by Demi Dumond
Professor Kiln turned her attention from the building back to me. We didn’t have too much longer before the sun started coming up and then we would probably start attracting more attention than we wanted.
Not to mention the fact that Keira was running out of time too, if she hadn’t already. I shook my head, trying to banish the thought.
“Ok, as to your question about how it works,” Professor Kiln said. “Lucky for you, that particular spell has kind of a failsafe built in. You see, you can transform his matter, but only into what it’s been before. In simple terms, you can’t turn him into a tree or a rock, you can only return him to the specific form that he was before now.”
“Well, that explains how it worked for Keira, but how the hell did the Headmaster turn me into a dragon in the first place, then?” Tor asked. “I wasn’t a dragon before he threatened me, chased me into the forest, and then turned me into a dragon.”
“How did he do it?” Kiln asked to nobody in particular before turning to focus on Tor. “I don’t know exactly how he did it. I need details. Everything you can tell me will help. It might even help me figure out exactly what kind of forbidden magic he’s using so I can get a better idea of how to pop the time bubble.”
Tor thought about it for a moment. “There was a fire. I remember smoke and flames. Then I inhaled the smoke until I choked. I couldn’t breathe. I remember looking straight into the flames. I thought he was going to throw me into the fire, but he didn’t. He threw me aside into the grass.”
“What color were the flames?” Professor Kiln asked.
“Um, blue I think,” Tor answered.
“Then what?” Professor Kiln pressed. “Hurry, boy, we don’t have very much time.”
“Then he started chanting over me. Oh yeah, the dirt. He put dirt on my face before and after he spoke the words. Before you ask, Professor, no I didn’t understand the language he was speaking. It sounded a little bit like Latin, but I took Latin in high school and none of what he said sounded familiar to me.”
Professor Kiln put a hand over her mouth and looked pained. “Then it’s progressed much more than I thought. A person can only use so much forbidden magic before it changes you irreparably.” She shook her head. “Julius Crowe didn’t used to be a monster, but he certainly is now. The Headmaster that I knew couldn’t and wouldn’t have ever attempted that kind of spell. And if you want to save your friend, then I suggest you hurry, Malachai.”
13
Keira
I kept an eye on the Headmaster with my fingers crossed that he’d let me have at that minibar. I held my breath while I waited. Was he going to keep talking to me, let me have a drink, or transform into a hideous monster and eat me?
Wow, my life has taken a weird turn.
He stood, and I froze in place where I sat, waiting to see what he would do next. As it turned out, he went to the mini bar and took two glasses out of a drawer. “What’s your poison, Keira?”
This took me by surprise. He was not only going to let me drink, he was going to let me choose. Was the alcohol going to be poisoned? Probably not, his clearly stated plan was to rip me to shreds. Poison sounded too easy.
Too many thoughts were going through my head while he poured his own drink and then turned to me, waiting for my answer.
“Um, rum, please.” I said it like I was ordering a drink at Applebee’s, not dealing with a murderous monster.
He crossed the room, handed me my glass, and then calmly retreated back to his seat. He sat down heavily before taking a sip of his drink.
I held my glass shakily.
“Go on,” he said. “It’s not poisoned.”
I took a sip, wanting to show him I was going to play along and be a good sport for as long as he was going to indulge me. The rum was delicious, and I had to fight the urge not to slurp the whole thing down.
“What’s your poison, then?” I asked him.
He looked surprised by the question. “Scotch. Excellent scotch. You chose poorly.”
“What are you talking about? This rum is delicious.” It felt so weird to be drinking and speaking to each other civilly all while waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I was nervous and had to consciously fight the urge to babble. I couldn’t let my guard down either. I decided to see how far I could push it.
“So, you just bring all of your victims in here, give them alcohol, and then eat them?” It sounded so stupid the moment it left my mouth. Like, that had to be no evil villain’s plan, ever.
“Pretty much,” he said, taking another sip. “Only usually the victims don’t get alcohol. That’s something I started fairly recently. I mean, the minibar is right there, why not use it?”
I squirmed in my chair. He was obviously better at pretending nothing was wrong than I was. Probably because he was the killer and not the kill-ee. “They’re going to know you did something to me,” I said as casually as I could under the circumstances. “What’s your endgame here?”
He laughed. It was a horrible sound that started in his belly and erupted through his plump lips and stuffed up nasal passages. I winced.
“Endgame? My dear, you vastly overstate your own importance. Without you everything will continue on as planned. Better, even. You’ve got the entire academy in an uproar. The minute you’re gone things will go back to normal. And I’ll be fed for months. You see, I’m a dual race creature now. What I’ve become feeds off of dark magic as well as dead flesh. A detail I overlooked when keeping students with dark magic out of the academy. You will be a delicacy, a treat. Therein lies the totality of your usefulness and your memory will end here.” He looked around. “In this gorgeous room. I mean, you’ll have to die eventually anyway. It might as well be in style.”
By the time he finished talking I was literally speechless. I realized my mouth was hanging open and I closed it.
His lips curled up at the ends at my reaction. “Feel free to get more rum.”
14
Malachai
Professor Kiln’s alarming words about how much danger Keira was in hit me hard.
A quick glance over at Tor, Malachai, and Rafe revealed they were just as worried. But I was the only one who could actually do something about it.
I looked at Professor Kiln and nodded. “Okay, how do I do this?”
Professor Kiln walked over to Tor and knelt next to him in the grass. “First things first. This spell won’t work unless you give your express verbal consent.”
Tor squirmed in the grass for a moment and I saw the grimace on his face from the pain of his broken leg. He was already suffering.
“I give consent.”
Professor Kiln got up quickly and returned to me. “You’ve done at least one forbidden magic spell in my class. Do you remember what that felt like?”
“Completely different than any of the other spells, but I only did it once.”
“How was it different? Concentrate.”
I shifted from foot to foot. “It wasn’t about saying the words, it came from within, like it was there all along. The forbidden magic spell felt like it was a part of me being exhaled.”
“A part of you being exhaled,” Professor Kiln repeated. “That’s exactly what it’s supposed to feel like. You have to know in your mind and feel inside of you what is supposed to happen. As soon as you say the words, the magic should take care of the rest. The difficulty isn’t that the spell won’t work, with consent and his already recent transformation, the magic should be fine. The problem is whether or not you have enough of it? And if you do complete the spell, it’s going to take a lot out of you.”
A loud noise coming from inside the building caught all of our attention. My eyes scanned the windows, looking for the source. That’s when the sound of glass shattering left no doubt about the source of the sound.
A second later, Ian was waving a bloody hand outside the window and shouting. “Up here!”
“Okay, I see you. Where are they?” I shouted.
&n
bsp; “Fifty feet that way,” he pointed to his right.
The direction that he was indicating meant that the target area was the very south end of the building.
“We see you,” I shouted back. Then I looked at Tor, who nodded.
“Got it,” Tor said. “Just one thing. When I turn back, I won’t have the fine motor skills that humans have. I’m going to be very effective as the battering ram you guys need, but I can’t be sure Keira won’t be affected by falling debris or other after-affects.”
“Okay,” I said. “As soon as the spell is cast, you run up there, Rafe, and tell Ian and Ivy to be ready to pull Keira out of there on their end.”
Professor Kiln looked at me. “If you do this spell properly, you’re probably going to pass out. And that’s the best-case scenario. The teacher’s lounge is close, I’ll grab you an energy drink to help you recover. You start on the spell, and I’ll be back soon.”
Professor Kiln sprinted off, leaving me with Rafe and Tor. Part of me was relieved that she was leaving so that I could screw up or succeed without the pressure of her prying eyes, but part of me wanted her here to help me just in case. It didn’t matter though, she was gone.
“I’m ready. And you can do this,” Tor said. He held his hand out to Rafe, who helped him up. He stood there on one foot waiting for me to say the spell.
I glanced down at the book one more time, then I nodded.
“See you guys on the other side,” Tor said. Then he closed his eyes.
I started the spell.
15
Keira
I got up to get more rum. No sense letting very good rum go to waste. I filled my glass to the top, nodding at the Headmaster, as if we were two people having a conversation about the stock market. In the roaring twenties.
The décor in this place was so odd. Everything in here looked like it belonged from a different century.
I cleared my throat. “You really should get a decorator in here to update the place.”
I saw anger flash in his eyes. That was unexpected. I was just making polite conversation.
“My dear, what would you have me do? Replace all of the priceless treasures in this room with the temporary, thrown together furniture and art of today? Blasphemy.”
Alright, don’t bring up interior decoration with him, got it. “Okay, sure. I guess it’s fine the way it is.” I took a very long sip of rum before deciding it was best if I returned to my seat.
As soon as I headed in that direction, though, I saw the window. An actual window with and I thought I could see the pink behind the curtain of the sun coming up. Was it true? Was a new day dawning? I took a few steps closer.
Then a thought hit me. No matter how weird and magical this room was, if I could see outside, maybe outside could see me.
I tried to nonchalantly make my way over to the window. Then I moved the curtain out of the way to get a better view.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the Headmaster snapped. He sounded angry. What now?
I turned back to face him. “Don’t mind me, I’m just letting a little bit of sunlight in.”
I swept the curtain out of the way and the full force of the morning sun made its way into the room. I glanced back and saw that the Headmaster had gotten up from his chair and took a few steps back. He was glaring murder at me. I already knew he wanted to kill me, why did he care if I opened a window first?
He took another back. The light seemed to bother him. Good to know. I heard a loud banging. It sounded like it came from nearby. Then there was the unmistakable sound of broken glass.
I turned my attention away from the angry Headmaster to the window to see what was going on, but I couldn’t see far enough to the side to know where the broken glass was coming from.
One glance around the courtyard, however, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was Tor. And Rafe. And Malachai! Malachai had a book. I couldn’t tell for sure from this distance, but it looked like the same spell book I used to turn Tor human.
I couldn’t see it perfectly, but I could feel it. I could feel the dark magic coursing through Malachai. He was going to turn Tor back into a dragon. They hadn’t given up on me. I dared for a moment to hope.
Tor in dragon form was a formidable opponent, even for a magically sealed kill room. Maybe I still had a chance.
I turned back to the Headmaster, feeling worry mixed with a growing sense of hope. I had gotten distracted by the events going on in the courtyard, and my back had been turned to the Headmaster for far too long. It was too quiet.
When I turned to face him again, he wasn’t him. Or I guess he was him, just not the him that I was used to. He was much bigger, a solid green color, and the horn on his head was scalier.
“Shit!” I yelled, unable to stop myself at the sight. As he mentioned earlier, his claws looked like killing machines. They were razor sharp and at least six inches long. They reminded me of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
His mouth had enlarged and elongated. It now resembled the size and shape of a crocodile, complete with jagged interlocking teeth that protruded from his face.
The teeth looked razor sharp and they were a gross yellow color, like they were decaying. And his eyes were tiny, too tiny. The effect was horrifying.
He had been standing there, waiting for me to turn around so he could freak me the fuck out. And it worked. I slammed down the rest of the rum and then, in the absence of any other ideas, I threw the empty glass at him.
It hit him with a small clink and bounced off of him. Then it hit the floor and shattered into pieces.
The monster that used to be the Headmaster shook his head slowly. “Now, that’s just rude. The foreplay is over, Keira.”
“Ew,” I said, looking for something else to throw at him. Then I remembered I had magic. I assumed my stance. Just as he rushed me.
I tried to hurry the magic, but it was still tingling inside of me waiting to get out when the Headmaster hit me with a claw, knocking me backward into the window.
I hit the window hard. It knocked the breath out of me. Plus, I felt a searing pain in my hip. The swipe of his claws had gone through my jeans and panties and into my flesh. Blood now poured down my leg. I screamed in pain, then whirled to face him.
I saw him straighten and lift his face in the air.
It looked like he was sniffing. Like he had caught the scent of my blood. His body twitched and then he turned his full attention to me again.
His eyes were crazy and focused. “This is where your story ends, Keira. I’m afraid you didn’t graduate. You flunked out. Just another loser street kid nobody will miss.”
“Hey! That really hurts,” I said, up and moving now. If Malachai’s plan worked and he was able to turn Tor back into a dragon, he was probably going to come right at the building. That’s what I would do. I had to get away from this window.
The beast Headmaster charged again. I felt like I was battling some sort of ogre or Egyptian god. I threw myself to my left, on the other side of the fainting couch. I got out of the way just in time, it was the only reason I wasn’t sliced open again. The outstretched claws swiped just out of reach of my body. The claws did contact the fainting couch though, slicing the end of it to scraggly, hanging pieces of cloth.
The Headmaster didn’t expect to miss me, and the result was that the surprise momentum carried him forward into the glass window.
When he touched it, he screamed, like the heat or the sunlight hurt him. He recovered quickly, and his face was a mask of rage when he turned around to face me again. He was breathing heavy.
I guessed that his technique of changing into a monster and then pouncing on students when they were least expecting it was effective enough that he never had to work for the kill. Well, he said he wanted a fight and now he was going to get one.
He half-roared and half-groaned when he saw that he had sliced and diced his own furniture in his attempt to cut me open. “Do you have any idea how long it took to find th
at lovingly restored piece of antique furniture?”
I blinked to remind myself this was my reality now. The murderous crocodile monster was complaining about his antique. “Why the hell would I care about your stupid furniture?” I asked as I backed up. With any luck I could get far enough away to give my magic time to blast him before he tried to pounce on me again.
Then his hideous face changed from rage to calm to a horrible expression that resembled a smile. Shit. He was enjoying it again. That probably meant I was in trouble.
“All you’re doing is making it more fun for me, Keira. You have no chance. No student has ever gotten out of my kill room alive. Not in a century.”
Since he had stopped his advance, I let my guard down for a moment to consider this. A century? Was he serious? “How fucking old are you? You do realize that a century is like a hundred years, right?”
He went from a crouched position to standing tall and straight. He towered in an obvious attempt to intimidate me. It was working. “I know you think you’re special, Keira. But you’re not. Unless you count being extra delicious. I can’t wait until your insides are spread all over the floor.” Then his snake-like tongue came out and licked his lips in anticipation.
“Ugh.” I fought back a new wave of terror and the urge to hurl at the mental image he just put in my head. And at the sight of his tongue.
He dropped back into a crouch and prepared to charge again. And I was out of fainting couches to hide behind. I had to find another way to stall. “Tell you what, let’s make it interesting. Are you a betting man?”
He cocked his monstrous head from to one side to another, as if he were trying to get a better look at me. “I’m listening.”
“If I kill you, I get a whole bottle of your rum. And if you kill me then you can empty out my bank account and buy some of that scotch that you like. How much is that stuff, anyway?”