Blood Faerie Read online

  His gaze went to the body. It lay as they’d found it. Soon SOCO, the scenes of crime officers, would arrive and put a white tent over the gruesome display. “We have a name?” he asked Sergeant Hallward. Munro hadn’t touched the body to search for ID, but forensics and CID, the Criminal Investigation Department, were en route and would be there within minutes. Impressive, considering how few murders Perth saw. Domestic abuse and drug related crime, they saw those every day, but this was different. The shock on the victim’s face wasn’t something Munro would forget any time soon. Nor was the savage rip in the chest or the smell that poured from it.

  “CID will check it out,” Hallward said. His eyes searched Munro’s.

  “Vicious.” Munro repeated the assessment he’d made earlier to Getty. “Seems personal.”

  Getty spoke up. “Can’t get much more personal than ripping someone’s heart out.”

  Munro turned to the sergeant. “A lad was hanging about a few minutes ago. Took off like a light when I approached. Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Skinny kid. Maybe he saw something. Could have just been a nosy bugger, but I got a feeling.” Munro shrugged. He didn’t like talking about his hunches. “Be a bastard to find though. Dark jeans and a hood. Didn’t get a good look at his face. Had light eyes.” Those eyes had latched on to Munro and made his gut lurch.

  Hallward nodded at Getty. “Did you see him?”

  “Not his face. Scarpered pretty quick.” Getty gestured toward Mill Street.

  “He wasn’t one of the usuals. Clothes were baggy, but clean,” Munro said.

  An ambulance pulled up, immediately followed by two other cars. Munro recognised Detective Inspector Boyle and Detective Sergeant Hayes as the two CID officers, as well as the Home Office pathologist.

  A drop fell from the sky and landed on Munro’s shoulder, quickly followed by another.

  “Bloody hell,” someone said.

  Sergeant Hallward turned to Munro and Getty. “Going to be a long night.”

  Forensic technicians dressed in protective white jumpsuits worked quickly to take pictures and collect evidence before the coming rain washed away something the murderer left behind. The three policemen stayed on the cordon to protect the scene as the SOCOs did their job.

  A strange flurry above him made Munro glance up.

  “Fuckin’ pigeons,” Getty said and shrugged with a hard scowl etched on his face.

  For just a moment, Munro wondered if Getty could also sense they were being watched. He let his eyes wander to the walls of the other buildings around the little square. The glare of the scene lights made it hard to see anything but gloom.

  ***

  A light pressure tapped Eilidh’s toe. She looked down in the darkness of the church steeple, and a smile flitted across her tense mouth. “It’s you, is it? Where have you been? I thought the barber next door must’ve finally caught you. He’s been after you for weeks, you know.” She’d not had much difficulty getting past the policemen. Humans saw what they wanted to see, and she’d been careful to approach the church from the opposite side.

  Crouching low, she pulled a few crumbs from her pocket and offered them to the rat. He came close, unafraid, and Eilidh scratched behind his ear. With twitching whiskers, he chattered with appreciation. His feet tapped the wooden planks as he retreated to the building’s lower levels.

  Eilidh stood again and peered outside, fascinated that her quiet street had become such a hive of activity. Blue lights flashed, and they’d cordoned off Old High Street Wynd, blocking what little traffic went by. The vehicle movement had slowed in recent years, since the humans put up signs telling each other to drive only in one direction. It amazed her that they could be so organised and follow arbitrary rules of which way to face, but despite her doubts, they saw the blue arrows and red circles and obeyed. The fae never used signs or markers. Magical boundaries told them all they needed to know.

  She watched three policemen below. One was taller than the other two. He was broad and erect like a stone wall. In her time in the human city, she’d noticed the police often had that stance, as if making themselves oak-like would deter wrongdoers. Perhaps it did.

  The people were so different, and even after a quarter of a century in this tiny tower, watching them every day, Eilidh did not truly understand them. Fae warriors were silent, agile, and their greatest strength came from their ability to channel the seasons. Stature was irrelevant to power. She’d watched the humans through their windows, but never entered a human home. She saw them on the streets, but never engaged them in conversation. Her fate was to be apart.

  To hear her father Imire tell it, at one time the fae got along well with humans, back before Scotland was called Caledonia and before the Picts came under the rule of one God. Those people had understood the power of the Elder Race. Eilidh’s brow furrowed as she remembered her father’s voice and the way he would mutter about modern humans. Her gaze went to the dense clouds that dropped rain on the scene below. Her father loved rain. His strength came from the second season, and he knew how to draw from water. Rain held the element of air and the earth rose to meet it, bringing the power of the first and third seasons with it.

  When Eilidh looked down again, the humans were walking away. She caught the sounds of their speech, and she recognised the one who’d spoken to her, the one who’d seen through her shadows. A name drifted to her from the lips of the soldier-like policeman. He called the other Munro. The word tickled at her ear and found its way to her lips. “Munro,” she whispered.

  She had not intended to put power into the word, but the instant it left her mouth, he turned and cast his eyes upward. She stepped into the shadows, her heart pounding. She’d heard of true druids, in stories her father told, but thought they must have died out, as humans turned away from magic and embraced invention. When Eilidh inched forward again, he no longer looked toward her. They had greeted another group of policemen, and they all swarmed around the human carcass. She suddenly felt vulnerable in her spire. She climbed down to a more central level of the church, angry at the murderous faerie that brought this disruption to her doorstep.

  Anger was a sensation Eilidh had rarely experienced before her exile. Her father tried to protect her when everyone learned the secret of her forbidden magical talents, but what more could he have done? What choice did they have? The fae didn’t have prisons. When the death order came, her father had visited on the pretence of allowing her to consecrate her soul to the Earth. No one suspected her father, the upright priest, would send her on the run. All would consider that fate worse than finding the peaceful embrace of the Mother.

  “I didn’t teach you enough about humans,” was all he said when he entered the room where she’d been left under guard.

  “You taught me nothing about them.”

  “Come, Eilidh. It is time to pay tribute to the Mother.”

  So, it would be tonight. She remembered staring straight into the guard’s eyes as they passed. He had tensed, and she felt a small pleasure in knowing he was afraid of her, even though her father held her inside a binding bubble that cut her off from the Ways of Earth. The pleasure was short lived when she considered that he thought her to be a monster.

  I did not mean to cast the azure.

  Soon, she and her father stood within the stone circle. He released the binding and put up a shield of magic around the stones. “The binding would be an affront to the Mother,” he said. “None can be brought into Her presence against their will.” It had been Imire’s way to explain his every action to her. Even at her Rite of Final Prayers, he still instructed her.

  A thick elm branch rested beside one of the stones. “Father,” she said. “The circle is broken by that branch.” She felt removed and distant, considering the ritual academically and not as her last opportunity to reconcile with the Goddess. But in her disbelief of all that had happened, she could not touch the emotions trapped within. Could this really be happening?

  “Yes,” Imire said with a heavy
sigh. “You must strike me with it to break my shielding, but not yet.”

  Eilidh’s mind froze, not willing to grasp what she must do. How could she attack her own father in a holy place? Where would she go?

  He turned to her with a tender expression. “I have been a distant father. I should have instructed you better. And now there is no time to make up for my failings.” He glanced up at the cloudy sky, his eyes shining like river crystals. “Remain within the human cities where our people’s power has faded to nothing.”

  “You want me to run.”

  “I was a fool.” His face was smooth and beautiful, but she saw the age in his eyes as he spoke. “Eilidh…” He tucked a tiny package into her hand. “I’m sorry I cannot give you more.”

  Eilidh was paralyzed. “Father, I can’t go.” She was not eager to die, but living outside the kingdom? She’d seen the barbarian humans from a distance. What she saw sickened her.

  The expression in his blue eyes turned sharp. “Survive.” His gaze flicked to the branch, and he turned to face the northern stone. For his sake, the conclave had to believe she’d overpowered him. She hit him hard enough to break his shield and incapacitate him, and she prayed to the Mother that he would survive.

  To this day, she did not know if he lived. Up until that moment, she’d been innocent. When she ran, she confirmed her guilt. Her father had cursed her to live between worlds, never a part of either.

  She had been a child, not yet past her first century. She’d celebrated that milestone of adulthood alone with the pigeons and rats in the abandoned St Paul’s. The evil that had brushed her doorstep made her wish for the first time in decades for her father’s counsel. He would have known what to do.

  The order against her still stood: kill on sight. She’d never get close to her father. He rarely came anywhere near the borders and spent much of his time in the Otherworld. But perhaps there was another of her kind who would stay the order long enough for her to get word to Imire. She needed to take the chance, to ask his advice, and to warn the conclave of this renegade faerie. Perhaps.

  The killer would not stop with taking one human life. The forbidden magic of the Path of the Azure was addictive, as she well knew, and this murder had obviously been aided by a blood spell. Azuri magic had two possible manifestations, blood or astral magic. The Ways of Earth and its air, water, stone, and fire magic could not rip out a man’s heart, so this killer was no kingdom faerie. The humans could not cope with what he would bring. Even she did not know if she could do it alone. She would need help. Yet asking for help from the kingdom that threatened her life did not hold any appeal.

  She considered this Munro and wondered how developed his power was, if indeed he had any. He didn’t look like her mental image of a true druid, but she knew better than to judge too much on appearances. Humans aged quickly. As a young adult faerie, she was older than all living humans.

  Eilidh climbed to an exposed beam within the second level of the empty, rotting church and made herself comfortable. The police still worked outside, and their voices filtered through the boarded-up lower windows. Their methods did not concern her. Once they departed, she would look for all the things they’d been incapable of seeing with human eyes.

  Chapter 3

  The longest day of the year approached, so the sun rose early, a full three hours before the shops would open. This left Eilidh plenty of time. She stretched and made her way to the roof of St Paul’s, using the loose flap on a boarded-up window to exit into the gloom. Lifeless grey clouds hung low and dulled the glow of the summer sun. Light mist fell, making the mossy stone ledges slick.

  Eilidh glanced up and down the street and to the buildings around her before she made her way to the pavement below. Years ago, she’d cast a light warding around the church so that most humans didn’t notice it. She was not a strong spell-caster, so it could not put off those determined to see. Rain had fallen through the night and washed away much, but not all, of the blood on the cobbled stones behind the church.

  She crouched over the spot where the human had lain and opened her senses. When he’d first fallen, she’d been so concerned with the faerie and the blood shadows he’d cast that she hadn’t paid attention to the victim. Now she wondered, why this man? A woman had walked with him. Eilidh distinctly remembered them passing below. They’d walked up together, then a few others had passed, and then the man had come back this way alone.

  Having watched for so many years, Eilidh recognised some human habits. Women rarely travelled alone at night, except in groups. So the man had been escorting her either to her home or perhaps to a car.

  Eilidh recalled their smells with sudden clarity. She’d noticed a chemical perfume about the woman. Humans put different scents in their hair, under their arms, and sprayed it on their bodies. It made them easy to detect among the street smells of food and machines. Add to that the alcohol on their breath, and…Eilidh stopped mid-thought. The woman had smelled of all of those things, but the man had not. She noticed it when he’d returned alone. The woman’s scent clung to him in a faint, familiar way, but she wouldn’t have even noticed him if she hadn’t heard him. He smelled natural: no perfumes, no smoke, no alcohol. The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

  After the night’s weather, it would be impossible to pick up even a faint trail, but Eilidh tried. She could smell nothing but the acidity of the street overlaid with the pleasant wafting sweetness that came with summer rain. She paused, bracing herself to do something she didn’t like to do. She would not cast the azure—she would simply listen. The forbidden astral magic welled easily, pooling in her mind. Her thoughts opened, and suddenly she could see herself from above. With god-like eyes, she scanned the street below, aching with the details of every pore in the stone, each fleck of moss in every tiny crevice. Blood and death flooded her senses, and she could almost feel the life in those diluted cells that crept away with each tumbling raindrop. Larger forms of life: a white moth, a heather beetle, a small brown spider, a cluster of rats, birds flapping overhead, the force of their tiny existence beat loudly in her enhanced hearing.

  Overwhelmed by the sensations, Eilidh fought to come back into her own mind, but her inexperience with the astral flows left her unable to control the power that thudded in her body. Even as she fought with herself, she recognised in a flash what was missing from the spot where the man’s body had fallen. The knowing came before the words, but as the words formed in her mind, something else intruded.

  Outcast. The word shuddered through her entire existence, relentlessly pressing in her ears. Outcast. He called to her, and Eilidh’s mind was wide open because of the unpractised astral casting. The word echoed, beckoning and holding her as though he knew her past, future, and every intimate thought. How could one of the blood touch her thoughts? The realm of a blood faerie was flesh and bone, while an astral faerie touched perception, memory and illusion. Eilidh knew she should fight it, but her body was heavy and her magic wrapped in the miasma of her heightened senses.

  She didn’t have to ask who it was. Only a powerful faerie could do this. While she could have pretended it was one of her own kingdom come to redeem her, she didn’t waste time on such hopes. Besides, she could taste the tang of blood magic in her mouth. None of the kingdom knew those rites.

  Eilidh fell to the wet paving stones. She heard voices and felt the rough touch of human hands on her arms and throat. She smelled their breath. Their words came loudly, but the meanings took longer to take hold in her throbbing mind.

  “You’re okay.” The voice soothed her and a part of her relaxed.

  He had gone, no longer picking at the edges of her thoughts.

  Eilidh opened her eyes and met the worried expression in his, which were a dark shade of blue. “Munro,” she whispered. Her thoughts were now her own. She sighed. Her mind calmed, and she realised what was missing from the murder scene. Still looking intently at Munro, willing him to understand, she said, “The death occurr
ed here. The casting of blood continued elsewhere.” The words felt strange within her mouth, and she realised how long it had been since she had talked to someone else. English, of course, was not her native tongue. It had been spoken by humans in this land all her life, so she’d been taught. She also knew the tongues of the fae, Picts, Gaels, Swedes, and Celts, as well as Latin, even though she’d been born many hundreds of years after the Romans had come and gone from this island.

  She struggled to sit up. Munro searched her eyes, seeming puzzled. Had she said something wrong? English had changed in her lifetime.

  “You need to lie back, Miss. You’ve taken a tumble. An ambulance is on the way.” To a few people crowding around, he said, “Give her some room to breathe. She’ll be just fine.”

  Eilidh reached up behind her head and tugged at her hood to make sure it covered her ears. Munro stared into her eyes, investigating their strange colour, drifting in the swirls. Even for a faerie, Eilidh’s eyes were remarkable.

  A screeching siren approached. She could not let herself be taken. “Thank you, Munro,” she said, twisting the English words in her mouth. He crouched beside her and looked up as the vehicle turned onto the nearby side street.