Faerie Rising: The First Book of Binding (The Books of Binding 1)

by A. E. Lowan

  How could she tell Jessie that she was an outcast, and that Winter was quickly losing her ability to protect her? That Winter should have her tattooed in magical ink under her left collarbone with the Mulcahy Mark, two interlocking spirals branding her as wizard property. Chattel. “They won’t come,” she said quietly, once again putting off the inevitable. She turned and lied to her apprentice’s face, feeling like a coward. “The wizards won’t come, Jessie.” Not as long as Winter was there to stop them.

  Jessie’s eyes narrowed as she looked over Winter’s shoulder, and as Winter turned to see the Army coat hanging behind her Jessie’s hand shot out to grab Winter’s left wrist. Before she could stop the girl, Jessie jerked up her sweater sleeve. The healed bite was etched in livid pink lines into her pale skin. “Really?” she asked, incredulous.

  Winter snatched her wrist back, pulling the sleeve down over the marks. “I’m fine,” she said, moving around her apprentice to return to the front of the store.

  Jessie was close behind her. “And how long were you going to not tell me that you got hurt last night?” she accused.

  Winter picked up her empty frappe cup and threw it into the trash. “You didn’t need to know. I handled it.”

  “I should have been with you.”

  Winter’s mind flashed back to the mysterious power surge. What if Jessie had been with her and it blew? “No.” Her chest clenched at the very thought of Jessie being in danger. She could not bear to lose her, too.

  Jessie practically hopped with frustration, and opened her mouth to continue arguing.

  Winter’s head swiveled to face the shop door, and she held up her hand to silence her apprentice. Someone was outside. “Hold that thought. I’m sure you’ll remember to scold me later. Now, get the door and then take the bank bag and on your way back fetch us breakfast.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes at being thwarted, but obeyed.

  Winter sighed, then mentally braced herself. Her long day was beginning. “Jessie, also fetch two more frappes, please.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was a goddamn fortress. Etienne stood on the sidewalk and scowled at the tall stone wall studded along the top with twining Art Deco rose vines and “decorative” iron thorns. The thorns were each as long as his hand from middle fingertip to heel and came to lethal-looking points. A few feet to his left the iron vines swarmed to form a gate that stood open as tall as the wall and wide enough to march ten men abreast through without bumping elbows, the work of a skilled blacksmith. In one corner was a half-decorative wrought iron web, complete with wrought iron spider.

  It was mocking him.

  The gate guard wasn’t mocking him. He was downright threatening; glowering from behind the glass of the small guardhouse, making it very clear that Etienne, in his ponytail, worn jeans, and brown leather jacket was not the sort of person who he would let pass. Etienne squelched the urge to throw an obscene gesture.

  Two lanes passed in and out of the iron gates and the occasional car rolled slowly by, the mortal driver handed the glowering guard a white rectangle, and the guard would open the white barricade and let them roll through. Bisecting the lanes was a large black stone obelisk with water running down the sides, and “Moore Investments” in raised silver lettering. Etienne knew he was in the right place. The magazine picture in his pocket, taken from inside the walls, showed two men, one young and one older, standing in front of a glittering black glass tower. And there it was. Rising high into the sky, far enough from the wall to be in easy view, was the tower itself, sleek and gleaming smugly in the autumn sunshine. Of course, somehow it hadn’t looked quite so huge in the picture. Somewhere in that tower, he hoped, was Cian’s friend Senán.

  He needed more information.

  He turned and walked down the glittering wet sidewalk, the stone wall keeping up with him until he got to the corner and a busy intersection. On all sides buildings rose, most no taller than a handful of stories, none as magnificent as the gleaming black tower. It was one of those faux forest corporate reserves, an island of enterprise surrounded by a sea of over-priced cookie-cutter houses, with trees and walking paths and tiny shopping centers serving fast lunches and trendy beverages, all catering to the needs of the neatly dressed men and women who rushed about with cell phones in hand, ignoring it all.

  Etienne crossed the busy street with a tide of about a dozen suits, all talking, none to each other, and found Cian sitting on the motorcycle in the coffee shop parking lot where he had left him, helmeted face turned towards the black tower. Even under the jacket, Etienne could tell the boy’s shoulders were tight with tension. “What do you see?” he asked Cian.

  “Glamour.”

  Etienne turned and faced the tower himself. The members of his mother’s court had been fond of saying that his human blood was a contamination that muddied the pure, clear spring of his sidhe magic – poetically cruel, but basically correct. Etienne could not see through faerie glamour at all, because of the glamour couldn’t even see magic was in use here, and what magics he could wield were weak and limited. Cian, on the other hand, had no such contagion. “How much?”

  Cian turned the visor towards Etienne. “The whole thing. There’s nothing on this side of the wall, but the gates and grounds and tower are all warded, and the glamour covers the entire thing. It conceals the wards.” He turned back toward the tower. “There is another layer of glamour on the tower, beneath the wards... but I can’t see what it’s covering.”

  Etienne let out a low whistle. “That’s a hell of a glamour.” In all his years wandering across lands both faerie and mortal, he had never heard of such an extensive glamourie, especially one cast over Cold Iron. It spoke of an incredible amount of power. And it also begged questions. Was the glamour to hide Senán? If so, why? He was widely rumored to have died years ago. But, if the glamour was not being used to conceal a supposedly dead sidhe prince, what was it hiding?

  “It looks like it’s dormant.”

  Etienne raised his brows. “How so?”

  Cian pointed at the cars moving through the gate. “They’re not setting anything off. I can see them moving through both glamour and wards, but nothing is happening. It’s like…” he groped for an explanation.

  Etienne understood. “Like they’ve been turned off for the day.” With so many mortals moving in and out, even as powerful a magician as Midir the Proud could not key active wards to such a number without revealing himself for what he was – and secrecy was much too important to all the fae for him to do such a thing. The most efficient method would be to simply have guards watching the grounds during the day when the mortal workers were about and activate the wards at night.

  Guards Etienne could deal with. A small, hard smile tugged at his mouth. “Stay here,” he told Cian.

  He felt Cian tense even more. “Where are you going?” the boy asked.

  “Just to get more information. Stay put and keep your eyes open.” Maybe he would get lucky and they could end this right here.

  Etienne crossed back to the wall, excitement quickening his steps, and continued to follow it down and away from the main gate. He wanted to be as far from that gate guard as possible. He had no white rectangle, so he had to make his own, less obvious way inside.

  The wall led him several hundred paces away, around another corner, until it jogged inward suddenly to make way for a large tree with a small sign. He tucked himself into the alcove formed between the tree and the wall, then looked up and around. The wall rose at his side, the tree towering above it. People moved about up and down the sidewalk on the other side of the tree, going about their business, but none turned to look at him with any curiosity. He ran one hand down the bark, and tucked his body as far behind the tree as he could. While he may only be half sidhe, he was still half sidhe… He crouched and waited for a lull in the foot traffic, then sprang nearly to the top of the wall, catching his weight with one hand on the iron vines, the other hand braced against the tree trunk. Mindful of th
ose vicious thorns, he pulled himself up until his boots were secure on top of the wall, and then eased himself over the rose vines, dropping silently to the soft ground on the other side.

  The cry of alarm did not rise from the sidewalk, but from the other side of the bush he landed beside. Etienne snapped out an arm and reeled in a man in a brown canvas jacket and hat, an MI logo printed on both, and tightened his grip on the man’s throat. The human struggled under his strength, hands clawing at Etienne’s wrist while Etienne looked carefully around to make sure the human had been alone.

  After a moment, confident that they would not be disturbed, Etienne spun the man about and caught him firmly in a sleeper hold. “Sorry about this,” he said softly in his accented English and squeezed down, cutting off blood flow to the man’s brain. Within moments the human hung limp in Etienne’s grasp and he released him gently to the ground. Satisfied the human was still breathing – it had been a while since Etienne had been forced to incapacitate a mortal and they were more fragile than the fae – he checked him over for anything useful. Immediately, he found one of the white rectangles and grinned. He turned it over in his hand, wondering what magic it held. Featureless, it seemed to be made of this “plastic” that was new since he had last spent time in the Mortal Realm. It was only a few inches wide and about the thickness of a quarter. Fascinating.

  He pulled off the man’s logoed clothing, pulling the jacket on over his own and tucking his ponytail up under the hat. The man should be unconscious for a while – long enough for him to get a good look around, and maybe even find Senán.

  Etienne slipped out from behind the bushes and strode boldly across the open grass towards the gleaming black tower. Nothing drew a guard’s eye like skulking, but few and far between were the ones who questioned a confident man who looked like he knew what he was doing and belonged where he was doing it.

  He just hoped he could figure out exactly what he was doing by the time he reached the tower. Few things inspired less confidence than floundering around looking lost.

  Finally, he spotted a small party of people entering the tower via a side door and watched them brush their rectangles against a black box that stuck out at about waist level. A tiny light turned from red to green and his sharp hearing picked up the click even this far away as the door unlocked itself as each person was admitted. Red and green made sense – he was long accustomed to traffic lights. He made his way towards the door.

  Acting as if he did this every day, he pulled out the white card and brushed it against the black box.

  The red light gleamed steadily.

  Etienne paused in consternation. This was supposed to work. He glanced at the white rectangle and brushed it against the black box. Again, the red light refused to change. His jaw clenched.

  Did everything in this place mock him?

  He was about to try a third time when he heard, “You new?” from behind him. He turned to face a middle-aged woman with a friendly face, the stench of cigarettes wafting heavily from her. He nodded, not trusting his voice to not choke on the sudden assault on his sensitive sense of smell. She returned the nod in understanding and pulled out her own card. “So many new people lately, huh? Security really needs to get on the ball about the pass keys.” She swiped and the door clicked to green. Etienne held it open for her. She smiled at his courtesy, and stepped inside. “So… rumor mill has it we’re having a major expansion. What have you heard?” she asked in that quick fashion as he followed her into a hallway, dark after the bright sunshine, and she looked back at him with curiosity. English only being one of Etienne’s languages, he heard several terms he did not understand and so replied with a shrug. She waved negligently in his direction, turning away again. “Well, I guess Grounds Management wouldn’t hear too much, huh?” she said with very mild disappointment.

  Etienne gave her back an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I guess not.”

  She turned back, plucked brows lifted. “Oh, wow… great accent. Where are you from?”

  Etienne fell back on his usual explanation. “Ireland, but my father was French.” There, no one could complain about how muddy his accent was to humans. Besides, it was basically true. His birth language was Faerie Gaelic, and his father had been a medieval French troubadour. His old friend Arthur Reynolds was to thank for that explanation. He warmed, remembering the young wizard he had met in that bombed-out farm house on the front, how they had shared the camaraderie of being other than human, of keeping their secrets from the other soldiers. Arthur had been an easy man to like and he had shown him his picture of his pretty wife back home in Seahaven. He was, what, in his eighties now? Nineties? Not grievously old for a wizard. When this was all over, he would look him up. It would be criminal to be this close and not.

  They emerged from the windowless hallway into a massive central lobby. Etienne extended what senses he had to their limit, listening and looking for any direct threat, any sign of Senán. In the center of the room was a large round desk with framed pictures that moved all in a line below the counter. A man in the same guard uniform as the one at the gate sat within, watching a certain frame closely and talking to a small black box in his hand. His back was to them as they entered the lobby. Etienne waved his thanks to the woman and set off in a random direction away from her. The building was huge, how was he…

  “Hey,” the woman said.

  He turned and looked back, hiding his irritation. He needed to lose her.

  She tapped her white rectangle. “Don’t forget to get this fixed before you get locked out again.” She pointed to the round desk. “Just go talk to Gary. He’ll get you another temp key while security gets yours sorted out.”

  Etienne smiled at her and nodded his thanks. He turned to make his way in the direction of the round desk, all the while listening for her footsteps to take the cigarette smell with her. Finally, he heard her brisk steps carry her away from him and he changed his course to pass the round desk and head deeper into the building. He did not want to talk to “Gary” about getting a “temp key.”

  “What’s he doing?”

  Etienne kept walking, just in case they weren’t talking about him, but perked his ears to the new voices. He slid his eyes towards the round desk. Gary had a companion, now.

  “He’s just sitting there, watching the building.”

  Etienne’s chest squeezed tight. He changed direction, moving closer to the desk, and saw that both men watched the one frame now. He shifted to get a better view.

  Somehow, there was Cian, sitting on the back of the motorcycle where he had left him. He was watching the building, just like he’d told him to. His helmet rested against one thigh and his face was in full view to the world.

  Etienne clenched his jaw, biting back a curse, and his heart hammered in its now tightened cage. Gary held up a finger to his ear and talked into the small black box again. “Yeah, go ahead and see what this joker’s up to. I don’t like the looks of him.”

  Etienne turned and made his way back toward the windowless hallway as calmly as he could manage. Adrenaline pumped, urging him to run, to save Cian from capture, but he kept his steps steady. He could not afford to alert the building’s master of their presence. He did not know what it meant for the guards to have spotted Cian with their picture frames, but he did know he could not let them take him at any cost.

  Once he made it to the hallway and heard no footsteps, Etienne allowed himself to open up and run. The spells on the gun rig granted him the full speed and strength of a sidhe, so he covered the distance within mere seconds. In the open, he would need to be much more circumspect – mortals might be watching. Breaking out into the sunlight, he crossed the grass in a brisk walk, heading back toward the tree alcove where he had come over the wall. It put him further from Cian, but gave him a secure place to cross where he would not come into direct confrontation with the guards before he absolutely had to. He passed the still-unconscious form of the human grounds keeper, checking his breathing as he passed
, and leapt to the top of the wall.

  This time he was not as delicate getting over the rose vines and in his haste he tore his jeans and lacerated his hands. Cursing softly, he dropped to the dirt behind the tree and shot out from behind into foot traffic, eliciting a startled cry from a woman on a phone. He immediately settled into a ground-eating lope, keeping close to the wall to bypass the denser sections of people, and raced the wall back to where Cian waited unaware that Midir’s guards were about to descend on his position. Each rushed breath repeated the boy’s name in his head. Cian… Cian… Cian…

  As he rounded the corner and came within sight of the coffee shop parking lot, Etienne spotted several guards emerging from the Moore Investments gate and head across the street towards Cian. The boy had slipped off the back of the bike and stood, helmet in hand, eyes turned up – he did not see them. Throwing caution to the wind, Etienne broke into a run, leaning into the rig’s magic to push just a little more than human speed to get to Cian’s side. The quick movement drew Cian’s eyes to him and the boy smiled.

  “Helmet!”

  Cian tilted his head to the side. The guards saw Etienne running and began to run themselves to intercept.

  Etienne pointed as he ran. “Helmet! Now!”

  Cian’s eyes widened with understanding, and he pulled his helmet on just as Etienne reached him and leapt onto the driver’s seat, rocking the bike off its kickstand with his hands and magically tripping the ignition as he let gravity take him down. The engine roared to life as he shifted, the bike bucking under him as it objected to Etienne’s unorthodox start. Cian jumped back on the bike behind Etienne and threw his arms around his waist, finally realizing they had company. Etienne ignored the Harley’s protests and gunned the bike, eliciting a small squeal from Cian as the bike kicked up a bit and forcing the guards to scatter out of his way as he tore out of the rain-slick parking lot. The wind of their sudden acceleration whipped off his stolen hat and his short ponytail fluttered behind him as he wove through traffic, putting the gleaming black tower and Midir the Proud behind them.