Blood Faerie (16 page)

Munro took a long drink, stalling. He’d been desperate to find some help, but now that he had it, he felt wary and uncertain about revealing too much. On the other hand, he couldn’t see the harm in just talking about himself. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stone tear and the bear. He set them on the table and watched as Frankie stared at them for a moment.

Frankie didn’t touch them, but instead hovered his hand over the bear. “This one is fresher.” He glanced at Munro for confirmation and then moved on. “You shaped these with the flows?”

“I guess,” Munro said. “I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

“Stone,” Frankie muttered. “Interesting.”

“What does that mean?” Munro remembered Eilidh and Saor talking about the Ways of Earth and affinity with stone or whatnot, but they’d never fully explained it.

“We call our abilities earth magic. There are four spheres and they correspond to the seasons and elements. The first season is winter and the air element. Next is water and spring. Stone is the element for the third season, and if you could do this without even thinking, I’d guess that’s where you’re strongest. It doesn’t mean a strong druid couldn’t learn the others, but your abilities will probably be strongest in the summer, and working with stone or clay will come naturally to you. Maybe you unlocked without a mentor because we’re so close to the height of summer. I really don’t know.”

“What’s the fourth?”

“Fire. That’s the rarest. I’ve only met one fire druid before.” Frankie tapped the stone tear lightly, as if afraid of what it might do. “You say this started a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yeah, I was outside a church and I put my hand on the stone. I felt…strange. A little bit later, I picked up this rock and was just holding it. Next thing I know, it had become this.”

“A church? Was it St Paul’s?”

Munro went still. He’d intentionally not mentioned the name, because he knew Eilidh lived there, at least some of the time. But now he thought of it another way—as the site of the first murder. “It was, actually,” he said. “How did you know? Is it special?”

Frankie waved it off. “Nah, I just remember another stone druid saying he felt some resonance there.” He shook his empty Coke can. “Want another?”

“No thanks.” Munro tried to act as natural as he could while still keeping an eye on Frankie as he went into the kitchen. His cousin was lying. He wouldn’t say he had a nose for it, not like he had those hunches for violence, and it certainly wasn’t tied to any ability. Cops got lied to every day of the week. It came with the job. After a while, they got a feel for it. It was something in the eyes and the body language. People either lied well or lied badly, depending on how often they did it. Frankie was obviously unaccustomed to thinking on his feet.

Munro tried to tease the lie out of the statement. It was possible, of course, that some stone druid had felt Eilidh’s presence. He had certainly responded to her magic. It must have been Eilidh who unlocked him, although she didn’t seem to realise she’d done it. Perhaps Frankie somehow knew of her existence and wanted to keep the information from Munro. She certainly didn’t know Frankie, from what she’d said about druids, but there was more going on than Munro could work out.

On the other hand, it could be that some druid, maybe even Frankie himself, knew something about the murder. Could Eilidh have been wrong? Could the perpetrator have been a druid and not a faerie? Maybe she sensed the magic and not the race of the person casting it. He wanted to ask Frankie what he knew about blood magic. That certainly didn’t fit into the tidy four-season scheme he’d just explained. But then, Eilidh had suggested she had abilities other than the normal earth magic. Could it be that druids could cast the azure too?

When Frankie came back, he didn’t have another can in his hands. “Hey,” he said, “I was thinking of going to meet some of my friends tonight, a couple of druids. They could probably answer some questions I can’t. Want to come?”

There’s even more of us?
“Sure,” Munro said. He needed answers, and now not just for himself, but to see what these people knew about the murders. He would have liked backup, but he couldn’t exactly invite Getty along. Besides, all he planned to do was ask a few questions. His thoughts went to Eilidh. He wished she were with him. He could have used her knowledge and keen senses, wherever they were going. “I just need to phone in first. We’re all on call lately.” That was total BS, but Frankie wouldn’t know that.

Munro called his own number and faked a conversation, leaving it recorded on his landline voice mail. If anything happened, at least someone could find out where he’d gone. “PC Munro here.” A pause. “Okay, that’s fine.” Another pause, pretending to listen. “That’s fine. I’m at my cousin’s in town. I’ll check in again in a couple hours.” Feeling like an idiot he added, “No problem, Sarge. I have my phone with me.” He hung up, hoping he didn’t sound as stupid as he felt.

“You’re working those murders?”

Munro didn’t make too much of the fact that Frankie connected the two deaths. Perth was the sort of place that almost never had an unexplained death. Although they’d kept some of the details out of the press, having two bodies found in public places with no arrests would be enough to make anyone assume something was going on. “Not really. They’ve got CID detectives for that. They’re just making everyone work longer hours to have higher visibility. Gotta let the public think we’re making progress.” He shrugged and tried to look suitably annoyed. He also felt like a bit of an arse for suspecting his own cousin of being involved in a murder, but something was up. He’d learned long ago that being a little suspicious was never a bad thing.

The long journey and wakeful night left Eilidh on edge. In the Ways of Earth, she’d only had limited success with the first season, her strongest. Tomorrow would be the height of the third season, and she would have the least connection to her earth power than any other time of year. It left her feeling vulnerable and weak. When Saor told her he’d encountered a few fae on a hunt the night before, she realised how lucky they’d been.

After they crossed the sound and set foot on the Isle of Skye, Saor used his small talent with fire to dry and warm them before they proceeded. Eilidh could tell he was just as anxious as she. She’d had to live with the idea of having Path of the Azure magic ever since she accidentally cast an illusion that nearly killed one of her kinsmen.

He had believed he saw a white stag, rare even in the Otherworld, in the highland forests. It had surprised her as much as it did him.

She remembered controlling the beast like a puppet. She played with it, seeing what it could do. It didn’t have limitations like something real would, but she couldn’t make it do just anything. Trying to discover the rules, Eilidh made it jump in the air. It took great concentration for her to hold it off the ground, but she didn’t understand why. It wasn’t real, after all. Then her kinsman, Piedre, leapt out at the stag, hunting knife drawn. He fell nearly four hundred feet straight down. Neither saw the drop until it was too late. The angle at which the stag stood—up the mountainside from them—deceived their eyes completely. If a fall like that occured in the Otherworld, he would have survived with nothing more than a deep bruising to his pride. In the hills of Earth, though, even the fae were vulnerable to tragedy.

She could tell by his distance the idea of the Path of the Azure filled Saor with horror. As far as she knew, he’d never seen Eilidh cast it and seemed to be in some denial that it was real. As they walked inland, tension wracked his shoulders. He frowned and focused intently on the flows of earth.

Eilidh couldn’t keep her mind on their early scouting of the island. She kept thinking back to their conversation the previous night. Returning to the kingdom, even if she were severed, would extend her life by a thousand years. She hadn’t considered that possibility during the past decades. She’d been taught that, as an exile unable to return to the Halls of Mists and walk the magical plane of the Otherworld, she would age faster, although nowhere near as fast as a human. That seemed a blessing to her, condemned and alone as she was. But if she had Imire and Saor beside her, and possibly some of her other friends, if she could once again breathe the kingdom air, would that be worth it? What would she lose? Her earth magic was weak anyway, and she’d never been trained in astral magic. She watched Saor. Perhaps if she wanted to accept his proposal, she shouldn’t go any further. What if she was strong in the Path of the Azure? Wouldn’t that make it harder to give it up?

“Do you hear something?” he asked.

“No.” She opened her mouth to tell him what she’d been thinking but changed her mind. She shook her head and added, “Nothing.” Then she noticed a deadness in the air. “They’re here.”

Saor gave her his full attention, but didn’t ask how she knew.

“Don’t you feel it?” Eilidh asked.

“Feel what? I feel nothing.”

“Exactly,” she said. “The kingdom magic is completely disturbed here, as though we were standing in the centre of a human city. The few thousand people around this island would not be able to achieve that on their own.”

Saor looked around and she saw his expression change to one of understanding. They stood in a deep forest on an island in the middle of nowhere. A place like this was where the kingdom was usually the strongest. But instead, its influence was minimal. “This isn’t right,” Saor said. “I’ve heard there is a gateway nearby.”

“If there were, we would be able to smell the Halls of Mist.”

Saor didn’t argue, but he grew even more tense. The pair continued walking, up the peninsula toward the centre of the island. It took several hours, because they moved with caution in the unfamiliar territory. Suddenly, Saor stopped. “Eilidh,” he said and turned to her.

She waited for him to finish, but he said nothing more. “Saor?”

“It’s gone,” he said. His golden skin turned sallow.

“What’s gone?”

“The flows. I can’t see the flows.”

Eilidh’s ability with the Ways had always been so weak she hadn’t noticed the change. For her to see the flows, she had to try. For Saor, it was as natural as breathing. Eilidh turned to a nearby tree and whispered, but it did not acknowledge her words. She turned a puzzled expression to Saor. “Speak to the earth. Try.”

She’d never seen him so tentative, as though he feared even to say the words. Saor knelt on the hillside and put his hand on a flat, grey stone. Frustration marred his smooth features. In the ancient fae tongue he said, “Water.” His forehead wrinkled into a frown. “Path. Strength. Ages.” Each word became progressively angrier until he shouted, “Fire!” None of his words had any effect. Stone magic was opposite on the spectrum from her weak air magic, so Eilidh had never been attuned to his casting. But as he spoke the words, she felt their hollowness. Something in this place robbed him of his connection to the earth.

The failure visibly shook Saor. For the first time, she had to acknowledge she hadn’t been entirely confident in their mission. Just because Imire heard a few rumours about elder outcasts did not make it so. Still, as she looked around this place and felt the lack of kingdom influence, she grew excited at the idea of meeting another azuri fae. It had been easy to think about giving up talents that had never been anything but a curse to her. But if she were not alone, what would that mean?

She gave Saor’s arm a reassuring squeeze and took the lead. Now she dismissed her earlier idea of turning back. She had to do this. It was possible the lack of kingdom influence could be caused by something other than the Path of the Azure. She had no idea what it could be, though, and she was determined to unravel the mystery.

She led Saor, who with each passing hour seemed more troubled. His golden eyes were vacant and fixed on something in the distance. Several times he didn’t follow, and she had to double back. She found him heading the way they’d come. “Stay with me,” she said softly.

Eilidh led them in a broad curve over the high mountains and past the sheer cliffs. The terrain was rugged, and it slowed them down, but she believed the fae would stay away from people. Wouldn’t they? She paused to consider. She didn’t stay away from people, so why was she assuming these faeries would? She’d made the same mistake any kingdom fae would make, thinking that human settlements were the antithesis of their power.

With that realisation, she changed direction, heading straight north. She based her judgment on the deadness of the air and how disoriented Saor became. The more agitated he grew, the more confident she was about their direction. To make progress more certain, she began to follow a human road. Few cars passed, with only an occasional bus. Now she held Saor’s hand. He had stopped responding to her completely, but at least she did not have to fight him to get him to follow.

Once, Saor stood motionless. Eilidh waited patiently, thinking he might simply need to relieve himself. But instead of saying a word to her, he began to speak with someone, or something, she could not see. He looked down, as though the person was quite small. He turned to Eilidh and said, “We need to go south.”

“Why?”