Lost and Forsaken Book 1: The Huntress
Life can change in a minute. For Cain, one minute he was worried about a dead-end job and what was for lunch, the next he was worried about monsters and fairies.
Chapter One
Early evening, October 28th, 2023
Cian sighed as he slung his tool bag onto the T’s seat beside him for his ride on the light rail back home to his apartment near South Hills Village mall. He groaned and jammed his noise-canceling earbuds in, so he didn’t have to listen to the children scream while the accompanying adults ignored them.
At least my boss understood this morning when I told him I refused to drive my car into downtown Pittsburgh and pay the exorbitant parking rates for the day. Especially since I’m not sure when he’ll manage to reimburse me.
Although that didn’t stop him from making me cover for the supposedly “on call” downtown tech and his gout flare-up.
On a Saturday.
Of course, now I’ll probably have to drive in tomorrow—or preferably later in the week if I can get away with it—to finish fixing that last blasted copier. Figures, the parts the customer is supposed to have stocked, like fusers and drums, they don’t.
He frowned and leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hand.
Who am I kidding? There is no way Stephen will be back tomorrow. His flare-ups always seem to coincide with a high number of calls in his queue, especially if it’s on the weekend. That means even though I took care of all but the last one, he’ll stay out for a few days as a cover.
Which also means I’ll be riding the T from my apartment back into town at least on Sunday, although it’ll probably be longer. Guess I’ll tote a hundred pounds of parts with me.
Cian sighed as the car of the mixed light rail streetcar-subway system started moving, and he rocked gently back and forth. As the railcar stopped and started again, a slight smile tickled the corners of his lips.
Maybe I’ll get off at Station Square instead and hit up the Grand Concourse. Treat myself today since I had to work on my day off. My inheritance will cover it, even though I don’t like dipping into it too much. After all, it doesn’t make me rich. Only makes it so I don’t have to worry about my apartment or car. Even if I don’t do that, I am getting paid double-time today. Plus, what I didn’t spend on parking downtown would cover most of a nice steak dinner.
Or…I could ride to South Park instead and go to Pasta Too. Chicken parmesan sounds nice. Then, I can either ride the T back to my place or take an Uber.
The car started moving away from another station, but before he could decide, the subway car rocked again. This time, it wasn’t the gentle back and forth of when it started moving. Instead, the sudden, violent shift threw Cian out of his seat. He sprawled into the aisle, his earbuds popping out and skittering away as his head struck the floor.
Which let him hear the intense metallic squealing as the car rocked side to side, the wheels finally breaking away from the track a moment before he was launched into the window next to his original seat. The glass cracked when his spine impacted it, and the car completely derailed.
As it hit its side, Cian looked at what was now up, seeing the sparks reflected by the windows on the opposite side. The car wiggled back and forth before coming to an abrupt stop when it felt like the rear of the vehicle snagged on something.
The passengers’ cries and screams finally broke through his stunned state. He scrambled to stand, surprised that he was able to, considering the impact between his back and the window.
“Come on, everyone, we have to get out of here!” he shouted. When everyone ignored him, he felt a growl bubble up deep inside. “Now, people! We don’t have all day! I have no idea when another T is coming through!”
Most of the screaming seemed to die away, although quite a bit of sobbing remained.
I’ll give them that. I’m sure they’re hurt, even if I managed to get through relatively unscathed.
Cian glanced at the closed door overhead. He climbed onto the side of a seat and was pleasantly surprised when he found a way to balance himself while not hitting his head on anything. He prepared to struggle to wrench the door open.
Except the door easily pulled back instead. He overbalanced and slipped off the seat before falling to the newly designated “floor” of the car.
“Mother—” He strangled down the oath when he spotted a little girl of about eight with tears in her eyes staring at him open-mouthed while she cradled her arm close to her chest. He managed a toothy smile, and she shied away. “It’s okay, young lady. I’ll help you get out of here.”
He sprang back to his feet before jumping up and grabbing the edge of the car. By pulling himself up and out with a groan of effort, he reached the “top” of the T’s car. He turned and reached back inside, offering the little girl a hand. “Come on, take it. I’ll pull you up.”
“Take his hand, honey!” a woman inside pleaded, her voice tinged with panic.
“But, Momma, his ey—” the girl began.
“Come on, take it, kid. We have to get out of the car and off the tracks. I promise I won’t hurt you,” he vowed.
“Go on, sweetheart. It’s okay,” the woman told her.
Must have cut myself near my eyes or something. I don’t feel anything, though. He took a quick glance around. At least we’re still near a platform.
He helped lift the little girl out, then her mother, then a teenage boy.
When he went to reach back in again, he suddenly sprawled onto his stomach as the entire two-car light rail lurched backward in a squeal of tortured metal. The little girl screamed as she fell. He spun toward her voice, expecting to see her falling over the side. Instead, she was lying on her stomach, eyes wide in fear as she stared back toward the station. Toward the rear of the car.
What in the unholy hell?
The entire thing was being hauled back by fleshy triangles attached to a giant worm. Gleaming, shiny black areas covered the creature, separated by thick, squiggly, deep red lines that almost glowed.
He blinked in amazement, trying to clear the vision away.
I must have hit my head harder than I thought.
But the apparition remained.
It hauled the train backward toward the station again.
At least we’ll be able to run away from that…whatever in the hell it is.
The sound of squealing metal vied with renewed screams as the creature lurched backward, lifting the rail cars and slamming them down a good fifteen feet back the way they’d come from.
The passengers raised slightly into the air, but the little girl’s lack of weight made her lift higher, and she was flung toward the edge. Cian grabbed her by her injured arm a second before she’d have gone over the side and gotten crushed between the car and either the wall or floor of the tunnel.
She screamed in pain but smiled at him gratefully.
Like I’m her hero or something.
He nodded, passed her off to her kneeling mother, and quickly started sorting through his options.
Options? No gun. No knife. Not even my tools, which are probably scattered somewhere inside. And I’ll have to replace them, of course. What was I going to do anyway? Throw a screwdriver at a gigantic worm that can derail and fling around a rail car like it’s a chew toy?
He looked from the worm to the Steel Plaza station, which it had hauled them back to, where he met the gaze of a man dressed in a black trench coat. The man’s blank, dead eyes stared directly at him without blinking. He showed no concern that a giant worm was currently eating a rail car.
The man stood at the point of four others with identical expressions, gazing at Cian while the other people cowered away, frozen in fear.
A shiver ran up his spine as he felt a tingling at the base of his skull.
That tingling spread down his body. The hairs on his arms raised with goosebumps.
A woman stepped down the stairs into the corner of his vision, drawing his attention away from the trench coat-clad figures.
She was magnificent.
Her exquisite, heart-shaped face had bright cyan eyes with thick lashes, while her full, pouty lips were painted a dark purple and currently turned down in a frown.
The porcelain white skin of her neck and upper chest disappeared into a form-fitting cuirass of shiny purple metal. Her shoulders were bare, but her upper arms down to the backs of her hands were covered in the same strange metal with swirling lines of silver wrapping through it.
She stopped as she reached the bottom of the steps, hitching her leather-encased hips to the side. Her tight leather pants had cuisses on her thighs and greaves on her shins, made from the same shiny purple metal shot with winding veins of silver.
As she tilted her head to the side, one lengthy, tapered ear parted her mass of long, wavy purple hair with cyan streaks reflecting the overhead lights. Even in the stillness of the underground air, her hair flowed around behind her in a nonexistent wind. Jagged, variegated purple butterfly wings twitched in anticipation, their black edges with shiny cyan spots gliding back and forth.
A…fairy?
She’s a giant fairy!
“You know, I’m getting fairly sick of hunting down the lot of you,” she called in a rich, cultured voice with an Irish accent. “You should have remained under whatever rock you crawled out from.”
The man at the point never moved, his eyes not straying from Cian. However, his four companions turned to face the newcomer. “If you will but listen,” the man began in a deep, ragged voice.
“Fortunately for me, it is past the autumn equinox,” the newcomer continued, ignoring the man. “That means the Queen of Air and Darkness reigns.” Her frowning lips turned up in a smirk. “Which means I don’t have to speak with the likes of you.”
Her right arm shot up, and a blinding flash of light enveloped the platform.
Cian shied away, his eyesight nothing but a mass of purple at the lingering afterimage of the intense radiance. He smelled ozone and something indescribable. He heard distant movement from the platform, the scuffing of feet, and what sounded like the metallic ringing of swords striking each other.
At least, that’s what I think it is. Movies aren’t really a good way to judge.
As he rapidly blinked his eyes, he glanced back, seeing the man who’d stood in the center on his knees.
He also saw the speckled tiles of the floor behind the man through a gaping, smoking hole in his torso.
She shot him! Killed him!
Cian shuddered, his racing mind finally latching onto three thoughts.
First, she was now holding a sword, not a gun. Plus, what handgun lights up an entire underground area with the muzzle flash while blowing a six-inch hole through someone’s torso?
Second, the rear of the rail car was glowing orange, and he could feel the temperature rising around him as waves of heat pulsed through the plaza.
Third, while three of the men were fighting with the…fairy, one was coming toward the car.
Toward him.
Great. I have no idea what they want with me, but I doubt a few years of martial arts is going to help.
Cian reached up and ran a nervous hand through his short brown hair. “Umm. I’m willing to listen, even if she isn’t?” he hedged.
The man’s lips pulled up in a smile as they opened, revealing rotting, jagged teeth. He slowly shook his head and raised his arms, revealing black nails ending in sharp points.
“Well, it was worth a shot, I suppose,” he muttered. Then, he took what he figured was the single dumbest action in his entire life up to this point.
He jumped down onto the platform to fight the man.
He squared up and managed to block the man’s first strike with his forearm, but the impact numbed his entire arm.
What the hell?
The man’s second strike was a jab to Cian’s stomach. The single, quick hit sent him sailing, but his momentum abruptly stopped when his back slammed into one of the concrete pillars. He blacked out, only to be awakened when the man’s solid, methodical footsteps stopped in front of him. His opponent reached down, grasping and lifting him by the throat.
“Die,” the man demanded in a cold, hollow tone, his breath hot against Cian’s face.
Cian’s eyes flashed open. He snapped his head forward against the man’s grip, slamming his forehead into his enemy’s nose and shattering it in a spray of brackish black blood.
Black?
The man—the creature staggered backward two steps, dragging Cian along until he slammed his right fist into the thing’s forearm.
The snapping of its bone echoed through the plaza.
Cian dropped to his feet. He met the creature’s stunned gaze and reached out with a snarl, returning the favor and grabbing it by the throat. He squeezed, seeing the thing’s suddenly black eyes start bulging as the crunch of its crushed windpipe reached his ears. He lifted the creature off the ground with one arm, grabbed its back with the other, and slammed it into the tiles, shattering them.
The creature lay in the newly indented floor, staring up at him as it gurgled in its death throes.
As he stared down at it, the fairy woman stepped into his peripheral vision. “Not that this’ll ever matter to you after today, but always make sure to take ghoul’s heads so they don’t regenerate. Or at least their spines,” she advised him.
Then, she slammed her sword into the thing’s neck and severed its spine.
Her cyan eyes met his deep blue ones.
She’s only a few inches shorter than me, he numbly thought. Probably five-ten. The fairy is five-ten. Aren’t they supposed to be tiny?
She arched an eyebrow. “Humans,” she muttered, turning away from him as the passengers from the rail cars began gathering around.
“Umm…fairy? What about the worm?” he asked.
Her head snapped around to him. “What did you call me?”
“A fairy?”
The corner of her lip raised in a snarl. “I’m not a fairy, you uneducated fool. I’m a sidhe fae. The most powerful of faekind.”
“Oh. Umm, sorry?”
She muttered something unintelligible before backing away from him. “I killed the ignermis. The fire worm.” She waved her purple-bladed sword through the air, and it disappeared. Then she held her right hand up. “Now, if you will all look at me.”
As if she has to ask. Everyone is already looking at the giant fairy. Or fae, or sidhe…whatever.
The fae scanned the crowd. “Wonderful. Now that I have your attention. This was a terrible, horrific tunnel collapse. We’re grateful you all survived.” She snapped her fingers. There was a flash of light, and everyone fell to the ground, unconscious. “Oh, well. What are a few more bumps and bruises?” She turned to walk away.
“Tunnel collapse? Are you freaking kidding me?” Cian couldn’t help himself as everything but the woman faded into background noise. He knew everyone falling over was wrong. It simply didn’t seem to matter when compared to her.
The fae spun, cyan eyes wide in surprise. “What?”
“Tunnel collapse. That has to be the lamest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard. A giant worm knocked the cars off the rails, then started eating one! I’m hesitant to even mention how you also killed five me—”
“They weren’t men. They were ghouls.”
“Fine. Ghouls. Ignoring my tiny faux pas, I’d also like to remind you that you’re a fairy!” He held up his hands when her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Sorry, sorry. A fae. You’re a fae. Like straight from myth.”
“How’re you still awake?” She held up a hand, forestalling his answer as she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Never mind. I must be losing my touch.” She returned her gaze to his, staring intently as she closed the distance. “It was a tunnel collapse. You can clearly see the debris. Humans did not die. Ghouls, ignermis, and most certainly fae are myths and legends.” She snapped her fingers directly in front of his eyes, emitting another flash of light.
Cian tilted his head to look past the fingers in his face. “Dead guys.” He pointed. “Dead fire worm thing.” He pointed again. “Fae.” He pointed at her.
She blinked. “Huh. Interesting.”
The last thing he saw was her fist coming at his head before the world went dark.
As if monsters weren’t enough of a surprise. Getting punched in the face by a Fae is just adding to the long list of weird things happening to him. Find out on July 25th why the spell didn’t work on him when Lost and Forsaken Book 1: The Huntress is Released.
