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  Fae, Flames & Fedoras

  Glynn Stewart

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  1. Fae, Flames & Fedoras

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  Chapter 1

  Changeling’s Fealty by Glynn Stewart

  About the Author

  Other books by Glynn Stewart

  Fae, Flames & Fedoras © 2018 Glynn Stewart

  Illustration © 2019 Shen Fei

  ISBN (epub): 978-1-989674-03-1

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Joe Costa sighed exasperatedly as he filled the date in on the form—September 8, 1948—and accepted the detonators and wires he used to do his job every single day. Stacking them and several boxes of explosives on his cart, the burly sewer worker quickly caught up with his team as they headed into the new sewer tunnel heading out west, into one of New York’s rapidly growing suburbs.

  The six-man tunnel-blasting team lit up their electric headlamps as they passed beyond the brightly lit excavation where the engineers had laid out diagrams of how the sewers were going to look in about six months. Most of the work was being done on the surface, with excavations and pipelines, but Costa’s team’s job was to blast the massive drain tunnels the rest of the pipelines drained into.

  This required them to walk the better part of a mile through the portion of the tunnel they’d already blasted out, in roughly an inch of water that had leaked in from where the tunnel linked to the existing storm system that drained out to the sea.

  The group of men laughed and joked as they headed deeper and deeper under the earth, their lights occasionally reflecting off various side tunnels where the other sewers linked to their tunnel. The joking was self-defence—Costa shivered slightly, remembering the first few times they’d made even part of this trek. With only their headlamps to light the way in the dark, it was terrifying.

  They reached the end of the tunnel, where they’d finished clearing and smoothing the existing walls the night before.

  “Have at ’er, Joe!” the team lead told the demolitions man.

  With a big grin, Joe started pulling explosives off of his cart and setting them on the rough rock face where the tunnel would soon extend. Even though he’d gone over the placements with the engineers the previous evening, he’d served in the War and could have done it himself by feel.

  For the first hour or so, the other five men were mostly only there to keep the demo man from going insane in the dark, though he happily used them as grunt labour, running wires and holding charges in place. If nothing else, the other sewer workers’ expressions when holding the charges were always priceless.

  “Right, boys, stand back,” he finally ordered once the first set of charges was in place. Joe wasn’t technically in charge of the team, but no one argues with the man holding the detonator.

  The big man lit a cigarette as he backed away with the rest of the team and rolled out the wire from his detonator until they were clear.

  “Fire in the ’ole!” he barked and hit the button.

  He expected a shockwave of air, a blast wave of heat, and then a shortness of breath for a few minutes while the air refreshed in the tunnel.

  There was a shock and blast of heat, but then his cigarette was torn from his hand by a massive backflush of air as it rushed into the space opened by the explosion. The sound of the explosion echoed, along with a clatter of stone falling into an empty space that shouldn’t have been there.

  Joe carefully picked up his cigarette as the rest of the team ran forward to see what had happened. No demolitions man would ever leave loose flame in an area he was working.

  “You’ve gotta see this, Joe!” one of the men yelled. “We blew into some kind of cave.”

  “Madre de dios,” one of the other workers suddenly swore. “That’s gold.”

  That got even Joe’s attention. He jogged lightly forward to join his team. They were well ahead of him, scrabbling down the uneven slope of the massive hollow he’d blown open. Distantly, flickering in the light of their headlamps, he could make out the gold the other man had seen.

  It wasn’t the veins of natural gold he’d been expecting. It was coins—piles of coins. Blinking against the strangely fresh air of the cave, he saw that it wasn’t just the metal—the gold lay amidst statues and what looked like the fanciful scrolls from Hollywoodland movies. A giant pile of money and artifacts buried under New York? That was impossible!

  Joe stayed at the edge of the cavern for a moment, trying to comprehend what his coworkers’ lights were showing him, and that was why he saw the movement before any of them did.

  He opened his mouth to shout a warning, and then the hollow was suddenly filled with light. A pillar of flame wider than a man was tall flared through the cave. It lit the entire space as bright as day for a few moments, showing the immense cavern to be filled with gold and priceless artifacts—and the immense winged lizard that had just burnt two of Joe’s friends to ash.

  There was movement in the dark as Joe stared blankly forward, and then a third light simply disappeared with a cut-off scream, and the remaining two workers who’d entered the tunnel turned to run.

  Joe didn’t wait for them. His paralysis broke with the scream, and he fled back through his tunnel.

  None of the others ever caught up to him again.

  Talus, son of Korinth, noble of the Seelie Courts of the Fae, had never visited New York before. When he left his birthplace in London for the wilds of Western Canada to escape the Blitz, he’d been carried by the Wild Hunt and had bypassed all of North America’s ports.

  The nineteen-year-old fair-haired Fae tried not to gawk as the car carrying him and two other young Fae into the city drove through under-construction skyscrapers and other wonders of the energy of man.

  An older, dark-skinned Fae drove the car, grinning unabashedly as his three young passengers gawked at the bustling energy of the city around them. In the aftermath of the War, New York continued to grow ever more dramatically. That growth had left the Fae Courts in the city under-strength and overwhelmed, so both the Seelie and Unseelie had sent out calls for new blood to support them.

  Talus was still, technically, the ward of his uncle Oberis, the Fae Lord of the western half of Canada, but he’d argued that as a fully trained Fae Noble, one of the most powerful beings in the world, he was doing the Courts a disservice by remaining in what was, supernaturally, a complete backwater.

  So he and the other three youths in the car, all of them Seelie Fae Nobles, all of them under the age of twenty-five, had answered the call of the New York Court. Clad in trench coats and fedoras against the autumn chill, they’d met their driver on a train platform and now were seeing New York for the first time.

  The black car eventually pulled into a loop around a massive oak tree next to a four-story brownstone building on the edge of Manhattan Island. The driver turned to look at the three youths and smiled gently at them.

  “This is the Manor for New York,” he told them. “Keeper Owen should be waiting for you.”

  The sign above the door the oak shaded declared the brownstone the Galahad Inn. All Fae were required to meet with the Keeper, the neutral arbiter of Fae law in an area, when they arrived in a new town. In turn, the Keeper was responsible for providing three days of room and board—formally “succor”—to them, so most Keepers ran a hotel as their Manor.

  The driver easily offloaded the three suitcases from the trunk, and then the car drove off, presumably to some hidden parking lot behind the building. With a grin at the other two Fae, Talus grabbed u
p his suitcase and entered the hotel.

  The lobby looked more like a museum than a hotel. It was a double-height room that stretched the full length of the building, with glass display cases shaping the space into clear areas and serving as the reception desk.

  Each of the display cases contained weapons. Some were clearly crude, historical artifacts from the history of firearms. Some were new, likely used in the World War a few years before. Pride of place in the room was taken by a stacked display of what Talus recognized as bazookas, with an odd, multi-barrelled weapon set up on a tripod on top, out of reach of even the tallest without climbing.

  Around the display cases with their impressive arsenal, the interior of the building was panelled in plain light wood, and cheap but sturdy furniture filled a clear hotel waiting area. A dark-skinned man, similar enough to the driver of the car to have been his twin, sat behind the reception counter—a display case of no fewer than fifteen tommy guns. Two men and a woman, dressed in the same trench coat and fedora as Talus—and, truth be told, about half of New York—occupied one of the seating areas.

  Like Talus and his companions, the receptionist and all three guests had their hair cut roughly shoulder length, concealing their ears. The receptionist lacked the high pronounced cheekbones of most of the Fae, but the guests all shared it.

  Talus approached the desk.

  “I am Talus,” he told the man simply. “I believe we are expected.”

  The dark-skinned Fae ducked his head minimally, checking a list. “Yes, Master Talus, Master Caleb, Master Andre. Keeper Owen is unfortunately out of the Manor, dealing with a Covenant issue. He will be returning shortly and asked me to hold the six of you to meet with him.”

  “The six of us?” Talus asked, glancing over at the other three Fae.

  “Yes, Masters Michael and Morgan and Mistress Celia are nobles of the Unseelie Court,” the lesser Fae explained. “Keeper Owen wished to speak with all six of you since we rarely get quite so many nobles arriving at the same time.”

  “Thank you,” Talus told the man, raising an eyebrow in question for the man’s name.

  “I am Isaac, sir,” the dark-skinned Fae offered. “You met my brother Abraham on the way here.”

  “Thank you, Isaac. We will await the Keeper’s pleasure.”

  Behind him, Talus felt Caleb and Andre bristle, but they remained silent. They might object to him taking the lead, but the truth was simple.

  Whether they wished to or not, they would await the Keeper.

  Talus considered avoiding the Unseelie Nobles for a few moments, but there was only one large sitting area in the hotel lobby, and it would be impolite to blatantly sit apart from them. The split between Seelie and Unseelie Fae was more on the order of a family feud than a conflict between nations. Some sub-species exclusively hewed to one side or another, but in the main, Fae were Fae, and if the race was challenged, Seelie and Unseelie would stand together. That was why the Keeper existed, after all.

  Concluding the only polite thing to do was to introduce himself, he crossed to the sitting area in the shadow of the pyramid of rocket launchers and offered the three nobles a slight bow, that of a Noble to an equal.

  “Good day,” he said genially. “I am Talus of the Seelie Court of Western Canada.”

  The same standards of politeness that had forced him to join them forced them to their feet. The woman, a petite platinum blonde with pitch-black eyes, bowed first, slightly deeper than required to better expose a flirtatious amount of décolletage.

  “I am Celia, of the Unseelie Court of San Francisco. Greetings,” she returned before allowing her two male companions to speak.

  “Greetings,” the largest of the three Unseelie Fae rumbled. He was easily six inches over six feet, and an ugly scar crossed the man’s face. “I am Morgan, most recently of the United States Marines.”

  The last of the three Unseelie grinned at Morgan’s self-description. “I’m Michael,” he said simply. Michael was the smallest of the six Fae present, barely over five feet tall, but there was an air around the fair-haired man that suggested this was not a Noble to mess with.

  “I am Caleb, of the Seelie Court of London,” the first of Talus’s fellow Seelie joined the introductions. Caleb was a slim Fae, almost as tall as Morgan but far slighter than the massively bulky ex-Marine. He was also, so far as Talus could tell, a cousin on Talus’s mother’s side.

  Andre had opened his mouth seconds too late to pre-empt Caleb, which left him introducing himself last. From the corner of his eye, Talus could tell that the redheaded Noble was unenthused, but he introduced himself gamely.

  “I be Andre, of the Teutha Courts,” he said simply, declaring himself a Noble of the homeland, one of the Irish Fae beholden directly to the Council of Lords and Ladies that ruled their race.

  The formalities observed, Talus and the other Seelie joined the Unseelie in the sitting area. None of the six seemed to feel overly pressured to make conversation, and the time passed slowly.

  After a few minutes, he found himself examining the odd revolver-like launcher at the top of the pyramid of anti-tank weapons in the middle of the lobby. Almost as long as he was tall, it was made of nine tubes surrounded by a metal ring at two points. Standing and crossing to it, he could only make out a single trigger mechanism. It was designed to fit over the shoulder in much the same way as the US Army-issue bazookas stacked beneath it.

  “That’s a Luftfaust—or Fliegerfaust B, depending on who you ask,” someone said behind him. “One of Hitler’s people’s many brilliant ideas that never quite got produced in enough quantity to make a difference in the war. I ended up with three, but as you can tell, I collect weaponry.”

  Talus turned to the speaker, who turned out to be a dark-tanned older man, his skin weathered by the sun and his eyes a glinting, gleeful blue. The typical Fae features that were so stark in the Nobles were muted in this man, though the feeling of oak strength and iron will that radiated from him suggested that even they should take him seriously.

  “I am Owen, Keeper of the city of New York,” he introduced himself. “I am a Gille, for those of you who were wondering, not a Noble.”

  Talus nodded his understanding. The Gille were one of the races that mostly joined the Seelie Courts, but they were bound to trees in a way that tended to keep them outside Court politics even when they joined a Court. The immense oak outside, for example, was likely bonded to the Fae in front of him. While they both lived, they would both draw strength from the other. Of course, Owen would survive the tree dying—and the reverse was not the case.

  “Welcome to my Manor,” the Fae continued. “If any of you are in need of the traditional three days of succor, you are already booked into rooms—just ask Isaac for your key.

  “I apologize for holding you up as I have, but something came up in my meeting with the city’s mortal authorities. It appears that a number of workers have gone missing in the city’s sewer construction project,” he explained. “What little information I could extract from the survivor was inconclusive but enough for me to know that his companions are dead—and that it wasn’t an accident or any ordinary creature that claimed the lives of his compatriots.”

  “What does this have to do with us?” Morgan asked, his deep voice surprisingly curious rather than challenging.

  “This city is not really under the control of any supernatural faction,” Owen told them, perching on the edge of a display case. “Until a few years ago, the vampires ran New York—and it was mortals that drove them out, not us.

  “This means the Covenants between us, the Shifters, the Magi, and others in the city are still in negotiation,” he explained. “Any action we can undertake that shows us to be capable of handling incidents like this in which others couldn’t or hadn’t will help us seize a position of primacy here. I want to be sure that this beast, whatever it is, dies. That’s where you six come in.”

  “Isn’t six Nobles a leetle much for some poor beastie in the sewers?
” Michael asked, glancing around the group. “Wouldn’t just one of us be more than enough?”

  “We don’t know what’s down there,” Owen reminded them. “There are many creatures in this world that could threaten a Fae Noble alone. There are even creatures that would pose a real threat to two or three Nobles. There are very few things in this world short of the Powers that could threaten six of you.”

  “We’re all new to the city,” Celia purred into the conversation coquettishly. “We lack arms or any assets beyond our own powers.”

  Owen gestured lackadaisically at the display case of tommy guns that served as a reception desk. “I would not allow you to take on this task without aid,” he declared. “Each of you should take a Thompson and a couple of drums of silver, salt, and iron rounds.

  “I will also pay each of you ten thousand dollars to complete this task,” he finished. “That should help you get set up in New York while you find places at the Courts.”

  Something about the situation seemed off. Fae were not normally so free with promises and offers, even the Seelie, and especially not Keepers.

  Duty to the race, however, was duty to the race. With a nod at his fellow Nobles, he settled his fedora back on his head then nodded at the Keeper.

  “I think you’d best be getting us those guns, then, milord,” he said politely. “Looks like we’re going monster-hunting.”

  Abraham and Isaac drove the Fae nobles, once again divided between cars by Seelie and Unseelie Courts, down towards the under-construction districts where the sewer workers had encountered the beast.

  They drove past a busy worksite assembled around a large excavation—the entry point for the deeper tunnels, according to the map that Owen had provided—and then parked several blocks away.