The Changeling Page 5

  “Of course I would.”

  “Well then.” Sinjin shrugged. “Sadly, it could not be. A shame as I would rather her company to any of the other options.”

  I frowned. “Well, who else is there?”

  Sinjin flashed a smile. “Have you not learned by now, dear Tempest, that I am full of surprises.”

  #

  Sinjin

  “Damek.”

  The young man stood up straight as I spoke his name. Since the arrival of the Daywalkers in our midst, Damek had taken on a new role within our little community and, I was glad to see, had grown up a little as well.

  Damek was a Daywalker/Elemental hybrid, one of the products of Luce’s breeding program (or officially sanctioned rape as I preferred to see it), and he was a reminder of how successful that program might be.

  He had grown to adulthood at an astonishing rate and seemed to have already developed many of the advantages of both species. He had always been strong and quick but was now starting to develop some limited magic (though he struggled to control it) and sensitivity.

  “Hi Sinjin. What’s up?” He continued to speak with the language of youth, but I could not be surprised at that – for all his looks, he was still a child.

  “Have you heard of what has happened with Bryn?”

  He shook his head. That was a relief; I had been testing to see if gossip had spread the news beyond the council, and it was gratifying to learn that it had not. At least, not yet.

  “Sit down and listen. I may need your help, but…”

  “I’ll do it,” said Damek eagerly.

  “Sit down and listen ,” I repeated. I wanted the boy to understand what he was volunteering for.

  I explained the situation to him. To some, it might have seemed odd that I, who had been so suspicious of the Daywalkers, was choosing a companion who was part Daywalker, but Damek was different. He had arrived via a different means to the others, along with his mother, Rachel. He was one of our group, and I had been, for various reasons, a sort of surrogate father to him.

  Because of what his mother had been through, Damek had no love for Luce. I also felt that his hybrid nature might serve to show Gaia how we had fostered peace between the different races. My only hesitation was putting the youngster in danger, but there was danger everywhere these days, sooner or later Damek would face it.

  “I’ll do it,” Damek repeated. I was not convinced he had heard a word I had said. “Can Dayna come too?”

  Dayna was Damek’s werewolf girlfriend. An attractive young female if you did not mind that she was a bit of a bitch from time to time.

  “Have you been listening to me?”

  He looked hurt. “Of course.”

  “And you still would wish to bring your girlfriend along into this sort of danger?”

  “Dayna can look after herself,” said Damek, firmly. “And we don’t like to be separated.”

  On the one hand, I did not want to endanger more people than I had to. On the other, a werewolf in the wilds of Africa did have a certain perverse rightness to it, and I did not want Damek’s focus split between me and the girl he had left behind. Though he still acted very much like a teenage boy, Damek did behave more like an adult when Dayna was around.

  “I want the permission of your mother first,” I said.

  “I’m my own man,” Damek countered.

  “And you owe the decision to be made by your mother.”

  “Okay, and if mom says it’s fine?” Damek continued. “Then I can ask Dayna if she wants to come too?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  #

  Naturally, young Dayna was as keen as young Damek. The young can be foolhardy when it comes to anything that seems like an adventure; they only think of how ‘awesome’ it will be, how

  ‘cool,’ and possibly how ‘wicked’—I am somewhat behind in my youth slang. With time, age, and experience, they would learn the far greater pleasures of staying at home with the one you love. I hoped they would not live to regret their decision to come with me. Or perhaps I hoped that they would live to regret it.

  As was to be expected, Rachel, Damek’s mother, was more difficult to convince. But convince her Damek eventually did.

  I was already questioning my choice as I made my way to my next stop, walking slowly as I was not looking forward to the conversation I was about to have.

  Chevalier answered the door at my knock.

  “Sinjin, I wondered when you would be here.” He threw open the door for me as he strode back into his home. “I’ve already packed. I’m ready to go as soon as you are.”

  “I am taking Damek.”

  The frog rounded on me. “That child?! Are you mad? Gaia will tear him apart.”

  “She will tear you apart just as easily,” I pointed out. “There is no one whom I can take who will make any impact on Gaia whatsoever. So, in a way, it does not matter who I take. It matters who I leave behind.”

  The change in Chevalier’s face let me know he now understood why I was here– he was not always as foolish as I liked to imagine him.

  “You understand how hard this is for me?” I began.

  “I do,” the frog nodded. “And if it helps, you don’t need to ask.

  I’ll look after Bryn. I will keep an eye on the Daywalkers. If anyone tries to get to her, it will be over my dead body.”

  I had spent a lot of that day thinking about trust and what it meant. What it really meant was certainty. I trusted the fop to irritate me, to be pretentious and say foolish things. But I also trusted him with Bryn; I trusted that he would do everything in his power to protect her, because, although he was now with Klaasje, he still loved Bryn after a fashion. I wondered if the vampire would ever supplant the elemental in his heart. I hoped so for all our sakes.

  “Thank you, Monsieur Chevalier.”

  The fop answered with a courtly and faintly ridiculous bow.

  “Thank you for the honor you do me by asking.” I had once heard Damek use the phrase, ‘ You make everything suck.’ That was how I felt about Chevalier right then; a nice moment ruined by his choice of words.

  The fop thrust out a hand to me. “Good luck, Master Vampire.”

  I shook his hand. “And to you.”

  If what had happened to Bryn was the attack from Luce we all thought it was, then there was more to come. Those I was leaving behind might be in as much danger as me.

  SIX

  Sinjin

  It is in the nature of vampires that we live a life of too many goodbyes—most of them permanent. Perhaps I embraced the role of the lone wolf—one I had played for much of my long life—because it was easier to be alone than to make acquaintances whom I would inevitably lose. Goodbyes are never easy, and they get no easier with practice, and yet, I had never felt one as acutely as the one Bryn and I were in the process of sharing.

  “I shall be back soon, Bête Noir ,” I breathed into her ear as we held each other.

  “You’d damn well better be. If I have to change one diaper without you here.”

  “What in the world is a diaper?”

  She sighed. “What do you Brits call them? A nappy, that’s it. We are splitting ‘nappy’ duty fifty-fifty.”

  “Hmm,” I mused. “Maybe I shall not be back as soon as I thought.”

  It helped us both to make jokes, to pretend this was not as difficult as it was. But I was leaving on a dangerous mission with an uncertain conclusion, and my love was remaining with a child whose fate none of us knew. We might never meet again, and if we were fortunate enough to be reunited, what might have happened in the interim?

  But where would be the sense in enumerating the difficulties we were up against? We both knew them well enough. Better to enjoy the time we had together the way we always had, with a little affectionate point-scoring.

  We kissed, and I could not help wondering if I would ever again taste her lips. As we drew back, we kept hold of each other’s hands until the last possible moment, fingert
ips grazing as we finally parted.

  “You’d better go now,” said Bryn, and I could tell she was struggling to keep her emotions in check. “Or I’m going to run out of jokes to make about you traveling with Damek and Dayna.”

  “You think I have chosen poorly?”

  “I actually think you’ve chosen well. Give those two a chance, and they’re going to show you how much they’ve grown in a short time. On the other hand, you’re a highly sexed man who’s going to spend the next few weeks listening to a pair of horny teenagers doing it every night, and there’s nothing you can do to scratch that itch. And I think that’s funny.”

  “I had not thought of that, I must admit, and now that I have, I am beginning to doubt my choice,” I admitted.

  “I’m sure you can see the funny side too.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Do you suppose Dayna’s a howler?”

  It was typical of my Tempest to make me smile even at this most difficult moment. “If she is not, then I imagine Damek is doing something wrong.”

  Bryn smiled. “Go on, get out of here. Have a nice trip. Try not to think about the fact that when you get back, I’m going to be the size of a house.”

  “You shall be just as beautiful to me as you always have been.”

  I started for the front door to our quarters and paused when my hand met the knob. I turned back to look at the woman who had stolen my heart and I felt tears welling in my eyes. I could not remember the last time I had been so emotional.

  “I love you,” I said.

  She smiled, and her eyes shined with tears. “I love you too, Sinjin Sinclair.”

  #

  A few hours later, we were on a night flight out of Scotland to London. While Damek and Dayna fought over the window seat, I slumped back and tried to think of anything other than the woman and baby I was leaving behind.

  Dayna got up and headed to the bathroom, Damek watching her go as if he resented even this brief time she was out of his sight. He saw me looking at him, turned red, and mumbled, “I’ll be back in a bit.”

  He then scrambled out of his seat and hurried after Dayna with a very unconvincing imitation of nonchalance. As I helped myself to the window seat, I could not help but smile; Bryn had been right, this was going to be a frustrating journey for me.

  Damek and Dayna returned to their seats roughly ten minutes later, both looking a little red-faced and disheveled.

  “Your fly is open,” I said to Damek as he sat back down.

  Damek fumbled with his zip, flushing an even deeper shade of scarlet. “I... I…”

  “Joined the mile-high club, have you?”

  The young man frowned. “The what?”

  “Nevermind. I just hope you both got it out of your systems.”

  I was strict, but if Bryn had been here, then we would have certainly been doing the same thing. If I had learned anything lately, it was that you should enjoy life while you can. Young love is stupid, frantic, clingy, over-emotional and sickly saccharine to anyone forced to observe it. But when you are young and in love, then it is the best thing in the world. Especially if you are discovering sex for the first time.

  The flight was long enough that the pair could renew their membership of that exclusive club just before we landed.

  “What now?” asked Damek as we made our way around what is officially the busiest airport in the world.

  “Mercedes booked us on a flight out that takes off in a few hours.”

  “But it’ll almost be morning by then.”

  I nodded. “Thus, this time I will not have the window seat.”

  Back in the old days when I had traveled by steam ship, by train, or by clipper, crisscrossing the world at my leisure, I had often done so as luggage, sleeping peacefully in a boot in the hold. It enabled me to avoid the sunlight, and it was also much cheaper.

  These days of course, heightened security does not allow a body in a suitcase to be sneaked onto a plane, so I had to pay full price and get a seat in the center to avoid being burned to a crisp.

  As we had time to kill at the moment, I called Bryn.

  “You’ve only been gone a few hours!”

  “You are not pleased to hear from me?”

  “Of course I am. How are the wonder twins?”

  “You were right,” I said, darkly.

  “At it already?”

  “Twice on the flight down to Heathrow.”

  She immediately began laughing. “And it’s not like that’s a long flight. Go Damek.”

  The announcer called for boarding.

  “I have to go, my pet.”

  “Thanks for calling. Stay in touch.”

  “I will.”

  Once we arrived in the African mountains, the phone coverage would be, as I had been informed, patchy at best. Thus, I wished to hear Lady Macbeth’s voice as often as I could.

  The sun was threatening the skyline with a haze of red as we climbed aboard another plane for the next stage of our journey. I clenched the armrests of my chair as the plane shot forward, taking us from earth to air. I would never admit it to anyone, but I had never liked flying. It was an area of modern technology (over a century old but still modern to me) with which I had never fully made my peace. In the event of a crash, I would likely be the only survivor, but something about several tons of metal up in the air seemed against the natural order of things.

  Which is an unusual viewpoint for a six-hundred-year-old vampire, I must confess.

  “Sinjin, I’m just going to…” Damek nodded towards the bathroom, to which Dayna had already made her way a few minutes previously.

  I rolled my eyes. “Hell’s teeth, Damek, your bloody todger will drop off if you keep on like this.”

  I got out of his way, and Damek hurried after his werewolf lover.

  I did not hear any howling come from the front of the plane, but presumably they were trying to keep quiet. I wondered if Dayna ever changed during. And if she did, I imagined such would scare the bloody hell out of Damek. Hopefully she would not shift during the flight, as I imagined a werewolf aboard the plane would certainly cause quite the uproar.

  From the windows to my left, harsh sunlight, unfiltered by clouds, shone into the cabin and I winced. While my two companions could pass the time by humping each other’s brains out as a queue formed outside the bathroom, for me this was going to be a long and unpleasant flight. From my pocket, I took a pair of black leather gloves that I pulled tightly over my hands, making sure that no sliver of skin remained exposed at the wrist.

  “Are you cold, sir?” a passing stewardess asked.

  “No,” I replied. “I am a little obsessive compulsive about touching things. Please make sure that no one disturbs me during the flight.”

  The stewardess nodded and hurried on. In my experience, once people know something like that about you, they do their best to avoid you completely in case of awkwardness. This is particularly the case in England where awkwardness is a dreaded condition. It is amazing how far you can bluff and con your way in Britain simply by making things awkward.

  From my other pocket, I pulled out a large, black handkerchief, freshly laundered. This I draped over my face. I could feel the

  heat from the sun beyond—unpleasant but bearable. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  I was woken by the sharp bumping of the plane touching down.

  Damek and Dayna were back in their seats, although I wondered how much of the flight they had spent there.

  “What now?” asked Damek as the plane had come to a halt and I could breathe again.

  Klaasje had booked the tickets and had carefully selected a flight that would leave in the early dawn and arrive after the sun had set. Time zones could be convenient for something like that.

  “Now we need to find Mathilda’s friend,” I replied.

  “Has Mathilda called to let them know we’re coming?” asked Dayna.

  I smiled. “I doubt Mathilda has ever done anything as prosaic a
s making a phone call in her life, but her friend is expecting us.”

  We made our way through baggage reclaim and out of the airport.

  Although the sun was down, the buildings, the ground, the very landscape around us seemed to have retained some of the heat of the day and was radiating it out. I would be glad to get up into the mountains where it would be a little more manageable. A dislike of the heat is not a vampire thing, it is an English thing.

  “Master Sinclair.” The voice was deep and mellifluous, pronouncing my name as if it were written in dark honey. I turned to find myself looking at an old, but extraordinarily beautiful African woman, with eyes that were almost black. She wore brightly colored clothing wound about her short, round body, and her feet were bare. She took me in with an amused smile on her lips.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said, but then gave her a curious expression. “How did you presume I was Sinclair?” After all, I had no sign hanging about myself, proclaiming me to be the man in question.

  “You stand out, Master Sinclair.”

  “Call me Sinjin,” I put out my hand and the woman took it. Her skin was as soft as a baby’s, with no hint of her age. She reminded me of Mathilda in that respect; old yet agelessly lovely. “This is Damek and Dayna.”

  “You’d do well to keep your claws in,” the woman said to Dayna with the same smile. “We have shifters here that would make a werewolf choke on its kibble.”

  Dayna goggled, wide-eyed, and Damek took her hand for comfort.

  “Don’t be scared, child,” the old woman laughed. “My name is Hero. Mathilda told me you were coming and asked me to help you if I could.”

  “Can you?” I wasn’t interested in small talk at the moment.

  “We can talk in the car, master vampire. I know you’re in a hurry. We’ve a long way to go and you don’t travel so easily by day.”

  Hero’s car looked as if someone had started with perhaps a Land Rover (it was hard to tell) and had then replaced whatever had broken with bits from other cars when needed, over the years (perhaps decades). What, if anything, of the original car was left was hard to say, but what it had evolved into was a car you would never struggle to find in a carpark. It had wings from different sources, its hood was a different color to the rest of the body, the roof had been stripped of paint altogether, and its doors (of which it had only three) had come from such different vehicles that two of them were held closed with a screwed in bolt that looked to have come from a bathroom door.