by Laura Taylor
He’d been aghast when she’d told him she was going through with the ritual. He’d tried to talk her out of it, tried to convince her that there was no shame in refusing, no obligation to endure this. His concern had been touching, a warm reminder of their newfound affection for each other… but nonetheless, she’d stood her ground and quietly explained to him that she had no intention of backing out. In her oath to Il Trosa she’d been granted aid from any wolf in Europe and agreed to lend the same in return. Honour, as well as conscience, decreed that she help in whatever way she was able.
Before Dee was quite ready for it, Heron stepped up next, her face blank, her shoulders back. Dee was still bleeding, not too quickly, but enough for another test, and Heron picked up the knife and cut her wrist, a tiny flinch the only sign of discomfort.
“Heron was sired by the line of Fellor. Her sire was Raven. His sire was Anstella of Inuell. Begin.”
The same procedure. The same result, and at the end of it, Dee could hardly manage to keep herself upright. She leaned heavily on the table while Faeydir tried to offer comfort, feeling drained, weak as a newborn puppy.
And then Skip stepped forward, and she was about ready to beg off the final test.
Of the four bloodlines traced from the Four Mothers, only three were still used by Il Trosa. The fourth was the line of Grenable, reserved exclusively for the Grey Watch, and while it was unlikely that Dee would have come from them, the chance remained. Or, of course, there was the possibility that she was not of any registered line. Given what was at stake here, they couldn’t afford to make any assumptions.
“Skip was sired by the line of Harkans,” Baron announced. “Her sire was Tank. His sire was Eleanor Renoir. Begin.”
Skip flinched as she cut herself, grimacing as the blood began to flow, which made Dee feel better about the fuss she had made at her own wound. Quickly, as if wanting to get this over with, Skip darted forward and held their wrists together. Dee braced herself for another trip through the wringer… and a few seconds later, looked up at Skip in surprise. There was no reaction, no pain, no fire in her veins, just a faint warmth amid the slick seep of blood.
“The Den has witnessed this,” Baron announced, as Skip withdrew. “Dee Carman is descended from the line of Harkans.” He paused, and when he continued, his voice sounded a little tighter. “Her sire will be recorded as Jean-Luc Descoteaux.” Dee recognised the name as one of the shifters who had been kidnapped. Jean-Luc was from the French Den, the only one of those kidnapped from the line of Harkans. But she was too worn out now to really consider what it meant to know her sire. She had expected joy, maybe, or relief, or even sadness, given the circumstances of her conversion. Instead, all she felt was an overwhelming desire to get the cuffs off her wrist.
“Dee?” Baron was talking to her again, and she tried to concentrate. He crouched down in front of her and spoke in low tones. “There is one more test we’d like to perform. It won’t hurt much, just one more little cut, but it will tell us whether your sire is… whether he’s still alive.”
They hadn’t mentioned this before, and Dee fiddled with the straps with her free hand, wanting them off, not really listening to Baron.
He put a firm hand over her own, stilling her attempts to get free. “Dee? Listen. Please.”
Dee forced herself to look up at him.
“Let her go,” Mark spoke up, sounding strained. Baron growled loudly without even glancing up at him.
Dee shook her head. “How the hell can you tell if he’s alive just by taking my blood? Mixing the bloodlines at least makes a bit of sense, even if it’s totally gross.” Exhaustion was catching up with her, Dee thought, as she realised she was starting to ramble. “But now you’re just going to use my blood to conjure up a crystal ball to tell you if the guy’s alive? That’s not possible.”
“This is a world of myth and magic,” Caroline said softly, and Dee was surprised to find her crouched down beside Baron. She hadn’t noticed her move. “Science as you know it no longer applies, nor does the conventional sense of cause and effect.”
“You’re crazy,” Dee said flatly. But then she felt Faeydir give her a nudge. An image of flames. An incantation echoing in her head. Bloody hell, even the wolf was against her.
“Let her go!” Mark repeated, and Dee glanced over at him. She wondered what it would feel like if he had gone missing, if she was sitting at home waiting for news of his fate.
She squinted up at Baron’s rugged face, crease lines etched into the skin around his eyes, around the corners of his mouth, and he looked older in the dim light. Tired. Worn. “If he lives, we need to find him,” she said, her voice strained. “If he’s dead, then let his Den mourn for him properly.” She felt completely wrung out, her muscles aching from the earlier tests, her head hurting, her eyes stinging even at the faint light of the torches. But she’d come this far. They may as well finish it now.
She barely flinched when she felt the next cut. Blood ran over her wrist, down onto the wood, pooling in a small silver dish beneath the platform. As Baron collected the dish, Caroline undid the straps and tended her wound, a few quick swipes with disinfectant and then a soft dressing, a fast and expert job of applying a bandage.
By the time she was done, Baron was over on the lawn. A large candle, at least four inches wide, was set on the ground, and a strange scent was rising from it that made Dee wonder what it was made from. As she watched, Baron placed a metal stand over the flame, then lowered the dish onto the stand reverently.
Heron stepped forward, a bandage stained with red covering her own recently cut wrist. Electricity filled the air, and a low murmur rose around her. Dee felt herself sway as the sound got louder, and then she realised that the entire Den was chanting. Heron added a pinch of black powder to the dish over the flame. Two drops of oil from a tiny vial. A small leaf of some herb or other, crushed and sprinkled on top. Then she called out an incantation, startling Dee, the words loud against the chanting, the language beautiful, if incomprehensible.
The candle sputtered, the flame licking up over the sides of the dish. It turned vivid blue, engulfed the cup of blood in a bright burst of light… and went out.
Silence.
Baron closed his eyes briefly, taking a deep breath to steady himself.
“The sire no longer breathes,” he said, his voice strained, and Dee felt her lip tremble, tears pricking at her eyes. Her emotions were a mess as exhaustion, anger, and a sudden and unexpected sorrow washed over her at the news that the wolf who had brought her into this world was dead. For all her earlier indifference to her sire, she suddenly understood the hatred Il Trosa felt for the Noturatii. No longer a distant, impersonal threat, their activities now had a personal impact on her. A moment’s reflection was all it took to realise that, for all her shaky and involuntary introduction to this world, these people were now her family, her friends, her comrades, in a war that had raged for centuries.
“May his body find rest in the earth. May his heart return to the forest. May his soul ride the night winds with those who fell before.” The entire Den recited the mantra, then a thick silence engulfed the circle.
“Thank you, Dee,” Baron muttered, eyes on the ground, his gratitude heartfelt, if laced with sorrow. “I’ll contact the Council and inform the Den in France.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It took surprisingly little time for the laboratory complex to be restored to order. After her impromptu meeting with Miller, Li Khuli had released the security system back to Jacob’s control, opened the sealed doors to let the staff out and presented herself and her team of five assassins to the head of security. It wasn’t a polite introduction, but rather a lecture on the inadequacies of their defences and the need for a complete overhaul, after which she simply vanished.
Jacob was livid. It was hard to tell which annoyed him more – that Li Khuli had broken into the lab with such ease, or that she had omitted to introduce herself to him at any point in the hours that
followed. Jacob liked to be in control, liked to dictate how things ran, rather than having them dictated to him, and Miller had to wonder just how that was going to work out with a free-agent assassin wandering around. Li Khuli answered to no one but the CEO, an elusive figure in the German Head Office, who ran the Noturatii with the refined control of a drill sergeant and the fanaticism of a third world dictator. So, while she was here on Jacob’s request and to serve his lab, that didn’t mean she was going to do anything he said.
So when Miller finally had the chance to catch up with Jacob again, after an hour or two of restoring their systems and debriefing with the security team, it was no surprise to find him in a foul mood.
“You haven’t submitted your report from your investigation up north,” Jacob barked at him when he arrived in his office.
“I was nearly finished typing it when we were interrupted,” Miller said politely, avoiding any direct reference to Li Khuli as it was only likely to send Jacob into a lather again. “It would only take me a few minutes to finish it now-”
“Just tell me what the hell happened and stop wasting my time!”
Miller was not at all put out by Jacob’s harsh attitude. If he was the type to get offended every time a superior officer yelled at him, he’d never have made it in the military. And he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the Noturatii. “There was nothing particularly informative, sir. The house seemed suspicious, but nothing that could be immediately linked to the shifters. Once the report is finished I’ll submit a request to put them under surveillance.”
“The sooner the better,” Jacob said impatiently. “These creatures are dangerous.”
“The lady we spoke to didn’t seem particularly dangerous,” Miller countered hesitantly, knowing his views on this went against official Noturatii opinion. “She was polite, cooperative, pleasant enough. I would find it hard to believe she had any criminal intentions.”
“Have you ever met a shifter, Miller?” Jacob interrupted, impatience in his tone. “Ever seen one face to face?”
“Only once, sir. The day you showed me one in the lab.” It had been a gruesome experience, Miller’s first real introduction to the Noturatii’s underground world, only an hour after he’d been told that shape shifters were real, and not confined to video games and fantasy novels. The shifter had been more dead than alive from the torture, but that hadn’t been what had shocked Miller. Seeing the man turn into a wolf…
He snapped back to the present, realising that Jacob was talking again. “…innocent face, a girl, maybe, some no older than eighteen or nineteen. And you can look into that face, wide eyes, tears, downturned mouth, and forget what they are. They are deceptive, above all else. They pretend to be one thing, while they’re quite another. Do you know why I do this job?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s because the shifters are the biggest threat to national security – no, to the security of the human race – that we’ve ever seen. Can you imagine how easy it would be for them to carry out terrorist activities? They can travel through remote areas, endure conditions that would kill most humans. They could find their way through a forest to a major dam, for example, set bombs to blow the place up, let the flood destroy a city downstream, then vanish into the wilderness as wolves, and no one, no one would ever find them again. They can cross international borders without a passport – any countries connected by land, at least. They could walk down the street and you’d never know the difference. That’s what you have to keep in mind. The wolves are natural deceivers. They’ll lie to your face, make you believe that black is white, turn your world upside down, and then kill you while you’re trying to figure out what day of the week it is. So never, ever underestimate how dangerous they are.”
“Yes, sir,” Miller replied respectfully. For all his disagreement with Jacob’s assessment, the man was his boss, after all.
“Now get that report finished and send it to headquarters. We’ve wasted quite enough time today already.”
The ritual was over, the mood sombre, as the Den filed back into the house, or out across the grounds, some of them shifting even before they got to the trees.
Baron and Caroline were standing nearby having a tense conversation, and Dee supposed she could have waited for them to finish, asked them to help her back into the house, but a stubborn determination made her attempt to stand up by herself. Her legs were shaking, her arms supporting her weight on the blood-stained table, but she told herself it was only a short walk to her bedroom. Though getting up the stairs might be difficult…
Strong arms scooped her up suddenly, and Dee looked up in surprise, expecting to see Baron carrying her again.
No, not Baron. Mark had caught her, his face grim, mouth a tight, angry line as he carefully nestled her in against his shoulder. “You look exhausted,” he muttered, as if that was her fault, and he set a quick pace back towards the house.
“I’m okay,” Dee said, trying to reassure him, but his scowl only deepened at the words.
“Baron shouldn’t have asked you to do that. You’re too young as a shifter. For heaven’s sake, you’ve only been out of the cage for a few days.”
It was tempting to argue with him, to insist that she was strong enough to look after herself, to make the point that she wanted to be useful to the Den, but given the fact that she didn’t think she could even walk by herself at this point, she suspected the argument would be a hollow one.
“It was rough,” she admitted. “But it was worth it. I know who my sire was, now. And his Den will know what happened to him. That’s got to be worth something, right?”
They were inside the house now, Mark heading up the stairs, careful not to jostle her as he walked, and for a moment he didn’t reply. At the top of the stairs, he paused, looked down at her, pain evident in his eyes.
“That was horrible to watch, you know that?”
Dee nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. But it was necessary,” she said stubbornly, not regretting her decision to go through the ritual, despite the pain it had caused.
Mark shook his head, marching quickly to her bedroom, kicking the door closed and setting her gently on the bed. He tugged the blankets up over her and set a pillow against the headboard for her to lean against. Then he sat down beside her, watching her intently. “The surprises just don’t stop with you, do they?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been thrown in the deep end so many times in the past few weeks. You’ve been kidnapped, tortured, locked up, insulted… but I’ve never once heard you complain. And then Baron just keeps asking more of you, and you feel like you owe us something. Do you know how much I admire you?”
Dee shook her head. In her own mind, she hadn’t done anything remarkable. Despite the bad circumstances of her arrival, this Den had been working overtime to help her, even when it had caused them plenty of problems of their own. Tonight had been a chance to prove she had something to give back to them, however small it might be.
Unexpectedly, Mark leaned down and kissed her, hands cupping her face tenderly, his eyes shining in the dim light of the bedside lamp. “You are absolutely priceless.”
Dee couldn’t help the grin on her face. This fledgling romance with Mark was moving rather more quickly than she was used to. But then again, everything in her life in the last few weeks had seemed to be happening in fast forward. Her conversion, her ‘death’, her acceptance into the Den, the status fights – it was only a day since she’d officially become part of the Den, and already she was ranked third up from the bottom. Another two weeks, and God knew what more might change in her life.
But there was one nagging issue in her mind, one that, despite her best efforts, wouldn’t leave her alone. “Could I ask you something that might be awkward?”
Mark nodded immediately. “Of course. Anything you like.”
“It’s about the lab.”
Despite his eager agreement only a moment ago, Mark’s expression turned guarded
– not that Dee was surprised. The whole issue of the lab was rather a tough spot, after all. “Is this about keeping it a secret from Baron?”
“No! No, I said I wouldn’t tell him and I won’t. I do feel kind of guilty about that, but… Look, there was just… there’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“Okay,” he said cautiously. “What is it?”
“When we talked about how you rescued me, you said you were looking for someone. I’d like to know who.”
Mark grimaced and looked away. Dee didn’t mean to upset him, but nonetheless she needed to know. “My sister,” Mark said finally. “You know we renounce our family ties when we join Il Trosa. But about a year ago, I just wanted to know where my sister was, how she was doing. So I did a little research. It’s completely against our rules, I know,” he added, to his own chagrin. “I wasn’t going to contact her directly, but I needed to know she was doing okay. And then… well, the short version is that I stumbled upon some information that suggested she’d been kidnapped by the Noturatii and was being held in their lab. I did a little digging, found out where it was, explored some of their security protocols so I could work around them. And then the other week, we were in London on other business, but I had a few hours to myself, so… I went looking.”
Dee nodded. It explained a lot, why he’d been willing to take such a risk, how he’d known the layout of the lab to be able to find her. “Then you know what it’s like to lose your family, and to need to break the rules to see them safe,” she said softly.
Mark nodded slowly. “It’s an act of treason. But in this case, the goal was worth the risk.”
“I understand. And because of that… I’d like to ask you a favour.”
“What is it?”
Dee held her breath, glanced around the room like she expected someone to leap out of the wardrobe and yell ‘gotcha!’. She lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “Would you be able to send a message to my family? To let them know I’m alive?”