The Arena (14 page)

I
woke
up sore from the multitude of hits that April had landed on me with the escrima sticks. Even though they were padded, it still packed a nasty punch. We hadn’t even sparred for that long and I was in bad shape. What was it going to be like when we went full speed and she really started drilling me with those things? At some point, we were going to switch to the unpadded version, and I wasn’t looking forward to that at all. I was going to have to ask Marcus about healing spells at some point. On the bright side, so far she had been much gentler with me than Sarge had ever been. After the first few months, Sarge would really lay into me when I made a mistake. “Better in here than out there,” he would always say. “Out there when you make that kind of mistake, you wouldn’t be coming home.”

Tossing on my last pair of clean workout clothes, I headed for the door. It seemed like life sometimes devolved into a never-ending cycle of laundry. Clothes for two workout sessions a day and class didn’t wash themselves. Now wouldn’t that be a nice use for magic? I wondered if the credit card Mr. Stillman had set up for me would still work, and if it didn’t, how would I be able to ever purchase new clothes? I didn’t have any money or a job. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if it cost money to attend class here. It was kind of shocking that I hadn’t thought of it yet, but when you were on your third load of laundry in a week, it gave you extra time to ponder.

I realized that, outside of the savings from my summer job, I was out of money. Who knew if that money was even available? The police could have frozen it after my parents’ murders. Being the number-one suspect in what I thought of as unsolved homicide probably meant they had seized my funds and were tracking my cards. I would have to find someone to talk to about the money situation; I just wasn’t sure who would even handle something like that.

I felt my chest hitch before I knew what was coming. The sobs escaped me as I thought about the last moment I had seen my parents alive. Here I was thinking about myself and money, when I should have been thinking about how I could find their killer. What I was learning here would help, but at some point, I was going to have to track him down and make him pay for what he had done. There was no doubt in my mind that that was what I wanted to do.

I was sure that my parents would tell me to let the police handle it, but dead people didn’t get a vote, did they? I had never felt exceptionally charitable when it came to how rapists and murders were treated, so an eye-for-an-eye punishment seemed justifiable to me. Who knew when I would even be able to go back home. We were on lockdown for the semester, so I couldn’t even check out the local papers for information.

One thing that I knew for sure was that I missed them, and I wished they were still here. I was going to miss waking up on the weekends to hang out with my dad, and our family dinners. It’s funny how much you think you hate those things until you can never have them again. I could still see his face as he tried to get me to run. That was something that would stay with me forever. I knew if he was here today, my dad would tell me to focus on what I was doing now. That it was important, and that I would find time to deal with the rest later.
I miss you, Dad.

* * *

I
was putting together
my normal high-carb double breakfast burrito meal when Britta walked up. Since I sat in the front row in most of my classes, I didn’t get the chance to look at her as often as I would have liked. She had black hair cut in the trendy style where it was longer in the front than in the back so it framed her face. She was curvy and, well, in fantastic shape, almost everyone here was. She had bright blue eyes that made you want to stare into them for days. I might have been just a little bit smitten. Was smitten even a thing people felt anymore? All I knew was that since our chance meeting outside of the gym, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her.

She reached out and poked my bruised shoulder. “Humm, what have you been getting up to, Jackson?”

“Oh, just putting in a little more work on physical training. Somehow getting hit doesn’t seem to agree with me. It’s great to see you again, though. I had been hoping to run into you again.”

“Well, at least this time you didn’t knock me down, so that’s an improvement. Looks like your training partner really did a number on you.”

“It sure doesn’t help my ego much to admit I’m getting kicked around by a girl half my size. I mean if the guys at my old school would have seen it, I’d never have been able to live it down. Just an FYI for later, if you plan on stepping in the ring with April, she is a monster.”

Britta looked over my shoulder. I assumed she had spotted April and was thinking of how I let the smallest person in class kick the crap out of me. “I can see that,” she murmured. “Before I go, let me give you a little something.”

As she stepped closer to me, I felt my heart begin to race. She smelled faintly of wildflowers. Seriously, how was that even possible? I felt a hand cover my bruise, and three seconds later, the bruise was gone. Britta had just healed my shoulder, something that would have normally taken days or weeks to go away on its own.

She gave me a warm smile. “You should really go and see one of the healers every so often. Granted, if you don’t like going to the infirmary, you could always swing by my room and I could help you out with those bruises. I’m pretty sure I’m just down the hall from you in room 307.”

“I’m thinking of ways that I can hurt myself right now.” Wait, did I say that out loud? Shit. Real smooth, Jackson, real smooth.

“Well, try not to do anything to that face,” she said, and ran a finger down my cheek before walking away.

I watched as she walked across the cafeteria to go and sit with her friends. Man, I loved watching her walk away. I started to wonder, was I going to man up and stop by her room? Maybe I could have April hit me hard again tonight and I could just swing by. I knew she was friends with Ted’s girlfriend, and that made me a little bit wary that I was being set up for something. In fact, they were sitting together and talking right now.

Britta caught me staring and winked at me. Damn, even if it was a trap, she was so hot, it was worth the risk. What was the worst Ted could do to me, anyway? Blondie probably didn’t even have it in him to beat someone up without some help from his friends. I was going to have to think about it, but for now, it was time for more important things. Now it was time to feed the ravenous beast that lived inside of me. Now it was time to eat.

I tried to wipe the goofy grin off of my face as I headed over to join Marcus and April. I didn’t know that they knew each other, so I was surprised to see them sitting together. Did I have two friends now? That was a two-hundred-percent increase in a week. From the looks of it, they knew each other pretty well. They were deep in conversation as I approached the table. For the first time, I noticed that they weren’t sitting alone. I know, I wasn’t so great with situational awareness yet. I hadn’t seen anyone new to the academy since I arrived. Granted, with my lack of observational skills, that didn’t mean much, but I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to find out.

I sat down at the table, and everyone stopped talking. If that started happening regularly, it was going to give me a complex. “Don’t stop talking on my account.”

“It wasn’t that, bro,” Marcus said. “We were just talking about the best way to fill you in on what just happened.”

Were they talking about me and Britta? I mean, it might have been odd to see me talking with a girl, but it couldn’t have been that odd. Right? “So what’s up?”

Marcus gave April a look before meeting my eyes. “So the twins here just told us that the Council has decided to stop supporting the academy.” Marcus said it with a shrug, almost as if he had been expecting it to happen.

April looked furious, and the twins were oddly excited. For the next few seconds, the rest of the world faded away. Did that mean they were going to close the academy? I didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was like a cruel joke. Oh, you have this gift, and we are going to show you just enough of our world so that you can’t ever go back to being normal again. And then, wham, guess what, we are going to take it all away from you.

I started to come back around as I realized Marcus had stopped talking and was just staring at me. “Sorry, I zoned out for a second. What were you saying?”

“Yeah, bro, I thought you were going to lose it there for a minute. Anyway, the Council, in their infinite wisdom, has decided that the way Adam runs the academy is not to their liking. They feel like he is keeping too much of the top talent for the Ascendancy, and when they started to feel the power shifting again, they decided to make a move. None of us are sure exactly what happened, but Adam used to run the Council. He left for America back in the 1700s and has never really acknowledged the Council’s rule since he left. Something big happened about eighteen years ago, but no one talks about it. We were all just saying, today probably had something to do with that.”

I put down my burrito; the chances of it surviving this meal just went up tenfold. My stomach did a little flip flop. What was I going to do? My mind tried to shift me away from the brink of a breakdown. What was going to happen to this little lost burrito, let alone its friend resting on the other side of my tray? Maybe I could run them over to my fridge before class, and help them find a way into their home in my belly later. I mean, I wouldn’t want to be responsible from taking a burrito away from its home.

My mind finally stopped spinning enough that I could pull myself back into the moment. “Ok, so the Council has this big beef with Adam. Why support the academy at all?”

“Well, the Council has wanted a stronger presence in the US for some time, but Adam has always opposed them. They have a pretty good hold on the East Coast, while Adam controls the West. So there is some friction there. The biggest thing that I have heard is that Adam thinks that Demons are coming back to this world. He wants to form an alliance with some of the Pretenders to make sure we can defeat them when they do. The first group he reached out to was the Lycans. Rumor has it he worked closely with them when founding the Ascendancy.”

I almost choked on my juice. “Wait, he wants to work with the werewolves?” Then my brain just slipped into my next thought like someone ice skating for the first time. It was abrupt and then slammed to the forefront of my mind with a hideous crash. “Wait, are there really Demons?”

April cut in. “I’ve seen a Demon. That is why I came to the academy. I needed to know that if there were more of them, that someone was doing something to stop them.”

Marcus gave her a look as his mouth dropped open in stunned silence. The silence didn’t last long. “I’ve only heard stories,” he said in a hushed tone. Marcus turned to me. “The Ascendancy used to work with the Lycans. All of that came crashing to a halt around the time we were born. No one knows exactly what happened. The Council and the Ascendancy have kept a pretty tight lid on it. But we have always had a love-hate relationship with the werewolves. They like to handle everything in house. Sometimes that isn’t good enough. Now they teach us how to hunt and kill them.”

I knew better than to think that anything April told me wasn’t true. She was kind of a serious person, and if she said it with that much fire in her eyes, then I knew every word she spoke was true. If she said she had seen a Demon, then Demons were real. ”So what? For them it comes down to a difference in philosophy, or beliefs?”

Marcus’s expression turned serious again. “Worse than that, Jackson. It comes down to power, pure and simple. Adam seems to be right, and the Council is working hard to make sure the word doesn’t get out. They want to make sure they control the Gifted on both sides of the ocean. No questions asked.”

This time I shoved my tray to the side. It seemed like those burritos were safe after all. There was no way I was going to be eating now. I hated the political machine. Sometimes when things were right and just, they had to get done no matter the cost. Bickering over who controlled what when Demons were real just seemed like a waste of time. This was serious, and it had far-reaching consequences for everyone.

I wondered how long I could survive outside with no money. With so many things outside of these walls that were more than happy to kill one of the Gifted, what would I do if the academy closed and all my friends went home? “So what does that mean for us?”

Marcus let out his first smile since we had started talking. “Well, that brings us to the twins. This is Tamara and Tim Kinju. They just got to the academy today. They were telling us that Adam sent out the word to bring back dedicated trade skills to the academy, something they haven’t done since the Ascendancy operated purely outside of the Council’s view.”

Tim jumped into the conversation for the first time. “My grandfather used to work for Adam during the early years of the Ascendancy. He said it was always his greatest honor to know that he crafted weapons to help the Ascended slay Demons.”