… When the walls come tumblin' down
When the walls come crumblin'crumblin' .
—John Cougar Mellencamp
Prologue
My philosophy is pretty simple—any day nobody's trying to kill me is a good day in my
book.
I haven't had many good days lately.
Not since the walls between Man and Faery came down.
But then, there's not asidhe-seer alive who's had a good day since then.
Before The Compact was struck between Man and Fae (around 4000 B.C. for those of
you who aren't up on your Fae history), the Unseelie Hunters hunted us down like animals
and killed us. But The Compact forbade the Fae to spill human blood, so for the next six
thousand years, give or take a few centuries, those with True Vision—people like me who
can't be fooled by Fae glamour or magic—were taken captive and imprisoned in Faery
until they died. Real big difference there: dying or being stuck in Faery until you die.
Unlike some people I know, I'm not fascinated by them. Dealing with the Fae is like
dealing with any addiction—you give in, they'll own you; you resist, they never will.
Now that the walls are down, the Hunters are back to killing us again.Stamping us out
likewe'rethe plague on this planet.
Aoibheal, the Seelie Queen of the Light, is no longer in charge. In fact, nobody seems to
know where she is anymore, and some people are beginning to wonderif she is anymore.
The Seelie and Unseelie have been smearing their bloody war all over our world since her
disappearance, and although some might say I'm being broody and pessimistic, I think the
Unseelie are gaining the distinct upper hand over their fairer brethren.
Which is a really, really bad thing.
Not that I like the Seelie any better. I don't. The only good Fae is a dead Fae in my book.
It's just that the Seelie aren't quite as lethal as the Unseelie. They don't kill us on sight.
They have a use for us.
Sex.
Though they barely credit us with sentience, they have a taste for us in bed.
When they're done with a woman, she's a mess. It gets in her blood. Unprotected Fae-sex
awakens a frenzy of sexual hunger inside a woman for something she should never have
had to begin with, and will never be able to forget. It takes a long time for her to
recover—but at least she's alive.
Which means a chance to fight another day.To help try to find a way to return our world
to what it once was.
To send those Fae bastards back to whatever hell they came from.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, ahead of the story.
