by Claudy Conn
“I’ll be twelve in a couple of days,” Frankie objected.
Aaibhe touched her face. “You still have quite a bit of growing up to do, and so you shall.”
“My Queen.” Frankie lowered her lashes. “Please … tell me the truth about m’self. I need to know everything, and I know there is more. It is something about me being a Fios, isn’t it?”
The queen made her decision and dove right in. “Very well, then, child. The truth is, you are more than Fios, which you are because of your mother’s bloodline.” She paused, and her voice caressed Frankie when she continued. “And you are Fae, on your father’s side.”
“No, that can’t be right—m’da was no Fae,” she said on a frown.
“The man you called your ‘da’ was, for all purposes, your father. He loved you and raised you, and you loved him, but he wasn’t the one who gave you life.”
Frankie got up and walked away from the queen; when she turned her eyes were narrowed with her thoughts. “So, then, ye be telling me I am half Fae?”
“Yes, I am telling you that, though a little part of you knew something … always suspected there was more inside you. Your Fae genes have remained dormant during your childhood, as there was no one to call on your powers and train you, but you have felt ‘different’ during your training time with Nuad, haven’t you?”
“Aye, I jest thought it was m’Fios growing.” She pulled herself up and returned to sit with the queen. “Kindly tell me who m’Fae father is then?”
“There is time for that. I need you to remember that you have been snatched out of your time period. You were living in the 1800s … you would have grown to maturity and at some point realized you were immortal. At maturity, your Fae genes would have expanded and taught you who you really were …”
“But now I know who I am, and I want to know who he was,” Frankie said calmly.
“Our job now, Nuad’s job, is to unite the Fios with the Fae in you and bring out your strengths to make you powerful for the immediate future, because the universe is about to be plunged into the deadliest of all times.”
“Aye, and though child I be, I will be fore and center, my Queen, in the fight. But my da … m’father, the man who raised me as his own—did he know?” Frankie chewed at her bottom lip.
Aaibhe had no way of knowing the answer to this, but she lowered her lashes and shook her head. “No, Frankie, he did not. As far as he was concerned, he was your father.” She was pleased to see the sigh of relief Frankie released.
“Right, then, if ye please, can ye tell me now who this Fae is … who is m’Fae father?”
Aaibhe arched a look at her. “I can tell you he must have cared for your mother a great deal. I can tell you he left you to lead a normal life for your sake, not his. I can tell you he is a good and faithful member of my very special team and I can’t have him distracted just now.”
Frankie cocked her head. “But he already knows about me, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but remember, he doesn’t know you are here in Tir, or even if you lived through the centuries. I believe your mother must have asked him to let you be raised as a human with her.”
“Please, m’Queen, please, who is he? Can I not go see him?”
“Not right now. He is on a mission, and I can’t recall him. The time will come to reunite you.” The queen squeezed her hands and said softly, “Frankie, we have a threat approaching from the Dark Realm, and I need you to continue your training. Will you do that for me and trust me to choose the time and place for you to meet your Fae father?”
Frankie hugged her close. “Aye, then, for ye must know, my Queen … I do trust ye … and Miss Jazz … with m’life, and I would lay down m’life for either of ye.”
Aaibhe sighed and held her. Her vision of the future had been filled with blood, and she knew life—the life they prized, where art, music, and harmony ruled—was coming to an abrupt end.
~ Eighteen ~
TREVOR LOOKED AT his Jazmine Decker and wished he could send her safely to Tir. She didn’t have enough training yet. Her powers needed time to evolve.
How could he put her at risk? He had been raised to know that Fae females fought beside their mates as equals. Their monarchy was female, for bloody damn sake! He could not remember a time when this had not been so, and yet …
All he wanted to do was keep her tucked in safely in Tir, away from all the dark ugliness of this world, away from Pestale and his wicked brothers.
He had the Orb of Time, safely hidden with his Death Sword. He could call on it and return her to Tir, but would she ever forgive him?
Could he manage it? Her newfound Fae powers would allow her to see it coming. She was a fighter, a brave and resilient Fios as well as an immortal. She would not allow him to send her off. So that option was for the moment discarded.
Still, he made an attempt. “Jazmine Decker?”
She cocked her head and chuckled. “I love the way you say my name. It sounds so formal and yet so sexy all covered with that delicious accent of yours.”
Bloody hell, he thought, pulling her in closer and nipping at her ear. He loved everything about her. She made him feel alive, truly alive in each moment. He raised his head and said urgently, “I need you to go to the queen and tell her of your suspicions. It will take the queen’s physical presence to close a portal of such size. We cannot do it from this side of the Dark Prison, and I doubt that even the Royals can do it without her lead on the other side.”
“Trevor of Lugh,” she said archly, “you are not in the company of a fool—well, not a total fool. I am not going anywhere. If you want to communicate with the queen …?” She held up her pendant. “Tada!”
He sighed. “Sweet love, can’t you see? They will target you to get to me. Don’t you want me safe?”
“You are trying to trick me. There is nothing any of those dark creeps can do to you—a Seelie Royal. So, what you are suggesting …?” She shook her head. “Not going to happen.” She frowned at him and added, “I am not stupid enough to get caught by any of those Dark Royals, because now I have Fae blood in me and have been trained by the best.” She inched closer and said. “Come on, baby, let’s boogie, as there is no time to lose.”
He grinned and shook his head. “Baby? It is odd that I rather like the sound of that on your lips, and yet, I must wonder how it is that you call me baby. I am not a baby.”
She laughed right out loud. “You are my big, hunky, handsome, strong baby.” And she laughed again.
He wondered at it, at the feeling she drew from him. She always made him smile; through it all, she made him smile. Even now, faced with horrendous danger and a mission that was beginning to look doomed, she made him smile. Absurd.
He took her hand and wondered how it never ceased to thrill him when he touched her. From the first moment … she thrilled him.
Damn, but what was he doing—mooning on and on now, when they had to plan strategy? No time remained for this.
If she was right, and the Dark Princes were working on opening a portal deep within their castle, they had to get there fast and destroy it.
If the bastards succeeded in opening such a portal they would surely have an Unseelie army at their back. It would be catastrophic unless they were able to contact the queen and get her to close the portal in time!
“Right, then, sweet Fios. Do not leave my side.”
A moment later they had shifted into the darkest part of the castle. They stood at the top of a long, winding, and narrow set of stone steps that led them to a small, weathered wooden door.
Trevor hesitated. He didn’t want to shift directly into Pestale’s midst, for he hoped to take them by surprise. He murmured a gypsy chant to disguise their scent in the spell of concealment. It would only buy them some time to evaluate the situation before making a move.
“Was that language you spoke Danu? It sounded different in my head.”
“Quite right.” He smiled at her. “It was Romany—a Gypsy spe
ll Bres taught me a few months ago. Romany will translate, as will any language in your head, now that you are Fae and that Fae is growing in you, but the spells have to be learned. Breslyn said that the Dark Ones were not adept in Gypsy spells and would not see through them immediately. It will only buy us time before they realize we are near.”
A moment later they entered the huge dungeon chamber, hovering in a mist of darkness, near the rafters, a skill he had taught her just that morning and one that she had picked up easier than she had some others. The room was full to overflowing with Unseelie of every imaginable caste, horrifying to look at, repulsive to smell, but what was worse was the swirling dark opening that went from floor to ceiling. Although it was only a few feet in width, it seemed to be getting larger with each moment.
They took in the scene with eyes wide open, and Trevor knew they were in for serious trouble.
* * *
Jazz’s mouth fell open as she stared at the horde of Unseelie monsters. They jostled one another, and little skirmishes broke out, diverting attention to the fights. Pestale had more than once put up his hand and called for an end to it.
The dungeon had to be at least fifty feet wide and eighty feet long.
Insect-type beings the size of cows, snakes that stood on two legs and were the size of basketball players, and grotesque, elephant-sized pig-like creatures snorted and bumped and grumbled. And then she saw a horde of green humanoid types, standing quietly behind the three Dark Royals.
“What are those, the green guys? They look almost like—”
“They are the Green Babblers. The sound they make can kill a human a hundred feet away, and then they feed on the dead body.” He pointed with his chin. “Those, the giant insects, they like to feed on live humans. Now and then over the years, one or two escape and feed until we locate them and return or destroy them.”
She grimaced and swallowed hard. She had even in her worst nightmares never pictured so many monsters of so many different castes collected into one chamber. Their numbers spilled over and into a long hall she could only assume led outdoors. They were, as she had worried, lined up and ready, so ready for their trip into the Human Realm, and they were going en masse. They looked anxious, and they looked damned hungry!
“Trev …” she whispered, feeling her body go numb.
The time has come to use the pendant. We must inform the queen. He didn’t speak out loud but in her head. Another skill he had taught her and had her practice over and over yesterday.
It was a unique sensation to hear him inside her mind, but she complied immediately. She grasped the pendant and mentally recited the required chant.
Nothing, she said in his mind.
Don’t stop. Keep calling for her, he answered.
Another moment went by before the queen’s image appeared, and she said, “I know—I have felt the shift in the universe. There are two voids in the atmosphere, and we are not certain which one he will try and use.”
“My Queen,” Trevor whispered, “he has the Green Babblers at the head of his army—we must stop him, or the loss of human life will be … disastrous.”
“Indeed, do what you can on your end.” And the queen was gone.
“Jazmine Decker … this is … grave,” he said as he turned to her.
“What should we do first?”
“There is something stored at the Retreat, something Crystal showed me when you were in transition. I will have to get it into the heart of the portal.”
“What is it?”
“Iron, hundreds of iron rods, spelled by the Dark King, but I will have to get to the Retreat and manage its delivery here. Because iron can affect a Seelie Fae as well—and in that quantity there is no saying what it will do to me—I will need you to help me shift it here.”
“But you are a Royal. Iron affects Royals?”
“In quantity, it can.”
“Well, I have human in me, so I betcha I’m immune and can help you get it here.”
Trevor considered her for a moment and said, “No time to talk.”
He took her hand, and they shifted to the Retreat into a dimly lit room filled with iron bars.
She saw at once that Trevor was almost immediately affected by the potency of the iron. Its effects showed in his eyes. She also was sure that it had no effect on her whatsoever. “Okay, Trev, what do I do?”
“Can you help me move these, like I showed you—when you lifted the bed with your mind? Remember how you went into your mind? Do that now, my love, with me.”
She concentrated and discovered she could help him. The bars lifted as one unit, and she grinned. “Are you doing it too?”
“Yes, but I can feel myself getting weaker. I need your help … the iron … is poisoning me …”
“What?” She lost her concentration, and the iron mass fell with a heavy and resounding thud to the wood flooring.
He touched her shoulder. “No time, and you needn’t worry—it is only temporary. As soon as we are rid of it I’ll be fine.”
She turned on the room full of the iron bars, and with scarcely an effort it went up as one unit and hovered. She turned to Trev and said, “Shift us, baby—shift us now.”
She could see he was in pain and rubbed his arm, wishing she could do something. He was stoic about it, simply patting her hand, and managed to shift them back to the dungeon.
They had shifted into the recesses of one dark corner, hovering near the rafters as they surveyed the bevy of movement and grunts below. Jazz found she could keep the iron bar collection up with very little effort and concentrated on helping Trev stay conscious, for he looked like he was going to pass out.
These monsters, all shapes and sizes and varying degrees of repulsiveness, had Jazz grimacing with disgust. She could never have imagined such horror. It was like being in what she always envisioned the pits of hell would look like. Unseelie creatures shuffled about, bellowing, groaning, grunting—some would throw back their heads now and then and howl like rabid animals.
And then Trevor shifted them to the cold stone floor, laying the pile of iron as a circular wall around them. She could see it had taken a great deal of his determination and strength to fight the affects of the iron to accomplish this.
Trevor was in trouble. She could see it. The iron was a deadly poison to the lower-caste Dark Fae, but apparently it had a debilitating affect on Seelie Fae as well. She knew whatever they were going to do next had to be done immediately.
Unseelie everywhere hung back with sounds of horror and began screaming in bellowing terms.
“We need to get the iron into the mouth of the portal …” Trevor said, but his voice was a weak whisper.
The Dark Princes had surrounded the iron-clad circle, but it appeared all of them, including Pestale, were helpless to get inside, as they couldn’t approach the iron.
The odd thing that Jazz noticed at once was that Pestale and his brothers didn’t seem overly interested in trying to get at them.
Trevor was in no condition to shift the iron into the mouth of the portal, but she could. She hadn’t learned the knack of true shifting yet, but she had learned how to jump shift, and the portal was close enough that she could jump shift to it.
She said softly, “I’ve got this, Trev.”
Even as he reached out to stop her, yelling something about a mistake, even as she mentally lifted and jump shifted right smack dab into the middle of the portal’s black, cavernous mouth, she realized something was wrong.
She felt it as she shifted. How could she not have realized in time? That was her, always impulsive, leaping with that damned faith leading and never looking, ‘just in case’.
The iron went flying in different directions but was sucked up into the gooey walls of the portal. She saw the mouth close, and she heard Pestale laugh just before he said, “Now, my brothers! Now, my Morrigu!”
“Nooo,” she heard Trevor yell, and her heart sank.
Her Fae blood had enlarged her brain all right, but
she hadn’t listened to it in time. A trick, her Fae brain told her now.
This had been a diversion.
This was not the portal to Earth but one to another dimension!
And as the swirling black hole consumed her and sent her flying she heard over and over again what Pestale had told his army: “Now …”
~ Nineteen ~
A FIRE-WORLD OF molten lava met her gaze when she was spit out of the portal, and she hovered, looking for a place where she could stand.
There wasn’t any.
Spouts of clay—opening mouths no larger than three or four feet in width—covered the landscape and spit sprays of red, burning puke. These geysers were scattered as far as she could see and spewed their insides at regular intervals. Fire sparks exploded as they burped hot, black, crusted lava. She thought of the geysers at Yellowstone when she looked at them, except this landscape was red, as was the sky above.
Jazz adjusted her inner temperature just as Trevor had taught her, and she remained calm in the face of what could be a horrible death. She had to find a way out of this dimension. Would Trevor find her?
She took a breath, and it burned to the taste. She was in serious trouble.
She said out loud, “Hey, Trev, trouble here—come and get me.” She then tried the mind link and repeated, Hey, Trev … now would be a real good time. Nothing. No response. Was he okay? Oh, please let him be okay. She looked around and added another request: Please let me be okay.
How could Trevor find her when she didn’t know where she was? She needed a Fae GPS system. Good idea; she would talk to him about one.
She felt a moment of panic and calmed herself again. Yup, she was in trouble because she knew he would have no way of knowing into just which dimension the portal had taken her. The iron had neatly shut the portal down.
Right. Well, she couldn’t hang out over these hot mud tubs forever, now could she? She had to do something.
She scanned the horizon and discovered something interesting. Was it a mirage?