The Immortal Highlander

Page 8

“No I’m not,” Gabby snapped instantly. Defensively. Stupidly. Oh, that was good, O’Callaghan, you dolt!
Snapping her mouth shut so hard her teeth clacked, she unlocked the car door and scrambled in faster than she’d ever thought possible.
Twisting the key in the ignition, she threw the car into reverse.
And then she did another stupid thing: She glanced at it again. She couldn’t help it. It simply commanded attention.
It was stalking toward her, its expression one of pure astonishment.
For a brief moment she gaped blankly back. Was a fairy capable of being astonished? According to O’Callaghan sources, they experienced no emotion. And how could they? They had no hearts, no souls. Only a fool would think some kind of higher conscience lurked behind those quixotic eyes. Gabby was no fool.
It was almost to the curb. Heading straight for her.
With a startled jerk she came to her senses, slammed the car into drive, and jammed the gas pedal to the floor.
Darroc, Elder of the Tuatha Dé Danaan’s High Council, stood atop the Hill of Tara on the Plain of Meath. A cool night breeze tangled long copper hair shot with gold around a face that was exotically beautiful but for the scar marring his chiseled visage. It was a scar he might easily have concealed with glamour, but chose not to. He wore it to remember, he wore it so certain others would not forget.
Ireland, once ours, he thought bitterly, staring out at the lush, verdant land.
And Tara—long ago called Teamir and before that christened Cathair Crofhind by the Tuatha Dé themselves—once testament to the might and glory of his race, was now a tourist stop overrun by humans accompanied by guides who told stories of his people that were abjectly laughable.
The Tuatha Dé had arrived on this world long before human myths purported they had. But what could one expect from puny little creatures whose lives both began and sputtered to an end in the merest blink of a Tuatha Dé’s eye?
When first we found this world, we had so much hope. Indeed, the name they’d chosen for Tara—Cathair Crofhind—meant “ ’twas not amiss”; their choice of this world to be their new home.
But it had been amiss, egregiously amiss. Man and Tuatha Dé had proved incompatible, incapable of sharing this fertile world that bore so many similarities to their own, and his race, once majestic and proud, now hid in places humans had not yet discovered. Having only recently learned to harness the power of the atom, humans would not present a serious threat to the Tuatha Dé for some time.
Yet time passed swiftly for his kind, and then would his people be forced to flee again?
Darroc refused to live to see such a day.
Banished. The noble Tuatha Dé had been relegated to leftover places, just as they’d been forced out once before, an aeon ago. Outcast then. Cast out now. The only difference was that humans were not yet powerful enough to drive them offworld as they’d been driven from their beloved home.
Yet.
They hadn’t been able to take Danu—the other races had been too powerful—but they could take this world and conquer it. Now. Before Man advanced any further.
“Darroc,” a voice interrupted his bitter musings. Mael, the queen’s consort, appeared beside him. “I tried to slip away from court sooner but—”
“I know how closely she watches you and expected it would be some time,” Darroc cut him off, impatient for news. A few days in Faery was months in the human realm where Darroc had been waiting at their appointed meeting place. “Tell me. Did she do it?”
Tall, powerfully developed, with tawny skin and a mane of shimmering bronze, the queen’s latest favorite nodded, his iridescent eyes gleaming. “She did. Adam is human. And, Darroc, she stripped his powers. He can no longer even see us.”
Darroc smiled. Perfect. He could ask for no more. His nemesis, that eternal thorn in his side, mankind’s most persistent advocate, was banished from Faery, and without him, the balance of power at court was skewed in Darroc’s favor at long last.
And Adam was helpless, a walking target. Mortal.
“Know you where he is now?” asked Darroc.
Mael shook his head. “Only that he walks the human realm. Shall I go hunting for you?”
“No. You’ve done enough, Mael,” Darroc told him. He had other Hunters in mind to track his quarry. Hunters not quite as loyal to the queen as she liked to believe. “You must return before she discovers you gone. She must suspect nothing.”
As the queen’s consort disappeared, Darroc also sifted time and place, but to a different realm entirely.