One more swing.
Yes
! I celebrated in my head as my feet met the ground outside of the forest. Three seconds later the blonde Pagori was beside me. He shook his head at me, his smile was filled with surprise. His eyes were glowing with respect.
“
What’s your name?” he asked. The Australian had dropped his playful accent now.
“
Sam.”
“
Well, Sam, I think I’ve just fell in love.” His state of disbelief now had him giggling. “Come on.”
We ran back through the forest at vampire speed, finding Jared waiting at the mouth of it. He seemed amused. Until the Pagori spoke.
“
She’s like a nymph or something!” He shook his head. “I can’t believe she did it.”
The look on Jared’s face was priceless. “Green, are you saying she outran you?”
He nodded. “You should have seen her leap over the river, she completely cleared it!” He patted me on the back and then waltzed over to his comrades, telling them about the chase.
Whereas Green was dazed yet excited, Jared was dazed but irritated. The other blokes weren’t laughing anymore, but they were still looking at me oddly and whispering. Then I got extremely cheesed off when I heard one of them suggesting to another bloke that I must have given Green a blow job to get him to say I’d outran him. I stomped hard on his foot and shot him a scowl. He didn’t seem confident enough to scowl back. Were they all arsewipes?
The bloke with the shaven head who’d earlier assured me that I would not pass this tryout glared at me. “You sure you’re not a disguised Pagori vampire on crack?”
“
Oh shut it, slap-head.”
He just chuckled.
“
For the final stage, we’ll return inside.” Jared’s walk was filled with that much frustration that he was almost marching.
I knew as I entered the building and joined the line in front of Jared that my smugness must be apparent on my face because he was glowering madly at me. I snorted.
“
The final stage,” he drawled. “Combat. This is where you get to use your gifts. In the legion we train to avoid up-close and personal combat as this only tires a vampire and leads to more injuries. Instead we like to rely mostly on our gifts, aiding us to attack from afar. For this stage the effectiveness of your gift will be just as important as your control of it. There are now only seven of you left. From what I have seen so far, I’m confident that the three spaces I have left to fill for the squad will be filled today. Which means four of you will be going home.”
Jared first matched up one of the two remaining Kejas with a Pagori for combat. “Your aim is to outmatch your opponent, not to kill or cause any harm that can’t be fixed by our self-healing.”
Contrary to mythology, vampires can be killed in lots of ways. A stab to the heart would do the trick purely because we need it beating just as much as we did as a human. We can also be bled out if our injuries are too extensive which leads to death. Being starved of blood for more than four weeks was another way to go. In addition, a lot of vampires have deadly gifts and these will just as effectively kill us as they would a human.
Both the Keja and the Pagori were good. They stayed clear of each other, as instructed. Their powers were impressive. Although the Keja was a conjurer and was materialising weapons, the Pagori could secrete smoke from his hands, making the room hazy and preventing the Keja from finding his target. As such, the Pagori seized a weapon on a bad throw and used it against the conjurer. Combat done and dusted.
Jared then paired up the other Keja with another of the Pagoris. The Keja was exhaling tiny thorns which I guessed were poisonous to some degree however seen as his opponent had the power to deflect or negate anything thrown at him with just the wave of his hand, the thorns simply hit the floor each time. As such, I never got to see what effect exactly the thorns could have. Jared eventually stopped the duel seen as they were both as good as the other.
The last two Pagoris were next – one being the annoying but cute slap-head. He winked at me before confidently heading to the Northern point of the building. And God his gift was extraordinary, which meant that the whole thing was over in seconds. He had the power to cause temporary sensory paralysis, which meant his opponent was rendered blind, deaf and mute. As such, he was shooting his superhuman breath blindly – literally.
I was next. And I lacked an opponent.
Jared sighed and glared at me with narrowed eyes. I half expected him to say ‘I’m afraid there’s no one to duel with you, you’ll have to run along home’. But instead he started removing his jacket.
“
I guess I’ll have to be your duelling partner,” he sighed.
ALSO BY SUZANNE WRIGHT:
FROM RAGS
PROLOGUE
Jaxxon, age fourteen
“
B-but…but…but -”
“
Oh stop snivelling, Jaxxon,” snapped Leah as she zipped up her tatty old duffel bag. “You should be happy for me; I’m finally getting out of here. I’m going to have my own place.”
Jaxxon Carter, who was curled up on her bed, watched as her older sister stretched her long, lean body, looking much like a contented cat. “But -”
“
Oi, what did I just say? Stop with the snivelling!”
Jaxxon took a deep breath and wiped her tear-stained cheeks with her sleeve. But she could feel more tears brewing. “Will you come see me sometimes?”
Leah snorted. “How can you even ask that? You know I’ll be busy going for auditions and stuff.” A self-satisfied smile surfaced on her face. “Hey, just think, you might see me on T.V soon, singing and doing concerts.”
As usual, Leah’s squinty hazel eyes – so very different from Jaxxon’s own huge, brown ones – shone with confidence. That was one thing that Leah had in abundance, though sometimes Jaxxon thought it bordered on vanity.
“
Won’t that make all the Foster Plonkers sorry for passing us off from house to house.”
“
But you’ll stay in touch, yeah?” Jaxxon could hear the uncertainty in her own voice and didn’t like this feeling she suddenly had that she was losing her sister for good. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if Leah would just tell her the address of her flat, but she was refusing to tell her and had even asked their Social Worker and the Glennons not to reveal it. Leah could be strange like that sometimes. If she thought you desperately wanted something from her, she would refuse to give it to you purely for that reason.
Leah shrugged. “What are you panicking for? In two years you’ll be out of here yourself.”
That was true enough. But two years would feel like a long time to someone who was all alone. Once Leah, all she had left in the world, was gone that was exactly what Jaxxon would be. Alone.
For the past six years Jaxxon had watched the only people she came to care about disappear from her life. First went Mum. Suicide by heroin overdose. Jaxxon – the one who had found her mother’s lifeless body on the sofa – had been eight, Leah ten. There was no dad or other family to care whether they lived or died, so into the social system they went.
It wasn’t until eighteen months ago, after pit-stopping in a series of foster homes all over London, that they had come to live with the Glennon family. They weren’t all that bad. Compared to some of the other foster parents, these people were eligible for sainthood. Although they were – in a word – slobs and not all that interested in what their foster children did, they didn’t hit, they didn’t grope, and they didn’t decide to suddenly starve you for a short while for their own entertainment like the last lot had. Where the Glennons were concerned, as long as you didn’t raid Gloria Glennon’s stash of chocolate or help yourself to one of Eric Glennon’s beloved beers, they’d practise the principal of ‘live and let live’.
Still, Jaxxon knew that Leah would have, as she always did wherever they were, played up and set out to annoy them if it hadn’t been for the other foster kids. The gorgeous Connor McKenzie and the geeky Roland Thompson had made the situation bearable. Both Jaxxon and Leah had had a little thing for Connor. In fact, Jaxxon had become infatuated with him and his cocky grin as only a teenage girl could. Not just because of how gorgeous he was, but because Jaxxon soon found that underneath his temper and broodiness was intelligence and even kindness. He had always looked out for Jaxxon, always protected her, always chased off any boy within a one mile radius of her. Everyone had feared him – probably because he somehow had the look of a predator – but Jaxxon had never felt threatened by him. In fact, strangely enough, this menacing person had been the only one to ever make her feel safe, even when he was zooming her around town at top speed in a car he had ‘borrowed’ for the night – which he had done regularly but had never been prosecuted as he had never been caught.
Then six months ago, shortly after Connor had turned sixteen, he had moved into a flat of his own just like Leah was doing now. Jaxxon vividly remembered when he had kissed her the night before he left – something which had shocked the hell out of her. He had promised that he would visit sometimes and even take her to see his flat when it was fixed up, but so far he hadn’t been in touch. Then three months after he had left, Roland’s mother had finally sorted her situation out and taken her son back to live with her. And now Jaxxon’s very own sister was leaving too. Sure, she’d have the newest foster addition, Rhona, but the girl was far from friendly and kept everyone at a distance.
“
If you do get famous and stuff how will I get in touch with you when I get out?”
Leah shrugged carelessly. “Maybe I’ll phone here on your sixteenth birthday. Maybe I’ll even come get you in a limo. Can you imagine the look on everyone’s faces if I turned up here in a limo!” Another squeal.
Her sixteenth birthday. It seemed so far away right now. Without thinking about it, Jaxxon reached under her mattress and pulled out the photograph that Gloria had let her have. Jaxxon was stood smiling in front of the wonky Christmas tree with Roland on her right side looking absolutely bored and with Connor on her left side wearing that cocky grin she loved so much with his arm flung over her shoulder. Leah was in the background combing her long blonde hair, glaring hard at them. She almost looked angry. This was all Jaxxon had left of them all.
“
Oh when are you going to stop pining for him?” groaned Leah. “He isn’t coming back. Why would he? What’s he got to come back for?”
A pang struck Jaxxon in her chest at the impact of Leah’s words and that condescending glare she had that could decrease a person’s own self-worth by 90% just like that.
“
Don’t worry,” continued Leah, “I’ll tell him you said ‘hi’.”
It took a few seconds for those last words to register. “What do you mean?”
She gave Jaxxon a sympathetic smile but didn’t even try to conceal the insincerity of it. “Oh come on, Jaxxon, you didn’t honestly think that he had any real interest in
you
, did you? Oh my God, you did. How cute. Or stupid, whichever.”
Jaxxon felt as though she’d been slapped.
“
He told me he only thought of you as a little sister, that it was me he loved. We did
it
lots of times, you know. He made me promise to come find him when I got out.” She sighed wistfully. “Soon me and him will be living in L.A., our faces all over the magazines, I’ll be recording album after album…Maybe we’ll even get married. Leah McKenzie…I like the sound of it. It’s a lot better than Leah Carter anyway.”
In that one instant, Jaxxon almost hated her. Her and him. The tears gathering in her eyes were ones of anger and despair now, no longer of the fear of being alone. Why would he have kissed her that night before leaving and then told her he had always cared about her if it was Leah he loved? Leah who he had been sleeping with all this time? “He kissed me,” she blurted out.
“
Well of course he did. He felt sorry for you – you were getting all teary-eyed. I was the one who told him to kiss you. He hadn’t wanted to, but I thought it might stop you from snivelling.
Something you’re doing again now
.”
Jaxxon squeezed her eyes shut against the pictures her mind was tormenting her with of Leah and Connor together – kissing, touching, sleeping together. And then them laughing at poor little infatuated Jaxxon.