The Immortal Highlander Read Online Free Page B

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.
    He laughed as he went, knowing that although Adam was wont to champion mortals, the vainglorious prince of the
D’Jai
would hate being human, would despise being trapped in the body of one of those limited little, fragile creatures whose average life span was so horrifically brief.
    He was about to find it far briefer than average.

3
    Adam was so caught off guard that it didn’t occur to him to do a series of short jumps and follow the woman, until it was too late.
    By the time he’d tensed to sift, the dilapidated vehicle had sped off, and he had no idea where it had gone. He popped about in various directions for a time, but was unable to pick it up again.
    Shaking his head, he returned to the bench and sat down, cursing himself in half a dozen languages.
    Finally, someone had
seen
him.
    And what had he done? Let her get away. Undermined by his disgusting human anatomy.
    It had just been made excruciatingly clear to him that the human male brain and the human male cock couldn’t both sustain sufficient amounts of blood to function at the same time. It was one or the other,