Freya Snow Pup Trilogy

by L. C. Mawson

  Across the street, two teenagers walked towards the shops, both standing as close to the other as they dared.

  “My lord,” he heard behind him, feeling the magical pressure change of a Demon shifting behind him.

  “Do you have word on Manel?”

  “Dead,” she said, confirming what he already knew.

  “And what did your investigation of the body tell you about what killed him?”

  “Well, it obviously couldn’t have been the girl,” Gia said with a shrug.

  “No? The subject gave her a defensive charm, and she’s Sensitive, so she could wield it.”

  “He was killed by a wound from a sword,” she conceded, “but there was evidence of other magic being used. Specifically, Elemental magic.”

  Uther frowned, turning his gaze back to the girl across the street as she laughed with the subject. “A Mermaid?”

  “That’s the thing, there was evidence of fire being used, as well as water. Maybe a Mermaid and some form of Dragon teamed up, but that would be unlikely, given their rarity on Earth.”

  “And yet the only other option would be equally rare,” he said, taking stock of the girl once more. She had something around her neck that he couldn’t quite make out. He chanced extending his magic out to sense around her. As always, he found that she registered as nothing more than sensitive. But now he could sense the slightest haze around that signature, as if someone had masked stronger power. As he continued to sense, he finally found a source of magic around her neck. A protection rune that reeked of Elemental magic.

  “An Angel,” he said, the pieces clicking into place.

  “No Angels have been born since the Twilight scarred the Earth,” Gia reasoned.

  “But what if the Angel was conceived elsewhere?” he wondered, taking note of the girl’s sheet white skin and dark hair. “Say, the Shadow Realm?”

  “But the Geni ensure that there is never more than one person in the Shadow Realm at a time, to prevent exactly that.”

  Uther nodded. “Which would mean that a power beyond them would be required, such as the King or the Council of Light, and the Council was always friendly with the Twilight’s line. But if we know who the Geni had in the Shadow Realm at the time she was conceived...”

  He frowned as worked out the dates, his skin crackling with Dark Energy as he grinned at his answer. “Oh, my sister is certainly crafty. She knew that the subject would lead her right to the Angel.”

  Gia blinked. “So, you truly think that she’s an Angel?”

  “The first Dark Angel in centuries. Inform everyone loyal to me that I will grant any reward requested of whoever brings me the Angel’s head.”

  Short Stories

  Family

  Alice wasn’t amused by the knock at her door. She was in the middle of a multi-player match and didn’t want to lose her progress by quitting.

  “What?” she yelled through the door, realising too late that her tone had been sharp.

  The fact that they had knocked told her that it was one of the adults, and not the children. She was surprised to recognise Janet’s voice. They usually ignored each other.

  “I need to see you downstairs, Holly.”

  Alice was used to not correcting Janet anymore. She refused to call her anything but her legal name. She stood up from her game, knowing full well that she would be booted before she returned but not wanting to quite believe it. She straightened her skirt, appreciating how soft it felt.

  Ever since her roommate had been fostered, Janet had tried to get someone else to share Alice’s room. The problem was that everyone she had suggested had previously bullied Alice. She eventually suggested her own roommate, a young girl with a lisp who the kids also picked on, and Janet had, after a little objecting over their age difference, finally agreed. However, the whole thing had Alice stressed, which of course meant that she was also sleep-deprived. So she had woken up early that morning and had used the time to focus on getting ready for the day, despite the fact that she had nowhere to go. She found it soothing to spend time drying her hair properly and applying body butter and make-up. Her dress was a soft blue and white, A-line dress which reminded her of her name-sake.

  Alice followed Janet downstairs, her hands clasped tightly behind her back, keeping her posture straight. Once they were at Janet’s office, Alice did her usual thing of reading the bible quotes on the wall. She found Jesus interesting as a philosophical figure, but it was mostly just an excuse to avoid eye contact.

  “Now, Holly, I have a few things I have to discuss with you.” She paused, as if waiting for a response, but Alice had no idea what kind of response she might be looking for and so stayed silent.

  Janet continued on. “Holly, would you please look at me when I talk to you.”

  Alice responded by taking off her glasses before turning to Janet, her face becoming a blob of colour.

  “Now, isn’t that better?”

  No, Alice thought, but kept her mouth shut.

  “I wanted to talk to you about some of your behaviour issues.”

  Alice prepared herself for the usual tirade of Janet blowing her few points of non-conformity out of proportion. However, she decided that she was too tired to hear them again.

  “What does it matter?” Alice asked. “I’m not far off of eighteen. I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “And that’s what concerns me.” Her sickly sweet tone had Alice’s hackles up immediately. “How are you going to handle the outside world if you can’t even cope with the rules here? Employers will not be as generous as I have been.”

  “You know that I’ve been working for two years now, right?” Alice liked sarcasm. The problem was that she didn’t always remember to inflect. But, in all honesty, she didn’t care if she confused people like Janet.

  “But it’s not a real job, is it?”

  Alice felt as if her bank account would beg to differ, but she held her tongue, instead asking, “Was that all you wanted to talk to me about?”

  “Actually, no. There’s... someone here to see you.”

  “Freya?”

  “No.”

  Alice was confused by that. Freya was the only one likely to ever visit her. “Then who?”

  “Your aunt.”

  “I don’t have an aunt.”

  “Well, apparently, you do. She’s your mother’s sister. She’s been living in Japan since before you were born and has only just contacted us now.”

  “And she’s here?”

  “Yes. We verified her identity a couple of days ago. We didn’t expect her to immediately jump on a plane and come over here.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me when she first contacted you?”

  “We didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”

  Alice was fuming at that. At seventeen, she was used to disappointment. Every time something was promised to get better for her, it didn’t. Even the one time she had gotten fostered, it had been by a woman with a massive saviour complex, convinced that she could ‘fix’ her. The thing she couldn’t handle was having something sprung on her like this. Even the unexpected meeting with Janet had disrupted her idea of how the day was going to pan out, irritating her.

  “Do you want to see her?” Janet asked.

  Alice was a little tempted to say no. She was spending today in her room alone. She was going to level up her quarian tech and then maybe browse her Steam account for yet-unplayed games. Of course, meeting her aunt would be better, but she hadn’t planned for it. If she had, she would have spent yesterday in her room instead of bothering to go to school.

  “Okay then,” Alice eventually answered. She didn’t want to risk offending this new-found family member. She wasn’t expecting much, but she would at least like to know more of the mother who had died giving birth to her.

  Janet stood up, leading her through to one of the counselling rooms. The walls were decorated with flower stickers and the bookshelf was littered with various toys. There was a desk, but the
chair behind it had obviously been repurposed for another room, leaving only beanbags, tiny plastic chairs, and the seat in the bay window, as options for sitting down, though it was occupied.

  The woman sitting in the bay window stood up as they entered, revealing herself to be tall for a Japanese woman. Though Alice quickly realised that she was wearing reasonably heeled white shoes, a perfect complement to her white dress. In her arms she held a black duffel coat and her eyes were covered by large bug-eye sunglasses. Her hair was cut into a sharp bob which perfectly framed her features. She looked like she had just walked off the catwalk, making Alice slightly thankful for her unusually good state of dress.

  “Would you like me to stay?” Janet asked.

  Despite not liking Janet, Alice was a little tempted to say yes. But she took a deep breath before replying, “No.”

  Janet left, but left the door slightly ajar. Alice felt offended by that. She was seventeen, not a child. She had the right to her privacy. She went over and deliberately shut the door.

  “Alice,” her aunt greeted with an almost flawless accent.

  Alice would have similarly greeted her aunt with her name, if she had known it. However, she instead simply nodded. After she was sure far too much time had passed, she remembered that “Hello” was also an option, saying it aloud despite its lateness.

  Her aunt went to sit back down, placing her coat next to her, though she made no effort to take off the glasses. Alice was thankful of that, since it meant she couldn’t see her aunt’s eyes. It made faking eye contact a lot easier.

  Alice decided that she too should sit down, though she wasn’t about to attempt sitting on the tiny plastic or beanbag chairs. Instead, she pulled herself up onto the side of the desk, interlocking her ankles as she let her legs swing back and forth a little over the edge.

  “My name is Mitsuki Hino. I was your mother’s sister.”

  “I’m Alice.” Only after the words had left her mouth did she remember that her aunt already knew that.

  “I’m sorry I could not be here sooner,” her aunt said.

  “Why couldn’t you?” Alice wondered if her words had been too blunt but her aunt didn’t seem surprised or offended and didn’t comment.

  “It’s a long story. Your mother and I used to be very close. A few years after starting my business, I brought her in as a partner. However, after she met your father, we had a falling out. I didn’t trust him and she... thought my eccentricities made me a bad judge of character. She left for England and told me, in no uncertain terms, not to interfere with her or her family.”

  “You were right about him,” Alice figured, though wanted to change the topic as she felt an anxiety attack growing.

  “I know,” her aunt said bluntly. “But I obeyed her wishes. Even once she was gone, I was reluctant to interfere. I didn’t even know you existed until a little while ago.”

  “How long is ‘a little while’?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “And you still didn’t think to interfere?” Alice was marvelling a little at the conversation at this point. With anyone else, she was sure she would have offended them. But her aunt just kept on returning her comments with just as few inflections.

  “I had my reasons. Ones which I cannot tell you just yet.”

  “Okay,” Alice replied, though she was a little confused.

  Her aunt leaned forward, perhaps to more carefully regard her, before speaking again. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “A proposition?”

  “A... blue pill, red pill scenario, if you will.”

  Alice smiled a little at the Matrix reference. “Okay.”

  “The blue pill option is that I leave for Japan at the end of the week and you stay here. We have as little or as much contact as you like and I’ll give you a little cash as an apology for not being here sooner. Twenty-five million pounds is a good sum for living the rest of your life in relative comfort, don’t you think?”

  Alice’s eyes widened at that number, sure she had heard it wrong. “Could you repeat that, please? I think I misheard,” she eventually said, after figuring out how to word her answer without the number in it, in case she was wrong and looked silly.

  “You and I can have as much or as little contact as you would like and I would give you twenty-five million pounds as an apology.” Alice didn’t really have an answer to that, but her aunt continued on. “If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it’s that having money makes all the difference for people like you and me. It’s the difference between ‘eccentric’ and ‘crazy’. This is money so that you can educate yourself in whatever you want. So that you’re never looking at things like weighted blankets and wishing they would be cheaper. So that you can have a garden big enough for a swing and pay someone else to take care of it for you.”

  “Thank you,” Alice eventually managed in response, though she was sure that she wasn’t communicating that sentiment enough with her tone or facial expressions.

  Her aunt shrugged. “It’s the least I could do after leaving you here.”

  “So, what’s the red pill option?” Alice asked as she remembered.

  “The red pill option is that I stay here until you turn eighteen and tell you the truth about why I didn’t return before now.”

  “What happens when I turn eighteen?”

  “You can choose your own path with a little financial help from me, just like the blue pill, or you can come back with me to Japan. I’m always looking for people as talented as you are at my company.”

  “What does your company do?”

  Her aunt shrugged. “When people have problems, they come to me and I fix the problem for an appropriate amount of money.”

  Alice frowned. “That’s just a description of capitalism. What specific problems do you fix?”

  “All kinds. Though I do pick my clients carefully. The plus side of variety being that you can focus on doing whatever catches your interest at the time.”

  That did actually sound pretty nice to Alice, though she wondered briefly why she got the sense that there was something more to what she was being asked than her aunt had explicitly stated. But she brushed that aside as her curiosity about her aunt got the better of her.

  “Then I think I’ll take the red pill.”

  Her aunt smiled, standing up. “I was hoping you would. There’s a nice restaurant just a little way from here. How about we meet for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” Alice said before gritting her teeth as a headache swiftly formed.

  “Headache?” her aunt asked, moving towards her.

  Alice nodded, unable to unclench her jaw.

  “Here,” her aunt said, moving her hand to Alice’s forehead.

  The headache immediately stopped.

  “How did you do that?” Alice asked.

  Her aunt shrugged as she headed out the door. “Probably some ancient Japanese secret.”

  Alice assumed she was joking.

  “I’ll come and pick you up at twelve,” her aunt told her as she moved towards the door before pausing and speaking once more. “Alice, if you would indulge me, I was wondering, do you ever feel as if you’re... different, I guess is what I’m searching for?”

  Alice shrugged with a smirk. “Yeah, it’s called autism.”

  Her aunt smiled as she left the room. “I suppose that may provide an answer, yes.”

  Alice didn’t really have time to think about that before they were at the front door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” her aunt said.

  “See you,” Alice replied before heading back inside to return to her multiplayer game.

  ALICE STRUGGLED TO find sleep that night, though that wasn’t unusual. She woke up every hour or so with her heart pounding, presumably from a nightmare, though she couldn’t remember them. At around three in the morning, she gave up on sleep, instead reading on her tablet in the hopes of her tiredness catching up with her while she was distracted. It didn’t
, and at four she got up and returned to her computer.

  By the time dawn came, Alice was dressed and made-up for the day, anticipating seeing her aunt again.

  She finished the game she had been playing at about breakfast time and so went downstairs to investigate the food options. On her way down the stairs, she saw some of the younger kids running down the hallway. She had a sudden vision of one of them placing their hand on the banister to turn, only for their hand to slip on the coat someone had thrown over it. They tumbled down the stairs, their arm twisted.

  Alice had no idea where the vision had come from. She supposed it might be an extreme version of her catastrophizing, as she often did when she was stressed, but it had seemed so real. As much as she knew she shouldn’t give in to her irrational, anxious urges, moving a coat seemed harmless in the grand scale of things.

  However, just as she was about to head back up the stairs to remove the coat, it slipped off the banister and fell into her arms, solving the problem for her. The boy ran down the hall, gripped the banister and didn’t slip. It was eerily similar to what Alice had seen, but that didn’t mean anything, she assured herself.

  Alice slipped into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of toast before scurrying away again, hoping that no one saw and chastised her for taking food to her room. She kept cans of pop under her bed so that she’d never be told off for drinking them in her room, or be told off for consuming too much sugar, but anything better than snack food would require an elaborate set-up. She had sketched up plans for hidden kitchen items, like a kettle and a mini-fridge, but she supposed that none of that was necessary now. Not if she was going to live with her aunt.

  Once Alice was back in her room, she carefully went through her wardrobe, eventually finding a knee-length, black jersey skirt and a white crocheted jumper that would have shown her midriff if she hadn’t hiked the skirt up to cover her waist.

  She looked at the time on her phone, realising that she still had two hours before her aunt even showed up.

  She sighed, looking down at her clothes. She didn’t want to eat or drink anything more, in case she got them mucky, but two hours was a long time to wait and her throat immediately felt dry at the prospect.