Bran experienced the precise moment of his death, when his lungs burned and his heart slowed. He buried the panic of waiting for the last thump of his heart, and the beat of silence where another thump should have been.
It didn’t come. Only quiet. Followed by darkness.
He felt his soul lift, saw his physical form lying facedown upon a white cloth. His arms were spread out, his thick wrists shackled with iron manacles, his own athame plunged between his naked shoulders.
It was always the same. Night after night. His death coming to him in a vision that never revealed any more, or less. His death by an unknown hand and in an unfamiliar place.
The seconds of lifelessness hovered, started to fade. Air and warmth soon began to flow back into his lungs and veins. But he fought it. He was not yet ready to return to the land of the living.
Luring the bastard back, Bran refused to fall into any other state than the deep divination trance that would bind him and Death together.
Death had screwed him for the last time.
Pressing his knees to the cool, mossy earth, Bran grounded himself, sending the excess elemental energy into the ground to be dispersed. Eyes now opened, he focused on the black candles and inhaled the scent of incense as Death struggled in his grip. But Bran was stronger, able to hold Death in his grasp until darkness once again descended and he was dead once more.
Finally.
This part of the journey was all new to him. He was hit by an onslaught of sensory stimulation.
Scent.
The smell of female arousal mixed with nightshade and male musk.
Sound
. The husky pant of a woman, his own heavy breaths.
Touch
. The sensation was everywhere, surrounding him from all sides. His sigils, which adorned his chest and arm, neck and temple, tingled with the incredible power he felt cocooning his body. Yet there was a weakness there, too. It was draining him. Making him vulnerable. Still he craved it, that haunting touch that hurt as much as it aroused.
Sight
. He tried to see, to look deep within the flickering glow of the candles. Tried to reach out to Death, to use his strength to piece together the rest of the vision.
And then it happened. His sight swirled for the briefest second, then stilled. The pupil of his right eye dilated, allowing him to see his world. Annwyn was still.
Quiet
. His left pupil opened to the mortal realm. The same disquieting calm was seen there. But before he could close the portal, he was assaulted by the cries of a screaming woman. Splashes of red swam before both eyes. The acrid stench of burning flesh stung his nostrils, while a low chant of invocation swam in his ears.
A shadowy image followed, of a hand, delicate and pale, wrapped around the hilt of his athame.
A female hand
. He reached out to the vision but his fingers sliced through gray fog. The image was gone, having evaporated in tendrils of smoke. The sight, scent, and sounds of the vision were sucked out of him as though a separate entity, leaving him spent, panting, and wondering what he’d just witnessed.
He had never seen that vision before. There was a dark malevolence to it. In his previous visions, he had merely died. In this one, there had been suffering and pain—and a woman.
Death, it seemed, was fucking with him.
Head bent, Bran sought to slow his breathing while his body continued to hum with the life force that surrounded him. He still smelled the heavy perfume of a female nearing orgasm. His nostrils flared, taking it in, that heady, arousing aroma. Shuddering, he felt his skin flicker in awareness at an imaginary caress.
He was aroused, he noticed. His cock thick. Erect and straining. Pulsing with unspent desire. So this is how death would find him, the scent of a female clinging to his damp skin and her touch rippling along his flesh. He had been at someone’s mercy. But whose? A female—that was all he could be certain of.
Morgan had cursed him to be brought down by a mortal. He had always believed the mortal would be male, but the hand on his athame was definitely a woman’s.
Inhaling again, he drew the scent deep into his lungs and shuddered. He had never responded to a human female in such a way before. And yet what Sidhe female would kill her king? Morgan, of course, but he would never respond physically to her. The vision made no sense.
A twig snapped and he glanced up, snarling at the sound of someone approaching. No one dared interrupt him. Especially not here, in Nemed, his sacred circle of magick. No one would think to intrude on him, the king of the Sidhe.
“Your magick cannot keep me out, Raven.”
Except her.
“What do you want, Cailleach?” he growled between great breaths of air.
The sex.
He could still smell it on his skin, taste its dew on his lips. It had been centuries since he had felt this kind of lust. And like a slave he was weakening to it. Its heady scent, like a drug, went to his head, making him crave more of it, making him lick his lips so he could taste the fine, teasing drops that lingered on his mouth.
Swallowing hard, he looked down between his thighs. His cock was near to bursting. He wanted to stroke it, to relieve himself of the ache that was growing in his shaft. He wanted to close his eyes and envision a female submitting beneath him while he got off with his hand.
He wanted it hard, to empty in forceful thrusts right here in the open grove where everything was primal and male.
Where everything was his
.
He needed this release, but he would not have it now that
she
had arrived.
“Clothe yourself, Raven, so that I may approach you.”
“Does the sight of me not please you?” he taunted, knowing his consort, the supreme goddess of Annwyn, was a damn prude.
“I am not alone. Cover yourself.”
Bran stood to his full height, his erection slowly dying. But his skin was still alive and vibrant with the remnants of sexual energy. His sigils glowed gold and pewter, especially the ones where the goddess was afraid to look.
“There is no need to flaunt yourself, Raven,” she snapped in a crisp voice that was more hag than the beautiful woman she was. “I have no interest.”
“Nor do I.” He’d never been attracted to Cailleach. Not before he became king and coruler of Annwyn, and especially not after. “To what do I owe your visit?” he asked as he shrugged into his black cloak.
The tall, svelte woman dressed in a formfitting white gown stepped between the trunks of two ancient oaks. At her side was a figure shrouded in black, a hood concealing his face. Only his hands were visible, and when he emerged from the shadows into the moonlight, their markings were suddenly illuminated, turning into whirls of curling lines. In his arms, he carried a woman, clearly dead.
“There is a Judas amongst us.”
Cailleach’s proclamation sent a ripple through the life force. Bran perceived the vibration along his skin, and the evil that seemed to gather in the grove that surrounded them. Even the candles on the altar flared.
As Cailleach and the stranger approached the magic circle he had crafted, Bran studied the body of the woman. Her white-blond hair caressed the dark sleeve of the man’s cloak, her arms dangling at her sides. Her pale flesh, mottled in death, was marred by slashing cuts that crudely marked her arms and neck with the symbols of their world. The
Lemniscate
, or infinity knot as the mortals called it, was carved in the valley of her small breasts; the triscale, which was the symbol of Annwyn, was drawn above her navel. Streaks of dried blood the color of rust ran from flesh that no longer lived.
The lifeless form the stranger cradled so protectively in his arms was that of a woman of Bran’s kind. A Sidhe. A youngling, only a few years into womanhood.
The goddess motioned to the altar and her companion placed the youngling atop the black altar cloth. Brushing her hand over the face and chest, Cailleach blessed the lifeless body before raising her brilliant green gaze to him.
“Like the others before her, she has been anointed by the Dark Arts.”
Necromancy
. It had returned to Annwyn after nearly two hundred years of banishment. The fact could no longer be denied that someone was practicing ancient death and sex magick. But why, when the punishment for practicing the banned art was so severe?
“May I?”
Nodding, Cailleach seemed to float gracefully away from the altar, allowing him to come forward. The stranger stood his ground, however, guarding the body, refusing to allow Bran to see her. “You are her
Anam Cara
?” Bran asked. The man inclined his head.
That explained his presence here and the protection energy Bran sensed radiating from the cloaked figure. The stranger was the youngling’s Soul Friend. It was the
Anam Cara
’s responsibility to guide the soul through the passage of birth, life, and death.
“Were you with her when this happened?”
“No. It is not my purpose to change one’s path.”
“So you did not see who did this to her?”
The stranger shook his head. “I arrived just in time to keep her soul before it could be taken. It is here,” he said, showing Bran his hands. The illuminations glittered, nearly blinding him.
“You do realize she is the ninth?” Cailleach asked, drawing Bran’s gaze away from the youngling’s body and the
Anam Cara
’s glowing hands.
“But the first woman. The other eight were males.”
Cailleach met his gaze. “Is it of significance, do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
Bran walked the perimeter of the altar, taking in the woman from all angles. “May I?”
Reluctantly the
Anam Cara
nodded, stepping just far enough away to allow Bran near the altar.
The scent of burning flesh assailed him. On her mons, which had been shaved, a pentacle, point down, had been scratched onto her skin with the tip of something sharp. A knife? A sword? The jagged edges of flesh told him it might be from an athame, but the sacred knife of their rituals was never meant to shed blood. There was no greater insult than to use the sacred knife to cut flesh. And the significance of the pentacle? Inverted, it was pointing to the Shadowlands, otherwise known as hell to the mortals.
Her thighs were bruised as well, the tops bloodied and smeared with sexual secretions. Both wrists and ankles bore red excoriations. She had been tied down.
Spread.
Bending closer, Bran inhaled the heavy perfume of incense. It was a cloying, oppressive aroma that coated her body. Pressing close to the woman’s mouth, he smelled the sweetness of death, but there was something else there as well. The pungent, nutty scent of thorn-apple. Parting her lips, he found the pod of thorn-apple that had been placed inside her mouth. Bran closed his eyes, imagining this youngling tied up. The dark magick rituals performed as she writhed in pleasure, unaware that her death would follow orgasm.
“Where was she found?”
“The Cave of Cruachan.”
The passageway to Annwyn
.
At the eastern end of the stone corridor lay the glimmering gold veil that led to Annwyn. At the western end was an ancient wooden door that led into a nightclub where both mortals and immortals mingled. The corridor was long, shadowed, with alcoves perfect for hiding, or for carrying out clandestine meetings. Built deep beneath the club, only inhabitants of Annwyn knew of the cave. Unless, of course, the mortals had somehow discovered it, which posed a whole host of threats. But Bran doubted they had, for the human owner of Velvet Haven would never allow any mortal near the door that led to Annwyn. Besides, Bran himself had cast a protection spell on the door, keeping mortals away. Which meant, of course, they were dealing with something magical.
“What has you frowning, Raven?”
“Had she been inside Velvet Haven, then, if she was found in the cave?”
“Yes.”
Then this dark mage was preying on immortals who came to the club. And this female, she was not the first immortal to return to Annwyn dead.
The previous eight bodies that had been returned had been that of males, old enough to know what they were doing. There had been signs of sex and bondage, but not gruesome markings. No symbols or incense.
Bran had thought the first two deaths might be nothing more than sexual experimentation by lovers not well versed in bondage. But after the third body had turned up, Bran had known something more sinister was lurking in the shadows.
“This is someone of our world,” Cailleach announced as she came to stand beside him. “Only one who makes their home in Annwyn could know of these symbols.”
Bran glanced once more at the woman’s body. “That is clear, but it’s where they are placed on her body that puzzles me. And there is this symbol here,” he said, pointing to her neck, above the red excoriations on her throat. “This is not of our world.”
“Ancient Druid,” Cailleach suggested. “Or perhaps an archaic symbol used in Black Magick?”
“No. It’s Angelic.”
He thought he heard Cailleach’s breath catch.
Interesting.
As he walked around the body once more, Bran studied not only the youngling, but the goddess as well. She was discomposed, though she tried admirably to hide it. Nothing unnerved Cailleach, but something about this particular situation did. Which, of course, made him even more determined to discover what the black magician wanted of them. For that was the purpose of the markings on the youngling’s body. The mage had something to say.
“The third eye has been etched onto her forehead.” Bran ran his fingers carefully over the mottled flesh. “That is a warning we are being watched.”
“But by whom?” Cailleach murmured. There was true fear in her voice. He’d never known the goddess to fear anything—or anyone.
There were a few seconds of silence before the goddess addressed the
Anam Cara
. “You may leave us. Carry her soul with you, for I fear that the ones who have done this to her seek her soul for use in black magick.”