Daizlei Academy Omnibus Collection

by Kel Carpenter

  “What are you talking about, you can’t kill me yourself?” I yelled, and as I’d hoped, she paused and turned away from my sister.

  “You think I’m daft enough to give away all my secrets to a pest I can’t kill? No…You’ll be gone long before you ever figure it out.” She turned back to Lily and offered one of my sister’s arms to the Vampires. They plunged their fangs into her, but Lily didn’t cry out when their teeth pierced her skin. I couldn’t stop trembling as I watched, unable to look away, too afraid of accidently killing her to stop it.

  Violet’s presence was a numbness I couldn’t afford as I rallied the power within me to try for one final shot. Aaron still wasn’t here, and Johanna was nowhere to be found. With none of my team in sight, saving my sister and stopping Anastasia was on my shoulders. The pounding in my ears had reached its crescendo when Anastasia seemed to notice that something was amiss. That I wasn’t bowing down without a fight.

  “Selena!” a voice screamed. Alexandra’s voice.

  I turned—just a fraction—but it was a moment too long. Anastasia said, “Snap her neck.”

  “No!” I screamed, sending a wild shot at the stage. The power was unsteady, though. It didn’t want to be contained. It wanted to break.

  The power exploded against them, throwing Lucas and the others, but Lily… I missed, and Lily took the brunt of it. She hit the wall with a wicked crack, her neck hanging at an odd angle. It was only when the light left her eyes, and she collapsed entirely that I realized what I’d done.

  Oh my god.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t see.

  “No!” I screamed again, scrambling to get to her. To bring her back. To do anything.

  She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t, because if she died…

  Nothing was going to stop me from killing every living thing on the planet.

  The ground rolled beneath my feet, but I didn’t care. My knees hit the floor before I could even process what was happening, and I gave myself over to my demons. Fire ignited, pressing in on me like a mob after a murderer.

  “Dormi, dea, propter manicaveris.”

  Sleep, little goddess, for you must rise with the dawn.

  Those words wouldn’t work this time, because madness had me. Grief claimed my every thought as I crawled on my hands and knees toward the stage—ripping concrete up by the chunk.

  Oh my— I can’t— I didn’t mean—

  I killed my sister.

  The one I’d sworn to protect. To cherish. The one I’d held through every nightmare and panic attack. The one who was only just learning to live, and to save herself. She would never love again. Never laugh. Never cry.

  “Lily!” I screamed, summoning an impenetrable dome of dark matter as I collapsed in on myself. Letting it disintegrate anything that dared attack me, and absorb their energy.

  One moment, I was being swallowed up by the pain, and the next I’d been sucked away and was looking through different eyes. Clearer eyes.

  Alexandra’s face illuminated next to mine, like a warrior princess in battle. She grabbed me, this body, and brought my face to hers.

  “You told me that you broke my heart for her. You told me that your entire existence depends on her. I can’t save her and fight, okay? So I need you to come through on your promise that you’ll get her out.” Alexandra’s eyes were glossy with unshed tears. Her voice cracked on a silent sob before she continued. “You take her to the place I showed you, and if I don’t return in twenty-four hours, you run. You run like hell, and you never look back. You hear me? You never let her look back.”

  Images flashed of her in the bathroom, worried that this party wasn’t a coincidence. She showed him pictures of a house with a white picket fence and an alpine larch, and made him promise to take me away. Far away, if anything ever happened—as the only repayment for breaking her heart. He shuddered at the memories, and the lump in his throat at what he was about to do.

  “She’ll never forgive me,” he said softly, but he’d do as she’d asked, and not because he’d promised, but because he thought it was the only way to keep me alive. It only took me a moment to realize whose body I was in, whose emotions I was feeling, and a moment more to understand that he loved her.

  Aaron truly loved Alexandra. He loved her fire. He loved her will. He loved how she fought for me, but he wasn’t in love with her. Not like she was with him, and they both knew that. They both knew that he cared for her like a sister, because his heart—no, his soul—belonged to another. It belonged to me.

  “I don’t care. As long as she lives, I don’t care what you have to do to make it happen. You told me you’re her signasti, right? That she’s your one and only half?” Alexandra asked, not a shred of brown in her eyes as the fire burned.

  He only nodded.

  “Then you and you alone can heal her, and make her happy when I’m gone. That’s all I ask. Make her happy,” she whispered.

  Aaron’s throat caught when she hugged him tightly, briefly, and forgave him for dating her just to be closer to me. He turned toward the dark mass that was growing, eating everything that stood in its path as my body started to self-destruct.

  Behind him, the fire grew as Alexandra faced off against my enemies, and trusted the man who’d broken her heart to save himself and the girl he was bound to. Letting her sacrifice it all in the process, just for one chance.

  I tried to pull away, to go back to my mind as his emotions ran through me, one after another. So fierce and powerful, and yet I wouldn’t let myself feel them. I couldn’t stand the burn of them, and I screamed out to Violet.

  Aaron broke through each layer of my shield, and when he looked at my face, the sight was one I never wanted to see again. I scrambled from his mind, wanting nothing more than to curl inside limbo and wither away. My consciousness left him, rushing back into my body the moment we touched.

  He jolted for a second, as if he’d realized where I’d been, but didn’t slow as he picked me up and ran—letting the world disintegrate behind him as my shield caved in and collapsed the ground.

  I closed my eyes and surrendered to unending despair as I let the fire and brimstone swallow me whole.

  Chapter 95

  Death is a fickle thing.

  For the longest time, I’d obsessed about it, wishing I’d died instead of my parents, but I never truly understood the concept of ending. Never wrapped my mind around the very real truth of what it meant to be gone. Not until I heard the crack and saw the light fade from my sister’s eyes.

  For so long, I’d fought myself over what was right and wrong. I’d fought the killing gene, afraid of the monster I was becoming. I’d fought against Violet, because I didn’t think she was real. I’d fought against the memories of my past until I could no longer deny what had happened. And still, I’d fought to hold on to the last shred of my sanity.

  Lily was gone, though, like my parents, and she was never coming back.

  It would’ve been so easy to give myself over to the light and fade away. They said that people couldn’t die of grief or pain, but they also said that the matter manipulators were extinct, so what did they know? I could do it, and I was no longer scared, because the girl I’d been had died the moment Lily was taken from me.

  I felt it the moment the killing gene broke free and the monsters overtook me. Trapped in my own internal hell, I stared them down with a promise in my eyes. A promise of what was to come. Of what I would become.

  Lily had died, and I was never going to see her again. The absoluteness of that shook me to my very core, in a way my own near-death never had. It changed me, molded me, as I walked in limbo, watching my monsters fight each other for who would come out on top when I opened my eyes.

  It had been four months since I’d nearly died and woke up no longer dormant. What would I be when I awoke this time?

  That was the question I didn’t know how to answer.

  Not yet.

  The pain that caged m
e was so resolute that I didn’t know how to break out of it. I didn’t know how to ease it, like I had as a child. That was wrong, though, because I’d never eased it, not really. Every time my father had pushed me too far, my mother had called me back from limbo. Who was going to do it this time, when no one knew how to reach me? No one saw my demons, or the inferno I’d let myself be trapped in.

  No one, but one.

  Violet.

  She defied all reason, and even I didn’t know how she was here, or what she was, but I knew what she could do. I knew she could end the pain and remake me into something more. Something stronger. Something so unbreakable that the heavens would shudder when I roared.

  She could help me take my vengeance, when, alone, I couldn’t.

  “Is that what you want? More than anything?” she asked, eyeing me warily.

  I was a withering ball of nerves and bones, but what I wanted more than anything was for the pain to end. For the suffering to end. For the grief to have an outlet, and for me to take revenge. That was all I wanted, and I told her as much.

  She stared at me, with crystal-clear violet eyes. So bright, they looked like cut gems. I hoped they could cut. I burned to feel my enemies bleed.

  “Then we will become one.

  “We will become something new, something which has never been before.

  “We will become death.”

  Her words echoed through me, speaking to the sorrow in my soul.

  Death.

  I liked the sound of that.

  I would become the very thing that had taken everything from me. I would become more.

  Violet reached out to me, tenderly, like she would’ve her own child. There was no warmth in her eyes when she took my hand, though, and I was grateful for that, because I never wanted to feel warmth again.

  “Let’s begin.”

  Epilogue

  When I opened my eyes, it wasn’t a me, but a we. Pale purple bedroom walls were the first indication of where we’d gone, where Aaron had taken me, but I felt nothing.

  Not a sliver of sadness. Not a shred of guilt. I felt absolutely nothing as I took in my childhood room for the first time in almost seven years. Outside, the wind howled, beckoning me on to begin my hunt. I had unfinished business, though, and a mild interest in what the voices downstairs were.

  The bed creaked, ever so slightly, when I shifted to sitting, but made no noise when I stood. Footsteps echoed from downstairs, and the smell of lilacs and smoke drifted through my bedroom window. My mother had grown lilac bushes with Li—my sister. They had been gentle souls, but now they were gone, and I would hunt in their stead.

  I walked around the room, examining the bits of paper where I’d scratched out my homework in Latin, and left every ounce of innocence behind when I stepped out of this house for the last time. I’d been in that very bed, with the black paisley bedspread, when the news came that my parents had died.

  Somehow, I didn’t believe that. I didn’t believe a car crash was even a factor in their deaths, but that was just another secret I’d need to dig up when I’d killed each and every one who’d wronged me. Starting with the Council.

  Wind chimes. Wind chimes pealed downstairs, and I knew then that this wasn’t a dream. That while dreamland may have brought me here many times over the past month, I was here in the flesh this time. Hearing the wind chimes my father had created from the glass of the first window I’d shattered on command.

  He’d been so proud of the little monster I was becoming.

  What would he say if he could see me now?

  I didn’t care. Not anymore.

  I didn’t even need to flick my wrist to open the door silently, my mind loosening the hinges so they didn’t squeak. The element of surprise was in my favor, and I needed to use it to greet my guests, before I decided how I would slit their throats. How we would slit their throats.

  Violet and I were so tightly interconnected now that none of my demons could reach me. None of my emotions could overcome me. She’d once told me that there was peace in control, and for the first time in my entire life, I was at peace in my apathy.

  Voices floated up the stairs, so mortal in their emotions. So breakable.

  “It’s only been twelve hours. No one’s going to come looking here, not yet,” Alexandra was insisting. There was a time when her voice would’ve made me weep for joy, but I wouldn’t weep again. Never again. Not even when I’d built a throne out of my enemies’ bones and slept soundly at night.

  “We don’t have time. Anastasia will recover, and what’s left of the Council will side with her when she puts a bounty on our heads. If you want this place left in peace, we need to leave now,” said another voice. A voice that wasn’t entirely Supernatural, and tasted like the power of something that had left this earth long ago. I sniffed once, but only blood, dust, and smoke permeated the air.

  “My sister is dead, and likely one of the Made by now. Selena is upstairs trapped in limbo, and I’m—”

  Her voice broke off in a sob as she collapsed. From my place, four stairs from ground level, I could make out their reflections in the fireplace glass panels. My sister, an emotional heap on our dusty, old couch. Blair sat next to her, stroking her hair, her own eyes lost in something frigid and wrathful. I had no doubt that she would be useful in this quest for vengeance; I’d trained her that well.

  Johanna paced, while Oliver sat on the floor nearby, watching her with guarded eyes. There were others of the nine here, though. I could smell them, even though they weren’t in the living room. My breath hissed between my teeth when I spotted Aaron brooding in the corner. He was going to be difficult, stubborn.

  He seemed to be the only one who heard my hiss, and his eyes flashed to meet mine in the glass. He strode forward just as I rounded the corner, still dressed as the queen of death, my newly shorn hair brushing my chin.

  I couldn’t imagine what they saw as they gaped at me now. Alexandra sat straight up, her mouth open in something almost like shock. But it was Aaron who got to me first—or at least tried to, only to be thrown back by an invisible shield that even he couldn’t penetrate.

  “What the—”

  “Selena, are you—”

  “How did you do it?” Alexandra asked. She was the quietest of them all, but somehow her voice was the only one that stood out.

  I eyed her as I strode further into the room, relishing my remade body and mind. Savoring our strength.

  “Walk out of limbo?” I asked, unsmiling but not quite bored. These people still had a purpose, even if they no longer meant the same things to me.

  “Because your sister’s not the only one with us,” Johanna answered slowly. Her voice was hard, and unflinching.

  I smiled lazily, showing my lovely, sharp teeth. “How perceptive. You smell of the ancients. From whom did you spawn?” I asked, in a way the old Selena might’ve considered brash. Then again, she’d died from that sentimental heart. I’d been remade from the ashes.

  “The dragon. And you? Mother lost to time?” she asked, yielding to me, but not in complete submission. She would also be a problem, if I let it get out of hand.

  “I am death, and I’ve come for the blood of those who’ve wronged me,” I said, giving her credit for not shuddering underneath my otherworldly stare. I enjoyed the way it made the others flinch, as if something in them recognized that the girl they’d followed was no longer living.

  A sharp knock rattled the front door of my parents’ home.

  Several jumped to get it, but I was at the door before anyone could take a single step. I sniffed again, parting my lips to taste the air, but it was ash in my mouth. I unlocked it, despite the protests, and opened it wide.

  Leaning against the doorframe was none other than Elizabeth.

  The cousin who’d once betrayed me.

  “What’s she doing here?” Blair snarled, and I suddenly found myself partially frozen as the doorway turned to ice.

  A breath of fresh air wafted in with t
he autumn breeze as I took a very hard look at the girl who’d showed up on my doorstep. Elizabeth’s hair was matted to her head, and she smelled of sweat, and dirt, and ash. Not an ounce of her was untouched by whatever had happened back at Daizlei.

  “That is an excellent question. Why are you here in my doorway, uninvited? I’m certain I promised to kill you if you ever spoke to me again,” I said.

  Unlike Blair’s, though, my voice contained no rage. Instead, I spoke with the softest menace and the promise of death. My energy reached out to caress her, and the mortal liar shuddered, pushing back against my power as she stepped away from the door.

  “I’ve come to deliver a message to you,” she said to me. Her voice shook like a leaf in the winter. She sweated like a sinner in hell.

  “From who?” I asked, ripping my arm from the ice-covered doorway. I stepped out into the open air, tilting my head back to inhale the scent of life.

  “From your mother.”

  My head snapped up, and I grabbed her by the throat. I took two steps in her direction, and she backed up, going right over the edge of our porch. Sweat dotted her temple in the few moments I held her there, just long enough to let her think I would kill her. Just long enough to make her honest.

  “My mother is dead,” I said flatly, not wasting my breath on the whys or hows.

  “I—spe—speak—with the—” Her voice broke off.

  “She can talk with the dead,” Blair said from behind me, making no move to save the girl. Her loyalty to me was going to make this so much easier. Provided the others proved compliant.

  “Is she reliable?” I asked.

  “That’s for you to decide,” Blair said, not moving from her spot in the doorway as I threw the other girl down.

  She choked on air, taking great, rasping breaths. Her heart beat in overdrive to make up for the lack of oxygen, and I gave her a minute before I spoke.

  “I’m only going to ask once, and your answer decides whether you live or die. Understood?” I said, raising an eyebrow and daring that taut mouth to spit on me. The wind whipped around me, but I didn’t shift an inch as she nodded.