Blood Faerie (3 page)

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.

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 occurred 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.

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?”