Grim undertakings, p.1
Grim Undertakings, page 1
part #1 of GrimFaerie Chronicles Series
Grim Undertakings
The GrimFaerie Chronicles Book 1
By Whit McClendon
Copyrights
Grim Undertakings
The GrimFaerie Chronicles, Book 1
Copyright © 2019 by Whit McClendon
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, Whit McClendon, or the publisher, Rolling Scroll Publishing, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at whitmcc@jidaan.com.
Cover Art by: Wicked Smart Designs
Copyediting by: Michelle McClish
Published by: Rolling Scroll Publishing, Katy, TX
Website: www.jidaan.com
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Acknowledgements
I’d like thank all the folks who encouraged me along the way. Writing is a lot of work, but knowing that people out there enjoy my stories makes it much easier. My wife, Christina, has always been super supportive. Thanks to Michelle for her amazing proofing skillz, and Tara for her valuable input as well. RJ Batla, thank you as well, sir. And thanks to Brian for almost reading it. Love ya, man.
~Whit McClendon
Table of Contents
Grim Undertakings
The GrimFaerie Chronicles Book 1
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
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
The End
About The Author
Chapter 1
“Great power brings great responsibility.” I read that somewhere years ago. It seems that every so often, somebody remembers something obvious and puts it in print for everyone to ooh and aah over. As for me, I’d known this little fact of life for a particularly long time. I believed it completely. As a result, I often found myself skulking through the darkest, most dangerous parts of the city in the wee hours of the morning, usually in search of a very evil son of a bitch. Granted, that was also my job, but I’d have likely done it anyway.
This time was no different. It had come to my attention that another killer was loose in our city, and it was time for me to do something about it. Oh, I can hear you now, “But there are killings all the time!”
Well, you’re right. People die or get killed quite often in Houston. People kill each other for love or money, and I don’t lift a finger. Innocents are murdered for their sneakers, and gangbangers kill each other over drugs or turf. People die of neglect, disease, and car wrecks, and though it occasionally pains me to hear of such things, I don’t walk the streets at night in an attempt to avert those deaths.
But this particular killer was different. These recent deaths were the work of a single man, one very sick, twisted, and evil individual who brutalized and murdered young women. Now THIS I could do something about, and I would be only too glad to take care of the bastard. Sometimes, humans need a few bad genes removed from the old pool. That’s where I come in. My unique talents assist me pretty well in such removals.
Hearing all this, some might ask if I think I’m God. “What right do you have to choose who dies and who lives? What makes you so special?”, one might ask. Well, I certainly do not think of myself as God, though I have a lot of his/her power within me. And I actually have far more right to kill than psychos like this one, considering the evil nature of my targets. What goes around comes around. That’s a universal law, baby. Most folks would just depend on fate to take care of such karmic debts. Well, just who do you think fate calls on to tend to business? That would be me. I’m a bit special, you could say.
I’m a GrimFaerie.
Although I usually look, walk, talk, and even occasionally think like a man, I am actually far from being human. And don’t ever mistake me for one of those cute little winged pixies that flit about and sprinkle shiny dust all over the place. I’m just not that kind of Faerie. And even those are tougher than you think.
No, I’m the kind that had your ancestors bolting their doors and cowering in their homes at night. I’m the kind that caused unwary travelers to disappear in the deepest of our forests without a trace. Seeing me at work is usually enough to send people to years of therapy, and I’ve heard that their nightmares never go away.
Things have changed quite a bit since I came to be, but some things have always remained constant. There has always been evil around. Good and evil, there never is one without the other. Though many might misunderstand me because of my more nasty characteristics and generally bad attitude, I’m actually on the side of Good. When the balance between light and darkness starts to shift in certain ways, the Goddess speaks to me and lets me know when I have a job to do. Like now. I was born as an instrument of higher powers. I just do what my Goddess (your God, or whatever you choose to worship, they’re all the same) tells me to do. And I love every minute of it. Especially the bloody stuff.
But I digress. I was following a young woman that was destined to be the killer’s next victim. Earlier that day, she had appeared to me in a brief vision, a gift from the Goddess. In that vision, I was made aware of the killer, his past murders, and I got a glimpse of this woman at this place. My mission was clear.
I don’t know what she thought she was doing out so late at night. Night is our time, not yours. But then, she was only one of many. More than an hour past midnight, the lights of the many nightclubs on the street called Richmond cast an ever-shifting rainbow of colors on the pools of rainwater in the road. Young humans were everywhere, going from one club to another, most at least mildly inebriated.
Following her had been easy. This woman was a bit taller than most, and a slight shift of my perception showed her to have a bright blue aura, easily distinguishable from the less intense auras of the ordinary humans around her. Their pitiful auras were varied dull shades of reds, yellows, greens, and some blue, but an intense blaze like hers was rare. It marked her as special. Not only did that make my job easier, it also piqued my interest. I wondered what it meant, but then resolved to focus on the job at hand.
Oblivious to the fact she was being tracked, she just walked towards a huge building up ahead. Parking had been horrendous, and she had found a spot for her little vehicle around the corner. I followed her silently, trying to look like just another human out for a night of partying and fun, and I watched her move.
She wore a close-fitting dark blue garment that left her shoulders and midriff bare. A tight skirt of the same color hugged her body and came down to the middle of her thighs. Glints of gold shone around her neck and wrists. As she was on the tall side, I was unsurprised to see flat-heeled shoes on her feet. By human standards, she was probably quite beautiful. The Faerie concept of beauty is somewhat different, but I’ve lived among humans long enough to gain at least a vague understanding of their varied tastes.
I trailed her at a safe distance, but she never looked back at me. If she had, she would only have seen a medium-sized, dark-haired fellow with green eyes, perfectly ordinary. Just another Saturday night reveler. I grimaced at her lack of awareness. She never once looked to the left or right, only straight ahead, ignoring all others. I pressed on.
Seeing all the humans about made me think that she’d be relatively safe for a while. From what little I knew, the evil one had always abducted his victims, taken them somewhere to do his vile work, and then left the body (or pieces of it) where it could easily be found. Therefore, nothing truly harmful was likely to happen to her until they reached his killing place, and that was just fine with me. I needed a bit of privacy to do my own work if I wanted to be thorough about it, and I didn’t want his screams to draw any attention. His workplace would probably be secluded enough for me. Seeing a GrimFaerie at work would only make any bystanders think that I’m the bad guy, and I didn’t want any would-be heroes to try and get in my way.
She continued walking until she reached her destination, a large establishment that went by the name of Avenues. Even from outside, I could hear several different types of music mingling in an awful mess to my Fae ears. It should come as no surprise that human music doesn’t thrill me. It’s lame. The noise and the energy I felt oozing from the place told me that it was filled to capacity with noisy, drinking, laugh ing, dancing humans. Not my favorite scene, but you go where the job takes you. Compared to a Faerie Revel, this was a children’s party.
The woman walked right up to the beefy doorman and showed him a little card from her purse. He glanced at it and then smiled appreciatively as he pushed the door open for her. I could see his eyes moving over the lithe muscles of her body as they bunched and moved under her clothing. I stepped forward to follow her, but he quickly barred my way.
“Hey!” The big guy put a massive paw on my chest to keep me still. “I’ll need to see...some...” His voice trailed away as I touched his mind. No sparkly dust or fancy words here. Like many of the Faerie, I have the gift of enchantment, the ability to make humans see, think, and feel however I wish them to. I can’t force them to actually do anything. That’s against the rules. However, I can certainly make a human want something so badly that they’ll do anything to get it. I can make suggestions that seem imperative in the moment. And I can make them see what I want them to see. It works wonderfully.
Nothing so complicated was necessary with...Brad. I touched his mind only briefly, leaving a strong impression that he had already seen my little card and that I was to be shown every possible courtesy. It makes it easier for me to work if I don’t scare people to death all the time.
“Uh,” Brad spoke again, “Sorry ‘bout that. Here you go, man!” He pushed open the door and thunderous noise whumped through the open portal, buffeting me. I slipped inside, my eyes instantly adjusting to the semi-darkness. Stairs to my left led up and away to another area, and the more brightly lit piano bar was to my right. The hallway ahead angled away from me, and it was from there that the bulk of the noise was emanating.
The girl was nowhere in sight. I shifted my perception again and watched as the shadowy figures of young men and women suddenly sprang to life in vivid colors. At first, I didn’t see her, but I did catch a faint trace of her dazzling blue essence on the air, like the lingering scent of a passing woman’s perfume. Those faint traces led me towards the main room, and once there, I found her easily.
She was already in the middle of the throng, her arms held high in the air, her body moving to the pulsing beat of the music. She danced with no one in particular, and as I watched, she turned away several men who made attempts to dance with her. Apparently, she was there for the noise and not the companionship.
Since my vision from the Goddess had not included a view of the killer, all I could do was wait. He would move on her sooner or later, and once I knew who he was and what he looked like, his life was to be measured in minutes. Several of those would be quite agonizing. I smiled at the thought.
I sensed the young, dark-haired human woman long before she actually walked up to me. As soon as she had begun to look at and think about me, I caught the play of energies that wafted from her. I assumed a non-threatening stance of polite aloofness as she walked over. I didn’t want to piss her off, but I couldn’t afford to waste time with her. Trysts between Faerie and human were rare, but not unheard of. However, Faerie love was a bit intense, and most humans simply could not handle it. In any event, I had no time for that tonight.
“Wanna dance?” She looked up at me and I could see that she wasn’t quite as drunk as the others. A pretty little thing…for a human. Keeping my eyes mostly on the dance floor, I touched her mind as I had the doorman’s, and gently suggested that her time would be better spent elsewhere. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Sorry, fella, you’re not my type,” as if I had been the one to ask her instead of vice versa. I nodded at her and she flounced away to put the move on some other unsuspecting guy. As soon as she left, I felt other eyes upon me as a few more women took notice.
As I said, I had no time for this, so I moved away from the bar, watching the woman on the dance floor as I did so. When I felt the gaze of those other women lessen, I flexed my will and became, for lack of a better word, dim. Anyone looking at me now would only see a shadow on the wall unless they already knew that I was there. Being Faerie certainly had its advantages.
I watched her dance for the next two hours, keeping my senses open. Nothing happened except that the humans around me got louder and drunker. I was anxious to find the killer, but nothing I could do would hurry him. As long as she was here in the noisy club, I knew that she’d be safe. The club would close eventually, and in that darkest time of the night, I was certain that the killer would take her.
After dancing constantly and never once making eye contact with another soul, she suddenly decided that it was time for her to leave. There was no warning, she simply stopped dancing in the middle of a song and headed for the hallway and the exit beyond. Glad to be on the move again, I undimmed myself and followed her at a safe distance. Even if she did temporarily vanish from my sight, I knew that the traces of her were easy enough to follow.
She slipped through the exit door, and I came soon after. When I emerged, she was already walking away from the club and down the covered sidewalk that fronted the building. I had expected her to retrace her steps from earlier that night, but the rain that pounded into the earth must have dissuaded her. Instead, she stayed under the protection of the overhang and headed towards lights and laughing voices. The dance club was in the farthest end of a strip center, separated from an all-night coffee shop by a handful of businesses long since closed for the day. Several young male humans were laughing and talking as they leaned against the columns outside the coffee shop. She walked towards them, and I saw her aura tighten, a sign that she was on the defensive.
One of the males, the largest, stepped away from his column, calling to her. I could see his teeth from where I was as he grinned stupidly at her, and immediately his friends also stepped forward.
I knew his swagger all too well. There have been men like him from the dawn of time, and they have all been the same. Big, dumb, predatory...and always in need of an audience. This fellow had it all, and it looked like he had decided that my girl was his target for the night.
I stepped into the shadows behind one of the columns and dimmed myself again. I hated guys like this one. I’ve killed many of them, but only if the occasion truly warranted it, and this was hopefully not one of those occasions. This punk wasn’t the killer that I was after, and he might be preventing me from finding the real threat. I just wanted him gone. For now, though, I watched and waited.
The punk stepped smoothly in front of my girl as she tried to pass the coffee shop. She stopped, keeping her eyes forward, and tried to step around him without making eye contact. He moved where she moved, speaking the mindless words that had been spoken countless times before. I did not have time for this.
As much as I would have loved to tear out the stupid human’s throat, I knew that it would be the wrong thing to do. The girl must be allowed to go on about her business as planned so that the killer would be able to make his move. When he did that, I would have him. This punk was just an unforeseen obstacle, and I hoped that she could get around him without my help. I’m not subtle when I get serious, and what I had in mind for Mr. Big Smileypunk would most likely frighten her badly. I remained dim as I started to move closer to them, working my way from column to column, trying to find a way to get her past them without showing myself.
They started to close in on her, encircling her. She still refused to look into Smileypunk’s eyes, instead choosing to look straight ahead, imperious, as if her gaze was too important to waste on him. He did not like that.
One big hand reached out to grab her chin, forcing her face towards his. I could not see her face from where I was, but was surprised to see the smile on the punk’s face disappear as his buddies burst into laughter. She’d insulted him. Good for her.
I heard him call her a ‘bitch’, a word I recognized as a bad one, and watched his face quickly flare an ugly red as he raised his right hand to strike her. It looked like I was going to have to step in after all. Good. I hadn’t killed anyone in a while, and though I’d prefer to wait for the murderer, this one would do just fine.
It was not to be, though. As the punk whipped his open hand at her, intending to deliver a humiliating slap, she stepped into the blow, blocking his arm with the sharp ridge of her upraised forearm and simultaneously punching him in the throat with her other hand. Before he could even register the pain, she had grabbed him by the arm and shoulder and then slammed a vicious knee into his groin. He buckled, as all human males do when struck there, and his eyes grew wide. Moving smoothly and with far more strength than I thought she had, she yanked him off balance, whirled, then hit him with a judo throw before he had time to recover. He went down hard, bouncing his thick skull on the pavement.
