Faerie Queen: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 3 : Part I) Page 2

  “Do not come here again,” says Mona’s father, and slams the door behind the man. Mother rushes over and locks it, then casts a large warding spell that covers the entire door and the wall around it.

  Mona sneaks back to her bedroom.

  A year passes. Mona visits the Academy for the first time. It will be a long time until she can enter the junior program, but her father wanted to show her anyway. “This is where you will learn all about magic,” he says. Mona is in awe. She doesn’t want to leave, and falls asleep at the end of the day on her father’s lap, after asking him a thousand different questions. Newt wanted to come, but had to stay home with mother. “It’s a special trip for the two of them,” mother explained. “Don’t worry, one day you’ll get to go too.”

  Mona can’t sleep. She keeps thinking about the Academy, about magic and how wonderful it is. How she’s so lucky to be a gifted. She levitates one of her stuffed animals, a giraffe she named Tony. It stays in the air for only a few seconds before plopping back down onto her bed covers. Mona’s magical well is almost empty, but she doesn’t want to stop. She wants to learn more and more, and get stronger and stronger, until she can lift a real giraffe. Then her parents will be really proud. Newt will be jealous, but he’s going to be a good mage too. He hasn’t casted his first spell yet, but Mona knows. He’s smart. He watches Mona when she casts spells and tries to copy her.

  A terrible smell comes into her room, under the door. Mona thinks it might be smoke from a fire, but she knows that’s not quite right. It’s something else.

  Mona goes to investigate. As she opens her door, a heavy thump sounds from downstairs. Suddenly she’s scared. The terrible smell fills the whole house, and she creeps down the hallway to her parents’ bedroom.

  “Dad?” she whispers. No answer. Mona looks inside and sees an empty bed. Panic sets in, overriding her fear. She runs downstairs, searching for her parents.

  Mother is laying on the kitchen floor. Father is squared off with the man in the funky old robe. There’s blood around mother’s head.

  The man in the robe sees Mona first. He smiles as she runs to her mother’s side and shakes the limp body. Father spins around. “No!” he shouts.

  The smell comes again, a fresh wave of it so strong that Mona gags and coughs. Tears well in her eyes, blurring her vision. A claw of shadow reaches out from over the shoulder of the robed man and into father’s chest. He gasps, his eyes widen, then his face goes slack. The claw disappears, and father falls to the ground. There isn’t any blood, but Mona knows that he is dead.

  She screams and screams until the robed man comes over and grabs her by the hair. Only then does Mona remember her magic, the first spell that she ever casted. The one that her father taught her.

  The man’s robes light on fire. He drops Mona, and she runs, out the front door and into the night. Tears stream down her cheeks. At first, she runs aimlessly. And then, to get help. Heading for the Academy.

  There was no pain the next time Mona woke. The stump where her arms used to be, right next to her shoulder, had been treated with magical balm and bandaged. It itched, but nothing more.

  “She’s back. How are you feeling, Mona?”

  Mona laughed dryly. “What happened? Where are the others?”

  “The guardsmen are back at the estate.” The fae walked to the front of her bed. He set down a wooden chair and sat on it, watching Mona in the face with great intent. Looking for something.

  “Who are you?” He was obviously nobility. Mona could tell that much from the way he spoke and moved his body. A servant of Lord Hyde’s, perhaps?

  The fae softly sighed. “I am Augustus Hyde. The same one you always knew. I now longer wear my glamour. This is what I really look like.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Mona, looking him up and down. “I knew from the start that something was off.” She coughed, and the other fae handed her a glass of water. “I suppose you had your reasons.”

  “Forgive me,” said Augustus, graciously.

  The words set Mona on edge, and triggered the shame rotting deep in her heart.

  Forgive you! For rescuing me? For letting me come along? For giving me all that I have?

  Augustus’s apology only served to remind Mona of her many shortcomings. The depth to which she was indebted to the Hyde’s…and how much she had let them down.

  A talentless, one-armed freak. That’s all I am, an embarrassment.

  “Show her the arm,” said Augustus.

  The other fae opened a drawer and came to Mona’s side. He held out an arm made of stone and metal. “To replace your old one,” the man said.

  It was a crude construction, entirely lacking beauty. But beauty was no longer an option for Mona. Striving for it would be a fool’s errand. She was about to agree to take the arm when the man continued.

  “Not this one, of course. This is only a model. I will have to measure your other arm and craft a duplicate for you. Not an exact duplicate,” he added, with a chuckle.

  Mona glared at him, letting a surge of raw magic enter her veins. “Do you find this amusing?”

  “N-no,” the man stuttered, taken aback.

  “Do you think that you can latch me with whatever hunk of metal you have stored away?” Mona smacked the arm out of the man’s hand. It fell to the floor, a delicate part of it breaking off into little pieces.

  Augustus hasn’t left me. I’m still part of House Hyde, and the behelit remains in my control. Act like a noble! Don’t settle for the first thing offered! This isn’t the Academy. You have a new life now.

  Mona raised her chin and gave the man a look of disgust. He hurriedly scooped up the prop arm and put it back in its drawer. Augustus regarded Mona with narrowed eyes. Per usual, she could not read his expression.

  “Your new arm will be delivered to the estate when it is ready,” Augustus said. “Farmot is one of Lodum’s best artificers. You can trust him to do a good job of it.”

  “Of course,” Mona replied. “When can we return to the estate?”

  “As soon as you are ready.”

  Mona turned herself so her legs hung off the side of what she had thought was a bed and now realized was an operating table. She felt bloated and nauseous, and still light-headed from tapping too deeply into the seed’s magic. But she had to get back to the estate. The longer she stayed away, the more Yonafrew would doubt her ability, think she was injured, incapable of looking after herself or working in the interests of the Hyde family. Even if she was bedridden for days, being in her room at the estate would be ten times better than in some doctor’s office right off the street.

  Mona took a deep breath, held it in, and stepped to the floor. She was able to stand, a little hunched over, and take a step in Augustus’s direction. For the first time, she noticed that her cream-colored clothes were dark with her blood. My hair too, no doubt.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Are you sure? You will have to ride on my horse.”

  “Good,” said Mona, not at all looking forward to showing her dirty, mangled body to the crowds on the streets. “The faster I get to a shower, the better.”

  3

  Amber

  Amber had never been so frightened in all of her life. She was led up to the gallows in the large square of the Faerie capital. Only two hours ago she had been laying on the couch at home, trying to contact Suri. It had been in the midst of her communication attempt that two enforcers had kicked down her apartment door and dragged her back to their headquarters. On the way they had not listened to anything that she told them, or answered her questions.

  The enforcer chief, McNaulty, had laughed when Amber told her she did nothing wrong, that it was a mistake, they got the wrong person.

  “You’re an accomplice,” he had said. “Your friend, Suri, is a wanted criminal, and so is Maggie.”

  “The priest?” Amber asked, gawking at him. What he was saying was impossible.

  “Yes, the priest,” McNaulty repli
ed with a smile. His greasy lips looked like two worms attached to the bottom of his face. There was a dark gleam in his eyes that made Amber not trust him, to say little of the fact that she had been dragged out of her apartment without so much as a word from the enforcers, other than “shut up,” and “get in the car.”

  It had not taken long after that for Amber to be put into a cell, and see the fae and a number of unscrupulous characters walking about the enforcer HQ. Something had gone terribly wrong; the enforcers were compromised, and the councillors had lost control of the San Francisco area. The councillor was missing, she knew, but it seemed crazy that, in the short time of his absence, evil could so easily infiltrate the gifted community.

  Now Amber was in Lodum, the Faerie capital that she had always wanted to visit and Suri had told her she could not come. For good reason, it seemed. The fae hated humans. Amber had been spit at, kicked, pushed and shoved as the creepy hell spawn guards had paraded her, her brother Paulie, and the other humans through the streets.

  At first she had been glad to see her brother, and the other humans that she had known from San Francisco before they made the move to Faerie. Now she wished she had not seen them at all—she wished that she was alone up there on the gallows, because they were all going to die.

  Amber didn’t care that she was crying openly. She didn’t care that it gave the fae satisfaction, who were lined up outside the row of hell spawn guards along the edges of the square, jeering and making lewd gestures in her direction.

  Some of them held banners and pieces of cut out cloth with a red trident on them, and a human head with x’s for eyes, and a stuck-out tongue. It was not at all like the faerie tales; the monsters were supposed to be hidden in the dark, only coming out rarely, to be quickly defeated by heroes. The whole city was not supposed to be like this, infested with brash, open hatred. It wasn’t right.

  Is this what she’s been suffering through this whole time? Amber asked herself about Suri, on her courier trips. Is this what she has been shielding me from? No, I would have known, even if she tried to hide it. There’s no way I wouldn’t have known. Right? Besides, Suri said that she found a boyfriend, so obviously some fae don’t hate humans. Only most of them.

  It didn’t seem real to Amber that she was about to die, and without knowing why, who benefitted from it, or what she had done to piss someone off.

  Suri, Amber realized, as the executioner stood he up on a box, tightened the rope around her neck then moved on to the next person, a fae with golden hair, beautiful blue eyes and two scars across his face. His face held immense anger.

  The fae really are beautiful, she thought as she scanned the crowd. Even if their personalities are ugly.

  She tried to find Paulie in the line of humans waiting for their turn at the gallows.

  She could not pick him out; they all had bags over their heads, so she could not tell one from the other. There were about twenty of them. She knew that her brother was there, and the others who had escaped the fire, because she had seen them when they were rounded up and made ready for the journey, from their holding cells to the square.

  Old instincts kicked in, traditions that were rarely practiced anymore but her parents had taught her as a child. Amber began praying Hail Mary, the first prayer that came to mind.

  She was in Hell, and although calling on God’s grace was not something that she had done in decades, it seemed to work for Suri. She was always the brave one between them, ready to face danger head-on. For the first time, Amber wondered if part of that confidence came from devotion to the divine, something greater than herself and the material world.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners…” Amber’s breath caught in her chest. “Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

  The last of the group of them on the gallows was having the nooses tightened around their neck, and being stood up on a box. It would not be long until the trapdoors dropped out from beneath all their feet, and they were dangling, doing the hangman’s dance in the last moment of their lives. A terrible way to die, and in front of a crowd whose anger their deaths were meant to appease.

  Amber began trembling. The executioner began reading from a scroll of parchment in the Faerie language. Amber had never bothered to study it, and unlike Suri had never needed to pick up the basics, so she did not know what was being told to the crowd. But they sounded like grave words, the type that you proclaim before killing someone.

  The crowd yelled louder, and the man had to raise the volume of his voice so his declaration could be heard. She and her brother would die—Amber knew that much. She only hoped that Suri had not shared the same fate. McNaulty, the son of a bitch, had said that she was Wanted. Amber did not trust him to know everything that was going on in Lodum, if Suri had lived or died, or was captured. But unless Suri had returned to Earth since the last time she and Amber spoke, her best friend was still here, meaning that McNaulty couldn’t have captured her and given her to the hell spawn.

  All communication had been cut off. Amber’s tattoo, twin to Suri’s, below Amber’s left ear, no longer tingled. She felt no connection to Suri, even as she tried her hardest in her last moments to warn her best friend of what was happening.

  Suddenly, silence.

  The words stopped coming from the executioner. The man paused, quirking his head slightly to one side, and then rolled up the parchment, having stopped what appeared to be partway through his declaration, sentencing, or whatever the hell he had been going on about. Amber and the others waited with bated breath.

  The crowd began to boo and jeer, this time at the executioner rather than the humans. Some even tried to get through the line of hell spawn, pushing and shoving against the round copper shields. But they held strong, unmoving, and kept the crowd back from rushing the gallows and carrying out the executions themselves.

  Hell spawn guards came up onto the gallows and cut the bonds tying Amber’s hands behind her back, then led her back to the line with the other humans, down in the market square.

  Thankfully they did not cover up Amber’s eyes again, so she was able to watch, sniffling with tears running down her cheeks, as the man who had been reading from the parchment spoke to a hell spawn guard who had a red plume atop his copper helmet. Amber assumed that he was a hell spawn captain, and that her prayer had been heard. The execution was no longer going to take place. Of course, that led to the greater question of what was going to happen to her. She was relieved, adrenaline blasting through her veins, anxiety making her hyperventilate, but Amber knew, as all gifted had been taught in the Academy, that there were fates worse than death.

  Gifted could be used for all kinds of experiments conducted by black magic users, of which there were many in Faerie. Perhaps the person who had ordered Amber and the humans captured had found a better use for them—to be guinea pigs for a newly crafted spell. So Amber did not allow herself to celebrate just yet. First she had to get the hell out of the square, find Suri, and get them all back to San Francisco where they would be safe. The recent necromancer attacks did not feel like such a big threat anymore. And never, ever, would Amber let Suri or anyone else she knew come back to this foul place. The fae wanted all humans gone? Fine, that was just fine by Amber. They could go back to the old days when the only communication between Earth and Faerie was done by the Masters and councillors, when it was absolutely necessary.

  Amber did not know who it was that she passed, because of the black bags over the heads, or if the person was fae or human. But as the guards took her past the line of people waiting to be executed, she grabbed the nearest hand and squeezed reassuringly, telling the person that things had turned for the better. Amber knew from the time when her head had been covered that there was no way of knowing that the executions had been stopped, at least for the time being, their lives granted a few more hours, maybe days. For now, they we
re ok. The refugees had another chance. It was up to them to find a way to buy even more time to escape back to Earth.

  The hand squeezed back. Amber went on down the line. The hell spawn behind her shoved her hard in the back with the haft of his spear, making Amber stumble forward. She was unable to squeeze any more hands and let them know that things were ok for now, but passing down the line she was able to brush her fingers against all the others, a subtle sign, not telling them anything for certain, not giving them any reason to think their lives were being shared, but it was still a bit of human warmth and reassurance, a boost of courage to better face the unknown.

  The hell spawn shoved Amber into a place near the front of the line, and they stared to move out, away from the market square. We’re going back to the holding area where they kept us.

  It was a dungeon, a squalid cell with bars and smelly hay straw covering the ground. Amber hoped they did not return there, that the change in plans meant they were headed somewhere else. The dungeon did not seem the kind of location that people lived in for long.

  A rock hit Amber on the shoulder. Another one clipped her head. She yelped and ducked, hiding from the assault. The fae mob angrily threw bits of rock and bits of the ceramic tiles of a nearby roof at her and the other humans. The hell spawn folded in around the humans with military precision, raising their shields to block the projectiles. They fell into a tortoise formation and cut through the crowd, leaving the market square and moving down a street with the humans in running column, between them like the meat of a sandwich.

  The shouts of the fae mob followed them. Amber ran, trying not to trip over the person in front of her. The hell spawn kept them jogging at a quick pace for half an hour, going uphill, then down, twisting through winding streets that were sometimes too narrow for the hell spawn to protect them on both sides. Amber found that she was bleeding from a scrape on her head, from a thrown rock. Her hair was dirty and unwashed from staying the night on stable straw, and having been taken from her apartment ten hours since her last shower.