by C T Rhames
“Lunch.”
He grinned, flashing surprisingly white teeth. “Ah, the best meal of the day, no?”
Tomas came up beside his friend and look at me, with Cash’s hand still on my shoulder. “This one giving you grief, Cash?”
“More like he’s the one causing problems,” I muttered.
“Moi?” Cash widened his eyes in fake innocence. “I don’t know what you mean. I was merely about to request your aid with the homework.”
“Right.” I pulled away. “I don’t do homework help, especially not for bullies.”
“Bullies?” Tomas looked confused by the word.
“Yeah, where you treat someone like shit because you think you’re so much better than they are.”
“But we are better,” Tomas said slowly. “We are superior beings.”
I snorted. “Sure, keep telling yourself that.”
“Tomas,” Cash said in a warning voice. Then he leaned in closer to me and whispered in my ear so quietly I could barely hear him. “You fascinate me, lassie.”
“I don’t care,” I threw back at him. I turned away and marched down the hall, my shoulder blade aching from where he’d grabbed me.
Turning the corner, I ran straight into Jeanine and her crew. Great, just what I needed.
“Oh, look, it’s BooBoo.” Jeanine said in a bored voice. “Why are you still hanging around here?”
“Because I study here,” I said. I tried to go around the group, but Jeanine moved to block my path.
“I hear you think you’re better than us.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, you did,” Malia muttered from behind her friend.
“I said you bullies aren’t better than the rest of us.”
Jeanine glared at me, her pupils shrinking down to almost nothing. Was she on drugs?
“You are nothing like us. The so called bullies in this school? We’re the real students. You’re just a sham.”
“Jeanine, I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but I have to get to class.”
“I think you’re playing hooky.” She smiled evilly and nodded at her minions.
Malia and Jess jumped forward faster than I thought possible and grabbed my arms. Before I could say or do anything, they were dragging me toward the basement. I kicked and tried to yell, but Jeanine shoved a handkerchief into my mouth.
The steps to the basement were dark and damp. The basement was more of a dungeon than a proper basement and the girls dragged me along the flagged corridor into darkness. I couldn’t see anything. There were no lights on the walls here, just tangible blackness.
I finally managed to spit the handkerchief out and coughed up some lint. Then I screamed.
Jeanine laughed and they pulled me to the left. I heard a door shut with a very final sounding thud.
“No one can hear you down here.”
Chapter Nine
I wasn’t sure how long I had been in the darkness. The girls seemed to feed off my fear. They would be quiet for a while, long enough that I started to wonder if they had somehow slipped away in the darkness. Then something would touch me.
At first, they just slapped my face, pulled my hair and poked me. They laughed when I scrambled backward across the slippery, foul-smelling floor until I found a wall.
“You can’t escape. We know you can’t even see the door.”
“Who said I’m trying to escape?” I asked, inching along the wall until I found myself in a corner. At least this way they couldn’t come at me from all sides.
I waited for a glimmer of light, but there was nothing. Yet the girls seemed to have no trouble finding me. Their chuckles echoed around the room we were in and disorientated me.
Then they got worse. The first thing was a slash down my cheek that made me yelp in pain. I felt blood trickling down my face and when I touched my cheek, I could feel a cut that was at least two inches long.
“That better be a clean knife,” I warned, nearly choking at the word. “I’m not going to end up with some kind of crazy infection just because you bitches think it’s funny to draw blood.”
“Oh, we don’t think it’s funny. We think it’s funny to see you pretend you’re not terrified.” Jeanine’s voice sounded from across the room.
Something slashed at me again, but I felt the air move this time and jerked back. The sharp thing caught just the tip of my nose. There was a growl in the dark that made my blood run cold.
It was cold in the dungeon and the dampness had soaked into my jeans. I could feel my legs going numb, so I scrambled to my feet, listening carefully for any movements. There were scratches and scrabbles around the room and I started to move along the wall again, toward where I thought the door was.
“Ah ah ah! Not so fast, BooBoo.” Something grabbed my arm hard, right where my scar was and pulled hard. I flew across the room and hit the wall, sliding down to the floor.
That’s when it really struck me that I could die down here. My lip was split and blood ran from that, along with my cheek, dripping audibly onto the floor.
“Are you seriously going to go this far?” I muttered. My lip made it hard to speak.
“What are you, anyway?” Malia asked, suddenly right by my ear.
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“Fey? Lupine?”
“Lupine? Isn’t that a disease?” I choked out.
She grabbed my hair and forced my head painfully back. “What. Are. You?”
“I’m a girl who would like to live without fucking bullies like you!” I screamed in her face.
I started scratching at her, clawing her face with my fingernails and she shrieked and jerked away from me. Standing up, I snarled into the darkness and ran for where I assumed the door was, hands outstretched.
This time, no one grabbed me and I hit the wall hard enough to scrape my palms. I felt along the wall until I found a handle and turned it, lunging out into the dark corridor.
There was a strange noise behind me and I shoved the door closed again, hoping it would give me a little advantage as I ran toward the end of the hall I knew had the stairs.
“Help!” I croaked, as I ran. My voice caught in my throat, barely able to get past my thick tongue. I realized I must have bitten it when they threw me across the floor.
“BooBoo?” a man’s accented voice came from the darkness ahead of me and a moment later, I ran into a solid shape.
“Oof,” the voice said and I recognized it as Mel’s voice. Thick arms wrapped around me. Then he inhaled sharply. “You are bleeding. Who did this?”
“We did.” Jeanine snapped from behind me.
I pulled away from Mel and took off running again, tripping over the uneven floor in the dark. I was really getting tired of not being able to see. Scrambling to my feet, I pressed one a little more carefully.
“Get back here, you bitch!” Jeanine yelled. I could hear footsteps pounding toward me. Then there was a thud and a screech.
“She got as good as she gave, huh?” Mel said, with a smile in his voice. Jeanine growled something at him.
I was far enough along now that I could see the dim light of the first floor ahead, trickling down the stairwell. I put on a burst of speed and finally reached the steps.
It took far too long for me to climb the steps. I stumbled several times and bashed my knees, but finally made it to the top and ran for the headmaster’s office.
“You should see the nurse and get cleaned up,” the headmaster looked at me with disgust once I’d explained the situation. “You’ve dripped blood all over my floor.”
“I’m sorry for disturbing you because I was nearly murdered,” I snapped.
He raised an eyebrow. “Hardly. You have a cut on your face, which you claim was made by a girl that you couldn’t see . . . this is precisely why we don’t let civilians wander around in the basement.”
“Civilians? Is this a military academy or something?” I sucked in a deep breath. “Look, I know it was
Jeanine and her minions who dragged me down there and one of them did this to my face and threw me against the wall.”
“I’ll have words with them,” he promised. Then, wrinkling his nose, he jerked his head toward the door. “Now please go get fixed up.”
I left the office fuming. Jeanine and her friends must have friends in high places.
“Whoa, what happened to you?” Karen stepped out of her classroom and nearly ran into me. “Oh, my god, Lyric!”
“It looks worse than it is,” I told her. Then I shared the whole story as we walked to the infirmary.
“I can’t believe they didn’t take you seriously at the office! I should march in there and give them a piece of my mind,” she frowned.
“It wouldn’t help. He didn’t seem to care at all that they hurt me. I don’t know how much worse it would have been if Mel hadn’t shown up.
“Well, I’m glad he did. I’m not a big fan of that guy, but if he saved your life, I’m not going to complain.”
We reached the nurse and she quickly sent Karen away while she patched me up. It was a fairly quick job to disinfect the wound and put a bandage on it. Then she cleaned my palms and told me to be more careful in the future.
“I will be,” I said. More careful to avoid being alone in the halls with those girls.
Chapter Ten
I dreamed of Mel that night. I’d skipped the remainder of my classes and had just had a shower and climbed into bed in warm pajamas. I missed Sara’s little arms wrapping around my waist as I slept, and nightmares usually kept me from sleeping well, but that night, I crashed hard.
In my dream, I was sitting at the dining room table back home. Sara and Brett were eating eggs across from me and giggling about some joke.
Then Mel appeared in the doorway and I leapt to my feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m a dreamwalker and you got some of your blood on me today.”
“This is just a dream,” I told myself. “You can wake up at any time.”
“You can, but wouldn’t you rather be here with me. Who are these two little ones?” He cocked his head at Sara and Brett. They’d frozen in mid-laugh, their eyes squeezed shut and their mouths open in laughter.
“My brother and sister.” I wasn’t supposed to share my real life with anyone, but it was a dream, so who cared?
“They’re . . . adorable.”
“Thanks. They’re dead.” I bit my lip and looked over at Mom, frozen over the stove. “So is she.”
“Humans have short life spans,” Mel said easily.
“What?” I looked at him. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”
“Oh, sorry.” He thought for a moment, “I’ve got it, we studied this last week in Human Endearments.” He straightened up, patted my shoulder and said, “There, there, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You’re really weird. Even in a dream.”
“I’m the same in real life as in a dream, that’s what it means to be a dream walker,” he told me.
“Well, it’s my dream, so that means my head made you up. You’d think I’d make you a little more normal.”
“I am not normal. I am far beyond that.” He winked at me and looked around. “Was this your home before?”
“Yes.”
“I miss the sun.” He walked to the window and peered past the curtains at the sky.
“Me, too.” I sank back down into my chair. “I miss my family, my house, my life.”
“You left them behind?”
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I?” I shook my head. “I mean in real life, I’m in the academy. I have nothing else left outside these walls.”
“That sounds lonely. I understand you,” he said gently. He pulled out a chair beside Sara and sat down. “But I didn’t come for . . . chit chat. I came to warn you.”
“Warn me?”
“Yes. The others are getting restless. They do not understand what you are.” He frowned. “Neither do I, for that matter. However, they are willing to take you apart to discover what makes you different.”
“Literally, huh?” I touched my cheek, which was uninjured in my dream.
“Yes, I believe so. Judging from the attempt today.”
“Well, that sucks, because I have nowhere to go. Maybe I should kill them first.”
“That would be unachievable.”
“I figured. Besides, I can’t actually kill anything. I suck at it. My dad took me hunting when I was little and I couldn’t kill the deer he shot. Not even when it was suffering.”
“I believe you should leave the academy,” he told me. “You don’t belong here.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So you will leave?”
“I told you, I can’t. I have nowhere else to go. I have nothing left in this life.”
“You will most certainly perish then.”
“At least I’ll be with them again,” I said sadly, looking at my brother and sister.
When I looked up, Mel had vanished. The kids were laughing again and then it all came crashing down, just like it did every night.
I woke sweating and shivering, wiping imaginary blood off my arms. I hated my nightmares, but they were the only time I actually got to see Sara, Brett, and Mom. Even for that brief period of time when everything was wonderful, before Steve stormed in with a knife or a chainsaw or a gun, or whatever instrument of death he carried on a nightly basis, I would go through the deaths over and over again. Just for a few minutes of smiling and laughing with them once more.
When I got up, the first thing I did was go knock on Karen’s door. She’d help me work out why I was dreaming about some weird guy telling me I was about to die in a horrible way. She wasn’t in her room though, so I headed to the dining hall. She wasn’t there, either.
“Have you seen Karen?” I asked Jack, when he dragged himself into the dining hall at noon.
“No, I just got up.” He yawned and went to the buffet to grab a burger. “You two are usually inseparable.”
“Yeah, I just can’t find her today. Oh well, we have our first class together.”
Except Karen wasn’t in our shared classes, either of them. I checked her room again, went to the infirmary to see if she was there and finally, I went to the headmaster to see if Karen had asked permission to go outside.
“Twice in two days? You are determined to make waves here, aren’t you?” he sighed. “I’m sure your friend is fine. If she’s slipped out without permission, she will be appropriately punished upon her return.”
“But what if she’s actually missing?” I pressed. “I mean, look at what happened to me yesterday!”
“I saw what you did to Malia, as well. It was a fair fight, it appears.” He shook his head. I’m tempted to suspend you, but I don’t believe that would have much effect on your behavior, Ms. Masterson. You seem determined to be troublesome and we won’t stand for that.”
“How am I being troublesome? I’ve worked hard while I’ve been here,” I protested.
The headmaster sighed. “All I get are complaints from you. It is getting rather wearisome. Please be more considerate in the future.”
I didn’t bother responding, just left the room. I would just have to find her myself. And that meant going places alone without any backup. It worried me, but I knew I had to do it.
Chapter Eleven
I ran to my room to get the flashlight I’d forgotten to give back after our trip to the cave and headed to the basement. There was no one else I trusted in this place, apart from Jack, but I didn’t know how to find him. Instead, I went alone and left a note on my bed, in case I didn’t come back.
“It’s stupid, they wouldn’t actually kill anyone,” I muttered to myself. “There’s no way.”
I trudged down the steps and started my journey into the depths of the nasty dungeon. To get the worst over with first, I headed to the very end of the corridor, feeling my heart pounding harder and faster as I reached the room I thought I’d been
held in. It seemed so much further than I’d thought. But it was the last door in the corridor.
Pulling the door open, I shone the light around inside. The room was empty.
The next three rooms I opened were, as well. The fourth held a pile of old desks and chairs, but no sign of Karen. I kept moving methodically through the basement. There were four corridors that ran east to west and one at the end that ran north to south. It was nearly midnight by the time I reached the final room.
There was a metal door here, a change from the heavy wooden ones that all the other rooms featured. When I tried it, the door was locked, but I could sense movement inside. I slunk into the shadows and waited inside another empty room, peeking out through a crack in the door.
A few minutes passed and then I saw Cash and Tomas come down the corridor, laughing and talking. They knocked three times on the metal door and it swung open, letting them into a well lit space and then shutting quickly behind them. There were no sounds of torture, though, so I figured it was probably just a night club thing. Especially since I didn’t think Cash and Tomas were capable of doing anything too nefarious.
Exhausted, I trudged back up to the main level and pounded on Karen’s door for a full minute. There was still no answer, so I went to bed. I would keep looking in the morning. It was Saturday tomorrow, so I could spend all day searching for her.
In the morning, I left notice with the secretary that I was going outside and trudged the long distance through the forest to the cave. Maybe, if she was hiding out, she could have gone to the cave.
It was empty, just as I’d suspected, but hoped I was wrong. When I realized she wasn’t there, I sank down in the entrance and tried to think. Where else could she be? I’d searched the obvious spots. The only other option was the East wing or the teachers’ level, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be on the teachers’ level. No, she must be somewhere on the main floor. And that meant I would have to start knocking on doors.
Chapter Twelve
I found her late on Sunday. It had been a long weekend of searching, asking people if they’d seen my friend, and knocking on doors to see if she’d spent the night with someone. Nothing led me anywhere.
