Bloodrage - Helen Harper Page 0,89

vampirism,” he read slowly. “Once turned, these creatures of the dead remain frozen in time, until such point as they are destroyed through either a weapon of pure silver or a piercing of the heart.” He snapped the book shut. “Sawing off their heads or setting them alight works pretty fecking effectively too.”

I stared at him. “Is that the voice of experience?”

“I’m a fecking librarian, what do you think?”

Giving up, I shuffled out towards the great library doors. “See you, Slim,” I said tiredly.

“Have a good fecking day!” trilled out the gargoyle, crowing in the knowledge that my day would be anything from fucking good. Unfortunately at that point I hadn’t fully appreciated just how bad things would turn out to be.

*

I arrived at the Protection building rather early, so sank myself down against the outside wall and closed my eyes, letting the now warm sun heat my bones. I still felt ridiculously sick and the thumping in my head showed no signs of dissipating. I felt rather than saw, someone slide down next to me. Opening up one eye, I squinted over.

“Hey, Mack,” said Thomas weakly.

The mage didn’t look well. The pallor of his skin was deathly pale, no doubt much the same as mine. Strangely, I felt oddly comforted that we were both suffering together. It kind of made me feel that the bond between us was even stronger. If he’d been bouncy and happy, I would probably have punched him, which might not have gone down well in terms of our slowly blossoming friendship.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. “You know I’m absolutely blaming you for this,” I muttered.

He let out a weak snort. “You were the one who decided that shots of tequila were in order, not me.”

A sudden of flashback of me pressing a small glass of colourless liquid accompanied by salt and a chunk of roughly hewn lemon on him filtered its way into my brain. My stomach rolled again in nausea. “Oh God,” I moaned.

“By the Founder,” agreed Thomas. He reached into a bag beside him and pulled out two cans. “Here,” he said, handing one over to me. “I thought this might help.”

It was a luridly bright and familiar orange and blue, and happily cold to the touch. I pulled the tab and took a gulp, then wiped the condensation from my fingers onto my robes, leaving a smear. Thomas opened his and sipped at it delicately.

“Dudes! Irn Bru? The Scottish nectar of the hungover? You must be feeling bad.”

I wasn’t sure I could cope with Alex’s chirpy bounce. “Fuck off.”

“Yeah, Florides,” mumbled Thomas. “Fuck off.”

Alex stood in front of us, hands on hips, blocking the light, and shaking his head in mock derision. “Oh, when will you crazy kids learn?”

Hah. Alex Florides, the sudden voice of sensible adult reason. Yeah, right. I grunted at him and took another swig of the sweet indefinable fizzy orange drink. “Where were you last night, then?”

He cocked his head down at me. “Off trying to trace the resting place of the bones of a certain wraith,” he commented drily.

I sat up a bit. “Tryyl? Did you find him?”

According to what little I now knew about wraiths, from scanning through a book the other day, if you had their original remains then you could easily rid yourself of them by burying them in consecrated grounds. And, hey presto, no more annoying hissing shadow.

Unfortunately, Alex looked grim and shook his head. “Sadly no, Mack Attack. My inveniora was picking up zilch. Wherever they are they are well hidden. Some magic spell of concealment no doubt.”

Thomas looked confused. “What are you two on about?”

I shook my head dismissively. “Nothing. Just some wraith that has a hard-on for a chunk of wood that the vamps have. It’s not really anything to do with us anymore.”

Alex nodded seriously. “Yeah, it’s not really our problem. But as I found the thing for the undead dudes, they’re claiming that I need to sort out their wraith problem for them.”

“And you can’t,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

“Nope.”

“Stupid bloodsuckers,” commented Thomas. “They always think that they’re better than everyone else just because they live a little bit longer.”

“Well, not really live,” drawled Alex.

We all grinned at each other. Thomas clambered to his feet then stuck a hand out down to me. I looked at it for a moment then took it, and he helped me to my feet. “Let’s cancel our lesson for today, shall we, Mack?”

Thank the skies. “Yes,” I said