Through Time-Slamming

by Conn, Claudy

  Trevor shifted to a quieter spot and demanded, “Orb of Lugh, show me my mate, Jazmine Decker.”

  He received a very good picture of her hanging from the clutches of a huge and prehistoric raptor bird.

  He closed his eyes. Pestale would pay for this. He knew of only one dimension that housed this particular species, and he shifted there at once.

  He arrived in the prehistoric dimension, and hovered in the air, looking around for the dinosaur bird of prey. Though he saw many, something felt wrong. For one thing he and Jazmine had bonded, yet he could not feel her when he reached out to her. He tried calling her with their mind link. Nothing.

  He asked the Orb again, “Show me my mate.”

  Once again, it displayed a raptor bird much like the ones flying nearby, with Jazmine dangling from its claws. He watched as she vanished from the giant bird’s talons and saw that she had jump shifted into the air, and hovered face to face with a giant anaconda.

  He felt anxious for a moment, and then saw she managed to lift up higher hovering well beyond the snake’s reach. However, a moment later, down swooped the Pterodactyl which caught her up again before it climbed high and still higher in the air. Trevor watched helpless as the bird flew with her, knowing she was too high to jump shift to the ground. She needed more confidence, more training. She needed…damn, bloody damn… she needed him.

  A moment later the bird was at its nest where its young eyasses reached to eat what their parent had just dropped their way—his mate.

  Trevor gasped as he watched with some relief as his Jazmine Decker jump shifted and then the Orb clouded over again. “Show me!” he growled, but the Orb sighed and did not clear.

  “Right then, she was whole and relatively safe, or at least using her wits and her new skills to stay as safe as she could be. “Somewhere in this dimension, but where?” he asked out loud, and then looked around, “Where are you sweet Fios—where?”

  Something about the lay of the land was all wrong—it didn’t feel as though he was in the right dimension. Although the Lugh Orb is not as powerful as the Orb of Time he asked, “Am I in the right place?”

  The Orb blinked by shading itself once, and showed him the very spot he occupied. He was in the right place. He was, but where the hell was she then?

  Chapter Two

  A HUMAN SCREAM resonated out of Jazmine Decker’s mouth. She didn’t even know she was screaming as she dropped towards the Pterodactyl’s open beaks!

  She knew that she wasn’t quite human any longer, but her mind went human on her as she fell towards the large mouth of one of the babies.

  Her new Fae blood kicked in and took over instinctively however, as she shifted this time, it wasn’t a jump shift but an honest to goodness Fae shift.

  She knew immediately that she had actually shifted a distance.

  She stepped out onto solid ground, as though her Fae blood had triggered a map in her mind and located a safe haven for her.

  She stood there and caught her breath.

  She looked around in awe because she stood at the precipice of a cliff on a very high mountain.

  She was on a slab of flat rock that protruded out about twenty feet by only five foot wide. As she looked down to the ravine below she murmured, ”Whoa”.

  She stepped back, took a look around and headed for the safety of the grassy slope of earth at the side of the mountain whose rock walls reached toward the sky—straight up to its peak.

  Wild and tropical vegetation filled the gaps in the rock wall before her. Lush green bushes and palms were scattered along the earth where she stood. Steam and heat engulfed her surroundings, which were so completely at odds with the world she had just shifted away from.

  Further down the ravine she could see molten lava pits spurting out their insides and with a heavy sigh, she plopped onto the grass and put her head into her hands.

  “Trevor, find me baby, find me,” she whispered to him, as she surveyed her surroundings. She scrambled to her feet once more as she realized what lay behind her. A cave!

  “Huh?” she murmured brushing herself off, as she went forward to inspect this new find.

  So it works, she thought, just like Trevor said. A Fae thinks of where he needs to go…and bam, he shifts there. Earlier, when she was plummeting from the flying dinosaur’s talons, she thought what she needed was a cave to hide out in and wham, here was the cave.

  How could she know there was a cave in this God-forsaken realm?

  She didn’t know how it worked, but she was damn glad it had. What she needed was a few moments to get control of herself and figure out what she could do to get Trevor to hear her. He had to hear her and come for her.

  An answer was there, somewhere in her altered brain, a brain that was now as much Fae as it was human. In fact, probably more Fae, than human.

  “Okay,” she said out loud, “This is good.”

  Trevor had taught her how she could use the elements. She had only been able to nearly master the simplest of tasks. He had said her skills would improve with time. The Fae blood now surging through her and making her strong in ways she never could have imagined, would eventually replace all trace of human blood. He had said the most difficult thing to overcome would be her human characteristics as they were embedded in her psyche.

  One of the things she had enjoyed was discovering she had the power of what she as a human would have called telekinesis. This was in actuality Trevor had said, a science of mind and body and the power to use the elements.

  He had begun her training in this science, though she thought of it as magic. She told him she would always think of it as magic.

  For the moment, she didn’t need to transport anything with her mind. There were things she could use laying around the mountain ledge.

  She picked up a long branch from a nearby tall tree, tore off a piece of her top, and laughed as she looked at herself. She looked like a castaway grimacing ruefully, because in essence that was what she was.

  She wrapped the cloth around some dried grass she gathered and then picked up some pine bark. The Fae in her kept telling her she didn’t need all of this. She had a link to the elements and could create fire with a thought, but her human side needed something to keep her busy.

  Once her torch was ready, she sighed and resigned herself to do what only the Fae in her could do. She concentrated on one vision; fire. Just like that she had a working torch. She couldn’t help but grin but then she faced the dark beckoning mouth of the cave.

  The entrance to the cave was angled and partially hidden by a jutting rock. The cave’s mouth narrowed as she went in deeper. The light from the torch allowed her to see two passages.

  She worked the torch into the dirt to stand it up and looked around. She needed time to figure out what she was going to do to help herself get out of this situation. She had learned a valuable lesson, if it looked too easy, it was. Pestale had not seemed too unconcerned when they found him opening a portal. She should have known it was a ruse. He wouldn’t do that to her again. She had to come to grips with what she was becoming, and used the skills that were newly hers, but hers all the same.

  She was fairly certain the shape and size of the entrance wouldn’t allow larger predators to stick their grubby claws inside and get to her.

  Sighing with a certain amount of resignation, and extremely wary, she looked down at the forked trails and realized something else. She could see in the dark.

  Not as well as during the day, but so much better than a human. She left the torch at her back and moved towards the joint of the two trails and contemplated them.

  Something could come at her from either of these trails, something her size, for the corridors at least at this end, wouldn’t allow for anything, or anyone larger.

  There would be no sleeping here, but did she need sleep?

  And was she doing the right thing—hiding out like this?

  Would Trev still be able to find her if she stayed in this cave?

&n
bsp; What if the cave was lined with iron? Would he like Superman? Would iron be his Kryptonite? She had seen what happened to him when he handled iron. It had sapped him of his strength and even caused him severe pain.

  His senses would be affected and he would not be able to find her. Now she was imagining things. There was no reason to believe this cave was coated in iron.

  She was going to have to get herself together and venture out into this realm and use the Fae skills he had trained her to use if she was going to stay alive long enough for him to find her. Stay alive. She was becoming Fae. Could dinosaurs eat Fae?

  That was something she didn’t want to chance.

  She continued to explore deeper into one of the narrow avenues. It seemed dry which surprised her as she had always thought that caves were not only dark and slimy, but damp as well.

  The ground was solid. The low and rocky ceiling was smooth, just like the walls. The entire cave looked like it had been carved out with a file.

  The path she had taken seemed to be headed downward.

  At that moment she decided that was where the exploring would have to end.

  She returned to the torch lit area and realized she had forgotten an important fact. She was Fios, still a Fios and that part of her wasn’t human either. The combined force of her Fios and her Fae blood should be formidable when it had matured.

  One of her Fios skills was the ability to enact shields to protect herself. Well, she rolled her eyes, why hadn’t you thought of that sooner?

  Nothing human or non-human could get past her shields for it was Fios and Fae Magic weaved and interlocked. She put a shield in place between her and the two paths leading deeper into the cave, and then another at the mouth. There, she thought with some satisfaction.

  Now, she would take a moment and plot out what she needed to do next to get back to Trevor.

  She sank down onto the earth and thought if only she had a bed of at least some palm fronds--and the next thing she new, she did.

  Okay, okay, think it and if it is within range, you shall have it, Trevor had said. Food…like bananas, do they have bananas here?

  The next thing she knew at least ten pounds of bananas lay on the fronds beside her. She was starving and stuffed her face for a moment before she put down a half eaten banana and said softly, “What are you doing Jazmine Decker? We need to get home, so think, no eating, just thinking.”

  But as hard as she tried, even her Fae mental faculties had nothing yet to suggest.

  Chapter Three

  THE DARK PRINCES, Pestale, Hordly, and Graely, with Morrigu beside them, and countless monsters of every Unseelie Caste at their backs, stood in the heavily membraned inner closure of the portal, momentarily trapped.

  They were damned uncomfortable in the sticky pulsating tunnel of living tissue. The inner walls began to make a roaring sound that was deafening in its force. Its floor of goo vibrated and shook, and it was obvious it wanted to spit them out and be done with them.

  Eventually, even the Queen would not be able to keep its entrance to the human world shut down. Eventually, it would spit them out one by one if it had to. It would not tolerate their presence much longer and could not send them back into their own realm due to the gravity pull of the Human Realm. Once called on to open, it could only open into the World where its receptacle had been prepared.

  All portals were not the same.

  This one was amongst the strongest of the largest portals.

  This one had its own rules, because not only was it ancient, but it was a living thing with specific needs and at that moment its need was to complete its purpose.

  Its purpose? To be a portal, to transfer other living beings from one realm to another. Even if the Seelie Queen demanded otherwise, it could not obey her much longer. even if it wished to

  Pestale envisioned the immediate future as he stood with his army at his back.

  He knew that his arrival in the human world be so unlike the Seelie Fae’s arrival in that world.

  The Seelie Fae had arrived in Ireland in a mist, with no thought to destroy. He, on the other hand, meant to destroy any that opposed him. He knew how he would look with his brutal, bloodthirsty forces of grotesque beings at his back. He knew the terror he would inspire.

  Oddly enough, that was only a means to his end. A means he would not thoroughly enjoy, like Morrigu and Hordly. Eventually he would curtail the destruction of humans—eventually.

  But now his army was hungry, and they would need to feed before they did anything else, and feed he would allow. Chaos is what he needed before he brought order.

  They would come without the disguise of invisibility, without human Glamour. He wanted humans to cower and cringe before they sank to their knees in supplication. Their guns would be useless, as would their bomb dropping planes. His magic would redirect their firepower back to them.

  They would fall, helpless and willing, begging subjects and then he and his family—his family, he liked the sound of that in his mind, would march on the Isle of Tir and take the Seelie world for themselves. He saw his future as glorious and it spurred him on.

  He wished he and his brothers, his dear Morrigu, were about to enter Killarney where the Royals stood waiting to cut them down. He wished he could have faced Danté and Chancemont and watched their faces as he marched on the villagers and allowed his hungry army to feed.

  Wisdom however, had guided him.

  Right now the last thing he wanted was a battle. He had a better plan. As much as he would have liked to engage, it would not have served his greater purpose.

  He was going to take the easier road. He was going to surprise them.

  He had created a fork in the membrane. He had infused a false portal with dark magic, and now it was time to abandon it and leave through the Monoliths that had been there waiting to receive him for eons. Stonehenge!

  The foolish humans had argued that the stones were set for funerals and sacrifice. Idiots. They were and always had been Fae Portals.

  The stones had been used by the Fae for transporting to and fro from Tir, long before the final battle, before ‘shifting’ was so widely incorporated into their travels.

  Stonehenge was one of their greatest Portals.

  He almost laughed out loud to think they were waiting in Killarney. He had fostered that belief, but Killarney was only beloved by Gaiscioch, not by him. While the Royals centered all their magical and quite powerful strengths on closing the entrance at the Middle Lake, he would march out somewhere else entirely, and they would have no idea where.

  Pestale knew his plan was brilliant, and because he was patient, he stalled the Royals just a bit longer, letting them believe they would be victorious, before he led his army down the other living tunnel with its magical living walls. They were about to enter Earth without even having to raise a sword—but when they did raise their swords, they would make the Human Realm their own.

  Their time was upon them.

  The Dark Royals arrived in the twilight of evening among the stones of Stonehenge.

  Their appearance was not through a light mist, as the Fae had arrived from Danu. They came in a burst of thunderclouds at their back, with swirling shades of darkness, followed by small bursts of flames.

  Theirs was not a warm greeting to the humans they encountered. Their faces were drawn with purpose, their power pulsating off their bodies. Pestale a foot ahead of his brothers and Morrigu, led them with the confident smirk of a man who has attained what he believed was always his right.

  And thus, they walked forward, like dark Gods, brilliant, exquisite to look upon, frightening in their dark leather fitted coats which flapped around their ankles in the visible swirling mass at their backs. They walked forward with the force of each of their pounding steps reverberating with an echo that could be heard for miles.

  At their backs was the horrific sight of monsters, indescribable, drooling with a desire to feed, hungry with need, anxious for the command to attack.
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br />   His two brothers were on his left, his Morrigu with her black hair flying in the wind was on his right, and Pestale felt the victory engulf him with pleasure. It was so forceful that he had a moment when he nearly climaxed sexually, but controlled himself. They were here. Unhampered and victorious, they were here!

  Black glittering eyes surveyed the tourists who all as a unit had stopped their meandering about on the Stonehenge mound and stared transfixed.

  Pestale saw their expressions. They thought perhaps this was a movie production. He could, in fact, hear them murmuring this to one another.

  He knew and understood the picture they presented to the curious humans who stopped and watched them. He knew they presented a powerful, exotic, beautiful image as long as they did not look past him to his army. He had no hatred for humans, as Gaiscioch did. He meant in the end to rule them benignly…in the end. However, one must do what one must do to achieve that end he told himself.

  And then came the moment when he heard their gasps as the humans saw what followed him and his clan. They saw the abominations at his back.

  The tourists began looking to one another, and he heard someone say, ‘come on—it has to be a movie set, what else could it be?’

  Pestale sneered. Humans were great fools. They never saw the truth, only what was more comfortable to believe. Pompous idiots to think they were the only ones who inhabited the Universe.

  He put up his hand to stop the noise of the Unseelie excitement at his back. He had made a decision. It would be wise to allow his army to feed—and he motioned first to his Green Babblers to do so.

  Green Babblers use their power to scream a pitch that will kill humans. They are horrendous to look at, with distorted lizard faces, and several eyes splashed throughout. Their bodies were human-like in shape if one discounted the fact that their chest cavity would open and allow a Venus fly trap mouth to emerge and feed.