Death's Academy (3 page)

Magnificus clears his throat, and I snap back to my current situation.

“Oh, yes, your Reapless is at the same time as ours this year. I forgot. That was some nasty business up north.” Magnificus slides his hand through his perfect hair. “By the way, have there been any meaningful arrests made?”

“You know I can’t tell you that, Magnificus. I’ll say this, our plates might be full for some time.”

“Hmm. Very well then, let’s schedule for when we all get back,” he replies.

“Can’t do that either. According to statute 379, you only have one week to give testimony or the charges can’t be prosecuted,” Demien says while opening the door to his ebony black coach and heaving me into the backseat. “This is a real unfortunate incident. I was looking forward to the Reapless this year, and I can only imagine how much you were looking forward to it too. But you know how those pesky rules can be.” I just notice a slight smile jump across his lips. “I imagine we’ll be seeing you in a couple weeks then, Magnificus?”

Demien shuts the door behind me and then opens his own door to hop in.

“Wait! Wait, Demien!” he calls out, rushing forward.

This time I’m not imagining it; Demien has a real smile plastered across his face.

“What is it, Magnificus? I’m in a hurry. Lots and lots of paperwork to do.”

Magnificus comes up short and rubs his hands together with a look of consternation on his face.

“You know, Demien, I guess there was no harm done. If you can promise me that he will get a harsh talking-to and any other punishments you can dole out, without, of course, any further involvement from me, I would consider the matter closed,” he says.

“Really?” Demien asks.

“Yes, yes.” Magnificus replies and then turns to me. “Just make sure you don’t come slinking around this neighborhood again, boy, and we’ll consider it all forgotten.”

I nod several times. If I never see this part of town again, I’ll be the happiest hoodie this side of the river Styx.

“You’re the boss, Magnificus,” Demien says, and the coach lurches forward.

I’m thrown back into my seat, and my skull hits the hard leather headrest. I grimace and squint in pain at
my surroundings. It’s a typical Sickle coach, an unholy union between an eighteenth-century horse-drawn hearse and a station wagon. Certainly not the most becoming of vehicles, and it leaves a sour impression upon those that see it.

In the interior, iron bars extend from the roof to the floor, dividing the prisoners from the driver and crisscrossing over the windows. The seats are made from some type of animal hide dyed the color of pitch and smoothed from centuries of use.

We zoom around a corner and barely dodge a shorty school bus parked on the side of the road. The kids press their faces and “ooh” and “aah” at us as we race pass them with the siren blaring. You see, to you shorties, our vehicles look just like your everyday motorcycle, truck, or—in this case—police car.

It’s all part of the big inoculation. Our dark world is all around you, but you’ve been “immunized” so you can’t recognize it for what it really is. To you, what looks like a cement truck might actually be a spike-covered chariot carpooling a group of hoodies to work, or it may just be a cement truck. That’s the beauty of it—you’ll never know. To you, it looks like a cement truck, and it sounds like a cement truck—heck, it even smells like a cement truck.

How did we do it? Have you ever eaten a piece of chocolate, licked an ice cream cone, guzzled a soda, or, for you real weirdos, ever muscled down a brussels sprout? If so, then you’ve been immunized. We put a special concoction into those foods and countless
others that numb three percent of your brain. Why else do you think babies cry all the time? You would too if you saw all of this crazy stuff around you.

With each turn, I skip across the backseat and slam into the iron bars with a clank.

“Ouch! Take it easy,” I protest.

Demien glances over his shoulder at me and smirks.

“Just because the halo isn’t pressing charges doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, kid,” he says, and then takes the next turn even sharper than before.

This time I think my backside actually takes flight, and I hit not only my head, but also my kneecap on the iron bars.

“Come on! That really hurts!” I yell.

Demien’s smirk widens into a grin, but he seems to be placated. He doesn’t take the next turn quite so fast. He peers into his rearview mirror and squints at me.

“Why do you look familiar? You gotten in trouble before?” he asks.

“No. I mean, I’ve been grounded before by my mom, but I’ve—”

Demien slaps the steering wheel triumphantly.

“I recognize you. I saw you in the paper. You’re the roller for the under-twelve skull ball team,” he says. “I saw you play last month. You’re really good.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I say, and a small grin crosses my face.

“So, what’s your name, kid?”

“Midnight, but everyone calls me Night,” I reply.

“And your last name?”

I bury my chin into my chest and whisper,
“Smith.” I try to change the subject. “Where are you taking me?”

“To the Lock,” he says.

My heart sinks. You guessed it. The Lock is our jail.

Demien turns in his seat and glances at me over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t happen to be Obsidian Smith’s son would you?”

I lower my head even lower and nod.

“Ouch,” he says and a flash of pity wipes across his face. “Well, you’re going to hang out at the Lock until your parents come down and answer a couple of questions.”

“My parents don’t know anything. I snuck out,” I plead.

“So how did you get the details on our friendly Mr. Chipmunk, then?” he asks.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat and stare at my shoes. “I just picked an old-looking chipmunk.”

Demien snorts, and on the next turn he cranks the wheel so hard our tires screech around the corner.
Clang!
My head slams into the iron bars.

I look down and see I have grown an extra set of hands and legs. In fact, I have two of everything.

“You lie to me one more time, and I’ll drive us over to Cutback Canyon,” he says.

I shake my head and take a deep breath. “My Aunt Dementia. She’s a chipmunk, squirrel, and bushytailed hare Death. She was over at my house for dinner the other night. I snuck a peek at her schedule for this week. There was a chipmunk due to be knocked off
and it was close by, so I wrote down the details. I have my exam coming up, and I don’t have a benefactor. I thought I would be doing her a favor,” I say with what I feel is my best downtrodden voice.

He frowns back at me. “Her schedule had Fluffy on it?” he asks.

“Well, kind of,” I reply.

“Kind of?”

“Before I could get all the info from her schedule, my mom came into the room. I knew when and where, but I wasn’t sure which chipmunk. So I came to the park and looked around. When I discovered the chipmonster—I mean, Fluffy—I just assumed it was him. Did you get a look at him? He has one foot in the grave, and he is probably the most hideous creature on the planet. I was sure it was him,” I say.

“So you came to the park hoping you would find the right chipmunk, which you didn’t, and then you were just going to wing it?” Demien asks.

My bruised ego rumbles to life and I bark. “No, I had a plan! It would have worked too, if it wasn’t for that stupid falcon.”

“I gotta hear this,” Demien says.

I give him a dirty look. If he could read minds, he would be able to charge me with a couple more crimes.

“I told the falcon to drop a cactus branch on the southeast corner of the tree. The cactus would have broken through the leaves and hit the hedgehog.”

“The hedgehog?” Demien asks.

“He was on the opposite side of the trunk from the chip-monster. His back was turned so he would have
gotten pricked on the butt by the cactus thorn. He and the chip-monster hate each other; I figured that out while casing the scene yesterday. The hedgehog would have assumed it was the chip-monster playing a prank on him, charged the chip-monster, and pushed him into …”

For some reason, when I was planning everything out in my head, it seemed a lot cooler than it does now that I’m saying it out loud. I make what I think is a wise decision and shut up.

Demien shakes his head and gives me one of those looks that you reserve for when a dog bites its own tail or a toddler spins too many times and falls flat on his face.

“Figures. Like father, like son,” Demien says.

My stomach lurches, and I become very interested in a speck of dirt on my tennis shoe. No matter where I go, my last name has been there before.

I have seen the Lock several times in my life, but only from the outside. That has always been good
enough for me. I’ve heard horror stories of what goes on inside there that would make you have a complete, simultaneous system evacuation. Yep, I’m talking about the big three—whizzing, dumping, and puking all at once. It’s not a pretty sight, believe me.

I’m able to keep control of my stomach, bladder, and bowels, but just barely. We pull around to the back of the Lock, and the pronged gate rattles to life, swinging open to let us in. We drive into the cobblestone courtyard, and Demien stops the coach in front of a tombstone-shaped speaker.

A microphone shrieks, and a gruff voice spits out, “Identify.”

“Demien Harris with detainee,” Demien says.

The earth in front of us begins to quake and a road-way collapses into complete darkness. We pull forward and start to descend. Within moments it’s nearly pitch black. I almost lose control of two of the big three.

“Illuminate,” Demien says.

Torches all around us ignite, and a spacious underground garage comes into view. Crudely chiseled stone columns extend off in every direction like massive dominoes. Demien parks next to a handful of other coaches and pulls me out of the back by the crook of my arm. He walks us through a pair of arches made from the skulls of creatures I don’t recognize and into a narrow tunnel.

Demien notices my curiosity.

“Manticore, griffin, and unicorn skulls. These are from the first great war,” he says.

“Unicorns? Aren’t they extinct?” I ask.

“Of course. But this was their ancestral land. This city we live in was built on the ashes of their ancient capital,” he says.

“Really?”

Demien gives me a shove from behind, and I stumble forward.

“This isn’t a school field trip. Keep moving,” he says.

We follow the tunnel until we reach three sets of sharpened iron gates. Demien reaches into his pocket and pulls out his gazer. He swipes it in front of a black orb protruding from the wall and whispers something unintelligible. The gates open in rackety succession.

He gives me another shove, and we pass through the gates. I can hear them clanging closed behind me. Each thunderous lock makes my stomach do a cart-wheel. As we continue down the torch-lit tunnel, a steady roar of movement and voices crescendo. We pass through one last skull archway, and an enormous room opens before my eyes.

The room easily has to be the size of a football field. The domed ceiling is decorated with hundreds of thousands of pieces of uniquely cut stained glass. I gaze up at them trying to see some pattern or cohesion, but I can’t make anything out. Dozens of tarnished chandeliers dangle from the ceiling. Their candles flicker and waver back and forth. Below them hang waxy stalactites.

Sickles are bustling all about. Some of them are leading prisoners in front of them; others carry teetering stacks of paperwork from one desk to another. We swerve and dodge the traffic until we reach a wide
U-shaped desk where an equally wide, sour-faced woman glares at me over her sixty-two-ounce diet drink and pile of Twinkie wrappers.