Fear University

by Meg Collett

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’ll let me hit you?”

  “If you can. No free shots.”

  “Fine.” I closed the distance between us as he shrugged out of his hoodie and dropped it to the floor. His T-shirt’s sleeves stretched tightly around his biceps, the material so worn and faded that I wondered if it was his favorite. The collar dipped low enough to reveal a series of corded, black claw marks that likely continued a thick trail down the middle of his chest.

  “Anytime you’re ready,” he said dryly. I raked my eyes back up to his. The bastard totally caught me checking him out.

  “Are you ready?” I asked him, raising my fists. He didn’t move to match my stance. “Cause if I hurt you . . .”

  I let my words trail off and ducked in, letting my fist fly. Luke sidestepped the blow, the muscles in his legs rippling in a really annoying, distracting way. I kicked, using the leg he hadn’t stabbed, and aimed for his shin, but he caught my ankle and sent me stumbling back. With a growl, I righted myself and lunged at him, only to have him easily catch my wrist and swing me off balance, which wasn’t hard to do with my banged up leg and hip that kept giving out beneath me.

  And so it went for five minutes. Every time I tried to hit him, Luke parried the blow with a swat of his hand or a swift sidestep. When he checked his watch and held up his hand, sweat poured down my temples and off the tip of my nose. My breath came quick and fast, but Luke didn’t even seem winded. I hadn’t landed a single hit, which really pissed me off.

  Though he’d signaled time was up, I ducked in, swinging my fist and aiming for his nose. I put all my strength behind the punch, grunting with the effort, but Luke merely grabbed my wrist and jerked my arm down like he’d been expecting the cheap shot. “I don’t teach dirty fighting.”

  I pulled my hand free, still panting and out of breath, and flipped my ponytail over my shoulder. “Do you have any fun then?”

  He studied me for a moment, his face as unreadable as always. Finally, he handed me a piece of cloth. “You’re out of shape. I want you running one lap around the fence lines for the next two weeks.”

  “What about my leg that you stabbed?”

  His face remained unchanged, no guilt flashing through his eyes. “The pain shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  He was challenging me because he knew I wouldn’t back down. Instead of answering, I took the strip of cloth from his hand. “What’s this?”

  “Every evening you run. If you miss your run you’ll have double the laps the next day. And trust me, I’ll know if you miss.” He pointed to the cloth. “It’s a blindfold. Tie it on.”

  “Why are you blindfolding me?”

  “You’re blindfolding you, and because we’re training.”

  I offered the blindfold back, holding it by the corner’s edge. “I don’t like having my eyes covered. Let’s start with something else.”

  “I figured.” Luke crossed his arms, not taking it back. “You think you can fight your way out of anything even if you have to break every bone in your body to do it. But you can’t always fight like that. So I’m blindfolding you. No more power. No more control. I’m in control.”

  “No.” I shook my head, letting the blindfold fall on the floor.

  “This is how we train today. It won’t be every day, but you need to learn that I’m in control when we work together. I’m in control until I give you that control back. Now, pick up the blindfold.”

  “You sound positively delightful.”

  “Do you want to pass Dean’s evaluation?”

  My stomach twisted. I’d made it all day without thinking about the dreaded evaluation. “You know I do.”

  “No, I don’t. The evaluation won’t be easy. You’ll need to be in shape and capable of keeping up with me. I won’t go easy on you, and I’ll use every weakness you have against you.” His eyes flashed with a cool, cruel kind of sincerity.

  I glowered at him. “Because you don’t want a civvie here.”

  “Whether I want you here or not, you’re here. If you want to stay, you have to be as good as the best first-year here. Otherwise I’ll make sure you don’t pass. Got it?”

  “That’s not exactly fair.”

  Luke shrugged, clearly unconcerned with fairness. My nervousness about the evaluation tripled. Not only would I have to get Dean’s approval, but now I would need Luke’s. “Fair or not,” he said, “that’s how it’ll be. I won’t have you getting someone killed if you graduate because I went easy on you during your training. So,” he pointed to the blindfold on the mat, “do you want to pass the evaluation or not?”

  “Will you let me pass?” I asked, glaring at him.

  Luke crossed him arms and waited. I glanced at the blindfold and back to his face. Unreadable. Nothing. Blank. His face was the freaking Mojave Desert. I sighed and scooped up the cloth from the floor. Before I turned around and waited to be blinded, I handed the cloth to him, making certain our fingers didn’t touch. He quickly tied the blindfold in place, tugging the ends tight enough that I saw nothing but blackness.

  I hated it. The darkness and lack of control made me think of basements and screams. All my control went into keeping my hands at my sides and not jerking the blindfold off. I swallowed the whimper rising up my throat.

  If I was going to pass the evaluation, I would have to be great. To get Dean’s and Luke’s approval, I would need to turn my weaknesses into my strengths. I wouldn’t put it past Luke to blindfold me during the evaluation and make me look like a simpering fool in front of Dean if I didn’t overcome this. So I gritted my teeth and shoved down my fear.

  When Luke touched my shoulders to spin me back around, I tensed. I hated not being able to see him or my surroundings. But even more than that, I loathed the fact that he could touch me without me expecting it or being able to prepare myself for the contact. The training mat squeaked beneath Luke’s feet when he leaned forward. “Let it go, Ollie,” he said, his quiet words warm against my ear. I jumped back.

  “Let what go?”

  He didn’t answer. I looked around even though it did no good. The smell of sweat-dried mats and over-circulated cool air gusting down from the air vents far above my head suddenly grew stronger. In the background, the air conditioner whirred quietly along, working hard to cool the prison, but closer to me, the mat gave beneath Luke’s weight. There was a soft squelch of leather, and the clink of chains.

  I threw my hands up right before the punching bag hit me in the ribs hard enough to knock me down.

  I ripped the blindfold off in a flurry, spitting and sputtering as I scrambled to gather up my legs and lurch to my feet. “What the hell?” I shouted, advancing on Luke with every intention of breaking his face.

  He stepped back, pulling the still-swinging punching bag with him, and swung it at me again. I quickly sidestepped it. “Put the blindfold back on,” he commanded.

  “Not if you’re going to hit me.”

  “If you’re good enough, you’ll get out of the way before it hits you.”

  Luke kept the bag between us, making it impossible for me to reach him. Every time I got too close, he swung it at me. It was thick and heavy, but I managed to shove it back at him once. How he easily moved it around was a wonder.

  “How am I supposed to move out of the way if I can’t see it?”

  In answer, Luke tapped his ears, meaning I should listen for it. I growled and yanked the blindfold back over my eyes.

  Screw this evaluation. Screw Luke. Screw Dean. Screw these professors and students who hated me. I would show them all.

  When I was ready, I waved him on with my lips twisted up in a snarl.

  I hit the mat at least twenty times before Luke stopped an hour later. “Ollie, listen. You’re not listening. You’re not feeling. You can’t always rely on taking the pain. You need to learn to avoid it.”

  I don’t want to avoid it, I thought. But I didn’t dare say it out loud. “Fine.”

  I imagined I heard Luke smil
e, but I doubted it. Probably too many punching bags to the temple. I wasn’t paying attention. When the bag hit me again, I fell to the mats and didn’t bother getting back up.

  “Lis—”

  “If you tell me to listen one more time,” I threatened from the floor, directing my words up to the ceiling, “I’ll shove this punching bag down your throat.”

  “That’s not anatomically possible.”

  I rolled my eyes behind the mask and stood, holding up my hand for Luke to wait until I caught my breath. My breathing shook as I inhaled, but I shoved aside the bad memories. Luke couldn’t know about the thoughts he’d triggered by blindfolding me, but I did and I had to get past them.

  I knew I was safe here. This wasn’t the house in Virginia. I wasn’t in a basement. Max and his father weren’t standing in front of me, laughing as I cried and begged them to let her go. I’d left that behind me. I focused on the smell of the mats and the clanking chain above the punching bag until my thoughts cleared of fear.

  After a moment, my heart calmed, going from a manic flutter to a steady rhythm echoing down to the tips of my toes. I tuned out all the other sounds around me and waited until I felt something: the empty air in front of me, around me, behind me. A few feet ahead, I sensed a denser darkness where Luke stood behind the bag with it pulled back and ready to swing. The chains holding the bag clicked and clanked from the taunt weight. The air changed when he let the heavy bag go, not waiting for me to say I was ready, just as I’d expected. A cool breeze swept straight toward me, so I jumped to the left, and the bag swung by me without contact.

  Luke grunted in approval before catching the bag and sending it crashing back toward me.

  For another hour we kept up the dance. Like a ballet, we moved over the mats, dodging and ducking each other. Luke swung the bag harder each time as we moved in our demented circle. It came at me from all directions; sometimes I wasn’t fast enough, but sometimes I was. When we finally stopped, sweat poured down my back and my knees wobbled, muscles twitching deep in my legs. I pulled off the blindfold and sank to the mats with a relived groan. Luke sat a few feet away.

  “That wasn’t bad,” he said, stretching out his arms, his skin slick with sweat.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “You need to get over this no pain thing. It’s your worst flaw.”

  “You keep saying that,” I said, propping myself up on an elbow so to glower at him, “but everyone else thinks it’s a gift.”

  “Who does?” Luke asked, dark brows raised. “Dean? The professors? When was the last time they were out fighting in the real world?”

  “Worried you might have some competition?”

  Luke didn’t take the bait. “I’m serious, Ollie. You can’t rely on your condition. It’ll get you killed.”

  “Or make me awesome.”

  “You’re naive. Overconfident. Undertrained.” Luke ticked off my flaws on his fingers like he was counting lemons. “You’re brave because you don’t understand the consequences that come with fear and pain, but that’s the wrong kind of bravery we need around here. This medical condition you have makes you think you’re invincible, but you bleed like everyone else.”

  Consequences? He didn’t think I understood? My entire life had been on big consequence.

  I quickly stood. I’d deal with being blindfolded and hit over and over with a punching bag, but I wouldn’t sit here and listen to him talk down to me like he knew a damn thing about me or what I felt. “I’m not naive,” I growled down at Luke, who made no effort to stand. “You have no clue what I’ve been through—”

  “You’re right.” He held up his hands in surrender, but he’d already started a war with me. Wrong thing to say after the life I’ve lived. Way the hell wrong. “I don’t know. But I do understand fear and you don’t. You just know you can’t feel pain. Everyone here thinks that’s great, because you can walk out into the night and take down any ’swang because they can’t affect you. But they’re wrong. That won’t happen. Those ’swangs will get in your head. Pain isn’t only physical.”

  I couldn’t say anything without revealing too much about my past and how well I understood pain. The Tabers’ basement had taught me plenty about the true nature of pain, more than Luke could ever comprehend. Maybe I acted a little too fearless, but fear had nothing on pain. To me, the two weren’t inherently linked like everyone at Fear University seemed to think. Fear was something I overcame because of my understanding of pain. I understood the inevitability of pain. Luke thought I was naive because I couldn’t feel it, but I did—on the inside. Every breath cut razor sharp, memories of my childhood threatening to slice and dice me. Pain was a constant in my life. The only thing that had stuck by me. I didn’t fear it.

  I loved it.

  Luke thought I would fall apart when I fought a ’swang, but he was wrong. I’d already faced down a worse monster that night in the Tabers’ basement; I’d faced fear and pain head on and came out the other side a killer. But Luke had no clue about that night, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be telling him. So I turned and left the gym, forcing myself not to look back.

  I doubled my laps around the estate that evening to burn out the anger pumping in my blood.

  S E V E N

  Later that night, in my cell, I sat at my desk, tap-tapping my new pencil against my new textbook in my new pajamas. My wet hair dripped down my back from the shower I’d taken earlier. A stiffness set into the muscles in my legs and back after practice with Luke and my run, but I ignored it for the most part. After a late dinner with Sunny, who’d waited on me to eat, I’d come back to my room with the intention of studying, but I could only marvel at how damn normal I felt.

  I’d never felt normal my whole life. Maybe I had when I was little, before my mom left me in the closet, but I didn’t let myself remember those times. The best policy was always to forget.

  I propped my elbows on the edge of the desk and rubbed my temples. Of course, my “normal” had become a stab wound to the leg, a university of monster hunters, and a prison cell. That was messed up on so many levels.

  But I was clean with a full belly. I had a space to call my own and a purpose to wake up to each day. I might have been any other student-athlete at any college, sore and studying, exhausted from a long day of classes. It was a drastic but welcomed change from my old life of cheap apartments and long nights filled with nightmares of Max finding me. Passing the evaluation in two weeks suddenly became more important than ever. Even if it meant training in a blindfold every day, I would do it if I could hold on to this feeling.

  Thinking of the night my life had changed course so drastically, I flipped over my hands and studied the bandages. I’d peeked earlier in the shower; the skin was starting to close and form raised patches of thin, inky-black flesh. My first ’swang scars, the first of many more. As messed up as it sounded, the hope comforted me.

  The ten-minute final warning chimed. I glanced at the lock on the sliding, solid, impenetrable material of my door. Hopefully tonight I would get more than an hour’s sleep. I needed to get over this issue. I refused to let a little lock on a door freak me out so bad.

  “Hiya!” Sunny slipped into my room, wearing pink pajamas with yellow ducks dancing on them, and slid the door closed. Before I’d recovered from my surprise at seeing her so close to lockdown, she bounced across the room and sat down on my bed with a thump that sent the springs popping. She shoved her glasses back up her nose, her hair in a floppy bun on top of her head, and grinned at me.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, shock turning my voice flat and mean. “The warning bells are going off.”

  “I know. I just thought . . .” Sunny’s smile faltered and she looked at her hands. “I thought maybe you would want some company. I was pretty freaked out on my first day. Hearing about all that fighting stuff . . .”

  Sunny’s voice trailed off, and I was ready to tell her that I didn’t need anyone’s comfort. But the look in her eyes—bright and
purposeful, like she was determined to keep me from being as scared as she was on her first night—stopped me. “That’s, uh, sweet.” I tried to say the right thing to show her I appreciated the gesture. “But aren’t you worried about the rules?”

  She grinned, looking almost as maniacal as Hatter that I wondered if she’d been staring at him too long. “This is the first time I’ve snuck out of my dorm. You’re worth it, though.”

  Sure, I wasn’t able to feel pain. But I damned sure felt when my heart broke as she told me I was worth it. It was like someone had lined up a hammer and slammed a nail right through my soft, beating tissue. The poor organ. It didn’t stand a chance against this raven-haired, brown-eyed fiend. I swallowed to make sure my voice didn’t sound funny and said, “Gee thanks. Maybe I won’t pee the bed tonight.”

  The warning chimed from my lock, a sound that echoed hundreds of times over in the Death Dome. Sunny cringed a little, but laughed at my joke. “You better not pee the bed. I refuse to sleep on this floor.” Her eyes found the textbook on my desk, and she scooted closer. “What are you studying?”

  “Psychology. I really like Peg. She’s a cool professor.”

  “Yeah. Everyone likes her a lot. Did she show you her leg?” I nodded. “How crazy was that? A ’swang fudging bit it clean off!”

  “Pretty fudging crazy,” I agreed, putting on a perky little drawl like Sunny’s voice. She swatted at my arm, and I grinned at her.

  “I have all my notes from the beginning of the semester. I could share them with you.”

  “That would be great—”

  I didn’t get to finish my sentence before hundreds of locks clanged shut. I glanced at Sunny, who stared back at me, wide white rings around her irises. “That’s an awful sound,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. No shit.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I shuffled along behind Sunny as we made our way to the cafeteria for breakfast before class. I’d gotten a few more hours of sleep last night, but that was it. Between my constant staring at the lock and Sunny’s snoring and horrifying tendency to cuddle, I was beat. I rolled my neck again, hoping to get rid of the crick there, but it was as useless as trying to get my obviously sore legs to move right beneath me. I considered stopping to try and punch some life back into my tattered muscles. Running extra laps last night was a seriously bad idea.