The Triad of Finity (4 page)

“I wish we could go after her,” said Dean, as he had many times before.

“Tsss,” Oliver hissed in sullen agreement. Over the last two years, they’d had plenty of time to research the possibilities for getting to Arcana themselves. Traveling through space-time was no easy thing. Traditionally, only certain higher demons could do it, and they always had to secure permission from a Time Merchynt who existed across four-dimensional space. Emalie and her family had used just such a being, Chronius, who granted access to time portals in the form of his fingernail.

Last January, already tired of waiting around, Oliver and Dean had climbed down into the Yomi and asked Chronius if he could send them back to Arcana, but he merely dismissed them with a wave of his smoky, time-blurred hand.

“Look at you,” he had whispered. “A vampire and a zombie. You have no form of payment that I could possibly want.” Emalie and the Orani had apparently been able to give Chronius information from the minds of his competitors in the Yomi. Emalie had also been known to pay Merchynts with future days of human happiness. Neither Dean nor Oliver had those.

“We’re never going to find her,” Oliver muttered.

They sat silently in the rain.

“Nnnn,” Dean moaned quietly a moment later. Oliver turned to see him wincing and scratching brusquely at his forearm, his long yellow fingernails leaving black streaks across his blotched purple-and-yellow skin.

“Bad?” Oliver asked.

“Yeah,” said Dean. He scratched harder, and now a patch of skin tore free. Black fluid dripped down his wet arm. Oliver’s nose twitched at a tangy smell of decay, like spoiled milk mixed with rancid meat; he was getting better at not showing his disgust at this, but it wasn’t easy.

“Antibiotics aren’t helping?”

Dean just shook his head. “The only thing that helps is the rain. The cold, too. And, well, you know …”

Oliver nodded grimly. Over the last two years, Dean’s zombie condition had been getting worse: the necrosis of his skin, the festering bacteria that no amount of antibiotics or toxins could totally cure. Rain eased the near-constant itching he felt, but the moisture led to mold problems too severe to be treated even with the pure quartz sand baths his mom Tammy prepared for him.

The fact was that even though zombies were more long-lived than vampires, eventually they tended to rot down to the bare bones (they usually kept their eyeballs and brains, though, along with various kinds of bone fungi, which made for an appearance that even a vampire could find unsettling). It was the natural way of their existence. But it was happening to Dean faster than most, because there was only one thing that somewhat staved off the effects of time, and it was the one thing that Dean swore not to eat.

Human brains. But much like human blood for a vampire, once a zombie had a taste for brains, there was no turning back. The desire became an unquenchable thirst that overtook any other kind of rational thought. The only way to keep from becoming a moaning brute like the other zombies was to resist. Which meant living in near constant rot and pain. Both options sucked.

“I’m not going to be one of them,” said Dean quietly. This was something he repeated often.

“I know,” said Oliver, but he had to wonder: How long could Dean hold out? He was only a zombie after all. His destiny was inevitable, just like Oliver’s destiny to get a demon.

On nights like this one, Oliver couldn’t help entertaining a certain thought: Maybe opening the Gate and ending all this was actually the best way things could turn out, at least for the two of them. Dean’s suffering would be over. And Oliver would be a fully demonized vampire, so his guilt and worry would be gone. There’d be no more yearning for his soul, no more emptiness or confusion, and there’d be no more missing Emalie. …

They reached school. Rodrigo let them in the back door. Oliver waited as Dean ducked downstairs to a bathroom, where he changed into a dry school uniform that he kept stashed in the ceiling panels: white shirt, black pants and a tie, just like Oliver’s.

They headed upstairs, passing the glowing demonic forms of the grotesqua dancing around the walls. They reached the second floor and pushed through crowds of younger vampires who jumped away, mainly due to Dean’s smell, but also because Oliver and Dean were in the ninth Pentath now: the oldest kids.

They passed the classroom where Oliver had attended eighth Pentath, and headed up a smaller set of stairs. At the top, a narrow door to the school’s attic stood open. This was their classroom.

Dean used to go to a home school with two other students: a zombie girl named Autumn Fitch and a human boy named Sledge. Autumn’s mother, a zombie shaman named Ariana, taught the classes in Dean’s basement.

It had been a good arrangement, until last spring, when Dean’s family took a trip out to Spokane for the April school vacation to visit family (Dean had traveled in the trunk to spare his siblings from his odor). Dean’s mother, Tammy, agreed to let Ariana hold class for Autumn and Sledge while they were gone. But one night, Autumn and Sledge, as they often did, got into a nasty fight about American football, specifically over the finer points of the Seahawks’ off-season moves. Zombies in general, and Sledge too, were huge football fans. If Sledge could have kept himself in a normal school, he would definitely have been on a team.

The fight spiraled; they started pushing one another, and Autumn ended up biting Sledge. A zombie bite was infectious, and would turn a human in about forty-eight hours. But the smell of fresh blood led Autumn and Ariana to agree that letting Sledge become a zombie would be cruel, so instead they made a meal of Sledge’s brains and entrails, and then, in a state of bloodlust, they left without cleaning up and proceeded to go on a rampage around the neighborhood. A disgusted vampire couple passing by beheaded Ariana, and Autumn barely escaped, minus her right arm.

So that was the end of the home school. The Aunders returned home to a grim reminder of what Dean really was, of what he was bound to become. Dean hadn’t seen Autumn
, and things hadn’t been the same at home, since.

Of course, having a zombie in a vampire school should have been unthinkable, except in Dean’s case there were two exceptions: First, Half-Light liked having Dean and Oliver in the same place, to keep an eye on them. And second, there was a new student in the ninth Pentath who liked having him around, too.

“Minion!”

Dean was just inside the door when his shoulders slumped. “Ugh, what already?” He moaned, rolling his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling miserably.

“I need my sweatshirt!” called Lythia LeRoux. She snapped her fingers expectantly.

“Get your own stupid sweatshirt!” Dean muttered, yet he obediently shuffled over to Lythia’s desk, picked up her sweatshirt, and threw it up to her. “There, happy?”

Lythia scowled, brushing her upside down hair out of her eyes. “Don’t talk back to me, slave!” she shouted.

“Will if I want to,” mumbled Dean, walking away.

“Give it a rest, Lythia,” Oliver snapped at her.

“Shut up, Nocturne!” Lythia hissed. She glared at him menacingly, her eyes glowing, but they were only a pale blue now, not the lavender they’d once been, and her look didn’t have the same effect it once had.

“Whatever,” said Oliver, waving a hand at her dismissively as he continued across the room.

Lythia snarled, but didn’t say anything further. Instead, she turned back to her ceiling-mates and leaned in, whispering conspiratorially.

It had been a long two years, from the middle of the last year of eighth Pentath into this second year of ninth, with Lythia LeRoux as one of his classmates. She’d lost her demon during the Anointment ceremony, and so had been rendered just another middle-school student. Of course, she hadn’t lost her attitude, or her evil streak, but she had lost all of her advanced vampire powers, along with that dizzying demon presence she used to have. She was still technically Dean’s master, and could still command him to do her bidding, but without her demon strength, Dean could somewhat resist her, or at least complain loudly, and carry out his instructions lackadaisically and with almost no enthusiasm.

“So annoying,” Dean muttered now as he walked over to the far wall.

The attic was a long, triangular room with only two circular windows, one in the center of each end wall. The corners were piled with a hundred years of junk from the human school: old computers and typewriters, outdated globes and maps, microscopes and broken chairs. Hidden in these piles were the necessary vampire class supplies: weapons, texts, and, importantly, the set of triple reinforced titanium shackles.

Class mainly took place on a circle of thick floor pillows, centered around a design of concentric circles made from different-colored crystal sands. When the Pentath had begun, there had been seventeen pillows including one for Mr. VanWick, eighteen counting Dean’s, which was over by the wall. Now, only eight remained. Ten students had received their
vampyr
demons and moved on to high school.

Oliver sat down cross-legged on his pillow and unloaded his supplies from his backpack: a black candle, matches, a pair of heavily tinted welder’s goggles, a small ivory-handled knife with a short but lethal two-inch blade, and a slim black leather volume with a single Skrit symbol on the front, meaning Demonology and History.

Oliver glanced back at Dean. They made a habit of not talking during school, as it could be assumed that anything they said was being monitored not only by Half-Light, but also by the little gang of students assembled on the ceiling.

Their whispers attracted Oliver’s attention now. Beside Lythia sat Theo and Maggots. Theo and Lythia had been fast friends, especially after Theo’s girlfriend Kym had gotten her demon last spring and promptly dumped him. She was dating a high school boy now who’d nicknamed himself The Talon. Everybody else from Theo’s old circle was gone, too, except for Maggots.

Oliver couldn’t tell what they were talking about, but he stretched his senses and tried to hear:

“… forces …” he heard Theo mumbling.

“… closer to … radiance …”

“What about the Legion meeting?” Maggots blurted out.

“Shut up!” Lythia hissed as Theo socked Maggots in the shoulder. Lythia flashed a quick glance at Oliver, catching him watching. “Mind your own business, Nocturne!” she snapped. “Go back to daydreaming about your long-lost bloodbag!”

Oliver narrowed his eyes at her, but didn’t reply. Instead, he filed away these latest tidbits of information. Oliver couldn’t be sure what, but Lythia and Theo were definitely up to something. There were lots of secretive moments like this lately. He’d heard them mention the word “legion” before, but not “radiance.”

Berthold Welch crept through the door, slouching his undersized self across the room, hoping to avoid any interaction with the ceiling crowd. Back in eighth Pentath, he’d always been the target for tripping and other violent pranks. They were all too old for those kinds of kids’ games now, but the verbal taunting could be twice as biting. Yet the ceiling crowd paid no attention to him tonight.

“Hey Oliver,” said Berthold, sitting on the pillow beside him.

“Hey,” said Oliver.

“Think tonight will be the night?” Berthold asked.

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Probably not.” Berthold had been asking that question practically every night for the last two years. “But I guess you never know.”

“I hope it’s my night,” Berthold said hopefully as he got out his supplies.

Oliver felt like telling Berthold,
don’t bet on it
, but he didn’t. You could sort of tell when kids were ready to get their demon. They’d dress older, be more obnoxious, and their demon dreams would be in full swing. Berthold was nowhere near any of those things. Oliver wasn’t, either. He still hadn’t had a demon dream since that night, almost three years ago now, when Dean had been killed. Then again, kids like Theo and Lythia had attitudes like they should have been demon-ready years ago, and yet they were still here, so maybe you never knew.

When the last student arrived, Oliver leaned to Berthold. “I think we know whose night it’s going to be.”

Carly had appeared in the doorway. Her entrance set off an intense round of whispers from the ceiling trio. In the past, these whispers might have been because of Carly’s lack of fashion sense—compared to other vampire girls, she was never very put-together—or her shy mannerisms, but this time they were different. Something had changed over the last few days. The mouse-quiet girl that Oliver had always gotten along with had suddenly transformed.

“Hey guys,” Carly said with a lazy drawl as she slouched in the doorway. She made a little salute, her mouth smacking on gum. “How’s it hangin’?” She sauntered across the room, her leather bag and a skinny black jacket falling off her shoulder, revealing a teal tank top. Spike-heeled magenta boots clicked on the uneven wood floor.

Oliver didn’t get it. This was the same girl who, up until about three weeks ago, had always arrived in sweatpants and oversized flannel shirts, her hair a rat’s nest. Now her hair was slicked down straight and dyed cobalt blue.

She dropped down onto her pillow, legs thrown out straight, crossing her boots. “Hey Oliver,” she said around her gum. “How’s your mopey self doing?”

“Fine,” said Oliver quietly. He was sad to be losing Carly, but these were the clear signs of a student on the cusp of cohesion: the bonding with a
vampyr
demon.

The only thing weird about it was how fast it had come on. Seriously, just last Friday, she’d been the same old Carly. But then she’d showed up Monday completely different, and changing at a furious pace.

Oliver glanced up and saw Lythia and Theo eyeing her, clearly jealous.

Cohesion was supposed to take at least a couple months, sometimes a full year, but Carly was the fourth case in their class of this accelerated cohesion happening in mere weeks, if not days. All in the last couple months. It was weird.

“Good evening students.” Mr. VanWick swept into the room, closing the door behind him and pulling off his long black coat. “Let’s begin.” He wrapped a black ceremonial robe over his tweed suit and sat cross-legged on a pillow. Pulling the hood over his head, he struck a match and lit a black candle in front of him.