by Conn, Claudy
“Red is what I have called Princess Royce since childhood—because of her flame-colored hair. We are very different, she and I, but also the best of friends, and Red is anything but cold-blooded.”
She eyed him. “A childhood friend? I never thought of Fae as ever being children.”
He ignored her and said, “What you need to know, Jazmine Decker, is that we were taken through a time portal. Pestale, the eldest Dark Prince of the remaining three Dark Princes, did this not so long ago when he meant to take over both the Seelie Fae Realm and the Human Realm. We, of course, defeated him, but against my wishes he was allowed to live.” Trevor paused as he gritted his teeth and composed himself to add, “See now what comes of it?”
“I’m with you on that. Never let your enemies live to come back at you one day.” She frowned and then asked, “Right, okay, if he escaped, why did he try to get into the present if he meant to come here to 1816? That doesn’t make sense.”
“No doubt something went wrong in his calculations. Opening the portal from the Dark Realm is not easily done.”
“Well, this time I hope you intend to finish him off. This playing with portals and time is so not good …” Jazz said irritably as she looked around. She was venting; she needed to vent. She really wasn’t sure that she wasn’t just hallucinating. It would be so much better if she were having some kind of fantasy...
“Indeed, perhaps you are more intelligent than I had at first assumed.” He put up his hand to stall her when her finger came up and pointed at him, and he hurriedly added, “Obviously, he meant to travel to our present time but miscalculated and was sent into the past. We were taken with him, as the portal must have encompassed a larger area than he anticipated, and anything living was sucked in with him. I am certain he is still working on a way to get to our time, which we must counter at all costs.”
“WE? There is no we trying to stop a Dark Prince. There is you trying to stop a Dark Prince and me trying to get home.”
He shrugged. “You are here and perhaps capable of distracting him while I take him down. You might prove useful in this manner.”
For a moment, Jazz was sure she felt steam rise in her head and exit her ears. “I might prove useful?” She poked him in the chest and said, “I want to get home, so I am hanging with you. Big ol’ period to that!”
“In order to get home, we must first capture him and discover how it is he got here.”
“You are a Royal Seelie. If he can time travel, why can’t you?”
“Time travel was something we once were able to do. Something went wrong some years ago with the curvature, probably because somewhere along the line someone did something in the past they should not have. Now time travel eludes even the Fae. I am certain the Dark Prince did not wish to time travel but wished only to enter the Human Realm.”
“Yeah, well, here we are, so now what?” Jazz pulled a face and started pacing. What was she going to do? Her senior group would be waiting for her to guide them first thing in the morning. This would mean no tips, and she needed that extra money to see her though the summer.
“Indeed, Jazmine Decker, here we are,” he said and went into deep thought.
She waited a few moments and then nudged him to ask, “I repeat, now what?”
“We find him—Pestale, who must be responsible for this anomaly—and return him to the Dark Realm where he belongs, and hopefully we’ll find a way back to our time.”
“Hopefully? That is all you can give me? Hopefully?” Jazz was beginning to worry, really worry. She was so going to be oh so fired!
As an answer, he took her hand, and before she knew what he was doing, they did what she had heard all her life Fae did to get from one place to another in a matter of seconds: they shifted.
* * *
Once again, and this time more comfortably, she was traveling with a Royal Fae, her hand clasped in his large, strong one. Only this time, it was nothing like the black hole that had earlier swallowed, battered, and parted them. This form of travel, while momentarily disorienting to her, was over quickly, taking only a second or two, and she found his hold oddly assuaging to her frazzled nerves.
Man, she thought, this sure didn’t feel like a dream or a nightmare; it felt real.
A moment later, they stood in the middle of a busy avenue as pony carts laden with supplies, riders on horseback, and elegant coaches traveled past them. The dust drifted upwards, and she coughed. Oh yeah, so real.
He pulled her out of the way of an oncoming carriage. Once they were both on the curbing, he stood for a moment looking around. “We are protected by the Féth Fiada. We cannot been seen by humans.”
“We—meaning, I’m invisible as well?”
“Yes, as long as you are near me.”
“How near?” She eyed him doubtfully.
He grinned, reminding her of an adorable, naughty boy. She banished this thought. “Right, okay, so now what?” she asked again.
“Now what, now what? You don’t have to keep repeating the same question. Be content that I am working on a solution to our problem.”
All at once, she realized that one of the things that seemed to travel through her mind, soothing and intriguing her, was his accent. He had an accent, one she could not quite place. Something of an Irish lilt, but something else as well. She couldn’t name it, for it was nothing familiar, but it was incredibly beautiful. And his voice was masculine and full of confidence. Absurdly, she felt safe with him, sure he would get her home.
Lost in these thoughts, she jumped when his voice echoed loudly in her ear.
“Aha! His scent is fresh!” he pronounced with a sneer. “We have tracked him to earth.”
She looked in the direction his strong chin pointed and saw a lovely Tudor-styled inn at the edge of town. “Tracked him to earth? You make it sound as though he is an animal.”
“His actions have made him little else,” replied Trevor on a hard note. Then she felt herself pulled speedily along, felt that same ‘shifting’ rush, before finding herself standing on level ground, this time in front of the inn. She looked his way and stared wide-eyed as he sniffed the air.
He was sniffing the air. Like, holy cow, so her mother had been right. They did use sense of smell to track. She knew they were capable of incredible feats of tracking, but she couldn’t believe it was through sense of smell. So, then, he was tracking this horrible Dark Prince? She swallowed. This meant they would soon come face to face with him. Oh-oh, that was fine for him … Royal Fae, there. Mere mortal, here.
She then studied the ring of tattoos on his huge bicep, and as she looked him up and down, she admitted once again to herself that in spite of his arrogance, he was one fine-looking male! Oh, was he ever. She frowned, silently berating herself for giving in even for a moment to such a thought.
A puzzled expression took over his face, and he said, “You frown a great deal, Jazmine Decker.”
“I have good reason,” she answered, still frowning.
He laughed, and she discovered that his smile was absolutely mesmerizing, as was the sound of his laughter. How could he be so coldly overbearing one moment and so incredibly sexy-boyish the next?
She said, “Look, I have to find a way to get back. I have people in our time waiting for me, depending on me—what will they think? I have a job to do, and, well, how will I ever explain this?”
“I am sorry for your problem, but if Pestale is here, then here is where I must be to do my job, and doing that, you must see, will also be the solution to hopefully get you back in time to do yours.” He said, “Now, before we go inside the inn, you must tell me just what you are, Jazmine Decker, for we both know you are quite a bit more than human.”
She realized she wasn’t afraid of him any longer. For one thing, she had remembered the Treaty: Fae were prohibited from causing any permanent injury to humans. She sighed, for she knew the Treaty didn’t stop them from playing their pranks, but it did prohibit them from doing more than that. In additi
on, her inner self told her this Royal would consider it beneath him to bother playing planks on her. He seemed sincere about returning her to her life, but would he still do that if he knew what she was?
Should she just tell him that she was a seer? He would guess it in the end. She opened her mouth but instead of telling him said, “I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you!”
“No, that is correct. You would be dead,” he answered pragmatically. “Now, if we could get back to my question. What, Jazmine Decker, are you?”
“Listen here, Royal. I am a tour guide, and very soon, this fall in fact, I will be a marine biologist at the Charleston Aquarium, and … oh, never mind.” A sudden urge to cry tickled her throat.
“Yes, but that is not what I am asking,” he said, displaying something close to a temper, which surprised her. She had been raised to believe the Fae were an alien race, superior mentally and thus coldly detached and unemotional. His constant change of facial and body language disputed that old theory and gave her pause. She would have to rethink this later.
Her reticence had obviously annoyed him, and her brows went up as he shouted, “Now, tell me not who you are, or what you do, but WHAT YOU ARE!” Clearly he had lost patience as he hovered threateningly.
“Rude!” she declared as her own temper came to the fore. She had been hauled off to another time by forces out of her control, and he was treating her with anything but compassion. Out of frustration she hauled off and kicked him in the shins, and then she gasped at her audacity.
Pain did not register on his face, but she was certain from his slight flinch that he had felt some. Then he put a finger in her face and warned, “Do that again, and you will be sorrier than you ever dreamed possible. Now, back to my question before I lose interest and leave you here to fend for yourself.”
She hesitated, and then said, bending her neck back slightly so she could look up and meet his gaze, “You must first promise not to take me as a prisoner to Faery.”
“Why would I do such a thing?” he asked incredulously.
“Because it is what the Seelie Fae have always done.”
“What are you talking about, Jazmine Decker?”
“I am a Fios, as was my mother before me and her mother before her and so on.” She saw his expression of dawning understanding, and a shiver of dread went through her.
He slapped his forehead. “Indeed, why did I not realize immediately? Absurd creature. We have not carried off anyone to our Isles of Tir since the Treaty was signed. If you are a Fios, why do you not know that?”
“We are raised to be cautious,” she answered.
“I should have known. A Fios … I am acquainted with a Fios. My brother had some interest in her awhile back.” He frowned at her and added, “You are very different than BJ, who is a very talented Fios. You do not seem as talented as she.”
She put her hands on her hips. “How do you know? You haven’t seen me in action.”
“True,” he said on a laugh. He bent towards her, wrapped an arm around her, and held her close. “I look forward to that—seeing you in action, Fios.”
She felt herself blush, but he was already straightening up and telling her, “Very well then, we have no time for this. We must track this fresh scent and see what we may find.”
“Why wouldn’t he disguise his scent?” she asked. “I mean if he is a Dark Royal, doesn’t he have Dark Magic? My mother said Fae are capable of disguising, concealing, themselves from one another.”
“Not exactly true, but, yes, for short periods of time even the Unseelie, at least the Royals, can conceal their scent, but he doesn’t know we are here, does he?”
“Right.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t know we were sucked into the portal.” She sighed and then frowned once more to ask, “Why didn’t you immediately realize I was a Fios?”
“Your scent misled me. As I said, BJ, who is a part of our ragtag team, and I have an acquaintance. We fought the Unseelie together not so very long ago. Her scent is very different than yours.” He bent, took a long whiff, and mumbled softly, “Very different.”
She stepped back and said sharply, “Hey! Well as to that, early in the Fios history, way back in the day before the Treaty, we seers found a way to disguise our scent from the Fae. A different genetic formula for each of our family lines so that Fae could not pick up on any one common link.”
He considered her with a thoughtful gaze and said, “Very well then, more than human, not immortal, and with only limited powers.”
She wanted to kick him in the shins again but controlled herself and said, “Tell me more about the Dark Prince.”
“You know all you need to know. He is deadly. He is without moral compunction of any sort. He wants out of the Dark Realm so he can rule the universe and will do anything to accomplish that final goal. Get in his way, and you will die.”
“Dontcha worry, bud. I am not about to get in his way.” Jazz’s tone added weight to her words.
He glanced at her as he went suddenly very still, and then before she could utter a word, he took her hand in his and they were traveling once more, shifting through what she thought of as a ‘wormhole’ until they touched down inside the old inn.
“He is in that room at the end of the hall. His scent is very strong here, but careful, Jazmine Decker. Do remember that if you truly are human with only a tad more, you had better stay behind me when we enter his room!”
“Are you telling me we are going in there—face to face with the Dark Prince?” Terror touched Jazz’s tone.
“Aye, he has a human female, and from the scent of it he has already gone too far with her. She won’t live many more days.” So saying, and ignoring her protests, he held her up against himself and shifted.
~ Three ~
SHE WOULD NEVER, she immediately knew, forget what met her gaze in that suite of rooms.
Trevor stood by her side, though he immediately shoved her behind him. She peeked around his massive back, simply because she could not believe what she’d seen.
A hot-looking, muscular, and erotically feral male, wildly handsome with glittering black eyes, looked around. He was just too beautiful to be evil, she thought.
The Unseelie Prince clearly knew they were there but chose to ignore them, as though they were mere insects; his attention was all for the woman he was manipulating on his bed.
Everything about the Dark Prince pulsated with sexual aura, and even though Jazz was immune to his Lianhan, she felt its pull, and that pull was strongly magnetic. She felt a certain wetness between her thighs and silently called herself to order, but he was vibrating with sex, and she couldn’t deny that even her Fios was not totally immune. She was able to resist, but she felt the power.
Hot dayam! Her mind exploded with sexual tension. His Unseelie sensually erotic spell over a human would be every bit as dangerous as that of a Seelie Fae’s Lianhan, which addicted humans to sex and sent them into a downward spiral, unable to do anything other than seek sexual gratification. A human subjected to the Fae Lianhan would not eat or drink and would doze only briefly, waking and immediately needing, wanting, thinking only of getting more sex; the afflicted human would eventually die in this state of constant desire.
Jazz could feel his sensual, hypnotic vibrations travel through the airwaves and stroke her. That aura wrapped itself around her body in a way that made her immediately feel lust from her toes to her nipples. Oh yeah, she was able to resist, but she felt its might course through her and tickle all her sensory nerves.
She hurriedly decided to increase her immunity with the shield she had discovered was hers some years ago, and she silently chanted the spell to put it in place. Not all Fios were blessed with this gift, and though she had never had to use it before, she was certainly glad she had it now. Whew! A cool waft of air swept over her at once.
She was still able to sense the hot vibrations surrounding him, but her shield kept her from reacting at all.
Everything that ha
ppened next seemed to take place in slow motion.
She was locked in a scene with a primal, savage Fae. His vibes didn’t read at all like Trevor’s. Everything about the Unseelie was dark and menacing. Everything about him was cold, unfeeling, and murderous.
She was sure he didn’t need to use his Lianhan to get women to fall at his feet. She was sure women would succumb to him without it, for he radiated a sexual promise of gratification, and yet, knowing in advance he was killing them, he chose to use the Lianhan.
It occurred to her that Trevor had never tried to subdue her with the Lianhan, even though she knew he had the power and could have tried. Score one for the Seelie Royal.
It was all surreal, and it was all happening in the blink of an eye. She watched the Dark Royal on the bed, on his knees, like she was watching a porno film. She snapped herself together. It was as though she had been trapped in some kind of trance.
The Dark Prince turned at this juncture, his hands still stroking the woman he was using. It was impossible to look anywhere else but at this incredibly beautiful, tattooed, magical and yet cold blooded being.
He sneered at them as she took in the spectacle. He was naked but for the silver torque around his neck.
Even as she tried to avert her gaze, she could not help but take in the vision of his huge cock as he shoved it into the mouth of a very willing and naked young woman. He grinned, tauntingly, as though he owned the world, before his voice thundered at them, “How dare you intrude on me!” He had slowed mid-movement as he spoke. Then he glared at them both and said on a sneer, “Ah, Seelie Royalty, eh?”
His stare was charcoal black, frigid; without wanting to, Jazz found herself stepping behind Trevor even more. She peeped out from behind his bare and enormous back simply because fear made her want to know just what was happening, but fear also made her want to close her eyes and make believe she wasn’t there.
Suddenly she realized that the Dark Prince was concentrating his gaze on the little he could see of her behind Trevor. Too late, she realized he had locked his glance with hers. Yup, they were on lock-down gazing! Those eyes of his took on a red glint, and he said on a low-throttled and sensual note, “Ah … a beauty. Come, human, join us.”
