“You wouldn’t recognize them now, not even with your excellent Huntress vision,” Bowyn said sarcastically.
“You killed them!” she said.
“We did. It was the beginning of your mother’s vengeance.”
“This has to be stopped before the world is awash in blood,” Brighid said.
“Let it be awash!” Gorman shouted. “While you were chatting with your uncaring Goddess, Bregon was going about your mother’s business. He’s already been to Guardian Castle, and should return to the plains any day with news of his bloody success. The wheels are spinning past the point of no return, and it is impossible for you to stop them.”
Brighid’s eyes went cold. “Don’t ever tell me what’s impossible, you pathetic sycophant. What would you know of the impossible? All you’ve done your whole life is follow a centaur who is little more than a petulant colt and lust after a female who knew more of hatred and manipulation than love. I pity you, Gorman.”
“You pity me!” he screamed, blowing spittle in her face. “We’ll see very shortly who’s to be pitied.”
Thunder roared ominously and lightning flared outside, brightening the tent with a surreal, fitful light. Breathing hard Gorman sidled closer to her and fisted his hand in her hair, jerking her head back painfully.
“Bregon had more to report from the Otherworld than the news that you’d finally managed to taste of the Chalice.” With a single, violent movement, he ripped the vest from her chest, exposing her breasts. “He also said something we found very shocking. He told us that you had mated with a man. Could that really be truth?” With his other hand he lifted her breast so that he could easily bend his head over it. When his tongue flicked out to lick her nipple, she surged so violently away from him that her world began to blacken as the rope cut off her air supply.
Then two other sets of hands pressed against the other side of her body as Bowyn and Mannis held her upright so that the rope loosened and her breath returned in panting gasps. In a gray haze it seemed that the eyes of the three centaurs burned with an unnatural light. Their faces were flushed and their breathing had deepened. Where their hot hands touched her she could feel their lust burning into her.
“Answer him,” Bowyn said, his voice gruff and breathy. “Did you mate with a man?”
“I did,” she ground between her teeth, fighting off panic. “Cuchulainn MacCallan is my husband and lifemate, and when I lead the Dhianna Herd I will do so with him at my side.”
“That will never happen!” Gorman shrieked.
“Perhaps she has been too long without a centaur lover, and she has forgotten true passion,” Bowyn rasped between ever-thickening breaths. His hand closed over her other breast and as he squeezed and prodded the nipple he bit into her shoulder so hard that his teeth drew blood.
Gorman’s low chuckle sounded near her ear as his tongue flicked up and down her neck. “Perhaps you are right, Bowyn.”
She could feel Mannis moving behind her, his hands and teeth taking painful turns at kneading and then biting her haunches. Frantically her eyes searched the tent for Hagan, but the centaur had disappeared into the storm-filled night.
“If you do this thing I swear by the Goddess Epona that I will not rest until each of you are dead,” Brighid hissed. She struggled against the blackness that kept narrowing her vision by concentrating on the warmth that had begun to spread from the turquoise stone that hung between her naked breasts.
“And how will you fulfill that oath?” Gorman whispered, his hot breath coming fast and heavy against her skin as he nipped and licked the mound of her breast. “Will your puny man mate track us down and scare us to our deaths with his overwhelming strength?”
“He won’t have to. He’s going to kill you tonight where you stand,” Cuchulainn said from the opening of the tent.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The deadly sound of Cuchulainn’s sword being drawn free of its sheath was echoed by a wolf’s low, menacing growl. When the warrior moved Fand struck. Bowyn was the first to go down, screaming as the wolf lunged under Brighid’s body to get to his rear legs. With one powerful tear of Fand’s teeth, Bowyn was hamstringed and floundering in his own blood on the grassy ground.
Cuchulainn didn’t move like a man. He moved like a malevolent spirit-silent, all-knowing, deadly. With speed that caused his sword to become a silver-white blur he whirled and lunged past the fallen Bowyn, slicing his throat in a neat, scarlet arch. The centaur’s last breath escaped his open mouth in a gurgling gasp.
The warrior closed on Mannis without making a sound. The centaur was scrambling back from Brighid’s haunches, his body still engorged with his obscene lust, when Cuchulainn struck. He skewered him in the chest, pulled his sword free and whirled past him, dragging the blade along his equine belly and disemboweling him.
“I won’t be so easy to kill,” Gorman said, hefting the long sword he’d retrieved while the man had been kept busy with Gorman’s comrades.
Cuchulainn’s only response was to move relentlessly toward the centaur. He didn’t speak and he didn’t break his stride. With speed that had been honed like the edge of a blade, he made the centaur look old and clumsy in comparison. Cuchulainn ducked smoothly under Gorman’s sword, but instead of going for a killing blow, he sliced at the centaur’s front hock.
Gorman hissed in pain and stumbled back-and right into the wolf’s path. Fand wasn’t as silent a warrior, but she was just as deadly. Thunder blanketed Gorman’s scream and, in turn, lightning illuminated the torn flesh that dangled from his rear hamstring. He collapsed and Cuchulainn closed on him.
“No!” Brighid yelled.
Cuchulainn’s body jerked to a halt. The face he turned to his wife was one she had only seen once before, when they had fought side by side against Fallon and the misguided Fomorians who tried to protect her. But his blood-spattered warrior’s mask did not frighten or repulse her. She knew her own visage was a reflection of the same cold intensity.
“Cut me free,” she said.
“Fand! Watch him,” Cuchulainn ordered. The wolf slunk over to stand near the centaur’s bleeding hindquarters, fangs bared.
Cuchulainn sheathed his sword and pulled free the dagger from his belt. With swift, sure movements he cut the ropes from his wife’s body.
Without asking, Brighid pulled his sword free, and then, bare-chested and holding the bloody blade before her she approached Gorman.
He looked up at her, eyes glazed with pain and fear.
“Don’t kill me! I’ll do anything!” he pleaded.
“Don’t speak to me,” she ground between her teeth. Without looking at the warrior who was standing beside her she said. “Cuchulainn, Epona gave you the gift of seeing the soul. What do you see within this centaur’s soul?”
She heard his sharp intake of breath and knew that this was the first moment he had used the gift newly given to him by the Goddess.
“I see rot and darkness.”
With no hesitation, Brighid plunged her husband’s sword into the centaur’s heart. In almost the same motion, she jerked it free and handed it back to Cuchulainn.
“I have to get out of here,” she said.
Cuchulainn nodded tightly. Before he followed her through the open tent flap he stopped to pick up her torn vest, and the Huntress’s bow and quiver of arrows that had been thrown into one of the tent’s corners.
“Fand! Come,” he said.
The warrior and wolf walked out into the night to find that Brighid had stumbled several steps from the tent. She had dropped to her knees and was being violently sick. Fand lay close by, whining worriedly. Cuchulainn stroked her back, held her hair, and murmured wordless sounds of comfort, all of which were drowned out by a deafening crack of thunder, followed by a blinding blaze of lightning. Brighid’s head jerked up.