Oh, the testosterone. You could have cut it with a cafeteria spoon.
“We were sparring. I got stupid.” I took another two steps, my heels landing harder than they should have and pain jarring up through my entire spine. “You all right?” This was directed at Irving, who was coughing, a deep rasping sound. But he didn’t look almost purple now.
He glared at me, and I felt sorry. It had just been a little friendly workout, nothing big. I should have just rolled my eyes and let his posturing pass.
But instead, I’d gone off on him. And I was supposed to be so much more mature than boys at this age.
“Sorry, Irving.” My back seized up again, and I breathed out through my mouth. The muttering growl behind me receded a little, and I put my hand down to help him up. “I should have grabbed you and helped you into that wall instead of trying to punch you in the nose. Go figure.” It was really hard to sound conciliatory with something dripping and dribbling off my top lip. I was hoping it wasn’t snot. That would be gross.
I sniffed, and the rest of the nosebleed let loose in a pattering gush.
Irving froze, staring up at me. His pupils shrank. A spatter of bright-red blood hung in the air, then splashed right on his clothes, starring the mat next to him too.
“Shit,” Dylan said, and leapt on him. “Get her out of here!”
Hands grabbed me, hot against the bare skin of my upper arms. I was dragged backward, and the world threatened to turn over without me attached to it. The ringing inside my head got worse, the sound of owl wings brushing the inside of my skull in frantic bursts. The wulfen hauled me out, and I heard Irving screaming as Dylan held him down, the bloodhunger turning his voice into a harpy’s shriek.
Yeah. Just another night at the Schola. The fight doesn’t stop until there’s blood on the floor.
But when the blood is mine, it can send the boy djamphir a little crazy. It’s something about me being svetocha. Super-happy stuff in my blood even before I “bloom,” something that reaches down and wakes up the crazy in anyone with a touch of nosferat.
After the blooming hit, I’d have my own superhuman strength and speed. And that super-happy stuff in my blood would make me toxic to suckers just like Raid is toxic to insects.
But now it just made me vulnerable. I smelled like a really nice snack.
Dylan had been drilling it into my head for the whole week now, on and on, that I couldn’t spar with the djamphir students. They couldn’t control the bloodhunger very well, I could get seriously hurt, yadda yadda.
Christophe had never told me about that.
There were a lot of things he hadn’t told me.
The wulfen dragged me out into the hall, and the rushing noise inside my head got bigger. I think I probably passed out. At least, the world got really faraway and dim, and the only thing that mattered was hearing Graves. He could talk now that the rage had passed, and he was saying the same thing over and over again, a catch in his voice right before my name.
“It’s okay, Dru. I promise it’s okay.”
He didn’t sound like he believed it either.
CHAPTER 2
The ice pack stung, but holding it against the bridge of my nose meant less swelling and bruising. I sighed, shifted uncomfortably, and blinked away the hot welling of reflex tears. Graves had thought to grab my jacket, too, so the goose bumps on my arms were covered.
“It was my fault,” I repeated stubbornly. “I should have pulled Irving past me instead of trying to paste him on the nose.”
“That’s not the point.” Dylan sighed. Some days he sighed more than others, and some days it seems like he did nothing but. He had a face that could have been on a Roman coin, and I’d heard his real name was something unpronounceable and Goth. Not like black-lipstick-and-angst, but actual barbarian.
Around here, you never knew. Even the teachers looked like teenagers. The really old ones look about twenty sometimes. But they’re late drifters, and they never get to looking thirty. My dad’s friend August, the one I’d called to confirm Christophe’s story, must’ve been one of them. I wondered about it, but it didn’t seem polite to ask.
Dylan pushed a hand back through his dark hair and settled more firmly in his chair. His desk was stacked with papers, and a large silver blob I stared at the first time I was in here until I realized it was a skull dipped in shiny metal. The skull had long canines and long pointed incisors, and I decided not to ask if it was a real sucker skull for the thousandth time.
Behind Dylan, shelves of dusty leather-bound books stood frowning down on me, cobwebs ghosting up near their tops. The place smelled like leather, dust, and the musky smell of teenage hormones, but it still felt like the principal’s office.
I’ve been in principals’ offices all over America. Before I figured out the best way to get by was to just keep my head down.
I’ve kind of been sucking at that lately.
Graves stood just behind me. Dylan didn’t offer him a chair. I didn’t like that, especially since Dylan had refused to talk or sit until I sat down. His office had windows, with the obligatory iron bars. I’d made some sort of joke when I first got here about whether the bars were to keep us in or the suckers out, and the dead silence and pained look on everyone’s face had told me to shut up.
Outside the barred windows, the lawns were painted with moonlight. Trees stood guard, silvered with threads of fog, a white wall sending spectral fingers up to touch naked black branches.
The ice pack crackled as I held it to the bridge of my nose, then peeked out at Dylan.