Bedeviled (18 page)

All of those thoughts and more flashed through her brain in an instant as the air around them seemed to shimmer. Maggie’s vision blurred as swirls of color and shapes dazzled her eyes. She felt wind sliding past her, and a sense of movement.

Okay, this was new.

Instinctively she closed her eyes, clung to Culhane, and felt his arms around her tighten in response.

Moments later, when all movement stopped, when the wind blowing around them ceased, Maggie cautiously opened her eyes again. She almost wished she hadn’t.

“Okay,” she said, more to herself than him, “we’re
so
not in Kansas anymore.”

“Kansas?” He frowned at her.

She gave him a wry smile. “I guess not everyone’s seen
that
movie. Never mind. Where are we?”

“You know where we are,” he said, his voice low and close to her ear. “
This
is Otherworld.”

Culhane hadn’t planned to bring her here so soon. And certainly not at this moment. But he’d been watching her as she slept, then had heard the telephone conversation with her friend. He’d had to end it, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have Maggie interfering with his plans for Nora. Even now Quinn was making the move Culhane had decided was necessary. Soon Maggie would know what the stakes in the battle were.

But he would be the one to tell her, not her friend.

So he’d blanked the phone, tapped the power with his own and shut the blasted thing down. After that he’d had no choice but to adjust his plan. Keeping Maggie with him now was the only way he knew to bring it all home to her. To show her what was needed.

What she was meant for.

Now Culhane looked at his home through her eyes as she turned in a slow, deliberate circle, trying to take it all in. She had no way of knowing that Otherworld was as large as her own. That she couldn’t see the whole of it at once.

His gaze slid over what was, to him, the familiar, and he wondered what she thought. Roads paved with silver bricks wound through the heart of the city and shone bright under noonday sunlight. Trees as old as time spread heavy branches out, entwining one with another until bridges were formed, linking the trees and the homes within them. Windows, carved into the tree trunks themselves, marked the homes of both pixie and Faery.

In the distance shining buildings speared up from flower-laden ground, looking like magic wands. In the far distance, dominating all below it, rose the crystal towers of Mab’s palace, bright in the glare of the suns.

When Maggie turned toward him, an expression of pure astonishment on her features, he cupped her face in his hands. His thumbs brushed across her cheeks and sparked fires under his skin. As a look of shock and bewilderment crossed her face, he knew she felt it, too.

The feel of her beneath his hands was heat and more. There was magic here. A kind he didn’t want. A kind he hadn’t planned on. A kind he couldn’t—didn’t even want to—ignore.

He’d sensed the beginnings of a bond between them even when she was no more than a child. Hadn’t he felt the threads connecting them, stretching and pulling, though loosely then? Hadn’t he guessed those years ago that her destiny was more than just the saving of Otherworld?

In centuries of living, fighting, protecting his people, Culhane had never felt for a woman what Maggie Donovan incited inside him. She made him want. Made him desire. Made him need.

And he was still unsure what he thought about that.

Brushing those more-than-disturbing thoughts aside, Culhane focused his attention on the here, the now, the essential.

“It’s beautiful.” She turned in his arms, looked up into his eyes and narrowed her own as she did. “But why am I here? Why’d you bring me here, Culhane? This isn’t my world.”

“It will be soon.” He shook his head. “Frown at me if you must and deny it if you can, but you feel the power growing within you, and that you can’t ignore forever.”

She stepped back, as she seemed to do more often than he’d like. “I’m not talking about my so-called powers,” she said. “I’m talking about you taking me off to fairy-tale land. I don’t belong here. This isn’t my place. I already have my world. My life. My family. Heck, my
dog.
”

“If Mab isn’t stopped, what makes you think that family, that world, will be safe from her?”

“Why would she care about us? She has all of this.” She swept one arm out to encompass the glimmer and shine of Otherworld. “In my world people don’t even know Mab exists. They think of her as a legend. Lucky bastards.”

“This place won’t be enough for her forever. She knows there are other places, other dimensions. Over the centuries she’s grown more and more dissatisfied. Her own greed will spur her on to take what she doesn’t already have. And she’ll want
all
the worlds under her reign.”

Still frowning, still denying, she flattened her mouth into a thin, tight line. As stubborn in her own way as Mab herself, Maggie wouldn’t acknowledge the truth unless it was thrown in her face. Which was why Culhane had had to bring her here.

He grabbed her before she could skip out of reach, and when she tried to pull away he only tightened his grip. Drawing her in close, he stared into her eyes. “You wonder what the future is? Where Mab’s ambitions will take her? Then see it now for yourself.”

He turned her to one side, waved his hand, and the air shifted, swirled, reality bending. Otherworld dropped away as an assortment of images rose up from the fog and produced other realities.

Here the Faery war bled into Maggie’s world. Here people were screaming, cut down in the streets as demons and Fae alike fought for supremacy. The humans didn’t stand a chance. The powerful beings from Otherworld slashed and burned and took what they wanted, leaving only charred rubble in their wake.

The scents, the sounds, the images were so clear, so real, Maggie trembled in his arms.

“Oh, my God.”

Culhane ended the demonstration and waited until she lifted her gaze to him before speaking. “She’ll do it, Maggie. Believe me. If not now, then soon. Mab will eventually want it all.”

“How am I supposed to stop a Faery queen, Culhane?” She scraped her hands up and down her arms, a nervous habit he’d noticed her indulging in often. “She’s a
queen
, for God’s sake. And I’m—” She stopped, laughed shortly and admitted, “I’m no threat to her and you know it. I can’t be the one you want. I can’t be your destined whatever. If I were I’d know it, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I be stronger or braver or—”

“You are all you need to be, Maggie Donovan. You must trust me that it will be more than enough. You’ve only to believe. To try.”

She blew out a breath and turned her gaze back to the vast, shining sweep of Otherworld. Her voice, when it came again, was tired, soft. “Say I do believe—hypothetically. How do I fight her and win?”

“We’re going to work on that while you’re here,” he said.

“While I’m here? I can’t stay here indefinitely. I have to go home. Nora and Eileen . . . not to mention Sheba—”

“Won’t miss you.”

One dark red eyebrow lifted. “Thanks very much.”

Now he smiled. That sharp tongue of hers was never far away. “I meant only that they won’t notice your absence. Time moves differently here. You’ll be home before they know you’ve gone.”

“Right.” She nodded. “Eileen told me that, too.” She glanced at one of the closest trees, this one laden with golden fruits that begged to be plucked and eaten. She slid a glance at Culhane, and he could almost see the fast-moving thoughts whirling through her mind. “Eileen also mentioned something about how you can’t eat or drink anything in Otherworld or you’re trapped here for a hundred years.”

Laughing outright, Culhane reached up, tore a fruit from a low-hanging branch and offered it to her, still smiling. “That’s as much a lie as pixies being tiny, pretty creatures. Your people know nothing of us. We left your world so long ago that the legends that have survived have been so changed, so twisted, they hardly hold more than a glimmer of truth.”

“Well, sure, you’d say that. I eat an apple and boom—your prisoner.”

He bit into the fruit himself and chewed while she watched, still unconvinced. After he swallowed, he sighed. “You can starve yourself if you’ve a mind to, Maggie. You’ll decide that for yourself. But the simple truth is, whether you eat or drink means nothing here. We trap who we wish—for our own reasons. Food has nothing to do with it.”

“How do I know that?”

“Woman, do you really believe I need a piece of fruit to trap you? I don’t. You’re here now. And here you’ll stay until I say you leave.”

Chapter Nine

M
aggie stayed at Culhane’s side, because seriously, what choice did she have? Not a good thing when the only soul you know in a place is the man who’s just told you he’s as good as kidnapped you.

Unless she could find a way out on her own, she was pretty much stuck with Culhane.

“Don’t stare,” he muttered, draping one arm around her shoulder and drawing her into the shadows of yet another ancient, spreading tree.

“How can I not?” she whispered just as fiercely. “It’s not every day I see women
flying
, for God’s sake.”

Or, she thought, herds of pixie children shrieking and darting through the branches of the trees. Or Fae men shimmering in and out of existence at the blink of an eye. How the hell did they keep track of everybody when they were forever disappearing or launching into the sky? Childcare here had to be a bitch.

Everywhere she looked, there was something new to be dazzled or astounded by. Hard to believe that a completely separate and wildly different world existed right alongside her own. It made Maggie wish she’d read more science fiction.

The trees, Fae versions of condo living, were everywhere. Shining silver roads twisted and roped their way up hills so green and lush it almost hurt to look at them. And at the very crest of the biggest hill was a crystal palace that glistened like polished diamonds in the midday sun.

Make that
suns
.

Plural.

Two suns for Otherworld.

Even the air was different. Cleaner, with a thick, foresty scent. The sky looked different, too. It seemed bigger somehow, and it was a shade of blue Maggie didn’t think she’d ever be able to duplicate with paints.

The people—the Fae, she reminded herself—didn’t seem all that different from those she knew. Well, except for the whole flying-and-disappearing-into-a-ripple-of-air thing. They laughed, they shopped, they scolded their children.

Which just went to show, she guessed, that people were pretty much the same wherever you happened to find them. Even if they weren’t people so much as . . . Faeries.

The problem here was, Maggie told herself, that knowing the Fae were so much like her own family and neighbors made it that much more difficult to turn her back on all of this. How could she tell Culhane to go find himself another chosen one after seeing his world? Now she knew it was real. That it was just as important to the Fae as her own world was to her.

How was she supposed to pretend to not care?

Her stomach churned, and Maggie knew it wasn’t the piece of fruit she’d eaten despite Eileen’s warnings because, let’s face it, she never turned down food, threat or no threat. No, it was sheer terror turning her stomach into a pit of frothing nausea. Dread.

Not to mention a lot of self-doubt.

She was supposed to save not only Otherworld but her
own
world? How in the hell was that possible?

“You’re talking to yourself.”

“What?” Maggie frowned at him. “No, I’m not. I’m thinking.”

“Out loud. Others are noticing.”

“Oh, well,” she said, drawing those two words out long enough to be their own sentence. “Can’t have that. Pixies in trees and Faeries flying are okay, but hey, let’s not
talk
. Wouldn’t want to look weird or anything.”

Beside her Culhane hissed out a breath, and somehow that made Maggie feel better. Hell, if she was going to be in a death-spiral tizzy, then he could be, too. Why should
he
have it easy?

He grabbed her arm, dragged her off the silver brick road—the Wizard of Oz should have had silver; very pretty—and into a narrow space between two of the elm tree condos.

Backing her up against the closest tree, he loomed over her, and Maggie didn’t know whether to be pissed or to give in to the lust scratching at her throat. Apparently it didn’t matter that he made her mad. She still wanted him. But for now she settled for being pissed.

“Knock it off, okay?” She shoved at his chest with all the success she would have had pushing a train off its tracks. “I’ve had a rough couple of weeks, and you’re not making it any easier.”

“It
isn’t
easy. That’s the point,” he said, practically biting off every word. “You can’t draw attention to yourself while you’re here. If Mab discovers you’re in Otherworld, she’ll kill you before you have a chance to fight her for the throne.”

“Then why the hell am I here?” Maggie threw a couple of frantic glances around her, then remembered to look up, too. Flying Faeries, pixie children scampering through trees . . . God, there was no way to be sure they weren’t being overheard. Watched.

Finally she turned her gaze back to Culhane, and when she spoke again, she kept it quiet. “If it’ll be so easy for her to kill me now, what’ll make it different later?”

“You’ll have more access to your powers. They grow daily.”

“So you keep saying. But big deal. Who cares if they’re growing? If I don’t know how to use ’em, what good are they?”

“You will. You’re learning.”

“Sure, how to breathe on demons.” She pushed at him again, but it was useless. “I’m guessing that’s not going to work on Mab.”

“No,” he admitted, and looked over his shoulder at the crowds of Fae moving through Otherworld. “But you’ll have more. Know more.” He looked back at her. “Besides, strength alone isn’t the only way to win a battle.”

“Strange talk from a warrior.”

“Warriors more than anyone know that sometimes luck plays the most important part in battle readiness.”