And finally there was the engagement ring Tali wore. When Stronge pressed her on the matter she said she had a fiancé, and yet she never once asked us to check in with him—to let him know what had become of his lover. Sure, her focus was on catching the man who killed her, but even so, that lack of consideration should have sent up a major red flag.
Talking of red flags, the platform we were occupying was starting to look like its own kind of perilous. An over-the-shoulder glance in the direction of the station concourse revealed the Vengari soldier who’d been lying in wait for the fae, only now he was heading in our direction, and at speed. The vampire was still a way away—far enough that I couldn’t make out his facial features but read his body language loud and clear. His shoulders were hitched, head hung low like an animal ready to pounce, and he wasn’t alone. Two more Vengari soldiers had joined him, their postures matching his, jaws thrust out, claws bared.
I had options here. This wasn’t a fight or flight situation. As far as the Vengari were concerned, I was working for them—the harelipped vampire who took Frank’s tongue made that pretty clear. There was nothing to stop me acting like I was here doing his dirty work; that I’d intended to hand the fae over to him and not the London Coven. After all, killer or not, I had every right to throw the Arcadian to the wolves. He wasn’t just any fae, he was the prince of the Unseelie Court, and everything I’d read about that lot spelled bad news. So what if he didn’t murder Tali? Who knew how many other scalps he had on his belt. He might not be guilty of this caper, but he was dirty all the same.
Then again, how could I really know that? I had no proof that the Arcadian in my custody was a wrong ‘un besides some things I’d read in a pile of yellowed old pages. All I knew for sure was that he didn’t kill my client. That was the case I got handed: to bring in a bloodthirsty murderer and avenge an innocent woman. Now what did I have? Far as I could tell, I was looking at a lovesick fae who chickened out of a double-suicide. A delinquent who did a runner from a wedding. How could I possibly hold that against him? God knows I wished I’d skipped out on my nuptials, it would have saved me a world of heartache.
I looked to Frank, then to the Arcadian. He was just a sick kid, really, or at least he looked that way. And there was something in his eyes… something that didn’t say killer. Try as I might, I couldn’t summon up a picture of a crusty machete lying under his bed. Until I knew for a fact that the guy deserved his fate, I couldn’t let the vamps get their hands on him, or anyone else. What happened next wasn’t up to the Vengari or the Arcadians, it was up to me.
‘Come on,’ I said, hustling him along the platform. ‘We’ve gotta scoot.’
Chapter Thirty-One: Together Forever
The Vengari were already through the ticket barriers and cutting off our exit. We weren’t getting through them. The best we could hope for was to find a way around.
I was searching for some way to wriggle off the line when a train pulled into the station with a raucous metal shriek. The carriage doors sprang open and vomited up a great flood of commuters, disgorging them onto the empty platform as one congealed mass. As the advancing scrum formed a wall between us and the vampires, I seized on the chance interference. Frank and I rode the tide, heads bowed, forcing the Arcadian to duck down with us as we manoeuvred ourselves to the other end of the platform. The Vengari fought a losing battle against the flow, desperately searching for their prey, but the chaos made us invisible. A quick cut to the left and we were heading for the station’s service exit with the vampires none the wiser.
‘Nice move,’ said the Arcadian.
‘Thanks,’ I replied, remembering our first encounter at the nightclub. ‘I stole it from you.’
We arrived at the service exit: a large shutter separating us from the street outside, chained and double-padlocked. The Vengari would find their way here soon, so we needed to get through quickly. Lucky for me, my corporeal companion had a knack for this kind of stuff.
‘Do the honours, would you, Frank?’
He wrapped his mitts around the chain and pulled it apart, sending a snapped link whizzing over my shoulder. With one hand he yanked the shutter aside and sent it screaming along its coaster. We shot through the exit like bullets from a machine gun, and off we went, moving as fast as our legs would carry us. The night was a puppy, but there was plenty to do.
The Arcadian was the first to slow. Despite keeping up the pace for a good half-mile, he eventually succumbed to a coughing fit that folded him in half. He looked so weak. So hard done by. I was having a tough time squaring the bloke coughing his guts into the gutter with the man who got the better of me twice. But then no wonder; all the evidence suggested the Arcadian wasn’t the ruthless killer Tali sent me after. That she’d made that man up. And I had a good idea why. Hell, I bet even Frank did.
‘She wants you dead so the pair of you can be together, doesn’t she? That’s why she hired us.’
The fae stopped coughing but said nothing. Even now, after everything Tali had put him through, he was loyal to her. Even after she sentenced him to death, he still loved her. He was on his own there. Tali lied to us—set me and Frank on a bogeyman that didn’t exist. She was so desperate not to suffer in limbo alone, so keen to see her lover dragged through the grey veil with her, that she pretended to be the wronged party, the hooker with the heart of gold who died at the hands of another cruel customer. She framed the man who jilted her at death’s door and set the dogs on him without a care for me and Frank.
It pissed me off. Tali played me, took advantage of my old-fashioned sense of chivalry, and it had worked. Once again I’d let some dame get one over on me, only this time I wasn’t the victim. Because of her, I almost sentenced a man to death for a crime he didn’t commit. It didn’t matter that it was love, not vengeance, that drove Tali to such extremes. The results could so easily have been the same. Another dead body. Another wasted life.
‘What a mess,’ said the Arcadian, propping his back against a wall, knees ready to buckle. ‘Look at all the trouble I’ve caused. Maybe I should just give Tali what she wants and put a bullet in my head.’
Frank groaned.
‘What’s he saying?’ asked the fae.
‘He’s saying you don’t want that. Take it from the pair of us, being dead ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.’
The Arcadian laughed and set off another coughing fit. While he hacked away, I asked myself what death meant for his kind. Were there fae in Heaven, I wondered? Were they part of God’s flock? Not that He was much of a shepherd anyway, at least going by the number of deceased souls left stranded here, tangled up like lambs in barbed wire.
On that grim thought, The Munsters theme tune kicked off and out came my phone. I checked who was calling, sighed, and dumped the thing back in my pocket.
‘Who was that?’ asked the Arcadian, still wheezing.
‘A detective I know.’
‘So why don’t you answer?’
‘Because I can’t be dealing with her “I told you so” right now.’
Stronge knew something was wrong with Tali’s story, and when she found out just how right she was she’d be sure to beat me over the head with it.
‘There’s something still bugging me,’ I told the Arcadian. ‘How come the vamps are so upset with you?’
A cold sweat had washed off most of his makeup by now, leaving barely a few streaks behind. ‘Because I stood up their bride.’
‘Yeah, I get that. The Vengari wanted to marry their girl off to your lot and merge houses, only Hugh Grant wanted to muck about with Divine Brown instead. So what? Can’t the vamps just fix their bit of totty up with some other geezer? There must be a hundred different flavours of Uncanny to choose from.’
The Arcadian—who probably caught about half of what I said there but figured the rest out using context clues—filled me in.
‘It’s about blood,’ he said, breathing shakily. ‘Fae blood and Vengari blood… they’re compatible, or at least
mine is with their candidate.’
‘So you and their princess can breed?’
The Arcadian nodded. Still struggling to catch a breath, he went on to explain that the child of such a union would have none of the faes’ intolerances to the modern world and could live comfortably in an urban sprawl. Additionally, they wouldn’t suffer the aversion to sunlight that blighted the vampire race, and the necessity to feed on human blood would be a trait that belonged only to their ancestors.
At last I had the full picture of what I was mixed up in. A fae-vengari half-breed would have all of the good stuff—magic, strength, speed—but none of the downsides. No wonder the vamps were so keen to catch the Arcadian and drag him to the altar for a shotgun wedding. And no surprise the Arcadians were prepared to hold their noses and mix blood with those Vengari cockroaches. This was about more than consolidating power. Much more. If the two factions succeeded in formalising their pact and creating a hybrid species, they’d become an unstoppable force. In a couple of generations we’d be looking at an unholy alliance that could rule the UK with an iron fist.
This wasn’t about a murder investigation, it was about the birth of a master race. Not for the first time, I’d found myself tangled in something so much bigger than I was. Why could it never be simple? Did every job have to turn into a whole bloody saga? I get that I had to do right by the Big Man, but I was trying to get into Heaven, not audition for Jesus.
‘Come on,’ I told the Arcadian. ‘Rest time’s over. Get your skates on.’
He did his best to comply but his legs unhinged and he sank to the ground. ‘Just go,’ he gasped, his throat tight, his voice cracked almost beyond comprehension.
‘No man left behind,’ I told him. ‘Frank, be a good lad and help the feller to his feet, would you?’
Frank hefted the Arcadian over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, and off we went, wending our way through the backstreets to Hammersmith.
‘Where are you taking me?’ asked the fae, his voice little more than an arid whisper.
‘Same place I was always taking you,’ I replied. ‘The London Coven.’
That was about the point the Arcadian blacked out.
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Witching Hour
We were walking the last cobbled stretch to the coven when sleeping beauty peeled back his peepers.
‘Good morning, Major,’ I said, despite the fact that it was distinctly nighttime.
‘Major?’ replied the Arcadian, still woozy as Frank set his feet down on the ground.
‘Never mind, it’s from an old sitcom,’ I said. ‘It occurs to me I don’t know your name. I’m Jake Fletcher and this is my partner, Frank. What do you want me to call you?’
The fae rubbed his eyes. ‘My name is Lneshes’sent.’
‘Right. Don’t suppose you’ve got a nickname I can say without giving myself a nosebleed?’
He shook his head.
‘Kid it is then.’
We came to the coven door. You might expect the entrance to the famous London Coven to be a thing to behold, but it’s nothing to write home about. No mystical etchings, no wrought iron bands, no fancy antique knocker, just a plain wooden door in need of a fresh lick of paint and a squirt of WD40.
‘Is this…?’
‘Hammersmith, yeah,’ I said.
The Arcadian gave me a hooded look and completed his question. ‘Is this the home of the witches of the London Coven?’
Frank chuckled. Even he knew better than that.
‘Used to be,’ I told the fae, ‘before they got potted by some bad bastard who ate magic for dinner.’
The ancient trio who established the coven were long gone, and with them, the wonder wall they built to protect the city from demonic slags. But they left behind a failsafe—a familiar they built to handle the rough and tumble stuff. Not the kind of familiar you might be thinking of, a cat or a crow or something like that, but a human-looking protector by the name of Stella Familiar. She was the one who kept the peace around these parts nowadays. The one who dispensed justice.
It’s funny, when I fantasised about Frank and me handing the Arcadian over to Stella, it wasn’t going to be for his benefit. How things had changed. The moment he blew up my world with his big reveal, I realised the kid wasn’t the enemy. In fact, he was the only thing standing between life as we knew it and an army of fanged blue fairies running amok. So instead of a perp-walk, I’d come to the coven looking for sanctuary, because this story was way too big for Fletcher & Fletcher. To make it through this one we needed to call in the big guns.
Frank rapped a knuckle on the coven door.
‘You’re looking better,’ I told the Arcadian, passing the time.
I didn’t say it to be polite. Even with makeup streaking his face and sweat still beading his forehead he looked much improved.
‘It’s this alley,’ he explained. ‘There’s magic here. A lot of it.’
‘That’s blind alleys for you.’
His nose wrinkled. ‘Blind what?’
‘Secret streets that normals can’t access. Can’t see, even.’
The Arcadian flexed his fingers and stood taller than I’d seen him stand. ‘Whatever it is, it’s making me better.’
‘No wonder. Pollution can’t touch you here. Blind alleys are their own thing, a sort of… wrinkle in reality.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s more than that. Magic is like oxygen to my kind. The place I come from swims in it. This city is a desert by comparison, but here in this alley… it’s like an oasis.’
I nodded politely and shared a secret look with Frank. I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was: Are we juicing up a bloke who’s about to turn on us? After all, it was only gut instinct telling me the kid was a black sheep among his kind and not just as rotten as the rest. The sooner we brought Stella in on this, the better. She’d have a better idea of who we were dealing with, and be able to nip any problems in the bud if my read was wrong.
Frank knocked again, louder this time. I pressed my ear to the door but heard nothing inside. What was the hold up? Everyone knew the coven’s door should be open at this hour; open to anyone who needed the resident’s help, anyway. It was common knowledge that tonight was for walk-ins, that visitors were welcome to stop by and request the coven’s assistance. So where was its last remaining member? Where was Stella Familiar?
‘You’re a ghost,’ noted the Arcadian, sensing my frustration. ‘If you want in, why don’t you just walk through the door?’
‘And set off about two-hundred magical countermeasures? I’m not ready for the knacker’s yard just yet, mate.’
What was keeping that woman? Was she back there having a kip or was she out and about fighting monsters? Maybe something urgent came up that she needed to deal with: some other looming catastrophe besides the one I was bringing to her door.
Frank knocked again and I decided to cover the conversational shortfall with some chit-chat.
‘Something keeps nagging at me: The Vengari have been knocking about for centuries. If you and your peeps wanted to mingle, why did you wait this long to come to London?’
‘It’s not that simple,’ the Arcadian replied. ‘Just like the door before us, this world was closed to my kind. For hundreds of years, modernity made it impossible for Arcadians to thrive here, but more than that, the magic was gone. Literally. When we first arrived in Old Albion—when Arthur sat upon the throne—magic ran rampant across this land. Then came the Age of Enlightenment and people stopped believing in things beyond the limits of their five senses. Science and philosophy reigned and magic became myth. We Arcadians had no choice but to leave. It wasn’t that we couldn’t survive here, we couldn’t exist.’
‘Then how come you’re back? What changed?’
‘You did. Your whole civilisation. This is a post-truth world now, where facts are no longer relevant. And when facts don’t matter, the unreal prospers.’
I only half-followed, so I let him go on.
&
nbsp; ‘Take a look around you, Jake Fletcher. This world of yours is so anti-science now that it has become pro-myth. An age of illusion is upon you. Is it any wonder that we Arcadians were able to return?’
‘Hold on a sec. Are you telling me because of you-know-who at Number 10 and these bloody anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers, fairies are back?’
‘That’s precisely what I’m telling you. The skin between our dimensions has thinned. We were held captive in a fantasy, but when reality became a fairy tale, the genie escaped the bottle.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. All I knew was, no one was answering this bloody door, so I decided to let myself in.
Chapter Thirty-Three: No Rest for the Wicca’d
‘How exactly did you do that?’ asked the Arcadian as Frank closed the front door behind us. ‘Didn’t you say the coven was sealed with all manner of magical protections?’
‘Yeah, but I found a key under the mat.’
Unsurprisingly, the fae wasn’t taken in by this.
‘Okay, I gave it a bit of the old razzle dazzle, that’s all. Nothing fancy.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘I broke in. I used a spell to disable the security measures and now here we are, bingo-bango.’
I was a dab hand at kleptomancy, but even still, I wouldn’t have stood a chance against the protections the coven’s original witches employed when they were around. It was only because Stella did the locking up these days, and her magic was geared more toward lobbing about fireballs than bolting doors, that I was able to pick the lock and gain access.
The Arcadian cast a wary look about the hallway. ‘Should we really be here without permission?’
I coughed on a laugh. ‘It’s just a spot of B&E, mate. I thought you were an unseelie fae. Aren’t you lot meant to be hard cases?’
All the same, the kid had a point. ‘Stella?’ I called. ‘You home, luv?’
Deadly Departed: A Supernatural Thriller (Fletcher & Fletcher, Paranormal Investigators Book 2) Page 19
