Chapter 17
“Cole’s just trying to break you all apart,” Olivia suggested as she offered me a cold glass of water.
I downed the drink, but it didn’t seem to do much to quench the insufferable thirst that came with this eternal heat.
“Well he’s doing a good job of it,” I said as I shoved the glass at her for a refill. Steam drifted from my fingers as she took it.
She gave me a raised brow. “Looks like he’s doing a good job of getting under your skin, literally.
” She swiped away a tendril of smoke that spilled off of my arms. “Don’t give him that kind of power over you.
Demons work off of emotions, you know, and you look like you’re ready to burst with them. ”
“Hendrik betrayed me,” I said, my voice cracking. “And Dante too.”
“What’d they do, fuck each other?” she teased as she poured me a glass of water. “They’re both such broody assholes. I could see it.”
I sighed. “Yeah, but that’s not the kind of betrayal I’m talking about. They can fuck each other all they want. They’re both still my Virtues and they share me, I can share them too, but they did something else, something horrible.”
She froze until water spilled out onto the countertop. She cursed and got a towel. “I was joking, Lils.”
I smirked, amused by her reaction. “I know.”
She dabbed up the rest of the water before tossing the towel into the sink. “Okay, we’ll address the bromance love later… What kind of betrayal are we talking about?”
“They knew about Cole,” I said, then proceeded to tell her everything. Calamity could have been dealt with already but no, my dumbass Virtues had to go and take matters into their own hands.
“Well, in their defense, I’m not a big fan of you tracking down a rage demon either, much less mating with one,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe they were just trying to help.”
I crossed my arms and glowered. “You don’t get to take their side. You’re my best friend.”
She chuckled. “Of course.” She poured a new glass and handed it to me before sitting down. “So, are you really mad at them for trying to keep you away from a demon? Maybe it’s just Cole’s rage effects working through the mate-circle and getting to you.”
I sighed as I coddled the glass between my knees. The water began to boil and I frowned. “If that’s all this is, then maybe there’s something you can do.” I set the glass on the table and faced my best friend. “You’re a Light Mage now. Can’t you… I don’t know, give me good vibes, or something?”
“Like an attitude adjustment spell?” she asked.
“Yeah, sure. As long as it’s temporary, I mean.”
She smirked. “I doubt any spell I cast on you would last for very long, but we have class in a couple of hours, so it would be a good test.”
I groaned. She was right. I hated teaching, but working as a co-mentor for Monster Studies was my only chance to get on the Dean’s good side and hope I might come across the vampire from Olivia’s visions.
“Okay, fine,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Olivia shook her hands, sending her bracelets jingling together before she ran her fingers over mine. She whispered a spell, repeating it over and over again until her entire body emanated with golden light.
Comforting warmth funneled into me and banished the scalding burn of Cole’s presence. The lingering rage that seemed to get worse by the second faded into the background, not completely gone, but dulled.
Olivia scrunched her brows and continued her chant until my shoulders relaxed and the weight of all my grief, all my rage and burning vengeance diminished into a tiny little ball that I was able to tuck in the back of my mind.
Releasing a long breath, I smiled. “Well, I’ll be damned. That worked.” I finally felt like I didn’t have the weight of the entire universe on my shoulders.
Olivia grinned. “Yeah, I think so.” She tried to pull away but the transfer of energies only glued us together as her golden light continued to pour into me.
“Uh, Olivia?” I asked, concern creeping into my voice. “You can stop now.”
She pulled again, then yanked until I tumbled into her, our hands still locked together. “I’m trying,” she ground out as she struggled to get off of me.
I cursed and urged my powers to block the spell rolling over me like a truck, but it wouldn’t stop.
A sense of giddiness overwhelmed me and I started to chuckle.
Then I felt… pretty amazing.
Like, seriously amazing.
“Don’t let any more in, Lily!” Olivia cried when my innocent chuckles turned into manic laughter.
A hum sounded in my ears like a bee had gotten trapped inside my brain and I only laughed harder.
“It tickles!” Olivia growled with frustration, but I’d forgotten what had gotten her so worked up in the first place.
I swung her hands back and forth as a huge smile spread across my face.
“Oh come on, Miss Pouty. Have fun with me!”
Olivia glanced at my necklace and tried to grab for it, but our hands were secured together, so she dove in and bit down like she was bobbing for Blood Stones.
Her teeth closed around the gem and a shot of heat blasted through both of us, frizzing my hair and sending me flying against the wall with a hard thud.
My vision wavered as Olivia battled with an overturned chair before rushing to me. “Lily! Are you okay?”
I doubled over laughing. “That was hysterical! Let’s do it again!”
My best friend rolled her eyes, completely exasperated with me, but this was the best I’d felt in ages.
“Well, clearly my ‘feel-good’ spell needs some work.” She gripped my arm and gave me a light shake. “Do you feel up to going to class? We really can’t miss this one, even if I did just overdose you with dopamine.”
“Class? That sounds awesome!” I exclaimed as I jumped to my feet. Tingling sensations ran over my head and I steadied myself against Olivia, then smiled as it passed. “Last one there’s a rotten deviled egg!” I shouted before I burst into a run.
Olivia yelled after me, totally trying to ruin my good time, but I decided I was definitely not going to be a rotten deviled egg and I ran all the way to Monster Studies with a giant smile plastered on my face.
Monster Studies—or any of my classes—were way better when high on whatever spell Olivia had overdosed me with.
For once, my mind wasn’t racing with all of my responsibilities, worrying about what my Virtues were up to, if we’d all die in the next second when Calamity decided to drop the other shoe, if the Dean found me out or remembered who I was, or the other thousand-and-one things that could go wrong that resulted in death, destruction, and absolutely suckiness.
Now nothing mattered and I just felt… good.
Apparently feeling good left no filter on my mouth, so Olivia had to tell me when I was going off the deep-end, which was easy to do when I didn’t care about anything.
The latest monster didn’t help, either. The warlock-vampire was a smokin’ hottie and apparently I was a little too vocal about my opinion on that front.
Plus it was just too plain cool to learn that his magic revolved around time.
I planned on studying him because even if he wasn’t the vampire from Olivia’s vision, he had power over freaking time.
It made me wonder why he didn’t just zap back to when he was captured.
Our guess was either some timelines couldn’t be changed, or he needed sufficient blood to have the strength to work his magic.
I didn’t really care about his reasons. If he could really manipulate time, maybe I could use him to go back and stop Hendrik from getting Cole locked up in the first place.
And, yeah, if I got an eye-full of sexy male vampire while I was at it, then no harm, no foul.
For once, I didn’t feel like shit for appreciating a guy with good looks. That’s just the kind of girl I was, being one-third succubus and all, and maybe it was time to accept that.
Humming a tune to a song I couldn’t quite remember, I filled in the lyrics with meaningless babble as I worked my way around another empty classroom.
I wandered in a small circle as I dropped tiny red orbs Olivia had given me.
While I thought that the new monster was hot as Hellfire, I wasn’t stupid.
He could still rip my throat out and I so did not want my black blood to get on my new uniform.
How to contain a sexy vampire who had access to witchy-gifts? Use his warlock powers against him, of course.
All of the classrooms needed to be bugged with magic-containment traps and Olivia had put me in charge of setting up new rune nets just in case he ever got out.
I wasn’t too concerned, because I’d locked him up myself.
The Dean had already starved him to keep him malleable, but Olivia wasn’t going to take any chances.
She was such a worrywart.
I didn’t mind the task of keeping him grounded, though. If he got trapped in one of these bad boys, it would keep him locked in place and right where I could keep an eye on him.
I hadn’t forgotten my purpose. I was going to find Cole and convince him how awesome I was and remind him that he needed to stop working against me.
Step one of that plan was to find him, and to find him I needed the Dean to let me into the Monster Arena in the first place.
One of these monsters held the key to making that happen, even if I didn’t know how or when, if Olivia’s visions were to be believed.
I jerked my head up when a crash sounded from one of the other rooms, indicating something, or someone, had triggered one of the traps.
I ran out into the hall and listened. A sputter sounded just before the ground shook and made me stumble into the wall.
I regained my footing and listened with a stupid grin plastered on my face.
Was the vampire going to play hide-and-seek with me?
Or maybe he’d run and we could play cat-and-mouse. I did love a good game of chase.
A feminine voice filtered through the wall, making me jerk upright. “Marcus!” she cried. “Are you okay?”
I ran toward the source, avoiding the over excessive traps I’d set all over the place. While hilarious, trapping myself would be quite counterproductive.
I jerked a door open only to see the vampire in the center of one of the rune nets while a female gawked at the room as if she’d never seen one before. “Is this a… classroom?” she asked.
Shit. Olivia’s mind-altering magic was having some serious side-effects. I’d have to chat about that with her later.
“Who the fuck let you out?” I snapped at the vampire. His escape did not work in with my plan to use him to find Cole. It’s not like I was going to hurt him. Saving the world was in everyone’s best interests, even monsters.
To my surprise, the female shoved the vampire she’d called Marcus behind her and glared at me.
Did she… know him?
“Who let who out?” she asked innocently.
Gods. Olivia had really done a number on her.
“Our vampire-warlock!” I said, pointing at him. “He’s one of a kind, you know? The Dean will have your head if she finds out that you’ve broken him out of prison for a…” I grinned when I saw how her fingers ran over his and noted how she stood a bit too close to him.
Ah, I get it now.
“Private lesson,” I said, finishing the thought.
I couldn’t get too mad at the girl, regardless if Olivia had screwed up her memories. If I didn’t have Virtues of my own, I’d want to take a bite out of the vampire myself.
I flipped a stray blonde curl over my shoulder.
“I’m not going to judge, sweetcheeks. Can’t say I haven’t thought about freeing one of the research projects here and there.
” Namely, Cole. Thinking of how this particular monster played into my master plan, I gave the vampire a wink. “Especially the hot ones.”
The vampire shoved around the female, nearly toppling her over as he snarled, showing off sharp teeth. “You bitch!”
Well, that was uncalled for, but I guessed from his end of things I just looked like a crazy person keeping him prisoner.
The girl surprised me by softly gripping his arm. “Hey, she’s just a girl.”
The vampire whirled on her. “No, Evelyn. This is a fucking monster—”
The rest of his conversation dropped out into a buzzing that sounded in my ears as my adrenaline spiked.
Did he just call her… Evelyn?
I took another long look at the girl and chewed my lip when I noticed she wasn’t actually wearing a uniform.
This was it. This was Olivia’s vision.
She seemed too young to be the founder of Fortune Academy, but then my eyes blew open wide when I realized why that was.
Time… warlock.
Duh.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
The pair turned on me, the vampire with murder in his eyes and the girl with concern written over her features. I knew not to underestimate her now, not when this was the Queen of the Royal Covens in the making.
I had to get them both back where they belonged or Fortune Academy wouldn’t exist at all.
As much as it sucked being the Champion of the Third Echo of Calamity, Olivia had seen a future where we all made it out of this alive.
That future included me facing off the Dean, and if there was no Dean, then there was no future.
Right, Lils. You’ve got to play your part.
The shock seemed to offset the spell Olivia had put on me and the responsibility of my role settled its familiar weight on my shoulders, but I’d had my fun and now it was time to follow the vision Olivia had seen for me.
This was what I’d waited for during these six long months.
Now that I had a path to follow, I was ready to take that first step.
I cleared my throat and pretended to be indignant.
“I’m not a girl, and I’m not a fucking monster.
” It wasn’t hard to put emotion into the statement.
I’d fought the idea that I was a monster as long as I could remember and it still was a sore spot for me.
I crossed my arms and stared them down. “I’m Lily and I’m a student of Fortune Academy with much more seniority than you. ”
And I’m the fucking Champion of the Third Echo of Calamity, I added inside my head.