Not that there was any shame in that.
Which was why I’d been furious last night at Genny’s insinuations. She’d fucked half our year, and the guys she hadn’t fucked were because she wasn’t attracted to them. Whether or not Eve had been blowing our brains in the sack, she didn’t have a right to judge.
Figured that another woman would do that though.
I swear, some bitches were cats through and through.
“Nah, he was out for the count the second Eve slept. Put the guitar down and zoned.” Eren grunted. “Took her a while to come down.”
Adrenaline highs were a bitch.
She’d danced some over in the shadows, away from the fire, with Reed, Stefan, and me of all people, but only when three songs she claimed to love had blasted on the speakers.
My lips twitched at the memory. Her moves were unpracticed, and yet, they were also hot as sin. Damn woman knew how to make those curves work for her.
Around two AM, Nestor had started playing his guitar and she’d cuddled into him, then fallen asleep after a while. Could have felt like church camp with the guitar notes floating around the fire, all they’d needed was to start singing ‘Morning Has Broken,’ but it had been a surprisingly chill end to the night. Everyone had calmed down and grabbed a few hours.
Now, morning had broken and we needed to get our asses back to the Academy.
With a yawn, I leaped to my feet and grunted as my body protested a night on the unforgiving sand. Shrugging off the aches, I shuffled over to the tent and crouched down. It was probably wrong of me, stupid even considering the crowd, but I crawled in behind Eve. The second I did, Nestor’s eyes flashed open and I was relieved to see he was aware, if not awake—it meant she’d been safe all night long.
When he registered it was me, he closed them again, and didn’t even grumble when I pressed my face into Eve’s throat and wrapped my arm around her belly. It was a move she’d never have anticipated from me. I’d never done more than hold her damn hand, and I knew it was a jerk thing to do because of that, but her souls knew me. She didn’t even stiffen or tense up at my approach, if anything, she melted harder into me. Rather than make me feel less guilty, I felt like more of a shit for taking advantage, then she hummed under her breath and murmured, “Morning, Frazer. Nestor.”
I froze, stunned that she knew it was me, then I felt something inside me. And I wasn’t talking about my cock starting to turn into a lead pipe.
What the hell was that?
It felt like her fingers were dancing over my souls. A notion that had me blinking. Was she petting them? Like a kid would pet their dog?
What the fuck?
Nestor grunted then. “Stop it, Eve.”
My eyes flared wide and he looked at me, shaking his head. I knew she’d been sleeping in his room, and wondered if that wasn’t the first time she’d done this, whatever this was. But to two of us? At the same time?
Her lips plumped into a slight pout, and I watched as her brow puckered before the petting stopped. Another hum escaped her as she tumbled back into sleep, and I let her because even though we needed to move, I wanted to know what the fuck was going on even more.
“She did that yesterday morning. Stunned the crap out of me.” Nestor’s eyes were stark. “I’m thinking it’s what turned Dre.”
I licked my lips, half terrified by his words and half exhilarated. Eve had given Dre access to his bear years ahead of schedule. Not that he could take advantage of that here at Caelum. If anything, what she’d done had caused more of an inconvenience for him because I couldn’t imagine how much control it took not to let the creature run rampant, to run wild and free. But for all that, I’d take it. I longed for her to help declare my soul, to make me a creature in the true sense of the word.
At the moment, we were just fledglings. Potential Ghouls in the making.
But Eve? She’d made Dre, the guy she probably liked the least, the most secure.
There was definitely an irony to that.
“Why is she doing it?” I rasped.
“Don’t think she knows she is. That’s twice she’s done it now, and each time it’s when she’s waking up. I think she’s trying to do what Dre taught her. Look for what soul is dominant that day the second she’s aware. But something goes wrong—”
“Or, what we do to find control isn’t something she can replicate,” I mused. Despite myself, I turned my face into her throat once more and pressed a kiss to her skin. “Sleepyhead,” I mumbled, wincing when she ground her hips into me. “Time to wake up.”
Another pout that was so unlike her had my lips twitching into a grin. “Don’t want to. Too early.”
“Yeah, but we have to get back. It’s a big day for you today.”
Her eyes flashed open, and big doe eyes dazedly flashed around the tent. “It is?”
Yeah. It was. I’d seen her schedule. “You’re going to see some N-Files today.”
“N-Files?” Another slow blink, then she tensed. “Wait. The others mentioned that before. N-Files…”
“It’s a shitty joke,” Nestor informed her, his voice husky from just having woken up. “Like the show, the X-Files? Remember? We made you watch it.”
“Mulder and Scully.” Her nose wrinkled. “I didn’t like it.”
He snickered. “No. You didn’t.”
She yawned, then rubbing at her eyes, mumbled, “I think I remember. They’re files on nests, right?”
“Yep.” I ran a hand down her arm, relieved she wasn’t tensing up or trying to pull away. “You’re going to start your real training.”
“I am?” She stretched and sighed. “Ugh, no more talk of serious stuff before food.”
Both Nestor and I shot each other a glance and began laughing—there were shittier ways to start a day, that was for damn sure.
❖
Eve
Deren Livings had skin as dark as ebony wood, and it gleamed like he polished it. I was fascinated and he knew it. I kept studying him, studying his beauty, and knew only my strange origin, my unusual heritage, excused my stare.
I was really trying not to be rude, and in Caelum, I’d come across such diverse skin tones that I shouldn’t be taken aback, but Deren was beyond beautiful. It was like asking me not to stare into the facets of a beautiful gemstone. Not to look at the petals of a flower and wonder what they felt like against my skin.
It didn’t make for the best of starts for my ‘N-File’ lesson. Or, as was the actual name of the class, Nest Origins.
The class demographic was noticeably female. Not a single male was in the room except for the teacher, which was kind of stupid in my mind. I knew the faculty consisted of creatures who were high up the ranks, supremely low in the ranks and too useless to be out in the field, or those who were injured too badly to return to their original positions or were healing. And I wondered what had put him in this classroom, in a class that was aimed at girls.
I’d been coming to learn about ‘-ists’ and though I’d like to claim the class was sexist, having seen the girls train and the boys too, I could see why girls had different roles. There was no doubt we could kick ass—hadn’t I done that last night?—but the men held distinctive differences. Their bodies were weapons, and while I had no doubt that some of the women were trained to the highest degree, there was just something missing from their makeup.
It made me feel like a traitor to say that, but it was the truth. Their souls were just less deadly than the males’ on a physical front whereas mentally? Things were skewed—there was a reason we had a propensity to turn Ghoul, after all. I believed it made us shrewder, smarter, apter at dealing with things with our brains and not our fists. Which, in the grand scheme of things, was just as important.
Everything in its proper place, after all.
We’d already spent half the day picking through the cultural differences between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland in Ghoul Theory. Why? Because there were three major nests in the country, and for
a Pack to blend in, there was vital information that was required. It could be down to the certain twang on a word, the certain use of a slang word in one town that was out of touch in another. Simple things that would help a Pack blend in, slip into the cracks.
It reminded me of a scene in Inglourious Basterds—a movie the guys had insisted I watch a few weeks ago. Michael Fassbender had gotten shot because, in German territory and undercover as a German officer, he’d raised three fingers when placing an order for more drinks. Germans did it one way, the British another—at least according to Quentin Tarantino—and Michael Fassbender had been no more for that one small mistake.
There was so much information to process that my brain was in heaven.
But now, things had taken a different turn.
Sure, there was information, heaps of it, but it was darker.
Learning about the cultural heritage of a group of people was fascinating. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I’d be able to get my hands on such detailed reports about people a world away, but this? The turn we’d taken? It wasn’t interesting. It was scary.
“There’s a strict hierarchy among Ghouls,” Deren was saying as we flicked through the folders he’d handed us on a nest Caelum called ‘O’Neill.’ It was one of the Irish nests we’d spent the morning learning about. “It might not seem like it,” he continued when no one said a word, “in fact, they go out of their way to look like there isn’t, but it’s nonsense.
“These nests are extensive, and over the years, they have taken over villages and morphed them into towns. Towns full of flesh-feeding suckers that need eradicating—”
“Then why don’t we, sir?” a girl called Agathe asked, interrupting the instructor’s flow.
“Because slaughtering an entire town of Ghouls would raise questions.”
“But they killed a town in the first place,” Agathe countered.
“Yes, and replaced them with their own kind. The numbers didn’t alter that much, and a lot of these towns were established before the digital age. Some colonies have been around for hundreds of years or more. Destroying one brings attention to them and to us, and we don’t need that.”
Agathe scowled but nodded, and Deren’s lips twitched before he continued with his earlier speech. “So, we have the head honcho, simply known as the ductor. They are the leaders, the kings or queens of their nest. They are treated as such as well. They’re royalty—Juliet McAllister is one such ductor. Then, there are the Ghouls beneath them. The bules—” He pronounced the word ‘boo-ley.’ “It’s a bastardized version of the English word for ‘bully.’ They have a position like a government official. Then, there are the legatus, the Enforcers for the bules, the praefectus, and finally the pecus. The majority of the nest are pecus. They are sheep. Nothing more, nothing less. In another time, they’d be called cannon fodder.”
“That’s what happened at Aboh, isn’t it, sir?” Josefa, a Chilean girl, queried.
“Yes. Unfortunately, mostly pecus were sent in, a few praefectus to manage them, and a single legatus. We had hoped for a handful of bules, but no such luck.” He reached up and rubbed his chin. He had a small beard that sat under his bottom lip. The hair was thick, and he tugged at it as though he was in the middle of a thought. “Those hierarchies are important. With each nest, and there are thousands, you must come to know who is who. By name and even by face.
“When you graduate, you will be assigned to a certain territory. You must know the nearby nests better than you did your own families when you were home. If you can’t do that, then you are no use to your Pack.”
The girls were too young to hear news like that, and their faces and posture reflected it. I thought it was a cruel way to introduce them to this side of their life, but then, Caelum, I was coming to learn, was cruel. It was just far less evil than most of these children had experienced in their past.
“The Gallagher Nest is a clever one,” Deren explained next, and he pressed a button revealing a map of a slot of territory south of the border, just around Dublin. “They were an integral force in the IRA back in the day, aligned their cause with the nationalist front.”
Pictures were flashed next of high-ranking bules, and we even saw a small, grainy image of the ductor, an apparently evil woman called Claudia.
My Pack hadn’t been wrong when they told me that most Ghouls were female. All the important members of the Gallagher nest were female, and there were only a handful of males.
I wasn’t certain why, but that knowledge put me on edge. Severely so. It felt like there was a connection there to something I didn’t really know yet. Which, I knew, made zero sense whatsoever.
Sometimes, I wondered if I had old souls inside me. As though they’d been recycled in me. They seemed to know things I didn’t, seemed to be more mature than I was, more capable in many ways. It was unnerving, especially at moments like these when I felt certain there was a gap between what Deren was saying and what I knew.
It put me on edge for the rest of the day.
“You’re Sin Eater today, aren’t you?” Frazer asked me just after I got out of the shower. I released a scream, not having realized someone was in my room, and then pressed a hand to my throat when I saw him lounging on my sofa.
When his eyes cast over me in a towel that didn’t show much, but still revealed far more than I was comfortable with, his gaze clashed with mine and held. I got the feeling it was hard for him not to look down, not to tilt his head and stare at me some more, but instead, he went out of his way to show me that he wasn’t gaping at me or trying to make me feel uncomfortable.
“What are you doing in here?” I demanded on a huff after my heart slowed down.
“Eren said he thought you were Sin Eater today. You and I have a training session.”
I blinked at him. “I do?”
“Yes. Meet me in the gym when dark hits.”
With that, he disappeared, and I grunted in irritation. The last thing I wanted was to work out again, but Nestor was right. These one-to-one sessions were important. Not just to get in touch with my souls, but with the men who housed them too. I was busy, tired, and a little stressed over the sudden change in my schedule—all with the threat of discovery hanging over me too. Still, Frazer was pretty to look at…
Maybe the day wouldn’t be ending too poorly, after all.
8
Frazer
“Frazer?”
Eve’s soft voice drifted over to me as I carried on pumping iron over by the free weights. Once I’d hit the count of fifteen, I put the dumbbell down and called out, “Over here.”
Her tread was soft as she wandered over to me, carefully skimming around the padded mats lining the floor, as well as the workout equipment.
“Why are you in the dark?”
“Because I prefer it.”
I didn’t have to see her scowl to know that was exactly what she was doing.
“Why? Doesn’t it make it harder to concentrate?”
“No. I like it. It calms the Sin Eater.” To be honest, I wasn’t sure why all the Sin Eaters hadn’t picked up on this like I had. Not that there were many at Caelum though. Incubi were far more common as Pack leaders than my kind.
“How come?” she inquired, her tone interested as she stepped over to the two-shelf table that supported everything from half-pound dumbbells to forty-pound behemoths. I saw her eying the weight I was lifting, then study the shelves.
“I’m not sure,” I told her honestly. “I just like it. It’s almost as if… you know when you have a really bad headache and you don’t want to be in the sun?” Her nod was hesitant. “Well, it’s like that. Constantly.”
“Does that mean you’re in pain constantly?” she asked, and her forehead was puckered with concern.
For me.
I licked my lips and slowly said, “Pretty much.”
“How come you aren’t a bear to be around?”
“Like Dre?” I quirked a brow at her, pleased when she laug
hed a little. I hadn’t meant to make her concerned for me, didn’t need that kind of softness from her, even though it was pretty fucking nice to have someone at my back who wasn’t a brother.
“Yeah. Like Dre. Figuratively and literally,” she teased.
“I guess I just shove it aside.” I shrugged. “I didn’t bring you here to talk about that, though.”
“You didn’t want me to work out again, did you?” she said on a groan, and I was amused as fuck to watch her take a step toward the door.
Like she could ever outrun me.
“No. I wanted to give you something when the guys weren’t around.” I jerked my chin at the bench to my left. “I don’t have fancy wrapping paper or shit like that.”
“Wrapping paper?”
Christ. The cult. I guess they weren’t about bows and ribbons on birthday presents, in fact… “What do the people from your compound get for their birthday?”
She blinked. “Get? Nothing. It was a feast day. We all ate a good meal together.”
My lips curved into a sneer. “That’s it? Didn’t you eat together every day, anyway?”
“Yeah, but it felt more special.”
Jesus. “Well,” I told her, clearing my throat, “that pretty much sucks balls, Eve.” She squeaked at my statement. “From now on, we’re going to celebrate the fuck out of our birthdays. You hear me?”
“Stefan said I should pick my own birthday.”
I’d heard the weird bullshit about how they’d had a communal date at the New Order, and I approved of Stefan’s suggestion wholeheartedly. Nodding, I questioned, “Have you picked one yet?”
She shook her head. “No. It seems silly.”
“Why? It’s the one thing we all have that belongs to us and us alone. Just as it is with our name.”
“Millions of people could share your name and your birthdate,” she countered.
I shrugged. “It’s about being an individual, Eve. Not about being a part of a congregation. You’re already in a Pack. An unusual one, but a Pack nonetheless. You have the group shit down rote. But individually speaking? You’re still kind of the New Order’s puppet. You don’t wear anything except for yoga pants and boys’ shirts, and I’ve never seen you do anything with your hair—”
Eight Souls: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part TWO Page 21