Page 57 of Sorrow & Strangers

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Rafe’s Fallen.

Summer

I chuck my phone to the side and move back to Rafe’s side, the smell of burned flesh and feathers singeing my nose. His body is charred and raw, the patches of skin that remain, horribly blistered. Wounds cover his arms and torso, and I can see the white gleam of exposed bone on his side. The blood bubbling from the many lacerations is a hideous concoction of red and black as the demon takes root inside him and forces the angel blood from his veins. Pieces of fabric cling to him, melted into his burns, and I know it’s going to be agony to remove them. I can’t see his back, but the blood pooling around his body hints at the severity of his injuries.

There’s a knock on the front door, and Alice glances at me before running to open it. She returns quickly, followed by the headmaster. His brow is furrowed, and his silver eyes barely pass over me before they settle on Rafe.

I hardly breathe as he assesses Rafe. My gaze is locked on the head­master, desperate for any information he may have on Rafe’s condition and how we might help him. As usual, I don’t get anything, but I don’t know what I expected. The headmaster is always difficult to read and cryptic at best.

Without looking away from Rafe, he pulls a small vial from his pocket and holds it in Alice’s general direction. “For the paste,” he says, and Alice plucks it from his fingers.

The headmaster turns away from Rafe and slices his finger. The walls are a bright, barren white, making the red of his blood stand out starkly when he starts to draw on them. He’s drawing runes, but they’re not like anything I’ve ever seen before. They’re not necessarily more intricate than Daoine Sith, but a different hum of magic fills the air as they activate.

After he’s drawn two, he pauses and glances at me over his shoulder. “Never a boring day since you enrolled, Miss Tuatha De Daanan.”

“Yes, sir,” I say with a sigh, shame flushing my cheeks. I hurry into the bathroom and return with a warm, wet cloth. I don’t look at the headmaster again as I kneel beside Rafe and gently clean his face.

We all work in silence for a while. Rafe’s ragged breathing and infrequent grunts of pain ease when Alice starts to smear a gray paste over Rafe’s body. The headmaster finishes and joins us next to the bed, looking Rafe over again.

“I’ll enroll him in the university,” he says, and then pauses for a moment, his jaw flexing as he thinks. He sighs. “But that will only delay his uncle for a short time.”

“Uncle?” Alice asks with a frown as she slathers more paste on Rafe’s wrist and his nearly severed hand.

“Lucifer,” I say. Why didn’t I think of this?

“The devil? He’s real?” she asks, sounding almost scandalized.

I nod. “He’s Uriel’s brother.”

“Unfortunately, very real,” the headmaster says, crossing his arms over his chest. His sweater strains, looking like it’s barely containing his muscles. “And very possessive of Fallen. There hasn’t been one in over a millennium.”

Rafe’s face contorts with pain again. “He’s going to be okay, right?” I ask.

“Miss Tuatha De Daanan, if you please,” the headmaster says, kneeling beside me and gesturing for me to stand.

I scoot off the bed and stand next to him. He’s almost as tall as me, even kneeling. He holds his hand out, and a black dagger forms in his palm. I can tell it’s obsidian by the way the blade swallows up the light.

“I know you haven’t taken Infernal runes yet, but they are not like others. They need demon blood to be effective, and only demon blood.”

He scoops some of Rafe’s blood onto the tip of the dagger and turns it to press the flat part of the blade against Rafe’s chest. I watch as he starts to draw a rune. It’s difficult to see through the gore and charred skin, but once complete, it illuminates a dark red. Now I can see the sharp lines and how black tendrils spread from the edges. It’s like the ones he drew on the walls, yet somehow fundamentally different.

“This is the healing rune. In Rafe’s condition, I’d estimate it will need to be renewed every three hours,” he explains, his voice settling into his professor voice, and I fall into the familiar role of learning, helping to calm me a little.

I follow the lines of the rune with my eyes, memorizing and cataloging it. He then draws another rune, this one on his shoulder, and I watch in fascination as it also illuminates.

“This is a guarding rune. It will need to be redone every second day.”

I nod, memorizing it too. He shows me another handful, and by the end of the lesson, my head is spinning with information. I curse the fact that I didn’t do more research on demons last year. While I am still terrified and overwhelmed, I find myself intoxicated by the way the headmaster teaches. Apart from the one capstone class I attended last year, I have never seen him in action. He’s definitely an excellent teacher.

“He’s going to heal faster than an angel, but it won’t be an easy process,” he says, and then he looks at Alice. “I will bring more brimstone. That paste must be applied twice daily. Anything that you apply to his skin will require brimstone.”

Alice nods and gets back to making another batch of salve while I go back to making sure I have the runes memorized, knowing that when they’re gone, I’ll need to re-create them.

“This transition will be an unpleasant one,” the headmaster warns again.