Blood Faerie - India Drummond

Chapter 1

Eilidh detected the greasy scent of evil moments before she heard the scream below. She perched in St Paul’s steeple, watching Perth’s late night pub-crawlers through rotting slats. The scurrying footfalls of humans did not hold her interest, nor did the seeping ruby blood that spread quickly over the flat, grey paving stones. Instead, her eyes turned north along Methven Street, seeking the source of that familiar smell.

Evil smelled like nothing else, worse than a rotting corpse, worse than sewage and disease, more vile than the fumes that billowed from modern machinery, more cloying than the shame of drunken whores. This particular evil was fresh, but not quite pure. It mixed with rage but was contained, refined, as though gestated in the belly of ancient hatred. This evil held promise, and for the first time in decades, Eilidh hesitated, slightly afraid.

The familiar magic that nestled in the subtle overtones of this particular wrong propelled her into action. She pulled back the shutter and leapt down to the roof below. Her feet made scarcely a sound as she landed on the mossy stone. She ensured that the black sweatshirt hood covered her short white hair and the other tell-tale signs of her race. Moving faster than any human could, she skipped down the side of the building, lightly touching window frames and door tops until she landed on the hidden south side of the dilapidated octagonal church.

The corpse at her feet stared at the full moon, glassy-eyed and empty. She crouched beside it and sniffed the air. The hole hacked in his chest left bone and organ exposed. Blood poured from it. He’d passed by the church only moments before. Eilidh had seen him with a human female who leaned against him, taking drunken steps, screeching too loudly, laughing at nothing. Eilidh had paid neither of them any attention. They were like scores of others who staggered down her street most nights.

Her senses caught the earliest whiff of decay. It began immediately upon death, as soon as the heart no longer thrust blood through mortal veins. Eilidh had to move before it masked the trace she hunted. She sprang forward and her feet carried her north just as someone behind her shouted, “Oi! You!”

The scent was not difficult to track. She darted past the small groupings of oblivious people, mostly gathering in the doorways of pubs, smoke wafting from their mouths. Various human smells: sweat, smoke, cars, and food all mingled together, but none could distract Eilidh from her quarry. She knew this smell because it was old and magical, and, like her, it was fae.

She followed the trace past the main thoroughfare, taking only minimal care not to attract attention. Habit made her duck and dodge away from people. Although she was faster, better trained, and had keener senses, human technology could render those advantages moot.

Her handmade leather shoes made no sound as she pursued the unknown faerie down dark, cobbled side streets. Once, she’d stolen human shoes, but the same day she left them near the entrance of a homeless shelter. She could not bear the feel of the strange rubber. It squeaked and smelled of oil. So she’d made shoes in the style of her own people, using the hide of a lamb she’d killed near Kinnoull Hill, a woodland area she rarely dared visit. Its cliff summit overlooked the city, but the proximity to the fae kingdom made it dangerous. The shoes, moulded over time by her weak earth magic, would be thought quaint or foreign. They were the only item she wore that was not distinctly human, but they never slipped on tile rooftops, so she took the risk of them being noticed.

Eilidh could not help but wonder about the faerie she chased. Did he too try to blend into human society? Was he exiled as she was, or born of an outcast? Had she known him in her other life? Before she was cursed to live where the ground was hard with pavement and the air polluted with fumes, the scent of foul human food, and the sound of endless, meaningless chatter?

She crossed a street, easily dodging cars that roared past. Then Eilidh stepped into the shadows, her back hugging a tall tree on the North Inch, a square mile of manicured green on the edge of the city, now cast in complete darkness. Her heart beat rapidly within her chest.

Tugging back her hood, she listened hard. A dog barked. A distant siren howled. A