Chapter One
Lord Malek Taal of the Unseelie Taal nation stared grimly down at the letter in his hands. It was a summons.
From the Unseelie King.
Malek folded the parchment and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. His head was beginning to hurt. With a thought, he could have ended the pain. Physical sensation was the domain of the Taal, down to the molecule. He could have made himself forget all about the dull but persistent pulsing behind his eyes, the building unease in his gut, and the way his teeth wanted to gnash together.
But because the Taal could so easily control physical sensation, they tended to become numb to it after a while. Sometimes and in some cases, such as this one, it helped to leave everything in place. As a reminder of how dire the situation was.
Malek was facing a crisis. After thousands of years of peace between his people and the rest of the fae and mortal worlds, there was now very great unrest in the ranks. Something had shifted, upsetting the balance to a dangerous degree.
The Malek Taal unseelie fae were named after their leader, Lord Malek Taal himself. But as a people, they were called the Taal. Within the Unseelie Realm, the Taal lived in the Unlit Forest on the kingdom’s far edges. Their neighbors were the Shades, another Unseelie race both dubious and dangerous, and the Taal lands bordered the Shadow Kingdom.
They’d lived there for as long as their existence had been recognized and recorded by the realms, but it was generally understood by those in the know that they’d been around far longer. And those in the know would be correct.
Malek moved across the room like a ghost cat, his tall form both filled and embraced by grace and magic, so much so that it radiated from him. A human would feel drunk or high in his presence if he didn’t make the effort to carefully rein it in. At the moment, he was alone and he let his mind – and power – wander.
He thought of his people and the calamitous turn of events they were suddenly facing. The Taal were a strong society, ancient beyond measure, and they’d faced their share of problems over the plethora of centuries. Unfortunately the most pivotal aspect of the Taal was that they were a fae society uniformly male. Their continued existence would defy the logic of physics – even fae physics – if it weren’t for the fact that the Taal were immortal.
The Taal could not proliferate with the females of any other race; something in them made reproduction impossible. No woman, whether mortal or immortal, could carry a Taal child. The opportunity had never even arisen. The seed never took.
In all these years, their number had never changed. No man had been born, and no man had died. Like the mortal legend of their “human” counterparts the vampire, the Taal were infamous because they subsisted on the blood of the living. As fae and especially as unseelie fae, they were cloaked in a glamour that hid the very long, sharp, and deadly fangs that were one testament to their true design. Fortunately they needed to feed only once a month to survive, because the feeding was almost always lethal.
To the outside world, they were a race of beautiful, calm, refined, and highly intelligent men. A few more powerful Taal, those who had learned the skill necessary to keep their glamour thick and secure in order to spare those around them, even possessed identities in the mortal world. They were CEO’s or rock stars or politicians. They attended functions in which they projected a presence charming, witty, and utterly disarming. They seamlessly maintained a façade. But beneath that façade, they were pure predators – always hungry, always hunting, ever on the prowl.
For feeding, they normally chose women who were not needed by society, either fae, mortal, or otherwise, and made certain to erase all evidence they’d ever existed. On the rare occasion the Taal allowed a victim to live, the bitten was considered “chosen,” and given a choice. They could remain alive as a slave to the Taal who’d bitten them, or they could be taken before their leader, the original Malek, to be “erased.” Their memory would be wiped clean of the traumatic event, and they would be set free.
Rarely did this last, however. The Malek Taal had chosen them and allowed them to live for a reason after all, and the Taal breed was tenacious, if anything. Hence, the cycle was almost always repeated until eventually the woman grew too weak to resist any longer. She would become a slave, and would later die from a weak constitution. For this reason, the leader of the Malek Taal strongly discouraged becoming attached to any victim. It wasn’t nice to play with your food.
They were not what one would call a benevolent society to begin with. But recent events had further complicated matters dramatically. There was a new hunger rising in his people. It wasn’t a new need for physical sustenance that was shifting the balance, but something else. Something deeper, stronger and far more dangerous.
Rogue Taal with no immediate need to feed were now slipping into the night, singling out mortal women, and taking them from their lives. The Taal and the woman would disappear together. Without fail, the woman would be found dead days or weeks later, drained entirely. Bodies were turning up everywhere. There had been sixteen so far.
A long-standing treaty between Malek Taal and the Unseelie King ensured no more war with the other Unseelie, and a place for Malek on the Unseelie Court. But it was as if chaos had touched the group of men in the Unlit Forest, and the summons Malek held in his hands just then made Malek wonder whether the treaty was about to be broken.
Malek was uncertain of the source of this sudden change in his people, but he was absolutely certain of the effect it was having.
It was happening to him too.
He felt a need he’d never before experienced, and of all things loneliness was at its core. There was no other word to pin to it, no other phrase to describe it. Having never suffered the emotion, Malek was at first confused by the discomfort, a hollow sort of feeling somewhere behind his heart. But Malek was not young. The centuries had given him a front row seat to the behaviors of the mortal world, and within a few weeks, he’d come to realize what was plaguing his people. And keeping him from sleeping.
Now the Malek Taal were hungry, and in a far more dangerous manner than before.
As he saw it, Malek had two options. He could meet with the Unseelie King unprepared for anything but war, or he could get some answers and go prepared to fix the problem. Given that he, too, was beginning to feel this “sickness” come over him, as far as he was concerned, the former wasn’t really an option at all. Only finding a solution mattered.
Malek pocketed the note, slipping it inside his suit, then turned and left his study. What he needed was a seer. And not just any seer, but one who specialized in… curses. She was called the Prophet, a woman bathed in darkness and time so much so that her form wavered between states of being, and her words echoed with eerie delay.
With a nod at his servants, who stood back and watched silently, Malek transported from the designated transport circle in the grand hall of his mansion. The transport walls were inky black shot through with what looked like smoke, a testament to where the spell was speeding him off to.
When it opened again, Malek was deposited into a cold chamber. The only visible life signs were those of the illuminated face that waited at what Malek knew was the center of the chamber. He’d been here before.
“My lord,” said the one who owned the face. She had the appearance of a twelve-year-old and reminded Malek of the Child-like Empress from the film, “The Neverending Tale.” Yes, he enjoyed movies. Especially of late… they were a welcome distraction from the menace of the Taal’s recent troubles.
Malek knew the Prophet’s outer appearance was nothing if not deceiving. She may have become what she was at a young age. But that was a long time ago.
“Prophet,” he returned curtly.
“You’ve come seeking guidance concerning that hole in your chest.”
Malek stopped in his tracks, and the corner of his mouth twitched with the threat of a smile. The Prophet always did know how to get right to the point.
She smiled instead, beckoning him to come forward. “Come. Sit down. Share some tea with me. No one ever comes to visit me anymore, and my dog died two years ago.” She looked up, and Malek heard a clapping sound.
The lights came on in the chamber.
He looked around, noting the newest additions to the Prophet’s living space. She’d added sixties-style couches, lamps and rugs, and the center of her chamber was now recessed. It looked like the meeting house for the Scooby gang. He turned back to face her with an arched brow. She shrugged innocently and said, “I have a taste for modern amenities.”
“The Clapper is almost forty years old.”
She shrugged again. “We have different ideas of what is modern.”
He swallowed another smile and joined her in the recessed center of her chamber. She was seated on a floor pillow in front of a table. As he approached, a tea set for two and a plate filled with pastries appeared on the table. Most of the treats were fae in origin, but Malek noted that many of them were human.
“I think what you have a taste for is humanity,” he said teasingly as he sat down opposite her.
She was thoughtful for a moment in her twelve-year-old countenance, almost pensive. Then she said, “Perhaps. And I’m afraid that you now do as well.”