by Scott, Helen
Her cheeks flushed with surprise but she ducked her head. “He’s not raping me. It’s a deal we have.”
“A deal?” I frowned, and a part of me was relieved. The relationship, though distasteful, was consensual. “What kind of deal?”
“Why should I tell you?” she demanded.
I shrugged. “No reason. You’re going to keep me in the loop because I know what’s going on whether you tell me the details or not.”
Her nose wrinkled at the truth of my words. Still, I was surprised when she admitted, “He fixes my grades to make sure I’m good enough to stay in the year.”
Not for the first time, that had me frowning.
The ranks of this year’s class were being diluted by the masters themselves. What the fuck were they trying to do?
Weak Sixths meant weak brotherhoods, and that was a major issue.
My own brotherhood was still Beta and would be until Marcella officially joined our ranks. Being Beta meant we dealt with small jobs. Much like a beat cop would in human society. When we became Alpha, we were given task forces with real goals and targets.
Having a weak Sixth linking us would weaken our abilities, make us vulnerable in the face of our enemies.
Knowing I needed to hurry Jesseda up if to stop her from catching Gideon and Marcella in the woods, I leaned down and offered her my hand. “It’s time to go inside,” I told her gruffly.
Though she allowed me to help her to her feet, she hesitated before asking, “Are you going to tell anyone else?”
Aware of what she really meant, I murmured, “My brotherhood knows all. But nobody will share your secret. The information you’re going to give us will be invaluable.” Though she bit her lip as she turned around to walk off, I called out, “Jesseda?”
She stiffened but kept her back to me. “Yes?”
“If there are any pranks against Marcella that you don’t advise me of first, or that you take part in, I will let the news spread. Do you understand me?”
Her shoulders tensed, but she dipped her head in agreement. As I watched her go, I wondered what to do with the information I had. I’d share it with my brothers, of course, but where did we go from there?
Brotherhoods and their Sixths were supposed to be inviolate, and yet, they were being corrupted by the very people the councils engaged to keep them sacrosanct. . . .
I rubbed my forehead as the migraine from my time-walking began to pulse in time with the sun’s pounding rays.
This was a clusterfuck, no doubt about it.
10
Marcella
My head felt slightly fuzzy as I ran around the course. My feet landed against the pathway that was as familiar as the back of my hand, which was good because I felt like I’d lost a few minutes somewhere. I remembered Gideon talking to me, his tattoos practically crawling over his skin in the most enticing way, but the next thing I knew I was out here running again, with no sign of the man I had just been admiring.
I didn’t remember leaving Gideon or how our conversation ended, just something about a glow and the feeling he was holding back.
After everything that had happened with Cade, I hadn’t expected to be as attracted to the rest of his brotherhood as I was to him, but there was no denying the way my blood had heated at the sight of Gideon in the training hall. It was why I had come out here running in the first place. It had felt like his gaze was roaming my body, peeling away my clothes as it went while I was trying to focus on not dying.
Stupid men. I had always thought women were the saner sex, at least that was what the other members of staff had led me to believe, except now I couldn’t help but wonder if we were just as crazy.
My whole body ached with need, not just for sex, but for blood, too. The whole thing had me fidgeting and feeling like I was burning up.
Maker, I was an idiot for allowing myself to get attached to them, but the five of them had shown me more care in the last week than I had received throughout most of my life.
The memory of my mother’s only visit to the Academy forced itself to the surface of my mind. Her form was frail, even to my ten-year-old eyes, and more so than it had been the last time I’d seen her before I’d been taken to the Academy. The visit was short and full of bitterness and regret.
“Marci?” the woman on the other side of the gates called out. A hood covered most of her face and hair, so I couldn’t be sure, but she called me by my mother’s nickname for me. It was a name I hadn’t heard in two years.
I didn’t acknowledge her until I had closed the large wrought iron gates behind me and stepped to the side. “Mama?”
“Oh, my Marci,” she whispered like a prayer as she fell on me, wrapping me with her bony arms into something like a hug, while her cloak surrounded us. No one had touched me without violence behind their actions for two years. I couldn’t help but flinch at the contact.
“What have they done to my sweet girl?” She knelt down, so she could look me in the eye. The crystalline-blue of my mother’s eyes stared at me, the question reflected in their depths, but I couldn’t help but feel as though it was a test.
“I’ve been fed and given work until all my powers come to the fore. At the moment, I can only manifest illusions when I’m scared. Once I’m ready, I’ll begin training as a Sixth.” I wanted to be proud, but all I could feel was a cold numbness spreading through me, which worsened the longer I looked at the woman who had been missing from my life for the last two years, or if I was honest with myself, a lot longer than that.
“You’ll do so well, my baby, all you have to do is trust your instincts.” She paused and her fingers, which were bonier than I remembered, stroked my cheeks. A split second later, she seemed to come back to herself from whatever daydream had taken her away. “Never show them your full potential, though, they’ll punish you for it, you hear me? Always defer to the more powerful, or higher ranking purebloods.”
“Can’t I come home with you?” I croaked as tears began to form a rock in my throat.
“I wish it was that easy, sweet girl, but you know that my master will kill you on sight. You realize how foolish you were, don’t you? You bit him! Drew blood! And for what? To protect me? I’m nothing, Marci, just a piece of trash, a toy that he likes to play with occasionally.”
“You’re my mother! I had to do something,” I cried as more tears began to streak down my face.
“You must never help me again after today, not until you are placed with a brotherhood at least, and then only if you’re with a strong one. You hear me?” By the end, she was shaking me.
“Yes, Mama.”
I looked up and saw that her hood had fallen down around her shoulders. Her Master had done quite a bit of work in my absence.
A vicious looking scar decorated the side of her face, and her hair had been cut away on one side . . . no, I realized, not cut away, burned away. The wrinkled, puffy pink skin spoke of the pain she’d endured under his care. She seemed to realize what I could see because she pulled her hood up and tighter around her face.
“What’s wrong, Mama?” My tiny voice sounded worried even to my own ears.
“Nothing, sweetness, I’m just not healing as fast as he would like, that’s all. You know he always said my screams were the sweetest.
“He’s trying to be so careful, really, it’s the best he’s been in a while, but I know the darkness that’s inside him is eating him up, and he needs to let it out, but he can’t because I’m still healing from last time.”
“Maybe if he brought you enough to eat or to pay for rent then you would be able to heal faster!” I spluttered, outraged by her defending him. “He whipped me, Mama. Did you know that? The night he took me, while you were unconscious, he whipped me. I still have scars because no one would feed me. I starved until I couldn’t stand up anymore, and only then did they let me have just enough blood to keep me alive.”
Her face had paled at the revelation, but at the lack of outrage, I knew he’d told her, probabl
y bragged about it.
“That makes what I need to ask you all the harder . . .” She waited as though to see if I was going to protest, but she and I both knew, even then, I could never deny her anything. I loved her too much. “I need to feed, Marci. I need untainted blood, so I can heal.”
Nausea rolled through my small body. I barely had enough for myself, but her feeding off the drug dealers that lived all around our apartment would be tantamount to her poisoning herself. “What about Matty or Devin?” I asked, referring to the men she regularly entertained to help make ends meet.
“Master found out about them and killed them, draining their blood in front of me and not letting me have a drop.” She sounded more offended about that than their deaths. “No one else will even touch me. I’ve had to do things I’m not proud of to survive these last few years, but getting the information to see you again was worth it.”
“Why didn’t you see me earlier, though? I needed you, Mama.” I had intended to yell at her, to vent some of the anger that had swamped my small body, but instead my voice ended on a whimper.
“Because it’s not safe. If my master knows you’ve seen me, that I’ve visited you then I don’t know what he’ll do to you or me. This is my last resort, Marci, please.”
“Can’t you just run away?” I begged.
“You think I haven’t tried before?” she sneered, before bringing her face under control. “I’m a thrall. I signed a blood debt to my master when my family needed help the most. The terms were very clear, I was to stay with him and satisfy his every need until he changed his mind. When I had you, my whole world seemed to flip upside down. I tried to run, to keep us both safe from him, but it was no use. He tracked us and hauled us back. You were just a babe, so tender and vulnerable. With one snap of his fingers he could have snapped your neck, suffocated you with shadow, broken you, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
I stared at her, tears streaming down my face all over again, before I just held out my arm.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Take what you need, Mama. I love you.”
The tender loving mother disappeared then, and the beast that was her vampire side came out to play. Her fangs struck my arm, and I couldn’t help but yelp in pain. I’d only ever fed her and usually she wasn’t so desperate and was gentler with me.
This time was different.
A sense of finality flooded me as she sucked mouthful after mouthful of my blood down. I knew that if she saw her master again, then he’d kill her. My blood would give the illusion she was healed and ready to take the punishment his dark side wanted to mete out, but she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She would need to drain me dry three times over before she’d be ready for an encounter with him again, and it was that thought that had me trying to pull away from her.
I didn’t want to be drained to death at my mother’s hands. As I struggled, though, all I did was tear the wounds on my arm open wider until she was gulping as fast as she could so she didn’t waste a drop. My energy dwindled rapidly, and soon, my mother’s scrawny arms were wrapping around me and lowering me to the ground as the scent of my blood perfumed the air.
The world looked faded and everything started to seem far away. The last thing I remembered was her kissing my forehead with bloodied lips. . . .
It was almost a week later when I woke up. It turned out that one of the cooks who worked in the kitchens had found me in front of the gate, a hair’s breadth from death.
With the wounds from my mother healing slowly, I was given a day to recover before I was put back to work as though nothing had changed.
Only, everything had.
My mother’s need to please the man who controlled her life was almost the death of me. I had known as soon as I woke up that she probably thought she’d killed me, and she’d done it all in an effort to win his affections. It disgusted me more than I could ever express.
I tripped on something. I didn’t know what, but the feeling of my face planting itself in the dirt was enough to wrench me out of the memory, something I was grateful for, even though it physically hurt. As I rolled onto my back, I was conscious of the swirling sensation that surrounded me and the way the clouds seemed to be speeding overhead.
Pushing myself onto my hands and knees in time, I was able to avoid vomiting on myself. I coughed and spluttered and retched until there was nothing left. My body didn’t stop protesting. It was as though it had fallen into a loop that it couldn’t get out of. As soon as I moved, I retched again.
It was only the knowledge that there was nothing left inside me except stomach acid that allowed me to push to my feet and shakily move toward the buildings. Everything hurt, and I felt like I had run a hundred marathons, not just my regular path.
As I emerged from the long grasses, I couldn’t help but feel dread pool in my stomach as I found Barclay walking toward me. I had hoped I would be able to make it to my room without anyone seeing me in the wretched state I was in. I hated looking weak, it only left me open to attack.
It wasn’t that I thought any of the brothers would attack me, but I couldn’t help but hold on to the faint hope I would be their Sixth. They wouldn’t want someone who was mentally unstable, though, and when the memories of my mother surfaced that was the only way I could describe how I felt.
* * *
Raven
Five days later
“What is it?” Keiran frowned at me then knocked me in the side with his elbow.
“What?” I snapped, irritated at being disturbed.
“You’re scowling at the wall.”
Who could blame me? My only question was why we all weren’t scowling at the fucking wall.
I folded my arms across my chest and glowered harder. We were in the common room of our quarters, and though they were amply sized, I was seriously starting to feel like the walls were closing in on me.
It was quarterfinals week.
How the fuck had it come upon us so fucking quickly?
The groups of Sixths were being narrowed down to the final four, and for the past five days, we hadn’t been allowed near the training areas, which meant we hadn’t been able to see Marcella. And I felt like I was about to climb out of my fucking skin.
Only Cade had sealed the bond, none of us had dared do much else than be near her. Even that had been frowned upon by the Masters who seemed to have been alerted to the fact Marcella was a favorite of ours—I had no doubt that was thanks to Barbie.
Fuck, I hated that bitch.
Now, there was no sneaking out of our quarters to go and find her.
We were on lockdown, and would be until the fourteen-strong group had been whittled down to four.
I ran a hand through my hair, my agitation at being confined starting to bleed through. “I didn’t realize it would be so hard being stuck in here.”
Barclay grumbled, “You think it’s hard on you? My fucking wolf is going out of his mind.”
That made me grimace because I had to concede it must be ten times worse for him. Not only would his beast want to get out and roam, but he’d also be needing to feel the closeness between him and our Sixth. Sympathy had me clapping Barclay on the back. “Sorry, bro.”
He shrugged. “No other way it can be.”
We were still hoping that ‘natural selection’ would hold true. That the Masters and Headmaster would realize Marcella was perfect for us.
If that was the case, we didn’t have to do anything. We wouldn’t have to worry, wouldn’t have to consider crazy schemes to make her officially ours rather than just spiritually.
The promise of future punishment weighed down upon us all like the sword of Damocles, but I knew that was nothing compared to a life without Marcella as our Sixth. Just thinking about it made me feel like I needed to get out of my skin, like it was too tight; almost like my very fucking soul was itching, the need to scratch free of this form, so I could get to her, was so overwhelming, that I knew I’d have to walk to find her
.
I’d refrained, mostly because it wasn’t fair.
The other guys couldn’t contact her. Well, Keiran could, but his dream-walking wouldn’t hold the same repercussions as my visiting her would.
Still, I knew I’d have to. I felt like there was no other choice.
I blew out a breath when Cade caught my eye. He’d been shuffling four decks of cards for what felt like a lifetime. He made a Las Vegas card dealer look slow-witted the way he was flicking each card between his fingers, twirling them this way and that as he merged the decks.
I narrowed my eyes at him, but he just smirked. If I wanted to fight, I knew I could use that smirk as an excuse. He was the only one of us to feel in anyway settled because he’d fucked Marcella, after all. But I knew that was BS—good BS, but crap nonetheless. He was smirking because he was a shit. Not because he’d stuck his dick in our Sixth.
He knew what I was thinking.
He knew I wanted to walk, and he knew I wanted to break the rules to do it.
An explosive sound escaped from Gideon. “Maker mine, Raven, just fucking do it.”
I jerked in surprise. “What?”
“You heard me. You’re antsy, and it’s getting on my fucking nerves. Fuck, if you fidget one more time, I’ll tie you to your seat.”
“I’d like to see you try,” I half-growled, then I realized I’d had ‘permission’ to walk to Marcella, to at least see how she was doing—not just with herself, because she had to be feeling the distance between us, too, but also how she was getting on in the first set of the trials.
We’d have learned by now if she hadn’t made it to the quarters, wouldn’t we?
I ran a hand through my hair, the movement explosive. “I can’t help that I’m on edge.”
“We’re all on edge,” Gideon countered, some runes on his exposed arms lighting up as though he’d flicked a switch. A part of me wished the bastard would wear more shirts and not go bare-chested—not when he lit up like a Christmas tree—but we were all slouches in our quarters. It was part of our natures to hate being confined by clothes. Most of us wore jogging pants, and only Barclay went the whole hog and wore boxers when we were alone.