Len sat with that for a moment before deciding that his brain really wasn’t equipped to deal with it. “Right. So Nigellus has you both beat, then. Though I maintain that literal immortality is an unfair advantage.”
“I have no doubt most of my people would agree with you,” the Fae replied darkly.
“On the other hand, I suppose death has its uses,” Len went on, following his meandering thoughts as the last of the daylight faded. “Just think, if a demon got trapped here, they’d be stuck for eternity with no escape at all.”
And... okay, that was a bit further down the path of morbid musings than he’d intended to venture. Albigard shivered in the firelight, and Len frowned. He shrugged off his battered cardigan and held it out.
“Hey, man. Do you want this? You definitely need it more than I do,” he said.
Albigard waved him off. “Unnecessary.”
Len raised his eyebrows. “Dude, no offense, but you’re wearing half of a pair of pajamas and nothing else.”
But the Fae only shook his head. “The offer is thoughtful, but the synthetic fibers would be more irritating than comforting.”
Len opened his mouth, ready to offer the henley instead... but it was a polyester blend. “Okay,” he conceded. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Albigard regarded him for a long moment, his eyes searching.
“What?” Len asked warily.
His companion’s sharply swept brows drew together in a thoughtful frown. “It’s merely... you appear to be taking all of this surprisingly well.”
Len took a moment to parse that. “Right,” he said slowly. “I guess, given our recent history together, you’re probably waiting for my next epic meltdown.” He took a breath. “Which is totally fair.”
“That isn’t precisely what I meant,” said the Fae.
“No. I get it.” Len poked around the edges of his feelings, trying to put them into words. “And... don’t get me wrong. I can’t guarantee my brain won’t go into ‘desperate addict’ mode at some point. But... well... being trapped with no hope of rescue takes the pressure off in a lot of ways, as screwed up as that sounds. I mean, look around us.” He gestured at the fire... the lake. “There are no responsibilities here, except maybe breaking off some more branches for firewood tomorrow. Other than that, jumping in front of your ass to try and protect you if the Hunt shows up is quite literally the only agency I’ve got left at this point. There’s very little here that I can fuck up.”
Albigard’s expression grew troubled. “You cannot protect me from the Hunt. You must realize that.”
Len shrugged. “I can try. I should have been standing in front of Rans and Zorah in St. Louis. If I had been, they’d still be alive. So excuse me if I’d rather not make the same mistake twice.”
Stillness settled over the camp, broken only by the crackle of fire consuming wood.
“Do you not fear your own death?” Albigard asked.
Len blew out a loud breath and fiddled with a twig from one of the branches, snapping it in half, then quarters, then eighths.
“Honestly? I feel like death has been trying to send me a message for a very long time,” he said quietly, aware on some level of how ridiculous that sounded. He gestured vaguely at their surroundings. “Looks like I finally received it.”
TEN
ALBIGARD APPEARED to give Len’s words weight, pondering them for several seconds before he replied. “You and death are... kindred. Its power would have been your power, had you ever chosen to reach out and take it.”
And they were back to this again. Len threw up his hands in frustration. “Seriously, what does that even mean? I’ve told you—I have no clue how anyone’s supposed to suck up death like some kind of paranormal vacuum cleaner.”
“And I have no idea how someone with such an affinity could be unaware of the mechanism of its use,” Albigard replied, clearly perplexed. “I would expect it to be an instinctive process.”
“Great,” Len muttered. “So, not only am I a filthy necromancer, but I’m also incompetent at it?” He rolled his eyes heavenward. “A guy could get a complex, you know.”
“Indeed. At least you will not suffer with such an affliction for long.” The statement was perfectly deadpan, and Len shot the Fae a dark look.
“Gallows humor,” he said. “Ha, ha. Don’t worry, though—I approve in principal. It’s a common coping mechanism for people who work in emergency services.” He tilted his head, assessing. “What about you? I’ve gotta say, I didn’t expect you to roll over quite so easily in a situation like this.”
If he expected anger in response to the observation, he was apparently destined to be disappointed.
Albigard directed his attention to the crackling flames as they feasted on their bounty of dry branches. “Immortals and other long-lived species are notoriously greedy for life, even when they grow too jaded to live in it fully. I... am beginning to understand the situation Ransley Thorpe found himself in, after the end of the last war. Isolation from one’s own people is a heavy burden.”
Len pondered a vampire who’d outlived the rest of his race, and a Fae who’d been abandoned by his.
“You’re not alone, you know,” he said after a long moment.
Albigard glanced up at him again. “While I appreciate the sentiment—”
But Len cut him off. “I don’t just mean me. Even though... well, it looks like you’re kind of stuck with me at this point. But there’s the cat-sidhe, for one.”
The Fae seemed to consider that. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “Though it seems something of a moot point, under the circumstances.”
“Yeah—and another thing about that,” Len continued. “You were pretty quick to dismiss the idea of using me as a jump-start battery to get us out of here. I understand that my supposed necromancy gig isn’t very Fae-friendly. But you’ve gone on and on about how I haven’t actually used that power. It just kind of... floats around me like a cloud of death-scented cologne, right?”
“What an unpleasant metaphor,” Albigard observed.
Len scowled at him. “But what about my normal human life force? I’ve obviously got some of my own to draw from. I eat and drink and breathe to survive. It just seems like it would be smart to try and use whatever juice I’ve got available sooner rather than later. Like you, I’m only going to get weaker as time goes on.”
The faintest hint of a rueful smile tugged at one corner of Albigard’s lips, so brief Len wasn’t sure he’d really seen it.
“You are, indeed, not what I expected,” he said, looking back to the flames. “But the animus of a single human is not enough to fuel the kind of portal that spans two realms. It would barely be sufficient to power a portal on Earth. The cat-sidhe lent me all the animus they could spare, and even combined with my own depleted powers, it took most of that to get us here.”
“Will the cat-sidhe be okay, do you think?” Len asked, sobering as he thought of the little Fae charging into a magical battle to cover their escape.
Albigard appeared troubled. “I cannot believe Unseelie would dare kill a sidhe, even if that sidhe was weakened enough to be vulnerable to such a thing. But... many things are changing on Dhuinne these days—and not for the better.”
There was little to say to that.
Len joined Albigard in contemplating the shifting light of the campfire. He considered trying to sleep, but knew there was no way in hell he’d be able to manage it right now. He felt jittery. Out of sorts. Some of it was probably down to low blood sugar. The rest might conceivably be tied to the whole ‘trapped and almost certainly going to die’ thing.
Albigard had been onto something when he talked about being alive without truly living. Somehow, the idea of sleeping away whatever time Len had left before he became too weak to do anything seemed almost... disrespectful, for lack of a better word.
“Do you need to rest?” he asked, aware that the Fae had been pretty thoroughly battered over the course of the last day or
so, and might have a different opinion on the matter of getting some shuteye.
Albigard lifted a bare shoulder and let it drop in a careless gesture. “As I have said before, sleep and I are not close companions these days.”
Len nodded and tried to make himself more comfortable on the bare sand. “In that case, tell me more about Dhuinne. What was it like growing up someplace where magic is just a normal, everyday thing? I’m guessing the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin.”
The Fae shot him a sidelong glare.
“Harry Potter,” Len clarified. “It’s a book series by—”
“I understood the reference, thank you.” He settled back, resting his weight on his hands, and Len found himself watching the play of firelight over pale skin and twisting tattoos. “As with any talent, there are wide variations in aptitude among the Fae. Those with more affinity for magic receive earlier and more intense training in its use. And my aptitude was greater than most.”
It wasn’t a boast. If anything, there was a hint of bitterness underlying the words.
“Because you’d absorbed your twin sister’s magic?” Len hazarded.
Albigard’s brows drew together, his expression growing distant. “Yes. As the cat-sidhe pointed out, twins were common in my family line, though vanishingly rare overall among the Fae. Since the death of my older brother and sister, there are, to my knowledge, only five fraternal pairs left.”
Len’s eyebrows shot up. “Okay. That’s... definitely rare.”
“Two of the pairs are quite elderly,” Albigard went on. “They’ve been spared so far, as they are the repository for specialized magical knowledge about twins. One pair is of adult age, but they fled into Dhuinne’s wildlands during the war in an effort to escape their fates. The other two pairs are still children, and I weep for their future prospects should the peace with the demons crumble.”
As he spoke, Len’s stomach sank. “I don’t understand.”
“With the exception of the Wild Hunt and Dhuinne itself, living male and female twins are the most powerful magical force in the entirety of the Fae realm. Their complementary abilities feed off one another, and allow them to act as conduits for raw power on a scale unheard of for a single individual. It did not take the Court long to realize that this ability made them useful as weapons.” Albigard’s features had grown increasingly drawn as he spoke. “Unfortunately, a bomb seldom survives being dropped on the enemy.”
Len made a soft, punched-out noise as the connections slid into place.
“Your siblings,” he said.
Len had been an only child—not exactly a blessing in his case, since it meant all of his parents’ hopes and expectations had rested solely on his shoulders. When he’d failed to uphold those expectations, the fallout had been predictably ugly. But it also meant he had no real frame of reference for the idea of losing a sibling—or multiple siblings, in Albigard’s case. He could only imagine that it was worse, even, than losing friends... and that was something with which Len had far more experience than he would have liked.
“It was no surprise that the vampires sided with the demons in the last war,” Albigard observed, “given the contempt Fae have always held for night creatures. But they were a bane against us in battle—far more numerous than demons, and at least somewhat resistant to common Fae magic. I did not learn the details until relatively recently, but the search for a weapon against them had been ongoing for the better part of a millennium, shrouded in secrecy. When one was finally developed, the Court was eager to use it as soon as possible in hopes of ending the conflict.”
Len scrubbed at his face, feeling the tug of the metal piercings in his skin. “Why do governments always feel the need to use the big new bomb on the battlefield, instead of just saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got a big new bomb and maybe now would be a good time to rethink that peace negotiation’?”
Albigard sighed. “An excellent question. In this case, I suspect those in power had a genuine desire to see the vampires removed permanently from the field of play. My people have a bad habit of regarding other species as mindless beasts rather than fellow sentients.”
Unable to let that pass, Len raised an eyebrow. “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
Either the barb sailed straight over Albigard’s head or he had a really good poker face, because he didn’t react.
“At any rate, Oren gave his blessing for my brother and sister to be deployed to Earth with the weapon. Their Flight Commander gave them final orders to detonate its magic, and all the vampires except Ransley Thorpe—safely hidden away in Hell—died in a single instant. No one thought it prudent to mention ahead of time that using the weapon would burn out my siblings’ magic and leave them as little more than blackened husks.”
Len’s stomach churned. “Oren,” he said, finding it difficult to push words past the tightness in his throat. “Rans said in St. Louis that he’s your...” He trailed off.
“My father. Yes,” Albigard finished for him. “He knowingly sent his own children to their deaths.”
“And now he wants to drag you to yours.” The bile of family betrayal was far too familiar for comfort, and Len found that it burned just as bitterly when it was someone else’s family screwing them over.
Albigard shrugged. “While I am considered a relatively powerful practitioner among my people, the fact remains that my twin sister did not survive to be born. No doubt that makes me a terrible disappointment in my father’s eyes.” His gaze grew hooded. “Since I began asking too many awkward questions about the war, the Fae have tolerated me for one reason only. And it is a reason I refuse to indulge.”
Len watched him carefully. “What reason is that?”
“They want me as breeding stock, of course.”
The words hung in the air, sickening in their implication.
Albigard continued in a tone of contempt. “Until now, they’ve overlooked my politically imprudent acts in hopes that I would eventually continue my twin-heavy bloodline.”
Len frowned. “And the fact that you’ve gone more than a thousand years without finding a nice Fae girl and settling down wasn’t a bit of a tip-off?”
“One would think so, certainly.” The words were as dry as the desert. “But with my mother dead and the only other twins of reproductive age hiding beyond the Court’s reach, I suppose their options are somewhat limited at present.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in his own thoughts. Len rubbed at his jaw, debating whether to ask the question he wanted to ask, since it was none of his damned business, really. After a bit more dithering, it became apparent that the answer to the question ‘how long does it take a person to lose all semblance of good manners after being ripped from the normal world and trapped in a pocket dimension?’ was ‘about as long as Len had been stuck here.’
He opened his mouth and the question tumbled out, bald and graceless. “So, are you gay? Is that a thing—gay Fae? Because if it is, I guess it might explain why I got called a fairy so often in school, if nothing else.”
Albigard shot him a dark look. If Len hadn’t been pretty much resigned to dying anyway, it might have sent a spark of trepidation through him.
“Perhaps I merely object to the idea of handing my father and the rest of the Court more weapons that they can use like they used my dead brother and sister,” he said evenly.
Len didn’t break eye contact. “Fae don’t lie, so I can’t help noticing that answer was very carefully worded as a suggestion rather than a direct statement.”
Albigard narrowed his eyes dangerously. “You think I do wish to give my people more children that can be used as disposable weapons of mass destruction?”
That phrasing was also a bit suspect when it came to directing attention away from the original question, but there was a limit to how far Len was willing to push him.
“No,” he said. “Of course I don’t think that. Though I’ll point out that bisexual people also exist, so it’s still not really an answer
.”
The Fae scoffed. “You did not ask if I was bisexual. I can’t be held responsible for the verbal imprecision of a human.”
And that was pretty close to an answer, especially combined with the rather unambiguous hard-on that had been poking Len in the hip while he’d been attempting to pick the lock on Albigard’s wrist shackle. He shrugged and let it go.
“True enough,” he said. “Though ‘bisexual Fae’ doesn’t really have the same ring to it as ‘gay Fae.’ Is it accepted, then? In Dhuinne?”
Albigard’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Accepted? Among a conservative race with catastrophically falling fertility rates?”
“Ah,” Len said. “So, I’m guessing that’s a ‘no.’”
Albigard stretched out a hand to grab a couple pieces of wood from the pile they’d made, and tossed them into the fire. A riot of sparks flew upward, climbing toward the sky in an intricate dance before they burned out.
The Fae settled back, drawing breath as though he might say something more, only to hesitate for so long that Len assumed he’d changed his mind.
Eventually, though, he did decide to speak.
“Male children who express inappropriate interest in others of their own gender are brought before the elders. There, they are regaled with old folktales designed to deter them from acting on their curiosity and desire,” he said slowly. “The stories are all very precisely phrased, as you might imagine—some people say this, and many people believe that.”
From what he’d already seen of Fae verbal gymnastics, Len could picture it easily enough.
“The gist of the story never changed, however,” Albigard continued. “The elders would speak of the Forsaken... disgraced Unseelie who either fled or were driven out of Fae society and forced to live in the wildlands. Their wickedness was purportedly so great that they would sneak into the cities at night and abduct adolescent boys who showed evidence of ‘unnatural desires.’ After spiriting the boys away, the Forsaken would keep them as slaves, binding them in magical bonds and forcing them to perform the most horrific and depraved acts against their will.” He let out a harsh breath. “The elders were often quite blunt about what, exactly, such acts might entail.”
Forsaken Fae: The Complete Series, Books 1-3 (Last Vampire World) Page 25