Sharp as Scarlet preview!

 Notes: Darlins! My brain is chock-full of plotting and my time is crunched, so forgive me for no blog story today. Instead, I'm going to share the beginning of the next newsletter story with you--Seamark is over, so it's time for something new. Never fear, I'll have more Chelen City ready to go next week--we're getting so close to the end!

Title: Sharp As Scarlet: Chapter One

Blurb: Rainer Blake lives a simple life running an old antique store gifted to him by his guardian. He's a mostly normal human being in a slightly abnormal world--a world that can be breached by other realms, invaded by fae both light and dark.

Most fae can't stay long—modernity is poison to them—but not even the threat of iron will stop the Erlking's Hounds from tracking down Scarlet, the beautiful, dagger-fingered faerie prince who stole a great treasure from his father before fleeing to the human realm.

Only Rainer knows where Scarlet is. That means the Hounds' target should be easy prey.

But it doesn't pay to underestimate someone who's captured the heart of a heartless prince.

***

“The Fairy in Winter” by Walter De La Mare

There was a Fairy – flake of winter –
Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence,
Sister crystal to crystal sighing,
Making of meadow argent palace,
Night a star-sown solitude,
Cried ‘neath her frozen eaves, “I burn here!”

Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like,
Wand within fingers, locks enspangled,
Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet,
She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow –
Green as stalks of weeds in water –
Breathed: stirred.

Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing,
Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic.
Softlier than moth’s her pinions trembled;
Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered,
Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken.

In air, o’er crystal, rang twangling night-wind.
Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament.

 

Chapter One

 

NOW

Shaw’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Antiques sits a little ways off the main streets of the city, down an older, semi-residential block that’s only now becoming afflicted with coffee shops and modern kitsch. It’s not far enough away from downtown to make it hard for customers to find, but it’s not on one of the major thoroughfares either, which means that most of the people who do end up there are deliberately looking for it.

The Cabinet specializes in small, holdable antiques—the sort of thing you can tuck under your arm or put in a bag on your way out with no one the wiser. You can find everything from bespoke East Coast cufflinks to Chinese nephrite teapots to Peruvian Nazca sculptures there, none of it quite fine enough to be hunted down by truly avid collectors, all of it beautiful enough to enhance a normal life. About ninety percent of the people who walk through the door are satisfied with a lovely gift and leave happy.

The other ten percent are looking for something entirely different, and happiness is unfortunately never assured. Rainer does his best, but helping fae adjust to the human realm isn’t easy. He’s seen it all: tears, screams, curses that do their damndest to stick despite his protections, even the occasional assassination attempt. None of them have ever worked, obviously, but it’s something he has to be on guard for.

Desperate people are hurt people, and they’re not always careful about who ends up sharing their pain. Several bad experiences have instilled in Rainer a sense of caution that Scarlet calls paranoia, but Shaw was always supportive of it. Better safe than sorry, lad, he used to say. Shaw was small fae, with small powers, and he appreciated a good back-up plan.

Inheriting Shaw’s caution might be the only thing that kept Rainer alive after what happened next.

When the bell above the door rings five minutes before closing, Rainer barely notices it at first. He’s too busy collecting the few paper receipts he’s generated today and taking pictures of them to upload to his accounting software—some fae can’t handle being in close proximity to modern technology, so he tends to save this for the end of the day. It’s the reason he uses old-fashioned lamps to light the store instead of LED bulbs and hasn’t upgraded the radiators yet. The older, the better for his real customers.

“Welcome in,” he calls out, not looking up. A wash of cold air blows across the shop, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. It’s not quite winter yet, and Rainer pauses for a moment as the smell of petrichor wafts in along with the cold.

He sets the receipts aside but keeps his phone in his hands, being very careful to keep his eyes down even as he lifts the phone enough to see through the camera. “Anything I can help you with?” he asks as the door closes with a ding. He captures a photo of a man with a close-cut gray bears wearing a long, heavy leather jacket before actually looking up.

The man smiles. “Not as such.”

Rainer smiles back. The expression feels frozen on his face, but he knows it doesn’t come off that way. He can conceal the truth as well as any fae out there. “The shop closes in five minutes.”

“Oh, we won’t linger long,” the man says.

We… It takes too long for Rainer to register the fact that there’s another set of footsteps wandering around the shop. The other steps aren’t a pair of shoes, either. Rather, it’s the click-click-click of nails on hardwood; there’s an animal moving around the shop.

A big one, from the sound of it.

The man comes up to the counter, staring down at the jewelry on display beneath it. “You’ve an eclectic assortment of goods here.”

“Thank you,” Rainer says mildly, sending the picture off without looking at the phone. “It’s a collection that’s taken a long time to put together.”

“I can tell.” When their eyes meet, Rainer is momentarily stricken with fear. These eyes are blue, normal, average in every way except in which they seem to be capable of staring straight through Rainer. “I wonder if you might have something I’m looking for.”

“Maybe.” Rainer sets the phone down on the counter and lowers one hand to the scarred wooden surface of the ancient display case, the other one falling casually behind it. “What are you looking for?”

“A ring,” the man says. “A signet ring, in fact.”

Rainer shakes his head. “I’m afraid we don’t—”

“Let me finish, boy.”

Rainer shivers violently, then shakes off the compulsion. The man continues like he never used one in the first place.

“It’s a signet ring made from obsidian, engraved with a silver crown on the surface,” he continues. “It belongs to a very powerful person who would like it back. I was told this would be a good place to begin my search for it.”

It takes a moment to father the breath to respond, but Rainer manages after a few seconds. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything of that sort here.”

“Mmm.” The man nods in understanding. “I see. But perhaps you know someone who does. I have it on equally good authority that you’re quite…close with the bearer of this ring.”

A message comes in on Rainer’s phone. Then another. And another. It dings with notification after notification. “Just let me get this first,” Rainer says, but the man reaches out and slams a hand down on the phone before he can pick it up.

“No more dissembling between us,” he says, the blue in his eyes beginning to melt into silver. The click-click comes closer, then stops. Rainer risks a glance at the end of the aisle and sees a massive hound staring at him. At first it just looks like a big breed of pitbull, but a second and then a third glance reveal the leonine mane around its head, and the massive spread of its claws and jaws. It’s tawny and muscular and drooling a pool onto the floor. The drool steams lightly. “Tell me where to find the prince, and I’ll spare your life.”

He's fae, so Rainer knows that he’s telling the truth. But looking into those eyes, he also knows that if he were to tell this man where Scarlet is, he would end up in such incredible pain and suffering that he would wish he were dead.

Fortunately for Rainer, he has absolutely no intention of giving up Scarlet.

“Get fucked,” he says in a pleasant voice instead, then slams his hand down on the emergency button beneath his desk. The fae is reaching for him, the creature is coming for him, but as the cloud of tiny gray particles puffs out of the special drawer he installed in the cash register years ago, both of them pause, then begin to cough.

Have some iron lung treatment, you bastards. Rainer swipes his phone up, sends out one last text, then shoves it into the back pocket of his black jeans and leaps over the counter. The fae man reaches out for him again, light fizzing for a moment across his fingers, but he doesn’t make contact. Just a few more feet and Rainer will be out the front, and then—

The bell above the door dings with alarming merriment, and a face pokes in from the outside. This one isn’t even trying to maintain a glamour—this is the head of a hound bisected in two, the middle gaping with redness but not actively bleeding as the mouth splits even wider, showing off three rows of terribly sharp teeth. It sticks its shoulders inside the storefront, beginning to crouch, silver claws digging gouges into the wooden floor.

Rainer acts instantly, uncoiling the long leather bracelet from his left wrist in a snapping motion as he pulls his tactical folder from his front right pocket. The slender bracelet extends into a short whip, and he lashes the beast with the whippy, iron-studded tip, making it recoil long enough for him to get close enough to slash it across the face with his knife.

The beast roars and rears back, letting the door fall shut as it begins to paw at its new wound. It’s only a few feet away, though; Rainer will never escape it if he tries to use the front door.

Time for the back, then.

He coils the whip up and turns for the back door, narrowly evading a paw swipe from the leonine creature. It’s still trying to clear its face, but it lets out a yowl of fury as Rainer dances by, letting him know that his lead is temporary at best. He’s got to go faster…or slow it down.

Without hesitating, Rainer shoves the carefully curated shelves onto the floor behind him as he passes by. Tchotchkes smash into shards, elegant antiques are sent tumbling, and the occasional very rare and precious curio is shattered without a second thought as he runs for the back of the store. He can hear the yowls become growls, hear the beast picking its way through the wreckage. Worse than that, he can hear the fae who came in with it begin to laugh.

It’s the sound of a raven on the edge of a battlefield, the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance. It’s the sound of doom impending, so full of menace that Rainer can barely force his limbs to move.

“Make the chase a good one,” the fae calls out as Rainer darts through the back door, slamming it shut behind him. He turns then, just in time to see the leonine beast smash head-first into the heavy slab of black walnut, nearly breaking the vertical glass inlay in it right then and there. Silver eyes stand out even across the entirety of the shop, glowing with malice.

The beast growls again and gathers itself for another attack.

Rainer runs.

Halfway across the world, a man grips his phone hard enough to make the plastic groan, staring down at two little words: They’re coming.

 

 

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