Chapter 66: Screaming

POV: Carly

It happened fast.

One second Niko's fist connected with Tommy's jaw and the next the cafeteria had become something she did not recognize. Tables overturned. Trays hitting the floor. Every supernatural species that had been sitting quietly minding their own business suddenly finding a reason to be in the middle of it.

Wolves and vampires going at each other properly across the room. Someone from the witch table threw something and then it did not matter who started what because the whole room was involved and the noise was tremendous and she was standing in the middle of it trying to find Niko in the chaos and also trying not to get hit by anything.

She found him.

He was on top of Tommy and his knuckles were bloody and his face was the specific expression of someone who had stopped being controlled about it and she felt sick watching it even knowing what Tommy had said to her.

She looked around the room.

Nobody was stopping.

No authority had appeared yet.

Every table had become its own war zone. Sirens screaming at wolves. Witches throwing spells at vampires. Enzo ducking a chair with the specific practiced ease of someone who had been in many cafeteria brawls before.

She looked at Niko.

She looked at Tommy.

She looked at the whole room.

She stepped back.

She closed her eyes.

She had never used this much of herself before. Had tested her limits recently and pushed further than she thought she could and each time found more than she expected. But this was different. This was the whole room. Every supernatural creature in it simultaneously.

She reached for it.

The witch's call lived somewhere deep. Not in her throat. Not in her lungs. Somewhere below all of that, in the place where the magic actually came from. She had been taught about it in theory. Had practiced the smallest version of it once in her freshman year and had not attempted it since because the smallest version had left her with a nosebleed and a headache that lasted two days.

She pulled it up.

It came faster than she expected.

"EVERYBODY STOP."

It left her like a wave going outward from where she stood. Not a scream exactly. A frequency. The witch's call was not designed for human ears because humans could not hear it. It was designed for everything else. It moved through the room like a shockwave and every supernatural creature in its path seized at once.

The lights burst overhead. Every single one simultaneously. The tables shuddered. Trays hit the floor. The room shook around her like something enormous had pressed its hand against the walls.

Everyone stopped.

Not by choice. Because they could not do otherwise.

Vampires with their sensitive hearing had it worst. She could see them seizing. Pressing their hands against their ears. Dropping to their knees. The sound was inside their heads not outside it and there was nowhere to put their hands that helped.

Wolves were down too. Every wolf in the room on the floor or bent double.

Witches staggered.

She held it as long as she could.

She felt herself running out.

The moment her eyes found Niko across the room she knew she was done. He was on his knees with blood at his ears and his jaw clenched and his eyes open and looking directly at her and even through the pain his expression was something she had never seen before.

She let it go.

The sound stopped.

The room went completely still.

She stood in the silence breathing hard and felt the specific exhaustion of having used something she had not known she fully possessed until thirty seconds ago.

Then her nose started bleeding.

She touched her lip and her fingers came back red and she blinked at them and the room started to tilt slightly.

Niko was beside her before she finished the thought.

His arm around her waist. Keeping her upright. A napkin from somewhere pressed gently to her nose.

She let him hold her up.

She did not have much choice.

The doors burst open.

Headmistress Saltzman stood in the entrance with two security guards behind her and an expression on her face that suggested she had seen a lot of things in her tenure at Black River Academy and this was still managing to surprise her.

"What." She said. Looking at the overturned tables. The burst lights. The students still recovering on the floor. "Is the meaning of this."

Nobody answered.

Silence.

She looked around the room slowly. Her eyes moved over every faction. Over the damage. Over Niko standing with his arm around Carly. Over Tommy Lancaster wiping blood from his jaw on the floor three feet away.

Her eyes settled on Enzo.

Who was the only person in the room currently upright and composed and looking back at her with the expression of someone who had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

"Mister Lorenzo." She said.

He smiled. "Headmistress. Lovely timing as always."

"Do you have anything useful to contribute." She said.

He considered it. "Instead of seeking out fault, perhaps this could be viewed as a historic moment of cross-faction interaction. A breakthrough in supernatural relations if you will."

The room was silent for a moment.

"Detention." She said flatly.

He accepted this with a gracious nod.

She looked at the room one more time.

"Lunch is over." She said. "All of you. Classes. Now." She looked at Niko and Carly one final time with an expression that contained approximately forty-seven different things before she turned and walked back through the doors.

The room began to move slowly.

Students picking themselves up. Gathering bags. Filing out in the specific quiet of people who had just collectively experienced something and had not yet decided how to feel about it.

Niko's arm stayed around her.

She leaned into it.

"You alright." He said quietly.

"I think so." She said. Her voice came out slightly unsteady.

"You nearly brought the ceiling down with your brain." He said. "So that's something."

She laughed. It came out exhausted. "Did it work."

"Everyone's still alive." He said. "So yes."

She nodded and let him keep holding her up and looked at the wrecked cafeteria around them and thought that this was genuinely the most chaotic lunch period Black River Academy had ever hosted and she had been at the center of all of it.

She felt Niko flash them out before the last of the students cleared the room.

POV: Whitney

She had been watching the whole thing.

She had watched Carly walk across the cafeteria and sit down. Had watched the whole room track her movement and had felt her own chest do something complicated that she was not going to examine right now.

She had watched Tommy arrive and the confrontation that followed and had pressed her lips together at the things he said and had told herself it was not her place to intervene. That she had made her position clear and this was not her fight anymore.

She had watched Niko throw the punch and the room erupt and had gotten to her feet automatically because the room erupting meant she needed to be on her feet.

And then Carly had stepped back.

And closed her eyes.

Whitney had known what was coming before it happened. Not because she had seen it before. Because she knew Carly. Had known Carly for ten years. Knew the specific expression she wore when she was about to do something she had never done before and was doing it anyway.

The wave hit her the same as everyone else.

She grabbed the table and held on and felt it move through her and noted with the specific detached awareness that she had learned to maintain around these things that it affected her differently than it affected the full witches around her.

Less than them.

More than she should have been if she was purely what everyone thought she was.

She filed that away immediately and focused on staying upright.

The sound stopped.

She straightened up and looked across the wrecked room at Carly standing with blood on her lip and Niko's arm around her and that specific exhausted expression of someone who had just discovered a depth in themselves they had not known was there.

Whitney stood very still.

She had known Carly was powerful. She had been watching Carly be powerful for ten years. She had sat beside her in coven sessions and watched her move through spells that took other witches twice as long with half the effort.

She had never seen her do that.

She had never seen any witch do that.

She thought about the things she had said in the corridor yesterday. About weakness and manipulation and how she could not watch Carly walk into something that she knew ended badly.

She stood in the wrecked cafeteria and watched Niko press a napkin carefully to Carly's nose and say something that made her laugh despite everything and thought about all of it.

She was not going to change her position today.

She was still scared. She was still angry. She still believed every word she had said.

But she was starting to wonder if scared and angry and right could all be true at the same time and she was not sure what to do with that yet.

She picked up her bag.

She walked out.

She did not look back.

POV: Katy

She had watched the entire thing from the bleachers of the gym.

She had heard the commotion from two corridors away and had followed it with the specific vampire instinct that flagged loud supernatural disturbances and arrived in the cafeteria doorway just as Niko threw the first punch.

She had leaned against the door frame and watched.

She had seen brawls before. She had been in a few. The specific choreography of a multi-species fight was something she found genuinely interesting from a tactical standpoint and this one was no different.

Until Carly stepped back.

And closed her eyes.

And then it was very different.

Katy had felt the witch's call hit her and had grabbed the door frame and held on and noted that it was stronger than anything she had encountered from a witch before. Significantly stronger. She had met supreme witches. Had been around power her entire life in various forms.

This was something else.

She held onto the door frame and watched Carly hold the whole room until she ran out and then watched her nearly collapse and watched Niko catch her with the specific speed of someone who had been watching for exactly that and had been ready for it.

She stood in the doorway after the room cleared and looked at the overturned tables and the burst lights and the aftermath of thirty seconds of Carly McPherson deciding she had had enough.

She thought about their breakfast conversation.

About Carly saying I like him I really like him in their dorm room with her pajamas still on.

She thought about the faction review notice she had seen on the board outside the headmistress' office.

She thought about Niko's arm around Carly as they flashed out.

She thought about Whitney Salem standing in the corner of the room holding a table and being less affected by the call than she should have been.

She filed all of it away.

Then she straightened up and walked back toward the east corridor and thought that Black River Academy was proving to be significantly more interesting than she had expected when she transferred here.

She was going to need to pay very close attention going forward.