by Lan Chan
Sophie and I both ducked, but it turned out we needn’t have bothered. The wind hit the protective barrier of my circle and dispersed sideways. It ripped other students up off their seats and launched them across the room.
While the commotion distracted everybody else, I grabbed Sophie’s arm and we snuck away.
“You’ve really done it now,” Sophie said as we sprinted outside. “She’s going to be gunning for you bigtime.”
“I seriously don’t understand what her problem is!” I snapped. “I haven’t done anything to her.”
“Some girls just take one look at you and decide they don’t like you,” somebody close by said. I looked over and realised it was the female dwarf from the trials. She was sitting on the red polka dot picnic rug with her dwarf partner, the vampire boy, and the shifter boy. “Unfortunately, if that girl happens to be Brigid Harcourt, you’ve got problems. I’m Diana, by the way.”
I stepped right into the middle of their group and plopped down using them as human shields. “Can I hide here for now?”
“You just faced off with a manticore,” the vampire said. “You shouldn’t be scared of one skinny Fae.”
“It was an illusion of a manticore,” Diana shot back. “And you and I both know Brigid isn’t just some Fae. Her father is on the Council.”
“All Fae are fickle and mean. Council or not.”
The tiger shifter grunted in between shovelling heaped spoonfuls of bacon and eggs into his mouth. “You just contradicted yourself, Sasha,” he said. “Fickle and mean isn’t exactly something Alessia wants to go up against. Why has she decided she hates you?”
Sophie just couldn’t help herself even though I was flashing death-ray eyes at her. “Kai was the one who extracted Lex from the human world,” she said. I tried to elbow her but she’d sat down behind Sasha and was too far away. “And now he’s going to be her private tutor.”
Diana’s eyebrows shot to the sky. Then she and Sophie joined in a chorus of childish catcalls. I gave the dwarf a penetrating glare.
“I expected better from you.”
“Oh so just because I’m tough I can’t think a guy is hot?”
“Gross,” the male dwarf said. “I’m not going to hang around you guys if this is what we’re going to be talking about.” He turned to me. “I’m Roland. Trey and I were discussing our classes before my sister so rudely interrupted with boy talk.”
I deduced that Trey was the tiger. It turned out this was their first year as well. Unlike Sophie, they had spent the first part of their education in their respective communities before being invited to Bloodline. Supernatural schools were just like human schools then. And Bloodline was the ultimate supernatural prep school. The topic of classes made me want to crawl into a hole and die. It wasn’t long before my shameful secret was discovered.
Trey blew out a whistle. “Aw man, that sucks.” He squealed suddenly and rubbed his arm where Diana had pinched him.
“I’m sure it won’t be so bad,” she said. “When you think about it, it’s quite a practical way of doing this.”
“It’s just another way for that Nephilim jackass to mess with me.” I thought the hush that fell over them was in response to my harsh words. But then I felt the chill of something inhuman crawl down my spine. I’d felt that coolness before. It was in Nanna’s cell before he appeared.
“Believe it or not, the Nephilim jackass has better things to do with his time,” Kai said. He was standing right behind me. Diana choked on her hash browns and tried to cover it up with a cough. Roland’s dark eyes were bright. Trey fumbled with the spoonful of food that was halfway to his mouth. They just stared over my shoulder. “Are you done running your mouth off so I can take you to the junior school?” I could tell by the lessening of the oppressiveness that he’d started walking away.
I skewered the last of my waffle and stuffed it in my mouth. “For the record,” I said, “I’m never done running my mouth off.” What came out was a bunch of incoherent words because I was still chewing vigorously. I waved at the group and ran to catch up with him.
Why? Why was this happening to me?
19
The length of his stride was about twice the size of mine. He didn’t bother waiting for me to catch up either. Clearly he wasn’t impressed. It didn’t bode well that I was breathing hard when I finally caught up to him. I had to sprint just to keep up. It didn’t leave much room for trying to memorise the route.
“Can you hold your horses?” I puffed.
“I’m sorry, is this a little inconvenient for you? Because I have all kinds of time to waste on a loud-mouth know-it-all who can’t even admit when she needs help.”
My nostrils flared. “If you’ve got all the time in the world, why don’t you spend some of it extracting that stick from your butt? Why don’t you just teleport me and be done with it?”
He barged through a thicket. I had to sidestep to avoid the branches ricocheting back at me.
“Do you think I’m an inanimate object or something? That I only exist to ferry you around? Look alive, Blue. This is your one and only guided tour.”
“Well in that case, could you slow the hell down?”
If it were possible, his stride got even wider. I rubbed my eyes because for a second, I thought he might be floating from one spot to the next. He didn’t even have his wings out. Show-off. My short human legs were burning. The non-existent muscles in the front of my shins ached. But I would rather collapse than give up while he had his panties in a bunch.
I tried to catalogue landmarks but to my dismay, I’d already become slightly disorientated. We’d crossed over a bridge to get past the foaming, clear water of a river. Then through a tangle of forest where the light couldn’t break through the canopy of trees.
When my feet hit yet more lawns and I saw the incline up a steep hill, I was ready to weep. A tingle ran up my left arm. This was it. I was going to have a heart attack. I dragged one leg in front of the other until mercifully, we hit the top of the mound.
A building rose up in the distance. The same bloody building as the one we’d just left. I must have made a pathetic sound because his-royal-jackass slowed.
“But…” I stammered. “That better be a replica. Because if you’ve been leading me around in a circle, I’m going to strangle you.”
“You can barely stand up right now, I wouldn’t be making threats.”
Clearly, he didn’t know me very well. A second later he was walking again. While I was a hot mess of sweat and exhaustion, he barely blinked at the pace. I could only imagine how much stamina he possessed even aside from the fact that he was a supernatural being.
My screaming legs were secretly grateful that the pace he set was more manageable. I was even beginning to think he might have slowed down for my sake until I ran headlong into an invisible barrier and was thrown back. I would have landed on my ass if Kai hadn’t reached out to stop my trajectory with an arm curled around my back.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I said, my face flaming.
“I thought a genius like you would have felt it.”
His lips twitched. No way. There was no way he was laughing at me right now. I didn’t have time to comment because two men materialised in front of us. They hovered in the air, the span of the white wings behind their backs much wider than they were tall. And that was saying a lot. Both of them were dark-haired, their eyes a stunning coppery gold. They wore khaki pants and T-shirts in calming earth tones.
“Malachi,” the one on the left acknowledged.
“Curtis,” Kai greeted in return. He turned to the Nephilim on the left. “Bran.”
“Is this the one?” Curtis asked.
“The one and only. I’m sure she’ll make herself known to you.” I shot him a dirty glare.
“Hello, I’m Lex.”
Bran winked at me. “It’s not every day one gets escorted by our brother. What did you do to deserve the honour?”
“Not sure. I’ve been wracking
my brain to figure it out myself.”
Both of them tried to suppress their grins as Kai levelled them with a scarily even look. “She’s going to need passage across the barrier every weekday,” he said, ignoring us. “Make sure the guards know her.”
“They already know about her,” Curtis assured him. “The tiny human who bested a manticore, with seeds of all things. Come, we’ll show you the rest of the way. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do, Kai.”
“I do.” Except he didn’t move. When we reached the entrance of the building, I turned around to glance back at the hill. He was still standing there, a shadow across his features, his shoulders set in stone. It wasn’t until Curtis raised a hand that Kai nodded slowly and winked out of sight.
I blew out a weighted breath. Curtis shook his head. “Don’t take it personally,” he said. “He hasn’t been the same since the battle at Seraphina.”
“What happened?”
There was a pause. “Most of his family was murdered by demons.”
I tripped over my own feet and only just managed to stay upright by flailing my arms. Bran steadied me. “How?”
Something cold in my gut turned my hands clammy. I glanced at one solidly built Nephilim to the other. It was like someone got a bunch of boulders and sculpted them into human-shaped bodies. My lips turned up into a smile at the idea of someone using rocks for Kai’s brains. But jackass or not, there was no arguing with the fact that he was built for power. They all were. The very idea of anything murdering them sent a trickle of fear right through my bloodstream. Bran seemed to sense where my thoughts were. Or maybe it was the way I was blatantly staring at his washboard abs.
“Demons are cunning,” he said. “They have to be, given the circumstances.”
“Isn’t this place well-guarded?”
They took me through a series of halls that reminded me of the senior campus. “It is,” he said. “But we aren’t omniscient. Things slip through the cracks. Especially when there are so many with abilities that can’t be measured simply through a barrier.”
Curtis nodded at the closed door a few steps away. The sign above the doorway said it was the administration office. “This isn’t our story to tell. Sufficed to say, Malachi hasn’t been the same since. In fact, that was the most words I’ve heard him string together in a long time.”
Without warning, he placed his palm on my forehead. A tingle of warm sensation flickered through the connection.
“We will remember you,” Curtis said. “And the others will be alerted for your passing. Do you remember the way?”
“Not even close.”
A laugh. It was pleasant. I didn’t peg him for someone of either Michael or Raphael’s line. When I asked, he only smiled. “We are borne of Uriel’s blood.”
As if that meant something to me. I would have asked more except a bell went off and kids started streaming through the entrances. Yikes! Day one and I was already late. Five years too late, I wanted to press. But the Nephilim had disappeared.
Inside the administration office they registered me in yet another huge book. The Deputy Headmaster, a vampire named Dmitri, eyed me suspiciously while his assistant took down notes. I was given directions to the room for my first class: Magical History. When I got there, it was already in session. According to my timetable, I was fifteen minutes late. The chance of slinking into a seat at the back was zero.
All eyes turned to me as I pushed the door open. The teacher walked-glided over. She had to be another Nephilim. “Uhh hi,” I said.
“You must be Alessia. I’m Professor Magnus. Welcome to the class.” Professor? She didn’t look any older than twenty-five. They should bottle this ageless supernatural gene and sell it. They’d make a killing. She clapped her hands.
“Class. I’d like you to meet our newest student. Alessia Hastings. She comes to us from the senior campus.”
“She’s old,” one of the boys in the back said. A snotty little kid with a mop of wavy black hair and a smattering of freckles.
“Is she stupid or something?” a girl with blonde pigtails asked. Why was I not surprised that she sported pointy ears and the telltale signs of palest pink wings behind her back. “Why does she have to come to the junior campus?”
And here I thought the kids my age were rude jerks. The professor turned to me. “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself, Alessia?”
God I hated this part of starting a new school. Why did they think the new kid wanted to talk about themselves? As if this wasn’t awkward enough!
“Umm…”
“I know who she is!” a sandy-haired boy in the front of the class piped up. He was stocky for a twelve-year-old, his frame almost filling up the room around the desk. “My brother let me watch the senior school trials. She beat a manticore with her bare hands.”
He proceeded to make growling noises like he was fighting a monster. I liked this kid already. The interruption caused the room to turn into a madhouse of talking and arguing. The professor closed her eyes for a second before she clapped her hands again. Unlike at the human schools I’d attended, these kids grew silent again at her beckoning. I began to wonder whether she was compelling them or something.
“Your brother shouldn’t be showing you such things, Charles,” the professor said.
“He told me I had to watch it so I’d know what to look out for when I go through my own trial,” Charles shot back.
For a second, I saw her face soften. Then she simply waved at me. “Why don’t you just take a seat, Alessia.”
There was only one spot left. It was next to a little girl with reddish brown hair and eyes of a light green. Freckles dotted her creamy skin. She didn’t take up much room but when I settled down next to her, she shrank further. Her spine was stiff as a board. If I didn’t know better, I could swear she was afraid of me.
“Now, class, can we turn to page seventeen of our textbooks, please.”
Textbook? Ah dammit. In my haste to get out the door, I’d forgotten all of my books in my room. This was not turning out to be the best start to the day. Or the Academic year.
“Who can tell me the names of all the seraphim?” Professor Magnus asked.
A half-dozen hands shot up into the air but one little girl, a redhead, started talking before she was even called on. “There’s Michael, the storm bringer,” she said, her voice feverish. “He’s the leader of the seraphim. He banished the Morning Star from the Seraph dimension.” I could just imagine she’d been storing all this up to blurt out. Guess there were know-it-alls at every school. I remembered Kai calling me one not so long ago and grimaced.
A goblin boy mistook my look and stared down at his desk.
“He did not!” Charles corrected.
“Did too,” the redhead said.
“You’re just saying that because you’re of his bloodline! The other seraphim helped too!”
“That’s enough,” the professor said. “Maddison, next time wait for me to call on you.” She pressed her point by staring the little girl down. But though Maddison snapped her mouth shut, there was defiance in her icy blue eyes.
“Does somebody else want to continue?” She held up her finger when Charles opened his mouth. Instead, she pointed to a dark-skinned boy with hair so coarse and black, it seemed to glow like strands of metal. “Thank you, Luther.”
“There’s Raphael, the healer,” Luther said in a surprisingly deep voice. “Gabriel the messenger. Uriel, the seer. Ariel, the protector of animals, and Azrael, he who walks with death.”
Luther recalled all this without so much as glancing down at his textbook. If he wasn’t using it, I wondered if he’d let me borrow it? Just as I was thinking that, my desk partner pushed her textbook so that I could read the page we were on. I wanted to mouth a thanks but she was glancing down at the floor.
“Very good,” the professor said. “Chelsea, could you please read the second paragraph on the page to the class.”
As Chelsea, another Fae
with green wings, read, I learned about the fact that the humanoid dimensions were all interconnected. And that it had been the seraphim’s duty to watch over them all.
“‘The seraphim were vigilant for unrest,’” Chelsea read, “‘but they did not see the threat from within their ranks. For the seraph known as the Morning Star had begun to covet power and dominion over the dimensions and over his own kin. The seraphim waged a war. But they were so mighty that their fighting tore apart the fabric that separated the dimensions. The angel Gabriel repaired the barriers as best she could but there were some that were so damaged they fell. The falling of the barriers unleashed beings from other dimensions into the Earth realm.’”
“Thank you, Chelsea. Tanner, could you continue?”
I was already impatient for the rest. A boy’s clear baritone filled the room. “‘In order to correct their mistake, the seraphim gave up some of their powers to descend to earth. Only Gabriel remained in the Seraph dimension and Azrael stood by his post over the dead. The other seraphim crossed the firmament knowing they would never be able to return home. Their sacrifice allowed them to imbue their blood into humans to carry on their fight. From them, the first Nephilim were born. The bloodlines that this Academy was built upon. Over the centuries, the Nephilim came to an agreement with the leaders of the supernatural beings that escaped the war and made the Earth dimension their home. They agreed to work together to continue to beat back the forces of the Morning Star.’”
“That’s great, Tanner. Thank you.” She walked up to the front of her desk and sat down. “This is the official story of our history. It is a condensed version. Who can tell me what other important events occurred that hasn’t been touched on in the text.”
Even more hands went up. What the heck was up with these kids? When I was their age, I sat cringing at the back of the room hoping not to be noticed. Kind of like my desk buddy.
Charles waved his arm in the air frantically. He was so desperate to answer that he looked like he was going to pee his pants. To stop a potential health hazard, the professor called on him. Eyes bright, Charles said, “The Soul Sisterhood.”