Chapter Twelve
Lough showed Sip, Lisabelle, and me to our room. None of us looked around that night. We barely had the energy to shower, let alone explore, before we all fell into deep sleep.
I woke up in the middle of the night to find that we were all in a cavernous room, high up on a platform. All around the cavern were more platforms, and I was amazed to see that each platform was completely filled. On several were the green of pixies, the glow of the white fallen angels. Below was a sea of teaming black masses. For an odd moment I thought that the blackness was in truth a sea of water filling the base of the hall, but I quickly realized that it was the black of the darkness mages. They might be out of sight, but they were there.
I gulped. Sip and Lisabelle stood on either side of me. Sip’s darted back and forth like a caged animal’s.
“This is bad,” she murmured. “What are we doing here? Aren’t we supposed to be in bed? This is the vampire version of a dining hall, by the way. I think they call it a breakfast room.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read,” said Sip, nose in the air.
It was the middle of the night and everyone was quiet. I looked around for Keller, but the crowd of paranormals was too dense for me to be able to pick him out. I did have a sense, though, that something was missing from the room. Frowning, I tried to figure out what it was.
“It’s the food,” said Lisabelle, her eyes glinting in the dark. “We’re not smelling it.”
I nodded. We were in the breakfast room, but we weren’t there to eat. Behind me, the tables were gone. We were in empty space, waiting.
The sea of darkness mages parted to reveal that one whole side of the gathering consisted of vampires. Lanca’s Rapier sect was there, trying to keep order. It was the first time I had seen all of them since we arrived, and I kind of wished I hadn’t.
I didn’t realize how much vampires tried to temper their ability to intimidate when they were at Public. Here at Locke they made no effort to hide it.
The result was terrifying.
Every one of these vampires was larger, stronger, and faster than any I had seen before. Their black clothing billowed around them as they floated and cast their sunken eyes around the room. They were all very pale and some looked as if they had been crying. They were in mourning, after all, for their murdered king.
Gasps went up around the room and my eyes strained to pick out the reason why.
An ear-splitting howl broke the calm as a white object went flying into the center of the room. Darkness mages and vampires alike moved back. At first I thought it was a wet and dirty rag, but then I saw it struggle and jerk. The thing was alive, thrashing weakly on the ground.
My stomach rolled.
Lisabelle’s eyes flicked to Sip, who stood nearby, her face a mask of horror.
Following the agonized white creature into the center of the room was a vampire. He had no hair, and his eyes were so far back in his head they looked like two black holes that had been bored into his face. His nose was long and beaked and looked as if it had been broken at some point, with a pronounced tilt to the left. He barely had any lips or chin, which made it hard to tell where his voice would come from if he spoke.
“That is Faci,” Lisabelle murmured. “The one who is trying to marry Lanca.”
“It’s a real wonder she doesn’t want to,” Sip murmured darkly, her eyes cold.
There was a sharp, collective intake of breath.
Following Faci was Daisy Validification.
The hybrid’s eyes were bright with excitement. Her ironclad control had slipped, and she nearly skipped behind the vampire.
The thing on the ground was snarling as its two tormentors headed for it. All the other paranormals stood silently.
Suddenly, a voice in my head sounded, ringing around in my skull and sounding remarkably like Professor Dacer’s voice, although how he had projected it into my head I had no idea. I darted a glance at Dacer himself, who was standing across from me, down on the ground with the other vampires, an unbridled pain etched on his face. He never looked at me. Dacer’s voice sounded panicked as he ordered me not to intervene.
Blood gushed from sores on the writhing white animal, which I could now see was a little dog.
A hand’s breadth away from Dacer stood Professor Zervos. My salt-and-pepper-haired professor stood erect and alone. I was a tiny bit relieved to see that despite his mask of calm, underneath the surface even Zervos looked disgusted.
Lisabelle took a painful grip on my arm and glared at me. I grabbed Sip before she could do anything either. Maybe Dacer had spoken to them as well, but for whatever reason, none of us moved.
I forced myself to look at the dog. I felt wretched. The dog chomped uselessly at the legs of his captors. Blood spit from the sides of his mouth to pool on the ground, his fruitless thrashing covering his face in the red pools.
The dog trembled and writhed and started to scrape feebly along the floor, trying to get away, but he didn’t know where to go. In the center of a circle of darkness I wouldn’t have known where to turn either.
I darted another glance at Professor Dacer. He gave the slightest shake of his head. Fury pounded in my temples. How could he let this go on?
This was the first time I had been in the same place as Lisabelle’s kin, the other darkness mages. I quickly decided it was not an experience I wanted to repeat very many times. The figures varied in size and height, but there was a hollowness, an empty pit about each of them that made me think we would not be friends. Every so often one would turn his or her eyes up to me, or maybe it was to look at Lisabelle.
The looks were filled with a cold hatred that took my breath away.
“Just ignore them,” Sip murmured. She had seen the looks too.
The dog bucked in pain as more blood gushed from an open wound. Daisy came close and the dog let out another little growl, but he must have been kicked in the throat at some point, because I could barely hear it.
The little girl whose dog it must have been darted forward, but she was quickly grabbed and tossed backward by a man much larger even than Risper. She screamed and thrashed, but there was nothing she could do. Her blond head turned from side to side and tears glistened on her face. She moaned and sank to the floor, covering her face with her tiny trembling hands.
I wanted to reach out to her and give her a hug, or stop the torment of her little animal, but I didn’t move. Dacer had warned me not to, and the paleness of his face and the sweat on his brow told me that even he was frightened.
The manic look in Faci’s eyes scared me and I didn’t even know the man.
“Someone needs to put a stop to this,” Sip murmured. “They cannot be allowed to torture an innocent creature.”
“They can and they will,” said Lisabelle. “Trying to stop Faci and Daisy would be madness. That’s exactly what they’re waiting for.”
“You think they would hurt us if we tried?” Sip asked. “Here in Lanca’s own domain?”
“I think Lanca herself is afraid, because she knows she doesn’t have control even in her own home,” Lisabelle said, her voice so low I had to lean toward her to hear. “And I think they would kill us. I think they would relish it.”
I looked at the two crumpled shapes down below, the little girl and the dog. Apparently the girl’s behavior from earlier was not to be forgiven. Instead of hurting her, which they could not do without repercussions because she was a paranormal, they were hurting her innocent pet instead.
A feral smile covered Daisy’s face as she lifted her foot and brought it down, hard, on the dog’s paw. He let out a howl as the little girl let out a scream.
Daisy grabbed the dog and jerked it upward, pulling it up by the bloody hair at the back of its neck. It howled. She smacked it. The dog went limp. The little girl tried again to get to her beaten pet, but the burly man held her back. I couldn’t tell if it was out of kindness. I hoped that it was.
The darkness ma
ges around Daisy and Faci smiled and murmured. Some pointed. Others made little cheering noises. They wanted to see the dog hurt. They wanted Daisy and Faci to show their power to the rest of us.
No other paranormals moved. The pixies, whom I normally associated with horrible paranormal behavior, floated high above the rest of us, looking solemn. Even Camilla’s mouth was drawn into a thin, tight line.
“I had no idea Camilla had it in her to feel bad,” I murmured to Lisabelle.
“Pretty sure she and feelings don’t have a close relationship,” said Lisabelle dryly. “She’s like a guy that way.”
“This is sick,” said Sip, growing angrier. “You cannot treat animals like this.”
“Is that the werewolf in you?” Lisabelle asked.
“It is certainly not the humanity,” said Sip, her fists in balls at her sides. “If someone doesn’t do something, I will. I can’t stand by and watch this.”
Lisabelle moved then, but it wasn’t to get down. Instead, she took two steps behind me, and came around to stand on the other side of her roommate. I saw her take Sip’s arm in a vise-like grip. Sip’s eyes widened in surprise.
“We will be watching a lot of this in the months and years to come,” Lisabelle murmured. “It will get worse before it gets better. This isn’t being done to punish some stupid child who couldn’t behave herself. This is to show the rest of us that we are powerless.”
“We aren’t, though,” Sip seethed. “Someone could do something. Maybe not us, but someone.”
I looked around the room and saw the darkness mages watching with glee. Many of the other paranormals studied the floor. Those who still held their heads high had fear etched all over their faces.
Against all the darkness mages massed together we couldn’t do much without heavy casualties, and none of the other paranormals appeared to want to take the risk.
The puppy thrashed, trying to get loose from Daisy. Faci watched for a moment as if he read an ancient text or studied an important manuscript, all scholarly attention. Then he pulled his fist back and punched the dog in the gut.
At this the puppy passed out. It didn’t even react except to give a sort of shake as Daisy threw it across the room. The paranormals cried out and scrambled to get out of the way.
“Alright, enough,” said a strong and clear voice. To my surprise it came from a vampire. She was young, probably not even as old as Dirr, but she held her shoulders back and her eyes glinted with confidence. Her fists were balled at her sides. I almost cheered, but I saw Dacer’s stricken expression and refrained.
“It is never enough,” Daisy hissed. Her red skin, covered with sores like her brother’s, oozed a little in her fury. “She must learn her lesson.” Daisy pointed at the little blond girl huddled in the corner, her face still obscured in her arms.
“She didn’t mean to get in your way,” the vampire girl said. “Attacking an innocent puppy to teach her a lesson does no good.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Daisy snarled. “How dare you question me?”
“Who do you think you are, anyway?” the vampire girl asked quietly. “You’re just a Starter at Public. You’re not a great mage, you’re not one of the senior paranormals, you’re not elemental. You are nothing important.”
It took me a second to realize that the vampire girl had included me on that list, and another second to register that Daisy was flying across the room at the other girl.
“I can’t just stand by anymore,” I said, and started climbing down the ladder.
“Yes!” Sip stamped her foot in glee. “Right behind you,” she said eagerly. I felt her follow at my back.
“And once again Lisabelle tries to be the voice of reason and gets dragged into a mess anyway,” my darkness friend sighed gustily as she followed us down. I avoided Dacer’s gaze as we went past him. If no one else was going to do anything, I had to. There was no way I was going to sit by and watch Daisy beat on a puppy and a couple of girls who had not yet learned how to defend themselves. My ring pulsed with excitement. The magics flowing around us were almost overwhelming.
But I had forgotten about Faci. He was waiting for us at the bottom of the ladder, his sunken eyes turned in our direction and his nonexistent mouth twisted upward in what could only be described as a smile.
“Ah, I was hoping you would come,” he said. “You resisted longer than I thought you would, very do-gooder of you,” he said, his voice light for a man’s, almost feminine.
“Here we are,” I said, pretending to be cheery. “Sorry, don’t think we’ve met.”
Faci shrugged. “No, I go to school abroad, at least for now, and you do not associate with my kind.”
“What kind is that?” I asked, thinking that I was friends with his princess.
“The smart kind,” he sneered, staring at Sip and Lisabelle.
“Oh, please,” said Lisabelle. “You’re just jealous that we have eyes and a face and you have holes.”
Any color left in Faci’s face disappeared. “You have no idea who you’re crossing,” he snarled.
“Of course we do,” said Lisabelle. “Princess Lanca’s hanger-on.”
With a cry Faci lunged forward. Lisabelle dodged him easily and came back to stand next to us. Faci didn’t come on again, but his breathing was labored. Daisy hurried to stand next to her partner in crime as both Dacer and Zervos came forward.
“I think we have seen enough for one evening,” Zervos said, ignoring me altogether, which, I figured, was probably for the best given that he hated me with a force that not even Lisabelle, who was an expert on hate, understood.
“It is enough when I say it is enough,” Daisy hissed. “You cannot cross all the darkness mages here.”
“Oh, just die,” said Sip savagely, her eyes blazing.
Daisy reared back as if struck, not used to such words from the small werewolf.
Zervos looked at the darkness mages who surrounded us, standing silently.
“My guess is that they understand what is at stake,” he said. “If this comes to a fight, yes, we will have losses, but so will you, and who is willing to incur that damage over some stupid puppy and the girl who couldn’t control him?”
“Leave them be,” said Castov, his eyes hard.
“This is not their place,” said Dacer, his tone conciliatory. “Children don’t punish other children for mistakes. That is not the way of the paranormals.”
“Maybe the way of the paranormals is changing,” Faci spat. “How dare you question me in my own home?”
“This is not your home,” said Zervos, his tone harsh, although not as harsh as when he spoke to me. “This is Princess Lanca’s home.”
Faci simply sneered. Obviously he thought that there was no difference between the two.
“Get moving,” Dacer ordered in a clipped voice.
Daisy’s lip curled. “Fine, that’s fine. We were done here anyway.” She used her bloody hand to flip some of her black hair out of her face, then turned to leave.
But Faci was not to be defeated so easily. Without warning to react, I was slammed upward by a blow from his fist. I kept flying until I struck something. With a snarl, Camilla pushed me back into the center of the gathering. So, her upset over the dog didn’t extend to me. She had shoved me with as much force as she could right back to Faci.
I tried to stop myself from tumbling end over end through the air, but I had lost control.
In the distance I heard yelling. Zervos and Dacer were furious. Faci was laughing, and Sip was keeping Lisabelle from killing any of the darkness mages who were closing in.
I landed with a sickening thud next to the prone puppy, who had awakened to whimper into the deafening silence that had followed the attack on me.
The force of Faci’s blow had made me bite my lip and I spat a little blood out of my mouth now, trying to avoid looking at the injured dog next to me. I rolled away from it and got to my knees. Instantly Sip and Lisabelle were on either side, helping me up. No
one else moved. Faci jerked out of Daisy’s hold. She must have grabbed him after he attacked me, knowing that someone, Dacer, Sip, Lisabelle, would kill him if he did any real harm to their friend.
Faci sprang away from her and savagely headed for the small blond-haired girl, who still sat with her head in her hands. But someone blocked his path. I realized that the massive vampire who had grabbed the girl to begin with was familiar, although far bigger than he had been the semester before. It was Rake, whom Sip routinely liked to tell off when we were at school. He was a good enough sort as vampires went, and despite his massive height, at least six four, and his massive shoulders and a block for a head, he still managed to be overwhelmed by my tiny purple-eyed friend. Now all he did was shake his head at Faci, who skidded to a halt, unsure what to do with this new challenge.
Dacer stepped into the middle of the floor and stood over the prone dog. The little girl darted around Rake and raced to her pet. To my intense relief, others joined Dacer. With so many paranormals standing in front of them, the darkness mages backed down, muttering things like, “Wasn’t that entertaining anyway” and “Kids will be kids.”
Sip and Lisabelle both shook with rage. The blond-haired little girl was talking frantically to a fallen angel who had hurried over to help her and her pet. She was insisting that she was uninjured and that the pet was the one that needed the attention.
“Are you okay?” Lisabelle asked me, but her eyes were cast upward, where Camilla still floated overhead, smirking.
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said, dusting myself off.
“Good,” said Lisabelle, her eyes scanning the area for potential threats.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Sip.
“What are we even doing here?” I asked. “Last I knew we were sleeping.”
“Castov has the power to summon the visitors at Locke,” said Lanca. “He wanted us all to see how his son dealt with insults to his honor . . . like from small children. Just walk back to your rooms and go to sleep. There’s nothing else we can do tonight.”
The breakfast room was already emptying. I sighed, feeling bone tired. “She doesn’t have to tell me twice,” said Lisabelle. “Summoning spells indeed.” But somehow I knew I would never erase the image of the bloody puppy from my mind.
Elemental Dawn (Paranormal Public) Page 9
