Chapter 22
Mythical Sex Demons
I woke the next morning to the smell of something warm and breakfasty.
Outside my door, two girls skipped past, with one giggling about how excited she was for breakfast because Carmi was back.
I trailed behind through the hall, around the Wall of Calling, and down C-Block until I found the word CAFETERIA engraved above a pair of matte-gray double doors.
Long wooden tables with worn gray benches filled the room in five clean rows. Trays of vibrant food stretched down the center of each. Only a third of the benches were filled, but every place at the table was brimming with breakfast.
I scanned for the emptiest spot in the room, and preferably the one farthest away from Soren.
He sat in the far right corner with a tall strawberry-blond boy. While Soren studied a book sprawled out where his plate should have been, his friend seemed engaged in the same activity I was: scanning the room.
He caught me and said something to Soren. I didn’t watch long enough to see if Soren turned and looked at me or not. Instead, I rushed toward safety with my metaphorical tail planted firmly between my legs.
“Hey!” Salah grinned when I sank into the space beside her. “Didn’t know you were at Chapel already. I thought you were coming this afternoon.”
“Got here late last night,” I mumbled, trying to steal a glance at Soren in my peripheral vision without getting caught.
I looked at the plates in the middle of the table filled with bright vegetables and fruits, muffins of all different flavors, a tray with cups of yogurt topped with more fruit, and a tower of eggs any way anyone could like it.
I wasn’t even sure I could eat. My tongue throbbed with the same pulse that had ripped through me the night before when he’d kissed me.
My first real open-mouthed kiss had been nothing less than a full-on assault.
“Take as much as you want,” Salah said, piling strawberries and grapes on my plate. “Only rule is you finish everything you grab.”
I wasn't sure if I could eat anything at all with the aching pain still lancing through my tongue, so hopefully, she would stop soon. I shifted my tongue in my mouth a smidge and wrinkled my nose at the soreness. It wasn’t an injury I could go to Zuri about either.
“Hey, can you heal my tongue because some psycho tried to bite it off last night when I kissed him back?”
He hadn’t tried to bite my tongue off. I knew that. He would have undoubtedly succeeded if he had.
I kissed him back.
But he kissed me first.
No, he didn’t kiss me. He attacked me. That bastard crossed the room with nothing but violence.
It was a warning.
And I was going to heed that warning.
That was the end of it. From now on, I would avoid Soren at all costs. No looks. No questions. No slip-ups.
Nothing.
Absolutely. No. More. Soren.
And no more threats. If he bothered me again, I’d follow through on what I’d said and go to Winifred.
I didn’t care how that scent of mint and ash seeped into my bones and pulled me under. I didn’t care how he said Xiao Ying like he’d known me my whole life and could drag me into his darkness to stay and play. Like I belonged to him.
His Little Shadow.
Starting now, I was throwing myself into training. Into answers. Into getting my life back and taking Azazel’s.
“I’m surprised you sat with me,” Salah said, eyeing my banana and adding a croissant to my plate while effectively pulling me out of my spiral.
Sitting with the ultimate blacklister didn’t seem so terrifying now that I had probably replaced her on The Tower’s most hated list.
“Did you sleep all right?”
“Hm?” I looked from my half-peeled banana to the only person who could possibly understand even a fraction of what I was going through. “Yeah.”
It was strange to see a Pulse celebrity now stuffing her face with a blueberry muffin, more carbs than she would have eaten in a week back when her face was on every luxury brand ad and billboard. Astrid would have a stroke if she were here.
“Food outside The Tower is better,” she said around the baked good. “It’s because it’s real. It’s not the nanos-engineered stuff that they feed you in The Tower.”
I bit the banana carefully, avoiding using my tongue as much as possible.
He’s a sadist.
“You liked it,” hissed that voice.
I made a small sound of pleasure from the taste of the banana and pain from the slight sting of my wound.
“See, it’s not so bad out here,” Salah said. “Life’s better on Earth if you ask me.”
I nodded and popped a grape into my mouth.
Big mistake. The sour juice hit the cut. I winced and swallowed it whole. Then I choked and nearly gave up on life.
“We’re still fugitives,” I muttered, reaching for the croissant for the sole purpose of tearing it apart. No more eating.
Salah’s smile was the kind that made everyone work harder to get her to smile again because of the way it lit up the rest of her face, her white teeth shining so crisply against her dark skin. “Not all of us are running, Elle. I choose to be here. What I had before wasn’t living. They saved me.”
“They kidnapped you,” I corrected. “While you were unconscious and in a poor state of mind. They’ve brainwashed you because you were vulnerable.”
She replied with a cream puff on its way to her mouth.
“They saved me from myself. I could have left any time I wanted over the last three years, but they are my family.” The puff disappeared behind her lips, but she continued anyway, her speech garbled around cream, sugar, and dough.
“It helps that I get to train with some pretty badass weapons.”
“Train? For what?”
Was she really going to try to take down The Tower with these people?
Salah nodded but was too busy trying to chew the cream puff to answer right away.
The voice that did answer came from behind me, riddled with the condescension of someone who knew they could rip your skin from your bones in a snap.
“You’re going to have your work cut out for you if you want to survive down here, much less make it back into your tower, Rapunzel.
You should start training as well.” I would have expected Adriel if the voice had been deep enough.
It was the same snarky strawberry-blond girl from the N-Block last night.
Marigold, with hair that matched her name.
I turned, jaw clenched.
“Maybe you’ll get a Charism,” she continued with a smile belying the venom in every word. “You’ll need it, especially if you’re prowling Neko halls at night looking for Soren.”
She didn’t hang around for my reaction. Instead, she strutted over to that far right corner where Soren and the boy with hair that matched hers were sitting.
The strawberry-blond boy stared right at me like he knew things I didn’t, but should.
Soren didn’t look up.
“Wait,” Salah hissed. “You went to Soren’s room last night?!”
Marigold slid into the seat next to Soren and coiled herself around him with familiar intimacy.
She whispered something in his ear. And when he finally turned from the book on the table to look at her, Marigold smiled innocently, her gaze flickering to me for a breath before she turned back to Soren and kissed him.
She kissed him, and he kissed her back.
If she knew that he kissed me last night, she’d kill me. I knew that much.
But now I wanted to kill her, too.
Shit.
I didn’t even register mouthing the curse until the other boy smirked.
Right. He’d seen it. He knew exactly what I was thinking. I bet Soren had already told him what happened last night. He must have told both of them. They’d probably had a good laugh over it.
If I had a bow, I’d shoot all three of them.
Jerks.
I thought I was done with all of this drama when I walked across that stage and got my diploma.
I wasn’t jealous. I was furious.
Mostly at myself.
Because last night, I kissed him back, and now he was kissing someone else. Right in front of me.
How could I have been so stupid?
I couldn’t kill any of them, though. Not because I didn’t have a bow with me, but because I couldn’t move.
All I could do was stare back at the stranger-boy’s blue eyes crinkling in mischief across the room.
They were a sea of glass pulling me in. Salah was saying something, but I couldn’t understand the garbled mess.
I was going to die sitting there, staring back at someone I’d never even talked to, while two people I hated made out behind him.
Mystery Guy was a beautiful stranger, but not pretty enough to lose my life over.
I didn’t have a choice, though.
Nothing in my body would move. Even my mind slowed to a crawl.
This must have been his Charism. He could trap people with his eyes.
“Earth to Elle!” Salah whispered again, elbowing me. Her hand covered my eyes. “Stop looking at him.”
I blinked, and my head whipped back toward the girl beside me. Sound came rushing in along with the ability to control my faculties and an internal scream of, “What the hell was that?”
“Sorry. Did you say something?”
“Did you go to Soren’s room last night?”
“No. Yes. Not like that.”
Her eyes bulged.
“Not like that,” I whined. “I was…sleepwalking.” Maybe not a lie, considering I wasn’t entirely convinced I was awake yet. I forced a smile. “Soren found me. He walked me back to my room right away.”
And bit my tongue in the middle of a hot and heavy makeout session.
Heat bloomed in my abdomen and between my legs at the memory of his mouth on mine, but one press of my injured tongue against the roof of my mouth, and all lust evaporated on contact.
“Well, I highly recommend you stay out of N-Block,” Salah warned. “Nekos are dangerous. Marigold’s dangerous. She’s in love with a guy who doesn’t know how to love, but she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way.”
I followed Salah’s gaze toward where Marigold clung to Soren. They weren’t kissing anymore, but she was pressed so tightly against him as he studied whatever was on the table that she might as well have been sitting in his lap.
Fortunately, the other boy had turned around toward them with his back to me.
“And don’t mess with Matthias either,” Salah added.
I faced her again for the sole purpose of not getting caught glimpsing at any of the assholes at that table. “Matthias?”
“Her twin. Most dangerous being in Neko. Soren can’t feel anything.
He’ll kill you if he has to, but he doesn’t care otherwise.
Marigold is a succubus, and Matthias is an incubus.
They take pleasure in others’ pain.” Something between a sigh and a growl punctuated her sentence.
“Marigold isn’t into girls, so she won’t cause you nearly as much damage as Matty. ”
Made sense.
Hah.
Okay, none of any of this made sense.
His being Marigold’s twin and screwing with me went hand in hand, but…being an incubus? Marigold being a succubus? Weren’t those mythical sex demons or something?
“So,” I laughed, too high in pitch, “It’s like Babel all over again. Cool kids preying on others with a sadistic need to see the nerds squirm. Only now, the cool kids have magical powers, and the nerds are…me.”
Salah grabbed another muffin from the tower in front of me. “That’s the problem with Nekos. So cool and interesting, but they have no soul. I don’t even understand why they are allowed in the guild, but Ezra insists that the Creator made them that way for a reason.”
“What do you mean they have no soul?”
She scanned the room and leaned in closer. “Only humans have souls.”
If only humans had souls, and the Nekos didn’t have souls. Then…
Were none of the Nekos human?
And Soren is one of them.
My stomach flipped.
Salah nodded. “I know. It’s a bit much. And I’ll get my ass handed to me if anyone finds out I told you all this.
” She was whispering still, but then it rose in pitch.
“You’re going to find out soon enough when you start taking classes.
Please don’t tell anyone I told you. Pretend it’s all brand new information. ”
I put a hand up and shook my head. “I won’t tell.”
She turned back to her pastry, and I avoided looking around the room to see if I could figure out who was human and who wasn’t.
“So, if they aren’t human, what are they? Are they all the same as the twins?”
I’d read enough fiction over the years to start guessing. Could totally see Soren as a vampire.
She swallowed. “Lots of things. Some dangerous. Some not.”
“Like?” I prodded.
“Angels. Demons. Zombies even.”
I snorted, but Salah’s raised brow and nod told me she was serious.
“You and I are Lumos. Most humans are. So, you’re safe there.
The ones on Lumos that aren’t human are safe, too.
There are also the Aequus, Tenebrae, and Fidelis blocks.
Stay away from Tenebrae, but the others are good.
And always avoid Nekos. They not only can kill you in a blink, but they also have a history of it. ”
“Why would they put a bunch of murderers in here? I thought this was supposed to be a bunker to keep us safe.”
A voice behind me answered.
“It’s not really that simple.”
This time, I was happy to turn around.
“Veda!” I greeted her with genuine relief.
She smiled, dropped a granola bar on my plate, and sat beside me. “Don’t categorize people by their hall. You’re mostly Lumos, Eliana. But your lifelong goal has been to murder someone. So you could just as easily be Neko.”
Oof. Fair enough.
“And you’re all five,” Salah snorted.
Veda tilted her head. “Exactly.”
“What are the others?” I asked. “The other blocks. Like, how do they decide who lives there?”
“Aequus is utility. They are on Q-Block. Tenebrae are dark powers that aren’t violent.
T-Block. And Fidelis is passion and love.
F-Block.” Veda ate the last half of the muffin on my plate and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Come on. I’m supposed to give you a tour.
And then you’ve got classes this afternoon.
You want answers. Well, you’re about to get more than you bargained for. ”
Getting answers?
About damn time.
Part of me knew from the moment I stood to follow her that the answers I was about to get would indeed be more than I bargained for.
If ignorance were bliss, then knowledge couldn’t be only power.
Knowledge was what had gotten my mother killed and would probably do the same to me.