Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World)

by Steffan, R. A.

  Albigard nodded slowly, his expression speculative.

  Apparently, Len’s mouth had decided to keep running without his permission, now that he was on a roll. It was strange—with the exception of Kat and a couple of his therapists in rehab, he’d never told the entire story to anyone. If someone had tried to convince him he’d be spilling it to this asshole, he’d have laughed in their face. Yet the words still came.

  “I had to do some pretty sketchy shit to scrape together enough money for a bus ticket, but I eventually washed up in St. Louis,” he continued. “Found a restaurant that was desperate enough to hire me as a dishwasher, and worked my way up to line cook. Life got better for a while. But the ghosts—the hallucinations—still come back whenever things get tough. I’ll have a dream about them... and when I wake up and turn on the light, they’re still there.”

  “They are not hallucinations.”

  It was just as well Len was already sitting. A chill prickled over him, leaving his arms and legs trembling in its wake. “You just told me that ghosts aren’t real,” he managed hoarsely.

  Albigard raised an eyebrow. “Indeed, they are not. Nevertheless, I’d have thought you’d be pleased to hear that you’re not clinically insane.”

  Len’s jaw worked silently as he tried to muster words. “You think I’d rather believe that my friend Yussef... that all of those people... are trapped in some kind of living death?”

  The Fae regarded him as though he were some sort of fascinating, newly discovered species of insect. “They are not people. That part of your visual interpretation is merely the human mind’s attempt to make sense of something beyond its experience, nothing more.”

  Len stared at him, exasperated. “So I am hallucinating. Make up your damned mind.”

  But Albigard waved the words off in irritation. “Human brains are hard-wired to fill in informational gaps. Doing so is not a form of pathology. No more than any other human behavior, at least.”

  “Gee. Thanks,” Len said, tone flat.

  “What’s so fascinating is that it appears you’ve never partaken of the death that you attract. That truly is rather extraordinary.”

  “I still have no clue what you’re trying to say,” Len told him. “Ghosts aren’t real... but my ghosts are real?”

  Albigard pushed away from the wall. The room was too small for him to pace, but he exuded a sudden, nervous energy. “As I said, they’re not ghosts. You are surrounded by the life force—the animus—shed by those who’ve died in your presence. It clings to you like smoke, and your mind attempts to catalogue it by showing you the memory of its source. But you have not consumed it.”

  Consumed it how? He wanted to ask, but the words tasted rotten in his mouth. What the hell does that even mean?

  “And this... animus? This is why I ‘reek of death’ to you?” he asked instead.

  The Fae looked at him sharply. “Apparently so.”

  Exhaustion dragged at him, making him wish he’d stayed in the damned kitchen with his coffee. “What, exactly, am I supposed to do with all that? Jesus Christ. I have no intention of somehow feasting on the power of death. I also have no desire to lose my mental shit completely and end up getting committed. For one thing, the food in mental hospitals is horrible.”

  Albigard continued to study him with disconcerting intensity. “You are not what I originally assumed.”

  “Fuck off,” Len told him. “No, wait. Answer my question first. Then you can fuck off. What do you expect me to do with this information?”

  The Fae tilted his head, considering. “An interesting question. It seems that before the arrival of the Hunt, you had achieved a sort of equilibrium, yes?”

  “I’ve been coping, I guess,” Len allowed. “Though it would be a lot easier if my friends weren’t constantly jumping into deadly danger.” He paused. “When I say friends, I don’t mean you, obviously. Feel free to jump to your heart’s content.”

  Albigard ignored the jab. “Then, assuming the planet is not destroyed by Dhuinne’s escaping darkness, you should be able to regain that same equilibrium once the current crisis is past.”

  “Peachy,” Len said. “Has anyone mentioned that you suck at pep talks?”

  “Fae cannot lie,” Albigard reminded him.

  Len closed his eyes. “Right. So in that case, you can tell it to me straight. These visions. This animus stuff. Do the people who died and got stuck in my orbit have any awareness of self? Are they trapped with me somehow, instead of... going wherever they would normally go?”

  Again, Albigard seemed taken aback by the question. “Animus... is not sentient. It is energy. A source of power, nothing more. It may retain the fingerprint of its source, so to speak—but animus is not a being.”

  “So they’re not suffering?” Len pressed.

  The Fae hesitated, as though choosing his words. “They are dead. If there is justice in the universe, their suffering ended at the same moment their lives did.”

  For a long moment, Len let those words sink into him. Then, he nodded. “You don’t know any more about what happens after death than the rest of us, do you?”

  At first, he didn’t think the other would answer.

  Then the Fae drew breath. “The human view of death has been shaped by millennia of religious propaganda—much of it originated by my own people. It goes without saying that the wicked do not travel to Hell to be tormented for eternity. Were that the case, the demons would have been squeezed out of their own realm long ago, given humanity’s penchant for evil.”

  “Nice,” Len observed.

  “No one has heard from the angels in eons,” Albigard continued, ignoring the interruption. “There is no reason to think Heaven has any more relevance to the afterlife than Hell does.”

  “And what about the Fae?” he asked. “What do they think?”

  Again, that hesitation before answering.

  “Fae children are taught that if they are good, they return to Mother Dhuinne, the force that has nurtured our species since time immemorial. And if they are bad...”

  “The Hunt takes them and flings their souls into the Endless Void,” Len realized, remembering the expression of existential horror on his companion’s face after they’d fled the creature in St. Louis. “Shit.”

  Albigard made an impatient motion with one hand. “Quite.”

  “But you don’t believe that,” Len continued. Or at least, he was confident Albigard didn’t want to believe that. And, really, who could blame the guy under the circumstances?

  “It is pure speculation,” said the Fae. “How could it be anything else? It’s not as though one can check and report back afterward.”

  “Not to mention being a pretty transparent method of social engineering,” Len pointed out. “I should know—I spent years being told that I’d suffer for all eternity in a lake of fire and acid if I didn’t stop with the whole ‘being gay’ thing.”

  “Did it work?” Albigard asked.

  “Nope,” Len told him. “In fact, I should probably warn Nigellus to set up a fiery lake for me just in case, since I’d hate for Hell to be unprepared. And to be clear, all I’m saying is that your story sounds like pretty much the same load of crap—‘act the way we want you to, or the Wild Hunt will eat you.’”

  “Small comfort,” Albigard said with a hint of bitterness, “since anyone taken by the Hunt is still equally as dead.”

  “Personally, I’d take oblivion over endless suffering any day of the week,” Len replied. “To be frank, there are times when the prospect sounds downright restful.”

  “You’ll forgive me if I prefer to live,” the Fae retorted.

  Len shrugged. “You don’t need my forgiveness for that. Though I can’t help noticing that since no one really knows what happens after death, the Fae version of religious propaganda seems perilously close to a lie. I thought your bunch couldn’t do that?”

  Albigard slumped against the door, his spine losing some of its stiffness. “In this cont
ext, lies are more a function of intent than factual accuracy. Anyone may believe something, only to discover later that they were mistaken. But a Fae who intentionally misleads another is no longer Fae.”

  “Tell me something. If you had a child, would you tell them their souls will be flung into the Void if they’re bad?” Len asked, genuinely curious.

  “No,” Albigard said in a voice so low it was barely audible. “I would tell them that by defying the Fae Court, they risk a sentence of exile or death at the Wild Hunt’s hands... but that sometimes, defying the Court is nevertheless the right thing to do. No ruling body is infallible.”

  If he tried to reply to that directly, Len was afraid he might end up unintentionally expressing sympathy—or worse yet, empathy—for this asshole. So he said, “Fair enough. Right, then. I don’t know about you, but I personally prefer being out of the closet. Oh, and... message received when it comes to mentioning necromancy in mixed company. Even if I’m still mostly convinced you’re full of shit.”

  Albigard grunted in wordless acknowledgement. He flicked his fingers, and the sparkly ball floating above them extinguished. At the same time, the stifling atmosphere of the silencing wards fell away. The door opened, light from outside streaming in. Len followed the Fae out, and nearly collided with his back when Albigard came to an abrupt halt in front of him. Promptly irritated again, Len started to shoulder past him, only to freeze in place at the sight of the black cat sitting in the hallway, its ears pricked and its head tilted toward them curiously.

  THIRTEEN

  THE CAT BLINKED at them, its large green eyes closing and opening in a lazy movement. “Mallacht mo chait ort!” Albigard snarled, in the tone of a vicious curse.

  The Fae shoved Len behind him, as though to physically shield him from the sidhe. His body vibrated with tension; his aura prickling against Len’s awareness like static electricity... a feeling he was coming to associate with the imminent unleashing of magic.

  “You will not harm this human,” Albigard stated flatly. “He has value to the others, and we will need them as allies.”

  Len had never needed to be protected from a housecat before. He’d also never seen a housecat roll its eyes in exasperation. Reality twisted around the sidhe. Len blinked, and when he opened his eyes the creature was in human form again. Or... human-ish form, anyway.

  “You think me concerned with Seelie and Unseelie prejudices when the Wild Hunt is shredding the veil between realms?” The diminutive Fae eyed Len with curiosity as he shook off Albigard’s hold and moved to stand next to him, before adding, “Though I can see now why the demon seemed so interested in this one.”

  “So, you heard every word of that despite the so-called silencing wards, huh?” Len asked. “Awesome.”

  The cat-sidhe shrugged, their attention shifting to Albigard again. “I told you earlier, youngling—your wards are nothing to me.”

  The hard line of Albigard’s shoulders eased a bit, though another low growl of irritation escaped him. Len felt his own burst of adrenaline fade away, since apparently the two Fae weren’t going to start trading magical blows right here in the hallway.

  “I will take my leave now,” said the cat-sidhe, “and return soon with others who may be of help.”

  “Um... bye, then,” Len said. “Thanks for not trying to kill me.”

  “You are welcome, human,” the sidhe told him solemnly.

  * * *

  Since everyone seemed confident that it would be a few hours before anything of import happened, Len went for a hike in the woods behind the house to pass the time. Not that hiking was really his thing, but Zorah and Rans had been making noises about going into the city for a bit, and that meant the alternative was either hiding away in his bare, echoing bedroom or hanging out downstairs with an intimidating demon and a constipated Fae.

  Having already negotiated one extended conversation with Albigard today, choosing the hike felt like exercising the better part of valor. Besides, he had a fair amount to think about after his brief stint back in the closet.

  A path of trampled grass led from the flagstone patio into the trees, evidence of Albigard’s frequent passage. The narrow track eventually intersected a marked dirt trail—presumably part of the nature preserve Zorah had mentioned. Even speaking as someone who much preferred nightclubs and tattoo parlors to poison ivy and mosquitoes, Len had to admit it was a pretty forest. Wildflowers dotted the ground, while chirping birds drowned out the distant sound of suburban traffic.

  The human view of death has been shaped by millennia of religious propaganda—much of it originated by my own people, Albigard had said.

  Religion. The thing that Len blamed for much of the pain in his early life—though perhaps it would be more accurate to blame human nature. Still, religion had been the weapon of choice used to bludgeon him, even if that weapon had been wielded by human hands.

  He’d decided long ago that he had no interest in a god who seemed totally cool with the concept of torturing people for all eternity just because they happened to be born a certain way or in a certain place.

  One of the defining memories of Len’s stint in a conservative religious school was of asking the teacher whether a toddler in China whose parents were devout Buddhists, and who therefore never taught him about Jesus, would really be thrown into a fiery pit to burn forever if he died in an accident or something while he was young. Even the dour Mr. Evans had drawn the line at saying, ‘Yes, that child will spend eternity suffering unimaginable agony because his family has a different religion than we do.”

  Instead, he’d gone red in the face and quoted bible verses—he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned... neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, and so on and so forth. Then, when Len had pointed out that it hardly seemed fair, Mr. Evans had given him detention and made him write those bible verses one hundred times each.

  As it turned out, most of what he’d been taught was a lie. Which... to be fair, he’d kind of suspected anyway. But it was a very specific kind of lie—one crafted over the course of millennia as part of a Fae propaganda campaign during a supernatural war.

  Demons are evil... don’t you go siding with those nasty demons, little humans! Bad things will happen if you do.

  The most mind-bending part—the part that had sent Len hiking through an unfamiliar forest to ponder it—was that the Fae supposedly couldn’t lie. And this couldn’t be a case of ignorance, like telling their kids about the Wild Hunt eating their souls if they were bad because they actually believed it would happen. No... this had been willful.

  There were two possibilities, as far as Len could see. First, Albigard was lying about the Fae not being able to lie. Second, this was also down to human nature. It was all too easy to picture some early human being dragged before a captured demon and told that demons were powerful, dangerous creatures who lived in a desolate underground kingdom. It would be just like humanity to warp that basic description in the retelling, adding ever more terrifying embellishments over time in a millennia-long game of telephone.

  And on the other side, it was equally easy to picture the Fae exerting their mental influence over credulous humans, engendering the frightening level of adoration that Len had personally experienced on two occasions now, to become angels in humanity’s eyes.

  Yeah. Len’s species was more than capable of twisting unpleasant truths into even more unpleasant fantasies. That didn’t make him any less pissed about the revelation that Albigard’s people were indirectly responsible for him getting kicked out of his house at the age of sixteen for being gay. Which... admittedly paled beside Albigard’s people also being directly responsible for everyone in Len’s neighborhood dying, and, potentially, everything on his planet dying.

  He shook his head to clear it.

  Priorities.

  Len took a drink from the plastic water bottle he’d
brought along. The little blue flowers sprouting among the tree trunks smelled like spice and something vaguely piney. Or... maybe that part was coming from the actual pines mixed in with the deciduous trees. He wasn’t an expert. Clouds sculled across the late-morning sun, a bank of gray moving slowly from west to east across the sky.

  He took another deep breath and turned to retrace his steps, not wanting to chance having a storm blow through and scatter the little arrangement of sticks he’d made to mark the place where Albigard’s track met the public nature trail. Even so, it took him almost an hour to get back to the lonely house on the side of the hill. He let himself in and headed for the kitchen, figuring he could refill the water bottle and maybe make a salad or something.

  When he entered the room, it was to find two huge black hellhounds in a standoff with the cat-sidhe, which stood protectively in front of Albigard in animal form—its back arched and its hackles raised.

  FOURTEEN

  LEN FROZE, THE water bottle sliding from his slackening grip to land on the floor with a dull thunk. Under the circumstances, he felt it wasn’t unreasonable that it took him a couple of seconds to notice the demon and an unfamiliar copper-haired Fae watching each other warily from opposite sides of the room.

  “... what the ever-loving fuck,” he said blankly.

  Albigard’s eyes flicked to his for an instant.

  “These are the cu-sidhe,” he said, as though he wasn’t being protected from a pair of giant hellhounds by a ten-pound housecat. “On Dhuinne, they are the hereditary wardens of the Wild Hunt. Unfortunately, they seem to think that the best plan of action under the current circumstances is to drag me to the Fae realm in iron chains, then use me as bait to lure the Hunt back to its home.”

  “The cat-sidhe did rather fail to mention that you were consorting with a demon!” snapped the unfamiliar Fae in the corner.

  Len blinked.

  Oh. Wait. The other Fae wasn’t completely unfamiliar after all.