Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “How?” Bartlett questioned, his brow furrowed.

  “The seven of us wished for the same thing at the same time.”

  Avalina and Bartlett froze, then shot each other a look. But it was the wife who spoke, “What did you wish?”

  “For Caelum to be safe.”

  “That was a very clever wish,” Bartlett replied, his tone rough as he sank back into his chair like he’d run a marathon in five minutes. “That’s the thing with wishes, they’re temperamental. They’re not supposed to be depended upon, and that’s in their nature. That means you have to word them carefully, be specific and yet, broad.” He shook his head. “Under that level of pressure, with the odds against you, you picked a very good wish.”

  Eren didn’t preen as many in his situation might. The guy was a hero, after all. Instead, he mumbled, “It wasn’t like I could sit around and twiddle my thumbs. We had a nest of Ghouls approaching us in helicopters. We had to act.”

  Dre cleared his throat. “When the wish worked, and the threat was nullified, we hauled Eve out of the Academy. The gates were wide open. Might as well have hung up a ‘welcome’ sign for the McAllister bastards. We crossed it because it’s easier, and when we did, I was carrying Eve, and it was like she was given an electric shock.”

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed Eve cut Dre a quick look, one that was loaded with sadness. In contrast to his carrying her out of the Academy, Dre now seemed to be doing his level best to avoid Eve, and though I didn’t understand his reasoning, we all did what we thought was best.

  Even if it was fucking stupid sometimes.

  “That was how she got the markings. They appeared a little while later when we were safe.” He shuddered, and I empathized. Seeing the markings grow, literally spread over Eve’s form, had been one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Bar none.

  “The branches and leaves began to furl around her arm,” Stefan continued. “Then, it seemed to center in her chest. It formed a tree that glowed then sank into her skin.”

  Avalina gasped. “עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע.”

  We blinked at her, understanding the Hebrew even if we didn’t understand why she’d switched languages.

  As he’d been raised Jewish, it probably figured that Samuel was the one to blurt out, “The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? How is that…” He shook his head. “That can’t be possible. Eve is a person, not a tree!”

  What the hell was going on with my life when something like that had to be clarified?

  I mean, seriously. Could no one cut us some slack?

  Running a hand through my hair, I muttered, “Is this getting weird for anyone else?”

  When Dre shot me a glance that was sympathetic, I knew shit really had started to derail. Dre? Sympathetic? Not bloody likely.

  “You can’t hypothesize, Avalina,” Bartlett chided, his focus on his wife as he ignored the rest of us.

  “I’m not. It’s on her arms, Bartlett, I just didn’t recognize it. There’s knowledge here. Of good and evil. Forged from the intent of good and evil.” She shook her head and took a step back from Eve. She was shaky, her body quivering as she plunked herself down on the armrest of the sofa I was sitting on. I quickly moved my arm so she didn’t sit on me, but I had a feeling she wouldn’t have noticed.

  This was starting to look less and less like bullshit, and that had an uneasy feeling stirring inside me.

  Eren murmured, “Is it a coincidence I was raised Muslim, Samuel Jewish, and Nestor a Catholic?”

  The three main religions in the world?

  Hell, how had we only just figured that out?

  But Avalina was tugging at her bottom lip. “Unlikely. Remember, God isn’t religious. But it’s probably useful for your knowledge of the past.”

  I snorted. “Eve’s more likely to be useful on that score. None of us know our religions from our asses, but Eve? She can recite the Bible back to front.” I wasn’t sure why that came out sounding proud, but fuck, I was proud. Eve was beyond intelligent.

  Bartlett tilted his head to the side. “Were you raised to be religious?”

  If a cult could be considered that, sure, I thought drily, then immediately felt like a shit when Eve squirmed and mumbled, “I was raised in a cult.”

  Bartlett frowned. “I suppose that makes sense. I always wondered why you were on protected land that way. You weren’t even supposed to be camping out there at night, but I sensed you for a full day and night while I was there, and assumed you were breaking the restrictions.”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea about the rules. Just knew we lived there.”

  “Did you never hear boats? Or have people come close to hike?”

  “Maybe the men did, but women were kept close at hand. Only at night did we retreat to the cabins.”

  Christ, and most of the kids at Caelum thought they’d had a shit life.

  Deciding that we needed to get things back on track here, because I recognized the looks on Avalina and Bartlett’s faces from Samuel’s hard-on expression when he was studying the stock market, I blurted out, “Can you help us with the markings or not?”

  Avalina tensed then nodded. “Yes. But you might not like what they mean.”

  I snorted. “Lady, that just fits the current MO of my life.”

  And wasn’t that the truth?

  ❖

  Eren

  As I stared up at the ceiling, something inside me relaxed when Eve murmured in her sleep and turned her face into my side. I lay on her left and to her right, Stefan snored away.

  The sounds were both relaxing and comforting, yet also capable of making me envious.

  How would it feel to be able to rest with this girl who had brought enemies together? Who was a powerful creature locked inside a young woman, capable of making the world itself shake at her might?

  She rested. Slept. Even though she’d been scared earlier at Bartlett and Avalina’s revelations, she was here, cuddling into me.

  The deep desire to rest was a bitter ache inside me that I couldn’t withhold, and in the dark hush of the Chelsea cottage, with its quaint interior, low ceilings, and too little space, I was safe. In a safe place where sleep shouldn’t have been an issue, but deep inside, I felt like I was at war.

  Always at war.

  My eyes felt gritty, my eyelids ached with the need to lower, but I fought the urge, fought it because when I closed them, I knew my personal demons would overcome me.

  I didn’t even realize I let them fall, didn’t know I was asleep until I was there again.

  In the darkness. My body was a heap of bruised tissue and meat that lay awkwardly between the rubble of what had once been a relatively happy home.

  The heat and the flies, and the stench assailed my senses next. They were so powerful. So strong. My hands ached again with the need to free myself, and yet, the weight above me was so incredibly overwhelming, I was going nowhere.

  Then, the sound came next. My mother weeping. Her pain evident, and her distress making her plead with Allah—not for her safety, but my own. She never seemed to hear me when I called to her, was in some kind of daze that told me she was badly injured. My father didn’t speak, didn’t whisper a word, but I heard the low keening sounds that told me he was hurting too, just without the energy to release a single word.

  Tears came next. Flooding me, drowning me. I was submerged in them. Covered in rocks, suffocating on tears. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t—

  “Eren.”

  The whisper, the soft, gentle lullaby of my name had me tensing, but it stopped my thrashing.

  “Sleep, Eren. Rest. For me.”

  It was so quiet, and the words were so simple and beautifully uttered that something inside me reacted like a cat would to a gentle stroke by its owner. I wanted to nuzzle that voice. Embrace it. Because it represented everything I’d lost. Home. Love. Warmth.

  Inwardly, I shuddered as my subconscious fought the ease I felt. Ho
w could I trust the words, trust the sentiment when I’d never had peace before now? And yet, it came. As those feelings were stirred by a song that was almost soundless, a gentle hum that made everything inside me soften and gentle. Relaxing into the sheets, into a woman’s arms like the demon slayer she was, I slept.

  For the second night in a run, I sank into her, my haven.

  My peace.

  ❖

  Stefan

  I stared into the darkness, hearing the soft lullaby my woman gave my brother. He was huddled against her, sleeping as fitfully as a child, even though he’d calmed to the extent that he just looked as though he was in a deep REM sleep.

  Eren only rested when he was exhausted, and I knew we’d pushed his reserves, because I wasn’t sure if he’d done anything other than mess around on his phone while the rest of us had been catching some Zs, and even though he’d managed to get some shuteye last night that wasn’t enough to make up for every other sleepless night, was it?

  He was a huge concern to the Pack, and he didn’t even know it. His sleep deprivation was a major issue. It never seemed to affect him during a mission, but it mattered because all our welfare did. I wished there was something we could do to make him sleep, but as the situation at Caelum had proven, not even powerful narcotics—enough to fell a school, for fuck’s sake—had downed him.

  He’d not only built a chemical tolerance, I’d come to believe, but one that was forged with his mind too. He refused to let the drugs into his system, and while that sounded like it was impossible, creatures themselves were impossible, weren’t they? Possessed souls that were spawned from Adam and Eve themselves.

  The day had been beyond insane, the revelations on the brink of ridiculousness. It was no wonder Eren finally succumbed to sleep because I knew we all felt like we’d been put through the wringer. It was a testament to our exhaustion that we were all in bed before eight PM, but the markings on Eve’s body, what they meant—literally—as well as the position they put us in, were ramifications that were hit home with a goddamn mallet.

  And yet, as complicated as the future was because of our attachment to Eve, how could I not love the woman who cradled my brother through his nightmares? Who sang to him like a mother to a babe so he’d sleep?

  I wasn’t sure my heart could be more full of love than it was at this second, and to be honest, it scared me. I was torn. So torn. Most of us had been taught not to love. Had been shown by example that it was an unwise emotion. I’d been dumped in an orphanage. Nestor had been handed off to a batshit priest. Eren’s brother-in-law was a bully and a tyrant who’d abused him, and Dre had been left with a cruel grandmother who’d worked him to the bone on their tequila plantation.

  We were fucked up.

  So, while Eve’s level of fucked up was a tad unusual, it wasn’t anything we weren’t used to. Not when she was who she was. And I wasn’t even talking about this Jannah crap. I meant as a person.

  The person who could switch from Pollyanna to Bloody Mary if she felt sure she, or one of us, were being threatened. The woman who could accept seven men into her life, even though it went against everything she’d ever learned as a child, and had embraced them and learned about them all equally. She hadn’t Claimed us all, and I wasn’t angered by that. Truly. She represented more than just sex, and that knowledge alone was what had made me realize she was different.

  I wanted her for more than that.

  I wanted her heart when I’d never given a damn before now.

  When the final notes of her song drifted off, the sheets rustled, and she carefully twisted onto her back. I didn’t move from my position, not wanting to disturb her or Eren, even though I knew from experience that when he did eventually sleep, he’d go under deeply until another nightmare woke him when his body had recharged to the point it could function normally.

  I hoped, for his sake, that Eve could soothe him out of that too.

  “Are you asleep?”

  Her whisper had my lips twitching. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I woke up when Eren fell asleep.”

  She stilled. “How come?”

  “Because when he goes under, it’s like he’s drowning.” My throat felt too full of emotion to get the next words out. “Thank you, Eve. Thank you for helping my brother rest.”

  She was quiet for a second, then she murmured, “It’s my honor.”

  Three words, and somehow, they were more powerful than the ones I longed to hear—I love you.

  I knew she meant it. Knew she cared for my Pack as well as I did. My Pack was my family. My everything. I’d chosen these men as my brothers in arms, but also, for life. We fought together but we played together as well, because we were the family we’d selected for ourselves. Nature hadn’t paired us, but our free will had.

  “Do you think you can rest?” I asked, when there was so much more I wanted to say but couldn’t.

  She turned into me. “I can try.”

  We spent the next ten minutes trying to sleep, both of us like tuna in a can as we tried to stop ourselves from moving around so as not to disturb Eren. When, ultimately, we both gave up, she whispered, “I’m just going to the kitchen.”

  “I’ll come with.”

  “Okay.”

  As the pair of us carefully slid out of the room, she was waiting on me on the other side of the door with her hand outstretched to grab mine.

  The gesture was tiny, but to me? It was like a fucking earthquake. The way everything inside me responded to it was like a dam bursting.

  She frowned at me when I gulped and took a hold of her hand, carefully enfolding hers in mine.

  “You okay?” she inquired softly, her head tilting to the side to look up at me—there was a major height difference between us too, so that figured.

  “Yeah.” My smile was tight, and I squeezed her fingers then led her down the narrow stairs to the kitchen.

  The second we were down there, we had proof that the rest of the house was sleeping because the kitchen and living areas were both empty.

  It felt strange to have Eve to myself after having shared her for the past few weeks. Only in the early days of knowing her had I experienced it because I’d been the only one with a mark. Now, she had marks of her own, and males of her own too.

  I didn’t resent that, though. Didn’t resent sharing her. Caelum had taught me that we were born to live in Packs, and having Eve safe, secured—both emotionally and physically—made me feel so much better on the inside.

  I truly didn’t understand what Dre was fighting against, just knew that he was, and thought he was being a douche about it too.

  “Do you want some tea, pui?” I asked softly.

  “Tea?” She blinked. “Yeah. That would be nice. What does pui mean to you? You’ve called me it before.”

  Taken aback, I asked, “Huh?”

  A snort of laughter escaped her. “You just called me that. It’s the first time you’ve called me anything in… I guess, Romanian? I know it means little, but little, what?”

  I hadn’t even realized I had. Though I cringed inwardly, I focused on filling up the kettle with water and putting it on the stove. As the gas began to whistle, I turned around and leaned against the counter, folding my arms against my chest in a classic ‘don’t wanna discuss this’ position and explained, “It’s like a little animal. Like a pup or a cub, you know?”

  “And you called me that?” Something flashed in her eyes, and it didn’t take a course in ‘how to understand women’ to see that she liked that I had.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Can you call me more things like that?”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “I like it.”

  That made me snicker. “What the lady wants, the lady gets.”

  “Even though you don’t like that you called me it?” she countered.

  Damn, she was too astute for her own good sometimes. Using the need to grab tea as an excuse, I turned my back on her.
“It’s all good.”

  “Is it?” she pressed softly. “I’m not sure if it is. Ever since Avalina’s translation, you’ve been freaked about going home.”

  I couldn’t lie, because I was.

  Seven wishes to destroy the Screamer,

  Solomon’s ring to lure Drekavac to you,

  Bucegi where he sleeps.

  Without even thinking about the translation Bartlett and Avalina had given us, the words came to me.

  Bucegi. The mountains I’d seen every day through my orphanage window.

  It was hard to believe that Eve’s markings were taking me to a place I could never consider home, and yet, was.

  “I’ve tried to dissociate myself from the place,” I admitted, grabbing the canister of tea Eve had bought from the pretty store she didn’t realize was super expensive.

  Maybe it was anti-climactic to go grocery shopping after hearing the Creation story from the first of the firsts’ perspective, but we ate a shit ton. Anyway, the memory of watching her in the food store at Harrods was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. Samuel had told her to grab whatever she wanted, so she had.

  To the tune of six hundred pounds.

  Of course, Frazer could afford it, but it was amusing nonetheless.

  Eve was literal to a fault.

  Sam had muttered that he’d take her to Aldi next time, even though I knew he’d gotten a kick out of her in that place, too. She’d also bought a lot of clothes from there, and that was an expense I could get behind.

  She wasn’t wearing one of our shirts for bed now, but a pretty, slinky dress that felt good against my chest when she’d curled into me. The light rose suited her creamy skin and made her hair appear all the darker for it.

  Eve hummed as she watched me spoon out the loose leaf into the teapot. “Is there anything you want me to see when we’re there?”

  I snorted. “The ‘exit’ sign?”

  “You can’t hate all of it,” she countered, her tone mulish.