Chapter Five #2
Sabrina weathered my outburst without a blink. “Do not despair, human. If everyone must attend their lessons to avoid expulsion from the academy... that means everyone must attend their lessons.”
I pulled a face, frowning at her. “What are you...?” I trailed off—understanding smacking me over the head.
“Everyone includes the sacks of manure who kidnapped my sister! They’ll have to show up to class, or risk being booted out of their neutral hostage location,” I said.
“If I find one of them, forget wandering around mapping this place, I can just follow them back to Dora.” I was already moving and chasing after the crowd that disappeared past the suit of armor.
“Will they see through my glamour? They know me. They’ve seen me.
They stalked my sister and broke in our house. ”
She shook her head. “The only way they’ll be able to see through the glamour is if you tell them you’re wearing one. I assume you have no intention of doing so.”
“You assume correctly.” I picked up the pace—renewed determination lighting a fire under my clown slippers. “And there’s no way they could be skipping classes and getting away with it by lying low somewhere?”
“The patches are spelled, human. If they weren’t attending their lessons, it would be known—and there’d be no place for them to hide.”
“That’s the best thing I’ve heard in a month.”
In my head, I figured those pricks would be stashed away in some basement dungeon, but if they had to play student just like the rest of us, then maybe it wasn’t optimism talking. I really could find my sister in a day or two.
“All I have to do is find them.”
Thankfully, demons were a loud and raucous bunch.
I had no trouble following their noise through the darkened, velvet-walled corridor to a set of closing double doors.
If I was an admirer of creepy, death-based architecture, I’d have a major crush on the dancing skeletons carved into the mahogany entrance.
They danced, balancing on bony tiptoes as their hands joined above their heads and at the meeting of the doorknobs.
I broke their embrace, throwing the doors open. “Oh no...”
This was not a lecture hall, or anything approaching the hell equivalent of one. The gong has summoned me to a place much, much worse.
“The cafeteria,” I rasped as dozens of pairs of eyes flew off the buffet, and landed on me.
“Fucking hell, look at this freak,” someone shouted.
And they were off.
Laughing and insulting me, they were tearing me apart before I even set a foot over the threshold.
There were two buffet lines taking the right and left sides of the front of the room, with food lines on both sides of the buffet to keep things moving.
Behind them were a bunch of small, round tables perfect for all the time I was destined to spend eating alone.
First looks told me this used to be the manor’s ballroom.
A floor grand, polished, and perfect for dancing was stomped on by muddy boots, pounded by hooves, and scratched by clawed feet. High above our heads, bone chandeliers clung to the rafters, showering us in dim, almost romantic, candlelight.
“Fucking disgusting piece of maggoty shit! I’d punch that nasty face in but it’d probably pop like a pus-filled balloon!”
Almost romantic. But even so, I wasn’t about to let their unpleasantness get to me.
I wasn’t a little kid anymore. What did petty, juvenile insults matter when life was heaping real problems on your head?
Taking a look around, I saw red eyes on top of red eyes.
Everyone was a demon, and nearly all of them were holding something I’d never expected to see in hell—cellphones.
With as many people were sneering at me, there were just as much kicking back with their feet on the table, messing about with their phones.
But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.
If a someone could invent phones in their human life, why wouldn’t they invent it in their afterlife?
I have to wonder what else hell and earth have in common? Besides bullies.
Steeling myself, I raised my chin, stepped fully inside, and shut the door behind me. “Good morning, gentlemen,” I said to raised brows and growing frowns. “I hope you had a good night to go with a great day. I’m looking forward to getting to know you all—”
Something came whizzing at me out of the corner of my eye.
I yelped, shooting back as a plate went sailing through the spot my head had just been in. If that had made contact, it definitely would’ve busted open one of my warts—and my skull.
“What the hell are you rambling about, freak!” shouted the same angry fellow. He stepped out from the line, bringing me eye to eye with an eight-foot-tall behemoth. “Are you mocking me?”
“No,” I cried. “I—”
“He’s definitely making fun of you, man,” someone called, snickering away. “You’re getting dogged out by a walking wart. Pathetic.”
The elephant demon snarled, his red eyes flashing dark with hate.
I likened him to an elephant because he had loose, saggy gray skin; huge, leaf-shaped ears; and two lethal, ivory tusks protruding from his mouth.
But that’s where the similarities ended. He didn’t have a long trunk, kind eyes, or a gentle nature. The demon before me was nothing but muscle on muscle, girth on girth, and anger on hatred. He punched his fists together and sparks—real blinding sparks—shot off his colliding knuckles.
“I’ll teach you to fuck with me.” Growling, he snatched up the collection of steak knives helpfully placed next to the pile of plates he threw.
“Wait, stop!” I bellowed, but it was drowned out.
“Yeah, kill him!”
“Stake him!”
“Aim for his eyes!”
The bloodthirsty hellish crowd screamed and stomped for my death and maiming, curdling my heart to paste.
“What is wrong with all of you!” I bellowed to an unhearing crowd. “Stop this! Stop!”
The elephant demon wound back and flung the knives—all aiming for my head and chest.
I dropped to the ground, hitting the marble painfully, and ripping a furious hiss out of Sabrina as the door opened behind me.
Everything stopped. The shouting, the banging, the stomping, the gleeful sociopathic lust for blood and pain.
Silence fell so fast and sudden, I wiggled on the ground—clapping my hands over my ears to see if I’d lost my hearing, and craning my neck to see what had happened.
Pushing up, I rocked back on my bottom and spun around—looking up at the sight that stole everyone’s attention.
Him.
The same beautiful, evil stranger who stole my patch, and then my room and bed. He towered over me, eye-wateringly resplendent in black pants and a simple black linen shirt... if not for the half a dozen knives sticking out of his chest, shoulders, and cheek.
I clapped my hand over my mouth, gasping at the thick, black ichor seeping from his wounds.
He looked down at the weapons riddling his chest—cocking his head like he was trying to understand how they came to be there. Then his eyes snapped up, and narrowed on the elephant demon.
“No,” the attacker barked. “No, Ronin, no! It wasn’t me, it was him!” He pointed straight at me. “He dared me to throw them. Fucking taunted me saying I didn’t have the balls to!”
My jaw dropped.
“He kept shouting throw them, throw them,” the liar plowed on, “because he knew you were behind the door! The cowardly fuck dropped at the last second because he wanted you to get hit and—”
The now-named Ronin didn’t blink, didn’t shout, didn’t so much as twitch a facial muscle. Lifting his hand, he snapped his fingers, and the demon exploded.
Bursting in a shower of guts, bones, and black blood that splattered the walls, ceiling, the food, everyone in the buffet line, and a shrieking me.
I howled like a banshee—frantically wiping at the foul-smelling blood splattered on my skin. I slapped something squishy away, and it bounced down beside my shoe. One look, and I saw it was a piece of his brain.
Pitching forward, I heaved—nothing—on the floor. An empty stomach wouldn’t let me vomit, but my body kept trying.
A hand hooked through my ruffles and collar, and started dragging me away.
“H-hey,” I croaked, twisting my neck around.
Ronin was pristine once again. While I was dry heaving, he obviously snapped away the knives and healed the wounds.
There wasn’t a trace to say they were ever there—not even holes in his shirt.
Unnaturally gorgeous once again, Ronin moved through a crowd that parted quickly for him, tugging me along the whole way.
“What are you doing?” I snapped. “Let me go! I did not tell that guy to throw those knives. I don’t have anything to do with him, or you!”
He didn’t even look down.
“Are you listening to me?” Outrage laced my voice. “Hello? Hello!”
Ronin walked up to a table of guys. They were up and vacating their seats before he even grabbed hold of a chair. Pulling it out, he lifted me up and plopped me blinking and stuttering on my backside.
I could only goggle at him in complete disbelief as he waved a hand, magically cleaned me of ichor and brains, pulled up a chair, stretched out, and dropped his head on my lap.
He was out and snoring within minutes, which was half as long as I stared at him—trying to make sense of the complete stranger who made me his pillow not once, but twice in the last twelve hours.
“Ummm...” I raised my head, looking around as if someone was going to help me.
Everyone, absolutely everyone, was staring at me—but no one made a move to help me. On the contrary, the tables nearest us emptied out quick—with all of the students moving to seats as far from us as they could get.
For the first time since I found myself in the company of demons, they were three things I never thought a demon could be—quiet, subdued, and behaved.