Boss Fight (Beyond the Aura Book 1)

by Helen Adams

  She was really working that eighties rock-chick look in a white leather vest and trousers. Her feet were bare, and I noticed a tattoo on her right foot – a broad leaf, curled at the tip. She seemed about my age, but one look at her eyes told me the truth.

  “Stay right where you are, sister.” I levelled Baby at her throat. Whoops. ‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’, by Daphne McArthur. I lowered the blade.

  “Sister,” she said, tilting her head. Her accent had a gentle lilt. “You could be right. Eventually.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She let out a silvery laugh. It made me shiver. OK, so she was much older than I’d thought.

  “Never mind me. I’m just an… interested bystander.”

  “Yeah? Interested in what?”

  “You, of course.”

  I sweated a little. When an ancient shapeshifter sneaks up on you, you start looking for the exits.

  “Interested in a good way, right?”

  “Perhaps. I want to help you win this fight.”

  “How?” More important, “Why?”

  Her smile was approving. Oh goody, I was asking the right questions.

  “One day Lukas will rule. Let’s just say that there are certain individuals who feel that his character needs… rounding.”

  Rounding. I liked that. It was a neat way of saying ‘sandblasting’, or possibly ‘incinerating’.

  “How does this involve me?”

  “Because you’re going to change him.”

  “Firstly, fuck that. And secondly, again with the why?”

  Another smile. “I’m sure you can work that out.”

  “Alright. I’ll bite,” I said. Supernatural politics were a pain in the arse; I didn’t like playing cards without a full deck. I’d been doing too much of that lately. “When I beat Lukas it’ll make him look bad, take him down a few places in the pecking order. That’s what you want, right? To teach him how to be humble, or some bollocks like that?”

  I stepped closer, deliberately invading her space, until we were just a foot apart. She didn’t flinch. The woman had balls.

  “My social standing will go up among his people,” I continued. That could be both a blessing and a curse. It was also unavoidable. “And some of them will want to kill me.”

  That was unavoidable, too. The price I was paying for Alice’s location – not even her freedom, not whether she was alive or dead – was steep. But I’d pay.

  “Quick thinking.” The woman still hadn’t moved, other than to tilt her head so that she could look at me. “So here’s my advice –”

  “I don’t need your help to win this spar,” I interrupted, dismissive. “I can do this by myself.”

  And that didn’t sound childish at all. Her expression became gently mocking.

  “Lukas has had centuries of experience at swordplay. You’ve had a few years.”

  “Yeah…. but –”

  “I know why you fight. I know everything about you.”

  “Mind your own business.” Was she the one feeding Lukas information? Had she been in my fucking flat, taking photos? What was she to him?

  Why did I care?

  “I know why you went to prison.”

  “No, you don’t.” I took a step back.

  “You lost your temper and killed your father.”

  “Stop.” I stepped back again.

  A flash of colour and slight pressure on my shoulder – Lorl landing. Old memories tried to surface. I gave them a violent mental shove but they still bobbed away, just out of sight. Did everyone know? Raz; Lee; certainly Lukas. Now this woman, whoever she was. Why couldn’t my dark secrets just stay secret?

  I tried to tell her to shut the hell up, but I couldn’t get the words out. My tongue was paralysed. I could have smacked her in the face but it seemed as if the rest of me was paralysed, too. It wasn’t magic. It was all me.

  My tongue moved in my mouth, fat and restless, but nothing emerged. My eyes were so hot they burned. No tears came.

  “Your biggest fear isn’t dying, or pain. It’s that one day your control will slip and you’ll kill again.”

  Memories moved under my skin as the kitsune tugged and pulled. She was right. I wanted to make Lee hurt; I could almost taste his blood on my teeth. As for Mina… well. My control was close to breaking point.

  Can’t go back to prison. Can’t. Can’t.

  The Crappy Story of Daphne’s life wasn’t so unusual. Tragic, sure, but not unusual. Mum died when I was a baby and dad raised me. When he got drunk – which was often – he’d lose his temper and use his fists. I was an easy target. I acted up at school, caused trouble, started fights. He was sacked from his job and things got worse.

  Social Services got involved when I was nine. Gramps – my grandfather – was given custody, and I was sent to live with him on his farm. It was the closest thing to perfect I’d ever known.

  I didn’t see my father again until my eighteenth birthday. He came to the farm with a shitty birthday card and a box of petrol station chocolates. Words were exchanged. He tried to hug me and mumbled some half-arsed apologies.

  I told him to get lost. The only thing he lost was he temper. He hit me, but I wasn’t a kid anymore; I hit him right back. Just an ordinary dewdrop punch – no hidden berserker strength, not then – but it took us both by surprise.

  He fell over, banged his head on the tractor’s wheel arch, and died.

  Involuntary manslaughter, the judge said. When other kids my age were writing their fucking CVs and applying to universities, I’d been working the prison library, getting used to eating processed crap and trying to keep out of fights.

  Lee had learned the facts, as had Lukas… but the only person in the world I’d trusted with the full story was Raz. I trusted him implicitly and knew he wouldn’t tell another living soul. Which meant that this woman – somehow – had access to every part of my life.

  I took my hand off my mouth. Sounds emerged as a rusty croak.

  “How did you…?”

  I remembered what the therapist in prison had told me: breathe. Push them out. Lorl clutched my neck and it felt as if she was breathing with me, the tiny puffs of air in and out of her lungs mirroring mine.

  “It’s my business to know things,” the woman said, as if my own personal hell – the memories I’d spent so long repressing – hadn’t just crashed down around me. There was no way that Raz had told her, and I doubted that she’d ever met Lee. So how did she know?

  “Who are you?”

  “Right now? Your friend. Call me Mel.”

  I looked away. I was about to fight Lukas and I had to have a clear head. Was that Mel’s goal? To destabilise me? If so, I was determined that it wasn’t going to work.

  I breathed and breathed and pushed those memories away, heaved them back to the corner of my mind where they always lurked. My hands steadied as I petted Lorl to lavender calm. For her benefit, or mine?

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Mel was back to that approving smile. I wanted to slap it off her face.

  “You’re a strong woman.” Wow, a compliment. “That’s an admirable trait. But you’re also flexible, which is even better.”

  “You ought to see my Lotus position.”

  She laughed. It was a ‘we’re all just girls here’ kind of laugh. I stayed silent.

  “My advice is this.” She stepped in again, and now she was in my space. I wanted to shove her away. “Use your head. You’ll never beat Lukas in a straight fight. Work out which buttons you need to push, then shove them so hard that they break.”

  “That’s it?” I demanded, incredulous. “That’s your help?”

  “You’re smart.” She patted my cheek; if she touched me again I was going to rip her fucking hand off. “You’ll figure it out.”

  The air around her shimmered again. I moved back, not wanting to be anywhere near that barrier. When it cleared the kitsune stared up at me with big black eyes. She
trotted out of the room, down the corridor, and was gone.

  I thought about Mel as I finished my warm-up drills, and all the while memories tugged at my attention. I pushed them back. No time for distractions now.

  Mel was right about this fight. I’d always known, but I hadn’t wanted to admit the glaring reality, regardless of how many different ways Raz tried to persuade me. Unless I did something drastic, Lukas would carve MINE across my back before I could stop him. And I couldn’t stop him.

  But… I didn’t need to, did I? There was one way to get out of this with my skin intact, if I could man up and find the balls to hang tough (and if I stuck a few more clichés in there, I couldn’t fail. Right?). I didn’t need to beat Lukas. I just needed to distract him long enough to make him sloppy.

  I schemed and ran through my drills. Raz was a badass sword-craft teacher: - enough humour to get my interest, enough discipline to keep me focussed. I could do this.

  I let out a steady breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them everything was different. I saw with the cold clarity of combat, everything vivid and blazing.

  I was ready.

  SIXTEEN

  As if sensing my readiness – and who knew, maybe it did? – the portcullis dissolved, losing its shape and breaking down into nothing more than vapour. When it cleared I stepped out onto the arena floor. It crunched under my trainers. Sand? It looked like regular old cloud – that well-known building material – but it sure felt like sand.

  The space beyond was vast and lit up like a Christmas tree; white globes hung everywhere, suspended by magic, casting clean light over everything. Given the earlier heat in the tunnels, here it was surprisingly cool.

  “Go sit with Raz,” I told Lorl. She chirped and tugged my T-shirt. “Don’t argue with me, sweetie. You’ll be safer with him.”

  She made a rude noise and turned brown. I poked my tongue out and watched her flit away.

  I walked across the not-sand, Baby over my shoulder, sizing up the multiple ranks of benches. There was a smell here, familiar, but exotic. Sweat and excitement and bloodlust. The ghost of old battles. The promise of the fight to come.

  The place was packed to capacity with people who looked human but weren’t. I saw a cluster of grey-skinned women off to one side. They were aurai, sky-nymphs, and this was their natural habitat. I’d met a few. Standoffish bitches, the lot of them.

  A massive noise tore the air. I skidded to a halt, dropping Baby into a guard position, scanning the sky above. Two enormous shapes circled down from above, immense bodies glowing with their own internal light. I fought the need to run. And it was a need, not an urge; this was something primal, hardwired into my spine. The fear that my distant ancestors felt when they came down from the trees and saw the magnificent sky-death. For the first time in my life I was seeing vaengrjarl in their natural skins, and it was fucking terrifying.

  I bullied my body to loosen up and got moving again. I never took my eyes off the dragons. One – the largest – was a rich, vivid royal blue. Light dazzled off rows of scales. The other was about a third smaller, but no less majestic. Scarlet scales caught the light and threw it back as tiny flames.

  I was buffeted from the wind of their passage. Even from this distance I could smell them, but I couldn’t have described it even if someone held a knife to my throat. It was an old smell. It made me think of ancient mountains, deep snow and – oddly enough – hot chocolate.

  They landed on a vast dais at the far end of the arena, light and easy on huge feet. Perfect wings folded back against sleek torsos and the wind disappeared. Clawed hands tucked massive tails around their bodies.

  The air around them shimmered. When it cleared the dragons were gone, replaced by their human skins. I couldn’t make out their faces or any details of their clothes, but I didn’t need to – not when two thrones rose up from below the dais. Not when gold gleamed from their crowns. The king and queen took their seats.

  Fuck me. Lukas had brought me to meet his parents.

  Lukas loped out to meet me. Flashy bastard, he’d changed into leather trousers and biker’s boots… and nothing else. He was trying to distract me with his bare, muscled, hairy chest. Wasn’t working. Totally wasn’t working. Nope, I wasn’t staring. Not a sucker for muscles.

  The crowd roared with approval. Clearly their support was with the vaengrjarl prince. Me? I was the underdog, and in the supernatural world the underdog usually got eaten.

  We met in the middle. His eyes were like fireflies, glittery flecks of green showing his excitement. I wondered what my face looked like… then decided that I didn’t want to know.

  “No sword?” I said. “Too bad, you forfeit. I win.”

  I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. He let out a short two-note whistle and a long, slender katana materialised in front of him. I cursed, startled, and stepped back. He caught it in one hand.

  “I call her Vedr,” he said. His voice betrayed none of the anticipation that his eyes telegraphed, not even a thickening of his accent. “It means ‘wind’. We’ve been together a long time.”

  Hoping he wouldn’t pull another stunt like that – knowing that he probably would – I got my shit together and admired his weapon. Vedr was beautiful. Light gleamed along her length, the collar decorated with fine, intricate metalwork. The handle was long and finely detailed.

  “Maybe you should have a kid with her, instead.”

  “Maybe I should,” he grinned. “She could cut no less than your tongue.”

  Arsehole. He was enjoying this. Under other circumstances I’d have sold my right kidney to run a few practice drills with his blade, but if I wasn’t careful I could end up losing my right kidney anyway.

  “This is Baby.” I swung my falchion in a slow butterfly pattern. “She isn’t pretty and she doesn’t sparkle. I might even go so far as to call her an ugly bitch. But d’you know what?”

  Lukas rocked on his toes. The movement was light and easy. I was going to have to work my arse off for this victory.

  “Enlighten me.”

  “She likes to hurt things.”

  “And you? Do you like to hurt things?”

  I flashed back to Mel. To the memories that were always close to the surface.

  “No. But I’ll make an exception for you.”

  I attacked.

  Holy fuck, he was fast! Steel rang against steel, reverberating along my arms. Vedr was stronger than Baby – the blade of a katana was folded a gazillion times to increase the strength – but my falchion was a brute. What she lacked in strength she made up for in weight and force.

  I slid Baby away and whipped her up. Lukas blocked with a contemptuous flick. I tried again, this time aiming lower. He caught it and we circled. The crowd roared.

  “Come now,” he laughed, “is this the best you can do?”

  “Just warming up,” I countered. Bastard, he thought this was a game. “Don’t want to pull a muscle. Besides, we want to give mummy and daddy a good show, don’t we?”

  This was a game. Just not the one he thought we were playing.

  “Their presence is coincidental,” he scowled. “I don’t require their approval.”

  Vedr slashed out, so fast that I barely saw her move. I got Baby up just in time. His attack was controlled, but the emotion behind it wasn’t: - I’d pissed him off. Was this the button I was looking for?

  “Oh, Daphne, that block was laboured. I’d hoped for more.” The words were casual. I wasn’t fooled.

  He attacked in a flurry that made the air whine. I blocked one stroke, ducked the second and threw myself out of the way of the third, rolling behind him. I stumbled upright and whirled to hack his ankles. The clang of clashing blades made my ears ring.

  I straightened and backed away. We were both sweating. Throughout the last exchange I’d watched him with narrowed eyes, paying attention to the way his chest and shoulder muscles twitched (in a totally non-pervy way) a second before his ar
ms moved, noticing which hand he favoured. He’d switched Vedr back and forth – the git was ambidextrous – but he seemed to use his left hand more.

  “Bet mummy wasn’t pleased when you told her that you wanted half-human kids.”

  “Mother has no impact on who I choose.” He lashed out, left, right, left. I caught each blow until my bones ached.

  He still called her ‘mother’? Not ‘mum’. Not ‘ma’. Centuries old, and he still had a boarding-school mentality. Not that they’d had boarding schools back then. But that was what wealth and power did to you –

  The attack took me by surprise. I sucked air through my teeth and parried, muscles bunching in my arm as I struggled to hold him back. I slid Baby away and skipped back, heart tripping a mad techno-beat. No more wool-gathering for me.

  “Bet she’d already picked out a nice little vaengrjarl noble,” I panted. “What does daddy think?”

  “Why should I give a flying fuck what father thinks?” he snarled, following up with a messy attack. It was brutal – straight overhead, designed to cut me in two – but easily dodged. I didn’t even need to block. His eyes, now solid green, had lost that playful twinkle.

  Then everything began to shake, and I thought the world was ending.

  The ground – cloud? – sand? – underfoot was trembling. The air around me vibrated. The stands were moving, quivering so hard that people were standing up in alarm.

  I dropped to a crouch. Lower centre of gravity meant more stability, but it also meant taking my eyes off my opponent while I tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

  It was a mistake. The vaengrjarl’s foot snapped out. I felt stinging pain in my hand and Baby was gone, knocked away.

  “Welcome to the Shake,” Lukas smirked.

  I lunged for the sword. He grabbed my hair and yanked me back; fire seared my scalp. My arse hit the floor and pain jolted up my spine.

  “The magic used to run this place is controlled by a Custodian,” he said. I heard the cocky grin in his voice. “But it builds up. It needs a release.”