A thrill of excitement rushed through me. There was no way in hell I was going to get any sleep now.
I took Alina’s note and tore it up. I didn’t need to be told this was a secret. The fact that she hid it under the blank music page said everything I needed to know. No other students got an opportunity like this. I was about to get a forbidden sneak peek into the unknown.
10
The knock at my door made me jump. It was heavier than usual and had to belong to a large brutish hand. I knew who it was before I opened it.
“You understand the concept of discretion, right Blackburn?” Jake leaned up against the door frame as I opened it.
“Yes. Do you?”
He snickered. I could only imagine his face contorted in some mischievous way after Lothar told him where I was sleeping. He seemed to understand my meaning and extended his arm to let me know time was wasting away and I was meant to follow him.
I was dressed in my trench coat and a pair of leather boots half a size too big for me. Not that it mattered. I was just grateful Alina was willing to share her wardrobe with me. The only thing I had with me that was my size was the trench coat I was wearing. I’d have to fix that soon but it would require a trip into the human realm.
I walked down the stone steps. Jake held me back right before I walked to the main courtyard.
“What?” I asked.
“Discretion, remember?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
Jake took a small vial with dark powder in his hands. I instinctively took a few steps away, recognizing it immediately. It was the same powder Lothar had used to blind me when he wrestled me out from the back of the vehicle when the Vontex first brought me here.
“Relax, Blackburn,” he said with a grin. “Telmir has multiple uses.”
“Telmir?”
“It’s a special powder designed by the vixra. It can blind an enemy’s sight or blind others from seeing you.” With that, he threw the powder in the air between the two of us and it spread over both our bodies like some sort of sparkling pixie dust. I couldn’t tell if anything was different.
“Come on,” he said as he led the way out into the courtyard and toward the main drawbridge outside the fortress’s walls.
It wasn’t until we walked onto the wooden drawbridge with the night guards watching over the front of the fortress that I realized the powder was doing exactly what he claimed. It was hiding us. We appeared as nothing more than a shadow. Like a bird flying overhead and never revealing exactly where it is.
“Where are we going tonight?” I asked once we were far enough away from the fortress and making our way toward the woods.
“The human realm.”
“I figured that much,” I said.
“We rarely know the exact area. Sometimes we stick to the city and other times we have to journey farther out, which can get a little complicated. The oracle wheel will tell where to go.”
“The oracle wheel?”
He smiled as though he found my naivety cute. Which only made me irritated.
“You’ll see,” he said.
Alina and Lothar were already waiting along the dirt path in the forest once we reached them. The same car that I was hauled away in was parked behind them.
“Are you ready?” Alina asked me. The corner of her mouth was raised in a delighted smile.
“Given I’m not exactly sure what we’re doing, I can’t really say yes,” I responded.
“Same as we do whenever there’s a full moon,” Lothar answered. “Lycan are always more likely to hunt under the light of a full moon. It brings out our animalistic instincts more so than any other time. We use it as an opportunity to find freshly bitten werewolves and determine whether or not they’re suitable for the trials.”
I never really knew why Lothar spared me that night he found me in the graveyard. Other than the fact that my eyes turned red. He suspected I was a Blackatter right then and there. What criteria did a regular person who was freshly bitten need to meet for Lothar to spare their life?
“Here,” said Lothar, digging into his long black trench coat and pulling out a silver dagger from his pocket. “You’ll be observing tonight. Nothing more. Don’t do a single thing I haven’t expressly permitted and don’t move too far away from the car. If for any reason you feel in immediate danger get back in the car. And on the off chance you need it, use this.”
He presented me with the dagger in his hand. It didn’t have straight edges. It was carved in waves that met a sharp point at the end. The handle was wrapped with brown leather and silver lining. It fit my hand perfectly. Almost like it was designed for me. The second it touched my fingers I felt an insane amount of energy surge through my body.
“What the hell was that?” I asked once I took it into my hands.
“The vixra provide these daggers to us. They’re made from silver. But they’ve been spelled by magic that will prevent the silver from harming the lycan that wields it. This dagger will protect you and only harm those who wish to hurt you. But it’s still a weapon. Use it wisely.”
That was when I noticed Alina was wearing two belts with identical daggers around her waist. She removed the buckle from one and handed it to me. I wrapped it around my waist and fastened the knife to the hook along my side, loving the feeling of the cold handle against my skin.
“Get in,” Lothar ordered me.
He climbed into the driver’s side as Alina took the front passenger seat. I was stuck in the back with Jake and his leering eyes. He made no effort to hide the few times he had already tried to get a peek down my blouse.
Lothar started the car and we were off. Only this time, I wasn’t caged in the back like I was when I first arrived. I was a part of the action. Well, I was watching it. Even so, this felt like a natural progression. One I was more than willing to let myself enjoy.
I leaned forward and watched as the same gold light started to ripple open like waves in a pond. It sparked and flared as we drove through and entered the human realm right on the busy street. That was when I saw the silver wheel sitting on the center console.
“What did I tell you?” Jake beamed. “The oracle wheel.”
I peered over to him. His eyes were practically dancing at the sight of it. “You people have the craziest gadgets and toys that I’ve ever seen. Swords, magic dust, oracle wheels. Mind explaining?”
“With pleasure.” Jake gave me a wink.
Lothar glared at us through the rearview mirror.
I decided to play along with Jake’s flirtatious attitude and crossed my legs as though I was intrigued and ready to listen. I didn’t like Jake. He leered at me whenever he had the opportunity and was playful in ways I found juvenile. Not to mention he had zero game whatsoever. But for some reason, Lothar couldn’t help but steal glances at the two of us in the backseat through his rearview mirror. And I got the faint sense that he saw me giving Jake attention and was jealous.
‘This might be fun.’
“The oracle wheel was another gift from the vixra. Most of what we have is. But the oracle wheel is by far one of the most important. Each group of Vontex has one. We use it to help us find the humans that have recently been bitten. It gives us exact directions. We follow it and usually find the victim within a matter of minutes.”
“Is that what led you to me?”
Jake laughed. “That and the screaming.”
I wasn’t flirting anymore. The last thing I wanted was to remember what I did to the grave keeper. It filled me with an instant and unending spiral of shame.
“It works like this,” Jake went on, not even noticing the sudden change in my mood. “Spin it, Alina.”
She reached for the side of the wheel and thrust it downward. It spun counter-clockwise until I couldn’t even see the spindles anymore. It created a swirl of white light, glowing from the center of the car. I practically had to cover my eyes for a moment because the light was so bright. Then it started to dissipate within s
econds. One of the spindles was glowing, giving a direction once it came to a stop. Lothar took the closest exit and we drove west where it was pointing. A few kilometers away from the fortress and down Whitechapel Road. Then up Henriques Street. I recognized it instantly and felt my heart sink. It was a famous street for one reason. It used to be called Berner Street. And it was where Jack the Ripper murdered Elizabeth Stride. His third victim.
Dirk took me on a Jack the Ripper walking tour along with a bunch of tourists when I was young. I lost sleep over it for a week. That resulted in a six-month-long obsession over reading everything about the Jack the Ripper cases that I possibly could get my hands on. I only stopped after my mum told me my little obsession was starting to disturb her. Young girls shouldn’t take interests in serial killers, or so she said. And to think… here I was. Hunting the killers in the flesh.
‘Not quite what mum had in mind for me, I suppose.’
The alleys were darker, the atmosphere grim, and it wasn’t generally a place I wanted to wander in the late hours of the night.
‘Naturally, this is where a werewolf would end up on my first trip out with the Vontex.’
It was late, the streets gradually emptied, and my imagination did what it does best. Running away with images that were clearly the inner workings of a mad mind. I could envision the streets the way they must have looked ages ago. Dirty, filled with people and riddled with crime. Drunkards running about in the streets and the local whores freezing cold on a long winter night. That wasn’t what made me uneasy about this area. It was so old that I doubted it changed much in appearance from the days of the Whitechapel murders.
“You’re thinking it,” Jake said with an arch of his brow.
“What?”
“Oh, come on. This is where it happened. I can see your discomfort.”
‘You couldn’t see it when you brought up the grave keeper.’
I didn’t respond. I simply flipped my long curls back and gave him a curious grin as if I wasn’t sure of what he was talking about. A rush of heat struck the pit of my stomach. I knew Lothar was watching.
“This is where Jack the Ripper did his handy work,” Jake said.
“So?”
“So… ask what’s on your mind.”
“Was he a…a-”
“Lycan?” Lothar said from the driver’s seat. “We don’t know. But the Vontex from the 19th century suspected he may have been. The murders were far too brutal for words. So brutal that some of the handy work might have been the techniques of the Vontex before the police arrived to the crime scenes. The techniques for preventing bodies from transforming into werewolves was more barbaric back then. They were difficult to kill in times before we had modern weapons and silver swords and daggers enchanted by the vixra. Whoever the Jack the Ripper was, and if he was indeed a lycan, he was powerful.”
“And he brought about a great amount of upheaval,” Jake added. “Some say he was trying to expose us. Or it was the Dolch Erbe intentionally murdering women so we would make a mistake and reveal ourselves. No one knows for certain. They were dark times.”
“So why did the oracle wheel bring us here, then?” I asked.
Before anyone had the chance to answer my question I saw something move by the passenger window. It was far too fast to be a car. Or a human for that matter.
Lothar slammed his foot on the brakes and we stopped in the middle of the road. He climbed out of the car along with Alina and Jake. I got out too but stayed by the door.
“Don’t move, Riley,” Lothar ordered me.
I nodded, doing my best to do as he said. But it wasn’t easy. I felt exposed.
Lothar withdrew the sword from his side, as did Alina and Jake.
Alina sniffed the air and waited in silence, listening for some sort of sign of where the beast had gone. “There’s at least two,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Lothar agreed, moving slowly down Henriques Street.
There were a few cars parked on the road along with street lamps still lit above us. My senses picked up on all the awful smells in the area. Garbage, cigarettes, and least appealing of them all… old blood. Stale blood. Whoever was here, we were too late. The lycan we were searching for had already murdered someone.
“To the left,” Alina said, walking around a shadow on the road.
Lothar looked down at the body lying in the street. It was an old woman maybe in her eighties with a small basket of food she was carrying home from a local market. She had been there a while. We were the first to find her. And yet, I knew what I was looking at from the second I saw the body. Her throat had practically been torn out but her chest was moving.
“Oh my god,” I mumbled, taking a few steps forward. “She’s alive. Her body is trying to shift.”
“Stay by the car, Riley,” Lothar scolded me.
I backed up and watched as Lothar approached the old woman. Her breathing was labored and rough.
‘Oh, no.’
Lothar shook his head and raised his sword high. Then he thrust it down and severed the old woman’s head from her body. I wanted to turn away but I forced myself to watch as her skull went flying into the brick wall behind her. I didn’t need to be told why Lothar chose to end her life. She was too old, she had lived a long life, and she was far too weak to survive the trials. One key attribute I noticed about the trials was that all the initiates, including myself, were relatively young. Mostly in their teens and twenties. Only a select few were in their thirties. There were no significantly older students walking around. They couldn’t survive ten transformations.
Alina sighed and pulled out a bag from inside her trench coat.
“Wait,” Jake said.
I heard it too. The sound of heavy breathing. And it wasn’t human. I turned around to see gold glowing eyes appear from a nearby alleyway. I saw a jaw full of sharp teeth. A werewolf had been watching us from the moment we got out of the car. It was bending forward on its hind legs ready to pounce. Whoever this lycan nearby was, he had bitten more than one victim that night. And he didn’t even bother trying to hide them like Devon did with me.
“We’re dealing with an amateur,” said Jake, obviously coming to the same conclusion that I had.
“Then we have to start looking for him,” Alina said as she edged closer to the werewolf. It had its eyes on her and was clearly ready to attack her first, probably assuming she would be the easier target over the two muscular men. It assumed wrong. “Especially since he was probably able to survive all ten transformations on his own.”
Lothar and Jake closed in ranks around her, giving Alina protection as she walked with the old woman’s head in a bag and her sword in the other. The werewolf leaped through the air and tried tackling her to the ground. It never got the chance. Alina raised her sword and lunged forward, stabbing it directly through the chest until the beast sank down her blade. The only problem then was the beast coming in fast and forcing her to the ground with its heavy body weight. Lothar kicked it away and I watched as the animal tumbled to the ground and howled in pain with the sword still lodged in its chest. Blood sputtered from its mouth. Jake closed in on it and sliced it clean through the neck until it was dead.
That was when I heard it. The sound of a man screaming down the road. It was the sort of screaming that meant only one thing. A man was going through his first shift. I could hear his bones breaking one by one, followed by an ungodly cry of agony.
Lothar shot me a glare before taking off down the street, making sure that I knew better than to follow them. Alina and Jake ran down the road with their swords in one hand and guns in the other. I was alone on the street, listening as they turned a corner and saw what I assumed was a young man just starting his first shift in the darkness of what was probably one of the most haunted corners of London.
‘This is your idea of letting me observe? Leaving me alone like this?’
I leaned up against the car with my arms folded across my chest, wondering if Lothar would kill th
e young man or if he would give him a chance to pass the trials. Rodrick said I was one of the few he had brought back in a long while. I gathered that Lothar’s mercy wasn’t easily won.
A foul smell greeted my nostrils. I recoiled at the smell and covered my nose. One of the less enjoyable parts about becoming a lycan was the heightened smell. It didn’t help when there was something awful in the air. But in this case, I knew it was doing me a favor. I wasn’t smelling just anything. It was the smell of rotting flesh. Or more accurately, bad breath from eating dead human flesh.
My back stiffened. The sound of two feet walked stealthily around the opposite corner of the street. A beast stood before me in the shadows. He was tall, he was hungry, and he saw me standing there.
It was a lycan. And not just any lycan. The one that bit the two people the Vontex were now having to deal with.
“No! No! No!” the young man shouted from around the corner. Then I heard the sound of metal clashing against the concrete. Lothar killed the man mid-shift. He didn’t show him the same mercy he bestowed upon me.
I wasn’t sure if I should scream for Lothar to come back or to shift right away to defend myself. Either way, the lycan saw me and was coming in for his next meal. He went down on all four legs and started charging in my direction. I was getting better at shifting but I couldn’t do it fast enough to fight him off. So I ripped the silver dagger out of my trench coat and let the crowning magic brewing inside of me out as quick as I could. It tore through my palms so fast that it felt like they were being sliced open with knives. I let out a yelp just before I thrust my arm back and got ready to stab the lycan. Only my magic had other plans.
My sight turned red and I could see the lycan with perfect clarity in the darkness of the night. Along with my target. His heart.
The red magic swirled around the knife and shot a bolt of energy through my shoulder. I threw the dagger in the air and my magic guided it right where I wanted. The beast roared into the sky just as he reared up to attack me. The dagger landed true, directly in his heart.
He tumbled to the ground and started sliding in my direction. And he wasn’t losing speed. I had to leap out of the way before he collided into me. He didn’t stop until he reached the corner of the lane.
Restrike: (Lycan Academy of Shapeshifting: Operation Shift, Book 2) Page 10