Story Notes:

            Type: drama, angst

            Rating: PG-13

            Warnings: human sacrifice, blood

            Length: 3900 words

 

 

Answering the Call

 

Blood called to him.

 

Even in his dream, Daniel recognized its call.  As Daniel watched, unwilling observer of a sacrifice that both fascinated and disgusted him, the Fairy King slid the knife free from the victim’s death-wound.  Blood coated the knife, rich red like the finest wine, and part of Daniel reveled at the sight of it.  He saw the Fairy King’s tongue flick out to taste the blood and wished it was his own tongue.  The desire for blood inflamed him.  He hungered for its taste, ached for it, needed, needed, needed…

 

With a strangled sob, Daniel flung himself out of the dream and out of his bed.  He barely made it across the room to the wash basin before he vomited.  He gasped for breath in between heaves and shuddered convulsively as he braced himself against the table where the wash basin sat.

 

Moments later, a cool hand brushed back his sweat-soaked hair and brought a damp cloth to his heated forehead.  He leaned into the touch.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his throat raspy after its ordeal.  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

 

His wife soothed him with a wordless murmur and continued bathing his face while her other hand rubbed circles on his back.  His tremors eased and faded.

 

“Daniel?”

 

He turned to look at her.  Summer’s Morning was the epitome of the Fairy world in which they lived.  Her flaxen hair and fair skin glistened in the moonlight that streamed through the bedroom window.  A tendril had escaped her braid, and he smiled into her anxious eyes as he tucked it behind her pointed ear.  She was his guiding star, air and light coalesced into a vision of loveliness.  He caressed her cheek.

 

She reached up and drew his hand from her face, twining her fingers in his and refusing to be distracted.  “This is the fifth time since the sacrifice.”

 

The seventh, but he wouldn’t tell her that, nor would he mention the half dozen other times he’d managed to conceal before the sacrifice.  The sacrifice five days ago had only magnified a bloodlust that had been growing in him for months.

 

He had hoped he would be spared this.  He was the twenty-seventh and youngest son of the Fairy King, the halfblood result of the Fairy King’s fling with a Man-maiden, unacknowledged and unwanted when his mother died in childbirth.  He had thought his diluted blood and his distance from the throne would keep him from the curse of the Fairy King’s lineage.  He was wrong.

 

“I feel the way your skin burns,” she persisted.  “I hear you cry out, begging for something as if you will die without it.  Do not tell me this is an ordinary sickness.”

 

He felt his heart stutter.  He hadn’t realized he cried out during the dream.  “It’s nothing, Summer.  It’ll pass.”

 

He would deny the blood path with every ounce of strength he possessed.  He would refuse its call.  He wanted nothing to do with it.

 

Summer’s Morning gazed at him, skepticism visible on her face.  He prompted her with a gentle tug.  “Come, love.  You need your sleep, and so does the baby.”

 

The comment distracted her as no other would.  She smiled tenderly as she smoothed one hand down her swollen belly and allowed herself to be settled into bed.

 

Long after Summer’s Morning had fallen asleep, Daniel lay awake.  He stared at the ceiling, hands clenched at his sides, jaw clamped.  Sweat poured from him.  In his mind, he watched the sacrifice replay, saw the blood run in rivulets down the knife, heard again the siren call of the blood path.

 

#

 

The Fairy King studied his halfblood son.  Daniel stood before the throne with chin out-thrust and arms crossed aggressively over his chest.  He was like a craggy rock jutting up alongside the seashore, defying wave and wind and rain.  The Fairy King had always thought his youngest son weak, so he admired the boy’s display of contempt, even as he planned its defeat.

 

“Well met, my son.”

 

Daniel scowled.  “The king summoned; the subject came.  I am no son to you.”

 

The Fairy King allowed the point.  Vexed by the loss of the Man-maiden who was his lover, he had spurned the halfblood child who was their son.  In doing so, he had inadvertently saved the boy’s life.  An unacknowledged son was no rival.  When the Fairy King’s twenty-six true sons plotted each other’s deaths, they had ignored Daniel’s existence as thoroughly as their father had.  Now only Daniel remained to succumb to the dark pleasures of the Fairy heritage.

 

He had worried at first.  Although he had rejected Daniel, he had still watched from afar, searching for signs of himself.  In thirty years, he had seen nothing.  Daniel was pensive, apt to serious questions, prone to study.  His features were plain; his ears, rounded; his skin and hair, dark.  He lacked any aptitude for manipulation, trickery, or deception.  The Fairy King had feared the insignificance that protected Daniel from his brothers’ rivalry had also weakened the call of the blood path.  What he had observed at last week’s sacrifice had reassured him.

 

“I think blood cannot be denied so easily, my son.”

 

Daniel retreated to sullen silence.  The Fairy King reclined in his throne.  He had expected no less.

 

“I saw your fascination at the sacrifice.  How you craned forward.  How your body hungered for the blood.”

 

Daniel quivered with tension.  His hands curled into fists.  His jaw hardened.  His eyes burned.  The Fairy King smiled, pleased with the effect of his words.

 

“I wonder if you watched long enough.”  Daniel’s voice trembled with suppressed rage.  “Did you see the revulsion on my face when it was over?  Did you see me vomit after you licked the blood from your knife?”

 

The Fairy King shook his head gently, clucking his tongue.  “My son, haven’t you wondered why it affects you?  While you shuddered and seethed, didn’t everyone else walk away, reassured by a centuries-old ceremony they witness every month?”

 

Dread shadowed the boy’s face.  He pressed his arms tighter against his chest as if protecting himself from the questions.  The Fairy King leaned forward, to score a final blow.

 

“Shall I tell you why your body feels like a furnace, why you awake in the nights, drenched with sweat, dreaming of the sacrifice?”

 

Daniel rocked back.  The blow had struck.  “How—how did you--”

 

“The blood path calls you, only living son of the Fairy King.”

 

“No!”  He flung himself away, turning his back on the Fairy King.  His breath had quickened to sobbing pants.

 

“The path is unavoidable.  You can’t restrain these passions by force of will.  They will build inside you until you perform the sacrifice.”

 

“I won’t!”

 

The Fairy King straightened angrily.  “Will you stand by and watch the portal between Man and Fairy close?”

 

“I’m sure Man wouldn’t mind,” Daniel snapped.  “The portal isn’t worth the victims they’ve had to expend for it.”

 

“Don’t be so sure.  A world without Fairy magic would slowly poison itself.”  He lowered his voice to a whisper.  “And have you considered what happens to Fairy?  Man gives our world substance.  Without the portal, we become ghosts.  Imagine taking your wife into your arms and feeling… nothing.”

 

Daniel gave a satisfying moan.

 

The Fairy King smiled and continued, “I wonder if you will fade, halfblood.  You might lie in bed, surrounded by the emptiness that Fairy has become because of you, and feel the whisper of a breeze.  Is it a one-time friend come to haunt you?  Is it your wife come to embrace you?”

 

“Stop.”  Daniel bowed his head, clutching at his hair.  “Please…stop.”

 

The Fairy King stood, and his voice echoed in the chamber as he pronounced judgment upon his son.  “You will perform the sacrifice three weeks hence, after which I will prepare you to follow me as Fairy King.  You will answer the call of your blood.”

 

#

 

With a frustrated growl, Daniel slammed shut the heavy Man-book.  He shoved it to one side, where it collided with several other volumes.  The parchment notes on his desk rustled in agitation.  The breakfast tray that Summer’s Morning had brought in hours before teetered at the edge of his desk, wavered, and crashed to the floor of the library.  Daniel winced at the noise.  That would bring Summer running for certain.  Mind and body numb with fatigue, he laid his head on the desk and made no move toward the mess of uneaten food and shattered dishes.

 

He had barely slept in the two weeks since the Fairy King’s ultimatum.  Time jeered at him.  Only one week remained until the sacrifice.  He was no closer to finding an answer, and he was so very, very tired of fighting.

 

It seemed the Fairy King was right.  Daniel couldn’t control the bloodlust.  The harder he tried to resist, the more it hounded him.  He heard the call all the time now, like the background buzz of a mosquito.  Distracting, annoying, insistent.  His body was an inferno.  He saw blood everywhere.  Only the other day, he had caught himself staring at Summer Morning’s throat, watching the throb of her pulse, wondering how her blood would taste.

 

He could feel his sanity slipping away, corrupted by the hunger for blood.  He needed to find a way to end the sacrifices before he lost himself.

 

A cool cloth touched the back of his burning neck.  He blinked, opening his eyes to the fuzzy image of Summer’s Morning, illuminated by moonlight, leaning over him.  He realized he had fallen asleep and was torn between relief at a few hours of dreamless sleep and irritation at the loss of a half-day’s research.

 

He lifted his head, massaged the stiffness in his neck, and stared at the parchment where his sweat-drenched forehead had rested.  The ink had smeared; the words were beyond recognition.  He sighed.  Summer’s Morning pushed a tray under his nose, hiding the parchment from view.  He glanced at the floor and saw that she had cleaned away the breakfast tray while he slept.

 

“Eat,” she ordered.

 

He speared a forkful of salad.  Salad was safe.  No blood there.  Unless one considered the sap coursing through veins from root to stem.  He gagged, spat out the mouthful, and vaulted from the desk.  Summer’s Morning followed him to the window.  She rubbed circles against his back while he gazed at the night sky.

 

“Do you want to tell me again that this will pass?” she asked with gentle irony and a hint of steel that warned him that excuses would no longer satisfy her.  “That a fever that does not burn itself out is ordinary?  That eating and sleeping are mere indulgences?  Tell me again that nothing is wrong, Daniel.”

 

He crossed his arms over his chest, hugging himself.  “The Fairy King wants me to succeed him.”

 

“You are his son, his only living heir, and he is very old.”

 

He closed his eyes.  It sounded so reasonable when she said it like that.  She didn’t know the cost of the Fairy King’s lineage.   He wasn’t sure he could tell her.

 

“He wants me to perform the next sacrifice.”

 

She didn’t say anything, but he sensed her confusion, knew what her face would look like with her puckered brow and the tip of her tongue playing over her upper teeth.  The sacrifice was commonplace.  It had been part of their lives forever, part of what made the Fairy world what it was.  She wouldn’t understand why it troubled him.

 

“It’s a curse, Summer.”  He turned to her and saw her face exactly as he had pictured it.  “I don’t know how it happened or why, but Man and Fairy were not meant to live this way.  We should have been friends.  Instead, the Man-world fears us.  With good reason.  We’ve used our magic to trick and deceive.  We’ve stolen their maidens for pleasure-loves and their children for sacrifices.  We’ve given nothing and taken everything.”

 

“Daniel--”

 

He couldn’t stop.  “I can’t do it.  I can’t perpetuate a curse that has bound Man and Fairy for centuries.  The sacrifices have to end.  Don’t you see, Summer?  The sacrifices have poisoned us.  We should be ashamed of what we’ve done and what we’ve become.”

 

He paused, breathing heavily.  He felt light-headed and pressed one hand to the windowsill to keep himself upright.  Summer’s Morning grasped his other arm and urged him back to his desk.  He carefully averted his gaze from the salad as he slumped into the chair.  Summer’s Morning knelt before him, his hands in hers.

 

“Are you seeking an end to the shame, Daniel, or an end to something else?”

 

He stared down into her clear eyes and saw himself reflected.  He was becoming a shell of the man she knew while bloodlust seared him from the inside out.  He owed her an explanation.

 

“It’s something that happens to the Fairy King and his heirs,” he whispered.  “If my half-brothers had lived, I might have been spared.  Instead, I’m the only one left…”

 

She lifted a hand to cup his cheek, giving him strength.

 

“At some point, we’re called to the sacrifice.  The urge to shed blood becomes overpowering.  The need for it--”  Images tainted his mind, the knife plunging, the blood—so much blood—pouring from the blade, the tongue catching droplets.  He choked down both bile and craving.  His body trembled, and he could feel his wife’s hand tighten over his as if she could hold him together.  “Summer, I can’t—can’t talk about this.”

 

Her fingers slid upward against his cheek, smoothing away the sweat and tears that dribbled into her path.

 

#

 

On Fairy feet that barely grazed the floor, Summer’s Morning crossed the library and waited at her husband’s side.  Daniel stared out the window and didn’t notice.  He had grown thin and pale.  The skin under his eyes drooped and looked smudged with shadows.  He had sequestered himself in the library for three weeks, pouring over ancient Fairy tomes and dusty Man volumes, hardly eating, emerging at night to collapse into bed beside her.  Even then, nightmares drove sleep from him.  Nothing she did could soothe his fevered brow or satiate the strange desire that flamed within him.

 

He was so solemn.  She remembered how her friends had teased her when she first declared her love for the quiet halfblood boy.  An ill-made match, they said, until the day he had laughed with abandon.  Another year passed before he admitted his own love for her, and by then, he had tamed her of wildness.  Now she nurtured his son within her body and loved Daniel all the more for his deep ways.

 

She touched his arm.  “Daniel?  The sacrifice is at dawn.  You should sleep.”

 

For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t respond.  Then he said softly, “I found the answer.”

 

She studied him.  He should be dancing around the room, so desperately had he sought a way out of the sacrifice.  Instead, he sighed and continued to frown at the moon’s fullness.  His shoulders had slumped with his heavy exhale.  She gripped his elbow.

 

“Daniel?  What is it?”

 

“Two willing sacrifices, one Man and one Fairy, locks the portal in place.”

 

“Willing?  But, Daniel, where would…”  As he turned to gaze sadly into her eyes, she trailed off and caught her breath in sudden, horrible understanding.  “Daniel, no!”

 

“I’m halfblood, Summer.  Man and Fairy.  The portal would close some, since there’s only one of me, but not enough.  Not enough to destroy both worlds.  And the sacrifices would end.”

 

She shook her head violently.  “No!  Find another way.”

 

“There isn’t one.”  He cupped her chin and brushed her lips with his thumb.  “Even if there were, I don’t have time to find it.”

 

She jerked from his grasp and backstepped, shaking her head again.  “Then make time, Daniel.  Perform the sacrifice.  Become the Fairy King.”

 

“Summer, you don’t know what it’s doing to me.  What it will do to me, month after month, sacrifice after sacrifice.”

 

“Fight it!” she cried.  A sob choked her.  Tears trembled on her cheeks.

 

He groaned.  “I can’t!  The hunger inside me is too strong.  I can feel it pulling, luring me to the sacrifice.”  He swayed.  His eyes clouded.  “And I want it, Summer.  I want to smell the blood.  I want to taste it.”

 

He struck the window sill.  Once, twice, five times.  Harder and harder, as if he could pound the bloodlust from his mind.  Finally he grunted in pain and pulled his hand back.  Blood oozed from a cut in his palm where a splinter had lodged.  He stared at it, and she shivered at the fascination in his gaze.

 

“The moment I take the knife, I’m lost,” he whispered.  “The blood path will corrupt my soul.”

 

She drew closer and touched his arm again, banishing tears and panic and her own need for comfort.  “Come to the desk, love.  Let me bind your hand.”

 

#

 

Mist clung to the beech trees, obscuring dawn’s arrival.  Daniel sighed.  He would have liked to see the sun one last time.  As Fairy folk gathered in the courtyard, greeting one another and jostling for a better position,  tiny clouds emerged from their mouths and joined the mist.  The monthly sacrifice had become a social event.  Daniel searched the crowd for his wife and found her to the right of the dais, alone in the sea of her kin.  She was watching him sadly, her cheeks rosy in the cold, unnaturally red against the paleness of her face.  He tore his gaze away, lest the sight of her tempt him to abandon his plan.  He wished he could see her smile once more.

 

The Fairy King joined Daniel on the dais.  A hush descended.  The Fairy King set a bundle on the altar and unwrapped it, exposing a naked Man-child to the air.  The child stirred in a drugged sleep and subsided.  Drool dribbled from the slack mouth.

 

From the folds of his robe, the Fairy King drew out a knife and presented it to Daniel.  Daniel imagined he could see the layers of blood that had stained it for centuries.  His head throbbed with the need to immerse himself in the sacrificial blood.  He fought the desire, biting the inside of his lip until the pain cleared his mind.

 

The Fairy King’s eyes glittered.  “Take it.  Prove what a halfblood can do.”

 

“First, swear to this assembly.”  Daniel lifted his voice so it carried over the courtyard.  “Swear that with this act, I make a halfblood worthy.  Swear that I and the sons of my blood will follow you as Fairy King.”

 

“Ha.  Ambition at last!”  The Fairy King chuckled.  “It is sworn.  May you be more ruthless than your brothers.”

 

Daniel closed his fingers over the hilt of the extended knife.  He gasped.  A torrent of fire engulfed him.  Bloodlust steamed over him until he thought he would explode in its heat.  His body ignited.  The pyre that was his old life burned away.  He was recreated, wonderfully alive, every sense heightened.

 

He felt the damp touch of the mist, pleasantly cool against his heated skin.  He heard each shuffle of impatient feet, each hushed breath, each trill of early morning birdsong.  He looked down at the Man-child, and when it blinked sleepily, he saw every hair of the feather-light eyelashes.  He imagined how its blood would taste and shivered with anticipation.

 

“You understand now,” his father whispered.

 

He nodded.  He brought his eyes upward, hoping to communicate the depth of this new joy to Summer’s Morning.  She looked so beautiful, wisps of flaxen hair tickling her ear points, her eyes bright.  He wondered at the sorrow on her face.

 

A distant portion of his mind clamored at him.  He had decided—something—that had disturbed her.  Memory intruded vaguely, drifting like the mist.  She expected him…to give this up.

 

He rebelled.  Give up this exquisite moment?  He couldn’t.  He wanted it more than anything he had ever wanted in his life.  He needed it.  The thought of returning to this moment, month after month, made him dizzy with rapture.

 

He raised the knife over his head.

 

“Good,” his father’s voice enticed.  “Answer the call.”

 

He plunged the knife toward the Man-child’s heart.  Summer’s Morning cradled the swell of her belly and shrieked his name.

 

Daniel snapped free of the blood-tainted fantasy.  He wrenched the knife into a new trajectory.  It grazed the Man-child’s chest, skipped onward, and embedded itself in Daniel.

 

The world fluctuated, growing dim and bright in turns.  Daniel gritted his teeth and yanked the knife out.  Agony laced through him.  He staggered up against the altar, clutching the knife desperately.  His fingers were numb.  Someone grabbed his shoulders.  He gasped at the fresh intensity of pain.

 

“Stop!” the Fairy King screamed.  “What are you doing?  Perform the sacrifice!”

 

“I have,” Daniel managed to say.  He lifted the knife to his mouth and licked his own dripping blood.

 

Taste exploded upon his tongue.  The metallic bitterness of Man-blood and the cinnamon sweetness of Fairy blood mingled together.  His vision blurred.  He could see the dim outline of the portal.  He watched it expand.  Hesitate.  Curl inward.  It inched toward closure.  Paused.  Trembled.  Something cracked, echoing like thunder.  The portal flared, as if in celebration, leaving sparks in Daniel’s eyes.  Then it locked in place, half-open to the world of Man.

 

Daniel blinked and saw grey sky, tinted with dawn pink.  He realized he was lying on his back.  He couldn’t feel the stone beneath him or the blood pulsing out of him.  He couldn’t hear the crowd milling in the courtyard like lost children.  Except for sight, his senses had abandoned him.

 

He watched Summer’s Morning mount the dais and confront the stunned Fairy King.  Though he couldn’t hear the words, Daniel knew the flush of anger on her face.  She snatched up the blood-stained knife.  His act of self-sacrifice had broken it, and she flung the two pieces at the Fairy King’s feet.  How strong and brave she was!  She would make a worthy king of their son.  Then she knelt beside him, lifting his head into her lap.  He saw her fingers brush his cheek and wished he could feel them.  She smiled tenderly.

 

Golden light crowned her head.  The mist had cleared.  The sun was shining.

 

#

 

The boy Fairy King snuggled up against his mother.  He was not a beautiful child to Fairy eyes.  His features were ordinary.  His ears were tipped with the barest points.  His hair was an unremarkable brown.  In a moment, his moods would shift from serious study to playful mischief.  But he was the darling of the Fairy world, and although the half-closed portal didn’t allow passage between worlds, Man heard his young laughter on the wind, and it brought smiles to their faces.

 

“Tell me again, Mother,” he begged, as he did every night while the blankets were tucked around him.

 

Summer’s Morning caught her son into a hug and began the story as she did every night, “Your father was Man and Fairy, and he saved both from a shameful curse…”