Dark Fae (Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac Book 1)

by Caroline Peckham

  DARK FAE

  Ruthless Boys of the Zodiac

  by

  Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti

  Welcome to Aurora Academy, here is your campus map.

  Please take note of where The Lunar Brotherhood and Oscura Clan have claimed turf to ensure you don’t cross into their territory unintentionally. Faculty will not be held responsible for gang maiming or disembowelment. Have a great term!

  Click the map to enlarge.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  BOOKS BY CAROLINE PECKHAM

  BOOKS BY SUSANNE VALENTI

  Damn, I love the sound of screaming in the moonlight.

  I stalked a slow circle around my prey, adrenaline coursing through my limbs. My fangs were lengthening with it, demanding I take a taste of him, but I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. Not while he had that poison coursing through his veins. A piece of shit like him would likely taste like piss on a day when he wasn’t off his face on Killblaze anyway. The damn drug was making him delirious though. The pain I was dishing out was resulting in laughter as often as screams.

  Just gotta push harder then, Elise. For Gareth.

  I ran my tongue over my fangs, savouring the sound of his heartbeat as it pounded a panicked tune on the breeze. Yeah he was high as fuck, but he was also terrified of the psycho bitch who had hauled him out of his car, wrapped him in a bubble of air magic and transported him to this backwater alley behind the closed down burger shack on the outskirts of town. I hadn’t been sure if I’d have enough magic to get him the whole way here, but I’d done it. It was a damn shame I couldn’t drink from him though; I really could have used the magical top up I’d gain by draining his power while I took a drink of sweet, sweet blood.

  I guessed I’d just have to find some unsuspecting asshole to drain on my way home to get my fix. For now, I needed to focus on dragging the answers I needed from this pathetic excuse for a man who was currently trying to crawl away across the darkened sidewalk.

  I shot past him with my Vampire speed, coming to a halt right before him so that he gasped in horror, his rancid breath washing over my black boots.

  He looked up at me, probably wondering what a skinny girl with white blonde hair down to her ass and freckles spattering her nose was doing dragging him into the dark in the middle of the night. But he was about to find out why he shouldn’t judge a book by its cover if he thought I looked weak. Pain and grief had carved anything soft and gentle out of me. This was all I had now. My thirst for vengeance was even sharper than my thirst for blood. And I’d get it no matter the cost.

  I didn’t bother to contain my sneer as I looked down at the asshole who blinked up at me through red-rimmed eyes.

  “Fucking bloodsucker,” he snarled but there was no real venom in it.

  In all honesty I wasn’t sure why he was still in his Fae form. Werewolves were usually quick to shift into their Order form at the slightest hint of trouble, but this guy was scrambling across the piss-stained concrete like a worm trying to escape a blackbird. But I was no blackbird. I was his worst fucking nightmare. I just wished he’d realised it before my brother had to die.

  I’d seen the signs, I should have done more. I should have read the cards. I should have...

  Back the fuck up, Elise, you’re here to get answers from this bottom feeder not wallow in self pity again.

  One thing I’d learned for sure in the month since the Solarid Meteor Shower when Gareth’s body had been found in the dingy corner of that godforsaken academy, was that no one else was going to get to the bottom of what had happened to him. No one else gave a shit about the truth.

  The Fae Investigation Bureau had dismissed his death as an accidental overdose even though I’d told them straight that he’d never touched that shit. And despite the pitying looks the FIB officers had given me in response, like they felt sorry for my ignorant ass believing the best of my brother, I knew I was right about that. Gareth was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a goddamn junkie. He was a Pegasus for the stars’ sake; he could get a better high flying through a rainbow than he’d get from some drug.

  Besides, he’d never waste money like that. Or his life. He knew just as well as I did that there was only one way to claw your way out of the cesspit we’d been born into. And that sure as shit wasn’t through snorting the weird ass Fae drugs which were probably being pedalled by the gangs at his school.

  Just thinking of how proud Mom had been when he’d gotten in to Aurora Academy, how much it had meant to her that he would be getting a chance to better himself, I knew in my bones he wouldn’t have let her down like that. He’d gone there to earn a better life for all of us. He wouldn’t have started taking Killblaze. No fucking way.

  I hadn’t been as lucky as him. I’d spent the last year and a half attending our local high school with no boarding facilities and no fancy ass classes on defining your inner Fae, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. And he’d known exactly what that opportunity was worth. Aurora Academy may have been one of the lowest ranking academies in Solaria, but it was still an honest-to-shit academy. And everyone knew that even a piss poor academy education was ten times better than a high school one. He’d have left that place with options people like us could only dream of. He’d even managed to land a full scholarship from the Rising Sun Foundation which was designed to give the best of us gutter kids a shot at an Academy Education. And Gareth really was the best of us.

  Of course I was smart enough to take the entrance tests too. Book smart, computer smart, street smart, people smart. But I’d known that Mom couldn’t cope with the two of us being away at an academy and leaving her on her own. So I’d never even applied to one, knowing he needed it more than me. That he deserved it more too. He was a better person in his sleep than I ever could have hoped to become. And now all of that was worth nothing. He’d made it to his Junior year and ended up dead. Accidental overdose. Fuck that. Someone in that academy had killed him and this mongrel was the first piece in the puzzle for me to find out who.

  “I’m not telling you anything, bitch!” Lorenzo shrieked, not for the first time.

  Vampire strength sure came in handy in a pinch. I stomped on his hand as it landed on the concrete before me, a savage smile tugging at my lips as he howled in pain.

  “Wanna rethink that, dipshit? Or shall I start removing fingers?”

  Lorenzo rocked back onto his knees, hacked up a load of phlegm from the back of his throat and spat it at me. I shot aside with my Vampire speed before it could hit me, rounding him and catching him by the throat. He was
a lanky fucker, a foot taller than me but just as skinny. I still shouldn’t have been able to lift him from his feet like that, but then what was the point in having enhanced strength if I didn’t use it?

  Damn, I was lucky to have been born a Vampire. Right up until my magic was Awakened last year when I was eighteen, I hadn’t been sure what Order I’d turn out to be. Mom was an exotic dancer and a Pegasus. She’d loved Gareth’s dad which was why she’d given him his surname of Tempa. But when my dad broke her heart less than a year later, she decided to give me her own surname. She didn’t like to talk about my dear departed dad with me, but it turned out he was a pretty powerful Vampire and I was lucky enough to have inherited that much from him. So he’d given me one thing I guessed.

  When my powers were Awakened, my fangs snapped out as the Vampire in me awoke too. I half ripped the throat out of the guy standing next to me in a bid to drink him dry of blood and magic. It was fucking fabulous. Aside from the night I had to spend in the cell the faculty called the ‘detention area’ for losing control of my Order form and almost killing him. But that first taste of blood on my lips had been practically orgasmic so I hadn’t complained. Worth it. Totally.

  My fangs lengthened at the memory, the damn things always hardwired to my libido, though I had zero desire to take any kind of satisfaction from this mutt before me. He’d pay in blood for his involvement in my brother’s death but not a drop of it would pass my lips.

  “When my family finds out what you’ve done, they’ll fucking destroy you. They’ll mutilate you before you die, you’ll be begging for them to end you days before they do!” he yelled before he started laughing so much that I threw him back down to the ground in disgust.

  Yeah, that thought had occurred to me too, but in the grand scheme of things I’d decided to take the risk. For Gareth I‘d chance it, for his dopey smile and hugs that went on too long. For the phone calls in the middle of the night because he never remembered to call at a reasonable hour before waking up feeling like shit for forgetting about me. For the way he always swore that he’d dig us out of this place and build us a better life somewhere once he graduated. For the fact that one of the assholes in that school had taken him from me and Mom. And now she just lay curled beneath the sheets, too heartbroken to face the world while the bills piled up and the days crawled by.

  “I’m not scared of the Oscura Clan,” I snarled, the shiver down my spine the only sign that it was a lie but he couldn’t see that. “I’m ten times scarier than them.”

  Lorenzo coughed through a mouthful of blood where his face had impacted with the ground, it stained his teeth a rusty colour in the moonlight and the iron tang of it on the wind called to me.

  “Kill me once and I’m all gone, kill me twice that might be nice, kill me three times you’re getting close, but Oscura Clan will kill me most.” Lorenzo pushed himself to his hands and knees as he continued to babble nonsense and I stalked forward, aiming a kick at his ribs.

  My rage leant strength to my limbs and I heard bones crack beneath the force I used as he rolled away from me. The sound sent a shiver of power racing along my limbs. I shouldn’t have liked it. But I did. I was a cruel, twisted creature now. And it felt good.

  Before he could rise, I pressed my high heeled boot down on his throat, the stiletto just piercing the skin as he flailed beneath me.

  “I hacked his emails,” I hissed, leaning close as I continued to press my weight down. “I know you were meeting him that night, I know you were trying to get him to join the Oscura Clan.” The bunch of psychopathic Werewolves who this asshole called family ran half of downtown Alestria and were so deep into the criminal underbelly of this city that I doubted there was a crime they weren’t connected to somehow. If it wasn’t for the Lunar Brotherhood meeting them blow for blow at every turn and keeping them on their toes with gang wars and rivalry, then I had to think the whole of the city and beyond would have been under their rule by now.

  Fae claimed whatever power they wanted so long as they were strong enough to do so and the gangs had taken most of the power in this forgotten city of Solaria. Sure, the Celestial Council technically ruled the kingdom and it was them who set the laws which the gangs consistently flouted. But short of Lionel Acrux or any of the other pretentious assholes I saw on the news trekking down here to sort this place out in person, I didn’t see it changing any time soon. People with that kind of power just didn’t waste time in places like this.

  “I meet lots of people. Every knows me...everyone knows my family,” Lorenzo growled, a little of the wolf in him showing through at last. Yeah, fucking with an Oscura - even a bottom dwelling amoeba like him - was probably a bad idea, but I was goddamn grieving and I had to get these answers. I needed to know what had happened and who was going to pay the price for it. It was tearing me apart, ripping my soul to shreds and destroying what good I had in me.

  Besides, Lorenzo was off his face on Killblaze, chances were he’d think this whole exchange was a figment of his imagination come tomorrow - presuming I let him live that long. I still wasn’t sure if he’d been directly involved in Gareth’s death yet, but if I realised he had been then vengeance would come on swift wings. I may not have had a huge reserve of power left in me, but my magic was strong enough to steal the oxygen from his lungs until he suffocated if that was required. Although, I might have been tempted to go for something a little more violent.

  “Your family aren’t here now. But Gareth’s is. And I’m not letting you leave here without giving me the answers I want.”

  Lorenzo cried out as he sprang to his feet, launching himself at me. I almost moaned in relief at the excuse to vent my rage on him.

  My knuckles slammed into his face, once, twice, three times. Blood flew, curses spilled from his lips, a solid punch crashed into my gut painfully and a spike of twisted pleasure followed it. Yeah, pain was one of the only things I felt now and I was beginning to get a taste for it - but it wasn’t enough.

  I slammed my fist into his face again, knuckles splitting deliciously before he fell back but I caught him, keeping him on his feet by holding onto his wrist.

  He swung at me again and I shot around behind him using my Vampire speed, kicking out the backs of his knees so that he crashed down onto them as I circled around to face him once more.

  Grief almost split me apart as I pictured my brother on the floor, his body horribly cold and his limbs twisted. I bellowed my rage, rearing my head back as I caught him by the collar, driving my forehead down on the bridge of his nose.

  I heard it crack as Lorenzo screamed in agony, toppling back to the ground beneath me as I refused to release him. Vampire strength was handy as fuck for my new calling in life.

  His blood splattered my face, but I resisted the urge to lick my lips, fisting my hands in his black hoodie as I straddled him.

  “Tell me what happened to him!” I snarled, losing my cool and feeling the beast within me flex her muscles as I dug into the reserves of my Order’s strength.

  Lorenzo started laughing maniacally. “He’d kill me worse than you! He’s the King... King of the Academy. You can’t begin to compare...”

  I slapped him to stop the laughter, baring my fangs as his blood dripped from my face down onto his.

  “You think you know nightmares?” I growled, nice and low. “You haven’t even met me yet. Five minutes in my company has you bleeding in a puddle of piss, think how bad you’ll feel after five hours? I want answers, dog, and you’ll give them to me one way or another. If you’re very lucky you might leave this interrogation with your life, but don’t expect to keep all of your limbs.”

  Lorenzo stopped laughing, staring up at me with bloodshot eyes which wheeled wildly. He started twitching beneath me and I had to wonder just how much of that foul drug he’d taken before this exchange. “You’re a walk in the park compared to him,” he breathed. “And if I tell you anything at all I’ll pay in more than blood and flesh.”

  “You will talk,”
I assured him. “Everyone has a breaking point.”

  “I know,” he replied, a bubble of laughter escaping him again as he pressed a hand down on his chest over his heart. “Which is why I won’t let you find mine.”

  “What?” I snapped.

  Lorenzo laughed and laughed, his back arching beneath me as he put a small amount of effort into bucking me off of him. I wasn’t going anywhere though.

  “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t tug at this thread,” he whispered, his eyes glimmering with a desperate kind of clarity for a moment. “I wish I never had.”

  “What does that mean?” I demanded.

  Lorenzo’s smile widened for a heartbeat then his eyes suddenly rolled back into his head and his hand fell away from his chest.

  “Shit!” I cursed as I spotted the dagger of ice impaled straight through his heart.

  I scrambled upright, looking down at his still body as blood pooled beneath him in a mixture of shock, outrage and simmering disappointment. He’d used his water Elemental magic to create a shard of ice to kill himself rather than risk telling me what I wanted to know.

  My mind whirled, my lips parting with horror and disbelief. He’d barely told me anything, I was still just as deep in the dark as I’d been before...except...

  He’s the King... King of the Academy. You can’t begin to compare.

  So maybe all I had to do was find this King and I’d be able to get my answers. Lorenzo’s fear of this so-called monarch probably should have had me running in the opposite direction. He’d chosen death rather than cross him. But I didn’t feel fear anymore. The worst had happened. The only thing left to me now was rage and vengeance. And I wouldn’t stop until the man responsible for killing my brother paid with his own life.

  I backed up before Lorenzo’s blood could stain my shoes. At least I hadn’t bitten him. No one would suspect a Vampire took part in his death. It’d probably just be put down to gang violence. Add him to this week’s body count.

  I turned my back on Lorenzo’s corpse and stalked from the shadows, leaving the blood and stench of death behind.