by Lan Chan
I shook my head. “I only found out about it a little less than two years ago.”
“Yet you’ve managed to integrate quite well.”
“Ride or die.”
He gave an amused huff. “Death seems to be quite the common occurrence for us when it comes to dealings with the supernaturals.”
I couldn’t dispute that. But we weren’t exactly blameless either. “Monsters come in all different forms.”
His brow twitched. “True. I understand you were part of the foster system before being placed here. I assume it wasn’t a happy experience.”
I was glaringly aware of Nanna standing nearby doing her best to eavesdrop. “It wasn’t all flowers and cupcakes,” I said. “But I lived through it.”
“That seems to be a prevailing theme in your life,” Sam suggested. “How many life-threatening situations have you been in since you joined the Academy?”
Too many to count. I told them so.
Declan actually chuckled. “It almost feels as though you’re a magnet for bad luck.”
That’s exactly what I thought. So I gave him the explanation I had used to make peace with it. “I have Lucifer’s blood in me. Evil is drawn to it.”
They both nodded. I made the obvious comment. “Neither of you seems particularly surprised about the existence of supernatural beings.”
Declan played with a chunky gold ring on the middle finger of his left hand. “We’ve had a long time to get used to the idea. Don’t get me wrong, it still keeps me up at night knowing there are beings out there who could outmatch us with their abilities.”
“I’ve seen some of the weapons you’ve come up with to disarm them,” I bit out. “They’re very creative.”
Their expressions clouded over. “A few weapons used to fight against a small group of supernaturals isn’t even close to enough,” he said. “The only way we can ensure they don’t overwhelm us is if their presence is made known to the human population.”
So they were still going on about that. I tried to give Nora a mayday signal. She had edged a little farther away to give us space to converse. Where was everyone when I needed them to interject? Okay, I guess I was winging it then.
“Do you honestly think that most people are ready for this kind of revelation?” I said. “You’ve seen how our species reacts when they believe they’re threatened. And you didn’t see the ones who consented to demons invading their bodies.” I shuddered at the very thought. “Some of them chewed off their own arms without a second thought.”
“That is unfortunate,” Declan said. “Your experience is one that we hoped we might be able to replicate. But we concede there are some people who would take the news badly. We just can’t sit forever in the dark while the supernaturals prey on us.”
I pointed at Nora and Mani. “We are doing something about it.”
“Really?” Sam asked. He did a quick headcount. “They’ve obviously gathered all the humans in their population to parade them in front of us. It’s barely pushing mid-double digits. You were fortunate to be born with powers that will allow you to fight them if need be. What about the rest of us? We’re just ants waiting for that big magnifying glass to burn us alive.”
“Fortunate isn’t how I’d describe these powers.”
“Better to be a feared abomination than a helpless mouse.” I knew then that they weren’t concerned like the supernaturals were that I was a freak with powers way beyond what should have been possible for my species. The way Declan was watching me made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Then he asked the million-dollar question. One that the Terrans tried to get me to answer all of last semester.
“When the time comes,” Declan said, “whose side will you be on?”
I spat out a laugh that had everyone within two meters turning to look at me. “There are no sides besides us and the Hell dimension,” I said. “If and when that day comes, you’d better hope the supernaturals are enough.”
“Isn’t it enough now?” Sam asked. “Despite all you can do, it doesn’t seem like they respect your power at all. We’re never going to be anything more than a nuisance species to them. Especially if they continue to recruit our only fighters and indoctrinate them into their fold. Nora has shown us the ways of their Council. She has to negotiate everything to a fine point.”
“Isn’t that politics? Doesn’t the same thing happen in the human world?”
“Oh really?” Declan asked. There was a commotion by the doorway. Somebody cleared their throat. The throng of people moved in the direction of the entrance. Declan’s face broke out into a strange smile that was neither about amusement nor chagrin. “I think your theory is about to be put to the test.”
I couldn’t see over the crowd, but Sophie wedged her way back through it. The look of consternation on her face startled me. Before she could say a word, the voices in the room died down to a whisper. Nanna and Basil moved back to also flank me. What the heck?
I pushed my way forward. Jacqueline walked in my direction. Her lips were pressed into a thin line.
Diana had made shoving supernaturals aside seem like pushing against marshmallows. My elbows were sore by the time I reached the front of the crowd. And then I spotted the thing that had everybody else at a loss for words.
Meryl Laurent stood in front of a towering structure draped in a white silken sheet. The way the material fell made me think it was a sculpture. The damn thing was eight feet tall. The trolley it sat on groaned under the weight. Two Nephilim with more muscles than I had hairs, stood beside her.
Chanelle peeled herself from the crowd to join her mother. Tiberius and Professor Avery stood just to the right with big shit-eating grins on their faces.
I found Kai in the crowd. Beside him, Durin was bristling silently. The look on Kai’s face was almost demonic. Durin had a hand clamped on Kai’s shoulder. Megan and Walter huddled with the rest of the Supernatural Council around Kai.
Meryl clapped her hands. “Thank you all for attending this evening. I know that this will be the beginning of a fruitful relationship between the supernatural and human worlds.” I could practically feel Declan’s eyes burning into my back.
“Is she serious?” he hissed at me.
“I think so.”
Meryl continued to speak. I soon realised the meeting with the Human League was peripheral to her actual goal. Boy was she a master at shoehorning. “I have no doubt that if there were ever a need, our two species will come together in unity. We must never forget the sacrifices those who came before us made.”
Somebody grabbed hold of my hand. I turned to find Nanna beside me. Her fingers were calloused from all the gardening but somehow also soft, and best of all, familiar.
I’d lost sight of what Meryl was saying. Nanna squeezed my hand. “...two of the greatest men to have ever walked this dimension. Today, we in House Laurent present this gift to Malachi Pendragon as a promise of a shared future.”
Chanelle reached up and pulled the silk aside. The crowd gasped, but I couldn’t tell whether it was from astonishment or distaste. The present was a sculpture of Kai’s father and another man I guessed was Chanelle’s. Kai’s father stood tall with a book clutched in his arms, a caring smile on his face. The other man was in full battle armour. He was positioned in a protective semi-crouch in front of Kai’s father. His sword was raised. He clutched a decapitated demon head in his left hand. It was all very antiquated.
Kai locked gazes with me. If I weren’t so busy ruminating on how they were deliberately spitting in my face, I would have been embarrassed for them.
“May this be a reminder...” While Meryl spewed rubbish about how great the Nephilim were, I couldn’t help smiling at Nanna. She’d spent seven years under the influence of a demon and refused to break. I blinked and my memory showed me the image of my mother’s broken body as the waves crashed around her. Misguided or not, she had done the only thing she knew how in order to save the world. The thought always brought a feeling of bi
ttersweet agony to my throat. And then there was Hilary. The Grand Mistress of the Sisterhood who had defied a deity to keep me alive. All of them completely human.
I felt Declan shuffling beside me. If he spoke, I didn’t hear it above the rushing in my ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nora gripping Mani’s hand. She kept looking at the sculpture and then back at me. But she didn’t move. Nobody moved a muscle because what could they do? The Laurents were a powerful Nephilim House. Chanelle was the Council’s chosen bond mate. I was just a human who kept getting in their way.
Nanna tugged my hand. “Lex,” she said. “I think this is quite enough now.”
I completely agreed. The first circle was one for containment. I enclosed the sculpture in a blue circle that pulsed and expanded into a sphere. The other circles I drew around the humans in the room were for protection.
“Lex!” Jacqueline shouted. I shoved away all their voices.
An inkblot of black interspersed with silver and gold bloomed inside the blue circle. They started off as small dots that fanned out and compounded to become cylindrical. Within the blue sphere, my bone magic vibrated as it had when the Evil Three had tied me to the pier.
“Move,” I warned the supernaturals. I wouldn’t do anything more to protect them. The blue sphere would either contain the bone magic, or it would shatter and there would be hell to pay. As the darkness whipped around the sphere it shaved chunks off the sculpture. I smiled when it sawed off Chanelle’s father’s head. It popped right off, ricocheted into the blue sphere and crumbled into dust.
I could hear shouting and screams but nothing could broach the circle I’d drawn around myself. Faster and faster the sphere spun until they reached a critical mass. I clapped my hands together. The sculpture disintegrated. The resulting fission of magic caused a blinding flash of light to explode in the room. I stood my ground as the blowback of my own magic hit the circle around me and the ones I’d drawn around the humans. I absorbed all of the magic I could so that I wasn’t being battered. Slowly, the aftermath of the magical bomb I’d just set off eased.
Over where the Supernatural Council has stood, Kai was still cemented in place. I glanced at him, daring him to challenge me right now. He raised a brow at me. I wasn’t sure but I think I felt something akin to anticipation rolling off him. Griff coughed beside him. I allowed the circle I’d drawn around Griff to dissipate. I withdrew all of my circles.
The room was a mess. The cascade of my magic had shattered the windows. The buffet tables had collapse. There was debris all over the floor. But all I could see was the pile of rubble sitting on the trolley and scattered all around it. “Would you look at that,” I said. “I didn’t even have to use an Angelical word or anything.”
I stepped over where Chanelle and her mother were huddled together for shelter. Tiberius was already trying to help them up. The shriek that came out of Meryl’s throat could give a banshee a run for its money.
“How dare –”
“See you in the Games.” I walked out of the ballroom to the soundtrack of ominous laughter from the Ravenhall sorceresses.
32
Footsteps followed me. “Don’t say anything.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word,” Kai said.
“If you did,” Max said, “it would be holy shit!” But he was grinning at me. “Remind me never to piss you off.”
“Do I look like I’m pissed off?” My voice was unnaturally even. His eyes grew wide and then narrowed. He turned his head up and sniffed at the air. The insult had my hackles rising.
“You would know if I was being possessed, Maximus!”
“Alright,” Jacqueline’s voice called from behind him. “That’s enough of that. I think it might be best if you made yourself scarce, Lex.”
I was being dismissed. That suited me just fine. But I sure as heck wasn’t going to run out of here like some little bunny rabbit. Instead, I turned back around and went into the ballroom. Many of the supernaturals had already left. There were Nephilim attendants trying to clean up the mess.
Chanelle and her mother were sitting on a set of chairs, speaking in low voices to the Nephilim Council. I ignored them as I glided towards Declan and Sam.
The former raised a brow at me. “It’s taken me two years to learn enough control to do that without potentially killing somebody,” I told them. “Don’t make the mistake of forcing this on someone unsuspecting. It’s not worth it. The Mwansas are your best bet if you want safety. I’ve trusted them with mine.”
With that, I left. Basil was waiting with Sophie outside. Everybody else seemed to have disappeared. His face was a play of consternation. “I know,” I told him. “But I’m done being silent while they treat me like crap.”
He blew out a breath. “I’m just worried that you’ve shot yourself in the foot.”
“As if I could possibly do anything to make them hate me even more!”
He took Sophie and me back home. Halfway through the transport, something brushed against my arm. The cloud of deadly darkness had no form. Cold fractured through me. It was so sharp that I came through the other side gasping. I clutched at my chest, feeling as though an icicle had pierced my heart.
“Lex?” Basil asked.
I was shivering. My breath came out in puffy white clouds. “Lex!” In the reflection of the mirror, I saw my lips turning blue. Sophie snapped her fingers in front of my face to get me to focus on her. She spoke a few words of an incantation. Pink light flared around her hands.
She slapped them on either side of my face. Her eyes closed as the magic took over. It permeated my skin. My sight pivoted to the Ley dimension. In it, my blue light had almost engulfed the starlit quilt. Sophie’s magic skidded through me. Where it touched the foreign object in my chest, it sizzled and turned to steam.
Sophie bit her lip and forced more magic into me. With an agonising breath, I called forth my own hedge magic to reinforce hers. For some strange reason, while inside of me, the hedge magic had become a strange aquamarine colour. Almost like some green had mixed with the blue. The icicle began to melt.
I opened my eyes to find myself sitting on the floor with my back pressed against the wall. Sweat poured from me. The hair that crowned Sophie’s brow clung to her skin.
“What the hell was that?” Sophie croaked.
“I think hell is an apt description.” I hadn’t felt anything that frosty since the cavern below the Fae forest. And the feeling of being caught when Astrid teleported me.
Basil’s face was lined with worry. He crouched down in front of me and lifted my eyelids. “I’m not ill,” I told him.
“Not that you know. Has this happened before?”
I shook my head. My limbs felt heavy. “Not like this. But weird stuff has been happening to me every time I’ve been teleported.”
Basil stood and began to pace the room.
“What’s happening?” Sophie asked. She mopped at her brow with her sleeve.
“Incidences of the Hell dimension encroaching over ours. Isla did say her father has seen more than one place where demons are congregating.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
Basil turned away, his brows creased. “I have to go see the First Order.”
“Basil!” I said. “Focus.”
He shook himself. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t say anything for certain. I need to go. Stay here and don’t do anything insane.”
After getting changed and showering, Sophie and I got into our beds. “That was a crazy night,” Sophie said. “It feels like we have more of those than normal ones these days.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
I could feel her brimming with unspoken words. “What?” I said.
“I can’t believe how tacky that statue was,” she said. I got the feeling it wasn’t really what she wanted to say. At the moment, I couldn’t focus on anything too real.
“Tell me about it! The thing was an eyesore.”
�
�Did they really think it was going to go down well?”
“I don’t think they care.”
I wasn’t even sure when we both fell asleep. Green light covered me in comforting heat. I was wrenched awake again by enormous pressure squeezing my brain. My eyes blinked open one by one. I groaned and turned over. I could see the first rays of the morning sun through the window beside Sophie’s bed. She snored softly in her sleep.
I cast around for the source of the pressure. It wasn’t until the magic twisted itself into a knot that I realised something was scraping against the blood barrier I’d erected around the Grove.
Ten minutes later, I stood at the intersection where the Grove and Nightblood Academy met. In the Ley dimension, the entire area was shrouded in blue.
“What in the world?” Professor Mortimer said. I dropped back into this realm.
Scratching at my head where the pressure continued to press, I waited for the professor to make his assessments. Five minutes later, Jacqueline and the Headmaster Stan arrived. So did Professor Flint.
He gave me a surprised look before conferring with Professor Mortimer. I hung back next to the Arcana tree. Might as well do my chores while I was standing around waiting for the verdict.
That came shortly after. “I think it might be a good idea for you to undo the blood circle,” Professor Mortimer said.
The nymphs went into a rage. The gist of their issue was that the edge of Nightblood was encroaching on the Grove. The school itself absorbed a certain amount of living energy as a way to fuel their spells. The nymphs were not okay with that energy coming from the Grove.
Professor Mortimer ducked and weaved his head under the assault of the flying nymphs. “Ladies,” he said. “Professor Flint and I can set up another barrier that will funnel energy from elsewhere. But Alessia’s blood barrier is too unstable. If she loses control of it, she might end up taking out the Grove if it goes wrong.”
The nymphs put their heads together. Once in a while they cast sidelong glances at me. There was a great deal of gesturing.
The professors didn’t seem to have any trouble understanding what was being said. Finally, the nymphs seemed to agree. The purple nymph flew up to me. She came to a stop at eye level. There was something hesitant in the way she peered at me. She produced a tiny dagger.
