Mark of the Harbinger (Book 1)

4 - A Cross and a Scar

I could almost hear the sudden cessation of their voices and the sharp crack of the padlock breaking. I could almost see the silhouette of a man standing in the open doorway, framed by the moonlight—

Someone poked my shoulder and I yelped, twisting in place. 

Alfie smirked as he cleaned his hands on a spotted rag. "What are you doing out here, standing in the dark?" 

Alphonse Barone was a well-built man in his mid-thirties, dressed in a gray long-sleeved undershirt and a pair of grease-spotted slacks. His blond hair was almost brown and sprung in a shaggy mess around his head, his beard shot through with lines of silver and white. His eyes appeared to be a flat, unremarkable brown—until he tilted his head, and the reflective lens beneath his retinas caught the sheen of the porchlight and reflected it back. 

No, Alfie wasn't any more human than I was. He was a Were—a Panthera-Leo Were, a lion. I met him seven years ago, when I had been a twitchy seventeen-year-old bumpkin from the county limits considering enrollment at RNU and he'd been a clean-shaven, nontenured professor in charge of my application interview. I knew what he was instantly, of course. Weres have almost nonexistent control over their magical signature, and if it weren't for their exceptional senses they wouldn't be able to tell each other apart from humans and other preternatural. 

So, I knew what Alfie was the moment I caught a whiff of the dried, earthy scent of his magic—and, being the idiot that I am, I asked him about his pack. I'd only been trying to be polite, but when his face went white and his jaw dropped, I knew I had outed the man and myself in one swift move. 

Thankfully Alfie and I'd been the only people in the conference room at the time. After an awkward conversation where I was forced to confess I had certain...peculiarities of my own, we struck up an unconventional friendship. We've been friends for years, and when he went to prison for fraudulent species registration, I was one of the only people from the university who kept in contact with him. A small technicality in the law that faulted the university for not checking into the Were's registered pack status saved Alfie from the death sentence, but he still spent five years in a max-security detention facility with other criminal elements of the preternatural kind.

Needless to say, it was not one of his favorite topics of conversation. 

"I could ask you the same thing," I said, hand patting my chest to see if my heart hadn't leapt through it. "You scared me."

"Sorry." Alfie stuffed the rag into his dirty pants without thought. "I was out working on the truck and saw you walk up the drive. Why are you out here so late? You know it's not safe this far from the city."

"It's not like its safe in Roccia Nera, either," I pointed out. 

Alfie shrugged and started toward the porch with me at his heels. "No, I guess not. But it's safer than out here in the dead of night." He shoved the creaky screen door in and stepped aside for me to pass. As I did so, I heard the Were inhale sharply. "Do I smell...vampires?"

I grimaced. "Yeah. I don't know where to begin."

The screen closed with a clattered. "Damn, I thought you avoided them, Grae. Is that why you're out here? You need some dinner?"

I hesitated. "Um, yes, actually. I didn't have a chance to eat yet." 

Alfie disappeared into the kitchen after giving me a rough pat on the head. I stared after him, the muscle in my jaw working overtime as I ground my teeth and generally tried to ignore my surroundings.