“Poor Kalix,” said Verasa, in her well modulated Scottish tones. “I admit we’ve had our difficulties but I’d hate to see her heart cut out.”
Markus made a sound of mild contempt. He loathed the girl, and made no secret of it.
“She would deserve it. But we can’t let Sarapen capture her. Or kill her. Great Mother Dulupina would never let us forget that he succeeded while we failed.” He looked at his mother. “We should have tried harder to catch her.”
The Mistress of the Werewolves sighed.
“I hoped she would just disappear. It’s not pleasant for a mother to have her youngest daughter dragged back for sentencing, even if the Council insists on it.”
Verasa stroked Markus’s hair. He was such a good child. It would be difficult having him succeed as Thane instead of her older son Sarapen, but Verasa had successfully manoeuvred her way through the tortuous and occasionally murderous political strife of the werewolf clan for long enough to be confident of succeeding in her wishes.
“Incidentally,” said Markus, raising his head. “We still haven’t dealt with the matter of the cousins about whom we do not speak.”
An expression of distaste flickered over the Mistress of the Werewolves’ features.
“Please Markus. I can’t think about both Kalix and the cousins about whom we do not speak. Not in the same day anyway. This family will surely send me to an early grave.”
8
“Cut out her heart? Ew!”
Moonglow was appalled. So appalled that she wondered if Daniel might be making it all up to impress her. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done such a thing. When they first met, Daniel had told her he could play guitar and had an older brother who made films in Holly-wood. Neither of these things had turned out to be true. And it was very unlike Daniel to rescue anybody from a machete-wielding maniac. Not that he’d be unwilling, just incapable. Last time they’d got drunk together in the student bar Daniel had offended two large rugby players and had it not been for Moonglow’s tactful intervention they would certainly have pummelled him. Daniel was not the fighting type though he was good company, when he got over his shyness. She might have been inclined to dismiss his story altogether if it hadn’t been for the book and the journal.
The girl - a wild beauty, according to Daniel, who’d been unusually forthcoming on the subject - had left them in his car, wrapped in a plastic carrier bag.
“The Flower Fairies of the Summer?”
It was a children’s book, with pictures of fairies sitting on flowers. It was old and seemed to have been through a great deal of wear and tear. The book was stained with finger prints. And paw prints, as if a dog had walked over it.
“This proves she was there,” said Daniel, aware of Moonglow’s slight scepticism.
“Not entirely,” Moonglow pointed out. “It could be yours.”
“Very funny. And there’s this as well,” continued Daniel, plucking a very worn looking notebook from the carrier bag.
“It’s some sort of diary.”
He flicked it open and tried to read from a page near the start.
“It’s kind of illegible. She can’t spell a single word right. I think it says My mother is mistress of the werewolves. My father is - can’t make out that word, something like thin - of the werewolves.”
They both laughed.
“My brother is heir to the werewolf throne.”
“She’s pretty consistent with the werewolves,” said Moonglow. Really, she was not unsympathetic. Moonglow was fascinated by anything otherworldly. Tales about werewolves were always interesting.
“Pity she can’t spell it properly,” said Daniel. “Her handwriting is really terrible.”
He struggled to read more.
“I am fourth in line to the thin ship of the Mac - something - clan.”
Neither of them knew what that might mean. They didn’t have time to read any further, there was work to do. Daniel and Moonglow had almost finished packing to move house. Daniel was going to pick up a rental van and when night fell they were moving to their new flat. They’d lived in this one for eight months, moving in after becoming friends in their first year at university. It wasn’t a bad place but they were behind on the rent and couldn’t pay so they’d decided that a moonlight flit was the best solution. Moonglow was rather anxious about this. She didn’t relish the prospect of being apprehended by an irate landlord. Moonglow had long black hair, soft pretty features, a firm belief in astrology, a kind nature, and no experience of irate land-lords. She was certain that if she encountered one, she’d find it very awkward.
9
The early winter afternoon was already turning cold when Kalix picked up her prescription. The pharmacist looked at her suspiciously. Kalix was wearing sunglasses, as she frequently did, even in the weak winter daylight or the murky London night-time. The sunglasses always seemed to arouse the suspicion of pharmacists. As did her ragged coat which failed to cover her even more ragged T-shirt. And maybe her skinny frame, which suggested either substance abuse or an eating disorder. Her prescription was legitimate however. The werewolf clan, whilst not exactly part of normal society, were not entirely outside it either. In Scotland the MacRinnalchs had their own doctor, a werewolf who had studied medicine at Edinburgh University. Werewolves rarely fell sick, but there were often injuries to be taken care of and it was vital that they received treatment from someone who knew of their unique physiology. Certain human drugs could have a very bad effect on a werewolf. Besides, as the Scottish werewolves took great care to conceal the wolf part of their nature, it wouldn’t do to have any member of the clan examined too closely by a normal doctor.
So Kalix had been registered with a doctor in Scotland, and through this she had been referred to a psychiatrist who had prescribed diazepam for her anxiety. Kalix disliked her psychiatrist but she liked the diazepam. She fretted uncomfortably while she waited for the prescription. When it finally appeared she grabbed the packet and hurried out of the shop. As soon as she opened her bag to put the pills inside she realised that something was missing.
“Where’s my journal?”
She cursed out loud. The journal was one of her few possessions, and very precious to her. She remembered picking it up before she fled from Duncan Douglas-MacPhee at the warehouse. She was trying to work out where she could possibly have lost it when a familiar scent caught her attention. Duncan was close. She spun round, searching. She didn’t have far to look. Duncan and his sister Rhona were no more than fifty yards away, and closing fast. Kalix ran for her life, sprinting up the street at a speed which would have left most people in her wake. The Douglas-MacPhees raced after her. As werewolves in human shape, they too possessed unusual strength and speed, but they weren’t as fast as Kalix. She turned the corner only a few yards ahead of her pursuers but by the time they reached the next street she was rapidly disappearing from view.
“Come on!” yelled Duncan. “She can’t keep up that pace.”
Duncan doubted if the scrawny girl could keep running for long. She looked like she hadn’t eaten in months, and even the primordial energy that burned inside every member of the MacRinnalch Clan couldn’t support a starving werewolf forever.
Kalix ran for her life, and cursed the day she had sold her pendant. It had been foolish. With it she had been undetectable. Now she was easy prey for experienced predators like the Douglas-MacPhees.
Kalix was always doing foolish things. It had been foolish to attack her father. It had been foolish to crawl into Gawain’s bed when she was fourteen. It had been foolish to drink the entire contents of her family’s malt whisky cabinet when she was thirteen, though Kalix had protested that as a Scottish werewolf, she was merely exploring her heritage. And it had been foolish to eat the contents of her mother’s medicine cabinet just to see what would happen, an escapade that led to her being the only teenage MacRinnalch werewolf ever taken to hospital for an emergency stomach pump. On each occasion the Mistress of the Werewo
lves left Kalix in no doubt as to the foolishness of her actions, and the disgrace never really went away.
After running the length of several streets Kalix knew that she had outdistanced the Douglas-MacPhees. They might still be following her scent, but in the city they couldn’t track her as easily as they could in the wilds. There was too much pollution for her scent to linger for long. Kalix disappeared down an alleyway, over a fence, through several gardens and back out onto another quiet street where she stopped, and sniffed the air. She couldn’t smell another werewolf. She had escaped. She sniffed again. There was another scent she recognised. The young man who had driven her in his car away from the warehouse.
Kalix remembered her journal. Could she have left it in his car? The young werewolf trotted along the street, following Daniel’s scent. Escaping from the Douglas-MacPhees had left her weak. She hadn’t eaten for a long time. She craved laudanum, but she had to recover her journal first. Every part of her unhappy life was recorded there. In some ways Kalix’s journal was more real to her than her own being.
10
“There’s nothing worse than moving,” declared Daniel, who was struggling to pack plates and cutlery into an unsuitable cardboard box.
Moonglow nodded. She accepted the toil more stoically than Daniel but it wasn’t something she enjoyed.
“Funny how everyone was too busy to help,” said Daniel. He was staring rather forlornly at a frying pan, wondering whether to try to fit in the box or put in a plastic bag. Perhaps he could just throw it in the van. After all, what harm could come to a frying pan?
“Colin claimed he had to study for an exam. Is that a feeble excuse or what?”
Moonglow nodded. She was struggling with their CD collection. While these weren’t difficult to fit into boxes there were a great many of them and she had unwisely determined to sort them out first, putting them all back in their correct covers. This was proving to be an impossible task. The covers for Daniel’s Slayer CDs all seemed to be missing and there was no sign at all of the first disc from her Kate Bush boxed set.
“I notice Jay hasn’t made an appearance,” said Daniel, pointedly.
Moonglow was immediately defensive.
“He had to visit Stonehenge.”
Jay was Moonglow’s boyfriend. Daniel was jealous, though Moonglow wasn’t meant to know this.
“As if Stonehenge wouldn’t be there next week.”
“It had to be now. Horoscope said so.”
Daniel was derisive.
“Very convenient. Boyfriend avoids work by means of astrology.”
He put down his box with a thud.
“Hey careful! Plates and glasses!”
Daniel was always mean and sarcastic about Jay. Moonglow understood this. Even if her friend Caroline hadn’t informed her that, while under the influence of alcohol, Daniel had confessed to her his love for Moonglow, she would have known anyway. It was fairly obvious. At nineteen, Daniel hadn’t learned how to shield his emotions.
The doorbell rang. They were immediately nervous. If it happened to be their landlord paying a surprise visit the boxes were going to be very hard to explain. Daniel crept to the front door and peered through the peephole. Seeing Kalix, he was hesitant. The bell rang again. Daniel opened the door a few inches.
“Eh… is that guy right behind you with a really big knife?”
“You have my journal,” said Kalix, coldly.
“Right… come in.”
Kalix marched inside. Daniel made an attempt at introducing their visitor to Moonglow.
“This is - ”
“Where’s my journal?” demanded Kalix brusquely.
Moonglow was startled by Kalix’s appearance. So thin and ragged. In the gap between the ends of Kalix’s threadbare black trousers and her boots, her ankles showed like two white twigs. And she was so intense. Her large dark eyes burned as she scanned the room for her possessions. Her gold nose ring was very noticeable, larger than normal. As for her hair, trailing down lankly to her waist, Moonglow had never seen its like, not even on the most unkempt beggar.
“Are you the werewolf girl?” asked Moonglow.
“What?” demanded Kalix, suspiciously.
Moonglow realised that this had not been the politest of greetings.
“I mean the girl who wrote the werewolf poem? I thought it was really cool. My mother is a werewolf, my father is a werewolf. I wrote a poem like that once, I kind of imagined my… eh…”
Moonglow ground to a halt under Kalix’s withering glare. Kalix turned to Daniel.
“Where is it?”
Daniel picked up the carrier bag which contained Kalix’s journal and her book. Moonglow was immediately concerned that she’d offended the girl.
“Are you annoyed I read it? Sorry… it was a really good poem.”
“Stop talking,” snapped Kalix. “I’ve no time to waste.”
Her voice seemed too strong to emanate from such a skinny frame. Moonglow was rather shocked. She was about to make a conciliatory response when the front door suddenly flew open and, terrifyingly, two strangers burst into the room.
“Get her,” said Duncan Douglas-MacPhee.
11
The Fire Queen was always happiest when surrounded by clothes. She loved visiting Thrix’s establishment and had now completely forgotten her anger towards the Enchantress. As she gazed with pleasure at Thrix’s rough drafts for her new Spring catalogue, the mighty Fire Queen looked much more like a model than a powerful supernatural being who ruled her own realm. A smile spread over her dusky features as she examined some sketches for an evening gown which Thrix had promised to make exclusively for her.
“Could it be ready for a cocktail party at the Duchess Gargamond’s next week?”
“Next week?” said Thrix. “Malveria, you know I can’t work that quickly.”
Malveria was one of the Fire Queen’s names. Not the most secret of her names, but one that very few creatures of any sort were free to use. A person had to be on very, very good terms with the Fire Queen before they could call her Malveria.
Before meeting the Werewolf Enchantress, the Queen of the fire elementals had been very poorly dressed. Her wardrobe was full of dramatic but very gauche outfits which somehow never seemed to suit her. Malveria had found herself continually overshadowed at some elemental event or other by finely arrayed nether-world princesses who’d arrive in fabulous new outfits purchased from the catwalks of London, Paris, or Milan. The Fire Queen knew that her rivals were laughing at her behind her back. The young aristocrats from the Ice Kingdoms could be particularly cutting, and as for Princess Kabachetka, Malveria’s great rival from the neighbouring land of Hainusta, there was no saying what spiteful gossip she might have spread.
Thrix had changed all this. Now, dressed by the Enchantress, Queen Malveria was widely admired in the nether worlds as a Fire Spirit who really knew how to shop. Her wonderful collection of shoes was particularly envied.
“Do you know how long it takes to put a collection together?” said Thrix.
“No,” admitted the Fire Queen, shaking her head. Her hair, long, black, gleaming, in perfect condition, was attended to by a salon in Kensington that Thrix had recommended; one more reason to be grateful to the Enchantress.
“It takes months. I start off with drawings, consult with my designers, cost fabrics, make up patterns, send the patterns for cutting, and that’s just to get the process in motion.”
Malveria frowned, and only just prevented herself from pouting.
“Furthermore,” pointed out Thrix, brushing back her golden hair and pointing to the mass of paperwork on her desk. “I’ve got a hundred things to get done and they’re all urgent. I’ve got people to interview, photographers to hire, models to send to assignments, and the plumber needs instructions.”
“The plumber?” said Malveria, puzzled. She had little idea of what life in this world was really like.
“The pipes downstairs are leaking again.”
“Surely you have minions to do these things for you?”
“I do. But the junior minion got it wrong last time and the senior minion - my property manager - is away at a conference so I have to take care of it myself.”
Malveria shook her head.
“This is all very mysterious to me. If your minions get things wrong surely you should simply kill them and get new minions?”
“Tempting,” admitted Thrix. “But it would lead to a lot of trouble with the union. Besides, my minions aren’t so bad.”
As if to demonstrate the difficulties of running a fashion empire, the plumber chose that moment to arrive. Thrix’s personal assistant buzzed through to let her know he was here.
“I have to see him now,” said Thrix, apologetically. “If you miss your plumber’s appointment, you’ve no idea of the trouble it causes.”
Thrix spent a long time talking to the plumber. The Fire Queen sat in her chair, still mystified by the entire process. After the plumber departed to gather his crew and sort out the pipes downstairs, she again voiced her puzzlement.
“I could not tolerate such a long discussion about such a tiresome subject. Surely your slaves could perform these tasks for you?”
“They’re called employees,” replied Thrix. “But there comes a time when the boss has to get her hands dirty. How do you think I get my collections together? By magic?”
“Yes,” said the Fire Queen. “Isn’t that how you do it?”
“Afraid not.”
“Oh.” Malveria looked thoughtful. “But all these lovely shoes. They arrive by sorcery, surely?”
Thrix shook her head.
“No. People make them.”
“Really? No sorcery at all? People must be cleverer than I thought. Because these are beautiful shoes.”
Thrix took Queen Malveria downstairs to her showrooms to find her some new clothes because really, she wouldn’t want to let down such an important client. While there was no time to make something special she could certainly put together an outfit for the Fire Queen that would impress on the day. As Thrix readied some young models for an impromptu fashion display, the Fire Queen was thoughtful. Normally, being surrounded by clothes was enough to occupy her attention entirely, but an amusing thought had struck her.
Lonely Werewolf Girl Page 3
