by Cate Corvin
I thought about trying to dissuade him, but in a way, I was relieved. No more cramped rooms, surrounded by slayers who judged me as I fed on cold blood. I could be outside again, run with Càel as we planned what to do about his Maker… even help Will and Suraziel find a safehouse for Mom instead of lounging around in Libra doing nothing while everyone else did the real work.
I obediently followed Burns out of the training grounds. It was hard to feel bad when I felt like I could explode with energy from the fresh blood of one of my singers. Aislin Liddell was walking down the hallway, leading Lux with the prefect pin back on her jacket, and her mouth fell open for a second when she took in the look in the Headmaster’s face and Will’s downcast eyes.
I tossed everything I owned into a black leather backpack, which, it turned out, wasn’t very much. A few sets of clothes, my cellphone and the thumb drive I’d stolen from Will stuffed into a little box of cold iron constituted most of it.
When I emerged from the room, the Headmaster wasn’t alone. Will had his own backpack slung over his shoulder… and Suraziel, wearing the human glamour of Sergio Enver, was at his side. My eyes widened involuntarily. “What are you two doing?”
“What kind of slayers would we be if we let a young, sweet, innocent vampire go wandering the streets alone?” Sura leered at me. It was impossible to forget that under that glamour, which showed us a large man with short black hair, brown skin, and eyes as dark as onyx, there was a gorgeous-as-sin incubus with curling horns and a midnight sheen to his skin.
“The responsible kind,” I muttered, but Burns turned a cold eye on Suraziel.
“Mister Enver, you realize that if you follow Mister Godalming and Miss Holmwood, you will never be permitted back into this institution?”
Suraziel shrugged. “I’m a free spirit. Gotta go where the Will takes me.”
“A leaf on the Will?” I suggested.
“Please stop,” Will said.
“Enough. This is not the time for jokes.” Burns looked over the three of us.
Will gave him the stubborn, opaque look I knew from him all too well. “Looks like our minds are made up. If she goes, we go.”
He’d been planning on going anyways, but I was determined not to be the wrench in his plans. I didn’t need Libra’s dubious safety. I could help Will, Mom, and destroy Thraustila just fine from outside.
Besides, Burns wouldn’t have let me stay forever, anyways.
The Headmaster sighed, looking older than ever. I heard a scuffle behind me and glanced over my shoulder to see Professor Knightley holding back Aislin. He whispered something in her ear and she stopped fighting, but she watched the three of us and the Headmaster with burning eyes.
“Very well, Mister Godalming. I have no authority to keep adult slayers here against their will.”
Will let out a soft sound. “Headmaster Burns, is there any way you could delay the news to my father?”
My stomach clenched. I hadn’t thought of that. Now that Will was informally expelled, the Headmaster was required to tell Percival Godalming, and any time advantage we had would be gone.
Burns gave Will a once-over, and there was a wealth of knowledge in that look. How much did he know about Will’s father? From his age, he might’ve been one of Percival’s professors. “Three days, Mister Godalming,” he said, his voice so soft that only the three of us heard it. “I can give you three days before I’m required to inform your patron of your expulsion.”
Will’s eyes flashed, but he nodded firmly. “Thank you.”
“And thank you for allowing us to stay here,” I said, ‘us’ meaning me and Càel.
Headmaster Burns only nodded. As a vampire, I was beyond his care now.
We strode down the hall. I reached out to grip Aislin’s hand as I passed, and as soon as Knightley’s head turned towards Burns, I dropped her a wink. “Be good,” I mouthed.
Aislin’s full-throated laugh followed me down the hall to freedom.
Three
Will
My god, I’d fucked up. Tori was supposed to remain safe in Libra Academy.
And I was not supposed to have her marks in my throat.
But here we were, sitting on the pink marble front steps, my neck still aching. Just a couple of slayer prep school dropouts waiting for the fourth member of our group.
Who was going to be pissed as all fuck when he arrived and found Tori outside.
She lounged between us, her skin shimmering like it was touched with gold in the moonlight. Burns had been understanding enough to allow us to wait in the Caitland-Moore for sunset, when Tori could step out of the building unharmed.
“We need to find a safe house for you,” I said, extremely aware that her long legs were only inches from being pressed against mine. “I don’t want Thra- the Maker getting word that you’re out here.”
“We need to wait for Càel,” she said, glancing at me. Her eyes had been a warm gold like honey before she’d been Made; now there was a different dimension to their depths, like a layer of gold leaf had been burnished into her irises. “He’ll know what to do. On the bright side, now you don’t have to take care of Mom by yourselves.”
“It’s not a bright side, Tori.” Even though I was overjoyed that she was with me, every moment that she was outside was a disaster waiting to happen.
“Sure it is. You know how awful it is to have to sit back and watch everyone else do your work for you? I’m not supposed to be sitting around in safety waiting for everyone else. I’ve gotta be out on the front lines, too.” She sat up straight and adjusted her shirt collar, looking up and down the street.
“And if Càel doesn’t come back tonight?” Sura asked.
As soon as Burns had walked in on Tori drinking from me, I’d felt that weird pull I always felt around Sura as something shifted. Now that I knew the truth of what he was, and that we were bound by a universal law called the ‘Cords of Fate’ by demonkind, I knew that the shift was probably the Cords pulling Sura onto the new trajectory of my life: dropping out that night with Tori.
Tori probably thought that I’d been shocked as hell when she forced Sura to take off his glamour. Truthfully? It was nowhere near as soul-rending as the discovery of the branding iron in the demonology room and the subsequent guess as to who had used it on her.
I wasn’t sure much of anything would surprise me again after that. Finding out my best friend was a demon in disguise… well, sure it was a shock. But I believed Sura. He was no longer here for the same reason he’d been sent.
“He’ll come.” Tori sounded completely confident. She tapped her head. “Bloodsong. It’s been getting stronger since we came outside.”
For a second, a question nipped at me. She’d told me that she was Càel’s singer, a gift given to him by Lilith… but if she was his singer, was it possible for someone else to be her singer?
I realized I desperately wanted that to be true, and that I wanted that singer to be me.
But she’d just told me she felt it for Càel… so it wasn’t possible.
Disappointment flooded me and I pushed it away. I was marked by Tori, and she’d made no sign that she was planning on leaving us anytime soon. Not while we were willing to help her mom get out of Father’s grip.
“We could still get a hotel room.” I didn’t like the idea of Tori wandering the streets where Thraustila or another Clouded Court vampire might see her.
“Nope. I’ve been inside for three weeks, Will. Just let me enjoy this for a few minutes, we’ve barely been outside for an hour.”
The city never really got dark, but a frenetic lavender light appeared down the street, bobbing from lamp post to lamp post. Tori frowned, her attention caught by the speck, and Suraziel grimaced. “A pixie. If it comes this way…”
He didn’t need to elaborate. The last thing we needed was a drunken pixie reporting back to Club Bathory that a new vampire was lingering on the steps of Libra Academy.
“Come on.” I climbed to my feet and
offered a hand. My skin tingled everywhere Tori touched when she took it and I hauled her upright. She looked up into my face, only inches away, and I thought of closing that distance to kiss her again… but Sura was still glaring at the pixie. “It’s coming this way.”
He didn’t hide the strain in his voice.
We strolled off casually, blending in with the crowds. I kept my hands shoved in my pockets, but a bubble of happiness welled in my chest when Tori looped her arms through mine and Sura’s like a chain linking the three of us.
“Fucking pixies,” she muttered.
We turned the corner and Sura glanced back. “I’m pretty sure the little bastard is following us.”
Tori heaved a sigh. “So what do we do? I’m not killing Fae, I’ve already got a big enough target on my back.”
“We take a shortcut.” Sura waggled his eyebrows and steered us into a dark alley where no lights touched the depths.
“This is the shortcut?” Tori asked skeptically. I was feeling that skepticism myself until Sura yanked her out of my arms, breaking the chain.
He jammed his arm through mine instead, grabbing both of us tight against him. “No, this is.”
Reality warped around us, crushing my internal organs to a pinprick of throbbing flesh, squeezing all the blood out of my body and sending it swirling through time and space, warping my vision until black and red streaked through my brain-
And everything reformed an instant later. I took a deep, gasping breath, dropping to brace my hands on my thighs as I assured myself that I was still a human with everything in the right place.
“What the fuck was that?” Tori ran her shaking hands over herself, glaring at Sura with wide eyes.
“The shortcut,” Sura said with a shrug and a grin. “Welcome to Bathin’s Path. We can get to anywhere from here.”
I straightened up, taking in my surroundings. We weren’t in Kansas anymore; hell, we weren’t even in New York. The ground underfoot was gray and black sand that had been melted and refrozen in glassy swirls, and a velvety tunnel of darkness pressed in all around us. It felt like standing in the bowels of a massive creature.
Sura shimmered at the edge of my vision, abandoning his human disguise to reveal his deep blue-brown skin and curled horns. “Bathin is pretty particular about who uses this way, so we need to get a move on.”
“Right,” Tori said weakly. “How will Càel find us?”
“We’ll find a portal and walk out into another part of New York.” Sura made it sound like we were taking the subway, not trespassing in a demonic realm.
He grabbed our arms and tugged us along. My frozen legs slowly began to work again as we silently moved. Every few moments, a patch of even deeper blackness would appear against the tunnel’s ridged, velvet-like walls, and Sura would peer in. He did this several times before stopping. “This is the one.”
Tori and I stared at the patch of darkness. “It doesn’t look like much of anything,” she said.
“You don’t see the Statue of Liberty?” Sura asked. We both looked at him like he was crazy, and he laughed. “Nah, just kidding. I can’t see anything either.”
“How do you know it’s the right one?” I resisted the urge to snap at him and kept my tone level. Ever since the truth had come out, a lot of Sura’s crazy-seeming quirks made a lot more sense. There was no rushing a demon to sanity; he probably didn’t have the same concept of cosmic time and space as Tori and I did. Or danger. He could vanish right out of here with a thought.
Sura shrugged. “It feels right.”
Tori leaned closer, frowning. “I don’t feel anything, except maybe the fleeting sense that we’ve made a huge mistake.”
A faint slithering sound reached my ears and every hair on the back of my neck prickled and stood up straight. Tori’s head snapped towards the sound, her eyes narrowed.
“That might be one of Bathin’s scouts,” Sura said, cocking his head. “Did anyone bring a suitable offering? No? Then we go through this one.”
He held out his hands. I just had time to notice that the natural color of his nails was the shade of India ink before he wrapped his fingers around mine and yanked us through the portal.
Instead of hitting something solid, we flew back into the crush of reality. Right before my brain and eyes were yanked a thousand miles apart, I caught a glimpse of something thin and grub-white creeping along the tunnel towards us, but it was left behind with a bit of my own sanity.
The portal out of Bathin’s fucked-up Path deposited us on a patch of soft, springy grass, a lake of gently-rippling water reflecting earthly moonlight, thank god.
Tori fell to her knees, gasping for breath, and I touched my face gingerly. I felt like I’d been shredded down to my atoms and put back together in a matter of seconds.
Sura brushed an invisible speck off his collar. “Central Park. Nice.”
Tori looked up at him incredulously as he unbuttoned his shirt. “Are you insane? How- are you stripping right now?”
Sura peeled off his shirt. “I’m not a student anymore. Pretty sure this means I can do what I want.”
“You can’t walk around naked,” she said weakly.
Sura started to unbuckle his jeans, and Tori slapped her hands over her eyes. “Suraziel! Put your pants back on!” she hissed.
Thanks to the blood, bone, and iron seal of Solomon around her neck, Sura obeyed, but he glowered. “Incubi don’t wear pants.”
“If you’re going to be around me, I absolutely require you to wear them.” She peeked between her fingers and seemed relieved when she saw his pants were still on. “I draw the line at full nudity.”
“I was told this is a free country, where an incubus can aspire to a pants-free life.” Sura held up the shirt and it vanished. His hands dropped to his belt buckle again, and Tori went nearly apoplectic. “Jokes, jokes. I’ll leave them on. Shoes have gotta go, though.”
I didn’t miss the hungry glaze in Tori’s eyes as she took in his naked torso, and neither did Sura. “Stripping in Central Park was not part of the plan,” I said, trying to drag the swiftly-derailing train back on course. “We’ve evaded the pixie, but we need to find Càel.”
“He’s coming.” Tori sounded dreamy, tearing her eyes away from Sura to gaze into the darkness. She pointed east to a stand of trees. “That way.”
Water splashed, and the three of us were instantly on our feet, every muscle tense as we gazed at the lake.
Something dark broke the surface of the reservoir, a horse-like head with a stringy seaweed mane. Tori’s shoulder shrugged, and she stepped forward, kneeling on the path. The Faerie river-horse’s eyes glowed like phosphorescent fires in the darkness, but she didn’t seem enthralled. Her body language mimicked having a conversation, one that took place entirely in their heads.
A bolt of white burst from the trees. Càel, in his strigoi form, raced towards Tori like hell was on his heels. For all we knew, it was.
Tori raised her hand and the kelpie vanished with a small plopping noise. She rose and turned, holding out her arms for the wolf that dwarfed her in size and ferocity.
Càel bowled her over, knocking her flat on her back with a growl.
An instant later he’d shrugged his second skin and become a man, one much larger than your average human guy, and he was layering kisses on her lips and neck between growled questions. Tori buried her fingers in his blond curls, returning his touches with her own desperate kisses. Jealousy reared its ugly head and gnawed at my bones.
“Why are you outside Libra?” Càel snarled. Tori couldn’t really answer, because he was kissing her a second later.
“We got kicked out,” I said. “We were going to find you before moving on to Plan B.”
Càel finally let Tori breathe- not that she really needed to- and hauled her upright in one smooth motion. “You fed on him.”
Her eyes flashed, but there was no judgment in Càel. I couldn’t say I was the biggest fan of Tori’s loyal knight, but he was good f
or her. That was one thing I could force myself to appreciate about him. “I was hungry, and… I couldn’t live on the donor blood anymore,” she admitted. “Will and Sura were going to leave tomorrow, anyways. We need to leave New York for a while, Càel.”
He raised an eyebrow, waiting for an explanation, and Tori and I filled him in. My heart thumped in a hollow beat when I confessed that my father was a murderer. Like Mother’s death, it was growing easier to say it out loud and accept it at face value. I was the son of a murderer, one who had Tori’s mom in his grasp.
“Where is this Percival?” Càel demanded. “I will bring you his spine as penance, Victoria.”
Oddly enough, that thought didn’t bother me as much as it should.
Tori touched the back of her neck. “I don’t think I’m a spine girl anymore,” she admitted.
“How about we divvy up my father’s body parts after we figure out how to get Connie out of there?” I said, my tone a little more waspish than I’d intended, and Tori immediately looked guilty.
“Right. We need to find somewhere to regroup”
Càel gripped Tori possessively, but she just melted into his touch like a marshmallow. “I take it Hell’s off-limits?” Sura murmured.
“Hell is definitely off-limits,” Tori said fervently, and I agreed. You couldn’t pay me to stay the night in a demon’s large intestine, no matter how safe it was from Thraustila. “Nobody wears pants there. Let’s just find a hotel outside New York. We’ve got some serious planning to do.”
“Pants ruin everything,” Sura grumbled.
We traipsed out of Central Park, staying as far from the Clouded Court boundaries as possible. It was going to be an awkward fucking recon, that was for sure. A slayer, an incubus, and two blood-bound vampires crammed into a hotel room. And we all wanted the same woman.
Great.
Four
Tori
In the last twelve hours, I’d been kicked out of Libra Academy, bringing Will and Sura with me, traversed a shortcut that turned out to be an infernal portal through what looked suspiciously like a demons’ guts, and had the terrible secret my stepbrother had been keeping penned up dropped on my head like a sack of bricks.
