Another spasm of pain tore through his stomach. Blaze doubled up, reaching out to grasp the railing. As his hand came into contact with the iron, the skin sizzled and he recoiled from it, stumbling into the road. He hadn't expected that. He looked down at his hand accusingly. The gate couldn't be iron. Iron didn't burn. Why didn't it burn the younglings? The wardings, he realised. It was a trap made for his kind.
He was expected.
When he looked up he saw a pretty dark-haired girl in uniform looking at him intently. She had pushed the sleeves of her blazer up and tied her tie backwards so that it was pencil thin. She came towards him unsurely, reaching out to help him. Blaze pulled away from her outstretched hand.
"Are you okay?"
He bared his teeth. It was her time. He could smell the blood on her. He wanted to taste it so badly, but it was too public here. There were too many people around. He had a mission, anything outside of that was a distraction.
She backed up, one step, and then another. "Sorry," she said. He'd obviously scared her. Blaze raised both of his hands trying to show her everything was all right, that he was fine. "Sorry," she repeated.
He found his voice. "Go." He said. Just that, nothing more, confusing her for a moment. Another wave of pain gripped him, but he refused to let it show on his face. In that moment though the hunger was fiercer than ever, and she smelled so good it was almost too much for him to bear. He dropped his head. His nostrils flared, his breathing suddenly heavy as he struggled to master his body. He could feel the shift coming on, brought on not by the moon this time, but by the overwhelming scent of blood. Blackwater Blaze gritted his teeth against it, refusing to buckle in an immense battle of will.
When he looked back up his face had taken on a purely animalistic cast.
But he had not changed.
Not yet.
But there was no telling how long it would be before he did.
This was new. Unexpected. He was no longer the master of his own body. This world tormented him. In that moment he simply longed to go home. But he couldn't while the girl lived.
"Go!" Blaze repeated, barking the word out as another wave of agony gripped him.
And this time the girl did not hesitate, she ran straight for the school gates.
He didn't follow her.
He sank to his knees, clutching at his stomach.
He was in the middle of the road.
A car roared around him, honking its horn as it steered hard left to avoid ploughing into his back, and nearly took the wing mirror off against the side of a parked car in the process. Blaze didn't look up. He sank lower and lower, until his forehead touched the tarmac in front of him, then, when it looked for all the world as though he was going to fall completely and sprawl across the road, he somehow found the strength to lift his head. He put his hands flat to the ground and started to rise.
Still on all fours, he looked up.
The street was busier than it had been.
He could see two people looking at him.
He recognised them both.
Or rather his nose did.
Their scents were unique.
Blaze breathed them in, able to tell one from the other as easily as he could night from day.
The first was the wrinkled and leathery faced not-ghost he had seen peering down at him from the window yesterday. She stood in the doorway now, her pince-nez spectacles balanced on her crooked nose as she ushered a gaggle of girls inside. It was the second of the two that captivated Blackwater Blaze.
He stared at her, and didn't bother to hide the fact.
It was her.
Tanaquill's daughter. The King Under the Moon's only child. The girl he had been sent here to kill.
Right there in front of him.
She was no more than twenty feet away from where he knelt.
Her scent was intoxicating.
He breathed her in and she flooded his body, giving him the strength he needed to stand. She suffused his blood, filling it like oxygen, bringing it back to life. He felt every inch of his skin tingle, every hair follicle beneath the surface bristled.
The Fae princess was nothing like he had imagined she would be. There was no power to her—that was it. She hadn't come into her gift yet. Perhaps it was this place stifling her. He breathed her in. She was caught halfway between this place and the Moonlands, the magic in her just waiting to wake up. It was almost a shame that the worlds would never know the woman she would have grown up to become, Blaze thought, still decidedly uncomfortable with his mission. He could see traces of the dead queen in her features and colouring, but where Tanaquill had been captivating and terrifying, with an almost dangerous beauty, the girl was merely interesting.
He breathed her scent in again, learning it forever.
She wasn't alone.
A dozen more girls, all dressed near-identically, came laughing and joking around the corner. One of them dragged a stick along the iron rails of the park's fence.
"Inside, girls! Now!" The old woman bellowed from the doorway as she emerged from the safety of the school.
The steel in her voice belied her advancing years.
Blackwater Blaze looked at her properly.
He knew her.
Her name was Marissa du Lac.
She was another of Ephram Wanderer's Wardens.
Another traitor.
He looked around him quickly, but only needed a split second to play through the possibilities presented to him to know that there was no way he could take out the girl and escape before the old woman was on him—and she had ways of hurting him that went far beyond anything the shift could inflict upon his body.
He was painfully aware that he was on his knees.
In his true form, being crouched, ready to pounce, made him feel powerful. He could feel the strength in every taut muscle. But in this form he felt submissive. He did not like that feeling.
The look Marissa du Lac sent his way as she came out to meet the girls at the gates said it all. And he was left in no doubt of the fact that she knew him, even in his transformed state. He had found two of them now, Targyn Fae and Marissa du Lac. Both of them supposedly long dead, and yet somehow here, now, and very much alive, and both still in close proximity to the girl. It was no coincidence. Well, it wouldn't help them, he thought, looking away from the librarian. "No time for dilly dallying, girls! Straight to Home Room!"
He looked at the King Under the Moon's daughter.
She hesitated, looking back at him.
She wasn't frightened of him.
There was something in her eyes—in the way she looked at him. He didn't recognise it at first, but the sudden shift in scent betrayed her arousal. Her pupils dilated. Her skin flushed, reddening.
That was unexpected.
Blaze looked up at her, holding her gaze.
He smiled coldly, enjoying the way she couldn't look away from him.
She didn't know who he was, or why he had been sent here. She didn't know what he had to do before he could return home. All she saw was a boy in the middle of the road smiling at her.
She flicked her head back, making her red hair bob and swish around her throat. The movement brought the sudden awareness of the blood pulsing through her neck right to the forefront of Blaze's mind. He breathed her in again. No. She wasn't just interesting she was exquisite. It was hard to imagine something so perfect to his senses being the source of so much pain for his people. But then, beauty was the most insidious of all evils. It could mask any cruelty conceivable. She must die for the good of us all, he thought. One death for the greater good. One sacrifice.
Blaze drew himself slowly up to his full height.
She didn't move.
He couldn't go for the girl here. Not like this. But his instincts had been right all along; she had come back here. This place might not be her den, but it was an important part of her pack's territory. He could wait. Du Lac and the others couldn't protect her forever. Not from him.
&n
bsp; He remembered Redhart Jax's order: If you encounter another of the girl's protectors, kill them, or die trying.
He smiled again.
He would feed on Marissa du Lac. Her blood would sustain him long enough for him to finish what he had come here to do. And it would be a pleasure in the process. He would savour her treacherous blood as it trickled down his throat. It had been so long since he had fed. He felt the shift coming on, the tell-tale surge of black agony racing across his brow from temple to temple, the breaking of that first bone at the base of his spine, which before would have caused him to cry out in pain, the distending of his wrist and the slow searing pain of his hands stretching to become Wolfen paws. He hid them behind his back, and masked the wince the wave of pain caused.
And, it was the damnedest thing, but when he looked at the girl she was smiling back at him. He could smell her heat. Perhaps this wouldn't be so difficult after all?
He tossed back his head, causing his long black hair to fall back into his eyes when he straightened. It masked the pain afflicting his body as the hunger tore through him. He wouldn't be able to hold the change off much longer. He knew that. All he had to do was make it back to the protection of the woods in the parkland and he could surrender to it.
Blaze clenched his fist so hard the claws that had begun to grow out in place of his nails dug into his palm, drawing blood.
"Miss Hawthorne," the librarian snapped impatiently, right at the gate now, her hand on the iron railing. "Inside, now!"
And this time the girl did as she was told.
Blaze followed her with his eyes as she half-ran half-walked through the gate and up the short flight of stone stairs into the school under Marissa du Lac's watchful stare. She hesitated for a moment on the top step, casting a look back in his direction, and disappeared inside.
The librarian didn't move until every last girl was inside the building.
She faced him from the gate, just one step inside it, and behind its protective wardings.
He couldn't go any further, no matter how much he might have wanted to, because of those wardings. And now he knew that they were obviously Marissa du Lac's handiwork, and meant to keep his kind out of the building.
Blackwater Blaze smiled at the old woman, baring his teeth.
She did not match his smile.
The Warden said, "She is protected."
"Not well enough," Blaze said.
TEN
The Librarian
"Did you see him out there, Ash? Oh my word. I mean come to mummy, honey." Mel rubbed her hands together as though she was auditioning for a role in Oliver Twist, though instead of gruel it was a bowl of tapioca pudding on the table.
"Mummy? That's just disturbing, Mel. And putting me off my pud, thank you very much."
"Seriously, Ash Pash, I saw you looking at him, and the way he looked at you, like he wanted to eat you right on the spot. He was gorgeous. Tall, dark and broody. Who wouldn't want to be eaten by that for dessert?"
And Ashley couldn't actually argue. He was tall. He was dark. And his eyes… yes, they counted as brooding, but it was his smile that had done it for her. Forget global warming his smile was enough to melt the polar caps.
She was tired and grouchy, because hadn't slept well last night.
But that was yesterday. Today was another day and she'd decided it was going to be a completely ordinary day.
As if she had the power to make such decisions…
After the encounter with Tall Dark and Broody outside the school gates the rest of the morning had been decidedly average, double English with a side helping of Mathematics. The highlight of the day had been Miss Jeeps humiliating Katie Jenkins for wearing a black bra that completely showed through her too-thin-for-school-regulations blouse. Other than that it was just numbers. That was about as exciting as things got around the world of quadratic equations. The promise-threat of calculus to come next term didn't exactly help spice things up either.
There had been a moment on the school steps where Ashley had almost asked Miss Lake if her first name was Marissa and if she knew Aunt Elspeth, but hearing the old librarian chasing the tardy with that wire-wool voice of hers she'd lost her nerve.
"Well?" Mel asked, pointedly.
"Well what?" Ashley asked, looking up. She'd been a million miles away and hadn't heard the question.
"I asked if you wanted to head down to Leicester Square after school, catch a movie. They're premiering the new Jack Kinkaid movie. Red carpet, limos, posh frocks, the works. I heard he might even be there."
"Ah, mum had tickets for the pre-screening of that one."
"And you didn't bite her hand of? Sometimes I despair of you, Ash Pash."
"What can I say? More hanging out watching the beautiful people and feeling inadequate? Sounds like the perfect Friday night."
"You know it, babe. So, you in?"
"I was planning to wash my hair," Ashley shrugged, knowing her indifference to the Cult of Celebrity drove Mel up the wall. "Anyway, I thought you were over Jack because of that whole older women fetish he's got going on."
"Old woman," Mel corrected. "And you're such a freak."
"Takes one to know one."
"I can't believe you turned down tickets… you could have sat beside someone cool."
"Or beside you," Ashley said, with a smirk.
"I take it back. You're such a nerd."
Students clattered about all around them, moving from the long banks of the buffet counter where the dinner ladies ladled out servings of pudding, taking their trays back to stack in the racks and bustling between tables. The level of chatter in the big hall was immense, always threatening to spill out of control before hushing markedly as one of the teachers on dinner duty coughed and brought it back to a reasonable volume for a couple of minutes. Today Miss Jeeps and Mr. Bachman, the music teacher, were on duty. They walked between the rows of tables, offering the occasional comment to one of the girls, usually "Slow down," or "Don't talk with your mouth full."
The five-minute warning bell sounded, generating a sudden burst of activity.
A minute later the dining hall was all but empty.
Ashley gathered her stuff together, and then took her tray over to the rack. Mel was two steps behind her.
"So?"
She looked at the clock on the wall. Four minutes until class started. It would take her two minutes to go upstairs, so she had plenty of time. Fifth form study hall was next to the library. She could drop in on Miss Lake and ask her if she knew Aunt Elspeth, and if she did, show her the letter she had in her satchel.
"Sounds like a plan," she said out loud.
"Great. I'll be round to pick you up at six," Mel said, meaning something completely different. "We can paint the town instead of your bedroom wall for once."
"What? Oh right, yeah."
The corridors were the usual maddening crowd of girls pushing by each other, more girls trying to get into their lockers, and prefects walking down the line counting out the last couple of minutes before class like the Speaking Clock of doom. Two minutes. One minute forty-five seconds. One minute thirty seconds. Mocking them all as they wrestled with their bags and books and pencil cases trying to get organised for the final mad rush upstairs to the classrooms.
Ashley pushed her way through the milling girls, nodding to Evangeline and Jacqueline, who were talking animatedly about new shoes, weaving a path along the corridor to the main foyer and the grand staircase in the middle of the school. The granite steps had been worn smooth by the shuffling feet of scholars for more than two hundred years, dipping slightly in the centre. The staircase was a reminder of the school's grand tradition. Half way up the school crest decorated the wall. It was a green shield with a white heron, wings spread out across the width of it, making the bird look more like a mythical gryphon or perhaps a wyvern poised to strike.
Ashley touched the shield as she passed beneath it.
She wasn't quite sure why she did, it was just
one of those habits the girls had adopted years ago, like a good-luck thing, that irritated the teachers and because of that guaranteed it was passed down from generation to generation of Regent's Park girls. Ashley was just the latest initiate.
The library was opposite the bursar's office.
The heavy oak timber door was closed.
Student access had ended with the five-minute bell.
Ashley knocked on the door tentatively. She could smell the wax that had been polished into the old wood. That surprised her. She'd never noticed it before.
A moment later the door opened a crack and a crooked nose and pince-nez glasses poked out. "Can I help you, Miss Hawthorne?"
"I'm not sure. I hope so."
"Hmm," the librarian said sceptically. "Without knowing what it is you want, I can't, that's for sure. So how about we start there?"
Ashley nodded. She had always rather liked the strange old woman. She had a way with her that was both stern and yet utterly grandmotherly and made you feel safe as she bustled about the stacks pulling out books about this and that to help with prep. Plus she had a slightly French accent that just made her seem so much more exotic than the other teachers. That was why she'd thought she might be the Marissa du Lac Aunt Elspeth wanted her to find. Du Lac meant of the lake in French.
Miss Lake had an old book of the school she treasured—it was filled with photographs and paintings of Regent's Park Girls School that dated back more than one hundred and fifty years and had things like the original architect's designs tucked away inside along with photographs of the classrooms back when they were bedrooms with huge four-poster beds and gorgeous white lace curtains. She had photographs and paintings of Heron House that dated back much further.
"This is going to sound strange, but did you know my aunt? Elspeth Grimm?"
The old librarian opened the door wider. "You best come in, dear."
Ashley looked at her watch. She only had a minute until she was supposed to be along the corridor in study hall.
"I'll write you a note, don't worry. In you come. Some conversations are best had in private. I suspect this is one of them."
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