Shadow Walker (Neteru Academy Books) (40 page)

She craned her neck to stare up and almost lost her balance.

“Counselor Zehiradangra has her living quarters up there.” Professor Razor cupped a hand to the side of his mouth, holding his cigarette in the other hand and called out, “Hey, Z, I’ve got Sarah up here. …Yeah, yeah, she’s in my class now.” Then he turned to Sarah. “Counselor Z says she’s sorry and really feels bad about what happened.” He let out an impatient breath. “That’s the one thing I can promise you. I
will
give it to you straight. If you screw up, I’ll tell you. If you do good, I’ll tell you that, too. Angels cannot lie—well, one did, and we know how that turned out.”

“You’re an angel?” she said, looking at the cigarette he held.

“Gimme a break, kid. None of us is perfect—except the One. This is my one vice since they took me off Hell patrol.” Professor Razor took a deep drag of his cigarette, let the smoke come out his nose and briefly closed his eyes. “Headmistress Stone and about a hundred thousand white wingers tell me it’ll be the death of me one day, but, hey, I’m immortal, remember? Besides, it reminds me of the good times me and my buddies had down in the black sulfur smoke of hellfire and brimstone, kicking demon butt.” He took another puff, then crushed out the smoldering butt between two tobacco-yellowed fingers, and finally made it disappear. “Just because I do it doesn’t mean you should, though. You’re not immortal, and your lungs are still pink and alive. Mine are tar pools after working in the mines demon hunting for so long.”

She had no comeback to that. The professor was so not what she’d imagined a hell-fighting angel to be. Looking for a graceful way to change the subject, she stared out at the horizon.

“Thanks for bringing me up here,” Sarah said, casting her gaze around as she turned in a slow circle. “I think I needed this.”

“All right, but I’m going to make this lesson quick, so you don’t miss the rest of your classes today. Assembly is going to inform everybody about the things you already know. Then your dad is gonna whirl out those kids whose parents are nervous and want them home. But what you need to know is this: No matter how upset you were or whatever they might have done to you as a prank, going after a fellow student is something that has to be addressed—especially when you’ve got powers like you do. Next time, you could kill somebody. So this isn’t a hooky session or a reward for screwing up in Miss Tittle’s homeroom. I’m just giving you a little time to get your head on straight so you can go back to class without doing more damage. We clear?” Professor Razor said, breaking her quiet communion with nature.

“Yes, sir,” she said, feeling the sting of his reference to what she’d done to Melissa. Up here in the fresh air and cloaked by peace, she’d almost forgotten about it.

“See that black ring in front of the tree line?” he said, stretching out a long arm and pointing for her gaze to follow. “That’s the no-fly zone. You don’t have to worry because none of you guys in my advanced class have that gift. But every year there’s at least one winger who thinks he or she knows enough about aerodynamics to fly over the ring of darkness down there and make it to town. Tell your brother not to be stupid.”

“Is Al about to move up from Specials into the advanced Shadows class as a flier?” she said, suddenly feeling dejected.

“In his dreams,” Professor Razor said, and then kicked a small pebble over the edge of the platform.

Mixed emotions coursed through her. This was a first. She was in a talent division class that was more advanced than Al’s? All her life she’d thought it would be great to one-up him, but now it felt really strange…and she felt oddly sorry for her brother. This kind of recognition meant more to him than it did to her.

“He’s not so bad,” she offered quietly.

“Reminds me of your father—needs a lot of discipline before he’s ready for my class.”

“So…am I really in your division now?”

“
Hmmm…
let me think about that some more while we’re up here. To be a Shadow, you’ve gotta really want it. If—and I do mean if—I agree to take you on, you’ll meet everybody tomorrow, last period, at which point I’ll become your living nightmare.” Professor Razor gave her a sidelong glance. “Today, spend your time getting your head together and following your normal roster.” He hesitated, then looked away from her. “Everybody is a little thrown off by what’s been happening lately. It’s tough losing a compound sister. I’m sorry about what happened to Ayana. But tomorrow, I will have no mercy. You can’t be a loose cannon or do anything that could hurt a fellow student, regardless of what’s going on.”

She noted that, unlike her grandmother and parents, Professor Razor didn’t tell her everything would be all right and that they’d find Yaya. He just said he was sorry about whatever had happened to her. His statement was true but not comforting.

“I already have detention from Miss Tittle,” Sarah finally said, hoping that would help mollify him. It didn’t.

“Tough break. But if I were you, I’d honor it as a matter of principle—just so it doesn’t look like your grandmother gave you a pass on a serious school infraction. Sure, you could argue that Miss Gray provoked you with an earlier prank,
blah, blah, blah
, but in the end, the Academy has a zero-tolerance policy on student-against-student violence, for obvious reasons. Kids can die. If the other students see you walk and not get punished just because you were extra upset about Ayana, you’ll never live it down. Plain and simple. So suck it up. Other kids around here have gone missing, too. The only difference is, they were all orphans and didn’t have an entire posse of family to come barging into the school to turn everything upside down. Yeah, there was an exhaustive search for them—an ongoing search, just like this one—but there were no parents, aunts, uncles and cousins coming to school in full-metal-jacket mode, ready for war.”

He shrugged and looked off toward the horizon again. “Sure, you could cop a plea and probably get your grandmother to tell Miss Tittle to back off and not make you do detention. Suit yourself, but do you truly want to do seven years here as ‘that privileged Neteru bitch’ and be hated by everyone because of that?” he asked, making little quotes in the air with his fingers as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Or would you rather fit in as best you can? Your choice, but if it were me…”

Sarah just stared up at her newest instructor, hanging on his every word.

“I thought so,” he said. “Good choice. Now, back to why you don’t base jump from here, and I’m telling you this because you came in here with a couple of fliers. Earlier this year we lost two seventh-year Uppers because they were showing off for a couple of girls. Sure, they claimed it was all about trying to locate the missing students—but if you ask me, it had more to do with trying to impress the two Clavs they came up here with.” He let out a hard breath and looked off toward the horizon again. “Damned shame, too. So much life yet to live, so much promise, and gone—for what? Just because they couldn’t follow some basic rules.”

He turned his attention back to Sarah, and his gaze was penetrating. “So I guess you wonder why am I telling you this. Because after the shadow attack, you might suddenly find yourself being very popular with a few bad asses. Why am I concerned? Because those bad asses are dumb asses at your age.”

He walked to the edge of the platform and slapped his chest. “I’m a supernatural. Was never a kid. Was always this age since the beginning of ages. I can fly in where normal angels fear to tread, you read me? Problem with an inexperienced flier base jumping from here is that this entire structure is being shielded by a Neteru energy distortion, courtesy of your dad. Once they come out of that at the base of the pyramid, things are a lot closer than they appeared.” Professor Razor shook his head. “Ground just comes right up on you—
whack
.”

She cringed and thought about Al and Val flying out past the light barriers at the Neteru compound. If they had managed to land out there, God help them. Maybe the only reason they’d made it back safely that night was because they’d had to turn back when they heard her screams.

Her voice moved up her throat and past her lips without consulting her brain. She thought of Val’s expression when he took flight, just as he took a running leap. “Or maybe,” she said, closing her eyes and opening her arms wide, feeling the breeze caress her soul, “maybe if you had wings you feel like you have to do this. Maybe not giving in to the wind and hurling yourself off the edge of the world would feel like you were in a cage, maybe you have to just let the nothingness catch you until you became lighter than air.”

“That must suck,” he said quietly. “You’ve got the soul of a flier but no wings.”

Sarah opened her eyes.

“Tough break. But everybody’s got issues.”

For a moment she just stared at him. “Yeah, I wanted the wings but got crazy demon shadows that hurt people. Go figure.”

“They aren’t demons, and for the record, I wanted white wings and a frickin’ harp but got raven wings and a scythe, then a class of newbies with problem parents. You learn to play the hand you’re dealt. Not much work after the Armageddon for us Reapers. Just a little border patrol duty, the occasional riffraff to drag back to Hell, nothing major. Gotta wait until the next big one, I suppose. Like I said, kid, we’ve all got issues.”

“What’s a Reaper, exactly?”

Professor Razor let out a long, weary sigh and rolled his shoulders. “Didn’t they teach you
anything
?” One moment he was standing beside her like a normal old dude with weird eyes. In the next moment, darkness fell over her. His twenty-foot, muscular wingspan eclipsed the sun. Blue-black feathers glistened as his eyes turned midnight blue and a silver scythe materialized in his hand.

“This is a Reaper,” he said in a low, ominous rumble. “If one of us is on your ass, you’ve obviously made some very unfortunate choices in life.”

Sarah stepped away from the edge of the platform on wobbly legs. “You were after my dad?”

Her shadows leap-frogged over each other and let out tiny squeals before jumping into his larger shadow to disappear entirely.

“Yeah,” Professor Razor said, then folded away his wings and flung his scythe away from him into the clouds. “But he got a last-minute pardon. Luck of the draw that never sat right with me, but I don’t make those decisions. Then again, you’re here as a result, so somebody must have had a reason for sparing him.”

“Oh.” What was she supposed to say to that?

“And those little shadow guys who scare you? Those are Collectors. And they don’t like being confused with gremlins, hobgoblins or demons. It’s an insult.”

He tapped his foot and waited as they came sliding over the edge of the platform, then began bouncing up and down like tiny balls.

“Collectors?” Sarah hugged herself, making sure she kept her distance from the Reaper.

“We Reapers are like bounty hunters,” he said matter-of-factly. “We drag things down to the Pit, and those little guys are like our bloodhounds. They help—and they love to play go fetch. Yours are still young. Your Collectors are like big puppies, really, when not on the hunt. You just have to give them plenty of love and discipline, let them know who the alpha dog is and tell them no when they grab the wrong creature occasionally. But I like ‘em.” He motioned toward the small moving orbs with his chin. “You oughta name them.”

“Name them?” Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Yeah, like give…them…a name,” he said slowly and deliberately, without a smile.

Sarah shook her head and walked away from him and the little nuisances that had bothered her all her life. They looked like ink spots, just strange splats against the stones, when dormant and not three dimensional. The really weird part was when nothing was going on, there’d always just be two of them—but when things got crazy, it was as if they’d multiply and divide into a bunch of smaller dark orbs. Yet after things calmed down, they always came back into the main two blobs they’d originated from. And now she was supposed to
name
them? Was he nuts?

She hadn’t a clue as to how to name a shadow, especially when they began stretching like an old Slinky toy when they tried to follow her down the stairs. “Inky… Slinky? Professor, help me out here,” she said, opening her arms wide. “I don’t know! Who names scary shadows?”

Shrill noises that degenerated into grumbles emanated from the shadows.

“It might be me,” Professor Razor said, trying hard not to smile, “but I don’t think they’d like that. The whole Inky and Slinky thing? Rhyming…uh…not so great.”

“Well then…what?” Sarah dragged her fingers through her hair, grabbed her scrunchie and slipped it around her wrist before placing both hands on her hips. “How’s Beep and Bop, since that’s what they sound like when they’re playing around and not fussing at me?”

Squeals of delight ricocheted off the stones, and her instructor cracked a smile.

“Wouldn’t have been my choice, but I guess it works for them,” he said, trying to remain stern.

“Okay,” Sarah said, blowing out a breath of annoyance. “Beep and Bop—but how the heck do I tell you guys apart?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, since they work in tandem…sorta like twins are supposed to,” Razor pointed out. “Anyway, now that they’ve been named, your Collectors should behave a little better just knowing you’ve finally claimed them, which should also stop any unauthorized attacks. Rather than acting on your behalf, they’ll wait for your command. But you’ve really got to practice some anger management, kiddo.”

“They grabbed Melissa,” Sarah said, and hung her head. “They bit her, yanked out her hair and cut her up.”

“Yep. But they’ll fix her up in the infirmary and her face will be as good as new—courtesy of our expert healers,” he said with a shrug. “Unfortunately for Melissa, the green-eyedmonster is hard to tell from other demons, then add in a jigger of malcontent, lies, whatever else she had stewing in her, and then an attack that sent you to a very dark place inside your mind, and your Collectors flipped out. It was the perfect storm.”

“Were they really gonna drag her to Hell?”