by Jade Alters
“What is it?” I ask.
“I’m here with you because you can handle it,” Cece tells me. Then I see it, just as I feel it. A shift in the Soul of Fire - in this world we created with our passions. The lines in Cece’s face sink. The fires around us flare up, far more blue than orange. “Because I’m afraid…no one else can.” Cece wilts over like a flower in the sun. She flattens against me to whisper, “I’m sorry, Lee.” The pain in her voice seeps into my own heart through our interlaced emotions, just before they untie completely.
“Cece, it’s alright. Just wait a…” I lift my hand to touch her face, but it passes straight through. Cece’s form dissolves into blue-tinted smoke, and curls up into the blackness. Her blue fire twists up and away, until I’m left in an orange circle of my own fire, in a pristine white bed, alone.
Without a partner to hold together the fever dream, it begins to collapse. My own body disintegrates, starting at the fingertips, while the circle of fire dims around me. Just as quickly as I was flung into this wild, flaming fantasy, I’m yanked right out. The last traces of the fire circle close in on me just as my body atomizes to nothing. The whole scene condenses into a single, orange ember, adrift in the black.
Me and my big mouth.
Cece,
The Broken Academy, D Wing
I’m not sure which is more confusing, the dream I’ve just had about Lee, or what’s happening when I wake up. I guess River and I fell asleep after she curled up on the bed with me, as a border collie. There’s no dog sleeping on me now. No, it’s the head of my oft-disgruntled roommate snoring on my stomach now. I almost scream when I see her, especially considering where I just was in my dream - if you could even call it that. It was like I was really there with Lee.
It doesn’t help that my skin is beaded with sweat all over, and I feel like I peed myself. I reach down the inside of my pants to check my underwear. I clench my teeth in wait to see if this is going to be the most embarrassing night of my life. Sorry, River, we fell asleep together, then I wet the bed. I am a little damp, but it’s not pee. God, that’s worse. Every racing thought in my mind fuses into one: I’ve got to get out of here. Lucky for me, River’s a heavy sleeper.
I caterpillar my way out from under her. She hardly snores louder than usual when her head thumps on my bed. I flatten sideways on the wall and scoot down to the floor. Now I’m free, in the center of the room, I face a choice I didn’t realize I had. Where am I going to go? The bathroom? I could change out of these clothes and sleep on the floor. Or… I can hardly believe I’m considering the alternative. But, I did already embarrass myself once tonight, and not with the guy I planned.
I peek out our door into the hall and, when I see the coast is clear, shuffle down the hall. I move like a shadow from one door to the next, until finally, I find the one meant for my knuckles. I give it three gentle raps. It’s the middle of the night, so I’m not sure what I expect. In truth, I’m still reeling from the adrenaline of that crazy dream.
“Cece?”
I stiffen rigid as a plank when he actually opens the door. Serge. The hall-lanterns give his dark skin an orange glow. They make his eyes glint like facets of precious stones in some precious vault. He’s already in boxers and a tank top - good. “What are you doing?” He asks me. It’s a loaded question. I can see it in his face. The second our eyes lock together, we’re back on the Academy ramparts. What he’s really asking me is if I’m ready this time. I load a steaming yes onto my lips, and push them up onto his.
I do a quick sweep of the room as I push my way in with my chest against Serge’s. No one else in sight. Perfect - he’s mine. I lock Serge against the first hard surface I can find with my waist, which happens to be his counter. I tear my shirt off over my head as I roll my hips up on him and discover another hard surface. It slides further up between my legs with each locking of our lips. When I feel the tip of it push up against my vulva, I step back from Serge to throw his boxers off, to the floor. I watch his eyes rest on my firming breasts as his fingers loop around my pants and underwear together. He looks at me like a portrait or a sculpture while he undresses me. He reads every chiseled edge of my muscle, the little curves that bounce around my chest and bottom. Serge’s shirt flings across the floor. His hands glide down to the ridges of my backside to lift me up.
I hold myself open and clutch Serge’s back while he pushes up inside me. He backs out slowly, gently, and eases back in. With each pass I feel my insides hug him, I feel tingles that rise up around my lips, to the bulge of pleasure at the top. I clench Serge between my thighs, lips just outside his ear to whisper:
“It’s okay. You’re not going to break me.” I push hard against him, letting his penis as far inside as it can stretch. I let my head back, smiling at the ceiling while I savor each throb of his muscle.
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Serge chuckles while I rock up and down on top of him. “Or me, for that matter,” he adds, when he sees the slight note of discomfort in my face. Right about now, I notice the heat waves around my fingertips. I notice how flushed Serge’s skin is, from me pressing against him so hard.
“Why don’t you work some of your magic, then?” I ask, slowing my pace to a gentle nudge against him. “Take us somewhere.”
“I don’t do magic. You’re thinking of a Warlock. But…” Serge smirks. He holds up one of his hands, “I’ve got just the trick.” Serge snaps. In an instant, his room is gone. The two of us float inside a halo of soft light, in a world of eternal blue. It’s like being under comfortably warm water we can breathe in. Our naked bodies are still connected, and now free to twist and collide in a thousand supernatural ways that don’t involve gravity.
“Is this…” I try to ask, but it’s too hard to focus with Serge pushing up inside me so hard. Each thrust sends a tremor of pleasure up my spine. “Is this…” I try again, but the question merely comes out as oh.
“It’s real. We’re here,” Serge tells me, “and you can’t hurt me here. Don’t hold back.”
I try to tell Serge I won’t, but it only comes out as another, longer oh. I close my legs behind his back to pull him into me, as hard as we can. I lock my arms behind his back, until his skin starts to feel different. It takes a few seconds before I realize it’s actually me that’s different. When I let him loose to grab his shoulders, I see my arms are covered in scale from the elbows down. I twitch back from myself a little, before Serge laces his fingers through mine, soft skin against serpentine armor.
“It’s alright,” Serge tells me. He slides his hands down over my butt cheeks, grabbing them hard to pull me down onto him. “Your eyes changed, too. It’s beautiful. Don’t hold it back,” he tells me. I run the talons that have replaced my nails through his long, dark hair as the waves of pleasure intensify through the gateway to my body. I don’t even have a moment to wonder what my eyes look like. I can feel in the change of his pace, the length of his stride, that Serge is about to finish.
I trap him in the grasp of my crossed legs. I arch my back to give him the full view of my body. I watch his face twist up in ecstasy as a long groan trembles across his lips. I squeeze my pelvis down over his again with each warm pulse inside me. His pleasure births little bursts of azure light in the dark around us, like mystical fireworks.
Serge stays strong as I pick up the pace at the tail end of his light show. I angle myself up to brush my clitoris against him with each pass. Another minute of crashing together sends me right over the edge. I let my head fall back and scream for the whole void-world to hear. Serge runs his hands up my body, over my breasts, to the side of my face while I slam into him twice, three times, four. At the very height of it, a tornado of flame swirls around me, igniting the whole halo bright red as I orgasm. No control. No restraint.
I bury my head in Serge’s neck as I ride out the last few waves of pleasure. When the fire and lights calm again, we’re left floating in euphoria, completely spent. In a trance between waking and sleep, I drift
along in Serge’s arms, him in mine.
It might be minutes before the shimmering paradise fades away from around us, it might be a lifetime. I can’t be sure which, when I finally stir to find myself in Serge’s bed, back at the Academy in the middle of the night. I don’t truly care, either. All I care about is how warm his skin feels under mine, now that I’ve let the fire out.
Painful Truth
Serge The Broken Academy, Room A1C
I get shivers just thinking about it. I can’t believe it happened. In all the arranged unions my parents proposed with other prestigious Magician families, I never once met a girl like Cece Ford. She’s the kind of girl I thought I was forbidden from. Wild. Unscripted. She’s the kind of girl I would have forbidden myself from, knowing the trouble it’d land me in. But then, I guess Cece isn’t really any one kind of girl. What’s forbidden doesn’t mean a damn thing to her.
But I do still have obligations. The last thing I wanted to do, after last night, was leave Cece to wake up alone. But if I didn’t show up to prep for Mystical History, Fey Hartgen would have wanted to know why. She might not order a search and rescue for one day missed, but I know for a fact I’d have had a good old-fashioned Dalshak family tail following me around to figure out what went wrong with their son. Especially if Cece missed class the same day. She hardly needs another reason for the Council to cajole her. Besides, I didn’t leave her completely alone. I at least left her a note with some breakfast. A breakfast rendition of the curried tofu I was making when she visited me at my room the first time.
So here I am in Room A1C, sorting notes, when all I can think about is my and Cece’s naked bodies linking together in an illusory lightworld. It’s about thirty minutes before any students will show up when I feel a sudden warmth in my pocket. Damnit, now? I shove my hand down to find my Room Monitoring Amulet.
“Shi-shit,” I sputter before I can stop myself. I want to scream it. No, no, no, I want to growl. But Fey Hartgen has already turned me a suspicious eye from her seat a few feet away.
“What is it, Serge?” she asks, though she can see the shimmering Amulet in my hand. I know why she’s asking. This thing has already glowed a distress call at me twice this semester, and it hardly shook me either time. But then, it’s never been my room that lit up on the Amulet before.
“Sorry. Just startled me is all. One of the rooms in my Wing,” I tell her. I elect to leave out which one in the moment, though I shudder at how easy it would be for her to find out.
“Well?” hums Fey Hartgen, at my hesitation. “Go and do your duty. I’ll see you when you’re finished.”
“Yes- right,” I stumble around some facade of formality. It all threatens to shatter and crumble around me. The Dalshak name. My own personal reputation. The prestige of powers I’ve spent my lifetime honing. It could be gone later today, depending on what waits for me back in my room.
I take a brisk, military step out of the room. As I turn the first corner outside, I break into a sprint. I don’t stop running until my hand touches my door. I don’t bother with the key for a second. A trick of my palm, flat on the keyhole, pops the door in. It flings wide with enough force for the knob to put a little dent in the wall behind it.
“What in the hell are you doing?” I scream when I see the worst nightmare I never thought of come to life. Cece stands across my kitchen from Darius. Both have their arms up in hostility. A small bonfire rages across the top of the countertop of the island between them. My question was aimed at both of them in equal measure, but it’s Darius who takes the liberty of answering.
“Defending myself, jeez! I came in here to see if I could steal some of your milk, and she tried to torch me!”
“Oh, like you don’t know who I am? Like you have no clue…” Cece retorts instantly. The hate in her voice seems to taint the very air in the room. I’ve never heard spite quite like it - not from her, not from anyone. “Like you don’t remember my brother!” At her scream a new wall of fire rises from the counter behind Darius. He holds up both hands in surrender at the thought of being cooked inside the searing hot pincer-trap.
“Alright, easy!” I shout over the hollow rumble of flame that’s quickly filling the room. Cece’s fingers twitch together, threatening to clench. Threatening to close her jaw of hellfire on Darius. Of course, he could zip out from it in an instant, but then he knows as well as I do what would happen. The look in Cece’s eye tells it all. Right now, she doesn’t care what she has to incinerate to get to him, anything between them is fair game. “Cece, you want to tell me what you’re talking about?”
“My brother, Jason… He… This son of a bitch ate him! Drank him dry, right in front of me!” Cece screeches. Again, her fingers give a dangerous little flicker. A cloud of embers swirls out through the air in the room. Any second now, she could turn this place into the heart of a volcano. Sweat trickles down the back of my neck. Then she looks to me. Her face is twisted up in wild desperation. Her eyes shimmer a neon version of their human color, pupils sharpening to two slits, just like last night. “A few nights before I came here…in a San Francisco alleyway, right outside the Tether and the Training Grounds…” Cece’s electric blue eyes beg me louder than words ever could, to believe her.
“Darius…” I turn my head to him. He’s been oddly silent for an innocent man. Especially one I’ve known well enough, since I was a boy, to know he’d never stand for false accusations like this one. Unless… “Do you want to tell me what she’s talking about?”
“Not particularly,” Darius mutters.
“Bastard!” Cece roars, and the flames converge an inch away from Darius on every side. Even his naturally cold skin starts to perspire.
“Alright!” Darius surrenders, fangs gritted in a cringe, “I bit her brother- I bit your brother,” he admits, first to me, then to Cece. Though she claims to have seen it herself, the news seems to strike Cece numb for a second. Her hands, poised to turn my room into a crater seconds ago, now hang limp between her and my oldest friend. I can’t help hanging a little loose myself. Why wouldn’t he tell me this? Maybe he didn’t know we were getting intimate, but Darius sure as hell knew the girl he traumatized by feeding on her brother was my resident. “I didn’t eat him. Didn’t drain him dry, either. I fed on him. Vampires need to feed, and you were in the Training Ground! If you hadn’t-”
“Don’t you…fucking dare,” Cece cuts him short. Her arms, which have slowly drooped down at her sides, convulse in anticipation of the words on Darius’ fanged lips. Darius looks to me for help. I’m not sure what he sees in my face just then, but it’s certainly not helpful. I don’t know what to think of him, just now. With no other options on his table, Darius lets out a long sigh on his way to looking back at Cece.
“I’m sorry about your brother, Cece. But I didn’t kill him. You did.”
“You believe that?” Cece murmurs. Like three little phantoms gliding down my spine, those words haunt me more effectively than any disembodied Astral ever could. Her glowering eyes flash up at Darius, then at me. “You believe that?” She whispers again. My whole body quakes at the sound, at the raw emotion charging it.
“Come on, Serge. I’ve been a star student in the Controlled Feeding Program for years,” Darius reminds me. It’s the truth, just as much as the fact that he omitted what he did to Cece’s brother until now.
“I…” I mumble. Really, what I mean is I need a second to process. I need some time to sort through the accusations of the girl I just slept with, and the suddenly suspicious word of my friend. That second’s delay, however, seems like a decision in itself to Cece. She lifts an open palm to Darius. Her eyes shine like sapphire high-beams. Skin crawls away from her fingertips with the spread of a flame over her hand, until a claw closes its scaly death grip on Darius.
“Then I guess I’m already a murderer,” says Cece.
“No!” I scream, and slam my palms together on instinct. The clap sucks Cece and her flames into a temporal rift the size of a quarter.
For her good as much as Darius’, I send her the first place I can think of where she can let it out without killing anyone. I’m left panting from the sudden exertion in a charred room, across from Darius.
“Damn, you’ve got a tough roster this year,” he chuckles nervously, when he finally swallows the lump in his throat. My palms feel magnetic, with how hard it is to pry them apart. The second I do, I fall back against the counter.
“Shut…the hell…up, Darius,” I bite. Even as I do, he zips over to my side to catch me. An arm under mine, he helps drag me across the suite, through the door to my bedroom. Even though he can feel the seeping from my pores.
“Sure, sure,” Darius nods. Still, he can’t help himself asking, “So, uh, can I borrow some milk?”
Cece,
The Broken Academy, D Wing Courtyard
I unleash a bloody scream of vengeance, though it sounds oddly different. Rather than bouncing off the enclosed walls of Serge and Darius’ suite, it rises to fill the open air. I realize all too late that I’ve been transplanted somewhere else. Before my eyes even have a chance to adjust to this new, bright world, the pent up inferno in my palm froths through, whether I want it to or not.
“Dammit!” I growl to focus on restraint. I hold it back in a clenched fist just long enough to thrust my arm straight into the air, away from anyone who might be nearby. I open my scaly fist to unleash a special kind of fury reserved for only one. The shockwave from my hand flings me straight to the ground. My back flattens a patch of tall grass. Above me, I watch a wicked tower of crimson fire and black smoke surge up past the suspended Administrative Level. Like a beam of pure color, it streaks across the sky, blasting a hole through every cloud in its wake. By the time it finally burns out, the world comes into focus around me.
I’m on the floor of the gardens in the D Wing Courtyard. Around me are classmates and students of every class from all over D Wing. They flood from the adjoining cafeteria to ogle my outburst and the aftershocks above. I’m tired enough that I almost let my eyes shut. They can watch all they want, damn them. I just went from one of my best mornings to one of my all-time worst in ten minutes - I’ll sleep in the damn garden if I want to. At least, that’s my plan until I smell something burning right next to me. I follow the scent and the little crackle my ears pick up to my right arm. It’s still a scaly gauntlet, with a faint violet hue. It still emanates heat and smoke, which is cooking the grass around it. Part of me wants to lay there anyway. Let the whole place burn. But then, I know I’ll burn before the Council lets that happen. Besides, if I want to get even with Darius - which I do more than anything just this moment - I can’t get myself expelled. Or terminated. I don’t imagine, if one proves too dangerous even for the Broken Academy, they just release them into the world.