by Sam Hall
Away with the Faeries
Sam Hall
Contents
Description
Author Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
What’s next?
Stalk me!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Description
Everyone sees from their own perspective, they say. But I’ve always seen things that aren’t there. As a child I called them fairies.
I didn’t know how right I was.
My parents tried to cure me by giving me a new lens through which to see the world: a camera.
My nan thinks she has the answer with herbal concoctions and effigy’s to ward off evil.
The doctor calls it mental illness and tells me to eat right and take my meds.
But none of them work.
The world jumps and shifts and changes, showing me things no one else sees.
I think I’m mad, until the day I photograph a friend’s lavish party - where rules and inhibitions are tossed aside along with clothes. Nothing had prepared me for these sights or for them: the Changelings.
A group of bad boys who glimmer in my messed up vision. I’m irresistibly drawn into their web. Into their musical world of debauched sensuality where I am called to document their band's tour.
Nan’s warnings of the fair folk don’t even cross my mind. Swept up in their fairy ring my crazy vision finally makes sense, and I’m not sure I ever want to leave. Or should I want to leave?
Author note: This is an RH tale so one woman, multiple love interests. 18+ only for adult content.
Author Note
This book is written in Australian English, which is a weird lovechild of British and American English. We tend to spell things the way the Brits do (expect a lot more u’s), yet also use American slang and swear more than both combined.
While many people have gone over this book, trying to find all the typos and other mistakes, they just keep on popping up like bloody rabbits. If you spot one, don’t report it to Amazon, drop me an email at the below address so I can fix the issue.
[email protected]
Also I’ve played fast and loose with Canon camera’s actual capabilities, so if you’re a gear head, don’t write me cranky emails about what they actually do. It’s a fantasy book ;)
Away with the Faeries
Away with the Faeries © Sam Hall 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except for in the case of brief quotations for the use in critical articles or reviews.
Cover art and design by Mibl Art
The characters and events depicted in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Created with Vellum
1
I walked along the thin dirt path, camera in hand. It was cool this morning, with mist covering the surrounding bushlands. I’d had to pull a jumper on when I would’ve rather been sleeping in bed under the quilt, because while I knew these shitty low-lying clouds of water vapour looked gorgeous on film, they were not much fun to walk through. I paused and took a breath, all feelings of discomfort fading. For a moment, I wasn’t Kira, not my body nor my conditions, all of it falling away until there was only what I saw. Through the viewfinder, the mist transformed from cold inducing nuisance to eerily beautiful, and the stark stands of trees in the background conjured up feelings of windswept moors and women in period dresses, running towards broodily dysfunctional, hot men. At least, that’s what I hoped as I took the shots.
Click, click, click.
I captured some big empty shots with not enough detail for a landscape but perfect for compositors to add gaunt models or rugged looking SUVs in front of. I twisted the lens, zooming in to take some close-ups, snippets of the wider landscape, good for mood boards and small product shots. I crouched down low, looking up, so the trees loomed menacingly, the sky white and stark against the clawing black limbs. This was my bread and butter kind of shot. To the person clicking through page after page of glossy stock photos on the big websites, if they wanted moody and creepy, I was their girl. My best friend, Jenny, says I have this unique knack for turning the most innocent thing into something weird, which is perhaps why it was now that she stumbled across me.
“Fuck, more creepy trees and mist?”
I jumped out of my skin, nearly dropping my bloody expensive camera, something that had her grinning wildly at me.
“What the fuck, Jen!”
“Why the creepy again, Kira? Seriously, we can jump on a plane to Bali. Sun, sand, someone willing to massage us for hours, and you can take shot after shot of gorgeous me in the brand-new bikini I bought.”
My best friend struck a pose, and weirdly, it worked. She might have been rugged up with winter woolies and a beanie over her long white hair, but Jen had always had the unerring ability to look incredibly beautiful, no matter what she was doing. My finger itched as she stood in front of the trees. If she dropped the pose, let her hands drop listlessly, pulled the hat off, and looked off to the right as the wind lifted her hair…
“You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Stop composing photos, and listen to me. Bali, we could do it. Daddy will pay.” Jen reached out to put a hand in front of my lens, forcing me to look at her with my own eyes.
“That bikini, the one that looks like you have to cut off your labia to wear it? No thanks, there is not enough money in the world for me to spend the day Photoshopping your stubble off your mound.”
“So prosaic. Remind me again why we’re friends?” she said, linking her arm in mine, though thankfully, not the one holding the camera.
“Because I was the only one willing to talk to you on your first day at school. Everyone was too intimidated by the rich girl with the looks.”
“Yep, everyone but you. Shall we go and grab a hot chocolate and a scone at the caf?”
“I just need to shoot one more thing…”
“Kira! It’s freezing and creepy, and I only came out here to do my daily cardio and that’s done, so let’s go,” she whined, tugging at my arm.
I heard a skitter behind me. There were plenty of critters in an area of bush like this. Lizards, mice, rats, and a whole host of things that would run away from me on tiny little feet as I tramped along, but there were some that caught at my ear. People have asked me why it was those ones, and I’ve never been able to tell them. Most noises blend in with the cacophony of hisses and clicks and skitters you usually hear, but some pricked at my ears. I took a step towards the trees, raising my camera. I had to. Things would get a little hinky when I heard the sounds. I pressed down the shutter release. Click, click, click. I listened, because I couldn’t trust my eyes.
If I’d tried to focus, I knew what I’d see. It was as if the world was a stylised glitchy bit of footage, where the image distorted and jerked in response to the editor’s tweaking, giving it an edgy look. It was a whole lot different when your eyes did the same. The trees loomed and shrank, danced and twisted as I forced my vision to bl
ur. A sharp pain started in my temple, reminding me not to look, don’t look. Looking meant pain, looking meant being wiped out for the day as lightning bolts smashed into my skull and crackled across my eyes, even as I kept them closed. Looking meant more chats with the specialists where they bandied around terms like ‘vestibular migraine’ and ‘psychosomatic’. The camera clicked and clicked, while Jen’s hand was warm against my arm as I tried to capture whatever it was that had set me off.
“It’s OK, Ki. It’ll be OK.”
I heard her low croon as the urge left me. My eyes ached, and I was forced to drop my head down by my knees as a wave of dizziness washed over me. I was grateful when Jenny took the camera from me. It was as if all of a sudden, the world spun faster on its axis and I was at the centre of it.
“Let’s get you to the car. I didn’t walk down, it’s too damn cold. Let’s get you inside and get you to the caf. Espresso stat, right?”
I tried to nod, but the movement sent cascades of pain through my head.
“OK, let’s go.”
I became a photographer as a kid to see the truth. Sick of my little turns, my parents gave me a camera. They’d taken me to doctors and specialists, psychologists and psychiatrists, because back then, what I saw wasn’t so much of a mystery. Back then, I had a convenient explanation for my neurological interestingness. I thought I saw faeries.
“C’mon, here we go. Bit of a drop, then you’re in a seat. I made sure to keep you away from the windows,” Jenny said. I fell into the chair gratefully, the weird colours playing behind my eyes flashing bright like fireworks as I did so. The drive over, smooth as silk I’m sure, had them sparking each time we made a turn. “It’s OK, love.” She patted my hand. “Oi! You! I’ll give you fifty bucks, right now, if you get me an espresso on this table within a minute.”
“You serious?” I heard the rustle of money. “Right you are, ma’am.”
I sat there in a timeless cocoon of pain, unsure if the server took two minutes or twenty days to bring the coffee. I was just pain, until Jen grabbed my hands and pushed a hot cup into them.
“It should be OK, but test it. I added some cold water.”
“Thanks,” I croaked, my voice clogged with tears.
“It’ll be OK, love. Just get the coffee into you.”
I was powerless to resist her command, as the lilt in her voice somehow got me to lift the cup with shaking hands, and I took a sip.
It was dark and acrid and just what I needed. I could almost feel the slow relaxing of the pain receptors in my skull as I drank it down. I couldn’t afford to savour it. As soon as I felt it was safe to drink, I took great mouthfuls of the coffee, sculling it like you would a beer. I opened my eyes a crack, instantly regretting it, but saw a blurry Jen pushing another cup at me. When it was cool enough, I drank that one down too.
I leant back in my chair, carefully. The pain was beginning to recede, but my brain still felt like it was made of glass. All of the muscles in my neck were rigid and sore from bracing against it. I tried to lower my shoulders, but they protested as I forced them down.
There can be something almost orgasmic about the absence of pain. A weird kind of pleasure washed through me, just from sheer relief. When I opened my eyes and the light didn’t stab at them, when I could look around without my neck muscles seizing, when I could see the face of my beautiful best friend, even though my view of her was glitching a little—a hangover of my fit—I felt some good ole euphoria. Perhaps because of my dopey state, Jen chose to pounce.
“So you look a million times better.”
“My heart feels like it’s run a marathon, but yeah, much. Thanks, Jen. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Hey, you know me, I’m here for you. But seriously, you need someone coming with you on your weirdo film shoots.”
“I’ll be—”
“Were you today?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Kira, you’re an amazing photographer. You do great work, but you’ve gotta admit you need some help sometimes.” She looked at me in a way that I’ve learned to hate. It was that curious combination of concern and pity. The same look I got from my family as I couldn’t hold down a ‘proper’ job. The same look specialists had when the tests came back inconclusive. “Even just letting people know you’re heading out and when to expect you back. I know!” She patted her hands together excitedly. “I could let Mark go out with you! Saves me traipsing out in the bloody bush.”
Mark was one of Jen’s bodyguards. I never saw the need for someone like that in a smaller town like Gisbourne, but as her dad was a big-time music exec, he seemed to think it necessary. I shook my head and instantly regretted it.
“C’mon, you’d be doing me a favour. I think he’s got the hots for you, anyway.”
I laughed at this, thankful I hadn’t taken that mouthful just yet. Apart from walking around in the bush as I shot weird photos and rescuing me from neurological collapse with espresso, I knew Jen was my best friend due to her constant assertions that all the beautiful people that seemed to hang around her house had the hots for me. That laugh soon died as the man himself walked into the cafe. His face looked like thunder as he scanned the tables full of people nursing coffees and reading newspapers.
“You didn’t tell him you were coming with me,” I said, my heart sinking.
“Of course not. Daddy might think he can lock me away in this little backwater town and watch over me, like a bird in her cage, but I happen to disagree.”
Uh-huh.
I watched him weave his way towards us. Mark was six foot four of well-tailored, black suit wearing, muscle. He kept his hair longer than most of her security detail, eschewing the paramilitary look for a shoulder-length sweep of sandy brown hair. Hair that he raked back from his face right now.
“We talked about this, Miss Rutherglen.”
“No, you talked about this, and I walked away. Anyway, you’re scaring the good burghers of Gisbourne. Take a seat. Kira here would love to show you some of her photos.”
She said this in that bright, sparkling tone that had most people falling over themselves to do as she bid. I was only impressed more by Mark when he resisted, taking a seat under sufferance.
“Coffee?” she asked, gesturing to the passing waiter.
“No, I just want to be able to do my job properly,” he grumbled.
“I’m sorry, she was out with me shooting photos. I had a turn, otherwise we would have let you know where we were.”
He turned to face me, something that had me shrinking back for two reasons. One, those grey eyes were harsher than the morning light, seeming to take me in entirely in just one glance, and I wasn’t sure how pleased he was with the results. Two, and this was always the problem with being Jen’s friend, he was gorgeous. It was an occupational hazard as a photographer that I was drawn to beauty. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to look at the window, my scone, anywhere but at my friend’s hot, hot bodyguard, but instead, my eyes catalogued the various parts, noting the chiselled jaw, the way the muscle there flexed as he stared, those plush lips, currently pursed, the warm scent of sandalwood and pepper, hair that brushed his collar, just waiting for you to bury your fingers in…
“Did you get any good shots?”
I blinked, the words taking a little to absorb. He didn’t look like he was all that tolerant of the pause as his lips thinned down further. Both our eyes dropped to where my hand had somehow landed on my camera.
“Um… Not sure.” I turned it on, cued up the photos on the LCD display on the back of the camera, and passed it over.
When those long fingers brushed mine as he took it, I froze, then smiled politely. I ignored the spike of my already labouring heartbeat and didn’t shrink back in my seat like I wanted. I did my damnedest to act like a normal person showing another a photo, something normal people did all the time. When those eyes dropped away and to the camera, I let out a little surreptitious sigh of relief.
Th
ere was something about the perfectly symmetrical beauty of Jen’s inner circle that had me on edge, and at the same time, reaching for my camera. I couldn’t ask her staff or her father’s friends to sign a thing as prosaic as a model release form, but I wanted to. Gods, I wanted to. Right now, the morning light picked out the angular shape of Mark’s face as he scrolled through the shots, turning the grey of his eyes almost blue. If I angled the lens up slightly, he’d appear as distant as a god, leaving the viewer torn between the desire to reach out and touch him and the knowledge they had no right to do so. I blinked, realising I was staring again, and worse, he was staring back. My camera sat on the tabletop, discarded now, and the socially awkward silence just stretched on and on. Jen smirked, tipping her head at me before sipping at her hot chocolate. It wasn’t what she thought, but that wouldn’t stop her from thinking so. I made sure to keep my expression polite and professional as he turned back to the LCD display. I’d expected a generic comment or two, something about them being ‘nice,’ but that’s not what I got.
He frowned as he scanned, those perfectly shaped brows drawing down further and further. Even Jen noticed, looking at me and mouthing, ‘WTF.’ I think we were both relieved when he handed the camera back.