Forever (Book #3 in the Fateful Series) (13 page)

“What are those?” Nadia asked, and Danielle turned back to see where she was pointing. A flock of birds off in the distance caught her eye and she watched them as they neared. What she’d thought was one bird; she soon noticed were actually three, and then four, and then six, like they kept dividing as they neared. She realized then that they weren’t birds at all.

“Just pixies,” said Alora, like it was not a problem.

Nadia gasped. “But won’t they try to take us?”

The fairy touched the necklace they’d given to Nadia that was very much like the one Danielle wore. “They won’t be able to see you, dear.”

With rounded eyes they all watched as the swarm of pixies flew right at them. They ducked. Danielle expected to feel the little beings latch onto her clothes, but all she experienced was a gentle breeze from their many flapping wings. She heard the wicked little sounds they made as they communicated with each other, and she caught the strong whiff of rotten apples that always accompanied them, but the pixies swept past them as though they were not there at all. Her fingers curled around the three crystals as she rose upright. She was shocked, but grateful. “Wow. It worked.”

“Hurry along,” commanded Alora, ignoring her astonished words. “You must get within our borders to be safe, and you must not leave them.”

Danielle’s eyes dropped to the sand closing in around her shoes with each step. Darn, she’d hoped to walk this beach barefoot later to experience what it would feel like between her toes. It seemed the beach wasn’t part of the cove and they wouldn’t be allowed to come here again. They started up the hill and she wondered how far they had to walk before she would see what her new home was going to look like.

Chapter 7

Derry Glen Cove

The borders of Derry Glen Cove weren’t far from the beach. They were informed that they’d entered fairy land the moment they moved past most of the rocks and their feet got tangled in the grasses growing there.

“At least we can come here and watch the ocean,” said Danielle.

Ethan suspected she’d added in her head,
and watch for mermaids
. He knew curiosity about something she’d been as fascinated with as fairies would still interest her, even after she’d been told how dangerous they were. He could see she didn’t completely believe the beings could harm her. She’d want to draw them, partly because she had already. Such creatures lived in her imagination. Recalling the painting of the dark-haired mermaid hanging in their master bath, he held her hand as she negotiated a particularly large rock.

Not that she needed his aid, of course. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. It was his job as her man to care for her and to spoil her. He was grateful she didn’t constantly smack his hands away, and simply let him be old-fashioned. Ethan wasn’t sure he liked how she’d compared him to her grandfather, though. She’d said he held onto out-of-date notions just like her grandfather had. He wasn’t an old man, was he? Feeling a crease form between his eyebrows, Ethan realized that maybe he was.... And soon he’d be hunched, grumpy, and gray. Swallowing, Ethan tried to snuff out the way his thoughts were making him feel.
Why is it so hard to be mortal?
he asked himself as he shoved up his glasses once more.  In a way he felt like
Harry Potter
. But
Harry
was ultimately the hero of his story, and Ethan feared he was not the hero of his own, but the underdog.

His eyes followed his wife as she gingerly made her way up a steep incline. She looked back at him and managed to smite the negative thoughts in his head with a sweet look of devotion. That soothing image sank into his soul as he grasped onto a thick root jutting from the sheared wall of soil to keep from slipping, mentally reminding himself that even if it was quite literally a mental struggle to remain weak, mortality with her was what he wanted. A family with her was what he wished for. A normal life with her was what he fantasized about. Casanova took her hand and helped her over the last rock which was clearly the hardest to negotiate. Ethan’s teeth clenched as his prior frustrations returned just as quickly as his wife had chased them away.

With the grinding of his back molars, Ethan was struggling to get over the same rock when Casanova returned and took hold of his arm to help him too. Ethan barely resisted the urge to punch the grinning Frenchman in the face. Deep down he knew the guard was likely harmless. But Ethan just couldn’t find it within himself to like having all of these vampires around. Constantly. In the past he hadn’t minded, it was for her safety, but now every time one of them looked at his wife, it caused his possessive nature to flare up. Even Max still drove him mad with that bloody winking of his.

Once they’d cleared the top, Danielle looked over her shoulder at him again as she returned her hand to his, her gaze going just past his shoulder briefly before returning to his face and measuring what she saw there. Ethan looked away. Too late.

“I really think Casanova means well,” she said, proving she’d seen straight to his frustrated heart.

Forgetting what he really wanted to growl, he said instead, “You’re probably right.”

Her brown eyes danced past him again. “Was it really mermaids that tried to overturn us, or was that something else?” she asked, her tone hopeful. Danielle was clearly still thinking about them, and he wasn’t surprised.

“Yes,” Alora said before he had a chance.

“Why?” she asked, with her gaze moving to the fairy that fluttered around in front of them along a path of grass through the trees. The fairies wouldn’t be the ones to wear it down since their feet never touched the ground, Ethan thought as the thin blades of green crushed beneath his boots. In a way, he felt as though he was trespassing, and causing mortal damage to a precious preserve. Why were the fairies even allowing them to come here?

The male fairy dressed in green answered Danielle’s question. “They probably want possession of you too.”

He felt Danielle stiffen at that, but her eyes rolled when she again asked, “Why?” She probably knew she’d been asking that question a lot, and likely feared she sounded like a child.

“They’re not cursed, so wanting a cure from you is likely not the reason...” The male fairy trailed off as he considered it, tapping a finger against his chin. His silvery blue wings worked as fast as a hummingbird’s as he flitted along ahead of them. He dropped his hand in what appeared to resignation, and shook his head. “I can’t imagine why.”

“They could just wish to drown you all,” said Alora. “They take pride in that, especially ending vampires who mistakenly think they’re invincible.”

An unnerved shudder worked its way up Ethan’s spine. According to the fey, even as a vampire, he couldn’t combat mermaids. This was yet another way he was incapable of protecting his wife. With this and other failures on his mind, Ethan peered back at the ocean and decided he had to keep her away from there, despite her curiosity. While the sea wasn’t visible from here, alarm once again prodded at his peace of mind. They had reached their destination, and he could still hear the water crashing against the rocks. Danielle would still be tempted to look.

Moving farther into the trees, they were greeted with a moss-draped buffet laden with a colorful array of fruits and nuts. Richard tunneled fingers in his hair and sighed loudly with a look of bewildered agitation tightening his features. “Please tell me we don’t need to eat potion-tainted food again.”

The fairies simply tittered at that, causing Richard’s scowl to deepen.

“Well?” he demanded.

Alora dashed up to him with hands on hips. “
If
you were more observant, you would see this is mostly
fresh
food that has not been prepared by us.”

Richard’s left eyebrow kicked up as his hands landed on his hips too. “
Mostly
?”

“You must consume some of our magic to dwell here and not turn into fey.”

“As though we’d entered the ring?” asked Merrick with a startled look on his face. His eyes made a pass around the area like he was searching for a circle of mushrooms to mark the threat. The Highland warrior gulped before adding, “Could we sprout wee, glittering wings?” He held two fingers apart at about a fairy’s height. “Shrink?”

“
We
must eat, as before?” asked Casanova. He said it like the very idea made his stomach squirm, but Ethan was fairly certain the vampires had enjoyed the chance to actually taste food when that was something that had been lost to them for quite some time. Slowly Ethan realized the Frenchman was probably more concerned with its effect on him than the taste of it.

“Yes,” said that male fairy in green. “But you need not worry about being drugged ... again. It is for your well-being that you consume some magic-touched food while here.”

“Perhaps we didn’t think this through,” murmured Merrick. Ethan figured the huge vampire was terrified at the idea of turning into something as dainty as a fairy and he stifled the urge to laugh.

“Everything you consume will be quite healthy for you. Trust us,” said Alora in a tone that spoke of her patience wearing thin.

All of the guards began arguing at once and Ethan measured what he saw in Alora as she reacted to it. By the pinkening of her little cheeks, he could see she was growing quite wroth with the guards. The little fey was getting angry faster than when he’d argued with her. His head tipped to the side as he pondered why. He’d marked a hesitation before the word
healthy
, and he wondered if they were telling little white lies again. When nothing came to him, Ethan decided it didn’t matter. “We trust you,” said Ethan as he moved forward and selected a juicy-looking peach. Knowing Alora as he did, he knew from past experience that it wasn’t productive to argue with her. His teeth sank into the flesh of it and he savored the slightly tart and sweet flavor. Swallowing, he collected what looked like a pomegranate and tossed it toward Merrick, who caught it easily. With a scowl, the vampire considered all sides of the fruit before he sniffed at it. His curious eyes lifted to Ethan, who said, “We don’t have any choice but to trust them, and I mean to make the best of it. If it means an existence of bewitched confusion, then so be it!”

It seemed his words and actions had stunned the guards into silence. After a moment’s hesitation, Danielle, Max, Nadia, and Cedric joined him.

“This tasted just as delicious as before,” Cedric said after he finished off a pear and tossed the core of it into the woods. “That hadn’t been dusted with some of your fairy, sparkly stuff, had it?” As he spoke, he’d inspected his finger as though he figured his hands would be covered with glitter.

Safe, uneventful days passed by. Ethan felt secure in the idea that nothing could harm them here. The fairies had been right. The food hadn’t made him feel loopy and confused as before, so it seemed they were telling the truth about that too.

Over the past several days, life here had been relaxing, but also slightly boring without the electronic advances they’d grown accustomed to. Ethan could remember his Victorian life, and then his Edwardian life, and so on, until things like television and computers had been invented. He’d liked the simplicity of the past, but he’d favored technological luxuries more so. Ethan nudged a low-hanging branch out of the way as he made his way to the waterfall they’d discovered on one of their many hikes. The hikes were nice. It was very beautiful here, but watching a movie and munching on microwaved popcorn had also been quite nice.

Earlier in the day, Danielle had said she planned to be here after lunch. After taking a nap, he’d decided to join her. Drawing closer, he noticed Danielle standing with her back to him at the edge of a thicket of trees. She had her easel set up in front of her, a palette of wet paints in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. She was also dancing, her cute little backside was swaying with a rhythm he couldn’t hear. He wondered about that until he got close enough to see the black earbuds tucked into her ears. Ethan wondered how she’d managed to keep her iPod charged without a place to plug it in.

The water rumbled as it rolled over the edge of the cliff and crashed into the pond below it. This was the second time she’d painted this scene. He could see that she’d chosen a different angle than before, but he also knew she was running out of new scenes to paint. The land they had to explore here was quite limited and the fairies insisted they never cross the boundary lines which were marked with a ring of tall brown mushrooms. They were prisoners in paradise, he would suppose....

A blade of sunlight cut through the canopy of leaves and made the mist coming off the water glow. This entire place was so saturated with fey magic that it practically hummed. His soul hummed when he looked at his wife. He watched as she dipped her brush into a dollop of black paint and twirled the brush with the bristles against the palette, effectively creating a point and removing any excess acrylic. She bent forward, and he knew she was adding her signature to the piece. Ethan was admiring the view, because she was still bouncing to whatever it was she was listening to.

Movement from above distracted his thoughts from all the different ways he could kiss her, and his focus caught onto a spider dangling from a shimmering web. Neither large nor small in his book, its eight legs wriggled in all directions as it inched lower. Ethan’s head rocked to the side, and his eyebrows rose. It seemed like it had looked at him when its little pincers twisted his way before redirecting to Danielle, as though the main focus in its minuscule life was to land on her. Quickly Ethan grabbed the web just above it and tossed that and the spider away from Danielle.

She would have shrieked in horror had that thing touched her. Spiders had been the first fear she’d confessed to him. Those had been followed by Lucas and snakes. Later he’d learned of her concerns about getting lost and her loathing for doctors. Danielle may have been fond of fairies, but she still feared creeping things of any kind, it wasn’t just spiders, Lucas, snakes, loss of direction, and doctors that distressed her peace of mind. While she would normally be wearing some sort of pretty skirt or dress, here she always wore long pants, long sleeves and tall boots. She was clearly trying to protect herself from anything that could quietly creep into her space.