Some Enchanted Dream: A Time Travel Adventure (Seasons of Enchantment Book 2) (29 page)

"How did Artie get it?" Dan wondered aloud. "The stuff at the exposition, if it's the same brand, is seeking a patent at present, and will be available in stores and for shipment to other countries in a few months. The stuff must not be out in stores as yet. It's just being given out as samples at the exposition and to a few special souls as a gift."

"Aye, a gift from the enchanted ones, the stinking old man in the woods claimed." Mick turned and stepped quickly to the bed. He lifted Arthur's pale head in one hand, by the back of his skull, and slapped him lightly on the cheeks. "Arthur, awaken."

"Hey, knock it off." Dan was quick to interfere with Mick's rough handling of his friend. He moved to grab Mick's hand and stop him from slapping Arthur's cheeks to help bring him around.

With a quick flick of his wrist, Mick sent Dan hurling across the room as if he were made of paper. Poor Dan landed against the wall with a crash, muttering a curse as his hand went to cradle the back of his head.

Fury seized Tara. She lifted her hand in the air and wound back, similar to tossing a softball. Lightening came from her fingertips. She hit Mick in the side with an arcing stream of blue white energy.

"How dare you." Mick was on his feet instantly, his face infused with rage and his voice unnaturally deep and guttural.

"No, how dare
you
! Nobody hurts my Dan. You get that?" Tara had no idea where the anger was coming from, or the lightening that flew from her fingers.

Mick approached on quick feet.

Tara braced her hands on her hips, daring him to try to hurt her or those she loved.

Adrian stepped in front of her, as if he meant to shield her from the ancient fey who had just tossed a very large man across the room with only a flick of his wrist. "Stop, Mick."

Mick stood eye to eye with Adrian. Both men were seething with rage.

Adrian's hands were fists. Tara moved to come around him and face Mick herself, as it would not end well if her husband challenged the seventeen hundred year old fey warrior. Adrian held out an arm, barring her attempt to slip around him and put herself between him and Mick.

"Aye, but the lass needs practice." Mick's voice was natural again, and the fury drained from his face. "See now, didn't I tell you?" His head arched around Adrian's shoulder so he could peer at Tara. A teasing grin slowly spread across her brother's face. "Dinna I just tell you the other day you could hurl lightning bolts when angry?"

"Yes. Now help Dan up, and don't hurt or threaten either of my humans again."

"That's the stuff, girl!" Mick nodded, seeming to have taken an abrupt change in attitude in the past seconds. "You needed an incentive to use your gift. Anger is the catalyst." He raised his right arm up and touched his side with light fingers. His shirt was split open several inches. The white fabric was scorched around the opening. His exposed skin was red, as if he'd been burned by hot liquid. "I see I'll need a new shirt. Now, lass, if we can channel that energy, that fury, at the right target, we just might have a chance."

Chapter Twenty-Three

The afternoon sun was glaring as Riley sat on a marble bench in the court of Artemisia. The flowers were washed out under the brilliant sun, drooping as if they were sleeping. He knew from earlier visitations that the court was best viewed in the night, as the flowers, the gazing pool and even the exotic fish swimming in the pool had a magical glow about them. 

Night was her time, just as it was the time when her courtiers, the humans, were most prolific in their various arts. She was a goddess to the growing community of artists, poets, musicians and writers who flocked to Paris in the past fifty years to practice their craft.

Artemisia was beautiful. Riley understood why mortal men would find inspiration just in gazing at her. She had pale, iridescent skin and golden hair that hung about her in vibrant waves. She appeared innocent, alluring and vulnerable.

And yet, he knew she was quite the trickster.

Little did the men who flocked to her court know, but Artemisia's gift of heightened  creativity provided an important benefit to her; she fed off their worship.

She was one of those vain creatures who absorbed praise and worship from mortals as if it were a delicacy, a food with which to sustain them. She was a huntress, for all her beauty and grace, all her genteel mannerisms and pleas of needing assistance. She was as treacherous as a Venus Fly trap, a thing of beauty that attracted the unwary so she could feast on their dreams and gain sustenance from their adulation.

There were others like her, sirens of old who enchanted men and lured men into their lairs and did not let them go back to the land of the living. The old legends claimed sirens killed the mortal men they beguiled. In truth, they kept the men as pets, as willing consorts, as they, too, were intoxicated with the worship of mortals. The men were drugged, as the sirens were keepers of herbs, and used their knowledge of the plant world to further enslave their victims.

Yes, she had much in common with the sirens of old. And other creatures who intruded upon the realm of mortals seeking the heady rush of adoration. This failing in many of the fey was why a division grew between the light and the dark fey. Those of the light clans wished to aid humans and befriend them. They treated mankind with respect. At best, a fairy clan in one region might ignore the humans unless provoked into revealing themselves.

The dark fey were like the sirens of old, who wanted to toy with humanity for their own amusement. History was rife with examples of the dark ones influencing mankind, influencing a culture so strongly that men would make a spectacle of killing other humans to please them. The gladiator games in Rome were a result of an elite ruling force of humans bowing down to the dark ones, giving them the blood games and human sacrifice they craved in return for riches and power. Humans could be just as treacherous, selling out their own kind for personal profit.

Artemisia had the appearance of a pale Scandinavian woman, as she was born in the Swiss Alps and her family was aligned with the humans of the area. She was born in a Starling Fey Mound, but, her need for adulation made her dangerous. She could easily defect to the dark ones, an may have done so already.

And that was why Riley and Mick decided that she was just too cunning a creature to be playing in the mind of their baby sister. Tara knew nothing of Artemisia's history or that of fey beings that strayed from the light to embrace the cruel decadence of the Darkling clans. 

"Why don't you tell me again why it is you cannot leave this garden? Was it a spell woven by the dark ones, or a trap created by humans?" Riley plied her again with questions she had danced around and sidestepped without truly answering on previous visits. Knowing what magic held her here would reveal who she had to be consorting with, and that might be why she was reluctant to reveal the source of the power keeping her here.

"Riley, my fair one, you wound me with your distrust." Her voice held that tinkling, bell-like quality that seduced men and placed them into a trance state. "I am trapped here by magic."

"And you forget, lovely one, I am not mortal. I will not be brought under your spell. If you wish for my brother and I to help you, truth is required in the bargain, absolute truth."

Her sweet face became hard and cold as she realized she could not beguile him as she had her many worshippers from the human world. "It is dark magic."

"Yes, we've covered that. From where did it emerge? Who trapped you here, in this enchanted garden? And for what purpose? If you are in league with the dark ones, we cannot help you. If you wish our aid, you must help us first, help us find a way to defeat them."

Tears glistened in her eyes. She turned away from him. He could see her wiping at her eyes to brush the tears away. Aye, female tears could be likened to poison. They were disturbing to males, both human and fey, and could be used to manipulate them.

Riley waited, ignoring the deep tugging of his heart, as he did favor her a wee bit. If circumstances were different he might have courted her in the fey manner. But, as Mick was wont to point out in that superior tone of an elder brother, they did not yet know if she were an ally of the Starling Clans, or an enemy.

Artemisia seemed to have recovered. As she turned to him again her eyes were moist, but she did not appear to be trying to ply him with that feminine wile. Her eyes hardened again, and her face lost some of its loveliness as bitterness overshadowed her features. "It was my husband."

"The human who brought you here, the human you married?"

"Yes, Comte Victor Le Bruin was a sorcerer, a master of the dark arts."  She came to sit beside Riley on the marble bench. With a toss of her head, her long hair shimmered and shifted beneath the sun like a cloak of pale gold. "He escaped Paris during the revolution, and hid in a chalet near my home. We met at a mountain waterfall. He found me bathing there, and fell under my sway. He wooed me and sought my hand in marriage. I was young, and I fancied him. I came here with him when the horrors of the revolution were over and he was no longer in danger of losing his life to the mobs or the guillotine. He asked me for my special recipe, the fey tonic. I gave it to him. And once he had it, he cast a spell, imprisoning me here, in the garden of his estate. He said it was because too many men were enchanted by me when I went out among them. He was jealous and controlling once we came to live in his home."

No wonder she was so bitter. A human tricking a fey, that was difficult to do. Only a naive fey, a young one, or a fey very much in love would fall into a trap such as this. Artemisia was not naive, not now. She might have been naive when the count wooed her and lured her here. Was she seeking revenge by bringing men who drank her potion to her court of dreams because of the bitter betrayal by a human she had trusted and loved?

"Do you know what kind of magic he followed? What tradition?"

"No," she whispered, as she sat gazing forlornly at the pool before them.

The water of the pool was green, like her eyes, like the emerald green fey potion she'd given to her lover. The pool was not a fresh water source as much as it was a tonic, a fountain of youth for her benefit.

"Was there a sorcerer he followed?"

"He was a disciple of The Count of St. Germaine, and followed the teachings of a Frenchman named Nicholas Flammel. There are books by those men in his library, as well as books by other men who practice magic and traffic with the dark ones for power."

"How did he trap you? Iron rods beneath the boundaries of the garden, under the ground? Iron pyrite or other powerful gemstones at the entrances?"

"Yes, Iron bars are between the stones in the wall, vertical bars concealed in stone and mortar so I cannot climb over the walls."

Yes, Riley knew that trick of imprisoning a fey very well.

"Now then, my fair one," Riley plied his own charms on the woman beside him. "Tell me how it is that you are in contact with the dark ones."

Tara was sitting with Mr. Bellows. He was still deeply asleep.  Mick instructed her to keep trying to make him drink the milk with Riley's blood in it every half hour.

Fey blood had magical properties that bonded them to humans?

Would she ever master this odd life? Being human had been so much simpler. And yet, so lonely. She wondered again why she was an outcast in human society, according to her brothers she should have been living well.

"Has no one ever given you something, simply because you asked for it?"
Mick's incredulous question echoed in her mind.

Well, there was the man who had given her a car. She thought him sweet. Tara had walked into the local car dealership and had said she needed a car. And she was given a Saturn Ion. Not a new one, not by any means, but it was given to her free of charge by the salesman who just wanted it off the lot. And then, when she'd been looking for a job, she'd mentioned the need for a job to a college professor, who told her about the position at the local radio station. And didn't he just happen to know the man who owned the station. He'd called the station owner, and she was given the job on the spot, without an interview. And her mobile home; that was another boon, one she hadn't considered more than luck at the time. A college friend allowed Tara to move in with her during her second semester and pay rent. Miranda inherited the mobile home from parents who moved to Florida to retire. Once Miranda graduated and was offered a job in another state, she signed the title of the mobile home over to Tara, free and clear.

Okay, so it wasn't a palace, and her car had not been a Mercedes.

But she voiced her need and the people around her gave her what they had available to them. Too bad she never asked aloud for parents to love her. Oh, she wanted loving parents, but hid her desire behind a wall of cynicism as she feared showing her neediness.

"Hello, my fair one," the man in the bed murmured. He had been watching her for some time while her mind meandered down the sidewalk of the past. "Are you the Green Fairy?"

Tara blushed a little as he was looking at her with such potent adoration it was embarrassing. She was wearing her new green tulle dress that was rather floaty and ethereal. "No, I'm Dan's daughter, Mrs. Dillon. How are you feeling, Mr. Bellows?"

"Like death in winter, Mrs. Dillon. You are lovely."

Again, she felt her face glow with red as she looked down at her hand.

"Why am I here? Where am I?" Mr. Bellows looked around him. "Is this your apartment?"

"No, it is the one across the hall from us. My brother, Dr. Riley, thought you should be moved close so he could watch over you. Do you realize you've been poisoned?"

The Englishman sat up in the bed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'd not argue against it. I feel most peculiar, rather shaky and weak. Surely, you must have heard of the Green Fairy? She is spoken of often in this neighborhood. I've been to her court several times of late."