The Changeling

by H. P. Mallory

  In the next instant, I was in a whirl again, the Darrig spinning us round and round again. I came to rest in the same place; a double bluff.

  Again, Bryn looked between the two of us, her quick eyes taking in every nuance. I could not imagine what she was looking for, but the smile returned to her face as she turned to me once more, without even a hint of uncertainty.

  “Sinjin.”

  “Very lucky.” I could hear the irritation in the Darrig’s voice and I took immense pleasure in it.

  A split-second later, I was caught up again as the Darrig spun us both around, but this time, rather than coming to a stop, I felt myself suddenly shoved backward. I wanted to cry out as I was drilled into something hard, but no sound came. My eyes were open

  —I could see the scene before me—but I was unable to move.

  This time, it was not because I was frozen; the Darrig had thrust me inside one of the trees. I could feel the tight clutch of its heartwood around me, compressing my chest, squeezing my limbs. I felt the heartbeat of its sap, drawn past my trapped body. I was able to look out, but invisible to those around me.

  The scene on which I looked made me wish I could scream. The Fir Darrig could create illusions as easily as it could change shape, and there were still two Sinjins for Bryn to choose between. Two identical versions of myself, neither of which was truly me. Why had we trusted the trickster Fae? Of course it was cheating; deceit was in its very nature! Now Bryn would inevitably pick a fake Sinjin and the Darrig would crow in delight! Then it would be onto the next two attempts until I had lost both my child and Bryn. There was nothing I could do but watch!

  With mute horror, I saw Bryn size up the two Sinjins, her eyes passing from one to the other as they had before. A clutching sensation seized my stomach as I saw the smile return to her mouth.

  Bryn spoke. “Neither.”

  “You must choose,” said the voice of the Darrig, taunting.

  “Not when you break the rules. Neither of you is Sinjin.”

  “Lies!” screeched the Darrig’s disembodied voice. “Choose.”

  “Show me Sinjin, and I’ll choose.”

  “I am Sinjin,” insisted both the fakes. “You must know me Bryn!

  How can you not?”

  But Bryn just smiled and shook her head. “You must be desperate if you’re resorting to this sort of cheap trick. Give me a choice that includes Sinjin and we can complete the game.”

  “You must choose!”

  “I feel like I’ve already won,” she answered with a shrug. “It seems like the dignified thing to do would be to concede defeat and hand over my child.”

  Both Sinjins now looked angry, their faces almost black with fury. In an instant, one of them vanished while the other spun to look at me. The tree I was imprisoned within burst asunder in a shower of splinters, releasing me from my prison.

  “Bry…” I tried to speak, but was immediately caught up again in the Fir Darrig’s whirlwind, even faster than before. It did not know how Bryn was choosing correctly and was making sure she could not follow me as we spun together.

  We came to a halt, standing next to each other.

  “Choose,” the voice of the Darrig snapped.

  In truth, I too was in the dark as to how Bryn was doing what she was. Could it be simple good fortune? She seemed too confident for that.

  Whatever the case, she looked us both over as she had before, smiled and pointed at me.

  “Sinjin. Now give me back my child.”

  Spitting with anger, the fake Sinjin beside me contracted, twisted and shifted back into the Fir Darrig, the smile wiped from its evil face as it leveled a dark look at Bryn.

  “You cheated!”

  “Me?” Bryn rolled her eyes. “You’re one to talk! I didn’t cheat, which is more than you can say, you little miserable troll!”

  “You must have. There is no other way.”

  “If I cheated,” Bryn leaned in towards the Fae, “then tell me how.”

  I could see the irritated confusion etched into the Fir Darrig’s ugly features. It was hard to say what made it angrier; the fact that it had been cheated or the fact that it could not work out how. For the King of Tricksters, it was a bitter pill indeed to be tricked.

  “You must have cheated,” it finally snapped. “But how?”

  Bryn shrugged. “I could explain, but you wouldn’t understand.”

  “You cheated!”

  “I didn’t,” Bryn shook her head. “That’s why you won’t understand. You can’t get your twisted mind around anything that doesn’t involve subterfuge and deceit.”

  The Darrig snarled and spat, wringing its thin hands in fury.

  “Give me back my child,” said Bryn, her voice stern and threatening. “We made a deal and you lost, fair and square.”

  The Darrig leveled a nasty look at her and smiled its thin smile.

  “My dear Elemental, did you really imagine that I would ever do that?”

  “No.”

  The instant the word was out of Bryn’s mouth, a series of light flares seemed to launch from the ground around the Darrig, arcing over its head, leaving a magical wake behind them and creating a cage of power about the Fae. It only occurred to me now that I had not seen Mathilda in among the men and women of Kinloch Kirk who watched the spectacle. This magical cage certainly had her fingerprints all over it. But would Mathilda’s magic be strong enough to hold something as powerful as the Fir Darrig?

  For the moment at least, it seemed to be working. Shrieking with impotent rage, the Darrig hurled itself at the bars of its prison, throwing up sparks of uncontrolled magic. Looking around, I noticed every Fae, from Dureau and Audrey down to Emma’s babysitter, were holding hands. Where their hands touched, a glow of power shone.

  Mathilda had constructed the spell, but it was fueled by every Fae here, working together, putting all their effort into keeping the magic alive and strong. That was the only way to hold the Darrig, and even then, it had needed Bryn’s cleverly distracting game to give them a chance to cast the spell.

  Bryn ran to me, and as she threw herself into my arms, I felt as if all the dangers we faced were temporarily lifted.

  “I had forgotten what a formidable adversary you are,” I whispered to her as I chuckled and held her close.

  “You should know by now never to underestimate me.”

  “I never shall again.” As I looked into her eyes, I knew there was something I needed to tell her. “We are having a baby girl.”

  #

  Bryn

  My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open. “A girl?”

  “That is what Gaia said.” Sinjin smiled. “I was not certain if I should tell you while all this was still going on, but… I just could not keep it to myself anymore.” He paused and smiled broadly. “I never was any good at keeping secrets.”

  A girl! Jolie had been right all along. I was going to have a daughter. The knowledge renewed my resolve. I was going to have a daughter. We were getting her back.

  Sinjin seemed to read my thoughts. “What now? We cannot keep the Darrig imprisoned like this indefinitely. The Fae will be exhausted before long, and it is too strong to hold.”

  I rounded on the creature in its magical cage. “Where is my child?”

  “Let me go and I’ll bring it to you,” suggested the Darrig.

  “You think I’d trust you?” I scoffed. “Tell me where my baby is and I’ll let you go.”

  “You think I’d trust you?”

  I thought about this for a moment. “Frankly; yes. Of the two of us, I’d say I am by far the more trustworthy. I’m not remotely interested in vengeance; I just want my daughter back, so yes, I definitely think you should trust me.”

  “Really?” the Darrig sneered. “How much harm did I do to you and your people? I set you and each one against the other. I made your lives miserable. I attacked one of your number—the female vampire—and left her to die beneath the dawn sun. Even when you tried to get away�
�that little road trip you took—I followed you, I rode with you, I kept my influence forever upon you. One of your closest allies is still missing—dead for all you know. I suppose, perhaps , you yourself might be willing to let me go if I told you where the child is, but the rest of your friends? I should think they would not agree! So, no; I definitely don’t trust you.”

  “Why did you do it?” Jolie spoke up, always the conciliator, tackling the problem from a different angle. “What did we ever do to you?”

  “Nothing,” the Darrig shrugged.

  “You did all this just for fun?” she continued.

  “Partly,” the creature grinned. “It certainly was fun.”

  “What did Luce promise you?” asked Rand, grimly.

  At that, the Darrig’s smile broadened. “You people know how to make enemies. You have no idea how angry Luce is after you took his precious Daywalkers away. So he asked me to destroy the lot of you from within. And,” he turned his narrow eyes on me, “you have no idea how scared he is of that child of yours.”

  “My child?” I didn’t understand.

  “There’s never been an elemental vampire hybrid before,” the Fir Darrig went on. “Luce has experimented with Daywalker Elemental cross-breeding with promising results.” He meant people like Damek. “But a vampire might produce an even more powerful child.

  He thinks you plan to beat him at his own game. He wanted the child to see what it could do, to see if he might exploit it or create a hybrid of his own. I was supposed to deliver the child to him.” The Darrig chuckled to itself. “But I found it too interesting to part with.”

  “So the child is in Faery?” Jolie leapt on the clue.

  The Darrig looked irritated with itself for giving something away. “Faery is vast. You will never find the babe without me. So release me, because I’m not telling you anything. I’ll be free before the sun rises and we both know it. You can’t harm me.”

  He was right. If he didn’t want to tell us where my baby was, then there was little we could do to make him.

  “That is why you got Odran out of the way?” Sinjin asked.

  It went without saying that Sinjin was physically a dangerous fighter, but it was easy to forget how clever he was. Psychology was the only way around the powerful Fae; I’d used that approach earlier, and now Sinjin was baiting the creature.

  “Odran was the only one who could actually hurt you,” Sinjin continued.

  The Darrig snorted contemptuously. “That oaf? I dealt with him my first day here and took his place. Playing the part of that buffoon was easy; just imagine what an ox would do.”

  “He has kept you in check for long enough,” replied Sinjin, deliberately winding the Darrig up. “And on your home turf as well. I bet that stung.”

  “It was the Seelie Court that forced me from my home,” the Darrig snapped. “And that was centuries since. The Court is powerful—or was back then, in its heyday—but Odran is no more than a foolish figurehead.”

  “I bet that’s why you agreed to help Luce.” Now Rand was getting in on the act, picking up Sinjin’s lead. “You couldn’t beat Odran in Faery, and this gave you a chance to tackle him in the real world, where your silly tricks count for something.”

  “I could tackle that oaf anywhere!” The Darrig snarled, rattling the magical bars of its cage.

  “How did you beat him then?” asked Sinjin, so casually that no one would have guessed how important the question was.

  “I disguised myself as a woman,” said the Fir Darrig.

  “Hah!” Sinjin laughed. “That is tackling him head on, is it? Play to his weakness, then wait for him to turn his back, and hit him over the head with a vase. I take it you just showed up on his doorstep in a push up brassiere?”

  “There were no vases!” The Darrig yelped. “I lured him down to the sea.”

  “My mistake; you hit him with a fish.”

  “I enchanted him!” The Darrig was yelling now, scraping its long fingers across the bars, sending showers of magical sparks flying. “He never even sensed my magic. Now I can return to my rightful place in the Faery court, and he’ll spend eternity at the bottom of the bay!”

  I saw the flash of triumph in Sinjin’s eyes. There was no way the Darrig would tell us where our daughter was hidden, and none of us could search through the unreal world of Faery with any hope of success—even Mathilda would struggle to make her way through the web of alliances and in-squabbles. But Odran could find our daughter, and now we knew where to find him.

  The success came just in time. As his anger built, so did the Darrig’s power and with a scream, he burst free from the cage, sending the Fae whose magic had fueled it tumbling to the ground.

  Crowing at his victory, the Fir Darrig rose into the air. “Thanks for the hospitality and the games; it’s been wonderful fun. I’ll say hello to your child for you, Elemental. And that’s the only word it’ll ever hear from you. You will never even lay eyes upon it.”

  “Her,” I corrected him, glaring at him all the while.

  The creature spun in the air, forming a portal in the night sky from the fluctuations of its spinning body. And then, with a final sneering laugh, the Fir Darrig was gone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Sinjin

  The shards of first light had broken the ocean horizon as the procession made its way down to the beach. From my hiding place, sheltered in the darkness of a cave, I squinted against the light, trying to watch proceedings.

  For the most part, I have always enjoyed being a vampire, but the inability to face the sunlight is, at best, an inconvenience and an imposition. Right now, it was distancing me from my friends at an important moment when I would far rather have been with them.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” said Klassje, standing beside me.

  She was, of course, a younger vampire than I, though still too old, I felt, to be using words like ‘sucks’ in that context. On the other hand, her words did a very good job of summing up just how I felt about the situation; it did, indeed, ‘suck’.

  Being a vampire has, I think, always suited my temperament. As I remembered it, even before I was bitten, I had been a lone wolf who preferred the night, and being turned into a creature of the undead required little shift in my lifestyle beyond a change in my favored beverage.

  I had always worn black and had the same pale good looks that now seemed synonymous with my nature. At least, that was how I recalled it, but it was so long ago now. Truthfully, it was equally possible that I was a gawky, awkward young man who blushed in the presence of the gentler sex, could not hold his drink, tripped over his own feet, and was in bed by nine thirty every night. Possibly. But, to misquote Christopher Marlowe (whom I never met although frequented some of the same haunts), ‘ that was in another country. And besides, the man is dead ’.

  It never occurred to me that I might live to forget my old life and so I made no effort to remember it. Or perhaps I had made a conscious effort to forget. Though there are certainly worse things to be, every vampire is a tragedy of a person who must watch their friends and family die. I had a family, and the fact that I no longer thought of them was not because they were a bad family, but as a defense mechanism against the inevitable grief.

  A vampire who clings to people and his past is a vampire doomed to misery.

  But now I had a new family. My eyes lit on Bryn as she walked toward the sea, and she seemed to shine in the early morning light. She had made me whole again and filled the void that had existed in my life, whether I acknowledged it or not, for the last six centuries. With her help, I was able to walk in the light again (in a both literal and metaphorical sense) almost like a man. Together, we had created a new life, defying biology and logic, completing our little family.

  As much as I valued my friends here, it would be good to be part of a family again—a real family. And I would not let some meddling Fae take that away from me.

  What I watched from the shadows of the cave was the first step in getting t
hat missing member of my family back.

  Mathilda stood centrally. The old Fae was understandably exhausted after all she had been through in the last day or so.

  She had reversed the curse of the Fir Darrig, something that had taken nearly all of her strength, and had then wrought the spell to trap it. But however tired she unquestionably was, she had insisted she take part in this. It was a relief to us all; there were few who used magic as adeptly as Mathilda. Mercedes stood behind her. The two were so different and yet complimented each other well, each always there to support the other.

  Mathilda was flanked by Jolie and Bryn—so similar and yet so different—and the more I came to love Bryn, the more the differences stood out to me. Of course, at the present, the most obvious difference between them was that Bryn still appeared pregnant, and that was the next little challenge that our family would face.

  Randall stood just back from Jolie, supporting her with his presence. I could not help wondering what might have been said between them behind closed doors after all that had happened and almost happened during my absence, of which I still knew only the bare bones. My best surmise was that Jolie had forgiven him, because it was not his fault, and because Jolie was Jolie with forgiveness as her first instinct.

  Audrey and Chevalier stood together, and I sensed the eyes of Klassje lingering on her chosen man. She and the frog still seemed an odd pairing to me, but who was I to question the hearts of others? Audrey and I had at one time been almost ‘an item’

  (as, Damek assured me, people say) so why not another vampire Fae combination? Kinloch Kirk seemed to inspire such unlikely relationships.

  I had not seen Damek or Dayna since the night’s events, and had no doubt they were curled up together somewhere, venting the pent-up tensions of our time away in energetic sex. I quite envied them.

  At the fringes of the group on the shore, over whose toes the waves now lapped, was the diminutive figure of Jolie’s daughter, Emma, her hand held by the Fae girl who watched her from time to time (I had never learned the girl’s name). In a year’s time, would Emma have a little cousin to play with? I swore under my breath that she would.