Through Time-Slamming

By Claudy Conn

Jazz and Trevor’s love story continues in Slamming, through adversity and growing confusion.
Pestale and his brother Hordly are on the offensive and have a few surprises for the Seelie Fae.
The Queen of the Seelie Fae, Aaibhe is under attack by her council, and discord threatens the solidarity they need to take down the Unseelie abominations.
Frankie meets her Fae father in Slamming and Prince Breslyn is hit with epic changes that will alter life for him as he knows it.
Humans are at the mercy of hordes of hungry Dark Fae...and chaos rules!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Claudy Conn
• Release date: Jun 26, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301971589

Claudy Conn

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Claudy Conn is a multi published author who got her start with her bestselling historical/regency romances.She tells us that she fell in love with the fantasy/paranormal genre and created a world of paranormal.She hopes you will read and enjoy and join her on her facebook where she loves to interact with her readers.page.http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claudy-Conn-Paranormal-Romance-Author/135826686471445

Book preview

Contents

Through Time—Slamming

Books by Claudy Conn

Copyright Page

~ One ~

~ Two ~

~ Three ~

~ Four ~

~ Five ~

~ Six ~

~ Seven ~

~ Eight ~

~ Nine ~

~ Ten ~

~ Eleven ~

~ Twelve ~

~ Thirteen ~

~ Fourteen ~

~ Fifteen ~

~ Sixteen ~

~ Seventeen ~

~ Eighteen ~

~ Nineteen ~

~ Twenty ~

~ Twenty-One ~

~ Twenty-Two ~

~ Twenty-Three ~

~ Epilogue ~

Excerpt: Through Time—Frankie

~ One ~

~ Two ~

About Claudy Conn

Read more about Claudy Conn’s books

Through Time—Slamming

Books by Claudy Conn

available at smashwords.com

Through Time Series

Through Time—Pursuit

Through Time—Whiplash

Through Time—Slamming

Through Time—Frankie

Through Time—Compulsion

~

Legend Series

Spellbound—Legend

Shee Willow—Legend

Prince in the Mist (Novella)

Prince Prelude—Legend

Aaibhe—Shee Queen (Novelette)

Trapped—Legend

Free Falling—Legend

Catch & Hold—Legend

~

Shadow Series

ShadowLove—Stalkers

ShadowHeart—Slayer

ShadowLife—Hybrid

~

Hungry Moon Series

Hungry Moon: Quicksilver

Hungry Moon: Destiny

Hungry Moon: Jodi

~

Witches, Warlocks, and Dark Magic

Dark Love

Netherby Halls

Lady X

Journey

~

Risqué Regencies

Myriah Fire

Oh, Cherry Ripe

Rogues, Rakes & Jewels

Taffeta and Hotspur

Wildfire Kiss

After the Storm

Runaway Heart

Lady Bess

Lady Star

Serena

Mandy

Disorderly Lady

Madcap Miss

~

Multi-book Bundles

The Complete Legend Series

Through Time Series Box Set

Claudy Conn’s Bestselling Regencies

Through Time—Slamming

By

Claudy Conn

Copyright Page

Through Time—Slamming

By Claudy Conn

http://www.claudyconn.com

Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

First edition edited by: Kathryn Riehl

Second edition edited by Karen Babcock

Cover Artist: Kendra Egert

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America

Smashwords editions

First edition, June 2013

Second edition (in Through Time Series Box Set), March 2015

Second edition (as single title), April 2015

Excerpt of Through Time—Frankie

Copyright © 2015 by Claudy Conn

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Names, characters, and events depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

~ One ~

AN ASSORTMENT OF things could bubble up in one’s mind as one dangled from the talons of a prehistoric and flesh-eating, pterodactyl-like creature.

What bubbled up in Jazmine Decker’s mind and out of her mouth as she looked down at the lush green landscape below was an Eden Phillpotts quote her mother had been fond of: The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. She then screamed, very loudly, and while this did not help her situation, it did relieve some of her stress.

She might be in the talons of a giant flying beast, but her Trevor had taught her the skills she needed to escape her situation.

The landscape was changing faster than she could take it all in. She would have to make a decision fast. Yup, time to leave.

She shifted out of the sharp talons, and just before she landed in the mass of tall wheat grass below, she hovered with a smile on her face. She gave herself a mental pat on the back.

The feeling of accomplishment, however, was short lived, as an anaconda lifted itself high and slithered through the air to come face to face with her.

Screaming was her first reaction. The entire jungle vibrated with the scream that came out of her mouth.

Her next and instinctive reaction was to lift off and hover higher—much higher off the ground. Never going to touch that land down there again, she told herself out loud. Then she once again attempted to mind link with Trevor.

Nothing.

Jazz remembered the pendant around her neck. It had to work. It had worked in the year 1816, so why wouldn’t it work now?

Hovering well above the huge anaconda that had not given up on her and had curled into a coil ready to spring, she took the pendant in her hand and murmured the ancient spell that had been handed down from mother to daughter.

She waited, and then a swirl of black mist opened up onto a bright yellow aura, but, as suddenly as it had arrived, it was gone.

She thought she heard the queen’s voice whisper just before the aura vanished, Be patient.

Unsure it actually was the queen’s voice, Jazz frowned with frustration. What is the good in having this charm if you can’t get through to help me? she asked the queen, but she did not receive a reply. She shook her head and sighed heavily.

She was going to have to shift again and again until she could find a place to set down and shield herself.

However, suddenly a strong swish of wind blasted over her, and once again she found herself dangling from a determined pterodactyl’s talons.

She swung in the wind for a moment while she tried to get herself together and decide where to jump shift to. Then she saw them.

She was being carried toward three hungry-looking pterodactyl babies whose wide-open mouths were as large and toothy as that of a great white shark.

Jazmine Decker screamed with total abandon.

* * *

In Killarney, the Arched Monoliths stood regally at the edge of the Middle Lake. A glow emanated from and surrounded the gigantic sarsen stones. The air vibrated and pulsated with magic, both light and dark magic, and the earth objected to the clashing forces.

The Seelie Royals could feel the power of Unseelie magic as it instigated tremors through the ground and shook everything within its immediate circumference. The lake bubbled and foamed. Opposing powers were contesting and challenging each other’s might.

The queen stood, both hands out, palms facing the dolmens, as she silently chanted. She had to trust Jazmine to take care of herself, for at the moment she had a larger problem.

At her back were her finest and strongest: Princes Breslyn and Danté, Princesses Ete, Radzia, and Royce, and Milesians Chancemont and Morgan LeBlanc. Together they formed a pyramid of power and magic as they concentrated on keeping the portal from opening.

* * *

They looked grim, ready to kill or be killed.

This was Trevor’s first thought as he stepped through with the Orb.

He felt a sense of pride, but he saw it was going to be one hell of a battle. The Dark Royals were already inside the portal, and in that regard they had the advantage. However, the portal was locked and, thus far, would not allow them to emerge. The Seelie Royals had managed to trap them for the moment, though it was a challenge that none of the Seelie Royals had encountered before.

The laws of nature could not be interfered with in this manner for long, and Trevor knew what they all knew. This was a losing battle. The best they could hope for as Aaibhe’s army increased at their backs was to contain the Unseelie, to keep them from storming Ireland and beyond.

Nuad, with his white hair blowing in the breeze, arrived and took up a stance with all of his Trackers flanking the pyramid of Royals.

The queen’s Royal warriors were gathering in numbers as the moments swiftly ticked by, but Trevor knew their numbers were not enough—they would have to rely on Seelie magic.

Aaibhe knew, Trevor thought at once. She knew the Dark Ones would break through. Even she could not stop a force of nature, and though it had been harnessed for an evil purpose by Pestale, the portal was still itself a force of nature.

The Milesian Army arrived and lined up with the Seelie Warriors. Forgotten were old wounds and differences as they united to defeat a common enemy—the Unseelie.

The Dark Royals were pounding at the entrance to the Human Realm.

Trevor could hear them—all his brethren could hear them.

Although his duty was to stay and fight with his queen’s forces, he would do so after he saved the life of his mate. He knew that without Jazmine Decker his life would be over. He could not live on without her. She came first, before all others. Before anything … she came first.

He would already have been searching for her, had the Orb of Time not brought him against his will to the queen.

This Orb had once been the possession of the Dark King, but now it had attached itself to the Seelie Queen Aaibhe. It would answer only to her.

Danté, Trevor shouted over the roaring portal. It was nearly deafening with the explosion of power beating at its mouth. He touched his brother’s shoulder and got right to the point. I want to be here with you, fighting beside you, and so I shall be, but first I have to find and save my mate. You have enough help here, but she has only me.

Danté raised a brow. Your mate? And then, in spite of the immediate problem before them, he grinned and slapped his younger brother on the back. "Well, well … our family is growing."

So you’ll explain? Jazmine Decker risked her life diving into the portal for us. You see, we thought it was the portal to the Human Realm, but Pestale tricked us, and now she is out there in another dimension.

Do you know which one?

I have an idea. Something about it looked familiar.

Use the Orb of Time—it is the most powerful one, and you should have it in your possession, Danté said.

The queen called it to herself. She needs it to help fight the Dark Ones.

Then I shall call the Lugh family Orb, Danté said and put up his hand. As he was the eldest in the House of Lugh, it responded first to him. An Orb appeared, and he handed it to Trevor.

There … tell it what you need, Danté said and then shook his head. And now, out of my way, brother! He returned his attention to the portal, which had belched and spewed a blast of beastly, bat-sized insects as it tried to open wide.

Trevor shifted to a quieter spot and demanded, Orb of Lugh, show me my mate, Jazmine Decker.

He received a very good picture of her hanging from the clutches of a huge and prehistoric raptor bird.

He closed his eyes. Pestale would pay for this. He knew of only one dimension that housed this particular species, and he shifted there at once.

He arrived in the prehistoric dimension and hovered in the air, looking around for the dinosaur bird of prey. Though he saw many, something felt wrong. For one thing, he and Jazmine had bonded, yet he could not feel her when he reached out to her. He tried calling her with their mind link. Nothing.

He told the Orb again, Show me my mate.

Once again, it displayed a raptor bird much like the ones flying nearby, with Jazmine dangling from its claws. He watched as she vanished from the giant bird’s talons and saw that she had jump shifted into the air, hovering face to face with a giant anaconda.

He felt anxious for a moment but then saw her lift up higher, hovering well beyond the snake’s reach. However, a moment later, down swooped the pterodactyl. It caught her again and then climbed high and still higher in the air. Trevor watched, helpless, as the bird flew with her, knowing she was too high to jump shift to the ground. She needed more confidence, more training. She needed … damn, bloody damn … she needed him.

A moment later the bird was at its nest, where its young reached to eat what their parent had just dropped their way—his mate.

Trevor gasped with some relief as his Jazmine Decker jump shifted, but then the Orb clouded over again. Show me! he growled, but the Orb sighed and did not clear.

Right, then, she was whole and relatively safe, or at least using her wits and her new skills to stay as safe as she could be. Somewhere in this dimension, but where? he asked out loud and then looked around. "Where are you, sweet Fios—where?"

Something about the lay of the land was all wrong—it didn’t feel as though he was in the right dimension. Although the Lugh Orb was not as powerful as the Orb of Time, he asked, Am I in the right place?

The Orb took on an inner shade and then displayed the very spot he occupied. He was in the right place. He was, but where the hell was she then?

~ Two ~

A HUMAN SCREAM RESONATED out of Jazmine Decker’s mouth. She couldn’t seem to stop screaming as she dropped towards the pterodactyls open beaks.

She knew that she wasn’t quite human any longer, but her mind went human on her as she fell towards the large mouth of one of the babies.

Her new Fae blood kicked in and took over instinctively, however, and when she shifted this time it wasn’t a jump shift but an honest-to-goodness Fae shift.

This time, she had actually shifted quite a distance, and as she stepped out onto solid ground, Jazz knew her Fae blood had triggered a map in her mind and located a safe haven for her.

Jazz stood there, caught her breath, and looked around in awe. She was at the edge of a cliff on a very high mountain. A slab of flat rock about five feet wide protruded out about twenty feet, and she stared down into the ravine below and murmured, Whoa. Okay, she thought and stepped back, took a look around, and headed for the safety of the grassy slope of earth at the side of the mountain. Rock walls met her as they reached toward the sky—straight up to another peak.

Wild and tropical vegetation filled the gaps in the rock wall before her. Lush green bushes and palms were scattered along the earth where she stood. Steam and heat engulfed her surroundings, which were so completely at odds with the world she had just shifted away from.

Further down the ravine she could see molten lava pits spurting out their insides, and with a heavy sigh she plopped onto the grass and put her head into her hands.

"Trevor, find me, baby, find me," she whispered to him as she surveyed her surroundings. She scrambled back to her feet when she realized what lay behind her. A cave!

Huh? she murmured, brushing herself off as she went forward to inspect this new find.

So it works, she thought, just like Trevor said. A Fae thought of where he needed to go … and, bam, he shifted there. Earlier, when she was plummeting from the flying dinosaur’s talons, she thought what she needed was a cave to hide out in, and wham, here was the cave.

How could she know there was a cave in this God-forsaken realm?

She didn’t know how it worked, but she was damn glad it had. What she needed was a few moments to get control of herself and figure out what she could do to get Trevor to hear her. He had to hear her and come for her.

An answer was there somewhere in her altered brain, a brain that was now as much Fae as it was human—in fact probably more Fae than human. She had to come to grips with what she was becoming and used the skills that were hers, newly hers but hers all the same. She had already learned one valuable lesson: if it looked too easy, it was. Pestale had been too unconcerned when they found him opening a portal. She should have known it was a ruse. He wouldn’t do that to her again.

Okay, she said out loud. This is good.

Trevor had taught her how she could use the elements. She had only been able to nearly master the simplest of tasks, but he said her skills would improve with time. The Fae blood now surging through her and making her strong in ways she never could have imagined would eventually replace all trace of human blood. He had said the most difficult thing to overcome would be her human attitudes and assumptions, as they were embedded in her psyche.

One of the things she had enjoyed was discovering she had the power of what as a human she’d have called telekinesis. This was in actuality, Trevor had said, a science of mind, body, and the use of the elements. He had begun her training in this science, though she thought of it as magic. She told him she would always think of it as magic.

For the moment, though, she didn’t need to transport anything with her mind. There were things she could use lying around the mountain ledge.

She picked up a long branch from a nearby tall tree, tore off a piece of her top, and laughed at herself. She probably looked like a castaway. Then she grimaced ruefully because, in essence, that was what she was.

She gathered some dried grass, wrapped the cloth around it, and then picked up some pine bark. The Fae in her kept telling her she didn’t need all this—she had a link to the elements and could create fire with a thought—but her human side needed something to keep her busy.

Once her torch was ready, she sighed and resigned herself to do what only the Fae in her could do. She concentrated on one vision: fire. Just like that, she had a working torch. She couldn’t help but grin, though that grin quickly faded when she turned to face the dark, though somehow very beckoning mouth of the cave.

The entrance to the cave was not a wide opening but narrow and partially hidden by a jutting rock. The cave narrowed even further as she went in deeper, and the light from the torch showed that it split into two passages.

Jazz worked the torch into the dirt to stand it up, used a bit of Fae magic to secure it, and looked around. She needed time to figure out what she was going to do to help herself get out of this situation, and she needed a safe place to do that. She was fairly certain the shape and size of the entrance wouldn’t allow larger predators to stick their grubby claws inside and get to her, but what about from the other direction?

Sighing with a certain amount of resignation, and extremely wary, she looked down at the forked trails. Suddenly, she realized she could see in the dark, not as well as during the day, but so much better than a human. She left the torch at her back and moved to where the two tunnels diverged.

Something could come at her from either of these passageways, something her size, for the corridors at least at this end wouldn’t allow for anything, or anyone, larger.

There would be no sleeping here, but did she need sleep?

And was she doing the right thing—hiding out like this?

Would Trev be able to find her if she stayed in this cave?

What if the cave was lined with iron? Was he like Superman? Was iron his Kryptonite? She had seen what happened to him when he handled iron. It had sapped him of his strength and even caused him severe pain. His senses would be affected, and he would not be able to find her.

Stop, just hold on, she admonished herself. She was imagining things—there was no reason to believe this cave was coated in iron.

She was going to have to get herself together, venture out into this realm, and use the Fae skills he had trained her to use if she was going to stay alive long enough for him to find her.

Stay alive … did she even have to worry about doing that?. She was becoming Fae. Could dinosaurs eat Fae?

That was something she didn’t want to chance.

She continued to explore one of the narrow avenues. It seemed dry, which surprised her as she had always thought caves were not only dark and slimy but damp as well.

The ground was solid. The low and rocky ceiling was smooth, just like the walls. The entire cave looked like it had been carved out with a file.

The path she had taken seemed to be headed downward, and she decided that was where the exploring would have to end.

As she returned to the torch-lit area, she realized she had forgotten an important fact. She was Fios, still a Fios, and that part of her wasn’t completely human either. The combined force of her Fios and her Fae blood, when it matured, should be formidable.

One of her Fios skills was the ability to construct shields to protect herself. Well, she thought, rolling her eyes, why didn’t you think of that sooner?

Nothing human or non-human could get past her shields, for it was Fios and Fae