She crossed a street, easily dodging cars that roared past. Then Eilidh stepped into the shadows, her back hugging a tall tree on the North Inch, a square mile of manicured green on the edge of the city, now cast in complete darkness. Her heart beat rapidly within her chest.
Tugging back her hood, she listened hard. A dog barked. A distant siren howled. A human ran along the circular track around the park. The water of the River Tay lapped gently against its banks. Cars crossed the Old Bridge.
Eilidh whispered to the night. A’shalei tedrecht. Nothing. It was risky, casting with another of her race nearby, perhaps even watching, and her ability was weak. But the scent had dissipated. It had led her this way and then disappeared. She doubted the traffic alone could have so completely obscured the scent.
Walking across the green to the water’s edge, Eilidh could not resist the pull that drew her eyes to the hills. Beyond them lay the kingdom that had cast her out. The order had been “kill on sight.” It would never be lifted. The fae did not forgive or forget. Her crime was in her blood, and there could be no restitution.
She pulled the hood to cover the long, twisted points of her ears and headed back to St Paul’s. The crumbling church had been her home for nearly a quarter of a century. Townspeople wanted it torn down. Developers wanted it turned into a wine bar or an art museum. Eilidh wanted a place where she could watch. She would have her way, and the humans would never understand why all their plans fell through. She might feel sorry for them if she cared, but she did not.
Blue lights flashed into her sensitive silver-green eyes. She cut through Mill Wynd, slithering along two-hundred-year-old stone walls to watch the commotion below. Men in bright yellow jackets stood in groups of two and three, behind a cordon they’d placed around the body. Eilidh listened to their chatter with curiosity. She caught words like “butcher”, which confused her. No meat-seller had done this. Could they not recognise evil when they saw it so plainly manifested?
She was dismayed that they could not smell what she had tracked, but at the same time, relief filled her. Whatever had done this was not of their world, and they would not have the means to deal with it. For them to try to hunt this thing would only mean many human deaths. In theory, Eilidh did not mind human deaths any more than she regretted the death of the lamb whose skin she wore on her feet, but she did not like the idea of a predator in her city, feeding on innocence, killing to nourish darkness.
It had been twenty-five years since Eilidh had borne the weight of any responsibility except to feed herself. She was no longer a Watcher. She could ignore it. Easily. The evil might move on. The dark faerie might not return. But even as the thought formed, she knew it was not true. Some twisted creature of her own kind had come into the city to hunt or to steal. The humans could not stop it. Only she could.
She cast her eyes to the north, to the half-mile back where she’d lost the scent. When her gaze returned to the human police, she saw one looking directly at her. She swore. Faith. Slamming her back into the stone, she felt him approach, heard the thunk of his rubber-soled shoes against the concrete as he inched closer. He was wary; she could smell sweat and uncertainty. From the darkness, she turned to face him and raised her chin enough to peer out from under the black hood. A flash of something passed over his face. Something in his expression paralysed her for an instant. Instead of being repelled by her magic, he seemed drawn to it. Worse yet, he saw her eyes.
He hesitated only a moment before he said, “Don’t be afraid, son. I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Because she was taller than the average human female and slight of frame, city people often mistook her for a teenaged boy. That she wore a hooded sweatshirt and dark jeans helped the illusion. She slipped away, skirting around the building to a small car park behind her. Rolling to the ground, she darted underneath a squat red vehicle. She hated the stench of machinery. Even after so long in the city, she couldn’t accept the smells that invaded her keen nose on a daily basis. She breathed the word, deny.
His shoes passed quickly, but he paused as though sensing her. Was that possible? She had been a Watcher, and she knew how to track and go unseen. No human could detect her magic, and yet, this one hesitated. His worn black shoes stopped directly in front of her. If she’d wanted to, she could have reached out and traced a finger along his laces, or lashed out and broken his ankles, depending on her mood.
She had no desire to hurt the human and knew if she did, it would only bring more police. She dismissed the idea that he might capture her. Humans were bigger, yes, and stronger, of course, but Eilidh was not defenceless. She hid only to protect her secrets.
Most fae could pass for human on cursory inspection, and depending on their colouring, some even at close range. But no human could stare deep into her eyes and not sense the Otherworld. The locals had an expression, “a fey look.” It wasn’t too far off the mark. Her white hair could be a wig or dye. But her eyes had flecks of silver that swam with the magic of her people. Her blood was pure and her lineage ancient.
The police officer’s feet turned after a few long moments. He walked up and down the car park, nearly all the way to the old mill. Eilidh didn’t move. She knew how to be patient. She’d stalked both deer and men for hours. Eventually he gave up and returned to St Paul’s Square. When he did, she followed in the shadows.
∞
Cridhe trembled, his eyes fixed to the south, his blood coursing with power. The tension in his limbs relaxed as he released the darkness that hid him. When that beautiful warrior had spoken her enchantment, she’d teased the edges of his power. It had aroused him even further. Considering that his skin already tingled and every sense, both physical and magical, was heightened from the kill, it shocked him that any sight could distract him. He anticipated the delights to come later that night and recalled the unbearable pleasure of every past sacrifice. Still her memory tugged his attention. But why? He’d heard of the outcast, naturally. He had not expected to encounter her or to be both pursued by and drawn to her.
A siren started some miles in the distance and drew closer. How could she stand living among them? Under the best of circumstances, he loathed the noises humans made with their cars and trains, but tonight the wail screamed in his thrumming ears. He had to get away from the city to finish what he’d started. Cridhe had little difficulty evading the kingdom Watchers. His blood magic closed their ears and eyes to his presence.
He inhaled deeply and let the scent of fresh blood fill his nose. His fingers went to the pouch that hung across his body, and caressed the human heart that still beat through the power of his blood magic. His essence throbbed with vitality so fierce he caught his breath. Suddenly consumed with hunger, Cridhe turned and left the city behind.
Chapter 2
Police Constable Quinton Munro stopped dead in his tracks. He could have sworn he heard tapping behind him, but when he turned, he saw no one.
“Spooked, eh?”
Munro sought out the speaker, expecting a ribbing from his partner, but even though Getty’s voice was full of bravado, his face was pale and shaken. They’d been first on the scene. “It’s a dead vicious one, that,” Munro said.
“Aye,” Getty agreed.
Munro fought the urge to turn again. He might have convinced himself he’d imagined the sounds, if it weren’t for a prickling on the back of his skull. He felt as though he was being watched. Things like that happened, and he knew not to dismiss it, no matter how tempting it might be. His sergeant said he was both the unluckiest bastard on the force and the luckiest. The other coppers called him haunted. He’d like to chalk it up to luck, but luck was only supposed to sneak up on you every once in a while, to explain the inexplicable. It didn’t hang around your neck like a bloody millstone.
So nobody was surprised when Munro called in that he was on scene within moments of an emergency treble-nine call. When he’d told Getty to take a left off Atholl while returning to the station after a domestic, G
etty didn’t argue. In fact, his partner didn’t seem to think twice. Munro had a difficult time not telling him to hurry.
Sometimes a bad feeling nagged. Other times a hunch would twist his gut. This one screamed in his head and clawed the insides of his eyes.
Sergeant Hallward barked his name as he approached the Police Do Not Cross tape protecting the crime scene. The sergeant pulled Munro and Getty aside and nodded, waiting for their report.
“Sarge. At 20:45 we were passing and I noticed a man.” Munro consulted a small, blue notebook. “Gregory Johnson, yelling and waving his hands to flag us down.”
Hallward interrupted. “You were passing.” Not a question. More a statement saying he knew they were in an unusual place at an unusual time.
“Aye. I’d wanted to stop at the chippie,” Munro said. They both knew he was lying, but it was for the best. When the sergeant nodded, Munro continued. “Mr Johnson showed us the body. Said he’d just called 999. Getty secured the scene while I called it in.” Munro hadn’t wanted to call it in, but if he’d balked, he’d have to face that it was because of his damned “luck.”
He was fast gaining a reputation for always being on the spot of the worst crimes. Just once, he wanted to ignore the pull, but instincts like this one were always right. Not usually…always. Every time he felt it, he wanted to keep going and let some other sod be first on the scene. Then he’d reminded himself why he became a copper to begin with. One day, he thought, he’d get there before disaster struck, and he’d prevent someone from having the worst night of his life.
His gaze went to the body. It lay as they’d found it. Soon SOCO, the scenes of crime officers, would arrive and put a white tent over the gruesome display. “We have a name?” he asked Sergeant Hallward. Munro hadn’t touched the body to search for ID, but forensics and CID, the Criminal Investigation Department, were en route and would be there within minutes. Impressive, considering how few murders Perth saw. Domestic abuse and drug related crime, they saw those every day, but this was different. The shock on the victim’s face wasn’t something Munro would forget any time soon. Nor was the savage rip in the chest or the smell that poured from it.
“CID will check it out,” Hallward said. His eyes searched Munro’s.
“Vicious.” Munro repeated the assessment he’d made earlier to Getty. “Seems personal.”
Getty spoke up. “Can’t get much more personal than ripping someone’s heart out.”
Munro turned to the sergeant. “A lad was hanging about a few minutes ago. Took off like a light when I approached. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Skinny kid. Maybe he saw something. Could have just been a nosy bugger, but I got a feeling.” Munro shrugged. He didn’t like talking about his hunches. “Be a bastard to find though. Dark jeans and a hood. Didn’t get a good look at his face. Had light eyes.” Those eyes had latched on to Munro and made his gut lurch.
Hallward nodded at Getty. “Did you see him?”
“Not his face. Scarpered pretty quick.” Getty gestured toward Mill Street.
“He wasn’t one of the usuals. Clothes were baggy, but clean,” Munro said.
An ambulance pulled up, immediately followed by two other cars. Munro recognised Detective Inspector Boyle and Detective Sergeant Hayes as the two CID officers, as well as the Home Office pathologist.
A drop fell from the sky and landed on Munro’s shoulder, quickly followed by another.
“Bloody hell,” someone said.
Sergeant Hallward turned to Munro and Getty. “Going to be a long night.”
Forensic technicians dressed in protective white jumpsuits worked quickly to take pictures and collect evidence before the coming rain washed away something the murderer left behind. The three policemen stayed on the cordon to protect the scene as the SOCOs did their job.
A strange flurry above him made Munro glance up.
“Fuckin’ pigeons,” Getty said and shrugged with a hard scowl etched on his face.
For just a moment, Munro wondered if Getty could also sense they were being watched. He let his eyes wander to the walls of the other buildings around the little square. The glare of the scene lights made it hard to see anything but gloom.
∞
A light pressure tapped Eilidh’s toe. She looked down in the darkness of the church steeple, and a smile flitted across her tense mouth. “It’s you, is it? Where have you been? I thought the barber next door must’ve finally caught you. He’s been after you for weeks, you know.” She’d not had much difficulty getting past the policemen. Humans saw what they wanted to see, and she’d been careful to approach the church from the opposite side.
Crouching low, she pulled a few crumbs from her pocket and offered them to the rat. He came close, unafraid, and Eilidh scratched behind his ear. With twitching whiskers, he chattered with appreciation. His feet tapped the wooden planks as he retreated to the building’s lower levels.
Eilidh stood again and peered outside, fascinated that her quiet street had become such a hive of activity. Blue lights flashed, and they’d cordoned off Old High Street Wynd, blocking what little traffic went by. The vehicle movement had slowed in recent years, since the humans put up signs telling each other to drive only in one direction. It amazed her that they could be so organised and follow arbitrary rules of which way to face, but despite her doubts, they saw the blue arrows and red circles and obeyed. The fae never used signs or markers. Magical boundaries told them all they needed to know.
She watched three policemen below. One was taller than the other two. He was broad and erect like a stone wall. In her time in the human city, she’d noticed the police often had that stance, as if making themselves oak-like would deter wrongdoers. Perhaps it did.
The people were so different, and even after a quarter of a century in this tiny tower, watching them every day, Eilidh did not truly understand them. Fae warriors were silent, agile, and their greatest strength came from their ability to channel the seasons. Stature was irrelevant to power. She’d watched the humans through their windows, but never entered a human home. She saw them on the streets, but never engaged them in conversation. Her fate was to be apart.
To hear her father Imire tell it, at one time the fae got along well with humans, back before Scotland was called Caledonia and before the Picts came under the rule of one God. Those people had understood the power of the Elder Race. Eilidh’s brow furrowed as she remembered her father’s voice and the way he would mutter about modern humans. Her gaze went to the dense clouds that dropped rain on the scene below. Her father loved rain. His strength came from the second season, and he knew how to draw from water. Rain held the element of air and the earth rose to meet it, bringing the power of the first and third seasons with it.
When Eilidh looked down again, the humans were walking away. She caught the sounds of their speech, and she recognised the one who’d spoken to her, the one who’d seen through her shadows. A name drifted to her from the lips of the soldier-like policeman. He called the other Munro. The word tickled at her ear and found its way to her lips. “Munro,” she whispered.
She had not intended to put power into the word, but the instant it left her mouth, he turned and cast his eyes upward. She stepped into the shadows, her heart pounding. She’d heard of true druids, in stories her father told, but thought they must have died out, as humans turned away from magic and embraced invention. When Eilidh inched forward again, he no longer looked toward her. They had greeted another group of policemen, and they all swarmed around the human carcass. She suddenly felt vulnerable in her spire. She climbed down to a more central level of the church, angry at the murderous faerie that brought this disruption to her doorstep.
Anger was a sensation Eilidh had rarely experienced before her exile. Her father tried to protect her when everyone learned the secret of her forbidden magical talents, but what more could he have done? What choice did they have? The fae didn’t have prisons. When the death order came, her father had visited on the pretence of allowing her
to consecrate her soul to the Earth. No one suspected her father, the upright priest, would send her on the run. All would consider that fate worse than finding the peaceful embrace of the Mother.
“I didn’t teach you enough about humans,” was all he said when he entered the room where she’d been left under guard.
“You taught me nothing about them.”
“Come, Eilidh. It is time to pay tribute to the Mother.”
So, it would be tonight. She remembered staring straight into the guard’s eyes as they passed. He had tensed, and she felt a small pleasure in knowing he was afraid of her, even though her father held her inside a binding bubble that cut her off from the Ways of Earth. The pleasure was short lived when she considered that he thought her to be a monster.
I did not mean to cast the azure.
Soon, she and her father stood within the stone circle. He released the binding and put up a shield of magic around the stones. “The binding would be an affront to the Mother,” he said. “None can be brought into Her presence against their will.” It had been Imire’s way to explain his every action to her. Even at her Rite of Final Prayers, he still instructed her.
A thick elm branch rested beside one of the stones. “Father,” she said. “The circle is broken by that branch.” She felt removed and distant, considering the ritual academically and not as her last opportunity to reconcile with the Goddess. But in her disbelief of all that had happened, she could not touch the emotions trapped within. Could this really be happening?
“Yes,” Imire said with a heavy sigh. “You must strike me with it to break my shielding, but not yet.”
Eilidh’s mind froze, not willing to grasp what she must do. How could she attack her own father in a holy place? Where would she go?
He turned to her with a tender expression. “I have been a distant father. I should have instructed you better. And now there is no time to make up for my failings.” He glanced up at the cloudy sky, his eyes shining like river crystals. “Remain within the human cities where our people’s power has faded to nothing.”
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