by Conn, Claudy
The monster who had once been a man stepped nearer, surveyed her openly, licked his ugly, charred lips, and reached out to touch her arm. She thought she might heave, something Fae just didn’t do …
She must not allow him to see how frightened and uncertain she actually was. She had to treat this situation as a test, a test she had to score one hundred percent on if she were going to make it out of his fortress and back home alive.
She had to bluster. She had to puff herself up and appear more powerful and bring him down a peg, enough to anger him and make him act irrationally and with more fury than skill. She had to draw out the monster in him, for monsters when enraged rarely thought clearly!
“Why? Why have you allowed yourself to dissolve into … what you are?”
“Do ye know how many centuries I have been here alone?” he asked, but she could see he wasn’t really looking for her answer. She kept quiet and went through the planning steps and paces in her mind.
He shook his head. “’Tis why I spelled the Peckering to bring me the first person that touched her—and now I have ye both.”
Royce eyed him and answered caustically, “I’ll bet you didn’t expect to get a powerful Seelie Fae, though, did you?”
“Powerful in many realms, but not so here …”
“You haven’t had enough experience with the Fae to know that. I can see you aren’t sure of your words. There is no conviction in them.”
“If ye were powerful, ye would have already left.”
“Do you think so? Think again. Obviously you didn’t die. How were you put here? Had you no contingency for escape? No … you are not infallible, obviously not all-knowing, for you were trapped here. So I count myself more powerful than you, for I am not trapped here.”
“Are ye not? Why then are ye still here?” He shook his head. “My contingency is to usurp your powers, yer magic, combine it with m’own, and escape this hell.”
“And how could you even begin to do that?”
“By absorbing ye, Seelie Fae, by absorbing ye and all ye that ye are,” he answered on a sly and confident note.
“Fool.” Royce sneered. Now, she thought, now let’s tickle that monster temper he must surely have. Let’s play with his convictions. “I am not just a Fae, but a princess of the House of Nimrough. Do you actually believe I can be overpowered and, what did you say, absorbed?” She snickered at him.
She was correct. His ego could not take the injury. He stepped forward, his dark features contorting with anger, and then he stopped himself as though aware of what she was trying to do.
A tremor shook her when he grinned, it was so damned wicked, and then she was filled with revulsion as he leered at her. Malevolence throbbed and pulsated all from his body and into the air around them.
“The House of Nimrough, eh? As though that would mean anything to me. Doona think that will help ye, woman. It was yer queen that imprisoned me, but not before I spelled the Peckering and put it where the Fae should not have found it. Ye Fae doona know how to find yer own artifacts … so it’s wondering I am how ye managed it. Was it by accident?”
Right then, she thought; she had not known that the queen had imprisoned him. That was a good thing. If royal magic had been used to create this terrible hellhole for him, then royal magic could be used to get her out. Right? Well, yes, in theory, she told herself, but then the queen’s royal magic was above all others.
“You don’t know anything about Fae power and certainly less about royal Fae power. I found the Peckering—and not by accident. Think what else I can do.” She stalled for time. “And now I think I will leave you to whatever you do here …”
“Ah, but that would be rude, and besides, ye canna leave here at will. What enters this dimension, stays …” He laughed insanely.
As she stood her ground she began silently chanting. She had to call on black magic and demand it recognize and submit to her white Fae magic; she had that power as a Royal. Then she stopped, stunned, as the Fallen Druid morphed into something else.
Mesmerized, frozen with shock, she watched him grow into a hideous beast nearly twelve feet tall. Saliva—green and festering—drooled from his mouth, and red heat glowed from his eyes.
Fear took a swipe at Royce, but she immediately beat it off. She was a Royal Fae—she couldn’t allow fear to enter the mix.
She stared at him as his voice reverberated off the walls. “It has been a long time since I have eaten anything so delectable …”
Time to run, she told herself. “Peckering—out, get us out of here!”
The Peckering immediately obliged, but once outside there was nowhere to hide.
She pressed herself flat against the stone fortress and tried silently chanting again. She had to break through the black magic the Fallen Druid had threaded into this world. She had to get through to the queen’s white spell. What she needed was time—time to figure out which ancient words would work.
Trouble, she thought again. I am in so much trouble.
“Okay … are you still under his command?” she asked the Peckering, who was still in her tight fist.
“No, Princess,” she answered. “His last spell was fulfilled, and now I am yours until the queen recalls me.”
“Then help me get back to MacBathe,” Royce whispered.
“Magic works differently here. I don’t know how to take you to the present. I can, perhaps, get us through to another time …”
“I don’t understand. Why can’t we just go the way we came? You are supposed to be so powerful.”
“So I am, but I was in his keeping when the queen created this dimension as a prison for the Fallen Druid. She was afraid he might be able to recall me to himself here, and so she made it next to impossible for him to use me in this dimension to get out.”
Damn, that made awful sense. Now what? He was Druid no longer; he was a monster—a black sorcerer and a monster. Somehow, she told herself, she had to get the hell out of Monster City!
She didn’t want to exhaust whatever powers she still had, so she hurriedly tore off a piece of her cotton shirt and made a makeshift sling for the Peckering at her waist without the use of magic. Instead, she used it to call to her Death Sword, but it did not appear. It seemed she would need more magic to call it to herself in this awful place.
She would need it against the big rats and whatever other things were out there. She racked her brain looking for the power to find her way to a white magic that would work in this realm.
Hatred, fury, and recognizable frustration bellowed in the air.
A roaring sound such as she had never heard before came at her as the beast raged after its prey. Right, she was his prey. Any minute and he would find her at the back of the building.
She could hear his heavy footsteps as he tore around his fortress after her. She didn’t want to jump shift and land in the middle of the giant rats, so she used her Fae super-speed to keep constantly ahead of him.
All the while she tried to break through the black magic’s barrier. And then, the rats came into view. Damn, she thought, any minute now and they would see her. She would be trapped between the giant rats and … him!
And if that weren’t enough, her vision shifted and saw that wasn’t all that was out there with her.
Another creature raised its hoary tentacles and, with dinner obviously on its mind, began galloping in her direction.
“This is so not good,” she told the Peckering. “It has fangs … and its fangs are dripping with something foul-smelling that I can smell from here … and, Peckering, it has a lot of eyes … oh by Danu … so many eyes …”
Four rats looked up, saw the creature charging, and must have realized a meal awaited the one who got to Royce first. The rats screeched wildly, as they stood and clawed the air. They appeared hungry and notably willing to take a chance that they could get a piece of her if they got to her first.
Royce saw the drama unfold as something caught in her throat, and she searched her mind for the thing she n
eeded to help her out of this deadly situation. Stress, she thought. This is what humans suffer …
Royce was not a warrior by nature. She didn’t like fighting, but now was not the time, she told herself, to be squeamish. She was going to have to put her training to the test, because this thing was going to be on her any minute.
She formulated a new plan. Would it work? She didn’t have the answer to that, but she knew it was better than nothing.
She stood her ground and waited. She was not immortal in this realm. She could die, if she made an ill step. She thought of her human friends who faced danger, sickness, and accidents, and her admiration for them as a whole was renewed.
Right then—so she could be eaten. She had never really contemplated death before. She had never had any reason to in the past.
Rats had gathered into a force, but the monster creature spotted them and bellowed out a growl that made them hesitate as a group.
Some stood on their butts and clawed the air defiantly at the thing that had stopped to throw its head around in fury, as though to tell them the meal was his and his alone.
They, however, were hungry enough to defy it and didn’t seem to be backing down as they started towards Royce again.
The creature’s head was fitted with many horns of different shapes, all ugly, Royce thought as she studied it. Its skin looked weathered and aged, but what was really eye catching were the spikes on its tail.
Long, spiked tail, much like a giant crocodile’s tail except for the many spikes. It stopped and pounded the clay earth every now and then as though to claim anything in its path, and then it charged again.
It caught one of the smaller rats and devoured it. Royce’s eyes opened wide, and she said out loud, “Okay … one appetizer down.” Would it slow it down? Would it try and eat more rats and forget about her? Were rats its normal diet?
Perhaps this would give her the diversion she needed.
Spikes shot through the air, taking Royce once again by surprise, but they weren’t aimed at her. Those spikes were headed for the rats! Okay, so whether it usually ate rats or not, it appeared the creature was determined on stopping anything else from eating her first …
Agonized screeching, baying, and hissing filled the air. Horrified, Royce gasped as she tried to think. Many of the spikes had speared only the earth, but more than a few had speared giant rats.
One by one, the rats fell over. Dead, they must be dead. They looked dead, and their blood was pouring out of their wounds. Were the spikes poisonous? Why didn’t the rats know that? No time to contemplate their brain capacity, because now the monster was turning back towards her. Its black tongue came out of its mouth, a mouth which when opened displayed many rows of sharp teeth.
Royce stepped back as she watched it lick the air.
With a bellow of superiority it charged at her full speed, and she was sure she felt the earth tremble.
It was larger than a tank, and damn if on top of everything else not being enough, the ugly thing was breathing fire!
* * *
“Chancemont—what the hell just happened? Where is the wee princess?” his lordship MacBathe exclaimed as he looked at the Milesian and Trevor for an answer.
Chance didn’t have one, but bloody hell, he thought, he was damned if he wasn’t going to find one and right quick.
It had to have something to do with the Seelie Hallow. It must have been spelled. That was the only conclusion he could come up with that made any sense. He put out his hands and closed his eyes as he sought further information from the scent left behind in the air.
A small hole still remained in the atmosphere, and he worked it, called on his inner powers to widen it and keep it open.
Long ago, when the Milesians were still partially human—not immortals as they had become over time and generations, leaders amongst their clans had been skilled with Light Magic and used it in many forms. His father and he were the last of those men …
When the Tuatha Dé Danaan’s (Fae) Danu was destroyed, particles had exploded and scattered over the Earth, but for some inexplicable reason an extremely large deposit was found in Chance’s village. They used it, fertilized their soil with it, made their mead with it, breathed it in, and passed it down through the generations.
The day arrived when they realized their plan had worked. They had absorbed Fae powers through the Danu dust they had been breathing and from the crops they had eaten. They knew they were immortal and magical. It was then that they decided to take back their beloved Ireland and Scotland from the Fae.
They had over the years before this watched the Fae and learned their spells, watched their style with shifting and learned a few other abilities quite by accident.
They were a determined breed.
Determination to maintain the portal that had taken his princess drove Chance. He chanted the ancient spell he knew so well, and a swirl of dark mist appeared.
He turned and grinned at his friend MacBathe. “Aye then … I’ll have her back in no time!”
Trevor, however, was not being left behind and jumped through the portal after him. Chance grinned and laughed heartily as they were spit through the dark abyss.
Chance parted the atmosphere as they stepped through and said quietly, “The air is thick here—too thick … have to adjust our breathing …”
“Aye … but what is this place?”
“Not sure, but it has the scent of Fae … Seelie Fae …” Chance frowned as he looked around himself.
Trevor took a long whiff, and his eyebrows went up with his surprise. “My queen was here—centuries ago.”
“Aye, but she didn’t create the black magic surrounding everything—och no, Trev, that would be m’old friend who did that.”
“The Fallen Druid,” said Trev.
“Aye then … but that isn’t the only thing we need to worry about, lad. We are mortal in this dimension.”
“What?” Trevor shouted and then lowered his voice. “How do you know?”
“I feel it,” Chance said, pounding his chest, “in here—doona ye feel it?”
“Yes, I do feel different, hell and by Danu. Let’s get Red and get out of here!”
Chance grinned, and they began walking towards a shadowy building in the distance. A huge stone fortress came fully into view, and Chance studied it as they walked. “No windows—what sort of place is that?”
“A prison,” said Trevor.
And then they heard a roaring growl and turned sideways to see Royce a few hundred feet away, standing very still.
Coming at her was a beast from hell. With his Death Sword up, Chance tried shifting but got nothing. With a full-throttled war cry he met the monster’s sound of fury as he charged towards her, full force, only to suddenly pull up short.
He knew he would never get there in time. She was going to be trampled by the beast—why dinna she move out of the way? What was she doing?
There was only one thing he could do. He had to get the big ugly’s attention. He jumped up and down and swung his sword like a madman. He screamed and hollered curses at the beast and attempted to divert its attention.
Would he catch its glance? Would he get its attention? Damn and bloody hell, how many eyes did it have? His taunting went on, with Trevor joining in as loudly and as conspicuously as they knew how.
“Come on … ye big stupid … come for me … I’m bigger … more for you to eat … two of us … here!” He waved his hands towards Trevor, who pulled a face at him.
The beast stopped in mid-lunge and for a moment looked confused before it turned back towards its original goal. Royce.
“Noooooo,” Chance yelled and started towards her once more.
* * *
Royce felt him before she saw them.
It was as though a light lit in her brain and a soft whisper traveled through her body and said his name. Chance.
She didn’t question it; she just turned her head, and there he was, with Trevor just off to his left.
This was not what she wanted.
She didn’t want him rushing in to save her and getting killed. He wouldn’t even know he was mortal in this prison realm. He would take more chances than he should.
She could tell when he realized he wouldn’t reach her in time. He started shouting and jumping and raging for the beast to notice him.
Royce felt a wave of emotion.
Chancemont LeBlanc was so very brave. And then her body, still trembling with fear in spite of what she planned to do, went into overdrive as all concern for herself shifted and became centered on him.
Somehow she had to keep the beast focused on her. She tried linking into its stupid brain and hoped her silent command, Come and get me, would get through.
A few long, hard strides brought her closer to one huge (ugh!), hairy dead rat. A spike that had missed its mark lay at the dead rat’s claws.
She picked it up. She might be mortal, she told herself, but she still had Fae strength. She tucked the Peckering, which she had unsheathed from its sling, into her jeans and examined the spike. It was about twelve inches long and an inch thick. It was also heavy. She could see poison still dripping (confirming her earlier suspicion) from its pointed end and kept that away from her skin—just in case.
Taking aim, she hurled it at the beast, but the damn thing fell short. She grimaced to herself, but it had managed to catch the beast’s attention. He clawed at the dry, cracked earth and began his charge for her once more.
She held her breath and made herself stand her ground.
She had to wait for the last moment.
The very last moment.
The beast was once again fully concentrating on her as it thundered towards her, Chance and Trevor momentarily forgotten.
That’s right, she told it, I’m the appetizer … me first.
It was nearly on her. In another second it would chomp down on her if she wasn’t precise. At the very last moment she pulled out the Peckering and said, “Peckering—now!”
The Peckering jumped shifted Royce onto the beast’s wide, horned, many-eyed head. She straddled its huge leathery neck, held tight to one of its horns, and shouted once more, this time to herself, “Now or never …” With that she plunged the Peckering Dagger of Dark and Light into one of the eyes on its forehead. And then she jump shifted well out of its way!
