The Academy (22 page)

Alex wasn’t thinking very clearly, and his head was buzzing. Some of it might have had to do with the training, too – in all honesty, he’d been all jacked up for days, just looking for an excuse to try it out on somebody. And the Academy, in Alex’s eyes, was simply another institution.

The redhead, Margot, was staring down at the plate in front of her, ignored and seemingly oblivious to what was going on around her. Even in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t help but notice that vampires ate a lot of salad, or at least this one did. Near the end of the table, Steve and Charles leaned over a girl sprawled out in spilled food and dishes. She was still sitting where she’d fallen, looking confused, and her eyes wide and blank. Her sweatshirt was splattered with red sauce, and the majority of a bowl of pasta sat on her skirt.

“Aw, poor thing,” Steve said, crouching down beside the girl with an oafish grin. The other boy cackled. “It looks like you had another accident. You have terrible balance, freak.”

Steve winked at Charles, who laughed even harder. Alex was very sure the toady wouldn’t be a problem.

“Let me help you with that,” Steve said, reaching toward the pasta, and then, casually, flipping the girl’s skirt up, exposing her panties. Charles howled with laughter, and the girl gasped.

“Hey, Steve…” Charles said nervously, much too late for a warning to help.

Alex would have liked to have said something cool. He was so angry his hands were white where he gripped the tray, and he would have shared his opinion of Steve, Charles, and his tittering classmates who were watching, but words wouldn’t convey the message the way a metal tray upside Steve’s head would.

He held the tray in both hands and swung it as hard as he could, catching Steve solidly behind his left ear with a meaty thud. Steve cried out in pain and surprise, and tried to turn around, but Alex had already pulled back for another swing. The second blow hit even harder than the first, connecting with the boy’s temple, and the tray warping with the force of the impact. Steve cried out again and fell to the floor, eyes closed, clutching his head.

Alex stepped over him, smiled, and raised the tray above his head. Steve opened his eyes just in time for the tray to catch him in the mouth. Steve shrieked again, and then rolled onto his side, spitting blood and a tooth on to the cafeteria floor. Alex dropped the tray to the floor with a crash, thought for a moment, and then kicked Steve in the side of the head for good measure. He shot a warning glance at Charles, but he’d apparently decided to let Steve fight his own battles, or at least the losing ones, and was standing nervously several feet away, trying his best to look uninvolved.

Alex walked over to the girl, who was staring at him in frank astonishment. He was surprised and pleased to see that her face was dry, that she was tougher than she’d looked. Or maybe she was used to it. Then Alex noticed that the girl’s striped panties were still visible, and he turned bright red.

He held out a hand to her, struggling to simultaneously stare and avert his eyes.

“Here.”

For a moment, he thought the blue-haired girl would just stare at him, and got apprehensive and embarrassed. Then he felt a small, warm hand in his own, and he pulled her gently to her feet, the remaining pasta splashing to the floor.

Alex wondered why she wasn’t required to observe the dress code – the black skirt was part of the uniform, and maybe the black knee socks as well, but she also wore a loose grey sweater that hung off her shoulders that was clearly not.

“Are you okay? Can you walk? Do you need help?”

The words tumbled out, one after the other, faster than he could think. They just spilled straight out of his mouth and into the air, surprising and unfamiliar. His body felt very warm, for some reason, and all the lights had halos around them.

“You aren’t hurt, are you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, looking puzzled and releasing his hand. “Who are you?”

“The fuck are you thinking? You’re the one who gets hurt, dumbass,” Steve snarled, one giant hand clutching the side of his head, his face snarling and bloody.

He’d propped himself up on the table with one arm, glaring unsteadily and swaying. Alex realized that the room had gone silent, and everyone, except the purported vampire at the other end of the table, was watching the scene develop. His anger flared again, and he turned around to face Steve.

“I couldn’t understand you there, Steve. You develop a speech impediment all of a sudden?”

Alex tried for a cocksure smile, but his voice squeaked as he walked forward, sure that he was about to get his ass kicked.

“That’s it!” Steve howled. “You are fucking dead!”

Alex didn’t see a transition, if there was one. One moment, there was a jerk that looked like a linebacker standing in front of him, and then the next, there was a living statue. Where there had once been skin, there was now something that looked like rock, stony grey protrusions jutting out of his torn uniform. When Steve took a step forward, the linoleum cracked under his weight.

“Any other funny shit you’d like to say?”

Steve’s voice had become a roar, and the enormous hand wrapped around his forearm felt like granite, the surface cold and abrasive. The pressure was immediately intolerable, and it was all Alex could do to avoid falling to his knees.

He watched the other stone fist pull back with resignation. No way to dodge with the grip Steve had on him, and no point in even trying to block the punch. What a strange way to die, Alex thought, his head spinning, his eyes watering with pain at the intense pressure on his arm. Beaten to death by a statue.

Alex wondered if that was any better than being eaten by wolves.

“Steve? Alex? Any possibility of a word with you two gentlemen?”

Michael came striding across the cafeteria purposefully, his smile sad and knowing. In his wake, all of the whispering and gossiping students who had crowded around during the altercation rapidly found other things to do. Steve released Alex’s arm, and Alex immediately hugged it to his chest, both of them trying to act like nothing had happening. His arm even more after Steve let go, and Alex wondered if he’d broken anything. When Alex looked over at Steve, he’d returned to normal, minus the torn clothing. He was breathing hard, and was obviously enraged, but he didn’t look, well, rocky.

“Steve? Please tell me that you weren’t about to use a combat protocol on another student.”

Michael towered over Steve disapprovingly. Alex was reminded again that, despite the smile, that Michael was a pretty scary dude, and wondered exactly how much trouble he was about to be in.

“Mr. Lacroix, sir, he hit me first!” Steve shouted, red-faced, pointing at Alex. “He knocked my tooth out, sir! He hit me from behind!”

“Terrible,” Michael said grimly. “Is that true, Alex?”

“Well, yes,” Alex admitted. There was no point in lying about it. “He left out the part where I kicked him in the head, though.”

Michael looked down at the broken dishes and spilled food, and then at the blue-haired girl, the remains of her lunch still dripping off her sweatshirt.

“And, how did all this happen, Steve? Anything you’d like to tell me about?”

Steve looked at the ground and clenched his fists, unable to meet Michael’s gentle eyes, but he said nothing.

“I thought that might be the case,” Michael said, with a tired laugh. “Alright, Steve, let’s take a walk over to the Administrative building. Alex, I was going to have a chat with you after homeroom already – I suppose we’ll have more to talk about. You can wait in my office after class. Eerie, you can go back to your room and change. If you hurry, you won’t be late. Margot, would you go with her?”

The pigtailed vampire-girl nodded without looking at any of them, stood up, grabbed Eerie rather roughly by the wrist, and half-dragged her from the cafeteria, still blank-eyed and silent. Alex suppressed an urge to wave at her receding back, and wondered what had gotten into him.

Michael sighed loudly and stretched, raising his tattooed arms above his head.

“As if I didn’t have enough tying me to that desk,” he complained loudly, to no one in particular. “Students are definitely the worst part of this teaching gig.”

She had people call her Evelyn.
No special reason – she’d seen a movie, so long ago that she’d forgotten the title, and that had been the name of the main character. It hadn’t been particularly good, but it was the first thing that hopped to mind the next day when someone asked for her name.

Evelyn, then. She’d called herself that for almost five years now, which was the longest she’d ever kept a name. She wondered if that meant she was becoming sentimental in her old age.

Still. It beat admitting that she didn’t have a name of her own.

Witches aren’t human – although they look very much the same. But, like humans, Witches need to sleep, and Evelyn hadn’t gotten any in almost two days. Also, she’d had to kill a number of people in that time, and that always left her feeling a bit ill.

The safe house’s popcorn ceiling crawled, shifting with the gentle afternoon light that snuck through the blinds. She could hear a television faintly, from the adjacent room, and the hiss of water running through the pipes. Her sisters, watching TV and showering, respectively. The air conditioner hummed, occasionally breaking into fits of coughing and struggling, only to kick over again and resume its work. Evelyn could not close her eyes without becoming nauseous, and she could not sleep with her eyes open. As a result, she lay on her back and watched the ceiling crawl.

Evelyn was not suffering from pangs of conscience – far from it. Witches maintain their existence with power drawn from human suffering, so in order to survive, Evelyn had spent decades sowing misfortune and grief in the people she encountered, and then harvesting the resulting sorrow and pain. She didn’t feel bad about it – her nature was parasitic, and she had no more choice in the matter than any of the other parasites that preyed on humanity. Her only alternative, after all, was to starve.

Cruelty wasn’t part of her nature, and she took no special pleasure in causing pain. Evelyn preyed on strangers almost exclusively, which had allowed her to enjoy her relationships with the humans around her over the years – she’d had friends, in a fashion, and lovers whom she’d been genuinely fond of. And she’d done her best, as far as it was possible, to do well by them. This, however, was not always possible.

She felt no guilt, and she had shown no mercy. Her species was not capable of either.

Tired of the ceiling, Evelyn rolled onto her side and stared out the window, through a crack in the blinds. She knew the ocean was close, but she couldn’t see it from here. All she could see were tall pines, close to the building, waving in the wind, and beyond that an expanse of green hills.

Her last assignment had been no different from any other – she, and her sisters, had been ordered to Los Angeles, where they worked their way into predetermined social circles, romances, and jobs. All of their lives had a relationship in some way to a specific import-export firm owned by one of the Operator’s cartels, and they’d wormed their way well inside it. They’d taken on the local color, become invisible, part of the herd.

Evelyn genuinely did think of humans as a herd – and why not? She meant nothing unkind by it. Cows were benign by nature, patient and useful. She did not consider the comparison to be unflattering.

She and her sisters had collected information, made reports on the mundane activities of their day-to-day lives, and waited for orders. Evelyn had taken a husband, an executive in the company that she was surveying, and had rapidly charmed and won over his two daughters from a previous marriage. She’d spoiled them; Evelyn was too old for children of her own, and she was surprised to find how much she enjoyed it.