by Callie Rose
When I saw him the next day, Kai and I didn’t talk about what had happened between us—what had changed between us. We were both too stubborn and cowardly for that.
But to my massive relief, something had changed. He no longer avoided me or the other men in the halls, no longer kept himself apart from us. He still sometimes hovered just at the edge of our little group, but he was firmly a part of it.
And it was a good goddamn thing, because things at FU were starting to get weird.
As the weeks went on, the pressure of living in the underworld had split the students evenly. Those who couldn’t take it had been steadily whisked away to some mysterious “daycare” downstairs. Those who could stand it, who grew stronger to spite it, were given jobs.
The job that took the most time—and felt the most important—was perimeter patrol. To conserve energy and strengthen our protection, the wards had been moved in from the wall around the school to just the school building itself. Maintaining and checking them was a daily chore that rotated between assigned groups.
The guys, Hannah, and I had all been assigned to perimeter patrol on the same shift. Toland was big on keeping natural groups together; he was as much general as headmaster by this point, and he knew that we would work far more intuitively with each other than we would with strangers.
Hannah was in charge of wards, since she had the highest marks in magic. Xero took the lead on early detection—changes in the atmosphere and things like that—since he knew the place best. Kai was tasked with checking the high, dark, and small places; places where his hunter’s night vision would come in handy. Jayce used his heightened sense of smell to make sure the others hadn’t missed anything, and I double-checked Jayce’s perceptions with my own sex-seeking radar. Although honestly, I didn’t know if it worked the way Toland intended it to. I could barely taste my own guys down here, how was I going to taste a native of the underworld?
But I actually didn’t mind the patrols. They got us out of the school and gave us a chance to screw around without attracting unwanted attention from Sonja or her posse, who’d only become worse. This particular Thursday, Kai and Jayce were racing in their demon forms to see if vampires or hellhounds were faster.
“Vampires,” Kai said smugly as he perched on a rock next to the castle wall that had been the end goal. Then he frowned, confused. He glanced over his shoulder, looking for the hellhound, and almost fell off the rock when Jayce popped up behind him with a terrifying snarl.
“Damn it!” the dark-haired vampire cursed. “How did you do that?”
Laughter sounded evil and otherworldly through a hellhound’s throat, and I think it startled Jayce. He froze, then shifted back into his human form, grinning sheepishly.
“It’s the underworld,” he admitted with a shrug. “I don’t know, it’s like I’m part of the atmosphere here. I can just sort of… bleep forward at will.”
“Portal travel? Cheater.” Kai glared at him.
“It’s not portals,” Jayce objected. “It’s just—I don’t even know what it is, honestly, but it makes it easier to live in this cave. Makes me feel like I can breathe, you know?”
“You have been dealing with your claustrophobia pretty well since we’ve been here,” I said thoughtfully. "Do you feel like this place is changing you?”
He shook his head, his blue eyes as bright and open as always. He sure didn’t look like he was turning evil. “Just adapting, I guess. I’m good at that. Had lots of practice growing up.”
“You and me both,” I muttered with a sigh.
He smiled at me sympathetically. “I think yours was probably harder to deal with than mine. I had to adapt because my parents—before they built their little commune homestead thing—they were caravaners.”
Xero frowned at him in confusion. “They were what?”
“Caravaners,” Jayce repeated. “We lived in an RV and traveled all over the place with a bunch of other people who also lived in RVs. I saw forty-nine states by the time I was six, and went all through Central America and Canada. We even took one trip to South America, but then there was all this political unrest and stuff, and my dad almost got shot, so they decided it would be safer for me to live in a house. That was when I was eleven, I think.”
“So your family were gypsies?” Kingston wrinkled his nose. “Ugh.”
“That word is offensive,” Jayce said matter-of-factly. “But no, we weren’t. I just told you. We were caravaners.”
“And what did your caravaner parents do for money?” Kingston asked.
Jayce shrugged. “Eh, I don’t know. My dad’s a professor and my mom’s a writer, so they probably just published stuff. I never really paid attention.”
Kingston gaped, then shook his head in disbelief. “I knew the specifics of the family business by the time I was eight. I was practically raised in a boardroom.”
“That does sound boring.” Kai stood up on the rock, stretching his arms over his head with a smirk.
“Not at all, it was fascinating. Not to mention, educational. I had the highest marks in math all through school.”
“Congratulations,” Xero said wryly. “Did you ever have friends?”
“I had colleagues.” Kingston lifted his chin with a sniff. “Children of my parents’ colleagues, in fact.”
“Yay, nepotism,” Kai drawled.
“Don’t tell me you were playing house with your colleagues,” I said with a grin.
“Of course we didn’t play house.” He grimaced, as if the very idea was distasteful. “We played tycoon.”
“How do you play tycoon?” Hannah clambered up onto the rock beside Kai.
“Well, it always starts with a board meeting. You decide which direction you want to take the business in. There’s lots of shouting and disagreeing, and then eventually you take a vote on which small business to crush. Then someone has to play the small business owner, and you open negotiations. The goal is to give him an offer he can’t refuse.” Kingston grinned evilly and made a tent of his fingers.
“Wow. Sounds thrilling.” I rolled my eyes. God lord, how am I actually falling for these men?
The thought was so natural and spontaneous that it caught me entirely off-guard. My body jerked slightly, and I cleared my throat, hoping no one had noticed the sudden flush I could feel rising in my cheeks.
Fortunately, the guys were all too busy staring at Kingston in disbelief to catch the sudden change in me, giving me a chance to tame my emotions before they leaked into the guys through our shared bond.
“It was quite thrilling, actually,” Kingston said, his grin softening to a natural one. “It taught us negotiation and stuff, but it also gave us an imaginative outlet.”
“Riiight.” Xero drew out the word doubtfully.
“No, really. For example, sometimes we would be the Knights of the Round Table, and we would have to quash the Days of the Square tables.”
“You know that Knights of the Round Table is knights with a K, right?” Kai threw in, barely stifling a laugh.
“I do now, obviously. I didn’t when I was six though.”
“I bet your parents were so proud.”
There was just a hint of sarcasm in Xero’s voice, probably indiscernible to anyone who didn’t know him well. Which, of course, meant that Kingston picked up on it immediately. The dragon shifter narrowed his green eyes, then grinned.
“Tell us about your parents, Xero,” he said innocently.
The fire demon shrugged. “Dad was CFO for a construction company. Mom was an artist. My brother and sister and I did normal kid shit. Didn’t travel the world, didn’t play tycoon—you know, just Legos and dolls and shit.”
Kingston looked vaguely disappointed, and Jayce shot him a fiercely disapproving look, probably for falling in line with traditional gender stereotypes or something.
“How ’bout you, Kai?” I asked. “What’s your background?”
“Japanese mom, Polynesian dad, Norwegian sire.”
�
�That’s not what I meant.” I rolled my eyes with a laugh. “I mean, how did you grow up?”
“Same way you did,” he said.
“So…you grew up tending to your sick mom and trying to get your absent dad to pay a bill now and then?”
Softness flared in his dark eyes for a moment, an almost tender, protective glint. Then he grimaced. “That’s not what I meant. I just meant I was an infant, then I was a kid, then I was an adult, now I’m a vampire.”
“Ah, leave it,” Jayce said with a shrug. “He’s mysterious, it’s his whole thing.”
“I’m like a Xero-Piper hybrid.” Hannah scrambled a little higher up the rock, scrunching her face up thoughtfully as she checked the wards. “I had that sort of normal childhood until my parents died, then my sister and I moved in with my grandma, who was pretty old and got sick a lot.”
“How did your parents die?” Jayce asked, his voice infused with the empathy that came so naturally to him.
“Car accident.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Going around a turnpike in a storm. Semi going the opposite way lost control.”
“That’s awful,” Xero said. “Sorry to hear it.”
“Didn’t mean to be a downer. It was a long time ago, but I do still miss them a lot. Although…” Her expression fell a little. “Now I miss my whole family.” She shook herself slightly, as if refusing to give in to thoughts that would drag her down into a depression again. “This ward’s good. On to the next!”
We walked along for a while with the uneven, dark stone wall of the school to our left and the broad black and red expanse of the cave to our right.
“Jayce has new hellhound abilities in the underworld. I wonder if that means I’d fly better down here,” Kingston suddenly said.
“Wouldn’t try it in here.” The blond man shuddered, glancing upward. “You run into one of those stalactites, you’ll mess yourself up.”
“Aren’t those stalagmites?” Kingston asked.
“Doesn’t matter what you call them,” I interjected with a chuckle. “They’ll still fuck you up.”
“I’m gonna try it,” Kingston said. “Look out.”
“Wait.”
Xero’s voice was a command that brought all of us to a halt. He stood at full alert, not moving a muscle. I saw his ear twitch, and I focused on my radar, reaching out with my senses. Jayce inhaled deeply through his nose.
The underworld vibe was thickening somewhere to our right. Thickening—and complicating.
Sex. Blood. The musky scent of something animalistic.
The sulfuric, fiery atmosphere grew stronger, and a shudder worked its way up my spine.
Jayce spoke quietly, his voice strained and tight.
“Something’s coming.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Run!”
Xero’s bellow echoed off the cave walls, followed immediately by a chorus of screeches and roars. Each of us shifted into our more powerful demon forms as we followed the wall of the castle, racing back toward the massive entry door. They were coming closer, and there were a lot of them.
Kingston roared overhead, and the dark cave was suddenly illuminated by his flame. His roar changed to one of pain, and I looked up, my heart leaping into my throat. A dozen bat-like creatures were tearing at his wings.
Come on, persuasion, work for me this time.
It’d been weak and unreliable for the entire first part of the school year, but ever since Kai and I had kissed in his dorm room, my magic had felt much steadier. Stronger.
I hoped like hell it would work now.
“Sleep!” I ordered the little monsters, raising my voice as much as I could without undoing the effects of my persuasive magic. “Go to sleep!”
One by one, they fell out of the air, plummeting to the ground with sickening splats.
“Nice one.” Kai glanced at me, a sort of feral pride in his expression.
I grinned back. His approval shouldn’t have mattered in that moment, but it gave me a warm feeling down to my toes.
“Watch your back!” Hannah shouted as she spun around, building an energy ball up between her hands. I ducked out of the way as she fired at the horde on our heels. I risked a glance behind me, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Oh my fuck.
The monsters who lived in our school were weak sauce compared to these abominations. A massive spider whose abdomen rose up into the head, arms, and torso of a humanoid demon was leading the pack. Behind him, naked women with eagle talons and wings, gaping black mouths, and burning yellow eyes flew through the air, talons outstretched to rip us apart.
A poisonous-looking salamander as big as a tour bus crawled along the ground, knocking boulders loose and shattering stalag…whatevers. It didn’t even bother to climb over the wall that bordered the castle courtyard, smashing right through the heavy stone as if it were tissue paper. There were more behind it, so many more, but I could only hear them. Their screams were like death and despair. Tears streaked down my face, and I realized that something in the pack was evoking and feeding off of our emotions.
“Keep it together!” I shouted, to no one in particular. “Block them out.”
We finally skidded to a stop at the door, and I took a quick head count as we pushed through it. Oh, shit, no. Jayce was missing. I turned around to call for him, but Xero yanked me inside and slammed the door shut, then barred it.
“No! Jayce!” I wailed.
“What?”
The blond man’s voice from behind me made me jump, and I spun around to find Jayce leading a pack of teachers and advanced students toward us.
“I told you, I’m faster here.” He shot me a lopsided grin, though his features remained tense. “I told them already.”
I wanted to smack him for scaring me, but there wasn’t time for nonsense. I’d make him pay for it later by fucking him until neither of us could walk. Right now, an army of fallen were at the door, and we were not prepared.
“The wards?” Hannah asked Toland, her voice high and thready.
He shook his head. “Hope they hold and be ready to fight.”
My whole body tensed up as the first monster slammed against the door with a booming thud, making the heavy wood shudder. “Shit.”
I grabbed my guys, one after the other, and pressed my lips to theirs, fueling up on the spark that ignited between us even now. They all gave willingly, charging me up like a battery. And if I kissed them a little harder and deeper because I was terrified one or all of us might die, well, no one had to know.
“Headmaster!” Lena Shen, the applied magic teacher, flew around the corner behind us, out of breath and frantic. “We have to protect the wards!”
“The wards are intended to protect us, Lena,” he said gravely.
“They can’t withstand a direct attack of this magnitude. If they break through the wards, nowhere in the castle will be safe.” She wrung her hands, almost sobbing. “We have to stop them!”
Silence fell over the hall as the implication of her words settled in. We couldn’t just hunker down and defend our territory. We were going to have to go out there and meet the threat.
Damn it. Of course.
Toland faced off against the tall woman, his mustache quivering as he shook his head. “I won’t tell them to go out there.”
“You won’t have to,” Kingston said, stepping forward. “Hey, Hannah, you want to go for a ride?”
She looked at him with confusion for a second, then grinned. Without another word, the two of them raced for the stairs, no doubt heading for the roof. Other flyers and mages followed, prepared to attack the invaders from above.
“And we’ll go out the front,” Xero said grimly, fixing his gaze on the door as it shook with another unholy boom.
“Are you shitting me? No, we’re doing this the smart way. Come on.” Kai shook his head and marched toward the end of the school, which was pressed nearly all the way to the cave wall. Jayce and I followed, barely looking back as a bu
nch of other people followed us. I could hear Toland and Shen arguing, but the honest truth was, it wasn’t up to either of them. Our lives were in danger no matter what, and if we chose to fight, they couldn’t stop us.
One unexpected benefit of all the perimeter patrols and wandering we’d done was that we had all practically memorized the layout of the school, from hidden passageways to random little side doors. We hurried to a door on the far side of the school, which almost didn’t have room to open because it was so close to the cave wall. Kai forced it as wide as he could get it, and we all followed him through then crept single-file around the side of the school. We could already hear the sounds of battle from above, but I couldn’t yet see it.
“We know you can shrink,” Jayce murmured quietly in my ear as we walked. “But how big can you get?”
“Guess we’re going to find out.”
He clapped a hand on my ass and squeezed. “Power boost.”
I almost laughed, but it died in my throat as the battle came into view. Energy balls, lightning, and fire rained down from above. Our encroaching enemies shrieked in pain and fury, redoubling their attacks. I heard a student cry out, a piercing scream, and my heart began to race.
Big, I thought, picturing it in my mind. I want to be big. Bigger than the spider. Bigger than the salamander. I can do it. I’m massive. Gargantuan.
We were snaking around behind the onslaught and with every step I took, I grew a little larger. I knew I could get as small as a toddler, but I had never pressed the upward limits before. Soon, I was looking down on Jayce, then Kai, and then I was taller than everyone around us. I couldn’t tell if I was any stronger though, and I began to worry that I would stretch myself too thin. Size without strength would only make it harder to fight.
When we were all in position, gathered behind the last corner that concealed us from our enemies, Kai raised a hand and counted down with his fingers.
Three. Two. One. Attack!
We all surged forward, beating the hell out of whatever was in front of us with fireballs and fists and fangs, whatever weapons we had at our disposal. A big, ugly cyclops stood over twenty feet high right in front of us, blocking our way. Some of the students attacked his legs, but he didn’t even seem to notice. I stepped forward, moving quickly since my strides were so much longer in this shape. My growing ability seemed to have tapped out—I could only get tall enough to come eye level to his chin.