The Violent Fae

by Phil Williams

  “I’ve read the reports,” Obrington said, cutting mercilessly into a sausage, “including Ward’s weighty new edition. So I’m not gonna insult anyone’s intelligence, or time – let’s agree the Sunken City doesn’t add up and the fairies might be important. That it might be prudent to take our time before enacting Protocol 38. And you, for reasons currently beyond me, have some keen insights into that. Correct?”

  “It’s my natural curiosity,” Pax said. “I couldn’t do your work with all the questions your lot have left unanswered.”

  Obrington looked to Ward, inviting her response. She cleared her throat, and Pax picked up an uneasy edge in her voice. “Management tend to believe we can do our jobs without overextending ourselves. Understanding is not an absolute requirement for keeping order.”

  Pax didn’t let her look away, trying to weigh up the conviction in the assessment. Then said, “Management have royally fucked us all for a fair while, haven’t they?”

  Obrington snorted through a mouthful of food, seeming to approve, and waved his fork for Ward to continue, flicking brown sauce onto the table. Ward waited as the waitress returned with septic-smelling coffee, then said, quietly, “We’re starting to uncover the full breadth of the grugulochs’ influence. How much we don’t know. The truth is, without your . . . curiosity . . . we might never have recognised the fox in our own henhouse.”

  Pax watched Obrington, as Ward was clearly saying it for his benefit. He shovelled more food into his mouth and worked his bovine way through it, offering no input.

  “Okay,” Pax said. “I can contribute more, but I want to be careful about how we involve the Ministry. I’d like to borrow Sam, but otherwise have no one else nearby. And I’d like you to press pause on provoking the Sunken City creatures. Definitely don’t go near the FTC again.”

  Obrington stopped eating. “Funny, I thought you came to help, not make demands.”

  “I am helping.”

  “You’re aware the creatures have been moving erratically? Approaching some very compromising positions?”

  “Yeah, and I’m concerned that simply killing them might make that worse.”

  Obrington looked sideways at Ward, and she fumbled for a compromise. “Perhaps if we knew where –”

  “I think I can work with the Fae,” Pax said. “But not their leaders.”

  Obrington sat back. “You’ve experienced their lunacy. They’re a bloody nuisance.”

  “They’re more than that,” Pax insisted. “The horde go after the Fae with more passion than anything, but the blue – the grugulochs never sought them out, not since they were driven above ground. Your leaders were corrupted a long time ago but only took action against the Fae last week. Only now have you seen a creature venture towards them, right? The grugulochs was scared of them.”

  “They developed weapons dangerous to it.” Obrington shrugged. “So have we. Only difference is we had no inclination to use them before.”

  “The bigger difference is you’ve no idea if yours work, do you? You’re finding your existing tools aren’t all you thought them to be. Understanding the Fae is the only sure way to get a complete picture here.”

  “Alright.” Obrington put his fork down, like this detail was enough to cost him his appetite. “Say you’re right. Say you’re not just, for example, buying time to get your little fairy mate back? The one accused of killing our people? Let’s say –”

  “Oh, piss off,” Pax cut in. “She did not do that. I’m doing this because you’ve no idea the damage you might do messing with powers you don’t understand.”

  Ward averted her gaze. Hiding a smile? Unfazed, Obrington said, “Implying you do understand. Why would that be?”

  “I’m smarter than you? Then, it doesn’t take a genius to see co-operation with an otherworldly race with miniature technology might benefit us.”

  He clicked his tongue in thought, then deferred again to Ward. She said, “I’ve always promoted a better working relationship with the Fae. I don’t see the harm in exercising caution.”

  “You think it’s cautious to work with the people that gunned down eight agents?” Obrington said.

  “We’re looking for the fairy Lightgate,” Ward said. “That’s –”

  “Don’t care. You keep this up, I’m stuck lurking in this backwater. Wasn’t I clear about that? I don’t like to lurk anywhere longer than necessary. Least of all places where you’re exciting a dormant force of evil or two that we’d rather stay dormant.”

  “It has been for decades,” Pax said. “You can afford a few extra days.”

  “I also don’t like having a civilian presume to tell me my business,” Obrington said. “This is really how you do things?” Ward straightened up, not meeting his eyes but steeling herself to defy him. As she took a breath to speak, he continued, “Don’t know why I’m even pretending this is my rodeo. Whatever, you take Ward. Get yourselves murdered. Anything else you need, seeing as you got all dressed up to meet us?”

  “Yeah.” Pax ignored his attempt to wrong-foot her. “I want to know where your Management stand on genuinely offering the Fae something.”

  “Something like asylum? Some part of these tunnels we’ll shortly be clearing out?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s an option,” Obrington said, plainly. “London are open to it, considering the mess our system of miscommunication created. Couple of backbenchers in Parliament might push Fae rights into a carefully hidden reality. Protected under UK law. Without revealing them, of course.”

  Both Pax and Ward gave him open-mouthed responses. Where had this man come from? Pax said, “You’re serious?”

  “Theoretically. But it’s a big ask, for a very unclear reward, besides general harmony. We’re talking about legitimising terrorists. Based on the whim of a pretty young lady with a hunch? I’ve merely been exploring options. Only seems sensible in case our people were gunned down by one rogue agent. But Ward, Ordshaw’s your screwy town. You’ve gotta live with it, I’m just here to put a lid on the bleeding chaos. When that’s done, you can make those screwy calls yourselves.”

  It took Ward another moment to recover, unable to believe her luck. “Of course. I want to do whatever we can to open channels to the Fae –”

  “Fine.” Obrington waved a finger in the air, calling over the waitress, and eyed Pax again. “But I’m not done with you. Before you two get yourselves killed by insects, you can at least pay lip service to our primary goal. We’re tripping over mysteries left and right.”

  “Like the black spots?” Ward suggested, brightly. Obrington eyed her in a way that said that wasn’t necessarily what he had in mind, but that it warranted consideration. She explained to Pax, “We’ve found pockets of unreported activity, or unreported inactivity, more accurately. Places where energy isn’t manipulated. But we don’t have the manpower to check all this out – the Bartons are ready to help out, and I’ll be meeting with them once we’re done, but we can’t throw them into this without at least some initial exploration ourselves.”

  “And here we’re all sitting not pulling our weight,” Obrington said. An idea had started ticking in his mind, a way to lean on Pax and make a nuisance of himself. “We’ll take a look ourselves, shall we? Investigate one of Ward’s curiosities and give me an idea that you really are in this to help, all in one.”

  Pax bristled at the sudden demand. Obrington’s magnified eyes tested her resolve. His new venture was not optional. And Ward wasn’t much better, eagerness trumping concern as she was getting every treat under the tree all at once. Pax in the tunnels and a potential meeting with the Fae, what a day.

  “Can I eat my eggs, at least?”

  Footsteps stirred Casaria. Not from sleeping, he told himself, only rest.

  He scrambled up, fumbling at his torch. The switch didn’t work; batteries dead after so long waiting. He pocketed it and used his phone. Stopped and listened. Yes, the tap, tap of footsteps, people approaching. At least t
wo; talking in low voices.

  Holding his hand over the phone screen to hide the light, Casaria checked the time. Hell, it was morning, no wonder he’d dozed. Should have returned to the office and called for backup or proper surveillance. But those idiots would’ve sent someone like Landon to scare off intruders by breathing too loud.

  Casaria, on the other hand, would catch them red-handed. He’d haul them into the office by the scruffs of their necks. See what Sam Ward thought of him them.

  As the footsteps got closer, he made out what was being said, the voices rolling around the tunnel. “– not a bloody gorilla, I keep telling you.”

  “Like a gorilla, I said. That covers a lot.”

  “It doesn’t cover this, see. It’s some Big Foot level shit.”

  Casaria recognised the voice. It had sifted in and out of his mind while he’d been tied to a chair, waiting for injury. One of Pax’s uncultured, violent associates. Low and slow and continually churning out ridiculous ideas.

  “Things mutate living underground, don’t they? It’s true what they say about alligators in New York. And pigs under London – monstrous things.”

  Casaria edged along the wall, hand going back to his torch. Heavy enough to knock a man down; and he’d knocked this particular man down before. But he’d also been knocked down by him. Beaten, a toe severed . . .

  “– taken to speculating,” the second voice said, a nasal tone, higher-pitched, someone small and disagreeable. “Take a blood sample and prove it’s just something escaped from a zoo. You’re tired, eyes not adjusted down here.”

  “I know the difference between sleep-induced psychosis and seeing something unnatural, Vulcher. Would’ve saved us all time and effort if that were taken as given.”

  The footsteps tramped past as Casaria tensed. Moving in a parallel tunnel, close but then gone, echoing around a corner. They were looping to the intersection. Casaria pressed himself back into an alcove, a foot or so deep.

  They pattered on. Turning, getting louder again.

  “You sure this is the right way?” the whiny one, Vulcher, asked.

  “I’ve got a keen sense of direction,” the bigger one answered. His voice came through clearer, along with the heavy footsteps, as he drew into the same tunnel as Casaria. Torchlight bobbed past. “Twelve lefts and three rights. Didn’t I tell you it was about a twenty-two-minute walk? How long’s it been?” Which thug was he? The ashen, ugly one or the infuriatingly blond one? Casaria wasn’t sure which face he’d rather rearrange.

  “Twelve lefts?” Vulcher echoed. “In that order? One wrong turn and –”

  “I know what I’m doing,” the thug said. They finally passed the alcove, and Casaria froze. The ashen one, with his ugly, stony face and threadbare denim dungarees, filled the tunnel, stooped. A smaller figure followed, a scampering silhouette in the bounced-back torchlight.

  The thug mumbled something about trust as they passed, and Casaria braced himself to go after them. A quick step behind the little one, clock him with the torch, a sharp punch to the thug’s jaw. That’d do it. Only he’d lose the element of surprise on the small one.

  Their footsteps were retreating and Casaria hadn’t moved.

  He’d race up behind them, a knee to the little one’s back, carry the momentum forward and bowl the bigger one down. They’d grapple, but he’d knock the man senseless.

  The talking got quieter as it became more distant.

  They’d hear him now, hear his approach. He couldn’t run after them.

  He couldn’t.

  Casaria realised his heart was beating fast. What in hell. He’d waited all night, and they were getting away. They had got away.

  He closed his eyes. What was going on.

  3

  Pax watched Obrington on his phone through most of the journey underground, tapping away like an addicted teen trying to beat a high score. Hell, maybe that’s what he was doing. He led them to an unlit stairway that must’ve gone down fifty steps at least, and they followed his phone light onto another corridor. Pax was glad he was distracted, because with the tension in this place she had no desire to talk.

  Finally, Obrington replaced the phone with a small torch, barely the length of his palm but startlingly bright. A handful of doorways sporadically lined the brick hallway.

  “That one?” Obrington asked, and Ward checked against a map on her phone. She looked as anxious as Pax felt, watching the walls like she was looking for something. But this was safe, Pax told herself. The “anomaly” was a place where nothing went. A vacant lot in a system otherwise populated by fiends. And she had the company of the Ministry’s finest.

  Obrington pushed their chosen door and it didn’t move. From the look of it, it had been closed for a very long time. He leant his shoulder into it, using all his weight. It cracked open and Ward flinched, a little cloud of dust puffing back over them. Obrington entered into darkness and summarised: “Huh.”

  Pax looked in herself, trying to see around him. The cold stillness was oddly noticeable, considering it was already so still and cool in the corridor. Obrington took a step further and Pax followed, feeling the sensation that had made him say huh. It was like taking a sharp intake of breath.

  His torch lit up a large space. A hole in the rock of the earth, unadorned, without the brick or concrete that lined much of the Sunken City. The chamber was roughly spherical, though jagged around the edges, like someone had extracted a giant round boulder, and the doorway entered onto a ledge about halfway up, over a drop of some ten feet.

  Obrington waved the torchlight back and forth. Nothing there but this vast, empty sphere. Ward crept around Pax to see for herself.

  “Never seen your Sunken City described as cave-like,” Obrington commented. “Tunnels, man-made, that’s what they say. Any other parts tap into caves?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ward said.

  Pax stayed near the door. The ledge was barely a foot wide, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to climb back out if she fell. But that wasn’t her main concern. The place felt weird. There was an emptiness to it. A painful emptiness.

  Ward said, “There’s no other break in the walls.”

  “Like whoever was digging down here found an air pocket,” Obrington said.

  “I don’t think . . .” Ward went quiet, as if short of breath. She held a hand up in front of her, into the room, to feel something more.

  “Dying to hear your take.” Obrington turned to Pax, having waited what must have been an acceptable time for Pax to draw Serious Conclusions. About twenty seconds. Pax wasn’t sure what to tell him. Ward’s face expected something, too. The dug-out space served no apparent purpose, but she could, deep in her body, sense something wrong with it. It was colder than the surrounding tunnels by degrees, and – it was like looking at a flat lake. Eerily calm, with hidden depth. Capable of great change with the slightest touch. Pax sensed something in its silence, too. Or was it the absence of sound? The expectation that she should hear something?

  She let out an uncertain comment, just to say something: “Meditation chamber?”

  “For monsters?” Obrington said.

  “Why not.”

  “Right.” Obrington moved back out into the hallway. “There’s something off with it, I think we can all agree on that.”

  “Yeah.” Pax left quickly, now he’d set precedent, with Ward just behind her. Obrington closed the door and Pax tried to ignore his expectant look, to focus her senses. It was suddenly hard to reimagine the feeling from seconds before. “Did it feel cold to you?”

  Shrugging his big shoulders, Obrington took his phone out again. Back to work or whatever addictive app he had. “Not especially. Notice anything else? Let’s hear you deliver the same insights that cut down the Raleigh Commission and the grugulochs.”

  The big texting goon said it deadpan, disinterested. Pax replied, more firmly than necessary, “I felt nothing.”

  Obrington looked up. “Nothing?”

  �
��Literally,” Pax said. “An absence. Emptiness. Didn’t you feel it too?”

  “Uh-huh.” He slapped his beefy free hand into the wall before concentrating back on his phone. “As opposed to out here. You feel something different?”

  “We never claimed Pax was psychic,” Ward intervened with an awkward laugh. Essentially informing Obrington that they were hiding something. He didn’t look up again, pausing in his typing to read something. Pax was curious herself, despite his manner. Wondering if she did feel something beyond general disquiet.

  Carefully, she placed her palm against the moist brickwork, and inhaled, drawing in. Ordinary, lifeless brick. Pax concentrated harder. It wasn’t lifeless. There was something there, moving. She could imagine it, like worms in the ground. The same way she felt the blue screens when they were active, only less clear.

  “It’s different,” Pax said. Able to draw that conclusion at least. “That room was different to out here. Lacking something.”

  “Huh,” Obrington said, finally sounding interested. Pax was about to elaborate, if she could, when he explained his surprise. “There’s been an alert. I have to go. We can pick this up later.”

  “Go?” Ward exclaimed. “We’re just –”

  “Turns out there is someone in the tunnels,” Obrington said. “Casaria’s called for backup, and we’re closest. Did you know he was still down there?”

  Ward’s stunned look said she didn’t.

  “Guess he spent the night.” Obrington straightened up, getting into action mode. Ward had her own phone out then. “Probably just a bum got in because we’re spread so thin – I’ll sort it out. Meantime, Ward, this place seemed harmless enough, your civilians might as well throw themselves into the others.”

  “I’ve got an alert, too,” Ward said, distracted by her phone. “But it’s about the horde. Changing direction. Maybe they got unsettled by the intruder?”