“Not that I know of.”
“Crimson Death gets all the press these days, but Lord Bone was the real deal. Absolute nightmare in a top hat and white tuxedo. It took seven of us to take him down. Our Shadecaster got his ticket punched and most of the rest still bear scars.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with all this ancient history, but I saw my opportunity. “Now imagine having a Crow on your side for once!”
Nikolai continued as if I hadn’t said a word. “I’ve heard some of your classmates call what you do going full-Walker. But do you know what makes a real Walker dangerous?”
“They don’t feel pain and they don’t stop?”
“Nah. That just makes them a pain in the ass. What makes them dangerous,” he explained, “is that they come in packs. For every walking corpse you take down, the damn Crow will be killing normals and raising another three or five to replace it. An endless supply of expendable soldiers, every one of them tireless, fearless puppets.”
“I don’t get tired—” I began.
“That’s not the fucking point, Banach. When you use your power, it’s impressive, I’ll grant, but there’s only one of you. Even worse, you’re not raising Walkers, you’re turning yourself into one. So what happens when someone decides to put you down?”
There didn’t seem to be a great answer to that.
“You die,” he concluded. “Not feeling pain is a long way from being invulnerable. A Crow’s power lies in sending the dead to do their bidding while staying safe themselves.”
“But my power doesn’t work that way.”
“Yeah. That’s why we’re here.”
I smacked the back of the chair with one hand and did my best not to howl at the pain that raced through my recently healed fingers. “So what the fuck does that mean for me?”
“It means you need to leave Close Combat to those built for it.” If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn the old Titan was trying to be kind. “Maybe you’ll have better luck with one of the other Cape paths.”
“No doubt. I’m sure I’ll kick some serious fucking ass at Perception,” I growled. “Come on, Nikolai. I’ve taken History of Powers. Everyone knows powers manifest internally or externally. Never both. The other Crows were externals, but I’m clearly not. Combat’s the only thing my power’s good for.”
“Then you need to give serious thought to another career,” the big man growled back. “I’ve got enough dead kids on my conscience without sending another one to his grave.”
I wasn’t going to beg, not to Nikolai, and not to anyone else. But still… “Give me until the new year. Maybe there’s something more I can—”
“Sorry, kid. I told Bard my decision while you were being healed at the med ward. Just thought you deserved to hear the news straight from me.” Nikolai rose to his feet, massive bulk blocking the light of the single lamp, and nodded to the door behind me. “For what it’s worth, I wish you luck.”
Like most wishes, his was worth nothing at all.
•—•—•
It took less than an hour for the news to spread among the first-years. Their reactions were about what you’d expect. Kayleigh was all outrage and sympathy, Silt was gruffly supportive, and Wormhole was… still convinced I was going to murder her, I guess. Caleb spent the next week walking around with a victorious smirk on his face as if he’d had a damn thing to do with my failure. Paladin’s expression was perfectly calibrated between appropriately sympathetic and aloof, and Jeremiah…
Turned out my roommate was all marshmallow beneath that dark chocolate shell.
“I’m so sorry,” he said for the second time that day, and the seventh in the past week and a half.
“Stop apologizing.” I was flat on my back on my bed, Glass face-down on my chest, as I stared up at our dorm ceiling. “It’s not your fault.”
“You went straight from our fight to the med ward to being kicked out of Combat. How is that not my fault?”
“It just isn’t. Was it Alan Jackson’s fault—” I was not calling the guy The Manimal. “—when he tore you a new one?”
“Sort of, yeah.”
“Wrong. He did what he’s supposed to do. Just like you did.”
“But now you’re—”
“I’m not out of Combat because you won. I’m out of it because I couldn’t win.” That truth had been weighing on me for almost nine days. I didn’t agree with Nikolai’s decision—because fuck that sadistic bastard—but he was right that temporary immunity to pain didn’t mean shit against super strength, super speed, or—as my roommate had unfortunately demonstrated—rock-hard skin. I might as well be a One or Two for all the good my power did me.
“But if it weren’t for you, I’d be getting kicked out of Combat myself any day now.”
Truth was, I had been pissed at Jeremiah at first. I’d spent a lot of my free time teaching the big fucker how to fight, and then he’d turned around and used what I’d taught him to ruin any hope I had of being a Cape. But it was hard to hold on to all that righteous anger when the guy seemed as upset about it as I was.
“Nikolai wasn’t going to kick you out, Stonewall. He was just waiting for—” I cut off as an all-too-familiar rhythmic banging started in one of our neighboring rooms, followed almost immediately by paired moans. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” I got out of bed, walked over, and banged on Jeremiah’s wall. “It’s eleven in the morning, El Bosque! Can’t you and your girlfriend fuck somewhere else for a change?”
Shockingly, neither Santiago nor London took my advice. I rolled my eyes. “A building full of horny, eighteen-year-old Powers, and they give us dorms with inch-thick walls. This is one fucking thing I’m not going to miss.” I tossed myself back onto my bed and tried not to listen as the Druid and Pyro went at it.
“No shit. Anyway, what were you saying—” Jeremiah cut off with a frown as a particularly loud moan interrupted him. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous.”
“There’s only one thing we can do,” I agreed. “Retaliate in-kind.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You need to bring a nice girl home and bang her brains out. Preferably when I’m on the other side of campus, thanks all the same.”
“Wait… what?!?”
“I’d do it, but…” But Orca wasn’t interested, as she’d made abundantly clear. “Look, Paladin may be keeping himself pure, but almost every other guy in the class has managed a one-night-stand… except for you and me. And that’s just fucking embarrassing.”
“Actually…” Jeremiah coughed. If he’d been any less dark-skinned, I was pretty sure I’d have seen a blush. “I’ve been kind of seeing someone.”
“Seriously? Who?” I waited as he stammered out something entirely unintelligible. “Just promise me it’s not Winter, okay?”
He gave me an odd look. “It’s not Winter.”
“Or Tessa the Pube-Hunter.”
“Tessa the what?”
“Never mind.” In the other room, London and Santiago finally fell quiet. “What was that? Three minutes? El Bosque’s improving.”
“This was not how I expected Sunday morning to go,” grumbled my roommate. “Why are you here anyway? Don’t you have counseling?”
“Not this week. Bard decided to give me the week off for good behavior.” Actually, Alexa was away on some sort of work emergency. Someone in the world was in critical need of dispassionate diagnosis.
“So what are you planning to do with your free time?”
I shrugged. I’d been wondering the same thing for almost a week. There didn’t seem much point in putting that time into my powers classes—let alone the academic ones—when I was now all but guaranteed to wash out of the Academy as a first-year. “I don’t know. Try and find a non-powered woman who doesn’t know—or care—what I am, I guess.”
“Christmas break’s coming up. You could always come meet my family. My sister—”
“Are you seriously trying to set me up with your sister?”
“—has plenty of friends,” he continued with an ominous glower. “Maybe one of them wouldn’t hate you.”
“It’s a nice thought, but like I told you before summer break, I’m not allowed off campus. Looks like it will be another week of me having the whole place to myself.” Part of me almost hoped Sally would make another appearance… but I wasn’t sure if that was the insanity talking.
We both looked to the door as someone slid a crisp white envelope into our room. Jeremiah picked it up with a frown. “It’s addressed to you.”
The envelope contained a card with a green wreath embossed on the front, below the words Season’s Greetings. On the inside, the pre-printed message read ‘Tis the season for merriness. Come join us for a night of celebration… except the words us and a night had been crossed out and replaced with me and an hour or so, respectively. The sender had added another message below in that same uneven scrawl:
Banach. A little bird told me I’m not the only fart staying on campus for Christmas. Come on by and have some food. There will be booze.
“Bard?”
I shook my head, and nodded to the signature. It was almost entirely unreadable, but I’d seen it on my History of Powers exams. “Amos.”
“I forgot he lived on campus.”
“Yeah. Looks like I have plans after all.”
Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend a few hours with Amos. I only understood half of what the old fucker said, after all, and he wasn’t shy about enumerating my faults. But he’d promised food and booze, and hadn’t said one word about me having to pay for it.
Maybe it would be a merry fucking Christmas after all.
CHAPTER 58
Christmas Eve at the Academy is weird. The weather is mild, the campus’ many trees still green and leafy. The sun goes down early, like it does everywhere else during winter, but out there on the coast, it takes forever to fall into the ocean, and the shadows it casts across campus seem to stretch for miles. Weirdest of all is the silence. Every student and teacher with a place to go has left days earlier, and college grounds that were built to house thousands seem almost desolate and abandoned.
No doubt, it had been like that during our two-week summer break too, but between the hordes of ghosts swarming me at every opportunity and my still-unexplained three-day talk with Sally Cemetery, I hadn’t been in the frame of mind to notice. Now, a part of me almost missed the bustle. Having only one roommate was something I was still getting used to. An entire dorm building to myself was a long fucking way from comfortable.
A single sliver of sun was poking above the western woods as I walked the empty paths between equally empty buildings to Amos’ house. In honor of the occasion, I’d pulled out the fancy, not-so-new suit Jeremiah had given me. The legs were a little short, and the sleeves a little long, but the black went well enough with my too-pale skin, and after a shower and quick shave, I felt mostly presentable.
Not sure who I was trying to impress. Amos didn’t have a daughter that I knew of… and if he did, she’d be over a hundred. Even her hypothetical daughters would be too damn old. Mostly, I think I was just enjoying wearing something other than Academy sweats for once.
Amos’ home was a little cottage on the southeast side of campus, tucked behind the regular students’ dorms, and surrounded by apple trees and a white wooden fence that was at least as old as I was. Warm light poured out through the two windows that flanked the front door, and the door itself was partially open. I smelled real turkey—free of that oily, slightly artificial odor that synth-meat never quite managed to hide—and something that my nose enthusiastically identified as pie.
“I can hear your stomach growling all the way from the door, Banach. Don’t just stand there like some sort of Salt Lake missionary; come on in and lend a hand.”
I followed Amos’ voice into the cottage. The crusty old professor was in his kitchen, a blue and white striped apron over his own slightly worn suit. He picked up a bowl of steaming vegetables and nodded to the stove where a platter of freshly sliced turkey had been set aside. “Grab the bird, if you please. Getting it out of the oven almost did me in.”
“You could’ve just waited for me.”
“And let it burn? For all I knew, you’d fallen asleep on your way over. Or is it just my voice that has that effect on you?” He put the vegetables down on a dining table in the other room, and came back, gesturing imperiously. “Come on, young man! That turkey’s not going to move itself.”
I picked the wooden platter up with a grunt. There had to be twenty pounds of meat. “How many people did you invite tonight anyway?”
“Invite? Half a dozen… but they all had other plans, as usual. It’ll just be us.”
I looked from the large turkey in my hands to the smaller—if equally appetizing—ham on the counter, next to two pies and a basket of fresh rolls. “Amos, how the hell are we going to eat all of this?”
“One fork at a time. Or two forks at a time, if you’ve got the dexterity for it.” He gingerly shook the gnarled fingers of his left hand. “When I was your age, I’d have looked at a meal like this and asked where the rest was!”
“I’m not sure you were ever my age.” I carried the turkey out to the table. A plain white tablecloth sat beneath the dishes the old professor had already carried out, and two candles brightened the small room.
“One-hundred-fifty years old and I still can’t get no respect. Eat your heart out, Dangerfield.”
“Who?”
“Just another guy who died before you were born,” he muttered, placing the rolls on the table, and heading back to the kitchen. “Water or beer?”
I opted for water.
I know; I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking either.
•—•—•
I don’t know how people ate before the Break, but either Amos had been lying or they’d all been as big as King Rex. Two heaping plates of food later, we’d barely managed to make a dent.
I eyed the piles of sliced turkey still on the platter. “I think there’s more now than when we started.”
“It’s possible I overdid it,” he admitted. “But you know what that means? Leftovers all the way to Remembrance Day.”
“It was too much, but it was good.” I looked the old man in his slightly rheumy eyes. “Thanks for going through all the trouble.”
“My pleasure. It gets a little spooky around here during the break. Figured you might appreciate the company as much as me.”
“How’d you even know I would be around?” I shook my head and answered my own question. “Bard.”
“I’ve been a professor almost a century, Banach, and there’s one thing that’s never changed during that time.”
“What’s that?”
“Nobody gossips like teachers. Like it or not, you’re a topic of conversation around these parts.”
“Fantastic.” I eyed the apple pie, and debated having another slice. “Glad to hear I’m keeping everyone entertained.”
“Make no mistake; if it were just about entertainment, there’s plenty to be had from all you first-years. That Mikkazi boy, for instance… Anyway, you’ve got your detractors, sure enough, but a fair number of us are pulling for you.” He made a face. “Now, if you go crazy and start raising Walkers to attack the campus… that’ll change things a bit.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that… the raising Walkers part, anyway.”
“So I’ve heard. Sorry to hear your power’s a bust.” His eyes were almost kind. “So are you still moping about it, or have you started thinking about what’s next?”
“What do you mean?”
“See, moping is when you get bad news and, instead of doing something about it, you sulk like a—”
“I know what moping is,” I interrupted.
“Oh. Well… good. I swear, feels like half the words I use fell out of the vernacular decades ago, only nobody ever bothered to tell me.” He frowned, and lowered his bushy eyebrows
as he shot me a mild glare. “But if you know what moping is, why’d you ask?”
I couldn’t tell if he was doing this on purpose or not, but I shot back my own glare. “I was asking about the second part.”
“Ah.” Amos cut a thin slice of pie, and slowly levered it onto his plate. “Well, you’re a Low-Three who’s been kicked out of Combat class. What’s your best shot for making it to another year at the Academy?”
I’d given it plenty of thought already, and the real, brutally honest answer was that I didn’t have a shot at all, but that’s not the sort of thing you say to a teacher, even if he’s just fed you pie. “Weapons, I guess. Perception and Projection are pointless, and nothing about my power lends itself to Mobility.”
“So what… you’re going to carry a big stick around with you, and then do that Walker thing you do?”
“A club’s not going to keep me from getting murdered as soon as a Shifter or Titan gets their hands on me. I was thinking something ranged. Maybe a rocket launcher.”
“Which doesn’t make use of your power at all.”
“As far as I can tell, my power’s useless against anyone Low-Three or higher. You wanted to know my best shot at making Cape. That’s Weapons.”
“I asked for your best shot at sticking around at the Academy. Who says you have to be a Cape?”
“I’m a Power.”
“So am I. So what? College is about more than just making Capes. Hell, most of the students here are studying to be something else.”
“What are you suggesting then? That I become a History teacher?”
“Oh God, no! I’m just saying that there’s plenty of non-Power things you can do with your life.”
“Oh yeah? You have a career in mind where it’s okay if I go nuts and start killing people?”
“There’s always the postal service. They’re used to that sort of thing.”
I didn’t bother to ask what a postal service was. It didn’t sound all that useful, regardless.
See These Bones Page 30
