Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Bellcolor
I ’m screwed. Big-time. Valentina and I are late to our first self-defense class. But unlike Valentina, who somehow managed to get away without being punished, I got picked as the guinea pig for the first face-off.
I can tell that Ms. Kingsley is a tough bitch just by the glare she shot me as soon as I set foot in the gym. I won’t lie, I expected to see a male coach, but the powerful aura her firm body radiates makes it clear to me that she’s on par with any man.
And if the embarrassment of being called out by Ms. Kingsley to stand next to her in a boxing ring isn’t awful enough, add the school uniform for self-defense lessons. Seriously. Despite the changes my body is going through, standing next to a redheaded bombshell like Ms. Kingsley makes me feel like a Q-tip. And all the students staring at me must be thinking the same. Embarrassing? Understatement.
“Gather ‘round, children,” Ms. Kingsley calls out to the class. “I promise there’s no cause for alarm. Everything we demonstrate during the first year won’t include blood.”
Blood? Fuck, fuck, fuck. My head spins and my muscles cramp. Fucking breathe, Belle . Out of the corner of my eye I pick up on Valentina’s distress, and motion to her that I’m able to control the madness threatening to take hold of me. Of course there’s no blood, you absolute bitch. I can’t bleed anyway. I have a feeling Ms. Kingsley didn’t just happen to pick me, even if the rest of the class isn’t aware of that. Have I mentioned that I’m screwed?
“Self-defense training is very important, and they’ll be about fifty percent of your overall studies during the next three years of your life here with us at the University of Bologna. We believe that fulfilling your calling, which will be selected at the end of your studies, is only possible if you’re able to defend yourselves. Don’t forget, children, we’re at war. And in war you must know how to defend yourselves, not just how to fight.”
Ms. Kingsley finishes her opening remarks, turns to me and brings up her hands in a fighting stance. She nods to me, and I imitate her posture. But my hands are shaking wildly, and my legs are unconsciously backing up until my back hits the ring ropes.
“This is just a demonstration, Bellcolor, you have nothing to fear,” Ms. Kingsley tries to calm me down, but it doesn’t help at all. The look in her eyes could freeze Hell itself.
She darts towards me with no preparation, and all I can do is use my arms to defend my body. She strikes me without pausing, without hesitating, without mercy. I take the hits all over my body. The blows to my sides are the worst. I feel my internal organs rocking, my head is spinning and all I want to do is vomit from the pain pulsing through every point in my body.
“Stop…” I manage to say, but my plea goes unheard. She doesn’t stop for a moment. The familiar lump settles in my throat and I fight with my whole body to weep, to release the tremendous frustration that keeps building up inside me.
I think Ms. Kingsley feels my surrender, because she pauses for a moment. I lower my arms and find that I’m wrong, her kick hits the side my head and my slim body plummets to the mattress.
I sob. Everyone watching us must think I’m a whining baby, I’m not bleeding after all and Ms. Kingsley wasn’t hitting me very hard. But the truth is my whole body aches like hell and I can barely breathe.
“No more…” I raise my hands in surrender as she approaches.
I’m surprised to learn that she wasn’t planning to attack me. She reaches out a hand to help me up. I shrink away as she pulls me to my feet and helps stabilize me.
“That was excellent!” She puts her hands on her hips as she addresses the class. The bitch isn’t even breathing hard, while I feel like I got hit by a fucking truck. “Now that we know what our starting point is, we can build a training program that will produce results quickly.”
A hand rises from within the crowd in front of us. It’s Liam. Ms. Kingsley nods at him, giving him permission to speak. “With all due respect, Ms. Kingsley, wouldn’t it have been better to pick someone who represents most of the class?” His tone is almost as nasty as the smile on his face. Son of a bitch.
“Our strength is measured only by our weakest link,” she replies without hesitation. Is she serious? She beat the hell out of me and somehow I’m still standing. I seriously doubt any of them would’ve lasted as long.
“If that’s our sitch, someone better tell the Devil his army’s fucked,” he says, invoking laughter from the rest of the class.
My hands curl into fists at my side and I feel my blood burning in my body. I can barely hear Ms. Kingsley’s warnings or the gasps from my classmates, pain ignites in the palms of my hands, and that familiar itch in my gums returns and grows stronger as my talons keep growing and digging into my skin. The pain stirs the rage building within me. I lift my gaze to Liam, who balks at my appearance. I want to teach him a lesson. To teach him that words have power. That his insulting words hurt more than any of Ms. Kingsley’s blows. Most of all, I want to prove to myself that I’m not weak. I don’t overthink it and bound forward, but I’m immediately stopped. Ms. Kingsley’s firm hands grip me, and I go wild, screaming, trying to get out of her impressive hold. When I’ve almost squirmed out of her grip, a tremendous blow hits me right in the ribs, and I fall back.
“Fuck…” I hiss, shutting my eyes tightly, trying to get air into my lungs. When I open my eyes I see Ms. Kingsley standing over me, her furious glare freezing me like someone poured a bucket of ice water on me.
“Ten laps, on top of the ones already assigned to you! Now!” she commands, pointing towards the exit to the field.
I mumble curses and barely manage to get to my feet. I don’t look at the excited audience, who are surely all riled up at the thrilling events they hadn’t been expecting for their first lesson in self-defense training.
I’ve only fulfilled half my obligations but my legs feel like they can’t take the physical effort anymore. I doubt I’ll be able to complete all the laps I’ve been tasked with. If I thought the Dean was an incarnation of the Devil, I seem to have found and even worthier contender for the esteemed title: Ms. Kingsley turned out to be Satan himself.
My pace is so slow that my classmates have long since left the gym, while I still try to complete my punishment.
Valentina says goodbye to the trio and sits on the bench, waiting for me to finish. This time she isn’t cheering me on, she’s just sitting there examining me. At least it’s not fucking raining today. The pain searing every organ in my body only makes it even harder for me.
I wonder if we’re allowed to take sick days, because I’m not sure I’ll be able to move when this nightmare is over. To say nothing of the homework Dr. Abano assigned for tomorrow. I’m really worried I might lose my eyesight at the end of this punishment, because after the last lap my vision’s gotten blurry and black spots are dancing before my eyes.
“ I want you to be critical and try to understand what was cut out, what isn’t told and why. ” I’m reminded of Dr. Abano’s instructions, and try to understand how we’re meant to know what isn’t told. Are we just supposed to make up the missing information he claims exists in the scripture?
A sense of discomfort stirs in me as I remember my wandering through the library last night. Dr. Abano said he was disappointed I hadn’t found the right questions. Did that mean the library wasn’t the right place to find them?
I come to a halt. Damn, how did I miss that?
We’d read the Old Testament story of Creation today. Even though Dr. Abano said it was just a book like any other, and humans were the one who attributed sanctity to it, I have a feeling that’s not the whole truth about why he chose that book specifically. I’m reminded of the one book in the folklore section that dealt with Jewish mythology. The Old Testament belongs to the Hebrews, didn’t it?
I cross the soccer field in a mad dash, snatching my backpack off the bench and passing by Valentina, who calls my name again and again.
“I’ll be right back! Bathroom!” I wave a hand to keep her from following me.
I run down the campus corridors, completely forgetting that my legs are meant to be totally worn out; something inside me tells me I’m onto something big, and I have to go deeper into the investigation I’d started to find the answers I’ve been chasing since I joined the Devil’s ranks.
I pass by Ms. Lando and ignore her greeting, making my way directly to the folklore section. I immediately find the book I was browsing through yesterday, which had caught my eye because of the unusual depiction of the angels, and I stop on a page about Lilith. Until that moment I hadn’t stopped to look at the illustration of Lilith because she’d seemed like just another angel, winged like the angels in the other books. But she wasn’t an angel at all. She was Adam’s first wife, and she was a demon.
I grab my backpack and pull out the Old Testament we received during Dr. Abano’s lecture. I read from chapter 1: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them 1 .” And immediately afterwards came the contradiction in chapter 2: “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him 2 … And theLordGod caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And from the rib, which theLordGod had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man 3 .”
God created two women for his human man. But what happened to the first one?
As I read the third chapter we’ve been assigned, I realize that even though all mention of her has been removed, she got her own in the end.
“Lilith,” I whisper, caressing the page that mentions the snake – a repeating motif in the illustrations of demon women I found in other books. While humans are the creation of God, Lilith was the first marked by Satan. A human who became a demon, just like the other demons who found their way to Adam’s land. The story of creation isn’t just the tale of human creation, it’s the story that describes the start of the war between God and Satan, with its central arena being the world we know today.
I flip through the book of Jewish mythology and pause at the illustration of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam, Eve, the snake, the gang’s all there. Three birds circle the tree, and they catch my eye. You wouldn’t think it’ strange to see birds near trees, but something about the way they circle over it seems almost artificial.
I return to the illustration of Lilith, and read of the three angels barring her path. Three angels who oversee medicine. Just as Prof. Sapienti said, healing abilities only exist in the divine realm.
“Senoy, Sansenoy, Semangelof…” I whisper their names. Suddenly thunder splits the skies and knocks out the power in the library.
I lift my gaze from the book, and my heart starts pounding in my chest. Absolute darkness has fallen on the library, and its constant cold sends chills down my back. Glowing eyes shine from among the stacks, and I leap back. I rub my eyes, trying to get used to the darkness, trying to find the eyes I could swear were looking at me. But they were gone.
And yet the feeling that someone was watching me didn’t go away, and my hair stood on end at the invasive feeling.
I don’t dawdle, probing the desk with my hands, throwing the books into my backpack and fleeing the library. I walk the darkened halls until I emerge into the campus yard. Gleaming white eyes appear in every corner, and joyous cheers are heard in every direction.
I pull myself inward and stick to the wall of the building. Every time I lift my gaze I find another pair of glowing eyes reminding me of the ones watching me in the library.
The timing of the power outage is too suspicious. I’m terrified, and maybe that was the goal of the person watching me? To scare me? I can’t retreat now. I get to my room and discover that it’s empty. I thank all the damned ones that Valentina loves scented candles, and I light her entire overblown collection. With the room fully illuminated I can slightly calm my surging blood.
I open the backpack, pull out the Old Testament and another book about the divine, rifling through the backpack only to be disappointed that the book on Jewish mythology isn’t there. I could swear on all I hold dear that I’d put both books into the backpack before getting the hell out of the library. Someone or something was indeed watching me, and didn’t stop there.
I’m sure it took the book from me. Now I have no doubt, my answers lie with three angels whose names incite chaos even in the most damned place in the world.