Page 64 of Guardians of the Pack

‘That’s how you found the location of the black tourney so easily. Your daughter runs it.’ My voice was only a shade away from accusatory.

‘Griffins have to kill. At the start of the tourney, it was a way for Charlize to get rid of the urge. She took part in one round of the tourney, and that was her sorted for the week. It’s no different to taking an assassination contract.’

‘It’s a tourney – it’s not supposed to end in death.’

‘All contestants know that death is a possible outcome, and if you agree to fight a griffin it’s almost certain. The family of the dead are well-compensated from the tourney proceeds. But this,’ he frowned, ‘taking someone’s magic – extinguishing them – it’s wrong. Charlize needs to be stopped.’

‘Because she’s kidnapping children?’

‘Because she’s bringing griffins into disrepute. We don’t kidnap. We’re not mercenaries – that’s the ogres. We are assassins. We kill people and that’s it. There are only two hundred of us left in the world, so we can’t afford for any one of us to go off-piste. Not even my daughter.’

‘So let me get this straight. You’re pissed that she is not off killing people?’ This time I didn’t even try to keep the accusation out of my voice.

‘She is an assassin. I’ve let her mess around with the black tourneys for long enough. She should be proud of what she is. Being an assassin is the second oldest profession after prostitution.’

‘If the oldest profession is prostitution, the second oldest profession is pimping,’ I muttered. ‘Men have been taking advantage of women since 56AD.’

‘If we’re being factual,’ Greg interrupted, ‘the first profession was probably farming or building.’

‘We’re getting off topic, my quibbling magical beasts,’ Reynard interjected. ‘How do we find these pricks and rescue the kids?’

‘That’s easy,’ Bastion confirmed. ‘I’ll track my daughter.’

‘Are you one of those creepy parents who has tracking devices on their children even when they’re fully grown?’ I asked.

Bastion raised an eyebrow. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Lucy, but I don’t believe that you are a parent.’

‘So? What’s your point.’

‘My point is that you won’t be familiar with the crushing love that a parent has for their child.’

I wondered if my birth parents had loved me.Move on, Lucy. It’s not healthy to get obsessed.I focused on the conversation again. ‘Crushing love? Love shouldn’t be crushing, it should be uplifting. You know, bunnies and cookies and flowers.’

He gave me a flat look. ‘Once again, I repeat that you are clearly not a parent. Once you are, life changes. You go from being an easy-going, relaxed kind of person to worrying about everything. Will your child make friends? Will they hurt themselves if they fall over? Will they ever master knife throwing?’

Wow. ‘I think your parental worries will be different from my parental worries,’ I asserted. It made me think again about my birth parents, but I shoved that stray thought down hard. I didn’t have time to wool-gather.

‘You think so?’ Bastion gave me a superior look. ‘You don’t think you’re going to worry about your werewolf child, to wonder if they’ll successfully attain dominance over their wolf or form a healthy symbiotic relationship, such as the one that you enjoy with Esme? You’re not going to worry that they will get lost to the wolf? That they’ll pick a fight with the wrong alpha?’ He smirked. ‘You’ve got it all to come, Lucy, but until that day don’t judge me for tracking my daughter. Non-parents aren’t allowed to judge parents. It’s a rule that transcends either realm.’

Reynard cleared his throat. ‘As lovely as this chitchat is, my darlings, shall we get down to the actual point?’

Bastion nodded briskly. ‘I’ll locate my daughter, then we can move in at first light when they’ll be sleeping.’

I shook my head. ‘Bobby, Jason and Wren have been apart from their parents for long enough. We go in tonight.’

Chapter 23

Bastiondidhisthingand before long we had a location. It appeared that Charlize had taken up residence at a small suburban property in the quaint village of Wooburn Green. He went ahead of the rest of us and performed some initial reconnaissance, then reported back that there appeared to be six people occupying the property. With the three children that accounted for three of the kidnappers. Obviously, in an ideal world we would have captured all four but I didn’t want to delay matters further. Every moment we risked one of the children getting extinguished – or worse. That wasn’t a risk I was willing to take.

I asked Amber to come with us in case there was some black-magic runes mumbo-jumbo that we shouldn’t disturb when we arrived, and she agreed to come for the night-time raid. She pulled out a bottle from her ever-present tote bag and gulped it down. ‘An energy potion,’ she admitted. ‘I’m flagging after that last unsuccessful scry.’

‘Should you come?’

‘Maybe not, but I’m in it now until the end. This will keep me going. Afterwards I’ll need to recharge in the Common, but I’ll be good for tonight.’

I accepted her at her word because she knew more than me about this stuff, but she didn’t look happy at the price she’d have to pay by taking the potion. It was witchy business. She left us to go back home, change and pick up some defensive potions. She would join us later at the rendezvous point.

I called Maxwell. All right, he hadn’t exactly embraced me with open arms over the missing children situation, but his hands were very much tied by Roscoe’s commands. Besides, Maxwell had made it clear that Roscoe needed this win. I liked the two of them, and wanted to do everything I could to help them secure their position, even if it meant them coming on the raid with us. Plus, I wanted allies; no man, woman or werewolf is an island. The weak get swallowed by the Other realm and, relatively speaking, werewolves are fairly low on the food chain. We’re not immortal, we don’t have proper magic other than our intrinsic magic that allows us to shift, so we needed allies. Calling Maxwell was the first step in securing some.

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