Urban Decay: Darkly Mine Season One

by Leona Windwalker

  “And when was that?” he probed.

  I pursed my lips. “1916,” I admitted softly.

  “Oh, my,” he said.

  I knew he was surprised. It was a long time to be out of school however you looked at it. Education had moved on a lot since then, too, though the change was much less between the 50s and now that it was between the early 20th century and the Atomic Age. It was also a significant amount of time between being Made and being elevated the way I was. Nothing about this situation was usual.

  After a moment, he said, “Well, regardless of how long it’s been, you need help or you won’t pass this class. I’m assigning you a tutor, one of the best math students we have. His name is Shannon Lockwood and you’re to meet him at three in study room four, in the main building.”

  I was stunned. I’d expected him to tell me I needed remedial help and suggest a tutor. I hadn’t expected him to assign Shannon, though. I wondered if Shannon was going to show up or if he’d feign having an unavoidable time conflict.

  “I’ll be there,” I assured him.

  “Excellent. In the meantime, the Deputy headmistress informed me that until you’ve caught up satisfactorily, you’re to take your exams in one of the study rooms. They’ll be an open book and proctored by myself. I’m afraid you’ll miss your lunch period on test days, in order to make this possible.”

  “I understand,” I said. It was fine. Human food only boosted the vitality of my kind. It was our other, main, food source that kept us youthful and strong, and we only needed to feed in that way every six weeks.

  “Good. Now, on to another matter. You’re to join us this evening at nine in front of the bookshop.”

  Us? Who the hell was ‘us’?

  “There’s someone very eager to meet you,” Professor Lambert continued.

  Shit. I had a terrible feeling about this.

  “It’s such an honor for a mere student to be invited, so don’t disappoint us and not show up. I’m sure you know how to behave when in the presence of a Sponsor,” he said.

  Yup, this was so not good, if my suspicions were correct.

  “Oh, bring a change of clothing and shoes. The ones you’ll be wearing are likely to get wet.”

  Fucking hell.

  I made it to the study room fifteen minutes early only to find Shannon already there. He glanced up as I came through the door, shifting his gaze away from me to someplace besides my head the moment his eyes met mine.

  “Whatever it is I’ve done, I’m sorry,” I blurted out. Usually, I wouldn’t have given two shits about what someone outside of the Family thought. Shannon was different, though. He knew River was a Legacy, though to him it just meant my Family had attended this place for generations, and he was a scholarship student, but he didn’t kowtow to me. He also hadn’t pulled the upperclassman superiority thing. I’ve watched my fair share of movies and TV over the years, though lately not so much. Enough to know these were both things that happen in school settings. I liked him; he was a genuine sort of person. What you saw was what you got, unlike with the rest of the Family’s members and me. We were wolves in sheep’s clothing and nothing we said or did with those not in our confidence could be trusted. Except I wanted Shannon to. Trust me, that is.

  He swallowed visibly. “It’s not that. You haven’t done anything. I just couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t what?” I asked, moving closer. The look of distress on his face set my protective instincts firing. “Who was it?”

  He turned away. “Who said it was someone saying anything?” he mumbled.

  “Don’t be like that. It’s obvious that someone has said or done something to make you react in this manner.”

  His shoulders slumped. Yeah, I knew it. Anger suffused me as I placed my hand on his shoulder and he flinched. Someone had scared him badly and I intended to find out who it was and deal with them. I turned him gently, but firmly, to face me.

  “Tell me. Please,” I begged him.

  He sighed in defeat. “Fine. But please, don’t tell them I said anything, okay? If they say anything else, we can just tell them that Professor Lambert assigned me as your tutor, okay?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him, not liking the implications one bit. “So, whoever it was told you to stay away from me? To not be my friend or to help me with my math?” My mind raced as to who that could have been and only came up with two names connected to me. “Was it Henry or Rusty?” I asked shortly. “Or both?”

  “Well, neither of them, directly,” Shannon hedged.

  I raised my eyebrow at him, waiting for him to elaborate. “Go on.” My tone brooked no argument.

  “Henry has a cousin that attends here. He’s in his junior year, but we take German together. He cornered me after class the day after you got here and told me to stay away or he’d beat my ass unconscious and leave me to drown in the storage shed under the pier.”

  Drown, huh? I guess that was how they explained away the snacks the Old One made of trespassers. No way was I letting this buffoon feed my friend to the Old One — not no way, not no how.

  “Did he say why?”

  “Just that a schollie kid had zero business hanging out with a legacy kid. That there was no use in trying to cozy up to you to get into your pants because someone suitable would be arranged for you. Hell, I didn’t even know you were gay.”

  I barked out a short, harsh laugh. “Yeah, no. No one is arranging anyone for me. And yes, I’m very, very gay and out. This prick can go take a jump off the pier at high tide as far as I’m concerned. I’ll have a word with Henry, tell him I want his cuz to mind his own fucking business. And no offense, you’re good looking and all, but I’m just out of a relationship and not looking right now.”

  Shannon rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m bi and I think you’re hot. I’m not ashamed to admit that. But honestly, you seemed like you needed a friend and I wanted to be that for you. No ulterior motives at all, I swear.”

  I gave him a crooked grin. “You think I’m hot?” I teased.

  He snorted. “That’s what you took away from that? Yeah, you’re hot, but I hear you’re not so good at math, so I dunno…”

  “Ass,” I said, shaking my head as I walked past him to take a seat at the desk. “Okay, now we have that all aired out, how about you come and make me better at math? “I waggled my eyebrows. “All the hot guys go for math nerds these days, I hear.”

  The rest of the tension in his body left him then as he began chuckling. “Uh huh. Totally go for us brainy types. It’s why I’m still single,” he joked.

  Oh, if he were Family, I’d be so tempted. I was mourning Michael, but in all honesty, I’d grieved his impending death for so long now, the pain was already dulling. I wished I could say that I wasn’t filled with relief at not being left alone to wallow, to have the excuse to move on without guilt. But he wasn’t Family and even if I took him into my confidence with family permission, he’d remain mortal and die. I doubted permission would be forthcoming now, anyway, no matter how much I might want it. I was high society now and the connections I’d make as River would strengthen the Family’s position. I’d be expected to choose from aiming extended Family or a mortal who was in a position that would greatly benefit our kind. An average guy who was to become an architect who’d have to claw himself a place in his field without the benefits of social and professional connections? Yeah, I had no illusions about that. Still, I could protect him from members of the Family who thought they could hurt him.

  I might not be allowed to love him, but Shannon was mine, and you didn’t mess with what I laid claim to.

  8

  If I ever had any lingering doubts as to the purity of Shannon’s heart, they were dispelled by the end of our tutoring session. He had a way of explaining the concepts in a way that made me feel less stupid at not grasping the idea right away, the way it seemed all of my classmates did. I knew that wasn’t true; not everyone was a whiz kid. Some of them were no doubt merely muddling through with
a solid C. I hoped to be able to count myself among them soon, especially once the next weekly test came up. Having it open book was going to really save my bacon. I had to figure out a way to bring my grade in that class up even further, though. A C was not going to cut it when it came to my overall GPA. I’d be in serious shit if it kept me from being able to transfer to a prestigious medical school after graduation, not to mention I’d be very disappointed in myself for not being as good as I should be.

  Shannon wouldn’t come to dinner with me, which disappointed me to no end. I didn’t press him, though, as it gave me the perfect opportunity to hook up with Henry and Rusty. We needed to have a serious talk. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Our friendship was still new and, therefore, fragile. Even so, I’d toss them to the Old One myself along with Henry’s cousin if it meant keeping Shannon safe.

  Was I being overprotective? Maybe, but if I couldn’t use my new status to protect someone who was a fundamentally decent human being, what was the point of it? Just helping garner more wealth and allow more human Family members to become liches wasn’t enough, not anymore. That’s what I told myself, anyway, ignoring the fact that every time I thought of Shannon since our tutoring session this afternoon, I saw him smiling at me saying he thought I was hot.

  I stopped outside of Rusty’s room as he was the dominant half of the pair. Find Rusty and you found Henry. They’d be rooming together, as well as taking most of the same classes, except all room allocations were done randomly, to encourage making new connections within various branches of the Family. Scholarship recipients were roomed on the ground floor, with other scholarship kids and fee-paying non-Family human students.

  I knocked and Henry answered. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

  “I had a tutoring session during my afternoon study period,” I told him.

  “Oh, yeah, I heard you got asked to stay after class. So that was what Lockwood wanted, huh?” Rusty asked, coming up behind Henry.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “He’d already assigned me a tutor and booked a study room and everything.”

  “Oh, man, you must have bombed your last test!” Rusty exclaimed. Henry elbowed him. “What?” he demanded, rubbing the spot on his ribs where Henry poked him. Henry gave him a pointed look, then looked meaningfully at my head. “Oh, shit! Your accident made you forget a lot of stuff, huh? Even stuff like math.”

  “And let it never been said that Rusty here isn’t sensitive to others’ feelings,” Henry joked.

  “Anyways,” I said. “I thought I’d stop by to see if you guys were ready to go eat?”

  Henry’s face brightened. During the three short weeks I’d known him, I’d come to learn that he never turned down a good meal or a tasty snack, if either were on offer. “It’s meatloaf night!” he said, bouncing on his toes. “With mashed potatoes and gravy. They usually have apple strudel on meatloaf night!”

  “Every Wednesday is meatloaf night,” Rusty reminded him, rolling his eyes. “But yeah, I could eat. Just let me get my key.” He disappeared back inside, reappearing moments later wearing a jacket he was stuffing his room key into a pocket of. “Okay, Let’s go.” He stepped out into the hall, Henry right behind him. The door shut with an audible snick, but he tugged on the handle anyway to make sure it latched correctly. The doors had one of those automatic locks on them, but if they weren’t pulled all the way to properly, they didn’t latch quite right and a good jiggle might give someone entry.

  We started down the hallway and I tried to figure out how to ask my friends about the Shannon situation without causing a ruckus. I wanted to avoid one if I could. If it was a mere misunderstanding or if Henry’s cousin was acting out on his own, I didn’t want to end up on the outs with my buddies because I’d come across as confrontational. But I also wanted to let them know I wouldn’t stand for any bullshit, especially where Shannon was concerned. He’d made himself my first friend here, the very day we met.

  “So, Henry, I understand you have a cousin here that’s an upperclassman.”

  Henry looked surprised at my choice of conversation topic but blinked and answered me anyway. “Yeah, Roy. He’s a right asshole, though. I try to avoid him. He didn’t care that I was his cousin and the heir. He used to give me swirlies when we both attended prep here, and before that, he’d break my toys when he and his parents visited. Why? He done something?” Henry’s voice sounded resigned.

  “You could say that. The day I arrived I was assigned a guide, a sophomore named Shannon Lockwood. Real nice guy, friendly. I told him I was worried about my math classes and he offered to tutor me, only the next day, he started ghosting me. Then today, he was the guy Professor Lambert assigned to help me and I asked him why he was avoiding me. He said your cousin accused him of being a poor scholarship gold digger of a guy out to seduce a wealthy Legacy and threatened to beat him up and stuff him into the storage building under the boardwalk to drown.”

  Henry stopped walking, his face white. “What? No. He wouldn’t go that far, surely!”

  Rusty placed a hand on Henry’s arm, “There were three incidents in the past year, though.” He glanced over at me. “Until the end of last semester, they used to hire humans from the local area to work in the restaurants. Then a girl and her scholarship boyfriend were found after our Sponsor found them in his shed, house, whatever you want to call it. The local police got involved and poked around until they managed to hush it up and pass it off as drowning by misadventure. Then there was Bill’s sister, remember?” he said, now addressing Henry.

  Henry nodded miserably as he explained. “Bill was in my and Rusty’s prep school class. He had a sister two years older than him, Laura. She used to come to see him and bring us all homemade cookies. Bill’s dad complained to my dad, saying that as head of our House, he needed to get Roy in line. He’d been bugging Laura to go out with him, but she kept telling him no, her going so far as to get into a yelling match with him over it during spring break when he came over to their house.”

  “And the third one?”

  Henry’s shoulders slumped. “Mrs. McElroy. She was Roy’s English Comp teacher. Everyone thought that she’d misjudged the tide during her evening beach walk, got caught out, and drowned. She hadn’t been Made, and by the time they found her, the fish had been at her.”

  “Any idea how he knew Shannon had met me and we’d already made friends?”

  “He probably saw him showing you around,” Rusty said. “He probably recognized your friend as one of the scholarship students and asked about to find out who you were. He’s an asshole, so probably used you as an excuse to have some of what he thinks of as fun.”

  “I’ll tell Dad. I’ll call him right now,” Henry said, fishing his phone out of his jacket pocket and stepping aside. My heart warmed. Henry was a good egg. He and Rusty had been innocent after all and now were joining in helping keep Shannon safe while hopefully stopping his cousin from hurting anyone else.

  “So, everything okay now between you and this Shannon?” Rusty asked.

  “Yeah. I told him I’d make sure the bullying stopped. He looked skeptical, but I think he realized that Roy wouldn’t get away with anything once other people knew what he was doing.”

  “He your boyfriend?”

  I shook my head no. “He’s not Family and I don’t think I could lie to him while running a second life. Nor would I want to burden him with the truth.”

  Rusty nodded. “We were raised knowing it, being let in on the secret. It’s a heavy burden. I often envy them their shorter, less complicated lives.”

  Henry returned. “Dad was livid, said if Roy has been doing this, he risks others taking a closer look at the Family. And if he’s killed Family members, such as Mrs. McElroy and Bill’s sister, well, that’s a whole other mess of trouble for our branch that he doesn’t even want to contemplate. He promised to call my uncle once he was off the phone with me and have him deal with Roy today. Not tomorrow or next week, but today.”

  His father was right.
Even if the school’s Old One had fed from those people, Roy couldn’t go around just getting rid of people on a whim and feeding them to the Old One. A chill ran down my spine. Had he offered them up as part of a bargain?

  Entering the lunchroom, I spotted Shannon just exiting the dinner line with his tray. I waved to him. “There he is.”

  “Hey,” Shannon said, sauntering over. “Eating with us plebs tonight, huh?”

  “It’s meatloaf night!” Henry replied, glancing at Shannon’s tray. “Yes! There’s strudel!” He took off to join the line as if terrified they’d run out of the dessert.

  “Okay, someone likes the strudel a hell of a lot!” Shannon laughed.

  “He’s been like that ever since seventh grade,” Rusty said, shaking his head side to side in mild amusement at henry’s antics.

  “Oh, you guys went to the prep school here, too?” Shannon asked.

  “Yeah, tell you what, there’s something Henry, River, and I need to say to you, so why don’t you go find a seat for us all?” Rusty replied. He didn’t wait for a reply before joining Henry in the line.

  “It’s nothing bad, I promise,” I said, seeing Shannon’s worried expression.

  “Okay,” he said, turning away to scan the rapidly filling cafeteria. I left him to join my other friends to get our dinner.

  “He okay?” Henry asked.

  “He seemed a bit worried about what we were going to say.”

  “It’s just to let him know Roy won’t be bothering him anymore,” Rusty said.

  “I know.” I did know. Because, if Roy didn’t listen to his father, I’d kill him myself.

  9

  “Thanks for saving us a seat,” I said to Shannon as we joined him at the table. He shrugged as if it was nothing, but I knew better. It was a lot, considering how afraid he had been these past few weeks.