Legend 4 - Free Falling (16 page)

Morrigu thought she would sit beside me, but when it was over and I no longer needed her services, I was going to eliminate the grasping, needy bitch. Why ever had the Dark King allowed her to live? How could he have put up with her when he had no need of her?

They thought I was mad, and perhaps I was a little …

I had lived longer than my queen. I was eighty thousand years old, and I’d never drunk from the Cauldron to cleanse my mind and forget. I had no one I could trust with my memories, and therefore chanced madness to keep them. So, yes, perhaps I was a bit mad, but I was clear-sighted all the same.

Mankind had to be enslaved, and those who would fight me would be eliminated. Would that my fellow Fae would see this … and stand beside me instead of against me. Humans were useless, pitiful creatures with no life to speak of. They destroyed my beautiful earth and misused everything that came their way.

Outside my window in this awful world everything was dark and barren. Oh, how I hated this land of mist and fog and grotesque beasts. It palled on me. It was a vacuum that throbbed with death. It was a world of misshapen, leafless trees and lifeless terrain. Even at that moment slithering things I shuddered to call Fae, Dark Fae, were scavenging for food. The Dark King had left this realm behind for good reason. In his efforts to create life, he’d only created creatures that ate away at his lovely realm and left it as it was now—a hellhole where his freaks fed upon themselves and still had multiplied beyond imagination! How I loathed this realm …

It was all so different than my beloved Isles of Tir, where my estate stood regal and elegant and my manicured gardens fascinated the eye—and where the creek I loved so much bubbled through my land. Green and vibrant was the home I left behind on Tir
—my Tir
, a
land surrounded by sandy pink beaches and aqua waters. How could I bear much more of this wasteland, when Tir called to me?

Hatred filled my gut and spewed instructions that I could not adhere to—to do so would only ruin my plans. I had to control myself, but there were times when I was not certain I could. Still … victory was ahead, and I could almost taste it. It was on my tongue and in my mind’s eye, and I needed to hold onto it, revel in it and grow …

This bleak place the Dark King called his Dark Realm was a breathing hell. It pulsated with vile creatures with a ravenous hunger to escape and destroy the world I would rule. I would use them, and then once I had this universe under control, I would imprison them once more …

Morrigu … I had once thought I might let her live. However, she had killed any compassion I might have felt for her. Compassion? At times I thought I had not lost it altogether. She said she loved me …

Love—
she knew nothing of love. She was obsessed with me—nothing more. She sickened me with her sex games, with her constant demands. I’d never thought I could tire of a beautiful woman so easily, so quickly, but I was heartily sick of Morrigu, and this last game of hers had nearly cost her dearly. I nearly took her life …

I’d lost interest in her … in the sexual pleasures she used to afford me, but she never tired of sex and babbling conversation. She was petulant when I didn’t give her attention. Earlier, she had been more than petulant; she was spiteful.

I would not interrupt my session with the four Royal princes to entertain her, and she would not leave the training room. She began flirting with the Royals, who I knew she had been with before I arrived in the Dark Realm. I was not jealous. However, I did not like to share. I enjoyed group sex when I was the only male …

Morrigu had started her game to tempt me, to get a rise out of me, thinking I would either join or carry her off; she didn’t care which. It had all begun casually enough, with her flirting, and then she was touching first one prince and then the other, taking out their cocks and stroking them.

I felt my eyes twitch as I watched her. She kept looking my way as she pulled off the gown she wore and stood naked and rubbing herself against one of the Dark Royals. They were handsome, each one as handsome as any Seelie Fae, but they were devoid of empathy, compassion, emotion, and moderation.

One of them had thrown off his clothes and sat on a wooden chair, and she situated herself on him and began to ride …

The other had her from behind, and the third put himself in her mouth. The fourth took care of himself while he waited his turn.

“Join us,” Morrigu called to me. I sneered at her, but she simply rocked herself harder on the prince she rode.

I shifted out and came here to my suite to stare out on the world I loathed. I knew she had been sneaking about with the princes those last few days. I didn’t give her enough of what she needed … attention.

She had yelled out at me before I left her to her ‘darlings’, “Fine … go—I am certain my darlings will entertain me …” She glanced at all of them in their turn and added, “Won’t you … sweets?”

My first feeling now when I thought of Morrigu was that she needed killing. If I hadn’t needed her skills with the artifacts, she would have already been dead. She was the only one who knew where the artifacts the Dark King squirreled away in this realm were hidden, and she had only given me two in all these months …

Do I need any more? I have all that I need to open the portals.
Perhaps I could kill her now?

No, my better sense told me no. However, she would be my very first kill when Tir and Aaibhe became mine.

But for now, I still might need the bitch …

Aaibhe’s image filtered in, and she came to life just then in my mind. I had adored her all my life, and for a time she had even accepted me as a lover—until she took that Druid priest for a mate.

Well, now I had her where I wanted her. I’d seen how weak she became when she closed the portal at Inverness River. She’d nearly collapsed just before her little bitch cousin, Ete, hurried her away.

I watched Prince Breslyn joined the fray and, damn their souls, the Milesians in battle. How could they fight alongside our enemy?

“They are the traitors to our race, not I!” I heard my own voice in the empty chamber, and it echoed back at me. I would show them … I would show them all, and soon, very soon.

My memory took me back and flickered to that newcomer, the little half-breed Daoine princess, Radzia MacDaun. I knew who she was, of course, because I’d killed her father—just for the fun of it.

I knew she wanted to kill me … and I planned to taunt her until I could get my hands on her and have a … little fun … before I killed her. She had some power though, and I would have to be careful. Perhaps I could absorb her power when she died? We’d see.

They didn’t know how much I’d learned watching them in battle. It would serve me well when I surprised them with the army … the real army I had amassed in this hateful realm—because my lead Dark Fae would be given death weapons.
I had three
.

I knew what they expected. They thought I was going to open a portal in Dublin and another in Inverness, and they were right … but those portals would be diversions. I would bring my army through in Edinburgh!

And that wasn’t the only surprise I had planned.

Oh by Danu, I would watch Aaibhe try and close the portals, and when she was at her weakest, I would send in Dark beasts to distract her guards, and I would pull her within this Dark Realm … and then by
bloody hell
, she would be mine!

My plan was perfect—and damn Morrigu, there she was again!

“What do you want, Morrigu?”

“
You, beloved
 … it is always you.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Morrigu, it is obvious that you want anyone who will entertain you.”

“Not my fault! It is the curse of being in here … in this hell for thousands upon thousands of years.”

For a split-second this riveted me … and perhaps for a split-second I pitied her, and then once more I wanted to kill her as a solution to her long suffering.

She was touching me … and I wanted to pummel her. She was kissing my face, and I wanted to tear hers off.

Morrigu whispered, “Don’t be angry … it was nothing more than a little fun …”

I looked at her—she was so damn beautiful. Her long, black hair shone against her white naked body …

She wanted more, did she? Again I had to squash the urge to kill her on the spot. I hated her—but I was a patient Fae. I had been patient over the centuries, timing my revolt … what were a few more weeks?

So instead of killing her, I kissed her roughly, biting her bottom lip before I laid her against the marbled floor. I did not bother to blink a cushion beneath her. “Is this what you want, whore? This …?” And while I took her I tried to hurt her, but the stupid bitch only begged me for more!

~ Fifteen ~

DANTÉ PARKED THE Jeep and sat for a long moment. I didn’t say a word. I knew he sensed something was wrong. However, it was nothing magical—it was a human ‘wrong’, but what it could be was just out of my grasp. It was a gut feeling.

“Come on,
enfant
, but careful … something is off here …”

“Yes, I feel it too.”

We took the brick path side by side, hand in hand, to the front door, and Danté used the brass doorknocker.

Nothing—
so we listened for a sign of life. Their familiar car, a modest Ford Escort, was parked in front of their detached garage
.

Danté used his very large fist this time, and I noted to myself that even when he was in human Glamour, anyone opening the door would be startled by the height, breadth, and presence of the male on their doorstep. I felt a surge of pride.

This time, we heard a scuffle and a door close. Fae hearing is very good, much better than the human ear, but even had we not been Fae, we would have heard them.

The front door opened wide, and there stood Mr. Wendell MacClenny, with his rail-thin wife at his back. I would never be able to see them quite the same as I used to. Until the other night, they had just been an ‘older’, childless, and quiet couple. Witches and warlocks? I would have laughed at such a suggestion. Goes to show you.

“Radzia MacDaun,” Mr. MacClenny said coldly. “How dare you enter our home—”

“Isn’t this where we enter for your bed-and-breakfast?” I asked sweetly, cutting him off.

He eyed Danté, who filled the covered portico and said quietly as he pushed his way past the older man, “Ah, now, shall we go in and be more comfortable? We need to talk.”

“I don’t know who you are,” he said to Danté as he hurried with his frail wife towards the salon and set her once again behind him. “And I would like you both to leave!”

Danté and I followed, and I felt a sweeping sense of shame. Both of them looked so terrified. I had to remind myself that they had been going to watch a young woman be eaten by an Unseelie.

Mr. MacClenny got himself together and pulled out a gun from his pants pocket. He undid the safety as he pointed it at my prince. “How dare you push your way into our home! Now get out, or I will use this.”

“Time for the gloves to come off,” Danté said softly, and MacClenny’s gun was gone. I could only assume my prince had sent it off to another dimension and wasn’t concerned about displaying his magic to them.

The MacClennys backed up in unison, and what caught my interest was the way Mr. MacClenny put a protective arm about his little gray-haired wife. They cared about each other. I was always struck by instances like this, when someone who you though must be evil because of what he or she had done suddenly displayed compassion, gentleness, and everything you’d thought they must be incapable of feeling. So it was at that moment. I wondered what had gone wrong in their lives, for something had.

Danté was drilling them. “We already know what you have been doing—working with your coven to allow unspeakable creatures to walk loose on this earth. We know, but we now need the names of each of your coven members.”

“I cannot. I must not … it would all be for nothing if I give you their names,” MacClenny snapped out at us with a show of bravado that I could see he was far from feeling. It was obvious he realized Danté could destroy them with a flick of a finger.

“Don’t you realize you are on the wrong side? What could you possibly hope to achieve by aligning yourselves with a force that will turn on you as soon as it has what it wants?”

“I asked of them the only thing that mattered and to be allowed to continue here … in our home … in peace. All we had to do was allow them to use the pit … a pit that has always been there,” MacClenny shouted. “When we were approached by the coven who said the prophecy described a pit that could be used by them, we hadn’t even been aware of such things. We thought the pit just an old sinkhole. We just covered it over in the past and had forgotten about it. It seemed at the time I had no choice, because we needed what they offered.”

Danté was studying them both, and I watched the expression flit in his dear, gold-dust eyes. I wondered what all this was about but stayed quiet.

“Fools!” Danté snapped at them. “You are being used. You know nothing of the real prophecy. Tell me how this pit was resurrected, and tell me quickly.”

“The urn … the coven leader has an urn … and we didn’t know about the girl …we never realized until the moment he put her on the slab—I swear.”

Danté pulled up short to consider this before he barked, “What did this urn look like? Show me!” He produced drawing paper and pen and shoved it at MacClenny.

Wendell MacClenny hesitated, and his frail wife stroked his arm and said, “Go on, dear … it doesn’t matter. I’ll be fine … and you’ll learn to manage.”

MacClenny sighed heavily and said, “My wife … is dying. They promised that if we let them use the pit … they had the power to heal her … They said they would heal her. We don’t know much more than that.”

Danté’s hard stance relaxed all at once, but he frowned as he glanced towards me and then back at them. He walked over to Mrs. MacClenny. Her husband tried to shove her further behind his back, but Danté patiently said, “I won’t hurt her, man … I promise you that.”

Mrs. MacClenny gave him the hand he reached for, and I watched as Danté closed his eyes. When he opened them again he sighed heavily and said in a low, sad voice, “They didn’t have the might to cure your illness, Mrs. MacClenny, but I do.”

So saying he closed his eyes again, and this time I watched Danté work a Fae miracle, and I knew it cost him dearly. He would be weakened because he gave of himself, of his essence, to cure her cancer, and this was a time when he could not afford to be weakened.

When Danté was done, I saw at once the difference in Mrs. MacClenny. Her complexion was clearer, pinker … and her hair though still gray was soft and waved around her heart-shaped face. Her husband was crying and laughing at the same time as he took her hands and kissed them. When he turned to Danté, he bowed his head. “I can only thank you by doing anything you ask …”

“For now draw … and allow the coven to believe you are still working with them … and we will need each of their names.”

“We know all of them but one,” MacClenny answered grimly.

“How is that? Which one kept his identity secret? Can you describe his height, approximate weight?” Danté demanded.

“The leader never showed himself to us or any of the others, but he was tall and disguised his voice.”

“Right then, never mind … we’ll find him—make no mistake.” He took up the drawing MacClenny had made, and I pulled at it to have a look as well. I was stunned. It was a drawing of a simple urn.

“Was it bronze or some other material?” Danté asked sharply.

“I don’t know what it was made of … although it was etched with gold.”

Danté turned to me and on a hushed note said, “It is from Danu.”

We left shortly after they handed Danté a list of the names of the other coven members. I did not realize how much Danté was depleted from healing the MacClenny woman until he flung the car keys to me and asked that I drive. I watched with some concern as he sank heavily onto the passenger seat and whispered, “Let’s get the car back to MacDaun … and then a quick trip to my castle on Tir …”

“On Tir …? We are going to Tir now?”

“I am afraid we must.”

* * *

I had been more than shocked when Danté requested me to shift us to his castle on Tir. I had never been to his castle, and I was just a bit concerned that I wouldn’t get it right and we would end up inside a wall or something equally uncomfortable. So I shifted us to the front oak doors. He grinned at me and shifted us to his bedroom.

I eyed him and the enormous bed and teased, “I don’t think you are up to that at the moment …”

“I am always up to that, but first, I need something …” He grinned and went to what I thought was just a stone wall. A moment later a small rectangular stone moved inside the wall. He reached in and retrieved a small bottle, drank some of its contents, and returned the bottle to its hidey hole.

“What was that?” I asked, curious.

He grinned. “A little pick-me-upper.” He was already reaching for me when the room filled with light. In the middle of the brightness was a mist of gold dust, and out of the mist, Queen Aaibhe stepped towards us.

I was flabbergasted, and that got my tongue. Danté looked sheepish and waited, because for her to appear in this manner could only mean one thing:
we were in trouble
.

The queen’s exquisite brow was arched quizzically as she said, “So … of all my Royal princes, I did not expect
you
to be the one to disobey my directives. To heal a human for no other reason than pity—to subject yourself to weakness at this moment in time …” She shook her head and her finger. “Danté, I had not expected this of you. The serum you just drank will hardly strengthen all your powers, and you will need all your powers before we are done!”

I felt like hanging my head—I think I did hang my head, but Danté put up his chin and stood regally as he said, “Forgive this prince, my Queen, it was but a kindness I could not deny them.” Danté’s gaze did not falter from her face.

She obviously did not believe he was truly sorry and made a face at him as she turned to look at me. She threw over her shoulder, “At least the MacClennys will owe us their allegiance—that is something.” She then turned on me, and I felt a wave of trepidation before she said, “However, I am pleased in this instance, very pleased.”

She walked over to me and took my face in her hand. “It is good to have you with us. Now—if you will bring me up to date.”

I wasn’t opening my mouth. I didn’t know what she knew and what she didn’t know. Danté smirked and threw up his hands. “The MacClennys have given us the list of the coven members involved in all of this.”

Her eyes were calculating as she said, “They don’t really matter. What matters is their warlock.” She eyed Danté again and said, “I called for your presence in my chambers. Imagine my surprise when you did not respond and my scan discovered that you were here …”

“Forgive me,” was all that Danté returned.

“I understand it was not an emotional whim that caused you to sacrifice your strength.” She eyed him ruefully, and it was obvious to me the queen did in fact believe this. “However, even with the serum you just took, it will be a few days before you are at full power. You should remain here until you are totally restored to yourself. I shall ask your brother, Trevor, to stand in for you with Radzia.”

“No, my Queen.”

“
No
?” Her tone told him he was on dangerous ground.

“I am afraid that only I can keep and protect Radzia MacDaun.”

“Even in your present condition?”

“Just a minute, please … my Queen …” I stuck in at that moment as respectfully as I could, “Daoine here … perfectly capable of protecting
Danté and myself
.”

The queen smiled softly and looked at Danté, who had not appreciated my remark, before she looked my way again and said, “Well said, Radzia, and in fact, I do believe that you are very capable of taking care of yourself.”

She turned to Danté then and directed a grimace his way. “You, Danté, will have to allow her to do so for now, as you have to remain here and recoup your full power. Very shortly, I expect we will be facing all that Gais has to throw at us, and we all need to be at our most potent.”

“I am not leaving my princess to take care of herself, my Queen … begging your pardon,” he added, but his temper was up. “Gais has no doubt taken notice of her by now, and there is no saying what he will do in her regard.”

“You will obey me in this.”

“I always try and obey you on all matters of state, but believe me—leaving my
enfant
to her own devices … does not serve your greater purpose.”

I listened to them argue for a bit before I put up my hand and said, “I can take care of myself, and
my power
has not been compromised!”

They both looked at me as if suddenly seeing me in the room, and then both of them frowned and proceeded to ignore me.

Danté’s voice held defiance as he said, “The prophecy dictates that a meeting with Daremont and BJ must be concluded … as well as one with Shee Willow.”

“Who are Daremont … and BJ? Who is Shee Willow—why do you call her Shee Willow?” I stuck in.

Again I was totally ignored. Aaibhe’s chin was up, and she stared at Danté for a long moment before saying softly, “Fine, I accept your strategy in this instance, my Prince.”

I didn’t think she meant it. She didn’t seem to mean it, but then she changed the subject by interjecting, “I have an idea that the village banker in MacDaun is the coven leader.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed and then decided to keep quiet. The queen was not looking happy.

“Why do you say so?” Danté was still angry, and there was a tenseness about him that I could feel across the ten or so feet that separated us. I wish we weren’t separated. I wanted to hold his hand.