Bloodrage (9 page)

“It’s fine,” I muttered.  “I’ll make my own way back.”

“Suit yourself.” He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.  Loudly e
xhaling the angst and anxiety of the afternoon, I followed him out.

Chapter Six

I ended up following Thomas all the way back to my little room.  Whilst I’d been glad to have him along thanks to all the stares and hushed whispers from the collection of Initiates and mages as we passed, I felt more and more nervous as we approached the dorms that he would come in and immediately spot the books I’d nabbed from the library.  I cursed myself and my stupid actions.  I should have put them under the pillow after all, then at least I’d have had a chance of concealing them.  Now, between what had already happened between Thomas and myself, and the fact that I’d completely freaked out an experienced mage and destroyed what was probably a priceless painting, the d
iscovery of the books would completely signal my downfall.

Fortunately for me
, he just left me at my door, silently leaving to return to whatever he’d been doing before I’d interrupted with my spooky red inveniora catastrophe.  I’d wanted to ask him whether everything was okay – that my Divination creation had all vanished into the ether and wasn’t now making its way to smother some nearby human inhabitants with its noxious redness - but I was kind of afraid of the answer.  I also naturally wondered how much trouble I was in now.  Deep down inside, I had to admit that maybe it would be better for everyone if I put a stop to all this foolishness now.  Mrs. Alcoon might be permanently trapped in her state of enforced inhibitory stasis, but at least she was alive.  At the rate I was going, if I became much more successful at any of these disciplines I was liable to kill everyone within a ten mile radius.

I moved over
with a heavy heart to the small sink, then twisted on the cold tap and thrust my hand underneath the stream of water, watching as my blood mixed with the cold water and swirled its way down the pipes.  I’d need to see if I could get hold of some tweezers or something to pull out all the tiny shards of glass.

I was still standing
there, staring down at the white ceramic bowl and the splashes of blood continuing to inexorably drip down into it when there was a knock at the door.  Startled into action, I jumped and managed to call out, “Just a minute!” in time to hastily flip over the corner of the bedsheet to mask the books that still lay there.  Then I turned off the tap and creaked open the door an inch, peering through the gap to see whether it was Dean coming to take me away.

“Hey, Mack!  Look what I’ve brought!” 

Relief flooded through me.  It was Mary, holding up a first aid kit.  I opened the door all the way and ushered her in.

“Hi Mary,” I said weakly.  “How are things?”

“Awesome!  Although, I mean, like, wow.  You’ve really been tearing things up, huh?”

“I guess.”  I took the kit from her and unzipped it with my teeth, then searched through until I found tweezers.  “Is Higgins okay?”

“Mage Higgins?  Yeah, so I hear.  I think he’s just a bit shaken up.  What on earth happened?”

“Honestly, Mary, I have no idea.”  I headed over to the sink and turned on the tap again, the bent over my head and began digging into the wounds to get out the glass that remained embedded in my flesh.  “Have you heard anything about what the Dean is going to do?”

Silence answered me, so I craned my neck backwards.  Mary was staring at my hand with a faintly sick looking expression on her face.  “Does that not hurt?”

I blinked in surprise
and then looked back down at my bloody hand.  “Um, yeah, I suppose.  A bit.”  I hadn’t really thought about it much.  “Have you heard about the Dean?” I prodded her again.

She shook herself.  “Uh, no.  I don’t think he could do anything even if he wanted to.  Mage Thomas checked and says you were telling the truth that you were just doing as you were told.
  His Divination skill is good for that.”  She shrugged.  “That makes it the fault of the teacher for not taking appropriate precautions.”

I yelped slightly.  Higgins?  “Fuck!”  I swore. “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Was it your fault?”

“No, but, he didn’t know that would happen.  I mean, I didn’t know that would happen either, but that doesn’t mean he’s to blame.”

“He kind of is,” said Mary, gently.  “That’s why he’s there, to make sure that nothing goes wrong.”

Yeah, but he didn’t know that he had a fucking Draco Wyr who had no idea what she was capable of in front of him, did he?  Now I had the guilt of making him look bad to add to everything else.  I turned off the tap again.  “I need to see Thomas.”

Mary ignored me and rummaged inside the kit, pulling out a small bottle.  “Here’s some disinfectant.”

“I mean it, Mary.”

“He won’t see you.  He said that he’s busy or something, and that I should make sure you’re all cleaned up and that you get some food, and then some rest.”

I bristled at Thomas’ seeming solicitude.  Yeah, he was a wanker.  One minute he was forcing me to shave all my hair off and the next he was pretending to look after my well-being.  I trusted him more when he was just being nasty.  I grabbed the disinfectant from Mary’s hand and rubbed it on, hissing slightly at the sting, then took a pristine white bandage and wrapped it tightly round my hand and wrist.

“When was the last time you ate?” Mary enquired.

My stomach growled in answer. 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she said.  “You didn’t even have lunch, did you?”

I could feel myself getting annoyed.  The last thing I needed right now was to be m
othered by a teenager.  She beamed at me.  “Let’s head down to the cafeteria.  It’ll have just opened so the food’ll be fresh.”

I pasted a smile onto my face, forcing the corners of my mouth to curve upwards.  “Fine.”

I took a surreptitious look at the lump on my bed where the books were as we left.  If Mary had noticed it, then she hadn’t thought to mention it.  I mentally crossed my fingers and prayed it was going to be alright, along with poor Higgins.  As we walked down to the cafeteria, Mary gushed away about her day, and the success she’d had in conjuration with “like, making a dryad appear in the middle of the room.”  I briefly wondered whether I should tell her just how painful it was for a dryad to be even a short distance away from the trees they called home, then decided it would serve little purpose now.  Clearly responsibility towards the rest of the Otherworld wasn’t something that was high on the mages’ agenda.

I was getting quite sick of the wave of silence that seemed to precede our journey to the canteen
with every room we passed.  It was even worse when we entered the dining area itself, as at least forty pairs of eyes immediately swiveled in my direction and then quickly looked away as if to pretend that they hadn’t seen me.  One swaggering teenager stood up and walked towards us as if he was going to say something to me, then brushed past, his elbow barely catching the edge of my robes.  The group sat at the table that he’d emerged from sniggered nervously.

“Ignore them,” said Mary confidently at my side.  “It’
s just truth or dare.  All the Initiates play it at some point.”

“Let me guess – I’m the dare?”

She flicked a rueful glance at me.  When the teenager twisted back for a return shot, I couldn’t help myself from snapping right and snarling animalistically in a manner that any of my old shifter buddies would have been proud of.  He was so startled that he half fell backwards, skidding on the polished floor.  I tried not to laugh, but it was a struggle.  Then I reminded myself soberly that I had to start giving off a better impression of myself. 

We joined the back of the queue for some food.  The smells wafting up were delicious: homemade bread, something pungent with garlic and tomatoes and, if my sense hadn’t completely deserted me, coffee.  Realising how hungry I was, and how much better some food would make me feel I began to relax.  That’s when Mary tapped the shoulder of the Initiate in front of us, who turned stiffly and awkwardly.

“Hi Mary,” he said nervously.

“Hey Brock
!  Have you met Baldilocks?”

The guy muttered something inaudible then stuck out his hand limply.  I
only just barely worked out that Mary had been referring to me, so I was momentarily frozen until I got hold of myself and managed to reach out and shake his hand back.  He muttered something again and then turned back to face the queue.

“Baldilocks?” I hissed at Mary.

“Yeah!  D’you like it?  I think it suggests a sense of humour, but reminds people that you’re just a girl and not, like this big scary ogre or anything.”

I curled my nails into the palms of my hands.  “It’s great.
” I said through gritted teeth, “But I think Mack actually suits me better.”

“No way, like I said, a nickname will do wonders for your reputation!  Everyone will realise that you’re actually kind of fun.”

“I’m actually not kind of fun,” I growled back at her, but she missed it as she leaned over to give her order to the serving lady.

Once we both had piles of steaming food on our plates, we headed to sit down.  I veered right,
making straight for a nearby empty table, but Mary tugged at my sleeve instead and irritatingly took me to a table filled with Initiates who looked to be about the same age as her.

She introduced me to them all, yet again as ‘Baldilocks’, to which I was barely able to repress a shudder.  Mary then proceeded to keep up a stream of chatter the entire time.  I watched her for a few moments, mouth half-agape at the bubbly enthusiasm that never seemed to quite abate, then my stomach growled loudly again, making the kid to the right of me jump almost half out of his seat.  So instead I smiled pleasantly, and began to dig in.

It was virtually impossible for the table to remain silent and stony under the onslaught of Mary’s chatter.  By the time we were done, I knew all the Initiates’ names and backgrounds.  I knew that Brock, the poor boy who’d been forced into an introduction with me at the dinner queue, was particularly gifted at Evocation, but that he really, really wanted to do well in Kinesis instead as that was his family’s business.  I also knew that Deborah, whose family bloodline ran all the way back to the Pendle witches in the seventeenth century, had a huge crush on Thomas (I found that particularly difficult to fathom but managed to refrain from commenting further) and that Aqmar had travelled all the way from Indonesia to chilly England to train here because this academy was meant to be one of the most prestigious in the world. I managed to deflect many awkward questions about my own background, well aware of what Mary had said earlier in the day about shifters, and instead gave the teenagers the chance to talk about themselves.  Inevitably, however by the time we were all finishing up, the conversation drifted to Protection.

“I hate it,” groaned Aqmar.  “All we ever do is work on protecting ourselves and defense spells instead of how to actually fight back.”

“Mmmph,” agreed Deborah through a mouthful of food.  “I’ve got Mage Atterton for Protection and he’s a complete waste of space.  Now if I had Mage Thomas,” she said with an arch look in my direction, “things might be different.”

Mary bounced up and down in her seat.  “But that’s perfect!” She exclaimed.  “Baldilocks, you can teach us Protection.”

My eyes widened in alarm.  “Um, I’m not sure that’s a very good…”

“That’s a great idea!  You’ve been out into the real world, you know what it’s really like,” cried Aqmar.

Deborah joined in.  “And you can show us what Mage Thomas shows you.”

“I don’t really think…” I began again.

“We can do it on Saturdays when we’ve got, like, time off,” Mary suggested.  “Out in the old field.  You know the one that never gets used any more.”

“Let’s do it!”  Aqmar’s eyes were shining.

I looked from one face to the other and sighed inwardly.  “You’ll need to get permission first,” I finally conceded. “I’m not sure that I’m really allowed to do this.”

“Brock can go to the Dean - he’s like the pet Initiate.”

“I am not,” he spluttered.  “I just know him from outside the academy ‘cos I’ve met him a few times at family things that’s all.”

“Yeah, but you’ll ask him, won’t you?”

He looked uncomfortable but Deborah put a perfectly manicured hand on his arm and purred up at him. “Come on, Brocky.”

He shot me a quick look from under his eyelashes and then gave in.  “Okay, I’ll go talk to him.  I’m not promising anything though.”

“Yes,” I agreed hastily, “I’m not convinced that the Dean would be happy with me contaminating your young minds with thoughts of violence.”

“Tosh!  Don’t you worry, Baldilocks, he’ll agree.”

I winced yet again at the ridiculous moniker.  I figured rationally, however, that having some of the academy’s best and brightest on my side couldn’t do any harm.  I was fairly certain that I could put them through their paces without getting them to do anything dangerous, and I supposed that at least it would keep me busy.  With that, I made my excuses, and left them to it, all of them jabbering away at poor Brock to sort out exactly what he’d say to the Dean to make him acquiesce to their request.