Betrayal: An Urban Fantasy Academy Series

by Bob Dattolo

  “It depends. When I’m fighting off tasting some blood? I try not to. It’s literally the only thing stopping me from getting out of this bed and having some fun. I had some fun earlier and one big fucking dragon died and two ran away and owe me money. I could go for a bit more fun. So my rambling? No, I don’t shut up when I’m using it to build a gigantic fucking wall that my rage is banging against right now.”

  The scent of fear wafted from her side of the room, and the girls in the bathroom were rushing through more of what’s happening.

  “You…you don’t scare me!”

  A silence spell went around me as I hopped out of bed and shifted. The room’s pretty much pitch black, or at least damn close to it, so she didn’t see me approach and spread my wings. Nor did she see me lean in and spread my much larger hands and massive claws. Not until the silence spell went out and fire lit up around me, rippling up my skin and pooling in my eyes, “Boo!”

  She screamed bloody murder and tried to push herself away from me into the wall on the other side of her bed. Piss began spraying everywhere, which is hard to do since she just peed. Loud, long peels of torturous screams came from her as I left the fire up, rippling across me as I flared my wings wider and stood, lowering my claws.

  “I rest my case.”

  She continued screaming as I returned to my bed, shifting back to human again, and climbing in. She can deal with her own piss, although she is a water mage and should be able to handle that once she gets ahold of herself.

  At this point, the screams broke down into hysterical crying. Just in time for the pounding at the door and the demands to be let in.

  “Come in, Tiffany.”

  The magic of the door let it be wrenched open, with light spilling in from the hall and every nearby student standing there as Tiffany rushed in to look around. “What the fuck happened in here?”

  Eva lunged out of bed and wrapped herself around Tiffany, still hysterical.

  The fire dragon kicked my bed, “I’m talking to you!” Rage is riding a little strong on her, and her skin is roiling as she fights shifting.

  “I didn’t know that. As for what happened in here? You heard the entire conversation, so don’t even think to question me on that.”

  “What did you do to her!”

  “She said I don’t scare her. I think I proved that wrong when I said boo to her, and it resulted in that.”

  “You little fucking bitch! You know it was more than that!” She kicked my bed again.

  “Hey, Tiffany? You’re in my room at the moment. You want to help her deal with her bed and sheets? Go for it. I don’t have to put up with your questions. I really don’t.”

  She loomed over me, Eva still holding onto her tight, “You don’t have to put up with me questioning you? I saw you with Stacey!”

  What the fuck, man, this is crazy. “I’m not sure I get why you care. You both made it clear that you don’t want any part of me. Why should it matter to me that you saw me with Stacey? Or anyone else in this school?”

  “I’ll make it matter to you!” I swear her eyes tried to drill into me.

  “I think we’ve gone full circle. Someone saw me talking to Stacey. You saw me. Awesome. Your powers of observation are legendary, and we all bow down to your insight and ability to understand context clues. Now maybe we can get to the part where you tell me why it fucking matters that I was talking to her? Cause if not? You can get out or get with helping her clean up her bed. I don’t really care which it is.”

  Her hair lit up as she started working a spell. I had maybe five seconds to wonder what it would be before it went off and rocketed into me. It feels like it’s supposed to be pain. Not quite like the agony spell our gym teacher hit me with a few times last year. More like…maybe a migraine? No brain damage, just intense pain. That barely registers to me. I’ve yet to understand why that is. Why pain spells don’t do much to me. I don’t know if it’s because my affinity seems to be magic? Or maybe it’s just that I lived with agony for years with the mortmagi in? They were utter agony from start to finish. More so than I can adequately explain to people.

  She smiled at me in triumph. Until she realized I wasn’t screaming. Her smile started to dim as I lifted a hand and spread my fingers. “Hey, Tiffany? Want to see a cool trick? You tried to give me a headache? I’m gonna do a trick and then you get to feel some backlash. You ready? Abracadabra!” I clenched my fist and crushed the spell, letting it rebound and nearly take her off her feet as she screamed and clutched her head.

  “I’m about 20 seconds away from taking your attack on me as cause for a challenge. I don’t really want to do that, but you’re kinda pissing me off. You heard me talking to Eva earlier. I use my rambling to stop from sliding into a rage. I’m quickly heading in that direction right now again. Starting with her. You adding to it. Then your spell hitting me. I’m very, very nearly ready to start some mayhem and see how long it takes for me to work off some steam.” My magic flowed out without my hair lighting up, then I let it go a tiny bit. At which point I triggered it and lifted myself off of the bed with the spell, floating up and then standing. Then red light that looks like fire coursed up my body starting with my feet, ending with my head. At which point I shifted and towered over the large fire dragon. She stared in horror at me as I flexed my hands. “I’m trying, Tiffany. I’m struggling. You all think you can come at me whenever you want, and I’ll just take it. Because I have to take it. I’ll be pretty fucking honest here; I take it because I can’t be bothered to shut it down most of the time. I don’t get why people hate me, but I kinda do. So if people want to call me names? Go for it. On some level I don’t care. Yet on other levels?” Magic pushed my voice, sending her hair back in a stream, “Don’t come in here and think you can dominate me!” Her roiling skin stopped long ago, and I can see her dragon trying to get her to round her shoulders. She’s fighting it. Hard. “I put up with a lot. I put up with a tremendous amount. Where I draw the line is people trying to dominate me. You want to dominate others? Knock your fucking socks off. You want to come dominate me? Then it’s time to fucking play. You. Came. In. Here. I didn’t go to you. Eva questioned me and decided to play it strong. I salute her ability to think big, I really do.” She held still as I leaned down and looked directly in her eyes from about six inches away, “You wanna come for me? Be my guest. You wanna stay away? Be my guest. As for me talking to Stacey? I will politely say that who I talk to is none of your fucking business. Not even remotely. You’ve made it clear you don’t want to be allies with me. At this very moment, you’re very, very nearly food to me.” My sharp teeth clacked together, and pee rushed down her leg. Great. I didn’t intend for that to happen. “My rambling helps stop this very thing that you’re facing. It really does. It may sound inane. It may even make you think that I’m stupid. Yet that’s far from the truth. It’s a coping mechanism that stops me from tearing the heart out of every fucking person that I think can be a threat to me and eating it. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s a very, very literal thing. I can’t even tell you how much I want to do that right now. Right this very moment. Which means you need to take your questions and get the fuck out of here. Take her if she wants to go. Leave her. I don’t plan on touching her unless someone shoves me over the edge. All I wanted to do was sleep. Instead, I get questioned and vaguely threatened, then someone else coming in and thinking they can demand something from me.”

  I squashed the magic as I shifted back and climbed into bed. “Now deal with her. Clean up your piss. Do what you gotta do, only do not threaten me unless you really want to see who walks out of that circle out there.”

  Was it stupid of me to pull my sheets up and close my eyes? I know right where she is, so I’m not afraid of her attacking me. More of her coming at me with a spell. Only I don’t think she’ll do that at the moment.

  As it is, Eva’s still crying and is even worse than she was. The room smells like piss something fierce. And terror.

  Man, d
o I want to eat a heart or drink blood or something. This is killing me. Maybe I can get something raw for breakfast.

  Upon waking at 4:45, I no longer wanted something raw. Which is a shame. I’d still eat it; I just don’t feel like I’m going to have my stomach crawl out of my throat and engulf someone to get it.

  Maybe.

  I won’t rule it out, I’m just not expecting that to happen.

  How long did it take them to clean up the piss?

  They didn’t. They left the room because Eva couldn’t get her shit together. I was up for an hour listening to Tiffany try to get her to calm down, then hit the piss with some magic and got rid of it. I don’t even know if they’ll figure out how I did it. You’d think they’d remember, but maybe not?

  Instead of heading to breakfast naked, which was my initial thought, I peed and slipped on some short, a t-shirt, and put my hair in a ponytail and headed out. Let’s see who all is out this morning. I’m not expecting a ton of people, nor am I shocked by there being zero people there. For some reason, even a little before 5am seems to drastically reduce the number of people.

  That let me grab food and head for a corner by myself. I brought my phone to surf sites, then promptly didn’t fire it up as I started eating. This year is feeling kinda weird to me. It really is. I have a feeling it can go either way. I just would really prefer it to be a good one. I really would.

  My thinking was broken maybe 20 minutes later when Stacey, Cesar, and Cleo arrived. I haven’t seen them out this early, which makes me think they’re coming here to meet with me. They look like they’re dragging.

  They grabbed food, extra coffee, and headed my way. I kinda expected them to not sit with me since that’s how things go for me, but they came right for me and sat.

  “Good morning. How’d you all sleep?”

  Stacey yawned wide, “Ugh, it took forever to fall asleep. I can’t believe they tried that with you last night.”

  “You told her about everything?”

  Cleo nodded to my question. “Yeah. That was…odd, maybe?”

  “You got me. They never did tell me why. I have to assume it’s due to the argument or whatever. Did they try to get either of you not to talk to her?”

  “Neither of them have said much to me at all. Nothing about Stacey.” Cesar started to dig into his eggs.

  “They talked to me once or twice but never quite hit it. I think they wanted to; they just never did.” Cleo followed suit with eating.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see if they continue it. They weren’t doing too well when they left.”

  Soft laughter from them. “I can imagine. Not that we got to see what you did. I take it you shifted?” Cleo has the best look on her face, like she missed seeing something really cool.

  “Yeah, pretty much. She can’t see for shit in the dark. I’m anticipating nightlights soon.”

  The dragons laughed at my comment, “Yeah, we have some in our room.”

  “I can’t believe you guys can see when it’s so dark! That’s the craziest thing. I never understood that before.” Stacey shook her head, “It’s yet another way you guys are different from us.”

  “Yeah, it’s not just that we can shift. There are mental differences on top of the senses and things like that.”

  She leaned into the table, “You guys hear people farting constantly, right?” She laughed like a 12-year-old.

  We joined her for a bit, with Cleo answering, “Like we talked about? Yeah. It takes a lot to hide things like that from us. None of us care, so there’s that. You can’t care when you can hear like we can. We have the added benefit of being dragons too, so that also changes things. We’re way closer to our animal side than humans or mages are.”

  Stacey sighed, “I never knew that. Had I known that last year, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten into it with her.”

  “Maybe. But it’s done. Unless you want to apologize to her or something?”

  “No!” Her eyes narrowed at my question. “The thing she said to me afterwards? No way.”

  I guess I can see that. “You guys want to do some getting to know you things? Maybe we can head away from the rougher conversations.”

  They seemed on board with that. Cesar pointed at me with his fork, “Okay, boyfriend or girlfriend? Any crushes on anyone?”

  “Umm, none of either? Ever? No crushes on anyone.”

  “What? No way!”

  “Yeah way? You have to remember; I haven’t had a normal childhood. I was blind and powerless from nine to 18. Then came here. Everyone hated me last year at the end from people spreading rumors. Which, by the way? If you hear rumors about me? Please come and ask me. Even if the rumors say I’ll freak if you do that or some crazy thing like that. I’d like to cut that shit short if I can.”

  “Oookay?” Cleo answered for them.

  “Now, you guys? Same questions.”

  Cleo leaned into Cesar, “We’ve been dating since the first week of first year. We knew each other prior to going in and always talked about it but never tried it before. Neither of us dated prior to coming here.”

  “Ahh, very cool. You guys didn’t go after each other in the trial? There was a couple last year…he fucking cut her down in the first room and she was just so confused.”

  “Yeah, no.” Cesar cut that line of thinking off, “Our family is close. Something like that? No way in hell.”

  That’s good to hear, “Now you, Stacey?”

  She toyed with her food, “None right now? I’ve had both in the past, although I didn’t really go for girls until shortly before having to come. Tiffany was sort of a huge crush for me. Now I can’t really force myself to try. It’s just…too risky here.”

  “I hear you. This place is brutal. Now, who’s next?”

  We started trading questions, and it was pretty cool. We didn’t stick to the obvious questions for very long, moving into fun directions pretty quickly. By the time we were done and headed out, I thought I had a decent sense of them. They could be lying and hiding things, but they didn’t seem to be. Didn’t smell like it, either. Which I took to be a good sign.

  Still no one in our room when I got back, so I got ready for the day before slipping into my uniform. It kills me that we have a school uniform, yet people don’t wear it all the time. I sort of figured people at a place like this would put it on and pretty much never wear normal clothes again. Here, you’re considered a suck up if you wear it to breakfast or outside of class after it ends. That’s so strange to me, but whatever, it’s not like it matters all that much.

  Mr. Giamatti in intermediate magic welcomed us all to class. I’m waiting for one of the teachers to be a bastard to me, I just know it’ll happen at some point, but starting out another day without it happening is a good sign.

  “All right, let’s start the year with spells. Specifically, working with more than one at a time. As you all saw in the trial for year one, the idea of creating two, three, or more light spells at one time was hit. You worked on that last year, yet we know it’s a pain point for people. So let’s talk about that more. We’ll work through various ways to cast multiples, then you can take those to practical application and see if you can get them to work.”

  We fell into the learning at that point, and it was a pretty cool class.

  The less said about English, history, and social studies, the better. I still think the class is a joke and only here to make people feel better. We’re learning jack in there and I don’t think that’ll change.

  Ms. Karuthers had us head to our workstations in practical application. She smiled through her headcount, then put her book away, “All right, as you started talking about this morning in your magics class, the idea of casting more than one spell at a time is a daunting one for people. There are a number of ways to make it easier, which you walked through. We’re going to start working with those. Before we do that, how many of you can cast two, three, or four lights easily? Just a show of hands.”

  No hands went up, getting
her to laugh.

  “Right. No one wants to admit to anything. Yet you all made it through the year one trial, so you can all do it. People in this class saw you do it. You know they did. Now, how about a little honesty? Don’t make me cast a spell on you that highlights when you lie and then ask you about it individually in front of the class.

  Six hands went up. Mine was one of them. I figured that admitting to it won’t be a huge thing. Hopefully.

  “Wonderful! Some honesty. We’re going to start working on that now, so grab your magic, and let’s see what we can do!”

  The class was pretty cool. I didn’t learn anything huge, but I was able to somewhat streamline my efforts, which should make things easier overall. That’s a solid plus.

  Lunch had me sitting with my new allies. The others in the caf caught it and gave me all sorts of looks.

  All of which changed when Levi joined us. He hadn’t been here when I got my food, so I didn’t go sit with him.

  He nodded to the others, “Huh, so the stories are true? Stricken has allies again?” I can’t tell if it’s an attempt at a slur or him using my last name. He doesn’t sound antagonistic, yet he might just be hiding it better.”

  “Hey, Winters. Nice of you to join us. Yeah, new allies. Maybe I can keep them longer this time.”

  “Maybe. Then again, I think you’ve proven that you have a knack for freaking out and pissing off people.”

  Tiffany growled from her place four tables away, “She doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up!”

  He laughed at her comment, “No, she doesn’t. She’s raised that to an art form. She really has.”

  “I’m impressed that you joined us, Levi? I didn’t think you would?”

  He shrugged, “You said you’d join me, but I was caught up before coming in. I figured I’d make it easier on you.”

  “Huh, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He motioned to the others, “Don’t let me stop you. You guys talk about whatever you were going to talk about. I’ll just sit here and wait for the show to begin.”