Courts of the Fey Read online

  “No,” he said, the determination as palpable as my pain. “When the sun sets for the final time I do not want to be alone. Even your constant ear-shattering imitation of speech is better than that.”

  I focused on him to see the pretense of humor creasing the sun-creased skin around his eyes. Actual humor from a nose-in-the-air, death before dishonor, shimmering robes, white horses, constantly with the never-ending . . . the never-Oberon’s shriveled worthless balls-ending ethereal-singing High Court Fey. I had taught him something after all. Or he had taught me something—that you can be enemies so long that you are actually closer than friends. He taught me that word as well. There was no word for friend in the Dark Court—ally, comrade-in-arms, former ally (otherwise known as “sorry-is-that-my-dagger-in-your-back”) —but not friend. I grinned, tasting my own blood, and asked, “Can you make sure I die with my boots on, pardner?”

  Let him remember this moment with a laugh or a groan or, best of all, annoyance, but let it be this moment . . . not my death. And I was going to die. I had no doubt of that. If we had our magic left to us, I might have had a chance, but we did not. When the world died, we had felt the shake and death rattle of it in Under-the-Hill. Our home might be a step to one side of the humans’ reality, but it was also a reflection of the Earth itself. Reflections are the first to go. Our home began to die as well. Those legends and fables returned to our memories as the truth they were. Many of us managed to remember the way and galloped our steeds to the world of man to see what was wrong. What could be done?

  Everything and nothing.

  The human race’s unnatural magic obliterated ours. What we’d once had, we had no more. Our weapons and armor faded away. Any charms, spells, or pure destructive streams of magic were gone. We were no more than humans with pointed ears and a severe allergy to silver. It was pathetic. We discovered we couldn’t go home again—not that it mattered. Time Under-the-Hill passed as a river compared to a stone on the bank that was earth. If we had had the magic left to re-open the door, we would have found nothing. Not death, but nothing at all. Earth had died, but Under-the-Hill was only the memory of a gravestone. Those of us that had left had barely escaped in time. Under-the-Hill had washed away, we knew, for no one there had ever followed us out.

  I closed my eyes, clenched dirt and sand in my fists as the silver-agony spasmed through my body.

  Fairy tales . . . I had been thinking of fables and legends. Humans remembered us better than we remembered them. Iron and silver: some of them recalled our weaknesses. When we joined together, Light and Dark, to vent our fury on those that would be the Grim Reaper of us all, and unleashed the first Wild Hunt in a thousand of their years, tens of thousands of ours, a few of them knew how to fight back. A bullet was a bullet, but a silver one was a bullet made of the deadliest of poisons.

  When they had slain the world, they had perhaps slain all of existence, as well—what else would blow out the stars like candle flames? Somehow they had torn a gaping wound in reality itself. They might not know themselves how or what they’d done, but they’d done it all the same. Their magic had exceeded their grasp. I’d have thought they’d have lain down and gone with it when they realized their fate. But no. Stupid and predatory to the end.

  They had learned magic of their own. It took me forever to puzzle out what an automobile . . . a car . . . was supposed to do, but when I did, that was magic I would’ve liked to have seen on the move. Their magic was greater than ours had ever been: cities I couldn’t have imagined if I had tried and a surplus of weapons that, despite our heritage, even we of the Unseelie Court found to be obscene. With our swords gone, we’d learned to use the least offensive of them: guns.

  Then there were the ones called nuclear bombs. Little suns. They had possessed thousands upon thousands of those, a human had told me after I sliced off his ear. When the end came, they had none . . . that information had come with the removal of his other ear. I’d removed his nose as well . . . wasn’t that one of their sayings? Cut off thy nose to spite thy own face? And wasn’t that precisely what they had done? Thousands of small venomous suns erupting all at once . . . in one last battle . . . one last pitting of ego against ego.

  Knowledge, and a lack thereof, against reality: the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth beneath our feet, the air in our lungs. Everything that had been, everything that was, and everything that wouldn’t be again.

  And here we were.

  For now. I didn’t know how long it would take the earth to rot away, the last star to disappear, the sun to set and not rise again, but the Hunt would remain . . . at least until there was no one left to punish. And as much as Ialach would deny it, the Hunt would survive without me.

  “Why do you call yourself Seven? There has never been a time you have not called yourself that and these years we have ridden together you would never tell me why.”

  I slitted my eyes. “I am dying,” I pushed the words through the pain, “and you would like a bedtime story?”

  “It would be only fair, as you were the one to name me.” Ialach shrugged as he placed the point of his knife against my chest and sliced me open much as a goose for a banquet. Or a pig for a barbeque with all the fixings. The slippery words of the Fey—water over a pebbled stream—and the harsh ones of humans were mixed up now. “And I thought it might distract you,” he added, but those words were distant. Far away.

  I sucked in a breath and decided breathing was distinctly overrated. I didn’t think I’d closed my eyes again, but the darkness came all the same as I felt fingers slide past my skin and into my chest. Then those things like feeling and pain went away and I lived in the memories. I had named Ialach Scotch. But it hadn’t begun as Scotch.

  It had started as Buttercup.

  Seelie and Unseelie had been enemies before anyone knew when, but that didn’t mean we didn’t all know each other, duel with each other, insult each other, screw each other. The Courts were small; time was long. What else was there to do? Ialach happened to be the only unlucky Seelie bastard to be born with yellow hair. All the others naturally had windswept silver-white veils to rival the feathers of the purest white dove. The dove was a notoriously stupid bird, which seemed appropriate to us black-haired Unseelie. I was the first to pounce on the difference. There were flowers that were the same color as the buttercups outside in the human world, with an equally embarrassing name that grew Under-the-Hill—in the High Court at least, needless to say. In the Dark Court we had black roses that wept tears of blood and scarlet lilies that ate butterflies. Yes . . . ate butterflies. We were truly beyond pretentious.

  From the moment I spotted Ialach, he became Buttercup to the entire Dark Court. That was the cause of our first duel. It was a tie, but as I swore up and down, it was only because I could not stop laughing every time I addressed him as Lord Buttercup.

  When we had come here and discovered what the humans had wrought, I’d stumbled across a sweet in one of their shops. Butterscotch, it had been called, and it was similar to the color of Ialach’s then much shorter hair. As a peace offering between new partners, I called him Butterscotch instead of Buttercup and tried to kill him for only the first week or two. Eventually we discovered something from the time we last walked with humans: uisge beatha. The water of life. Scotch whiskey. Scotch had seized upon several bottles and drank nothing but that or water from then on. Taking the name for his own. After three years, I gave in and stopped telling anyone and everyone in the outposts we passed the truth of it. Once you decide not to kill your partner, you have his back. Not in the Courts, but here. Always here. And then he goes and stabs you in the chest. Where had I gone wrong?

  I woke up to a night sky. Hazily I counted ten lonely stars. Ten out of the one time thousands that spread across the darkness. Not long now. No, not long. I coughed against a dry throat and asked hoarsely, “Are my boots on?”

  “No.” Scotch’s voice was beside me. I turned my head to see him squatting by a small fire to add another chun
k of dried manure. “Just in case you were weak and useless enough to die, I wanted you to wander what lies beyond eternity in your socks cursing my name. My real name.”

  I was lying on a sleeping bag, covered with two blankets, but I could see my toes. I wiggled them. Nothing but socks was right, the bastard. Not that I didn’t like socks. That was one thing humans had done right. Thick, warm socks beat striding black marble floors in silk hose and knee-high boots . . . oh, damn, and a crimson-lined cloak that was bespelled to drop blood-tipped black thorns in my path. I really had been a fucking douchebag. I didn’t know what a fucking douchebag was, but a human had spat it at me before I gutted him. I took that to mean it was a fair enough insult.

  “And why aren’t I dead? With the silver and then you helpfully stabbing me in the chest, I expected something less in the living realm.”

  “I didn’t stab you in the chest. I cannot believe all the Seelie that you bested in duels. Swatting pixies should’ve been beyond you. You whine like a satyr who’s lost his nymphs and his cock.” He sat beside me, stirring a can of beans. Another human invention, less appreciated than the socks. “I didn’t stab you. I cut only as deep as needed to remove the bullet.” He had his gloves off and I could see the silver-burns on his fingers where he had plucked it out of me. “Unfortunately it wasn’t deep enough to discover if you in fact have a heart. Now none will ever know.” He ate a bite of beans. “Then I stitched you up with a few of Pie’s tail hairs.”

  I was alive. Shit. That was damn near unheard of. Human speech, bad habits—easy to slide back into when you can throw all that grand leave-your-partner-with-a-good-memory fairy princess crap out the window. “They’ve tried taking silver bullets out before. They go too deep. Nobody lives. The poison of the metal spreads too fast.”

  “Guess I’m a helluva sight damn faster than any other sumbitch ’round these parts.” Scotch grinned.

  I laughed, groaned and held my chest, and laughed again. Ten years to bring a Seelie down to my level or at least half way between. It was worth the wait. “Hungry?” Scotch spooned up some more beans, putting the spoon in front of my mouth. I growled that I wasn’t an infant and reached for the spoon. I managed to get at least one third of the spoonful in my mouth, the rest on my chin and blanket.

  “So,” Scotch said as I mopped my face with the blanket, “I’m still waiting on that story. Why are you called Seven?”

  I had threatened to kill and had killed one or two who had been foolish enough to say my birth name aloud in the Dark Court. I had been known as nothing but Seven since I could heft a sword, but if I owed anyone, it was my partner. Wasn’t that a bitch?

  “It’s short for seventeen,” I gave in and grumbled. “When I was born my father was drunk. Well, he was always drunk, but he was drooling drunk this time. When he stood at my mother′s birthing bed to name me, he became, they told me,” I winced and it wasn’t because of a bullet wound, “caught up in the moment. He declared I’d be called Prince of Shadows, He Who Rides Among the Storm Clouds and Will Forge the Blackest and Mightiest of Swords to Strike Down the White Army, Spilling Their Blood as a River . . . by then he sobered up some and remembered my mother had slept with his three brothers, his archenemy, and I think Titania. Mom always liked to mix it up. That’s when he added Born of a Whore Who Would Rut With Any Barnyard Boar That Would Have Her. And then he passed out or I wouldn’t be Seven. I’d be Twenty or Thirty. Seven is short for seventeen which is short for seventeen syllables of Elvish. He thought I was a cretin because I couldn’t memorize my name until I was fifty.” Which to give me credit was about a human child of four. “There. That’s your story. Happy now?”

  He leaned back against the rock wall we were camped again, beans forgotten. His smile was as wicked as any Unseelie could hope for. “Actually, I think I am the most happy that I have ever been in my life. Let me bask in it for a moment.” Tilting his head back, he looked up at the ten stars and for once wasn’t, as we always did, counting them—the sand trickling down the hourglass. This time he was seeing them simply as stars. I could see by the softening of the stubborn jaw. He might not be a portrait of joy and rainbow farting bunnies, but he wasn’t grim. For a moment I could see home in him, see the magic lost.

  Looking back down, he leaned over to search in his saddlebags to hand me a bottle of his precious scotch and lift one of his own.

  I was shaky, but not so much I couldn’t clink my bottle against his with the peal of a bell. It sounded the same as the ones they rang at most of the outposts—a habit the Fey who ran them had picked up from the humans.

  Last call.

  Not yet perhaps, but soon. Close enough to be draining your glass and ordering that last round. There was no one I’d rather drink that last round with than a Seelie Fey. Who could possibly have known?

  “You were the worst of the best,” I said and meant it for the compliment it was.

  “And you were the best of the worst,” he offered solemnly in the same spirit.

  Maybe Scotch was as fast with a knife as he said or maybe there was a tiny speck of magic left in us after all. A magic that came from finding out what a millennia of balls, duels, conniving, spying, wars, taking the throne, losing the throne, all over and over again had failed to teach us: there was no Light Fey, no Dark Fey.

  There was only the end.

  BEAUTY

  Jenifer Ruth

  It’s funny. Most of my kind can’t see the wonder in this new human world. They’re blind to anything that they don’t control. So many of the lazy bastards would rather sit and hide in their hills and cut themselves off from the mortal realm than explore something ever-changing. They feel that a world that they created is much more wonderful than anything a human could dream.

  Maybe it’s because I need these fleeting creatures in order to survive that I enjoy the world they made so much. That’s probably it. I and the other Sidhe who still roam the open roads are all the creatures who feed from the mortals or are closely tied to them. Like pets or small children, we can marvel at their ingenuity. We are amazed when they show us something we didn’t expect.

  The massive city sprawling around me is a perfect example.

  Life, bright and noisy, fills the desert valley. Lights pulse and sparkle in a thousand different dancing patterns, bright enough to rival the stars in the sky. Music pounds on every street corner, the bass beating in time with the rhythm of the human heart.

  But while luck and human inventiveness rules this land, magic is its undeclared king. Hidden realms of illusion melt together with the mortal’s technological wonders. Mankind created the city, but the presence of the Sidhe adds that extra sparkle to it.

  As with New York and Hollywood, Las Vegas sits as a crown jewel in the land of the Sidhe, at least for those of us who know how to appreciate it.

  Though all fae creatures remain in the world of fantasy as far as the humans are concerned, times have changed for both mortals and for us. The plague of man has spread to nearly every corner of the earth. The untouched field and wood have become a memory buried under suburbia. These days it doesn’t matter what court a Sidhe was from originally. Underhill or overhill is all that matters. If you stayed underground, you might as well not exist. Living topside is the only way to go.

  So Las Vegas is a haven for the flashy and the dark creatures who shun hiding in the mounds, a feeding ground for Seelie and Unseelie alike.

  And tonight, I’m one of them. Normally, I don’t troll the streets looking for prey. But I need a new meal, since I just drained my last one. L.A. tends to be a better, more fertile hunting ground for my kind, but Vegas would have to do in a pinch. I should’ve known better than to let my last donor take up the offer to headline here, being as weak as he was. But I’ve always been too considerate and giving to my donors, especially when their short little lives were nearing the end. After all, I promised them a full draught of fame in return for their soul.

  A Sidhe always keeps her word.

 
So now I, one of the divine Leanan Sidhe, have to resort to walking the streets and searching for a proper repast.

  Luckily in this town, I’m not the type that the average tourist would spare a second glance, making it easier to hunt. I’m careful not to draw the wrong kind of attention. My black slacks and white silk top are of nice quality but not overly done. My long red hair can glow in certain lighting and my delicately carved features are known to inspire great works, but gorgeous women are a dime a dozen in a town where plastic surgeons advertised on billboards. So while I might not be fifty pounds overweight and wearing some wretched, skin-tight knock-off dress bought at one of the venders parked on the sidewalk like most of the tourist crowd, I don’t exactly stand out.

  If the average vacationer does notice me, it’s not for my looks. The way I scan the streets, eyes constantly sweeping, might draw a gaze and a raised brow. I don’t pause to gawk at the sights. One bad Elvis impersonator is very much like the next and none have the vital energy of the original. I’ve seen it all before and I don’t have the time to waste. I don’t blink as men and women in bright colored vests flick cards sporting half-naked women in my face. My step doesn’t falter as young men with carefully gelled hair offer me free dance club tickets in hopes that I’ll attract paying male customers. What would I want with any of that garbage?

  These average mortals don’t rate my attention.

  Another woman, so beautiful and golden that she practically glows, skips past me with a herd of frat boys baying at her heels. Unlike me, she doesn’t try to blend. She doesn’t need to. Her laughter rings out like the chime of so many bells on a lonely night. She tosses her head, shaking out her sunny mane, and two more men join the chase.

  The humans can’t see past the glamour that hides her less than human features. They don’t notice the over-sized, red-tinted, wild eyes. They can’t tell that her teeth gleam more brightly than they should, or that they are slightly pointed. They don’t notice the hungry desperation in her gaze when she looks over her shoulders at her growing group of fans.