Through Time-Pursuit (7 page)

“Oh … oh no … did you have to fight him?”

“No, and when he received his death blow … I found him, and was with him in his last moments.”

“Chance … oh … I can’t imagine what you must have felt.”

“Good. I wouldna want a wee thing like ye to imagine such pain.” He shrugged it off, grinned, took her by the waist, and brought her in close. He looked long into her eyes and said softly, “I canna think of that devil’s lips on yours without burning inside.
Doona let it happen again
.”

“Well, it wasn’t as though I had a choice …” She felt a wild heat rush into her cheeks.

“Ye had a choice. Doona try and tell me, otherwise lass. Ye are strong and sure, and I’m not a betting man, but I would wager ye were curious about him. Doona be curious again.”

“You think you are so smart!” Royce snapped at him, feeling like a schoolgirl. “And you can’t tell me what to do.”

“I can and I am—doona let him touch ye again.”

“Well, I don’t want to, but even so, you can’t tell me not to do anything I choose to do,” she retorted angrily.

“Think not?” His smile was smug. “Think again.”

“Grrr …” She made a sound but decided she would change the subject. She looked around and asked, “And where did Trevor go off to?”

Chance shrugged. “I doona have a clue.”

“Well, I am sadly disappointed in him. He should have joined our efforts to save those people.”

“Och lass, doona be so judgmental. He has his beliefs, just as ye have yers.”

Royce frowned over this as she silently conceded his point. It was at that moment she felt the atmosphere wiggle. Trevor stepped out of his shifting to stand before them, a grin on his face and a large, blue-velvet–covered globe in his hands.

The thought still jumbled in her mind as she looked at her old friend.
Y
eah,
beliefs or not, he just up and left!

She stomped over to him, slapped his arm roughly, and then wagged a finger. “How could you just leave like that?”

“
Ow
—no need to keep hitting me every single time you don’t agree with me, Red. I saw you two had things under control so I decided to go off and find Danté and get the Lugh Orb.” He shoved the blue-velvet–covered ball into her hands.

“Still, you should have helped us,” she said as she removed the velvet cover and held up the transparent Orb.
Humans would call it a crystal ball
, she thought, but it was so much more.

“I wouldn’t have been much help … and besides, Red, you know we are not supposed to interfere with humans,” he said, avoiding her eye.

“We weren’t interfering with humans—
we were interfering with Pestale
,
” she shot back at him. “He was punishing me for shifting away from him when he wanted me to stay. He was, I believe, attempting to manipulate my behavior towards him in the future.” Her free hand went to her hip. “Since when do we let a Dark Fae interfere with humans?
We don’t
—we use our brain, which tells us that we are supposed to take Pestale and his black magic down.”

He eyed her, frowned as he thought about this, but said nothing. Chance slapped him on the back and said, “’Tis never easy to go against one’s orders, and Trevor has only just begun to look into the face of evil.
He’ll learn
.”

Chancemont LeBlanc had once again surprised her. Until the last hour she had spent with him, she had thought he was just a big, handsome hunk set on revenging his sister’s cold-blooded murder, but …
he was more so much more
.
He was full of logic and good sense. This new side of him intrigued her. And then there was Trevor, whom she had considered one of her dearest friends, totally shocking her with his callous behavior towards humans. She had not thought he could be so …
Fae cold-blooded
about the humans she adored.

She eyed Trevor sadly and decided not to give him any slack. “Well, what’s that to say to anything—
all new to him
? This is all new to me, but making the right choice has got to take precedence over all else.”

“Ho ho, look at little Miss Know It All. Ye can’t cut things into black piles and white piles. Making the right choice is different for everyone. Too many colors in this world, lass.” Chance put up his hand to silence both Trevor and her and put an end to the argument. “Now, how do we use this, Trevor m’man?”

Trevor stood taller, and his face took on what Royce thought of as his ‘I’m a Royal Prince of the House of Lugh’ look. “The family Orb is thousands of years old. We consider it a Hallow, for it developed a life of its own. The Orb’s loyalty will always be to the family who first gave it life, the House of Lugh, but as years go by, it continues to grow and become—”

“Not interested in a history lesson, lad. What does it
do
?” Chance interrupted, and Royce looked away and bit her bottom lip to keep from giggling.

”Uh, we, or rather I will ask it to locate Pestale for us.”

The Orb began to glow a soft shade of amber, and Royce stared at it.

Chance stared at it as well, but Royce suddenly remembered that she had to let them in on Pestale’s near breakthrough with time travel.

“Yes, yes, it was very clever of you, Trev, to retrieve the Orb, for it may help us, but first I have to tell you both what Pestale has done.”

She turned back to Chance, who took her fingers in his firm grasp, brought them up to his sensuous lips, and looked at her intently. “Aye, then I should like to know, lass, what else besides kissing ye did Pestale do?”

“Pestale kissed you?” Trevor’s face expressed revulsion.

She waved his remark off impatiently as she pulled a face at him. Then she turned back to Chance. “Stop that … he only kissed me—”

“Only, ye say, but that is quite a bit more than he should have done!” snapped Chance, getting angry all over again.

“I’ll say,” agreed Trevor. “Arrgh—how could you let him?”

“Do you two want to know what he has done, or don’t you?”

They kept silent and waited for her to go on, so she did. “He shifted us to a place that he called ‘in between time’. Apparently he has created a dimension—don’t know what else to call it—but it is nothing more than a cloud where time stands still. He hangs out there so that he can’t be tracked, and he is working on getting through the time barrier … so that he can shift through time, using ancient black magic.”

“Are ye saying he has found a way to break through the time barrier?” Trevor shook his head. “’Tis not possible. Even Queen Aaibhe has lost that ability because of the curve …”

“Well, he hasn’t done it yet, but I have this awful feeling that he will—and soon. He was very confident.”

“Was he now?” Chance wrinkled his nose with a sneer. “And I’m still wanting to know why he took ye off alone and showed ye all this—and why didn’t ye escape him sooner?”

“I—he talked some nonsense about ruling the world and me at his side, and I stayed as long as I could bear it to find out what he was planning.” She grimaced at him and hurriedly added, “And as to
why me
—I am, in spite of what you think, a powerful Royal Seelie, and he no doubt believes he can entice me to his side and use my Seelie magic.”

“And were ye—enticed to his side … ?” Chance was bending to her, touching her arms with both his hands, and looking into her eyes.

She felt his penetrating blues search her face. What was he doing? What was wrong with him? Didn’t he believe her? She frowned at him. “
No
—how could you ask such a thing? What is wrong with you?” She shook her head and pulled out of his touch—it was so … too distracting to think when he was so close and looking so penetratingly at her.

“Right, so he is working his black magic to find a rift in time. Let’s put the Lugh Orb to work and see just where he is now,” Trevor said, calling them back to order.

“Aye then—have at it.” Chance turned away from her as Trevor took the Orb back from Royce and set it on a nearby high, flat stone.

Royce was all too aware of Chancemont LeBlanc. He sent shivers of pulsating excitement through her system, and something in the tone of his voice made her want to look at him all the time and listen to his every word.

She moved away from him, thinking she had to get some semblance of control over herself. She was behaving like an infatuated schoolgirl. Was she? Was she infatuated with him? A sigh escaped her; he was just loaded with way too much testosterone, his hormones were revving up hers, and that was much more than infatuation …

She had to get her mind off him and onto the subject at hand. She looked at Trevor, who sat cross-legged near the Orb. They followed suit and waited.

Trevor was a Prince of the House of Lugh, so the Orb would respond best to him. When it did just that, it startled Royce into a jump, for its voice was strong and clearly male. “I am the Orb of Lugh, and you are the young Prince Trevor.”

“Yes,” was all that Trevor responded, and Royce knew he was following proper etiquette.

“Yes, young Prince. Tell me what you need.” The Orb’s voice was low and self-assured.

“Well, I am not so very young—I don’t know why you have to address me that way,” Trevor objected.

Royce almost giggled and looked to find Chance rolling his eyes, but they both waited.

“You are the youngest. Prince Danté is the eldest,” the Orb answered logically and without emotion.

Impatiently, Trevor sighed and demanded, “Orb, this is important. Can you locate the Dark Prince Pestale?”

“I can locate him, yes,” the Orb answered.

Trevor grinned and looked at Chance, who gritted his teeth before he said grimly, “Then do it!”

“Shall I?” answered the Orb, addressing Trev.

He grinned and shot a superior look at Chance, who slapped him alongside his head before Trev laughed and said, “Yes, at once.”

Royce realized she was holding her breath as the Orb began to fill with colors. She released a moan of anticipation as she attempted to calm herself. Could it be this easy? It just couldn’t be this easy, could it?

And it wasn’t that easy.

The Orb worked to do its job, while waves of energy splintered throughout her brain.

A vision that began its process in the dark opened into lighter shades of gray and displayed Pestale’s face. He was laughing as he reached for someone. With a start, she realized who he was reaching for: her—he was reaching for her.

In the vision, Pestale pulled her into his arms, and she knew she was with him of her own volition. How was that possible?

She would never surrender herself to the Dark Prince.
Never.

She watched as though her vision presented a stage with her as the star. She almost gasped out loud as she saw him take her into his arms and heard him whisper, “
Now, my Princess—to bed!
”

She jumped, and the vision was gone. She held a hand to her forehead.

Chance looked at her and frowned. “What? Ye saw something in that complicated brain of yers—
what?
”

“Nothing … I … nothing,” she answered and was saved by the Orb.

The rainbow colors shifted into gray, and the Orb spoke. “Here … the Dark Prince lies here …”

The three peered into the Orb, but although they could see Pestale standing and actually conversing with someone who was just out of sight, they couldn’t discern where the Dark Prince could be.

Chance nudged Trevor. “What the bloody hell? Where is he?
Ask it!
”

Trevor frowned at him and said, “It takes time …” but he did return his attention to the Lugh Orb and asked gently, “Orb … we see the Dark Prince, but we need to know
where
he is.”

“He is surrounded by black magic. He is evolving—as his father once did, losing some of himself as he gives himself over for more power. He is in the
in between
.”

“The
in between
what?” Trevor asked.

“Time,” answered the Orb.

“How do we get there?” Chance got right to the point.

“You must find the Peckering, and it will open the door,” answered the Orb.

“
The Peckering
?” Royce asked in surprise. Her brother had told her the tale of this Hallow, missing for so many centuries. She then was utterly surprised when the Orb directed his answer to her and said, “Yes, Princess, and it is you who holds the key to its location. I cannot see past the black magic that hides it.”

“
I hold
the key?” she said, shocked. “How shall I see past black magic?”

“Dark was the Druid who held it fast. Dark was the Druid who was taken by the black magic he conjured up, and hidden became the Peckering,” whispered the Orb before the gray mist that floated like heavy clouds inside it vanished. It glowed orange for a moment and then turned into clear glass.

Trevor tried to recall it, but it would do no more than glow to the sound of his voice and remain quietly still.

“That’s all the Orb can give us today,” Trev said on a heavy sigh. “And damn if I know what to do with what we’ve learned.”