Through Time-Frankie (19 page)

Frankie frowned and thought of the Shapeshifters and the one honey colored wolf that seemed to stand apart. “Thanks Ete, I will keep it in mind.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

TRINITY LOOMED BEFORE Frankie’s eyes, still so regal even after the beating it had taken. It was a connection to the past, a monument to history. Even after the effects of the blast, Trinity as a whole had endured.

However, so much had been blown to pieces. The sculptures that had been on display in the middle of what had once been a grassy square had been destroyed; their parts scattered and covered with dirt and shrapnel.

She watched a clean-up crew as they worked diligently to remove the debris. She allowed the sounds of the city to fade into the background as she tried to concentrate on something, a feeling she was getting from underground.

A familiar and welcome voice at Frankie’s back made her turn and smile, “Fiona,” she said softly.

“Frankie!” Fiona reached for her hands and shook them, “Ye need to check yer emails and give me yer cell number.” Fiona clucked her tongue, “I have been trying to get in touch with ye and make certain ye were alright.”

Frankie sighed and took a step out of the way of one of the workers loading up a large wheelbarrow with debris. “Sorry Fiona, I haven’t had a minute to even check m’mail, but I am that glad I am to see ye.” Frankie gave her a comical once over and added, “What have ye done to yer hair?”

Fiona touched her new short black locks, “Oh, why what color was m’hair when ye saw me last?”

Something in her tone sounded as though she was trying to recover. Recover from what, Frankie wondered. “Ye were a redhead,” Frankie said. 

Fiona giggled, and Frankie heard a nervousness line her voice, but Fiona had already linked her arm through hers and said, “Walk with me...we’ll go get some tea.”

Frankie allowed her to drag her a few steps and said, “Fiona, I am so sorry, but I don’t have the time right now.”

Fiona stopped and said, “Then just sit with me for a minute or two.” She pointed to a quiet corner where a bench had been set under a huge oak.

Frankie was anxious to be free. She needed to do some investigating, but she said, “Right then, a minute or two, but then I must be off.”

They sat and Fiona took her hand and said, “I want you to know, Frankie, I am sorry.”

Frankie was wondering where Fiona’s accent had gone to, when she felt something sharp jab her wrist.

She looked down, blinking, not at first understanding as she looked at the needle depositing its awful ingredients into her blood.

With disbelief, she stared at Fiona as the girl pulled the syringe away and flung it. Suddenly looking into Fiona’s eyes, she saw what she had missed.

Fiona wasn’t human at all.

Why had she not seen it? Her mouth dropped and Fiona as though reading her mind said, “Fae cannot detect our Glamour at first. It takes Fae a very long time before they can see through our Glamour and mine is stronger than most.”

“Why?” Frankie said as the first sharp pain shot up her arm and started spreading through her body.

“Please believe me, I am so very sorry. I like you, Frankie. I did from the moment we met, and I didn’t want to do this, but Pestale says that you will ruin all his plans. He says that if I did this, I will be putting you out of harms’ way and because I do like you, that is my fervent wish, Frankie. I must help him accomplish his goals. They are true and will save this earth, but you are prejudiced because of his past. So you need to be safely tucked away.”

“Fiona,” Frankie tried to reason with her, but whatever had been injected into her bloodstream was making her woozy. “Someone who makes ye trick and hurt others is not someone ye can trust. Pestale is not someone ye should trust. He is not who ye think he is.”

“I love him, Frankie,” she sighed, “He is so much better than anyone knows. Everybody has the wrong idea…”

“No, Fiona, we don’t have the wrong idea. He and Hordly are as evil as evil can be,” Frankie’s breath now was ragged and her words edged with the agony the poison was producing in her veins.

“You are wrong,
and
my name is Eslym of Conglam,” Eslym said sadly. “Now I have to get you away from here.”

Frankie was already beginning to hallucinate as everything around her began to swim in waves of distorted images. She felt Eslym take her hand and knew they were shifting, and didn’t have the strength to fight it. “Eslym, is it? Right then, Eslym what did ye inject me with?”

“
Dragon’s Breath
,” Eslym said quietly.

“Don’t ye know, Eslym,
Dragon’s Breath
can be deadly to a Fae,” Frankie rolled her eyes. Everything in her body, all her joints were beginning to ache.

“I do, but
not to you
.” Pestale says it will keep you under control, but it won’t kill you, as you have already been exposed.”

“He is wrong, it gets more lethal each time a Fae ingests it,” Frankie managed to say and suddenly felt her world go black. She gasped because she couldn’t see and as her head started spinning she felt the darkness engulf her.

Eslym took her in hand and shifted with the power that was hers.

Eslym shifted below to the catacomb and inside the cell lined with iron. She was torn about this. She felt wicked. She told herself these sort of things were necessary for the good of the whole, but the words didn’t ring true in her mind.

She looked at Crystal, the Dark King’s consort, encased in the
Dragon’s Breath
netting and saw that even unconscious the woman twitched with pain.

It hurt to see her thusly.

Would Frankie also be subjected to such agony?

Pestale had said Crystal would sleep and not feel a thing. Why had this not happened yet? Why, even while she was unconscious was Crystal making such whimpering sounds? It was heartbreaking to hear.

She stared at Frankie, not encased imprisoned with the torturous netting but lying there looking as though she was near death. She couldn’t bear it if anything happened to these two brave females. But perhaps she was being fanciful? Perhaps?

She had a job to do.

She lifted Frankie’s arms and used what had once been part of the
Golden Wiele
to shackle both Frankie’s wrists above her head. Its properties had been altered into a chain of sorts, a chain layered with
Dragon’s Breath
.

Frankie was unconscious and yet she writhed in agony. She could not deny this to herself any longer.

Not supposed to hurt like this. Pestale had said
…it wouldn’t hurt. He said they would sleep peacefully. He said he just wanted them out of the way. Had he lied? Or was he simply mistaken. If she told him they were in pain…would he fix the situation?

Iron lined the walls of the cell Crystal and Frankie now shared. The Fae would never find them while they were encased within its walls, because even the Dark King himself could not see beyond iron walls.

Had Pestale tricked her? Was Frankie right? Had he lied to her to get her to inject so much of the serum into Frankie’s blood?
Would it kill her?

She hurried through the tunnels, leaving Frankie’s scent everywhere as per her instructions from Pestale, but it felt wrong, all wrong.

No—oh please no, she thought as she closed her eyes. Pestale hadn’t tricked her into doing this, had he? Had she been blind? Perhaps he had just been mistaken about the dosage? She would tell him and he would make it right.

A moment later, she left Crystal and Frankie in their iron cell and shifted to Pestale’s castle.

* * *

Graely felt it the moment it happened.

“Frankie,” he murmured out loud. His mind linked with hers, and was horrified.

Poison.

The word slammed into his brain.

Trinity! She was at Trinity. Without thought he shifted, and was in time to see Frankie slumped against her roommate. Her roommate—Fiona.

The girl looked different, she was dark-haired…And then suddenly she shifted away with Frankie.

“
What the bloody hell?”
he growled out loud.  A bolt of searing fear torched his brain.

Pestale was behind this. That girl…
what was she
? Where had she taken Frankie? “Frankie!” he called desperately both out loud and with his mind.

He searched with his link for her, but it was as though she had vanished into the dark. He couldn’t connect with her.

He sniffed for her scent and tracked the residue left behind from shifting. It was odd as he got off a ‘wolfen’ odor as well, and tracked it into the underground. But the girl or whatever she was had already covered her tracks, leaving Frankie’s scent throughout an intricate trail through the catacombs.

All at once Graely realized, Frankie was once again, a prisoner somewhere in an iron cage.  He wouldn’t be able to track her any further…her scent was everywhere but, he would have no way of knowing exactly how to pinpoint her location. It could take days.

He wanted to punch something.

Instead, he shifted to the castle in Conglam and found his brother standing in the war room with a map of Dublin spread out on the long oak table.

He took the twenty feet that separated them as though he was a madman unleashed and pushed his brother’s naked chest as hard as he had ever done and shouted in Pestale’s face, “What have you done with her?”

Pestale looked genuinely shocked, but Graely wasn’t fooled.

His brother had perfected the art of acting, and Graely returned a sneer and repeated, low and threateningly, “Don’t bother trying to pretend you don’t know anything, my brother.  Now, what have you done with Frankie—tell me at once, or face the consequences.”

“I wasn’t sure how you would react, to my ministrations in the Human Realm, and I certainly didn’t realize that you and Frankie the Sluagh were so well acquainted. That, brother
, is a surprise
. I thought you would come in here with outraged fury to find out what we had done with our father’s consort.”

Graely stopped dead and swallowed his breath. Crystal?
They had Crystal
? The Dark King would kill them all to retrieve her. Was Pestale some kind of crazy?

He said on a quieter note, “Do not expect me to believe that someone such as you was actually capable of capturing and holding our father’s most powerful and beloved consort.” Graely had calculated his words to get an unguarded response. He did.

Pestale’s face contorted with rage, “
You know me not
,” he calmed himself, “Indeed, I would have thought you would know by now, just what I can accomplish when I set myself to it.  We have Crystal contained, and although the initial injection of
Dragon’s Breath
will keep her sufficiently helpless, I have not administered a lethal dose—
yet
.” He put up his hand. “I am not ready for her to die just yet, as I must keep her alive long enough for
him
to know she is missing, long enough for him to feel the fear of her possible loss forever, long enough so I can drive home the pain I wish to cause him.”

“I don’t believe you. She has evolved beyond us, beyond the ability to be abducted and held…” Graely was incredulous.

“Ah, her pride has brought about her downfall. She could not give up her lovely female form. Indeed, when she visits the inhabitants of Conglam, she does so as a Fae, an incredibly beautiful Fae, even more so, now brother, than ever before.”

Graely tried to put his thoughts in order. He had to remain calm and find out all he could, he said on what he hoped was a suitably concerned voice, and one that did not hold condemnation; “Even so, she would not allow you to get close enough.”

Pestale cut him off with a ferocious growl, and then snapped, “That is why I partnered with a faction of the Blue Demons. They called her here, and the leader I work with, Sventer, was the one to shoot her with the venom and truss her up with the tainted netting, Hordly was crafty enough to perfect.”

“She will find a way to escape,” Graely scoffed.

“Will she? Not if she is hidden in a box of iron, as is your little Fios Sluagh.”

Graely felt all his insides collapse.

So it was true. All his fears were correct. His Frankie was presently at Pestale’s mercy. 
What mercy
? His brother had none. He knew better than to try and reason, but he was desperate and suddenly he found himself trying to appeal to a threat, to some fear of consequence.

“Pestale, I have not interfered with any of your machinations over the years, because you left Frankie out of it.  But, I swear to you, I will find a way to rip you to pieces and feed you to the abominations we left behind in the Dark Realm, if you harm her.”

Pestale regarded him curiously and asked, “So then, you would betray your brothers for this
one female?”

“I would do anything to keep her from harm,” Graely said and saw the flicker of Pestale’s long black lashes and realized...

Too late, Graely realized. Too late he turned to find Hordly plunging the long needle into his bicep. It was too late, he realized what was about to happen.

He closed his eyes cursing himself as a fool and felt the powdered iron as it scurried through his veins and played havoc with his Fae blood.