2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 (8 page)

BOOK: 2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5
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“To find out if it was possible. If I could come here on my own without him finding out.” He smiled into the darkness, at something I couldn’t see. “So that next time we’ll make better use of our time.”

“Next time? What next time?” Did he have a head injury too? “And who is he?”

This boy with gifted blood dropped to his heels. “Someone very unpleasant. Someone I hope you never have to meet.” Abigail streaked through the darkness and butted against his knee. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to petting her as if he was the one being stroked. I sighed heavily. Like it or not, Abigail had become our supernatural barometer. If it was weird and she liked it, it was probably going to stick around for a while. The universe had screwed things up with Abigail. Instead of being the cat that someone brought home, she was the cat who brought creatures home.  “What is my brother’s cat doing in my dream?”

He cracked a contented eye. “Actually, this is my dream. I’ve just pulled you into it. And even in the Dreamtime, cats do what they damn well please.”

I smiled a little, at that. “Why should they be any different in dreams, right?”

He smiled back, laughter bubbling up for the first time. But it softened into something else. Something that reminded me I stood in my living room in my pajamas with a boy who was not my boyfriend.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, jumping up. I remembered Mrs. Alice’s Foretelling. Three is never balanced. When he touched my elbow, I jumped.

“I need to get back to bed,” I said.

“Of course.” He turned back to the record player. “Just wait for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?” I watched as he selected another record and slipped it carefully from its sleeve.
The Strangest Colored Lights
. A favorite. Of course he’d have to have good taste in music. Way to go, Caspia.

“I’m a Dreamwalker. It’s one of my gifts. I’d prefer to put you back to sleep myself, rather than have you go back in your bedroom.” He changed vinyl carefully, breathing deeply as if smelling something delicious when the music began to play.

I’ll bet you would, I thought. “Why?” I asked out loud.

“Most people don’t react well to the sight of their own motionless bodies. It’s rather like looking at your corpse.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of an objection to that. I didn’t want to see my almost-corpse, or Ethan’s either, for that matter.

The ink of his tattoos shimmered in the faint blue light that enveloped the rest of him. “You haven’t run into a friend of mine, by any chance?” he asked casually. He might as well have been asking for the salt and pepper, his tone was so deadpan. “A bald man carrying a sword wrapped in a leather jacket?”

“Um, no.” I tried to suppress the laughter and failed. “Nope, definitely not. Even in Whitfield, word of something like that would get around.”

“You’re serious.” He raised a single black eyebrow in my direction before turning his back to look at records again.

That’s when I saw it: a long, deep gouge across his back, like a single huge claw had taken a swipe at him.

“Oh my God,” I swore softly. I found myself right against him, my hands on either side of the gouge. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but still… “What would… uh. Wow. Let me put something…”

He tensed under my hands. “When a Hellhound takes a swipe at you, the wound pretty much cauterizes itself.” He spun under my hands, his dark eyes bright with sharp silver shards. “Besides, this is just a dream. Remember?”

He had a symbol inked over his heart, something familiar, if I just tried a little harder to place it… It was the last thing I saw before my alarm woke me to one of the worst headaches of my life.

Chapter Eight:

Unwelcome Substitutions

They say one of the first signs of serious addiction is lying about your habit and hiding the evidence.

Unfortunately for me, Logan decided to take my coffee away the morning of one of the worst hangovers of my life. He gave me an innocent, puppy-eyed look when I accused him of trying to teach me a lesson. “But Caspia,” he said smugly, handing me a mug of healthy green tea. “Your body needs anti-oxidants and rehydration. Coffee does the opposite.”

Even if my head didn’t feel like it had been colonized by evil elves with pick axes and a brass band, I needed my early morning caffeine fix more than ever. I had a brutal schedule this semester, including back-to-back studio classes and three lecture series. As luck would have it, the most boring class of all was also my earliest. I needed coffee. How else was I supposed to get through it?

I smiled grimly at the gigantic Styrofoam gas station Big Gulp cradled against my forearm. As long as no one came up and sniffed, it would fool everyone into thinking I’d suddenly developed a healthy appetite for sodas. I didn’t have a problem. I just needed coffee to stay awake in class and deal with one tiny hangover. I could quit anytime.

“Images of Art in Literature” was a core class at Andreas Academy. Close to one hundred of us sat, in various stages of sleep and boredom, throughout the campus’ largest auditorium. Mrs. Kenner taught the class, just as she had for the last twenty years. She was a kind but unenthusiastic teacher who gave her lectures in a pleasant monotone. The cushy auditorium seating, dim lighting, early hour, and soothing lecture voice all combined to give her class the nickname “Organized Group Sleep.”

Amberlyn was my only fellow sufferer in this class, and she was late, as usual. Mrs. Kenner was too, which was highly unusual. If she didn’t show up soon, I was going to sink into blessed sleep before she even called my name for the roll. My phone buzzed against my hip. I had just enough time to scan the first few lines of Logan’s text when a freesia-scented arm knocked me on the back of my already-pounding head. My phone came perilously close to knocking over my forbidden, and therefore valuable, coffee.

Amberlyn, predictably. “Looking for this?” she teased, her spiral curls twisted into a messy bunch at the nape of her neck.

“Is that a paintbrush holding your hair together?” It hurt to look up, even though the light was dim. “I hope it’s paint free.”

She rolled her eyes as she slid into the desk next to mine. “I hope that’s not coffee in a Big Gulp cup,” she countered, tossing my phone at me. “Not only is that just sad, but coffee in Styrofoam? Nasty, Caspia. It’s got to be carcinogenic, or bad for the ozone layer, or something.”

“What isn’t?” I muttered. “Besides, even if it was, which I’m not admitting to, by the way, how else am I supposed to stay awake in here? Logan thinks he can cut off my coffee supply, and Mrs. Kenner is really late. I need it. Don’t tell, please?” Amberlyn shook her head at my pleading whine. The rest of the class had become restless, checking their watches and openly using cell phones. “Isn’t there a time limit when we get to leave or something?”

“I don’t know,” Amberlyn said, a tiny crease appearing between her golden-green eyes. “I heard that was just an urban legend. I know Dr. Christian gave an entire class zeroes when they tried to pull that once.”

“Yeah, but he’s evil,” I countered, reaching for the Big Gulp. What the hell, I was already busted. I took a deep sip and winced. Coffee and Styrofoam really did taste terrible together.

Amberlyn pulled a sheet of iridescent blue paper from somewhere and began to make tiny folds with the precision of an open-heart surgeon. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Temperamental often goes along with genius, right?” I stared at her in shock. The blue paper rapidly took on the dimensions of some kind of flower. “Do you have any classes with him this semester?”

I choked down the acrid, lukewarm coffee. “Um. You know this one already. The gods have smiled on me for once. So no. Remember?”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “Oh, right. Forgot. Sorry.” Her slim caramel-colored fingers made faster and tinier folds. All around us, students shifted in their seats and grumbled.

Suddenly, the back of my neck started to tingle. I wondered if this was some hangover symptom I’d never heard of before. The door to the left of the far podium flew open violently, exactly as if it had been kicked. Students, many roused from the brink of sleep, shifted uneasily around me.

When Dr. Christian came storming in instead of mild mannered Mrs. Kenner, I almost dropped my coffee.

Oh, hell, I had time to think before he took the stage and glared straight at me.

***

I don’t know how he managed to single me out so immediately amongst all those students in that auditorium, but the second his hands clutched the podium and he turned to face us, I felt as if the room melted away and it was nothing but the two of us alone in a very dark universe.

I clutched my coffee, dimly aware that I was crushing it, but strangely unable to move. The class had come fully alive at his presence, as if they’d suddenly been given a wonderful treat. I could hear them buzzing at the edge of my hearing, like the soothing drone of insects on a pleasant summer afternoon. Only it wasn’t a pleasant summer afternoon. It was an awful gray morning and I should be drowsing peacefully through a power point lecture on ancient Egyptian tomb relics or cave paintings in France. Instead, Dr. Christian pinned me with his awful blue eyes until I had to remind myself to breathe.

“I am sorry to bring you all very sad news,” he announced. “Mrs. Kenner has been the victim of a very serious incident.” My classmates, especially the female ones, responded with an appropriate amount of rapt sympathy. Amberlyn was strangely quiet beside me, her origami flower forgotten. I could only stare at the impossibly attractive professor with growing horror. “She was brutally attacked in her home last evening. Whoever did it has not been caught and is presumably still a danger.”

Brutally attacked? In Whitfield? The only crime we ever had was the occasional act of petty vandalism. His words seemed even less plausible than the presence of angels and demons and tattooed Nephilim descendents. Blood roared in my ears. I fought the urge to bolt for the safety of my warded apartment and Ethan’s arms.

A girl with brown hair secured into a messy ponytail hesitantly raised her hand. Dr. Christian nodded sharply down at her, giving her permission to speak. “Will she be all right, sir? Do you know?”

Dr. Christian managed to look both grave and dismissive at the same time. “I do not, Tabitha, but your concern is touching.” Messy-haired Tabitha turned bright tomato red at this praise and ducked her head in her hands. Those sitting near her clutched at her arm, either in support, or to absorb some of Dr. Christian’s magnetic attention by osmosis.

I felt sick. I thought I had escaped this last semester. Not only was he back, but his charm seemed stronger than ever. Why was I immune to it? Why wasn’t everyone else as horrified by the news he brought as I was? I realized my fingers had curled around the edges of my desk. Maybe Dr. Christian was just filling in temporarily. Oh, please, I silently begged the universe.

My hopes and my stomach plummeted when he announced, “I will be filling in for Mrs. Kenner until she recovers.” Dr. Christian smiled, slow and brittle. “I am afraid that means I may be with you all semester.”

The buzz of approval swelled around me. What was wrong with these people? Mrs. Kenner was a sweet old lady who’d been with the school for ages. And Dr. Christian was… if not evil, then at least wrong on many levels.

“So generous of him,” I heard a girl whisper.

“Far beneath him, to take a class on this level,” another added.

What the hell? A surge of hot anger shot through me as my shallow, traitorous classmates whispered excitedly around me. Excited, because Mrs. Kenner was so badly hurt she wouldn’t be with us for the rest of the semester.

I felt myself standing without any conscious intention of doing so. My classmates noticed me, and one by one the noise began to subside. Dr. Christian waited until everyone was silent before singling me out. “Miss Chastain? You have something to say?”

“Um, yes actually.” Was that hostility I saw in my classmate’s eyes, or was I just being paranoid? I dragged my gaze back to Dr. Christian’s plastic perfection. “What about Mrs. Kenner, sir? Do you know anything more about her condition?” The silence was somehow more deafening than all the noise had been. I angled my body and pitched my voice so it would carry across the darkened auditorium, appealing directly to the students now. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” I was about to suggest we take up a collection for her family, or send flowers or something, but his flashing blue eyes stopped my thoughts right in their tracks. Eyes so blue could not be natural; concepts like ocean and sky slid right off them like oil on Teflon. I thought, instead, of jungle predators in the dark, just before they consumed their prey. My breathing was labored and slow. I couldn’t remember what I had been about to say.

“Miss Chastain is an idealist.” His voice was at once loud enough to carry across the entire auditorium and soft enough to feel like an intimate whisper right beside my ear. “She sees injustice, and wants to act against it. Admirable.” The class tittered. “Mrs. Kenner was an unfortunate victim, attacked by dark and terrible forces against which she had no defense. It’s a sad fact that most individuals have little or no defense, should those same dark and terrible forces,” he strode to the very edge of the podium, “choose to strike at them. Do you understand, Miss Chastain?”

What the hell? I staggered back, hitting the edge of my desk with my thighs. All I meant was that we should send her a fruit basket or something. He was treating me like I’d suggested a vigilante mob start stringing up random citizens. I tried again to make myself understood. “That may be true,” I heard myself say. “But surely we can do something. Mrs. Kenner has been a teacher here for years and years. She is one of us.” An instinct I didn’t analyze made me put a slight but distinct emphasis on the last three words.
One of us
. Dr. Christian’s finely arched eyebrows shot up. “Or else…”

“Or else what?” he echoed softly, almost mockingly. “It is comforting to think we can somehow protect the ones we love from all harm, Miss Chastain, but it is naïve. A child’s comfort.” The class shrunk to waves of noise around me, rising and receding like ripples in a smooth pond, pelted with stones.

BOOK: 2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5
5.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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