Kane's Fate 2 Chapter 2

Everyone whirled around to see a young man about our age with long black hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He had a tattoo of a spiderweb across his scrawny, pale throat, and his black leather jacket squeaked as he strode forward into the classroom.

He was confident yet something about him hit a nerve, like he didn’t belong here. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I glanced over at the rest of my class, and they were all staring at him with the same sense of awe and confusion. No one greeted him or said anything, and it seemed fairly obvious no one knew who he was.

The stranger walked through the aisles to the front of the classroom and stood in front of Ms. Smith with an expectant smirk.

“Can I help you?” the professor finally asked as she brushed imaginary lint from her pantsuit.

“You’re the professor, right?” He arched an eyebrow and looked around the room in mock confusion. “You should be able to help me learn defense of the mind or whatever.”

“Are you a student here at Meloria?” Ms. Smith asked as she eyed him with caution.

“I am now,” he said.

“I didn’t expect any new students,” the professor replied as she straightened up and looked him square in the eyes. “You’ll need to speak with Dean Canmore--”

“I already did,” the stranger cut her off. “She said you’d be getting an email soon with my info. I’m in this class unless she finds somewhere else for me to go.”

“Alright,” Ms. Smith murmured. “And what is your name?”

“Dax,” he said. “Dax Mullen.”

With that, he plopped into the chair behind Vic and slouched back to wait for Ms. Smith to continue. She still looked a little flustered at his dramatic entrance, but she cleared her throat and returned to the lecture.

Despite what he said, Dax showed absolutely no interest in the information Ms. Smith was giving out, and he spent most of the class on the phone in his lap. I could just barely see him swipe back and forth, and it looked like he was on Tinder.

New kid on campus, and he thought he was going to find a match already?

My fera growled at the thought of this random guy encroaching on my territory, and I had to temper the response with some deep breathing. I’d rip that stupid tattoo from his throat before he swiped right on one of my women.

Or potential women.

It seemed Indira was right about my instinct to grow my pack, and I considered who else would be a good fit when the buzzer rang and brought me back to the present.

Dax slipped his phone into his pocket and jetted out of the classroom while the rest of us gathered our things before we walked out toward the Medius.

“…will be so beautiful, right, Kane?” Demi asked.

“Yeah, sure,” I mumbled distractedly. “What did you guys think of that Dax guy?”

“Oh, that tattoo is godawful,” Madison groaned and rolled her blue eyes. “If he’s going to get ink, at least get something cool. He could have gotten just about anything, and he got a stupid spider web.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty bad,” I agreed, “but there are worse things, right? He could have gotten it on his forehead.”

“I’m not sure his neck is any better,” Demi giggled.

“It’s not,” Madison confirmed with a shake of her head. “I think it’s probably one of the worst I’ve ever seen. It looks like he drew it on himself.”

“It wasn’t that bad,” I chuckled. “I’m no professional, though. I don’t have any.”

“Really?” Demi’s mouth opened in shock before it turned into a mischievous smile. “I’d have to see you naked to verify that.”

“Or you can just go with me to get one,” I pointed out. “I’ve been thinking about getting a white tiger. Is that too cliché?”

“A little,” she giggled. “Maybe go a little less obvious.”

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“Hmm.” Demi tapped her lip in thought. “Maybe a snowy owl feather.”

“I like that,” I said. “Maybe with Charlotte’s favorite color around it or something.”

“Ooooh, like a watercolor painting,” Madison squealed. “Oh, my God, I’ve seen some amazing ones. I’ll show you on Pinterest!”

The blonde shifter pulled up the app on her phone, but I quickly lost interest as my thoughts returned to Dax and his odd tattoo and demeanor. He stuck out like a sore thumb around here, and I wondered what had brought him to Meloria in the first place.

“What do you think his fera is?” I asked out of the blue.

“Who?” Madison asked as she looked up from the screen in confusion.

“Dax,” I said. “Maybe it’s a spider. Then the tattoo would make sense.”

“Who cares?” Demi replied with a shrug. “He’s a weirdo, and he won’t last long with that attitude. Ms. Smith put up with it because she was surprised, but some professors won’t. He’ll get kicked out for being disrespectful.”

“I’m just curious,” I said. “Maybe it means something to him, like his fera is a pig, and he thinks he’s Wilbur.”

The girls nearly fell over themselves laughing, but I was halfway serious. I wasn’t sure where Dax had come from or what he was doing at our school, but I figured it would come out sooner rather than later.

“So, we heard you had an eventful break,” Demi said with a gleam in her emerald eyes, and she twisted a braid around her finger as she flashed me a coy smile. “Did you and Charlotte and Indira have a good time?”

“Yes,” I replied with a grin. “It was a little weird at first, but it makes sense now. I don’t know how to explain it. Anyway, we just have to get our parents used to it. That’s been the hardest part about it all. My dad was pretty pissed at first.”

“Because you have two girlfriends?” Demi wondered.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “He still thinks it’s wrong, but obviously, I’m not cheating on anyone since I brought them both home with me. He just doesn’t know how to handle it. My mom was a wreck and kept saying I was disrespecting the girls.”

“Ouch,” Madison murmured. “What did you do?”

“Did it anyway,” I chuckled. “They can’t stop me, and I like having this open relationship thing.”

“Do you have any more openings?” Demi asked and licked her lips.

“Oh?” I smirked.

“I mean are you open to more than one threesome,” she said and batted her eyelashes.

I sputtered for a moment as I tried to think of a response, and Madison and Demi giggled together as they watched me flounder.

“Do we have to fill out an application or something?” Madison asked and winked a blue eye at me. “I’ll fill out whatever you want, Kane.”

Even though my instincts screamed at me to mark them both right here and now, I resisted the urge. Part of it was due to being in the middle of the quad, and part of it was because Indira and Charlotte weren’t around to approve.

“I just have to talk to the girls,” I finally said. “I don’t want to assume I know how they feel, and we haven’t exactly talked about it in great detail.”

“It seems our local white tiger is also a gentleman,” Demi remarked with a smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll be around whenever you’re ready or whenever they’re ready.”

I really needed to talk with the girls about how to establish the rules about growing the pack. Did I get to pick whoever I wanted? Or did I always need to go through them before I made the decision?

“We won’t rush you,” Madison agreed, and the blonde patted my arm in assurance. “We want to be as happy as they are with you, even if that means we have to wait. Just don’t forget about us!”

“I could never forget about you,” I said. “Besides, I stare at your perfect asses all day. I have to think about you when I do that.”

“Fair enough,” Demi laughed. “I’ll wear my good jeans tomorrow. The ones that are really tight.”

“Do you have tighter jeans than what you normally wear?” I arched a playful eyebrow, and they giggled again before our approach to the Medius was interrupted by a loud throat clearing.

I turned to see Dean Canmore with her arms crossed over her chest and a grimace on her lined face. Her sandy blond hair fell just below her ears, and her brown eyes were narrowed on the three of us with concern.

“Mr. Turner, may I have a word?” she asked in a low voice.

I wondered how much of our conversation she’d overheard, and my cheeks heated up as I nodded my head.

“I’ll see you girls in there,” I said to Demi and Madison.

They both scurried into the building, while the dean and I took a stroll away from the Medius. For a few minutes, she didn’t say anything, and I grew more concerned with where this conversation was going. It couldn’t take this long to tell me no threesomes on campus, so something else had to be happening.

I had a feeling it had something to do with Dax.

“Can I--” I started.

“Sorry to--” She stopped and laughed. “Sorry again. I just wanted to talk to you since you got back from break about the whole Philo thing.”

Philo Geralds, the man who’d shown up after my Bellator victory and thrown some pretty heavy words around. He’d said his group called the Atroba would be doling out some sort of punishment and that he’d let me rest after winning the Bellator, but it wouldn’t be long. No one seemed to know what he meant except that he hated Meloria for some reason, not to mention he was on the Concurem’s radar for a number of murders and other crimes. He was a dangerous guy, and he’d threatened me and everyone else on campus.

The mention of his name made my blood boil.

“Are we finally going after him?” I asked as I clenched my fists at my sides.

“No,” Canmore sighed. “But you need to know more about the Atroba he’s created. I don’t want you to be in the dark about this threat, and you have to take it seriously. He meant what he said, and I don’t know which head he wants to cut off-- yours or mine.”

“Alright,” I agreed. “So, is there a book I need to read or something? What do I need to do?”

“Not exactly.” The dean frowned and stopped as she gnawed on her lower lip. “I think it’d be easier to teach you myself.”

“Teach me?” I echoed.

“Yes, in a classroom,” she chuckled. “You act like you didn’t just leave one of those.”

“Well, not to learn about a cult,” I pointed out with a grin. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t know you knew that much about it.”

“I do, but not enough,” Canmore replied. “I want to know more, and I think the best thing for both of us is to study and learn it all together. Then we can understand exactly what we’re up against.”

“So, we’re making our own club?” I joked.

“Of sorts,” she hedged. “There will be one other person in the class for now, so it won’t be just the two of us.”

“Who?”

“You’ll see this afternoon,” she said. “I want to start the class immediately. Instead of your Magical Beings class, you’ll report to my office today. I think knowing about the Atroba trumps knowing about other kinds of magic creatures and beings for now. Besides, you seem to have made, ah, friends with other types of magical abilities.”

“Yeah, a few,” I agreed and smiled. “I don’t mind learning from them.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Canmore chuckled.

We continued to walk along the quad when I noticed Dax sitting on the steps of the gazebo where we usually held our duels. He held a tray of food from the cafeteria, but he’d barely touched any of it, and he ignored us as we walked toward him.

I felt a twinge of sympathy at the sight of him eating alone. He was new, and I knew it wasn’t easy to be the outsider at Meloria. My first few days had been getting to know people who mostly knew each other. I was the transplant from Durango, while many of the other students were from California cities and knew each other before they’d arrived here.

“He doesn’t know anyone yet,” the dean said in a hushed voice as though she’d read my thoughts. “He’s new.”

“I found that out when he showed up in my class today,” I replied. “He made quite an entrance into Ms. Smith’s classroom.”

“Ms. Smith?” Canmore repeated and shook her head. “He’s not in that class.”

“He was today,” I insisted. “He said you sent him there.”

“He went to the wrong room,” she groaned. “I bet he’s figured that out already. I’m sure he’s embarrassed. He probably needs a friend right now.”

“It sounds like you’re volunteering me,” I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. “He wouldn’t even talk during class once he sat down. He just played on his phone.”

“He’s probably nervous,” Canmore pointed out. “New school, none of his old friends, and he went to the wrong place. It’s not easy, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“I haven’t,” I grunted. “He just didn’t seem very friendly. What if he doesn’t want me to talk to him?”

“Do it anyway,” she said with a shrug. “He came from Imperium. I don’t think he’s too happy about having to leave it.”

I didn’t know much about our rival school, Imperium Academy, but I figured being rivals was at least part of the reason Dax was so cranky about being here at Meloria. It couldn’t be easy to go from one school to the one you hated, but I couldn’t figure out why he would have made the switch. It wasn’t like we were forced to go to the magical schools.

“So, why did he?” I asked.

“You’d have to ask him,” Canmore said, and the slightest hint of a smile twitched across her lips. “I’m sure he’d be happy to meet someone here.”

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll go, but if he doesn’t want me to talk to him, I’m out of there.”

“Fair enough,” she agreed. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

The dean walked away, and I made my way toward Dax. He watched my approach with a mixture of curiosity and disdain, but I forged on. I’d keep my word to the dean and say hello, but if he didn’t want me around, I wasn’t going to keep trying.

“Hey, I’m Kane,” I said and stuck out my hand. “You were in my Defense of the Mind class this morning.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I was.”

He begrudgingly shook my hand and leaned back against the railing of the gazebo steps.

“Uh, did you like the class?” I tried to make conversation.

“Boring,” he replied with a shrug.

“Well, we were only doing the lecture today,” I said. “Tomorrow, we’ll start mindscape battles, but I don’t know if we can shift in there or what. What’s your fera?”

“I don’t have a fera,” Dax said and frowned. “I’m a charmer.”

My fake smile froze on my face for a moment as I tried to catch up. Ms. Canmore had said he was in the wrong class earlier, but I hadn’t really thought about where he was supposed to be instead.

I tried to cover my duh moment with a helpful offer.

“You were in the wrong class earlier,” I remarked with a smile. “It happens, especially if you don’t know any of the other charmers yet. I can introduce you--”

“I’m good,” Dax cut me off and waved his hand. “And I don’t need your pity party friendship either, so if that’s all you came over here for, feel free to alleviate the awkwardness and go back to your lunch.”

A slight flush colored his cheeks, and I realized he was embarrassed about going to the wrong class. It probably didn’t make things any better to realize he’d been a jerk for no reason to Ms. Smith since he was in the wrong room, and there was no way for her to be expecting him. So, all his false bravado had been for nothing, and I felt another twinge of sympathy for the tattooed outcast.

“Nah, it’s not too awkward,” I assured him and sat down on the steps with him. “I heard you’re from Imperium. Did you like it there?”

“Nope.” He smirked and shook his head. “Too many assholes.”

“So, did you want to come here?” I pressed for information.

“Not really,” he said with a shrug. “But there aren’t many options for learning how to control my power, so I went with this one once Imperium kicked me out.”

“Kicked you out?” I repeated. “For what?”

“I’d rather not talk about it,” Dax muttered. “You wouldn’t understand. You only know Meloria and the good magic they use. You don’t know anything about Imperium.”

“They use dark magic or something?” I asked.

“Or something,” he replied in a low voice.

I started to ask for more information, but Dax had already shut down. He pulled his phone from his pocket, and I soon realized he wasn’t swiping on Tinder but on a bubble shooter game.

I wanted to give the guy a chance, especially since it didn’t seem like he had much else going for him at the moment. He’d been kicked out of his school and had no choice but to start here, he didn’t know anyone, and now, he’d fucked up and gone into the wrong classroom and made an ass of himself.

He was a memorable guy, but I doubted he planned on being easily remembered for acting like a tool.

“Well, I’m going to grab some food while I still have time,” I said as I rose to my feet. “I guess we won’t have many classes together, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah,” Dax replied with a shrug. “See you around.”

I almost felt bad as I walked away from his dejected face, but then I realized that was pretty much how his face always looked. He was bummed out about Meloria and Imperium, but my curiosity was intensely piqued about how he was kicked out from a notoriously bad school.

Where Meloria focused on light and goodness, Imperium focused on power and strength. It didn’t matter how you got what you wanted as long as you were the best, and they’d step on anyone or anything to get their way. At least, that was how Ms. Canmore had described our rival school and its students and professors.

I hadn’t had any of my own experiences with the school yet, and I didn’t intend to get mixed up in Dax’s drama with Imperium. I was just curious.

I walked into the cafeteria and was almost immediately swarmed by Indira, Charlotte, Demi, and Madison.

“Oh, my God, are you okay?” Madison asked with trembling lips.

“Did you get in trouble?” Charlotte wondered.

“No.” I shook my head and smiled. “Nothing to worry about. Just a special class I have to take this semester. I’ll explain it all later. I want to eat before history class. I’ll need the extra energy to stay awake.”

“Of course!” Indira grabbed a tray of food from the table. “We already got you something.”

I grabbed the PB&J from the tray and shoved what felt like half the sandwich in my mouth. Then I tucked the bag of chips into my bag for later since we only had a few minutes before it was time to go to class.

I looked around for Auden with the intention of telling him about the Atroba class, but I could see he was a little busy.

He and Lark were playing an intense game of tonsil hockey, and I had no desire to interrupt that. I decided to text him later, and we could talk about it when he was free.

Once I’d finished my sandwich, we walked from the Medius back to the classroom building. Indira headed for the older level classes, Charlotte walked toward the pusher classes, and Demi, Madison, and I made our way to our history class.

Our professor, Jude Macintosh, was a nerdy guy in his late twenties or early thirties who was easily the only person I knew who got excited about history. He was nearly jumping up and down with excitement when we walked inside, and Vic was already there and halfway asleep.

“Welcome back!” Jude announced with a wide grin. “Boy, have I got a lesson for you today! I’ve already been told some of you have been researching a certain topic, so Dean Canmore is allowing me to cover it today. Who’s familiar with the plague of the seventeen hundreds?”

I froze in my seat.

I was familiar with that plague because Charlotte, Auden, and I had found some information about how it was during the same time as an asteroid shower, asteroid disappearance, and magical sacrifices, much like the ones we’d read about in San Diego. The recent murders were currently being blamed on Philo Geralds, though no one had any evidence to arrest him, but we weren’t sure who was responsible for the murders three hundred years ago.

The whole three centuries ago part was most interesting to me because of the prophecy I’d found. It said a white tiger shifter would activate when the rest of the world needed his light. Since the rest of my family was made up of charmers, and I was the only shifter, it made sense for the prophecy to be about me, but I still had no idea what darkness I was supposed to fight off with my light.

My secondary power was light manipulation, which felt a little kitschy to say I had to use my light to fight the darkness, but I wasn’t the one who wrote the prophecy. In fact, we weren’t sure who’d written it yet. We only knew it had to be a combination of a charmer and a seer.

“Well, not everyone at once.” Jude frowned as he tapped his finger on the board, and an image of a scale-covered body appeared. “This was the plague. Now, we know it was a magical attack on humans, but at the time, no one knew who it was. In fact, many magical authorities tried to cure it first before resorting to wiping the memories of those who remembered being attacked. They couldn’t give authorities any details about who the attacker was, only that he’d thrown some sort of potion on them and chanted a spell.”

“So, it was a charmer?” I asked.

My mind immediately jumped to Philo Geralds. He couldn’t have been around three centuries ago, but maybe an ancestor or someone else who’d been tainted by dark magic. Maybe history was simply repeating itself.

I guessed we’d have to all watch out for scaly rashes to be sure.

“We suspect so,” the professor agreed. “Nothing has been confirmed, as it is now three hundred years later, but charmers are most likely to use potions such as the one used to create this plague. It took time for our people to find a cure.”

“But a lot of people died,” I pointed out. “So, was it because of that scaly stuff or what?”

“A few died of the plague itself, yes,” the professor confirmed. “However, a greater number died due to the memory rewrite. Humans can only handle one or two rewrites in a short amount of time. It seemed the attacker had performed a few of his own, and when the authorities tried to rewrite their memories of the attack, their brains became overloaded with magic, which often leads to dire results.”

“We killed them?” I was aghast at the thought.

We were supposed to go in and clear up the situation, but instead, we’d killed a large number of the victims to keep our secret safe.

Was the magical world really that important?

“Truly, the charmer killed them,” he pointed out. “He knew we’d try to do a rewrite, and he did one first to ruin our chances of performing our own successfully. It was a chess tactic to be three moves ahead, and our authorities at the time played right into his hand. However, a few of the people were not harmed, and they were simply relocated. At that time, it would have seemed like they’d died in the eyes of their friends since no one had Facebook at the time to update their location.”

There was a mild ripple of laughter through the class, and Jude continued on with his speech about the plague. I listened intently and took notes as he talked about how the charmer had infiltrated multiple cities in western Europe to infect as many people as possible with his deadly potion, as well as how our people had worked tirelessly for weeks to come up with a solution.

As he began to wind down, I pulled out my phone to text Auden.

Got new details on the plague. Turns out a charmer started it all. People mostly died because of the memory rewrite since he’d already done one first.

The three bubbles popped up as Auden responded to my message.

What a prick. He knew it would kill them to have a second one. It was like a backup to the plague then?

Makes sense, I agreed. If the potion didn’t kill them, the rewrite would. He wanted to take out as many people as possible, but no one knows why. Jude thinks it was just someone attacking humans.

You don’t. It wasn’t a question. Auden knew me well.

No, I think it was a sacrifice, like the murders in San Diego. It has to be linked somehow to what’s happening now.

Someone’s going to do another plague?

Not sure, I admitted. But they have to do something drastic to get as much power as possible. We need to know more about sacrificial magic. I’ll find out what I can in my new class. Dean wants me to learn about the Atroba. Maybe they do that kind of stuff.

I’ll start digging. Let me know. We can talk more at dinner.

I sent back a thumbs up just as the buzzer sounded, and I tucked away my notes for our talk later. I’d be adding more notes in my Atroba class with Ms. Canmore, but I had plenty about the plague for now.

I started toward the door to the classroom building when Demi touched my arm.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “We have our next class together.”

“I’m with Canmore now,” I replied. “She has a special assignment for me. I’ll see you after, I promise.”

“Okay.” Demi pursed her lips before she sashayed back toward our former shared class.

I walked outside and across the quad toward the Medius. Dean Canmore’s office was on the third floor, so I took the elevator up while I wondered what all we’d talk about with the Atroba and how much the dean already knew. I was curious about what she didn’t know and how she planned on us learning together, but I didn’t have much to go on.

An interview with Philo Geralds was pretty much out of the question.

He’d also mentioned the Atroba was larger than Canmore knew, and he’d implied we had a member close by. Could a staff member be playing double agent? Or was it someone else who happened to be on campus for the Bellator? We’d had dozens of parents and other spectators here to watch the competition, including the Premier and her Tuito. It could be any number of suspects.

My head began to spin with the possibilities, and I rapped gently on the door of the dean’s office and shook my head to clear it. I needed to focus on finding out as much as I could for right now. We could find the possible members later.

“Kane, come in,” Canmore said as she opened the door. “You’re just in time.”

She motioned toward the large circular table in the middle of the room, and I was surprised by who was filling one of the seats. The other student in the Atroba class was Dax Mullen.