Bloodfire (Blood Destiny 1) - Helen Harper Page 0,52

feel uncomfortable to be reminded of what I was. Even Tom tried to change the subject whenever I’d spoken about it. Added to which, I was starting to both like and admire the gangly mage. In for a penny in for a pound, I supposed.

“I don’t know who my father was,” I said softly. “And my memories of my mother are rather hazy. I have flashes – I know she was petite and dark haired, unlike me, with a kind voice and a good heart. I remember little things, like driving through the snow and wishing I could make a snowman. She stopped the car in a layby and we got out and did just that – built a tiny one by the side of the road, even though we had no gloves and it had to have been below zero. She made things fun.”

I paused, remembering. Alex stayed silent. “I know that we were always on the move and we never stayed in one place for very long. She discouraged me from making friends and it was if we were always running from something. At least I certainly never knew where we running to, so I suppose that we were trying to escape from something. Or someone.

And then one day we ended up here. It seemed like she knew where she was going and that she knew who the pack were. But she must have been human because that’s what I am so I don’t know how she knew of them. She walked straight into the keep without knocking and was stopped by John in the hall. He asked her what was going on and all she did was push me at him. Then she turned and walked out. Before she left the threshold of the keep, she turned and said, ‘No-one must ever know. You are all bound to keep her secret.’ And she left. She never came back. I’d sit by the window of the library for hours and days, and then weeks, watching for the car to come and for her to jump back out and take me away with her, but she never did.

The words that she’d said must have had power to them because no-one in the pack has ever been able to talk of me to another. They tried – John later told me that he had called up the Brethren for help with what to do with this human child they’d suddenly found themselves lumbered with and found he couldn’t speak. He’d said it was like having a weight clawing his tongue to the bottom of his mouth, and that the pain inside his head when he even thought of revealing to an outsider who I was had been excruciating. After trying to break the geas himself, and failing repeatedly, he compelled the others to never attempt it themselves either.

I laughed, sharply. “They weren’t happy to have me. John was always kind but sometimes back in those early days he had a look in his eyes as if he’d like to just drown me in the nearest well. There were others who were less kind.

But the longer I stayed, the more they got used to me. The pack here aren’t particularly violent or even particularly active. They keep the Way and follow the Brethren’s orders from London but they’re not monsters. Before they knew it, I was part of the furniture. I made friends. Tom, the wolf who was just here, and Betsy, a werelynx. And others too.

John started to train me and I quickly worked out that even though I couldn’t shift, I could be just as strong as they could. I helped hunt. I helped keep them safe.”

I swallowed. “And then when it was my eighteenth birthday, John bit me. I wanted it, so badly. I didn’t care what my shift was to be, I just wanted to be like them. And it was a pain that I’ve never experienced before or since. The shifter virus ate through me for days. It felt as if my whole body was crawling and turning itself inside out. And after three days, I was still me. Still human.”

I kicked angrily at the sand.

“But you stayed,” Alex said, his eyes projecting empathy. At least it wasn’t pity, that much I didn’t think I could deal with.

“This is my home. There are still one or two who wish I was gone – or worse - but for the most part, the pack accept me. And