“Rylee? Ah, I remember now. Rylee. Yes, come inside dear; show me what you’ve brought for Giselle.”
She shuffled away and I followed her in, breathing shallowly; trying not to think of all the possibilities for the smells. This was not good. Milly and I were going to have to do something about this, no matter how hard it might be. Scattered junk littered the floor, old newspaper, bags of groceries un-emptied and stacks of books to the ceiling, and those were just the things I could identify. It was worse every time I came.
The back kitchen was as full as the rest of the house, only I suspected that this was where the majority of the bad smells were coming from.
Giselle dusted off a rickety gold chair circa 1960 and I sat down. She pulled a green vinyl chair with rips in it close and grabbed my hand before I could even ask her, her eyes suddenly focusing, an intelligence that hadn’t been there a moment before filled them.
Because I’m an Immune, even psychics can’t read me, it’s like I don’t exist. But I have lines in my hand and reading those lines isn’t really magic, it’s like knowing how to read a map and understand all the symbols and variances.
“Ah, little Rylee, you have big trouble coming your way. Always the same with you though.” She turned my hand first one way, then the other, her grip intense.
“You will find someone, a man, from your past that will become a part of your future.”
“You mean like a lover?” I hated the almost hopeful tone in my voice, the way it sounded, but I needed to be as clear as possible. A little romance never hurt anyone, but if it got in the way of finding India, or any other child for that matter, it wouldn’t matter how I felt about him.
“Obsession.” She whispered the word and a cool wind wrapped around my ankles. “Death. Power. They are all tangled here,” she pointed to the middle of my hand where indeed there seemed to be several lines tangled about one another. “But you will also find your own past in this circle of three.”
The house groaned as a gust of wind pummeled the barely standing structure. I shivered, and Giselle did too.
“You must go now. I have said enough for today. Where are you blue socks child?” Her eyes began to slide into vacancy once more and I grabbed her hands, snagging her attention. I asked her what I always asked. “The child I seek, will I find her in time?”
Giselle’s eyes flickered and the intelligence returned. “This child you seek, she is strong, you have time, I do not know if it will be enough but you have time.” I stood to leave, pressing the stuffed elephant into her now empty hands. For all that she loved her stuffed animals, I never once saw one after I had left it with her, and I still had no idea what she did with them. I brought them now because it was one of the few times I got to see her smile.
“Wait.”
I froze in the hallway, Giselle’s voice drawing me back in.
“There is another child, a child of golden sunshine and blue skies that seeks for you.”
Every muscle in me tensed, my body paralyzed by the seer’s words. It couldn’t be what I thought, but I whispered her name without meaning to.
“Berget.”
The cold wind whipped through the house again, papers scattering about, a stack of books toppling over, and chaos ensued.
Giselle scrambled to her feet, and rushed past me, caterwauling like a banshee about blue socks, her hair coming loose from her bun and the strands of it whipping about her face, obscuring her features as she attempted to right the things that the wind had demolished. It only made matters worse, for every pile she straightened, another fell, taking two more with it.
I shook myself free of the paralysis and reached out for Giselle, grabbing her by her bony shoulders.
“Let me go devil spawn! Blood seeker! Killer! Whore! Let me go!” I didn’t take the names personally. Though some were accurate. You can’t get too pissy when people are telling you the truth.
I hung onto her shoulders, steered her back into the kitchen and plunked her into the green chair. She went limp and a voice came softly to my ear. “Sing for her child.” I didn’t look around; I knew it was one of her guides. They loved Giselle and so I did what they said. I sang.
“Trip upon trenchers, and dance upon dishes, my mother sent me for some barm, some barm; she bid me go lightly, and come again quickly, for fear the young men should do me some harm. Yet didn’t you see, yet didn’t you see, what naughty tricks they played on me? They broke my pitcher, spilt the water, cursed my mother, chided her daughter and kissed my sister instead of me.”
I trailed off, the old song from my childhood catching in my throat. They didn’t call it a melancholy tune for nothing.
“So nice dear. Perhaps you’ll sing to me again sometime?” Giselle’s coherent question surprised me, but I took it in stride.
“Of course Giselle. Will you be alright now?”
She cocked her head and squinted her eyes at me. “Child, go home, get your blue socks, you’ll need them before the week is out.”
I left her there in her kitchen, muttering about blue socks, the elephant gripped in her frail hands and a cool wind blowing through her house.
4
The cell phone shook a little in my hand. Milly’s number was normally embedded in my brain but I had to look it up.
Millicent, Milly to her friends, was my closest friend and the other girl that Giselle had raised alongside me. Raised gives the impression that we were little when she took us on. I was sixteen and Milly was a year younger. Both orphaned in our own ways, both needing a mentor for the innate abilities that were becoming apparent.
“Hello?” Her soft voice was sleepy and it was obvious I’d pulled her from sleep.
“Hey witch. Get out of bed. We’ve got a bit of a problem.” I switched ears with the phone and turned the heat up with my now free hand. I could still feel the wind from Giselle’s house in my bones.
She groaned. “Listen. I’ve barely been in bed for two hours. You know I don’t run on the same schedule as most people.”
I nodded to myself and said, “I know, I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important. It’s Giselle.”
She gave a sharp gasp and I heard the bed creak in the background then a soft exclamation that wasn’t Milly. I smiled to myself. She was always having “sleepovers.” That was something I didn’t have time for, or the inclination. Matters of the heart were just too messy in my opinion.
Footsteps and then a door closing told me we had a little more privacy. “What’s wrong?” She whispered.
“We have to move her. I don’t know how, but that house is falling down around her ears. And the madness has moved quickly in the last few months. I don’t think she’ll survive the winter on her own.” I paused. “Hang on a minute, I think I’m lost.”
I took a left hand turn and started to navigate through a sub-division. Bismarck wasn’t a huge town, but it was expanding and when all the houses were cookie cutter look a-likes, it was easy to get turned around.
Slowing for a stop sign I continued. “I’m on a salvage right now,” that was my word for going after kids, just in case we had anyone listening in. “I don’t know how long it will be, at least a week. If you can start to get Giselle out, I’ll help you when I get back.”
Silence on the other end of the line. “Milly? Are you still there?”
“I can’t help her Rylee.”
Shock filtered through me. This wasn’t like Milly, not at all. What the hell was going on?
“The coven wants me to break ties with all people who aren’t witches. That includes you and Giselle. This is what I’ve always wanted. I’m so sorry.”
“Do you mean like forever?” I whispered back, my heart breaking at the thought of losing one more person in my life.
Her hiccupping sobs were all the answer I needed. “You can always come home Milly. No matter what, you know that right? I’ll always look out for you.” It was the best I could do. My own emotions were choking me. I didn’t want to be left behind again.
Her words hitched into sobs, I couldn’t be angry with her. We both had wanted only one thing growing up. To fit in. And now she had a chance and I couldn’t begrudge her that, no matter how much it hurt. Swallowing the pain back I said one last thing before hanging up the phone.
“You’ll always be my witch Milly.” Only then did I let the tears fall and feel the hurt of being abandoned once again.
5
I didn’t have time to relocate my mentor if I was to save India. But there was no way I was going to let Giselle stay in her house with what felt like an early winter coming on. I wove back through the subdivision to Giselle’s house and parked out front for the second time that day.
Bundling her up in a threadbare lightweight jacket, I tucked her into the passenger seat of the Jeep, and cranked the heat up.
Her eyes followed me, a silent question in them, as I walked around to my side of the vehicle.
“We’re going for a ride,” I said, as I put on my seatbelt and pulled away from the curb. She huddled in her seat, lost in her mind’s abyss, somewhere far beyond my reach.
She’d been the one to name me, name my abilities. I was an Immune and a Tracker all bundled up into one. My tracking abilities had come on line very early in life; I could always pinpoint where any member of my family was, and even friends and even strangers when I worked at it. Could lead you right to them, no matter the distance. But more than that, I knew if they were hurt, happy, sad, alive or dead. With the kids I hunted for, this ability was priceless. It only failed me if the kids weren’t on this side of the unseen veil, which often they weren’t. If they’d being taken by supernaturals interested in the kid’s powers and abilities, they weren’t kept where I could find them easily.
My thoughts flickered as I glanced over at Giselle, sound asleep and snoring lightly, a blush of color on her cheeks. I reached over and brushed my hand over her forehead, letting out a sigh of relief. “No fever.” I murmured to myself.
I took a left hand turn and went back to the day that I’d been bitten by a large rattlesnake, not long after moving in with Giselle and Milly. We’d been in the back yard, me practicing my tracking on the neighborhood children, pinpointing them for Giselle, while Milly practiced her incantations under her breath. I’d stepped back into a large bush, and felt a sharp jab into my left leg. Looking down there was a massive diamond shaped head hanging off my left calf, venom pumping into my system. Its eyes transfixed me as it worked its teeth deeper into my flesh, trying to get a better grip on my calf.
Giselle shouted, but I was too frozen by shock to move.
That was the day that Giselle told me I was an Immune. Immune not just to supernatural bites that could turn me furry or sunlight hating, but immune to poisons of all kinds. Not to mention immune to most magic and invisible to most psychic probing. It was a sweet deal and not a part of my nature that many people knew about.
We pulled up to the hospital and I parked on the curb getting Giselle as close to the door as possible.
“Here we are.” I said, as I opened the passenger door. At first she looked surprised to see me. Then she smiled and said, “Did you find your blue socks dear?” I shook my head.
“I was hoping you could help me find them. I think I left them here.” I pointed to the hospital.
She squinted in the direction of my hand. “You think you left them in a hospital?”
I blushed. This would not be a good time for her to be more lucid. When she was angry, she could give O’Shea a run for his money.
“Yes, the hospital. I think that’s where they are. Can you help me?” I asked again, hoping to just get her in.
Giselle followed me in through the sliding front doors and up to the reception desk without a word lowering herself slowly into one of the padded chairs set out for the infirm. I watched her a moment before turning to the clerk. “I’d like to admit my friend. She’s not competent and I think she may be quite sick. Maybe an infection of some sort. She’s been hanging around the neighbors who just got back from Mexico.” That got the clerks attention real fast what with all the upheaval of the swine flu coming up from down south. Of course it wasn’t true, but I didn’t want them pissing around with whether or not to admit her and for how long. Just the possibility of Swine flu was an automatic admittance and a minimum of a one week observation around here.
Within moments they had Giselle under quarantine, settled into a private room, and on a heavy dose of sedatives to keep her quiet.
I stood by her side, mask over my nose and mouth, holding her bare hands with my gloved ones. “I’ll be back as quick as I can.” I whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear me anyway. The week of warmth and good food would help her more than anything else, and having her in the hospital would keep me from worrying when I should be focusing on India.
Leaning in I gave her a kiss on the cheek through the paper mask, then started out the door.
“Milly will come back Rylee.”
I spun back towards her. “What?” But her eyes were closed and her breathing was even, her body slumped with sleep. There was nothing more and again I headed out the door. Maybe I was hearing things, or maybe I was just hearing things I wanted to hear.
Check out Shannon Mayer’s first bestselling series! Romance is taken to a whole new level in this action packed, apocalyptic story that will leave you breathless with anticipation for each page.
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Acknowledgements
As always, I couldn’t have made these pages sing without my amazing team of editors, Melissa Breau and Rachel Peterson who worked overtime to help me get “Dark Fae” out to the readers.
To my amazing husband for his support and love, and his belief in me and my writing.
And to my readers. Your reviews, emails, tweets and Facebook messages truly keep me going on the tough days when my muse wanders away.
Dark Fae
Celtic Legacy Book III
Shannon Mayer
Copyright © 2012 Shannon Mayer
Electronic Edition
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
To know more about Shannon Mayer, please visit her blog:
http://shannonmayer.blogspot.com
Cover Art: Patricia Schmitt
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Epilogue
Excerpt from Urban Fantasy
Other Books by the Author
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