The Autumn Prince

Interlude: Darker Shades

Anyone watching would see nothing more or less than a tall man with long, black hair wearing a black suit and sunglasses, polished shoes clacking against the concrete in bold, lengthy strides. Slender, deceitful fingers checked jeweled cuff-links as he nodded amiably at passersby whose sudden and inexplicable dread bid them step clear of his path.

He loathed the necessary subterfuge. He would have preferred ripping into the woman approaching him with dozens of needle-like fangs, feel her flesh tear beneath his claws, and savor hot blood as her failing heart forced it into his throat in a final act of betrayal, but he dared not defy his queen over sweet distractions. Instead, he smiled again, flashing the flat, bovine teeth of the woman's pathetic race, forced to let her pass untouched, mocked by her lingering scent.

It galled him to know he was capable of assuming their appearance, that the Veil concealed an aspect of him that shared their weak bodies, but the glamor was only a shadow. As a predator, he stalked the shadows, owned them. Ruled them.

The time for hiding would soon pass. When her Majesty's work was done, he would be free to glut himself on human meat and lick clean the bones as befit a dark god of death.

His target stood at the corner of the next block, wearing a gray traveling coat, leaning against a streetlight and sucking smoke from a dark brown cigarette. When he approached, the man with salt and pepper hair gave him a condescending nod.

"Nictis," the man greeted him, blowing an acrid plume into the intervening space. "How the hell have you been?"

Rage flourished within the Orcus. The man's invasive power had already begun its work and while he could resist it for a time he was not entirely immune. He wished to butcher the vile traitor where he stood, but shedding the blood of a gean canagh was madness. No other provision could have checked the violence he yearned to visit on this devil. Instead, he spoke with the deep voice of a polished gentleman.

"You failed your mission."

"What mission?" the other man drawled. "Be specific Nicky, I haven't been to court in ages. Mabs invited me to leave, remember?"

Nictis ground his teeth while he fought to control his rage, the part that didn't come from within. "Two score years ago and four, you were commanded to take a life."

"Nicky," the man chuckled, "you need to up your game. Nobody talks like that."

"You were to end the line of the Morrigan and you brought word and evidence of your success, but the woman's patron forestalled her death for nearly a year."

"Not likely, but who cares? That just means she suffered longer. Tell your bitch queen she's welcome."

Nictis growled low in his throat, nearly shedding his glamor, "Watch your tongue, mongrel."

The gean canagh chuckled in reply. "Did you just call me a dog? Nicky, I'm disappointed. If you wanted to make your point, you should have gone with something like 'fugly bitchass cockweasel.' I learned that one on a gaming forum."

"Enough, Caratacos!" Nictis snarled, "The Moirae has seen a darkling child rising here in the west."

"What does that have to do with me?" He winked at a young lady passing by. She smiled back, flustered and blushing.

"Then woman you were sent to kill gave birth to a son after receiving your seed, faen," Nictis spat the word as if brandishing a weapon. "You not only failed to end her line, you have tainted it. You have created an abomination!"

"You don't get how this works, son," Caratacos muttered, showing annoyance for the first time. "I've fucked hundreds of women to death, there's no way I have a kid. Maybe she got knocked up before I banged her."

"Then explain why one changeling continues to elude my hunters."

"Sounds like you need better hunters. Any idea when you plan on getting to the fucking point?"

Too much, the Orcus thought to himself and his illusion faltered. "Do not taunt me, Caratacos," he snarled, but the man's grin widened.

"Or what? You little turds get a pat on the head from Her Majesty and you think that makes you king shit. You're in it deep, Nictis, or you wouldn't be coming to me. Now tell me what you want or fuck off."

The Orcus moved more quickly than human eyes could follow, his powerful arm swinging a vicious backhand at the one who dared insult him.

Caratacos was faster.

"Nicky," he said, the death god's wrist held painfully in one hand. "I've been feeding in this world since before your daddy squirted you into the belly of the whore you called mother. I'm not built for butchery and gore like you, because I don't need it. You have exactly the amount of fight I say, and if I want to take it away completely, I can do that too."

He squeezed and blackness closed around Nictis' heart, filling it with something he'd never before known. Abject fear. He froze in its embrace, falling into the deepest dungeons of a despair so intense it ravaged his body with physical pain. Before he could succumb, the gean canagh released him with a shove of contempt and lit another cigarillo.

Nictis hadn't remembered falling to his knees. He coughed to hide his terror, and tried to match it with anger, to drive it out, but the gean canagh's touch was a potent venom. He had badly underestimated his foe.

When he spoke, the words came cautiously. "Then answer this. Who among the Fae is strong and skilled enough to dispatch a captain of the Wild Hunt and four of his horsemen?"

Caratacos pondered the question, contemplating another insult, or trying to find a way around the inevitable conclusion, but he said simply, "Her family's gone. She's gone."

"Unless you have indeed failed." Nictis delivered the words like a dagger, and they found their mark. The mask of Caratacos' confidence slipped. "If Janet Lane's child lives, an darkling now walks free. Your existence has been tolerated, faen, only because you carried out her Majesty's justice. What do you think will happen to you if she discovers it was a lie?"

Caratacos considered his answer, finishing off his cigarette and grinding it underfoot before answering. "Nah, you're full of shit," he smiled, but he carried himself with far less of that infuriating confidence.

"So be it," Nictis said, tugging at the hem of his jacket. The Orcus was of the Aes Sidhe, the highest order of Fae, and he would not tremble before his predecessor. "I have done my duty. Find your progeny and end it, or you will suffer long before the Great Lady permits your release in death."

"I don't take orders from you, fuckstick."

"I think you will obey this one,"

Caratacos didn't answer as Nictis strode off, walking quickly to burn away some of the hostile emotions boiling within him. There was only one thing on his mind, one thing that would drive off the mounting fury, and the scent of the woman he'd passed on his way still lingered in his path. He'd hunt her, he'd find her, and she would have the great honor of witnessing his true form, falling beneath great leathern wings, filling the night with her screams, and abating his wrath with her feeble human blood.