Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

by Patricia Briggs

  Nick stopped at a small well-kept house near the base of Big Butte, the hill that had given its name to the town—despite not being a butte at all. He let himself in the front door.

  Thomas stopped on the porch. “If you want me inside,” he told the hobgoblin, “you have to invite me in.”

  The little fellow stopped where he was and looked up at Thomas. “You mean no harm to me and mine, you will swear it.”

  “I’m not fae. Oaths have no power over me, Nick,” he told the fae. “What I am is already damned.”

  The hobgoblin hissed and dismissed that with one hand.

  “Don’t throw Christian gobbledygook at me,” he said. “Margaret told me you would come, told me you would help. You are here, so that is the first, but I wonder if the second is true. Vampire. I served her father most of my life. I can’t afford to get this wrong.”

  The fae didn’t like vampires. Thomas would have left because, with one exception, he didn’t like the fae, either. But it hadn’t been Nick who had brought him here; it had been Margaret. For her, he would do what he could.

  “I owe Margaret Flanagan,” said Thomas, who was better educated about fae than he’d been a hundred years ago. He knew what he was admitting—and that the fae would take it very seriously. “What she did for me was far more than what little I managed for her. I swear I mean no harm to her or hers.”

  “Come in and be welcome,” said Nick after a pause, and turned to lead the way into his home.

  • • •

  There were four other people in the little man’s living room, waiting for them, along with a blazing fire in the fireplace that gave out more light than heat.

  One of the people, a big blond man, looked familiar, as though Thomas might have known him a long time ago. They were none of them human, and given that they were in a hobgoblin’s house, Thomas was certain they were fae.

  As soon as he entered the room on Nick’s heels, everyone stood up—almost everyone. The kid on the piano bench just relaxed a little more. Thomas judged him the biggest threat: the really powerful ones often disguised themselves as something soft and helpless.

  “Vampire,” said the only woman. She was tall and muscular and spoke with a Finnish accent. “Is this the one?”

  The big man’s nose wrinkled as if he smelled something foul.

  There was an old man—or one who looked old, since the fae could adopt any appearance that suited them. He peered at Thomas with nonjudgmental interest, which Thomas returned.

  “It is him,” said the boy on the piano bench. He was a beautiful young man, draped between the bench and the piano, his elbows on the cover that protected the keys. “Who else could it be? How many Chinese vampires do you think there are in Butte?”

  “This is Thomas Hao,” said Nick. “It is he who will find our Margaret.”

  He didn’t introduce the others—hardly surprising, as names were odd things for the fae. Even a nickname, if held long enough, had power.

  “Why does Margaret need finding?” Thomas asked.

  The woman and the big man dropped their eyes and looked uncomfortable. Silence hung in the air for a moment.

  “It is a long story,” said Nick. “Will you take a seat?”

  Thomas might be a vampire, but he had no way to judge the people in the room and was reluctant to sit down and put himself at a disadvantage.

  The boy’s smile widened as he slid off the bench and onto the floor. “Sit down, vampire, do—and the rest of you, too. Nick’ll give him the rundown and then we’ll see if she’s right about the vampire.”

  The piano bench was hard and easy to rise from, unlike the overstuffed furniture in the rest of the room. It was acceptable—and it told Thomas something about the boy that he understood that.

  Thomas sat on the bench. Once he was down, the fae took their seats. Nick sat on the floor opposite Thomas, though there was an empty chair.

  “Let me begin this tale in its proper place—with the Flanagan,” he said. “He was high-court fae. Do you know what that means, Tom?”

  “Powerful,” replied Thomas. “Though there is no high court any longer. There are only the Gray Lords, who rule all of the fae.”

  “Aye,” agreed Nick. “Powerful. Also old—and smart. A person didn’t survive long in the high court if he weren’t smart.” The little man looked down at his hands.

  “That’s not really where the story starts,” said the boy sitting at Thomas’s feet. “It starts with Butte. With fae who came here hiding among the humans. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that all the fae don’t get along together, will it, Mr. Hao?”

  “We vampires are the soul of brotherly love,” Thomas responded dryly. “I assumed that the fae were the same.”

  The boy laughed until tears ran out of his eyes.

  “It was not as funny as all that,” said the woman.

  “Brotherly love,” repeated the boy. “Ayah. I’ll remember that. Anyway, the fae came. From northern Europe and the British Isles mostly, like the people. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Cornish, and Irish—they all came.”

  Italian, too, thought Thomas. The Serbians, the Czech, the Ukrainians.

  The boy sat up straight now, his eyes on the woman and the big man, turned slightly away from Thomas. “Once upon a time, the Irish fae would have squashed them all, but then came the ironmongers and their Christ and they bound the old places. Left us crippled and weak.”

  “It didn’t hurt us as badly,” said the woman softly. “We have more iron-kissed among us, we Finns and Nordic folk.”

  “Iron-kissed?” asked Thomas.

  “Those who work metals: dwarves, hiisi—some of them anyway, metal mages. So for thirty years we controlled the land here, and among us was one, a hiisi, who . . . was not kind to the other fae.”

  The boy laughed as if he thought she were funny, too.

  She looked at him. “Most of us were too afraid to object.” It wasn’t an apology . . . not quite. “He had a talent for finding what you held dear, and then using it to make you do his bidding.”

  “Yes,” the boy said dryly. “You suffered too, didn’t you, you poor things.”

  She bit her lip and turned away. Apparently she was ashamed.

  “And then came the Flanagan,” said the old man. He might look fragile and aged, but his voice told a different story. It rumbled in Thomas’s ears—British with a hint of Welsh or Cornish.

  “I knew we’d get to him sooner or later,” said Nick. “Flanagan changed things.”

  “For the better,” rumbled the giant. “Even we could see that.”

  The woman snorted inelegantly. “He pushed the hiisi—this was an old and powerful hiisi—into summoning the Iku-Tursas. The Flanagan could have worked something out, but he pushed and pushed and would not compromise.”

  Thomas frowned. Iku-Tursas. The name sounded familiar. He’d had some friends in school: Juhani Koskinen, Matti Makela, and another boy who was also Finnish. They told him a story once.

  “The dragon,” Thomas said. “But I thought it was a sea serpent.”

  The fae looked at him in surprise, except for the woman, who smiled and sat back. “Most people don’t know Finnish stories.”

  “They didn’t grow up here,” said Thomas.

  “The Tursas is a little more than a mere sea dragon, vampire,” said the boy coolly. “It can take many forms. It attacked the Flanagan when he was down in the mines.”

  “No,” said the big man at the same time the old man did. The bench under Thomas slid forward a little bit in eagerness, as if it wanted to go to the old man. Forest fae of some sort, he thought, setting his feet down a little firmer.

  “It attacked the miners,” said Nick. “Playing with them a little. The place where they’d be working would start leaking water. It was the Speculator Mine—the one Flanagan was working f
or as a mining engineer. Modern, safe, well ventilated—the Flanagan insisted upon it.”

  “High-court fae always did love the silly humans,” murmured the boy as if to himself.

  The woman snorted again and reached out with a boot to nudge him hard. “I’ve heard you might come from high court yourself,” she said.

  He jumped up, fierce with indignation. “You take it back! You take that back right now.”

  She smiled at him. “Of course, I never believed it. Too much stupid, not enough looks.”

  He shook himself like a wet cat. “Damned piru,” he snapped.

  “Easy prey,” she purred.

  Piru, thought Thomas. Finnish fae, he remembered. But was it one of the witty demons prone to games of wit, or one of the air ladies who hung out and looked beautiful until something ticked them off? He looked at the woman and decided for the clever demon; she looked a little too substantial to be floating around.

  “It picked groups of miners with fae among them to frighten,” said Nick, picking up his story from where he’d left off. “Eventually one of them figured out that the water they’d been hitting wasn’t just an accident of geology. He took the tale to the Flanagan.”

  “He was supposed to charge off to confront the Finnish fae who was tormenting his people,” said the old man. “He would have, too, if certain people hadn’t gone to him and told him that what he faced wasn’t just any fae.”

  “There was betrayal on both sides,” said the woman. “Some did not think that the Flanagan was strong enough to keep his promises and it would be the less powerful fae who would suffer. Others looked to him for justice and a way out from under the hiisi’s thumb.” She rubbed absently at the fabric of the couch where she sat. “It didn’t matter. He went anyway.”

  “Aye,” said the big man. “As he had to, being who he was. But he went armed and ready instead of oblivious. The Flanagan, he wouldn’t back down for Tursas.”

  “Wait,” said Thomas. “The Speculator. The Granite Mountain fire? The mining disaster, during World War One?”

  “1917,” said Nick. “When the fire broke out, we knew he’d won.”

  “In true Germanic fashion,” said the giant morosely, “I suppose he had.”

  “He never came out,” Nick told Thomas. “When the fires went out, we pulled out the bodies. Some of them were fae, most were human; some you couldn’t tell. We didn’t find the Tursas or the Flanagan.”

  “Afterward,” said the woman, “we met. All of us. Summoning the Tursas from its exile, as if he were a dog to come to his master. If the Flanagan hadn’t . . . hadn’t done whatever he did, it might have eaten the world.”

  She believed that, Thomas thought.

  “The fae killed him,” rumbled the old man. “That hiisi who summoned the Tursas. He’d used so much power to do it, he was vulnerable. Even his allies turned on him. All the fae that were here: Cornish, Irish, Finn, German, Norwegian, Slav, and that little guy from Italy. We killed that hiisi who thought that his power was more important than the survival of all.”

  “We thought that was the end of it,” the woman said. “Time passed. The city started to die, people left, and most of us left, too. Just a few stayed.”

  “But that hiisi had taken the Flanagan’s daughter to make certain of his victory if the Flanagan, by some miracle, had destroyed the Iku-Tursas,” the boy said. “Searches were made but . . . there are thousands of miles of tunnels. We thought her long dead. Then two years ago, she started to talk to us,” said the boy. “A high-court trick, that, getting into your head. Unpleasant.”

  Thomas remembered.

  “She’s quite mad,” whispered Nick. “Quite mad from all those years trapped in the earth.”

  “So what do you need me for?” Thomas asked.

  “We need you to find her and kill her,” said the big man.

  “It is what she wants,” said the boy, answering Thomas’s raised eyebrow. “She tells me so, over and over. I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “She’s in the mines.” Nick’s voice was pensive. “We don’t have an earth or iron-kissed fae left here to find her—not that they had much success when they looked before.”

  “And even if we did, she has a haltija.” The woman looked out the window, and Thomas noted absently that the fae needed to replace the double-paned window because ice had formed around the edges of the inside of the glass.

  “A what?” he asked.

  She waved a hand. “A guard. This one is a kalman väki, we think—a dead man’s spirit. He was probably killed and set to guard her when she was taken.”

  “A kalman väki,” Thomas said slowly. “How do you know that, since you can’t find her?”

  “She told us.” The big man glanced at Thomas searchingly and then looked away. Thomas knew he wouldn’t read anything but mild interest in his face.

  “We’d have to destroy it to get to her.” The woman closed her eyes. “Even if we could find her, we could not get by that. A kalman väki holds the power of mortification: it kills with a touch; not even the immortal are immune. But you aren’t exactly immortal, are you?”

  “The mines were mostly filled when the company shut them down.” The old man pulled his beard lightly. “The old timbers were rotting through and the tunnels collapsing. Was a time you could take a step off your back porch in the morning to find a hole four or five hundred feet down that hadn’t been in your backyard when you went to bed. One tunnel collapsing on top of another, on top of another. Was quite the thing to fill them—expensive and time-consuming both. But some of it is left, where the tunnels were cut into granite mostly.”

  “So,” said Thomas. “You want me—a vampire—to go looking in the old mines to find Margaret Flanagan, who has been trapped down there for a century. Because vampires are so good at . . . what? Dissolving into mist and sinking through the earth? I think you’ve been watching too many bad horror movies.”

  “She was never the same after she met you,” Nick said. “She had such a touch with the earth: it came to her call and did as she bid. She had a little of her father’s gift for fire, but it was the earth that knew her. She was able to call you here. If she can do that, she should be able to guide you to her down in the mines, where her power is greater.”

  “Hello, vampire,” said the big man softly—and his American accent turned lilting and softened. Thomas had only talked to Margaret for a few hours, one day out of the many years he’d lived, but he recognized her intonations in the man’s deep voice.

  The other fae moved away from the big man, but they didn’t look startled. He knew that they would not perceive his surprise; his father had taught him well.

  “Or ill,” the big man said, proving that her gift of reading thoughts that Thomas did not speak was still hers. The fae’s clear blue eyes were not quite the same shade as Margaret’s.

  “They think I can find you,” Thomas said carefully. “That because you called me here, you can lead me through the tunnels.”

  “Like to like,” she answered him. “I don’t know why you heard my call, just that you did. I could not have given you your wish if you had not been earth-touched.”

  He knew what she meant. How could he not? He remembered that sense he’d had of how she was a part of the earth that had held them together in its maw. He’d sensed it because the earth spoke to him, too.

  Vampires develop abilities, the Master had told him. The Master could make humans do as he wanted even before a blood exchange—a rare gift, and useful.

  Thomas’s mother’s family were scholars, back as far as their family history went—all the way, the stories said, to the dragon scholar who knew everything that dragons knew and turned into a man to see what men knew. Thomas’s mother had told him that her family was founded by a dilong, an earth dragon. “Only a story,” his father had said, rolling his e
yes. He had never cared for anything that reminded him that his wife’s family had higher status than his.

  Thomas looked at the assembled fae. “Why do you say that she is mad?” he asked.

  “My father’s blood runs in the earth,” the big man whispered in Margaret’s voice. “His fire consumes me. When I emerge I will burn them all to dust and beyond.”

  “We think the Flanagan died two years ago,” said the woman in subdued tones. She did not look at the man who sat next to her and spoke with Margaret’s voice. “That he gave her his last strength so she could call out and find someone to help, so she could be saved, but it was too late.”

  “What would you expect of her?” asked the boy. “Alone for nearly a century. Trapped with only the dead for company, under the earth. Chained, without food or water. Neither dying nor living. And now she has the power of her father, who killed the Iku-Tursas.” He shivered and hugged himself. “She will kill us all.”

  “No,” said Thomas, coming at last to his feet. “I shall not allow it. The girl I knew would not want your deaths on her conscience.” She had rescued him, a vampire who had hurt her, and still she rescued him. She did not need the blood of these fae on her hands.

  • • •

  It took him four days to find a way to the place she’d been kept. As the old man had promised, many of the tunnels he’d known were collapsed or filled, but his sense of the ways beneath the mining town was as good as it had ever been. He found a path.

  As before, though, that earth sense he had did not betray her to him. It was the blood he’d taken from her. Like calls to like, she’d told him. While all the fae around her thought she was talking about her magic.

  He rose in the absolute darkness and felt the shape of the last obstacle that stood between him and his goal. It was not just winter’s chill, it was colder than that. He found himself wishing for a light to see the väki, but he’d never needed a light down here, so he hadn’t brought one.

  “Why come you smelling so of death?” It was a woman’s voice; he hadn’t expected her to be a woman.

  “I am vampire,” he told the kalman väki. “I bring death with me.”