by Alex Lidell
“Count Victor.”
Ellis cursed. The vampire has been one of the leaders in the fae-vamp wars and—despite respectable appearances—was unaware that the war ended.
“The demivamps are already bending over backward to conjure ways to impress him, just like the demifae do whenever our dear old Dad decides to make an appearance,” Asher continued. “The bastard Victor encourages it, dropping hints through Quinn that he might consider inviting some half bloods into the clan.”
Just what these already cutthroat demis needed, another bone to tear each other apart over.
Ellis cut his gaze from Sam, who was bracing her arms on her thighs as she pulled desperate gulps of air into her lungs, and back to Asher, the male’s line of conversation finally making sense. The witch was a novelty, and with the demivamps tripping over themselves to show off before Victor, she would be a prime target.
“If Samantha doesn’t get better quickly, she’s going to get hurt,” Asher said, nodding as if he’d read Ellis’s thoughts. Both Bryant’s bastards, Asher and Ellis had been born only a month apart, which gave them a shared understanding of each other that was usually reserved for twins. Or had, before one witch broke them all, leaving bloody pieces of their soul for the crows to pick at. “She has not a drop of immortal blood and less natural ability to fight than a beagle. The demis will tear her limb from limb and not even notice.”
Ellis’s chest tightened around his ribs, the same way it had when Quinn had grabbed Samantha’s neck. Worse still, he saw a mirrored look in his brother’s eyes. “She’s a witch,” Ellis reminded them both, his wrists aching beneath the phantom weight of long-gone shackles. “So long as they don’t kill her, I don’t care what the demis do.”
“I grew up with you, Ellis. I bloody know when you are lying.”
“With due respect, sir, keeping the cadets at bay is your job.” Ellis gave his brother a mock salute. “I’m just here to help when the hunters decide to come calling, because we all know they will. Well, that, and to be appropriately humiliated.”
Asher quickened his pace, cutting in front of Ellis and stopping.
Catching a spark of triumph in his brother’s tawny gaze, Ellis crossed his arms over his chest, his gut warning him that Asher had just led him into a trap. “Asher—”
“Oh, no, you don’t.” Asher rocked back on his heels, throwing a quick look over his shoulder to where Samantha was trudging ahead with painful slowness. “Seeing how you are, as you said, under my full command, I have some new orders for you. Father wants you to keep the witch alive. I want you to do one better than that. Help her keep herself alive. You are now promoted to pack leader with exactly one cadet beneath you.” Asher jerked his thumb toward the witch, a corner of his mouth lifting as Ellis’s nostrils flared with sudden ire. “Get the witch in shape. Running, fighting, the works. I can give you a month before I put her in hand to hand against the others, but that’s as far as I can stretch it.”
Ellis’s fingers curled into a fist, the willpower it took to keep from driving his knuckles into his brother’s nose no less than the witch was exerting. Yes, Asher had set him up expertly. And Ellis had fallen right into the bloody trap.
Asher’s face hardened, his gaze dropping to Ellis’s closed fist. “Don’t.”
Drawing a breath, Ellis forced his fingers to relax. He little feared punishment, but it would hurt Asher to order it more than the male deserved. Even for this. “Orders received and understood,” he said instead, the words clipped but proper enough. Without waiting for a response, Ellis moved around Asher and closed the distance to the problem he’d just inherited.
A problem that was now down on one knee, swallowing a whimper as her calf seized up with enough force that Ellis could see muscle bulging beneath blue cloth. This was supposed to be the pleasurable part, damn it, watching the witch flop around like a fish on dry land. But somehow, Ellis couldn’t find pleasure in it at all. And that pissed him off.
“How did you survive as a burglar when you can’t run a hundred paces without losing your lunch?” he asked.
“Go to hell,” Sam said through clenched teeth, red-tipped brown hair sticking to her pale cheeks.
“We are both already here.” Ellis let a cruel smile spread across his face. Despite his still-simmering anger at both Asher for setting up this trap and himself for falling right into it, Ellis’s mind was already assessing his newly inherited disaster. Once, before a witch named Sienna changed everything, he used to enjoy training armies—not that his trainees shared the sentiment at the time. Leaning close enough to Sam that he could smell her sweet and citrusy scent, Ellis brought his mouth to her ear. “Though I’m about to make it feel even more hellish for you.”
It was oddly satisfying to see the blood drain out of Sam’s irritatingly beautiful face.
12
Sam
“What the hell?” I oomph awake as something heavy lands on my chest. Ellis’s unreadable face hovers a few feet away. For a second, I think he barged into my room and smacked me as some form of deranged hazing, but then I realize that the weight is still there, and it is bag shaped. I glance at the window, not even surprised to find that dawn has yet to visit. On the other side of the room, Bernadette’s bed stands empty, my evil roommate busy with fire watch. Not that she seems to need much sleep.
Sitting up, I push the bag off me. “What is this?”
“Your new training gear.” Ellis leans against the doorframe as I open the smooth zipper to find a whole slew of things inside. Under Armour and Lululemon shirts the same color as the Academy uniform, but of higher quality, wrestling shoes, a set of boxing headgear and gloves, a weighted jump rope. Even a fluffy towel and lavender-smelling shampoo.
The bag itself is quality, and everything has that things-from-a-store smell, the kind that doesn’t cling to Goodwill donations. Pulling out one of the jackets, the tags promising to keep its wearer warm even in rainy weather, I can already see it will fit me perfectly. I haven’t had anything this nice in my life. “Where did you get this?” I ask.
“I conjured it from thin air. Where do you think?” Ellis crosses his arms over his chest, his biceps straining against the sleeves of his black training tee, and I’ll be damned if the sight doesn’t send heat racing down the inside of my legs. “It’s bad enough you can’t walk ten meters without tripping on a good day. Your body is a damn lilac when the weather is bad.”
I glance at the still-attached price tags, my brows climbing. Each one of those little tight workout shirts is over fifty bucks, and the neon-yellow Nike sneakers are north of two hundred. Yeah. Closing the bag, I throw it back at Ellis’s chest. “I don’t need your charity.”
“Good, because you aren’t getting it.” Ellis hurls the bag back at me like a hot potato, his Scottish tones taking on a more rolling brogue with anger. “But in case you were too deaf to hear yesterday, there has been a change of plans, courtesy of our all-knowing and powerful cadre. I’m training you until such a time in the far-distant future when you are able to find your own ass with your hands without a map, GPS, and three guides. And I am going to have enough problems dealing with you without also having to work with what this Academy calls gear. Change and let’s go.”
I drop the bag onto my bed and pull out a set of training clothes and shoes. Realizing that Ellis is still there watching me, I raise a brow.
He merely leans deeper into the doorframe, a sardonic tilt to his brows. “You think you have something I’ve not seen before?”
“That doesn’t mean it’s open season on my naked ass.” After closing the door in his face, I pull on the first new set of clothing I’ve ever owned—I was right; each piece fits perfectly, including the cool max sports bra, which I don’t even want to think about the male purchasing—and step out into the hallway. “All right, what is it we’re doing? After all, I can barf with the best of them in almost any circumstances.”
Ellis gives me a dark look that sends a warning shiver down my
spine and motions for me to follow him as he moves through the night with predatory ease. I shiver when we get outside, but not as bad as usual, the thin high-tech jacket and thinner base layer doing their jobs as advertised.
Instead of heading toward the forest trails or stopping at the usual dirt-packed training corrals behind the north castle, Ellis leads me into a long, low outbuilding beyond them. After climbing down a set of narrow stone stairs, we walk into what turns out to be a bona fide gymnasium with things like punching bags and training mats and a cage in the center that would make any MMA fan drool. Harsh overhead lights bely the usual old-fashioned flickering-lantern vibe of the dormitories and classrooms. It seems they choose modern or Dark Ages depending on what suits their cadet-torturing needs best.
The whole thing makes my stomach sink.
“Headgear and gloves,” Ellis calls, beckoning me into the ring. He himself wears only the fingerless grappling gloves, his skull apparently too hard to worry about something as insignificant as a strike from me. Or, more likely, the male is simply certain that I won’t land—
I stumble back as Ellis’s fist hits the side of my head, my whole body bucking with the force of the assault. “What the hell?” I yell at him. If I hadn’t just clicked my headgear into place, I’d be seeing darkness right about now. “I wasn’t even—”
The second strike comes before I can finish my sentence. I stumble, nearly losing my footing from the force of the blow, a dull ache spidering through my side. My heart quickens as I see Ellis move again, my hands rising.
“I’m sorry, were you expecting an embossed invitation?” Ellis says calmly, not a hair out of place on his blond head as he circles easily around me.
When the damn male goes for a third strike, I feel something inside me snap, fury spilling into my blood like a fine cocktail. Teeth grinding together, I launch myself at him and shove him in the chest. Hard.
My palms connect with rock-hard muscles that might as well be a stone wall, the collision bouncing me onto my ass.
Ellis smirks at me.
My world darkens at the edges, my body focusing on one overwhelming need: to bury my fist in Ellis’s perfect fucking face. With a snarl, I step in again, aiming my knuckles right for his nose.
This time, instead of letting me land the blow, he blocks the swing midmotion and hooks his foot behind my heel. I fall flat on my back, my whole body hitting the harder-than-it-should-be foam with a resounding thump. A moment later, he follows me down and mounts me, straddling my midsection with powerful thighs. His forest scent surrounds me, not a hint of sweat in it. For him, this isn’t even a warm-up.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” he barks into my face, his eyes dark.
I don’t answer, the roaring inside me too loud to process his words. I’m trapped. Held down on my back. My heart pounds against my ribs, my breathing fast and hard. I can’t be here. Not again. I’m not going to be here. At any cost.
Nails out, I swing wildly at Ellis’s eyes, my hands a blurring windmill between us.
Ellis growls as he snatches one of my wrists, pinning it expertly against the mat. “In what world do you imagine that flailing like a bloody maniac is going to get you anywhere?” he bites out, emphasizing his point by forcing my elbow up, the joint lock sending pain exploding through my shoulder.
I swing at him with my free arm.
Ellis’s face hardens, the pressure on my shoulder increasing until I have to clamp my jaws together just to keep from howling. The asshole is going to rip my joint apart.
“Lesson one,” he says, his perfect face merciless as he looms over me, his blazing eyes showing me a hint of the Scottish warrior I’m sure he used to be, many moons ago. “You don’t flail like a fish on dry land. You think. You orient. Now, tap out, and we’ll start again.”
I glare at him, breathing through the pain and panic and my racing pulse.
“Tap out,” Ellis enunciates, as if I’m either hard of hearing or too much of a dimwit to understand quite so many syllables strung together. “That is when you acknowledge your surrender and I let you up. It is how this training is going to work.”
“Like hell I’m surrendering to you,” I say through clenched teeth, my shoulder howling in pain. It isn’t as if Ellis doesn’t know what he’s doing to me, that the power to hurt or release me is fully in his hands. I hate him for it. But I’m not going to beg for mercy.
“Tap, snap, or nap,” Ellis orders coolly, not letting up on the pressure. “The choice is yours.”
And I’m making it. I’m not begging for the pain to stop like some weakling, throwing myself on Ellis’s good will to let me up. That’s what he wants—that’s what they all want, and I learned long ago not to give it to them.
“Are you truly going to make this a problem?” the male demands, and this time when he increases the pressure on my shoulder, my pained scream fills the entire concrete-walled gymnasium, echoing from the high walls.
Ellis lets go in disgust. “Lesson two,” he says as he climbs to his feet, looming over my limp body. “You do what I say when I say it. Closely followed by lesson three—if you don’t tap out, you are going to have an even longer day than you do already.”
13
Sam
By the first day of liberty, ten days after my arrival at Talonswood, I don’t care how much trouble I’ll get into for leaving the cadets’ quad and heading into the small town. I just need to get away from Ellis. If we had any televisions or computers at Talonswood, I’d think he must have watched every one of those marine training movies with dick drill sergeants and was now moving down the list of every torment known to man.
Except, of course, being an immortal fae male, he has a much larger and more extensive list of techniques than Hollywood could ever come up with. In the past three days, he’s literally doused me with freezing water before forcing me through calisthenics in a sand pit, made me bear-crawl the running trail, and thrown me fully clothed into the deep end of a twelve-foot pool to introduce me to swimming. The only thing he hasn’t done yet is take one of those rattan canes to my shoulders the way I saw Quinn do.
Maybe Ellis knew that would be a bridge too far. Or maybe he alphabetized his torment and we haven’t made it to “W” for whippings yet.
For my part, I’ve thrown up, passed out, and half downed. But I haven’t cried.
Which I think might be pissing him off. I fucking hope so.
With his perfect body exuding power without even trying, his every movement filled with leashed violence, the male deserves a little irritation now and then.
Tugging my leather jacket closer around my uniform blouse—which is the most presentable top I own—I try to shake the annoyance that thoughts of Ellis now provoke in me with Pavlovian predictability and quicken my stride through the picturesque streets of Talonswood. Getting out of the quad proved easier than I’d expected, a quick scramble out the window and down the rough stone wall. I might suck at running, but climbing out of windows—that I’m good at.
Or, more likely, Ellis was right that the “stay to the quad during liberty” rule is more of a formality. Given that the place is on an island, with miles and miles of forest surrounding the habitable part (that much Reese told us, though he didn’t specify where in the world we are), running away isn’t an option. Which also explains why no one is bending over backward to make sure I stay locked up like a good little delinquent.
Talonswood Reform Academy, I quickly discover, makes up only a small part of what could best be called an immortals’ university town, a small enclave in the human world where it seems vamps, demis, and whatever fae chose to stay out of Talon can be themselves. The town has an old-world charm, almost like a postcard of some European city, with winding cobblestone streets lit up with tall iron lampposts and small white-painted brick buildings with colorful awnings and potted flowers. I see some humans as I walk too—they stand out like red flags, with their short, weak bodies and hair that’s not straight out o
f a shampoo commercial. Reese mentioned in class that they live and work knowingly alongside immortals, some passing the secret through generations, others simply liking the pay and knowing how to keep their silence.
I wonder how many humans, the ones outside Talonswood, know about the existence of creatures. Certainly someone must. The government? Is this one of those things they tell the president along with nuclear codes? Here is your briefing on the Middle East, sir. And here is another one about a magical realm you didn’t know was even a thing. I wonder what the new presidents say to such news. I wonder what Janie would say if I ever get the chance to tell her. Which I probably won’t. Those were the rules. For a moment, I miss the girl so deeply, I can’t take another step.
Then I make myself shake it off, burying my emotions deep in the back of my mind. I did right by Janie coming here. And that will have to be enough. Letting that resolve wash over me, I start walking again.
Outside the red-brick-and-ivy academic quarter, there’s a small but very posh residential area, a bustling commercial strip where the nightclub Dusk is located, and tons of huge, very fancy buildings that look dedicated to various forms of research. Oh, and vampires. There are a lot of vampires.
They look at me with open curiosity, even something like lust, which makes me shiver. Unfortunately, for once, I’m not dressed to avoid this kind of attention—I don’t know who this Cassis is, but I’m beginning to get the sense that vampires have little tolerance for frumpiness. I’m wearing my best skinny jeans, black and skintight, tucked into chunky black ankle boots. The white lace cami under my jacket is little better than a nightie, for how much of my cleavage it shows. My hair is loose, and I light-fingered some of Bernadette’s mascara and eye shadow for good measure. It’s the best I could do.