Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  When she came, the way her pussy tightened around me was more heaven, but this time, it was combined with the exquisite taunt of hell.

  She sucked me dry, those tiny muscles pulling from me, milking me of everything that was me until it merged with everything that was her.

  As she Claimed me, made me hers in earnest, I recognized that I’d always been hers.

  Even before I’d known her.

  Even before I’d been a spark of life in my mother’s womb, I’d been hers from the very beginning, and that was how it was supposed to be.

  ❖

  Nestor

  “Talk about arrogant,” I muttered as I stared up at the bar in Ploiești and read the name.

  Drekavac.

  It was how we’d found the Original, so we couldn’t complain that much about him being a prick, but still, it was excessive. If his name had to be invoked during the wishes we’d use to kill him, why tempt fate the way he had?

  “Ghouls are arrogant,” Dre muttered under his breath. “You know that.”

  I did, and I reached up to rub my throat, scarred forever by a Ghoul’s attack. “Still, this just seems a bit crazier than usual. Why would you give someone the means of—”

  “Of what? No one can use the name against him save us, and only that because of Eve,” Reed grumbled, but that was only because he was pissed that he hadn’t persuaded Eve to come in full-on leathers.

  I was certain the Hell Hound had a dominatrix fetish, and that would certainly fit considering the beast’s temperament.

  A part of me was astounded at how much control Reed had been showing of late, especially when Hounds were renowned for being hard to handle, and yet, Eve did something to him. Mellowed him out.

  Perhaps she was the majnūn equivalent of CBD oil or something, and though he was usually grumpy, we’d had no major explosions. Yet. Outbursts, sure. A lot of broken furniture? Hell, yes. But nothing too wild.

  “I don’t care. It’s still a stupid move to pull, and I didn’t think a Ghoul so old would be—”

  “What? Careless? Rash? The bastard has lived so long he’s gone through evolution, Nestor. Wouldn’t you be bored shitless?”

  Eve appeared then, and she placed her hand on Reed’s arm. Instantly, the other man calmed, and she tipped her head to the side, and asked, “Problem?”

  I couldn’t blame him for being smitten with her. There was something about her, something that had the power to just hit us square between the eyes.

  I’d have resented it if I knew she wasn’t as taken with us, and now that I’d been Claimed? My gouille was about as close to purring as it could get.

  Even if it didn’t have the organs to purr.

  I rubbed the back of my neck as I stared at the bar where the Original had asked us to meet. At least, his PA had told us this was where we’d meet.

  The only part of our plan that had the potential to go wrong was that Drekavac wouldn’t be there himself. Or, should I say, Mihai Adamescu, as the Ghoul was currently named.

  He was, Samuel had discovered, two things.

  One—a mafia overlord for this area who hid his criminal ties in legal businesses like the bar opposite us.

  Two—obsessed with ancient artifacts that were shrouded in Biblical lore.

  Both made sense in a way. What was unusual was the fact that Adamescu wasn’t living in a nest. At least, not a nest as we understood them to be.

  He was surrounded by humans as far as we could tell. Of course, Ghouls looked normal, so until we approached, we wouldn’t know for sure of their species… therein lay another set of issues.

  If Adamescu wasn’t as pumped about the signet ring as we imagined, then he wouldn’t be here.

  Secondly, we were creatures on the brink of walking into a packed nightclub that may or may not be overloaded with Ghouls.

  Fun.

  I didn’t care for myself, but for Eve?

  It bothered me. And yeah, I knew she was capable of using someone’s severed leg as a fucking weapon, but still, she was my woman. My softness. I didn’t need her in danger, not without my gouille turning insane in the process.

  I was surprised by Romania. The Bucegi mountains were beautiful, and this part of the city we were in was quite pretty. There was something fresh in the air that reminded me we were in the countryside. It wasn’t dirty like London had been, instead it was clean and crisp. It rained a lot, more than the UK, but from how Stefan had always described it, I’d expected a dump.

  It wasn’t.

  But I knew his past had colored this place, had ruined any beauty in it for him because he’d experienced only the ugly side of life here. Setting foot on Romanian soil had changed him, made him harder, tenser. So much so, not even Eve was getting through to him, and I didn’t think anything would until we left again.

  Still, I could appreciate the place even if he couldn’t. We’d passed beautiful ancient buildings, pretty streets lined with expensive homes, and green fields that made my gouille want to get out and run. I couldn’t even imagine how badly Reed and Dre were being hit with those urges too.

  The bar was in a less than chic neighborhood, but for all that, the queue was rammed solid.

  My gouille sensed that the crowd was all human, too, which meant they were essentially cows walking into the abattoir for slaughter if the Ghouls in charge deigned to make it a slaughterhouse for the night.

  The humans’ presence made it difficult for us to discern what was going on inside the nightclub, which meant we couldn’t use our souls’ abilities to figure out what we were about to walk into.

  It was inconvenient to be sure.

  But I had to assume that the nightclub wouldn’t be popular if masses of humans randomly went missing from inside its walls.

  “Are you ready?” Eve asked, murmuring the words close to me.

  I knew why. She was gouille today, and she could sense how on edge mine was.

  While I liked that she checked up on me, I didn’t need to be soothed. What I needed was for her to be back at the hotel. Safe and sound.

  Unfortunately, we couldn’t exactly end this Ghoul without her, which was a definite hitch in that plan.

  I nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told her grimly, and I grabbed a firm hold of her hand as we crossed the slick street toward the bar.

  The others were gathered around behind me. I knew it was instinct to want to surround Eve, but it would look weird, and as it stood, we were just businessmen. Of the illegal variety, but businessmen, nonetheless.

  The queue hadn’t lessened any while we’d studied the building. Frazer had headed around the back to see if there were any surprises there, and we’d already studied the blueprints that Samuel had managed to purloin—no one even bothered asking how he got those. We were as prepared as we could be after we’d read Adamescu and his group’s list of crimes, and knowing we were walking into a killer’s den didn’t appease my gouille any.

  Adamescu appeared to live like a human. Most Ghoul leaders did to be fair. Ductores weren’t like the masses, after all. They had a control that was forged in a world of bloodshed. But Adamescu truly was the wolf among the sheep.

  As we approached the doorway, the crowd grumbled as we passed. Every now and then, I heard Stefan tell them to fuck off, but I forged ahead. Three bouncers, list in hand and earpieces at the ready, saw us, and when they did?

  They moved aside to let us pass.

  That Ibramovicz had managed to get Eve’s picture to Adamescu shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did set me on edge.

  As we stepped into the club, the darkness had my gouille rumbling with pleasure. It was weird because it was night, but in this antechamber, it was pitch-black. I only had a second to enjoy it before another door was opened and we walked into a mass of strobe lights that had everything inside me flinching.

  I heard Reed and Dre groan too before the music swallowed them up as though they’d never made a sound.

  The club was huge, but we a
lready knew that. The bar ran down one wall and a team of bartenders serviced it. They ran like worker bees down its length as they handled the masses who wanted to find their buzz.

  In the center of the space was the dance floor, and on either side were cages containing dancers, mostly naked, as they writhed to the beat.

  Behind the dance floor, there were windows guarded by a door that was fenced off with red rope. The VIP area.

  When a bouncer from outside appeared in front of me, I nodded at him and let him guide us to where we needed to be.

  Unsurprisingly, it was the VIP area, and the guard securing it released the rope, then opened the door, so we could walk in.

  We were led into a space that was half the size of the bar and dancefloor. Here, there were large seating areas that were sectioned off with velvet curtains. There was a scent inside that told me these private areas were used for two things.

  Sex and feeding.

  Ghouls were back here, and it had all my senses switching into turbo mode.

  We were surrounded by the enemy, and the only saving grace? The only thing keeping us alive?

  We could scent Ghouls, but they couldn’t scent us.

  A fact I’d never been more grateful for in all my life.

  The guard led us straight down to the back of the room where there was another door, and he opened it, letting us into an office that looked like it belonged in a modern museum.

  White walls with only a desk and a chair behind it, with seats for guests on the other side, and then a sofa. That was it.

  Why?

  Because the walls were taken up with glass cubes that had spotlights on them. I couldn’t see what was inside them all, but some were tiny, some were large like swords, and others were various weapons. Standing in front of this wall of art, with his back to us, was a man.

  Adamescu.

  I was surprised he was alone, especially when the guard left us with him. That told me Adamescu thought he was either about to feed on a meal of eight humans, or there was no threat here. Simply a business transaction.

  Not that it mattered what he thought.

  Our seven wishes would fell him.

  At least, I hoped they would.

  We’d uttered the wishes in London, Geneva, and the second we’d landed in Bucharest, and to no avail. If they didn’t work when we were here, opposite him?

  We were fucked.

  The rest of Eve’s markings ricocheted inside my skull. Each word was vital. Each one the means of bringing this bastard, and all those in his line, to an end.

  “As you can see,” Adamescu murmured, “I’ve made it my hobby to collect certain objet d’art.” He remained with his back to us. “A friend of mine has informed me that you might have something I would like to add to my collection.”

  When Adamescu turned around, Eve tensed at my side.

  I could understand why.

  It was often difficult to account for how beautiful Ghouls were when they were capable of such ugliness, and Adamescu was walking sin personified. He could have been a model with his perfect blond hair and pretty face. His eyes sparkled like sapphires, and his lips were a ruby red that was far too similar to the blood he fed from on the regular.

  Not just to nourish, but to kill.

  Samuel fed, and until recently, we’d fed too, but Ghouls destroyed with their appetites.

  Adamescu’s mouth twitched at what I assumed was Eve’s starstruck impression, but when she saw that, she cocked a brow at him, then reached up and dropped her purse down her arm. Pulling her hand from mine, she dipped into her purse and pulled out the ring we’d had mocked up to ensnare Drekavac’s attention.

  When she passed it over, his attention switched from her to the ring, and Eve smirked at me as she took off her jacket, revealing the markings that had proclaimed him as her victim.

  The seven of us moved around her in a semicircle, while his focus remained on the ring, as we slipped silently into position as rehearsed.

  The words Avalina had translated slipped into my mind, staying at the forefront of my memory as though there was a chalkboard in front of me I could read from.

  The words had to be perfect.

  We’d learned that from the wish we’d made back at Caelum. Words Bartlett had congratulated Eren on choosing because wishes were finicky.

  And this was not the moment for finicky.

  “With the…”

  “…blood of…”

  “…the Father to…”

  “…guide him, we…”

  “…wish for…”

  “…Drekavac…”

  “…to return home.”

  Seven voices spoke at once, and the second the words fell from our lips, Adamescu’s head tipped up in surprise. We spoke in a language as old as him, a language that would be the end of him.

  The second the wish was out there, red flashed in Drekavac’s eyes.

  “You think to contain me?” he growled, his Ghoul half flaring to life in the face of the threat.

  But it was too late.

  Even as fear swamped me that the wish hadn’t worked yet again, that we couldn’t do what Bartlett and Avalina believed us capable of, Eve let out a scream.

  The Original spun to face her, and his eyes became round as her ink, her fucking ink, began to move.

  Before our eyes, her hands glowed as the leaves, attached to endless reams of branches, spilled down from her fingers. Morphing from the light into a physical entity, and even as Adamescu made a running jump to attack her, a knife appearing in his hand from out of nowhere, the branches hit him.

  In seconds, he was hurling himself at us, and then he was wrapped in an endless ribbon of leaves. They went around and around him, coddling him into a papoose worthy of a baby. But the minute they covered him from top to bottom was the second they began to tighten.

  Before our eyes, the branches squeezed. Growing tighter. And tighter. Until there was a scream, this time from Adamescu, and then there was no more.

  The branches caved in on themselves, surging into a flame so hot that my skin felt scorched. Noticing from the scent filling the room that the paint on the walls had begun to melt, scorched by the intense fire incinerating the Original Ghoul, I dragged Eve back, but the branches were attached to her.

  There was no escape.

  But as quickly as the flames surged into being, they disappeared. In the blink of an eye, they were there and then they weren’t. As the heat died, the fire ceased, and there stood the cocoon of branches and leaves. They appeared intact until, for no reason at all, they shattered into a million pieces.

  We watched as, like glass, they dropped to the ground, but even as they revealed a pile of ash that we had to assume was Adamescu, a wind appeared from nowhere. Just as the fire had burned brightly, this whipped around, creating a tornado within the four walls of Adamescu’s office.

  The wind separated the two entities.

  Branches and leaves seemed to swirl close to the ground, whereas the ashes surged to the fore. A flash of light blinded us, and though my gouille raged, I had to drop my hand from Eve’s to cover my eyes from its unearthly glow.

  When I looked next, the haze from the ashes had disappeared, and the branches were retracting up Eve’s arms.

  She held them out so we could see, and just as they slipped back into her skin, they began to retract once more, disappearing until Dre rasped, “Look at her chest.”

  Eve dipped her chin, and quickly unfastened the buttons on the blouse she was wearing. The second we saw the strange motif on her stomach, the glow and the ink just as unusual as the leaves had been, screams sounded from the nightclub.

  “Cover up,” I snarled at her, barely giving her the time to do so before we hustled her into a protective circle and began to clear out of the office. As we moved, the scent of blood grew stronger, as did the scent of fire, except the over furnished spaces hadn’t fared as well as Drekavac’s empty office.

  Everywhere was scorched and parts of t
he VIP area were still burning, but what caught my eye were the piles of ash on the ground. Dozens of them.

  It had only fucking worked.

  Bartlett and Avalina’s theory, one posited from the clue scrawled on Eve’s skin, was true.

  One of the Original lines was defunct because Drekavac was no more, and all that remained were piles of ash that would be swept into the trash where they belonged.

  ❖

  Samuel

  “Did that seem too easy to anyone else?” I asked, once we were safely back in our vehicle and heading to our digs.

  Eve blinked at me. “Easy? Were you in the same room as me?”

  I snorted. “We just walked in and killed his ass. I expected more action.” After weeks of planning, of building up to this moment, it was all over. Pretty anti-climactic, in my opinion.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” she retorted with a huff, as she folded her arms across her belly. But I spotted the wince.

  “Is it sore?”

  She pulled a face. “A little.”

  “When we make it back to the hotel,” Reed said, “we’ll take a picture so you can show Bartlett and Avalina. They can translate what we need to do and where we need to go.”

  “I hope we get some action next time,” I stated on a grunt. “I didn’t even get to feed.”

  “If my blood isn’t enough for you…”

  The twinkle in her eyes told me she was teasing, not that my Vampire appreciated the joke.

  I grumbled, “There’s a difference. The blood of a mate and the blood of an enemy.” I smacked my lips. “Nothing better.”

  “Love and hate are on the same taste spectrum, are they?” she countered with a pout that had me grinning at her.

  “I think I preferred you when you were quiet and didn’t understand half of what we had to say.”

  She snickered but shoved me in the side. I pressed my lips to her temple, hiding a grin. Around me, my brothers chuckled in the confines of the SUV Frazer was driving like he was on a Nascar track, but there was a definite levity in the air, a joyousness that came from a job well done.