35. Pandora
As I sat in Demonic Curses, Dex, Hemlock, and Skel watched me with what I could only call predatory interest. Their stares prickled at my skin, but I sought comfort in my hair again, a silky curtain that shielded me from the dimly lit classroom. I did my best to ignore them and focus on our professor.
Dusk had her hair up in a long gray ponytail today, and she glided across the room as she lectured. “Demons curse for many reasons,” she began, her voice clear and commanding. “Revenge, power, or to bind a soul to their will. The intricacies of such curses are as varied as they are dangerous.”
Most of the students didn’t care, but some hung on her every word. It was a typical mix for the reform academy. I had thought that more demons would be hungry for well…knowledge. This was a reform academy, a chance to learn more about how to function better in society. I was sorely mistaken.
A student in the front row I had never seen before spoke up. His voice was a dark, disembodied rumble that sent a shiver down my spine. “What about cursing with dark magic?” he chuckled, an unsettling sound that seemed out of place with everything going on in the Demon Capital and the academy itself.
I found my gaze glued to him, trying to place his face among my memories of classmates, but I couldn’t. His arms moved erratically as he spoke, his laugh filled with madness.
“Of course,” Dusk stated, irritation clear as she placed her hands on her hips and narrowed her gaze at him. “It’s possible, just like any magic. But it isn’t recommended. Obviously.”
He stood, the chair falling back behind him and hitting the rock floor with a loud clatter. “Dark magic isn’t recommended? It’s the dawn of a new subspecies of demon and a gift of dark magic.”
“What?” Dusk asked incredulously. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Now.”
Even in the dim light, I noticed the dark veins webbing his skin. It was a sign of deep dark magic infection, of a soul compromised and a body only living on the dark magic’s power. He was infected, and it was not a new infection.
“You say that now.” He chuckled. “But dark magic will infect everyone at this academy and all demons in the Demon Capital, no, in all of Kalista!”
Murmurs spread through the class.
The student turned, and his black eyes, no whites of his eyes showing at all, met mine. Fear impaled my chest as my instincts screamed at me to flee.
Dusk”s gaze widened, and her magic sparked the air. “Everyone, get out of the classroom. Now!” she yelled, but the student had already launched himself at me, eyes wild with the depravity of dark magic.
I jolted to my feet, but before I could react, Skel was there, yanking me back over a row of desks. “Take her!” His vanilla and smoke scent was a sudden comfort in the chaos.
But then Hemlock”s strong arms encircled me, his smell of spicy bourbon strangely reassuring. “I’ve got her!”
Dex stepped out of the shadows in front of us, his tendrils lashing out to slice through the oncoming infected demon, and it did. The shadow tendril cleaved down from the man’s skull to where his legs separated, and two halves of his body dropped onto the ground.
But that didn’t stop him.
His two halves turned to black goo that reanimated his severed pieces, moving together until his regular form stood back in front of us, and he smiled a sinister smile full of rotten teeth. “Woah. That was great!”
“Dude, what the fuck!” Dex shouted. “If I kill you, fucking stay dead! Is it that hard to just die? I mean, honestly.”
“Dex, stop baiting the infected demon,” Hemlock hissed, his hot breath against my ear.
“Why shouldn’t he?” Skel took a hit on his pipe. “It’s disrespectful not to stay dead when someone kills you.”
“See! He gets it.” Dex turned his back on the demon and pointed toward Skel.
The infected demon laughed maniacally. “You feel familiar.”
“That’s probably not good,” Dex groaned, leaning his head back.
My soul resonated with something dark, and the man’s eyes found mine again.
“No. You feel like a threat,” his disembodied voice accused, echoing around the room.
A familiar tug pulled at my core, and a stream of death smoke poured from my mouth, drawn to the tainted soul before me. He had to go. He was unnatural, and I had the power to put an end to it.
“Oh, fucking fuck! She’s doing it again!” Hemlock released me abruptly, his tattoos of wolves and hawks flexing as he recoiled from me, but I was too focused to give it the attention it probably deserved.
The students that remained in the class screamed in horror.
My smoke swirled around the infected student, entering his mouth, nose, and ears rapidly.
I tilted my head, feeling my eyes tingle. My magic devoured the dark magic and soul within, and I felt my reserves fill. It was blissful and bitter all at the same time. The smoke returned, seeping into my stomach with a painful drop that wrenched a groan from my damaged throat.
“The dark magic and soul are gone,” I croaked, hot tears welling in my eyes.
The student”s gray flesh began to crack and flake away, his body disintegrating into ash in front of my very eyes. Then, the sickness hit me, violent and relentless. I dropped to my hands and knees and vomited onto the remains of what had once been a demon.
Everyone in the room was frozen; I could practically feel a mix of shock and fear. Dusk ushered the remaining students out, leaving me with Dex, Hemlock, Skel, and the growing pile of ash.
“Holy fucking Fates, trouble,” Dex said, astonishment clear in his tone.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Skel shouted, fear saturating his voice. “Maybe don’t praise the soul eater for eating fucking souls!”
“But she did a good job. You know, she hasn’t been able to lately,” Dex muttered.
“Is she like…okay?” Hemlock asked.
“Of course I’m not okay!” I choked out, sucking in a breath as I claimed a break from the vomiting session.
I had just eaten a soul, an infected dark magic soul that was tainted, but I did. And unlike when I ate Mother’s soul, I could feel my magic swirling inside of me in a way I had never felt before. When I ate her soul, I had been close to death, and my magic healed me. I had no idea this was what it felt like to be a demon with filled magic reserves, but my magic felt…alive. I felt like I could do anything, control my own magic.
Headmaster Blackthistle entered the room with Hunter and Daryl in tow.
“Gravesend, are you injured?” The headmaster”s amber scent filled the space, his green eyes assessing the mess with a strategic calm.
Hunter, with his sweet chocolate aroma and hooded icy eyes, rushed to my side, concern etched into every line of his face. “Starlight, talk to me. What do you feel?”
Daryl had his black eyes trained on Hunter. “Starlight?”
Hunter whipped his head back to my father and barked, “Not the time!”
“You’re right. There’s always later.” He sighed, kneeling down on the other side of me. “Pandora, are you okay?”
“I—” My body heaved as I hurled more dark tar-like puke.
“We need to make sure she’s not infected,” Headmaster Blackthistle stated matter-of-factly, brandishing a golden staff-like artifact.
“Give me that,” Daryl snapped, taking it from the headmaster roughly. “She’s my daughter. I’ll check on her.”
As I continued to heave, my body shaking with exhaustion, Daryl moved the artifact over my body. The council members began chanting an incantation, making the artifact pulse with a white light, but it did nothing to ease my agony.
“Is she going to make it?” Skel asked, his voice tinged with genuine concern.
Hemlock clenched his fists as if this whole situation pissed him off. “She”s fine,” he grunted.
Dex hovered close behind Hunter. “I need them to tell me she’s okay.”
My stomach felt like it was turning inside out as I hurled, but when I finally stopped puking, the chanting stopped, too.
Exhaustion swept over me as sweat clung to me in a sheen.
I didn’t know who I fell against, but their touch was like a healing balm to my soul.
“She’s not infected. She doesn’t have an ounce of dark magic in or on her.” Daryl muttered in shock. “She…she absorbed it?”
“Only time will tell what it will do to her,” Headmaster Blackthistle murmured, and it sounded like the creepiest thing I had ever heard.