Bloodrage (6 page)

It was a soft tingle against my fingertips, as if one of the books was almost vibrating.  I’d felt that half-buzz before.  I half opened one eye and squinted towards where the sensation was coming from.  My jaw tightened
when I realised that I wasn’t mistaken.  Without thinking further, I reached over and pulled out a dusty looking book, the now forgotten Human-Fae dictionary dangling half off the shelf above me where I’d been trying to push it back in.  I focused instead on the new tome in my hands, that was continuing to hum against my skin, and moved down and sat on the floor, carefully turning over the first page.  The familiarity of the opening image floored me: a stunningly beautiful landscape with undulating emerald green hills in the background, a shining blue river, and what appeared to be a pomegranate tree.  I turned the next page, but I knew what I would see before I got there.  It was a Fae rune, singly screaming itself at me from the pristine white page.  This was exactly the same book that I’d come across in the Clava bookshop, the one that had freaked me out so much and made me really doubt what the old woman had been up to.

I tried to rationalise it to myself.  I’d been in a bookshop.  What else would you find in a bookshop other than books?  Now I was in a library.  Hello! And it was a vast library stocked with hundreds of thousands of titles no less.  Of course there would be copies of the same book.  But in such a large library was it really credible that I’d come across such an unusual and rare book without even looking?  I moved my hand up to my scalp to twist my fingers thoughtfully through the hair that I no longer had, and then stopped abruptly in midair and brought my fingers to my nose instead, sniffing.  Oh God.  There was a definite whiff of stale bonfire clinging to them.  I raised the book itself up to my face and sniffed again, even more cautiously this time.  The smell was even stronger.  As if the book had been in a fire and the pages had been burnt.  I flicked quickly through the rest of i
t, not looking to see what was inscribed within but instead hunting for any signs of damage.  There were none. 

I rocked back.  Okay, so it could be a coincidence that I’d come across the same book.  Coincidences happen all the time
; in fact it would be a coincidence if there were no coincidences (I struggled mentally with that one although I think I got it).  But could it really be a coincidence that a copy of the book that I last saw burning in the debris of Mrs. Alcoon’s shop now turned up here with the definite and distinctive odour of burnt paper?  I wasn’t completely stupid.  Something was going on here.  I glanced down at my blue robes and realised that they would actually have some use after all.  Taking a quick glance around to make sure that no-one was within eye shot, I hiked up the robes and shoved the book under one of my arms.  The robes would drape over my body well enough to conceal its shape and I’d be able to sneak it out of the library and examine it in more detail later.  Assuming I didn’t have to move my arms very much of course, that was.  Another thought struck me, and I reached up and scooped out the dictionary that was still half hanging off the shelf above me and did the same, only this time shoving it under my other armpit.  Hopefully I wouldn’t sweat too much into the books.

I stood up and smoothed the blue material down, trying to crane my neck around my body to see if the corners of the books were suspiciously poking out.  They see
med to be hidden well enough from what I could judge.  Carefully squatting down so as not to disturb their positions, I grabbed my test answer sheet from the floor where it had fallen when I had initially been shoved against the shelves.  I tried not to think about whether that was a coincidence or not as well, and instead stiffly got myself back to standing position and walked back out into the main area of the library, keeping my arms firmly at my sides to hold the books in place.  I realised that the headache that had been bothering me so very much had now completely vanished.  It must have been psychosomatic, I told myself.  If not, then it had been a tension headache from the stress of having to take the stupid test in the first place.  It wasn’t that the book itself had given me the pain to alert me to its presence.  No.  That would be impossible because it was an inert object.  Not alive.  Nor could it have been reincarnated from a fire on the other side of the country.  Definitely not.

“Now what the feck are you doing?” came a familiar
ly gruff voice from behind me.

I turned slowly, attempting to look natural.  “I was looking for yo
u.  Here,” I said, uncomfortably bending my elbow at the joint in order to pass over my answer sheet to the librarian, without the books dropping from their precarious position under my robes, “these are my answers.  I think you’ll find they’re all in order.”

Slim snatched them from me and scanned down the sheet, huffing as he did so.  He pursed his lips.  “Very well.  I suppose you’ve passed.”  He looked up from the sheet and stared at me, the wings at his back continuing to flap.  “Can’t say I think much of your fecking penmanship though.”

I inclined my head slightly and muttered that I would work on it.  The floating gargoyle stared at me for a moment, and I could feel myself starting to sweat uncomfortably.  Then he blinked with what seemed to be some kind of dismissal and turned, flapping off in the other direction.

I exhaled slowly.  I might just have made it.
  Making an odd shuffling turn that would have looked bizarre to anyone who was watching, I maneuvered myself towards the library doors and stiffly walked out.

Chapter Five

I felt considerably more confident once I’d left the library and began the hike back to my little attic garret.  Both books were tight under my arms and, although I had to take care to grip them tightly, I passed several mages who didn’t seem to notice anything peculiar.  Of course, they all veered considerably far out of my way when they saw me coming and averted their eyes to avoid meeting my gaze, and I knew that once I’d passed them they were all staring at me in wide-eyed fascination, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t then be able to catch their eyes.  So far, however, no-one was shouting anything about the crazy bitch who wasn’t really a mage trying to steal things and hide them about her person though.

I was particularly glad that the thumping headache was showing no sign
s of returning, despite my muffled alarm that it really had been caused by the Fae book alerting me to its presence.  I kept whispering in my head that I was being ridiculous, but I didn’t really manage to fully convince myself.  However, I did feel a sense of churning nausea that resembled an odd sensation of oily seasickness at the thought that my thievery would be discovered.  I was pretty sure that I’d pushed the Ministry of Mages to the limits of its patience with me.  I didn’t have much of an idea about what they would do if all this training stuff didn’t work out, and truthfully I didn’t really care all that much about what happened to me.  Other than Mrs. Alcoon, there was no-one anymore who depended on my existence or who would probably even miss me that much if I was gone.  Imagining a tiny violin playing in my ear, I scowled.  I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, I really wasn’t.  I was just facing reality.  Solus was a Fae, therefore notoriously fickle, and would forget me in a heartbeat.  Alex would probably be thrilled that he’d no longer be held accountable for my actions.  Betsy and Tom had each other and would do fine while Julia was far too capable on her own, even crippled as she was, to need me underfoot causing the problems that I repeatedly seemed to involve myself in.  And Corrigan…well, I didn’t really know what he’d think.  Regardless of all of them though, if I didn’t make it through this training then Mrs. Alcoon was finished.  That was completely unacceptable.  Therefore, it was imperative that I kept my nose clean and didn’t do anything else stupid.  Like getting caught sneaking books out of the library.

I c
onsidered whether I should have just left the books where they were.  The fact that both of them had materialised under my nose – and that fate had conspired to force me to trip over right next them to them - suggested to me that it hadn’t been an option.  Certainly not if the headache had been going to continue anyway.  No, I had done the only thing I could do.  And the overwhelming curiosity to discover exactly what lay inside the Fae book was searing its way through me.

I swung round past the dining hall and took a quick peek inside as I went past.  The entire room was empty and it seemed pretty clear that I’d missed lunch by at least an hour.  I knew I had Illusion and Divination 101 classes to get to, but I reckoned that I could easily make it back to my room first to drop off the books and hide them somewhere safe before I found
out where I was really supposed to be.

As I reached the staircase up to the dormitory level, I noticed with a sinki
ng feeling that Thomas was standing there, arms folded, watching my approach.  His back was ramrod straight, exactly as if the metaphorical poker up his arse reached through his spine and into his skull.  That probably accounted for the lack of brain cells, I figured sardonically.

I made it just past him and was on the step beyond, when he decided to speak. 

“So I hear that your classes yesterday didn’t go so well?”

Smug bast
ard.  I resisted the impulse to turn and just carried on walking, ignoring him completely.   Unfortunately, he decided to join my ascent up the stairs and continued to talk.

“That’s a real shame, you know,” he said, without a trace of apparent emotion in his voice.  “It’ll be interesting to see how you do this afternoon though
.”

I ignored him and continued walking up the stairs, keeping my arms closely clenched to my sides.  It was probably fortunate for both of us that when he grabbed my shoulder, I was sentient enough to not react physically.

“What?” I snapped.

“Look, Mackenzie, I’m sorry.”

I paused, entirely befuddled.  Thomas continued, “I shouldn’t have done that.  With the whole, you know, shave your hair thing.  It was immature.”

Well, score one for the
idiot in a frock.  I stared hard at the mage, trying to work out what he was up to now.  “Yeah, it was, Thomas.”

He flicked at an invisible strand of hair.  “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot.  Perhaps we can start over.”  He took his hand off my shoulder and thrust it out, palm extended upwards.

I fixed my gaze on his hand.  I had no idea whether this was some kind of trick or not, but I was pretty sure that if I reached out to shake his hand in a gesture of peace that I would lose my grip on the filched books.  I didn’t think that he’d be so friendly if they fell to the floor and exposed my sneaky theft.  I prayed to myself that he couldn’t actually read my mind while my bloodfire swirled nervously around, flickering through my veins with dulled heat.  I cleared my throat,  “Well then, I apologise if I hurt you.”

His hand remained outstretched.
“Fortunately we have some dedicated healers whose talent is virtually unsurpassed.”

I thought of Julia and had my doubts at that, but I shrugged anyway and hoped he’d go away.  No such luck
, however.

Thomas had apparently worked out that I wasn’t going to shake his hand in return.   He shrugged and withdrew his arm, but there was a flash of something indefinable in his eyes. 
“Still, it did have one positive outcome,” he said, his voice somewhat flatter now.

I turned to face him, exasperation getting the better of me.  “What?  What positive outcome did it have?”

His eyes gleamed. “You will start Protection lessons tomorrow after all.  And they will be with me.”

Oh fucking hell. “Great,” I muttered.  “Except I think I’ve proved that I’m better at Protection than you.”

“At attacking, perhaps.  But being truly gifted at Protection involves learning how to hold back and use control.”  He bared his teeth in what I suppose could be called a smile.  “So that’s what we’ll be doing.  I will be making you learn how to control yourself. I’ve realised that it’s not fair for me to judge you so harshly.  Of course it’s not your fault that you act like an untrained creature.  After all, you did spend all that time with the shifters.  It’s no wonder you have base feral instincts.”

Bloodfire roared in my ears with the unfiltered rage of a thousand angry devils.  The only thing that
brought me back from the brink and saved Thomas – and me - this time was that at that particular point one of the books tucked under armpit chose that moment to suddenly begin to slide down.  I clenched my arm tighter to my side and willed it stay put, biting my tongue until I tasted the hot iron rich blood.

“I hope that we can put all this unpleasant business behind us and become, if not friends, then collegiate colleagues instead.
” He reached out to squeeze my shoulder again, but this time seemed to think better of it and let his hand drop back down to his side. 

It took every fibre of my being
to not flinch, and to instead grit my teeth and smile back at him.  The book slipped an inch further down and I could feel the trickle of sweat behind the nape of my neck.

I cast my eyes down so I didn’t have to
look at him.  “I thank you for your gracious tutelage, Mage Thomas.”

He was silent for a moment, clearly
wondering whether I was taking the piss or not.  Then he shrugged nonchalantly and nodded to himself.  “You’d best be on your way then, Initiate.”