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

by Marian Maxwell

  Amber and Paulie slowly approached. They glanced at each other, not sure how to start a conversation or to get the Faerie creatures to leave the alley. The golden haired fae was already collecting the other refugees.

  “Ahem!” said Amber sheepishly, clearing her throat. The creatures still did not notice her presence.

  One of the imps, a little brown creature with two horns, bared its fangs as the pixie threw a pair of finger bones onto the dirty floor of the alley and grinned. “Fours!” the pixie exclaimed, and did a little backflip in the air, pixie dust falling from her green-and-purple wings.

  “Cheats!” said the imp.

  “Is not,” said the pixie.

  “Cheats!” the imp repeated.

  They spoke in a very crude form of the Faerie language. Even Amber could make out the words. It was like baby talk.

  “Next round,” the goblin grumbled. He stroked his beard with the long fingernails of a gnarled old hand.

  The pixie flew down to the ground, grabbed the mummified ear and pulled it over to her side of the gambling circle. “I’s won,” she cackled.

  The imp growled.

  The goblin pocketed all of the bones that lay scattered on the ground, seemed to mix them up in there, then spat into the middle of the circle and threw out all the bones.

  The pixie grumbled. The goblin squinted and stroked his beard. He seemed to be the referee; Amber could not tell if he was also betting and had a stake in the items. Maybe it was only the imps and the pixie playing each other for the yarn and other treasures.

  “Scram!” said Paulie. He stepped into the circle, scattering the bones. The group all looked up at him with wide eyes. They really hadn’t noticed Amber and Paulie approach.

  The goblin muttered under his breath. Amber only picked out the word “human.” The gamblers went on their way, the goblin glancing back over his shoulder as he left.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” Amber said to Paulie. “You could have asked them nicely.”

  But Paulie wasn’t listening. He had also heard the goblin and picked out the word “human.” Even if he didn’t understand the rest of it, he knew well enough it was an insult.

  He grabbed the goblin, who stood only as high as Paulie’s hip, raised him to eye level and held him against the alley wall. “What did you say?” he growled. “Do you have a problem?”

  The goblin sneered, spoke again in the Faerie tongue, this time too fast for Amber to make out anything at all.

  Paulie clenched his jaw. “A goblin like you shouldn’t be saying anything bad about humans. You’ve never even been to Earth, have you?” He was muttering, talking to himself more than to the creature. Knowing this, he let the goblin fall the distance to the ground, pick himself up, and glare one last time before making his exit.

  Amber did not like this side of her brother that she was seeing. It was one thing to hold a grudge against the fae, but a goblin? Minding his own business and playing bones in an alley? It wasn’t right. Hell, even if it had been a fae it wouldn’t have been right. This wasn’t revenge, it was his own bitterness that he couldn’t contain, leaking out into the world.

  Amber didn’t have any more time to think about it. The golden haired fae, the two bandana ambushers and the five humans appeared at the mouth of the alley, right as the imps and the pixie flew out after the goblin. They looked at them as they passed by, wondering what in holy magic just happened.

  “Never mind,” said Amber, before any of them could ask. “Come here, all of you. Join hands and stand together. Yes, like that. Shoulder to shoulder.”

  The humans the ambushers joined hands. Amber picked up a bone that had fallen from the goblin’s pocket. She hoped it wasn’t too valuable to him. With it, she scratched a series of geometric shapes onto the dirty ground. The lines showed up not so much from scratching into the stone, but pushing through the dirt and grit caked on top, hiding the white cobbles beneath.

  Amber furrowed her brow in concentration. It had been some time—not since the Academy—that she had attempted to cast a glamour with this area of effect. It needed to cover herself and her allies, a range of people who stayed within close proximity.

  All eyes were on her as she chanted and scratched shape after shape with the bone. “Don’t move,” she said, taking the time to break her chant to give the order.

  The shapes she scratched—double triangles, a helix, a pentagram with circles over the tips, and many others—were designed to channel her seer’s power and focus her mind in the right way for this complicated spell to take form.

  A group of passing fae glanced into the alley and hung around to watch what was unfolding—until the golden haired fae scowled at them and glared so intensely that the onlookers decided to move on. In a place like the entertainment district, there was no telling what could have been going on, or which players were involved. There were all sorts of under lords and mafia members, and people generally up to no good, that unless you knew the people involved or were sure of where you rested in the hierarchy, it was best not to interfere in the business of others.

  Amber scratched in the last shape so that all nine pairs of feet had a geometric rune on either side of them and in the middle, making a circle that joined them all spiritually. Then Amber ducked under two linked arms and came into the middle of the circle. She quickly turned, brushing each person on the forehead with her palm. After she rubbed her hands together as if cold on a winter night, faster and faster, building heat between them, chanting louder and louder, her voice ringing through the alley, perhaps too loudly, making it heard out on the promenade.

  It was a risk worth taking. When her hands were heated up enough, and she felt them thrumming with the magic, she stretched out the spell, making it wide enough to encompass the whole group. She held out her hands, raising her palms in the air, and spoke the final word of the spell.

  Amber knew it had worked because the sensation of snowfall, cold as mountain air, touched onto the top of her head and shoulders, then down through the rest of her body to the tips of her toes. The others, shoulder to shoulder and holding hands, gasped from the sudden temperature change, telling Amber that they were also covered by her glamour spell.

  “You are glamoured to look like fae,” Amber explained. “We have two minutes, max. You will know the spell is broken when the cold goes away. You should be able to feel yourself warming already.”

  The golden haired fae nodded. Paulie frowned.

  “Very good,” said one of the other ambushers. It was the woman from before, with the python arms and short pink haircut. “You will be a valuable member of our hunting party.”

  “Hunting party?” Paulie asked.

  “Enough,” said the golden haired fae. “We don’t have time. Don’t run,” he added quickly, as two of the human who had joined their party rushed to exit the alley. “Casual.”

  They stepped out of the alley, and not a moment sooner a mob of angry fae came into sight down the side of the promenade, carrying clubs and daggers, small buckler shield, and other petty arms, including what even looked to be a frying pan, from one fae who evidently had joined their number without any better weapons nearby.

  That was the front line of the mob; behind were many more, shouting angrily, pointing, watching the rooftops and looking everyone for a human face, or anything they might recognize as having come from the dead hell spawn. It was good that the ambushers had ditched their packs of hell spawn armor once they had been spotted, and the horn had been blown. With the copper left behind, all they had to do was take off their bandanas and their was nothing suspicious to mark them out from anyone else in the district.

  “Stay calm,” the golden haired fae muttered. They would get to the mansion barely ahead of the mob, so that they would be passing through the door, between the two bouncers, at about the same time as the mob marched down the promenade behind them.

  Despite holding a stoic expression, Amber began to sweat from her brow. She was heating up faster
than she had anticipated. How many seconds since they left the alley? Fifteen? Twenty? Almost half the spell was up. If the glamour dispersed at the time they crossed the mob’s path…It would be lights out for all of them, the safe house would be compromised for all the other groups who had yet to show up.

  And then there is the matter of getting inside, Amber thought. Black Gauntlet claimed it was their safe house, but did the bouncers know that? Would they let them inside, even though they wouldn’t be able to recognize anyone because of the glamour?

  Worried thoughts flew through Amber’s mind in a scatter. She thought of a number of contingencies, spells that she could cast in cast they were discovered, but there was really nothing she could do. A seer’s speciality was for the planning and preparation stages, not the heat of battle. To make matters worse, the ambushers would be without spells too—if it was true that their magic wells were nearly depleted.

  They drew ever closer to the large building. Amber did not know what kind of business was carried out inside, but only that she had to get past the bouncers as soon as possible. Whether it was a brothel, a slave parlor, or a hashish den made no difference. Anywhere off the promenade would do—even back into the dungeon, where she had first been kept in faerie.

  The golden haired fae went first up to the ogre bouncers. The mob of fae went past behind them, not so much as giving Amber, Paulie or the others so much as a glance. The glamour was just that good. Amber allowed herself a small bit of satisfaction, now knowing that her spells could fool even the fae of Lodum. It was a story to tell the grand kids, that was for sure.

  A hand signal was flashed. The ogres stepped aside, revealing not a door, but two sheets of white linen lined with red trim, symbols of the fae language painted on the front. Amber did not know what they said. She guessed it was the name of the establishment.

  The linens hung down like a short curtain, designed to block the view from the promenade more than to keep people out. Amber and Paulie to follow the fae inside, raising their hands to hold up the linens as they passed through.

  The fae kept walking, not slowing or glancing back or showing any sign that they should relax. It was only when the full group of ten, including Amber, had gone through the linens and into the building, and the ogre bouncers had gone back to their position covering the entrance, that the golden haired fae let out a sigh of relief.

  He led them to a room that featured a large gong held up on a black wooden stand in the middle of the far wall. It was there that two goblins holding mallets beat agains the gong in time, back and forth, from they lounged in hammocks on either side of it, smoking out of pipes that they held in the space between their big toes, allowing them to puff leisurely with their hands free to scratch their bellies and take their turn to methodically ring the gong, back and forth, so that the reverberation, while not loud, never fully ceased.

  Lounging, Amber could see, was exactly what this room was for. There were hammocks hung all along the outside walls, next to tall potted plants. A chattering monkey sat on top of the large leaf of a fern, wearing a little golden bell attached by a small red rope around its little neck. Upon seeing the arrival of ten new visitors, it yelped, and leapt from the leaf to another plant, and climbed up to a branch far above, near the ceiling.

  The room was already quite full, but there was a couch in one corner and a couple of chairs that they were all able to slide into and relax. As their butts touched the cushions, the last of the chill signalling Amber’s glamour wore off. The heat came back to them, along with a tingling of skin. They rubbed their arm and took deep breaths as they readjusted to a normal body temperature.

  The goblins paid no notice. Neither did the fae, or the centaur, who stood tall, the marks of its hoofed feet all over the hardwood floor. He stomped and munched happily on one of the plants.

  Only the monkey seemed to care about the newcomers. It sniffed and watched them carefully, bell ringing as it jumped up and down on the branch.

  8

  Amber

  “Welcome to Borto’s club,” the pink haired fae drawled. “Y’all will be safe here. For now.”

  “Borto is a friend to humans, and to Black Gauntlet,” the golden haired fae added. “No one will harm you in here, not without severe punishment. I should say, the patrons do not know about this being a safe house, only not to cause trouble inside the club. And no one is inside that Borto does not want inside.”

  Paulie and the other humans nodded to show they understood, and looked warily at the centaur, goblins, and the fae who occupied other hammocks and lounge chairs.

  Surely the owner can pay the sum required to keep the gong ringing forever, Amber thought. I could cast it myself after a day or two of research.

  Or maybe the goblins enjoyed it. Maybe it was a way to keep them employed and off the street. She liked to imagine the owner as a kind soul giving homeless goblins a place to stay in exchange for carrying out a task that kept their days occupied.

  “Meet Paulo and Slinger,” said the golden haired fae. “They are Borto’s cousins,” he said, gesturing at the two goblins Amber had just been thinking about.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed. “His cousins.”

  “Yes. What did you think they were, his slaves?”

  The two goblins, who had so far not glanced once in the newcomer’s direction, burst out in a chuckle.

  “They know what’s going on. You can speak freely with them,” another one of Amber’s rescuers said.

  “Thank you,” said Amber, slightly bowing her head, being unsure of proper etiquette and not wanting to offend.

  Paulie grunted his thanks. The other humans voiced sentiments at the goblins more in line with Amber’s thanks.

  “Our family is pleased to help any ally of the Lady of Arrows,” one of the goblins grumbled. He finally regarded them through half-lidded eyes. “But do not bring any more trouble here than you need to.”

  Amber licked her lips and gulped. “Might I trouble you for a drink?”

  The centaur perked up immediately and raced out of the room, a bunch of leaves still in his mouth as he almost bashed into the doorframe that was sized to fit fae.

  “Never mind him,” said Slinger. “He’s new here. He’ll learn.”

  “He should have brought refreshments as soon as they arrived,” Paulo grumbled.

  “Never mind,” Slinger repeated. “He’s a good sort. He’ll work it out.”

  So the centaur is the servant, Amber realized. I had it all backwards! What a funny place this is.

  She felt no small amount like Alice in Wonderland, although she thought that Alice would have a bit more of a tough time getting along with the denizens of Faerie than with a talking cat.

  The centaur reappeared carrying a metal pitcher in one hand and a number of glasses on a tray with the other. He poured the beverage, which looked to be sparkling champagne. Not carrying that she had no money for it, Amber took the glass and gulped it down. It was not the water that she wanted, but it was a sweet taste and quenched her thirst well enough to continue on without feeling light-headed. In fact it did more than that. It calmed her tense nerves and muscles, relaxing her for the first time since she had seen the gallows. Her shoulders settled back down and her jaw fully unclenched. She slumped down into the comfortable couch cushion.

  “Thank you,” she said to the centaur.

  “Most obliged,” he replied in halting English.

  The golden haired fae rose and went to the window. It was blocked by a curtain, which he held open a crack to peer out onto the promenade. “They’re gone,” he said. He moved to the side to peer out as far as he could, in the direction that the mob would have went.

  “I don’t think they’ll be back anytime soon,” said Paulo.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” the pink haired fae quipped. She removed her bandana, revealing an iron-cast jaw that matched her hard eyes. “They knew we were coming for this district. They spied us from a rooftop. It was far from blind chanc
e that led them here.”

  “Bah,” said Slinger. “They’ll do nothing. Worse things have happened. Just the other day, Lord Renfrew stabbed his half-brother on the steps of the great bank. You should have seen the commotion! I thought there was going to be a bloody battle.” He had funnily accented English, as if he had been taught at a British boarding school.

  Amber refilled her champagne from the pitcher. She was sleepy, the adrenaline gone, finally resting at a safe haven. I should get a long rest. Whatever comes next will come next. It will be dealt with another day.

  “Before you all head off for bed,” said the pink haired woman, stuffing her bandana into her front pocket, “we need to brief you on the situation. Tomorrow we are launching stage one of our plan to take Lodum back.”

  Amber groaned internally, mostly stifling it so that no one would hear. But then she sat up and summoned the will power to focus once again on the events at hand. It seemed there was no end to pressing issues.

  “You may use the reading room,” said one of the goblins offhandedly, a moment before striking the gong. He gave a glance about the room, making sure that everyone noted the other loungers. Comfortable as the space was, it was not free of other eyes and ears. The refugees were safe from being attacked, but that did not mean that everything they said would be held in the strictest confidence.

  Amber was not the only one to groan. They picked themselves up off the couch and chairs. The cushions were deep, and the back of the couch slanted on an angle so that they had almost been laying in a reclining chair. Rising so soon, it would have been better if they had never sat down at all.

  The ten of them went deeper into the club. The place was gaudy in its decoration, a Baroque-style design giving the club the look of a European noble’s summer home from the 17th century.

  The stairs they went up were made of polished steel. The ceiling held a series of fans, designed based on reports from Earth—not powered by electricity, but by runes etched into each fan blade to keep them rotating.