by Sofia Daniel
“I know you can make holes in the wards. You did it for Zarah Peridot, and I saw the hole you made for yourself and Gates. Don’t bother to lie and say you can’t. You will make a hole for us, too.”
And have a bunch of werewolves wandering the streets? “Isn’t it dangerous—”
“Don’t you dare complete that sentence.” She shot out of her seat, pointing her finger between my eyes. “We’re not monsters, and we deserve our freedom just as much as any other creature.”
Irritation fizzled across my skin. She was a fine one to talk. “It’s your fault that Lady Mantis injured my vampires and turned me into a knocker.”
“You selfish, little whore,” she snarled.
My mouth fell open. If anyone was selfish, it was her. She had handed papers that incriminated me in the murders to the vampires in exchange for a reward.
Her werewolves standing around the walls filled the cabin with their growls. My pulse quickened, and nausea swirled in the back of my throat. They pushed themselves off the wall and advanced on me with menacing slowness. I pushed myself off my seat and turned around. Keeping the table at my back was my pathetic attempt at self-preservation.
The alpha walked around the table, her teeth bared. “We werewolves are prisoners, just like you.”
“It’s worse,” shouted a voice at the back wall.
“Dolph is right.” She waved her dagger in the direction of the door. “The vampires don’t give us fancy beds, lessons, or square meals. They keep us here to act as their guard dogs.”
Wrapping my hands around my middle, I asked, “Is that why you sold me out to Lady Mantis?”
“I did the best for my pack. With the reward Lady Mantis offered, we could have gotten a chance for a real home.”
“Oh.” My shoulders sagged. This was another example of how hopelessness caused people to stab others in the back.
“Will you help us escape?” she asked.
I lowered my head. Right now, I couldn’t afford to make an enemy of the hunters. And the werewolves looked like they might drag me along with them as a hostage, which would be disastrous for the boys.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“What?” She grabbed me by the lapels and lifted me off my feet.
The doors burst open, and Justine stepped in. The deformed hunter gave me a slow round of applause. “Backbone. I like that in a frumosi.”
I slapped my hand over the alpha’s fists. She dropped me to the floor, making me yelp.
Every werewolf’s head snapped to the door, and they growled at her intrusion. One of them stepped in Justine’s path, eclipsing her by half a foot with his bulky frame, but she flicked her wrist and threw him to the other side of the cabin. The other males backed away, a few of them whining.
“How long have you been out there?” I squeaked.
“Long enough.” Justine snapped her teeth at the fallen male.
My insides writhed with apprehension. That didn’t answer a damned thing. Had she followed me to the onion woman? I glanced at the doorway, looking for signs of Radu or Renée, but they weren’t there. Hopefully, this didn’t mean they were dealing with the onion woman.
Justine turned to the alpha. “You’re a backstabbing bitch.”
The alpha stiffened. “The vampires were our captors. What do you expect us to do?”
“Did you complete your task?” asked Justine.
My tongue darted out to lick my dry lips. Was this related to the traps the werewolves had set to catch the runaway vampires?
“How can we get the job done with no rations?” the alpha snarled.
Justine walked around me and stepped into the alpha’s personal space. She placed her hands on her hips and announced, “No food until you find every single blood-sucking brat hiding in the forest.”
“We can’t do that,” said the alpha.
Justine cupped her hand over her missing ear. “Can’t do what?”
“No one performs at their best on an empty stomach.”
The hunter’s face split into a wide grin that froze my lungs. In the few hours I’d observed Justine, she seemed to be the most sadistic of the three Radites. Now it looked like she was about to do something terrible.
My breaths shallowed, and I shrank into the table, trying to make myself invisible.
“You want to eat?” Justine’s tone was mild enough to dilute my blood.
The alpha didn’t reply. I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to get caught up by an obvious trick question.
“I’m serious.” Justine spread her arms wide. “If anyone’s hungry, we’ll walk out into the clearing, and I’ll bring some meat.”
One of the werewolves, a man with a bald head and a shaggy, black beard, stepped forward. “I’m starving.”
“Don’t worry,” said Justine. “You’ll have something to eat soon.”
Another male pushed himself off from the wall. “I haven’t eaten in days.”
Justine clapped her hands together. “Come with me. Everyone else who wants to eat may join us.” She turned to me and winked, although it was impossible to tell as she only had one eye. “You too, Alicia. It’s time you learned to flex your innate powers.”
We stepped out into the clearing. The sun hid behind a dark cloud, turning its edges incandescent. As the werewolves followed after us, a cool juniper-scented breeze blew over our heads. My heart pounded with trepidation, and I swayed on my feet, wondering how many of the werewolves would be desperate enough to fall into Justine’s trap.
Justine grabbed my hand. “We’re more powerful joined together.”
I closed my eyes, transparent tendrils wrapped around our wrists, binding them together. With a cough, I tried to jerk free, but Justine held on tight. The tendrils settled at my fingertips but didn’t suck out any magic.
“Don’t say the hunters never reward good work,” said Justine.
A thick stream of indigo emerged from her third-eye chakra and wrapped around the red-hared werewolf who had once locked me in the storeroom.
He stiffened, and his eyes bulged. “What’s happening?”
Justine squeezed my hand as though urging me to pay attention to what would happen next. “You don’t want your brethren to go hungry, do you?”
Panic seized my heart. I clutched my chest with my free hand, trying to work out how to stop this. “Justine, don’t—”
“What?” She whirled around, her tendrils of magic wrapping around my throat chakra. One of them stabbed through it like a dagger. “Did you have something to say?”
My mouth opened, and I screamed, but no sound came out. My voice was gone.
She smirked. “That’s what I thought. Stand still, don’t interfere, and I’ll return you to Lord Radu in mostly one piece.”
My stomach churned, and I wrapped my arm around my middle, trying to hold in the contents of my stomach. What had she done? Strands of mahogany hair blew into my face, indicating that she hadn’t yet consumed me as far as Kat, but that could change if I did anything to annoy Justine.
I opened my third eye and studied the tendril attached to my throat chakra. The barest stream of blue light seeped out and settled in the transparent tube connecting Justine and me. But she hadn’t brought it into her body… yet.
Instead, she used her magic to pull the werewolf’s solar plexus chakra down to the ground.
“Nice meat for the nice doggies,” Justine said with a laugh.
“What are you—” With a scream, the male fell onto his front, twitching and shuddering and wetting his jeans.
The yellow light of his solar plexus wrapped around the green of the heart chakra and the red of his root chakra.
“Please,” cried the alpha from the doorway of the hut. “Stop this. We won’t complain about not being fed.”
Justine waggled her finger. “You abducted one of my hunters-in-training and tried to force her to help you escape. For that, you deserve—”
A pair of males transformed into tawny dire wolves and
leaped at Justine. I staggered out of the way, a silent scream tearing from my throat. But Justine kept a vice-like grip on my hand and formed a barrier of sunlight around us, singeing their fur.
She threw her head back and cackled. “More volunteers!”
As her tendrils stretched out to the yelping wolves, I turned back to the male whose chakras she manipulated. The man’s limbs were missing, and his head sank into his shoulders. Ragged breaths wheezed out from his lips, and his chakras were so mixed up, the light turned brown.
I doubled over. My stomach heaved, but nothing came out.
“Alicia,” Justine said. “Do I need to empty your stomach chakra as well as your throat?”
Shaking my head, I clapped my free hand over my nose and mouth. I stopped looking at the wolves, stopped looking at Justine, stopped looking at myself. The scene playing out before me was both incomprehensible and monstrous.
“Nearly there,” Justine said with a sigh.
The smell of burning clothes filled the clearing, along with the stench of burned hair and skin. Squeezing my eyes shut, I pulled my blazer over my mouth and nose to stop myself from dry heaving.
“Get up.” Justine’s voice was pitiless.
I pulled myself to my feet.
“Look.”
I jerked my head away. Whatever she was about to show me would be horrific beyond words.
“Look,” she snarled, “Unless you want me to drain your third eye.”
I took a long, deep breath and then another. Something told me that Justine would punish me for becoming light-headed. Then I opened my eyes and looked into the clearing.
Three piles of… A surge of emotion thickened my throat. They weren’t human-looking anymore and nor did they resemble canines. All I could think of were the joints Mom bought in the supermarket for Sunday lunch. The boneless ones wrapped up in string.
I turned to Justine, tears clouding my vision. She could have killed the werewolves for their insolence, but she had gone to all this trouble to turn them into lumps of meat. It was as though she wanted everyone to suffer as much as her.
She spread her arms wide and dipped into a mockery of a curtsey. “Bon appétit!”
The alpha burst into tears and leaned against the door frame.
With a smirk, Justine flicked her bald head in the direction of the castle. “Come on, your dinner’s getting cold. If you can stop blubbing, I might even return your voice.”
Chapter 8
The alpha rushed to the three bundles of her packmates’ meat, her sobs tearing at my heart. I glanced from her to the other werewolves, who stood in the cabin, staring at the floor. Nobody wanted to act against the hunters, least of all me.
I let Justine grab me by the scruff of the neck and drag me through the trees and out of the clearing.
Twigs snapped underfoot, leaves rustled, but the rest of the forest stilled, as though holding its breath in the face of such a malevolent presence. By now, the sun dipped beneath the canopy, spreading tiny rays of orange light through the tree trunks.
I glanced up at the six-foot-tall hunter, at the side of her face which hadn’t been cleaved. How much of my evening’s activities had she followed? If she had spied on my conversation with the onion woman, she would march me to my execution, not to my dinner.
“Thanks.” The word slipped my throat like steel wool, but I had to discover what she had overheard.
“You’re lucky I was paying the werewolves a visit,” she snarled. “Otherwise, they would have forced you to betray Lord Radu.”
Relief surged through my veins, and I heaved out a long breath. Her appearance at the cabin had been a coincidence. But I couldn’t completely relax. Justine seemed the type who enjoyed mayhem, and recent experiences with others had taught me to watch my back.
“I refused the alpha’s offer, didn’t I?” I said.
Justine scoffed. “But she had nearly a dozen wolves to convince you to change your mind.”
I wrinkled my nose. They were mostly scraggly, bearded brutes. “Seduction?”
“Rape.”
A shudder ran down my spine. “Well, I’m glad you came when you did.”
With a snort, Justine rounded an eight-foot-tall blueberry bush. “After a bit of training, you might be able to debone a werewolf.”
“Is that what it’s called?” I wanted to spit.
“Anyone with precise control over the body’s chakras and meridian pathways can do the same.” She jumped over a small stream and didn’t let go of the back of my blazer.
My feet landed in the water, and the cold seeped through my loafers. I scrambled out, ignoring the unpleasant squelch. “Right.”
“You’re wondering why I didn’t use that knowledge to fix my head, aren’t you?”
“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” I said.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it.”
Sweat broke out across my brow as we hurried along an uphill trail. If I told her the head wound was barely noticeable, she’d call me out for lying, and if I said yes, she might be offended and maim me in revenge.
“I thought Captain Tanar did it,” I blurted. “An injury like that would be fatal, so you have to be extraordinarily strong to survive that, let alone be a great warrior.”
“That’s right.” She grinned and slung an arm around my shoulder like we were best friends. “Of all the people in this academy, why did you associate with a sniveling sewer rat like Zarah?”
Another trick question? It was one I couldn’t answer directly without lying. I might have been Zarah’s friend in our first term, but she was never mine. “The vampires captured us at the same time. I sort of felt responsible for her at first.”
“But you don’t now?”
“She’s a hunter,” I said.
“But you’re more deserving of her rank.”
What the hell was this, another attempt to trip me up? We stepped out of the woods onto the road that wound around the hill. The castle loomed up ahead, its presence ominous now that I knew what manner of monsters it accommodated.
I raised a shoulder. “Until last night, I didn’t know frumosi had ranks. Right now, my only concern is surviving the training and meeting Lord Radu’s standards.”
“You’re pretty accepting of these new changes,” she said with accusation in her tone.
Our feet trampled the gravel, and I turned my head up to the sky. The barrier around the hill glistened like a soap bubble. Light from the setting sun warmed all the colors within its iridescent sphere. Was this the hunters’ influence? Now that they’d taken over the academy, they probably didn’t want knockers under another vampire’s control opening the wards.
Justine turned to me, her single brow raised in expectation. She probably wanted me to explain why I wasn’t rebelling against the hunters.
“Frumosi are in charge for once,” I said. “It’s nice to be able to walk about during the daytime and not live in fear of vampires.”
“Yet the Stryx brothers made you their concubine,” she drawled.
“Blood whore,” I said. “And I was blackmailed.”
Justine gave me an understanding nod. “You did what you needed to survive. That makes sense. But if you use your wiles on Lord Radu, I’ll slice off your lips.”
I reared back. “He’s my grandfather several times removed!”
She snorted. “We’re all related. Dracula fucks his descendants, and so does our lord. How the hell do you think he made the most powerful Radites?”
Disgust crawled through my insides like a hoard of centipedes. I didn’t need a refresher on royal dynasties to know the answer was inbreeding. But in the human world, it led to birth defects and insanity. In the supernatural world, inbreeding just created stronger monsters.
Dipping my head, I murmured, “I’ll keep my head down, study, and not make eyes at our lord.”
“See that you do.” She gave the back of my neck a hard squeeze before opening the castle’s double doors.
> We walked through the hallway side by side, the slipping and squelching of my loafers on the marble floor filling the silence. I couldn’t help thinking about how they had barged into the bathroom and how Radu had offered me sex. When I had reacted badly, he had said it was a joke, but Justine didn’t believe him.
Apprehension squeezed my heart in its clawed fist. Maybe I needed to return to my old room in Frumosi Tower tonight, so Radu wouldn’t know where to find me in case he got frisky.
When we stepped through the doors of the dining room, a group of male vampire students stood at the walls, each wearing a metal torc around the shirt collars of their uniforms. On the vampire side of the room sat a group of uniformed hunters and people wearing casual clothes. I furrowed my brow. It looked like Radu had brought in reinforcements.
“Welcome, welcome!” Radu stood from his throne at the head table, his golden ringlets glinting in the chandelier light. Renée sat on his right, and the seat at his left was empty.
Justine gave me a hard clap on the back before hurrying to take her place. I glanced around for somewhere to sit, but the only table with lots of spare places was occupied by Zarah. Bile rose to the back of my throat, and I snatched my gaze away from the parasite.
Annette raised her arm and gave it a frantic wave. The seat next to her was empty. With a sigh, I walked over.
Radu beamed, his teeth sharp and white. “Today is a particularly happy occasion because it marks the awakening of a number of our brethren.”
I turned back to the vampire side of the room and took another look at the newcomers.
“They’re knockers,” said Annette as I lowered myself into the seat next to her. “Just like you.”
My chest tightened. Lady Mantis had ordered my transformation into a knocker, but I had no recollection of anything I had done before Gates and the onion woman had hidden me away and broken the enchantment. “Right.”
Annette’s eyes widened, and she placed a hand on my arm. “Oh, I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Give our brave warriors a round of applause!” cried Radu.
While we clapped, I studied their faces. The man I had met on my first day at the academy sat at the front, his head high, and looking at Radu with tears of gratitude in his eyes.