"How did you do that?" Sabrina asked, gaping at him.
"My human appearance was a glamour. This is my true self." He smiled, as if he knew how ridiculously good-looking he was, and I started to feel a little self-conscious. I marched over to the coat closet and grabbed my shoulder rig and duster and started arming up.
"Can trolls do that? The glamour thing?" Greg asked.
"Yes." Otto replied. “That is how they manage to pass among humans without notice. They appear to be nothing more than boorish, overweight humans that smell bad.”
"So you mean like the typical American." Mike said wryly. I noticed that he hadn't moved from the couch.
"You not coming with us, Dad?" I asked.
"No, Jimmy, I think an excursion to Fairyland might be pushing the bounds of my ordination a little too far. I'll stay here and consult my sources to any information we can find on this side of the veil about trolls and fairies." He answered.
"In other words, you're going to hang out with the cute witch that has an unreasoning bias against vampires." Greg observed.
"I will indeed be visiting my Wiccan friend, and you must admit that a human's fear of vampires isn't exactly unreasoning. You do look upon us as a source of nutrition, my friend. I'll also stop by the hospital tomorrow morning and see how your cousin is doing, Sabrina." With that, Mike finished his drink and headed upstairs. I looked after him a little worriedly. Mike had taken a couple of tough shots in our last big fight, and my friend's mortality was fresh in my mind. I was honestly a little relieved that he wouldn't be joining us on this trip. I had enough on my plate looking after Sabrina and making sure that Greg didn't fall in love with a fairy girl.
I finished gearing up and walked over to Otto. "Alright, Mr. Spock, how do we do this?"
He ignored my Star Trek reference to his ears and said, "First, you must all remove anything made of iron or steel that you have on your persons, including your guns."
I held both hands in the air and protested, "Oh hell no! You want me to go into a magical wonderland and meet with fantastical creatures on their home turf, and now you want me to do it unarmed? You gotta be nuts, baldy!"
"This is not a point of discussion, vampire. Cold iron is lethal to my people, and to carry it into a meeting is a grave insult. You may bring weapons of bronze, or silver, but no iron or steel can be on your persons." Otto crossed his arms and stared at me stubbornly. I looked around at Sabrina and Greg for support, but all I saw was two people busily divesting themselves of any metal.
"What about zippers?" Greg asked, pointing to the crotch of his jeans.
"Nothing." Replied our implacable tour guide. I went into my bedroom and changed into a pair of sweats and a hoodie. It wasn't the most stylish of ensembles, but there was no metal anywhere on me. I brought a spare pair of sweats for Sabrina, and she went into the bathroom to change. I found a belt that I remembered had a solid titanium Batman belt buckle (don't ask), and laced it through a couple of sheaths I had lying around. I loaded a pair of matching silver daggers into the belt, and picked up a tall staff I'd bought at a Ren Faire back before I turned. Greg found a nightstick and a pair of brass knuckles, and when Sabrina came out of the bathroom I passed her a baseball bat I kept in the closet. All in all we looked like a cross between a demented sports team and the Fellowship of the Ring.
"Alright, Otto, let's go see the fairies." I said when we were all suitably, if ridiculously, attired.
"Before we go," he replied, "I should tell you something of our land. We will attempt to meet with Milandra, the Queen of House Armelion. There may be challenges set for us before we are allowed into her presence, to prove our worth. You must not protest these challenges, or you may be killed outright. Ours is an old society, much older than any human civilization, and our traditions are strong. We are a long-lived people, and change is slow to come to the Fae. We are not like humans, who change with the blowing of the wind." I noticed that Otto's speech had changed as he got closer to going home, he started to sound a lot more like one of Tolkien’s elves and less like the bouncer at a gay bar in North Carolina.
"Alright, I get it," I said. "Don't piss off the fairies, they'll kick my ass. I get the idea. Now can we move this party along? I'd like to be there and back again before daylight. I didn't pack my sunscreen."
"Very well, vampire. I can see that you will simply have to experience this for yourself. Please remember, stay close to me and try, please try, to keep your mouth shut." With that, he made some kind of hoodoo gesture in the air, and a shimmering portal of light appeared in my living room. "Step through, each of you. I will hold the portal here and follow."
"I just hope that thing doesn't stain my carpet." I said, and stepped through the hole in the air to Fairyland.
Chapter 13
I stepped through the glowing yellow circle and right out the other side. I could tell immediately that I wasn't in Kansas, or North Carolina, anymore. For one thing, the sky was a pale pink with fluffy purple clouds. For another thing, it was daylight and I wasn't bursting into flames. I got out of the path of the portal as Sabrina and Greg came through and looked around. Otto followed close behind them and made some hand gestures that closed the portal behind us.
"It looks like a My Little Pony convention in here," Greg said.
"If anyone would recognize one, brother, it's you." I shot back. I looked over at Otto. "Why aren't we on fire? It's daylight, and we're outside. We should be crispy critters by now."
Otto looked at me like I was retarded and said, "You're in the HomeLands, vampire. The sunlight cannot harm you here unless the Queen deems it so. Do you understand nothing of your nature?"
"My nature?" I asked. "I'm a vampire. I'm fast, strong, and if I follow a few simple rules I'll never die. I stay out of the sun, avoid big toothpicks and decapitation, and I have a few dietary restrictions. What else is there to understand?"
"I was right. You understand nothing. Let it suffice to say that because you are magical in nature, the light of a magical realm cannot harm you. Anything else is not my place to say. But you should seek some insight into the nature of your existence, vampire. You cannot live forever without sometimes peering inwards."
"Yeah, yeah, 'the unexamined life is not worth living' and all that. But the point is - we're made from magic and the sunlight here won't kill us." I said, looking around at the foliage in a rainbow of colors. Orange plants, purple grass, blue clover, the whole place was starting to make me think of a bowl of Lucky Charms.
"Correct. A vast oversimplification, but it is correct. Now, we must make our way to the Hall of Queen Milandra." Otto started off down a trail that I hadn't even noticed before, a beaten track of yellow earth between two tall blue trees that looked like pines, only with pink and green needles.
I started after him, struggling to keep my sweats up against the undergrowth. As I was fighting with one particularly thorny bush, I heard Greg ask, "What's up with the Technicolor foliage? It looks like somebody's TV needs the color calibrated."
"I think it's pretty." Sabrina replied, and looking back at her I saw a strange look on her face. She looked at peace somehow, and younger. It's like I was getting a glimpse of the girl she was, before she had to become the tough police detective.
"Our queen has unique tastes in decor, and the realm reflects her desires." Otto said as he continued to break a trail ahead of us. He didn't so much cut a path as wave his sword at the undergrowth and it pulled back enough for us to pass, mostly. Except that the little sticker plants seemed to take a particular glee in poking me in the butt as I walked by.
"You mean that the plants change color because the Queen likes these colors?" Sabrina asked, running her fingers along a tree trunk.
"Exactly, Detective." Otto called back over his shoulder.
"Call me Sabrina." She said dreamily, tucking a green and purple flower behind one ear. I shot her a look and she said "What? He's helping us; I might as well be friendly. And besides, I don't think my rank tr
anscends dimensions."
We continued through the woods for at least a couple of miles, certainly long enough for me to get tired of thorns in my butt and for Greg to start a serious sweat, when finally the trees parted and we came into a clearing. Or at least I thought it was a clearing at first. When I continued to look around, I realized that the buildings were so carefully integrated into the forest as to appear that they belonged there. A doorway looked more like a natural crack in a rock face, a chimney looked more like a spire of dead tree, and windows looked like just extra knotholes in a tree trunk. The houses were so cleverly disguised that unless you knew what you were looking at, you could walk right through the clearing and never have any idea you'd just passed through the heart of town. Otto led us to the base of an enormous tree that I normally would have called an oak, except I've never seen a paisley oak tree before. We walked up a slight ramp that wound around the tree to a crack in the trunk about eight feet off the ground, and he stopped, removed his helmet and knocked.
As we waited, Otto looked at me and said, "Please try to be respectful. Milandra is a kind and gentle Queen, but she is the absolute ruler here. Her every whim is answered, not just by we who serve her, but by the very land itself."
"What makes you think I wouldn't be respectful?" I asked, feeling a little insulted. Sabrina smacked me on the back of the head, and I shut up. After a minute or two of waiting, the door opened, and we stepped into the greatest great hall I'd ever seen. The floor was pink marble, shot through with veins of lavender, pale blue and flecks of white. The ceiling, which must have been thirty feet above us, was painted (or magicked) into looking just like the sky outside; only this was an earthly, blue sky with white clouds. There were even birds flying across, which gave me even more reason to think there was magic involved. The walls were cut from even more marble, fading slowly from the pink of the floor to the sky blue as they went up. And at the far end of the hall, at least a football field away, stood a twenty-foot dais with a throne on it surrounded by ladies in waiting. A double column of armored knights lined the hall leading to the throne, and every fairy in the honor guard made Otto look like the "before" pic in one of those old Charles Atlas ads from the back of a comic book.
On the throne sat Milandra, and if there was a dictionary entry for "regal," she would be what you'd expect to find as an illustration of the ideal. Tall, blonde and beautiful, with high cheekbones and delicate features, she was everything Hollywood dreamed of when making a Fairy Queen. It was only as we got a little closer that I noticed something else about her - her eyes. Something about the shape of her eyes was familiar, and it bugged me as we approached. We were probably twenty feet away from her when I finally realized exactly what it was, and drew in a sharp breath.
Otto heard my gasp and poked me in the back. "Say nothing, vampire. It will do no good and may lead to trouble." He murmured, so low that no one without enhanced hearing would know that he said anything at all. I snapped my mouth shut, but as we approached the foot of the dais, my suspicions all crystallized into certainty. I knew those eyes, and had spent more than one evening mentally cataloguing those lips in my mind. I was suddenly 100% certain that we were meeting with Sabrina's changeling cousin, the Queen of FairyLand.
Chapter 14
We got to the foot of the dais, and Otto poked me in the back again. "Kneel," he said, doing so himself. I went to one knee and out of the corner of my eye saw Sabrina and Greg doing the same. Sabrina obviously had not noticed the family resemblance, and Greg was keeping it to himself if he had seen anything out of the ordinary, as far as ordinary goes for a vampire in FairyLand.
"Rise, Octavian. And please, introduce us to your guests. Two of the Sanguine and a human? You have selected strange companions for your travel, Knight-Mage." Her voiced poured over us like honey, but I could tell that there was a bee sting in there somewhere from the way Otto stiffened.
He bowed his head again and answered, "Your Majesty, may I introduce Detective Sabrina Law, a Peacekeeper of her realm, and her lieutenants, James and Gregory, of The Sanguine."
"It is our pleasure to meet you, Lady Law, and your servants." I stopped thinking how adorable she was when she got to the bit about servants. I didn't say anything, because Otto shot me another warning look, but I was getting a little tired of keeping my mouth shut in the name of interspecies relations.
"Thank you for receiving us, Your Majesty." Sabrina said with a curtsy. Now I knew we were in a different dimension, because no way in hell was Sabrina ever going to curtsy to anyone.
"You are welcome here, Lady. Please treat the Great Hall of Armelion as your home for as long as you require our hospitality." I saw Otto relax when she said that, and I hoped that meant she'd just pledged that no one in her court would try to stake me as long as we were here.
"Many thanks, Your Majesty." Sabrina curtsied again, and I heard Gloria Steinem's ghost screaming in feminist agony somewhere in the ether.
"Octavian, do you pledge the good behavior of our guests and that they mean no harm to our royal person?" The queen asked Otto.
He stood up straighter, if that's possible for someone who was already making a marine at parade rest look like a slinky, and said "I do, Your Majesty. Upon my honor as Knight-Mage of House Armelion, they shall bring no harm to your person or House."
"Fair enough, Otto, fair enough." With that, Queen Milandra waved a hand and the honor guard all disappeared, along with most of the great hall, leaving behind only two guards and a much smaller sitting room. The guards took up positions beside the door, while Greg and I gaped at the new room we suddenly found ourselves in. I heard a tinkling of laughter, and spun around to see Milandra seated, not on a throne, but on what looked like a very comfy armchair, laughing at us and our consternation.
"Oh I do love visitors!" She exclaimed with glee. "Especially visitors from the mundane world. Your faces are absolutely priceless!" She kicked her little feet in amusement, and waved us over to a pair of sofas that had appeared when the room changed. "I prefer to hold audience for friends in my chambers. The great hall is just so drafty this time of year, and no matter how I make the weather outside, it always seems to be chilly in there. I suppose it's all the marble, but I can't remake the great hall, you know."
I sat on the sofa furthest from the queen and closest to the door, not just to keep my escape clear, but also to be ready to deal with anything that came in with bad intentions. Not that I had any illusions of being able to handle anything that could get all the way into the heart of the Fairy Queen's castle, but it made me feel better. "Your Majesty," I began, "We need your help..."
She cut me off with a wave of her hand and turned to Sabrina. "Who let him speak? And why did you let him keep his tongue in the first place? Have you not heard of their powers of persuasion? Or do you just find it exciting to tempt fate?" Her eyes sparkled with the last question, as though tempting fate was one of her favorite pastimes.
"He speaks whenever he pleases, sometimes much to my chagrin. And regardless, his tongue would just grow back if I removed it." Sabrina said, nodding politely to the serving girl who had just brought out a tray of drinks and fruit. She took a small glass with a pale orange liquid in it, but didn't drink immediately. The queen took a small plate of fruit and a pale lavender drink for herself, then waved over another serving girl, who knelt at Greg's feet, looking up at him with a small smile.
"Do you thirst, vampire? You may drink of Tirina if you wish. But please, leave enough for your friend to share, and do not drain her or I will be very cross." Greg looked at Milandra like she was absolutely insane, and started to shake his head.
"Drink, you idiot," I whispered to him. "You don't know when you'll have the chance to feed again, and I doubt there's a blood bank anywhere near here."
"But dude," Greg whispered back plaintively. "I don't do that anymore. I haven't drank from a person in almost ten years! I can't do it now, in front of people." He got really quiet on the last part, like he was talking
about losing his virginity.
"You have to, bro. You've gotta keep your strength up, and I know you didn't eat anything before we left the house. Plus, I don't want to piss her off by not accepting." I really didn't want to start some kind of inter-dimensional diplomatic incident by not drinking the girl. Besides, I wanted a snack and had never had fairy for lunch before.
"Your friend is right, vampire. You must drink. I can sense your hunger." Milandra said from her chair, which somehow looked like a throne while still being a comfy armchair. Greg stared at the girl's proffered neck for another moment, then took a deep breath and leaned in. I could smell the blood when he broke the skin, and the smell just about drove me nuts. Imagine your mom's fried chicken, with homemade biscuits, gravy and fresh cherry pie for dessert. Well, this fairy's blood smelled like all of that and more, and I could hardly wait for Greg to top off the tank and pass the entree over.
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