Blood and Mistletoe (8 page)

Lengthening shadows reached like skeletal fingers as the sun began to set behind the trees.  I clutched the iron nails in my pocket and crept forward on the balls of my feet.  I searched the darkness below the trees one more time and, satisfied that nothing supernatural lurked there, stepped onto the frozen grass.  The gates hung open like a yawning grave and nothing stirred as I entered Founders Park. 

It was like entering another world.

The sounds of city life drifted away, replaced by dead air.  A heavy silence smothered the park, broken only by a high pitched squeak as a hunched figure came toward me pushing a rusty shopping cart.  The sun retreated and the ice covered pond snapped as a thick layer of frozen water shifted.  I jumped and the old crone cackled.

I had found The Cailleach.

I cleared my throat and stepped into a pool of light cast by the flickering street lamp.  The hag lifted her head and my stomach heaved.  A dark socket was all that was left of her right eye.  The other eye stared at me over a large, beaklike nose and her skin was an unhealthy shade of blue.  The Cailleach was half my height and her body was bent forward under the weight of a large bundle strapped to her back.  The stooped position forced the old crone to twist her neck at an uncomfortable angle to look me in the eye.

The Cailleach was completely unlike the water hags I’d dealt with in the past.  Hopefully that meant she was less crazy than her swamp dwelling cousins.

The Winter Hag lifted a bag of dried corn and flashed a toothless grin.

“Hungry?” she asked.

The old crone was trying to feed me deer food?  Okay, maybe she was mad as a hatter. 

“Um, no thanks,” I said.

I shuffled my feet wondering how to begin.  Asking faerie favors was tricky.  A faerie bargain was binding and immortality gave the fae a long time to practice their deal making skills.  I had learned the hard way that faeries will always get the upper hand.  The trick wasn’t winning so much as surviving.

And I didn’t have time for haggling.

“Too bad,” she said.  The Cailleach sighed and tucked the bag of corn into the folds of her rag dress.  “You would have made a lovely pet.”

Mab’s bones, she really did want to turn me into one of her pet deer.  My chest tightened and I struggled to breathe normally.  This wasn’t the time for a panic attack.  I shook my head and focused on the job.  I needed to learn the location of Leanansídhe’s lair and get the hell out of Dodge.

“I can bring you more deer food, for information on where I can find Leanansídhe,” I said. 

I planted my feet hip width apart and took a deep breath.  My gloved hands were cramping, but I held tightly to my anti-fae charms.  If this went down badly, I’d have to fight or run.

The Cailleach rummaged through her cart, finally finding whatever it was she was looking for. 

“This will lead you to the Faerie Mistress,” she said.  She held out a hotel key in a gnarled hand.  “But human food will not sate my pets.  If you wish to strike this bargain, I require a branch from the hamadryad’s tree.  Fetch me a branch before the Yule log fully burns or face my wrath.  That is my offer.”

Crap, what were the odds that I could do as she asked?  But what choice did I have?  I needed to find Leanansídhe before she unleashed her zombie lovers on the world.  Talk about a Christmas gift from Hell.  I lifted my chin and nodded curtly.

“Deal,” I said.

The hag raised her hand and cackled, the laugh ending in a phlegm filled cough.  The hotel key fell to the frost covered ground.  With a squeak of the rusty cart, The Cailleach lurched away, the bundle of sticks on her back rocking to and fro as she shuffled deeper into the park.

Was the key the clue, or did it require a vision?  I skirted the key like a viper, finally hunching down and slipping a glitter topped pencil from my belt.  I slid the pencil through the key ring and lifted it to the streetlight.  A fancy crest and the words “Bishop Hotel” gleamed dully in the flickering light.  I’d sniff around there and see if anyone had seen any suspicious activity.  Maybe the Faerie Mistress was staying there and the key led to Leanansídhe’s room.

It was a start.

Chapter 9

O
ne thing was painfully obvious as I strode up the steps of the Bishop Hotel.  No one had occupied a room here in years.  The door hung open, the frame swollen and warped from damp and disuse.

I pushed the door open wider with the toe of my boot and peeked inside.  Black mold climbed the walls, marring the elaborate wallpaper and draperies.  The lobby was lit only by light from the street lamps outside that filtered in through the open door and a broken window gaping above a second floor balcony. 

I flicked on a mini maglite and shone it around the room.  The floor looked sound, though I avoided the decaying carpet runner as I stepped into the room.  I covered my face with a gloved hand and stifled a sneeze.  Dust rose in amber clouds as I tiptoed further into the hotel lobby. 

I shone my light along the floor where small feet had walked back and forth through the dust, a large object dragged between them.  Someone, probably Leanansídhe’s redcap henchmen, had been here recently. 

I followed the tracks, careful not to make a sound as I walked past a marble counter and into a dark service passage.  The hallway was wide, but unadorned.  An old laundry cart stood beside a metal door farther down the hall to my right and a storeroom spilling its contents into the corridor was to my left. 

I stepped over the abandoned bottles of cleaner and rolls of toilet paper that prior thieves hadn’t wanted and followed the dusty prints down the hall toward the laundry cart.  I stood on tiptoe and peered inside the small window inset into the metal door.  Stairs led down into impermeable darkness.

Great, it looked like the redcaps were holing up in the basement.  I reached out with a gloved hand and tried the doorknob, surprised when it turned easily.  I turned my head to the side and examined the door.  It wasn’t locked.  Leanansídhe was either sloppy or confident that she and her redcaps could deal with any intruders.

Or maybe the faerie was just too crazy to care.

My stomach tensed and I forced myself into motion.  Standing in the spooky old hallway wasn’t doing me any good.  Plus, I had to locate the hamadryad’s tree, and remove a branch for The Cailleach, before it burned completely.  Sadly, amorous zombies weren’t my only worry.  If Leanansídhe was successful, and the Yule log burned to ash, I’d have no way of fulfilling my end of the bargain with the Winter Hag.  I shivered, icy fingers trailing up and down my spine.  That was one old crone I didn’t want to break a deal with.

I pulled the metal door open and let the narrow beam from my flashlight shine down the stairway.  I gasped and lurched back, distancing myself from the mass of spider webs that clung to the ceiling and walls.  The redcaps had come this way, but they were pint sized compared to my height.  The webs had only been cleared as high as my knees.

Why did it always have to be spiders?

A memory of the spider “cloth merchant” on Joysen Hill crept in unbidden.  The carnivorous faerie had used his glamour to cover his terrifying visage, and the bodies of his prey, from human eyes.  Unfortunately for me, my second sight allowed me to cut through his glamour to see the men and women wrapped in spider silk, hanging from the fire escape above his market stall.  The image of wriggling human-sized snacks dangling above the spider faerie had haunted my dreams for weeks.

I swallowed hard and rubbed my gloved hands along my arms.  I could do this.  There were no man eating spider fae here.  It was just a bunch of old cobwebs, right?  I took a shuddering breath and crept down the stairs, moving as fast as I could without alerting the entire basement of my presence.

“It’s just cotton candy,” I muttered. 

Something skittered along a web to my left and I cringed.  I pulled the collar of my coat up higher and kept moving.  At the bottom of the stairs I took a shuddering breath and shook web from my hands and hair. 

Waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, I studied the smells of mildew, wood smoke, and decay.  A hint of detergent hung on the air and I realized the large objects to my far left were washing machines.  My eyes continued to adjust to the darkness and I confirmed that this was the laundry room for the hotel.  Industrial washers and dryers lined one wall and a large steamer sat like a metal gargoyle in the center of the room.

I crouched down and circuited the steamer and folding tables.  Something let out a raucous laugh and tinny chamber music played in the room beyond.  I froze, but when no one came looking for me, I continued forward. 

Beyond the laundry room was a cavernous space.  The walls were rough brick lined with exposed plumbing and wiring for the hotel above.  A large furnace was the focal point of the room.  The metal beast billowed smoke where it rose from the dirt floor, but someone had tried to make the place homey—if you lived in a Victorian parlor. 

I inched further into the room, keeping to the shadows, to get a better view.  Velvet fainting couches lined the walls beside small tables covered in doilies and photographs of people sleeping.  In coffins?  Scratch that, they weren’t sleeping.  The people in the gilt frames were dead.  That wasn’t creepy or anything.

But the creep factor didn’t stop there.  Redcaps surrounded the large furnace.  The door of the furnace hung open, a large tree protruding from its fiery maw.  The redcaps looked like red ants climbing up and down a series of ropes to where a metal spit hung over the burning tree.  Taking turns, the redcaps cranked a lever, turning the items on the spit over and over again.

My stomach roiled and I looked away.  The dead faeries—peri, hamadryad, pixie, Fear Dearg, and the merry dancer—hung from the spit as it slowly rotated over the fire.  Bile rose in my throat and I swallowed hard.  The redcaps giggled with glee each time the bodies snapped and popped above the fire, as if eagerly awaiting a Christmas roast.

I blinked away tears from the lingering smoke haze and scanned the room for additional threats.  There, sitting on a striped satin fainting couch was Leanansídhe and her dead lover.  The Faerie Mistress cradled the skeleton in her arms, relishing in his embrace. She lifted an athame, ritual dagger, in one hand and dragged it along the skeleton’s cheek, then leaned in for a kiss.  The macabre tableau made my stomach twist and I felt my skin crawl.

Leanansídhe was most definitely unhinged.  As Hob once explained to me, the very, very old fae tended to go through an unhealthy stage of boredom that was often followed by a period of “goin’ doololly.”  Some fae manage to retrieve their sanity again over time, but most remained damaged.  I thought Jinx put it best when I explained my earlier vision of the Faerie Mistress.  Leanansídhe was fuck nuts crazy.

With the powerful faerie and her pets surrounding the Yule log, there was no way that I could retrieve The Cailleach’s branch, remove the bodies from the roasting spit, pull the hamadryad’s tree from the fire, and put an end to the power fueling the necromancy spell.  I needed more firepower.

It was time to call Jenna.

I crept back toward the entrance, holding my breath as I crab-walked back the way I came.  I bit my lip, back muscles straining, as I inched forward, careful not to bump the table holding the gramophone.  Making the music skip would definitely catch Leanansídhe’s attention.

My boots touched concrete and I let out a shaky breath.  I’d made it to the laundry room.  I risked a glance back to the cavernous room behind me to see the Faerie Mistress continuing to stroke the cheek of her skeleton lover.  For now, at least, I was safe.

I scanned the laundry room for threats then inched to the basement stairs.  Looking up through the tunnel of spider webs, the door to the hotel looked far away.  But I couldn’t risk making the call here.  I needed to escape the basement level where I might be overheard.

Pulling my coat tight around my neck, I put one foot on the step, then another.  I was nearly at the door, my hand reaching for the handle, when a stair tread let out a loud squeak of protest.  I lifted my foot and froze.  Had I given myself away? 

I held my breath and counted to twenty.  Sticky webs tickled my nose and something skittered along my coat sleeve.  An itch burned between my shoulder blades, but I didn’t turn around.  When I was sure that there were no footsteps approaching from behind me, I crept up the last few stairs and pushed out into the hotel service corridor.

With trembling hands, I closed the metal door and leaned against it.  Mab’s bones, that was close.  I closed my eyes and took a steadying breath.  I made a mental note of which stair had had the squeaky tread and pushed away from the wall. 

It was time to call in reinforcements.

I punched in Jenna’s number from memory.  The petite, young Hunter had helped me on a few cases since we’d met last summer.  We weren’t exactly friends—she killed faeries for a living and I was a wisp half breed—but I’d earned her respect that first night on the waterfront.  I had been ready to die to save innocent humans from supernatural baddies and that was what all Hunters were sworn to do.  I may not be fully human myself, but I fit with Jenna’s ideals.  So far that worked for both of us.

“Got a case?” Jenna asked.  Her breathless voice came down the line in bits and pieces between the rhythmic clang of metal on metal.  She must have been in the sparring room at the Guild’s home base, where Hunters trained obsessively.  “Just a sec.”  The background noise ceased and Jenna let out a barking laugh.  “Need help with another gnome infestation?”

I grimaced.  Jenna had helped me net a small family of gnomes long enough to warn them that the empty lot where they lived was being turned into a shopping mall.  My client had hired me to serve the eviction notice.  It had sounded like a straightforward job, but the gnomes had cried and pleaded with me.  It hadn’t been my finest moment. 

“Not gnomes, redcaps,” I said, keeping my voice low.  “And a faerie necromancer.  I’m at the old Bishop Hotel on Forsythe.  Leanansídhe and her redcap minions are down in the basement.  I need to stop a blood magic spell that she’s casting, but so far they’ve only harmed other faeries…”