“As much as we try to stay informed, the numbers of demons in the Hell dimension are legion. It would be impossible to know them all. So today, we begin our lessons on how to understand the best way to vanquish a demon even if you’re not entirely sure what type of demon it is. We will begin with the soul suckers.”
The fox in front of me raised her hand. “Didn’t we cover this in the lesson on succubi?”
The professor swallowed. Deep grooves appeared on either side of his mouth as though he’d been sucking on a lemon. Someone else in class groaned. “I would hope you will know what to do should succubi come for you, Stephanie. But I’ll press again that we’re speaking in general now. Not specifics. One day you might be in a situation where a soul sucker comes at you. The same techniques you’ll use for succubi might not work. That’s when you’ll have to remember to draw upon these lessons.”
For some reason, the unease I had been feeling turned into a knot in my stomach. My mind flashed back to the cloud of darkness I’d woken up to last night. Almost as soon as the thought entered my head, it disappeared again. Just like a cloud, it was impossible to hold on to. What it did was purge all thoughts of Max from my mind. I sat up straight and listened as the professor began to discuss all the ways in which a soul sucking demon could be defeated.
6
By the end of the lesson, I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to be anywhere near when a soul sucker was present. The term demon was a catchall term for the beings who served the Hell dimension. True demons were ethereal. Their power lay in twisting the minds of those they inhabited. They whispered suggestions to their victims and had them questioning their own sanity. These types of demons got to humans from behind the barrier of the Hell dimension. When they did, the things they could make a possessed person do were beyond heinous.
The monsters that had physical bodies had come from dimensions that had traded their freedom for the power the Hell dimension promised them. They were the ones that tended to feature heavily in the imaginations of humans. Sometimes, they gave up their bodies to their true demon masters. Some of them were natural predators of the supernaturals. Most of them had been chomping at the bit for the dimensional barriers to fall.
By the time I made my way to the second class for the day, my brain was so full of contingency plans. The best way to kill a demon was with an angel blade. The only ones who could wield an angel blade were the Nephilim. So that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. The next best thing was to find the object in which the demon had superimposed its soul in order to gain physical form in the Earth dimension. I could do that.
I kept repeating that mantra to myself as Professor Magnus, my Magical History professor, talked to us about the formation of the Supernatural Council.
A Nephilim herself, Professor Magnus was the epitome of her race. Diminutive and delicate, she gave off the impression of serenity. Her bloodline came from Ariel, the seraphim that protected the animals and the earth. It figured that they would stick her with the junior school; some of these kids here acted like they were raised in a zoo.
Having grown up amongst the supernatural community, I wasn’t the least bit surprised about the fantastical tale that ended with beings from another dimension existing in this one. It was said that the angels, or the seraphim as we know them, were charged by the Supreme Being to watch over the barriers between the dimensions. When Lucifer began to covet power over his brothers and sisters, the seraphim waged a war that tore apart the barriers and some of the dimensions. Creatures from dimensions that were never meant to coincide now encroached upon the Earth dimension.
Seeing their mistake, a number of the seraphim gave up their claim to the Angel dimension in order to cross the firmament to restore order to the Earth. In doing so, they were able to imbue some of their spirit, their blood, into progeny. Those offspring became the first Nephilim. The bloodlines for which the Academy was named. The Nephilim fought what became known as the Dimension Wars. They beat back Lucifer’s forces and imprisoned him in the Hell dimension.
Michael, Raphael, Ariel and Uriel would never be able to return to the Angel realm. But their sacrifice meant the Earth dimension had a chance to survive the onslaught of creatures that would otherwise have preyed upon them. These days they lived in Seraphina, the magicked Nephilim city, located in the middle of the Australian desert.
The supernatural creatures banded together and appointed a council made up of a representative of each of the seraphim bloodlines and each of the supernatural species. It always smarted that there wasn’t a human representative on the council. When I asked Mama about it, she said it was because our population was so small. Plus, we had our own government. That was all well and good except when great-grandfather was caught, they didn’t try him in any human court. The shifters that came upon him took matters into their own hands.
I had to admit, I wasn’t all that interested in learning about Orin Harcourt, the Fae representative of the Council. His daughter was a student at Bloodline Academy. I had done a happy dance when she left for the senior campus. That was one thing I wasn’t looking forward to when I moved across the campuses next year.
My thoughts were all over the place for the rest of the day. I became pensive when the siren sounded for the last class of the day. While the other
