my memories, but I'm not bitter. No, really I'm not this time.

I'd forgiven Arach once I'd come to terms with his fey nature and how it had motivated him to do what he'd done. Mainly, trying to save his race. Arach's saving grace was that, along the way of tricking me into breeding for him, I'd changed him just a little and he'd changed me. We'd fallen in love.

Love was kind of my thing. I was the Goddess of Love and Lions. Love made me keen on sharing the emotion and the lion part made me need multiple lovers. It's a reversed pride thing(as in a lion pride not ego). So my plate was already full when Arach dished himself up.

In fact, my other lovers were there in Faerie with me. Trevor, the Froekn(werewolf) Prince, was my alpha. Kirill, my black Russian lion, was my Ganza(Intare bodyguard). Odin, God of Victory and the Dead, was my husband from a previous life, father of my sons(also previous life), and the man who brought me back into this life. Last but not least there was Azrael, Angel of Death, he'd helped Odin by putting my soul in the Viking Well of Souls so that Odin could eventually bring me back. Funny how that kind of thing usually has a magical price attached. The price ended up being me, Odin now had to share me, not only with Trevor and Kirill but with the angel who carried my soul for him.

Odin bore it well though. He'd waited centuries to bring me back, so sharing me was worth it, according to him. Frankly, I couldn't have shared any of my men. The very thought enraged me and brought my dragon to the surface, as if my lioness wasn't bad enough.

I didn't have to share them though. In fact, they were considering adding one more to their number. It was partially the reason we were in Faerie, to talk to Arach, well, to have my men talk to Arach. The other reason, was to attend the first Faerie-God Ball ever. We had all been invited by the High King of Faerie himself.

So not only were my lovers with me but the entire Froekn clan, all of my Intare, and the remaining members of the God Squad. I say remaining because we'd recently lost Mr. T, the Navajo Sun God, and his fertility goddess wife, Mrs. E still hadn't come out of mourning. So we were two short and my heart hurt a little not only for them but for the lions and wolves we'd lost in the same battle. I wished they could have seen Faerie with me.

We were all gathered at The
End of the Road, the only tracing point in the Faerie Realm. The fey had created the Aether, the magical space between realms, as a means of traveling to the Human Realm. You could get anywhere in the Human or God Realms by tracing through the Aether but Faerie had restricted itself to only one doorway, the easier to guard. Their reservations served them well, for when humans began to hunt the fey, it was relatively simple to close the door and cut themselves off from the other realms.

Then I'd come along. Originally born fey, my mother had hidden my nature with a spell that turned me temporarily human. Unfortunately, she was killed before she could remove the spell or even tell me about it. I had died human but Odin pulled me from death and put me into another human body. So I was human again, until I drank from the Holy Grayel and became a goddess, but underneath it all, I had the soul of a fey and when I casually asked the Aether to take me home one day, it did. It took me to Faerie.

My entrance weakened the seal and set into motion a series of events that has made me a Queen, opened the tracing point of Faerie completely, and given the High Royals reasons to consider allowing the passage of fey into the Human Realm again. All from one of my screw-ups.

So there we were,
a huge mass of us and more were still arriving through the huge tree behind me. In front of me was a line of coaches, waiting to take us all to the Castle of Eight, the living castle made of eight monstrous trees, in which the High King and Queen resided with their court.

“
Are you sure you're ready for this?” Trevor was beside me, hadn't left my side since we'd arrived in fact.

“
I think you're projecting, honey eyes,” I smiled at him. “I'm fine but you don't look so good.”

“
It's just that the last time I was here,” he looked around warily at the active plant life as it shifted and sighed, “it was to rescue you from that dragon.”

That dragon
, I held back my laughter but just barely. Trevor had formed a shaky truce with Arach but it didn't mean he liked it. Calling him
that dragon
was only one of the many ways he had of expressing his distaste. I couldn't blame him though, I was asking a lot of my alpha lover, of all of my men, to come to Faerie and get to know the man who had tried to steal me from them.

“
It's just a party,” I took his arm and led him to the coach at the front of the line. Kirill, Odin, and Azrael followed on our heels without being told. “Try and relax. Faerie can be amazing, if you can let go of your fears long enough to enjoy it.”

“
Fear is your body's way of telling you something is not going to be enjoyable, Vervain,” Trevor gave me his annoyed face.

“
I know,” I laughed and let him help me up into one of the opulent coaches. “You'll see what I mean though. Relax a little, we're all here together under a diplomatic mission. Nothing will harm us, so look around and try to have a good time.”

“
Yeah, sure,” he huffed as the others climbed in with us. “Nothing will harm us except the grass. I did warn you guys about the grass right?”

“
What?” Azrael smirked at him. “Don't smoke it?”

About the Author

Amy Sumida lives on an island in the Pacific Ocean where gods go to play. She sleeps in a fairy bed, high in the air, with two gravity-defying felines and upon waking, enjoys stabbing people with little needles, over and over, under the guise of making pretty pictures on their skin. She, like Vervain, has no filter but has been fortunate enough to find friends who appreciate this... or at least tell her they do. She bellydances and paints pictures on her walls but is happiest with her nose stuck in a book, her mind in a different world than this one, filled with fantastical men who unfortunately don't exist in our mundane reality. Thank the gods for fantasy.

On a serious note, she's the author of several books, including the Godhunter series, Feeding the Lwas, The Magic of Fabric, and Enchantress. She's been writing since she was a little girl but first decided to pursue writing as a career when she gave her high school English teacher one of her books to look over and unbeknownst to her, that teacher passed her book around to all her friends. A month later she was accosted in the halls by a teacher she didn't know, begging her to write a sequel. She's been writing novels ever since.