by Dante King
“This is not happening,” Judyth said, snatching the girl away. “Uh uh. Forget it!”
“Luke has made his decision,” Maddie said, stepping around the crowd. Angels were already filing out of the courtroom, going back to their classes now that the drama was done. “And frankly, I think it’s a good one. I’ve been to both Academies already, and I think an exchange student program would be a fantastic idea.”
Judyth stared at Maddie and me like we’d each grown a second head and started using them to make out. “You’re all cracked,” she muttered, looking at Raquelle like she’d never seen her before. “You’re actually thinking of agreeing to this?”
“She’s got ambition,” I said proudly. “She’s pretty fucking evil. She’ll fit in with the Infernal set like a house on fire, Judyth. Come on, we’ll talk about it later.” I took the Headmistress’s hand, guiding her out of the courtroom. “Right now, I want to see the Prudence School. I think it’s time you introduced me to the seat of this Academy’s power…”
Chapter 11
If Judyth had her way, we’d probably have called the tour early. The Celestial Academy was in an uproar, the news of Raquelle’s humiliation spreading through the student body with the speed only good gossip can achieve. The Headmistress had several fires to put out, and even knowing about our ‘special arrangement’, she probably had places she needed to be that were more important than playing tour guide to two new students.
I decided to push my luck. “If you need to go take care of things, Judyth, Maddie and I understand. We’re perfectly capable of checking out the Prudence School on our own.”
The three of us stood in the intersection between the Temperance, Justice, and Prudence schools, shortly after making our way back from the courthouse. The reception to Maddie and I had warmed considerably since our last visit here—both of us were the focus of quite a bit of attention. Students clapped me on the back warmly as we passed, shooting us a thumbs-up or asking if we were coming to the fraternity mixer.
If I’d given Judyth the hardest, most primal fucking of her life, I don’t think I’d see her as flustered as I did right then. The revelation that her most prized student in the Justice School had been tipping the scales in her favor—and that the truth had been brought to life by an ‘abomination’ from the Infernal Academy—shocked the blonde angel to her core.
“Oh no,” Judyth said, laughing a bit. “You two have gotten into enough trouble already. I shudder to think what mischief you would get into without me to hold you back.”
I snickered at the thought of it. “It’s no trouble at all,” I assured the Headmistress.
Judyth gave me the same look she’d had on her face when Maddie and I emerged from my subspace looking suspiciously refreshed and giggly. She crossed her arms beneath her ample breasts, staring daggers at me. “I’ll finish the tour,” the Headmistress said, the words falling from her lips like heavy stones.
The final door of the tour was both more ornate and more imposing than any we’d stepped through thus far. The word PRUDENTIA had been carved above its lintel, in a flowing script like a celebrity’s signature. For the first time I wondered who’d put all these decorations here, though I definitely didn’t risk Judyth’s ire by asking unnecessary questions.
“Prudence is the ‘prime’ school of the Celestial Academy,” the Headmistress explained as we closed the distance. The students unlucky enough to be out and in our party’s way had learned by now to clear a lane for the Headmistress and her charges, lest they be run over. “Many comparisons have been made between the Prudence School of the Celestial Academy and the Pride School of the Infernal, though I wouldn’t recommend making any in front of our students. Regardless, both form the officer corps of their respective sides. Prudence is focused on strategy, wisdom, and divination—as well as defensive magic such as wards and shields.”
“Sounds like my kind of place,” I said, stopping before a knob in the shape of a massive harp. “I like it already.”
“I assumed you would,” Judyth said without rancor. “Considering your performance so far during the tour, I’d say Fortitude and Justice would be a fit for you. Temperance, not so much. The resisting of temptation is most certainly not your strong suit.”
I could tell she was still thinking of the quick extracurricular break between Temperance and Justice that I’d shared with Maddie. Judyth would probably blown it up into something even worse than it truly was, her mind filling in whippings and orgies and debauchery when really, it had just been a quick BJ between a guy and his girlfriend. But admitting that would have been as good as submitting my request for expulsion, so I kept my mouth shut.
Instead, I changed the topic. “Not really feeling the Justice School,” I said. “Maddie seems to like it, though. Repairing old wrongs and all that stuff.”
Judyth seemed taken aback. “Really? You embarrassed the top student of the school in front of the entire student body, Luke. I’d have thought you’d be a shoo-in to take her place.”
I shrugged. “I’m more of a combat guy. Hands-on, you know? I’m thinking of a major in Prudence with a minor in Fortitude. Plus, I promised Gordon I’d help him spar against some demons later.”
Judyth sighed and rolled her eyes. “Of course. Gordon. Well, I won’t try and force you,” she said with a tone that told me she’d totally try to force me later.
Before I could come back with a cutting remark, however, a pair of angels grabbed the harp-shaped knobs and opened the door to Prudence. An icy, arctic wind blew against me, like a bucket of cold water in my face.
“Oh wow that’s cold!” Maddie said, shivering as she wrapped her wings around her. Even that didn’t fully protect from the elements, and she had to press her body against mine as we stepped through the doorway. Why was the Prudence School so freaking chilly? Was there a problem or something?
The path sloped sharply upward—the three of us had entered a short rock tunnel. Crystals of ice covered the walls, filling the earth above our heads with dozens of tiny, distorted reflections of our own faces. I stared at them as we made our way upward, emerging from the small cave into a much larger, cavernous space.
Then all I could see was the castle.
It stood in the center of the underground space like something from a fairy tale, carved from solid ice. A hill of snow surrounded it on all sides, despite there being nowhere for snow to fall. Massive towers of clear blue ice rose to the ceilings, with carved windows and frescoes and even a drawbridge frozen forever in time.
I couldn’t help it—my first thought was that I’d stepped right into the Fortress of Solitude from Superman. More massive ice crystals covered the walls, splitting the light into fractals of green and blue that made the place feel like some mammoth cave under the Himalayan mountains. I stood in the snow in mute amazement, just staring at it for long moments as Judyth and Maddie waited for me to catch up.
As an icy wind blew through the massive cave, I saw dozens of tiny shapes flying around the castle’s towers. Making our way up the path, these resolved into angels, soaring through drills and taking part in mock combat exhibitions. Only these weren’t the warriors I’d seen back at the Fortitude School—these were elite troops, the best of the best. Their weapons and uniforms marked them as separate from the pack, the ones who led other angels into heavenly battle.
My arms and legs began to tingle. The cold felt really, really intense. My demonic powers, which had done such a good job of shielding me from hot coals and beds of nails during my tour of the Temperance wing, did almost nothing to protect me here. Maddie shivered almost as badly as I did, her nipples poking through the thin fabric of her white robes.
“It’s colder than my ex-girlfriend in here,” I said, avoiding any of the naughty words that might trigger the Headmistress. “What gives?”
Judyth looked distressed by the weather as well, though she’d clearly prepared for it. “The extreme cold of this place acts as a bulwark against the fires of Hell,”
she explained, the words steaming like smoke from her lips. “Our students frequently open portals to the Infernal realm in order to test the strength of their defensive wards, and we needed some way to avoid cross-contamination. This frigid underground cave absorbs the heat.”
“I’ll say,” Maddie whimpered, her teeth chattering together. “Feels like it’s about to drain the warmth right out of my body…”
Her pain set off all of my protective instincts at once. “I’ll take care of you, baby,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight. “Need me to conjure a little fire to keep you warm?”
Before she could say yes, Judyth cut her off. “None of that,” the Headmistress snapped, separating us forcefully. “It’s nowhere near as cold inside the castle. We’ll head there presently.”
With that, she led us through the snow, leaving angel-sized footprints in her wake. Maddie and I followed, while I spent the first part of the walk wondering why she didn’t just fly over to the castle and save herself the chill in her feet.
The ground sloped steadily upward as we braved the castle path, the ‘intended way’ to the front gate helpfully marked by a white picket fence straight out of a country song. As we drew closer, we realized that a whole lot of activity happened outside of the intended path. Groups of angels dotted the landscape, clustered around circles where the snow had been melted away. As I watched, a flash of light around one caused several angels to cheer and clap one of their fellows on the back.
“What’s that over there?” I asked, pointing.
Neither Judyth nor Maddie looked like they wanted to spend more time out in the cold than absolutely necessary, but the Headmistress of the Celestial Academy had a duty to show us everything the school had to offer. So Judyth heaved a heavy sign and fluttered over the fence, inviting us to do the same.
“Some of our students are practicing wards,” Judyth explained, gesturing at the nearest patch of melted snow. A half-dozen angels clustered around it, wearing thick jackets with fur fringes against the biting cold. “I’ll let you take a peek. The process generates some of the only warmth we get in this School, outside of the heating systems inside of the Castle…”
Where the snow had melted lay a bare patch of earth, with a few scraggly grasses struggling to grow. An angel in the ermine robes of an instructor watched as a younger student drew a complicated symbol in the dirt with a piece of chalk, filling it with runes and curlicues like something out of a grimoire.
As the student finished, the instructor took a long, hard look over the design. After a long moment where worry showed on the student’s face, the instructor gave a short nod and a thumb’s up. “Looks good,” the angel said. “Care to test it?”
The rest of the students stepped back, giving the ward plenty of room. As Maddie and I watched, the instructor spread their arms, sparks flying from their fingers. Arcs of electric power flowed down their arms, seeking the center of the design. Where they struck, a rent opened up in the earth beneath the ward, opening a portal. A portal that led to…
I gasped. Maddie tensed up next to me. I recognized those flames.
Through the expanding portal in the ground, I saw the silhouette of the Infernal Academy. This angel had just opened a portal to my alma mater, using the connection to test the strength of the student’s ward.
It was tested hard, indeed. As soon as the portal opened, a wall of fire rose up to fill the rent. Tongues of flame lapped at the edges of the ward, prompting both student and instructor to take a worried step backward. Yet the ward held—nothing came through the design save for a wave of heat. The students clustered around the melted patch sighed contentedly—both because their classmate had succeeded, and because it was suddenly as balmy as a summer’s day.
“Man, that feels good,” I said, stepping closer to the ward. Through the walls of flame, the students of the Infernal Academy looked like ants as they scuttled from the various buildings to the dorms and back. An unexpected wave of homesickness rolled over me as the rent closed, sealing the portal. I didn’t miss my old, pre-Lucifer life in the slightest. Hell, who would? But I did miss tearing up the Academy with Christina and Mareth, and I missed being the big badass on campus in front of all the other sexy demon girls.
I ought to get back, I thought, the idea bittersweet. I don’t belong here. Maddie does, sure—but not me.
I hadn’t truly fit in since I’d arrived. I’d begun wondering whether I ever would. I might be the next Archlord of Hell, but would the Pearly Gates ever open for me voluntarily? Even Maddie’s faith in me felt somewhat misplaced.
As soon as the portal closed, the cold rushed back in. The instructor stamped out the pattern with his feet, making a mark in his ledger to show the student had passed with flying colors. As the next angelic student stepped forward to try their skill, Judyth hustled us back to the other side of the fence.
“I thought that might appeal to you,” the Headmistress said with a coy smile. “There’s a certain artistry involved in crafting wards strong enough to resist demonic forces. You mentioned you were interested in the offensive side of the martial arts, but at the Celestial Academy we find the defensive side of things to be as much or equally more important. You seem pleased to have gotten a close-up view.”
“Absolutely,” I told Judyth, enchanted by what I’d seen. “It was strange seeing the old hometown, even for a moment. I hope they’ve been taking care of my wheels.”
The mention of my demonic automobile gave Maddie a start. “Your car?”
“Yeah,” I said with a chuckle. “Thing’s kind of strange, isn’t it? Lucifer must have put some kind of magic on my wheels for sure. I swear, that car seems like it’s listening to me sometimes—”
I trailed off. Maddie’s face had gone white. “Luke,” she whispered, taking my hand like she was about to relate some very serious news. “I think it is listening to you.”
My eyebrows furrowed together. “What do you mean?”
“That night that I decided to come with you,” Maddie said, looking away. She was unable to meet my eye as she related this part of her story. “I came out of the diner after you and your girlfriends were done eating. I wanted to see you one last time before the three of you went off to do whatever it was you were doing.”
What we’d been doing was having a threesome in the shitty van I used for my IT business. But I didn’t mention that part. “I know,” I said instead. “You hopped into the trunk and snuck down to Hell with us.”
But Maddie shook her head. “That’s just the thing. Luke—I was only planning to ask you for your number. I knew you were involved with other girls, but whatever you were doing in the diner…” she shuddered with remembered lust. “I’d never been so turned on before. Like, ever. I had to see you again—I would’ve split you with any number of girlfriends if you’d just take me out on the town the way you did with Christina and Mareth…”
“Hold up,” I said, waving a hand. She was getting off topic. “You’re telling me you didn’t sneak into my trunk?”
“Oh, I did,” Maddie said with a strange smile. “Only your car told me to.”
I stared at her like she’d grown a second head. So did Judyth, who dearly looked like she wanted to get out of the cold.
“Come again?” I asked.
Maddie let out an awkward little laugh. “Did you ever read The Odyssey back in school? I never did, but the teacher brought in this TV movie version when I was in high school that was in, like, seven parts? I was really into it.”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with my car,” I protested. I was starting to lose feeling in my toes—they’d sunk completely into the snow. Angels flew in circles over our heads, keeping an eye on us as they did flybys over the ice castle’s towers.
“I’m getting to it,” Maddie said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Her body language begged me to give her a minute, so I stood there rather than making for the warmth of the inner castle. “There’s this part in the movie—
and the book, I guess—where the sailors have to sail past this rock in the ocean. There are these creatures that live on it called ‘sirens’—they have the faces of beautiful women but the bodies of eagles. And they sing.”
“I remember this part,” I told Maddie. I’d never seen it, but cultural osmosis is a powerful thing. The Simpsons had probably done a joke or two about it over the years. “You hear the song, and you go crazy and crash your boat onto the rocks. The main guy had to put stuff in his ears to stop them up.”
Maddie nodded like a bobblehead. “That’s what it was like,” she explained. “Your car, it had this... this voice. It spoke right inside my head, like it was bouncing around on the inside of my skull. And everything it said made so much sense!”
I thought about my demonic powers, and how they tended to leach out into the world around me. How back at the diner, I’d turned on the waitress and the women around me without even meaning to, just by the force of being who I was. Was this part of that?
“What did it say?” I asked.
Maddie stared down at the snow between my feet, ashamed to remember. “It said ‘you know you’re never going to be an actress, right’?” Her lips formed a tight little line. “‘Or if you do, it’ll be the kind of movies where you get naked for money.’”
I would’ve liked to have made some of those movies with Maddie—but I sensed it was the wrong thing to say. Instead, I let her keep talking,
“Then it said, ‘that guy and his girls—they’ve got life figured out. They know what’s up. Why not hop in and see where they take you?’ It’s true, you know. I realized it later. I never would’ve made it as an actress—and you did know a thing or two about life that I couldn’t imagine.”
Her words touched me deep inside. “Still, my car insulted you,” I said, brushing a lock of brunette hair out of her face. “That’s not cool. I’ll have to have a talk with it when we get back to the Infernal Academy.”