Sea Fae Trilogy

by C. N. Crawford

  But why come for me when there were demons far more dangerous roaming London’s streets, demons who could make your blood drain from your body on sight?

  Moonlight pierced the water’s surface.

  I kicked my legs, moving higher and higher, until my head reached the top. I took a deep breath of spring air.

  Icy water soaked my clothes, and my teeth chattered as I hoisted myself up onto the river walkway. The moon and streetlamp cast faint light over the empty pavement.

  I shivered, pulling my comb from my pocket. Tonight, mist hung thick and low over the Thames.

  All magic had certain properties—smells, sounds, textures. I mostly listened to the sounds, like music that every magical being possessed. It was a thread of magic connecting two people.

  I tuned into the vibrations of the assassin. He’d come for blood, and his magic sounded like a drumbeat, a pounding in my blood.

  Once I’d found him, I pulled the comb through my sodden blue hair and launched into a low, ancient song—the song of the Morgens. In the night air above London, my magic called to my target.

  This was my magic. My sad dirt hole magic. I lured men to me with a comb and a song. And if they were bad men, I killed them.

  Admittedly, this wasn’t the most effective magic in a battle. I needed a body of water for this to work, and then I had to sit by the water while singing and combing my hair. There were very few battle situations that provided this kind of opportunity.

  Once, I’d been jumped by a gang of six demons near Fenchurch Street. They’d beaten me within an inch of my life, burned my skin with their names. They’d left me for dead. My particular skillset had done me not a lick of good in that moment. “Sorry, fellas, but could you just pause the torture for a bit while I get my comb out and make my way to the Thames? Give a girl a fair chance, will you?”

  But I’d found them in the end. I’d lured them to me. Then, I’d ripped out their hearts, dried them, and sold their bones in my shop.

  The way I saw it, I was the Scourge of the Wicked, and darn good at what I did.

  A shiver of connection skimmed over my skin as my magic found the rhythmic vibrations of my target. By the time this guy found his way to me, he’d be too mesmerized to fight.

  Then, I tuned into a second sound. Gina had been right—there were two of them. The second was melodic and sad, like a dirge. Beautiful, really. Too bad I had to end it.

  Soon, this would all be over, and I could go back to my shop.

  I pulled the comb through my hair, chanting the ancient song. I could feel them drawing closer.

  I felt my magic wending through the air, slipping around my victim.

  In theory, Morgens were supposed to be seductive, and sometimes I looked the part. But right now, I was wearing an old T-shirt drenched in river water and cutoff shorts, my bare legs streaked with mud. Still, it wouldn’t matter.

  When I felt the magic humming more powerfully along my bones, I turned and saw the flame-haired fae standing behind me, trying to catch his breath. Enormous, he cast a long shadow over me. Moonlight glinted off his weapons, and swathes of silvery fog curled around him. His cheeks were flushed, sweating. He’d run to get to me like his life depended on it.

  In his amber eyes, I could see my spell had already taken hold. Entranced, his gaze swept over my body, taking in the wet clothes that clung to the curves of my hips and the swell of my breasts.

  A strange sort of mental shift happened when I enchanted people. I could see how I looked to them, how they felt about me—like a bubble in my mind, giving me a clear view of their warped image of me.

  And right now, this assassin’s vision of me was downright pornographic.

  In his mind, my wet blue hair draped over my bare breasts, nipples hard in the night wind. I was wearing nothing but a white thong, practically transparent from the river water, and had one hand thrust in my knickers. My other fingers were by my mouth. I thought it was honey I was licking off my fingertips, but the gods only knew. In his vision, my eyelashes fluttered at him. He envisioned me pulling the thong aside and smiling at him seductively. Gross.

  What he did not see was the reality: an angry, mud-spattered chick in a Joy Division T-shirt, pointing a gun at him.

  It almost felt like a sin to shoot someone as helpless as him, but my time was running out, and what’s more, his fantasies were filthy and disturbing. And in any case, he wouldn’t be helpless for long, and then he’d kill me in a frenzied rage of lust and violence.

  He reached out for me like I was his long-lost lover, an ecstatic smile on his lips, hand straining for my breasts.

  My heart felt heavy as I squeezed the trigger and shot him in the chest. Iron ripped right through his aorta, ending his life. He fell hard to the pavement, and I wiped a shaking hand over my forehead. At least he’d died happy, I guess.

  Exhaling, I scanned the shadows by the river’s edge, quiet in the dead of night. Why wasn’t the other one here?

  I was sure I’d lured him also.

  When I turned around, I saw him, and my heart skipped a beat.

  There he was, towering over me. The second fae. He glowed with the cold, unearthly light of an angelic king.

  His beauty was devastating.

  Unfortunately for me, he did not look the least bit enchanted. In fact, he looked like he wanted to rip my head off.

  Chapter 3

  He smelled like almonds and sea-swept stones. The wind toyed with pale hair so light it nearly looked silver, and his deep blue eyes pierced me. He had the cold perfection of an angel—sculpted cheekbones; a perfect mouth; straight, dark eyebrows—and the arrogant stance to match. Masculine beauty that could have been carved by Michelangelo himself.

  With his tightly coiled muscles, he gave the impression of being a warrior. But the crown on his head told me he wasn’t an ordinary foot soldier in the assassin crew. At first glance, it looked like thorny wildflowers; on closer inspection, it was clearly dark, spiky gold.

  It took me a moment to realize he was enchanted—a little.

  I was getting an image of how I looked to him, and it was much like reality: pale blue hair, soaked with river water. No transparent thong for him. Instead, it was the curve-hugging shorts and red high heels that I really was wearing. He liked the heels more than he wanted to.

  He saw my big, green eyes, heart-shaped face, pink lips. I’d look innocent if it weren’t for the gun, and the sharp-lined tattoos curling over my tan skin. He liked the innocence, but reminded himself it was a lie. His gaze took in my breasts, peaked in the cold air, headlights engaged.

  I glanced down for a second. That was all real. He saw the real me—small, curvy, and dirty. And cold, it seemed.

  The overwhelming feeling emanating from him, however, was disdain.

  Deep under the surface, desire flickered as he took in the shape of my legs in my tiny shorts, eyes lingering at the apex of my thighs. It felt kind of like that lust only made him hate me more. For whatever reason, I was someone he’d spent a lot of time thinking about. And I didn’t even know who he was.

  This had never happened with an enchantment before, and it was throwing me off. I couldn’t get a good read on him at all. It was like he wanted me and hated me in equal measure.

  Despite the warning bells ringing in my mind, he was stirring something in me, a buried energy. He intrigued me.

  Why, though? In my long life, I’d learned that good-looking men could be dangerous.

  I gripped the gun hard. Shoot him, Aenor. Before he kills you.

  But my eyes strayed down to his perfect mouth again, and an image blazed in my mind of the two of us against a tree trunk—him shirtless, me in only that white thong, pulling it down for him. My pulse raced in the heated air.

  Was he enchanting me? He must be, because I didn’t even like sex. And if I did, this shiny-haired jerk would not be my type.

  Shoot him, you idiot.

  This was the thing about the fae. We had the power to make peo
ple feel things—rage, sadness, lust. And while this beautiful man stood before me, I felt his magic stroking my skin, a strange and powerful pulse. I had an overwhelming urge to get closer to him, to feel his body against mine.

  River water slicked my hands as I gripped the gun, fingers wet.

  His gaze slid down me, taking in the filthy clothes that clung to my body, and they suddenly felt too small and tight on me. Once again, I felt his disdain. My muscles tensed as I tried to focus.

  This was all backwards. I was supposed to entrance him. I wasn’t supposed to be imagining him grabbing me and stripping the clothes off my body.

  With the gun still trained on him, I took a step back. A shiver danced up my spine. Something about his deep blue eyes looked strangely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The power of his magic overwhelmed me, and for just a moment, my knees felt weak. I felt strangely inadequate before him, painfully conscious of my dirty little clothes. What was he?

  “Aenor.” The quiet way he spoke my name sounded like an ancient curse. “Using a gun. Iron bullets, I suppose?”

  I nodded, my finger on the trigger. Why in the gods’ names didn’t he look scared? He was about to die. And how did he know I had iron bullets? It wasn’t like they were easy to come by. Everything about this was bizarre.

  His lip curled away from his teeth, baring his canines, and he snarled. He seemed part divine, part beast. Like a beautiful god dredged up from a grave of moss and soil.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Disdain laced his voice.

  My skin felt hot. Why hadn’t I shot him yet? Something about him made me want to drop to my knees. To worship him. To stick out my tongue and—

  “I’m pointing an iron weapon at your heart,” I said, interrupting my own fevered thoughts. “Why aren’t you scared?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He prowled closer, and I took a step back, my legs shaking. “You won’t escape me, Aenor. I will find you again, and I will make you suffer.”

  “No. You won’t.”

  I gritted my teeth, then unleashed two iron bullets into his heart.

  Tendrils of dark magic burst from his body, transforming into shapes that looked like ravens flying away into the night sky. My enemy fell to the ground, and the pavement trembled at the impact of his fall.

  “You should have modernized.” It was a whisper, my voice shaking.

  Everything about this felt wrong, but I didn’t linger over his corpse. These fae had come to kill me, so they had to die. It was as simple as that.

  I let out a long breath. Now, I had to make sure Gina was okay.

  Already, I was diving back into the Thames, heading back to Gina. I plunged deep into the river, swimming until I found the tunnel’s entrance. My body undulated in the water.

  As I moved further through the tunnel, the water level grew lower. When it became too shallow to swim, I trudged through it until, at last, I could run.

  With burning lungs, I burst through the door into my shop, cold mud streaking my body.

  I found Gina standing on the countertop, staring down at the filthy water that had flooded half the room. I heaved a sigh of relief. She was fine.

  “Are you okay?”

  She beamed at me. “You’re alive!”

  “Of course I’m freaking alive. I’m a major badass. Scourge of the Wicked.”

  “Right.”

  Gina hugged herself, shivering. “Shop’s totally wrecked. The dried herbs and demon hearts aren’t so dried anymore, and everything stinks. Can you still sell them? Those hearts are worth hundreds.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “We can fix it. We’re both alive, that’s the important part.”

  “What happened to the assassins?”

  “I killed them. I told you, I’m Aenor, Flayer of Skins, Scourge of the Wicked.” I’d meant it to sound light and fun, but I just sounded sad.

  Gina was only a teenager. I needed to stop her from thinking about the supernatural chaos. She shouldn’t worry about iron bullets or fae corpses, or how she’d almost drowned in Thames water. She should be thinking about normal teenage things.

  I took a deep breath. “What happened to your stuff? Is it all wrecked?”

  “Yep.”

  “Even your schoolbooks?”

  Gina shrugged. “Pretty much everything’s online now. But my computer's dead, so…. You know what? Who cares. I don’t need to know how to graph linear equations.”

  “Is that accurate, though?” Gina’s school grades had been plummeting recently. I had no idea what linear equations were, but apparently, they were important.

  “Do you know that some girls make a hundred thousand pounds a month dressing up in Lolita outfits on Snapchat?”

  “Oh my gods, you are not doing that.”

  “Why? It’s just a lacy dress with ribbons. You don’t take the dress off or anything.”

  “You can’t do that because the creepy men who watch those—”

  “How do you know it’s creepy men? It’s not, like, the book Lolita. It’s an anime thing.”

  “That is not a long-term life option for you. And you are human and don’t have to live in a tunnel like I do. You can live in a house! So you need to talk to your teachers first thing in the morning about your computer situation.”

  “Fine.”

  It smelled awful in there. I wasn’t sure if it was the bottom of the river or the dried demon parts that were no longer dry.

  Gina’s brow furrowed, like it always did when she was upset. “All our food is gone. All the Pot Noodle.” She made this sound like an absolute tragedy. “The custard creams….”

  I could tell she was hungry. She got emotional when she was hungry. “I’ll get more. Look, the water’s receding already. No harm done.” The place was a stinking mess right now, and I sounded much more optimistic than I felt. “I’ll run out and pick up a few things. We might not be able to stay here tomorrow, but I can make it habitable for tonight.”

  My heart sank when I looked at our shelf of ancient, magical texts. The river had soaked them entirely. I wouldn’t be able to fix the gibberish situation, because the ink no longer formed letters at all.

  I pulled one of the leather-bound tomes from the shelf and opened the pages to find that the words had turned to tiny rivers of black.

  I hadn’t memorized most of the spells, or really paid them much attention. Except for one book, the one I held now: the ancient and rare book of curses. I’d memorized every single page. I’d scoured it from top to bottom, searching for a way to reverse what had happened to me long ago. The ancient words were now midnight streaks on muddy paper.

  All that magical knowledge, gone….

  Gina was still looking at me. “Don’t suppose you know a cleaning spell?”

  I closed the sodden book, surveying the shop. Sadly, it wasn’t just a shop. It was our home, too. We lived in little rooms just down the hall. At one point, there had been a few more witches here, but we were always broke, and they’d moved on.

  Now, pungent sludge covered everything we owned. The washer and dryer probably didn’t work. I actually had no idea how to fix this. “No, I don’t know a cleaning spell.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mainly because I don’t care if things are clean? And I never really learned spells. Magic memorization was never my strong suit. I mostly get by on my charm.”

  “Right. The Flayer of Skins is definitely known for her charm.” Gina sat on the countertop, still hugging herself. “How are you going to pay for new food and stuff? Aren’t we broke?”

  “I have some money stored away.” Total lie. There just weren’t many witches around anymore, since the assassins had killed them all. And the ones that had stayed in London couldn’t find our shop, given that we were literally hiding underground.

  Things were bad now, and they would only get worse.

  Gina’s stomach rumbled so loudly I could hear it. We’d missed dinner.

  “Sit tight,” I said. “I’m going to f
ix this.”

  I had twenty-four quid and seventeen pence left to my name. I’d have to see exactly how far that would get me in Tesco.

  Chapter 4

  The value-brand section was my friend. They purposefully made the labels look off-putting, just plain white with black text, like they wanted you to feel bad about the situation. But as the Scourge of the Wicked, I wasn’t going to worry about the graphics on my tins of beans. My boots left muddy footprints on the floor as I walked through the supermarket.

  At the self-checkout machine, I stuffed my plastic bags with canned corn and peas. Beans and eggs for protein, whole wheat bread. The woman bagging her groceries to my right shook her head at me, tutting loudly. I looked very much like I’d just crawled out of a sewer. I mean, I basically had.

  Gina had food restrictions. She couldn’t eat any nuts without going into anaphylactic shock. I always checked the labels on everything and made sure nothing was contaminated with peanut dust from the factories. We ate total garbage most of the time—chips and candy—but it was all perfectly safe for her.

  The cans of vegetables were for vitamins and fiber, the stuff humans needed. I wasn’t sure exactly why I was worrying about vitamins now, but after the shop disaster, I felt a sudden and overwhelming drive to act responsibly.

  I stuffed a roll of trash bags into my haul. The trash bags were the centerpiece of my cleaning plan. Admittedly, it was not an excellent cleaning plan. It involved sleeping on plastic bags to stay dry, washing our clothes in the bath, and letting them hang to dry overnight.

  And as for what we would sleep in? Lucky for us, Tesco now sold value-brand underwear, size large. Anyway, the important part was that it was clean.

  “Please remove item from the bagging area.”

  I snarled at the robotic voice. Right now, I wished I had enough money to take a bottle of wine home with me as well. My mood darkened when I thought of the two assassins, hunting me down. Now, they were both dead, and my life had gotten a whole lot grimmer.