Shadows of Ourselves (The Charmers Series Book 1)

by Apollo Blake

  His eyes raised a fraction of an inch, from the raging fire before him to the portrait hanging above it. Caution, Ava would tell him if she were here now. Patience is a virtue.

  A hard one to find, though, when surrounded by enemies and falsehoods.

  He clenched his fists, straining against the constant thirst of absorption. The soft brush at the edge of his consciousness that hinted at dark nourishment.

  “If it happens again,” he said quietly, “I will consume you.”

  A halting breath, and then. “Of course. I won’t let it.”

  She left then, heels clicking on the wooden floor, and he was left alone in the silence. His gaze went back to the flames, and he smiled to himself. Soon, even these would bow to his control. Once they had the boy.

  The man’s feet left the floor, and he rose into the dark shadows above. Below, the fire continued to rage.

  In time he would heal all of the bad blood and the perversions and the weakness. Soon, an entire bloodline would be cleansed with death and fire through his touch.

  TWENTY

  BEYOND

  We drove out of the city. Hunter wasn’t talking, telling me he was too keyed up from the fight—he needed time to process and think. Only after he promised to explain once we reached our destination did I leave him be and flip on the radio instead. Sitting in the passenger seat, I stared at the scenery flying by, and thought.

  Not about the fight, or Jackson, or the very real possibility that Crayton was Hunter’s father. . .but about myself. About the fact that I was—had been—lying to myself.

  Penn, working for an Incubus right under my nose.

  Powers, slumbering inside of me my entire life, waiting for the time to come alive.

  The stark difference between me and everyone around me, a fat stroke of mortar, a brick wall between me and the rest of the world.

  I had been lying to myself—and here I thought I had everybody’s poker face called. All but my own, clearly. I was a naive little idiot if I really thought that running from this world was an option. I hadn’t just become a part of this last Saturday: I’d been a part of it my entire life. It had been a piece of me, buried in my genetics and lying dormant in my blood. I simply hadn’t realized it. I couldn’t run from this any more than I could run from my gift, from the colour of my eyes in the mirror.

  Some things can’t be escaped. This world had been twisted around my ankles my entire life without me even realizing it, vines snaking around the roots of a tree, growing into it, leaving marks in the bark.

  A magikal landscape full of danger and beauty, hidden beneath the vindictive mask of the city.

  Bond or not, I was a charmer. I had to accept it. I couldn’t leave it behind—and I was realizing now that I might not want to.

  It was ugly, this life. From what I’d seen at least, it was a world of brutality and backstabbing, kill or be killed, and it was lethal. It could be. I’d had more brushes with death in the past few days than I’d had in my entire existence prior. Danger simmering through every encounter, a world full of Vampires and Skinwalkers, mysteries piled on mysteries. But it was also this: ancient cathedrals buried beneath shopping malls, Empaths who poured tea, visions leading into the unknown. . . .

  And I could try to run from it, but this world would seek me out again and again until it finally managed to claim me. It was my birthright, it was a curse, and it was the one thing I couldn’t run from.

  And what was more. . .I did not want to.

  I was so tired of turning tail and hiding from everything, every feeling, every emotion. Maybe I deserved some magik in my life, for once. Some strength.

  I am the sky; watch me rage with storms.

  I leaned my head against the cool window and stared at the passing scenery. We were out near the airport, and in the distance a helicopter sliced through the pale sky like a huge red-chrome dragonfly.

  Across the center console, Hunter still gripped the steering wheel too tightly, like he was ready to snap it. I wasn’t ready to talk to him—or anyone—about this yet, wanting to keep it close to home for a while, but I needed to take my mind off of it all, at least for a few minutes. Just enough to make my head stop pounding under the weight of processing everything.

  And we couldn’t put off this conversation any longer. I’d tried.

  “He let us go, you know.”

  “What?” His gaze was hot enough to burn. I was starting to realize that when he felt things, he felt them all the way.

  “Jackson,” I said. The fabric of my leather jacket brushed the burn marks on my arms, making me hyper-aware of them. “When I tossed that couch at him, I missed. He purposely stepped into its path and let it hit him.”

  “He couldn’t have.” He turned back to the road, dismissing the idea, and I reached over and hit him on the arm. “Ouch! What was that for?”

  “I’m not stupid. And he winked at me before he did it.”

  Hunter didn’t say anything. He frowned at the road ahead of us, confused. I had to admit that it made no sense to me either. The incubus was clearly playing a twisted game, and it wasn’t entirely clear if he was on our side, or just not downright evil. He’d helped us get away, even while making it appear that he’d tried not to. He had all of his bases covered.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see the faerie queen,” Hunter said.

  “Unacceptable.”

  He glanced over, brows furrowing. “Huh?”

  I shook my head in disgust and put my booted feet up on the dash, cranking my chair back. If I was going to have a nervous breakdown, I was going to do it in comfort. “You really are a piece of work, you know. Fuck. I mean, You can’t just drop it on me that you’re taking me to see a faerie queen, like it’s just running to the mailbox or going for groceries. Faeries are not no big deal.”

  “Oh. That.” He ran a hand over his hair and turned the radio down, muting the violently catchy bubblegum pop. “I keep forgetting that you’re basically a mortal.”

  “A mortal wouldn’t be stuck in a car with you, jerk face.”

  “Sick burn. We’re almost there, actually. It’s just down Taylor Lake Road.”

  I had no idea where that was. The land outside of Saint John was a string of endless suburbs and unincorporated communities and dusty side roads. A single plane was soaring overhead, cutting a trail behind it as it sliced through the graphite sky. The helicopter was nowhere to be seen. It was turning overcast, one of those cold, endless days that fell on us more and more often as winter deepened. It would be a long time before we saw the sun in full force again.

  We passed the airport and turned right at a crossroads, and now we were coming up on a Shell station with a nearly empty parking lot and a sign advertising free movies and a discount on sodas.

  Things I needed: energy drinks and fresh air and a second to be moving, in order the clear my head.

  Faeries. Faeries queens. Just normal Tuesday morning activities, or whatever.

  “Can we stop?” I asked, nodding at the station billboard emitting an electric glow into the morning sunlight.

  “We need gas anyway,” Hunter said as he pulled into the parking lot. Dust kicked up under our tires as we swung around into a spot. White trash western novel aesthetic. Lovely. I was glad Hunter knew how to drive, because I’d actually never learned. I’d never needed to, since Mom had always kept us in the city. I took the bus everywhere. Cabbed, if I had the cash, though I usually didn’t.

  We got out, frozen air jolting me awake, and Hunter went straight for the pumps while I headed inside. Warm air kissed my face as I walked in, and I breathed a sigh of relief at getting out of the cold. I hoped that chasing Faeries didn’t mean a trek through the frozen woods, because it was going on another ice age out there.

  Right now my mind was a million miles from anything I normally thought about; painting and escape and weakness and lies. I felt tired, but strangely content.

  I’d made my decision. Magik was real. I
was going to live with it.

  It was a miracle that my wallet hadn’t fallen out of my back pocket during the fight at the club, but even then I didn’t have much cash on me. It had been a while since I’d had an appointment. (Father and son, the kid was stealing, the dad suspected and I, for my part, confirmed. They both got mad, I got paid.) Plus Mom had bled me dry between rent and the money she’d slipped herself on the sly while I was in the shower Saturday night. I couldn’t believe it had only been three days ago. It felt like an eon, after everything.

  Suddenly I realized I would never have to pay her rent again, and a dopey, dazed smile unfolded on my lips.

  I was free. I would live somewhere that didn’t smell like the lovechild of vodka and scotch had blown its brains out over the walls. Be able to leave my wallet lying around without worrying if anybody was going to steal the contents. I would be able to stop living like the echo of a person, a ghost in my own home.

  It felt like I’d melted into the air. I floated through the store and grabbed a Red Bull and a bag of sour candies. I needed sugar to make it through this.

  This: meeting a faerie queen.

  Risks: ???

  Me: dreadfully unprepared.

  I was not floating anymore by the time I shoved out the glass doors and walked to Hunter. But I was still holding back a smile.

  “What’s got you looking like the cat that ate the canary?”

  “Why? You worried I’ll cough up a feather in your ugly stolen car?”

  He looked at it and kicked one of the wheels. It was the colour of dirty coffee and barf, rust flaking near the bottoms of the doors. One of the side mirrors had a crack in it. “It is kind of ugly, isn’t it?”

  “Kind of?”

  He smirked. “I have to pay for the gas, wait in the car.”

  “That stolen car, you mean.”

  “Yup. Sit. Wait.”

  “You got it commander.”

  I climbed in and leaned back in my seat again, considering. So we were going to see magik royalty. What did I care? I wasn’t about to let Tinkerbell scare my gay ass—I’d faced down an Incubus before breakfast, this lady had nothing on me.

  Except the crown. And throne.

  And whatever else faeries had. Fucking Faeries, man. We were getting into Shakespeare territory, here.

  What would an otherworldly queen look like? What would her court be like? Something twisted in my chest at the idea of walking into that. I’d seen enough of magik now that I knew better than to expect bedtime stories and pretty sparkles. Magik wasn’t pretty, and, even when it was, the beauty was like a snare set out to lure you in before the pain came. I had a feeling these beings would be more Brother’s Grimm than Disney, and the suspicion made me feel as cold and numb as the scenery we passed. Excitement died, and something hardened took its place. I was bracing myself, I realized.

  Get ready for battle, soldier.

  Time for some purely chemical magik. I cracked open my energy drink.

  The Red Bull was like nectar of the gods. This beat coffee any day of the week. My mind buzzed, cortisol and dopamine production getting a sweet little boost. I needed a distraction, and I was ready to get some answers out of Hunter, if it meant I had to shake him.

  The minute he got in the car, I started pestering him. Kind of my thing.

  “So,” I asked as we pulled out of the parking lot, “what’s the deal with the faeries?”

  He thought for a second. “It depends on which court you mean; there are two. The Seelie and the Unseelie. The Seelie are easier on those they perceive to be lower beings—namely anyone who isn’t one of them—and the Unseelie tend to have more fun turning us into animals and cursing us. And raping us, though both Courts have showed a willingness to do that. Whisk humans away and make them fall in love against their will. Like venus fly traps with angel blood, if you believe the old myths. You might like them, though—just the Faeries in general, I mean. They can’t tell lies.” He paused, then smiled at me. “If they could, they’d be the best at it, though.”

  “Yikes.”

  “You have nothing to worry about.”

  “He says, as he drives me down a road toward a bunch of evil pixies.”

  “If you call them pixies in front of them they might turn you to stone.” He sounded serious.

  I struck the word from my vocabulary.

  We turned off the main road onto a narrower lane bordered on one side by a big field of dirt with two empty, worn trailers propped up in it, sale signs hanging loosely on their sides. Taylor Lake Road, I learned as we drove down it, was an odd mix of wealth and poverty—while some homes looked like vacation houses for rich families, others seemed like they belonged more in a decrepit inner-city district rather than the countryside, showing clear signs of wear and rot, knee-length, unkempt grass poking up yellow through the ice and frost.

  In one yard a trampoline was missing one of its legs, a single corner touching the ground while the others still stood. Loose shingles fell from rooftops, dogs chained in their front yards barked and watched the car with dark eyes, and overhead a few crows circled in the dull sky. Some houses slanted to the side entirely, as if a strong wind or someone leaning against them might tip them right over. This place spoke of harshness in every breath. And then it started to change—the further we got down the road, the nicer and further apart the houses were. Massive cottages that might as well have been luxury resorts, with private strips of beach lining the lake shore in their backyards. We started to see the water through the trees, weak daylight glinting off of the surface. Hunter stopped the car on an inconsequential stretch of road across from a large log house that stood at the top of a hill, directly across the street from the lake, the view mostly blocked by a cluster of thin young trees. I could see the water and mist through them, though. The Faerie court was tucked away somewhere among a bunch of rustic rural mini-mansions? Fucking lovely.

  “Come on,” Hunter said. I grumbled, but followed, leaving my drink and candy in the car. The breakfast of champions would not fare well in this cold.

  “Where are we even going?” I asked him. “Why are they way out here?”

  “Faeries hate iron, and they hate modern society. They keep to themselves, in their own realm.”

  “Realm?”

  He just led me down to the shore, helping me over the moss-covered stones sticking out of the ground between the trees. Overhead birds chirped, burst from the trees to fly across the lake. Soon the moss would be covered under a thick blanket of snow, and the earth here would seem barren and dead, just like the trees. The evergreens still stood out all around us though, brilliant strokes of life in a sleeping world.

  “The entrance is out there,” he explained. He was pointing directly out at an island in the middle of the lake, a tiny thing with evergreens lining its shore.

  “An island?” I looked around. “I don’t see a boat. I really hope you don’t think you’re making me swim out there in this cold water. Zero out of ten.”

  In response, he leapt onto a half-sunken log covered in dirt and soaking wet, surprisingly managing to keep his balance. He held a hand out to me, a grin stretching his features. “Come on,” he said. “Unless you’re afraid?”

  I wanted to smack that grin off of his face about as much as I wanted to plant a kiss on it, so instead I did neither, and looked down at the rippling water. The floor of the lake was made up of round grey and purple boulders, worn smooth by the pressure of the water pressing on them, obedient animals tamed by their master. If I fell in, I would die. Not literally. But it was probably cold enough to make my soul leave my damn body.

  “If you drop me, I’ll murder you,” I said, and let him pull me up.

  As soon as he caught me in his arms and steadied me, the log started to move. It glided across the water like a leaf floating on the surface of a pond, and soon we stood on our own tiny island in the middle of the lake, a vessel like a natural gondola gliding on the surface. Getting closer and closer to th
e small clump of land he’d said the entrance to their realm was on.

  In a few month’s time, the entire lake may be frozen over. A little ocean out here in the woods, unknowing home to the Fae.

  Out here I could see why they’d chosen this place. It was more than the privacy—the earth was a real, living being out here, a world alight with life and motion and colour, even in the dark days of the start of winter.

  It made me see why some people worshiped the planet, or believe in Gaea.