Catch & Hold-Legend (Legend series) (8 page)

It wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t want to die until I knew Gais was dead. That was my goal, although Danté’s face pulled on my heart and spoke softly to me … words that didn’t quite register. I had to tell him, as angry as I was about Morrigu naked on his thigh, but I had to let him know. “Danté,” I whispered out loud. “I love you … I hope you can hear me. If I don’t make it, I love you …”

“No, Z … don’t go back there—” Rolo started to say just as I shifted in the thick gook of the Dark Realm’s atmosphere and landed in Gais’s war chamber. I scanned the room, but Gaiscioch wasn’t there.

The table that had once housed the maps with the information I needed was empty with the exception of one low-burning lamp. The room was enveloped in fog of black magic that pulsated with evil, and for a moment I felt a sense of panic. I bucked myself up. I had everything I needed to defeat Gais, and I had to do just that. My dad’s memory was vividly on my mind, bolstering me through the sudden sharp pain in my right arm.

Obviously Gais had spelled the room, and I realized it probably gave him a warning of my arrival. This was what Rolo had tried to tell me was a dumb move, and just as I stood silently agreeing with him, I noticed blood not only covered my arm but was dripping onto the stone floor at my feet, leaving a puddle.

I glanced away from it and scanned the room again, not quite able to focus for a minute. Not good. My arm should already have been healing—the Fae in me should have been healing the wound.

As half human, my wounds healed slower than most Fae, but I healed. However—not this time. It was getting worse by the minute. It looked already infected, and I knew I was in serious trouble.

I was beginning to feel the poison surge through my system and felt powerless to stop it. My human element was receding into shock, but I didn’t feel as though I were being paralyzed. “Rolo …” I whispered.

You have to let go, Z. Let go of your human!
Rolo screamed the words into my head, and I tried to concentrate. How does one let go of what they have been? How does the body reject what it is sure it is?

Before I could explore the possibilities and help myself, I was staring at Gaiscioch, who had suddenly shifted into the war room, only ten feet away from where I tottered.

I straightened up, determined not to appear weak—determined to hold my own against the grinning bastard. It occurred to me that he was way too handsome for the evil thing he had become. He should look the part … like a shark.

He shook his head and smirked at me. “Well then, just what kind of a warrior
are you
? Letting one of those things connect with you—tsk, tsk. Not as proficient with your Fae skills as you thought you were, eh, Daoine?”

His tone goaded me and somehow gave me the strength to sneer at him with a great measure of bravado I was far from feeling.
Bluster
, I told myself,
bluster … and get the hell out of here.
Did I listen to me? No.

I prepared myself as instinct took over, guided me, and told me just what he had in mind. I waited as he looked me over. I waited for the moment he would shift at me with his death sword aimed.

I sensed it the moment he went into his mind. I sniffed at his scent and forced myself to wait a fraction of a moment.

If I timed it wrong I knew I would have
his
death sword buried in
my
gut.

Just as I felt him shift, I jumped out of his way. His face was a mask of fury, and he lunged towards me, but again, I was ready for him, and this time, I shifted.

This time I listened to Rolo screaming in my head to shift out of the war room. It was time to escape, and I shifted—heading for the relative safety of the Dark King’s retreat, hoping it would allow me entrée once more. Once again I had come face to face with my father’s murderer and I had allowed him to live. I felt heartsick … and then I realized I also felt really sick …

The Dark King’s retreat did more than allow me to enter. It seemed to enfold me within; as I collapsed onto the glass flooring just within its doors, I felt as though its magic arms were somehow wrapped around me, taking me into its protective shield as it whispered, “Daoine—you are allowing your human to kill you. You will die if you don’t find yourself. You need to forget the human in you. Let go—you must let go …”

That was just what Rolo had told me. Was that Rolo still speaking? I felt myself slip into a haze.

Was I dying? No. I couldn’t die yet, I had to kill Gais—
I had to
. I couldn’t die without doing that first, and something else, something so important,
someone so important
.

Danté—I had to see Danté, if only for the last time. My mind exploded with his name, and I heard the anguish in my voice reverberate all through the Dark King’s retreat as I shouted with the last bit of strength I had.

“D-a-n-t-é!”

* * *

My
enfant’s
voice pulsated in my head and gripped my essence. My name reverberated through my mind. I felt it pierce me with fear, and without thinking I shifted towards the sound. I found myself outside the blasted Dark King’s palace. I could see it all now as though it mocked me. I could see it in all its full glory, and a fury inside me, heedless of the Dark King’s power, demanded, “I am a Royal Prince of the Tuatha Dé—allow me entrée
now!”

“You have never been denied, Danté, Prince of Lugh. Your right of passage has always been there for you to see when you decided to open your eyes. If you could not see past the slight shade of black magic holding you apart, how then will you face your enemy?”

I wasn’t in the mood to play at puzzles and riddles with a robotic voice, and I think I made an animal sound because I felt it deep in my throat, but I didn’t care. I felt the thousands of years of civilized behavior wash away in the storm and the primal take over. I waved my fist for emphasis, but physical movement wasn’t needed to gain my entrance; my determination was what was needed, and sure enough, the twelve-foot-high entrance with its magnificent doors opened wide.

I stepped through.

Z’s essence, our bond, beat and surged through my blood and pulled at all that I was. I was hit with something that felt like a small bolt of lightning—but lightning all the same. Something was wrong with her, and I felt terror clutch at my insides and knew a fear I had not felt in thousands of years.

I shifted then to Z, to her body lying there in a fetal position on the glass floor. She was so damn still …
so bloody damn still
 …

I saw the pool of blood under her arm … her torn clothing, nylon ski clothes—even in the midst of my fears, the question flickered: why was she wearing …?

No time. I had to do something. I was on my knees and about to lay my hands on her wound and her heart when an invisible force stopped me in mid-motion.

I roared with the fury I felt, “
She will die!
”

“Yes, and if she does, then it was meant …”

I looked up at a projected image of a woman—no, a Fae … yet, something of a human—and I knew this was the Dark King’s consort. She had evolved, and I could see, even though it was just a projected image, that she was definitely no longer the human she had once been.

We Seelie Fae have always referred to her as the Dark King’s human, but now she was so much more—she was Seelie Fae.

She had put up a barrier I could not break. With all my magic I could not touch my Z and heal her.

“Please … I can heal her,” I begged, and I would have groveled. I would have forgotten all that I was to save my Z. I looked at her and saw she was slipping away from me. I could hear the faintness of her breathing.

“
She can heal herself
. She is Daoine, and it is all part of the prophecy. She may die or go on to be one of the Daoine’s most mightiest warriors, but both ends can only be achieved by her will.”

“She is unconscious!” I continued to beg. I couldn’t break free from the power that held me immobile, and I was helpless to aid my beloved. “She cannot help herself while she is unconscious.”

“Radzia MacDaun can do many things, and what you call unconscious is only true of the human in her. The human in her needs to take a ‘back seat’ as humans say. I believe she will find her way.”

“I can’t take that chance—let me go …
Let me heal her!
”

“No.”

I concentrated and put all my magical and scientific skills into one thought—to break free from the shield she had me wrapped within. I had to get to Z. It was all I knew, all I wanted. I felt the outer walls cracking, and then the force of her power hit me like a punch to the gut, as the Dark King’s consort quickly built up another wall against me.

My Z was going to die
,
and if that unthinkable thing happened, I would bury my death weapon into my own chest, into the heart we Fae supposedly do not possess …

* * *

Weak and cold. I felt weak and cold … and something worse. I felt as though my life force was quickly ebbing out the back door.
Come on, Radzia … break free
, I told myself.
You can do it. Get hold of yourself. Myself? Who is myself …?

Daoine princess
, Rolo said in my head.
You are a Daoine princess.

Part of me was tired, and that part just wanted to let go. Another part, a larger, stronger part, thought of Danté and then my mother, who would surely slip into madness if she lost me as well. That part—that part heard Rolo and fought to regain the Fae I knew I was.

Who are you fighting
, I asked myself.
Me
—I was at war with myself, my human self, and I knew I was going to have to say good-bye to most of who I had been all my twenty-one years, in order to become the Daoine I needed to be.

First, I needed to live, find Danté, and get the hell out of Dodge! In that order—and in that order I severed ties with my human cells and started to repair the damage to my body, my immortal body.

That’s right
, I told myself,
you have behaved like a wimp of a human
, and although I did not really blame myself, I was disgusted with myself. I had always been proud of who and what I was—the human, the Fae. And what I was, I suddenly realized, was a Daoine princess!

As the pain receded and my Daoine body began to heal my wound and dispel the dark ugly’s poison, I felt my mind begin to stir and knew my Danté was near. An image of him holding his death sword too near to himself stirred me. As I tried to shake off the deadly sleep, I am pretty sure I called out his name, because I heard him roar out mine like a Fae possessed. I felt many things inside me stir.

And then I saw him clearly in my mind with his death sword unsheathed and held to his throat. I realized that if I didn’t heal myself quicker he was going to—

“
Noooo
!” I sat up immediately, and he was on the floor with me, his big arms enveloping me. I felt his face on mine and his tears on my cheek, and I pulled back, looked at him in wonder, and then shoved him off with my Fae strength and shouted, “You let that Morrigu bitch touch you!”

And he laughed out loud, and then he slapped his thighs and bellowed and then laughed some more.
I
did not think anything was funny.

“It is time for you to leave,” Crystal said in that soft, alluring voice that immediately got your attention and kept it.

“Wait!” I looked at Danté. “Sally—I have been worried sick about Sally. Do you know if she is okay?”

“She is fine and safe,” he said as he attempted to put his arms around me again.

I stalled him with an arched brow as I turned to Crystal and asked, “Leave … time to leave?”

Even as I waited for her to speak, I felt Danté once more try to touch me. I slapped his hand away and gave him the evilest eye I could level at him.

“Yes, Radzia MacDaun—the time has come for you to get to your queen,” Crystal offered gently.

“Yes, you are right, we have to tell the queen about the maps I saw and warn Breslyn—”

“Maps? You saw maps?” Danté was diverted into asking me. Mistake—I wasn’t ready to give him a break.

“I wasn’t speaking to you,” I answered curtly. He deserved to writhe beneath my frigid glance and squirm from the power of the ice dripping from my tone.

“Not speaking to me, and yet, it
is I
who must get us to Tir,” he answered smugly. At least it seemed smugly to me, but then he said, “Take my hand,
enfant
 … and I will take us home.”

His voice was a caress and very difficult to resist, but, you see, jealousy is a cruel beast that works you until it enslaves you, and I was still under its grip. “Perhaps I would rather stay here than take
your
hand.” Childish, I know, but that was what came out of my mouth.

He released an impatient sound—maybe it was more a grumble than a sigh—and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “
Chur Tir na nog
.”

As I waited to be transported to Tir I made an awful face at him and said, “That’s it?
Spell Tir na nog?
”

He frowned and explained, “In this context
chur
actually means ‘return to Tir’, and only a Royal has the power to invoke the words, but something is wrong. We should already be shifting out of here.” He looked at Crystal. “It isn’t working.”