Breaking Barriers

by Bob Dattolo

  I don’t even know how to handle the fact that I’m drinking his blood, except that it tastes beyond delicious. He kept trying to pry me off, but his struggles became weaker and weaker until something crashed into my side, making me scream in pain as something important shattered inside of me.

  The next thing that made sense is me slumped against the wall across the room, looking up at an enraged wolf staring at me over someone’s body. My body made an awful crunching sound, which felt even worse than it sounded, and I spit blood onto the floor. I’m not sure how I knew, but it was mine, not Connor’s.

  The huge wolf, easily outweighing me, launched itself across the room at me and I scrabbled to get up, only to find that I planted my feet against the wall and pushed off…directly at the wolf. I’m pretty sure I snarled as we moved, until we collided. Her weight and speed should have catapulted me backwards, but it didn’t. Instead, we tumbled and fought, all the while I kept wondering what exactly I was doing. No part of me should think I could fight a shifter, yet here I am with her teeth embedded in my shoulder.

  And I’m laughing.

  Whatever it is inside of me leapt forward, surging throughout my body until I was lost to the raging rivers ripping through me. Her claws tore at me, but even that didn’t stop the laughter as I crushed her ribs before grabbing her jaws and separating them until my shoulder pulled free. At that point I hauled myself to my feet and spun her before throwing her towards the same wall I’d just come from…then I hit her with something.

  What?

  I don’t have a clue. Not a clue.

  At first she was just flying there, my blood spraying from her claws and teeth, then a catastrophic wave of blackness roared from my outstretched hands to hit her. I had the tiniest moment to think, huh, maybe I am a mage? Then the blackness hit her like a battering ram and she was gone.

  Not disappeared, at least not like you think. No, the power I hit her with shot her forward and she disappeared through a demolished wall. The successive crashes and screams make me think that she didn’t stop at just that one wall.

  The other students stood around their tables in shock. This side of the cafeteria is blood splattered, Connor is still laid out on the floor, although his neck looks mostly healed now, and I’m standing here holding my bulging intestines in with one hand and licking the other.

  I should be on the floor. I should be screaming or passed out. Instead I’m hungry.

  Ravenously so.

  My dozenal didn’t say anything at all as I took my place at the table and started eating with my free hand, shoveling in food faster than I should be able to swallow it. Certainly not chew it. I’m not entirely sure I am chewing it, although it’s still going down. Staff members poured inside almost a minute later and stared around the room. I stood with my empty tray to get more food when the headmaster crouched over Connor. “What happened here?”

  Bless him, Tom answered for me.

  “Connor and Lacie attacked Ceri.”

  Something poured from the headmaster across Connor. “My God…” he looked around, “where’s Lacie?”

  Tom pointed back towards the destroyed wall. “Somewhere out there? She was in shifted form when she was…I don’t know, shot out of here, I guess. No idea what happened there. Anyone else?”

  One of the other kids spoke up. “I saw it and I still don’t know what it was. Lacie was biting and clawing at Ceri, then Ceri pried her off and threw her and hit her with something. Like she was shooting skeet.” He mimed using a rifle of some sort. “It hit her and, yeah, no idea where she is now.”

  The headmaster groaned and stood, dusting his pants, before heading to the wall. “We need to get Connor into a bed. He’s going to take some time to recover.” He looked through the hole in the wall before turning to me. “How hard did you hit her?”

  “No idea. I don’t have any idea how it happened.” Looking down, I shrugged, although that frankly hurt. A lot. “I don’t even know why I’m not crying in pain.”

  He looked through the huge hole and sighed. “Oh my…we’re going to need some assistance. I think the outer wall stopped her. Barely.”

  The teachers jumped into action as I loaded up my tray again one handed. I ignored them as I took a third helping of everything and then sat down. The muffled voices through the hole in the wall told me that they were concerned about structural damage to the outer wall. The outer stone wall.

  Connor was carted away and then the teachers and staff members began using magic to clean things up and fix the outer wall. It doesn’t seem like they can fix the inner ones, but the stone wall is possible. No idea why that would be.

  I continued eating as my tablemates watched me with shared looks of shock and horror on their face. Rachel watched my stomach from her seat and was even more shocked than the others. “Fucking hell, it’s healing!”

  Sure enough, my intestines pulled back inside and I felt tingles across my stomach and other areas that the wolf hurt, and I could tell they were healing. Steph pulled my shirt collar to the side and wiped away some of the blood. “Damn…that’s…you shouldn’t be able to heal like this. I mean…fuck, Rachel can and most of the shifters can…just not this fast.” She looked across me at our vampire classmate. “Can you heal this quickly?”

  I wasn’t watching her, only having eyes for my food, but I could tell she shrugged. “I’m not sure? I think so? The small ones, anyway. I’ve never been cut open like this, so I’m not sure if I’d heal that quickly. I sure as hell don’t think I’d have been able to fight back after being hit by Connor like that.”

  Tom shook his head as I finished my tray of food and looked over at the serving line. “You’re still hungry?”

  “Yeah.” My plate and tray were empty again. “I shouldn’t be. There are so many things that I shouldn’t be, right now.” That got a few laughs. I’m a comedian, I guess. They remained behind as I got more food, not quite mounding the plate this time. I still felt hungry, just not hungry enough to move into cannibalism. My stomach and every open wound that I knew of, was healed. I licked my blood off of my hand as I sat down. “So…seriously, is the fighting normally like this?”

  More laughter. “Yeah, no,” Sarah said, “not even remotely. Most of the fighting is over pretty quickly at the start of the year, like within the first week. Even then, it’s a lot of posturing for the most part. Tom and I have never actually fought. It never got that far. We’ve both fought others outside of our group, but even then, there’s usually less destruction of school property.”

  I felt a swelling of something through the damaged walls and turned, finding that the other mages in our group turned as well.

  Carl held up his hands. “Damn, that’s a lot of power.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “You can’t tell?”

  “No idea. I can tell something is happening, but that’s it.”

  “Whatever you did to Lacie damaged the outer wall. They’re restoring it and strengthening it.”

  Zach nodded along. “That’s what I feel as well. You can’t tell what they’re doing?”

  I shook my head and ate a few bites, feeling like I’m finally approaching full. “Not a clue. The amount I do know for sure seems to be shrinking in comparison to what I don’t know. Starting with why I’m not dead right now. I should be dead far too many times over the past few days for a 16 year old girl, you know?”

  More laughter as Steph patted my back. “Well, if it helps any, I think that little display should dissuade some of the others.”

  Armand laughed. “You got that right. At least not straight-up fights. Maybe some hidden things? Hard to say. The good thing is that you don’t care about being number one, so as long as that doesn’t change, the shifters here will let it go.”

  Tom and Sarah nodded along. “Too true.” Tom said. “As long as we’re not challenged, it doesn’t matter to us.”

  I squinted at him. “I don’t get it. If someone is strong enough to beat you, but doesn’
t, then you don’t care?”

  “Yup!” They both said at the same time.

  “Why not? I don’t understand.”

  Sarah gestured at everyone at the table. “Everyone here has their strengths. It’s like this, if you were a team captain for a sport and someone on the team could be a better leader, but didn’t want it and didn’t go for it, would that impact you?”

  That made me sit back. “Okay, yeah, no, it wouldn’t.”

  “That’s us in a nutshell. Not in every situation, mind you, but in school? Yeah, that’s us. Tom’s content being the leader of our group, most of the rest of us are content with him being that leader. Could I fight him? I could, but it’s not worth it. We’re so close strength-wise that it’d be a toss-up some of the time, with him coming out the winner probably…what, 75% of the time?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I think so?”

  “Right, so I could win if things go my way, but that’s a big chance for not much gain. You heard Armand earlier, he loves his magic, and being in charge doesn’t do it for him. As it is, I’d have to say that you’re a stronger mage than he is, but I can’t really judge that.”

  Armand sighed. “I’m not sure it’d be a competition at all. I can’t even tell what she did earlier. In either fight.”

  “But I don’t want to be in charge of anything! I couldn’t care about my ranking!”

  More laughter. “And don’t think that the rest of us aren’t relieved over that. I wish I were a fly on the wall around Corey when he finds out what happened with Connor and Lacie.” Tom’s smile was nearly infectious.

  I rubbed my face. “Okay…yeah, this is going to come and bite me on the butt at some point. Even more than before.”

  Somber nods from most of them. “Probably? If it hadn’t happened, I think he would have come back pretty soon, but when he learns about this, he’s going to change his approach. He has to.” Tom’s statement got nods from the rest of the table.

  “Great…just great.”

  The magical pressure from outside the room petered off and the headmaster came back to the room. He looked worn as he studied me from the doorway before entering fully. “Are you recovered?”

  I pushed away my empty plate and nodded. “Feels like it. Is the wall okay? Is Lacie okay?”

  His nod was slow. “The outer wall is fine now. We can’t do much to fix the inner walls, although we’ve cleaned up the broken segments and removed the blood. Lacie is in the infirmary now. My understanding is that she will heal, but it will take some time, even with healing spells being provided.”

  That brought hisses from the table. “My God…how hurt is she?” Steph asked.

  He looked around the table briefly before sighing. “She’s about as injured as I’ve ever seen a shifter be without dying. I’m not sure if she has a whole bone left at this point except possibly her tail. Most of her organs are injured. She’s…drained, as well.”

  “Drained?” I couldn’t help asking that.

  “Like Corey is. Just not as severe as he is. The healing spells have helped her organs recover, but she has a long way to go.”

  “What about Connor?” Christine hasn’t spoken much, so it was a shock to hear her ask something.

  “He’s also drained. His throat injury is healing well, but he’s weaker than he should be. Can you explain that?” He looked pointedly at me.

  My blush came on quickly. “After he hit me and I tore out his throat, I kind of drank his blood? I think that’s probably it?”

  He groaned and shook his head. “That…might do it.” He looked around the blood-splattered eating area. “I’d recommend not getting into any other fights, but I understand that you haven’t exactly pursued them. With that in mind, I’d ask that…maybe your response not be quite as vigorous?”

  Not as vigorous? “Since I have no idea how any of it happened, I’m not even sure what to say about that. I threw Lacie away from me on purpose, but I didn’t even know the whole black ray thing that shoved her through the walls was an option. I guess I’ll try? I’m just not sure how well I’ll be able to do it.”

  Another sigh from him. “That’s all I can ask. For now you may want to head out. We’re going to need to do a lot of cleaning in here. You probably want to clean up as well.”

  Oh…yeah, I’m sort of covered with blood.

  We left a few minutes later, with my little group of, dare I call them friends, circling around me. It felt disturbingly good to think that people cared about me. Rachel planted herself at my side, but didn’t touch me. When I looked over at her, her eyes were doing a weird color thing that I couldn’t figure out at first. “Are your eyes turning black?”

  Sure enough, when she looked at me, they were bleeding to black all the way across. “Sorry. They do that when I get hungry.” Her fangs peeked out from between her lips as she talked.

  I should have been horrified, but I wasn’t. “What’s making you hungry?” I’m proud of myself for my voice not quavering.

  She looked me up and down briefly before looking back out from our circle of people. “You’re covered in blood. I shouldn’t normally be hungry right now, but there’s just so much of it.”

  No one else seemed to care about what she said. “What…uh, how do you feed?”

  “The nurse has bags of blood for me. Otherwise, I have to convince someone to let me feed from them.”

  That almost made me stop walking. “But that’s…” argh, I can’t tell her it’s evil. It’s kinda becoming clear to me that my parents screwed me up royally that way. “What are you going to do now?” That seemed like a better approach to things.

  She shrugged, “Try to see if someone is willing to let me feed from them.”

  Again, no reaction from anyone. “Uhh, like who?”

  Another shrug. “I’ll check with our folks first, then I’ll have to branch out to the others. I’ll probably have to trade if that’s the case.”

  “What? What do you trade for that?”

  She frowned as she looked at me. “My ass?”

  That did bring me to a stop. “What do you mean your…your ass?” It very nearly hurt for me to say the word out loud. When my parents didn’t pop up out of nowhere and punish me, I breathed a little easier.

  She gave me a look like I was naïve. Since I am, I’m not sure why she bothered. “My ass? You know, have sex with them? That’s pretty normal. I don’t have any money to pay people, so they usually want to fuck my ass. Although, not if it’s a girl. Then it’s other things for sex.”

  I had a little breakdown right there as they watched. “I…I don’t understand?”

  She sighed. “It’s simple. I’m asking them for something very personal to them, so they want something in payment back. Supernaturals are horny by default, so they often want sex. That’s how a lot of things are bargained for here. Need help in a course? Maybe they’ll do it for a blowjob or for you to let them sit on your face. It all depends.”

  “But…does this happen to everyone?”

  They all nodded. Carl laughed, “The last time I needed help with a class, I had to go to another group. I had to let him fuck me twice for every tutoring lesson.”

  I swear, if my brain explodes any more I’m just going to lay down and die. I’m sort of not sure why it’s not happening to begin with. “Why would you agree to that?”

  Steph touched my shoulder. “It’s what I was talking about earlier? If someone holds the upper hand, they can set the bargain for whatever they want. Every supernatural that I’ve ever heard of is horny. Well, except angels, but the rest of us? Yeah. Pretty much all the time. I don’t think it’s the invasion that you take it as. At least not for those of us that grew up like this.”

  I looked at everyone around me. “But why isn’t it?” Focusing back on Carl, I asked him outright, “Why did you let him do that to you?”

  He squinted back. “Let him? It was payment for his help. I got some decent sex out of it. It’s not the first time someone’s been in my ass
and it won’t be the last. It feels amazing and it’s not like I’m going to run out of sex to pay someone with.”

  Steph nodded. “Right. And what did you take in payment the last time you tutored someone?”

  He smiled, “Blowjobs.”

  I barely know what that is, but I didn’t ask for a concrete explanation. “I don’t understand?”

  Rachel touched me and drew my attention. “I think you’re thinking of it as being forced, right?” My nod was pretty clear that I did. “It’s not. Not in this type of situation. You agree to the payment ahead of time and it’s up to you if you want to pursue it. If not, you go on your way until you find someone that can help you with whatever it is.”

  “So…you’ll trade sex for food?”

  She nodded, “Pretty much? I can eat from a bag far easier, but it doesn’t taste as good.”

  “How is that any different from what Corey wanted to do to you?”

  Christine jumped in. “What he was doing was different. He walked up to her and told her he was going to be fucking her later. There wasn’t a bargain in place. No agreement. Just him deciding that he could do what he wanted. Her choice then is to fight or let it happen. We usually just let it happen and let it go, even though we may not like it. Using sex as a bargaining chip is different.”

  “Wow…yeah. I don’t understand this whole thing. Every time I think I get a tiny grasp of what my life is now, it just disappears with the next bit of news.” I fought not to blush. “The fact that I’m 16 and a virgin has got to be the strangest thing to you guys.”

  They all broke into laughter. That just sums it up.

  We split up back on our floor, although Rachel stayed with me until we got to my room. She hugged me again. “I’m going to go see if someone will let me feed from them.”

  “None of our people can do it?”

  She shrugged. “Possibly? None of the mages can, I’ve fed from all of them too recently. The shifters can, but they may not want to.”