Faerie Blood: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Changeling Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

“Humans, cruel humans, let me go.”

“You’re harming it?” asked Lord Colton.

I hadn’t pegged him for the pacifist type. “No. It’s an act. Melodramatic idiot.” I took out my sword, letting the creature see the iron, and it fell silent. “You answer my questions, you get to leave. Simple.”

The changeling wailed.

“None of that,” I said. “You were sent in as a replacement for a human teenager. Who sent you?”

The changeling’s wail reached such a pitch, it felt like my eardrums were bursting. I rolled my eyes and hurled a knife at the circle. The point missed the changeling by a hair’s breadth—intentionally—and it screamed again.

The mage, however, pulled his sword from thin air again and pointed it at the thing’s neck.

“Is this a good incentive to pipe down?” he inquired. “Who are you working for?”

“Nobody.”

“A likely story.
I can put you under a compulsion spell,” I lied—those spells were one of the trickiest of all. “Just tell the truth, it’ll be easier. Who sent you?”

“I didn’t see his face,” said the changeling. “He was… pale. Like a Sidhe, but not. He was human. And Sidhe.”

“Human and Sidhe?” Lord Colton echoed.

Half-blooded? Half-faeries had no reason to be interested in a human child. Right?

“Anything else?”

“He carried a silver blade. Not iron, but ash.”

Lord Colton’s expression said
that’s interesting.
I hoped mine said the same, not what I was really thinking:
oh, crap.

Only the Sidhe lords and their most important warriors used weapons forged from the hearts of their trees.

“And he asked you to impersonate a teenage human?” asked Lord Colton.

“Forced me,” the changeling croaked.

“How?” I asked.

“Spell.”

Damn. Faeries here weren’t bound by the laws that governed their lords in their own realm. There, nobody could lie, but that didn’t stop them manipulating the truth if it served them.

“Somebody put a spell on you?” I asked.

The changeling’s gaze shifted to me. “Bad faerie!” it said.

Oh, shit. Lord Colton glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m not a faerie,” I said. “Who put the spell on you?”

The changeling tried to speak, but could only make gasping noises. I froze, my heart sinking.
Oh, no. Oh, god, no.

It had been a long time, but I knew what a tongue-tied spell looked like. Someone had cursed the creature so it physically
couldn’t
answer the question.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to answer,” I said quickly, aware of Lord Colton watching my reaction. “Where did he—or she—come from?”

“Faerie.”

“You’re all from Faerie,” said Lord Colton. “You’re evading, aren’t you? I’ve heard your kind like to bend the truth.”

So he’d been researching. But did the changeling mean its creator had recently come from Faerie, or before?

“Whereabouts was the spell put on you?” I asked it.

“Acacia Road.”

I stared. That was half-blood district—the closest place to Faerie in this realm.

In other words, exactly the kind of place where somebody with a lot of magic and a lot of guts could summon up a changeling.

“So someone from Faerie put the spell on you in this realm,” I said. “Did you see the human child you replaced?” My heart began to pound, cold sweat gathering on my back as I instinctively prepared for the worst.

“Yes.”

“Where’d they take him?” My heart beat faster with each word.

“I don’t know.” The changeling burst into tears. “Let me go, cruel human.”

“Only when you give us answers,” I said in my coldest voice. “Who else was there?”

“Faeries,” sobbed the changeling, beating its tiny feet on the charred soil.

I raised an eyebrow. “Care to be a little more specific? Names?” It took everything I had to speak clearly and confidently, even with sweat running down my spine and old memories threatening to claw their way free.
No. He’s not dead. You can still find him.

The changeling started to speak and choked again.

Lord Colton turned to me. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Tongue-tying spell,” I said. “Whoever’s behind this figured their changeling might get caught.” Pain in the ass. Not that I’d expected this to be easy. If I couldn’t track the Swansons’ son and the changeling couldn’t speak, we were at a dead end.

No. I wouldn’t give up so easily.

“Damn,” said Lord Colton, lowering his sword. “I’d guess it can’t speak the names of anyone involved. What does your master look like?”

“Pale. Tall. Silver hair.”

“Sounds like half the faerie-blooded population in this realm,” I muttered. “Great.”

“Aside from the ash blade,” Lord Colton reminded me. “Trinkets like that aren’t easy to come by.”

“True.” I had to hand it to him for improvising. He’d likely never encountered this kind of spell before, but you didn’t get to be the leader of the mages by being an idiot. “It’ll be faerie-made… where would he even get that?” I snapped my mouth shut before he got suspicious, and faced the changeling again. “Who was there who you can tell us about?”

“My brothers.” He cast a shifty look around.

Oh, shit. There was more than one.

At that moment, two small figures jumped from the bushes. Three feet tall with long, spindly legs, they waved pointed knives at me. Not regular knives—faeries couldn’t touch most metals—but ones that looked like sharpened twigs.

How threatening.
I nearly laughed, some of the tension knotting in my spine easing slightly. “Get in the circle,” I said.

The faeries bared their teeth at me.

I circled them, pulling out my sword. “This contains enough iron to make your skin fall off your bones.”

Two shrill screams followed. I circled back, seeing Lord Colton watching me with amusement in his eyes. “Come on, get in the circle.”

Fire exploded from nowhere and the faeries screamed, bolting across the field—and right into the path of the circle. I opened my mouth to shout a warning. The cloud of fire disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, and a hooded figure approached, casual as anything, like a movie star walking away from an explosion.

Lord Colton regarded the man with a frown. “Must you be so dramatic?”

I snorted. He was plenty dramatic himself. I turned to the new mystery guy, who lowered his hood to reveal a crop of dark red hair. His coat was similar in style to Lord Colton’s. He must be another of the Mage Lords.

“You’re Ivy?” He held out a hand. “I’m Drake, Vance’s second-in-command.”

“And a fire conjurer?” I shook his hand warily, but it didn’t burn to touch. Interesting. His casual manner was a sharp contrast to Lord Colton’s, but he must pack some serious firepower to have the title of second most powerful mage.

“That’s me. What’s with them?” He indicated the circle, which blazed blue as ever, keeping the changelings contained.

“We’re questioning suspects,” said Lord Colton.

Drake grinned at the changelings, who howled and dived away from him, pitching against the outside of the circle and tumbling into a heap. “You didn’t pull the blade on them? Isn’t that a witch’s trap?”

“It’s not worth expending my power on an interrogation,” said Lord Colton.

“Ha. More like you overextended it in the fight with those hellhounds.”

I glanced at him, surprised. So the Mage Lord did have a limit. And apparently his fellow mages didn’t mind pointing it out. I stowed that information away for later.

“Anything else you want to ask them?” Lord Colton directed this at me
. Changing the subject, huh.
I guess the head mage needed everyone to see him as invincible.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” I said. By that, of course, I meant we hadn’t learned a damn thing. “Care to help carry the changelings back? I can pick up the spell cage so they won’t escape.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You want to keep them in your house?”

“I thought you arrested faeries who broke the rules.”

“Larsen’s the one in charge of that,” he said.

I groaned. That figured. He wouldn’t be pleased with me. But letting those changelings run away free would get me worse than a threat. “Fine.”

“Drake, is anything else happening?” asked Lord Colton.

“It’s bad news,” said Drake, his smile fading. “A second child is missing, this one the daughter of two necromancers.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Where?” I asked immediately.
Oh. Shit.

“Finchley Road,” said Drake, checking something on his phone. “Two of our people are over there now. I’d be there, but I heard you’d decided to go wandering off with a witch in search of a changeling.”

Other side of town. Damn. “How d’you know it’s linked to this case?” I asked him.

“Because those little buggers followed me here after I unmasked them,” he said. “One of them was trying to impersonate a teenage girl. Not very successfully, I might add.”

Normally, the mental image would make me smile. Except his words brought a different image to mind. “A teenage girl?” My voice rose on the last word, much as I tried to hide it.

“Yeah. Her name’s Melanie Climes. I’ve just spoken to her family.”

“Necromancers?” asked Lord Colton. “So you followed this creature all the way here?”

“I brought a car,” he said. “Little bastards move fast.”

The changelings tripped over one another in an effort to escape the circle. I rolled my eyes at them, trying to suppress the tightening feeling in my chest. Another child taken, and I’d come no closer to finding the culprit.

“Have you taken on the case, then?” I asked. “If it’s linked to the other changeling—and they’re brothers, so I have a feeling it might be—I’d like to talk to the victim’s family.”

Drake looked from me to Lord Colton. “What do you say, Vance?”

Lord Colton turned to me. “What are you going to tell Mr Swanson?”

“That I caught the changeling. At least it won’t be bothering him anymore.” I faced the three small creatures in the circle. “Did any of you use magic after you were told to impersonate humans?”

It was the most roundabout way I could think of to figure out who was responsible for the hellhound trap. These creatures were the lowest rank of Faerie. They’d been set up as much as we had, I was certain. Somebody else had laid the trap.

“No magic, none,” said the first changeling, as its brothers howled and beat at the circle’s side. “Can’t use magic.”

What? “You can’t?”

“No magic,” said another. “None. Magic is bad.”

So much for that. I’d known most lesser fey couldn’t so much as conjure up a spark, but I’d thought changelings might.

“What about those illegal necromantic traps in the Swansons’ house?” I asked. “Did you have anything to do with them?”

Lord Colton’s gaze shifted to me at those words, but I kept watching the changeling.

“No. Wasn’t us.”

Great. “Did you see who set them up?”

“No. No bad magic.”

“Bad magic?” asked Lord Colton, moving towards the circle. “I was under the impression
all
faeries could access a certain amount of magic in this realm.”

“You did read the handbook,” I said. “Not all of them can, actually. Not if they’ve been ordered not to, for instance.”

His sharp gaze met mine. Why was he looking at me like that?

“The piskie in my room can’t use magic,” I said. “Most low-born faeries can’t. They’re too stupid to.”

Three shrill voices protested. I tuned them out. “They’re not going to give us any useful information. I can carry them if need be, but did you say you brought a car?” I directed this at Drake, who grinned at me.

“Someone’s angling for a lift?”

I shrugged. “Figured it’d be easier to get to the Climes’ house that way. Saves time.”

“The Climes case isn’t yours,” said Lord Colton, to me.

What was his issue? “It’s connected, isn’t it?”

“I’d say it is,” said Drake. “Come on, then.”

Lord Colton glared at me. “If you’re volunteering to carry those changelings, you’re welcome to it.”

“It’s no problem.” Actually, it was. As I crouched down, all three changelings tried to jump on my face. I had to close my eyes to concentrate on picking up the spell circle without accidentally deactivating it. As I lifted the circle to balance it in my arms, the lines converged, forming a cage. Three screaming voices hit my eardrums.

“Quiet,” I snapped. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll pitch you into the canal.”