Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy

well ventilated—the Flanagan insisted upon it.”

“High-court fae always did love the silly humans,” murmured the boy as if to himself.

The woman snorted again and reached out with a boot to nudge him hard. “I’ve heard you might come from high court yourself,” she said.

He jumped up, fierce with indignation. “You take it back! You take that back right now.”

She smiled at him. “Of course, I never believed it. Too much stupid, not enough looks.”

He shook himself like a wet cat. “Damned piru,” he snapped.

“Easy prey,” she purred.

Piru, thought Thomas. Finnish fae, he remembered. But was it one of the witty demons prone to games of wit, or one of the air ladies who hung out and looked beautiful until something ticked them off? He looked at the woman and decided for the clever demon; she looked a little too substantial to be floating around.

“It picked groups of miners with fae among them to frighten,” said Nick, picking up his story from where he’d left off. “Eventually one of them figured out that the water they’d been hitting wasn’t just an accident of geology. He took the tale to the Flanagan.”

“He was supposed to charge off to confront the Finnish fae who was tormenting his people,” said the old man. “He would have, too, if a certain people hadn’t gone to him and told him that what he faced wasn’t just any fae.”

“There was betrayal on both sides,” said the woman. “Some did not think that the Flanagan was strong enough to keep his promises and it would be the less powerful fae who would suffer. Others looked to him for justice and a way out from under the hiisi’s thumb.” She rubbed absently at the fabric of the couch where she sat. “It didn’t matter. He went anyway.”

“Aye,” said the big man. “As he had to, being who he was. But he went armed and ready instead of oblivious. The Flanagan, he wouldn’t back down for Tursas.”

“Wait,” said Thomas. “The Speculator. The Granite Mountain fire? This was the mining disaster, during World War One.”

“1917,” said Nick. “When the fire broke out, we knew he’d won.”

“In true Germanic fashion,” said the giant morosely, “I suppose he had.”

“He never came out,” Nick told Thomas. “When the fires went out, we pulled out the bodies. Some of them were fae, most were human; some you couldn’t tell. We didn’t find the Tursas or the Flanagan.”

“Afterward,” said the woman, “we met. All of us. Summoning the Tursas from its exile, as if he were a dog to come to his master. If the Flanagan hadn’t … hadn’t done whatever he did it might have eaten the world.”

She believed that, Thomas thought.

“The fae killed him,” rumbled the old man. “That hiisi who summoned the Tursas. He’d used so much power to do it, he was vulnerable. Even his allies turned on him. All the fae that were here: Cornish, Irish, Finn, German, Norwegian, Slav, and that little guy from Italy. We killed that hiisi who thought that his power was more important than the survival of all.”

“We thought that was the end of it,” the woman said. “Time passed. The city started to die, people left, and most of us left, too. Just a few stayed.”

“But that hiisi had taken the Flanagan’s daughter to make certain of his victory if the Flanagan, by some miracle, had destroyed the Iku-Tursas,” the boy said. “Searches were made but … there are thousands of miles of tunnels. We thought her long dead. Then two years ago, she started to talk to us,” said the boy. “A high-court trick, that, getting into your head. Unpleasant.”

Thomas remembered.

“She’s quite mad,” whispered Nick. “Quite mad from all those years trapped in the earth.”

“So what do you need me for?” Thomas asked.

“We need you to find her and kill her,” said the big man.

“It is what she wants,” said the boy, answering Thomas’s raised eyebrow. “She tells me so, over and over. I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find her anywhere.”

“She’s in the mines.” Nick’s voice was pensive. “We don’t have an earth or iron-kissed fae left here to find her—not that they had much success when they looked before.”

“And even if we did, she has a haltija.” The woman looked out the window, and Thomas noted absently that the fae needed to replace the double-paned window because ice had formed around the edges of the inside of the glass.

“A what?” he asked.

She waved a hand. “A guard. This one is a kalman väki, we think—a dead man’s spirit. He was probably killed and set to guard her when she was taken.”

“A kalman väki,” Thomas said slowly. “How do you know that, since you can’t find her.”

“She told us.” The big man glanced at Thomas searchingly and then looked away. Thomas knew he wouldn’t read anything but mild interest in his face.

“We’d have to destroy it to get to her.” The woman closed her eyes. “Even if we could find her, we could not get by that. A kalman väki holds the power of mortification: It kills with a touch; not even the immortal are immune. But you aren’t exactly immortal, are you?”

“The mines were mostly filled when the company shut them down.” The old man pulled his beard lightly. “The old timbers were rotting through and the tunnels collapsing. Was a time you could take a step off your back porch in the morning to find a hole four or five hundred feet down that hadn’t been in your backyard when you went to bed. One tunnel collapsing on top of another, on top of another. Was quite the thing to fill them—expensive and time-consuming both. But some of it is left, where the tunnels were cut into granite mostly.”

“So,” said Thomas. “You want me—a vampire—to go looking in the old mines to find Margaret Flanagan, who has been trapped down there for a century. Because vampires are so good at … what? Dissolving into mist and sinking through the earth? I think you’ve been watching too many bad horror movies.”

“She was never the same after she met you,” Nick said. “She had such a touch with the earth: It came to her call and did as she bid. She had a little of her father’s gift for fire, but it was the earth that knew her. She was able to call you here. If she can do that, she should be able to guide you to her down in the mines, where her power is greater.”

“Hello, vampire,” said the big man softly—and his American accent turned lilting and softened. Thomas had only talked to Margaret for a few hours, one day out of the many years he’d lived, but he recognized her intonations in the man’s deep voice.

The other fae moved away from the big man, but they didn’t look startled. He knew that they would not perceive his surprise; his father had taught him well.

“Or ill,” the big man said, proving that her gift of reading thoughts that Thomas did not speak was still hers. The fae’s clear blue eyes were not quite the same shade as Margaret’s.

“They think I can find you,” Thomas said carefully. “That because you called me here, you can lead me through the tunnels.”

“Like to like,” she answered him. “I don’t know why you heard my call, just that you did. I could not have given you your wish if you had not been earth-touched.”

He knew what she meant. How could he not? He remembered that sense he’d had of how she was a part of the earth that had held them together in its maw. He’d sensed it because the earth spoke to him, too.

Vampires develop abilities, the Master had told him. The Master could make humans do as he wanted even before a blood exchange—a rare gift, and useful.

Thomas’s mother’s family were scholars, back as far as their family history went—all the way, the stories said, to the dragon scholar who knew everything that dragons knew and turned into a man to see what men knew. Thomas’s mother had told him that her family was founded by a dilong, an earth dragon. “Only a story,” his father had said, rolling his eyes. He had never cared for anything that reminded him that his wife’s family had higher status than his.

Thomas looked at the assembled fae. “Why do you say that she is mad?” he asked.

“My father’s blood runs in the earth,” the big man whispered in Margaret’s voice. “His fire consumes me. When I emerge I will burn them all to dust and beyond.”