CHANGELING'S FEALTY
GLYNN STEWART
Changeling’s Fealty © 2017 Glynn Stewart
Illustration © 2017 Shen Fei
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Other books by Glynn Stewart
1
MY INTRODUCTION to the wonderful people of Canada was literally running into a large, leather clad, blond man who stopped unexpectedly as I crossed the parking lot of the bus station.
The man turned to face me, sniffing exaggeratedly, and bared a canine smile. “Well, lookie here; I think I smell something...faerie.”
I raised my hands placatingly, wanting anything but a fight within an hour of my arriving in the city of Calgary. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to run into you,” I drawled quickly, only to see his grin expand. Somehow, the man knew what I was.
“I would think your kind would be more careful, little faerie,” the man told me, and with a sinking feeling I realized the canine impression was more than just a passing fancy. A wolf shifter had decided to pick a fight with me, in a parking lot.
“I just got into town,” I said as quickly as I could. “I didn’t know this was your pack’s territory.”
That, apparently, was the exact wrong thing to say.
“Pack?” the man snarled. “I am Clan Fontaine, you punk. Not some animal to run in a pack!”
I didn’t have time to apologize before the man swung. Normally, there are other tricks I can pull, but there were mortals in the parking lot. Unable to do more than stand there helpless, I took the massive fist in the stomach and folded.
A rough hand grabbed the back of my head, through the stolen hat, and kept me moving downward. I slipped on the ice and was introduced to the cold, frozen concrete.
The shifter’s knee drove into the blade of my shoulder, pinning me to the icy ground as he shoved my face into the grit.
“You’re new in town,” he growled in my ear. “So, I’ll let it go. Once. Your kind has a Manor north of here.” He yanked my bruised face up and pointed at a blue-and-white bus just pulling into the lot. “You want that bus.”
With that, my “welcoming committee” let go of my face, letting me drop back to the icy pavement.
I LEFT the south because I was sick of it. Down there, “my kind” has been set up for centuries, if not long enough to stop some of the elders’ bitching about the “Old Country” and the “Old Ways.”
Maybe it would have been better if they had actually been my kind. The old fae run the Deep South of the United States, so far as the supernatural goes, but I’m not true fae.
My name is Jason Kilkenny, and I am a changeling. My mother, whatever Powers are listening preserve her soul, was a mortal woman with the misfortune to have a one-night stand with a frisky fairy—my father. I was the result, and she never saw my father again.
It’s not an uncommon story. Given the fae population of the Deep South, I’m surprised that changelings aren’t half the damn population by now. But then, the old fae disapproved. Which is why I was there, freezing my half-human butt off outside the Greyhound station in a Canadian city as far from home as I could think of.
My mother passed on when I was nineteen, before I’d discovered what I was. On my twenty-first birthday, some jackasses made a comment about her, and I was too young and too drunk to take it.
Next thing I knew, I’d laid out four of the biggest bruisers in the bar and set the last on fire with my mind for good measure. For about a week, I thought I might be some kind of superhero.
Further encounters with people like my “welcoming committee”, not to mention other fae, proved me very sharply wrong. This, again, leads us to me freezing in a Canadian winter, waiting in line for the indicated transit bus outside the Calgary Greyhound depot.
As fae go—hell, even as changelings go—I’m a pushover. I’m an Olympic-level athlete who never exercises, and I can conjure faerie fire—if I’m really angry, I can hurt someone with it. Most of the time, I’m lucky if I can light a cigarette.
Of course, even little changeling me could create a lot of havoc if I acted out in public, so everywhere we go, all changeling and fae check in at a Manor like the one the shifter had directed me to—neutral ground, a meeting place for fae. I assume other supernaturals have similar rules, and if they’re looking for one of us, they come to the Manor and speak to the Keeper.
My bus finally arrived and I got on, passing the driver some coins from the sparse collection of Canadian currency I had on me. My collection of currency was sparse in general—dropping out of college to dodge assault charges left me without much means of making ends meet, and the old fae are not generous.
The Seelie Court—the good guys, as much as any of the fae are such a thing—had helped me bury my old past and forge some kind of new identity. I was too weak a changeling to be much use to them though, so I ended up drifting from town to town, Manor to Manor, bouncing off rule after rule, true fae after changeling.
I got sick of being the bottom rung in a highly formalized ladder, so when someone mentioned that Calgary, way up north, had a tiny and informal Court, I bid my home states an unfond farewell and started catching buses.
Ending with this white-and-blue Calgary Transit vehicle whose heating could not possibly be working. There was no way it could be that cold in a vehicle with working heat.
When the bus finally disgorged me by the bar, surrounded by hotels, that my welcoming committee pointed me toward and the surrounding fae-sign told me was the Manor, I couldn’t feel my fingers, despite the heavy gloves I’d stolen somewhere in Montana.
A faded blinking neon sign announced VLTs and karaoke. Under that, a recently updated sign, barely lit by the streetlights, announced cheap draft of some beer I’d never heard of.
The wall behind that sign told me what I was looking for. Fae-sign, invisible to those without our blood, declared that this was a Manor, neutral ground, and that swift death awaited those who broke the neutrality of the Manor.
Walking in, I was almost stopped by a sudden blast of hot air. The inside was so warm, it took a minute for the noise to sink in. It was late on a Thursday evening, and the volume had been cranked on the bar’s sound system.
A blonde girl dressed in a uniform that would have meant swift death in the winter night outside flowed her way around the handful of patrons in the bar to me.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, her voice helpful. My system still in shock from the sudden blast of heat; it took me a moment to realize she was true fae—a water nymph with a bewitchingly delicate beauty to break the hearts and minds of mortal men.