A Labyrinth of Fangs and Thorns: A Dystopian Fantasy Romance (Fae Guardians Season of the Vampire Book 2) Page 2

  “You’re late,” Shade observed.

  Haze tossed the obsidian coin. Shade snatched it out of the air and turned it over, taking in what Haze had been doing. Patrolling random villages and completing spot raids was not in the job description for any member of the Twelve. That lovely menial task was reserved for the recruits or regular Guardians. It lowered the tone, Leaf—the Twelve’s Elven team leader—had always said. Haze couldn’t give a floater’s fuck. In his opinion, cadre should make themselves known randomly around Elphyne. It kept the fear alive.

  “You already have a job,” Shade reminded him.

  “Indi isn’t here yet.”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  Haze shouldered past Shade, which was a feat without shifting his wings away. The big, leathery hindrances barely fit through the door. But it was pointless wasting precious mana to shift them away when he’d be out again before sunrise and with no time to refill from a source of power. His stomach rumbled. He needed to feed. Refilling had to wait.

  Their outpost cabin had four bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room with a crackling fire in a stone fireplace. Without house brownies to keep the place stocked and cleaned, it was up to visiting Guardians to do the job. Haze didn’t expect a supply of blood in the cupboards, but checked anyway. The room had a small amount of food but no blood. He grimaced. Shade waited for him by the door.

  Haze’s mood darkened.

  It wasn’t as though he had blood donors lining up around the corner as Shade did. Haze cowed females with his size. He frightened children. That little girl today had seemed fierce as she’d stomped on him, but he’d smelled the tang of urine on all of them. Haze thumbed his bone stud piercings and wished he’d ignored the pups and carried on down the street. It was more than the unintended intimidation. It was the tease of what his daughter might have been.

  On the flight over, that girl’s trembling hands had plucked a memory deep from his soul. His baby also had trembling fingers as she’d once wrapped them around Haze’s thumb. So tiny at the end. So weak.

  “I’ll call one of the Mages from the main outpost,” Shade offered.

  The instinct to see to the feeding needs of their roost was inbuilt in all vampires. If one was lacking, the others helped source sustenance. Sometimes, out in the unlawful towns and cities, this could result in gang activity. Here, it was a sign of their brotherhood.

  “I can feed myself, Shade,” he grumbled.

  The vampire clicked a disapproving tongue. “Between you and Indigo, I sometimes doubt that.”

  “He’s suffering from a completely different affliction.”

  A few turns of the moon back, Indigo had fed from Ada, the Seelie High King’s Well-blessed mate and queen. Human blood was already particularly tasty, but as a Well-blessed human who’d been frozen for thousands of years, Ada’s blood was so nutrient dense that it sustained Indigo for weeks instead of a single day. It also gifted Indigo with a pleasant drugging sensation, not unlike mana-weed mixed with divilixir, a potent aphrodisiac distilled by the elves. Unfortunately for Indigo, it meant any other blood tasted like cardboard.

  “So you have an affliction, now?” Shade arched his eyebrow.

  Haze grunted, annoyed. He would feed in Obscendia. “When did you say Indi was due back?”

  “In a few hours.”

  Fuck. “I’m leaving. He can catch up.”

  Reproach swam in Shade’s eyes, but Haze ignored it because he knew what the vampire would say. He would believe Haze’s haste was an avoidance to connect with a Mage—or with any fae, for that matter—on an intimate level. Feeding was a tactile and often sensual act, something Shade took advantage of almost every time he fed.

  But Haze wasn’t the type to share his bed or his heart. Any lustful urges were met in the arms of a Rosebud Courtesan or with a quick jerk of his fist. He had no desire, nor the inclination to waste valuable time when there were wrongs to right.

  “You can’t save the entire world, Haze,” Shade said quietly. “It won’t bring them back.”

  Icy thorns wrapped around Haze’s heart. He shrugged and was airborne and flying north through the thickening snow before Shade could stop him.

  The night was looking like a bust, much to Haze’s annoyance.

  He’d been standing for hours on the porch of Indigo’s parents’ house in Obscendia, glowering at nocturnal fae walking or flying past. A tavern across the road ensured the street remained busy. Some were even brave enough to glare back at Haze. Most took one look at his Guardian battle gear, or Justice hanging from his hip, and made haste in the opposite direction.

  He waited for Indigo’s brother, Demeter, to turn up and spill the details about the queen’s latest escapades. The vampire was almost identical to Indigo in looks, but the opposite in temperament. Where Indigo was jovial and adventurous, Demeter was mean and preferred his routine. Being a member of the Unseelie High Queen’s Guard suited him.

  Demeter’s failure to turn up meant one of two things. Maebh had caught wind of his betrayal and now he was in hiding or a prisoner. Alternatively, Demeter had decided to fuck off the Order and was now completely loyal to Maebh.

  Haze drained the last drop of market-purchased blood from a waxed paper cup and placed it on the doorstep with a small coin left inside. Indigo’s mother had offered the blood earlier. She’d not asked for payment, but Haze would rather give a coin than find out he owed a favor. He didn’t want ties to anyone.

  Not long ago, Indigo had arrived. He’d come to observe Demeter’s behavior as he’d not seen his brother in decades. Indigo didn’t trust Demeter’s offer to share sovereign secrets. But Indigo’s mission was different to Haze’s. Where Haze’s mission was to find the source of these mana-warped corpses cropping up around Elphyne, Indigo had been tasked with tracking down Well-blessed humans from the old world.

  At first glance, these humans were indistinguishable from today’s humans. They had no glittering teardrop tattoo beneath their left eye like the Guardians, nor did they have it on their bottom lip like the Mages. But they held a capacity to hold mana within that was second to none. Almost unending. Thus, it was imperative the Order bring all such powered humans into their fold. In the wrong hands, unending power would be perverted. Just look at the queen. She’d always been strong, but after making half of Elphyne her queendom, she’d received a tithe from the Well in return for respecting its laws. Maebh’s power had grown.

  One would imagine a ruler of all of Elphyne would receive the biggest tithe of all. Their mana capacity might truly be infinite. Something not even a Well-blessed human could compete with. And as long as they respected the laws of the Well, they would hold this power.

  Indigo had only been here for moments when, like a bloodhound, he’d caught the scent of a Well-blessed human. He’d given chase through Redvein Forest. He wouldn’t be back.

  And with sunrise not far away, it looked like Demeter was a no-show. Fuck it. Haze spat in distaste. He hated waiting. The longer he waited, the more he felt the pinch of loneliness, the prick of icy thorns, and the need to do something. Anything.

  Preferably teaching ingrates lessons.

  “Well-dammit,” Haze grumbled and squinted at the snow thickening. If Demeter wasn’t coming here, then Haze would go to him and find out exactly what had held him back. Maybe Haze would use his time to conduct his own internal investigation at the palace. No doubt Demeter had scurried home there, if he’d even left. Haze had long suspected the queen’s thirst for power was the cause behind the mana-warped bodies. She’d already created the Sluagh. Now that she’d lost a few to the Order, and she was discovering her most feared weapons were defecting, she wanted to birth something new.

  All he needed to do was prove it.

  Haze descended into Aconite City on the currents of icy air. During the brisk flight across from Obscendia, he’d considered his options. He could claim he had Guardian business with Demeter and locate him that way, but that would bring unwanted
attention and effectively destroy their informant relationship. Haze wasn’t sure if he was ready to burn that bridge. So that left subterfuge. As long as Haze’s mana wasn’t depleted, his shadow could be pulled over him like a cloaking spell, hiding his identity.

  But shadow wasn’t infallible. If someone already knew he was there, it would be harder to hide. And then there were the Sluagh to contend with. Those roaming inside the palace might sense Haze through the heartache that never left his soul, or through using their ability to reach into minds.

  An extended intelligence mission took careful planning. Standing around waiting for something to happen was worse. It left him alone with his memories.

  An uninvited Guardian inside the palace gates would be seen as a hostile act by Maebh. She was already on the Order’s shit list for dubious acts involving contraband, but she’d hidden the evidence upon investigation. It was only a matter of time before she slipped up. No one, not even kings and queens were above the Order of the Well when it came to policing the Well’s laws.

  A few turns of the moon back, D’arn Jasper had defeated one of Maebh’s scariest weapons, a Sluagh. It was probably the reason Maebh was trying to make something scarier. This defeat had been in her own throne room. The Unseelie people were questioning if Maebh was fit to rule. No contenders had made a play for the throne, but anything was possible. Haze had heard a rumor the Autumn Court—D’arn Forrest’s old family—had been lurking. Watching.

  That was how fickle and ruthless the Unseelie were. At the first sign of weakness, another would swoop in, cut off a head or eat a soul, and take control. Queen Maebh’s sanity was up for debate, but she’d protected all fae-kind years ago in the Great War against the humans of Crystal City. She’d earned her station.

  Since Jasper had taken over Mithras’s rule in the Seelie kingdom, reports out of the Obsidian Palace were Maebh was sometimes a recluse, other times a sadistic hedonist who seemed a little unhinged. Something was going on. Haze felt it like ripples on the surface of the Well.

  Gathering darkness around him, he circled over the enormous palace cut into the side of a mountain. It was made of black stone and writhing vines, spires and towers, courtyards and labyrinths. Aconite City extended into subterranean tunnels under the mountain, and through randomly placed snow-capped buildings on top. Haze spiraled down to a dark corner of the barracks yard near the palace battlement walls.

  With his shadow rendering him invisible, Haze coasted until he hit the soggy ground with a grace that belied his size. Once certain he’d not been seen, he crept silently past the sleeping quarters and stinking stables until he stopped outside a bone smithy bursting with noise. Male voices filtered out of the smithy hut, drawing him closer. Smoke billowed from the chimney. With so many nocturnal fae in the Unseelie kingdom, the palace was abuzz with activity. The smell of some kind of acrid chemical hit Haze. He held in a sneeze. As he approached, the voices became clearer, and he slowed to listen.

  “I mean, it’s like her blood is going to waste. So unfair,” came a nasally male voice.

  “I hear ya, brother. I know she belongs to the queen”—the smithy lowered his voice—“but there’s plenty to go around.”

  “Would she even notice if we took a tiny sip?”

  “One sip is all we need.”

  “She heals fast. I heard.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Dolten shoved her and she cut herself. He panicked because the queen might have thought he’d drunk from her personal blood slave, so he went to see her the next day and—mark my words, brother—he found the wound almost gone. I jest you not.”

  Silence. Haze’s ears pricked up. He eased his head around the hut doorway to look inside. Two vampires stood over a stonework desk, filing down bone swords. A tall, skinny male and a portly one. Neither had their wings shifted out, and both were covered in bone dust and a foul attitude. Pointed and arched ears twitched as they worked.

  Haze should find Demeter, but their conversation intrigued him. The queen had an exclusive blood slave that tasted different? Maebh was a vampire, but over the millennia she’d been alive, she’d evolved into something else no one really understood. Even Shade, who’d lived in this palace for decades, said he never believed he truly understood her motivations. Haze supposed it wasn’t uncommon for the queen to not share her blood source, but there was something in the tone of these vampires’ voices that gave him pause.

  The tall vamp paused sanding a sword. “You know Bain? Well, he fell face first into her and nicked her with his fangs.”

  The portly vamp stilled. “Bain?”

  A nod. “He said he tasted a drop—accidentally—and it felt like he’d taken a hit of mana-weed. Or an Elven pleasure elixir. One drop, Marit. One drop! Can you imagine the coin we’d make if we could—”

  “Don’t even start,” warned Marit. “We get caught tapping the queen’s personal source. She’ll tan our hides and throw us to the tachi. Or worse, a wyrm.”

  Both vampires shuddered.

  Haze eased back from the doorway and stared at the empty training yard. Dawn approached and most vampires felt the drag of the sun like a physical thing. Nocturnal creatures would soon head to bed. As a trained Guardian, Haze had learned to function during the day, despite this ingrained lethargy. Now was one of those times. He had to keep going.

  There was only one type of blood that intoxicated the feeder: a Well-blessed human’s. The existence of these rare and special humans was relatively new. The knowledge wasn’t widely known, but it sounded like the queen was using one as a blood slave.

  That meant Demeter was no longer priority. This human was.

  CHAPTER 3

  Deep in the bowels of the Obsidian Palace, Peaches flattened herself against a narrow hallway wall as one of the Sluagh walked toward her, his tattered robe swishing. Clutching her food tray, she tried to become invisible. She wished the glamor cast over her appearance actually made her fae instead of look it. Her human teeth looked pixie-pointed, as did her ears. Her hair was peach-colored instead of dull brown. Trembling legs reminded her the Sluagh would see through it all if they entered her mind.

  The fae with the hauntingly beautiful face glided past, ignoring her.

  She exhaled and relaxed. It had been six years since she’d awoken in this time, two thousand years from her own and, yet, she still wasn’t used to the otherworldliness of the creatures she lived with. Peaches gingerly touched the black velvet ribbon at her throat—if she could call what she did living.

  The ribbon symbolized her blood slave status, in particular the queen’s. The choker matched the velvet clinging to her petite curves. The skirt flared out at the waist like some kind of medieval princess’ dark wedding dress. Her slippers were made of leather and lace. With ribbon around her long peach hair and waist, and ugly bows at the back, she felt like a wrapped gift.

  Peaches had been in this palace for two years now. She supposed it wasn’t so bad. No other vampires were allowed to feed from the queen’s personal source. In the grand scheme of things, she’d been in worse situations. The queen’s bite only hurt for a few minutes. Peaches found if she counted down the seconds, it helped pass the time. The feedings were only a few seconds in the trillions of her future life. At least she was fed, had a roof over her head, and the freedom to roam the palace and grounds when she wasn’t wanted by the queen.

  Peaches balanced the tray on her hip so she could place a palm over her fluttering heart. She focused on her breathing until her pulse calmed. Shouts and curses of soldiers running somewhere down a distant hall ruined her efforts. She glanced the way the Sluagh had come. A fluffy rabbit with antlers and chicken wings half-hopped, half-flew toward her with fear in its eyes.

  If the soldiers caught it inside the palace, it would be dead, so she hiked up her big skirt and motioned the terrified animal beneath. With only seconds to spare, she dropped her skirt, completely hiding the fluffball.

  Two guards wearing black velvet long
coats stopped to peer down her hallway.

  “Did you see a wolpertinger come this way?” one of them barked.

  She shook her head and tried not to giggle as fur and feathers tickled her legs. For a moment, she thought the guards wouldn’t believe her, but then one continued in another direction. The remaining guard cast a wary eye down the hall at her.

  “I just saw a Sluagh go this way,” she said and pointed down the hall. “Maybe it’s gone there.”

  The whites of the guard’s eyes showed, and then he followed his fellow soldier. After a few more beats of silence, Peaches nabbed a carrot from the stew on her tray. Balos won’t miss it. She hitched her skirt and nudged the wolpertinger out.

  “Here,” she said, crouching to feed it. “Now, you best hurry out of this palace before you become part of the next stew.”

  As she continued down the hall, a moment of weakness had her glancing over her shoulder. The wolpertinger’s big dark eyes glistened. It will be fine. She faced the front and forced her legs to move until she went down a staircase to the basement levels.

  To get to Balos’ workshop, she had to pass the dungeons and other strange nefarious laboratories she didn’t like to think about. The stench of piss, shit, vomit and blood assaulted her nose, along with some kind of chemical that made her gag. She held her breath because her destination was just beyond the torture chambers, laboratories, apothecaries and mana stonemasons. Someone screamed. She flinched but stared straight ahead, lengthening her rapid strides, counting each step until she arrived at a closed door with a ceramic knocker.

  Balancing the tray on her hip, she rapped three times. “Balos, it’s me.”

  “Go away.” The stony male voice pierced the heavy door.

  She smiled affectionately at the familiar grump. “It’s Peaches. I need a favor.”

  A pause. Then the door opened to reveal a goblin who reminded her of a garden gnome. When he straightened his red beret, his white long beard shuddered all the way down to his feet. Great leathery bat-like ears stuck out at the side. She’d bet he could pick up radio frequencies with those things—if radios still existed.