by Cate Corvin
“Victoria the Vicious, are you with us?” Sura pinned me to the wall between him and Will, wiping blood off my mouth with his sleeve. “You almost killed her.”
“I wish I had,” I said, my own words sounding like they came from miles away. “She cut up my picture of James.”
But now that her blood was all over my hands in a warm, wet penance, I felt a little more at peace when I told Sura what she’d done, a little more scar tissue healing the edges. The loss would hurt for a while longer- hell, maybe years, who knew- but seeds of acceptance had taken root.
Knowing I’d permanently ruined Beatrice’s face helped that along a little.
He kept his hand on my face, stroking my bruised cheekbone with his thumb, his lips set. “I’d have fucked her up myself if I’d known.” There was a tension in his voice that set me on edge. “What can I do, Tori?”
I gave him a crooked, humorless smile. “Take me to the headmaster’s office? Unless you think I need to be restrained, of course.”
Will met Sura’s eyes over my head, and another one of those annoying wordless communications zipped between them. The tension was so thick I could’ve cut it with a knife. “You might as well let me up. I’m done going psycho.” For now. “I promise to go peacefully.”
I held up my hands like they were cops and I was about to be arrested, and Will relaxed with a sigh. “The worst you’ll get is a detention. Not like students haven’t killed each other before.”
“You don’t say.” They flanked me as we walked to the headmaster’s office.
“Shit happens when you play with sharp objects for a living.”
Headmaster Burns wasn’t particularly pleased, and I left out the part about James’ picture. That was a private hurt, one I wanted to nurse alone… or at least until I decided I was done with Beatrice for good.
He ended up giving me a detention with Ermengol, looking like a large, weary scarecrow as he wrote my demerits out in a ledger. “We’ll have to notify Lord Godalming about this, of course,” he said, and I shrugged.
Who cared what Percival thought? I’d just lost the only memento of the person I was truly here for. If I wanted to break Beatrice’s nose again, no one was going to stop me, least of all my stepfather.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
________
WILL
Tori was an absolute wreck. The last thing I expected was to feel like the worst person in the world over it.
The night after the Glover bitch had pocketed the second half of her promised payment and fucked up her room, Tori had looked annihilated. Utterly destroyed. Emotionally gutted- no, slaughtered.
For about ten seconds that morning, I was confused as to why Tori would be so distraught just over having her room torn up. Then she’d told me what my accomplice had really done.
Instead of pissing on her mattress and tearing up her homework, Glover had destroyed the only thing Tori had left of her dead brother.
I was floored by the guilt, as painful as if someone had repeatedly punched me in the gut with an iron fist.
That was my fault. Even if my hands hadn’t touched it, I’d facilitated breaking her heart. I’d as good as destroyed her last remnant of James, the brother she still cried over and talked to when she thought no one heard her, myself.
I was the one who’d ruined her.
After I’d paid Beatrice to dump her in the snake pit, which had been so much more fucked up than I’d anticipated, I’d felt terrible and tried to comfort her, wondering if I should tell the truth… only to end up buried in her tight pussy in what was the best sex of my life. Now I could barely look at her without salivating.
Several nights after she’d been given detention, I still couldn’t sleep, because the realization was weighing on my chest like a stone gradually crushing me to pulp.
I liked her. Tori was tough as fuck. She packed one hell of a punch. She was a ray of sunlight on a demon-clouded day, poured into a gorgeous body. I had no interest in being any kind of brother to her. I wasn’t a cardboard cutout James-surrogate; if I heard ‘stepbrother’ come out of her mouth one more time, I might puke.
She’d been demolished, but there she was, lying in a shitty, weed-choked courtyard between brick buildings with her arms behind her head and one leg propped on her knee, looking like she was sunbathing instead of posing as demon-bait.
The only reason she was so cheerful was because she was going to unzip the demon’s guts as soon as it appeared, but still. Her resilience after so much bullying and psychological torture was admirable as fuck. I didn’t even care so much about her little I-have-more-experience barbs anymore, because they were true. She could hold her own in a fight.
Unless it was against snakes.
I leaned on the brick wall of our rendezvous point, scarcely breathing. I couldn’t do it anymore. I’d gripped her heart in my fist and crushed it, but now I couldn’t stomach any more revenge.
Sura had been right. It wasn’t satisfying. It felt like poison spreading through my veins, a vicious hatred that was never satisfied with what it had wrought, only wanted more, more, more.
I had no idea how I was going to tell her.
Sura was silent, watching Tori with a level gaze. He’d barely spoken a word to me since the morning Tori had fractured Glover’s face in three places. I was the one who deserved those punches.
“I’m going to tell her.” My whisper was flat enough that Tori wouldn’t be able to hear me.
Sura’s lip curled and he shifted in place. “Yeah? Finally had your fill?”
“Yes,” I gritted out. Sura had always understood me better than anyone else. I knew he’d read every bit of what I was feeling in that one word.
After an eternity, he glanced my way. “I tried to tell you. Revenge isn’t always satisfying. Most of the time, it’s just a load of bullshit.”
“Thanks, Doctor Enver, for your professional opinion. I fucked up. That’s all I’m trying to say.”
Thirty feet away, Tori jiggled her foot impatiently, then suddenly went still.
“You need to be better to her, Will.” Sura frowned as he watched her. “You don’t know what I’d give for someone to look at me the way she looks at you-”
“Shh.” I gripped his arm. With the other half of Tenebris out hunting imps, we needed full focus on Tori, and she’d just sat bolt upright.
We moved down the alley, silent shadows as Tori climbed to her feet… and stumbled, weaving like she was drunk.
A woman strolled seductively into the courtyard, naked as the day she was born, which made perfect sense because she wasn’t human. She was a succubus, her shimmering skin tinted violet, a pair of glossy dark horns curling back over her skull.
The succubus was on Tori in a heartbeat, one finger tipping her face up to look into bright foxfire eyes. Her lips moved, but from this distance, it was impossible to hear what she was whispering to my slayer.
Tori leaned towards her, her mouth slack, and raised her hands to touch the succubus’s dark hair.
“We need bigger fucking crosses,” I muttered, and took aim with the Glock. Each bullet had been doused in holy water. “This is getting ridiculous.”
Demons were the biggest pains in our asses. Vampires and moonspawn more or less operated under a set of rules, and the more dangerous Fae thankfully made themselves scarce, but demons were wild cards. It was almost impossible to stop them from turning a person’s subconscious against them, and impossible to understand their true motives until it was too late.
Tori had been hit with the succubus’s siren-call before she even saw her.
At least we were at the perfect angle. I fired, just as the succubus pushed herself forward into Tori’s arms.
The bullet tore through the demon’s thigh, and the succubus’s call was cut short. Tori shook her head whiplash-fast and shoved the demon away from her, drawing her blessed iron sword and pressing the tip to the demon’s throat.
The succubus went to one knee, looking up at her wit
h an expression so abjectly pathetic and pleading I almost lowered the gun. Tori, who’d already felt her inside her head, wavered, her sword lowering inch by inch as the succubus tried to grip her mind again.
Only knowing about the demon’s body count over the last few months kept me from dropping my guard. She was dangerous- mostly to me and Sura, but she probably wouldn’t mind a female victim if Tori didn’t get the fuck away from her.
“Victoria.” Sura called to her before me, and Tori’s head jerked. “Run her through.”
He sounded cold, more callous than I’d ever heard him sound before. The succubus’s enormous eyes turned his way, and the pleading on her face was replaced with surprise and hope. “Sura!”
Tori took a step back, raising the point of her sword again so it was level with the succubus’s neck. “How… how do you know his name?”
Sura had frozen, his eyes flicking between the succubus and Tori.
So that’s what the guy did when he went up to Seventh Heaven. Made a lot more sense now.
“Don’t let her do this to me,” the succubus begged, pearly tears sliding down her cheeks. “Sura, please.”
Tori’s lip curled. The succubus was putting every ounce of her power into begging Sura, but he was completely unmoved by her pleas.
My attention was so focused on Sura and the succubus, I was taken completely off-guard when Tori rammed the sword through the succubus’s chest and upended a bottle of holy water over her head. The demon twisted and flailed with a shrill scream, and began to dissolve into black ichor as soon as she hit the flagstone courtyard.
“Next time there’s a rogue succubus running around, feel free to step in and actually do something,” she said, giving Sura a look so cold I almost felt the air ice over between them. Tori marched off through the buildings, heading to where the Libra taxi waited for us.
I dumped the rest of my own holy water over the succubus’s body. By morning, she’d be so much oozing ichor, and the sun would burn off the rest.
Tori had her arms and legs crossed when we climbed into the back with her, and Sura was smart enough to give her a wide berth until we got back to the Caitland-Moore. She was a purist, I knew; if Sura had been fucking demon women, he’d just kissed any chance he may have had with Tori goodbye.
She practically dashed up the stairs to the museum, but Sura was on her heels, grabbing her arm to spin her around. The way they were illuminated against the pink-gold glow of the museum would have been picturesque, if it wasn’t for the cold rage on Tori’s face and the way Sura gripped her, refusing to let her leave.
Someone cleared their throat behind me before I could take a step up the stairs, and a lead-lined brick sank in my stomach. I slowly turned, already knowing who awaited me.
Father watched me from the back of a dark Bentley. “Get in, William.”
I glanced back at Tori and Sura, but they were already heading inside, quietly and viciously arguing.
“Get. In.”
With the brick sinking somewhere near my feet, I stepped to the passenger side and slid in next to Father, my lungs gone glacial and shallow. For once, Constance Holmwood was nowhere to be seen, and the driver, a mute homunculus, didn’t so much as turn its head when I got in.
Lord Percival Godalming was a patrician man, with thick streaks of gray at his temples, and the kind of hardened face a slayer developed when they’d lived as many years as he had without dying. He was even capable of looking kind and handsome, when he was around his replacement family, but when it was just us, he was all iron, cold and hard with no give.
“I received a letter from Headmaster Burns.” Even when leaning back in his seat, he still looked like he had a steel rod for a spine. “It had quite a bit to say regarding your conduct thus far this semester.”
The brick in my stomach became a swirling knot of nausea. Being named prefect didn’t mean shit if you got a girl killed and led two others into a demonic Prince’s summoning circle without thinking. “I take full responsibility for what happened to Feldt,” I said, ashamed of the rasp in my voice.
“I’m not referring to Feldt,” Father said impatiently. There was a bite to his coldness that didn’t bode well. “One slayer’s death doesn’t concern me. I asked you to finish out your matriculation in Libra with top marks and a commendation- but in a month’s time, all you’ve managed to do consistently is fuck up.”
My marks were good. Just… one step below Tori’s, because she’d been holed up in her room, studying her ass off every night we weren’t out on practicals or in Club Bathory. I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Father cut me off.
“Victoria has dealt with blow after blow, and still she comes in with top marks in your classes. Maybe this is because she’s had true-to-life experience, while you’ve been a coddled brat your whole life.” Fire flared to life deep in my gut, the familiar twist of that old hatred. “Perhaps that’s my fault. But the fact remains that you don’t hold a candle to your sister, and she’s been dealing with extreme opposition since she arrived. Did I not ask you to introduce her to her new peers with the respect afforded to her?”
I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to snap back that she wasn’t my sister. It also didn’t help that I’d orchestrated every facet of the extreme opposition. “She’s an adult woman who wants nothing to do with networking.” True. I thought Tori might be happiest if we left her in a flophouse with a sword and several hundred moonspawn.
She wasn’t like us, no matter how hard she studied.
“Connie has been distraught since we received the letter. Victoria was forced to physically defend herself against a low-breed, and where were you, William? You’ve earned one tattoo this year, after numerous practicals. By my final year in Libra, half my back was already covered! Your sister is head and shoulders above you. By all rights, she should’ve been made the prefect. Your lack of initiative is shameful. What would Michèle think?”
The worst thing about Father’s rants was that he used Mother’s name like a weapon, even though he’d never given a shit about her. He was a cold, calculating machine, landing each strike precisely where it would hurt the most.
By the end, he’d cut me right back down where he wanted me, but a venomous snake was coiled in my stomach, waiting to strike back for once. “Mother would wonder why you sound so obsessed with Victoria. Perhaps you married the wrong Holmwood.”
Father’s face tightened, and a second later his fist caught the corner of my mouth. He drew back, wiping the blood off his knuckles with a white handkerchief as his hand shook. “You will not spread slander and lies in this family, William.”
Sharp pain spread through my upper lip, the skin sliced from his family ring. I gently touched the stinging wound.
“I expect you to make an attempt to surpass Victoria, though I don’t expect much from you. She’s exceeded you in every possible way.” His cold green eyes glinted. Was that what I looked like when I glared at people? Cutting and vicious? “She’s the only one of my children who wants to lift our family name. I’m glad she advised me to purge our home of the ghosts of our failures so we can look to the future… and it’s time you did too, William.”
With a flick of his fingers, I was dismissed. Good dog, go get your marks. Go babysit your sister.
The Bentley drove away as soon as I slammed the door behind me. Cool air whipped my face, stinging against my cut lip.
So, she was better at everything. Of course she was. How could I, Michèle Godalming’s only son, possibly compare to Constance Holmwood’s precious get? Father had been all too happy to burn everything, to bulldoze over marble and dirt and let weeds grow over Mother’s grave… it was Tori’s fault. Her fucking poison dripped in his ear. Where she and her mother had a clean slate to start fresh, my foundation had been gutted and burned, and I was expected to stand in the ruins with a perfect Godalming smile.
Tori never should’ve left the trailer she came from. She could’ve racked up a thousand moonspawn sickle-tattoos,
happy as a pig in mud, without inserting herself into Father’s life. Into my life. He could scream about slander and lies all he wanted, but the old fucker clearly had a raging boner for both the Podunk Princess and her mother. It was sickening.
I strode up the steps of the Caitland-Moore and found Sura and Victoria in the lobby, hissing at each other. Sura glowered down at her, and her fists were clenched at her sides.
“It’s pathetic!” she snapped. Her hair was slowly coming undone, tendrils of dark hair framing her face. “They’re nothing like us! I can’t believe you’d take me to a club where you go to fuck demons, then tell me a bold-faced lie about it.”
“I never had sex with her,” Sura growled back.
“Yeah? You never had sex with the succubus who knew you by name and begged you to help her?” Victoria scoffed, and I had to admit, the evidence against Sura was pretty damning. He wasn’t the only slayer who found his kicks in the Shadowed World, though. “The point is, you lied. To my face. On our date. In the place where you probably fucked demons. I don’t have room in my life for assholes who lie to me.”
Her honey eyes, brilliant with rage, snapped to me as I approached. “And you, Will. You just let this shit slide? We kill them. They kill us. We don’t fuck the trash we take out.”
“Plenty of people fuck demons, Victoria,” I snapped back.
She drew up short, her lips twisting. “I should’ve known better than to expect actual standards from you.” Before I could say anything, she spun on her heel and disappeared into the stairwell.
Sura’s sharp, glittering eyes caught my cut lip. “What the fuck happened to you?”
I felt like I’d been punched, but not by Father. The sting of that had faded; it wasn’t the first time he’d lain fists on me, nor would it be the last.
The real hurt came from how much she sounded like him. Like I was a piece of shit she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoe. “Father,” I said distantly. So those were her true colors. No wonder Father had snapped up Constance; he’d had an eye on the younger Holmwood the entire time, as well. Like called to like.