Chapter 9

THE WOMAN IN THE REFRIGERATOR

"I don't know." I squeezed his hands and he gripped mine tightly in response. "The headmistress is some sort of vampire and she glamored you and you walked in here like you were a zombie, and I don't know what to do. I couldn't get you to snap out of it."

"That can't be real." He frowned, looking around the room. "What even is this place? How did they make this building? What is the structure of the dome? I've never seen a geodesic dome built like this before. What are all those creatures? What is that fox next to you? Its face looks like a bulbous deer."

"The building doesn't matter. The familiars don't matter. What matters is getting out of here and getting you home." I squeezed his hands hard, bringing his focus back to me.

There was the clinking of metal and I looked past him towards the door to see a double line of soldiers walking in, dressed head to toe in plate mail armor like medieval knights, holding shields as they poured into the space and encircled the circumference of the room.

"Getting us home," he corrected. He nodded, his eyes tightening as he looked around the room, and the soldiers that now blocked the exit. "We should wait for whatever is going to happen to happen though, so we don't stand out trying to run away. Especially since those guys are watching us."

He nodded towards the four in violet jackets, before glancing down at his sleeve and back at them.

"Good idea." I sighed, releasing one of his hands as I looked around the room. He gripped my one hand tighter, wrapping all his fingers around it.

"Lumi, did you…I wanted to ask you sooner, but it felt awkward, and now that we've been apparently kidnapped I think it is important to know," he said.

I looked back at him, his ice blue eyes sending that familiar stab of light through my chest, reminding me how much I loved being around him. If I had to be kidnapped by a crazy vampire headmistress, he was the only one I would want to have beside me, and here he was.

I already knew he was the kind of guy I would bury a body with.

That was fucked up in its own special, horrible, heart warming way.

"Did you go get the pill from the clinic?" he asked. "You said you were going to do it after you got home, but then you were grounded and you didn't reply to my texts."

I felt the blood drain from my face.

Not only could I feel it, but I could see it in the expression that exploded on his own face when he looked at me. The answer was right there, along with the many things I forgot about in the whirlwind of shouting that happened when I got home. The bruises on my arm were still healing from where my dad had grabbed me, and my shoulder still didn't feel right from slamming into the book case.

I opened my mouth and closed it again.

The pharmacies on the way home from Magnus's house had all been closed, and I was grounded as soon as I arrived home.

"Do you think?" he asked, leaving the full scope of the question unexpressed.

"My period was supposed to start a few days ago," I said, thinking of the pads I had packed in my backpack in case it started after I got to school.

Magnus sucked in a breath, his eyes widening before he steadied, gazing at me with a determined certainty, like he knew who he was and who he wanted to be, even if he didn't think he'd get there that quickly.

"It is going to be okay," he said, squeezing my hand. "I'm here for you no matter what. I got you."

How could he be so wonderful?

How could he be here for me like that and not love me?

I widened my eyes and looked away from him, blinking to try to keep myself under control. I couldn't cry in front of him.

I couldn't cry here.

A loud rumble filled the room and a column erupted from the floor, carrying a familiar black haired vampire up into the air above us. She stared down at us all

"Welcome to orientation," she said, smiling. "I am Headmistress Tabitha, the judge, jury, and executioner of your time here. We will be going through some basic rules that you must follow if you wish to survive at this school."

I took a step forward, letting go of Magnus's hand.

He held onto me for a moment before I tugged free from his grasp.

DON'T! Niamh shouted in my mind.

I ignored her.

She used me.

I had to do this to make this right, to set him free.

"We want to leave," I shouted. "You have no right to kidnap us."

"That's a shame," I heard someone mutter from behind me.

Everyone turned to look at me.

The headmistress focused her gaze on me, her smile growing wider, not touching the corners of her eyes.

"Oh, I love it when I get a volunteer for the main demonstration," she purred out, lifting her hand to trace a symbol in the air.

There was a feeling, that feeling of knowing, that split second moment where the ground tumbles away to reveal a gaping crevasse under the snow and there is absolutely nothing that can be done but scream and fall. The world around me slowed down as my body dosed me with adrenaline, a last ditch attempt to avoid the plummet.

My arms yanked out to each side of me, held by glowing bands of circling runes.

My shoulders protested with sudden stabs of pain as I was wrenched up into the air towards the headmistress, dragged by my outstretched wrists.

"What are you doing?" Magnus shouted from below me, his voice rising in pitch with the treble of panic.

I was at least twenty feet in the air, floating next to the huge column that the vampire stood on. I twisted in the air, still dangling between my outstretched wrists, but the strange glowing circles that held me didn't budge. My body rotated in the air until I was within arm's reach of the headmistress vampire.

"Every year we have a demonstration to really drill into your mundane little heads why you must obey the rules of Order." The headmistress lifted her top lip just slightly as she said the word mundane. "The proper students already know. They've already been taught. But you mundanes come in thinking that the world is here to give you what you want, that this school is here to serve you . You think that you can sit around and make requests, that you have a voice, that your opinion means anything at all. You are not worthy. You are the lowest of Order's creations. You were made to serve, not be served. Right now, your lives are only worth the amount of magic you can channel into your familiars, and even that is nothing to us. You can and will be replaced. Consider this your first lesson."

"Let her go!" Magnus yelled again.

I pulled my gaze away from the headmistress to look down at him, and saw the sea of faces all looking up at me. A veritable hoard of students dressed in red jackets. Eyes so wide the whites took over the shape of eyes, mouths open, eyebrows pulled up and in.

What was about to happen was going to be really, really bad.

Everyone knew it.

Several students were glancing back at the line of medieval looking armored soldiers ringing the room, their faces and identities hidden behind the anonymity of plate mail. The soldiers blocked the door, encircling us as a group.

"Now, now, little incubus." The headmistress shook one finger side to side. "This is for you, too. You didn't get the privilege of being in a proper school as a child, so you have just as much to learn from this as everyone else."

I heard a clunking sound from below. I looked down past my dangling feet to see a huge metal bowl had been set down underneath me.

"The benefits of being a loyal servant of the goddess is to be unbound, to receive the gift of being whole, something that everyone who has a monster inside of them should strive for. It is…exquisite." She held up her hand and flexed. Her fingernails turned black, extending into claws. She held up one of them and pressed the point of it against my chest.

"Mundanes have no other self that has been bound by the mercy of the goddess." Tabitha's face contorted in a flash of hatred before smoothing out again. "Mundanes are batteries, useful for storing and extracting magical energy. You are here to be of service to your betters. You are here to trigger the traps, wash the dishes, and work in the fish hatchery."

What was I going to do?

How could I get out of this?

Fight, flight, freeze all raced through the survival focused part of my brain before it settled on the only option I had left - fawn.

"Please, I'm sorry," I said. "I will be obedient. Please tell me how I can be of service."

"See?" Tabitha dragged her finger down my chest. There was a sharp bite of pain and I gasped, looking down to see my shirt and bra falling open and a thin red line forming on my skin from neck to navel. "The beautiful thing about mundanes is that you can learn, quite quickly in fact. You have no beast inside of you screaming that you are worth more than the dirt that you walk upon. There is no monster in your heart to make you believe that you are equal to the Aos sí Seelie who are the rightful, goddess-chosen rulers of this world."

She swiped her hand so quickly it was just a blur.

My clothing fell to the ground.

I hung there, exposed to the room, my naked flesh prickling from the sensation of eyes crawling over the curve of my ribs, the jutting corners of my hip bones, the hard lines of my abdominals exposed from existing meal to meal.

I should have felt shame.

That was what I was supposed to feel - to feel exposed and terrified. Everything in my world, from my parents' scolding me to the mockery on some of my favorite shows, had told me that my body was something I was supposed to keep hidden under layers; that the exposure of my skin was something to be berated for. Even a teacher at my school had said that I needed to hide my body so that the boys wouldn't be distracted. Until this moment I thought that they were right, but now I knew the truth. Stronger than my fear came a clarity unlike any other.

I wasn't the one who should feel ashamed.

I wasn't the one who was in the wrong.

I glared at Headmistress Tabitha, holding her gaze, even as my skin prickled in the cold air.

She was the one who should feel ashamed.

She frowned at me and pressed a claw back against the scratch on my chest. She dragged it down again, pressing harder. Pain seared through me, taking over every ounce of my focus. There was nothing but suffering. It hurt. It hurt. It…was separate from me.

I floated backwards, but didn't.

My body was still there, I was still there, the pain was still there…but it felt like it was happening to someone else. It felt like something had coiled around me, holding me as I watched the pain like a bystander.

This time her claw cut through all five layers of the epidermis, reaching through the thicker layer of the dermis and the almost nonexistent space of my subcutaneous layer of connective tissue and fat.

I realized I was screaming, even as my mind went over all the little details of exactly what she was doing to my anatomy. I could feel blood dripping down my body, down my leg, and off my toes, the juxtaposition of liquid plinking into metal and my sobs.

She put her hands on either side of the deeper cut.

"You will stay conscious through all of this." Her eyes held mine, mesmerizing me. "Your mind will stay anchored in this present moment. You will not go elsewhere in your head to escape. You will feel everything, in exquisite detail, and you will fully understand what is happening."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Magnus bellowed from below.

I looked down to see him trying to climb up the base of the column.

Not trying - succeeding.

"Restrain the incubus!" Tabitha ordered.

Four soldiers broke off from the line on the wall, grabbing hold of Magnus and dragging him back off the column. I could see the muscles in his arms flexing as he fought against them. Then he lunged, ripped one arm free, and cracked one of the soldiers on the helmet.

The metal helmet dented inwards and the soldier fell backwards to the ground.

Several more left their stations at the wall, and Magnus was tumbled into a pile of metal. Then I couldn't look down any more or hear the muted sounds of fighting because Tabitha was peeling my skin back like I was an orange.

My own voice was a distant sound, but it wasn't the only sound in the room.

I wasn't the only one screaming.

Some of the red suited students below had run to the door, only to be knocked back by the soldiers, beaten by clubs and forced to their knees. Whenever anyone covered their face or looked down at the ground there was a soldier on them, ordering them to watch.

Magnus didn't look away.

I looked in his eyes and I could see that I wasn't the only one who was breaking.

He held my gaze as my ribs broke. He fought like a wild creature as my stomach was cut open, as the headmistress slowly and methodically sliced and pulled apart my body like it was a toy for her amusement, like the screams and sobs that echoed around the room were an orchestra that she was conducting.

"It's almost over," Tabitha murmured, her voice soft and gentle for a moment, like she was speaking to a beloved pet. "I just want to make sure you know that you will not be resurrected. Your heart and brain will be destroyed so that even if that man who loves you down there manages to convince a healer to take on the burden of the spell, it won't be possible. You are about to die, permanently, and the only purpose of your death is to teach others to be afraid."

There was a pressure on my heart.

Not an emotional one, but an actual pressure as Tabitha reached into my now open chest and gripped it with her bare hand.

"This is the goddess's favorite way to kill." She stared into my eyes with a sickeningly sweet smile. "She loves to end the mouthy ones."

I opened my mouth.

I had to say something, to tell Magnus something, to shout something to the room, to help them know that they shouldn't let this stop them, they shouldn't let the weight of fear crush them and keep them trapped under the terror of their oppressors. I had to tell them to fight back.

I wanted to tell him that even if he never loved me back, my own feelings would continue to spill from my heart onto paper, forever immortalized; that love does not have to be returned to be true, and beautiful, and valuable.

But I never got the chance.