The Awakening (Daray Hall #1) Page 8

  Chapter Eight

  After lunch, Austin walks me down to Jillian’s “classroom”, where she teaches the fledglings how to control their bloodlust. I’m not sure how this class is going to work, but I’m a little scared and interested to find out. It’s a strange combination that gives me a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  When I take a seat next to Austin at one of the tables, he elbows me gently. “Relax, would ya? This isn’t so bad. You’ll see.”

  I hope he’s right.

  As Jillian flows into the room, I catch the faint scent of roses again, like when we first meant and, strangely enough, it seems to calm me. Austin tenses up beside me, and I notice that he’s sitting straighter, trying to look more…mature?

  It hits me the second he sighs, and I realize with a shock that he has a crush on Jillian. And it looks like he isn’t the only one. There are a couple of other boys that look completely enamored by her beauty. It’s easy to see why, too.

  Jillian Daray is possibly the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen. With her long, wheat-colored hair, her clear blue eyes and her perfect figure, she looks like an angel that decided to walk around with us mere mortals.

  She smiles when she sees me, and I can practically feel Austin begin to melt beside me. Judging by the smile in her eyes, she notices it, too. “Hello, Kylie. I hope you’re not too worried about how this lesson works.”

  I shake my head, even though I totally am, and hope that she can’t see that.

  Her smile grows as she looks at the rest of the residents in her “class”. “Alright, today we’re going to be learning one of the most basic techniques to controlling yourself. Breathing.”

  She goes to the front of the classroom and opens the door to a mini-fridge that I hadn’t noticed before. Suddenly, my stomach starts to hurt, and I get very uncomfortable. Considering I know the name of the lesson, there’s only one thing that could be kept in that fridge.

  Jillian pulls a large, refrigerated bag of blood from one of the drawers in the fridge, and quickly snips it with a pair of scissors. She takes a metal tray and places fifteen small paper cups on it, and begins to pour the thick, cold blood.

  The second the first drop of blood hits the bottom of the first paper cup, I feel my senses start to cloud, and everything takes on a reddish tint. My heart starts to pound in my chest, and I can feel my mouth watering.

  Jillian is watching me closely, and I’m worried about disappointing her when I lunge across the room and grab for the blood. I dig my nails into the table, trying to keep myself in my seat. I can tell that Austin is having a similar reaction to the blood, and it makes me feel a little better to know that I’m not the only one being affected.

  “Ok, fledglings. I want you all to calm your racing hearts by focusing intently on your breathing. Just take slow, even, deep breaths. Count your breaths in your head, all the way up to twenty-five. Alright?”

  I doubt it will work, but I don’t argue with her. I take my first deep, calming breath, and don’t feel any change. All around me I can hear nothing but the near-silent breathing of my fellow fledglings, and I know that they’re struggling as much as I am.

  When I get to the seventeenth deep breath, I realize something. The scent of the blood is still fogging up the room and my senses, but it’s not as bad as it was at first. My breathing is actually slowing down a little, but I can still feel my heart pounding in my chest.

  Suddenly there’s a loud clatter, and my eyes snap open. One of the fledglings has leapt from her chair, knocking it to the ground. She’s reaching for the tray of blood, and Jillian is restraining her by holding her arms behind her back.

  With a shock, I recognize her as the girl that was sitting at the empty half of our table earlier. She looks like she’s barley fifteen years old, and she’s a couple of inches shorter than me. She’s dressed almost entirely in black.

  Her hair is black as night, falling in waves to her waist. Her eyes are narrowed at the tray of blood, but from where I’m sitting, I can tell that they’re sterling gray in color, and they’re entirely focused on that blood.

  She’s gnashing her teeth and growling at anyone in the room. Even though her build is very petite, Jillian looks to be struggling with the flailing girl in her arms. “Morgan, stop!”

  Amazingly, she listens, and her entire body starts to go slack. After she relaxes, Jillian relaxes her hold on the girl, Morgan, who suddenly grins slyly.

  Amazingly, she disappears in Jillian’s grasp. The entire class sucks in a collective breath. A girl disappeared. She actually turned herself invisible, and escaped Jillian’s hold.

  The cups of blood begin to rapidly move, and it’s creepy to watch them get picked up by invisible hands and lifted to invisible lips. When they’re empty, the paper cups are chucked carelessly over her shoulders.

  Jillian regains her composure, and grabs for Morgan’s invisible form. I can tell she’s managed to grab her because Morgan begins to shriek in anger and rage. She becomes visible again, and I can see her flailing around uselessly as Jillian backs up with her.

  Her foot lashes out and knocks the metal tray from the front desk, and all hell lets loose. The second the tray touches the floor and the blood is spilled, the rest of the fledglings leap to their feet and begin shoving one another violently, trying to get to the blood.

  Austin is one of the first to reach the front desk and, before he can reach any of the spilled blood, someone knocks him over and lashes out at him with a pair of sharp fangs. He shrinks back, but not fast enough, because he gets swarmed by the others.

  Jillian is screaming something and trying unsuccessfully to keep a hold on Morgan. When Austin disappears under the rest of the class, I don’t stop to think, I just act.

  I jump from my seat and, though the blood smells so amazing it makes my heart race, I ignore it. Reaching out, I grab the nearest resident by the back of his shirt, and throw him back against one of the tables. The force of his weight knocks the table over, and just adds to the chaos.

  A girl hurls herself at me, fangs bared and eyes wild, and I elbow her sharply in the face. She falls to the ground, and I sweep the feet out from another girl. She falls to the ground too, and she glares up at me in hatred.

  I ignore her though, and start looking for Austin. I can see his bright green shirt at the bottom of the pile, and I start shoving people aside, trying to get to him. His hand appears, and I grab for it, and use all of my strength to haul him from the pileup of bodies.

  He’s gasping for air, and I can tell already that he’s going to have a massive bruise on his left cheekbone later. Right now his lip is split and bleeding, and he steps away from the others to nurse a crushed hand.

  Jillian shouts to me, “Kylie, help me break this up!”

  I nod, and wade back into the fight. Making sure Austin is ok will have to wait. Right now, I need to stop this frenzy before anyone else gets hurt. If any more blood gets spilled, the other will go insanely crazy, and the fight will never stop.

  I grab one girl’s jacket and shove her out of the pile of bodies, and she backs away trembling in shock. I can see bloody gouges in her wrist; it looks like someone might have dug their nails into her skin. She takes off her jacket and wraps it around her wrist to stop the bleeding.

  I turn my attention back to the squirming, wriggling bodies that are still lapping up the blood off the floor. A boy sees me reaching for him, and snaps with bared fangs at my outstretched fingers. Reacting on pure instinct, I slap him across the face, knocking some sense into him.

  He climbs from the pile and hides behind the front desk, trying to stay out of the rest of the fight.

  I pick a girl off the floor and, with a shock, notice that her lips and chin are smeared with bright red blood; she obviously got to some of the stuff on the floor. She notices the blood on her fingertips, and starts to contentedly suck on them in the corner.

  At least she’s done fighting.

  A boy lunges at me, and I duc
k under his wild haymaker, before elbowing him in the stomach. He wheezes directly in my face, and I catch the scent of blood on his breath. It forces me to pause for a second, and someone jumps onto my back while I’m busy battling my rising bloodlust.

  He leans around my shoulders, and I can tell he’s getting ready to bite me. His fangs are bared in a snarl, and he bends his head. I shriek and try to buck him off, but it’s no use. He’s wrapped around my body like a monkey, and I can’t shake him off.

  Someone else joins the fight, and he rips the boy from my back and throws him against the wall. I turn, and surprisingly find Kaven standing there with a ferocious snarl on his face. He clenches a hand and reaches out and, for a second, I’m afraid he’s going to punch me.

  His fist sails past my face though, and it solidly connects with a boy’s nose. It takes me a second to realize that the boy was charging for me, and I now owe Kaven for saving me twice in less than sixty seconds.

  Two more Protectors enter the classroom and start to break up the fight. With the three of them, the fledglings are all calmed down and back in their seats in under three minutes. When they’re all seated again, I notice that several of them are smeared in blood, and others are bleeding from wounds sustained during the fight.

  Jillian is looking at everyone with a mixture of worry and anger. Part of her looks like she’s not quite sure what she should do first, reprimand us or send us to the infirmary. After a minute, she decides on the latter.

  “Kaven, I want you and Kylie to take the injured fledglings over to the infirmary. Tell Margaret that I want them all bandaged up and ready to return to class within the next thirty minutes. Understood?”

  Everyone stares at her, and she sighs.

  “If you’re bleeding, follow these two over to the infirmary. You will not speak. You will not dillydally. And you will not fight. Anyone who does will see me after the lesson is through.”

  I sigh, and nod to some of the injured residents. All in all there are about eleven of them. Only a couple of them managed to not get hurt, and they get to stay behind and continue the lesson. Or help clean, I’m not sure which.

  Kaven and I walk the students over to the infirmary. Nobody so much as sneezes, for fear of being punished. They just hang their heads and try not to whimper. When we reach the infirmary, a woman in a nurse’s outfit, Margaret, is already waiting for us.

  She ushers the fledglings into the room, and she tells us to wait outside. When the door closes in our faces, there’s nothing to do but obey.

  Kaven stands there, leaning against the wall, with his arms crossed over his chest. I hate to admit it, because he’s kind of a jerk, but the movement causes his shirt to pull tightly over his chest, and he looks good.

  He has a confident arrogance that makes him look sexier than he is. Not that he’s bad looking, but his quiet seriousness takes him from cute to hot in an instant. And I hate myself for noticing that.

  Unfortunately, he catches me watching him, and his mouth spreads slowly into a sexy grin. “Like what you see?” he asks, flexing the muscles in his arms and chest.

  I smile as sweetly as possible and say, “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Like I hoped it would, it catches him off guard, but he quickly recovers. With an entirely arrogant smile he says, “Too bad you can’t have it.”

  I snort, and he narrows his eyes at me. “I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t want it.”

  He smiles, and this time it isn’t cocky, arrogant, or mean. It instantly makes him look like an actual person, instead of a jerk, and I wonder if he really dislikes me as much as I originally thought. Maybe he’s just hard to please, like Andrea…

  “So, you probably kept a lot of people from getting hurt worse than they did.”

  He sounds almost reluctant to admit it, but I just smile. “Yeah, I did. I don’t know why I wasn’t as affected by the spill as the others.”

  “What happened in there?”

  I sigh. “Someone freaked and they spilled the blood all over the floor. Everyone in the room just went crazy. I think I wasn’t as affected because I was more worried about helping Austin than getting my fill of the blood.”

  “Have you tasted blood yet?” he asks softly.

  I nod slowly. “Yeah, last night. I kind of went crazy and almost snapped at Jillian and my best friend.”

  He smiles again, and this time it makes him look younger and strangely boyish. “I did the same thing. I think most of us do. A few get sad or even outright depressed, but most just go crazy. Of course, that was almost two years ago for me, and I wasn’t the towering hulk you see before you now. It wasn’t hard to stop me.”

  “How long until the blood won’t affect me like that?”

  He uncrosses his arms and sticks his hands in his jean pockets, then shrugs. “I’m not sure. It varies. Some only need a few weeks, others months or years.”

  Years?

  He chuckles. “Don’t worry. You’ll get the hang of it eventually. Until then, you just have to be extra careful.”

  I nod, and take a deep breath. “Thank you, you know, for helping me in there.”

  He shrugs again, this time looking a little embarrassed. “It was nothing.”

  “Are fledglings usually like that? When they get the scent of blood?”

  “Pretty much. It probably didn’t help that Morgan was already freaking out.”

  “She can turn herself invisible.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Yeah, invisible. Right in Jillian’s arms. It caught her by surprise and Morgan was able to slip out of her grasp.”

  Neither of us speaks for a minute, until, “I’m sorry about the others in the gym today.”

  “What? Why? It’s not like it was your fault.”

  “I know that, it’s just that Protectors are supposed to be like Knights. We’re loyal, brave, honest, and chivalrous to women. They weren’t being very chivalrous.”

  “Haven’t you heart? Chivalry is dead.”

  “Not to Protectors it’s not.”

  The door opens, and Austin walks out. His lip is split, but no longer bleeding, there’s a giant red mark across his left cheek, and two of his fingers are taped together. When he looks at me, I notice that he looks very uncomfortable.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He sighs. “I thought I was getting better at controlling myself. One little spill and I acted like a monster.”

  “Austin, how long have you been here?”

  “Eight weeks. Andrea and I both died at the same time. She has much better control than I do. That spill wouldn’t have bothered her at all. She just would have ignored it and went about her day.”

  “Austin, you can’t know that for sure. She might have done the same thing you did.”

  “You didn’t do it,” he says softly, looking away from me.

  “Well, I was too worried about you to try for any of that sweet smelling blood.”

  “So you noticed it?” he asks, his eyes wide and hopeful. “You don’t have some freaky special control over your bloodlust?”

  I shake my head. “No, I guess my training just started to kick in a little early. I was more worried about pulling you to safety, so I was able to just not focus on the blood.”

  “Austin, how many others are still being patched up? Are any of them staying the night in the infirmary?” Kaven asks, getting information like a Protector probably should.

  Austin nods. “Donna and April are staying the night. Margaret says they have some broken ribs and a little internal bleeding. It’s not bad, but she just wants them off their feet to be sure. The others are almost done.”

  The three of us wait out in the hall for almost another ten minutes before Margaret releases the fledglings back to us, minus the two that are staying. Without a word, they follow us back to Jillian’s classroom, and await their punishment.