Archon(5)
“You could say that. I just arrived in Luz three days ago, actually. I haven’t even had a chance to open a book yet.” Angela stood up, bowing to a passing group of Vatican novices, a few of them eyeballing her longer than she felt comfortable with.
There was a tall one at the end of their gang, so strikingly pale that his skin resembled paper, his eyes a vivid and penetrating amber color. Like the others he wore the long dark coat of a novice, but his hair was as striking as his face, the strands pitch-black except for a chunk dyed fire engine red.
When he left with the others, Angela felt it wouldn’t be for long. “Despite what you said about me being a blood head, I actually got into the Academy because of my art. And because my parents are dead. They never let me get out much.” She continued to stare after the novice with the black hair. “Though I didn’t always disagree with that. Sometimes I feel like I’m really the one on display, not the pictures.”
Nina shrugged off the comment, shifting aside to let a couple examine Angela’s best self-portrait. The painting wasn’t perfect, but it captured her large blue eyes and angular face rather well. She was reclining on her parents’ old parlor room sofa, her fine blood-red hair covering half her body like a poker-straight curtain. That was before the burns, the scars, and the need to cover herself almost head to toe in fabric.
The couple made sure to remark on that before turning to the neighboring booth.
“Are you talking about the novices?” Nina said. “Don’t pay any attention to them. They’re just all tightwads about blood heads lately because of the murders near the Academy. They think the sororities and fraternities are getting out of hand again, dabbling in all kinds of occult stuff. I think they’re giving Stephanie and her lackeys too much credit.”
“Stephanie?”
“Stephanie Walsh.” Nina stared down at her shoes, a chip half raised to her lips. Her voice hushed drastically. “I’m actually surprised you haven’t met her yet. She has a habit of meeting new blood heads, absorbing them into her sorority, then controlling their lives for three more years after that. I guess you could say she’s the queen bee here at Westwood, keeping tabs on everyone who’s anyone—and even people like me, who aren’t. You’re pretty popular already, so I’m sure she’s going to make it a point to meet you. Just so you know.”
Popular? The only place Angela had ever been popular was in the psych ward at the institution. There, her long hair and scars had made her more intriguing than a supermodel. But anywhere else, she was a freak, a monster, a danger, the possible fulfillment of a prophecy that meant death and destruction on a staggering scale.
A century had passed on Earth since the Vatican chose to reveal its ominous conclusion: The dark messiah it had long feared—the silencer of all people, things, and hopes—would be a human with red hair. The One, who would forevermore be known as “the Ruin,” had been prophesied as having blood on his head and blood on his hands. From that day onward, children born with red hair were detested, shunned, or, in the saddest cases like Angela’s, abused. It wasn’t until the Vatican established its island city off the coast of the American continent that those now termed “blood heads,” especially blood heads with supernatural prowess, seemed to find their place.
Only in Luz were blood heads accepted and encouraged to discover what kind of powers or special abilities they might possess, even though sometimes it was hard to figure out whether the Vatican officials feared or admired that unique fourth of their student body. Were they protecting people like Angela? Or were they merely gathering them together like rats into a trap, ready to poison them once they’d found the Ruin they were looking for? This place was full of contradictions like that. From the first day Angela entered Luz, she’d been overwhelmed by its sense of backward elegance and almost topsy-turvy culture. While the supernatural was welcomed—though always under strict control—technology couldn’t survive. Electricity gave way to candlelight, modern building materials to stone, wood, and elaborate tile-work, most of it decaying beneath acid rain and neglect. From the coast where her parents’ house had burned to the ground, Angela would stare out at the ocean, gazing at the city that sat like a lonely lump of crags, turrets, and oddly twisted spires, its iron support beams lashed by waves taller than trees. Luz was a city on stilts, its grandest buildings built on top of others, all of it looking ready to crash into the sea at any time.
Luz, the city of lights. The Vatican’s wonder of the world that was now a world of its own. So many candles burned here that the Academy twinkled at night, covered in a million artificial stars.