house held five: connected by growing bounds of friendship, diehard loyalty, desire, and their cause.
Emile Noel was the homeowner. Blonde and browneyed, the Native American blood which ran through her veins was impossible to see, diluted by the lamia French blood which marked her as Metis. She had been born during the Red River Rebellion and still clung to her culture. Blood had been shed in her childhood in order to protect it and she would
honor her slain kin by following Metis life.
She had known all along that there were people in the world who believed as she did. It would only be a matter of time, she knew, until they could find one another. What she had
not predicted was for one of the people she found to be her Soulmate.
She had found Mackenzie five years ago, wasting his life away in some minimum wage, dead end job. She had targeted him as prey, thinking that she would be putting him out of
his misery. She knew she was attractive and it was easy to lure him out to a pub. There, she started talking to him, and found she couldn't kill him anymore.
His name was Mackenzie. He was half Native and half white. He hated whites. He hated them for breaking his mother. He hated them for putting him in an orphanage after his mother had died in childbirth. He hated them for not adopting him because his skin was too dark. He hated them for giving him failing grades no mater how well he did. He hated
them for not hiring him at better jobs. He hated them for making booze jokes when they came to the gas bar where he worked or filled up their plastic gas canisters and asked if he
wanted a sniff before guffawing loudly.
Then he'd apologized after his rant. He found her easy to talk to, it wasn't that he was crazy. He just wished that the tables were turned on them. He wanted them to know what it
was like to be a laughing stock and a grunt. Emile had been pleased with him. "I'm descended from the French, you know," she had told him, offering him the final test.
"You're blonde. Your name is French. You're not white. You're not like them. If you were you wouldn't be here, talking to me. You'd never have asked me out for a coffee. When you
asked," he had laughed warmly, "I thought maybe it was some kind o a trap. Now I realize I was wrong. You're like an angel."
A year later, despite going against Night World law, Emile changed Mackenzie. It was then she had discovered they were Soulmates. Mac did her proud as a vampire. He was a bit
particular about his prey, feeding off of only white males, and he refused to subscribe to the caste system of the Night World. All his anger had condensed into one group: white males who preyed upon minorities. Emile had seen Mac pull off vampires from human women and shifters alike. He was quick and merciless with his kills and Emile loved it. The men he killed had not deserved mercy.
It was Mac who found the others. The first one he had brought home was King. Gawain King was a small, weaklooking Native American boy with hornrimmed glasses which had
once belonged to a middleaged accountant. He had brought the young witch home when Gawain was only eleven and set him down in a guest bedroom. Then he had gone back out
and did not return for two days. He snuck back in at night and had a shower. Emile had been able to smell the blood coming off of his clothes, bundled up in the corner of the
washroom as they were. The blood smelled tainted.
When he had come back to bed Emile sat up, worried. "The boywitch hasn't come out of his room. He hasn't eaten anything. I'm worried about him."
"He'll eat." Mac promised her. "Eventually, he'll eat."
Mackenzie had bribed the boy with books. He put them outside the door. They had disappeared by the evening. The next day it had been another book, sitting underneath a
cellophanewrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It had disappeared again. The day after that it had been another book with a bowl of freshly cut fruit and a pitcher of water. It
disappeared.
The next day Mackenzie had made Emile a lunch. She had raised an eyebrow but went along, enjoying the way Mac puttered about the kitchen, humming. She understood when they
sat down to eat their hamburgers and side salad. The boy had slowly crept downstairs and joined them at the table. He ate in silence and then disappeared again. Mackenzie
repeated it the following day. This time the boy had asked for seconds.
Gawain never spoke of how he had met Mackenzie. Mac had finally explained to Emile how he had found Gawain. He had been out hunting and had found a vampire trying to force
himself on the little boy. Mac had rescued Gawain and brought him home. The boy had done nothing but he had been terrified that Mac was going to hurt him. Mac had simply
dropped him off and then he went to stalk down his quarry. When it had been explained to her, Emile had been about to ask if Mac had found the other vampire, but she could still
recall how long Mackenzie had been gone and the smell of the tainted blood. She didn't need to ask if Mac had found the pedophile.
Then there had been Zhi Niao. Mac had found her too. A beautiful Asian girl, she had been snuck over to Canada with her mother. Her father had already emigrated from China to
establish a house and a job before bringing them over. Full of spunk and life, her attitude had gotten her into trouble with a local gang of vampires. They didn't like that Zhi Niao, a
scavenger like Kotori, was consuming the leftovers of their kills. They had harried her, and slowly bred the hate into her. She hated anybody who looked down upon her as an
animal and she dreamed of a time when shifters were in control again.
Trouble came when the vampires had gotten tired of the whole family: her parents, her big sister, and Zhi Niao. They had tried to set the house on fire with the family locked inside
it. The family had gotten away and had moved to Vancouver Island. When she had graduated from high school, Zhi Niao had returned to the mainland to attend university. There
she hunted in the woods to avoid the vampires, only to encounter LouisEtienne.
A werewolf, LouisEtienne was a dying breed. He was a burly man typical of the poster werewolf: ruled by instinct, an awesome fighter, and wild. He had been cowed when he had
been beaten in battle by an eagleshifter. When Zhi Niao had defeated him, she'd earned more than LouisEtienne's steadfast loyalty. She had earned herself her own personal
bodyguard.
Mac didn't know that when he found the two of them fighting one day. It was their own kind of foreplay as they fought, trying to outdo the other. Mac had bravely tried to pry the
Caucasian man off of Zhi Niao as they grappled, only to be thrown into a dumpster by Zhi Niao as she defended the werewolf.
Eventually the situation had been resolved and soon the two shifters had come to live at the log cabin. More than once had Mac and Emile regretted that invitation, when they heard
LouisEtienne howling in the middle of sex, but the house felt safer with his presence there. Even little Gawain had started coming out of his shell more, feeling sheltered when
LouisEtienne's shaggy body slept at the foot of his bed during the full moon.
Their house full, Mac and Emile had revealed their plan. The end was coming and they were going to come out on top. It was not about race or caste strictly. It was about religion
and family. They were going to resurrect the dragons. Once again, the shifters would be in power. They would never be called 'dumb animals' or 'puppy' or 'grunt' again.
no longer be looked down upon. Once again, the Natives would have power. They would no longer be considered savages. They would no longer be considered wards of the state.
Mackenzie hopped down the stairs. Gawain sat on the floor in the living room, papers and fragments spread out around him. The slight boy was chewing on his bottom lip as he
read over the papers. The hornrimmed glasses enlarged his eyes comically. Gawain was a brilliant boy, and the collection of writings which c
onsisted of Emile's life work on the
sleeping dragons was Gawain's puzzle to solve.
"How's it going Gawain?" Mac asked, coming down from the kitchen in naught but a pair of jeans. His hair was wet from a shower. Dead or not, Mac was obsessed with showers. He
wanted to wash away the blood and memories of his kills. Sometimes it took more than one shower to do the job. He hopped up on the couch in the living room to watch the boy.
"Figured out why the shifters and stuff we took weren't able to do the job?"
"I… I think so." He picked up a piece of parchment carefully. "See, this one here says that we need the blood of the dragons to wake them up. I'm pretty sure that shape shifter
blood will do the trick since they are the descendents of the dragons. Frankly Mac, if we have to cut open one of those sleeping dragons to wake them up, I don't want to be the
witch doing the ceremony anymore. I'd like to live to see the end of puberty."
Mac smiled. "I can understand."
"Right. Well, this other document says that we need the blood of their enemy. So we started thinking that maybe this one was right while the other one was a red herring meant to
throw us off, but we had less success with that ceremony than we did with the shifters. Well, I think I found the reason why. We need both blood."
"Both blood?"
Gawain nodded. "Yes. Both blood. The human blood is supposed to tell them that supper is here. The shifter blood is meant for something else, though I don't know what. See?"
stood up to stand in front of the vampire, gesturing to the tablet. "I know you can't read the runes, but it says here something along the lines of 'mingled blood'."
Taking the tablet, Mac studied the inscriptions. They looked like nothing but worm tracks to him, but he thought about Gawain's translation carefully. "Mingled blood, huh?"
"Yes."
He smiled and passed it back to the witchboy. "I think you found the key, kid. We don't need two victims. We need one. We need them to come to our defense with an affront of
nature, with the blood of their heritage and their food supply mingled in one host. We need a halfbreed."
"A humanshifter halfbreed?" Gawain looked dubious. "Don't people understand exactly how dangerous that match is? You're making someone who has the instinct to do nothing but
kill and yet could potentially lack the ability to shapeshift."
"The council for a little while considered them perfect warriors because of that. There're rumors that the Viking berserkers were half bearshifter, and that some of them had really
gone a little psycho from never being able to complete the transition from human to bear."
"You're telling us we need a Viking?" Emile asked from the doorway, overhearing the entire conversation. Her blonde hair framed her face prettily. "Where are we ever going to find
one of those in this age?"
Lunchtime was Bethany's least favorite time of the day. The cafeteria was hot, and smelly, and gross and tightly packed. She felt trapped. Bethany hated feeling trapped more than
anything. Her mother had learned quickly that Bethany could not stand to be in a closed room for very long. Even in the dead of winter—which in BC usually consisted of rain—she
still had a window open to enjoy the refreshing breeze.
Add on to that another unappetizing cold cut sandwich and Beth was not a very happy person.
"Well, if it isn't the dogooders," purred Michael Richmond, helping himself to an empty table at Kotori and Beth's table. The two lamias who were his best friend sat down next to
him. At once the heat Beth felt in the crowded cafeteria melted away to be replaced with utter coldness. "Rumor has it in the Night World that your groups staged some kind of a
dramatic capture of these shifterkillers and that it fizzled. Of course, I think I can understand why. Your team consists of a pansy, an incompetent leader, a stupid shifter, a stupid
teenage shifter, and a biological failure," he finished, his eyes landing on Bethany.
Kotori's hand clenched around her Gatorade. "Move along, Leech, or you're going to be in a world of trouble."
"Leave him alone, Kotori. Mike's not worth it."
"He doesn't have to be 'worth it' for me to break his wrist," she snarled.
Michael and his two friends laughed. They knew they were getting to the two shifters. With his flawless black skin and welltoned body, Michael was the object of desire for many
girls in the class. What was the most horrendous thing was that Michael was nice to everyone… except to shifters. He was nice to the human girls and boys because he needed them
in his pocket for feeding every day. He preferred the first, but if no girls were available, Michael had no trouble getting a boy alone. But the shifters were useless, particularly when
they were Daybreakers.
"Actually, I'm glad you guys failed," he said smugly, helping himself to the remnants of Beth's ham sandwich. His smug smile vanished as he chewed on the meat. "God, how can
you stand to eat this shit?" He threw it back into her lunchbox.
"Hm. The great Michael Richmond is glad that we failed to capture a dangerous and violent group of murderers. What about that situation doesn't surprise me?" Kotori's voice
dripped with sarcasm.
"Yes. I think that these guys have the right idea, killing off shifters. They're making the world a better place. They are making the world a safer place by getting animals like you off
the street."
Even Bethany let out a growl at his comments. The sound coming from her took them a little by surprise, but it was Kotori who drew their attention. "Michael, have you ever had a
nose job?"
"No, why…" SMACK!
Kotori's fist connected with his face. Michael's nose spurted blood and there was a surprisingly audible crunch sound before he fell back off the cafeteria bench. His two lamia
friends paused, astounded, and then lunged for Kotori. Beth leapt on one of them, covering his eyes with her hands and holding on with her legs to keep one of them off of Kotori.
Her weight knocked him down, but she didn't weigh enough to keep him pinned. As cheap as it was, Beth gave him a stern knock with her fist to the back of his head. His face
smashed into the tile floor.
"Food fight!" someone yelled loudly. Sandwiches and French fries began to volley back and forth from rival tables, clear over the table where the three vampires and two shifters
were fighting one another.
Michael grabbed Kotori's leg and pulled her down. Beth kicked his hand away, giving Kotori the chance to back away, but she was scooped up in a bear hug by the other vampire.
He squeezed hard and Beth felt the air try to flee her lungs. Someone threw a bottle of Coke, the lid open. The sticky substance flew over Beth, spraying her hair and her white
shirt. Beth punched the man in his belly, but it wasn't enough to let him go.
Kotori came to her aid, striking his kneecap. There was a loud crunch and he toppled. Kotori's actions were brutal, but she knew that he'd heal in no time at all. A teacher was
straining through the food fight to reach their brawl. By the time she got there the broken kneecap would just be a sprain.
Beth landed on her knees and came backtoback with Kotori as they faced Michael and the remaining lamia. Michael sneered. "Glad to see that you aren't pulling any punches."
"I only do that to people I like," Beth countered.
"Like Rappaport?" Michael laughed. "I've seen how you look at him. Wouldn't your parents be ashamed if they knew their precious students was causing fights at school when she
wasn't Daybreaking and swooning over some Jewish vampire freak?"
Bethany was startled. Kotori liked Nicolas? But… Beth had always thought that she hated Nicolas! She waited for some kind of an explanation or a retort, but none came, not
immediately. All Beth could smell from her fri
end was the anger which warmed her back. The actual scent of Kotori's anger was hidden by the overwhelming smell of CocaCola.
"You wouldn't dare tell my parents, Michael."
"Wouldn't I?"
"No, because if you do, I will be the last thing you will ever see, Michael."
"Stop this!" The teacher reached them before Michael and Kotori could attack. Covered in ketchup from the fight, the teacher was hardly a figure of authority, but her voice was
another mater. "Detention hall, right this minute! NOW!"
"Where are Michael and his friends?" Beth whispered to her friend, leaning across the aisle between the desks.
Kotori frowned. "He probably hypnotized Principal Dean into letting him go," she said disdainfully.
"Ladies." Their principal looked up from where he sat at the desk at the front of the class. "No talking."
Both girls settled back into their desks, and continued a composition entitled 'why food fights are bad'. Bethany was shivering with cold from the goose bumps on her exposed skin.
She had showered in the gyms in the cafeteria, and her clothes had been sacrificed into the bowels of her knapsack, clotted together with Coca Cola. She was wearing him gym
shorts, which were a little too cold in the fall season. To make matters worse, the water from her long hair was soaking into her shirt. She could feel Kotori giving her pitiful
expressions of concern, but the principal didn't seem to notice her shivering at all.
After half an hour, the principal needed to leave to attend to some schoolrelated business. Kotori and Beth were left alone. Although they didn't try to escape from detention, their
diligent work became lax and they resolved to talking. They could hear the principal returning down the hallway long before he would ever be able to hear them talking.
"Was Michael right, Kotori?" Beth asked gently, turning in her seat to face her friend. "Do you like Nicolas?" Kotori went bright red at the question. There was no look of anger on
her face. It was just simple embarrassment. "But I thought that you hated Nicolas."
Kotori's voice was surprisingly tender as she answered. "I don't know if I could ever hate Nick. I think he's wonderful. He's intelligent and sensitive… but he's a vampire. And he's
Replacement Page 4
