Interlude II
Five days earlier, in London…
Caedren looks down from the rooftop ledge he’s perched on, his shimmering eyes missing nothing. He can smell his prey. Sickly sweet, likely some sort of minor Faery. Unfortunately for it, it won’t be drinking sugared milk for much longer.
Snorting at that thought, he jumps off the roof and lands on his feet like a cat. He can smell the Faery. Closer now. Closer.
He follows his nose as he saunters down the street, to a nearby nightclub. A large man, the guard that humans call a “bouncer,” stands in front of the entrance. He has a nasty look on his face.
“ID, please,” the man says as Caedren stands before him.
Caedren waves a hand. Shimmering sky blue magic spools around his fingers, before weaving into a crown on the human’s head. The man pauses; his eyes go blank. He stumbles backwards, his motions awkward. Then he opens the door behind him and holds it for Caedren, waving him in as an honored guest.
“Welcome, sir,” the man says. “Have a good evening.”
“Thank you.” Caedren sneers, pulls up his hood, and enters the club.
He winces just inside as the darkness breaks for flashes of bright, strobing, multicolored lights.
How garish. It disorients him, but after a moment, his eyes adjust. He slips between grinding bodies towards his prey.
With all of the people in the room, the Faery could’ve been a needle in a haystack, but Caedren spots him in seconds.
His prey is a Pixie, and the fool has his real wings out.
He’s a pretty thing, the Faery dust highlighting his cheekbones, the soft lines of his body, his beetle-like wings fluttering.
The humans around him “ooh” and “aah,” commenting on his “neat costume.” But the Pixie turns towards Caedren, ignoring the humans’ chattering.
Caedren recognizes the response as the universal compulsion of lesser Fae to marvel at a High Fae like himself, not that he could tell what Caedren is with his hood up.
For him, it would just be a sudden, strange nudge in this direction.
He closes the distance, thumbing the tip of the spring-loaded iron dagger hidden up his sleeve. Closer. Closer. The Pixie turns away and returns to his dance, not knowing it’ll be his last.
Caedren is upon him. Another BOOM of music thunders through the room.
He slides his hand up the Pixie’s naked waist. His mark starts to turn again to see his new dancing partner.
Caedren’s other hand goes up to stroke his shoulder, only for the dagger to snap forth with a flick of his wrist. The little Faery gasps as the blade enters the back of his shoulder, then Caedren stabs again.
This time, judging from his frothy wheeze, he hit a lung through his ribs.
The Pixie writhes in his arms, but Caedren hits his final target: the heart, near his spine.
Each thrust is timed to the pounding beat of the music, covering bloody gasps and gurgles.
Then, he releases him and fades into the crowd as he is rendered to his knees.
Caedren grins darkly as the screaming begins.
But in a moment, the sound is deafened as Caedren tears, using his magic to rip a hole through space and time.
He grimaces as the air crushes against him on all sides, whistling painfully in his sensitive ears.
He’s home in less than a second, but he never does get used to the disorientation of tearing.
Caedren’s home is a neat, windowless living space.
In a corner sits his sterile white desk adorned with a desktop computer, and in the opposite corner, his spotless kitchenette, with a waist-high table against one wall covered in potion vials.
The only hallway leads to his carefully maintained bathroom and his sleeping chamber.
He’s in a bunker under the Great Plains in the midwestern United States, an ocean and half a continent away from where he’d killed the Pixie, safe from any human authorities.
“Good night, goodbye, little Faery man,” he says to himself, laughing.
He takes a seat in front of his coffee table, the plastic cover on his couch crinkling under his weight.
He picks up an impeccably clean white cloth from a stack at the corner of the table, then wipes down his dagger.
A deep red stain blooms upon the cloth as he does.
As Caedren examines his blade for any chips from hitting bone, he feels a shiver go down his spine.
He sneers in disgust. Another. As a High Lord, or at least a former one, Caedren possesses the magical ability to detect when the barrier between the Fae realm and the human realm is crossed.
There’s been a rash of these lately. The Faery he just killed.
A couple days ago, another one, which the Reapers got to first and made things more complicated. And now yet another target. But where?
He closes his eyes and breathes deep, concentrating.
He opens his mind, letting his magic flow…
He finds a willing raven near where he felt the border crossing and boards its mind.
Below, he sees what he recognizes as the Appalachian foothills, sloping down to flatter forested land.
Not too far, then; a few hundred miles east. Interesting.
He leaves the raven and finds a flock of starlings who see the shooting star, the orb of magic containing the interloper as they cross into this realm, pass over a distinctive rock face… He knows what to look for.
Another bloody, disgusting Fae. Caedren is a banished Fae himself, but he has no love for his own kind.
He did once. He tried to help them, all the rejects, the minor Fae, the Faerals.
That was before they turned on him. Caedren has spent centuries in the human world now, and he’s grown to like it better than he ever liked the Fae realm.
He has no tolerance anymore for incursions from that cursed place.
Any Fae that comes here must die for the crime of polluting this beautiful world.
He opens his eyes with a deep exhale. If only he could just tear again and deal with this now…
But tearing is exhausting. Even in the best of times, doing it again this soon would not have been possible for him.
With his powers permanently constrained by the spell that was placed upon him at his banishment, it will be until tomorrow before he can tear again.
Yet… he can begin the journey there through other means.
Giving his prey a headstart will almost certainly mean the Reapers will get there first, but…
something in Caedren is excited at the thought of getting to kill another Reaper. He relishes a challenge, after all.