Chapter 1

We meet Lexi.

~1~

~Year 3494, Present Day~

 

 

Trudging noisily along the path worn into the grass, two men dressed in clothes that were too thin to be walking in the woods cast their eyes lazily through the shadows for what they sought. They were too used to this task; everyday they were sent to look for one thing that persisted to go missing. The wood was still dark and shadowed though most of the leaves on the trees had browned and fallen for the coming winter.

            “She disappears every day; we shan’t find her if she doesn’t wish to be found,” the younger of the two said with a sigh, his voice matching exactly how tedious the task was. His hair was mousey and curled tightly on his head, longer than what was considered presentable. His eyes and nose were small in proportion to his face and neck, his voice considerably high in pitch.

            “Indeed, she persists to be so boy-like,” the other said in a deeper tone, more serious yet still lazy. His hair was dark but greying in places, his eyes larger and hawk-like. “God help whoever’s wife she will be. She’s just as reckless as the youngsters.”

            “Sometimes I wonder if she is actually one of us…” the younger mused thoughtfully. “She shows so many signs of being at one with nature; why is she always in the woods, for example?”

            The older man turned on his companion. “Nothing of the sort could pass through our guard,” he snapped harshly. “Her parents have been proven human, how can she not be?”

            The younger man shrunk into his shadow slightly but did not take back the words he had spoken. The older man continued to stare for a moment or two longer before he huffed out a breath. “Let’s return to the village; like you said, she shan’t appear if she does not want to. She will return eventually, like always.”

            “Won’t we be punished for returning without her?”

            “When have we ever returned with her?”

            The younger companion acknowledged this and, casting a last glance around the darkening forest, walked beside his friend out of the trees, chatting merrily about a subject far less dour.

            As soon as they were out of earshot, Lexi peeked out from behind the cluster of deadened leaves and jumped from her branch, landing in a soft and almost silent crouch. Their figures had shrunk to mere black dots at the entrance of the forest.

            Straightening up, she grinned slyly to herself and hurried off the path and into the overgrown depths of Thistle Wood where nobody dared venture. Wolves and bears and other predators usually lurked in the undergrowth, yet never had crossed paths with her. She stopped for a moment to pick blackberries and packed them in the satchel that was always by her side. She blew a few stray strands of fair hair out of her eyes before pausing to retie them back into the leather strap at the nape of her neck.

            She smirked as she continued her journey back to the place where the school stood, remembering the snippet of conversation she had overheard from the two men. Adolescents were encouraged to marry at a young age; most couples became engaged at around eighteen or nineteen years of age. Girls were trained to be housewives during school, as that is all they were expected to be. Lexi was eighteen, but had no desire to marry, nor be turned into a housewife. And even if she had, no one desired her. That was the reason she was out in the forest at this time when she should have been enclosed inside a grey-walled classroom. When no one was looking, Lexi would escape the grounds and disappear into her woods for the majority of the day.

Even if she was a burden to her parents, they could count on her to find berries and other herbs in the depths of the woods where no one else could. On occasion she would be given a knife and told to bring back a rabbit or two, if she could find them. Food was expensive; if she could hunt it, then it made life easier for all three of them. Hunting was technically illegal; though her entire being here �" in Igrendem �" was not permitted either.

            Glancing up through the branches, Lexi saw grey clouds begin to block out the sunlight. Drops of rain spattered down, light at first and then heavier. Pulling her hood over her head, she started to jog in the direction she knew the school was, scrambling over the taller ferns and casually leaping over tree-roots. She was one of the few people in Hargate �" her village �" that could read, write, or even count above twenty accurately and found no interest in classes.

Lexi diverted her course to the square, needing to collect a new hide for her mother. If she could, she would take back some strawberries as well. The rain persisted as she jogged down side streets and dodged out of the way of men that strode home from work in the mills and women that had darted in groups to buy a long-lasting supply of meat in case of a flood. The women were the worst for gossiping; not even waiting until she was out of sight before chatting away;

“She is too much like a boy.”

“Have you seen what she wears?”

“I doubt I will see her married in my lifetime.”

In the opinion of the village’s women, Lexi was not feminine enough to be a wife, not caring enough to be a housewife, and spent too much time in the forest. In the eyes of the men, however, Lexi was respected for being stealthy and secretive; though the younger men that should have been taking an interest in marrying thought she was too masculine for such a proposal.

After exchanging the berries she had gathered for the deer hide, she drifted to stand on the porch of the crafting hall where her father worked and waited for the rain to lighten before she returned home. She had a clear view of the forest through an alley and settled for daydreaming while she waited.

“Lexi!”

Her head snapped round at the sound of her name being called and met the icy blue gaze that seemed to pierce her mask and see right into her head, read the thoughts that she had to keep secret from everyone. Cedonia was Lexi’s only friend, a faery also stuck in this human settlement. Her features were sharp: a straight-edged nose and dark-brown hair that was often tied back and fell to the centre of her spine, giving her a typical Igrendem appearance. She reached Lexi’s height but she was more slender with less of a figure. She, like Lexi, wore trousers instead of skirts.

            “Yes?” Lexi asked as she scampered up.

            “Can I very possibly borrow your knife? I need to make a new set of shoe-laces, these ones have snapped.” Cedonia showed Lexi her left boot, made of deer hide, and the leather laces that were dragging on the floor, having snapped in several places.

Lexi pulled the pocketknife from her satchel and handed it to her, handle first, making sure no one else saw. Weapons of any sort were not to be handled by women and Lexi could find herself being carted off to the prison if she was caught with a knife.

“Give it back tomorrow,” she said as Cedonia pocketed it and nodded.

“Does your mind ever stop working?” she asked as Lexi’s gaze floated back to the forest on the far side of the village.

“Hm?” Lexi asked, feigning ignorance.

She gave her a ‘do-you-think-I’m-stupid’ look and said, “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t much rather be running about in those woods than living in a village full of humans. I know what you’re thinking.” Cedonia’s accent was much more carefree and rushed than that of most. Lexi’s native language, Findasian, was spoken in much the same way as she, though Inglish was much more proper.

            Lexi sighed. “When am I ever thinking about anything else?”

            About a hundred years ago, shape shifters were widely respected across the globe; the same amount of vampyres, lycans, witches, faeries, elves, and any other Neäkan as humans. Then a group of humans banded together and called themselves Slayers, killing off any supernatural being they could lay their hands on. Unfortunately, most of the human population decided that they agreed with this guild and also started killing them off.

            “Have you ever thought about finding any others?” Cedonia asked her, lowering her voice so much Lexi could barely hear.

“No,” she muttered back. “How could I? I’m not allowed to leave Cassandle.” There was a strict travel code among the six islands, and an even stricter code between countries.

“Your parents managed it…” she mused.

Lexi shot her a dark look. “They have friends in the travelling industry,” she said in a low but snappish tone. “And they are human.”

            It seemed silly, the fact that humans were at the bottom of the food chain where Neäkan were concerned, yet they had managed to crush them to the point of extinction.

            Instinct told her that she was not the only shifter left, but she knew there were not many. Lexi would not know if she ever met one either, no shifter trusts anyone. The shifter ability was genetic; to have a shifter child at least one of the parents had to be a shifter themselves. Both of her parents were human, so it was clear that she was not of their blood.

             She and Cedonia exchanged a quick good-bye and Lexi turned her back on her and looked towards the fields beside Thistle Wood that were her quickest way home. Unfortunately, that meant passing Tom and his crowd of young men that were stood sheltering under a balcony.

            “I am certain she lives in that wood, there aren’t any houses down the hillside,” he said loud enough for Lexi to hear over the rain as she passed them.

            She gritted her teeth and replied with, “I think you will find there are.”

            “Of course there are,” he said with a slight smirk, his tone mocking. “I’d bet you go into that wood and sleep there, because you have no parents.”

“I do have parents, actually.” Lexi stopped and turned toward him, glaring up at him from underneath her hood and through the strands of hair that had fallen free again.

            “Has anyone ever seen them?” Tom asked, addressing his group. They laughed and shook their heads, playing along. Lexi swallowed the growl that was building up in her throat. No one saw her adoptive parents because her mother was always at home and her father did not speak much Inglish. No one could cross borders of the islands unless they had a special Traveller’s licence, or a Traveller gave permission for them to pass, and Lexi’s parents had managed to cross from the mainland, Findasia. It would not be good to be found speaking Findasian here. Beyond the mainland country laid the mountainous land of Enderwice, where she was descended by blood. Beyond that country, no one knew what lay. Adventurers never returned to retell their adventures.

            “It’s odd that I’ve not seen your parents either, it does not mean you don’t have them,” she said, trying her utmost to sound casual and uncaring. Tom saw straight through her pretence and knew she was becoming increasingly annoyed.

            “Do you have to make your own clothes?” he asked, taking a few steps closer to her and pretending to examine what she was wearing. Unless one could afford to buy clothes from the tailor, one made their own; Tom’s parents owned the harbour on the coast a few miles north. They could afford anything they wanted. “They smell like you took them from a dead person.”

            Lexi nodded, meeting his gaze. “I’d bet they do.”

            “Actually, you smell more like a wet dog.”

            This last remark sparked something in her chest and her eyes flashed with anger. A growl ripped from her teeth and she lunged at him, her hands clawing into his shoulders and knocking him backwards so that she landed on top of him, her teeth sinking into his neck while her feet supported her on either side of him.

            She felt his scream beneath her as blood leaked into her mouth. He struggled and kicked and tried to push her away, but she bit harder into his skin, possessed by the creature that forever haunted her dreams. The breath was knocked out of her and pain flared up her side as one of his friends tried kicking her off of him. Lexi growled and used her grip on Tom to steady herself.

            She heard shouts, though she barely understood what they said, before two pairs of strong arms yanked her away from the boy beneath her. Lexi struggled against their hold and continued to growl at Tom as he scrambled to his feet, using his sleeve to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. “Shifter!” He shouted the insult at her over his shoulder, his expression one of terror as he darted through the alleys and out of sight. She snarled after him; to be called a shifter was to be called an animal among humans. She sometimes wondered how the humans had not figured out that she was not one of them; everything about her screamed ‘Neäkan’; the way she dressed, her eating habits, her evasiveness and the likelihood to find her skipping off into the forest at every chance she could get.

The desire to cause pain wore off as quickly as it had come and she was left feeling bewildered in the arms of two men with fresh, warm blood coating her lips. She was released by one of the men, but held in place by the other. “What has gotten into you?” the butcher snapped, but at the same time he seemed unable to express what he was truly thinking. Lexi said nothing, unable to express herself in words even if she had wanted to.

She could not turn, locked in place by the arms of the butcher, but she could hear the steps of someone approaching, quickly followed by the crack of the whip. She swallowed and shuddered; she was no stranger to the whip. Her cloak was thrown over one shoulder, revealing the back of her cloth shirt.

Pain ripped across her back as it was brought down twice across her flesh in quick succession, tearing through the fabric of her shirt. She sucked in a breath and bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming. The lashes had not been hard, as they never were when women were to be punished, and she did not bleed.

The butcher shoved her away and she stumbled, catching herself on the post of a balcony. He and the miller exchanged a disgusted look.

“If you don’t watch yourself, you will be chased away from this village!” the miller spat at her.

If only, she thought, narrowing her watering eyes at the man.

                She leant against the post for a short while, waiting for the smarting pain in her back to subside before she disappeared off home. She was aware of the crowd gathering about the street, the disgusted looks and the murmurings and rumours flitting through the villagers. Lexi pushed herself upright off the post and was immediately grasped by the collar.

            Lexi snarled and snapped and fought the strong hand that imprisoned her and the tailor looked down in disgust, holding her at arm’s length as if he were afraid she would attack him next, given the chance.

            “You cannot just let her go!” he snapped at the butcher, and the crowd of villagers murmured in agreement. “She attacked one of us as if she were an animal!”

            “She’s a vampyre!” someone called out.

            “A lycan!” someone else shouted.

            “A shape shifter!”

            The beast locked within Lexi’s chest growled at the accusations and Lexi did her utmost stay in control; if she shifted now, she would be undoubtedly slaughtered. Her growling ceased and she took a steadying breath.

            “Let me go!” she snapped, trying to wriggle free of her captor.

            “So you can attack someone else?” the tailor snarled. “A woman or a child next time? Tie her up!”

            The tailor shoved her away from him and she stumbled and fell, sprawled across the stone-paved street. Running would do her no favours, though the impulse was almost impossible to resist. The butcher lifted her to her feet and tied her hands behind the post of the balcony. The hard wood chafed against Lexi’s sore back and she hissed in pain, trying to pull her hands free of the ropes.

            The mayor stepped forward and stood in front of her, frowning. He was a short man and had to gaze up at Lexi, and when he spoke he sounded almost intrigued rather than frightened or angry.

            “Show me your teeth,” he commanded after a moment.       

            Lexi frowned at him, confused by his request, and said nothing, keeping her lips firmly together.

            One of the men �" whether the tailor, the butcher or the miller, Lexi did not know �" grasped her lower jaw and pried her lips apart. Lexi growled threateningly and tried to shake her head free.

            “Her teeth are just like yours or mine, Faron, it is quite clear that she is not a vampyre,” the mayor said as if this solved the problem. Lexi refrained from rolling her eyes; they had not needed to see her teeth to prove that. Vampyres had red eyes; Lexi’s eyes were ocean-blue.

            “Then explained why she bit Tom and drank his blood,” the tailor demanded from somewhere Lexi could not see.

            “Can you be certain she drank his blood, Faron?”

            “Well, no, but-”

            “Hey!” Lexi glanced up at the sound of her father’s voice as he charged out of the crafting hall and pushed his way through the crowd to reach her. The tailor attempted to block his path, but Lexi’s father pushed him aside easily.

            “Eihr tou ikna?” he demanded when he reached her, speaking softly so that no one could hear.

            Lexi shook her head, replying in the same language. “Tal nator.”

            Her father took out his pocket knife and cut through the ropes that bound her. Lexi rubbed her sore wrists as her father turned to the mayor. “She my daughter. I say she human. Anyone hurt her, I kill.”

            “She will be executed if she attacks again,” the mayor threatened him. “Alexia, go home. I must talk with your father.”

As if in a dream, Lexi turned and hurried towards the fields, ignoring the distrustful stares of the villagers as they parted to create a path for her. No one wanted to be near the girl that bit.

            As she passed the forest, Lexi paused to stare at it. Part of her longed for the solitude and freedom of the trees, but another part of her feared it. She continued to stare, the rain cascading down like a waterfall.

            Then the forest stared back.

            Lexi jumped as she realised she was staring at a pair of amber eyes that glowed faintly in the trees. Looking closer, she could vaguely make out the silhouette of a person; male by his stance and figure.

            He turned and disappeared into the shadows soon after she had registered his presence. Acting on impulse, she followed him into the trees, straining her eyes to keep track of his retreating shadow.

            “Hey!” she called softly, feeling the need to not startle him. She watched him twist and look over his shoulder for a second before breaking into a run. She dropped her satchel and chased after him, leaping over roots and logs and undergrowth as best she could, but his legs were longer and far more used to this kind of terrain.

            “Hey!” she called again, louder. She could not decipher why, but she had the feeling that she must catch up with him. He darted between trees and leapt across ditches as if he were a horse. Lexi had to work her legs hard to keep up with him.

            She was a stubborn being and had to drag oxygen into her lungs, her breath coming in loud gasps the more she ran, but she was determined to catch him up. Listening for any rustle of leaves or snapping of twigs, she kept up the chase.

            She heard a frustrated sigh and saw the boy slow to a halt in front of her and turn around. Lexi skidded to a stop and had to catch herself on a tree.

            “Did you wish to speak to me?” the boy asked pleasantly, hardly out of breath. Looking up at him, Lexi suddenly lost her voice. He was dressed completely in black and was incredibly good-looking. His skin was fair and his nose was straight-edged, but his features were soft. The lines of his eyes were slight and softly-curved, his lashes dark to match his hair that was long enough to hide his ears and creep down the back of his neck and tousled and plastered to his forehead, half-obscuring his amber eyes that mocked her just slightly. He had a strange way of standing: his weight on one leg and his thumbs in his front pockets. It was a very casual stance and not one Lexi had ever seen used by the men in Hargate.

            “Why were you watching me?” she asked, finding that she was not as out of breath as she had thought.

            The boy shrugged casually. “Why shouldn’t I?”

            Lexi narrowed her eyes at him, anger boiling in her chest again. His sincere grin shocked her; she was so used to people either giving her strange or dark looks; usually out of disapproval or fear. “What amuses you so?” she snapped.

            “You have a very short temper,” he said in answer. “It indicates to something you have to hide.” Her mind went temporarily blank. How could he know that? His smile got bigger when he realised he had figured something. “Am I right?”

            “You are a shape shifter,” she stated coldly.

“So are you,” he replied lightly. “We are not all that rare anymore.” Part of Lexi so desperately wanted to believe, but she could not find it in herself. She turned to leave but he followed her.

            “You followed me, what were you expecting me to offer you?”

            “It would be nice to know why you were watching me,” she said without turning around. “And why you are in a forest during weather such as this.”

            “I could ask you the same things,” he replied, still following.

            “I asked you first,” she protested indignantly, stopping and looking back at him. He was taller than her by about five inches or so.

            “I fancied a walk,” he said lightly. “Is that allowed, my lady?”

            “Don’t call me that,” she said sharply.

            He raised his palms to his chest. “Sorry. Rather touchy, aren’t we?”

            “That’s none of your business.”

            “You owe me your answers,” he said, and even though she was walking again she could hear the smile in his voice. “You have blood on your mouth.”

            “I’m going home,” she said shortly, wiping the blood away irritably. “Is that allowed?”

            He hesitated before saying, “Of course, who doesn’t have blood on their mouth just before they return home?”

            “Is there a reason you are following me?” Lexi asked, ignoring his comment.

            “Was there a reason to you following me?”

            So he was sarcastic as well as secretive. Lexi was very similar in her efforts to hide who she really was, but she began to realise exactly how irritating the act was. Most humans would have given up by now, but this stranger was beating her at her own game.

            She listened to his soft steps on the wet forest floor behind her and sensed his tension and anxiety, even though he looked so calm whenever she glanced back at him. He was very good-looking, she could not help herself thinking.

            It took Lexi about ten minutes to find the edge of the forest again, and as soon as she was there, she did not want to leave. There was something about this boy that equated to her; he was not normal and boring and full of rubbish that almost every other man seemed to be.

            “Who are you?” she asked, looking back at him and dropping her barrier of anger and defensiveness.

            His eyes flashed up to hers. “Who wants to know?”

            “Me.”

            “Why?”

            “I would like to know your name.”

            He tilted his head to the side for a few moments, continuing to stare at her while he thought over his answer. “I’m known as Hunter to most.”

            “Define most. Shape shifters?”

            One corner of his mouth tilted upwards. “You will see soon enough.”

            Before she could question him more, he turned on his heel and stalked back into the shadowed wood. Lexi was left standing staring after him, wishing he would not leave.

 

            It was dark by the time she returned home; a small house down the hillside away from the beaten track surrounded by woodland and made from oak, as most of the houses in the village were. Lexi’s father had built the two-storey home in less than a week after they had migrated here from Findasia. Lexi could hear her mother muttering to her father as she stepped into the entranceway. Her mother’s voice was clipped and short, the way it always sounded when she was angry. Lexi’s heart sank and she tried as hard as she could manage to sneak up the stairs to the upper storey without her mother hearing.

            “Alexia?”

            Lexi took a shaky breath and turned back to face her mother, who was glaring up at her from the bottom of the stairs, a paper in her hand. Ever since the age of thirteen, her mother had started acting like she needed less parenting and more bullying. Or at least that’s how it felt to Lexi; never could she make a mistake in life without a verbal beating. Lexi was mostly numb to the words nowadays, though it was not something she looked forward to.

            Lexi’s adoptive mother was almost the exact opposite to her. Her hair was black, where Lexi’s was fair, and her skin was tanned brown. Her eyes were dark, but Lexi had never discovered whether they were black or just a dark shade of grey. She was a short woman and Lexi exceeded her height by several inches.

            “Do you want to explain what happened after school today?” she asked in her cold voice. Lexi must have spent longer with the boy than she had thought if the letter had beaten her home.

            “You know what happened; I expect that letter gave you an account of everything.” Lexi’s voice sounded a lot more confident than she felt. In truth, she was terrified of her.

            “Don’t be smart with me, Alexia, you were seen biting into the throat of some poor boy.”

            “He was asking for it,” Lexi told her, her lip threatening to curl up into a snarl.

            “Why were you biting him?” she asked with more emphasis.

            “I don’t know why, vamar, in all honesty. Maybe it has something to do with-”

            “Hush!” she hissed.

            Lexi shut her mouth and glared at her. “It’s not my fault I am like this, vamar,” she said quietly. “You knew I was like this when you adopted me.”

“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t,” she hissed. Then she saw her daughter’s expression and added slowly, “That’s why you are going away.”

Panic rose in Lexi’s chest. “What? Away to where?”

“To a place where other people like you stay.” Lexi hesitated, wondering and hoping she could have heard her right but did not like jumping to conclusions. Her mother continued when she did not answer. “There are other people that can change into something else, there’s an Academy up north.”

“You mean shape shifters?” Lexi corrected impatiently. Something about the words, for some reason or other, made her cringe.

Lexi was not entirely sure what to make of it. She stared off into space for a few seconds before continuing up the stairs and shutting herself in her room, dropping her satchel and sitting heavily on the straw mattress and thin linen blankets, hugging her knees. She had known she was not the only shifter in the world, but she had never met another. Not until Hunter. Now she was going to an entire Academy full of them? All these thoughts whirled around her head mixed with emotions of terror, joy, confusion and anger. The creature growled threateningly inside her and she clawed her fingers into her hair.

            If she went away, Lexi would leave everything behind: her room, her house and she would miss Cedonia. She did not know how far away she was going, where it was, what it was like, or anything of the sort.

            There was a knock on her door and her father entered, smiling at her in a fatherly way. He sat down beside Lexi without saying anything for a few minutes. He looked very similar to her mother, but he was taller. He had the same black hair that was greying in places and dark eyes, but his were a softer brown. His skin was tanned and he had a smile that Lexi had not seen mirrored by any other man.

            “How are you?” he asked eventually. She smiled at his attempt at Inglish.

            “I am fine, teiirhra,” she replied, slipping into Findasian to address her father. “At least as fine as I can be.”

            They conversed in Findasian after that. He filled Lexi in on the information her mother had missed: where it was and why she was leaving. It was on the island Rosavale, the smallest of the six. A Traveller was coming to take her the next day. Lexi packed her things as he talked. Excitement replaced every other feeling in her body as she thought about being surrounded by other people that could do what she could do, maybe even learn how to control it.

            The image of the boy in the woods appeared in her mind the more she thought of it. He was a shifter, as he had admitted outright. Lexi hoped he would be there, though she did not see how he could have crossed both the Selert and the Cairn bridges alone.

            When he finished, Lexi smiled. “Your Inglish is improving.”

            “Do not tell your vamar, but I have been visiting the village a little more to practise.” It was a good thing the village was small, but even so, her mother did not like the risk.

            He left when the sun had completely dipped below the horizon and Lexi clambered under the sheets.

Author's Note

I'm open to any criticism