Find Me: Faeries Lost

by Grace Brannigan

Chapter Two

  Pandimora shifted on the truck seat, stifling a groan as movement stirred pain like hot flames, licking the inside of her skin. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to push away the memories as heavy energy rushed at her like smoky residue. Her chest felt tight, uncomfortable. She feared what lurked out there, rushing after her, trying to take her back. As her heart pumped the blood wildly through her, her body told her it was dying. Her conscious mind was aware of the internal breakdown of her body and she had to force herself to remain upright in the seat.

  Drew's shoulder and arm next to her felt solid. She had never been so intimately close to a human before. She had seen Drew from a distance his entire life, but after their childhood, they had never spoken, never touched. She could feel the anger emanating from him. Her shoulders slumped. It had not been the right thing to do, to try to get him to go faster. She felt foolish, but fear had overtaken her, so now she sat tensely, trying to slow her breathing and the panic winding through her.

  Even in her fear, her faerie senses remained sharp. She heard the steady, strangely reassuring beat of his heart, felt the blood coursing strongly through his veins. As they continued down the road, she looked back. Surely even the elder would be slowed down by the earth's density and this storm. That was in their favor.

  "We won't get far if we can't hide," she muttered, but knew she was too weak to create even a temporary masking dimension to hide them.

  "I don't see anyone behind us," Drew said, glancing at her, then back at the road.

  Pandimora feared Lukais could find them no matter how fast they drove. Despair settled on her shoulders and she began to shake. Had she escaped his wrath only to die on the earth dimension? And what about Drew? She had also endangered him!

  "I'll do my best to protect you," she said now.

  He looked at her, one dark blond eyebrow raised. Distracted, Pandimora studied the attractive face next to her, the square jaw, deep set brown eyes. Something inside her chest fluttered.

  "Level with me," he said, his voice no nonsense. "Tell me what's really going on."

  Pandimora stared at Drew, biting her lip. He might well die for his efforts. He had no understanding what he was up against.

  "It's faerie magic." She felt nauseous, even though her stomach was empty. Her entire body ached as the insidious poison seeped into every cell. Lukais had poisoned her. The black poison from beneath the earth's dimension. She gritted her teeth.

  Faeries did not normally feel the cold in the earth realm, but now she felt chilled down to her faerie bones. She wanted to close her eyes, but feared she could lapse into an everlasting coma and her immortality would slowly and surely be sapped away.

  "I swear your eyes looked like cat eyes when I shined the flashlight earlier. How did you do that?"

  "I am a faerie." She shrugged at the disbelief emanating from him.

  "Can you see in the dark?"

  She nodded, trying to keep her head upright. She had the urge to curl into a ball.

  "When I first saw your burns you looked at death's door, but now the burns appear to have healed. Either it's a good makeup job or you heal faster than anyone I've ever seen. Are you really sick?"

  Pandimora felt tired, wishing he had not been dragged into this. "I was poisoned. I am not okay." Faeries didn't lie.

  "How did you get poisoned?"

  "His dark tentacles wrapped around me."

  "Those black strips," he muttered.

  "Where I entered your dimension lies a healing sanctuary. Right now it's my only hope." Pandimora felt the raw heat emanating from his body. "The elder is more powerful than anything your world knows," she said abruptly.

  "Do we have any chance of making it to Dell's Bridge?"

  "I'm not sure." She hesitated. "Lukais may stop at nothing to silence me."

  "What did you do to piss him off?"

  "I eavesdropped on a private conversation." She swallowed. "I heard him making plans to restrict all worlds' access to the universe's natural resources. We have so much in Aisywel and yet he is greedy for more." She shivered when she thought of the full extent of the elder's plans. "He will use the crystal power to create even more havoc in the earth's atmosphere, with destructive, irreversible results. It will affect the food supply of nations already starving. How can I hear this and allow it to happen? The faerie he struck down disagreed with him and was equally horrified."

  "That's a pretty incredible story," Drew said. "It almost sounds like a science fiction movie."

  "It's the truth." She wasn't sure if he believed her.

  "I might be able to erect a temporary barrier to protect us," she said now, hesitantly. "But I would need your help."

  "What do you want me to do?" She heard the wariness in his voice. He didn't believe her but she would do her best to protect him.

  She chewed her lip. "I've never done this with a human, but my sister and I have many times created a protective barrier when we came to this dimension. I am very weak, but if we share energy, I might be able to create a temporary invisibility. Please stop the vehicle. I don't know how this energy exchange might affect you."

  She heard his sigh. "Really?"

  She nodded earnestly.

  Drew drove the truck to the side of the road and turned to her.

  Taking his hands in hers, Pandimora held them firmly, trying to concentrate on igniting a flare of energy between them. Drew's hands were large in comparison to hers, slightly rough and calloused. She opened her eyes, looked down where their hands were joined. A few thin strings of blue light curled around their fingers.

  "What is that?" he asked.

  She leaned back against the seat, releasing his hands. "It's not enough. I'm too weak."

  "When you grabbed my wrist earlier I saw the same blue lights. Is that what you mean? How does that even happen?"

  "If I felt well, I would build a bubble of energy around us by using the heat of our skin surfaces. The molecules in the air spaces would vibrate and that would shield us, at least temporarily, from the elder. I thought that perhaps with your strength and vigor, I could compensate my energy for yours and create the same effect." In her agitation she had trouble catching her breath.

  "Relax," he said. "Take slow breaths. You only held my palms. What if we connected more skin surface -- would that make a difference?"

  Pandimora nodded, trying to calm herself. "It might, and the storm aids us by creating a heavy atmospheric shield of sorts, but we have to hurry. Take my hands again, then slide your palms up to my elbows and I will do the same to you."

  After a slight hesitation, Drew did as she instructed, his slightly calloused fingertips moving from her hands to her wrist and then up her arm under the lightweight sleeves of her blouse. A shiver coursed through her, jumping under her skin. Even in her weakness, she was strangely affected by the touch of his fingers against her skin.

  Pandimora pushed at his more tightly woven sleeves. "I need you to push your shirt sleeves up so our skin makes direct contact," she said.

  Drew leaned forward, pulled his sweatshirt off and was left with his t-shirt, which clung to his body. Pandimora's mouth went dry. There were no faeries like Drew. His t-shirt outlined a chest hard with muscle, a few tufts of dark blond hair at the top of the shirt. Trolls were the only ones she knew in the world of the fae with hair on their torsos and she'd never found herself attracted in the least to trolls. Was it because she'd watched him from afar, curious about this human?

  She looked up and caught his eyes giving her a similar perusal. Her breasts tingled. She shivered in the warm cab, a sensuous heat moving through her. There was no embarrassment. Faeries never experienced such an emotion in relation to themselves. No matter what shape their bodies took, they were a perfect creation.

  She needed to focus. "We must hurry," she muttered. "We need to create enough heat for there to be a significant rise in temperature, which will build the energy between us and therefore the shield."

  She gripped the
muscled contour of his arms as he firmly gripped her arms at the elbow. Pandimora closed her eyes and envisioned the energy building between them, felt her own state of flux, her body system in partial shutdown, then she felt his pulse increase, heard his breathing grow deeper. Suddenly, she felt an increasing warmth. Drew's energy. His life force. It was working. Even from behind her closed lids, she could see that bright strings of light snapped and crackled around them, transforming the inside of the truck to a bright blue halo of light. She held onto him with her limited strength, his energy filling and reviving her to a degree, winding through her as they merged into one. The mingled energy rose to a deep, uplifting crescendo, affecting them down to the cellular level, reaction coursing through nerve endings almost to the point of physical pleasure. With difficulty, she pulled away and gently disengaged contact. Drew jerked back against the seat.

  Her flesh wanted to remain close to him; she had actually begun to crave the contact. She felt confused by such a reaction to a human. Pandimora felt the shudder that went through him, saw his jaw clench, and she knew he'd been similarly affected by their contact. She had heard stories of the intensity of sensory circuits when lovemaking occurred between a human and faerie, and this brief experience made her even more curious.

  She called upon her boosted energy reserves to erect a temporary veil of protection around them, also incorporating the increasing intensity of the weather into the shield. Finally, when she knew she'd done all she could, she moved back from Drew. He carefully pulled his jacket back over her shoulders. Her breasts felt incredibly sensitive, almost burning, but there was no time to explore the implications of what this might mean.

  "We are masked -- for now," she said on a ragged breath. "A small protection." She met his eyes. "Drive as fast as you dare to this Dell's Bridge." She swallowed. "I promise not to interfere in your driving of this vehicle."

  Drew cleared his throat, moving on the seat uncomfortably, but remained silent as he turned his attention to driving and they moved quickly down the road.

  "Can you go faster?" she fretted, staring straight ahead. "As soon as we arrive, you must leave. You might be able to avoid danger."

  His large hands gripped the wheel. "I'm not leaving you out there in the road."

  "There will be someone there," she said quietly. "However, if we don't get there before the elder the decision may be taken from us."

  "I don't understand any of this, Pandimora. What just happened? It looked like electricity arcing around us." He gripped the wheel. "At least tell me what you expect to find out there."

  "Faeries who can help."

  "Faeries," he muttered.

  "Yes, in a special healing sanctuary. In Aisywel, I witnessed an elder strike down another faerie. Unlike humans, faeries are immortal. However, in rare instances a faerie can be sent away as punishment. Being immortal, they would live out their days away from our faerie realms. It is a terrible thing and as far as I was aware, has only happened rarely in faerie history. When the elder discovered I'd been listening and saw everything, he tried to mind wash me so I would forget. But I remembered! I fled." A deep ache twisted inside. "I should have stayed and tried to alert the elder high council and also find my sister, but I ran away."

  Surprisingly, he reached for her hand. Pandimora liked the feeling of his hand engulfing her own. "Does your sister know what's happened?" he asked.

  "I don't know. I hope her ignorance will provide protection." With difficulty, she drew in a deep breath. Her chest hurt. "At Dell's Bridge there is a portal to a healing realm. I can get well and go back for my sister."

  "There's a healing realm out there in the middle of nowhere?" His voice sounded skeptical. He didn't believe her. "Why out there?"

  "The area has a unique geology of quartz and magnetic lodestone and in combination with the sulfur springs, it is a vortex of spiraling energies that exists through many dimensions. There are few places in any of the worlds that offer such a unique blend of energy."

  "How will you be safe if the elder comes after you?"

  "The healing realm is a dimension removed from Aisywel and therefore somewhat hidden. It is the only safe place. There is no other choice."

  "How will you get into this place if the elder is waiting?"

  She knew he was right. The elder could outpace her and always be one step ahead. How could she really hide?

  As they moved through the night, Pandimora saw the reflection of her white face in the mirror. Guilt weighed on her. She had abandoned her sister and now Drew was in danger.

  She pressed a hand to her head. Maybe none of this was happening as she'd thought. The pain in her head and shoulder made it hard to concentrate. Even though the wounds appeared to have healed on the outside, she could feel the tendrils of poison working inside.

  She had to remain strong in her convictions, remember who she was ... remember what had happened.

  She could still feel the intensity of the raw energy she and Drew had exchanged. His human scent felt stronger all around her in the vehicle, and it was on her skin also. She had to force herself not to lean heavily into him again. In these modern times such an energy exchange with a human was forbidden because as time went on their worlds grew further apart. She had known Drew a long time, but sadly it was not unusual for humans to forget the faeries they used to know as children. Human memory at times had its own cloaking device, shielding humans from memories that might prove overwhelming or too fantastic for them to believe. She had known Drew and his brother since they were young boys. She and her sister had played with them all one summer.

  She hugged her arms around herself. The more time he spent with her, the more she endangered him.

  Pandimora bit her lips on a groan as needles of pain sliced her. Pain was foreign to faeries, but she had observed enough humans in pain to know it for what it was. It wound around each cell, infiltrating her entire body.

  Drew threw her a glance. "We're almost there."

  Her vision seemed to be failing and she feared her body was shutting down.

  And what if these were her last moments? It was possible she could die from the evil poisoning her body and not even the healing sanctuary could make her well. Lukais's magic could prove stronger than her immortality.

  She would never see Drew again. Her breath caught in sadness. Knowing this would be her last contact with him, Pandimora reached up and gently touched the back of her hand to his hard jaw with its soft growth of stubble. He was a human, but she was fond of him as she thought of the memories of their summer together.

  "I'm sorry you've become involved in this," she said softly.

  Drew looked at her, his handsome face expressing concern. "We're here," he said gruffly, and stopped the vehicle in the middle of the road. The wind seemed to pick up in ferocity as it rocked the large vehicle."There's nothing here," he said flatly, looking out the window.

  Pandimora opened the truck door.

  "Wait!" he said. "You have bare feet --"

  She evaded his hand and quickly slid off the seat to the snowy road. "The portal." A gentle blue and gold glow hung suspended in the air. The activated portal. Drew hurried to her side, putting an arm around her waist as she swayed.

  "No one's here," he said louder as the wind whipped them.

  She pointed to the faint glow, not sure if he could see it in the swirling snow. The wind stilled for a moment and the arm around her tensed.

  "Geez," he muttered. "Geez." Disbelief on his face.

  "There's a dark cloud or something coming," he said grimly, staring over his shoulder into the darkness.

  "Your realm is dense and that has worked to our advantage. Drew, there is no way to show my deep thanks, but you must go!"

  The portal flickered and snapped as if the energy flow had been interrupted. As she stepped toward it a little man suddenly leapt from the portal and rolled onto the snowy ground beside them. He jumped to his feet.

  "Finally!" he yelled, grabbing her arm. "Hurry! I
can't hold the energy much longer."

  Pandimora recognized his light energy as belonging to her world.

  "You're the guy in the road!" Drew exclaimed. "Let go of her." He held her back.

  "It's okay," Pandimora said, trying to step away from him.

  The faerie tugged her forward, his energy all encompassing and no match for a human's. Pandimora entered the portal with Drew still holding on to her.

  "No!" shouted the other man, but it was too late.

  All three of them were sucked into the portal.