War of the Fae
Book Four
New World Order
Elle Casey
Copyright 2012 Elle Casey
All rights reserved.
Copyright Notice
© 2012 Elle Casey, all rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or copied without author permission. Please support artistic expression and help promote copyright protections by buying a copy of this ebook at www.Amazon.com. The author thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.
Acknowledgments
I have lots of people to thank for the final installment of the War of the Fae series. First, to my editors, Beth G. and Margaret R. – you girls make me a better writer. I learn with each book. Thank you so much for your dedication. I’d also like to thank my readers. Wow. You guys are just fabulous! I love hearing from you on Facebook, by email, on my blog, on Shelfari, Goodreads, Amazon’s forums, and on Twitter. Your supportive words are my drugs. I cannot possibly thank you enough not only for your reading, but your community spirit. To the book bloggers out there who take time to read and review indie books like mine, hats off to you. Thank you so much for putting my work in front of your readers. To the bands who inspired my work with the fae, including Breaking Benjamin, Muse, Lana Del Rey (ignore the haters, babe!), Gotye, Evanescence, The Civil Wars, and Nine Inch Nails. I am very grateful to Amazon.com and especially its KDP program, which allows indie authors like me to promote my work to the masses. I owe Amazon a lot and I’m proud to be a part of the Amazon family. Thank you France for being a magical, inspiring place to write. Thank you to Lady O and Sir Richard for lending me your Paris apartment to write, write, write. Something about being surrounded by books and friends makes the process so much more enjoyable and fruitful. To my momma who is always always supportive of me. To my husband and kids who put up with my writer nonsense and still love me. To Hercules, the wonder poodle, who will sit and warm my feet for hours as I write, watching my every move with love in his eyes. And to my friends who are still my friends, even when I ignore them for days or weeks on end while I write. Super hugs to all of you!
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my grandmas, Jeanne and Grace. Two of the ass-kickin-ist ladies you’d ever want to meet. They never fit the mold their families wanted to put them in and they always rebelled, even if only just a little. Their spirits live in my characters, especially Jayne.
Chapter 1
The snarl coming from the power flux streaming through my body and out of my hands towards Ben was nearly deafening. It’s as if a series of bombs were going off in the distance – in the spot where I was aiming all of it. I heard a scream that could only have been Samantha getting Finn’s mindseye arrow surprise. Happy birthday, bitch.
A roar that sounded like a wounded and angry orc on a magically amplified megaphone came next, sending shivers up my spine. I worried that whatever it was would be coming for me any second. Was it Ben? Or maybe one of the Dark Fae ogres that had been trying to kill the Light Fae elves lined up to my left? – Elves I could no longer see or hear, but whose presence I could still sense in The Green somewhere.
I didn’t let up and I didn’t let go. I cast a glance over at Finn standing next to me, who was having a hard time withstanding the ferocious wind. “Get back inside!” I yelled.
Finn turned to go, but the storm blowing around us was too much. He bent over in an attempt to battle it, but it was no use. He started to get pulled away from me, towards Ben. I felt Scrum bump into me as he, too, was drawn away.
I started shouting in desperation and anger, unable to control the wild emotions that started erupting from me to join the forces of nature battling around us. No one was going to take my friends away from me, especially not Ben.
I kept up the flow but started simultaneously building a concentrated ball of power in my hands. It seethed and swirled, my last-ditch effort to blow Ben to smithereens. If I could launch this thing at him, I just knew something big would happen. I felt the ball’s perfectly smooth sides, pulsing with energy. I gathered it in towards my chest and then, without hesitating or worrying about the consequences, sent it blasting out toward the place where I thought Ben was standing.
The sound that hit my ear a split second later was not what I had imagined it would be. I hadn’t been sure what to expect exactly, but this wasn’t it.
It’s as if I’d suddenly lost most of my hearing. The percussion of a distant explosion shook the earth beneath my feet, but everything was muffled to my ear. I felt a flash of heat and immediately lost my sense of space and time. Moments before, there were fae all around me, both Light and Dark, and I was aware of the ground under me and my friends standing nearby in support, the sources of power that fed the beam of destruction coming from my hands. Surely there must be some fallout from the mindseye arrow that Finn had just launched at Samantha, aiming to kill; but I couldn’t sense it. Any of it. I was lost in a kaleidoscope of greens and blues that made up the combined raw power of the elements Earth and Water.
I was afraid to let The Green go. I was even more afraid to stop combining Water and Earth to overwhelm my opponents. What if Ben was still there, waiting for me to lower my guard? What if Samantha was poised to send another bolt of white lightning at Finn or Scrum? The Dark Fae would be able to get into the Light Fae compound, my home; they would destroy my family – or turn them over to the Dark Fae side, sealing all our fates.
Images and snatches of memories flickered through my mind as I stood there frightened and confused – my father telling me my personality was going to get me into trouble some day; Tony, hugging me, telling me everything was going to get better after I’d failed a stupid history test; the looks on Dardennes’ and Céline’s faces when I explained why I had selected Mother Nature as my superhero of choice during my changeling interview. I had so gotten that one wrong. I wasn’t superhero material. This proved it. In a moment of need, I had lost it – cracked.
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the visions, but everything stayed the same. I couldn’t tell anymore what was real and what was imagined. My hearing issue made me want to reach up and rub the sides of my head, but I was afraid to move my hands. All I needed to do was make this worse than it already was – to send a rocket of power headed off in the wrong direction, frying the Light Fae elf warriors who had come to protect our home, fighting side by side with me.
In the wake of the boom that issued from my exploding power ball, I heard the steady buzz of white noise. A loud, fuzzy drone that wouldn’t go away. I still couldn’t see anything but the lights, swirling and twisting around each other, and I wasn’t able to sense the presence of my friends either. I felt lost. Alone. And, man, did it suck.
“Jayne!” came Tony’s voice, from off in the distance.
“Tony?” I asked, tentatively. Why is he here? Where is here? Am I still outside the gargoyle-symbol door, standing near the edge of the forest that marked the home of the Ancient One? Or had I sent us both into one of the Otherworlds?
“Jayne! You have to let it go! Stop now!”
“I can’t. I’m afraid,” I answered out into the colors swirling madly around me. My voice was weak, lame-sounding, which only served to make me pissed off at myself.
“Jayne, it’s over! Come back to me! We can’t get near you with your power switch on like that!” His voice was pleading now and he sounded scared.
The panic in my best friend’s voice worked like a magic spell, snapping me out of the weird place I was stuck in. Tony needed me – I had to get back. And if he said it was over, it should be safe to drop the stream of energy still flowing out of me and towards the forest where Ben had emerged earlier. Tony would never lie to me.
At first, the power
didn’t want to leave. I could feel its resistance, urging against its forced retreat. I had to try and recall the technique that Valentine, the incubus, taught me, focusing on the power and reining it in. I knew at least one of the entities that came up through my Earth Element, the Ancient One, was there, reveling in the use of its essence above the ground. I pushed it back mentally, forcefully reminding it who made the decisions around here – me. I’m the boss of all this messed up shit. I may be a total screw up, but I’d decided long ago, if you’re gonna screw shit up, you might as well own it. Meet me – Jayne – the girl who just couldn’t seem to get it right.
“Good, Jayne, good. Keep going,” pressed Tony, sounding a little less desperate.
“You’re doing it, Jayne, good job!” urged Scrum, way too cheerful-sounding for how crappy this all felt.
“Take me over there! Put me on her shoulder!” yelled Tim’s tiny voice.
I should have known they wouldn’t be able to keep my stubborn pixie friend away for long. And him being here meant Spike was here too, since he was the one put in charge of Tim when the shit had so recently hit the fan.
I blinked my eyes hard a few times, trying to clear them of the greens and blues, but they wouldn’t go back to normal. I turned my attention back to managing the flow of power and felt The Green now completely under control, waiting for my final order to go back into the earth.
“Tony?”
“Yeah, Jayne?”
“Can I let The Green go now? Is it safe?”
I heard a heavy sigh. “Yeah. It’s safe.”
“Don’t worry, Jayne, I’ve got your back,” assured Scrum.
I didn’t know what Tony’s sigh was all about – Tony’s sighs usually carried a lot of meaning, but without being able to see his face yet, I couldn’t guess what it was. He was a master at communicating with sighs and eye rolls. I was missing at least half of the equation without my eyesight.
I let The Green know that it could release Water and go back into the earth. I thanked it and tried not to feel awful about the fact that I’d used its pure essential light and rejuvenating combination of life forces to hurt another fae. We were at War, and it’s the Dark Fae who had brought it to our doorstep. I refused to feel guilty about the consequences they had brought upon themselves.
The Water Element that I had finally learned how to bring into the mix felt different than The Green. It was sparkly, energetic, bouncy. It reminded me of Becky, which instantly brought a lump of sorrow into my heart. Please, please don’t let her be dead. The last time I’d seen her, she’d just suffered a bolt of Samantha’s witch power to the chest to end up lying in the grass with a death stare in her open, sightless eyes. But Becky had managed to teleport out of there somehow, so I was going to hold onto a sliver of hope that she was still alive as long as reality would let me.
Water proved to be harder to rein in and send back from where I had drawn it than Earth. Part of the problem was that it had come from many places. It felt a lot less concentrated and organized than The Green. Using it and trying to control it was more like herding champagne bubbles or something. I’d had champagne once at a cousin’s wedding reception; it had made me sneeze, all that sparkly stuff getting away from me in my mouth and throat.
I had thought that when I had the two elements under control, everything would be back to normal, but when Water finally left me, the only thing that was different was the fact that I could hear better and I could put my arms down. I still couldn’t see anything other than the weird lights.
“Jayne?” asked Tony.
“Yeah?” I said, worried, not sounding like my normal self at all.
“Look at me.”
I heard whispering behind me. I couldn’t tell who was doing it or what they were saying.
I turned in the general direction of Tony’s voice, and tried not to wince at the gasp I heard from him. “What the hell’s wrong, Tony? Why can’t I see you?”
“Jayne, your ... it’s ... your eyes. What do you see?”
“I see blues and greens, twisting all around, moving. What do you see?” I finished weakly, afraid I was now blind and that one of my colossal fuck-ups had made it happen.
“They’re glowing turquoise, kinda like you just described, actually – not your normal hazel color. You can’t see me?”
“No. Nothing at all, other than the swirls.” I closed my eyes and it was the same. I wondered how long I could watch this stuff and not get nauseous. Hopefully it would become a non-issue very soon.
I felt his hand on my arm. “Come on. Let’s get you to the clinic.”
I resisted his pull. “Wait. Tell me what happened, first.”
I felt Tim’s weight on my shoulder as he joined me. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
“Go ahead, Tim. Tell me.”
“Tim,” started Tony, sternly, “I don’t think it’s a good idea right now ... ”
But Tim ignored him, in typical Tim style. “What happened is you blasted the you-know-what out of those Dark Fae. Boo-yah! And the ones who were already dead on the ground? Gone. Poof! Disappeared. Samantha? Gone, but not before she got a nice pricking from Finn’s arrow if I got the story right – I didn’t get to see any of it firsthand, since someone saw fit to lock me away with a hungry incubus during all the good parts.”
“What about the green elves? And Ben?” I asked, anxious for the response.
“Finn?” prompted Scrum, “She wants to know about Ben and the other green elves.”
I heard footsteps come up on my right. Finn touched my hand, his fingers warm and dry. “The elves are fine. They’ve left for our forest campgrounds.” He cleared his throat. “They took Falco’s body with them. I’m not sure about Ben. There was a lot of wind. He may have left with it.”
“Dammit!” I yelled. Falco, the sweetest green elf I knew, had fallen in battle, and the asshole I held responsible had gotten away. “I wanted Ben dead!” Life was so unfair sometimes.
“Jayne, just relax,” said Tony, taking my elbow again. “I’m not so sure you want that on your conscience. Let’s just go to the clinic and see what we can do about ... your eyes.”
I pulled my arm away from him again, calling out, “Scrum?”
“Yeah, right here,” I felt his arm brush up next to mine.
“Show me to the clinic.” I grabbed onto his elbow, refusing to let Tony help me. I was pissed he was trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to protect my friends.
“Jayne, don’t be mad at me,” said Tony, sounding very tired.
We began walking towards what I assumed was the gargoyle door leading into the Light Fae compound.
“I’m not mad. I’m just not in the mood for your ‘Ben’s a good guy’ speech.”
“That’s not what I was going to say. I just worry that ... ”
“Tony. Later, man,” came Spike’s voice from in front of me. “Let’s get her seeing again and then we can worry about that stuff.”
The sounds of several feet walking through the meadow grasses whispered in my ears. No one said a word as we made our way through the gargoyle door and down the hallway to the clinic. I couldn’t help but wonder what had become of Ben, Samantha, Becky ... and my eyesight.
Chapter 2
“So what’s the scoop, doc? When am I going to be able to see again?” Staying flippant about my problem was my way of having a positive attitude. The idea of being blind for the rest of my very long fae life was more than just a little bit worrisome. I’d be a sitting duck for any Dark Fae that came along, from pixie to dwarf to ogre, not to mention the fact that I’d be friggin blind. I liked seeing the world around me way too much to lose that ability and stay sane.
The fae doctor who’d been examining me and discussing various theories with his colleagues answered, “It appears as if you’ve suffered what we suspect is a temporary loss of vision brought on by the power surges you manifested and sent through your body. Based on the information shared by your friends, it seems as if you
r – er, non-traditional – means of controlling the power could be the problem.”
“He means you suck at it,” translated Tim.
“Yeah, thanks, Tim. Noted.” I rolled my eyes and immediately heard a couple fae gasp in response. One of them quietly apologized.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Tony, gently.
I knew from the tone of his voice he was lying. “Tim? What is it? I know you’ll tell me.”
“I think that fae girl was grossed out by your glowy eyes going up into your head. But I could be wrong on that. I can’t really see them from here.”
I turned so he could see me and rolled my eyes again.
“Eeegads, woman, stop that. You look like a fae-eating zombie ready to go on a rampage.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Great. Now I was grossing people out. “So what should I do?” I asked, turning to face the spot where the doctor’s voice had most recently come from. “Do you have any eyedrops or anything like that?”
“No. But we are going to consult with some of our witches to see if there are any spells that could hasten the healing for you. We will send a message if we are successful.”
I held out my hand. “Scrum? You here?”
“Yep, right here.” He took my hand and put it in the crook of his elbow.
“Take me to bed or lose me forever.” Smiling at my own lame-ass Top Gun humor, I realized that there is one positive side to being blind – I couldn’t see anyone’s reactions to what I said, so there would be no guilty feelings if I made anyone flinch. Awesome.
Scrum cleared his throat nervously. “You mean to your room, right?”
“Yep. And if everyone’s not too tired, I’d like you all to come with us so we can discuss what happened tonight.”