The Changeling

by H. P. Mallory

“Just because Luce isn’t capable of such magic, doesn’t mean he’s not responsible somewhere down the line,” Randall spoke again, this time having put some thought into what he said and, though I hated to admit it, I agreed with him. “What if Luce has made new alliances?”

  “That would mean we have a new enemy,” Klaasje continued the thought.

  Randall nodded. “And based on what Luce is capable of, were it a new enemy we are now facing, it would be a powerful one.”

  “There are Fae powerful enough that they could hide their actions, even from me,” mused Mathilda.

  “Never!” Odran shook his head firmly. “The Fae maynae always think as one…”

  “Or at all,” I whispered under my breath but was unable to get any reaction from Bryn, who remained almost catatonically still.

  “But we ha’ nae love for Luce, or any o’ his breed,” Odran went on. “Ah know mah people, and this cannae be one o’ them. Ah’d stake mah immortal soul oopon it.”

  “It does seem unlikely,” admitted Mathilda. “Would Luce ally himself with a Fae?”

  “No,” said Bryn. “Luce hates the Fae.”

  While that might be true, I wondered how angry Luce might be after we had taken his people from him. Pretty angry was my guess.

  “Whit aboot Mr. D?” Odran seemed to take accusations against his people personally.

  “Monsieur D,” Jolie corrected him.

  “Aye,” Odran said with a nod. “We know he hasnae qualms aboot workin’ with Luce if it suits him.”

  This time it was Chevalier who shook his head. “Monsieur D is not where you would look for birth magic. He’s more concerned with the other end of the spectrum.”

  “It’s doesn’t feel like Monsieur D,” agreed Audrey.

  “There are others,” said Mercedes, darkly. “Though I hesitate even to name them here. Older and fiercer and far more dangerous.”

  “But why would any of them team up with Luce?” Mathilda shook her head, and I thought I had never seen the mild-mannered Fae so frustrated—it was a sign of how much she and everyone here cared for my Bryn. “It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. We are missing something.”

  Throughout this discussion, Bryn herself had remained mostly quiet, uncharacteristically so. Normally in council meetings, she argued along with the best of them, holding her own and making certain her own point of view was heard. But the devastating events of the day seemed to have robbed her of what made her my Bryn, my precious Hellion.

  Her emotions had been scoured by grief, leaving an empty, blank numbness behind. I was fairly sure she was too busy dealing with worries for the babe to even think about how it might affect us all as a group. To some degree, I myself felt the same way, but her thoughts were all of the baby, while mine were all of her.

  It is the nature of motherhood – so I am led to understand – that the mother puts the child before everything. But it is the nature of fatherhood to put the mother before everything. I had always been protective of Bryn, even when she could clearly defend herself. Since she had fallen pregnant, I had become still more so. But now that she had actually been attacked, I found myself frustratingly unable to do anything, and that failure gnawed at my insides. I kept my silence, knowing I had nothing useful to say.

  “This is low, even by Luce’s standards,” Audrey shook her head.

  “I just find it so hard to believe that anyone would do such a thing.”

  “You’re too kind, sister,” said Chevalier. “Luce is capable of anything. And remember the rage he must have been in after we stole his people. He probably sees this as fair recompense.”

  “But how?” Mercedes pressed.

  “If Luce can’t have done this himself,” Klaasje spoke up again,

  “and nobody who would help him could, and nobody who could help him would, then maybe we should go back to looking at natural causes.”

  “It must be Luce,” Randall shook his head. “It’s too great a coincidence for this to happen now, and it not be him.”

  “Ye say the bairn could nae cloud its own thoughts,” said Odran, oddly thoughtful for once. “Boot could someone else mayhap cloud them?”

  Mathilda nodded slowly. “Maybe. And that would be more achievable than doing something to the child itself. Simple thought magic.”

  “Aye,” Odran went on. “Boot surely sich magic cannae be accomplished from a distance?”

  Mathilda rocked her head from side to side as if she were unsure.

  “As I understand it, it would be easier if they were nearby. But I am not an expert in such things; this is more like Elemental magic.”

  I looked up sharply at her words. And I wasn’t the only one; the foppish Chevalier had had the same thought.

  “Elemental magic? Could the Daywalkers have learned it? They were in a camp with Elementals.”

  “Now you’re jumping to conclusions, Dureau,” Jolie interposed.

  “Am I?” The Frenchman stood. “We welcome these people into our world, and suddenly Bryn is attacked by this form of magic.

  That’s not jumping to a conclusion, that’s arriving logically at one.”

  “Hardly ‘suddenly’; they’ve been here for weeks,” Klaasje argued.

  “Spying,” spat Chevalier.

  I could feel the rage rising inside me, white-hot, bubbling up from my soul. I agreed with Chevalier. Not something I would normally like to do but now the thought was out there I found that it fit. It made perfect sense; Luce had sent an agent along with the Daywalker refugees, one who could destroy us from the

  inside, starting with Bryn. It was exactly what I had feared, exactly what I had warned Bryn about.

  I saw the exchange of looks between Jolie and Bryn before Bryn spoke again.

  “I don’t think it’s the Daywalkers,” she said. “I’d know if it were them.”

  “Due respect,” I said, as I could stay silent no longer, “Bryn, you have told me yourself that vampires and the like can cloud their thoughts from you, and you would not know it. How would you know if they were clouding the thoughts of our child?”

  If looks could kill, then the one my love shot at me would have been a stake to my heart.

  “I won’t have us condemning the Daywalkers without evidence,”

  Jolie spoke firmly. “Mathilda and Mercedes have both said that no magic is involved.”

  “What other option is there?!” I was angry now and could not stop myself. We were all sitting about talking when we should have been doing something, and the fact that I did not know what we could do made me furious.

  “We don’t know what’s happened,” Jolie answered my rage with calm, but firm words. “I understand your frustration, Sinjin, we all do. But lashing out when we don’t know what’s wrong isn’t going to make things better. If you march into the Daywalkers’

  camp and start biting necks, looking for a confession, then you make enemies of people we’ve only just won as allies. And for what? We don’t know if they had anything to do with it…”

  “I still think…” Chevalier began.

  But Jolie rounded on him. “Your Queen was talking, Dureau. I remind you that you were there with Bryn, contacting the Daywalkers in their dreams. You made the offer to them; you told them they would be welcome and well-treated here. You must have trusted them then. Is your trust so fickle?”

  “I agree,” Bryn said in a calm tone.

  Jolie nodded as she looked from her sister to the rest of us. “We can’t act until we know what’s happened and who to act against.

  That is the purpose of this council. If anyone has anything useful to say in that direction, then I’ll listen to them now, but if all that’s left to say is blind accusations and wild theories, keep them to yourself.”

  “Then you don’t believe Luce is behind this?” Klaasje asked.

  Jolie looked at her. “I agree that it’s mostly likely Luce behind this, but if we don’t know how or by what means, then it’s

  largely aca
demic. Now,” she took a deep, calming breath, “does anyone have anything to say that might be of help to my sister?”

  There was a long pause as we all looked sheepishly at each other.

  My anger had not subsided, and I was not yet convinced I was wrong, but Jolie was right; lashing out could do more harm than good. If Luce did have an agent amongst us, then who knew what else that agent might do before we caught them. Helping Bryn had to be our first priority.

  “There may be a way.” Mathilda finally spoke, breaking the heavy silence of the room. “A way to find out what has happened to Bryn’s baby. But it would be an avenue that went deeper than anything Mercedes or I can accomplish.”

  “What way to find out?” Bryn asked, and I took her hand beneath the table as she spoke, lending her my strength.

  Mathilda appeared cagey. “I don’t want to say yet. Let me check my facts and commune with the spirits. I don’t want to raise hopes unnecessarily.” She paused. “What I will say; if I am correct, then there are still no guarantees, and the avenue forward will not be safe for whoever undertakes it.”

  I do not know if it was Mathilda’s words that made me think of an idea of my own, but it was as she spoke that the idea occurred to me. A long-shot perhaps but one that might be worth trying.

  However, it was not something to be discussed in council; it was a decision for Bryn to make.

  There was one person who might be able to shed light on what had happened to the babe, one person whom we had not yet asked.

  FOUR

  Bryn

  Strange how the loss of something I’d only known for a matter of weeks could be so devastating. Since first sensing the developing mind of my unborn child, I had become so accustomed to the baby being my constant companion that losing those feelings was like losing a limb.

  I’d heard little of what was said in the council meeting; my mind had been elsewhere. Regardless, I was well aware that there was not a person in the room who didn’t love me and have my best interests at heart, but it was a room full of very dominant personalities who would fight tooth and nail for their point of view. Furthermore, they would swear up and down that black was white if one of the others told them they were wrong. Trying to get Jolie’s council to agree on a course of action was like trying to get cats to march in formation. Yes, I was just as bad as any of them, which made me all the more in awe of my sister’s ability to run the council and get anything useful out of it.

  But this time, little had been achieved. As I left the chamber, with Sinjin beside me, I felt as lost as I had when we’d gone in.

  We were no closer to knowing what had happened to me, how it had happened, and who might have done it. Only the occasional movements of my baby inside me gave me some crumb of comfort.

  While the baby lived, there was hope.

  “I am sorry if you feel I spoke out of turn.” It was typical of Sinjin that he didn’t apologize for what he’d said against the Daywalkers, but just how it might have made me feel – attentive as ever, but still insistent that he was right.

  I said nothing.

  “Bryn,” it was strange to hear him use my actual name rather than one of his nicknames for me.

  I turned to look at him.

  “I know this is happening to you, not me. But this is my baby, too,” he placed his hand on my belly. “Please do not underestimate how much this means to me.”

  “Blaming other people won’t put things right,” I replied.

  He made a face. “Depends if they are guilty or not. But,” he raised a hand as he saw I was about to argue, “I do not want to fight with you. Not now. If you say the Daywalkers are innocent, then I trust your judgment. If you can trust them after what they did to you, then I should learn to do the same.”

  He referred obliquely to when I’d been held by Luce and used as part of the Daywalker breeding program.

  “Thank you.”

  I felt him reach for my hand and was comforted by his touch.

  “You know I would move heaven and earth to put things right.”

  “I know you would,” I replied quietly. “The problem comes when there’s nothing you can do.”

  Sinjin was a man of action, and not being able to do something to fix this was killing him. He pulled a rueful smile. “I know. But I do not accept that there is nothing I can do.”

  “What would you suggest then?”

  “I do have a suggestion, as it so happens. Though I am prepared to admit it is a somewhat radical one.”

  “I’d expect nothing less from Sinjin Sinclair,” I said with a small smirk. It was true. “Go on; what is it?”

  “If we want to know what is wrong with the baby, then perhaps we should ask it.”

  #

  Back in our room, we sat on the bed. Sinjin held my hands in his as he further explained.

  “You know when I drink your blood—or anyone’s blood—I gain some sense of them.”

  I thought back to the early days of what Sinjin liked to refer to as our ‘courtship.’ My blood had saved Sinjin’s life when I’d thought him nothing more than another piece of shit vampire. He’d fed from me a few times before the hostility between us cooled—

  though attraction had always been there, albeit reluctant on my part.

  “Are you saying you want to drink the baby’s blood?” I could barely believe what I was hearing. I wasn’t even sure how it was possible. The baby’s blood was my blood, after all.

  Sinjin sighed. “Would that I could, little hellcat. If that were an option, then I might well be able to diagnose the problem. But the baby is inside you, denying me access to its veins, and it anyway has so little blood that I would be afraid to take as much as a sip. However, if my understanding of fetal biology is accurate—and you must realize this is a rare subject in which I am no expert—the sprog’s blood goes into you.”

  He was right. As I understood from my limited reading on the subject, the baby’s ‘used’ blood went back through the placenta into the Mom’s body where all the bad stuff got taken out, then good stuff was put in before cycling it back to the child. It was a basic import/export system.

  “You can drink my blood and learn about the baby?”

  Sinjin held up a hand. “Perhaps. I do not know, for certain, but I think it will matter what vein I drink from. But it seems logical to me that if I can find a fresh source of baby blood, then it should not matter that I am drinking from your body.”

  I thought about this. “Do you think it will work?”

  I could see an intense sadness in Sinjin’s eyes, but they also burnt fiercely; here was something he could do . “I do not know for certain, Bête Noir . But it is all I can think of at the moment, and I want us both to understand why the baby has grown silent.”

  Okay, so maybe this was, yet again, Sinjin’s desperate need to be doing something active, but he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I felt that I now existed solely to protect my baby, and the

  fact that I’d been unable to do so burnt me at least as badly as it did Sinjin. I wanted to do something, and no one else was offering me an option.

  “It won’t hurt the baby?”

  Sinjin shook his head. “I would be drinking the blood leaving the baby, not that going in. It will make no difference to the sprog at all.”

  “How would you make sure you’re drinking the blood leaving the baby?”

  “I am, as yet, uncertain. But I imagine that an online search will enable us to locate an appropriate blood vessel conveniently situated close to the skin.”

  I tried to smile. “Yeah, I bet that’s one of Google’s commonest searches.”

  His blue eyes flickered for a moment. “You know I can put a glamour on you so that there is no pain…”

  “Do you think it will affect what you sense in my blood?”

  Sinjin screwed up his handsome face into an un-Sinjin expression.

  “I do not know, Bête Noir . I know nothing about this.”

  “What does
your gut tell you?”

  He cocked his head to the side. “I imagine were I to glamour you, it would likely affect the baby too, so yes, I am afraid it might affect the blood and make me unable to glean anything useful from it. But…”

  “Then don’t glamour me.”

  “Bryn…”

  “I know it will hurt. It’s not like we haven’t been here before.”

  His face was serious, and I could see the pain he felt at the idea of hurting me. “This may be different. Depending on where I bite you.”

  I reached out a hand and stroked his cheek. It was important to me that he knew I didn’t blame him for any of this. “Do you think there’s any pain I wouldn’t endure if it meant I could help our child?”

  Sinjin managed a smile, though there was no joy in it. “And that is one of the many reasons I love you as much as I do, my little heathen. I just wish it was me who bore the pain.”

  I knew he did.

  As Sinjin had predicted, an online search yielded a useful schematic of the fetal circulatory system, showing where it connected to the mother.

  “All this is going on inside me?” I shook my head. “It looks like my insides were designed by an insane plumber.”

  “None of these are desperately convenient,” admitted Sinjin.

  “Your body – ravishing as it is – has been well-designed to protect the sprog. I would say here is our best bet.” He pointed at a vein on the screen and then stroked his fingers along the corresponding spot on my body. “That’s as close as I can come to fetal blood.”

  “Close enough?”

  “I wish I could tell you.” He paused. “You are certain you want to attempt this?” he asked as I nodded. “I must admit, I am less enthusiastic about it as I was.”

  “It won’t hurt the baby, Sinjin.”

  “But it will hurt you.”

  “It won’t,” I said.

  I was already stripping. Pregnancy had altered my fashion sense, but only somewhat; you can get yoga pants to suit all sizes, and I’d taken to pairing them with a loose top to replace the sports bra I usually wore. My old bras had stopped fitting anyway as pregnancy took me up a cup size – something Sinjin had appreciated way too much.