Chapter 9
There is nothing about Bathory Academy's exterior to suggest that its students are fl edgling vampires. There's no outward sign of the strange nature of its teachings - unless you count its eternally shuttered windows. Beautifully designed, the three-story mansion on East Ninety-fi rst Street was built by one of the old robber barons, back when the Upper East Side was still the suburbs. In fact, the only building in the vicinity that dates back as far as Bathory Academy is its male counterpart, Ruthven's School for Boys, located two streets over on East Eighty-ninth.
Every Monday through Thursday night, from late September until early May, a succession of limousines pull up in front of the school, disgorging a steady stream of young girls dressed in maroon blazers and gray pleated skirts. What they do inside the school is anybody's guess. Most nights the students remain inside the building until at least two in the morning, sometimes as late as four. Every so often groups of students leave in the company of what are assumed to be faculty members, whisked away in shiny stretch limos on mysterious midnight fi eld trips.
These sightings aside, the girls and their teachers have remained little more than phantoms to the generations of New Yorkers who have found themselves neighbors to the school. And since those who do not mind their own business have a tendency to suddenly disappear forever, it's far safer for all concerned to simply explain away Bathory Academy as a private night school for the children of the pampered rich who cannot be bothered to get up at the crack of dawn and prefer to sleep away the daylight hours in their parents' penthouses. Getting dressed was one of Cally's favorite things. She'd always had a fl air for styling clothes. Ever since she was old enough to talk, she had been allowed to dress however she pleased, or at least as far as her pocketbook permitted. She loved buying unusual fabrics, ribbons, and lace and using them to customize the skirts and dresses she found at vintage shops and fl ea markets. As she checked herself in the mirror, she regarded the dreadful maroon blazer and gray skirt with disgust. It was so drab and nondescript compared to what she usually wore. More than ever she wished she was human and could have a tattoo! Sadly, vampires healed so fast the ink was literally pushed out of the skin within seconds of being applied. Perhaps there was another, less drastic way of proclaiming her individuality on her fi rst night at her new school?
She opened the jewelry box on her vanity table and took out a pair of vintage Bakelite bangles she inherited from her grandmother. One was a pale olive color that could almost pass for jade; the other was sunfl ower yellow.
"That's better," she said with a smile as she slipped the jewelry onto her left wrist.
As she stood on the elevated platform at Marcy Avenue, the wind whipping about her exposed legs, Cally found yet another reason to loathe her school uniform. Judging from the number of leers she was getting from creepy-looking guys, it was a real perv magnet.
As she walked up the stairs of the school, Cally wondered what lay ahead for her behind Bathory's blood-red doors.
The fi rst thing she saw on entering was the fulllength portrait of an outstandingly attractive woman, her milk-white face framed by reddish hair. The lilac shade of her fl owing dress offset her luminous green eyes. In one slender hand she held an open roll of blank parchment; the other held a scrivener's talon.
What Cally found particularly striking was the look in the woman's eyes. Unlike other early Romanticera paintings Cally had seen in museums, there was nothing coy or coquettish in the woman's gaze. Instead she radiated a mixture of wisdom, curiosity, and determination. She seemed to be staring expectantly at Cally, as if she had just asked a question and was patiently awaiting a reply.
Cally walked over to look at the brass plaque attached to the bottom of the portrait's frame. To her surprise, the inscription was in English, not the formal chthonic script of the Old Bloods. It read: our founder, morella karnstein.
Even though the subject of the painting was long dead, Cally felt as if she were somehow welcoming her to the school. Maybe she could fi t in here after all. But fi rst she needed to locate the school secretary and fi nd out what her classes would be.
Cally looked around, suddenly aware of how empty the building felt. Although there were supposed to be at least seventy students attending the school, there were no voices buzzing behind the closed doors of the classrooms or rattling of lockers in the hallways. The only sound she heard was the rapid clicking of fi ngernails on a computer keyboard, coming from the offi ce on her right.
She walked in and saw a middle-aged woman dressed in a gray jacket and skirt, her long dark hair piled atop her head and held in place by several strategically placed sharpened pencils. She was seated behind a desk, entering data into a computer. On seeing Cally, the school secretary stopped, her fi ngers frozen in midkeystroke.
"What are you doing aboveground?" the secretary asked sternly.
"I - I'm sorry," Cally stammered, startled by the woman's severity. "I'm a new student - I was told to report to the school secretary when I got here. . . ."
"You're the New Blood," the secretary said, her upper lip wrinkling as if she smelled something foul.
"And you're late."
"I realize that," Cally said. "I had to take the subway to get here and it took longer than I thought. . . ."
"Tardiness is not tolerated at Bathory Academy. Nor is non-regulation clothing, jewelry, or accessories," the secretary said tartly as she eyed Cally's unusual hairstyle and the colorful bangles on her wrist. "While such outlandish personal fashion statements might be acceptable at a place like Varney Hall, they are frowned upon here. You would do well to remember that, Miss Monture."
"Yes, ma'am," Cally replied quietly.
The secretary got up, walked briskly to a fi ling cabinet, and pulled out a manila folder. She strode over to a tabletop photocopy machine and slapped a piece of paper from the folder onto the glass. Her body language made it clear that being forced to attend to a New Blood was almost too galling to bear.
"Here's your class schedule," the older woman said, literally shoving the photocopied paper into Cally's face. "You are to report immediately to the grotto for assembly. Is that understood?"
"I guess so."
"Then go join the others," she said curtly, slamming the door shut behind her.
"Thanks a lot, bitch," Cally muttered under her breath as she stood in the hallway, frowning at her class schedule.
It was printed in chthonic script, the written language of the Founders, which looked like a cross between Chinese, Sumerian, and chicken scratch. She'd learned the simplifi ed version of the language at Varney Hall but wasn't familiar with the more formal version preferred by the Old Bloods. It was going to take a little deciphering on her part to fi gure out exactly when, where, and what her classes would be. To make matters worse, Cally had no clue where to fi nd the grotto.
She looked around, desperately hoping to catch sight of a student or faculty member, but the fi rst fl oor of the school was deserted, save for an undead servant dressed in janitor's grays slowly pushing a broom down the hall.
Since her family didn't have servants, Cally hadn't grown up surrounded by the undead like most of her New Blood friends. The undead tended to creep her out. It wasn't that they scared her or anything; it was just that she didn't know where to look or what to say whenever they were around. It seemed superweird to be waited on hand and foot by people you - or at least someone in your family - had essentially murdered.
She walked up to the caretaker sweeping the fl oor and politely coughed into her fi st. "Excuse me . . . ?"
The janitor kept pushing his broom along the fl oor.
"Hello?" Cally said, a little louder than before, this time tapping him on the shoulder.
The man with the broom jumped slightly. He turned to look at her, a stunned expression on his face. "You are talking to me, mistress?" he asked, clearly baffl ed by why she would want to do such a thing.
"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting your work, but I was hoping you could, uh, help me fi nd where I'm supposed to go?"
"I am only the janitor, miss."
"Yeah, I can see that. I just need to know where the grotto is."
"It is located on the third level, miss," the janitor said, turning back to his broom.
"The grotto's upstairs?" she asked with a frown, looking to the upper stories over her head.
"No, miss," the janitor replied with a shake of his head. "It is below."
"So how do I get there?"
The servant said nothing but merely pointed at a door across the hall from them marked janitorial.
"But that's the supply closet," she said, frowning harder than before. She turned back to ask another question, only to fi nd that he had already pushed his broom down the hall and around the corner.
Cally scratched her head, baffl ed by the janitor's instructions. Still, just to be on the safe side, she walked across the hall and peeked inside the cleaning supplies closet. Instead of a bunch of mops and cases of fl oor wax, she saw a large wrought-iron cage elevator complete with an undead operator dressed in a maroon jacket with Bathory Academy's insignia emblazoned across the breast pocket.
"I need to go to the grotto," she said hesitantly. The elevator operator had the same thousand-yard stare as the janitor, and it was starting to spook her.
"Very well, miss," the operator said, pulling fi rst the interior elevator door and then the folding gate shut behind her.
Cally grabbed one of the side rails to steady herself as the car suddenly jerked into motion. "I'm new here," she explained. "Can you tell me what the grotto is?"
"I do not know, miss," the operator replied, his eyes riveted straight ahead. "I have never seen it."
Cally frowned, perplexed by his response. "You mean you work here and you don't know what the grotto actually is?"
"I am the elevator operator, mistress," he replied, as if that explained everything. "It is my duty to take students and faculty from one fl oor to the other. I have been doing so for - what year is this, mistress?"
"2008."
"Ahhh." He nodded slowly. "In that case, I have been inside this elevator for one hundred and twenty-seven years. That is all I do. All I shall ever do."
"Okay. I see," Cally said, now offi cially creeped out. She decided to spend the rest of the lengthy ride to the mysterious grotto in silence.
Stepping out of the elevator, Cally heard a strange mixture of buzzing and high-pitched piping, as if someone had angrily shaken a hive full of bees and tossed it into a cave full of bats. She followed the sound, walking down a long vaulted corridor that ended at a huge doorway. Its massive metal doors were standing open.
As she got closer, the buzzing resolved itself into the sound of dozens upon dozens of voices talking excitedly, while the piping proved to be the ultrasonic chittering of those speaking in the true tongue, the ancient language of the Founders.
Cally stepped across the gigantic threshold and found herself not in a room but a cavern, one as grand and awe-inspiring as any cathedral. The roof soared over two hundred feet above her head, held aloft by six enormous rock pillars. If she remembered correctly what she'd learned from the tour guide during the trip she and her grandmother made to Howe Caverns when she was ten years old, the huge rock formations that hung down from the ceiling like gigantic icicles were stalactites, while those pushing up from the fl oor like huge fangs were stalagmites.
But as amazing as the secret grotto was, it was more amazing to see so many vampires openly gathered in one spot. Most of the vampires were in their humanoid forms, dressed in Bathory Academy or Ruthven uniforms. They sat perched, gargoyle-like, atop the various stalagmites. But there were a good number in their winged forms, clinging to the steep walls and large stalactites, hanging head down like sheaves of tobacco drying in a barn.
As she threaded her way through the maze of rock formations in search of a place to perch, those who had already claimed their spots turned to look at her, their eyes glowing in the dim light. She was keenly aware of being a new, unfamiliar face among those famous for their cliquishness.
As she tried to climb onto an unclaimed stalagmite, a girl with red hair and emerald-green eyes jumped onto it from a nearby rock formation, hissing at Cally like a cat warding off an intruder. "This seat's taken!"
Cally wanted to tell the redhead to kiss her ass, but getting into a fi ght during assembly on her fi rst day was probably not the best way to start things off. She muttered an apology and kept looking. In about a minute, she found a place to perch and quickly clambered up it.
"May I have your attention, please?"
It wasn't really a question. As the words boomed out across the cavern, the assembled students fell silent and turned in the direction of the voice. Cally followed their lead and saw a woman wearing jeweled cat's-eye glasses, with a dramatic streak of white in her ravenblack hair. She was standing in the mouth of a tiny cave that hung suspended high above the fl oor of the grotto like a pulpit.
"For the sake of our brethren at Ruthven's, allow me to introduce myself. I am Madame Nerezza, headmistress of Bathory Academy. Our schools are gathered here tonight to acknowledge the passing of one of our own, who was attacked by Van Helsings early Saturday morning. Her name was Tanith Graves, daughter of Dorian and Georgina Graves, and she was a third-year here at Bathory."
There was a brief fl urry as the students looked at one another. Although a few gasped in surprise, the majority of the student body simply sat in silence, as quiet as the rocks on which they perched.
"My sincerest sympathies, as well as those of the combined Bathory and Ruthven faculty, are extended to Miss Graves's family and friends in this, their time of loss.
"As you all know, the Founders of our race were summoned forth over twenty thousand years ago from the infernal region, only to fi nd themselves stranded in this dimension. Since those early days, our kind has struggled to survive in a world not our own. Yet, despite all odds, we have managed not only to endure, but to thrive. However, our success has not come without opposition - and often requires us to pay a steep price.
"If there is anything positive to be learned from this tragedy, it should be this: Van Helsings are very real.
"I realize this is an exciting time for you students. You are standing on the verge of adulthood and you yearn to experiment, to stretch your wings, both fi guratively and literally. You hunger to embrace the night, as is your heritage. But just because you are stronger and faster than humans and possess powers that they lack, do not fool yourselves into believing you have nothing to fear from them!"
Madame Nerezza paused for a moment and looked out over the sea of young faces, then gestured with her left hand. "Look to the persons to the left of you," she commanded.
Cally found herself looking at a female student with black hair worn parted down the middle in braided double pigtails fi xed by red ribbons.
"Now look to your right," the headmistress instructed.
All heads dutifully turned again - save for the girl to Cally's right. Instead of looking at the back of her neighbor's head, Cally found herself looking directly into the face of the blonde she had challenged at the park. Judging by the expression of sheer, unalloyed hatred shining in her eyes like blue steel blades, the blonde recognized Cally too.
"The cold, hard truth of the matter is that within a hundred years, one of the three of you will be dead,"
Madame Nerezza intoned. "Such is life for our kind. And it is the duty of our schools to prepare you for it."
Cally swallowed hard, quickly looking away from the blonde's searing gaze. Something told her she wouldn't have to wait a hundred years to fi nd out if the headmistress's prediction was accurate.