by Sofia Daniel
“So, how could you develop powers in an oppressive atmosphere?”
“No idea.” I padded across the room to the reception area.
“Where are you going?”
“For a shower.” I glared at her over my shoulder. “Do you want to watch?”
Her heart chakra bloomed a fluorescent green, and pink spots appeared on her cheeks. I kept a neutral expression, not wanting to acknowledge what that could mean, and left for the shower.
Zarah wasn’t waiting for me when I stepped out of the bathroom, but there wasn’t time to relax. I longed to venture further down the basement and find Raphael, but Zarah was probably watching out to see where I disappeared outside classes.
After dressing, I made my way up to the dining room, where a buffet of bread, cheese, and cold meats had been left out. Frumosi students and former knockers sat around the tables amongst a few of the lower-ranking hunters. The atmosphere felt surprisingly subdued for an academy under siege.
Later, we walked en masse to the ballroom, where Radu chatted on the dance floor with Justine, Renée, and about twelve other hunters in burgundy leather. The women all stood six feet tall, and the men at least six-four. I wondered if Radu chose the statuesque as his inner circle or if they grew as a result of their parasitic tendencies.
“Good afternoon, my children!” his voice boomed through the ballroom.
“Good afternoon, Lord Radu,” we chorused like a bunch of primary school children.
With a dazzling smile, he walked around the crowds of students and former knockers. “Bloodroot is an important aspect of unlocking your magic, but many of my dear frumosi will never achieve their full potential.”
I glanced around the room at the frowning students, hoping that this wasn’t another excuse to absorb someone’s life-force.
“Why?” he asked. “Because many of you have experienced psychological damage at the hands of vampires.”
He had to be talking about the knockers. My throat convulsed, and I wrung my hands. Did my few days of being a knocker mean I was also afflicted?
Justine cleared her throat. “When you reach our level of magic, you can see the impurities vampires have left on the frumosi. The sooner you cleanse yourself of their taint, the sooner you’ll conduct lives of authenticity.”
“Take this girl.” Radu placed his hand on the head of the young woman who used to work in the beauty salon. “The vampires programmed her not to react to pain.”
Renée walked over from where she stood by the stage and stood in front of the cowering ex-knocker. Transparent tendrils of magic curled out from her throat and chakra, wrapped around the girl’s solar plexus, and pulled out several worm-sized pieces of black energy.
Everyone gasped, making me wonder whether they could see Renée’s tendrils or just the black magic leaving the girl’s body.
My heart thudded, and I hoped the hunters wouldn’t find anything so terrible inside my chakras.
“Let’s see.” Radu glanced around the room, and his gaze landed on me.
I shot Justine a helpless look. She told me to stay away from her precious lord. Now he was heading in my direction. She raised a shoulder and gave me a half-smile, which I hoped meant that she wouldn’t blame me for attracting Radu’s attention.
The golden-haired monster beamed at me with inhumanly large, white teeth. “My dear girl, your chakras are trembling!”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
He stopped a few feet away and raised a gloved hand. “Come to me.”
The low purr in his command turned my stomach. On legs that felt like they would give way, I took one step toward Radu and then another until I stood before the giant. At that moment, my entire consciousness focussed on Radu, feeling like a mouse caught in the glare of a lion.
He chuckled. “You are watching me.”
Maybe he meant that I had activated my third eye. I didn’t bother to ask what he meant.
“Let me see…” One of his tendrils rubbed against my crown chakra, making my spine stiffen. His eyes twinkled. “And now you are feeling me.”
I clenched my teeth and focussed on the beauty spot below his pouty lips. It looked like something people used to paste onto their faces in the days of Louis XIV. Radu’s touch felt like being strangled by an incorporeal boa constrictor. It was at the edge of my consciousness, but my instincts screamed at me to escape.
My mind blanked, and I forced breaths in and out of my nostrils to stop myself from fainting. I had to endure this, or Radu might consider me unworthy for training and then absorb my life-force.
“How fascinating,” he drawled. “You have been mesmerized. Several times.”
“What?” I looked into his blue eyes.
The corner of his lip curled. “Oh, yes. And not by the same vampire.”
My breaths came in shallow pants. Someone had mesmerized me twice in my first term. There was the time I thought I was being attacked by giant vampire bats. Then the other time, Pigtails had tricked me into believing she was Raphael and locked me in a dungeon with Gates on his first transformation.
But those were the only two occasions I’d been mesmerized, and Radu had said it had been several times.
His large hand cupped my cheek. “Do not be afraid, my darling girl. We will explore your altered memories together.”
Lowering my gaze, I swallowed hard. It wasn’t like I could refuse.
In the first vision Radu triggered, I’d fallen, and Micalla looked into my eyes and offered me her hand. Unlike my recollection of the event, this time, I felt my crown chakra twisting into knots. I ignored her and walked away.
After a time skip, I opened a classroom door and walked into vampire bats the size of cats.
Radu’s magic wrapped around my head, and black bats flew out from my third eye chakra and poofed into smoke.
“Childish pranks,” he muttered.
The next memory was the one I had expected—my encounter with Gates’ werewolf. Radu tutted and pulled out the black energy like it was an extra-long snake. “If that werewolf had as much as scratched you, I would have lost a beautiful and potentially powerful companion.”
I clamped my teeth together and swallowed hard. If I’d known that practicing with the onion woman would result in the attention of Radu cel Frumos, I might not have bothered.
“Let’s see…” Radu’s perfect brows drew together. “This next one is complex and has been woven by a master.”
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
“Unlike the first two that affected your perception, this altered your memories.”
“They made me forget something?” I asked.
“Not just memories,” he said. “Emotions.”
I took a step back and swayed on my feet. Whatever he would show me would be disturbing, and I wasn’t sure if the knowledge would destroy my peace of mind.
Sweat broke out across my brow. What the hell could he be talking about? After the werewolf incident, Professor Proust had looked into my memories, but no other vampire messed with my mind. I doubled over, gasping for air. If the illusion of Pigtails disguising herself as Raphael had taken the form of a snake, what the hell would Radu pull out?
He glanced over my shoulder and waved someone over. Moments later, a hunter brought a chair and ushered me to sit. I lowered myself into the seat. Radu knelt at my side and placed his oversized hand on my leg.
“Don’t worry.” His soft murmur made my skin want to crawl away and hide. “I will clean you of the vampire’s taint.”
I gave Radu a shaky nod, all the while wondering who on earth had violated me.
Still kneeling at my feet, and tendrils of magic snaked out from his vast, energy body. What I could only describe as oversized worms slithered over my crown and heart chakras. They burrowed beneath dark patches and eased them out. My stomach twisted, and my lungs froze. Every instinct wanted me to scream at the intrusion, but I clenched my teeth and endured.
Radu lifted off black debris, which he flung int
o the air, where they remained as malevolent specters. The more he removed, the more memories he uncovered. One was of me sitting in a restaurant with Steve asking me for permission to marry Mom. My throat thickened. I’d thought he barely knew I existed.
More and more memories resurfaced—Mom helping me into my bridesmaid dress, Steve taking me to a party when Mom hadn’t been feeling well, the doctor telling us that Mom’s baby would be a boy, me at Mom’s hospital bedside with baby Daniel in my arms. My heart expanded, encompassing the love I felt for Mom and Steve and Daniel. The memories kept coming and coming until they overwhelmed my senses.
“No.” How on earth could the vampires have suppressed so much?
Radu’s face hardened. “The removal of your familial ties was a particularly harsh violation.”
Mom hadn’t excluded me when she remarried. All those memories of me standing at the sidelines watching her, Steve, and little Daniel act as a family without me had been fabricated. We had been a family. Tears continued to roll down my cheeks.
I’d said goodnight to Daniel in the hallway of the Velvet Lounge on the day of my abduction.
Raphael had stolen my love for my family. He had left me with a need to belong and stepped in with his brothers to fill that gap.
I had been a fool.
Next, I stood in the hallway outside the ballroom, and Nero showed me images of each member of my family, twisted and dead and bleeding—murdered by the vampires.
Grief tore through my insides like a hurricane, leaving agony in its wake. I had known they were dead, but not like this. Slumping forward on my hair, I rasped out, “No more.”
“Sorry, my dear.” Radu held me upright with his shoulder on my palm, sounding genuinely remorseful. “But you must know the truth, no matter how painful.”
The final memory Raphael had erased was an incident at the beginning of term when I had told the boys I wouldn’t exchange blood with them or suck their dicks. Nero had worked out that I held something against them, and mesmerized me into revealing that I had hidden a baggie of ashes in Frumosi Tower. By the time they had gone to search for the evidence, it had gone.
The boys had assumed that the knockers had cleared it away. They had. And they’d given it to Captain Tanar, who later used it against us.
Nero had decided to let me think I still had leverage against the boys. I supposed it was his way of keeping me sassy.
But this memory paled in comparison to Raphael making me feel like I’d been an outsider in my own family.
Sorrow surged in my chest, and I choked out a sob. “Why would the vampires go so far?”
“Manipulation and violation is the way of the vampire.” Radu pulled me into his arms and let me cry. His large hand rubbed up and down my back.
“No more classes for you, sweet child.” He gathered my limp body into his arms and carried me through the ballroom. “Sleep, and after resting, you will help me find the vampires who raped your mind.”
Chapter 10
Darkness swirled in my mind, blank and warm and welcoming. I reveled in it, wanted to lose myself within its depths, but a larger-than-average hand stroked my bare back, returning me to awareness. Every muscle in my body stiffened. This wasn’t Raphael, Gates, or any of the Stryx brothers.
It was Radu.
The hand withdrew, as though its owner thought it was bad manners to grope a naked girl when she was awake enough to shudder in disgust. With a trembling breath, I turned around and opened my eyes.
Radu stood at my bedside, staring down at me with concern etched in his blue eyes. We were in a bedroom much larger than any of the boys, with ivory furniture arranged against walls decorated with damask paper.
The huge man tilted his head and smiled. “Are you feeling better, my dear?”
As I pulled myself up to sitting, the silk bedsheets slid across my bare breasts. “Why am I naked?”
Radu’s eyes dropped down to my shoulders, widening a fraction in faux-surprise. “You hyperventilated. I did not want you to overheat.”
“I’ll have my clothes back, please.”
“Of course,” he said, not moving to fetch me so much as a pair of panties.
The memory of Mom, Steve, and Daniel’s dead bodies rose to the surface of my mind, their throats cut, and their lifeless eyes staring into nothing. Grief, fresh and jagged and bitter, surged through my insides. It shattered my heart, splintering it into jagged shards that pierced every organ, and tore a sob from my throat.
My spine curled forward, and I clapped my hands to my face. They were dead. Murdered. By vampires.
The side of the bed dipped, and gravity leaned my body into Radu’s hulking form. With the sweeping of a massive arm, the monster drew me to his side and filled my nose with lavender perfume.
“I know,” he crooned. “The vampires have taken much from us.”
I continued sobbing and drowning in my grief. Radu’s voice pierced the edges of my consciousness.
“It is not enough that they murder your family and suppress your memories of them? But they took away your love. Unforgivable!”
“Why?” I croaked.
“Frumosi are a precious commodity,” he replied. “We are the most powerful supernatural beings in the world, and vampires wish to direct that power for their own means.”
I knew that. The use of knockers to maintain the wards and their training us to become familiars was a testament to the vampires’ desire to control us.
What I didn’t understand was why Raphael went one step further and made me think Mom had shut me out of the family. Had it been to create a gap in my heart that only he and his brothers could fill?
“You have heard of Stockholm syndrome, yes?” Radu’s hand rested on my hip.
“Yes.” I shuffled back, but he held me in place.
“From what I gleaned, the Stryx brothers needed you to complete a magical pact.” He paused, perhaps to see if I knew what he was talking about.
When I didn’t speak or flinch, he continued. “This type of magical pact is something my daughter Belinda developed. A deep mating bond to join the power of a frumosi to a vampire.”
“What does it do?” I asked.
“It cures the vampire’s thirst, returns his soul, and grants him or her the ability to walk in the sun,” replied Radu. “He retains his vampire strengths but with none of the weaknesses.”
“They become day-walkers?” I tilted my head up and stared into his mane of golden ringlets.
He chuckled, the sound harsh and bitter. “The genius of the magical pact occurs when there are more than two vampires. Belinda bonded with vampire brothers, linked their chakras, and amplified their magic. They live on an island secured by impenetrable wards. Not even I can enter to punish her treachery.”
“Oh.”
The old me would have salivated over this knowledge. I would have asked how Radu’s daughter had linked the brothers’ magic. But my eyes were wide open, and I could see Raphael, Dante, and Nero for what they were. Manipulative, blackmailing, love-stealing parasites.
Radu drew back and stared into my eyes. “Where are the Stryx brothers hiding?”
“I don’t know.”
His brows drew together. “You don’t?”
I shook my head. No matter how much they had hurt me, I couldn’t reveal to Radu that Raphael had dug an underground burrow. Besides, I really didn’t know its location.
“If you find them, I want to ask why they changed my memories to make it look like I didn’t love my family.”
Radu gave me a gentle smile. “You can be assured that they will suffer for their wickedness.”
A heavy knock on the door turned our attention.
“Enter,” said Radu.
Renée strolled into the room. Her gaze lingered on my naked form covered by a thin, silk sheet, and it snapped back to Radu. “We’ve captured three vampires. Two of them suffering sunburn, as Tanar described. They won’t talk.”
A spasm of fear gripped my heart. Ha
d Raphael been sneaking around looking for me? I was furious with him, with all three brothers for messing with my emotions, but that didn’t mean I wanted to side with the hunters. And I certainly didn’t want to become Radu’s favorite.
“Is Alicia ready to identify them?” asked Renée.
“Alicia needs to rest,” said Radu. “Make the vampires comfortable until I am ready to bring her to see them.”
The female hunter inclined her head and backed out of the room.
Nausea swirled in the pit of my gut. I needed to get out of here. Needed to find out who the hunters had captured. How much did Raphael know about the onion woman? She was the key to setting us all free.
I leaned back into his thick arm, trying to make eye contact with the monster. “Lord Radu—”
He placed a thick finger on my lips. “Hush, child. Identifying the vampires who violated you can wait. You need time to recover and grieve.”
“Why are you so kind to me?”
“I see your potential.” He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “You are very much like my granddaughters, Renée and Justine, when they were young, born with active magic that needed the barest of training.”
My throat spasmed. Now was probably the time to tell him that my magic wasn’t a natural occurrence, and I’d spent a term developing my skills, but he would probably want to meet the onion woman. I couldn’t risk anyone disturbing her from completing the ritual to banish Radu.
“Lord Radu,” I said, “I’m no one special—”
“With my guidance, I can elevate you to my fourth-in-command. You saw what Justine did to the werewolves, yes? And you saw us defeat the vampires in the dining room. Wouldn’t you like that sort of power?”
I lowered my gaze to my lap. The onion woman had wanted me to increase my power, so we could join forces and summon that spirit. But after discovering what Raphael and Nero had done, I didn’t feel like being mated to anyone.
“Would it mean drinking vampire blood?” I whispered.
Radu chuckled. “You are young! When you get your first wrinkle, you will change your mind about feeding on vampires.”