“Yes, but…”

Corrigan turned his attention back to me. “Not that I owe you any explanations.”

“I’m the head of the council tasked to bring Endor down. You owe me every explanation.”

A humourless smile crossed his face. “Ah, yes. Your new job.” He leaned in closer. “Tell me, how does it feel having all that power and control? Is it everything you wished for?”

I snarled at him. “Fuck. Off.”

He laughed sharply. “Why so moody about it? You got what you wanted.”

“I didn’t want this, Corrigan. I didn’t ask for this. There wasn’t a choice.”

“There is always a choice.” His eyes raked across my face. “So what happened? Was that one of my shifters?”

“Huh?” I asked, suddenly confused.

“Your face. There’s a rather conspicuous bruise and it appears that you can only see out of one eye. What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Mackenzie…”

“I walked into a door.”

A muscle throbbed in Corrigan’s cheek. His voice deepened to a rumble. “What really happened?”

“I told you,” I said, exasperated, “I walked into a door.”

He leaned in towards me until I could feel his breath hot upon my cheek. My chest tightened. “Who’s lying now?” he whispered.

Just then there was a crash from out in the corridor. Both Corrigan and I tensed immediately and my hands reached back for my daggers. He tilted his head up, nostrils flaring, then took hold of my arms to stop them in midair. An expression of irritation flickered across his eyes, and a nervous looking face peered round the gap in the door.

“Dude! Sheesh! What happened here? And what the bejesus happened to your face?” He sent an accusatory look in the Lord Alpha’s direction.

“It’s alright, Alex,” I said, pulling away from Corrigan, and trying to ignore the burning imprint his hands left on my skin. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure? Because, man, it looks like a hurricane tore through this place.” He rubbed at his cheek worriedly. “Was it that Endor dude? Was he here? Did he take Wold?”

I started. “What? No, Wold’s here, she’s just…”

I turned around to the chair where the Batibat had been sitting. It was empty. Fucking hell. Had I really been so engrossed in Corrigan that I’d not noticed a three ton naked woman get up and leave? A window towards the back of the room gaped open, as evidence of my own idiot culpability.

I swivelled back to Corrigan. “Didn’t you see her get up and go?”

He growled at me, clearly pissed off. “Didn’t you?”

I glared. “You were the one facing in her fucking direction!”

Alex held up his hands, palms facing outwards. “Whoa, should I go out and come back in again?”

“Set up a Divination spell, Alex,” I snapped, looking away from the Brethren Lord in self-directed disgust.

He nodded, and half closed his eyes, starting to chant. A snake of blue inveniora light curled up from his hands and etched its way through the clammy air of the room. I moved out of its path as it veered over to the empty chair where it hovered for a second before screwing upwards and out of the window. Without pausing further, I followed it, leaping out of the window and landing with a heavy clatter on the ground three feet below. Corrigan, right at my heels, arched out and hit the ground while barely bending his knees. Stupid cat reflexes. Then the pair of us took off in pursuit.

Alex’s blue tracking spell made a beeline for the end of the narrow street. Keeping up with the front of the trail, we followed it down.

“It’s heading for the main street,” I said, stating the obvious. “She can’t go there. A huge naked female Batibat is hardly going to go unnoticed at three o’clock in the freaking afternoon.”

Corrigan grunted his assent. As soon as we reached the sunlight of the crossroads that stretched back into the less shadowy manifestation of London, however, the blue inveniora arced upwards into the air and disappeared into one of the leafy green trees that edged the pavement. The light hung there for a second before it too vanished.

“Fuck.” I slammed my hand into the trunk of the tree, ignoring the answering shot of pain that I received back. “We’ll never catch her now.”

Corrigan’s eyes followed the street down, glancing from tree to tree. “She could jump from one to the other and we’ll never know where she is,” he agreed.

“This is your bloody shifters’ fault.”

“They might have a lot to answer for,” he growled, “but they’re not the ones who allowed her to disappear in front of their eyes.”

I had no answer for that. My shoulders sagged in defeat.

“Screw this,” I said. “I’m going to get Alex and go home.”

“Corr? Is everything okay?”

I stiffened, and glanced over at the owner of the voice. A pretty blonde was standing a few feet away, her perfectly manicured eyebrows raised in Corrigan’s direction. I instantly hated her.

“Everything’s fine.” He didn’t even look at me, but instead held out his arm for her. She took it and he smiled down at her. “Come on. Let’s go and get that late lunch that I promised you.”

Without so much as another glance, the pair of them walked off. I watched them go, mouth hanging open. Well, it didn’t take him fucking long to get over me, I thought, brimming with unjust ire. “In the sodding vicinity, indeed,” I muttered to myself. “In the sodding vicinity wining and dining so that he can get freaking laid later on. Prick.”

Alex appeared by my shoulder. “Where’s Wold?”

“Gone.”

“His Lord Shiftiness?”

“He’s gone too.”

“Ah. What do we do now?”

I was still staring down the street in the direction of Corrigan and his new ‘friend’.

“Mack Attack? What do we do now?”

I chewed my lip. Fine. Corrigan could go off and live his life how ever he saw fit. I was going to do my job, preferably without the interference from the furry ones this time. “We’re going to see if we can’t get hold of a lot of money so that we can get make some weapons of necromancing destruction.”

Alex beamed. “Cool. You don’t need him anyway, Mack Attack.”

“Damn straight.” A sudden rip of roaring bloodfire lit through my chest. I ignored it. At least my headache seemed to have finally dissipated. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Five

On our return journey, I filled Alex in on what had transpired before he’d arrived. He was suitably appalled.

“Sheesh, Mack Attack. And they’d been told not to let you near the place? What in the Founder’s name was the Lord Alpha doing?”

I desperately wanted to give Corrigan the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact I was still smarting from the revelation of his new lady friend. “He’d said that it was on Staines’ orders, not his.”

Alex sucked in air through his teeth. “Staines? The bear? Why would he do that though?”

I couldn’t think of any reason that made any sense. I tried to rationalise it. “Maybe he was afraid I’d go in all guns blazing and temper flying, and scare her off.”

“Except they were the ones trying to torture her.”

“Yeah.”

“Does he want the credit of hunting down the necromancer dude for himself?”

“I don’t like the guy, but he’s never struck me as a glory hound. I just don’t get it,” I said, frustratedly.

“You could call him and ask. He’s on the council, isn’t he?”

“I could but…” my voice trailed off.

“What?” prompted Alex.

“I’ll lose my temper again. I need to try to act more responsibly if this council is ever going to work. I can’t be the one flying off the handle at every moment.”

A grin spread across Alex’s face. “Is this the new improved Mack Attack that I’m seeing?”

I sighed deeply, the image of Corrigan and the blonde strolling off arm in arm still seared into my brain. “I gave up my shot at happiness when I took on this fucking job. The last thing I need to be doing now is screwing up the job itself.”

He patted my shoulder. “You’ll work it out.”

I wished I had his confidence. Before I could mull it over further, however, a voice came over the train tannoy, announcing that we were pulling into the next station. I tugged at Alex’s arm.

“Come on.”

He looked confused. “This isn’t your stop.”

“We’re taking a detour.”

The train whined as it came to a halt, and the pair of us stepped off onto the platform.

“Dude, this isn’t going to be, er…”

“Dangerous? “ I smirked slightly at his predictability. “No.”

We walked along, dodging the other commuters, and then emerging out into the late afternoon sun. Because we’d disembarked at King’s Cross, the streets were predictably busy. I began to hum to myself, a particularly tuneless creation that matched my melancholy mood. Alex sent me a sidelong glance, then started to snap his fingers at various intervals, speeding up as he went along, and forcing me to change my beat.

“Woohoowooooooh,” he sang, with even less musical dexterity than I was managing.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhhh,” I continued.

He injected a little skip into his step. “Beedebopdelooolah!”

A harried looking woman pushing a pram gave us a funny look. Alex beamed at her and linked my arm in his, pulling me along with him until the pair of us were both bounding down the pavement and singing at the top of our lungs. I directed him to the left and we continued down the street in the same manner, eventually coming to a halt in front of a large brown building that curved its way in both directions around the street corner.