Iron (The Warding Book 1)

by Robin L. Cole

  “Hunted.” Well, wasn’t this fairytale getting better and better? I cleared my throat. “Lovely. Dare I ask by who?”

  Seana looked away, chagrin writ on her all too expressive face. “Our people were not always united as they are now. Once, there was some credence to the common misconception of the fae being divided into warring factions of good and evil. Granted, as with much, things may not have been so clean cut but there were a great many years of unrest among us. The Warders of old became mistrusted by both sides, for the immunity their bloodline gave them. Those who were not killed in the Great War fled across the Veil, to hide here among the humans.”

  My stomach tightened up in knots. I desperately wanted to call bullshit on the wild story they were weaving but something made me hold my tongue. Instead, I choked out, “Well, isn’t that just great.”

  “They were dark times, thankfully long past. Many believe the Warders died out entirely during the wars, but Mairi had a vision that caused us to believe otherwise. She knew we would find one of their bloodline here, in your world.”

  “Which just happens to be little ol’ me.”

  Mairi was gazing off into space as she mused aloud, “And you just might be the last of your line. We have been searching for years, but you’re the first Warder we’ve found.”

  Just what I wanted to hear. “Wonderful. And that—this ‘Warding’—is why she can’t read me?”

  Seana nodded. “Precisely.”

  Again I touched the back of my head with a tentative hand. “But then how—?”

  “Gifts are a power born unto themselves. They have limitations, especially when newly formed. Your Gift is very new; a raw talent that needs to be honed. Right now, it is much like a child that slumbers deeply after a powerful exertion and, as such, it is active only when you are. The Gift does not yet know how to work when you are unconscious. Thus, I was able to heal you while you slept.”

  “Well that’s a crap Catch-22,” I said dryly.

  “It will change, over time. As your mind adapts and learns to use the Warding unconsciously, the Gift will begin to strengthen. There will come a day when even sleep will not stop its protections—no fae magic will be able to work upon you.”

  I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining the possibility of believing them, but the words kept tumbling out of my mouth without stopping to check in with my brain. “And just how would I have inherited this awesome and rare Gift?”

  “Are you sure you’re human?” Mairi asked, forehead scrunched up as she scrutinized me like a bug caught inside a glass jar.

  “Mairi! That was rude.” Seana’s tone was that of a scolding mother. Mairi didn’t look at all chastised, though she shrugged and mumbled something that could have been an apology. Seana flashed me an apologetic smile. “Someone in your family line was fae. The Gifts rarely emerge in children of mixed blood, especially in generations further away from the original source, so it is likely that it was someone quite recent.”

  “So you’re telling me grandma was probably banging a fairy. And, thanks to her interspecies hanky-panky, I have some really nifty superpower that millions of people would kill me for—oh, and right now it doesn’t do jack shit for me if I take a nap. Yet, somehow, I’ve gone my whole life without ever having the teeniest tiniest hint of being so super special and it just happens to happen to me twice in one night, right when you guys show up. Am I getting all this?”

  “You turned thirty today.”

  My head whipped around. Kaine stood with his back to my mantle, staring at me with the most unsettling turquoise blue gaze I had ever seen. His golden-gravel voice resounded with the deep profoundness of a church bell, clearing the room of all conversation with just four words. It was the first time he had spoken all evening. In fact, I had almost—somehow—forgotten that he was there at all while his lady friends bombarded me with weirdness. My voice came out as a breathy rasp. “How did you know that?”

  “Thirty is the age of majority for us. We live longer and age slower than humans,” Seana explained, her eyes also on Kaine. He turned and went back to gazing out the window as if we were no longer in the room. “Our gifts first manifest when we come of age.”

  “You have got to be shitting me.” They had finally maxed out my bullshit tolerance. I threw my hands up in the air. “How the hell can you expect me to believe any of this?”

  “I know this must all sound very strange to you.” Seana bit her lip. “You saw the troll for yourself—”

  “No, I don’t know I saw a ‘troll.’ I know I saw some hideous, psychotic chud, but he could have been some freaking inbred mountain man come down to the city to get his kicks for all I know.” Rage made me oh-so eloquent. “Look, I don’t know what the fuck this is or what crazy shit you guys are on, but this?” I waved my hands and gestured to all three of them. “This has stopped being funny.”

  Seana frowned, her June Cleaver face wrought with confusion. “I do not understand. No one here has made any jokes.”

  I stared at her for a good thirty seconds, mouth gaping open. She was gazing at me with innocent puzzlement, as serious as a heart attack. Was sarcasm foreign to her? My voice broke hit a hysterical octave and my hands flapped in the air, doing their own spastic freak-out dance. “I don’t know what kind of sick game this was supposed to be but I’ve had enough. If you’re going to splatter-paint the room with my guts, I’d rather you just got on with it!”

  “Please, hear us out,” she begged, spreading her hands in what I assumed was supplication. “I know this is a lot to take in and much of it must sound mad to you, but I assure you every word we speak it true. The awakening of your Gift may be frightening but I promise you we mean you no harm. We have spent many years searching for a Warder. I beg that you let us explain our plight.”

  I scrubbed at my face with both hands, fighting back the urge to scream in frustration. I wanted to say that this couldn’t be happening to me—but it obviously was—or that they were out of their freaking minds—which was highly likely but debatable given the unusual and otherwise unexplainable events of the evening. Still; I couldn’t swallow the pills they were selling. I crossed my arms across my chest and channeled every bit of do-not-fuck-with-me energy I had into my face. “Why the hell should I listen to one more insane word of this? Give me one good reason why I should believe anything you’ve said. Just give me one, solid thing that I can’t chalk up to you all being bat-crap crazy!”

  Seana took a deep breath. She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. Three heartbeats passed before she said, with that maddening, infinite calm, “Show her, Mairi.”

  The blonde girl scrunched up her nose and whined, “Do I have to?”

  “Do as she asks.” There was no room for arguing with Kaine’s clipped tone. Another three words, yet he cleared the air in the room like a gong strike. Freaky.

  “Fine,” she agreed with a huff. She closed her eyes and the world around her went wonky. Like a shimmer of heat rising from the horizon on a sweltering summer day, the air around her suddenly seemed to move all on its own, going all fuzzy and weird in a way that made my eyes hurt. There was no light, yet it stung like someone had shined a flashlight in them. I turned my head and squinted, raising a hand to shield them from whatever was threatening to sear my retinas. I started to open my mouth to protest but my thoughts found themselves jumbled up like a train wreck in my mouth. There was no longer a young girl seated on my recliner. Instead, a run-of-the-mill calico kitty stared back at me with luminous amber eyes. The tip of it long tail flicked back and forth lazily.

  You know that feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster and it crests that first huge hill and starts hurtling downward, throwing your insides into free-fall?

  Yeah—that moment had nothing on this. My voice sounded small and distant to my own ears. “Well. Kind of hard to argue with that.”

  “Mairi’s mother is Aos Sí but her father is a shape shifter, an ancient fae race that predates even ours. As
you can see, she has inherited his abilities as well,” Seana said, as if that particular tidbit needed any further explanation. “We have told you no lies this evening, Caitlin. We are everything we have said we are, and more. I know this is all very strange and likely frightening for you to witness, but I ask again: will you please hear us out?”

  What arguments did I have I left? I rounded the couch unhurriedly, hoping my gait looked graceful and deliberate rather than snail-slow to prevent my shaky legs from giving out. I took a seat, putting equal distance between myself, Seana and the impossible feline who had curled up contentedly on my chair, purring loudly. Kaine stood directly in front of me, once again silent and fixated on the dark, empty street outside my second-story window. For a fleeting moment I wondered, if the little one could read my emotions, see the future, and turn into a freaking cat, just what the hell could he do?

  His eyes flicked back to me, boring in to my own with a chilling confidence for half a second before ignoring me once again. On second thought, maybe I was better off not knowing.

  I took a deep breath and readied myself for the plunge. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  Chapter Five

  I’m not sure how I managed to get to work the next morning, fully dressed and looking like my world hadn’t just been shattered into tiny, pixie-dust covered pieces. 7am saw me bleary-eyed and rattled; short on sleep and high on nerves. I poured creamer into my cereal instead of into my coffee when I tried to force myself to down some breakfast—and that was only after burning my toast so bad I was forced to resort to said stale cereal. I had completed the morning by knocking my coffee off of the counter, breaking my favorite mug. Red letter start to the day, it was.

  Luckily, those breakfast snafus were between me and the four walls I wasn’t entirely certain I’d ever feel safe in again. After cleaning up my messes, I pulled on my big girl pants and tried to pretend it was any other day. I hadn’t driven into the river on the way to work (though it might have crossed my mind once or twice) and I managed to punch in on time. I even smiled and told my boss that everything was just peachy when she pretended to care. No, I didn’t mind working on my birthday one bit. Of course I wasn’t offended that she had forgotten to get me a card. I’m pretty sure my laugh at her “who wants to be reminded that they’ve turned thirty anyway” joke was convincing. It got her to leave me alone in any case and, really, that was all that mattered.

  I managed to lose myself in the mindlessness of the office grind, though I knew I was only half present in the dreary gray little world of my cubicle. One good thing about my job—at that moment, at least—was that it didn’t require much brain power. I was a glorified switchboard, though I think the company had given my position some self-important (and wholly bullshit) secretarial title like Customer Service Specialist. Whatever you called me, I was an office grunt. A monkey probably could have done my job if it had legible handwriting and a pleasant speaking voice. I had been working there long enough that routing calls and pretending to care had become routine. Oblivion proved short-lived, however. When the lunch-time slowdown hit and the phones stopped ringing, reality crept back in on quiet cat-feet.

  God, that was such a bad metaphor, given the night I had just had. I hated myself for even thinking it.

  Taking a deep, shaky breath, I slipped my hand into my purse and pulled out the neatly folded piece of paper tucked safely behind my phone. I must have told myself to throw that paper out half a dozen times while I sat on my couch, every lamp blazing deep into the early hours of the morning. I know I had told myself to throw it in the trash at least once more as I stood in my kitchen, staring at the garbage can while I poured Coffee-Mate into my bran flakes. I didn’t need their brand of crazy in my life. I wasn’t buying whatever it was they were selling. I couldn’t write them off as wackos, given the furry antics I had witnessed with my own two eyes, but I didn’t need shape-shifting and faerie bullshit in my life. That sort of crazy could only bring trouble. I didn’t care what kind of super powers they claimed I myself had.

  “Your Gift allows you to see through the glamours of even the most powerful fae, and that is a Gift we are in need of.” Seana’s pleas rang in my head. “There is a Secret Keeper we must find, but he remains hidden from us. Our sources say he resides somewhere here, in Riverview. It cannot be a coincidence that we have found you here as well. Only with your help do we stand any chance of locating him.”

  I certainly didn’t give a rat’s ass that I was their Obi Wan. I had never asked to be their only hope in some war being fought in some far off realm where trolls and elves ran free.

  “Our High King is mad. He sees enemies around every corner; even in the face of those he once called friends. He no longer trusts anyone—even the words of his own advisers fall on deaf ears. Anyone who dares speak against him is banished, or worse. His younger brother tried to reason with him and voice the concerns of the people. He too was cast aside, a victim of Tiernan’s mounting jealousy.

  “We too have been exiled. The High King has placed a powerful geis upon us that prevents us from returning home. We are trapped here in your world, helpless, and can only listen as others tell us tales of how our homeland suffers. We need to find a way to break this binding, so that we may return home and join the fight to save our people from the High King’s neglect before we no longer have a home to return to.”

  I blinked and looked down. The paper was unfolded, the edges crimped where I clenched it with my shaking hand. Written neatly in the center was a phone number. No identifying name was needed. They knew I wouldn’t be forgetting any of them anytime soon. Honestly, I was kind of surprised—and maybe a touch disappointed—that they had given me something as mundane as a regular ol’ phone number to reach them at. Shouldn’t exiled faeries have had some sort of crystal ball messaging system or specially trained owls to deliver their mail?

  My refusal to become embroiled in whatever mess they were in had been met with surprising calmness. Seana had insisted that I take that note, in case my mind somehow changed or I found myself in need of them, but then they had filed out; quick and quiet-like. Kaine never spared so much as a glance in my direction. Seana’s parting hug and kiss upon the cheek left me feeling awkward, like I had just let down my long-lost aunt down. Mairi had brought up the rear, pausing in the doorway. Her words haunted me now, as they had all through my sleepless night.

  “The troll has seen your face, but worse he knows that you have seen his. There isn’t a fae alive who has forgotten what that means. If he travels back across Veil and tells others that a Warder lives in Riverview, you could be in grave danger. He may come looking for you, Caitlin. Please, be careful.”

  I crumpled up the paper and tossed it across my desk, watching it bounce off the fabric-covered wall and roll to a stop next to my untouched glass of water. My mouth was dry, making it hard to swallow, but I had no desire to drink. I felt shaky. I could have chalked that up to the three cups of coffee it had taken to get me functioning this morning, but I knew better. Some things, once seen, just cannot be unseen no matter how badly we wished them to be.

  Sitting around staring moodily at a wad of paper wasn’t going to give me back my peace of mind, in any case. I had no good explanation for what I had seen and even less reason to deny Seana’s ludicrous version of reality. It certainly made more sense than anything I had come up with. All in all, it sucked but there it was—shit had gotten too real, too fast and now all I could do was take deep breaths and try to make it through the day. Preferably without thinking about how vulnerable I would feel walking to my car after work. Or scampering the few feet from my parking space to my front door, through an empty parking lot set down off the street.

  Funny, I had always loved the seclusion that came along with my overpriced little apartment. Living above a shop that was closed by the time I returned home every evening and closed on Sundays gave me the luxury of privacy that not many in Riverview had. Being set back from the main road had always made it th
at much sweeter; not even Saturday traffic bothered me. Today, those assets had lost their luster. The thought of the sun setting with me alone, deadbolt or no deadbolt, was not a comforting one. I had the feeling my electric bill would be sky-high by the end of the month. The Ramen Days were coming early this year. Yippie.

  I looked down at the clock on my computer screen. 12:45. Life around the office would be picking back up shortly, and while I still felt like a nervous squirrel was lodged in my gut, I had to try to eat something. I dragged myself up out of my chair and headed toward the kitchen. Perhaps staring at my yogurt instead of that note would guilt my stomach into letting me ingest something semi-solid. I gave Bernice, the co-worker one cubicle over from mine, the pantomime of eating and smiled at her affirmative thumbs up. There was no feeling in that smile, but maybe hers was just as bogus as mine. I couldn’t see anyone actually liking the sterile gray world we worked in.

  I kept my eyes trained on my fingernails like they were the most important thing in the world as I traversed the path to the break room. One or two nods at passing co-workers seemed to suffice, which was a relief. I was in no mood to make small talk. I had the feeling that the generic “What’s new with you?” would send declarations of fairies among us spilling from my lips in shrill, hysteric tones. A trip to our dour HR man and the all too likely company mandated follow-up with a shrink was not the way I wanted to end my day. Instead, I kept my lips clamped tight and made a beeline for the refrigerator. Digging through that wasteland of precariously stacked items—and avoiding the land-mines of forgotten food—took a deft hand. I was consumed with that task when a voice behind me said, “Hey Caitlin, isn’t it your birthday today?”

  I knew without looking that that would be Marc, from the billing department. He had one of those voices that oozed confidence. He was the self-admitted “ladies’ man” of the office, having declared himself God’s gift to my half of the species on more than one occasion. Ugh. He was a nice enough guy, beneath the boasts and never-ending stream of cheesy pickup lines, but I had long thought he should consider himself lucky to work in a place where the adherence to professionalism was so lackluster. Anywhere else, he probably would have had a sexual harassment lawsuit or three on his hands. Some slightly inappropriate comment would somehow worm its way into our conversation, even if it only lasted two minutes, but I didn’t have the energy to think of an excuse to avoid it.