Faery Worlds - Six Complete Novels (129 page)

My brother turned and shouted something at the others, not bothering to cover the phone with his hand. I tried not to grin.

“Meg? Yeah, tell Mom you’re going to be late because of a school project, got it.”

“Thanks buddy,” I said, my shoulders slumping in relief.

“Kay, gotta go. Logan’s got a spray bottle and Aiden’s supposed to be covering me- Aaaaaagh!”

Chuckling, I hung up. “We’re all clear. I have at least two hours I think.”

I turned and looked at Cade. My skin suddenly started prickling. He was studying me so intensely I was beginning to wonder if he was of the same opinion as Adam with regards to my face. The recollection of my lunchtime nightmare made my face flame anew.

“What is it?” I asked self-consciously.

He sighed and let his hands drop into his pockets. “Nothing, let’s walk. Over there.”

He nodded towards the tide pools, the place furthest away from everybody else. I swallowed hard. If I were an ordinary high school girl and if he were an ordinary high school boy, I would be hoping for some romantic liaison on his part right then. But neither of us was ordinary and he was definitely not a high school boy. I had to work hard to get a hold of my wayward imagination. Even if he didn’t find me repulsive, it didn’t mean he was interested in me in that way. Besides, that line of thinking could get me into trouble.

I paused to take off my shoes and socks. I had this rule about always walking on the beach barefoot. Cade lifted a brow and followed suit. Even his bare feet were attractive. I shook that thought off as quickly as I would a wandering spider. We walked in silence for a while, listening to the waves crash along the shore. I could see why Cade would choose this place to calm his anger. The ocean was soothing; the primitive heartbeat of the earth.

When Cade decided we were far enough away from the other beach goers, he turned and looked at me, his hands still tucked in his pockets. I studied him for a while, still awed by how tall he was. His clothes fit him well and his shoes dangled from the thumb of his left hand. I hadn’t noticed his tattoos before; one on each arm, starting near his elbow and twining up to disappear beneath his shirt sleeves. Not surprisingly, they were Celtic in design, intricate, beautiful. It was then that I noticed the bandage on his arm. It wrapped around his wrist and went halfway up his forearm. Blotches of red bled through in many spots.

I darted my eyes up to his, the shock clear on my face. “What happened?”

He took a deep breath and turned his eyes, now a gray-green, towards the crashing waves. “Occupational hazard.”

He turned back to me, grinning without showing any teeth. That action turned out to be just as effective as the Mojave sun on an ice cube.

“And, what exactly is your occupation?”

He started in without any preamble. After all, we both had our suspicions of one another. We had both admitted as much those few weeks ago when he had lured me into the swamp and I had taken on his challenge to start my own research.

“I have a duty to fulfill to one who is far more powerful than I. To regulate and control those creatures who don’t follow the rules.”

I blinked, and not because of the salty spray which had just suffused the air.

“Basically, I am in charge of capturing the Otherworldly creatures that do not belong in this world. Or to punish those who have broken the rules in the Otherworld. I am, in a sense, the Otherworldly Police. Or, if you prefer something a little more dramatic, you could call me a faelah bounty hunter.”

I snorted, but not because I didn’t believe him. Hadn’t I seen him in action that night I had wandered into the swamp in my pajamas? I just thought the term
Otherworldly Police
sounded a bit ridiculous.

“And that is how you hurt your arm?”

He nodded and we fell back into nonverbal companionship.

“I’m sure you have many more questions Meghan. Do not be afraid to ask me, for I intend to tell you more than you probably wish to know.”

I swallowed. Hard. That sounded rather daunting. I didn’t want to know everything, I knew I didn’t, but from the look Cade was giving me, I knew he planned on telling me anyways. Taking a breath, I asked the question that had been bothering me from the beginning: “How did you know my name?”

He cocked his head to the side and smiled. “The internet.”

That time I really did laugh out loud. “Seriously?”

He nodded. That was getting annoying.

“It isn’t hard to find information on people these days.”

“But why did you
want
to find information on me in the first place?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Your home, Meghan, is very close to a gateway into Eile, the Otherworld. One I often use because of its convenient location in regards to my home on the other side, and because of how hidden and isolated it is. The scholars and historians call them dolmens, structures composed of rocks, forming a crude doorway of sorts. We Otherworldly folk call them
dolmarehn
. Not too far off the modern term, but if you want to say things properly . . .”

He rolled his shoulders, and I nodded.

“Dolmarehn,” I repeated the exotic word, trying it out on my tongue. It sounded creepy, like a word that might be found in a gothic poem.

“It was when I was passing through this dolmarehn that I first detected you. You see, when you spend time in the Otherworld, you absorb its magic. That magic lingers in your system for a while on the other side, here on earth. It wears off in time, almost like a residue, but it gives us extra powers, you could say. Mortals call it glamour. It also gives us the ability to shift our appearance or shape to a certain degree.”

An image of Hobo Bob came to mind, hunched over with the face of a very old man.

Cade took a step forward, moving closer. He leaned his arm against the sheer side of the bluff just beside me and looked me in the eye. His were closer to that dark green now and I wondered what color my own eyes were.

“When this residue is still fresh in us, we can easily detect others like us. If the residue is old, then we have to be much closer to each other to recognize one another. You just happened to be passing by on the trail that day.” He was quiet now, his voice barely audible over the waves.

“And, and, when was that?” I stammered. I felt like a fool, letting his close proximity bend me to his will.

“Several months ago. I kept an eye on you, did my own research. I was baffled, you see, for you give off a very strong aura, though I suspect you haven’t been to Eile in a very long time. Meghan,” he sighed and looked away for a minute, “like me, you are of the Otherworld. You are not human, but immortal. You are one of the Faelorehn.”

-Twelve-

Answers

I think I might have blacked out for a split second, because the next thing I remembered, Cade was holding onto my shoulder as if I was going to fall.

“What?” I whispered, my attention not on him anymore, but fixated on the fascinating shells being washed up by the surf. The grainy sand suddenly felt rough against my bare feet and the underlying smell of fish and salt made my nose sting.

“Here, come sit down a little while,” Cade murmured, somewhere a bit too close to my ear.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough sense to protest. He sat me down on a large, flat rock, its surface warm from the sun, and took a seat next to me. For a while, we just watched the waves, Cade most likely afraid to set me off into a fit of denial or rage, me, well, I was just trying to get a hold of my swirling emotions. Disbelief, for what he had told me couldn’t be true. Hilarity because, let’s face it, it was ridiculous. And finally fear. I thought, despite everything else, my fear was the strongest.

I couldn’t fully accept that what he had said wasn’t true, however, for I had seen things with my own eyes and heard things with my own ears that proved the existence of this mythical Otherworld. Just that very day, had I not enticed a pinecone to fly off the ground of its own accord and smash into the back of Adam’s head? But to be a part of it? To have emerged from such a place? To be immortal? I shivered. Despite my violent self-denial, deep down inside I knew it could be possible. After all, I had been found wandering all on my own when I was too young to have true memories, not a scrap of evidence to suggest who I was or how I had ended up in a sketchy section of Los Angeles by myself.

“Do you remember the three questions I asked you, that afternoon in the swamp?”

Cade’s words were calm, soothing, as if the simple cadence of his voice could win my trust. It was working.

I nodded, swallowing before speaking, “If I had heard voices or seen strange things, if I had ever had premonition dreams, and,” I paused and looked up at him, his now gray eyes calculating, “and if my eyes had a habit of changing color.”

He nodded and looked away. “All traits of someone with Faelorehn blood.”

I let that digest for a moment, and then asked, “What exactly does it mean to be Faelorehn? And what do you mean, I’m immortal?”

Was it like being faelah? I hoped not. He had called those creepy little creatures that had attacked me and the corpse hounds faelah; surely to be Faelorehn meant something else entirely.

“The Faelorehn are the people of the Otherworld, the books and fairytales would call them fae, or faeries. We look very much like human beings, but as you know our eyes never settle on one color, we have heightened senses of the supernatural, and when we have visited the Otherworld for a length of time, our gifts become stronger in this world. It’s almost like a battery Meghan. When we spend too much time here on earth, our powers are drained and we must return to the Otherworld to recharge.”

“We?”

Cade picked up a stone and threw it into the ocean. It went far further than it should have been able to go with the force he had put behind it.

“Yes,
we
. You and I. We are both of the Otherworld; both Faelorehn, both destined to live forever if disease or violence doesn’t claim our lives.”

I had kind of already surmised that, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I moved on to other questions. “If I’m from the Otherworld, then why am I here? Why did someone abandon me in the middle of Southern California when I was so young?”

Cade cringed next to me. “I have a theory,” he said. “I believe you are either the daughter of someone very important and they felt the only way to keep you safe was to send you far away. Or,” he paused, casting me a softer look. “Or, you were unwanted, and there was no place for you in Eile.”

Something in that second option must have had some significance to Cade, because he sounded almost pained by it; more pained than he should have sounded as someone simply delivering bad news. I wondered if he had ever been unwanted himself and my heart opened to him.

He sighed. “The only way to tell for sure would be to bring you to the Otherworld and try to discover your origins. But that is not an option right now. It could be dangerous, especially since you have no knowledge of the Otherworld.”

“Can you teach me?” I asked, terrified and curious at the same time.

He turned and grinned. “Yes, to a point, but not today. So, tell me what you discovered from your research.”

I started out by mentioning Fergus, since his current absence made me think of him.

“I read that Otherworldly animals are white with red ears. But,” I thought about the other supernatural creatures; the gnomes, the Cumorrig, the raven . . . “not all the creatures I saw were white.”

Cade nodded. “Fergus is a spirit guide. He is connected to me. Spirit guides are hard to find, but they remain attached to their Faelorehn companion for life. When the ancients saw an animal that was white with red ears, they knew it was Otherworldly because spirit guides are able to do things normal animals can’t.”

I tucked that information away: white animals with red ears were Otherworldly spirit guides.

I continued to tell Cade what I had learned about the Celts and their deities. He nodded, waiting for me to finish before he spoke again.

“Unfortunately, with our kind not everything is as it seems. The Otherworld is very similar to this one, parallel you could say, but on a different dimension; linked together but not dependent upon one another. We have plants and animals and everything you might find here, but our people are capable of shifting between the worlds. The Faelorehn and the faelah can come and go between this earth and the Otherworld, but human beings and the other denizens of this planet cannot enter our world.”

I nodded, letting him know I still followed.

“Long ago, our people first discovered a way to enter into this place, through the dolmarehn. Many were built, both here and in our world. We discovered the relative weakness of humans and unfortunately, the most powerful of our kind exploited that weakness. They are the ones who cannot be killed, and they became gods and goddesses to the ancient people of northern Europe.”

This made sense, if any of it could make sense. I had seen science specials on T.V. that tried to claim aliens were responsible for building the pyramids, so why couldn’t the Faelorehn have slipped into our dimension and impressed early humankind with their supernatural strength?

“Someday I’ll show you the dolmarehn that I most often use, but not today. The Otherworld is a dangerous place Meghan, even to one who belongs there, and if you don’t know what to expect, it can kill you.”

That sounded daunting. The small bits and pieces of the Otherworld I had seen in this world were terrifying enough. I nodded severely, letting Cade know I concurred. The last thing I wanted to do was go wandering around in a strange place full of various faelah.

Cade was silent for a few seconds, then he turned and looked at me. His skin took on the golden hue of the sun as it fell further towards the horizon. Some well buried instinct tried to coax me into reaching out and touching him, but fortunately my better sense squashed it before I made a fool of myself. Honestly, what had gotten into me?

“Are you well?” he asked.