Huntress

My first impression was... space.

The room devoted to the Masquerade was enormous. It might, I thought, have been bigger than the area of the building above us.

“Woah,” I couldn’t help but say, as I was prodded into the room.

“Chin up, boobs out, glare at everyone,” Holly hissed in my ear.

The walls and floor, although they should have been concrete, didn’t look it – in fact, the floor was wall-to-wall hardwood floorboards. The walls were papered in a gorgeous old-fashioned floral style and hanging with various pictures. Chairs and small tables of every size and description, including armchairs, couches and ottomans, crowded the room all but for a basketball-court-sized space in the middle which was not boarded, but rather an odd mottled dark red stone.

People milled around everywhere. At the opposite end of the room there was a larger ring of chairs, centred and facing the elevator. The largest chair was directly facing us as we walked in, and, although empty, was obviously reserved for the Monarch.

Nice, I thought slightly sardonically. A throne room.

Heads swivelled toward us; some turned away and continued their conversation, while others stared openly. After a while, when more people began to look and I realised what they were staring at.

Me.

Great.

“Why are they all staring?” I hissed at Holly, who was surveying the room with cool grace.

She shrugged. “We don’t get a lot of… fresh meat… down here. Especially fresh meat that looks so much like a certain ex-Monarch. Give it an hour or so and people will stop staring. Maybe.”

Some did, even within the first few minutes. Our group moved forward, coolly observed with suspicion. Then three people broke away from a group further up the room to the right. Anger disfigured all three faces.

“How dare you show your face here,” the middle one, a fierce but slightly horse-faced woman screeched. At first, panicking a little, I thought she pointed at me. Then I realised I wasn’t the source of her displeasure – Alec was.

He raised his eyebrows with admirable composure. “Expected me to cower in a hole, Alissa?”

“Traitor,” she hissed. “You’re scum.”

Alec’s face hardened. I watched with interest as he spat. “I was workingwith scum. Pieces of shit like you, who thieve and maim because they get a thrill. Not anymore. I don’t need you.”

By now everyone had turned back to us, and were watching the exchange. The other woman and man who stood flanking Alissa said nothing, simply choosing to look threatening. It complimented her seething rage nicely.

“You’re the piece of shit,” she accused. “Coward.”

“Coward, am I? I’m not the one hiding behind an old lady past her prime for protection.”

“Or are you?” Alissa asked, eyes glinting. “Seen Asp lately?”

I had to admit, Alec sort of set himself up for that one. This time Holly stepped forward, crossing her arms. She was taller than Alissa by about half a head.

“You,” she said gently but menacingly, “are a stupid, vapid hag. I suggest if you value that ugly head of yours that you fuck off, and hide behind Persephone while you still can.”

Alissa glared but I felt a little pity for her. Holly was so much taller and more beautiful that it would have been extremely hard not to be intimidated. But then, that was the effect we were going for. Alissa was clearly a total bitch.

Instead of obeying Holly and actually making herself scarce, her gaze flicked over our group. Clearly she was trying to pick the odd one out and it wasn’t long before her eyes landed on me.

“Who’s this bitch?” she snarled, trying to claw back some credibility.

“New recruit,” Avery said lazily from behind me. “She look familiar?”

Now I was treated to a full examination and tried to keep my expression both neutral and hostile. Alissa’s face became uncertain but whatever her suspicions were, she brushed them off.

“I don’t socialize,” she spat, putting a nasty emphasis on the last word, “with tramps.”

Alec smirked and I could see where this was going. “Why not, Liss?” he said, mock surprised. “Birds of a feather, and all that.”

She gave him the finger and the guy behind her cracked his knuckles quietly. Apparently unable to think of a suitable retort, however, Alissa simply glared; it had absolutely no discernable effect.

Holly opened her mouth, probably to say something else derogatory, but was interrupted by a commotion behind her opponent. The three in front of us whirled around and our group looked over curiously.

“I WARNED YOU,” a dark, stocky, extremely muscled man roared at another, who backed off. He tripped backwards over a small unoccupied chair and his attacker shouted, again, “I FUCKING WARNED YOU, DALE.”

‘Dale’ sprang to his feet and kept backing toward the centre of the room, where the dark stone square lay embedded in the ground. “Wait, Hal. Wait. Shit. Look, I swear, I didn’t know this time!”

Hal – who I’d heard about but never seen until now – looked both livid and fed up. He was fast advancing on Dale, kicking chairs out of his way.

“You knew. You always know. I said the next time someone pulls from the wharf, it goes through me. But did you listen?” He kicked a particularly large armchair out of the way like it was a footstool, and answered his own question. “No, you bloody didn’t!”

By now Dale was standing in the middle of the curious dark section of stone. He looked understandably nervous. “Hal, I told you we could work this out. I didn’t know what Jimmy was gonna do, alright? He only told me after!”

“Which means you keep a tighter grip on your boys, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t control everything!”

By now Hal had reached Dale and had picked him up by the collar with ridiculous ease. “It’s not about control, Dale,” he spat. “It’s about fear.”

With that he flung the other man downwards, where he hit the stone with a sickening crunch. Gasping for breath, Dale tried to crawl away, cradling his wrist. Hal, however, was having none of it. He picked the other man up again and bellowed, “NEVER – AGAIN!”

“I think Dale got the message,” Holly muttered to me from the corner of her mouth, sounding amused.

I looked at her incredulously. This wasn’t funny, this was... violent, and disturbing. Hal was going to kill this guy and everyone was looking on impassively.

“Ok, ok,” Dale choked out from the centre of the room. “Never again. Got it.”

Apparently unsatisfied, Hal once again threw him against the floor with some violence. I couldn’t help myself – I winced. “Are you sure?” he asked menacingly, fists balled by his side.

Dale nodded and got up slowly, carefully. As though wanting to really make sure the message was properly received, his attacker sunk first a fist and then a booted foot into him before letting him get up and limp toward another door.

I looked on, both aghast and intrigued. “So that’s Hal.”

“Yep,” Holly nodded. “Don’t piss him off.”

“No kidding.”

Hal went back to stand with a bunch of people that I, obviously, didn’t recognise. When he was well and truly out of earshot I was suddenly able to put two and two together and ask, “So... mind explaining how he was able to do that?”

“Do what?” Holly asked me innocently.

I snorted. If there is one look that girl cannot pull off, it’s innocent. It’s like Jessica Rabbit trying to play the victim.

“Don’t play coy, Holly. That was some pretty unnatural shit. Dale should be dead, not able to walk. And Hal... look, come on, you need to explain now.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. I guess we probably do owe you that.”

A lot of people had now stopped staring, having taken their mental picture and moved on. This meant we were able to move forward, now unchallenged, and commandeer a circle of chairs near the side of the stone square.

“The thing is,” Holly said with a sigh, reapplying another coat of reddish pink lipgloss. “No one really knows anything about it. Like, we don’t have a scientist or whatever trying to figure it out. It just is what it is.”

“It?”

Alec glanced over. “Start from the start, Hol.”

She gave him a look that could almost be called a glare. It held a fair dose of contempt, anyway. Weird. “If I’m already doing such a crap job, why don’t you try?”

“Maybe I sh-”

“Alright, shut up, you two,” Olivia interrupted. “Both of you are crap storytellers. I’ll explain it to her.”

I leaned toward the older girl expectantly. She shook an apricot curl out of her pale face and continued, “Holly was right, for a start. We don’t know much about it. But what we do know is this.

“About twenty-five years ago, a guy named Nick Larsson started hanging around the Masquerade. Obviously, I wasn’t really old enough to remember him, but apparently he was pretty hot, and charismatic to boot.”

“And?”

“Well, about a year after that, he went off to America as part of some smuggling deal. It was supposed to be in and out, something that was a lot easier before the whole war on terrorism and that.

“It look him a whole day longer than it should have, which had everyone worried. But when he came back... he was different.”

Her huge hazel eyes widened a little and I got totally sucked in to the story. “Different how?”

“Different like... he had this weird sort of ability. Like if there was just a shadow around, he could melt into it, disappear into the crowd. Not literally,” Olivia hastened to add, “but it seemed like it. It earned him the nickname Seamless.

“Of course everyone wanted to know how he could do it. And no one believed that he had secret ninja training. One day a couple of guys cornered him and got it out of him. Some time when he was over in the States, he met a girl, who told him she had something for him. A gift.”

A little crinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “This is where it gets a little hazy. We assume from what we know now, though, that they somehow exchanged body fluids and he was... well, transformed is the wrong word. Changed, I guess.”

It was a great story and all, but I was having trouble figuring out where Alec and his Amazing Healing Blood Powers came in. Or Hal.

“What Olivia is trying to explain,” Holly interrupted, “is that Nick understood it even less than you do. But what he did figure out was that all he had to do was swap blood, or saliva, or whatever, with another person, with the intent to Share. And so it travelled.”

“It?” I asked for the second time.

“There isn’t really a name,” Olivia took up again. “It’s like a gift. As long as you concentrate on the intent to share it through your blood, or whatever, the other person gets it too. And it affects everyone differently. It’s like it adapts to your personality.”

Alec nodded. “I was pissed off for a long time. Like what kind of pussy ability is healing blood? I got mine from Samson, who, as you can see, got something a bit more macho.”

I took that to mean his enormous biceps and generally threatening manner.

Holly looked also a little sour. “I got mine from Alec. I actually wanted the power to heal... I thought that was the coolest. I’d be like Nurse Betty. Only...”

She trailed off, sighing. “Only I got the opposite. The universe enjoys irony, it seems.”

“So...” I said, trying to get my head around all of this. “Your blood... kills people? Like a poison?”

Holly shrugged. “Sort of. I mean, it’s not just my blood. Saliva, and stuff. And I have to be concentrating on using it. Like, I don’t kill everyone I kiss. But I could.”

Wow. That was pretty... disturbing, actually. “Is that why you asked Lewis if he wanted a kiss?”

Avery smiled. “I like this girl. She catches on quickly.”

“So what’s yours?” I demanded of Olivia and Avery. Both the twins had chimed in too, along with Connor.

Olivia smiled. “I’ll show you. Try and hold on to my arm.”

She was so skinny that my hand fit well and truly the entire way around her wrist. I held it tightly, wondering what was meant to be happening, when my grip started to slip. I tightened my hold even more but it didn’t work – she just drew her arm back like I wasn’t even there.

“Cool,” I couldn’t help exclaiming.

Olivia laughed. “It is, isn’t it?”

Avery now stood up and I looked at her curiously. She motioned for me to copy her and so I did. “Pick me up,” she suggested.

I was a little doubtful – she’d weigh at least as much as me and I’m not the strongest of people – but nonetheless put my arms around her around the waist and lifted. To my surprise she was light as a bird, and I nearly staggered backwards with overcompensation. She laughed as I put her down.

“I’m a Bone. When I focus I can make them as light as a birds – my bone marrow dissolves and then re-forms.”

This was cool but I had another question. “A Bone?”

Holly nodded. “With most people there are three types. Blood, Skin and Bone. I’m a Blood, Olivia is a Skin and Avery is a Bone. Alec’s a Blood, Hal, like you just saw, is a Bone... we think Nick was a Skin.”

“And what are you guys?” I asked Connor, Noah and Nate.

“Blood, like them,” Connor said easily. “More like Holly. Mine’s not a poison, it’s more of ... a drug, I guess you’d say. Unlike Hol here, though, I usually have to spit in people’s drinks to get what I want.”

He said it with a wicked, suggestive grin that made Holly give him the finger.

Both the twins laughed and when I repeated my question Nate grinned. “Fire and ice, baby.”

Noah elaborated. “We’re both Skins. I can handle temperatures up to... what did we test it to, again?”

“About ten thousand degrees,” Nate chipped in. “Give or take.”

“Right. And Nate can handle temps of about minus eight hundred, or roundabouts.”

Now that was cool, in a superhero kind of way. “Who else?” I asked, eager to find out what exactly I was dealing with, here. I saw no reason to doubt what they were saying – I’d seen Alec and Liv’s up close and personal already.

Holly scanned the room, starting with our immediate group. “Well, you can guess what Samson is.”

“Bone?” I guessed.

She nodded. “We think so. His real name is actually just Sam, but this fit so well it stuck. He and Hal could probably destroy the Sydney Harbour Bridge completely between them. Luckily it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to team up.”

I looked at Samson with new respect. He was that strong?

“Eli can make his skin as hard as stone when he’s on form,” she continued. “Only when you match it to strength like Hal’s, it becomes less effective a power. That’s what happened the other night.”

Nodding, I listened as she moved on. “Bill is the one over there with the short blonde hair and the sleeve tattoos. He’s another Camo, a bit like Nick was. That’s a Skin term for someone who blends in, especially in a crowd.”

“Hmm... who else... Carrie’s another Bone, we think, cause she can jump from just about anything without getting hurt. She isn’t that strong, though, which is interesting.”

“And Lewis?” I asked, looking over at the older guy. He leered at me and and licked his lips. I looked away in disgust.

Holly mirrored my look. “Lewis, unfortunately, has a gift so rare we’re not allowed to kill him. He’s neither Blood, Skin, nor Bone – there isn’t a term for it.”

Again, I snuck a glance over at our topic of conversation. He was laughing at something someone said, exposing nice teeth which unfortunately couldn’t make up for a weak but pointy chin and patchy stubble.

“So what can he do?”

“Well,” Olivia mused. “At present, we’ve seen evidence of extremely highly developed brain power. Lewis is a master strategist. He knows exactly how to manipulate people, and he can tell when you’re lying. Um... oh, yeah, he has a photographic memory, can read several thousand words a minute, and we’re not quite sure if he needs oxygen to live.”

“Either that or he has the lung capacity of six dolphins,” Holly added.

That one person should be able to do all that left me gaping. Especially because it was Lewis, who just did not look prepossessing enough.

“Really,” Avery said, “It’s a pity he’s not better looking, or less annoying. He’d probably own this place.”

“So I should be glad he’s on our side?”

Holly laughed. “You wouldn’t think so, but yeah. Definitely.”