“The Queen called it to herself. She needs it to help fight the Dark Ones.”
“Then I shall call our family Orb, the Lugh Orb…” Danté said and put up his hand. As the eldest, it responded first to him. An Orb appeared and he handed it to Trevor.
“There…tell it what you need,” Danté said and then shook his head, “And now, out of my way, brother!” he returned his attention to the Portal which had belched and spewed a blast of black heathen insects as it tried to open wide.
Trevor shifted to a quieter spot and demanded, “Orb of Lugh, show me my mate, Jazmine Decker.”
He received a very good picture of her hanging from the clutches of a huge and prehistoric raptor bird.
He closed his eyes. Pestale would pay for this. He knew of only one dimension that housed this particular species, and he shifted there at once.
He arrived in the prehistoric dimension, and hovered in the air, looking around for the dinosaur bird of prey. Though he saw many, something felt wrong. For one thing he and Jazmine had bonded, yet he could not feel her when he reached out to her. He tried calling her with their mind link. Nothing.
He asked the Orb again, “Show me my mate.”
Once again, it displayed a raptor bird much like the ones flying nearby, with Jazmine dangling from its claws. He watched as she vanished from the giant bird’s talons and saw that she had jump shifted into the air, and hovered face to face with a giant anaconda.
He felt anxious for a moment, and then saw she managed to lift up higher hovering well beyond the snake’s reach. However, a moment later, down swooped the Pterodactyl which caught her up again before it climbed high and still higher in the air. Trevor watched helpless as the bird flew with her, knowing she was too high to jump shift to the ground. She needed more confidence, more training. She needed…damn, bloody damn… she needed him.
A moment later the bird was at its nest where its young eyasses reached to eat what their parent had just dropped their way—his mate.
Trevor gasped as he watched with some relief as his Jazmine Decker jump shifted and then the Orb clouded over again. “Show me!” he growled, but the Orb sighed and did not clear.
“Right then, she was whole and relatively safe, or at least using her wits and her new skills to stay as safe as she could be. “Somewhere in this dimension, but where?” he asked out loud, and then looked around, “Where are you sweet Fios—where?”
Something about the lay of the land was all wrong—it didn’t feel as though he was in the right dimension. Although the Lugh Orb is not as powerful as the Orb of Time he asked, “Am I in the right place?”
The Orb blinked by shading itself once, and showed him the very spot he occupied. He was in the right place. He was, but where the hell was she then?
Chapter Two
A HUMAN SCREAM resonated out of Jazmine Decker’s mouth. She didn’t even know she was screaming as she dropped towards the Pterodactyl’s open beaks!
She knew that she wasn’t quite human any longer, but her mind went human on her as she fell towards the large mouth of one of the babies.
Her new Fae blood kicked in and took over instinctively however, as she shifted this time, it wasn’t a jump shift but an honest to goodness Fae shift.
She knew immediately that she had actually shifted a distance.
She stepped out onto solid ground, as though her Fae blood had triggered a map in her mind and located a safe haven for her.
She stood there and caught her breath.
She looked around in awe because she stood at the precipice of a cliff on a very high mountain.
She was on a slab of flat rock that protruded out about twenty feet by only five foot wide. As she looked down to the ravine below she murmured, ”Whoa”.
She stepped back, took a look around and headed for the safety of the grassy slope of earth at the side of the mountain whose rock walls reached toward the sky—straight up to its peak.
Wild and tropical vegetation filled the gaps in the rock wall before her. Lush green bushes and palms were scattered along the earth where she stood. Steam and heat engulfed her surroundings, which were so completely at odds with the world she had just shifted away from.
Further down the ravine she could see molten lava pits spurting out their insides and with a heavy sigh, she plopped onto the grass and put her head into her hands.
“Trevor, find me baby, find me,” she whispered to him, as she surveyed her surroundings. She scrambled to her feet once more as she realized what lay behind her. A cave!
“Huh?” she murmured brushing herself off, as she went forward to inspect this new find.
So it works, she thought, just like Trevor said. A Fae thinks of where he needs to go…and bam, he shifts there. Earlier, when she was plummeting from the flying dinosaur’s talons, she thought what she needed was a cave to hide out in and wham, here was the cave.