Faerie Queen: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 3 : Part I) Read online

  Faerie Queen

  Part I of II

  Marian Maxwell

  Blackwater Press

  Contents

  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

  Foreword

  Thanks for picking up Faerie Queen Part I!

  Faerie Queen spans two parts so that I can give each character (major and minor) a satisfying ending!

  Part II will be released in Q1 2017.

  The Vampire’s Bane series:

  Faerie Mage: Vampire’s Bane Book 1

  Faerie Empire: Vampire’s Bane Book 2

  Faerie Queen: Vampire’s Bane Book 3

  Happy reading!

  1

  Augustus

  “Yah!”

  Augustus snapped the reins of his steed and dug his heels into its flank, commanding his pure-bred horse to gallop faster. “Come on,” muttered the vampire fae through clenched teeth. “She can’t die. Not yet.”

  Mona sat in front of him in the saddle, slumped against the front of his chest. Her soft cheek rested against his shoulder, jostled now and then as the horse raced across the winding streets. Horse shoes clacking against the colorful cobbles, taking the pair ever closer to the noble's district of Faerie’s capital city.

  “Stay with me!” Augustus called to her. “We’re almost there. Hang on.”

  The foolish human had lost her arm trying to stop the prisoners from escaping Turndour Keep. It had been a close call burning shut Mona’s wound and keeping her from bleeding to death. But she had gone into shock, and then fallen unconscious. Perhaps she would still have her wits about her, if she hadn’t expended so much energy trying to fight the Black Gauntlet mercenaries. Tapped deeply into her connection with the behelit seed, and sickened herself with a near fatal overdose of raw magical power.

  All for naught.

  Augustus Maximilian Hyde was not one to dwell on his failures, but the events of the past six hours had been a monstrous disaster. I was a fool. I should never have let her come. Father will be furious.

  Lodum was in chaos. Lord Korka’s hell spawn army marched through the streets with their round, bronze shields and polished armor gleaming in the sun.

  The Faerie King, Jansilian, and his inner circle of advisors remained absent. The royal family was not doubt raising a force to counter Lord Korka’s, but the hell spawn attack had taken Lodum by storm. And more of them were still coming. Augustus had seen demon mages summoning rifts within Lodum, where the defensive wards did not apply. Dozens of groups, chanting and slamming their two-handed staffs into the ground, protected by the long spears of the hell spawn soldiers for the many hours they needed for the spells to complete.

  The street shook. Augustus turned his head and saw a river of hell spawn marching around the corner of the street in front of him. Driving away the fae commoners, the ungifted rabble, in a screaming panic. They rushed down the street, throwing aside whatever they had been carrying to pound on the locked and barred doors of street shops and try to climb up the side of the Lodum’s old, stone buildings. Many of them made it to the rooftops, where they could watch the invasion of their city free from harm.

  The rest of them ran straight in Korka’s direction. A mob too thick for him to rid and cut his way through.

  Blood and ash! Augustus swore. The disruption added five minutes to the time it would take to reach a healer in the noble's district. If a healer is still there. I might have to take her all the way back to the estate—where I should be at this very moment.

  The flare that he ordered Mona to cast should have summoned a flying gryphon for Augustus and Mona to escape on. Instead, it had called on Gorgax. Or so it seemed. The timing was too coincidental. Immediately after the flair lit up the sky, Lord Korka had entered Lodum’s airspace and begun dropped pods of hell spawn into the city streets. As if thinking that the flare was a signal to attack.

  Augustus snapped turned his steed and urged it back the way he came, then left, turning into a side street and climbing up the hill that would take them to another of the gated entrances leading into the noble’s district.

  The way was clear. Only a few scattered fae shared the street with Augustus’s massive horse, and they were quick to move aside. Nothing slowed the gallop. In three minutes Augustus and Mona reached the wall leading to the noble’s district. The portcullis was shut. Four massive guards dressed in heavy black armor, carrying long halberds, stood out front. An explosion sounded off in the distance, the echoes of a magical battle taking place elsewhere in the city. The guards turned to Augustus as he slowed and approached.

  His steed was frothing at the mouth, sweating and snorting. Augustus patted its neck, then released the glamour spell he had been using to disguise his identity.

  The spell shimmered out of existence. Augustus’s curly brown hair transformed to straight and jet black—long, groomed and swept back over his head, ending at the nape of his neck, two inches above the collar of his white tee-shirt. Coupled with his jeans, it was not exactly the attire of nobility, which was why Augustus felt compelled to show his true appearance. Otherwise, in his normal finery, the heir to the Hyde family would not have bothered. Much of what makes up nobility is appearances. The guards would have let him through regardless of how his face looked. Not so in this situation. He needed to show his royal blood, and fae features.

  His body grew from short and pudgy to long and lithe, muscled like an Olympic swimmer. Mona’s cheek, once resting on Augustus’s shoulder, slid down his body as he grew in size. He grew four inches to a tall six-foot-three, and had to take his feet out from the stirrups until they could be readjusted. Mona’s cheek rested on his chest, right over his beating heard. She still was not moving.

  Augustus’s hands grew larger, fingers lengthening, but the biggest change of all was to his face. Where it had once been soft and circular, it was not thin, hawkish, with cold, narrow eyes like his father’s and high cheekbones. A tight mouth and thin lips, like a slash across the bottom of his face. His ears were long—almost longer than was tasteful—but not as long as a Wilder fae’s.

  The towering guards were able to look Augustus eye-to-eye from his seat on his steed. The portcullis was not being raised. His features and horse alone were not convincing enough. Not with his clothes being the way they were, and the maimed human girl that he was, by all accounts, trying to protect—decidedly not the behavior of fae nobility.

  One of the guards grabbed the reins of Augustus’s pure-bred horse and pulled it closer to the wall. “Dismount,” he ordered in flat, deep voice that came from a dark hole in the bottom of his helm.

  Augustus did not have the insignia marking him as a member of House Hyde. Nothing at all to identify him as a member of nobility, let alone a commoner who worked on the estate. He had not thought to bring them before rushing to defend Turndour Keep.

  It occurred to Augustus that he appeared as a fae who had disguised himself as a human, was helping a human, and was riding an extremely expensive horse that in no way looked to be his property. And now, as the city was in chaos, was trying to sneak into the noble’s district. He was exactly the type of trouble
maker that the guards were meant to keep out.

  More explosions. The guards and Augustus all took a second to glance over the rooftops as the sky over a portion of Lodum lit up with magical lightning.

  “I am Augustus Hyde, son of Lord Yonafrew Hyde. Let me through, at once,” said Augustus, not budging an inch from his saddle. He held himself straight and glared at the large guards. Reminding himself not to be intimidated; that they were nothing more than pawns in the games of their superiors.

  The guard holding the reins was not convinced. He reached with a large, armored hand and grabbed Augustus’s arm.

  Mona’s breathing had become labored. Her face grew paler by the minute. She was dying, and with her death the power of the behelit seed would fall out of the reach of the Hyde family. Augustus would rightfully be blamed.

  And punished.

  His father would not spare his fury. No—being the heir to the family only meant higher expectations. The fact that the seed’s acquisition was all due to Augustus’s cunning would mean nothing. Lord Yonafrew had already factored it into his plans. It was a heavy weight on the balance of power that could not simply be given up. Not due to negligence. Not when the fate of Lodum hung in the balance.

  The hard times have only just begun. Lord Korka may take power temporarily, but he will not be able to control the city without a fight. The hell spawn will leave eventually. By then, the Hyde family must have confirmed its position of power in the new order.

  Augustus opened his mouth, tapped into his vampire magic and let his fangs grow long. The whites of his eyes turned red. The guard tried to pull him off his steed, but Augustus held firm. Vampire magic bolstered his strength. The horse whinnied as Augustus tightened his muscled legs around is body.

  “Lord Korka returns,” said Augustus, staring unblinking at the guard. His eyes were as cold and as flat as a snake’s. “My father expects me by his side. Let me pass, or you will die.”

  His words carried the commanding inflection of noble command, and the weight of truth. The guard relaxed his grip. His helmet continued to face Augustus, presumably as the man behind the metal met the eyes of the Hyde family’s heir and tried to judge if the words were a bluff. Waiting for a flicker of hesitation, anything to signal that it was all a ploy.

  Augustus did not waver. His gaze stayed locked onto the guard, as an aura of regal violence slowly gathered around him. He slightly widened his eyes. Dropped the reins with one hand to point it at the guard—but he was turning away. “Open the gate,” he called. The other three hastened to obey, setting their halberds against the wall and using their brute strength to turn the winch connected to the heavy portcullis.

  The way open, Augustus shot a parting glare at the guards, snapped the reins and rode off into the noble’s district.

  It was quieter than the rest of the city. The damage of the hell spawn’s rock pods, that they robe from Gorgax’s back high in the air, was notably absent. Unlike the rest of the city, where the large rocks had smashed into buildings, cratered the cobbled streets and killed hundreds, the noble’s district had thus far been untouched by the invasion. Instead of hell spawn, it was the small, private armies of Lodum that marched the streets, keeping order and reminding everyone inside the walls to whom the city belonged.

  The tops of the walls were crowded with fae. They looked out over the rest of the city, chatting and gossiping about what was going on—spectators of the most exciting event in hundreds of years. Some of them broke away to watch Augustus come into the district, no doubt eyeing Mona was hatred and disgust. The anti-human racism that the Hellfire Guild had spent so much effort building in Lodum was strongest among the unwashed masses. The weak and poor who had to be strung along and told what to believe. But the sentiment had also fostered inside the noble’s district. Largely due to the fact that, as it had always been, humans were lowest on the social hierarchy. Nobles were at the top. Their aloofness, and handkerchief distaste of humans had turned into outright malice. Augustus stroked a hand over Mona’s hair to make it fall over her ears, which were previously exposed. It wouldn’t do to draw more trouble. Many of the people inside the district knew Augustus, but most did not. As heir to the Hyde family, he was too important to mingle with thousands of commoner fae who worked in the district, or even the lesser nobility. But they saw the horse, and they the guards had let them inside. All should be fine.

  Should is not a guarantee, Augustus reminded himself, keeping a watchful eye. Chaos was spreading through the rest of Lodum. Riots and fires, skirmishes, even executions as Lord Korka assumed legal authority over Faerie’s capital and dealt swift justice. Like the racism, it would only be a matter of time until the chaos leaked past the walls and into Lodum’s finer streets.

  The estate was at the farthest edge of the district. Unlike below, Augustus would not be able to gallop through the streets and force everyone aside—not with the other noble’s armies on patrol.

  Augustus slowed his steed to a trot. He dismounted, gathered Mona off the saddle. Everyone on the street was watching, but he didn’t pay them any mind. He cradled Mona in his arms and strode up to the front door of the district’s best apothecary, hoping that he wasn’t too late.

  2

  Mona

  Mona woke with a shuddering gasp.

  The prisoner!

  The woman’s long, tangled hair, matted and dirty from years in the Turndour dungeons, was the first thing that came to Mona’s mind. It was blasted from her thoughts by a spike of pain.

  She cried out, reached for where it hurt, and touched the stump of her arm.

  “What’s going on? You said she wouldn’t feel anything.”

  “I’ll up the dosage. Hold her still.”

  Strong hands with long fingers took hold of Mona. Pushed her back onto her bed and held her there firmly. She knew it was for her own good—that she should be dead, and someone had saved her. But her body couldn’t help itself, and tried to writhe, twisting as she moaned to escape from the pain.

  Another pair of hands touched her forehead. Cool and soft, they brought relief. Numbness, settling over her entire body. It made her eyelids droop. Sleep threatened to take her once again. Mona growled and fought it off.

  “Tell me…what’s going on,” she groaned, gulping past her dry throat.

  “You are safe,” said the first voice. Mona couldn’t place it; it didn’t sound like anyone she knew. “We are in the noble’s district.”

  “Who are you?” Mona asked. Both fae walked around her bed to the front, where she could see them. Neither looked familiar. Was my memory damaged? “Where’s Augustus?”

  Saying his name recalled to Mona what she had been feeling in those last moments at Turndour: the desire to serve House Hyde, impress Yonafrew, stop the prisoners from escaping…I failed. Mona slumped back into bed. Augustus had probably dropped her off to be healed, then returned to House Hyde. At this moment shaking his head as he told his father that Mona was no good. Despite all the training, despite the behelit seed…Mona clenched her fist. Her mind told her that she could clench both of them—that the other one was doing that just now. It thought that she still had her other arm.

  Mona looked down at the empty air where her arm should be next to her side. Empty to her eyes, yet it felt as if she was moving it. She shook her head. Her mind would learn and adapt.

  It’s the stages of grief, right? What are they? Denial, anger, depression, acceptance? That’s what my body’s going through right now. It will learn to accept the missing part of me, just as I learned to accept my dead family.

  “…She’s not answering. Did you give her too much?”

  “Possibly. She shouldn’t be feeling any pain now.”

  “Mona, can you hear me?”

  Fuzzy sounds, coming as if from the street outside. Mona drifted off into sleep, thinking once again of the long-eared woman running towards her, wearing nothing but rags and long, matted hair.

  But her eyes! Emerald green and wide with fu
ry, they had been the last thing that Mona saw before her arm was removed from her body.

  Mona whimpered, the last sound she made before sleep came like the tide to reclaim her.

  Mona lights a candle. Her mother claps. “I’m so proud of you,” her father says. Newt gurgles, too young to know that Mona just casted her first spell.

  It’s a day of celebration. Mona is gifted, of course, but the magic showed itself much earlier than is usual. “You will be a strong mage,” her parents say. “Just like your grandmother.”

  There is cake. Everyone is smiling. Relatives arrive from out of town for dinner, even her great uncle Roger. It’s like her birthday, except it’s unexpected, which makes it even better.

  Mona spends all of her waking hours lighting candles. Soon there aren’t any left in the house, and she accidentally sets a curtain on fire. Her father laughs, and quickly puts it out. “The Academy is going to have its hands full,” he tells mother.

  Months pass. It’s late at night. Mona wakes up. She hears shouting coming from downstairs. She’s never heard shouting in the house before, and goes to investigate. There is a man wearing a funky old robe standing by the door. Father is standing in front of him. Mother is further back, leaning against the wall. She has her arms crossed over her chest and looks very worried, like the day when Mona was almost hit by a car.

  From the top of the stairs, Mona hears the man say, “…will not ask a second time.”

  Mona’s father does not like this. “Get out!” he roars. “This is my home, my city. Your threats will do nothing.”

  “I am warning you, for your own good,” says the man. He moves for the door, spots Mona from the corner of his eye and smiles at her. Her parents do not notice.