Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) (7 page)

Shelton's lips curled. He grabbed my sleeve and pulled me well away from the creepy mind twisters.

"I take it you don't like Dean Buckley?" I asked.

He chuckled. "That jackass is not only in charge of educating kids, but he's one of the old bigots on the Arcane Council."

Thinking of Dean Buckley reminded me of the term Shelton had used to turn the dean from an admirer into a total hater. "What, pray tell, is a bloomer, besides an old style of women's underwear?"

Shelton gave me a sideways glance. "It means something different to everybody, but to the elitists, it means you never had formal training and came into your powers late." He shrugged. "There are plenty of nom kids in the world who have abilities, but don't even know it."

"Uh, I don't mean to be nitpicky, but I'm not human, so I was never a nom at any point in my life." It felt strange to say that aloud, but it was true. Supers called normal humans "noms", not only because of their normality, but because to supers like vampires, normal humans were nom-noms—self-aware snack packs.

"Yeah, well there's a reason I told him that."

"Because you want me to be an outcast?"

He shook his head. "I don't want people like him getting their hooks into you, or taking an interest." Shelton's eyes narrowed. "Believe me, when those kind of people are interested in you, it's usually gonna end up bad."

I rolled my eyes. "You're one of the most anti-social, anti-establishment people I have ever met."

"If you knew about my past, you'd understand."

My curiosity lit up like a beacon. "I'd love to hear that story."

He snorted. "Maybe someday."

Judging from how my every day went, I'd likely be dead before someday ever arrived.

Chapter 7

I took in the scene near the door to Queens Gate—the dwindling line of people entering and the roped-off crowd to the right. I read one of the signs someone waved in the air. "We have the right!" it exclaimed in red letters. Another read, "Arcanes Don't Own Queens Gate!"

"What in the world is this about?" I said as Shelton and I stopped next to the rat maze of ropes designed to herd people through the line to the entrance. Thankfully, the line had shrunk considerably since our arrival. A man in a dark suit inspected papers given to him by an older gentleman. He ran his wand along the older man, grunted, and tapped the wand to the papers before waving the man toward the doors.

The man in the suit looked us up and down. Raised an eyebrow. "You have business here?"

Shelton's jaw went tight. "Yeah. What's it to you?"

The man's eyebrow went up a notch. "The Arcane Council is restricting access to all relics dominated by Arcane school zones. As you may or may not know"—he sniffed as if we were complete idiots—"vampires attacked two novice schools." He held up a wand. "Therefore, you must be screened and approved for entry."

"You've got to be kidding me," Shelton said. "Why not set up an automated screening ward outside the entrance?"

The man shrugged. "The council plans to, but the Overworld Conclave is balking." He sighed and looked at the crowd of protesters. "The bloody vampires think they own the place."

I thought back to the last time I'd actually walked the cobblestoned streets of the Grotto. I'd seen plenty of vampires there, though I hadn't been through any of the Arcane school zones. I assumed they considered the entirety of Queens Gate a school zone. "So you're not letting any vampires through at all?"

"No. We're not taking any chances." He held up his wand. "Who's first?"

I shrugged. "Me, I guess."

The man said a magic phrase sounding suspiciously like "Scabadee Scoo" and ran the wand up and down my body. He frowned as results floated in the air before us. "You're spawn."

"Daemos," I said, deciding I'd suffered enough discrimination for the day.

He tutted. "Yes, yes, whatever." His nose wrinkled, but apparently there was no edict preventing my kind from entering. "There's something very strange about these readings," he said, looking back at them. I suspected it had to do with the big red word blinking at him beneath the breakdown of my supernatural lineage. Even though the words floated in the air in reverse before the man, I read
Daemos, UNKNOWN, AP-ERROR
.

"It doesn't say vampire, does it?"

He grudgingly shook his head. "I suppose not." The man looked at Shelton. "And now for you."

Shelton seemed to go through a fistfight with his conscience before growling assent. "Fine."

This time, the results came back as
Human, AP-17
. The security officer's eyes flashed wide. He looked Shelton up and down and muttered, "Unbelievable." After a long-suffering sigh, he gave a signal to the guards and motioned us inside. "Please enjoy your visit." His tone seemed to indicate he actually hoped otherwise.

If we ran into more bungholes like him and Dean Buckley, our visit certainly would suck.

"What's the 'AP' stand for?" I asked Shelton as the guards closed the doors behind us.

"Just some classification crap they like to throw around."

I guessed Shelton didn't care much for being classified, and I had to admit it was a bit hard to pin him with any designation except the "jackass who likes to keep everybody guessing."

We stood on a wide yellow brick road which wound its way toward a city nestled in a valley between two towering mountains. An adorable little cottage sat to one side of the yellow brick road, and something that looked like a shiny rocket ship from a nineteen fifties sci-fi movie sat to our right.

I took in the steep rocky summits on either side of the town. The base of each mountain started as gentle green slopes which gave the valley a bowl shape. A cityscape like something from Victorian-era London stretched between the two mountains. Tudor-style houses dotted the green landscape up to the perimeter of the city where lines of antiquated row-houses stretched the expanse. A huge clock tower rose above the rest of the city, flanked on either side by the tops of domed buildings.

At the edge of the valley bowl, mountainsides turned to craggy cliffs tufted with bits of grass and tenacious bushes, climbing toward the sky until they ended in plateaus, with one mountain terminating slightly higher than the other. At the other end of the valley, I saw where the mountains joined into one steep cliff.

"Amazing," I breathed.

"It's a sight, all right," Shelton said.

"Is the university up there?" I asked.

"Yep. We'll take the sky car," Shelton said, pointing toward the cottage. He led me around the side to a bright red cable car sitting atop a slab of polished obsidian.

I looked up the steep cliffs to either side of us and glanced back. The doors from the archway station were built into a solid rock wall which rose at a ninety-degree angle from the floor of the valley. It seemed hewn from the side of another mountain, which joined with the others to box in the valley. I gazed at the plateaus atop the mountains, but the university and academy were hidden from sight. Another thing I did not see was a single cable designed to allow a cable car to ascend those heights.

Then again, who needed cables when you had magic? "What's up with the rocket ship?" I asked.

Shelton grinned and led me to it. "The techies take this to Science Academy." He opened a hatch on the side of the vessel. Inside were shiny chrome bench seats occupied by several students—a young man with a backpack, a girl with geek chic glasses playing on an arctablet, and several others who looked like any other college students I'd ever seen.

A chrome-plated robot with a clear glass globe for a head stood at the front of the ship. Its torso pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees to face us. "Greetings, Earthlings," it said in a robotic monotone while multi-colored lights in the shape of a mouth blinked with each word. "Please take a seat if you are bound for the academy. We will depart momentarily."

I looked around the cabin and whistled. "It's like a budget science fiction film."

Shelton laughed. "Yeah. I'll say this for the techies—they have style."

We closed the hatch and headed back for the cottage with the cable car. A moment later, the rocket ship rumbled. Long flames licked from the nacelles, though I noted they didn't burn the grass.

"Fake flames?" I asked.

Shelton nodded. "That thing's way past using rocket propulsion. It's got some anti-grav stuff."

"What?" The sheer shock in my voice seemed to surprise Shelton. "You mean advanced scientific locomotion? Why don't the noms have this technology?"

Shelton shook his head. "Firstly, the Arcane Council would never want noms having access to this stuff, and secondly, because the Overworld Conclave forbids it."

"But think of the good it could do society! Anti-gravity cars would be so wicked."

He snorted. "Yeah, and I'd bet noms would love commuting on flying carpets. Never gonna happen."

"Stupid politics," I said, grumbling.

"There are a lot more noms than there are supers. If they had access to magic and our mad science, they'd have the edge, and Overworld politicians don't like that." Shelton shrugged. "They even have an entire division devoted to sabotaging nom scientists and recruiting those who are the most promising."

"Didn't stop them from making nukes or digital watches," I said.

He snorted.

An announcement for the departure of the cable car to the university interrupted my thoughts. We hurried aboard just before it lifted. I realized an instant later why it didn't need cables. "This is a slider, isn't it?"

"Yup." Shelton stared out the window as the spires of a castle rose into view.

I watched as a girl wearing a pink arcane robe played a game on an arcphone. Some kid in a brown robe across from her glanced up from an old book and frowned. "You're on the wrong shuttle, techie."

She wrinkled her forehead and gave him an unsure look, as if wondering if he'd spoken to her and not one of the many other students aboard. After meeting his stern gaze, she seemed to decide he was, indeed, talking to her. "The handbook said arcphones are allowed now." She shrugged. "Don't see how they can ban them anyways. Everybody has one." She looked around the cabin, as if searching for someone else to support her logic.

The guy sneered. "If you suck at magic you might need one."

"Kid, you might wanna join the real world," Shelton said. "'Cause I can think of a half-dozen things an arcphone can do better than a human brain and a staff." He pulled his phone out as though for emphasis. "It's a focus, just like a wand or staff, except it ain't made of wood, and it gives you a heck of a lot more computing power for complex spells."

"Oh, please," the guy said.

"Well, you sure as heck can't play Unicorns versus Zombies on your staff," the girl said, stuck out her tongue, and went back to playing.

The student glared at Shelton. "A real Arcane doesn't need that garbage to do magic."

"You're a lost cause," Shelton said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. "Then again, you'll probably never amount to more than a magician."

A chorus of "Oohs" went up from the other students, some of them grinning at the argument while others held out their phones, probably recording everything.

The student's jaw dropped open, and his eyes filled with rage. "Do you know who I am?"

A burst of laughter from the crowd only enraged him even more, just as the cable car, now a dizzying height above the valley below, thumped down in a landing zone.

"Please tell me you did not just drop the 'I'm a big deal' card," the girl said. "That's just sad."

"I am William Vanderbilt," the guy said. "And my father—"

"I'm sure you're a real good magician," Shelton said, before the student could finish. "Maybe I'll buy you a top hat for graduation and come see you in Vegas." He threaded his way through snickering students and left the car.

I squeezed through the crowd as William hurled obscenities at our backs.

I knew Arcanes really hated terms like sorcerer, wizard, and warlock, but magician was apparently the lowest of the low.

The landing zone sat atop a bluff overlooking the valley on one side and the plateau on the other. A long stone path led down a gentle slope. Trees dotted the verdant terrain. Narrow stone paths led to quaint cottages, and fields bordered by low stone walls held flocks of bleating sheep and goats. It reminded me of a setting from rural Ireland or Britain except for one thing.

Arcane University.

The sprawling campus looked like something straight out of the Middle Ages. A massive castle and several other mansion-sized outbuildings stretched across the terrain from one end to the other. A snow-blanketed mountain peak towered behind the university, its slopes covered by thick forest.

The castle dominated the center of the complex, its walls composed of white stone bordered by gray and lined with arched windows. Soaring spires reached for the sky atop huge round towers that rose from all four corners, each one boasting intricate stone designs around the edges and windows. A long oval building of white stone with a transparent dome glittered like diamonds to the right of the castle, and something that looked like the Coliseum in Rome, only ten times bigger loomed behind it. Romanesque buildings that appeared to be housing facilities crowded the left side of the complex. A riot of colors bordered the east and west sides of the university—gardens, apparently.

"What's that for?" I asked Shelton, pointing at the giant stadium.

"That's where they hold the Grand Melee," he said.

"The what?"

Shelton gave me a surprised look. "That's right, I never told you, did I?" He grinned. "Imagine this: robots fighting golems in gladiator battles."

"Ooh," I said. "That sounds cool."

"Yeah, now imagine a giant robot from outer space fighting a golem the same size, shooting fire and laser beams at each other."

My eyes went wide, and my mouth hung open. I might have even drooled.

Shelton's grin grew wider.

"That's the Grand Melee?" I asked.