Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Darius is up to his neck in this mess with the Enforcers,” I said quietly, meeting Mary’s eyes. She nodded silently, holding her friend as she sobbed.

  “Can you contact the Council now?” I asked Holly, who shook her head.

  “The first things those fuckers did was break my phone,” she told us. “Without the protocols from it, I can’t reach them.”

  We sat there in quiet for a long time, Mary holding and comforting her friend while I tried to solve our growing puzzle. Darius had his part in this plot—a seizure of power? As Speaker, he could take the Clan out of the incipient war, leave it a clash between the Enforcers and the Court.

  That would leave the Court weak enough that assassination would appear to have been a likely choice. If McDonald died then, with the Clan stepped aside and the Court fighting alone, the Wizards would descend on us like a hurricane. They would probably accept Oberis’s death alone to save the Court, but that would gut us, leaving either Talus or Laurie in charge. A new Covenant would be negotiated, likely including the cabal, with the Enforcers as a power in their own right.

  Even if I’d guessed the plan correctly, though, I didn’t see a way to stop it. So many gears were in motion, grinding toward catastrophe. I needed a way to slow some of them. If I could stop one or two, maybe we could bring the whole thing crashing down.

  “Holly,” I asked slowly, thinking aloud. “What happens if you show up to the Speaker election and accuse Darius of all of this? Bear witness against him in public, before the Clans?”

  “He’d be called to account, allowed to defend himself,” Mary said slowly.

  “It’d be his word against mine,” Holly said quietly.

  “In a room full of Alphas,” I reminded them. “They can’t force him to tell the truth, but they can know that you aren’t lying.”

  Holly raised her head from Mary’s shoulder, brushing away tears as she looked at me.

  “I know it’s a huge thing to ask,” I told her. “But we could stop him becoming Speaker at least, couldn’t we?”

  “Stop him being Speaker?” she said harshly. “He ordered the murder of a Clanswoman—if he can’t prove his innocence, Clan Fontaine will tear him to shreds.”

  The anger in her voice led me to suspect she wasn’t being at all metaphorical.

  “The election will be at Tarvers’s funeral,” Mary said quietly, and a shiver ran down my spine.

  Tarvers’s funeral would see the largest gathering of supernaturals in the city since I’d arrived. He’d been a signatory to the city’s Covenants, the voice for the shifters, a solid ally of peace—everyone had respected him. Every fae, every shifter, and most of the independent inhumans would be there. Every inhuman in the city—all five hundred-ish of us—would be gathered there.

  At Tarvers’s funeral, a new Speaker would be elected for the Clans. At Tarvers’s funeral, Oberis’s deadline would run out, and he intended to ask the Clans for help in waging war upon the Tower and the Enforcers. At Tarvers’s funeral, Talus wanted to present incontrovertible proof of the vampires’ presence. Everything was gathering at that funeral, to take place before the assembled inhuman populace of the city.

  “That’s going to be a big day,” I said simply. “We need to keep you safe until then, Holly.” I paused, eyeing my girlfriend. “I’d like you to stay with her, Mary,” I told her, “but I need somewhere to hide you.”

  “Ask Shelly,” Mary suggested. “If she runs Talus’s properties, I bet anything she knows where there’s a safehouse or three that no one else knows anything about.”

  As usual, my new girlfriend was demonstrating a better ability to think of allies than me. “You’re right,” I admitted. “Thanks.”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed the lawyer’s number. She answered almost instantly.

  “Hi, Jason, I was just about to call you—I’ve finished my digging for places to check out,” she told me.

  “That’s good,” I said quickly. “Can I ask you a huge favor first?”

  “We’re working together,” Shelly said slowly. “What do you need?”

  “I have some information tied into our mess that we’re trying to deal with, and also the whole fight going on with the shifters,” I told her. “I have a young lady we need to get to the funeral to accuse certain people, but I don’t know if I can keep her safe in my place. Do you have a safehouse we can hide her in?”

  “Place to hide, out of sight, concealed, guarded?” Shelly quickly reeled off the criteria.

  “Only guarded if they’re people we can absolutely trust,” I said carefully.

  “What do you know about goblins?” she responded.

  “Goblins? They exist?” I asked, confused by the apparent change of topic.

  “They’re rare. Mainly because they’re short, weak, ugly and prone to petty theft,” Shelly said bluntly. “But once they give their loyalty, they hold to it to the death. Talus rescued a Clan of them out of the Vietnam War, and they swore undying fealty to him. I don’t know if even Oberis knows they’re here, to be honest, but they are completely reliable.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “If you want to check out the sites I’ve picked out, I can swing by your place and pick up your witness,” she offered. “There’s an apartment building, much like yours, in the northeast that we bought for the goblins and they take care of for us. There are three empty units there that they keep maintained for if we need a safehouse.

  “There are few safer places in the city—no one is getting into those apartments without fighting through forty or fifty goblins...all trained by Vietnam War veterans,” she said simply.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Where do you want me to check out?”

  “Two places showed up when I went digging,” she explained. “There’s a hotel that was shut down a few years ago and is right by the big homeless shelter downtown. There’s also a condemned office building in the same area—the previous owners didn’t maintain it worth shit, and now it’s about ready to fall down in on itself, but that won’t bother vampires. They’re both on the east end of downtown; I’ll text you the addresses, if that helps.”

  “It does,” I agreed. “I can’t check them out tonight, though,” I admitted. “I got rather badly torn up earlier and it’s going to take me until morning to heal up.”

  “How badly?” she asked, concern in her voice.

  “Well, I may need to heal every tendon in my right hand,” I admitted.

  “You can do that by morning?” she asked, sounding shocked.

  “Um. Yes,” I confirmed. I forgot, sometimes, that while my healing abilities were slow by fae standards and absolutely glacial by shifter standards, they were still lightning fast by human standards.

  “We still have a couple of days,” Shelly told me. “Talus will be bringing his team into Calgary early: Friday lunchtime. He’s planning to move in Friday evening or Saturday morning, so we have tomorrow evening still to check them out. I can’t see it being anywhere other than the hotel or that office unless they’re way outside the profile Karl gave us.”

  “I’ll check them out tomorrow, after work,” I promised.

  “Good enough,” she said swiftly. “I’ll still come by and collect your wayward witness tonight. In about an hour sound good?”

  “Perfect,” I told her. “Thank you.”

  I hung up and turned to the girls. “Shelly will be by to pick you up in about an hour,” I told them. “She’s got a safehouse in the middle of a goblin colony loyal to Talus that should be completely safe.”

  “Goblins?” Holly said uncertainly.

  “They stand by their loyalties,” Mary said quietly, confirming what Shelly had said. “That’s the reputation, anyway—I’ve never actually met one.”

  “Well, now you’ll have the opportunity,” I told her with a forced grin.

  27

  Shelly arrived almost precisely one hour later, buzzing to be let in. She came down to my apartment, and must have come dir
ectly from work as she was still dressed in a prim black suit. She greeted Mary with a nod and handshake, and looked Holly over.

  “So, you’re our mystery witness?” she asked, and the shifter nodded. Shelly looked over at me. “Do I want to know what we’re keeping her safe to say?”

  “One of the Alphas is playing very dirty,” I told her. “Pretty sure he’s tied into our mess, so I want to make sure he doesn’t end up as Speaker.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Shelly agreed with a nod. “I’m Shelly,” she introduced herself to Holly, and I mentally kicked myself for not doing so. “I work for one of the fae. Did he tell you what arrangements I’ve made?”

  “Goblins,” Holly said quietly.

  “They’re a lot nicer than you may think,” the lawyer told her gently. “I’ve worked with this group for over ten years; they are amazing people. Think Hutterites, but ugly.” She paused reflectively. “Really ugly.”

  “I’d like to go with her, if that works?” Mary asked. “An extra level of protection.”

  “Of course,” Shelly agreed with a nod. “We should get going,” she added, “it’s getting late, and while I’ve warned them we’re coming, they don’t like visitors late at night.”

  Mary gave me a quick kiss goodbye, and I walked the trio of ladies out. Mary and Holly got into Shelly’s powder blue SUV and drove off with a quick wave, and, shivering against the cold, I dove back into my apartment.

  There I found I had a text message from Michael. Asking around. No one claims to have heard from K within the last week except some of the seniors. Will be in touch tomorrow or if I learn more.

  Work the next day was a madhouse. With everything going on in the inhuman political world, I’d completely missed the approach of Christmas in the mortal world. With only a couple of weeks left, the business level at courier companies like ours was rapidly ratcheting up.

  The good side of working in a madhouse is that the days pass quickly, and this Thursday was no exception to that rule. Before I knew it, most of the orders had been picked up, dropped off, or packed up for tomorrow’s delivery, and Bill was chivvying everyone out of the office. We’d worked an extra hour today, and according to our boss, that was a mortal, unforgiveable sin. Mostly on his part.

  Unfortunately, that hour later left me struggling into downtown, by bus, during rush hour. It was an experience. I’d been in cities with worse traffic problems, but I don’t think anywhere with more than five people is fun to travel through downtown at rush hour.

  In the end, it took me half an hour to get into downtown and to the somewhat run-down east end, where both of the buildings I was intending to check out lay. The first of the two possible dens was the abandoned office building. It wasn’t much of an office building and would never have qualified as a skyscraper. Eight stories tall and largely brick with few windows, it clashed with the collection of modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers to the west of it, all of them brightly silhouetted against the giant under-construction tower that dwarfed them all and shone brightly with workmen’s lights. Even the Wizard’s Tower paled into insignificance against that edifice of glass and light.

  Despite the glittering core, there were a number of low brick buildings like my destination in the blocks around it, however. It looked like an older portion of the downtown, and snow-covered cranes and scaffolding showed that the entire area was in the process of being rebuilt.

  My candidate, however, had no scaffolding or cranes around it. Unlike the other buildings, which someone had apparently decided to repair and rebuild, this one had clearly been written off as a lost cause. An eight-foot-tall orange plastic fence surrounded it, and neatly lettered official signs declared the building condemned.

  A quick wander around the building revealed one obvious issue with the vampires using this building as a hiding place—there wasn’t any way through the fence. It looked like part of the fence could be rolled back, but it didn’t look nearly easy enough to be done as a regular thing, and the snow around that part didn’t look disturbed at all.

  There could be other ways in as well, though. Karl had implied that they’d use sewers for travel, and I was pretty sure I’d seen a manhole inside the fence. I took a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching, and then quickly climbed up and over the fence, dropping lightly onto the untouched snow inside the fence.

  With the exception of my own footprints, the snow inside the fence was fresh, touched only by the wind. Peeling my ears for the sound of anyone else moving around, I carefully approached one of the side doors to the building.

  I listened at the door for a moment and heard nothing. I was pretty sure that the vampires weren’t there now—night was starting to fall; if they were there, they’d be moving around. The untouched snow was a good sign as well.

  However, I had to be certain, so with a deep breath and a flick of faerie flame, I melted the deadbolt holding the door closed. The door creaked loudly as I pushed it open, the sound echoing out into the office building’s corridors.

  I slipped quickly inside the door, drawing my pistol from under my coat. Anyone realizing I’d been carrying it on the bus would have had me arrested instantly, but I wasn’t planning on facing vampires without being armed. Unlike last night when dealing in shifter politics, I’d loaded it with the triple-kill rounds the Queen had provided—silver, cold iron, distilled garlic.

  No one came running to investigate the creaking door, so I moved deeper into the building. None of the lights were working, but enough light drifted in from the windows to allow me to see. Dust had gathered on the floor, and as I entered the main lobby I saw why the building had been condemned: at some point, a crane had been mounted on the roof for some form of repair, and the roof had given way.

  The twisted wreckage of the machine lay untended in the middle of the old lobby, covered in a drift of snow that had fallen down through the hole that stretched through all eight floors. While much of the outer rooms and offices of the building were still intact, its central core was the eight-story path of the falling crane—clean into the basement.

  Nothing moved in the building, and the only sound was the wind and my feet crunching on the snow. The vampires weren’t there, and I’d just wasted half an hour. It was now fully dark, and the light filtering in was from the streetlights outside.

  I carefully retraced my steps to the outside of the building, stowing the pistol back in its concealed holster as I did. It was generally a bad idea to walk around a Canadian city, waving firearms everywhere. The building creaked in the wind around me, and I started to worry more about the damn thing coming down on top of me than a vampire surprising me!

  Thankfully, I made it out of the condemned building without incident and set off further east—to the old hotel Shelly had picked out as the other likely target. Even though it was dark, the sidewalks were still full enough that I didn’t stand out, which helped soothe my rampant paranoia that I was being watched until I reached the hotel.

  Silent and unlit, the long blue building looked amazingly creepy in the dim light cast by the streetlights. It looked like an old barn, and light reflected off an unlit neon sign on the roof. I stopped across the street from it, closer to the homeless shelter to the north, and studied the building.

  Many of the windows were boarded up, and the others looked to have been covered by dust cloths. I didn’t think a normal human could have picked that out, at least not at night, and it would serve double purpose to a vampire—blocking light leaking out at night, or leaking in during the day.

  On the other hand, if someone was working on internal renovations—turning the place into low-cost housing, as appeared to be the rumor around town, for example—they’d do much the same. Scaffolding was set up around the front entrance, concealing any scuffing done in the snow there while also lending evidence to the renovations possibility.

  From the outside, there was no way I was going to be sure. I was actually going to have to enter the building I had every reason to
believe was a vampire lair. With a sigh, I crossed the street to inspect the scaffolding. It looked sturdy enough for being covered in snow and reached up to the top of the three-story building. A small ladder provided a way for workmen to reach the upper levels.

  I quickly, and as quietly as possible, climbed to the second level of the scaffolding. For my efforts, I discovered a window just large enough for me—if I could get it open. Luckily, it wasn’t one of the ones boarded shut, but the lock was obviously on the other side.

  Wishing, once again, for the telekinetic powers of stronger fae, I snuck a tendril of fire through and cut the lock, allowing the window to swing free. I opened it a tiny crack and listened for a moment. The other side was silent, so I pulled the window all the way open and slipped inside.

  The room on the other side was small and completely empty. It had clearly once been a hotel room—there were indentations in the carpet where a bed had stood for longer than I’d been alive.

  A sound rustled behind me, and I spun to point the pistol at a large rodent that squeaked in horror and dived for a nearby hole in the wall. I stood stock-still for a moment, trying to control my rapid breathing as I realized I’d nearly blown everything because of a rat—the pistol wasn’t silenced, and if I’d shot the rat, anyone in the building would have known I was there.

  My heart still beating quickly, I stowed the pistol. If I ended up having to shoot someone or something, I’d already screwed up pretty badly. I carefully stepped over to the door and checked it out. At some point, it had been locked from this side and never unlocked.

  Carefully, I unlocked the door and opened it, peering out into the corridor. It was empty, and I moved out into it. A piece of wooden debris shoved in to make sure the door didn’t close and lock behind me, and I was ready to move on.