Traflier lowered his head slowly, his red eyes widely staring into me.
“My Desmoree, do not fear, for I’ll not kill you yet. You will live to see what I do to your human realm, your fabled creatures, your new elf friends. If you think the extermination of the yowies was bad, just wait and see what I do next.”
“You don’t even know how to use the power you took from me, do you?”
He threw me back and I tried to phase but nothing happened except me slamming against the mountain wall. I cried out as the pain shot through my back.
What the hell, did he take it all?
“What, do you think I failed to take your power before? That I couldn’t?” He was laughing now. “Please, I left you that power so you could do exactly this. The demons attacking Sayeesies, reclaiming my tree and absorbing it’s power, and sending the fey fleeing from the realm. I wanted you all to evacuate, and so you did. Do you not see, Desmoree? You have done everything just as I planned.”
“Prove it, go on,” I said, climbing to my feet. “Show me what that power can do.”
He smiled and his eyes went an even darker shade of red, then he was gone. I scanned the area, finding him gripping the neck of a human projection to my right. The woman’s eyes bulged just as they would had he really been holding her. I could no longer smell her fear, it didn’t call to me, but I could see it was calling him. His mouth opened and sharp pointed teeth descended from his eye teeth.
“It calls to me, I can feel them all. I must have it. I will have it. All of them will be mine,” he said, then bit into her neck. For a split second she cried out then dissolved away, and he was left holding a bulbous fruit to his lips.
He snarled at me and instantly appeared beside another of the projections. He didn’t waste any time, grabbing the man by the throat, he tilted his head and bit down. Again the man dissolved and the fruit dripped from his lips.
It was hard to track what happened next as he went from one to the next until all the projections disappeared and all there was left, was him and me and a scattering of bulbous fruits.
He moved in front of me, his eyes dark red, his fangs dripping with the juice of the bulbous fruits.
“I can still have you,” he said, reaching for me, but a silver shimmer reverberated in a bubble around me, blocking him from making contact.
What the fuck is that?
“You think this is over,” he spat, moving so that his breath sent the slightest of shimmers across the weird shield as he spoke. “You have no idea. I can still feel them, you know? The power calls to them as it does to me. Wait here, my little Desmoree, I’ll be back in a moment and then, after I’ve destroyed your beloved humans, you will share the same fate.”
Then he vanished. A blur of black was all I registered.
“Crap, what now?”
“Now we get out of here,” Sien said from behind me.
“What the hell? Where did you come from?”
“What, you think I would leave you here? King Blake wouldn’t be impressed if I returned but you did not. Come, Desmoree, I’ll open the gateway. You must return to the Elf Kingdom.”
“Wait,” I said, grabbing her arm. “You said this would work. You said he wouldn’t be able to handle the emotion that comes with that power, he looks just fine. He looks pretty damn pleased with himself. What the fuck?”
“He’s going after the humans, once he gets closer to them their effect will affect him. We must go, Desmoree. My shield cast won’t last and we have to get you some magic back before we go after him.”
“You made the silver shield thing?”
“I cast it just after he took the first bite of the fruits.”
“And you can give me back magic?”
Her lip raised a little on one side. “Sort of.”
“Whatever, let’s go.”
She opened the gateway and pulled me through. Jax’s arms gripped hold of me, spinning me away from the gleaming black stone of the gateway. He squeezed me close whispering in my ear, “thank the fey you are alright.”
The glitter of the cast creating the gateway fell around us. The cast closed.
“Des, are you okay?” Jax asked and he continued to hold me close. “You feel different.”
I pushed back. “I am different. He took it, Jax. All of it. Not just the vampire’s power, he took all of mine, the Tanzieth too. I’m human.”
“What?”
“Desmoree, is this true?” King Blake asked.
I nodded. “He had more fur. Yowie fur. He took everything from me. Sien said you can give me some magic so I can go after him? So we can capture him. Kill him, whatever.”
King Blake’s eyes went to Sien, his brow furrowed. “Sien, we will not be doing that. Desmoree, I do not say this to be cruel, the magic Sien speaks of is mine. My magic.”
“Sien?” I turned to her.
“It wouldn’t be all of it, a tiny portion really, besides, it’s the only magic we can give you. Your fairies can’t gift you any now that you have protected all of their power.”
“She is right,” Grace said, storming into the room. “The fey cannot help you. If the king will gift you some of his magic we can go and end this now, before anymore are hurt.”
“Grace, are you sure you want to be there for this?” I asked, walking over to her and taking her hand.
“I must.”
“If you’re sure.” I turned back to King Blake. “Do it, whatever you have to do, just do it. Because with or without magic, I’m going.”
“This is going to hurt,” King Blake said, closing the distance between us. Then he had me in his arms, his lips over mine. I went to pull away but then I felt it. The cold sharp sting of his magic, flowing from his mouth into mine.
My legs collapsed beneath me but he held me up, keeping his lips locked against mine. Almost as fast as it began it was over.
I sucked in a breath and stumbled a few steps back.
“Des,” Jax said, and I held up a hand to halt him.
“I’m okay. Just major head rush.” I tried to see the magic. But when I looked nothing happened. “I can’t see it, are you sure it worked?”
“It isn’t fey magic, Des, you can’t use it the same way. Elf magic, my magic, it reacts to will. Be careful. It’s your desires that will direct the power.”
“Cool, so if I want…” I thought about my elf sword. Then in a flash of golden light it flung from behind the throne and into my hand. They all jumped back. “That was so cool. Get the folding orbs, we need to take him out now.”
Grace came to stand on one side and Jax on the other. The second Nazieth joined us as too did seven elf guards. Jax did the honors of throwing the orb. I closed my eyes and waited for the cold to hit me, but it didn’t come. Jax shuddered beside me, but for me it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket.
So that’s why the elves use these, it feels good to them.
The cloud lifted and suburban streets stood before us. Someone gasped from behind and an elf guard leapt towards the man, dusting him with something green and sparking. His eyes glazed over and he turned and walked away.
“Nice, so where is he?”
A woman cried out in the distance.
“We’re too late.”
“Get to that warehouse,” I yelled at them, pointing to a large, dark building across from us. The windows were blown out and the chain-link fence around it meant it was hopefully abandoned and if we were lucky, free from squatters too. I took off at a run. I tried to phase, but with elf magic coursing through me, nothing happened. “Damn, I have to get there fast.”
Then it was like I was running at super speed. The city streets flew past me in a blur, and I stopped just a few steps from the woman he held in his mouth. Her blood dripped down her white neck, eyes rolling back, she moaned as an elf guard joined me and blasted Traflier with an orb of something. It exploded a flash of light.
Traflier hissed and released the woman, then ran for the guard, gripping him by the shir
t he lifted him up high off the ground.
“You think I won’t drink you dry too? I wonder what elf tastes like?”
“Put him down!” I yelled and it was like he was seeing me for the first time. His eyes bulged and he tossed the guard aside, slamming him into a brick wall of the building beside us.
“Desmoree, is that you?” His head tilted up and his nostrils flared. “You smell… different. You are different. I’m different too. Can you feel them? I can feel them. There are so many. So, so many. I want them all. I’ll have them all. It will stop if I take them all.”
“What will stop?”
“Don’t you hear them?”
The power must be taking its toll.
“Let them in. Let all of it in. You know you want to. Only when you do will you be able to get what I have,” I said. Then I willed myself to the other side of the street. I moved at lightning speed. His eyes flared a darker red, then he was beside me, teeth bared.
I moved again down the street. He followed.
“How are you doing this? I took your magic, your power. Did you do it, Desmoree? Did you get what I need?”
What he needs?
“You want me, come and get me.” I zoomed through the city streets to the abandoned warehouse where the others were waiting. He was there in an instant too. Jax lowered down from the broken skylight above us.
Traflier slowly stepped towards me, his shoulders hunched, his eyes becoming slits. “Desssmoree, come now, give in to my voice, come to me, my little Desssmoree. It will all be over sssoon.”
“That shit won’t work on me,” I spat. Where are the Nazieth, the elves?
I lifted off from the ground. I was in Jax’s arms and he was flying me out of the hole in the ceiling.
“We have to go back,” I said as we soared higher.
“He was trying to enthrall you.”
“No, I have the king’s magic, it doesn’t work on elves. Jax, take me back!” I yelled, shoving off him, and like that, I was free from his arms and falling.
The ground was coming up quickly, but he caught me again and lowered me softly to my feet.
“Des, just be careful. You don’t know how to use this magic.”
I laughed. “When has that ever stopped me?”
He shook his head and grabbed my hand and together we walked back into the building. There was a Nazieth on the ground near the entrance, he wasn’t moving. The others circled a now snarling Traflier. His face distorted, pinching at the nose, his top lip pulled back as he bared his pointed teeth.
“I’ll drink you all,” he said, lunging at an elf. The elf swung an arm and a shiny opal shield appeared in his hand. Traflier rebounded off it, hissing as he clutched at the arm it had touched. The skin blackened then returned to normal a second later. So he isn’t fey anymore? Opals won’t make him stronger. We can use them to hurt him.
“He can’t touch the opal shields!” I yelled. The others circling him swung their arms and shields appeared in front of them too. They slammed the edges of the shields down against the ground and a milky light rose up like a dome over him. He leapt up and when he hit the dome, his face and hands turned black. He screamed.
I didn’t know they could do that.
“Grace and the elves have been preparing, they have a cell waiting in the elf dungeons too. It will be strong enough to hold him,” Jax said as we watched Traflier try again and again to leave the barrier they forced around him. Every time his flesh touched either a shield or the dome, he hissed in pain and his skin blackened.
Sien worked on the ground beside the dome, her back was to us and I moved closer to see what she was doing.
“Grab the fallen,” she called to no one in particular. I looked to the Nazieth on the ground near where we came in. He was being picked up by another Nazieth and brought over to where we stood.
“Everyone stay together. Don’t let the shields separate. We will be back in the elf palace in no time,” Sien said, climbing to her feet, her hands holding something in front of her just out of sight.
“She is very cleaver that one,” Grace said as she moved to stand on my other side.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, wrapping one arm around her.
She nodded with a half-smile then looked back at her father trapped in a dome of opal elf magic. “I will be,” she whispered.
A flash of light caught my eye and I turned my attention back to Sien. She was looking up, and I followed her stare to a bowling ball-sized orb filled with teal mist. It exploded and the cloud spread to encompass all of us.
It fell like it always did and I was relieved to feel the same warmth I had since acquiring some of the king’s magic.
It released us in the throne room, but Traflier wasn’t there.
“Where is he?” Grace yelled before I could.
“Relax,” Sien began. “I sent him directly to his cell. He’s there, I assure you.”
“Is he guarded?” she asked as I watched the Nazieth inspecting the shields the elves had made for them.
“There is a guard in the stairs and another by his cell. I promise you, your father is not getting out.”
Grace nodded to Sien, then her eyes brushed over me as she turned and left the room.
“Sien, thanks.”
She smiled at me and tapped a small bag hanging over her shoulder.
I wish I still had my bag. I wish I still had my house. I can’t believe it. It’s actually over.
“Des, we should go,” Jax said, walking towards me and trying to turn me towards the door.
“What’s your rush?”
“Nothing…” Then I saw them lift the bodies up. The ones Traflier killed while we were trying to capture him. I let Jax turn me away and we went to see Ava. She was perched on the end of the bed chewing her nails when we walked in.
“Mum, Dad, thank the fey you are okay.”
She leapt from the bed and ran into our arms. It was so nice to have her there. To hold her. To hold them both.
I don’t want to let them go.
A buzz went through me and suddenly, my hands sunk into Ava’s hair and the rainbow strands wrapped around and through my fingers.
“Ouch, Mum, my hair,” Ava said, trying to pull away. But she couldn’t. She was stuck.
“Des, I’m stuck too,” Jax said, and I felt him pull at my hair.
“What the hell?”
“Des, what is this? What’s happening?”
“Mum, you’re hurting me.”
“It’s not me, I mean I’m not meaning to. I don’t know what’s going on.”
The magic reacts to your will.
King Blake’s words repeated in my mind.
“Crap,” I said, then took a breath and thought about letting go. Ava’s hair and my own immediately un-weaved and we were free.
“I’m sorry, it was me. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I wanted to hold you both, I didn’t want to let go. Then…” I shrugged. “I guess I know even less about elf magic than I do my own.”
“Mum, you have elf magic?”
I nodded. “It’s a long story, one I’m happy to tell you. One day. But not today. Today I just want to spend time with my daughter and husband. And father. Where is Max?”
“I don’t know. He was waiting for you to come back, then we got word you captured Traflier and he took off.”
I looked at Jax. We both knew where he would be.
“I’ll be back,” I said, kissing them both before heading out the door towards the one place I really didn’t want to be.
Fucking hell, Dad, you couldn’t wait one day?
I tried to think about getting there fast so that the elf magic would take me, but because I really would have rather be almost anywhere else, I zoomed through the palace only to find a confused Sien and Maylea staring back at me instead of the door that led to Traflier’s cell.
It was going to take me a few goes to get this right.
I shook my head and waved them off as I left the elf kitchen a
nd headed the direction I thought the dungeon entrance was. After a few wrong turns, I finally found it. The elf guard standing at attention by the door was the giveaway I was in the right place.
“Has anyone gone down?” I asked, but the elf didn’t answer. He didn’t move at all. Then his eyes darted wildly from side to side. He was frozen by a cast. “For fuck’s sake.”
I slid behind him to enter the stairwell. It was pitch black. All the candles had been snuffed out. I hated the dark.
I really wish I had my magic now, it would’ve been nice to see where I was going.
Then I felt my eyes flicker open and closed, and the stairwell began to come into focus. It held a blue tinge to it, but I could see each stair ahead of me clearly.
Awesome, night vision.
I stepped slowly down the stairs, listening out for any sounds, but it wasn’t until I got half way down that I heard anything. A slight moan echoed up the stairwell. I trained my eyes to the remaining stairs ahead and at the bottom, a dark shadow slumped in the corner on the ground. I dashed the final distance and fell before my father.
“Dad, what happened?” I whispered. His eyelashes fluttered open and he reached out. He pointed to the panel on the wall that opened the door to the dungeon. He tried to say something but it came out as gibberish, then he collapsed back in the corner.
I instinctively went to push my magic towards him, to help heal him. It took a second for me to remember I didn’t have any fey magic to give him, and I had no real clue how to use the elf power coursing through me.
He let out a soft sigh and I could see he was still breathing.
Maybe he fell down the stairs?
Then a crash from behind the door sent chills up my spine.
I slowly stood and pressed the panel, a thin stream of light rose up from the ground and I breathed a sigh of relief the dungeon lights were still operational. The last thing I needed was that vampire getting too close in the dark. I ducked under the door when it was open just enough to fit, then closed it again so Max would be safe.
I looked to my right, the vampire cell looked just as it had the last time I’d seen it. Half bathed in the bright, magical white light, half shrouded in darkness. I took a few tentative steps up the corridor to better see. Something moved in the darkness, but before I could question the vampire, a crashing sound reverberated from further down the hall.
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 78