“There are shelters that allow them to stay the night off the streets,” her father explained.
“They cannot stay there all the time?” Tegan asked perplexed as they moved quickly through the streets.
“Some offer it, some don’t,” her father looked at her once. “Remember daughter, some of these humans don’t want to be kept inside, the street is where they feel safer.”
“I don’t understand,” Tegan frowned as they waited for traffic to slow so they could cross the street. “But I know that it is not for me to judge them,” she sighed. “But wecancome back and give aid to those that need it?”
“We can. Or it may be better if I make a donation to one of the shelters, offer blankets and clothing, not draw as much attention to you.” They crossed the street and her father led her into another back street, away from the main hustle and bustle. “You will be busy soon.”
“I will,” Tegan agreed.
“We shall talk later, save your breath, you never know who is listening.”
Tegan looked around the almost empty street and was about to comment that there was no one there when she caught sight of a shadow moving down an alley across from them. Drakyhn stayed in the shadows in the daytime, sunlight was too powerful for their eyes, blinding them, making them vulnerable. A quick look around the street confirmed there was little human movement, other than the handful of scattered homeless people.Easy pickings,she thought as she touched her father’s elbow signalling to him, before crossing the street towards the alley. Tegan reached under her jacket removing her knives from their holder on her back and shifting them to the front. Ducking into the alley, she moved stealthily down it, heading deeper into the shadows, alert for a darker shadow which would identify if it was Drakyhn.
Movement to her right had Tegan spinning into a defensive crouch, knife in her hand ready to fight what lurked in the shadows. Whatever it was darted deeper into the alley and further into the darkness and Tegan was quick to follow. The alley stopped at a dead end and Tegan scoured the shadows looking for a darker shade of black, that would identify the Drakyhn. Tegan threw her knife and an answering hiss was her answer. Her next knife was in her hand and she threw it quickly, this time aiming slightly to the right. She heard another hiss. Darting forward quickly with another knife in her hand she finally had eyes on the Drakyhn. It was tall, taller than she had seen in a while, which meant her knives had hit the Drakyhn in the lower abdomen rather than the chest. A Drakyhn’s heart lay on the right side of its chest, slightly lower than Akrhyn or humans. However, as she watched the Drakyhn pull her knives out of its abdomen, Tegan knew she hadn’t even nicked the heart. A knife to the heart wouldn’t kill it, but it would slow it down. Tegan advanced, steadily reaching behind her, withdrawing her short sword from its sheath on her back. The Drakyhn shifted quickly to its right, trying to manoeuvre itself into a better position to escape and head back up the alley. Tegan mirrored its movements and the Drakyhn became still.
“You seek to fool me with a child?” The Drakyhn spoke – its voice a low grating growl as if it was not used to speech.
“Fool you? It is easy to do so,sobaka,” Leonid said from the shadows. The Drakyhn hissed again in response. “You give it time to heal,” Leonid murmured to Tegan.
“I’m waiting,” she replied, seemingly at ease as she stood with her sword in her hand. The Drakyhn’s attention was on her again, its thin pale lips drew back in a snarl, revealing the pointed teeth of its kind.
“You wait too long.” The Drakyhn sprang forward, talons outstretched like curved knives, which was exactly what they were; weapons. Tegan half spun, raising her sword in a smooth arc, she dipped low as she brought the sword up, effectively avoiding the taloned hands and sliced through the neck of the Drakyhn. The dismembered head rolled three times before resting at Leonid’s feet.
“You waited too long,” Leonid repeated the words the Drakyhn had said as he bent to pick up the head and cursed softly as he tossed it back beside the body. Black blood oozed from the corpse, staining dark forgotten corners, which would forever be stained blacker with the death of the Drakyhn. “Burn it. I’ll check we attracted no more attention than we needed.” Leonid turned from his daughter and the corpse. “Remember to…”
“Check it over,” Tegan sighed. “Iknowfather.”
“Habit daughter mine, habit.”
Tegan could hear the light humour in her father’s voice as he moved quickly up the alley. With no hesitation, she dropped into a crouch and began to search the body of the Drakyhn. Finding nothing of interest, she pulled a small can of lighter fluid from her backpack and then quickly set the body aflame. Drakyhn bodies burned quickly and soon she was heading to the mouth of the alley, leaving behind nothing more than scorched cement.
“Every trace?” Leonid asked.
“All of it. I scattered the ash.” Tegan confirmed. “Anything out here?”
“Nothing for us to concern ourselves with,” Leonid replied. “Come, we have lingered here too long.”
Both moved away from the alley quickly and quietly, ready to resume their journey through the streets of Prince George. Had Tegan looked back, as she did with the humans at the diner, she would have seen a darker shade of black watching them from the shadows.
As they approached the Headquarters, Tegan felt a flutter of nerves in her stomach. She frowned even as she looked over at her father. He had taught her how to become emotionless under stressful situations, enemies could detect weakness. Heartbeats were easy ‘tells’ attesting to the levels of your emotions, whether you were lying, anxious, exhilarated. Even humans could tell an emotion from a heartbeat – if they were close enough. Leonid had taught Tegan how to clear her mind, even in the throes of panic he trained her to switch it all off. Feel nothing.
So, why were there butterflies dancing around her insides, her palms sweating and her brow furrowed? She had been fine for the eight hours travel it had taken to get to the boundary of the Headquarters from Prince George, but on this last approach Tegan was… nervous.
“Control it, daughter,” her father’s low voice carried softly to her where she stood a few meters away.
“I don’t know why I’m reacting,” Tegan admitted softly.
“It’s understandable,” Leonid responded, his voice barely a whisper. “But this is not the time for emotion.”
Tegan nodded in understanding, taking a deep calming breath she pulled her hood over her head as she felt her father stand behind her. Her final test of her training over these last few days was to get into Headquarters without detection. Tegan surveyed the electric fence which rose about thirty feet in front of them. She didn’t doubt it was electrified although she couldn’t see anything obvious. It was probably spelled. Tegan frowned, she hated spells. Ensuring that their hiding place was still concealed, Tegan pulled out a small pouch from her backpack. She couldn’t Cast, but she had a few components in her pouch to disarm most spells. Father had trained her to be able to assemble a disarming spell by touch alone, so that even in the blackest of places, ingredients could be detected through touch. It took years for her to be able to discern the different textures of each powder or ingredient but with a few major injuries and cuts and scrapes along the way, she had confidence that she wasalmostalways infallible.
Cautiously, Tegan tested the fence with a commonly used white detection powder. She didn’t know the correct terminology for the powders, some with names in languages that were lost to the common world. The mages, or Castors as they preferred, kept their silence. They said it was in order to protect the untrained, but it was more likely for them to covet. Castors were a secluded race of Supernatural, feared by many, for their secrecy and thirst for knowledge. Tegan called this powdersparkly white glitter, Leonid would look at her with displeasure, but Tegan argued it didn’t matter what shecalledit, as long as she knew how touseit. Father conceded the point but with reluctance, however, he still couldn’t mask his frown when she called the powder the ‘sparkly white one’.
Tegan watched the powder settle softly against the chain fencing, a soft burst of blue and purple shone briefly. Tossing a small dead rodent to the area she had thrown the powder she and her father started running through the dense trees. The powder told her what spell was Cast over the fencing – but it also alerted the Sentinels to a disturbance in the perimeter. Which was what she wanted, the Sentinels would investigate, and she was hoping it would draw their attention from other parts of the perimeter. Tegan knew what kind of soldiers these Sentinels would be, knowing that for Headquarters they were the best and that Elite Guard would be present. Tegan ran swiftly and silently through the trees. The area where she had tested the fencing wasn’t Tegan’s intended entry point, she was heading north, where the trees were denser andtaller. She heard nothing as they moved away. Tegan wasn’t foolish enough to believe the breach wasn’t being investigated, it just meant the Sentinels were efficient and as equally as stealthy as she and her father. She daren’t ask her father if he heard anything. His superior hearing would be able to tell her if the Sentinels had come, but this washertraining exercise, not his.
Holding her hand up to signal a halt, Tegan slowed down, her focus now on the trees above her. The trees had long sparse trunks until the upper parts, where the branches started off thick, but thinned out at the crown. Drawing her hood closer to her face and removing small spikes from her pack, Tegan began to climb the tree trunk swiftly. She was exposed on the trunk and speed was a necessity. The trees were so densely packed together, it enabled her to move with some ease between them once she was in their branches, moving ever closer to the perimeter fence. Scaling onto the tallest one, Tegan made a note to criticise the defences of the Headquarters when they were inside. Slowly, she withdrew a pinch of the glittery powder and softly blew it into the air over the top of the fencing. A pale luminescent green pulsed once and was gone quickly. Tegan grinned at her father, there was a spell over the top of the fencing also, maybe these Akrhyn didn’t deserve her full criticism. It would be a judgement call as to the height of the spell. Spells on air were tricky. The root of the spell was attached to the physical object, in this case the fence. But although the spell would be stronger nearest the object, as it reached upwards, it became weaker. A spell needed to be attached to something, and thin air was hard to maintain any form of strength. The strength of the Castor determined the strength of the spell. A soft luminous green, meant the spell was weaker than it probably could be. Or it had been Cast for some time, spells lost their potency the longer they were Cast.