Once Upon A Time (2 page)

Half-brother
to Alix and Adhémar, sired by the same father, but on an unnamed
pack female. Their sire brought Casimir into his mate’s home,
forcing her to raise his bastard son, along with two others sired
on other females. Casimir is a psychopath. After his sire was
executed, he expected to inherit the Alpha title and the pack.
Instead, the pack went to Adhémar. Casimir set up his own pack,
made up of disenchanted shifters from other packs, and former
members of the military who needed the structure afforded by a
pack. Casimir is involved in various illegal activities, and more
recently, reached an agreement with Lamashtu. However, he views her
as he would any other disposable ally.

Great-grandaughter of Albert Anastasia, Rosa is an assassin who
hides her nature behind the sophisticated image of a gallery owner
in New York. She met Casimir Gosselin when ostensibly he was
looking for new artwork for his apartment. He offered her a role as
‘Vice President’ in his organization, which transpired to mean
being Pack Beta of the Hellfire Pack. She has a ‘friends with
benefits’ arrangement with Casimir.  

Discovered by
Rosa, Daniela is a ‘psychopath in a wrapper of normal’, as Casimir
describes her. She joined the Hellfire Pack as a contract killer.
Initially, she refused to respect Casimir and call him sir as she
was advised, until he shifted to his wolf form, and threatened to
rip out her throat.

Youngest
sibling of Alix and Casimir, he was the butt of Casimir’s
psychopathic tendencies, before he managed to flee the Gosselin
compound and was signed up as the ‘face’ of Givenchy. When his sire
was slated for execution, Adhémar realised that the pack needed
someone to pull it back to the straight and narrow, and took over
the pack. He discovered afterwards that his dam, Janice Gosselin,
had always intended that he would take on the pack as her direct
heir.

Based on the
Welsh legend of the Ddraig Goch, the Ddraig Clan are red Welsh
dragons. The original Ddraig Goch fought the white dragon of evil,
driving it from Wales. That was the present Queen’s sire, and her
mother’s Consort. The Ddraig Queen is able to foretell the future,
but not her own death. The only clue that she receives is that she
will lay a Queen egg, to replace herself, when her life is
threatened by a great evil. This will signal to her Consort and
Mate, the Ddraig Goch that he will need to fight to protect her. If
he fails, and the Queen dies, he is faced with having to raise
their daughter as the next Queen. When she is ready to assume the
throne and his own replacement is appointed, he will also die.

Consort to the
Ddraig Queen, and responsible for her security. He is the Ddraig
Goch of Welsh legend, guarding against an evil which may kill his
Queen.

Queen of the
Ddraig Clan. According to legend, she will lay a Queen egg when her
life is threatened by an evil of sufficient magnitude.

Related to
Taliesin through his sister, Lili-Meinir was born in 1990. Her
uncle persuaded Ariawen to let Lili-Meinir and the rest of her
hatching mates attend human schools and universities to better
integrate with the outside world. She works at MI6 as a language
specialist, splitting her time between her home in London, and the
Ddraig Clan lands in North Wales

Human partner
of Alix Gosselin and fellow Homicide Detective with NY State
Police. Born in 1969, he only discovered recently that his family
had links to the Cŵn Annwn, as his father’s soul was the first soul
read by Rhys Jones. Following Alix’s mating with Bran, he accepted
a blood brotherhood bond with Gavril, which enhanced his human
abilities, and ensured that Gavril could come to his assistance if
required. He has adapted well to the world of the supernatural, but
it still causes him the odd moment. Works closely with Rhys Jones
when their cases develop a common thread.

Human CSI, working in the same precinct as Jake Petersen and
Alix Gosselin. She is happiest in her lab, having discovered that
she really doesn’t like the smell of corpses.

Son of Svitovid, an Eastern European god of warfare,
fertility and divination. As such, he shares his sire’s affinities.
His sire tasked him with working with the Cŵn Annwn, knowing that
various timelines might result. As part of working with the Cŵn
Annwn, Zarek watched over their former home in the Carpathians.
When the Russian authorities tried to use him, based on rumours of
his paranormal abilities, he had to relocate to the USA. He has
recently rekindled an association with Diana MacGregor, a
half-human/half-demon hybrid.

Half
demon/half human hybrid and close friend of Zarek Svitovidsyn. They
have rekindled a friendship from 1990, which came about through the
indirect intervention of Zarek’s sire.

Born in 1989,
Avigail is the grand-daughter of Eliana, the girl rescued from
deportation to the concentration camps by Bran Cadwgan. She was not
aware of this connection. However, Avigail was conceived as an
early ‘test tube baby’, from an egg donated by an unknown Cŵn Annwn
female. Whilst her father had handled some business affairs for the
Cŵn Annwn until his retirement, he had been unaware of the
connection with a specific individual within the Negrescu
organization. Avigail is a lawyer specializing in assisting
trafficked woman or victims of domestic violence.

Solange is a
wolf-shifter who works for the French security organisation. She
will be part of the next book in the Diaries of the Cŵn Annwn.
Recently acceding to the rank of Alpha of the Griffe de Noir Pack,
she is trying to lead her Pack in the way that she believes her
late sire would have wished.

Pack Beta to
the Griffe de Noir Pack, she had run from events in her home pack
in Romania, before being found by the Griffe de Noir Pack.
Expecting to be slaughtered for trespass, she was surprised to be
taken in by the Pack, finding her Mate in the then Beta. When he
was murdered in Egypt, she withdrew from Pack life. The new Alpha
of the Pack, Solange, encouraged her back by demonstrating that her
late Mate's siblings still needed her. As a result, both she and
Solange are as much close friends as Beta and Alpha.

Who Am I?

Fane
Anghelescu

How can I
describe the thoughts running through my mind? The realisation that
when, and it was when, rather than if, my sister returned to the
Pack, having disappeared to parts unknown, I would have no choice
but to issue a judgement against her for her blatant flaunting of
my authority.

Roxana, my
sister, you have always been the most important thing in my life,
and that it unlikely to change. I have been a fool. I saw only the
cub, the juvenile, whom I have wanted to protect from the moment
you were born. You were a little fur ball of grey and white fluff,
eyes screwed tightly shut, one of the last to be born to the
Anghelescu Pack. You were only a year behind me in terms of our dam
whelping you, but you would always be my baby sister. How many
mistakes I made because I could not lose that image of you as a
cub? But, the mistakes have been made, and now, I can try only to
rectify the damage.

When Vladimir
Lupei slaughtered our dam, my only thought was to protect you. So,
I begged the only authority higher than Aurelia for protection. I
made my plea to our Queen. Would things have been different if our
dam had told us that she had lowered her status in the Pack because
she knew that you and I had to the potential to lead? Our dam also
tried to protect us, but she chose a different method and one
which, ultimately, failed.

Regardless,
she didn’t tell us. We didn’t realise that she had tried to protect
us, in the hope that we would overthrow Aurelia when we reached
maturity. Instead, I made my plea to the Queen, and she accepted
the offer of my service in return for protecting you. Again, 20/20
vision is wonderful. Over the time I have served the Queen, I know
that she changes the truth to suit herself. After all, she is, or
was, the Queen of Hell. She is hardly going to be a ‘pleasant’
person. She needed me, though, and thus we had an agreement.
Whether she has maintained her end of the deal is something, at the
moment, I will not know. The Queen had realised that she needed a
change in the way that the Anghelescu Pack was being led. My plea
to her, along with the incipient powers that I had within me, were
a gift at just the right time.

Training.
Wonderful word. It covers a multitude of sins. Again, part of the
way that the Queen decided to change the status quo was how she
prepared her Alpha Designate for the inevitable battle. I needed to
learn to fight in ways that my enemies would not expect. So she
‘recruited’ some specialists. Humans have a long history of
fighting, considering how long their species has been around, it
could be argued that this was their key life skill. Where there is
fighting, there are those who will find ways of achieving their
goal, regardless of what stands in their way. These were the humans
that the Queen recruited to be my trainers. Since I have become
Alpha, the common term for the type that she would recruit were
those involved in Black Ops, ‘missions’ which the human hierarchy
would never admit to having authorised. But in times past, it was
the sadists, the murderers, the serial killers, the ones who took
pleasure in causing pain, and the ones who knew how to kill both
efficiently, and with the maximum amount of blood energy released
for the Queen’s gratification. It was the humans who glorified in
slaughter that the Queen felt would provide the best grounding in
how to fight in an unpredictable manner, and it was to these
‘trainers’ that I was given, with their brief being to make me a
better fighter. And, learn I did. I would return topside bruised,
bloody, not always victorious, but with the knowledge of how that
would change the next time my trainer tried that particular stunt.
Their advantage was, they believed, that they were already dead.
What else could happen to them? Quite a lot as it transpired, such
that we had a mutual hatred society. I knew that training was
necessary, and let’s face it, their methods meant that I came up
with a lot of unexpected ways to use my abilities, some direct and
some indirect. All of them were intended to ensure that I won.

But, I move
ahead of myself. My human ghost-writer has given me a list of
questions, which are supposed to help explain my origins, motives
and the rationale that makes me what and who I am. I don’t seek the
understanding or forgiveness of others for what I am, or who I am.
I am a creature of the Dark. I am, as humans would say, evil
through and through, and I don’t have a problem with it. But, I am
also the Alpha of the Anghelescu Pack, a Hellhound Pack, and it
will always remain that there are two things which are of
importance to me: my sister, Roxana and my Pack.  The rest I
will happily send to our Queen for our pleasure. I believe the
human term is that they can go to Hell. Then again, why should they
enjoy the pleasure of a visit to my homeland, when necessity keeps
me topside?

I am what I
am. I am spawned from what the human race calls Hell. I am born of
the blood of the Huntsman. I am not some shape-shifter, living as a
human, and occasionally letting myself indulge my animal side. I am
Hellhound, and to make my life topside easier, I have chosen to
adopt a human form.

My brethren
and I were created when the Huntsman took our Queen as his bride.
She bore him an heir, since there must always be an heir to the
Huntsman. As a show of his gratitude to her for this, he created
her own Pack of Hounds, who, like his own, would run with the Hunt,
but we remained loyal to her, with our primary duty to protect her,
whilst the Heir was protected by his own Lupei Pack.  What can
I say? The Lupei Pack screwed the pooch big time, as humans would
say. During the annual Hunt, somehow the Heir fell and died. Our
Queen was distraught. Her child was lost to her. The Master was
distraught, because now there was no Heir. When he found that our
Queen could not provide him with a second Heir, he put her to one
side, taking instead a human whom had caught his eye and thus began
the cycle of replacing his Queen, constantly searching for one who
would bear him a live heir. Our Queen was banished. We followed our
Queen, and chose exile, but in order to continue to feed her the
human scum that she needed, we were ordered to make our home
topside, and to find ways to ensure that we would feed the souls to
her that she needed, now that she could no longer take her pleasure
from victims of the Hunt.

Thus, the
Anghelescu Wolves were born. We are not wolves, and we are not
shape-shifters, as I have said. We are Hellhounds, and would enjoy
nothing more than the thrill of running with the Hunt. But this is
not to be. To run with the Hunt would mean that we would associate
with the human who supplanted our Queen. Time has shown me that it
is easier for humans to see a pack of wolves that it is for them to
understand seeing me and mine in our true form. So, for the sake of
efficiency, those are the forms I will use in the main. Don’t
misunderstand me. My Pack and I enjoy running as wolves, since we
are seen as the epitome of ‘wild’ and by and large, we are left to
our own devices by humans. It is only in settled areas where we are
seen as a problem. Explain to me why I would want to eat a
domesticated animal instead of a wild animal who has provided me
with the thrill of the chase. No? Well, don’t worry, as the
majority of the anti-wolf lobby couldn’t understand that one
either.