by Jade Thorn
Ryan threw a look over his shoulder at the sound of the witch hitting the floor and chuckled.
“Fuck, I love magic,” he said obnoxiously.
Oz snorted and held the tray in front of her. “Yours is closest to my right elbow,” he told her.
Melody smiled her thanks, and Oz moved to set the tray down at the foot of her cot.
“Aren’t you going to discipline him?” the witch persisted.
“No, I’m not.”
“You say you’re so strong, but you let them walk all over you.”
“Firstly,” Melody said, swinging her legs to the ground and gratefully taking a breakfast sandwich from Ryan. “He’s not my familiar. So, I can’t discipline him, he’s not mine.”
Ryan grunted, frowning.
“Secondly,” she continued, ignoring him. “It was an accident, he apologised, and you were a bitch about it. As far as I’m concerned, if he was rude back, you earned it.”
She put her coffee on the ground and peeled back the foil. Melody had no idea where she was supposed to be and how many classes she’d missed, but waking up with half of her year in her temporary bedroom and her familiars missing was not the best way to start the day.
Mrs Hardinger threw the door open, another one of Shawna’s crew getting hit. Melody couldn’t help it, she laughed aloud as the witch cried out, holding her tongue when she realised it was a teacher and not another student or shifter.
“Well, you stupid girl,” said Mrs Hardinger. “What on earth did you expect to happen if you stood behind a door. Seriously.”
The older witch made her way towards Melody, stopping just outside her ward and raising an eyebrow while eyeing off the cranky young woman behind her.
“Don’t tell me, you were victim number one, and you want reparations?” Mrs Hardinger flapped a hand and shooed the girl away. “Go find a spot to sit on, before you get hit by something else.”
Melody lowered her ward and Mrs Hardinger stepped forward as though it had been her intent to pause at the threshold all along.
“Good morning, how are you feeling?” she asked, solicitously.
“Like I must have fallen asleep in class?” she half asked, looking at the students milling around the other end.
Mrs Hardinger looked behind her curiously and then nodded. “Well, yes, not the most pleasant way to wake up I suppose. Sorry about that. We had to move classes in here today, because the other gym has been turned into a makeshift hospital for the shifters. You, madam,” she said, pointing a finger at Melody. “Have been excused from classes today. You can come to my apartment and clean up, but then you’re to be interviewed by Councillor Argrum.”
Of course. Anything to do with her aunt meant that Melody was either a suspect or a source of information. She had a sudden awful feeling that she’d never be free of the stigma that was Bestia.
There was a flare of magic, and then an opaque ward replaced the one that Melody had let subside. Mrs Hardinger passed a sweater to Melody and another to Nick who was sitting shirtless in some boxers.
“When you’ve finished your breakfast, put those on, here’s the key to the teacher’s accommodation. My apartment is the only one on the ground floor, that’s the smaller key. Head in there and clean up. Toby fetched clothes for all of you, so you’ve got something to wear. You two are the last up, in fact.”
“Oh goddess,” Melody said with a start. “Just how late in the day is it?”
Mrs Hardinger laughed. “It’s only just after eight, Melody. Don’t stress. Now, if you don’t need anything else, I need to go teach this class. Nick, put that sweater on before they start ogling you again, you too Melody. It’s not just the women eyeing off Nick, you’re getting your fair share of leering as well. Good, now, if you don’t need anything else, I’ve got to go teach that lot a thing or two about beasts they’ll never manage to claim,” she said, with a roll of her eyes.
The older witch was always so down to earth. It was comforting. Melody always knew where she stood with her. There were no games or maneuvering, the counsellor always said what she meant and meant what she said.
It made her wish that they were somehow related.
“Come on you two,” Mrs Hardinger said as she walked away. “You’re not excused from classes, at least not this one when I’m always short of shifters to volunteer.”
Oz and Ryan grumpily followed along behind her, casting woeful looks at Melody. She wanted to hug them both, take them with her, but she had no say over anything to do with them. They weren’t bonded. For the first time, Melody actually wanted to bond a shifter. Not because she had to, but because she desired to.
The whispers and stares continued as Nick and Melody finished eating, stuffing their feet into their shoes, and grabbing their soiled garments from the floor. The others hadn’t left any of their clothing behind, so Melody was reluctant to either.
“Nick, baby, why don’t you come and be my partner?” Shawna called from the class as they walked past.
“Because you’re a stuck up bitch who has taken six years to graduate and is no more mature than when she arrived,” Nick said without rancour. The very cool and calm way he delivered the words only underlining them.
“Mrs Hardinger,” Shawna protested.
The teacher held up her hands. “Don’t look at me.”
“Melody, really? You might have been able to say Ryan wasn’t yours, but Nick is. Aren’t you going to discipline him?”
Melody looked from Nick to Shawna and back again, tired of this song and dance. “I thought he was being polite,” she told the stunned witch. “Just be thankful I didn’t answer your question, because I wouldn’t have held back.”
Someone snickered, but Melody couldn’t laugh. She was just over it all.
“Mrs Hardinger!” Shawna protested again.
The woman chuckled. “They’re not exactly wrong, Shawna.” She turned away from the sputtering witch. “Now, class, we’ve wasted enough time, if the shifters would oblige us, it’s time we learned about coat care and grooming. There’s only so much your shifter can achieve in their beast form…”
Her voice was cut off as Nick closed the door behind Melody.
“Trent’s right, you know,” Nick said to her thoughtfully as he walked alongside her.
She looked at him questioningly. Trent? Or the kitsune?
“Mrs Hardinger is influencing you. You’re stronger, more confident.”
Melody shook her head. “No, I wasn’t a total pushover back at the compound, I just knew which battles to pick. I always stood up for the shifters when I could. I think witches are lucky to have the opportunity to bond with shifters, and that society has forgotten that.”
Nick threw an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to his side. They walked the short distance to the teacher’s accommodation like that. They got some odd looks walking into the building, but no student said anything to them, and thankfully they didn’t encounter any staff in the lobby as they headed straight to Mrs Hardinger’s apartment.
Toby looked up from a sheaf of papers when they arrived.
“Good, you’re here. Nick, you can take the shower in my room, here’s a towel for you. Melody, you can use Janet’s. Here are a couple for you. I don’t know if you do the hair thing, but there’s one there just in case. I’m off to help her in that class. Fucking Shawna drives her nuts, if I’m not there, she’s going to take a chunk out of her.”
Nick snickered.
“I think I might have upped the ante,” Melody said with an apologetic look.
“Fuck,” Toby muttered, running out of the room and slamming the front door behind him.
Nick laughed outright. “If anything, Mel, I think you gave her some comedic relief.”
Melody stared at the front door, worried. She hoped so, but it wasn’t likely to be true. Besides, the staff had been told not to take Melody’s side, she didn’t want Mrs Hardinger to be fired again because of her.
She said as much to Nick, bu
t he shook his head.
“Mel, she didn’t take your side if you think about it very carefully. She didn’t take Shawna’s either. She was pretty much her usual self. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about there. Now go get a shower and clean up. They’ll be waiting on us.”
She nodded woodenly, and headed off to the room that Toby had pointed to. Under other circumstances, she would have enjoyed taking a quiet look around, but her mind was busy and her heart was heavy.
More interviews by the council. What were they going to ask of her next?
34. Melody
Thankfully, Toby was waiting for them at the entrance to the other gymnasium, looking none-too-happy about it. Mrs Hardinger was nowhere in sight, probably the reason he was so grumpy.
That, and the fact that the council guards were being dicks and weren’t going to let Nick and Melody in. The whole reason Toby was waiting there for them in the first place.
“I’m telling you,” Toby said angrily. “This is the young woman that Councillor Argrum is waiting to see.”
“And I told you, mutt, that only one of them goes in. Either she goes in alone, or she don’t go in.”
Nick let out a low rumble, scales rippling across his skin as they appeared.
“Say that again…” he growled warningly.
“What the fuck kind of freak are you?” the guard snarled, unafraid.
“He’s a fucking dragon,” Councillor Argrum said angrily, and the guard paled. “And you’re lucky I don’t feed you to him for breakfast. You’re sacked.”
The councillor opened a small portal beside him and pointed to it. “That takes you back to your base. Pack your things, be gone before I get back.” He pointed to the other guard. “You, accompany him, make sure he takes only what is his.”
“But, Sir!” the other guard protested. “You need to be protected.”
Councillor Argrum pointed at Nick, at himself and then Melody. “Dragon. Me. Her. Between us, we’re covered.”
The guard hesitated and the councillor rolled his eyes. “Fine, send through two replacements while you see him out. Just stop wasting my time.”
“Yes, Sir!”
The two guards went through the portal, one pushing the other, and it closed behind them.
“How are they going to get back through?” Melody asked.
The councillor winked at her. “That’s their problem.”
He led the way back inside. The space, as Mrs Hardinger had said, was being used to hold the shifters who had been left behind by Bestia. What she hadn’t said, was that it was more like a hospital for the dying. Looking around, seeing so many faces she knew, Melody felt something inside of her break. Not just hurt, but shatter.
All those shifters. All those faces that she’d thought long dead, now resurrected to haunt her.
Melody sank to her knees, a wordless cry escaping her lips.
“What’s wrong with her?” the councillor asked, concerned.
“She knows them,” Nick replied. “She thought they were dead, long dead, and now she’s realising they’ve been tortured for years, possibly decades.”
“But it’s not her fault,” the councillor objected.
“She thinks it is. She was used to break them until the weaker witches could bond with them. She thinks she’s a monster.”
Melody flinched.
No, she didn’t think she was a monster. Looking at all these faces, seeing the years of torture, she knew she was. But she didn’t have the right to collapse, to grieve. That was a luxury, these people knew her, needed her, and she was going to be there for them.
Melody rose, wiped her face on the hem of her shirt, and went to the first cot where a withered man lay, his gaze dulled.
“He’s had pain drugs honey, you’re not going to get much from him,” a healer said. “He’s Leon …”
“Calder. I know,” Melody said quietly. “I’m not here for anything from him. I’m here for him. To give him whatever I can.”
“We can’t help him, he’s too weak to break his bond, and his witch is drawing on him, she’ll kill him before long. We’re just easing his pain.”
Melody looked up at the woman angrily. “Do you have a volunteer? Someone willing to take on his bond?”
The healer frowned at her. “I just told you, it will kill him to break it.”
“I used to hold his bond, I can take it back, but if I do that for everyone here, it’s more than I can hold. For any too weak to break the bond, find me a volunteer and I’ll transfer the bonds to them.”
“You can do that?” the healer asked her.
Melody shrugged. “He’s dying. He’s going to die if you break it. Wouldn’t it be better to try, than to let a leech suck him dry? Why should we give Bestia any more power than it already has.”
“I’d need the provost’s permission,” the healer said, hesitantly.
“Nonsense,” interrupted the councillor. “This is a council matter. You have mine. Go to the students, offer them the chance to bond shifters who won’t survive without it. Make sure they understand that the shifters will be traumatised and may not make it. How many are in this state?”
“Where we’re drugging them? Only seven. Ones that won’t survive the bond breaking? Another twenty.”
“Then find me thirty witches who would be willing,” he commanded.
“Final year students,” Nick told her. “Get final year students. They will be best prepared.”
The healer looked at him blankly.
“Fuck it, I’ll go find them, I know who would be most likely to succeed. They’ll need to be strong enough to hold the bond, it won’t take much magic to gain it, but they’ll both suffer if the witch can’t control the shift.”
Melody nodded, only half listening as she held onto Leon’s hand. Carefully she fed a trickle of magic into him. Not enough to alert the witch connected to him, but enough to keep his heart going a little longer. She could feel the trace of her old bond with him.
It was funny, he was one of so many faces that haunted her, yet she couldn’t say where he had come in the lineup. Only that he was one that they had all grieved as lost. What on earth had her aunt been doing with them?
She held onto Leon’s hand, counting his breaths, stroking his fingers, talking quietly to him of the shifters she remembered still being at the compound when she left. More guilt wracked her. How could she have left the rest of them to this? She’d left them all behind and they had no protection without her.
Melody snorted. They had no protection with her, but she’d been able to provide them with a modicum more comfort than they would have otherwise. Heated water made bathing less horrific, even if it was with a bucket in a cell full of other shifters. Scraps of food, small bars of soap, even an extra blanket. She couldn’t be too greedy, or everything would be taken from all of them, but she’d done what she could.
Firm hands rested on her shoulders. “Mel, you have to stop it. You’re hurting them.”
Melody looked up in alarm to Oz’s blue-grey eyes. “What? Hurting who?” Her gaze tore frantically through the room, but other than the healers, nobody was stirring, even councillor Argrum sat to the side holding the hand of a shifter, stroking it as she was.
“Dean, Asher, Trent and Nick. You’re hurting them with your guilt, Mel. They’re all dying to come in here and rescue you. Asher’s been in his wolf form for the last half an hour, howling. The provost threatened to silence him permanently with a spell, except Trent—the other Trent—did something with his magic to mute it.” He stroked a curl back from her face. “They were too agitated to be allowed in here, so they sent me. I’m not bonded, so I can’t feel it.”
The pained expression on his face told it all. He wished that he could. It didn’t matter that she’d hurt him too, he just wanted to feel what she did.
Goddess, she didn’t deserve any of them.
The doors slammed open again, and Nick returned with half a dozen or so witches. Melody didn�
��t know any of them, but Nick obviously did. They all gathered around the cot Melody sat beside.
“This is Leon, he’s a mountain lion,” she said, woodenly, as if by leaving out the emotion, she could lessen her pain, or the horror of what she was about to say. “Loyal, steadfast. His first witch fell in love with him at another college. He never spoke of her other than that, but whatever happened hurt him deeply. He couldn’t control his beast, so he eventually came to Bestia, hoping someone there would help him. At his fittest, he’s strong. The bond had to be broken forty-seven times before he was weakened enough for one of the other witches to take him.”
There were gasps from the senior students.
“The witch who got him wasn’t strong enough to help his shifts, so I was always trotted out whenever it was needed. None of the other witches would help, it was beneath them to tend to a beast that wasn’t their own.”
Melody stroked his head.
“Leon is a good man. They ordered him to breed me once. He knew I didn’t want it, and he refused. They whipped him so badly I thought he’d died. All to save my virginity.”
A hot tear slowly made its way down her cheek.
“He deserves a good, strong witch who is going to understand that he’s traumatised. He’ll probably have nightmares or night terrors. Many of the shifters at the compound did. He deserves to have the life that he should have had from the start. He’s a good man.”
One of the male students stepped forward. “I’m Steve, I’d be honoured to hold his bond until such time as he chooses the witch that he wants.”
Melody looked gratefully up at him through tear-blurred eyes. That was more respect than she’d hoped for. Someone who would not only care for Leon, but allow him the freedom to make his own choices, even to Steve’s loss.
“Thank you,” she said, huskily. “Please, give me your hand. Open your magic as if you were going to force his shift, but hold it there, can you do that? I don’t know if this will work, but we can only try.”