by Alix Marsh
“So, the family line continues, yeah?” Jack extended one of the cold branches with dotted lines. “And future generations are completely cut off unless a relative interferes and seeks out one of them. But pledging across bloodlines like that is weak, a lot weaker than pledging downward and if the blood ties are too loose, the Touch of Zeus doesn’t pass down at all.” He shaded in a narrow band either side of the dotted cold line. “So, when we say distant relative, it can’t be all that distant.”
Flynn was back to wondering about his family connections. At least now he knew why Milo and his minions thought Flynn was fair game for target practice. “Cold Slayers are basically the weakest, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Not necessarily,” Ice said. “If you took your pledge from an estranged grandfather, or great grandfather, skipping generations downwards doesn’t matter as much as pledging across lines.”
“But usually, yeah,” Jack told him with a grimace. “That would be the case.”
Ice scowled at him. “That’s not true.”
“Except, it is,” he said.
“Well, maybe, but you don’t have to go on and on about it.”
“I’m not,” protested Jack. “I’m just stating the facts.”
“It’s all overrated, anyway,” Ice said huffily. “I honestly don’t know why there’s always such a fuss about the power passed through our pledges.”
“Maybe because we’re as weak or strong as our Surge?” suggested Jack with a touch of sarcasm.
“We’re as weak or strong as we want to be! Dedication and training—working at it—is far more important.”
Flynn wished he could agree, given his apparent crappy path to his slayer relations, but he couldn’t. “You have to have something to work with, though, don’t you?”
“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have anything.”
“Come on, Ice,” said Jack. “You don’t really believe that the powers passed through our bloodline means so little.” He shot Flynn an apologetic look. “Some slayers are just going to be stronger, better warriors, and I’m not talking about myself. My pledge Surge wasn’t all that fantastic. I’m just saying… it matters. A lot.”
“And I suppose you think we should stamp it on our foreheads,” Ice snapped. “Label everyone nicely, so we all know where we stand and how little we should aspire to.”
“Why not?” Jack sounded quite cross himself. “Not to limit anyone, of course, but all this cloak and dagger stuff is pathetic. Tell you what, when I go into battle against any demons, I’d like to know how powerful the slayer fighting at my side is, rather than just guessing at our odds of getting out alive. It never used to be a secret, you know. All the slayer biographies include descriptions of their pledge Surge. In fact, my granddad said in his day, they used to make a note of it on your school record here. It’s only recently that it’s become politically incorrect to mention the ‘S’ word.”
“It’s discriminatory,” Ice exclaimed.
“It’s ridiculous, that’s what it is.”
“Then you don’t mind sharing, do you?” Ice gave him a sour-sweet smile. “Go on, tell us all about your Surge.”
They exchanged a heated glare.
Flynn was still agreeing—mostly (he didn’t particularly want to stamp Crappy Slayer on his forehead)—with Jack.
“Right, then.” Jack sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I felt hot vibrations up my legs and arms. And a tingling, warm flush all over my skin.”
Ice’s mouth dropped open.
“That puts me bam in the middle of your average, non-exceptional slayer,” Jack said, “and I’ve got no problem with everyone knowing. I am what I am.”
“I can’t believe you did that.” Ice jumped up, swiping her bag off the ground and onto her shoulder as she did so.
Jack shrugged. “You told me to.”
“I didn’t mean—” Her eyes were glazing, a silvery blue shaded in frost. “You know I didn’t expect you to actually tell us!” She looked at Flynn, back to Jack, shaking her head, then she spun about and stormed off.
Flynn watched her weaving through the tables, somewhat relieved. If she was that upset, then she’d definitely not be happy with this next bit. He turned to Jack. “Those hot vibrations…what did you call it? Your pledge surge?” Jack nodded. “So, that’s what happened straight after you swore your oath?”
“Yeah, that’s Zeus’s Touch surging through you. The stronger the energy force passed through your bloodline, the stronger you feel it,” he said as gathered up his notebook and pencil. “You should read some of the stories about the earliest slayers, man. Some of them were zapped right off their feet.”
“Zapped off their feet…” Flynn’s mouth went dry. He snagged the family tree drawing and pulled it closer. If he was right, and he was starting to think he might be, then it didn’t make any sense.
He knew his family tree.
His eyes traced the extended dotted line, but the branch he was mentally following wasn’t on the page. Dad was an only child, and his parents had died before Flynn was born—but they were buried in the churchyard, they’d lived in Little Rislin all their lives, the whole village had known them…surely someone would have noticed if it wasn’t true, if one of them was walking about instead of being firmly dead. Besides, he’d seen enough black-and-white photos of his grandfather to recognise the man, un-dead or not.
Jack was still talking about Surge experiences he’d read, but Flynn was only half-listening.
On his mother’s side, there was Nan…Gramps had passed away quietly in his sleep when Flynn was eight. His mom had two sisters who lived in Scotland, but Flynn had met them and their families loads of times. He just couldn’t see it… He couldn’t see where the old man could fit in his direct family tree and he couldn’t get Jack’s words out of his head “…pledging across bloodlines like that is weak, a lot weaker than pledging downward…”
If the old man who’d pledged him was some great-uncle twice removed or a second-cousin or something like that, then why wasn’t Flynn the typical crappy Cold Slayer he’d assumed himself to be?
“…and there’s this one picture,” Jack was saying, “a painting, and there’s a massive lightning bolt and it looks as if the man’s body is actually part of it—”
“What?” Flynn’s gaze flew up.
“Cool, yeah?” Jack grinned. “Imagine surging so powerfully that the only way to describe it, is like being struck by a bolt of lightning?”
Flynn tried to work his tongue loose…to say what? Actually, not so hard to imagine. Funny thing, you’re not going to believe this… Which he wouldn’t. He’d totally think Flynn was making it up.
“Those slayers were powerful and then some,” Jack went on. “Doesn’t happen anymore, no way. I bet even the First Slayers don’t feel much more than a decent jolt, maybe a kick up their spine. Now that’d be a treat, getting Milo Christos to admit—” Jack cut off dead.
A whoosh of air, followed by a plunk—an enormous, glossy, hard-cover book slammed onto the table right under Flynn’s nose.
Ice was back. By the look of it, her mood hadn’t improved at all. “I thought you might find this useful,” she told Flynn, and then she took off again in a whirl of huffiness.
“She really is mad,” Jack said, sounding surprised.
“You only just noticed?” Flynn looked down at the book, which had the longest title he’d ever seen.
“100 Famous Slayers who Refused to be Defined by their Touch of Zeus.” He opened to the first page, skimming over the Foreword. “Your pledge Surge wasn’t all you hoped it would be. Take a deep breath. Now lean in…closer…closer… Silas Moskrat. Basillo Attair. Nikolai Pavlis. You’ve heard of them—”
“No, I haven’t,” Jack said dryly.
“—you’ve wanted to be them—”
“Not likely.”
Flynn chuckled at the running commentary. “Listen to this…the only person holding you back is YOU. Don’t let a d
isappointing pledge dictate your destiny. Silas, Basillo, Nikolai and many, many other great slayers, certainly didn’t.”
“Blimey,” said Jack. “What’s Ice doing with that?”
“It’s a library book,” Flynn said, noting the envelope stuck to the inside of the cover. “Maybe she checked it out for me. She does seem a little sensitive all of a sudden, about the whole Cold Slayer thing, right?”
“Tell me about it.” Jack stood, indicating they should be going. “She lectured me all the way here about giving you a break, which is kind of hilarious, considering she’s had as many laughs—” He cut off with a groan. “Sorry man. Clearly, she isn’t all wrong. I’m really in jackass form today.”
“Seriously, it’s cool.” Flynn picked up the book, and winced. “However, if you’re really sorry, you could always offer to carry this thing in your bag. It weighs a ton.”
“Not that sorry. Deeper,” he said as he watched Flynn tuck the book into his bag. “You want to really hide it or you’ll be fodder for the rest of the term.”
Flynn pulled a face at him. “This is all your fault, you do know that?”
Since a second wave seemed to have arrived for lunch, and they were the last of the first and second years to leave the dining hall, they didn’t dawdle and walked most of the way back to class in silence. Flynn’s thoughts were miles away, with the lightning force of his Surge and what the heck that meant. One minute he was thrilled—no one wanted to be a useless weakling—but then he’d remember why it wasn’t so great, how him being super powerful meant his family was seriously messed up somewhere along the line.
When they cut off the oval path, Flynn had no intention of looking, but somehow the silver birch sapling with the tangled lower offshoot was impossible to miss. Rowan hadn’t lied. He’d helped Flynn, and then made a joke of him. Flynn didn’t know what he was even supposed to think about that and so he didn’t.
Perses was a waste of time.
THE REST OF THE week passed quickly and, to Flynn’s continued disappointment, very normally. Even Ice started speaking to them again on Tuesday, as if she hadn’t totally flipped the day before.
Thursday morning, they were marched up to the Manor for a two-hour Free Study period. Through a set of double doors into a long, empty room with polished mahogany floors and mirrored walls and chandeliers swinging low from the ceiling. Up a grand stairway that split halfway up—they branched right—to deposit them at one end of the Long Gallery. The walls were hung with portraits and lined with short bookshelves, the floor covered with a Persian runner extending the full length of the thin hallway.
Ice peeked into a series of tiny mini-libraries leading off the hallway until she found a room that wasn’t occupied. Flynn left them at the door with some excuse about wanting to browse the other sections, and set about hunting down the librarian.
He found her in what was clearly the main library, a maze of wide passages formed by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and then more bookshelves. She was perched on a hardback chair, floating in midair. Flynn didn’t notice the giant hydraulic arm until later, he was too busy staring at the girl—well, maybe she was too old to be called that, but not by much, and she was…well, jaw-dropping. He wiped his arm across his mouth in case there was any drool.
“I’ll be right down,” she said when she saw him standing there. She pressed a button, and the chair started descending.
Her hair was white—not the dull white of hair that had lost its colour—glossy, thick, stacked into a high ponytail on top of her flawless, beautiful, mesmerising face and her eyes were hazel, shimmering with blue and green and gold, as if her beauty couldn’t tolerate the boring mediocrity of just one colour.
The chair settled on the wooden floor with a gentle thump.
“So…” She stood, turning to him with a smile that seemed to hit a weak spot in his stomach. “What are you looking for?”
“Um…” The thought of the book he’d intended to return burned the tip of his ears. It remained firmly hidden in his bag. He glanced around him. “A book?”
“Hmm… I was hoping for something more specific.”
He looked back to see she was moving slowly away from him, a finger trailing along the row of spines as she walked.
“You’re new, right?” she said, tipping one book out, then pushing it in again. “We don’t see many first years here. Their eyes tend to glaze over the ‘study’ part and see only ‘free period.’ Ah, yes…” She tipped another book out from the shelf and brought it over.
That’s when Flynn saw the tattoo, a streamlined eagle taking flight from the dip of her collarbone, one delicate spread of wings just tipping into her hairline on the side of her neck. It was possibly the most wickedly cool thing he’d ever seen.
“A Concise and Precise History of Slayers,” she read out as she handed it over.
Flynn’s knees sagged slightly beneath the weight of the book. It was twice as big, twice as heavy, as Ice’s 100 Famous Slayers.
She gave him another smile and suddenly the book didn’t seem that heavy at all, until, that is, she’d checked it out and sent him on his way. If girls didn’t stop giving him books, Flynn thought morosely as he stomped down the Long Gallery, he was going to develop serious back problems.
Ice had an elbow on the table, her head resting on one hand, and her nose so far deep in the leather bound book she was studying, she didn’t even look up as he entered the mini-library. This wasn’t exactly normal for her. From what Flynn had seen this week, she was usually the one tapping her pen on the desk and staring out the window.
He took the seat next to Jack, across from Ice, and dumped History of Slayers on the table.
Ice shot him a scowling, “Shhh…”
She’s concentrating, Jack mouthed at him, smirking, then went back to lounging in his chair and scribbling—yes, that hadn’t been a joke—in his diary.
An actual diary, one of those slim, black, pocket calendar diaries, each day marked off into hours for people who really needed every minute of their lives planned for. Jack wasn’t using it for that, though, his tiny scrawling was written at an angle across the lines and filled the page. It looked like some sort of poetry, but Flynn didn’t get a chance to see more because Jack flipped the diary closed and slipped it inside his blazer.
Flynn had more interesting things to talk about, anyway. He leant in and whispered, “What do you think of the librarian?”
“We have a librarian?” Jack whispered back.
Flynn grinned. “She’s kind of hot and you should see this tattoo she has, a wicked eagle.”
“She let you see her mark?” Jack’s eyes widened.
“Mark? No, it was a tattoo of a—”
“Like this?” Jack ripped his shirt from his waistband and tugged it up to his ribcage.
Flynn glanced across to Ice, but they were talking in very quiet voices and Ice was too involved in her reading to even notice that Jack was stripping.
Jack pointed to a small tattoo, barely visible since it appeared to have been done in white ink and Flynn had no wish to look too closely, and in the vague outline of a smudge. “We’re all marked by Zeus’s Touch. That’s where our House emblems come from.”
“Oh, that’s a leaf?”
“Haven’t you seen your mark?” Jack said, pulling his shirt down again to tuck in.
Flynn shook his head. “But I haven’t really looked.”
“It’s usually on your chest, or maybe your back,” Jack said, “but it can be somewhere really obscure. Go on, then…” He nudged Flynn with his elbow. “What were you and the librarian doing in the library and where is her mark?”
“Oh, for goodness sake!” Ice said, who must have been listening really hard after all to hear their whispering. “Her name is Evana and that eagle is a tattoo, not her mark, and it’s impossible to miss from a mile because it’s right there on her neck. She’s Perses, anyway…she got the eagle done when she was going out with a boy from Hellys and you do rea
lise she’s far too old for you?”
“Not that old,” Flynn protested.
“She went to school with Reece.”
“Isn’t Reece your youngest brother?” said Jack.
“He’s still twenty-two.”
“So,” Flynn said, “you’re friendly with her, then?”
Ice rolled her eyes. “I am not going to introduce you!”
“That’s okay.” Flynn’s grin spread. “We’ve already met.”
Ice shook her head, muttering something about idiots and delusions as she dropped her head over her book again.
That evening, straight after his shower, Flynn examined every inch of his body. Well, maybe not every inch. He did find some interesting new moles, but nothing resembling a white tattoo or even any odd smudge.
He didn’t say anything about it. Clearly, everything about him becoming a slayer was off-whack with everyone else…of course his mark would be in an obscure, embarrassing place.
Jack was sprawled over the armchair, his head back, eyes closed, plucking mindlessly on his guitar. Flynn hadn’t heard him playing a complete—or recognisable—tune, but his messing around actually sounded quite good.
The secret of Jack’s little black book suddenly hit him.
“In the library,” he said as he crawled into bed. “Were you writing a song?”
Jack squinted one eye open at him. He didn’t stop plucking. “Maybe.”
“Well, can I hear it?”
“No.”
“Does Ice know?”
“Not unless you tell her.” Jack swung his legs over the arm of the chair and slid to his feet.
“Do you want me to?” Flynn rolled over onto his side, propping his head up with a pillow.
“Don’t be daft. Why would I possibly want you to do that?”
“Because she thinks you doodle hearts in your diary,” Flynn said, “while writing songs is totally cool.”
“You do realise…” The room went black as Jack flipped off the light switch “…that if I was at all worried about what Ice thought, I wouldn’t doodle where she could see, right?”
