Seventeen
I think this was a mistake.
It takes more strain to control my heartbeat and keep it steady as I watch Callahan and Varian walk right past me. An old bell begins ringing with the twenty-third hour. The game has officially begun now.
After the last minute touches were made last night for the masquerade, me and Jullia walked back to our dorm room alone. She wanted to finish her mask for her costume and I was going to stay up late to finish papers and then sleep in through the morning.
Except when we got back to our room we found two dress, two masks, and a note.
There wasn’t much done to Jullia’s dress and mask other than being fully finished and displayed up for her to see.
The second dress, however, appeared out of nowhere.
Layers of different shades of orange with black accents and a mask that would cover my entire face and most of my head. Designed exactly like a fox.
The note – which I knew was for me – only said, It was not random when that blood was shoved down your throat. Make the most of the beginning of an end, wishes don’t make themselves.
A draft blows up from the stairs spiraling down and a frozen chill snakes up my spine. The lip of the fountain cuts into my lower back as I press further back and away from the transparent wall in front of me. A wall created to seal off this alcove, but still allows those hidden to see out.
More people exit the ballroom. Not a lot, but enough to know they’re going after their prey.
Everyone participating in any of the games must attend the ball and be present for at least half an hour throughout the night before they can leave.
Usually it’s the prey who arrives and leaves first to go hide, with the hunters needing to at least be in the room when the belltower rings for the hour before midnight.
Once the clock strikes twenty-three times the hunters are let loose and they have an hour to find and secure their prey. If their prey is not secured and at midnight are able to step onto the dance floor then they win and a wish is granted.
I plan on winning that wish and having it granted that my soul be ripped out.
Doesn’t matter that Darian has been murmuring and playing with having me believe certain people are in the room with us when he helps me.
Though last night, for a moment, I felt no pain when Darian was touching me.
I only felt his hands on my thighs as he had me believe those four others where there.
He kept edging me for a good minute, bringing me right on the cusp before stopping, but when he let me tip over that point it felt like extasy. Especially when I had believed Castiel was watching all of us, Varian was sucking so hard on my nipples, Thorne had his hand around my neck, and Callahan –
I swallow thickly and clench my thighs as I try to clear my head. I take my hands wrapped around the lip of the fountain and run them along it to the column the staircase spirals around. Then I take a careful step down, straining my ears for any sound, before heading down them.
After finding the dress and note Jullia asked if we should go report this to anyone. No one but us, Callahan, and Asher can get into our room and Asher would have notified us if someone tampered with the spell on the door.
For some reason though, I got the same feeling I did before I met up with Jullia earlier and I told her not to tell anyone.
I’ve been meaning to ask about the whole ordeal with the vampire who tried to turn me.
Why everyone is so adamant about getting me to go and stay at this school.
I haven’t wanted to talk to Nana though, and by extension Ms. Elaycia.
I’m still irritated at them for making me stay here.
That just means I’ll have to figure it out myself.
Starting with doing as whoever wrote that note said.
And here I am, dressed in a ballgown with my mask, planning on winning that wish.
All of last night I roamed around the school. Planning my hideouts and paths and how I’ll hide my scent. One of the rules was that the prey can’t use magic to mask themselves. A true hunting game. So people get creative.
Finishing my ascension into the cellars, I grab the rothberry branch hanging right where I put it beside the torch and my necklace.
I kept the rest of them on – which could be a signal to who I am since they’re notable and I only ever wear them – but chose to leave this one here. This one holding my mini apothecary.
Unscrewing the bottom of a flatter oval charm, I pull it from the lid and dip my fingers into the powder. Using the bark of the rothberry and a powder made from baking soda, charcoal, and seasell will help neutralize my natural scent and make me smell like musk and spice.
Once masked as much as I can for the moment, I light the end of the branch and let it burn up to ash. Erasing my scent from the passage and up the stairs.
I had asked Asher this morning when we all went to breakfast in the little cottage town everyone always goes to during the weekends.
My first time away from the school in five months.
He said there’s always been stories of hidden rooms and passageways through the school.
A lot of them are known to students and they’re how people can sneak around the school.
There’s the catacombs and cellars which are used for underground parties and the tunnels which can lead you to an underground fight club that’s held right on the edge of Syngenia grounds in the city.
There’s more than just that, though. Asher said sometimes the walls of the school move, which is why sometimes rooms look larger than the outside.
A partial reason I can’t stay down here for long and why I needed to hide my scent immediately because the hidden halls will be the first place everyone goes.
And right on cue, a figure dressed in a skeletal deer mask rounds down the last few steps of another staircase.
His suit fitted and in tones of black and brown, though there are gloves I’ve never seen before on his hands.
Gloves – which I mean in the loosest of terms – with fingers that extend in plated metal and end in sharp points. Like thin boney claws.
His head cocks in a mechanical way as a sense of dread fills the space and I cock my head back at him. An open mouthed grin behind my mask as I run my tongue over one of my fangs.
Hunched to the floor as I am and with his height, you can see the difference between hunter and prey right now. Doesn’t matter that foxes are a smaller predator on their own or that his animal form compliments a deer.
The shifter isn’t after me, though.
Standing to my full height, which isn’t saying much since I’m barely five foot five, but I twist that second key. Enhancing that earthy and spicy animalistic scent already around me and making the ground beneath our feet slightly rumble.
His head cocks an inch more before his voice fills the echoey room. “You’re a sneaky liar, little fox. Careful not to get trapped in your own snare.”
Then he exits through another hallway just as I catch a hint of copper and ozone right before I hear footsteps.
Launching myself down another staircase, I stay on my toes so my heels won’t echo and put all my force in keeping my heartbeat even. So much tightly coiled control throughout my body that it almost makes me lightheaded.
Adrenaline flushing my system and my heart wanting to pound as my blood rushes.
I plan on winning this game, but I do understand the consequences if I lose.
Darian had made that very clear when he swept me across the dance floor as Callahan watched us.
He told me to pick a word. One single word in case I needed to pull out because he said he’s been itching for a chase.
He’s been waiting for the chance to do all the dirty little things I secretly fantasize about.
A fucking cheat because he only knows about all of that due to what he truly is. He is the only person who is certain I do contain a soul within me.
Taking the last step, I don’t stop as I run down the twining tunnels. The acoustics jarring as more people start filtering in and their whispers and footsteps cloud me. So far I haven’t run into anyone else and I’m hoping it stays that way.
Taking another hall that leads to a wide staircase is the last direction for where I’m headed. Taking the steps two at a time so I can get to the top faster.
The further up I go the narrower it gets until I approach a wall the same size as a door.
I run my hands along the uneven stone trying to find the hitch since there are no scones or torches up here.
My long nails scrape against the ridges until a square section of stone, about a foot above my head, has a different texture than the rest.
I reach to my tippy toes and with as much force as I can I push it in.
There’s no sound even though there should be, and then there’s a creaking before a click and the door-sized wall swings open.
I enter the next room and immediately shut the hidden door. My heels scuffing on more stone, but this time it’s painted with soot. The fireplace large enough to house a bed surrounds me with a dark academia styled office space before me.
Varian’s office is quiet as I walk into it from the fireplace. It looks the same as it did the last time I was here. Asking him about runes and runic curses and he probably started realizing there wasn’t a chance I could be a vampire.
Him and Castiel.
It makes me wonder now though, maybe they could help me in breaking this curse of mine if I decided to tell them. There’s no real valid reason in not telling them if they could help me aside from me not wanting to reveal that secret.
Maybe after I’m able to withstand the pain alone. That way it can’t be a weakness against me. Because it is a weakness. I only ever trained with Nana and Rosemary fully covered.
The soothing scent of life fills the room. Varian’s scent coating this room, almost as if –