The Changeling

by H. P. Mallory

  #

  Bryn

  “Get after them!” yelled Jolie as the Fir Darrig fled the council chamber with Sinjin in pursuit.

  “What the hell was that?!” asked Rand, staring at the doors.

  “The Fir Darrig,” repeated Mathilda, and the look on her face said it all.

  “Never mind what it is,” Dureau was on his feet and striding for the doors. “Let’s get after it.”

  “Wait!” Jolie fought to keep control. “We need to know what we’re facing. Sinjin will keep track of it. Klassje, you keep track of him.”

  Klassje nodded and dematerialized.

  Every fiber of my body told me to run after Sinjin and after that bastard Fae who’d taken my baby, but I knew Jolie was right.

  “Mathilda?” Jolie turned to the Fae.

  “One of the old ones,” said Mathilda, shaking her head in unconcealed worry. “One of those that used to make the lives of mortals a misery for their own entertainment. The Fir Darrig is ancient but has also never grown up—always a child. It hasn’t been seen in this world for years. Neither in Faery.”

  “Why?”

  “It fell foul of the Seelie Court,” explained Mathilda. “Those in power in Faery at the time—this was centuries ago—put a bounty on its head. With the whole of Faery looking for it, the Darrig made good its escape. I heard stories that it had gone to ground in the outer realms of Faery, where Phooka the Puck and a lot of the old ones retreated when the world changed, and they couldn’t tease humanity as they pleased any longer. That was when Faery decided to be civilized—in as much as it ever is.”

  “How do we beat it?” All this Faery history was very interesting, but all I cared about was my child and Sinjin.

  Mathilda could only give me an apologetic look. “The Darrig may not look like much, but it is powerful. Fast as quicksilver, adept at magic, and able to look like anything it chooses.”

  “Clearly it was scared of the Seelie Court,” I pointed out.

  “Would they help us?”

  Mathilda pulled a face. “The court has changed many times since then. I doubt the current one cares about what the Fir Darrig did hundreds of years ago. Odran might be able to coerce them into action but…” She threw up her hands in frustration. “Who knows where he is?”

  “Or even if he’s alive,” muttered Dureau, voicing the fear of us all. Odran was strong and powerful, but he was also proud and preening, which was the sort of thing a trickster like the Darrig could use against him. All the Darrig would have had to do was take the shape of a beautiful woman or a flattering admirer and Odran would be putty in its hands.

  “Then what can we do?” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice and also out of my heart. I would not be the victim here.

  I’d had more than enough of that already. Now that we’d found the person responsible, I refused to be put on the back burner. I was a warrior, and I’d found an enemy I could fight. I didn’t care how old, how powerful, how clever they were; bring it on.

  “I don’t know,” admitted Mathilda. “Even now I’m not convinced we

  ‘found it out’; this might all just be part of its game.”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I felt a thrill of excitement stream through me.

  That’s it .

  Jolie looked up at me, What ?

  “That’s it,” I said out loud as I stood up from the table.

  “You’ve got an idea?” Dureau looked as excited as I felt. He’d been used worse than most by the Fir Darrig in the last few weeks and was anxious to redeem himself, as well as get some revenge.

  “Maybe.” It wasn’t like I had an absolute and foolproof plan for taking out the Fir Darrig, but… “I’ve got something. A weak spot, perhaps.”

  “The Fir Darrig has few weaknesses and none that we can exploit.”

  It was strange to hear Mathilda so pessimistic.

  “If you’re trying to beat it, then yeah,” I admitted. “But psychologically you’ve already told us its weakness; it likes to play games.”

  I could see the light enter Mathilda’s features, and her eyes widened as she realized what I meant. “That… might just work. The Darrig would never turn down a game. Or a bet. It would rather play than win.”

  “Well that sounds like something we can use,” said Rand.

  “Come on!” I led the way.

  As we left the council hall and headed out into the night, my mind raced with possibilities for how we might face the Darrig.

  But it was not quite enough to silence the needle of horror that had pierced my mind earlier, and which nothing could remove. The baby moved inside me.

  Could I even call it a ‘baby’ now?

  Certainly not my baby.

  There was a thing living inside me that wasn’t my baby, a thing which had been used to fool me, a thing that wasn’t even real, just a creation of magic. For weeks now, I had loved the thing within me, the Changeling child; I’d reached out to it, whispered to it, sung to it, implored for it to communicate with me.

  I felt guilty for having lavished so much love on this thing when my own child was out there somewhere, alone, perhaps desperate for the warmth of her mother. Just the thought made tears start in my eyes. I’d lost my baby.

  Put in stark, bald terms like that, there was no hiding from it.

  I had lost my baby.

  An alien creature was growing inside me.

  And yet, I felt almost sorry for it. It wasn’t the Changeling’s fault this had happened; it was just a pawn in the schemes of the Fir Darrig. It was impossible to carry something with you as I had for weeks and not feel some protective urge towards it.

  It wasn’t real, it had no thoughts or feelings or life of its own. When all this was over, when the Darrig was gone, the Changeling would cease to exist, leaving me empty and alone. I didn’t know how I might feel then, but right now, the thought terrified me. Stupid though it was, I preferred to have the Changeling inside me, like a placebo, than to be empty and have to face the full horror of what had happened.

  Before we reached the woods, Klassje appeared before us.

  “It’s in there. I’ve told the guards to spread out around the wood. It can’t get out without us seeing.”

  “What about Sinjin?” I asked.

  “He’s keeping the Darrig busy,” replied Klassje. “It’s toying with him, but I think he knows what he’s doing. But he can’t keep it up much longer.”

  “Sinjin will keep going as long as we need,” I said with certainty. He’d never let me down, and I knew he’d do anything for me and the ‘sprog’.

  “What’s the plan?” asked Klassje.

  “We’re going to go and get the bastard,” I replied.

  Klassje shrugged. “Simple. To the point. I like it.”

  #

  Sinjin

  I rematerialized, and the world seemed to swim before my eyes. I was balanced on a branch, twenty feet above the ground as the Fir Darrig danced in front of me, laughing as ever.

  “Something wrong, vampire? Don’t tell me you’re tired. I can keep doing this all night.”

  “Not with my boot up your arse,” I growled angrily and lunged for the Fae.

  That was a contemptible mistake and one I would not have made had I been thinking more clearly. The Darrig easily kept out of my reach, moving with the same quicksilver speed it had exhibited for the past hour. I, by contrast, was moving on dead legs as if I had lead in my boots. As I reached for the creature, I slipped on the branch, losing my footing. For a moment, I seemed to hover on nothing, as if gravity had not noticed what was going on, but in the next instant, I was plummeting for the ground.

  “Oof!” A branch caught me in the midriff as I fell. As a vampire, I had no breath to be knocked out of me, and the branch did at least do me the favor of slowing my descent, but it still bloody well hurt.

  “Ah!” Another one broke across my back. I bounced from branch to branch on my way to the ground, where I land
ed heavily in a bruised heap.

  Master Vampires have their pride, and this was not good for mine.

  Meeting Gaia had given me an uncomfortable reminder of how small and weak I truly was in the grand scheme of those beings that have inhabited this world for longer than even I can remember, but at least she looked the part. The Darrig was the size of a child, had the appearance of an old man and the weight of a rag doll, yet the wretched creature was, as my dear Bryn might have said, ‘ kicking my ass ’.

  My brain told my body to spring back up, but my body answered with a polite, ‘ Not bloody likely ’.

  “Is the game over, vampire?” From the corner of one bloodshot eye, I saw the Fir Darrig fifteen feet above me, hanging from the underside of a branch by its prehensile toes, like a bat in a fur coat, swinging in the breeze.

  I opened my mouth to deliver a witty comeback (I was well versed in such things thanks to an old friendship with Oscar Wilde), but neither my tongue nor my brain had anything left to give. With a herculean effort, straining every sinew, I fought to dematerialize, planning to reappear on the branch above the Fir

  Darrig and take the wretched thing by surprise. At the very least, I could stamp on its spindly toes.

  My body rippled with waves of unreality, fading in and out of existence. For a moment, I was simultaneously at the base of the tree and on the branch above the Darrig; in both places and neither. But the strength had left me, and with a miserable grunt of exhaustion, I gave up, my corporeal form staying exactly where it was—on the ground.

  The Darrig laughed above me, adding insult to exhaustion. “Going nowhere, vampire?”

  I summoned up all my strength to speak. “Fuck… You…” Not the wittiest of bon mot , but I like to think that in similar circumstances, even Oscar himself would have abandoned wit in favor of something earthier and more to the point.

  The Fir Darrig chuckled to itself. “Such a shame to end the game.”

  “End it?” said a voice from the trees behind me. “The game’s just beginning.”

  It was the voice of my Tempest, and just hearing it gave me new strength.

  TWENTY- THREE

  Sinjin

  The Fir Darrig smiled its smug, broken-toothed smile. “You will find yourself ill-matched, Elemental.”

  As the Darrig dropped to the ground, casually somersaulting as it went, its shape shifted. And by the time it landed neatly on its feet, it was the living image of myself (by which I mean; devastatingly handsome).

  But Bryn merely shrugged. “Sinjin wears it better.”

  “We are identical,” snapped the Fir Darrig.

  “Not at the moment you’re not,” Bryn pointed out, referring to the fact that I was a bruised and bleeding wreck. “But in the morning, he’ll be himself again, and so, unfortunately, will you.

  Disguise yourself anyway you please, but you’ll always be what you are… an ugly fucker.”

  “I can be whoever I please.” There was threat in the Darrig’s reedy tones. Bryn was playing with fire, and I hoped my Tempest had a plan more sophisticated than angering the powerful Fae.

  “Care for a wager?” suggested Bryn. She spoke casually, and yet I sensed that she was desperately hanging on the creature’s response.

  The Fir Darrig’s pointy ears pricked up, and a cunning smile lit its face. “You seek to trick a trickster? Bold, Elemental, very bold.”

  Bryn shrugged. “You can always refuse. If you’re afraid you might lose.”

  The Darrig laughed once more—I did not find it infectious. “I think you know I cannot refuse. Or will not. What is the wager you propose?”

  “That I will always be able to pick the real Sinjin from the two of you.”

  In the next instant, I felt strength flowing into my body, my bruises vanished, and my cuts healed. Vampires heal quickly, Master Vampires faster still, but even I had never felt anything like this before.

  Fully restored, I sprang to my feet, only to find myself face to face with my mirror image. Shocked, I took a step back, and the Darrig did the same, matching my movements instant for instant to the smallest twitch of my eye.

  “I really am quite stunning,” I started.

  “Sinjin!” Bryn barked at me and I frowned back at her. “Stop admiring yourself and pay attention!”

  “Very well,” I grumbled.

  As I had lain on the ground listening to this exchange, I had been confident Bryn would know the real me, because I doubted the Fir Darrig would be able to match the sublime grace and muscular certainty with which Sinjin Sinclair, Master Vampire, met the world. There was a sinuous, panther-like quality to the way I moved that was as much an external manifestation of my inner self, as it was a result of my enviable physique, and I was sure the Darrig could not emulate such.

  But now, as I stared my facsimile in the face, doubts began to creep in. Never mind Bryn being able to tell us apart, I was not certain I knew which was the real me.

  “There’s still time to back down,” the Darrig addressed Bryn in its own voice, with a mocking smile.

  “Yeah?” Bryn shrugged. “Well, if that’s what you would prefer, then sure; just give me back my child and… ahem, Odran… and we’ll say no more about it.”

  The Fir Darrig threw back my head and laughed uproariously. “I like you, Elemental. You are much more fun than your vampire paramour. Perhaps you would like to come and live with me in Faery? I will show you sights you cannot imagine and make you feel things this bloodsucker cannot dream of.”

  “In return for my child?” She would do it, I knew she would. Bryn would sacrifice herself for our daughter in a heartbeat. I wondered what I would do if the Darrig said yes.

  But the Darrig shook its head. “I’d sooner have you both, but if a choice is to be made, I will keep the babe.”

  My fists clenched as Bryn gritted her teeth. “Then the bet stands.”

  “You’re sure?” smiled the Darrig, standing beside me. I desperately wanted to reach out and grab it, but I controlled myself, knowing that such an effort would be futile.

  “Quite sure,” replied Bryn.

  “Certain?” This time the creature wearing my skin spoke in my voice, completing the illusion.

  “Let’s set the terms.”

  The Fir Darrig shrugged. “Very well. Now you’ve raised the possibility, I find it too tempting to abandon. If I win—perhaps I should say ‘when’—you will come back to Faery to live with me as my concubine. Perhaps I will allow you to see your child, but perhaps not. I don’t want you poisoning its mind against me.”

  I noted the Darrig continuing to refer to my daughter as ‘it’.

  The Fae must have known the sprog’s gender, but such things were of little concern to such a creature; the baby was no more than a prize.

  Bryn nodded. “I accept. But when I win, you will give my child back to me… and Odran.”

  “You get one.”

  “My child,” she answered without hesitation. She chose correctly, because I had a feeling once the Fir Darrig lost, Odran would be restored to us, regardless. And, if not, I could not say it was the worst loss the world had ever encountered.

  The Fir Darrig eyed Bryn for a moment, looking for some sign of guile and finding none.

  “Very well, these terms are acceptable to me. But this sort of event deserves a proper audience, and I fear your friends cannot see properly from where they are hidden. They should show themselves.”

  “Come out!” Bryn yelled.

  “Come out, come out!” the Darrig echoed. “I won’t play with feeble Underworlders hidden behind every tree.”

  I looked around to see people slowly emerge from the wood where they had secreted themselves. There were Jolie and Randall, Dureau and Audrey, Klassje and Mercedes; the whole council and more besides. They had been ready to leap out and ambush the Fir Darrig, but it had known and was too quick for any of them.

  “That’s better,” the Darrig grinned. “Now, how will the game work? Best of five? To take
luck out of the equation.”

  “If you like.”

  The ancient Fae thrust an emaciated hand towards Bryn who took it with undisguised distaste. It looked as if the hand might crumble in Bryn’s grip, but the spidery fingers wrapped tightly about her hand to shake it.

  “Now…”

  The Darrig flew at me faster than thought and for the next few seconds, I did not know where I was as the world spun about me.

  When I was still again, I found myself standing beside the Fir Darrig, who appeared exactly like me. I tried to give Bryn some sign of who I was, but found myself frozen, unable to speak or even to move. With my mind, I reached out to Bryn, opening myself to her, so she could sense who I was, but here too, I had been made immobile. I began to realize just what a powerful entity the Fir Darrig was.

  “The game begins,” the voice of the Fir Darrig came from the woods around us, while the creature itself remained beside me, as frozen as I was.

  Then I could move again, but the Darrig beside me moved in exactly the same way. I must have looked startled because it looked startled. I opened my mouth to speak and then realized the futility as I saw it do the same. What could I say that would identify me to my Tempest?

  “ Bête Noir …” We both said the words at the same instant. Was the Darrig in my head too?

  Again I reached out with my mind, but from her face I could see that Bryn was getting conflicting messages as the Fir Darrig aped my mind as well as my body and voice. It was not copying me; it had become me. Beside me stood another Sinjin Sinclair with a little Fae in its center, piloting it.

  Bryn turned from one to the other of us, taking us both in. I wondered how difficult it was for the Darrig not to laugh at her confusion. But then, my dear hellion smiled, and pointed to me.

  “Sinjin.”

  “Lucky,” the Darrig’s voice again came from the trees around us.

  “You won’t be so lucky twice.”