Faerie Blood

by Angela Korra'ti

  Don’t see us. Go away. Nothing to see here, move along—

  The magic swirled up, oddly subtle, as if it somehow reacted to my desperation to keep us out of sight. It circled back and forth between my hands, pulling from Christopher, from me, and from the necklace, and then rushing out and up to fall across us like a blanket. There was nothing to see, not even for my new and improved vision, but all three of us hunkered lower in the truck in instinctive reaction. I allowed myself only enough exposure to keep what little of the street I could see in view; all the while, I kept up that mental litany.

  Don’t find us don’t find us don’t find us—

  First one and then the other, in opposite directions, the motorcycle headlights flashed along the street. They slowed. Then they stopped, right at the top of the driveway, and my heart stopped along with them. I couldn’t tell from my vantage point who sat astride the bikes, but within the energy coursing out from Christopher and me, I felt my nerves spike up with warning at their nearness.

  Don’t find us don’t find us don’t find us—

  Seconds crept by, each one seeming to last two years, until at last the lights took off again on down the street.

  “They’re gone,” I said in a breathless squeak as I drooped, limp and boneless, against my seat. After a few more seconds—two, then five, then fifteen—the street remained dark, so I dared to say it again. “I think they’re gone!”

  Slumping along the steering wheel, Jude exhaled in relief. “Oh good,” she mumbled weakly. “I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep that up.”

  Christopher sagged forward towards me, his head touching the back of my seat. The power we’d raised began to sputter and fade, and yet his fingers did not relax their grip. “Christopher.” I waggled his hand a little. “Are you with us?”

  “Just give me a minute…”

  “We should get him to a bed,” Jude told me, her brow crinkling up. Around a jaw-cracking yawn she added, “And me too, for that matter.”

  That made three of us, but I hesitated. “I don’t think we should go back to Aggie’s,” I said. That made Jude’s head shoot up off the wheel, and even Christopher straightened, painfully, to peer over at me. “Just in case our friends show up again once we get moving, I mean.”

  “We told your aunt we’d come back to her place,” Jude protested.

  And Aggie would have a conniption, I was certain, but there wasn’t any way around it. Hopefully she would understand. “I’ll call her and apologize as soon as we get to a phone, but I’m still not laying a trail back to my aunt if I can help it.”

  Jude considered this, and then after a moment thoughtfully nodded. “Okay. Where do you want to go instead?”

  “My place. Christopher’s staff is there,” I said, and he glanced at me with surprise and approval, pleased at the reminder. “And Sidhe or no Sidhe, I have to feed my cat.”

  * * *

  Christopher had a tiny room in one of the off-campus student boarding houses not far from the campus; Jude lived in Laurelhurst, just south of the Sand Point district. Both were on the way to my house. After a quick conference we agreed to stop at each place for five minutes, just long enough for each of them to run in and grab what they deemed necessary as long as we needed to stick together.

  I wasn’t convinced that Christopher would make it into his boarding house under his own power, but with a stubborn set to his jaw, he did just that. He returned almost immediately, toting a ragged camouflage-green knapsack that looked older than he did—and a long, slender instrument case that looked like it might contain a banjo. The knapsack rode casually slung off his shoulder, but he bore the instrument case as though it were made of gold.

  “What in the world is that?” I blurted at him as he got back into the truck.

  “My bouzouki.” He said it as though it was made of gold too, and as Jude got back on the road he rested the case in his lap, never taking a hand off it.

  “You needed to bring that with you?”

  “I feel better having it with me,” Christopher said, shooting me a sheepish little smile. I recognized his expression; I felt the same way about my violin even if I went for weeks without touching it. “And aside from that staff, this is everything I’ve got in the world. If I’m to be on the move, I want it in reach.”

  That wasn’t quite so much of a comfort.

  Jude’s stop at her apartment was just as swift, though she ducked in and returned with nothing more than a yellow backpack stretching at the seams with all she’d crammed into it in two minutes flat. That left us with a straight shot to my house; Jude took it with as much speed as she dared, given the late hour, the weather, and her own exhaustion.

  We were lucky. The motorcycles didn’t reappear.

  Even before we made it through my front door I heard Fortissimo yowling. The moment we got inside he nearly tripped us all as he wound about my ankles, Christopher’s, and Jude’s with equal insistence. I pointed Jude off towards my spare bedroom and its futon, and Christopher towards the couch; both of them went without protest, each looking grateful for an imminent chance to lie down. Fort followed me into the kitchen, keeping up his adamant insistence that neither he nor any of his kitty ancestors had ever once been fed, and shutting up only when I plunked a dish full of food before him. My ears rang in the ensuing silence, which opened the way for the stench wafting out of his litter box, tucked away out of sight in my little laundry room, to overtake me. I nearly wept, but couldn’t let that chore go unattended; such was the price of being a cat owner who hadn’t been home in two days.

  Once that duty was attended, one more remained. It was almost a relief to pick up the phone to call Aggie, though I was certain she was about to give me an even more thorough haranguing than the cat. And I was right. She picked up before the first ring ended, and the first words I heard across the line were an anguished shout.

  “Kendie baby, is that you? Lord God almighty, where are you?”

  “My place, Aunt Aggie,” I answered, my throat closing up a little at the naked fright in her voice. “I’m sorry we didn’t call you before. Things went badly.” And I told her about what had happened, of the fight with Elessir at the restaurant and of the Sidhe who’d followed us. I held back on telling her about the magic I’d done; I could barely think about it myself, much less talk to anyone else. But what I told her was enough. She let out one low moan as I described our flight away from Mama’s, and then went unnervingly silent until I finished, “We’re going to stay the night here; Jude can’t drive another foot. Millicent hasn’t called or shown up, has she?”

  With a deep sigh Aggie said, “No, baby. I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of her. And I don’t like you being over there. Millie said you needed to be behind protections.”

  “I’ve got Christopher’s Ward,” I said, reaching for the wolf’s head on its chain even though my aunt couldn’t see it. “It helped at the restaurant. And we’re all still together and still okay. If anything happens, Aunt Aggie, I promise we’ll call for help!”

  “Please do, Kendie. I couldn’t stand it if something happened to you.”

  Moisture prickled across my eyes at her soft, weary words. Traces of her old West Virginia accent had crept into her voice, a sign of her great stress. She sounded as exhausted as I felt, and for the first time I could ever remember, she sounded old. “I feel the same way, which is why I couldn’t let those Sidhe find you!” I blurted. “You do understand that, don’t you?”

  “I do, baby.” Then her voice regained a bit of life. “You get yourself to sleep, young lady. And you call me as soon as you wake up, or else I’m coming right over there to tan your hide!”

  I giggled just a little. “I will. Cross my heart.”

  “Good. And one more thing: you get Christopher to help you. If that thing he did with your necklace really did work, he’s a lot more of a Warder than he’s ready to admit. You get his help to keep yourselves safe.”

  Christopher’s power thrummed war
mly in the pendant. As I rubbed my thumb along it I thought of his leaping to my defense at Mama’s, and of his hand holding mine while we’d shielded ourselves against the Sidhe. “I will,” I murmured. The necklace stayed in my fingers as I bid Aggie a heartfelt goodbye, told her I loved her, and hung up. And Christopher stayed in my thoughts while I dialed Millicent’s cell phone and got her voice mail yet again.

  When I came back out into the living room Christopher was sitting on my couch where I’d left him, his head bowed forward, his hands curled loosely around the neck of his bouzouki case. The sight stopped me in my tracks. With weariness pressing down upon every muscle in his body, he looked little better than he had sitting there two nights ago—but at least this time, I thought, his head wasn’t bleeding. He looked up, though, the instant I approached. And despite his palpable exhaustion his gaze was steady, his expression resolute.

  “You should sleep,” I began, but he shook his head.

  “Not yet, lass. If I can get your help once more, there’s somethin’ I’ve got to do first.”

  * * *

  That something called, much to my bemusement, for Christopher to venture back outside with the flashlight I kept in my kitchen utility drawer. The rain had finally slackened off, leaving the air heavy with a wet, unseasonable chill, the kind that seeps into your bones if you’re out in it for too long and which Seattle usually doesn’t see until autumn. Privately I thought Christopher had no business anywhere except off his feet, but a new intensity had come into his face, rousing my curiosity despite my own bone-deep tiredness. So I warned Jude we were stepping outside, locked the front door, and stuck to Christopher like a shadow as I led him out into the dark.

  We needed to go no further than the nearest private patch of ground: the backyard. As backyards went it wasn’t much, just a stretch of patio that held Carson and Jake’s lawn furniture and grill, grass fringed along one side by a narrow band of flower garden, and two gates that led out to the driveways on either side of the house. In the middle of the night, soaked by the rain and bathed in my flashlight’s beam, it looked even less prepossessing.

  But it also had a tree, a tall, sturdy weeping willow that dominated one of the back corners of the yard and kept most of the rest of it in shade throughout the summer. Underneath its draping leaves, close to the trunk where the earth was driest, Christopher and I huddled together.

  “This’ll be perfect,” he murmured to me, kneeling with no apparent fear of wet, dirty knees upon the ground.

  Holding the flashlight for him, I crouched at his side and watched as he pulled an old pocketknife out of the pocket of his jeans. “So why are we out here, then?” I had my suspicions—but I waited to hear what he would tell me.

  “Do you remember what Millicent said at your aunt’s place?” His gaze flicked to me while his fingers flicked open the knife. “She’s right. A taste of a Warder’s blood is enough to get a city ready and waitin’. Warder’s just got to take up his side of the bargain.”

  My eyes went wide. “Then you’re—”

  He gazed at me steadily. “Yeah.”

  “You’re good with this?”

  “Yeah, I am.” Christopher blew out a breath, hesitating for a moment. Then he squared his shoulders and went on, “Kendis, my blood got on you before, just as it got on the grass and woke up my magic. Yours was wakin’ up too. And if it means what I think it does, you’re goin’ to feel this.”

  Nervousness rippled through me along with the low-key prickling I’d begun to associate with Christopher’s presence—but so did the beginnings of a strange excitement. “It linked us up, didn’t it? Your blood, I mean?” I said. “That’s why we can feel one another?”

  Christopher smiled just a bit. “Truth be told, lass, I’m guessin’ right along with you. I’ve never heard of anythin’ happenin’ like this between Warder and fey before.” He paused, watching me; shadows from the shifting willow fronds overhead played across his face in the flashlight’s glow, lending him an almost otherworldly look. Right then, though, it seemed appropriate. Then he added, “Anyway, I wanted to warn you. I won’t mind if you want to go back in—but I’d like it if you stayed.”

  His voice was calm and determined; his eyes, however, brimmed with uncertain, mute appeal and more than a little nervousness of his own. So I just nodded firmly, doing my best to ignore the way my pulse skipped several beats at the notion of what was about to happen. “Do you need me to do anything?”

  “Just be here,” he said.

  Then, with the knife in his right hand, he sliced open the palm of his left.

  As I gasped out loud, Christopher turned his left hand palm down and slapped it against the earth between two of the willow tree’s farthest-reaching roots. The moment his hand made contact it was as though an electrical circuit went live; power crackled out from the place where his hand touched the ground, making his arm quiver noticeably and the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  His eyes squeezing shut, his head bowing forward, Christopher began to whisper words in a language I didn’t know. He pronounced them uncertainly, as if trying to remember what to say, but that didn’t seem to matter. The surge of power latched on to every syllable he uttered and carried it straight into my chest, where they echoed back and forth. With each word the energy built, and with each word Christopher shivered; when he paused and looked back at me, his eyes had gone gold.

  When he let go of his knife and lifted his right hand to me, I grabbed his fingers without a moment’s thought—and the energy rolled over from him into me. Christopher repeated the same words, more confidently this time, and I thought in wonder of reverse lightning rods that pulled lightning up from the ground rather than down from the sky.

  One more time he spoke, in English now, staring unwaveringly at me above our joined hands. The words came out as conversational and ordinary of tone as if he’d commented on the time of night or the wetness in the air. But a certain reverence came into his expression and a glow sprang into life behind his eyes, lifting what he uttered up to a solemn, formal vow.

  “I am Christopher MacSimidh, son of Damhnait, son of Malcolm, and I will Ward this place with my breath, bone, and blood.”

  Either light actually flashed, or else I dropped the flashlight; I wasn’t sure which. Still, everything around me went white for an instant, turning nighttime into noon. When the brilliance dwindled back down to the flashlight’s earthly illumination, Christopher’s hands were on my shoulders and his gaze drank in my face and frame. “Are you all right, then?” he demanded.

  His hands. With a little squeak, I plucked his left one off my shoulder and cradled it in both of mine, palm up. I felt remarkably no surprise to find that the only sign of the gash he’d made was a white scar, thin and fine as a strand of hair, one I could barely make out in what little light we had. Awestruck, I said, “I take it this is a good sign!”

  “That’s how it works,” he told me, sounding giddy as I felt. “I wasn’t sure I’d remember the words Mom used when she pledged to St. John’s. We all do it differently, the Warders do. Mom had a thing for threes.”

  “But are you all right?”

  “I asked you first!”

  Giggling, I clasped both his hands in mine. Here he’d just committed an act of magic he’d been avoiding for the past sixteen years, and he was asking after my welfare. But then, he was a Newfoundlander and they were like that—or at least the one before me certainly was. “I’m fine,” I assured him. And I was, so far as I could tell, even though my ears were burning again and every square inch of my skin seemed hypersensitive. I could feel the pressure of Christopher’s fingers, the brush of the wind against my cheeks, the occasional droplet of water hitting my hair from the branches overhead, and even the texture of the ground through the soles of my shoes, all together, all at once.

  It should have been scary, and it was. But it was exhilarating too. “What about you?” I prodded. “You are all right, aren’t you?”

  He pau
sed—and then that shining smile he’d given me before ignited across his face. The sight of it went straight to my head, like a long draught of wine, firing off an impulse to which I willingly succumbed. I hugged him. And he hugged me back. His arms about me, humming with an energy that no longer felt unfocused, were like being embraced by sunlight.

  “I’m goin’ to be, Kendis lass,” Christopher murmured warmly into my hair. “I’m goin’ to be.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The inhospitable night turned strangely inviting in the wake of what Christopher had done. Never mind the wind and rain picking up again, sending damp gusts of air eddying under the willow’s branches. Never mind the cold, uncomfortable ground. With my hand locked around Christopher’s, the energy he’d created coursed up from the ground, through him, and into me before it swept right back again. It suffused my system with a profound sense of connection and belonging, as if the city I’d known all my life had become awake and aware and welcomed me into its arms.

  What the magic did to me, though, seemed nothing compared to how it transformed Christopher. Exhaustion and pain fell away from his bearing; his face, incandescent with joy, was the face of a man coming home. He surged to his feet and pulled me with him, spun me around in a circle, and then crushed me to his chest in a fervent embrace. Wet willow fronds slapped against us, but he paid them no heed. “Lord Jesus Christ,” he exulted, “if I’d known it’d be like this, I’d never have run so long!”

  Lifted bodily off my feet, I gasped and laughed out loud, clinging to Christopher for balance—and to keep the fronds out of my face. I liked hugging him. A lot. It felt like hugging an oak tree made of light, all strong and vibrant life, sinking intangible but powerful roots far into the earth beneath our feet. “But then you wouldn’t be here,” I said in an unthinking rush, lifting my head to smile up at him.