Forbidden Tutor

by Chantal Cross

  Ah, my Demon Queen…

  Could she have done this? Somehow I don’t think so. If my suspicions about her power are right, I think she’s still got many months of recovery to come before she’s ready to deal damage like this. And even is she does have the power, it makes no sense why she didn’t attack Ebony instead.

  True though it was that Ebony had gone missing for a couple of hours, she’d returned unharmed. In knowing, first hand, that Rhiannon isn’t kind if provoked, it’s reasonable to assume the Queen isn’t involved. Not in this madness, at least. As for what distresses Ebony so much right now, that’s another story entirely.

  If Rhiannon wanted it so, Ebony would either be still lost or taken over by my Queen. Seeing as neither has come to pass, I think other foul intentions are afoot inside my school. I fear it’s Wrath’s doing. It smacks of his sort of righteous devilment. And yet, I once again don’t understand why Ebony is okay if that’s true. Although I don’t wish her ill, she isn’t strong enough to withstand an attack from Wrath. Even in his weakened state, he’s a force to be reckoned with. He terrorizes with the purity of his devotion to the task at hand.

  The bastard hasn’t changed. In fact, I’d wager he’s gotten worse since the last time we met.

  More people filter out now, but still, her boys persist. They’re so eager to show their love for her that they can’t see that she wants to be rid of them. If only the pitiful fools would use their heads, then they wouldn’t have the shame their pride like this.

  Finally, after great efforts from Ebony, they shuffle back toward their dorms. I note however, that Seth in particular looks dejected by this. He always did struggle to accept her rejection, long before he became Sloth.

  When the last person leaves, I wander over to Ebony; her face is still stricken and bleak. It doesn’t fit the stunning beauty I’m used to seeing.

  “Are you okay — where have you been?” My intention was to try and appear calm, but in my haste to learn more, I reveal my hand too quickly. Despite my edgy voice, she smiles at me.

  “I, well, I got delayed,” She gives a doubtful look from left to right, as if she doesn’t trust that the walls themselves. “Can we move back to your office and talk there?”

  “Yes, I think that’s best too.”

  Ebony takes one route to my office while I take another. As convoluted as it is, both of us appreciate how necessary it is to keep our relationship — professional relationship — concealed from everyone. Even other teachers can’t be trusted. In fact, they’ll likely be the most offended if they see me so intimately entwined with a student.

  Before I open my door, I smell it.

  It’s been infected with corruption, and within that tainted aura is one of insurmountable power… Wrath. He was here.

  Quickly, I cross the threshold, searching my room as I go. I see a lot of damage, as well as blood, but I don’t see any signs of Wrath still hiding within. Wherever he’s gone, it’s far away from here. When a creaking floorboard shrieks behind me, I throw a defense charm over my shoulder. It shoots up a barrier between myself and the door, much to Ebony’s shock.

  “Wha— what the hell, Leo!?” Her voice is fraught and tense; my magic has shaken her, however it seems to go deeper than just surprise.

  “What are you keeping from me, Ebony?” I ask, completely ignoring her angry glances. Swiftly her mood changes. Gone is her fire, her anger, replaced with darting eyes and wild, untamable fright. She’s a mess. A quivering shambles of troubled thoughts, and for the life of me I have no clue why.

  I dismiss my spell promptly. The barrier tumbles to the floor and fades into its boards. Yet despite the change, Ebony still behaves as if she’s entombed on the other side of the room.

  “I asked you a question, don’t ignore me.”

  “I’m, I’m not ignoring you,” She begins. “I just don’t know how to explain it.”

  “Try.” My speech is pointedly aimed at her. She’s trying my patience, and I’m not in a gaming mood, not after all the torment I’ve witnessed today.

  Ebony rubs her hands down the front of her thighs, the nervousness to her movements oddly adorable. I’m pissed, yet she evokes reactions from me that don’t suit our situation. It feels like witchcraft to be so beguiled by such a young woman. Even in knowing who she really is, it still throws me to be so infatuated. Failure to keep my wits about me will result in pain, though not for her, for me.

  Raking her nails against her garments, I wince at the sound. It’s awful. My body shivers as I listen to the fibers screech in aggravated distress. I’m ready to stop her, to instruct her to tell me all or leave, but then she speaks.

  “I met Wrath.”

  My mouth flops open. I blink several times while shaking my head, certain I’ve misheard her. What she said struggles to register with me, my mind disoriented as I try to make sense of it.

  “You what?”

  “Wrath, he was here. In your office.” Her monotonous tone is chilling: she sounds like a zombie enchanted to speak, not a living human. Whatever occurred here has terrified her. If her voice didn’t tell me as much, her eyes do. They’re wide and shaking, tears threatening to spill.

  “Ebony,” Taking a breath, I pause. “I can see that you’re upset, but I need you to explain what happened, in detail. Is this your blood in here?” I know it is without her replying. Ebony nods her head, her expression crestfallen.

  “Ebony!” Her head jolts up. It shocks her into life, speech tumbling from her lips.

  “You left to go to the injured students, and as I went to leave he sealed the door shut. I couldn’t escape, I couldn’t do anything.” The misery of her admission rattles me, though not as deeply as it has done her. “I nearly died, I was going to, then…”

  “Then what?” I implore, confused as to why she’s stopped. When she ignores me for a second time, I probe a little harder. “Ebony, then what?”

  She shakes her head to clear her thoughts. “I survived. I woke up here, in fact. But then I blacked out and ended up in my bedroom, though I don’t know how I got there.”

  I don’t accept this. Not a single word of that makes sense to me, at least not the first part. There’s no way she could just survive Wrath’s attacks. It isn’t possible. Although I’m confident in my own abilities, even I believe I’d be too inferior to stave off his spells. I’d die or almost. Yet Ebony claims she miraculously walked away unscathed. It’s a lie, and a poor one at that.

  “You’re lying to me.” I state coldly.

  “I’m not!”

  “You are because if you weren't, you wouldn’t be so defensive.” She goes to cut in, but I silence her with a steely glare. “Don’t bother. Right now, I’ll accept your lies, even if it annoys the hell out of me. But you’d better start taking my advice and listening to me — no more fooling around in our sessions, thinking you’re stronger than you are.”

  Her eyes flash with a tangled cluster of emotions, none of them distinguishable from the others.

  “Screw you, Leo. You know what, you can go to hell along with Wrath and Rhiannon, that way you’ll be with your beloved Demon Queen just like you want.”

  Her lips fix into a tight line. Pirouetting on the spot, she sweeps out of my office in a cloud of fury, leaving me to stare in bewilderment.

  18

  Gabriel

  The clamor my sneakers make against the flooring is all I hear.

  They slap against the ground, the way they peel back then stomp down a rhythmic beat to my worries. Who hurt those students — was it me, did I do it? I can’t recall the last hour. Whenever I try to, all I see is a black gap in my memories, whatever lurks there is shrouded in darkness. It’s hiding itself so deeply, I question whether I’ll ever have answers.

  I don’t think myself capable of such savagery, however I don’t feel myself these days either. Not since those dreams started. Until they swarmed my sleeping moments, I’d been sure of myself as a person, even my flaws had been a recognized part of my
personality. I was Gabriel, the embodiment of Gluttony, a man who wanted too much all too often.

  But who am I now?

  I tell myself I should be the same, a completely unchanged person, however I fear it’s a lie. How can it not be when I don’t remember the last hour — something is amiss. And I need to discover what it is before anyone else does. If one of the others connects me to the incidents, I’ll be at risk of interrogation… or worse…

  Slap. Slap. Slap. My soles go down again and again, the floor subjected to a torrent of feverish paces. I cross from one side to the other then back again in a daze. I’m lost to my restlessness, unable to pay attention to the world around me. It doesn’t matter to me. All that does is figuring out the puzzle that is myself.

  None of this makes sense! I wouldn’t hurt anyone, not when my whole mission since embracing immortality has been to protect Ebony from her evil fate. All I’ve ever sought to do is keep her away from Rhiannon, from the monstrous woman she can become. And while that would inevitably involve putting her to death, that doesn’t mean I’d lose control and harm others.

  Yet questions about my faded memory won’t leave me. In fact, the more I pace, the greater the anxiety becomes until it’s nothing other than an entity all its own. It has shape and weight, able to stalk my every move, never letting up until I eventually go insane.

  Maybe if I go insane it’ll save me from whatever haunts my dreams now. It can’t be any worse than the predicament I currently find myself in. That we all find ourselves in. Ebony is withdrawn, Seth is a lost puppy dog without her, and Lucien’s suddenly uninterested in pursuing girls. Then you have Kashton still consumed with getting exactly what he wants, Leo is being his stuck up self, and Wrath is somewhere hiding in the shadows.

  Each of us has been thrown into personal turmoil, all since Ebony came to this school.

  “What are you doing? You’re gonna wear holes in the floor, Gabe!”

  I find Kashton standing in the doorway, his form in silhouette. If it wasn’t for his smooth tones, I could have mistaken him for someone else. But oh no, I’d recognize that smarmy voice anywhere.

  Being alone in this damn school is practically impossible. No matter where you go, someone can always find you. And then once they do, they bombard you with idiotic questions that don’t matter. Why I’m here isn’t of any concern to him, nor should it be to anyone else. Out of spite, I choose to be flippant with my response.

  “I’m pacing, what does it look like.” I crack back, rolling my eyes. He may have caught me off guard, but that doesn’t mean I need to tell him about it. As far as he’s concerned, I’m the same old Gabriel I’ve always been.

  Kashton sends his hair bobbing about as he shakes his head.

  “I know that, you idiot, I mean why are you doing it — you ran off pretty quickly after we found those students—” My breath catches when he mentioned them; he jumped on it instantly. “Okay, that look right there tells me that something is up. Either you know what happened or some other weird crap is going off. Share.”

  I swallow, unable to form words. When I think to myself about it, the sentences come freely. However, now that I need to share my fears with someone else, they stagnate on my tongue.

  You don’t have to tell him anything, if you don’t want to… Just spin a small lie, it won’t hurt anyone.

  Is that my voice or someone else's? It sounds like me, yet there’s an edge to it that I don’t recognize as my own. For now I ignore it, however the way it probes at my thoughts leaves me unnerved. I feel vulnerable inside my own head.

  “I’m just having bad dreams and the lack of sleep is getting to me, I guess.”

  “Bad dreams?” Kashton rapidly fires back to me.

  I pay closer attention to his expression now, and in it I see unease. I’ve hit a nerve with what I’ve said. As the realization of this dawns on me, we stand staring at one another, uncertain of whether it’s coincidence or higher forces at work.

  If we’re sharing the same bad dreams, or ones similar, what does that mean for us — are we friends or foe?

  Since finding each other in this school, we’ve become friends of a sort, in our own weird way. Nonetheless, with the world shifting out of balance with each passing day, there’s no telling where our friendship will end up. After all, while Ebony still remains chaste, we still caught a glimpse of the Demon Queen. Her energy had poured out of the school when Ebony fell ill after biting that damn apple. Then ever since then Rhiannon’s vile needles of her shadow form have been felt everywhere.

  The amount of times Ebony has nearly died, it’s not surprising the Queen has made a play and reared her ugly head. She’s been given the opportunity to do so. In her being free, there’s only more chaos to come. I need to know who’s on my side, our side; is Kashton one of those people?

  Are you Gabriel? You don’t seem so sure.

  I bite down on my tongue, drawing blood. I won’t accept that there’s anyone else inside my own head except me. There isn’t, there can’t be.

  “Gabriel—”

  “Hey, guys!” Both of us look at the doorway, Kashton craning his neck to peek behind him. No one is there, but we recognize Seth’s voice; he must be down in the main common room. I welcome his interruption, for I fear what’ll unfurl between Kashton and I if we’re left here much longer. The distrust between us is palpable.

  “W-what’s up, Seth?” I stammer back, my voice scared to speak in case it isn’t me I hear. Kashton cocks an eyebrow in quiet curiosity.

  “Lucien thought it best we all chat, so can you both come down here. I’d rather not have to keep shouting.”

  “You could have just come upstairs, Seth, you do have legs, you know.” The bitter undertones of Kashton’s reply are unmistakable. Seth never responds, although I don’t think it’s because he’s upset. It’s more than likely he feels it too much effort to dignify us with a response. If it was Lucien behaving this way, I’d call it arrogance. But seeing as it’s Seth, it’s undoubtedly because of his idleness. It always is so with him.

  Kashton looks back at me, annoyance etched into his face. He looks older, closer to his age now than what he did ten minutes ago. “We’d better go join them.” He sighs. I frown as I think on what Seth just said, causing Kashton to tilt his head. “What’s up now?”

  “Did Seth say chat with Lucien?”

  “Yeah. Your point being…?”

  “Erm, isn’t he in class right now. Unless they’ve all been canceled, which I doubt because Leo wouldn’t ever be that nice.” It’s my turn to be sour faced now. Kashton laughs, tickled by my jeering about Leo.

  The two of us are bookends, in a way. His greed and my gluttony long for the same things, we’re drawn to the same vices — maybe that’s why we’re plagued by the same dreams, because we share similar traits. I hope that’s what it is.

  “Hey, Seth. Did you forget about Lucien’s classes?” Kashton calls over his shoulder.

  “No, you ass. Now come on, we’re gonna be late. Besides we can talk in class!”

  I shrug, as does Kashton. Whatever Seth wants, he gets. Neither of us particularly care, so long as he’ll take us away from the rising tension between us. The atmosphere lessened a little when we queried Seth’s abysmal choice of meeting time, but now that it’s sorted, we’re left with our thoughts again. And they’re the most damaging of all. They can convince you of wrongdoing, promise you lies, and turn you against those you love.

  I don’t want to be alone with such thoughts.

  If this potential issue between us isn’t resolved shortly, I fear more students are going to get hurt. Perhaps ones closer to me… people I’d once thought of as friends… It’s a dastardly notion to have niggling away inside my head. Even more so when I know that I’m meant to be one of the good guys.

  Following Kashton down the staircase, I keep my morbid dread to myself. He doesn’t need to know, none of them do. I’ll keep my concerns close to my chest, at least until I’m sure they can be t
rusted.

  19

  Lucien

  “Lucien!” Professor Balkin barks my name. I slowly drag my gaze from the seemingly endless field to look at him. He’s a short man. He barely comes up to my chest. However, he’s still the best instructor in mounted combat the school’s ever seen. I should know. I’ve been alive long enough.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you going to perform the requested exercise with your steed or are we interrupting your daydream?”

  The other students in the lesson snicker but I pay them no mind.

  “I was just wondering what time it is,” I reply.

  “Not time for class to conclude. Complete your excursive.”

  “I’ll do it if you give me the time,” I smirk. Professor Balkin turns beet red. It wouldn’t surprise me if smoke started coming out of his ears.

  “It’s a quarter to three,” he grumbled.

  “Oh!” I raise my brows. “Terribly sorry. I have to be off.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have a prior engagement. I wouldn’t have scheduled it at this time if it were up to me,” I shrug.

  “You will stay until the end of class or I will inform Headmaster Leo of your disrespect and truancy,” the Professor huffs.

  “If I don’t leave now, I won’t be able to properly cool down your horse.” I pat the silvery neck of my steed. Most fights nowadays are fought with magic alone. However, I came from a time where battles were fought with metal, blood, and sweat as well as magic. My magical abilities are sharp and well-trained, but I don’t like to let skills go to waste. It doesn’t do me any favors. It certainly won’t do Ebony any favors if I’m not prepared for every eventuality.