by A. K. Koonce
“You look sharp today, Professor.”
His smile is a blinding, handsome thing on his face. He fingers the sleeve of his cuffs as he speaks, “That’s because today is a very special day, Izara.”
My eyebrows raise at the excited tone of his voice. “Oh, really?” I lean forward on the toes of my shoes. “And why is that?”
“Because…” He spreads his arms out at his sides. “Today is the day we bring the essence of hell to you.”
Hope flares to life in my chest. It was a kernel before and now its burning embers erupting in a blazing inferno. I’m struck speechless for a single moment, struggling to find the right words. When the pounding of my heart catches up to my racing brain, I take a desperate step towards him.
“You found a way?” I grasp his lapels in my fists and tug him closer.
Shade smiles and his hand encloses over mine, grasping, soothing. The look in his bicolored eyes is tender. “I did.” His palm smooths over my clenched fingers, gently prying them away so he can take my hand and hold it. His other hand comes up to my face, thumb brushing across my cheek. “You’re a daughter to me, Izara, do you know that?”
My throat tightens. When you’re born not knowing what you are or where you come from, you crave affection, no matter how much of it your adopted family gives to you, the ache is still there, living inside. It’s here now, and my heart grasps for those words and tucks them close.
“You’re very… important to me…” He’s like a birth father. Not in the sense that he donated his sperm to create me—ew—but in the sense that he’s kind and proud, he’s guided me and protected me ever since I came here. I love my adopted father, but he could never truly give me what Shade’s given me. And I can have two fathers, can’t I?
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” He pulls away long enough to offer me his arm, which I take, and then we start walking along the forest grounds, back to the direction of the Academy. It’s a slow trek with lazy, casual movements back toward the academy grounds. “I mean it, though.” He stops for a second, and something in his posture, his voice wavers. “I started working at the Academy because of my son.”
I nod. “You mentioned that.” My heart aches, and my mind flashes back to the first circle of hell and the murderous angel stuck in limbo.
“I thought if I joined a school that’s meant to better people like my son that I could make a difference, but…” He runs his free hand through his hair. “The Academy is corrupt. You know this.”
“It’s kind of hard not to.”
A muscle in his cheek jumps. “It’s... difficult... being the only professor who cares about the students. I came here looking to help the Prodless; that’s why the Academy was founded in the first place, right? To help those in need so that we don’t suffer another Dark Genocide and lose our children?” He cuts off, his voice shaky. I squeeze his arm just a bit tighter for comfort. “But then you realized that neither the Academy nor the Supernatural council care about the Prodless. They want them to fail so they can take them and lock them up, kill them. Out of sight, out of mind. Because they’d rather murder what they don’t understand rather than take the time to get to know them, care for them.”
I was ‘them’. I was the Prodless that they meant to kill. They locked me up, they threatened me with death and have done nothing to help hone my powers. Not really. Because why bother when I’m meant for destruction anyway, for death? I don’t know what I am, so I don’t matter. Throw me into a crumbling dorm, give me a half-assed schedule, shitty teachers, and pray for the best. But there is no best here at the Academy. There’s nothing but violence and Prods going through the days on their own because the teachers can’t bring themselves to give a fuck.
They threw us into a pit of darkness and destruction, and it’s only a matter of seeing who comes out victorious.
“This place is corrupt.” We walk beneath the canopy of trees and slowly reach the edge of the forest and the clearing that leads up to the angel statue. “I want it to change. I think you do, too,” he says.
The broken body of his son flashes in my mind. So fragile, and killed all because, like me, he couldn’t control his Prod. That could have been me. It still could be me.
“I do.”
His smile is a confident thing. “You are great, Izara.” His thumb reaches out to push aside an errant strand of hair. “But you can be greater.”
The promise of power thrums to life. My Prod thrums to life and sends a taloned tip claw raking down my spine as she purrs, desperate for a taste of it. It’s hypnotic, seductive, and I fucking want it.
“Turn towards the Academy,” he orders on a firm tone.
My body obeys.
“Repeat after me, ‘Ego convocabo, Regina Infernumae, infernum. Voco daemonium, voco dimensio mihi, voco domus meus. Regina Infernumae filia diabolus et angelus, nunc aperi mundi.’”
My Prod rises from her slumber, as if summoned by those words. I feel the power in them as he speaks and every single hair on my body rises. My mouth opens and moves, repeating it. Word for word. Even as the words taste foreign on my tongue, I say them with confidence. I trust Shade. I trust him to fix every broken bit of me, to make this better. To make me better.
So I say the words and the stench of sulfur and burnt cinnamon permeate the air, overpowers it, until I’m dizzy and drunk on the odor. But the words slip from my tongue like they’re meant to go there. Like they belong.
Above our heads, the bright sky darkens and the clouds roll across one another in dangerous grays and blacks. Thunder roars and lightning flashes, like my calls are being answered and met with heavenly force.
“Louder,” Shade echoes in my ear.
So I throw my hands out and just the taste of the words has my Prod awakening. Finally, finally, I can feel her, the same way I felt her in hell. She’s here, rising to embrace me as one. No longer will I be the Academy’s pawn, no longer will I have the threat of death and incarceration over my head. No longer will I have the constant worry twisting my gut that I’ll murder the people I love.
The well of power inside me is there. I feel it lurking, waiting for me.
So the words stop and my magic settles over me once again. My skin glows, my wings flare. I finally feel complete.
“Do you feel the power?” Shade circles around me before stopping in front of me. He’s glowing with a never ending well of pride that I soak up. “Do you feel how strong you are?”
“Yes.” It comes out an ethereal gasp.
“You could have more. You could have more and never fear the Academy again. Never fear hurting your friends and family.”
My body jolts, but all Shade does is smile. It’s gleeful.
“I don’t—”
“Have you ever wondered about your mother, Izara?” The abrupt subject change is enough to put me on the tips of my toes. “I knew her, you know. Rather intimately.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“She would have killed you in the womb if I hadn’t prevented it.”
“What are you talking about?” I feel suddenly like I can’t breathe. Like there’s something here, something vital that I can’t quite grasp and I don’t know why. I’m blind to it.
He steps close to me and takes my face in his hands. “I wanted to be sure it was you. I wasn’t completely honest before. I came to the Academy to help the Prodless, but also to find you. I knew you’d come back to me one day, even when I had to hide you from those who wanted you dead. Among them, your mother. Etheria.”
I want to stagger back from his words, from the shock rippling through my body at the confession, but he holds me firmly in his grip.
“Don’t run away from the truth, Izara. No one else would have been able to do what you just did. No one but you. Because you have angel blood in your body. Angel blood that...” He swallows and I can see the torment on his face. “...that sits next to my own.”
I have no words to give him. The shock of this information invades eve
ry inch of me, numbing my senses, my body. I don’t know what to say, don’t know if I should say anything at all.
So instead, my Prod leaps in to save the day in the worst possible way. Just as she always does.
And I faint.
My eyes blink open and I swear years have passed instead of mere seconds. I’m sprawled on the ground, cradled in Professor Shade’s arms. He’s looking at me with such tenderness and such fatherly love that it builds an ache somewhere inside.
“My father is the Messenger of Chaos,” I say defensively. He’d called me daughter. He’d taken me from my dimension to his home. He’d placed me on the throne.
In a room that held three of them.
“I don’t understand…”
His smile is a little sad. “I think you do, you just don’t want to accept it.”
“He called me groemmel.” The excuse sounds pathetic in my ears, weak.
“Groemmel means sister. Graemmol means daughter.”
Fucking Ifrit and their fucking bullshit translations.
“But that would mean that…”
Those lips widen and in a second, wings appear on his back, spanning out. Black with curved talon tips, smoking like they’d long since burnt out. And they… they look like mine without the rivers of white and orange fire coursing through them. And for a moment I wonder if that is somehow a gift from my birth mother.
An angel.
A fucking angel.
The founder of this school, and leader of the Dark Genocide.
“But… she killed your son.”
“I know. And she tried to kill you too, but… I got to her first. For you. To protect you. I cut you out of the womb myself.”
My head spins. The information is overwhelming and I feel like I just might faint again. “But that means you’re…”
Lucian Morningstar, the King of Hell.
A small crown suddenly appears perched over his brow by magic. It glows and shimmers with smoke and hellfire.
“Come.” He stands, pulling me with him. “You’ve done what we set out to do and this time should be celebrated.”
He turns, and over the ridge of his wing, I see the rip in the fabric of this dimension, like a curtain has been pulled back right from the trees and the sky to reveal the image through a foggy window, overlapping the angel’s statue of the Academy. My mother’s statue.
Through the rip in the fabric, I see hell.
And it’s pouring into this world. It smokes through the rip, spreading like ink on a page, consuming the ground, the sky. Until everything is black and red and gray.
His arms spread out at his sides and for the first time, it’s like a veil is ripped away and I can see the full force of Professor Shade’s power. His whole body pulses with whisking smoke, sliding off of him like water off of stone. As if answering his call, from the corner of my visions, shadows appear.
They slither against the ground, some emerging from the portal and flock to him like faithful soldiers.
Demons.
My Prod delights at the sight of them. Because she is their leader, she is their queen, their commander and the power inside me slowly builds, ready for an eruption.
“MISS CASTILLO!” I flinch at the voice of Headmaster Willms. Professor Shade turns as the stout man comes running towards us with security flanking his sides, holding pathetic buzzing clubs. They stop short of the line of demons and the Headmaster glares from Shade to me. “What the hell is going on here?”
Funny choice of words.
Can he not see the rip in dimensions and hell pouring through or is he literally that stupid? Hysteria threatens to choke laughter out of me.
“This is illegal. Your constant inability to follow rules has left me no choice. Izara Castillo, you are placed under permanent arrest for the use of illegal magic. Professor Shade, if you’ll please grab her so she does not escape.”
Professor Shade—no, Lucian Morningstar—laughs. The sound is like the crackling of wood in a bonfire, like the haunted echoes of tortured screams. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before and it makes the guards around the headmaster shift uneasily.
“Consider this my two seconds’ notice, Headmaster Willms.” Lucian lifts his arm and magic assaults around us blindingly. The force of his power lifts the headmaster in the sulfur scented air.
Willms screams but the sound is immediately cut off with a gurgle. His body arches and his arms are thrown at their sides like a grotesque religious parody.
“You have helped corrupt this Academy; you’ve poisoned it with your tyrant, murderous ideals and your reign is over.”
Headmaster Willms eyes go to me, pleading, begging, and filled with such hatred. Before I can blink, Lucian’s hand closes into a fist and raw, vicious power swallows the headmaster of the Academy…
And destroys him from the inside out.
Twenty-Nine
Malek
Every instinct inside me roars to attack, to protect, to kill. I’ve pushed aside the Change from within me for so long, limiting myself only to the power of the Full Moon. Not now. I can’t.
Not when magic assaults the air, dangerous, deadly magic. Syko flies above me, Saint and Heaven with their vampire speed run ahead of me. Phoenix is at my side, the full force of his demonic self on display in destructive, agonizing fury. Sasha is gliding through the earth by the push and pull of her vines.
When we burst out of our dorm, we are greeted with a blackening sky and a jaggedly opened portal set in the middle of the Academy.
The shock of seeing it forces us into a skidded halt. I stop mid-Change, my features elongated and distorted into a grotesque half man-half beast creature. I drop to all fours, my hand-claws sinking into the darkening earth.
“We’re too late,” Heaven breathes a quiet whisper.
Shade, that devil, he got to Izzy. He got to my mate, and I did nothing to stop it. But I refuse to believe it’s too late. It’s not. My eyes scan through the Academy and I find her before the portal, a hand slamming up to her mouth to stifle a scream. Shade is in front of her, his fist held in the air.
In a split second we see it, a split second in which I catch sight of the headmaster, floating above the both of them and then the next... he explodes.
His body is torn apart with magic. His skin erupts in welts and bubbles that burst into bloody, remnants of the doctor. His remains rain down on the earth and shadows... no, not shadows, demons screech and jump, ripping through the guards in a single swipe of death.
Their screams pierce the world around us, and I’m propelled forward by the sound alone. A growl tears from my throat, becoming a vicious snarl to protect. I jump and when I land on the ground again, I’m a wolf. The more savage part of me takes over, demanding and violent.
I rip into the fray of demons, tearing through scaled flesh with snarling teeth. I don’t care, don’t discriminate. All I care about is Izara, my love, my mate. Syko swoops down from above, grabbing at the tail of a demon and lifting it up... up... up…
Then the body comes hurtling to the earth, dying with a splat.
“Stop! STOP IT!”
Everything freezes. The breath in my lungs, the chaotic noises of the fight… everything as that one sweet voice commands us all.
I spit out ichor from my mouth and look up, my eyes taking in Izara’s trembling form.
“Izzy, get the fuck away from him!” Phoenix snaps. There are no more niceties in his voice, just the infinite amount of worry and desperation. Like he’s one single second away from jumping across the space that separates them to reach for her, pull her into his arms.
“He killed the headmaster.” Saint steps into my line of vision, and only the side of his face is visible, but he looks paler than usual.
“You don’t know what he is.” Syko lands beside Saint, his white and gold wings fanning out across his back. “He’s Lucian Morningstar. He’s the devil.”
Said devil makes no move to attack us, but that bicolored gaze flicks across t
he line of us with cool indifference. How had we not known? How had we ever thought he was good?
“I know,” Izzy whispers a little sadly. “I know who he is…” She turns to look at him, and the look of tender confusion on her face pushes me to change back into human. She turns back, and her whiskey-colored eyes meet mine. “He’s my father.”
Thirty
Izara
Saying the words feel... right. In a way that they never felt right when I thought of the Messenger of Chaos. I never felt a connection to the Messenger. The thing inside me that prompts my Prod to whisper, He’s family, he’s mine.
Even while he’d just completely destroyed the headmaster before my eyes, my Prod delighted at the destruction, absorbed it while pushing aside my own disgust. Because I recognized the destruction, the taste of that power as something similar to my own.
Like we belong.
Like we were connected.
I register the shock on the faces of my friends, my men. Like they cannot believe I’ve so easily accepted the devil as my father. But nothing else has ever felt like it belonged. Not my adoptive father, not the Messenger... but Shade? He feels right. In a way I can’t explain. In a way I don’t want to.
“He used you,” Phoenix grinds out. I can see the soft flickering anger fading in and out of his body. His eyes are pitch black, his veins running dark with the color. “To bring hell on earth. He used you, Iz. Please... get the fuck away from him.”
My hands shake at those words I know in my heart are true. He’d lied, he’d tricked me, not into bringing an essence of hell to myself, but into actually opening the rift between dimensions to let them through. And they were pouring through the portal, silent shadows slipping from the glowing pulse of that rip.
Despite it all, I can’t take a step forward, can’t take a step away from my father... my fucking father. He lied, he tricked… but he’d also saved me.
“You don’t understand,” I whisper.
“Then fucking explain it to me!” he yells. And I can literally see his heart fracturing before my very eyes. The emotions he kept so long at bay that appeared for me are suddenly tumbling and he doesn’t know what to do.