Guardian (24 page)

Ian and I followed.

I was concentrating hard on not making any sound and was proud of myself for how careful I was being. But then the ground beneath my right foot dipped and I didn’t notice. I gave a little gasp as my foot descended further than I expected and my right knee locked painfully under me as my foot hit the ground. I fell forward…right into one of the Shades.

The inflexible air in front of me gave off a soft “oomph!”, followed with an expletive that quite unfairly questioned the validity of my origins.

“Sorry!” I whispered harshly.

Dawnia turned suddenly, her sharp gaze piercing the dark where I stood. “Someone’s there!” She whispered to Aubrie.

He turned in our direction, looking slightly distracted. “You are paranoid.” He pointed inland, away from the river. “That rise there. That’s the place. Come.”

I bit my lip as Dawnia’s worried gaze speared the darkness one last time in my direction before she turned to follow Aubrie. As she climbed away from the river her eyes kept swiveling in our direction.

Since we knew where they were heading we gave them a few moments head start before following.

“Stay back clumsy spirit.” Admonished one of the Shades.

I frowned and resisted the urge to mutter something surly.

Ian took my arm in a soft but firm grip and nudged me forward, chuckling. “Grace thy name is Nuria.”

“Shut up!” I whispered.

Aubrie stopped suddenly as we neared the higher ground he’d spotted from the river. The area where he stood was cleared of all vegetation, the ground beneath his feet smooth and smelling of rich, black dirt. He turned to Dawnia. “This is the place.”

She looked around, grimacing. “Are you certain? It doesn’t look like much.”

Aubrie scowled at her. “Are all faeries so dense?”

As her aura deepened from pale yellow to pink, heading quickly toward a hostile red, Aubrie shook his head and swung his arm in a semi-circle. “Look around you faery. We stand in a charmed place.”

He was right. I noticed now that the cleared ground beneath their feet was perfectly circular, and that the edges of the circle were marked by huge rocks, shaped like arrows, pointing Heavenward.

“Holy shit! Ian, it’s an astrological calculator!”

He nodded, “Like Stonehenge.”

“Yes.”

As we spoke, the dense cloud cover slid away and the immense light of RiverIsle’s moon flared through a tall archway built of stone, illuminating the circle where Aubrie and Dawnia stood. Aubrie turned to Dawnia and smiled smugly.

The light did funny things to their forms, they paled under its force and wavered.

I blinked, thinking the problem was with my vision, and a necessary adjustment to the focused light of the over-bright moon. But as I squinted at the elf and the faery I realized their faces had become slightly translucent…as if they were beginning to disappear.

Realization hit me full force as I watched their forms waver and thin. “Holy shit!” I screamed, “Ian! It’s a transporter!”

I surged forward, flinging myself toward the circle just as they started to disappear. I launched myself at the nearest upright stone and wrapped my arms around it, screaming as a thousand volts of electricity entered my body. Rather than fight it, I flung back my head and tried to absorb the immense power flowing through that stone, praying with everything I had that I would be in time.

Hard, insistent hands grabbed my waist, and arms, like iron bands wrapped around me, pulling with inhuman strength in an effort to wrest me from the rock. The air filled with extremely colorful swearing as the voltage moved through me and into Ian. The air between us snapped and sizzled at the contact.

I realized Ian was using his aura to pull me back. I opened my mouth and screamed, “No, Ian!” But the words barely made a sound as they petered from my lips.

I was on electrical overload, my circuits were frying from the inside out. I could see the long, silky strands of my hair flying around me and smell the burnt cloth odor of my smoking clothes, but still I clung to that rock.

I couldn’t let them escape.

I almost made it.

I felt myself moving…finally…into the sphere between layers of time.

But then Ian growled my name and gave one, final, herculean tug and I popped loose from the rock, landing on my back on a warm, pleasantly firm, smoking surface whose heart pounded frantically against my back.

I groaned, blinking as dots danced before my eyes, and shoved myself off Ian. “Damn it, Ian!” I screamed, “I almost made it!”

I glared at him, hands on hips, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. I followed the direction of his horrified gaze and nearly swallowed my tongue in shock and surprise.

Wavering in the center of the mystical circle, her small, pale face wide with shock, Etta’s little monster face peered out at us. Then her image thinned, dancing as if on an invisible wave of air, and faded away.

The surprised “O” of her pouty lips was the last visible thing as she slid into the next layer of time.

Chapter
Fourteen

Through Time and Between Worlds

“
E
tta!” I shrieked. “I should have known she was involved in this.”

Around us the air thickened and the circle filled with reappearing Shades.

Ian jumped to his feet and entered the circle, striding aggressively toward the leader of the Shade team. “What is this place? Where does it lead?”

The Shade spread his legs in battle stance and his form wavered as Ian approached. It was obvious he was ready to kick Elfaery ass if he needed to.

Ian realized this as soon as I did and threw his hands up in a placating gesture. “I just need to know where they have gone.”

The Shade’s form strengthened and firmed but he retained his battle ready stance. “The circle works only one time a night, as the Moon moves across the land, it falls once and only once within the key.” The Shade motioned toward the archway built of rock.

“Damnation!”

I stepped up beside Ian. “And you stopped me from following them!” I glared at him. Frustration fizzed through my system so aggressively I was surprised my hair wasn’t standing on end. We’d been so close to catching them.

He turned to glare at me.

“Had you given even one tiny thought to what would have happened to me had you disappeared into another layer of time?”

My eyes widened with sudden realization. “Oh.”

He gave me a mean, little smile, “Yes! Oh. And what of you?” He grabbed my arm, dragging it up so the band of metal on my wrist was right in front of my eyes. “How would you have fared alone, with no powers?”

I bit my lip and jerked my arm from his grasp. “Well…I didn’t think…”

“Exactly!” Ian interrupted.

“Hey! I wasn’t finished…”

Ian turned back toward the Shade, dismissing me completely. I resisted the urge to kick him on his well formed ass.

Just barely.

“How many of these are there?”

The Shade shrugged and looked at his men. One of them stepped forward. “There are four in all, one at each compass point.”

I caught on to Ian’s thought process, “And the moon will touch the keys each in succession through the night?”

The Shade nodded. “Yes, but only two remain.”

“How long until that happens?” I asked

“Four hours at most. Two turns of the clock between each key”

“Take us to the last one.” Ian said, already moving down the slope toward the river.

The Shades followed and passed him, heading North.

I caught up with Ian. “We don’t know which layer they took.”

He turned warm chocolate eyes toward me. “I’m hoping we can catch Etta’s magic signature.”

I frowned, “Can you do that?”

“I’ve never tried before, but we have no choice.”

Shaking my head I fell silent, buried in my thoughts. They weren’t comfortable thoughts. Too much was riding on our finding out where Etta and her fellow monsters had gone, and too little worked in our favor.

I tried to think about historical times that might have been conducive to this type of plotting and magic. A further complication arose immediately with this train of thought. Was I looking at Olympian history, biblical history, or human history.

Frustration reached a new level in my chest and my stomach roiled. Suddenly I remembered our promise to Rapha. Turning to Ian I whispered, “We promised the king we’d bring his daughter home.”

Ian shrugged, “That will have to wait.”

I frowned. “He won’t be happy. We’ll probably have a date with those ravens when we return.”

Ian grinned at me, fingering his sword smugly. “I think I can take them next time. I’ve figured them out.”

I snorted. “Right.”

We walked in silence for the next several moments, each of us buried in our jangling thoughts. My own thoughts tended toward impossible, unanswerable questions such as—What if we couldn’t find Aubrie, Dawnia, and Etta? What the hell was Etta doing? Was she truly the one pulling the strings behind the current unrest in the magical and non-magical worlds? If so, why? Was she working alone? Did her boss know what she was up to? Why hadn’t I kicked her narrow white ass when I’d had the chance?

Sighing I forced my mind away from the impossible questions and focused instead on our surroundings. We had been following the Isle River for the better part of an hour and showed no signs of changing direction. I figured at some point we’d need to veer away from the river, toward high ground.

Beside me Ian suddenly said, “Hekate!”

I looked at him, my eyes widening. “Zeus’ favorite chthonian goddess. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Ian nodded. “Probably. Zeus favors her above nearly all others. She’s high enough in the hierarchy to grasp the ultimate power and has enough influence over Zeus to undermine him without him suspecting.”

“And her affinity to the magic world makes her the obvious choice to pull the different magical communities together, united under one purpose.”

“Exactly.” Ian turned to me, frowning. “She’s associated with crossroads in mythology. What does that tell us?”

I frowned, unsure what he was trying to say. Finally, I ventured a guess. “Crossroads in time or history…or maybe both.”

He nodded, “Exactly.”

We fell silent again. Only one of us knew what we’d just figured out. I was in smile and nod mode, reluctant to show my ignorance. I settled into thought, determined to figure it out for myself. I’d embarrassed myself quite enough for one evening.

Finally we stopped and the Shade leader turned to us. “We have arrived.”

I looked around, seeing nothing. There was no circular area with an archway and no sharp boundary stones pointing to the sky. I frowned, “Where?”

The Shade pointed to the river. It was at its widest point and, if I squinted I could see a small island in its center. “You must swim.”

I gulped. “Swim?” My voice did a very unattractive squealing thing and I cleared my throat with embarrassment.

Ian turned to me with a grin. “Let me guess, you don’t swim either?”

I tilted my head and put my hands on my hips. “Hello? Monad…electrical energy… I can get wet, but I can’t immerse myself totally, it shorts me out. I’d drop like a stone.”

He grimaced, “I see your point.” He thought about this for a minute and then reached into his pocket. Looking down at the small mound of faery dust there he frowned, “Not much left. We’ll have to use it judiciously.” Then he grabbed my hand and flung some of the dust over us.

We entered another layer and made the journey to the small island in just a few long strides. The water shimmered below us, looking very pretty, and for me…very deadly.

I was glad to step out of the layer onto hard ground. We looked around. We were standing within the circle. The entire island consisted entirely of mystical circle.

Ian looked up and saw the edge of the moonlight inching toward the archway. “We’re in time.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to the very center of the transporter. Then he pulled me into his arms and grabbed my butt with both hands, dropping his lips toward mine. “Here’s for good luck.”

I gasped as his lips claimed mine. Warm energy spread quickly through me as his lips urged mine apart and his tongue slid between my parted lips for a taste. Moaning softly I folded myself into him, fitting perfectly against the hard planes of his body with my soft curves. My hands slid under Ian’s tunic and caressed his firm belly, marveling at the incredible warmth his body gave off.

I felt the tangy zing of his aura as it slid around us, pulsing warmly against my skin and bathing us in erotic oranges and vibrant purples. The very core of my pleasure throbbed and spread wide to accept every ounce of pleasure he offered. I sighed as my body softened and opened, pulling in his essence, until I couldn’t tell where he stopped and I began.