by A. K. Koonce
“Night, Kira.” I flatly give her a look that wipes the happiness from her features. Oh. My face did something. I push the smile back in place, and she hesitantly returns the forced peaceful look. I flop my head back into the fluffy pillow and give up.
This kindness shit is going to take time to get used to, I guess.
Weeks slip by like that. Kills. Class. Crap.
All of it. Total shit.
Each kill just becomes worse than the last. I’m tired of it. Tired of tracking down supernaturals with depleted power, only to listen to them rambling about things I can’t make any sense of. There’s one name, though, that each of them repeats.
Dr. Hyde.
I wonder who that is, and I’m tempted to ask around, but I don’t. I’m safe here. I should take what I can get. Safety is a good thing. Even if it comes at a price.
Also, no one at the Academy owes me any loyalty, and I’m sure they’ll betray me the first chance they get to the headmistress. Instead, I keep that information to myself and wait until I come across it at some point.
Because I will. I know I will.
As the days blur together, I fall into a comforting routine. I never thought I’d be as brainwashed as the rest of the people here, that I’d enjoy being here in a comfortable bed with no one from the outside hunting me for my body parts. I get paid a nice allowance too. It just gets saved up but someday I’ll use it for something. I’ll build myself a beautiful life with that money.
Someday.
I can almost trick myself into believing that I want this metal attached to my spine, that it’s mostly a normal part of life. That nothing is wrong. I can trick myself into believing that this place is safe.
It’s safe and confusing.
Just like the man sitting at my side on the hard boulder in the middle of the night. Another killing night.
And another class assignment is due in three hours.
I don’t know which is more terrifying at this moment.
After that first night and my botched attempt at escaping, I found myself in the company of my supposed mentor, though I feel like he’s a glorified babysitter. I don’t bother telling him he doesn’t need to watch after me. I’m not a complete moron. I’m not going to rip my spine out through my own asshole just to go back to being on the run, killing shitty humans for shit pay.
I wonder if that’s part of the illusion of this place and feel slightly disgusted with myself for falling into it.
I write one more filler word with my scratchy quill, but I can’t seem to force my essay to hit Professor Sills favorite number: four thousand.
My wrist cramps, but I keep going. Wind breezes right through my hair and across my flesh until I shiver, but I ignore it.
It’s a job. And I always finish a job.
Even one that revolves around death and fucking essays.
“Why do you never attend the classes?” I ask as I pretend to dot some i’s and cross some t’s.
“Why are you writing instead of watching for your target?” Sialen fires back with both a bored and annoyed tone of voice.
Why is he here? Is it some sort of bonding experience between the only two Sekar’s in the world? No one else has a mentor.
No one.
Just me. And lucky me, he’s a total fuckhole to be around.
In the past fourteen days, he’s told me nothing about himself. Kira fills me in on my mentor more than anything. Hell, even Rueren drops tidbits like crumbs every now and then. When he wants something, that is.
But I still know nothing about my mentor except he tried to bind his soul and failed, that his marks seem cursed somehow, and that he’s pissed off at the world and takes it out on me and everyone else within his vicinity.
Bastard.
“Tell me something about you,” I demand flatly, dropping my quill and splattering ink across the crisp paper, but I have to show him I’m here. I have to skip the facade of power that everyone around me forces on display and make sure he knows that I’m here for him.
Just like he should fucking be here for me.
As the last of our kind, we have a responsibility to keep our Lady alive. In a fantasy scenario, I’d say we were obligated to keep the lineage going. This isn’t fantasy, and I wouldn’t want his stiff dick. Sex with Sialen is probably as enthralling as personality is. Actually, his personality is a bit on the rough side.
Images of hair pulling, nails scratching, and forceful thrusting flicker through my mind.
I shake my long hair back and forth until the delicious—I mean disturbing thought flits away.
His bright eyes close slowly, and I don’t know if he’s praying or counting for calmness or imagining my death, but with time, he finally cuts his cold attention to me.
And it sears through my heart. Every time he looks at me is like a knife cutting through my skin just to revive my soul.
“I don’t like to talk. Now you know something. So shut up.” He cocks a dark eyebrow at me until it nearly hits his stark white hair.
The Princess-looking fucker. I swear to fuck, he looks like an anime character, and my otaku heart skips a beat in an almost painful way. I rub across my chest gently but stop the motion when I see he notices.
“What happened to your runes of darkness? The blessings our Lady herself gifted us with, what happened?” I shove those words at him fast and remorselessly, and it doesn’t even make him flinch.
My heartbeat drums in my ears. It’s a heat that burns through my flesh, and I can’t hide it. I hate it. I fucking loathe it. He stares at me with so much hatred and so much passion in his gaze that it makes me shift. It isn’t sexual. Hate shouldn’t be sexual.
But it feels like it is.
And it feels like he might finally tell me something real.
Anything.
Any one tiny thing to make me feel connected to the only other Sekar left in this world.
“Your target’s on the move, Lucero,” he finally says, and the hope inside me dies before it’s given the chance to be born.
I roll my eyes at him but shove my papers to the dirt as I stand instantaneously. My entire body reacts to the setting and the thought of what’s about to come. The discomfort of sitting and writing for hours on end disappears as my gaze scans the night.
I rest my hand on the hilt of my sword but don’t unsheathe it yet. I can feel Sialen’s eyes on my weapon, feel the burning gaze of his dull, dead eyes flare. Perhaps he does have a little life left within him after all, and it’s my weapon that sparks it to life.
At birth, we are all given gifts by our Holy Lady of Death. Gifts that are forged from her hellish plane and sent next to our cradles upon our births. They can be something as simple as a necklace or a spoon or as deadly as a sword. Our holy objects guide us through our lives and help pave the pathways to our destinies.
I wonder what his object is. If, like his runes, it’s dead and soulless?
I itch to ask, but a flicker of a shadow darts through the night. A sigh pushes past my lips. This has grown boring. Night after night hunting after lowly supernaturals. It’s as boring as hunting after humans, and I don’t want to do it anymore.
But the metal burning into my spine reminds me that I don’t have a choice.
“Hurry the fuck up,” Sialen complains, arms crossing against his broad chest.
Fucker.
I dart in the shadows after my target, skidding around the corners of buildings with quick, silent feet. The shadow is faster. Every time I get it within my line of sight, it promptly disappears into a blur of darkness.
My sword hums with anticipation.
This hasn’t happened in two weeks, and I feel the sudden thrill of the hunt. Usually, I appear before the supernatural, sword gleaming in my hand before it brightens their darkened souls and rips away their hope for life. No one has ever outrun me before, and the fact that this blur is trying now is almost too exhilarating an opportunity to pass up.
A malevolent smirk touches the cor
ners of my mouth, and I sprint, muscles of my legs pumping beneath me. I whisper a spell for agility, and I feel the threads and strands of DNA in my body thin out until I’m nothing more than a blur myself.
I turn sharply at a corner of an abandoned alley.
I’ve got you now . . .
The thought is blown from my mind completely as I’m struck square in the center of my chest by what feels like a giant metal hammer and get thrown back. I gasp for breath and taste blood inside my mouth that I vomit out to the side.
Fuck!
The pain is excruciating and it feels like something within me shattered.
“Lady of Death, hear me, please, fill me with life and allow me to gift you with this sacrifice.”
Lady Death can grant life as easily as she can take it away. The price of my life is death in exchange.
My body repairs itself enough for me to know I am not going to die, but I can still feel the pain as if I am. My mouth drops open as I watch my target loom over me.
A scream lodges itself within my throat as I can do nothing but gape at the monstrosity above me. It’s, in a word, terrifying. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, like a demon ripped straight from hell or a cyborg ripped straight from another dimension.
A gaping mouth with jagged rows of teeth looks down at me, dripping black gunk like motor oil. It has no legs but dozens of arms down its long torso that scuttles like a fucking centipede. It’s more metal than flesh, and the parts that are made of flesh and bone look like something straight out of a horror film. Its chest is ripped open to reveal a heart that bleeds black and pumps that disgusting liquid through veins that hang like spiderwebs. Dead soulless eyes stare down at me, and I can see my reflection in the marble depths as clearly as I can see the murderous intent.
I roll just as it strikes, a cry breaking past my mouth as every bone in my body screams and aches. I hop up on shaking feet, unsheathing my blade as I whirl and strike it just across its metal legs. It sears through one, sending a shower of sparks raining down on us.
My blow doesn’t seem to affect it at all. It keeps coming towards me, stabbing at me with its sharp-tipped arms. It’s like sparring against dozens of swords and opponents at once. It’s fast and strong. Within moments, it tires me out. My chest heaves for breaths. I dodge, duck, my sword strikes, and the night is filled with the sounds of our battle.
The thing pushes me back, and I whirl through the air, landing on my feet with a cry. It advances, scuttling across the ground. I wait until it’s a breath away and strike out, sword slicing through the skin of its chest. My sword glows, and the runes on it and my body burn to painful proportions.
I scream, every muscle in my body feeling like it’s about to snap with the strength I’m using to try and defeat him.
My teeth grit against the pain, and it lashes out with a spindly limb, slicing me across my thigh, then my calf. I feel the instant pain, the blood pooling down my clothes. My legs buckle beneath me, and I fall, dropping my sword. It skids across the pavement, too far for me to reach.
I can feel the presence of my Lady close because someone is going to die right now. And it’s probably me.
Its gaping mouth widens and emits a shattering shriek. My mind rushes to find a way out of this, when a body is before me, my glowing sword in hand. The sharp point of it shoves into the monster’s blackened heart.
Sialen wields my sword like it’s an extension of him, of his very soul. With a single jerk of his wrist, he twists the blade, and black liquid bursts across the front of him. It drips down the hilt, hissing away in plumes of smoke. The runes burn brighter, like a cosmos across the sky, and where the pale strands of hair touch the nape of his neck, a bright rune burns like a brand.
Proof that the race of the Sekar lives within him still.
But as quickly as the rune glows red against his skin, it bleeds through it like ink on parchment and blackens like it shouldn’t be there at all.
He turns and stares down at me. Black blood is spattered across his face and lips, and the darkest vile part of my soul wants to reach up and run my fingers across the back of his neck. I want to trace the wound, and taste the death on his tongue.
Because I know just how sweet it will be.
He drops my sword like it burns his palm, and I react on instinct, catching it before it can clatter disgracefully to the ground. My mouth drops open, and there’s so much I want to say, but I can’t form any of my thoughts into words. Not when he’s staring at me like that.
Death brings Sekar together. It’s the sweetest ambrosia to our senses. Even now, my body is humming like my sword, desperate and demanding for a single touch of his skin. It’s a hatred and anger so strong, we can channel it through fucking. It’s like a hypnotizing spell that breaks the minute he opens his fucking mouth.
“Sloppy,” he snaps, breaking me out of my thoughts. “What the fuck was that display? You call yourself a Sekar?” Every word is laced with the strongest venom, and I can’t seem to reply to him.
I look behind him to the thing sprawled across the ground. “What the fuck is that?” I ask, because I know if I snap back, I’ll spew venom of my own. He wants to point fingers? Tell me how I can call myself a Sekar? He can get a fucking mirror. At least my runes don’t bleed through my skin like they don’t fucking belong. At least I haven’t lost my Lady’s favor.
In two prowling steps, he’s bearing down on me with a hard-edged look. His body heat burns into mine. My nerves react, racing though me from the simple closeness of our magic. He growls a low, menacing sound. “Don’t worry about it. Now get your ass back to the Academy.”
In response, I feel the slide of belladonna through my veins. It’s the slightest sliver, enough to render me magicless but not drop in pain. Enough to let me know that someone wants me to obey.
So I do.
I limp towards my room, trying not to wince at the way my wounds tug and pull with each painful step. Day after day I go through this, but tonight it’s worse.
Honestly? Losing my sword again hurts more than this.
Every time I go out to kill, I am allowed a brief moment to hold Damios within my grasp. Just like every time I come back to the Academy, Marcen is there to take it away.
A hole burns its way through my chest every single time I reluctantly hand it over to the warlock, who just stares at me with knowing mockery in his fucking gaze.
Being without it is crippling. More so than the open wounds on my thigh and calf from that weird fucking hybrid thing.
I know I’m dripping blood over their expensive carpets, and I just can’t bring myself to care. Get fucked, headmistress, I think vehemently. Fuck her and her Persian rugs.
Unsteady steps lead me to the housing unit. All is quiet, just like every night I come back. This place is like an academy of assassins.
We hear very little from one another. And I like it that way.
I almost stumble and bite the inside of my cheek to avoid groaning, making a tiny sound. I should be used to pain. I’ve sustained a substantial amount of injuries over the years, but this one feels deep.
My palms meet the wall in my hallway as I try to hold myself upright.
Ma chère?
Ah, fuck.
I push myself away from the surface and whirl, trying to keep my composure as I meet Rueren’s red gaze in the dimly-lit hallway.
“Hey, DeVoure.” I half-ass salute in his direction.
Our relationship . . . it’s weird. It’s a completely weird thing. He blesses me with a range of pet names the same way a father baptizes a child in church. They are all ridiculous and flattering, especially spoken in his fierce tone. Cajun French is what I’ve learned his beautiful accent is.
It shivers through me to hear him say a single word. Even in my current messy state. Sometimes, I even look forward to hearing it. Not that I’d ever fucking admit that, because more often than not, I just want him to leave me the fuck alone.
This is one of those times.<
br />
“You smell like blood, pretty Sekar.”
Wow, two nicknames in one night. One right after the other. I am a lucky, lucky bitch.
I try to make a mockery of the situation. “You aren’t going to eat me, are you?”
I can see his serious expression even in the shadows. He doesn’t speak. He’s completely silent, and I can’t even hear or see his footfalls as he prowls towards me. Seriously. One moment, I’m blinking, and the next, he’s in front of me.
“Whoa!” I shove against his chest from the surprise and nearly lose my footing, but he grabs my elbows to hold me steady. My heart rises and sticks in my throat at the close contact. His body is warm, and I feel his breath fanning across my cheeks. “Let go of me, Rueren.” I’m glad my voice doesn’t shake.
He does as I ask but not immediately. No, first he slides his hands down my forearms, big hands encircling my wrists. Then, ever so slowly, he drops to his knees before me like he means to worship.
I bite back a sliver of hysteria. It slips out in an embarrassing, gagging breath of laughter before I find my seriousness.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
His hand encircles the ankle on my injured leg. I want to pull away, but his intense eyes are captivating as he stares back at me. He doesn’t say anything, but there’s a dare in his gaze, a challenge, as he takes my pant leg and rips straight up.
The sound echoes loudly through the halls.
A million curses tip my tongue, but all I can do is glare at the crazy man. I start to pull away, but he’s holding me firmly in his grip.
He still doesn’t say anything, but he does tear his eyes from me and lifts his wrist to his mouth. Before I can repeat myself, he tears through his flesh with shining teeth and presses his damp flesh to my leg. Drops of blood slide from his body to mine and just like that, I feel warmth pool through my opened wounds and spread on a tingling sensation. The sensation builds to an overwhelming thrum of power. I gasp as my skin pulls together, flesh knitting into perfect smoothness with no scar to show that I’d ever suffered at all.
“That should do it,” Rueren finally says. He stands up, nearly towering over me. I catch the flash of his grin in the darkness. “Fighting is against the rules, ma chère.”
