Chapter 11

The Revelation of Classification

NEEDLESS TO SAY, I didn’t go back to sleep that night. Instead, after recollecting myself, I dragged my feet to the library downstairs and buried myself in books. It didn’t go as well as I was expecting because well, there was really no order in those books and without anyone’s help, I really had no idea where to start looking. These were old books, the kind I was worried to turn the pages too fast because they could break in half.

So instead, I used my trusty friend, Google and typed “good looking eerily attractive mythical creature” and ended up with “Pontianak, Indonesia. Next time you smell something wonderfully fragrant followed by a putrid stench, don’t be fooled — it’s probably a Pontianak. Having died during childbirth, Pontianaks return to the earth as undead creatures who just want to feast on the flesh of easily seduced men and pregnant women. These creepy beings take the form of eerily beautiful, long-haired ladies in white gowns whose cries notoriously warn of their presence — if loud, she’s far; if soft, you’re doomed.” or “Encantado, Brazil. Do you have an attractive, well-dressed friend who’s really into sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll? Does that friend have an affinity for H2O and disappearing for long periods of time? We hate to break it to you, but your buddy is probably an Encantado. These shape-shifting, musically inclined creatures emerge from an underwater paradisaical “Encante” to dazzle and spitefully impregnate human party-goers, occasionally kidnapping their targets and dragging them back to Encante.”

Needless to say, that wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to read about in the middle of the night. And when I typed “mythical creatures” and “dream” together I got the same stupid website again. I was seriously considering someone messing with me.

I didn’t want to think about it too much but, I knew one person with green eyes around here, the kind of green eyes that stuck with you and his name was Kostyantyn Brahe and I had been given warnings about him ever since I had arrived here. Was that what was so bad about him? That he could have some kind of pull on my dreams or my subconscious maybe? It shouldn’t surprise me. He did have that whole eerie vibe working for him. It freaked me out a bit.

But then again, maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was just one of those really vivid dreams some people had. I shouldn’t be making a big deal out of it. What could happen in a dream anyway? It wasn’t like my life was in danger or anything. For all I knew this was all just a really bad dream and I was going to wake up in Detroit in the shabby bedroom I shared with two other foster girls, Jessica and Bailey, and I would be on the floor because Jessica was such a fat ass and took up all the bed. And I would be cold and hungry and dirty, but that was all familiar territory.

Or maybe I was just living an illusion like sweet Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island. That would be an interesting turn of events.

Either way, tomorrow, well err, today, I was going to go to school and I would get answers.

In the morning I tried to go along as I always had, but it felt like everybody could just tell I had a creepy dream, and I was on the verge of standing up on the table screaming “YOU WANT A PIECE OF THIS?” and go ghetto fabulous on their ass.

I seriously need to deal with my paranoiac issues…

Hugo kept giving me weird glances and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew. That little bitch probably did. He had probably seen it weeks before that something like this would happen.

“Try not to kill anybody in school today, kids!” Semyon shouted happily when I left with Marina and Pasha. Marina wasn’t listening and Pasha rolled his eyes. I kind of froze for a second. I couldn’t promise anything, yet.

Needless to say it was a long ride to school.

When I stepped in my first class, I wondered if I should try to sit with Yoan this time. He had been nice and he seemed armless enough, and I was sure my grandma would just love it. Anything that implied not spending time would Kostyantyn Brahe was bound to make her break into a cancan dance. But then, I needed to talk with the creepy boy. So I sat at the same desk I had and waited for him.

Obviously, I was used to insomnia and not sleeping a lot, but the dream had taken a serious toll on me. I found myself leaning against my desk, my eyes closing of their own accord.

So, when Kos-tiara walked in the class, I didn’t see it. But for some reason I felt it. Also, he was whistling Martin-slash-Georgie’s tune fromTwisted Nerve which was slightly unnerving. And by slightly unnerving I mean bad shit crazy. I had my head pressed against the table when I heard him ask, “Are you sleeping?”

“No, I’m trying to die,” I replied without looking at him.

The chair beside mine move, and I felt him sit beside me. I could smell him too. I took an unnecessary deeper breath.

“What’s wrong” Kostya asked.

I looked up this time. “What are you?” I couldn’t help but be reminded of the dream when I asked him this.

The roguish grin he had given me, the first time I had seen him, played on his lips. “I’m a vampire. And your blood sings to me.”

I groaned and leaned my head against my desk again. “Shut up.”

Obviously, the boy beside me had other ideas. “I’m also one of nine young aliens that were sent to Earth after our planet was destroyed. I am number four. And I’m from a secretive race called the Nephilim or more commonly Shadowhunters and I was born with angel blood in my system. And I only have sex with women that look like my mother and I like to hurt them. And I have a crazy wife hidden in my attic. And I’m a fallen angel that needs to sacrifice you in order to become human. And I don’t age—I actually have a portrait of myself that does all the aging for me. And—”

“And cut it off, will you?” I interrupted him. “Everyone else has told me what they were,” I whispered harshly. I knew what everyone else were, he knew my family so he probably also knew what I was. Wasn’t it only fair for me to know what he was?

I sighed and held his gaze. I couldn’t help but compare the eyes.

No. They weren’t his, they weren’t the right green. It wasn’t him, hadn’t been him. Couldn’t be him. Could it?

He snorted. “And they have the nerve to say I’m easy!” I glared at him. “Don’t look at me like that,” he whined. “Of course your family will tell you, they kind of have to, and Hugo is lame. I mean, please, he’s a nain rouge. Know what that is? A red dwarf. His daddy is an ugly midget and his mother a fat tree loving hippy.”

I frowned slightly. “Why do you hate Hugo so much and why does he hate you so much?”

Unluckily, Professor Magnum P.I. called attention to the front of the class before I could get my answer.

I was distracted during his lecture because of the boy sitting beside me. Whether I liked it or not, whether he had crept into my dream or not, I couldn’t deny the effect his presence had on me. Seriously what was up with him? It was like all my senses were on hyperdrive whenever he was close. It just made me want to know what he was more.

I tried to distract myself by looking around. Two rows behind me, I could see Yoan sitting with another boy. They were both wearing jerseys so obviously they were school jocks. For some reason, a school jock didn’t sound that much like a suprahuman for some reason, but really, who was I to jump to conclusion.

Now, obviously because I was sneaking glances, I got caught. Yoan saw me looking at him but luckily, the guy was sweet, so instead of giving me a “what the deuce” face, he smiled at me. I smiled in response and then turn back to the front of the class, but Kostya was still sitting beside me, so I kind of needed to get preoccupied elsewhere again. And for some reason I turned to look back again, though I tried to be a little more inconspicuous about it this time. I realized I wasn’t the only one gazing around. He kept shooting glances at a girl sitting in the back of the class too! Obviously, I didn’t know the girl’s name but she was obviously Asian, dark brown hair hanging a little lower than her shoulders with bangs, and she actually had a little red bow in her hair. She was pretty and Yoan looking at her like that, it was actually cute. I suddenly had the urge to croon or something.  

Half way through the class, Magnum P.I. was done talking and passed around exercises we had to do in pairs, finding figure of styles in small excerpts. I ignored the perfect smelling boy besides me, and read through the first excerpt carefully.

Kostyantyn sighed, and I looked sideways just in time to see him running his hand through his black hair. “I see dead people,” he whispered out of nowhere.

There was a glow in his eyes though, something telling me that wasn’t the truth, yet again. “Sure you do Cole Sear. And they walk around like regular people and they don’t know they’re dead?” I all but snorted.

The eye-glowing was obvious this time. “Exactly.”

“And I’m dead,” I stated.

Kos-tiara nodded. “Yes, you used to be a prostitute, an Azteca, Indian girl with mysterious lidded Billie Holiday eyes and you were in love triangle with Jack Kerouac and morphine. And you don’t want no love.” He snapped his finger moving on his chair like he was trying to move his hips. It was actually hilarious to see him do that, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction of my laugh. Plus, people around were starting to stare. Well, that was a lie. People had been staring pretty much all class long. I was getting a lot of glares from the female class population, and about three guys too.

“My name’s not Tristessa,” I informed him and wrote litotes for the first answer.

“You read the book?”

“Anything with the words junkie and prostitute on the cover just speak to me in higher levels,” I replied in a fake cheering voice.

“Really? Me too!” Kostya was just as enthusiastic while answering. For some reason, I don’t think he was faking anything here.

            I gave a faint nod and then went back to answering more questions.

            I heard Kos-tiara softly sigh beside me again. “Look, I don’t mean to be a jerk about this, but it’s really best for you if you don’t know.”

            My eyes stayed glued on the sheet in front of me. “Give yourself a round of applause. You actually sounded sincere.”

           He chuckled. “Don’t let your sexual frustration make you bitter about all of this, Newbie.”

            I ignored the silly pet name. “Sexual frustration?” I felt like my grandmother for a second, with the whole repeating thing. But seriously, what the hell?

            “Don’t worry,” he whispered, leaning closer to me, “it’ll be our little secret.”

            I backed my head, putting more space between us and looked in his eyes, leveled. “You mean, the way I’ll dispose of your body?”

            “Nobody can argue that you don’t have the Faustin’s spirit, that’s for sure,” Kostya chuckled again.

            “You ain’t even seen half of it buddy.”

            “Eager to see more Oksana Matveyevna.”

            We held each other’s gaze, almost sizing up the other. I was trying really hard not to hit him on the side of the head with my bad. He looked like he was just having the time of his life. I seriously didn’t understand this boy—or any boy for that matter.

            At the end of the class, I didn’t give him time to catch me for a little chat again, sprung to my feet and bolted out the door.

Just like yesterday, Yoan caught up with me. I let him. “Everything’s okay? You look exhausted.” He paused and added, almost apologetically, “and a little mad.”

            This guy was seriously sweet. I didn’t know what to make of it. I didn’t really know about any people being sweet and not having an incentive behind it. “I just didn’t sleep that well, and the asshole beside me was being, well, an asshole.”

            “Fair enough,” Yoan chuckled softly. There was something soothing about him, in the sense that there was no vibes coming from him. He just felt utterly normal and human. That should probably worry me though, with my luck. “Well, I hope your day works better, and we can sit beside each other tomorrow if it can make your life less miserable.”

            “That would really be nice,” I conceited. Plus, maybe that would also stop people from staring at me, because it really felt like all the girls were and I had a feeling I knew why.

            “No problem” the corner of his lips raised. “Have a good class.”

            We nodded to each other and went in opposite classrooms.

“Are you alright, you’ve been out of it all morning,” Pasha asked, during our lunch break while our little group sat around a table.

I shrugged, rolling my spoon in my soup. What should I answer? I had a freaky dream? People didn’t want to hear about your dreams, it was just common sense. “It’s nothing really.”

“Is it your time of the month,” my cousin joked.

“Pasha, what is wrong with you!” Marina punched her brother on the shoulder. “Oksana, don’t listen to the idiot.”

I shrugged again. Whatever, really. I scanned the room, trying to drop the subject, not because I was looking for a threat but was surprised by what I saw. “Huh, guys, why is there a girl trying to shoot lasers out of her eyeballs staring intently our way?”

Everyone turned their head to gaze where I had. “That’s Phoebe Oiorpata,” Hugo stated in an empty voice.

“An ex of yours?” I asked in a sing-song voice.

“Definitely not,” Pasha snorted.

“Let me guess.” I tapped my index on my bottom lip. “She’s pissed because she can’t eat human foot soup for lunch?”

“Far from it, but that’s always an entertaining thought,” Pasha trailed. Idiot.

Her appearance was, I don’t know, exotic, with her dark hair and dark skin. She looked like she came from an island—a sunny island where she spent all her time sun bathing. And if look could kill… “Why does she seem to hate us though?”

“She doesn’t seem, she does,” Pasha interjected, “but it’s not you, or Marina. It’s me. And Hugo,” he added, “And every male in this building.”

Nice. Not! “Angry butch lesbian?”

My two cousins snorted. Hugo stayed stoic. “Don’t ask her that,” Marina all but giggled.

Well, nice to know. So, Phoebe, O-whatever was to add to the ever growing list of messed up creature around the city that seriously didn’t like members of my family. Always good to start the day with news like these.

At home, I think I was unusually quiet because the weight of everyone’s staring was almost palpable. And they were complaining I was always babbling and being a smartass before?

            It got so annoying that right after dinner, I went to hide in the library again and tried to get info from the books, but I was going nowhere. Three walls where completely covered with leather bounded books, and paperback books, and hard cover books and old and new ones. The choices were simply endless.

“You’re going at this the wrong way,” Hugo suddenly announced. I jumped in my seat because I hadn’t heard him come in.

I looked up from my book, which I wasn’t even sure was in English. “What do you mean?”

Hugo walked around the table where I had set up camp, and came to stand beside me, his palms pressed against the cold wood. “What are you looking for?”

“Descriptive words in the indexes,” I simply answered. If he was going to help me with this, I figured it would be silly to start with the sarcastic comments. Especially with stick-up-his-ass-Hugo.

The boy beside me let out a soft breath. “Are there any indexes?”

“Maybe,” I trailed.

“There are none,” he corrected me, though I already knew that, I just didn’t want to sound like an idiot that kept looking for indexes that weren’t there—I mean, like I was doing now, “because those books are too old to be convenient.”

Nice to know that old shit and convenience didn’t go hand in hand. “You need to understand that when it comes to suprahuman everything is divided into two categories—the ones that feed on concrete physical thing and the ones that feed on essence. We usually just use shorts like Flesh or Essence, even though Flesh doesn’t cover all the strange diets some suprahumans have.”

“You base your regroupings on diet,” I asked in disbelief.

“Mainly yes.” The boy shrugged. This was all normal to him after all.

“Every suprahuman have to feed on something?”

“Yes, in order to function. Just like human beings need food to get vitamin and make their body function, if suprahumans want to be able to use their abilities they need some kind of fuel. Obviously, the fancier the creature, the more they need to feed. And suprahumans like shape shifters for instance, they’ll only feed after they’ve turned. They don’t need to constantly recharge. If they never turn, they never need to feed.”

I was scared to ask. “What do berserkers feed on?”

“Berserkers are a peculiar case. They feed on their own adrenaline.”

I frowned at that. “Like self cannibalism?”

Hugo gave me a half smile. “If you consider catabolism as self cannibalism, then yes.”

“I know I might regret this but,” I took a breath, “what’s catabolism?”

“It’s when your body breaks down molecules into smaller units to produce energy, like for instance with fat,” Hugo simply explained. Because yeah, that totally made sense, you weird boy.

“That slightly makes sense. What about you?”

“Well, batibats feed on their trees essence, so basically on vegetation, the way tree Faeries would. And nain rouge feed on the people’s misery following the awful events.”

Well, that didn’t give me warm and fuzzy feelings. “How do you feed on misery exactly?”

“Not willingly,” he quickly assured me. “It just kind of crashes into me without having to work for it.” He changed subject, “Valkyries feed on violence, and so do einherjars.”

“So, all Essence?”

“Exactly.” He nodded, almost like a proud teacher and then closed the book I had been looking at and took another one from the pile on the table, carefully flipping though the pages. “Now, creatures like vampires who feed on blood, or ogres who eat children, feed on concrete physical things. And that’s when it becomes troublesome. The two kinds are obviously not in good terms. They’re kind of at war actually. They kill some of us, we hunt them down and do the same.”

“Why are they in such disagreements?” I mean, killing others was usually the last step in ‘I have a disagreement with someone 101.’

“Human nature?” he offered. “Well in truth, it’s because Essence feeders don’t need to kill in order to survive. Some Essence suprahuman creatures will kill the people they prey on, because the specific energy they take is essential for humans, but most of the time they don’t and often it’s done unconsciously. A creature that needs to consume a freshly ripped out from the ribcage heart does need to kill. If they need to eat human flesh, they can’t all feed on already dead people, some of them don’t work that way.”

“This is fucked up.”

“I know,” Hugo agreed, and I was glad he did. I never seemed to be able to figure out the guy, but at least I hoped he had some kind of moral compass, especially when it came to eating people, and not in the hot kinky way. “And among the two kinds, different types of creatures also disagree. Seer, Warlock, Mare, Fae and Incubus are the prevalent ones because they’re often the more powerful. For a few years now though, the Incubus have been allies with the Mare, which has stopped quite a lot of fighting. And since the Fae and the Seer also are allies, you got two very strong clans that help each other out from now and then. I know the Queen Mare often consults with the King Seer—”

I stopped his ranting, raising my hand. “Woah woah woah! Hold up! King? Queen?”

Hugo half smiled. “Yes. Every family of suprahuman vote for a representative every five hundred years and their child take their place if they die before the end of the term and so on so forth. The Queen Mare at the moment has actually ruled for almost nine hundred years now. She’s on her second term and still kicking.”

“This is unbelievable.”

“This is your world now, actually.”

            He was right. And it scared me.

            “As for Flesh suprahumans, you’ve got the usual Shapeshifters though some are Essence, and then the ever popular Vampires, and what-not. They aren’t organized the same way we are to be honest.”

            I nodded. I understood why Essence suprahumans wouldn’t want to deal with the Flesh ones.

Hugo motioned for me to look at the book where the Flesh suprahumans were obviously presented. “Often they will feed on specific parts,” he flipped a page, “brain,” I almost gagged at the pictures in the book. He flipped another page, “heart,” he changed page again, “liver… stomach… kidneys…” he kept turning pages, one for each parts, the old sheet covered with ancient drawing that were quite graphic. Maybe a little too graphic actually. “If a suprahuman doesn’t feed for a long period of time, it’s like starving someone. They’ll get into a frenzy and try to meet their needs any which way they can. The rational part of the brain apparently shuts down. They might even feed unconsciously and that’s when bad things happen.”

All the while he explained the last part to me, Hugo ran the tip of his fingers back and forth on the edge of the book binding, never looking directly into my eyes. “If you’re a suprahuman, a lot of bad things happen…” he whispered lowly, his eyes on the book, probably thinking I wouldn’t hear it, but I did.

“It’s not your fault you know,” I whispered, trying to get him to look at me.

“What?”

Part of me wanted to place my hand on his arm in a comforting gesture, but I wasn’t exactly known for comfort, more for annoyingness, plus, I was still not a touchy feely kind of person, at all. So instead, I just told him softly, “all those bad things that happen around you, it’s not your fault, you only see that they will happen, but you don’t actually make them happen.”

“But I don’t make them not happen either. I can’t not make them happen.” When he gazed into my eyes this time, he looked and sounded fierce, but also desperate at the same time, urgently so. The words ‘beautiful and broken’ suddenly popped in my head. 

            “I’d rather go to sleep. It’s getting late.” I whispered my eyes on my feet. I wasn’t used to conversations like these with Hugo. I hadn’t called him stick-up-my-ass-Hugo in too long to be normal.

            “Yes, you should.”

            I nodded once never looking back in his eyes and rushed out of the room, realizing too late that the reason I was hiding out in the library, the last thing I wanted, was to go to sleep.