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  DARK FAE

  THE DARK FAE

  BOOK ONE

  Dark Fae

  Book 1 of The Dark Fae.

  Copyright © 2020 by Quinn Blackbird

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission—this includes scanning and/or unauthorised distribution—except in case of brief quotations used in reviews and/or academic articles, in which case quotations are permitted.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental. Names, characters, incidents, and places are all products of the author’s imagination.

  Imprint: Independently published.

  Blurb.

  He came to destroy the world.

  He came to destroy us.

  But he kept me alive when all else died.

  It’s the end of us—the humans. Our world is ravaged, burned to the ground, destroyed by the armies of dark fae crawling all over our lands. They seek to end us, weed out the last of our survivors, and tear us to pieces.

  We hide as best as we can. But it’s inevitable.

  A dark fae army finds us, hiding in a little village. We’re all goners. All of my group dies, and I’m about to join them in death—until he spares me.

  1

  2

  3

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  6

  1

  Before all this, I never realised how dark the night really was. With all the light pollution—street lamps, phone screens, illuminated shop windows—it was never really dark. Not like it is now.

  Outside this little abandoned shop we’re cooped up in, the darkness is so thick that I can’t see the houses across the street. The road doesn’t look like a black river, because I can’t even see it. It is thick, drenching blackness … everywhere. I can’t tell if it’s day or night. We lost track of that time-telling long ago. Not even a moon in sight to cast a faint white glow over our misery.

  I sigh and release the curtain, letting it fall back into place. We shouldn’t be looking through the window—we shouldn’t be seen. Stay hidden, that’s our rule of survival. And it has kept us alive for a year.

  That’s how long it’s been since the day turned to darkness for the first time, then it spread all over the world. It started in Britain, sweeping over Scotland first, then spread like a virus all around the world. No daylight. Our technologies died. We starved, fell victim to the Black Plague, and wars broke out. It all happened so quickly, and soon, there weren’t many of us left.

  Our numbers were depleted before the dark fae even came to finish the job. Now, they march all over our world, every continent, thousands of armies burning down our cities, slaughtering the survivors they come across. Just making their way through our world one day at a time. They want nothing more than our end—plain and simple.

  It’s all we can do to survive these days. Barely.

  Still standing by the window, I look around at what remains of us. Twelve. That’s a fraction of what we once were. Starvation is our greatest enemy. We face it every day, just scraping by. Well, it’s easier with so few mouths to feed now. But back then, even just months ago, we were living on scraps we could scrape up from abandoned homes and shops and hospitals—whatever we could find, we looted.

  Infection and disease aren’t to be taken lightly, either. They’ve taken more of us than I can count on my hands. Childbirth, old age—you name it, it’s a threat to us.

  We’re back in the dark ages.

  “Come away from the window, Vale.” It’s Maureen, our eldest woman in our little tribe. She’s the kind of woman who, when the world was normal, spouted out racist tangents at Christmas dinners, but insisted she was anything but a bigot.

  It takes more energy to fight her than to listen, and it is energy I don’t have to waste. I just nod and push from the wall. She’s not wrong anyway. I shouldn’t have been by the window. We can’t risk being seen, not by the dark fae who scour our world and rip us to pieces, and not by other groups. Can’t trust anyone these days. Not even our own tribes.

  That’s why, when I park myself on an upside-down crate by the bookshelf in the little village grocery store, I count my supplies that are laid out at my feet. Three tins of baked beans—a favourite of mine (when cooked! Never raw.)—and a can without a label that I dread will be something like cat food or tinned stew. I’ll trade it with someone for tinned fruit if it comes down to it.

  Satisfied no one pinched my share, I unzip my backpack and peel apart the leather to inspect the inside. My flashlight stares up at me, taunting me. Ran out of batteries over a week ago, haven’t found any that fit since. There were some in the store when we broke our way in through the backdoor. But I was on watch duty while the slowest of us made their way inside and set up, then I had to do a sweep of the shop. By the time I was done and found the battery shelf, they’d been wiped clean.

  It’s first come, first serve around here.

  I could always trade in my heavy-duty torch for a lighter one with thinner batteries, that way I would at least have some light. But the smaller torches are just too weak to penetrate the bulk of the darkness around us. Even in the shop, I can barely make out the survivors flanking me. Faintly, I see their silhouettes, watch them as they sip cold soup from peeled-open tins. Some faint lanterns are to thank of the dim light we have. But it won’t be long before their batteries run out.

  No matter what we do, how long and often we do it, it’s a constant fight against the darkness.

  I push aside my torch and dig my hand deeper into the leather backpack. Down the bottom, I fish out a pencil and my small book—barely much bigger than my hand. It’s meant for note-taking, jotting down ideas. Not for sketching. Not like I do much of that anymore, though.

  Coming out of the shadows, Tiffany sits beside me. I know it’s her form the pungent stench of rich perfume in the air. She’s the only one in the end of days who worries about those things. Smelling good, lip gloss, fake lashes. No joke, she has a stash of those spider-leg things in her bag.

  But she’s nice enough, so I don’t wish her away.

  “Hey, Vale,” she says. I turn my head to look at her. “You got strawberries?” she asks me. In her hands, I can faintly make out a labelled tin, though I can’t read it well enough in the poor light. “Jacob said there were tinned strawberries down one of the aisles.”

  Strawberries…

  A girl can dream. The last of those tasty fruits left in the world are stuffed in metal cans, drenched in too-thick syrup. Preserved.

  I shake my head. “I was one of the last in,” I tell her. “Didn’t get a chance to stock up on anything.”

  Even the pads and tampons have been wiped clean of the shelves. Since we’re mostly women (eight of us all up, four guys—one of them old enough to need a cane), menstrual products can ignite an all-out war between us.

  Back when the group was hefty, I watched in the faint lantern light as one woman sank a knife into another woman’s back over one tampon. One. Not a box, just a single stick. Needless to say, the woman died. Not immediately, it was the infection that got her. We banished the stabber. She’s probably dead by now.

  Tiffany sighs, and I realise I was her last resort for a chance at those tasty fruits we all miss. She peels open the lid of the tin in her hands, and the scent of tomatoes hits me hard, like a punch to the face. Skinless, peeled, and not the most appetising or filling of loots.

  She stays parked beside me, eating in silence. At least the lantern she brought over offers some white glow over the pages of my book.

  “It’s nights like these I miss Mike,” she says softly.

  I frown.

  Mike was around our age,
in his twenties. Guess he and Tiffany were close. Maybe closer than I realised. But he died some weeks ago. It’s hard to track the days, but I mark off time in my book (It has a calendar at the back). It’s about a month ago now that Mike died.

  We were arriving in a village near the sea, walking up the main street. All of us were drained, exhausted, and hungry. The sun might have been gone, but the heat still had its clutches on the world, and it was one of those hot days that clung hair to your temple and made your clothes all sticky.

  Those of us flanking the tribe held up weak lanterns and studied the doors to the buildings all around us. We looked for the best place to hide out for a few days. We didn’t make it halfway up the street before the sound came.

  It was heavy, so heavy that it rattled the ground, shook the windows in their frames, and shivered doors. In the dark, we couldn’t tell what the sound was or where it was coming from, only that it was coming.

  I was far from the lanterns. I could barely make out my hand in front of my face. I felt around my belt for the kitchen knife tucked there, my fingers trembling. Silence would have been thick around us if it wasn’t for the pounding headed straight for us, growing louder and louder by the second. Then, one word sent ropes of cold, icy fear unravelling down my spine.

  “Run!”

  I didn’t know who screamed for us to flee, but I didn’t care. I abandoned post and bolted away from the fading lanterns. It became everyone for themselves. Scattered, like mice chased by cats.

  The shatter of glass exploded in the air. A lantern, dropped, left behind. The light faded as I slammed into something hard and metal. A car, left on the side of the road. My heart quickened as I dropped to the ground and rolled under it. My bag got caught on the edge, I had to rip it free.

  Then the noise was booming. It was all around us, everywhere. Pounding the ground like a hammer—no, like a thousand hammers, all at once.

  In the distance, a guttural cry ripped the air in half. A man’s scream, I was sure of it. But no one cried back to him, no one shouted to aid him. We all stayed still and silent, hoping that whatever it was would pass, hoping that we weren’t just marched upon by an army of fierce fae warriors.

  I was under that car for what felt like hours. It might have just been the longest minutes of my life, and I lived through the apocalypse, the wars, the pestilence, all the changes in our world. It was the first time I ever feared, truly feared deep in my bones, that the dark fae had come and were about to slaughter us in the black street.

  But time slipped away, and the sound of pounding faded. It carried off into the distance, until we couldn’t hear anything anymore, other than the harsh breaths coming from all over the street. Coming from us.

  I rolled out from under the car. Scuffling sounded out from the darkness. We were moving, feeling our way through the darkness to find the one who screamed.

  It was Mike. He was sprawled out in the middle of the road, a bloody, torn mess. Even with the faint light of the lantern, it was hard to stomach what he looked like. Mangled.

  Tiffany couldn’t stomach it. She threw up whatever sparse food was in her stomach, and it splattered all over the road. Some drops hit my boots. I felt them like raindrops falling from the sky.

  Mike was as good as dead. He wheezed, struggling to breath. Bones were broken all over his body. His wrists were shattered, his legs bent at odd angles.

  “Horses,” he wheezed. “Horses.”

  For a moment, I wondered if he was dreaming, or his mind had drifted away to a place without pain and only beauty. But then I realised, the pounding sound, the rattling windows, the scream and Mike’s mangled body. A stampede of horses.

  “He’s been trampled,” said Lee. He was our bossiest survivor. Thought he ruled the tribe, fancied himself our alpha or what have you. But no one argued with him then. Because he was right.

  Lee stepped up. He ‘put Mike out of his misery’. That was what he said to make us all feel better about the murder. The way he so easily sank his blade into Mike’s neck, like it was a knife simply cutting through butter. It was a dark thing. Darker than the air around us, darker than the shadowiest parts of me that I keep hidden.

  Still, it wasn’t as though we could somehow take him with us. He was broken all over, his bones a shattered mess, and his wounds would kill him within the week if infection didn’t come faster. We knew what we had to do. Mike knew it too.

  But it didn’t stop him begging to live.

  I never understood why he was in the middle of the road. Why didn’t he run like the rest of us did? Now, I wonder if he was looking for Tiffany, trying to save her from what was coming.

  Guess I’ll never know.

  I side-step the memory and snub all talk of Mike. “How do you know it’s night?” I ask Tiffany instead. “You said nights like these.”

  She gives me a half smile. Forced. But isn’t everything these days?

  “Feels like night,” she says. I can hear the tears slicking her voice, and worry her voice might crack any moment. “Coming in here, getting our blankets and supplies out, bunkering down. Eating,” she adds and lifts the tin as if to punch her point. “How tired my bones feel. How I ache.” Her eyes gleam blue at me, like little gas-flames. “It’s night.”

  I just shrug after a moment. She falls silent and eats her tomatoes until not even the juice is left in the tin. Then she gets out her sleeping bag, and falls away to the dark.

  I bring my gaze back to my book.

  As I flip through the bare pages, pencil in hand and ready to go, I’m faced with the usual barrier. Darkness. I can’t see the pages well enough, and even if I could, my mind goes blank. Inspiration died long ago, when the light was stolen from us. All I see when I close my eyes, when I open my eyes, is black. So I sketch dark grey lines down the page, lazily, and I think of my tins, mull over which one I’ll have tonight and wonder how long they will last if we don’t find more to loot before we leave the village.

  We’ll spend a few days here.

  We’ve been travelling for a week now. We’re all exhausted. Our bones and muscles ache for rest. So we must rest, loot and scavenge what we can before we move on.

  It’ll be another small village or even a farmhouse that we move onto next. Before we go, we always check the maps, mark our location, and find the closest isolated place. It has to be isolated. Cities and towns are too large—too much of a target of the dark fae. It’s a sure way to end up dead, burning down to ruins.

  I can’t focus. Rarely can these days.

  I slam my book shut and drop it into my open bag. It lands with a thud. With a swipe, I lift the closest tin onto my lap and peel open the metal lid. Beans. I eat it with my fingers, bent to scoop up as much as I can hold. I even lick as much of it clean as I can without cutting my tongue.

  By the time I’m done, most of the others are asleep. The silence is broken by deep, long breaths and the occasional rustle of a sleeping bag.

  Phil, at the far end of our little circle, reads a magazine by the lantern perched beside him. He’s our oldest. His cane is tucked next to his sleeping bag. Lee’s awake too. He lifts his gaze, brown eyes catching on the light of the lantern, and looks at me. I feel goosebumps crawl all over me instantly. He gives me the creeps.

  With a sigh, I push up from my little nook by the shelves and wander down the closest aisle, if only to escape Lee’s leery gaze. He’s got women on his mind all the time. But no one in this group is stupid enough to find sex with him, the pig. Hell, I bet he’d even take Maureen if she was up for it. She’s not.

  I follow the darkness down the aisle, letting it get thicker and bleaker all around me, like a blanket of night. I don’t have a torch to light the way, so I feel my way down between the shelves. Glossy covers of magazines glaze over my fingertips for a beat. Then, the smooth surfaces are replaced by the wrinkle of packaging—chocolate bars, crisps, sweets.

  I grab some at random and stuff them in my cardigan pocket. It’s deep enough to carry qui
te a few. I take some more against my better judgement. Junk food isn’t all that great to carry with you these days. The sugar highs help for a small while, but then come the crashes. Surviving on just sugar—chocolates, sweets, juices—is a certain way to crash your energy before you’ve made half the trek to the next village.

  Canned food is the way to go, and fresh water when you can get it.

  I find some bottles of spring water down the end of the aisle, tucked at the back of the bottom shelf. It takes some digging around to reach them. Most of them have been looted already, leaving me with three bottles and two empty ones. I leave the empty ones behind and scoop the rest in my arm.

  My voyage around the grocery store brings up more than I expected. Some tins find their way into my pockets—though it’s too dark to see the labels—and I’ve managed to scrape up some power bars (their texture is a dead giveaway when you’ve been chasing and eating them for a year). I grab a glass jar of something before I head back to my nook.

  There, I get a better look at what I gathered. I make a face at the glass jar, then set it aside. Marmite. Not my thing. No wonder it was left behind in the countless raids this grocery store has faced. The tins aren’t much better. Corn in one, and the other is straight-up dog food. I stuff the corn into my bag, along with the sugary treats and water bottles, then zip it closed.

  Didn’t find any batteries. Might get lucky when we start scavenging through the village tomorrow, though. Those raids usually come up with something good here and there, because of the evacuations.

  Before the dark fae came to finish us off, major evacs swept through Europe. There was nothing to stay for in the villages dotted around the countryside. So they were all moved to the towns and cities. That was, before the wars and plagues that swept the world. At least, with the fall of technology, none of the bomber planes would work. It was neighbour-country against neighbour-country. Pure old fashioned bloodbaths on a battlefield.

  I was lucky enough to avoid them altogether.