Tala Phoenix and the School of Secrets

by Gabby Fawkes

  “I…” he said, then withdrew them.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “We can’t,” he said. “Not until you’ve mastered the shifting. If not…”

  “Hold up.” I paused to try and see if I felt my birthmarks burning. But the only place the sensation was, was down there... “You’re not telling me I could shift mid…. that.”

  He peered at me, quirking a brow. Then, with zero warning, he burst out laughing.

  I’d only heard Axel laugh that hard once – the first time I’d met him in the forest, when Demi had asked about the Flying Narwhale. I liked it way less now.

  “You reggie-taught girls…” he said, his face red with laughter. “The things you… don’t know.”

  “It was an honest question,” I said, my cheeks aflame. “Jerk.”

  “Thought it was asshole - Asshole Axel,” he said, still chuckling.

  “Maybe you are!” I said, getting to my feet.

  “Tala, I’m sorry,” he said, holding back his smile with obvious difficulty as he rose. “I just… the thought of it.” He touched my cheek gently. “Come on, it is funny.”

  “Maybe a little,” I admitted.

  I could tell Kian and Demi would be cackling when I told them my mistake.

  “No, the reason for my… carefulness,” Axel said. “Other than that I care for you, is that such an act is usually a highly emotional one. One that could leave you… emotionally depleted for controlling yourself for a day or so after. At least in the early stages.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  Honestly, I’d gotten a bit carried away myself. I was a bit relieved things had stopped. It wasn’t like I was some master seductress, anyway. Or had any clue what I was doing, for that matter.

  At the sound of a polite little cough, Axel and I broke away.

  Standing before us, eyeing us with a haughty expression, was a goat boy I recognized from before.

  “Apollo sent me to tell you,” he said. “Your friend is awake.”

  32

  Jeremy wasn’t looking much better. In fact, with his bloodshot, heavy-lidded eyes, he looked worse.

  Still, the sight of him awake, conscious– nothing beat that.

  “You’re okay,” I said, rushing forward. Apollo stopped me before I reached him.

  “His injuries are such that… if you touch him, even just a light hug, you’ll most likely hurt him.”

  I nodded, shaken, hanging back with Kian and Demi. God, poor Jer.

  Jeremy eyed us, his brow furrowed as though he had something important to say.

  “What is it?” Demi asked softly.

  “Just… you guys didn’t happen to bring Maurice along, did you?”

  A shocked pause. A series of guffaws that were more like coughs wracked through Jeremy.

  “Careful now,” Apollo admonished him.

  “If he can’t laugh or smile, he’ll never get better,” Dion said in a horrified voice.

  He was standing off to the side, nearest Kian, wearing an expression that clearly indicated such an existence, no matter how temporary, would be a fate worse than death.

  “Yes, he will,” I said fiercely, nodding to Jeremy.

  He gave us another strained smile. “You guys… actually did it. Made it out of the school.”

  “It should’ve been with you,” I burst out. “I should’ve never let you take the fall for me like that. We tried going to the Room for you, but….”

  “They never took me to the Room,” Jeremy said, his face suddenly looking decades older. “Probably never intended to. And don’t be sorry, Tal – you didn’t do this to me. They did.”

  My friends and I exchanged a look. Considering this was the first time Jer was awake, we didn’t want to start interrogating him, even if we were burning with questions.

  “They’re all in on it, I think,” Jeremy said quietly. “Definitely the headmistress, but I think even the teachers too. Miss Mildred certainly was.”

  “Don’t talk about it if you don’t want to,” Kian said heatedly.

  “But I want to,” he said fiercely. His gaze dropped to his hands, which I just noticed now were a mass of bandages. “I want to tell you… while it’s still fresh in my head…” He exhaled low. “What they did to me.”

  “What who did?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Miss Mildred took me to the sleep room and acted like it was a regular day there, just something they’d do before the actual punishment. She forced me to take a sleeping pill that put me to sleep. I woke up in a lab. There were doctors with masks and this smell… like chemicals and blood… and the lights, the green lights…

  “I was numb, drugged. But I could still feel it… the blades, the burns, what they were…doing… adding.”

  We could only stare at him horror-stricken, while his words wriggled all over us like grubs.

  “Are you saying…” I said.

  “I wasn’t the only one, either,” Jeremy said, lips quivering. “I could hear their screams, their moans – the other ones. I never cried out – didn’t want to give the sick fuckers who were doing this to me the satisfaction. Not that they would’ve cared. The doctors never gave any indication we were anything other than mannequins they were dicing up. They all seemed to know just what to do and when. Maybe he told them, who knows.”

  “He, you mean someone from the school?” I said.

  “No,” Jeremy said. “The shadowy man who stopped by from time to time. The one whose face I never saw.”

  “But how’d you get out?” Kian said. “Did they let you go?”

  Jeremy’s nose twitched. “I woke up –in excruciating pain, in my horrible bear form. I was dark, underground somewhere. I ripped myself free, could hardly see. I’d been underground, but was now in some city square, with noises, lights, colors, everything blurred under pain like I’d never felt before…And then there was this voice, I don’t know how, but it was in my head, my skull, reverberating with it…”

  “What did it say?” I asked.

  Jeremy’s eyes were staring out, unblinking, as if he was still back there. “It said: Venit invenient me, id est.”

  Demi inhaled sharply. “Wait, you’re saying it told you to come find it and to keep going, in Latin?”

  Jer didn’t seem to have heard her, though. Gaze still fixed on the distant point, he said, “I was all woozy and maybe imagining it… but it seemed like what I was doing, the more destruction I was wrecking… it made the voice happy.”

  Talking seemed to have sapped Jer of the little energy he had. He sank further into the bed as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

  “He needs rest,” Apollo said, stepping forward with a warning look.

  “Of course,” Kian said to Apollo. To Jeremy, she said, “We’re just glad you’re okay.”

  Jeremy’s blue-lidded eyes were closed, but he called out, “Wait.”

  “The whole point…” he said. “Why I told you… we have to go back. Save the others.”

  “Of course,” Demi said immediately.

  “Promise?” Jeremy said.

  My friends and I exchanged a look. Jeremy had barely survived that horrific Times Square incident and the DSA base fire, how could we say no to him? Not to mention the horrible things we’d just found out were going on.

  “Promise,” I said.

  “The fatigue is a side effect of the healing I gave him,” Apollo said, as Jeremy nodded off. “His injuries were extensive, but I did the best I could. He’ll be groggy for another week at least.”

  “Thank you,” I said, throwing both arms around him.

  “Of course,” Apollo said. He drew away with an embarrassed, yet pleased look on his face. “I am the god of healing, after all.”

  “And a damn good one too,” Axel chimed in. He’d been standing on the sidelines for most of it, although his expectant gaze was on me now. “About what you promised your friend…”

  Kian nodded. “Before, we just suspec
ted something sketchy was happening at the school, but now….”

  Demi nodded. “Now we know for sure.”

  Both looked to me. I bit my lip. There was no escaping the obvious conclusion – and what it meant for us personally.

  “We can’t just sit on this,” I said. “Not while every week they could be taking another one of our friends. When we were escaping, they fought, helped us. And when graduation comes…”

  Kian’s and Demi’s grim faces were probably what mine looked like.

  “You’ll do it, then?” Demi asked me eagerly. “You’ll come back from that… place? Help us try to rescue them?”

  Damn it. Couldn’t they see that I’d had a rough week, needed some space to think things through?

  “Come on,” Kian said. “That empty rock place is mucho shitty. Demi’s daught- I mean, Pursephony showed us a painting of it. And she said you were pretty much miserable there.”

  “You had her check up on me?” I said.

  “’Course we did,” Demi said airily, though her expression went Mamma Bear when it stopped on me. “There was no way we could rest easy knowing you were in the Underworld, Tal.”

  “And Hades let her report to you like that?”

  Demi wound a curl around her finger evasively. “Let’s just say Persephone and Hades aren’t exactly a power couple who are madly in love or anything.”

  Kian patted Demi supportively. “At least your daughter has the good taste to hate her husband.” Her gaze swung to me. “You still haven’t answered.”

  “I haven’t had time to think,” I said.

  “What’s there to think about?” Axel asked. “You shifted into your dragon form and back successfully, what’s there to worry about?”

  “You what?!” Kian said, as her and Demi’s gazes whipped my way. “Since when?”

  “As much-needed a conversation as this appears to be,” Apollo said, waving us away, “I am certain that loud arguing is not conducive to healing.”

  “Fine,” I muttered.

  Just outside the temple, my friends circled me.

  “Sooo…” Demi said. “Your whole successful shifting thing?”

  “Was in entirely controlled conditions, and could’ve been a fluke,” I argued. “If we actually manage to even find our school again, once we get in, who knows what guards or whatever else we’ll have to stand up against? If I have to shift, with stakes that high, if I mess up….”

  I didn’t need to finish the sentence. A dead kid would be unbearable on my already pretty guilty conscience.

  “That’s it, then?” Kian said. “You won’t come with us. You promised Jeremy, and now-”

  “I never said that I wouldn’t come,” I argued, backing away.

  “You never said that you would, either,” Axel said.

  “Are you?” I said.

  “Depends,” Dion said.

  I hadn’t even noticed he’d joined us, but now there he was, looking all secretive and whimsical with an ivy garland around his curly-haired head.

  “On?” Kian asked.

  “How shitty your plan is,” Axel said deadpan.

  Kian rolled her eyes, while Demi’s face had a ghost of a smile. Turning to me, she said, “See? Look, you most likely won’t have to shift at all.”

  “But if I do...” I trailed off, backing away further. “Just give me a minute.”

  Although I was positive I needed a whole bunch of minutes, at least. Everything Jer had said was a lot to take in at once, and not just because how horrendous it all was. Students being taken to be turned into hideous mutants… operated on… but why? And what about the whole Latin voice-in-head thing, it couldn’t just be coincidence that we’d been taught Latin since we could walk and talk, could it? Had Jeremy really been set free on purpose or had someone inside taken pity on him?

  Like the identity of the shadowy man, that seemed impossible to know, at least for now.

  What was obvious was what would happen to all the students at our school if we just left them to their fate. We’d be seeing another attack on the news, another familiar face.

  I shivered. What if the next time it was Sammy? Or Cody? He had been a dick, but he was also the reason we were standing here free.

  I stopped walking. I’d reached where I hadn’t even consciously headed for – the cliff. I sat down on the edge, the same spot where I’d sat with Hades.

  A circumspect look around found that now I was at least alone. I needed it. I had a lot of thinking to do.

  That our classmates and the other grades needed to be rescued from the school was obvious. They were being operated on and tormented, for John’s sake! But would me coming along be more of a danger than a help? If we could even locate the school, that was.

  At the sound of footsteps, I frowned. “I told you guys-”

  It was Apollo.

  “There’s something you should know,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s the DSA,” he said, standing over me. “Early this morning, Hermes told me they’ve been up at the golden gates making inquiries, seeing if there isn’t a loophole they can exploit so they can come investigating here.”

  “There isn’t,” he said, answering my next question. “But it was just a matter of time before they showed up. The DSA aren’t stupid. They know that we were seen in the company of several girls at the bear attack – and later, similar-looking girls at the gala, at least with Axel. Whether they know your identity or are merely suspicious is unclear. But the fact is, once Hera comes back…”

  “She’s going to hate them poking their noses into things.”

  Apollo nodded. “And she’s going to hate that you three are still here too.”

  “What you’re staying is, our visit here has a time limit. And it’s dwindling rapidly.”

  His head made a noncommittal gesture. “Yes and no. If Zeus comes back in the meantime…”

  “Do you think he will?”

  “Frankly, no,” Apollo rubbed his stubble-less chin. “I don’t know where my father went, or why… but in times like these, I doubt it’s good.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him?”

  Apollo frowned down at me. “Of course I am. But what can I or anyone do? My father simply disappeared, as he has done in the past. If he’s decided to take a human or animal form, he is untraceable.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So why are you telling me this now?”

  “To warn you,” Apollo said. “That whatever you decide, be careful.”

  I rose, nodding. “For the school rescue, though, you won’t help?”

  Another chin rub, while Apollo’s navy eyes grew thoughtful, then disgusted. He sighed.

  “Yes. It’s idiotic, interfering once again when the DSA are involved, but….” His lips became a firm line. “Mutating children…”

  He shook his head, looking past me. “Yes, all honor and valor demands that I help rescue them.” His head swivelled my way. “But will you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, following where his gaze had been seconds ago.

  It was off in the distance, remote, how I wanted to be. I was tired of feeling unstable all the time, dangerous.

  As he walked off, Apollo whistled. Fast movement sounded from behind me. I turned just in time to see him crouch to give Cerebee a good pat.

  Hades’ words roiled in my stomach: “Some creatures are not meant to be of the upper world.”

  But that was the thing. Cerebee had the same DNA as her mom, but not the temperament. She’d been raised here, on Olympus, while Cerebus had assuredly been raised down in the Underworld.

  I found myself rising and walking forward unthinkingly. Apollo had already left the way he’d come, while Cerebee raced up to give me a joyous greeting. I was careful to pat her two amenable heads.

  No, Cerebee wasn’t vicious like her mom. She’d been raised peacefully and had become that way, for the most part. Nothing was born evil, only environment determined that. Hadn’t I known that already, i
n a way?

  And what about me? If I kept on practicing shifting, kept going all out to keep my powers in check, I could learn to not be a danger to my friends, couldn’t I? I’d already managed shifting and shifting back once with Axel.

  When I reached my friends, who were waiting for me nearby making absolutely no attempt to pretend otherwise, they were already smiling.

  “That was more than a minute,” Kian said, pursing her red-gold lips.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Want me to go back and think on it some more?”

  “No,” Demi said. “What did you decide?”

  I looked from her very hopeful face to Kian’s slightly contemptuous one. I had to trust that I’d be able to control my powers when the time came. My friends were everything to me.

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  Kian snorted. “Well, duh.”

  "You guys," I said. “Couldn’t just let it rest.”

  “You becoming an Underworld dragon hermit permanently?” Kian wagged her finger. “Nah, don’t think so.”

  I had to smile. “Thanks, I guess.”

  Demi smiled sanguinely. “That’s what friends are for.”

  33

  The next few days passed in a blur. It took less than an hour to establish that the Olympus gang was coming along. We made plans on how to find our invisible school and how to break in, each one crappier than the last.

  We visited Jeremy of course, who listened to our plans with a mounting excitement.

  “Wish I could come,” he said, wincing as his attempt at an expressive fist pump failed miserably.

  “You really want to see Miss Mildred and the Headmistress again?” Kian said skeptically, shaking her head already. “Uh-uh. No gracias. Believe me, if this wasn’t a chance to kill the bitches in their sleep, I wouldn’t be going either.”

  Although we knew that was bogus. This rescue was all Kian had been talking about for the past few days. Not that we were any better. Making and scrapping and swapping plans. It got to the point where we’d heard three different versions of Axel’s ‘Let’s kidnap a DSA member and torture them for info,’ all of them from people other than Axel.