Through Time-Frankie (21 page)

Frankie felt the fierceness of her words and screamed out in pain as she rattled her shackles. She had to get free of them.

She had to become all Fios, but when she tried, she realized, both Fios and human were affected by whatever concoction Pestale had put together.

She released a scream filled with the agony and frustration she was suffering.

Damn, but she was in deep, deep shit.

* * *

How long have I been out?

Frankie licked her dry lips and then heard,
Whisper Dust
.

“Whisper Dust,” Frankie repeated out loud questioningly. “Did you just say that, Crystal?”

No response.

Crystal’s eyes were closed, and Frankie imagined that Crystal had forsaken her body for the time being, but that her mind still worked.

Frankie, Whisper Dust,
she heard again
.

“Of course, I could be hallucinating,” Frankie said out loud and gritted her teeth. “No way to tell.”

Something blue opened the cell door and stepped inside.

Frankie tried to focus as the form blurred before her eyes.

The voice that spoke was hoarse, as though he had a sore throat as he said, “Well, well, you are a pretty thing, aren’t you?”

What the hell? Was he talking to her? She stared hard and saw a huge Blue Demon. She hurriedly glanced at Crystal who was lying in a fetal position and unconscious. Frankie felt a shiver as her gaze met his eyes which were cold and lacked sympathy. He was staring at her.

“Who are ye?” Frankie asked doubtfully. “And are ye even here?”

“Oh I am here,” he answered in that gravelly voice. “Sventer asked me to look in on you two. I see Crystal is unconscious, which is what Pestale wants, but you, you are wide awake and just what I need to pass the time while I’m here.”

“
Ye think so”
To herself she said, okay, bravado might work if ye weren’t chained up here.

He laughed and answered her, a leer making him uglier than he already was, “I know so.”

He took a step toward her and Frankie tried hard to use a threatening tone. It wasn’t easy; because she was sure she was seeing double wavy images.

“Stupid—don’t be stupid. Ye can’t know what ye are dealing with,” Frankie managed to slur.

“Oh I know, little Fae, or whatever you are,” he answered sharply. “But, I’ve been needing some relief, and you look so inviting, strapped to the wall like that…I can just imagine you naked.”

Frankie’s pain seemed like naught compared to the sudden terror she felt at his words. She drew on everything she had and said, “I’ll be giving ye fair warning, so think twice, demon, think twice,” Frankie hoped he would be taken aback by her bluff.

She needed to stall him and think, she had to think.

She could see Graely in her mind. She felt Graely’s gentle touch. This thing meant to harm her in a way she would never forget or get over. She couldn’t, wouldn’t let that happen.

“Oh but I have thought twice, and it will be so worth the bit of fight you put up,” he sneered at her.

Frankie yanked out her Fios. Suddenly she could see a little more clearly, suddenly she was able to set aside her pain and pulled on every resolve she owned.

He continued to tell her what he was going to do with her and she heard his filth and let him talk while she pulled herself together and fought through the agony the poison was causing to her insides.

Frankie managed a smile as she told him, “You know, this will not end well for you.”

“You Fae,” he snapped angrily. “You all think you are so superior. Look at you now. Who is superior now? Well, in a moment, you will be a used and discarded easy piece of fluff,” he said on a rough growl as he leaned over her.

“Touch me, and I promise ye, ye won’t live to see tomorrow,” Frankie threatened.

He laughed, “Big talk for a female strapped to a wall and sapped of her strength with a rare Fae poison.”

“Rare?”
Frankie scoffed; she had to keep him at bay while she figured out how she could collect enough power to kill him. “Ye think
Dragon’s Breath
is rare? It can be found almost everywhere, and I have been working to get past its effects, so ye don’t know how much or how little strength and power I have—do ye?”

He stopped and a worried look made his face twitch, but then he released a short hard laugh, and accused, “Bluffing. If you had any power, you would have already used it.” He shrugged, “Besides, you aren’t just fighting off the
Dragon’s Breath
. It is laced with something else…” He bent and tore off Frankie’s jacket. She felt her wings adjust themselves and tuck in further at her back.

Oh,
thought Frankie,
he was so going to die
. She watched him thrown her torn garment across the room.

The effort seemed to excite him.

The darkness forever restrained inside of her shot out with long reaching tentacles and filled her with renewed strength.

He was close, too close as he tore at her tank top.  She brought up her knees, and kicked out with both her sneakered feet, so hard, so furiously that he went flying backward and bounced off the iron wall.

This effort, however, did not immediately help her.

Blue Demons are both magical and strong. He recouped, growled and came charging at her with a force she knew was going to hurt!

* * *

Graely’s thoughts were lost in a sea of darkness, and as ever, he was alone.

The truth was, he would never be alone again. Frankie had become so much a part of who he was that he didn’t know where he ended and she started. She was with him because she was a part of him.  

The sound of her Irish lilt tickling his mind, making him think he had both a soul and a heart had a power that was greater than magic. The image of his Frankie, even now while he was in more pain than he thought possible to endure, made him smile.

He had no hope of being found and released to save his beloved, but he had to find a way. He simply had to find a way. He knew the iron powder would kill him in the end, but he couldn’t die until she was free.

The powdered iron Pestale had administered to Graely was just short of a lethal dose, but he had absorbed it all too quickly into his system, and it had taken him down—
hard.

Together with the effects the thick iron walls of his cell had on him, time, would do the rest.

He was thrown into a black void by the effects of the poison in his system.

He couldn’t die, he told himself. He couldn’t die because he had to get to Frankie. Pestale had done something to her and he had to find a way to save her. She was the World’s last hope, and she was everything that mattered to him.

Through the throbbing pain his mind found something of a solution.

He wasn’t sure his message could get through the thick iron surrounding him, but he knew Jazmine Decker well enough to know that by now she was on the alert and perhaps, the past they shared, the love they shared for Frankie could connect their present.

Jazmine knew he was not like his brothers. She would listen to him and she might be in tune to him, if he could just call on enough of his power to get through to her.

He concentrated and collected all the strength that was left him. He gathered the words so that they would mean something and he centered his mind on Jazmine Decker’s image. He had to get through, he simply had to!

“Jazmine Decker! Hear me.
Find Frankie
. Pestale has her imprisoned.
Find her
,” he said before the poison shut him down and he slumped onto the iron floor, spent and unconscious.

* * *

Jazz had moved away from the royals as they argued. The queen’s chamber, even as large as it was, seemed full with wall to wall muscular princes. Danté was arguing with Trevor, but his younger brother, her dear mate, was not backing down.

Breslyn was arguing with Queen Aaibhe’s mate, leader of the Milesians, Morgan LeBlanc, and Radzia was fuming all by herself as Ete tried to quiet her.

Princess Royce hung to one side listening to it all as did her mate, Morgan’s son, Chancemont Le Blanc. She could see, they were taking it all in, before they commented.

Jazz was sick inside, because everything Fios inside of her told her Frankie was in trouble.

Trevor was asked by the queen to visit with Queen Mab and speak with Deimne. He first took Jazz into his arms and kissed her softly on her lips, “I have to go, but I won’t be gone long, Jazmine Decker.”

“Trevor, Frankie is missing and I don’t like it,” she said stalling him.

“Missing? How?”

“I am not sure, I don’t share a mind link with her as she wanted privacy when she turned eighteen, but the two of us have something else…and that something else tells me she is in trouble.”

“Do you have an idea where she might be?”

“No, but you go ahead, I am going to try and track her. I’ll be back later.”

“Where are you going?” Trevor frowned, obviously not happy about her going off.

“To Dublin.” She smiled tentatively, “Go on, I’ll be fine.”

All the royals started speaking to one another, offering theories and plans. Jazz stepped away to a quiet corner and shifted. A moment later she was standing at Trinity campus, and sniffing the air.

Every blood vessel in her body screamed Frankie’s name and she knew, absolutely knew that she wasn’t far, but where? Where could she be? Her scent was everywhere and then, she realized Frankie was underground.

She shifted once again, this time into the tunnels.

Someone had gone to a quite a bit of trouble, spreading Frankie’s scent throughout the intertwining tunnels.

And out of nowhere she heard Graely’s voice in her head,
Jazmine Decker! Hear me. Find Frankie. Pestale has
her imprisoned
.
Find her.

Her Fae and Fios mingled and searched the sound of Graely’s voice and got an image. She saw him slumped on an iron floor, in a cell totally constructed of iron. She felt for his vital signs, and gasped.  

Graely was dying.

Jazz closed her eyes. She would have to work fast to free Frankie and look for Graely.

She started tracking Frankie’s scent, again, eliminating the weaker trails, and sticking to the direction where it was strongest.

Suddenly she sensed she wasn’t alone.

Something, someone had come up from behind her and before she could defend herself, a long needle was jabbed into her throat.

She felt as though she was choking as she tried to speak. She spluttered something incoherent and slammed her fist into a pair of balls between two muscular thighs.

She saw something blue…as he howled in pain and bent over himself. She used the walls to help her as she tried to shift off, but something was dragging her down. Her magic wasn’t working.

Breathe, she told herself and clawed at her neck as she tried. She had to get control, but she could feel her knees cave and she crumbled as though she had been broken into many parts.

She hit the damp ground hard, and that blue image returned and swam before her eyes as she heard a string of curses hurled at her.

Trevor!
Hurry to me…

She mind linked with Trevor, and heard the terror in his response. “I’m coming.” He called in her head.

Blue swam in waves before her eyes, and it registered, Blue Demons—two of them.

Jazz felt one of them grab her ankles and she bumped her head on a jutting rock as he dragged her along. Paralyzed. Whatever they had injected her with had made her limbs numb, she couldn’t feel them, she couldn’t move on her own.
This was so not good.

She heard a door creak open as the demon shoved her inside.

There were others in the cell with her.

She saw movement, she caught a glimpse of Frankie—chained to the iron wall. She tried to speak and heard her voice as though it was nothing more than a whisper, “Frankie.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

HE WAS ON her, with his groping demon hands. He ripped at her tank top tearing some of it away.

Suddenly he stopped and turned.

Damn
, she was just about to kick him in the crotch, and looked past him to see two Blue Demons dragging in…oh no, oh no,
it was Jazz.

Frankie’s tormentor laughed as he greeted his comrades and said they had interrupted his ‘bit of fun’.

They told him, he now had more to play with. “Stay,” he urged the newcomers, “There is enough to go around.”

They laughed and said that Sventer had already recalled them, and that something big was about to happen in Conglam, and that unless they meant to stay hidden in iron, they had best get back. They took a minute to chain Jazz to the iron wall with the
Golden Wiele
that had been soaked in
Dragon’s Breath.

Frankie held her breath as he nodded to the two just leaving.

He turned and grinned wickedly to tell her, “Well, this is going to be fun—two special Fae to play with. First I’ll, what do humans call it? Ah yes,
I’ll nail you
, and then when I’m finished, I’ll do the same to her. Yes. I like that term. I am going to nail you both, and take a long lock of your black hair and her blonde hair and add them to those already on my belt.”

Frankie had already made up her mind to kill him. Now she wanted to do it slowly.

She looked at Jazz.

No way in hell would she let him touch Jazz. She said softly, ignoring her pain, ignoring the burning flesh she was sure was being scorched off her body from the inside out.  “Have ye said yer last good-byes, m’fine creepo? Because, after I’m done with ye, I’ll give ye to m’da, and m’boyfriend, not to mention, Royal Prince Trevor, and they will take what is left of ye and rip that apart as well. And when they are done, they will feed yer bits and pieces to the rats.”

“Big talk for a Fae chained to a wall. I’ll have my fun and be long gone, and you’ll still be here, dying, the three of you,” he indicated with his chin Crystal still in a fetal position. “Dying, hidden by iron, with no way for anyone to find you. No one is coming to your rescue.” He grinned. “You see, Pestale wants to use you to negotiate with the Royals, and now we have another as well. Shows you how strong we are getting. Oh, and by the way, Pestale doesn’t care if we have to kill you. He gave us orders to kill you if you give us any trouble, and I am determined to be the one to do it. It will give me so much pleasure to drain the blood out of your body and drink it from a crystal glass. But first, oh first,
little bitch
, I’m going to hurt you in ways you never thought possible.” Saying this, he put his hand on her breast and pinched her nipple hard.

Frankie twisted away and then back as she took aim and spit in his face.

He gasped and stepped backward but after he wiped his face he growled at her and said, “Oh I am going to have fun,
but you aren’t
. I’m going to make sure this hurts you.”

Desperately she called on her the magic of her Fios. She had to get Jazz and Crystal out of here. She simply had to.

She had never wielded her ‘fireball’ with anything but her hands. Could she do it with her mind? Could she give it direction without the use of her hands?

He was tearing at her tank top, and although Frankie felt sick to her stomach, she yelped out, “May you live in hell eternally,” and suddenly the fireball was right before her eyes and growing from golf ball size into basketball size, and with more ease than she thought possible, her brain sent it slamming deep into the Blue Demon’s belly.

And then her fireball did something she had never witnessed it do before. It went inside of the Blue Demon.
Inside
.  

She could see it tear a hole through his middle and lodge itself in his gut and then it exploded!

Frankie blinked, she knew, that dark power inside of her had done that.

But she wasn’t ashamed, she was exuberant. Blue ash covered the iron floor where he had stood and tormented her, and she wondered for a moment if his blood had been blue, and then incongruously, Frankie grinned.

But she had to tend to Jazz.

Jazz who was chained so close to her, but unconscious. She had to wake her, and tried shouting her name, “Jazz…Jazz…are ye okay? Wake up, Jazz.”

But Jazz, like Crystal was unconscious, deaf to all.

Frankie knew it had taken everything she had left to get her fireball to such power. She felt the pain rack her body again, and just as she felt herself slipping into a star filled black sky, she heard, W
hisper Dust, Whisper Dust, Whisper Dust.

All at once, she could hold on no longer, Frankie’s world went dark.

* * *

Darmon knew he had to do something to help Essie. If she didn’t confess to him, she would live with the guilt of whatever she had done.

This was all Pestale’s fault. If he could just discover what it was that Pestale had asked her to do then perhaps he could prompt her to confess?

He knew Essie needed time to come to the place where she could tell them just what Pestale was up to, but he also knew—they simply did not have time.

Pestale was on the verge of accomplishing his goals. Darmon felt that as a certainty. His wolf’s hackles were up all the time, because he sensed the danger they were all in, although he could not see it.  

Life in Conglam as they knew it would come to an end if he and his alpha parents did not do something soon.

It had something to do with the Dark King’s consort, he was certain, for she would not have left them so precipitately. One moment she was there, hearing their concerns and the next she was gone. That was not like the Crystal they had come to know over the years.

What he needed to do was a little reconnaissance. The Dark Fae princes could not see through his Shapeshifter Glamour, or his invisibility.

In wolf form, invisible to all but his own kind, he loped to the castle, and then shifted inside, padding quietly toward the sound of voices. The first voice he heard was Prince Hordly who was complaining.

“I think we gave him too strong a dosage. What if he dies? The Dark King will know it was us. He will know, and he won’t tolerate it. Besides, I wouldn’t like it if Graely dies…he has been with us so long.”

Pestale frowned and put a hand on Hordly’s shoulder but his brother shrugged him off and paced. “I don’t like this, Pestale. If you can kill Graely so easily, what then of me? Will I be next?”

“He won’t die,” Pestale tried to reassure him.

“You can’t know that!” Hordly snapped. “I am bloody hurting just from holding the syringe.”

“Graely won’t die,” Pestale said calmly.

“And what about Crystal? What if father finds her? What if she tells? She will, why wouldn’t she? Or what if she never recovers and dies too soon. We can’t know what the effects of the
Dragon’s Breath
and the
Zolem
blood
will do to her, can we? She was never in Danu, father brought her straight to the Dark Realm with him, long after Danu was destroyed. She never received the vaccinations. She never had time to develop an immunity to the Zolem, because she was never exposed!” Hordly’s hands raked his hair.

“You are allowing your fears to get the better of you. What if this, what if that. You can’t do that you damned fool. We will handle everything together, just as we have always done. We have always survived. As to Crystal, I never meant her to survive. Sventer doesn’t know it, but I supplied him with a lethal dose of the Zolem. She won’t just be sick,
she will die
.” He shrugged. “She must, and when our father realizes he will never have her, see her again, he will implode. That is the plan.”

“What if
he can
see past the iron?” Hordly was not convinced. “You are forgetting what he has become.”

“I haven’t forgotten one damned thing. He will lose his mind when he discovers she is dead. I will put it all at the door of the humans.”

“It won’t work,” Hordly sounded doubtful. “I never thought we would kill her, only get her out of the way until it was too late for her to stop us, only that.”

“He cannot see past the iron. I know because I once tested him, at great pain to myself. I managed to wrap some of the vials he had stored of
Zolem
in an iron box and he was never able to find it. When Crystal, sentimental fool that she has always been, allowed us to collect our things from the Dark Realm, before coming here, I managed to deposit many items that I had stored in iron lined boxes into the trunk of things we brought with us to Conglam.” Pestale scoffed. “Crystal thought we brought personal, keepsakes of the Dark Realm, of better days. She believed me when I told her I was beginning to see things differently. She was so pleased to hear it that she never looked past my lies.” He sneered, “Fools, betrayed by emotions.”

“Yeah, yeah, but now what?”

“Why all this sudden doubt, Hordly? You knew what we were going to do?” Pestale frowned darkly, suspiciously.

Hordly shrugged, “It was a plan…yes, but you never said anything about killing Crystal or Graely.”

“Did I not? Well, Graely should not have interfered, and Crystal has to die…we don’t have a choice, do we?”

“Yes, but…this seems, I don’t know, like it might end badly…
for us.”

Pestale laughed, “Oh it will end badly,
but not
for us. We have been misused and abused from the moment we were created. We were never given what we needed to be what he wanted and then discarded because we weren’t what he wanted. Now, it is our turn to do the discarding. We will rule this world and have everything, power, magic, might.”

“Very well, Pestale, you know I have always followed your lead,” Hordly sighed heavily.

“So you have, and I have always taken care of you.” he took a step toward his brother and put a hand on his shoulder, “Now Hordly, now we wait until our father discovers she has not returned to him.”

“Then what?”

“Then what? He will come looking for her here.”

“You know, Pestale; I have never been able to lie to him. He sees through me, he knows what I am,
he loathes me
,” Hordly said hopelessly.

“
You
don’t have to face him. I will do that. He will come here when he notices that she has not returned to him in a timely fashion.  I will be there to greet him and give him the news. He and Crystal are bonded, and I expect he will miss their mind link very shortly. He will come here and accuse us of villainy.”  Pestale said this on a laugh which grew on itself and bounced off the walls, echoing and Hordly stepped away from his brother, and displayed a face full of dread.

* * *

As Frankie was a Daoine Fae and linked to nature in many ways she centered all her thoughts on earth, wind and fire.

The healing powers that were a part of all Fae make-up began working in an effort to repair the damage the poison in her system had produced. She could feel those healing powers straining beneath the effort.

During the process, everything hurt, but Frankie gritted her teeth and tried to focus on the situation at hand. Jazz had come looking for her and was now unconscious and as shackled as she was.

Jazz had been a Fios all her life, but had only been Fae for six years. Her system would not repair itself quite so easily. The thought that Jazz could die drove her into a frenzy to get loose.

She had to concentrate. She had to find a way of breaking her chains.
Whisper Dust
, the words bounced into her thoughts and she looked at Crystal—Crystal who was not moving, who had not moved in hours. Yet, Frankie was certain that the words
Whisper Dust
were coming from her. What did it mean?

Frankie was frantic.

An answer to their problem seemed to lie with this thing called
Whisper Dust
, but she had never heard of it before. They were locked and shackled in a world of iron and hurt. Where was this
Whisper Dust
and how could she get her hands on it? What did it look like? What was Crystal trying to tell her?

“Crystal, I know ye are trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is. Can ye not give me an idea, what it is—this Whisper Dust ye keep telling me?”

Crystal couldn’t move, and she didn’t, but her lashes flickered ever so slightly and Frankie felt a moment of hope and repeated, “Crystal. I need to know how to get this Dust ye keep telling me about. Do ye hear me, Crystal?”

From the Dark King’s consort’s mind into Frankie’s one word only one word,
ring.

Frankie said the word out loud as though trying it on for size, looking for a meaning,
“Ring?”

And then she saw the large gold ring on Crystal’s delicate finger. It was the sort of ring that opened. It was the sort of ring that could hold a secret…or the
Whisper Dust,
Crystal had repeated over and over.

Frankie shoved all the hurting aside and groaned with the pain it caused her to stand on her two feet. She yanked at the shackles, she tried to use whatever magic she had left to dislodge the
Golden Wiele
that tied her to the shackles imbedded in the iron with iron, but nothing happened. She was immune to iron but not to the Golden Netting or the poison it had been painted with.