Immortal Divorce Court Volume 2: A Sirius Education

by Kirk Zurosky

  When we awoke the next day, we were still intertwined, and our faces were so close together it brought about a giggle, then another lesson, then yet another. I could not get enough of Knowledge! Finally, she flitted from the bed. “As much fun as you are, Sirius Sinister,” she said, searching for her laboratory clothes to assume the role of the teacher, “it is time for you to go.”

  “No more lessons?”

  She gave up the search for her clothes, and instead flew high, out of my lunging reach. She did not trust me, and perhaps did not quite trust herself either. “I must return to Justice and Wisdom,” she said. “And you are overdue at Hedley Edrick’s school. Have you forgotten your daughters?”

  Actually, I had not thought of anything but satisfying Knowledge for the last several hours, especially not my daughters. “That was a dirty trick,” I said, pulling on my clothes. “Effective, I have to admit, but dirty all the same.” I saw Garlic waiting patiently by my side. “And where have you been?” Garlic merely barked and padded out of the bedchamber.

  “A mission for Hedley, remember?” said Knowledge.

  “And now, I have to start mine,” I said. “I have a feeling you have some work to do for my favorite demon half brothers.”

  Knowledge fluttered to the top of the room, and a wormhole appeared. “Indeed I do,” she said. “So until the next time we meet over a good book . . . good-bye, Sirius.”

  “I would like a next time,” I said with a wave.

  Knowledge smiled and passed through the wormhole, but I could still hear her words. “No promises,” she said. “But keep up with your studies, and maybe you’ll get some more knowledge.”

  I was now alone in the Chamber of the Master of Masters, except for one pacing, agitated vampire Maltese. I finished dressing and grabbed my pack and some breakfast. Garlic barked again, this time more insistently. “Okay, okay,” I said. “I get it. We have to go. I was a little busy before. . . . Hedley will have to wait.” Garlic barked louder this time, and a wormhole appeared. “I guess that is a no,” I said. “We are not going to end up in the snow again, are we? Or Hell?” I paused, seeing Garlic’s tail disappear through the wormhole. Clearly, she knew where she was going. So did I. Finishing school. Maybe Hell was not too far off from the truth.

  I passed through the wormhole and was happy to find myself in merry old England and not a snow-covered cliff or Hell-fired inferno. I looked around and saw I was in an oddly deserted university courtyard, staring at a door to what I presumed to be the Bod, or Bodleian Library. Over the doorway was a sign that read, “School of Moral Philosophy.” The door opened to reveal a grinning, robed Hedley Edrick.

  “Welcome to Oxford, my good man,” he said. “Do come in before someone decides to study you a little too closely.”

  “School of moral philosophy?” I queried, walking toward Hedley. “That is what you call your esteemed and famous school?”

  “In this incarnation, yes,” Hedley said.

  I stopped outside the door and pointed to the sign. “I am on record that some immortals are more immoral than mortals. Ironic, yes?”

  Hedley laughed. “I see Knowledge has indeed put you to the test. And that explains why you are late—all that studying, and then her examining you to make sure you were fit, took longer than I thought.”

  I smirked, enjoying the incredibly pleasant memories of the last several hours. “I could not get enough of her putting me through my paces,” I said. “She is a truly enlightening girl.” I cracked my knuckles. “I especially enjoyed my last discussion with her on Newton’s laws of motion. I think she was truly satisfied with my performance.”

  “Indeed! How wonderfully academic of you,” Hedley said, pulling me gently through the doorway. “You really have changed!” He handed me a small gold pin in the shape of a book. “Here, put this on your cloak,” he said. “And welcome—you are now officially part of the College of Immortals.”

  “Hedley, we need to talk about what happened in Florence,” I said, pinning the book to my cloak as he had directed. “And just as importantly—are my girls here yet?”

  “Not yet,” Hedley said, leading me down a hallway that terminated at a stone wall. “They should arrive tomorrow. And as for us talking, well you know what they say—sometimes the walls really do have ears.” Hedley did not stop walking and passed straight through the wall, leaving me alone in the hallway.

  “Okay, then,” I said, striding forward, and bumping my face on an unyielding piece of granite. “Come on now, Hedley. What gives with this wall? If this is your idea of my first lesson, then I am going to give you my idea of a beating!”

  Hedley poked his head out of the wall, and then his whole body followed. There was a great look of concern on his face. He reached for the pin on my cloak and removed it, turning it over again and again in his hand before taking out a small magnifying glass. “Odd,” he said. “This charm has been tampered with. Probably just one of the blokes trying to play a joke on one of his comrades, and it somehow made it to my office. Boys will be boys. There is a reasonable explanation to be sure!”

  I rubbed my nose. “Are you sure about that reasonable explanation?” Hedley remained silent. “Then, that is a resounding no. There was no reasonable explanation about my encounter in Florence.”

  “Another upset husband would be reasonable.”

  I gave him a steely glare. “Neither one of us believes that, now do we? Where can we talk, Hedley?”

  Hedley handed me another pin, and pocketed the one he had first given me. “To my office,” he said, and disappeared through the wall once again. I put out my hand, waved at the wall, and was relieved to see my hand disappear. Garlic barked happily and darted through to the other side, and I begrudgingly followed. I found myself in a great circular common area with padded benches lining the walls, and in the center of the circle were a wooden platform and lectern, surrounded by more chairs than I cared to count.

  Hallways shot off from the common area in every direction, giving the appearance that it was in the center of a great wagon wheel, and the many hallways were the spokes. The hallways seemed to shift and move as I focused on them, never seeming to be in the same place very long. In my earlier days, I would have thought I was bearing witness to some strange sort of magic, but my newfound sense of intellect and critical thinking chalked it up to architectural design and engineering, combined with the barest hint of demon magic. And was demon magic really magic after all, or simply a form of science that I was not yet privy to? I shook my head—all this critical thinking was going to give me one colossal headache.

  I spied Hedley walking down one hallway, and as I took a step in his direction, I heard a set of bells begin to ring. Instantly, the hallways were flooded with young robed immortals, seemingly rushing at me in the center of the common area. My hand went to my sword, as leading them was a host of young, muscular goblins. They paid me no mind, being deeply engrossed in some sort of fierce discussion with a group of trolls. Lean, young male werewolves reeking of musk roamed the hallways in packs, each trying to assert his alphaness on his peers.

  I saw a flash of bare skin, and my eyes met those of a stunning female faerie whose robe was trimmed to the shortest of skirts, and she bared enough cleavage to leave absolutely nothing to my imagination. “New blood,” she said to her similarly dressed faerie friend, while looking at me and licking her lips naughtily.

  “I just love vampires to nibble on my neck,” her friend agreed.

  “I just love when they nibble a whole lot lower,” the first faerie fantasy said, and they burst into uncontrollable giggles.

  I was going to like school if these girls were in my study groups. But then I realized that they were around eighteen years old, and though I looked young, I felt like I was older than the stones of the floor I stood upon. My werepires were older than this when they had gone to train with my father before coming here. I
actually felt sick to my stomach, leering at those faeries like I was a perverted padfoot. Then it hit me, every student walking here was between eighteen and twenty-five years old, and they really had only been on the planet for that long. I could literally scent the mass virginal innocence of most of the young lasses. They were mere girls, and I knew what a real woman smelled like. Likewise, these were mere lads trying to pose as real men, stinking with the sweat of hopeful conquest as they unconsciously and continuously touched their privates. Ugh, could I punch them all in the face now to get it over with before my girls arrived? Maybe Hedley would excuse me for killing one of these walking phalluses as an example to all of the others? Ugh, again!

  I found myself backing up to the lectern. Garlic had done me one better and had taken a perch on the platform itself, letting out a sharp bark. There was something, or more accurately somebody approaching that she did not like. I sensed him before I saw him—a young vampire with long flowing blond hair that he wore loose down past his shoulders. His face had a familiar cruelness to it, and I had absolutely seen his eyes before. They were gray with just a hint of crazy in them, just like his mother’s. But that did not stop him from having his left arm around a pretty young mermaid, and his right hand curled in the ashen hair of a sleek, supple werewolf maiden. He did not so much walk as saunter, and I could see many a female eye go to this loathsome lothario. He was not that handsome, or that muscular, or remotely pretty, as some of the girls preferred their men to be. No, he exuded a confidence, nay arrogance, that defied his relative age and that drew the girls to him like bees to a flower. But this was no blooming idiot, for he had been well schooled in the art of manipulation by his mother, Bloodsucker Number One. Our eyes met, and it was instant hate. However, his two young confidants looked at me with a completely different reaction.

  “Look who is here at our school!” the werewolf screamed loudly to her friend. “It is Sirius Sinister, you know, the famous master assassin!”

  The mermaid plucked at the young vampire’s arm. “Martin, Martin, he is a vampire like you, let’s go talk to him!”

  “I know who he is.” Martin scowled, flipping his blond hair angrily. “And he is nothing like me.”

  “Hello, ladies,” I called out in my most charming voice as I petted Garlic in an attempt to calm down the frothing, snarling little white ball of anger on the platform. “Pleased to meet you, I am indeed Sirius Sinister, Master Assassin. Would you like to pet Garlic?”

  “Would we?” the girls shouted in chorus and left Martin standing quite awkwardly and much less confidently by himself.

  That sealed Martin’s fate as he instantly lost all control of the situation and any power he had wielded over the girls. His bed would be as cold tonight as his tiny little heart. Because no man ever stood a chance of gaining the favors of women when small, fluffy white dogs were involved, particularly when the small, fluffy white dog in question was intent on attaching itself to his throat.

  Garlic rolled on her back, still eyeing the hesitant Martin, and let the girls rub her belly. I locked gazes with Martin. “Strange,” I said. “She usually likes everyone. You and I are kin somewhere up the line, being fellow vampires, you know. Have you been consorting with some sort of evil feline, Martin? Perhaps that is it.”

  “Well, that isn’t the funniest thing I have ever heard, and coming from a famous master assassin like Sirius Sinister to boot,” Martin said with another toss of his hair. “Is the killing business going none so well, and you are now the new maid service here at school?”

  “On the contrary, my young friend,” I replied. “Your guess could not be further from the truth. I am to be a student here, just like you. Maybe we can become study buddies?”

  The girls looked up from petting Garlic and whispered excitedly to themselves at the prospect that I was a student here. “Not likely. You better watch your step,” Martin said, his eyes narrowing into slits. He leaned forward and sniffed in my direction. “You smell old. Really old! You got some years on you, old man.”

  I looked in the direction of the girls petting Garlic, and then to the faeries who were trying to get my attention in an exceedingly unladylike way. “You say that like it is a bad thing,” I said to Martin, who was giving me his best sneer just as Hedley Edrick came up and grabbed my elbow. Good thing, as I was just about to give this whelp a thorough pounding.

  “There you are, Sirius,” he said. There was another peal of bells. “To class, to class, my students. Come on, move along, move along.”

  “Hey, Martin,” I called to him as he walked away quite alone. “You say old. I say experienced. You would do well to learn the difference.” And with that, I scooped up a growling Garlic and followed Hedley Edrick to his office.

  Hedley’s office was simpler than I expected. It was just a small room containing only a rickety wooden desk and chair, surrounded by volumes and volumes of tattered books heaped in a disheveled fashion on the floor. The walls were bare of any paintings, tapestries, awards, or certificates. Nothing distinguished it as the office of the Master of Masters. I looked closer and saw, in one corner of the room, a large, brown rat caught in the middle of conspicuously making some rat droppings. Tiny paws went to cover tiny privates—it was the first bashful rodent I had ever encountered. “Nice place,” I said, looking for a spare chair. “Spend a lot of time here, do you?”

  Hedley smiled, took a seat, and began idly rummaging through some papers on his desk. “Not exactly,” he said, and gestured to the rat. “Norville,” he said, addressing the rat. “Stop crapping and do your job.”

  The rat finished his business and ran back and forth, tracing a series of intricate patterns on the floor, and my mouth dropped open when the rat stopped, looked back at Hedley, and squeaked, because it sounded remarkably like he had said, “As you command.”

  “Thank you,” Hedley said as the wall where the rat stood simply ceased to be there, and Garlic woofed a brief thanks to Norville as we passed through into nothingness.

  I emerged from the nothingness and found myself standing in a long hallway with a series of vaults lining both sides. The floor and walls were fashioned out of a strange sort of blue steel that seemed to absorb the light, just like the fixtures I had seen in the House of Indigo. “Interesting stuff,” I said, rapping my knuckles on the wall. Garlic put her face to the wall and barked, and the sound hit it and was absorbed instantly instead of reverberating loudly like I had expected. I picked Garlic up, pursed my lips, and fixed a curious look on my face, staring at Hedley, who remained silent. He was not going to offer any information, so I would have to be more specific as to my concerns. “A blade, or cannon shot, made out of this stuff would be rather formidable, don’t you think?”

  Hedley shrugged. “I don’t regularly think about machinery of war. I think about how to prevent wars actually. But since you asked, I am the only one who knows the formula for making this particular alloy. I did not write it down. No speakers of any human languages were involved in the forging process either. And rest assured, I am not talking.”

  I nodded, hoping he was right. I envisioned an army at Baron Orcinus’s command, flinging projectiles made of this blue steel out of the ocean with their own highly effective war machines, and destroying every coastal city in the world. Any survivors would be surely cut to ribbons by tridents fashioned from this stuff. “So what are you trying to protect in all these vaults?”

  “Follow me,” he said, and walked down the hallway, his footfalls muted by the blue steel as if he were walking on goose down. “To my right, this vault contains the contents of the Library of Alexandria.”

  “But that was destroyed by fire, was it not?” I was proud of my newfound knowledge, thanks of course to Knowledge.

  “Actually, the library suffered a few assaults over the years before it finally was destroyed,” Hedley answered. “But I had moved anything of value early on. Unfortunately, I could not trust
the Romans, particularly Aurelian. All that conquering and warring, and revolts aplenty. His ego was so large he could not let Queen Zenobia of Palmyra be. It was not like she was a real threat to the Roman Empire, you know.”

  “But she was making them look bad,” I said. “What happened to her? Was she just an ordinary mortal?”

  “Mortal, yes” he said. “Ordinary, no. But I digress.” He began walking again, and pointed to his left, leaving my question about her fate unanswered. “This vault contains the contents of the House of Wisdom, and the one next to it the contents of the Imperial Library of Constantinople. And the list goes on. Here is Epang, Antioch, Ctesiphon, al-Hakam, and Nalanda, and they are all here—safe for all eternity.”

  I nodded. “Tell me this, Hedley, what good is all this knowledge if it is kept here, isolated from the world? Shouldn’t this be shared with all mortal and immortals alike?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “It is my hope that, although the warlike nature of man will most likely continue unabated, at least as time goes on, there will be some means of communication that will enable anyone, anywhere to instantly have any piece of knowledge or information they desire at their fingertips.”

  “Now that would be something,” I said. But would that be a good thing? Wasn’t a little bit of knowledge on its own, in a vacuum, a bad thing?

  We approached Hedley’s real office, which sat at the end of the hallway. I set down Garlic and chuckled as her paws skittered on the odd metal floor like she was on ice. She looked up at me and huffed her disapproval. Over the doorway was an inscription in Latin, which I read out loud. “Infinite knowledge strengthens infinitely,” I said.

  “That is my belief,” Hedley stated. “But there are those in this world who believe that the only true power is to keep all knowledge hidden, so they cultivate people’s differences, making an issue out of race, religion, sexuality, and culture, which ultimately breeds ignorance with the goal of keeping people fighting each other.”