Blood Faerie

by India Drummond

  When she stepped into the clearing where he lay nestled in a bed of pine needles, his eyes fluttered. He gazed at her, his eyes burning with delirium and said the last word she would have expected. “Dem’ontar-che.” Love, in the ancient fae language. Yet more than love. Devotion didn’t even define it. The phrase was spoken only at sacred ceremonies, and never lightly. It implied blind faith, utter servitude, and unquestioning loyalty.

  Eilidh’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

  Munro blinked his red, bleary eyes and slowly sat up. He shook his head, as though trying to clear it. His keen eyes took in the clearing and then fastened on her. “How did I get here?”

  “Munro,” she persisted. “What did you say to me?”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and paused a moment before struggling to rise. Eilidh could see he was stalling, working his thoughts, trying to remember.

  “‘Damn, my arse,’ I think it was.” He grinned in a half-hearted apology. He looked around the forest again. “How did you find me?”

  Eilidh reached toward him, running her fingers over the magic that pulsed between them. “I think you found me.”

  He moved toward her, and it took all her will not to step away. I am fae, she reminded herself.

  His hand went to the side of her face and traced the gentle curve of her upturned ear. “I thought it was a fevered dream,” he said. Eilidh tried to pull her hood up, but Munro pushed it back. “No, don’t. Please. I want to see.” With a fingertip he touched her ear and stared at her spiky white hair before settling his gaze on her eyes. “Where are you from?” he finally asked.

  Eilidh started to turn away, but his hand guided her face back to meet his gaze. “Here,” she said. He clearly had no idea what an intimate gesture he’d made.

  Munro chuckled. “That’s no Perth accent you’ve got.”

  A century of teaching railed against her. Avoid the humans. Never speak to them. Whatever you do, never reveal our existence. They would seek us out and destroy us. We are stronger individually, but they have numbers and machines. They would drive us into the Otherworld completely, and we would be forced to shut our gates to the Ways of Earth forever.

  Eilidh saw that he understood. The frown that quickly replaced the smile told her he had likely worked it out. Perhaps he only wanted confirmation that he had not gone completely mad.

  After a very long, intense silence she said, “I am fae.”

  He sat, silently searching her face, as though he could read the truth in her expression. She felt him processing it, making a decision.

  Although she didn’t know why, she wanted to reassure him. She wanted him to believe her. Perhaps, more than anything, it occurred to her that maybe she didn’t have to spend the rest of eternity alone. One person could know, perhaps. One friend. Maybe. This strange human shed a ray of hope into her life.

  Eilidh suddenly glanced up. It had gotten late. “Faith,” she cursed.

  “What is it?” Munro said, turning as though listening to the forest around them.

  “Darkness falls, and the gateway to the Otherworld will soon open.” When Munro stared blankly, she explained further. “We must go. The kingdom borders are expanding.”

  It was more words than she had ever spoken to a human at one time. She didn’t know how he would respond. She could, of course, leave him behind. He would be in less danger than she when the borders overtook them. The kingdom fae did not hunt men who did not seek trouble. But, inexplicably, she didn’t want to. She wanted him to accept and follow her.

  “Your eyes are shining,” he said.

  She nodded. “As darkness falls, I will be able to see much better than you. Take my hand.” She offered her long, pale fingers, but he hesitated before accepting. When the skin of his palm engulfed hers, heat washed into her, racing up her arm. A wave of concern passed over her. Was he ill? She didn’t worry about contracting a disease from him. The fae did not succumb to human ailments, but she searched his eyes. He did seem slightly red in the face, but she had no time to worry for him. She could not be found here once darkness fell. “Come, I will guide you to the city.”

  Chapter 6

  I am fae, she had said.

  Munro lay in his bed and replayed the scene. She’d led him by the hand. An old melody played in his head. Over hill-way up and down…Myrtle green and bracken brown. She’d guided him as far as the Old Bridge and scanned his face with those eyes like pools of liquid silver. When she appeared satisfied with what she saw, she let go.

  He grabbed her wrist, and she flinched. Could she seriously be afraid of him? “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  She hesitated, as though giving her name would give away so much more. “Eilidh,” she said. An odd name, old and rich in texture, but once he heard it, he couldn’t imagine anything more right for her. Then she left him, running faster than she should have been able to. He watched until she slipped out of sight, but he couldn’t help but notice that passers-by ignored her, as though she didn’t register in their minds.

  He must be losing it. Somewhere deep, he accepted her. His logical brain, on the other hand, told him to go straight back to the hospital. He was too tired to be reasonable, so he turned toward home. It only took a few minutes to walk to Mill Street, and from there get the bus to the Tulloch Institute a few blocks from his house. By the time he put his key in the front door, it was pitch dark. Only when he heard his landline ringing did he realise he must have lost his mobile sometime during the day.

  He answered like always. “Munro.”

  No hello or how are you greeted him. “Jesus. Where have you been?” It was Getty. “The hospital said you walked out.”

  “Aye,” Munro said, not sure how to explain himself. “A bit out of it, I guess. How’s the St Paul’s case going? Any word?”

  Getty hesitated. “Not much, really. The victim, Robert Dewer, seems to have no enemies, no recent arguments, not much of a social life at all. The woman he was seen with at the bar, Alison Brice, said she just met him that night. He hadn’t been acting strange, and nobody can see a reason anyone would want him dead.”

  “Damn,” was all Munro said to that.

  “Yeah.”

  So a real whodunit. No motive and no witnesses. Except Eilidh.

  I am fae.

  Munro didn’t know what her presence or her race meant, in terms of their case, and it surprised him that he wanted to believe her strange pronouncement. But even he, a natural sceptic, reinforced by years of hearing every lie and excuse a man might invent, could not deny what he saw in Eilidh’s eyes or heard in her voice—not to mention those ears. But a faerie? Could it possibly be?

  “I’m back at the doc’s in the morning. I’m hoping to get word that’ll get me cleared for duty.” He didn’t mention that he’d spoken to the one possible witness to the murder. Not yet. He felt protective of her, even though he wasn’t sure why. Munro’s head hurt, and he knew none of this made any sense.

  “Alright then,” Getty said. His partner understood that he didn’t want to be off work during the biggest investigation their careers would likely see.

  “I’m going to bed. Been a long night. I’ll ring you first thing.”

  They said goodbye and Munro did as he said he would. The day had utterly exhausted him. Had he really napped in the forest? He could almost believe his encounter with Eilidh had been nothing more than a fevered dream. Almost.

  Although Munro had nearly talked himself out of returning to the hospital, he didn’t get the chance to back out. Eight hours after that phone call, Getty banged on the door and offered him a lift, even though Munro lived less than a mile from the Perth Royal Infirmary.

  They didn’t have to wait long to see the doctor who’d ordered the blood tests the day before. The doc told Munro the tests were inconclusive—probably meaning they showed diddly—but the doctor wasn’t happy about the seizure. He wanted Munro to get an MRI and didn’t think they should put it off.

  Munro knew a
n MRI wouldn’t reveal anything either. He’d been sick and seen a vision of Eilidh. Somehow, he’d found her. Then when he did, he got better. He didn’t believe in coincidence, but he wasn’t daft enough to tell anyone he’d been seeing faeries. They’d have him in a hospital gown before he knew what happened—and possibly a padded room.

  Getty offered to stay, but Munro knew that even though the doctor said he’d get him squeezed in that day, it would take a while. Munro went to get some coffee and begin a long day of trying not to think about the girl who turned his life upside down with three words: I am fae.

  ***

  Rather than returning to the church tower, Eilidh slept most of the day on Moncreiffe Island, the forty-six-hectare strip of golf course, garden allotments, and woodlands that divided an elbow of the River Tay into two channels. Because it was attached to the city by a footbridge and a rail line passed over, it was well beyond the influence of the fae kingdom, even at night when the borders expanded. The area was small, and the presence of foot-bound golfers and fishermen meant it didn’t offer her much privacy, so Eilidh didn’t dare make this a permanent haunt. However, it was less trafficked than the city’s two large parks. Best of all, it was green. She could hide amongst the trees and brush and feel the power of the cool water on all sides. The previous night, Eilidh had felt the coursing magic of the kingdom air. After that, she hadn’t been ready to surround herself with stone, rats, noise, and pollution. Not yet.

  As the sun crossed the horizon, Eilidh shook herself awake. She’d taken the habits of humans, in some ways, sleeping at least occasionally at night, even though she felt less alert and weaker during the day. But after her meeting with Saor, she realised she’d been marking time. Now she forced herself to imagine a future. Would she continue to hide among humans for the centuries to come? Could she imagine integrating with them? Passing for one of them? The idea seemed ludicrous. What would she do?

  Eilidh shook her head. These thoughts were foolish. She couldn’t pass for a human any more than a shepherd could pass for a lamb. Besides, she had more important things to think about. Her thoughts went back to the killing at St Paul’s, and the blood shadows that had been used as a weapon. Even if the conclave refused to take notice, she had to find out who’d slaughtered the man below the tower and why. She hadn’t felt the blood faerie’s voice again since she’d returned to Perth, but he couldn’t be far away.

  Eilidh. When she first heard it, she tensed, but then realised she’d only done so because the blood shadows had been on her mind. She recognised the voice carried on the wind. Saor arrived a few minutes later, just as dusk fell, looking magnificent and serene as he always did. She drank in the scent of Otherworld that wafted around him.

  “You live here?” he asked as he stepped into the small clearing where she sat cross-legged, waiting for him. His eyes swept over the thin protection of the trees and shallow, barely perceptible flows of earth magic.

  “No,” she said. “This is much greener than the place I live, Saor.” Her tone held a challenge. She did not need his condemnation or want his pity. Once, she had wanted his love, but that time had passed into dust. There was no point wanting things that could never be.

  He nodded. “The conclave will do nothing,” he said.

  “You told them of the blood shadows, of the killing?”

  Saor’s keen eyes glistened in the darkness. “Of course. I left nothing out.”

  Eilidh hadn’t realised until that moment how much she had counted on their help. She couldn’t stop this unnatural magic on her own. “More will die,” she said.

  “You could go south, to the wastes. You could hide more easily there.”

  A cold dread clenched her stomach. Down into the concrete wastelands of Edinburgh and its ever-growing burn of technology? “What of this blood faerie? Shall I leave him then, to feed on the men of this city?”

  Amusement filled Saor’s eyes. “Are you their Watcher? They are many. Even humans know that when a herd is too large, it should be culled.”

  Eilidh thought of Munro, of his strange, alien, pulsing magic. “They are not so different from us as we might have once thought.”

  Saor did not answer. Instead, he watched Eilidh as the silence between them stretched on. Finally, he asked, “Why did you not tell me?”

  It took Eilidh a long moment before she realised what he meant. Her forbidden talents. The reason behind her exile. Her tainted and twisted magical curse. “I was a child. I did not know.” The weight of the memories dragged her into sadness. “Even if I had understood, it was better you did not.”

  A subtle flick of his head told her of his annoyance. “You think not?”

  “If you knew I could cast the azure and said nothing, you would have been condemned alongside me.”

  “Or I could have helped you stop.” He paused. “I always aided you, Eilidh.”

  She smiled at him now. “You did. But could you stop hearing the stone call to you? Could you sever yourself from the Ways of Earth?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “But the Ways of Earth are natural. Do you think the conclave would have forbidden the Path of the Azure without reason? Its magic is twisted and dangerous. Piedre should have been enough to prove that to you.”

  “I have paid for the wrong done to him.” Eilidh avoided thinking about the young faerie whose life she nearly took with her accidental illusions. “I do not cast the azure. I told you that.”

  “Yet you say you could not sever yourself from it.”

  “I am what I am. My crime was being born.”

  “Self-pity does not suit you. You have grown thin of heart.”

  “And you are as self-congratulating as ever, Saor. Go. The Otherworld calls. I have not grown so thin that I cannot hear it.”

  “Will you go south?”

  “No. This is my home. These are my people now. Maybe I am their Watcher.” She was not certain she believed her own words, but saying them made her feel stronger. They gave her purpose after decades of mere existence.

  Saor’s face was still unreadable. He stood and turned to go. “Your father sends his blessings. He hopes you are well and happy. I told him you are.”

  “Thank you,” Eilidh said. All three would know it for a lie. No faerie could be well or happy outside the kingdom. Could they? “Goodbye, Saor. Thank you for delivering my warning to the conclave, even if they chose to ignore it.”

  He responded with a curt nod and disappeared through the trees, heading north.

  Eilidh stood and went west to the footbridge that connected the island to the city. She pulled her hood up to cover her hair and ears and walked aimlessly. She looked closely at the humans that stood at bus shelters or walked to pubs and restaurants. The night was still young. Cars with their cold, artificial eyes of light crept through the streets, carrying people to their homes. For the first time, Eilidh wondered what it would feel like to sit in the metal cage and be trundled down the road. She liked being on her feet, connected to the earth, but tonight she saw these people differently.

  If they knew what she was, would they be frightened? Would they accept her? She thought of Munro. He seemed to be drawn to her. But then, he was something different too, perhaps as different from his people as she was from hers.

  Eilidh stared at the stars, where her forbidden magic flowed. If she were to be the city’s only Watcher, she would need all the help she could find. The conclave had turned their back on her, and she didn’t know how to touch the magic flows above her. Always before, the astral magic flooded her without warning, overwhelming her senses. She had been taught that to touch the Path of the Azure was to tempt fate and the surest way to madness. It would mean risking death, but what was that to her now? She had no home, no family, no friends. She possessed nothing and owed no one. All she had was this place. She could let this blood faerie drive her further into the wastes, or she could take the chance to protect a city that did not even know her.

  Chapter 7

  Cridhe
had not dared to breathe when the Watcher called Saor approached the island. Although he knew the blood shadows were superior to the Ways of Earth, he had never tested his strength against a kingdom faerie. Dudlach raised him to fear the kingdom, while still speaking with wistful jealousy. As a child, Cridhe wanted to hear again and again about the Halls of Mist. His father indulged him for a time, but after a while, he told Cridhe to put his childish dreaming behind him. The pair lived beneath the notice of the kingdoms, but not for much longer.

  A year ago, finding an exiled female who could walk the Path of the Azure would have been a gift of fate. After all, how could they seed a new kingdom without someone to bear the children? They had heard rumour of her existence, but never encountered her.

  With their new plans, their need was not as urgent. Soon they would have their pick of the kingdom fae. Still, discovering her held a promise. They would take the kingdoms back, and mating with another of the Path of the Azure would increase the chances of a purer, more elite bloodline. Dudlach had explained that if two with earth magic mated, the chance of a child with higher magic was one in a thousand. If one parent had talents in the Path, the chances raised to a third. With both though? The gifts were never assured, but the chances were doubled. The magic came from the child’s own fate and manifested in a way as unique as a soul itself.