City of Fae (16 page)

“What do you mean kill Reign? I’m not who you think I am. I’m a reporter. I just want to know what’s going on, that’s all. I just want the story. I’m Alina O’Connor. I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not a killer.” A memory flashed; the dagger sinking into fae flesh. The look of horror on the fae’s face and the chilling calm in me.

Miles snorted, released my hair, stepped around me and yanked on my wrists, pulling me onto my feet. “Every time they say the same. Your kind never last. Always burn out. I’m getting too old for this shit.”

Miles frog-marched me to the door. I chanced one look back at Andrews out cold on the floor and prayed Miles hadn’t killed him. He’d be all right. He had to be … He was the only sane thing left in my life.

The ride from Andrews’s flat to Chancery Lane could have taken an hour, or five minutes, I barely registered the passage of time as I sat cuffed in Detective Miles’s car. He uttered a few words about pleasing the queen, mentioned Saturday, and constantly checked his phone. When his gaze wasn’t on his phone, or the road, it roamed over me. My hands fisted in my lap, palm itching to close around a weapon.

“Andrews will come after me,” I said.

Miles laughed. “That upstart kid? He has no idea what’s going on. I’ll tell him you attacked him. If he remembers? Well”—he sniffed hard, and dabbed at his bloody nose— “it doesn’t matter; nothing matters. By the end of the week, it’ll all be changed anyway.”

Turning my head I forced myself to look him in the bloodshot eyes. “What’s happening at the end of the week?”

“Nothing, if your boy Reign doesn’t pull his finger out. The queen’s tired of him. About time too. Soon, she won’t need him, or you.”

I tied to swallow the saliva pooling in my mouth but my throat tightened. “Why does she need me?”

Sunlight cut into the many lines on Miles’s face, hollowing his cheeks and pooling shadows under his eyes. Was he mad? Somehow, I doubted it, but I wished he was.

One corner of his mouth tucked into his cheek. “You were the failsafe, but you’re broken. Have you blacked out a few times, maybe entered rooms but had no memory of getting there?” He saw the answer on my face. “Don’t worry that pretty little head over it. She’ll set you right in no time and you’ll go back to doing what you do best.”

“Which is what?”

Miles’s eyebrow twitched. “Nothing you need to worry about right now.”

Perspiration speckled my clammy skin. I shivered, as though feverish. “I think you have the wrong person. I don’t know the queen. I only saw her once and I wasn’t even meant to be there.”

“Weren’t you?”

My hands trembled. I cut my gaze away and searched the sun-blushed street outside. Wisps of clouds hung in an azure October sky. The world continued around me, life marching on, as I sat cuffed beside a corrupt detective spouting crazed nonsense. I denied Miles’s words meant anything and instead let them slip off my hastily constructed armor of denial.

Miles manhandled me from the car at Chancery Lane station, marched me through the foyer, and through the throngs of people. When we were stopped at the ticket gates, he flashed his Met Police badge and we were waved on through. Down he guided me, down the trundling escalators, down the tunnels, down where the dry air cracked my lips, and where the trains thundered. His hand on my arm, he steered me away from the people, through tunnels where nobody walked. Out footfalls echoed off tiled walls. Under the glare of the artificial lighting, Miles appeared to age, and his hand on my arm trembled. There were no smiles now, no sideways leers.

He pulled me up short in the middle of a pedestrian tunnel. I looked around us, expecting … something. Behind, as in front, the dirty white walls of the tunnel curved away. The ground beneath my feet shuddered and the lights flickered.

Miles’s white-knuckle grip released. “This is as far as I can take you. I’ve done my part.” Unlocking the cuffs, he stumbled back a few steps. “Sweet dreams, Alina.” He turned on his heel and marched away, footfalls echoing long after he’d turned the corner out of sight.

Rubbing my wrists, I turned on the spot and eyed the other end of the tunnel. Besides some graffiti and a peeled advertising poster, it looked harmless enough. If I’d learned anything about the fae, it was surely that looks could be deceiving. Free, as far as I could tell, I turned away from the unexplored tunnel and broke into a jog, back the way I’d come. Whatever the reason Miles had left me there, I wasn’t sticking around to find out. As I rounded the corner, the tunnel turned from the everyday into a funnel of cobwebs, leading down into bottomless darkness. I reeled back. That hadn’t been there before … Keeping my eyes on the dark heart of the web, I twisted, my feet already carrying me away.

Black and red tree branches snapped on either side of me. I spun, a scream lodged in my throat—not branches, legs. The queen reared up, legs arched wide, seeking. Her swollen body glistened and her fang-filled smile cut across her monstrous face. Behind her, sprawled facedown and motionless in a pool of thick blood, lay Miles. Wide, glassy eyes gazed toward the middle distance. Dead.

The queen hissed, and lunged.

Fear is a terrible thing. It cripples, wrenches away all hope and buries the mind deep inside a place where instinct reigns. The damp bricks beneath me, the slight metallic taste in the air, the rippling and hiss of a dozen arachnids and their writhing pitter-patter where they crawled inside my clothes. I knew exactly where I was. Knew I was surrounded, buried, smothered. The underground reservoir. Terror clamped its icy grip around me, shutting down all but my most basic functions.
Breathe.
Spiders scurried over my face, their twitching legs delicate, but their numbers formidable. I breathed though my nose, keeping my mouth pinched shut.
Make this not be real.

I heard—no, sensed—her approach, sensed her spiders fan outward, cresting in a wave of millions upon millions of tiny bodies, before they broke over me. Her carapace creaked. The fine hairs covering her body whispered as she swept through her millions, and her legs tapped out a staccato beat. Fast, irregular, coming closer, heavier, louder.

The last of the spiders scuttled away and for the first time in what felt like forever my body was my own again. I didn’t want to open my eyes. Her gaze settled over me like a veil of cobwebs. I knew she stood over me. If I didn’t look, she wouldn’t be real. None of this was real. Just a hallucination.
Bespellment.
Please, God, let it be bespellment, let me be mad.

I cracked one eye and witnessed the monstrous body of the red and black queen. She wavered on the eight legs craned over me, swaying slightly from side to side. Red pupil-less eyes peered down at me; unblinking, she smiled. She always smiled, to make way for her crescent fangs.

“You’re not real.” Even though I could see her, smell her oily excretion, hear the rustle of her fine hairs, my fragile thoughts wouldn’t acknowledge her.

“I am not real?” she echoed, her voice fractured, brittle, shattered, and forced back together to create sounds that merely mimicked speech. My stomach heaved. She grinned.

One of her glossy black cantilever legs probed toward me and nudged my shoulder. Grimacing, I turned my face away.
Not real. Not real.

“You had served me well, until now. Such is the way of things in Under. Borrowed draíocht will never be enough … Never.” Her legs rippled, carrying her backward. She turned away from me, scuttling toward one of the arches.

Propping myself up on an elbow I scanned my surroundings. The reservoir floor glistened with rivers of spiders, undulating to an internal beat like poison-rich veins feeding into her world. Shadows sagged and pooled among the brick archways. Candles flickered and danced. If those candles died, I’d be plunged into darkness.

“Where’s Reign?” My voice rolled over and over into the cavernous space.

“Ah, my Sovereign, disobedient youngling. The Authority have him … They will set him on the correct path, or I will.” She hissed and turned back toward me, scuttling forward, bearing down on me. She loomed, shortened appendages below her human arms reaching for me. I scrambled back, kicking my heels against the ground. I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see her, but couldn’t tear my horrified stare away.

The queen rose up, lifting her forelegs off the ground. “
Mm
… This is … different. Tell me, Construct, what are your memories of me?”

I blinked, once, twice, my mind latching onto the single word. “Construct?”

She cocked her hairless head and blinked. “Puzzling. You do not know me, do you? My dear … Perhaps I was hasty weaving your construction. We shall rectify this unfortunate matter. Come. Stand. You have not yet finished my tasks. Soon, soon you shall rest, and well deserved your rest shall be.”

Construct? It seemed to take a lifetime to get to my knees, and another to find my feet and stand. Even upright, she towered over me. “I’m Alina O’Connor.”

“Yes, yes … of course you are. And the next time, you’ll be Joanne Turner, and the next perhaps … Caroline.” She gave an odd little bark of laughter. “Caroline, yes … Some irony there. Perhaps I will give you a different accent. Yours is grating somewhat.”

“What … what are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing I haven’t done before.” A leg arched high to my right and tapped on the bricks.
Tap-tap.
“We waste time. You are mine. The time has come for you to fulfill your purpose,”
tap-tap-tap,
“Alina O’Connor … A fine name. I listen, I hear … They think me trapped, but I am always watching. I hear them talking of light, of noise, of people, of life … I heard this name,
Alina
… Do you like it?”

“This is”—I gulped and stepped back—“this is madness.” Another step back, another.

“A name is necessary, when you walk among them. A life too. A reporter. Someone who asks questions. Someone who watches, records, reports back. That is what I needed. You failed your first task, to watch Sovereign, report back to me, and kill him. It matters not. I still control Sovereign. I control you.” Her body fell into that left-right rhythm once more, coaxing the madness from my mind, smoothing the fear away. “You are close to him, yes?”

“Yes.” The acknowledgment burst from my lips of its own accord.

“Younglings such as him are easily distracted, in that you have done well. He was my best once. My ancient hound. Ruthless. Obedient. Deadly.” She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, but as with all pets, he bites. A pity.” She flicked a hand. “He failed me. I’ll deal with him soon enough, but we have more pressing matters. Three Keepers are dead. One remains.”

Left and right, back and forth.
Tap-tap.
I blinked, trying to clear the blurring in my peripheral vision.

She inched forward, stalking down my retreat, “Once I have restored you, you will forget all of this nonsense. My faithful pet. You will be my eyes, my instrument, my killing blow. And we shall rise together. Take this city as our own. And feed …”

I lifted a hand, but it didn’t feel like my own. Even as I brought my fingers to my face, touched my cheek, I felt nothing. What was happening? This wasn’t real. I was Alina O’Connor. Trainee reporter. American Girl. But this … this place, this dream …

The queen’s razor-edged voice sliced into my skull but I no longer understood her words. The sway of her body held me frozen, locked still. Heavy eyelids sagged.

“There, there … Isn’t it so much easier without those messy memories clogging your thoughts?”

Memories. Yes. My job … wasn’t real. My life? Was any of it real?

“Submit to my will, my sweet thing, listen … listen to the breeze. Isn’t it uncomplicated? Isn’t life simple? You will kill for me, Alina O’Connor. Kill so that I will be free. It is your purpose. Forget all that you think you know. You are mine. You will always be mine. I am your queen, I created you, you are a part of me, and you, Alina, will free me from this prison.”

“Yes.” I heard a voice very much like my own say. I dropped to a knee, even though it seemed a strange thing to do. My head bowed, eyes closed, life seemed so simple now. Kill the keeper. This would please my queen.

Looking up, I fell into her red-eyed gaze, fell into the dark truth harbored at the back of my mind. Alina O’Connor wasn’t real, but her mission was. Kill the Keeper. Kill Warren. Sovereign had failed. I would not.
I am hers.
And she will be free.

I knew where they were, the hundreds of London fae. I didn’t need eyes to see them. We were connected by the strings of her web; the queen poised at the center, and me … I was there too, caught in the center of the pulsing network. Ancient fae burned brighter in my mind, while the younger ones barely flickered at all, but they were all there, all tied to the queen by silken threads. No amount of mental denials would change the facts. Telling myself it wasn’t real wouldn’t alter the truth. I was hers. I’d always been hers. And as I listened to her voice, I heard the fearful whispers from her subjects. They knew she was close to escape. Fear and anticipation strummed her web, and she wanted it, soaked it up. Nothing could stop her. She’d waited centuries. Waited in the dark, under London, sending her younglings, her spies, her constructs, out into the world to weave their magic through the heart of the city. She would rise up, and the fae would follow. I knew all of this because I was one such construct. I knew it as surely as I knew I would carry out her desires, because pleasing her was the only thing that mattered. I was hers. Alina O’Connor didn’t exist. She never had. The memories in my head were nothing but a jigsaw puzzle, a model the queen had constructed to strengthen the illusion, to allow me access to the wayward Reign and the world he inhabited. I knew that now. I wasn’t human. I hadn’t lost my job a few days ago, I wasn’t a reporter. My apartment wasn’t mine. It was lies, a beautiful tapestry of lies … spun by the queen. But everything would be all right. She’d given me one last chance to prevail. And I was honored. I would see her rise up, see her curl her legs around London and crush the city inside her influence.