by Lan Chan
“Chain-link fence.”
The frown deepened. “Did somebody tell you that?”
“No, I saw it.”
“Doesn’t look like a fence scar. It’s too clean a slice.”
“One of the Nephilim healed him after I found him.”
I wasn’t even sure why I was continuing the lie. Only that I didn’t want to cause more tension by suggesting things like this were happening frequently at Bloodline. “Ah right. What about Scar?”
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t a Lion King special.”
He laughed. It was a full-bellied sound. It reminded me of Peter. I bit down on my tongue to keep the sadness at bay. “How about Red Dog?”
“Are you just going to quote movie names at me?”
“Maybe I better stop helping you.” He left to tend to the horses. The dingo yipped at me. He chewed at the side of the fence. I knew the sign for I want out plain as day.
“I can’t,” I said. “Not until you learn to play nice with the other animals.” Mind you, I hadn’t had any evidence to the contrary. The dingo growled. He was getting impatient.
“Alright fine!” I said. Before I could open the latch on the gate, he padded away, turned, took a running start and leaped right over the fence that was as high as my shoulder.
“Normal animals aren’t meant to be able to do that,” Rachel said. She came up beside me. I wasn’t sure what to say. Everything felt incriminating.
“I’ve seen dogs jump over fences before.”
“Not a fence this high.”
I shrugged. “Then I guess he’s just unusual.”
“Hey, I’m not knocking it,” she said. “Just making an observation.”
“If you had seen the state he was in when I found him, you’d think it was a miracle he’s walking.” The dingo sat down next to me. I ran my hand down his back. I realised what I was saying was the truth. The difference between how he had been and what he was like now was remarkable. It made me wonder whether it was the conjuring that had changed him or whatever Kai had done while he healed him. A name suddenly hit me. “Phoenix,” I said.
“Huh?” Rachel asked.
“That’s his name. Phoenix.”
“That’s like calling him, Cat.”
“I like it.”
“He’s your dingo. Is he going to be able to stay calm while we have our lesson?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Either they were very relaxed here or there were other methods of containment. She led me around past where I had walked when Ashton caught up to me. The dingo matched my stride and didn’t even run off when a rabbit sprinted across the lawn. Now that was self-control. A glass house came into view shortly after. When we pulled up next to it, I saw that it was attached to another building that doubled as a potting shed. There was a small rectangular table and two fold-out chairs. The table was littered with potting mix. Rachel swept it all clean with her sleeve.
“I’ll give you some time to take this written test,” she said. She placed a few sheets of paper on the table and a pen. Both of these she took from a cubby in the wall that held various other bits and pieces like seed packets and secateurs. It wasn’t very organised and made me think of Peter again. Thalia was the one who kept the Herbology classroom running. Peter had a tendency to leave things lying around. Nanna would have died if she saw a pair of gloves left to the whim of the elements.
“What’s with the look on your face?” Rachel asked. “You heard that you have to do a test, right?”
I sat down and picked up the pen. “I was just thinking about my Herbology teacher at Bloodline,” I said. “His organisation skills could give you a run for your money. You’d like him.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d said, but the same vicious look she’d given Sean was now directed at me. “Trust me,” she said, “there isn’t a single monster on this planet that I like.”
“He’s human,” I objected. Her eyes flashed.
“I like traitors even less. You’ve got half an hour.”
She turned on her heels and walked away. Great. I’d been here less than a day and I’d already managed to piss off my roommate. I didn’t even know what it was that had pissed her off. I resolved to keep my mouth shut about the supernaturals in her company.
The test was a cinch after all of the things I’d been learning in Herbology. Not least because this test was based on a human perspective on plants so there were no curve balls thrown in. Where I got stuck was the industrial side of things. If I had wanted a plant at Bloodline Academy, we just tended to ask for them. The land was magically fertile and the Fae kept everything in order. I knew nothing about cultivation or the amount of water that would be used in medium-level irrigation. I hazarded a guess anyway based on the rations I had been using for the nymphs in the Grove.
Rachel was in a better mood when she returned. “This isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she said. “Just some of the business side of things that you need to brush up on. Any ideas about what you’d like to do once you’re done studying?”
For as long as I had been in Bloodline, it was pretty much a given that I would end up being a guard somewhere. Before that I was just hoping to live another day. Now that she said it, I was drawing a blank.
“I’m not sure.”
“But you definitely want to work with plants though, right?”
“I like working with plants…”
“Great,” she said. “Another teenager with no ambition.” Maybe she thought she was speaking low enough that I couldn’t hear. She eyed me in an annoyed manner. Maybe not.
“Well, sure or not, this is the path you’re on right now. You can figure out exactly what you want to be eventually. I’ve loaded the subject course work and sent it to your Academy email. You’re going to have to go through it and catch up on all the basic subjects. For now, throw these gloves on and help me inside the greenhouse.”
Helping her entailed the propagation of masses of seedlings. She told me they owned a nursery that one of the older hedge witches ran. Some of the other produce that was grown went into the kitchen. Everything was organic.
By the time dinner rolled around, I was so exhausted I could barely lift my fork to eat. I almost forgot to draw the circle around my bed. Groaning like an old woman, I got out of bed. It was a force of habit to take salt from Sophie’s bedside table, but there was none in sight. Rachel hadn’t even come to bed yet. Her side of the room was a homage to heavy metal music. Thankfully, I had some salt sachets in my suitcase. I crashed after I’d finished. It felt like I had only just closed my eyes when my breathing became heavy. My eyes snapped open to find a hand covering my mouth.
Hushed voices whispered around me. I kicked out wondering why the circle hadn’t alerted me. Somebody grunted, but they didn’t let go. A cloth was placed over my nose. Of course as soon as I commanded myself not to inhale, that was the first thing I did. My lungs filled with a sweet scent. My eyes drooped and everything went black.
16
I might have thought that I was still dreaming because of the sound of waves crashing all around me. It washed up on all sides, the spray close enough that it spat in my face. When I opened my eyes, it was pitch black but for the crescent of the moon.
That was enough to see the foreshore in the distance. I glanced up and saw that I was underneath the very tip of the pier. My back was pressed up against one of the wooden beams. Something rough held my hands in place behind me. The tide dragged my legs up and down in tandem with the swell of the waves. The thing that told me this was all too real were the figures treading water around me. Their faces were covered with Halloween masks, but the flow of hair billowing in the water around them told me they were female. My mouth was covered by soft material. I tried to kick at the person closest to me. She huffed as my foot grazed her, but the resistance in the water was too much for there to be any force behind the kick.
The figure on the left made a circular motion with her hand. The other
two nodded. They moved off back towards the shore. Hysteria that had been building in my chest broke free. I screamed, but from behind the bandage it came out as incoherent mumbling. My chest constricted so that my breathing became ragged. I rubbed at the bindings around my wrists, but they were too tight. There was no give in the knots. I didn’t have the strength to get them to loosen.
The water closed in on me from all sides. At first it had been just under my chin, but as I struggled, the moon danced across the sky and the water rose. The bandage over my mouth was soaked through. As were the rest of my clothes. It made breathing even more difficult. I was freezing. Fear lapped at me each time a wave carried something close. In the rational part of my mind I thought it might be seaweed. But the rational part of me had receded. In its place was something wild and uncontrollable. I screamed until my throat was hoarse. The water rose so that I had to strain my neck to keep breathing. Even then I didn’t manage every time. I swallowed more water than I would have drunk in one sitting.
The beach in this area was too secluded for there to be traffic at this time of night. A single car had driven by, but it hadn’t stopped even when I screamed as loudly as I possibly could. I had rubbed my wrists to the point where I’d broken skin. It matched the pain in my legs where I kept trying to push away from the plank of wood that held up the pier. There were no plants out here for me to take advantage of with my hedge magic. Seaweed didn’t have roots that I could use to help me break the pier. The wood itself was too long dead. It would take a lot of power to revive them.
You have power, Lucifer’s voice broke into my thoughts. A flashing image of him in his prison with his fist pressed up against a stone wall assailed me. Will you die by their rules?
In a moment of clarity, or perhaps sheer stupidity, I decided to throw my personal belief about balance out. Reaching into the depths of my magic, I shoved the surface of blue aside and willed the black beneath it to rise.
Water smashed against my ears and nose. Something scaly brushed up against my palm. I inhaled loudly. It sounded like the agonised bleating of a dying animal. With all of the resolve I had left, I directed the full spectrum of my magic into the pier. Grow, I commanded.
At first nothing happened. All of the energy inside me surged and then bottlenecked as it attempted to race out of me at once. There was an instant where it sat in limbo. At the same time, I lost control of my body. I was so exhausted from having fought to get free that my head bobbed forward. It didn’t have far to go. Just a small tip and my face was in the water.
Panic like nothing I had ever known before overcame me. But it was a panic that had no outlet. Instead, it dragged at my soul until the world around me became a glittering of lights. And then the rushing sound erupted in my ears. It roared like there was an aircraft engine right beside my ear. A burst of blue light flashed like a star going supernova. Night turned into a blazing blue day that blocked out the sky. The pier behind me turned into kindling.
Circles upon circles, millions of them, rippled out into the ocean. They pushed at the water creating a whirlpool. Freed of my bindings now that the pier was no more, I fell into the eye of the whirlpool as all of the water was shoved back.
I clawed at the bandage around my mouth until it was loose. The shuddering breath I took was a single second of reprieve. I threw my arms over my head, ready for the ocean to come crashing back at me. Instead, magic circles continued to pour from me. They burrowed into the water and the earth around me like spinning blades. Deeper and wider they cut until a huge chunk of the shoreline had been eaten away.
Voices screamed in the night. Other smaller voices cried out in pain and fear. Their helplessness reminded me of my own and fuelled the rage inside me. My vision blinked out until all I could see were the magic circles destroying this section of the ocean. I screamed again, this time with such fury that the world turned into a canvas of interconnected light. Big and small, they joined together until the magic circles sheared through them in their path of destruction. The whole section of ocean had been painted for me, and I was killing anything the circles touched.
The dying moan of a sting ray pierced through my heart. I turned my head to try and find it. But the circles were too insistent. Propelled by my fear and the dark power inside of me, they continued to spin. More and more, deeper and deeper until they hit an obstruction. A groan reverberated in my mind. Something ancient tried to latch on to my thoughts, but my vision exploded in a jet of green.
“Blue!” Kai’s voice screamed. My mind sputtered as another voice echoed in my thoughts. It didn’t have the capacity to speak, but it projected such terrible agony that the circles halted. The ocean itself was bleeding from all of the creatures I’d killed. My body went limp as Kai dropped down beside me into the eye of the whirlpool. He teleported us out just before my strength gave out and water rushed back to fill the empty space.
We landed on the beach. I was soaking wet. The light from the flash of power I had emitted was still holding steady.
“Kill the lights!” I heard Professor McKenna shouting.
“Blue,” Kai said. His hands cupped my face. My teeth chatted. He shrugged off his leather jacket and draped it around me. Pulling me against his chest, he wrapped his arms around me. “I need you to let go of the light,” he said. “You’re okay. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
His voice was beside my ear. His own light was seeping into my skin, soothing me. Somebody raced up to us. Sophie’s tense face appeared in front of me. She held out a mug.
“Drink this,” she said. She placed the back of her palm on my cheek. I was so cold I couldn’t feel anything. But seeing her opened the flood gates.
Tears streamed from my eyes. Kai’s arms tightened around me as the world dimmed back into the darkness. I wasn’t aware of much that was happening around me except for Kai’s scent anchoring me to the present and Sophie sitting beside us.
I knew there were people running up and down the beach. Professor McKenna and Professor Mortimer were barking orders to people. Men in the black robes of the First Order as well as Fae in golden armour stood in lines around us.
After a while, I ran out of tears. “Drink this,” Sophie said. She brought the cup to my lips and I did as she asked. The contents of the cup turned out to be chicken noodle soup. It was laced with her magic. As soon as the broth hit my tongue, warmth returned to my body. The edge of fear that had me clinging to Kai receded. Without the fear to blanket my other emotions, they were free to reign. The chief of those emotions was anger.
“I’m okay,” I told Kai, who refused to let me up.
“You’re weak,” he said. I tried to slug him in the gut, but it was difficult to hold my arm up. “Told you.” He was smiling, but it was brittle.
“You’ve got no business here,” Samantha’s voice called out. “This is private property.”
“We left her in your care,” Jacqueline snapped back. It was the first time I’d seen her lose her temper. “You were responsible for her, and the first night she’s here, look what happens.”
I didn’t hear their back and forth because I started to cough. Kai sat me up so that I wasn’t choking on the water that came sputtering out of my mouth. It was mixed with bile.
“I think I might just take her head off,” a familiar voice said. Astrid fluttered down beside me. Her skin was raised in scars in some places, but she seemed okay enough otherwise.
“Hey,” I said. I tried to smile but even that was tiring. I slumped over. At that point, Kai had enough, and we teleported. Strangely, it wasn’t to the infirmary. We landed inside the Grove. He laid me down on the grass. A couple dozen coloured lights swirled in the air around me. The wood nymph chirped.
“I don’t know,” Kai said to them. “Blue, close your eyes.”
I didn’t want to, but it was as though his command gave me permission to let go. As soon as I did, I fell asleep.
There was a lot of shouting when I finally woke. This time, I was inside the infirm
ary.
A private room inside the infirmary was usually a sanctum, but all I could hear was two women arguing. Samantha’s voice had me stirring. “This isn’t a negotiation,” she said.
“No it isn’t,” Jacqueline spoke. “We allowed Lex to attend Terran on the proviso that she would be protected. She’s been there less than a full day. If you can’t guarantee her well-being then you can forget about having her back.”
“You speak of protection like you’ve done a great job yourself,” Samantha choked. “How often has she been in danger since she arrived at Bloodline Academy?”
Jacqueline’s heels clicked on the floor. It echoed in the small room. “There are things that happen in this world nobody can account for,” she said. “We have protected her to the best of our ability. But to allow your own students to kidnap her and tie her to an unsafe structure when you know she is terrified of the ocean is unforgivable.”
Wait, hold up. How many people knew I was terrified of the ocean? A calloused hand pressed around the side of my neck. I could feel and scent Kai beside me. Half his body was braced against the side of the bed. His arm lay under my head, his hand stroking my hair. That was half the reason why I hadn’t opened my eyes despite the two banshees screaming around me. Okay, it wasn’t screaming. But the sarcasm was strong, and the way they couched their words in hard politeness made them all the more cutting.
“I didn’t say I approved of the practice,” Samantha said. “The girls will be reprimanded. But even they couldn’t have foreseen this outcome.”
Jacqueline made a sound that was basically a derisive grunt. Before she could say anything more, Samantha continued. “I have to insist that you bring Alessia back. A deal was struck and the terms are very clear. I will not accept another communication via this unnatural method.”
“Surely you jest,” Jacqueline said. More clicking. They were obviously conversing via the MirrorNet. “If you think you’re coming anywhere near her, you’re deluded.”