Canaan Club - 42. Chapter 42

A wet, lukewarm sensation on his face greeted Rafe as his eyes struggled to open. Though, instead of the sizzling agony he’d expected to wake up to, it was cool and admittedly pleasant.

It didn’t mean he was any less freaked out because when his vision unblurred, the sight of a large, furry, whiskered face with small, beady, and unblinking eyes amid a black mask welcomed him. Its arm, long, mechanical, and definitely looking like it shouldn’t be attached to it moved up and down as it wiped his face down with a wet cloth.

Whatever the substance was, it wasn’t water, but it was soothing.

“I’ve had strange nightmares before, but this certainly is new,” he muttered to himself, laying still on what he realized was a maroon bean bag. “This place is fucking with my head.”

“You don’t say?”

That made him wince. Suppressing a gasp, he turned his head to the left to find Bones sitting some feet away, tinkering with a couple of metal parts and tools at his desk near the window.

“Y-You? But what happened? Where the hell am I? And what the fuck is this?”

He ignored the animatronic raccoon’s ministrations to glare at his surroundings. He was in a first-year dorm, no doubt, but the place was the definition of an insane robotics engineer’s craft room. Unfinished, dilapidated, and disconnected animatronic parts littered the edges of the room. Heads of bunnies and bears with either one or both eyes missing, torsos with patches of silver all over, and steel limbs poking out of an overflowing drawer.

Jesus, did the guy have some kind of dark serial killer fantasy or what?

“Got your ass handed to you by a bunch of overgrown mutts,” Bones told him bluntly. “You’re in my quarters. Don’t mind the mess. And, Christ, check your pronouns. Azzy goes by ‘he’ and is helping you out. Though as part as punishment.”

Rafe blinked. “Punishment?”

He was unsure of where this was going. Did this fantasy go a different route?

The other boy rolled his violet eyes and turned back down to his tools. “Let’s just say he loves his pranks. It makes a whole big mess, kind of like what you guys can’t help but do.”

“Almost got sent into an early grave back there,” the blond groused, then flicked a hesitant eye at his mysterious savior. “Thanks.”

Thankfully, Bones only acknowledged it with a single short nod.

“What’d i- he give me, anyway?” he continued, turning back to Azzy, who now sat idly in front of him, eternal gaze pointed at his feet. “The pain’s a dull ache now.”

“Just some caladrius soap I stole from the locker room. They have that stuff in abundance in the showers for the Combat classes after every match.”

Bones side-eyed him then.

“Why were you out there anyway?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that, too?” the superhuman shot back. He didn’t mean to sound snappy, but he had nearly gotten roasted alive, and that fact was just now beginning to dawn on him.

He hadn’t been prepared when he should have. He’d gotten complacent, but he could only blame himself.

Cue the souring mood.

As if seeing through Rafe and understanding all that, Bones nonchalantly shrugged, speaking while fiddling with his devices. “I’m kind of a night owl. I know I look the part, too. The minute classes are finished, I conk out, wake up, and work on shit to pass the time. I heard the commotion, more specifically the roaring of flames and a bunch of growling, from my room. You? You were out by Lake Vesuvios. I’m guessing you saw some strange crap going down.”

Rafe pursed his lips for a moment.

The guy was a jerk, not forgetting the way he spat at Andre after his buddy saves his ass. However, it seemed like he was repaying that debt.

He owed his savior something. Hopefully, an explanation will suffice.

And so, he detailed not just his night, but the growing conspiracies surrounding the upperclassmen.

At the end of it, Bones huffed with another eye-roll.

“Of course, it involves those leeches. Wherever they go, corruption follows. And sad to say that your bat-wielding friend got caught up in it. If I were you, I’d dump him like a bad habit. Those human friends, too.”

Rafe couldn’t help but balk. “Just like that? No fucking way. Things might be getting sketchy, but I don’t think things are as straightforward. Those guys are tiny, little fish in an ocean full of sharks.”

“So, you’re playing ‘protector’ for the prey. Okay, but you must know by now that you can’t trust anyone that easily. You seem like the type to be weary of the folks around you. That blue-haired girl, whenever I see her reluctantly, has been acting all cagey.”

“I fucking am and I know!” he growled in frustration. “It’s just…”

“Your friend. The omé wolf.”

Rafe froze, his steel eyes narrowed to slits as he glowered coldly.

“What about him?”

If Bones felt the temperature in the room lower, he didn’t show it, continuing in his blasé manner. “I’m guessing he’s the type to trust easily. And you’re around him pretty much twenty-four-seven, so you have no choice but to bring who he likes into the fold. His naivety is gonna get the rest of you hurt.”

The sudden urge to grab the black-haired boy’s throat made Rafe’s right hand twitch. He might have saved his ass from imminent death, but nobody talked shit about Andre.

He would have sneered a threat in return if the dorm room hadn’t suddenly burst open, and three familiar boys charged in with frantic expressions.

“Rafe! You’re okay!” Andre, with Joe and Daeran in tow, dove past Azzy, and Rafe let out an “oomph” as the omé landed on him with a tight embrace.

Even so, the superhuman hugged back, holding his best friend close with his nose buried in Andre’s brown curls.

“Speak of the devil,” Bones sighed, strangely unperturbed that his room was being invaded.

He must’ve contacted them somehow.

“Bro! What happened!?” Joe stepped up to them, giving the animatronic raccoon a wary glance before giving his full, worried attention to his fellow super. “How’d you get here!?”

Huh. Guess Bones didn’t contact them.

“You guys knew I was here?”

Andre lifted his head from Rafe’s chest, and the latter felt his stomach clench when he saw the tears glistening in his eyes.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren’t there. So, I followed your scent to the quad… a-and… there was…”

Ah, shit.

Rafe cursed himself. How could he have troubled his wolf friend this much?

“Smoke,” Daeran finished, occasionally casting Azzy and the other dismembered robots a terrified look. “A-And blood. Lots of it. Some of it yours.”

“Andre tracked your blood smell all the way to here,” Joe pointed to the sniffling omé. “We were freaking out the whole time, man.”

“I-I thought… I thought something b-bad happened to you… and-”

Rafe swore again and pulled Andre tighter to him, caressing his soft hair with one hand.

“Hey, hey. It’s okay, Dre,” he cooed in the omega’s ear. “I’m okay. I got in a little tiff with those bastard wolves during a midnight stroll, but I’m fine now. And we have this guy to thank. Cut one of the dumbass’ arms off, so that explains most of the blood.”

“Holy shit!” Daeran hissed, his fright wracking up to new heights as he took a couple of steps back from the raccoon animatronic.

For a second, Rafe noticed Azzy’s black orbs for eyes flash a deep shade of purple.

“Damn. That’s hardcore,” Joe’s lips twisted up into a half-smirk, though, the concern still lingered. “I’m no sadist, but I kinda wish I got to see that.”

“G-Guess you guys have that in common,” Andre’s smile was watery, but at least, Rafe thought, he was smiling. He turned to Bones and nodded. “Thank you so much for saving him. I don’t know what I would have done if… if…”

Rafe sent the first-year engineer warning daggers. Bones, for the third time that night, rolled his eyes and dug into one of the drawers in his desk, shuffling around through plastic bags.

“You’re lucky I was taking a midnight stroll as well,” he muttered before tossing one at Rafe.

The blond caught it over Andre’s head and inspected the contents of the Ziploc bag, staring straight at a bar of cyan soap.

Caladrius soap.

“Just take it with you. Knowing the chaos you guys found yourselves in, you’re probably gonna need it more than I do.”

Rafe snorted.

Yeah. That was probably true.

He let go of his anger and nodded at his purple-eyed rescuer, the gratitude coming to him less reluctantly.

“Thanks. Again.”

-POI-

A second recounting of the night was in order, and Rafe, at the demand of his friends, delivered. Sat in their housing’s common room around an oval table, he watched as their faces shifted from anxiousness to horror and confusion.

It was Frodd’s part that stuck with them.

“But I don’t get it,” Andre scratched his head. “Why would Frodd want to be working for Deyja? He knows she has Zoel and his packmates working for her, right?”

It took quite a bit of willpower to hold in the peeved sigh Rafe wanted to let out at hearing that, reminding himself that Andre, being kept from the world for most of his life, was new to these things. They barely knew the barbarian. Just because he was the punching bag of his little clan didn’t mean he wasn’t up to no good.

“To get that plant thing or whatever,” he answered gruffly, glaring at the surface of the table. “Corpse Vice, I think. That’s the lead Frodd ate during the match. It gave him a crazy power boost and everything. Now, he’s addicted. And the bitch is feeding off that.”

Joe nodded in understanding. “Yeah. He’s the runt of the litter where he’s from, right? He’s hoping to impress the chief.”

“Hell, I guy like that won’t ever be impressed. And if he is, it won’t be for long. I should know that.”

“So, what do we do with him now?” Daeran dared to ask the biggest question.

It was silent for more than a beat.

In his mind, Rafe had an inkling that Caid, or Deyja, had wanted him to see what was going down. They were in some kind of war, and seeing what he saw would cause a rift in the group, weakening them as a whole.

With a hard shake of his head, Rafe growled lowly to the others. “This can’t wait any longer. The targets on our backs are bigger than ever and the enemies aren’t pulling their punches gunning for us. Tomorrow, we need to find Lindsay and press her about that bag.”

He wanted to yell when he got pensive looks in return, especially when Andre paled, but Joe put those thoughts aside with clarifications.

“I don’t know, bro,” he shrugged. “She hasn’t been around much lately since that time in the café. She didn’t even seek us out to congratulate us or anything until we ran into her after school.”

“I was nearly cooked to death tonight because of a fucking satchel,” he hissed, shame at his own helplessness fueling the boiling rage thrumming in his head. “I don’t care if she needs to keep her secrets. I’ll force them out of her if I need to, but if she’s on our side like she led us to believe, then she’ll tell us everything.”

“Fuck,” Joe blew out a shaky breath, but then his eyes steeled, nodding resolutely. “Yeah, you’re right, man. I’m with you.”

Daeran wiped his forehead and groaned. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Hold up!” Andre raised his hands, seeming panicked. “Before that, let’s find Frodd first. Ask him about all this. As friends. We don’t wanna scare him off into the vampires’ arms.”

There it was again.

Rafe gritted his teeth in exasperation, swallowing down the harsh retort he wanted to spit to skewer through the omé’s innocence.

It’s a logical approach, he told himself. No need to go guns blazing.

“I’m guessing he’s the type to trust easily. And you’re around him pretty much twenty-four-seven, so you have no choice but to bring who he likes into the fold. His naivety is gonna get the rest of you hurt.”

“You’re right. Frodd, then Lindsay. Got it?”

Joe and Daeran nodded instantly, but Andre let a hesitant second pass before he did as well.

Rafe let it go for now. Save the anger for tomorrow.

-POI-

A yelp.

Rafe swung straight up in his bed, his vision focusing in his alarmed state. One glance toward the other end of the room found the occupant gone. Panic began to set in but settled once they spotted the familiar small figure of Andre at their entrance door. However, that relief was short-lived when he noticed his friend hunched over near a gray bucket, dripping, and grasping at his head.

“Andre?” he hopped out of bed, quickly putting on a pair of black sweatpants before sauntering over to his roommate, whose unresponsiveness was beginning to stress the ball of dread that had settled in his stomach since his attack. “Hey, man! What’s wro-”

Andre sniffed when Rafe placed a tentative hand on his shoulder, giving the latter enough time to see a few trails of crimson leisurely descend the side of the omé’s head from a cut near the upper-right corner of his forehead.

That ball of dread in the blond’s gut exploded into a mixture of anger, concern, and terror.

“The fuck!?” he hissed, trying with every cell in his body not to scream right in his friend’s face. Despite his swelling rage, his left hand was gentle when he stepped in front of Andre and laid it on his right cheek. “Shit, are you okay!?”

“U-Uh, yeah. It’s just…” the omega wolf grimaced again, wiping beads of water from his face, which dribbled onto his black hoodie and gray shorts.

Andre was hurt.

Someone hurt Andre. Right when he was nearby.

Rafe looked down at the gray metal bucket, toppled over and still leaking out its remaining contents to the floor. It was just a dumb middle school prank, but nobody was laughing.

Rafe certainly wasn’t. He wouldn’t be until someone paid – someone screamed – for this.

“Who the hell did this!? I swear to god, I’ll-”

Then it hit him.

“Of fucking course,” he snarled dangerously, and the veins in his forehead and biceps began to twitch. “That goddamn bastard wolf. Either him or the vamp bitch.”

Andre pursed his lips and nodded.

Rafe glanced back down at the bucket once more, every fiber of his being compelling him to kick it as hard as he can and send it soaring straight toward the Abellon Clubhouse, but with the bleeding boy in his arms, his priorities shifted.

With a growl, he led the omé back into the room, slamming the door shut to alleviate some of the aggression, and into the restroom, grabbing the plastic bag of caladrius soap he put down on the counter. Andre sat on the rim of the bathtub while Rafe rummaged for the first-aid kit stashed inside the lower cabinet.

For some reason, they didn’t contain any caladrius whatever in the case of an emergency. Of course. Gotta make us suffer a little longer, Rafe scoffed, to which Andre winced at.

“it’s already starting to heal,” he tried to placate, pointing at the thin, near-unseeable tendril of smoke wafting from the cut.

Indeed, it was starting to close, but at the pace of a glacier even for such a tiny wound, which wasn’t good enough for the superhuman. It was a hell ton slower than Zoel’s healing abilities, and that heat emanating from it had to be uncomfortable.

Rafe softened his expression and leaned toward the other boy. “Let me clean you up anyway.”

Rafe worked in silence as he did so, using water to pour the substance of the soap down across Andre’s cut. Expectedly, the wolf whimpered quietly, which made Rafe’s chest tighten with guilt and even more anger, but his whines ceased almost instantly as the wound swiftly shut itself like a closing eye.

Now all that remained was water and light streaks of blood. He solemnly left Andre to shower it off after double-checking for any more injuries.

A knock on the door raised Rafe’s hackles for a second before calming down, hearing Joe and Daeran call for him on the other end. Opening it up revealed them to him, expressions just as unsettled as last night.

“Bro! Is everything alright!? We heard Andre and…” Joe petered off, eyeing the bathroom door as the muffled sound of the shower could be heard.

“It’s okay. He’s okay, but those assholes won’t be,” he hissed.

“What happened? Why was your door all wet?”

“Again, those pieces of shit!” he pointed at the bucket beside them, glaring at it with all the hatred in the world. “The bucket fell on Andre’s head and nicked him like some fucking practical joke. They’re resorting to old-school pranks now to keep us on edge.”

He couldn’t hold it in any longer. Rafe stomped toward the metallic can and punted it. Not as hard as he could, but just a short snap of his foot sent the damned thing hurtling down the hall until it crashed against the curving wall, denting it ninety degrees before clattering uselessly to the ground.

Joe’s sigh was grave. “They got you, too, huh?”

Rafe blinked, snapping back to the noirette and his roommate. “’Too?’ What do you…?”

Daeran was already beside their door, pushing it open so somberly that Rafe’s throat closed up, fearing what he’ll find inside.

On the surface, it wasn’t all that bad. However, it still had to be a nightmare to deal with, and the implications of how it happened were beyond terrifying.

Some-goddamned-how, a tornado had formed in the boys’ room and had a field day with it, tearing up clothes, breaking the desks, and destroying the furniture. Daeran’s bed linen was even missing, a feat impossible without waking the boy up.

But it happened.

All while Joe and Daeran were sound asleep.

“Fucking hell!” Rafe paled.

“They got inside our room,” Daeran spoke, his voice frighteningly monotone as he blankly observed the damages. “Somehow ransacked our entire bedroom while we were knocked out.”

“There’s no way they didn’t use magic,” Joe shook his head. “Those guys are freaking ogres! They can’t help but stomp.”

The blond’s fists clenched tightly, his nails painfully digging into his palms. “Yeah. They’re ramping up their game.”

And it would continue the longer they sat like pigs awaiting slaughter.

“We should go tell the administration about this,” Daeran suggested, though, he didn’t sound at all adamant about it.

He knew that would never work.

Rafe shook his head, walking out of his friends’ dorm room lest he go feral from examining more of the destruction. “I doubt that’ll do anything to stop them. Teachers watch fights in the middle of the cafeteria like an action movie on TV. I’ve seen them literally just sit there and salivate.”

“Damn,” the noirette superhuman blew out a worn-out breath. “I knew this was a combat school or whatever, but it really is a major religion here, isn’t it? Like a small town with football.”

Oh no. It was worse than that.

They were in the middle of a street gang war about to reach its climax. Rafe didn’t know how, but they were tied in it.

“The plan’s still on. We go after Frodd, then Lindsay. To talk. Peacefully,” he grated, having already reached beyond his level of patience. “Then after? We find that mutt and beat him and his friends into the ground.”

Joe and Daeran nodded in agreement, ready to end this once and for all.