CONVICTION OF THE DAMNED: SUPERNO ACADEMY BOOK ONE

by Tierney Storer

  “Unless of course there’s a reason for your little temper? Did someone break your heart? ” My hand slammed down against the table before I could stop myself.

  It wasn’t the fact Xavier was gaslighting me, which he definitely was by referring to the constant stream of abuse as teasing, but it was his constant assumptions that I was nothing more than a spoilt little bitch. Having people insult, chase and antagonize you was bad enough without that being the very thing that you grew up with too.

  “You know nothing about me or my life stronzo, so how about you find a new hobby instead of coming after me? Because when the day comes that I get whatever fucking powers I'm supposed to have, the first thing I will be doing is ripping off your head!”

  There was the tiniest moment of silence as the two boys looked between each other, wordlessly communicating whatever stupid thoughts their tiny brains had. But like everything I wanted in life, it didn’t last long.

  “Told you that you were being annoying.” Ember tutted, “Please ignore them Kaida, I do most of the time.”

  “I don’t think you would rip off my head; that would require you to be a killer and I don’t think you have it in you.” Xavier ignored Ember and ran a hand through his dark hair, leaving me a tiny window to act.

  I grabbed the front of his tie in my hand, yanking him towards me and down into the table. His face hit the desk with a satisfying thud, and his nose began pissing blood all over his shirt.

  “You don’t know a thing about me Xavier.” I whispered, dropping his tie like it burned and returning to my sheet as I waited for retaliation. “You know nothing about my capacity for murder.”

  Caleb was the first to break the silence, by ripping my sheet out from my hands and reading through it himself.

  “Tell me something about you Kaida; let’s see if we can change your mind about our friendship.” Caleb began copying my answers on to his own sheet and I didn’t bother to stop him. The questions were about different types of famous human brands, so it was hardly anything mind blowing and difficult for me to answer.

  Xavier had healed himself already, and the only trace of his broken nose was in the blood on his shirt that didn’t seem to faze him but was already annoying me beyond belief. There was a lose strand of hair falling from his bun, but I was fairly sure he always had that, as though he knew how much it infuriated me.

  “Yeah, if you answer some questions for us I won’t retaliate for you assaulting me bella.” I bared my teeth as he called me gorgeous, but he only chuckled, my anger never touching him.

  There was nothing I could do to get out of it so I agreed, hoping their questions would be nothing more than boring normal people things.

  “You don’t have to answer anything.” Ember said, offering me a stick of his gum.

  “It’s fine.” I smiled at him and popped the cherry bubble-gum in my mouth.

  “Why are you so angry? Even when you first joined and Novak made you introduce yourself, your sisters were irritated but you were completely raging. Mikel could feel it radiating off you like a bomb and I have no idea what was causing it.” Xavier asked.

  How the fuck do I answer that without actually telling them the truth?

  “Ryder broke into our apartment, coerced us into being quiet, told us literally nothing. Then dragged us through a portal into a courtyard full of strangers who then proceeded to stare and talk about us like we were nothing more than a circus act. Wouldn’t you be mad too?” I replied.

  “Excellent answer.” Ember was being nice, a little too nice. I didn’t know if I could trust it or not.

  They thought about it for a moment before shrugging, deciding my answer was acceptable enough even if it was a slight lie.

  “Okay but then why were you so quick to jump at us when Laina came over that night? We had barely said a word to her before Dari was starting a fight, and you went for me as soon as you arrived.” Caleb asked.

  “Of course I went for you. You were holding my sister.”

  Caleb looked at me like he couldn’t quite understand what I was saying. I had figured he of all people would know what family loyalty was like considering I rarely saw him leave his brothers side.

  “My sisters are the most important people in the world to me. I don’t care who you are or what your reasons were, if I see you lay a hand on either of them then I'm going to kill you regardless. Dari may have thrown the first punch but that means nothing to me once you retaliate.” Remember that when I come for you both in the middle of the night and extract my revenge.

  Telling the Heirs I loved my sisters was a large admission, but one that was already glaringly obvious anyway so held no risk. If they hadn’t deduced the lengths I would go for my family yet then they clearly hadn’t been paying much attention.

  “That makes sense.” Caleb said with a nod of his head. “You’re protective of them.” That’s an understatement.

  “Okay that leads me to my final question. Why are you so protective? What on earth has happened in your lives to make you so aggressive towards anyone you perceive as a threat?”

  Xavier’s final question was not one I could, or would ever, be answering. My reasons for my behaviour were my secrets and mine alone, and not something I would tell a person I loved let alone disliked.

  “Didn’t you get to read the files about us that Ryder found? Surely you know everything about me already?” I replied, trying to twist the question back round.

  Ryder had said the files he had made on Dari, and I were far too big for him to carry, so surely everything the Heirs wanted to know had already been discovered and put in their slimy grasp.

  “Your file was mostly empty; like somebody had wiped away your entire existence. There was no hospital, school or even birth records for you. Dari had loads of information about her, not that I read it, and even Laina had some. But there was nothing more than a few identical pictures and basic traits for you.” Ember answered.

  “It was like you never even existed. All I know about you is that you love you sisters, apparently hate germs, and seem to go straight for the jugular whenever someone hurts your feelings.” Xavier added.

  Their answers shocked me for about ten seconds, before I began laughing hysterically. Actual tears sprung up in my eyes as I went just the tiniest bit insane. I was out of my chair before I made the conscious decision to leave the silencing bubble of Caleb’s and head out the door.

  “Kaida?” Dari called my name, concern flickering in her dark eyes.

  “Quel fottuto demone mi ha cancellato dall’esistenza! Come se quello che ha preso da me non fosse abbastanza, ha fatto sembrare che non fossi nemmeno nato.” I replied, storming out the classroom without a care about the other member of that room who would have been able to understand my words.

  That fucking demon wiped me out of existence! As if what he took from me wasn’t enough, he made it look like I wasn’t even born. I raged the entire way back to my dorm, memories of the man who haunted my childhood surfacing with a vengeance. By the time I made it to my bedroom I was a nervous wreck and slowly sinking into another nightmare of mine.

  David held me up by the scruff of my shirt, his bloodstained hands the only things keeping me from certain death. We were on the roof of one of his apartment buildings for another ‘fun family training exercise’.

  “Why can I see fear in your eyes little one?” He snarled, his features twisted up in rage, as though he couldn’t possibly understand why I was terrified, as he held me over the edge of a fifteen-story drop.

  I was not scared of heights in the slightest but knowing that David held my life in his hands didn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence. The man was a psychopath, and despite him saying that everything he did was for my own good, I did not trust him not to kill me.

  “I’m not scared.” I lied.

  He knew I lied too, and so he kicked my legs out from underneath me as he grabbed hold of my hands, letting me dangle over the edge of the building as I clung to his limb
s for support. The only thing I could think of was to hold my scream and keep the terror inside me at bay. Because if I let out even an ounce of noise then he would surely drop me to the ground below and let me meet my maker.

  I didn’t know how long I hung there, helpless, and afraid, but I became numb from the freezing winds and the ache in my arms was burning from the effort of holding on. Eventually David yanked me upright and slammed me down on the floor next to his feet as I silently thanked the stars for letting me feel solid ground again.

  “Do you remember what you were told Kaida?”

  My tired head nodded solemnly as I dared to meet the gaze of the devil. His lesson today was simple, as were all the others.

  “You own me, and I am easily removed from existence should you ever see fit to do so. I am nothing without you, and I will always be nothing so long as you deem it so.”

  “Good girl.” David patted my head, and the nightmare began to fade.

  I didn’t know how long I had been sat there in a trance, but the floor around me was covered in blood and the sting of fresh cuts on my stomach were slowly easing the tension inside my heart. As I clambered to my feet for a shower my Portal chimed three times in quick succession.

  Caleb

  Hey Killer ;)

  Or is that attempted killer seeing as u forgot to actually stab me

  Missed you at lunch, where are you hiding?

  When I read his comment about lunch I panicked, unsure how I had managed to black out for so long. Ryder’s lesson had been the first of the day, and yet it was now almost two in the afternoon. A sliver of unease crept over me, and as much as I tried to wash it away down the drain I could not. The hot water of the shower loosened my shoulders, but it did nothing for my spirit.

  The bottle of Vodka hidden under my bed was a different story altogether, and a third of the way through the knots inside me finally gave up and disappeared. But it wasn’t that easy to get rid of the Vampire though. He was rather insistent.

  Caleb

  Can’t believe you left me on read, do you know how many people would love to have me in their DM’s ;)

  My eyes rolled but the tiniest of smiles creeped up on to my face. Caleb may have been arrogant, but he had a point. It was clear that the Heirs were the sort of people this entire school would give up an arm to have a chance with. Unfortunately for this particular Heir I had absolutely no desires to do anything of the sort.

  Caleb

  Guess you should be called heartbreaker not killer

  Kaida

  I prefer killer. It fits better.

  Another message popped up from Ember, and I had no qualms answering him. He wanted to know if I was okay, and when I said I was, he offered his services as a therapist should I ever want to talk. I would never accept his offer, but a little part of me was happy that he had even though to ask – I was starting to like him a little bit and considered that we could potentially one day be friends.

  As soon as I replied to Ember’s last message Caleb began typing again, so I quickly turned my Portal off and chucked it in the top draw of my side table. Replying once to him was more than enough for me, and I refused to make him feel like I actually cared.

  The smile on my face didn’t get the memo and refused to budge for the rest of the afternoon despite my best efforts to do so. It would seem the Vampiro’s insistence was wearing down my walls a little, and that would never do.

  Dari

  Personally, the idea of spending two hours of my morning learning about the death penalty and whether or not it was a good thing didn’t particular sound like fun. The kids here could only discuss it as a theoretical, on account of it never being a thing in Mirane, but as my family had come from America we were all too aware of the different benefits and drawbacks to capital punishment.

  From the look on Kaida’s face I could see she felt the same way.

  “Sir?” I raised my hand like a good girl, bored of the discussion ten minutes in.

  “Yes miss Darklight?” Ryder replied with a sigh, but the flicker of amusement in his eyes at me calling him sir was not easy to miss.

  “Is it really necessary for us to debate this? I don’t see how it has any benefits to my education and to be quite frank we didn’t learn about it back home, where they actually used capital punishment, so I don’t see how it has any use here. We all know capital punishment is a ridiculous idea, so I feel like this is a waste of time.”

  Kaida piped up too, seconding my response. Ryder chucked his portal on the desk behind him with a resigned shake of his head.

  “I should have guessed you two would have issues with the subject.” He turned to Kaida, pointedly ignoring me. “You seem like the sort of girl who loves to stand up for the damned of this world.”

  “You’re right; only because I’m damned myself. And the conviction of the damned is something that cannot be decided by a handful of random jurors. People were not born monsters; they were made into them. Who are we to say that those people don’t deserve to have their life just because they did bad things as a result of their trauma?”

  Kaida didn’t pause, the rant inside her mind clearly something she cared about. I tried my best to listen, but the way Ryder had been ignoring me since our moment in the woods was right at the forefront of my mind, and hearing my sister debate why people were not just good or evil wasn’t that important to me.

  “I should think being in prison and rotting for the entirety of their lives was fitting enough a sentence, seeing as they are stuck dealing with their demons and have nowhere to run.”

  “Would you like to explain a little more?” Ryder asked, genuinely curious. “I think that’s quite an interesting opinion, most people are either for or against, but you seem to be a little in the middle.”

  I knew Kaida didn’t particularly want to argue with him in front of a class full of people but seeing as it was a subject we had a lot of knowledge on she couldn’t quite stop herself.

  “Well you’re arguing about whether or not capital punishment is deserving, and the point I’m making is that it is not up for us to decide. Take for example if someone killed Caleb, you would no doubt be upset and want revenge, which you have every right to get. But if the killer was arrested and given the death penalty, then that achieves nothing for you. You have no revenge because you were not the hand by which the killer was ended. It serves no purpose other than to placate strangers, and quite frankly I couldn’t give a shit about the opinion of strangers.”

  The class began to talk amongst themselves, leaving Kaida and Ryder to debate. I could have answered the same damn question if he weren’t such a stronzo that he had to ignore me.

  “So you think that we have no right to convict people to death for a crime, but the loved ones of the victim have the right to seek justice themselves? Let’s say I wasn’t able to kill the person who murdered Cal, then I should want them to spend the rest of their lives in prison damned to an eternal torture from their own minds?” I nodded along with Kaida.

  I wonder if I got into trouble that would make Ryder speak to me? I can cuss him out for being such a bitch.

  “That implies that the people who commit crimes have a conscious and care that they’ve done bad things. When in fact most criminals probably couldn’t care less about the blood on their hands.” Ryder chuckled; his green eyes bright with amusement that stirred the butterflies in my stomach.

  Kaida disagreed with him, looking animated for the first time in a while.

  “From my experience even the most hardened of criminals feel the mental repercussions of their crimes. Even someone entirely broken inside cannot wash away the blood; it stains your soul and claws its way into your mind at every given opportunity. Just look at Lady Macbeth; she’s a perfect example even if she is fictional.”

  Ignoring the whispers of my peers was easy enough; their opinions on me were irrelevant. But one of the wonderful lot felt the need to open their traps about me being a psycho criminal once more, and
that’s when Kaida lost it, and turned her ire onto the student in question.

  “She probably doesn’t want the death penalty because it’s what would have happened to her sister soon enough.” A girl from the back of the room snickered, far too loud for it to have ever been meant a secret.

  I span in my chair towards the source of the noise, locking eyes with a bitchy Vampire girl that I vaguely remembered Allie telling me about. She was called Poppy and had been the one to bump into us in the Green Room. I knew then and there if she continued to rile my sister I wouldn’t be the only one gunning for her.

  I wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with a Vampire physically but seeing as we were in a classroom I had my doubts she would be able to snap my neck if she chose.

  “I find it funny how you feel the need to comment on my sister when you have absolutely no idea about our lives. If it weren’t for Dari we would have starved to death and been homeless. So even if she decided to go around massacring villages I personally would have had no objections. In fact, I would have helped her.” Kaida snapped.

  She didn’t even pause for breath as she continued her tirade in my defence. I didn’t realise she appreciated me so much…

  “But please feel free to share with the class all your wonderful opinions about my sister, because I would happily demonstrate the finer points of what she did to earn money. And trust me when I say you won’t be able to walk out of this classroom when I’m done with you, you stuck up little bitch.”