FABIEN
The ravens are so thick on the ground, I hardly get past them. In the alleyway, a chill falls that has nothing to do with the winter winds blowing through Chicago.
It's a crisp night, and the moon is nothing but the thinnest crescent in the sky. Korah tucks his long rabbit ears into a knit cap before leaving the car to join me. Soren and the others hang back.
The Sluagh are coming.
"Have we really fallen so far?"
Korah, my second in command, looks at me and grins.
"You're being morose, my lord."
"Gods, don'tcallme that, Korah."
"I'm required to call you that by your father, for as long as I serve your royal family."
He says it with a straight face, but I know his crooked grin is hiding just beneath the surface. Like most of our kind, Korah is long lived. He is just over three centuries old. Impressive for someone in our line of work.
Organized crime, as the humans dare to call it.
He's tall, almost as tall as me, but reedy and thin. He has a wiry strength and he's fast as lightning when he wants to be. His fur is tawny and soft, and he has big, gray eyes shining out from heavy lids.
You'd think he'd have a hare's teeth, but he doesn't. He has fangs that can rip and tear. Claws too. But my second in command prefers to use guns.
He never misses.
The trees near Lincoln Park have turned golden with the coming of fall. Ravens line their branches. An army of them, black shadows hiding in the trees. They're evident to the humans who pass by, only by their sounds.
One such couple walks past, and the woman startles at the sound of so many birds. The man is there to protect her, and gathers her in his arms. Obvious joy fills him at so simple a protective duty. And he's glad, of course, that it isn't something darker or more dangerous. When he heard the wings beating, it startled him, too, but he hid it well.
It's when he notices more and more of them that he becomes afraid. So many ravens in so many trees. His eyes dart to the power lines, where the ravens sit shoulder to shoulder, jostling for position. Then to the banks of the river, where they drink in large groups, pausing only to watch the couple go by.
Many of the ravens do that. They stare at the couple. Black eyes shining in the dark like so many marbles.
It spooks the man and he leads his lady faster.
"Let's get a cab," he suggests.
She agrees and they vanish into the night.
For too many millennia, the ravens have followed humans from battlefield to plague and back again. I feel their dreams, like a river flowing through the huge flock.
Somewhere among them is the deathless one. I feel him.
A large raven who wears a tiny hood and carries a bell that rings for no man's ears. He's out there. Among them. But where? Even my dream sense can't pick him out of the shadows. It's only by the gift of the Old Blood that I know he's there at all.
"The deathless one is among them."
"You're being very morose, my lord," Korah says, pursing his lips.
Even he is unsettled by so many ravens in one place. They eatourdead as well. "Surely the Sluagh should be here by now. What are they waiting for? More ravens?"
"The Sluagh have been here," I tell him, "for a long while. The ravens wouldn't have come otherwise. They're drawn to the scent of death like nothing else."
"So they're just making us wait? They disrespect us..."
"Relax, Korah. The Sluagh are always slow to rise above ground. They hate any task that takes them away from the moist depths that soothe their dead skin."
Korah coughs. "Don't say moist depths."
It's my turn to grin.
"You forgot to call memy lord. The penalty is death."
I give him a hard look. Korah knows I'd never hurt him, but even he pales slightly in fear at my gaze. It seems there's no one who'll look me in the eye these days. Not since Jarrad died.
Not since the Oleander clan put my brother in his grave.
"Don't joke about that, my lord. If your father found out I didn't show you the proper respect, I would be punished."
"Then I suggest you don't tell him."
Korah glances over his shoulder at the other soldiers, and raises a brow. He knows no one else can hear what we say.
"How'd it go with the witch?"
"It worked." I'm so excited, I nearly yell it out. "She's on her way to me. I should know soon enough how she'll arrive."
Korah gives me a warm smile and pats my shoulder.
"You deserve this," he says. His voice is a little sad. I know Korah, too, has dreamt of a mate to love him. The one he is destined for. But he doesn't show it.
He prefers to think there is no one for him. He never says why. Just that for someone like him there can be no true love.
The sewer grate whines as it moves. Like an ancient lid being taken off a sarcophagus.
"Finally," Korah says, breathing a sigh of relief.
His relief is short-lived.
The smell that emerges when the sewer grate slides away is truly revolting. Nothing smells quite like death. The Sluagh emerge, blue-skinned and wearing their bat-like wings as if they were clothes. By their pointed ears, these Sluagh are all Fae.
The unforgiven dead.The ones who strayed from hell. They used to haunt graveyards and the like, but now they gather in the vast underground of the sewers and subway tunnels. Miles and miles of them below the city, shrouded in the darkness that the Sluagh crave. And it's moist. They love that moisture.
Their leader looks up to the sky as if it insults him. He hisses at the moon. Then his blue-gray eyes settle on us.
"You have the money?" he asks.
Korah nods and shows him the briefcase.
"You have the guns?"
"We have the guns," he whispers in the chill wind. The ravens scatter as more of the Sluagh emerge. I have two more of my soldiers on the rear of the alley, making sure no humans come this way. But the Sluagh come out one after another. Five, six, seven. By the time they're all out, there are ten.
Far too many for a simple gun deal.
I'd bring my men in closer, but I don't want to frighten the Sluagh. My family needs those guns. The Oleanders box us in at every turn. It won't be long before they choke the life out of us.
"Do I scare you, Fahad?" I ask.
The leader, Fahad, glares at me.
"I have no need to fear you," he says, grinning and showing his missing teeth. "I don't dream."
"There's more to fear from me than dreams. I'm warning you, don't betray us. Where are the guns, Fahad?"
Fahad grins wider. "The guns? They're here."