The House (5 page)

“Yes,
grandfather. By five vampyre who had no knowledge of shifters and
blatantly broke the law when they did not back down after I told
them I knew of the witches’ justice. I even threw in your name and
it didn’t seem to faze them. But grandfather…”

“Yes.”

“They weren’t
newly-turned; they were old and the leader seemed very old and very
powerful. There is no way that this lot could have pulled it off
without their witches knowing.”

“Did you say
witches, plural?”

“Yes.”

“So they did
not all answer to the same master?”

“No,
grandfather, it didn’t feel like they did but you’ll have trouble
asking them. They’re all dead.”

“You did not
partake so easily in life-taking when I last saw you my
granddaughter.” Oh great, he was going to remind me that I was
family. He even managed to make it sound like an insult that I had
never killed anyone. Not ‘so easily’; I’d flat out refused to do
anything permanent to anyone ever. Not that I hadn’t had to sit
there while other people did the dirty work anyway, but it beat the
hell out of doing it myself. I wasn’t a pacifist; I just didn’t
like needless violence when there were other ways to accomplish the
same thing. I’d given up arguing after a while. Prisoners in the
Covenant have no rights, hell, people in general don’t have that
many rights there. It was the way of our world.

“I didn’t kill
them. You really think I could have fought five vampyre and won?
No, a hunter got them. Grandfather, Deacan Mackensie killed all of
them quick, clean and neat. It looked like he’d been following
them. So they were being none too subtle.” I heard him take a deep,
and presumably calming, breath. Deacan was a sore spot for both of
us.

“Did he harm
you?”

“No, he didn’t know anything about me. He had no reason to
connect me to that night, grandfather. I gave a false name and came
back the long way. He isn’t the problem right now. The problem is
how do five vampyre of different masters go about kidnapping and
killing humans without being noticed? Because it sure as hell
looked like they’d done this before.” I could hear the anger
starting to seep into my voice and I didn’t care. I
was
angry; I was scared
and I wanted answers.

“There’s no
need to raise your voice to me young lady; I believe you were the
one to call me for help. You couldn’t even be bothered to come here
and ask in person.” He sounded positively indignant, but then he
always did. He seemed to be able to make you feel guilty about
anything even if it had nothing to do with you. That, and I really
should have made this call in person. It was too late now. I would
have to deal with it. I was going to pay for it later, I was
sure.

I screamed; it
was so typically my grandfather. “You want me to come asking why
five vampyre - five vampyre that it is your job to keep track of -
attacked me! Did they do it on your orders then? Is that it? The
vampyre aren’t rogue, the witches are?” I didn’t care that the
whole house would hear me shouting and raving. I’d left the door
slightly ajar; I didn’t think I’d end up in a screaming match.
Shifters have very good hearing. They’d probably been eavesdropping
on the whole conversation anyway.

“How can you
say such a thing? You are my granddaughter. I would never think to
harm you.” His voice was full of righteous indignation. I wanted
desperately to believe him and I couldn’t. There were too many
times when my wellbeing had not even crossed his mind.

“How can I say
such a thing? You never cared about me. You never cared if I was
well or happy. All you cared about was my success, my power.” I
managed to say it calmly. I didn’t feel calm. I felt like there was
a storm raging inside me, or maybe a fire. We had gone far beyond
the discussion on the vampyre. We were back to old arguments and it
felt like I knew all the words to them already.

I knew what it
was that burned inside me. Power. I had a lot of it, just not many
skills useful in a fight. At that moment my power tried to burst
from my body. I had called it. I had called too much power to
contain without doing something with it. Magic is an odd thing;
sometimes I think it comes from within and other times it feels so
alien, so other, that I’m sure it has to come from elsewhere.

I fought to
stuff it back down. Anger shouldn’t cause my power to manifest; it
should make it nearly impossible to do anything at all. Hey, I’m
special. It was sadly a common occurrence when I had to talk to my
family.

“You clearly do
not want my help granddaughter. I will hang up now. If you wish to
talk to me again come in person. If it’s an emergency a video call
would suffice but not this tempest rage that you offer now.” And he
hung up. The bastard actually hung up on me and proved once and for
all that he is indeed more stubborn than I am. To make up for that
fact, I threw the phone across the room and fought not to cry. I
barely registered the crash as it hit the wall. We would need a new
phone again.

There were
voices in the hall outside the room. It wouldn’t have been at all
strange at a different time of the month; we had a lot of strangers
around at the full moon. Yet it was nearly two weeks until the full
moon and the stranger’s voice seemed oddly familiar.

“I think she’s
in here, hang on,” I heard James saying. Then silence. He poked his
head around the door and motioned for me to come out to him. I
pulled myself up and glanced at the phone where it had fallen. It
looked surprisingly intact. With that thought, I set myself to
rights to face the rest of the world.

The door was
three steps away. I had to pull it further open in order to get
out. I don’t know what I was expecting but, with the emotion still
raw from my fight with my grandfather, I actually took a step back
into the room before I regained my composure.

Standing there
in the middle of the hallway was a tall blond man with power
whispering around him like a cloak. And I could not for the life of
me figure out why he was there. He clearly didn’t need help with
the power side of things; nobody came out of the transformation
with that much power so he had to have had training. He looked
young and fit. Although his top didn’t show whether or not he was
well- muscled, I was leaning towards the yes side of that
question.

I realised that
I’d been staring at him for a full minute and not said a word. I
also realised why I was so fascinated by him; he felt like an echo
of me. A lion. He was a bloody lion like me, and God, he was
powerful. I could feel it and I wondered briefly if his power
nearby had caused me to call more of mine accidentally. Not that it
worked that way, but it would have been nice for my overreaction
with my grandfather to be this man’s fault instead of mine. I hated
it when things were my fault.

“Hello.” He had
a deep, almost gruff, voice that matched the strong jaw but seemed
completely at odds with the deep blue eyes that felt like I might
fall into them at any moment. Damn it, I still hadn’t said
anything.

“Who are you?”
Alright, it was rude and I sounded like a spoiled teenager, just
like I had with Mackensie in the alley. I shook my head in an
attempt to clear it, not that it made much difference, but it
brought my own eyes away from his captivating ones and his oh so
promising chest.

“Eddie.”
Simple, short and obviously not a real name. At least, not a full
name. I hated when people didn’t introduce themselves properly; it
made me not want to trust them. Then again, maybe it stemmed from
my childhood at the Covenant. The only people who didn’t give you
their full name there were the vampyre. We all tended to be just a
little bit too attached to our names and our family lines. It was
something I was glad to be rid of and I told myself to shut up and
act like a sane human being.

“Trix.” I held
out my hand since he hadn’t and he took it. His hand was warm and
nice. The humans always wrote stories of power jolts between the
magically inclined but it never really happened. My power was my
own and his was his, it didn’t jump to me. It did however bring
some of my power to the surface of my body, although I had probably
done that subconsciously.

Calling my
power allowed me a better sense of his. It was warm and wild and
instinctual. He felt like a new shifter with all those instincts
warring away in his body and in his power. He wasn’t new. I’d stake
almost anything on the fact that he wasn’t new.

“You sent out a
Call earlier tonight.” His voice brought me back to myself somewhat
and also drew my eyes up to his face.

“Yes.” He
wasn’t perfectly handsome but he was good-looking. A good strong
jaw line and a well-proportioned nose. His eyes were small but a
beautiful colour and his hair slipped over his face but didn’t
cover his eyes. I wondered if it was like that naturally. He didn’t
look the type to spend much time grooming, but you never know.

“I was too far
away to have heard it but I did. Why?” It took me a while to
realise that he’d asked me a question. I shrugged.

“I don’t know.
Excuse me.” I pushed past him gently and he moved before I touched
him, like he was afraid. I ignored it. He was new, he’d get used to
me eventually, to all of us. We ended up touching quite a lot, not
in a sexual way, well not generally, but just for comfort. We were
all pretty screwed-up; we needed the hugs. The majority of us had
nobody else, no other family to turn to. I think I would go mad
without the human contact.

I felt him grab
my wrist just as I passed him and it was too soon after the attack.
Comforting touch is one thing, being grabby is quite another. I
spun around trying to pull my arm from his grasp. He held on and a
small irrational part of my brain was screaming at me to get away.
Consciously I knew that he wasn’t dangerous, that I was at the
House, that I was at home. Unconsciously, my instincts had taken
over. I felt my power well up inside me and there was nothing I
could do to stop it.

My power
coursed through me; it felt like I was on fire. That scorching
power flowed easily from my arm to Eddie’s hand. He jumped back
like I’d burnt him, but it didn’t stop the power that was filling
me up from spilling over into him. It wasn’t quite a call for help
like earlier; more like my body just went into overdrive. It scared
me. I’d never done anything like that before. I shouldn’t have been
able to do anything like that. Which made for two magical events in
one day, which shouldn’t be possible. I really hoped it wasn’t
going to become a pattern. I had enough trouble with magic without
changing the rules.

I walked away,
leaving him rubbing his arms. I didn’t look at his face. I didn’t
want to know what was there. It was all I could do to keep from
running. I didn’t normally get shaken this badly but the
conversation with my grandfather, or lack thereof, had only added
to my fears. I did not want to be facing regular vampyre attacks.
That my power was doing strange things didn’t help either. The only
person I could go to for help on both counts was my grandfather,
and I wasn’t ready to pay the price for his help. Not just yet
anyway. I try to never actually say never.

“Trixibell,
how’d it go?” I looked at Marie still sat serenely in her chair in
the meeting room. She seemed composed and content despite the late
hour. She had practically raised me but she just couldn’t
understand what was going through my head at that moment. I finally
let myself break down. I strode over to her and slumped none too
gracefully onto the floor next to her chair. The House was my home
but it was Marie that really brought me comfort. The others were
great but she was a mother to me. And a mother’s arms are the very
best place to be.

“Shh, child …
it’s alright. They can’t hurt you here … it’s alright.” She was
stroking my hair rhythmically and it helped, sort of. Her
interpretation was way off though. I didn’t fear the vampyre so
much as being sucked back into witch politics. If the vampyre had
gone rogue then my grandfather would find a way to bring me back.
At that moment I hated him, more than I could possibly say, and
certainly more than I could ever get Marie to understand. Family
was family to her, and my grandfather was my family. For better or
worse, there was nothing I could do about it.

“I don’t want
to go back.” A part of me was horrified at the way my voice broke
between the sobs. A part of me was just glad to be saying it. “I
won’t go back, please don’t make me go back,” I mumbled, on and on.
I don’t think Marie even heard half of what I said. I sure didn’t.
She just continued stroking my hair and holding me, letting my
tears wash over her blouse and skirt.

The next thing
I really remember is waking up in my own bed. I couldn’t remember
how I got there, which probably meant that I’d fallen asleep in
Marie’s lap and she’d carried me upstairs. Or one of the guys had,
because although Marie was strong she was also getting older. Hell,
Stripes could have carried me there. I’m not that heavy. Or maybe
it’s better to say that we are all very strong. It wouldn’t be
difficult for one of us to lift a cow, let alone a person. Getting
the cow up the stairs? Now that I would like to see. I felt the
corners of my mouth twitch at the imagery.

I opened my
eyes to find that Hercules was sat in the armchair opposite my bed.
He looked like he was asleep; he looked so very peaceful. Then his
eyes fluttered open and filled with concern.

“Trix, are you
alright?”

“Yeah, sorry.”
I didn’t know how else to respond. I’d broken down in front of
everyone, even the new guy. Damn it, I was better than that. I was
confident and self-assured. I was powerful, but the events of the
previous night had worn me out. I was so tired and, although I hate
to admit it, terrified. I had meant every word I’d said to Marie. I
did not want to go back and I would do a lot of things to keep it
from happening.