The Hunted (21 page)

She grinned happily. ‘Well, good. I was thinking tomorrow if I had time I would whip us up a batch of waffles.’

I choked on a piece of rubbery egg that I had been trying to chew for the last few minutes, in between the crunching of shell.

‘From scratch?’ Lucas chortled, glancing at his plate.

She frowned at both our reactions. ‘Of course.’

‘Where did you get the recipe?’ I asked.

‘I’m not using a recipe. I saw someone on TV make them
and I’m just going to do it like that.’

Lucas and I looked at each other. That was not a good sign.

‘I’m done,’ I said, tossing my half-eaten piece of toast back onto my plate. I’d lost my appetite. ‘I’ll just get cleaned up and then I’ll be ready to leave.’

‘I’ll drop you off at the IMI this morning,’ Susan said, stuffing some egg into her mouth. ‘But after that I need to head over to the store to do some bookwork. Your father will take you both inside. Martha will be instructing all of your academic lessons for today.’ She swallowed. ‘I should be back in time for afternoon training.’

Phew. At least it wasn’t Sarah running classes today.

The woman seriously had it in for me. For some reason, Sarah had always disliked me. I think it had to do with the fact that she was strongly religious, and that my very being was a concept that evoked images of demons and devil worshipping.

Poor clichés aside, she was the worst kind of bigot possible. It wasn’t just the Vânâtors and the Vampires that offended her sensibilities, but also any person of mixed race or variation in religious beliefs. I felt tremendously sorry for the Jehovah’s Witnesses that came knocking on her door every Saturday afternoon. By the time they’d be allowed to leave, she would have bullied them into switching religions or pummelled them over the heads with her precious bible.

I dashed back up the stairs leaving the rest of them to debate about whether or not Lucas would be shown the Light of Mellar spell today. I hoped so. Despite how much Lucas could irritate me sometimes, I really enjoyed watching him and the other two Protector children, Karina and Lisa, learning magical defence. It was just a shame that I would never be able to partake in magical bidding. I was not born a Protector and therefore did not inherit magic of any kind. I wanted to learn, I really did. But instead, I had to be satisfied with watching the others and learning tricks of my own that would hopefully equip me for the long future ahead.

Alone.

Everyone was ready to go by the time I came back downstairs again. I shouldered my back pack and headed out to the car, Lucas following right behind me.

George and Lucas hopped into the passenger seats of the car while I stood to watch the usual morning ritual Susan was about to perform. No matter how many times I had seen it, I never got sick of watching the magic.

She raised her hand in front of her, pointing towards the car with her fingers, and then gave me a quick wink. She concentrated on the parked car in front of her and then uttered ‘
Revatarus
’ quietly under her breath.

Green light licked at her fingertips and danced across the air, smothering the car in its energy, pulsating over the metal surface like green glowing slime.

I watched as the Forrester slowly began to disappear from sight as the pulsating green slime oozed over the surface of the metal. The visibility of the car decreased exponentially and soon became all but invisible to the human eye. The only people who could see through this magic were The Protectors themselves. It never ceased to amaze me just how powerful these people truly were.

Susan took my hand and led me over to the car. She knew I didn’t have a hope in hell of finding my way inside unless we had a while to play Marco Polo. But at least once the car door had been opened, I could quite easily see inside the cabin. It was this particular cloaking spell that was going to allow us to gain entry to the drive-in, and still remain undetected by unknowing humans.

The Institute of Magical Intervention had branches located all over the world, with the main headquarters situated in Bucharest, Romania. There were only six in Australia, in total.

There was our faction that was comprised of eleven members, including my parents and Lucas. It was a small group in comparison to the other states, but apparently all that was necessary for our overly sunny neck of the woods.

Susan and George were the directors, or leaders, of this particular branch and the entire state of Queensland’s security was maintained under their command, just as George’s father had done before him.

There were other branches also located in every other state in Australia, the largest being located in Melbourne with well over sixty five members and counting.

Each branch was in charge of protecting their own area from vânâtor invasion and possible vampiric activities that were considered less than savoury or in direct violation of the treaty. Our faction was the smallest in the country, but also did not require anything larger given that Queensland was the sunshine state. Vânâtors and vampires were more than a little reluctant to stray into areas where the sun shone down brightly for almost three hundred and sixty-five days a year. But just because our faction was small did not mean that we were without resources. In fact, our faction was often called in to help reinforce other territories such as Melbourne, or Adelaide, when the situation required.

Hence our Christmas holidays last year.

The drive-in, where we were heading to now, had been chosen as our faction’s site because of its obscurity.

It had not been used for a good many years, and now remained relatively unoccupied, unless of course you counted misguided youths and homeless people who were occasional tenants. Even then it was mostly left abandoned, brandished with graffiti and covered in knee-high long grass. It was the most circumspect location that anyone could think of, and even if developers decided to flatten the place in years to come it would not matter. The branch was located under the ground and had several other visitor entrances that could be used.

I glanced out the window and caught sight of the familiar movie screens. Susan turned the car onto the side road that ran parallel to the highway and led directly to the front entrance of the drive-in. There was a six foot chain link fence that surrounded the entire perimeter of the area and had rolled barbed wire stretched across the top to daunt intruders from proceeding further. The owners of this land were trying to discourage vandalism to the property, but they unfortunately remained unsuccessful. They would have to fix the gaping holes in the fence first before the barbed wire became any real threat to an intruder. Not to mention the fact that an entire secret society had managed to manufacture an underground compound without the owner ever being aware.

Susan pulled the car into the short driveway in front of the fence and quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching. The place was practically deserted. People were too busy racing down the highway to work and school to notice our activities. Not that they could see any of us anyway, but if they had been looking they would be able to see what was going to happen next.

She looked at the fence, held her hand out in front of her and uttered the word ‘
Entriatus’
. I knew that she spoke the words for Lucas’s benefit so that he could learn and remember the charms, as once a Protector was accomplished enough at a particular spell they no longer had to speak the words but merely think them.

I watched as the padlock and chain that was wrapped around the gated entry quickly undid itself and then danced around in the air. The gates pulled open and swung inwards as if the action was performed by invisible hands.

I turned around in the seat to watch the finale as Susan drove through the gates and down the gravel and bitumen driveway towards the restaurant building and car parking area. The gates closed silently behind us, the metal chain weaving quickly through the air in a silent song and securely fastening itself with the padlock again.

Amazing. I love magic.

‘They’re already all here,’ I heard George say as I swung back around in my seat. I glanced out of the window, but the place looked absolutely deserted to me. There was not a single car in sight, but
given that I couldn’t see through the magic, I was going to have to take his word for it.

Susan pulled the car up a little way away from the restaurant building and we all stepped out, leaving Susan in the driver seat.

She smiled thinly at me and started tapping impatiently on her watch as I began my usual hokey-pokey of placing one arm in, and the other arm out and then shaking my invisible bits all about. For some reason, playing silly buggers with the invisible car never got old to me.

‘Okay, are you finished playing around now? Or do you and the car need some more time together?’ George asked me, tapping on my shoulder.

I looked eerily at my half-amputated arm and then laughed as I pulled it free from the confines of the magic. ‘No, I’m good,’ I said, waving goodbye to Susan and then shutting the car door behind me.

Lucas shook his head and took me by the hand so I didn’t hit any of the other invisible cars on the way inside. I did have to wonder, after I had rammed into the third vehicle with my knees, whether or not I should have asked for another guide. I was fairly certain that Lucas was trying to injure me on purpose.

I dropped his hand the second we reached the entry, marked only by two aluminium doors that were well-beaten and doing little in the way of shielding the interior from the weather. The windows here had been smashed in by vandals, as were many of the other windows that surrounded the small building. Small shards lay scattered across the floor, crunching underfoot as each of us entered the premises.

Inside, some of the old booths still remained, but were ripped by knife wounds and mistreatment. Graffiti marred almost every surface. The tables had not faired any better, some barely standing after being hacked at with knives, the counter tops ripped and burned from years of neglect and abuse.

George led the way through the battered restaurant. Nothing had changed since the last time we had been here on Tuesday.

I stepped over the old metal chain that led to kitchenette area, following closely on the heels of Lucas. The mirrored splashback that lined the old bar area was always the first thing that I saw, probably because I generally found myself warily watching my own reflection, somehow expecting it to jump out of the mirror and attack me. Ridiculous, I know.

The mirror itself was now cracked and broken in many places. There were rust spots that had accumulated in the corners and any other place that incurred damage over the years. What surprised me the most was that the mirror was still in one piece, as opposed to lying across the floor in shards, just like the rest of the glass in this place. Vandals generally weren’t too picky when it came to tearing a place apart. Perhaps the old superstition about seven years bad luck for breaking mirrors kept it intact.

Glancing back at the counter tops in the kitchenette, I noticed they were laden thick with dust and graffiti and were littered with cardboard boxes containing old newspapers and mail out catalogues. Even though I was a strong advocate for only cleaning rooms—like my bedroom—when they became close to bordering on the hazardous, I couldn’t imagine myself surrounded permanently by filth. This place was a cesspool.

George and Susan said it would look more suspicious and draw too much attention if we ever bothered to clean the place up. Their belief was that if we left it a wreck, then no one would ever look beneath the surface.

Pity they didn’t have the same view about me cleaning my bedroom.

We all moved further into the small kitchenette where some of the infill of paper from the boxes was spread onto the floor like a giant cat litter tray. I looked a little more closely at the area where the trapdoor was located, but as usual I could see nothing. And as usual, George revealed it to me.

‘
Revatarus!
’ he said, extending his hand in front of him. The same green light that had danced upon Susan’s fingertips this morning now appeared on George’s. It slicked across his fingers and then weaved through the air like a pungent green fog until it found its target on the floor. The trapdoor, providing our first port of entry into the IMI, slowly came into view. It was as if someone with an invisible pencil had drawn its outline and was now colouring in details.