by Cate Corvin
“Innuendo, Càel.”
“It was deliberate, shíorghrá. You will come tomorrow… and you will come tomorrow.”
I couldn’t help myself. I sucked my lower lip between my teeth, very aware of how little space there was between us, the memory of Càel pounding into me at the very forefront of my mind. “You are a twisted, perverted, downright filthy vampire.”
“Would you enjoy anything else?” He ran the tip of his tongue over my lower lip. I gripped his shoulders and stood on my tiptoes, digging my fingertips into the dense muscles of his shoulders.
“Doubt it.” This time I didn’t let him lead the way. My tongue slid into his mouth, heedless of sharp fangs. I was almost dizzy with need when I finally came up for air. A simple yes was all it would take, and I could forget everything in Càel’s arms tonight...
“Then it’s settled.” His lips moved against mine, like he was unwilling to pull away just to talk. “Tomorrow night, or your oath is broken, and you belong to me, Victoria.”
“You drive a hard bargain, White Wolf.” Maybe if he was feeling talkative, he’d tell me how he’d come about that nickname. “Luckily for you, I’m willing to make room in my plans.”
“I must be the most fortunate vampire alive.”
Ha. Of course there was wiggle room in my plans when Càel was one broken promise away from owning my body and blood.
Deep down, I was very curious as to what would happen if I did reach that point with him… but that wasn’t a feeling I wanted to examine too closely.
I finally pulled away. I wanted to walk back to Libra, let the night air clear my head, and I did in fact have class tomorrow. “Damn right you are. Until tomorrow, then.”
Càel kissed me one last time. Desire shuddered through me. “Goodnight, mo shíorghrá.”
It was strangely tough to walk away from him. Only twenty yards later, my step faltered, and my willpower broke. I looked back over my shoulder.
Càel was still standing where I’d left him, leaning against the wall, and giving me a crooked, knowing grin. He raised his hand and twinkled his fingers at me, like he’d known I would look back.
I scowled, waved back, and kept walking, turning my head resolutely forward. He was not getting the last word tonight. Or last wave, for that matter.
I felt his eyes on my back until I turned the corner.
2
Tori
I penned a neat line on a fresh page in my notebook: Demons die quickest with an iron stake through the heart. Then I doodled a little heart after the last word, a faint ray of happiness lancing through the black sea that filled my being whenever I was near the five people I wanted to murder the most.
One of these days, William Godalming and Sura Enver would drop their guard, and I’d push my blades right into their hearts with a smile.
For now, they weren’t stupid enough to turn their backs on me. I’d made sure of that myself. In a way, it was more satisfying to know that they’d both be sleeping with one eye open, but even sleeping with both eyes open wouldn’t save them in the end.
They had let me get too close. I knew what made them hurt, their heart’s desires.
I looked up from my notes as Professor Knightley scrawled on the blackboard, moving on to moonspawn weaknesses. Will and Sura sat together at the end of Tenebris’ side of the horseshoe of desks, my stepbrother draped lazily over his chair like he owned the room, Sura leaning back with the same insouciance.
Or, they only looked lazy and insouciant… to someone who didn’t know them. I’d spent enough time with Will to read the tension in his muscles, the shadow of a strained tendon beneath his neck. Sura’s eyes, as black as pitch, were cold and hard, his fingers clenched.
Will’s head turned my way, as if he felt my gaze burning right through him. Lavender shadows touched the skin under his jade eyes, and his chestnut hair was wild as though he’d run his hands through it over and over again. It was infuriating that even exhausted and strained, cruel and heartless though he was, Will was still one of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen in my life. It was going to be so pleasant to carve that beauty away piece by piece.
I glanced at Sura, who was already staring at me. His features were chiseled from deep stone, with short, dark hair, the smoky, flawless counterpart to Will. They were two sides of the same beautiful and twisted coin. Handsome as they were malignant.
They were dead as fuck when I got my hands on them. But I wanted to twist the knife a little first. This whole semester was devoted to cutting them down before the final strike.
I looked away first, as though I was bored by them, and practically felt Will’s fury from across the room. My eyes ran down the length of Tenebris: Gilcrist Rigel, Joshua Ferdinand, Pheric Grant, and… Apolline Moreau, Will’s ex-girlfriend, and one of the bitches who’d helped him humiliate me at the Samhain Ball.
Her weakness was easy: she placed a premium on beauty. I’d take that from her.
Lydia Hurst was the last in Tenebris’ line, a quiet, mousy girl who, for whatever reason, had decided to cast her lot with them. I didn’t know what made her tick yet, but I was going to find out soon.
And lastly, but far from least, Beatrice Glover. From my new position in Lux, she was only a seat away from me. Silas Vaughan sat between us, which she should probably be thankful for, because the urge to bury my pen in her eye might’ve been too much to bear without a buffer.
In her case, I didn’t care about breaking her down emotionally. My plans for her included one step: make her bleed.
The sound of tinkling chimes cut through Professor Knightley’s lecture, signaling the end of class. I jammed my notebook and pen in my bag, pushed in my chair, and strode out of class ahead of almost everyone except Aislin Liddell.
In the week since Semester Two had begun, Aislin had given me her personal ground-rules for Lux conduct and barely looked at me since. I knew how they all felt: irritated that they’d been saddled with the shame of Libra Academy. All of Lux and Tenebris, with the exception of both prefects and Sura, muttered nicknames for me when I walked by, emboldened by my lack of action against them: Gash, Hole, Vic-whore-ia.
They didn’t bother me. They were just words, so much air vanishing into the ether.
I had Càel. I had leads on the apothecary that would sell out the ringleaders. Soon, I would have my answers, and then the fun and games would really begin.
When I got to Professor Ermengol’s training grounds, I locked up my backpack and made sure the key was firmly in my pocket. I didn’t trust any of these assholes not to try another prank on me.
Ermengol was already there, her arms crossed over her chest as she waited. She was a petite woman, with short salt-and-pepper hair and a hard face, but I liked her no-nonsense attitude.
“Grab a sword, Holmwood.” I obeyed, taking my time in choosing a practice sword with the best balance as the rest of Lux and Tenebris filtered in, and we were paired off.
I got Will. Joy fizzed through my blackened heart as he took his place in front of me, pale eyes fixed on my face, his full lips pulled back in a grimace. I raised my sword with a little grin, settling into a solid stance.
He started the fight exactly how I thought he would: like it was a nice, safe practice session in Libra under a teacher’s watchful eye.
I ended the fight like it was a brawl against rabid moonspawn in Port Leona, kicking his knee out from under him and ripping the sword right out of his hands. There was a single second where I saw the clear surprise on his face and savored it, right before I buried my fist in his eye socket and drove him downwards.
He let out a low growl and I crouched over his chest, so close that loose strands of my hair brushed over his lips and cheek. “The first of many to come, William,” I whispered. Will glared up at me with the one eye he wasn’t clutching, but I got up before he could snap back at me.
“Get up, Godalming. Pair off with Vaughan.” Ermengol let out a little sigh, but I could’ve sworn there was a glint of
cruelty in her eyes as she scanned the pairs. “Holmwood, you take… Glover.”
Beatrice stepped away from her partner as we all shuffled into our new configurations. Her face was still a little lumpy from the last time we’d paired off in the training grounds.
She’d leave this class with fresh bruises. I couldn’t have her fully healing on me, now could I?
Beatrice came at me with far more ferocity than Will, but that didn’t help her in the end. It just made her sloppy. Ermengol seemed content to let me batter on her like my practice sword was a baseball bat for an interminably long time before she called a halt to our ‘practice’.
My Lux teammate crawled away from me, gasping for breath, and I stepped aside at Ermengol’s command, slowly and deliberately wiping the blunt blade clean of blood.
God, that’d felt good. Somewhere deep inside, I wondered if I should be worried at how much I’d enjoyed hurting her… but that black ocean of rage washed those feelings away like so much sand on the shore.
I hung up the sword and turned, taking in the crowd of eyes focused on me, Will’s steadily-purpling eye socket, and Beatrice Glover being pulled to her feet by Silas. A slow smile spread across my face. I really hadn’t meant to smile, but the crimson drip of blood in the corner of Beatrice’s mouth was just so satisfying.
“She’s a fucking psychopath!” Beatrice gasped, and my smile grew wider.
Ermengol picked up Beatrice’s fallen sword and shoved it into Juno Endelyn’s hands. “No, she’s a slayer. We live to kill. If you can’t handle a teammate, what makes you think you could kill moonspawn or an elder vampire?”
Sura stood next to Will, and something about the way they stood so close, moving at the same time, made it seem like they were almost one person. My smile finally dropped when his onyx eyes landed on me, slowly sweeping from my head to my toes in a way that’d once sent shivers through my veins.
I still felt those shivers, a strangely magnetic desire that wasn’t helped by the fact that I knew what he looked like under our uniforms and leather jackets, how silky his dusky skin was, how he felt pushing into me… but there was no affection under that desire. Not anymore.
I’d blindly trusted him when he said he wanted to be a friend to me. I’d known he was Will’s best friend, but after years of being alone with nothing but my brother’s ghost and a semi-comatose mother for company, I was so starved for love and companionship, I’d been blind to their true motivations.
Sura had confessed, not so long ago, that he wanted more than sex. More than a one-night-stand. Unless he’d been lying about that too… but my gut said he hadn’t, and that was the weakness I’d use against him.
Will’s place in his father’s esteem. Sura’s unfulfilled desire for real love. Apolline’s vanity. Beatrice’s pride. Lydia’s complacency.
All those things would be mine.
“You’re next.” My words were just below a whisper, almost silent, but I knew Sura had read my lips perfectly fine when he frowned, a line appearing between his dark brows.
My gaze slipped downward and caught on the tattooed necklace of dots encircling his throat.
A quick memory flashed to mind: straddling Sura, my vision seeming to slip as the dots wavered in and out of sight…
But a slayer without clan tattoos… it was unheard of. Libra Academy would never admit a slayer without a clan mark, no matter how much money they had.
It hadn’t seemed important at the time, but now it seemed like exactly what I needed to begin bringing him down. If Sura was lying about who he was, that was the sort of scandal that might overshadow my own humiliation.
That, and finding out where and how they’d acquired incubus saliva.
I glanced at Will, whose eye socket was now swollen as well as violet. “Meet me outside?” he mouthed.
I scoffed and shook my head. Was he insane?
“Please?” Will’s eyes said what his volume didn’t, but I just curled my lip. Fuck that. He’d already proven he was an expert at slithering into people’s hearts. Giving him any sort of leeway would only result in my vulnerability.
It was too rich that he’d compared me to a snake.
I took it easy on Juno Endelyn when I was paired with her next, then traipsed back to Lux Hall behind my team. Here, the walls were painted black and the doors white, the inverse of Tenebris Hall, and I’d been put in a room at the very end of the hall.
It, too, was almost exactly like my room in Tenebris Hall. This time, I hadn’t bothered trying to put a personal touch on anything. The only sentimental object I had was gone, thanks to Beatrice. Everything remained as stark and clean as I’d found it. Best of all, there was an empty room between me and the closest neighbor. I was well and truly isolated.
It wasn’t lost on me that I’d been deliberately pushed as far as possible from everyone else. Aislin wasn’t cruel, but she also wasn’t going to risk her team’s cohesion on a known troublemaker.
The rest of Lux was spending their Friday evening in the library before heading out to some hipster coffee shop, but there were no rules saying I had to go with them, and Aislin hadn’t demanded I stay inside Libra. That was one thing I appreciated about the Academy’s eat-or-be-eaten rules; they gave us enough freedom and rope to hang ourselves with, were we so inclined.
While I showered and dressed, combing through my hair and touching a bit of mascara to my eyelashes, I tried to tell myself I didn’t care what Càel thought about my appearance, but deep down, I knew that wasn’t true. He’d as much as proven that when he’d gambled on how easily I’d give in to his request for tonight.
I didn’t pass any other students as I slipped through Libra, past the glittering, spiraling Fae trapped in her glass tank, the massive skeleton of the dead angel, and up into the Caitland-Moore Museum, the human-friendly façade for Libra Academy.
A group of human tourists looked up from a stuffed saber-toothed tiger when I emerged from the emergency exit stairwell, but a moment later the forgetfulness enchantment washed over them, and they didn’t spare me a second glance as I strode away.
The sun had already set. A black car idled at the curb in front of the museum, a vampire standing beside the back door with an expectant look on his face.
A tendril of surprise wound through me. Càel was sending his personal guards to drive me to Club Bathory now? That seemed a little overprotective, especially since he’d let me walk home alone last night.
On the other hand, it meant no one would know I’d gone to Club Bathory. Particularly not the cacodemon drivers of Libra’s personal cars.
The vampire opened the door as I approached, and I slid into the dark, quiet comfort of a vampire king’s car. I’d half-expected Càel to be inside, but the back seat was empty, and the driver didn’t say a word as he pulled from the curb.
Nerves fluttered in my stomach like panicked butterflies as we drew closer to Clouded Court territory. Two months ago, those nerves would’ve been for fear of my life, when I’d been convinced Càel was going to murder me the first chance he got. In fact, I still wasn’t entirely sure he’d given up on that endeavor, since he’d technically sworn a solemn vow to ‘see me speared on the end of a sword’. If I wasn’t allowed to break my oath, what would happen if he broke his?
Now, the nerves were because I was sailing a boat into uncharted, choppy waters, where I couldn’t reconcile my attraction and emotional understanding for Càel with what he was- a vein-licker. A blood-drinker. Only slightly less horrible than demons.
They wore teeth as jewelry, for fuck’s sake.
But when the vampire halted the car outside Club Bathory, and a massive form appeared outside the tinted window, my stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with disgust.
Càel opened the door and I stepped out onto the pavement, my nerves humming. The Nordic vampire towered over me, his dizzying scent of ocean and pine washing over me in a heady wave.
I looked up at him, suddenly awkward, wondering if I should say s
omething a little different from what I usually greeted him with. What did one say to a one-night-vampire-stand? One that I’d kissed last night when my shields were down? Maybe it was a mistake to let him accompany me on my mission. The lines would only get blurrier from here.
“Here I am again. Blackmail fulfilled.”
The faint smile on his lips became a grin, exposing his sharp fangs. “I wasn’t sure you’d listen. It wasn’t part of the official bargain.”
“Don’t say it like you’re actually glad.” I looked down at the pavement. I shouldn’t be happy that a vampire- much less one who was a ravisher of fucking cities- was pleased to see me. “We both know you’d love an excuse to use low-down, dirty tactics.”
He took my hand and pulled me onto the sidewalk so he could shut the car door. “I haven’t lived this long by playing nice. Come, I would like you to meet someone.”
My mouth went dry when that someone chose that moment to step out into the crimson light bathing Club Bathory, her strawberry-blonde hair glinting red, an ancient sword swirling with Celtic knots at her side, incongruous against a silk cocktail dress. Her gray eyes were the shade of a rainy day, looking me over with far more authority than my perusal of her, and holding a far sharper consideration.
The Morrìgna whose very expensive boots and jeans I had yet to return.
The bastard had played me. This wasn’t just an invitation to drink and maybe fuck him; this was a meet-the-family invitation. The next step into Serious Relationship Territory.
I bit back a curse. Low-down tactics indeed.
“May I present my younger sister,” Càel said, his hand around my waist securing me in place. “Rhianwen Moonfawn.”
3
Càel
Victoria was furious.
I soaked it up, bathing in the fire of her honey-colored gaze. AVictoria radiating pure rage was far better than a Victoria lost in her own head, her gaze dark with brooding.
