Chapter 24
Professor Quinn had a habit of darting through the door as soon as his instruction ended.
Better to flee from overzealous students before they could entrap him with a circus of questions.
No, he thought himself above that menial drivel and senseless waste of time.
A man of his status had better things to do than listen to young adults question him on the syllabus or why a missing historical artifact mattered in the long term.
He’d stared during the lecture, of course.
Eyes darting in my direction and lingering longer than necessary as he paced behind the barrier of his podium.
If I caught his eye and bit my lip, his throat would bob on a thick swallow.
That oceanic gaze would drip lower on every pass, sending electric frissons over my skin, knowing that he was admiring the shape of my legs.
But maybe that was exactly why he ended class early and fled like his life depended on it. Avoidance.
A taste of my own medicine.
When all the other students drained out of the lecture hall in that gradual trickle of fatigued bodies shuffling through a tight threshold, I stayed behind.
No one looked back or second-guessed their departure.
All too eager to make their escape from academia into the fog-shrouded night where their tired feet maintained the energy to ferry them to frat parties and crowded bars.
If I were smarter, maybe I’d be one of them and not a frantic mess chasing after her professor.
I left the class in the dark, scurrying from the lecture hall toward his office.
Determined to find him and demand answers, my boots clicked on the sidewalk as I rushed through the cold.
My breath swirled from my lips, and the chill crawled over my skin as incessant as hundreds of icy ants.
I hurried, not wanting to spend more time in the dark than strictly necessary.
A hair-raising prickle at the back of my neck served as a reminder that the school wasn’t safe.
Silence had acted as a security blanket to me for most of my life.
I found peace in the quiet, sanctuary from the noise and traffic of the world.
Now that same silence bore a crushing oppression in the form of an unseen obscenity.
Monsters lurking on campus grounds and acting as a foreboding pest, threatening shadows rippling on the edge of my periphery, and the edge of terror always balanced knife-sharp over my neck.
Feelings worsened by the abnormalities rising in an ebb and flow around me as consuming as a daunting tide.
Things in my room and bathroom weren’t always where I left them.
My books had a disturbing new habit of growing legs and waltzing off when I wasn’t looking.
There was always a freshly brewed pot of coffee in the morning, even when I knew I had forgotten to prepare it the night before.
I passed a dew-coated bench at the back corner of the quad. Mini ghost-like wisps swirled around the iron-wrought legs, and browned leaves skittered along the pavement. A lonesome, whistling gust of air lifted the ends of my hair.
A rustle turned my head.
Awareness prickled through me.
I had become familiar with the sensation of being watched.
Watched. Watched.
Always watching.
Not even the bugs chirped.
“He-hello?” I called.
My voice echoed into a whisper, growing thin, thinner—thinning—until a shrill, high-pitched ringing pierced my eardrums.
A grunt punched through my lips, and I doubled over. Hands on my face, gasping for air through my fingers. The pressure wasn’t enough to ease the pounding throb inside my skull.
Skriii—skriiiiiitch.
The sour, moldering smell of rot and sulfur draped itself across the campus. My stomach lurched so viciously I nearly vomited. The ear-splitting scratch of nails heralded the demon’s arrival, as its wings were as silent as death.
Dread suffocated me, my heart pounded painfully hard, and an icy fear washed through me.
I looked up at the gap between the History building and the lecture halls, instantly noting the gnarled figure hunched in the gray gloom.
Taller than a man, stretched to an impossible capacity and bearing wrong angles.
Wing-like appendages spread out, tipped in hands with talon-sharp claws that mirrored meat hooks.
The neck twisted with a crack, and sharp, yellow eyes illuminated from within by an infernal glow narrowed on me—its intended prey.
My heart rioted against my ribs, and a weak scream died on my lips.
A stolas.
And how was that for believable?
Was that real enough to shatter the illusion of my disbelief?
The demon opened a beak lined with crooked, needle-thin teeth and emitted a horrible, ragged growl. Viscous, red-tinted strings of saliva oozed from its beak in webbed strings. Large splotches of old, dried blood were crusted on the crest and wing feathers.
Gravel skittered from the stolas’ talons as it prowled closer and closer. All while my thigh muscles tensed and refused to unclench. I was frozen in place, leashed by fear, a helpless fool within reach of a primeval predator.
I might as well have been serving myself up on a silver platter.
The stolas flared its wings in a threatening display, stressing the danger of its presence with a thunderous hoot.
Adrenaline flipped the switch in my body, and I jolted into action.
Sprinting through the ankle-deep fog, leaves and loose twigs snapped under my boots.
Several times I stumbled or tripped, whimpering with fear.
Even the afternoon streetlamps flickering to life around the campus appeared grim through the shroud of eerie mist.
The grumbling cries and talon scratching sounds of the stolas chasing me kept me in perpetual motion.
I panicked at the thought of that damned demon catching up to me and snatching me up with those horrible claws at any second.
I swore I felt the rustle of air from wings sweeping behind me as it reached out.
My panic-stricken sprint took me under an ivy-wrapped stone arch.
I emerged into the sickly amber glow of the historical wing’s exterior light.
Alarm struck me as charged and violent as bolts of lightning with each aching pulse of my heart, and an ancient, animal instinct screamed in my head: Run, run, run!
The demon was larger and faster than me. It could probably fucking fly. I couldn’t see myself getting out of the encounter alive. A sound snapped beside me, and I lurched in the opposite direction. And managed to stumble over my own feet.
I tripped and sailed sideways into the grass. Blunt pain radiated through my hands and knees. Wet grass and cold dirt seeped through my pants and froze my skin. A rolling blanket of fog shuddered where I crashed.
The demon emitted a cooing snarl sort of sound.
I flipped over, crawling on my elbows to escape the stolas hunting after me.
Its rounded, feathered face grew nearer, allowing me to briefly skim the grotesque features of a distorted bird.
The sight of it made my heart flop and wither in my chest, and air refused to enter my lungs.
I was simply frozen, locked into the final moments of my life, watching gleaming talons reach closer, and closer still.
A shadow from thin air cut across my vision.
I shrunk back and threw an arm over my face. My heart stalled even as my entire body seized into a statue of rigid stone.
The blow never landed.
Instead, a metallic scrape broke the silence.
A grunt and frustrated snarl followed.
My neck snapped up, and a breathy intake of air filled my lungs with much-needed oxygen. Exhilaration rushed through me.
Burnished in amber light, Luther appeared, towering between me and the demon. Time slowed, and my gaze flicked from his broad shoulders, down his toned backside, then back up to the dagger in his hand blocking a meat-cleaver talon.
I barely registered what I was seeing before the world caught up with reality.
Professor Quinn feigned a step back, and the demon surged forward.
The action gave him the space to dip and turn while the stolas stumbled forward.
I yelped as the stolas careened, only bringing its attention back to me.
A wide beak parted, and yellow eyes gleaming with malevolent intent zeroed in on prey.
A swift kick to the ribs as Luther deftly spun around sent the creature sailing off its trajectory. The oversized bird landed in the grass on all four, swinging its long neck and round head to the professor. It stomped a talon-tipped wing on the ground and bellowed at him.
But the professor simply turned his razor-sharp attention to me. Eyes dark and expression strained, he snarled, “Ophelia, run!”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
Heart pounding, gasps punching through my lungs, I pushed off the ground and fumbled into a panicked run.
I pulled my bag to my chest as if it might shield me from further terrors and sprinted across the haze-obscured quad.
I didn’t pass a single sign of life from any of the various buildings on campus.
No one hiding in the overhang of the science building or couples kissing behind the theater office. Not a single soul.
No obstacles to my escape.
Whoosh.
The air lifted my hair. Goosebumps flared down my neck and across my arms.
I looked up as a shadow soared overhead.
Yellow eyes stared back.
Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.
Upon being spotted, the bird announced itself with deep hoots in a stuttering rhythm. The sound of it sickened me to the marrow of my bones.
Hoo-HOO-hoo-hoo.
The parking lot split through the gloom.
I didn’t have the wherewithal to question where everyone had gone or why my car was the only one left, sitting alone under a flickering lamppost. Those thoughts had no bearing on the fear pounding in place of my heart and the will to live begging me to run faster, faster, faster.
Whoosh.
I ducked my head, nearly slipping on the loose gravel at the edge of the parking lot.
Peering over my shoulder, I saw a great horned owl rapidly swooping back around.
Not a stolas, but still the very embodiment of an aggressive nighttime hunter, and it would strike me from above if I didn’t find shelter.
My car came within reach.
I shoved my hand into my bag, fumbling for my car keys.
Alarm made me dizzy, clumsy. I couldn’t find my keys to save my life, and that was exactly what I needed them for. Instead of driving away to safety, I would have my eyes gouged out by a goddamn bird!
The hooting beside my head stopped. I still flinched, pressing my body low and firmly into the side of my car with an arm over my head.
A wet squelch and garbled noise made my stomach curdle.
Lowering my arm and standing, I met the gaze of a furious professor. Luther stood above the carcass of the horned owl, chest heaving with each breath, several loose curls of black hair flopping over his eyes, and a snarl smeared on his lips.
The dagger in his clenched fist dripped with blood.
“What the fuck are you still doing out here?” he barked. “In the dark, really?”
I felt like a chastised child and kept myself pressed against my car. My head shook as words failed to come. As terrified as I was, I barely felt the hot tears streaking down my face or the hammering drum of my heart bruising my ribs.
He huffed, and his expression scrunched into one of fathomless fury.
Horror kept me in place, watching helplessly as my professor wiped a blood-coated blade on his pants leg and smeared the viscous ichor into his trousers.
I couldn’t even blink, observing as he returned the blade to a hidden holster under his coat before he turned on me.
Professor Quinn must have noticed the tears then.
His mask softened, and his shoulders dropped.
He sighed softly before dragging a hand through his already tousled hair.
He took a step, and I reacted with an instinctive cringe.
Not that I feared him, or his acts of violence, but because the sense of fear had hooked claws into me and refused to let go.
“Come on, Ophelia, let’s get you home.” His voice had gentled, and his motions slowed. He moved as if approaching a skittish animal, and perhaps that was exactly what I was. But I didn’t fight him when he pried my car keys from my terrified, iron grip on them.
Logically, I knew I must have gone into shock.
The aftereffects of the adrenaline and the horror had amalgamated into a noxious brew in my blood and turned me into a helpless, pathetic creature.
He didn’t complain as he maneuvered me into the passenger seat, carefully buckling me in before seating himself in the driver’s seat.
The only thing I was truly aware of on the ride home was his hand, reassuring and grounding, resting on my thigh during the drive.