Some Enchanted Dream: A Time Travel Adventure (Seasons of Enchantment Book 2) (37 page)

The sudden thud behind them made Tara and Adrian swing around in surprise.

Mick, Riley and Dan had arrived. Dan was pale, and looked as if he were about to toss up his cookies. He'd confided to her before that he didn't like air travel.

"Have a care, sister. Wait for us to check the perimeter before you proceed," Mick sternly advised. "Riley," he nodded to his sibling and the pair of them leapt into the air and took flight. Tara watched them for a brief moment, amazed by the gracefulness of their movements.

"Are you well, Dan?" Adrian moved to their companion and peered at him with amusement. "You're looking a little green there, my friend."

"Never been carried somewhere by flying . . .
fairies
." He looked at Tara as he said it.

She knew what he meant to say but didn't;
flying monkeys
. She smiled and nodded at him. Good call. For once he had the grace to not let his mouth get ahead of his brain. No need to insult his ride, as they had to get out of here quickly once the explosives were lit.

The brothers returned to the ground. "I detect no protective sigils here," Mick said.

"They set this up a few months ago," Riley added. "They would not have been worried about us or any other fey finding their still."

"Yet, they did put them up at the fair. Why?" Mick thought out loud.

"But that's a very public place with crowds swarming in from all over the world," Dan countered. "Some fellows, like my buddy here, marry a fey, who might in turn detect the dark ones presence and interfere with their plans to make humans stupid and psychotic."

"I don't like this," Mick murmured. "It could be a trap."

"Let's get to work, the sun is going down." Adrian was the one to bring the men into focus. Tara was amazed by his ability to take charge of men bigger than himself. She forgot he was a militia leader and led a group of rebels against a common foe in Ireland.

They found a side door and broke in. The brothers spread out with wings retracted tight against their backs. Each one went a different direction, keeping close to the walls and lurking before a doorway, like marines securing a stronghold of an enemy. 

Dan and Adrian searched the rooms to find the stills. Tara followed them. She kept turning about as she walked, surveying the area, trying to detect the presence of a dark one.

They passed an office. Tara called out to them softly, and they paused to follow her inside the small, cluttered factory office with a window overlooking the river. There were hand written shipment schedules on the walls. And ledgers filled with herb acquisitions, wormwood, anise, fennel, prices per kilo and supplier information. She moved the ledger aside and discovered a handwritten list of names and addresses of customers they intended to ship their product to in the next months. The distribution list was comprised of numerous pages, and lay amid scattered milk bottles that were nearly empty and emitting a sour smell.

Milk. They liked milk, just like Riley. 

"Holy shit," Dan's voice rumbled behind her. "It's a who's who list for 1889. They've got Queen Victoria's sons listed here, Princes Albert, Alfred, Arthur and Leopold. There's President Harrison of the United States, G. Daimler, T. A. Edison, A. G. Bell, Pope Leo XIII,
Samuel Clemons
--hey, I know that name from somewhere."

"Mark Twain," Tara informed him. She looked over the list with him. There were leaders and dignitaries from countless nations, famous industrialists, inventors, businessmen, and intellectuals as well as Catholic Cardinal, Anglican priests, various dukes, earls, counts from European nations, generals and diplomats.  This was their target distribution list. Start at the top of society and bring civilization down.

It was a brilliant plan, one they could not allow to succeed.

With disgust, Tara placed the sheaf of papers in the metal ash pail and set it aflame with an energy ball, the better to warm herself up with a little practice shot. The acrid smell of burning paper filled the room, overcoming the sour odor of rancid milk.

"Let's move on," Adrian directed. "We have to destroy the product and their stills."

They wandered down the dreary corridor. The sun was on the opposite side of the building, casting the eastern side in shadows.

They found packed crates in one large warehouse room inside of the building instead of in separate building as they expected. The crates were marked with stamps foretelling the destinations of the potent, mind altering poison.  New Orleans, Shanghai, Athens, Venice, Madrid, Prague, Vienna, New York, Istanbul . . . it was mind numbing to see so many place names on packaged crates ready for shipment.

"This looks like a good place to start," Dan said. He pulled out a couple sticks of the explosives and started setting them around the stacked wooden crates. "Oh, damn it--I'm low on matches." He shot a glance to Adrian, his question clear.

"I didn't think of that," her husband admitted. "How many matches do you have?"

Dan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small cardboard matchbox. He opened the lid. "About six or seven, sorry. I thought you were bringing them."

Both men looked to Tara. She nodded. Her blue zaps were made from electric energy. They also produced enough heat to melt a tin can, if she concentrated enough.

"Let's find the still room before we light these," Adrian directed.

"This stuff is gonna be highly combustive, we won't need to set off each stick. The explosions from the others will do that, plus the alcohol in the mixture. If we linger too long here after Tara starts firing zingers, we could be blasted to hell with the green juice."

Dan had a point. The three of them looked at each other for a long moment before moving on to find the still room. They found it at the center of the building. It was a huge room with large cylindrical copper vats rising like vertical towers toward the ceiling and the glass skylight above. Tara counted sixteen of them, in four rows across and with four vats in each row.

The shadows grew, despite the skylight above that still revealed a perfect blue sky.

The men started tossing explosives at the base of the vats. They quickly discovered they didn't have enough sticks for each vat.

"Shit," Dan swore. "We should have brought more explosives."

"Once this room goes the heat should ignite the rest of the building. As you pointed out, it's highly flammable material," Tara reminded them.

Loud screeches and the sound of a scuffle on the roof made them pause like deer in the headlights.

With a horrendous crash, Riley fell through the skylight above with a shower of glass descending around him. He rolled in the air, flapped his wings hard, creating a stiff breeze and then recovered at the last instant before he hit the concrete floor. "They're here, ten of them by my count," he warned and flew up and out of the building again to join his brother.

"Light the stills," Adrian ordered. Dan struck a match and lit the fuses in the center row.

"Just light a couple sticks," Tara shouted and sprinted down the hallway to the packaging room. 

The sounds of battle ensued above. Shouting, snarling and dark ones shrieking. Mick and Riley were trying to hold off the dark fey. It sounded like they needed help.

First, they had to destroy this building and the poisoned absinthe.

Once she arrived at her chosen target, she started shooting off energy balls. The wooden crates went up in flames and the long dynamite fuses started to glow. She aimed at the wooden legs of the tables with all those bottles ready to be packed in crates, and then turned to ignite an interior wall with a cluster of notes and announcements tacked onto it. The paper lit up instantly from her charge and started to curl and blacken as the flames licked up the wall. She glanced back at the table, and was pleased to see the wooden legs engulfed in greedy orange flames. It wouldn't be long before the table top started to burn, and then the bottles would explode.

"Get out,
now
," Adrian ordered, grabbing her upper arm from behind to make her do as he said. Dan was running behind them. "Outside, before the stills go up."

They raced to the end of the hallway, toward the door they'd entered in the back.

Just as they arrived at their goal, a dark winged fey dropped down from the ceiling, blocking their exit. "Going somewhere, humans?"

Tara's hands flew up in defense. She intended to shoot him with energy bolts.

Would it be enough?

It was one thing to scorch her brother's shirt, emolliate a rat or melt a tin can--harming a large fey male would take a lot more energy.
Focus, Tara, Focus on substantial energy.

A shot rang out as she hesitated. Adrian fired on the dark one, hitting him in the belly, not the heart. The thing shrieked and gasped, but still stood upright. The flesh surrounding  the bullet wound ripped a hole in its gut was becoming streaked with black spider veins.

"What did you shoot it with?" she asked as she watched the creature founder.

Adrian pushed her aside. An arrow went flying into the thing's heart. That made it shriek louder as it dropped to the floor clutching it's impaled chest and the lead tipped arrow.

"Move, move,
now
!" Adrian pulled her past the fallen fey and pushed her through the door. Dan followed, shoving them along to reach safety. 

"I used a silver bullet made from the sovereigns I brought here from the past." Adrian explained in a breathless rush. "They're outdated in the present, except for those who don't know there is a difference in English coinage since 1815.  I had our remaining sovereigns to cast into bullets of pure silver."

The screeching above distracted them momentarily as they looked up  above the factory. Mick and Riley were each grappling with a winged Darkling. Seven other dark fey males hovered in the air in a circle about them and were taunting them like schoolyard bullies.

"Dan, we must take them down from the ground. Our lads will never overcome them all." Adrian raised his pistol and fired. His shot hit the wing of one of the creatures. It screeched and turned about to look down at them, as did the other fey males watching their companions fight Mick and Riley.

"Oh, shit," Dan muttered, "now they see us."

Chapter Thirty-One

A group of darklings descended from the sky as Tara and the men tried to clear the warehouse as it would blow any second.

Adrian and Dan fired at them again as they ran. Tara started hurling lightning balls. Their efforts only seemed to piss the wretched beings off, not repel them as the creatures dodged and feinted in the air to avoid their shots.

The sudden roar of flames made it impossible to hear Adrian's warning shouts.

Heavy black smoke billowed up to shroud the battle above where her brothers fought in hand to hand combat to overcome their opponents.

"Run, damn it," Adrian shouted, whether it was to her or Dan, she wasn't sure.

Adrian was dragging Tara with him across the road and firing his pistol at the creatures flying out from the smoke behind them.

One dark fey fell from the sky and shrieked hideously as if in agony. It started thrashing like a wild beast caught in a trap. Gray foam emerged from its mouth as it hugged it's bullet pierced chest with both hands and rolled on the ground as if it had been splashed with acid.

A massive sound of breaking metal combined with earth shuddering booms.

The copper stills full of Absinthe were exploding. The force of the blast sent them hurtling several feet into the field across the road as a hellish inferno of rushing smoke and gushing flames rose up in a sooty column to block out the sun.

Repetitive booms, like successive cannon fire, resounded continuously for several moments as the bottles blew, one by one. Louder booms emerged as bottles exploded together.

Odd smells choked the air--burning herbs from the storage room where bags of dried wormwood were kept, along with other dried plants, combined with that acrid smell of burning wood and paper.  Lying on her belly, Tara lifted her head and stared at the burning plant, seeing black skeletal remnants of what had once been a building amid the devouring flames.

Stunned momentarily, Tara and Adrian remained flat on the ground in the tall grass with heads up, watched the violent inferno of flames and smoke that dwarfed them and the surrounding countryside. Surely people in Paris would see this and come to investigate?

Dan was several yards behind them, crouching on all fours near the road. He rose, brushed himself off and started to run to them. A soot covered fey landed on his back and pushed him to the earth. The beast hovered over him, wings spread, ready to strike a deadly blow.

Tara wrenched her wrist free of Adrian's iron hand and fired at the malicious creature. Her energy bursts only stunned it, making it stop trying to hurt Dan, but she kept firing and letting her fury fuel her shots. It stood, staggered away, its blackened flesh zinging with neon blue energy as its wings started to catch fire. "Bastard," she shouted, slamming it with another lightning ball. It fell and did not get up again.

Dan quickly rolled over onto his back and took out another one hovering above him with his rifle. He shot it three times in the heart as it descended from the sky to take it's fallen comrade's place atop him. He rolled quickly out of the way as it hit the ground, struggled to his feet and ran to join them in the high grass.

Adrian grabbed her arm as she instinctively tried to get up to go to Dan. "Get down." His words came through tight lips. "If he's running to us, he's fine."

Dan sank to one knee next to them and reloaded his rifle. He took aim and started shooting at their enemies. The remaining fey were experts at dodging gunfire. None of Dan's bullets hit their target. Nor did the arrows Adrian fired find flesh to pierce. They were running out of ammunition by shooting into the air as the fey dipped and glided up gracefully like giant crows swarming a cornfield.

Tara stood again, and was about to let loose with more lightning bolts when she was seized from behind and lifted up into the sky.