CHAPTER Ten
Rather than following the streams of hungry students in the familiar direction of the cafeteria, Alex and I peeled off and wound our way through the other buildings until we reached the end. He led me to a small stone bench set into a snug bricked off alcove round the corner of the crumbling Protection block. We both sat down, facing outwards.
Alex wrung his hands and sighed deeply. Then he turned to face me. “Mack Attack, I’ve really f*cked up. I don’t know what else to do or who to talk to.”
I stared across at him, empathy and concern filling me. “You can tell me, Alex. What has happened?”
A bird chirruped overhead and he almost jumped out of his skin, his eyes tracking it nervously until it flew off. “You never know who might be listening,” he muttered.
Feeling nervous now, as well as worried, I reached and put my hands over his. “You know you can trust me, Alex.”
He nodded, then looked up to me with angst filled eyes. “I had a job last week. A Divination job. That’s where I have to…”
I interrupted him. “I know what Divination is.”
He shook himself. “Of course you do. Anyway, the job was to track down some daft objet d’art for this vamp.”
“You work for vampires?” I couldn’t prevent myself from recoiling ever so slightly.
“Of course we do. Do you think that shifters are the only ones who need to use a bit of magic now and then? They’re not all bad, Mack, they just have some unpleasant eating habits. Anyway, are you going to keep interrupting or can I tell my story?”
I shook my head in apology, now more worried than ever. The note of irritation in Alex’s voice was not at all the friendly surfer dude that I knew. I squeezed his hands to continue.
“Anyway, I had to retrieve this thing, some kind of statue. A wooden sculpture of Athena called the Palladium. According to mythology, it was held within the walls of Troy and the legend went that as long as it remained there, Troy would remain undefeated. So, unsurprisingly, Odysseus and his mate Diomedes sneaked in and nicked it, Troy fell and blah de blah. Then the Palladium ended up in the hands of the Romans, but of course it didn’t stay there for long. The vamps somehow got their hands on it and used it as a symbol of their omnipotence and undefeat. Naturally it was all bullshit though.”
“Naturally,” I murmured.
“The vamps’ stronghold was broken into years ago by a wraith thief called Tryyl, and several artifacts were taken, the Palladium among them. Tryyl was caught and tortured horribly and the vamps recovered everything pretty much apart from the statue. Nobody really cared all that much. It was ceremonial and the vamps felt their honour had been restored through the mental and physical destruction of Tryyl so although they looked for it, they didn’t really search all that hard, you get me?”
I nodded.
“But this old vamp, powerful dude, someone who’s been around for several hundreds of years, was reminiscing with a bunch of his bloodsucking buddies and decided last month that he’d like to see if he could get it back. I think it was some kind of dare or something, I dunno. So instead of getting his own hands dirty, he calls in me – or rather he calls in the Ministry – and pays us a bunch of money to get the Palladium back for him. I track it, eventually find it buried in an old cellar in a cottage up in the Lake District and give it back.”
I was puzzled. “So what’s the big deal? It doesn’t do anything, it’s not going to hurt anyone and you did your job.”
“See that’s just the thing,” said Alex, pulling his hands away from mine to run them through his hair. “When I initially started tracking the Palladium, my inveniora, that’s…”
I nodded, “Yeah, I know what that is.”
“Okay, my inveniora did something really strange. It sort of split off into two. At first I thought maybe it was because the statue had been damaged somehow and was in different sections – we’ve had that kind of thing happen before. So I just chose one randomly and followed it. When I got to the end, the statue was there all whole and shipshape and not damaged in the slightest, so I picked it out from the rubble and gave it to the vamp.”
“Right. But?”
“But then I got curious. I wanted to see what else had triggered the inveniora. So I went looking and found this.” He dug into a satchel that was lying by his side and pulled out a small wooden statue.
“Uh, Alex, that looks like it might be…,”
“The Palladium,” he said miserably.
“So what did you give the vamp?”
“Well, I checked up on the Othernet, trying to see if maybe there had been two statues. There hadn’t. But what I found was another wooden statue called the Ancile. It’s meant to have appeared on earth much later than the Palladium, but it’s much more powerful. It’s made of the same stuff as the Palladium, and is meant to be indistinguishable from other similar wooden statues if it’s stolen. Which is why my inveniora couldn’t tell the difference between it and the Palladium. What the Othernet also said is that it belonged to Mars himself, and that if wielded in battle and touched by blood, it would cause fire and war and destruction.”
“And you think that you gave the Ancile to the vamps?”
“Yeah.”
“And that because blood is their dejeuner du jour, you think that they will set off the Ancile if they touch it.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Well, why don’t you just tell the vamps that you made a mistake? Get them to give you the Ancile in return for the real Palladium.”
Alex looked unhappily down at his feet.
“Oh, I see,” I said slowly. “Because you think that once the vamps realise what they have in their possession, then they won’t want to give it up.”
“Got it in one. Yeah, vamps aren’t always as bad as everyone makes out, but they’re not going to give up a relic of that kind of power just because I asked them to.”
“Get the Arch-Mage to ask them to. Surely they’ll want to keep in his good books.”
“Yeah, I could do that. The thing is…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” I prodded.
“Well, the thing is that the Arch-Mage isn’t doing so well right now. A lot of other factions are unhappy with the way he’s running things. They’re just looking for an opportunity for him to screw up and they’ll jump right in there with a vote of no confidence.” Alex looked at me with panic in his eyes. “Mack, I can’t let that happen. I can’t let my f*ck up be the reason that he’s ousted from power. The Ministry will disintegrate. There’ll be in-fighting and power struggles, and people will die. And it will all be my fault! And that’s even if the vamps decide to give the Ancile back. If they decide that they’re going to ignore the Arch-Mage – which they might well do – then things will be even worse.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Yeah, I could see how this was bad. And I had to admit, the Arch-Mage, for all of his posturing and his forcing me to come to the academy in the first place, was a pretty decent mage. I had actually had a few inklings as well that things weren’t looking too rosy for him. I shuddered to think what things would be like if someone like the Dean ended up taking the reins of the Ministry’s power.
“So, is there a way out? Is there some way that you can get it back?”
“Mack Attack, you know what I’m like. I’d be awful at that kind of thing. If I got caught, I’d be a blubbering wreck. And you know I’d get caught. I’m just not that kind of person.”
I felt a heavy sinking feeling of inevitability in the pit of my stomach. “But you think I could do it.” It wasn’t a question.
Alex just looked at me. I looked back at him and sighed. “Okay, what do I have to do?”
“Oh, Mack, I knew you’d help me. I knew that you’d save the day and come through and make everything right. That’s why you’re the Mack Attack!” He grinned suddenly and, for a flash, was back to his former self.
“Hey, hold on,” I said seriously, “I don’t even know if I can do this yet. Let’s not forget that I’m stuck here at the academy in the first place. How I am even going to get time off to begin to sneak into a vamp’s lair?”
Alex shifted in his seat, abruptly looking uncomfortable.
“Alex?”
He budged around again and wouldn’t meet my eye.
“Alex? Why do I get the feeling that I’m really not going to like this?”
“Okay, look. There’s an easy way for you to get a night off.”
“And how’s that?”
“Someone important asks you out, you know, like for a date or something.”
I had a nasty inkling that I knew where this might be heading. “But then I’m out on a date with this important person, not anywhere near the vamp’s place where the Ancile is,” I pointed out.
“Well, you see,” Alex demurred, “that’s where serendipity comes into our hands.”
“Oh yes?”
“There’s a party. Next week. All the Otherworld bigwigs attend. It’s an annual thing, designed to encourage inter-species cooperation. And guess what?”
“Let me think,” I said drily, “it’s being held at this vamp’s house.”
“Got it in one! It’s not his house so much as the vamps’ actual stronghold, though.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Alex laughed slightly. “In order to keep things fair, the party’s location is rotated through the places belonging to the leaders of the main different Otherworld groups. And this year we’ve struck lucky!”
I definitely didn’t feel very lucky.
Alex continued, “So all you need to do is to wangle an invitation and the hard part of getting into the building where the Ancile is kept is already covered. And if you get an invitation, it’s with someone important so that makes it okay for you to also leave the academy for an evening. The Dean won’t be able to say no.”
“It’s like you planned the whole thing out.”
“Yeah, dude!” Life leapt back into Alex’s eyes as his personality started to re-assert itself. “You just get in touch with little old Lord Shifty – because of course he’s going – and then you’re in. And you can retrieve the Ancile and put the real Palladium in its place and then there’s no fire or war or destruction and the Arch-Mage is safe and everybody’s happy.” He beamed at me, full wattage.
“Yes, see,” I said carefully, “except there’s just one small flaw in your perfectly laid out plan.”
“What’s that?” Alex looked confused and I was half tempted to bang his head against the stone wall.
“The part where I have to ask Corrigan if he’ll take me to a party for all the VIPs of the Otherworld,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Alex put his hands up. “Oh, but he thinks you’re great, dude! Everyone knows that you saved his life and saved the Pack, and are the hero of the moment. You just need to whisper a few sweet nothings in his ear and hey presto!”
“Except for the teeny tiny little point where I just so happened to bump into him yesterday and we almost came to blows.” Or at least I told him in no uncertain terms to f*ck off, anyway.
“What? Oh, Mack Attack, no. Really?” The mage was visibly deflated.
“Do you have a back-up plan?” I asked gently.
He shook his head. “No. This is it. I’ve thought of everything else. This is the only chance there will be to get this done. And it needs to be done quickly or there’ll just be more opportunity for the Ancile to be activated.”
“The Dean really wasn’t very happy about me talking to Corrigan yesterday. He’ll be even less happy if I’m going out on actual date with him. And that’s even assuming I can get the Lord Alpha to invite me. You can bet he’s already got some glamorous shifter lady signed up for that duty.”
“Don’t worry about the Dean,” said Alex confidently. “If you can get our mate, Shifty dude, to invite you, I’ll take care of the rest.”
Somehow I thought that would be the hardest part of the whole operation. Alex’s plan, to me, appeared to be balanced on the shuffle of far too many cards. I didn’t have a problem with stealing back the Ancile thing for him, but fluttering my eyelashes at Corrigan was not going to be easy. If anything, I didn’t feel quite right about lying to him. I might not be part of the pack any more but old habits died hard. I’d just have to look upon it as a challenge, I figured. Though a challenge that could well see my head ripped from my shoulders, of course.