Except, this didn’t feel like one helicopter.
I wasn’t on the faculty, and my brothers, though high-ranking in our class, weren’t on the need-to-know list. We weren’t going to be kept in the loop as to any important visitors, but no one came at this hour. Ever.
As I clambered to my feet, I released a deep yawn. I was tired, had been for hours, but I’d pushed it aside as I often did. Being exhausted was preferable to the nightmares that hit me, and to the terror that swaddled me in its grasp for those few moments I closed my eyes and allowed my body to rest.
This time, though, I stumbled with fatigue, and that shocked the hell out of me. I’d slept last night for a little while so I shouldn’t have been this weak. I was only noticing it now as I was standing and walking toward the windows.
Dizziness hit me, but I pushed it aside and looked out into the distance.
I squinted, unsure what I was seeing, but when I saw the number of lights headed our way, my stomach clenched.
Dashing over to the corner where a big red button for emergencies only lay, I pressed it. Instantly, the silent alarm rang. One that worked on a level only creatures could hear. It fucking hurt, but not enough to totally shut down my hearing. When I discerned nothing, not the chaotic panic of a five-hundred strong population waking up at the sound of the panic button, I froze.
What the hell?
Staggering, I began the short walk to Eve’s quarters. Well, it should have been short. Instead, it was long. Took me ages. No matter how hard I forced myself, it was like my feet were coated in concrete and I was wading in mud.
Instinct had me going to Eve’s room first because she was my mate, but as I neared her room and all the other bedrooms in the dormitory in this part of Caelum, I began to find them.
Bodies.
Lots of them.
Slumped over, hunched on the floor, laying flat out.
All of them snoring. Deeply asleep.
We’d been drugged, that was the only answer, but so many of us?
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that the only reason I wasn’t asleep was because I was used to the sleeping drugs they’d kept trying to force me to take since I’d arrived here, and before then, in Istanbul too. For that reason alone, I was grateful to every shrink I’d been forced to see. If I hadn’t been used to them, hadn’t built up some immunity against them, I’d be asleep too, and I wouldn’t have seen the twenty-strong fleet of military-grade helicopters heading our way.
When I pushed through the slumbering crowds, a feat that made my journey even harder, I found my brothers. They were asleep too. Was it good fortune or just bad luck that they were here? They’d evidently taken Eve to her room first before coming out with the intention of going their separate ways.
When I saw Stefan wasn’t there, I realized he’d probably been the one to win the coin toss over who’d sleep with Eve tonight.
Pushing into her room, I saw Stefan slumped on top of Eve, like he’d fainted as they’d been making out.
Terror filled me. How the fuck was I supposed to save Caelum when everyone was knocked out? More importantly, how was I supposed to keep my Pack alive to see another day?
Panic and adrenaline shoved some of the drugs out of my system. I rushed over to the bed faster than I’d managed on my slow climb to Eve’s quarters, and when I looked at her, truly looked at her, I saw she was awake. Not like the others.
Her eyes were open, staring, almost as though she were dead, and for a second, terror like nothing else I’d ever known hit me.
I’d been buried alive. Had heard my parents die around me. Had been beaten bloody by my bastard of a brother-in-law, and yet nothing scared me as much as the prospect of Eve being dead.
When her gaze fluttered over to me, the relief was enough to make me tremble. I almost dropped to my knees in thanks, but the cocktail of rage and terror kept me upright.
I knew how she felt.
Trapped.
Unable to help herself.
The only thing I could do was talk to her, and I called on my Lorelei to back me up.
“You’ve been drugged, Eve. So have the others. Someone’s coming, twenty helicopters are flying their way toward us, and I can’t think they’re friendly. No one arrives this late, and no one ever comes in a helicopter,” I rasped. “I need your help. I need you to wake up, to shake off the drugs, and then I need you to call on the others, stir them. If we don’t, we’re all going to die.”
I sang the words to her. They were the worst lyrics in the world, but my voice? Wasn’t. It was the most enticing I’d ever called upon. I purposely crafted it to be more intoxicating than the drugs in her system, and when she blinked, when her lips quivered, I repeated the words, called on her strength. Called on the souls that made her different, that powered her differently than the rest of us.
When her head moved, I wanted to weep in gratitude, but it was taking so long. So fucking long. The helicopters were an ever-approaching rumble, and even if I managed to get everyone awake, there was nowhere to go. We were stuck here. In the middle of nowhere. With no escape.
Panic threaded its way through me, but I fought it. Just as I’d fought to survive when I’d been buried alive in the rubble of my family home.
I almost choked on it, almost, but didn’t.
When she stirred, her body shifting on the bed, I watched as she whispered, “Come to me, Eren.” I blinked, as entranced as she was now when she used her voice against me. The power she packed made my voice look puny.
I stumbled closer, gave her my hand, but deep inside me, I felt her touch something that had never been touched before.
My Lorelei.
She stroked it, caressed it, even as her thumb rubbed the back of my hand. Then, she squeezed, and a scream escaped me, which morphed into one long note of joy and pain and terror combined.
Light seemed to blind me, to flash behind my eyes, and it wasn’t from me.
But from her.
Stefan began to stir, his body sluggish as he awoke, and outside the door, I heard more shuffling. Not enough for it to mean the rest of the school had started to awaken, but for it to be our Pack.
“The alarm?!” Stefan blurted out, his words slurred. He fell off Eve, tumbling onto the mattress before slamming into the bed. The light dimmed for a second when he’d moved, but then, Stefan screamed, and I knew she’d done the same to him. Called on his soul, enticed it, intoxicated it, then squeezed it. Not to choke it to death, but to bring it to life.
As the light reappeared, the shuffling outside turned into thuds of heavy feet as the rest of my brothers ran into the room.
When I saw our Pack was awake, looking disheveled and half-baked, I was still relieved.
“We’re under attack,” I bit off. “Helicopters. Nearly two dozen of them are coming our way.”
“Friendly or enemy?” Dre rasped as he blinked at me, his eyes showing the strain of being awake through the haze of the drug. That stupid question was enough to tell me he was still loaded down with whatever had been used to poison us.
“Enemy. Who the fuck flies in at eleven at night?”
Dre blinked at me again, and when they all did the same, it was like some creepy ass scene from a horror movie.
Frustrated and scared for Eve’s life, I blurted out, “We’re going to die if you don’t get your shit together.”
The words stirred them as nothing else could, but even then, they weren’t firing on all cylinders. Sluggish and strained were the only ways to describe them. Even as I wanted to ram their heads together, I couldn’t blame them. I was feeling exhausted too.
Desperate to do something, I turned to Eve. “If we make a wish, can that stop it?”
Her eyes were big, wide, and even though she’d done something to us, the drug was hitting her hard. Harder than it had us. How had she managed to wake the Pack up when she was still under the power of the intoxicant?
“Doesn’t…” She clenched her eyes as though that would make
her mouth start to work. “Takes time. Not. Instant.”
I gnawed on my bottom lip, then cast a glance at my Pack. Nestor, already injured, had slouched to the ground, with his back to the wall. The vibration from the rotor blades seemed to surge through my body, making all of me tremble with it.
“We don’t have an option. We have to try.” I stared at them all, tried to imbue the importance of what I was about to say. “We all want Caelum safe. Don’t we?”
I received some slow nods and a few garbled, “Yessssses.”
Then, I said, “On the count of three, we’ll all wish at the same time.” It was wishful thinking, but with only God knew how many people were about to enter our territory, under cover of night, after the entirety of the school had been drugged, I needed all the luck I could get.
“Three,” I rasped, hoping everyone would stay awake for this. “Two,” I carried on, cutting everyone a look, trying to make sure they were on board. “One.”
“I…”
“…wish…”
“…Caelum…”
“…was…”
“…safe.”
Five words.
All of us saying them at the same time, slurred and shaking. It wasn’t magic, but fuck, that we spoke simultaneously when my brothers were hopped up on whatever had poisoned us? It was a minor miracle.
I cast a look at Eve but her eyes were closed. Had she heard the wish? Was that how it worked? Did she have to do something? Wave her wand and say ‘abracadabra?’ I didn’t know. Only knew that the helicopters sounded closer than ever and my heart had just taken root in my throat.
Staggering over to the windows, I heard the various thuds as my brothers gave up, conceding defeat to the poison. I prayed they’d sleep it off, and prayed that when they awoke, we weren’t imprisoned by whichever nest had discovered our lair.
It had to be the McAllisters.
We’d managed to make them miss out on a hundred-million-dollar deal. They’d been stationed in Nigeria and we were close by. Maybe one of the praefectus had gotten to an air traffic controller, made them speak about where we were… I didn’t have an answer, and when I stared up at the sky and saw the helicopters were so close to landing, I thought for a half a moment I was about to puke.
Aside from my nightmares and losing Eve, I was pretty hard to scare. But now? The repercussions of what this meant petrified me.
As I watched the flying beasts approach, machines that were close enough for me to see the colors on the underbelly—McAllister colors—I knew the nightmares that hit me as I slept were nothing compared to the waking one I was currently living.
And then, just as I closed my eyes and willed for the first time in almost a decade for sleep to come, to help me escape the horrors of something I couldn’t protect us from, I heard it.
A bang.
Followed by another. And another. And another.
My eyes popped open and as I stared ahead, I saw the helicopters were no longer moving forward but were soaring upward instead. The rotors were on fire, the bodies being ripped apart by an explosion that seemed to have a domino effect.
As I stared, the blast rushed from one side of the V-formation and down to the other, lighting up the sky with a firework display that would never leave my mind.
I sank to my knees and realized that a woman Caelum would want dead if they knew the truth of her nature, had just saved us all.
Every single one of us.
And all because of seven wishes granted by some kind of djinn/creature hybrid.
Knowing we were safe for the moment, I let my eyes close, and as the drugs overtook me, I knew, deep in my bones, that our time had run out. We’d been spared the McAllister attack for a reason. What that reason was?
I wasn’t looking forward to finding out.
Epilogue
Dre
The gates were open.
Wide open.
We only ever entered and exited that bad boy when we were inducted into the school and when we graduated. They were locked at all other times.
It made me wonder if the fleet of helicopters had been friendly, but Eren swore they’d been McAllister colors, and considering Juliet was a grade A bitch, as well as a ductor that would make a Spanish Inquisitor shiver and shake in his shoes, I could believe it.
Somehow, Caelum had been compromised.
Our location, a secret we protected with our lives, had been revealed to our worst enemies, and rather than helping out those who’d suffer if another attack came, we were sneaking out at dawn.
I hated myself for it and knew Stefan and the others weren’t happy about it either. But we had to get out of here. Had to get Eve off this island.
What she’d done?
The lives she’d saved?
She’d never be on the receiving end of anything other than distrust and dislike. She’d saved Caelum, kept it intact, and yet, if the truth of her nature was revealed, she’d be nothing more than a commodity.
Shit, we’d be nothing more than a commodity either.
We’d reaped the miracle too, and I still didn’t know how. None of it made sense.
“Why are the gates open?” Reed snarled.
Of us all, Reed and I were the least affected by the drugs now we’d slept off the worst of it. I figured that was because of our Shifter souls, whereas the others had different talents. Nestor was evidently still weakened from his assault because he was out like a light.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but it looks like Caelum has a traitor.” That was the only reason that justified the gates being open—someone had unlocked them, just as a flock of Ghouls were flying on while the rest of us were sleeping off a ‘high.’ Coincidence? Highly unlikely.
Reed’s mouth tightened, and I nodded at him, my irritation and his were on the same page. The very fact we were leaving now made us look guilty, and I could only pray this shit didn’t fall back on us at a later stage. For the moment, there was nothing I could do other than carry on with our original plan, but it grated on me.
God, how it did.
I hauled Eve closer to me, while Reed did the same with Nestor. My brother wouldn’t appreciate Reed hauling him around, but Nestor was a heavy motherfucker and as strong as I was, gouilles were just as heavy as Hell Hounds. It only fit that Reed hoisted him around.
When Reed crossed through the gates, there was no visible sign of reaction. Nor for Nestor either. No electrical zapping sounds as they were fried by the portal, which was the reason for Caelum’s existence in the first place.
Licking my lips, I headed through the portal and even though I didn’t feel it myself, that didn’t mean I didn’t sense it secondhand.
Eve’s body felt as though it were charged with a lightning bolt. Against me, she stiffened so quickly and so rigidly, I almost dropped her. Clinging to her to spare her from a nasty and unnecessary fall to the ground, I dragged her across the threshold. It was a matter of taking two steps, and yet it felt like I had to run a ten-mile race.
By the time I made it to the other side, I was out of breath and panting. My Pack looked at me, but I shook my head. We could talk about this later after Reed guided us to a cave he knew where we were going to hide out until a boat came for us.
Though I was exhausted after being drugged and then going through the gate, I maintained the same pace as the others. We hauled ass to the other side of the island with only Nestor and Eve passed out.
Slipping down the cliff face was dangerous with our burdens, but Reed and I were limber, and we descended to the shoreline like the mountain goats we weren’t.
By the time we made it into the damp cave, the sun was rising. Samuel, upon awakening, had contacted his boat, and they were sending a smaller dinghy to come and grab us from the coordinates he sent just before he came and hid in the cave with us.
We had a long day ahead of us just hanging around in here, wondering what the fuck was happening back at Caelum, and if anyone had woken up yet to figure out what ha
d gone down.
But Caelum wasn’t our priority anymore.
With our seven wishes granted, and her eight souls, Eve had just saved hundreds of lives.
That kind of power?
It was ripe for manipulation.
She needed us to protect her, to guard her against those who would want to use and abuse her gifts, and for the first time since I’d met her, I was ready for the task.
She’d brought my bear to me years ahead of schedule, and I’d yet to thank her for that. Truth was, it was nearly two weeks now since she’d done that, and I was still processing what had happened.
The bear was changing me. Shaping me into a better man. One who might, one day, deserve Eve as a Chosen.
The cave stank of dank water and seaweed. There was a sandy base so we could get slightly comfortable, but it wasn’t like sinking back onto our sofas in the common room as we ought to be doing right about now.
Everything had changed and only we were aware of it.
With Samuel having hauled his ass back inside now that the coordinates were with the captain of his ship, Frazer rasped, “What the fuck happened at the portal?”
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “It was like she got struck with a cattle prod.”
The six of us—Nestor was still out for the count—frowned down at the woman slumped in my arms. As we watched, I saw something begin to shimmer to life on her hand.
At first, I thought it was a play of light, a bug on her hand that the faint rays of the sun were making iridescent.
But then I saw it and my nostrils flared.
I grabbed her jacket and began hauling the sleeves down her arms, revealing branches loaded with leaves that swirled around and around, first, one hand, then up her forearm, and along her bicep before it streamed over her chest, meeting at her collarbone, then taking off down her other arm. But where the ‘light’ coalesced on her torso, it burst out, wider and wider until a canopy was formed.
It was wrong when she was unconscious, but I grabbed her shirt and opened the buttons so we could see what was happening to her.
By the time her flesh was revealed to us, creamy mounds my hands itched to shape, they were covered by a tree.
Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO Page 24
