Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (21 page)

“Jenks makes him Change to heal but can’t
control him. Then your boy flicks one hand and smashes him into the
wall and just leaves him there. Then you and our esteemed Director
show up.”

Ashling studied the vampire for a moment, her
jaw clenching. She finally nodded and turned to Gina.

“This is yer idea of teaching witches? I left
three of me most powerful healing charms with the boy and I felt
all three get used in a matter of days. So I drop everything and
rush here to see what had happened. And I find ye allowed a sadist
werewolf to beat him up till he snapped and used forbidden magic.
There hasn’t been a new, true warlock in almost a hundred years,
but now we got one. Congratulations. You humiliated the son of the
most powerful witch to ever come out of Ireland, himself more than
her equal. Pushed him to use battle magic on himself, to tattoo
glyphs that change him forever,” Ashling said.

“Ah, if it helps, I think it’s just henna
ink,” Mack said.

“Ah, but it doesn’t matter now, does it?
Because once a male witch uses the glyphs, they become permanent,
now don’t they?”

Ah, what? That hadn’t been anywhere in mom’s
manual. I read the damn thing five times before I even started to
sketch the glyphs.

“The boy used magic in my class, Mrs.
Velasquez. I want him expelled,” Jenks said.

“Not until a changed werewolf started to
attack him. Before that, he just used it on himself. Not part of
your rules,” Erika said, which was truly a surprise.

“I told you on Friday, Mr. Jenks, fighting
students, especially those with vastly different levels of power
was forbidden. And yet two days later, you do it again,” Gina said,
trying to get some semblance of control.

“I didn’t allow anything. The witch boy
picked a fight,” he replied.

“And almost fecking ended it, too,” Ryanne
said. “Ye realize that he could have just hunted ye and Delwood
down as soon as he broke your fancy anti-fecking-magic bracelets,
don’t ye? Instead, he found another way, he did. It’s what yer
always going on about—being prepared. Well, looks like he came to
class prepared, but now yer all… what did the vampire call it? Butt
hurt? Yer all butt hurt cause he beat up yer pet boy.”

“It’s a good damn thing he didn’t come
hunting me or we’d be short one warlock,” Jenks said.

“Oh really?” my aunt asked. “Mistress
vampire, if ye’d be so kind as to vacate that wooden thing?”

Katrina disappeared from the top of the
kung-fu dummy in a blur. The dummy was basically a round six-foot
log of wood, polished and finished, set upright into a metal stand
that had suction cups to hold it to the floor. A wooden leg came
out about knee height and then bent down to brace on the floor.
Three wooden arms jutted out of the front about shoulder
height.

“Warlock, immolate that thing,” my aunt
commanded me.

Immolation is very different from just
starting something on fire. Throwing balls of fire or even streams
is really inefficient and wasteful. Lots of lost therms going
nowhere.

A good immolation starts from deep inside the
target and then feeds upon itself as well as on additional outside
heat. They’re tricky to pull off, but my mom had been a master with
Fire and Earth, teaching me from an early age.

I started it deep inside the dummy, in one of
the hollow spaces where the arms entered it. Extra oxygen is really
good, at least at the beginning. The heat I pulled from everywhere;
the ground, the air above the crowd of students, the furnace
heating pipes in the walls, the flailing werewolf on the wall.
Rolling it into a tiny, tiny compact ball, I pushed it deep inside,
then fed it more as the first embers began.

The next part is tricky, reburning the smoke
and gases that come from the initial ember, but it’s vital if you
want a truly fast burn. All that extra fuel goes to complete waste
otherwise, so rechanneling it back into the fire takes it to a
truly spectacular level.

The effect was that nothing happened for like
a second and a half, and then the air above started to shimmer.
Suddenly, the entire top of the dummy disappeared in a white-hot
light that was almost too bright to look at. Six seconds after I
started it, the fire abruptly went out. Just the twisted metal
base, all blackened, and part of the foot remained. There wasn’t
even any smoke. Just heated air and I dispersed that across the
room, back into the floor and walls and up into the metal beams
above us.

“Ye’ve heard of spontaneous human combustion?
Well, me family invented it and me nephew has perfected it, as ye
can see. How would all yer combat skills do against that, wolf?”
Aunt Ashling asked.

“Yer last name isn’t truly O’Carroll, is it?”
Ryanne asked as Jenks was silent, staring at the ash remains of his
equipment.

“No dear, it isn’t. I was born Ashling Irwin
and me sister, Declan’s mum, was Maeve Irwin. Have ye heard of us
then?” she asked with a small, tight smile.

Zuzanna, Britta, and Erika all took sudden
deep breaths. Ryanne just smiled and nodded.

“Oh yeah, ye bet I have. The Irwins of
Tipperary are famous. Me own mum used to tell me sisters and me
tales of the Irwin sisters. Said she’d met ye both when she herself
was a girl. Megan Flynn, well she would have been Megan Boyle then.
Said yer sister was sumthing… as were you,” Ryanne hastened to
add.

“Aye, we were all of that. And me boy here is
as well. What he lacks in training, he makes up for in sheer
power,” Ashling said. “So in that regard, the lass is right. He
could have just snapped and we’d be having a different
conversation. But why don’t we just call it a day, then? I’ll take
me boy out of this… this madhouse and ye can go about bolloxing up
young witches and the like without him?”

Leave Arcane? Somehow in all my planning,
leaving the school had never really entered my mind. I only just
got here. Sure, Jenks was a maniac and Delwood a bully, but now
that the kid gloves were off, things should be different, right?
Unless they expelled me.

“Now let’s not be hasty here. Does Declan
really want to leave? Seems to me if he did, he would have right
after the incident on Friday,” Gina said.

Ryanne snorted and my aunt lifted both
eyebrows in disbelief.

“Surely you don’t think an Irwin would run
away from a fight, now do ye? The menfolk of our Clan were bred to
fight. Why, he’d be more like to stop breathing and die on the spot
than to run away. No, ye boxed him into a corner, humiliating him
that way. I can’t imagine a worse nightmare. For eighteen years,
I’ve been afraid of exactly what ye’ve done to him. He was taken as
a child, ye know, by a pervert. The man died, by me nephew’s hand.
And when his friend Caeco , who’s been strangely silent over there,
was threatened, he took out three soldiers and a vehicle. But what
ye done was worse. I’m surprised ye have a building still standing.
So in that regard, I guess I’m glad he chose the route he did.
Except for breaking his promise. Maybe blasting the damned building
would have been better. Come on, Declan. We’re leaving,” she
said.

I didn’t move. Just looked at her and then my
friends, who were all fascinated by the drama.

“Declan… come on,” she said again.

I finally shook my head. “Oh? That’s how it
is, is it?” she said, hurt and anger flashing across her face.

“I think your nephew has made a large number
of friends here, Miss O’Carroll. Despite the recent unpleasantness,
he may still want to stay. Perhaps you and I could talk, just for a
bit, maybe over some tea? You are absolutely right that we have
gotten a great number of things wrong with our programming and your
insight would be invaluable. A famous witch of your caliber?
Critiquing our program? It would be a major boon,” Gina said, her
tone sincere.

My aunt was still looking at me, reading my
face, which I hoped was suitably sorry looking even as I felt
determined to find a way to stay.

“You and I will have a little chat later,
boy, don’t you jest know it,” she said, her voice a quiet,
dangerous tone. “And put that wolf down.”

Instantly, I dropped Delwood, hearing him
land on all fours behind me, but I still watched my aunt’s eyes.
She held my gaze for a moment, her expression telling me I was in
major trouble. Hearing claws clicking, I turned and watched the
massive werewolf, but he just shook his fur and then trotted over
to Jenks who, in turn, was watching me like
I
was the feral
animal in the room.

“Okay then. Let’s call it a class, then? Have
a good day everyone and we’ll see you all tonight at dinner,” Gina
said, quickly moving to my aunt and talking in her ear. After a
moment, my aunt turned her way and then they moved off out the door
and right toward the dining room.

“Dude, that was freaking awesome!” Mack said,
slapping my back. I winced as my ribs compressed, and he
apologized. But my attention was now on the pack of kids that
surrounded me. Ariel, Ashley, T.J., and Justin, but also the witch
pack and even some of the werewolves, notably Janek and his sister
Darina, as well as Matthew.

Jetta was talking to Caeco a few feet
away.

“You’re an Irwin witch?” Britta asked. Beside
her, Zuzana was looking at me in almost complete shock, whereas the
others wore expressions that told me they were either trying to
figure me out or were just flat-out wowed by all the drama.

I nodded to Britta.

“And your mother was Maeve Irwin?
The
Maeve Irwin?” Britta continued. I looked around for a pad to write
on. An iPhone appeared in front of me, opened to a Notepad screen,
held by a slim white hand.

I took it, nodding my thanks to Katrina, who
was now on my right side. Typing quickly, I held it up for all to
see.

Yes, she died when I was eight. Murdered in
Boston. She and my aunt were betrayed by the rest of their
circle.

“Betrayed? How? Why?” Erika asked.

Their mother, my grandmother, was leader. She
died and another witch took over. Feared my mom. Tried to marry her
off to a Croatian witch. He raped her. They fled here.

“I thought an Irwin wouldn’t run from a
fight?” Janek asked, a touch of sarcasm in his voice. I looked at
him for a second, then choose my response.

If your entire Pack turned on you, would you
stay and fight them? Kill them? Your own family? Particularly if
most of them were following the orders of your leader?

He frowned. “Okay, that’s different, I guess.
Didn’t think of it that way.”

“All right, enough of twenty questions.
Declan needs some alone time with his
girlfriend,
” Jetta
interjected, shoving her way into the crowd. She grabbed my hand
and towed me through the pack of kids, past a rather
shocked-looking Zuzanna to the open spot where Caeco was
standing.

“You two kids have some things to talk about.
Why don’t you go get breakfast or something?” Jetta suggested.

I nodded my thanks to her and turned to look
for Katrina to give her phone back. She was standing two feet away.
Spooky. Giving her a grateful head bob, I handed her the phone
back, then glanced at Caeco. She had her poker face on, but I
sensed apprehension. Super. Looking around, I spotted some papers
and stuff on Jenks’s teacher podium. I felt really, really
tired—drained. Maybe Mom had left out some other important details
about battle magic.

There were a couple of mostly blank pages in
Jenk’s notes so I helped myself to them, along with a pen. Then I
led Caeco to another classroom, this one empty.

She hadn’t said anything yet, but had let me
pull her along. I wrote my first question.

Do you like Delwood?

She snorted and looked at me in disbelief.
“Don’t be absurd. Why would I like him?”

He’s a big, muscular fighter that turns into
a beast. You are a strong, gifted fighter. I’m not so much.

“That’s idiotic. I met tons of guys like him
at the lab. All the meathead soldiers that thought being big and
tough was all that. I guess some girls like that but trust me, when
you beat them up every day, they lose their appeal.”

You beat me up almost every day… in
practice?

“Yeah, cause I’ve been trained from birth to
do just that. How long would the fight last if you used magic? For
that matter, how long did Delwood last as a fully Changed werewolf?
Two seconds?”

Then why were you ashamed of me after Delwood
beat me up?

“I wasn’t ashamed of
you
. I was upset
and ashamed of
me
. Jenks made me an assistant instructor and
suddenly I was right back to being in the lab and taking orders.
Snapped right back to being a good little soldier for a guy I don’t
even know. A guy who let a fight happen to my boyfriend that was
the equivalent of a sucker punch. And I did nothing to stop it.
Jetta and Ryanne, who don’t even like each other, had to come to
your rescue because I was just standing there like I was back in
the lab watching two soldiers beat each other up. Six months of
freedom and what did I do? I followed orders. When I got out, I
swore I wouldn’t ever just follow orders again. But I did and you
got hurt because of it.”