Suri opened her mouth. Closed it again.
The words wouldn’t come. She’d never had a family. Had no idea what Amber was feeling right now. Loving someone that strongly was foreign to her. It was like seeing a Ferrari in a commercial and thinking, yea, that would be nice. Knowing it will never happen. Being an orphan kind of fucks you up that way.
There were two thousand humans living in Lodum. Working, making cakes and chocolates, toys and clothes that fae loved to buy. The Faerie King had allowed them to move in fifty years ago. Humans could set up shop and sell their wares, as long as they stayed confined to their section of the Merchant District.
Hate humans as they might, the fae love their Earth chocolate.
They were crazy for all desserts and pastries, really. The demand for Earth goodies was enormous. As was the price fae were willing to pay. But go on a date with a human? Be seen holding hands? Never. It would get a fae exiled, or killed before the law could be carried out.
Bastards. All of them.
Suri clenched her jaw so hard she thought her teeth would crack.
I’ll make them pay. Every last one of them.
A couple of fae, cheering on a nearby rooftop, glanced at the carriage. Their eyes lingered on Suri for a moment before turning back to the flames. It was only a matter of time until they gave her their full attention. Realized there was a human among them. One left alive.
Suri’s blood was boiling. She stared daggers at the fae from behind her visor. It took every ounce of willpower not to smash them into tiny pieces. She shut her eyes.
You can do this. Stay calm, remember your spells. Save who you can and get home.
The other option was to go nuclear. Blast the living shit out of Lodum. Kill as many fae as Suri was able to. The dark part of her mind wanted to do just that. Badly.
Suri’s most powerful spells came to mind. The sort ungifted write horror stories about. She wasn’t suppose to know them, but she’d dabbled in black magic at the Academy. She knew some things. She felt the words scrabbling like spider’s legs to get out of her throat. Unleash their evil across Lodum.
Not yet.
Suri buried the urge and opened her eyes. The elemental spell had finished, leaving a disk of ice attached to the bottom of her boots. She did a little hop, positioning herself at the edge of the hill. Ahead, the street dropped off quickly. A steep descent leading straight down to the flames.
3
The ice began to melt. Suri wobbled, and slid forward. Slowly, over the edge, then suddenly plunging down the cobbles at break-neck speed.
“Woah!” This was not what I planned!
The rooftops of the grand, old houses on either side of the street were packed with fae. Dozens upon dozens, celebrating a mass murder. One by one, the groups of fae turned and pointed at me. Shouted angrily as Suri flew past, whooping and flailing her arms to keep balance.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a fae throw open the front door of his quaint, old English style home. He rushed after her, holding what looked like a kitchen knife. Sounds of doors slamming shut, running feet, told her more were on their way. Through the pillars of smoke, the sky was colored deep orange and purple. The last hour of daylight.
Suri was only half aware of what was happening on the street. Her knees were bent in a skateboarder’s crouch. Arms wide for balance. She had somewhat stabilized, but now had a growing mob of fae chasing after her.
Because the human district was in the poorer section of the city, Suri could be reasonably certain that none of them were gifted. That wouldn’t be the case for long. Instinct told her that there was magic involved in the fire. Otherwise it would have spread across the city.
A spell had contained the fire, maybe even started it in the first place. That made Suri wonder: Did an angry mob start the fire, or was it planned? Who did this?
She didn’t have time to ponder the question. Near the bottom of the hill, the flames reached higher and higher. The smoke was thick, black and oily. There were screams, loud and clear. Real screams, of humans desperate to escape—and with nowhere to run.
The ice disk beneath Suri’s feet had almost fully melted. It was thin. With a crack, it splintered apart, sending her sprawling to the ground.
Her head bounced off the cobbles like a basketball, scuffing the side of her black helmet. Her vision blurred. She picked herself up, but was moving slowly. Too slowly, as if she was underwater. There was a ringing in her ears. A line of barbed wire pain flashed through her elbow.
A glance over her shoulder showed the street filling with fae. Angered, yelling. Holding knives and hammers, candlesticks, bedposts, crowbars. Anything and everything that could be used to kill the human witch. They moved like a colony of ants, set to devour anything in its path. Or, barring that, to drive its enemies into the flames. Once again the black magic spells came to mind. Once again Suri pushed them back down.
It was hard to breathe through the smoke. She muttered a short incantation, bringing to life a gust of wind that constantly swirled around her, clearing the air and allowing her to see the way forward.
Suri was at the edge of the human district. Loudly came the pop and hiss of engulfing flames. The crash of collapsing buildings. The low, steady roar of burning wood. It was all right there. Terrible, beyond her worst nightmares. In that moment she wanted to turn away. Run like a frightened rabbit for the nearest waygate and teleport back to San Francisco. And maybe she would have, if she’d had a home.
Suri had an apartment. A physical location where she slept, ate and kept her belongings. It was shelter, and only full of life because Amber was a bubbly extrovert who forced her to do things and have fun. Amber kept little plants about the place. When they died, she would walk five blocks to Lili’s Flowers and buy new ones. She was happy. She played chess with her grandfather once a week. But the apartment wasn’t her home, either. Her home was with her family, wherever that may be. That’s a real home, and what Suri would never have.
So maybe she would have run away, if she’d had somewhere to go. Left Paulie and the others to figure it out on their own. Heck, it wasn’t her fault that fae were batshit crazy. That’s just life. It would be foolish to drag herself into this mess.
I guess you have to count her as a fool.
Suri charged into the flames. Smoke billowed all around, a shroud of darkness and death that her wind spell barely kept at bay.
How the heck am I going to find Paulie in this mess?
She leaped over a fallen beam of wood. One end of it was charred, and glowing orange. She ran on, down the street, face sweaty and dirty with soot. She wiped away strands of hair stuck to her forehead and spun around. Searching, searching…
The streets were empty. The screams had stopped. Everyone was gone. Suri had expected to find humans running around in panic, fighting to put out fires.
A piercing shriek split the air. Overhead, the Faerie moon cut through the shroud of smoke, washing the ground in silver light.
Was I too late?
Suri raced toward where she thought she’d heard the shriek. Her elbow throbbed every time her feet pounded against the hard cobbles.
Grunting came from inside a nearby shop. The scrape of claws against wood. Suri skidded to a stop and drew her sword. Its name was Sorrow. She was almost as dear to Suri as Blackbird. The polished blade caught the reflection of the flames as she held it low and barged inside, jumping over the broken door.
A few hours ago the shop had been normal. A happy chef behind the counter, puttering away at their craft. Sweeping, washing the windows. Eager to please their customers. Now, it was a mess. Suri’s wind spell cleared the air, revealing blood and broken glass on the hardwood floor. A row of dessert cakes rested on the counter. Somehow they were untouched. The little yellow and blue flowers decorating the top looked like they had been made this morning. Curls of sugary, white frosting ringed the edges.
The shriek again, from upstairs. So close and loud that it made her hair stan
d on end. Goosebumps shivering down Suri’s body from head to toe. She’d never heard a sound like that before—the horrified cry of a woman in mortal danger.
Suri bolted up the stairs. “Ignitus!” she shouted, and her other hand erupted with red death magic.
At the top of the stairs was a second floor. This was where the shopkeeper lived. A short hallway ran down its length. It was a small place. Only a bathroom, bedroom, and closet. And outside the bedroom door, pounding on it with gnarly, clawed hands, was a ghoul.
The thin, wooden door was already cracked. Holes appeared in several places. Wide enough for Suri to see the young woman inside. She had put her bed against the door to block the ghoul from getting inside. But she didn’t look like she had a plan. She sat against the far wall, eyes wide in terror. She held a rolling pin in two hands, tight against her chest. A puffy chef’s had sat lopsided on her head, brown curls of hair poking out the edges. She could have been Suri’s age. Maybe a bit younger.
“Foul creature!” Suri yelled, trying to distract the ghoul.
It worked. The ghoul removed its one hand from where it had smashed through the door and turned around. A horrible stench came off it, like it had been rolling in the sewer behind a butcher’s shop. Rotting flesh hung from its arms with the soggy grossness of a wet paper towel. Its claws were long, dirty and curved. The pentagram of the necromancer who had animated the beast was branded on the centre of its chest, burned right through its dark, matted fur.
Ghouls are not native to Faerie. They are not natural creatures at all. It takes black magic to create one from a corpse. Someone in Lodum had done just that, and sent it into the human district. Another mystery.
Suri wouldn’t get any answers from the beast. It couldn’t even think, much less talk. Its jaw hung low, revealing yellow fangs and a long tongue dripping with drool. Beady, hungry eyes snapped on her position from beneath its heavy brow.
All Suri could do was put it out of its misery.
The ghoul rushed down the hall, less than a dozen paces away. Suri let her sword hang long. The ghoul’s stumbling, awkward gait gave her time to calmly raise her other arm, palm out and facing down the hallway. Suri’s heart beat once, twice, and she let loose the death magic.
Red beams of light spiralled out from her hand. When they reached the ghoul, they wrapped around it, constricting it and making it fall to the floor of the hallway with a heavy-boned thud. The ghoul screamed and thrashed as the spell did its work. It severed the connection between the ghoul and the necromancer, and soon the body stopped thrashing. It became still, once again a normal corpse.
In different circumstances, she would have taken the ghoul to Maggie. Maggie was the only gifted priest in San Francisco. Her speciality was dealing with necromancers and the undead. She has a special spot behind her church, next to a tall oak tree, where she buries bodies that necromancers have fouled. It might all be superstitious nonsense, but Suri believed in something greater than herself. Greater than Earth, and Faerie. Some people call it God, or Heaven. She just thought of it as the Divine. It centered her. Kept her on the right track, when she might otherwise do harm. Lord knows she’s been tempted. So many people are atheists these days that Suri is often taken for a fool. Saying prayers, blessing dead bodies. Believing in anything outside your smartphone…It’s all nonsense, the internet says. But she liked it, all the same.
The situation being what it was, Suri left the ghoul to burn with the rest of the human district. In fact, she didn’t even give it a second thought. She stepped right over it, put her sword back in its sheathe, and smashed apart the bedroom door with a magically charged kick.
The woman screamed again. Rushed at Suri, rolling pin held high for a devastating strike. Suri grabbed it before it could ding her helmet. “Hey, it’s ok!” she said. The woman didn’t seem to be able to hear her, because she gave a walloping kick right on Suri’s shin. “Ow! Stop!”
She kicked Suri again. Right on the shin, damnit! It hurt more than when Suri wiped out on the street earlier. She was losing patience. Buildings burned all around them. There were more people to rescue, and not much time to do it. Any second the roof could collapse, ending their short little lives.
Suri wrestled the rolling pin out of the woman’s hand, who struggled with surprising strength. “No! Get away!” she shouted. But at the same time she beat on Suri’s chest with little fists. The bravery of the ordinary person never ceases to amaze.
Perhaps she felt Suri’s chest, because she stopped and backed away. A curious expression was written across her face. Suri finally got her helmet off, letting her mane of red hair hang free.
“Look, I’m human,” she said, holding out her hands in a non-threatening gesture. “I’m here to rescue you.”
“No,” said the woman, backing away. “You’re one of them. This is a trick.”
Suri rolled her eyes. Neither of them had time for this.
“Listen!” she shouted, fixing the woman with her best glare. “We need to get out of here. What’s your name?”
The woman’s chest rose and fell as she took a deep breath. She blinked, as if coming back to reality. “Clarissa. I’m sorry.” Then she burst into tears. Her sobs drowned out the rest of her words.
“For goodness’ sake,” Suri muttered. She took Clarissa firmly by the hand. Led her back down the hall, down the stairs. A peek out the front door showed the street filled with even more smoke than before. There was nothing to indicate another ghoul was nearby.
“Clarissa. You need to stay as close to me as possible. We’re going to find the others, and get out of here. Ok?”
“Ok,” she sniffled. “Wait!” she ran back inside, grabbed one of the cakes on the counter and rejoined Suri on the street.
All right, then…
Suri didn’t say anything. The human mind does strange things under stress. Clarissa had certainly never experienced anything like this before. She had only seen it in the movies. Nothing to prepare her for coming face-to-face with her worst nightmare.
Clarissa paused in the middle of the street. Right where any baddie could see them. Frowned as a gust of smoke got through Suri’s wind spell and darkened the side of her cake. Suri sighed, waved her hand and swept away the smoke. That seemed to satisfy Clarissa. She was doing a good job of following, but Suri worried about the vacant look in her eyes. She was acting as if there was nothing unusual about the fire.
Suri knocked on the door of a building that was still standing. “Hello?” she called. No one answered. “Hello!” as loud as she could. Nothing.
They continued searching for buildings to check, but most of the district was blocked off by fire and fallen buildings. There were only so many places they could go. They turned the corner of the street, and the sign for “Paulie’s Bakery,” written in large, cursive pink appeared through the smoke.
The front of the bakery was blackened from fire. The display window was broken. A pile of freshly baked bread lay mixed with the broken glass. Smushed, as if by running feet.
Paulie could still be alive. Suri wanted to tell Amber, but it would be cruel to give her false hope. Expecting the worst, she stepped inside.
4
Inside Paulie’s shop, the first thing Suri saw was a piece of graffiti. A red trident, each spike stuck with the head of a stick figure. Childish, sloppy work. It dripped down the wall, a line leading to an otherwise clean rug set in the middle of the floor.
No doubt the work of fae. Thankfully, it was not drawn in blood. The paint was still fresh. When did the attack happen? Suri might have missed it by minutes.
Clarissa grabbed Suri’s arm. Made a little peep noise.
Turning, Suri saw a pack of goblins walking down the street. There were five of them. They didn’t see her yet because they were walking bent over. On all fours, large noses almost touching the ground. Tracking humans by scent. Their sickly, green skin was covered in bumps and warts. Only the leader, a foot taller than the rest and standing in the back, ke
pt an eye on the street. A sword too big for him hung from a loose fitting belt at his side. His chest was protected by a rusty plate of armor.
Suri ducked, grabbed Clarissa by the hand and pulled her down. Clarissa looked like she didn’t have a worry in the world. Suri grinned in disbelief. Damn, girl. Give me some of that bravery.
But no. It wasn’t bravery. Something was wrong with Clarissa. Suri feared the ghoul’s attack had damaged part of her mind. She was unstable. Unpredictable. They needed to get out of here. Suri could handle herself in tough situations, sure. But she was no superhero. One wrong move and bam. And goblins were tricky enemies. Oddly resilient to magical attacks. Nimble, highly effective when attacking as a group. Suri’s skill with a sword was nothing to sneer at, but five opponents at the same time? While protecting Clarissa? Even her ego shook its head at that one. And if goblins were out, that meant the trolls, ogres and vampires were close behind. The situation was starting to snowball out of control.
Was it ever in control?
Suri shook her head. Firmly gripped Clarissa’s hand and crouch-walked behind the counter. The goblins couldn’t see them now, but that didn’t do anything to mask their scent. One of the goblins let out an excited yelp. They knew they were close.
Clarissa was watching Suri with big doe eyes. Suri met her gaze. Clarissa smiled. Sniffled because of the smoke, and rubbed her nose with a finger. Then she turned back to her cake. She checked it over to make sure it was ok. Her chef’s hat rested crooked on her head.
Suri might lose an arm to the goblins. Suffer terrible wounds. But she would survive. Not Clarissa. Saving people with magic, hiding, covering your trail—that’s Amber’s speciality, not Suri’s. The more juice she put into her spells, the more things go boom. For the first time in a long time, Suri wished she had paid more attention at the Magic Academy. Learned different spells, instead of running around and hunting beasties.
Faerie Mage: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 1) Page 2