Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  “Won’t the ink change if Erlik’s location shifts?” Eve questioned. “I mean, it’s not like anything is fixed. It might change.”

  “Or it might not,” Avalina replied gently. “I’d far prefer for you to get a handle on this situation sooner rather than later. We must act.

  “The world will endure another so-called Armageddon if it happens shortly. But to give the humans a reprieve of three weeks, only to take their safety net away from them again? It’s beyond cruel.”

  “I wish the private jets we had were capable of transatlantic flights,” Frazer admitted on a sigh, “but they’re mostly for shorter journeys. Max, a red-eye flight from New York to LA.”

  Avalina wafted a hand. “It can’t be helped. We’ve been fortunate that you have a great wealth at your fingertips.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  The question came from Eve, but the bluntness of it surprised us all.

  Avalina stared at her. “Why aren’t we rich? Because riches come in different forms, and when you’ve lived as long as we have, then you—”

  Eve snorted. “Your library doesn’t exactly scream poverty, Avalina. And I get the feeling that a university wouldn’t pay for such luxurious surroundings as your office.”

  The harshness in my woman’s tone had me reaching over to grab her hand. Not as a prompt to quiet her, but to comfort her.

  What was going on inside her head?

  She’d awoken this morning with a big grin, and the smirk on Dre’s face was answer enough that he’d finally been Claimed. But that smile on her face had died as soon as we’d explained the clue to her, and when Samuel had hooked us up to Avalina and Bartlett’s office, her mood had just disintegrated entirely.

  “No, and we live in comfort, but truly, when you live a long time, riches come in many shapes and sizes.”

  Eve’s mouth tightened, and Samuel, casting a look at her, began to speak, but as he said, “If—” Eve blurted out, “Why are we even doing this? What if the Ghouls are the only thing containing the humans? Have we ever thought about that?”

  Bartlett shot Avalina a look. “Where is this coming from, Eve?”

  Her nostrils flared. “Have you looked outside your ivory tower recently? The world’s in chaos and what are people doing? Looting shops, holding people at gunpoint to steal from them—”

  Ah.

  The news.

  Shit. Frazer had said we should switch it off, but keeping her in the dark wasn’t something any of us had wanted to do.

  Before the call with Samuel, she’d grabbed some toast from the breakfast tray and had taken a seat in front of the screen. Flickering through channels had shown us the state of chaos in this mad world, and I could empathize with why she was questioning things.

  We were saving people who didn’t particularly merit saving.

  “Humans were never supposed to be inherently good or bad. They just are. They live their lives with free will to do as they want. Their punishment is not ours to mete out,” Avalina advised her soothingly, her eyes softening as she saw Eve’s distress.

  I snuggled closer to her on the sofa and hooked an arm over her shoulder, so she was under my protection. Even if it was only a hug, I hoped it made her feel better.

  Eve tipped her chin up and challenged, “When all the Ghouls are gone, what happens next?”

  “There’s no way of knowing.”

  “No, and what if it’s worse than it was before?”

  “That’s in God’s hands.”

  “And what if God’s wrong?” Eve snarled, shoving my arm away and surging to her feet. “It might have been inadvertent, but he made four creatures. The Ghoul, a destroyer. The majnūn, a soldier. And the Jannah, a protector. All of us seem to have a purpose, but the humans? What’s their purpose?”

  “Why does it matter?” Frazer asked softly. “We have a role to play in this, love. We have no choice.”

  Her jaw clenched. “We’re saving people who don’t deserve it.”

  “No, we’re destroying people who need to kill to survive. Saving the humans is a byproduct of that one action,” Reed explained, and I wasn’t surprised to see her take to that idea.

  “I’ve watched enough documentaries to know that when you take away an apex predator from an ecosystem, it never bodes well. Maybe we shouldn’t take Erlik out of the equation. Maybe that would be too dangerous,” she reasoned.

  But Avalina shook her head. “I might agree with you, Eve, if it weren’t for one thing. This mention of Tamag.”

  “Explain, please,” Dre said gruffly, and I watched him grab her and haul her onto his lap. Before she could argue, his hand tightened around Eve’s thigh, his fingers flashing white with tension for a second as he squeezed.

  “Tamag is a Turkish term,” Eren interjected, before Avalina said a word. He drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s our ancient mythology. Greece had Hades, Rome had Pluto, our ancient God of Death was Erlik, and he ruled over Tamag.”

  “I’m surprised a boy of your age would know that,” Bartlett commented with a frown.

  Eren’s smirk was dark. “I have a lot of time on my hands. Plus, my father was fascinated by the mythos.”

  “So, Erlik is the name of the Original, but along the way he’s gotten mingled in with ancient mythology,” Frazer reasoned.

  “Yes,” Avalina replied simply. “The trouble is, these references to Tamag, with Erlik as the gatekeeper, then Erlik’s leader? It sounds remarkably like a reference to Satan himself.” She whispered the devil’s name, and it was hard for me not to shake my head.

  After a lifetime of atheism, it was difficult, even in the resounding proof shoved straight in my face, not to react to such fear. I’d never believed in Heaven and Hell because, at far too many points in my life, I’d lived in hell, except mine had been very earthly in origin. Heaven? That was for rich boys with food in their bellies and parents who gave a damn about them.

  Simplistic, perhaps, but the memories were as real as ever, and made a mockery of Avalina’s fear.

  After all, she was the one here who’d dealt with Satan in the flesh.

  Bartlett squeezed his wife’s shoulder. “Ghouls were likened to demons in human legend because they were Satan’s workers on this realm. With his taint in their bones from our sins, he used them for his gain. I can’t say what happens in his lair, but I know that having decimated two-thirds of his legions on this realm, he won’t be happy.”

  My mouth gaped. “You can’t seriously tell me that you think the devil is about to rise?”

  “Kill Erlik before his leader surfaces? That pretty much sounds like it to me,” Samuel stated grimly, and his face looked pretty ashen now. Shit, we all looked ashen.

  “We have no choice then,” I confirmed. “We have to speak with Nicholas.”

  Avalina was nodding, even as she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Limit how much you speak of us,” she advised, but Bartlett shook his head.

  “How can they? Without us, they’d never have translated the markings.”

  “They can speak of another professor, then,” she retorted.

  “He’ll sense our hand instantly—”

  When the pair seemed on the brink of an argument, I cleared my throat, and dismissed, “We’ll be in touch when we’re in Turkey.” I cut Samuel a look who dipped his chin in agreement and cut the call with little chance for farewell.

  “That was rude,” Frazer retorted, but he was smirking at me from his slouched position on the dark orange armchair. If the dude spread his legs any wider, he’d be able to fit a horse between them.

  “I was born rude,” I replied, gnawing on the inside of my cheek as I looked around at my brothers, sizing up who exactly should make the call.

  “I’ll speak with him,” Eve murmured, sensing what I was doing and nipping it in the bud.

  “What? You barely know him!” Eren replied. “At least let me try. Maybe I can use the Lorelei—”

  “On an Ancient?” She shook her
head. “No. Our powers are puny by comparison. We barely contained those Ghouls yesterday evening. Why would we be able to sway an Original majnūn?

  “No, if I speak with him then I can explain. Perhaps make him see reason?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Reason about what?”

  She shrugged, but turned her focus to Samuel. “I’ll speak to him if you can contact him, Sam. Do we have a specific location for this Derinkuyu place?”

  “It’s an underground city in Cappadocia. Bartlett and Avalina saw no other specific starting points, so I guess we’ll just have to get there and figure it out for ourselves.”

  She nodded and held out her hand after Samuel dialed a number on his cell phone then passed it to her. When she went to stand, I frowned and tugged at her hand. “Speak with him here,” I directed, but she pulled away.

  “No. It will be easier to speak alone.”

  As she wandered off, I knew I wasn’t the only one who tensed when I heard her say, “Nicholas?” The door promptly closed behind her, and then there was the sound of the TV in the bedroom.

  “Why wouldn’t she want us to hear what she’s saying?” Frazer questioned, his gaze narrowed on the doorway she’d just passed through.

  “She’s trying to save us from ourselves, of course,” Eren answered fondly, his gaze softening as he flickered his attention to the room where Eve was sitting. “I have no doubt she’s about to take all the blame and, if something goes wrong, is hoping Nicholas will take us back.”

  Frazer snorted. “What in the hell made her think he’s that benevolent?”

  “God loves a trier?” Eren quipped.

  My lips twitched at his words, but it didn’t stop me from rubbing my jaw—I really needed to shave. “What are we doing, guys? What’s the plan?”

  Reed grunted. “No plan. How can we? There’s nothing to go off of. Sure, we have some details but nothing to help us prepare.”

  “True, but not entirely.” Samuel clicked his mouse a few times and on the screen where we’d been speaking with Bartlett and Avalina, a picture came up. “This is the city map according to the tourist organization that runs tours down there.”

  “Jesus, it’s like an ant farm,” Frazer retorted, his eyes tracing over the depths of a city that ran deep beneath the surface.

  “Yeah. It goes two hundred feet down. In its heyday, it was capable of housing over twenty thousand people.”

  My heart thudded dully in my chest. “That’s a lot of ground to cover, and a ton of Ghouls sheltered within its walls.”

  “Exactly.” Samuel grimaced. “I have to hope that the first wish has to do with that.”

  “’With caution approach?’” I nodded. “I can see that. It’s almost telling us to approach it and then make the initial wish.”

  “If this is open to tourists, then how the hell are the Ghouls living there without interference?” Eren retorted.

  “Only half of it is accessible to the public, and like the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, their dinner comes to them. Why wouldn’t they hang around?” Reed reasoned, his eyes on the ant farm-like layout of the underground city of caves.

  “There are dozens of similar cities in the vicinity. This one even links up to another about five miles away via a tunnel.”

  “So, this Erlik could be there? Jesus, when you said there were no specifics, you really fucking meant it,” I groused.

  Samuel heaved his shoulders. “We can only start where the markings tell us. This is Derinkuyu. There’s one official entrance with five unofficial ones that are closed off now. But when you look at the city, you can see that an approach isn’t as difficult as it would have been back in the day.”

  Another picture shot up, and the design of the town was so much like an anthill that I had to wonder what these ancient people had been smoking to come up with this concept. I wasn’t saying they were dumb, far from it, but they had some strange design ethics.

  Underground, they’d chiseled out rooms that were interlinked via corridors. There were maybe ten of these chambers to a level, all interlinked by what were essentially ventilation shafts and wells. When you put the picture together, it was like something a Doomsdayer would come up with while smoking a joint. Because the mass of chambers was boggling to behold.

  And above the ground? The homes looked like upside-down ice cream cones with windows chiseled out.

  “Are people still living there?” I questioned, uncertain because there appeared to be modern buildings interspersed among the ancient ruins. A lot of the anthill homes had been destroyed, which was what Samuel meant by the access points having changed over the years.

  Not officially, but we’d been trained to seek out points of infiltration, and even as I scanned over the Google Maps’ images, a few leaped out at me.

  “For sure. Twenty thousand people live aboveground now, and this is a major tourist attraction site for the region,” Samuel explained.

  As we all stared at the pictures, Eren asked, “Think she’ll get us there?”

  As one, we cut a look at the bedroom where she’d holed up in.

  “I think whatever Eve sets her mind to,” Frazer said softly, “she’ll get her way.”

  Looking at a Pack that was made up of men who’d once been my enemies and were now my brothers, I couldn’t do anything other than agree with him.

  8

  Eve

  The helicopter ride set me on edge.

  I didn’t like cars, hated boats, loathed planes, but helicopters? Worst of the bunch.

  Unfortunately for me, my preferences weren’t considered, and since the situation was rather dire, it made sense.

  Caelum’s jet enabled us to get to Ankara, and from there, one of its helicopters was waiting to take us to Kayseri, a thirty-minute ride from where we needed to be. But helicopters, with their god-awful vibrations that managed to offend everyone in the vicinity, would ruin our cloak-and-dagger approach.

  Nicholas had a car waiting for us where the helicopter landed in a dust-strewn field atop crops that, had the farmers been tending, would have been destroyed.

  As it stood, like everywhere else, it was a ghost town.

  That was to our benefit, but it was creepy, and I was grateful for the backup Nicholas had insisted on as his price for helping us in this final battle against Erlik.

  Of course, that wasn’t all he’d asked for, and in his shoes, I would have asked for more too. Didn’t mean I was going to give him what he wanted, even if he accepted us back into Caelum afterward.

  Mouth pursing with disgust at his request, I let Reed enfold my hand in his. He tugged me along to the waiting SUVs and hefted me into the middle seat where he soon joined me.

  It didn’t sit well with me that we were going to be split up. My Pack was made to be together, forged as one unit, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. These SUVs didn’t seat eight people, simple as that.

  We set off down a regular road but swiftly turned off onto a dust-lined track. It was easy to see why the three-vehicle cavalcade had all looked wrecked. For all I knew, there could have been brand new vehicles hiding beneath the red mud spattered on the tires, the fender, and lower half of the body.

  The track grew rocky and even messier as we traveled the thirty minutes from the helicopter’s drop off point to Derinkuyu. The driver was a local, a creature, and he glowered at us with an intense dislike that went above and beyond someone being pissed at being called in for a job on short notice.

  “I can’t believe they blamed us for the infiltration when we were the ones who saved their asses,” Samuel grumbled from behind me.

  “In their position, we were the easiest to blame,” I replied easily, turning my face to the side to stare out the window and onto the rocky terrain, which had been half-civilized for modern living but was still rough and raw.

  “You told him we weren’t behind it, didn’t you?”

  I snickered at my control freak Vampire and turned to look at him. “You think Nicholas would have
helped me if I hadn’t told him exactly what happened?”

  His brow puckered. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” I drawled, amused. “What did you think I was going to talk to him about? The weather?”

  He shrugged. “Thought you’d hold some things back.”

  “Nope. He even knows we’re a Pack now.”

  “He does?” Stefan’s voice was high-pitched.

  “Does that bother you?” I inquired, my cheeks turning pink in the face of his embarrassment. Anger began to whirl inside me, and only when Reed tutted and squeezed my thigh, did I feel like I had an escape valve.

  His Hell Hound butted alongside mine, calming me down, and when I looked at Stefan again, I knew it was without anger, making my eyes gleam.

  “I just—”

  “You have to understand, Eve,” Eren replied. “Nicholas is important to Stefan. The whole Academy is. If Stefan hero worships anyone, it’s Nicholas.”

  I blinked. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “Because he’s stoic?” Eren said with a snigger, which earned him a shove in the side from Stefan’s elbow.

  “Fuck off,” Stefan grumbled, but his pink ears said Eren was spot on with his comments.

  “I mean, I didn’t tell him we did threesomes and stuff,” I mumbled, dipping my head so the driver couldn’t hear.

  “Jesus, I should hope not,” Reed retorted, but he was laughing as he spoke and I shot him a grin, happy he was amused. “He didn’t ask for the specifics then?”

  My lips twitched before I could control them. “Nope. He didn’t ask if any of you touched either.”

  Silence fell at my words before I began giggling, slapping my belly to contain my glee at their horrified glances at one another.

  “We don’t cross swords, babe,” Samuel replied with a disgusted shudder.

  “Never say never,” I said in a singsong voice.

  “I will,” Eren retorted, sticking his tongue out and making puking sounds.

  “Spoilsports,” I teased, but I gave them a wink that encompassed them all, and turned back, feeling surprisingly lighter than I’d anticipated.