Chapter Three #4
“What?” I jerked back, shaking loose my clenched fists. “What are you talking about? Of course I am.” I forced a laugh. “All good here.”
Spinning away, I glared down at the journals—screaming at myself. What the hell is wrong with you? You are not jealous! It does not matter how many princesses fling themselves on Ronin’s lap, you can’t stand that guy, and you want nothing to do with him!
The door flew open again, letting in a fresh wave of students flying very close to being late.
“What’s up, everyone?”
A cold, icy shard pierced my heart as that voice filled my ears.
“Did you miss me?”
I held still—head and eyes down as I busied myself putting away the journals, and taking out my notes and textbooks.
A shadow fell over me.
“I know someone missed me.” A hand clamped down on my shoulder. “Got to be my good friend, Charlie, here. He— No, wait, she...” Kazuya rolled the pronoun around on his tongue, then spat it out on my head. “...has been waiting all this time for us to finish our conversation.”
The cat-faced dickhead plopped down in the seat next to me. “And now we can,” he purred, those feline eyes boring into me, “without that mutt to interrupt us.”
I was a good person. I worked hard. I told the truth. I respected others’ boundaries, and I never demanded more than I earned. I was the kind of person that had good reason to believe I wouldn’t end up in this place when I died.
But when I looked into the same face that grinned down at me as he threw me off a cliff into the snapping maws of starving hellhounds, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell I stopped Tristan from killing this jerk?
Following on his heels, the other two feline demons that I begged Tristan not to kill took up the seat behind and in front of me—closing me in on three sides.
Kazuya opened his mouth, no doubt to ooze more slime, when a tall, stately demon swept into the room. Unlike Professor Radu who preferred wearing slouchy cardigans and a bored expression, this large, imposing man was dressed in a three-piece suit.
Stopping before his desk, he turned to face us—giving me a full look at his large, curling, ram-like horns; thin, pursed lips; wide-set ruby eyes; and very humanlike face.
I couldn’t assume that every demon that didn’t have animal features was using a glamour, but if this guy was, I was having a real hard time understanding the choice. If he chose this face, why did he go with the meanest-looking mug in the shop.
“You will stop talking,” he stated, “or you will leave this room and be marked absent.”
Everyone stopped talking.
“I am Professor Connard, and I am your new The Great Invasion instructor,” he began, pressing his fingertips together as he paced.
“Now, your instruction in the history of this event up to this point has been... inconsistent. That ends now.” His darker-than-red eyes swept over us.
“From this moment on, your textbook is your life. It is your guide. You will have every word of it memorized by our next lesson or—”
“Next lesson?” blurted a meerkat demon in the front row. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s tomorrow! You expect me to memorize—!”
He snapped his fingers, and the demon’s left ear ripped free of his body.
I clapped my hands over Dora’s ears, cringing as his bellows filled the lecture hall.
“You insane fucker!” Meerkat Demon shouted. Snap! Snap! Snap!
He snapped his fingers in rapid succession and explosions lit under Connard’s feet—sending a shower of carpet, dust, and stone all over the front row.
I held Dora tighter, screams bleeding through my teeth, as she nonchalantly kept to her task—scribbling in the notebook.
The dust and debris slowly settled to reveal Connard standing exactly where we’d left him—completely unharmed. He crooked a brow at the meerkat demon. “Normally, attacking an instructor would be grounds for immediate expulsion, but that pathetic display could hardly be called an attack, can it.”
The meerkat demon didn’t reply. He was too busy clutching the bleeding hole in his head and penning in his groans.
Those two had everyone’s attention, except for Kazuya’s. He was fixed completely on me.
“Abaddon was once the finest institution in hell, and now look what it’s come to. Leeches given positions of power over their betters where they’re free to spew all the lies and propaganda that falls from their empty, rotting skulls.”
I frowned, instinctively recoiling at the quiet hatred laced through every word. What the hell’s wrong with this guy?
“On top of that, you’ve all been besieged by violence and distraction these last few months that’s resulted in fundamental changes being made to the school’s charter all for the benefit of one”—his red eyes latched on to me—“misplaced student.”
I tensed. I couldn’t say for sure what he meant by calling me misplaced, but I knew it wasn’t good.
“No more,” Connard said clearly. “From this moment on, you will receive the proper instruction required for you all to become the strong and powerful leaders”—he tipped a nod at Ronin and company—“and soldiers,” he said to the rest, “that hell needs if we’re to take back our world from the filth who’d dare to change our way of life. ”
I couldn’t help it, my lips peeled back from my teeth with every word that dropped from his empty, rotting skull. Like I said before, everyone spoke hate in the same language, and I knew a racist when I heard one.
Or maybe it’s speciest in this jerk’s case. But whichever one it is, this guy has me wishing my sexually assaulting, imprisoning, blackmailing, vampire stalker professor would come back.
“You,” Connard barked, zeroing in on me. “Have you taken such issue with my speech that you’ve decided others can’t hear it, girl? You take your disgusting hands off that demon, or I’ll remove them for you.”
I didn’t move a muscle. “First, I’m a woman, not a girl. Second, my hands are not disgusting. Third, if this demon has a problem with it, she’s more than capable of asking me to stop.”
Said demon was happily writing away, not in the least bit concerned about either one of us.
“And last, all bigotry is stupid at all times, but don’t you think it’s taking the idiocy too far to have a problem with me just because I’m alive?
” I asked his purpling face. “If you really think my red blood sets me apart too much, then that’s even more reason you should be able to get along with vampires. At least you’re both dead.”
Rage stole over his placid face so quickly, I didn’t have time to think before his fingers flew up and snapped.
A pale greenish beam of light shot across the hall—directly at my head. I shrieked when it struck an invisible barrier—bursting apart on it like fireworks and raining sparks on Kazuya’s friends’ bellowing heads.
“Tsk, tsk.”
All eyes swung to Ronin. Even Dora stopped writing to gape at him.
“Now, now, Professor,” Ronin drawled, his eyes still heavy-lidded as if he was talking in his sleep. “If it’s against the rules to attack a professor when provoked, it’s certainly against the rules for a professor to attack a student unprovoked.
“Make that two students,” Ronin said, drawing everyone’s attention once again to the meerkat demon who was currently passed out on his desk.
“Didn’t you say you were against violence, distractions, and rule-breaking?
And yet here we are ten minutes into class, and instead of teaching us a fucking thing, you’re distracting us with two prohibited acts of violence.
” Ronin laughed out loud. “Quite the hypocrite, aren’t you, Professor? ”
Connard’s face darkened deeper with every word from Ronin’s mouth. His hand flew up—thumb and pointer fingers a hair’s width apart—
—and then he slammed his hand on the desk, spinning away. “What are you all waiting for!” he roared. “I told you to have your textbooks memorized by tomorrow! Get on with it!”
We got on with it. Even Kazuya stopped drilling a hole in my skull long enough to pull out his ripped and tattered textbook and get to reading. Seriously, it looked like he played soccer with the thing.
Turning away from him, I cut a look to Ronin and found him looking back at me. Heat stupidly filled my cheeks as those grinning lips filled my vision. As if hearing my wordless thank you, he winked.
After class let out, I grabbed my stuff and Dora and made quick for the exit.
Something hooked around my ankle, pulling my legs right out from under me.
“Ahh!” I hit the stone hard, bouncing off my chin and reverberating pain through my skull.
“Oh no,” Dora cried. She knelt beside me, patting my head. “Are you okay, Jehoshaphat?”
Who the heck is that?!
Winding his leg back in, Kazuya stood up—laughing his tail off. Stepping over his handiwork, he turned back and spat on my head.
He and his buddies laughed louder.
“This is going to be easy.”