I came to with a jolt, shot upright, froze from the pounding headache and the spinning in my vision, but forced out a single word.

"Ellie!"

"She's fine," Simon said calmly, then called out, "Mrs McLal?"

My sight began to clear, and I recognised the room at once, I'd been here plenty of times before. The clan hospital ward. Grey walls, a dim bulb under a plain lampshade, a rough wooden bed, stiff, clean linen, and the unmistakable aroma of a thousand healing concoctions, even with the window wide open to the night air.

Sally often helped out here, along with a couple of warlocks, but the ones truly in charge were Miranda and Eugene McLal. Both ungifted, but certified medics with an excellent grasp of where magic should be applied, and where a plain old pill would do better.

Miranda answered Simon's call quickly, her heels clacked down the corridor as she stepped into the room in her white coat. She was a plump woman with round cheeks and the kind of smile you'd expect from a kind-hearted aunt. Our generation, regardless of blood ties, simply called her Auntie Miranda.

Clearly, no one had told Simon that yet.

My own aunts, Mary and Ailie, had their broody hen tendencies, but they were of the more authoritarian variety. Not overly fond of being contradicted. I got off lighter than the younger ones, probably because I spent more time away from home.

"How are you feeling, Duncan?" Miranda asked, shooting Simon a disapproving glance as she went to shut the window.

I touched the right side of my face, numb, and felt a cold salve under my fingers. I withdrew my hand.

"I'm all right. What about Ellie?!"

"She's fine, your girl. You did well. Clearly you paid attention during Eugene's lessons."

Honestly, it was probably more down to Harry's lessons, he taught me to focus first on internal structures before patching up the surface. But if Miranda wanted to feel proud of her husband…

"They came in handy. Can I have the details?"

"We had to cut the wound open. The potion nearly closed it over. The bullet, or what was left of it, lodged in her intestines: couple of holes, bit of necrosis. Nothing Eugene couldn't handle with a scalpel and a few brews."

"No organs lost to the 'death' effect?"

"Just the intestines," Miranda shook her head. "But she's a shifter, she'll recover. She'll have a scar, mind you, but if she wants, it can be removed later."

A scar wasn't the worst outcome. First the death magic, then the aggressive surge of blood magic, I'd have been surprised if no mark was left. I'm no healer. I acted more on instinct than knowledge.

Although… if Hal finds out his daughter had to fight a werewolf because of me...

"If that's all the questions, may I see to your injuries now?" Miranda asked, a hint of dry patience in her tone.

"Of course, Auntie," I said.

As I'd mentioned, Miranda wasn't gifted. But the clan didn't skimp on the hospital budget, there were shelves of diagnostic amulets that didn't require magical talent to operate. Bremor sourced them from across the globe: Asia, the Americas, northern Europe, but most came from the southern counties and the capital.

Miranda picked up one of them, a strangely shaped cone, and shone it into my eye. A beam of sharp light stabbed like a shard of steel. My head roared in protest, and a wave of nausea climbed up from my chest.

"Excellent! Just a mild concussion. You'll be fine by the end of the week."

"Can't we speed that up?"

"You know my opinion on that sort of thing!"

"Not now," I said firmly, surprised at the steel in my own voice.

Miranda and her husband believed that any injury which could heal naturally, should heal naturally. There was a theory behind it, that potions and spells warped the subtle body over time, deforming it in ways you couldn't see.

I suspected Harry would've had a few things to say about that. But I wasn't Harry, and Miranda wasn't some beat copper from Avoc. This wasn't really the time to be bossing her about. I softened my tone and explained:

"Things are too unstable right now. I need to be ready. Just in case."

Miranda rolled her eyes.

"Kinkaids! Fine. I'll bring you a mild restorative, it'll have you right by morning."

She turned to leave.

"Wait," I said. "Kinkaids? You mean someone else got hurt, or was that just a general statement?"

"Evan lost an arm."

"What do you mean lost?!" Evan?! My invincible cousin? He eats master vampires for breakfast and snacks on werewolves. Kate flinches just hearing his name!

"Don't worry," Miranda said, calming me. "It's been reattached. Should be good as new in a month."

"Bloody hell! What on earth happened in Avoc!?"

"You'll have to ask your uncle," she replied. "I've got other patients to see."

And with that, she left. Clearly still a bit put out.

"Do you know anything?" I asked Simon.

"Just scattered rumours. Big fight in the city. Three civilians dead, twenty or so injured, a dozen unbelievably strong werewolves killed, and a couple managed to escape."

Three dead. God! We were meant to protect these people. The clan had failed. The weight of that sat heavy in my chest.

The clan…

"What about the Bremor lot?"

"Heard there were injuries. No deaths."

That was something, at least.

Damn it — what a mess of emotions. Relief that the clan was alive. Shame for feeling relieved.

Rationally, three civilian deaths wasn't a high price for wiping out a dozen werewolves. It could've been much worse, if they'd gone on a rampage under the full moon in eleven days' time…

Yes, I checked the lunar calendar now. Religiously.

It was terrifying to imagine the strength those monsters would have shown then, if they could do this just days after the new moon.

"What about the… the cabman?" I asked.

"Put him down. Your dagger went up through the chin and lodged in the upper jaw. He lost it, ripped the blade out, kept going, tore his own mouth open and smashed his teeth. The lads who questioned me reckon you hit a nerve. While he was still butchering himself, I walked up, pressed the barrel to his head, and pulled the trigger."

Simon then made a face and showed me the oil stains on his jacket cuff, lapel, and tie — every bit not covered by his coat during the shot.

Miranda returned with a vial of pale green liquid. She handed it over, and I instinctively pulled the cork out with my teeth.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"No spitting!" she warned immediately.

I carefully dropped the cork into my left hand, drank the potion, corked the bottle again and handed it back.

"Am I allowed to leave?"

"You're allowed to lie down, unless you'd like a second concussion."

"What?" My vision was already fogging. "Seriously? No potions, but sleeping draughts are just fine? You're no different from my bloody aunts…"

I flopped back on the bed and shut my eyes. My satchel wasn't nearby, so struggling was pointless. Of course, I had no doubt there was an antidote somewhere in these walls, but I'd probably kiss the floor with the back of my head before I ever found it.

A proper, solid sleep did me good.

Birds were chirping outside the window, hopping branch to branch on a still-bare chestnut tree, not a single bud in sight. Next to it, in full bloom and smelling sweetly of apricot, stood a tree covered in pale pink blossoms.

My head didn't hurt. Neither did the rest of me. The potion had a lot more in it than just a sedative. For the first time in days, I'd woken up feeling properly rested. Though, I could really do with a bath. The chase, the fight, and then a night spent fully dressed… Yeah. I was giving off a distinct aroma.

I bent down to check under the bed, found my shoes, slipped them on, and stepped into the corridor. My jacket and coat turned up at the nurses' station, held, rather unexpectedly, by none other than Betty.

Betty. In a hospital. Who would've thought…

Was this her way of improving her status? Or just the old side-angle trick? Every lad ends up in here sooner or later. And here, she could tend to them, comfort them, fuss over them…

"I stopped by this morning, but you were asleep," she said.

"Uh… right." What was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to say something?

"I was worried," she added.

"Thanks for your concern. I'm perfectly fine."

"You know," she said, "modesty never suited you. Still doesn't. It's been, what, not even a year since you became a wizard? You haven't unlocked even half your potential… and yet, Duncan, for heaven's sake, you're a bloody hero. You fought vampires. You stopped two werewolves."

"I wasn't alone. I always had help. If anyone's the hero, it's Ellie."

She always had the heart to stand by her friends, and face her own demons. I remembered how terrified she'd been when she accidentally blew that bloodsucker's head apart. She'd never been trained like I was. But Ellie had faced her fear, and won.

And after that… she never flinched. The "Tear," the station, that alley last night. I kept my distance, she went straight in, close quarters. I knew all that, and still I'd dragged her into danger, where she'd been hurt.

Betty rolled her eyes.

"From what I heard, you're the one who saved everyone. Risked your life."

"Simon?" I asked. "He's a notorious windbag. I wouldn't believe a word. In fact, best to assume the opposite of everything he says."

"Well, at least he's not too modest. The whole clan knows how werewolf brains splashed all over his coat."

"Windbag," I confirmed. "Can I see Ellie?"

"Sally took her home this morning," Betty said, a little sharply.

"And Evan?"

"Fourth ward. He was still asleep last I checked."

"Thanks."

She clearly wasn't pleased with how the conversation ended.

I, for one, was just glad it ended at all.

I opened the door carefully and peeked inside.

My grown-up cousin lay on the bed inside a scaffolding of metal rods. His neck was wrapped in a stiff collar, both arms up to the chest and his left leg up to the waist were in plaster. The damaged limbs were strapped into soft slings, which in turn were hooked to cords running up to the overhead frame.

A cord dangled near the fingers of his left hand, ending in a large tassel. It ran to a switch on the wall. Something new, maybe a nurse call?

His wife Anna sat dozing in a chair beside the bed. Evan couldn't turn his head, but Anna stirred at the faint creak of the door and opened her eyes instantly.

"Duncan… hey."

"Duncan," Evan echoed, lighting up. "Heard you caught a bit of it too."

"Nowhere near as bad as you," I said. "What happened?"

"Trap. They were ready. Had a couple of seals primed and waiting before we even showed up. I triggered one, leapt away, and landed straight into another. All I managed was to jam a dagger in some flea-bitten freak's ear. The other one grabbed me by the leg and started using me as a club. Olly tried to pull me free, and that's how my arm came off at the elbow."

Evan shot a sideways glance at his right hand. The fingers poking out of the cast were noticeably paler than his left. He grimaced, like even talking about it caused discomfort.

"If Sean hadn't dropped the bastard…"

"Feron? He was with you?"

"Yeah," Evan sighed. "He bagged first prize on this hunt."

"First?" I said, surprised.

"Two kills — both his."

"And Uncle?"

"Father took the second one alive. Olly ripped apart two of them as well, but, you know…"

I did. Olly McLilly was a shifter with the spirit of a bear. Killing enemies didn't bring him the same benefits it did to warlocks, but in the heat of a battle like that, it wasn't exactly a time for weighing long-term gains.

"In fact," Evan went on, "the shifters outperformed the warlocks in this hunt. Nearly all of them took one down solo. Bloody tattoos! I'd kill the bastard who came up with the idea of sewing reservoirs under the skin."

"Under the skin?" So that's what those elemental stars were that I'd seen in the subtle plane. "But what about poisoning?"

"Werewolves," Evan said simply. "Full regeneration with every full moon."

"But the one at the station didn't have any reservoirs."

"He was older. His runes were old-school."

From what Evan told me, the fight had been brutal. Now that it was over, he didn't hold back, he told me the whole story behind our uncle's scheming. At least, the part he knew.

The shaggy guest in our dungeon had sung about a planned attack. The twenty-fifth, full moon night. Just as I'd suspected. According to him, the clan wasn't the target. But the forest…

There weren't many truly wild places left in Duthigh. Industrialisation had done its work. The royal preserves had royal rangers patrolling every tree. But apart from those, the largest, untouched forest with real, proper wilderness was ours. The werewolves had been instinctively drawn to it, and they had a blood debt, besides.

Most of them had been tracked by the Bremor folk, and now the pack wanted revenge: wipe out the older generation, enslave the younger.

It had all begun before Grandfather's death. The werewolves arrived in Avoc secretly, scouting the area, each time getting closer to the woods and the clan quarter, but always retreating before they risked exposing the plan. Except once, when one of them ran into Grandfather.

I didn't know whether Anna was aware that vampires had been involved in Grandfather's murder, so I dropped Evan a subtle hint about the inconsistencies in the story. He assured me she knew, but this! This wasn't the place to talk about it. And it was, after all, the version told by the werewolf.

So… vampires were either drawn in by chance, or the mutts were used as pawns without realising.

If you thought about it, Simon hadn't infected Grandfather with vampirism. He'd infected his corpse. It had required a specific potion, even. But what about the subjugation runes? Had Uncle misread them? Bloody hell, this was getting messier by the minute.

The werewolves had somehow acquired blueprints of the district, defence layouts, too. That had to involve betrayal.

Did they have a man inside the clan?

No. More likely, they were working with the vampires.

They'd created a tactical map, marked the homes of the clan's strongest fighters. Those were to be hit first.

By the full moon, the core of their force, two dozen fighters, was meant to be in place. One or two arrived each day.

We'd cut that force in half.

In the primal structure of a werewolf pack, there's one alpha and up to twenty fighters he can control through sheer personal strength. But twenty is a lot — young ones struggle to manage their emotions, make mistakes. Mistakes lead to hunts.

The station mutt's pack had eight heads.

Turns out, our enemy was more organised than we'd thought, and had even picked a pretentious name for themselves.

They had the audacity to call themselves the Clan of the Blood Moon.

Imagine that. A werewolf clan, with dens spread across the country. The station werewolf's pack was based in Shropshire. The rest? He didn't know. But he did know what kept them united: tattoos.

They had to be renewed periodically. And the only person who could do that was the head of the clan.

Who that was, the werewolf had no idea. He'd never seen the leader. In seven years of wearing the tattoos, he'd had them redone four times, each time in a different corner of the country—so the location clearly didn't matter.

There wasn't much else he could tell. Before each tattoo session, he was given a strong sedative. Only the pack alpha knew the leader's name and face.

Maybe Uncle hadn't been wrong after all. Maybe the tattoos didn't just enhance the werewolves, they allowed the mysterious "leader" to control them. What other explanation was there for why a horde of superpowered beasts hadn't torn each other apart for dominance? Unless they'd all been promised their own packs... but only for a while. In the end, they were meant to be thrown away.

The day before the attack, the werewolves were instructed to infect at least eight people with lycanthropy. And not in the traditional way, biting a thigh and letting the fever take hold, but secretly, using a specialised potion.

With vampires, subjugation is biological, once bound by blood, a fledgling simply can't disobey their elder. Not so with werewolves. Alphas had to assert dominance constantly. But the ones coming in? They had more than enough strength for that.

There had to be a link between the werewolves and the vampires. Instead of two dozen beasts, we'd have been facing nearly two hundred, and a localised apocalypse. The strike would've been catastrophic. The losses, among both the clan and the civilians, unthinkable.

But the whole thing was stupid.

For all the precision of the plan, for all the damage they might've caused, what would the werewolves have gained?

Nothing.

Not all Bremor's warriors would've been home. Some in the woods, some in Avoc, others scattered across cities and abroad, but every last one of them would've rushed back the moment word spread.

There are plenty of gifted in Avoc alone who would rise to defend their homes. The whole county would rise. So would the neighbours. At the very least, the Elphs would answer the call.

The bureaucracy may grind slow, but after an attack like that, the Crown would send regular troops to defend the county. Cleansing would only be a matter of time.

The werewolves wouldn't get the forest. They wouldn't get their show of strength, their getaway, or their chance to hold anyone to ransom. The remnants of the clan would go crawling back to the woods, and out there, no beast outruns the hunters of Ferrish.

And they'd be hunted across the country.

Tonight, there's to be a general assembly. I don't know how they'll present it to the city, maybe they'll avoid scaring people, but Bryce will tell the whole truth to the clan.

Rumours are already flying. Uncle's "poor behaviour" will be forgiven now — guaranteed.

Hell, they'll forgive everything, and in advance, years ahead. Decades, even. The old man's about to receive a mountain of goodwill, and I've got a feeling he won't waste any time cashing it in.

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