Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

“Uh, Stefan?” I asked, exiting my room and staring at the paper in my hands. It was my schedule. Also, I had just realized that I made my bed for no reason. I didn’t sleep, for goodness’ sake. But I just left my stuff like that and searched for Stefan with my ears. Therefore I tripped and fell on Law who was reaching for something under the couch. Then I fell onto another couch, landing painfully on someone. Alarms went off in my brain when I saw where my head was going toward. “Cra—” I started to say, but then I landed in the exact spot you should never land on when you are landing on a dude.

Oops.

“FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK!!” a loud, pained voice exclaimed. “FUCK! Holy shit that was—ow!” Sakar hunched over, shielding his unmentionables as I crashed lumpily onto the floor.

“Sorry!” I gasped, still a bit shocked.

“Dude! Those were you fuckin’ teeth! Agghhhhhhh!” His face was scrunched up in excruciating pain, and I was thinking about how I had a replacement for Fallen as my face turned bright red. I would not be able to look Sakar in the eye for a year. I just smashed my teeth where it counts.

I is skewered.

I snuck a glance at Sakar. He was glaring at me. I felt like he thought I had cut it off with my teeth, not just rammed into it. Oh, I’m glad that happened too quickly for me to remember how it feels. Praise the Lord, glory hallelujah! Sakar was definitely not so lucky.

“In the future, would you kindly refrain from attempting to tear my dick off with your mouth?!” Sakar spat. “Damn! That hurts like a motherfucker…” He took a deep breath then attempted to stand. He got halfway up before totally failing and careening back into the couch. “You…are…” he gasped at me, eyes scrunched close again.

I didn’t want to find out what exactly I was, so I decided to run for it. I had a feeling that Sakar would react like Kuzco would if you threw off his “Groove”. Oh man, I was in deep crap. And all I wanted was to ask Stefan a stinkin’ question about my schedule!

I stood up and was about to bolt back to my room and barricade my door with my bed and dresser and desk, but then I laid eyes on the one who had tripped me in the first place. Law appeared to be on the brink of hyperventilating. He was staring in revulsion, fear and alarm at his left hand. I looked closely and saw that there was something sticky-looking on his fingers. It was a golden-brown color, and kind of glittery.

The smell of something burning was in the air.

I grabbed Law’s arm and stared at the goopy stuff. Then I looked under the couch. It was too dark to really see anything much. My “night vision” or whatever it was that seemed to be developing in me kicked in and I saw a little of something under the couch. I shoved my hand under, and in the darkness it lit up, glowing like it had in the Tunnels of King Liam and McHorrific.

“Holy crappaloni…” My heart went cold and I drew my head back. “Sakar, can you stand?”

He glared at me. “What do you fuckin’ think, dipshit?”

It wasn’t a question.

I sighed quickly, then raced into the hallway, recalling what I had heard my roommates—or common room-mates or whatever they were—say earlier. The only magic user was in…what class? I couldn’t remember. Then I saw just the man I was looking for: Taylor Bergen. He was standing in the hallway, wings lowered, hands by his sides. I sighed in relief. “Hey man, where’s—”

He turned to face me. I stopped talking and moving. Cuts were randomly opening all over his body. A burn appeared on his neck, reaching up to his jaw. And all the while, he just stared at me, blue eyes stationary. They had found my coal black pair, and his weren’t looking away. Meanwhile, bright red blood was blossoming in little patches all over his shirt.

“Wass’ goin’ on?” Sandy asked quietly, urgently, suddenly next to me. A couple of people came to a halt behind Taylor.

I stepped forward, ignoring my danger senses. “Taylor… Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

The blonde responded by falling straight down, right onto the floor. A couple gasps were heard, but I ignored those around me, focusing on the unconscious winged man.

Only…he wasn’t winged anymore.

“To take a fairy, to turn it from its Guardian’s cause or for it to ignore its duty to its Guardian is a terrible deed—a very terrible deed.” Uncle-Dorian-Once-Removed was standing twenty feet behind me, simply watching the goings-on. “Do not bother, Caspian. It is already too late for him. When a fairy dies, so does all of its past magic. Those magically healed wounds will never close up. Taylor knew the risks. He took them. This is what he gets.” My older relative’s cold blue eyes bored into mine as I stared hopelessly at him. “However…” Dorian continued as I looked at Taylor’s slowly disintegrating shirt. “It is an even fouler crime to slay a fairy, even an outlawed one.”

My stomach clenched, and I remembered what my hand had lit up just two minutes ago. A beautiful, golden, broken fairy. Taylor’s fairy.

Dead.

I left Taylor on the hallway floor with a small gathering of students and Uncle-Dorian-Once-Removed around him. I raced into the eighteen class’s common room and saw Sakar crawling across the floor toward Law and Stefan. Stefan was watching Law’s hand with wide eyes, and Law was gasping in pain. Fairy blood was disintegrating his skin.

“Come with me,” I ordered, and slipped an arm around Law. I pulled his arm over my shoulders.

“How can we trust you?” Stefan suddenly asked harshly.

I blinked at him. “Stefan, can you save this for later? Your brother—”

“No. I’m not just gonna leave Law in your hands.” As if to prove this he pulled Law back toward him and supported his weight instead of me. “How the hell can we trust you? We’ve barely know you for half a day and already we’ve found out that you’re in contact with Guardians and this has happened!” He looked scared but extremely defiant.

I sighed. “You’re just gonna have to. Trust me, that is.” Hmm. Smooth.

Stefan looked in despair at Law, who glared sullenly at his darker-haired twin. Stefan sighed. “Okay. But I’m watching you the whole time.”

I smiled grimly and took Law back, towing him into my room then the bathroom. He held his infected hand out to the side.

“What…the hell…is…even going…on?” Sakar asked, looking majorly pissed.

“Law and I just accidentally killed Taylor Bergen’s fairy,” I said hurriedly. “And in doing so, Taylor himself met the same fate.”

“You…mean…to tell me…” Sakar panted, lumbering across the floor, doubled over, bending his knees a lot and gritting his teeth, “…that…you…and Law…just mur…murdered…two people…in one…blow?” He slumped onto a random stool that was in the corner of the bathroom and heaved out a sigh.

“Um…basically yes,” I responded. “But it was accidental.”

“And murder nonetheless,” Sakar grumbled.

I ignored him and turned on the bathwater after placing Law’s arm on the bottom, careful not to touch the fairy blood. “Sorry, man,” I told him. “I’m guessing that is gonna hurt.” Law just stared worriedly at his hand, still all but hyperventilating. So I stuck the end of the upper limb under the running water.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!!” he screamed and tried to wrench his arm out of my grip. I held him firm, determined to get all of the fairy blood off of him. He would thank me for this later. I let the strong gush of water run over first the back of his hand, then his palm, then I paid special attention to his fingers. I shoved the digits under the weirdly loud stream of bathwater until I couldn’t see or smell any more of it on his skin. I turned off the water.

“We’ve just got to hope that none of that seeped somehow into your bloodstream.” I bit my lip. “’Cause if it did, you’d be in for a very rough night.”

Sakar snorted. “You can say that again.”

I threw a soft glare his way, then looked back at Law. He was inspecting his left hand. It was charred—all red, brown and black: withered. He attempted to twitch his fingers into motion. “YEOW!” He then tried to hold his injured hand, which resulted in even more pained cries.

“Could you tell him to shut up?” Sakar growled to Stefan; they were both still in my bathroom, but I overheard.

“You. Shut up,” I retorted, glaring heatedly at Sakar. “Skunky.”

Sakar pulled his “oh it’s on, bitch” face out of hiding and said, “Oh yeah? If I’m a skunk, you’re a mutt.”

I smiled devilishly. “Why thank you.”

He growled, obviously wondering why the word didn’t affect me. I could guess that that was a major insult in vampire lingo—y’know, almost everyone’s a human randomly born with a taste for blood? So they had “tainted” or “impure” blood. But I wasn’t one of them. Therefore, the word “mutt” bounced right off my Armor of Lineage.

“Tonto,” Sakar grumbled when he paused his incoherent growling. I decided
that I didn’t want to know what htat word meant.

“Law, we’ve got to bandage that up,” I told him urgently.

His eyes widened and he stared at me in horror. “Fuck no.”

I smiled thinly at him. “Here. I’ve got some special…anti-fairy stuff. I’ve had lots of experience with them.” I pulled the scrap of my black cape out of my pocket and tore it in half. One bit of it went back into my pocket and the other was placed on Law’s forced-into-the-open palm. I hoped the magical piece of cloth would work. I held Law’s wrist still and willed the currently inanimate scrap to do something. It eventually began to spread out, coating Law’s hand in a silky smooth glove. Sakar was speechless for once in his life. That made me happy.

Then Law made a confused face. “I can’t move my hand. At all.” He tapped the thin black layer over his skin. “What is this stuff?”

I shrugged. “Seriously, I don’t know.” Stefan narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “But it was the best thing I could think of,” I continued, “to protect your hand while it’s healing.”

“Will it heal?” Stefan asked. “All the way?”

“No,” Sakar and I said at the same time.

“Something of that scale can’t turn back to normal,” I attempted to explain.

“Fairy magic was in the blood. Wounds caused by that can never be fully healed,” Sakar added.

Law sighed. “Good thing I decided to become ambidextrous. I’ll go start practicing writing with my right hand…” He began to trudge off to his room, then stopped short. “Wait… What’s gonna happen to the fairy?”

I smiled grimly. “You can leave that to me.”

Law nodded and continued on his way. Stefan shuffled after him, throwing me a look I couldn’t decipher, but may as well have been suspicious.

And I thought to myself, Self, this has been one hell of a first day at school.