by Shea Balik
Tears of Life
Druid’s Curse 7
Mingus had one true love in life, animals. None of them were off the list, although, if he were completely honest, his favorite was his cat, Pretty Baby. He never imagined one day he might have to put someone else first. Not just anyone, but the man who has stolen his heart.
For centuries Oluf has dreamed of finding the one destined to be his. He’d even anticipated the need to woo him by becoming a chef. After all, according to his mother, the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. What he hadn’t expected was that he would come in second to a cat with sharp claws, who seemed to enjoy using people as her personal scratching post.
As Mingus, Oluf, and their friends get closer to Samhain, the Fae will try to stop them using everything at their disposal. It means finding a way to work together, even if it takes shedding a few Tears of Life to do so. But in the end, will the fate of the human world come down to a cat?
Copyright ©2019 Shea Balik
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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Cover by: Harris Channing
Edited by: Avril Stepowski
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
Druid's Curse Series
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
“You better get your butt down here, Mingus,” his mother shouted up the stairway. “I don’t know what’s coming, but it looks like the entire sky is about to open up.”
The moment they’d seen that stupid white line arc upwards, Mingus and his parents had leapt into action. They’d faced the beasts that came through the Veil five years ago. Only because his father’s magic was able to kill them had they survived and still managed to close the opening to stop any further creatures from coming through.
It had taken them less than an hour after that to pack up all their stuff and move to a small town in upper Michigan, in hopes the Fae wouldn’t find them again. Up until today, that had been the case. Well, it was possible they had known, but they’d never come after them until now.
Diving under his bed, Mingus reached his hand out and grabbed onto the ball of fur where he knew she would be. Claws ripped into his skin, and if he wasn’t wrong, which he doubted he was, teeth embedded into him at the same time.
“Fuck,” he cursed as softly as possible. Shouting wouldn’t help his cause at the moment.
“Mingus Clacher, get your ass down here this instant,” his father’s voice boomed.
Thankfully, Mingus had managed to grab his target by the scruff. Little rivulets of blood were starting to run down his arm from where tiny claws had managed to slice him open as he pulled the furball from under the bed.
“That Veil is opening up and if we aren’t out of here in the next five minutes…” His father didn’t finish that statement but he didn’t have to. Mingus could hear the terror that currently gripped him as they waited for their only child to make their escape.
“I’m coming,” he yelled as he shoved the orange, black, and white fur inside his shirt to keep her safe.
Those damn claws latched onto his skin as she squirmed to get free even as he raced down the stairs to his pacing mother. The moment she saw him, relief seemed to envelope her, but it was short lived.
Spying his slightly bulging shirt, she scowled at him. “Please, tell you didn’t just risk all our lives for that ugly-assed cat?”
“She’s not ugly,” Mingus instantly defended. “And how she looks isn’t her fault, is it Miss Pretty Baby?” he crooned, as he stroked a hand along his shirt, hoping to calm her down enough that she might stop using his chest as her new scratching post.
“Move.” His father’s voice boomed from just outside the house, most likely at the driver’s door of their truck.
Propelling Mingus and his mother into action, they both ran for the front door. He bolted through it right after his mom, but neither one of them made it beyond the front porch as they came to a dead stop.
That bright white line, that started less than fifty yards from their house, and stretched from the ground upward at least five hundred feet into the air, was starting to separate. Mingus was sure even though they lived in a remote part of Michigan’s upper peninsula along Lake Superior, that even the city of Detroit, which was as far from them as possible and still in the same state, could see it.
“Get in the truck,” his father yelled, even as he slid behind the wheel.
Mingus grabbed his mother’s hand and tugged, for she was transfixed by the horrifying sight. There was no way they were getting out of there alive, but if dad wanted to try, Mingus was on board with that.
Gently, yet quickly, Mingus pushed his mother into the passenger’s seat, then dove into the backseat. Even Pretty Baby had stopped moving, other than to shake in fear, as if she sensed something terrible was coming. She probably did. Cats were good at knowing when something was up.
Mingus hadn’t even got his door shut when his father pressed down on the gas pedal hard enough to cause the tires to squeal along their asphalt driveway. Then they lurched forward. Thankfully, Mingus had managed to pull the door shut just as they’d started for he wouldn’t have dared to try and reach for it as his father raced down their long driveway to the main road that would lead them south and into Wisconsin.
But they hadn’t even made it halfway down their driveway when the opening widened enough for them to see what was on the other side. “Oh fuck.” Dread poured from his dad as he looked upward.
Then he pushed down harder upon the gas as if hoping to outrun the army that was standing at the ready to come through. “Where are the monsters?” Mingus asked as he loo
ked from one end to the other of the ever widening gap.
“What?” his father asked.
“Last time, it was those creatures that looked like some mixed up animals, except they could walk on two legs,” Mingus reminded his dad, well, and his mom, but he wasn’t sure she could hear him as her eyes were closed while she quietly prayed. “They aren’t there.”
His dad looked back up at the ever widening hole. “They must be the Seelie.”
Since that day when they were attacked five years ago, all three of them had spent a lot of time researching the Fae. Not the stupid stuff one finds on the internet about Shakespeare’s version of them, but actual accounts from other druids, like them, who’ve either encountered the Fae, or had previous generations that have.
The creatures that his father had managed to fight off the last time were actual pets of the one group of Fae called the Unseelie. They had been referred to as the dark half of the Fae, not because of their looks, but because they tended to add twists to any dealing they had with humans in the past.
As scary as the Unseelie tended to be, they usually let their pets do their fighting for them when it came to humans. There were even some druids who thought humans were too weak to manage to completely close the Veil with their eight yearly rituals. That made the humans not worth the Unseelie’s time.
The Seelie, on the other hand, were the true evil ones. For they pretended to befriend humans when the Fae had first arrived, only to turn the humans into puppets for them to control. They were far more dangerous, for the Seelie didn’t believe in doing anything halfway.
If they were coming for Mingus and his family, there was no way they’d survive the encounter.
“What are we going to do?” he asked, fearing his father’s answer, but still needing to know.
His father’s gray eyes met Mingus’s in the rearview mirror. The defeat was already there for Mingus to see. “We’re going to pray for a Miracle.”
Mingus reached into his shirt and stroked Pretty Baby’s soft, yet somewhat bumpy fur. “How are they coming through now?” Mingus asked. “Lughnasadh isn’t for five more days.”
Lughnasadh was the druid celebration for…well, basically the first of August. In layman’s terms it was beginning of the end of summer. For the temperature would turn soon in the old world, which meant some of the crops needed to be harvested.
It was also Mingus’s birthday. Not that that had anything to do with the druid celebration, but Mingus had always felt a little special. Now, he was downright terrified.
He wasn’t stupid. This birthday would be his twenty-first, which was the same year he’d receive his magic that had been passed through the generations to each druid since the Fae had gifted them with it. The fact that the Fae were coming just before he came into his power had to mean something.
“I don’t know,” his father admitted as his mother continued to murmur the same prayer over and over again.
As much as he would rather tell his father to go faster, Mingus feared that wouldn’t help. Instead, he closed his eyes, took a breath and said, “I think we should go back and perform the ritual.”
The truck swerved a bit as his father glanced over his shoulder at Mingus. “Are you crazy? They will kill us.” His father’s eyes were wide as saucers when he looked back up to the sky. “The Seelie aren’t like the pets, Mingus. My magic isn’t going to kill them.”
He knew that. Mingus had been paying attention to everything he’d read about the Fae and how the druids had been trying to keep them from crossing into the human world for centuries. “I know that. But we also aren’t going to be able to run this time.”
He pointed up to the sky with its gaping hole that appeared big enough to swallow all of Michigan. “The only way we’re going to live through this is if they don’t step through that opening,” he said of the Fae standing there as if waiting for the signal to go to war.
The truck lurched as his father slammed on the brakes. Before it came to a complete stop, he turned the wheel and they skidded across the asphalt. When they stopped, they were facing in the direction of home. Mingus was flung backward against his seat as his father once more pressed hard on the gas pedal.
“We’ll need to do this fast,” his father said. Then his hand reached out for his wife’s. “Are you with us, Elsie?”
Mingus’s mother opened her eyes as she stopped the flow of words that had become a mantra for her since they’d gotten in the truck. She gripped her husband’s hand and nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Mingus had no clue if they would succeed, but he knew, deep in his gut, it was their only chance.
Carefully, he pulled Pretty Baby from where she was now quivering inside his shirt and held her close for another moment. Then he whispered, “I’ve got to go do something that’s too dangerous for you to come with me.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m going to leave you in the truck for safety, my sweet girl, but I swear to you, I will do everything I can to come back for you.”
Then he rolled down his window. No way was he going to leave her trapped inside when he might die that day. At least with the window open, she’d have a chance to climb out and find food and water when everything calmed down again.
“Remember, I love you, Pretty Baby,” he told her.
But the moment his father put on the brakes he started to place her on the floor beside him. By the time they’d come to a stop, she was safety hiding under the seat.
Mingus flung open the door and raced to the woodpile they kept near the place they usually had the bonfire for each of the eight rituals. They didn’t have time to move it. His dad must have realized that too, for they both said, “Lasadh.”
Flames ignited along the woodpile. Never had Mingus been so grateful to have learned that spell in their research. There were a few others, but starting a fire was the only one that was of much use, especially now.
The three of them skidded to halt just before the flickering flames and as one they started the chant that he prayed would save their lives.
CHAPTER 2
“We need to hurry,” Tess said as they flew to Michigan. “They are opening the Veil.”
Pissed that he hadn’t been allowed to just charter a flight last night, Oluf glared daggers at Eirik. “If Mingus dies, I’m blaming you.”
“You’re just grumpy because you didn’t sleep last night,” Arne told him.
“Of course, I didn’t sleep last night,” Oluf exploded. “You’ve all had your chance to find the one you could love for eternity. If Tess is right, this is my chance.” Something he’d been wanting for as long as he could remember. “We knew the Fae would be coming. I don’t get why in the hell we waited.”
A small hand touched his shoulder as Tess had unbuckled her seatbelt and walked over to where Oluf was ready to tear his seat apart as the need to get off this damn plane and help Mingus surged through him. Her unusual violet eyes stared at him with kindness, yet there was something in them that told Oluf she knew what she was doing.
“No,” she told Oluf. “They couldn’t know we were coming. We had to leave at the last minute.”
“Wait,” Eirik said. “Who couldn’t know we were coming?”
“The Fae,” Tess said simply as if that explained everything, which it most definitely didn’t.
Wylie took Tess’s hand and led her back to her seat and placed her in the booster seat they’d brought for her. Then he clipped in the seat belt before asking, “How would they have known we were coming?”
The look Tess gave Wylie was one of patience, as if he were the child and she the adult. “They would have felt our presence when they went to open the Veil and it would have scared them off.”
Oluf frowned as he twisted around to face her. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Then Mingus would have been safe.”
“But they would have gone after Logan,” she replied. “And I don’t know where he is… yet,” she added that last part after a pause. “I couldn’t risk it.” Her g
aze went to Brandr, who sat in the seat across the aisle from Oluf. “I’m sure Brandr would agree.”
Oluf’s friend, and their resident doctor, blinked when he’d heard Tess’s statement. He seemed a bit stunned. “Logan,” Brandr whispered as if trying out the name to see how it sounded on his tongue.
Apparently, he’d approved of the name for Brandr nodded and said, “Tess is right. We can’t sacrifice Logan, especially since we would have no way to warn him or help him.”
As much as Oluf wished he could disagree, he knew it wouldn’t have been right. All eight druids, no matter who they were destined to love, needed to be saved. If this is the way Tess felt it needed to be done, he was willing to go on a little faith. She’d proved herself worthy.
He just wished she wasn’t only five years old. It would help him to trust she did, in fact, know what she was talking about.
“Fine,” Oluf grumbled. “But if they are starting to open up the Veil and we’re still flying, how are we going to get there in time to help?”
She pointed out the window. With everyone paying attention to the conversation, no one had been looking outside. If they had, it would have been impossible to miss the huge white line shooting up from the ground a short distance away.
“Not to worry, Oluf,” Tess told him. “We’re almost there.”
Then, to everyone’s surprise, she once more unbuckled herself from her seat, but instead of going to one of them, she went to the front of the plane. The cockpit door was open since this was a chartered flight. Now that they were more aware of what was happening around them, they could hear the pilot on the radio in a panic about the light forming to their right.
Tess tapped the pilot on the arm until he looked right at her. “What…?” he started to ask, but Tess had climbed up into the copilot’s seat and pointed to the ground.
