Blood Faerie Read online

  Eilidh’s mind was weary from her encounter with the blood faerie, but her body was able. As soon as Munro’s attention moved away, she sprang to her feet and darted south, dashing through traffic. She narrowly avoided a passing car, and she cursed. Normally, her perception would allow her to flit through the moving cars before drivers saw her. Today she felt like a lumbering cow. A sounding horn startled her.

  She ran down Canal Street until she came to the River Tay. Without glancing back to see if she was being pursued, she ran to the water’s edge and dove into the tidal river. Although in earth magic, her season was the first, and air her primary element, she also had some small influence with the second. She allowed herself to feel the natural flows of the cold water. Without coming up for air, she let it carry her the short distance to the far side of Moncrieff Island and downriver, away from the city.

  Recent rains made the swollen river flow swiftly to the east, so it took less than half an hour for Eilidh to reach the place where she intended to cross into fae territory. The cold Highland melt mixed with rainwater, and by the time Eilidh emerged from the river, she felt restored from her contact with the blood faerie. It disturbed her that she’d come so close to the humans. In twenty-five years, she’d managed to speak to them only on a handful of occasions. Most of those were in the early days before she’d grown accustomed to being alone.

  Although she was not particularly strong in any of the Ways of Earth, fire was Eilidh’s weakest element, so she opted for a simple spell of air magic. Her white hair danced on end as a gust of wind swirled around her, blowing frigid air over her clothes to dry them.

  She sat on the bank of the river and took off her leather shoes. Still damp, she laid them aside and stared at the flowing water. She recalled the times when she and Saor had snuck away from their home boundaries and swum in the moonlight. It hadn’t been too far from this spot. Using a shameful amount of effort, she mustered a little heat into a whirlwind she held in her hand.

  Rather than continue, she decided to leave her garments slightly damp. It would be a mistake to approach the ever-fluxing kingdom boundaries at night. That was when the borders would come closest to the city. The Watchers would be more awake and better able to see her. No, she would do well to travel further, and meet the barriers when they were weakest. She should not delay.

  Eilidh turned toward the hills and ran, fighting the fatigue that came from being awake in the middle of the day. She’d shaken off her earlier encounter and felt more herself with every step toward her former kingdom. She came upon long dirt roads that led through plastic-tented berry fields. Without missing a beat, she ran through them, not even bothering to shield her presence from the hunched field workers. Early on, she’d spent a great deal of energy trying to conceal her presence from the humans. That was before she’d realised they rarely paid attention.

  Beyond the farms lay wide fields, separated by centuries-old stone dykes. Eilidh easily jumped the walls and dodged the sheep dotting the landscape. They scurried away as she ran, forcing her to acknowledge that she did not move as silently as her early training had required. A quarter of a century wasn’t long, not when her people often lived for more than a millennium, but long enough for her to become careless and loud-footed.

  When she finally came to the forest’s edge, Eilidh hesitated. Once she stepped beyond this tree line, her life was forfeit. She might be able to find Saor, her childhood friend. They had often worked together in this very spot. They’d taken lessons together, played together, and when they approached adulthood, they’d trained and become Watchers together. Everyone assumed they would marry, but before Eilidh reached the requisite century mark, she’d been exiled. When they arrested her, he’d not come to see her. She’d never gotten the chance to say goodbye.

  Eilidh held up her hand and touched the nearest tree. Why was she here? Was it really to warn her people about the blood faerie she’d encountered? Now she was no longer certain what had kept her feet running in this direction. If she did encounter Saor, he would be forced to either kill her or help her.

  She shook her head and smirked at her own foolishness. Saor would kill her or he wouldn’t, but he was no longer hers. He would be close to a hundred and thirty, and if he hadn’t found someone else by now, she’d be shocked. Even to suspect that he would not have taken another was ridiculous. He would have grieved, but when he found out about Eilidh’s true nature, he would have counted himself lucky to escape her fate. As her childhood friend, no one would blame him for her crimes. If he’d been married to her though, the taint of her existence would never have left him.

  A light breeze pushed at her back, and Eilidh steeled herself for whatever would come. With as much courage as she could muster, she stepped into the woods.

  ***

  Munro didn’t mind house-to-house enquiries, generally speaking, especially not when someone like Gladys Pentworth offered him and Getty tea and freshly baked bread. Nobody made bread at home any more, except, it seemed, Gladys Pentworth. Munro and Getty sat on her beige settee to ask her, as they had most of her neighbours, if she saw or heard someone rip Robert Dewer’s heart from his chest.

  “Mrs Pentworth, were you home last night?”

  “Why, yes, that poor felly.” Her eyes widened with sympathy and she tutted. “Jam for your bread, dears?”

  “No, madam, this is just fine. Did you know Robert Dewer?”

  “No, no. I don’t really keep up with young people anymore with their iPods and hoodies. The way they wear their trousers! Really, officers, can’t anything be done?”

  Getty coughed, and Munro schooled his features as best he could.

  “Would you like some more tea?” she said to Getty, who hacked as though some bread had gone down the wrong way.

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual last night?” Munro asked.

  “Well, I heard him die. A horrible sound. He shrieked, the poor man. Didn’t sound human.” Her eyes were wide as though she could still hear it. Then she came back to the present moment, turning her head to the side and waiting for the next question.

  Both officers sat forward. “You’re sure it was him and not something off the telly?” Getty asked.

  She frowned. “Really, you’d know a sound like that. Besides, I don’t watch violent shows.” She paused. “There’s always foul noises coming from the street, you understand. This used to be a nice neighbourhood. At first I thought it was someone being sick. Then I thought that wasn’t quite right either, was it?”

  “What time was this?” Munro asked.

  “Oh, must have been just before ten. I usually go to bed around then, see, and I had just cleaned my teeth.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “Well, I went to the window to see what the matter was. He was lying down there all alone. Sad, really, to die alone.”

  “You could see him from here?” Munro put his teacup on the coffee table and went to the window. He had to lean close to make out the church steps. The position of the building made it awkward.

  “I couldn’t see the body exactly, but I knew he had to be dead.”

  Munro turned back toward Mrs Pentworth and waited.

  “Because of the angel, you see.”

  “Angel?” Munro and Getty glanced at each other.

  “Yes, floated down from heaven. Just right after he died.” She shook her head again.

  Munro turned back to the window and peered up. He saw nothing but the church and the buildings opposite. St Paul’s Street, the tiny, crowded road that curved behind the church, barely had room for a car to park. “Are you saying someone jumped down from one of those apartments?”

  Her teacup rattled on the saucer when she set it down. “Don’t be ridiculous. They’d have broken their neck. And no, they didn’t come from the apartments.” She narrowed her eyes. “It was an angel from heaven, come to take that poor Mr Dewer away. It didn’t jump. Angels don’t jump. It floated. And second, it came from heaven. I saw it d
escend from the sky.”

  “Yeah,” Getty said with a glance to Munro. “If you think of anything more, give us a call.” He handed her a card with the relevant phone numbers.

  “Thank you,” Munro said, and they left Mrs Pentworth to undoubtedly call her friends and report on the excitement.

  After they made their way to the ground floor Getty said, “Nice old crackpot. Good bread. Shame she’s such a loon.”

  “Maybe not,” Munro said.

  Getty stopped at the street exit. “I’m all for believing in the Good Lord when it comes to weddings and football, but don’t tell me you believe she saw an angel.”

  Munro shook his head. “She saw something.” Once on the street again, he glanced up at the grey sky. “I saw our witness this morning.” He hadn’t mentioned that he’d seen the girl, or that it was a girl. Her appearance left him unsettled, and he didn’t want to admit that.

  “The kid?”

  “Short light hair, hazel eyes, maybe fifteen or sixteen? Foreign, I think. Hard to tell. Had some sort of medical condition. Collapsed on the steps. I only turned away for a second, and he stood up and ran off.” Why was he still deceiving Getty? Munro could always claim later he hadn’t realised. The girl certainly didn’t seem ordinary. It would be an easy mistake for anyone to make.

  “If he has a medical condition, he might be registered with a local GP. You think he’s involved?”

  “I think he’s scared. Maybe he saw something, or maybe he’s just scared of cops in general. You know how it is.”

  Getty nodded. Some families raised their kids to distrust the police. Usually it meant their mum was selling drugs out of their front room to make ends meet until dad got out of jail. One day on the outside and the old man would take up the family business again.

  Munro also didn’t tell Getty the girl hadn’t been blonde. Her hair was white. Bright white, like his gran’s, but without the blue tinge. And her silver-green eyes weren’t like anything he’d seen. He couldn’t get her face out of his mind. Something about her made him uneasy. He didn’t like to think she was involved, but they had to find her, even if it was for her own protection. She seemed frail and small, but even though he’d told Getty she was a kid, he knew that wasn’t right either.

  Munro couldn’t help but wonder about the angel Mrs Pentworth swore she’d seen. His hunches were stirring again, and he wished they’d just shut the hell up.

  Chapter 4

  “Really, Cridhe, you’re becoming quite mad.”

  Cridhe inclined his head as though deferentially agreeing with his father, but inside he seethed. The fae did not go mad. Dudlach should know that. Why would he suggest something so blatantly insulting to their race? Furthermore, Cridhe wasn’t just any faerie. He was the hunter, vital to the Krostach Ritual because of his unique talents. When those with higher magic once again ruled the kingdoms, he would surely be made a lord. He was eccentric, perhaps. Driven, certainly. But never mad. “I enjoy my work,” Cridhe said finally.

  Dudlach’s dark eyes flashed. “Too much, I think.”

  Impatience nipped at Cridhe. “Would you prefer I were timid and weak? Or have you simply developed an affinity for the human creatures?”

  “Don’t be disgusting. You always were a petulant child.”

  Cridhe held himself in a perfect calm pose, ignoring the roiling voices as best he could. “My point, Dudlach, is that I do a job that must be done. I enjoy it.” Cridhe shrugged, as though the conversation bored him, but his mind ticked over every recent conversation he’d had with Dudlach, searching for signs of betrayal. “Is it wrong to find pleasure in service?”

  “I have lived much longer than you,” Dudlach said.

  Cridhe bit back his internal response. Simply growing old was no accomplishment. Besides, Dudlach was dead. Somewhere in his twisted mind, Cridhe knew this, even if the ghost before him didn’t. “Yes, that is so.”

  Was Dudlach a ghost? Cridhe didn’t know. His mind wouldn’t let him focus on the truth. He couldn’t even ponder why he couldn’t think about it.

  “The higher magic should only be touched when necessary,” his father said. “It is addictive, consuming. Blood magic even more so than the other three forms. You practice too much, draw too much.”

  For a moment, Cridhe forgot his concerns about Dudlach’s state of being and launched into a familiar argument. “My drawing feeds the source stone. Without me…” Cridhe let the words trail off. They needed the sacrifices, and he alone could make them. He could not bear to be lectured by a shadow of a memory.

  “Yes, what would we do without you?” Dudlach’s eyes were so dark and the pupils so large it was impossible for Cridhe to tell if Dudlach was actually looking at him—or right through him.

  His father’s all-knowing air annoyed Cridhe. The old faerie was arrogant. And useless if he wouldn’t practice or teach more of what he knew of blood magic.

  “Cridhe!” Dudlach’s voice made him jump. “You’re muttering to yourself again. This is what I mean. This is what worries me.”

  “Was I?” A tinge of doubt crept into Cridhe’s mind. He forced a weak smile. “I’m overtired, perhaps. Nothing more.”

  A cloud moved through Dudlach’s eyes. “Rest, then. Our work is vital.”

  Dudlach stalked into the surrounding trees. Cridhe watched the blackness intently. When Cridhe had killed Dudlach, he’d tasted the magic, consumed it, but it had not become part of him. It ran through him, as would any meat. He’d tried to collect Dudlach’s heart the same way he now did with humans, but it hadn’t worked. The spell failed and the heart ceased its beating. In many ways, it hadn’t entirely surprised him. The fae, being superior to lower life forms, were far too complex to have the same weaknesses as humans.

  A flicker of recognition threatened, but Cridhe denied the horror he should have felt at having killed his own father. Dudlach had deserved to die.

  ***

  Munro squinted out the window into the bright afternoon. His eyes resisted, and he had to lower them again. The light burned. He’d never had a migraine before, but he’d known plenty of people who had, so he wondered if that was what he was experiencing. Migraine sufferers never seemed to miss an opportunity to describe, in excruciating detail, why theirs was no ordinary headache.

  “You all right?” Getty asked. He said it with a chuckle, as though he only asked out of social convention.

  Munro never got sick, took a sick day, or so much as had a cold. “Yeah,” he said. “Just a bit of a bad head.”

  Sergeant Hallward happened to be walking through the squad room. “Shake it off, cupcake. We have work to do,” he said without even breaking stride.

  Munro chuckled. “Yes, boss.” But Hallward was already out of earshot by the time the words had come. He turned to ask Getty if he wanted to grab some lunch before the St Paul’s case review, but suddenly he found his face planted in the dark grey carpet.

  “Jesus,” Getty said, kneeling beside his partner.

  Munro felt himself being rolled over and then Getty’s cool hand touching his face. Munro tried to speak, but vomit sprayed out of his mouth, all over Getty’s black uniform and onto the shoes of nearby officers.

  “We need an ambulance at Divisional Police Headquarters on Barrack Street…”

  Why did they use such a strange monotone when talking to dispatch? Why did everyone sound so worried? Had the killer struck again?

  Munro wasn’t surprised at the thought. The killing had been so bizarre. Someone who could do something like that to a person wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Unnecessary violence would usually indicate that a killing had been personal. In this case, it hadn’t been so much violent as just bloody wrong. Munro had heard one young idiot breathe the phrase “serial killer” when Hallward had been within earshot. It hadn’t taken very many words to shut the kid up. Serial meant more than one, a pattern, a predator. Right now, they had one dead bloke and one sick killer.

  Anyone would know why you didn’t
say things like that before you had to. Just the idea of a serial killer in Perth made Munro’s stomach tighten. Perth was his city. He’d been born here, gone to school here, and becoming a copper had been the most natural thing in the world. Some people dreamed of moving away, going to university in Edinburgh or Glasgow, maybe even London. One mate had gone to America, for pity’s sake. He’d gotten an athletic scholarship to a university in a state Munro couldn’t have found on a map. Ohio or Oregon or something. But Munro knew Scotland was where he belonged. He wasn’t settling; he was home.

  The thoughts drifted through Munro’s mind. He felt oddly calm and removed as though he could finally think clearly, separated from his physical reality.

  Someone placed a plastic mask over Munro’s face. The cool air smelled strange, as though it were too clean, too pure…the smell of nothing. Something jostled Munro. He felt movement and heard voices, calm, but no-nonsense. He used that tone sometimes himself. Cops learned quickly how to talk without leaving room for argument or negotiation. Some people needed help focusing. Usually if anyone needed a cop, there was something bad happening. He had to talk to people who were distressed, angry, grieving, or clouded by alcohol or drugs. Clear, crisp commands. That was the only thing that would get through. Step away now or get out of the vehicle, please or I’m sorry. There’s been an accident.