The Last Guardian of Tara (The Guardians of Tara Book 5) Read online

  “This really doesn’t bode well for us,” Hanna mumbled back.

  Enlil tilted his head at Hanna and said, “So you’re the young goddess everyone thinks will safeguard the earth? You hardly seem capable of defending yourself, let alone an entire planet.”

  “Fortunately,” Hanna retorted, “it’s only my responsibility to defend people from assholes like you.” She thought about his accusation then added, “How do you even know about me anyway?”

  “Do you forget that your traitor has still been moving between realms this entire time?” Enlil answered.

  “Oh,” Hanna said. “Apparently.”

  “And you,” Enlil said to Prometheus, “haven’t changed at all. Your dedication to humans nearly killed you once… I suppose it’s only fitting I finish the job now.”

  “Yep,” Hanna decided. “This bastard needs to die.”

  Enlil laughed and spread his arms wide, inviting her to try to kill him. “Go ahead, little girl.”

  “Now I know why your father’s always wanting to smite people,” Prometheus whispered.

  Hanna nodded and pointed out, “And he actually has smote this particular asshole’s entire family. He just keeps coming back.”

  Enlil seethed at the mention of his dead sons, and the winds came alive around them. The wisps of gray smoke still rising on the horizon transformed into ashy wolves that leapt across the sky as they raced toward the Guardians who were now weaponless.

  The other Sumerians raised their swords and spears, but Hanna erected the barrier between them, hoping to buy herself enough time to come up with a solution that wouldn’t result in her death or Prometheus’s. But as spears hit her invisible wall and fell to the ground, she felt just as lost as before, only now, she’d angered the gods who’d thought she’d be easy to kill.

  Prometheus grabbed her hand and cried, “We have to destroy this realm. If it kills us… at least we’ve died protecting Earth, which is why we’re here, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but I kinda thought my reign would last longer than one day.”

  A breathy laugh answered her as those smoky wolves leapt from the sky, their jaws yawning open, and somehow, impossibly, their fangs appeared both sharp and misty, deadly and corporeal yet ethereal.

  “And,” she added, “we have to get those mortals out of here first. We can’t kill them, Prometheus.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “We haven’t been able to free them because they’re imprisoned by some sort of enchantment. We’ll have to break it first.”

  “How? We’re trapped inside a dome of energy with a dozen gods surrounding us who want us dead. And we’re about to get attacked by huge smoke wolves.”

  “Šerida,” he breathed. “We have to summon her… a Sumerian goddess in her own realm will be powerful enough to break those bonds.”

  “Great,” Hanna groaned. “We’re going to summon a goddess we’ve never met and drag her into a war she never asked to participate in.”

  “Something like that,” Prometheus agreed then quickly added, “For what it’s worth, I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never really felt alive until I met you. And despite what’s about to happen, knowing you has made every moment worth it.”

  She had at least a hundred different responses, but they were out of time. Enlil’s wolves had reached them, and their claws scratched at the shield, sending sparks of broken energy cascading from the dome.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “They’re going to break through.”

  “I think I have to ask,” he said. “Even if we’re about to get mauled by smoke-wolves.”

  “Enlil,” Hanna hurriedly decided.

  “Makes sense,” Prometheus said.

  The pretty goddess with dark hair and bronze skin appeared beside them, startling Hanna, but Šerida didn’t give her time to scold Prometheus for not giving her more warning. The Sumerian goddess squinted toward Enlil and hissed, “What the hell am I doing here?”

  Hanna opened her mouth to answer her, but Enlil interrupted by shouting, “What the hell is she doing here?”

  “I helped Ukko because he assured me you were going to kill him,” Šerida said.

  “We are,” Hanna promised. “But those humans here… we have to send them home first. And we need your help to break whatever enchantment is binding them to this world.”

  Šerida placed her hands on her hips and continued to glare at Enlil, even though she addressed Hanna. “Prisoners. He brought mortal prisoners to this world.” She lifted her chin in the air and tossed her sleek black hair over a shoulder as she shouted at her old adversary. “Is there nothing you won’t stoop to?”

  Enlil glanced at a god next to him and yelled a command in Sumerian. Prometheus gasped and beseeched the goddess he’d summoned. “You have to hurry. Please!”

  “Why?” Hanna cried.

  “He just ordered the gods to kill all of the prisoners,” he replied, his voice panicked and desperate.

  Hanna suddenly felt panicked and desperate and completely and utterly helpless.

  Šerida murmured what sounded like some sort of spell and grabbed both Guardians, pulling them farther from the shield’s barrier. “Can you make this larger?” she asked.

  “I can try,” Hanna said. “How much room do you need?”

  “Enough for all of the humans. I can get them this far, but I can’t send them back to Earth.”

  “Okay,” Hanna whispered, closing her eyes to concentrate on expanding the shield around them. She sensed their arrival before she could hear their terrified appeals for help, and as she opened her eyes, she saw that Enlil hadn’t only abducted men and women but children as well. Šerida’s attention was fixed on one small child in particular whose arms clung tightly to his mother’s neck. The Sumerian goddess’s eyes raged with a fire as deadly and fierce as any Hanna and her father had created, and she finally turned her furious gaze back to Enlil.

  “A child,” she screamed. “You enslaved a child.”

  “I’ve got them,” Hanna announced. “I can send them all back to the Guardians waiting outside the Highest Heaven.”

  Prometheus’s emerald green eyes dragged across the faces of the humans still begging for someone to help them, and he grabbed her hand. “Those wolves are destroying this shield. We have to try to transport them all at once, and we have to do it now.”

  Hanna closed her eyes again and latched onto each spirit, sending them beyond the veil that separated Earth from the Hidden Heaven. When she opened her eyes, Prometheus was watching her closely, affectionately. “Can you help me destroy this realm now?”

  “Okay,” Hanna breathed. She briefly pictured her parents and friends sitting around their table in Murias, a memory of them laughing about something, but she could no longer recall what had been so funny. She could, however, easily remember the smell of frying shrimp, the taste of Dionysus’s wine, and the feel of Badb’s hand over hers as she leaned closer to whisper about her secret plans to take her to New Orleans for her twenty-first birthday.

  It had been one of the happiest days of her short life, surrounded by the people she loved most, and even then, she’d wished for nothing more than a lifetime of days like those.

  Everyone had so much faith in her, so much hope that she would somehow change the worlds of both gods and men, that she’d rewrite the Games of the Gods forever.

  And while she and Prometheus might safeguard them from this one threat, she would ultimately fail them all, because in the end, she wouldn’t usher in the new relationship between gods and humans, and she wouldn’t be there to defend Earth from gods like Enlil who’d been all too willing to use mortals as pawns in his own game.

  Prometheus gently squeezed her hand, and Hanna took a deep breath before quickly kissing him goodbye. Enlil’s wolves continued to scratch and claw at the shield, and the god himself stood nearby, his arms folded triumphantly over his chest.

  “Are you ready?” Prometheus asked.

  Hanna took one last deep breat
h and nodded. “Let’s bring his world down. He’ll never hurt anyone again.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The torment of the tangled webs of energy that marked the passage through the Highest Heaven burned into her skin, searing deep into her soul like her body had burst into flames. The vortex blinded her, and she couldn’t tell if she was hurtling through it or falling or stuck forever in its torturous clutches. And she couldn’t see Prometheus.

  Another wave of energy slammed into her and pushed her so forcefully that it took her breath away. But as she struggled against it, she realized she was actually falling, and her body slammed into the hard, hot ground of Baghdad. Voices surrounded her as she moaned and tried to sit up, but two familiar hands, the most familiar in any world, rested on her face and shoulder and the most comforting voice she’d ever heard soothingly told her to lie still.

  Her mother cradled her head in her lap, and the pain that had spread throughout her entire body melted, dissolving into some realm that no longer existed. Hanna opened her eyes, and Selena’s blue eyes stared back down at her, so worried and scared yet filled with so much pride and love.

  Hanna swallowed before she could speak, and when she did, her voice was just a raspy whisper. “Prometheus?”

  Selena glanced back toward the green and blue hurricane that marked the Highest Heaven and slowly shook her head. “Only you’ve come through, my darling.”

  “No,” Hanna groaned.

  She sat up and groaned again when the vortices seemed even angrier and deadlier than before. Whatever they’d done to destroy the Hidden Heaven had sealed those worlds from Earth forever.

  Cameron stood in front of it, his hands planted firmly on his hips, and his eyes fixed on the forbidden entry. With their thoughts connected, Selena confirmed what Hanna already feared when her mother cried out for him, pleading him not to leave. But he planned to look for their missing friend.

  “Dad,” Hanna begged weakly. She couldn’t lose him. As much as her heart knew Prometheus would always own it, losing her father was a pain she couldn’t survive.

  Cameron inhaled slowly, deeply, and stepped back. “Don’t worry, Hanna. I’d never leave you and your mother.”

  “Cameron, don’t!” Selena cried.

  He only replied, “I love you.”

  “Daddy!”

  But Cameron jumped into the remnants of the Highest Heaven and was swept away by their violent intensity. Hanna scrambled to her feet, followed closely by her mother as they stood helplessly in front of the destructive force that had enveloped a god who was supposed to be indestructible.

  Selena clutched at her hair and screamed, “Badb! Help!”

  But Badb’s wide gray eyes blinked back at her, uncomprehending and vacant. Thor paced frantically, alternating between tugging on his red beard and running his fingers through his hair, his lips moving as if he were speaking but no sound ever passed through them. The silly god who had won everyone’s hearts despite their bantering and teasing couldn’t die. Fate had asked so much of him, and he’d delivered every demand. Didn’t she owe him a longer life, a happier and safer life with no battles or monsters or enemies… just his family and friends and shrimp po-boys and millennia with the only goddess he’d ever loved?

  Hanna fell to her knees, partly in prayer and partly because her legs refused to hold her upright. Her mother fell beside her, lacing her fingers around her arm, gripping so tightly that her bicep protested from the pinching pain. But Hanna didn’t ask her mother to let go. Selena’s soul was inextricably linked to Cameron’s, and without him, she would be a lost goddess, wandering the Otherworld with half of herself permanently missing.

  The winds of the storm picked up, knocking both Hanna and Selena over, and Thor stopped his frantic pacing to pull them to safety. Selena protested, wanting to be near the world that had taken her husband, but Badb knelt beside her and held her as they shielded their eyes from the ferocious storm.

  Hanna buried her face in her hands, and she heard the impact but couldn’t lower her arms, because the winds were blowing in every direction now, sending sharp pellets of hail that stung her skin.

  “Ow,” Cameron groaned.

  Despite the pain, Hanna dropped her hands and gasped.

  Her father was alive… and he’d brought back the Titan that Fate had decided long ago she would spend the rest of her life with.

  Selena was already crawling to his side, and Thor, despite the wrathful winds trying to knock him over, rushed to his best friend and dragged him away from the Highest Heaven. Selena threw her arms around her husband, crying against his neck, but even as she sobbed in relief, she healed his body. Badb helped the sore and battered Prometheus away from the green and blue death-spirals, and coaxed Selena away from Cameron so she could help the Titan.

  Hanna inhaled slowly, so emotionally drained from the longest day of her life, and more than a little astonished that they’d all miraculously survived. As Prometheus slowly opened his eyes and smiled at the goddess who was healing him, Hanna sat next to him and took his hand.

  “I didn’t have a chance to tell you,” she said quietly. “Before… in the Hidden Heaven, when you told me what meeting me had meant to you.”

  Prometheus turned his smile toward her and said, “You didn’t need to. I already know.”

  Hanna shook her head. “I need you, Prometheus. You’re what’s going to make my reign on Earth not only bearable but beautiful.”

  “But I already knew that, Hanna,” he said. “It’s Fate’s way of thanking us for what we’ll do. And there’s no better gift she could have given us.”

  Hanna grabbed handfuls of clothes from her closet and tossed them into a box, which her mother immediately dug out so she could fold them neatly before repacking them. “Maybe next year,” Selena teased, “we could just go to Dublin for your birthday. You know… see the homeland and all that.”

  Hanna nodded and pulled more clothes from her closet. “Seriously, if all of my birthdays end up like this past one, I’m going to stop aging.”

  “You kind of already have,” Cameron pointed out.

  “Conceded,” she agreed.

  “Besides,” Cameron said. “We’re never going to stop celebrating your birthday. It was the happiest day of our lives.”

  Hanna smiled at him and asked, “Are you sure we don’t need to shut off Tartarus?”

  Cameron shook his head. “It would kill him, and I don’t want to kill anyone unless we have no choice. We’re negotiating with him to put a time limit on Veles’s imprisonment. We’ll work something out, because he knows his choices are to be reasonable about what he can do to punish gods or face his own death.”

  “We’re changing so much so quickly,” Hanna sighed. “Some gods are going to resent us for this. What if we end up with more enemies than friends?”

  Cameron shrugged and told her, “Then we’ll do what we always do: fight them, defeat them, and start all over.”

  Hanna snorted and tossed another pile of clothes into the box, which made her mom scowl at her and fish those out as well.

  “And are you sure you want to live in Portland?” Cameron asked. “I always thought you’d move into some castle in Ireland or something.”

  “Dad,” Hanna laughed. “Nobody lives in castles anymore. Not on Earth, anyway. And besides, Prometheus already has a house there.”

  Cameron crossed his arms and frowned at her. “You just met the guy. Don’t you think it’s too soon to be living with him?”

  So Hanna crossed her arms and retorted, “You married Mom the day you met her… in one lifetime, anyway.”

  Cameron waved her off and claimed, “Things were different then.”

  “No, not for gods. If we were human, I’d agree with you. But we both know gods have destinies and he’s part of mine, just as Mom has always been part of yours.”

  “Stop teasing her,” Selena added. “Just because Enlil is gone doesn’t mean her work is through. Somehow, she and Prometheus have t
o convince an entire planet that we’ve changed, that the gods will never use humans again as part of their games. That’s not going to be easy or quick.”

  “No,” Hanna agreed. “It won’t.”

  Cameron finally stopped pretending to be upset about her move to Portland with Prometheus and smiled at her instead, putting an arm around her shoulders and kissing her forehead. “I don’t know. I have a feeling once people see you, they’ll fall in love with you. They’ll realize goddesses like you can change the world… and in the end, we’ll all have the kind of world we’ve always wanted.”

  A knock on her door surprised her, but she recognized his presence immediately, and her heart fluttered with excitement. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled at the Titan who’d come to bring her home.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Hanna kissed her father’s cheek then picked up one of the last boxes she was bringing with her. “I am,” she said. “I’m finally ready. Let’s go change the world.”

  Also by S.M. Schmitz

  Receive a free copy of my post-apocalyptic novella, The Scavengers, when you sign up for my mailing list, which will keep you up to date on new releases and great deals from multi-author promotions.

  For more information, please visit my website at smschmitz.com.

  Other titles by S.M. Schmitz

  Blades of Ash, an Unbreakable Sword series prequel

  When Olympus is destroyed, the Tuatha Dé and their Greek allies want revenge. But what their vengeance costs may haunt them forever.

  Badb, one of the triune of Irish war goddesses known as the Mórrígna, is having a rough millennium: the mortals of Ireland have turned away from the Tuatha Dé, and now, the Sumerians have launched a disastrous invasion into Olympus.

  Worse, the reason for the invasion isn’t as straightforward as they first thought. With powerful players stoking the flames between the Irish alliance and their enemies, both sides may ultimately lose everything, including their own worlds.