by Claudy Conn
It was hard to believe, however, for he is a stunning royal Fae for a Druid priest to compete against. His height—well over six foot. Dark blonde, slicked-back hair frames his oh-so-handsome face. Warrior built, and I do so wish he would see me as more than a child. I am his younger sister’s best friend, and that seemed to disturb him as well.
At any rate, the queen gave us a new mission. She said that we have to find a way to capture the traitor Gaiscioch and strengthen the thinning walls between the worlds of Fae and Man. Easier said than done, but it threw us together—just what I wanted.
I know that he felt something for me when he saved me from Gais just a few months ago. I saw want in his eyes when he looked at me then...
However, there is a new human woman in the mix—part of our mission. I am most distressed. Once more he will work closely with yet another beautiful woman, and this one...this Willow Lang is not what she seems...
~ One ~
MY NAME—WILLOW Lang. So much has happened that you need to know, so I will start at the beginning—but first, I’ll give you some stats.
How I got to the ripe old age of twenty-three and still remained sane is beyond me. Maybe I’m not sane. I have been told that my pale blonde, very thick, very long hair catches the eye. Eyes? Mine are violet. Come on, you say, but yes, they are violet, like the flower. That is an accident of birth—I take no credit for it.
I stand about five foot three in my stocking feet, and I have a really good figure. Now, please don’t think I am being immodest. I am not, because in spite of all that, I know, have always known, I am a freak!
Let me explain.
I should first give you a little history of the Tuatha Dé (the Fae). They came to Ireland before the beginning of history. They are immortal, which means they don’t get sick, they don’t age past their maturity (which generally looks about twenty-eight to thirty years old), and more often than not, they get sadly, dangerously bored. When they get so bored that they are ready to off themselves, they look for really good entertainment.
Apparently to many of the Fae, humans provide that entertainment for them.
So you should know right up front, I am not quite human. My father is Tuatha Dé.
Yep—an alien, ancient race from the World Danu. No Tinker Bells, no flitting about, tiny winged things. The Seelie Fae are tall, bold, and many of them (male and female alike) have been warriors and are built along those lines. All of them are almost too beautiful to look at (especially the members of the Seelie four Royal Houses). Their eyes are iridescent (unless they have taken human Glamour).
Glamour is something they use to disguise the alien in themselves, which can be seen in the iridescence of their eyes.
My mom was human, but a very unusual kind.
I guess my eyes are such a unique shade of violet because of the combination of my dad’s many-colored thing going on in his Fae eyes and the deep blue of my mom’s. At any rate, my dad enjoyed describing how totally, completely, and madly in love with my mom he was. I always knew my mom was even more totally and madly in love with him. They both doted on me.
My mom died when I was ten years old.
Okay, what does all that really mean, you ask? It meant that from the start I never belonged in either world—freak.
I didn’t belong in Tir (the world of the Fae), and although here in Wilmington, North Carolina, was where I lived, where I grew up, I didn’t completely fit in with my peers here either.
In spite of that, we were really a very happy family. It felt like we were always laughing. My dad spent a great deal of his time here with us, and although sometimes he would have to go to Tir on Fae matters, he was content living with us in Wilmington. I was content hiding my Faeness and pretending to be all human.
My dad was what anyone would call a serious hunk. His hair—like mine. His height just over six-foot (like most Fae), and his build athletic. He was a musician on the Isle of Tir and even dabbled a bit down here until he got too much notoriety. (Fae need anonymity amongst humans.)
My mom met him when she was eighteen. Dad doesn’t age, but when a Fae reaches maturity, he usually takes the Glamour of the form closest to what he looks like. He was about ten thousand years old, but he looked about twenty-eight to thirty when they met in Wilmington at a rock concert, fell in love, and were married shortly thereafter. My grandma didn’t like him, by the way—she still doesn’t.
Ten years later, he looked the same, and my mom although still young and beautiful was twenty-eight. He didn’t want her to age. He didn’t want her to grow old without him. He didn’t want to go on living his immortal life without her. Simply put, Dad didn’t want Mom to die a human death.
He had a solution. He petitioned the queen of Fae, Aaibhe, for a very special elixir. She granted him his wish. Dad was ecstatic. He began insisting Mom take the elixir of immortality to stop her aging. After months of his insistence, mom finally agreed, but before she had a chance to do so, she was jogging on her way home to us after her morning run in the park and she was hit by a drunk driver—a drunk driver in the morning...and killed!
For weeks and weeks I felt alone. I had lost my mom whom I adored, and my father was so struck with grief that he was a basket case.
Summer vacation was approaching when Dad suddenly took me by the hand and said we were going to Tir. It wasn’t the first time we had been there together. He had taken my mom and me there for a day or two at a time over the years. The problem with that was their time doesn’t work like ours. A day or two in the world of Fae could be almost two to three weeks on Earth. And there is no figuring it out. It is not an absolute. The time difference varies. Very inconvenient.
Thus, Dad told Grandma we would be back soon and she gave him an unending argument, but off we went. He touched my shoulder, we shifted through space, and there we were on Tir. (Shifting is the Fae’s mode of locomotion. Think of it as parting the airwaves and then stepping through the tunnel it creates.)
The Isle of Tir is multi-faceted. It has a mountain range. It has a beach to rival the Caribbean, it has gardens, and it has fields, piney forests, and lakes of all sizes. Tir is...absolutely breathtakingly, beautiful. Color rivals the rich hues of a Disney cartoon. Everything in Tir is wildly vibrant. Flowers, waterfalls, trees of every imagination, and birds of all kinds sing, spread their beautiful wings, and everywhere you look...you find beauty.
My father is Fae, but he is not royalty. Even so, his wonderful estate was on the edge of a river, and there were animals of every kind roaming around. As a child, I was at first quite content.
I was also getting quite an education. There are many things Fae are taught as they attain their maturity. My father tended to that from the moment I started to walk, but on Tir that summer he put me in a class with other Fae young just about my age.
There are not many Fae young—their ability to reproduce has diminished over time.
Right, so there I was with other Fae young, some older, some younger than I was.
Disaster! I felt like it was the end of my world. They looked at me like I was some kind of freak, and I was dubbed the ‘Faeling’.
You know the story of ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer’. None of the other reindeer would play with Rudolph...and none of the other Fae would play with me. Their words, their actions, and their obvious hatred of what I was made me cry nearly every single day of the first week that I was there.
By the end of the month, my dad noticed that something was really wrong and discovered what was happening to me. He stormed around. He let loose on our teacher (who felt much as the children did about me), and then he took my hand and shifted us home to Wilmington.
Our month on the Isle of Tir had cost me a year in the human world.
I didn’t age in that year, but life had just gone on without me on Earth. And Grandma was fit to be tied. My grandmother was absolutely beside herself with relief to have me back. She knew my secret, and she and I shared another secret as well.
; I don’t know if you have ever heard of a Shee Fios/Shee Seer? It is a human (usually a woman) who can see past the Glamour a Fae uses as a disguise, and a Seer can see past the cloak of invisibility called the Féth Fiada. In addition to that ability, many Seers have the gift of precognition or what some call inspired sight.
Okay, this is a lot to throw at you all at once, but you’ll settle in and get the hang of it as we go along.
Grandma was determined to keep me out of Tir forever. Good—so was I.
Dad asked Grandma to move in with us and be there for me, as he wanted to be able to spend some time in Tir. Without Mom, our world did not hold the lure it once held for him. Now, don’t be thinking he neglected me. He didn’t.
However, a little depression had taken hold of me for a time. My mom was gone. My dad was on Tir, and my dad was Tuatha Dé, a member of another race. I didn’t fit in Tir—where they thought of me as a faeling—and if I wanted to fit in the human world I would always have to hide what I was.
Couldn’t and didn’t confide in my closest friend. She would have thought I was nuts, and Fae don’t want their presence known amongst humans. That was built into me.
At least I could pretend to be a one-hundred-percent-human child and survive, and like most, I survived my childhood.
Dad was always around. He would pop in frequently, spend some time with me, and pop out. Grandma never liked him, and never will, but I adore my dad.
When I was sixteen, Dad wanted me to go back to the Isle of Tir with him, just for my summer vacation. He said he would have me back in time for my senior year of high school. He wanted it so badly that I finally gave in and said okay. I dreaded it.
When we first arrived at our home on Tir, I stuck close to the grounds. On my second day, Dad insisted I accompany him to the palace to listen to him jam with some other musical Fae.
It was there, at the palace, on my second day in Tir, that I saw Valtye. I felt...slammed!
My mind said, Holy shit! I looked at him and felt my world rock. Fireworks went off in my mind. I felt the earth tremble beneath my sandals, and I heard a bell toll. It said very clearly that I was meant for him. I was sixteen, after all.
If he were human he would have been about twenty years old. In Fae years he was about one thousand years old. He was tall and completely tantalizingly well built, and his hair was a copper-tinged gold. I had my first teen crush.
I couldn’t believe it, but he noticed me at once and came right over to take my hand and put it to his sensuous lips as he introduced himself. When he said his name, it felt like the blood in my veins sizzled. My heart pounded out his name—Valtye. Oh, I fell fast...
The next few days found us dancing together at a concert at the open-air music grounds near the palace, and then we went on a picnic.
I had my first kiss during that picnic. Not my first Fae kiss, but my first kiss ever! It was wonderful. It was all any sixteen-year-old could hope her first kiss would be and of course ruined me for any other kisses thereafter.
You know since then I have had other kisses—not an extraordinary number, but my fair share, and unfortunately not a one compared to that first kiss.
Then, one afternoon I was supposed to meet Valtye in the park.
Fae have many abilities. As I mentioned earlier, shifting is how Fae get to place to place quickly. It allows them to instantly travel wherever they wish. Just a bit more advanced than a Beam me up, Scotty. It is mostly science with a touch of magic for concealment.
Because of my Faeness, I can shift, but I have always liked to walk. I don’t shift unless I have to—I always enjoyed exercise, and I have grown accustomed to behaving as human as possible. Fitting in has always been a paramount goal. However, I can do nearly all things Fae. The largest difference between a ‘faeling’ and a Fae is the fact that I am not immortal.
This one afternoon, I had been with my dad all day and was running late. So I decided to shift to the Park. I arrived and thought Valtye wasn’t there yet, so I took a little walk and stopped when I heard his voice on the other side the of shrubbery as he conversed with his friend.
“What, Aonghas—don’t be daft! You can’t think I really care for her? She is a faeling. I am merely amusing myself for a time.”
“It looked like more than that, Valtye. I think you really like the half-breed.”
“Well, I don’t. I don’t give a rat’s ass for her,” Valtye said with so much disgust that I felt my heart actually physically contract. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I made myself listen. I wanted to remember this. I wanted to keep myself from ever being hurt again.
“What then is it?” said Aonghas.
“Well, have you looked at her? She is an exceptional beauty, but it is more than that. She has the passion of a human. That is what I am after. When I am done...then you can try her on for size.”
That was all I needed to hear. I would remember it always, and every single time I do remember it, I cringe.
I shifted to my dad’s house, left a note for my father, and shifted back to Wilmington. I have never been back to Tir since.
The occult is a wild mixture when you add Fae and Druids to the brew!
Dark Love
An excerpt
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable,
Mark Twain
Chapter One
DARKNESS ENVELOPED HER. She strained to peer through the murky night sky. Something was wrong, so wrong. Gloom overshadowed her, she knew it was because of her surroundings. It must be night. And yet, it didn’t have the feel of nighttime.
He was larger than any man had a right to be. It wasn’t just his size, but his aura. He seemed to fill all voids. Who was he?
She couldn’t see his face, she didn’t recognize his voice, but she felt they belonged to each other.
He had wrapped her in his arms. It was where she wanted to be. More than anything she wanted this. His magic and his touch were all consuming. He bent her to meet his lips.
Without warning she was wrenched away. Mist rose around her legs as she crouched in the forest. Fear infiltrated every pore. Danger hunted her…him. Run! Her instincts screamed run!—her inner self whispered something else, something so much more efficient and faster. She didn’t want to think about that because doing that something else would make her feel not quite human.
Shaking off her trance, she chose human and ran. Her lungs labored with her pace. She ran hard, as though her life depended on reaching her goal. Her toes caught on a knotted root. Windmilling her arms out for balance, she fell with a force that knocked the breath out of her.
Gasping, her mouth opened and closed as she tried to force air into her lungs. Her palms stung, wet and raw from the collision with the damp earth. There wasn’t time to consider the pain in her twisted leg. She lurched up and took off again, fear taking over and numbing the pain. For a split second she almost did what she had forbidden herself so many years ago: she almost slipped out of human.
She had to get to the manor. He was there—and in danger. She had to get back to him. She had to see him. She had to know…
Something pulled at her, taking her away. A voice called. Her eyes flew open as she twitched in her seat and attempted to make sense of where she was.
On the plane. I’m on the plane.
Chazma Donnelly’s eyes flashed open and she sat up with a start. She grasped the arm of her aisle seat and a choking, gasping sound escaped. She put her hand to her lips, and hoped she wasn’t drooling.
“Sorry, miss, you were having a nightmare.” The elderly gentleman seated beside her smiled apologetically. “I thought I should wake you.”
“What?” Chaz looked at him and managed a feeble smile as she shook herself awake. “Oh—yes—thanks.” She focused on him a moment. His white hair fell over his round, pinkish face and he reminded her of a sweet grandfatherly figure. “I am so sorry and embarrassed. You must think me a spaz.” She straightened up in the chair and smoothed her
clothing.
A grandfatherly smile accompanied his touch as he patted her arm. She heard him say something about never getting used to these long trips. He spoke softly and continuously in an effort to set her at ease. She only half-listened as she dispensed with what she had begun to think of as her re-run nightmare. She nodded gratefully as she ran her fingers through her blond hair. Get a grip, Chaz. This miserable, terrifying nightly dream wouldn’t let go. It had now followed her into the skies.
Always the same nightmare. Lack of sleep exhausted her. Where was this dark, shadowy manor? She had this feeling that she was running in the dream to find someone important in her life.
Chazma straightened in her seat and looked around. Yup, still in the air and headed for Ireland. She closed her eyes and asked herself for the hundredth time if she was doing the right thing. She had a list of very excellent reasons why she shouldn’t have taken this job.
Top on that list was the fact that her grandmother had urged her to do so. What is up with that? Since when had her grams ever urged her to do anything that would take her away from home? Duh. Never.
She rubbed her eyes, heedless of her eyeliner, and grimaced as she realized she must have smudged what little makeup she wore. Her body still shook.
“Feeling better?” Her elderly neighbor moved in his seat and bent to look her over for visual confirmation.
“Thanks…yes.” Smiling, she touched his arm. “You woke me just in time.”
“Why, what was about to happen?”
“I don’t know, but nothing good.” She tried making light of it with an uneasy laugh as she got up and made her way to the lavatory. She always took an aisle seat when she flew. Easy in and out.
In the lavatory she looked at herself in the mirror. Ugh. Makeup smudged, her long blond hair a tangled mess. And her mouth, oddly swollen—as though she had actually been kissing someone.
Dreams—vivid dreams—had always been a part of her life, but this...this foreboding nightmare was altogether different. It seemed to foreshadow things to come. And now it occurred every time she closed her eyes.