Chapter 4
The subway tunnel was a blur as the train sped through it.
I was detached from the world around me, struggling to keep reality from crashing down on me. I wasn’t ready to face what happened at my house, not yet, not in the presence of this stranger. I couldn’t afford to fall apart, not when I still knew so little about what was actually going on.
I cleared my throat, trying to dislodge the lump there, and looked at the man who was my seemingly reluctant escort. He was all puffed up like a lion, watching the passengers of the train like they were predatory hyenas in his savanna.
“Where is this school you’re taking me to?” I asked.
He regarded me with those steely eyes, and his features softened slightly. “I’ll explain soon. Our stop is coming, and then we can speak more freely.”
I nodded, understanding that he still considered us unsafe.
I looked at the uncaring, distracted commuters around us. They looked harmless, ordinary. They certainly didn’t look like the pale creatures portrayed as vampires in movies, but then Caesar looked like a regular guy, too—albeit a pretty darn good-looking one. To look at him, you’d never know there was a feathered beast lurking beneath the surface.
Could one of these people be hiding a supernatural identity and be out to get me?
I tried not to think about that, either. Grief and fear were playing tug-of-war with my heart, and I didn’t want either one to win.
Stop by stop, all the passengers disembarked until Caesar and I were the only two left on the train. I looked at the digital map on the wall. The next stop was the end of the line. Where were we going?
The train slowed for its final destination.
“Come on, this is where we get off,” Caesar said, rising from the bench.
Allowing a sense of curiosity to fill my fretful mind, I followed him to the door, and we exited as soon as it opened. The platform was dim and completely empty. The stairs to the right led to an industrial part of Chicago that I’d never been to before, but I couldn’t imagine a school for supernatural beings dwelling in this neighborhood.
I headed for the stairs, but when Caesar didn’t take the lead, I stopped short and looked back.
He was walking toward a janitorial closet in the darkest corner of the platform.
I cocked my head and walked up behind him, watching as he pulled the same subway pass out of his pocket and swiped it through the reader on the closet door. A little green light came on, and a click sounded. Caesar pulled the door open and nodded for me to precede him inside.
Burning with skepticism and trepidation, I slowly crossed the threshold to find myself on another subway platform. A secret platform. Caesar followed me in and closed the door behind him.
“There, now we can talk freely,” he said. “This subway will take us to The Dome. Here, this is your pass now. It’s the only thing that will unlock that door and allow you to ride this private subway.” He offered it to me.
With a mild sense of privilege washing away my previous hesitation, I accepted it. “You’re trusting me with this?”
“All students get one,” he said with a nod. “None of our students are prisoners of the school. They can come and go whenever they want, with a chaperone if they’re minors, of course.”
That was comforting. Some part of me wanted to trust Caesar, even though I had no solid reason to yet. Knowing that I wasn’t expected to be confined to the school he was taking me to made me feel so much better about the situation. Not like I had anywhere else to go. No extended family. No friends except for Shea, who apparently would be in danger if I stayed with her.
“Let’s get on,” he said. “The train will be leaving soon.”
With his hand on my upper back, he gently steered me toward the waiting train.
“But where’s the school?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, a hint of a smirk on his face. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise. There’s nothing like the first time you see it.”
I raised a curious eyebrow but stepped into the car anyway. We both took a seat on opposite benches facing each other, and the train began to move forward.
“Look, for what it’s worth,” Caesar began with an awkward expression. “I’m truly sorry about your mother. About all of this. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was supposed to come to your house and talk to you and your mother about the school, and ideally, you both would’ve come back with me. If we had any idea the vampires were targeting you, I would’ve come much sooner.”
“How did you find out about me?” I asked, choosing to avoid the subject of the night’s previous events. “If I really am what you say I am.”
“We have a seer,” he said. “She helps us locate and welcome shifters from all over the world. Yesterday, when she was doing a routine search, she saw you.”
“A seer?” I asked, trying not to sound as skeptical as I felt. I had to remind myself that this stuff wasn’t as crazy as it seemed—I mean, I did just see him transform into a gryphon.
“Yes. Her name is Celeste,” he replied, braiding his fingers and putting his hands on his lap. “She’s actually the head instructor of the mermaids at the school. You’ll meet her tonight.”
“Is she a mermaid, too?” I really couldn’t keep the skepticism from my tone.
Caesar nodded. “A rare talent among mermaids is the ability to see the future. She’s the most gifted seer I’ve ever met, and she’s been using that skill to find lost shifters like yourself since the school started seven years ago.”
I nodded, trying to wrap my head around all this. He thought I was a mermaid. But how could that be? I’d never experienced anything to suggest I was something other than human, and I’d certainly never sprouted a tail with a flashy flipper.
But, then again, I’d never really been in open water before, either. Mom hadn’t even allowed me to take baths. It’d been nothing but showers since before I could remember.
Could this have been the reason for the no-water rule? If I really was what he said, she’d kept me from all of it on purpose. But why?
“How does someone become a mermaid?” I asked. “Is it random?”
Caesar shook his head. “Mermaids are born mermaids. It’s hereditary.”
“So that would mean that my mom was a mermaid?”
“One of your parents would have to be, yes,” he answered. “Do you know anything about your father?”
I frowned and shook my head. “I guess my mom was hiding more than I thought.”
I leaned back and looked out the window, watching the darkness outside zoom by. I knew I should be taking this time to ask more questions, but I didn’t have it in me, not when the questions I really wanted to ask were ones he couldn’t answer for me.
How could Mom keep this from me? The no-swimming rule made so much sense now. Mom knew I was a mermaid and had intentionally kept it from me. Did that mean she had been a mermaid, too? Or was it my mysterious father whom Mom would never talk about? I didn’t even know his name.
A dirty, poisonous feeling began to bleed into my veins. Betrayal. All this time, Mom had known. She kept this massive secret, the very essence of my being, from me.
I tried to push away those thoughts, to will the poison out. I didn’t want to feel it, not when I was so shattered by her sudden loss. I’d never hear her voice again, never see that secretive smile again. Between the betrayal and the sorrow, I was being ripped apart from the inside out.
Tears brimmed again, and I blinked them away. My entire being was begging to cry, to shed the weight of all this anguish and regret, but now was not the time or place to give my body the release it needed.
According to Caesar, we’d be at the school soon, and the last thing I wanted was to be a wailing, soggy mess in front of so many strangers. I had to keep it together for just a little while longer.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caesar move. He came to sit beside me.
“I know what you must be feeling,” he said in a low voice. “Seven years ago, my parents were killed by vampires.”
I looked at his face, which was tight with tension. I could now see the sadness behind his stoic eyes. Was this loss the reason for his roughness?
I had no words of comfort to offer. I was just as broken by the loss as he was.
Instead, I asked, “Why do vampires go after shifters?”
He sighed and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “They believe they are the superior species, and they want to rule over humans. Shifters believe that all races of humans are equal and should stand together. We’ve been fighting their advances for centuries. Venoms and bites from certain shifter species are fatal to vampires, so we are the only thing standing in the way of their dark dreams.”
A sudden hatred sparked inside me, focused on the demons that took my mom from me. Part of me hoped I really was a shifter, that I really did have some secret powers ready to be unleashed somewhere in me because I wanted to hurt them. All of them. I wanted revenge.
“Is there a way to beat them?” I asked, a new edge to my voice.
“I hope so,” he said, giving me a strange look, as if he expected me to explode at any minute. It was a look of anticipation.
Feeling uncomfortable under his intense gaze, I turned to look out the window again. As I did, the darkness outside suddenly broke and gave way to a beautiful blue. The lights within the train slowly dimmed, allowing the blue around us to brighten and cast an almost magical glow on the benches and walls.
“Whoa,” I gasped, turning my whole body around to take a better look. The train was now passing through a glass tunnel that was completely underwater. Fish of all sizes and colors swam beyond the glass. Where were we?
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Caesar said with a smile in his voice. “Look out the other side.”
I turned around to do as he suggested, and I couldn’t believe what I saw.
In the distance a few miles away, an enormous glass dome winked at me through the surprisingly clear water. I couldn’t tell just how big it was from here, but it looked as though it spanned at least a mile. Magnificent metallic buildings filled its womb, twinkling like a modern city of Atlantis. I’d never seen anything so wondrous in my whole sheltered life.
“Arya Walker, welcome to The Dome,” Caesar said.
“This is incredible!” I gushed. “Where are we?”
“At the bottom of Lake Michigan,” he answered. “It’s our greatest and most important secret.”
“How long has this place been here?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the glass structure.
“Seven years. After our previous school was destroyed, we needed a new location that the vampires would never find. So far, our plan has worked.”
I had no more words. I was mesmerized by the sight beyond the windows. It made me forget, for a precious moment, the tragedy of this night. I stared at it until it passed out of view as the train curved away, my anticipation building to see what the inside looked like.
Finally, the train came to a stop, and I rushed out the doors with a newfound eagerness. Landing on the platform, I went to the glass that framed this tunnel, placing a tentative hand on it as if I could reach right through it to the dense water on the other side.
I looked up directly above us, amazed by the fact that I couldn’t see the surface. I knew we had to be deep under the lake, but seeing all the water on top of me was no less miraculous.
Having never been anywhere near open water before, I realized I should feel at least a little claustrophobic from being stuck under so much of it. After all, I didn’t know how to swim. If the glass broke, I’d most certainly drown. And yet, I felt absolutely no fear, only extreme wonder and a sense of…comfort.
Caesar came onto the platform and stood beside me. “Are you ready to see the inside?”
All I could do was nod like a shaken bobblehead.
He led me to a large vault-style metal door at the end of the tunnel. He opened a little metal box that was roughly head-level, leaned close so that his face was within inches, and pressed a button. A tiny green laser flashed and moved over his right eye. Then large bolts clanked loudly within the door, and it opened.
“Retina scan,” Caesar informed. “Shifters have unique retina structures. That way, even if a vampire did make it to this point, they wouldn’t be able to get inside.”
Caesar pulled the door open the rest of the way and invited me to follow him through. We came into a large entrance hall whose floors, walls, and ceiling were made entirely out of some dark matte metal.
Directly in front of us was an archway framed by metal columns around which long Japanese-style dragons coiled, shining like silver on the lackluster metal. At the zenith of the arch, the same crest from the business card perched proudly, welcoming me.
A large desk sat to their right, behind which was a large man with a fiery orange beard, his hair buzzed nearly bald. He smiled and nodded at us as we passed.
Through the archway, I could see only a fraction of a long and massive corridor, like something found only in palaces of old. Breathless, I emerged from the entrance hall, staring with wide eyes at the towering grand hall in which I now stood.
The ceiling was at least three stories tall, and shining metallic creatures of ancient lore crawled and slithered up and down the unpolished gray walls.
Dragons snaked up the vaulted ceiling, meeting to hiss at each other at the upper-most point. Mermaids stood in the doorframes of every adjoining corridor as if holding them up. Wolves howled here and there at an unseen moon, and magnificent gryphons stood like gargoyles on the ledges of each story that overlooked this grand hall.
I could never have imagined architecture like this in my wildest dreams. It was all crafted and molded out of metal, either polished to a glorious shine or left flat and unrefined. There wasn’t a single brick, wooden beam, or even a dab of plaster in the entire place, and yet the darkness of it was nothing short of beautiful.
I reached out to touch one of the wolves that seemed frozen in his climb up the wall, amazed at how meticulously each spike of ruffled fur was molded to look lifelike.
“Is this whole place made out of metal?” I asked, staring straight up.
“Yes. It’s a silver-steel alloy. The student population is mostly made up of weres, who are vulnerable to silver. This helps them better control their shifting ability and be less governed by the phases of the moon.”
“Weres?” I asked, lowering my head to give him a quizzical look.
He gave a gruff chuckle. “There’s much you have to learn about our world. Weres include hounds, which you probably know as werewolves, maos, which are cat shifters, and ursas, the bear shifters.”
“How many different shifters are there?” I asked, my head already spinning.
“In the most common varieties, ten,” Caesar replied. “But, every now and then, something new or something thought to have been extinct will pop up. I’m sure this all seems like a lot right now, and you don’t have to learn it all tonight. There will be plenty of time for that later.”
A group of teenagers came out of one of the many corridors. They were chatting happily, but when they saw Caesar and me, they stopped and fell silent. They looked at me with question marks on their faces, making me feel like some freak on display at a circus, and I refused to cringe under their scrutiny.
I knew how this worked. I’d been the new girl enough times to know never to show signs of weakness. So I stood tall and gave them a cool, unflinching look right back.
“It’s late, and you’ve had a very long and difficult night,” Caesar said, guiding me away from the onlookers and toward a staircase with a firm hand on my back. “Let me show you to your room so you can get some much-needed rest.”
At his suggestion, I suddenly felt the weight of my exhaustion crashing down on me. Nothing sounded better than curling up in a bed with a blanket over my head and letting the darkness swallow me away from my pain for a few precious hours.
I nodded and allowed him to lead me up the stairs.
As we walked, more and more students crossed our path, stopping to watch. Whispers followed us all through the building. I didn’t care to try to catch any of their words. I just wanted to get away from it all.
Seriously, what was their problem? Caesar said new students were brought in all the time. What made my arrival so interesting?
We came to a large pair of doors that were molded to look like arching waves with elegant mermaids swimming through them. Just as he was raising his knuckles to knock, the doors parted inward, and a tall, beautiful redhead greeted us.
“My dear girl,” the woman said. “I have been so looking forward to your arrival, and I’m so terribly sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”
How did she know what happened? Caesar didn’t call anyone.
The woman passed a knowing glance at Caesar for a second, and he nodded.
“This is where I leave you,” he said to me. “Celeste is the head of the mer dorms, and she will take it from here. I’ll be by again in a few days to check on how you’re doing.”
“Uh, thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
He bowed his head, then turned around and stalked down the hall.
“Come, Arya,” Celeste said, beckoning me with an open hand that was creamy white and delicate. “Let’s get you settled in.”
I nodded and followed her through the double doors, eager to be done with this horrible night.
We came into a lounge room where a few teens were sitting on couches, talking, reading, or staring at illuminated laptop screens. Once again, students turned their heads toward me.
I chose to ignore the unwanted attention, keeping my gaze forward.
“How did you know?” I asked, casting sheepish eyes on Celeste.
Celeste nodded, her powerful green eyes glinting in understanding. “Some mermaids have the ability to see the future. I was the one who had the vision of you that brought you to us. But visions don’t always come in a timely manner. I only saw the death of your mother as it happened. I am so sorry.” Her pretty brow furrowed in genuine sympathy.
I had forgotten what Caesar said about Celeste’s ability. There had simply been too much information in the last hour to process it all. I sighed, resigned to the fact that I knew less about this world than any other person in this school.
We went up another short flight of steps and stopped at one of the many doors along the hallway. Celeste pulled a key card out of the pocket of her black dress pants and unlocked the door, then handed me the card.
“This will be your room for as long as you’re a student here,” she said. “There’s a campus map and a class schedule on your desk.”
I walked into the modest bedroom and looked around. There was a comfortable-looking twin bed—complete with blue sheets and comforter—a dresser, a desk with a chair, and a closet. No window.
“Your teachers are expecting you in classes tomorrow morning, but I completely understand if you need a few days to mourn,” Celeste said softly.
I turned to face her. “No, it’s fine. I’m already behind. I’d like to start classes tomorrow.”
Celeste gave a long nod. “In that case, I’ll see you tomorrow in Transformation.” She backed out through the doorway and began to close the door, then stopped. “My door is on the main floor of the common room, under the stairs. If you need anything, please feel free to come and talk to me.”
The smile she offered was so warm and motherly, it reminded me of Mom’s smile. Queue the lump to constrict my throat again.
I coughed unevenly and said, “Thank you.”
Celeste mercifully closed the door, leaving me alone at last.
I stood in the middle of my new room for a few minutes, the weight of my anguish washing over me like the first wave of a tsunami. Drowning in it, I no longer had the strength to make it to the bed.
I crumbled to the floor and sobbed.