by C. R. Jane
“Will you ever forgive me, Adeline?”
My jaw trembles and I go frozen-still. Something about the softness in his voice opens the floodgates in my head. “You hurt me so fucking bad. I thought you liked me, even as a friend, but what you did was an asshole thing. And I know I saw you watching me as Alexia beat me up that day outside the school. Did that do it for you?” I’m shaking all over because I don’t want to talk about this at all, let alone in a library where anyone nearby could hear us, but it all comes gushing out regardless.
“Adeline, it’s nothing like that,” he pleads, the sorrow deepening in my gaze, but I don’t believe him. How can I? My head swims, and the memory plays over and over in my head.
Alexia and her gang shoving me to the ground, kicking and punching me. I broke a rib that day from what they did. I met Connor’s eyes for a split second from the corner of the school before he vanished and left me with the bitch gang.
I rip my hand from his. “Then what’s it like?” I snap.
A shadow shifts two rows away, and I lower my voice. “What possible reason did you have for throwing me to the wolves?”
He rakes a hand through his short black hair, lips pinching tight, and looks at me through his lowering lashes.
“You want to know the truth?”
“Yes, that’s why I’m asking.”
“I was starting to have such deep feelings for you,” he confesses. “It scared me.”
My mouth feels like it’s been left open for weeks and moths have made a home inside. “What’? Because of Alexia?” I gape.
He’s shaking his head. “I never should have dated her in the first place. I’m sorry if I hurt you, and I handled the situation fucking atrociously. I go over that moment every single day, hating myself for not stepping in.” He pauses, his gaze lowering like he’s picturing it in his mind. “Maybe you’ll learn to forgive me one day which is why I’m trying to make it up to you now by keeping you protected.” His features morph into sorrow and sympathy.
“I don’t know what to say,” I explain with no inflection in my voice, standing numb on the spot. For so long I let myself fall for Connor and now to hear he left me because he liked me too leaves me shaking fiercely, a sharp ache settling in my heart. I feel wrecked. “I have to go,” I murmur, my mind spinning with information overload.
“Just one more thing,” he says, and I stop in my tracks, glancing back over my shoulder. “I need you to open your eyes to what’s going on at this school, Adi for your own sake. Have you ever wondered why there are no mirrors anywhere, not even in the bathroom? What do you think you’ll see if you look at the other students’ reflection?”
He tilts his head back, watching me, expecting a reaction. But I’m drowning in reactions right now, and I want to be alone to sort out my muddled thoughts, the conflicting emotions that Connor always gives me.
Tension pulses through my muscles. “What do you mean?”
Connor groans and turns away from me before heading down the stairs to the lower level without another word. A bang sounds behind me, and I flinch around to find a blond girl has dropped a book out of the pile in her arms. Her friend helps and they giggle as they move to a nearby study table.
What in the world is going on with Connor? And what’s the deal with the butterflies that had taken residence in my stomach around him suddenly.
I can’t stand being in the library a second longer, so I hurry downstairs and outside.
Why there are no mirrors anywhere.
The more I think about it, the more I can’t recall seeing a mirror anywhere in the school. I found it strange on my first day not seeing one in the bathroom, but thought nothing more of it. Every school had unusual rules and I expected some quirkiness in a school as old as Raven Academy. But now, Connor’s words drum through my mind.
My walk transforms into a run, and I’m rushing to my room. I burst past the door and storm to my toiletries bag. Rummaging through it, I pull out my small compact mirror. The one I’ve been using since arriving on campus to get ready. I’m mad with curiosity. Connor knows something but seems insistent on me working it out myself, or maybe he knows I most likely won’t believe him. And now I want to know why there aren’t mirrors at Raven Academy.
Fingers curling over the compact mirror, I storm back into the hallway, making my way outside, when Liam, the golden-haired boy from my chemistry class passes me. He sneers my way. We’re not exactly on friendly terms after our school camping trip.
I head outside where the grounds are empty.
Once he passes me, I lift the mirror and flip it open, then stare into it over my shoulder, finding Liam strolling with his hands in his pockets away from me.
I huff a breath. What was Connor talking about? Or am I doing this wrong?
Inside the main building where the lessons are held, students are everywhere, jostling against me, and I jerk forward when someone accidently kicks the back of my knee in the crazy stampede of getting to class. I need to do the same, but I need to first find out if there’s anything to what Connor says.
So, I push myself into the crowd to where everyone is and turn my back before lifting the mirror. I position it so I’m glancing through it to those standing behind me. I’m sure I’m seeing wrong as there are only maybe half a dozen students showing in the mirror despite the fact that the corridor is cram packed around me. I look back and there are at least three dozen students. My hand tightens on the mirror, and I look again, keeping my eyes trained on the room. In the mirror there are far fewer students then when I look at them with the naked eye.
My head hurts trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
Someone brutally slams into my shoulder and my hands flinch, the mirror slipping from my grip.
I gasp and dive for it amid the masses, but I can’t see it.
Crunch.
The familiar sound of glass shattering reaches me, and I die a little on the inside.
Shit!
“Adi, are you okay?” Dante asks.
I jolt to my feet, blinking hard, trying to see clearly through the fog inside my head.
“You look flushed.” He takes my hand in his and guides me away from the horde.
Breath flees my lungs as I scan the ground where the mirror lays trampled and smashed into a thousand pebbled shards. The image of what I saw stays with me, it rolls over me, and I can’t understand it.
“You alright?” he asks again.
I nod and look up at him, pushing my lips into a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I lie. “Just have a headache.”
His hand slides around my waist and confusion flares up inside me. All I can think is I need to find Connor and ask him what in the fucking world does the mirror not reflecting everyone means.
“You want me to take you back to your room?” Dante asks, and I feel horrible for ignoring him.
I lean in closer to him, his male scent invading my nostrils, making my heart pound harder. “I’d like that.”
He leans closer and guides me down the hall where the crowd seems to split open for us to pass like Dante somehow holds sway over them.
I slip inside my room once we reach it without him, using my headache as an excuse to reinforce my need to be alone.
Once inside, I lean against my door, my heart beating a thousand beats a minute.
What kind of creature doesn’t have a reflection and how the hell did I end up surrounded by all of them at this school?
Chapter 10
That night, I can’t stop thinking about how I found Alexander and Dante with that girl in their dorm so many weeks ago. After they swore to me that it wasn’t what it looked like, we kind of moved on. I never did get any answers. How did that happen? What exactly were they doing? I was usually a smarter girl than that.
It isn’t that I don’t believe them that nothing happened between them sexually, it’s that obviously there is something going on, something that I didn’t comprehend back then, even while staring right at the scene.
My mind darted to the image of Dixon sucking the white mist out from Mercy’s mouth. That weird way that Mercy would act sometimes. Were Dixon or her ex feeding on her somehow? Then there were the missing mirrors, the supernatural strength and speed. The inhumanly good looks. The yearbooks...the weird way that scholarship students acted around here. The list went on and on.
I had been operating with my head in the ground, a part of me most likely not wanting to disrupt this fragile little bubble we had been developing lately where everything was good. Laying in my bed with my tortured thoughts, I realize that none of it has been real. I mean they know I’m an angel, but have they offered up what they are? No. They haven’t. Every time we even get close to the topic, they shut down and I can see the fear lurking in their eyes. Whatever they are, it’s going to rock my world. Maybe not as much as finding out that I’m an angel though. It’s one thing to find out that someone else is something strange...but finding out you are too, whole different ball game.
It’s four am when I can’t take it anymore. I have to know what they’re hiding. And if they don’t tell me, well then, we’re done. It’s as simple as that.
I throw on a sweatshirt over my thin sleep shirt and open the door, giving a small squeak when I see Finn sitting next to my door, leaning against the wall as he watches YouTube videos.
He looks at me in surprise and quickly stands up. “What’s wrong? Why are you up?”
“What are you doing outside of my door?” I retort, irrationally angry.
He looks at me with confusion. “We told you that you weren’t ever going to be alone. Someone has been by your door every night since Dixon happened.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling stupid as I remembered them saying that. “Why haven’t you been coming inside then?”
“You haven’t invited anyone in even though one of us asks you every night if you want us to stay with you,” he replies slowly.
“Right,” I say, feeling guilty that I’ve been forcing them to sit out in the hallway every night when I could have been cuddled up with them in my bed.
But then I remember why I came out here in the first place, and my guilt disappears. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t deserve anything from me.
“Adi,” Finn says gently, touching the side of my face as he speaks. “What’s wrong?”
My lip quivers, a mixture of anger and irrational sadness overwhelming me. “I need you to tell me the truth. I need to know what you are,” I tell him in a raspy voice.
He freezes. I can see the alarm flood his features. “I…”
“Don’t try and get out of this conversation, Finn,” I cut him off sharply. “I will find out the truth tonight or we’re done. I’m not above threats on this.”
Finn looks devastated. “Adeline, please…”
“Tell me!” I shriek before looking around the hallway quickly to see if anyone is around.
He lets out a frustrated sigh and then seems to come to a decision. He types something furiously into his phone and then grabs my arm and begins to march me down the hallway.
“Where are we going?” I ask, as I jog to keep up with his frantic pace.
“You wanted answers, Adeline, and now you’re going to get them,” he replies tersely, obviously angry at the situation I’m putting him in.
I personally don’t feel bad about it at all.
I’m surprised when he walks me to Braxton’s room. Before he can even knock, Braxton is opening the door, a tense look on his face. He opens the door wider and gestures us to come in, still without saying a word.
The rest of the guys are waiting in his apartment, the same tense, almost frightened looks on their faces.
For a second, I'm tempted to let it go, just so I don't have to see them looking like this. I push that thought immediately away. I deserve answers. I need answers.
Braxton closes the door once we’re all inside, and then he locks it and leans against it, as if he's blocking the only exit in the room just in case I decide to try and escape after what they tell me.
It only serves to make me more nervous about what I'm going to hear. My mind has been racing all night, trying to think of what they could possibly be. Some kind of witch? A demon? There were so many possibilities. When I tried to Google it, it only made me more confused.
What kind of paranormal creature feeds on a white mist from someone? What in the world is the white mist?
I have so many questions.
The silence is deafening in the room. They're all staring at me, and I'm not sure what they're waiting for. They know why I'm here. I guess I’m going to have to force out every answer that I want.
"Which one of you is going to tell me what you are? Are you all the same things, or are you different?" I begin, sitting down in one of Braxton's plush armchairs and trying to look relaxed. I can probably get more answers out of them if I look calm, like I'm not going to bolt at any second.
"What do you think we are?" Braxton asks curiously. "Any theories?"
"You told me that day in my room that you weren’t an angel. Just by the way that you reacted then, and the way you're reacting now, you must be closer to a demon," I begin slowly. The word ‘demon’ makes me remember the book I was reading earlier. The one about the demons from Transylvania. The devils.
"What are you thinking right now?" Dante asks.
"Do you feed off of the white mist too?" I blurt out, shivering as I think about what it had looked like. The guys all appear confused.
"White mist?" Dante questions.
"Dixon was feeding off of Mercy when Adeline found them," Braxton explains before I can answer.
"I see," Dante answers.
Braxton takes a deep breath; I look over briefly at Alexander who is unusually quiet. He's just watching me with an unfathomable gaze.
"In answer to your question, we do feed off the white mist. We depend on it to survive,” explains Braxton matter-of-factly.
I blanch at the fact that the five guys I'm dating have the same dangerous propensities as Dixon, a creature who’s killed other students, who fed off my best friend, and who almost killed me.
"Let's all stop trying to protect Adeline’s delicate sensitivities," comments Alexander sarcastically. "Adeline's promised to love everyone in this room at one point or another, hasn't she? That's not going to change because of a little thing like this," he says challengingly, still not taking his eyes off of me as if he's daring me to say differently.
The room’s heavy as if everyone is waiting with bated breath for me to answer Alexander's question. When he sees that I'm not going to rise to his question, he goes for it.
“My sweet angel, we’re vampires,” he says bluntly with a smug smile on his face.
I watch in an awestruck horror as his canine teeth start to lengthen and sharpen right in front of me. “Our kind has hunted your kind, enslaved them, and killed them practically since the beginning of time."
Sick fear curdles in my stomach as his new teeth gleam under the lighting of the room. But I also have a million questions. As far as I know, vampires can’t go out in the daylight...and the five of them clearly can. The white mist hardly looked like blood. They aren’t really fitting any of the stereotypes that human beings are raised to think about vampires.
Alexander is glaring at me, just daring me to go screaming out of the room. Maybe a rational person would be afraid. And honestly a part of me is terrified.
But I know these men. I’ve felt what’s in their hearts. We’re like a twisted version of Romeo and Juliet except Romeo never wanted to eat Juliet.
“It’s rather fascinating then with that kind of history between vampires and angels, that the five of you have fallen in love with one, isn’t it?” I finally answer after a breath.
It takes a moment, but eventually Nyx starts to chuckle at my response. He’s always the one with the best sense of humor, so it isn’t a surprise that he would find some kind of joke in this situation. “You’ve got balls of steel, my love,” he c
omments, eliciting a snort from the others around us and alleviating some of the tension.
My next sentence sobers everyone up though. “I’ve never seen you drink blood,” I say quietly. “So, what do you feed on with those things?” I ask, gesturing to Alexander’s still extended teeth.
“We drink blood occasionally,” admits Finn. “But it’s so we can walk in the daylight,” he says. “The effects of even drinking a little bit stay with us for quite a while so it’s only sometimes. Whoever decided to spread the rumor that we were bloodthirsty obviously didn’t know our kind very well. We don’t even really like the blood directly from the vein.”
“So, what do you feed on?” I ask, cringing as the question once again slips out. I somehow know that the truth of what they eat is far worse than blood. The silence in the room after my question feels heavy, filled with expectations and fears.
“We feed off souls,” Braxton whispers to me in a gravely, tense voice. “Every hope and dream, every devastation and failure...they all taste differently...and we feed off them all. It’s what makes you so valuable to our kind, Adeline. Your soul is so much purer than a humans, it provides us with a high we don’t ever come down from. Your soul doesn’t break and sliver like a human’s when we feed, it stays completely perfect no matter how much is taken from it. One taste of your kind is the equivalent to heroin for our people.”
“The white mist was a part of Mercy’s soul.... Dixon fed on our souls?” I ask in a panicked whisper. I thought that I had a handle on this paranormal stuff, after all, I didn’t think anything would top finding out that I was an angel. But I had been wrong. Finding out that vampires existed, and they not only fed off of blood, but also souls. This was a lot to take.
“Your angelic bloodline was the only thing that saved you after Dixon fed on you that night,” Braxton continued in a haunted voice. “Any human who had that much of their soul taken would have been nothing but a shell afterwards.”
My mind races as I think about all the strange things at this school, the strange way a lot of the students acted. It was starting to all make sense.