Chapter 12
The first few questions are weak, in my opinion.
What does being a demon feel like? Tiring because I’m very old and have to deal with students with dull questions.
Do you have horns? No. Do you have claws?
Sometimes. Can they really kill other demons just like silver?
Yes. Why did you join the Brood? It was what was expected of me.
Why did you leave the Brood? Someone showed me a new way of seeing the world.
At that one, Reid’s eyes find the dean’s behind me, and I wonder what that could mean.
I’m not surprised when Kitty raises her hand. “What’s the underworld like?”
Finally, Reid’s brows lift. This question interests him. “Care to be more specific?”
Kitty frowns. “What is the average deviant’s day-to-day in hell?”
Reid seems to think on this one for a moment.
“No clue—I was born here on the mortal plane, just as you were, long after the Chasm was closed…” Reid’s mouth twists as he thinks further about the question.
It’s as if he doesn’t want her to go unrewarded for actually asking something brave.
“But what I’ve heard from older deviants is that demons, at least, live quite well, despite the fire and brimstone.
The lesser deviants and turned demons, not so much.
You’re either a torturer or the tortured. ”
A girl in the front row raises a tentative hand. “Why don’t the highest echelon of demons live in their own domain?”
“Why would they? The underworld is a place of pain and suffering. And up here…” Reid looks out the window of Crowley’s classroom, where leaves are just beginning to fall with the end of summer.
“Deviants feed on life. Blood, souls, flesh. Sins, sex, drugs, violence, euphoria. It’s all up here.
There’s a reason the lymantrians came down and, when the Chasm was opened, the deviants fled up.
Everyone, on some level, wants to be as close to mortal as they can. Without ceding any power, of course.”
The honesty surprises me. It’s not too far-off from how I feel when I fall asleep wishing I could trade places with Penny.
A girl with a septum piercing raises her hand next to Sophia. “Could the demons even go back down to the underworld if they wanted to? I thought the Chasm was closed.”
“It is closed. Demons are the only kind of deviant that can go back down to hell, but only with the body of the soul they’ve taken.
A demon’s purpose in the old world was to drink the souls of sinful mortals and shepherd them down to their fate.
But now—after the Elders sealed the Chasm—even the High Thane and his Brood would be stuck in hell if they accompanied a soul down there.
Not a risk anyone’s taking just to see the old stomping grounds. ”
“Who rules down there, then? If the High Thane is on the mortal plane?”
“A sentinel has been stationed to keep order since the Chasm closed. Someone the High Thane trusts and, I’d assume, communicates with somehow.”
“What’s running the gauntlet consist of?” another student asks.
I whisper to Sophia, “What’s the gauntlet?”
She leans over to whisper back to me and I get a whiff of grapefruit body spray. “Only way out of the underworld ever since the Elders sealed it up. I don’t think any of the deviants who have attempted it have survived, so we don’t know much.”
Reid’s answer is a similar sentiment. “I wouldn’t know. Some research has pointed to it having something to do with the seven deadly sins.”
But the student pushes, unsatisfied. “You don’t have any friends from your Brood days who braved it and escaped hell?”
Something shadowed crosses over Reid’s eyes. “No. I only ever met one vampire who had. Said it was a series of trials. That’s all I got out of him. It…” Reid shifts in his chair. “He wasn’t right, after that experience. Not sure it was worth leaving the underworld at all.”
“So if deviants can run the gauntlet,” Elliot says, when called on, “why do we refer to the Chasm as closed? Seems pretty open to me.”
“Also looks pretty open,” Sophia chimes in. “There’s an enormous valley cutting through Astera, in case you missed it.”
Some kids titter. Crowley doesn’t shush them—in fact, a little slice of silver peeks out from his half grin—and I decide he’s my favorite teacher so far.
“I’d imagine fewer than fifty deviants have made it through the gauntlet since the great war.
That’s not open. When the first High Thane split the Chasm open, it didn’t look like it does now.
Imagine a sea of fire running through Astera—rising tides of flame filled with deviants.
This was the time of armadas. Not tourists handing out binoculars for five bucks a pop. That was open.”
“So today, if your soul is taken by a demon,” Kitty muses, “you’ll be a demon condemned to hell unless you brave this impossible gauntlet, which ninety-nine percent of deviants who even try die attempting?”
For some reason, Peter’s entire body tenses at Kitty’s question. When she turns to him with an inquiring look, he only sinks lower into his seat.
Down in the center of the classroom, Reid nods, cold as ice. “Correct.”
It’s something my father warned me of many times.
To be turned—reborn as a vampire or were—would be a fate worse than death.
But to be sealed in the underworld for all eternity…
a fate worse than anything at all. I try my best not to think of all the mortals and lymantrians who have had their souls stolen and are currently rotting away deep down below my feet.
“Are you saying heaven and hell are real?” one girl asks. “That our sins direct where we go after death?”
“I’m saying if your soul is consumed by a demon, you’ll die and wake up in the underworld. The moral judgment piece hasn’t played a part in thousands and thousands of years. Not since the old world. I don’t know any more about that than your religious studies professors might.”
“And what about when you die?” Sophia asks. “Or any other deviant?”
“When I die, I die,” Reid says with a cold, unfeeling shrug. “Just like you. Nothingness. The void. No underworld. No heaven, either. But that’s just what I believe.”
“The true death,” Sophia says, voice a little somber. “Since…you’re all already kind of dead, right?”
“Do demons need souls to stay alive?” a cocky student in the back asks before Reid can respond. “Like vampires need blood?” His voice is smug, like he knows the question will make Reid uncomfortable.
But it doesn’t. “Yeah.”
More silence. A desk chair creaks.
Crowley grinds his silver teeth. “Maybe you can tell the students about the choice you’ve made, Mr. Graveheart.”
“I don’t take souls anymore,” Reid says without an ounce of ego. He’s not looking for a round of applause. “Which means I’ll have a shorter lifespan. Thirty, maybe forty more years.”
It’s not a great loss, I tell myself. The guy’s been around for hundreds already.
“And…?” Crowley prompts.
“And I’m not as strong as I once was. As the demons you’ll fight. Human souls grant an extraordinary amount of pow—”
One kid interrupts with, “Who’s the High Thane?” My money’s on Matt, but I can’t see. A couple of his friends snicker. Crowley rolls his eyes.
“Who’s the Zodiac Killer?” Reid says, gaze narrowed. “Fuck if I know.”
“You never met him?” Matt presses.
“If I had, wouldn’t I be hunting him down instead of sitting here, wasting my time with you?”
Silence spreads through the classroom. I wonder if I imagined Driscoll’s gruff laugh behind us.
“Do humans see what we see?” The girl who asks is two rows in front of me and has already taken two full pages of notes. I look down at my blank page and purse my lips.
Reid weighs this one for a beat. “For the most part, no. Half-borns, beasts, and the undead cannot be seen by mortals. A selkie will look like a seal. A ghost, a ripple of wind. But turned deviants and demons who already appear like mortals can show their true selves to humans if they choose. Just as they can to you all. That’s why there are humans who claim to have been bitten by vampires or chased by a werewolf in the woods.
” Reid crosses his arms and leans back. “Thankfully there are also humans who think they’ve been abducted by aliens. ”
“Can deviants sense hunters?” the same girl asks quietly.
“No,” Crowley says just as Reid says, “Rarely.”
Crowley shoots him a look, but Reid only shrugs. “I knew a demon once who could,” Reid tells us. “He’d taken so many hunter souls, he said he could feel them coming a mile away. He’s dead now, but…” Reid shakes his head. “Yeah, I don’t know how he did it.”
The words send a chill through me. A demon, or any deviant, knowing what we are would make our job next to impossible.
And for some reason, the thought fills me with genuine rage.
These are softball questions. This entire practice is only making these first years think demons are, at worst, grumpy, uninterested assholes.
They should be afraid. For their safety, they should know what he’s capable of.
My hand shoots into the air and Reid’s eyes pierce mine. They are endless as they take in my face. My determination. He looks like he knows I’m going to skewer him. Good.
“Yes,” Crowley says, motioning to me.
“Why’s the dean here? I’m guessing he’s not just big on Q and A’s?”
Crowley stands, jaw tight. “Hey. I said—”
“The professors,” Reid interrupts. “He’s here because the professors didn’t like this idea.
Didn’t want me on trial before the students.
Or maybe they don’t like me near the students at all.
Dean Driscoll vouched for me and said he’d observe for the students’ safety.
That’s what you wanted to hear, right, huntress?
That I’m dangerous and need to be watched? ”
Something about the nickname, said before the whole class, turns my skin hot.
If my question aimed to drag him through the mud, he took me down with him.
I don’t have time to think of a response before someone else has jumped in with their own question.
But Reid’s eyes keep sweeping over the class and landing back on me.
It takes another two questions before I’m breathing evenly again.
When class ends, Reid leaves before the rest of the students. We’re trudging up the stairs when I realize the dean is still standing by the door. “Viv Abbot,” he says brusquely. “A word?”
Sophia makes an ooh sound, and I swat at her arm before I follow the dean down to the center of the room where Crowley teaches.
I’m preparing myself to be kicked out of the class.
It wouldn’t be the first time I pissed off a professor.
I chased down a changeling once at Belaire and knocked our algebra teacher over a cafeteria table. Earned myself a three-day suspension.
“Miss Abbot,” the dean says. He’s even more vicious-looking up close—those jagged scars, those tattoos you can’t get anywhere but prison. “You don’t have to like being taught by a demon, but you do have to show him respect.”
“With all due respect to you, Dean Driscoll, I don’t have to do anything. I didn’t even know this place existed two days ago.”
“But you’re here now, and you’re on my campus and in my classrooms. So you’ll do as I say or you’ll leave.”
He’s right, of course. But I’m not going to snivel my apologies, and I’m not going to tell him that looking at Reid reminds me of the men who brutalized my father, so I say nothing, hoping to end the conversation here.
“You don’t think it’s an advantage? To learn how to kill demons from a demon?” When I remain silent, Dean Driscoll only studies me, curiosity glinting in his nearly black eyes. “Can I tell you a story, Miss Abbot?”
“Is it about listening to authority?”
Driscoll can’t help his chuckle. “The opposite.”
“Hit me.”
“I grew up in a mining town. Nobody there expected much of a kid like me, and I didn’t give them much to expect.
But I wanted to get out of that town something fierce.
My father told me I didn’t belong anywhere else but in the mines.
” Driscoll’s eyes grow hard with the memory.
“But I didn’t want to be anything like my old man. How do you think he took that?”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Not great.”
“He beat me senseless.”
I chew my lip, the image of his childhood turning my stomach.
“But I had abilities. Abilities my father didn’t have.”
“You were a warlock.”
“So I left. Even though they told me I’d never be anything. And years later, after being on my own for too long probably, I learned about this place. Once again, I was told the same thing. I’d never be a student here. I didn’t belong.”
I see where this story is going, but find I have no more bitterness left in the tank. The guy’s been through some shit. I’d have known that even without story time.
“But I proved them wrong too. Joined in with a group of students here who became my best friends. Protected this school with my life. Won tournaments. Fought beasts. Became its dean. And still, you think the Elders treat me with the respect they employ toward their hunters? The other professors?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not,” he echoes darkly. “Especially not when I vouch for an ex-Brood. People don’t like people who make them question their own biases.
They don’t like looking their own judgments in the eye.
But your job as a hunter, Miss Abbot, is to do just that.
To make sure you have the right read on everyone you encounter.
Good, evil, lymantrian, deviant, mortal.
Your misjudgment of Mr. Graveheart isn’t just foolish.
It’s making you worse at what you do. And I know you don’t want that. ”
I have nothing to say in argument. I’m starting to see why the students cheer for this guy. “You’re the person who pulled him out of the Brood, huh?”
Dean Driscoll stands from the desk he was perched on and heads for the exit. Halfway up the aisle, he says, “Why don’t you ask him?”