Institute of the Shadow Fae Box Set

by C. N. Crawford

  My lip twitched. “I think I’m going to consider this our first date.” So quiet I wasn’t sure if he’d even heard it. We’d have a few dates in cemeteries and bone water, then we’d try to kill each other when the truth came out. A perfect relationship for me, really.

  Instead of responding, he pulled away, walking silently through the water again. The truth was, even if I was angry at Ruadan, I wanted him so badly my ribs ached.

  He’d ruined my life, and part of me still wanted more from him. Not just sex, but I wanted his secrets and his confidence and his trust. I wanted late-night conversations, my head resting on his chest to hear his heart, his arms encircling me. Gods help me, some part of me actually wanted to take care of this nightmarish demigod. I was on his kill list, and he’d told me relationships were forbidden anyway. Was I losing my mind completely? I sighed, a hollow opening in my chest.

  As we walked forward, narrower tunnels branched off on either side of us, curving away into darkness. Escape routes if we needed them.

  Ruadan sniffed the air, then turned to me. He placed a finger over his lips. I hadn’t even been talking, and he wanted me to be quiet. The Caoranach was here.

  Still, the bean nighe’s singing grew louder, along with the rhythmic sound of beating of wings. I gritted my teeth, willing my heartbeat to slow. Ruadan flicked his wrist, and the ball of silver light brightened.

  As we moved deeper into the tunnel, another pearly light glowed up ahead of us. In the gloom of a dank cemetery tunnel, a single bean nighe shone like the moon in the night. She wore a silver gown, black hair cascading over pale shoulders, and she scrubbed at a cloth. I hadn’t expected the bean nighe to be so beautiful, and she drew me closer, like the moon drawing in the tides. A sheathed sword glinted on her back. I didn’t suppose we could trade the cakes for their weapons as well?

  From the shadows skulked two more armed bean nighe, their dark eyes wide. All three were singing, their voices mingling harmoniously, echoing off the tunnel walls. Each of them scrubbed a scrap of crimson cloth, and droplets of blood dripped into the river.

  If three beautiful washerwomen didn’t seem like much of a protective force, that was only because they hadn’t launched into the real shit yet. Fortunately, we’d come armed with baked goods.

  “Cakes,” said Ruadan under his breath.

  “I know what I’m doing,” I mouthed.

  I slid my backpack off my shoulders and reached for the Jaffa Cakes, shoving aside a change of clothes and a few crumpled Tube maps.

  The bean nighe fell silent as we drew closer, eyes turning to us. They gripped their blood-soaked cloths.

  I held out the Jaffa Cakes in front of me as we approached the closest woman. She cocked her head, eyes wide as she stared at the treat.

  “Will you let us pass?” I whispered, pointing at the cakes. “If we give you these fine cakes, will you let us pass?”

  The only response was that eerie sound of beating wings, like an invisible bird flapping all around us. The closest bean nighe cocked her head sharply—an eerie, reptilian movement.

  I took a step closer. Maybe they hadn’t heard me. “They’re actually limited-edition strawberry Jaffa Cakes. They’re not the ordinary orange kind. They’re quite… delectable.”

  A grin spread over her face. Despite the sharpened teeth she revealed, my shoulders began to relax.

  The serving wench rolls an eighteen for her charisma check, and we are getting somewhere.

  “If you let us pass, the Jaffa Cakes are yours.” I shrugged. “I might even throw in a package of fondant fancies. Multicolored frosting. Unopened. Especially if we can borrow your swords for a bit.”

  Still grinning, the bean nighe nodded enthusiastically. Then, she dropped her bloodied cloth and snatched the box from my hand. The three washerwomen descended on the Jaffa Cakes, ripping them out of the cardboard and plastic, shoving them into their mouths. Crumbs rained down into the river.

  When they finished, they ran their long tongues over their bony fingers, looking at me hopefully for more.

  “You’ll give me the swords, right?” I mouthed, pointing at their weapons.

  All three nodded.

  I reached into my bag, pulling out the fondant fancies—bright pink, yellow, and purple cakes, drizzled with chocolate. The bean nighe crowded around them, elbowing each other and snatching the cakes, mashing them into their mouths, grunting.

  I crossed my arms, satisfied with my work. They’d agreed to the deal. They’d taken the cakes, and that meant our safe passage had been secured—swords and all. We’d already passed the first hurdle.

  “Well,” I whispered. “We’ll just be on our way, then.”

  I took a step forward through the cold water, ready to brush past the three bean nighe.

  As I did, the washerwomen dropped their glamour. They transformed, hair whitening and growing tangled. Blood streamed from their eyes, and their singing rose to a keening fever pitch. The sight of their gaping, dark eyes hit me like a gale-force wind, knocking me back. What the hells?

  The first bean nighe opened her mouth, and she shrieked, the otherworldly sound curdling my blood.

  I clamped my hands over my ears, trying to block it out. Someone was about to die. But was it them or us?

  Chapter 77

  So much for the legends about cakes.

  I shot a glance at Ruadan, and he gave me a quick nod, which I interpreted to mean “kill them now.” Gripping the knife, I began to rush forward, well aware that I’d brought a knife to a sword fight.

  But as I moved forward, a wall of darkness slammed into my skull.

  I stopped running and looked back at the clearing with a growing sense of horror. I stared at the red hair spread out over the soil, at the fae bodies rotting before us. My father stood over my mum, black wings swooping from his shoulders, his expression haunted.

  He’d killed her. His wings of death had come out and disease had spread over the village. Fae wilted like flowers in the sun. I’d heard rumors of the Angel of Death. I’d never known he was my father.

  I turned and ran again, desperate for the portal. I needed to put as much distance as I could between myself and the Angel of Death.

  He’d killed everyone.

  Hadn’t he?

  Fury exploded. I ripped myself free from the vision until I found myself in the tunnel again. As I’d been reliving my past, some primal part of my brain had taken over. Somehow, I’d managed to avoid the bean nighe’s sword, shadow-leaping around the tunnel.

  I held my knife out in front of me, slashing it as a bean nighe moved closer. Her sharp teeth were bared, fury contorting her features. Swinging for her, battle fury blazed. I thrust the iron blade between her ribs, and her skin began to crumble and crack, the fissures of flesh weeping blood. One down.

  Out of the corner of my eye, a flash of red hair.

  Ruby’s hair.

  My heart leapt. I whirled. As I stared at the woman before me, the ground tilted beneath my feet.

  Crimson cascaded over a white dress, eyes a pistachio green.

  My chest tightened. “Mum?” I stammered.

  Still alive. What’s she doing here?

  She reached for me. My legs shook, and I took another step closer, stretching out to touch her hand.

  Ruadan shifted from the shadows and clamped his hand around my mum’s head, snapping her neck. I felt the break as sharply as if it had been my own. Then, he tore her head off her body.

  My screams echoed off the tunnel walls. A hollow opened in my stomach, and I blinked away the tears. “Why did you do that?”

  He stared at me. “Why did I kill the bean nighe?”

  I shook my head. Of course. I knew the bean nighe screwed with your mind. As I looked around me, I realized Ruadan had killed the other one, also. They were all dead.

  “She looked like my mother,” I muttered, before a jolt of panic pierced me. Had I just given away my identity to Ruadan? Had he seen Ruby, too?

  His
violet eyes gleamed in the darkness. “That wasn’t your mother. It was a bean nighe glamour, harvested from our own memories. She looked like someone else to me.”

  “Who?”

  Darkness bled around him. “My wife.”

  I swallowed hard. “You said there was a legend about cakes. If we fed them cakes, they’d be in our debt.”

  “Legends aren’t always accurate. If they were, we’d call them facts.”

  “Legends aren’t always accurate,” I repeated for emphasis.

  Like the legend about how Adonis had created the Black Death. That one wasn’t a fact, was it?

  I gripped my knife, searching through the gloom for our next threat. “I don’t understand. Did the bean nighe scream because they were going to die? It seems like a poor evolutionary trait, since the screaming caused their deaths….” My thoughts were getting tangled again.

  Ruadan’s attention was on the water below us. “Does it matter now?” He reached down, swiping his fingertips through the shallow river. The silver light from his orb illuminated blood dripping from his fingertips into the stream.

  My bones chilled. All this blood wasn’t just from the bean nighe—the river itself had turned to blood.

  My gaze trailed up and down the underground river, and I could see nothing but blood all around us. This was the doing of the Caoranach, lured by the noise.

  Ruadan snuffed out his light, and I felt a finger over my mouth, signaling silence. After another moment, I felt the hilt of a sword in my hand as he handed me one of the bean nighe’s weapons. My muscles had frozen completely.

  A rough, raspy sound carried through the tunnel, raising goosebumps on my skin.

  Ruadan touched my cheek, then whispered, “Jump.”

  I clutched the lumen stone at my throat, summoning the cold, electrical magic.

  I leapt—just as an explosion rocked the tunnel. Midair, I slammed into a hailstorm of oncoming rocks. Chunks of stone caught me in the shoulder and the hip, knocking me arse-backward into the blood river. I scrambled to my feet, gagging on the blood that had trickled into my mouth. Somehow, I’d managed to hold onto the sword.

  From behind us, a snake’s hiss rippled over the water. Ruadan hadn’t been kidding. The Caoranach was bloody terrifying.

  Ruadan grabbed me by the arm, pulling me up from the river. Then, he practically threw me into a tunnel that branched off the main one. In here, darkness consumed us completely.

  “Jump,” he said again—unnecessarily, since at this point I had very much internalized the concept of run from the snake woman.

  Another loud explosion, and rocks rained down around us. How was she making these tunnels collapse? I blocked my head with my forearms as debris slammed onto my arms. I grunted with pain, falling to my knees and dropping my sword.

  When the explosion had finished, I forced myself up again, grasping around until I found the sword. Ruadan reached for me, and he pulled me close against his powerful, damp chest. His muscled arm clamped around me, and I could hear the sound of his heart beating hard. I’d wanted to hear his heart. Just … not like this.

  I wasn’t sure where the Caoranach was now. Could she hear us if I asked him a question? My arms screamed where the rocks had slammed into them.

  I stood on my tiptoes to get closer to Ruadan’s ear, my body sliding against his. “How is she smashing the tunnels?”

  His breath warmed my ear as he whispered. “Her tail. She’s slipping around the tunnels, trapping us by collapsing walls.”

  I breathed in deeply. I hadn’t understood exactly how large she could get.

  Okay. So the great avoidance plan wasn’t working. We’d have to kill the bitch.

  Was it even possible to kill one of the Old Gods? Probably not, given that Ruadan was one of the most powerful creatures I’d ever met, and he was hiding in a hole to avoid her.

  Down here, total darkness enveloped us, and the dank tunnel air felt oppressive. If it hadn’t been for Ruadan’s body warming mine through our wet clothing, I could almost imagine myself in the musty underground cage Baleros had kept me in. I’d grown used to being trapped underground, but being hunted by a snake woman was an unwelcome addition to the usual scenario.

  Ruadan had said that she hunted through sound—especially loud noises. Right now, I could hear only his breath and mine. Was that enough to draw her closer?

  As I pressed against Ruadan, her hissing grew louder, along with the raspy sound of scales rubbing against stone.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Ruadan’s arm loosened on me. I stepped away from him, tightening my fingers on the sword’s hilt. The sound of my own breathing made my muscles tighten. I couldn’t see a bloody thing in the damn tunnel. Ruadan, demigod of night, probably knew exactly what was going on, but it wasn’t like he could tell me.

  The coppery scent of blood grew stronger around us.

  The Caoranach hissed again, and the sound slithered over my skin, raising bile in my throat. Then, when her body began to glow with faint golden light, all the breath left my lungs.

  The serpentine lower half of her body practically filled the tunnel. She’d transformed into something different than she’d been before. Her face looked half-woman, half-monster: pale skin with two slitted nostrils; tiny, dark eyes and a wide mouth that showcased her fangs. Her eyes transfixed me, and I could hardly remember what I was supposed to do. Were we here to fight?

  A dark, forked tongue flicked out of her mouth, and even in my mental fog, a survival instinct spurred me on to fight back. With a lightning-fast reflex, I slashed for her tongue. I cut into it just a little before she really hit me with it.

  But before I could take another breath, she licked at us again. Ruadan swung for her, but her tongue hit his arm, then lashed at me. She caught me in the side, just below my ribs. I clutched the wound, already feeling the toxin spreading through me. The poison wound its way around my muscles, freezing me up. I dropped the sword into the blood river. Around me, the water was rising.

  This was not a good situation. Ruadan and I were both about to be immobilized.

  I gaped as the Caoranach transformed, her reptilian body contracting. No longer was there a giant serpent standing before us, but a woman clad in red leather, grinning at us. She had a tidy leather satchel at her waist—one that actually did look like it was made of human skin. I wanted to smash that grin right off her face.

  Fear slid through my veins. I couldn’t get out of this the same way I had before, not without potentially revealing my true nature in front of Ruadan. When he saw the death magic pulsing out of me, he might know. My blood roared in my ears. I willed my body to move. Still, I couldn’t move a single muscle.

  Ruadan had been hit, but he was still wielding his sword. He lunged forward, swinging for the Caoranach, but she dodged. Another lash from her tongue caught him in the side, and his body went still, a deep red gash showing through his clothing.

  Panic began spiraling through me. The blood river was rising higher around us, at my waist now. Although I couldn’t move my body of my own volition, my teeth chattered involuntarily.

  When Ruadan dropped his sword into the rising blood, my stomach sank.

  I could feel the ancient winds of death whispering through me.

  Fae, demons, the unholy beasts who scrabble over the earth … I will steal your breath.

  Not my own voice. The voice of an Angelic horde, echoing off my skull.

  The Caoranach smiled. “Now. Isn’t this lovely? I have you both where I want you.”

  Chapter 78

  Pale blue light from her body glowed over the tunnel, gleaming over the rising river of blood. It had reached my hipbones, now, the smell of blood overpowering.

  The Caoranach began shivering, teeth chattering. Apparently, the cold bothered her, too, and Ruadan was delivering heavy doses of ice. Frowning, she reached into her skin satchel and pulled out a thermos, followed by a teacup.

  With her talons clacking against the metallic thermo
s, she unscrewed the top, then poured herself a cup of steaming tea, one taloned pinky extended. She stared at us over the rim of her teacup as she took a sip. Steam curled around her.

  “Ahhhh….”

  I hadn’t admired her before, but now I had to admit the woman was genius. I’d never thought to pack hot tea in my bug-out bag. Assuming we got out of this situation, that was the first thing on my agenda.

  The Caoranach drifted closer to Ruadan, and she took another sip of her tea. “I’ve been here since before the angels. Before the fae. I am one of the Old Gods. Did you know that?”

  Frozen in place, I caught a whiff of her tea. I didn’t know what was in it, but it smelled like death.

  She took another sip from her cup, the curls of steam winding around her head. “Mmmmm.” She closed her eyes as she drank. “Do you know how I make this tea? I squeeze my victims to death, gut them, and then dry their organs. The agony they felt when I crush them continues to feed me after their lives have ended.”

  Gross. I still admired the thermos, but mine would not contain organ tea.

  She knocked back the rest of her cup, then threw it against a wall. The porcelain shattered against the rock. Now, her body glowed even brighter with that pale blue light.

  “You know me, Prince Ruadan. You remember me, don’t you? I was there when you were just a young boy. I’m older than language,” she went on, “and I will be here after all of your race dies. Demons. Fae. The lot of you.”

  With an iron will, I forced my eyes to move, to look at him.

  The Caoranach was only inches from him now, her cheeks pink, eyes half-lidded. Her sights were locked on Ruadan, her expression starved. She carved one long, silver talon down his chest, ripping open his clothing.

  “Can you stop making it so bloody cold?” she snapped.

  Good luck with that, woman.

  Ruadan looked like he was shifting—eyes darkening, the ghost of dark wings cascading down his back.

  The temperature plummeted, the river growing so cold it was a shock to my body. My breath misted in front of my face. Immobilized, I shivered uncontrollably. Snake Lady shivered, too.