Incarnations (9 page)

Caislyn wrote out the final words on the final words
on the sketch pad and then flipped to the beginning to look them
all over. "Oh Goddess! What are we supposed to do with this?"

Caislyn immediately picked up the cell phone she had
refused to use since she last contacted Seth.

"Seth, I need Jaxon, now."

"What's going on?"

"I found a code in the book that we got from the
attic in Ireland. It tells what we're needed for, what the prophecy
really is..."

"It'll take a while for us to get to you, Caislyn,
we're still in Italy."

"Stay there. I'll come to you."

"Do you think it's safe for you to travel, or even
teleport in your condition."

"I don't think my condition is going to matter much
longer if I don't get to Jaxon very soon."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Are you guys still at my family's place in
Italy?"

"Yeah, we are. Caislyn, what was that supposed to
mean?"

Caislyn hung the phone up and got up to get dressed.
Once she was done, she tucked the paper with the de-coded message
on it into her pocket, grabbed the cell phone and put that in her
other pocket, and then she focused on wanting to be in Italy, at
the house she had stayed in for the summer when she was 16. If she
was right about what the book said, then they were going to be able
to change everything, for the better, and very soon.

***

THE PLAN

Caislyn popped into the condo her family had in
Italy. She had almost forgotten what happier times were like and
the nostalgia hit her immediately as she remembered being sixteen
and heading out to go get gilato with her friend AnnaBeth two doors
over.

At first, Caislyn didn't think anyone was there when
she first teleported in, but then she caught movement out of the
corner of her eye. She turned, a little too quickly, and saw Jaxon
sitting on a chair just before the dizziness overtook her. The room
started spinning, and then quickly started dimming out to a solid
gray tunnel in front of her just before everything went black.

~*~

"Is she okay?" A woman, who's voice Caislyn didn't
recognize, was asking.

"I don't know." Jaxon said.

"I tried to warn her that I didn't think it was safe
to travel that way. She has no clue what it will do to the baby."
Seth was furious, she could hear the anger plainly in his
voice.

"Did you call Gregore?" Jaxon asked.

"No, I can't reach him. The cell he had before is no
longer active. I'm not sure what's going on."

"I do." Ash's voice was suddenly everywhere, like
smooth velvet trailing across her skin.

"What the hell?" The unfamiliar female voice nearly
yelped.

"Ash!" Seth said, "I'm glad you were able to get
here quickly. She teleported in, then fainted, she hasn't come to
yet."

"Damn it. I didn't think she'd attempt to teleport
anywhere or I would have been in the room with her."

"What do you mean?"

"She decoded that damn book. I was hoping to head
her off at the pass so the rest of us could know what it said
before she ran off on one of her little quests." Ash said. He must
have been leaning in close because suddenly Caislyn's senses were
flooded with the sweet, exotic smell of him. Faerie clung to him
where ever he went, and it instantly made Caislyn feel at home and
at ease. "And by the way, Gregore's gone. He gave Caislyn an
ultimatum, and when she refused to stop training with me, in order
to find you, he took off. No one's heard from him since."

"That dick!' Jaxon proclaimed as she jumped up and
started pacing back and forth. "I'm sorry, Cais. I'm so sorry. I
didn't know I was still screwing things up for you too. Uggghhh!
Does anyone know what the damn book said?"

"No. Vesta's working on it now, but I came as soon
as Seth called."

Caislyn tried to open her eyes, to speak, to tell
them how important it was for her and Jaxon to get to the
Brotherhood. She wanted nothing more than to be able to make them
all understand how monumental this prophecy was, but she just
couldn't. The effort to try to open her eyes at all was so taxing.
Instead, she found herself slipping off into a peaceful dream.

~*~

"Where are we?" Ash asked as he looked around the
small city.

"This is what it will be like when the prophecy is
fulfilled. Peaceful. We will all be able to live without all this
drama that's been tearing us apart."

"Wait, what are you saying, Caislyn?"

"I'm saying things will be different if Jaxon and I
do this, but it will be different for the better."

"How do you know that? This is just a dream."

"It's a dream of the future, Ash."

"Momma?" A little girl of about four years old came
running up and threw her arms around Caislyn. She looked so much
like the woman herself, that there was no denying who she was.
"Momma come see the pretty butterflies."

"Okay, baby," Caislyn said without question as she
walked off hand in hand with the little girl."

Ash stood there watching and wondering what it meant
that the little girl hadn't recognized or even acknowledged him. He
stood watching as the woman he loved, and her daughter, walked over
to a bush, commonly known as a butterfly bush, and sat down
watching the perfectly normal butterflies fluttering around it. As
he took notice the butterflies dipped into the flowers for the
sweet nectar they provided.

These butterflies were not made from Faerie, they
were real and normal, which he guessed was what Caislyn meant,
because he also sensed an absence of magic around them. He tried to
reach out through the dream and tap into Faerie, but was unable
to.

"Caislyn?" He called to her, but she didn't turn
around any longer. The minute the little girl came up to them
Caislyn seemed to forget that Ash existed.

~*~

"Well, did you reach her?" Jaxon asked as soon as
Ash woke up.

"Only momentarily, and then she seemed to forget
that I was there."

"What does that mean?" Jaxon asked.

"It means that she talked to me momentarily then a
little girl called her mommy, they walked off together, and neither
of them acknowledged my presence again."

"Oh." Jaxon could feel the emotion rolling off of
Ash now. He was disappointed, thinking that it meant the baby
Caislyn now carried wasn't his. "It doesn't necessarily mean
anything, Ash."

"No, but something else bothered me. Caislyn said it
was a dream of the future. But in her future there was no magic. I
couldn't even summon Fey magic inside her dream. I don't know what
that means, but I was definitely blocked, and that's never happened
before."

"Okay, we have to figure out what to do to help wake
Caislyn up so we can find out." Jaxon said as she took Seth's phone
and began dialing.

"Vesta, it's Jaxon." She listened for a moment, "no,
no, she got here. We have a little problem though. I was hoping you
would know what to do." Jaxon relayed what was going on with
Caislyn, and then listened for quite a while as Vesta explained
what they needed to do for her daughter. When she was finished she
made Jaxon promise to call her immediately when things changed.

"We need to get her outside, as close to Faerie as
we can, and then you need to take her over," she said to Ash.

"Why?" Ash asked.

"Vesta said it was Faerie magic that caused this,
since witches can only summon and not teleport. She said, because
it was Faerie magic involved, that perhaps being closer to Faerie
could help heal her as well."

"That makes sense." Ash shook his head, “Vesta
always was a smart cookie.” Ash said as he went to the bedroom to
gather Caislyn up.

~*~

Ash took Caislyn to the fields just beyond the
condos and lay her there in the grass. He began weaving some of the
magic from Faerie until the ground around them began to shimmer,
then he grabbed hold of Caislyn and used his magic to pull both of
them through to the other world. Caislyn's skin began to shimmer an
almost greenish gold as she lay there under the Fey sky. Ash had
never seen a sight so beautiful, and this had not ever happened on
any of their previous trips to the Faerie. He began to wonder if it
was because Caislyn was unconscious this time, and therefore not
blocking out her Fey side. Either way, the sight of her here, in
the glow of the Fey, made him love her that much more. She was
real, she was attainable for him like this. It meant there was a
larger part of her that was Fey than anyone had ever guessed.

"Ah, Caislyn, if you could just let go like this
when you're awake so you can see what you really are. You wouldn't
question things as much. You really are your father's
daughter."

Ash placed a hand on her forehead, and another
across her chest and concentrated on the healing energy he felt so
connected to in Faerie. He let it flow through him and into
Caislyn. He felt the warmth tingle through his body as he connected
to the earth and sky, pulling energy from all around to give to
her, that she might wake up and have the energy to carry out
whatever task was set before her.

Ash felt it the moment Caislyn started coming to,
but he didn't stop there. He wanted to make sure she was healed
thoroughly. It occurred to him that he could check on the baby in
this state and possibly see if she had a larger than normal trace
of Fey magic, but two things stopped him. He didn't want to betray
Caislyn by checking without her permission, and he wasn't sure he
wanted to know yet. As long as he didn't know, he still held out
hope that Caislyn would fall just as in love with him as he was
with her. Even if, in the end, it turned out not to be his child.
He wouldn't care, he would stand by her and help her raise it since
Gregore had already left. Ash had resigned himself a short time ago
to give up on Caislyn and help her have the life he thought she
wanted with Gregore, but after seeing her here like this in Faerie,
he just couldn’t let go any longer. She was a part of his world,
even if she wasn’t sure to what extent.

Ash was lost deep in thought when Caislyn finally
came around. She surprised him by putting her hand across the one
he still held over her chest.

"Ash, I need Jaxon." She whispered it, but she
looked fine. He simply nodded to her and lifted the veil between
Faerie and the human realm. They were back in the field outside the
condo in only moments, and he helped Caislyn stand up.

“
Cailsyn,” he started to say, but
she stopped him by placing a finger over his mouth.

"Thank you," she said as she turned and began
walking toward the condo. He simply nodded and didn’t bother to try
again. It was obvious Caislyn was on a mission and she wouldn’t
really hear anything he had to say anyway.

~*~

Caislyn looked around the living room and nodded to
each of its occupants. "I need to speak to Jaxon in private for a
moment, please." Caislyn smiled reassuringly as questioning glances
were exchanged. "We'll still be here when you all return, I
promise."

Jaxon stood to walk everyone out the door, and then
she joined Caislyn on the couch.

"How are you?"

"I'm good. Whatever Ash did helped immensely. We
have to talk, but I know they're still listening." She motioned to
the door where the vampires with their extraordinary hearing were
still standing.

"No problem," Jaxon said as she grabbed Caislyn's
hand and formed a protective bubble around them. "Watch, they'll
come pouring in any second because they can't hear us anymore."

True to her word, the door flung open and a pair of
wild-eyed, panicked men poured in. The girls both looked up
incredulously at them, before Jaxon dropped the bubble. "She did
say in private. Now, get out!" She pulled the bubble back up around
them as Ash and Seth left the room once more.

"Thank you," Caislyn said.

"Cais, I'm sorry, for everything."

"Don't, Jaxon. We've all made our share of mistakes,
some of them we have to live with forever, others we don't. Let's
not rehash them right now. I have a plan to make everything
better."

"Okay, so what's going on with this code you
found?"

Caislyn smiled. "It's the key to everything, to
getting our normal lives back."

Jaxon looked at Caislyn with that carefully hidden
skeptical judgment she always had when she learned something new.
Caislyn was not daunted by it, she had always been able to convince
Jaxon of things in the past. She didn't think this would be any
different, as long as she was really willing to listen. "Tell me,"
Jaxon said simply.

"I'm gonna go backwards here. While I was
unconscious, I saw a vision of the future. I saw a place where
magic didn't exist." Caislyn smiled and held up her hand to stifle
Jaxon's questions. "Wait, let me explain. It was beautiful. We were
all still there, living our lives, but there was none of this magic
bullshit. No one was trying to kill us, there were no looming other
than human wars on the brink. There was just an air of peace and
tranquility. I saw my daughter, Jax. She wasn't the baby I'm
carrying now. She was from a different time and place, but she told
me that we had a happy life. She also showed me what things looked
like if we made another choice. It wasn't pretty. Always on the
run. My child, the one I am carrying now wouldn't make it to see
ten. He'll be killed by the same people who chase us down now.
Fanatics, who don't even know what they're fighting for or against.
I can't live through that, Jax. I can't watch someone else we love
die for us, or because of us."

"How do you know any of this was real? Maybe it was
just your mind trying to work through everything that has
happened."

"And if it was, then my mind is telling me that I'm
not willing to lose anyone else so that I stay alive. The code I
found, it tells how to find the Brotherhood, and it tells why we
need to find them."