Inferno Anthology

by Gow, Kailin

  Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)

  Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

  Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

  Entropy (The Countenance Trilogy 3)

  Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

  Prologue

  Baya

  Sometimes life has its way with you. It peels back the layers of your existence like the skin of an onion until the real you glows underneath, raw and painful to the touch. It’s in those moments, in that hour, you look to those that give you strength—for me, that person was my brother. He was the one that put me on a pedestal after tragedy struck in our young lives. He promised to always look after me. To make sure that I wouldn’t stumble in life and that the right people would land beside me along the way. It’s no coincidence most of those people were of the estrogen card-carrying variety. My brother loves me so much he pinned me high on the good girl board long before I could have contested the effort, and, now that I’m admiring the view below, I’m not so sure I want to be the poster child for innocence anymore.

  It’s funny how something like death, which isn’t funny at all, can shape your destiny. When my father was alive, all he talked about was his heyday at Whitney Briggs, and, of course, being little I imagined him stuck on a farm, pitching straw over his shoulder—but Whitney Briggs is a far cry from any countryside barn. Whitney Briggs University is billed as a cosmopolitan educational institution tucked in the blue mountains of North Carolina, and, so, after he died, both my brother and I set our scholastic compass in that direction. That’s where destiny kicks in, and I meet him.

  Bryson Edwards. Even his name makes me sigh.

  He’s right here, and I want nothing more than to close the gap between us until he falls into me. I’m boiling over, ready to have him, ready for him to have me any way he wishes.

  I stretch my arms up over my head and wriggle my body into his mattress.

  His chest ticks with a silent laugh. “Whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it.” A seam of moonlight catches his features, exposing the fact he clearly approves.

  “I’m settling in.” I twist my hips into the bed. “I think I could get a good night’s sleep here.”

  “Oh, sweetie”—he growls it out as the smile slides off his face —“if you spent the night in my room, there wouldn’t be a whole hell of a lot of sleeping going on.” His fiery breath sears over my mouth like a promise. “And, if you did happen to fall asleep, I’d be guilty of doing something very, very wrong.”

  My fingers run down his granite-like abs and unbutton his jeans. I glide down the bed and plant a kiss just above his boxers.

  “I don’t plan on sleeping,” I say it low like a threat. “And neither should you.”

  1

  The Arrival

  Baya

  I’m pretty sure flashing your boobs at the hottest guy in a ten-mile radius isn’t the best way to meet new friends on move-in day.

  “Shit!” I pull my tube top up, quick as a flicker, but it doesn’t matter, “the girls” have already made their startling debut right here in Founder’s Square in front of a demigod who’s witnessed the first of many embarrassing episodes I’m sure to have at Whitney Briggs. “I swear I don’t know how that happened.” I pluck and adjust, while struggling to hold onto the oversized duffle bag I’ve filled with all of my dad’s favorite books. When he died I sort of adopted them, and, now, I’m dragging them around like a body. It was the one bag I didn’t check and thankfully so since the airline sent the rest of my things to Kansas. “It’s like a ghost just pulled it down. Stupid top.”

  “I don’t think it’s stupid.” He gives a lopsided grin, and my insides squeeze tight. He’s gorgeous, and built, and way the hell out of my league. “I think it’s friendly.” He dips his gaze to my cleavage again as if waiting for a reprisal.

  “It’s not friendly, and neither am I.” I take a step to the left, and he’s quick to block my path. “Look, sorry about the peep show. My clothes usually don’t make a habit of falling off in front of people.” His caramel hair glows in the dappled sunlight. It looks glossy and slick, and it’s all I can do to keep my fingers from running through it.

  “Don’t feel too bad—clothes everywhere have a habit of falling off in my presence. Especially the undergarment variety.” He gives a cocky grin. “In fact, I double dog dare you to do it again.”

  Perfect. He’s tanned, ripped, and evidently ready to dip his wick.

  “I’m leaving now.” I ditch around him and step into the swell of humanity. Girls in every level of undress scream and hug as if summer had somehow lasted a thousand years. Dozens of skateboards jet by, quick and lethal as bullets, as I struggle my way through the main thoroughfare. If I wasn’t lugging around all my father’s books, which have decidedly morphed into bricks, I might have actually enjoyed my first stroll through campus. I had seen snippets of it in the glossy brochures, but I’ve basically shown up at Whitney Briggs sight unseen. The first thing I noticed when the airport shuttle dropped me off is the fact the air is thinner in the mountains of North Carolina, much more than it ever was in Texas. Back home you could take a bite out of the heat, and here it feels like I’m filling my lungs with something just this side of helium.

  A pair of bicycles zoom at me in either direction, and I squeeze my eyes shut in a passive effort to avoid the near collision. They whisk by, and I force my lids to open once again. I could use a serious nap right about now and maybe a defibrillator if I ever manage to trek across this overgrown scholastic terrain. Swear to God, this campus is uphill both ways. Whoever thought it was a good idea to plop a school on the side of a mountain must have been part billy goat.

  “You need a hand?” It’s the tanned, ripped, dip-wick willing and able with his half-cocked smile, and I’m sure he’s got a half-cock in his pants to match. Just as I’m about to protest the idea, he swipes the duffle bag from me without the proper invite, not that my tired muscles are willing to fight him. “Which way you headed?”

  “No really, it’s okay.” I try to snatch it back, and he swings it just out of reach. His muscles redefine themselves, and a series of lightly sketched tattoos track up over his biceps.

  “I promise I won’t say a word to your dorm sisters about ‘nipplegate.’”

  I suck in a quick breath.

  “Nipplegate?” Crap. I’m not on campus five minutes, and already I’ve caused a quasi-political scandal of mammary proportions, not that my boobs are anything news worthy. “I’m in Prescott Hall.” I sag into the idea of him schlepping my things. I bet he’s secretly going to call me nipples each time he sees me. In fact, I’m sure he’ll share this juicy tidbit with his lowlife friends, and I’ll have to endure four long years listening to things like nips, the nippler, nipapolis, the rack, gah—the nom rack!

  Just shit.

  I scan the area for signs of my brother, but he’s nowhere to be found. He’s the reason I’m at Whitney Briggs to begin with. I miss him. He’s been out of the house for three long years, and I’m dying to be near him again. Cole is my favorite person in the world, no offense to Mom who is also pretty great. But after Dad died, Cole really became so much more than a big brother. Once he left, I lived for his weekly phone calls, and now that I’ll get to spend time with him every day, the idea brings tears to my eyes. He’s that sweet.

  “Prescott it is.” The blonde duffle bag wielding demon leads us to an overgrown building that to my surprise is in close proximity and doesn’t require mountain climbing gear to get to. On the lower level there’s a packed café with a giant sign in the window that reads Hallowed Grounds. The smell of fresh brewed coffee transforms the vicinity into a nirvana-like heaven. He gives a sly smile as he walks alongside me, and a fire rips through my bones.

  A breath gets caught in my throat at the sight of his pale grey eyes—stunning is the only word I can think to accurately describe them. He’s watching me, heating my skin with his stare, and my cheeks catch fire being this lethally cl
ose to him. I move my gaze lower and note his bulging biceps with the beginnings of a tattoo peering out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt. Whoever this is, he’s spent some serious time at the gym, or prison—or maybe the gym in prison.

  “So you’re a freshman?” He opens the door to the building with his back and nods me in first.

  “What gave it away? My ‘How to Survive Your First Year at University’ handbook for dummies or my perky peach nipples?” I smart as we step into the waiting elevator. I punch in the third floor, and we start to float.

  “Neither, but the perky peach nipples were a nice surprise. You really know how to brighten a guy’s day.” His teeth illuminate like a row of stars, and I blush a deeper shade of crimson.

  I want to say they don’t call me Baya Brighton for nothing but resist the lame joke at the expense of my surname.

  His smile fades as he takes me in. There’s a sadness hiding there beneath those lightning grey eyes, and I can’t pinpoint where it might be coming from.

  “You’ve just got that freshman look about you.” His voice gravels it out low, like a secret. “You look sweet—yet to be tainted by the masses. Most of the girls around here eat frat boys for breakfast. You don’t strike me as the man-eater type. You’ve got ‘good girl’ written all over you.” He says it with a leer as if he’s ready and willing to revoke my good girl visa. And the way my thighs are quivering, I’m not sure I’d mind.

  God, he sounds just like Cole. If I hear what a “good girl” I’m supposed to be one more time, I’m going to hurl all over his shiny new tennis shoes. As much as I love my brother, I’m tired of him reminding me of what a little angel I am. Honestly, sometimes it feels as if Cole wants to keep me a little girl forever.

  “Yeah, well, being a good girl is highly overrated.” I should know. Much to Cole’s approval, I am one.

  We step out, and I follow the number on the doors all the way down the hall. Most of the doors are opened, exposing the fact girls are busy decorating their miniaturized abodes with wall decals and superfluous purchases from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Music blares from a room to our right and a tall redhead stomps out and tapes a poster of a fuzzy white kitten over her door that reads, A, B, C, D, E, then below the fuzzy cute kitty, F.U.

  “Nice,” I say, glancing over at the demigod of moving day. “Looks like I’m not the only friendly one around here.”

  “That’s Roxy.” He leans in as he says it, and his warm cologne washes over me like a private heat wave. He smells good, clean like warm spices mixed with soap. His silver-blue eyes sear into mine, and an earthquake rolls through my body. “She’s pretty nice on days that don’t end in Y.”

  “Again, just like me.” My throat runs dry, and it takes all of my effort to break our gaze. I step up to room 315 and pause. “Here I am.” I pump my shoulders excited to be anywhere I might actually belong. After Dad died, Mom uprooted us to Texas where I always felt a little out of place. But this is college—my dorm. I’m going to finally fit in. And I’ll have a roommate. What could be better than that? I bet we’ll be friends for life, closer than sisters. I’ve always secretly wanted a sister, not that I’d trade Cole for one. He’s pretty amazing as far as big brothers go. But I’m desperately in need of a little estrogen in my life, someone to dish about boys at all hours of the night over a carton of Cherry “breakup” Garcia. Someone to peruse the Victoria’s Secret catalog with while debating boy-shorts or thongs, someone who can really appreciate Green Goddess dressing for what it truly is—culinary perfection.

  I unlock the door and swing it wide open for my duffle-bag-wielding friend, but Conan the Chivalrous demands I enter first. The room itself is smaller than a hiccup with twin beds on either side and not much else. A bare wall greets me on one side and on the other—

  The comforter is moving, slow and lethargic, like there’s a giant anaconda buried deep beneath it.

  Oh God, my insides cinch with fear. I hate to break it to my new dorm sister, but I don’t do snakes, or rats, or even some of those little beady-eyed purse puppies that have a propensity to growl at people. Then a tangle of limbs pop out from beneath the sheets. A heavy demonic moan escapes the tiny bed as a waterfall of blonde hair floats to the floor.

  Oh God, she’s going to be sick.

  Just as I’m about to kick over the trashcan, a bare hairy ass hikes into the air, and her equally hairy legs bend in flexion. Oh wow, she’s got some serious follicular issues, but I totally won’t hold it against her. In fact, it makes me like her more. I bet the poor thing never wears a bikini. I had a friend in high school who actually had the misfortune of growing hair on her chest. She was well on her way to morphing into a baboon before junior year. It’s just one of those freak things that nature unleashes on poor unsuspecting testosterone-riddled girls, and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it other than wax yourself silly, and God knows that’s a little piece of hell right there.

  I take a step forward just as the comforter flops off the bed.

  Gah! There’s two of them! And one of them is a boy!

  I watch in horror as the hairy ass bumps and grinds while beneath him a svelte blonde lets out a satisfying “Oh yes! Oh yes, yes, yes!”

  “Oh no. Oh no, no, no.” My hand flies to my lips, my feet still rooted to the floor.

  The hairy ass picks up his pace, and the girl’s boobs flops back and forth as if they were waving hello.

  “Oh my, God.” I push my face in the dip-wick’s rock hard chest and lose myself momentarily rubbing my cheek against him. Good God, he’s skin over steel.

  “Whoa,” he says, lowering the duffle bag to the floor. “Maybe we should just get going for now.” He presses his hand in the small of my back, and my spine electrifies as he ushers me into the hall. He closes the door behind him as his laughing eyes magnetize to mine. “Welcome to your first day of school, princess.” He gives a crooked grin, and this time it makes me feel oddly safe like he’s just rescued me from some sexual dungeon of perversion. “Bryson Edwards.” He holds out a hand, strong and thick, and a part of me wants to bite down over his fingers then extricate them from my mouth in a sexual manner rather than shake them.

  “Baya.” It rasps from me just barely audible.

  His fingers clasp over mine, his eyes seal themselves over my features, pulling me in as if rescuing me from the deepest end of the ocean.

  “Baya.” He gives a brief nod, and that veiled sadness returns to his eyes. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.” He leans in. A look of seduction sweeps over him. “Why don’t I get you out of here.”

  I give a coy smile up at his blond eminence. “I double dog dare you.”

  The temperature outside feels as if it’s just dropped twenty degrees. Of course, it might have something to do with the fact I was sweating all the way down in the elevator while visions of my dorm room being defiled swirled in my head. Talk about your first day trauma and drama. As if the fact my boobs insisted on taking a look around campus wasn’t bad enough—although technically my new roommate showed me up in the boob drama department. She was large and in charge, and, holy shit, those things were spinning out of control like hands on some demonic clock.

  Right about now I’m starting to lose any sisterly connection I was feeling toward my new roommate. Her inability to blush while busting a move has quickly relegated her to more of a distant slutty cousin who I’m not opposed to removing.

  I take in a lungful of air trying to cleanse my mind from the sight, but that hairy ass haunts me behind my lids, and, now, it’ll forever be locked in my subconscious, taunting me as it bounces into the air. Crap. I can never un-see that.

  A tall row of pines campaign for my attention. I choose to ignore the fact I just threw up a little in the back of my mouth and force myself to take in the scenery. The evergreens spear out like skyscrapers all along the outline of campus, and their sweet perfume infiltrates my senses.

  “You want to grab some coffee?” Bryson cinches a smile and moves
in close as we traverse an entire minefield of bicycles. My father loved to ride. He died that way, too. I try not to think about it, but, with my mind buzzing a million miles an hour, nothing seems off limits today.

  “Coffee?” I pause to gaze up at Bryson’s eyes, the exact shade of the pale sky and my toes curl at the sight of him. A brief vision of him raking his naked body over mine, moaning in my ear with passion, blinks through my mind, grey and fuzzy like a bad cable connection. He’s so stunningly gorgeous, and, for the most part, gorgeous guys don’t have too much to do with me. I’m guessing my boobs cast some sort of nipple spell on him, and now he thinks a homerun is in the works by midnight. For all I know he’s got some boob fetish he’s looking to satisfy. “I’d better not. I need to find my brother. I’ve texted him like six times since I got here, and he’s pretty much ignored me which isn’t like him.” I’m more than a little worried, but I’m guessing he dropped his phone in the toilet or left it at home and went for a hike.

  I spin in a slow circle trying to orient myself. The tall Gothic-style buildings give this place that Hogwarts’ vibe I’ve always secretly craved, and the pepper trees, the weeping willows, the overgrown maples only lend to the magic. “I think I’ll head over to the Briggs Apartment building. That’s where he’s staying. His name is Cole Brighton, have you heard of him?”

  His head ticks back a notch. “Cole?” A tiny smile tugs at his lips. They look full and soft, and I bet kissing them would feel like falling into a bed of clouds—erotic, cocky clouds—nevertheless, he’s still way out of my league. “Everyone knows Cole. I’m headed that way.” He lands his hand over my shoulder, and my skin sizzles. “I’ll take you right to him.”

  “Really? Thank you!” Everyone knows Cole, huh? I’m not sure why my brother’s popularity surprises me. Cole is the nicest, most noble, decent guy on the planet. And now I’m suddenly thrilled to have bumped into Mr. Muscles here because he’s going to take me right to him. “You know, you’re proving yourself to be more than a pair of perfect biceps,” I tease.