A Demon's Wings: Vice College For Young Demons: Year Three

by Marie Mistry

  “I, Lilith Carazor, stand for her. I have tasted her brimstone and seen her destiny. And it is Lust!”

  “Lust! Lust! Lust!” The group chanted.

  “Welcome, Vivienne Ajax,” Felicity said, smiling serenely at us all. “Let the initiation begin!”

  “Lust! Lust! Lust! Lust! Lust!” The chant was ringing in my ears as I took Vivienne's hands and tugged her through the door.

  It was refreshing to watch her gape at the opulence of the tower as I led her to the register on the table. As she bent to sign her name in small, neat letters, I looked around and grinned. Aeron was in the corner, by the stairs, looking at me with a secret smile in his eyes.

  Technically, any Lust caste members could attend an initiation and I suspected he was using that as an excuse. Then a familiar stroking sensation caressed my horns and I almost groaned.

  Vivienne looked up, stepping away from the register and diverting my attention from my Lust mate and his tormenting. I quickly evaluated her, taking in her resolute posture and the slight crease of her determined brows. She didn't look ready to bolt and I knew she could cope with an innocence circle. Hell, after an assassination attempt like that, it might be just what she needed to relax.

  “Let the games begin!” I called, announcing my intention to the room.

  Someone handed me the blindfold, and I gently secured it around her head with a soft smile that urged her to trust me. I led her to the middle of the room as the rest of the caste cleared the furniture and all who were interested stepped into a loose circle around Vivienne and me.

  The familiar words of the traditional chant sprung up as I gently spun her shoulders, and I couldn't help being half lost in the memory of my own innocence circle as I released her and backed away, out of the circle.

  Straight into Aeron's arms.

  He pressed his hands gently over my eyes, turning me, but I knew the unmistakeable smell of black coffee that belonged to my Lust mate. When his firm lips met mine, plundering exactly the way they had that first time, I sighed into him and melted completely. His power kept stroking against my horns, taking over my entire body.

  Hell, I knew it had only been a few hours since we'd last been together, but I'd missed him in the summer months while he'd been gone, and now every cell in my body clambered to take him in. Professor or not, he was mine and I needed him like fire needs oxygen.

  All too soon, he ended our kiss and pushed me back toward the circle, just as Maxine pushed Vivienne back into the centre. I grabbed her and we clung to one another for support as I spun her round.

  When I ripped the blindfold from her, she blinked back at me. I grinned as she took in the circle, trying to figure out the identity of her first kiss. Maxine's cheeks were flushed and her expression obvious, so I distracted Vivienne by passing her one of the two glasses that waited for the both of us.

  Chapter 14

  Unfortunately, I couldn't revel in the festivities like the rest of the caste. Mentors had strict rules for initiation parties and the main one was to remain sober enough to keep our mentees safe. Although, I didn't need to monitor Vivienne for long because she was also a total lightweight and ended up passing out on a sofa within the first two hours.

  I gently floated her up to her room on a shield of PK, deposited her on the bed, and took off her shoes before closing the door and heading to my own room.

  Jin was in the bed, waiting for me with a sexy, sleepy smile on his face. “A little bird told me we both have Combat tomorrow…” he began, dragging me toward him. “I think, what with the new professor, we should both be fully charged up before we venture out of here tomorrow.”

  I fell asleep in his arms but woke up alone to the blaring of my alarm clock. It took a herculean effort for me to slip out of the covers and face the world, but underneath it all, I was excited to see Aeron, even if our dynamic had been completely turned on its head when he was made a professor. I left my door open as I got ready and almost missed the blur of black hair that swept past.

  “Vivienne?” I called, fumbling with the laces on my shoe. “Is that you?”

  Long seconds passed before my new mentee appeared in the doorway. She seemed awkward and fragile in the Lust uniform and self-consciously tugged at the short skirt and cropped top.

  “Yes, Lady?”

  I grimaced at the formal title. “No need to call me 'Lady' unless I'm wearing that damned sigillary. My name is Lilith. Are you going to breakfast?”

  “Yeah. And I'm just Viv,” she muttered.

  I tried for a friendly smile. “Would you rather eat with our caste or my friends?”

  “I don't care.”

  She said it in such a deadened tone that it didn't even get my hackles up.

  “Surely you must have a preference?”

  “No, it doesn't matter.”

  Well … this conversation is productive. I finished tying my laces and grabbed my bag, beckoning my imps to my shoulders as I headed for the door.

  I waited till we were outside to try again. “Did anyone tell you that I'm your mentor?”

  “No.”

  “Well, hopefully I won't be too terrible at it.” I had Nelly and Lulu's great example to lean on, although I was sure I'd been a bit more talkative than Viv was being. “We could sit with your brother if you want.”

  I didn't want to make the offer, but if it would get her out of her shell…

  “I don't have a brother.”

  I just didn't get this girl. I found myself dipping into my pathokinesis just for some insight into what she was feeling, but the instant I did, only apathy and a sense of doom greeted me. Obviously, my gift wasn't going to be much help. “What do you mean? I met him yesterday.”

  “By now, I will have been completely emancipated from the Ajax line. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened yesterday as soon as Professor Saxon picked up the phone to tell Lord Ajax. He certainly got the assassin hired quickly enough.”

  “You think your own father ordered a hit on you?”

  She gave me a dark look that told me she knew it had been her father and she wasn't surprised.

  “Well, my mum tried to kill me herself in a duel at the Christmas visit.” I shrugged it off, trying to be as unaffected as Viv. Something told me she didn't respond well to being coddled. “She wanted me to be a Pride, but I obviously failed at that…”

  Viv grimaced. “I was supposed to be a Greed, the backup child in case Morpheus failed to meet our father's expectations.”

  “Well you're a Lust now. You can wish you were a Greed but I've found it's better to accept and enjoy who you are, than to try and change to earn other people's conditional love.”

  She just shrugged.

  “What do you know about Succubae?” I asked, trying to shift the topic.

  “They're parasites, rapists and whores, like the rest of Lust. Except they survive by killing.” Her response was monotone and automatic.

  “That's horseshit.”

  “So, we don't take power from others, killing them in the process and giving them nothing in return? I saw you do it yesterday to the assassin. You can't deny it.”

  “I stopped before I killed him. All Lusts derive their power from others, but we give plenty in return. Everyone in the Carnal Tower is a generous lover, and many are monogamous. Don't judge what you've not experienced. Besides, I know your cousin, Babette. She wasn't a whore.”

  Viv went rigid at the mention of Babette. “My cousin is dead.”

  I stared at her, wide eyed with disbelief. “No.”

  “My uncle married a Wrath and had a Lust daughter, so my father chose to have them assassinated, rather than face the shame of having an Ajax in Lust. She didn't live a week after her showing.”

  I shook my head. “Babette graduated a year ago. I watched her leave with her parents from the Gatehouse.”

  Viv clammed up, her disbelieving scoff her only answer as we entered the dining hall and retrieved our breakfast from the buffet.

  I t
ried to be a good mentor and sit us both with a large group of Lusts, but Viv contributed nothing to the conversations going on around her, other than a deadened glare whenever someone tried to speak with her. As a result, breakfast was painfully awkward. I started by trying to include her but Viv was doing her best to drive everyone as far away as possible. By the time she left for her first lesson, I felt bad for being glad to see her go.

  “Am I a bad choice for a mentor?” I asked Rina as we walked into the gym together.

  “Probably the worst.” I should have been used to Rina not sparing my feelings, but it still stung. “You have too many secrets, too many obligations and you tend to blame yourself for the failings of others. Case in point, the new Succubus is a bitch with emotional constipation. It's not your fault and not your responsibility to fix it.”

  We reached our lockers and she thrust her bag into hers with more attitude than usual, slammed the locker door then growled when it rebounded and almost slapped her in the face. “Ugh, I don't have the energy to deal with combat today.”

  “Just for that, Miss Inferna, you'll do an extra twenty laps.” Aeron's voice echoed all around us and the class whirled around, searching for him.

  It was Daron, staring at the ceiling, who clued me in to Aeron's position.

  My Lust mate sat in the rafters, staring down at his students with an unimpressed look. He wore his white shirt open at the collar and, from below, I could really admire the way his grey trousers moulded to his ass.

  I was so distracted by the view, that I almost didn't notice him speaking until the class began rushing past me on their usual warm-up laps of the gym.

  I fell back into the routine easily enough; my body still remembered the way to breathe so I wouldn't get winded and my feet pounded out a tuneless beat on the wooden floor. I wondered if Aeron planned to keep lessons the same as Hadrian had, but he didn't. The moment we finished running, half of the class was levitated up to the beams where Aeron was waiting. When they were secure, he grinned down at us.

  “Your objective is to knock one of your classmates from the beam while they resist you. No gifts allowed, and fourth years cannot use anything other than PK. You have one minute before you swap over.”

  The lesson passed quickly after that.

  While Hadrian had focused almost exclusively on training us in different forms of combat and fitness, Aeron added battle strategy to the mix. When the one-on-one matches were finished, team battles were called and the fourth-years became commanders. It was thrilling but draining.

  By the end of the lesson, I was limping slightly, exhausted and running dangerously low on power, if the looks I was getting from the rest of the student body were anything to go by. I was almost grateful that I had Demonic Politics after lunch and not Healing, because there was no way I had the strength to heal anyone after that lesson.

  Of course, that gratitude disappeared the instant I walked into the politics classroom.

  Professor Saxon sat at her desk, surveying the five other members of the class. Evidently, Advanced Demonic Politics didn't have a high uptake, and I looked at the five others, noticing they were nearly all Pride and Envy, except for one Gluttony guy, sat at the back.

  “Ah, Lady Carazor. I was just telling your classmates how valuable it would be to have you in this class.” Professor Saxon's serene smile as she gestured me forward to the front row made me jealous of the Gluttony at the back. “I'm sure that you will have some interesting insights to share with us all about our current political system.”

  I suppressed a groan and took my seat, already certain that this was going to be my least favourite class.

  “For today, we will simply go over the basic structure of our political system, but for homework, I would like you to write five pages on the differences between the High and Low Chambers.”

  Almost everyone in the class groaned, and I was no exception. Apparently, Politics was going to give me even more homework than Healing and Combat combined this year.

  As much as I would have liked to complain, there was no denying how useful everything Professor Saxon taught us was. By the end of the lesson, I understood more about the Assembly than I had when I was sat on my golden throne in the High Chamber.

  Occasionally, when no one could answer a question, Professor Saxon would look at me as though I should know the answer, but I just ignored her. One day in the Assembly did not make me a first-rate politician. Unlike last year where I suffered anxiously under the weight of her glares in Demonic Citizenship, this year, I wasn't giving her the benefit of watching me squirm.

  Chapter 15

  It wasn't just Professor Saxon who was piling up the assigned coursework. When I entered the infirmary the next morning, Rezinax didn't just hand me two files like she had last year. Instead, a full box of them waited on my desk, each one containing the details of a patient I was supposed to help.

  And that was just the long-term cases. I was also expected to assist in trauma cases, acting as an anaesthetic for patients who didn't have time to take the drugs that would normally numb their pain.

  Even Maddox was pushing me to try and use my gifts in creative ways. My assignment from him was to try and pull emotional imprints from objects or through them. So far, despite hours spent staring at the sword he'd provided or casting my focus into the classroom beyond, the emotions I got from them were muddled and indistinct.

  It didn't take long for me to start feeling overwhelmed by it all. The feeling snuck up on me in ways I didn't even notice at first. I started snipping at my mates over tiny things, sleeping through the mornings on weekends and holing myself up in my room and staring blankly into my books. The pressure made it hard to focus on the work which, in turn, made me more stressed, causing a vicious cycle.

  That was exactly the situation I found myself in on Halloween morning. As it was a Saturday, I hadn't even changed out of my pyjamas and was contemplating getting dressed to head down for an early lunch when Kain and Jin appeared in my room, fully dressed and wearing identical grins.

  “Get dressed, Sunshine!” Kain strode to the wardrobe and started yanking out clothes.

  Jin ripped open the curtains with a bright grin. “We're going with you on your girls' day out.”

  I frowned blankly at them. “That makes no sense.”

  Jin just grinned, grabbing my hands and pulling me upright. “Well, we noticed you were drowning in stress and since you haven't used the spa tickets I got you for your birthday, Kain bought some extra.”

  “We've dragged Nelly, Lulu, Rina and even Viv out of bed already,” Kain added, chucking over a skimpy set of purple underwear. “They're waiting in the common room.”

  Jin chucked the purple lace back at his friend. “It's still my gift, so I want to see her in my colours.”

  Kain smirked, rolling his eyes as he neatly folded the undies back into the drawer and pulled out a set in the light blue of Sloth. “Happy now?”

  Jin didn't answer because he was too busy stripping me out of my pjs.

  “But there's so much to do … I have another Assembly meeting tomorrow as well…”

  “Pet, you can't pour from an empty cup. The key to surviving third year is understanding that there will always be so much to do but taking care of yourself should always come first.” Jin caught the pair of comfy jeans and the soft t-shirt that Kain threw his way and held them out to me.

  I pulled them on, watching as Kain moved over to my desk and started carefully sorting through the layer of debris that had accumulated there. By the time I'd pulled on my clothes and laced up my shoes, most of the clutter had been sorted and organised. Jin pulled my hair back in a smooth low bun as Kain moved on to the pile of unwashed clothes at the end of my bed.

  I began to protest, but Jin slipped a finger over my lips. “Let him, Pet. It's how he takes care of people.”

  Kain finished with the laundry and looked back to see us waiting for him. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door, twirling me a
s he did so. “Come on. It's time for some pampering.”

  We didn't take the stairs. Kain's excitement was evidently too great to wait for us to meet the others down in the common room. Instead, he pulled us into the shadow realm and straight onto the doorstep of a white-painted building on a quiet, London street. My imps followed, buzzing around my head as I took a deep breath to steady myself. Nelly, Lulu, Rina and Viv obviously hadn't been expecting the abrupt teleport either because they all nearly collapsed where they stood.

  “Some warning, next time?” Rina growled, even as the twins just grinned and rushed over to hug me.

  “Lilith!” Lulu squealed, not letting go even as the guys ushered us through the door and into the spa. “Oh my god, I missed you.”

  I knew what she meant; even though she was a junior scholar in residence at Vice, Lulu's schedule was almost as hectic as mine. She was constantly forced to help the senior scholars with their projects and we rarely managed to say more than a few words to one another before we were yanked apart.

  I emerged from their hug with a tightness in my chest and turned to stare at Rina and Viv. I was surprised that Viv had come. She'd spent the last month barely talking and refusing point-blank to take power from anyone. I'd spent hours at lunch and in the library just sitting next to her, talking at her, trying to make her more comfortable around me and her caste. Nothing worked.

  “This better be a good spa,” Rina muttered, as Kain talked with the receptionist. “I've been so stressed recently that I've forgotten what relaxation even is.”

  “Ah, third year…” Nelly smirked and hugged her sister. “It only gets harder.”

  I groaned. “I can't survive harder.”

  Jin came up behind me and kissed my neck. “You're strong enough to take anything, Pet.”

  I smiled and leaned into him, but the moment was short-lived before a small fleet of assistants hurried over to our group and handed each of us a folded black robe, which felt cloud soft and just as light.

  “Your private relaxation room is through here.” One of the assistants led us down a corridor and unlocked a plain, white door. “Your booked treatments are scheduled as you requested and there are refreshments inside. Enjoy your stay at Seven Star Spa.”