Heir of Earth (Forgotten Gods) (42 page)

“Yeah, just some girl stuff,” I said, hiding my puffy eyes by looking out the window. I’d wrestled all night with my decision, but I couldn’t see any other way around it.

“I know, I know. Rose told me. My ears don’t need to hear that stuff!” Phin joked loudly before I finished speaking. He was driving one handed and rubbing his upper arm with the other hand.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” I poked my chin toward the arm he was massaging, quickly turning my head back to the window when he glanced away from the road ahead.

“My arm’s been giving me fits this morning,” he said, wincing with pain as he tried to rub the discomfort from his shoulder and upper arm.

“Did you sleep on it wrong?”

“Yeah. I must have,” he said and we continued on in silence.

I hadn’t dreaded going to Ennishlough so much since my second day at work when I was sure Dayne would fire me. I hadn’t spent a night without Dayne since he had saved me from death, and I hadn’t ever faced a day with so much uncertainty. Were things over between us? Was he already gone? Would I ever be able to live a life without him in it?

I knew the answer to the last question. That would be impossible, but I was hoping I was being a drama queen and that there was no need to even ask questions one and two.

When we arrived at an empty barn, the fear that I might not be over reacting settled into my bones.

A cold fear enveloped me when his tender good morning greetings only hung as memories in the dark shadows of an abandoned wash rack. He wasn’t waiting on me with LeSheen and Lisana like he had every morning before. My desperate sigh echoed down the darkened corridor of the barn. He wasn’t there.

Phin knew something was wrong, but thankfully, mercifully, he didn’t ask. He gave me a list of chores and kept me busy all day. At lunchtime we ate in silence. Phin still rubbed at his arm, and he grumbled about needing to get more sleep as I left the office to begin the second half of my day.

I was closing Sterling’s stall door when the sensation of Dayne’s proximity prickled along the length of my body. It was such a blissful feeling after an entire day of pain I was almost afraid to turn around. I was afraid what he would say to me.

My eyes blinked disbelievingly when I finally turned and saw him. He was worn and ragged, like he hadn’t slept in days. A week old beard covered his beautiful face that hadn’t been there yesterday. His hair hung in greasy strings, and the overstuffed bags under his eyes were the color of the dark cement under our feet.

I instinctively rushed to him, wanting to feel the comfort of his embrace once again, needing to hear the softness of his voice purring in my ear, telling me it would be okay. He disappeared as soon as he saw me move toward him.

A loud commotion rang out behind me and I turned in time to see him collide with a pitchfork leaning against the stall wall. He crashed down to the floor along with it, unable to hold himself up on his feet after traveling so quickly.

I looked at him lying there helplessly on the ground. I walked over and offered my hand to help him. He shook his head and instead reached out for a lead rope wrapped around the stall door and hauled himself up to his feet.

“It’s gotten worse?” I asked, already knowing the answer as I watched his chest heave with the labored breath his movement had caused. Dayne had officially run out of gas.

He nodded his head but said nothing. I took a deep breath and gulped it down, quieting myself before I made the ultimate sacrifice.

“Take me. I want you to have it,” I whispered, eyes closed, body leaned towards him, offering whatever it was I had that he so obviously needed. Would it hurt? Would I feel him borrow my breath or would his painful poison numb me to what he would do? The impossible decision had kept me up all night, but it was the only way. I couldn’t lose him. I
wouldn’t
lose him.

This way, I reasoned, at least we could be together. Even if I would become some catatonic puppet, at least I would be with him.

He sucked air angrily through his teeth. A rush of wind wafted over me and I relished the warmth of his body so close to mine. My head fell back, and I closed my eyes, ready for him to take me. The delicious scent that I had come to know as Dayne filled my nostrils. I wanted to do this. I had to save us.

“I would die before I would destroy you,” he hissed. I had never known words could be filled with so much love and anger at the same time. Another puff of air and he was gone. I opened my eyes, a bit stunned that he had refused me. I had been so ready to make this sacrifice; I had never imagined he would refuse it.

“In here,” he called out from LeSheen’s stall. “I have an idea.” Dumbly, I shuffled to the stall, still reeling from his refusal, and closed the door behind us.

He shook his head when I looked at him. I’m not sure if it was disappointment of disbelief at the sacrifice I had been willing to make for us. I grimaced when he fell onto a hay bale, breathing heavily with the effort, but didn’t offer to help him. I knew he wouldn’t want it.

LeSheen ambled over to his master and poked his nose at Dayne’s chest, looking for a treat the way horses do. He squealed in pain and threw his great head high in the air when the agony of Dayne’s touch hit him squarely in the nose like a boxer’s right hook. Dayne’s body was so desperate for strength at that point even the beating heart of an animal would do. LeSheen snorted at the lingering effect of Dayne’s touch, and retreated to the far corner of his stall rubbing his sore muzzle along his strong white leg.

I noticed for the first time that Dayne wore the thick leather gloves he usually had on when he was mending fences.

“Does it help?” I asked pointing toward his gloves.

“A little. But it will continue to get worse the weaker I get,” he said as he turned his hands over and studied the gloves

“What’s your plan?” I asked as I looked at the gloved hands with a sinking feeling, knowing they could no longer protect me from the dangers of his world if he had to.

“There’s a boxing match scheduled for the town festival this weekend. If an arm wrestling match can recharge me, I’m sure a boxing ring spar will too. At least it would be enough to give us more time to figure out what to do.”

“No, you’ll get killed,” I said shaking my head. “I won’t let you.” Every man in Clonlea who had stupidly challenged Dayne to arm wrestle in the tavern wanted another shot at him, especially that huge beast Burly Hugh. If they came at him in his current condition, he would be beaten to a bloody pulp, fairy or not.

“You can’t really stop me,” he said arrogantly punching his chin in the air, knowing his pain was the only power he could rely on at this point. It was a new place for our relationship. I was pretty sure I was physically stronger than him right now, but with the touch of a fingertip he could inflict more pain than a Golden Glove boxer. “Even if I get knocked out by the first punch, there’s got to be enough power in that one blow to recharge me. That’s all I need, Faye, Just one powerful touch, and I should be back for a few days at least.”

“And then what? We’re back here again? Waiting for you to disappear before my eyes? I can’t live like that, Dayne. I can’t wake up every morning wondering if today is the day you’ll be taken from me.”

“I know. But short of changing into an animal for the next 15 years, I don’t have an answer yet, Faye. I need more time.”

“Let’s go to LisTirna. You’ll be fine there.”

“That’s not an option, Faye. They can’t know about you.”

“Staying here isn’t an option either. I don’t care where we are, Dayne. I just want to be with you.”

“LisTirna is out of the question. You would never be allowed to return if they found out about your powers. Elementals are too much of a liability in this world.”

“So what, LisTirna is too dangerous for me and my world is too dangerous for you?”

“Yes.” There was a heaviness in his voice that stifled the air around me and made it suddenly hard to breathe.

I turned away from him in defeat. He would never let me near LisTirna even if that were the only place he was safe. He feared my future there more than he feared his own here.

I didn’t see any other way around it. Dayne needed the strength of something living in this world if he was going to continue our life. He refused to take anything from me or other humans unless it was forced into him, like the arm wrestling, but looking at him hanging onto the hay bale in front of me, I doubted he had enough time for that. Dayne was slipping through my fingers.

I wiped at the tears in my eyes for the hundredth time when the creak of Phin’s office door swinging open carried down the barn aisle.

“Faye?” He called out to me in a weak voice.

“I’m in here, Phin,” I said walking to the stall door. I popped my head out and looked up the aisle toward his office.

To my horror I watched as Phin clutched his chest and clung weakly to the frame of the door with one hand.

His eyes met mine and he took one step toward me before his body fell to the cold cement floor beneath him, gasping for breath.

“Phin!” I cried out at the top of my lungs.

I sprung through the stall door, rushing down the aisle, the loud steps of my leather boots on the hard surface echoing down the length of the barn and startling the horses I ran past. The horses spooked in their stalls, jumping to the side and snorting at the danger they thought was in their midst. The rustle of their bodies moving followed me as, one by one, heads poked out, looking at me and then at Phin as he lay motionlessly on the ground.

I crashed to the cement beside him and pulled his head into my lap.

“Phin?! Phin?! Look at me Phin!” I screamed his name as loudly as I could, and the horses paced restlessly in their stalls at the commotion. His blue eyes rolled around in his head and perspiration sprung from every pore on his body, drenching his clothes and rolling down his blanched forehead as I shook him to try and wake him.

“Dayne, call someone! I think he’s having a heart attack!” I yelled orders to Dayne and glanced back quickly. Dayne’s face was a mask of shocked horror as he watched me from the entry of LeSheen’s stall, holding onto the walls to support himself.

I couldn’t be bothered with Dayne right now. Phin was struggling to breathe as his body went limp in my arms. I laid him out on the barn floor and began to assess the situation. Leaning over to him, I struggled to hear any breath at all coming from his mouth or nose. I waited for the heat of his breath to brush across my cheek, but felt nothing. His chest was still, no breath pulled in to make it rise and no exhale escaped to flatten it back.

My hands trembled as I reached out for his wrist, trying desperately to find a pulse on his clammy arm. Nothing. I grabbed at his neck, but only felt the tremor of my own hands.

“He’s not breathing!” I shouted down the aisle to Dayne. I tried desperately to remember anything I had ever learned in health class about CPR. I tilted Phin’s head back to open his airway and gave two slow breaths, watching as his chest rose with my borrowed breath. I moved down to his chest, locked my arms in place over his sternum and began to press down in great, jerking pounces.

“Come on Phin! Breathe!” My voice seemed disconnected and distant as tears ran down my nose and landed on my hands beating furious on his chest, trying desperately to bring him back to life.

The echo of a horse, desperately crying out in pain, shot down the length of the barn. It sounded like Hannah, the night Ali was born, but deeper, more powerful than Hannah had sounded. It was an unnerving sound that broke through my concentration. The shriek turned from a strong, powerful roar into a pitiful moan that died out as quickly as it had started and my focus was restored. I reached back to continue my breaths.

The next second two familiar, gloveless hands pushed my own away from Phin’s chest. I looked up to see Dayne, returned to his beautiful, youthful self, close his eyes and mumble under his breath as he ran his hands along Phin’s body, hovering over his heart. Their heads met and I saw Dayne breathing breath into the failing body before him.

Phin’s lifeless body stirred under Dayne’s touch and he drew a huge breath into his lungs. He coughed as the air flowed back into his body, reviving him and bringing the color back to his cheeks immediately. His eyes fluttered open.

“Faye,” he said with a weak, broken voice as he looked at me.

“Shhhh…don’t try to talk. You’re okay. We’re going to get you to a hospital,” I soothed as I watched Dayne’s gloveless hands lift Phin effortlessly off the ground and carry him with miraculous speed down the barn’s aisle and toward his truck.

I was running to keep up with him. As I passed LeSheen’s stall, I caught a brief glimpse of the once mighty stallion cowering like a weak kitten in the corner.

Immediately, I knew what Dayne had done in order to save Phin. LeSheen’s massive body lay sprawled in the darkened shadows where Dayne had sat seconds ago. The solid mountain of white quaked and shivered as the last of his magic left him.

We were at the hospital
in record time. I stayed with Phin, and Dayne left to pick Rose up at the bakery. After Phin’s initial assessment, the doctors were shocked that he was in such amazing condition after having what they confirmed was a massive heart attack. They insisted on keeping him for observation, and Rose insisted on staying with him.