Nine Lives: The Caelum Academy Trilogy: Part THREE

by Akeroyd, Serena

  Of course, our amusement gained us glowers from the driver, and though I knew it was bad, I couldn’t stop myself from spitting, “If you don’t want to be here, then get the fuck out of the car and we’ll take over.”

  The man jerked in response, the wheel going with him before he got the vehicle back under control.

  He’d heard the Hell Hound in my voice, and it satisfied me deeply that he responded to it.

  Reed mumbled, “Since when do you say ‘fuck?’”

  I shrugged. “You guys all say it when you come.”

  “We do?” he asked with a snort.

  “Yep. I hear it often enough…” I gave him another shrug and a quick grin that had him laughing.

  “You’ve got game, girl,” he replied.

  “Maybe.” I schooled my features, robbing them of all amusement as I turned back to shoot a poker face the driver’s way.

  I didn’t appreciate how he’d been glowering at us, and though I could empathize, he was supposed to listen to his leader and be on our side. Not make us feel like pieces of human trash.

  Trash who’d literally been the ones to annihilate two-thirds of the world’s Ghouls.

  So, the guy was lucky I hadn’t told him to suck it.

  Folding my arms across my chest, I stared out onto the road ahead and sighed as Derinkuyu unfolded. I didn’t need the GPS to tell me we were almost there. Not after all the pictures Samuel had shown me.

  There was an official entrance, but Samuel had discovered there’d been a landslide about eighty years ago in the area. He believed that if we traveled past the area of Derinkuyu that was known to the tourists, we’d potentially find another entrance Mother Nature had revealed.

  In doing so, we had to pass a lot of ramshackle buildings that were scrawled with graffiti. It was remarkably like Hidalgo, truth be told. The same low-level poverty rubbing shoulders with angry people who thought writing on walls would ease their anger at the world.

  What couldn’t be ignored were the bizarre rock formations that the region was known for. These spiky monoliths were like huge stalagmites. They blended into the face of the mountain at their back, shielding them from the eyes of their ancient enemies.

  It was a sea of stone, broken up only by patches of terrain that had been farmed, and black holes that were windows in the rock.

  When we eventually came to a halt, I was relieved.

  Though my body wasn’t as sore as it might have been if the gouille hadn’t softened my fall from the Temple two days ago, being jolted around for hours on end was making me feel the burn.

  I wanted terra firma.

  Now.

  When we climbed out of the vehicle, the other SUVs appeared, and relief flushed through me as Frazer, Nestor, and Dre hustled over to my side. From the tension on their faces, I assumed they might have been arguing on the ride over, but when they greeted us, each of them finding a way to touch me, I saw the strain disperse and recognized that they’d disliked being separated from us as much as we’d hated it too.

  Well, I could only speak for myself, but being back with my Pack definitely made me breathe easier.

  “Now that we’re here, what’s the plan?”

  It was the driver who spoke, and though he wasn’t glaring at us anymore, I heard his disdain and fought with the need to get in his face.

  Today was not the day to be throwing shade my way—as Reed would call it.

  I didn’t need his BS, nor did I want it.

  There were bigger fish to fry, so wasting time and energy on him was stupid, but it didn’t make his attitude any easier to take.

  Plus, it sucked that if we made it out alive, and were welcomed back to Caelum, it might not be with a hero’s welcome but with disdain and distrust.

  Sure, Nicholas was now looking into what had happened that night and was looking for a traitor in the Academy’s midst, but as Dre would say, shit stuck. And he wasn’t wrong.

  Ignoring the driver, I turned away from the cluster of men around the SUV, and stared out at the land ahead.

  Samuel approached me, and really, this was on him. This was his plan, but I knew my input was important to the guys because my body was a walking, talking compass.

  Not of my own making, of course. But that was neither here nor there.

  “How far out is this from what most people call the underground city?” Samuel asked the driver, who was the leader of his six-strong Pack. He and his brothers moved forward to join us at the edge of the ridge where we stood. They were as dark as him, but although they might have blended in as Turks, they weren’t. One was too light, another had blue eyes that were hidden by contacts, and the last looked more Hispanic. His coloring was like Nestor and Dre’s more than Eren’s, whose skin was just a hint darker. Like burnt papyrus rather than ripe olive.

  “Not far. Under here is the tunnel that connects Derinkuyu with another cave system a few miles away.”

  “When I looked online, I couldn’t see any mention of the landslide damaging the city,” Samuel replied.

  The driver, a guy who’d been impolite enough not to introduce himself, shrugged. “There was damage, but a lot of the underground city isn’t open to the public, anyway.”

  “What do you think, Eve?” Frazer inquired, his hand coming up to cup my shoulder. “Do you get a good feeling about this place?”

  Though the other Pack sneered at his question, I thought about it. Thought about that internal compass I’d been gifted and pondered if we were in the right place.

  As I stared up at the sun which was high in the sky, I realized that different points of the old city weren’t cast in shadow. At all. It was a spiky vista that lay ahead of me, but it gave me no clues. I didn’t know if this was the right place or not.

  Biting my lip, I wondered how I could help narrow things down. Samuel had been working on instinct, so why couldn’t I?

  Just because I wasn’t comfortable in my skin, was totally ill at ease with the creatures under my control, didn’t mean I hadn’t called on the Lorelei to bring those Ghouls to me in the parking lot. And today, hadn’t I used the Hell Hound to scare the driver?

  I just had a feeling that this went deeper than that.

  Touching upon the seven souls was easier than holding on to the eighth. That elusive eighth soul that had been the bane of my existence since I’d come to know how unusual it was.

  Sucking down a breath, I tried to center myself and do as Dre had taught me back at Caelum. I called upon the Hell Hound, because that one was closest to the surface after my contretemps with the douchebag driver.

  She purred at my approach, and I felt Reed tense at my side. For some reason, they were linked, connected in a way I felt sure was unusual. Even to a mated pair.

  They were a bit like they were piano keys, as I strummed my touch along each of my souls, feeling the jolt in my mates’ souls as they responded to the caress. I felt their response deep inside me—Stefan stiffened, Eren softened. Each of them gave me their undivided attention as I used the awakened souls to reach the eighth.

  Deep inside me, in that tiny space where they were resting, I called upon what I now knew to be the Jannah. I felt like I was climbing walls inside me, trying to go above the nook where the souls usually lay to reach the last one. The holy one.

  I didn’t know if I could do it, didn’t know if it was even possible. Only when a wish was uttered did I feel its presence—

  My eyes flashed at that. “Make a wish. Something important enough to count, but easy enough to happen now.”

  Silence fell at my words and then the driver snorted. “How about this… I wish to be anywhere other than here?”

  The words were uttered with scorn, but they were enough.

  Deep inside, I felt the Jannah stir to life, its purpose of granting wishes being triggered by the disdainful driver’s words.

  The light inside me was like the one that made the marks glow, and when I tried to touch it, a soft laugh sounded inside me.

 
“It will burn you.”

  My body tensed as I heard the words in my head.

  Communicating with the souls wasn’t something we did verbally.

  “But I’m not a soul. And you’re not majnūn. You are Jannah.” A sigh came, gusting through my mind as though it were a stiff breeze. “I’ve waited a long time to speak with you.”

  “You have?” The words were tremulous and also spoken aloud.

  I felt my mates shuffle around me, sensed their unease over me speaking to myself, but I’d found the Jannah deep inside and wasn’t about to let go—this voice, however, wasn’t Jannah.

  Was it God?

  Was God speaking to me through my eighth soul?

  “Of course, I have. You’re My child, but you were locked up so tightly that I could never get to you. Seven wishes were all it took,” the voice teased. “And now, here we are. The beginning of the end.” A hum sounded. “You’re in the right place, Eve. What you’re about to see will be disturbing but have faith. You’re my soldier, guided by My hand. We will see this through until the end.”

  I felt the Jannah retreat into the background where it had always resided, so I opened my eyes and saw that my men were clustered around me while the others weren’t. Only one of the SUVs remained, and for all of us to get in there would be a tight fit—probably a good thing that the laws were a little loose at the moment.

  “Where did they go?” I queried, rubbing my arms that suddenly felt cold, even in the intense heat of the summer’s day.

  “Nicholas called them back to Ankara. Some dicks took advantage of the chaos and hit the city with a bomb.”

  Reed rubbed the back of his neck. “We told them we could deal with whatever happens here.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” I stated grimly, thinking about the other man’s wish as I looked over the terrain once more. “We’re in the right place.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  Samuel’s voice was hesitant, careful. Like he knew he could offend me and totally didn’t want to.

  “The Jannah,” I informed him somewhat absentmindedly.

  “You can talk to it?” Eren blurted out, and I shot him a look then nodded.

  “First time today.” I stared at the tumbled walls, which were half-designed by man and half-designed by God, then I added, “It’s time to grant the first wish.”

  The guys cut each other a look then nodded.

  It was time.

  ❖

  Frazer

  “I wish we were safe.”

  The first wish couldn’t have been simpler, and the seven of us uttered it by rote. Of all the wishes Eve had to grant, it wasn’t like this was most difficult to remember.

  But as we uttered the words, nothing seemed to occur. We stared at the cave system, waiting for a miracle to happen.

  Only, it didn’t.

  “We must be in the wrong place,” Samuel said, his tone gritty.

  Eve shook her head. “No. It’s not. This is the right—” Before she could finish the sentence, she released a gasp, and shooting her a concerned look, I could see why she was gasping.

  Jesus Christ.

  Each of her new marks was glowing.

  All eight of them—the tree on her belly as well as the seven that represented each of the creatures.

  She stumbled, and all of us reached for her, all of us connecting with her to keep her upright.

  The second we did that?

  Shit rained.

  The light whirred from her body and blended into one large bolt. It was brighter than the sun itself and it hovered in front of us for a second, blinding us with its power before Eve exhaled.

  And like that, it dispersed, shooting away.

  The sun disappeared, shrouded behind a dense cloud of darkness that made it feel like an eclipse had just transpired. The swift change had my eyes aching, something that was only exacerbated by the light tunneling toward the cave systems.

  A wind appeared next, but it didn’t affect the clouds shadowing the sun. If anything, it coaxed it to grow bigger and brighter before it whirred into one of the many openings in the cliff’s face.

  We could see the passage of the light as it meandered through the cave system—that was how goddamn bright it was. It reminded me of light that passed through my skin if I covered the flashlight on my phone with my finger.

  As it swirled around inside the caves?

  Screams sounded.

  From wherever the light touched, there was a cry of pain that was swiftly cut off.

  “Shit,” Dre whispered. “The light’s killing them.”

  Unease settled inside me, making my stomach churn. “I guess the clue wasn’t wrong. After that wish, we’ll be safe.”

  The eight promises of death that, ironically enough, came in the form of light, whirled through the cave like a tornado intent on ripping its way through the countryside. It was so fast, so horrifically violent that the wave of screams blurred into one endless noise.

  “How many are even there?” Eve cried out, only audible only because I was close to her, with her horror at what was happening evident. Ghouls weren’t human though. They didn’t deserve a humane way to die.

  “Thousands,” Samuel screamed over the roaring noise tearing through the underground city. “Has to be.”

  The light’s path, gleaming through the stone walls as it was, showed us just how intricate the cave system was here, meaning either we were accessing an underground cave network that hadn’t been explored before, or this was part of Derinkuyu that had been held off from the public—perhaps thanks to a high-ranking Ghoul’s interference.

  Still, the complexity of the network was bewildering, and the noise was enough to make that marvel a nightmare. The loss of silence blurred into an endlessness that made my ears weep with the need for the screams to die, and after a solid fifteen minutes of listening to this torture, when the screams perished, it had me closing my eyes and whispering thanks because I seriously wasn’t sure if I could deal with much more of that.

  With the quiet came the return of the sun. It appeared from behind its thick shroud of clouds. Though it was back, my eyes didn’t ache as they normally would. The light I’d just witnessed tearing its way through the cave had been bright enough to make me feel as though it were still midday.

  “They’re all gone?”

  “Most of them, I reckon,” Samuel stated grimly. “Apart from Erlik. The fact we have two more wishes tells me he’s alive, but why didn’t the light reach him?”

  “Maybe he’s in a part it couldn’t get to?” Eve suggested, but I heard the shakiness in her voice. Who could blame her for being scared? I was too, but not for myself—for her and for my Pack.

  We were about to head into war with no one at our back and an Original Ghoul at our front.

  Which part of that boded well?

  “We need to get moving,” Reed said uneasily. “The light penetrated through there.” He pointed to a kind of rocky terrain on ground level, which, from where we were standing, would have been invisible without the guidance from our first wish.

  We were dressed for the desert in sand-colored combats Nicholas had provided for us. Whatever Eve had told him, he’d given us the best gear he’d handed out only to the top Enforcers. There was an honor in that as well as trepidation. After all, we weren’t top Enforcers. Though it had been in our future, it took time and battles to reach that point.

  We still weren’t old enough to fucking graduate, yet here we were with the best kit.

  Releasing a breath, I directed, “I’ll take point. Keep Eve between us. Watch out for the ground shifting, Eve. It might look stable, but that doesn’t mean it is.”

  She shook her head. “The danger isn’t out here but in there.”

  Because she wasn’t wrong, I didn’t bother arguing. Just nodded at her and headed over to a thin track of land connecting the hill we were standing on with the higher one beside it. It was a steep trail, bogged down with weeds, some
dead and some alive, which had been trampled at some point.

  “This is their access point,” I mused, then shouted the words back to my Pack.

  “They use this as their base, that’s for sure,” Eren observed grimly from behind me.

  It was a wonder there was anyone left in Derinkuyu City considering how many Ghouls the light from our wish had just blasted through…

  Between the people of Derinkuyu and the tourists who gathered here for the attraction of the underground city, the numbers told me that high-ranking Ghouls lived here. Ones who could control their urges, who were grounded in reason enough to know that you didn’t shit where you ate.

  Literally.

  As we approached the other hill, the path came to a natural end, and I saw the scorch mark on the face of the cliff. Had I not seen that, it would have been impossible to see the slight opening, but because it was there, I sucked in a breath then peeped inside.

  Half of the opening was in the light and the other in the dark, making it hard to catch my bearings, but the second I did, I saw the steps. And the piles of ash.

  There’d been some Ghouls heading out, undoubtedly to investigate the noise from our vehicles.

  Pulling back, I called out, “This way.”

  Stepping inside the cool air of the cave was a delight after that short journey in the heat of the midday sun. When we were all inside, Samuel said, “Time for the second wish. We have no idea where we’re going.”

  “The only way to go is down, right?” Dre argued. “I think we should head down and then have a look around. Reconnoiter the area before we waste the wish.”

  But Samuel shook his head. “Why waste time? We need to get to Erlik ASAP before he does anything that could jeopardize our goal. We still don’t know what he’s capable of, and now that he’s lost the Ghouls living in his sanctuary, well, he’s a loose cannon.”

  Eve nodded. “I think Sam’s right, Dre. Better to say the wish now than to regret it later. I don’t think whether we start now or deeper in the cavern will make much difference on if the wish is granted at all.”

  “We’re not lost, and the clue distinctly said that,” Eren chimed in, agreeing with his brothers.