Urban Allies: Ten Brand-New Collaborative Stories

by Joseph Nassise

  The Fae were negligent jailers. They almost never came into the cell. Octavian’s waste bucket was noxious, but once he fell asleep and when he woke up it had been swapped for a clean one. The sleep had been induced. That was the only time someone had opened the door or actually looked at him.

  For two more days Octavian and Dahlia followed the same procedure. He fed her; she healed him. Though Octavian had feared he would get weaker and weaker from the blood-taking, that didn’t happen, maybe partly due to the extra water Dahlia gave him to drink, and her immediate healing of the puncture. Octavian also recovered from the physical punishment he’d received when he’d been captured as he entered Faery.

  The portal he’d used had obviously been watched. In retrospect, it seemed likely that Dahlia’s break-in had made the Fae suspicious.

  Octavian thought it was strange the Fae guards seemed to show no interest in the two of them besides giving them food and water. The next night, that changed.

  And not for the better.

  Though the door never opened, he became aware that he was not in his cell alone. A beautiful woman was there, and she bore a heartbreaking resemblance to someone he’d once loved. He just couldn’t quite recall who that someone was. But she was so familiar, her eyes just as he remembered, and her breasts, too, because she was quite naked.

  He was not surprised to hear an exclamation in another language from Dahlia’s cell. She had a visitor, too.

  “My love,” said the woman. “I am so glad to see you, so happy.”

  “My God,” he said, knowing what he was seeing could not be real, must be magic . . . but still, it was intoxicating to see her again. “You’re stunning,” he said falteringly. Breathless. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You don’t believe this?” She smiled as she took his hand and put it on her breast.

  Octavian frowned. “You don’t smell right.”

  “What do you want me to smell like?” she said, with the teasing smile he remembered so well.

  “Honey and cotton,” he said, though he hadn’t wanted to speak.

  Her smell changed.

  “There, my darling, is that better? I’m so anxious to hear why you came to me here. Why am I having the pleasure of being with you again? Please tell me how you came to find me.”

  It was harder and harder for him to cling to a shred of reality—I’m in a jail cell, she couldn’t really be here, she would never ask me for my secrets. After the bleakness of the cell and the pain of the past few days, her flesh and sweetness were absolutely compelling. He might have succumbed to the vision entirely, but then the screaming from the next cell began, and it wasn’t Dahlia’s familiar voice that was making all that noise.

  The woman in front of him glanced toward the wall of the next cell, and in that second, the illusion was broken. It was a woman, yes, but she was Fae, not his beloved, and she was at least a foot taller than the woman he’d adored. She was naked, yes, but her body was not at all reminiscent of the one he’d made love to.

  When her gaze returned to him, she could tell her spell had broken, and she instantly slammed him into the wall with such force that she knocked him out. When he came to again, he was alone.

  Dahlia was laughing in her cell.

  He went to the door. The corridor, as far as he could tell, was empty.

  “What happened?” he said. He could hear Dahlia moving closer to her door and caught a glimpse of her.

  “Killed him,” she said proudly. “He made himself in the image of my husband, but I knew it could not be Todd, and I killed him.”

  “You should be full of blood,” Octavian said.

  “Drained him dry,” she all but chortled.

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say this would be a good time to break out,” Octavian said. “You know they’re going to retaliate.”

  “Yes, they’ll kill me,” she agreed. “But it was worth it.”

  She was suspiciously cheerful.

  “Did the blood make you high?”

  She jumped up and down so he could glimpse her grin and bloody clothes. “As a kite,” she said. “Have you regained any of your magic?”

  “A bit.” He wasn’t sure how much, but he could feel the magic flowing in his blood and will. Maybe the flow was a trickle rather than the usual torrent, but it was there. In every conscious moment, he had been tapping into the magic at his core and using it to reach out into Faery. Accessing the magic here, drawing on it to bolster the magic inside him, was like learning a new and very difficult language. But he could feel the connections beginning to be made; the translation taking place.

  “Hopefully enough,” he added.

  “Then now is the moment.” She laughed and Octavian thought he’d never heard such a mad and excited sound. If this was the effect Fae blood had on vampires, he was surprised they’d let her live at all.

  “Now,” she said, and a terrifying strength was in her voice. “Octavian, weaken these bars.”

  He would have helped her anyway, but he felt compelled to press his face against the bars of his own window. He felt his slender thread of magic furl itself around the bars crossing Dahlia’s. He pulled, and he saw Dahlia’s tiny fingers wrap around the bars as she pushed. They both strained. She was growling, though he didn’t think she realized it, and he was aware that he’d been holding his breath, which really wouldn’t help at all. Octavian thought his brain was going to pop from the pressure he was putting on it. He closed his eyes to focus more intently, only to open them when he heard a groaning sound that had not come from a human throat.

  The bars were bending outward.

  “I’ve got it now,” Dahlia said, and the bars popped out and flew across the corridor, to thwang! into the opposite wall.

  Octavian said, “Oh, that’s not going to attract any attention.”

  But Dahlia leaped forward and kicked her door, and the wood splintered outward now that it was not reinforced. She pushed through the gap, and for the first time he saw Dahlia in her entirety. She was a lot like a very short Barbie doll, and she was wearing boots with very high heels and the remnants of what Octavian, in his male ignorance, would have called a cocktail dress. At least, it was short and tight. It had probably been aqua once upon a time, before grime and blood made their own random patterns. Her tight, wavy black hair was in a sort of Helena Bonham Carter state.

  Dahlia was beaming as she grabbed the bars of his window, her hands covered in something messy and smelly. She leaped up easily and braced her feet against the door while she pulled with her arms. The bars smoked and hissed against the substance covering her hands, and Octavian pushed on alternate bars. When the whole barred frame gave way he thumped against the door, then staggered backward.

  Dahlia delivered one of her kicks to the wood, and he was out of the cell. From being captive to being free had taken about two minutes. Dahlia gave him a resounding kiss (which tasted of blood and metal) and pointed to her right. They began to run. Octavian wanted to escape the cellblock as swiftly as possible. “Anywhere but here,” he said, and Dahlia nodded.

  Even in the boots, she could keep up with him, and Octavian suspected she might have passed him if she hadn’t been trying to stay at his side.

  They heard voices just in time to flatten themselves against a wall.

  “. . . what happened with Bronwyn and Eigar?” one of the Fae was asking. He was tall with long brown hair and a pair of pants that looked like snakeskin. His companion was shorter, blonder, and even more ethereally beautiful than the first. Octavian was too smart to be envious, but he noticed that Dahlia was smiling.

  Maybe she was thinking about how good their blood would taste.

  “Bronwyn said she made an exact copy from his memory, but he still detected it,” the shorter Fae said.

  “And the vampire woman ate Eigar,” the first Fae said. “Foolish of him to let that happen.”

  “Hard to believe Eigar is gone. And he owed me money!”

  “More fool you.�
�� And they went on their way. They had not noticed the two escapees. Octavian, who was feeling stronger by the second, became aware with a thrill of pleasure that he had cast a concealment spell over them without conscious thought. He kindled the embers of magic inside him, reached out and felt a more solid connection to the power in this world than he had before. The magic he knew and the magic of the Fae were beginning to communicate with each other—to translate. He thought of cell phone signals and how frustrating it could be to have only one bar. This felt like three bars, now. Not great, but better.

  Nonetheless, they needed to proceed with great caution.

  The corridor came to a nexus where several others also met, a roughly circular space with a ramp leading up on one side and what appeared to be an elevator on another. The idea of an elevator in Faery seemed odd and somehow funny to Octavian, but now wasn’t the time to ruminate on Fae architecture. There were several Fae in sight, some traveling up and down the ramp, and a pair emerging from the elevator. With a growing sense of urgency, Octavian whispered, “Our guards.”

  Dahlia nodded. “Elevator,” she whispered back.

  After a second, Octavian nodded. The ramp was obviously a major thoroughfare. People moved along it in a steady stream. Octavian couldn’t understand why anyone would choose to be below the surface when they could be under a real night sky. He pushed the idea away and took Dahlia’s hand to keep them in sync, reinforcing the glamour that kept them invisible with a gesture of his hand and a muttered phrase.

  The elevator was similar to all elevators Octavian had ever used, except the doors did not close from the sides but from the top and bottom. He and Dahlia pressed against the rear of the box, which had room enough for eight people, more or less. The doors opened again after one level.

  Three Fae got on. One had a crutch and a bandage on his leg, and he was complaining loudly that the fight had been thrown. The other two, both women, were skeptical about this and began to jibe at the male Fae.

  Octavian was just beginning to relax when the paler of the two women said, “What is that smell?”

  The man swiveled on his crutch and said, “I smell blood. Are you having a human menses, Adelphi?”

  “Watch out or you’ll lose your other leg,” Adelphi said. “Seriously, what is it?” She began to examine the floor, perhaps looking for drips of blood. “That’s weird,” she said. “I can’t see . . .”

  And then her throat wasn’t there.

  The male Fae bellowed, the woman shrieked, and Adelphi fell dead to the floor, only to be yanked back up by invisible hands and to be held, moving, at about the height of a small vampire’s mouth.

  Octavian killed the male with a spell that paralyzed his breathing, and then used the same magic on the remaining female, but not before she drew a dagger and made a determined effort to cut his throat. She might have managed, if only she’d been sure where his throat was.

  They arrived at the final level. According to Dahlia, this was the level where Ripley was being held. Dahlia dropped the corpse she’d been drinking from, beamed at Octavian, and stepped over the other two as she left the elevator. With some disgust, Octavian followed her, pushing a head back into the elevator and punching several buttons on his way out to stall their inevitable discovery. The guards should have reached the demolished cell doors by now, in any case.

  Still weak from days of feeding Dahlia his blood, Octavian had been operating on adrenaline up to this point. Now to his chagrin he stumbled and would have fallen if his companion hadn’t gripped his shoulders.

  “Shit,” she muttered. “Shit. Hold the illusion, sorcerer!”

  Octavian struggled to maintain his consciousness and to hold their invisibility. There were Fae around, he knew; he could sense movement and hear voices, though dimly. He heard a little fleshy sound, and then Dahlia’s grimy wrist was at his lips.

  “Drink this, now!” she said in what he could only think of as a commanding whisper. To his astonishment, he obeyed. The second the blood hit his own bloodstream, his strength surged, and he felt smarter and faster and more wonderful than ever before. He was truly a great sorcerer, and he knew he would succeed. And he was moving so fast he thought anyone watching would only see a blur. He was also bouncing up and down.

  What the hell did she just do to me? he thought. But really, he felt so damned good that it hardly mattered at all.

  The thoughts nagged at him, though. When he could bring himself to stop drinking from her, he said, “I feel you influencing me. You have some kind of power over me?”

  “Just a little mental influence because I’ve taken your blood a few times,” she said. “It’s going to wear off, Octavian. Don’t worry, you’re not my human puppet,” she said as she took off the ridiculous boots.

  “Where are we?” With her blood buzzing in his head he had been in a kind of fog.

  “We’re in a bedroom of the residence of Niall, the king,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, I know, dangerous. But we were in a public place, and I knew someone would hear us or smell us again,” she said, in a rapid whisper. “Pay attention! You are strong enough now even without your sorcery to blow these Fae out of the water, but it won’t last long. They’re inherently magic, while you acquired yours.”

  Octavian nodded.

  “So we’ve got to move while you’ve still got the extra strength I just gave you. We have to get Ripley out of here and to the portal. The thin place. In my Louisiana.”

  Octavian still buzzed but his thoughts were not so clouded that he was blind to how that scenario would likely end. “No. To my thin place. The one I created on my property in Italy. It opens right in the courtyard in front of this palace.”

  “Which is why you ended up in the dungeon with me,” she said, waving her hand. “And I’m betting they’ve shut it down by now. But let’s worry about step two after we’ve accomplished step one, which is to get the bastard out.”

  “Agreed,” said Octavian, with deep distrust. “Where is he?”

  “He’s three doors away. But we are in Niall’s palace, and if we encounter the king, we are dead. Niall is cold and incredibly strong.” Dahlia was a fan, it seemed. “There are guards at Ripley’s doors and windows. They want to keep him sweet until they decide what to do with him.”

  “I thought they were going to kill him?”

  “Or they might use him. They might decide to sell him to us. Or to you.”

  Octavian threw up his hands. “We can’t wait for them to decide. We’re here. Let’s get him.”

  “Oh, sure,” Dahlia said. “If you take care of the guards inside, I’ll take care of the guards outside the window of Ripley’s room. We have to be quick, and we have to be quiet. If I am killed, you will find my portal to the west. Run three miles due west through the forest. You won’t encounter many Fae in the forest at night. After that, you’ll pass through a thick gray mist and you won’t be able to see anything around you. That’s their buffer zone. But if you follow your nose, and let’s hope your nose is good for a human’s, you’ll smell roses and vegetation if you keep going west. That’s the garden we need. There’s a spot in the mist that looks almost like a picture frame, and the picture will be a rosebush. That’s the portal. Just leap through with Ripley, if you still have him by then.”

  “It took days to weave the spell to create my own portal . . .” he said. “I didn’t know where it would lead in Faery. When it opened into the courtyard I knew I was in trouble. They had me the minute I came through. The shift from my world’s magic to the . . . I guess the wavelength of magic in this world had me disoriented and they swarmed me, beat me unconscious. But it’s right there, so much closer. Are you sure they’ll have closed it? I think I’d have felt it.”

  “Bad luck,” Dahlia said briskly, “but yes. Almost certainly. The portals are all supposed to be sealed forever. So when you created one, it probably set off some kind of alarm.”

  “What about the one you came through?�
��

  “Ha! That’s Niall’s only remaining portal, his personal one,” Dahlia said. “And if I told you how I found out about it, I’d have to kill you.”

  It didn’t make any difference to Octavian how she’d found out about its existence, he realized. “Okay,” he said. “So I end up in another world, in Louisiana, but still not home.”

  “Better than being here,” Dahlia said.

  He couldn’t argue with that, and there was no time to come up with a different plan.

  Dahlia nodded at him as if he’d agreed out loud. Without further ado, she turned and went to the windows, which had curious handles shaped like hands. She gripped the hand on the right window as though she were going to shake, turned it, and the window opened inward. Then she did the same with the left. She gave Octavian a brilliant smile and stepped over the sill gracefully, looking to her right.

  Octavian knew she would be visible to others the moment she left his proximity and he waited for the shouts of discovery. Apparently, when you were as fast as Dahlia, invisibility wasn’t at such a premium, though. He heard a deep moan, realized Dahlia was doing her part, and shook himself. The surge of power he’d felt still rode him. Octavian took a deep breath, opened the bedroom door, and entered.

  Two male warriors in leather pants stood on each side of the door. These weren’t the casual guards of the prison level. These Fae were sharp and wary, and they drew swords at the sound of the door swinging, but it took an instant for them to recognize Octavian as an enemy. He’d already summoned the magic inside him, magic bolstered by the strength of Dahlia’s blood. He hit them with a blast of percussive force that knocked them unconscious on impact, then caught them with a levitation spell before they could slam to the ground. He lowered them gently and soundlessly to the floor.

  He didn’t have such luck with the young Fae woman who stepped out of a room farther down the hall; she caught sight of him and let out a piercing scream, waxing and waning like a siren. Screams in Faery attract just as much attention as screaming anywhere else. Octavian could hear the sounds of doors opening and voices exclaiming; the noises echoing over what felt like a huge area. Maybe one of those voices was Niall’s, and that would be bad. Even Dahlia was afraid of Niall.