Faerie Queen: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 3 : Part I)

by Marian Maxwell

  4

  Amber

  Where are you, Suri?

  It was not a question that could really be answered, but Amber repeated it, imagining that somehow her friend, who could very well be in worse trouble than she was, would magically appear and save her from being captured. Suri could do anything. She was strong like that, more powerful in magic than she thought. Ever since they had first met at the Academy, she was a bit of a superhero to Amber. It had been that way, Amber being clever with the good grades, Suri brazen, quick to run towards danger with a twinkle in her eye and a laugh on her lips.

  I cannot rely on her forever, not for this.

  Amber had been happy to help when Suri was lost in the catacombs. As bad as it had been for Suri, Amber got the sense that her nerve wracking experience in the apartment, wondering if they were escaping or moments from death, had been even harder on her than the fleeing humans. She didn’t have the best nerves.

  Maybe I need to pray more.

  But no, of course that wasn’t the answer. Suri had that special something that Amber did not, that made her foolishly brave. Whereas Amber would think and think and overthink, and worry herself half to death, and all the while the problem wouldn’t go away, but keep getting worse, until she was too scared to take action. She was not the hero; she was the sidekick. The Robin to Suri’s Batman, and knowing that she just hoped that her friend was not in trouble so deep that Amber could not save her. Once in a while, the sidekick needs to do the saving.

  I need to be strong. I can go back to worrying later.

  It wasn’t just Suri who needed saving; it was all of the humans. None of them that had been left behind in Lodum were strong magic users. Only about half of them had even gone to the Academy, and of those none had practiced battle magic, or the seer spells that Amber had learnt, which were not good in battle but were still useful in a tight situation.

  When the enforcers had broken into her apartment, she had enough time to cast a quick glamour on herself and blend into the environment like a chameleon. But the enforcers had seen through it, perhaps even expected what Amber would do. Whatever the reason, the result was that, with a quick glance around the room, the enforcers had seen her, grinned to themselves knowingly and grabbed onto Amber’s arms, as if she had never casted a glamour at all. Since then she had been watched every moment, never given an opportunity to try any kind of sneakery that would help her or the others escape. So she being herded like cattle, with nothing to do but keep up and stick with the hell spawn.

  Their captors did not have to worry about any of them running away, because for the moment the hell spawn were both their captors and their bodyguards. To leave them in the middle of the city would mean death. It would also put a big wrench into any plan that Amber might have to escape, for there as nowhere to go but a waygate, and they were large centers of activity. Glamour or not, they were hardly easy to slip inside unnoticed, likely guarded by the hell spawn of the invading army.

  So far, Amber had only picked up bits and pieces of what had gone on in the city over the past couple of days. Suffice to say, the hell spawn were not the royal family’s army. Neither were they Lodum’s police force. They had invaded the city, and there was a civil war going on, a struggle for power. Amber was sure that Suri was somehow caught up in it all. It did not seem that those events and the invasion lining up to happen at the same time was mere coincidence.

  Amber touched her neck where she could feel the raw marks from where the noose had been tightened. Her flesh was soft, not used to rough treatment. The coarse rope had rubbed painfully against Amber’s skin. She was thirsty too, light-headed, adrenaline still in her veins but beginning to fade away. She needed to eat and drink and rest, and then plan for the future.

  Amber began praying again, almost as an afterthought, a mantra to keep her focused and sane amidst the chaos of uncertainty. “Hail Mary, full of grace…”

  When she reached the second stanza a loud bird call sounded out from nearby, like the caw of a raven. Amber was no bird watcher, but it was a fairly distinct sound. She didn’t think that there were any ravens in Lodum. Actually, she didn’t have much of an idea of what wildlife there was at all. If it was a raven, it must have been the largest one that Amber had ever heard of, because the caw came again, louder than before, directly overhead.

  If the hell spawn heard it, they had decided not to pay it any attention. Everyone was too busy rushing forward to pay mind to background noises.

  “Caw! Caw!”

  Two more, from different ravens, coming from the rooftops on opposite sides of the narrow street they were running through. Amber tried to look out from between the shields and bodies of the hell spawn next to her. The street was too narrow for them to run on either side of the human column. Instead they were packed in tight with the humans, running in a big mix, trying to get to wherever they were headed before the fae mob could corner them and attack.

  Their tall bodies blocked the view. Amber was only 5’4 and she was unable to see much. The rooftops however, at a brief glance, did look to be clear. She did not see any fae waiting to throw rocks. It made it even stranger that the ravens would be cawing, as there was nothing to agitate them.

  Amber gulped past a dry throat and shivered. This was not the fairy tale dream that had made her jealous of Suri’s adventures into Lodum.

  No longer. This courier business is finished, Amber decided. It was a stupid, dangerous idea to begin with. No wonder that Master at the Academy warned us against it.

  Amber had only gone along with it because of Suri’s insistence that it would earn them enough money to get buy without having to work in the ungifted world. It was a business startup. They had often joked to each other that they would make a gifted version of Silicon Valley, make the courier thing a big business. Real entrepreneurial.

  That had shut down fast. It wasn’t safe in Lodum, the most civilized city in fae. It seemed unlikely that any of the other Faerie settlements would be more welcoming.

  They had already missed their month’s rent payment. Not long before the enforcers had taken her away, Amber had pleaded with the landlord to give them another week, planning to scrap together the money while Suri did what she had to do on the Other Side.

  It’s all too stressful. Being a gifted was supposed to make life easier.

  That’s what Amber’s parents had told her, and Paulie too. When she first found out about magic, at the age of three, it had scared her. “I don’t want it,” she had said. “I want to be like the other kids.”

  “But it’s a blessing,” her parents had replied. “Don’t worry.”

  All the adults had laughed at her concerns, in that annoying way that adults do when they think children don’t know what they are talking about.

  Amber’s concerns had been well-founded. There were many dangers that came with being gifted. Including being kidnapped by fae and almost being hung by the neck, Amber thought. That’s high on the list.

  By all accounts, because of her magic, she should be lounging on a beach somewhere while a fae bartender served her martinis. That was the life that she always wanted, to share, one day, with a cute husbando. That’s what being gifted was all about. What good was it if you had to spend all your time risking your life against supernatural baddies? Being gifted felt to Amber like a curse, more than ever before.

  The raven cawed again, this time so close that Amber was startled, and slowed her jog. Rocks rained down from overhead.

  They found us!

  Amber cowered, ducking next to hell spawn near her side. The other humans did the same. Only the golden haired fae stood tall. At the same time, they all tried not to stumble into each other and fall down. Their hoods were off, removed when they had started jogging away from the market square. Amber could see the human’s faces now, and their expressions of fear, and wondered if her face looked the same.

  A rock bounced off the copper helmet of the hell spawn guard next to Amber, setting it askew and
making room for the rock which came immediately after and found its mark, connecting with the guard’s exposed head. A pin-point followup from the first throw that had moved the armor and made the opening. The blow sent the guard down in a crumbled heap.

  More rocks flew down. The column stopped, the hell spawn halting to find the attackers. Amber heard running feet and watched five hell spawn break off from the group and begin climbing up the side of a building, armored hands easily finding slots in the roughly cut stone exterior.

  Ten, then fifteen seconds passed in relative silence. The rocks stopped. The hell spawn lowered their shields and made ready to move again when the edges of the rooftops on either side of the street suddenly showed the people who had launched the assault.

  They did not look like an angry mob of fae. They were a group of men and women, twenty strong, with black bandanas over the lower half of their faces, a gold sigil of a gauntleted fist sewn into the cloth, over the mouth.

  At an unseen order, the ambushers all leapt down, each landing on top of a different hell spawn guard. They avoided the tips of the long spears and used their weapons. All were armed with an axe, sword or mace. Others were shifters, taking animal form as they shifted in mid-air and landed with the full, crunching force of their furry weight on top of their target.

  The ambush was over in a matter of seconds. Amber did not move. She had never seen someone killed before, and was paralyzed by fear. But her lips could still move. She began chanting a glamour spell under her breath, able to do that much even though her leg muscles were locked, frozen and unable to run like in a nightmare. The discipline ground into her at the Academy paid off. The spell was on the edge of her lips, about to finish, when one of the masked figures came over, kicked the fallen hell spawn next to her, then put a hand softly on Amber’s shoulder.

  5

  Amber

  “We’re here to rescue you,” the masked woman said. “You have nothing to fear from us. Black Gauntlet knows who you are. You have more friends in Faerie than you may think. Black Gauntlet lives!” the woman shouted, raising her arm.

  The other ambushers joined her. “Black Gauntlet lives!” As did a few voices coming from the rescued prisoners—one of them belonging to the golden haired fae with the lantern jaw and beautiful blue eyes, who had been next to her on the gallows.

  So these are his people, Amber thought. Maybe we will survive this thing just yet.

  The first order of business after the ambush and all of the hell spawn were taken care of was to strip them of arms and armor. The ambushers went about this with practiced precision. They seemed to be a military unit, used to this style of guerrilla warfare, perhaps even trained.

  The name Black Gauntlet sounded familiar to Amber. As she stood waiting for them to lead the way, she remembered it was a name Suri had once used to tell Amber who she was staying with. And then Amber remembered Black Gauntlet from the Academy. She had never been interested in joining the mercenary guild in the same way that battle mages like Suri did, but she knew the name still as one of the most vaunted in the mercenary world. There were many similar organizations in Faerie that did not have the same reputation. Black Gauntlet was taught in gifted history books because of their role in the last Faerie War.

  And now they are making history again.

  But it still remained to be seen whether they would be treated favorably, or unfavorably in future history books. The events still had to play out, and Amber was beginning to realize the magnitude of the events she was caught up in.

  Maybe this is how Suri feels, she thought with a grin. With luck, these people will know where she is. Perhaps she’s even with them right now and waiting for me! Amber knew it was a lot to hope for, but it was not quite outside the realm of possibility either.

  “Give me a hand with this body,” said the golden haired fae.

  Amber grabbed the dead hell spawn by the arms while the handsome fae unbuckled the copper breastplate from beneath the creature’s armpit. He did the same on the other side, Amber turning the body so that the fae could easily reach it. They did the same for the greaves and the boots, and every piece of armor, last of all the helmet, which Amber took off herself and held in the crook of her arm.

  The cobbled street was dark green with gooey demon blood. The face of the hell spawn that she and the fae had stripped the armor from held no expression at all. Somehow it was even sadder than if it had worn an expression. These were creatures born in the spawning pools of the demon realm, slaves to the arch demon who had conjured them up with black magic. They had never had lives of their own, perhaps never even a conscious thought. There was no telling how hell spawn lived their lives, for even when they were captured they would die before succumbing to interrogation.

  Amber put a hand to her mouth, stifling the urge to throw up.

  She had never killed before. She didn’t want to either. It was far outside of her plans, yet she might not have a choice if events continued the way they had gone thus far. Ashes, Amber swore, if I had known who’s side the ambushers were on I would have joined them by bashing a hell spawn across the head.

  Last was the long spear and round shield, which the fae took for his own. He held them in his hands in the same way the hell spawn had, as if familiar with the weapons, and scanned the street behind them. He moved away from Amber to join his friends in the rescue party.

  Most of the other hell spawn bodies were stripped of their arms and armor. Rather than put them on as a disguise, the ambushers tied them up into bundles and carried them as packs on their backs.

  “We have to move fast,” Amber heard one of them say. “It won’t be long until an alarm is raised.”

  “Where’s the closest safe house?” the golden haired fae asked.

  The ambusher he was talking to, the bandana covering the lower half of his face, shook his head. “They’re all gone,” he said. “All the ones in this city anyway. We had to talk to Borto. He’s letting us use his club.”

  The golden haired fae frowned. “That’s it then? All the safe houses gone? Was there a traitor?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Amber had thought it was a man because of the deep voice, tall stature, wide shoulders and muscled arms as thick as a jungle python, but it was in fact a woman. Her hair was short and pink.

  “We’re trying to figure out who has been captured,” she continued. “We have to go. We can talk after we reach Borto’s.”

  The golden haired fae nodded. “Come with me,” he said to Amber, and the others who had gathered nearby to listen. “Keep up. Don’t fall too far behind. If you do, and you get lost, we won’t be able to come back for you. We’re running for our lives. There’s no one else in the city besides who you see here who will help you. It’s us and them.”

  No one said anything. There was nothing to say. They simply nodded and got ready to move out. For all their talk of not leaving anyone behind, the ambushers did help the humans scale the rough stone walls and get onto the rooftops, from where they had first thrown the rocks. All of the humans understood the situation much better than Amber, as if they knew who the ambushers were, and they were quick to get up off the street.

  She found her brother Paulie when they were on the rooftop, right before they had to make the leap to the next building. “Paulie!” she cried.

  “Amber!”

  They rushed into each other’s arms and held tight. After a few people had jumped across, and there was a slight worry of being left behind, Paulie took his sister’s hand and said, “I can’t believe it. I didn’t know you were here. When did you get into Faerie? When did this happen? You shouldn’t be here.”

  Amber laughed. “Yea, tell me about it,” she said. “It wasn’t exactly my idea. Something’s going on in San Fran. The enforcers aren’t on our side anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They grabbed me and brought me here. Don’t ask why—they just did it, and then I was up on the gallows.”

&
nbsp; Paulie closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw, looking extremely angry. “That was you up there,” he said softly. “I knew they were planning to make an example out of some of us. But…”

  “But what?”

  “I never imagined it could be you. I thought you were safe from all of this. Of course…”

  “Of course what?” Ever since they were kids, Paulie had the habit of trailing off his sentences when he was thinking deeply about something.

  “Hold on. We have to make this jump first. Are you ready?”

  “No,” said Amber.

  “Come on. It’s not that far.”

  The human next to Amber ran and leapt the distance, barely landing on the other side. He teetered on the edge for a moment, then one of the bandana ambushers grabbed him by the arm and pulled him fully onto the rooftop of the next building. They ran on.

  “Come on you guys,” said another ambusher, before he took a leap. “You can’t afford to stand around.”

  “You first,” said Paulie.

  Amber shook her head. “I don’t know any levitation spells. None of us do.” It was not a long drop to the street. Not really. It just looked bad. Three stories, not enough to kill, only injure. But if she fell…

  Already they could hear the sounds of chaos in the streets nearby Or have those noises always been this whole time and I didn’t notice them? It sounded like the streets were very active with fae rushing around, looking for humans to kill—the ones who had escaped the gallows.

  It’s like what Suri told me about the human district. It’s the exact same thing, but now it’s me running.

  Amber peered over the edge of the building at the cobbled street. The fall would mean to be abandoned and likely caught by the fae mob. It would take a while to scale a building and get back to the rooftop, and even if she did it without being seen, none of the ambushers would be waiting for her. She would be left to find her own way to the safe house, and she did not know where it was.