by Ruby Loren
Her hair was blown back from her face by the same warm breeze. January realised that it had grown longer, recently. With so much else on her mind, she hadn’t thought about cutting it. She sighed and shrugged to herself when she reached the treed edges of her property. There were certainly more important things in life.
“Hi,” a low voice said.
January realised that she’d been so preoccupied she’d nearly walked straight into Joe.
“What are you doing here?” She asked and then bit her tongue.
Joe raised an eyebrow. “I thought I’d meet you here and we could walk to the pack meeting together. We’re all about a united pack, aren’t we? And we’re meant to be together,” he added, giving January a significant look.
She brushed her hair off her face, instantly feeling bad. They hadn’t talked since she’d received Gregory’s present. “Sorry we haven’t seen each other. I’ve just been, I don’t know… trying to get on with things and avoiding responsibilities,” she said with a weak grin.
Joe’s mouth set in a firm line. She suddenly realised that labelling him as a ‘responsibility’ wasn’t exactly winning her any brownie points. “Sorry,” she repeated.
Joe just sighed. They walked on through the twilight woods in silence. At first, January tried to think of ways to patch things up, but her mind soon drifted back to the events of the past week and one event in particular that she wasn’t sure she’d ever get over…
“I heard you died,” Joe said, bluntly.
January blinked and looked at him. “You don’t sound too upset.”
Joe shrugged and looked directly into her eyes. “Should I be? It’s pretty clear you aren’t dead, but I don’t know why you’d make something like that up.”
January half-shrugged and wondered what to say. She wished she’d had a chance to talk to Tor since everything had happened, but it had completely slipped her mind. Probably it wouldn’t be a good idea to go around letting people know she could rise from the dead.
“It was a stupid publicity stunt,” she mumbled, wishing they would reach the clearing a little bit faster.
Joe snorted. She looked at him, her eyebrows sky-high.
“What? You didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell anyone who cared about you that that’s all it was? You let us all hear about it on the news?”
January bit her lip, avoiding his gaze. “It was really last minute. Sorry! I really am,” she said, feeling like her insides were being put through a blender. “I hope the pack are okay,” she said, wondering how many of them had known she was playing with James Phoenix, or how many of them had recognised her from the blurry images on the news.
“There were a few calls…” Joe said.
January tilted her head at him, expectantly. His eyes glowed bright for a second and January could feel the annoyed energy pouring off him.
“I told them you were fine. January Chevalier is pretty hard to kill,” he said.
January’s mouth twisted up a little, but Joe’s sombre expression didn’t change. She sighed and shrugged, not knowing what else to offer him. This was the way her life was, and the way it probably always would be until The Clan finally killed her off, or she found a way to wriggle out of her fate. Joe would have to decide if he wanted to stand with her, or give her a wide berth. She wouldn’t blame him if he chose the latter.
A howl cut through the silence. Joe’s eyes glowed wolfishly again. “The wolves are on a hunt. See you later,” he said. The next second, he was a huge, dark wolf, already disappearing into the distance. January considered changing herself, but after everything Joe had told her about shifters calling up concerned, it would be best to show her face.
She looked down at her feet that seemed so slow in comparison to hooves. A warm breeze blew through the leaves, smelling of freedom and the promise of miles of galloping. She sighed as it was carried away from her. Lately, her life had been reduced to living for times like these - small, sweet moments of relief in-between trying to stay alive and keep what remained of her hopes and dreams hidden somewhere deep.
“Whoa,” she muttered when one foot slipped on the edge of the clearing. She’d made it to the edge of the bowl without realising. She looked at the group of shifters below, already in their animal forms. They were fewer than they had been, but that was probably because the tourists were finally heeding her warning and staying away. She hastily pasted a smile on her face, and then turned down the wattage, so that it was less forced.
“I just wanted you all to know that rumours of my demise were greatly…”
“January Chevaaaalier!” A familiar voice rang out, cutting her off in the middle of her dramatic quote. She couldn’t resist rolling her eyes heavenwards, before turning to face Bob.
The ‘King Magician’ stood on the opposite side of the clearing, dressed in some form of ceremonial robe.
“Go away, Bob. This place is for shifters only and you’re in danger.” Her voice was taut. The shifters in the clearing turned towards Bob, fur on end and teeth on show. January felt a shiver run up her spine. She wasn’t actually sure who would come off best if it came to a battle. It would probably depend on how fast Bob could move his tongue, before someone ripped it out.
“I challenge you for leadership of the pack! I challenge you by duel!” He yelled.
January felt her annoyance grow to a level where it was really hard to stay in human form. “You. Are. Not. A. Shape-shifter.” She enunciated. “Leave now,” she said, summoning the energy around her and getting ready to change. Perhaps he’d find her an easier target, but what did it matter? It was just as Joe had said, she was pretty hard to kill – even harder now it seemed she really was immortal.
“No one beats me,” Bob said, so quietly she wouldn’t have heard it, if it weren’t for her supernaturally finely tuned hearing. Some instinct made January’s blood run cold. She hurried up the change, sensing she’d be safer in unicorn form.
Bob threw something onto the forest floor. January heard the sound of breaking glass and then some words mumbled by Bob. Bright red light spilled out around him, circling him like tongues of crimson flame. The shifters backed away, turning towards her with animal fear in their eyes. January stood on the edge of the clearing, her mind filled with fuzz. She had to step in and stop this, but how? She didn’t even know what Bob was doing.
All she could tell was that it was extremely deadly.
Protect them! The words echoed around her head. She pulled and shaped something out of her magic, throwing it down into the clearing, where it spread over the top of her pack – a black cloud of protection.
She had no idea if it would work.
Her gaze returned to Bob. The stretched smile on his face let her know her efforts were probably in vain. He screamed a word January had never heard before and somehow instantly forgot. The red ball of power spread out, travelling as fast as a nuclear bomb explosion. January felt it hit the edge of her shield of magic and disintegrate it into a billion particles.
It was all over.
So, this is how it ends, she thought, more bemused than anything else. An arrogant magician was the one who would finally destroy her.
Hang on.
A second had passed and she was still alive.
She discovered that she’d shut her eyes and opened them again.
The red light had stopped at the edge of her protective shield and was hovering there, frozen in time. Bob was frozen too, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. His magical bomb looked like someone had pressed pause.
Then something impossible happened.
The red ball of light began to crawl backwards, folding itself in towards Bob. Bob’s mouth was now a silent scream. The power plunged back towards him, striking him in the chest and folding inwards, until all that remained of Bob and his magic was a pinprick of light that winked out.
January discovered she hadn’t taken a breath for several moments. She flicked her forelock back out of her eyes and stared at the pl
ace Bob had been.
Look here, something whispered. She turned her head, her eyes meeting an amber pair. A young woman, still in her teens, that she’d never seen before looked back at her. January frowned inside, knowing that her eyes knew far too much for her apparent age. Was she looking at her saviour? Was this the person who had broken all of Bob’s death curses?
January lifted a hoof, preparing to cross the clearing to meet her, but the girl smiled once and waved her hand, dissolving January’s protective shield over the shifters without a second thought. Then she vanished.
Who is she? January wondered and knew that her life would now be taken up trying to solve this new mystery. Someone had to know who the girl with the amber eyes was and why she would want to save January.
19
“What was that?” Ryan asked, panting as he climbed the steep side of the clearing in human form.
January inwardly cringed when she changed back into her human, very naked, shape. It was too bad that the shifters were still creeped out by psychic shifter communication whilst in animal form. If only Luke hadn’t abused it.
“What was… what part of it?” She asked, not entirely sure what those down in the clearing would have seen. To be honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what she’d seen.
“The magician freak, he had some bomb that smelt and sounded of death. Then all this black stuff came and it was pretty terrifying, too. But I don’t know, it felt…” Ryan took a breath and frowned. “…safe, I suppose,” he said. There was a moment’s pause when Bella swung herself over the top of the hill, far more gracefully than Ryan had.
“It was you. You saved us, didn’t you?” Bella said, her face glowing.
January felt her cheeks warm from the praise, knowing it wasn’t deserved. If it had been just her against Bob, they would all have died. It hurt to know that she wasn’t even good enough to take on a human magician. What hope did she have against a group as aged and experienced as the first vampires? It was a stone-cold reality check.
“I think Bob’s dead,” January said, eager to push the conversation away from her.
Bella and Ryan looked at her like she was crazy.
“You think?” Ryan said, sarcastically. Bella punched his arm in such a familiar way, January felt a jealous stab to the heart. Why couldn’t she find someone like that? The way Joe was acting towards her made her suspect that their newfound pack union wasn’t going to last for long.
“What was that?”
January, Ryan, and Bella, spun round and discovered that Joe had just appeared. They could hear the snarls and growls of the unsettled pack, who were presumably just behind him, waiting beneath the trees.
“The end of King Bob,” January said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about his death. Yes, he’d been a psycho, hell-bent on proving he was the best magic user out there, but had he deserved to die in such a horrible way?
Joe nodded. “Good,” he said. “My hair was so on end, I thought it was going to run away from my body.”
January chewed her lip. “How far away from here were you?” She asked.
“Three miles, give or take?” Joe said with a shrug.
January tried to quell the panic that kept rising up inside her. Bob’s magical bomb would probably have levelled the forest for miles around. After all of her training with Tor, and being told how powerful an enchanter should be, how was it that she was still so helpless?
“What happened?” Joe pressed.
January felt the weight of the world resting on her. Wasn’t tonight meant to be one of the few opportunities she had to escape from all the depressing responsibilities?
“Bob’s magic folded back on him and he died,” she said, carefully excluding the how and the why. Joe frowned and opened his mouth, no doubt to ask exactly that, but January had had enough. “Let’s all just get back to the full moon madness. It’ll be better for everyone if we carry on as normal…” And pretend that we didn’t nearly get disintegrated into tiny particles, she silently finished. “Have a good night,” she said, before turning back into a unicorn and nearly huffing out a sigh of relief. Maybe one day she’d get over the whole being in the nude in front of hundreds of people, but it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
“January, wait!” Joe started to say, but she had already disappeared between the trees. Her duties to the pack could wait. They’d be fine on their own for one full moon, now that she’d shown her face and may or may not have destroyed Bob. All she wanted to do was run and forget about everything.
But what she wanted to do and what she needed to do were two very different things, she reflected, when she neared the trees by her home.
“At least with Bob gone, I might get some peace and quiet,” she muttered under her breath, when she walked out onto her driveway.
Someone was sat on her porch, or rather - they were being propped up by it, she realised as she got closer. She broke into a run.
“Tor! What are you doing here? Are you okay? What happened?” She said, all in one breath, not finding time to be embarrassed by her appearance for once. Her magical tutor’s face was grey. He looked like the last of his energy was ebbing away.
His eyes unclouded and found hers for a moment, but there was no relief. “Time… I was giving you time by hiding your whereabouts. It’s all I could do. It’s the last thing I’ll do,” Tor added with a small smile.
January gaped at him. “What do you mean? You mean…. Them?” She said, filled with horror. Just a few moments ago, she’d been accepting how powerless she was against those with much stronger magic. She’d thought she’d have time to prepare for her next test, but now it seemed it was imminent.
She didn’t have a cat’s chance.
“There are just two more things to impart to you, January,” Tor said. January silenced the thoughts in her head. He cleared his throat. “Tell Simon that the rabbit is his problem now… and, January?”
“Yes?” She wondered if he was about to tell her some big magical secret.
“They’re coming. Run,” he said and died.
20
Two whirlwinds threw back the leaves at the edge of the woods by her house. January tensed and summoned her magic, but it was Leah and Gregory who materialised.
“January, we have to go right now!” Leah said and then glared at Gregory. “What are you doing here?”
He tried to look surprised but a snake-ish grin crossed his face. “I was following you to see if you’d notice,” he said and then chivalrously threw his long coat towards January.
Leah rolled her eyes at his implied mastery over her skills. “I don’t check to see if I’m being followed because who is there that could beat me?” She said and then paled. “They’re here. I can feel it,” she said, her eyes wide with warning. “If we run now… you should change and run,” she implored.
January shook her head, looking down at Tor. She hoped he would forgive her for wasting his last efforts by not fleeing. “I’ll be running forever if we go now. You shouldn’t stay, but perhaps this is it for me. Maybe they’ll let me talk.”
Leah snorted. “It’s more likely they’ll tear you to ribbons and scatter your remains in the wind before you can open your mouth.”
January winced but made no move. One last run would be fun, the voice in her head whispered, making her think of fields full of grass and corn. She shook her head. She did not want to die running. Anyway… you have one ace up your sleeve, she thought, remembering that there was a good chance she’d resurrect after her death. Perhaps not if she was torn to tiny pieces, as Leah predicted, but you never knew…
“January! The forest… everyone’s gone crazy!”
The two vampires and January turned to see Ryan and Bella winding their way through the bushes.
“They’re all fighting,” Bella added, her beautiful golden face lined with concern.
“Get out of here, now!” Leah said, her tone forceful and so
full of glamour January saw it as a glowing miasma that encircled the two shifters.
Ryan and Bella stared from Leah to January, but made no move.
“Great… they must be really close if that didn’t work,” Leah muttered and crossed her arms. The only thing that showed her true feelings was the muscle next to her left eye, which jumped.
“You should go, Leah,” January said, appreciating her efforts to save her. Perhaps the vampire-witch really was on her side after all. “You too, Ryan and Bella. I’m sorry if you get caught up in whatever happens next. I never meant for it to happen. Perhaps if you run now, it will be enough.” Ryan and Bella just looked confused. “They’re coming… The Clan. They’re finally coming to make an end,” she said.
Ryan and Bella exchanged a look and January felt her heart sink.
“I’m still your second. We’re staying,” Ryan said.
January wished they didn’t have to be so stubborn. Didn’t they understand they could have a normal, long life, if they just stayed away from her?
A flash of blue magic made them all jump, but January quickly recognised the person walking within the shield. “Simon… oh no,” she said, knowing he was here for Tor.
“I sensed the fading of my father,” he said, looking across at the figure still slumped on the porch. “I see now I’m too late.” He shrugged and dispensed with the formal speech. “Did he have any last words?” January tried to ignore his flippancy, knowing it was probably just his way of dealing with things.
Then again, with Simon, you never knew.
“He said: ‘Tell Simon the rabbit is his problem now’,” she repeated, knowing exactly which rabbit Tor had been referring to.
Simon’s face screwed up in annoyance. “Why, that old bag! I thought it was his idea of a bad joke. I’ll kill… oh,” he stopped talking and looked thoughtful.
“Simon, they’re coming,” January said, her voice cutting through the silence of the night.