by Cate Corvin
“He was the Good Samaritan she mentioned.” It was my turn to feel more than the usual amount of regret and gall. All that rage over how she thought of Shadowed Worlders as trash… and I’d driven her right into one’s arms.
Awesome fucking planning, Sura. Really great.
Maybe I should’ve just ripped away the Sergio Enver glamour and let her see the true face that lay beneath.
“Yeah. He was. I should just go over to Bathory and let him rip my head off.” Will’s internal storm abruptly became a barren void of despair. “I deserve it.”
“There are faster ways to go than suicide by vampire, Will. Buck the fuck up.”
Ermengol whistled, the sound cutting through the quiet murmur of the teams. “Lux. You have the cabin in the boreal forest. Defend it with your lives, my kittens.”
Aislin rounded up her people. Tori crossed her arms, her stance wide and solid, not bothering to cast a single glance at Tenebris. I almost felt guilty for noticing the salient details of her features, her lithe muscles and ass, hair as dark as Satan’s coalpits… but not really. The entire purpose of my being was to notice those things, and to want them.
Will sighed and gathered Tenebris as Ermengol turned to us. “Tenebris, you’re to use Fae tactics.”
Okay. Now that was different. She distributed Faerie tokens to each of us; rings, necklaces, coins. For us, they were powerful weapons, but for the Fae, they were just junk, trinkets not worth retrieving. I rolled a bronze coin through my fingers, the hum and tingle of Faerie magic biting at my fingertips.
“Good luck figuring out what each of those does. Now go fuck up their world, you sad-sacks.”
Aislin had already led her team out, seeking the little reinforced hunter’s cabin in the taiga biome. Will fastened a necklace with a blue stone around his neck and vanished from sight. “Whoa,” he said.
Lydia appeared at my side, and I took an involuntary step away. Maybe it was because I’d never paid much attention to her before, but on Samhain night, something had become brutally clear to me: Lydia was quietly obsessed with Will. Almost dangerously so. It was more of a deep fixation than a true lust, but her desire to hurt Tori had been eating her from the inside out the night she’d beat the shit out of Will’s stepsister.
When Tori came back to dish out her vengeance, I wasn’t lifting a finger to help Lydia.
“You want to kiss me, Will.” Her usual mousy voice suddenly sounded rich and seductive, like several female voices layered over each other.
Will flickered back into sight, staring at Lydia with a line furrowed between his brows. “I- what?”
“You want to kiss me. You can’t live without me.” Lydia rubbed the beaten-gold ring on her thumb. Will took a step closer, looking dazed, the necklace dangling from his fingers. When he was only inches from leaning in to kiss Lydia, his eyes wide and blank, I gripped her wrist.
“We get it, Lydia. Use the coercion on Lux, yeah?”
She gave me a sideways glance, shutting her mouth, and Will shook his head. “What the fuck am I doing?” He scowled at Lydia and put the necklace back on. “Don’t use that shit on your own team, Hurst.”
I felt Lydia’s narrow glare on my back. She could go to Hell. Literally. She’d fit right in.
I squeezed the bronze coin in my fingers and vanished, appearing ten feet away from where I’d started. “I can shimmer.”
“Good,” Will said from somewhere to my left. “You’ll bring them out one by one.”
Pheric, Joshua, and Gilcrist all ended up with mundane elemental talents, such as freezing or starting minor fires, while Apolline put on a pendant and scowled at it. “Nothing’s happening.”
“Figure it out on the way,” Will said, and a mile later we reached the edge of the taiga.
Our feet crunched in magically-preserved snow, the cold scent of ice and pine trees filling my nose. I practiced shimmering, flicking from one place to another and leaving imprints of my boots behind.
The cabin appeared through the trees, the windows lit up with warm golden light and smoke puffing from the chimney. It would’ve looked like a cheerful, welcoming sight, if we weren’t aware there were ten other slayers inside, waiting to kill us.
Will quietly gave us directions as Apolline parked her ass under a tree, glowering at the amulet that was apparently doing nothing at all. My objective was simple and satisfying: shimmer each member of Lux out of the cabin and into the snow.
There was one member who wasn’t going to find herself in Tenebris’s less-than-loving embrace.
I gripped the coin and concentrated. A second later, warmth washed over me. I stood in the middle of a cabin, surrounded by members of Lux, who were all staring at me in silent shock.
I grabbed Aislin’s wrist and shimmered out. I plunked her into a snowbank twenty yards from the cabin and Tenebris descended on her.
Three shimmers later, Juno, Silas, and Lara joined her. They wore shackles of ice around their wrists and ankles, all gazing at Lydia with perfect adoration as she whispered to them how much they loved her. Of all of them, Aislin alone seemed immune to the Faerie influence. She struggled against the bonds, snarling at her teammates.
Beatrice was next. I shoved her off me and went for Ethan and Caleb.
Finally, there was one member of Lux left in the cabin. I took a deep breath and shimmered inside.
A crossbow bolt buried itself in the wall next to my head with a loud crack. I glanced at the thrumming bolt. “You missed.”
“I hit exactly where I meant to.” Tori had already re-loaded and cocked the crossbow. The bolt was aimed directly at my chest. “Get the fuck out of my cabin.”
I raised my hands, and her finger tightened on the trigger. “Those aren’t the rules of the game, Tori. I can’t leave you here.”
“Sure you can,” she said. Her honey eyes glittered dangerously. “You had no problem leaving me to defend myself on Samhain.”
It was tempting to drop the glamour and the big slayer act and explain myself, but I couldn’t. Not unless I wanted to expose my true face to a very angry woman holding a crossbow, and after the way she’d murdered Kirana with a sword through the succubus’s chest, I wasn’t about to test her. She could have the watered-down truth for now. Maybe someday, if I had her tied to a chair with no weapons within arms’ reach, I’d give her the real explanation. “I haven’t had a chance to say my piece.”
“You don’t get that chance.” There was something almost gentle in her voice. “Neither you nor Will.”
“Well, I’m going to say to it anyway. I’m sorry, Victoria Holmwood. What we did was irredeemable.”
The fire crackling behind her filled the silence between us, limning her dark hair like a golden halo. She looked so serene on the outside, a complete foil for the storm I felt within.
“Yes, it was.” The crossbow didn’t drop, remaining trained steadily on me. “What are your apologies supposed to do for me, Sura? Can I use them to turn back the clock? Remove that video from everyone’s minds? Stop myself from stripping naked in front of the entire school?”
“We… Will didn’t know. He had no idea it would do that to you.” I kept my hands in the air, the bronze coin trapped between my thumb and palm.
“Ignorance is no excuse. He fed me an infernal drug, and you stood by and let it happen. I already asked Will this, as much as I don’t care, but why? What was your motivation? What did I do to you, Sura?” The tip of the crossbow trembled ever so slightly.
Several things came to mind.
You celebrate the deaths of my kin with tattoos.
You look at us like we’re shit beneath your heel.
You only liked this false face. As soon as you saw the real one, you’d kill me. Shallow, heartless slayer.
“Because you’re a hypocrite.” Her eyes widened, surprise glancing through the storm. That wasn’t what she’d expected at all. “You hold everyone else to high standards while ignoring your own. You’re happy to fuck Càel- but I was
a piece of shit when you thought I was screwing around with succubi? I’ve never even touched a succubus.”
“I would never have fucked Càel if you hadn’t given me a drug that destroyed all my inhibitions!” she flared. Lie. I could taste it.
“Please. When you ditched me in Seventh Heaven, I got to watch Càel rip apart a cambion over you, and you liked it. It’s pretty obvious he’s had a hold on you since the day you met him.” The evidence was right there on her neck, hidden under a light layer of makeup. Makeup couldn’t hide a mark of lust from me.
Her lips drew back over her teeth. “Having an inexplicable attraction to someone isn’t the same as acting on it before you’re ready.”
“My point stands, Tori. I offered to be your friend… I even wanted more than that. Then I got tired of the hypocrisy. Maybe you shouldn’t have called me ‘a twat of a slayer who only thinks with his dick’. I never touched the succubus.”
Her full lips tightened, a steady resolve coming into her eyes. “Guess I’m a hypocrite, then. But I could never have thought up something as cruel as that to do to you. I’m going to give you one chance to save yourself a world of misery, Sura. Where’d you get the saliva?”
I spit in a vial right after I jerked off to you. “Doesn’t matter where it came from.”
She let out a sharp laugh. “Defending your dealer? Is it another one of your demon friends? Korso?”
“Korso doesn’t trade with Sitri’s people.” Korso was the most strait-laced ex-Legionnaire I’d ever met, in fact. I’d never met a demon with so many valid liquor licenses in different dimensions. “I take responsibility for what happened. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault.”
“Don’t act noble now, Sura. We both know what you’re capable of.” Her tongue darted out and licked her lips, like she was steeling herself. I couldn’t stop my cock from stirring at the sight. Any gesture on her part was like a neon light drawing my attention, whether I was in imminent danger of taking a bolt through the heart or not. She could’ve sneezed and I would’ve gotten hard. Something as sexual as licking her lips was a foregone conclusion. “Last chance. Where?”
The words were right there on my tongue. All I had to do was confess… and I’d see what Tori really thought of me. If I was only worth a pinprick of black ink in her skin.
“You’ll never find out.”
The crossbow fired with a loud thwack, and I squeezed the coin as a bright, hot pain erupted on my chest. I shimmered out into the snow, past the line of pine trees, and pressed my hand to the tiny hole in my shirt.
I’d shimmered away before the bolt could do much more than pierce my flesh, but it’d gone deep enough to soak the front of my shirt with blood. Will appeared in a set of footprints. “Where is she?” His gaze dropped to the blood saturating my front. “Sura…”
“Let her have the win. She deserves it.” But somewhere under my still-simmering anger, I was surprised.
She’d tried to kill me. She would’ve if I hadn’t had the Faerie coin.
Lydia was still coercing most of Lux into dreamy trances, and Aislin had been knocked out cold. Will twirled the necklace around his finger. “Anyone else feel like arguing with a crossbow?”
Turned out none of Tenebris was feeling it. We herded our captives back to Ermengol, and the instructor whistled, eyeing everyone beadily.
Ten minutes later, Tori came stalking out of the taiga by herself, the crossbow slung over her back. She knelt next to Aislin as the rest of Lux rubbed the heads, trying to remember how they’d gotten from the cabin to here.
“Lux wins this round.” Ermengol took the crossbow from Tori as the younger slayer pulled Aislin’s limp body over her shoulder. “Take her to Mater Dolorum, Holmwood.”
Tori didn’t look my way once as she carried Aislin out.
“What was this necklace supposed to do?” Apolline asked, pulling the pendant over her head. The instructor took it, holding up the polished stone to the light.
“Nothing, it’s just a necklace. I was curious if you’d attempt to use your own brain without magical help.”
Apolline flushed red, and I dropped the bronze coin in a box.
I’d expected to vanish alone into my room, but Will joined me. He stared at the wall that backed what was once Tori’s room. “You were in there for a long time.”
“Yeah.” I slumped on the bed, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu. Will had done the same thing last semester while I’d tried to talk him up. “She wanted to know where I got the incubus saliva.”
Will leaned on the door frame, his green eyes fixed on me. “Where did you get it? You never said.”
I let out a hollow laugh. His suspicion was a low-grade bubble beneath his other, stronger emotions. “You really want me to tell you, Will? You’d be just as culpable as I am if you knew.”
“I’m already culpable. All of this is my fault because I was too hung up on petty shit to care otherwise.” His fists tightened at his sides. “Where’d it come from? Who’s out there selling shit like that to people?”
The Cords of Fate seemed to squeeze my chest, constricting me from the inside.
“Don’t get involved in this, Will.”
“I’m already involved. And if you think Tori isn’t going to make good on her promise…” he gestured to my shirt, the fabric stiffening as the blood dried to brown.
No matter what my original goal had been in coming to earth and wearing a false face, there was no denying that Will was more to me than the slayer I was supposed to spy on and warp to my Prince’s purposes. He was as close to me as a brother now. I’d rather take the heat than let him deal with it alone.
Plus, I didn’t want to know what would happen if he ever found out. The idea of being pulled apart, having the Cords of Fate completely unraveled, was a painful one. He was the catalyst for my own independence from Sitri.
“All that infernal shit isn’t your job to get involved with. And I’m sure she’ll try. But can we really deny that we deserve it?”
Will met my gaze evenly. “No.”
All we could do was brace ourselves, and hope we survived it.
6
Tori
For a slayer with such a dainty build, Aislin was as heavy as a sack of bricks. I carried her to Mater Dolorum’s quarters, still seething with rage over Sura’s audacity.
How dare he accuse me of hypocrisy? I could admit I’d been an asshole to Will. It turned out there was quite a bit I apparently misunderstood about the entire fucked-up Godalming clan, but that knowledge didn’t excuse his actions.
Besides, Sura was the one who went out to demon clubs. I knew as well as anyone that some slayers thought it was perfectly fine to mix with the Shadowed World, as long as they kept doing their jobs, but he’d known how I felt about that and chose to lie by omission anyway.
Fucker wasn’t off the hook just because he apologized. They’d both clearly demonstrated how little words meant to them.
Mater Dolorum swept to my side as I traipsed into her chambers and carefully lowered Aislin to a cot. The prefect for Lux had a good-sized purple lump forming near her hairline. Her eyes fluttered open as I eased her arm off my shoulder. “Welcome back, Liddell. We won.”
Aislin groaned, raising a hand to the lump on her head. “Urgh. You held it down?”
I shrugged half-heartedly. I was still vaguely in shock over the final confrontation.
In my rage, I’d pulled the trigger on the crossbow. I’d tried to kill him. And in that moment, I hadn’t felt a speck of remorse.
“Fuck. Nice, Tori.” She patted my hand as Mater Dolorum descended on her, pressing a palm to the lump.
“Ermengol gave them Faerie artifacts. The whole thing was a set-up.”
Aislin looked up at me. She had deep blue eyes, the kind that got compared to flawless sapphires or depthless oceans or other sappy, poetic shit like that. “‘Course it was. I figured as much when Hurst tried coercing me with glamour. Bet she wishes she could use that on Will all the tim
e.” She winced as Mater Dolorum pushed magic into her, forcing the bruised bone to heal. “Still, I mean what I said. Keep it up. It’s not like I haven’t seen you work with them, but it’s nice to know you’re willing to put it to good use for Lux.”
“What do you mean, use the glamour on Will?” My face had gone numb and stiff. I tried to look natural, not like I was suddenly a raging inferno of curiosity on the inside.
Aislin gave me a veiled look. “She’s been obsessed with Will since sophomore year. Like, crazy-bitch, slashing-tires, building-shrines-in-her-closet level of obsession. I figured you knew, since she…” Aislin trailed off, looking embarrassed for me. Since Lydia ganged up on me. Yeah.
“Oh. Yeah. Maybe. Feel better, okay?” I patted her hand. Instead of pulling away, Aislin gave me a crooked smile. The ice between us had thawed a little.
I left her in Mater Dolorum’s capable hands. On the way to my room, I tried not to think about how nice it was to have someone say something pleasant to me for once. It was the same shit that had gotten me in trouble with Will and Sura: my desire for approval and affection from others was my weakness. My downfall.
But now I knew Lydia’s as well. Sometimes opportunity knocked on the least likely of doors.
Four hours later, I’d showered, written an entire essay on moonspawn pack dynamics and hierarchy for Knightley, and the words of Matsuyo’s memoir, fascinating though it was, were starting to run together on the page.
My fingers drifted to my neck, stroking the mark Càel’s lips had left. I’d had to dig out a tube of concealer to hide the marks from the others.
But the mark had fulfilled his intended purpose. Now that I had the physical reminder of him on my body, I couldn’t quite pull my mind away from him.
I glanced at the clock. It was only ten o’clock. Plenty of time to go out and find Thornton from Pennywick Apothecary, and maybe Gwendoline, too.
No way was I going to let Sura get away with what he’d done. I’d needed the final nail for his coffin, and if I was lucky, I’d get to swing the hammer tonight, too.
