Chapter Text
“ANSWER ME,” the police officer slams his hand on the desk. Landon says nothing. The officer takes a deep breath, calms himself and says, “It’s good for you to answer me or things will start getting rough.” Landon wanted to scoff. Start? They were beaten and stepped on before they even got here. His back is still aching from the policeman’s knee as he kept digging his face into the ground.
It is a well-known fact that no one care about orphans. Not when their parents leave something behind, not when they are family and certainly not when they have no one and nothing. That’s the reality they have lived for almost 18 years. They learned to keep their heads down, to obey, to not step out of line, to not piss people off. They’d learnt long ago to never ever hope.
The more he didn’t answer, the redder the policeman’s face got. The man had a name but what use is that, he’ll just have to call him sir, Mr, Officer.
“I know you boys killed him. Tell me where you buried him.” Landon didn’t say anything.
Landon would say he hated working in a bar, but he didn’t have the luxury. Not when his only other option was selling his body. Not when it paid enough to share a flat, if it can even be called that, with seven other boys. Not when he needed to get out of this hellhole of a city. He passes by one of the tables and the man slaps his ass. Landon swallows every drop of feeling and turns around and smiles at him, “Can I help you?” The man is taken aback. He was expecting a woman, he didn’t he would have to look him in the eye, Landon didn’t really care. He only had about 20 more minutes to go before his shift ended. The man and his friends didn’t say anything for slow passing moments until suddenly they burst out laughing. “He looks like a girl.” “You slapped a boy’s ass.” “Do you wanna make out?” “When did you become gay?” The man who’d slapped him kept turning redder and redder as his friends kept making fun of him. Landon simply took his tray and left them alone.
The world was spinning around Landon. He tried to grab the wall but his hand kept slipping. His stomach threatened to throw itself out his mouth and no amount of repeating calm down under his breath seemed to be calming him down. Strong, wet hands grabbed his shoulders, keeping him from falling to the floor. As if zapping back to him his brain began to function again. They didn’t have much time. The boy had already lost too much blood, he wasn’t going to make it. Landon ignore the smell of smoke all around him and instructed Rafael to help him get the boy into the car. It was a moonless night but he could only hope no one saw them. Rafael guides them through the city, undetected by camera, to a ravine. In the glow of the car’s headlights they threw him off it.
On the way back Landon wondered how fragile he must have been to let something so silly and inconsequential take from him the most important thing he had – his life. Was being called gay that horrible? Landon knew the answer. He’s know the answer since he was seven. It just didn’t make sense to him.
The police could ask as many question as they wanted Rafael wasn’t going to answer a single one. If they knew, if they could prove that they’d killed that waste of space rich boy they would have charged them with it. The officer slapped the table again. That was the seventh time he’d done that. He says something but Rafael isn’t listening. He is thinking about how he could rip the man apart with his teeth and claw his skin out.
Since that day he’d been having these fantasies. Sometimes it was slapping someone or punching someone, something it would be smashing someone face into a wall and other times, like right now it would be something extra violent. He kept getting pissed off by the slightest things and it scared him to his bones. Landon never stopped complaining about how rough he was and now it had Rafael wondering if he was some sort of crazy guy.
Landon had comforted him afterwards, saying it was in the past, saying he knew him. Rafael had thought about turning himself in constantly for 9 days. He’d even sat outside the police station thinking about it. He was glad he didn’t. That asshole didn’t deserve to be found.
“Answer me or face my answer boy” the police officer screamed into his face, spit landing on Rafael’s cheeks. He simply wiped it away and before he could even look back at the officer a fist connected to his face. The chair fell backwards and Rafael along with it. His head smashed against the cold floor, murder burning brighter than it had in the last nine days. The other officers grabbed him on both sides as the first one came and punched him so hard his knees gave out and he doubled over.
The officer hadn’t touched him yet, Landon didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing. He’d heard the stories about how violent these men were. In one particularly horrific tale his foster dad had told him when he wanted Landon to fall in line was about a guy the police had hung upside down and beat with their batons. His foster dad had said he should be grateful he wasn’t being hung upside down because you die in 7 minutes when all the blood rushes to your head.
“You are going in a hole for the rest of your life boy.” The officer leaves. Landon relaxes, just a little.
He hasn’t left for half a minute when another one comes in. He doesn’t say anything, his angry, red face speaking for him. The man is three times his size in height and width with a face full with bribes over the years. Without a warning he grabs Landon by his hair. Landon’s hands reach up on instinct. He pulls so hard that Landon stands up. The officer doesn’t waste a second and leads him out of the dingy room. He goes over to the next room and throws him on the floor like he is nothing more than a bag of trash. He falls down in a heap and a moment later the wooden baton connects to his back. He screams out. He can hear Rafael telling the officer not to hurt him and the officer aims the baton in his direction. Rafael screams. “You want to tell me what to do?” the officer keeps repeating the question and hitting him. Landon tries to get in between them but the officer simply shoves him aside. He screams, begs, and pleads the officer to stop. He tries to bargain, to step in between them, he even tries to attack the officer. The other officers hold him down. Rafael starts bleeding out of his shirt but they don’t stop. He screams. He begs for them to stop. He puts his hands in front of himself to plead for mercy. The officer doesn’t stop.
It seems to go on and on. Landon can’t look. If he could go deaf on command he would, Rafael’s screams ring in the room, digging their permanent place into the nightmares of their lives. Suddenly, finally, it stops. The officer comes up to Landon, “Confess your crime or I’ll hang him upside down and if that doesn’t work I’ll hang you both.”
Landon can’t even speak. All he hears is the thump of wood hitting skin. He nods. He nods as vigorously as he can. The officer smiles and nods.
The door crashes into the wall and a man in a suit stands in front of them looking out of place, shining in a damp room. He looks down at Rafael, he leads down and studies him. The officers ask, “Who the hell are you? Who gave you the authority to be here?” The man in the classic black suit says nothing. He whispers something to Rafael and comes over to Landon. His eyes dart from his face to the officer’s hands still grabbing his bicep and shoulders. The officers look from the man to their superior as if unsure what to do. In the suddenly quiet room the man in the suit lets out a sigh and instantly the officers let Landon go. He doesn’t drift his curious eyes from Landon and hands them a file. The superior officer flips through the pages and simply says “Yes sir.”
“Come with me,” he tell Landon, turns around and gives his hand to Rafael. Rafael looks between them just as bewildered as Landon and takes the kind hand offered. Rafael hopes it is.
They come out of the police station. “I thought it would hurt a lot more than it does,” Rafael playfully says.
“Thanks for helping us” Landon pauses so the thanks registers, the man doesn’t seem to be paying attention, too preoccupied with his watch, “but who are you?”
“I’m sorry for this boys but we have less than three hours and I can’t have to turning in my car.” A gush of wind passes them. Suddenly the world seems to shift and collapse, Landon thinks those strange words will be the last words he ever hears.
He wakes up with a jolt. There is fabric under him, soft fabric, soft and smooth fabric. Very nice fabric. The room comes into focus. The walls are a light shade of green painted with tree branches that disappear into a dark wood cupboard with a mirror on one side. There is a big desk to his left illuminated by the moonlight from the open window. To his right is another bed, just as big as the one he is on with delicately crafted wooden legs. Everything about this room scream money.
“Where the hell am I?” Landon wonders out loud. The last thing he remembers is getting out of the police station with Rafael and the strange words from the man in the black suit. A hundred possibilities run through his head but none of them explain this room and his presence in it. He is glad to be alive but this feels like something more is coming.
He barely has his feet on the ground when the dark door opens. A man in a cardigan and scruffy beard walks in along with the most beautiful girl he has ever laid eyes on. Her auburn hair cascade down her shoulder in soft waves. The man comes towards him and pulls a chair for the dresser to sit upon. Up close Landon can see the healed scars on his face, tiny cuts here and there. The girl stays on the edge of the bed, hands in front of her. The stance reminds Landon of a soldier or secret agent.
“Hi, my name is Alaric Saltzman. You are at the Salvatore School in Mystic Falls, Virginia. I’m the head master of this school.” Alaric, Mr. Saltzman speaks with a calm demeanor, like he has done this before. “I…”
“Where is Rafael? What did you do to him?”
The head master and student look at each other and Alaric continues as if he didn’t interrupt him at all, “As I was saying, this is a special school…”
“Where is Rafael?” They look at each other again, unsure what to say, “Look I don’t care what you got going on here. I don’t care about anything other than finding my friend.”
This time the girl speaks, “That is what he is trying to explain to you.” Her sweet voice does little to subdue the growing anxiety inside him. “Please listen.”
Perhaps if he listens they will finally let him see Rafael, so Landon nods and the man continues, “This is a school for gifted individuals and your friend, Rafael is one of them. The man that met you at the police station was one of ours, tasked with resolving threats.”
“Resolving threats? Rafael is not a threat.”
“Are you sure about that?” The girl’s sweet voice has a sharp tone to it, like she is impatient.
“Yes.”
“So he did not kill Castor Blake?”
Suddenly the room falls silent. How did they, how could they know?
The girl keeps looking at him with those almond eyes like she wants to shake him up and the truth will somehow fall out of his pocket.
“Look it’s okay. And I was not saying Rafael was a threat but that the police officer who had you two was a threat. Man like that wouldn’t have hesitated in killing you and never thinking twice. That is why we had to send Roman despite the risk.”
“What risk?”
“Of Rafael turning and hunting him.”
“Turning? Hunting? What are you talking about?”
“Rafael is a were-one. A werewolf to be precise. That’s why he is in the dungeon right now or he might have ate half the student body.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Who are you people?” They are insane. No Landon is dream. No, he died in the police station and this is somehow a test to get into heaven. What does that mean, Rafael is a werewolf? He would know.
Seeing his bewildered expression the man says, “Well, there is never a nice way to break this, is there?” He looks at the girl. She simply shrugs. “Supernaturals are real. All the stories you’ve heard about Vampire, Witches and Were-ones are real. And we are a school for that.”
“Okay, so you are insane. I would like to leave. Now.”
Landon moves to get off the bed when suddenly the room is filled with blinding light. As Landon’s eyes adjust he can see the light comes from the girl’s hand. “Got it now?”
“Supernaturals are real. Okay.” Landon nods along, convincing himself of what he’d just seen. There was no other explanation. If this was a cult they had the budget to make these special effects looks like a superhero movie. “Okay. Okay. Supernaturals are real.”
“If you want we can take you to Rafael now.” That snaps him back into himself.
They dungeon looks, well, like a dungeon. The walls look damp and the place is colder than the room the rest of the school. He could hear the barks from the moment Mr. Saltzman had opened the door. The barks would get punctuated by the sound of someone throwing themselves against metal. Landon looked back at the entrance, perhaps there was still a chance he could make a break for it. Mr. Saltzman guided him in front of the barking wolf and suddenly he calmed down. His hazel eyes looked Landon up and down. He woofed at him. Landon didn’t know wolves could even make that sound. If he hadn’t seen the light show the girl made he would not have believed that Rafael stood in front of him. His dark skin replaced with a brown and white fur with cute triangle ears and a tail that swung back and forth with excitement. The wolf, Rafael puts his head against the bars of the cage. Landon goes closer to him, his heart about to jump out of his chest, and softly, anxiously pets him. What else could he do? Rafael is a giant dog right now.
“This is weird dude,” he says, not sure if Rafael even understand him right now, “if you were here. I mean if you could speak, like human speak, you’d say,” he mimics Rafael’s deep tone, “so weird, dude.” He thinks a moment, “They say this is you. I hope it’s you and they aren’t just lying to me.”
“We should go.”
“Okay, accepted that Supernaturals are real and this is a school for Supernaturals. So where does that leave me?”
“With me.” The man in the black suit appears from the shadows. Without a word he places his hand on Landon’s shoulder and says, “Forget everything you’ve seen here. Your friend Rafael has left you but he is in a better place.”
“What the fuck are you on?”
The three look among each other, eyebrows knitted in confusion.
“Did you check for vervain?”
“Of course I did, Mr. Saltzman. This isn’t my first time.”
“Why didn’t it work then Roman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stop bickering, we have to solve this problem first.”
“Hello. Problem would like to know the context.”
They ignore him.
“It’s possible he is supernatural himself,” says the girl.
“Whatever the case, it’s too late to do anything now. We will deal with this tomorrow. I need my five hours.” He is about to leave when he turns around, “Hope, show him to his room.”
Now that he is not worried about Rafael, Landon starts to notice the school itself. The building looks old in parts like the dungeon and the giant hall they passed when coming up, and it looks modern in other places like right now, with it’s faux brick wall décor.
They reach a similar looking dark door. “There you go,” she holds out a key.
Landon takes it and asks, “We weren’t properly introduced. I’m Landon Kirby.”
She smiles and says “Hope. Hope Marshall.”
“Hope. That’s a pretty name.” Up close he could see the lines of brown in her green eyes. “Anyway,” he chickens out of any other line he could think of, “what exactly will happen tomorrow.”
“Well since you are potentially a supernatural, you will be tested. Now of course you’re not a vampire, you’d have to be dead for that. But you could be a latent witch or an inactivated were-one,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “Landon is a pretty name too. What does it mean?”
He grins like a fool. Straightening his back he says, “I don’t know. Never managed to find out,” he shrugs, trying he best to looks nonchalant and cool, “so what are you? I mean what species… is that correct?”
“It is. Were-witch.”
He pouts and nods his head, “Never heard of it.”
“Well you wouldn’t have,” Hope takes a step closer, “I’m a very rare breed of supernatural. Half witch, half were-one.”
“Yeah what’s the deal with that? I thought it was werewolves?” Hope smirks and he knows he’s lost all the cool factor he built in one line.
“Were-ones come in all animal forms. The wolf ones just got very popular. The form a were-one takes depends of their nature. Your friend for instance is a wolf because he is a protector. Protectors can also turn into tigers, lions, bears and even Elephants. That’s why we let them turn outside.”
“So that full moon thing still applies.”
Hope nods.
Landon turns the information over in his head, “Then shouldn’t you be turning?”
“Part witch, remember. I can control when I turn.”
“That’s so cool.”
“Good night Landon.”