2. Darkness in the Blood Master copy MS 5 (15 page)

“Who were they, Nic?” I asked when I got my voice back.

“Our family,” Amelie said in a voice flat with despair. “My uncle’s children. Twins like us. Twins run in our family.” She squared her shoulders and gave me a watery smile. “In our race, actually.” It seemed to take everything she had, because she collapsed in on herself. She couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “My uncle has been looking for me for a very long time. He’s quite insane. We escaped him once, and came to Whitfield. I won’t go back to him again.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, catching her up in a fierce hug. She felt delicate in my arms, although I knew she was anything but. How long had I worked beside her and failed to see past the pretty illusions she wore as masks? The callous cruelty of the night before was her life- until she came here. To Whitfield. I felt the Shadows move deep within me, but for some reason, I wasn’t afraid of them this time. I thought of Jack’s tattoos and saw the glint of Ethan’s silver bracelets as I pulled down Amelie’s hood. What had happened to her? What had driven her and Nicolas to hide out as orphans in a strange town? I wondered these things and knew without doubt that I could control the Shadows if it meant protecting her. She was part of my screwed up little family. Jack was wrong. I wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t sure if I ever could be. But I was, and always had been, a protector.  I could damn sure defend my own. And when it came down to fighting, what was the difference between offense and defense?

Semantics. And field position.

“We have a very dysfunctional family, Caspia. I am sorrier than I can express that we have brought them to your door.” Amelie tried again to apologize for something that wasn’t her fault. It only made me angrier.

“But, you can’t just leave,” I insisted. “They said they were bounty hunters. They wanted me and Erik.”

“It’s not that simple.” Nic carried himself differently. He seemed surer, stronger. I wondered how much of his quiet coffee shop persona had been illusion, as well. “It’s because they are bounty hunters that we must track them. What’s happened here is typical ‘hunting’ behavior. We have to stop them because we can.” Nicolas and his sister picked up plain canvas backpacks and slung them across their shoulders. I looked frantically at Mr. Markov for support. Surely he wasn’t going to just let them walk away? What about protecting them as if they were his own children, and all that?

“They are bounty hunters, of a sort,” Amelie said. I could smell her perfume mixed with smoke from the burning coffee shop: frost roses and ash. “Slavery is closer to the truth. Our cousins are out ‘collecting’ for the Summer Court. They were coming here for us anyway, but when they were offered a bounty for delivering you and stumbled across Erik at the same time…” She stepped back and studied me. “Caspia, we have to go. We got news that Erik left town roughly the same time they did. Supposedly he’s just going to play a festival in Birmingham, but with our family roaming loose, we can’t risk it. It is no longer safe for us here, and we might be able to stop them.”

“You’re not exactly human, are you?” I said after a long moment. I tried to think of a polite way to phrase my suspicions. “Are you and Nic… are you, um, Summer Court, too?”

Her eyes flashed and narrowed, exactly like an angry cat’s. For a moment, she was the old Amelie, the one who flirted with every cute boy who walked in the door and who played the new coffee guessing game with me every night. “Do I look like a Summer girl to you?” Her spine arched and I shivered as an arctic blast enveloped us. I swear I saw a snowstorm reflected in the depths of her eyes. Her icy breath raised gooseflesh across my skin. “I’m a Winter Court royal. I kill Summer flowers with frost when I yawn.”

Ok then.

“It will be fine,” Mr. Markov said, making his words a command as much as a reassurance. “You will both let me know how you are doing at least once a week, or you will not like the results.”

Nicolas finally managed something like a small smile. “Yes, sir,” he said, taking his sister’s arm. Amelie’s eyes had gone from snowstorms to suspicious wetness. She pressed a set of keys in my hands. “Please check in on our little cottage,” she said, blinking furiously. “I do not know what will fit, but you are welcome to whatever you find.”

I just nodded. I was much more a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. There was little chance I’d be wearing Amelie’s silk and leather anytime soon, but if it made her feel better, I’d pretend. The three of us watched them disappear into the trees, Ethan and I still barefoot. The sun was fully overhead, and smoke clung to our hair and clothes. I needed a shower and a change of clothes but I didn’t want to move. Moving would close another chapter, make what had happened irrevocably real. I groped blindly for Ethan’s hand as I watched Amelie and Nicolas until I couldn’t see them anymore.

“Well,” Mr. Markov said. “That is that, then.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. My brain just couldn’t wrap itself around the event yet. “What are you going to do?” I asked Mr. Markov.

“Maybe I’ll take a vacation,” he said.

Ethan and I both stared. He didn’t look like he had a head injury.

“But maybe I’ll just go and pester Alice until the rebuilding begins.”

I actually felt Ethan exhale in relief. Then I smacked myself in the forehead.

“Oh god,” I moaned. “I’ve got class today. With my least favorite teacher, and where am I going to get decent coffee now?”

“I thought you were supposed to be quitting,” Ethan said, smiling down at me.

“I am,” I insisted defensively. “I mean, I can. If I want to. When I want to.”

He just raised an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t tell Logan,” I moaned.

The smoke suddenly had a hint of coffee scent to it. All that delicious, wonderful, life-giving coffee. Gone up in smoke.

“You know, you really don’t have to go,” Ethan said. “This would probably count as an excused absence if anything would.”

“You don’t know Dr. Christian,” I muttered. “I think that man is the devil himself.”

Ethan gave me a funny look as we walked back towards the apartment.

Chapter Fifteen:

Snakes and Angels

On the far raised platform, Dr. Christian lectured from his podium. Behind him on the monitor, power point bullets of his syllabus faded in and out. He rattled off office hours, attendance policies, and the due dates of major assignments. Almost every person in the room leaned forward eagerly as he spoke, as enraptured as if he were reciting love poems in French. The cold feeling I almost always felt in his presence now rippled across my spine again. It was almost like a low-grade Shadow eruption warning. But this was more insidious; this man had worked his way inside my brain.

“Caspia.” Amberlyn hissed my name as a warning, shocking me back to reality. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted in a low voice. “It’s him. Dr. Christian. Something’s wrong.” I frowned, not sure how to articulate something that was more a feeling than properly formed suspicions.

Amberlyn watched me with concern. “What makes you say that?”

I took a deep breath and tried to arrange my scrambled thoughts. “There’s just something about him that really, really bothers me.” If only she knew how much, I thought, then realized how lame that sounded. I tried again. “Mrs. Kenner was attacked, brutally, but he wouldn’t give any details and he even made fun of me when I asked about her. He has the whole class pretty much hypnotized. Just look at them.” I gave the class a swift glance of disapproval.

She looked around us swiftly and turned back to me. “Everybody just seems really into the class. That’s a good thing, right?” My knees drummed out their anxiety against my desk. She felt it and frowned. “Look, I know you had a really stressful morning. I’m surprised you made it in. Why don’t you just slip out the back or something? I’ll cover for you.” Neither of us bothered stating the obvious: Dr. Christian would never give me a pass out of his class once it started.

I shook my head slightly, my vision narrowed in on him like a hunter’s. “That would mean he wins.” Amberlyn’s pupils widened slightly in the darkness. Great, now she really thought I was loosing it. I tried again. “I just don’t trust him. He’s just… too good looking, or something. Plastic, like a Ken doll.”

If I had any chance of convincing Amberlyn, I lost her on the Ken doll bit. She looked like she was trying not to giggle. Why on earth had I said that? I leaned forward to start another furious whispering campaign.

“Miss Chastain.”

No one ever managed to inject my name with as much ice and venom as Dr. Christian right at that moment. I froze, not even daring to look at him. This class was turning into my worst nightmare. I wondered if I could arrange to drop it. But then I remembered what I’d told Amberlyn: that would mean he won.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. Win what? When had I devolved into fighting imaginary wars with teachers I hated when there were real ones going on?

Dr. Christian waited until the class finished laughing at me. “I have been quite patient with your outbursts thus far, but I am afraid I have reached the end of my tolerance. Since you persist in talking through my class, I will have to ask you to stay and talk to me afterwards.” More worshipful titters. I’m sure my face was white. “Now. If I may have everyone’s attention, we can start today’s lecture. Can someone tell me where Mrs. Kenner left off?” I sat frozen in my seat, burning with a combination of fury and embarrassment.

A girl with perfectly styled blond hair raised her hand, practically bouncing in her seat to get his attention. At his majestic nod, she gushed in one long string of syllables, “We were studying cave paintings in France and today I think we were supposed to study some Babylonian sculpture and also read some passages in the Epic of Gilgamesh where it made some references to the images.” As if exhausted by the effort it took to speak in front of Dr. Christian, she collapsed back against her chair.

He nodded, considering her words. “I’m sure Mrs. Kenner had a fascinating lesson planned out. But I find the ancient Babylonians a little dry, don’t you?” He paused for the light laughter he knew would come.

I rolled my eyes.
Ancient
Babylonians. As if there were any other kinds.

But my attention snapped back to the front of the room at the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. I looked up to see he had thrown a large, musty-looking book down on the raised platform between him and the rest of the class. He stood over the antique volume like it had issued him a personal challenge. The sound it made when hitting the hollow wooden platform echoed across the auditorium like heavy artillery. I jumped. It was bound in red leather and looked heavy enough to use as a weapon.

“We’re going to skip all that,” he said, crossing to stand over the book as if it offended him. “Now, I know in some parts of the world, what I’m about to do is considered controversial.” The blond girl who’d spoken earlier trembled in eagerness at the way he said the word. “The idea of the Bible as literature has sparked complaints, and even protests, in other schools. There will be none of that in my class.” He let his eyes skip around the classroom, fixing random students with his blue-eyed glare. I heard nothing except for the occasional indrawn breath when he drew someone’s attention. “Anyone who objects,” he stared straight at me, “to what we’re about to discuss can drop my class. Is that understood?”

Oh, thank God, I thought. Here’s my chance to drop the class. All I had to do was develop a sudden and intense religious conviction, and then, no more Dr. Christian.

Like robots, nearly one hundred young voices responded in near-perfect unison: “Yes, Dr. Christian.”

It was as if a single ventriloquist had suddenly developed a hundred vocal chords.  Instantly, the cold feeling down my spine was back. I could feel the pulse points of my wrists throbbing through the wing-shaped clasps of Ethan’s bracelets. “Amberlyn,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth. “I have a bad feeling about this.” Dr. Christian stood, ominous and forbidding, over the red leather Bible he’d tossed on the floor like an open challenge. Whatever kind of challenge it might be, I knew I couldn’t leave without finding out.

Then Dr. Christian’s booming voice cut through my confusion, and every thought, every feeling, every anchor to the here and now was ruthlessly severed.

On the auditorium screen in front of us, projected for the entire class to see, a tall, majestic angel with wings of light and a flaming sword grasped a kneeling woman by her long dark hair. The woman held her hands together, as if in prayer or supplication. The angel was clearly about to cut off her head, and the woman was just as clearly begging him to spare her.

Sometimes when something terrible happened to me, my mind had a way of slipping sideways. It would file the horrible thing, whatever it was, away for later, when I was safe and I could take it out and process it safely. My mind did that now. I found myself focusing on the details of the thing, circling around the greater meaning of the violent image. Oil, I thought. Late Renaissance? But who was the artist? What artist could possible have gotten the wings right? Because instead of painting the angel as a golden haired, feathered bird-hybrid, this artist had come close to reality. Layers of Light, thin as gossamer in some places, thicker gold in others, crossed the space behind the creature’s back. In some places the layers of Light intersected, creating planes so intensely bright they seemed as if they might burst into tiny golden sparkles in the otherwise bleak landscape of the painting. The angel stood in profile, hiding his full identity, but the artist had shown his strength and beauty.

Right down to the bloody sword in his hand and the cruel twist to his lips as he held the woman by her dark hair, preparing to draw more blood.

But the personal horror of the painting didn’t end there.

Faint shadows curled outward from the kneeling woman’s clasped hands. Dark hair hung down to her shoulder blades. The unknown artist had done an excellent job capturing the reddish brown highlights as she knelt before the merciless angel, holding her Shadow-wreathed hands out in a clear plea for mercy. My mind skittered sideways again: such luminous oils, to capture the red in her hair. Reddish-brown hair like mine. And Shadows wreathed her hands. Shadows like the ones I felt tingling in my palms right then and there.
Not here, please not here
, I begged whatever mad, capricious power might be listening. I concentrated on how the wing-shaped clasps, Ethan’s gift, felt against my pulse points. Then I sat on my still- tingling hands.