The Excalibur Chronicles: Camelot Rising

Chapter Five - Unexpected Changes

A/N: Sorry for such a long wait - it's been a busy couple of weeks and I just wasn't happy with this chapter. I'm still not but I need to remind myself over and over that it's just the first draft! Hope you enjoy...

Dedicated to ValeriBeatrix for the great comments! Thank you for sticking with the story! :)

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CHAPTER FIVE - UNEXPECTED CHANGES

Adam stared open mouthed at Veronica in the dim tunnel. "You killed it."

Veronica snapped her head towards him with an incredulous look on her face. "Of course I killed it - what did you think was going to happen? A handshake and a cup of tea? Those things are relentless. You should just be grateful it ended relatively cleanly."

He didn't answer; his knees went wobbly and he put his hands on his thighs to steady them. Looking at her and what was left of the tube station, he didn’t think that the altercation could be described as clean. "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Don't be so dramatic."

"Well excuse me for being a little squeamish," Adam retorted. "I've never seen anyone stab someone through the chest with a sword before!"

Veronica rolled her eyes in reply.

Righting himself, Adam took deep breaths. His hands were shaking, hard, and he didn’t think it was just because of the adrenaline let down. “What is going on? What was that thing?”

“That thing was a skin-walker - a shapeshifter. They can take the form of anything they desire. As for what’s going on, it was sent to kill you while you were incapacitated after drawing the sword in the park. A dirty trick,” she added, “trying to kill a man while he’s down. But skin-walkers aren’t known for being a particularly chivalrous race of creatures.”

Adam nodded, letting her words wash over him. They did nothing to calm his nerves. He tried not to linger to long on the idea that there might be other races of creatures besides skin-walkers. He cleared his throat, the noise echoing in the tunnel.

“And who’s the King?” he asked, dreading the answer, even if he knew he had to ask. “The King you mentioned.”

Veronica glanced up through her fringe, stringy now from sweat, and raised an eyebrow. “You are.”

“Me?” He tried not to laugh but it was so utterly ridiculous he couldn’t help it. It came out more like a wheeze. “King of what, exactly?”

“Of England, Protector of the Realm, the Once and Future King, etc etc. I don’t have time for all the titles right now.”

He put his hands out like she was a child that he needed to talk down from doing something dangerous, like torching a classmate’s desk. “Okay, you’re clearly…not from around here. You obviously believe in what you’re saying, wholeheartedly. But England has a monarch. Queen Elizabeth the Second. She’s been doing a pretty bang up job so far.”

“Stop talking to me like I’m insane. I’m not talking in a literal sense. I’m talking about-” Her words were lost in a wince. She looked down and moved the shreds of her shirt away to examine her wound properly.

“You’re still bleeding.”

“I know,” she said, but he noticed that she sounded somewhat surprised. Sure enough, when he looked she was looking at the blood on her fingers with a puzzled look, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. In the end, she wiped her hand on her trouser leg.

“We should get out of here. Train tracks are hardly the place to have this conversation and I think I might need medical attention of some sort.”