CHAPTER Twenty One
The back doors to the van were flung open, banging against the metal sides. I had half hoped – and half dreaded – that it would be Corrigan, but it was the were-tiger instead, newly returned to human and wearing a fresh set of clothes. Did the Brethren keep spare wardrobes with them everywhere they travelled, I wondered? It hadn’t really been much of a problem in Cornwall; generally if someone was going to shift then they knew in advance and came prepared. It wouldn’t do if some local yokel came across a bunch of naked people in the middle of the woods. Soberly, it occurred to me that it had probably been the same today with these guys though. They’d been expecting to shift because they’d been expecting to capture me. Unfortunately it had worked.
As he was climbing into the van, with one of the shifters who’d remained human, I called out. “I want to talk to Corrigan.”
They both completely ignored me.
“Hey! Where’s the boss? I need to speak to him.”
I didn’t even get a flicker of a response. Damn, he’d trained them f*cking well.
“If you’re going to get me out of this van, you’re going to have to untie my legs at the very least.”
The weretiger simply moved towards me and began pulling at the hem of my jeans, dragging me until I was almost at the exit f the van. A stray lock of hair was irritatingly falling across my one uncovered eye and I blew at it to try to move it out of the way so that what little vision I had was unimpeded. The tiger grinned at me, displaying a set of very white even teeth, and then yanked the blindfold back down again so that I was plunged back into darkness.
“What?” I sputtered, injecting as much disbelief into my voice as I could. “You think I don’t know where we are? How stupid do you think I am?”
The only place that I could possibly be being transported to was the Brethren’s headquarters, the keep. I’d seen it in pictures – and of course – been in Corrigan’s bedroom – and knew something of the layout from growing up with the Cornish pack. We may not have had much to do with the Brethren directly, but we still knew where to go when there was a problem so of course I was perfectly aware of where the keep was.
I felt my torso being yanked forward, and the waft of cold air against my face as I was pulled outside. Then I was unceremoniously dumped over a shoulder – the were-tiger’s I presumed, and carried in perhaps the most undignified fashion that I could possibly imagine. My trussed up hands dangled down towards the ground banging against the back of my captor’s legs, whilst one of his arms was tightly gripping round my thighs. Jeez, it was not as if I was going to be able to run away.
“Kind of overkill, don’t you think?”
The only answer I got was the sound of gravel as several people moved in the same direction. At one point, a loose stone ricocheted up and smacked me against the wound in my cheek. I swore, loudly, but again elicited absolutely no reaction from anyone.
“Corrigan? Are you there? Look, you just need to let me explain…”
Finally, there was an answering voice that growled at me. “You will address him as the Lord Alpha.”
Oh for f*ck’s sake. These bloody megalomaniacs and their sodding titles. I wasn’t exactly in much of a position to argue however.
“Okay,” I said soothingly, “I’m sorry. Lord Alpha, please give me five minutes and you’ll understand. This was all my doing. Nobody else had anything to do with it. Nobody else had a choice – they were under a geas not to reveal that I wasn’t a shifter.” I aimed for logic. “And as I’m not a shifter you really have no right to take me prisoner.”
I waited for a moment for a response. The shifters had clearly reverted back to ignoring me. The were-tiger walked up some steps, causing my head now to thump repeatedly against the back of his legs. I tried to twist it to the side to avoid causing any more friction or damage to my cheek but I didn’t have a lot of wiggle room with which to move myself. I probably should have taken up yoga or something, I thought miserably. Maybe if I was just a little bit more flexible then I’d be able to do some amazing twisting trick that would free myself from this ignominious situation. Some big scary badass dragon I was turning out to be.
The temperature around me changed abruptly as we suddenly moved inside. The chill of winter had given way to a very cosy interior. No expense spared on central heating here, I thought sourly. Not like the Brethren’s minions freezing their arses off out in the depths of rural England. There was the murmur of voices ahead of us that suddenly hushed as they no doubt caught glimpse of my fabulously rounded bottom on display to the world. I hear a whisper to the left of me and, although I couldn’t make out what was said, I managed to swing my hanging arms up for just a second to give the owner of the voice the finger. There, that’d teach them. Things might be looking incredibly bad right now but I was damned if I was going to let them think that they’d cowed me into submission.
Before too long, the were-tiger was changing his gait again as we started travelling downstairs. Excellent. I was being taken to the actual dungeon. Images flooded my head of a dark slimy place filled with rusty manacles and nibbling rats. At this point in time it wouldn’t surprise me. I bet myself that the dungeon didn’t have central heating.
We turned round, moving down some kind of spiral staircase. From behind a closed door I heard the murmur of voices and I strained to listen. I might not be able to use the Voice on either Tom or Betsy but I could use my normal voice if I could get hold of them. We were past the sound too quickly however for me to make any kind of distinction. My hands and feet were both starting to feel numb. I began to worry that I’d suddenly be plonked upright on the floor and would just slide humiliatingly down, unable even to make myself stand up. I needed to show the Brethren that I had strength and power. If I could garner their respect, then maybe they’d feel some qualms about killing me. And if they couldn’t bring themselves to kill me, then they could hardly hurt the Cornish pack either. I’d lived with shifters for most of my life; I knew that vulnerability was considered a weakness and was looked down upon. Hell, half the reason that I’d been tolerated by the human haters in Cornwall had been because they knew that I could take any one of them in a fight. They might not have liked me but, because of what I could do, they respected me.
From my ungainly position, I tried to wiggle my fingers and toes and will some life back into them. There was a brief tingling sensation but little else. I considered trying to spark back some of my green fire again, but then decided against it. Even if I could muster a few flames up, the odds of being able to get myself out of the Pack’s headquarters alive were pretty much zilch. Besides which, the big secret that I’d been trying to hide from the shifters had already been revealed to the world; I’d have to find some way to get on their good side if I had any hope of everyone I knew not being ripped apart. Setting my captors on fire would not help.
My head was banging painfully against the shifter’s back, despite my best efforts to keep it up, and I was starting to feel a little dizzy at being upside down for so long. Every step down that the tiger took seemed to send a new shot of pain to some previously undiscovered part of my body. My breath hissed out through my teeth when the edge of my hip caught what I assumed was the edge of a banister. At least that meant that were back on flat ground. A strong woody, almost floral, scent reached my nostrils that belied my expectations of a slimy dank dungeon. That alone would have made me certain that we still had a ways to go before we reached our destination, but I heard the distinct rattle of a doorknob being turned in front of me and the were-tiger began to slow slightly, before stopping altogether. I tensed up, trying to tighten my calf muscles to avoid collapsing to the ground as soon as I was let down, and clenched my teeth in preparation for the inevitable burst of pain as I hit the ground. The tiger’s muscles equally shifted and I felt an arm moving round my waist and pulling me off his shoulder and onto the floor.
My knees buckled slightly and I felt myself swaying towards the ground, teetering on the brink between managing to stay upright and ending up sprawled on the ground. A hissed sigh of exasperation came from somewhere to my right and a steely hand gripped my forearm and jerked me upwards. I scowled in annoyance.
“I don’t need your f*cking help,” I spat, and then instantly regretted the outburst as clearly I was going to need some help to get myself out of this situation.
Naturally, however, silence rebounded back at me. I sensed the were-tiger leaving, without saying a single word. That meant that I was alone with Corrigan. Okay, I could work with that. I’d remind him of how I helped defeat Iabartu and bring peace back to shifter world, without mentioning of course that it had been me she’d been after in the first place. I briefly thought of the knee weakening closeness we’d shared in his bedroom and wondered if I could also use that to my advantage.
A pair of hands reached around the back of my head and tugged at my blindfold, eventually yanking it painfully off from around my head. The sudden blast of unnatural light hurt my eyes and blinked hard a few times, beginning to speak.
“Corrigan, look, I….”
“What makes you think the Lord Alpha wants to waste his time being here in person?”
I jerked, my eyes eventually adjusting to make out the features of the figure in front of me. F*cking hell, it was Staines. A wave of hurt anger swept through me. After all that, the big man himself couldn’t be arsed to come and interrogate me? That prick. And he’d left me with Staines who’d never liked me.
I eyed him warily, managing to respond with a calm voice. “I apologise for the confusion. Given that the Lord Alpha,” the title stuck in my craw but I swallowed it down and continued on, “came to bring me in himself, I had expected that he would be the one here to question me. But of course I am delighted to see you again.” I managed a half smile in the direction of burly were-bear.
He growled at me and leaned forward. “Let’s cut to the chase. Did you murder the alpha of the Cornwall pack?”
I blinked in shock. Err… what? “What are you on? That was Iabartu. You were there, remember? At least for part of it, anyway, I’m sure you heard about the rest. She was this demi-goddess? Floated above the ground? I tried to kill her and would have if your Lord Alpha hadn’t gotten involved.”
“It appears that the official version of events may not be as straight forward as we had once believed. After all, you’re not even a shifter.” His voice remained even and steady but there was a definite underlying tone that promised menace and pain. “Were you in cahoots with the demi-god?”
Cahoots? Dear god, what century was this guy from? “No.”
“Then why does it appear that there was some sort of link between the two of you?”
I swallowed. Link? I’d thought all tracks leading in that direction had been covered. “Look, you’ve got Tom and Betsy from the Cornish pack here. They were there, they know what happened. Just ask them. You’ll know when they are telling the truth.”
“Oh don’t worry, Miss Smith, we are talking to them.”
The glint in his eyes sent an involuntary tremor of fear for them through my body. The tone if his voice didn’t make it sound as if they’d be sitting for a little old chinwag over afternoon tea. F*ck it, I’d been an idiot to bring them up.
I sighed heavily and looked him in the eye. “They don’t have anything to do with this. They were just there by dint of fate. If there is any fault to be had, any blame to be placed, then it needs to go on my shoulders.”
Staines stayed silent and just stared at me.
“I was not working with Iabartu. I did not murder John. Yes, I’m not a shifter, I’m sorry, but that’s no-one else’s fault but mine. The others, the Cornish pack, they didn’t have a choice. It was a geas and they couldn’t say anything if they wanted to. And I left them anyway. They made me leave. Anton made me leave because I’m not a shifter. So they did the right thing – it’s just me who messed up.”
I was aware that I starting to babble.
Staines opened his mouth. “Why was a mage trying to pass herself off as a shifter? What did you hope to gain?”
Disbelievingly, I shook my head at him. “I’m not a mage! The mages don’t even f*cking like me. I have to go back there in less than twenty four hours and become their effective prisoner because they don’t like what I did to them.” The familiar swirl of heat was starting to rise up. At least that meant my body was starting to recover somewhat.
“You can shoot fire from your fingertips and you expect me to believe that you’re not a mage?”
“I don’t know why that happens!” I touched the necklace at my throat. “This weird Scottish lady put this on me and then all of a sudden the green fire happened. It doesn’t mean I’m a mage!”
“You can transport yourself at will into highly guarded buildings.”
“That was a – friend of mine who was messing around!” I was going to f*cking kill Solus if I ever saw him again.
“You can go into a fight against otherworlders, including at one point, I might add, the future alpha of a local pack, and win.”
“I work out! I’ve trained for years! That doesn’t make me a f*cking mage!”
A deep voice suddenly smoothly spoke from behind me. “So, kitten, if you’re not a mage, then what are you?”
My stomach dropped with a horrifying lurch and I turned to face Corrigan. It irked me that I was very much aware that I was covered in dried blood, wearing smelly old clothes, and looking like I’d been squatting in an abandoned house and then unsuccessfully trying to attack the might of the magic otherworld before being set upon by a group of shifters in broad daylight. But, oh wait, that’s what I had been doing. I peered at Corrigan and noted heavy dark shadows under his eyes and a pallor to his normally tanned skin. At least I wasn’t the only one who was looking a bit worse for wear then at least. I forced myself to stay calm and keep my recovering bloodfire to a minimum. I needed him on my side.
“I’m nothing, my Lord. Just…nothing,” I answered, hoping that the tremor stayed out of my voice.
Staines spoke again, with the first hint of clear emotion that I think I’d heard in him up till now. “He’s not your Lord. You don’t have the privilege to call him that.”
Well, I was hardly going to lose sleep over not having that ‘privilege’ any more.
“Oh no,” I muttered sarcastically, unable to help myself, then immediately inwardly cursing at my stupidity. Five seconds into the ‘conversation’ and I was already letting my emotions get the better of me.
I turned back towards Staines and the glowering malevolence that he was shooting at me, and raised my eyebrows. His body tensed, about to launch out a hit. F*ck it. I prepared myself to block with my shoulder. Even with my hands tied behind my back, I could take him.
“You can go now, Staines.” Corrigan’s voice was so quiet that I barely heard him.
Staines blinked and immediately relaxed, bowing his head and moving past me towards the door. My mouth hung open slightly in shock. Jesus, Staines had been ready to murder me a scant moment ago. That was some serious self-control. My eyes followed his departure, opening the wooden door behind Corrigan and stepping out, shooting me just one quick look of undisguised hatred, before he closed it and disappeared from sight. Corrigan for his part didn’t move a muscle.
“That’s what loyalty is, Mack,” he said softly. “Something that seems to be in short supply as far as you’re concerned.”
I stared at him, my mouth suddenly clawed to the roof of my mouth. Despite his calm voice, the tension seeping from every muscle of his body coupled with the hard glint in his eye belied his anger. He took a step towards me. I took a step back.
Running an irritated hand through his black as night hair he spoke again. “You do realise that I almost caused an interagency war on your behalf?”
I regained my voice. “Er…I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“The mages. I thought they’d captured you.” He smiled mirthlessly. “I was coming to rescue you. But of course I didn’t know that you actually were one of them.”
I almost howled. “Corrigan, I’m not f*cking one of them! They’ve done something to a friend of mine and I’m trying to make it right.”
He folded his arms across his chest. I tried not to notice the way his muscles bulged and rippled. “So explain to me, Mackenzie, how you suddenly happen to have magical powers.”
“I don’t have magical powers! How many times do I need to say that I’m not a f*cking mage? As I said to your bitch slapped minion there, some witch up in Scotland put this necklace on me. Now I have freaky green flames that shoot from my fingertips. Up until last week, the most magic I could perform was pissing off everyone I came into contact with.”
A ghost of smile flickered across his face but was gone so quickly I thought I’d imagined it. “Well, I’ll give you the part about pissing people off, sweetheart. And yet,” he paused, his green gold eyes flashing sparks of ire, “you also appear to inspire the most bizarre acts of loyalty.”
“I thought you said that loyalty was in short supply as far as I was concerned.”
“Oh, on your part certainly. But tell me, if you are not a mage then why do your little Cornish friends refuse to open their mouths to state one single truth about you, even when I compel them to do so?”
I took a deep breath and raised my eyes to meet his. It was now or never. “It’s a geas, Corrigan. My mother dumped me with the Cornish pack when I was a kid and some kind of geas was placed on everyone to prevent them from revealing that I was human. It’s not their fault. It’s not the fault of anyone in Cornwall – they had no choice. You can’t invoke Brethren law against them when they couldn’t have done anything about my being there even if they’d wanted to.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek. “You expect me to believe that you’re human? You can take down otherworld creatures that send the best of my shifters running for the hills, and you’re human?”
I shrugged and tried to smile. Corrigan circled the room with visibly coiled feline grace, before stopping right in front of me.
“I suppose on one level it makes sense. You never did smell quite right. You refused to shift for so long as well. And the alpha - Anton? That’s one of the reasons why he hates you so much.”
I jumped on the opportunity to put the Cornish pack in the clear. “Yes! He wanted me gone for years. We know it’s forbidden for humans to have knowing contact with the pack. He wanted to protect them. So, you see, Corrigan, it’s not their fault, you can’t hurt them.”
He looked momentarily puzzled. “Why would I hurt them?”
I stared at him as if he was stupid. “Because they harboured a human.”
The cloudy expression on his face abruptly cleared and Corrigan’s tired eyes suddenly gleamed. “Ah, yes, I see. And you think it’s against the law for shifters to consort with humans. There’s an easy way to solve that, you know.” He smiled predatorily. “I’ll just transform you. I don’t know why no-one did that before. Did your previous alpha not consider it?”
I let out a small squeak. Yes, he’d f*cking considered it. He’d even tried it, but the bloody dragon part of me had rejected the change.
Corrigan’s eyes raked over my body. “I’m quite sure that you’ll end up being something slightly different to the were-hamster you were passing yourself off as. Problem solved.” He made to move towards me and I panicked and scuttled backwards until my back was against the wall.
“What’s the matter, kitten? Do you have something against shifters?”
“F*ck off, Corrigan. No, I don’t have anything against shifters. I consider my family to be shifters.”
“Nobody else has dared to tell me to f*ck off for years,” he mused quietly, moving towards me until he was bare inches away from me. I prepared to move to my right to get away from him, but he placed both hands on the wall around me, effectively creating a cage. I could smell his deep musky scent and felt the bloodfire inside me respond with instinctual feeling. Oh god.
Corrigan tilted his head and seemed to see the state of my face for the first time. A strange expression flitted across his features. “You’re hurt,” he said softly, brushing his fingers against my wounded cheek.
I flinched and he scowled.
“Well, that’s what happens when you get shoved into a cage and tortured by a crazed mage with nothing but blood vengeance on his mind,” I said lightly.
The steely arms on either side of me tensed and I saw, not just sensed his shoulders jerk back with anger. Why the f*ck was he angry? I was the one who kept being taken bloody prisoner by every single faction of the sodding otherworld.
“The Arch-Mage assured me that you were alright,” he growled.
“And I am.” I’d have stretched out my arms at that point to prove just how alright I was, apart from the fact that they were still bound tightly behind my back – Corrigan’s arms were still caging me against the wall.
“I will have words with him.”
“Jesus, Corrigan, I’m not a shifter. You don’t need to get all worked up on my behalf. I’m just a human. Now, please, tell me that you will leave my friends alone.”
I stared into his face, praying that he’d give me – and them – some leeway. He leaned in even closer, until I could feel his hot breath against my neck.
“As I said, kitten, I will transform you and then there will be no debt to be satisfied. You will become a shifter and stay here in London.” He paused and then licked his lips. “At my beck and call.”
Oh dear god. “You can’t do that, Corrigan.”
“I’m the Lord Alpha. I can do whatever what I want. Besides, your transgressions mean that you owe me. You owe the Pack.”
“Yes, but…” I started to stutter.
He interrupted. “But I can’t transform you. Not because you don’t want to be a shifter, but because you physically can’t be transformed.” He looked straight at me, confirming the truth of his words before continuing. “And the only reason that couldn’t work would be because you’re already not human. Your scent already tells me that. And I assume that this is your real scent that is assailing the air not some faked aroma that you have cooked up somehow. Not only that but you can hear and initiate the Voice. No human could do that. Do you think I’m a total idiot? You might have played me for a fool thus far but the buck stops here. With me.”
The look in his eyes was suddenly absolutely terrifying. I swallowed.
“So, Mack, if you are not a mage, and you are not a shifter, then what the f*ck are you?”
“I said it before, Corrigan,” I obfuscated. “I’m nothing, no-one. I’m not trying to cause you or the Pack problems. In fact I’ve been doing my best to keep the hell away from the lot of you. Now, please, tell me you are going to leave Cornwall alone.”
He snarled at me. “Tell me what you are and then I will leave them alone.”
Goddamnit. The bloodfire rose in my stomach in nervous panic. I tried to think. It didn’t really matter if Corrigan knew that I was a Draco Wyr if it meant that Julia, Tom, Betsy and the rest would be safe. But Iabartu had thought I was important enough for her to come to this plane to fight for. And Solus thought that my blood could be of use to the Fae. What if the Lord Alpha thought that he could use me to for some kind of nefarious Brethren means? It wasn’t as if I knew him all that well and now that he knew I wasn’t a shifter he’d have no reason to care whether I was dead or alive. I had no idea what the extent of my dragon blood actually meant, only that some people – some demi-goddesses at least- would kill for it. And my mother had abandoned me with the Pack apparently because of it, too. What if I told Corrigan and then he still destroyed the Cornish pack anyway and then took his newfound knowledge and did something terrible with it?
“You don’t trust me.” He said it matter of factly but the tic in his cheek was back again.
“I hardly know you,” I answered.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity to get to know me, kitten.”
I was confused. “What do you mean?”
He gave a short sharp laugh. “You cause trouble wherever you go. It seems far more prudent to keep you here where I can keep an eye on you.”
“You can’t do that!” I was suddenly alarmed.
“Why not?” He asked smoothly. “You tell me what you really are. I don’t hurt your little country friends. You stay here.”
My eyes widened. “Oh no no no no no, my Lord,” I protested, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t ‘good’ enough to call him that. “I need to go back to the mages.”
He suddenly stilled. “And why is that?”
“My friend, Corrigan. The one I told you they’d done something to? They’ll only release her if I go back to them.”
“Go back to them and do what?”
“Some weird mage training programme. Not that I’m a mage, as I keep telling you,” I said hastily, “but they seem to think that it means I won’t misuse my potential for power, such as it is. All I can really do is the green fire stuff and that clearly runs out of juice before I manage to do much.” I gazed beseechingly up at his tanned face, trying to avoid losing myself in his liquid gold eyes. “I gave them my word. And they won’t help my friend unless I keep my promise.”
He lifted a shoulder in an elegant shrug. “It’s of no matter. I’ll talk to them.”
I exploded in a fury of heat. “F*cking hell, Corrigan! It is of matter. I promised them I’d go back. And I am not going to let my friend down.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is this a special friend?”
“Of course, she’s a f*cking special friend, you prat!”
He smiled oddly at that and relaxed. “Well, you have a choice to make then, kitten. Either you save your Cornish friends and stay here, or you save your special friend and go to the mages.” He moved back and grinned wolfishly. “Your choice.”
“What is with you and your megalomania? Why do you need me to stay here? After all, Corrigan, all I seem to do is piss you off. Just do the right thing for once and let the Cornish pack off and let me go.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I’ll do that, kitten. If the Ministry and the Arch-Mage think that you’re so bloody important that they’re going to send you to their academy and train you even though you insist that you are not a witch, then you must be something special.” The green sheen in his eyes became more pronounced. “And that means that I want you too.”
I shook my head in exasperation. I didn’t really understand what was going on at all. I’d assumed that Corrigan would immediately go running off to fulfill the Brethren’s need to keep their existence a secret and punish Cornwall. But he seemed far more interested in me, than in any of them. I thought back over everything that he’d said. I realised that he’d initially seemed puzzled that I thought that he was going to hurt the Cornish pack. Either that meant that they were of so little consequence to him that he really didn’t care what happened to them or he’d never had any intention of meting out the famed Brethren purge. Everything I’d always been told – and certainly everything that the Cornish pack, John included, had always believed was that if the Brethren knew that a human had been let into the shifter secret, then everyone in that pack would be destroyed as a result. But maybe that was wrong. If only my brain and my bloodfire were both a little less cloudy then I might be able to think my way out of this. The toll of the mages’ inquisition and the fight with the shifters was becoming apparent.
I looked at Corrigan who was staring at me with an unfathomable expression on his face. My eyes flicked down towards his wrist. Just visible under the impeccably tailored and brilliantly white linen shirt he was wearing was a gold watch. It was typically expensive looking. No expense spared for the magnificent Lord Alpha, I thought sardonically. I craned my neck ever so slightly. It was just after 6. It had be 6 in the evening because it had been light outside when the tiger brought me in. That meant I’d only been out for an hour at the most. And that meant that I still had just under fifteen hours to make good on my promise to the mages.
“I need a break,” I announced.
Corrigan arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. Jesus, was everything about this guy perfect?
“In the last twenty-four hours, I have stormed the Ministry, been interrogated, been attacked and been kept against my will. I am tired. I need a break to think over what you have said.” I pasted a fake smile on my face. “Pretty please?”
He hesitated for the briefest moment and then snapped off a short grunt of agreement and turned to the door.
“Uh, Corrigan?”
He twisted his neck back towards me. “What?”
I jerked my head down and back in the vague direction of my bound hands. “Can you…?”
“No. Don’t push your luck, Mackenzie,” he growled. “I’ll send someone to tend to your wounds.”
“I don’t need anyone to look after me,” I started to call after him, but he was out the door too quickly and my complaint was swallowed up into the small room. I gave myself a brief nod, however. I had a bit of breathing space and a bit of time.