Read Online Once In a Blue Moon by Simon R. Green - Free Book Online Page A

disengaged, and fell back several steps. He was gasping for breath, and soaked in sweat, and hardly had enough strength left to raise his axe. He still had some fight left in him—everyone could see that—but he knew he was outclassed. He lowered his axe, and bowed his head to Hawk, who bowed briefly in return. He was breathing hard too, but he hadn’t lost that disturbing grin.
    “You’ll do,” said Hawk. He put his axe away and resumed his seat on the dais. Fisher smiled at him fondly.
    “Show-off.”
    “They get faster every year,” murmured Hawk. “Nearly got me, several times. But I’ve still got the moves.”
    Guards led the young axeman away, to begin his new life as a student of the Academy. He was smiling dazedly, as though he couldn’t quite believe it. He got a round of good-natured applause from the crowd.
    A quite ordinary-looking teenage girl shuffled forward next, and professed herself a witch, in a quiet, mumbly voice. No one even suspected she was a Seductress, until she mouthed a few words and suddenly every man in the hall was in lust with her. And not a few women. The smell of musk was heavy on the close air, and everyone’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the still very ordinary-looking young woman, as though she was the most splendid thing they’d ever seen. She laughed happily, turned to Hawk, and hit him with everything she had.
    “Aren’t I lovely?” she said breathily. “I think I belong here, in this silly little school, don’t you? In fact, I think I should be running it. Don’t you?”
    She was quite taken aback when Hawk laughed at her, not unkindly. And just like that the spell was broken, and all the spectators in the hall shook their heads in bewilderment, as though they’d just had a bucket of cold water thrown in their faces. They looked at the ordinary teenager and wondered what they’d ever seen in her. There were a few angry murmurs, cut off when Hawk glared at the crowd before giving his full attention to the Seductress.
    “You’ve certainly got one hell of a gift,” he said cheerfully. “And there is a place here for you, if you want it. But listen to me, young lady, and be warned: you ever pull that trick again, outside of your supervised classes, and you will be expelled.”
    “And we’ll cut your tongue out before we let you go,” Fisher said flatly. “Lily, if you would . . .”
    “She is a one, isn’t she?” said Lily, stepping down from the dais. “But I think she’s more Richard and Jane’s sort. You come with me, dear, and I’ll escort you to the tantric people. Sink or swim, that’s what I always say.”
    She led the Seductress away, while the young girl was still trying to make up her mind as to whether she’d got what she wanted.
    A young man stepped out of the crowd, at the Administrator’s instruction, and stood diffidently before the dais. He too looked pretty ordinary. He wore rough peasant clothes, he didn’t carry a sword, and he didn’t have the look of magic about him.
    “I’m a shape-shifter,” he said quietly, his eyes downcast. “I’m Christopher Scott, of the Forest Kingdom. I . . . change shape.”
    “You’re a werewolf?” said Hawk.
    “Not a werewolf, sir, no,” said Scott, still not raising his eyes from the floor. “I’m a were demon. You must have heard, sir, that back in the day, during the Demon War, when demons broke out of the Darkwood and roamed the Forest Land, they didn’t always kill their victims. Some of them were human enough that they . . . wanted human women. Raped them. That was what happened to my grandmother, when she was still just a girl. I am descended from a demon. I can . . . change, back and forth. And when the moon is full, I change whether I want to or not.”
    Hawk and Fisher looked at each other for a long moment. Hawk looked suddenly older. “No,” he said finally. “I hadn’t heard.”
    “Show us,” said Fisher.
    Scott bobbed his head quickly. He looked around