Spark of Chaos

Ghoul.

Even the word left a foul taste on my tongue.

My earliest memories were of my cousins taunting me, looking at me with disgust as they teased and spat that word at me.

Ghoul. How I despised that name.

I'd once searched the family library, looking for understanding of why I was so despised by people who were supposed to love and accept me. I'd found nothing reassuring.

Often depicted as grotesque, humanoid creatures with decayed or emaciated bodies. Ther skin pale, sometimes grey, resembling the corpses on which they fed to maintain some semblance of life. They were strong, their bodies regenerating from wounds made by conventional means, and some could mimic human voices to lure in prey.

I'd never had a talent with mimicry, but from my earliest days I couldn't stomach any meat but that provided by my father. It wasn't until I was older that he'd told me where it came from, and I had found a whole new level of self-disgust and loathing as I realised, I'd been eating human flesh.

And how much I enjoyed it.

My skin tended to stubbornly refuse to tan, remaining pale, and I had always had a supernatural strength that was the only thing that stopped all but the eldest cousin from attacking me physically.

Why then, would I not believe I was a Ghoul?

What else could I be?

I looked at Jack and wondered that very thing, staring, mouth agape as I sought to calm the chaos in my mind long enough to focus on asking a single question.

Jack, seeing my hurt and confusion, knelt, keeping his distance as he gave me a steadying look. I stared into his eyes, lost and feeling very alone, and without warning they began to glow.

Mine responded, and I turned my head.

"No," Jack said, voice calm and yet firm. "Let me see."

I couldn't see the change to my eyes, not without a mirror, but I knew what he would see. The iris turning a black so deep that all light seemed to be drawn in, my eye sockets becoming shadowed and even the whites of my eyes darkening as though infected by the black of the iris.

There was an ugliness to it, deeply unsettling to observe and eliciting cries of disgust and grimaces from those who saw the change.

"Beautiful," Jack said, and I blinked, brows drawing down in confusion and hurt.

"Do not mock me."

His grin was lopsided, and his eyes shone almost golden as he stared into mine, unblinking and refusing to look away.

"No mockery." He ran a hand through the tangled matt of hair on his head. "It's like everything I am is being drawn into you through those obsidian orbs."

I blinked at that. Huh?

No one had ever told me anything like that. Even my father had avoided looking at them whenever they'd changed, though for him I had always suspected it was because they reminded him of my mother.

Of what had happened to her.

"You're no Ghoul," he declared.

"How can you know?" I thought back to the first meeting in his office just a few short days ago, that seemed like an age. "I asked you, in your office, if you knew what I was, and you told me you did."

"Aye."

I stared at him, unblinking, until it became clear he wasn't about to expand upon that.

"What am I then?" I snapped.

"I don't know."

Intolerable!

"Why are you messing with me?"

"I'm not." He grunted, shoulders rolling as he shifted position, relaxing tense muscles. "I thought I knew."

"You thought I was a ghoul?"

"Something in that racial grouping." A shrug of those broad shoulders. "I was wrong."

"So, you could be wrong about me not being a Ghoul?"

"No." He scratched his cheek and tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he looked at me. "You're definitely not a Ghoul."

"Then what am I?" I repeated, my voice almost a wail.

"Something else."

It made no sense. My family had been adamant about what I was. It had been the primary cause of their disgust and hatred of me, and if anyone were to know what I was, it would be them. Why would they lie to me?

"Maybe they had a reason," Jack said, and I gave a start, realising I'd asked the question out loud.

I released the colour from my eyes and felt that shift that told me they had returned to normal. Jack followed suit, and he rose to his full height, looking around and then up at the blue sky above.

"We should get back to the car."

"Jeep," I murmured, and he flashed a grin.

"Aye."

"I've lost my strength," I reminded him. "Something's changed and I need to figure out what."

"Yeah, I know someone who might help."

"Who?"

"You won't like him."

"How can you know that?"

"Because no one likes him." He laughed, and I gave him a quizzical look. He just shook that shaggy head. "I was gonna take him the box we found at Kennys so he could open it."

"A witch then?"

I definitely didn't want to meet any witches if I could avoid them.

"Warlock," he said, and I grimaced.

Great. That was worse.

We set off walking back towards the car, Jack keeping a respectful distance and leaving me to organise my thoughts. Not that there was much to organise. Everything remained stubbornly jumbled and I was so confused about my own situation, that I gave up and pushed all thoughts of it aside.

Instead, I wondered about the investigation.

A Witch would have been trouble. Unlike those who formed covens, the hedge-witches didn't necessarily have a large amount of power. Some of them were decent enough people, but most were absolute pricks who cared only about themselves.

They were hungry for power and wealth and were all too willing to use their magical gifts to gain more of both. Though, they were constrained by skill and the amount of magic they could control. Which is why the especially smart ones formed covens.

Not that that didn't come with risks and challenges of its own. A coven required a level of personal vulnerability that most witches wouldn't trust another with. Which is why most covens were family affairs and ruled with an iron fist.

Still, even a lone witch was trouble, and they could sniff out lies and falsehoods far easier even than a werewolf PI.

A Warlock was something else entirely.

Their power wasn't innate, like a witches was. Any power they had was barely enough to perform the rites and rituals that gave them access to a patron, a demonic being who would grant them a boon of powerful magic in exchange for a price.

From what I knew, the first bargain was fairly easy to make, and the price paid for the power was something small and easy to get. But the power granted was finite, and once it ran out, another bargain was needed to be made and the price to be paid was higher each time, until it reached the point where the only thing left to give, was the Warlock's own soul.

Considering what would happen to that soul, no sane person would make that deal.

I shivered at the thought.

"Let me just get dressed and we'll set off," Jack said as we stepped out of the trees and caught sight of the jeep at the bottom of the incline.

I glanced at him and managed a small grin of my own. "Don't rush on my behalf."

His laughter echoed through the trees and together we made our way down the hill. I climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep while Jack quickly dressed. He settled into the driver's seat and reached over to a cooler in the back and pulled out a can of coke which he passed to me.

It was cold and most welcome, and I smiled my thanks as I opened it and took a long drink.

"God, I needed that."

"Aye, me too," Jack agreed. He drank from his can and settled back into the seat. "Thanks, by the way."

"For what?"

"The chase." He smiled, eyes distant. "In wolf form, our instinct is to hunt. If I don't, I start to get a bit antsy."

Like I did when I didn't eat the flesh of the dead. I could understand that feeling at least, and we both faced the same problem if we didn't scratch that itch. Or did we?

I'd thought that without eating human flesh, I would become dangerous. Feral. Aggressive and violent, lashing out at anyone around me until I ate.

Father had warned me about not eating and what would happen if I ever entered that feral state. How the covens would come for me. Hunt me down. Kill me.

A soft sigh escaped me, and I sipped at the coke, allowing myself a moment to enjoy the cold beverage and a brief respite before I needed to return to the task at hand.

Hunting down a killer, who happened to be me, figuring out why I had lost my strength, and finally knowing what I was.

My life was a mess.

No matter how I looked at it, there wasn't a way for me to deflect the suspicion away from myself without implicating someone else. Which was a problem, considering Kenny's father, Marko, would likely rain down fiery retribution on anyone implicated.

"You didn't beat me to the stream," Jack said, finishing his drink. "But how about I buy you dinner anyway."

I glanced at him, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I cocked a brow at him. "I thought we were going to see the Gwiber?

He shrugged. "Tomorrow."

"What about finding Kenny?"

"He can wait." Another shrug as he started the jeep. "Man's a piece of shit anyway. If he's as dead as I hope he is, he'll wait."

The twist of his lips as he said that told me he meant what he said and that he truly didn't like Kenny. Which, considering what he'd told me, I could well understand.

"Why are you working so hard to find him?" I asked, curious.

"What do you mean?"

"You don't like the guy and he's an objectively terrible person who has done some truly evil things. Why are you even bothering to look for him?"

Jack was silent for a moment, chewing his lower lip as he considered his response. Finally, he glanced at me. "It's the job."

Just that.

I considered that for a little while as we drove away from Dalby Forest, and if I was honest with myself, I wasn't entirely happy with the answer. I understood it, sure, but I didn't like it.

In just the few days I'd known him, Jack had proven himself to be different to everything I'd ever read about werewolves. He was kind, compassionate and incredibly honourable.

Which meant it didn't sit right, the idea that he would take on any job he didn't want to do.

"No," I said, and he glanced at me again and then back at the road.

"What do you mean?"

"I don't believe it's just the job. There has to be another reason."

Again, he was silent, and I bit down on my lip to hold back from saying anything else, letting him think.

"York is neutral," he said, finally. "There's no coven here."

I knew that. It was one of the main reasons I'd chosen the city to hide in.

"They stay out because they know that people need a place free of their control. Somewhere all the rebellious types can gather and bitch about how evil the covens are, instead of actively causing problems, yeah?"

"Okay."

"Well, that only happens because there are no problems." He managed a quick smile. "What is the number one rule of the covens?"

"Don't expose the supernatural world," I said, by rote. It was drummed into every non-human child as soon as they were old enough to understand what it meant.

"Yes, and why do we have that rule?"

"Because despite the powers many of our community have, we wouldn't survive in a war with the humans. We lost once before, and it almost destroyed us all."

It did destroy many races. Not all of us survived and it had taken millennia to reach the point where we could exist in secret with everything about us being thought of as nothing more than myth and legend.

"Good," Jack said, nodding. "I think Kenny's dead, and to be honest, I don't give a shit about that. But, his dad does."

I thought about that and gave a small grunt of acknowledgement to what he hadn't said.

"You need to find who killed him and bring him in so Marko doesn't expose us trying to get revenge, right?"

"Yeah. That's it," Jack agreed. "Anyone in the city exposes us, and the covens will come in and crack down hard. They have too much to lose by being exposed. They will wipe this city off the map before they allow that to happen."

It would be a tough job explaining the destruction on an entire city of 130,000 people, but they could do it. Which was the scariest part of it all. The covens were that powerful, that integrated into the political and business sectors, that they could do it without arousing suspicion.

Plague, fire or flood. Some natural disaster that people wouldn't really be able to explain and would investigate. Not that it would matter. Funding would be cut, aid redirected, media manipulated and even government ministers and politicians coming out and reassuring the public it was a one-off disaster and wouldn't happen again.

A web of lies.

"So, you have to find Kenny's killer," I said, voice quiet. I couldn't help feeling a hollow pang in my chest at the idea.

"Yeah," Jack said. "And I will, too."

I glanced at him and managed to force a smile. I believed him. And that scared the hell out of me.