“First of all, there was only one, and he didn’t beat me because I’m still here and I’m still standing. Believe me, I think he’s come out worse off. Or at least he thinks he has.” I knew I was being cryptic but I was getting irritated at having to continually point out that I’d been bested by one measly vamp. “Second of all, I don’t want to shift. I don’t know what will happen if I do. I think it’s safer if I just stay me.”

“And get your blood drained in the process?” Alex sounded about the same as Corrigan had, an angry protective edge to his voice. Prickly heat tingled at my toes.

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, but…”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Okay, dude, chillax. Look, I’ll head over to the shop now and find somewhere nearby to hunker down and watch it. I can email you with the details of who I see going in.”

“That would be perfect Alex, thank you.”

“Any time, Mack Attack.”

“It’s Mack,” I responded automatically.

“Sure thing,” he chuckled, then hung up.

I turned off the phone and stood there for a moment staring at it. It was getting really annoying that everyone was being so prissy with my safety. I knew that they all meant well and I guessed that it was nice that they cared. It was better than those dark days right after I’d left the keep and I’d been so completely alone. But, for goodness’ sake, I was capable of making my own decisions and looking after myself. I’d managed this sodding far without having half the Otherworld standing over me as if I was some kind of fragile flower. The worst of it was that I knew the mages would cast a Divination spell and find me in Shrewsbury virtually the second I arrived. Then I’d have them all hovering around there too.

I cursed under my breath, then stomped back to where Aubrey was sitting, and tossed his phone back into his lap.

“Problems?” he asked, looking up at me with a sudden malicious gleam in his eye that reminded of me of the predatory vampire he used to be, instead of the whiny human he’d become.

“No,” I snapped. Fortunately I was saved from having to respond further as a trolley came trundling past, offering brightly wrapped biscuits, limp looking sandwiches and coffee. I ordered myself a cup, Aubrey following my lead and doing the same. After the girl had taken her change and pushed further on, I took a small sip and winced. It was bloody awful coffee.

“Oh my God,” breathed Aubrey.

“Let me guess, you’ve never tasted British Rail’s finest before?”

He cradled the small plastic cup lovingly in his hands. “This is delicious. It’s so deep and rich and earthy. Is this what coffee tastes like?”

I peered at him. He didn’t seem to be being sarcastic. “You’ve never had coffee before?”

“Of course, I’ve had coffee before, but it never tasted like this before.”

“You mean like it’s made of dishwater?”

He looked at me as if I was crazy. “It’s amazing.” The expression on his face was one of stunned wonder.

“You, Aubrey, have never lived.” Then I realised that wasn’t far off from the truth. “Maybe that’s at least one thing you can take from now being a human. You have new improved tastebuds.”

He took another sip of the coffee, his eyes wide with child-like wonder. “Miss Smith, you may be right.”

Miss Smith? Seriously? “Call me Mack.”

“Okay. Whatever you say, Mack.” He took another drink, savouring it slowly in his mouth before swallowing, and turned to me. “So come on, then. Tell me what you did that made me human.”

As if. He might not technically be a vampire anymore but you didn’t undo almost two centuries of being part of one of the most untrustworthy groups of the Otherworld in less than a day. The last thing I was going to do was to tell him that I was a Draco Wyr who possessed blood that not only lit up my insides as if they were on fire and enabled me to shift, but also apparently had healing qualities that extended so far as to cure vampirism. Not a single theory in any of the vamp lore books that I’d read back at the academy had whispered the vaguest hint that such blood existed, even if they’d propagated all sorts of other rumours as to how a cure might be achieved. That thought, however, provided me with an easy escape route.

I shrugged. “Well, I took this herbal remedy a few hours before I was at the Heath. I think you’re only supposed to take a small sip but I guess I kind of overdosed. I was feeling really woozy before you showed up and I’m sure it was down to that.”

Aubrey’s eyes widened fractionally. “What was it?”

“It’s called TemperSoothe.”

He snorted.

“Hey,” I said, protesting, “I have some anger issues, okay? I’ve been going to anger management counselling. It’s just difficult to keep up with the sessions sometimes. I thought it might help. Anyway, it’s got skullcap and Passiflora Incarnata in it.”

He nodded slowly. “So you think that this Temper stuff is what turned me.”

No. My weird blood did. “Who knows?”

His jaw tightened and I could see him thinking. “So if you’ve got anger issues, then you’ve drunk it before, right? That’s why your blood tasted strange the first time around.”

“Mmm,” I murmured non-committedly.

“Where did you get it from?”

I told him the name of the shop. “I don’t think drinking more of it is going to turn you back, Aubrey.”

“No, but I could use it against my enemies. I could make them be human too.” His hand curled into a fist and he thumped it against his knee. “It’ll be fantastic. I can pulverize them into dust. I can make them feel the agonising pain that I now feel.”

“Is it really so bad? You’ve already discovered that you have the power to appreciate the taste of something other than blood. Now you can do more. Meet a girl, a real girl. Have normal sex. Have children. Grow old.” I ticked off the list on my fingers.

He spluttered. “We’re not living in a teen vampire romance! I’m one hundred and eighty three years old. That means that every single living person seems like a child to me. You all possess the maturity of toddlers as far as I’m concerned. I’ve seen two world wars, the industrial revolution, and the death of the slave trade. I used to drink with the fucking Bloomsbury group! What kind of possible relationship could I have with a human whose most important life experience has been the launch of Facebook?” His voice was rising, and a few of the other passengers were starting to look round.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry I brought it up,” I said soothingly. “Why don’t you get some rest and see if you can have a little nap. It’ll relax you.”

Aubrey’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Then you’ll just get off at the next station so you don’t have to be with me anymore.”

“I can’t,” I said patiently, “this is the last train and I have to get to Shrewsbury.” I reached down into the plastic bag at my feet and pulled out my laptop, tapping it. “Besides, I’ve got work I need to do.”

He watched me for a moment, as if I was suddenly about to push past him and leap off the train just to get away from him, then finally relaxed. “Okay. Is that what humans do?”

I nodded.

“Okay.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Thank fuck.

Chapter Nine

It didn’t take long for Aubrey to start gently snoring. It was no wonder. I figured he’d probably not slept since he’d bitten me the night before. Not to mention the now depleted rush of adrenaline I imagined he’d had to deal with from the physical and emotional trauma of his transformation. It made my life easier. While I decided that maybe I didn’t really mind if he tagged along for a bit – because perhaps I could potentially help him with the whole human thing rather than letting him roam the streets on his own like a ticking time bomb – I didn’t trust one red blood cell in his entire body. And that meant that even though I could hardly hide where I was going, there was no reason for me to divulge the reasons as to why. Atlanteia hadn’t explicitly told me to keep schtum, but the lengths she, and probably all the other dryads, had gone to in order to make sure that nobody else knew about her request did suggest that she wanted it kept a secret. If Corrigan or Alex or Solus or someone of that ilk could help, then I had no compunction about telling them if I thought it would help the dryads’ cause. I wasn’t bound to stay quiet. But I certainly wasn’t going to start blabbing to a vamp, ex or otherwise.

For a charge, that admittedly had me cursing, I was able to get a wifi connection. It was unusual for me to stick to normal human channels and not jump immediately onto the Othernet, but that wouldn’t serve my purposes right now as it was the humans who I needed to galvanise into action. It didn’t take me more than a few minutes before I found what I was looking for.

There was a group set up not too far away from Shrewsbury currently protesting against a road being built to improve links between two towns outlying Cardiff. They were clearly fighting a losing battle. The protests had been ongoing for around nine months, as had the local council, who had already cleared the planned route and were laying the groundwork for the next stage. All the approvals had gone ahead and it was patently just a matter of time before the road was completed. The main objection, apart from the felling of a considerably number of trees (which were surely dryad-less), was that bats had been sighted in the area. Sadly for the anti-road campaigners, it was one single report of one small colony (or cloud, as I learnt the collective noun often was) of bats in one small farm. It didn’t even appear particularly credible.

I cast a glance down the sleeping Aubrey. With bats as a clear winning choice to encourage others onto my side, he might prove to be more useful than I could have imagined. I was pretty confident that all the old legends about vamps shifting into bats were a waste of time, but I bet that Aubrey still knew a fair few things about the creatures.