Faerie Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Changeling Chronicles Book 1)
Read Faerie Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Changeling Chronicles Book 1) Online
Authors: Emma L. Adams
FAERIE BLOOD
The Changeling Chronicles: Book One
Emma L. Adams
This book was written, produced and edited in the UK, where some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.
Copyright © 2016 Emma L. Adams
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Rebecca Frank
About Faerie Blood
I’m Ivy Lane, and if I never see another faerie again, it’ll be too soon.
Twenty years after the faeries came and destroyed the world as we knew it, I use my specialist skills to keep rogue faeries in line and ensure humans and their magically gifted neighbours can coexist (relatively) peacefully.
Nobody knows those skills came from the darkest corner of Faerie itself.
When a human child disappears, replaced with a faerie changeling, I have to choose between taking the safe road or exposing my own history with the faeries to the seductively dangerous head of the Mage Lords. He’s the exact kind of distraction I don’t need, but it’s work with him or lose my chance to save the victims.
It’ll take all my skills to catch the kidnappers and stop Faerie’s dark denizens overrunning the city — but if the faerie lords find out about the magic I stole last time I went into their realm, running won’t save me this time…
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CHAPTER ONE
When I was sixteen years old, I walked out of hell, thinking I’d finally be free of the faeries.
Ten years later, the joke was on me. Instead of spending my Saturday morning sleeping in, there I was, deep in a troll’s lair with a piskie hovering over my shoulder.
“He took my friend’s charm,” whined the piskie.
“Yes, you said.” I hoped the faerie wasn’t mistaken, if just because it’d mean I’d climbed into a troll’s nest for nothing. I gritted my teeth, sorting through the array of junk the troll had gathered, searching for the tell-tale glint of a spell. Charms were notoriously tricky to get right, but given the wad of cash on offer, this one must be the real deal. I’d get a nice bonus if I returned it to its rightful owner.
In the suburbs, you took what work you could get. Even skulking around a troll’s nest. I’d had to wait until it went off hunting before I risked sneaking in. I’d rank the danger level up there with putting a harness on a kelpie. But at least kelpies didn’t smell like a blocked drain. Grimacing, I shoved a heap of what looked like human clothes aside—hopefully stolen, not the remnants of past victims. Trying to make faeries obey human laws was tricky at the best of times, but I was
not
sifting through troll dung to figure out if it had recently consumed a human being or not. Luckily, that job fell to the clean-up squad, who were one rank below me on the less-than-impressive ladder of poor souls freelancing for Larsen Crawley.
The word “freelancer” sounded like it ought to mean something like “dragon slayer”. In my case, that was almost literally true. But right now, the only things getting slayed were my already tattered new jeans and shoes. The low ceiling forced me to kneel in unappealing wetness to sift through another heap of old junk. Trolls had magpie-like tendencies for reasons I couldn’t fathom. I shoved a pile of expensive-looking jewels aside and found what I was looking for.
“Gotcha.” I picked up the small, glinting cylindrical charm. “What kind of spell is this?”
“Beautification,” said the piskie.
That figured. Damned half-faeries were posers and narcissists, one and all. I slid the charm into my pocket and headed towards the exit.
A shuffling noise ahead made me stop. Oh, shit. I’d planned to confront the creature later on for extra cash, but definitely not here in its cramped nest. Trolls were notoriously territorial. Great job there, Ivy.
Damn. The ceiling was high enough to account for the troll’s hulking frame, but with nowhere for me to hide. Which meant I’d have to break my own rule.
Don’t spill faerie blood in the mortal realm.
I reached for the sword I kept strapped to my waist. I don’t kill if I can avoid it, but it’s amazing how quickly an adversary will back off if you’re pointing a sword at them.
As per usual, I’d hoped for too much. The troll saw the blade and bellowed, swinging a giant fist at me. I ducked, cursing the cave’s tight walls. I needed to get to the exit, but the troll didn’t seem inclined to move out the way. As the light filtering through the cracks in the ceiling landed on the creature, it was revealed in all its ugly glory. Trolls resembled misshapen boulders, which meant none of my hits would do any damage. Its huge, lumpy body was resilient to virtually anything. Except—like all faerie-kind, with no exception—iron.
I repositioned myself, raising my sword, hoping it’d have the good sense to move. Unfortunately, expecting good sense from a troll is like expecting manners from a brain-eating boggart.
Rather than ducking, the troll took the hit. I hadn’t put all my weight behind it, but a few years swinging a blade in defence of your life makes it difficult to judge the impact. Especially with faeries. The bright spray of blood made the troll scream in alarm, stomping its huge, hairy feet. Its fists drove me against the wall, step by step, until I stood ankle-deep in… troll dung.
Worse, the piskie had disappeared into thin air, leaving me to deal with the fallout.
“Take a hint,” I snarled, swinging the blade again. A second spray of blood made the troll fall over its own feet towards me, driving me further back into the dung heap. “I’m sparing your life, you idiotic creature.”
Said idiotic creature aimed another punch at my head. I ducked, and the troll’s fist went through the back wall instead. The troll roared and tried to pull its hand free, sending bits of crumbling rock over my head.
Abandoning all restraint, I dropped to the ground, crawled between its legs and pointed my blade at its spine.
The troll flailed its free arm, howling—its other hand was stuck in the wall. I’d have laughed if I wasn’t doing my absolute best to forget what I’d just crawled through.
My blade gleamed, even covered in blood. Irene was my beauty: my faithful companion through ten years of fighting the evil forces of Faerie and laying down the law.
“Enough,” I said in my most dangerous voice. “I’m confiscating the charm you stole. A representative from the city’s council will be here shortly to question you and search for anything else you might have stolen.” I suspected everything here in its nest was stolen, but I couldn’t help being fervently glad the interrogation didn’t fall on me. No. I was just the sword-for-hire, the runner of dangers. Someone who played nicer with others would be in charge of the interrogation.
As for me, I gave the troll one last warning tap on the spine with my sword. Faint red lines rose where I’d hit it: a result of faeries’ incurable allergy to iron.
“Evil Sidhe!” wailed the troll.
“I’m not Sidhe,” I said. “I’m human.”
The hilt of my sword struck the back of its head, and the troll crumpled, its hand still wedged in the earthen wall.
I grimaced. Blood and troll dung covered every inch of my clothes, which meant risking the landlord seeing me walk back into the flat in this state. I’d figured the job wouldn’t go smoothly and had set up a cleansing spell to remove the blood from my clothes ready for when I got home. Once I’d dealt with that, I’d collect my bounty. Faerie blood attracted all kinds of trouble. The kind worse than a pissed-off troll.
Twenty years on from the faeries’ arrival and we’re still cleaning up their mess. Summer and Winter Sidhe might have come to Earth to stop humans destroying one another, but when they buggered off home, they left us saddled with their henchmen squatting under our bridges and nesting in our rafters. Most of the faeries who live around here have no allegiance either to the Seelie or Unseelie courts, because there’s no way back to Faerie. They probably fare better in our realm because there’s a marginally lower chance of being flayed alive.
Isabel sometimes says faeries got the raw end of the deal. I’m not inclined to agree.
The piskie reappeared at my side as I set up a ward outside the troll’s nest in case it woke up. “Thanks for the help,” I said.
The piskie fluttered its tiny gossamer wings. “I am honoured, human.”
I rolled my eyes. Faeries are the most literal creatures in existence.
My flat’s on the east side of what used to be a suburb of south Birmingham. After the hot mess the faeries left behind when they left following the invasion, most newly exposed supernaturals laid claim to various parts of the newly created town. I lived between witch and shifter territory, while Larsen’s place was situated between shifter and necromancer territories, right at the town’s edge. In other words, the place there was most likely to be trouble. The building I approached was a squat red-brick construction. It served as the base for Larsen’s offices as well as the clean-up squad, with various facilities open to freelance employees like the gymnasium and the target practise hall. I spent half my time there when I wasn’t on jobs.
Larsen accosted me at the doors, wearing his usual scowl. His sloppy T-shirt and jeans getup wouldn’t be out of place in a seedy bar. Then again, the local supernatural police unit’s place was hardly an elite establishment. Anyone who couldn’t afford to hire a mage to solve their supernatural problems came to Larsen, but everybody knew his place was a last resort.
“There you are. I was beginning to think I’d need to send someone after you.” He looked me up and down in the suspicious way I always hated, like he was looking for an excuse to lock
me
away. Why he thought being the head of what amounted to a magical garbage disposal unit was worth lording it over everyone else was a mystery to me.
“I couldn’t come here covered in blood,” I countered. I’d showered and changed, leaving my ruined clothes to soak, and cleaned away every trace of the faeries. I still felt like the stench clung to my skin, though. Places like the troll’s nest smelled more like a sewer than pure Faerie, but my nose is sensitive to every trace. The faint aroma of decaying magic made my skin crawl like it wanted to leap clear of my body.
“Blood?” Larsen raised an eyebrow. “You were supposed to retrieve a stolen object, not cause a scene. Especially after last time.”
“Don’t worry. No one’s hurt. I got the charm, knocked out the troll and put a ward around its nest. When clean-up go down there later, there are a bunch of other items I’m pretty sure are stolen.”
“And just how did you take down a troll?”
“I cut it a little.”
“I thought you did.” He gave me another of his suspicious stares, eyes lingering on the sword re-strapped to my waist. I met his gaze, daring him to ask. My cover story was airtight, and I was hardly the only human capable of defending herself from supernatural creatures. I’d had more incentive than most.
Regularly escaping intact from fights with Faerie’s biggest, ugliest denizens tends to make people ask curious questions. Mostly it’s a combination of witch charms and a handy skill with a blade. Larsen wouldn’t know I had faerie magic unless I hit him in the face with it. Humans, even witches and shifters, aren’t Sighted.
