by Callie Rose
Someone was at my shoulder. I threw an elbow just as Hannah started pelting her assailant with her fists. We got a few solid hits in, which I would’ve been proud of if I hadn’t been too busy trying to fight down my rising panic. But I forgot about the damn redheaded woman until my arms were jerked behind me and my feet flew out to one side. I didn’t even have time to brace myself before the asphalt rose up to kiss my face. Hard.
“You’re under arrest,” the auburn-haired woman growled.
“For what? Walking while red? You of all people should know better than to profile like that,” I grunted breathlessly. My mouth was bleeding. It pissed me off.
“Shut up, demon.”
“Demon? Girl, I didn’t choose the red life, the red life chose me. Literally. I got snatched up and turned, nobody asked if I wanted this.” I got a little sassy when I was freaked out. It’d been a problem my whole life and had gotten me sent to the principal’s office more times than I could count in junior high and high school.
But alongside my fear and panic, there was something else. A wave of fresh, strange power was coursing through my body. I could feel it vibrating my tongue and buzzing around my eyes. The longer I talked, the stronger it got.
“All I want to do is go home. Switch a bunch of my classes to online maybe. Live out my life in peace. You should let me go do that. Especially since I’m pretty sure I left the stove on. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for a whole apartment block burning down, would you?”
I could feel her grip loosen. Damn, wherever this power rising up inside me had come from, it was some good shit.
“Yeah, there you go,” I crooned. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” she muttered numbly.
“Yeah. That’s right. Just let me go.”
Her fingertips relaxed even more, and she made a soft, confused noise low in her throat.
“Thank you,” I murmured, letting the power vibrate through my voice. “You did the right thing. I have to go water my plants now. You have a nice day.”
“You too.” Her hand dropped away from my arm.
If I’d been smarter, I would have bolted away from the fray. But I was more impulsive than smart on a good day, and this had definitely not been a good day. I was still fucking pissed. Besides, they still had Hannah. So instead of fleeing for the hills, I spun away from the redhead who’d just let me go and bum-rushed the pair of guys who were holding my new friend. Moving quick enough to catch them by surprise, I knocked one in the jaw with my elbow and threw a punch at the other.
“Damn it, Sonja! Grab her!”
“…what? Oh! Crap!” The redhead—Sonja, I guessed—snapped out of whatever trance I had put her in and rushed me. A stream of curses fell from my mouth all the way down to the ground.
“You think you can make a fool out of me, you little bitch? Stay down.” She had her knee in my neck and a fistful of my hair. The way she was yanking my head back made my jaw ache like it would snap if I even tried to talk.
Hannah was crying. Sobbing, really. It would’ve broken my heart if it didn’t make me so angry.
“Let’s get this over with!” The redhead punctuated her shout by shaking my head. The only plus was that she repositioned me so that I could talk.
“Get what over with? You kill people for looking funny these days?”
“What are you waiting for, Kyle?!” Her screech threatened to lance my eardrums.
“Okay, okay!” One of the guys dressed in black straightened, his tone shifting as he spread his arms wide. “Demons, hear me! You are banished from this realm!”
He kept speaking, his voice booming so loud it almost seemed to have an echo. As his words resonated across the empty parking lot, a purple spot appeared in the air over his shoulder and began spinning.
“Have fun in the underworld, bitch,” the redhead snarled in my ear.
“Wait!” The man whose throat had caught my elbow croaked like a frog, but he held up one hand, and the guy named Kyle stopped chanting. The purple spot still spun behind him, but it had stopped growing larger.
“Skipping a step, aren’t we?” the first guy rasped.
Sonja muttered something under her breath and tightened her grip on my hair. The man shot her a disapproving look, and she relaxed her hold slightly. But just slightly.
“We were each given the chance, Sonja. This is how we operate—everyone has a chance to choose. Following protocol protects everybody.”
Hannah was still crying in little shuddering sobs. The man, who had short brown hair and a straight nose, put a comforting hand on her shoulder. I wanted to shove him through a wall.
How can you terrorize a girl and then dare to pretend you care?
“Do you two swear allegiance to the human race?” he asked quietly, the roughness of his voice finally smoothing out.
I blinked at him. “Um… yeah? Duh? What do you think we are?”
He didn’t answer. He looked at Hannah, who had stopped crying. Her mouth was hanging open.
“Who else would we swear allegiance to?” she blurted. “We are the human race! Or we were. Until yesterday. Of course we do!”
“Damn it,” Sonja breathed.
“Let them up.”
I shook Sonja off of me as she begrudgingly let me stand. Hannah ran into my arms, and I hugged her tightly. It was weird. Day before yesterday, I wouldn’t have even considered that a perky, bright-eyed girl like her could befriend someone like me, and vice versa. But now that the world had turned upside down, she was the closest thing I had to family. We stood arm in arm and looked at Not-Kyle.
“My name is Dru,” he said, inclining his head toward us. “You’ll come with me.”
Hannah looked up at me for approval, her entire body still shaking with fear. Our other options were purple orb thingy or getting our asses kicked, so I nodded.
“Fine. Where to?”
Chapter Four
“This is going to be quite a trip. Brace yourselves.”
Dru, Kyle, and Sonja had brought us to an abandoned house down the alley from the so-called psychic and we were standing in a derelict living room full of mildew and spiders. At least, I assumed there were spiders.
“Hold on.” I held up a hand, palm out. My heart was still racing, and as relieved as I was not to have been sucked through some portal to the underworld, I wasn’t keen on going anywhere without at least a little advance information on where we were headed. “Brace ourselves for what? You still haven’t told me where we’re going. Or how we’re getting there.”
“Or if we’re ever coming back,” Hannah added in a small voice.
Sonja sighed restlessly, looking like she wanted to hit me again. I shot her a look that told her I would most definitely fight back. Come on, bitch. Give me a reason.
Dru nodded. “The only way for demons to remain in the human world is through us. You will spend the next three years learning how to use your skills as a benefit to humanity.”
“And then we come back? Then we can get back to our old lives? Will we be cured?” Hannah asked hopefully.
Dru’s face closed and my heart sank. “When we get to where we’re going, you’ll speak to a man named Toland who will explain more.”
“And where exactly are we going?” I demanded. He still hadn’t answered my question.
“Not the underworld,” Sonja said impatiently. “Isn’t that good enough? God! Can we just circle up and get this over with already?”
Dru’s lips pressed into a line. He didn’t seem to like the redhead any more than I did. But he gestured for us all to come together.
“Hold each other’s wrists,” he said. “This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
I clasped Hannah and Dru’s wrists. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting. Maybe for the floor to lift up and reveal that the decrepit house was really a hovercraft or for a helicopter to land outside or something. But what actually happened was much harder to believe.
It kicked me in the chest, and my head flew back as my spine went rigid. A second later, Hannah gasped in shock beside me. My eyes refused to focus. Every nerve in my body buzzed. I couldn’t catch a breath. Tension in my body grew and grew until I was sure my bones would snap and my lungs would explode. Just as it became unbearable, the world went black.
I truly thought I had died.
When my consciousness finally meandered back to my body, all I could feel was cold.
Did they bury me already?
But I was still holding onto two wrists, one in each hand. I squeezed them to make sure they were real, and the hands clasping my wrists squeezed back. Slowly and tentatively, I opened my eyes.
The first thing I saw was snow. Our little group steamed in it, evaporating flakes as they fell—my skin was still extremely hot, which I was beginning to think was a permanent condition. The effect was like our own private cloud, which was weird but not weird enough to hold my attention for long. Because there, behind Sonja’s head, stood a massive stone gate. It looked ancient, all gray and black, covered in snow and crusted with ice. Stone letters stuck out from the arch.
Fallen University.
“FU?” I asked. “Really?”
Sonja rolled her eyes. Hannah made a sound like she was trying to laugh, but when I looked at her I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. She began to shake again.
“So, are we just going to stand in the snow, or…?” I looked at Dru.
“Come along,” he said. “Welcome home.”
“Temporarily,” Sonja sneered as we all tromped through the deep snow toward the gate. “Assuming you don’t wash out in the first week.”
Hannah shot me a worried look, and I forced myself to grin at her, jerking my chin toward the redhead. “Hey. Black Widow wannabe over there clearly didn’t wash out. The bar’s pretty low—I think we’ll be fine.”
Hannah hid a grin as Sonja marched up next to us looking like she wanted to fight.
“Are you both really going to go in there looking like that?” she asked.
“Sorry.” I rolled my eyes. “I left my makeup at home.”
She huffed a breath, which clouded in front of her face in the cold air. “You don’t need makeup, idiot. Just shift.”
“I’m a werewolf now?”
“You’re. A. Demon,” she said slowly, like she was talking to a child. “You think demons just run around looking demonic all the time? They’d never get anything done. Shift.”
“How?” Hannah asked.
“Oh my God, just do it! Or don’t. I don’t care. Ugh.” She shook her head and stormed away. Dru watched her go with that same thin-lipped look he’d given her back at the house. Then his face softened, and he looked at us apologetically.
“It’s like meditation,” he said, running a hand through his brown hair. “Close your eyes and focus on how you want to look. When you feel that ache start to build up in your chest, lean into it. Let it fill you up. It’ll take you a few minutes, but the more you practice, the faster you’ll be. See?”
He blinked. In just the span of time it took him to close and open his eyes, he transformed into a massive charcoal-colored creature with long fangs and claws. Hannah let out a terrified squeak, clutching my arm as we both staggered back a step. Geez, warn a girl first, huh, Dru?
Then he blinked again, and his form melted back to human. It took slightly longer and seemed to use more energy, but it was still fast and seamless.
Hannah took a deep, shuddering breath. It struck me as I watched her that although Dru’s transformation had startled me, it hadn’t actually been as terrifying as it probably should have. The fact that I hadn’t peed my pants made me think maybe I had finally snapped.
Whatever. Might as well be crazy in a world gone mad, right?
Following Hannah’s lead, I closed my eyes and tried to focus.
Oh, an ache? Understatement of the century. It burned like fire and sucked like a shop vac. I stopped breathing entirely and began to wonder if demons even needed to breathe. The pounding in my head screamed that we did, but before it managed to actually crush my skull, I felt my body change. It made me queasy, but it was better than the burning suck. I opened my eyes just in time to watch Hannah transform back into her human self.
“I did it!” she squeaked. “How do I look?”
“Normal,” I said. I hugged her and looked over her shoulder at the imposing gate. Sonja stood in front of it, tapping her bright red nails impatiently on the stone. Kyle was next to her, looking deliberately bored and shooting her glances every now and then to see if she noticed. Oh, for fuck’s sake. I rolled my eyes. If his infatuation hadn’t nearly gotten us sent to the underworld, I wouldn’t have cared—but really, guy? She wasn’t hot enough to kill for.
Hannah was happily raking her fingers through her blonde hair, unimpeded by her horns. She must have been going crazy with those things in the way. And apparently, Sonja’s use of the word “shift” had been accurate. What we’d done wasn’t just an illusion or mask. We’d actually changed our physical makeup back to a human shape. Surreptitiously, I patted my butt to see if my tail was still stuffed down my pant leg, but, nope. Gone.
Whew.
We followed Dru to where Kyle and Sonja were standing and stopped short at the gate. There was a weird buzzing in the air that made all the hairs on my body stand on end. I rubbed my arms furiously.
“What is that?”
“Wards,” Dru said. “Supernatural beings can transport up to the gate, but no farther. It protects the school.”
“Where are we?” Hannah asked.
“Mönkh Saridag.” When I blinked at the unfamiliar words, he added, “We’re in the mountains between Mongolia and Russia.”
As if that explained everything, Dru turned away, putting one hand on the gate and muttering a string of words. The heavy stone gate swung open.
“Explains the chill factor,” I muttered, still rubbing my arms.
We crossed a snow-dusted courtyard toward a towering building that looked more like a castle than a school. Like the gate, it was made of stone and encrusted with snow and ice. Black windows rose up like a million little eyes. I shivered. The place was so isolated—and from out here, it also seemed to be completely deserted.
We tromped up the wide front steps, then Dru and Kyle opened the big, heavy double doors.
“Welcome to Fallen University,” Dru intoned.
As I stepped inside, I saw that the emptiness had been an illusion. People were scattered in clumps all through the main hall, talking and laughing. They stopped when we walked in, and every eye turned to look at us. Hannah groped for my hand, squeezing it so hard I winced. While most of the people around us looked like people, not all of them were disguised as such. Un-shifted demons lurked—okay, maybe lurked is too dramatic, they were really just standing there like everybody else—here and there throughout the hall, and Hannah’s wide-eyed gaze flitted from one to the next.
A trickle of heat snaked down my spine, and the light in the hall suddenly seemed too bright. It seemed to undulate like a current in the air, snaking around the students, beckoning to me. Something foreign and enticing infused my blood, making my whole body tingle. I shuffled my boot on the stone floor, relishing in the thrill of the texture. My heart pounded hard, but it wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. It was… arousing. The hairs on my body stood erect, along with my nipples.
What the fuck?
The air in this place must be laced with ecstasy or something. It was the only explanation. After the shit I’d been through today, there was no way I should be feeling this good. This turned on.
I glanced at the others, especially Hannah. She seemed nervous and shy, but had somehow avoided picking up on the darkly erotic vibe that seemed to perme
ate the room. Dru, Kyle, and Sonja were either immune or oblivious. They were also walking away from me, so I hurried to catch up. I bit back a moan as I moved my thighs, my clit throbbing from every bit of motion. Whatever this was, it was becoming a problem. It was becoming hard to focus, hard to keep my breath even.
Was it the light? The air itself?
No, I realized. It was a scent.
My nostrils flared, and my eyes went wide as I spun my head toward the source. How the fuck I knew which person was responsible for the incredible scent in a room full of people, I wasn’t sure. But I knew, beyond any question or doubt, that it came from a man standing across the room.
He smelled like some insanely erotic combination of money and sunlight and boredom. He was tall and slender, with an aristocratic sharpness to his pale face. His eyes burned like green fire, and his perfectly manicured brown hair shone softly in the light. He whispered something to the man on his left, who chuckled. I couldn’t tell what the other man looked like.
Oh, but what’s this?
Sea-foam and sandalwood and joy.
The scent tore me violently away from the green-eyed guy and redirected my focus. The new object of my attention stood several yards away from the first man, and he looked like a California god, tan and muscular. Wavy blond hair fell haphazardly over his cobalt blue eyes, which matched the stone in the center of the hemp necklace he wore. He grinned at me openly and winked. As if the wink had been a physical touch, a lick against my throbbing clit, a shudder of pleasure made my vision hazy.
When it cleared, it was only because another scent had caught my attention. This one was spicy and rich and sweet, like sharp ginger stewing in coconut milk. The man attached to it didn’t project his emotions as much as the other two had; he looked more bored and aloof than the rich moneybags guy, but as I came closer, I could taste his fury.
And strangely, it tasted good. I was wholly enticed. I needed to know more about this dark-eyed man with the toffee skin and so much controlled anger.