Page 3 of The Teras Trials

Every time I’m close to one of these, my body reacts instinctively. An ingrained human response to something unnatural to our world. I start sweating almost immediately. There’s something about the eyes, the beady blackness of them, the void, the eternality—I might throw up. It’s fear, the true kind, the one that makes me want to run. A shake starts in my hands as I’m sawing through bone. I can’t stop it.

“Oh, God, you look pathetic.” Thaddeus comes and pats me on the shoulder. “And bloody tense. Listen, we’re London-based now. Not like before.”

Before. Instantly, my childhood floods me. Just impressions of a panicked life, my mother clutching her smelling salts on the fainting lounge, my father watching from the window with a shotgun aimed at the air. When you lived outside of London proper, without any of the University’s wards, expecting an attack was the best defence. Perhaps the only defence, without a Hunter nearby.

But Thaddeus was admitted to the University, and admission was all it took for London to open her arms to you. Crowded and foul-scented arms, perhaps, but hers was an embrace no one would turn down.

Not when London’s wards kept the teras at bay.

“You’re nineteen. A man proper. You won’t have me to hold your hand—”

I spit at my brother, “Oh, like I’d want to hold your sweaty hand—”

“But the trials aren’t a joke,” he says over me. “You better keep your head.” Firm. A touch of scolding beneath it. I feel myself flush, and Thaddeus makes it worse by saying, “None of that God-damned hesitation. So, tell me, Cass. What’s the first rule of being a hunter?”

“Never let your guard down,” I parrot. The motto of our father: noli dormire dum in speculis–never fall asleep at the watchtower. The fear leaves me. I put down the blade. My hands are covered in gore, and my brother can be so God-damned righteous — but in the end, Thad is right. It’s not just my own reputation I have to worry about, but my family’s. It means all the more to them, now they’ve made it to London.

My admission to the University will cement the Jones family in London society. No more talk about where we’ve come from. We’ll be useful members of society. Thaddeus won’t just be a fluke; the ability to graduate will be in our blood. And that’s all that matters, in the end. For the city to be indebted to you is to live a life of safety.

I pick up the blade again. Thaddeus watches me saw away at the teras’s neck. I will my brother out of my mind; let the glow of the gaslight lamp swallow him and obscure his image, ignoring his persistent stare. I put my whole body into severing the head, whacking desperately at the bone, and when it finally cracks free it’s a shock. I stare at the gap between the head and body for a moment. Then I throw the blade across the snow for Thaddeus to deal with and heave the head up. Black blood and stringy tendon slop to the ground. I lift it to head-height and give a mock bow before it.

“Good evening, kind teras. You do me a great honour by dying.”

“Cassius,” my brother says. It’s a warning.

“What?” I turn the head towards Thaddeus. “He does.”

The humour only takes me so far.

The ride back to London is long and silent. I stare back at Watford for a moment. Looking at it fills me with a gnawing sense of dread. The teras brutalised this town. They are getting brazen.

All the while as we move closer and closer to home, I squint through the dark for the tall spires and domes of the University, hoping to spot it rising out of the city. A beacon calling to me, promising safety.

But the clouds hang low this evening and show me nothing.

2

LESSON TWO

With my trophy in tow, Thaddeus intends to bring me before the dean of the University. I pretend like I don’t know it’s practically a bribe: we’re begging the University to take me without having to go through admissions. It’s easier this way. My pride can stay protected. This dead teras will at least prove I have some ability, but I know Thaddeus has set up this meeting because he doesn’t think I can make it. I’m too weak. Too brittle. An embarrassment to his legacy.

When I wake in our shared bedroom, Thaddeus is already up. I take the time to pull myself from sleep, even when his frustrated voice calls from outside the door. I stare at myself in the mirror. Thaddeus is strong, with visible muscle and a sturdiness to him that makes him seem grounded. I’m a wispy, lanky boy. Muscle clings to my bones in thin ropey strips. I look about as sturdy as the books I’ve wrapped myself up in all my life. My hair is long like a girl’s—I am teased for this constantly—but I plait it up and lay it over my shoulder and dress in the very best clothes I have. I wear high-waisted black pants, an open-necked white shirt, and my long black duster coat.

The hybrid’s head stinks in a way I can’t explain. I half expect to find it decaying already, but when I exit the room and see its haunting, vacant stare, I find its neck has only congealed with blood. Its putrid smell permeates our small apartment. I gag as I walk past and try to hide it before Thad sees, but he notices and scoffs at me, rolls his eyes. It’s not the worst reaction, but I know how easily he tips towards anger, and I don’t want to push him there; he wants me to bear the masculine apathy our father pushed upon us, but I feel too much to ever be very good at that.

My brother revels in his role as Hunter. Even at breakfast, he sits in his beautiful black Hunter’s coat, full of pride. The mantle is bright with silver thread, all of his conquests embroidered in tiny detail so a lifetime of hunting could fill it out.

It’s the most prestigious class the University has to offer. These are the brave souls who leave the safe wards of London and cull the teras that terrorise the rest of England. I know Thaddeus will judge me when I choose another class. I am an obvious candidate for Scholar. I’ve read every book I could get my hands on that had any detail on the teras. I know their types; I know many of their weaknesses. I know Latin to a decent extent. I would love to wrap myself up in the books and the scrolls and the tomes and let a century of knowledge seep into my skin.

Thaddeus will judge me, but it’s what I’m cut out for. He is a strange and inconsistent man: he doesn’t think I have the skill for a Hunter, but he’ll think me weak if I do anything less. I think Hunters are brutes. Violent, ungovernable, reactive people—they are good soldiers and nothing more. To me, it’s the Scholars that run this place. The Scholars that run the University itself.

I keep all this to myself and pretend I don’t see the look on his face.

We eat porridge and share a handful of berries between us. We eat in silence. Our mother comes in, sliding back the curtain she uses to divide our parent’s room from the rest of the apartment. I catch a glimpse of my father, catatonic and as vacant-stared as the severed teras head on the table.

“Do you have to keep it there,” she whispers, flinching at the sight.

Thaddeus ignores her. He has little time for our mother.

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