The House (3 page)

He lunged again
and panic flooded my system. I felt the last of the buzz from the
alcohol flee ahead of the onslaught of chemicals my body injected
into my system. I could feel every nerve ending with new and
terrifying quality. The magic from the vampyre screamed through me,
bringing with it flashes of their intentions and feelings. If I’d
been in a better frame of mind I might have been able to use the
clues from their heads to fight them. If I hadn’t had so many
chemicals rushing through my system I might have been able to
shimmer and fight them.

I used the only
defence I had instinctively. I’d only ever done it once before,
because for all the horrific things I’d seen, and all the dangerous
people I’d met, there had only ever been one other time when I was
in such serious danger. I felt my own power radiate out from inside
me. It burnt me up from the inside.

Desperately, I
tried to pull it back, to stop it. I felt Stripes behind me shift
as it hit her and prayed that it wouldn’t have the same effect on
Hunter; he couldn’t afford to shift in front of the crowded club.
The vampyre flinched as it hit them, not entirely sure what to do.
I’d called for help, magically, and I saw emotions flit over their
faces too fast for me to follow. I’d called for help but I’d also
just made us infinitely more dangerous in their eyes. This was an
unknown power, one that they wouldn’t understand. At best they
would brush it off as my being a shifter. It didn’t look like we
were going for best case scenarios at that moment in time.

The vampyre
that had started to lunge at me was within an arm’s reach. His hand
shot out at my head; he could probably knock me out with one quick
blow. I dodged and blocked his arm, debating whether to try
fighting back. I knew a little about defending myself and part of
that was being able to injure your opponent enough to stop them
chasing you. But they were vampyre and what I knew referred to
humans. It’s hard to appreciate the difference most of the time but
in a fight … well, it could be the difference between life and
becoming dinner.

By the time he
launched his next attack, about half a second after the first, I’d
made up my mind. Stripes was gone. She’d vaulted the wall without
any of them noticing she’d disappeared. All of their attention was
focused on me. I used his punch to push him past me and he went
down hard. He’d put all of his strength into that one punch and his
own momentum drove him further into the wall. I was so surprised
that it had worked that I would have missed what happened next if
my senses weren’t already in overdrive.

A second later
it felt like all hell broke loose, as if it hadn’t already. I
hadn’t actually meant to call for help but apparently most people
had ignored the summons anyway. Most of them were full of alcohol
and other mind-destroying substances and had put it off as a side
effect of whatever they’d been taking. That was really lucky
because I didn’t think I could explain the general sense of menace
and magic that humans tended to pick up on around vampyre.

Unfortunately,
the one man who did arrive probably didn’t come just because of my
call. In fact I had no doubts that he’d been following the group
for quite a while; they didn’t exactly blend into the background.
At first I didn’t see his face as my first clue that he was there
was a small arrow sticking all the way through my assailant’s head.
It had gone in through the skull and come out of his face. I
screamed in terror. I couldn’t help it. He died right there with a
look of vague surprise written across his handsome features. Blood
splattered up at me and I noticed it almost subconsciously.

I saw my
rescuer’s - if you can call him that - face before he shot the next
arrow from some kind of modern metal cross bow. I think my heart
stopped for a beat or two before I could gain control of it. The
noise in the alley escalated and it was only later that I realised
it was my screaming that had reached new and unfathomable levels.
There, standing across the entrance to the alley, his face
heartbreakingly, terrifyingly familiar.

Deacan
MacKensie.

In the short
time it took me to sort through and re-repress my memories he had
killed every single vampyre with an arrow to the heart. He even
came up and put an arrow in the vampyre that he’d shot in the head,
although he was already dead. And that meant that when Deacan
MacKensie turned around to talk to me, comfort me maybe, he was
close enough to reach out and touch. I never, ever wanted to be
touched by Deacan Mackensie, hunter extraordinaire and mass
murderer.

“It’s alright,
it’s over now. They are gone.” His voice was soft and raspy; he
wasn’t a young man anymore. I was somewhat pleased to notice the
start of lines around his eyes and mouth, and the fact that his
hairline had receded drastically. I fell onto my bum in my rush to
get away from him.

“It’s ok, it’s
ok.” He stood there with his hands facing down and towards me, the
universal sign for ‘look I’m unarmed, I won’t hurt you.’ Except
he’d forgotten something. I already knew he was armed. There were
bulges under the leather jacket that practically screamed weaponry.
Even to my untrained eyes he looked dangerous. Although maybe that
was more to do with what I knew he could do, what he would enjoy
doing, than anything about the image he presented.

Then again,
even when unarmed, I doubted Deacan was ever truly harmless and
there would never come a time when he would not hurt me. Not if he
knew who I was, what he’d already done to me. But I’d changed a lot
since I was a child. Back then I was tiny - tinier than I am now -
and I had long, brilliantly blond hair that came halfway down my
thighs.

“I’m Deacan,”
he said, like I didn’t already know exactly who he was. Right. Him
not knowing I knew that was what was going to keep me alive.
Hopefully. Maybe. If I was really, really lucky.

“Juliet,” I
said. He seemed to expect a name and how many people do you know
who are called Trix … well, Beatrice? I’d say probably not many. I
hadn’t studied Shakespeare since school, but the first thing I
thought of when I needed a name was the play we’d had to do as part
of English. I’d been a very bad Juliet.

“Ok Juliet,
where do you live?” I was still sat on my bum looking up at him. I
hate to think of what he saw on my face. Fear. Revulsion. Hate. I
hoped he didn’t recognise the last two, or that he put them down to
the stress of the situation.

Damn, he wanted
to know where I lived; I couldn’t very well tell him that. I’d be
skinned alive, or worse, if I led him back to the house where he
could kill us all in our sleep. It was taking my mind seconds too
long to process his questions. Lies always take longer than the
truth to think of.

“In an
apartment with my parents, and I should really be getting back or
I’ll miss curfew.” I picked myself up and used the pretence of
dusting myself off to keep from looking him in the eye. I look
young; young enough to have needed to sneak into the club, and
young enough to still be living at home. My clothes weren’t too
expensive so I could bluff living in one of the apartment towers
that the majority of the population occupied. I could smile sweetly
and pretend to be harmless. People always seemed to underestimate
small women. I could use that. I’d just always thought MacKensie
would know better.

“I’ll walk you
back.” MacKensie seemed determined that he would see me safely
home. In case I ran into any more trouble no doubt. My biggest
trouble that night was MacKensie.

“I can get back
myself, it’s not a problem. I don’t want to show up at home with a
strange man anyway. I don’t want to have to explain this to my
parents.” No, I wanted Marie to explain it to me, or even my
grandfather. He was going to get a very angry call tonight; the
witches weren’t keeping their little pets in line and someone was
going to have hell to pay even if I had to exact it myself.

“I understand,
but I would really like to make sure you get home safely, you could
be in shock. That was quite a traumatic event. And you have blood
on your face so you’ll have to explain it to your parents anyway.”
He was calm and reasonable but I couldn’t help but think that he
was trying to hurt me in some way. I know it was just my
imagination but I’d been programmed to think that about hunters
since I was seven years old.

“Don’t worry
I’ve got a cab pod waiting for me to call them. I’ll be home in no
time.” I smiled as sweetly as possible then sighed, switching
tactics. “I just want to get home and go to sleep and forget any of
this ever happened.” I looked at the ground, allowing my dark,
waist-length hair to sweep across my face. Then I looked up at him
through my veil of hair, begging him to let me go alone. I had
completely ignored his comment about the blood on my face.

“I suppose
that’s alright.” He didn’t sound convinced but I’d run out of
options. “Don’t you want me to stay with you while you wait?”

He phrased it
as a question, but it was a very leading question. “No, no, go on,
there must be lots of other girls for you to save. I’ll be fine,
I’m not a child.” I tried to sound indignant, but it came out
whiny. I was hoping he’d write me off as a stubborn teenager and go
on his way. To my immense luck and surprise, he did. He nodded
briefly and was gone so fast I thought I must have blacked out for
a second or two. Which wasn’t entirely out of the realm of
possibility.

I pulled my
coms pad from its thigh holster and pressed the right number of
buttons to dial the pre-booked cab pod without turning off the
safety lock. I pretended to answer the recorded questions then put
my phone away. He was probably already gone; I just wanted to be
sure. I felt the wall at my back and slid down to sit cross-legged
on the floor, ignoring the fact that my dress was far too short for
the position. Nobody else was in the alley. Most people wouldn’t be
leaving the club till closing time.

A tabby cat
meowed next to me and I let my hand run all the way along Stripes’
body and tail. Her outfit was in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Which was better than mine would be if I’d shifted in it. I picked
up the dress, shoes and underwear and stuffed them into the bag
that Stripes had brought out with her. Of course she wouldn’t leave
her work outfit in the club. Though where she’d stashed it in time
to follow me out with it so quickly was beyond me.

My heels joined
the rest of the clothes in the bag and I pulled out a pair of
bright orange flip-flops. They looked hideous but were incredibly
comfortable, especially after a night in the heels. The balls of my
feet had started to burn and I rubbed them before slipping on the
flip-flops. We were going to go home. It didn’t look like Stripes
was going to change back any time soon either. I found myself
wondering how much time she’d spent in her other form recently as
she seemed to be always either sleeping or working.

Stepping out of
the alley hurt my eyes as the harsh street lamps made the night as
bright as day. There weren’t many people about and I wondered how
they justified keeping the lights on all the time. The bright
lights should have made me feel safer. Yet I found myself searching
the shadows. I desperately didn’t want many more surprises; my
frayed nerves wouldn’t be able to handle it.

We took the
back way home, looping through the park and back alleys despite our
earlier escapades. It wasn’t likely that there would be two groups
of rogues out on the same night, in the same area. Any humans who
surprised us would be in for the shock of a lifetime. I was jumpier
than I ever remembered being.

I didn’t fear
the dark, or the abandoned alleyways, nor did I fear the tiny
strips of darkened woodland we had to pass through. It was peaceful
and I found myself wishing that I could see stars in the sky. The
kind of sky I’d only ever seen in films and photographs.

Shifters tended
to be outdoorsy people, even if they weren’t before. A part of us
craved the outside, free spaces and running. Not that you could do
any of that in England; the biggest area of free space was probably
Dartmoor. The parts still mostly covered in bog land. Every
available space had been utilised for building or farming. I was
always surprised that they hadn’t taken to reclaiming vast swathes
of land from the sea. The whole country felt like a concrete jungle
and it dampened our spirits.

I was thinking
of the sad loss of countryside when I arrived at the back gate to
the House. I typed in the codes absentmindedly and trudged up the
well-worn path. There were no lights in the long garden because
most shifters could see perfectly well in the dark, even in our
human forms. Marie just couldn’t spare the expense of flood-lights.
The only outside lighting was the small porch light at the back and
front doors required by law.

The doors
weren’t locked; the back door was a two-way swing mechanism
designed to be pushed open by human hands or animal muzzles. It
could be locked but we hardly ever did because someone was nearly
always home. Our hearing made the chances of anyone breaking in
unheard very close to impossible. That was if they could get past
the reinforced steel gate at the back or the high walls on each
side. All of the walls had sensors on them that called the police
if anyone tried to climb them. Of course we’d actually turned that
feature off since we didn’t want the police arriving unexpectedly,
but the small flashing box that showed the sensors were there was
still active. So far we’d not had any problems.

The back hall
was cast in shadow because Marie had already gone to bed and didn’t
trust the boys, James and Hercules, to turn out the downstairs
lights. Neither did I for that matter as they were notoriously bad
at it.