Most of my students were appalled, some were scared, but none were panicking.

Good. That was good.

Well, it wasn't good at all, but not at bad as it could have been, either. They were regularly drilled and expected to deal with anything from a blood-starved vamp to a were during a full moon.

"Everyone calm down!" I barked over the clamour. "I know this is shocking, but we are safe-"

A low, tortured moan cut me off, because when is anyone ever safe after saying such things? Out loud, too.

As I'd said, none of my mage students had really come into their powers yet. Currently, they peaked at making small objects fly or turn invisible. Carnival tricks, basically.

Fate chose a wonderful moment to accelerate their growth. Of course.

People can't really be trained to deal with mages, because it's almost impossible to know what you're training against. There's an old military joke about how the enemy can't guess your plan if you don't have any. Mages are like that.

Because their power is only limited by their imagination and the amount of mana they have, a mage can do almost anything, like Mihai did while trying to help me deal with my withering body.

And new mages? They didn't know what they were going to do.

Dammit. I had to stop them, before they harmed their classmates or themselves. But quickly, or things would only escalate.

I drew on the power strigoi use to manipulate weather, tapping into a sliver of it. God willing, it was all I'd need.

With an apologetic look at the human children, I drew most of the oxygen in the classroom towards and around me. The air thinned, like we were on a mountaintop. The humans fell to their knees, or against walls, trying to breathe normally. The mages, between the stress and the sudden change in the air, fainted, their eyes closing, the aetheric strands around them fading away into nothing.

The rest of the students were fine. Weres and iele didn't need air, and I had yet to hear of a zmeu choking. The vamps were looking expectantly at the fallen mages, ready to mesmerize them back to sleep if things looked like they were about to get hairy again.

For a moment, we all just stood, getting our breath back-literally, in some cases. I quickly thought of checking the other classrooms, to see if there had been other incidents, but it seemed like I had one more problem to deal with first.

Mia was slim and petite-by zmeu standards. Which meant I barely came up to the base of her neck, and was thinner than her. She usually looked so carefree and confident, especially when making her advances.

Now, she was practically squatting, muscles twitching, almost curled into a ball. I speeded over to her, gesturing for everyone else to stand back, and listened.

Her heartbeat was...normal. Steady and lizard-slow. Her breathing wasn't strained. Her lifeforce didn't feel out of the ordinary, either...so why did I have such a bad feeling about her?

"You alright?" I asked quietly, going down on one knee beside her, putting one arm around her shoulders. Her tucked wings rubbed and scratched at my arm, ripping through my jacket sleeve like sandpaper. "Do you feel fine?"

She raised her head to give me a strained smile, fangs clenched, eyes rimmed with tears. "Not...as fine as you, teach."

I clicked my tongue in annoyance. "Cut the crap. It's really not the moment to screw around-"

"You think I'm fucking joking?" She hissed. "It's like...like every goddamn urge I've ever had is hitting me at once..."

"Don't blaspheme." I told her, almost absent-mindedly. "What do you mean? What brought this on?"

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It took her a few minutes to get herself under control, so she could speak clearly. She was shivering now, though, but not like she was cold. More like...she was having a seizure.

"You ever stood at the edge of a building and though about jumping?" Mia asked, looking down at her desk, rather than me. The other students stood close by, ready to help, if needed, but watching the byplay, for now. Eric and Bogdan had rushed the unconscious mages to the infirmary, so they could be placed in the secure ward.

"A few times." I replied. Before I actually killed myself. "It's known as 'the call of the void' to some people." I said, watching her carefully. "Was that...what you felt?"

She nodded, finally looking at me. "That, and more...so much more. Look, Davi-sir. I talk shit all the time and mess around with people, alright? But I'm not dumb or impulsive enough to do everything I say, or think."

"And what did you feel, exactly?" I asked, wishing for this to be over, so I could check my phone, see if similar incidents had happened in other parts of the country and world. I'd gotten several texts from my colleagues, describing similar situations they had, thank God, gotten under control.

Even if a were teacher had needed to punch so many kindred students his silver knuckledusters had broken, driving shards into his fists.

Strangely, all the students had been some kind of werereptile.

Mia grinned at my question, but it was a dry smile. "I thought how great it would be to jump you right here, teach. Rip your clothes off and take you." Her eyes were half-lidded, but not with the earlier madness. Her usual humour seemed to have returned. "Did  you feel anything similar?"

"Oh, definitely." I deadpanned. "I feel such things all the time. You should see the holes in my ceiling at home."

Mia snorted, and the rest of the class cracked smiles, some of the tension and apprehension left.

In truth, I suppose she was attractive:fierce, spontaneous, friendly. Tall, athletic. Some guys were turned off by girls like her because they were completely flat, but to each their own.

However, I, personally, had never felt attracted to her. Leaving aside the age difference, and the fact that I was her teacher, I could only appreciate people on a platonic, aesthetic level, nowadays.

Ugh. Can't believe I've gone full creep mode...damn this freak occurence, whatever it had been.

"Did anyone else feel anything weird? The desire to do something they usually wouldn't do?"

I got a bunch of shaking heads and a chorus of 'nos'. I hadn't felt anything, either.

"Alright." I said. "Form a line. We're going in the courtyard."

The evacuation went smoothly, thanks to the drills. In a few minutes, buses and parents arrived to take the students home. The school would be searched, exorcised and blessed, just in case.

When I returned home that night, after the first of many inspections the school would go through, I turned on the TV immediately. Every channel was showing news-breaking news;aren't they always?- even the music and cartoon channels. I changed channels every few minutes, to see if what I was seeing was some hoax or attention-grab by a few isolated channels.

It wasn't. All of them, even the foreign ones, were showing the same thing. I even turned on the subtitles, to make sure I wouldn't misunderstand anything.

"Zmei gone mad? Bucharest under attack!"

"Return of Fafnir, Munchen cut off-"

"Taj Mahal toppled by naga! ARC response is-"

"Sui-ryu levels Kyushu. JSDF attempts counterassault."

Destruction, red in tooth and claw, and cold, cold-blooded.