by Cheree Alsop
“Lower your walls,” Professor Mellon said in her calm, steadying voice.
I let out a breath and willed my muscles to relax. A purr emanated from both heads of the cat. The dragon stirred and then settled again. Quiet talking sounded around the classroom. I heard the word dragon whispered a few times.
“Now pull inward from your fingertips,” the professor reminded me.
I took a calming breath and pulled. The cat stopped purring and stood perfectly still. Its fur was soft beneath my fingers. I imagined pulling its thoughts through my hand and up my arm. An image surfaced in my mind.
“I see darkness,” I said.
“That’s because your eyes are closed,” someone to my right replied.
“Quiet, Ms. Rae,” Professor Mellon admonished.
I ignored them and continued to describe what I saw. “Something is moving in the darkness. No; not something. Creatures. A lot of them.” A head turned and my blood ran cold. Sharp teeth and glowing eyes lit with green flames let me know exactly what I looked at.
“What are they?” Professor Mellon asked quietly.
“Demons,” I breathed.
The talking in the room ceased completely. Apparently, though demons were new to me, everyone else understood the danger they presented.
“Cats are keepers of the underworld and are very sensitive to shifting energies. What are the demons doing?” the professor asked in a tighter voice.
“They’re awakening,” I replied, watching the dark demons stir. Flames writhed around them, dancing on the walls and the floor of the room. “And there’s green fire everywhere.” A single trickle of moonlight fell from somewhere above the vision. The creatures avoided the light as if it hurt.
Something stirred in the middle of the mass of demons. The dark shadow rose, taller than the creatures around it. I could make out the colors of a school uniform from the Academy. The being stepped into the moonlight and looked directly at me. The light from behind cast the being’s face in shadow, but fangs glowed from its mouth.
The moonlight reveals our truth.
I gasped and pulled my hand away from the cat.
“What is it?” Professor Mellon asked.
“There was someone with the demons,” I said with horror in my voice.
“Do you know who it is?” she replied.
I shook my head, but it was a lie. I had at least a good guess who was with the demons, and it was a serious problem.
“Uh, can I be excused?” I asked, rising from my seat.
She appeared surprised by my actions, but nodded. “Go ahead.”
I grabbed my notebook, careful to keep my wrist behind my back and then pulling it in front of me when I left the classroom. I glanced back and saw Adalia watching me with confusion on her face.
As soon as the door shut, I let out a breath and leaned my forehead against the wall. It took a few minutes for my chest to stop heaving. I couldn’t pull my team out of class. I didn’t know where they were and I also didn’t have a solid reason for doing it. Telling Headmistress Wrengold or Mrs. Hassleton that I needed to talk to them based on what a two-headed cat had shown me sounded completely insane; though I had to admit that given what I had seen at the Academy, it wasn’t nearly as insane sounding as it would be if I was in my old school.
The dragon lifted her head from my wrist. I brought my hand up. The green eyes locked on me and the dragon gave a little mewling sound.
“Well, hello,” I said. I glanced around to make sure nobody saw us. Feeling conspicuous in the middle of the empty hallway where the sounds of professors’ voices echoed from the classrooms, I took to the stairs and jogged up them. By the time I reached the thirteenth floor, the dragon was fully awake. I crossed to the window that had been repaired and slid to a sitting position, grateful for the silence.
The dragon rose completely and crossed to stand on my palm. She was much lighter than a mouse; her claws made tiny pinpricks along my skin that I barely felt. The creature looked at me expectantly.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
I felt foolish. I had no idea how to talk to a dragon. Did I speak the way one did to a dog, or with the high-pitched nonsense words people used with babies? Or did I address it like a peer? I went with the latter for lack of a better idea.
“I’ll bet your hungry,” I said to the dragon. “You haven’t eaten anything since you were hatched.”
A buzzing sound caught my ear. I looked up to see a fly working its way up the closed window. I rose on my knees and lifted the dragon so it could see what I did.
“I’m not sure if I should kill it or—”
The dragon lifted its black wings and leaped off my hand with a speed that amazed me. Instead of hitting the window like I feared, it cut to the right at the last moment with a snap of its wings. It opened them and glided, turning gracefully with its full attention on the fly. The bug was oblivious to the dragon’s approach. It paused on the pane, its little legs working as though it had found something worth sampling. It rubbed its legs together, flicked its wings, and then was gone. Only a scent of mint wafted from where the insect had been.
I blinked, wondering how I had missed it. The dragon landed back on my palm; fly wings and one leg protruded from its mouth.
“Okay. That was impressive,” I said.
I settled back on the floor and watched the dragon quickly finish its meal. The tiny creature licked its jaws one last time with a long red forked tongue, then settled on its haunches and looked at me.
I tried to pull from the creature the same way I had from the two-headed cat and the fox, but the little dragon merely tipped her head at me, her green eyes watching me intently.
“Maybe dragons don’t share their thoughts like other animals,” I guessed.
On impulse, I ran a finger gently down the little dragon’s back. She closed her eyes in apparent enjoyment. The purple spikes that appeared hard settled back under my finger so that they didn’t poke me. I studied her closer. A small purple horn protruded from the top of her nose. The color matched the scales around her eyes and nose and ran in a soft pattern beneath her chin to her belly. She held her wings against her body so that they were nearly flush with her skin. When I stopped petting her, she shook and her spikes raised again. Her eyes blinked sleepily.
“Ready for another nap?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about baby dragons, or babies or dragons, for that matter. But I did know babies slept a lot. So when she curled around my wrist again and shut her eyes, I knew it was good for her. “Good night, little dragon,” I said.
I felt foolish, but I couldn’t help smiling. For some reason, with the professor and all of the other students in my first period class, the tiny dragon had chosen me to bond to. I had no idea what that meant, or even what I was supposed to do with her, but she had chosen me. For now, that was enough.
I thought through the things the cats had shown me. If Professor Mellon was right and cats were indeed guardians of the underworld, we had a serious problem.
The bell rang. My head jerked up with the realization that I had skipped my entire fourth period class. Alden was going to be upset that he had to sit through Professor Tripe’s droning description of Mythical Creature Anatomy by himself. I owed him an apology, but he would understand.
With Professor Briggs’ note in my hand, I ran down the stairs to the lunchroom. I wasn’t surprised to see Alden already sitting at our table, his tray laden with a double serving of spaghetti and meatballs. Lyris and Dara sat with him, intent on their own lunches. The slow pace of the lunch line tried my patience, but I finally made it through with my own tray of food.
At the very last stop before the door to the cafeteria, a girl with quadruple-jointed fingers and holes where her nose should have been set a little container on my tray along with my roll. I glanced inside and saw a dead fly.
“Just in case your dragon gets hungry,” she said with a wink of one ruby-colored eye.
“Thank you,” I replied,
startled and touched by her kindness.
I slid into the empty seat next to Alden and said, “We need to meet right after school. Professor Briggs says he has to talk to us,” I told them.
“Hello to you, too,” Lyris replied. “How’s the dragon?”
“Shhh,” Dara said. “If anyone hears, she’ll be taken away.” She looked around, then met my gaze and said, “So how is she?”
I smiled and lifted my wrist. “She just ate, so she’s sleeping.”
Both girls made cooing noises that appeared to be required whenever girls in general saw any type of baby. Lyris petted the dragon while Dara watched with a rare smile on her face.
“That’s just cool,” Alden said. “I wish I had a pet dragon.”
“Dragons aren’t pets,” Dara corrected. “They’re companion animals. You’d never call a dragon a pet.”
Alden looked down at his spaghetti. “I’d call it a pet,” he mumbled. He twirled a forkful of spaghetti onto the tines, then let it fall off again.
I took pity on him. “Maybe you could help me find a name for her,” I suggested.
He gave me a beaming smile. “Really? I would be honored!”
“Naming a dragon is a very important task,” Dara said. “Take your time.”
I nodded. “We will.”
Alden appeared to feel much better with his new calling as dragon-namer. He straightened and asked, “Do you know why Briggs needs us early?”
I shook my head. “I think it may be about whatever he learned from Mezania. But I also have to talk to everyone about what I saw in Creature Languages.”
Amryn took a seat next to Dara, her cup of blood held in one delicate hand. Dara didn’t look happy at the vampire’s presence. Amryn ignored her cold glare and turned to me. “What did you see?”
Everyone looked at me expectantly.
I opened my mouth to tell them when an angry voice barked behind me, “Why are you sitting with them?”
Amryn stared up at her brother. “I’ve sat with them before. What’s the big deal?”
“You know what the big deal is,” Vicken growled from behind me. “You’re a vampire. You should sit with your coven.”
The anger in his voice sent a surge of protectiveness through me. Nobody deserved to be talked to like that, especially someone from our team. I felt the wolf stir beneath my skin; the Alpha side of me bristled. I stood and faced the vampire.
“Don’t you think your sister should be able to do what she wants?” I asked, keeping my tone light.
Vicken glared at me. “Not if it means making friends with misfits like you.”
I started at him in shock. “What’s wrong with you?”
“You’re one of us, remember?” Dara pointed out from the other side of the table.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her hand on Amryn’s shoulder to keep the vampire from following her brother. The empath’s expression was defensive.
“I’m one of you because I watched you stick your hand in some stupid flame?” Vicken replied. “I’ll never be one of you.”
“But you’re coming tonight, right?” Brack asked.
I wasn’t sure when he had reached us, but he stood behind Lyris with his tray dwarfed in his hand.
“We shouldn’t talk about this here,” Lyris said.
I glanced around and found everyone in the lunchroom watching us. It bothered me even more that Vicken would make a conflict in the middle of such a public place. I had no idea what had made him change his mind in his truce with me, but apparently it was gone.
I met his gaze and repeated Brack’s words, “You’re coming tonight, right? I have something very important to talk to you about.”
Vicken looked from Amryn to me. “Don’t count on it,” he said in a low voice before he stormed away.
I glanced at Brack. The hurt expression on the huge student’s face gripped my heart. “I wish you could shut his mouth,” I told the warlock.
Vicken spun around. Hatred smoldered in his eyes when he shouted, “You think they follow you out of respect? They follow you out of fear!”
I shook my head. “They don’t follow me. We go together. Being a true team means listening to those who choose to work with you.” I looked at Amryn, then back at Vicken. “You should try it sometime.”
Vicken threw a punch.
I caught his hand with my right one. The force of his vampire strength should have knocked me into the wall, but I stood there with his fist clenched in mine. I had no answer to the amazed fear on his face. Instead of searching for one, I put on a calm expression and said, “Next time you try to hit me, you’ll be sorry.”
Vicken yanked his hand out of mine and stormed away across the lunchroom.
“What was that!” Alden asked when I sat back down.
I shook my head. “I have no idea. I’ve never done that before.” My chest was heaving as the weight of what I had done caught up to me.
“You’re a wolf defending those you care about,” Dara said, her voice musing. “I think he pushed you too far.”
“That was amazing,” Amryn said. “Nobody’s ever stood up for me before.”
“Why was he so mad?” I asked, still reeling from what had happened. Heat emanated from my palm where I had caught his fist.
Amryn lowered her gaze. “My parents called this morning and the Headmistress let us talk to them. He told them about you.” She shook her head without looking at me. “They weren’t happy. They forbade us from conversing with you.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair, so I refuse to do it. But Vicken’s afraid of making our father upset.”
I let out a slow breath. “You don’t need to make your family upset over me,” I said quietly.
“I’ll be friends with whoever I want to,” she replied.
It bothered me that mythics beyond the Academy already hated me. I picked up my fork and toyed with the spaghetti on my tray, my appetite gone.
A hand touched my arm. “Don’t let them bother you,” Lyris said when I looked up. “They don’t know you.”
I nodded, but I didn’t feel any better. “We need him if what I saw is real.”
“What did you see?” Brack asked.
I wanted to tell them, but knew that since Vicken’s confrontation, the students around us seemed abnormally interested in our conversation. I shook my head. “I can’t tell you here. Let’s meet in the usual spot right after seventh period.”
“We’ll be there,” Lyris replied.
The hours dragged on; my confrontation with Vicken replayed over and over in my mind. I couldn’t explain how I had managed to stop his punch. I should have been suffering from broken ribs and possibly a cracked skull; instead, I had seen fear in his face. I couldn’t say whether I was happy about that or not. It felt like it had taken so much work for us to get on the same side only for it to fall apart again after a conversation with his parents.
It frustrated me to the point that I wanted to confront him. I could feel him glaring at me through Monster Identification and had to force myself to keep looking forward despite the whispered taunts toned too low for anyone but a werewolf to hear that came from his place at the back of the classroom. Professor Rexus only overheard once. It took the huge, horned professor’s glare to silence the vampire, but since he didn’t know who the taunts were for, he couldn’t do anything about it.
“Why do cats always land on their feet?”
I let out a sigh and glanced up at Professor Briggs. Given everything that was happening, the question, as well as seventh period Black Cat Philosophies, felt like the last thing I had patience for. Briggs looked down at me, the candlelight making his scar look even more unsightly. The professor tapped his cane on the floor.
“Well?” he asked.
I went with a flippant answer. “Because they’re ninjas.”
He rolled his eyes and limped to the chalkboard. “Students, describe the powers of ritual magic and its relationship with ancient religion.”
Dara raised her hand.
“Yes, Ms. Jade,” Professor Briggs said.
Dara replied, “Ancient religion often relied on ritual magic for confirmation and validation that what they believed was of their gods.”
Professor Briggs nodded. “But in truth, much of these validations occurred as what?”
Dara replied without raising her hand, “Ruses based on mathematics, sun placement, and acoustics to ensure the devotion of their followers.”
“And this in turn ensured….” Professor Briggs led off.
“That their followers would continue to pay tithe and homage to the servants of their gods,” Dara concluded.
Professor Briggs nodded. “Very good. This led many to speculate whether some of these so-called servants were actually witches and warlocks.”
By the time the bell rang, I had filled several pages of notes. I was amazed how the things I learned at the Academy continued to contradict the knowledge I had been taught by my human teachers. If magic was accountable for the leaps of technological advances through the years, then why weren’t witches and warlocks revered instead of in hiding?
I made a mental note to ask Professor Briggs after things died down. When the bell rang, though, I had far more pressing items to discuss with him.
“See you downstairs,” he said when I left the room.
“We’ll see you there,” I replied with Lyris and Dara behind me.
Chapter Sixteen
“Where are the vampires?” I asked the moment we reached the basement. Due to the large number of students milling the halls and heading to dinner, we couldn’t use the entrance behind the unicorn picture. Lyris, Dara, Alden, and I had been forced to go all the way to the thirteenth floor and down because I didn’t know any of the other entrances. I made a mental note to ask Professor Briggs later.
“They haven’t shown up yet,” Professor Briggs replied.
“Amryn wasn’t in class,” Brack said from a chair near the professor.
“We need to find her,” I insisted. “Something terrible could happen to her or any of the vampires.”
“What are you talking about?” Mercer asked.
