Lord of the Dark (11 page)

The nymphs had slipped her shift down over her shoulders exposing her breasts to their collective touch. Rhiannon had freed her arms, but the gauze now tethered them, and she uttered a dry sob, trying to twist away as two of Vina’s deft fingers penetrated her.

“Hmm, still sore from your deflowering,” the nymph observed. “I shouldn’t wonder. His sex is enormous. We have all known its magnificence, and we will again.” She shrugged, plunging her fingers deeper into Rhiannon’s vagina. “You have nothing we do not have,” she said. “You are a curiosity for him now, but we will have him again. He is one of us. No human female can outshine the fay when it comes to the sexual arts.”

Rhiannon shut her eyes. Vina knew what she was doing. There was no way Rhiannon could beat back the orgasm. Vina’s rhythmic thrusts inside her had brought her to the brink. When one of the others began to lave and suck her nipple, Rhiannon was undone. She couldn’t see which nymph had taken her breast. The circle of swirling fog had nearly closed completely, blocking her vision as wave upon wave of orgasmic fire ripped through her sex with the release. Everything seemed so far away all of a sudden. The hands fell away from her body, and the tether Vina had made of her braid slipped away from her neck. Her hair, come loose of it plaits, fell about her near nakedness like a silken waterfall. Rhiannon was grateful for the warmth of it, for cold rushed at her from all directions with the nymphs’ body heat removed.

Their constant tittering now seemed like disembodied voices sharing secrets. It had grown distant, and Rhiannon took a deep breath as she sagged against the tree at her back. She had just begun to relax when Vina’s sultry voice assailed her at closer range. Though she couldn’t see the nymph for the fog, Vina’s warm breath, earthy sweet with the scent of herbs, puffed hot against her moist cheek.

“Foolish chit,” the wood nymph whispered. At the sound of her voice, Rhiannon cried out and vaulted away from the tree trunk as if she’d been shot from a catapult. “He wants you so badly?” the nymph went on. “Let him see if he can find you!”

“Wait!” Rhiannon cried out as Vina’s voice began to fade. “What do you mean if he can find me?”

But there was no reply except for the distant titter of the nymph’s triumphant laughter that soon faded to nothingness.

“He won’t have to find me!” Rhiannon called out after the vanished nymphs. “I shall find
him
! I took notice of the way we came to this place, and I will find him, I say!”

All at once, the fog lifted, and Rhiannon stood alone and shivering in the little clearing. She glanced about, but all she saw in any direction was ground-creeping mist ghosting over unfamiliar terrain. Where had the forest gone? Where was the ancestral oak she’d leaned against? Gone—all
gone
!

Rhiannon sank to her knees sobbing, as the last of the fog drifted away showing her what lay beneath her. Tethers of a different nature held her now. These would not be so easily removed. The wily wood nymphs had tricked her. They had led her to a place where Gideon might never find her, for she sat in the middle of a faery ring. Once a human entered into one and become captive of the fay, it was said they would never return, that they would live forevermore in Otherworldly captivity.

Rhiannon raised her face to the heavens and screamed her heart dry. Spread out wide around her in a ragged circle, was a ring of mud-brown, lace-edged toadstools. Their earthy scent rushed up her nostrils, mingled with the forest smells of mulch and bark and rich fertile soul.
Forest smells?
Had she brought some of Marius’s world with her into this Otherworldly limbo? Was there hope she might escape?

Rhiannon surged to her feet, her eyes riveted to the toadstool ring, but in a blink it was gone, carried off on the last wisps of mist as they fled over the thicket like living things.

“Nooo!” she cried, groping the ground. Sobbing in spasms, she stepped outside the place where the faery ring had been, but doing so changed nothing. It was too late. She had crossed over.

I
t was full dark when Gideon stirred awake under a lush canopy of leafy boughs that cradled him, soothing and nurturing him deep in the forest. This had been a particularly painful encounter with the watchers; he didn’t usually have to battle them, three against one. They would have killed a mortal, or a lesser form entity, with their lightning bolts. Consciousness was returning slowly, and with it, arousal. He groaned. It wasn’t the gentle petting of the leafy boughs that made him hard. Their ministrations this time were purely therapeutic. It was the wood nymphs.

They were purring like a litter of contented kittens as they danced around the tree that had embraced him, their familiar hands flitting over his naked skin through the opening they’d rent in his eel skin. They seemed in a celebratory mood as they stroked and caressed and fondled him. Despite the ancient tree’s attempt to keep the nymphs at bay, a rogue wind ruffling its foliage made a hissing sound that bespoke warning. Cracked and twisted branches were the ancestral oak’s reward for that, and the hissing soon changed to something more akin to cries of pain.

Vina had hold of Gideon’s penis, while the others stroked his wings despite Gideon’s protests and the tree’s valiant attempt to prevent them. These vixens of the wildwood had mastered the art of seduction. They had no compunction about mauling Gideon when he was conscious. It was no surprise that they would take advantage of him in a vulnerable state. It had happened thus many times before.

Rubbing up against him until she’d trapped his cock between her legs, Vina took his face in her hands. “Awake, my lord!” she whispered, her voice sultry and urgent. “We hunger for you…favor us…”

Gideon struggled toward consciousness. What was that scent, that sweet, musky herbal redolence ghosting past his nostrils? He’d smelled that scent before. It had overtones of sweet clover that set his heart racing. His dry lips parted, emitting a soft moan.

The nymph, quick to seize the opportunity, ran her hand along the angular planes of his cheek and slid her index fingertip into his mouth. It tasted familiar, evocative, and mysterious, and he moaned again.

“R-Rhiannon?” he murmured, for it was her savory-sweet juices he tasted and her essence he smelled.

Gideon’s eyes snapped open, but not to the sight of Rhiannon. Instead, he looked into the iridescent green cat’s eyes of Vina, whose rage was palpable as she withdrew her finger from his mouth and lowered the flat of her open palm hard across his face.

“
Rhiannon,
is it?” she shrilled, backing the other nymphs up apace. She flung his turgid member aside. The motion stung, and Gideon quickly covered his sex with his hand to prevent more damage done. “So that is her name, your human!” the wood nymph snapped. “No wonder she was reluctant to tell it! A mortal—a piddling
human
endowed with the name of a deity of the forgotten realm?
Sacrilege!
I am not sorry now!”

“Sorry?” Gideon queried, shaking his head like a dog in a vain attempt to clear his head. Voices were mumbling inside it again. “Sorry for what? What have you done? Where is Rhiannon?”

The name seemed to send Vina into a blind fury. The moment he uttered it, she began beating him about the face and chest with her clenched fists and shrieking like a banshee. When she began pummeling his wings, Gideon let go of his cock and seized her upper arms shaking her to a standstill. That left his erection unprotected and the wood nymph seized it in a savage hand and gave a tug that doubled him over in pain.

Well?
said an all-too-familiar disembodied voice in Gideon’s mind.
Do we step in now, then
?

No,
the other voice he’d heard before said, almost angrily.
It is begun, his rite of passage. It must play out as it is designed.

Even if…?

No matter what…if we are to save him…

The voices faded then, swallowed by the vibrating pain in Gideon’s bruised sex. White pinpoints of blinding light starred his vision. His head was still reeling from the lightning strikes. That Vina had attacked him when he was aroused had nearly cost him his consciousness again. Seizing her hand, he raised it to his nose and sniffed it through flared nostrils. Recognition drew his scalp back, and his jaw muscles began to tick. It was Rhiannon’s essence. There was no question.

He seized the wood nymph’s wrist. “Where is she,” he demanded, wise enough not to call Rhiannon by name. There was no need. Vina knew exactly who he meant. “What have you done with her?”

Trembling with rage and the still lingering effects of the watchers’ missiles, Gideon didn’t feel the tremor in the ground beneath his feet. He didn’t hear the clopping of heavy horse’s hooves approaching either, but Vina evidently did, for she wrenched her hand free and vanished in a blink, evaporating in the mist as if she had never been there, her sister nymphs with her.

Gideon knew she’d been there, however. The taste of Rhiannon’s juices still lingered on his tongue from Vina’s fingers. “Come back here!” he thundered at the absent nymph, but his words echoed back emptily.

Marius crashed through the underbrush and ranged himself alongside. “What is it?” he asked.

Gideon spun to face him, raking his hair back roughly. “Rhiannon,” he said. “Is she at the lodge?”

“No,” the centaur said, “I was hoping to find her here with you.”

Gideon stared. “What do you mean?” he demanded. “I counted upon you keeping her safe while I could not!”

“And my priority was keeping
you
safe from the watchers,” Marius defended. “I left her with Sy, while I made a search to be certain those damnable harpies weren’t lurking somewhere about, ready to hurl down more lightning bolts. Yes, yes, I know he is simpleminded, but I had no choice. She tricked him into going on a foolish errand so she could slip away and go in search of you. She wasn’t too thrilled with the nymphs’ ministrations. Where have they gone? I could have sworn I heard their voices when I approached just now.”

“I was hoping you could tell me!” Gideon said darkly. “They just vanished before my eyes. They’ve done something with her. Her essence was all over Vina. I have to find her, Marius!”

Gideon unfurled his wings, and the centaur halted him with a quick hand. “No,” he said. “Where they have gone, you cannot follow, my impetuous friend. They have crossed over.”

“Get them back!” Gideon raved, spinning in all directions, as if he hoped to make them materialize out of thin air.

“I cannot,” Marius said. “I have no dominion over the nymphs; you know that. They do not dwell on my island. They frequent it, yes, but they live in the Otherworld. They are creatures of the wildwood. They come here to play…and to catch a glimpse of you. If they have fled from you, you haven’t a prayer. What did you do to anger them?”

“Anger them?”
Gideon trumpeted. “Haven’t you heard me? Rhiannon’s sexual essence is all over Vina. How could you let this happen? You know how jealous the wood nymphs are. You never should have let Rhiannon out of your sight!”

“That’s gratitude,” Marius bellowed, rearing back on his haunches as Gideon’s wingspread threatened to knock him down, for unfurled, the dark lord’s wings were massive and strong. “Wait! Where do you think you’re going?” the centaur shouted, for Gideon was already in flight. “You cannot follow them. The Otherworld is entered by invitation only. You cannot storm those bastions. Wait, I say!”

“If she returns,
keep
her here!” Gideon thundered back. “Lock her in if needs must. Do not leave her side until I return.”

Marius said more, but Gideon paid him no mind. The centaur’s voice was bleeding into the disembodied voices that had begun mumbling in his mind again. He couldn’t make out any of it, but that didn’t matter. There was no time for chasing shadows. He needed answers, and there was only one who could supply them…the rune caster.

Gideon approached the rocky little islet on the edge of Outer Darkness on the cusp of midnight. His instincts told him that. It was still moon dark, and there wasn’t a star in the sky, dense cloud cover had swallowed them.

A stiff wind had risen, ruffling the feathers in his wings, making him hard, when he shouldn’t be hard, bringing him to turgid arousal, when he needed his wits about him. There was no help for it. This was his curse. He had learned to live with it, but not to like it.

He touched down on the rocks in a cottony fog bank too dense for the wind to chase that challenged his intuition again. Gideon’s sense of direction was infallible. Over the ages, his aerial observations had carved indelible maps of the Arcan terrain in his mind, automatically updating them as the geography changed over time. None in the hemisphere had such an advantage. Often he was sought for his navigational skills. He tapped them now, for he could scarcely see a handbreadth of distance ahead of him.

Stepping down off the rocks, he started in the direction of the rune caster’s cottage, when her voice assailed him at close range—so close, he made wide circles in the fog ahead of him expecting to touch her odious, misshapen form, or the comely seductive image she presented him with on occasion. He felt neither.

“Back so soon, Lord of the Dark?” Lavilia said, her voice a curious meld of seduction and mockery.

“Where is she?” Gideon blurted out. “Where are the nymphs? Where have they taken her?”

“Take care, dark one,” the woman warned. “You have but two questions left. Are you certain you want this to be one of them? Ah-ah! Take care! Do not speak too soon. You have posed
three
questions. Choose!”

Gideon raked his hair back wildly. This was no time for her games. “Where are you? Show yourself! I have no time for this. There are enough voices echoing about in my brain. I do not like jousting with shadows!”

Lavilia cackled. “I am here,” she said. “And I am wise enough to keep my distance when such a madness takes you, dark one. Choose, but remember, once you speak it, you will have but one question remaining.”

Gideon needed no reminders of that. He was in a blind passion with worry over Rhiannon, but she was right, he had posed three questions, and he wracked his brain to decide upon the most frugal one.

“Where is Rhiannon?” he finally said.

“Well done, Lord of the Dark!” Lavilia said. “The wood nymphs are of no use to you. She is not with them. They have abandoned her to the Otherworld.”

“How do I get there?”

“Is that your final question, dark one?”

“Yes…no…wait…you are confusing me!”

“I am not the one who has confused you,” she warbled. “But take your time. It will not count unless you say it. I will not trick ye, dark one.”

“That would not be wise,” Gideon said, his voice like edged steel.

He gave her directive thought. Marius said he could not cross over unless it was by invitation. That wasn’t likely. But how had Rhiannon been invited? And how had the wood nymphs abandoned her? The rune caster said they’d abandoned her
to
the Otherworld, not
in
the Otherworld. Could it be that they had not gone with her after all? And should that be his last question? He was reluctant to ask it. Who knew but that he would need that final precious question in the future? The way things were going, he was loathe to ask it. Could he trick her into telling? It was worth a try.

“No,” he said, “I shall save my last question if you please. Besides, being overanxious I’ve already wasted one. Marius told me she had crossed over.”

“Marius told you the nymphs had crossed over. You drew your own conclusions, dark one. If you’ve wasted one of your questions, credit love madness, it is no fault of mine.”

“No, not,” Gideon said. “But I shall be more careful with my last one if you please.” He still couldn’t see her for the fog. That made him uneasy. He always held that fog hid deep secrets. What secrets were Lavilia holding back from him, for she surely knew all. “How did you know the Lord of the Forest told me the nymphs had crossed over?” he asked her, a light having gone on in brain. It was as if the fog had seeped inside and clouded that as well. “And that is not a question, sly one. It is a clarification.”

“I know much, dark one,” she said smugly.

Praying that mind reading was not one of her talents, he took another tack. “Marius also said one cannot cross over into the Otherworld unless it be by invitation,” he said as casually as he could manage with a screaming need playing havoc with his loins, and a hard cock begging to be relieved, to say nothing of the madness she so rightly diagnosed in him.

“It is so,” she returned.

“I’ve also heard that one could be tricked by the fay and taken captive,” he said cautiously. “I’ve heard that if one tastes fay food, or blunders into one of their land traps, they could be lost in the Otherworld for all eternity. Rhiannon is a strong entity for a human. She has come through shipwreck, faced the watchers’ lightning bolts, and
me.
She is no fool. They would have to have tricked her in some way or used force in order to cross her over. I need ask no question to come to that conclusion, but…”

The rune caster sighed through his hesitation. “I tell you one thing for free,” she said.