Faerie Blood

by Angela Korra'ti

  “N-no.” I tried to bark out the denial. It came out a whisper instead, and I couldn’t make myself look away from the Unseelie’s warm, wicked smile.

  “Pity. But don’t worry, Miss Thompson, I never gainsay a lady.” Elessir leaned in a little farther, his hand hovering just above my chest; heat spiked up there, rising in a palpable wave through my shirt to push at his fingers. “And I promise not to ask for anything bad. Just take off that l’il’ ol’ Ward.”

  My throat went dry at that velvet cajoling, and my hands twitched of their own accord up towards the chain around my neck.

  “There you go, darlin’,” Elessir murmured encouragingly. “It’s for the best; your mother’s Court won’t want you. They’ll think you tainted because half your blood is human. The Unseelie are not nearly so prejudiced.”

  That last word jabbed like a spear through the haze thickening in my head.

  Prejudiced.

  A powerful word to use on a girl with a black father.

  The wolf’s head went so hot beneath my shirt that it felt like it had caught fire. Like a new blaze set to stop a wildfire’s spread, the eruption of energy flared through the overall wash of power in the room, breaking the compulsion Elessir was weaving over me. It scoured through every thought in my head—but left them sharp and clear as it passed.

  “What makes you think,” I hissed, “that I want to be in either one of your goddamned Courts?”

  Elessir’s smile vanished, turning his expression instantly into a mask of lupine alertness, but I didn’t give him—or myself—time to react. Fury strong enough to make me see red filled me as I thought of Christopher wounded, James with his memories altered, Millicent missing and very likely in danger. And then I thought of the old Warder tapping into the earth beneath Aggie’s house, and I instinctively tried to do the same. Magic rushed down through me, digging its heels in deep somewhere far beneath the floor, and then came surging back up in a burst of inexorable, incandescent flame.

  I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t try. Instead, I let it loose on Elessir.

  He went flying, landing hard against our table and overturning it along with everything on it. Every remaining light along the walls exploded, plunging the room into shadow, and only when the Unseelie tumbled onto the floor in the middle of the destroyed remains of our dinner did I realize he wasn’t the only thing I’d struck. Even in the darkness, I could see gouges in the wall above the bench where he and Jude had been sitting.

  What had I done?

  I wobbled to my feet and ran like hell, certain that at any second someone would intercept me. But I saw no one until I burst outside onto the sidewalk, where clusters of confused staff and patrons babbled at one another as they huddled under overhanging eaves to keep out of the rain. The waiter who’d taken our order was blurting out words at top speed into a cell phone: a 911 report. It had to be. Carson’s call to get help for Christopher two nights and a lifetime ago still burned too vividly in my memory for me not to recognize the young man’s urgent tone.

  “That’s right, we’re not sure but we think we just got hit by lightning—could have taken out a transformer or something—send somebody, please!”

  None of them seemed to see me even as I stood shell-shocked among them, my entire body crying out with the aftermath of magic. I whirled this way and that, seeking Jude or Christopher in the crowd but seeing only the faces of strangers. Not a one of them looked my way.

  My teammates at work hadn’t noticed the transformation of my eyes. Why could no one see me at all now?

  What was I becoming?

  An animal keening clawed its way out of my throat. Heedless of my direction, I plunged headlong into the downpour and the night. Water poured down from a sky the color of coal, the droplets pelting the sidewalk like hailstones, and the wind gusted up fiercely around me as I ran. But that barely slowed me down. I might have run back to Jude’s truck or even all the way back to Fremont if a pair of strong arms hadn’t intercepted me in my flight. I might have screamed, too, if a now-familiar wash of energy hadn’t seized me along with those arms, identifying Christopher even before I heard his anxious cry in his distinctive brogue.

  “Kendis! Whoa there! Oh Jesus, girl, did he hurt you?”

  “Babe, Ken, it’s us!” Jude, on my other side.

  Christopher’s eyes couldn’t match the Sidhe’s for brilliance; their fire was entirely human, entirely mortal. But they blazed nevertheless. I looked up into them and let out another mindless wail, and the next thing I knew, Christopher had pulled me close to his chest. Blue flannel soaked through and clinging to his sturdy frame, long arms encircling me protectively, and his head bent down towards mine combined to emblazon one thought across my mind: safety. I didn’t care that he was drenched. Frantically I huddled against him, my arms wrapping round his waist and my face pressed into his shoulder.

  He held me, and it was the best thing that had happened to me in the last two days, possibly in my entire life.

  But the storm of my angry magic had not yet subsided. It writhed like a snake through my system, flinching away from the brush of the energy that connected Christopher and me; I flinched too, suddenly gripped by a vision of my power ripping into him the way it had ripped into the restaurant’s wall. And then my mind tilted, hysteria roiling up to smother all else.

  Magic, I have magic—

  I didn’t recognize the hoarse mewling noises I was making. I was scarcely able to tell that they came from me. “Don’t touch me!” I shrieked, twisting in Christopher’s embrace and jabbing the heels of my hands against my temples in a desperate attempt to block out the crackling fire of my own blood. Wind gusted around us in a tight little curlicue, throwing raindrops into my face; they struck cold and sharp against skin that felt hot and tight all over my body. My ears burned. I scrubbed my hands against them, trying to make them stop.

  Undeterred, Christopher shifted his arms and pulled me back to him. His body against mine, even soaked to the skin, was warmer than the rain; his hand stroked my hair, smoothing it away from my face, as he whispered soothing nonsense into my ear. “Hush, lass. Hush now, it’ll be all right. It’ll be all right…”

  “I’m a mage,” I babbled. “I’m not human.” Aggie and Millicent had told me already, but for the first time I felt it in my blood and bones. The knowledge fell like a hammer on my brain, cracking my already unsteady thoughts into random, disjointed shards. Elessir’s wicked smile flashed across my sight—and then, his form hurtling back from me. I saw the troll leaping for me out of the bushes on Burke-Gilman, and glimpses of my parents’ anguished faces out of the depths of a dream. Malandor loomed up, fell and grim behind my eyes. A shadow I could not name, a shadow that had chased me through nightmare mazes, roared somewhere in the very heart of my mind.

  And still Christopher held me. “I know,” he murmured. His voice, an exhausted rasp, held no otherworldly allure. But it rang with a sincerity that began to soak through the turmoil in my brain and blood and bone. “I know. Let’s get you out o’ the rain. Come on, now.”

  “The truck’s not far,” Jude promised. She lingered beside me, her hands on my shoulders, a light and fleeting contact. Mortal contact. I peeked up from Christopher’s chest to find her watching me with worried eyes, and she smiled a little as she caught my gaze. “C’mon, babe, let’s go, okay? Before somebody shows up to find out what happened.”

  She was right. We needed to move. I wasn’t so far gone that the thought didn’t penetrate my haze, but I couldn’t make myself care that someone might discover us. All at once I could think of nothing but Aggie’s house, her quilts, and the comfort of the place where I’d grown up. I wanted to be in my childhood bed, to hide beneath pillows and blankets and shut out the entire world until it decided to return to the axis on which it had spun for as long as I had known it.

  All my life I’d wondered why I had no mother and father, as any young person raised as I was might. I’d never wanted for love—Aunt Aggie had
seen to that. But I’d wanted to know about my parents, who they were, where they were, why they hadn’t ever been able to be with me. Now I knew, and I didn’t want to know any more. Not right then.

  Right then, I just wanted out of the rain.

  “Get me out of here,” I mumbled. “Get me home.”

  I staggered hard, and two pairs of hands seized my arms so that I would not fall. Even without looking I knew which ones were Christopher’s. A fragment of my consciousness clung to the tingling warmth of his presence, but even its strange comfort couldn’t hold back the tears that began to stream down my face along with the raindrops.

  Reeling, I let them lead me back to the truck.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Things got a little hazy after that.

  Christopher picked me up to put me in the truck’s front seat, and Jude turned on the heat so our drenched clothes could dry out faster. She reached past me to hand her cell phone to Christopher as he settled in the back seat behind us. They spoke to one another; I heard the words, but with no sense of inflection and tone, and could only grasp their meaning dimly, as if through a dream.

  “Call Aggie.”

  “Your batteries are dead.”

  Then everything jumbled together in my senses: air from the heat vents blasting against my face, the heavy scent of wet sneakers, and the engine rumbling. The world faded like a picture on a shaken Etch-a-Sketch, and I welcomed it, my mind clutching gratefully at what shelter it could find in a cocoon of plastic, glass, and metal. My eyes dropped shut; I drifted, and thought of nothing at all.

  Minutes later, three more words of Jude’s dragged me back into consciousness.

  “We’re being followed.”

  Alarm stirred sluggishly within me, and as I heard Christopher swear, I fought to sit up and look around. Through the drizzling rain, beyond the windshield, I saw Westlake Avenue and the glassy silver sheen of Lake Union. In the back seat Christopher glared out into the gloom behind us, while Jude drove with an uncharacteristically grim determination, her eyes tracking back and forth between the road and her mirrors. But I saw nothing else, and I rubbed groggily at my face.

  “What? What’s going on?” I said through a yawn. “Followed?”

  “Motorcycles,” Christopher reported, scowling.

  Jude slid me a troubled glance. “They’ve been on us since we left Belltown—I didn’t want to say anything, I wasn’t sure before.” Her mouth tightened as she peered up once more at her rear view mirror. “Now I’m sure.”

  That woke me up completely. I twisted around in my seat, and as Jude’s truck began to follow the long curve of Westlake towards the Fremont Bridge I saw them: two motorcycles trailing behind us, rain-blurred and indistinct save for the gleam of their headlights. They hung too far back for me to make out their riders. But I didn’t need sight for a twinge of warning to pluck at my nerves, or for the subtle chill that crept over my skin, offsetting the warmth from the vents.

  “Lose them,” I heard myself saying. Christopher’s gaze swiveled around to meet mine—and in his eyes, I saw my own realization take shape. My throat went dry, and I trembled as repeated the words. “Lose them. It’s the Sidhe.”

  Jude started. “Shit! How do you know?”

  “I-I don’t know! I just do!”

  All of us have a touch of the Sight. Elessir’s claim echoed across my memory, but I thrust it fiercely away. I didn’t want to think about that ‘us’; it frightened me more than any strange gifts I might be developing. Nor did I want to think about Elessir—not now, not when Jude looked at me with fright in her eyes, just as she’d done in the restaurant. Urgently I reached out to grasp her arm.

  “Trust me,” I implored. “No matter what’s happening to me—I’m still me! Please don’t lead them to Aggie’s house!”

  “They may already know where she lives,” Christopher warned.

  “And if they don’t, we can’t be the ones that show them.” As I said it my trembling disappeared, replaced by absolute certainty. Wards on Aggie’s house or no, I would not point the strange immortal beings who’d already harmed those around me at my one blood relation in the whole world.

  Well, my one mortal blood relation…

  But I didn’t want to think about that, either.

  “Right,” Jude said then, giving me a small smile and squaring her shoulders. “Let’s do this thing. Hang on, kids.”

  She floored it, and the truck’s tires squealed as we rattled off the bridge’s metal meshwork and onto the asphalt beyond. At the first traffic light Jude spun the wheel hard to the right, whipping us onto Northlake Way, pointing us towards Wallingford and the University District beyond. I hung on. My right hand’s nails dug into the armrest beside me; my left hand wrapped around the wolf’s head pendant, which warmed in my grasp. I didn’t care which way we went, as long as it was away from Fremont and Aggie’s house.

  So I looked once more through the rear windshield, back towards the bridge we’d just left, and swallowed hard at what I saw.

  Their headlights angling like guided missiles on a brand new course, the motorcycles followed.

  * * *

  It’s easy to get lost on Seattle roads if you don’t know them. All the lakes, bays, and canals, along with the hills that rise up between them, turn a straightforward grid of streets into a warren of tangled avenues and surprise intersections. Streets sometimes change names, directions, or both. Two-way thoroughfares change to one-way without warning and back again.

  Jude knew our city’s streets. She drove through them like I’d never seen her drive before, swerving and turning around corners and roundabouts and barreling down alleyways, her hands and feet manipulating the wheel, gearshift, and pedals like a rock drummer in a solo. Her features tensed with concentration; sweat beaded along her brow. Through Wallingford and Greenlake and on over into the U-district she took us, while Christopher and I kept grim watch and the rain poured down upon streets that grew emptier as the night progressed.

  But no matter what she tried, we could not elude the Sidhe.

  All identifiable details obscured by distance, the darkness, and the rain, the motorcycles continued their pursuit. Only their headlights behind us advertised their presence, weaving and darting at impossible angles like alien spacecraft straight out of The X-Files. It was haunting, it was surreal, and as the breakneck pace of the ride continued, I began to wonder if we would be able to shake them at all.

  “Christopher, can you do anything?”

  He shot me a look full of self-directed frustration. “God help me, I don’t think I can,” he breathed, scrubbing the back of his hand across his face. “Not yet.”

  “Don’t try,” I said, studying him. His eyes were half-glazed, his voice thin, ever so slightly higher than its normal pitch. He wouldn’t stay awake much longer, I knew. Nor would I. Weariness gnawed at the edges of my consciousness, muting the magic coursing along my system and slowing my thoughts. Even if there was something I could do with my newfound power to throw off our pursuers, I couldn’t begin to think of what it might be.

  Which left Jude. “Babe,” I said, “we’ve got to hide.”

  “You got any ideas, talk fast,” she answered. Her control of the truck was still sure, but her entire face gleamed with sweat and she’d taken on a distinct thousand-yard stare.

  I racked my brains and looked around us in all directions. We were in the heart of the U-district now, scant blocks north of the University of Washington campus, cutting through narrow, tree-shaded streets. Old homes converted to student housing stood side-by-side with studio apartment buildings, and though the university’s fall term hadn’t yet begun, dozens of cars owned by early arrivals lined the curbs.

  And they were something else besides evidence of incoming students. They were cover.

  “Take the next corner,” I urged Jude then. “Pull into the driveway of the first frat house you find—and cut your lights!”

  “I won’t see where I’m going!”
/>   “You don’t need to. I can! Trust me, Jude!”

  She glanced frantically at me but did as I asked, snapping off the truck’s headlights as she hauled us around the corner of 19th and 47th. The moment the lights were off, I realized I’d spoken the truth. More than a little punch-drunk with tension and tiredness, I choked back a hysterical giggle at the thought of Aragorn in The Two Towers movie, bellowing ‘Legolas! What do your elf’s eyes see?’

  Mine saw through darkness and rain to make out cars, trees, and driveways as clear as day. Both my eyes still itched and burned, but somehow in the last couple of days my vision had grown sharper than it had ever been before in my life. It was the latest on a growing list of impossibilities—but one I could not afford to ignore. I leaned forward, peering hard, and seized the first opportunity I spotted: a driveway leading down to the shadows in the back of a frat house.

  “Turn! Now!”

  Jude obeyed, wheeling the truck around and shooting to the bottom of the driveway as smoothly as a bolt sliding home. I gestured sharply at her to kill the engine, and in the ensuing quiet we strained to hear anything beyond the hammering of the rain, any sign of our pursuers coming after us. “Christopher,” I hissed, thrusting my hand out to him, “Warder magic is for protecting and guarding, right? Can it hide us?”

  His fingers locked around mine, and through that contact, I felt his power laboring, trying to spark into life. “That could count. But you’re goin’ to have to help me, lass,” he whispered.

  “Tell me what to do!”

  “Just think about hidin’!”

  I thought about hiding with all my strength: at age five in the back of my closet from a rare Seattle thunderstorm, out of the sight of bigger children in a hollow between two blackberry bushes, in my room with all my lights off as I wrestled with the flu. Don’t see us, I thought, screwing my eyes shut and flailing into myself for the energy that had roared up against Elessir. It surged, and I grabbed onto it as tightly as I’d grabbed Christopher’s hand. I felt the wolf’s head pendant grow hot—and on impulse, wrapped my other hand’s fingers around it. It was a Ward already; maybe it could help.