Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Her back was still to us as she kept her gaze trained on Nestor, but I could see the tension dancing down her spine, could tell from how she was holding herself that she was listening and was purposely evading our stares.

  “Eve? Is he right?” Dre bit off, and even though he’d been Chosen, he still sounded as miserable as fucking ever.

  She tensed again, but her head bobbed in a single nod.

  Almost as one, we blew out a collective breath.

  “You can’t be serious,” Dre rasped. “This can’t be real.”

  “This is proof that it is,” Reed retorted, but he sounded just as winded. This news, while cool, felt so impossible that I empathized—I felt like I’d been hit in the gut too.

  He stepped over to me and handed me the key ring, but from his covetous eyes, the way his gaze stayed glued to it, I knew he hated giving it to me, knew he wanted it firmly in his grasp.

  When I looked at the crappy plastic, I saw the insert was severely faded. There was definitely a ‘Coolangatta’ sign on the front though, and just as I was about to call coincidence and begin praying that Eve had been teasing—because yeah, she was such a joker, not—I turned it over and saw a picture of a boy standing with a beaming grin as he looked at the camera. On one shoulder, there was a parrot, and the woman at his back was grinning down at him while she cringed when the wings of another bird, hovering on her shoulder too, flared wide like it was about to take flight.

  It was just as faded, just as water stained, but the details were somehow vibrant, so I could see everything, and there was no mistaking just who the boy was.

  When I handed it to Dre, he shook his head. “How is this possible?”

  “Is this the eighth soul?” Samuel demanded from Eve, his tone was harsh, but I understood his anger.

  She’d known this and had kept it from us?

  What the fuck? What else was she hiding?

  If things weren’t hard enough where she was concerned, now we had to worry about her holding back on us?

  “I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered, and her voice was strangely soundless like she was speaking but wasn’t somehow forming the words. “You wouldn’t have believed me until you saw it for yourself.”

  “Djinn,” Eren rasped. “That’s the eighth soul. Or what we call it where I’m from.”

  “Eve?” Nestor called, his voice softer than any of ours had been. We watched as he reached up and cupped her chin, then, using his hold on her, tilted her head back so he could look into her eyes. “Explain?”

  From her new angle, I could see the tear tracks on her cheeks. The sight stirred me like nothing else could, and even though I longed to go comfort her, I couldn’t.

  Nestor was right. We needed answers, and the only person we were going to get them from was the woman herself.

  ❖

  Eve

  “It started before I was eleven.”

  Six words, six damning words, but they were the truth, and having learned so much about our people, I knew that this, somehow, would be the most mind-blowing of everything I had to reveal.

  If I was looking for a positive, I could say, hand on heart, that this was the last secret I had to share. There was nothing else I was holding back, nothing else I was afraid to reveal.

  My final secret, one that was far more terrifying than any of my others, would flay me open for them.

  Now they knew this?

  I was in more danger than ever, while equally, being safer than ever before.

  “How is that even possible?” Stefan demanded, his eyes wide and the crystalline blue irises sparkling a storm as he stared me down.

  “You’re asking me? I don’t know,” I retorted, shrugging as I spoke because I wasn’t lying.

  If anyone was the most in the dark here, it was technically me!

  “That makes no sense,” Samuel stated, his tone cold. Not enough to freeze me, but enough to tell me his brain was ticking away. A thought that was confirmed when I shot him a look over my shoulder and saw he was staring at the wall like it held all the answers—it was kind of creepy.

  “Perhaps not,” I told him stiffly, aggravated with him and Dre and how they always questioned me like I was making things up. “But it’s the truth nonetheless. Look, I didn’t ask for any of this, just like none of you did either.”

  Stefan raised his hands in apology. “Sorry, Eve. Please, just explain.”

  “There isn’t that much to say.” I reached up and rubbed my eyes, tiredness was hitting me hard because I was so exhausted from hiding. From holding back. I looked at Nestor, suddenly needing him to understand something, “Nestor, I have no other secrets.”

  His eyes softened, the tension in his jaw fading somewhat as I urged him to believe me. “You promise?”

  I nodded. “Promise.” After licking my lips, I whispered, “The second you use the words ‘I wish’ around me, it comes true. I don’t consciously choose to make it happen.”

  “That can’t be possible,” Dre argued.

  “It is.” My heart began to pound. “It isn’t like how they show it in Aladdin.” They’d made me watch both movies, and I’d flinched every time Will Smith and Robin Williams had granted their wishes.

  I’d wanted to scream that it didn’t work that way, but how could I?

  I could grant wishes, and I didn’t know how it worked, just knew it wasn’t as easy as they made it look in the movies.

  “What is it like, then?” Nestor asked.

  “It’s specific, and it isn’t instantaneous.” I licked my lips. “Remember weeks ago, you wished for brigadeiros…”

  His eyes widened. “They were in the canteen the next day.”

  “Yes. Exactly. They don’t just pop out of nowhere, it’s like when you wish for something around me, the universe wills it into being. It can take days or weeks. It’s never instant. At least, never in all the time I’ve experienced this. Back at the compound, people didn’t wish for much, though. It just wasn’t done. Wishing wasn’t something that was accepted. We prayed for things and worked hard when we could to earn the little we wanted.” Not for the first time, I shrugged. “I’ve granted more wishes here than I have in years.”

  “What else have you granted?”

  My throat closed. “Dre wished to be better. For his knee not to hurt.”

  Nestor cut the Were a look. “You told me when I was out of the sickbay that your knee wasn’t hurting…”

  “And it isn’t. Because of the shift. You know we heal—”

  I licked my lips. “I’ve been wondering if the wish was behind that.”

  Silence fell at my admission, and I ducked my head, shame washing through me. Was this the straw that would break the camel’s back?

  How much did they have to come to terms with before they just walked away from me?

  I couldn’t, wouldn’t blame them if they did. I was a disaster waiting to happen.

  Nestor whispered, “If you wish for something—”

  “No. It doesn’t work like that. I get nothing. It just happens.”

  “Does the wish drain you?” Frazer questioned, stepping closer to Nestor’s bed. When he reached for my hand, I didn’t pull away. If anything, when his fingers enfolded mine, something deep inside me shuddered with relief.

  They weren’t pulling away.

  “No. Not really. When it happens…” I winced. “There’s a kind of power surge. It hurts. Gives me a little headache, but nothing else.”

  “How are you so calm?” Nestor asked, his voice shaky.

  “I’m not. But I’ve been waiting for this to happen. When Reed wished for his key ring, I knew it would wash up, and it did. I expected it to take longer, considering it had to be somewhere down at the bottom of the ocean.” I gnawed on my bottom lip. “The wishes… I don’t know if it’s like Aladdin. I don’t know if there’s a finite amount. In fact, there’s so much I don’t know, it’s ridiculous.

  “What I do know is that the wishes take time. And the more com
plicated they are, the more time they take. I can’t grant myself wishes, and… that’s pretty much it.”

  “We have to watch our words from now on,” Samuel stated, his remark breaking into the next bout of silence that fell as the boys processed my declaration. “If the wishes aren’t finite, we don’t want to waste them. We have to store them until desperate times call for desperate measures.”

  Frazer nodded. “You’re right, bro. But that’s going to be hard. Most of us just say it because it’s a throwaway statement…”

  “Tough,” Samuel retorted grimly. “We need to make sure we don’t use them up. Fuck knows if we find ourselves in a shitty predicament and we wasted them all…. That would be disastrous. Look at what happened to Nestor. If Eve was there, we could have saved him—”

  “Is that right, Eve?” Dre interrupted, and I turned to look at him. “Is it?” he pressed when I didn’t reply. “If he’d been close to death, could you have spared him?”

  “It’s never been wished before, so I don’t know, but I assume so. It just depends on how bad the injury is. As I said, these things aren’t instantaneous. If someone is bleeding out like in the movies we watch, the wish might not work in time,” I told him honestly, and something flickered in his eyes that I wasn’t sure boded well or ill for me. Who the heck knew where Dre was concerned?

  “What has been wished?” Reed questioned softly, and he approached me as Frazer had, but he scooted down so he was on the ground next to me. He rested his forearms on his knees, looking up at me like I was more interesting than a movie on the TV.

  Mouth dry, I licked my lips again as I thought about the handful of times I’d granted wishes. At first, I hadn’t thought I had anything to do with it, but after a third time, when my brother had commented that I was a good luck charm—a statement that had my father clipping him behind the ear—I’d taken note. Of the words, the phrasing, and the acute pain I experienced in the aftermath.

  “Once, someone wished she could get pregnant.” Inside, I froze at the memory. “If wives couldn’t carry children at the compound, they were considered no good.”

  “She feared for her life?” Nestor asked, his tone dark.

  I nodded. “Yes.” Gulping, I continued, “She wished she’d have a boy to make her husband proud, and a few weeks later, it happened. My mother said it was a miracle, because Sister Sarah had never had a proper monthly—” My cheeks burned at that. “Then, it just happened. She never carried again, though.”

  Nestor sat up, settled higher on his pillow and, as though he was rapt, asked, “What else?”

  Blowing out a gusty breath, I admitted, “There was a little boy who was very ill.” My lips twisted. “They were going to ‘send him to heaven,’ but his elder sister wished they could play together like the others their age could.” Tears pricked my eyes. “It took a long time for that one to come true, but it worked. He got better, strong enough to play with her, but he did die though. About five years after they were going to deal with him.”

  The guys released a collective breath, stunned by my admission. Eren strode across the room and, cupping my shoulder, whispered, “You have the power to save people, Eve.”

  I swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Jesus.” Dre’s voice was stark, then he bit off, “No one can find out about this. No one.”

  A round of nodding moved around the room in a circle.

  “She’d be in danger if people knew,” Frazer confirmed. “Christ, this is why—” He shook his head, and staggered slightly as he sat down at Nestor’s side. The mattress jerked and Nestor winced at the movement, but I knew Frazer was genuinely bewildered by what he was thinking. “This is why you need all of us, Eve. We have to keep you safe.”

  I blinked at that. “We don’t know—”

  “Of course, we do,” Dre snapped. “You can barely look after yourself here in Caelum, never mind in the outside world.” He stormed to his feet and began pacing. His steps were a fast clip as he tried to burn off his energy, but something strange happened. My hand began to burn where his mark was, and deep inside, I felt it. Felt him again.

  It wasn’t an aberration. Wasn’t something that had happened as a one-off, something that was potentially tied to his wish for his knee to be healed, something linked me to him. Our souls were connected. I half wondered if my soul was linked to the others and knew it was likely, but the truth was, I’d only noticed it with Dre before. Recognizing it with the others would be harder because I was sure I only recognized him because of what I’d done to somehow bring his bear out.

  It was instinctive to reach down inside myself and attempt to soothe him, and when he froze in the middle of stalking back and forth across Nestor’s room, I knew my actions had done something.

  Whether they were for good or ill, I didn’t know.

  “Don’t do that,” he grated out a few seconds later.

  I ignored him. Maybe that was stupid, but what was he going to do when there were six other men around who felt it was their duty to keep me safe?

  The bear was in charge, and it was the bear with whom I was connected with. The light in me attempted to appease and soothe the darkness in him, and when he turned to face me, glowering all the way, I stated, “Aren’t you mine? Aren’t I supposed to protect you, to care for you as you’re supposed to do the same for me?”

  His eyes flashed, but before he could say a word, Nestor snorted out a chuckle. “She has you there, Dre.”

  Alexandre tensed and his nostrils flared, so he looked more like a bull than a bear. “I don’t need to be appeased.”

  “I’d say you do,” I replied unashamedly. “There’s no point in freaking out over this development. I’ve been dealing with it, hiding it, for a very long time. You wouldn’t have noticed it if you hadn’t known I was strange. It would have just been a happy coincidence.

  “That’s how it’s always been. Always. There’s no need to fret—”

  “There’s every need, Madre de Dios, don’t you see, woman? You’re a walking weapon,” he grated out. “You’re exactly what Caelum needs to eradicate all Ghouls, and if you fell into their hands, you’re what they need to annihilate us.”

  When he put it like that…

  Goodness.

  ❖

  Dre

  “What are you doing here?”

  The sight of Eve in my garden should have irritated me more than it actually did. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t head over to her, grab her, and haul her out… but when her fingers curled on her palms, I was reminded why.

  She stroked her marks with the tips of her fingers and the sensation, though impossible, whispered over my flesh like a caress.

  Having leaped to her feet at my words, she stood there, shoulders rounded, and her hands now clenched into fists after she’d seen me watching her caress her palms. “I wanted to think,” she muttered.

  My jaw clenched at her words, then tightened further when I saw the empty bag of blood on the ground where she’d been sitting before I’d come inside my safe haven. That she was still refusing to take blood from the vein irked me, just like everything else about her. She had a Pack of seven hovering around her and she was still shy about taking from the vein?

  Jesus wept.

  Tone sharp from my irritation, I ground out, “Go and think somewhere else. I’m going to be busy.” I hadn’t been looking after the cacti since Eve had made an appearance at Caelum, and there were weeds starting to grow—to my shame.

  This was my heritage. The one link I had to my past and to my family.

  I didn’t like thinking about what was going to happen to them when I left Caelum. If things had proceeded like normal, they’d have been ready to harvest just as I was due to graduate. I could have made some tequila for the rest of the student body, left it behind as a gift for them—the ‘only beer’ rule was a shit rule. Sometimes, after the stuff we did and saw, beer didn’t cut it.

  But, because of this woman here, my plans had gone awry, and my cacti wou
ld probably be tossed on a scrap heap and burned. The thought alone triggered an acute pain deep inside me.

  “I like it here,” she whispered, turning away, so she looked over my cacti and toward the ocean, which blasted her with a gust of sea breeze. It rustled her hair, and Eren’s plaid shirt shifted against her body, revealing curves I didn’t want to find attractive but did.

  “Tough. Fuck off, Eve,” I snarled. “I have shit to do and don’t have time to babysit you. Isn’t it time you fucked up one of the others’ lives?”

  She stiffened at my words. “I didn’t mean to make you shift.”

  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” I ground out, and because she wasn’t moving, I decided I needed to make her.

  The bear roared inside my head, fucking with my thoughts just as it had been since she’d made him pop out like she’d whispered, “Abracadabra.” He didn’t like my intentions, knew this female was his to love and to protect, but the man? He didn’t fucking agree.

  My feet connected with the soil as I stormed her way, and when I grabbed her arm and began hauling her out of the yard, the bear rebelled by shooting searing pain through my nerve endings. The headache splintered out of nowhere, then disappeared when my hands shot up to cup my head.

  “Did you do that?” I growled at her. My bear had, but I knew she could do things to him. Knew she had some control over him.

  Her eyes were wide, and she shook her head rapidly, side to side, swinging like she was utterly petrified of me.

  I knew it made me a bastard that I liked it, and I loomed over her, wanting her fear because that I could handle. Her terror was easy to deal with, her dislike a boon. I didn’t need her to like me, didn’t even need her to Choose or Claim me, but she’d taken that away from me, and I was the only guy who seemed to mind that.

  Males had no choice, but if I had, I’d never have picked someone like her. She was weak, too fragile. Ghouls could hurt her, and through her, I could be destroyed.