Bloodfire (Blood Destiny) (10 page)

I closed my eyes and almost immediately
slept a dreamless sleep.

Seven hours later the sun was streaming
into the dorm room and hitting my face.
 
I moaned and turned over, sticking the pillow over my head.
 
I could hear the voices of the other
girls chattering.
 
It was a blessed
relief to hear some normality after the hushed tones of the last twenty-four
hours.

“Is he single?” Lynda wanted to know.

Ally giggled.
 
“He’d better be!
 
Oooh, that body, wouldn’t you just love
to feel it wrapped around you.”
 

One of them threw a stuffed cow at
me.
 
Shifter girls might be tougher
than most human ones but they definitely loved their cuddly toys.
 
“Mack, what do you think of the
alpha?”
 
It was Betsy.
 
Whatever I said to her would be round
the pack before I’d brushed my teeth.
 
I didn’t answer and kept the pillow firmly closed over my head.

“Mack, apparently he’s not the one who was
talking last night – that was Staines, the Brethren’s Head of Strategic
Deployment or something.
 
The Lord Alpha
is the gorgeous one with the black hair.”
 
Ally laughed again.

“Did you clock those muscles?” One of the
others loudly shrieked.
 
I winced at
the noise.

“I heard that when he took over as Lord
Alpha, he had sixteen challenges to the leadership, and that he beat each one
without even breaking a sweat.
 
And
that he’s really shaking things up in London – wants to stop a lot of the
old traditional ways and bring the Brethren into the twenty-first century.”

I may not have known a lot about our de
facto leaders but I was pretty sure that the old guard wouldn’t be too keen on
that.

“Well, Alexander said that apparently even
the vamps are afraid of what he’s going to do next.
 
That when one of their Masters went
round to welcome him as the new Lord Alpha, he didn’t even bother to answer the
door.”

Ally piped up again.
 
“I read last night on the Othernet that
he has dozens of girls just gagging to be with him, not just because he’s in
charge now, but because he’s very, very skilled in pleasure as well as
pain.”
 
She almost purred this last
comment.
 
I snorted aloud, which was
a mistake, because it drew their attention back to me.

“Mack!
 
What do you think of him?”
 
Betsy repeated; clearly she wasn’t going
to let me get away from this.

“Obviously I need to stay away from him as
much as possible,” I said, finally pushing my pillow out of the way and turning
over.
 
I sat up and tried to eyeball
her into submission.

“Oh yeah,” she answered, somewhat deflated,
before pausing briefly to give me a funny look and asking,
 
“Why are you rolling your eyes like
that?”

I scowled.
 

“Do you think they’ll really kill us all
for breaking the Way and letting you stay?” asked Lynda tremulously.

“It’s not as if we had a choice,” said
Betsy, firmly.
 
“
That
witch made us take
her.
 
And
she was only a little kid, we couldn’t have turned her away.”

That ‘witch’ was my mother.
 
I bit my tongue hard.
 
And I wasn’t a little kid who needed
protecting any more.

Ally spoke up.
 
“Well, it was John who made us not say a
word to anyone.
 
We couldn’t go
against our alpha, could we?”

“Yes, but John’s dead, isn’t he?” stated
Betsy with a grim face.
 
“We’re not
under any real compulsion now.”

Silence filled the room.
 
I had wondered when they’d start realising
that.
 
In fact I was surprised that
Anton and his cronies hadn’t made more of it yet.
 
Perhaps I’d misjudged them and they’d
keep their mouths shut after all.
 
I
checked my watch.
 
56 hours to go
– hardly any time at all for twenty-four shapeshifters to have to keep
their mouths shut.
 
I looked back at
Betsy and glared at her again.
 
She
gazed back at me innocently before sending me a grin and a wink.
 

Ally padded over to my bed and bent down,
hugging me unexpectedly.
 
“We love
you really, Mack, and not just because of your snappy dress sense.”

“Yeah,” added Betsy, grin still in
place.
 
“Even if the Lord Alpha
himself got on his knees and pleaded to us with that weak at the knees face,
that flowing hair that you’d just love to run your fingers through, those
bulging biceps that would wrap themselves around…”

I threw the stuffed cow back at her.
 
Betsy neatly dodged it, without moving
her feet, and laughed warmly.
 
“Even
then, Mack, even then we wouldn’t betray you.
 
You’re as much a part of the pack as the
rest of us.”

I tried to appear tough by growling,
 
“Yeah, well, that’s just what I’d
expect.”
 
The effect was somewhat
ruined when a single tear traitorously escaped and ran down my cheek.
 
Bloody girls.

There was a sharp knock at the door then Julia
came in, dressed unexpectedly in a navy business suit. She sent me a warning
look which
I tried and failed to interpret.
 
“The Brethren have set appointments for
each of you to be evaluated and then interviewed.
 
There are sheets posted up
downstairs.
 
You need to check your
times and, for God’s sake, don’t be late.”

Lynda giggled again, her earlier
trepidation seemingly forgotten.
 
“Are the interviews private ones with the alpha?”

“No,” Julia said.
 
“He’ll oversee all the evaluations but only
some of us are lucky enough to have that privilege with the interview.”
 
She looked meaningfully at me.
 
Shit.

“I don’t want to go to London, and I don’t
want to be alpha,” interjected Julie, “Can I skip the evaluations?”
 
Bless her.

“It’s their prerogative to test every pack
member.
 
I imagine they’re curious
as to why we’ve sustained so few serious injuries over the years.”

Betsy looked at me.
 
“I guess our resident human is good for
something.”
 

I pulled back the duvet and swung my legs out
of bed.
 
“Just remember that when I
go down at the first punch this morning.”

*

After re-applying the
shifter scented lotion and getting dressed, I headed down to the hall.
 
The evaluation schedule
was stuck on the noticeboard, next to an old ragged poster advertising the
spring social.
 
I checked for my
name and noted that I was down to fight Theresa, a weresquirrel, at
10.30am.
 
Tom was listed against
Anton fifteen minutes later.
 
I
breathed a sigh of relief - he had no hope against that canny bastard.
 
The interviews were scheduled for the
afternoon.
 
No problem.
 
At all.
 
Honest.

I headed for the canteen and took my place
in the short queue for breakfast. Johannes, who had come to us from the pack up
in Berwick about five years ago when his alpha had dropped dead of an early
heart attack, had clearly been at work. I dolloped burnt bacon, scrambled eggs
and some slightly charred toast on my plate.
 
Someone came up next to me and started
to do the same.
 
I glanced sideways
and realised it was one of the Brethren.
 
I tried not to hold my breath.

“Mmmm, crispy bacon,” she said.

I was about to retort something in Johannes’
defense when I realised that she was being genuine.
 
Odd – even those who normally
liked their bacon crispy found Johannes’ offerings hard to handle.

She piled several pieces on her plate and
smiled at me from under a dark fringe.
 
“I’m Lucy.” And then added, just in case I wasn’t sure, “I’m with the
Brethren.”

“Mack.
 
Cornwall pack.”

“Woman of few poetic words there, Mack.
 
We don’t bite, you know.”
 
She laughed suddenly, “Well, not this
early in the morning anyway.”

I’d withhold judgement on that one till
they left without discovering my true nature.
 
“I’m sure you’re all very cuddly.”

Lucy snickered again.
 
“Relax.
 
We’re just curious about you.
 
We visit the countryside packs whenever
they need help with a particularly vicious otherworlder or arbitration with an
in-pack dispute.
 
We’ve never had to
come here before and you’ve never needed us.
 
It’s…
.unusual
.”

She was trying to be friendly, not
combative.
 
I took a deep breath and
tried to match her relaxed attitude.
 
“Not much happens around here.
 
Not like London, I guess.”

“Yeah, beating up vampires and city-slicker
daemons whilst dodging the Ministry of Mages is a whole lot of fun.”
 
She added some black pudding to her
plate whilst I winced in anticipation of her ruined tastebuds.
 
“I’m sorry about your alpha.
 
It seemed like he was a good guy.”

‘He was,” I replied, swallowing down the unexpected
lump in my throat.
 
“When I find out
what killed him, I’ll rip its guts out.”
 

Lucy looked at me curiously and paused for
a second before asking, “So what are you?”

I knew what she meant but I wasn’t going
to go down that road unless I really needed to. The ways of actual werehamsters
were a mystery to me and I didn’t want to get caught out.
 
Deliberately misunderstanding her
question, I replied,
 
“Hungry,” and
turned to sit down at a nearby table.
 
Now I’ve covered a few niceties you can go away, I willed silently,
looking down at my unappetising plate and hoping she’d get the message.

Unfortunately Lucy wasn’t going to give up
that easily.
 
She sat down opposite
me and began shoveling food into her mouth.
 
I stared in fascination, before picking
up my knife and fork and gingerly taking a few bites myself.
 

“You know what I mean,” she said
insistently between mouthfuls.
 
“What’s
your shift?”

“I don’t like to talk about it.”
 
With any luck she’d think that I was a
small weak were that I was slightly ashamed of.
 
Like a hamster.
Then I belatedly remembered that I’d said I was going to rip the guts out of
whatever had slaughtered John.
 
Oops.

“Huh.”
 
She looked somewhat nonplussed for a
second before continuing,
 
“Well,
I’m a honey badger.”
 
That explained
the voracious appetite then.
 
I was
relieved that it appeared that she wasn’t going to push me any further to
reveal my own shift.
 
“It’s a
pleasure to find out so much about you, Mack ‘I don’t like to talk about it’.”
 
She took another mouthful and began
chewing hard on a piece of bacon.

“I’m sorry.
 
I’m just nervous.”
 
I didn’t want to play the meek and weak
card, and I clearly wasn’t much good at it.
 
Lucy seemed like a decent shifter who
I’d normally get along well with, despite her Brethren affiliations.
 
Then I thought briefly of Julia’s
instructions and realised that if I was to survive this then I had no choice.
 
“You all just look so strong
and…masterful.”
 
Oh god, kill me
now.
 
She flicked her eyes at me briefly,
with a faintly amused expression on her face, before returning her attention to
her plate.

I took a few more bites and was about to
speak again when a bell sounded.
 
Lucy immediately stood up, suddenly all business instead of focused on
her food.
 
“The evaluations are
about to begin.”
 
She looked at me
assessingly.
 
“I wonder how you’ll
do?”

I coughed, staying in my seat.
 
“I’m…er…not much of a fighter.”

“It’s not just fighting skills that we’re
after.”