I SHOULD HAVE KISSED YOU_Sometimes there are no tomorrows

http://romanticfridaywriters.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html

Once upon a time ...

There was a young girl undergoing painful treatments in the hospital. I owned a book store then. Harry Potter was just out.

Her mother would not let her read his novels. Not being heartless, she asked me to write something she would approve but would also appeal to her daughter's love of faeries and, frowning, she said "magic."

So Fallen, the last fae, and 14 year old Blake Adamson, the clone of the Nazarene, was born.

I made a serial of their adventures. They have never been read but by one ...

for some sleeping beauties never awaken.

(I later wrote other novels, using the same characters, but DAYSTAR'S ORPHAN remains unread by any but one ... until now.)

Here is an excerpt from the end of the trail for Fallen and Blake as he lies seriously wounded in the chariot winging its way to Valhalla, driven by the Angelus, Solomon Cain. Fallen is cradling him in her arms:


Black tears streaming down her face, Fallen held my hand tight as if willing her life force into me. “Don’t leave me, Blake. Don’t leave me.”

As black as her tears became the world around her, so that all I could make out was her face in an ever-thickening mist. My eyes must have been glazing over because I heard her crying low. She squeezed my hand even harder.

“If - If you st-stay, I-I’ll tell you a secret.”

I forced my eyes open wide to clear them.

She reached out and gently brushed that stubborn lock of hair from my eyes. “You know all those times you flew at night?”

I nodded.

“W-Well, I ... I crept into your room then.”

She turned her head to the left as if the memory was killing her. “I ... I used to go to your chest of drawers and touch your - your combs and brush, running my fingers along them. I’d imagine you fighting to get that mop y-you call hair to stay down.”

She smiled a smile of agony, her lips trembling. “I’d - I’d laugh and sit on your bed and s-smell your pillow, that always smelled of pine trees.”

Fallen looked as she were about to shatter inside.

“Th-Then, I’d pick up whatever book you were reading at the time, and ... and I’d open it, looking at the parts you - you underlined -”

She mewed soft and long as if she were about to break down. “Those - those parts you underlined. I read them out loud, pretending you were rea-reading them to me.”

She sniffed back the tears. “Your books. To my eyes, they burned with so many different colors. So many. I - I could tell what books made you sad, or laugh, or angry.”

Suddenly, she wrapped me in a fierce embrace. “But the book that burned the brightest was the one that had ‘Annabel Lee’ in it.”

She sniffed wetter this time. “I knew all about that poem, B-Blake, all this time. All this time.”

She clutched me tighter, holding her cheek against mine and rocking and rocking. “Y-You want to know what the color of love is?”

“Wh-What?”

“The color of love is you,” she sobbed. “Is you!”

She turned to Solomon, who was blinking back tears himself, and wailed, “You’re an angel. Tell me. Why does evil always win? Why? WHY?”

She raised her head and howled gut-deep like a shot animal. I couldn’t take it. And neither could Solomon. He turned his head away, choking down another sob. I lifted my hand with my mind fingers and stroked her cheek.

She shook her head that shivered in spasms. “I always thought I would be Annabel Lee. Not you. Not you!”

I forced my traitor throat to work, and it rebelled, making my words hoarse, almost impossible to understand even for me. “A-As long as you live, I live - in you.”

Her lower lip trembled so I thought she’d break down, but she managed to get out, “You big, d-dumb b-boy scout. I don’t want to go on living if you die. Don’t you know that?”

I tried to speak, but the world grew hazy and dark again. My head nodded to my chest. She shook me hard.

“Blake!”

I fluttered my eyes open and saw her reach frantic inside her mind as she tried to look devilish, but only managed to look even more miserable. “I - I know your secret.”

“What - what secret could ... a boy scout like me have?”

She smiled as if that secret was a knife in her heart. “That ‘full on the lips’ kiss you wrote about in your diary.”

“You read my diary!” I moaned.

She shook her mane, a bitterness twisting her face. “Such a silly thing. A simple thing. And ... And I teased you so with it.”

I had tried to stay with her, but it was no good. Her face. I could barely make it out anymore.

Only her tortured eyes, and them only in a thick haze. My head nodded, then my chin settled on my chest, and I heard her from far, far off.

“A-And now, wh-when it is too late, when y-you won’t even feel it, I’ll give you our f-first, our last, my only kiss.”

A flickering light filled my eyes. Fallen’s face came into focus. She was crying.

Her face was coming right to mine, her lips open, her breath soft and perfumed.

All became black.

BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD!

Hear that rumble? It is not an echo. It is a promise.

Some evils never die. They merely wait for us to grow complacent.

The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia began on this day in 1968.

One young poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko,

had to protest the invasion of his country else his despair would lead him to suicide.

He wrote “Russian Tanks in Prague," which was picked up immediately on underground radio in Czechoslovakia, making him a hero there and an official target at home:

Tanks are rolling across Prague
in the sunset blood of dawn.
Tanks are rolling across truth,
not a newspaper named Pravda.

Tanks are rolling across the temptation
to live free from the power of clichés.
Tanks are rolling across the soldiers
who sit inside those tanks....

The darkness which spawned those tanks is still there ... waiting, waiting, waiting.

{Oh, the lovely Kathy McKendry interviews me today!
http://imagine-today1.blogspot.com/
Check it out so her visitors don't slump because of me.}


Now, back to my small voice asking you to help keep my dream alive.


A few of my friends (not a tidal wave, mind you) have emailed me with questions such as:

Why does an undead TEXAS Ranger live in a jazz club in New Orleans?

How did Samuel lose his parents?

How did he get silver hair as a child?

Why does the vampire, Abigail Adams, hate him so?

When will you write another story of Hibbs, the cub with no clue?

What was Victor's and Alice's first Christmas after Katrina like?

What was Blake Adamson, my hero who is the clone of Jesus, like before his orphanage burned?

I answered those questions and another fun one: What if our world was invaded by aliens and it was left to Evil to defend it?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008ZM9B8M

IN A WORLD OF NIGHTMARE DO LOVE, COURAGE, and LAUGHTER STAND A CHANCE?


SEVEN DARK TALES ANSWER THAT QUESTION



MY FATHER’S GUN


Fifteen year old Samuel McCord takes his first terrible steps down a lifetime of supernatural horror in 1815 West Texas in a tale of loss and redemption.


DARK WATERS


Texas Ranger, Samuel McCord, both saves and damns twelve year old Samuel Clemens while trying to save the boy from a creature whose home is the realm of nightmare.


MARY CHRISTMAS


When the orphan, Blake Adamson, runs away from the orphanage only to meet the ghost of Elvis and the very real Lucifer, he realizes you can’t run from your past.


LIES THAT LOCUST TELL


A fallen angel awakens in a British asylum without any memory of getting there. Worse, the asylum is being run by aliens experimenting with the inmates. What would happen if Earth was invaded, and it was left to Evil to defend it?


A DOWN HOME CHRISTMAS


Victor Standish’s and Alice Wentworth’s first Christmas together looks to be their last as all the demons of the haunted French Quarter are at their heels. What can the ghost of a Spanish Inquisition priest do to help them?


THE RIVER FACE


In a Native American tale of myth and legend, Hibbs, the cub with no clue, is taught a fearful lesson of spirit from the mysterious Turquoise Woman.


BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD!


Why did an undead TEXAS Ranger decide to live in New Orleans? Why does the vampire, Abigail Adams, hate Samuel so? This haunting tale answers those questions. But sometimes answers do not give peace.

Only 99 cents for 137 pages and 8 beautiful illustrations by the artistry of Leonora Roy!

K is for KIRIKA AMARATSU_A kiss To Live For

THE PATH BACK TO DAWN:

http://www.amazon.com/PATH-BACK-DAWN-ebook/dp/B005EA029U

{Blake Adamson had been left chained to a tree in the New Zealand wilderness by the last fae. He escapes death by being given an apple of immortality from Idun's Asgardian garden.

By whom? Odin's ravens, Huggin and Munnin (that's MIND and MEMORY for those of you not versed in Viking - and yes, there is a bit of an allegory going on there.)

He has been discovered by Hone Heke (an angel on a sort of community service punishment) and by Kirika Amaratsu. In happy relief at finding him alive, Kirika has bowled him over on his back with her atop him.

Blake has kept a slice of Idun's apple for her. She agrees to eat it ... on one condition.

“What kind of condition?,” I asked with a sinking heart.

An evil gleam started to grow in her deep, large brown eyes. “Oh, nothing obscene, nothing bizarre, nothing sexual.”

She winked. “I lied about the sexual.”

Hone groaned, “Uh, oh.”

Kirika smiled wicked. “I will eat your apple. But only if you share the last bite ... in a kiss with me.”

She wiggled, pressing her hips dangerously into mine as I managed to croak, “I - I can live with that.”

She laughed, “I thought you might.”

She brought the apple to her lips.

“Oh,” I started, but Kirika had already bitten into the slice.

Her eyes rolled up as she stiffened in spasms on top of me. With horror, I saw her begin to fade, becoming a ghost on top of me. I wrapped both arms around her tight.

“Stay with me, Kirika! Don’t fade on me. Stay with me, please. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

The weight of her body pressed back down on top of me again. She was soft and firm in my arms once more. She squirmed her hips into me, her lips melting into mine.

She murmured, “Then, fade from you I never will. Never.”

I smiled, “I - I can live with that.”

She asked, “Are all the bites like that one?”

“Just the first.”

She raised an eyebrow, and I insisted, “Honest.”

“In that case ---”

She slowly took another bite. Her eyebrows shot up. She wiggled delightfully on my body. She actually seemed to glow. She let out a long, ragged breath.

“B-Blake, never have I tasted such a wonder. It fills me with such a power and joy. Starving, you denied yourself this for me?”

“Denied? Seeing you enjoy it this much is better than I have the words to describe.”

Her whole face glowed, her deep eyes seeming to swallow me. I went willingly. She bit slower and slower, savoring each bite, squirming more and more into me.

Hone coughed uneasy.

She seemed not to hear. Only the last bite was left. She took it and moistened her full lips with the piece. Then, she bent her face right to mine.

“When I place it in my lips, Blake, place yours around it, and we will kiss as I swallow. All right?”

I nodded. She moistened my lips with it, then re-wet her lips again. She smiled, and promises dark and tempting filled my head. Hone coughed again, but I barely heard him.

In fact, the whole world grew dim around the edges. All that was clear were Kirika’s gleaming, deep, deep eyes. She slipped the bit of apple into her wet lips, leaning right into me. I shyly wrapped my lips around the apple.

Like I knew she would, she tried forcing it into my mouth with her tongue, I thrust it back. Then, she caught me by surprise and swallowed it, wrapping her tongue around mine, doing some thrusting and rubbing of her own. I could feel my eyes roll back into their sockets, and tingles dance all down my body.

From the magic of Idun’s apple or Kirika’s tongue I couldn’t say.

She arched in my arms, thrusting her hips into me again and again. I was about to lose it completely, when she went limp in my arms, slumping across my whole body.

This time it was me that let out a long, ragged breath. I shivered in spasms. That had been --- something. Kirika purred in my arms.

“Next time, get a hotel,” growled Hone.

“I didn’t do that,” I sputtered.

Kirika breathed, “Was it good for you, beloved?”

I couldn’t help myself and let out a sigh, “Oh, yeah.”

Hone grunted, “Tell me again what you didn’t do.”
***

A KISS TO LIVE FOR_Hot Kiss blogfest!

Cassie Mae & Hope are doing the HOT KISS BLOGFEST :

http://readingwritingandlovinit.blogspot.com/2012/01/is-it-getting-hot-in-here-valentines.html

My entry, A KISS TO LIVE FOR, is from my THE PATH BACK TO DAWN :

{Blake Adamson had been left chained to a tree in the New Zealand wilderness by the last fae. He escapes death by being given an apple of immortality from Idun's Asgardian garden.

By whom? Odin's ravens, Huggin and Munnin (that's MIND and MEMORY for those of you not versed in Viking - and yes, there is a bit of an allegory going on there.)

He has been discovered by Hone Heke (an angel on a sort of community service punishment) and by Kirika Amaratsu. In happy relief at finding him alive, Kirika has bowled him over on his back with her atop him.

Blake has kept a slice of Idun's apple for her. She agrees to eat it ... on one condition.

“What kind of condition?,” I asked with a sinking heart.

An evil gleam started to grow in her deep, large brown eyes. “Oh, nothing obscene, nothing bizarre, nothing sexual.”

She winked. “I lied about the sexual.”

Hone groaned, “Uh, oh.”

Kirika smiled wicked. “I will eat your apple. But only if you share the last bite ... in a kiss with me.”

She wiggled, pressing her hips dangerously into mine as I managed to croak, “I - I can live with that.”

She laughed, “I thought you might.”

She brought the apple to her lips.

“Oh,” I started, but Kirika had already bitten into the slice.

Her eyes rolled up as she stiffened in spasms on top of me. With horror, I saw her begin to fade, becoming a ghost on top of me. I wrapped both arms around her tight.

“Stay with me, Kirika! Don’t fade on me. Stay with me, please. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”

The weight of her body pressed back down on top of me again. She was soft and firm in my arms once more. She squirmed her hips into me, her lips melting into mine.

She murmured, “Then, fade from you I never will. Never.”

I smiled, “I - I can live with that.”

She asked, “Are all the bites like that one?”

“Just the first.”

She raised an eyebrow, and I insisted, “Honest.”

“In that case ---”

She slowly took another bite. Her eyebrows shot up. She wiggled delightfully on my body. She actually seemed to glow. She let out a long, ragged breath.

“B-Blake, never have I tasted such a wonder. It fills me with such a power and joy. Starving, you denied yourself this for me?”

“Denied? Seeing you enjoy it this much is better than I have the words to describe.”

Her whole face glowed, her deep eyes seeming to swallow me. I went willingly. She bit slower and slower, savoring each bite, squirming more and more into me.

Hone coughed uneasy.

She seemed not to hear. Only the last bite was left. She took it and moistened her full lips with the piece. Then, she bent her face right to mine.

“When I place it in my lips, Blake, place yours around it, and we will kiss as I swallow. All right?”

I nodded. She moistened my lips with it, then re-wet her lips again. She smiled, and promises dark and tempting filled my head. Hone coughed again, but I barely heard him.

In fact, the whole world grew dim around the edges. All that was clear were Kirika’s gleaming, deep, deep eyes. She slipped the bit of apple into her wet lips, leaning right into me. I shyly wrapped my lips around the apple.

Like I knew she would, she tried forcing it into my mouth with her tongue, I thrust it back. Then, she caught me by surprise and swallowed it, wrapping her tongue around mine, doing some thrusting and rubbing of her own. I could feel my eyes roll back into their sockets, and tingles dance all down my body.

From the magic of Idun’s apple or Kirika’s tongue I couldn’t say.

She arched in my arms, thrusting her hips into me again and again. I was about to lose it completely, when she went limp in my arms, slumping across my whole body.

This time it was me that let out a long, ragged breath. I shivered in spasms. That had been --- something. Kirika purred in my arms.

“Next time, get a hotel,” growled Hone.

“I didn’t do that,” I sputtered.

Kirika breathed, “Was it good for you, beloved?”

I couldn’t help myself and let out a sigh, “Oh, yeah.”

Hone grunted, “Tell me again what you didn’t do.”
***

THIS LAST MEETING WITH THEE

LAST EXIT TO BABYLON :

{100% of the royalties for this book are going to The Salvation Army.}

Ernest Hemingway said the secret to great writing

was to transform poetry into prose while preserving its essence.

In LAST EXIT TO BABYLON, at the dawn of the End of All Things, there is no hope ... but love.

Blake Adamson wanders lost through the Mists of Oblivion when he hears one of the two strange women he loves, Kirika Amaratsu,

who chose death for herself to spare Blake. She is singing :

“My black hair tangled,
As my own tangled thoughts,
I lie here alone,
Dreaming of one who has gone,
Who stroked my hair til it shone.”

She is dissolving into the River Lethe, her fingers melting into the rippling currents as she continues to sob more than sing,

“If we could meet but once more,
Thy soul with mine.
Softly, I would whisper in thy ear
These words to thee :
I am dying, love, dying for thee.”

Blake startles her into pulling back her hand from the draining river, saving her life, and Kirika husks,

"Soon I shall cease to be.
When I am beyond this world,
And I have forgotten it,
Let me remember only this :
This last meeting with thee."

A bit of poetry to hopefully make better your day, following Mr. Hemingway's advise in my own way.
***
There IS magic out there. But sometimes magic KILLS :

THE DEEPEST WOUND IS LONELINESS_FRIDAY ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

My entry for Francine's and Denise's Friday Romantic Challenge :

FEARFUL HEART.


http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

FEAR.

It comes in many forms. Ask a prison warden what a prisoner fears most, and he will answer : solitary confinement.

Yet, all of us exist in the solitary confinement of our minds --

which leads me to my 400 word entry from the YA urban fantasy, DAYSTAR'S ORPHAN. At the end of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON, Blake Adamson makes a terrible mistake, whose consequence lead to LAST EXIT IN BABYLON.

But it also created a "bubble universe" where his life was rebooted and Fallen, the last fae, has just rescued the 14 year old Blake from DayStar's clutches, mangling him terribly with her long claws in the doing of it :


Fallen crabbed slowly back away from me on her knees, still shaking her head in horror.

"N-No. No! Oh, Blake, I told you I-I'd be a hard friend, but not like this!"

I shrugged, trying to hide how much it hurt, "Show me a rose that doesn't have its share of thorns."

"I'm no rose," whimpered Fallen.

"To me, you're as much a rose as the black roses whose perfume you have in your hair."

Fallen shook her head and, with self-hate in her voice, whispered, "I'm no rose."

"Not a tame one, for sure. But don't you know, Fallen? The wild roses have the sweetest smell."

Her long faerie face all eyes, she said softly, "Your lips just twitched, there, Mr. I-Don't-Lie."

I looked at her with so many warring emotions going at it inside me. Did I dare tell her the truth? I saw the lonely, self-hating hurt in those wet green eyes and knew I didn't have a choice.

"It's ... It's not just when I lie that they do that."

"Then, when else?"

Did I have the nerve to say it? "Ah, well, ... they've been known to do it when ... when -"

"When what?," murmured Fallen, edging closer, her green eyes seeming to swallow my whole world.

"When, ah, I'm ... next ... to a pretty girl."

There, I had said it, and I could feel my cheeks blushing. No. Fallen looked miserable. Man, couldn't I do anything right?

One single tear rolled down her cheek. "B-But that's just it. I'm not pretty. I'm not! I'm not even a girl. You heard DayStar. I'm a frea-"

Her next word I knew would break my heart so I didn't let her finish.

I took both of her hands in mine.

"-a wild, beautiful rose," I said soft, and without even realizing what I was doing until I had gone and done it, lightly kissing her fingers, claws and all.

I stiffened. Oh, man, what had I done? -- oh, no.

Big tears welled up in her jade eyes. She just looked at me for what seemed a frozen eternity. Why did I always screw up? Why?

Then, so fast it was a blur, she bent and kissed me softly on the cheek,looking as shocked as I felt.

My lips not wanting to work right, I knew better than to try and say anything, so I just smiled shyly back.
***
SOON THE DETAILS FOR MY MYSTERY MIRACLE CONTEST WHERE ONE LUCKY PERSON WILL WIN A KINDLE FIRE!

A MOMENT OF LOVE ... and DEATH

I am a romantic.

Not just on Fridays. Just because I am taken with this brief glimpse into the mythical, lyrical love of Blake, son of Man, and Fallen, last of the faes,

I share it with all of you, my friends :

{Blake and Fallen have just arrived in the lethal beauty of Avalon. Fallen is spent from her earlier ordeals. The two seek a place where they might rest with the shelter of a lush green slope behind them. Fallen lays slumbering as Blake sits protectively beside her.}

(When they speak in thee's and thou's, they are speaking in the tongue of Faerie - Blake was given the gift of Tongues in LOVE LIKE DEATH.)

The moon had risen just enough to send a shaft of its light through the umbrella of oak branches above us. A diffused glow of icy white lanced down to caress Fallen's face in a shimmering halo. And suddenly, she looked as angelic and pure as an angel. My heart seemed to grow and burn within me. I loved her so. Her eyelids flickered apart slightly, and she smiled dreamily up at me.

"Who needs a campfire," she murmured, "when thy love burns so bright beside me?"

Reaching out with her right hand, she softly touched mine, never taking her gleaming, mysterious eyes off me. “To find something, one must picture it first in one’s mind. No wonder I could never find love, for I had yet to see thee.”

I forced my lips to whisper, “I am an orphan, Fallen. A pauper. I have nothing worthy of thee to give.”

“Just love me, Blake. Simply love me, and I wilt be the richest Sidhe in all Avalon.”

“That’s a given, Fallen.”

She wrinkled her nose like a rabbit. “Oh, I knew that.”

Then, she laughed in her sleepy, impish way and shifted just enough to nestle her head in my lap. And just like that, she was asleep again. And I felt the richest orphan in all the world.

I don’t know how long I sat there with her head resting in my lap. I could have sat there for eternity and never regretted a second of it. After a time, I gingerly reached out and stroked her soft, velvet hair, careful not to mess up its intricate knots and weaves. Instead of waking up, Fallen just wiggled and started purring like a lost kitten having found home.

I stiffened just a bit. Home. I smiled. I had found home again. And it wasn’t Avalon. It was Fallen. I was home. And it felt wonderful.

I just sat there as the minutes flowed into hours and soaked up the peace and contentment I had thought would never be mine again.

As I sat there, trying to burn this scene, this moment, this feeling so deep into my heart and mind that I would never forget it, something white in the corner of my eye moved slightly. I went stiff, fear shooting across my chest. I turned my head slowly so as to not draw attention to the fact that I had spotted what was approaching. And then, I saw her.

The White Lady of Montaigu.

The slayer of all lovers who crossed her path.
***
And now to share with you the music of Josh Groban that I was hearing in my heart and mind as I wrote (the love theme to ROMEO & JULIET) :

***

WHERE IN MYTH ARE WE? _ FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE_plus I HATE YOU AS ONLY THE UNDEAD CAN HATE!_Tessa's I HATE YOU blogfest entry

The night tolls with midnight's ghost-bell chimes.

It is Friday once again.

Time to meet Francine's and Denise's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE. This week : CONFUSED

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

{My Tessa's I HATE YOU blogfest entry follows this}

My 386 word entry is from BLACK ROSES IN AVALON to blend in with yesterday's post. Blake Adamson traveled to the fabled brothel, THE PRINCESS ALICE

(a "gentleman's club" for the Marquis de Sade at heart),

in Victorian London to whisk Fallen, the Last Fae, away from the sadistic demigod, Abbadon Sennacherib.

Frantic to find some haven safe from Sennacherib, Blake uses an ancient enchanted dagger as a rudder to sail the seas of time and space. But to where?
Trusting an enchanted blade to save the girl I loved from the most evil being I had ever met seemed the right thing to do just a moment ago.

But now I was having doubts. Big ones. “Too Late” ones.

Our table sat in a small glade bordered by towering, ancient trees.

I tried to swallow and couldn't. Bending time and space had never gone so smooth for me before. And instead of feeling good about it, I started to get paranoid. Had Sennacherib helped me? Had he wanted me herded here? I remembered the rage in his voice and shelved that idea. From across the table, Fallen looked slowly about. She whispered in a dead calm way as if quoting from some scroll she had read long ago.

"Each blade of grass stirs with magic. Each branch sways to the breath of eternity. And each path leads to dream citadels whose misty towers murmur echoes of ancient glories never to be reclaimed, yet never to be forgotten."

I forced my throat to work, "What you said."

I sat back in my chair, tilted at an angle on the uneven grass. So this was Avalon? I could believe it. Webster had mocked me as a little poet, but even I was at a loss to describe what I was seeing.

The very air seemed to shimmer with tiny flecks of stardust as arrows of sunlight shot through the dark, hollow cathedrals of centuries old oaks. The thick branches swayed to a breeze I couldn't feel, as if the trembling trees were alive and startled at our sudden appearance. The low splashing of bubbling water came from the shattered remains of a black stone fountain. One lone, haunted-eyed marble nymph stared at me as if in silent warning. I could almost hear the echoes of Pan's pipes lamenting the intrusion of a mere mortal into this realm of faerie.

Fallen husked a whisper, "You really have taken us to Avalon. I - I have never been here ... at least not in what memories are left me."

"L-Left to you? What are you talking about?"

She smiled bitterly. "We of the Tuatha de Danann also know how to bend time and space."

Her eyes grew haunted. "But unlike you, we are left with minds wiped clean afterwards."
***
I HATE YOU blogfest entry : I HATE YOU AS ONLY THE UNDEAD CAN HATE!

http://tessasblurb.blogspot.com/

[From the soon-to-be published, THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH :

Victor Standish and his Victorian ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth, have survived more horrors than a Stephen King movie. Almost. It seems Victor has died saving his hero, Sam McCord.

The angel of Death has come for him. Alice insists on coming along, as do Father Renfield and the mysterious Sister Magda. They are standing at the head of the stairs leading down to the haunted jazz club, Meilori's] :


Everybody and their cousin could read my mind it seemed. Now, it was time to use it for me instead of it being used against me. I focused all the will I had and thought at Father Renfeild :

‘Now, Padre, now! Hold Alice. Hold her tight!’

“Ow, lad,” he snapped. “You didn’t have to shout.”

Alice frowned, “I heard noth ….”

She yelped as Renfield grabbed her from behind. Magda added her arms around Alice, too. I smiled bitterly. My girl sure struggled just the same. Then, she stabbed me with her words as I raced down the stairs.

“I hate you for this, Victor. I HATE YOU!”

She screamed, "I trusted you! Trusted! Do you know how hard that was for me after all these years?"

My steps slowed. "Yes, now you realize what you have done. I hate you, Victor. I hate you as only the undead can hate. I hate you so that there is no pity, no compassion, no ghost of the love you have killed by doing this! My hate will burn long, LONG after you die. I HATE YOU, VICTOR STANDISH!"

I stopped halfway down the steps and slowly turned to Alice, her neon blue eyes flaring and said, “D-Don’t let those be the last words I hear you say, Alice. P-Please.”

Black tears streamed from her strange eyes as she stiffened as if I had stabbed her as she mewed, “Dolt, imbecile, moron, dunce! Of course, I love you.”

I smiled despite my heart breaking. “I like it when you talk dirty to me, Alice.”

She whimpered, then managed to squeak out the words, “You are Victor Standish, and you will find a way back to me.”
***

BLACK ROSES IN AVALON!

The LOVE LIKE DEATH trilogy concludes :

Not even the eclipse of myth is forever. But eclipses return. And currents exist that are eternal. One such current is Love.

It binds the universe together.

Listen. Can you hear it? Can you hear him?

Blake, son of Man, is calling out across the night skies. What is he saying?

Remember.

Remember the strangled dreams, the shattered illusions that dropped from your bruised fingers long ago as a child. Still Time can be transcended. If you but remember ...

that love is forever,

that love cannot be taken from you,

that wounded hearts and minds but cast it from them in despair.

Listen.

Listen as Blake tells of haunted Avalon, broken by bloody Civil War. Of his love for the moon and the sun : the Last Fae and the alien drinker of souls.

Listen to his memories of BLACK ROSES IN AVALON :

The orphan, Blake Adamson, has been running for his life … or has he been running from it? One part of his mind says he is delirious, dying in the burnt ruins of his orphanage. Most of his mind insists what he is seeing and enduring is all too real.

His heart wants to believe the world he sees is real. A heart that is torn between an alien drinker of souls and the Last Fae. Loving both the sun and the moon may be his death. But Blake Adamson cannot help himself.

In an attempt to escape the enraged demigod, Abaddon Sennacherib, Blake and Fallen, the Last Fae, have left Victorian London by bending time and space,

using an ancient enchanted blade as a rudder. The two fugitive lovers find themselves far in the past … to Avalon.

Avalon, where life is illusory and deceptive, as are its inhabitants. In Faerie, nothing is as it seems, and even the simple act of uttering a name can be fraught with danger and death.

Blake and Fallen have appeared close to the Crystal Castle at the bottom of Lake Sayrade. The Dancers of the Myst float on their icy blue crafts upon that lake. And their Queen is Danis Nokkes, punisher of all false lovers.

Blake insists he is not false … just over-committed.

The distinction is lost to the sadistic Queen. To the Sidhe, mortals are but toys and pawns in their power games. They love to make the epitaph small and the death large.

In escaping the sadistic Queen, Blake and Fallen clash with the feral Wyldaelfen. And blood and destiny ensues.

In the midst of enemies in Broceliande Forest, they fail to skirt the Shadows of the Erinnyes and their dark queen Dinselle of the Golden Skin.

Atop the King and Queen of Avalon’s unicorns, Blake and Fallen evade the Wild Hunt as they race across the flying boulders of the fabled River Sambayton high in the skies of Avalon.

Until in the crystal and gold palace of Caer Wydr, Blake and Fallen endure the dark ritual, Diathke, ending the Avalon Civil War by paying the fearsome cost for love eternal.
***
http://www.amazon.com/BLACK-ROSES-IN-AVALON-ebook/dp/B005GQN03C/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1313029711&sr=1-1
***

LOVE ALWAYS WEARS A MASK_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

It is time again for Friday’s ROMANTIC CHALLENGE.

This time Francine and Denise have given us : SHE LOVES ME/SHE LOVES ME NOT.

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My 400 word entry {early to hopefully spark more entries from others}

is from THE PATH BACK TO DAWN.

Hone Heke, the famous Maori warrior, Kirika, escaped Ningyo princess, and Blake Adamson are fleeing their enemies aboard the cursed Junk, THE BLADELESS SAMURAI.

They have just entered the stormy Sea of Fate. Hone grabs Blake to help him secure the rigging :



Hone grumbled something biologically impossible and tugged me after him and headed to the back of the Junk. The wind was picking up, smelling of lightning and rain.

We staggered against it. He motioned at some ropes. He made a tugging gesture towards his chest and nodded to me.

I got the idea and started cinching them up. He bent down close to my head and yelled above the storm.

“Are you crazy, Blake?”

“People keep asking me that. But why you?”

“Why me? Why the hell Kirika, of all pretty monsters?”

“M-Monster?”

“Yeah, that’s right, monster. Succubus.”

“Suck my what?”

He rolled his eyes and looked like he wanted to strangle me. “You do know what Ningyo’s are, don’t you, son?”

I nodded sadly. “Something like a soul vampire, aren’t they?”

This time he did grab my throat and gave me a shake. “Succubus, idiot. Succubus, as in ‘poke me while I leech you.’ I know she’s beautiful, but so is a coral snake. And you don’t go to bed with either one.”

He balled up his right fist, looking like he was deciding whether to break my jaw or my head. “Do you really have a death wish?”

“You said it yourself, sir. Idun’s Apple freed her from the need to feed.”

He squeezed my shoulder.

“From the need, yes. But not from the desire, son. I know she looks like a beautiful sixteen year old girl. But she’s not, Blake. She’s not even human. She’s a Ningyo, a being hundreds of years old.”

His eyes grew hollow. “Worse, she’s in love with you, son.”

“Worse? How can being in love with me be worse?”

"Because that means she's not thinking straight. She's gonna expect you to act like a centuries old Ningyo male. And when you don't, she's going to feel betrayed. And a betrayed Ningyo is a demon let loose from Hell."

His hand squeezed harder on my shoulder. "You're walking with your eyes wide shut into suicide."

His eyes flicked past my head. My heart sank. I turned around. Kirika.

She was standing stiff, her fingers coiling and uncoiling. Her once lovely face did seem a demon's. How could I unhurt her?

I couldn't. She had heard me being told she was a monster. There was only one thing I could think of that would balance the scales. Balance them and screw up my life.
***
Don't miss the great two sentence pitch contest at BEYOND WORDS :
http://chanellegray.blogspot.com/2011/07/pitch-contest-with-victoria-marini.html
***
***

THE PATH BACK TO DAWN!

When we last left Blake Adamson in LOVE LIKE DEATH, he was surrounded by the vicious living shadows, the Amal.

Follow Blake as he is reunited with Kirika, sails the mysterious Sea of Fate, wanders lost down the Halls of Hells, and finally finds Fallen once again in Victorian London --

in the lethal brothel, The Princess Alice, whose only customers are those madmen who have killed as Jack the Ripper.

Worse, the dreaded Sennacherib is coming to fulfil his threat to rape the last fae. Can Blake save himself, much less the fae of his dreams?

If we live long enough, there comes that night when the darkness is more within than without, when we realize things have gone terribly wrong, and when we realize the answers we thought we knew have no more substance than the cardboard fronts of a movie set.

What do we do then?

What if all myths are true? What if believing can make it so, if enough believe? What if, like unwanted children, once born the myths cannot be unborn? Would a critical mass of myths one day be reached?

Only in the eclipse of myth can a young man have both the Moon and Sun as his brides. The Last Fae and The Lost Sun have both fallen in love with Blake Adamson -- and he with them.

If their crossed loves do not them kill them, their enemies surely will. Unless Blake Adamson can become the legend he is believed to be.
***
The lovely twin muses of my novels, Wendy Tyler Ryan and Orietta Rossi {artist extraordinaire}, have made this novel possible.
***
I just love this trailer whose hero and heroine remind me of Sam and Meilori :

SURRENDER TO THE MONSTER_Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

Friday's ROMANTIC CHALLENGE given by Francine & Denise is SURRENDER. http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/


My 400 word entry is SURRENDER TO THE MONSTER.

It is from LOVE LIKE DEATH.



{Last Friday, Fallen, to save her love from the dreaded Sennacherib, left Blake to starve chained to a tree.

But evil will not be denied. Sennacherib visits Blake wearing the form of a friend. Blake follows his instructions on how to use his mind to escape the chains.

With unspeakable pain, Blake finds himself free …

of his now lifeless body.

He has become an invisible spirit. Laughing softly, Sennacherib disappears. Then, Blake hears two people approaching through the woods. He hears the furious voice of Philip Darius, Fallen’s only living friend.}



"I can't believe you, Fallen. You left him out here to die?"

" I- I am back."

"Only because I browbeat you. What were you thinking?"

"Of sparing him!"

"Sparing him? By leaving him to die alone?"

“It was about mercy!"

"No, it was about trust."

"Trust?"

"You didn't trust Blake to be able to stand up to Sennacherib."

"You are wrong. I saved him from the hell Sennacherib planned for him."

"Really, Fallen? Maybe this and you were the punishment Sennacherib had planned all along?"

"Wh-What?"

"Think about it. He's actually been happy these past three days."

"Sennacherib would have accused me."

"Why? You did exactly what he planned all along.”

Philip rasped, "I can't think of a worse way to die than to slowly starve with the memory of you saying, ‘Oh, Blake, I do love you. Here, let me leave you here!"

"H-He forgave me."

I heard the slap. "You bitch! I'm sure he did. Pray to God he's still alive."

They broke out of the dense overgrowth into the glade. Philip looked furious. And Fallen? I don’t have the words.

She was dressed in a long black Victorian/fae shroud. No last look at those pretty legs. Her high cheeks were hollow, but not as hollow as her green slanted eyes. Her face brightened as she saw me, ah, my body.

"Blake! Did you really think I would leave ---"

"No!," she screamed.

Philip stood rock still. "My God, Fallen, what have you done?"

Fallen raced to me. She wrapped her arms around my lifeless body.

"B-Blake, it is me. Fallen. I - I came back for you. Oh, God, I came back for you!"

Philip watched coldly as she softly stroked my face. “Please, come back to me. It has only been three days. You cannot be dead."

Philip tore Fallen from my body. Caught by surprise, she fell to the ground. She lay there, staring up at the twisted face of her only friend.

"Get away from him, you piece of filth!"

"P-Philip?"

"I've wasted years looking out for you. I tried to keep Sennacherib from turning you into a monster."

He hung his head. "I give up, Fallen. I surrender to the monster inside you."

"It has not been that long," she wailed.

Philip snapped, "Don’t you get it? He didn't starve to death. He died of a broken heart!"

Fallen whimpered.

***
With Blake, being Blake, it gets even worse for him, Fallen, and Darius. But you'll have to read LOVE LIKE DEATH to find out.

***

FORGIVENESS IS A RAZOR_LOVE LIKE DEATH_FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

It's time for Friday's Romantic Challenge again from Francine and Denise :

FORGIVEN

http://fridaynightwriters.blogspot.com/

My 400 word entry comes from LOVE LIKE DEATH and explains a bit how Blake Adamson was left chained to a tree by Fallen to starve to death.

Prior to this moment, Lerner, the corrupt New Zealand police officer has chained Blake to a tree in the wilderness to torture some secret about Sennacherib (DayStar) from him.

Alas, poor Blake hasn't a single secret to buy his life or a quick death. Just as Lerner is about to use a blow torch on his eyes, Fallen appears behind him, slitting his throat with a mystic fae dagger :

"Thanks for saving me," I said.

Slanted eyes glittered. "Who said I was saving you? It is a fearsome thing to love and be loved by a Sidhe. And it is over before our first kiss."

"K-Kiss?"

Fallen’s lips almost touched mine but pulled back. "I will not make a mockery of our love."

She murmured, "Do you know what Sennacherib would do to you?"

"No."

"You would lose everything : dignity, hope ... innocence."

She traced a design on my chest with her dagger’s point. She stopped at my heart.

"The price of love is always death," I whispered.

"What?"

"Something I once told someone."

"I would thrust now, ending it quickly. But Sennacherib and I are linked."

She sobbed, "Soon you will be dead. Yet I will go on with the dark memory of what I must do tonight."

"Don’t …."

"No, Blake, to spare you, I must kill you. But not cleanly. Sennacherib senses when I kill, and he would come and save you."

She backed away.

"Don't do this to yourself, Fallen."

"To myself? You still love me? Why?"

"Love just is. Fallen, there has to be another way."

“Tell me how you can definitely defeat Sennacherib, and I will go through hell at your side doing it. Oh, tell me!”

"I don't think that there are any 'sure things,' Fallen. Life is short, bitter-sweet, and mostly pain."

"You are not helping your cause."

"Don't you see? Because life is like that, if love ever does come your way, you grab hold, and you never let go.”

Fallen made a soft cry and pressed her body against mine, kissing me, hungry, wild. She kissed as if trying to force all her dark love into one fury of passion. Suddenly, she pulled away.

"Y-You do not know Sennacherib. I have to do this!"

She backed up, never taking her eyes off me. She was at the edge of the clearing. Three more steps, and she would be gone. I had to say something. Something that would help her in the long nights to come.

"Fallen!"

She slowed.

"I ... forgive you."

She hunched over. "Damn you. Damn you!"

She mewed like a hurt kitten. "I love you, Blake. I love you so much I ache with it. I will never kiss another. Never!"

She ran into the dark woods. The chains weren’t as heavy as my heart.
***

CAN LOVE SURVIVE WITHOUT LIES? FRIDAY'S ROMANTIC CHALLENGE

Don't forget to order your copy of STORIES FOR SENDAI. It will help the hurting in Japan and not get you on the bad side of Mesmer. Brrrr. :

http://www.amazon.com/Stories-Sendai-Anthology-Inspirational-Short/dp/1463574215/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309406922&sr=1-1

My 400 word Friday entry for the Romantic Challenge given by Francine and Denise comes from the sequel to LOVE LIKE DEATH. Its title? THE PATH BACK TO DAWN.

Sixteen year old Blake Adamson has lost his heart both to a fallen angel and an alien succubus. Neither will share him. One or the other will kill him. Fallen, of THE LAST FAE, already has chained him to a tree in the wilderness to slowly starve rahter than chance him being corrupted by the infamous DayStar.

Kirika, the succubus, and Hone Heke, the fearsome Maori warrior, have been stunned to discover Blake still alive after six months of starvation.

He has survived by eating half of one of Idun's golden apples of imortality, gift of the Odin Raven, Muninn. He has saved the other half for the two girls he loves more than his own life.

In giving the saved quarter to Kirika, the succubus, who has found him, Blake finds love is never what he expects :

I frowned at my trembling. I was so weak. I fumbled at the button cinching my left shirt pocket.

I looked at Kirika. “W-Would you?”

She teasingly slapped my fingers. “The first of many buttons I will gladly undo, beloved.”

Beloved. I saw images of us wrapped in each other’s arms, doing things I knew we shouldn’t.

Not with Hone standing right there.

She quickly undid the button. Smiling wickedly, she dug into my pocket. She jerked her hand away.

Hone snapped, “What kind of trick did you pull?”

Kirika shook her head. “No tricks, Hone. Only a love that shames me.”

I pulled out the glowing slice of Idun’s apple. I looked at it. It wasn’t a jewel, but why was Kirika acting this way? Hone looked sick.

“I - I know it isn’t much --”

“Not much? Starving to death, you kept this. For me. Beyond the diamonds of suitors, I will treasure this gift.”

She slowly took it from my fingers. “Always.”

She brought it to my lips. “Now, eat, beloved.”

Muninn cawed, “Do not worry, Lady Kirika. He hast eaten a full half of ...”

Muninn looked like he could have bitten off his tongue

Kirika quickly reached into my right shirt pocket. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

“You saved a quarter for the Sidhe bitch? Fallen? She who left you chained to a tree to die slowly of starvation? You insult me!”

Muninn rasped,“I beg thee to pause an instant.”

Kirika spit in my face. I jerked. Time to leave.

“Hold, young fool. She dost not understand.”

Kirika husked, “Enlighten me, raven.”

“Hast thou truly tasted of this one’s spirit?”

“I was deceived by my loneliness.”

“Perhaps thou hast forgotten what meaning the boy places on his left side.”

“I do not understand.”

“Dost thou see no significance in his placing the apple he meant for thee in the pocket --- over his heart?”

Kirika’s lips quivered. She threw slender arms around me. “What a jealous fool I am! You did choose me over her. Over her.”

She kissed me. I couldn’t enjoy it. I would have placed her slice in my right pocket but for Muninn’s request. Muninn murmured in my ear.

“Sayest the truth, and I wilt peck out thine eye as I didst Odin’s.”

My silence was to spare Kirika’s heart not my eye. But it wasn’t any less a lie.
***


***

from the pages of THE LAST FAE comes LOVE LIKE DEATH

Magic has its price. So does love.

So it is not too surprising that to fall in love with a Sidhe is a fearsome thing.

To also fall in love with a being born of stardust and the sea at the same time is to walk the razor's edge.

Fallen, last of the Tuatha de Danann, fell in love with a strange teenager in THE LAST FAE.

In LOVE LIKE DEATH, Fallen learns his name (Blake Adamson) and more ...

she learns that there is a steep price to trusting your fears over your heart.

And what does Blake Adamson learn?

That it is hard to discern shadow from substance in that twilight realm between death and life where he meets ...

Solomon, the not-panther, who must live by rules that dare not be spoken.

Maija, succubus, who would kill Blake if only she could.

Huginn and Muninn, the two ravens that are the living embodiment of his Id and Ego.

Fallen of the etheral body and predator eyes, whose love wounds.

Kirika, alien born of stardust and the sea, whose love kills.

And DayStar, rumored to be the young teenager fully grown.

{Cover courtesy of the creative genius of that siren from Genoa, Italy, Orietta Rossi. Format and cover font crafted by the talented Wendy Tyler Ryan}

***

TALE'S END_Tara's HOT KISS BLOGFEST entry

The lovely Tara Fouts is having her HOT KISS BLOGFEST today :

http://t-fouts.blogspot.com/

Please vote :

http://www.wattpad.com/1073509-the-legend-of-victor-standish?d=ud

Many of you have come to love Fallen, the haunted Sidhe. She appears in THE BEAR WITH 2 SHADOWS, asking Hibbs to bring her Blake back to her.

Before Victor Standish, there was Blake Adamson. And here is the end of the tale for Fallen and her Blake, told through his eyes.

{Blake has been stabbed in the back by the hate of Fallen given living form. Solomon, the Angelus of man's body and panther face, is racing the chariot of Death to Valhalla in a mad attempt to save Blake's life.}


Her faerie eyes seemed to be on the brink of breaking down completely.

She took my right hand in hers gently. "Oh, hold on, Blake."

I shook my head. "C-Can’t."

"Don’t say that," she sobbed, bending down and placing her head on my chest.

She jerked up, her eyes wild with the desperation of finding some way of holding on to me. "Together. T-The Father told you we’d - we’d always be together. You can’t die. You can’t die."

I tried to hold up my left hand. No good. Like Fallen’s Hate had told me, I was all washed up.

I lifted it with my mind fingers, and even then, it took all I had to do it. I placed my trembling hand over her heart and tried for a smile. I don’t think I made it.

"H-Here. Always together. Here."

She looked up in agony as if there’d be an answer in the heavens. "Not good enough," she wailed. "Not good enough."

Black tears streaming down her face, she held my hand tight as if willing her life force into me. "Don’t leave me, Blake. Don’t leave me."

As black as her tears became the world around her, so that all I could make out was her face in a ever-thickening mist. My eyes must have been glazing over because I heard her crying low. She squeezed my hand even harder.

"If - If you st-stay, I-I’ll tell you a secret."

I forced my eyes open wide to clear them. It worked. A little.

This time I did manage a small smile. With my mind fingers, I wiggled my ears.

"I-I’m all ears."

She cocked her head as if she couldn’t bear the pain inside her. "Oh, y-you and y-your dumb jo-jokes."

She reached out and gently brushed that stubborn lock of hair from my eyes. "You know all those times you flew at night?"

"Yes," I whispered.

"W-Well, I ... I crept into your room then."

"What?"

She turned her head to the left as if the memory was killing her.

"I ... I used to go to your chest of drawers and touch your - your combs and brush, running my fingers along them. I’d imagine you fighting to get that mop y-you call hair to stay down."

She smiled a smile of agony, her lips trembling. "I’d - I’d laugh and sit on your bed and s-smell your pillow, that always smelled of pine trees."

I tried for a swallow and didn’t make it. Tears started to blind me. She knew what my hair smelled like. Fallen looked as she were about to shatter inside.

"Th-Then, I’d pick up whatever book you were reading at the time, and ... and I’d open it, looking at the parts you - you underlined -"

She mewed soft and long as if she were about to break down. And I think she might have except that Solomon choked down a sob himself.

She looked up. He turned his head away and slapped the black reins with a sharp snap.

The chariot took off faster in a lurch that sent a jagged bolt of agony through me. Fallen picked me up to cushion me. And meaning to help me, she sent another spear of pain through me.

But in a way that was a good thing, for it cleared my vision and hearing. She stroked my right cheek softly.

"Those - those parts you underlined. I read them out loud, pretending you were rea-reading them to me."

She sniffed back the tears. "Your books. To my eyes, they burned with so many different colors. So many. I - I could tell what books made you sad, or laugh, or angry."

Suddenly, she wrapped me in a fierce embrace. "But the book that burned the brightest was the one that had ‘Annabel Lee’ in it."

She sniffed wetter this time. "I knew all about that poem, B-Blake, all this time. All this time."

She clutched me tighter, holding her cheek against mine and rocking and rocking. "Y-You want to know what the color of love is?"

"Wh-What?"

"The color of love is you," she sobbed.

"Is you!"

She turned to Solomon, who was blinking back tears himself, and wailed, "You’re the Angel of The Most High. Tell me. Why does evil always win? Why? WHY?"

She raised her head and howled gut-deep like a shot animal. I couldn’t take it. And neither could Solomon.

He turned his head away, choking down another sob. I lifted my hand with my mind fingers and stroked her cheek.

She shook her head that shivered in spasms. "I always thought I would be Annabel Lee. Not you. Not you!"

I forced my traitor throat to work, and it rebelled, making my words hoarse, almost impossible to understand even for me. "A-As long as you live, I live - in you."

Her lower lip trembled so I thought she’d break down, but she managed to get out, "You big, d-dumb b-boy scout. I don’t want to go on living if you die. Don’t you know that?"

I tried to speak, but the world grew hazy and dark again. My head nodded to my chest. She shook me hard.

"Blake!"

I fluttered my eyes open and saw her reach frantic inside her mind. "I - I know your secret."

"What - what secret could ... a boy scout like me have?"

She smiled as if that secret was a knife in her heart. "That ‘full on the lips’ kiss you wrote about in your diary."

"You read my diary!," I moaned.

She shook her mane, a bitterness twisting her face. "Such a silly thing. A simple thing. And ... And I teased you so with it."

I had tried to stay with her, but it was no good. Her face. I could barely make it out anymore. Only her tortured eyes, and them only in a thick haze. My head nodded, then my chin settled on my chest, and I heard her from far, far off.

"A-And now, wh-when it is too late, when y-you will not even feel it, I shall give you our f-first, our last, ... my only kiss."

I prayed silently, 'Oh, Father, grant me strength just one more time.’

I smiled with all the love I had burning in me for her.

"Another thing you said a long time ago, Fallen, was - was that sometimes the best words were actions."

And with that, I wrapped my left arm around her and pulled her to me. I leaned in to her face. She sobbed, then her trembling lips parted.

Her lids went all heavy. And she kissed me, fierce, hungry, wild, just like she was deep inside. She crushed me to her. Her tongue touched mine.

I - I had never been kissed like that before. I didn’t know what to do.

I touched back as hard as I could. It must have been the right thing to do ‘cause she ran her tongue along mine, and I did the same to hers.

That had to have been the right thing to do, too, as she leaned her whole body into me, her lips crushing mine. I squeezed back.

She felt so soft, yet hard at the same time, in my arms. Her lips were soft, too, even as they pressed hard against mine.

And for one small magic moment, we were one.

Not in body, but in the heart, the spirit, the very soul. We were one. And she was mine. Mine.

Fallen was mine.

Our first kiss was all I had hoped it would be. No. A hundred times better. It was wonderful.

Wonder-

It was as if a plug had been pulled deep, deep within me, and all I was got sucked down a black hungry whirlpool that was darker than just sleep or fainting. Down, down, down, I went, being tugged down into a cold, black, starless sea that billowed all about me.

I went limp in Fallen’s arms. She screamed then, as if the very heart of her had been cut out. Strange. It had sounded as if she were three miles away. How odd.

Then, before I was pulled under completely, I heard someone else. Solomon.

But he was even fainter, so far off, so very far off. His voice seemed all but choked out with tears.

"S-Sorry, Sidhe, but - but even good souls die."

I was a child, and she was a child
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love,
I and my Annabel Lee.
***

THE DEEPEST WOUND IS LONELINESS_NO KISS BLOGFEST ENTRY

My entry for Frankie's NO KISS blogfest

http://frankiediane.blogspot.com/

is from my YA urban fantasy, LOVE LIKE DEATH :

detailing the adventures of the orphan reputed to be the clone grown from the tissue sample taken from the Spear of Destiny.

Helped by the 14 year old fae assassin, Fallen,

the clone, Blake Adamson, has just escaped his captors, though mauled by the claws of Fallen in the doing of it :



Fallen crabbed slowly back away from me on her knees, still shaking her head in horror and dismay.

"N-No. No! Oh, Blake, I told you I-I'd be a hard friend, but not like this. Not like this!"

I shrugged, trying to hide how much it hurt, and forced out of my weak throat, "N-Now, show me a rose that doesn't have its share of thorns."

"I'm no rose," whimpered Fallen.

"Well, to me, you're as much a rose as the black roses whose perfume you have in your hair."

Fallen shook her head and, with so much self-hate in her voice it scared me, whispered in a hiss, "I'm no rose."

"Not a tame one, that's for sure," I sadly smiled. "But don't you know, Fallen? The wild roses have the sweetest smell."

Her long faerie face almost all eyes, she said softly, "Your lips just twitched, there, Mr. I-Don't-Lie."

I looked at her with so many warring emotions going at it inside me. Did I dare tell her the truth? Did I? I saw the lonely, self-hating hurt in those wet green eyes and knew I didn't have a choice.

"It's ... It's not just when I lie that they do that, you know."

"Oh, no? Then, when else, boy scout?"

Oh, man, did I have the nerve to say it? "Ah, well, ... they've been known to do it when ... when -"

"When what?," murmured Fallen, edging closer, her green eyes seeming to swallow my whole world.

"When, ah, I'm ... next ... to a pretty girl."

There, I had said it, and I could feel my cheeks blushing. No. Oh, no. Fallen looked miserable. Man, couldn't I do anything right? Not anything?

One single tear rolled down her cheek. "B-But that's just it. I'm not pretty. I'm not! I'm not even a girl. You heard Tartan. I'm a frea-"

Her next word I knew would break my heart so I didn't let her finish.

I reached out for her, taking both of her hands in mine. I put them next to my chest, hoping she wouldn't notice the blood on both our fingers. I hiked up my left shoulder a bit and smiled sad back at her.

"-a wild, beautiful rose w-who I'm proud to call 'friend'," I said soft, and without even realizing what I was doing until I had gone and done it, lightly kissing her fingers, claws and all.

I stiffened. Oh, man, what had I done? Was I crazy, or what? I had kissed Fallen. Sure, only on the fingers, but -- oh, no.


Look at what I had done. Big tears were welling up in her jade eyes. She just looked at me for what seemed a frozen eternity in time. I started cussing myself up a storm. What a moron. Why did I always screw up? Why?

And then, so fast it was a blur, she bent and kissed me soft on the cheek. She snapped back, looking as shocked as I felt. She cocked her head timid at me.

My lips not wanting to work right, I knew better than to try and say anything, so I just smiled shy back. I could feel my blush burning like a hot neon sign.

"Oh, no!," I cried aloud, dropping Fallen's hands.

"What's wrong?," she yelped, springing to her feet and spinning in a clawed crouch.

"Mr. Myers and Mr. Heke. They're still trapped in the Eldritch Industries Building."

Fallen slowly turned around, her face so sad and bittersweet.

"Blake, Blake. You big, dumb boy scout. You worry about everyone but yourself."

Fallen stamped her right foot angrily. "Blake Adamson, when are you going to start worrying about you?"

I smiled sad, "That's what I've got you for."

"Oooh, Blake, sometimes you make me so crazy!"

I hoped you enjoyed my entry.
***

DREAM SEQUENCE BLOGFEST : THERE IS NO GOODBYE

It is time for Amalia's DREAM SEQUENCE BLOGFEST :

http://hellia.blogspot.com/2010/04/dream-sequence-blogfest-in-honor-of-100.html

Long ago in what seems almost another life, I wrote two novels for a hospitialized girl in her early teens. Her mother thought Harry Potter godless. The mother and daughter both turned to me, knowing I had written some Xena scripts for a young customer in the hospital.

My own mother was dying, my business was struggling, and I was on foot since someone had put sugar in my car's gas tank. But plotting the novels would give me something to do while walking the five miles to my store. I could type on my laptop in between customers. I agreed.

This scene is from the first novel, THERE IS NO GOODBYE. The 13 year old Blake Adamson has lost his heart to a fae named Fallen. He has sailed across the Time Stream, meeting the 3 Faerie Queens bringing Arthur's body to Avalon. And in fighting demons in present day Wellington, New Zealand, he has just suffered a fatal heart attack :

For long moments, I drifted aimless through the blackness as if upon a lazy underground ink sea. Floating, floating, floating. Then, suddenly, I surged along as if propelled.

I felt my body again. Not a good thing. My chest was gutted out, with the echo of a threat that another terrible charley horse was going to seize my chest with merciless steel fingers.

Guess I couldn't even die right.

I stirred uneasily. A weird, trilling music tugged me fully awake. The sound of it made me shudder as if caressed by a corpse. It seemed like the wailing of mourning unicorns at the death of the dawn.

I shifted about some more. Man, what was stabbing me? Jeez.

It felt like I was laying upon a thick bed of thin sticks, with thorns on them, yet. Thorns? My eyes popped open, as ice water took the place of blood in my veins. Not really wanting to but compelled by something inside me, I turned my head to the left.

I went stiff. King Arthur. His bloodless, bruised face was right up against mine.

Chest or no chest, I sat straight up, my whole body going as cold as the strange music all around me.

I looked to my left and right. I sighed deep. Just like I had feared. I was on that black barge, heading to Avalon, the misty Isle of Lost Souls. And even worse, I was laying right next to the dead King Arthur. I tried for a swallow and didn't even come close.

Did that make me dead?

A hollow laugher echoed from the fiery mists to my right. The tall, eerie figure of the Faerie Queen Hesperides suddenly floated in front of me. Her long raven hair framed a face not even Dali could have loved. Her thin, cruel lips curved up in a mockery of a smile.

"No, Last Defender of Camelot. Not quite dead."

I tried for a brave smile and did as lousy a job of it as she had. "Yeah, but the night's still young, huh?"

One second Hesperides was alone, the next, Meropis, tall and hair like a hot sunset, was beside her sister. Ice crystals formed a strange halo about her head. She was the next to fake a smile. The gesture seemed foreign to her. Goes to show you that you have to do things every few centuries or so for them to appear natural.

"Humor from the dead-but-not-dead? How pathetically quaint. Are you tired of life?"

I smiled crooked, "It makes my eyes water."

Then, as Meropis seemed to be debating whether to throw me overboard or not, High Queen Ogygia, her long hair the brightness of a full moon, appeared right in front of me. She turned fluid to face her sisters. Happy she was not.

"The young knight is a guest. My guest. I brought him. Treat him badly at your peril. Have a care, sisters. You two still wish to live. I do not."

Hesperides and Meropis showed me that I could still be wrong. They became even paler than they had been. Ogygia turned back to me, smiling a true smile.

Yep, this was my night to be wrong, alright. I hadn't thought it was possible for a Faerie Queen. She gently stroked the Alpha piggybacking the Omega on the necklace Solomon had given me.

"In your end is your beginning," she sadly murmured.

I jerked as if slapped. "What?"

Her eyes of winter come to life grew wet. "The words will make sense when the season is upon you."

I arched an eyebrow. "I can see you've spent time with Solomon, ah, Myrlin."

She cocked her head. "From the One comes two. From two comes The Three. And from The Three flows everything."

I sighed, "This is a lesson, right? Well, I can understand why they call them lessons 'cause my understanding of 'em lessens and lessens the longer this night stretches on."

Hesperides sneered, "Have mercy on the child, sister. He is at his wit's end. And truth, he did not have far to go."

Ogygia ignored her with an ease that comes from years of practice. She smiled, then frowned, looking at my chest. She clucked her tongue. I stiffened. For a moment, she had sounded just like -

"My daughter, the lioness," she murmured in tones of weeping ice.

"Fallen's your daughter? Oh, man, just wait til I tell -"

Seeming intent on never letting me finish a thought or a sentence, Ogygia shook her head. "The time to tell her is yet to come."

Her voice took on an edge you could cut diamonds with, "And it is for me to say, not some errant knight yet to shave."

I cleared my throat, more sad than scared, but just a little fearful, seeing tiny lightning bolts arc from her fingertips. "Please forgive me, your majesty. I would never hurt a friend."

She jerked as if stung, then smiled bittersweet. "Friend? You would call me friend? Then, I shall share a secret with you, dear knight, : Faeries cannot forgive a hurt."

I made a face. "Then, I'm in for a world of hurt from Fallen."

Her eyes became deep hollows. "More true than thou knows. It shall be the death of thee."

"Oh, for awhile there, I was worried."

Her eyes flashed hot. "Have a care, youngling. I do not take to mocking well."

"But I was being truthful, 'cause you see if Fallen's the one to kill me, then DayStar can't be the one to do it, can he, now?"

Meropis snorted, "How little dost thou understand the many faceted nature of thy destiny, whelp."

I shrugged, "Hey, you're not telling me anything I don't know, lady. I have a hard enough time with Algebra, much less fate."

Meropis looked at me as if I had been something stinky she had stepped in. It would have hurt had I cared what she thought of me. She stiffened as if hearing my thoughts. Her lips grew into a tight, white line. Forget the "if".

She murmured, "You are one of those mortals who would be tremendously improved by death."

She was doing a good job of scaring me, but I was darned if I was going to let her bully me. "Your Majesty, if I promise to miss you, would you go away?"

Ogygia's face brightened with a small smile, then she said low and hard to her sister without even looking back. "I can arrange for this barge to carry two corpses, perhaps even four, for as I said : I no longer care to live."

Hesperides obviously didn't share Ogygia's sentiments. She gently touched Meropis' arm and firmly shook her head. Meropis ground her teeth, but she backed away until the fog almost hid her. Not quite. That would have been too much to expect.

Ogygia turned and sighed, "And now, for the purpose of my bringing you here."

She slowly reached out to my chest, her hand glowing strangely. "To mend thy valiant heart."

I jerked away. "No. No magic. The Father wouldn't approve."

She looked sadly, first at me, then at Arthur. "If only Wart had felt the same way, he might yet be alive."

She turned back to me. "But even your Science says that there is more to the world than meets the eye. Or did you think that you were the only one that carried the gift of healing at his fingertips."

I looked close at her. "Natural?"

Ogygia smiled bitter. "As natural as one such as I can be."

Hesperides seemed to be studying me like one would a dissected frog in biology class. "Would you truly turn away from staving off death if you thought it would offend The Most High?"

I looked at her all puzzled. "If I wouldn't hurt a friend, why would you think I would hurt my Father?"

Hesperides flinched. "Truly, thou art the Son of David."

I shook my head. "Everyone seems to be sure of that, but me."

Ogygia sighed, "What I am sure of is that thy death would break my daughter's heart. Worse, it would herald the death of her soul."

My heart started to seize up again. "Don't say that, Your Majesty, 'cause even if you heal my heart, DayStar will still kill me."

She breathed, "To be is to become the value of a variable."

"What?"

She reached out quick and fluid, touching my heart with her glowing hand, sending strange warmth all through me. "In thy end is thy beginning, and thy answer will be The Dark Lord's question."

I shivered, feeling a tingling strength surge through my chest, no, my whole body. I shook my head and looked up sad. I tried for a smile.

"Now, I'm relieved, for a second there I was almost understanding what you were saying."

I fast snatched her withdrawing hand and lightly kissed it as I had her daughter's ages ago it seemed. "And Your Majesty? Thanks is too little a word for healing me."

Her whole face lit up. "As a very wise young boy once said : it was selfish of me really. Tell my daughter that she fought well."

Her eyes of frost held me, as if they were hands, as she cocked her head. My mind tingled and grew chill. And I knew that she was dipping into the shallow pond of my thoughts.

Her face grew so very sad. "You mean to leave her behind when you face The Dark Lord?"

I pulled up the corners of my lips. "Don't you think one of us should live, Your Majesty?"

Hesperides sneered, "You mean, besides the one you call Solomon?"

I weakly heaved myself on one elbow. "He's my friend, Your Majesty, and I trust him."

Hesperides spoke in the sound a glacier would make breaking away. "There is no wisdom in trust, child. Did you learn nothing from your voyage through the time-fog?"

I snorted a bitter laugh. "Wisdom from me? You're barking up the wrong tree there. I'm just a sapling. 'Course, Fallen would just shorten that to 'sap'."

Ogygia stroked my hair with her long, cold, oh, so cold, fingers. "But there is wisdom within you, child. Why else do you think the Turehu call you 'Aoraki', the cloud piercer? You pierce through the tinsel of reality far better than you realize. Tell me. What do you believe you learned in your voyage through eternity?"

I sighed. I truly didn't want to say. Not that I cared a whit about hurting her stiff-necked sisters. But I liked Ogygia. I even thought of her as a friend.

I squinted my eyes. As I had thought that last sentence, her face softened, and for a heartbeat, I could have sworn I saw tears in her eyes of winter frost. Then, I saw snowflakes swirl up from those eyes to lose themselves in the boiling mist. I drew in a shallow breath.

Alright, then, friends deserved the truth, but spoken in love.

At that thought, Ogygia swayed her head gracefully next to mine, like some magic swan, and whispered, "Speak not of Love to a Faerie Queen, dear child. You walk more dangerous ground than you know."

I smiled sad. "And how would that be different from the rest of my life, Your Majesty?"

I shook my head. "No. I mean, heck, you know my mind and heart already, so it would be just plain silly to speak anything but the truth. So - So if my heart has put me on dangerous ground, as you say, then at least it's love, not hate, that's done it."

Her head still next to mine, she kissed me lightly on the cheek, and her lips were more tingle than chill. "Oh, dear, dear knight, though Darkness seeks to consume thee, still thy heart remains true. Speak, and I wilt not hold it against thee."

My head was spinning, the way she kept changing the way she used personal pronouns, and all. I knew that there had to be a reason for it. Maybe Solomon's gift of Tongues had me hearing shades of meaning and warmth and, perhaps, even love, in the language of the Faerie Queens.

And maybe I was going a little bit crazy. Either way, I wasn't going to live out the night, so why work up a sweat about it?

I cleared my throat. "M-My love for you, Your Majesty, is of ... friendship."

She looked at me with such a bittersweet emotion, that it tugged at my newly healed heart, as she murmured in the voice of the awakening dawn, "Oh, I know, child. My daughter. She hast thy heart. And thee hers. I will write a song of it when your paths have wound their last."

And this time, I was sure that I saw tears form in her strange eyes. She blinked them away, and they flew up into the mists as snowflakes. I watched the snowflakes swirl in weird patterns, then disappear into the fiery clouds of fog around us. Her eerie voice tugged my head back around.

"Now, what is this truth that thou wouldst not hurt me with?"

I took in a deep breath. "I think that I learned this one thing : that when you focus on yourself, and your passions, at the expense of others, it ... it seems to always end up ugly. But I'm just a kid, not the 'Yardstick of the Universe', or anything."

She shook her head, and her lightning-white hair rippled like living electricity. "Indeed? No more than a child? Is that what thou truly believes? But no matter. Thou needs not have feared, Last Defender of Camelot. Thy words art truth, and not as simple as thee believes. Remember them, and though thou shalt die, thou wilt not lose. Remember ... remember ... remem ... re ...."

Ogygia's regal, alien face slowly began to blur as her words trailed away into the mists that seemed to swallow me. No. Not yet.
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And so ends Blake vision of the 3 Faerie Queens. And if you're wondering about the young girl I wrote the two novels for : some sleeping beauties never awaken. At least not on these shores.

Here is a video of Poe's DREAM WITHIN A DREAM