Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World)

by Steffan, R. A.

  “For us? More feeding in the city,” Rans said. “If we’re going to be acting as glorified magical batteries tomorrow, we’d best be topped off. You two should rest. Either of you need anything while we’re out?”

  Len considered the prospect of half a day and a full night with nothing to do but worry, and sighed. “Yeah,” he said. “Give me a minute; I’ll make a list for you.”

  * * *

  Three hours later, Len stood in the kitchen, babysitting the ancient analog gas stove and trying to ignore the unholy stench permeating the room. He looked up as Albigard entered, an expression of distaste twisting his haughty features.

  “If your goal is to decarboxylate those flower buds, you’d do well to reduce the oven temperature by ten degrees,” the Fae said, in the same tone most people would say ‘you are obviously an idiot.’

  Len scowled at him and inched the temperature setting knob a bit lower. “It’s not my fault if your stove is miscalibrated. Call this mausoleum a kitchen?”

  Albigard looked at him blankly. “Yes. What else would I call it?”

  Zorah chose that moment to enter as well, appearing suspiciously flushed in the cheeks and carrying a couple of shopping bags over one arm. She stopped just inside the door, her nose wrinkling. “What on earth are you doing in here?”

  Len came over and took the plastic bags. “Stress baking.”

  “Stress-baking... a skunk?” she asked.

  “He’s attempting to decarboxylate cannabis buds,” Albigard said. “Or possibly incinerate them. It’s unclear which at the moment.”

  Len took the bags and set them down on the counter with a bit more force than strictly necessary. “That’s it. Out. Both of you.”

  They shrugged and left him to it. Len tried to ignore the eye-watering intensity of the smell for another ten minutes before it occurred to him that he could open the windows. In a warded house, no one would be able to figure out where the overpowering stench of weed was coming from, if it even managed to reach the distant neighbors’ properties in the first place.

  What he was doing wasn’t ideal—pot brownies were honestly a lot more palatable with cannabis-infused coconut oil instead of actual crumbled-up buds in the batter. But infusing oil took hours and he intended to be back in stoner-land long before then.

  On the positive side, at least if they all ended up dying ignominiously at the hands of the Hunt in the morning, he wouldn’t be forced to examine his growing reliance on psychopharmacological sleep aids. But—not to put too fine a point on it—the prospect of staring at the bedroom ceiling while mentally running through increasingly horrific potential scenarios all night wasn’t one he was willing to entertain at the moment.

  While he waited for the old wind-up kitchen timer to finish counting down sixty minutes, he pulled out the groceries Zorah had brought, organizing everything for efficient assembly. Losing himself in the rhythm of food preparation was soothing, even with the stifling aroma of two-hundred-forty-degree weed emanating from the oven.

  By the time the sun had achieved a late-afternoon slant through the open windows, the smell had subsided to tolerable levels, replaced by the scent of chocolate brownies cooling on the counter and eggplant lasagna releasing curls of steam as he pulled it from the stove.

  Perhaps lured from hiding by the new aromatic landscape, Albigard reappeared in the doorway with the air of someone expecting a trap to spring on him the instant he stepped into the room.

  “Have some if you want. Everything’s organic,” Len said by way of greeting. “Since there wasn’t any meat in the house, I wasn’t sure if that meant you’re vegetarian or what. It’s all vegan, just to be safe.”

  The Fae still looked like he was expecting some sort of punchline, so Len ignored him. Instead, he scooped half of the faux-lasagna onto a chipped plate and started eating. After a long moment of hesitation, Albigard slid into the chair opposite him before doing the same. He took a delicate forkful from his plate and examined it as though he suspected Len of attempting to poison him.

  Len continued to shovel food into his mouth. Eventually, Albigard committed to eating the tiny bite, chewing for a long time before swallowing.

  “You are trained in the culinary arts?” he asked at length.

  Len rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am ‘trained in the culinary arts.’ In fact, that was the nature of the job that your Fae buddy blew up. I used to run the kitchen in Guthrie and Gina’s nightclub.”

  Albigard nodded slowly. “Presumably there wasn’t much call for decarboxylating marijuana in such surroundings. This explains much.”

  It sounded... suspiciously close to a joke.

  “Shut up, or I won’t let you have any of the damned brownies,” Len told him.

  They continued the meal in silence. Len was busy making a mental note to never use this brand of tofu ricotta again, because the manufacturer seemed to have decided that the key to recreating the dairy experience was to add buckets of salt. He glanced up in mild surprise when Albigard laid his fork on his empty plate and spoke.

  “This dish is... pleasant,” he said, as though he had to search for a moment to come up with a word used to compliment something a human had done.

  Len shrugged. “Bit salty for my taste. Vegan cooking’s not really my specialty.”

  The Fae raised a sharp eyebrow. “Nor mine. I merely prefer meat that has been hunted to meat raised in a cage or a pen.”

  Len tilted his head in mild interest. “Huh. Is that a Fae thing?”

  Albigard appeared to contemplate the question. “I doubt most of the changelings on Earth would have a strong preference one way or the other. Many of the Unseelie in the human realm were switched with human infants at a very young age. They grew up with processed food and caged meat.”

  “But not you?” Len pressed, not entirely sure why he cared enough to bother. But it was an interesting topic, and probably a step up from sniping at each other.

  “I was not raised on Earth,” his companion replied.

  Len nodded and hooked the pan of brownies closer, wiping the knife he’d used to cut the lasagna on his napkin. Doing a bit of quick mental math, he cut four lines along the short side of the brownie pan and five along the longer side.

  “What about Dhuinne?” he asked. “Don’t they raise meat animals there?”

  “While many prefer to hunt or fish in the wildlands for their sustenance, there is livestock in the Fae realm, yes,” Albigard told him. “Especially near the cities. But it is raised in the open, not confined.”

  “Free range, then,” Len said. “How very sustainable of you.” He pried out a corner piece of brownie, roughly half the size of a normal, non-pot-laced serving. Then he shoved the pan toward Albigard. “Fair warning, I’ve got no clue about the THC content of this skunkweed. Eat these at your own risk.”

  The Fae nodded his understanding. He took two pieces, sniffing them cautiously as he had done earlier with the lasagna. With less hesitation this time, he ate both squares and wiped his fingers fastidiously on a napkin afterward. Len ate his single piece more slowly. It was, as he’d predicted, fairly disgusting as brownies went.

  Fortunately, taste wasn’t the point of the exercise.

  He scooped up the dishes and set them to soak in the sink. Then, he picked up the brownie pan in one hand and grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the fridge with the other. “I’m moving the party outside... this house feels like a crypt, and it’s depressing me. Come along if you want, but don’t expect much in the way of scintillating philosophical conversation. Oh—and if you manage to OD on my brownies, you’re on your own.”

  With that pronouncement, he headed for the back door.

  SIXTEEN

  THE DAY HAD ENDED up being a warm one, but despite the occasional mosquito, Len was man enough to admit that the surroundings out here were growing on him. The gray clouds had blown over at some point during the afternoon. He made himself comfortable, sitting on the flat concrete shelf topping the decorative
stone wall and using the side of the house as a backrest. After placing the pan of brownies within easy reach, he cracked open the water bottle and sipped from it, watching the sky begin to shade toward pinks and oranges.

  Albigard joined him a few moments later, leaning against the wall a few steps away from Len’s perch. The Fae closed his eyes, turning his face to catch the faint breeze. Len realized he was staring at that perfect profile and dragged his gaze away, irritated with himself. As they had during the meal earlier, they let the silence stretch. Len leaned his head against the brick wall of the house, watching the sky fade through shades of lavender and slowly darkening blue. He felt oddly at peace, considering the circumstances hanging over them and the fact that the brownie hadn’t started to kick in yet.

  Once an hour or so had passed with only the barest hint of any effects, Len stretched a hand out to pry another square out of the pan and ate it. Albigard shot him a sidelong glance.

  “I told you the oven temperature was too high,” he said, and took another two brownies for himself. “You’ve reduced the potency.”

  “It’s your stove,” Len pointed out, not for the first time. “I can hardly be blamed if you don’t bother to keep it calibrated properly.

  He leaned his head back again, watching as the stars popped out one by one, the royal blue of the sky giving way to navy, and eventually black. By the time the last hint of daylight had disappeared in the west, the brownies had finally started to redeem themselves. Len slithered down to sit on the patio with his back against the brick facade of the house, figuring it was a safer bet than anything requiring feats of balance to maintain.

  When Len glanced around, he realized that Albigard apparently disagreed. A wedge of light from inside the house shone through the patio door, and the lumpy silhouette atop a section of wall was actually the Fae’s body. He was lying prone on his back with one leg drawn up, foot balanced on the concrete ledge, both arms bent and fingers laced behind his head. He, too, had been staring at the stars twinkling above them.

  The patio door screeched open and closed on its tracks, a new shadow blocking the light for a moment. Rans snorted softly, taking in the scene.

  “Good lord, Len. You managed to get him baked? I’m not sure whether to be impressed or appalled.”

  “Don’t be offensive,” Albigard said, enunciating the words more crisply than someone who’d eaten four pot brownies in two hours should reasonably be allowed to.

  Rans snorted a bit louder this time, and Len experienced a moment of dizziness as he dissolved into mist, reappearing an instant later in Len’s former spot, sitting on top of the wall with his back braced against the house.

  “Where’s Zorah?” Len asked.

  “Trying to contact Guthrie and Vonnie to let them know what’s going on,” said the vampire.

  “You keep making noise, bloodsucker,” Albigard drawled. “You should stop now. It was quiet until you came outside.” He reached an imperious hand behind him, palm up. Rans—closest to the brownie pan—tossed him another square. He caught it without looking.

  Ignoring the Fae’s directive for silence, Rans relaxed against the wall and sighed. “Goodness, this takes me back. Who was that bloke in London in the nineteen-seventies? The one who spiked the sangria with LSD and got you shit-faced?”

  “Warhol?” Albigard suggested listlessly.

  “No, no. The other one. Mancuso—that was his name. I thought you were going to rip his spine out when you finally stopped tripping balls the next day.”

  The Fae grunted, and to be fair, it was the sort of grunt that implied spine-ripping might be forthcoming at some nebulous future time when he wasn’t too stoned to be bothered.

  “Fucking hell,” Len observed, looking between them blearily. “Zorah was one-hundred percent right about you two, wasn’t she?”

  Albigard grunted again, but in a more questioning and less homicidal way this time.

  “Bollocks she was,” Rans retorted. “It was funny at the time, that’s all. Maybe you had to be there.”

  “Uh-huh. Right,” Len said agreeably. He made a gimme gesture in the general direction of the brownies, unwilling to be out-stoned by a Fae. Rans handed one down to him rather than tossing it, which was probably just as well. He rolled his head to meet the vampire’s eyes, glowing with a faint inner light in the darkness. “I’d offer you some, but since it’d only work on you if you got the THC from drinking my blood, you can fuck right the hell off. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Rans said easily. “It’s not really worth the effort anyway—the effects barely last a minute at my age.”

  Len had learned the complicated way that drugs and alcohol only affected vampires if they were filtered through a human’s bloodstream first... and even then, it was fleeting. When it came down to it, he wasn’t entirely averse to helping out a vampire in need, but after feeding this afternoon, Rans was already topped off. Besides, Len wasn’t feeling particularly well disposed toward the paranormal world in general right now.

  He turned his not-very-focused attention back to Albigard. “You. How come you got mixed up in the Fae shadow government if you weren’t a... what do you call it? A changeling.”

  “Oh, he had a real knack for the work,” Rans said dryly. “You should have seen him in a cassock.”

  “As a babe, I was considered too valuable to send to Earth,” Albigard said, ignoring the vampire’s color commentary. “Then, when I was grown and the war with the demons was underway, I was considered too valuable not to.”

  Len trawled through his memories of the past few days, noting that it was becoming more of a challenge than it had been an hour ago. His muscles were slowly turning to Jell-O, the hard wall at his back growing more and more comfortable.

  “Because your family breeds twins?” he asked.

  “Because I am a twin.”

  Len digested that. “You have a twin?” Somehow, it was impossible to picture.

  Silence fell. It seemed very... complete.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Albigard said eventually. “My sister died in the womb. The midwives said I absorbed her fetal tissue... and her magic.”

  “Oh,” Rans said, in the tone of someone having a revelation. “So that’s why you can perform both elemental and life magic? I had wondered about that, you know.”

  Len frowned, trying to knock enough brain cells together to follow the conversation. “The cat said... something like that. Earlier, I mean. About life magic and... what was the other one?”

  “Elemental magic,” Zorah offered from the door. Len hadn’t even noticed it sliding open this time. “This sounds like an interesting conversation. Go on...” She crossed the patio and hopped up on the wall with Rans, making herself comfortable between his legs and leaning back against his chest. He wrapped an arm around her to steady her on their precarious perch.

  “There is little more to say.” Albigard sounded distant, and Len got the distinct impression he wouldn’t have started on this subject in the first place if he weren’t already stoned.

  “What’s the difference?” Len asked. “Between life magic and elemental magic, I mean.”

  “We got a bit of a crash course on the subject during the run-up to Stonehenge,” Zorah said. “Someone stop me if I get this wrong, but basically, with elemental magic, you can affect inanimate objects, like rocks or air or water. With life magic, you can make a flower bloom or a length of vine whip out and grab somebody’s leg. Vonnie’s ex—the father of her child—can manifest a spectral wolf that’s physical enough to rip someone’s throat out.”

  “There is also blood magic,” Albigard told the night sky, still sounding oddly detached from the conversation. “As the vampires can attest. And death magic—”

  “Don’t,” Len said, feeling suddenly cold in the balmy night air. “We had that conversation already.”

  The Fae let it go.

  Zorah picked up the thread. “Anyway, with Fae, the Seelie are female and tend toward life magi
c. The Unseelie are male and tend toward elemental magic. I get the impression that a lot of the changelings—the Unseelie Fae that grew up on Earth—aren’t as magically strong as the ones who stayed behind on Dhuinne.”

  “It varies,” Albigard said. “Teague is a changeling, and he is quite adept in the magical arts.”

  She shrugged. “But there was also Caspian—you remember him, Len. He was that creep who was after me back when I first met Rans. He had the Fae ability to influence human minds, but aside from that, he was pretty much of a damp squib when it came to magic.”

  “Right,” Len said. “Whatever happened to that guy, anyway?”

  “I slew him in battle,” Albigard replied tonelessly. “It was a revenge killing.”

  “Oh,” Len said, thinking that he should probably have some feelings about that. Unfortunately, in his current state he wasn’t sure what kind of feelings would be appropriate, and trying to figure it out sounded like an awful lot of work.

  Rans made a noise of disgust. “And afterward, when the Fae authorities started asking questions, this idiot confessed to the murder and placed himself squarely at the top of the Court’s most-unwanted list. Hence the root of our current troubles.”

  “Caspian was a traitor,” Albigard muttered.

  “He was a traitor who happened to be in the Court’s good graces when you killed him,” Rans shot back.

  “He was responsible for the death of my siblings at the end of the war,” Albigard said.

  The words hung in the air for a beat.

  “Yes,” Rans said, very quietly. “There is that to consider.”

  “The fucker deserved to die,” Zorah said. “If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

  Again, Len felt the moorings tying him to the everyday world slipping from his grasp. He remembered when he and Zorah had first met—a broke line cook and a broke waitress working together at a local bar and grill. He’d kept assholes with entitlement issues from harassing her—as much as he could, anyway—and she’d complimented his medium-rare steaks.