hostile veins (h.s)

Chapter Five

"Open your textbook to page 332 and find last night's homework. We will be taking up both yesterday's and the previous day's work." Mr. Kellie scribbles something down on the board and says something else that I miss as a result of the earbuds in my head.

"Did you ever get it done?" Harry pokes my shoulder. I shake my head. He chuckles. "Didn't think so."

"Aye, fuck off," I snort quietly, fumbling with the thin green sleeves of my shirt. A new scar from while I was asleep peeks out the top of my hand. It scared me. It wasn't often I had demon encounters three times in a week, let alone twice in a row.

"So," he starts. I internally roll my eyes. "Are you going to tell me of the story of when the same snake which bit my dog, bit you?"

"It's not much of a story." I shrug. I don't like lying to him, or lying to anyone, even. Not that I have a choice.

"And, by the way, Roman is back to normal. Thank you for that. For saving her life."

I nod. "It's no problem."

"So? The story?" He taps his pencil against the desk.

"I was gardening and got bit by one of those snakes," I start. "My friend was nearby; she's training to be a vet. Her aunt has all these natural remedies for stuff like this, snake bites and whatever. So she ran and got it and it saved my life." I try to tell the lie as blandly as I can in order to get back to math.

Scribbling down the answers from last night, Harry does the same and remains quiet for once.

"Did the bite hurt?" He hums.

"Like a bitch. But the antidote hurts way worse. It works, though." This wasn't a lie. It honestly did hurt.

When I was 13, it was one of the first demons I'd encountered that took form as an animal. Before that time, I was good with animals. I would even say I had a gift with them.

It was the middle of spring when I discovered a snake in my kitchen. It didn't scare me as it would most people; my gift would normally allow me to just pick up the snake and return it to the garden. I wasn't going to kill it, I wasn't going to scream.

When I approached it and was greeted by its fangs, I screamed like no other. I did not expect the attack at all. In the past, I'd picked up fully grown ball pythons without any trouble. The demonic snake, which I didn't know was demonic at the time, bit me three times before a fourteen-year-old Akhila came to my rescue.

A knife through the skull sent the demon back to hell and left a pile of ashes in its place. I barely noticed as I was writhing in pain on the tiled floor. One bite could put me in my deathbed in three days; three bites made it less than one. I was dying and I didn't know it. Demonic poison raced through my veins. But, Akhila knew.

Akhila picked me up and carried me to her house, several blocks away, where she laid me in front of her elders. Her parents and grandparents knew what they were dealing with and saved my life accordingly.

The bewitched antidote was one they made specifically for me. A family of witches, they were. I was different, they later told me, which was why they had to make a completely different antidote in order to save my life.

They tied me down to a bed and injected the antidote into my heart as I had to Roman. I didn't understand why. The poison was no longer hurting in my veins; I just felt sleepy and slightly nauseated.

The pain that travelled through my veins as the antidote entered my bloodstream was like nothing I'd ever experienced. My whole body was burning. It felt as if someone had injected gasoline into my veins and set it on fire, over and over and over again.