"No, I told you I was just joking." Andre seethed.
"It was not funny." Her voice held an edge of condemnation, and Andre looked away from Jade as if he'd been burned.
"You." She turned her attention to Sean. "You know what I am?"
"Yes." The gun was heavy in his hands, but fear made him hold it tighter.
"How? I am not using glamour. This is true skin."
"You reek of magic."
"Really? Magic has a smell." She tapped a finger on her lips. "I'll have to fix that."
Jade pointed to Ashley, who sat slumped on the couch as if the last bit of strength had left her. "Get up and get my book. And I'll fix you and bug boy."
"Wait," Sean said. "What about Latreece? What did you give her?"
"You have it in your head that I'm a horrible, evil monster. I'm almost sorry to disappoint you. I gave the girl a harmless human root. It's no worse than any other vegetable. It'll help her gain a few pounds, regulate her cycle, and boost her self-esteem. And it'll do all of this naturally because she believes it will."
The relief Sean felt knowing Latreece would be okay vanished as Jade's front door swung open, and five figures stepped into the apartment. His hands shaking, Sean lowered the gun, his fear overwhelming his earlier confidence.
6
Galena
Living is Easy with Eyes Closed. - John Lennon
Queen Galena phased into the forest of the human realm while birds chirped incessantly, begging to be loved. The late morning sun, which both the human and fey realms shared, beamed weakly through the dense canopy of maple and oak trees. The smell of fresh rain was quickly dissipating with the rising heat. She couldn't hear the footsteps of her two personal guards walking behind her, but she knew they were there. After decades of training and fighting together, they were linked like shadows. Usually, they walked beside her, but today that honor went to her daughter. "Welcome to the human realm, Chalcedony," Queen Galena said.
Chalcedony beamed as she turned in a circle, her red eyes probing the forest. Queen Galena had been hesitant to bring the child, but the girl had begged and pleaded until Galena caved. Madoc, her closest advisor, had counseled against it. He believed Chalcedony was too immature, impulsive, and stubborn. He wanted her left in the fey realm until she'd outgrown those traits. Those habits could get her killed here. But he didn't see that she was also relentlessly determined. After months of questions about humans, human technology, and ceaseless begging, Galena had given in.
"Where are all of the humans, cars, and concrete?" Chalcedony asked as they walked through the trees.
Galena sighed. Perhaps Madoc had been right. "To make sure no human will see us, we phase into a forest. Usually, that means no humans and no human technology."
"Oh. I remember. Sorry." Hearing the agitation in her mother's voice, Chalcedony straightened and her smile disappeared. But wonder, excitement, and anticipation still emanated from her in waves. For all of Galena's training, she couldn't help but share the girl's excitement. If she were honest, she'd been looking forward to her daughter's first trip to the human realm. As a child, Gelena had been just as excited as Chalcedony to visit.
As they left the forest, they saw a short, dark-skinned man fidgeting beside a tan car. From the fear and nervousness Galena smelled radiating from him, she knew he was waiting for her.
"Are you the Fey Queen?" he asked once they were face to face. He glanced at Chalcedony and then to her shadows Mahal and Zanete.
"Who else would I be?" Galena had never been to Oklahoma. She only knew it was in the middle of the United States. The place was far from any portal, but rogue fey often traveled great distances, hoping to remain undetected.
But there was no place safe from her, or the other two queens.
The human bowed, showing her the top of his bald head. "I'm sorry. I had to make sure. My name is William."
"William," Queen Galena drew out his name, wrapping it in magic to compel him to tell her the truth, "if you cannot see us in our true form, why did you call?"
"I can't see past glamour, but I know the signs of," he hesitated, "fey. I have relatives who have suffered from the curse."
The man had just saved his own life. Queen Galena motioned towards the human's car. "Take me to this rogue fey."
The spaciousness of these apartments surprised her. The cities on the east coast of the United States where fey usually tried to hide were filled with humans stacked on top of each other. There was always someone in sight, which made the hunts cumbersome. She always had to plan meticulously. If there were rogue fey in this place, it would be easy to track them down without too many humans getting in the way.
William stopped at a building where a boy kicked a blood red ball against a wall. He was a year or two younger than Chalcedony. He stopped as soon as he saw them. "Wow," he said to their group. "Your ears look funny. You must be here for my momma."
"Is this it?" Queen Galena whispered to William.
"Yeah. Jade. She's his mother," William said. He had been confident on the way here, but when he saw the boy, his hand began to shake.
Queen Galena stared at the boy's ears. His ears were perfectly rounded. There were no scars or nubs to show that they'd been cut to appear human. And he didn't smell of fey. He must have been stolen. She'd encountered lots of fey who had taken human children to help fit in. "What's your name?"
"Coal. Are you looking for my mom?" he asked eagerly. "She already has company right now."
"I'm sure she won't mind some extra visitors. We've traveled far to see her," Queen Galena said. She killed humans who saw through glamour, but he'd have to wait. Right now, she was more curious about his so-called mother.
"This way," William said, leading them towards an apartment door with the number 180 on the front.
"Wait." Coal stared at Chalcedony. "Do you want to play with me? My mom says I have to stay outside when your kind is here. And since you're a kid maybe you should wait out here, too."
Chalcedony stared at the boy with her mouth agape, and Galena knew the last thing Chalcedony wanted was to stay outside. But maybe he had a point. "Stay here, Chalcedony," Queen Galena whispered in her ear. "Make sure he doesn't leave."
Chalcedony frowned, disappointment written in her downturned lips, but she did as she was told and turned towards the boy.
Queen Galena, William, and her shadows continued the few steps to the apartment.
Before they entered, she cast a spell. The words of intense magic would keep anyone from seeing or hearing anything in the apartment. The words didn't matter. It was the power and magic behind them that made most of her spells work.
For the next thirty minutes, any human nearby would see an empty yard and feel an intense desire to be anywhere but here.
Zanete took the lead. She turned the knob and nodded when it turned, unlocked.
They entered the house.
Queen Galena drank in the scene. Magic was everywhere. There must have been some type of barrier protecting the small apartment from the outside because the house was breathing powerful magic from its core. How did her waifs, who were supposed to feel any magic in the human realm, not know about this? How did she not feel it from outside?
There were five people in the room. Two appeared to be human, and she did not know what the other three were. Her senses said they were human, but their appearances told a different story.
"Who lives here?" she asked.
They all pointed to a woman with tightly coiled red hair and freckles. Galena looked to the human who had brought her.
"Yes, that's her. Jade." William's gaze darted back and forth between her and the others in the apartment, his nervousness growing.
"Who are these other people?" she asked William.
"They're just neighborhood kids. I think she's cursed them," he said, with a shaky, expectant voice, staring at the girl with snakes in her hair.
The woman they pointed to was the one who looked the most human. Galena pro
bably would have thought they were liars, only trying to draw attention away from themselves, but Jade grabbed the gun that one of the others had. She pointed it at Galena and pulled the trigger.
Stupid humans and their guns.
If she'd been a typical elf, a gun would have been enough to kill her, but she was a queen. She wielded the magic of a hundred generations of fey. Queen Galena focused her power on the bullet. Using her will, she propelled the flying metal backward. The redhead dropped to the ground, and the bullet lodged into the wall. Queen Galena phased beside the woman and placed her foot on the woman's neck, instantly cutting off her air supply.
"You obviously know who I am." Queen Galena lightly pressed on the woman's throat. She had to be careful. It didn't take much to crush a windpipe, and Queen Galena needed the woman to be able to speak. "Who are you? What are you?"
"I'm human. You can't touch me," Jade said with a brittle, raspy voice while she pushed against Queen Galena's foot.
"Your home is filled with magic. A human yielding true magic is impossible. What are you?" Galena used more force. Jade's eyes grew large and wide with the effort to breathe, and her face flushed blue.
Perhaps she is simply a human, Galena thought. But the smell of magic and power permeated the air. Magic felt foreign and out of place in this world of plastic, concrete, and metal. It was obvious that nothing was as it appeared in Jade's home.
After a minute, she released some of the pressure on Jade's throat, and words escaped from the redhead's mouth. "This is not pure magic. I only deal in herbs and natural remedies."
Out of the corner of her eye, Galena saw the abominations move towards the front door. She turned towards them while keeping her foot on Jade. "No one leaves." Knowing her intent, her shadows blocked the door. Queen Galena returned her attention to the oddity before her.
"What are you?" Galena asked once more, her impatience growing.
"I'm human," the woman repeated, gasping for breath.
Queen Galena picked up Jade and spun her around. She covered Jade's lips with her own, and Jade's eyes widened, this time from shock instead of pain.
Her lips were warm. They tasted of fear, fey, and magic. She was deliciously not human, Galena thought as Jade tried her best to escape Queen Galena's grasp. Whatever Jade was, she tasted immensely powerful.
As Queen Galena fed, she became aware of something piercing her skin. Somehow Jade had shifted her fingers into talons, and they were lodged in Galena's shoulders. If she hadn't been feeding, that would have been very painful. But with such a strong source of magic, Galena felt no pain. She felt nothing but ecstasy.
Galena watched as the woman's brown-tinted skin turned pale. Jade's short, kinky hair grew straight and long past her shoulders. Her ears extended and grew pointed. Lastly, her dark brown eyes turned red.
She had the red eyes of fey royalty.
The red of a queen.
Understanding dawned. Jade was not only an elf. She was also a shapeshifter.
Galena knew of only three shapeshifters, and they were all queens. Any other fey, she'd kill for what they'd done here, but she needed to know what and who Jade was.
She released the rogue, and Jade fell to the ground gasping.
Giddy from the magic, Queen Galena counted to five as she brought herself back from the intense high of the stolen magic. She turned to face the others in the room. What in all the realms had Jade been doing? She knew these were humans; but one had hair of snakes; another seemed to be morphing into a cockroach; and another was cursed and wilting, decaying by the second, a phantom sucking away her life.
"Were you experimenting with magic to make other shapeshifters?" Queen Galena asked the rogue.
Jade never looked up or bothered to answer the question. She cowered on the floor, chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. Still something told Queen Galena to fear her.
Always one to listen to her instincts, she kicked the rogue in the stomach and once in the head to make doubly sure she wouldn't get up.
She'd get the answers she needed from Jade later. Now, she had to focus on everyone else in the room. Galena had never seen anything like the living horrors in front of her. Not even in the torture chambers of the weavers.
It was old dangerous magic that had turned these humans into abominations. She stared at them each in turn, using the new wave of power she'd stolen from the rogue to render the atrocities powerless. She'd have to take them to the fey realm and study them. Until then, they'd be lifeless automatons, doing what she willed them to.
All but one.
"What are you? You are not like the rest," Queen Galena asked. The boy who appeared humans. The others huddled behind him as if he were the leader. As if he could protect them.
"I asked you a question. Why are you here?"
"We came here to force Crazy Jade to make us better." He met her eyes with steely defiance. His hands were balled into fists at his sides.
"Us? Is there something wrong with you also?"
"No, there isn't anything wrong with him. This is my son." William stepped between Queen Galena and the boy. "He shouldn't be here."
"This was the family member with the curse?" Galena asked. "Don't lie to me, because I'll smell it."
William's son spoke again, his voice full of hate. "I can't see you, but I see the others for what they are. You must be like her." He sneered at the transformed elf on the floor. "Able to hide behind something more than glamour."
The boy was much taller than his father, but she saw the resemblance.
Galena smiled. She loved unpredictable days. When humans and fey mixed, you never knew what would happen. "For telling me about the rogue, I'll give you a choice. Die or have your sight taken away."
"What do you mean?" the boy's father asked.
"Humans are not allowed to see us. So I repeat. You die, or I blind you."
The boy, to his credit, didn't try to run. "I don't want to die."
"So be it." She touched his eyes. Using her will coupled with magic, she extracted the fluid that helped him see. His teeth gritted against the pain as she pressed harder on his eyes. When she first tried this, most had died. But she had perfected the technique over the years.
She removed her hand.
When he blinked, she saw that his pupils had changed from black to white, telling her that she'd succeeded.
Queen Galena felt a brief pang of guilt when the boy's father began crying, but she reminded herself that she was doing the boy a favor. She usually killed humans who saw past glamour. With that in mind, her guilt vanished, and she faced her shadows. "We are finished here."
"What are you going to do with my friends?" The boy grabbed her arm, staring at nothing.
"I'm taking them with me. I need to find out what happened to them."
"But they're humans," the boy pleaded.
"Not anymore. I don't know what they are." She removed his hand from her arm. "But don't worry. I'll take good care of them."
7
Chalcedony
"We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?" asked Piglet.
"Even longer," Pooh answered. - Larry Clemmons
Chalcedony scowled while her mother and the others left her behind.
She wanted to be inside with all the action. She had begged for six months to go on a trip to the human realm and hunt rogue fey, but now instead of hunting, she was babysitting
"What's up? You want to play kickball?" the boy asked. His eyes were dark orbs of light, and Chalcedony wondered how many other humans had eyes so intense.
She sighed deeply, wishing again that she was with her mother. "What is kickball?"
"I kick it to you, and then you kick it back to me."
She'd seen plenty of children playing similar games in the fey realm, but she'd never played. There were never any kids around her home to play with. Well that, and they were all scared of her mother's wrath.
Taking Chalcedony's silence as a yes, he kicked her the ball. She ran tow
ards it and struck it so hard that the ball flew over his head and landed several feet away.
"Not that hard. You have to kick it directly to me," he shouted, running after it.
"My name is Coal. What's yours?" he asked, once he returned with the ball securely in his hand.
"Chalcedony."
"Kal-sa-da-nee." He said it slow like he was etching her name in his memory. After he was satisfied, he'd pronounced it right, he dropped the ball and kicked it.
She returned it, and this time it stayed on the ground. Chalcedony had to fight to keep the joy from showing on her face.
"See. It's easy," he said, triumphantly as if it was his achievement, not hers.
"Are you human?" Chalcedony asked.
Coal ran towards the ball and kicked it hard, but she'd gotten into the groove and stopped it.
He looked at the ball trapped underneath her foot. "I don't know," he answered, gnawing on his bottom lip and looking uncomfortable.
"Why don't you know?" she asked with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. "Is your mother human?" She returned the ball, and as before he stopped it with his foot.
"I'm not supposed to tell anyone this, but you have ears like hers, so I think it's okay." He nudged the ball gently with the tip of his shoe. "Sometimes my mom is normal, and she looks like everyone else, and sometimes she looks like you, with white skin and pointy ears."
Chalcedony was about to explain glamour and why his mother could be two different people when he stopped moving in the middle of a kick.
"What's wrong?" she asked, following his gaze.
The door to the apartment stood open, and Mahal, one of her mother's shadow guards, had an elf with long red hair slung over his shoulder. Her head and torso bounced limply from side-to-side like a dead person as she was carried away.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 175