Chapter Eight #4
“And why’d you give Tristan a pass?” The blond werewolf guy was getting louder and angrier.
“I heard No-Name’s been slumming it in the demon wing!
What happened, Tristan? You failed your people, so now you’re sucking the dick of any demon who’ll give you a free ride through the academy!
You think that’s going to get you back into the pack? ”
Heat flared in my cheeks. “That’s not—!”
“You’re going to want to watch your mouth, Lyall,” Tristan dropped. “It’s a poor leader who blames a loss on anyone but himself.”
Lyall did not like that, if his dangerously purpling cheeks were anything to go by. “What the fuck did you just—?!”
“Same goes for you, fly boy.” Tristan turned on Iarla. “You got caught in your own trap and ended up pinned like a fly stuck in shit. That’s your own damn fault, so back off Charlie.”
Iarla sneered at Tristan just as hard as me, but for some reason, he didn’t tell him off for addressing him.
“What the fuck is a Charlie?” he gritted.
“If you’re talking about that pox-ridden thing, then you should pick another lost cause, legend boy.
Because I’m not the only one who knows he’s a brother-fucking cheater. ”
“That’s right,” the others chimed in. “He’s been cheating from the start.”
My eyes bugged. “But I— I don’t even have a brother!” Wait, that’s not the point. “The point is that I didn’t cheat! You all saw me!” I pointed at the little creature nonchalantly eating cotton candy on my shoulder. “All I did was be kind to him.”
Confused looks passed among the separate groups. “He did what?”
“Kee-i-nnd?” someone repeated. “Is that some kind of magic?”
“Kind?” Iarla spat back. “What the fuck does that even mean? Stop fucking making up words and tell us how you’re cheating!”
My jaw hung open. Hell doesn’t have a word for kindness either?! “I’m not making up words! I’m saying I was nice to him!”
Blank stares.
“Considerate?”
Blank stares.
“Empathetic?”
Nothing.
“Ugh!” I burst out. “I took a second to try to understand this creature instead of hauling off and attacking him. Did it ever occur to you that the reason he didn’t seriously hurt any of you is because he didn’t want to in the first place?
Not even when you were attacking and trying to kill him? What do you think that means?”
If possible, they looked even more dip-damn-dumbfounded.
“It means,” I said slowly, “that imps—or at least this one—is not a threat. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wants to play. So I offered to play with him, and he let me pass... Do you see?” I prompted. “No cheating required.”
A thick, penetrating silence fell over the field. The guys stared at the imp as if for the first time since they came into this horrible world, they met someone who wasn’t an enemy.
“Nah,” Iarla dropped. “He’s lying through his rotting teeth.
The only explanation is he’s fucking that nasty little thing, and No-Name’s been climbing in and getting some action from the back.
Last I checked, cheating is punishable by expulsion in this shitpit, and there’s only one way to be expelled.
” Iarla fixed on the patch stuck to my metallic skintight jacket. “Hold him down.”
He said that, but Iarla charged me himself—his magnificent wings sprouting from his back and readying to cut off all escape.
A shadow fell over me. I jumped to find a large, scarred, muscled back suddenly between me and Ravenscar.
“Rethink this move, son of a bird-fucker.” I’d never heard such menace in Tristan’s voice. Not even when he was beating Kazuya and his cronies to death. “Because you won’t survive putting a hand on him.”
“Hmm,” Sabrina hummed, speaking for the first time since this whole ordeal kicked off. “Protective of you, isn’t he? I wonder why.”
She loaded enough suggestion in her tone that I knew she was implying something negative, but I blushed like it was the opposite just the same.
It had been a long time since a guy was protective of me.
The last guy I was sorta seeing didn’t even lift his head from his phone when a customer smacked me on the ass and offered me a bigger tip if I met him outside in the alley.
“Guys, please,” I cried, shooting out from behind Tristan.
“There’s no need to fight! This is all a misunderstanding— And are you really just going to sit there?
!” I screeched at Erlik, who at this point had conjured a lounge and was really going to town on the object stuck in his hoof. “Get up and do something!”
“Argh!” Iarla leaped off the ground, his powerful wings buffeting a gust of wind that nearly blew me off my feet.
Ravenscar ripped a feather from his wings and before my very eyes, it grew, and grew, and grew—transforming from a shimmering, delicate thing into a lethal longsword with an ivory hilt, and a blade so honed, it looked like it could slit my throat just from being in the same room with me.
Murderous rage lit those icy cold eyes aflame as he flew across the distance, racing to slice through Tristan, and get to me.
The imp pointed at him.
A shadow fell over Ravenscar. My eyes didn’t get a chance to send the information to my brain before it all dumped on him—weighing down his wings and body, and slamming him to the ground under a pile of mud.
A horrible stench hit my nose and almost ejected my lunch from my stomach. Clapping my hand over my face, I gagged. Not mud! Definitely not mud!
Everything stopped.
Even Erlik stopped fussing with his hoof to wide-eyed, brows-raised gape at the lofty fae prince... buried under a mountain of manure.
“Haha!” someone guffawed, and the silence broke.
Loud, raucous, unhinged laughter echoed over the field. The demons fell on their knees clutching their chests. The werewolves howled. The vampires lost their cold, stoic masks as soft, hissing chuckles escaped their breathless lungs, and laughing loudest of all, was Erlik.
“Winner,” Erlik wheezed, pawing and stomping the ground. “Winner! The kiss-ass wins!”
The only ones not laughing were the slack-jawed fae and—
“Erugh!” Ravenscar bellowed—his head popping free and hitting the burning air. The shit-covered man took one look at his predicament, and snapped to me. “You.”
“That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” Tristan told me out of the corner of his mouth. “But you’re going to want to run now.”
“Wha—?”
“Seriously,” Tristan barked, shifting before my eyes. “Run!”
Red-faced and enraged, Ravenscar shouted, “Kill it!”
Wings ripped from the backs of the fae. I was turning and running before their feet left the ground. The imp poofed out of existence—leaving me well and truly on my own.
“Ahhh!” I raced across the dirt to—where?! There was nothing ahead of me except for the forest of dead trees and miles and miles of nothing. If I wanted to get to the manor, I had to go back the way I came, and there were seventeen very angry fae between me and the way I came.
The wind off seventeen pairs of wings buffeted the dusty earth, kicking up a red cloud of stinging, choking dirt. I ran hard and fast, daring not to look back, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing the shadows of a dozen swords bearing down on me.
“Die!” His shout blew out my eardrum. I felt his presence on the back of my neck like the hand of Lucifer. “Demon scum—!”
Something hard slammed into me, tearing me out of my boots. The world twisted and spun me around in a whirling, heaving kaleidoscope, then spat me out on the cold ground.
I immediately pitched forward and vomited.
Heaving and choking, my stomach finally gave in and emptied me of my lunch—leaving me wheezing and shaking where I knelt.
“What...?” I blinked, trying to make sense of my new surroundings. I was inside—I knew that at once, but how? Did the faeman magic me away to kill me in a secluded spot?
Vision clearing, I began to make out shelves and shelves of books.
“A... library?”
“Not quite.”
I jerked. Whirling around, I landed on the relaxed figure slouching in an armchair, lazily lighting a cigarette.
My blood ran cold. “Professor Radu?”
He arched a brow, slowly blinking those lantern eyes as if he didn’t have the energy to expend answering stupid questions. Of course it was him. Who else would it be but him?
A proper look around showed me I wasn’t in a library.
I was just in the bedroom of someone who really loved to read.
Every square inch of wall was covered by towering bookshelves that reached as high as the rafters, and on the rafters were even more books—stacked precariously on top of the wooden beams, waiting to rain from the ceiling like knowledge bombs.
I couldn’t be too sure that it was a bedroom, because there was no bed, but there was something incredibly cozy about all the squashy armchairs circling the fireplace that made me believe this room couldn’t be anything but a place to relax.
And that was far from what I was doing.
I clung to the wall, fear jackhammering my heart into paste. “What— What am I doing in this room? Did you bring me here?”
“Obviously, and you’re lucky I did,” he replied. “Those fae would’ve killed you, and then killed you again for dirtying their swords with your blood. Your”—he licked his lips, eyes flashing—“dirty demon blood.”
He said that last sentence as a statement, so why did it sound like a question?
“Well, then... thank you,” I rasped, slowly rising to my feet. “You saved my life, Professor. Not even Erlik could be bothered to do that.” I tried for a smile. “So, if that’s all, I’ll just go—”
“You’re an odd one, Char... lie.” He drew out my name, rolling it around in his sinfully delectable mouth. “Your name, your manner, your actions—all strange. Furthermore, no one seems to know who you are or where you came from.”
My blood chilled. “You asked around about me?”