Chapter 5: Mind Attack

Dragoslav Stojakovic lightly swirled the glass in his hand, the red liquid inside coating more evenly then any wine. “Initial tests were good,” he spoke into the hands-free bluetooth with a strong East European accent, “and my technomage’s projections show it should be more than capable of reaching our target area once provided the appropriate magical power supply to boost it’s capabilities of course. Now I just need to know Albot if you’re going to hold up on your end of our arrangement. Your men will be ready?”

The bushy-eyebrowed vampire casually leaned back in his chair, lifting feet finely dusted in long black hairs up onto the leather footstool in front of him. An impatient gesture towards one of the barely clothed servant girls standing still against the far wall beckoned her to attend to them.

As she kneeled and began to massage his feet in silence, the obvious pleasure he felt from her ministrations was in no way reflected in his voice as he began once again to speak, “This all better go as smoothly as you say Albot, because I swear, if you have set me up for a fall, no power on this earth will keep me from my vengeance.” He crushed the stem of his now empty wine glass, ignoring the fragments piercing his hand as he threw the remaining pieces towards the fireplace opposite the girls before beckoning another one of them forward, “Very well then, unless anything unexpected comes up, I shall not contact you again until after the Feast of Gathering. And do give your dear mother my regards.”

He unwrapped the earpiece from around his ear, gently placing it on the table beside him before not so carefully pulling the waiting girl onto his lap. Obviously used to this routine, she let out not a sound despite the glass shards cutting into her flesh from his injured hand, simply recovering quickly from her tumble and moving swiftly to straddle his thighs in well-trained obedience. As she swept her long red hair off to one side of her neck, the bloody handprint on her arm glowed scarlet in matching color, creating a striking image in the dancing firelight that shadowed her face as she tilted her head submissively to await his strike. And strike he did, his fangs like a snake, piercing her neck quickly, and only then did she finally unleash any sound, a deep throaty moan.

* * *

My rest was fitful after Peter Stojakovic had left the night before. The few brief times I managed to fall into a deep enough sleep, the awaiting dreams were filled with glowing eyes and shadows that threatened to engulf me before I’d abruptly wake in panicked, sweaty fright. I finally managed a few uninterrupted hours after the sun broke, sleeping through breakfast and since I didn’t have a first period class, partway through that as well, barely sliding into place beside Isra before the Runes professor strode into the room carrying a sheaf of papers.

“I am Madam Yuri Goryanov,” she proclaimed, answering my earlier unasked question concerning the brown-haired dwarf’s gender, “Mistress of Runes and Warding. Since my chosen assistant managed to get himself killed yesterday,” she scowled, “I am currently looking for a new one. I sincerely doubt any of you have what it takes, but my advanced students are all either impossibly inept or have managed to thoroughly piss me off, so I’m going to offer up the chance to this class as well. This,” she waved the papers in her hand, “is a flawed runic warding schema. I want you all to attempt to figure out what it does, why it doesn’t work, and try to figure out how to fix it. Don’t,” she stressed, “attempt to actually do so yourself. Anyone who tries any runic schema in my classroom without my prior approval will find themselves booted out of my class so fast their head will whirl. If you want to experiment, do it on your own time when I don’t have to worry about you blowing up a dozen students in the process.

“Now,” she continued after thoroughly glowering at us under impressively large eyebrows to try and impress that last point, “as I said before, I don’t actually expect any of you idiots to actually be able to complete this task correctly, but this is a pretty good way to test your knowledge and skills. Try,” she rolled her eyes heavenward as if asking for patience, “to impress me.”

She passed out the papers and upon looking at the complicated warding schema, I felt excitement well up at the challenge. I was lucky she had chosen a schema that was mainly written in the Futhark languages that I had studied and that I could even recognize the occasional Egyptian hieroglyph and ancient Chinese character that sparsely decorated the page due to my own personal extracurricular studies. Let’s see, this rune connected to that one, placed in this particular pattern would have that effect… I soon became lost in the intricacies of the brilliant warding schematic and didn’t notice as the professor gained an increasingly strong interest in me as my pen began to fly across my paper in an impressive number of notes, especially when she looked around and compared my intent actions to the largely confused expressions that graced the faces of the rest of my fellow classmates.

When I scribbled off the last bits of my answer and slammed my pencil down onto my desk in triumph, I almost jumped out of my chair as Madam Goryanov snatched the papers off my desk from where she’d apparently been hovering right next to me without my notice. Leon would have reamed me for my inattention. The bell rang, ending class and only the professor’s quickly ordered, “You, stay!” as she pointed her finger at me without even looking up from her reading, kept me in my seat. When my friends looked like they were going to wait for me, I made a gentle shooing motion towards the door, indicating they should go on to lunch without me.

At one point as I waited, Madam Goryanov briefly looked up to ask me, “How long have you been studying runes?”

I was nervous as I stuttered out, “Just started this past summer.”

She only ‘hmmed’ once in reply before continuing her study of my notes. When I originally started analyzing the rune schema she gave us, I never imagined the possibility that I might actually be good enough for her to consider taking me on as her assistant and now that it was becoming clear that there was a very high probability of that actually occurring, I wondered if there was any way I could gracefully decline. After all, we all heard what had happened to her last choice.

She finally finished and looked at me, “You were wrong in your interpretation of the hieroglyph ‘ges’ and you messed up your geometric calculations,” she paused and I thought, ‘Yes, I wouldn’t get the job.’

“But,” she continued, “for the short amount of time you have been studying, it is clear you have an intuitive gift when it comes to runes and it would be a waste for me not to nurture and utilize it. There is still a lot you need to know before you’d admittedly be useful as an assistant, but really you’re the only one I’ve seen worth putting the effort in for and I want to give you the position.”

Shit, “Madam Yuri, I really appreciate the opportunity, but I’m afraid there are many elements,” especially certain teachers, I thought, “at this school who would not be happy to hear of my selection and well, you’ve just lost one assistant, are you so quick to lose another?”

She snorted in disparagement, “It’s true you’re only human,” Unsure of the truth myself at the moment, I decided not to correct her, “and only a first year student. But if you don’t accept I’d have to either choose the one who probably caused my other assistant’s death, and I really don’t want to reward him for the hassle he’s given me, or deal with some other idiot. I’d probably have to kill you myself just for the trouble your refusal would cause me,” she grinned darkly at me, reminding me of a pirate with her wild braid-strewn hair and rune-etched, gold-capped teeth. I gulped silently as she hummed again in thought, “Do you have any sort of protection already?”

Knowing there was no way I was going to get out of this, I popped up my force protection shield in answer, holding it as she poked at it with one finger.

“Impressive, anything else?”

Dropping the shield, I showed her my Smith and Wesson and also explained the burglar trap I’d put on my dorm room’s door, “Unfortunately I found out last night that not everybody needs to use a door. Do you know of any way to guard against that weird shadow walk thing vampires can do?” I asked her, thinking back in annoyance at Stojakovic’s antics the prior night.

“Hmm, got yourself a nighttime stalker huh,” she grinned, “Well it isn’t easy, but there is a way to ward against that. Since you like electrocuting people, I can even show you how to tie in your existing ward so that it can also zap anyone who tries that method of entrance. This is what you need to do…” As she began to explain, I ignored my lightheadedness and the increasingly painful pangs my stomach let out in protest over missing both breakfast and now as we continued to work, lunch. My head and stomach would just have to deal, I was learning stuff that could help keep me alive.

My mind was whirling when she finally let me go, filled with dancing runic equations and dizzy from hunger. I wished I’d had time to scarf something down from the cafeteria, but my next class was about to start and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to miss my first Mind Magic class of the year, especially when I had no idea what the professor was like, or his stance on humans.

Entering the classroom, the extremely dark-skinned professor gave me a pointed look, “Cutting it awfully close there Miss Langden.”

I blushed as the rest of the class snickered and hurried over to where Miguel was waving at me from the back, the seat he’d saved open next to him. In a low whisper, he tried to query what had happened with Madam Yuri, but the professor’s stern, “No talking!” shut us up before I could answer.

“Now as I started saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” he pointedly looked at us “I am Professor Marcel Angoua and you are all here, or should be, because you want to learn mind magic. The magic of the mind is an amazingly versatile skill that is necessary for advancement in everything from Illusions to Healing, Rituals, Song Magic, advanced Blood Magic, and even Necromancy. It is useful for diplomats, warriors, spies, and many more professions. With it, you can alter memories, levitate objects, read or project emotions, and even teleport if you have enough power and control. Mind magic is one of the most important tools in our arsenals for keeping our activities secret from the bulk of humanity,” he sneered the last word, shooting a barely subtle glance in my direction and I knew this was going to be another problem teacher.

“But anyways,” he continued, “it will take some time until you’re capable of that type of work and the first step towards getting there is making sure all of you have sufficient protection and control of your own minds. As such, I will be testing each of you today to see if your shields are sufficient before we move on to the more advanced material.” Great, I thought, today just seemed to be the day for tests, “When I call your name, please step up to the front. Amarok!”

A feral-looking, white-haired boy loped up to the front, and I watched with interest to see what would happen, but other then a slight swaying by him after a few minutes of them staring into each other’s eyes, the professor’s own glowing the now too familiar glow signifying a daemon, and him saying, “Good enough,” it was depressingly boring. I did find it mildly unusual that he seemed to alternate calling names from either the beginning or end of the alphabet, slowly working his way towards the middle letters. Though personally, I just believe he was trying to draw out my own torture since I was the last to be called.

Walking forward, I saw my guess had probably been more correct then I’d known judging from the eager gleam in his eyes and I quickly worked to buffer my shields as much as I could in the short moments it took to walk to the front. When he began, it wasn’t the tentative probing used by my earlier instructors, nor was it even the more powerful blunt force attack I’d half expected, instead, it was a fierce multi-pronged attack. Simultaneously in many places, my shields were assaulted by what seemed like a dozen different construction tools at once. Sledgehammers, pickaxes, whirling drills, they all combined to batter and whittle my shields into pieces.

I think he’d simply wanted to cause me pain, break open my shields as quickly as possible, and prove the inferiority of humankind, but I was stronger then he’d expected, and I could feel the shock that laced his attack turn into to rage at my defiance and he attacked my shields even more fiercely. As each fell, I threw up a dozen more, trying in vain to hold him back with sheer quantity if I couldn’t do quality, because I knew, with that terrible sudden knowing that can come upon us when faced with immeasurable danger, that he wouldn’t simply stop when he pierced my shields. No, it was clear to me, that whatever his original intentions, he now intended to go straight on through and continue, piercing deep into my mind with that fierce, overwhelming attack and destroy all that lay in its path. I would become a vegetable, worse than one when he was through.

There were only a few layers left, he was battering them down as fast as I could put them up now and I was so involved in our inner battle I hadn’t even noticed the pain when I bit clear through my bottom lip. And then he was through! Oh God the pain! It was excruciating! I felt him begin to destroy each scrap of knowledge and bit of thought, each tiny memory and piece of who I am, one little bit at a time. Outside my mind, a strangled scream was dragged out of my throat and blood started pouring down from my eyes, ears, and nose to the shock of all my watching classmates. Inside, I continued to fight, throwing every wisp of power I had at him and then without even knowing how, I reached out and drew in more. Vaguely I noticed these new energies were tinged with fear, anger, excitement, bloodlust; and outside the small enclosed world my focus had become, my eyes glowed.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

* * *

Watching all of this, Peter was frozen with the rest of the class in complete disbelief that a teacher would attack one of them like this. He could see her friends as they looked between themselves with anguish, fear, and confusion on their faces, but indecision over facing a teacher had stopped them still. Peter looked at Jessica standing proudly even as blood poured down her pain-scrunched face and moved without thinking. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, he was just suddenly there, a physical presence between the Professor and the strong-willed young woman. He stumbled as the magic painfully fed back through his own body as it forcefully broke their connection. AS Jessica began to fall, having slumped instantly into unconsciousness the moment the connection broke, he quickly half-turned to catch her. How could someone so delicate looking hold such power? He wanted to keep staring at her deliciously blood covered doll-like face, but knew better than to be distracted when an attack might still be incoming. Looking back up in time to see Professor Angoua’s rage-filled face as it abruptly became aware again of his surroundings and shifted instantly to a more neutral visage.

“Has she had enough,” Peter asked him, “or do you intend to kill her?”

The class held its breath at the confrontation, waiting eagerly for their professor’s answer. He looked around at all of them and seemed to realize that he’d gone too far in his anger, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to admit to any wrong-doing, “Class dismissed,” he sneered.

Not waiting for anyone else, Peter strode swiftly from the room with Jessica still in his arms. The awaiting hallways were as empty as his mind with most of the school’s population still in their classes so as he ran towards the infirmary he didn’t come across a single soul. Even when he reached the ward, the Healer was nowhere in sight and as he laid Jess gently upon one of the beds, his mind was left suddenly free to wonder at his own actions. What was it about this girl that made him do something so out of character for him? It shouldn’t matter to him if the professor did kill her, and opposing a teacher, especially in his first year, was probably not the best idea, but for some reason as he watched her standing there, enduring attacks that, if he honestly admitted to himself, he probably couldn’t face, he was impressed yet again by her. And Lord Dracul, the power that radiated off of her when her eyes started to glow. A tiny echoing tinge of the hunger he felt in that moment returned and he decided that it didn’t really matter if he had acted out of character or not, been foolish or not. After all, hadn’t he already said that she was his, his thing to play with as he wished, and no one would take away something he was not finished playing with without his permission. He nodded mentally to himself, yes, definitely in character. What he wanted, he got, and no one would stop him.

Internal crisis resolved, he was free to pay attention to other matters and looked down again at the girl before him, the blood still coating her face now playing havoc with his nose and reawakened hunger. It was an enticement that he didn’t want to fight, and since there was no one around to stop him, and had in fact just said that she was indeed his to do with as he pleased, he hesitated no longer and lowered his head to hers. He started with the blood that had poured from her ears and ran down her luscious throat, teasing the runnel that traced her arteries with his fangs before using a surprisingly gentle caress with his tongue to slowly uncover the pale skin beneath. The taste was exquisite, the usual copper tang laced with rich and complex undertones, bitter dark chocolate and smoky chipotle. As his tongue lapped at her skin, he kept his movements slow and sensual, allowing him to savor each taste, and awakening other hungers farther down his body. His movements started to speed up, first it was under the ears, then the eyes, the face beneath being licked clean with each graze of his eager tongue. He continued under the nose and down around the mouth, scratches from his fangs being left now at the urgency of his movements, then finally he came up again to the still bleeding lip that he’d saved for last, licking and suckling it between his fangs, pulling ever harder to draw more and more blood as his two hungers drove him to a fever high pitch and … hands were suddenly grabbing him, pulling him off her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

He snarled as he whirled on his attacker reaching out to strike with one clawed hand, but pulled up short upon being confronted suddenly by three people, the pause giving his mind the chance to seize control again and fight clear of his bloodlust, finally allowing him to recognize Jess’s little friends, the werefox who’d stopped him forefront, fur bristling and teethy muzzle beginning to protrude from his face in his angry half-transformed state. It was getting close to the full moon, one of us would surely die if we fought now and she’d probably not be happy if Peter killed him, the brief thought flitted in even as he wondered why he should care, but the moment had passed. So, still fighting the adrenaline rush, he ignored the were’s question, and instead simply grabbed the bag he recognized as his own from the goblin-sized fae before stalking angrily out of the infirmary. He was followed out by Miguel’s aggravated, “What the hell?!”

* * *

I woke to an intense wanting coursing through my body, a gnawing hunger for something more than food. I stretched sensually, luxuriating in the overwhelming sense of power that filled me. A power teasing and feeding that strange hunger as deliberately I ignored the nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I had forgotten something important.

The curtain surrounding me in what was, I suddenly became aware of, certainly a hospital room, twitched, and a man dressed in a white lab coat came through. He was bland, brown hair and eyes, and a skin color that was either a very tanned white or pale brown. The only thing that wasn’t forgettable about his appearance was the barely noticeable aura of wildness that seemed to surround him.

“How are you feeling?”

I pondered the question, something must have happened to put me in this hospital, but I couldn’t seem to remember, “What happened?”

He straightened up, “You experienced a severe mental trauma.”

His words sent a spike of fear and pain through me, instantly dousing the sensual hunger I’d felt and a woman’s face, with grey eyes and curly blond hair, flashed to the forefront of my brain, along with an intense feeling of longing and guilt.

The man continued, unaware of my inner turmoil, “I’m going to ask you a series of questions and would like you to answer them to the best of your ability.”

I nodded as he took out a penlight and shone it into my eyes, waving it back and forth as he began to question me.

“What is your name?”

“Jess.” it popped out without thought.

“Last name?”

This time my answer was less sure, but still felt right, “Langden?”

“Do you know where you are?”

I looked around at the hospital bed, curtains, and machinery, “a hospital?”

“Do you know how old you are?”

“16.”

“Do you know the date?”

A sharp pain entwined with a hefty dose of confusion swept across my mind and I was shaky as I replied, “I’m not sure.”

“Do you know your mother’s name?”

“Cathy.” Again it popped out without conscious thought, this time along with the image of the woman I’d seen before and I suddenly connected the two. She must be my mother, Cathy. I savored the name and image in my head.

Another person abruptly burst through the curtain with the force of a thrown bolder, tearing a section of the flimsy cloth out from its ceiling track. The new individual was short and squat with wild dark brown hair and a full beard, both of which were only contained by the many beaded braids strewn throughout them.

“Well, Barker, how is she?”

Sighing, the doctor answered the newcomer’s question as I listened keenly, “Madam,” Wait, this guy was a she, I thought incredulously as he continued to speak, “I’ve only just started the preliminary questioning, but it’s clear Marcel really did a number on her, cutting through large swatches of neuron connections and even completely obliterating multiple memories. The only thing that luckily seems untouched are her physical and involuntary control functions.”

“Hold on! Back up a sec,” I interrupted, “Are you saying, I was deliberately attacked?! What the hell is going on here?!”

The she-male looked troubled as she answered, “I know you were aware of the dangers in coming here Jessica, or at least you once did, but even I am surprised that he went so far, especially with a student.”

“Are you saying this, Marcel, is a teacher, my teacher?” my voice rose angrily in response, “Just what the hell kind of school is this place?”

It was bland Barker, the doctor, who replied, “We are at the Akademiya, an elite school for magic located in the middle of Lake Baikal, Russia and populated completely by non-humans.”

“Magic,” I flatly repeated, “You really expect me to believe that shit? And non-humans? Just what am I supposed to be then, Swiss cheese?”

“You registered as a human, a daring risk, since no human has yet lived to attend graduation here and completely unnecessary according to the rumors surrounding your attack. I do wonder why you were trying to pretend to be completely human though when your blood work clearly shows an active daemon’s genetic sequence.”

“What are you talking about,” I asked, completely baffled, “I am human! And I’m not sure exactly what the hell’s going on here, but I’m getting the hell out of here!” I started to get out of bed to do just that only to have my shoulders suddenly forced back down by impossibly strong hands holding me in an implacable grip no matter how hard I struggled.

“Get the hell off of me! Let me go!” I yelled as I fought.

A low warning growl emitted from the throat of the man before me and I froze. He opened his mouth to reveal rows of long sharp teeth that certainly weren’t there only moments before and no longer did I doubt his earlier words.

“Stay.” The command came out low and rumbling and I didn’t even think to disobey.

Seeing my agreement in my eyes, he pulled back and I watched in shock as his face slowly returned to fully human.

“What are you?” It slipped out quietly without thinking.

“Werewolf.” He grinned and suddenly there was nothing bland about him.

It was all too much and a sudden dizziness overcame me, followed quickly by darkness.

* * *

When she abruptly lost consciousness, falling backward onto the bed with eyes closed, the werewolf doctor hurried forward to check her pulse and pupil dilation, “Huh, she passed out. That will make the next part easier I suppose.”

Having watched all of this silently, Madam Yuri finally spoke up, “Can you help her? I don’t want to lose my assistant so soon after choosing her.”

“Your new assistant huh; that will really stir up the pot. Not very nice of you, I’d say, but surely amusing for the rest of us. Anyways, I’m going to have to do a mind healing ritual tonight and see what parts I can save. We’re lucky minds tend to be pretty resilient and generally want to be put back together. She’ll lose some memories of course, but I’m hoping to be able to reconnect the majority of her neurons. With any luck, she’ll be back to classes by Monday.”

* * *

I was adrift in a sea of memories, a broken web that moved around me to unseen currents. Occasionally, the presence beside me, one strangely both gentle and feral, would snag a cluster of memories closer and tie them back again into the web connected to me, each resulting in a replay of the memory group.

Little things at first, bits of knowledge like math or history, connected to memories of when I learned them and reconnected again and again by each mention of the knowledge. There were emotional parts too as I re-witnessed the accident that put my mother in a coma and awakened my magic. Faces became familiar to me once more, places and learned knowledge too and once again I was shocked to see the image of my eyes glowing from a mirror’s reflection, Peter Stojakovic’s accusing voice, “Daemon…” ringing in my memory’s ears.

An earlier grouping was tied in and suddenly I was small again, playing with toys on the floor as I watched my mom wash dishes at the sink, a small television turned on beside her.

“In other news, the Senator of Connecticut, Terrence William Albot the Second died yesterday from a fatal stroke and we will now hear these words from his son, the newly elected Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, Terrence Albot the third…”

A soapy dish slipped from my mother’s suddenly shaking hands, crashing to the floor and shattering into a thousand pieces, one sliver cutting into my cheek as it flew past. Unsure why my mom was so still, I screamed in pain, and the last thing I saw before I was whisked away to yet another memory, was my mother’s bone white, terror-filled face and a suited blond haired man speaking out from the television set.

* * *

When I woke again, it was night time, the almost full moon shining through the window beside me, highlighting the room in shades of gray. I looked around and a single rose in a vase caught my eye where it sat on a small table under the window. I couldn’t tell, but it was probably a red one. ‘Stojakovic,’ I snorted at the thought. He really wasn’t one to ever give up, especially something he wanted. It was almost an admirable trait, if his obsession wasn’t directed towards me at least. But I didn’t really want to think of him, and instead turned my attention inward.

I still had the feeling that there was something I was missing or had forgotten, but there was a lot more that I could remember now too, even things that I had long forgotten, like that odd memory of my mother and her fright at seeing the guy on the television. It was only with the knowledge of my now older brain that I could think and reason on what I saw then. It was apparent that she obviously knew him, and just as obvious that she was terrified of him. It was a terror that could only have come from personal experience and as I thought on it, a sudden instinctive leap of comprehensive understanding came and I just knew, knew that he was the man who had raped her…my father.

From the brief bit I remembered, it was clear he came from a privileged background, probably raised to be a politician like his father, and it hit me like a bolt of lightning, a daemon, just like me. Well that would make me at least a half if not quarter daemon, but still he was obviously the source of that side of my powers. Equal parts hate and gratefulness and guilt overcame me, because if he had never raped my mom, I would never have been born and never have caused the accident that put her into a coma, but on the other hand the magic that had saved her life also most likely came from him and I couldn’t help but be a bit thankful for that.

Long ago I had sworn to get revenge on the man who had hurt my mother so much, but for what he gave me I chose now to simply ignore his existence and not purposely go hunting after him, but still… if fate ever did cross our paths, he would pay. As I drifted back to sleep I repeated his name, Terrence William Albot the Third, my father.