by brett hicks
Dylan was apparently on the boy’s football team, so he invited himself to walk with us. I had my doubts about his intentions, but I didn’t think he planned to stab me in the gut. Jace apparently was the captain of the rugby team. He played football as well, but both were autumn and winter sports.
Being a lupine, Jace preferred to be able to physically hit people in his athletics.
Sixteen:
It was just past five when classes were finished for the day. Casey accompanied me back to our autumn dorm room to change into my soccer practice clothes. I didn’t know what this school’s colors were, but all I had were the deep-green shorts and matching tee-shirt from my middle school practice uniform.
I tied my hair up into a tight bun and with any luck, it would still be in place by the time practice was out. Casey changed too, she was wearing long sleeves and she had a large black umbrella. Even I could smell the lightly scented sunblock on her skin.
“What’s wrong?”
She asked as I was staring at her ensemble. I shook my head and winked at her.
“Nothing, just admiring the vampire sunbathing fashion ware.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes at me.
“Come on hon, let’s get you delivered to the soccer field in one piece this time.”
I scoffed and glared at her mock-crossly.
“I was still in one piece yesterday!”
Casey waved me off and said, “Doesn’t really count when you lose over a pint of blood.”
I couldn’t really argue with that logic, well I could, but you know what I mean!
“Come on superstar, time for us to shine!”
I grinned at her and I winked.
“Yeah well let’s hope you don’t shine, Casey.”
She looped her arm through mine and chuckled.
“True that.”
***
The massive stadium seemed to be somehow more imposing today. Maybe it was the whole being stabbed thing, or it was being a day late and a dollar short to practice. I might as well have worn a sign on my jersey.
The boys and girls teams were mixed together for tryouts. So I was greeted with over a hundred pairs of eyes staring on curiously as I walked onto the field.
“Excuse me, where do you think you’re going?”
I turned and I was greeted by a silver-blonde faerey woman who looked like a co-ed in her track outfit, but the shirt and hat she wore said “coach.”
Wow, this is disorienting! I’m never going to be able to tell age again after this school’s done with me!
“I’m here to try out for the girls’ soccer team?”
Her scowl deepened and she shrugged and waved a hand in a vague gesture towards the west.
“Well, then I would say you’ve taken a wrong turn in the middle of the Atlantic, wouldn’t you?”
I realized my mistake too late. Being UK born and bred, she was clearly annoyed with my American slip in terms. Several of the others chuckled as they watched from the field with morbid curiosity.
“You’re a day late.”
I huffed and crossed my arms over my chest. This coach was being a real bitch!
“Look, I’m sure you heard that I was stabbed by some psycho winter faereys yesterday. You hold tryouts for the entire first week, right? I am here for football, so please let me try out.”
She studied me for a very long moment and she finally shrugged.
“Fine, but you owe me for missing yesterday. You will be working twice as long as everyone else. If you cannot accept these terms, then leave now and find a soccer club back in the Colonial Wyldes.”
Shit! This was going to hurt, bad!
I gave her a firm nod and I jogged onto the field. The first thing you notice as a freshman running onto a high school athletic field is how much shorter and scrawnier you are than the other kids. A few of the feral-eyed girls were nearly six-feet tall. They were clearly lupine and likely as fast and strong as nearly any male in this school.
Great, no pressure here!
I noticed a certain fiery redhead with pale blue eyes. Her feral eyes were softer and warmer to me than the other lupine eyes watching me. I gave her a small smile and I waved lamely.
“Hey there Naomi, how are tricks?”
She blinked a few times confusion , but then she gave a shy smile and nibbled on her lip and gave a return wave. Several of the older lupine girls eyed her as she waved to me. I hoped that I didn’t make a mistake in befriending her, or by making that public knowledge to the other werewolf girls. They all seemed to have a very large tick in their fur for faereys.
I noticed the other girls were huddled around her, almost protectively. That was confusing, but I decided to just file that away and ignore the behavior for the time being. There were plenty of other issues to focus on right now, mainly the fact that I had just agreed to pull double-time!
This is high school athletics, so of course, a girl is not going to give up her shot at making the soccer—er football—team!
This is really going to take a lot of mental effort on my part! Soccer is not football in the mind of an American girl!
A barrel-chested man of mid-twenties and a stature about as tall as Jace blew his whistle. I noticed several of the teens flinched at the sound. This had to be the boys’ team coach. Judging by his feral yellow eyes and his thick muscle-mass, he was also a powerful lupine.
“Stretches first, then we will get into laps. Move it and if you little mutts let these girls beat you, then you’re never going to hear the end of it!”
The threat hung over the teenage boys like a sword and the girls had a renewed burning challenge to beat the boys! Like we ever wanted to be the girl who loses to the boys!
A second whistle sounded and the silver-haired faerey girl bellowed in a commanding tone.
“If you little girls embarrass me, then you are cut without questions!”
Was it my imagination or was she staring right at me?!
With fire in my eyes, I dropped and began my leg stretches and then my groin stretches.
***
We ran for the whole first hour and both coaches seemed to alternate threats and demands from us. They might be the best coaching duo in history, or they just hated each other, this girl couldn’t really tell.
I was very grateful that I had not totally slacked off during the summer break. I had anticipated needing to have my wind-endurance high for fall athletics, just not for football in particular.
After two hours of arduous practice, we began to scrimmage and play the boys versus girls. To say that the match was heated would have been gravely understating the situation. I was stuck on defense half the time and I nearly had my head taken clean off my shoulders on more than one occasion!
After forty minutes, I finally was allowed to switch to my position as a striker. I was a much better offensive player with my aggressive personality than I was defensive—not that I sucked at defense. I am just very ADHD, so defense feels much slower to me than breaking through the opposing team’s defense to score goals. Call me an adrenaline junkie if you wish, I live for such a struggle!
Lupine football players moved with liquid grace and their power was nearly unrivaled. I managed to keep up, but just barely. Whatever my genes did for me, I was apparently a very quick faerey girl. I might not command the type of elemental magic that the others did, but I seemed to be faster and more agile. For me, that was a much bigger deal. I loved sports—lived for them—so I couldn’t imagine being sidelined due to a supernatural disadvantage!
The lupines were still so fierce and powerful that collisions seemed to feel almost bone breaking. Scoring against apex predators was not easy either. So far, I had only managed to fake out the goalkeeper once. He was a senior and very well-seasoned at reading his enemy attackers.
After nearly four-hours practice was called. I wasn’t at all surprised when my coach dismissed everyone, except for me. She bellowed out “Laps,” and I took off running again. My body was a
ching from the two hours spent chasing the large and powerful male students around the field. I had many bruised and sore spots all over my body from impact. At least no one had managed to spike me with their cleats!
Roaring winds ripped through my hair as I ran the track. I felt like I was running against gale-force winds. My body burned and ached all across it. I felt like I was one huge walking sore now.
After about fifty-minutes of running, my coach blew her whistle again. She had a huge cluster of soccer balls set up about twenty yards from the goal on one side.
“I want you to practice shooting for me.”
She said simply and I nodded and I ran over to her and tried to ignore how much my body hurt. I felt red mist clinging to me again. The cool and damp feeling was welcome right now. I felt my muscles groaning and straining, but I managed to keep my head together.
I took the shots from varying distances from the goal. Once all the balls were sunk into the goal, she nodded and she pointed to the goal.
“Clean up this mess and then you can go hit the showers.”
I sighed out in relief, feeling like I was bathing in my own sweat as it was. She quickly added, “You’re not out of the woods yet, young lady. Come back tomorrow with twice that work ethic and maybe I will have a spot for you on my football team.”
I felt joy shoot through me. I have been dealing with grumpy coaches for years, so I know coach speak. That means she doesn’t hate me. I nodded and I tried to mask my excitement. Most coaches get very angry if they even think your ego was stroked. Athletes have a very well developed sense of self and often large egos to match their talents, so good coaches do not fuel these egos more than needed.
I dashed over to the goal and began to collect soccer balls. I then had to track down the darn bin they came in.
When I turned back to the sidelines, I saw a certain massive lupine alpha carrying a large bin. I narrowed my eyes and I realized something.
“Jace, are you related to the boys’ coach?”
His eyes widened slightly and he sighed and nodded.
“Aye, my father Aaron Pratt.”
My eyes went bug-wide.
“Father?! But, he looks more like a big brother.”
Jace’s lips turned up in deep amusement. His eyes gleamed and I had a sudden urge to hurl a soccer ball at his head!
“And, your father looks like he might be carded at a pub. I believe the American phrase is ‘join the club’ right?”
I snorted and rolled my eyes at him.
“Since you clearly know what we American’s say.”
Jace’s eyes wandered over my body and I felt suddenly hotter like I might combust under his intense gaze. He did more than should be possible with his hot looks. Part of me felt very angry and frustrated with the reactions he was eliciting in me. The other part wanted to pull that boy down to my lips and find out if those lips were as soft as they looked from here!
“What made you choose rugby over football?”
I asked conversationally as we picked up soccer balls and deposited them into the bin. Jace shrugged slightly.
“I always liked both, but my father and I shouldn’t be on the same field. It might spark some… lingering hostilities.”
I frowned deeply and I wanted to press for more, but I thought better of it with the heat in his trance-like gaze. Jace clearly had his own history and his own issues. His dad didn’t seem like a bad guy on the field though. He was awesome with coaching and teaching the boys. He even gave us girls some very good advice here and there.
Jace didn’t speak much, except to quiz me about America. We gathered soccer balls a bit slower than our supernatural bodies needed time-wise to complete the task.
I wanted to talk to him more, but I noticed Casey waiting on the sidelines. She had a deep tan and looked exhausted.
So, I bid the lupine prince good night.
Seventeen:
Casey and I ate in the autumn dining hall with the wolves and various other creatures that were aligned to the autumn season. I noticed that I was the only Moch Sidhe in the whole hall. That was curious, but I wasn’t about to press for answers yet.
Some of the lupine and faereys had treated me warmer after my hard work on the football field. Jace seemed to linger around me and he also seemed to tolerate my vampire roommate. The tension was noticeable between the two of them. I guess some bits of fiction and mythology is accurate. That got me to wondering about what other bits of mythology were correct.
After dinner, I begged off hanging out for video games with the others of my dorm section. I found myself wondering the central corridors of the massive circular construct at the very center of the castle with direct access points to each of the individual dorm sections. The library was massive beyond anything words could begin to describe.
A girl could get lost in this place without a damn map! Thankfully, maps were readily available at each of the well-marked and colored entrances and exits. Autumn was marked as yellow and orange, winter was blue and silver, spring was green, and summer was red and gold.
The color schemes seemed to find their way around the other various aspects of the castle. The library itself was made up of cool crystal and plain white. Everything was designed to be sterile and neutral. It looked more like something one might expect to see in a space-drama TV series.
Despite their aversion—our aversion—to iron, the faereys are very much into the tech boom. Once I was able to get my phone replaced with a model that mirrored human design but was created to work across dimensions, I would be able to reconnect with my friends in America. Granted I would have to bend the heck out of the truth with them.
Magic and technology seemed to go hand-in-hand. All of this was extremely fascinating to the nerd portion of my brain, but I was here for information tonight. I needed to learn everything I could about my father and his mysterious relationship with this Empress that most the faereys seemed to regard in near god-like reverence, or just in fear.
So many nuances of this harsh new world were lost on me. How could I possibly expect to navigate these waters ignorant of the past? How could I possibly trust a damn word out of my own father’s mouth, when everything was contradictory and ephemeral? Worst yet, what might I learn about his crimes? Part of me was afraid of these answers, but the curiosity burning inside my chest spurred me onward to seek out the truth.
My body ached and burned from the very Spartan practice regiment of my light elf taskmaster—AKA my coach. She had been hard and demanding today, but she also seemed pretty straight-forward for a faerey. I would like to consider myself a decent judge of character, so I hoped that my impression of Drusilla Brenton was accurate.
My eyes wandered over the shelves packed neatly with books. I really needed to find some reference information, like where the recent history section began.
“Looking for something in particular?”
I spun at the musically masculine tone. Dylan was standing at the end of the aisle I was currently perusing. Part of me wanted to demand why he was here right when I was, but then I opted for the more logical approach. If he had games, so be it, I could still use him to help me find what I am looking for in here.
“Dylan, done with dinner already?”
He smiled at me with a look that could have made a mere mortal faint. Faereys did seem to kick off some sort of pheromones, or so my roommate and new friend Casey claimed. I guess being a Moch Sidhe myself; his potent hormonal rush had a very limited impact on my body. I would be lying if I tried to claim that he was not hot and juicy all on his own.
“I’m done, so I thought I would go seek out the most interesting girl in our grade.”
Wow, that was extremely direct…
“Um, yeah I don’t even want to try to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole.”
Dylan frowned slightly but his easy smile never slipped.
“So, what are we looking for in the library? I have been a student here since I was a little lad, mayhap
I could assist you?”
I frowned and considered everything for a moment.
It’s not like he can really suspect me of anything more than curiosity. Besides, curiosity is essentially all this really is at the moment.
I shrugged and waved my hand out towards the pristine crystal shelves.
“I’m looking for accurate and impartial historical records accounting for the war I heard about. I am also looking for any history on my father and the Blood Queen.”
Dylan flinched at my use of the term “Blood Queen.”
“Please, do not use that term to describe Her Majesty. She has beheaded fools for less.”
“Are you calling me a fool?”
I scoffed and crossed my arms over my chest. Dylan’s smile finally faltered and his eyes widened at the realization of what his words had implied. He sighed and shook his head emphatically.
“No, but you would not be wise to keep using that term in the open. Her Majesty is not kind to anyone she perceives as an upstart.”
“I thought the Imperium was created to bring an end to the bloody conflict?”
Dylan shrugged slightly and spread his hands.
“Since when do powerful faerey rulers do anything out of the kindness of their hearts?”
He had a point there and it looked as if this admission pained him in some way.
“So, where do we start? I want to learn all I can about the wars and the Imperium. I do not want to read the company line if you follow my meaning?”
Dylan seemed to contemplate this for a long moment and then he nodded.
“Sure, but will you give me one date in return?”
I stopped in my tracks and whipped my head around. I could feel the weight of a debt threatening to tie itself around my neck. I already owe the lupine alpha-to-be, so I was not inclined to sign any more blank checks over to supernatural men at the moment!
“I’ll find it myself, next time try to ask a girl out without utilizing faerey debts to your advantage.”