Obviously, Theodosius knew what was happening to him, and the cause, and decided to end his misery.
"Ironic, isn't it?" Epsi said, as she walked into the basement room at the college with Guber. The team was supposed to show up in another hour to begin dismantling all the equipment. "Death by chocolate for the queen, as well as for her murderer."
"Kind of cosmic, poetic justice, if you really think about it." He snapped his fingers and the strips of blue-tinted light came on across the ceiling. "This is gonna take forever to dismantle." He gestured at the shelves full of equipment, silent and dark now.
"Yeah." She decided there was something sad about all those screens without any movement on them, no blinking lights, no statistics scrolling across the ceiling, counting down all the Fae still being monitored and those who had been taken off the suspect list. "I really liked working with you. Wish it didn't have to end."
"Doesn't have to." He looked up at the ceiling and scraped the toe of his sneaker across the floor.
She wondered for a moment what he was doing. Then it occurred to her that he was doing a bad imitation of a little boy trying not to look guilty.
Which made her wonder what he was guilty of.
"What do you mean, it doesn't have to? Like, work with you? Go into security work?" Epsi thought maybe she could like that. Not the security work exactly, but she'd put up with a lot worse to be able to spend every day with Guber. He wouldn't be an all-work-and-no-play bureaucrat, like a lot of other Fae men who had grown up a little too much for her taste. Even three centuries from now, he would still be an off-beat, overgrown little boy playing Star Trek and watching really badly done special effects British science fiction TV shows.
"Nah, not security." He met her gaze for two seconds, and blushed so hard that a red plaid haze covered him from the top of his head to nearly his waist. "Just...with me. Together. Y'know?"
"Yeah. I know. Like...a lifetime?" Her voice cracked and broke, because she had never thought she would use that word in relation to a Fae man. They were just so immature, even the eight hundred-year-old ones. Human males, even those touched with Fae magic, were a whole lot more mature, reliable, but still stayed fun.
"Sorry. Lifetime has been cancelled," a voice rasped from the ceiling.
Which started to move downward toward them.
The racks and racks of shelving stopped the ceiling before it lowered more than two feet.
"Smooth move, Ex-Lax," Guber chortled.
"And that's exactly why we have to put an end to this hereditary throne!" the same voice roared, making the monitors and other equipment rattle. With a flash of blue and green and yellow sparks, four Fae popped into the room.
"Y'know that water cannon game at the county fairs?" Guber said, as he grabbed Epsi's arm and led her in a hasty, backwards retreat to the storage room at the far end of the basement.
"Yeah," she lied. Epsi called up the quick-access addendum of the Ether Lexicon. In four steps, she had an image of what he referred to. She nearly laughed, wondering if he was thinking specifically about the open mouths on the clown faces.
"Flight is useless," the leader of the four Erasers growled. The walls shimmered through several sour-tinted shades of yellow and green, revealing a bubble now enclosed the room, sealing them all in.
"Hope you're a good shot. We want to get the flower all the way to the top of the pole." Guber ducked into the storage room and came out two seconds later, carrying enormous super-soakers, and put one into Epsi's hands.
"Resistance is futile," their enemy shouted, his voice about fifty decibels louder. He was probably peeved that Guber ignored him.
"Yeah, yeah. I will be assimilated. Blah de blah blah. I know the drill. Didn't you learn anything when the Borg went up against the Federation?"
Epsi muffled a giggle at Guber's reference to the half-machine aliens on Star Trek. Then she laughed aloud when the four Erasers paused, confusion momentarily wiping away the grim determination on their scowling faces.
"Now, baby!" Guber shouted, and pulled the battery-operated trigger on his super-soaker.
A brown stream shot out, and Epsi realized in that split second before she followed his lead, that had to be pure carob. The man was a seriously warped, demented genius.
He hit the leader of the Erasers while his mouth was open, just like shooting a stream of water into the clown's mouth to make the flower rise to the top of the pole to get the prize at the county fair games booth. Epsi went for the woman next to the leader, whose mouth dropped open even more in shock at the brown stream hitting him in the face. The other two behind them let out shouts--and a heartbeat later, Guber and Epsi, in perfect teamwork, shifted their streams of carob to them and their open mouths.
The intra-dimensional intruder alert went off, lights streaming through the spectrum and alarms whooping. Epsi giggled when Darth Vader announced, "I feel a disturbance in the Force," at a volume loud enough to make the floor and ceiling tiles rattle. That was a Guber addition, definitely.
All four Erasers were thrashing on the floor in brown puddles, scratching and choking and wailing as they vainly struggled to clear their faces, when the newly created Purple Blood Protection Detail Special Forces team arrived. They were accompanied by a HAZ-MAT team that was still undergoing training in handling carob.
Guber put his arm around Epsi and they retreated to a clean corner of the room, to watch and wait until the authorities had cleaned up the mess.
"Are we gonna have to put up with that kind of trouble for the rest of our lives?" she mused.
"Yeah, probably. Or at least until they get a new Administrator King or Queen elected who can push through that legislation to rewrite the royal genetic code." He waved his free hand, opened up a dimensional pocket, and brought out two frosty cans of diet cherry cola. "Until then, I'm gonna be rich from all the royalties on those carob cannons I'm designing and selling. Correction." He popped the tops on the cans with flickers of light. Epsi rather hoped it was so that he wouldn't have to remove his arm from around her waist. "We will be rich. Because you're part of this."
"I just suggested automatic machines to shoot the liquid carob. I didn't say anything about cannons or how to do it," she protested.
"Yeah, well, that's teamwork. I kinda like it, y'know?"
Was it her imagination, or did his arm tighten around her, and did he lean a little closer?
"Yeah, I do, too." Was that her voice, getting husky and low? Epsi had never thought she could sound like that.
Guber certainly seemed to like it.
"Maybe... I don't know... You want to go steady?"
"Steady?"
"It's basically the Human equivalent of courtship." His voice cracked and he leaned close enough she thought his nose would touch hers in a moment more. Which would be fine, quite frankly, because she had been thinking about ambushing him with another kiss, and that put him in close proximity for it.
"Courtship?" Epsi's eyes got wide and filled with sparks as her face heated and her blushing tinted the air in strobing shades of hot pink and lavender. "As in...?"
Guber could only nod, blushing so hard his face was green and the color began seeping into his hair.
"Eventually marrying?" she finished on a whisper.
He nodded again, and sparks shot off his ear tips.
"Yes!" Epsi tossed aside her can of cola and threw herself at him. Which wasn't very far.
Guber stood up, and the force of her impact against him had them tumbling head over heels across the room. A defensive bubble encased them, keeping them from hitting anything hard--another of Guber's patented designs that was sure to keep him rich. Guber and Epsi kissed and tumbled through the air, shooting off sparks that acted like jets that kept them tumbling, bobbing gently up and down.
"So, like, did you say yes?" Guber gasped.
Epsi kissed him again. He was smart enough to figure out what she meant.
END
About the Author
Michelle has been a story addict for as long as she can remember, discovering Narnia and Star Trek at an early age, and becoming addicted to Greek mythology. After discovering fandom in college, she published 40+ short stories in various universes including Star Trek, Highlander, and Stargate SG-1. This launched her writing career, eventually creating her own universes instead of playing in someone else's.
She has a BA in theater/English from Northwestern College and a MA in communication, focused on film and writing from Regent University. She continues to write and submit scripts for various screenwriting competitions.
In 1990, she broke into the public market when she won 1st place in the 4th quarter of the Writers of the Future contest, earning prize money, royalty money, and publication in that year's anthology. It took another 10 years before her first book contract, for Heir of Faxinor. Since then, Michelle has published 40+ books and novellas with multiple e-publishers, in science fiction and fantasy, YA, and many sub-genres of romance. She has been a finalist in the EPIC Awards competition multiple times, winning with Lorien in 2006, and The Meruk Episodes, 1-5, in 2010, and has garnered 4s and 5s from many review sites.
Her training includes the Institute for Children's Literature; 8+ years in advertising; 10 years at a community newspaper; and freelance editing for small presses and a major business publisher.
In 2008, she launched her own freelance editing business, offering proofreading as well as light or in-depth editing services on an hourly basis. Check her Web site: www.Mlevigne.com and click on the red pen to learn more.
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Uncial Press brings you extraordinary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Put a world of reading in your pocket.
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