No.
I could never let someone hurt me like that again.
Never.
“Why do you hate me so much?” she rasped, the words emitted through chattering teeth.
My top lip curled, and though I was on the brink of telling her that I didn’t give enough of a fuck about her to hate her, the words that spilled from my mouth were different. They weren’t intended. It was like my brain was rebelling. “Because you make me feel,” I ground out.
Her eyes rounded at that, and her shoulders dropped with surprise. With those five words, the fear seemed to drift away from her, and that was the last thing I needed or wanted.
When she hurled herself at me, I anticipated her attack, but what I couldn’t have anticipated was her throwing herself into my chest, as one hand came up to grip the back of my head. With a firm hold on my hair, she forced my head down, down until our faces were inches away from each other.
For a second, I froze. Everything inside me turned to ice, but when she bridged the gap, molten heat replaced the deep freeze.
I gasped, opening my mouth wide as the bizarre sensation coursed through me, and she took advantage.
Someone had taught her to kiss. Stefan? It figured.
She kissed like a dream. Making thoughts that didn’t belong in my head surge to life as my body conspired against me. My cock hardened as her tits rubbed against my chest, the taut nipples delicious buds I wanted to feel in the palms of my hands, between my lips.
I wanted nothing more than to thrust her to the ground, to fuck her in the soil. In the earth I’d claimed as mine when I came to Caelum, in the dirt I tended, where all that remained of my heritage lay.
Her tongue thrust into my mouth, rubbing against mine as she rubbed her body over my form. She taunted me, tempted me, tortured me with her lips, teeth, and tongue. Giving me what she wanted, not what I needed from her.
And even as the thought crossed my mind, I pulled back and yelled, “Get the fuck out of here. I don’t want you!”
Her pale cheeks blanched, and the promise of arousal in her body dampened as she tensed up, going from fluid and warm to cold and rigid. She stared at me, her eyes pleading with me to take it back, to accept her and everything she represented.
When I turned around, ignoring her, I heard her choked sob and the slam of the gate as she rushed out.
My teeth gritted as guilt filled me, but I didn’t need her. She was a complication, someone who had brought more problems into my world.
I was a soldier, and she’d just robbed me of my cause.
The second I forgot that, the second I forgot my purpose, she killed Alexandre and turned me into her puppet, just like all the others.
5
Eve
“To understand Ghouls, you have to understand how they’re formed,” Jenny Justiss—that was her real name, even if it did sound like it belonged to a Marvel character—told us, her voice earnest as she gave the class their first lesson in Ghoul Theory. “So, tell me. How do they come into being?”
I was sitting among a twenty-strong group of fourteen-year-olds, since my private tutors, Merinda and Damon, had been sent on a mission somewhere, the faculty—read Nicholas, the principal—had decided it was an opportunity to introduce me to the rest of the curriculum.
I’d gathered a few odd looks, but nothing too outrageous considering most people knew me as the odd old girl who had been rescued late in the game. Well, that and the girl who’d tossed one of the students into a glass coffee table.
Though it hadn’t been my fault, I was certain I’d never live that down.
Seated at the back so I didn’t obstruct the smaller kids’ view of the blackboard, I was listening eagerly, trying to understand the ‘things’ we believed were enemies.
“Does anyone know?” Jenny asked, and with a wither eye, monitored the three hands who’d shot up to answer her question. They were the same three hands that had surged each time she’d questioned the class on something.
Know-it-alls.
Yeah, it sucked to be jealous of fourteen-year-olds, but I was still in the dark about so much. Even though I was reading ahead of them in human literature, most of my class material was still controlled by the faculty. Sure, I could grab anything from the library, but it was like throwing something at a wall and hoping it stuck.
The library contained books the faculty themselves used as reference material, for goodness’ sake. How was I supposed to know what to read and what to ignore?
I hunched my shoulders and settled into the seat, hoping Jenny bypassed me. This was my first day of being a regular student at the Academy, and I’d already come to sense how teachers picked their prey in class.
Miss Justiss was out for blood like a shark in the ocean hunting food, and I didn’t want to be caught in her line of sight.
I blew out a breath when she said, “Jean-Paul, how are Ghouls formed?”
Even though I knew the answer to this question, I was glad I didn’t have to speak it aloud.
He hesitated, and his voice cracked before he replied, “Mostly they’re formed because they aren’t brought to Caelum.”
“You’re right. Why?”
Jean-Paul licked his lips, then rubbed at his zit-pocked temple—not even creatures were spared the irritations of teenage acne. “Because life outside Caelum isn’t geared toward our creatures being allowed to form naturally?” He answered it like a question and released a relieved sigh when Jenny nodded, then tensed up when she motioned with her hand for him to carry on. “Leading high-stress lives, not doing enough exercise, eating junk food, watching too much TV… they’re all poor lifestyle choices that make the souls inside us rebel. Then, when you throw in the fact that most parents drug us up from the start, that makes things worse.”
“That’s right, Jean-Paul. Well done. How do recruiters find us and bring us here, Eloisa?” Jenny asked another girl, who had shoulders more hunched than my own.
“It’s more by luck than anything else,” the girl whispered. “Other creatures sense us nearby and inform Caelum who sends recruiters to bring us home. But it depends on the soul. We have to correspond. If we don’t, then they won’t sense us.”
“Yes. We’re surprisingly sensitive to others of our kind, but each soul works on its own wavelength. A Vampire, for example, would never be able to sense a Lorelei. It would be like a dolphin in the ocean communicating with a horse. It just doesn’t work.
“It’s hit and miss, which is why each of us is lucky to be here. It might so easily have worked out differently for us. We might have easily been like the Ghouls, forced down a path of darkness with no alternative because someone didn’t sense us one particular day.”
As the class absorbed that grim tale which, in my opinion, was enough to give anyone nightmares tonight, she turned to me and inquired, “Eve, tell us what you know about the formation of Ghouls.”
My stomach twisted and, feeling the others’ eyes on me—with nearly half the kids having twisted in their seats to gawp at the oddity in the class—I stated, “Without the freedom of Caelum, it drives us mad. We truly become what the humans believed us to be. No medication will cure us. There is no way of preventing it. The souls don’t fight among each other for dominance as is the way with us here, instead, they fight the human part of us and take over.”
Jenny tilted her head to the side. “Correct. Do you know why they feast on human flesh?”
If my stomach had churned before, that was nothing compared to now. I thought about the books Nicholas had me reading, about what Damon had taught me, and whispered, “It’s a bastardized form of what the Vampire needs. The Vampire is nourished on blood, and in a Ghoul, it becomes more than that. They need flesh.”
“Why? And why humans in particular? Why not anyone? A cow or a deer? Something that would keep them under the radar?”
I swallowed. “Because humans are grounded, connected to the Earth in ways that we aren’t.” I remembered Damon’s words verbatim. On
the day my Chosen had flown to Aboh, had engaged in whatever they’d done across the ocean, he’d told me about Ghouls for the first time. I’d tried to learn about them as much as I could, but there was so much to learn, and not enough time. “The seven souls in a Ghoul never stop warring, and only the flesh provides them some peace.”
Jenny narrowed her eyes at me but nodded in agreement with what I was saying. When she looked elsewhere, relief swarmed through me, and Jean-Paul shot me a rueful and understanding smile before he turned back toward the blackboard.
“It’s like when we’re hungry,” Jenny said, continuing with what I’d been saying. “When our belly is gnawing away at us as though we haven’t eaten in a lifetime. They say that’s what a Ghoul feels like when they haven’t fed.
“But, there’s more to it than that. The more flesh a Ghoul eats, the more stable they become… Who can tell me about how Ghouls live?”
The usual suspects, three girls who always stuck up their hands at every question thrown down, jiggled in their seats with eagerness. Jenny finally took pity on one of them, and the girl started a pious explanation. “Ghouls live in nests. Like how we were brought here, they do the same with their fledglings. Ghouls are constantly sweeping their districts for fledglings to pad their nest because rogue Ghouls cause nothing but bad press when they’re on the loose, so it’s imperative that they’re brought into the fold.”
“That’s right, Kirsty. And who reigns over a nest?”
I held up my hand this time, and when Jenny nodded, I answered, “A nest leader. The more flesh a Ghoul eats, the more control they gather until they can lead their nest.”
“That’s when they cause havoc,” Jenny concurred. She pursed her lips as she folded her arms across her chest. “Ghouls are dangerous. Not just because of how they feed, but because of their inclinations.
“They’re covetous. Angry. Misfortune had them turning Ghoul, whereas, with us, we were fortunate enough to be allowed to fulfill our destiny. That makes them bitter, and in truth, is why they loathe us. We are the only thing that stops them from overtaking the Earth, from decimating human populations, and although they hate us for that, they detest us more because we are what they long to be and what they can never be.
“And that is why you must work hard. You must train hard. You must learn all you can. The Ghouls are out there. For every ten of us, there are forty of them. Those are terrifying numbers, and they’re only going to increase.
“We don’t have the ability to scan districts as they do for fledglings. We’re strained as it is trying to contain them and stop them in their destructive acts. It’s our duty to keep them at bay, to protect the humans, even though they’ll never thank us for it.”
“Is that what happened in Aboh, Miss?” Li Jun asked, and his question had whispers spreading around the class. A few looked back at me, but heck, I was just as in the dark as they were.
My Chosen had gone to Aboh. One almost hadn’t returned, but I had no idea why they’d gone to Nigeria. No idea what their purpose had been.
Jenny flashed a look at me, then she murmured, “Yes. We had news that a nest was looking to eradicate an entire town. That’s what Ghouls do. Especially in places that are difficult to reach by land or sea, such as out of the way villages. They’ll take over a town, killing everyone in it, then slip into their victims’ lives.
“In this instance, they were looking to take advantage of that town’s up-and-coming talks with an oil company. Remember how I said nests are covetous? Well, there was a lot of money riding on that deal. If our troops hadn’t gone in and put a stop to their attack, the nest would have found a new home, and they’d have made a lot of money off of killing a lot of innocents.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip as I thought about the guys being ‘troops.’ Nestor had almost died on the battlefield, and if he hadn’t returned to me, I’d never have known that he was one of my Chosen too.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with five men who were my mates. Wasn’t sure what my responsibilities to them were. I supposed I needed to find out. Being friends with them was easy, but the way Stefan had touched me the night of their return from Aboh didn’t speak of ‘friendliness,’ and the way the men looked at me? That wasn’t the look two friends shot each other’s way.
Did that perturb me? That each one seemed to want me in the way that, at the compound, only a husband and wife had engaged in?
No.
And that surprised the heck out of me.
The souls inside me purred at the prospect, and I knew they were in control of that part of my body. In control of my sexuality.
The human part of me was taken aback. Five different partners? But the souls superseded the human’s surprise. I wasn’t sure if that boded well or not.
Goodness, I wasn’t even sure if the guys were happy about it.
They were all rubbing along together now, two enemy Packs who’d joined so they could protect me, but would they want me like that?
Sister April had slept with Brother Matthew when they were both wed to others and had been stoned for it.
Would the guys want to stone me for being with another?
The prospect had my heart beating far too fast, but the clearing of Jenny’s throat had me jerking in response. I stared at her, saw that I had the class’s attention once more, and felt my cheeks grow pink.
“I-I’m sorry. Could you please repeat the question?”
Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “Who invented the portal?”
Taken aback by the redundant question, I blurted out, “Nobody.”
“That’s right,” Jenny replied eventually, and I realized it had been a trick question. “Do you know the importance of the portal?”
Uneasily, wondering if this was another way for her to trip me up, and well aware I was lying through my front teeth, I said, “Upon graduation, we walk through the portal, and that’s the first time the Shifter souls ever emerge.”
“Not just the Shifter souls,” Jenny corrected. “The Vampires too. Their fangs don’t drop until they graduate. Loreleis, Sin Eaters, and Incubi and Succubi don’t pack the same punch either. When they approach their twentieth year, they’re potent, but nothing like what happens once they cross the portal.”
I recalled Merry, the recruiter who’d taken me from the house I’d lived in on the compound, who had sung everyone to sleep so I could escape with her.
Potent wasn’t the word.
Jenny cleared her throat, drawing me from my thoughts and back to the class.
“So, today’s homework is to read to page one-forty so we can discuss why you think Ghouls meddle with human politics. What their end game is.” She dipped her chin, her eyes narrowed on me like she knew my mind had been elsewhere before she grumbled, “That’s all.”
Dismissed, I gathered my crap together and realized how tired I was. The one-on-one tutoring sessions had been more difficult somehow, but these required more energy.
After Creature History, Ghoul 101, then a two-hour training session in the gym with a bunch of teenagers who were younger than me and still kicked butt whereas I was as useful in there as a chocolate teapot, I was wrecked.
Bone-deep tired.
When Eren found me as I headed out of the gym, I wanted to weep and sag into his arms. Instead, I hooked my arm in his—the most contact and affection I was allowed with any of the Packs in public—and leaned into him.
“Tired?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Exhausted.”
The details of the mission Damon and Merinda had been sent on was unknown to us all, but I wished, with all my heart, that they hadn’t gone today and that my first day of the new classes was beginning tomorrow instead.
“Hungry?”
I shook my head. “No. I just want a shower then a nap.” When he led me toward my room, taking me across the foyer and to the closest staircase to the front door, I stalled. “No. I want to stay with Nestor again.”
In the four days since Nestor had
been released from the sickbay, I’d been sleeping in his room. Sure, it went against Academy rules and broke the curfew, but I wasn’t about to stop now. Even if my falling asleep early in the evening cramped his style.
Selfish, maybe, but I didn’t want to be alone. Not after the long day I’d had.
Eren hummed under his breath but guided me to Nestor’s room. As always, he was considerate. He didn’t speak much, just let me lean against him.
Today’s gym session had been much worse than any other I’d had. Until now, I’d been building endurance.
Apparently, it hadn’t worked.
Not if the fighting stances I’d had to learn in this afternoon’s class were anything to go by.
If this was day one, I wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow.
❖
Nestor
“You awake?”
My eyes fluttered open at her whispered words. “Yeah.” Then I cringed, figuring she was awake because she was sleeping on my sofa, which couldn’t be comfortable. I looked over at the clock and saw it was just after midnight, and I knew she needed sleep. “It’s okay, Eve, you can go back to your room if you want. You must be uncomfortable on the sofa.”
I heard rustling sheets, and turned my head to look at her.
My room was a pretty simple configuration. There was a double bed on the back wall that looked out onto the ocean, and to the right of that window, there was a TV and the sofa facing it. The positioning meant I could see Eve, and that was why I’d kept my head turned aside. Watching her was too addictive, and I didn’t want to creep her out.
Somehow, I was her mate too. The mark on her palm was proof of that.
I bit the inside of my cheek to stop my excitement from surging to the front.
Now was definitely not the time to be thinking such things. Definitely not.
No.
More rustling sheets, then the sudden waft of her fragrance that had my gouille stirring. Ever since she’d claimed him, the gouille had been stronger than ever.
Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO Page 13
