I nodded. That’s what I had thought.
“We call those halfbreeds. Most of the time the human gets lost in the wolf. Those are the wild ones. I’m a purebreed. My parents were werewolves, so were my grandparents. In fact, I have a pedigree that goes back over two thousand years.”
She gave me a wry smile.
“Pedigree is our word, so it’s not an insult. Purebreeds are stronger and faster than halfbreeds and, of course, we retain our intelligence when we change. A lot of halfbreeds don’t.”
I was stunned. This was all news to me.
“The vamps hate purebreeds because they can’t influence us in wolf form. There’s been a low-key war going on for centuries. They’ve slowly been pushing us out in favor of the halfbreeds, who they can control. There’s only a handful of purebreed packs left. There’s my old pack, one up in Scotland, two in Ireland, one small pack in the Falkland Islands, a couple in Europe and a couple more in Asia. That’s it. We’re an endangered species.”
I shook my head slowly and sat up. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
“What about halfbreed packs?” I asked.
“There aren’t any around here. When a halfbreed surfaces we take them in and look after them, try to prevent them from hurting people. Ultimately, after all, they are our responsibility.”
She stopped and stared off into the distance, seeing something that was not there.
“When I was growing up there was a halfbreed in our pack. A halfbreed named Dannor. Dannor was … almost okay. He was one who could think as a wolf, almost as well as a purebreed.”
I could see tears forming in her eyes. I reached out and took her hands in mine. I could see that the memories were causing her pain.
“You need to understand. Werewolves don’t bother with political correctness or equality. Male and female wolves aren’t equals, they could never be. When my parents died, Liam, my brother, took over responsibility for me. I was still a juvenile when Liam disappeared, but Dannor made it clear that he wanted me for his mate.”
Tears slipped down her cheeks and tore a hole in my heart. I pulled her against my chest and wrapped her in my arms. I had a feeling that I knew what was coming.
“When I reached puberty, Dannor claimed me. I was a lone female, not yet strong enough to fight him off. Our Alpha male approved, saying that Dannor would be a good male for me. No other male wanted to fight Dannor for me, not even my childhood friends.”
I tightened my arms around her and stroked her hair.
“Dannor had a particular perversion. He liked to take me when I was in human form and he was wolf. And there was nothing I could do to stop him.”
“He raped you?” I whispered, shocked.
“No, it wasn’t rape,” she said with a choked sob. “You really need to understand that. It wasn’t rape because I didn’t have the right to say ‘no’ to him. I was his female and he had the right to use my body how he saw fit.”
“Oh sweetheart, that’s terrible.”
“No!” she said passionately. “It’s not. That was terrible, but the way werewolves mate is wonderful if the male respects the female.”
She looked at me through her tears and spoke earnestly.
“You’re my male, I’m your female. You should dominate me, you do dominate me, and that’s the only way I want it. Do you have any idea how incredible it is to be a female who has a man like you? You’re strong and honest, you love me and you’d die to defend me. You’re everything Dannor was not and you’d never ask me to do something I wouldn’t want to do. That’s important because, if you asked, I would do it just because it’s you asking.”
“And that’s why me kissing the vampire hurt you so much,” I said softly. “It was disrespectful to you.”
She nodded and smiled.
“Your kisses belong to me, just as I belong to you. If you want to cheat on me there’s nothing I can do to stop you any more than I could stop Dannor sleeping around. I need you to be trustworthy and you are trustworthy, it’s one of the things I love about you.”
Suddenly she hung her head and sighed.
“Oh shit,” she said quietly. “I’m not expressing this very well. I want to trust you not because I’m strong enough to rip your leg off and hit you with it but because you can be trusted, you understand?”
I nodded slowly.
“Yes, love. I know what you mean.”
“Good, because I’m getting tired of being a girlfriend. I want to be your mate.”
“Do we need to exchange rings or something?”
“No, wolves exchange commitments, not rings. And it’s for life, you understand that, right?”
I nodded and ignored the tiny, barely audible voice telling me to run like hell. That idiot was in the minority and he didn’t know what he was talking about.
“There’s a couple of things we need to get straight. You know I’m not comfortable with that wolf-on-human stuff, right? Let’s keep it completely human, okay?”
I nodded and smiled.
“Anything you say, love.”
“And please don’t ask me to do it doggy-style, it’s degrading,” she said with a cheeky grin.
“Oh, now, I don’t think I can agree to that. That’s my favorite position.”
“Really?” she said, one eyebrow raised. “Well maybe when you get better you can try to persuade me to change my mind. I’m not promising anything, though.”
“And when can I expect this dominant/submissive thing to kick in?” I asked.
“Oh, don’t confuse submissive with weak. You have to dominate me, there’s nothing that says I have to give up without a fight.”
I laughed softly. I had the feeling my life was going to be very interesting from now on.
CHAPTER
27
I stood and faced the door, wondering if I had the courage to ring the bell. The last time I had stood here had been very different. I’d rung the bell and Bill had answered. He’d hustled me inside and I’d spend the afternoon celebrating his son’s seventh birthday. Robert—never Bob, Bobby or Rob, always just Robert—was a serious, studious kid with dancing, intelligent eyes and the clear stamp of his father’s features who had one blind spot. He persisted in thinking of me as a loveable, roguish uncle, and I wanted to play that role.
He’d even told his friends that ‘uncle Pagan’ was coming to his party, so I’d had a room full of kids waiting to meet me. I’d brought gifts: small plastic toy versions of the MP7 and the SIG, plus a small pair of canvas holsters so he could wear them like I did. Not long after that the Ministry had started selling the same toys as a ‘vampire hunter play set’ aimed at boys aged 5-11. Helen had simply rolled her eyes at me and smiled indulgently.
Today would be different. Like last time I’d left the FAL with the armory, but this time I had my other weapons with me. I was still wearing my black outfit whereas last time I had come in camouflage because that’s how Pagan is in the movies and TV series. Last time I had come bearing gifts, this time it was news.
I took a deep breath and rung the bell. The door was opened by a gray-haired man with piercing blue eyes. It took me a second to place him and when I did a bowling ball hit my stomach. It was Derek, Helen’s father. Derek disliked the hunters in general and Bill in particular, feeling that the father of his grandson should be an accountant or lawyer instead of chasing and gunning down people ‘just because they’re different’.
If Derek was here, then Angie, his wife, would also be here, and her hatred for the Ministry was matched only by her hatred for me personally. She saw me as the bad influence that had drawn Bill from the Marines to the Regiment, and from there to the Ministry. I was, in her mind, responsible for robbing her grandson of his father. It was amazing, given how much contempt she’d had for Bill when he was alive, how fast he’d been transformed into the perfect son-in-law once I’d ‘let him get taken by that vampire woman’.
Still, I was here and I had a duty to perform.
; “Hello Mr. Turner,” I said politely. “Is Helen in?”
He stared at me, his mustache writhing on his top lip as his face went red with rage.
“Don’t you think you’ve done enough?” he burst out in a harsh whisper. “You have to come here and rub it in?”
So many retorts rolled up my throat. So many nasty remarks and barbed comments. How dare you judge me? I was the best man at their wedding, remember? The one that you refused to attend because you felt she was marrying beneath her? And where were you the day Helen miscarried their first child? I was here, holding her hand and comforting her while we waited for Bill to fly back from Belize on compassionate leave. Where were you when Bill was taken and Helen almost collapsed with grief? You and that bitch of a wife were on the phone because your work in imports and exports—which were being threatened by the sanctions our so-called allies were constantly blustering about—was too important to rush away from and, by the way honey, that nice Kevin, you remember him, his family used to live just down the road from us, he’s now something in publishing, and he asked how you were when I saw him in the supermarket the other day. Yeah, I’ve done enough, I did the things you were supposed to be doing, you sorry excuse for a father.
I clamped down on my emotions, swallowing the bile and indignation.
“I just need to talk to her,” I said softly.
“Well she doesn’t need to talk to you,” he said and started to close the door.
“Dad?” came Helen’s voice from inside. “Who is it?”
I resisted the urge to shout out to her.
“Is that Jack?” she said.
I heard quick footsteps coming along the tiled hallway and saw Helen peer around her father’s shoulder.
“Oh, Jack,” she whispered as she pushed past him.
She threw her arms around my ribs and buried her face in my chest. I suppressed a grunt of pain and I hugged her tight, laying my cheek against her hair.
“Did you kill it, Jack?” she whispered.
I guessed she’d cried herself out before this, and now she just wanted closure.
“Yes, Helen, I found it and killed it.”
“Good,” she said. “Come on in. Dad, you know better than to leave Jack standing on the doorstep.
Helen took my hand and Derek reluctantly stepped aside. Inside the house was airy and clean, reflecting Helen’s organized personality and attention to detail. Framed pictured lined the hall. I saw Bill in his uniform, a fresh-faced Bootneck, taken at the end of the training at Lympstone. There was Bill, proudly displaying his single stripe, and then showing off his second when he made corporal. Bill and Helen, her looking tired but radiant, him looking tired but proud enough to burst, tiny baby Robert in her arms, just looking tired.
The last picture made me stop. Derek almost ran into me, then backed off a step and muttered something under his breath. The picture was of our unit, taken somewhere in South America, a group of grinning, gun-toting, sunburned troopers posing in front of a battered Bell “Huey” UH-1 helicopter. Bill was standing in the second row, I was crouched down in front of him and he was making bunny ears behind my head. It had been six months before Black Tuesday.
Helen touched my arm and sighed.
“He kept promising to get you a copy of that, didn’t he?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, and the laughed. “He had a mind like a sieve, didn’t he?”
“Well, he did get the print made, he just kept forgetting to give it to you. It’s around here somewhere, I’ll dig it out for you.”
“Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”
She led me into the living room. The first thing I saw was Angie, directing a look of unalloyed disgust toward me. But there were smiles, too. Paul and Barbara, Bill’s parents were there to. Paul shook my hand firmly and Barb gave me a hug. Then there was the thundercloud that was Dougal, Helen’s brother. Dougal was a wastrel, a piggy little man who, in my opinion, wasn’t worth a pimple on Bill’s arse. Of course, Derek and Angie doted on him, going on at length about his poetry and his sensitive soul. I strongly suspected that the vamps financed his alleged art, going on as it did in tortured, endless prose about the tragedy of the vampiric life.
Sitting next to Dougal and looking at me like I was a dog turd someone had tracked in the door was Portia, Dougal’s overbearing and shrill wife.
“Where’s Robert?” I asked, looking around.
“He’s at school, thank God,” said Angie sharply. “I don’t think he needs to hear that you killed his father, do you?”
“Oh come on,” said Paul. “Jack didn’t kill him, he set him free.”
I was familiar with this belief. The Catholic Church had recently decreed that when a human was turned into a vampire, their soul was trapped in the body until the vampire was slain. Frankly I believed in the soul about as much as I believed in the tooth fairy, but it did give a lot of Catholics a reason to join the hunters.
Angie sniffed and heaved her bosom in a way that spoke eloquently of what she, a Protestant, thought of Catholic dogma.
“Did you at least bring his body home?” asked Derek.
“Of course he didn’t, Derek,” said Paul. “Bill had it in his will that he didn’t want a funeral if he was turned.”
“Well if you hadn’t been so trigger-happy it wouldn’t have been an issue,” said Dougal darkly. “He could have come back and been treated.”
“Treated?” I said, my voice climbing. “He didn’t have the flu! He was turned into a vampire! There’s no treatment for that, no cure!”
“Yeah, that’s a convenient fiction, isn’t it?” snapped Portia. “I think you people are just worried you’ll be out of a job if the public learns the truth about hemovores.”
“Hemovores?” I said. “Is that what the politically correct are calling them these days?”
“These people need our help,” said Dougal.
“These creatures deserve nothing more than a bullet,” I snapped. “How about I take you out the next time I go on patrol? Get you some actual experiences rather than swallowing everything the vampire news network serves up?”
“How dare you?” she screeched at me.
“I stand toe to toe with the vampires every night, that’s how I dare.”
“Only because that’s what the government wants! We could make peace with the hemovores if we wanted, like they do in America.”
“You mean we could surrender control to them, like they do in America,” I replied mockingly.
“Huh! Fat chance of us being as enlightened as the US with your friends in the Ministry of Paranoid Raving Delusions in charge! I suppose you had something to do with that unprovoked attack on Havelock Manor!”
“Jack!” said Helen quietly
And just like that another woman in my life was able to shut me up with a single word. My mouth snapped closed.
“Portia, Jack is a guest in my house,” said Helen. “If you can’t be civil to him I’m going to ask you to leave.”
Portia looked stunned for a second and then swept out, her nose in the air and her husband trailing in her wake. Angie stood up.
“We’ll come back when you’re feeling better, dear,” she said snootily before she, too, left.
Derek gave me a dirty look and followed his wife.
We waited in silence until we heard the sound of car doors slamming and a car screeching out of the driveway.
“Jack, I’m sorry,” said Helen.
“Don’t be, sweetheart,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder.
“Can you stay for dinner?” she asked.
I thought about it for a second.
“Robert will be home soon, he’d love to see you,” she said.
I was going to agree anyway, but once she’d brought out the heavy artillery there was no way I could say no.
“Sure, I’d love to,” I said.
“Good, then you can tell us all about your new girl.”
My eyebrows shot up.
“I
s there a tattoo on my forehead or something?” I asked indignantly.
“No, but unless you’ve started using a new shampoo, you’re sleeping with someone,” she said with a smile. “I could smell her when I hugged you. Was it that Marie I met before?”
“Yeah,” I said, unable to keep a broad grin off of my face.
“Isn’t she a werewolf?” Helen asked.
I nodded, suddenly feeling worried about their reaction to that piece of news.
“Is she nice?” asked Barbara.
“One of the nicest women I’ve ever met,” I said. “And she’s great in a fight. Skillful. Strong. Good shot.”
“Jesus, Jack,” said Helen, rolling her eyes. “She’s your girlfriend, not one of your recruits.”
“Actually, she was one of my recruits,” I said.
“Oh, hell no,” said Paul, ex-Navy to the core. “You’re sleeping with a subordinate?”
“She’s a hunter,” I said firmly.
“Is she forces?” asked Paul.
“You know,” said Barbara, “before I married you that question wouldn’t have made any sense.”
Paul laughed and nodded. The military has its own language.
“No,” I said. “She wasn’t a member of the armed forces. She joined as a civilian.”
Helen was rummaging in a drawer. Suddenly she gave a triumphant “ah-ha!” and turned around.
“Here she is,” she said, holding up a photograph.
Paul took it and pulled out his reading glasses.
“Okay, she’s cute as a button,” he said.
I looked over his shoulder. The picture had been taken a month ago, the five of us standing by a farmhouse, muddy, wet, but grinning at the camera like we were having the time of our lives.
“Bill always had a camera,” I said softly. “I think he wanted to record it all for posterity. He managed to cajole some farmer into taking the picture for us.”
“Hey, where is Marie right now?” asked Helen
“She’s at Gateway House,” I replied offhand.
I glanced up from the picture when the silence started to stretch.
“What?” I said to the three stares. “This wasn’t supposed to be a social call, you know!”
Pagan (MPRD Book 1) Page 17
