Freya Snow Pup Trilogy
Page 22
Freya paled as much as her already milky white skin would allow. She had been avoiding Evelyn ever since they had first met. She was a Dark Witch and had made it perfectly clear that she knew what Freya was. On the one hand, Freya was tempted to ask her questions and figure out if there were any other magic beings in the area. But, on the other, Dark Witches tended to hang around with Demons, just like the ones Freya tended to kill.
“Actually, Margaret wants me home in the next little while,” Freya lied. “She’s planning on getting takeaway to celebrate my last exam.”
“Aw, really?” Damon asked. “I thought we were going to finally finish Space Warrior: Redemption.”
Freya shrugged sheepishly. “Sorry. I guess we’ll just have to save it until next time.”
“Are you going right now?” Damon’s uncle asked.
Freya pulled her phone out, pretending to check the time.
“You know, I’d better. It’s getting late.”
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Damon said. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”
“Pick her up?” his uncle asked.
“I, um... I broke up with Jamie,” Damon admitted.
“Again?” His uncle didn’t seem the least bit surprised.
Damon shrugged. “Yeah. So, I’m going with Freya instead.”
“You know, you don’t have to humour this tool just because he got himself into a mess,” his uncle told Freya.
“I didn’t have any other plans,” she reasoned, making sure all of her stuff was in her bag.
“It’s not like I asked her as, like, my second choice. We’re just going as friends so that neither of us are going alone,” Damon tried to defend.
“Yeah, that sounds completely different,” his uncle replied sarcastically. “You need a lift?” he asked Freya.
“Nah. I could use the walk.”
“Alright then.”
“See you tomorrow at, say, six?”
Freya nodded. “Sounds good. See you then.”
FREYA MADE IT HOME fairly quickly. Damon’s wasn’t that far and she was more than used to the trip at this point.
“That you, Freya?” Margaret, her foster mother, asked as she walked through the door.
“Yeah,” Freya answered, dumping her bag and taking her shoes off.
“How was the exam?” Margaret asked from behind her computer as Freya entered the dining room, where her foster mother usually set herself up to work.
“Fine.”
“Sounds good. I’ve got a ton to do here, so...”
“That’s fine.” She would probably be more upset by how much time her foster parents spent distracted by their work, if it didn’t make it easier for her to hide her magic nature. Plus, she had Amber.
“Any plans for tea?” she asked.
“Nothing specific,” Margaret told her. “There are ready meals in the fridge.”
Freya felt a little disappointed at that after the prospect of pizza at Damon’s and her own lie about takeaway, but she did her best to ignore that feeling as she answered.
“Alright, cool. I’m gonna head upstairs.”
“Okay.”
Freya bounded up the stairs, eager to do something. Her mind was drained from her exam, but her body still hummed with nervous energy. Her sparring with Damon had barely made a dent in it.
As soon as she shut the door to her room, a tall, ghostly woman, with olive skin and dark brown hair, materialised.
“Hey Amber,” Freya greeted, not fearing being overheard as she had placed a sound blocking charm on her room months ago.
“How did your exam go?” Amber asked, her hands clasped in front of her in a way that ruffled up her dark green shirt.
Freya shrugged. “It was French listening. Anything past Je suis un tot was going to stump me.”
Amber looked at her blankly, the Tots TV reference going straight over her head and reminding Freya that she had died in the nineties and had spent the final years of her life removed from society. When she had first met Damon, he too had been far from up to speed on British pop culture, but he had quickly caught up. Amber had not.
“Do you think you passed?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Freya reasoned. “The worst it’ll do is drag my French grade down to a B. One B isn’t going to kill me.”
The words came out of Freya’s mouth much more confidently than she felt. She knew, rationally, that a B was fine. But that didn’t stop the feeling of terror shooting through her every time she thought about it. Hell, she still wasn’t comfortable when she missed an A* by a few marks.
“Of course it won’t,” Amber assured her. “I still don’t know why you’re so hung up on these grades. You just need to do well enough to get into sixth form, which isn’t a concern for you.”
Freya let out a hollow laugh. She was self-aware enough to know that, thanks to growing up with no friends or family, she equated a lot of her self-worth to her intelligence. Being a genius was the only thing she had going for her. Anything that threatened her idea of her intelligence threatened her very idea of who she was.
Of course, being aware of it didn’t make it any less of a problem.
“I need something to take my mind off of worrying about the results. I’ve still got months left before I get them.”
She moved over to the box where she kept her magic gear. It was charmed, so that her foster parents wouldn’t open it, to keep away awkward questions about why she had a box full of various weaponry and armour.
“I’m going to end up having to charm another box,” Freya commented as she took out her current favourites. Whenever she left to hunt, it was in a hodgepodge suit, made out of various armour pieces taken from various Demons, most of which had to be charmed to get it to fit.
“Actually, I was thinking about that,” Amber commented. “Some of it’s just old and useless now that you’ve acquired better pieces.”
“Yeah, but it seems like a waste to destroy perfectly good stuff just because I’ve got better ones,” Freya said, getting changed into her armour. “I mean, I’m assuming we’d have to destroy it to keep it out of Human hands.”
“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting destroying it. I figured you could sell it.”
“What, like on magic eBay?” Freya joked as she struggled with the strap on her shoulder, before pausing to face Amber, more seriously. “Wait, is there a magic eBay?”
“If magical beings ever figured out the internet, it was after my time,” Amber told her. “But, as rustic as it may seem to you, there is a real market in town.”
Freya frowned a little, trying to imagine what that would be like. She knew that there were seasonal markets in town, with stalls set up outside, but she figured that a market for magical beings would have to be hidden.
“Well, I was planning on getting the new Ms Marvel book online, but I guess I could go shopping tomorrow and not have to wait for delivery. We can go to the market then.”
She inspected herself in her mirror before applying a glamour, watching as her features became less distinct and almost nebulous, making sure that no one could recognise her.
“Am I good to go?” Freya asked, turning back to Amber.
“It’s a little early for hunting, isn’t it?”
“Tell that to the suspiciously bloodless bodies found this morning.”
“No, I mean, an attack like that would suggest...?”
Freya sighed. Amber never spared a chance to make something a teaching moment.
“Vampyres, right? Because of the blood draining and the puncture marks on the inner thighs which, quite frankly, just lacks class. What happened to the romantic image of vampires seductively biting into the neck?”
Amber raised an eyebrow. “You mean the image Humans invented because they weirdly romanticise violence?”
“Okay, fair point.”
“But you’re missing something.”
Freya frowned, going through what she had said in her head.
“And...?” Amber continued, looking pointedly out of the window.
“Oh, yeah, I know they won’t be up yet. It’s still light out. No, I want to scope out their hideout while they’re still asleep.”
“You want to stake them while they can’t fight back?”
“Oh, come on. I’m not that much of a bitch. I just don’t want to be caught off guard by a trap or anything,” Freya said as she charmed her room so that Margaret would forget what she was doing if she tried to enter, before opening her window and climbing out.
THE DAYTIME MEANT THAT Freya had to keep a bunch of glamours going at once. Some to make her armour look like regular clothing and others to make sure that no one recognised her. Of course, as with all blanket charms, it wouldn’t work on other magical beings, or Sensitive Humans. But it was the best she could do.
She had a vague idea of where the hybrid was hiding out and had mapped it out on her phone. She wished the city had an abandoned warehouse district. It would certainly make finding nefarious magic users easier.
Of course, once she got into the general area, it was just a case of sensing for Demonic magic. Though, the fact that it was clouded by Vampyre magic was a bit of a problem. Thankfully, there seemed to be little in the way of background magic to mask him.
“You know, I could stake him in the daytime,” Freya figured into the decorative Bluetooth headset. “I mean, it’s the middle of summer. I’ll be waiting hours just to give him some semblance of a fair fight. I’m going to kill him anyway.”
“What about giving him the chance to leave peacefully?” Amber asked her.
“When have they ever taken that? I mean, I understand the need for it, but it’s just a formality. None of them are actually going to stand down. That would mean admitting that they were scared of me and, since they’re causing trouble to start with, they’re clearly not scared of the rest of the magical community. Why would they be scared of me?”
“That will change as your reputation grows.”
“You think I’ve got a reputation?”
“Freya, at this point, I would be astounded if you didn’t.”
She sighed. “I hate when people know who I am. It never leads to anything good.”
Amber didn’t reply as Freya followed the trail of magic to a retail park on the outskirts of town.
“Urgh. I hate when they’re in heavily populated areas,” Freya complained, following the magic through to a furniture shop. She supposed it would be the perfect place to camp out. There was a basement floor which never saw sunlight and the cinema next door was open well into the night, meaning that there was always fresh food around.
“Alart,” Freya muttered with a hand wave as she approached the stairs. In response, the fire alarm started blaring, spraying the customers who were now scurrying about in a desperate attempt to leave.
All except for one man, who Freya caught sight of as soon as she reached the bottom of the escalator. He looked lost, as if desperately trying to figure out how to leave without going upstairs. All it took was one moment to sense the magic coming from him. The same magic that had been on the bodies she had found.
She was glad he was already awake, solving her earlier problem.
“You needn’t worry,” she told him. “There’s not really a fire.” She ignited her hands into flame. “At least, not yet.”
He laughed. “I have disposed of every bounty hunter who came before you. What makes you think you can kill me when they failed?”
Freya sighed. “Look, I don’t want to fight you. I just don’t want you collecting bodies in my city. If you agree to leave, I’m more than happy to let you.”
“As if you could stop me.”
She sent the flame hurtling towards him with a disgruntled sigh. They never took her offer.
He dodged out of the way, rolling to duck behind a row of washing machines.
Freya used her control of the water around him, trapping him with liquid shackles. She shifted so that she was in front of him before drawing her sword.
“Are you sure you don’t want to just leave?” she asked as she moved her sword to his neck. “It’ll take forever to clean your blood out.”
He glared at her.
She moved her hand to slice his neck, only it didn’t respond. Instead, her sword slipped from her hand as the water around him dropped back to the floor.
“Eye contact!” Amber shouted, reminding her just in time for Freya to break her gaze from his and shift before he brought his own sword to cut her down.
Freya cursed under her breath as she broke a thin metal pipe from a display sign to use as a makeshift weapon. She couldn’t believe she had been so forgetful.
“What was that you were saying about how you barely ever make eye contact anyway?” Amber asked, reminding her that she hadn’t exactly been attentive when learning about thralls.
“I was saying that I bet there aren’t many Autistic thralls,” Freya responded, deciding not to focus on her screw up. She knew better than to make the same mistake twice.
“Uh-huh,” Amber said in a tone that very much told Freya that she wasn’t fooled by her attempt to change the subject as she folded her arms. “Five o’clock.”
Freya spun around just as the hybrid shifted behind her, bringing up the pipe to block his attempted blow. She twisted the pipe around, knocking him off-balance before hitting him square in the chest with the butt.
He responded with a bolt of Dark magic, crippling Freya with pain for a few moments before she could muster a shield. Enough time for him to get back on his feet and charge at her once more.
She shifted away, appearing behind him and striking his back with the pipe. He stumbled before spinning to face her once more.
Freya managed to block his next few blows effectively. He clearly wasn’t very proficient with the sword. She wondered if he usually used a different weapon, or if he just relied on making his opponents thralls.
She kept the majority of her concentration on blocking his blows, but moved a little of it to the water beneath them. She kept it out of her way so that she wouldn’t slip on the hard floor, while also having it twist around the hybrid’s ankles, ready to trip him at a moment’s notice.
When the moment came, Freya had the water tug, sending the hybrid stumbling to the ground, where she kicked him hard enough to send him flying into the wall at the opposite end of the room as her sword clattered to the ground. She had the water pick up the weapon and bring it back to her.
She had the water coil around the injured hybrid once more as she approached, careful not to meet his gaze.
“Are you quite done?” she asked.
He responded by spitting blood in her direction.
“Well. Clearly you were never taught manners.”
“Why can’t you just let me feed?” he hissed at her.
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t need to kill Humans for food. You can get blood easily enough from a hospital. Or, look, I don’t really care all that much if you enthral them. Just don’t kill them and remind them to take some iron or something.”
“It’s not just the blood...”
She folded her arms. “Again, you don’t need to kill for negative energy. Humans generate enough of it themselves.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
“Let me guess, you’re trying to augment your powers because you want to impress one of your higher ups? The last guy was trying to get enough power to gain an audience with the Demon King. Who is it you’re trying to suck up to?”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. The Demons won’t accept me otherwise.”
Amber chipped in at that. “You should probably kill him. The last Vampyre-Demon hybrid I met who wanted to prove herself ended up trying to strip the Power of the Ancients from me. You don’t want that kind
of trouble.”
“You sure you won’t just leave peacefully?” Freya asked him.
“I will not stop until I have killed the Angel.”
“What Angel?” Freya asked. “There aren’t any Angels around here.”
“The Angel who guards this city.”
Freya sighed. “If you couldn’t even stop me, an actual Angel would be wearing your entrails as a necklace within two seconds. Give up. Go home.”
“Never,” he snarled, gripping a source stone on his belt and unleashing a barrage of Dark Energy.
Freya collapsed with pain, grasping at the hurt and holding it tight. Within a few moments, she had channelled her pain into Energy of her own, blasting it back at him before collapsing into darkness.
FREYA AWOKE A FEW MOMENTS later to find herself in the middle of a crater. She groaned, holding her side as she sat up. She was pretty sure her rib was fractured.
“Who keeps giving these arseholes source stones?” she muttered as she focused on weaving magic around her ribs to keep them in place.
“Someone who wants to sow chaos,” Amber said as she regarded the wreckage darkly.
Freya rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I’d figured that much out for myself. I more meant that it has to be against the secrecy codes, right? Even the Demons follow that. I can’t believe the Demon King would be so reckless as to let any arsehole with dreams of grandeur have one.”
Amber shrugged. “Perhaps he doesn’t know. Not all Demons are likely to be happy with the codes.”
Freya nodded as she finally felt well enough to shift home. She was probably going to spend the rest of the night patching herself up. She just hoped that she wasn’t going to have to use too many illusions to be presentable for prom.
Chapter Two
Despite spending her night patching up her injuries, Freya found herself waking early. As annoying as it was, she supposed her body would have to get used to being able to lie in on weekdays. At least it meant that she arrived in town for the shops opening, while it was as quiet as it ever got.
“What’re you looking for?”