Blood of Half Gods (18 page)

“Xandra, snap out of it.  You have to get out of here.  These walls were safe before the shaking started.”

“How did you know I was here?” I ask, getting to my feet, steadying myself with a hand against the rumbling wall”

“I was following you.  I was able to get into the hole with you before it closed.  Kallen wasn’t able to.  Then, this whole enchantment thing started and somehow, I was blocked out of it.  All I could do was wait.  I couldn’t get back out of the hole to go for help, and I couldn’t get through the enchantment to you.”  Her voice sounds sad and embarrassed now.

“It’s okay, Nixie.  I appreciate that you tried.  And that you’re here now.  You’re a good friend.”

“Thank you,” she says, sounding a little cheerier.  Until a beam in the ceiling cracks loudly.  “Um, Xandra, I can probably survive a cave in, but I’m pretty sure your body can’t.”

She’s right, of course.  Closing my eyes, I let the memories flood my mind.  It’s like I was given a sedative that’s starting to wear off, and the images are coming faster and faster.  Quickly, I latch on to two.  One, I can teleport.  Two, I know where Kallen is.  So, I teleport to Kallen.

Chapter 15

I hit the bed with a thump.  Not my most graceful landing.  But, the landing isn’t nearly as bad as the screaming.  For a middle aged woman, Giant, whatever, Breena does a really good imitation of a little girl when she screams.  You know, that high pitched, I have fingernails on a chalkboard beat by a mile, screeching that makes you wish your ears would bleed to help block out some of the sound.  Even putting my hands over my ears, it’s still like scream talons latching on to my psyche, trying to rip it apart.  My broken leg wasn’t this bad.

So, I do the most logical thing.  I pull magic and take away her voice.  Of course, that freaks her out even more.  Her eyes get huge; she puts a hand to her throat.  If she had a cross and a torch, I think she’d be thrusting them towards me right about now. 

“Calm down,” Nixie tells her.  Nixie had latched on to me so I could teleport her out of the mine shaft as well.

Maybe Nixie didn’t get the memo on Giants fearing spirits.  Knowing her, though, it’s more likely she doesn’t care that she just made Breena faint.  At least I can give her her voice back.  I’m about to say something to Nixie for scaring her, but pounding footsteps in the hall pull my attention away from her.

The door is thrown open and Dagda, with Radella hot on his trail, runs into the room, magic ready to be used against whomever made Breena scream bloody murder.  He stops when he sees me.  For a second, I think he’s going to faint, too.  He doesn’t.  He does something worse.  He snatches me off the bed and pulls me into a bear hug of mammoth proportions.  Not only do I
not
think our relationship has progressed to hugging of any kind, I also can’t breathe.  He seems to realize at least one of those things, because he lets me go. 

With his hand on my shoulders, he steps back and looks me over.  “Are you okay?  Are you injured?”

I shake my head.  “Not anymore.  Where’s Kallen?”

Relief floods his face as he drops his hands.  “He is trying to find you.  He hasn’t slept in two days.  He’s practically started his own war against the Giants, for he believes they were responsible for your disappearance.  It has taken all of my power to keep him in check, so he doesn’t tear the entire outback apart looking for you.”

Huh, it really has been two days.  I’d be freaking out if I was Kallen, too.  “Where is he now?”

“He is searching where you disappeared again with Kegan.”

“Did the Giants have anything to do with my disappearance?” I ask, dying to get to Kallen and relieve his worry, but wanting to be a little better armed with information before leaving the house.

Dagda grimaces as he starts to pace the room.  “Quinn believes so.  He is sure that Ellu somehow arranged for your abduction.”

“Do you think he’s right?”

He sighs.  “It is looking that way.  Ellu is a raving lunatic.  He refused to see me at first, so I had to show him that he had no choice whether he received me or not.” Not sure I want him to explain that.  “I questioned him thoroughly, and he claimed not to have any knowledge of you, let alone where you were, but there is something not right about him.  I am not ruling out the possibility he is responsible.  Now, I think it’s time for you to answer some questions.  Where have you been?”

“I’ll explain everything after I find Kallen.  Hopefully, I’ll be right back,” I say, right before teleporting back out of the room.  I’m really going to like this whole instantly moving from place to place thing.  It also could make me very, very lazy.  The next time no one’s trying to kill me, I should think about an exercise routine.

I imagine the spot around where I fell into the hole.  I don’t want to get too close, though.  Falling into the hole again wouldn’t help matters.  So, I reappear about twenty feet back from there.  I see Kallen and Kegan just ahead of me, staring into a giant hole where the mine shaft caved in.  Ouch, glad I wasn’t still in there.  Kegan grabs Kallen as he tries to make a dash for the hole, which is bringing dirt and sand down into it at an alarming rate as the cave in moves down the shaft.  In about thirty seconds, both of them are going to fall if they don’t get out of there.

Not sure I can actually teleport two people, I make a snap decision to try.  I run towards them and grab both of their arms.  The shock in Kallen’s eyes for the split second I see them before teleporting would have made me laugh in any other situation. 

Once again, I make a not so graceful landing on my bed in Dagda’s home.  Kallen and Kegan go tumbling off the bed head first, and end up in a confused, and probably sore, heap on the floor.  Now, I guess it’s only fair that if I make a repeat performance of materializing into thin air, that Breena gets to make her own repeat performance, as well.  Crap, I was hoping she’d still be unconscious.  Well, if we’re doing encores, might as well go all the way.  I take her voice again.

“Thank you,” Dagda says, his hands coming down from his ears.  “I was just about to gag her myself.”  Breena glares at him from the corner of the room she’s backed herself into.  Why do people back themselves into corners?  Backing themselves to the door seems like a much more logical choice.

Kallen disentangles himself from Kegan and is over to me in a flash.  I don’t mind when he pulls me into a bear hug.  I hug him back just as tightly.  “If I was not so happy to see you, I would kill you for making me worry so much,” he murmurs in my ear. 

I hug him tighter. “I know.  I’m sorry.”  No, it’s not my fault, but I understand how worried he was. 

Pulling back, he puts his hands on my cheeks.  “Are you okay?” he asks.

I look at the dark circles under his eyes and the worry lines trying to take up permanent residence on his brow.  “Yes, but how about you?” I ask, smoothing back some of his unusually tangled hair from his forehead.  “You look exhausted.”

“That is because he has spent the last two days trying to tear the realm apart looking for you,” Kegan says, putting his hand on Kallen’s shoulder.  I can tell he was worried, too.  “We are all happy to see you back in one piece.”  A quick glance at Breena proves that statement incorrect, but I think he was talking about my family and friends, not the Giants.  “Where have you been?”

I pull back from Kallen’s arms, but he grasps my hand tightly.  I don’t think he’s going to want to let me out of his sight for a while.  That’s okay; I don’t want him too, either.  I sit in the middle of the bed so I can see everyone. 

Radella is still lurking in the corner.  She looks mad, but oddly, I don’t think she’s mad at me.  “Yes, that is a question we would all like answered.”

“She was in a mine shaft,” Nixie says, bouncing up and down on the wall and I think Radella was barely able to keep from screaming.  She does jump, though.

“Who is speaking?” Radella asks the wall.

“It’s just Nixie,” I say.  When she looks at me, it’s clear she doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.  Strange that Dagda didn’t tell Radella about her.

“She’s a tiny lost soul,” Dagda says impatiently.  “Enough about Nixie.  Where.  Have.  You.  Been.”  He says each word as if he’s tightening a noose for someone’s neck.  Glad it’s not mine.

“Nixie’s right.  I fell into a mine shaft.  She followed me in, and then the hole closed on top of us.”

Kallen nods.  “It did appear as if you sunk into the ground, but there was no indication of a hole after you disappeared.”

“Yeah, she said it closed magically and she couldn’t get out to go for help, just like you couldn’t get in.”

“She broke her leg when she fell,” Nixie blurts out.

I glare at where she’s lurking on the wall.  “Tattle tale.”  Kallen’s eyes are almost to his hairline, and I don’t think he’s going to let me skim over the injury part.  I sigh.  “It’s true.  When I fell, I broke my femur.  And I got a concussion.”  My hand goes to the spot on my head that used to have a goose egg. 

“But, you were able to heal yourself?” Radella asks.  She sounds almost impressed.

“When I finally woke up enough, yeah.  I was unconscious for most of the last couple of days.”

“You haven’t told them about the illusion, yet,” Nixie says impatiently.  I think she wants to tell the story.  And, she does.  “Two magical creatures created images from her mind.  They created her childhood bedroom and pretended to be her mom and dad.  I couldn’t get past the illusion so I could help her.  I kept trying until she finally woke up.”  She says the last part firmly, in case anyone dare question her about her dedication.

“I remember waking up once, and it was like I was in my old bedroom and Mom and Dad were there.   Or, at least, whoever was imitating them were there.  They were trying to convince me that I was injured by hikers and that I had a no good boyfriend who was leading me into trouble.”  Ow.  It hurts when a muscular Fairy squeezes your hand.  I scowl up at him and he loosens his grip with a sheepish smile.  I don’t think he even realized he had tightened it.

“How did you finally escape,” Kegan asks.

“Once I woke up enough, I started noticing little things.  The colors were slightly off.  There were gifts from my grandparents.”  Most everyone here knows that I didn’t even know I had grandparents until my seventeenth birthday.  “I knew something was wrong, and little by little, my memories started coming back to me.  As soon as I realized it was just an illusion, I was able to dissolve the magic.  Turns out, I was really just lying on the ground of the mine shaft.”

“And her leg was infected.  It was almost green.”

I glare at Nixie again.  “But, I healed it,” I say firmly.

Turning to Nixie’s light, Dagda asks, “Did you see the ones impersonating her parents in their true forms?”

“No,” she says, a touch of anger and frustration in her voice.  “They never appeared in any other form while they were with her, and they didn’t come back after Xandra woke up.”

“Did they say anything that would give you a clue as to who they really are?”

Radella is looking at Dagda like he’s crazy for talking to a light on the wall.  “Is that thing real?” she asks him.  He just gives her a dirty look and then ignores her again.

“They were really good at staying in character, but when they knew Xandra was asleep, I did hear them talking about someone named Ellu.  I couldn’t hear exactly what was said, but they repeated that name a few times.”

A thunderstorm is growing on the face of every person in the room except mine and Breena’s.  Mine because I haven’t had enough time to get really riled up yet, I’m still too glad to be safe, and Breena’s isn’t because she either doesn’t care, or she doesn’t believe in the talking light on the wall.  Probably both.

“I am going to kill him,” Kallen grinds out between teeth pressed together so tightly, I’m surprised air could even escape through them.

Dagda’s eyes flash a brilliant green.  “Get in line.”  I feel like I should mention that he’s being a bit hypocritical here.  After all, he’s the one who started the whole ‘kill Xandra’ ball rolling.  Then again, he is King and Ellu is supposed to be one of his subjects.  Kidnapping the King’s daughter and then lying about it isn’t the greatest way to show your loyalty to the crown.  I decide to keep my thoughts to myself on the subject.

A loud banging can be heard all the way from the front door.  Breena uses that as an excuse to escape from the room.  She sidles along the wall that Nixie is not on, until she gets to the door and then makes a hasty exit.  Everyone’s quiet as we wait for her to come back and say who it is.

It doesn’t take her long.  And she’s not alone; she has Quinn with her.  I frown at that.  I’m not a hundred percent comfortable with him being in my bedroom. I’m pretty sure there are other rooms in this house that would be more appropriate for talking.  Kallen must agree, because as soon as he heard him coming, he got off the bed and stepped in front of me, blocking Quinn’s view when he comes in.  I’m too happy to be here to be too annoyed at his overprotectiveness.

All nine feet of Quinn barrels into the room.  “Your Highness, there has been a cave in of an old mine shaft in the area your daughter was last seen.  I have my men searching through the rubble as we speak.”