A Life Less Ordinary (26 page)

Afterwards, we lay together for a long time. I felt completely drained, almost shattered by the experience. My body seemed to ache, yet it was a warm ache, a reminder that I had just had an orgasm. Cardonel was still inside me, just lying on top of me, exhausted himself. I had to smile. Falling asleep after sex was a male habit that seemed to cross races. I wondered if his father had done the same back when he had been impregnating his mother. My last boyfriend had been just like him, although he was a druggie, which had sometimes made it hard for him to get hard. He’d blamed it on me, of course.

Eventually, Cardonel rolled over and fell out of me. I had to giggle at the look of surprise on his face, even though – without lust burning through my body – looking at his naked body was rather creepy. It raised all sorts of associations in my mind and none of them were very good. I tried to push that thought out of my mind. Cardonel didn’t deserve to start thinking that I’d allowed him to sleep with me out of pity.

“I trust,” he began. He broke off as I started to giggle. He sounded absurdly pompous. “I trust that that was good for you too?”

I was tempted to keep him waiting for an answer, but that would have been cruel. “Very good,” I said. I felt so drained that I could hardly move. “Is that what sex is always like in the magical world?”

“Only with me,” Cardonel said. My giggles became chuckles and finally outright laughter. My ex-boyfriends had said the same. “I used a few charms to intensify the experience.”

I started. The thought wasn’t an amusing one. “A few charms?”

Cardonel seemed to sense my sudden change of mode. “Nothing harmful,” he assured me. “A charm to ensure that neither of us hurt the other, a charm to allow our pleasures to build together and a charm to ensure that neither of us would hold back when the time came to unleash ourselves.”

“Oh,” I said. I didn’t like that thought very much; no, I didn’t like it at all. Maybe it hadn’t been a spell designed to push me into bed – however expressed – but it still wasn’t a pleasant thing to do. I remembered how some of the other magicians had acted and shuddered. No, I didn’t like it. “Please don’t do it again.”

Cardonel didn’t understand. “You came,” he said, dryly. I flushed, unable to shake my head. “I felt you come. You shouted and screamed and everything.”

“That’s not the point,” I said. It was an effort to move, but somehow I managed to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. Somehow, without me noticing, we’d ended up in his bedroom. Had his charms assisted with that, or had I just missed the teleportation spells while I’d been kissing him? “I don’t like people tinkering with my mind.”

“What about people beating you?” Cardonel asked. I realised – and flushed again – that he could see the marks on my bottom. “If we were able to convince the Thirteen to share power, we would ban beating apprentices and workers...”

“I’m sure you would,” I said, as I stood up. I finally remembered a charm to draw on power and chanted it under my breath, accepting the wave of energy it brought. Like all such spells, there was a price to pay, but by then I would be in bed and fast asleep. “Point me in the direction of the shower, please.”

Cardonel followed me, still naked, as I waddled towards the shower. As he moved, I was struck again by his alien nature. It would have been less disturbing, I told myself, if he had been a full-blooded elf, even though sleeping with a full elf would have had its own dangers. Cardonel looked so human that it was alarming to see hints of a more disturbing nature.

“I’m sorry if I have offended you,” he said, as I stepped into the shower. A moment later, he stepped inside and triggered the water. “Allow me to make it up to you.”

I wanted to protest, but his hands went to work and I decided that I’d postpone the protest for a few hours, or maybe a day. He was
very
good, even without the charms...

***

I considered his words as I walked home and stumbled into bed, feeling the rejuvenation spell finally catching up with me. If there was more to the Thirteen than Master Revels had implied...what did that mean for me if I took service with them? I wanted to ask him personally, yet...if I did, it would reveal that I’d spoken to someone who opposed them. It might have explained his prejudice against Cardonel if he knew that Cardonel was on the opposing side, but then...this was the magical world. Nothing was ever that simple.

Master Revels had gone out, I discovered, when I finally dragged myself out of bed and stumbled downstairs for breakfast. Fiona, who rarely seemed to care about my appearance, looked concerned. She was concerned enough to order me back to bed and have my food transported up to me by magic. I had only myself to blame. The rejuvenation spells always extracted a price. Master Revels returned by late evening, by which time I was feeling better and determined to find a way of asking pointed questions. I wanted to know just what was going on.

He didn’t seem inclined to talk at first, though. “Go get dressed for a walk in the cold,” he ordered. “Wear dark clothes and a scarf.”

I blinked at the instructions, but headed off to comply. I knew better than to keep him waiting, so I was dressed in ten minutes and headed back downstairs to find him pacing impatiently in the lobby. He’d changed his suit for a set of working clothes, suitable for a joiner or plumber. He had never looked less like a magician.

“Come on,” he said, as he opened the door. “We’re going hunting.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Stay close to me,” Master Revels ordered, as we headed out into the darkness. “We’re going to walk the Wizard’s Freeway.”

I nodded, studying his back and watching as the first tendrils of magic started to curl around him. The Wizard’s Freeway was a complicated spell that created a path between two places – often places that were very far apart in geographical terms – and linked them together, allowing a magician to walk from one to the other relatively quickly. I’d been taught the basics of the spell, but I’d also been warned in no uncertain terms that I was not to use it without desperate need or supervision. The magic was deceptively simple. A magician who lost his train of thought in mid-cast would be lucky if he managed to return to the normal world.

The roads seemed to flicker around us, blurring down into a single path, which we walked as quickly as we could. Master Revels set a hard pace, for which I didn’t blame him; walking the Wizard’s Freeway felt rather like walking on ice, when one didn’t know just how thin the ice actually was. And, of course, there were worse monsters under the ice than fish or even sharks. Everything went black for a second, but before I had time to panic the world returned and we found ourselves in Morningside. The mundane people walking in the darkness, perhaps heading home or into town to a party didn’t even notice us shimmering into existence.

“Come on,” Master Revels said. “We have to get to the hospital before it’s too late.”

I followed him, stumbling a little, for he was setting a fast pace. In the darkness, I could barely see him, yet I could sense the magic surrounding him. I wondered, as I studied his back, just how much of his job was still a mystery to me. Which side was actually right? And, if I didn’t know that, which side should I be on? I looked away from him as we passed through the gates into the hospital. I hadn’t been to a hospital since I was a kid, when I’d had to have my tonsils removed, and I hadn’t enjoyed the experience very much. The nurses had been kind, but harassed; they’d had no time to play with a young girl. And then my throat had started hurting and...

The thought was a surprisingly less painful one now, after the Ordeal. I’d been through much worse, after all. I caught sight of a set of cars parked at one corner of the hospital car park and frowned in surprise. The people who could have afforded such cars could have afforded to go private rather than use the NHS. There was something about them that suggested that they were – vaguely – connected to our reason for visiting the hospital. It didn’t actually suggest any reason
why
we were trying to get into a hospital.

I’d wondered how Master Revels intended to gain entry, but in the end it was very simple. He breezed though the main doorway as if he owned the place, held up a card for the bemused security guard to see and kept walking, as if he expected any opposition to just melt out of his way. The guard sent me a reassuring expression as I stumbled after him, as if the hospital was used to seeing arrogant consultants and their interns striding everywhere, but said nothing. I guessed that he was bored and underpaid for his job.

Inside, the hospital stank of disinfectant and something else, something I couldn’t quite recognise. Master Revels showed no sign of discomfort as he found the stairs and led me up two flights and into a hospital ward. It was surprisingly quiet to my ears, as if everyone had decided to flee. There were ten beds in the ward and all of them were empty, but one.

Master Revels indicated the bed with one hand and I followed his finger. A young girl was lying in the bed, her hands clasped in front of her as if she were praying. An angelic haze of blonde hair surrounded her, drawing attention to her fine cheekbones and closed eyelids. She couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, a girl on the verge of blossoming into a woman. I felt a sudden burst of envy for her. She was innocent and unmarked by the world.

And she was completely alone. I glanced around, puzzled. There were no other patients - which struck me as odd - and there were no staff. There were no nurses checking on the girl, no doctors moving from patient to patient...there was no one else around. Anyone could have walked in and done anything to the girl, or any other patient for that matter. Hell,
we’d
walked in and no one had tried to stop us.

“I pulled a few strings,” Master Revels said, by way of explanation. “This part of the hospital has been evacuated. The vast majority of patients were shipped elsewhere, along with their staff. Dawn here” – he indicated the girl with a wave of his hand – “was left alone. If anything should happen to occur there will be fewer people to get in the way.”

I stared at him. “Why are we here?”

Master Revels grinned at me. “Look at her,” he said. “What do you sense?”

I turned back to Dawn. Of course; I had looked at her with my eyes, not my magical senses. I concentrated and peered at her, seeing nothing...no, there was a tiny trace of magic, unfamiliar magic. I studied it, trying to see how it worked, and realised that it was concentrated around her neck. I reached forward, following the magic, and slowly pulled back her collar. Two nasty red marks jumped out at me at once. Someone – or something – had bitten her hard, leaving twin puncture marks in her skin.

“She was found four days ago in a park,” Master Revels said, “after she went wandering off on her own. The doctors who examined her said that she’d caught a chill, but she refused to awaken despite everything the mundane world could do for her. There was no sign that she’d been attacked, apart from the marks on her neck. The mundane world decided that she’d been the victim of a dog.”

I shook my head. “No, sir,” I said. I
knew
what the marks were, all right. I’d seen them in countless horror movies. “She was bitten by a vampire.”

Master Revels nodded. “The mundane world is far too fond of vampires,” he said, disapprovingly. “They suck blood, which is enough to make them heroes to some; I guess they think that the vampires are more honest than the political leaders they have. They also infect someone they bite with vampirism, with the result that some of the people they bite turn into vampires themselves.”

I looked up, sharply. “
Some
of the people they bite?” I asked. He nodded. “And Dawn – this girl – is going to become a vampire?”

“Perhaps,” Master Revels said. He shook his head sadly. “The mundane world gets quite a bit wrong about vampires. There’s always a few days between the bite and then...the victim either fights it off or gives into the bloodlust and accepts the curse. This girl has been in a coma for several days, which suggests that the vampire drained her energy as well as blood. She will either rise tonight as a vampire or recover and live a normal healthy life.”

He shook his head. “And the mundane world thinks that vampires are sexy,” he said. “Whatever will they think of next?”

“They keep putting out films about vampires,” I said, feeling oddly stung. They’d been some of my favourites when I’d been a child. “They get good press.”

“I could write a book or direct a movie where a child molester is a hero,” Master Revels said, darkly. He found a chair and settled down to wait, waving for me to sit on the opposite side of the room. “That wouldn’t make it right.”

The hours ticked by slowly and I found myself looking away from the girl, up towards the clock on the wall. If the sun rose before she awoke, she would live as a human being; if she awoke earlier, she would be a vampire. I’d read enough to know that the vampire curse was incurable. The only way to deal with her would be to kill her and burn the body, destroying it completely. Master Revels seemed untroubled by the wait, leaving me to wonder what he was thinking as he watched the girl, never taking his eyes off her. He could have killed her right away and made certain that she could never rise as a vampire, which suggested to me that he wasn’t a bad person. But then...what was the Thirteen’s interest in all of this?

“Every time the mundane world gets all excited about fictional vampires, we see a resurging infestation of
real
vampires in the magical world,” Master Revels said. He shrugged. “The two worlds are linked in ways that most people don’t even begin to grasp, with events in their world affecting ours and vice versa. I think it has something to do with the uncertainty principle, but I’m not quite certain what that is.”

I groaned at the pun.

“And sometimes the vampires manage to create nests within the mundane world and start bringing in new victims,” Master Revels added. He looked up at me and winked. “The average vampire isn’t very clever. He just wants to suck your blood. A very few vampires, however, are smart enough to get organised and that’s when we start having problems. A vampire isn’t just stronger or faster than the average human; he’s capable of hypnotising and controlling anyone unwary enough to be caught by him. Have you ever heard of the mafia?”