by L.H. Cosway
“Your assumptions about how Wolf got changed back into a man are probably right,” Rita agrees, referring to my theory that the magic of the ritual somehow released Wolf from his animal form.
Delilah is rubbing her eyes, her lips are drawn in a thin line as she contemplates the fact that Theodore is back. Everyone else is silent, with similar expressions of worry on their faces. What does this mean for us? What does it mean for Tribane? All I know is that come hell or high water, I am going to figure out a way to fix this. To send Theodore straight back to hell and return my dad to his old life.
A few minutes later we get into Finn’s van and drive home. Once there, Finn helps Wolf, who still hasn’t breathed a word and looks as though he doesn’t know where he is, into his bedroom. He gives him some clothing to wear and then lets him go to sleep. I sleep for a few hours and then take a long bath and try not to think about anything at all, while Alvie and Rita retreat to their motor home.
When I get out of the bath, Gabriel and Delilah are absent yet again. I really want to know what those two are up to, family bonding perhaps? Playing catch up on each other’s lives? Although something tells me that they’re discussing far more important matters.
As I leave my bedroom, clad in some grey sweat pants and a loose white shirt, I walk right into somebody’s lean, tanned chest. Ira, the man who once was Wolf. It’s actually sad that I’m going to miss having the dog around, perhaps it’s selfish but I wish we could change him back.
“Sorry,” I whisper, looking up into his big brown eyes. His long hair hangs down by his shoulders and he’s only wearing a pair of trousers and no top. He keeps looking at me as if he knows me. Maybe he remembers me from when he was a dog.
“Are you hungry?” I ask, after I’ve heard his stomach rumble. He doesn’t answer. “Come on, I’ll make you something to eat.” Still no answer, but as I start to walk down the stairs, he follows.
In the kitchen I put some chicken and potatoes in the oven to bake, and Wolf stands by the door watching me the whole time. I take his hand and lead him over to sit at the table, he does so obediently. A few minutes later I hear Finn coming down the stairs.
“Something smells good,” he exclaims as he walks into the room.
“I’m making dinner,” I tell him. “You want some?”
“I wouldn’t say no,” he grins and goes to sit down by Wolf. “How’re you feeling Ira?” he asks, but Wolf just tilts his head to the side, staring at Finn quizzically. “Still not talking, eh? You’ll soon get the hang of it.” Finn opens a newspaper that’s been sitting on the kitchen table and begins perusing the headlines, while I check on the food and put out some plates and cutlery.
A minute later I hear a key turn in the front door and Gabriel and Delilah walk in, both looking a little anxious and stony faced.
“Jaysus, would you look at the two of you, faces that could crack steel. What’s going on?” says Finn, glancing up from his paper to peer at the dhamphir half siblings.
Before they have the chance to say anything, Rita, Alvie and Noreen come in. “I got your message Gabriel, what did you want us here for?” Rita asks.
“We have a proposition for all of you,” Delilah speaks up. “It’s in the best interests of everyone, especially given the current circumstances with Theodore. I managed to persuade Gabriel to agree, so the rest of you shouldn’t be too difficult to convince.”
“What do we need to be convinced of?” Finn asks, a sceptical look in his eyes now.
Delilah clears her throat. “You are all aware of what happened at Whitfield’s house a little under two weeks ago. That event had a profound effect on the Governor’s long standing relationship with my brother Ethan. Whitfield decided to put Ethan on trial for knowingly bringing a spy into his home.”
“But Ethan didn’t know anything about what I was going to do,” I interrupt.
“We all know that,” says Delilah. “Still, somebody had to take the blame for what happened and Ethan was the most obvious scapegoat.”
“What was decided upon in the trial?” Rita asks.
“Ethan was declared an outlaw of the South and has been cast out of vampire society, alongside those who are loyal to him, which includes Lucas, Dru and another vampire who works at the club, Will.” I let out a long gasp. This is all my fault. Like I need any more self-hatred to be dealing with right now.
“So,” Delilah continues. “I want to put a proposition to all of you which is this, we team up with my brother and the others in order to protect ourselves from whatever is going to happen now that Theodore has returned.”
“No way!” Finn refuses. “I’m a slayer, there’s no chance in hell that I’m gonna team up with a bunch of vampires.”
“Finn,” says Gabriel in a reasoning tone, “I understand where you’re coming from, believe me I do. No one has more of an issue with Ethan than me, but it is our best bet for staying alive, and perhaps saving the city from another long stretch of tyranny. Think about it. We need some vampires on our side, they are far stronger than any of us physically.”
Finn has an angry scowl on his face, but he seems to be mulling it over. His eyes are latched in challenge with Gabriel’s, who appears to be trying to silently convince Finn to say yes. Finally, Finn lets out a long breath and grudgingly answers, “Fine, we’ll give it a try. But I’m not going to make any promises that it will work.”
Relief floods into Gabriel’s and Delilah’s faces. “Okay, what about the rest of you?” Gabriel asks.
Rita looks to her mum and Alvie, the three huddle together and whisper to each other for a minute before Rita turns back to the room and announces, “We’re in.”
Before everyone can look to me I blurt out, “I’m in too.” My heart is twisting at the prospect of seeing Ethan, not knowing how he’s going to react to me. Then I add, “So long as Lucas keeps away from Amanda that is, she’s only just getting better.”
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t touch her,” Delilah answers.
“Right, so we’re all agreed then?” Gabriel asks in a hesitant voice. Everyone nods their heads in turn, except for Wolf, but I don’t think he has any clue of what’s going on. Delilah pulls her phone from her pocket to make a call. “It’s a yes. You can come in now,” is all she says before hanging up. Two minutes later there’s a knock at the door and my chest seizes up in knots. Is Ethan here already? He must have been waiting somewhere nearby for Delilah’s answer.
Delilah leaves the room to get the door. Mere seconds pass before she returns with Ethan, Lucas, Dru and another vampire with long dreadlocks, who I recognise as a barman from the club. The kitchen is suddenly far too crowded. My eyes immediately latch on Ethan, he looks marvellous as always, wearing jeans and a dark shirt.
For a moment I can’t breathe at the sight of him, but he doesn’t once look my way. Is he intentionally ignoring me? Yes, that seems to be the case. Oh well.
“Hello everyone,” he says, as he scans the room, still carefully avoiding my gaze. Wonderful. This isn’t going to be awkward at all. Slowly the vampires begin to mingle with their new found allies, but nobody ventures to talk to me. I feel like a leper. I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it, and I try to zone out for a while. No, no, I inform my heart, you’re not breaking on me now. Suck it up.
I listen while Ethan’s smooth voice does its best at charming Rita and her mother, while Lucas, Dru and the barman vampire chat with Delilah, Gabriel and Alvie. Finn’s standing nearby, silently watching all of them, a hard look on his face that says, don’t even think about messing with me. I put the dinner out for him and Wolf, all the while I can sense someone watching me. Each time I glance at Ethan though, his eyes are nowhere near me. Perhaps I was imagining it.
I take my plate of food and retreat upstairs. I will not allow myself to be sad about Ethan ignoring me. I’ll admit that I thought perhaps he would find his way to forgiving me, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon. I steel myself and my aching hear
t. I deserve this.
I clear my head of all thoughts and try to get my priorities straight. I have a lot to achieve in the coming weeks. One, figure out how to save my dad. Two, come up with a way of replicating my mother’s spell for Rebecca. Three, help in any way that I can to prevent Theodore from taking over the city. And four, discover where exactly my magic has come from and if my mother truly was a runaway from one of the magical families. Yes, all of that should keep my mind off of my feelings for the hostile vampire who I am now going to be seeing a whole lot more of.
Wish me luck.
Coming in 2013
Tegan’s Magic
Read on for an excerpt
Chapter One
There’s Nothing Kind About Man
The fighting seems to spring out of nowhere. One minute I’m walking down the street, minding my own business, and the next I’m standing in the middle of a riot.
I’m turning the corner onto Campion Row, one of the main shopping avenues in Tribane, when my eye latches onto a fist making contact with somebody’s face. Then, when I have the chance to scan the area, I notice that there are hundreds of people fighting one another. Just going at it like they’ve all suddenly taken crazy pills or something.
A thin, mousy looking woman, who seems like she wouldn’t normally harm a fly, is pulling down hard on the hair of a blond woman and spouting angry profanities right into her face, spittle flying from her contorted mouth. What are they fighting for? Was there some sort of protest supposed to be happening today that’s gotten out of hand?
I take a step backward, almost instinctively, because my gut is telling me it’s a bad idea to venture any further. I turn around to go back the way that I came, but find that the riot has rapidly spread and now there’s no way out. Only a moment ago shoppers were wandering calmly about the street behind me, and now they are basically kicking the living shit out of each other. Nerves build up inside of me, as I try to figure out if perhaps I’m dreaming.
A group of teenagers band together, throwing bricks and smashing the large glass windows at the front of an electronics store. Okay, I can’t even begin to fathom where they might have gotten the bricks from. It’s not like people generally carry them about on their person. Several employees come rushing out to try and stop them, which only functions to create more fighting. The teenagers throw kicks and punches at the employees who wear pale green polo shirts, name tags and dark blue slacks.
At first the employees try to prevent the teenagers from doing any more damage, but now it seems like they’re just as angry as the rioters. Fighting viciously for no real reason. I step away further, backing myself up against the concrete wall of the building behind me. Two men fall to the ground a foot or so away from me. The man on top is pummelling his opponent’s face in, bloodying up his nose, and I’m sure creating two horribly purple-black eyes. The man being hit looks like he’s on death’s door, his body limp within his abuser’s grasp. I can’t just watch this happen.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I shout at the man who’s still throwing punches like nobody’s business.
The man ceases in his persistent beating to turn around and glare at me. There’s a rampant, crazed look in his blue eyes. He’s wearing a grey woollen top and corduroy trousers, sensible brown shoes and his balding dark hair has speckles of grey in it. He looks like somebody’s straight laced father, an accountant or a financial advisor doing some shopping on his day off. Not some mental case who would randomly beat on a passing stranger. All of a sudden, he lets go of the man he’d been punching.
“You little tramp,” he seethes. “What did you just call me?” The anger and hate in his words strike me as displaced, since I didn’t actually call him anything. I only asked him what he was doing. The fighting and looting is still going on around me, but all I can focus on is this man’s bloodshot eyes and the saliva that has begun to drip from his mouth, like a rabid dog’s drool.
I press my entire body even harder against the concrete wall. I have no escape route, and the man is quickly advancing on me.
“I – I didn’t call you anything,” I tell him, but he doesn’t even seem to be listening any longer.
“I heard what you said, you fucking bitch, you’re going to pay for that now,” he spits.
“I swear, mister, I didn’t…um, maybe you’re hearing things.” Okay, that probably wasn’t the most clever thing to say. But I tend to get rude when I’m frightened. If this man were a supernatural being, like a vampire or a warlock, I would have no hesitation in using my magic to fight him. But he’s only a human, so I don’t know if my sparks would simply incapacitate him or kill him, and I wouldn’t want somebody’s murder on my poor, abused conscience. She’s already heavily saddled as it is.
“Don’t you tell me I’m hearing things, who do you think you are?”
His jaws clench as he fists his hand and brings it down on me, punching me right in the cheek, once, twice, three times. Fuck that hurts. Sorcerers and ancient vampires might be psychos, but man can be a cruel bastard when he wants to be. Then he lifts his right leg and lands several kicks to my shin and one in the ankle. Right, well I had tried to save my conscience the addition of murder, but this prick has it coming. Without much effort I summon my magic, sparks tickle my palm which I raise and use to smack him directly on his forehead.
Immediately they burn his skin and he leaps away from me, a look of pure, undiluted rage marring his benign features. A vile C-word escapes his saliva ridden mouth, and I wince at the harshness as well as the pain he has just inflicted on me. I glance across at the electronics store to see that the teenagers are now making their way out of the place laden down with looted items such as laptops, iphones and digital cameras. One of the employees grabs onto a fleeing looter, pulling him to the ground and punching him hard in the ribs.
When I look back to my own opponent I realise that he’s advancing on me again so I dodge out of the way, dropping the shopping bag I’d been carrying that had contained a few new novels I’d bought today. Oh well, I suppose losing a couple of books is worth avoiding another punch in the face. The man comes at me yet again, but I turn on my heel and leg it through the mêlée of combating shoppers. I can hear him grunting just behind me so I put more force into my run, my lungs burning in the process. I really need to exercise more.
A few minutes pass and the chase continues. It’s not long before I seem to have gotten away from the riot. That fucker is still on my case though, so I abruptly stop and turn around to face him.
“Back the fuck off,” I scream at him, and it shocks him out of his anger.
Now he starts blinking his eyes and shaking his head, as though trying to rid himself of a daydream. He peers at me, at my face that he had been hitting only minutes ago, and his expression clouds with confusion.
“I – I’m so sorry,” he mumbles, “I don’t understand…” then he trails off and starts shaking his head again while running his hands over his face.
“Sorry for what? For trying to beat the living shit out of a woman you don’t even know, or for the man back there who you have probably left irreparably injured?” My indignation consumes me as I take a step forward to confront this man who appears all but harmless now.
“I don’t know why I did that, why I hit you…I just felt – crazed.”
Something isn’t right about all of this. To quote Shakespeare, something is rotten in the state of Denmark. There was no protest on today, I would have heard about it on the news this morning if there had been. No, there is foul play afoot, and I’d be hard pushed to believe it didn’t have something to do with the Sorcerer Theodore being back on the scene.
“Go home,” I tell the man, “and maybe say a prayer to whatever God you might believe in that the man you beat is going to survive. Oh and perhaps call an ambulance for him while you’re at it.”
Although as I’m saying this, I can already hear the sirens approaching in the distance, sirens for both the police and an ambulance, inte
rmingling together to make an unpleasant high pitched wail, like a cat when it tries to sing in the middle of the night. We used to have a cat on our street when I was growing up who would wake me every couple of nights with the most God-awful mewling.
But anyway, I suppose I’m getting off the point, the point is, the paramedics are on their way. I should probably hang around and get checked out, but I can tell that my injuries are mostly superficial. However, as Finn would say, I’ll be limping like a motherfucker for at least the next few days after the number mister fisty cuffs here did on my leg. He’s still staring at me, bug eyed. Without another word I turn away from him and start my limping journey home. He calls to me, telling me to wait a minute, but I don’t acknowledge his pleas. It takes all of my self-control not to turn back and give him the finger.
For the past three days I’ve been spending the majority of my time wandering around the city alone, sitting people watching in cafés or mindlessly browsing through the shops. This is why I was out today in the first place. Basically, I’ve been doing it to get away from the house, there are just way too many people around Finn’s place these days. Half of which happen to think I’m some sort of modern incarnation of Judas. Yeah, the vampires remain pissed over the fact that I went behind their backs to rescue Rebecca.
Rita, her mum and Alvie are still living in the motor home out in the front garden, while Finn, Gabriel, Ira, Amanda and myself have been staying in the house. But get this, Ethan went and bought a house that had been for sale across the road for the vampires to live in while we’re still maintaining our strange alliance. Very cosy. I think he gets some kind of perverse satisfaction out of making me miserable. He still hasn’t spoken a word to me. It’s only been four days, but still, the vampire needs to learn how to let go of a grudge. I mean, he could at least be civil to me for the sake of working together, but no such luck. Maturity it seems, is something that has evaded Mr Cristescu and his two-hundred and seventy-nine years.