Chapter 8 #2
But a strange pang of connection hits me. I never got to go to college. I’ve never experienced this kind of academic camaraderie or shared anticipation for the year to come. It’s…nice.
“The quiet one is Peter,” I tell Sophia and Elliot. “Kitty’s cousin.”
Peter opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by the irritated strumming of Professor Lisette’s long nails on her desk. When a hush falls over the classroom, she lifts a brow. “No, please, continue. Mingle, chat. My time is meaningless.”
I roll my eyes. It sounds like something Fiona would say.
The candles along Lisette’s desk flicker more vividly as she dims the lights and takes a seat on the edge of her desk.
She lowers the horn-rimmed glasses from her head, where they were hidden among tufts of frizzy yellow.
“All right, first years. Who can tell me why this course matters?”
Silence across the crowded classroom.
“Your enthusiasm inspires.”
Sophia’s hand shoots up, bangles jangling. “Because it’s required to graduate?”
A few muted snickers sound. I expect Lisette to chew her head off, but she only presses her lips together. When her eyes find me beside Sophia, she glares like I’m a demon myself. I immediately swallow my laughter.
“She’s not too far off,” Lisette says, peeling her eyes off me slowly. “Miss…?”
“Sophia Valentine.”
“Why, Sophia Valentine, do you think mine is the only class at Harker you must take to graduate?”
Sophia chews her lip in thought. “So that we know the literal hell that awaits us if we turn?”
More hushed laughter. But Sophia is undeterred. She’s got the kind of impenetrable confidence that is unaffected by being flat-out wrong. I can’t think of anything that might embarrass her and decide it’s an enviable quality and not an obnoxious one.
Professor Lisette grabs what appears to be the class syllabus from her desk and hands the stack to the first row to pass on. “To understand what is above,” she tells us, “we must first understand what is below.”
Peter and Kitty scribble this dutifully in their notebooks. Beside me, Elliot is scrolling through a feed dedicated to men doing CrossFit. I write my first bullet point on my new notepad—I have a feeling this is the only class that will matter for my specific purposes at this school.
“In the earliest days, deviants dwelled solely in the underworld. Born there, lived there, died there. Humans were safe here on the mortal plane, and lymantrians lived above. Until the High Thane used the darkest form of magic to split the earth.”
The Chasm. Like my father told me. He also said the spell the High Thane had used drove him so mad that he carved out his own liver and ate it raw. Delightful information to receive at eight years old.
Lisette nods at Peter. “And then what happened, Mr. Roydon?”
Peter opens his mouth to answer, but Kitty replies for him.
“Our lymantrian ancestors had to descend from their astral plane to protect the mortals and close up the Chasm. A great war was waged. The deviants took this opportunity to destroy the lymantrian homeland, and the lymantrians were forced to relocate here and live on the mortal plane in secret. Hunters became invaluable in fighting the newly freed deviants, and aeons were briefly brought back into the fold to help before they couldn’t contain their hunger surrounded by mortals and were eliminated. ”
I shift in my seat at the mention of aeons. She makes it sound like we’re some kind of fallen angels. Disgraced, a last resort. Bloodthirsty feral animals.
What eats at me is that she’s right.
Lisette nods. “Very good. Though try not to steamroll your classmate next time, yes?”
Kitty’s cheeks glow red and Peter shrugs at her as if to say, Don’t worry about it.
“But,” Lisette continues, “not all deviants were set free when the Chasm was split. Think of it like a crack in a frozen lake. Not a dam breaking. Millions still live in the underworld, deep down below our feet.”
Sophia hands the stack of syllabi to me and I take one and pass the rest down. It’s three pages stapled together—the first two contain dates for essays, research projects, and tests. The third is double-sided. The front reads:
STRATIFICATION OF DEVIANTS
High Thane
Demons
Born Deviants
Turned Deviants
Half-Borns
Beasts
The Undead
And on the back:
LYMANTRIAN ORDER
The Elders
Hunters, Pixies, Witches & Warlocks, Nymphs, Mermaids, Shifters, Fairies, Elves, and Gnomes
I study the pages. Some of this I knew—my father taught me about the hierarchy employed by deviants, the cruelty by which each class subjugates and marginalizes those beneath their rank.
He taught me that we’re lymantrians, but…
everything else is an onslaught of new information.
I didn’t know some of these beings even existed.
I’m hit with a jolt of sharp and unwelcome hurt.
How could he have kept a place like this from me?
Somewhere filled with information I could have used to hunt these last ten years?
Perhaps I’ll learn things here that my dad already taught me, but after all this time, I can’t recall them.
I find the thought profoundly sad—that there are moments he and I shared that are now lost forever to the abyss of my memory.
I hate that I’ll never be able to ask him.
I hate almost as much that Reid might have been right about Harker making me better at what I do.
I shake my head, still shocked that this school employs the very kind of demon it seeks to eliminate. And that’s one of the many questions bubbling in my mind. I’m no Sophia—there will be no hand raising if I can avoid it—but I do lean over to her and whisper, “What’s a half-born?”
Sophia takes the paper from my hand and writes next to Half-Borns, Selkies, Succubi, Sirens, Giants, Djinn, Harpies, Trolls, etc. Not as human-looking as vamps, werewolves, or demons. Not as beastly as…beasts.
I nod my thanks, then I write under Turned Deviants, Why are turned deviants considered lesser than born deviants?
IDK, deviants are species-ist assholes.
Professor Lisette addresses the class. “Questions on the stratification of deviants?”
One kid up front raises his hand.
“Yes…?” Lisette prompts the student. He’s still got a bit of baby fat in his cheeks, which gives him a disarming cherubic look, but I spot a mean gleam in his eye.
“Matt Peverell. Have demons always been at the top of the food chain?”
“Yes—”
“Why?”
Lisette’s lips purse. “Despite the pride deviants claim to have for their kind, their hierarchy is entirely based on which hell-born beings appear the most human. That’s why demons are so hard to root out and eliminate. They appear just like us.”
Reid’s face blooms in my mind once more.
“They’re also the rarest of deviants you may encounter. Do you know why that is?”
Matt thinks a moment before shaking his head irritably.
“Does anyone?”
Peter raises his hand again. “When demons turn people, they wake up in hell. Not up here, like a turned vampire or werewolf would. So they aren’t repopulating on earth with the same numbers.”
“Very good,” Lisette says. “Deviants take their hierarchy very seriously. Only a born demon can ascend to High Thane. No other species has been allowed to sit atop the Throne of Bael since its creation. And the throne offers extraordinary power to the demon who claims it—immortality with or without taking mortal souls, incomparable strength, unique abilities…Ever since the High Thane broke open the Chasm, he and his Brood have resided here, among the lymantrians and the mortals, blending into human society. A physical demarcation of their class.”
Matt raises his hand once more. “So why don’t we spend more time hunting the High Thane and his Brood and less on all his weaker, lower-class subjects?”
Next to me, Sophia blows her bangs out of her face with an annoyed breath, and I purse my lips in agreement.
The High Thane is as realistic a target as the boogeyman.
The title passes from father to son like a medieval monarchy, and the identity of their crowned leader is the best-kept secret in all of Astera.
Sure, a few hunters throughout history have taken down one High Thane or another, but then someone new is crowned and the mystery begins again.
One of many reasons a hunter’s job is never done.
“If we knew who the current High Thane was, we’d have our most deadly hunters on him.” Lisette takes two steps forward, and that eerie feeling seizes my gut once more. Like there’s something off about her. “Harker alumni, mind you, not ineffectual first years who think themselves Rambo.”
The class titters, but Lisette’s lips don’t even twitch. “Anyone else?”
Most of the other students shake their heads.
Someone asks for a refresher on what constitutes a beast, which Lisette explains to be basilisks, dragons, wyverns, banshees, strzyga, ogres, and hydra.
I knew about three of those and quickly jot down the others.
For whatever reason, I cover my paper to make sure nobody besides Sophia can see all the things I didn’t know.
She takes my list from me and adds ghosts, wraiths, ghouls under The Undead.
So born deviants means they were birthed. Not turned? I write to her.
Sophia writes, That’s what born means last time I checked.
But Elliot steals the page from her before Sophia can write more. No deviants or lymantrians can crossbreed, if that’s what you’re asking.
Sophia writes back, And they said you couldn’t be smart and pretty.
Elliot flashes her a cocksure grin, and I catch Peter in the row below us, watching them with mild curiosity.
I lean over Sophia and write, So what happens if a succubus or a harpy has sex with a vamp or something? Nothing?
Sophia and Elliot both nod, but Peter waves a hand at us and motions for the paper.
Elliot hands it to him as Lisette talks about how beasts and the undead are given the most grueling positions in the underworld, due to their lower stature in the caste system, while higher-ranking deviants enjoy their roles as enforcers and torturers.
Vampires only procreate by turning others, Peter writes. I nod, reaching for the paper, but he hastily adds, They don’t have sperm. Then he smiles at us, proud to have contributed.
I grab the paper and write back, Thank you for that, Peter, before flashing it at him.
Kitty motions for the list and we pass it surreptitiously over to her.
She begins to write under my original question.
Nothing will happen if two different deviants fuck, EXCEPT with harpies.
Since they are all women, they are the only deviant that can become pregnant by another species.
But they can only birth more female harpies, and thus they are all considered “half.” TLDR: deviants are SPECIES-IST! !!
I stifle a laugh.
“Have you five completed the dissertation you’re writing back there?”
Hot shame coats the back of my neck as the entire class turns to ogle us.
“We were analyzing harpy discrimination,” Sophia says, clearly unbothered, while Peter, Elliot, Kitty, and I collectively span all possible shades of red.
“Wonderful,” Lisette says. “That will make a strong topic for your first essay.”
The class groans. Dirty glares are heaped upon us, and I force myself, through a will of steel, not to make eye contact with anyone.
“If I’ve learned anything in my many, many years at Harker, it’s that a lack of focus is the swiftest way to get yourselves killed.
” She says this like she’s in her eighties, but she doesn’t look a day older than thirty-five.
I wonder if she’s an elf of some kind. She doesn’t strike me as a hunter, but what do I know? This is my first day at hunter school.
“Each one of you needs to give this course—this entire curriculum—every ounce of focus you have. You must take it seriously if you intend to live through your four years here.” A shadow crosses over Lisette’s face.
“Or more importantly, have any hope of protecting humankind. You are all they have, after all.” Lisette takes her glasses off and stares at me until a shiver runs up my spine.
“And on that hopeful note,” she says, finally letting her eyes survey the classroom, “you’re free to go. ”