Seelie (The Falcon Grey Files Book 1)

by Sarah Luddington

  “He’s a slave to the royal family, he can’t be his own man. I protect him.”

  “Maybe that’s part of the problem. He’s never been himself, he’s been what you want him to be,” she said seriously. “You need to really think about how much you love him.”

  My throat tightened considerably. “If I love him, I have to let him go?”

  She smiled in sympathy. “Stupid book but I think you might just have to.”

  “I’d rather nail him to the floor so he can’t escape,” I said gloomily.

  Bethan laughed quietly. “He’d probably enjoy that.”

  Corny and stupid but it did make me smile. I gave up on the heartache and forced myself to think about the day ahead and what we faced.

  We still had to evade the Hunters and find a way of destroying the monster seeking Bethan. She turned on the television and we found a news channel. It didn’t make for happy viewing. The news made it obvious we would also be evading the local police. Bethan flipped open her phone to check her calls.

  “Damn,” she said. “Flat battery, no wonder we’ve not been called recently. What about yours?”

  “I’d have fried mine along with the helicopter,” I said, not even bothering to check. It was the helicopter that headlined the news, along with the hunt for the missing London police officers and unknown black man who might be a member of the cult they were now looking for in the Highlands. The final notice was the discovery of a young man’s body in a car park near a nightclub known for illegal activity of all kinds. Apparently he’d died with a thousand pounds in his pocket and a smile on his face, while his heart gave out.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  Bethan looked at me. “Please, tell me it wasn’t you.”

  I couldn’t look at her; the lad’s death pierced me hard in the guts. I felt sick and horrified by my actions. My stomach rebelled and I rushed to the bathroom, flinging the door open and startling Marcus, who stood drying his legs. I bent over the toilet and vomited hard.

  I heard Bethan explaining and then arguing with Marcus over the boy’s death. Her anger mystified him.

  “Falcon didn’t mean to kill him, it just happens sometimes. He’s stronger now and he was desperate. Be grateful he didn’t feed from you,” Marcus shouted.

  “He’s a murderer,” Bethan said.

  “He’s Seelie, you are mortal, you exist to give us life in this world. I’d feed from you if I could but I can’t,” he said, just as angry as Bethan now.

  I pressed my head against the cool porcelain and allowed their argument to wash over me while I remembered the feel of that life-giving young man. I’d not even asked his name, the news said Stephen. Did his mother choose his name or his father and who gave him those luminous dark eyes? I’d never taken a life by feeding before; in fact, I’d so rarely taken energy from the humans over the years that I’d been surprised I even remembered how.

  “I shouldn’t have been able to do it,” I whispered. I should not have been able to enslave him in a single feed and I should not have drained him of so much energy he died. I was not my sister. The dark side of the Seelie had remained hidden within me, repressed, controlled, smothered in my fake humanity and before that – Marcus.

  The argument grew to personal abuse and I could no longer ignore the spiteful rhetoric.

  I carefully wiped my mouth and stood. “Right, that’s enough.”

  “That’s enough?” Bethan almost screamed. “You killed someone.”

  “No, I fed on his energy. He was alive when I left him.” I could hear the hollowness in my words, I didn’t believe them and I could tell Bethan didn’t either. “We have to go and we have to finish this, when that is done I will face the consequences of my actions.”

  Marcus’ mouth dropped open. “What? This isn’t your fault.”

  I stared at him. “I am a policeman, Marcus. It means a great deal to me. This is my crime and Stephen’s family deserve justice.”

  His face contorted in frustration and his hands balled into fists. “When are you going to give up this farce? You are the Crown Prince of Elfhame, Falcon. This fake identity is going to ruin you. How can I have hope for my future while you deny who you are?”

  “When are you going to accept him for who he really is?” Bethan asked in my defence.

  “You have no idea who he is,” Marcus snarled as he stepped toward Bethan, his rage a weapon. Bethan’s eyes widened and I saw her reach for something stuffed into her waistband.

  I moved between them, Bethan to my back. “No, Marcus.”

  “You need to be shown how weak they are,” he growled.

  “And you need to understand their strength. She belongs to me, you will protect her as if she were me.”

  His eyes glittered dangerously and I just watched him, ensuring he didn’t try to broach my control. His head bowed, his eyes dropped and he said, “Your will, Highness.”

  Sadness washed over me at his words and expression but I didn’t have time to deal with it. The door crashed open and Gifling stood there with her hair a wild cloak around her body in a wind blowing from hell.

  She hopped from one foot to another and bounced. “We have to go, they coming. I seened them. They coming!”

  “Who?” I asked, already regretting my inability to have a shower.

  “Hunters!” she cried out. She rushed into the room, grabbed Bethan’s hand and pulled.

  Marcus and I dressed quickly in silence. I grabbed the food and we left the motel. Marcus still had the keys to the truck. “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “North,” Gifling said, clambering up into the Land Rover.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Marcus drove out of the car park slowly, a snow storm with strong winds now making life even more difficult. We should have been safe at home, not trying to drive through this terrible blizzard. I sat in the front seat and stared out at the wind remembering the beautiful smile of a lost soul.

  “We can’t keep driving in this,” Bethan said after a long and difficult silence.

  I’d been watching the snow tumble out of the dark daylight and hit the truck, not really thinking about anything but the consequences of last night. I’d have to tell them, the authorities, tell them I’d killed the boy and face a trial. I’d be easy to find and my sister would come for me. My life would be measured in days, or weeks. It wouldn’t need to be Marcus, she could finish me off with a simple mortal attack in prison. Maybe I should hand myself over now – to her – make it quick.

  “We don’t have any choice,” Marcus said. “We’re being followed.”

  I didn’t stir, I knew we were being followed – I could feel them. They’d been there for the last five miles. More Hunters, chasing us by day while the monster would hunt us by night. What was the point in all this? I was facing damnation either way. Bethan, she was the point and Marcus’ pelt. I owed them both. If neither of them had known me they wouldn’t be suffering right now. Bethan would be safe in her beloved city and Marcus wouldn’t be a slave.

  Something stirred in the back and a small body climbed inelegantly through the gap between the seats. Gifling clambered onto my lap and sat with her back to the dashboard using my knees as a perch.

  “What?” I asked.

  She pushed her matted hair out of her face and peered up at me with her strangely yellow eyes. “Boy wasn’t your fault.”

  “No one else fed from him.”

  “Your father is old and weak, his power is slowly transferring to you and your sister. She shouldn’t have it but you aren’t there to claim it all. You took a lot but not enough to kill the boy. He would have died anyway. Weak heart with bad medicine...” She patted my chest. “Not grumpy birdie’s fault.”

  “How would you know?” I asked.

  She grinned. “I watched. I wanted to see a prince of the royal household feed on mortals. You very sexy,” she announced and giggled.

  Bethan make a disgusted noise in the back.

  “You checked the boy af
ter I left?” I asked.

  Gifling nodded. “He dead after me but only because he was weak anyway. He’d be dead with or without you. At least he dead happy.” Her voice made it sound like a good thing I stolen his life.

  I nodded. “Perhaps,” I said and again I heard the disgusted noise from behind me. Regardless of what I’d done and what I’d need to make reparation for, right now I had to find a way to keep us all alive. “Gifling, I really need you to tell us how to stop the monster. That’s the reason we came to find you. Once I’ve done that I can stop the Hunters and my sister.”

  “You think it’s going to be that easy?” asked Marcus. I ignored him.

  “We are going north. Special place,” Gifling said. She dropped her eyes toward her lap and picked at faded ribbons tied to her waist.

  “Okay, but where in the north? That’s a lot of countryside and we are short on daylight,” I said.

  “Tap o’Noth,” she said quickly, running the words together.

  “Tappa what?” I asked.

  She waved a hand forward. “Tap o’Noth,” she said slowly. “We go there, monster find us, Hunters hunt, monster goes away.”

  “Your plan is to lure the creature to this Tap o’Noth and have the Hunters kill it?”

  “You got a better plan?” she asked crossly.

  I ground my teeth. “I was led to believe you knew a way of stopping this thing which would exclude us from having to fight it.”

  “Then you very stupid or gullible,” she announced. “No one can stop it but Tap o’Noth might help.”

  “How?” asked Marcus.

  “Power,” she said with her eyes widening alarmingly. “Old Seelie power, earth power, we have Princeling to help.”

  “Gifling, I can’t access Seelie power, it doesn’t do me any good,” I said gently.

  She poked my nose and stared hard at me. “You will have to learn or girl will die.”

  I closed my eyes and felt my heart sink into the abyss of Loch Ness. Memories I’d tried to hide behind the mask of a civilised man of inner city London began to surface. Times and places over the decades since I’d left Elfhame came to mind, places like the Congo or the forests of eastern Asia, old and dark places full of earth power just waiting for an unwary Seelie prince to stumble into when he’s supposed to working for Her Majesty’s government – not fighting madness and chaos in dreams of power and glory. There were places in this world I avoided because they tapped into the core of me and called with promises of dominance over humanity. These wild places in Scotland were doing just that, calling to a darker and older version of me that seethed with unholy thoughts and cravings.

  It made me realise, more than anything else had done over the last few days, that I didn’t want to be sucked back into my life as a Seelie prince. I didn’t want to be anything other than a good policeman, a lover to someone I could trust and a man who liked going for long walks on a Sunday afternoon with his dog. If it meant surrendering the power of the transformation and the joy of being a creature of the wild magic, then fine. I’d give it all up for a flat in Soho and a holiday home somewhere in the Cotswolds.

  But I’d been trying to escape my whole life. It would never happen. I was the Crown Prince of a murdering race of sociopaths.

  We trundled north and the Hunters followed but were unable to stop us. I grimly took stock and watched the fluctuating scenery appear and vanish depending on the strength of the blizzard. The vast spread of mountain valleys, tortured by weather for eons, surrounded us and the dark loch we followed offered an endless descent into the heart of a cold world. It felt as if we were the only people left in this desolate place.

  “Right,” Gifling said without turning to look at the road, still perched on my knees.

  “Where?” Marcus.

  “Now,” she said and flung her arm out across the steering wheel.

  Marcus obeyed and swung the vehicle right. We skidded on the snow, even though we were going slowly, jack knifing until Marcus wrestled the truck back under control. He muttered under his breath and flipped the vehicle into four by four mode. It bit the snow, found tarmac and we lurched forward. We began to go up and into a vast forest. We were following little more than a track into the vast woodland of Glenmore, the only bonus being less snow because of the tightly packed trees.

  Onward, upward, the jolting and jarring of the vehicle’s movement making it impossible to do anything but hang on and pray Marcus kept the beast on the track.

  “Is there a fucking road?” he asked at one point.

  “Don’t know,” Gifling said. “I go this way.”

  “When was the last time you were here?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “A few days after Culloden.”

  We all stared at her. “The battle?”

  She blinked and nodded. “Course, I needed gall bladders, seemed the easiest place to go, better than chasing down deer,” she said as if we were all stupid.

  Bethan whispered something of her distress in the back. Seelie lived long lives, even here in the mortal world. To live that long up here alone was a stretch but then my grandfather had been hunting down the meadow elves for a long time.

  Marcus cursed and the truck lurched dangerously; we were now driving through a blizzard and daylight began to be an issue. The truck stopped. “I don’t think we are on a road,” Marcus said.

  “Do you want me to take over?” I asked.

  “Can you do any better?” he countered shortly. He was still angry with me.

  I sighed. “No, Marcus, I can’t. I just wanted to help if I could. If we can’t drive what do you suggest?”

  “I can drive,” he said. “I just need a break, the snow is hurting my eyes.”

  “Let me take the strain,” I offered once more.

  He stared at me for a long time, his eyes angry and confused all at once. He wanted to say something, to challenge me perhaps, but he merely shook his head. “Fine,” he said.

  Gifling climbed off my lap and I let myself out of the truck. When the wind hit me it hurt. Icy cold, the snow like small darts. The air smelt of the extreme frost, not even the pine trees around me had any scent; as if they wanted to hold it close to help protect them against the weather. I blinked quickly, trying to clear my eyes of the disorientating swirl of objects.

  “The dark is going to be a problem,” Marcus said. He loomed out of the blizzard.

  “Everything is a problem,” I said.

  He turned his back to the weather and blocked it slightly for me. “Why do you care about them so much?” he asked suddenly.

  “Is this really the time?” I asked.

  “I hoped for an honest answer if the others weren’t listening.” He turned his collar up and hunched his shoulders.

  “I care about them for the same reason I care about you.”

  “They are weak.”

  “You think of yourself as weak?” I asked. A bitter barked laugh escaped me and unseen tears chilled my cheeks. “Marcus, you are not weak and neither are they. You are angry and I understand why but I will not give them or you up and both of you will have to learn to live with that.”

  “What if one of us chooses differently, Falcon? What if I choose differently? What I want something different?”

  The impact of his words burned into me as if I had been punched hard in the chest. “That is your privilege,” I said, holding onto the truck. “It changes nothing for me. I have never forced you to stay at my side, Marcus, and I’m not going to start now.” I couldn’t bear any more of this torment. I left the front of the truck, the light from headlamps briefly strobing while I walked away. When I climbed into the truck and shut the door, I felt colder on the inside than the out. Marcus settled next to me and I started to tackle the track we followed. The mechanical actions and level of concentration necessary to continue to drive through the forest saved me from myself. We were forcing a path through the blizzard and we were now heading downward.

  We came out of the trees and drove th
rough heathland, still struggling with some kind of path. The Hunters weren’t following in a truck now but I didn’t think they’d have given up. They’d be on foot, the storm just something else to conquer. The land rose again quickly and the drifts began to deepen. I was forced to slow further.

  “Road,” Gifling said quietly. She pointed straight ahead. “We go over road and on.”

  “I don’t think we can,” I said, fighting with the power steering which tried to force us off the path.

  “We have to go up there,” she pointed again and the snow cleared enough for me to see a huge rocky summit.

  “Oh, Gifling, we can’t get up there in this thing,” I said.

  “Place of power, pretty prince needs to be up there,” she said, her eyes very big. Noise suddenly swept over us and a bright light hit the truck.

  “I don’t think we are going anywhere,” Bethan said over the noise of helicopters now bouncing the truck more violently than the driving. I could also see the blue flashing lights of other police vehicles.

  I sighed. We were going to be arrested and there didn’t seem much point in fighting the inevitable. The truck lurched, just metres from the edge of the road, and we sank into a huge drift. The bonnet and front wheels were swallowed, cutting off our own light. The sinister light from above made me realise I didn’t have the willpower to fight, even if I did have the strength.

  “Fucking hell,” I muttered.

  Gifling kissed my cheek and whispered. “Sorry, got to go.” A door opened and a cold blast of air hit me. The small woman vanished into the dusk. We merely sat.

  “What do I tell them?” Bethan asked me.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I should leave,” Marcus said.

  I shook my head. “If you return to Elfhame now you will suffer for it. The wise thing to do is to stay with us.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. I’d never heard such bleak tones or seen such utter despair in his eyes.

  “Marcus, please...” I whispered, desperate to keep him safe.

  “Goodbye, Falcon,” he said and smiled, a soft upturn of his full lips. He stepped out of the truck, flecks of what could be mistaken for shining snowflakes swirled around him and he simply vanished, causing Bethan to inhale sharply.