Faerie Blood

by Angela Korra'ti

  Half of me wanted to argue, and that half kept my attention mercilessly riveted on the singer. Tears began to blur my view of him, throwing a watery, dreamlike cast across his face and form, but they couldn’t block out his song. The longer I listened the more it flowed into me like wine, whispering of how easy it would be to go closer. To listen for as long as he might care to sing, and hope that he would notice me when he was done.

  The rest of me rebelled. Spooked by the eerie, hypnotic song rolling through the room, I seized at the distraction of Christopher’s grip. He held onto me with enough strength to hurt, and the current that kept crackling between us shorted out my unnatural thrall. Five minutes ago, I’d been leery of that current; I welcomed it now. It cleared my head. It reminded me that Christopher, for whatever reason, seemed to be the only one who saw and understood the impossibilities that had entered my world. And he was the only escape at hand from the figure on the stage. Dazed, half-blinded by my own tears, I let him pull me out the door.

  Fleeing into the parking lot struck me with a physical shock, like diving into a swimming pool after you’ve been soaking in a hot tub. I reeled, for the air that hit my skin, which should have felt warm on a summer night in Seattle when I’d just bolted out of an air-conditioned bar, seemed far too cold. It ached against my cheeks, throat, and hands, as though I ran headlong into ice. Every inch of me tingled. The farther away I got from the bar’s front door, though, the more the sensation narrowed in on my ears, my shoulder where Christopher’s head had lain, and his hand tight around my arm.

  All else eluded my notice until we were three quarters of the way across the parking lot, almost to the sidewalk, where without warning Christopher stumbled mid-stride. Aghast, I grabbed at his arm this time rather than the other way around. He pressed a hand to his head, hauled a labored gulp of air into his lungs, and scowled in what would have been fierce disgust if queasiness obvious enough to jolt me out of my mindless flight hadn’t overridden it.

  The man had a concussion, I remembered in a rush. My face went hot with shame. How could I have forgotten?

  “Shit,” I gasped, pulling his arm around my shoulders so that he wouldn’t fall, even though that only made me all the more aware of the erratic buzz coursing through me everywhere my body touched his own. “Please don’t faint! Not now!”

  “I’ll. Be. All. Right.” Each syllable came out of him as a hoarse little grunt. I got the feeling it was more a mantra for himself, a declaration of what he would make reality by his own bullheaded determination, than it was reassurance for me. Then he opened his eyes and added brusquely, shoving me onward towards the sidewalk, “Keep goin’, and don’t wait for me. If you know what’s good for you you’ll keep goin’ till you’re out of this city entirely, as I plan to be!”

  “What? Wait a minute, I just can’t up and run away!” Shock at the idea splashed like water across the heat of my alarm, and I dug in my heels, balking at Christopher’s attempt to push me off. “I’ve got a job, and I don’t have a car. I can’t just leave my Aunt Aggie. And for God’s sake, you’re hurt, I’m not going to leave you either!”

  All traces of dizziness vanished from Christopher’s face. “Goddamnit, girl,” he exploded, “do you think a troll cares how you commute when it’s about to rip off your head? Do you think the Daoine Sidhe value your mortal kith and kin?”

  Concussion or no concussion, I hammered my fists against his chest. “How the hell am I supposed to know?” I howled. The confusion and panic of the last many hours crashed over me in a wave, threatening to pull me under, threatening to drown.

  “Don’t do that!” His big hands grabbed mine in self-defense before I could get in more than a blow or two, and another pained grimace tightened his features. “Settle down! I’m tellin’ you this for your own good!”

  Neither his bellowed order nor his hands upon my wrists stemmed the flood of frantic, angry words that erupted out of me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Or when the Sidhe stopped being fictional, or why the fuck a real live troll attacked me! Everything got all… since last night… I don’t know what’s going on!”

  I started crying again, hot, frustrated tears, and the man before me winced as though I’d stabbed him.

  “Don’t do that either,” he muttered, ire draining from his face. One of his hands let go of mine. I felt the break in contact like a switch flipping off, a slight diminishing of the current tugging us together like moons in a mutual orbit. It sparked up again, though, as his fingertips brushed against my cheek and smoothed away a tear or two. “You don’t know.” It wasn’t a question. “Eyes like that, and you don’t know. Not a bit of it.”

  “No.” I wanted to holler the word, but Christopher’s reluctant concern made me whisper it instead. Between his stricken expression and the unexpected gentleness of his touch, I found myself looking up despondently into his face. “And I don’t know what my eyes have to do with it—they were brown yesterday, I swear—but you do. Don’t you?” I turned my hands around in his grasp, so I could feel his palms against my own. As I did, he gasped. And that told me at least one thing I wanted to know.

  “You feel this, right?” I pressed, holding up our joined hands between us. My skin tingled against his. For an instant, it grew warmer as well. “You know what it is?”

  “Merciful God,” Christopher croaked. Shaking his tousled head hard back and forth, he stumbled back from me and thrust all his fingers into his hair, only to wince anew as he hit the bandage along his brow. “It can’t be. I’ve got to be leavin’, if it’s not too late already!”

  I went after him. Though he’d let go of me the tingling didn’t abate, and I couldn’t tell why—the singer in the bar, Christopher’s proximity, or what. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t too proud to beg, and now that I had a potential source of clues before me, he wouldn’t get out of my sight if I could help it. “You’ve got to tell me what’s been happening to me! Please! Don’t go!”

  Fright had surged up fast in his expression, but the concern was still there with it. They warred together now in Christopher’s battered face, while he lowered his hands and swept his piercing stare up and down me. When it came back to my eyes, it wavered once and then stayed there, as if he couldn’t make himself look away. I kept staring right back at him, prepared to beg again if I had to.

  I didn’t have to.

  “All right, lass. We’ll talk. I’ll tell you what I can.” He exhaled heavily, and then jerked a wary glance over his shoulder back towards the bar. “But not here. It’s too chancy, this close to one of the Sidhe—”

  All at once, over his last few words, the prickling ramped up another notch. Even before Christopher’s entire stance shifted again, turning sharp and alert, I was whirling without knowing why towards the sidewalk. He grabbed both my shoulders as I did and pulled me a step backwards to his side. It didn’t seem like much in the protection department, given that the figures I found behind me outnumbered us three to two, and he was injured besides.

  Later, I’d appreciate the gesture. Right then, I was too overflowing with dread at the sight of three strangers every bit as eerily beautiful as the singer I’d just fled. Each of them was dressed to blend in on Capitol Hill, sleek, stylish and aggressive. But I had exactly zero interest in their outfits. I was far more worried about the energy pulsating through my nerves, and about what the newcomers were carrying on them. Something far more intimidating than a guitar: swords.

  The male in the middle of the trio was a living sculpture wrought in hues of sunlight and flame. His silver eyes should have been cold, but instead burned with a hard, relentless light, like fire reflected off titanium. Like a river of molten lava, his unbound red hair spilled down past his shoulders and waist. And in a moon-clear, ice-bright voice, he sneered, “Correction, mortal: three Sidhe. Either whatever gift you have that permits you to sense us is faltering, or the blow to your head has hampered your ability to count.”

  “She doesn’t look like much.” Thi
s came from the female with sun-golden hair confined in a braid threaded with shining silver wire and tree-green eyes that surveyed me with remote, critical disinterest. “Are you certain she is the one, my lord?”

  The other male had shorter hair than his companions did, a loose amber mane that wreathed his head and shoulders in radiant waves, and eyes as blue as noontime. When he spoke, his lips curled with visible disdain and his elegant nostrils flared as though the odor of something caused him personal offense. “An oddly hued changeling, if she is changeling in truth.”

  What?

  “Humans come in as many shades as fey, Tarrant, you know that,” replied the first male. His titanium eyes continued to burn as he spoke, at odds with his dispassionate tone. He stepped closer, staring. I shied back. Christopher’s gaze seared into me each time he looked at me, reaching some elemental part of me that had lain hidden even from myself, but this being’s alien regard threatened to consume me where I stood. “The one we set to searching was certain, and now that I see her there can be no doubt—she is the one we seek. Most of her hues are clearly from her mortal sire, but no mortal gave her those eyes.”

  What?!

  “Now look, my friend and I need to have a private conversation, and I’m sure you’re mistaking me for somebody else anyway.” I knew my smile looked as scared as I sounded, but I couldn’t think of a damned thing to do about it. What did a software tester know about confronting three armed strangers? Nor, as the redhead’s two companions spread out to either side of us, could I stop myself from seizing Christopher’s arm. It didn’t reassure me much that he grabbed my arm at the same time. “So, ah, if you don’t mind, we’ll just be going now.”

  Christopher’s fingers trembled against my arm, a small physical tremor against the torrent of sensation now stinging every inch of my skin. But that was the only hint of unsteadiness about him. He interposed himself between the trio’s obvious leader and me, saying in a taut, harsh voice, “You heard the lady. We’d appreciate it if you’d let us be on our way.”

  The words were polite. The growl beneath them wasn’t. Unmoved and unimpressed, the Sidhe turned his attention to the man who’d already rescued me once and who now seemed to be stepping up to give it another go. “Do not waste my time. That wound you bear puts the lie to your posturing,” he answered, slanting a sardonic glance at Christopher’s bandaged head. But then he blinked and peered harder at the young man, as if only just then seeing him clearly. Then a tiny, one-sided smile curled his fine-cut lips. “And so does your aura, Warder-blood. You have no power yet in this city.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but Christopher did. The stoic set of his features visibly quivered as I shot him a frantic look, and a trace of the terror I’d seen him show before flashed within his eyes. The growl in his voice, however, grew distinctly more pronounced. “I’ve power enough to make sure you’ll not be layin’ a hand on her.”

  Something surged through him, something that pulsed beneath my grip on his arm and rolled out in a palpable shock wave to strike the Sidhe. It sent the female and the fair-haired male skittering back a pace or two, and even staggered the redhead, widening his hard, bright eyes and stoking the light in them into a fire of challenge. Someone cried out something. I couldn’t tell who yelled what, though, for the pulse staggered me too.

  And it almost dropped Christopher where he stood. Agony twisted his features, draining them of what little color they had left, and his hold on me broke as he clapped both hands against his forehead. But even as he swayed, he groaned at me, “Lass… run. Phone…”

  Going back into the bar—and facing the singer who’d taken over the stage—sent me into a cold sweat of panic. So did leaving Christopher, who was clearly in no shape to do whatever it was he’d just done, much less hold his own against three pissed-off Sidhe with swords. But my friends and teammates were in there too, not to mention a host of phones I could borrow to call the cops. Without a second thought, I spun to bolt back to the bar’s front door.

  I didn’t make it two feet.

  The female intercepted me, and though I was both taller and far less delicate of build, she seized me and held onto me with so little effort that I might as well have been made of air. Her amber-haired compatriot, the one the redhead had called Tarrant, went for Christopher. He clipped him across the skull in one quick blow that toppled him to the asphalt.

  That left their leader, who stared down at Christopher’s crumpled form with the barest hint of a sneer made even more effective by its own restraint. “He is ill-trained for one of his line,” he remarked to the others.

  “But he is Warder-blooded,” murmured the female who held me in a grip that showed no sign of breaking even as I struggled to break free.

  Tarrant said thoughtfully, “But not yet a Warder. The Wards on this city were not laid by his power.” He looked at his leader then. “But we must hurry, my lord, before the one who did lay those Wards discovers our purpose.”

  “Indeed,” drawled the other male, who then turned his head to me. He stepped forward to stand before me and lifted a slim, pale hand, capturing my chin with his fingers. “Now that we are free of interruption,” he went on, “let us see what truths we may uncover. Attend me, girl.”

  He tilted my face up so that his eyes could meet mine—and when they did, I was lost.

  More prickling rushed over me, stronger than what I’d sensed from the hedge-creatures, Christopher, and even the singer in the bar. But it was different this time. It hit me like a drug, overwhelming every thought in my head with a seductive and irresistible languor and sluicing tension off my body in a wave. I stopped struggling with the female who held me fast, my arms going slack at my sides. Quiet, complacent, I stood transfixed by the stare that flooded every corner of my being and by the fingers that cupped my chin. Like a kite, I floated, and the redheaded Sidhe’s stare and touch were my kite strings.

  Behind me I heard the bar door open and noise from within spill out into the parking lot, but it seemed strangely distant, muted, as unconnected with me as the mortal nearby—

  The mortal? His name slid out of my memory, which frightened me for a fleeting instant until the fright slid away too.

  “Isn’t that better?” whispered the Sidhe, and I bobbed my head without removing it from the cradle of his hand. “Let us begin at the beginning, changeling child. What is your name? The name your sire gave you.”

  “No, don’t—” someone croaked, before cutting off with a grunt of pain. But the shout was far beyond where I floated. Therefore, it didn’t matter.

  “Kendis,” I whispered back. “Kendis Marie Thompson.”

  The being before me smiled. Sweet golden warmth blossomed into being around the hand that held my chin, and from there it flowed down through my frame, straight for my feet. “Very good. Your sire’s name?”

  “William Douglas Thompson.”

  “And your dam’s?”

  Somewhere within the floating, I felt a stirring of disquiet. “I don’t know,” I confessed, for I couldn’t think of an answer to that question, and I trembled for fear that the floating and the warmth would cease.

  “All is well, child.” The Sidhe’s other hand stroked my hair, and I swayed ever so slightly between his two palms. “I have that answer, and more you do not even realize you seek. But I will show you all, and through me, your precious blood will mean the restoration of future lives. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it had to be good. Everything was good within the floating. Mesmerized, I bobbed my head again.

  “Kendis! Are you all right? What’s going on?”

  Someone else’s voice. A voice I should have known, a woman’s voice, but it seemed no more important than the mortal male’s. Nor did I care when the golden-haired Sidhe female abruptly released me, hissing a warning. I heard metal scrape against leather as she whipped her sword free of the sheath at her back; I felt her leap away from me. But I didn’t turn m
y head. I couldn’t quite remember how.

  “Great shining Lady, have you Seelie gotten even feebler in the last two hundred years? Three of you against a changeling and a wounded mortal man, and both of them unarmed!” That voice, ringing deep and resonant, I didn’t know at all.

  Metal clanged on metal somewhere behind me, beyond where I floated. But I began to care when the face of the one who held me enchanted with his touch went dark with a surge of anger. He shot a sizzling glance over my shoulder, and then negligently waved a hand across my brow.

  I remained willingly frozen as the floating feeling redoubled within me. Then the redheaded Sidhe blurred past me, drawing his own blade.

  And that was all I saw before something like the slap of a giant, unseen hand hit the parking lot. It ripped through my veil of tranquil detachment, opening the way for awareness and panic to roar back in, and it threw me down hard to my hands and knees.

  Earthquake? I thought wildly. Could I get up? Trying to get my bearings, I looked in all directions and saw—

  Jude, her dark eyes huge as she slumped against one of the cars in the lot and struggled to keep her balance.

  The female Sidhe, sprawled on the asphalt with a sword at her throat, a sword held in the hand of the black-haired singer from the bar.

  Christopher, lying huddled on his side almost within arm’s reach, his face stark white and his eyes squeezed shut in pain.

  The two male Sidhe, swords gleaming in their hands. They’d paused in the middle of charging to their companion’s aid, pivoting back to face the sidewalk.

  And the old woman I’d seen playing the whistle in front of the thrift store next door.

  Except now, she held a shotgun. As I gaped, she fixed the parking lot at large with a steely black glare out from under the brim of her fedora, and snapped out, “Everybody sitting down and shutting up? Good, because I get real testy when pointy-eared troublemakers come sneaking past my Wards and don’t pay attention when I’m talking!”