Authors: S.E. Myers
“What do you mean different?” Nissa appeared with blanket and Ryleigh covered Tristan.
She had Vee help her pull Tristan onto the couch. She fetched a bowl of water and a washcloth to clean off his skin.
“He feels different to me, Mistress. I also could not find Illeana or Gori.” Gori was Illeana’s imp.
Ryleigh wanted to know what Vee meant by Tristan “feeling” different. She tried reaching out to Tristan with a thread to connect to him, but as soon as she attempted to do so, she was rebuffed. It felt as there was an invisible wall that prevented her from reaching inside of him. She listened to his thrum of energy and heard a different tune than what she’d heard before. It wasn’t the same tune. It wasn’t the same tempo. It didn’t sing to her like before. He sounded familiar but there was an underlying tone that she couldn’t identify. She continued to wash him off, tending to his wounds, and finally allowed him to rest.
***
Tristan’s dreams were disturbing. Finar was standing in front of him commanding him to kill his sister but he refused. At least in the dream he did. Tristan dreamt he sucked the life out of her, that he pulled all of her energy into him.
Illeana appeared in his dream “Oh, my dear brother,” she said, sadness dripped from each word spoken.
“Where are you?” he cried. “I can’t find you. I can’t feel you.”
She was ethereal beauty. While her face was angelic, she was ferocity at its finest. Her beauty shown through like a lighthouse in a summer storm.
She touched his face with her graceful fingers, “I am with you. Always.” She wiped a tear escaping from his eyes, rolling down his cheek. He closed his eyes reveling in the touch of his twin. He knew she was speaking the truth. He knew that she would be with him always.
“Shhh, now brother. You have so much you are going to need to do. Ryleigh needs you. I need you.” She turned away from him. He could feel the tether that connected the twins drifting apart.
“Wait!” he cried. “Don’t leave me; I can’t do this without you!”
She looked back at him, tears streaming from her eyes, “We are one now.” She placed both hands on his head and forced back the memories he couldn’t remember, undoing the spell the witch laid upon him.
Tristan woke up - screaming.
He rolled off the couch clutching the sheet that was covering him. Tristan didn’t know where he was until he saw Ryleigh rushing in the room. “Are you okay?” she asked breathlessly.
Tristan wasn’t sure if he was okay. His heart was pounding through his chest and his felt as if his head were going to split wide open. “I… I don’t’ know,” he sat down.
Ryleigh reached out to touch him but he pulled away. “Vee says… Vee says you’re different.”
Tristan nodded.
“What happened?” Ryleigh wanted to know what happened to her cousin. To her friend. This was the only person she had grown to trust and she needed to help him.
Tristan held his head steady in his hands. Ryleigh waited for him. She could feel his sadness permeating the room. The vibrational energy shifted and she could hear his internal hum slow down. The underlying tone is what she wanted to know about. Why was he different?
He took a big gulp of air and hesitated before saying, “Illeana is dead.” The pain stabbed through each word as it rolled from his tongue.
Ryleigh was shell shocked. Her heart ached for the relative she knew for only a short time. She loved her. She couldn’t possibly imagine what Tristan was going through. The loss of his sister, his twin that he was with since birth. They had never been separated. Hot tears streamed down her face and Tristan turned to look at her.
“I’m so sorry,” Ryleigh said. She reached out again and this time he didn’t flinch away. She held him tightly as wracking sobs shook his entire body and her with it.
“You… You don’t know what I did,” he cried in-between breaths.
“Shhh, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything.”
“No!” Tristan screamed. He pushed Ryleigh away abruptly and stood. He started pacing the living room. “I did it! He made me. He made me take her into me.”
Ryleigh was bewildered, “Who? Who made you do what?”
Spitting the name from his mouth with such hatred and venom it was almost as if he was cursing, “Finar.”
“Finar?”
“He gave me something. He had a witch. I… I don’t know, it is still all fuzzy.”
“What do you mean that he had a ‘witch’?”
In the old days, witches and Fae worked together. Magic and Chi flow together. Where there were Fae, there were witches. When Halflings started to make their appearance, they started practicing witchcraft in order to increase their power. They wanted to match their Fae counter parts, however, when the Elders found out about this, they stripped all Halflings of their ability to work magic.
There were natural witches about, those born of the craft. The Halfling Fae began to seek them out until the Elders banned that also.
Imps were the ones who were usually called in order to find witches. Imps aided witches with their craft. Because imps belonged with and were paired with Fae, they were the ones who sought them out. All witches were eventually killed and imps became paired with Halflings to assist them with controlling their Chi.
“Finar had a witch that did something to me. Illeana told me. I mean, I dreamed that she told me. I – I don’t know.”
Tristan was confused and angry this was happening to him. He wasn’t quite sure what was going on and he wasn’t in his right mind.
Ryleigh brought him some food, “Thanks. I need to wrap my head around this.”
Ryleigh nodded and allowed him to eat in peace. She decided she would jump on the computer to see what she could find out about Fae/witch interactions. If there would be anything about them.
It seemed that all the research Ryleigh could find related to combined witches and faery and imps were tied to folklore. Imps and Fae helped witches with their power – for favors of course. If a witch needed a spell, or need an herb, there were always Fae to help.
Those favors usually resulted in children. True witches could not have children, not on their own. Not truly on their own.
17
Connecting
Tristan finished eating, changed into sweats and a t-shirt, and sat on the couch staring into space in disbelief. After his dream, a thought crossed his mind. “Ryleigh,” he called her into the living room. “Can you help me with something?”
“Ah, sure… what do you want to do?” she asked him confused. He’d just gone through hell; she thought he would want a little more time to recuperate.
“When Finar made me…” Tristan trailed off. It was hard to admit, that he killed his sister. “When he made me take Illeana into me, I think he was trying to make me…whole.”
“Whole?”
“Yeah, as opposed to a Halfling. I need to connect with someone. I need to see what’s different. If anything at all.”
Ryleigh was more than willing to help and Nissa was getting used to the amount of energy Ryleigh could pull through her. Tristan knew that if things got out of hand, Ryleigh could break the connection and pull away from him.
Tristan sat in the middle of the living room floor. Ryleigh sat across from Tristan – facing him.
Tristan put his palms up facing Ryleigh. “Illeana and I used to do this to practice cycling energy without our imps. Sometimes the draw could really drain them and we would rather that we were exhausted instead of them.”
Ryleigh took a deep breath and placed her palms against his. They both closed her eyes.
“Concentrate on my breathing,” Tristan instructed. “As I breathe in, you breathe out and vice-versa.”
Ryleigh could hear his breaths, slow intentional. As he let his air out, she took it in. Cycling breaths helped with cycling Chi. It was a way to regulate the ebb of energy they would send and receive.
As the breath beats continued, the energy hum beneath Ryleigh’s skin began to tremble. She felt Tristan and heard the tune of his Chi rumbling in his core. Opening their eyes, they attempted to send energy from one to the other as they were breathing. As Ryleigh breathed out, she sent a tendril to connect with Tristan and he did the same.
This cycled the energy between the two, carrying Chi from Ryleigh to Tristan and back again. The temperature in the room began to rise. Vee and Nissa paced back and forth feeling a rumble beneath their rabbit-like feet.
Tristan and Ryleigh were locked in an eternal dance that continued to spiral and syphon each other’s Chi. Ryleigh could feel the difference in Tristan, the strength in his own core, and thought she could even feel the presence of Illeana. She knew what he meant now by the two becoming whole. Tristan recognized Ryleigh’s presence. He also felt that she was more than herself, but she didn’t have two vibrations, she only had one where his had the melodic undertones of Illeana.
He pushed a little harder allowing a little more of his own Chi to cycle into Ryleigh. Ryleigh did the same. This was the same practice for younglings. It helped them practice control, and also understand much energy an imp, when they received one, could take. Tristan wanted to see exactly how much energy he had and how much he could cycle.
He pushed again, harder this time. Ryleigh felt the intensity of it and accepted what he was flowing into her. Ryleigh mirrored his actions, but she also sent little bits of Tristan’s own energy that was melded with hers. On the outer breath, he attempted to do the same, but found he couldn’t. He couldn’t expel her energy.
Tristan absorbed whatever she gave him and started to pull faster. It became uncomfortable for Ryleigh as a ripping sensation generated from her solar plexus. With their energies conjoined, it became more and more difficult for Tristan to sever the connection. Tristan started to panic because he couldn’t control the flow of energy.
His eyes pleaded with Ryleigh begging her to shut it down. While connected, speaking was improbable and their psychic link was distorted because of Tristan’s anomaly.
Ryleigh got the message and concentrated on the energy he was pulling from her. She figured that if she blasted him with enough it might break the connection. She imagined a ball of light at her core increasing in size. As the ball grew brighter in her mind’s eye, it grew brighter in front of her and started to stunt the flow of her energy to him and cycled only his back to him.
She continued to concentrate on the ball of light attempting to solidify the mass.
Don’t be mad!
She thought as she pushed the mass toward Tristan.
The impact shot Tristan backwards into the couch and was enough to break the connection, instantaneously.
Nissa immediately jumped into Ryleigh’s lap, providing her a replenishing supply of energy. Ryleigh was breathless and gasping for air.
Tristan sat forward grabbing his chest. His face riddled with pain recovering from the energy blast, “I knew… you could do it… I needed you to do it.”
Ryleigh was still gasping for breath, “What – was – that?”
“I’m not sure, but - I think I am like you - and not.”
Ryleigh shook her head and wondered what he was talking about, “What do you mean like me?”
“You are more - more than just part Fae. I think that is why Finar wants you.”
“Finar wants me? Why would he want me?”
“I’m not sure,” Tristan replied. He lied to her. He had a feeling that Finar wanted to do to Ryleigh what he made Tristan do to his own sister.
I need to talk to Aunt Vera,” Ryleigh resolved. She needed to make a trip back to the house. By now, Vera would be pretty ticked off that she wasn’t home. Her cell hadn’t gone off which was a bit concerning – she figured that by now, Vera would be hounding her every thirty seconds.
Ryleigh absentmindedly stroked Nissa’s ears as Nissa was healing her. Nissa didn’t mind at all. She actually liked it but didn’t want to say anything. Although she was a lower cast Fae, she was still more powerful than these younglings. Nissa had the ability to heal, to hurt, and to cause destruction. She was growing to love her Mistress. She loved the attention she got. She knew some of the other imps didn’t get the same attention she received and was saddened by it. But they had no choice once they were bonded with their Masters or Mistresses. So, for now, she reveled in it.
18
What is the truth?
Once recovered, Ryleigh knew going back to the house was probably a mistake. Tristan and Ryleigh decided to go together. They were going to use the imps to fade into the house and back.
The plan was to get in and get out. Ryleigh knew that Vera and Fin were connected. She
wasn’t
sure whose side Siegfried was on, but she was sure it was with Vera.
Tristan wondered about the FP’s and his real parents, “I just don’t know if my parents are still alive.” He was also slowly coming to grips over killing his sister. It was hard and it tore him to the core, but knowing that Finar made him do it gave him something else to focus on. Having Illeana’s energy within him also provided him comfort. He’d started noticing her voice in his head, telling him it would be okay and he was reminded of the dream. “I’ll be with you always,” she’d reminded.
They were ready to go. Tristan and Ryleigh figured that if they connected their Chi, as dangerous as that could be, they could stand up against Finar if he approached them. Tristan grabbed a switchblade and handed it to Ryleigh.