Left for Undead

New Orleans.   Fall

Fae archers stood at the Sidhe wall and trained their
arrows toward the tree line as a slow, unseasonable frost overtook the
branches. A sudden hard chill sliced through the humid air all around them,
keening their senses for a potential Unseelie onslaught.

The Captain of the Guards held up one hand, silently
cautioning his archers to wait until they could tell the true direction of the
enemy’s approach. Skilled eyes remained focused on the minute changes in the
flora as they picked up on a telltale clue. Thicker ice was forming on the
branches that faced the glamour-hidden golden path to the drawbridge. But as
the captain lifted an arrow from his quiver, a regal female voice rang out.

“Friend, not foe! I beseech you—I have come to seek
asylum from Sir Rodney!”

The entire garrison exchanged confused but skeptical
glances. Again using hand signals, the captain sent his men into better
positions, while cautioning them with his eyes to look alive and not to fall
for a possible Unseelie ambush.

“Then show ye-selves!” the captain shouted around a
stone pillar. “All of you!”

The stone path instantly glazed over with a thin
covering of ice and Queen Cerridwen stood between two formidable-looking Gnome
bodyguards. Her hands were concealed within a white mink muff and she was
shrouded in a luxurious full-length hooded white mink coat that flowed out in a
long train behind her. Perspiration rolled down her Gnomes’ faces from beneath their
heavy Cossack-styled hats and furs. But the queen’s composure despite the
Louisiana heat remained eerily cool as she simply pushed back her hood with
ease, moving slowly so that the nervous captain could observe her hands. Not a
platinum strand of hair was out of place as she turned her delicate face up to
the captain’s and made her appeal while her intense ice blue eyes beheld him.

“We have traveled far under dangerous conditions,” she
said calmly. “I need to confer with my husband on matters of national security
to our Fae way of life.”

“
Ex-
husband,” an elderly disembodied voice
stated bluntly. Within seconds Garth became visible as he joined the standoff
on the fortress outer wall.

“No matter what you may think of me, dear Garth,”
Queen Cerridwen cooed, “in the end, Rodney and I have a link that goes back as
long as—”

“Too long,” Garth snapped, cutting her off. He pulled
out a wand with crooked fingers from the sleeve of his monk habit–styled robe;
it was a thinly veiled threat—one that, wisely, neither Cerridwen nor her
Gnomes responded to. “There are some things that our monarch may be blind to,
but that I, as his top advisor, will always see.”

Queen Cerridwen allowed a tight smile to form on her
pale rosebud-shaped lips while she studied the ancient wizard. “Then see that I
have come with limited guards and did not arm myself to match your rude
challenge just now. My mission is much too important to be derailed at the foot
of your monarch’s drawbridge.”

Garth arched an eyebrow and glanced at the Captain of
the Guards, then let out a little snort of disgust. “This is not the Cerridwen
I am used to. Something is clearly awry.”

“There could be more of them in the trees awaiting an
ambush,” the worried captain murmured to Garth.

Garth nodded but spoke quietly: “But if we have their
queen and a full garrison at our walls, then the odds that they will siege the
palace are tremendously reduced.”

As though reading their minds, Queen Cerridwen stepped
forward. Using a simple hand signal, as one would command well-trained hunting
dogs, she bade her guards to stay where they stood.

“I need to speak to Rodney,” she said, never blinking
as she fixed her gaze on Garth. “It is a matter of utmost importance.”

After a moment, the elderly Gnome gave a curt nod with
his bald head, which was enough to signal the captain to lower the drawbridge.

“Only you,” Garth said, addressing the queen.

Queen Cerridwen nodded and lifted her chin as she
gracefully glided forward. “As only I would expect. But I thank you for your
limited hospitality, nonetheless.”

Her ice-heeled shoes clicked against the bridge,
ringing out in the deafening silence as garrison archers kept their deadly
arrows trained on her. The moment she was on the other side of the bridge,
anxious guards quickly drew up the only access to the castle. Then, just as
quickly, a phalanx of guards surrounded her.

“Your wand, Your Majesty,” Garth said in a suspicious
tone, then grudgingly gave her a courtesy bow before holding out his hand.

She calmly gave her muff to the closest guard beside
her and then carefully reached into her flowing left sleeve with two fingers to
produce a crystalline ice wand. As he cautiously accepted the queen’s
instrument of death, Garth nodded and silently dispatched a runner to alert Sir
Rodney.

“I will show you to the war room,” Garth said in a
dignified tone.

Queen Cerridwen tilted her head with an amused
expression. “But I was so hoping you’d show me to his private bedchamber.” She
released a melodramatic sigh with merriment in her eyes as the old Gnome drew
back, clearly shocked. “No matter, we’ll wind up there sooner or later. You
know Rodney almost as well as I do, and some of his notions of détente should
be predictable by now even for you, dear Garth.”

Elder Vlad stood by the desecrated mausoleum peering
down at the charred male corpse. Blue blood slowly blackened beneath the
visible pulsing veins in the paper-thin skin of Vlad’s bald head while his
black irises completely overtook the whites of his eyes. The Vampires around him
were quiet and still under the blue-white wash of moonlight in the cemetery,
awaiting his permission to investigate. Fury threaded through his body like
dark tendrils of hatred, although the ancient vampire remained stoic.

“Who did this?” His rhetorical question was uttered
between his fangs with deadly calm. He already knew the culprits; his angry
query was simply a command for external confirmation. Elder Vlad glanced up,
holding his top hunter lieutenant’s gaze, and impatiently waited for an answer.

“We believe it had to be Unseelie Fae, Your
Excellency. Just like the others.” Caleb dropped to one leather-clad knee,
allowing his long spill of platinum hair to flow over his shoulders as he more
closely examined the Vampire ash. The black leather coat Caleb wore dusted the
ground, billowing out around him from supernatural fury.

“Undoubtedly death by daylight invasion,” Caleb said,
suddenly looking up baring fangs as his rage kindled. “I suspect that Monroe
Bonaventure went to ground, sleeping here in his mausoleum for fear that since
the mansions of so many others had been recently overrun that his might be as
well. But they found the poor bastard anyway.”

“He was my sixth and last viceroy in the region.”
Elder Vlad paced away with silent footsteps, beginning to levitate from his
unspent anger, and then he turned quickly to speak in a burst of rage to the
assembled hunters. “We are of the caste Vampyre! We are the eternal night! That
we fear
anything
is sacrilege! We are the definition of fear in the
supernatural world! It is our kind that has always been at the top of the food
chain for millennia! By all that is unholy, I vow that there will be merciless
redress for this offense. Tell me, dear Mara, what clues have you uncovered,
before I formally declare war..   Transylvania will want to know why
and I shall give them indisputable proof.”

Mara traced the edges of the broken door hinges and
locks around the opened crypt with her fingers. Only her long brunette hair
moved in the gentle night breeze as she stopped for a second to peer at Elder
Vlad, remaining momentarily eerily still.

“This metal was fractured by sudden freezing.  
temperatures so cold that a mere tap would have shattered them,” she finally
said. Her smoldering dark gaze beheld Caleb’s ice blue stare for a moment
before returning to Elder Vlad. “Our local Seelie Fae do not work with such
extreme temperatures,” she murmured, her voice sounding like a seductive
forensic expert’s. “Nor do the wolves.”

Elder Vlad narrowed his gaze and looked off into the
distance. “No, they don’t, do they.”

Mara shook her head. “Sir Rodney is many things, but a
fool he is not,” she said with a low hiss between her fangs.

“Your orders, Your Excellency?” Caleb asked, rising to
stand with his head bowed before the ancient leader of the North American
Vampire Cartel.

“Fix this,” Elder Vlad murmured. “Make sure the
Unseelie have a list of names for which we demand blood restitution. And do be
sure to let Queen Cerridwen of Hecate know how very displeased I am.”

“Queen Cerridwen of Hecate,” Rupert announced, bowing
before Sir Rodney as he entered the war room with Garth and a formidable
retinue of palace guards.

“Cerridwen,” Sir Rodney said in an even tone, offering
her a slight bow while refreshing his Fae ale. “And to what do I owe the rare
pleasure—especially at this hour, unannounced, and well after I have declared
war on you via Fae missive for your treason of siding with Vampires against my
kingdom?”

“I was set up, Rodney. Purely and simply.” Queen
Cerridwen casually shed her mink coat and walked forward, allowing it to pool
on the floor behind her. “I received your missive and I suspect that you
received mine stating that all is forgiven. We are not at war.   what
has been between us has been a bitter disagreement at times—something that
occasionally happens amongst evenly matched rivals—but never war. However, we
are now under siege.”

“Rivals,” he said flatly, his sapphire gaze holding
hers for ransom.

“Among other things,” she said softly. “Is that not
sometimes the outgrowth of passion.   for lovers to become rivals?”

“Or enemies.”

Her cool gaze warmed him as it slowly raked him from
head to toe.

“You don’t mean that,” she murmured. “I have known you
a long time, my summer prince. Your warmth always belies the coldness of your
words.”

Sir Rodney glanced over her head at his men who rimmed
the room in protection, noting how they bristled at the queen’s blatant attempt
to lure him into complacency with feminine charm.

“And your coldness always belied your warmth, Cerridwen.
Therein always lay the conundrum.”

“Touché. Evenly matched in words and wit, as I said.”
A sad smile overtook her face as she walked closer to stand before him. “We may
have fought, but the one thing you never lost was my respect.”

He nodded. “And I never lost respect for how dangerous
you can be when crossed, Cerridwen. Forgive my hesitancy to simply allow
bygones to be bygones. I have felt your wrath, and men died behind it. We did
not fight as a couple; we went to war. So let us not play games tonight. State
your cause or leave my castle.”

“Very well,” she said, lifting her chin. “I have
traveled long to come here before nightfall, as have my guards. Surely
hospitality is not so lacking that you would see us unsheltered against
Vampires in the dead of night?”

“Rupert, please bring the lady refreshment and have
her men placed in the dungeon under heavy guard—albeit with food and ale.”