Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  She reached down to his side, where there was a knife glinting in the faint light from a streetlamp and gripped it in her hand. How she'd seen that, I wasn't sure, but what I was sure about was the way she began to stalk down the alley.

  It was a dead-end. I knew that because I could scent it. Before, when we'd approached the different mouths of the alleys we'd traveled down to find this scum, each opening had a scent of its own. Something unique that helped guide me farther.

  Now? There was nothing. Which meant Eve was walking toward danger.

  When a sharp scream sounded from the dark shadows, I flinched, and whatever hold she had on me disintegrated with my terror because that scream? It was female.

  As I rushed forward, I felt my brothers heading deeper into the back of the alley, and with them at my side, I felt our terror surge into a mushroom cloud that almost choked us as we approached.

  But we were stupid to feel fear because this was Eve, and even though she looked like butter wouldn't melt, and could still barely understand slang, she was a freak.

  My kind of freak, because this kind of freak had one Ghoul's belly being pierced by a fucking leg, and had a female's torso slit from throat to gut like she was cutting through a cake with cheese wire.

  The final male had backed into a corner, his hands raised as he covered his face, as though that would protect him from Eve's wrath.

  I almost snorted because yeah, that wasn't happening.

  Whether it was the blood, the sight of the horrors these bastards had reaped upon those innocent women, or the fact that this was her first encounter with a Ghoul, something had turned Eve into the predator that only appeared when she was threatened.

  We'd seen it a few times, and I had to admit, even though it was creepy as fuck, it was also hot as hell.

  Even on the battlefield, I'd never seen fledglings weep before. Yet here this motherfucker was, bleeding from his eyes. I shouldn't have noticed, considering he was covered in the humans' blood, but I did because that had dried on his cheeks, caking him like macabre makeup. His tears were fresh, and they coursed down his gaunt skin, rolling onto his throat where I could see them pool in his collarbones.

  I wasn't sure anything could have stunned me more than what Eve had done this night, but when she began to speak in a language I didn't understand?

  Yeah, that was definitely up there in the way to astonish the hell out of me.

  As she spoke, she grabbed the Ghouls' hands and shoved them away from his face. Because of her proximity and because he knew he was about to die, he began to fight her. But with every move he made, Eve was there, preternaturally aware of each action as though she could read his mind, as though she knew, a second ahead, what his move would be.

  When the bastard tried to kick her, she stomped on his foot and ground down until the scourge released a hoarse cry.

  When the Ghoul’s wrist slammed to the left in an attempt to grab her hair? She fielded it, gripped his wrist, tugged it down, then arched it against his back so she could shove him around and push his face into the wall.

  She pushed him against the brick fascia, not stopping until his face literally crunched with the force of the move. His nose had to be broken, and I could hear the creaking of his wrist as she didn't allow him to move even an inch from the position she had him in. When she raised her knee and shoved it into the bottom of his back, making the toxic piece of flesh grunt with the pain of it, I had to smile, and even began to relax. Though this situation was so beyond my pay grade, it didn't even matter because I knew Eve was two things.

  One, she was safe. This situation was totally under her control.

  Two, she was a freak. I already knew that and was coming to expect this weird-as-fuck shit she was capable of doling out on the daily.

  Hell, I could even say I was proud of her. I'd imagined her being weak in these moments. Too frail to be of any help to us as we tried to free the world of the menace that was our natural enemy. Instead? She was a boon.

  Her words grew louder then, and though I was sure it was a figment of my imagination, the wind seemed to whirl around us, seemed to swirl around her words too, drawing them toward the sky, making them louder, turbocharging them with a power I'd never experienced before in my life.

  There was a whirring sound, but it wasn't mechanical, and as she spoke, I saw something I'd only ever encountered when I'd begun to eat the souls of the Ghouls we'd captured on the battlefield.

  Out of their bodies, the toxic poison that made them Ghoul, began to drift from them and straight into Eve's mouth.

  The impossible had just happened.

  Eve wasn't a Sin Eater, and yet she'd just eaten the souls of two Ghouls.

  What. The. Fuck.

  3

  Nestor

  While I'd expected a lazy night after a shitty day of traveling, instead, I was watching my woman kick Ghoul ass Wonder Woman-style.

  After landing and driving to our digs, I'd anticipated nothing more than getting a bath. I knew people said that shit was for chicks, but fuck that. I liked baths. I even liked bubbles. Not from the soap that smelled of flowers and old ladies, but the ones that smelled like fruit I could get with.

  After an hour in the tub, I'd have contemplated getting into bed with Eve and carving out some 'us' time. Ever since Reed and Samuel had claimed her—I wasn't sure who was more shocked about how at ease Eve had been with that, and I thanked God for her Succubus every day—she'd become a lot more chilled about sex, and I was glad about that. Really glad, because she did things to me that set me alight and had me reveling in the burn.

  Case in point now.

  Watching her take down three Ghouls, alone.

  Either she was corrupting us or we were corrupting her. I seriously wasn't sure anymore, but no way was I about to complain.

  She'd stunned me when she'd frozen us in place, controlling our souls as though we could be taken charge of like we were tuned into a remote. Even more so when she had beaten the shit out of a Ghoul by using an amputated leg as a missile, and had somehow managed to slice a female Ghoul down the middle. Sure, that was all worthy of a Valium, but when she'd eaten their souls?

  That was literally my mic drop moment of the night.

  In fact, screw that, the year.

  What the hell was she?

  Female Sin Eaters existed, sure they did. But they didn't kill that way. In fact, male Sin Eaters didn't kill that way either.

  They didn't start chanting in some creepy old language that made the hairs at the back of my neck stand on edge. They didn't sing along as they beat the shit out of a Ghoul.

  Sin Eaters worked on downed Ghouls and entranced them. Although Eve might have been doing that with her singing, I didn't think so.

  Yet another puzzle.

  When the Ghouls were dead, and we were left with just under a dozen dead bodies in an alley, I was the first one to grunt out, "We're going to have to set them on fire."

  It was more relevant than discussing just how weird Eve was, yet again.

  We should really be used to her throwing this kind of shade our way, and there was zero point in even being huffy with her because I knew for a fact that she was as in the dark as we were where her talents were concerned.

  Every day with her was like watching a toddler take their first step.

  On repeat.

  Einstein said the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Well, he’d never met Eve. We'd go around the bend if we ever imagined that Eve could be in any way normal.

  "On fire?" she rasped, her nose wrinkling as she dumped the Ghoul on the ground as easily as another woman might puff up a cushion on the sofa. "That's gross. And what if it stirs more interest in what's happening?"

  "You'd prefer the authorities to find a bunch of dead bodies in a back alley?" I retorted, folding my arms across my chest as I stared her down.

  It was then I realized she wasn't coated in blood.


  How the fuck she'd managed that, I wasn't sure.

  Because that was suddenly more important than anything else, I spluttered, "Why aren't you covered in blood?"

  She blinked then stared down at herself. "I don't know."

  "The song," Dre rasped, and he was back in his human form once more, the bear having been as controlled by Eve as the rest of us. "When she started singing it, the blood went away."

  Samuel frowned. "I feel fed."

  Eren rubbed his eyes. "You mean to tell me she used the Lorelei's song to take the blood to you?"

  "How the fuck is that even possible?" I rasped. Did that break the goddamn laws of physics?

  "I don't know," Stefan admitted, "but it's damn handy."

  I gaped at him. "That's creepy."

  He shrugged. "I've seen worse shit on the streets."

  Eve released a pained sound and she stepped toward Stefan, moving around corpses as though they weren't even there in an effort to reach him. She didn't stop until she was snuggled against him, and he stared at us, as bewildered as the rest of us as he curved his arms around her waist and held her tight. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that," she whispered.

  He patted her on the back gently, then smoothed over her hair in a way that seemed to soothe her. "It's all in the past," he crooned, then, after a few seconds, he tugged her ponytail around his wrist and shooting us all a look, mumbled, "You shouldn't have done this, Eve."

  She stiffened. "Done what? These bastards needed killing."

  Considering that was one of the worse curses I'd heard her use, I knew I wasn't the only one taken aback.

  "No. Of course not. I meant you should have let us handle the killing. You don't need to be stained with this shit, pui. It's not... this isn't what you're supposed to do."

  Though I agreed with him, his speaking Romanian had my eyes widening.

  "I've never heard anything more chauvinistic in all my life and I'm mated to Dre!"

  "Hey! I'm not a chauvinist!"

  "No, you're just a prick," Eve snapped, twisting in Stefan's hold to glower at him.

  I knew she was pissed at the way Dre was evading her, and I could empathize. Though being on the boat had been shit, the only bright spot had been the fact that all of us had finally been Chosen, all our souls were declared, and we’d been hanging around as a Pack.

  Well, save for Dre who’d hung around with the rest of us, but had only allowed himself to hang out when Eve was there every now and then. Like he was rationing his time with her or something.

  I wasn't sure what his game was, not when I'd watched him cling to her like she was a pacifier and he was a toddler when we'd escaped the Academy, and had slipped into the cave for shelter before we'd been taken to the yacht.

  Between then and now, he'd barely been in her presence unless we were all in the same room.

  Dre had his issues, we all knew that, but still. This was weirder than usual and considering our standard for weird had changed since Eve had made an appearance in our world, that was really saying something.

  Dre growled under his breath at her statement, though, but she ignored him to glower back up at Stefan. Slamming her hands against his chest, she groused, "I was more than capable of handling the situation."

  "And we'd know that how? Hell, since when did you know how to fight like that?" Reed threw in, folding his arms as he glared at her just as hard as she scowled back.

  In truth, it would have been funny as fuck if the situation weren't so disconcerting.

  "He's got a point, Eve," I inserted softly, not particularly wanting her ire when I wanted her to understand our concerns. She tensed at my words, but I raised a hand to hold her attention. "We've seen your outbursts, meu amor, but they haven’t happened often enough for us to know your skills in a fight." I shrugged. "You froze us in place without even warning us, then dealt with a situation that could have gotten you killed. Do you know what that would have done to us? How that would have wrecked us?"

  Her eyes widened at that and she began to gnaw on her bottom lip. She stopped tugging at Stefan's hold and, instead, sagged in his arms. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  Because I hadn't expected an apology, I blinked at her. I wanted to sputter, 'Erm, what?' but I didn't. Couldn't. Because I knew that would irritate her again. Uncertain now, I murmured, "Please, just don't do it again without warning us."

  "I'll try." Eve shrugged. "It wasn't really me.”

  “Then who the fuck was it?” Dre growled, earning himself another glower from her.

  She cleared her throat, on edge at the question, but even uneasier with the answer if my guess was right. “I don’t know. It’s like there are two Eves sometimes.” Her brow puckered. “That’s the only way I can explain it.”

  Though she made no sense, equally, it made complete sense. We’d seen enough of Eve’s Jekyll and Hyde nature to realize that something shady was going on, and truth be told, it scared the fuck out of me.

  Sure, she had eight souls, but did that mean she was more unstable than sane?

  What if, when she hit twenty-one, she’d turn Ghoul? What the fuck would happen to us when our woman, the woman who Chose us, turned into the monsters we’d been trained to hunt down and slaughter since we were kids?

  I’d felt despair several times in my life. When my parents had dumped me at the local priest’s house, when the bastard had put me through another exorcism with no fear for what it was doing to me, and when I’d slit his throat to escape him and, like Stefan, had found myself out on the streets, except being homeless was a thousand times better than living with a man who thought I was infested with demons. Still, none of that matched the terror I felt at the prospect of losing Eve.

  But I knew she was right. There were two sides to her, and what was that if not crazy?

  Her words shook us all, and I knew I wasn’t the only one unsettled by her revelations since we were silently processing her words. As we broke out of our thoughts, we hustled into action, forcing our minds to focus on anything other than Eve and whatever was going down with her.

  Though she was right about it drawing attention, without being able to call in a cleanup team from Caelum’s UK HQ, our options were limited. Setting fire to the corpses felt wrong, considering the women were innocents and deserved a decent burial, but the damage to their bodies had to be hidden. Most Ghoul attacks were covered up, declared serial killings by sick fucks. Sick human fucks.

  Not just by us either.

  Sure, we dealt with the cover-ups, but so did high-ranking Ghouls.

  This massacre would be chalked up as some kind of occult attack, and it would be in the news for a week or two before being replaced with some stupid shit a royal did or some celebrity’s coke addiction. That was how human society worked.

  With the scent of charring flesh filling our nostrils, we ducked out of the alley and back toward the main street. As the scent grew stronger, Eve began to gag, and I couldn’t blame her. The smell was unique and all the more repulsive for it.

  By the time we hustled her into the limo, she’d buried her face in Samuel’s arm and was gently weeping. It didn’t take a mind reader to know her sorrow was for the innocents who’d died tonight.

  The journey to our accommodation was quiet and somber after that. Whatever we’d expected in the first hour on British soil, it wasn’t to walk face first into a Ghoul attack. And it sure as hell hadn’t involved Eve taking control and killing three Ghouls while we just hung around and watched.

  As we drove down a narrow, cobbled street, I wasn’t the only one who breathed a sigh of relief to be at our destination.

  Not having brought anything with us save for a handful of things we didn’t want Caelum to toss in the trash, we needed to go shopping, so there was no need to wait on getting our luggage out of the trunk. Dragging Eve out of the limo while Sam gave the driver a tip and helped him ‘forget’ our stopping nearby Ender’s Greasy Spoon—a Vampire’s ability to mesmerize came in damn handy at times lik
e these—we found ourselves on a street that belonged in some cutesy British rom-com.

  The cobbles were old, but the houses were short and looked like expensive cottages. They were painted white, had bright colored doors, and low roofs and this particular street seemed to have an explosion of plants and potted trees decorating the sidewalks.

  “It’s a mews cottage,” Sam explained, as he headed toward the door to our place. He wiggled the key in his hand at Eve and, handing it to her, said, “The driver gave it to me—he works for the company who looks after this place for us.”

  She stared up at him and whispered, “It’s so cute.”

  His lips twitched. “I’m glad you think so, sweetheart.” He rubbed her back and murmured, “Let’s get you cleaned up and in bed. You need some rest. What you did—” His smile made an appearance this time, but it was tight and taut with worry. “It took a lot of energy.” I knew how hard those words were to form because, fuck, what else could he say?

  Eve averted her attention to the door and stuck the key in the lock while we shot each other looks, glances that said we’d be discussing this shit out of her earshot later.

  The place was small and cramped for eight of us, but for three or four people, it was more than ample. The hall opened up into a lounge and kitchen/dining area. There was a large L-seater sofa in front of a big screen TV. The kitchen was mostly silver, from its metal cabinets to the fridge and oven. Shit like the kettle and toaster were the only bright spots of color in the space, and they were a green so bright it hurt my eyes.

  Dre, Frazer, Reed, and Stefan sank onto the sofa, while Eren, Sam, and I peered around the place on the hunt for the stairs, which happened to be next to the kitchen. As I followed Eren and Sam, my brother turned back to me and said, “Go and talk with the others. We’ll get her settled.”

  I nodded, but I wasn’t particularly happy about being dismissed. Eve needed her Chosen, and though she was depending on Eren and Sam for shit that she should be relying on us all for, I figured now wasn’t the time to get into it.