Faerie Mage: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 1) Read online

  Faerie Mage

  Vampire’s Bane Book 1

  Marian Maxwell

  Blackwater Press

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgments

  Huge thanks to Writing Excuses, Rocking Self Publishing, 20B50K, Ryk Brown, Hugh Howey, Lindsay Buroker, and to all the authors who blazed the trail. Love to my beta readers, family, and friends. This story would never have happened without you.

  Foreword

  Thank you for picking up Faerie Mage!

  You are reading v1.8 last updated on 11/05/16

  New Release Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/cbv2_n

  Book 2 is available for pre-order: Faerie Empire

  Happy reading!

  1

  “Two minutes until the rift opens.” Amber whispered. Her voice came from the enchanted tattoo behind Suri’s left ear.

  “Not enough time.” Suri drifted around a pickup truck and hit the gas, burning rubber as she blasted through a red light in downtown San Francisco.

  Billy, the demon spirit living in her motorcycle, cackled as she weaved through traffic at top speed. The ungifted pedestrians on the sidewalk looked at her in astonishment. Suri flashed past them, a blur of steel and leather. She cracked a smile, loving the sound of her bike’s lovely roar, followed by Billy’s maniacal laughter. But the magi council’s number one rule rested heavy in the back of her mind, more unpleasant than a stop sign.

  Never reveal magic to the ungifted.

  She was already at three demerit points. One more and they would take away her baby.

  Her bike, that is. Suri doesn’t have kids. 22 is way too young for that.

  “Find a closer rift,” she told Amber.

  “I’m trying!” Suri caught the beginning of a sob before Amber cut out.

  Amber had been Suri’s bestie since their days at the Magic Academy, but she was also a nervous wreck. Every single delivery she became frantic to the point that Suri worried about her health.

  Their courier business, Fast Fae, delivered packages from the human world to Faerie. You know all those folk tales about people accidentally finding themselves on the other side? Yeah, rifts. They pop up randomly and close in about five minutes. Unless you want to pay a crazy fee, you need a seer like Amber telling you when and where rifts appear. As Suri sped through the streets, Amber was in their apartment, staring into a bowl of water and guiding her across the city. She also handled the contracts, invoices and customer complaints of their little business. All the things that gave Suri a headache.

  Suri’s job was to get to the rifts before they closed, and to survive the madness of Faerie.

  On the whole, Faerie was not a great place to be human. The human race was tolerated at best. At worst, lynched. It depended on where you landed in Faerie and what the mood was at the time. Suri’s magical aura, and her deadly sharp sword, made a strong case against picking a fight. No one, fae or human, wanted to mess with a bonafide mage. But Faerie was Faerie, home to all kinds of supernatural creatures with short tempers and a bone to pick with humans.

  Suri stopped at an intersection and revved her engine. Police sirens sounded in the distance. “Which way.”

  “Take a lef—right! Take a right. Market Street.”

  Suri’s bike jumped off the pavement. She tore down Market Street at fifty, sixty, seventy miles per hour. Two police cars came into view up ahead, lights flashing as if she was on FBI’s Most Wanted. The brutes could never catch her, of course, but they were darned insistent.

  She touched the black envelope tucked inside her leather jacket. Its delivery guaranteed her and Amber’s rent for the month. She didn’t have time to waste playing ‘catch me if you can’ with ungifted.

  “Blast it,” she told Billy, and hunkered down in her seat. She felt Billy's unbridled glee through their magical connection as he unleashed his full power on the bike’s engine.

  The bike held strong and lurched from an infusion of hellfire. It was a Honda Blackbird, top of the line. Amber had modified it with rune magic to channel Billy's energy. Disperse it evenly so the entire machine wouldn’t blow up under Suri’s ass.

  For a time, anyway. Suri had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before she had to go motorcycle shopping again. Magic and machinery never lasted long together. Eventually the machine burned out.

  The engine roared as it drove Suri forward with supernatural power. Up ahead, the police had formed a blockade with their cars. Behind her, three police cars followed. Sirens wailing at her to stop, submit, obey.

  Suri hated them for it. She wanted to rain magic on their heads and open their eyes to reality: that they should be running from her. Suri tightened her grip on the handlebars and willed Billy to go faster. Her abs clenched as a growl escaped her lips.

  The police planned to force her onto a side street.

  They thought they could pen her in.

  Foolish.

  This time, she joined Billy's maniacal laughter. Maybe his hellfire magic was getting to her, a subtle touch lowering her inhibitions. She sped towards the police barricade, laughing with wide-eyed clarity.

  It was too late for the police to do anything. They goggled at Suri, knowing, just knowing that by the laws of physics she was about to suicide against the side of their vehicles.

  Magi council be damned. She was going to educate them.

  Suri split her mind in two, the way she had been taught at the Academy. While one half handled the motorcycle, the other grabbed a tendril of magic and wove it into a barrier spell. A pale blue shield appeared at the nose of Blackbird, too thin for anyone to notice.

  Suri aimed Blackbird for the part of the barricade where the car bumpers touched. Smashed into it and plowed the cars aside.

  Windows smashed. Metal shrieked. Police officers dove to the ground, even though Suri was nowhere near to hitting them. Blackbird sped on uninterrupted. In a moment of inspiration, Suri spun in her seat and posed like a pinup girl for the dumbfounded coppers. She gave them a cheeky wave, blew a kiss.

  Poor boys. They never had a chance.

  “You’re almost there. A few more blocks,” said Amber.

  Suri spun back around and took control from Billy. “Talk to me. What am I looking for?”

  “Stop! The rift, uh…It’s in the Orpheum.”

  The Orpheum is the main theatre in San Francisco. Judging by the crowd of poshly dressed ungifted lined up outside the front doors, there was a show happening.

  The magi council was not going to like this. Not one bit.

  “Thirty seconds, Suri. Are you going in?”

  “Yea, screw it.”

  The client had paid two thousand up front with another two promised for a completed delivery. He had called for the first ti
me last week. A new catch that Suri and Amber were counting on turning into a regular customer. Their line of business did not exactly bring in a lot of work. And have you heard what the rent is around here? Absurd.

  Suri jumped off the speeding motorcycle, flipped in mid-air to balance herself, and landed on the sidewalk outside the Orpheum’s main entrance. Billy kept the bike going down the street, then discreetly turned it into an alley.

  Suri shoved through the lineup outside the Orpheum, giving one meathead a little shock of magic when he got handsy. Most of the theater-goers simply stared and edged away. Dressed in black with a tight-fitting leather jacket, tinted helmet visor, and a longsword strapped across her back, she probably looked like she was sent to assassinate someone. Or on her way to a cosplay convention.

  The police would never find Suri. They only knew her as the infamous “Shadow”—well, that was what the newspapers called her, anyway. Not so with the magi council and their enforcers. Frisco was only big enough for one bad bitch to wear her uniform.

  The magical aura of a fae rift buzzed throughout the theater. Suri sprinted past the gawking bartender in the front lobby, pushed aside an usher and threw open the doors leading to the theater. Inside, a group of costumed actors paced across the stage. Behind them was the rift, a narrow tear in reality leading to Faerie. Not having the third sight, the actors had no idea it was there. It was a small miracle that none of them had accidentally stumbled through to the other side.

  Suri used a tiny bit of magic and leapt from the aisle onto the stage. The rift was fading fast. She had no time to hide what was about to happen from the pure, innocent gazes locked firmly on her leather-clad body.

  But hold on. One of the actors was kind of cute.

  Really cute, Suri decided on second glance. He had the face of Orlando Bloom and David Beckham’s hair. Piercing blue eyes. Full lips.

  Yum.

  Suri considered giving him her Fast Fae business card, but he cringed when she turned to face him. “Security!” he shouted.

  Was it the sword? Her motorcycle helmet? What the heck is this job even worth if I scare away the cuties?

  Burying her hormonal angst, Suri visualized the location of the delivery and stepped through the rift.

  * * *

  Dry leaves crunched beneath her boots. A massive forest lay before Suri for as far as she could see. Pixies flew through the air.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Suri spun to face the speaker and was met by a small group of fae. She had rifted next to the lift point they were gathered around. Behind them rose the enormous outer wall of Lodum, capital city of the Faerie empire and where she was to make her delivery.

  The telltale creak of a pulley lift sounded over head. Suri looked up, and rolled aside barely in time to avoid being squashed by a huge wooden platform.

  “Are you through?” Amber asked.

  Suri took off her helmet, ran a hand through long, curly red hair. The enchanted tattoo behind her left ear itched, but it was necessary. Human technology doesn’t work in Faerie. No motorcycles, no cell phones. “Yea. It’s all good,” she said.

  The carefree expressions on the fae as they streamed around her and onto the platform told her that she had landed in friendly territory. Ordinary, lower class fae were usually pretty cool about having humans around. But she was still an outsider, and wary of attracting trouble. Fae can be a prickly bunch. They know how to hold a grudge against humans. Suri stepped onto the platform after the others, iron skin spells lingering on the tip of her tongue.

  The lift operator was a forest gnome. He sat on a small stool. His long, brown beard was tucked into his ratty leather belt. A drooping pipe hung from a corner of his mouth. Rather than get up, he hooked the gate with the handle of his cane and pulled it shut. Suri remembered her sailor legs just in time to avoid being pitched over the side as the platform practically flew up through the air.

  Suri put a hand to her forehead to keep her hair from flying all over the place. She turned, along with everyone else on the platform, to take in the best view in all of Faerie.

  The canopy of leaves, now below her, blazed metallic red in the setting sun. Millions of leaves rustled in the wind, shimmering like an ocean. The platform swayed gently from side to side. The gnome rested with one elbow on the railing. He blew streams of pungent smoke into the breeze.

  A minute later, the crane and pulley system holding the platform came into view overhead. The crane stretched out over the edge of the outer wall like an arm. It supported the platform with a straight line of thick rope. The rope led from the platform to the crane, to a wheel out of sight behind the battlements. Under the wheel was a steam boiler that was constantly pressurized by rune magic. When the gnome hit the lever, he had unlocked the platform and allowed the pressure in the boiler to turn the wheel. This setup was replicated dozens of times around the city perimeter. It was the only way to enter Lodum—well, at least for commoners.

  Although magic was plentiful in Faerie, only one in five fae children had the gift. Gifted made the upper class, ungifted the lower class. And then there were humans, the lowest of the low. They were only allowed to use the fae’s magical waygates to get back to Earth.

  A huge gust of wind, a passing shadow blotting out the sun, and Suri was reminded of the third way to enter Lodum: Dragons, bred in the Azzor mountains and owned by the richest of the rich for war, transportation, and general intimidation. She glanced up in time to see the bottom half of the green-scaled beast before it flew over the wall and out of sight.

  By the time it was gone, the platform was close enough to hear screams. A chorus of them. Coming from Lodum.

  Suri shifted into battle stance and drew her sword. The fae muttered between themselves, but she could tell no one knew what the heck was going on.

  The platform reached the top of the wall. Suri readied herself for battle. Then her jaw dropped.

  Lodum was on fire.

  2

  The fae weren’t screaming.

  Cheering. They were cheering as their city burned.

  Flames danced across a huge swath of Lodum’s Merchant District. Suri stepped off the platform. A crowd of fae filled the street, pointing at the fire.

  Lodum was the crown jewel of Faerie. It had stood for thousands of years. Where was the fire brigade? Where were the mages with water spells?

  Why wasn’t anyone doing anything?

  Suri set off at a run. She needed to find out what was happening.

  She kept her helmet on and pushed through the crowd. It was pretty obvious that Suri was a human, but there was always the chance that she was a fae with an eye for human fashion. They had to see her eyes and round ears to be sure.

  Without her helmet, she would have been tripped, spat on, outright attacked. Just for being human. For not meekly bowing and scraping until she reached the—

  Panic clenched Suri’s chest. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead. She pushed herself to run faster, heels hitting the cobbled streets with sharp clicks. Around her rose Lodum’s beautiful stone-and-wood buildings. Flowers of every color hung from windowsills. Ivy covered ancient brick walls that Harvard would have died to see. Like the fairy tales said, it was beautiful. And filled with monsters.

  Suri crossed a canal over a stone bridge. Passed a garden filled with marble fountains and carefully groomed trees. She ran on, closer to the fire. Closer to the dirty part of the city. The place where the lowest classes lived. Where the fae had forced humans to set up shop—and set on fire.

  She stopped at the top of a hill. Panting, hands on her knees and trying to catch her breath. The road led straight down to the fire. The rest of the Merchant District was perfectly fine. It was only the human section that was being destroyed. Purposefully.

  A carriage pulled by a pair of wild-eyed horses clattered up from the other side of the hill. The back of it was on fire. Suri stepped out of the way and it passed behind her, racing from the fire and into the setting sun.


  It was almost twilight. With it would come the trolls and goblins, vampires and ogres. Creatures evil down to their bones, yet friends to fae. She had to get to the human district before them. Rescue as many people as she could.

  It was too far. Suri cursed, wishing for the thousandth time that she had Blackbird.

  So use your magic.

  Normally, Suri wouldn’t have dared. But the fae were distracted. Celebrating. They might not notice a human using magic in their streets. They thought the humans were all down below. Feeling the heat. Dying.

  She cast an elemental spell. While it formed a disk of ice beneath her feet, Suri opened her connection to Amber. She stifled a sob, and steeled herself to tell her best friend the news.

  “You there?”

  “Roger, roger,” Amber cheerily replied. “What’s up?”

  “Something’s gone wrong.”

  Just tell her. Don’t drag it out.

  “Lodum’s on fire. The fae…” Saying the words aloud somehow made it more real. Tears blurred her vision. Suri wiped them away, coughed as a gust of wind sent smoke into her face. Her hand hurt. She looked down and realized that she was clenching a fist.

  “They set the human district on fire. All of it.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll find him, Amber. I…”

  Suri had been about to say “I promise.” It would have been a lie. She had a feeling it would take all of her luck just to get out of Lodum alive. She was deep in the city. Far from the waygates that fae use to travel between cities, and that humans use to go back home.

  Suri took a deep breath. “Maybe he got out.”

  “Save him. Please.” Amber’s voice was barely above a whisper.

  Her brother lived in Lodum. Owned a bakery. Put up with all the shit so he could leave a rich man and retire at 35. Suri had a letter for him in her pocket, from Amber. His name was Paulie. He liked to stay in touch. Wrote once a month to make sure his little sister was doing ok.