Professor Mortimer had found him skulking in the dungeons of a Siberian castle. He’d had him ever since. Bebe didn’t deign to be kept. His cauliflower ears and patched fur denoted wildness.
“What are you up to?” I asked him. I swear he shrugged his shoulders. Who’s crazier, the person talking to a grim or the grim who pretends to respond?
When I tried to step past him, Bebe bared his teeth. It was a gruesome retraction of lips that had suddenly lost its fur. It never occurred to me that a cat could have a bitch-face. Thinking he was just being pissy because of the late hour, I ploughed forward. Bebe’s back arched. All of his hair disappeared. A thin rib cage attached to a bony spine made its appearance.
“Very scary,” I told him. No matter how I tried to get past, he kept blocking me. “For goodness sake! This isn’t funny.”
The pale green night-glow blink of his eyes said this wasn’t a game. I was just too thick-headed to understand what was happening until the reinforced door of the cottage exploded from its hinges. Bebe and I both hit the ground. He was on his feet within seconds.
Halfway across the clearing, Bebe turned back and hissed at me. I got where he was going with this, but I couldn’t get my feet to move. I drew a circle around us both, but Bebe wasn’t content to stay put. The circle wouldn’t contain him. It wasn’t meant to. But once he was outside it, he was on his own. The grim screeched at me one last time before he disappeared. He’d tried to help, it was my own fault if I was too stupid to understand. That was a fair assessment.
My attention became locked on the figure lurking in the professor’s doorway. The candlelight didn’t extend far enough to beat back the gloom. It cast long shadows over the humanoid form. The thing stumbled around, fighting with itself.
“Professor?” I called. Real stealthy.
A tearing sound had my head tipping up. Something thumped against the wall. I stayed rooted to the spot. My teeth ground together. The figure stumbled out.
My heart leaped into my throat. “Professor?” The thing wore Professor Mortimer’s clothes. They were stretched to ripping point across a back that undulated like there was a snake slithering beneath his cardigan. Muscles bulged and boiled. I would have thought it was a shifter transformation except for the gargled screams he was attempting to contain.
The professor clutched at his head. He lifted it to worship the moon. With that movement, I saw the glowing red that had invaded his eyes. I watched, dumbfounded, as the skin on his face stretched thin. He took gasping breaths.
Purple magic blazed along his palms. It shone bright as a light in the gloom for a second before sputtering out into a fizzled black. His left hand curled into a fist. He pressed it to his mouth for a second before smashing it repeatedly into his chest. I took a step back as he dropped to his knees. Scrambling on all fours, the professor came closer to me. But he wasn’t trying to get to me. He was stumbling around in a circle. He repeated the ritual of setting his hands alight with magic, only for it to be dulled a second later.
When he could keep the magic contained for a while, he reached out as though attempting to draw something in the grass. He choked out a word. It was bitten back by snapping teeth.
I tried to cover my own scream. This couldn’t be happening. Professor Mortimer was one of the strongest mages in the world. The First Order had tried to recruit him more than once. If he had wanted it, the Council seat would have been his. Instead, he’d decided that his calling would be to teach the next generation.
On his knees now, he reached out a hand in my direction. I took an involuntary step forward before logic kicked in. The professor’s hands flew to his throat. His voice was a gurgling rasp. “Aless...run!”
He collapsed to the ground.
I heard a roar like the sound of a compressed storm. The first spark of light appeared in the dim just behind where the professor lay convulsing. No! This couldn’t be happening on Academy grounds.
I bolted to him. Touching a possessed body was all kinds of stupid. Instinct was fuelling me right now. When a portal was about to open, my first instinct was to get the hell away from it. As soon as my hand touched down on the professor’s arm, he latched on to me. Something writhed along his forehead. Two points on either side of his skull protruded out like horns under the skin. His eyes were coated in a film of yellow.
I slammed my hand against his forehead and tried to remember the words of light. When I spoke them, a spark of what felt like cool electricity spiralled through me. They speared the creature that had a hold of the professor. This kind of thing had never worked for me before. The creature cackled from Professor Mortimer’s throat. Well, would you look at that, it didn’t work for me now.
I thought about knocking him unconscious, but that would do nothing besides give the demon free rein. If the professor couldn’t fight, he would lose himself. Purple flared against my hands. His grip loosened. For a second, I thought about unleashing another Angelical word. It was borne of desperation. I would likely end up killing the professor if I tried.
Cursing at the lack of options, I settled for dragging his body across the lawn away from the portal. It was a quarter of the way to becoming a
