“It’s how peace can be kept.”
And in that one sentence, I know exactly who Bermon is.
He’s a peacemaker.
He longs for peace.
Between all werewolves? All packs? Does he want the packs to all congeal under one massive pack, a pack to unite us all? There are some who feel that way, and that is one thought that almost strikes fear into the heart of me. The idea of the wrong alpha leading every werewolf who lives is terrifying.
If I could feel terror.
But there's no way that would ever happen. That would require the alpha of all alphas to get all of the other alphas to agree to him—or her—forever. Every choice would be dependent on the will of one single alpha, and that would be terrible. Not all packs are led by good and benevolent alphas as it is. All it would take is for the wrong one to ascend to the position of alpha, and all of the werewolves could be led to a path of destruction and even self-annihilation.
Such as war with the vampires on a much grander scale than just one academy versus another.
My gaze shifts over the crowd, and I eye Bellanore. She’s talking to her friend, Ellamaria, the one who took my seat. I didn’t want to move or give up the seat, but clearly, Bellanore wanted nothing to do with me.
The princess of darkness.
I eye Bermon. He has a faint smile on his lips that I don’t understand.
“Who is she?” I ask.
“Bellanore?”
I nod.
"She is—" Buzzing sounds, and he grimaces as he grabs his cell phone from his pocket. "It's Mercy. I should take this. Normally, she texts, so if she's calling…"
I smile and nod again as Bermon rushes away. I don’t know who Mercy is. There are so many here who I still don’t know.
So many who won’t mourn me when I’m gone.
A girl with a pouty face and narrowed eyes march over to me. “Why are you worried about who Bellanore is? She’s not worth your time.”
“Is that right?” I ask, bored.
“Yeah.”
I glance at the girl. I think she might've been in that crowd around Bellanore. "Think I heard her called the princess of darkness. That right?"
“It is.”
“And just what is so dark about her?”
“It’s not the good kind of dark, not the edgy kind.” She does some kind of awkward move that might be an attempt to be sexy, but it just looks super awkward. “It’s the pure dark kind.” She shudders.
“I don’t understand.”
“Duh! She’s half-demon. Her dad is a demon. And my friends and I, we’re all so brave to be willing to put her into her place because if her dad ever found out…”
“Hmm. Her dad’s a demon…” I glance back over my shoulder at Bellanore.
Darkness.
Princess.
Curse.
I’m sure this girl didn’t mean to, but she just made Bellanore even more interesting to me now.
Chapter 12
Bellanore
That night, Ellamaria tries to get me to come out with her and a few of the others. They want to run around as wolves and pretend that they can do whatever they want. It’s free, but it’s not, not really. We can only run in certain areas on the campus, and it makes me feel like we’re imprisoned. Not that this is remotely like Magical Prison, of course, but it just feels so… strange. When I’m outside of these grounds, when I’m with the pack…
I’m never with the pack.
I’m all alone.
By myself.
That fact is bothering me more and more, and I find myself turning on my computer and going to supes.com, the internet that the supernatural community uses that no humans can ever learn even exists. As much as I try to find any hint or whereabouts concerning Draz the imp, I can’t. It’s almost as if he doesn’t exist, but that’s impossible. I know the imp. I met him myself. Somehow, though, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s no knowledge of one of Dad’s associates. On a hunch, I look up my dad, but there’s actually more about him than I would’ve thought. Uh. That’s surprising. Or maybe not. Maybe Dad just makes certain that only what he wishes to be out in the open about him is available. Yes, that makes a lot more sense.
Of course, now that I'm down this rabbit hole, I read up everything I can about my dad, but there's nothing valuable or noteworthy. I know every detail listed, and there's no mention at all of his work, although there are numerous mentions concerning his great wealth.
Greed. Isn’t that such a demonic thing? Yes, my dad is greedy, but it’s not as if he’s the kind to rob banks. He doesn’t need human money.
What does he need? What does he want?
What was the object, the certain item Draz was to procure for my dad? And why had Dad been so cagey about it? Clearly, he’s up to something that he doesn’t want me to know about, something no-good, no doubt. I mean, I understand that he’s a demon. He’s not going to play by the rules. He’s going to get what he wants one way or another. Surely Draz realizes that? So why try to act like it’s impossible to get?
Even though I probably saved Draz’s life, he still feared my dad too much to tell me anything specific. Which I understand, but it also vexes me terribly. I have no way to get in contact with the imp. Then again, do I really think he’ll be more forthcoming during a second meeting?
No. A demon has his tongue, and that’s far worse than a cat having it.
I scowl and opt to go to bed early for the night, but I toss and turn, taking hours to fall asleep, and then when I do sleep, I constantly wake up. By the time it’s nearly dawn, I fling my blankets aside. I don’t want to stay in that terrible place, that nonsensical land where you’re trying desperately to sleep, but sleep eludes you at every turn. It’s worse than a prison. I’ve fought insomnia on and off for years, and staying awake longer out of bed doesn’t help to make the sleep come any faster that night. If anything, it means I get even less time to rest even if I can’t actually sleep.
I dress in my uniform and then head outside. Classes won’t start for three hours yet. That’s how early I’ve risen, and I head to the southernmost point of the campus. I found a small spot there that no one else seems to know about. There are rocks all about near a cave that somehow has moss growing inside like a green carpet.
That's where I head, walking about halfway there before I become too impatient for my own good, and I teleport the rest of the way. Once there, I examine the moss. It'll burn for a good while, I suppose, and it stretches back about maybe a quarter-mile. A long, even stretch. Here, all alone, without my father or any others to witness, maybe I can try again.
Try to face my fear.
Try to temper down my fright.
Try to see if I can harness the demon inside of me so that I can do what seems impossible.
Walk through fire unscathed.
I'll burn. I'll become scarred, my skin melted and deformed, disfigured. I can't do this.
Dad can. He has who knows how many times.
Fire doesn’t hurt him.
Is that the case with all demons? I don't know. After all, not all demons have the same powers. Magic can manifest in mysterious ways. Even witches don't all have the same kind of magic.
But this isn’t really magic. It’s an ability. Either you have it, or you don’t.
My fingers rub along my small burn mark. I burned once. What makes me think I won’t burn again?
But I don't want to have this wildfire inside me anymore.
This isn’t the first time Dad seems to know more about me than he should. I’ve wondered from time to time if he can read my mind. Or else he read my diary. I don’t keep one anymore just because I thought he might’ve read it, but then another occasion, he knew something no one else did.
Maybe he can infiltrate my dreams.
If that’s the case, I’m going to have to see if I can befriend a fairy. I know for a fact that fairies can do that. Oikeiosis, dream infiltration. It’s a scary thought, that when you are sle
eping and at your most vulnerable, when your body can’t be protected, that your mind can be assaulted too. That’s what dream infiltration is—an assault on the mind. Even if some claim to do it to help stop nightmares or to induce a specific dream, it remains manipulation nonetheless. Of course, if one asks for the nightmares to be stripped, the intrusion is then welcomed, but any intrusion on my mind or thoughts when I’m awake or dreaming is not welcomed in the slightest. Just my concern alone about this means that I must learn how to defend my mind.
Hmm. Now that I think of it, vampires can compel people, can coerce them into doing this or that, saying this or that, obeying their every command. It works on humans, without a doubt, but I suppose it might work on a few paranormal creatures too. The thought sickens me. There are some who think that all vampires, even those bitten and thus without a demon for a father, are demonic. Maybe that's true. Maybe not. I don't know, but I don't see vampires very often. Maybe I should get to know Romelia. We are related, after all. Distantly or not, she is blood, and blood should be thick.
How thick is my dad’s?
My body trembles as I reach into my cardigan pocket and remove a matchbox. It takes no time at all for the spark to catch the moss on fire, and the flames eagerly spread, slowly covering the entire carpet of moss before me like a fiery path.
I take a few steps forward so that I stand at the edge of the fire. The heat burns me from where I stand, the smoke bothering my eyes, and I fight back a cough. My lungs feel as if they're filling with the fire itself, and I have to back away. I can't even lift one foot over the flames, even though the fire isn't even licking that high. It would only touch my feet. It's not as if the fire is all around me. It's not hellfire, and it's not like the flames are rising above my head.
I should be able to try. Dad wants me to, and he thinks I can. He's never tried to push me to do something I couldn't eventually do.
But I have failed before many times before I could master the abilities. Teleporting took me so long to be able to master that I thought I would never be able to.
The longer I stare at the fire, the more my eyes burn. I don’t know if that’s from the smoke or from the sting of my failure. Not even lift a foot. I couldn’t take a step, but not even being willing to lift a foot screams of how much of a coward I am.
A terribly pathetic one.
Maybe Dad will abandon me too, like Mom did.
The thought has me so frustrated that I teleport to the bathroom back in the castle I live in on campus. I retrieve a bucket and then teleport to the pond on campus. Once the bucket is filled, I teleport myself and the bucket to the cave and douse the water. It takes a total of eight trips to put out the fire. Good. If it required a ninth trek, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I can’t even teleport to the bathroom to return the bucket.
Exhaustion has me staggering out of there. The last trek to the pond, I almost fell into the waters because I was barely hanging on then, but I did see that despite my proximity to the fire, I don’t have any soot or ashes on me. Bonus, I guess? I’m not one to look for silver linings much, usually.
I leave the cave, opting to abandon the bucket. I’ll retrieve it later, when I feel up to it.
My feet drag me up a hill, and I’m a bit shocked to see someone heading my way.
“I thought I smelled the stench of teleportation,” Robb says with a wide grin.
I grunt. “You can’t smell teleportation.”
“No? You so sure about that?”
“I am sure,” I retort.
“Just because I can’t teleport doesn’t mean I know nothing about it,” he protests.
“You can teleport. Go make friends with a fairy,” I retort.
“Let me guess. You want me to go do that so you can be alone? Teleport away from you?” He peers at me closely. “You aren’t teleporting anywhere.”
As if on cue, I sway a bit. He goes to grab me, but the glower I give him has him backing up a step. I can’t help the smile that curls my lips.
“I don’t need help.” I lift my chin and have to fight another wave of dizziness. Sitting down right about now might be a good idea.
“You need some nourishment,” Robb declares.
He's not wrong. Because my insomnia has been so terrible lately, the chances I'll be able to sleep aren't very high. Food is the next best thing when it comes to being able to recover as quickly as possible.
Robb glances at the horizon. “We have time,” he muses.
“Time for what?”
“Breakfast.”
“Of course. We don’t have that far to walk to—”
“Not walk. Drive.”
I lift my eyebrows.
“You need real food, not the stuff they serve here. Let me take you to a place.”
I hesitate. “I don’t think—”
“Don’t think. Don’t worry. You need food. I got you.”
“You don’t have me. You don’t have anything.”
“No friends, no Bellanore, nothing at all. I do have a car, though, and I also have the address of a great place. Trust me.”
“I don’t.”
He tilts his head to the side and shrugs. His eyes close for a second, and I realize the scar is along his eyelid, not just above and below his eye. He’s lucky he didn’t lose his eye in the attack. Is he violent? I mean, people don’t generally have scars like that unless they’re in a fight, and yeah, sure, it’s possible to be dragged into a fight, but only if you’ve set foot on the battlefield first.
Plus, his friends are warming up to my bullies. The first two weeks of the school year, it seemed like the two groups would go to war with each other. Then, they just dropped it, opting to ignore each other, and the bullies took up their bone with me.
I don’t know. They pick on me, yes, but I fight back. Is it fair to call them bullies when I stand up for myself? Usually, the victims of bullies just quietly accept the abuse.
Robb opens his eyes, and his lips curl into a relaxed smirk and then a crooked smile that would make most girls’ hearts race.
Not mine, though.
“Like what you see?”
Just to irritate him, I stare at his scar, this time meaning to whereas that first time we met, it had been more accidental.
His crooked smile just grows. He knows exactly what I’m doing, and he’s not rising to my bait. What is up with him?
“Come on, Bellanore. What’s the harm in letting me take you off campus so you can get a bite to eat? The worst thing that can happen is that we arrive back a little late. Professor Rockhound will be furious, so maybe I'll just skip, but you… you seem like the goody-two-shoes type. I'm sure the professor will apologize to you for starting the class when you weren't there."
“You don’t know me at all.”
“No? So surprise me and yourself by saying yes. You won’t regret it. Besides,” he says, drawing away from me, “I don’t think you can walk all the way to the courtyard to eat without falling down. You wouldn’t want anyone else to see you like this.”
“I don’t—”
He holds up his hands. “I’m sure you wish no one saw you like this, not even me, but that’s what chance decreed, so let it be. Come to the Cinnamon Chance with me.”
“What kind of a place is that?” I ask suspiciously.
Robb winks with his non-scarred eye. “You’ll just have to come with to find out.”
And he starts to walk away.
Chapter 13
Robb
I take all of two steps before I hear Bellanore huff a sigh behind me, and I fight back a grin. She’s a fighter, high-spirited, and she has more than enough life for the both of us even if she is half-dead on her feet.
My pace slows so I can walk beside her without her feeling like I’m taking extreme measures for her sake because I just know she won’t appreciate that. She’s easy enough to read, and I can tell that her initial dislike of me hasn’t worn off as mine has her. There’s something about her that either draws
people to her or against her. She’s polarizing, and I know why I’m drawn to her and why the likes of Roald and Wyatt are opposed to her. They see her as a threat.
She? She just might be my ticket to salvation.
And it has nothing to do with wanting a kiss or true love or any of that garbage. Curses don’t rely on any of that for them to be broken. No, curses are entities of darkness, and what does darkness crave most?
For more light to be snuffed out so there’s even more darkness.
Darkness is like a cancer. It grows and grows and grows even where it’s not supposed to. The darkness will be what claims me in the end. It’ll be all that I will ever have once I’m dead.
I don’t think anyone cursed can go to Heaven, so maybe I’ll be bound to Hell.
Or maybe those who are cursed end up as ghosts. I think that might be worse than going to Hell.
For now, though, I have a bit of life in me even if I’m still nearly emotionless. The smiles, the winks… It’s an attempt to connect to her, to feel alive.
She stumbles and rights herself, and I pretend I didn’t notice. The right choice? If she falls, I won’t stop myself from helping her up. I don’t want her to hurt herself just because of her pride.
My car is not a sweet ride. It’s just a hunk of junk, honestly, but it gets me from point A to point B, and she hasn’t failed me yet.
“Meet Lucile,” I say proudly. A Honda Civic, a tiny car, nothing special, except she’s been with me for years. Long before I turned sixteen, she was mine, and yes, that does mean that I drove around before I could legally. Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do, and I don’t always spend all of my time away from the eyes of prying humans. There are times when I can’t just use my wolf and abandon the world to let my legs carry me to my destination.
There are times, though, more and more often of late, when I want to do just that—to turn into my wolf, to flee the world, to just run for as long as I can until I expire like that messenger back in ancient Greece who managed to deliver the news of a war ending before dying.
But I don’t need to do something quite so dramatic. The curse will claim me, and I can’t outrun it.
Moonstone Academy: Year One: A Mayhem of Magic World Story Page 8
