Faith of the Divine Inferno - Leslie Thompson (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

been able to understand them, and so I didn’t bother to remember them.
“There are two basic kinds of faerie,” Shaw leaned close enough to speak quietly in my ear. “There is the Seelie High Court which is exclusively held for the most human-like types of fey. These people are the strongest members of the race and they run from the morally ambiguous to the perfectly benign. They spend their time seducing pretty girls and fighting demons and monsters, and only attack humans when they are provoked. The lesser fey are sent down to the Unseelie Court even though they are expected to maintain their allegiances to the same king. They don’t look human and they don’t even try to disguise themselves. They also attack humans without a reason and I have heard stories that claim that they steal, maim, and even murder. They aren’t supposed to be anywhere near the Seelie Court unless they’re called. At least that’s what my grandmother told me.”
“I’m going to have to meet your grandmother,” I answered, wondering who the hell the woman was and how she knew so damn much about faeries.
The crowd buzzed as the couple moved closer and the pixies jeered at them in tiny voices. When they came to a respectful distance from the King, they turned their faces toward him, and I recognized that the man was Bres. Among his own kind, Bres let his guard down so that he glowed with his shimmering power and seemed more inhuman than ever. He was so beautiful that he made my heart ache with dread.
Beside him, the beautiful and delicate redhead was no less a match for him. Her power blazed brilliantly over her smooth white skin and flowed down her slender body like an over gown with her anger as she flounced haughtily to the King’s platform and gave him a graceful curtsy. Not to be outdone, Bres ratchet up his own display until he looked like he was going to vaporize at any moment and he made a deep and elegant bow. Behind them, the two entourages arranged themselves among the surrounding crowds to wait for the show to start.
“What are you two fighting about this time?” Finvarra asked, clearly bored with what was happening.
“Sire, my wife has been denying me use of marital assets!” Bres declared loftily, gesturing at the woman beside him. “Furthermore, she is denying my rights as husband to make use of those who serve us.”
“Aren’t you two already divorced?” A note of annoyance sang in Finvarra’s voice.
“No my lord. You have yet to declare on some matters in dispute,” Bres replied angrily. Finvarra didn’t like the tone, and he gave the other man a fierce stare meant to warn him into better behavior. Bres flinched and growled apologies, although he didn’t look very sorry at all.
“What have you to say to this, Bridget?” Finvarra asked the woman smirking at her husband.
“It is as he claims your majesty,” she admitted easily. “Just as he has denied me access to the marital assets and servants that he holds, I withhold mine from him.”
“Exactly which assets are in contest this time?” Finvarra glanced at Shaw and I, and I knew exactly what they were arguing about.
“The human servants who stand just so beside your throne, my lord,” Bridget gestured to us, and blew a kiss at Shaw. He jerked as if he’d been slapped and his mouth dropped open as the horror of it struck him. There was no doubt that the woman was the faerie that had claimed him as her own. I watched him struggle to put a name to the woman’s face, and I assumed that she had appeared altogether different when they had their college fling.
“No wonder my grandmother was so angry with me,” he murmured as his skin turned sallow and he looked like he was going to be sick. “She knew that I had been marked when she saw it.”
“So this is a custody battle, then?” King Finvarra asked wearily.
“Yes my lord. Bridget has demanded use of my servant Rebecca Calden and has hidden the existence of her mortal from me,” Bres said coldly. “As always she seeks to betray me at every turn-”
“I betrayed you!” Bridget exclaimed in outrage. “What about your treasons? You stole my father’s cauldron from me. You-”
“You flaunted your mortal lovers in my face!” Bres shot back. “You usurped my throne and gave it to your lover-”
“You betrayed the Tuatha de Danann by granting lands and titles to the Formorian demons. If I had not revoked your sovereignty, you would have given them all of Tir na Nog!”
“Your damned bard blistered my forehead! It took years to get rid of them!”
“You seduced not one, but three of the virgins tending my flame in Kildare!”
“I still can’t sit down from the sores that damned bard gave me!”
“You sent our son Ruadan to his death!”
A stunned silence filled the court at that last accusation. Everyone held their breath and waited while Bres turned several shades of red and purple. When he exploded it was into a flurry of enraged curses and threats, spoken in the musical language of the Fey. Bridget did not tolerate it for more than a couple of seconds and soon she was screaming back and pointing her finger at him in lethal gestures. A fireball shot out of her forehead and struck Bres full in the chest, lifting him off of his feet and carrying him over the heads of his supporters. Bridget’s crowd laughed and clapped their hands while the people backing Bres stomped the flames out with their feet and propped him back up. Roaring his fury, a crispy and bruised Bres launched himself at Bridget and took her to the ground where the fight devolved into punches, swearing, spitting, and biting.
The court encouraged the pair while the pixies split into two groups and began to assault all the members of the High Court. Magic spells and bolts of lightning zoomed and crashed throughout the hall, tearing up chunks of black rock and setting clouds of pixies aflame. Bolts of electricity were followed closely by a shower of water and frogs that struck far too close for comfort and knocked me off of my feet. A body landed like a ton of bricks on top of me, driving the air from my lungs and leaving me blinking stupidly at startled frogs scattered across a wet floor.
Suddenly, everything went silent, as if the world became a sudden vacuum and sucked all of the sound of it. I felt the body lift off of me and Shaw offered me a hand up along with an apology. “Sorry about tackling you. Are you okay?”
“Yup,” I croaked, noticing that he wasn’t letting go of my hand and I had to work not to giggle like a school girl about it.
A large pixie, roughly the size of a sparrow, fluttered away from the cloud of buzzing faerie and drifted toward Finvarra. He held a graceful hand out to the pretty creature and she stepped delicately onto his palm and gave him a curtsy. He smiled gently as she went through the motions of addressing him as her liege in a high, tiny voice.
“Your majesty,” she continued as she finished formally addressing him. “There is a group of mortals attempting to enter the Mound.”
“Attempting?” Finvarra inquired with an amused lift of one brow.
“They are circling the door in the wrong direction, sire. So far they have not understood what they are doing wrong.”
“Do you know what they are after?”
“They seek the return of the immortal.” The pixie pointed a tiny finger at me. “They appear to be quite adamant about their desire to have her back. They are now calling for shovels so that they might try to dig their way in.”
“We cannot have that,” The King murmured. Her task completed, the pixie gave another curtsy and flew away to join her friends hovering over our heads. Finvarra sat back in his throne and gazed thoughtfully at nothing for a while. No one moved while he did this; even Bres and Bridget remained frozen in mid-combat while Finvarra considered the pixie’s words.
Finvarra’s attention suddenly focused, and his expression turned from thoughtful to fierce. The High Court held its breath and trembled, as if every one of them expected to be struck down in the next instant. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention, and I felt Shaw shudder in his unease.
“Far Dorocha, what business brings you into the Sidhe Knockma?” Finvarra called, his voice gone low and dangerous.
A figure oozed out of the shadows of the hall and formed into the shape of a tall, broad man. He was dressed all in black, from the ratty t-shirt and jeans to the old and worn boots clomping loosely around his feet. Even his hair and eyes were the shade of obsidian that made his snow white skin glow eerily. Once he was solid, he sauntered arrogantly through the crowd that cringed away from him to avoid his touch. He came to a stop at the platform and knelt before the king, though he did not bow his head in submission.
“This is a new look for you,” Finvarra said dryly. “I was not aware that you had taken up with the emo-goth movement. It suits you well.” Far Dorocha smirked and shrugged in response.
To my horror and dismay, I realized that I knew this man. A thousand years ago, in a time when I had gone to ground to while away a couple of decades, I had taken up residency in a small farming community in Scotland. It had been a quiet place where the people worked hard and died young in the way that peasants always did as they struggled to pay their taxes and avoid marauding Vikings. Far Dorocha had arrived as a mysterious woodsman dressed in black leather and homespun that had all the pretty unmarried girls in a romantic tizzy and their fathers in outraged suspicion. I liked him because he was handsome and didn’t talk, much less badger me with annoying questions. We had enjoyed a brief but wild fling until he left in the dead of night. A few days later, the plague had arrived and wiped out the entire village in less than three months.
I had not suspected what he was back then, and now that I was finally seeing him for what he truly was my skin began to crawl. Far Dorocha turned those black, cavernous eyes upon me and he smiled in recognition and I finally believed the tales the dying villagers had told of him. They had called him the Dark Man, the dire servant of the death goddess Morrigan. According to their stories, it was his task to obtain the things that were forbidden to his queen and to strengthen her terrible power without breaking the taboos she worked under. I still doubt that he had brought the plague to those innocent people,