Faerie Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Changeling Chronicles Book 1) (28 page)

The tune ran like cold fingers on the back of my neck. A whimper rose in my throat, though not a sound escaped.

“Remember, Ivy?” whispered the voice.

Did I ever. That fucking piano music. I pressed my hands to my ears, glancing at the others. Thick smoke rose between us, dense and grey.

And inside were a thousand faces, baring impossibly white teeth at me. Spirits. Half-faeries.

“You’re dead,” I told them, removing my hands from my ears.

Small figures appeared between them—frightened faces, wide eyes. Humans. None older than fifteen.

No. God, no.

I knew them all. Every one.

“I tried to save you.” My voice cracked. “I tried.”

The other prisoners. They’d fled at the same time as I had, freed at the moment I’d killed Avakis. But the spell of the faeries went too deep. I was the only one who’d made it out of the forest, back to the mortal world. They’d died. Faerie had taken them.

These were the faces that had haunted my dreams for months after I’d come home. I’d saved myself, but hadn’t been able to save anyone else.

Did they linger on, in the between world?

Or was this a faerie trick?

I closed my eyes. “I’m sorry I left you behind,” I said, “but I can’t help what I did in the past. I have a job to do.”

“If you use Avakis’s magic to open the veil, we’ll be free again,” whispered a voice. “You’ll be free of the guilt, forever.

I struggled not to open my eyes, but it was like fighting against the wind. My eyes flew open to see smoke surrounding me, punctuated by faces. The faces of the dead. Decomposing before my eyes, crawling with maggots.

“This is a trick,” I said, loudly.

Whether it was or not, I couldn’t give in. There were two, maybe three, living children trapped behind the veil. They could still be saved. I wouldn’t abandon them.

I closed my eyes and walked into the fog. My cheeks were wet from tears I hadn’t felt fall. The grief was still there. I’d had to lock it away or I’d never move on from what happened.

I bumped into someone solid. Tall. Familiar.

“Vance?”

He turned to face me, wearing the same blanked-out expression he had the last time he’d been in the fog.

“Sarah,” he said, looking right through me, pale as a ghost himself.

Crap. He saw someone dead, too.

“Sarah, what are you doing here? Get back in the house. It’s not safe."

“I’m Ivy,” I said. “We need to go.” I tugged on his arm, but it was like trying to shift a metal post. He was too strong, and even now, his skin burned cold against me. The blizzard. He’d taken in all its power. “Vance, you stopped the magic of a thousand faeries. You can snap out of this.”

He continued to look right past me in a way that was frankly creepy. His hands were icy cold. I looked down to see black scales covering his fingertips.

Oh, shit. He’d told me to back off if he shifted, but he was the only solid thing in this forest of smoke. I shoved him in the side, bruising my elbow.

“Vance, snap the hell out of it! For god’s sake, you’re the freaking Mage Lord.”

No response. The faeries had him, and I never figured out how to get around their mind tricks. If I hadn’t experienced them before, I’d have fallen, too.

I slapped him across the face with a deafening crack that sent him stumbling back a few steps. My hand stung, but his gaze dropped to the floor, and the blankness in his eyes shifted aside.

“Ivy?” Vance shook his head, wearing a dazed expression. “What…?”

“Faerie tricks,” I said. “They can make you see things. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “Blasted creatures. Did you hit me?”

“Didn’t know what else to do.” I looked into the fog. “I can’t see the others.”

“I’ll find them.”

“Who’s Sarah?”

There was a pause. “My sister. She was supposed to hide the night of the invasion, but she ran outside when the faeries stormed the wall down.”

Oh.
“Sorry.”

He moved, the sword appearing in his hands, but the fog didn’t shift when he swept the blade down in a motion that would have easily cut an opponent in two.

“Whatever spell this is, I can’t break it.” He watched me, his eyes the same colour as the fog. “Can you?”

What?
“No.”

“You’ve never tried to use your magic to break a faerie’s spell?”

“I use it defensively.” When it cooperated. What with the glimpse down memory lane, the temporary effects of the magic had faded and I was back to normal, human speed.

“We work on defensive magic first when training new mages, but I find the offensive mode of a mage’s ability is effectively a reflection of the defensive spell. Perhaps it’s the same for you.”

Huh? This didn’t seem the time for a magic lesson. “Maybe, but this magic—it’s not mine. I stole it. I can use it to defend myself, but it seems to need that trigger for me to use it at all.”

“I’ve seen you use magic when angry,” he said. “Would you say it needs an emotional trigger?”

“Maybe. But we have bigger problems.”

“We do,” he said. “But I just took on the power of a thousand Winter faeries, magnified by Death, and the magic looked and felt very similar to yours.”

Huh?
“Winter? My magic isn’t—I guess Avakis was originally a Winter lord. Faeries lose the essence of their magic when they’re exiled, though. Then they fight over the scraps. I don’t know how Avakis rose to power, but I’d guess it involved stealing magic from others.”

The sound of a car’s engine cut through the silence, as did a stream of piercing light. The fog parted, and Vance spun around.

Several necromancers walked towards us, towards the circle.
Finally.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“About bloody time,” I said.

Two robed figures marched across the grass—or what was left of it. They made right for the summoning circle, as if none of us were there.

“Hey!” I ran after them. Isabel was still trapped in there. If she got hurt by accident… “Hold on. Nothing can touch that circle.”

“It’s only a summoning circle,” said one of them.

“Only?” How clueless could you get? “There’s a thousand half-faerie spirits watching you. That place is supposed to be a gateway back to their own world.”

“What?” Both of them stared at me.

I didn’t have time for dealing with sceptical necromancers. “Trust me when I say there’s worse than undead behind there.”

“She’s right,” said Vance, from behind me. “Don’t open the circle unless you’re certain you can deal with what’s hiding there. You need to take it down without using too much power. The energy levels are unstable.”

“How dare you tell us how to do our jobs,” one necromancer said. “We were told to abandon our
own
territory when the undead are rising on our doorstep, because apparently helping your incompetent colleagues is more important.”

“It might have escaped your attention,” said Vance, in his most dangerous voice, “that this is the crux of the energy disturbance. The faeries are planning to rip open a doorway through the veil. I’m assuming they learned how to do it by questioning
your
traitor colleagues.”

“How
dare
you—”

A half-faerie appeared before him and thrust its hand through the necromancer’s chest.

I stared for a moment, then the air lit up as a thousand spirits reappeared.

Blue light flared along the circle’s edge, and a blast of icy air sent me staggering back. I gasped as the coldness intensified like a thousand needles stabbing at every inch of exposed skin.

“The gate is breaking,” yelled the necromancer.

A spirit flew at him, passing through his body, and the necromancer went still.

Then a high pitched laugh issued from his throat. He spun to face me, an inhuman smirk twisting his lips, and sent a blast of cold, blue light from his fingertips. I ducked on pure instinct.
Was that faerie magic? Is the spirit possessing him?

I blocked the magic with my own, my mind reeling. Ghost faeries possessing human bodies. What the hell next?

I used my own magic to deflect another attack, but the spirit used the necromancer’s body to lunge at me with inhuman speed. I blocked his strike only because I used faerie magic enhanced speed myself, but
this
faerie clearly hadn’t forgotten how to use a physical body. A punch to my jaw set my head ringing, and I stumbled.

Vance stepped in. Rather than using his sword, he struck out with a hand now covered in shiny black scales. The necromancer flew back several feet, pitching against the circle’s edge.

Vance met my gaze, and I damn near forgot we were in the middle of a fight. His eyes had narrowed to dark slits, which combined with the claws and scales, gave him a positively demonic appearance.

“Vance?” I asked uncertainly.

Fear squeezed my chest. Oddly, at that moment I remembered Vance had said he’d become head of the mages by killing the last one. Was he losing control again?

Vance roared, hands now entirely taken over by long black claws, and hit out as the second necromancer attacked.

Yes. He’s losing it. Get away.

I drew my sword, certain the necromancers themselves were dead, and only the spirits’ presence kept them moving. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. My sword swung, blood spurted, and the necromancer crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

I stared transfixed for a moment. I hadn’t expected my first human kill to be like—that.

Vance roared again. His claws reached out and knocked down the second necromancer, who didn’t get up this time. Another spirit flew past, shrieking and yowling. The breeze lifted the hair from my head, but I hardly noticed the cold this time. The way Vance looked around with predatory eyes made me feel more like I stood on the same side as an unpredictable monster than an ally.

“Vance.” I waved a hand in front of his face. He didn’t react. I considered slapping him again, but his furious shifted form might take my head off with those claws.

Drake shouted, and the summoning circle’s lights ignited again. Turning my back on Vance, I searched for Isabel, hoping she was safe. The circle remained shrouded in grey smoke. Damn. I stepped towards the circle, to be pushed back by an invisible barrier. Spirits—too many to count—thickened the air. If it was this bad here, a total shitstorm must be erupting on necromancer territory. No wonder they’d sent their worst members.

It was up to us to stop it.

Snarling sounded within the circle. Hellhounds. Isabel lay defenceless, and I had no way to cross over.

Except one.

I pulled one of the explosive spells from my pocket and aimed carefully at the point where two parts of the summoning circle converged in a beam of light. Then I ran like hell.

The explosion tore up the grass, sending fragments of earth surging into the air. I yelled at Vance to run, too, but I couldn’t hear my own voice over the racket. A second explosion triggered another, then another, and the lights were obscured in dust and earth and smoke. A familiar smell caught in my nostrils. Decay. Death.

Faerie.

A snarling noise. I froze, muscles locking in place.
Hellhounds.

The smoke cleared as faerie magic swirled around me, blue light illuminating the darkness. The lights of the summoning circle were gone, snuffed out. I’d blasted a hole into the field and knocked out two lights. Behind the wreck, Isabel lay, surrounded by hellhounds.

No. It’s too late.

This time, no circle blocked my way, because the earth had been torn up. I leaped over the gap, feet skidding in the mud. Isabel stirred, and relief seeped through me—she was alive.

“Hey!” I yelled at the hellhounds, brandishing my sword.

I ran, using the faerie magic to propel myself forward. I flew a good ten feet, slicing a hellhound’s throat in the same motion. I’d have been proud of the achievement if I hadn’t unintentionally launched myself right into the path of a second beast. Ducking a giant paw, I brought my sword in a slashing motion across its nose. Then caught it in the mouth. My blade sank through the roof into the monster’s brain, and it collapsed.

Three more leaped in, but a handful of fire flew past and knocked one of them into the other. I glimpsed Drake running towards what was left of the circle before a third tried to bite my wrist. I dodged and stabbed it in the neck.

Drake hurled a globe of fire so intense, I had to jump aside, but it sent the hellhounds scattering. I crouched beside Isabel, confident Drake could take care of the rest for now.

“Ivy,” she groaned. “I’m okay. I—”

“Don’t speak,” I said, slipping my arm around her head. “I’ll get you out of here.”