Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella

by A. G. Stewart

  If I failed, no one else would pick up my sword. No one would take my place. This was what I’d been born to do. I breathed out and felt the magic stir to life in my belly. The pain in my shoulder lessened, my heartbeat and breathing quickened, my limbs felt restless and alive.

  I followed Maarten, keeping my perch atop the console, and cut at his neck. My sword sliced through the bottom half of the scarf and left a beaded trail of blood in its place. He clutched at his neck, as though assessing the damage. I danced two steps closer and aimed for his heart.

  He blocked the blow, but only just barely. I reached back, grabbed a photo in its frame from the wall, and transformed it into a stone. I tossed it straight at Maarten’s head.

  A stone was too dissimilar from the photo for it to keep its form. It shattered against his skull, tiny bits of stone raining onto the carpet. From the dazed look in Maarten’s eye, it had still stunned him.

  “Nicole!” Anwynn called out. “Behind you.”

  I turned my head and saw, from the corner of my eye, two approaching sprites. They barreled into my back, little swords stabbing. “Anwynn,” I managed, trying to grab them with my injured arm, “I give you full permission to eat them.”

  “Good,” she said. “I already ate two.”

  And then Maarten had regained his composure. He sliced at me, forcing me back toward the wall. I grimaced as the sprites climbed over my back, stabbing as they went, as though I were a piece of land they needed to claim by planting as many sharp, pointy flags as possible.

  I leapt from the console, ducking into a roll. The gash in my shoulder burned, but I felt the crunch as I managed to crush one of the sprites beneath me. The other one darted free in time. “Anwynn, could use some help here!”

  “A bit busy at the moment,” she said. She turned in circles in the kitchen, trying to catch a sprite that had latched onto her tail.

  Maarten strode forward with easy determination, his cloak billowing behind him. My living room was a mess of overturned objects, little spatters of blood, and broken glass. Those goddamned sprites had ransacked my place, and in near-record time.

  I lifted my sword, ready to face him. And then I felt, more than saw, the remaining sprite fall into my pocket.

  The pocket where I had the kelpie heart.

  I reached into the pocket without thinking and immediately felt a needle-sword entering my palm, almost exactly where the other one had stabbed me earlier. I hissed with pain.

  When I drew my hand out, it had a sprite attached to it. The sprite had its arm tucked around a small, brown stone. The heart. I shook my hand, and the sprite tumbled free, but she did not let go of the heart.

  I couldn’t see Maarten’s mouth behind the scarf, but I knew that he smiled by the way his eyes crinkled. I leapt forward. “You are such an asshole!”

  My blade caught the scarf again, and this time, it tore free.

  The face beneath was not scarred or marred in any way. It was smooth, beautiful, with full lips and a strong, narrow jaw. It looked oddly familiar, though I could not place it. A drop of blood beaded at the corner of his mouth where I’d caught him with the point of my sword.

  “You’re not Maarten of the Daelus family,” I said.

  He reached up and wiped the blood from his mouth, a smirk beginning at the corners. “I never said that I was.”

  His three remaining sprites flew to his sides.

  We stared at one another for a moment, and then he darted toward the open doorway of the garage.

  “Anwynn!” She’d already started moving by the time I called her name. She leapt for the sprite with the heart. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Her jaws snapped shut on empty air as the sprite shot up to avoid her.

  The Sidhe man pulled something from inside his cloak, whirled, and threw.

  I didn’t see the knife hit Anwynn; I only saw her on the ground, the hilt of a blade sticking from her shoulder.

  And then, with a whirl of his cloak, the Sidhe man and his sprites were gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I DROPPED TO THE FLOOR BY ANWYNN’S SIDE, fearing the worst. I had no idea how long the blade was, or whether it had reached her lungs. “Are you okay?”

  For a moment she said nothing, and fear flooded my belly. And then she cracked open one eye, her breathing labored. “Yes, never been better.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I have a knife in my shoulder, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  I grabbed Anwynn’s blanket from the corner of the living room, knelt at her side, and put both hands around the knife’s hilt. “So this will probably hurt…”

  “Just do it.”

  I did. A spurt of blood gushed out as soon as the blade left her shoulder. I pressed the blanket to the wound. I noticed, curiously, that the blood from my shoulder had trickled to my fingers, making them red and sticky.

  “He got you too,” she said, her gaze going to my left arm.

  “Yeah,” I said. The room seemed to spin a bit. “If that’s not Maarten of the Daelus family, who is he and what does he want with a daemon geas? Who is ‘she’ and why will she be pleased?”

  “You’re the brains,” Anwynn said. She closed her eyes, her breath rasping in her throat. “At least you think you are. Figure it out.”

  I waited until the flow of blood from Anwynn’s shoulder had slowed, which didn’t take very long. Grushounds were tough beasts. And then I saw to my own wound. It was deep, but not to the bone. I found my first aid kit and bandaged it. I really needed stitches, or some of Kailen’s magical healing, but this would hold for now.

  That man had both the kelpie heart and the victim. If I didn’t move quickly, he’d complete the blood rite and enact the daemon geas, and I’d have another dead mortal’s blood on my hands plus the Arbiter breathing down the back of my neck.

  “Chris also worked at the county jail,” I said, slowly. I pulled some needle and thread from my junk drawer. “I’m going to sew you up, so stay still.”

  I picked black thread and tied a knot. The motions were orderly, soothing. “The daemon geas grants magical powers to those who can control them.”

  I stitched the wound closed as Anwynn clenched her teeth.

  “He covered his face for a reason other than disfiguration and other than hiding from me.” I stopped. “Oh. Oh no.” The blood drained from my face, my heart thumping at my ribs like a bird that’s been caged too long. “I know where I’ve seen him before.” I tied the knot off quickly, my fingers trembling.

  Anwynn struggled to her feet. “Enlighten me.”

  “This was back before I bonded you,” I said. “Kailen had taken me to meet my biological parents for the first time. My father wasn’t there, because Grian had already abducted him. There were Guardians in my parents’ home, and their leader was corrupt, taking favors from Grian in return for doing her bidding. One of the Guardians with her…it was him. He could have been just doing the bidding of the leader, but I’m beginning to think the corruption of the Guardians ran deeper than that.

  “He didn’t hide his face from me in the marketplace. He was hiding from the other Guardians. They’d recognize him, and they’d have questions on why he’d want the ingredients to enact a daemon geas. I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. He’s not trying to take advantage of the power vacuum left by Grian’s imprisonment. He’s trying to restore things to the way they were.”

  Anwynn shook herself, painting my living room with more little spatters of blood. “The daemon geas is for Grian.”

  “Yes. He means to set her free.” Merlin had taken away Grian’s magic, and since he was a Changeling, no one but me could undo this. But someone could grant her new powers, and Grian was Talented in mind magic. She had the skill and the willpower to control a daemon geas, if anyone did. “We need to get to the jail. Now.”

  “Yes, because we’re both in good condition for a fight.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, I felt all the aches and pains from two battles
. My left hand hurt, the wound in my shoulder throbbed, and all the thin cuts from the sprites burned and itched. I changed one of my windows back to glass. A thin, sallow light shone through. The sun had begun to rise.

  I was tired.

  “Well, I don’t have a choice in the matter, so that means that you don’t, either. We’re going.” I grabbed my keys from the countertop and went for the door.

  “I had better get a television after all this,” Anwynn said as she limped after me.

  I called Gomez as soon as I got out the door.

  “This is twice in one night, Ms. Philbin,” Gomez said when she picked up. “This had better be good—like you telling me you apprehended whoever it is that kidnapped that woman.”

  “No,” I said, a bit breathlessly, “but I know who did. Grian—are they still keeping her at the Inverness facility?”

  “No,” Gomez said. “They moved her downtown.”

  “What’s the address?”

  I repeated it in my mind twice, making sure I’d memorized it.

  “I don’t like where this is going,” Gomez said. “That Fae man, the one like you, he said she didn’t have magic anymore.”

  “She doesn’t.” I opened the car door and Anwynn jumped inside. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll take care of it, I promise. Try not to worry.” And then I hung up and followed my hound into the car. My phone started to ring again immediately, but I ignored it. There’d be hell to pay from Gomez later, but I didn’t have the time to explain at the moment.

  I peeled out of the driveway and headed toward downtown. As soon as we hit the first stoplight, I slammed my hands against the steering wheel. “Why would anyone want to free Grian? I did all the Fae families a favor by getting rid of her. She was absolutely nuts. Like peanuts in a can nuts. Just rattling insanity. Now the other Fae families are out from under her boot. You’d think they’d be grateful.”

  Anwynn grumbled a little. “The majority suffers beneath a tyrant, but there are always those who benefit.”

  “Those who want to maintain the status quo,” I said.

  She looked out the window as I sped past the intersection. “Change is terrifying for almost anyone, but most especially for the Sidhe, for whom things have remained the same for hundreds of years at a time. Then you show up, and everything gets turned upside down.”

  The Guardian, whoever he was, had enjoyed the favor of Grian, simply by doing her bidding and feeding her information. Now, with Grian gone, he was cut adrift. If any knew the ways he’d betrayed the Guardians, they’d shun him, even if half the Guardians had been complicit or had just looked the other way. It was another thing about Sidhe culture I found difficult to grasp: a bad thing was usually only a bad thing if you got caught.

  I slammed the brakes for a stop sign. “I didn’t mean to upset the balance of the Fae simply by existing, but if anyone thinks I’m going to off myself just to save some crazy Sidhe the trouble, they’ve got another thing coming.”

  I turned the corner. The streets were mostly empty this early in the morning, but there was another car ahead of me. A green Honda Accord. “Hey,” I nudged Anwynn. “What do you make of that?” I rolled down her window.

  She put just her nose out and sniffed. “Calendula,” she said after a moment’s pause. “That’s your man, just ahead of us.”

  I could have just waited another few minutes and I would have come to the same conclusion myself. He wove in and out of his lane like a man intoxicated, going twenty-five in a thirty-five mile-an-hour zone.

  Sidhe: not very good drivers.

  I remembered my car ride with Dorian, and the way he’d used his magic to travel from one side of the city to the other in mere moments. The Guardian might have been saving his magic for the blood rites, but he’d hightail it out of here if I didn’t stop him, and quickly.

  “Hold on,” I said to Anwynn.

  She held up one paw. “Hold on with what?”

  But I’d already jerked the steering wheel to the side, liberally applying my foot to the gas pedal. My car surged forward, and Anwynn thudded against the door with an “Ooph.” In a few seconds, we were level with the other car. I caught a brief glimpse of an unconscious woman in the back seat, of the Guardian’s surprised face, his mouth formed in a perfect O, before I pulled on the steering wheel again.

  My car screeched into his, metal slamming against metal. He tried to correct his path, but it was too late. Both his car and mine lurched off the road and into a park, narrowly avoiding the sturdy trunks of pine trees. I slammed into his sedan once again, just as we hit the top of a slope. My car got the tiniest bit of air before falling to the ground. My teeth snapped together, my jaw aching. That was going to cause hell to my suspension.

  The Guardian’s car tipped and then rolled onto its roof, skidding across the green expanse of a lawn before crashing into a picnic table.

  I hit the brakes, swerving across the grass before shuddering to a halt.

  Anwynn had somehow slipped from the seat and onto the floor, her paws on the seat as though it were a buoy and she was drowning at sea. I could see the whites of her eyes.

  “I think I hate you,” she said.

  “Hate me later,” I said, kicking my door open and drawing my sword.

  The Guardian was already halfway out of his window by the time I got out of my car. He was just too damned quick. A groan came from the woman strapped into the back seat. A swell of relief hit me. Melanie Baker was still alive after that tumble.

  The four remaining sprites flitted out of the windows with their master. They were clearly injured from our earlier tussle, but so were Anwynn and I. The Guardian gained his feet before I could reach him, sword in hand.

  “Why are you so eager for a second round when the first one clearly treated you so poorly?” he asked.

  “Hey,” I said. “Don’t want to be a bother, but you’ve got a little something…right there,” I said, rubbing at my lip.

  He touched his lip with his free hand and found blood. He sneered, his bloody teeth making his handsome face suddenly monstrous. “If the only way you can injure me is to run into me with a giant steel machine, I can’t say I’m overly impressed.”

  “What’s your name?” I said, keeping my tone light.

  “What does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Lethenan,” he said.

  “Lethenan,” I said, letting his name roll around on my tongue, “why Grian? Why try to free her? You could attach yourself to other Sidhe. You don’t need to do this, to restore her to any semblance of power. Her era is over.”

  “Because she was good to me, and because I’m one of the Le Fays,” he said. “Not all our family was fond of our leadership, but at least we had it. Do you know what it’s been like since you locked our Queen away? Our family has been beset by infighting. We’ve fallen into disarray, and I know the other families are laughing at us.”

  One of the Le Fays. “So you’re related to Kailen.” I circled him a little, testing his guard. He kept the car at his back, keeping Anwynn and me from flanking him.

  “Distantly, at best,” Lethenan said.

  But I could see it now, in the eyes, the jaw. The family resemblance. “And what about Kailen? What about your King?”

  His eyes went wild, and I recognized Grian in him. “A king in exile is no king at all.” And then he leapt forward before I could attempt any further reasoning.

  The sprites scattered, two in each direction.

  I danced out of the way of his first blow, my feet surprisingly light after my injuries. I darted forward, slashing. The world around me blurred and I felt the stir of the magic within me, sustaining my strength.

  He blocked me, but barely.

  I fell into the rhythm of it, pushing him back toward the car, forcing him to give ground. Every step back he took was an exercise in balance on this uneven ground. He could catch a stone, a twig, and that moment’s hesitation would afford me a chance to strike.

/>   He thrust at my chest and I blocked him easily. I was doing better than last time. I was doing way better. I might actually win this thing.

  But that was when I realized, the reason I was doing so well was because it was just me against Lethenan. A quick glance to my left told me that Anwynn was fighting two of them. That left two more unaccounted for.

  As I ducked beneath another blow, I saw them. They were prodding an injured and sleepy Melanie Baker from the inside of the car. She had the mark of the blood rite on her forehead, half-covered by graying hair. The vial of unicorn-purified water still weighed the inside of my pocket. I had to end this, quickly, before Lethenan and his minions shoved a mortal into the middle of this fight.

  I feinted to the left with my sword, and as Lethenan moved to block it, I struck out with my foot, using his momentum to trip him and send him sprawling toward the ground. I battered his blade with mine as he fell, knocking it out over the grass, out of reach.

  In an instant, I had my sword at his throat. “I always think second tries wind up being better than the first ones, don’t you?”

  He coughed and turned his head a little to the side.

  I followed his gaze. Just as I had the blade to Lethenan’s throat, the sprites had their needle blades to Melanie’s throat. I looked for Anwynn and found her snapping at the remaining two sprites.

  “Is it really worth it?” Lethenan said. I’d cut a thin line across his forehead during our fight, and the blood dripped toward his eyes. “Is keeping Grian imprisoned really worth being the cause of a mortal’s death?”

  The sprites jabbed their tiny swords at Melanie’s neck, making her wince.

  Well, that didn’t quite make sense. “But if I don’t stop you, you’ll kill that woman anyways. And if you kill her now, you won’t be able to complete the daemon geas.”

  Lethenan only laughed, and he definitely reminded me of Grian when he did so, his laughter full of dulcet, bell-like tones. It made a shiver run up my spine. I was really glad Kailen didn’t laugh like that. “This city is full of mortals. There will always be another for the blood rites.”