Garden of Dreams and Desires

  The bartender laughed. “Chickening out?”

  “No. Just making sure.”

  “Yeah, it’s fresh and it’s human. That’s why it’s $250 a pop.” He squirted the liquid into a pilsner. It oozed down the glass thick and viscous, sending a bittersweet aroma into the air. Even here in the VIP lounge, heads turned. Several women and at least one man radiated hard lust in his direction. The scent of human desire was like dying roses, and right now, Puncture’s VIP lounge smelled like a funeral parlor. He hadn’t anticipated such a rapt audience, but the ache in his gut stuck up a big middle finger to caring what the humans around him thought. At least there weren’t any fringe vamps here tonight. Despite his status as an outcast anathema, the lesser-class vampires only saw him as nobility. He wasn’t in the mood to be sucked up to. Ever.

  The bartender slid the glass his way. “There you go. Will that be cash?”

  “Start a tab.”

  “I don’t think so, buddy.”

  Mal refocused his power. “I’ve already paid you.”

  The man’s jaw loosened and the tension lines in his forehead disappeared. “You’ve already paid.”

  “That’s a good little human,” Mal muttered. He grabbed the pilsner and walked toward an empty stretch of railing for a little privacy. The air behind him heated up. He glanced over his shoulder. A set of twins with blue-black hair, jet lips, and matching leather corsets stood waiting.

  “Hi,” they said in unison.

  Eat them. Drain them.

  “No.” He filled his voice with power, hoping that would be enough.

  They stepped forward. Behind them, the bartender watched with obvious interest.

  Damn Sweets.

  The blood warmed in his grasp, its tang filling his nose, but feeding would have to wait a moment longer. Using charm this time, he spoke. “I am not the one you seek. Pleasure awaits you elsewhere. Leave me now.”

  They nodded sleepily and moved away.

  The effort exhausted him. He was too weak to use so much power in such a short span of time. He gripped the railing, waiting for the dizziness in his head to abate. He stared into the crowd below. Scanned for Nyssa, but he knew better. She only left Sweets’ side when she had a delivery. The moving bodies blurred until they were an undulating mass, each one undistinguishable from the next until a muted flash of gold stopped his gaze. His entire being froze. Not here. Couldn’t be.

  He blinked, then stared harder. The flickering glow remained. It reminded him of a dying firefly. Instinct kicked in. Sparks of need exploded in his gut. His gums ached, causing him to pop his jaw. The small hairs on the back of his neck lifted and the voices went oddly quiet, save an occasional whimper. His world converged down to the soft light emanating from the crowd near the downstairs bar.

  He had to find the source, see if it really was what he thought. If it was, he had to get to it before anyone else did. The urge drove him inexplicably forward.

  All traces of exhaustion disappeared. The glass in his hand fell to the floor, splattering blood that no longer called to him. He vaulted over the railing and dropped effortlessly to the dance floor below. The crush parted to let him through as he strode toward the gentle beacon.

  She stood at the bar, her back to him. The generous fall of sunlight-blonde hair stopped him, but the fabled luminescence brought him back to reality. So beautiful this close. He rubbed at his aching jaw. You’ll scare her like this, you fool. You’re all fang and hunger. Show some respect.

  He composed himself, then approached. “Looking for someone?”

  She tensed, going statue still. Even with the heavy bass, he felt her heartbeat shoot up a notch. He moved closer and leaned forward to speak without human ears hearing. Bad move. Her scent plunged into him dagger sharp, its honeyed perfume nearly doubling him with hunger pains. The whimpering increased. Catching himself, he staggered for the bar behind her and reached out for support.

  His hand closed over her wrist. Her pulse thrummed beneath his fingertips. Welcoming heat blazed up his arm. A chorus of fearful voices sang out in his head. Get away, get away, get away…

  She spun, eyes fear-wide, heart thudding. “You’re…” She hesitated then mouthed the words “not human.”

  Beneath his grip, she trembled. He pulled his hand away and stared. Had he been wrong? No marks adorned her face or hands. Maybe… but no. She had the blonde hair, the glow, the carmine lips. She hid the marks somehow. He wasn’t wrong. He knew enough of the history, the lore, the traditions. Besides, he’d seen her kind before. Just the once, but it wasn’t something you ever forgot no matter how long you lived. Only one thing caused that glow.

  She bent her head. “Master,” she whispered.

  “Don’t. Don’t call me that. It’s not necessary.” She thought him nobility? Why not assume he was fringe? Or worse, anathema? But she’d addressed him with the respect due her better. A noble with all rights and privileges. Which he wasn’t. And she’d surely guessed he was here to feed. Which he was.

  She nodded. “As you wish, mast—” Visibly flustered, she cut herself off. “As you wish.”

  He gestured toward the exit. “Outside. You don’t belong here.” Anyone could get to her here. Like Preacher. It wasn’t safe. How she’d ended up here, he couldn’t fathom. Finding a live rabbit in a den of lions would have been less surprising.

  “I’m sure my patron will be back in just a—”

  “We both know I’m the only real vampire here.” For now. “Let’s go.”

  Her gaze wandered to the surrounding crowd, then past him. She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and twisted her hands together. Hesitantly, she brushed past, painting a line of hunger across his chest with the curve of her shoulder. Get away, get away, get away…

  She was not for him. He knew that, and not just because of the voices, but getting his body to agree was a different matter. Her scent was so rich it numbed him like good whiskey. Made him feel needy. Reckless. Finding some shred of control, he shadowed her out of the club, away from the mob awaiting entrance, and herded her deep into the alley. He scanned in both directions. Nothing. They hadn’t been followed. He could get her somewhere safe. Not that he knew where that might be.

  “No one saw us leave.”

  She backed away, hugging herself beneath her coat. Her chest rose and fell as though she’d run a marathon. Fear soured her sweet perfume. She had to be in some kind of trouble. Why else would she be here without an escort? Without her patron?

  “Trust me, we’re completely alone.” He reached awkwardly to put his arm around her, the first attempt at comfort he’d made in years.

  Quicker than a human eye could track, her arm snapped from under the coat, something dark and slim clutched in her hand. The side of her fist slammed into his chest. Whatever she held pierced him, missing his heart by inches. The voices shrieked, deafening him. Corrosive pain erupted where she made contact.

  He froze, immobilized by hellfire scorching his insides. He fell to his knees and collapsed against the damp pavement. Foul water soaked his clothing as he lay there, her fading footfalls drowned out by the howling in his head.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  GARDEN OF DREAMS AND DESIRES

  look out for

  TRAILER PARK FAE

  by Lilith Saintcrow

  Jeremy Gallow is just another construction worker, and that’s

  the way he likes it. He’s left his past behind, but some things can’t

  be erased. Like the tattoos on his arms that can transform into a

  weapon, or that he was once closer to the Queen of Summer than

  any half-human should be. Now the half-sidhe all in Summer once

  feared is dragged back into the world of enchantment, danger, and

  fickle fae—by a woman who looks uncannily like his dead wife.

  Her name is Robin, and her secrets are more than enough to get

  them both killed. A plague has come, the fullbo
rn fae are dying,

  and the dark answer to Summer’s Court is breaking loose.

  Be afraid, for Unwinter is riding…

  Chapter One

  A Different Beast

  Summer, soft green hills and shaded dells, lay breathless under a pall of smoky apple-blossom dusk. The other Summer, her white hands rising from indigo velvet to gleam in the gloaming, waved the rest of her handmaidens away. They fled, giggling in bell-clear voices and trailing their sigh-draperies, a slim golden-haired mortal boy among them fleet as a deer—Actaeon among the leaping hounds, perhaps.

  Though that young man, so long ago, hadn’t been torn apart by gray-sided, long-eared hounds. A different beast had run him to ground. The mortals, always confused, whispered among themselves, and their invented gods grew in the telling.

  Goodfellow, brown of hair and sharp of ear, often wondered if the sidhe did as well.

  The Fatherless smiled as he watched Summer wander toward him through the dusk. She was at pains to appear unconcerned. His own wide sunny grin, showing teeth sharper than a mortal’s, might have caused even the strongest of either Court unease.

  Of course, the free sidhe—those who did not bend knee to Summer or her once-lord Unwinter—would make themselves scarce when the Goodfellow grinned. They had their own names for him, all respectful and none quite pleasing to him when he chose to take offense.

  Summer halted. Her hair, ripples of gold, stirred slightly in the perfumed breeze. Above and between her gleaming eyes, the Jewel flashed, a single dart of emerald light piercing the gloom as the day took its last breath and sank fully under night’s mantle.

  Someday, he might see this sidhe queen sink as well. How she had glimmered and glistened, in her youth. He had once trifled with the idea of courting her himself, before her eye had settled on one altogether more grim.

  The quarrel, Goodfellow might say, were he disposed to lecture, always matches the affection both parties bore before, does it not? The Sundering had taken much from both Courts, and that bothered him not a bit. When they elbowed each other, the space between them was wide enough to grant him further sway. Carefully, of course. So carefully, patiently—the Folk were often fickle, true, but they did not have to be.

  He let her draw much closer before he lay aside his cloaking shadows, stepping fully into her realm between two straight, slender birches, and she barely started. Her mantle slipped a fraction from one white shoulder, but that could have been to expose just a sliver of pale skin, fresh-velvet as a new magnolia petal. Artfully innocent, that single peeping glow could infect a mortal’s dreams, fill them with longing, drive all other thought from their busy little brains.

  If she, the richest gem of Summer’s long, dreamy months, so willed it.

  “Ah, there she is, our fairest jewel.” He swept her a bow, an imaginary cap doffed low enough to sweep the sweet grass exhaling its green scent of a day spent basking under a perfect sun. “Where is your Oberon, queenly one? Where is your lord?”

  “Ill met by moonlight, indeed.” She smiled, just a curve of those red, red lips poets dreamed of. There had been mortal maids, occasionally, whose salt-sweet fragility put even Summer to shame, and woe betide them if any of the Folk should carry tales of their radiance to this corner of the sideways realms. “And as you are an honest Puck, I have come alone.”

  “Fairly.” His smile broadened. “What would you have of me, Summer? And what will you give in return?”

  “I have paid thee well for every service, sprite, and have yet to see results for one or two dearly bought.” Summer drew her mantle closer. She did not deign to frown, but he thought it likely one or two of her ladies would take her expression as a caution, and make themselves scarce. They would be the wisest ones. The favorites, of course, could not afford to risk her noting such a scarcity, and so would stay.

  “Oh, patience becomes thee indeed, Summer.” He capered, enjoying the feel of crushed sweet grass under his leather-shod feet. A fingersnap, a turn, as if it were midsummer and the revels afoot. “As it happens, I bring word from a certain mortal.”

  “Mortal? What is a mortal to me?” Her hand dropped, and she did not turn away. Instead, her gaze sharpened, though she looked aside at the first swirling sparks of fireflies drawn by her presence. There was nothing the lamp-ended creatures loved more than her own faint glow by night. Except perhaps the Moon itself, Danu’s silver eye.

  “Then you do not wish to hear of success? O changeable one!”

  “Puck.” The fireflies scattered, for Summer’s tone had changed. In her sable mantle, the golden hair paler now as her mood drained its tint, her ageless-dark eyes narrowing so very slightly, the loveliness of Summer took on a sharper edge. “I grow weary of this.”

  “Then I shall be brief. He has worked another miracle, this mortal of science. There is a cure.”

  She examined him for a long moment, and the Goodfellow suffered it. There was a certain joy to be had in allowing her to think he quaked at the thought of her displeasure. Far greater was the amusement to be had in knowing that the Queen of the Seelie Court, Summer herself, the fount of Faerie—for so the bards called her, though Goodfellow could have told them where a truer fountain welled—had very little choice but to dance to his tune.

  She turned, a quarter profile of hurtful beauty, her black eyes flashing dangerous. The stars in their depths spun lazily, cold fires of the night before any tree was named. If an ensnared mortal could see her now, Goodfellow thought, he might well drop of the heartshock and leave the trap entire.

  “And what is the price for this miracle, sprite?”

  He affected astonishment, capering afresh, hopping to and fro. Under the grass was sere dry bramble, and it crunched as he landed. “What? I am no mortal tailor, to double-charge. All you must do is send your own sprite to collect it. The mortal longs for any breath of you, he entreats a word, a look, a sigh.”

  “Does he?” Summer tapped one perfect nail against her lips. There was a rosy tint a mortal might mistake for polish on its sweet curve, and it darkened to the crimson of her smile as her mood shifted again. Changeable as Summer, the free sidhe said. Unwinter was far less capricious, of course… but just as dangerous.

  “Welladay.” Summer’s smile dawned again, and she turned away still further. “Does his miracle perform, he may receive a boon. I shall send him a sprite, dear Goodfellow, and our agreement stands.”

  “My lady.” He cut another bow, but she did not see the sarcastic turn his leer had taken. “You do me much honor.”

  “Oh, aye.” A girl’s carefree giggle, and she moved away, the grass leaning toward her glow and the fireflies trailing. “I do, when the service is well wrought. Farewell, hob. I’ll send him a familiar face, since mortals are timid.” Her laugh, deeper and richer now, caroled between the shivering birches, a pocket of cold swallowing a struggling swimmer.

  “Mind that you do,” Goodfellow said, but softly, softly. He capered once more, to hear the dried brambles crunch underfoot, like mortal bones. He spun, quick brown fingers finding the pipes at his belt. He lifted them to his mouth, and his own eyes fired green in the darkness. Full night had fallen, and silver threads of music lifted in the distance—the Queen was well pleased, it seemed, and had called upon the minstrels to play.

  He stepped sideways, pirouetting neatly on the ball of one foot, and emerged in a mortal alley. It was night here too, and as he danced along, the breathy, wooden notes from his pipes arrowed free in a rill. Concrete whirled underfoot, the mortal world flashing and trembling as he skipped across its pleats and hollows. They did not see, the dull cold sacks of frail flesh, and only some few of them heard.

  Those who did shuddered, though they could not have said why. A cold finger laid itself on their napes, or in another sensitive spot, and the gooseflesh walked over them. None of them suited Goodfellow, so he ambled on.

  A little while later, a mortal chanced across his path—a sturdy youth, strong and healthy, who thought the Father
less a common, staggering drunkard. With the pipes whispering in his ear, luring him down another path, the mortal boy did not realize he was prey instead of hunter until his unvictim rounded on him with wide, lambent eyes and a sharp, sickeningly cheery smile.

  Yes, Goodfellow decided as he crouched to crunch, hot salt against his tongue, bramble did sound like mortal bones, if it was dry enough.

  Pleased by his own thoroughness, he ate his fill.

  Chapter Two

  Simulacrum

  Jeremiah Gallow, once known as the Queensglass, stood twenty stories above the pavement, just like he did almost every day at lunchtime since they’d started building a brand-new headquarters for some megabank or another.

  He was reasonably sure the drop wouldn’t kill him. Cars creeping below were shiny beetles, the walking mortals dots of muted color, hurrying or ambling as the mood took them. From this height, they were ants. Scurrying, just like the ones he worked beside, sweating out their brief gray lives.

  A chill breeze resonated through superstructure, iron girders harpstrings plucked by invisible fingers. He was wet with sweat, exhaust-laden breeze mouthing his ruthlessly cropped black hair. Poison in the air just like poison in the singing rods and rivets, but neither troubled a Half. He had nothing to fear from cold iron.

  No mortal-Tainted did. A fullblood sidhe would be uncomfortable, nervous around the most inimical of mortal metals. The more fae, the more to fear.

  Like every proverb, true in different interlocking ways.

  Jeremiah leaned forward still further, looking past the scarred toes of his dun workboots. The jobsite was another scar on the seamed face of the city, the skeleton rising from a shell of orange and yellow caution tape and signage to keep mortals from bruising themselves. Couldn’t have civilians wandering in and getting hit on the head, suing the management or anything like that.