Winterstruck: an urban fantasy supernatural crime thriller Read online

  Winterstruck

  Sara C. Walker

  WINTERSTRUCK is a work of fiction.

  All characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2021 by Sara C. Walker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Contact [email protected] for more information.

  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

  Excerpt of CARRION

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  I abandoned my car and ran in to the crowded hockey arena, hoping I wasn’t too late to catch this faerie. Normally, I hunted bridge trolls, red caps, and pixies. Mischief makers. Today’s target was a bit different: he could literally fire explosions out of his fingertips. At the moment, it seemed to be for entertainment purposes only. It was my job to grab him before he decided to set fire to the whole building.

  The stairwell was so cold I could see my breath. I slipped my mittens off and tucked them into the left pocket of my coat. I wanted warm hands, but I wanted my trigger finger free more.

  I pushed open the door, leaving the stairwell behind. In the city’s largest hockey arena, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the roar of the crowd greeted me. Colourful explosions showered from the ceiling, immediately jacking up my adrenaline—as if jogging up the stairs hadn’t been enough. The bursts of light never hit the ceiling beams, the electrical lights, scoreboards, or the fabric banners. The crowd probably thought the fireworks show had been expertly planned. But this was not science. This was magic.

  From my position about halfway up the rows of seats, I scanned for the location of my target and spotted him down rink-side. I descended the stairs, feeling the warmth from the body heat of eighteen thousand hockey fans begin to radiate through my jeans and boots as I pushed my way across a fully occupied row, my cheeks flushed, picking up the excitement diffusing from the crowd.

  I still had to cross over to the next section and go down several rows. I turned my head, ready to signal to my partner to take him from the right side while I came from the left…but then I remembered I no longer had a partner.

  My stomach flip-flopped and I bit my lip. I came to a full stop, unsure how to best approach this now that I was on my own.

  My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket. Message from my boss, Dagger Magnusson. He was dealing with the press, trying to bury coverage of our perp. And our team’s scientist, Oshaun Santos, needed more time to get into position. Stall.

  My team needed me. I forced my legs to get moving.

  The arena reeked of popcorn, beer, and antifreeze. I’d just reached the end of the crowded row when the whole building jumped to their feet again, roaring and cheering. An air-raid siren wailed alongside blaring rock music, screeching like duelling banshees. Coloured lights flashed. Fireworks screamed and exploded in a shower of sparks. In all the excitement, I wound up receiving a beer shower.

  The frothing liquid ran down my long Sherpa coat and pooled on the floor. I wiped my face with a dry spot on my sleeve, squeezed out my drenched ponytail, and tried not to take the shower personally. The excited fan had yet to notice I was there—or that his cup was now empty—with all the hooting and hollering he was doing.

  My hand dove into the large patch pocket on my coat, fingers wrapping around the cold grip of my M1911. The handgun was a hand-me-down relic, but it would do the job. My eyes scanned for my target. I focused my attention, searching for the source of the fireworks, using my senses to pick up traces of the faerie sitting among humans. Found him. Just as described: gold section, navy sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head blocking his face, sending up fireworks without any visible devices.

  A walking, talking, explosive that looked like a human, had emotions like a human, but had all the warped logic of a faerie.

  Some kind of fire faerie.

  If I handled this wrong, he could blow up the whole building.

  Back on May 5, 2000, a planetary alignment occurred that had many people worried about a polar switch and melting ice caps and the world being turned upside down. None of that happened. None of that happened because that alignment was used like a giant battery to short-circuit the Veil—the screen between this world and the faerie realm. While the Veil was down, the inhabitants of Faerie were evicted from their home, cast out. Then the Veil was locked shut, leaving faeries of all kinds stuck in the human world with no way to return home.

  Some of the fae blended in right away; the more powerful ones could make themselves look just like humans. Others had more trouble fitting in, and not just because of their appearance. They'd tried to stick to their old ways of doing things, using humans for playthings and prey. And their leaders didn't seem to have any control over them.

  Thus, my job was created. Capture and contain—and keep them secret.

  I had to proceed cautiously so as not to call any extra attention to the faerie. Awful things happened to humans who interacted with the fae.

  The human mind was capable of processing and understanding a great many things, from nanoparticles to expanding galaxies to fake news. But the human mind had limits. Faeries could look like humans, but didn't behave like them. They shifted appearance to their natural form—a concept humans barely understood. After a while, the mind tires of making excuses for what it’s seeing, but can’t accept the truth, and the knowledge of faeries' existence takes its toll.

  Just like it did to my old partner.

  The other reason we kept faeries a secret was for their safety—ironic, right? My merry band of humans protecting faeries, with their magic and deranged behaviours. Unfortunately, if most humans knew they existed, they might decide to take matters into their own hands. Imagine finding out a neighbour was an ogre. At first, a human might think, "All right. That's cool." But then the what ifs start: what if the ogre is the source of that strange smell? What if the reason the cat didn't come home is because the ogre ate it? What if the reason my property value went down is because of the ogre next door?

  History has shown us what humans are capable of when it comes to discrimination. My agency was simultaneously trying to prevent mass psychological trauma and World War III.

  The crowd cheered with each set of fireworks the faerie set off. The humans were loving this, oblivious to how dangerous this guy was. They held up their cell phones, thinking they were getting a recording to show their friends, but I knew from experience that faeries didn't show up on cameras so well. Most devices dumped the recordings as errors, glitches, or corrupted files. Any recordings that sur
vived showed the faeries as blurs, completely out of focus, or blended into the background. That's how it was on television right now. The recording was showing the fireworks, but skipping right over the faerie.

  So many damn stairs to go down. I had no idea how this fae snagged a prime seat in the gold section. Practically front row seats. There was a waiting list five years long for those. How the hell did he manage to get in? Luke would be insane with jealousy if he knew.

  My target must be sitting in a corporate section on a night when the corporation had no use for their seats.

  But why was he here at all? A hockey arena seemed an odd choice for a fae. On the other hand, the arena wasn't all that cold. Certainly not compared to the current temperature outside. With all the people in the building, it was fairly balmy. Warm, even.

  The cop on guard duty blocked me from proceeding to my target.

  "This section is closed," he intoned, arms crossed over his chest. His girth blocked my view of the seats.

  Damn it. I'd been given his name when I was dispatched, but it slipped my mind.

  "I'm here for the guy with the fireworks," I said sweetly. I needed to make this quick. The sooner I grabbed my sparkler faerie and got out of here, the better.

  The only problem was, not even the police had any idea faeries walked among us. And it was my job to keep it that way.

  "Closed," he repeated. He didn't so much as blink. All right. So he'd probably heard every excuse from people trying to get somewhere they shouldn’t be and my cute blond ponytail and bright blue eyes weren't going to work on him. I wasn't exactly dressed like a SWAT team. He probably thought I was a reporter or a YouTuber. Damn it. What was his name?

  He would certainly let me pass if I showed him my badge, but showing my badge would invite more questions. I needed to keep this discreet to keep the public ignorant and the faerie oblivious.

  "You were told a containment unit was coming," I said. "My name is Julia Ivory. I'm the containment unit."

  The guard snorted. "Yeah, right, lady. Go back to your seat before I call my pals to take you outside."

  "I'm serious."

  "And unicorns are real."

  Rumour was, unicorns had been sighted in Germany in the Black Forest, but I couldn't let him know that.

  With a sigh, I played the only card I had left. I reached into my pocket for my badge and ID. While he read it, I memorized the employee number on the identification pinned to his chest.

  "What the hell is this?"

  "Containment. Like I said. And you're Officer Warner? Wheeler? Webster?"

  His eyes flickered at me on the second name. That was it. Officer Wheeler.

  "What's that say? CSIS?" he asked, pulling my ID closer to his face. He wrinkled his nose. His lips moved as he read my name.

  I bit back a sigh. "Canadian Security Intelligence Service."

  The corner of his mouth turned up. "What the fuck is this? Get out of here."

  Did no one in this country pay attention to national security? "Ever heard of Homeland Security? CIA? FBI?" I wasn't surprised when he nodded at each of my questions, still with the same disbelieving grin on his face. American federal agents were often in the news and portrayed in books, movies, television—whereas CSIS barely had a Wikipedia entry, and only boasted a single page on the federal government website.

  "Cee-sis is Canada's version of those agencies," I explained. I watched as he scratched a dirty fingernail over the metal badge and tried to flake off the paint. I wanted to punch him in the nose for that, but I had a feeling if I did, I would quickly find myself being escorted to the outdoors.

  Restraint, Ivory. Restraint.

  "The badge is real, Officer Wheeler," I said. He turned the folder around so he could read my identification. "I was called in to contain the guy with the fireworks."

  "By yourself?"

  "If you'll let me do my job."

  His face sobered. He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "You packing?" he asked. Great. Now he was interested.

  There was no way I was going to show him the WWII relic in my pocket. We were a black ops unit and the first to suffer government cutbacks. The government barely—barely— recognized the threat of faeries among humans. As in, we had the support of exactly one member of parliament and one army colonel, both sworn to secrecy; we had to make do with Canadian Forces leftovers. "If my target leaves without me, I will arrest you for obstruction. Federal offence."

  "Oh," he said, finally remembering his job. "Right." He turned to the side to let me pass.

  I trotted down the steps to the fourth row from the bottom, my senses—which I'd affectionately dubbed my fae-dar—humming, giving me strong indications of the presence of a faerie. They confirmed that my target was the guy slumped in his seat with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head, hands shoved in his pockets. Thankfully, the surrounding rows were vacant.

  I slipped into the seat beside him. Hand in my pocket, fingers readying a reinforced plastic zip-strap. The guy didn't so much as look at me; his attention never left the action on the ice in front of him.

  I drew in a deep breath, steeling my nerves. Finally. Now that I was next to him, it occurred to me that if he could spark, he could explode.

  Proceed with an abundance of caution.

  "How's the game?" I asked cheerfully.

  "We're winning." His voice was rough, like tires rolling over crushed gravel. "Isn't it beautiful? Watching a team in action? They move intuitively knowing where the others are, anticipating the action, sliding in to assist as needed."

  "What's your name?"

  He didn't respond.

  "So you like to celebrate with fireworks. You realize you can't do that in here, right? Fire code regulations. Public safety."

  He shrugged. "It's what I do."

  "Yeah, I know," I said with mock sympathy. "You just can't help yourself. How'd you get in here?"

  "I woke up nearby. Followed the crowd." He shrugged.

  "Well, you can't go around putting lives in danger. There are rules." I had yet to see his face; I'd only been talking to the side of his hood.

  "See how they work together? Trying to win. Together."

  "Right. They're a team. You mentioned that," I agreed. "Okay, so you're leaving with me. Right now."

  He sighed. "I hate winter."

  His words dripped with so much venom I became concerned.

  "Are you talking about the weather now?" Though there were some fae that existed on their own terms, most belonged to a faction named for one of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter.

  He didn't answer.

  "You know it's thirty below outside," I said. "If you hate winter that much, I would think you would be inclined to stay at home."

  "Home." He snorted.

  Hmm. Sarcasm from a lower echelon faerie. They were assimilating better than we thought.

  I glanced up at the scoreboard, wondering how much work it was going to take to get this faerie out of here. It was almost the end of the period. I'd already sat with him too long.

  "All right. I'm going to make this simple—"

  The sparkler jumped up and went running down the row. I reached out for him, but missed grabbing his hoodie by mere centimetres.

  "Damn it."

  I jackrabbited my way back up the steps, but the fire faerie was faster. He hopped up the stairs two at a time, shoved Officer Wheeler out of the way, and kept on running. Wheeler cried out as he fell against a row of seats. Wisps of smoke rose off his uniform. The scent of burned fabric tickled my nostrils as I ran past.

  I wanted to stop and help him, but my target was on the loose. Wheeler would have to be tended by someone else. I had a job to do, but I did feel a pang of guilt in my gut.

  A damn partner would be handy right about now.

  I raced up the stairs, gaining on the faerie. He hit the top of the deck and veered down the hallway to the right, headed for the underground corridors.

  Toronto's u
nderground mall relied on artificial light and heat. Being faerie, he would need something natural eventually. I wished I could rule out the possibility of him heading for the subway. Certain kinds of metal made some faeries sick, and the subway was all metal. But I didn't know enough about the sparkler yet to even guess at his Achilles' heel.

  The stores were closed in the underground mall, but there were so many corridors, so many directions he could take. Public washrooms he could hide in. My fae-dar indicated he was close, and I was catching up. He was slowing. Maybe the cold was getting to him.

  Now I just had to track him.

  I'd thought maybe he would head for the subway—it's what I would do—but I sensed he’d gone in a different direction. Had he enough mental wherewithal to try to trick me, to make me think he would go to the subway when he was really going in the opposite direction?

  Something to keep in mind.

  I found him at the top of the stairs that led to Front Street. Flint (as I decided to name him) had his hand on the crash bar, his face turned to look out the windowed doors at the cold, winter night. I saw his face in the reflection. I was surprised he'd managed to assume a shape so humanoid. I knew now what he was, and what his element was, but it didn't make sense.

  "Past your bedtime, isn't it?" I asked.

  "How did you find me?"

  "Excellent sense of direction." I took the stairs slowly. "How about we get you tucked back into bed?" Since he was apparently not a Winter Fae, he must have been sleeping somewhere nearby.

  "You must be more than human. I should have guessed," he said.