But it had been amiss, egregiously amiss. Man and Tuatha Dé had proved incompatible, incapable of sharing this fertile world that bore so many similarities to their own, and his race, once majestic and proud, now hid in places humans had not yet discovered. Having only recently learned to harness the power of the atom, humans would not present a serious threat to the Tuatha Dé for some time.
Yet time passed swiftly for his kind, and then would his people be forced to flee again?
Darroc refused to live to see such a day.
Banished. The noble Tuatha Dé had been relegated to leftover places, just as they'd been forced out once before, an aeon ago. Outcast then. Cast out now. The only difference was that humans were not yet powerful enough to drive them offworld as they'd been driven from their beloved home.
Yet.
They hadn't been able to take Danu— the other races had been too powerful— but they could take this world and conquer it. Now. Before Man advanced any further.
"Darroc," a voice interrupted his bitter musings. Mael, the queen's consort, appeared beside him. "I tried to slip away from court sooner but— "
"I know how closely she watches you and expected it would be some time." Darroc cut him off, impatient for news. A few days in Faery was months in the human realm where Darroc had been waiting at their appointed meeting place. "Tell me. Did she do it?"
Tall, powerfully developed, with tawny skin and a mane of shimmering bronze, the queen's latest favorite nodded, his iridescent eyes gleaming. "She did. Adam is human. And, Darroc, she stripped his powers. He can no longer even see us."
Darroc smiled. Perfect. He could ask for no more. His nemesis, that eternal thorn in his side, mankind's most persistent advocate, was banished from Faery, and without him. the balance of power at court was skewed in Darroc's favor at long last.
And Adam was helpless, a walking target. Mortal.
"Know you where he is now?" asked Darroc.
Mael shook his head. "Only that he walks the human realm. Shall I go hunting for you?"
"No. You've done enough. Mael," Darroc told him. He had other Hunters in mind to track his quarry. Hunters not quite as loyal to the queen as she liked to believe. "You must return before she discovers you gone. She must suspect nothing."
As the queen's consort disappeared. Darroc also sifted time and place, but to a different realm entirely.
He laughed as he went, knowing that although Adam was wont to champion mortals, the vainglorious prince of the D'Jai would hate being human, would despise being trapped in the body of one of those limited little, fragile creatures whose average life span was so horrifically brief.
He was about to find it far briefer than average.
3
Adam was so caught off guard that it didn't occur to him to do a series of short jumps and follow the woman, until it was too late.
By the time he'd tensed to sift, the dilapidated vehicle had sped off, and he had no idea where it had gone. He popped about in various directions for a time, but was unable to pick it up again.
Shaking his head, he returned to the bench and sat down, cursing himself in half a dozen languages.
Finally, someone had seen him.
And what had he done? Let her get away. Undermined by his disgusting human anatomy.
It had just been made excruciatingly clear to him that the human male brain and the human male cock couldn't both sustain sufficient amounts of blood to function at the same time. It was one or the other, and the human male apparently didn't get to choose which one.
As a Tuatha Dé, he would have been in complete control of his lust. Desirous yet coolheaded, perhaps even a touch bored (it wasn't as if he could do something he hadn't done before; given a few thousand years, a Tuatha Dé got around to trying everything).
But as a human male, lust was far more intense, and his body was apparently slave to it. A simple hard-on could turn him into a bloody Neanderthal.
How had mankind survived this long? For that matter, how had they ever managed to crawl out of their primordial swamps to begin with?
Blowing out an exasperated breath, he rose from the bench and began pacing a stunted space of cobbled courtyard
There he'd been, lying on his back, staring up at the stars, wondering where in the hell Circenn might have hied himself off to for so long, when suddenly he'd suffered a prickly sensation, as if he were the focus of an intense gaze.
He'd glanced over, half-expecting to see a few of his brethren laughing at him. In fact, he'd hoped to see his brethren. Laughing or not. In the past ninety-seven days he'd searched high and low for one of his race, but hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of a Tuatha Dé. He'd finally concluded that the queen must have forbidden them to spy upon him, for he could find no other explanation for their absence. He knew full well there were those of his race that would savor the sight of his suffering.