by Eva Brandt
“Meph,” I repeated. It shouldn’t have suited him, since he was so overwhelmingly authoritative and larger than life. I still liked it. It sounded a little like ‘meth’, which was appropriate, since he and the others had almost turned into a drug for me. “Okay. I’ll remember.”
In hindsight, maybe it should’ve occurred to me to ask why he wanted me to call him by that name. But at the time, I didn’t feel anything was wrong. Instead, I took it as a sign that despite my earlier blunder, we were all headed in the right direction.
I really should’ve known better than to have such hopes.
Demonic Status
Exams came and went in a whirlwind. I aced Law and Demonology. I’d done a lot of reading in that field because of my problems, so the finals were easy. I did very well in Necromancy too, although that was just because Professor Grim had yet to ask us to create a necromantic construct. We were currently coming to terms with our ‘inner death’—whatever that meant—and the snake bite had given me an advantage there.
People who’d had a brush with death were far more likely to become talented necromancers, since they understood it beyond the level of a general concept.
Lilith was thrilled to learn about the progress of my bond with Shiro and wanted to start me on an advanced curriculum of familiar magic. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, since I still had so much work to do in every other field. I had to brush up on History and I lacked control in my practical magic.
As expected, there were no problems in Advanced Defense Arts, and not just because I was sleeping with the teacher. In Battle Magic, our exam involved something very similar to the test I’d taken at the beginning of the year. Morrigan wasn’t completely satisfied with my progress, but I passed anyway. Professor Jones fell ill shortly before the Herbalism exam, so we got away without having to do much for that one.
It would’ve been enough to put me in a good mood had everything else not been going like shit. I was slowly making progress in my relationship with my lovers, setting our differences aside and rebuilding something new. But because that was my rotten luck, the rest of the students still refused to accept Stefan’s inability to shift.
It was not unusual to hear them yelling slurs at him, just as ugly and violent as the ones against me had been, if not more so.
To make matters worse, Mikael wasn’t dealing with the loss of his wings very well. In the infirmary, he’d claimed he was adjusting, but I didn’t believe him. He tried to hide it, but sometimes, at night, I’d wake up and feel something was wrong. I’d leave my room and track him down. Whenever I found him, he was always looking at his back in the mirror, staring at the stumps where his wings had been.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help them, but I felt lost. If only I could understand and control my power better, I wouldn’t have been so useless, but so far, I hadn’t made much progress.
Second term began, and we found ourselves thrust in a flurry of new classes. I had wanted to pick the Psyche Manipulation elective, but it turned out to be impossible, since it was incompatible with my current schedule. Mephistopheles promised he’d figure something out next year, but for the moment, I was stuck unable to explore these new possibilities further.
Maybe it was for the best, since as important as my schooling might have been, I couldn’t focus on that alone. Stefan, Callum, Mikael, and I had to stick together. I couldn’t help them if I got pulled into too many different directions.
When Stefan was with me, the other students didn’t get violent. Yes, they shouted insults, but they didn’t physically assault him, not like they had that day in the courtyard. The same went for Mikael. There seemed to be a consensus among most students, to not piss me off too much.
I wasn’t sure the extent of my skills warranted such caution, but I welcomed it and I intended to take advantage of it.
But I was also only a human, and I should’ve known better than to believe that wouldn’t have some nasty effects. When the consequences showed up, they struck suddenly, without warning.
In mid-January, we woke up to snow covering the ground outside in a thick blanket of fluffy white. Shiro was overjoyed. He’d always loved snow and he dragged me out of the dorms to play. I had just enough time to find something thicker to wear before I was swept up into his enthusiasm. The other students weren’t so happy about it. “What in Satan’s name is this nonsense?” I heard one of my housemates ask. “I don’t think it’s ever snowed on the island since the school was built.”
“I don’t like it. Something’s not right.”
This was the second weather anomaly that had hit the academy in the past couple of months and it was unnerving. I made a mental note to ask Meph about it properly. We’d never gotten the chance to really discuss it, and it might be important.
Shiro and I didn’t have a lot of time at our disposal for our game, since my classes were waiting for me. I had to trek down to the greenhouses to get to Herbalism, and I soon found that as beautiful as the snow might have been, it was exhausting to make my way through it.
By the time I reached Professor Jones’s domain, I already had a mild headache. Supposedly, he was going to start teaching us more about Elemental Magic today, but I didn’t think I would be very good at it.
Weirdly, Mikael, Callum, and Stefan had disappeared somewhere, which put me in a foul mood. I tried to ignore it, but by lunch that day, my migraine had worsened and I began to feel light-headed. I could barely grab a bite, and what I did eat, I threw up shortly after that. Two hours later, the headache was bad enough that I went to my room and took an extra dose of my potion. I knew it wasn’t a great idea, but I hoped it would help me anyway.
It didn’t, and ten minutes after that, I lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling, drained of strength. I’d yet to have a convulsive seizure, but it would happen.
Shiro whined and pawed at my clothes in obvious panic. “Lyssa. Lyssa. You need to see a doctor.”
“I don’t think I can move, Shiro,” I replied.
“That’s not a problem. We can get one of your males. Where did they go?”
“No idea…” Their departure had been strange, since they’d insisted that I always needed to have someone to watch my back while at the academy.
“I will find them and I will bite them for leaving you,” Shiro said. “Stay there. This won’t take long.”
Shiro left the room. I sort of wanted to tell him to come back, but I could acknowledge that I needed more help than he could provide.
Thankfully, he kept his promise and returned to my side in only a few minutes, with Stefan and Mikael following in his wake. If Shiro had bitten them like he’d said, they didn’t seem upset about it. Stefan took one look at me and panicked. “What the hell is going on?” Stefan growled. “Why is she ill?”
“I don’t think Shiro can answer that question, Stefan,” Mikael said. “We need to take her to the infirmary, so that she can receive real care.”
“Do you think they’ll help me there?” I croaked out. I wanted to reassure them, at least a little, but my tongue felt like lead in my mouth and my head was spinning.
“They will,” Stefan replied. “If they refuse, I will force them.”
I wasn’t sure that was in his power, but I was too tired and weak to protest. When Mikael took me in his arms, I curled against his chest, reveling in his familiar presence. Mikael bundled me up in thick blankets and carried me out of the room. All the while, Stefan emanated an aura of heat that protected me from the chilly temperature. “Am sorry,” I mumbled as we made our way through the dorm.
“What are you sorry for, my darkling?” Mikael asked, pressing his cool lips to my forehead. Why were they cold? He’d always been so very warm, in every way.
Was it because of the ritual? I whimpered. “I didn’t want you to suffer, to have to amputate your wings. And Stefan too… I didn’t want him to lose so much.”
“We know, Lyssa,” Stefan replied. “Don’t worry about us. Worry about you
rself.”
“I can… I can do both.”
“You really can’t,” Mikael replied, and his voice was shaking. “But you know what? You don’t have to. That’s why we’re here. To worry about you, to fix everything.”
I might’ve tried to argue with him, but as we left the dorm, the cold wind hit me like a ton of bricks. I cried out, and the heat around Stefan increased. “Hang in there,” he said. “We’re not very far now.”
“I don’t feel well,” I croaked out. “I can’t… Can’t breathe.”
It had gone beyond the migraine now. I felt like I was suffocating, and yet, I was so cold. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. My heart was beating too fast. I was afraid and my whole body was screaming.
Thankfully, Stefan and Mikael kept their promise and it didn’t take them long to get to the infirmary. Mikael placed me on the bed, already trying to find medical assistance for me. “Someone! Anyone! Help us!”
Professor Faust emerged from a side room. For the first time since I’d arrived at the school, he was dressed like a doctor. That didn’t fill me with too much confidence. “What seems to be the problem, Mr. Lost?” he asked.
“It’s Alyssa,” Mikael replied. “She was fine this morning. According to her familiar, she started feeling sick a little while after.”
Faust approached me and I was filled with the almost unstoppable urge to smack him. Normally, I might have put some effort into staying respectful, but right now, I didn’t feel very inclined to be nice. “I don’t like you,” I told him in a voice that was much too weak for my liking. “Y-You’re mean. Shouldn’t have said such horrible things about Mikael.”
“Horrible words are the least of your problems when you’re living at The Academy of the Devil, Ms. Michaelis.” He pressed his hand to my temple and hummed thoughtfully. “How much time did she spend outside this morning? Was she exposed to the snow before she went to classes?”
“Yes,” Shiro replied. “We played a game before she had Herbalism.”
TB hissed, conveying this information to Mikael. Mikael repeated it to the doctor. “I see,” Faust replied. “That’s most unfortunate. I’m not sure I’ll be able to help Ms. Michaelis, but in this instance, I promise I’ll do my very best.”
“Will you really?” Stefan growled. “You weren’t so eager in the past.”
“We all make our choices based on what seems to be the best approach. I won’t explain my train of thought to you. I think I know better than…”
The voice trailed off into nothing, and I could no longer hear or feel Professor Faust. Suddenly terrified, I tried to cling to Mikael and Stefan, to their presence and their familiar magic. It didn’t work, and the last thing I heard before the world went black was the sound of Mikael’s voice calling out my name.
* * *
After that, I swam in and out of consciousness. Most of the time, I couldn’t see or register anything, but on occasion, I’d hear fractures of words and smell scents. I could feel the heat of familiar hands caressing my hair, making sure I was comfortable.
But those beloved hands couldn’t reach me or drag me out of my prison, and soon, I found myself stuck in the darkness, staring at nothing. I screamed, but I couldn’t hear the sound. I moved, but I couldn’t feel my limbs.
In the past, whenever I’d had seizures, I’d never been cognizant, not even a little, not enough to register something like this. So what had changed? Had someone at the school done something to me, perhaps in anger over me standing up for Mikael and Stefan? Or maybe people hadn’t gotten over the epilepsy thing at all like they had seemed to. They might’ve wanted to remind everyone that, no matter what had happened during my confrontation with the angels, I was still as weak and pathetic as I’d always been.
I couldn’t stay here. Stefan, Mikael, Callum, and Meph needed me. So did Shiro and my parents. I had family and loved ones. I needed to make my way back to them.
There was just one problem. I had no idea how I was supposed to do that. I didn’t even know what was wrong with me. Clearly, I’d fallen ill and had some kind of seizure, but why? And why had I ended up here? Was it something that happened all the time and I’d just never remembered?
As I thought this, the darkness around me started to clear. I shot to my feet—sort of, since I couldn’t feel myself move—relieved that something was finally happening.
Was I waking up? Had the seizure ended? God, I hoped so.
Unfortunately, nothing in my life could ever be so simple. The confusing nothingness melted away into a beautiful garden, one that looked a lot like the orchards in the academy. Even so, there was a strange vibe of untamed, untouched wildness here that the orchards just didn’t have.
Had I died? Was this a form of the afterlife? I’d never gotten the chance to study that in detail, although Professor Grim had promised to teach us more about what came ‘after’ in following semesters.
I didn’t feel dead. According to Professor Grim, souls that reached the afterlife tended to know when they had passed. Only the souls that stayed behind in the form of ghosts failed to process this fact, which was part of the reason why they were ghosts, in the first place.
I couldn’t be sure. Maybe I was just supposed to explore this place and find some answers.
There were no convenient paths, so I picked a direction at random and started to walk. After a while, it occurred to me that I should probably leave markings in the areas I’d already explored, since I didn’t want to go in circles.
I knelt and tried to pick up a stone, intending to use it to scratch a tree trunk, to mark my passage. It was a little rude and I didn’t like to harm the vegetation, but under the circumstances, I didn’t have much choice.
My scruples became irrelevant when I found it impossible to retrieve the rock. It was like it was stuck to the ground with Super Glue. Befuddled, I tried another stone, but that didn’t work either. A sudden suspicion niggled at the back of my mind, and I tried to tear off a few blades of grass. Once again, it was futile. No matter how much force I exerted, the plants escaped my hold unscathed.
“I can’t affect this place at all, can I?” I murmured to myself.
A familiar, unexpected voice confirmed my fears. “Good guess. You’re correct. This space is untouchable and you won’t be able to modify it in any way.”
Startled, I shot to my feet and pivoted on my heel, only to find myself facing the figure of Lucifer himself. “Hello, Alyssa,” he said, leaning against a tree trunk. “I’d love to say it’s nice to see you, but I would’ve preferred for our meeting to have been under better circumstances.”
I gaped at him in shock. “You! What are you doing here?”
He arched a perfect, dark brow at me. “I think my presence is the least of your concerns right now. I mean, if I were you, I’d worry more about my actual location than who I’m sharing it with. Wouldn’t you agree?”
As much as I hated it, I couldn’t argue with that. “Yes, okay,” I mumbled reluctantly. “You’re right on that one. So… Where am I?”
“This, dearest, is a recreation of The Garden of Eden, pulled from my own memories.” He kicked the tree and an apple fell from the branches, straight into his extended palm. “Apple?” he asked as he bit into the one in his hand.
“Uh. Maybe later,” I replied, confused by his odd demeanor. “What am I doing here?”
“Well, dearest, demonic diseases aren’t something a human body is built to withstand,” Lucifer said. “You caught a cold, but here on the island, it’s very easy for a harmless affliction to turn into something far worse. You’re now suffering from a form of demonic encephalitis and you’ve officially entered status epilepticus.”
Oh God. For so long, that had been my worst fear, that my epilepsy would escalate to the point where it would be incontrollable. Status epilepticus could be lethal in some cases, but it wasn’t death that I feared. It was being a constant captive of my own mind, unable to do anything with my life, turning into a shell of my fo
rmer self, forever trapped in the prison of my constant seizures.
“Is this because of you?” I asked him. “Did you attack me?”
“Of course not.” He let out a sharp bark of laughter. “If I’d wanted you hurt or dead, I had ample time to do it before you ever came to the school. And there are plenty of less convoluted methods that wouldn’t involve something as unreliable as a virus. Not that viruses aren’t useful, but I prefer to save them for necessary genocides.”
“Necessary genocide?” I had no idea how to reply to that. “There’s no such thing.”
“Don’t be so naive. Of course there is. After all, what is war if not genocide? And the systematic culling of demons by my angelic brethren could be considered that as well.”
Ouch. Yeah, I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. There was still so much about the history of their two species I didn’t understand. My studies in Demonology had only brushed the tip of the iceberg. It would’ve really helped if demons weren’t so secretive too, but when had things ever been easy for me?
For the moment, the historical background of the war between demons and angels didn’t matter that much. While I was half-dead because of my affliction, it was better to focus on that.
“But anyway, we’re not here to talk about my family issues,” Lucifer said, as if guessing my thoughts. “You need help and unfortunately for you, I’m the only one who can provide it.”
“Please don’t tell me you want another contract with me,” I replied, letting out a slow breath. I had not signed up for this shit. “I haven’t even fulfilled my first one.”
“Indeed.” Lucifer grinned, his eyes glinting with a wicked knowledge. “And you wanted to get out of it, isn’t that right? I advise you to be a little less reckless in the future. It’s not wise to try to deny me what is rightfully mine.”
“I think we’ve already decided I’m not yours,” I shot back. “If you wanted my soul, you could’ve asked for it when you saved my parents. But you didn’t, so now here we are.”