“I—I saw that.”
Levine rushed to the door and held it open waving the others out. “The rest of you, leave. Out, now.”
The urgency in her voice made them rush through the door without question. She banged the door closed behind them and faced Tarun. “How could you keep this away from me, from the school?”
Tarun stared at the headmistress as she raced around the room, slamming windows shut, drawing drapes. “Tell me what you’ve been going through.”
Tarun meandered back to her desk to look at the image again. “It’s called a Feeder. It feeds off your pain and guilt. By the look on your face, you know what I’m talking about. Tarun…” she moved to his side of the table, where Tarun was lost in the eyeless sockets. “Is there anything you feel guilty about?”
He shook his head sharply. “No. I’m fine.”
“Tarun, I understand how bad this is probably getting for you. That demon will feed on everything that is weighing you down, it will make you question your sanity, it won’t stop pushing until you go over the edge.” She stood again, her face pale, fingers clutching at the tip of her suit. “I need to know the extent of the damage.”
“Why me?” His voice shook. “Why not the others, too? We were there together.”
“It only recognizes one host at a time—usually the first it sees. Tell me, were you leading this little escapade of yours?”
“I was in front, if that’s what you mean…Ma’am.” He was beginning to grow hot—with the windows and doors shut. Tarun opened the first two buttons on his jacket.
“When we discovered it was gone, it was too late,” Levine went on. “Every student was gone. We had to wait and pray that it wasn’t too late. I watched the Sacred Tree every day, expecting a leaf to drop, but you’ve been strong. You’ve managed to keep it at bay. I’m impressed.”
Tarun looked everywhere but at her—at the dusty brown drapes, the massive desk, the cider table in the corner. He couldn’t tell her about last night. She would send him home. Talking about treatment—about this Feeder—was only a way to deceive him into admitting it. Maybe a student had seen them and reported. This was all a ploy to get him. Everyone was out to get him. He decided to keep mute.
“Tarun.” Alarm crept over Levine’s face. “It has happened already. You’ve done something drastic to yourself. I saw the way Ava kept looking at you. What happened?”
Tarun crossed his arms and ignored her. Inside, his heart was threatening to break out. Sweat slowly trailed from his forehead down his face; he made no move to wipe it.
Levine hurried to the speaker system on the wall, pressed the button, and announced, “Professor Matilda Liston to my office, please.”
“Professor for Mystical and Esoteric Studies? She’s got nothing to do with this here.”
“But she does, my dear boy. I fear we may be too late in saving you. I can see you slipping away.”
Tarun was finding it harder to breathe. His lungs felt hard pressed against his chest. He uncrossed his arms; his fingers felt sticky. He looked at them and recoiled, cringing at the sight. Dripping to the headmistress’s carpet were thick clumps of blood.
He collided against something hard and swiveled around to see. The rotten smell hit him first. The decay and loss. The desperate need to exist. Chunks of flesh were gone from its face, but he knew that person. It was his father.
Lolling on his sunken hollow cheeks were eyeballs hung by stringy pieces of flesh.
Tarun should’ve run—he wanted to run. But the guilt he felt and the accusation he thought he read in those dead eyes held him to the spot. He crumbled to his knees, begging, mumbling over and over, “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry…”
A few feet away, right outside Levine’s door, Ava, JiSoo, Winta, and James pressed their ears firmly against it. It was a futile effort; no sound escaped from it.
Azar, however, preferred to mind her business by the adjacent wall, though curiosity wouldn’t let her go back to her room.
“We were all there. Why did she stop him alone? We should be in there, too,” James said, frustration hitting him hard.
“Tarun’s different.” Ava choked out. Hanging by the doorknob. She twisted a lock of hair loose from her bun. They hadn’t even changed into regular clothes, thinking this was going to be a touch-and-go meeting as it always was with Levine. “He thinks he killed his father.”
Azar’s ears prickled—what did Ava just say? Tarun was the best of them, as far as she was concerned. Thinking of the times the guy saved her from boys.
She looked over at the others. “He did what?” But no one heard her; she was just a small voice in the midst of shouting and argument.
“He did not!”
“Impossible.”
“I don’t believe it.”
The group went into tirades extolling all of Tarun’s best qualities. Azar just watched them interact.
“He also tried to kill himself,” Ava blurted.
That caught Azar by full surprise.
“What?!” Professor Matilda Liston shouted from the end of the hallway. She was perhaps the most modern of all the teachers. Her name didn’t match the young, unlined face, the strut with which she walked, her stunning figure laid bare in blue jeans and yellow crop top.
“What did you say?” she repeated as she rushed forward, her heeled stilettos clicking on the tiles. “Carrington, say that again.”
“Tarun,” Ava shook more hair loose from her bun, “...he’s been acting crazy. He’s in there.”
The professor banged on the door. “Levine, I’m here.” The woman adjusted the heavy bag on her shoulders. The others shifted from the door as Levine opened it and Matilda rushed in.
“Did you see anything?” Ava asked JiSoo anxiously as the door slammed.
“No, anyone?”
“Omigod, I hope he’s okay,” James whimpered.
By the corner, almost out of sight, Azar could have sworn she saw Elaine sneak by.
“Tarun! Get up! It’s just in your head. Your father isn’t here.”
“Yes, he is; he’s there! He wants me with him! I want to be with him. I killed him…Oh, I killed him...”
Matilda felt his forehead, felt the pulsating life there, and hurried to her sack. She flitted around the room, setting up candles, incense that smelled like roasting meat. Tarun was curled up on the floor, shivering, tears running down his cheeks, blubbering words neither of the women understood.
“We need to move fast or we’ll lose him!” Matilda declared.
Instantaneously, Tarun went still.
10
“Levine, a blanket! Now!” Matilda yelled at the distraught headmistress. She ran into the inner room where she’d locked Ava that first semester and retrieved the blanket on the rickety, well-used bed.
After draping it around Tarun’s unmoving body, she looked him over frantically. He was covered in a sheen of sweat, but as she covered him, her hand brushed against his skin. He was chilled to the bone.
Matilda swiftly crossed to him armed with ashes. Levine watched in silence. This was beyond her capability.
The professor drew a swirling symbol on Tarun’s forehead after wiping it with her suit. She muttered incantations--esoteric words that almost sounded like music. Her voice rose, climbing higher and higher in crescendo.
She danced around Tarun, flicking more of the ashes all over him. Tarun didn’t move; the sheen of sweat was completely dried up, leaving his skin bloodless and pale.
“He’s not responding, Matilda.” Levine pressed her lips together.
The professor didn’t respond either, just kept up with her strange dance of waving her hands and spritzing the ashes around the room. The feather in her right hand was covered with the ashes. The whole scene would have been comical if it weren’t a life-or-death situation.
In the blink of an eye, she leaped high into the air and descended, morphing into the creature that Levine knew, but many believed existed only in legends, the creat
ure that made the professor special: a fairy.
Her wings, iridescent, shimmering with light, fluttered and brought her to the boy. Levine could barely see what the tiny creature was doing to the boy; all she knew was that she hovered over his ears, and in the next second, Tarun opened his mouth, and a dark smoke surged out violently.
The smoke coursed the room, searching for a new host, a way out. The pot of ashes on the floor next to Tarun suddenly quivered. The fairy stood on the boy’s head, moving her tiny arms. The dark smoke—the Feeder—found its way to the pot, and the quivering ceased.
Tarun’s eyes fluttered open.
His chest heaved as he took his first full breath in ten minutes.
Levine collapsed on the carpet next to him, a mixture of relief and extreme gratitude preventing her words. No leader wanted to lose a ward, not for anything.
Tarun looked down at himself and found that he was on the floor. He did a double-take at the sight of his headmistress beside him. Tarun bounced to his feet.
What happened here?
Last he remembered was talking about his father. He looked around him. Ashes all over him, frantic, he began to beat at them, wiping off as much as he could.
“Thank you, Matilda. Thank you.”
Levine was talking to herself? He followed her eyes and turned to see a tiny dot of light. It was moving; it shot into the air and descended…. A full-grown woman...
Matilda.
She smiled at him and asked, “How do you feel?”
“Why can’t I remember anything? What’s going on?”
“You should be thanking her, Tarun. You would be dead if not for her.”
A chill crept up his spine; he hadn’t been dreaming. That dark place—the place of nothingness—he was stuck in wasn’t in his mind.
He’d nearly died.
Tarun ran to the smiling professor and threw his arms around her.
“Hey, not so tight!” she protested, shrugging out of his hold. “Just doing my job.” She began to pack up her tools. The jar she left for last, leaving Tarun standing there, wordless.
He snapped back to attention as she conferred with the headmistress.
“I’ve secured the Feeder. What do you want to do with it now?” she asked.
Levine answered without mincing words, “Destroy it.”
Matilda nodded curtly, threw Tarun a smile over her shoulder, and marched out. Tarun made to hug the headmistress too, but she pushed him off, though gently.
“Your friends are waiting outside, Mr. Gulati.”
“Thank you, Ma’am. I do—”
“Go. It’s all right.”
Tarun hurried out of the office, still dazed. He had one foot out the door when Ava flew into his arms. Still disoriented, they crashed and landed inside Levine’s office.
A chorus of “sorry”s later and they were squeezing the life out of each other in the hall. James hugged him and Ava together, and Winta joined the circle. Not to be left out, JiSoo jumped on Winta’s back and wrapped her arms where they could reach.
It was a bit before anyone could speak. The others hadn’t heard or seen anything that went on in Levine’s office, but the seriousness of his condition dawned on them when Ava told them about the night before.
Late that same night, Elaine, accompanied only by her shadow, took a short stroll to the mailing room. In her hands, she had three letters, one to her parents, a second to Ava’s mother (last semester, she’d finagled the home address from the letter she stole) and third, to her roommate’s parents.
The following events would unroll starting from the next day. It was true what they said, disappointments were blessings in disguise.
The date had been conclusively canceled for that night; it was instead spent on the floor next to Levine’s office where Tarun recounted everything he remembered. For that night, Levine gave them the free pass to stay up together since one of them had just been through a terrible ordeal.
“Matilda’s a fairy?” Ava gaped.
“No, the question is, so there’s a fairy in Animage?” Tarun ruffled his white hair.
Ava peered up at him. She was sitting between his legs with his arms wrapped around her. “Can you talk about your dad’s accident now?”
She thought maybe he’d say it was too soon and dodge it the way he’d been for the past months, but surprisingly, he sighed deeply and pushed away from her. At first, Ava thought he was about to walk out...
“It was the night my mother told the family about her cancer,” he started. She listened with avid concentration as he continued in a hushed voice, “She looked so frail sitting in the light, but so strong. I couldn’t see why my beautiful mother had to be riddled with that terrible disease. I was angry—it killed me I couldn’t do anything to help her. I went into my room hopeless that night.
“I made the mistake of checking statistics for her survival rate. It was pretty grim. Even if she survived the first bout, there was a chance that it could come back. I flung my phone far from me with a singular aim in mind. Getting wasted on Vampire Serum seemed to be the best option next to lying on my bed and wondering the position she’d be in when she died. What if I was in school? I would miss that too. Selfishly, I took my car keys and ran out of the house.”
He paused, nearly choking on his words, Ava took his hand and stroked it. He smiled tightly and continued. He needed to get it out of his system. Like the Feeder, it existed in his mind only to torment him. And it was about time for her to know he dabbled—well, maybe more than dabbled—with Vampire Serum.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t even notice him getting in his car, too. As I drove out, I saw taillights, but I assumed it was some random car. God, I wish I’d taken the time to look.” He paused and groaned. “I drove like a mad man on the freeway—kept flooring the gas. My phone rang just as I was about to enter the city. It was Dad. Anger blinded me for a second before I clicked answer. He was begging me to return home. I could hear the car in the background. I thought he was watching TV and just hung up on him. I could never forget the disappointment in his eyes as he pulled closer to me. He mouthed ‘stop the car!’ but I ignored him. I can’t remember how it happened, but the next thing I know he blocked me with his car and I rammed him into a tree.”
He paused, waiting for the judgment to begin. The pity in her eyes only increased but she didn’t stop him. “Blood, blimey, there was so much blood. I couldn’t breathe. I rushed out to him, but it was too late. He was squished into his seat like putty; I couldn’t recognize my own father.”
Ava swallowed and reached out her hand. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that alone. But if your father were here, would he want you to torture yourself? It was an accident. Nothing more.”
“I tried to pull him out,” he continued. “But I wasn’t strong enough as a human...so…I—I—shifted.” His voice started to crack. “I grabbed him by the shoulder with my teeth to pull him out but…”
“Oh no,” Ava whispered.
“Yeah.” He nodded, wiping a tear. “I just ripped him apart. Literally. I don’t even know what happened. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Oh, Babe…” Ava wiped more tears from his cheeks. “There was nothing you could do.”
Tarun heaved a sigh, a little more of the weight of losing his father leaving him. He knew on some level that his father was already dead in that seat when he got to him, but the Feeder had clouded his mind.
He and Ava stayed there talking late into the night, rehashing the past. Tarun told her of the nothingness; nothing was barred, and for the first time since he returned to school, everything fell into place.
Preparations for the centennials were underway, and the organizers were selected among the students. Elaine was selected as the head of the committee. Naturally, she picked those in her clique to rule with her. Ava didn’t find it funny when she read the notice Elaine pasted for them to read.
“What in the actual crap weasels!? Why would she pair with Tarun and he
rself? I’ll tell you what, that psycho just wants more time with him.”
“Are you sure about that? I mean it could just be that three of you are better at finding the perfect theme.”
“Oh, spare me the rationalizations, Winta. I stayed with her for months. We know how vindictive she is….” Ava was still ranting when an announcement came on the speaker.
Winta tilted her head to the side as she listened. “Why is Levine asking for you, James, and Michaela?”
“Beats me. Did we do something?”
“Who knows--oh, hey, let’s check if you made it into games.” JiSoo moved to the end of the massive notice board. On the edge, one yellow paper was pinned with a red-tipped office pin.
“Oh, I hope you made it,” Winta crooned.
“You mean James, too, right?” Ava winked.
Ava traced the list of names. The three sharks were unsurprisingly on the top, Michaela didn’t make it, and neither did Deacon or Diana. Ava grinned.
“Hey, look, I made it!” Ava squealed, not that she was surprised. It was one of the things she put her mind to. She loved the way she felt when the wind whipped across her face, the exhilaration of clinching the target.
“Elaine made the list, too,” JiSoo observed with a shake of her little pigtail poofs.
“Of course she did,” Ava retorted, “and so did Colin.” Then she folded her arms and shot her nose in the air. “Actually, I’m happy Elaine did. This way, we’ll finally know who’s better.”
Winta and JiSoo exchanged glances. Ava was being overly competitive.
James was just under her name, and so were three other students she didn’t know.
“James, huh?” Winta let a tightlipped smile spread across her cheeks all the way up to her eyes.
Animage Academy: Year Three ~ The Shifter Academy Down Under (The Shifter School Down Under Book 3) Page 7