Seelie (The Falcon Grey Files Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  “Must have been one hell of a row and great make-up sex,” she said.

  “Firstly, I’m not likely to advertise that I’m involved with a man, secondly I’m not actually guilty of anything, am I? So can we leave it, Dar?” I begged.

  “No, Sir,” she said, sliding off my desk. “You need to go and see Hoggart. He wants an update and I think he wants you for a T.V. interview.”

  I groaned. “Why me?”

  “Because you’re usually beautiful to look at and you’re his poster boy,” she said brightly. She placed her hands on my desk and leaned over it, looking into my face. “Besides, he thinks you’re a good boy, nice and straight.”

  “Fuck off,” I muttered.

  She laughed and left me alone.

  The interview with Chief Inspector Hoggart did not go well. I didn’t have any new information to share with him and the pressure to find the murderer was increasing with each new crime and headline released. The press conference went equally as badly. I found it hard to concentrate and they wanted more of my blood for failing to catch the criminal involved, thus endangering the righteous youth of Britain.

  How could I explain to anyone that I knew exactly what was doing this but until it killed DC Dar it would continue the hunt? How could I explain that although I knew what kind of monster perpetrated these crimes, I didn’t know how to stop it because no one had ever stopped this kind of Underling? They just kept hunting, not even the person who summoned it could stop it and the person that summoned it only did so to find me and hurt me.

  The next few weeks turned into a blur of police procedure while we collected evidence, sought witnesses, read statements and appealed for calm. As the new moon, the last before the winter solstice, approached, things became more frantic. Bethan and I, along with the rest of the team, worked tirelessly. I tried to lead the forensic team into looking at something other than the usual profiling of victims by race, gender, hair colour or age and into something more esoteric, but they wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t just tell them that all the victims wore similar perfumes and had similar personal scents.

  At night I’d roam the city hunting for the monster, even though I knew it was pointless. Memories of my life with Marcus would keep me company and I’d fret over the future – our future, if we managed to survive my sister.

  Marcus had been given to me as my slave, my ‘whipping boy’ when we were children; he would take my punishments but I couldn’t see him hurt. We’d become such close friends, constantly fighting to keep him alive and unharmed, and then one day, it had become intimate. He’d fallen from his horse, broken his shoulder and I wanted to heal him, so I gave him the Breath of Life and in doing so, we kissed. When we ended that original kiss I just wanted to feel more of him, to touch more of him, so I knelt at his feet and removed his boots for the first time while his shoulder healed. Such a small act of loving submission but it set the course for our love. It changed us in ways I regretted only when I wasn’t under his spell, his personal power. Thinking such profoundly personal and intimate things brought me nothing but confusion and unhappiness; they were lonely nights.

  One of these dark nights led me to dark alley and an even darker bar under the city’s West End.

  We of the Seelie Court, who managed to live outside the controls and strictures of said Court, often felt the need to be around others of our own kind. Many of us had been banished to the world of men, for transgressions both real and imagined, some like me had run for their own reasons and some just wanted to be free. I tried to stay away from others of my kind because I worked hard to keep my Seelie footprint in this world small. If I made too much noise I’d be noticed and if I were found my precious brother might be found and I couldn’t let that happen. He represented hope for my people and my personal freedom.

  The Dvergar had found me because Marcus had found me. My sister had sent Marcus after me because he was one half of the best team of Hunters the Seelie Court had ever produced. I was the other half. We didn’t use scent to catch our targets, or sight, or any other ‘specialist’ method. We used our brains, our cunning and an ability to know and understand the target, a skill few Seelie could manage. Empathy isn’t an emotion encouraged among our kind. I made it a speciality because of Marcus and our complicated relationship.

  When the large and very ugly man on the door saw me he blanched slightly. The hidden Seelie didn’t like me poking around too much, it made everyone nervous. As a Hunter I should bring the runaways back. As a policeman, I should arrest the criminals among them.

  “It’s alright, Titus,” I said to the brute. A Seelie without enough power to hide his heritage under a pretty mask. “I’m not here for trouble, just information.”

  He grunted and opened the door for me, not taking payment for his trouble.

  I walked into the club and headed for the bar.

  “Falcon – what brings you out on a night like this?” asked a lovely woman who ran the bar.

  “Sasha,” I said as I sat down on a suddenly vacant stool. All the stools around me were suddenly vacant.

  “Well?” she demanded, just a slight hardness to her sultry tones and beautiful face.

  “Whiskey, leave the bottle,” I said, sliding thirty pounds over the bar toward her. Should be enough to buy me the alcohol and some good temper.

  She gave me a bottle of Jack Daniels, not quite what I wanted but it would do – we were old friends.

  “So, why are you here? Hunter, policeman or prince this evening?” She leaned on the bar and her t-shirt fell just a little too open at the neck. Her small pert breast were heavily tattooed and looked like they’d fit into my mouth perfectly. I shook my head.

  “None, just needed a drink,” I said. “And I’m no longer a Hunter or a prince.”

  “I think both jobs come with a lifetime guarantee.” She poured herself a shot from my bottle.

  I sighed heavily and downed another double. “You might well be right.”

  “I was sorry to hear about the attack.”

  I looked into her heavily made up eyes, the black coal making her even more exotic than her dark cream coloured skin and long sable hair did alone. “Attack?” I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed and she chuckled. “I should know better than try to have a conversation with a member of the High Court.”

  “Ex-member,” I pointed out, trying to remain friendly.

  She snorted. “No such creature. You are tricky bastards, the lot of you.”

  “That much is true,” I said, downing another double. “But I need help with something and it’s a bad something.”

  She sighed. As with barkeepers all over the known world, Sasha had more information at her fingertips than the whole of Google and the GCHQ working together.

  “The Dvergar from the other night?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I know who sent them and why.”

  “I hear Marcus was involved,” she said, carefully neutral. Was she going to sell information to my sister? That would be foolish. This place worked hard on trying to remain non-aligned – freedom and peace for all Seelie of Elfhame and the trusted Underlings from Hel.

  I gave her something for free. “Yes, he was,” I said.

  “That all I’m getting about the love of your life?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  She shook her head. “You want a lot of information in return for nothing.” Sasha had good instincts, she didn’t use the monster’s name, it would know and you didn’t want this one knocking on your door because you’d called it to you by accident.

  I smiled my most charming smile. “But it never hurts to have a Hunter owe you,” I said.

  She grunted again. “Fine. You want to know about the monster killing the girls?”

  I nodded. “I know the person stupid enough to call it from Hel but I can’t do anything about it and the thing wants to hurt me.”

  “It can’t hurt you, you’re royalty, you’re immune. Besides, you’re so well cloaked even
the lesser among your own kind can’t see you for what you are,” she said. Which was true. I passed as mortal to almost everybody unless they knew me by sight or were powerful like Sasha.

  “No, but they can hurt those I care about and I care about my DC,” I said.

  She smiled grimly and nodded her understanding. “You can’t kill it, can you?” she asked.

  “The last time the Hunters faced one of these it killed three of us and only stopped because it found its prey. There has to be something out there that kills these things. Something the Court wants hidden from us Hunters so they always have a weapon to use against us if they need one.”

  “Paranoid lot aren’t you?” she asked.

  “You have no idea,” I said.

  “I don’t know anything but I know someone who might, however they’ll have to come to you, not the other way around. I’ll be in touch,” she said and left me to serve other customers. She’d been careful not to identify even the gender of the person involved and I decided to leave shortly afterwards. The atmosphere in the club wore me down as the other customers studiously ignored my presence.

  With a powerful new moon coming I really wanted to solve this problem and I also needed to see Marcus again. He must be hungry by now, weak because of the damage done by my sister. The image of his naked body, the skin stripped from him, had caused me more than one sleepless night recently. Why had he returned to her – because of the pelt or because he didn’t trust me?

  Mind you, I’d left him in the middle of night without a word, why should he trust me? I’d taken such pains to hide from him and everyone else it had taken years for them to find me, decades in fact.

  “God, Marcus, we’ve been apart for thirty years,” I said to the orange night sky overhead. I walked home from the club and longed to know if he were safe. How many hours had I wasted thinking about him over the decades? All the years I’d been playing at being human while I waited for the right time to act. Moving around, moving my little brother around while he slowly grew older. Seelie took a long time to grow up and with his pure bloodline, even better than my own I suspected, he took longer than most.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Two days before the next new moon and the office reeked of tension. Four days before the winter solstice and barely a week before Christmas. All leave was suspended if we didn’t catch this bastard. With family time gone and resentful husbands, wives, children, partners and parents already making lives difficult I had an unhappy work force and that meant a long list of complaints to me, special cases for leave and endless nagging. It wasn’t that they wanted to walk away from the case but we all needed a break and the pressure was building. A constant tension – we needed to catch this ‘man’ or they’d implode.

  I hated Christmas. I didn’t see the point – being single and childless. It just meant a day where expectations wouldn’t be met and I’d drink myself into oblivion.

  I also had to protect DC Bethan Dar. This proved far harder than anticipated.

  “I think you should stay with me,” I said, after I’d failed to convince her to actually take leave and return to Wales where her family now lived.

  She opened her dark eyes very wide. “You are having a laugh, Sir. Stay with you? What’s that going to do to my reputation, not to mention my chances of a Christmas shag?”

  “I think you would be safer –”

  “Safer? Why would I be safer? This maniac is hardly likely to come after me,” she decided.

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “Please, Bethan. All these women are around your age. I just want you to be safe.” I could no more explain to her than I could to forensics about her scent driving this monster.

  “That’s sexual discrimination,” she almost shouted.

  I was fairly certain it wasn’t but to be honest I still preferred chivalry over feminism so I could have been wrong. I took hold of her shoulders and did something I really didn’t like doing. “You are going to stay with me until Christmas Eve,” I said, staring deep into her brown eyes.

  She opened her mouth to argue. Closed it and relaxed under my strong grip. “I’ll have to pack some things,” she said.

  I smiled. “You do that and here is a key, the alarm code hasn’t changed,” I said, handing her a spare key and releasing her shoulders. Her eyes were slightly unfocused but she nodded and left without argument.

  I sat and held my head, the pounding relentless. It would ease soon but forcing my will onto a strong human hurt. Bethan was strong. I didn’t like to do it for two reason, the first purely selfish. It would leave a footprint in her that could be traced to me, but with the price on her head already I guessed it was too late to worry about that one. The second – it felt wrong to use Seelie power to corrupt a mortal mind. She deserved better. My damned empathy again. Most Seelie used mortal minds any way they liked but I couldn’t do it, I preferred making them want to help me through persuasion and charm. Was it any better? Maybe not, but at least it was normal.

  Mind you, she might be waiting for me naked with ice cream and chocolate sauce. I hadn’t been specific on that point and I could smell her need for sex with someone. That vision had its advantages mind you – I’d not had sex for a long time.

  When I made it home I found Bethan asleep on my sofa, a half eaten microwave dinner on a plate beside her. I lifted her small form off the sofa and placed her in my bed. She wore an oversized t-shirt and she snuggled down quickly. I stripped and climbed in beside her. I should use the sofa but I doubted she’d mind too much. I slept deeply and for once I did not dream.

  At work, the day before the new moon, tension held the office and the capital. Reporters doorstepped us every time we left the building and chat show hosts asked why we weren’t finding this monster.

  I returned to Sasha, managing to find a way out of the office without anybody but the CCTV seeing me.

  The door to the bar stood open when I arrived, having walked through the biting wind hurriedly. The door never stood open. I frowned and breathed deeply. The smell of many Seelie hit me, some scents old, some new. Also Dvergar, the scent at least five hours old.

  I walked into the bar quietly and blended with the shadows.

  Sasha stood in the middle of the room with a mop and bucket and she moved a puddle of fluids around. Bruising covered her face and the fingers of her left hand were strapped.

  “You can come out, Highness,” she said.

  I stepped from the shadow. “What happened?” I asked, staring around me, looking at the destroyed club. Tables, chairs, mirrors, pictures, glasses and bottles were all smashed. The floor crunched under my feet.

  “Someone wanted to know why you’d been paying me a visit. So, thank you for this,” she said. Her anger made her skin shine and I saw the tattoos on her face reveal themselves, writhing over her cheeks.

  I stood open mouthed. “They did this because of me?”

  “Yes,” she snapped.

  I stepped toward her. “Sasha, I am so sorry, really. If I’d known they’d be stupid enough to do this, I would never have involved you. I thought you’d be safe.”

  “Clearly not,” she said and hiccupped, her emotions spilling out. “They killed my friend.”

  I took hold of her arms and she gently placed her athletic body against mine. I held her and stroked her hair. “I’m sorry, Sasha. I’ll find them, kill them. I have their scent. The pack will die.”

  “They were armed,” she whispered. “Who gives Dvergar guns?”

  “My sister,” I said.

  She drew back slowly, closing down her breaking heart. “I have an address for you and she’ll be waiting. I’m sorry it took so long. I know you’ll have another victim tonight but it wasn’t easy.” She dug into the back pocket of her cargo pants and handed me a slip of paper. Names held power among our kind, we rarely said them aloud.

  “If your sister takes the throne, Falcon, we are all fucked. You need to stop playing these games and just see to your heritage. Your father is dying. Yo
u must take your proper place and become our king,” she said firmly. “The Seelie need you.”

  “My brother –”

  “Your brother is a child. He cannot be king. You are the rightful heir. You must stop her.” She glared at me and I found myself unable to meet her gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “And thank you.”

  She grunted and returned to her cleaning. I backed off, leaving Sasha to her work. If I stayed to help, I’d only be delaying my own urgent business. When I reached the street I looked at the piece of paper.

  “Fuck it,” I said. No phone number and a Scottish address. I needed to return to the office and use my databases to hunt this person down.

  I made it into headquarters by ‘blending’ with the reporters outside and the officers in the foyer. No one noticed me but the ever present CCTV cameras. I could have played games with them but to be honest, since helping Marcus live I’d felt weak and just the wrong side of wobbly. I made to my desk and logged back into the system. I punched the address in – nothing. It didn’t exist.

  “Everything fucking exists,” I muttered, annoyed with the piece of paper and the person who owned the stupid address. I typed more fiercely, as if it would help. “Don’t tell me it’s ‘unknown’ and make that fucking annoying bleep,” I told the next database.

  I resorted to Google Maps. Nothing. It registered a village so deeply embedded in the Highlands nothing other than the satellite pictures existed and they weren’t clear.

  “Fuck it,” I snapped and pushed against the keyboard. Paper slid off my desk. Someone was going to die tonight because I’d not been given this information soon enough and even I couldn’t reach Scotland in less than two hours. That’s when dusk would fall and the monsters come out to play.

  I ran my fingers through my short hair and pulled at my scalp, then rubbed my face and realised I’d not shaved for days. Growling and cursing in a language no one in the office understood I grabbed my leather jacket and left, barking orders for DC Dar to come with me.

  She jumped up and for once didn’t argue as I strode out of the building, pushing through the reporters. My temper, once moving, turned into a spiralling creature of its own making, growing larger by the moment.