Donal and Brendan hopped out of the currach and pushed it ashore.

  “Watch the forest,” Siobhan told Brigid. “We’ll assess the state of our equipment before pushing ahead. Everyone else, grab a bag.”

  The men were in the middle of sharing an uneasy look when a bag flew between them. Ciara was facing the sea when the bag struck her in the upper back and she yelped in surprise.

  “And what was that for?” she asked Siobhan.

  “I did say, ‘everyone else,’ did I not?” Siobhan said without looking at the sorceress.

  Ciara returned the bag to Siobhan at a high rate of speed. Siobhan swatted it down into the currach.

  “What’s your problem?” Siobhan asked.

  “What’s your problem?” Ciara asked.

  “You are!” Siobhan said.

  “What did I do this time?”

  “Nothing!” Siobhan said. “That’s the problem. You’re not helping us. You’re not keeping watch. Now, half of our group is lost and we don’t know how to reach them.”

  Ciara leaped out of the boat and stood nose-to-nose with Siobhan. “Them getting lost isn’t my fault!” she said. “It wasn’t that damned dragon that did it. Those merrows are nasty things, and had they gone after us, we’d be lost, too.”

  Siobhan squeezed her lips shut and over the next few seconds the lower half of her mouth shifted into several shapes. “Then the nine of us would be lost together.”

  “Nine?” Ciara asked. “Or two?”

  Siobhan’s lips parted but her jaw remained locked. “Any of ‘em!” she shouted. “We need Maeve right now. And Niall. And yes, Finn. But they weren’t on my boat. You and himself were.”

  Ciara knitted her brow. Her tone shifted from defensive to aggressive. “That’s my fault as well, I bet,” she said. “Maybe you’re forgetting that I didn’t ask for any of this. You, lass, came to me. I’ve had little say in my life for several years now.”

  “And why would that be?” Siobhan asked. “The O’Cahans just saw you walking down the street and threw you in irons?”

  “We’re back to that?” Ciara asked. “You needed me to help you get two of the treasures to stop Breaslin and his people. That’s what I agreed to. Not the constant judgment or scolding. MacSweeney, there’s not a thing you can say or do that will make me feel guilty for what I did. Not you.”

  Brigid slid half of her body between the other women. “Siobhan, I can’t tell you how this pains me, but Ciara’s right,” she said. “We can’t punish her for everything that goes wrong. Maeve refused to ride with her, not the other way ‘round. I need Fergal back as badly as you and Donal need Finn. We need O’Reilly more than ever.”

  The color drained from Siobhan’s forehead and ears. She surveyed the faces of the rest of her crew. “Fine,” she said. “Round up the supplies as ordered. If you’ll excuse me for a moment.”

  She walked away from the group rubbing the top of her forehead. Donal watched her pace for a full minute before Brigid bumped his arm.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  “About what?” Donal asked.

  “You should go talk to her.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Brigid said, a smile spreading across her face. “We’ll take care of this. Go.”

  Donal walked over to Siobhan.

  “Donal, I’m sorry,” she said, “I know you’re worried about Finn, but we will get him back.”

  “I didn’t come over to talk about Finn,” Donal said. “I came to talk about you.”

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  “Sure look, about what just happened—”

  “No, not about that,” he said. “I want to talk about what happened in The Creeve. When we first met Ciara.”

  “What about it?”

  “You gave out to her pretty good. You even took a run at her. I haven’t seen you like that since you chased after that creepy Dother man at the abbey.”

  “For what he did to Faelan,” Siobhan said. “I remember. What’s your point?”

  “When you ran at Ciara,” he said, “how much of that was for my benefit?”

  “Donal—”

  “—You don’t lose your head often.”

  She stood quietly and surveyed Donal’s face before shaking her head and letting out a deep exhale.”

  “It wasn’t just for you,” she said. “I was plenty livid with her. I kept seeing Gavin in my head, laying on my bed in bits after…” She stumbled over the completion of her thought. “But I worried about what your shadowy friend would do to you, and I know Finn was fighting through his own feelings while still worrying about you.” She furrowed her brow. “Why are we talking about this now?”

  Donal shrugged. “Any time I’ve been around when you’re that mad, there’s been other reasons below the surface making it worse.”

  Siobhan stopped pacing. “Oh hell, am I really on this side of the conversation? It’s come to this?”

  “Settle down. You weren’t that bad, considering. Tell me what’s going on. Say it out loud.”

  “It’s just me,” she said. “No Niall. No Maeve, not even Finn.”

  Donal scoffed and whacked her arm with the back of his fingers.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “I don’t know these people. I don’t have Niall’s experience to lean on, or Maeve’s difference of opinion, or Finn’s…”

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I just assumed you didn’t want to hear me compliment your brother. Even with you and Brigid, there’s a lot riding on just my say-so.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Shiv,” Donal said, attempting to sneak her nickname into the conversation, “But it’s been your lead all nine of us have followed so far. Even Niall.”

  “And that’s gotten us—”

  “—Alive, for one,” he said. “You heard Brendan. He says Finn’s alive. So let’s go get him and get the job done.”

  She threw her arm around Donal and walked him back to the group. “You’re not half bad at this.”

  “I’ve had several teachers,” Donal said. “I figured between the lot of you I could scrounge a decent example or two. Sure look, how many more times must we save my eejit brother from himself?”

  “As many as it takes,” she said.

  The crew had strewn six bags in front of the currach. They laid what contents that wouldn’t spoil on the shore to dry. Siobhan walked up to the gear.

  “Fair play with this,” Siobhan said. “Here, I need to apologize to you all for my display earlier. I took out my anger and, yes, fear on someone who didn’t deserve it.” She looked at Ciara. “I’d like to offer a truce: I will try better to sheath my sword. I’m hoping you could throw down the shield. What say you?”

  Ciara folded her arms and pushed her mouth to the side. After a glance at Brendan she relaxed her face and looked down. “I suppose I can do that.”

  “Grand,” Siobhan said. “Furthermore, you’re a grown woman. I’ll leave it to you to mind your past actions while you’re getting familiar with the others.”

  Ciara met Siobhan’s eyes and grinned. “‘Familiar,’ you say?”

  Siobhan squeezed her face and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Let’s just go.”

  Ciara caught Brigid’s narrowed eyes and pointed her palms to the sky. “What did I say?”

  The group re-packed their sacks and grabbed their weapons. They trekked through the shrubs and tall grass into the forest. They passed oaks and elms, cypress and birch. The trunks and the shapes of their leaves matched their counterparts from home, but the forest didn’t look right to Donal. Wide branches hung low. Upward branches hung wide. Trees with old trunks did not grow tall.

  “Slower,” Siobhan said, wedging her way between low-hanging branches from two different trees. “Softer.”

  “Dya’expect us to crawl under this mess?” Donal asked.

  “We might,” she said. “I can’t imagine they’d call upon all those monsters to stop us and not have anyone waiting for us at the portal.”

  “What are we looking for?” Brigid asked. “Will the gate look like the one we stepped through up north?”

  “I’ll defer to our sages,” she said. “Brendan?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t imagine it would appear the same,” he said. “Up north was more of a door. It’s what you'd use to slide between planes, or travel from one part of our world to another. Going between different worlds? It’s not the same thing. Ciara?”

  “I never put much stock in that kind of travel unless I was the one casting the portal,” she said. “And I rarely had cause to do it.”

  “Look,” Brigid said, pointing to her right. “That section of the forest towers above the rest.”

  A column of white birch trees stretched into the sky above the oaks on their right side. The group batted away boughs and smaller branches for another half hour before they reached the birch grove.

  The grove was, in fact, three rings of trees, each ring taller than the one outside it. In the middle of the center ring, a sphere six feet in diameter rested on the ground. Its surface moved like water, but its shape was perfectly round. Images of the forest behind it rippled and wrinkled near the edge of the sphere.

  Brigid snorted in a deep breath and blew it out her mouth. “Air’s not heavy anymore,” she said. “This has to be it, right?”

  Siobhan nodded and turned to face the other four. “I’m going through it unless any of you give a reason not to.”

  The group responded with shrugs.

  “We’ll have to work on our decisiveness on the other side,” she said. “Let’s go see what’s over there.” With a slight hunch in her back, Siobhan stepped into the sphere and disappeared.

  “Spoken like someone about to fall into a trap,” Ciara said.

  VAMPIRE NINJA

  He’s a vampire. He’s a ninja. And he’s here to kick ass.

  Rick never believed in vampires, until one drained him dry the same night he just wanted to boot up his brand-new game. Dying should’ve been the end. Instead, it was the tutorial. Now he’s isekai’d into a game world that feels like a Souls-like nightmare, with a special class modification that turned his choice into something unique: Vampire Ninja.

  With Gabriella, a fiery cleric carrying secrets of her own, Rick will carve through monsters, duel cult fanatics, and grind for the XP that might just keep him alive. The stakes? Higher than his Blood Level.

  Dark, brutal, and laced with sharp humor, Vampire Ninja is a LitRPG where every level-up is written in blood.

  “LET THE BLOOD SPILL!”