Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

I squeezed her hand again and slowly stood up again with her help. “In the end, I don’t have much choice, do I?” I asked Eric, and the Keeper shook his head.

  “You were born to a Vassal bloodline,” he said sadly. “Once She claimed you, you were Hers. Forever.”

  I had just finished nodding my—somewhat grudging—acceptance of this fact when a burning car came careening around the corner outside the church and smashed through the gate.

  34

  The vehicle trailed flames and pieces as it spun across the parking lot, flipped up on its side and skidded another ten feet before finally coming to a stop. With the dramatic entrance finished, I recognized the silver sedan—it was Michael’s car. The Enforcer who said he’d be in touch every day—who I now realized I hadn’t heard from since Thursday.

  “Fire extinguisher,” Eric said quickly, pulling one from thin air and passing it to me before extracting another from nowhere.

  Unlike in the movies, thankfully, real cars don’t explode shortly after being set on fire. Eric started at one end of the car and I started at the other, and we quickly had the flames mostly doused. The last few stubborn flames revealed the source of it—the car had actually been sprayed with some sort of burning liquid. Someone had attacked the vehicle with a flamethrower.

  Two of the shifter guards arrived just as we got the flames out and help Eric and me tear the roof off the car so we could get the driver out. Others emerged from the tent to make certain the continuing discussions were safe.

  I was completely unsurprised to see Michael in the car. His state, however, was horrifying. Whoever had used the flamethrower had managed to get the burning napalm inside the vehicle. He was only barely responsive and all but screamed as we removed his hands from the steering wheel—they’d literally melted into the rubber coating.

  “We need a healer,” I said desperately, looking up to the guards. That was also when I realized that Mary had already left us. I looked around for her and spotted her leaving the pavilion, with Talus and Lord Oberis in tow. Her quick thinking gave Michael the only chance he had.

  The two fae nobles reached us moments later, taking in the scene instantly and deciding, with some communication none of the rest could interpret, who would do what. Lord Oberis knelt by Michael’s half-incinerated form, white light flowing from his hands as he moved them over the Enforcer’s body.

  Talus turned to me.

  “Who is he?”

  “One of the Enforcers,” I explained. “He was investigating the truth of what was going on—promised he’d keep me informed, but with all the chaos, I hadn’t realized he didn’t contact me. He may know something.”

  “Well, someone seriously didn’t want him telling us whatever he knows,” the noble observed, eyeing the burnt remnants of the silver car. The napalm from the flamethrower had only been the final indignity visited on the car I realized. It had been sprayed with bullets from a high-caliber weapon first.

  “Jason,” a voice croaked, and Talus and I both turned to look at the Enforcer.

  “Rest,” Oberis murmured at him. “This isn’t as easy as it looks.”

  “Have to,” Michael forced himself to speak. It looked painful for him to be speaking. “Winters—killing Enforcers.”

  Killing Enforcers? Why would Winters be killing his own people? I knelt beside Oberis, focusing on the badly injured man he was trying to heal.

  “MacDonald...is in chains,” Michael forced out. “We tried...to free him. Honor...our oaths.” He coughed, spewing blood over Oberis’s white suit. The fae lord ignored it—ignored everything around him. The white light shining between his hands and Michael grew stronger, and strain lines began to appear on the old Seelie’s face.

  “No chance,” the Enforcer concluded. “Any who won’t join...he kills. Can’t...stop him. Can’t...kill him... MacDonald...forged his own...doom.”

  Michael’s gaze locked on mine, his eyes clear and his voice suddenly unbroken for a moment.

  “Stop him,” he pleaded. “I have fai...”

  The light from Oberis’s hands faded as the badly burnt Enforcer slumped back on the grass. I looked at the Seelie Lord. Lines were drawn deep in his ancient face, and for the first time since I’d met him, Oberis showed every year of his centuries of life as he shook his head in silence.

  “I have to go,” I told him simply. “The Queen commanded.”

  “We all have to go,” another voice interjected, and I looked up to see Enli join us, the other Alphas walking behind him. “My fellows have pleaded and elected for me to be our new Speaker,” Grandfather told us.

  “As Speaker, it is my duty to uphold the Covenant,” he continued. “And our Covenant is with Kenneth MacDonald, not the Enforcers—and Kenneth MacDonald is in danger. We must act.”

  Oberis rose to his feet once more, the strain lines dropping from his face as he did. By the time the fae lord reached his full height, every hint of a mar in the perfection of his ancient and ageless face was gone.

  “Winters is no easy foe,” he said quietly. “MacDonald bound many magics into that man—he is more of a construct than a man now, and no mortal weapon can harm him.”

  “No shifter can face him,” Enli agreed simply. “But we can rescue the Enforcers in danger, eliminate the remaining vampires—we can clear the way.”

  “I am the only man who can face Winters,” Oberis told us all. “Eric may be able to help,” he continued, and pointed at me, “and this one has no choice about coming.

  “If your shifters can deal with the situation outside Kenneth’s Tower,” he said to Enli, “my Court and I will deal with the Tower itself—and I will deal with Gerard Winters.”

  The old shifter Speaker considered for a moment, and then nodded. “Done and done,” he said simply. “Let’s go.”

  The next few minutes descended into an apparent chaos as Enli promptly took charge, organizing the shifters into hunting packs. Oberis and Talus spent most of the same time frame on their cell phones, calling and coordinating the few gentry and greater fae of the city who weren’t already there.

  After about fifteen minutes, Mary made a point of rejoining me where I stood by the two noble fae. She smiled and slipped into my arms, pressing a quick kiss to my lips.

  “We’re splitting up and heading out,” she told me. “I’m a pretty good tracker, so I’m going with the team that’s hitting up downtown to see if we can follow the vampires from where you guys ran them off.”

  “They may have fled through the sewers,” I warned her. “They had tunnels leading into them.”

  Mary smiled sadly at me. “Unfortunately, that only means following them will smell much worse. I can track through that.”

  I kissed her.

  “Be careful,” I told her. “And good luck.”

  “You be careful,” she responded. “I have big nasty shifters with me; vampires aren’t going to be an issue. You’re going to the Tower and hunting down Winters.”

  “I have Oberis,” I told her, glancing over at the fae lord. “And no choice.”

  “Yeah, that last is the part I have an issue with,” she replied, and sighed as an SUV rolled up beside us. “I have to go. Be safe, stay alive,” she ordered.

  “I will,” I promised her, and watched her jump into the green truck before it shot away onto the back streets. I turned back to Oberis and Talus to see that Eric and the handful of other fae had joined them. More cars made their way out behind me as Calgary’s shifter Clans scattered to hunt down the feeders in the city.

  “Everyone is heading for the Tower,” Talus said quietly. “It’s time we did the same.”

  “You need a better weapon,” Oberis told me as I rejoined the group. “Eric,” he said sharply to the Keeper.

  “What are you looking at me for?” the gnome protested as I followed Tamara back toward her car.

  “You were a War Smith before you were a Keeper,” the fae lord told him dryly. “You have something in your portable closet.”

  The
gnome Keeper rolled his eyes and reached into thin air, producing a weapon that I thought was a rifle for a moment, until I realized it was way too bulky. A large magazine protruded halfway down its length, and the almost visibly sawed-off barrel led me to realize it was actually a shotgun of some kind. Orichalcum runes were traced over its remaining barrel and stock, glittering in the winter sunlight.

  “This started life as an Italian SPAS-15 automatic shotgun,” Eric told me as he passed me the weapon. “Modified to fire full spread, no choke. Infrared laser sight—you can see it, but mundanes like the Enforcers shouldn’t. Enchanted to reduce weight, absorb recoil, and pull ammo from a pocket storage space.”

  “It pulls ammo from where?” I asked as I hefted the weapon. If the gnome’s magic was reducing its weight significantly, I’m not sure I wanted to have to heft the weapon without it—it was easily ten pounds as it was.

  “That ammo box is linked to a storage space like the one I carry with me,” Eric told me, offhandedly explaining how he kept pulling objects from thin air. “It’s not infinite ammo, but if you manage to use up the two thousand twelve-gauge shells I shoved in there when I built the gun, you have bigger issues than needing to reload. The gun is disgustingly illegal in Canada; don’t be seen with it,” he finished.

  “Good, thank you, Eric,” Oberis said briskly. “Talus, can you ride with Tamara and coordinate everyone else by phone? Jason, Eric, you’re with me.”

  At this point, I joined the Keeper in following Oberis to his vehicle: a shining silver Lexus SUV. We were apparently the only ones riding with the lord.

  Eric and I had barely finished getting into the car before Oberis floored the accelerator, glancing over at me once we hit the road.

  “You two are both Vassals of the Queen,” he said bluntly. “I know She has given you orders, and your fealty requires you to fulfill them by saving MacDonald. I intend to save him, and you two are here to bear witness.”

  The fae lord pulled a blatantly illegal left-hand turn on a red light, neatly slipping into the traffic going perpendicular to us without a scratch, though several dozen horns sounded.

  “I am the only person in this city with a chance at facing Gerard Winters,” he said simply. “What Talus knows without my saying, and what no one else will hopefully realize, is that every other greater fae and gentry in the city will basically be a distraction—we are the real attack.

  “You two must make sure I make it to Winters,” he told us. “He is unlikely to be far from MacDonald, so once he and I are tied up, I expect you to rescue the Wizard. However Winters has prevented the Magus from destroying him once he acted on his treachery, I hope it is removable—if I fail, allowing the Magus to deal with his own garbage is our only hope.”

  “How do you plan to pull this off?” Eric asked, voicing my thoughts. “Even if Winters killed half the Enforcers, he still has over a hundred armed men in the Tower, all carrying orichalcum runes. The building is blocked against walking Between, I’m sure!”

  “What Gerard Winters doesn’t know,” Oberis said grimly as we drew into downtown and ever closer to the Tower, “is that there is one spot in the building that isn’t blocked against Between. There were times MacDonald wanted things done without going through his people, and he came to me—and having a secret access to his tower has had...other advantages.”

  “We’re going to walk right into the heart of the Wizard’s Tower and save his millennial ass from his own prodigal creation,” the fae lord told us. He pulled the Lexus into a dark alleyway, two blocks away from the glittering skyscraper our world knew as the Wizard’s Tower.

  Eric grabbed my shoulder as I was about to leave the car to join Oberis. “Jason,” he said quickly. “You should probably use the Queen’s gift. You are never going to be as out of your league as you are tonight.”

  For a moment, I had no idea what the old gnome was referring to, and then I remembered the tiny black pottery vial Niamh had given me at Queen Mabona’s insistence—the vial of quicksilver that still rested inside the runic armored vest I wore under my dress shirt.

  I took the vial and its leather thong out from around my neck and studied it in the anemic winter sunlight leaking down into the alleyway. The cork was sealed in tightly, and it took a moment of real effort to pop it out.

  The tiny mouth of the vial seemed to glow in the sunlight sneaking into the vial, and a spicy scent of cinnamon wafted out into the alley. I breathed deeply of the oddly comforting smell, and then slugged back the tiny dose of the drug.

  Nothing seemed to happen for a moment, and then a deep golden warmth began to spread out from my midsection. Everything felt a lot lighter, including the heavy auto-shotgun in my hands. With a surge of confidence, I stepped over to join Oberis, who gave me a questioning look, then shrugged.

  “Both of you, stand with me,” he instructed. Once Eric and I were standing on either side of him, he reached out and grabbed our arms, then stepped.

  35

  The cold chill that ran over my flesh felt familiar. Bone-chilling but somehow familiar—from my exposure to it by Mabona and previous, shorter trips with Oberis, I assumed. Everything around us faded to dim shadows of the world we’d left behind, intermixed with clouds and shadows of something else.

  “Hold on,” the fae lord murmured. “If you lose touch with me here, I may not be able to retrieve you in time—and the Cold Death is our worst punishment for a reason.”

  Remembering how Laurie’s defiance had shattered when presented with that possible fate, I shivered—and made very sure to keep my arm in Lord Oberis’s hand. For an interminable and cold moment, we stood there, Between, and did nothing.

  Then we moved. There was no stepping, no physical action, just a thought from Oberis, and we were heading up through the mists. After a few moments, the void we moved through felt even more oppressive, somehow, and I knew we’d entered into the area barred on the other side. MacDonald’s magic prevented us from crossing over back into the real world there.

  Somehow, I could feel the barrier. Feel its strength. Feel its weakness. And I could tell, before Oberis even shifted his direction, where we would exit. There was a softness to it my quicksilver-fueled senses could feel, a room clear for the fae lord to enter.

  Stepping back into the real world brought a surge of warmth almost equal to the quicksilver. It still felt strange for a moment, and then I realized that the drug was letting me feel the barriers erected against the Between—I could feel that other world that stood beside our normal one.

  The room we’d entered was very plain. A couch occupied one wall, with a desk and chair on the opposite of the room. It was large, the size of an executive office, but with no windows to either the outside or the rest of the building.

  Lord Oberis clearly knew the room well, better than I expected, even. He was heading toward the single door even before Eric and I had our bearings. Careful to keep the muzzle of the shotgun Eric had given me pointing away from the fae lord, I followed him.

  We stepped out of the room into an empty corridor. On the inner side of the building was a solid concrete core sporting a number of closed doors, where the outer walls of the corridor were glass windows looking out onto a sunken atrium. Sunlight filtered through the outside wall of the tower, lighting up the downtown core that spread out beneath us—we were at least fifty stories up.

  The view, sunlight and atrium distracted me for just long enough to miss several of the closed doors leading deeper into the tower opening. Quicksilver-fueled intuition caused me to dive for the floor as the shooting started regardless.

  The Enforcer squad had traded in their standard black suits for full-body SWAT gear in black and gold, orichalcum runes traced over the surface of the well-made mundane equipment. Box-like bullpup assault rifles sprayed bullets in our direction as all three of us scattered out of the line of fire.

  I could feel the cold iron in the rounds—the quicksilver sharpened my sense enough I could even say that it was every third
bullet. I rode the quicksilver, letting it fuel my motion as I hit the ground, rolled, and came up facing the nearest of the half dozen Enforcers now in the hallway with us.

  The heavy auto-shotgun roared, spraying heavy buckshot into the body armored guard. His armor and its enchantments stopped any of the rounds from penetrating but didn’t do anything against the kinetic force of the overloaded shell. The impact flung him back, through the wall behind him, shattering bones and leaving him possibly dead and definitely out of the fight.

  With the heartstone-and-mercury mix singing in my veins, I had tracked to the next Enforcer before the SPAS-15 had finished cycling. He tried to turn his rifle toward me before I fired, but his chamber clicked empty, his magazine drained, as the weapon bore on me. This time, the buckshot slammed into his head, ending his involvement in the fight with a very definitive snapping sound.

  Oberis’s response to the Enforcers was less advanced, possibly more elegant, and with the power of a fae lord behind it, much more effective. As the second Enforcer I’d shot dropped, he was lowering the last of the other four to the ground, having just scythed through them with the same glamor-blade he’d used to kill Darius Fontaine.

  “They’re expecting us,” he said simply, not even panting from exertion. “MacDonald is that way,” he continued, pointing. I didn’t question how he knew where the Wizard was; I simply obeyed the implicit order, heading clockwise around the top floor of the Tower.

  This floor, I realized, must have been MacDonald’s actual residence. The open doors we passed showed a kitchen, an astonishingly comfortable-looking living room—whose furniture was probably worth more than my apartment—and the various other rooms and necessities of a home. The entire floor was wrapped in a circular atrium that filled the space that would have been an office cubicle farm in most of the buildings downtown at this height.

  There was no sign of conflict or violence on the floor except the remnants of the squad of Enforcers that had tried to jump us. The floor was as silent as death as we ran, following Oberis toward MacDonald.