dark faerie 04.5 - without armor by alexia purdy

Chapter One
     
     
     
     
    No one ever stands in a cemetery at midnight, puffing out a breath in mid-winter while the snowflakes gathered at the tips of their eyelashes. I could feel the cold, like a dusting of frost on my nose and breathe, but it didn’t truly bother me unless I let it. The fire within kept the chill at bay, melting the crystallizing coat of ice off my skin within milliseconds. It clung to my coat, where my heat did not reach and sorely attempted to gather enough to bury me in its frozen embrace. Yet, here I was…standing in the middle of Yeat’s Cemetery, hoping to find what I was looking for.
    If I knew what exactly I was looking for, that is.
    You see, somehow I got wind of a small gathering of Unseelie Faeries here, at the edge of the city of Newark where the houses were sparse and the slums grew as the months rolled by. Near a failed school project, houses stood empty; boarded up and overgrown in their left to the wild yards along with the spray of graffiti decorating their ragged edges. I could hear the echoes of the past inhabitants roaming the now empty halls of this graveyard of homes. Each one glared down at me through the darkened windows like I was intruding,  like holes into the building's consciousness. Stepping on hallowed ground where only the ghosts of the past could wander.
    I was not welcomed, that I could tell right away. But it wasn’t the empty souls of houses and ghosts of the pasts filled with families, joys, celebrations and laughter that had my senses perked to the extreme alertness. No…it was the other creatures who roamed this empty scar of a town and who were far from being human.
    The banished Unseelie were everywhere. I’d already spent months tracking thousands of them down, one by one returning them to the boundaries of the Land of Faerie for judgment by the land itself, entrapping them within its reach, never to step foot into the human world again.
    Or…I would cut them down where they stood if they dared try to resist. Nothing lost actually. If they had the unfortunate luck to cross my path, most didn’t survive the trip back to Faerie anyway.
    I wasn’t a faery, but I wasn’t just a human either. I was trapped between both worlds; the mundane, or what humans thought of as normal, and the fantastical, magic filled one. I wasn’t truly part of either. My human heritage marked me as such, but my magic was elemental: not faery, not normal. Of earth, yes, but not so ordinary. You see, I could wield my element with enhanced strength, speed and agility. More so than any human could ever hope to achieve. It was what made me more than just one kind of being.
    What connected me to the Land of Faerie was having the Queen of the Seelie Court as my sister. That opened up a whole other bag of trouble for me and it was never going to end. The tie bound us forever. It was in the blood.
    Every family had its issues…right?
     
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
     
     
    “Did you get the kid?”
    “Yeah, the scrawny one with the wet nose.”
    “You forgot to put on those jackets they use.”
    “Is that why she’s shaking?”
    “Moron, she’ll die before we get him to the village and put ‘er to work!”
    “How am I supposed to know that? She’s faery right? Can’t she warm herself up with some sort of trick?”
    “No, idiot. That’s why they want ‘em. They’re weak. Pathetic really. As much magic as me little toe, she’s got, right yah. They want ‘em inferior.”
    The echoes of voices shook me from my thoughts, and I craned my neck to listen. There was something odd about them like they were muffled, shielded. The ability to wield magic also gave me the necessary senses to hear and see all things related to magic. Even through faery glamour.
    “Well don’t just stand ‘ere, give her yer jacket! She’ll rightfully freeze and won’t be any good to sell in da village. Move on!”
    The other grumbled their protests but complied. Nothing like a snotty little