Chapter 4: Fierce Creatures

We gossiped about who was turning hay with who – Brannath the Blacksmith and Rosy the Innkeeper's niece Patricia were now a hot item. We gandered guesses at who had stolen a keg of Innkeeper Rosy's beer, and chatted like drunken alewives, giggling, about the well-endowed selkie Laird from Innsmouth who had taken up with one of Cook Panetta's daughters. Panetta's lass had cried seven tears into a neap tide on a full moon to summon a sealcoat suitor.

The woods strangled the heath, and moss blossomed atop craggy gray rocks as Marino expertly rode the trails. The thunderclouds darkened like an omen, and bitter rain pelted us – but under my gray mantle, I felt no cold. Annis had dressed me well!

"Annis, where are you? We must hasten back to ready for Pottsmouth," I called. No reply. Her red hair and violet dress were nowhere to be seen, neither her mare. "Oh, for bollocks sake, it seems she went Rangering again on one of her Impressions, caught on the wind. I must go find her."

Marino whinnied as we freewheeled down a fork in the road. Pixies flew about alongside will-o-the-wisps. I shooed them away as they whispered sweet nothings into my ear.

"Blast it, we are in the thick of the woods now, think you not, Marino? Annie, Annie, can you hear me?"

An elf blew its horn in the distance. Suddenly, a sylvan retinue of ghost white, glowing gold, tall, slender elves walked and rode fairy horses and dogs in a procession in front of me. I dismounted Marino and curtsied low, giving the Fair Folk wide berth – I did not want to go under barrow mound and rath, into Twyleth Teg, to eat fairy meats and underworld fruit all my days in the Seelie Court, only to turn to dust upon returning home.

Their Queen, Lleuwinda, the local Seelie regent, had long butterfly wings of pure white, green skin, and purple hair. She fluttered a fan shaped like long-dead Marie Antoinette's at me, wearing an ivory chemise. She danced on fairy toes towards me, then Lleuwinda curtsied.

"Please stand, Lady of Invermoore. Say, do you think your kitchen staff could leave more bread, butter, and milk out for my Folk? We are falling on hard times this harvest – the Fairy Faith dwindles by the day. Only true believers like the MacKays keep it alive." Her amber eyes glistened, dark brown-yellow pools, the pupils like a cat. So, so enticing. But dangerous.

I stood, stiffening. "It is a great honor to leave offerings for the Seelie, my Queen. I am looking for my friend, the daughter of Black Annis. Have you seen her?"

Queen Lleuwinda puckered her lips, fangs agape. "For a kiss, I will tell you." She giggled.

"It is never just a kiss with you, my dear Lleuwa."

"When we were girls, playing in the forest, you oft times came to my bower..." Lleuwinda coquetted, running her pink talons down my throat. "Tell me, Abigail. Have you forgotten the taste of fairy milk? Of the dew of my breast?"

"N – no." I coughed. It was dangerous, to resist my old lover's invitation. "I suppose a kiss would hurt nothing."

"Ha, all is fair in love and war, like the Virgin Queen of old England. Tell me, I do so love Shakespeare – shall we sneak away to the Globe Theater like we did at sixteen, and see Midsummer Night's Dream again, just like when we were lovers?"

The fairies and elves gossiped and made merry, dancing arabesques on strange bent wings and akimbo limbs. One cavorted and one played the harp.

I softened, remembering quiet evenings in her arms. "It can be arranged, my old flame."

We kissed. Lleuwinda tasted of honey. I lost my breath, the burn-hunger rising in my chest.

"Lleuwa, stay back!" I coughed. "The – the blood-hunger. My apologies. I – I forgot how wonderful you smell."

Queen Lleuwinda simply laughed, then slit her wrist with a moonstone knife from her belt pocket. Silver-gold blood pooled in her cupped hand. "Feast, my dear. You are no stranger in the Court of the Dun Cow of Sedgewood. No, Annis simply found quarry. A rogue wulver has been giving us difficulties. We assisted her in taking out the wulver, and she brought it back to Peter to be skinned and sold to those abhorrent magicians. What they do in their chemistry labs with magickal artefacts, I care not to know!" Queen Lleuwinda held her wrist to me.

I couldn't resist. My empty belly cleared itself of the beetroot stew – blood was so much more potent than any masterpiece dear Cook Panetta dreamed up.

The silver-tongued blood of the fey: a miraculous, life giving substance, like the Sang Real. It would let a vampire resist silver if I was anything but a Reaper-blessed dhamphir, near immortal.

I licked it clean from where it had pooled in my old lover's palm.

"Thank you, Lleuwa," I blushed. "I was worried about Annis. And... you taste as good as ever."

"Tut tut, silly dhamphir maid. Puck, a glass of wine!"

Puck – one of many phookas – brought over a glass of rosé. We made small talk and drank. The rain pelted on. But it did not touch the fey, as if they were ghosts. I grew cold. Lleuwinda spread a blanket across my tartan.

"Abby, I must warn you. The Witchfather hungers for you. There are whispers, from my brother's Unseelie Court, that Samael hungers for a heart."

My stomach dropped out, her warm blood in my belly notwithstanding. I shakingly set down the glass of wine.

Suddenly, Annwnn's hounds bayed. A great musket went off, and a silver doe, the hart's blood at her heart shot through with a pewter bullet, came stumbling into the glen.

"We must go, we are not safe here! My apologies, Abigail – this is your matter to settle," Lleuwinda whispered, then kissed my cheek. "Best of luck." My old lover vanished into thick blue mist with the rest of the fey.

I readied myself with my broadsword. It was easy to lift with my superhuman strength. I raised it against the strange marauder, who rode a great skeletal blue roan. "Who goes there?" I asked.

"My apologies," came a voice all too familiar to me. "But it is noon, and I was expecting you an hour later, my dear." Samael dismounted the roan, then slit the silver doe's neck humanely. "Lunch, you see. I was to have you for tea in my manor."

I froze, my heart pounding. He lowered his hood, his skull shining in the rain. Slick with moisture, the eye sockets and gape of missing nose hole let the water in. Samael's collier coal eyes sputtered against the wet.

"You hunt?" I asked, taken aback.

"Of course. I have no servants, Abby. A man must hunt, and for such an esteemed guest as yourself, a fairy hind must be served. I could think of no better way to celebrate our friendship. It has been eight years since I last saw you."

The truth of the matter was, with my soul in stasis in Purgatory, an eternity of friendship had already passed between Samael and me. What was a mere second of his bone lips on my cheek, cradling my soul, was tens of thousands of days talking with him. I, a teenager betrayed by those closest to me, had had much on my seventeen year old mind. I did not let him get anything about himself in a word edgewise, but he listened and gave wise counsel, and showed me all the wonders and fruits of Gan Eden. His favorite, a pomegranate, felt ripe on my tongue as I looked at his gaunt figure in the brooding forest.

Samael helped me onto Marino, then slung the beautiful, dead deer onto the back of his monstrous roan. He mounted the steed, then outstretched a hand to me. "Would you care to come over early? The spit is ready for roasting. My manor is small, but the library I think will be to your liking."

"Death has a library?"

He smiled. "Yes, I find reading often passes the time. It is how I relax on the Sabbath."

"May you labor on the Sabbath? People still die on the Sabbath."

"The souls wait in Sheol for me, in a beautiful reverie of sleep. Then, it is on to Gan Eden with the lot," Samael said quietly as I followed him on Marino. We came to a beautiful plum orchard with wild roses, freesia, and forget-me-nots covering the mossy grass. Dew bloomed with pixies and goblin fruit. It smelled divine.

He plucked a fresh plum and offered it to me. By his manor – rather small, perhaps five rooms at most, with a thatch roof and barn out back – was a cider apple tree.

"Fruit?"

"Is it ripe?"

"All fruit is ripe in Death's hands."

"Fair enough." I politely accepted the sweet-smelling plum. "Samael, what do you want with me?"

We found ourselves inside, our horses in the stable.

"I will tell you after we eat. Tell me, Abigail – how has your life been since I raised you from the dead?"

I bristled. "You walk the Sedgewood, Witchfather. You drink at Rosy's inn, even. Don't you know that Invermoore is prospering?"

Samael smiled, smoking a pipe. The mint and tobacco smelled divine. "True. But I am not human. I would be curious, in mortal terms, what life is like when one is practically immortal. When they had been born with the taste of death on their silver spoon. Dhamphirs are rare in Scotland."

"Ah."

"May I offer you some tobacc?" He outstretched the pipe, shaped like an otter, to me. "It seems we both like novelties," he laughed genially, genuflecting to my badger breast-piece.

"It is the MacKay clan symbol. And... the otter?" I found myself laughing despite myself.

"Fierce creatures, otters. They will do anything for their young, just as I will do for the souls that fall into my escort."

I accepted, puffed, and the tobacco smoothed my nerves.