The Wolf's Call (Two-Natured London)
Read The Wolf's Call (Two-Natured London) Online
Authors: Susanna Shore
THE WOLF’S CALL
The Two-Natured London
Susanna Shore
The Wolf's Call. The Two-Natured London.
Copyright © 2012 A. K. S. Keinänen
All rights reserved.
Second, revised edition; October 2012.
The moral
right of the author has been asserted.
No part of
this book may be reproduced, translated, or distributed without permission,
except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, dialogues and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, organisations or persons, living or dead, except those in
public domain, is entirely coincidental.
Cover © 2012 A. K. S.
Keinänen
Cover photography:
The moon © LesScholz, Fotolia
The man © Vladimirs Poplavskis, Fotolia
Editing in the revised edition:
Lee Burton, Ocean’s Edge Editing
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@crimsonhouseboo
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It was surprisingly quiet in
the vast open office of Latimer & Holby Solicitors considering that six
lawyers were doing their best there to keep the firm at the top of their game.
Only the occasional shuffling of papers, clicking of keyboards, and quiet
murmur of a low male voice having a phone conversation at the other end of the
room broke the silence.
The
unobtrusive atmosphere sprang partly out of respect and partly from a clever
office design that made a traditional City chamber out of a modern Canary Wharf
business hotel. The workstations had enough space between them to make each of
them a small island, three on both sides of an aisle that cut through the
office from the front door to the back. Freestanding hardwood bookcases and
filing cabinets surrounded each islet on three sides; on the fourth, large
potted plants covered the view to the aisle.
The
only potential source of noise was a huge flat-screen TV mounted on the wall by
a sofa group near the door, high enough for everyone to see what was on. Today,
a twenty-four-hour BBC news channel broadcasted live from the House of Commons,
where a heated debate seemed to be going on. The sound was muted, however, so
the exact content was unknown to the people in the office.
Charlotte
Thornton, Charly to herself, didn’t need to hear the discussion to know what it
was about. The debate on whether or not the two-natured races – vampires,
shifters, and sentients – were eligible to stand for elections had been going
on for days. The same debate sprang up every now and then in the Parliament,
usually after some other country took up the issue. The arguments for and
against remained the same too. Vampires and shifters weren’t human, so humans
couldn’t allow them to decide on national issues; however, they were allowed to
vote so they should be allowed to stand too. It would be dangerous to let
vampires in the Parliament because they could influence humans unfairly with
their magic. On the other hand, vampires had influenced politics and
politicians for millennia as grey eminences anyway and it was high time they
were made to do it openly. Shifters were violent brutes unable to grasp the
finer points of politics; yet shifters were perfectly capable of getting PhDs
so they could handle politics just fine. Some clever person had even argued
that if vampires and shifters got a say in human matters, humans should get a
vote in vampire courts and shifter clans. This was countered with the
traditional argument about taxes: the two-natureds paid human taxes so they
should get to decide where the money went. Of course, if humans didn’t want
their money…. Since everyone knew vampires were rich beyond imagination, the
argument usually died right there.
All
six lawyers in the office knew that the debate wouldn’t lead to a positive
conclusion for the two-natureds this time either – it would be a political
suicide for any MP to vote for them – but in deference to their profession they
kept the TV on. Who knew, perhaps something new would happen this time round?
Already, one MP had suggested that sentients, a breed that was almost absent
from the UK, should be invited in the Parliament to monitor the other two
races, but that had been met with fierce opposition from vampires and shifters
alike. They had a living memory of the last time sentients had colluded with
humans to control shifters and vampires. It had led to a reign of terror during
which sentients ousted what was essentially their own kind for execution. A
devastating war between the two-natured people had followed that only ended
when vampires banished sentients to the Americas in 1827. To humans that was
ancient history and, in their opinion, wounds should have healed by now. But it
wasn’t so for the long-living two-natureds. So the debate went on.
Charly
had stopped paying attention to the debate a while ago. Secretly, she thought
that most two-natureds didn’t even want to become openly involved with human
politics and that they were only arguing for the argument’s sake. But she also
believed that times had changed and vampires and shifters couldn’t hide behind
the scenes anymore, as if they didn’t exist. In a world of instant information,
with a press that tended to dig out every little detail about their leaders, a
known association with vampires could topple a politician. It would serve
everyone better if things were done openly.
Then
again, she didn’t really know what those with a second nature thought of the
human-ruled world around them. Her father had made sure that she went to an
all-human school, joined humans-only clubs in Oxford, and didn’t take any
courses in two-natured law there or during her pupillage in Lincoln’s Inn prior
to being called to the Bar. If there had been non-humans around her, she hadn’t
been privy to it, let alone to their way of thinking. To top it all, her father
had recently made the chambers in which she had been practicing terminate her
tenancy when he learned that the QC there allowed them to take cases that
involved non-humans. She still didn’t know how Wilfred Thornton had managed to
pull that off, but it infuriated her to no end.
In an
act of defiance, only one of many during her thirty-two-years’ war with her
father, she hadn’t accepted the position he had arranged for her as a lawyer in
one of the bigger banking firms in the City, but had chosen Latimer & Holby
Solicitors instead. It lacked the excitement of criminal law, but at least she
was fairly sure her father had no influence here – for the moment anyway – so
she was trying to enjoy it for as long as she could. The only reason her father
hadn’t meddled yet was because her new employer didn’t have any known
associations with the two-natureds. How he could always tell, she had no idea,
because the one-natureds had no means for detecting those with the second
nature around them.
Charly
sensed someone pause by her desk. Annoyed for the interruption, she looked up
from an intricate contract she had been perusing the whole morning to see her
boss. She was on a tight schedule so she hoped Mr Latimer, a stocky and
autocratic man in his early sixties, would state his business quickly.
Then
his aftershave hit her senses and a sharp pain stabbed her behind the eyes, a
prelude to one of her migraines. She was oversensitive to scents, something she
had suffered from all her life, to her mother’s great displeasure, because it
had prevented her mother from wearing her favourite perfume while Charly still
lived at home. Charly had only been with the firm for a month, so her
colleagues hadn’t gotten used to her requirements yet, and the onslaught of
various scents hit her every morning when she came to work. It had forced her
to adopt a schedule where she arrived before everyone else and was the last to
leave at the end of the day, the idea being that the air-conditioning would
clear the air before she had to walk through the office again. For a further
measure, she had a small air-cleanser by her desk that kept her immediate
workspace scent-free.
Struggling
to contain the growing pain, it took her a moment to understand what Mr Latimer
was saying to her. “There’s a new client coming over in ten minutes and I need
you to make us some coffee.”
If
ever a mere sentence could end a budding migraine, this one was it. “I’m sorry.
What?” She might be the newest lawyer with the firm, but she wasn’t a pupil.
She didn’t take photocopies for others, run errands, or make coffee on command.
“You
heard me. Mrs Jones is at a dentist’s and there is no one else. So hurry up,
there’s a good girl.”
Charly
looked around the vast open office the six younger lawyers shared. Even if she
hadn’t already known they were all present, she was able to see with one glance
that she wasn’t the only person in the room. Then the last word Mr Latimer had
used registered and she knew the difference between herself and the other five
lawyers. She was a
girl
as opposed to
men
, judging by his
patronizing tone.
Her
always-ready temper flared. She would have none of that. All her life she had
struggled against her father’s old-fashioned ideas about women and their place
in society, and as her life as a working woman – instead of a housewife her
father wanted her to be – testified, she had won. Mr Latimer, while undoubtedly
formidable, had nothing on her father as an opponent. He would learn personally
why he had hired her in the first place.
She
straightened her spine, glad that she was closer to six feet tall and that her
mother had insisted on modelling classes when she was a teenager, thus ensuring
that she was never ashamed of her height. Sitting down, she cut a commanding
presence; standing up, she was hard to dismiss, something she used to her full
advantage in courtrooms.
“No,”
she said calmly, looking at him squarely. Inside, she was far from composed.
She had a quick and furious temper that had manifested in uncontrollable rages
when she had been a child, but she had been taught to control herself to an
extent that outwardly no one would be able to tell how angry she truly was. By
now, the techniques she employed were automatic and she was able to concentrate
on her boss’s reaction.
The
grey bushes Mr Latimer had for eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?” His affronted
expression was a poor imitation of that of her father’s and she had no trouble
facing him. She just cocked a brow of her own, black and well groomed.
“I’m
busy. Ask someone else to make it.”
Her
boss was genuinely taken aback, as if it hadn’t even occurred to him that she
might refuse. “But it’ll only take five minutes.”
“Then
you’ll have time to make it yourself.”
She
would not back down. She was the only woman in the office apart from Mrs Jones,
the secretary. If she didn’t stand her ground she would be reduced to being a
woman instead of an equal, let alone the superior she one day intended to be.
She had experienced this before; luckily, she had backbone to deal with it. She
waited for her boss’s reaction, and wasn’t disappointed.
“I’m
ordering you to make the coffee, Miss Thornton.”
“I’m
afraid you can’t do that, sir.” She kept her tone dry and official. “You can
only ask politely and then turn to someone else after I tell you I haven’t got
time for a task unrelated to my job description.” She nodded towards her
colleagues.
“But
they’re…” he paused, realising the slippery slope he was on. But she wasn’t
about to let him off easy.
“They’re
what, sir?” This time she let some of the steel inside her come through in her
voice.
“Busy
too,” he finished feebly.
Charly
glanced at the men who were all suddenly trying to pretend they hadn’t been
listening to the argument with great interest. This wouldn’t make her popular
with them, but she was used to that too. Men didn’t like women who were
stronger-willed than them and who weren’t afraid to show it. That she had a
stronger will than these men, they had established already during her first two
weeks with the firm, much to the men’s dismay.
She
didn’t care. She had strength in abundance. It had put her through the
Lincoln’s Inn when her father had refused to give her a place in the family
firm after she’d finished her studies in Oxford. It may have wreaked havoc on
her love life that she refused to submit to a man’s will simply by virtue of
his gender, but one thing was certain: being only a woman would not be part of
her repertoire. That included being asked to make coffee simply because she was
the only person around with breasts.
“Oh,
well. I guess you’ll have to make the coffee yourself after all.” She shrugged,
as if it wasn’t such a big deal.
“I am
not here for making coffee,” Mr Latimer practically growled, but she wasn’t
impressed. She looked him straight in the eyes, letting him see her resolve.
“Neither
am I,
sir
.”
Understanding
flashed in his eyes, but he wouldn’t just give up and she actually respected
him for it. “What would it take to get you make the coffee here?”
She
had an answer ready. “Thousand pounds more a month and a contract where it
states that making coffee is part of my responsibilities.”
Mr
Latimer practically spurted in surprise. “Thousand pounds a month for making
coffee?”
Charly
smiled slowly. It was time for the
coup de grâce
. “No. I’ll make coffee
for free. You pay five hundred pounds for assigning me a demeaning menial task
even though I’m the best-educated and most experienced younger lawyer here. The
rest is compensation for being forced to submit to outdated gender
stereotypes.”
Mr
Latimer blinked a couple of times. Then his anger rose. “I could fire you.”
“And
face the lawsuit that would follow?” She held her gaze steady. She was not
afraid of being fired. She thrived on challenges like this. If she was given
smaller clients for a while as punishment, it would only leave her with more
time on her hands to set things straight around here.
Mr
Latimer must have noticed the excited gleam in her eyes, because he harrumphed
in anger and turned to the man across the aisle to her. “Mr Brooke. You make
the coffee then, and be quick about it. Don’t think I didn’t notice the
solitaire you hid when you saw me coming.” Gary Brooke shot up to fulfil the
command and Mr Latimer disappeared into his office.
Charly
stretched, satisfied. This new job might not be as exciting as being a
barrister had been, but for the first time since starting, she’d had a chance
to stretch her metaphysical claws. She needed a good battle every now and then
or she became impossible to be around.
She
took a deep breath and a new scent hit her senses, overriding the aftershaves
the room was saturated with. Pure wilderness invaded her entire being, as if
the scent had a physical presence. It was intriguing, commanding, and sexy as
hell. For the first time ever the scent didn’t trigger a headache. Instead, an
entirely different physical reaction swept over her, no less overwhelming in
its pervasiveness. She got thoroughly aroused.