Redeemed: Bitter Harvest Book Five Read online

  Redeemed

  Bitter Harvest Book Five

  Ann Gimpel

  Edited by

  Kate Richards

  Contents

  Redeemed

  Book Description: Redeemed

  1. Magic Under Fire

  2. Someone Wants Us Dead

  3. Meet Stealth with Stealth

  4. Traps Snapping Shut

  5. Unfamiliar Magic

  6. A Whole Lot of Unknowns

  7. Hatching Plans

  8. Unseen Threats

  9. Give Me Blood

  10. Guardian

  11. A Time for Truth

  12. Too Many Feelings

  13. Strategies

  14. The Fair Folk

  15. Mating Call

  16. I Walk in Front

  17. Hubris

  18. Broken Bonds?

  19. Declarations

  20. Battle Cry

  21. Old Scores Settled

  22. Unexpected Gifts

  About the Author

  Book Description: Tarnished Legacy

  Tarnished Legacy, Prologue

  Tarnished Legacy, Chapter One

  Redeemed

  Bitter Harvest, Book Five

  Dystopian Urban Fantasy

  By

  Ann Gimpel

  Copyright Page

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © February 2018, Ann Gimpel

  Cover Art Copyright © September 2017, Fiona Jayde

  Edited by Kate Richards

  Copy edits by Diane Eagle Kataoka

  Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or people living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, e-mail, or web posting without written permission from the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Book Description: Redeemed

  Alpha for the few remaining Sea Shifters, Leif’s been playing fast and loose with death for years. Plagued by a poisoned ocean, treacherous sea gods, illness, and bad bargains, he’s learned to roll with the punches. Setting ancient antagonism aside, he joined a small group of land Shifters, pledging both his help and that of his pod.

  Moira’s a vulture Shifter who was trapped in Ushuaia for a decade. Life on Arkady, a small polar cruise ship, has its challenges, but at least she’s free. The worst parts about her stint in Ushuaia were sneaking around hiding from Vampires and not having enough magic to shift, courtesy of short rations and toxic air.

  Leif is drawn to Moira, but Sea Shifters don’t mate with their land cousins—ever. Moira works overtime to catch Leif’s attention. He’s damned attractive, but he spends most of his time as a dolphin. Besides, they have their hands more than full. Not only is there no time for love, there’s barely time to breathe as they wend their way through a volatile obstacle field scattered with demons, hostile gods, and ancient horrors bent on their destruction.

  1

  Magic Under Fire

  Leif swam lazily next to Arkady with his dolphin pod spread around him. He could have moved twice as fast as the ship, and then some, but he couldn’t keep up that pace all day, every day. Four of five whales paddled nearby. They’d rendezvous with the fifth when they were closer to the Siberian Arctic. Two-and-a-half days had passed since Ketha’s transformation back to her human body, and they’d just crossed the equator. Normally temperate, the central Pacific was far colder than he’d expected, but it went along with the weather as a whole being chilly and unsettled. Nothing like Antarctica or New Zealand, but different enough for him to suspect Earth would never fully recover from the Cataclysm’s onslaught.

  Times like these, though, when he cut cleanly through water that was clear of toxins the Cataclysm had pumped out for ten years, the simple joy of movement filled him with hope.

  And then reality intruded.

  They were so few. Fourteen sea Shifters. Fifteen land Shifters. Nine humans. An unknown number of the fair folk had promised their aid, but who knew how long their memories were? Poseidon, god of the seas, had ordered him and his sea Shifters to halt their northward journey. Leif defied him, a decision cutting them off from a potential source of aid. He slapped the water with his tail. In his secret places he was nearly certain his liege had switched sides, but he had no proof. Only instincts honed over his five-hundred-year lifespan.

  Leif had stopped trusting Poseidon long before his surprising edict to turn the ship around. The sea god, along with his consort, Amphitrite, had stood by and done nothing while nearly all the sea Shifters died, victims of poison spread by the Cataclysm. Nothing worse than the song of a dying whale. Multiply it by a thousand or more, and his soul was permanently riddled by sorrow.

  Perhaps whale dirges were the lynchpin that had been Poseidon’s undoing. If he’d opened his magic to darkness, evil may have blotted out the haunting laments.

  Leif had been nearly dead himself when the Shifters aboard Arkady reached out to him and his pod. The land Shifters had no idea how desperate his plight was, but once they found out, two veterinarians had worked like hell to cure the parasitic infestations choking the life out of him and his people.

  Leif exhaled in a shower of salty water. He felt better than he had in a very long time. The crippling pain that used to soak up all his attention was gone, and he felt like cavorting in the surf. If he’d been in his human body, he would have shaken his head. Being in the water at all was an indulgence, but he’d herded his group into the sea to take a break from endless battle planning going on throughout the ship.

  They were at least two weeks away from Wrangel Island, their objective in the Arctic, but he agreed with Viktor, Arkady’s captain and a raven Shifter, that they needed to leverage every advantage they could.

  “What do you think will happen next?” Lewis, another dolphin Shifter, swam near enough to talk. Their vocal chords were similar enough to human, they didn’t require telepathy to communicate.

  “After we reach the Arctic?” Leif focused one laterally placed eye on the other dolphin.

  Lewis sputtered around a mouthful of briny foam. “You actually believe whoever’s masterminding this isn’t going to strike long before we get that far?”

  Leif’s small, artificial window of peace frittered to nothing. “If the ship’s journey to date is any indication, I’m surprised we haven’t run into some other atrocity already. What’s it been? Nearly three days since we left the Solomons. Three days of harmony, tranquility, goodwill—”

  Lewis batted him with a flipper. “Spare me your cynicism.” He shook himself, and water flew everywhere. “I’m apprehensive. I like to have backup plans.”

  “Rather difficult to finesse when we have no idea what will crawl out of the ether next,” Leif countered. “I don’t expect any more Kelpies, but beyond that, the field is wide open. For all we know, the Cataclysm spawned some new breed of monster we have yet to meet.”

  “Aren’t you Mr. Cheerful?”

  “You brought this up,” Leif countered. “You are right about one thing, though. Playtime is over. Spread the word, and I’ll see everyone back on the ship.”

  “If I spend too much more time in my human body, my hide will shrivel,” Lewis groused.

  Leif didn’t answer. Hundreds of years ago, sea Shifters and their land kin had played by the same rules. Land Shifters always had an easier time hiding their dual natures, though. Far simpler to conceal themselves in a forest, turn into a wolf—or a coyote or a b
ird—and join a local pack than it was to swim into the ocean and shift in plain sight of boats and fishermen. The rise of the Church meant his kind faced persecution. Torture. Hangings. Burnings. So they’d taken to the sea for greater and greater chunks of time.

  When the Cataclysm hit, many hadn’t shifted to their human forms in decades. And then there’d been their ill-conceived bargain with Witches to augment their magic in exchange for a stud service. Who’d have guessed it would turn into a death sentence for the Shifter unlucky enough to be picked as a sperm donor?

  “I thought you said playtime was over.” Lewis prodded him with a flipper.

  “It is. I got lost thinking about how we ended up like we did.”

  “Not much value in that. It’s a bloody miracle any of us survived.” Magic turned the air around him shimmery and iridescent.

  Leif summoned his own power and shifted right along with the other dolphin. They ended up dripping water on Arkady’s broad quarterdeck. Viktor kept the surface clean enough to eat from, but he’d never complained about their sloppy transition from sea to ship. The damp marine air glowed and pulsed as the other dolphins and four whales shucked their oceangoing bodies.

  All the dolphins had names beginning with L for convenience. Their dolphin names would have been impossible for humans to pronounce. At the time Leif proposed that small concession—since they had a better chance passing for human if they didn’t lapse into sea speech—the whales had told him to stuff it. A corner of his mouth twitched. That little episode occurred at least a century before the Cataclysm. He’d always thought it strange none of the whales challenged him for the alpha position, but none ever had.

  “We were hoping for a few more hours in the water.” One of the whales pushed past a pair of dolphins and planted himself in front of Leif. He stood at least six inches taller and was impossibly broad. Fair hair was already beginning to curl as water dribbled down his body.

  “Maybe we can catch some surf time tomorrow.” Leif latched onto the whale’s dark-eyed gaze, staring him down.

  The whale twisted water out of his thick locks. “This has the stink of a meeting. Where and when?”

  “You’re assuming the one taking place round the clock on the bridge ended,” Lynda broke in. Another dolphin shifter, black hair eddied around her, framing high cheekbones and violet eyes.

  “The bridge is as good a guess as any location,” Leif concurred. “Say half an hour?”

  The whoosh of wings caught the edges of his sensitive hearing. He looked up in time to see a good-sized, black vulture swoop from one of the upper decks. It dive-bombed their group, cawing like a mad thing.

  Lynda snorted laughter. “She gets to play. We should do more of that. It’s good for us.”

  The vulture made another pass, flying low and veering off scant moments before impact. Leif made a grab for her, but she tossed her tail as she made a ninety-degree turn. “Moira!” he called.

  “Who else?” she countered in telepathy. Unlike him, her vocal chords weren’t conducive to speech in shifted form.

  Ketha bustled out one of Arkady’s many doors and onto the generous expanse that took up a portion of Deck Three. Brown hair shot with red and gold hung loose to her waist, and she shielded golden eyes—a throwback to her wolf bondmate—with one hand.

  “Goddammit, Moira! Get down here.”

  Still shrieking with delight, the vulture obligingly swerved hard left and headed straight for Ketha, landing on her shoulder and digging her talons in for balance.

  “Ouch!” Ketha thumped the flat of her hand across the bird’s talons, but Moira didn’t uncurl so much as one of them.

  Sensing a story lay behind Moira’s appearance, Leif aimed his words at Ketha. “What happened?”

  “We were deep in tarot spreads, or the other women were. I was working with my glass trying to get it to give me something other than the past.”

  “The tarot was contradictory,” Moira said, clacking her beak a time or two for emphasis.

  Ketha angled her head and eyed the vulture. “Patience never was your strong suit.”

  “Never claimed it was.” Another beak clack.

  “Anyway,” Ketha went on. “One minute, Moira was at a table with Tessa and Zoe. The next, she jumped to her feet and bolted from the room. Right after that, I heard her yapping in vulturese, so I’m betting her clothes are in a heap on the floor somewhere.”

  “When what you’re doing isn’t working,” the vulture inserted in a sing-songy tone, “do something different. Sitting on my ass for another three hours begging the cards to cooperate isn’t my style.”

  Leif smothered the smile that hovered in the background. He liked Moira. She was outspoken and gutsy. Beyond that, her acres of black hair and liquid dark eyes were lovely, as was her delicately boned face sprinkled with a dusting of freckles. Her lush lips were always rosy, and she had a way of licking them that made him want to replace her tongue with his own. She stood medium height, and he’d spent surreptitious moments taking in the curves of her breasts, hips, and ass. She had a fine ass, high and round and made for a man’s hands to grab.

  His cock began to swell, and he cut off his line of thought fast before his arousal became noticeable. He angled a cascade of his long, thick hair to provide better cover for his nether regions, but no amount of hair could conceal a full-blown erection if his unruly appendage got totally out of hand.

  Ketha drew her mouth into a frustrated line and made another effort to displace Moira’s talons, with no success. “How about making dinner? Is that more up your alley? It would free Aura and Zoe to spend more time with the cards.”

  “Sure. I’ll lose myself in the galley. Probably for the best. Maybe the cards decided to cooperate after my negative energy left.” Still cawing, the bird launched hard off Ketha’s shoulder.

  She stifled a yelp and rubbed the place the bird had been. “How can a bunch of feathers and hollow bones weigh so much?”

  “I heard that!” Moira punctuated her words with a hearty squawk.

  One of the whales approached Ketha and inclined his head. “I am not as skilled at scrying as the whale waiting for us in northern waters, but what happened when you tried to coax a vision out of your mirror?”

  Ketha drew her brows together and exhaled raggedly. “It’s different than before the wickedness that yanked me and the whale Shifter out of Arkady. Then I ran up against a blank wall. This time, when I instructed the mirror to show me the future, something that’s already happened popped up.”

  “Not good,” the whale muttered. “It’s a time inversion.”

  Alarms tolled in Leif’s mind, and he switched to his third eye, the one allowing him to view the world from a psychic perspective. Glowing bisecting lines formed. Some vertical. Some horizontal. Ley lines, they carried the world’s magic, concentrating it in key locations. He stared at them, assessing their integrity, and bit back a startled exclamation.

  “What?” Several voices, including Ketha’s, asked almost in unison.

  He held up both hands, fingers spread in front of him. “Do. Not. Panic.” Leveling his gaze at everyone, he repeated, “Do. Not. Panic,” knowing the injunction was aimed at himself as much as anyone.

  Lynda rolled her eyes and made come-along motions with one hand. “Fine, oh fearless alpha. What did you find?”

  He shuffled through palatable explanations but couldn’t come up with anything, so he stood straighter and muttered, “Magic is weaker than it was last time I looked at the ley lines.”

  “How much weaker?” Ketha demanded, followed by, “Never mind. I’ll look myself.”

  “I don’t know how much weaker,” Leif answered, but she’d shut her earth eyes and was deep into her own assessment. “These things aren’t easy to quantify. It’s a sure bet, though, that if our magic isn’t as effective, neither is theirs.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” one of the whales said

  “I agree,” Lewis broke in. “I never believe
d the dark ones sucked power from the same trough as us.”

  “You make us sound like pigs,” Leif protested.

  Lewis shrugged. “Sorry if my analogy offended you. It’s not the point, though. If something has laid siege to our power, you can bet an ugly surprise is right around the corner.”

  Ketha opened worried-looking eyes. “You won’t remember Rowana. She died before we met up with you, but she discovered small chewed places at the convergence of some of the lines. It looks to me like whatever started that destruction is still working on it, and it’s finally had an effect on how much magic is available for us to tap into.”

  “Probably why the tarot wasn’t cooperating. Or your scrying,” Leif said.

  “Exactly what I’m thinking. Crap. We do not need anything extra to stumble over. I’m going back upstairs. I’ll tell the women to conserve their efforts. Only one tarot spread at a time. While they’re working on that, I won’t do anything with my glass.”

  Leif nodded and glanced around the grim-faced group. “A staged approach may help. If there’s only so much magic, rationing it so it only has to do one thing at a time should maximize its utility.”

  Ketha ran across the deck, vanishing inside the ship.

  “Turns out us coming out of the water when we did was prophetic,” a whale muttered.

  “Yeah. I wish I could disagree, but it rings true for me,” Lynda said, adding, “I’m headed for the clothes locker. See all of you upstairs.”