by A. K. Koonce
And I give it all to him.
Somehow, the metal clinging to my spine allows this little bit of magic. It’s nonthreatening, it’s peaceful, and that must be why.
A growl like violence and agony trembles from his body, and I feel every ounce of that pain. It just isn’t long-lasting. It’s over in a matter of three strong and relentless heartbeats.
His heartbeats.
Wide and vibrant green eyes flash open to me. His eyes are locked on me hard, like he’s reading me. Knowing me.
The word spirit animal flits through my mind
It’s an unsettling sensation that shivers over my damp skin. Scents wash over me entirely that I can’t make sense of, and there are two things in this moment that I know with absolute clarity.
One, this pup is somehow magical. Two, I know he’s meant to be mine. My spirit animal perhaps.
I have to pull back from him, but before I can, his big paws slip over my thighs, and he settles into my lap. His big body covers me almost entirely.
A silent smile pulls at my lips as his head nuzzles against my neck.
“Who would’ve guessed the only friend I’d make here is someone who can’t say a Goddess damn word,” I whisper to myself.
My tired head tilts to the side, and there’s a long moment where we’re just holding one another up.
“I fucking hate this,” I whisper to him. There’s something about confessing things to animals that’s easier than saying them aloud to anyone else. “I hate this Academy. I hate the other Sekar. I hate . . . myself.” The last word barely slips out, but it does come.
I hate myself for killing those people, a sensation that fills me belatedly. Strange I should feel that now when I’ve spent my entire life sacrificing criminals to my Lady. But that’s just what they were. Criminals. I don’t know what those people did. I didn’t bother to look into it further. Not that Krist would have let me. I’d done it to survive, and I don’t regret it, but it still leaves an ache in my chest, and I have nothing to show for my freedom except blood dripping down my skin and metal attached from the base of my neck, down my spine, stopping just at my lower back.
A little whine echoes around us from my new best friend.
Before I drop further into my hate hole I’m digging, I shove up off the ground and stride out of the shower stall. Water flings around my feet and over the corridor tiles as I make my way back towards my room. It’s cold, and my nipples are the first to tell me just how incredibly cold it actually is when I pass a guy whose chin and throat are covered in blood. His pupils are so big, they’re like wells of power, and he settles that intense stare on every inch of my nakedness.
“I like your dress,” he says with a crawling smile and a voice that sounds like sweet apples dipped in sin. The undercurrent of an accent laces his words, but I can’t quite place it. French? European?
I bet that pick-up line would work for him most nights.
Not tonight.
“I’d give it to you, but it’s not your size. You’d never fill it out.” I lift my hands to emphasise my lack of care about my nudity and really give him a sympathetic look when his dark brows lift high, his smile widening to reveal two perfectly sharp teeth. Don’t need to be a genius to know what he is. Darkness surrounds his pupils along with smokey red, like blood.
Vampire.
His big body is distracting, though. Normally vampires are lithe, wraith-like creatures with unhealthy skin that clings to their protruding bones. This man is a different sort of vampire. I can tell with a single glance.
He’s healthy, with dark mahogany skin that stretches over a tall, muscled body. Thick dreadlocks are tied behind his neck, revealing the trademark silver collar that most of us prisoners wear in this hellhole.
I open the door across from him to room 120, and my new best friend brushes against my leg and slips inside before I even get a chance. I’m still holding the dark gaze of the dangerous vampire across from me. I can’t look away.
“You’d be surprised how much I could fill, ma chère,” he says on a low, suggestive drawl.
His confident, crawling tone almost makes me smile as I close the door with a quiet click. It almost makes me forget the breakdown I nearly had in the shower and all the feelings still clouding my chest.
Fuck those feelings. I can start over here in this place. I’ll be safe here. I can live safely here. And I won’t let anything tarnish what I’m building.
Not even myself.
Chapter Six
The closet in my dorm room is filled with all of the clothes from my apartment. I hate the fact that they magically whisked them here. It feels like a violation, but I’m glad to at least have something of my own. I’m warm in my T-shirt, shorts, and blankets for less than five minutes when the door bangs open. It jars into the wall, and the hinges cry a sad little tune that I feel deep in my tired soul.
Bright light flicks on and blinds me for a single instant.
I’m up with a weapon drawn in the blink of an eye. Said weapon just happens to be a bedside lamp. The wolf at my side emits a long growl that hums along my skin from where he stands poised at my side.
“Lower the lamp. This was my room first,” the girl says, striding past me without even blinking an eye at my makeshift weapon gleaming in the harsh overhead light.
I stare at her, dumbfounded, as she starts shoving notebooks into a bag and tying back her blonde hair that’s clumped with mud.
Then it hits me.
“You’re the cum girl,” I state, slightly groggily. “The Gavin fucker,” I add. “Dragon bitch.” For maximum effect.
She has many names.
None of them are very good.
“Wow, you are just super sweet, aren’t you?” She shakes her head at me and hikes a heavy book bag over her shoulder. Her nose looks bruised from where I smashed it in with the heel of my foot, but she doesn’t act like it hurts her at all. “You’re also going to be late.”
“Late?” At this point I’ve casually lowered the lamp back to the bedside table, but her words are more threatening than any knife she could pull on me right now.
“Yeah. We’re intro students. We don’t get the pleasure of sleeping. Grab the textbook they assigned you and follow me, New Girl.”
She’s rushing out of the room without another word, and I stand there in my fucking jammies. A long, heavy sigh shoves from my lips. My fingers lift to reach behind me and skim across the metal at the base of my spine.
Would they really release the belladonna just for skipping night class?
“Let’s go, New Girl!” she calls down the hall to me.
Motherfucker.
Introduction to Soul Searching, the blackboard rimmed in gold says.
Fantastic. I’m awake for twenty-five hours straight now, just so I can catch up on a therapy session.
I’m seated at the only vacant back table just behind Gavin Fucker, Woman of Dragon, Keeper of the Cum.
Wow, maybe I should stop.
I stare straight ahead, my eyes so dry I’m not really taking anything in.
I’m just existing. That’s all I can promise right now.
Metal hits metal, and I’m shoved to the left when a heavy shoulder thrusts into mine and nearly pushes me out of my chair.
“I liked the dress better,” the man says flatly as he sits down, opens his text book and never looks my way.
It’s the vampire. It’s official. This school isn’t a school at all. It’s fucking purgatory.
I glare at the single dreadlock that’s slipped from his tie to graze down his strong jaw. His jawline’s so sharp, it could crack marble. Brown-red eyes are fixed on the chalkboard at the front, but I know he’s aware of me.
I can see it in the way his body’s held tight. He’s listening. Observing without looking.
My hand lifts ever so slowly. My fingers curl. All but one. And I flip his pretty face off as he pretends not to notice.
“That’s not very neighborly, neighbor,” he
whispers with a small, vicious smile.
His alluring accent crawls over my flesh, and I have to force myself not to shiver.
I almost roll my eyes at him, but then it occurs to me that he’s seen me naked. And somewhere in that little Neanderthal brain of his, nakedness equals friendship. He thinks we’re friends of sorts. Or he hopes.
A beat passes as other students start pulling out notebooks and pens, and I simply consider the handsome vampire with the cruel smile for a bit too long.
“How long have you been here?” I ask while slowly lowering my middle finger and placing my hands quietly in my lap.
He still doesn’t look at me, but he does engage. “Too long.” There’s so much packed into that little statement that this time, it does send a shiver racing up and down my spine.
“And you room with Sialen?” I ask, firing off as many questions as he’ll let our little friendship get away with. Anything to distract me from the ominous tone of the previous answer.
“Do you have a thing for the broken Sekar?” His words are a drawn-out, careless thing and he doesn’t answer my question. He’s good at pretending. Pretending he doesn’t care about anyone or anything, but I see through that. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
And yet, he’s interested in me, and I can see it.
“He’s a Sekar. Isn’t everyone curious about him?”
He scoffs. “Not as curious as they are about the enchanting witch with more power than Krist herself.” His dark and deadly gaze slides to me then, and a telling shiver skirts over my flesh. “I hear you broke out of your confines.” His gaze stops on the pulse at my throat and then goes down to my chest. As if he can see through my flesh and gauge the power inside me.
“Sia is the way he is because he fucked up here. Don’t follow in your ancestor’s footsteps, pretty little Sekar. Death always comes. Even to those who worship it.” His hand lifts, and he twirls a lock of my inky hair around his finger as he studies me intently.
“Mr. Rueren DeVoure, please stop petting our new student and give me your utmost attention,” a man drones in exasperated tones.
Those depthless, dark eyes slip down to my lips before his fingers straighten, my hair drops, and he spins that tormenting smile toward the man in a white button-down at the front of the class. “You have my entire focus, Professor Sills.”
It’s an alluring but mocking thing, his accent. There are no dips or emphasis to a single word I have ever heard the man say. It’s like the entire world is a bore to Rueren DeVoure. And the professor seems to know this.
“No one and nothing have your entire focus, Mr. DeVoure,” the aging little man says as he opens his book and flips through the pages absently.
“Not until recently,” Rueren whispers so quietly, it seems only I hear him.
I’m still staring at the hard angles of his jaw and cheek as the professor starts to state what the class has been working on. I miss the first few lines he says, but something hits hard in my mind when he explains more.
“As we all know, Soul Searching is the magical binding of two souls, whether it be males and females, supernaturals or mundanes, the dead or the living. Two bound as one will always heighten the powers of both.”
Dead or living.
Soul Searching isn’t an emotional therapy session where I’m going to cry about my mid-midlife crisis. It’s a process of magic. Combining two souls into one.
It’s clearly exactly what Headmistress Krist did. She died and somehow was brought back. Joined with . . . whatever the fuck it is she is. Robot? Cyborg?
But why? And why didn’t he stop at a simple soul mesh? Why join bodies?
“Give me ten good minutes, and I’ll bind your soul so hard, your spirit will be screaming my name, pretty little Sekar.”
My thoughts are cut short by those fucking absurd words, and I slowly turn my neck toward the man at my side. His gaze is avoiding. Focused ahead. But the smirk on his lips reveals the sharp weapons within his mouth.
If only his words were as sharp as his teeth.
I lean in close to him, so close I know my breath is skimming across that strong neck of his. His lashes flutter just slightly, but he doesn’t move a muscle. “Tell me one thing,” I whisper on a voice filled low with taunting temptation.
“Mmm, anything,” he groans, all low vibrations of obnoxious confidence.
He’s dickdumb. The type of guy who’d be smart if he didn’t have a dick. Only thinks with one thing, and that thing isn’t nearly as useful as he imagines it to be. How has he lived this long? How was he invited to the most powerful supernatural academy in the world? Just how?
“Did you know Sekars are so powerful, they can rot a man’s cock off with a single touch?” I say breathily as I run one finger ever so lightly along his throat.
His eyes widen.
My drifting index finger slips lower. And lower. And lower.
And then he falls out of his chair.
I smile. He looks petrified. It is a good time had by all.
“Mr. DeVoure, your attention please!” Professor Sills commands, his short stubby finger pointing at the vampire’s seat like he can will the stupid man there with a single finger.
But I guess one finger has a lot of power sometimes.
Just ask my new friend Rueren.
Chapter Seven
I kick the door to room 120 shut behind me and don’t bother taking off my boots as I fall face first into my petite twin bed. A warm body settles in between my legs, and I’m oddly comforted by the new pet I’ve adopted overnight.
“Night,” I whisper to him.
He hums a sweet noise in reply and rests his head on my ass, practically stealing all the space on the small mattress.
I should name him.
I should take him on walks and have a boring little life with my new pet. When I’m done killing others, that’s what I’ll do.
A slamming sound jolts through the room, and that fucking cruel light overhead flicks on without apology.
“Get up. We have four thousand words to turn in by tomorrow night on the best Soul Searches of our generation,” Gavin Fucker says as she plops down on her bed with a pen and paper.
“What—are you on drugs? Adderall? Is it Adderall? What the fuck are you on? Shut the fucking light off, and do not speak to me until late in the afternoon!” I yell into my pillow, which is really just a muffled stream of sounds without words.
“Oh, I know, right!” She replies with a little laugh, like she knows exactly how I feel at this moment.
I’m going to kill her.
I’m going to kill Dragon Woman, Hoarder of Cum. Hope her parents find a better name to etch on her grave, or it’s going to make things a little awkward on Memorial Day.
“The other Sekar, Sialen, he bound himself,” she whispers suddenly, her thought process obviously racing.
My eyes slowly open, and it takes me a moment to lift from the soft white pillow. Long strands of soft black hair mats across my face like a spiderweb as I blink over at the pretty blonde woman. She looks up at me from beneath her thick lashes but doesn’t say more.
She waits.
Everyone here is so testing.
So untrustworthy.
Is this a test of hers? Why would it be? What would she gain?
My thoughts flash back to the redheaded woman screaming at her in the hall over a boyfriend who’s too stupid to keep his dick zipped up behind the Academy’s finely-pressed slacks.
An ally?
Does she want an ally here?
“Bound himself to whom?” I finally ask on a voice I dare not raise for anyone else to hear.
Her small shoulders lift in a shrug. “I dunno. But it screwed up. And the Academy hasn’t kicked him out, despite being a weak link now.”
She’s so pretty. She could easily use her soft features and her pale eyes to give and take information. That isn’t what this is right now.
She wants a friend.
Fuck. No. Anything
but that.
My stomach turns uncomfortably at that thought. Images of braiding hair and painting toenails while gossiping flicker nastily through my mind.
Gross.
“I like your wolf. He looks like a badass,” she adds with a hint of a smile.
She’s not wrong. He is a badass.
And suddenly, I’m not so afraid of the girl smiling back at me. Maybe she’s as pissed as I am about being here. Maybe, deep down, she’s just lonely.
“He’s sweet.” I peer back at the little pet still nuzzled sweetly against the curve of my body.
“Yeah, he’s massive. What’s his name?”
My lips open, and for some reason, Cerberus the three-headed dog shoves into my mind. But Cerberus seems too cruel for the cute but powerful pup between my legs.
“Styx,” I say slowly, like I’m unsure.
But it sounds right.
Styx is a dog of legend in Sekar mythology. He helps our Holy Lady of Death guide spirits to the fixed plane. A black wolf the size of a horse, he is my Lady’s spirit animal and right-hand helper.
He was there when I needed him. He’s my comfort in this hellish place. He’s keeping me grounded, and I bet he doesn’t even know it.
“Very badass.” The girl giggles, and I, too, smile.
She should give our neighbor pointers on how to make friends with someone. Don’t be an asshole and don’t be a dick. It’s that simple.
“What’s your name?” I finally turn to her, and her eyes light up at my simple question.
Holy Lady of Death, she really does want a friend.
“Kira.” She nods. “And yours?”
“Emmera. You can call me Em.”
You can call me Em? Who the hell calls me Em? You don’t have cute nicknames given by friends. You don’t even have friends, Emmera.
I shake my head at myself.
But she’s still smiling through her bruised nose.
And I don’t even mind.
But I’m not writing four thousand words with her at three in the morning, no matter how adorable she makes friendship look.