Free A Taste for Blood (The Godhunter, Book 6) by Amy Sumida Page A

are we?”
    “ Human?” His sword fell to his side, thumping lightly on the grass, his jaw unhinging slightly.
    Then he seemed to recover, sheathing his sword before stepping forward and looking me over from all angles. I mean all angles, he stalked around me in a circle, then got down on one knee and peered at me some more. He even sniffed my boots. He finally stood, a look of disbelief spreading over his vibrant features, and just kind of blinked at me for awhile.
    “You are human.” He said some more things in that language I didn't know, they had the distinct tone of curse words. You can always tell when someone is swearing, no matter the language. Then he nodded decisively and grabbed my hand. “You will come with me.”
    “ Whoa,” I held up my free hand, “you haven't answered me. What are you and where am I?”
    “ I am Danal of the House of Air, knight of Faerie, and you are in the Forgetful Forest, of  Tir Nan Og, the Faerie Realm.” He pulled me against his chest, wrapping an arm securely about my waist before jumping into the air and spreading his wings. “The High King and Queen will want to see you.”
    “ Look,” I shouted over my pounding heart, as I tried to not do any looking myself, mainly in the direction of the ground, “I'm not even sure how I got here but I just want to be on my way. I've got people who will be missing me. So maybe I should just go back to where you found me and try to trace the Aether again.”
    “ You rode the Aether here?” The strangely colored eyes swiveled down to mine. “What kind of human rides the currents of thought? That is a road for fey or gods alone.”
    “ I'm a goddess, technically.”
    “ What is technically ?”
    “ Ah,” right, if he was fey, and it was hard to deny that he was talking pure truth, he wouldn't know any modern terms. I bit my lip as thoughts whizzed through my brain. How did I land in Faerie? What was I going to do to get home? What was it Thor had told me? Something about the fey withdrawing a long time ago and how no one wanted them back. Leave it to me to find them.
    “ Yes?” Danal prompted.
    “ Oh, sorry,” I gave an uneasy laugh. “I was born human and then made a goddess.”
    “ How so?”
    “ I drank something,” I shrugged as much as one could while being carried through the air by a faerie.
    “ Ah, of course,” he nodded like it had made perfect sense. “What is your name and talent?”
    “ Talent?”
    “ Your magic?”
    “ Oh, right,” I laughed. “My name is Vervain and I'm a goddess of  love, lust, victory, war, and lions.”
    “ Vervain? A very powerful name for a human or was this granted to you upon your ascension to goddesshood?”
    “ No, it's mine,” I smiled, happy to find someone who understood my name. “I was a witch before I was a goddess.”
    “ Ah, a wise woman,” he nodded again, as if I had impressed him. “And here we are.”
    I looked over my shoulder, expecting some Tolkein-esque, ethereal, elven castle, all white spires and stuff. It was a castle all right but that's where the similarity ended. We were still in the forest and the castle was made of the forest, it was a castle of trees. Not lumber, trees, and I'm not talking about some kind of Ewok village, with rope bridges in the branches. The trees were the castle, shaped into it. There were eight of them total, all grown together, widening into walls at their bases while splitting into towers at their tops. Seven formed a circle around the largest tree, which sat at the center and whose top formed into three separate towers adorned with scores of branches, all lush with leaves.
    There were numerous windows in the trunks and even branches, through which light shone, giving it the appearance of a holiday monstrosity, and from the tops of several leafy towers, banners poked out even higher, waving in the breeze. We started descending toward an opening in one of the walls, some kind of gate with its doors flung wide, and I began