Exile

by Caleb James

  Lianna snorted. “Quite a lot of money, but it is necessary. Though humans tend to see what they want. So even before we get the ear cut and tooth shave, few notice… and a hat can hide a lot. As for the teeth, some humans have theirs filed to look like ours, a kind of vampire chic, so it’s not hard….”

  “In cities like New York, San Francisco, London, Cape Town, we blend in best,” Frederick explained.

  “We are that many,” Liam stated.

  “We number a few thousand worldwide,” Lianna said. “But still….”

  “Don’t,” Liam said, reading her emotions, as palpable as a shard of ice. “I will not be ruled by fear.”

  “Good. Then we will tell all that we know.” She swallowed and met his gaze. “I’d know how the passage affected you.”

  “It took most of my magic, and it gave me the shave and cut and turned my skin and hair darker.”

  “I’d wondered,” Frederick said. “No surgeries.”

  “No. I came through but two days ago. She was trapped in the Mist by her sister Lizbeta, who knew she could not hold her. She was right. So tell me more. Tell me everything.”

  The banter helped hold back the terror, the howl of sirens, and the wail of banshees.

  “Cities are best,” Lianna continued as the next plume of smoke appeared. As one, they headed down Eighth Street, where two fire engines pumped water into the basement of a building with a party supply store on the first floor and apartments in the six stories above.

  “Frederick and I, many of the others, we find work as models. It pays well and suits our abilities. We age much slower than they do, and so we pretend for a while that it’s healthy living and occasional plastic surgery. But if we stay too long in the public eye, they notice. We build second and then third lives. I’m going to school to become a lawyer….” She pointed to the smoking building. “I know this place.”

  Liam heard murmurs from the band of sidhe. “This is Norman’s store.”

  “She got Norman’s store.”

  They halted twenty feet behind the plastic barriers. This fire was like a repeat of the last several. The flames had been put out by the men in black with reflective yellow bands. But the smoke, thick and delicious, spilled up from the basement and through holes pierced in the roof.

  “Wait!” Something shivered down Liam’s spine. The fine hairs on the back of his neck and arms prickled. He stopped and put his hands on Lianna and Frederick’s shoulders to keep them from moving forward. “She’s here!” he whispered, as seventeen humanoid sidhe and three who fluttered on stolen butterfly wings followed his gaze.

  He was not mistaken. They watched a pretty blonde teen, dressed for a ball in blue satin and lace, step across the barricades.

  “She glows with power,” Lianna whispered.

  “She has fed… a lot,” Liam replied.

  “Tell us,” Frederick said.

  “She feeds on us, on humans as well, perhaps. Though of that I’m less certain.”

  “She didn’t see us,” Lianna said as they watched the beautiful young woman glamour a firefighter. She took his arm, and he escorted her down the stairwell and into the basement of the smoldering building. On either side of them, a thick hose pulsed with pressurized water.

  The firefighter stumbled. “She’s doing something to him,” Liam said. That could be Charlie. Caution fled. She’s draining him.

  “Liam, no!” Lianna, Frederick, and others shouted as he broke ranks.

  Not heeding their cries, he ran to the barricades.

  A police officer approached. “Sir, no one can go in.”

  Liam met the man’s gaze. He smiled and nudged his glamour across the distance between them.

  A spark lit in the officer’s eye.

  “I must go in,” Liam said.

  “Of course….” The cop shook his head. “What am I saying? It’s not safe. You can’t….”

  “It’s okay.” Liam stepped past the barrier, and the dazed policeman, who’d never once found another man attractive, could not look away.

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No. You mustn’t. Stay here,” Liam said, aware of the danger. He looked from the policeman back to the band of sidhe, all eyes on him. He shook his head no. “No one is to follow me,” he said to the officer. “Do not let them follow me.”

  He nodded and clung to the connection with the beautiful violet-eyed man.

  “Thank you.” And Liam followed May’s footsteps down to the basement.

  At the bottom of the metal steps, he came upon the firefighter, who clung to life by a thread. He looked into the man’s wizened face. She’s stolen decades from him. “I’m so sorry.” It’s not Charlie… but it could be.

  He peered through the dense smoke for the pretty girl in her party dress. “You have to get out of here,” he whispered to the dying firefighter.

  “I must stay,” he answered in a dull voice. “She told me to stay.”

  Liam swallowed as fear trickled through his veins. She is too powerful. She has drained him and cast a glamour far greater than anything I possess. I have no chance. Old thoughts fueled his fear. I have to get out of here. I have to run. No… I will not run. He fixed Charlie in his mind. The first time he saw him, he thought he was an ogre assassin, and when he took off his helmet…. I started to love him then. A man who runs into a house on fire. I need that. I will be him. He will hate me for this, but I have no choice. I will be hard. I will be cruel.

  A movement up ahead, and he glimpsed her legs skipping up the stairs into the store.

  His eyes teared from the smoke as he passed the source of the blaze, a two-foot crater that glittered with a thick sugar-white coat of fairy dust, with parallel streaks, like finger tracks. Aware of dust’s narcotic and addictive properties, he knew she’d rolled dust bunnies. Odd. In all the time he’d been at her court, he’d never once seen her dusted. Why is she rolling bunnies? Has she become a dust head?

  He stared up the charred stairwell and looked for a weapon. What would Charlie do? He went back to the aged firefighter.

  “I need your ax.”

  “Take it. Why can’t I move?”

  “Because she glamoured you,” Liam said as he gently unbuckled the ax. The man’s bones, even through the thick material of his turnout coat, felt like matchsticks.

  “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “I hope not,” Liam said. “I’m going after her.” Without another word, he hefted the six-pound weapon with its steel pick on one side and blade on the other. He headed up.

  In the garishly decorated store above, with rows of melted rubber masks and shelves filled with fun-making party stuff, he found May. She crouched over the body of a man with flame-red hair.

  He raised the ax above his head as she ran a razor-sharp talon down the dead man’s sternum and sliced him open.

  Ax aloft, he inched closer as she scooped into the dead sidhe’s chest and tore out first his heart and then his liver. Without turning from her meal, she spoke. “You betrayed me once, Liam Summer. You will not again.”

  He froze. His breath caught in his throat. He had lost the element of surprise, and the distance was too great for a frontal assault. This is it. He dropped the ax, knowing he would have a single chance and that all depended on her believing him. In that instant he turned back into the thing he loathed.

  He dropped on bended knee. “No, my queen.” A lifetime as her whore had given him a front-row seat to all her machinations. If anyone knows you, it is I. “I am your servant and your slave. I am yours to command or to kill. Do with me as you will.”

  She rose from her blood feast and faced him. In her right hand dripped the sidhe’s stilled heart, and in her left, a large red-brown liver, still aquiver with life. With her jaw unhinged, she slurped them down, like oysters at a raw bar. She dabbed the corners of her mouth, pulled Alice’s face back into its original form, and eyed Liam.

  He felt the power of her magic as it washed across the distance betwee
n them. Alice’s luminous blue eyes shone on him. She pursed her lips and blew out a thin stream of smoke.

  Liam saw it coming. She’s casting a glamour. Frightened as he was, he remembered a lesson his mother had taught him. It had not saved her and his father but was one of magic’s most basic maneuvers—deflection. She’s too strong. It won’t work. Shut up and try! He imagined a thick wall of glass protecting him from her spell and reflected it back like a mirror. What you send to me, back at you, times three. What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  WITH HER mouth filled with the savory and salt of a traitorous sprite’s liver, May stared at her pretty Summer fey, still lovely but far more human than sidhe. “You are not to be trusted. Though ’tis a shame to rip you apart as I did your parents. Tasty as they were. And tasty as I’m certain you will be.”

  “I never lied to you. I am true fey, and we do not lie,” he said on bended knee.

  “You aided the Nevus boy. That was not what I’d ordered. You were to glamour him, seduce and enslave him, and then bring him to me. You did none of that.” Let’s see if you can be of use. She blew the glamour onto his silken head.

  “I brought him to you, my queen. I kept him safe so that you could possess his body.”

  May pondered as the smoky glamour wrapped around him. There is truth in his words…. He cannot be trusted. She studied his movements. “Look at me,” she ordered.

  He raised his head. Their eyes met.

  He is devious… but lovely. “The trip between worlds seems not to have broken you. If anything….”

  “Yes, my queen,” he said with the hint of an eyebrow raise.

  “Your human form pleases me. It will please others. But you cannot be trusted.” See how he looks at me. My magic is strong. He will love and obey me. It’s in his eyes. I cannot trust this lovely thing, but I trust my magic.

  “I am yours. I am yours alone. Do with me what you will. I will not resist. I am yours. I will do all you ask.” All the time he chanted in his head: What you send to me, back at you, times three. What you send to me, back at you, times three. He felt the strength of her magic as it sought to penetrate through his eyes, his nostrils, every opening of his body and the pores of his skin. He pictured Charlie. What you send to me, back at you, times three. What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  HIS WORDS touched a place deep inside May, a place she’d not felt since… the Hound. So lovely, my Liam. I see it in your eyes. This is truth. You will rule by my side. She weighed the obvious advantage of having her beautiful Liam to do her bidding. But more. His face, his eyes, how they stare into me. He loves me. And I’d never realized I have feelings for him… for Liam.

  She spoke. “The trip to the See, it changed you…. I dreamed of you in the Mist. You could have been there.”

  “I was, and I saw. I am sorry that you suffered.”

  “As am I.” She sniffed the air, and even through the smoke of fairy fire, she sensed it…. He has magic. “Tell me what powers you have here.”

  “Few,” he admitted. “I have my glamour, but that is all.” What you send to me, back at you, times three. What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  “You will do everything I ask of you.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  “And you will love me.”

  “With all my heart.”

  And you will share my bed…. “I require proof, Liam Summer. You must prove your fealty.”

  “Yes, my liege. Tell me what you will.” Hope, albeit faint, rooted. Her glamour failed.

  The police officer who’d tried to stop Liam from entering appeared in the door. “You two shouldn’t be here. This building’s not safe.”

  “Him,” May said.

  AT FIRST Liam heard whispers, like someone tapping on the door to his brain. But too concerned with the likelihood he was about to get his organs ripped out, he blocked them. Never dropping his reflective wall, he met her gaze and watched as her glamour, more powerful than any he had ever thrown, bounced back to her, its power magnified by his repel. What you send to me, back at you, times three. What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  The whispers grew as her eyes sought out his. I know that look. He kept his expression warm and interested. His tongue spoke in honeyed tones. “Yes, my liege. Tell me what you will.” The whispers, at first nothing more than hisses and random words, grew stronger. Whole sentences. Her thoughts. It surprised him, having concluded that while he still had the power of glamour, it was weaker and different in the See. I cannot read Charlie’s thoughts. I can read hers. She is glamoured. Her gaze reflected back love and desire for him. Not dropping his deflection, he listened to her struggle.

  Mustn’t trust him… but so lovely. So…. Her musings of the two of them together, entwined in a lover’s embrace.

  It was the first time since coming to the See that he could read a glamour’s thoughts, something that was a given in Fey. Her mind scrambled for a test of loyalty. He even sensed Alex’s sister, not quite awake, but… dusted. That’s what the dust bunnies are for.

  His resolve to kill the haffling wavered. There’s no other way. He felt May’s attention shift to the patrolman as a single word crossed her lips. “Him.”

  “Yes, my queen.” And rising from bended knee, he turned to the man who’d let him pass through the barriers.

  “You,” the officer sighed, still under Liam’s thrall.

  He looked at the man whose heart he was about to bind. He felt shame and hesitated.

  “Do it!” May commanded.

  He knew his next move would destroy the man’s life. He would leave his wife and children and be bound to him. There is no other way. She must not doubt my loyalty, and then, when she lets down her guard, I will kill the haffling, and then I will kill her.

  He approached the man, who stood frozen in the entry. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he placed his hands on either side of the policeman’s face and moved in for the kiss. “I am so sorry.”

  As his lips neared the befuddled officer, Charlie, with Finn behind him, ran through the door. “What the hell, Liam!” Charlie roared.

  Before the seal-the-deal kiss connected, Liam pulled back. “No! Get out of here, Charlie! Run!”

  May shrieked. “You should be dead. Burned to a crisp. And that one. I know you!” Her mind scurried over related facts as she looked from Charlie to the redheaded Finn. “This means the Nevus boy is alive. Tell me! And you! Child of the Hound, how dare you!”

  “Screw you.” Charlie stared down the teen in her party dress and heels.

  Liam pleaded. “Run, Charlie. Please…. Get out of here!”

  A commotion sounded from within the building. Feet pounded up the basement stairs.

  “Kill him!” May ordered. “If you don’t, I will, and then you, my handsome traitor….”

  Liam knew that, glamour or not, his plan was ruined. He either did as she commanded or died.

  From the basement, Lianna, Frederick, and the others appeared.

  “No,” Liam cried. He turned from Charlie, who seemed more hurt by the near kiss than the fact they were going to die, to May. Well, if this is it…. He met her gaze. “I will not kill Charlie Fitzgerald. I will not kill the man I love.”

  May’s expression clouded. She stomped her heel on the floor. “Then you die!”

  Liam felt her power as it crossed the room. Like the opening of a tunnel between worlds, time expanded. He strengthened his repel. What you send to me, back at you, times three. Over and over he repeated it in his head, just as he’d repeated it at his mother’s side. While long dead, he felt her presence. What you send to me, back at you, times three. He expanded its mirrored surface and willed it over Charlie, Finn, and little Nimby, astride the redhead’s shoulder.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  Under the weight of her power,
he felt and heard her thoughts. Far from anything fey or even human, but older, the hunger of a beast.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  What you send to me, back at you, times three.

  Her feet left the ground, and she floated toward him.

  Liam panicked. I can’t move. Her thoughts and her hunger clouded his mind. She is too strong. Charlie, I have failed.

  She displayed a talon-sharp finger. Her smile broadened. “Such a pity.”

  He detected his glamour still in her eyes. She loves me, and that is not enough. It will not stop her. He gasped as the daggerlike nail tore the flesh at the notch of his neck.

  “Such a pity.” Her eyes fixed on his, torn between bloodlust and the other kind.

  Time hung as blood trickled down his chest. Staring into her clear blue eyes, Liam heard another voice, Alice’s.

  “Help me.”

  It was faint, like a sleeper waking from a nightmare. With an inch between them, Liam pulled out his remaining trick. Putting everything he had into his voice, a lifetime of honing the art of seduction, he whispered, “If I am to die, my queen, let it be with your kiss on my lips.”

  Her smile brightened, and her paralytic magic faltered. Before she could gather her wits and reason why a kiss was not in her interest, he leaned in.

  As their lips met, Liam felt the glamour’s binding power surge. And for the first time, he felt no shame. While he didn’t know if it would work, he’d done all he could. He did not break the contact. He thought of Charlie. I have gone into the building on fire, Charlie. I have done it for you…. I have done it for me.

  Alice’s voice flooded him. Help me. Please, get her out of me!

  I don’t know how.

  Then kill me.