Through Time-Slamming (2 page)

Chapter One

AN ASSORTMENT OF things could bubble up in one’s mind as one dangles from the talons of a prehistoric and flesh eating, Pterodactyl-like creature.

Oddly enough Jazmine Decker looked down at what was a lush green landscape and said, “The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper
.”
This quote by Eden Phillpotts was one that her mother had been fond of. What she actually heard in her head, and made her center her concentration on, was the fact that she was now quite capable of saving herself.

She may be in the talons of a giant flying beast, but her Trevor had taught her the skills to escape.

She could see that the landscape was changing faster than she could take it all in. She would have to make a decision fast.
Yup, time to leave.

She shifted out of the sharp talons and just before she landed in the thick of the green mass of tall wheat grass below, she hovered with a smile on her face as she gave herself a pat on the back.

The feeling of accomplishment however, was short lived as an Anaconda lifted itself high and slithered through the air to come face to face with her.

Screaming was her first reaction. The entire jungle vibrated with the scream that came out of her mouth.

Her next and instinctive reaction was to lift off and hover higher—much higher off the ground. “Never going to touch that land down there again,” she told herself out loud, and once again attempted to mind link with Trevor.

Nothing.

Jazz remembered the pendant around her neck.
It had to work
. It had worked in the year 1816, so why wouldn’t it work now?

Hovering well above the huge anaconda that had not given up on her and had curled into a coil ready to spring, she took the pendant in her hand and murmured the ancient spell that had been handed down from mother to daughter.

She waited and then a swirl of black mist opened up onto a bright yellow aura and as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone.

She thought she heard the Queen’s voice whisper just before the aura vanished, “…be patient.”

She couldn’t be sure it was her voice, and frowned with frustration. “What is the good in having this charm if you can’t get through to help me?” She asked the Queen, but she did not receive a reply. She shook her head and sighed heavily.

She was going to have to shift again and again, until she could find a place to set down and shield herself.

However, suddenly a strong swish of wind blasted over her, and once again she found herself dangling from a determined Pterodactyl’s talons.

She swung in the wind for a moment while she tried to get herself together and decide where to jump shift to, when
she saw them.

She was caught off guard by three hungry Pterodactyl babies, whose wide open mouths were as large and toothy as that of a Great White Shark.

Jazmine Decker screamed with total abandon.

~*~

In Killarney, the Arched Monoliths stood regally at the edge of the Middle Lake. A glow emanated and surrounded the gigantic Sarsen Stones. The air vibrated and pulsated with magic. Dark magic and the earth objected to the clashing forces.

The Seelie Royals could feel the power of Unseelie Magic as it instigated tremors through the ground, and shook everything within its immediate circumference. The lake bubbled and foamed beneath the opposing power they were exacting.

The Queen stood, both hands out, palms facing the dolmens, as she silently chanted. She trusted Jazz to take care of herself, for at the moment she had a larger problem.

At her back were her finest and strongest, Prince Breslyn and Danté, Princess Ete, Radzia, and Royce, as well as Chancemont and Morgan LeBlanc. Together they formed a pyramid of power and magic as they concentrated on keeping the portal from opening.

They looked grim ready to kill or be killed.

This was Trevor’s first thought as he stepped through with the Orb and took a look at them.

He felt a sense of pride, but he saw that it was going to be one hell of a battle, as the Dark Royals were already inside the portal, and in that regard, they had the advantage.

The Portal was locked; it was in the midst of spitting them out to their destination.

The Dark Royals were closing the Portal trapping them, while attempting to use the Portal’s power against them. Though it was something none of them had ever done before, it was very nearly impossible as they tried to use their own powers.

The Laws of Nature could not be interfered with, for long, and Trevor knew what they all knew. This was a losing battle. The best they could hope for as Aaibhe’s army increased at their backs was to contain the Unseelie; to keep them from storming Ireland and beyond.

Nuad with his white hair blowing in the breeze, arrived and took up a stance with all of his Trackers flanking, the pyramid of royals.

The Queen’s Royal warriors were gathering in numbers as the moments swiftly ticked by, but Trevor knew their numbers were not enough—they would have to rely on Seelie Magic.

Aaibhe knew, Trevor thought at once. She knew the Dark Ones would break through. Even she could not stop a force of Nature.

The Milesian Army arrived and lined up with the Seelie Warriors. Forgotten apparently, were old wounds and differences as they united to defeat a common enemy—
The Unseelie.

The Dark Royals were pounding at the entrance to the Human World.

Trevor could hear them—all his brethren could hear them.

Although his duty was to stay and fight with his Queen’s forces, he would do so after he saved the life of his mate. He knew without Jazmine Decker, his life would be over. He could not live on without her. She came first, before all others. Before anything…
she came first
.

He would already have been searching for her, had he not been brought against his will by the Orb of Time to the Queen.

Once this Orb had been the possession of the Dark King, but now discarded, it had attached itself to the Seelie Queen Aaibhe. It would only answer to her.

“Danté,” Trevor shouted over the roaring Portal. It was nearly deafening with the explosion of power beating at its mouth. He touched his brother’s shoulder and got right to the point. “I want to be here with you, fighting beside you, and so I shall be, but first, I have to find and save my mate. You have enough help here, but she has only me.”

Danté raised a brow, “Your mate?” And then in spite of the immediate problem before them, he grinned and slapped his younger brother on the back. “Well, well…
our family
is growing.”

“So you’ll explain? Jazmine Decker risked her life diving into the Portal for us. You see, we thought it was the Portal to the Human Realm, but Pestale tricked us, and now she is out there in another dimension.”

“Do you know which one?”

“I have an idea. Something about it looked familiar.”

“Use the Orb of Time, it is the most powerful one, and you have it in your possession I am told,” Danté said.

“The Queen called it to herself. She needs it to help fight the Dark Ones.”

“Then I shall call our family Orb, the Lugh Orb…” Danté said and put up his hand. As the eldest, it responded first to him. An Orb appeared and he handed it to Trevor.

“There…tell it what you need,” Danté said and then shook his head, “And now, out of my way, brother!” he returned his attention to the Portal which had belched and spewed a blast of black heathen insects as it tried to open wide.

Trevor shifted to a quieter spot and demanded, “Orb of Lugh, show me my mate, Jazmine Decker.”

He received a very good picture of her hanging from the clutches of a huge and prehistoric raptor bird.

He closed his eyes. Pestale would pay for this. He knew of only one dimension that housed this particular species, and he shifted there at once.

He arrived in the prehistoric dimension, and hovered in the air, looking around for the dinosaur bird of prey. Though he saw many, something felt wrong. For one thing he and Jazmine had bonded, yet he could not feel her when he reached out to her. He tried calling her with their mind link.
Nothing.

He asked the Orb again, “Show me my mate.”

Once again, it displayed a raptor bird much like the ones flying nearby, with Jazmine dangling from its claws. He watched as she vanished from the giant bird’s talons and saw that she had jump shifted into the air, and hovered face to face with a giant anaconda.

He felt anxious for a moment, and then saw she managed to lift up higher hovering well beyond the snake’s reach. However, a moment later, down swooped the Pterodactyl which caught her up again before it climbed high and still higher in the air. Trevor watched helpless as the bird flew with her, knowing she was too high to jump shift to the ground. She needed more confidence, more training. She needed…damn, bloody damn…
she needed him.

A moment later the bird was at its nest where its young eyasses reached to eat what their parent had just dropped their way—
his mate.

Trevor gasped as he watched with some relief as his Jazmine Decker jump shifted and then the Orb clouded over again. “Show me!” he growled, but the Orb sighed and did not clear.

“Right then, she was whole and relatively safe, or at least using her wits and her new skills to stay as safe as she could be. “Somewhere in this dimension, but where?” he asked out loud, and then looked around, “Where are you sweet Fios—
where?”

Something about the lay of the land was all wrong—it didn’t feel as though he was in the right dimension. Although the Lugh Orb is not as powerful as the Orb of Time he asked, “Am I in the right place?”

The Orb blinked by shading itself once, and showed him the very spot he occupied. He was in the right place.
He
was, but where the hell was she then?

Chapter Two

A HUMAN SCREAM resonated out of Jazmine Decker’s mouth. She didn’t even know she was screaming as she dropped towards the Pterodactyl’s open beaks!

She knew that she wasn’t quite human any longer, but her mind went human on her as she fell towards the large mouth of one of the babies.

Her new Fae blood kicked in and took over instinctively however, as she shifted this time, it wasn’t a jump shift but an honest to goodness Fae shift.

She knew immediately that she had actually shifted a distance.

She stepped out onto solid ground, as though her Fae blood had triggered a map in her mind and located a safe haven for her.

She stood there and caught her breath.

She looked around in awe because she stood at the precipice of a cliff on a very high mountain.

She was on a slab of flat rock that protruded out about twenty feet by only five foot wide. As she looked down to the ravine below she murmured, ”Whoa”.

She stepped back, took a look around and headed for the safety of the grassy slope of earth at the side of the mountain whose rock walls reached toward the sky—straight up to its peak.

Wild and tropical vegetation filled the gaps in the rock wall before her. Lush green bushes and palms were scattered along the earth where she stood. Steam and heat engulfed her surroundings, which were so completely at odds with the world she had just shifted away from.

Further down the ravine she could see molten lava pits spurting out their insides and with a heavy sigh, she plopped onto the grass and put her head into her hands.

“
Trevor
, find me baby, find me,” she whispered to him, as she surveyed her surroundings. She scrambled to her feet once more as she realized what lay behind her.
A cave!

“Huh?” she murmured brushing herself off, as she went forward to inspect this new find.

So it works
, she thought,
just like Trevor said
. A Fae thinks of where he needs to go…and bam, he shifts there. Earlier, when she was plummeting from the flying dinosaur’s talons, she thought what she needed was a cave to hide out in and wham,
here was the cave.

How could she know there was a cave in this God-forsaken realm?

She didn’t know how it worked, but she was damn glad it had. What she needed was a few moments to get control of herself and figure out what she could do to get Trevor to hear her. He had to hear her and come for her.

An answer was there, somewhere in her altered brain, a brain that was now as much Fae as it was human. In fact, probably more Fae, than human.

“Okay,” she said out loud, “This is good.”

Trevor had taught her how she could use the elements. She had only been able to
nearly
master the simplest of tasks. He had said her skills would improve with time. The Fae blood now surging through her and making her strong in ways she never could have imagined, would eventually replace all trace of human blood. He had said the most difficult thing to overcome would be her human characteristics as they were embedded in her psyche.

One of the things she had enjoyed was discovering she had the power of what she as a human would have called telekinesis. This was in actuality Trevor had said, a science of mind and body and the power to use the elements.

He had begun her training in this science, though she thought of it as
magic.
She told him she would always think of it as magic.

For the moment, she didn’t need to transport anything with her mind. There were things she could use laying around the mountain ledge.

She picked up a long branch from a nearby tall tree, tore off a piece of her top, and laughed as she looked at herself. She looked like a castaway grimacing ruefully, because in essence that was what she was.

She wrapped the cloth around some dried grass she gathered and then picked up some pine bark. The Fae in her kept telling her she didn’t need all of this. She had a link to the elements and could create fire with a thought, but her human side needed something to keep her busy.

Once her torch was ready, she sighed and resigned herself to do what only the Fae in her could do. She concentrated on one vision;
fire
. Just like that she had a working torch. She couldn’t help but grin but then she faced the dark beckoning mouth of the cave.

The entrance to the cave was angled and partially hidden by a jutting rock. The cave’s mouth narrowed as she went in deeper. The light from the torch allowed her to see two passages.

She worked the torch into the dirt to stand it up and looked around. She needed time to figure out what she was going to do to help herself get out of this situation. She had learned a valuable lesson, if it looked too easy, it was. Pestale had not seemed too unconcerned when they found him opening a portal. She should have known it was a ruse. He wouldn’t do that to her again. She had to come to grips with what she was becoming, and used the skills that were newly hers, but hers all the same.

She was fairly certain the shape and size of the entrance wouldn’t allow larger predators to stick their grubby claws inside and get to her.

Sighing with a certain amount of resignation, and extremely wary, she looked down at the forked trails and realized something else. She could see in the dark.

Not as well as during the day, but so much better than a human. She left the torch at her back and moved towards the joint of the two trails and contemplated them.

Something could come at her from either of these trails, something her size, for the corridors at least at this end, wouldn’t allow for anything, or anyone larger.

There would be no sleeping here, but did she need sleep?

And was she doing the right thing—hiding out like this?

Would Trev still be able to find her if she stayed in this cave?

What if the cave was lined with iron? Would he like Superman? Would iron be his Kryptonite? She had seen what happened to him when he handled iron. It had sapped him of his strength and even caused him severe pain.

His senses would be affected and he would not be able to find her. Now she was imagining things. There was no reason to believe this cave was coated in iron.

She was going to have to get herself together and venture out into this realm and use the Fae skills he had trained her to use if she was going to stay alive long enough for him to find her. Stay alive. She was becoming Fae. Could dinosaurs eat Fae?

That was something she didn’t want to chance.

She continued to explore deeper into one of the narrow avenues. It seemed dry which surprised her as she had always thought that caves were not only dark and slimy, but damp as well.

The ground was solid. The low and rocky ceiling was smooth, just like the walls. The entire cave looked like it had been carved out with a file.

The path she had taken seemed to be headed downward.

At that moment she decided that was where the exploring would have to end.

She returned to the torch lit area and realized she had forgotten an important fact. She was Fios, still a Fios and that part of her wasn’t human either. The combined force of her Fios and her Fae blood should be formidable when it had matured.

One of her Fios skills was the ability to enact shields to protect herself.
Well,
she rolled her eyes, why hadn’t you thought of that sooner?

Nothing human or non-human could get past her shields for it was Fios and Fae Magic weaved and interlocked. She put a shield in place between her and the two paths leading deeper into the cave, and then another at the mouth.
There
, she thought with some satisfaction.

Now, she would take a moment and plot out what she needed to do next to get back to Trevor.

She sank down onto the earth and thought if only she had a bed of at least some palm fronds--and the next thing she new,
she did.

Okay, okay, think it and if it is within range, you shall have it, Trevor had said. Food…like bananas, do they have bananas here?

The next thing she knew at least ten pounds of bananas lay on the fronds beside her. She was starving and stuffed her face for a moment before she put down a half eaten banana and said softly, “What are you doing Jazmine Decker? We need to get home, so think, no eating, just thinking.”

But as hard as she tried, even her Fae mental faculties had nothing yet to suggest.