RIDERS OF TUATHA by Bert McKenzie Copyright 2010
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any real person alive or dead is coincidental and unintentional.
CHAPTER XI
There was a strange car parked in the yard. Clarissa stopped the van a considerable distance from the house and approached it quietly on foot. Everything seemed the same, but she knew that this car must mean trouble. There was no reason for anyone else to be here. The owner of the property was dead and the estate was still tied up in court. The heirs to the property had given Tony permission to use the house while his team performed some contract work for them. The only ones who should be here were Jake and the girl they had in the basement.
Clarissa noted that something must have happened. She could see that one of the panes of glass was broken out on the basement window. Jake had simply said that the girl had tried to escape. It would have been impossible for her to squeeze through the bars that blocked the window on the outside. And yet, what was the significance of the strange car? Clarissa crept quietly forward until she reached the broken window and then she peered into the interior. It was quite dark outside and she was able to see the prisoner's room easily from the glow of the naked light bulb suspended from the ceiling in the center of the room. Jake was lying face down on the floor, his flannel shirt stained a dark maroon. Two girls now sat on the cot. A stranger was holding the prisoner, obviously trying to comfort her. This must be the girl who had killed Joe. Clarissa smiled. She admired this little, knife wielding murderer. She enjoyed killing and felt a connection to the actions this small girl had done. It would be a pity to eliminate her, but then Clarissa knew she had no other choice.
She quickly sprinted across the yard to the weathered barn that stood nearby. Just inside the door she found what she needed, a rusting can of gasoline. Hurrying back again across the yard, she opened the can and splashed the contents along the side of the small, wood frame house. The can was full, and she had plenty of gas to completely soak the back side of the structure. She then stepped back, dug a book of matches from her pocket, and tossed a lit one onto the back porch. The fuel-covered wood flared up immediately and the flames began to rapidly chase along the side of the structure. Clarissa then pulled out her gun and calmly walked around to the front of the building to wait and watch.
"Come, we must go," Caseldra said in sudden urgency. "I sense danger." Jennifer did not understand her, but her meaning was clear. The little fairy girl had stood and was trying to pull Jennifer up from the cot. As Caseldra helped, Jennifer stood, pulling up her jeans and trying to hold her torn blouse around her.
"Where is Scott?" Jennifer asked.
Caseldra understood the name and nodded. "Scott," she repeated and pulled again toward the door. Jennifer clutched her top and allowed herself to be led to the door, stepping over the dead body of her attacker. They went through the metal door and came to a rickety looking, wooden stairway just outside in a smaller room. As they began to climb the stairs, Jennifer suddenly realized that she was smelling smoke. It was quite strong. Something somewhere nearby must be on fire.
Scott had looked through the upstairs rooms of the little, two story, farm house, hoping to find some sign of Jennifer or Troy. What he did find was a bit more sinister. The house appeared to be empty for the most part, the furnishings having been moved out and sold at auction. However, what was left behind in one of the tiny bedrooms upstairs gave testimony to what had been there before. The room was painted flat black, walls, floor and ceiling. The paint had even been slapped over the glass of the one window to block out the light that might have come in from outside. In the center of the floor was a huge pentagram surrounded by a circle painted in white. There were small puddles of candle wax on the floor around the outside of the circle. Some rather obscene drawings decorated the walls.
There was no mistaking it. The room must have been used for some kind of black magic. The original owner was evidently into the evil form of witchcraft or devil worship, which certainly explained the box of things that Troy had purchased. It was all beginning to click. Scott had heard rumors of black magic cults in the area over a year ago while he still lived there. Somehow, Troy and Jennifer had stumbled onto one such group by the coincidental purchase at the auction. The cult must have wanted their things back, and Scott's friends had accidentally gotten in the way.
He carefully examined the empty room, and then retraced his steps to go back downstairs. That was when he discovered the fire. Thick, black smoke was rolling up the stairway, and looking down, he could see flames leaping along the walls. Racing down into the fiery room, Scott tried to call to his companion. "Caseldra!" he shouted and then began to choke and cough on the smoke and fumes. The room he was in was almost completely engulfed in flame, a beam falling from overhead effectively blocking his exit. "Caseldra," he tried calling again.
"Scott!" a voice screamed. He turned to see Jennifer and Caseldra trapped on the other side of the burning beam that had fallen across the doorway. "Scott!" Jennifer cried again as she held onto the small girl beside her.
Choking and blinking his eyes against the smoke, he tried to wave at them. "Get out," he managed to shout.
"We can't," she cried back. She too was coughing on the thick smoke. In a minute it would be over. They would all die of smoke inhalation before the flames ever got to them. A loud crash sounded and a piece of the ceiling gave way nearby, showering sparks as it fell to the floor. The intense heat was almost more than Scott could bear.
"Use the crystal," a voice said. He looked up and saw Caseldra pointing to her neck. Scott suddenly realized he was still wearing the homing crystal that Elnar had given him, suspended on a chain around his neck.
"I can't leave you," he said as a wave of dizziness swept over him.
"Touch my hand as you tap the crystal. We will be taken with you," Caseldra said stepping as close as she dared to the burning beam. She held Jennifer's arm with her left hand and quickly reached through the flames with her right arm. Scott grabbed her hand in his and reached his free hand up to tap the crystal dangling on his chest. He could feel Caseldra squeeze his hand as she cried out in pain, the flames bathing her arm. He reached for the crystal again, fearing that it wouldn't work, when he felt his whole body begin to tingle, and he felt as if he were falling through the floor.
"Troy . . . Troy . . ." a voice called out in the darkness. It seemed to reach him from far away, as if he were at the bottom of a deep hole or dry well and someone was trying to talk to him from the outside world on the surface. He felt himself lying on the bottom of the ocean with hundreds of tons of water above him. It would be so very much trouble to try to swim to the top. Life would be much simpler just by relaxing and staying on the bottom.
"Troy . . ." the voice called again. It was so insistent. "Can you hear me?" it asked.
He finally tried to rouse his mind to a form of consciousness in an attempt to respond. The very thought of responding brought a measure of reality back to his brain and he again suffered under the hands of Lars. His mind pulled back, curling away from the pain, the memory of pain already experienced, and the residual pain still lingering in his body. He wanted to sink again to the depths of the ocean.
"Troy, please," the voice called to him again. He opened his mouth and tried to force air from his lungs in an attempt to make a sound. But all that came out was a soft, mournful sigh. "Troy, hold on to my voice," the words echoed in his mind. "Use my voice to gain strength. Listen to me."
Troy did as he was instructed and finally came to a partial stage of consciousness. He tried opening his eyes and found that he could only see out of the right one. The entire left side of his face ached, but he couldn't remember why. There was the tangy, almost metallic flavor of blood in his mouth. Troy tried with all his might to form words, to be able to speak and communicate. "Who . . ." was all he managed.
"Robin," the voice replied. "I am in the cage across the room from you."
Something his mind registered the content of the words. The man he had betrayed was trying to communicate with him. "Why?" he gasped through cracked lips.
"I know not," came the answer. "I know not why we are here, or why they are treating us this way. I know not even where here is." Troy tried to move, but all he managed was to roll his head to the side to look in the direction of the voice. His vision was slightly blurred, his glasses being gone, but he could make out the image of a man sitting in a cage. "You must hold on to reason and to life," the blurry figure instructed. "You must know that help is on the way. Give in not to the torture or you shall be lost forever." His speech was cut short by a sound on the stairs. Robin heard someone approaching. He stretched out on the cement floor and pretended to be unconscious.
The door opened and Lars and the fat man entered. They came over to stand next to the cage. "He looks human except for the ears and the blood, but it's obvious that he isn't. I've asked the good doctor to send me photos of the autopsy. We shall see if his internal arrangements are very different from ours," the fat man mused. "At any rate, the doctor's institute is going to pay us quite a sum for him."
"Do they want him alive?" Lars asked.
"Of course they do. They'll pay twice as much for a living creature from outer space. Once they study him alive for a while, they'll put him to sleep and then dissect him." Disappointment was plainly visible on the tall, Scandinavian man's face. The fat man patted him on the back. "Don't feel so bad, my friend. You still have this boy to work on." He waddled over to the table where Troy was chained by the manacles. "He is still fairly well intact except for that one eye. You have lots of things you can do with him before he dies."
Caseldra cried out again from the pain in her arm. She involuntarily jerked it back and fell against Jennifer, toppling them both onto the floor. Scott was having a hard time breathing in the smoke, and fell to his knees at the same time. All three were wheezing and gasping at the fresh air that rushed into their lungs. They relaxed for a moment, then Jennifer was the first to react. "What happened?" she asked as she looked around her. "Was it all just a dream?"
They were sitting on the floor in the foyer of what had been Scott's house, but now belonged to Jennifer. "What are we doing here?" Scott asked Caseldra. She was the only one that he could ask who might be able to understand the magic. "We are supposed to be at the palace in Tuatha."
She looked blankly back at him. "I understand it not," she replied while still holding her arm. "The homing crystals always work. They vibrate to the feelings of the one who wears them. They always take you home."
"Maybe that explains it," he said sadly. "Maybe this is home to me. I guess I really don't belong in your world."
Meanwhile, Jennifer was trying to grasp the fact that she was sitting in her own house. She had almost convinced herself that it was all just a hideous nightmare. Then she looked down at her torn blouse and the memory of the rape came rushing back. "No," she cried and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
"It's okay, Jen," Scott said as he came over to her. "You're safe now."
Somehow, in his shape and size he reminded her of her attacker. He became her attacker as he leaned over her. "No!" she screamed at him and crawled backward across the floor. "Don't touch me!"
"Jen, what it is? What's the matter?" he asked in astonished surprise.
"Don't touch me," she continued to babble through her tears. "Please don't touch me." Caseldra went to her and held her gently while she continued to weep.
"What's wrong with her?" Scott asked the girl. He had never seen his friend like this before.
"She is on a mind journey," Caseldra answered. "She will return to us soon. It was caused by that man."
"What man?" he asked.
"When I found her downstairs in the dungeon of that dwelling, she was with a man. He was forcing her to couple with him."
"My God!" Scott exclaimed. "It was the vision I saw in the pool. What happened?" he asked her.
"I killed him," she answered proudly. "That is two of the enemy that shall not trouble us again."
"Let's get her up to bed," Scott suggested. He carefully helped Caseldra pick up Jennifer. She no longer cried out or seemed to mind his touch. She only laid limply in his arms and cried softly. They took her upstairs to her bedroom and placed her in bed. Scott went to get a damp wash cloth while Caseldra undressed her. Scott returned and Caseldra took the cloth and gently cleaned her up. They then covered her with a blanket and turned out the lights.
The two of them went back downstairs and out into the kitchen. Scott began to fix them something to eat while Caseldra tried making tea the way she had seen Jennifer do it. After they finally settled at the table for their late supper, Scott began to discuss the happenings of the day. "I came here to save her from the very thing that happened," he complained. "I should have stayed in Tuatha."
"My lord, had you stayed I would not have been here to kill her attacker," Caseldra reasoned with him. "It would have been much worse. She may have been killed."
"I suppose so," he agreed, "but now how will we ever get back. The homing crystal didn't work. It looks like we may be stranded here."
She smiled at him. "I can use the crystal to take me home and you shall come along."
"Now why didn't I think of that," Scott said as he tried to stifle a yawn.
"My lord, you are not well," she said in sudden concern.
"I'm just tired," he told her. "I've got to get some sleep."
"You are that ill?" Caseldra asked in alarm.
Scott chuckled softly. "I'm not ill at all," he told her. "People in my world sleep about eight hours or so every day. It's natural for us."
"I had no knowledge of this," she answered as she cast her eyes down at the dishes in front of her on the table.
Scott smiled again. "It's alright. It's the differences that make us interesting." He reached out to pat her arm, and she winced in pain. It was only then that Scott realized she had a bad surface burn. The skin was discolored to a faint bluish tint. "Come with me," he ordered and escorted her upstairs to the bathroom. Rummaging around in the medicine cabinet, he found a can of spray-on burn medication. Holding her hand, he sprayed the mist on the discolored area.
Caseldra smiled in amazement. "This is better magic than our greatest healers possess," she marveled. "The feeling is gone. It no longer gives me pain!"
"You probably should have a bandage, but maybe we better let it breathe," he suggested. "Now I have got to get some rest."
"While you sleep, mind you if I stay with Jennifer?" Caseldra asked him. "She may rejoin us during the darkness and be frightened."
"I think that would be very nice of you," Scott agreed. She turned down the hall and quietly slipped into his friend's bedroom.
Scott went back to his own room. Jennifer had kept it just like he had left it a year before. Stripping his clothes off, Scott collapsed on the bed. He sank down on the soft mattress and relaxed. There was something familiar. Clearing his mind as Robin had taught him, he silently made the Tuathan gestures of prayer and asked for unity of mind, body and spirit. What was it that felt familiar. Just as he was about the drift into sleep, his mind identified it. It was the sense of presence he felt with Robin, a feeling, a smell, a warmth. It was as if Robin had been here recently, within the last twenty four hours.
Scott smiled to himself at this thought. He was truly bound to that tall, handsome, blond fairy. As soon as he was sure Jennifer and Troy were okay, he would return. And what a homecoming he would have. A dark thought suddenly crawled into his mind. Where was Troy? He had hoped to find him with Jennifer. He hoped he was safe. It would have to wait until the morning.
In the room just down the hall, Caseldra pulled a chair close to the bed and sat beside her charge. Jennifer seemed to be dozing fitfully. She kept tossing and turning under the covers. Her face would occasionally cloud with unhappiness. Caseldra looked closely at her, and felt a deep stirring inside. She had always tried to be strong and stoic, desiring a warrior's life. But now she felt almost maternal. She wished she could take away the human girl's unhappiness. She got up from the chair and gingerly sat on the side of the bed. Jennifer quieted a bit, but the pained expression still marked her features. Caseldra stretched out, lying beside her new friend, and gently wrapped her arms about the sleeping girl. She closed her eyes and thought strong, pleasant thoughts of home. As she did so, the expression on the sleeper's face gradually melted to a much more peaceful look.