Page 2 of Caelum

ONE

EVE

“Welcome to Atlantis.”

The addition of Merinda’s snort after her comment told me she was joking even though, as I looked at the building that was the sole structure on the island, I wondered if this truly was the legendary place—a legend that had even managed to filter its way to me in the backwater compound I’d been raised in.

It would make sense.

It was where we truly belonged, or so Merinda had assured me yesterday. Where our true selves were revealed and where we could spring forth like we’d been reborn into a whole new world. Of course, that didn’t mean the old one had perished. We’d never be fully accepted, not like we would be on this island, but it was somewhere we could at least blend in without everyone thinking we were crazy.

Having believed myself possessed for the last six years, my relief was gargantuan at learning I wasn’t insane. The revelation that I wasn’t human, on the other hand, had come as a rather large surprise.

“You’re not going to freak out on me again, are you?”

I frowned at Merinda’s choice of words—she spoke so oddly and so quickly that I sometimes found it hard to understand her. “This is a lot to take in,” I replied after a few seconds.

Merinda was five-foot-nine and dressed in clothes that made me wonder how she’d managed to make it onto the compound at all—a black leather mini skirt, a red bustier, and shoes she’d called high heels that I had no idea how she walked in.

Had any of the Brothers seen her, they’d have called her Jezebel, all while looking at her the way they looked at me on those days when my voice had them circling me like a vulture would a fallen animal in the wilderness.

Lust.

I knew what it was, even if no one had ever outright said it to me.

Merinda was lust walking. Each step she took, the way she moved her head, every inch of her screamed it. Although I’d been programmed to believe that she was a Jezebel, I didn’t judge her for it. How could I when I had eight different beings living inside me? Just as she had at my age. Just as every minor here did too.

I wasn’t alone.

That was the most winsome factor about being here.

There were others like me.

Others that were lost and had been found, just like me.

“It might be a lot to take in,” Merinda retorted, “but it’s all good news, isn’t it? You’re not crazy. You don’t have schizophrenia, and in a few years’ time, when you’ve decided what you are, you won’t be stuck on that compound popping out babies for all those old perverts.” She shuddered in revulsion, and I couldn’t blame her.

Gnawing on my bottom lip, I whispered, “Father Bryan won’t ever be able to touch me, will he?”

Her eyes softened as she shook her head, her fiery auburn hair dancing around her shoulders, as wild as her spirit. “Never,” she assured me gently, and her tone was all the reassurance I needed.

In the short time I’d known her, I’d come to learn that Merinda was tough as nails. She wasn’t very sympathetic when I cried, instead she told me to suck it up—I had no idea how to do that, and she’d rolled her eyes at me and told me to check out something called Urban Dictionary when I received my phone.

I had no idea what that was either, no idea how a dictionary could be urban nor how it would teach me how to suck it up, but she said that all the kids spoke like her, and I’d soon learn how to talk like a person from the twenty-first century and not the eighteen hundreds if I checked out that website.

Most of the things she said confused me, if I were being honest, but I knew better than to reveal that, lest she think I was stupid. If I were stupid, maybe she wouldn’t bring me here, and after we’d escaped the compound when she’d lulled the almost four hundred-strong congregation to sleep with a song that had made me cry with its beauty, there was no way I was about to return to a life of misery and drudgery.

I’d had faith that God would help me, and He had. Just not how Father Bryan had preached He would.

“Come on, Eve,” Merinda snapped when I lingered just outside the gates, feeling small as I stared up at the twenty-foot plus tall fencing. “We have to get you inducted. You’re already two years behind.”

“What damage will five minutes of dawdling do then?” I snapped, goaded when she spoke to me like it was my fault I was late. It wasn’t. I’d been busy trying to survive the New Order, and if I could have arrived here two years ago, I sure as goodness would have!

She cocked a brow and folded her arms across her chest. “The virgin sacrifice has fangs?” She laughed at her own joke, and I wasn’t even sure why. “They’re going to eat you alive in there if you don’t grow a pair.”

“A pair of what?” I asked, annoyed enough to scowl at her and stupidly reveal, “Why do you talk like that? I don’t understand half of what you say.”

She huffed. “Look, we haven’t all been tucked away in a sect since birth.” Her impatience showed as she began to tap her toe against the ground. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The second you walk through the gates, things will change for you. You’ll be among your true people.”

And there was the concern. True people? I terrified myself with my moods, so to be around a lot of people like me? That was hardly reassuring.

Everything about these past two days was terrifying in truth.

I’d had to climb into a contraption called a car, which had been in the non-urban dictionary I’d memorized when I was barely five, but my imagination and reality hadn’t collided. This particular car moved at horrendous speeds. The faster it went, the louder Merinda had hollered out her glee, whereas I’d clutched at the chair, praying God wasn’t about to smite me for escaping the compound.

After three hours of non-stop driving, we’d arrived at a field. The field was innocuous enough, except for another contraption. It was larger than the car and it was shaped like a tube. Merinda informed me it was called a plane.

I’d never seen one before but had allowed myself to be hustled into the cabin. When we’d taken off and soared like a bird in the sky, I had fainted. I hadn’t known it was possible to do something like that.

The next time I’d awoken, I’d been fed something called a burger, and the fries that went with that meal made my stomach rumble eagerly at the thought of having some more soon. We’d been on board for hours, crossing the Atlantic Ocean until we came to an island called Paradisus Peccatorum—Caelum for short.

Such an abbreviation made no sense to me, but Merinda called it Caelum more than she did the other wordy name, so I was going to call it that too even if Paradisus Peccatorum ran along the banner above the gates I was peering up at.

As we’d begun to land, I looked out the window of the plane, and I’d seen there was only the one building here, and that it took up the entirety of the island.

It was a hodgepodge of different buildings that were all joined together. There were many different roofs in hundreds of colors, making it appear like an overlarge patchwork quilt from the sky. It was surrounded by barren land that intermittently housed tracts of vegetation before giving way to fields of black rock, but what enchanted me the most was the ocean. The way the waves tore into the cliffs as we approached was of endless fascination to me. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the sea, but it had never looked like that where the compound was.

After traveling for many hours here, we’d landed on a long tract of land that had been covered in something the color of gravel but was more tightly packed. I’d tried to bounce on it, but there was no give beneath my feet. Merinda assured me it was something called asphalt and that was what the roads we’d driven on yesterday were made of too.

It was a short walk from where we’d landed to the gates of the Academy, and as I stared at the building Merinda assured me housed my future, I knew I had little alternative but to step through them. I hadn’t come all this way to stand outside, after all.

The building up ahead was made up of a gray brick that had been weathered to a dull black over the years. There were many windows, each with a stone monster guarding it. The door was large, had a sharp arch formed from stone, and appeared carved with more of the monsters that decorated the building on its many corners. The monsters were like stone guards, and the thought had unease whispering through me.

Could they see us?

I’d have said no until two days ago, but now? I wasn’t sure. This world was not what I’d known it to be.

Seeming to have lost patience with my dithering, Merinda released another huff then she grabbed my arm. I tensed, waiting for her to drag me across the aperture, but she didn’t.

“Remember what I told you,” she mumbled. “Just let it happen. Don’t fight it.”

I’d heard my mother tell my sister that before her wedding ceremony to Brother Adam, who was approaching his fifty-second year. Merinda’s words didn’t inspire me with confidence, but I allowed her to drag me across because I wasn’t sure if I had the courage to do so myself.

With a shudder, I felt it the second I stepped from one side of the gates to the other.

Though I’d only taken a single step forward, it felt like I’d been dragged a mile. The wind seemed to fling me into its embrace, mixing with water that tried to overwhelm me. I felt like I was being tossed around like the apples in the bucket we’d dive into at the harvest festival. Juggled around in a vat of water, gasping for air, with no solid ground beneath my feet even though I’d moved barely a foot in front of me.

“Don’t fight it!”

I heard Merinda’s words, and although everything inside me told me to struggle, to not allow myself to be hauled under the tidal wave that appeared before me and me alone, one that felt like it was drowning my soul, I knew that I had to listen or I might not survive. I needed, I realized, to have faith in her.

She’d taken me away from the people who would hurt me when they came to learn what I truly was.

She’d brought me somewhere I would be safe and could learn better control.

She’d gone to great lengths for me to find the community of people who would become my true family, not one who’d sell me off to a man older than my grandfather just so their rank at the compound would improve.

I had to trust her.

The second I stopped struggling, the wind and the water let go of me. My personal storm disappeared, but the earth beneath my feet seemed to tug at me, drawing me down even as flames emerged around me in a tight circle. They licked at my skin, burning hotter and hotter while I sunk deeper and deeper into the earth.

I looked up, desperate to see the sky, but saw nothing but the flames. A gasp escaped me, and I knew I was struggling once more. I forced myself to calm down, to stop fighting, and the second I did, the flames engulfed me, but they didn’t hurt. The ground stopped trying to swallow me, and I was tossed out of whatever it was that had held me and released back into Merinda’s dubious care.

She smirked at me when I caught her eyes, but there was a flicker of something deep inside her gaze that belied her next words, “Not too bad, was it? ”

Not too bad?

Dear Lord.

Gaping at her, I rasped, “You mean there’s more to come?”

“Now that you’ve passed, there is.” She shrugged. “Don’t worry, you’ll like the rest. You put up a fight then, kiddo. I’m surprised. You keep up that kind of fight then this place won’t swallow you whole.”

Even as I wondered what she’d seen, what I’d done when the battle I’d just engaged in had to be in my mind since I saw no remnants of the destructive force, I realized something.

“We’re not speaking English anymore.”

That had her head tilting to the side. “How do you know that?”

I frowned at her. “Why shouldn’t I?”

She licked her lips, and more surprise bubbled to the surface before she cast a look at the building beyond. “We speak in tongues here.”

My eyes widened at that. “Like the Apostles?”

That had her snorting. “No. Not like them. Like us. It’s what we call our language. What just happened to you…” She motioned at the gates. “It changes us. Let’s us speak our true language.”

I gnawed on my cheek for a second. “I am a demon, aren’t I?”

“Sometimes you will be,” she teased. “When the mood strikes.”

Dear Lord.

“Now, come on. I want to dump you with your class.” She huffed. “Recruiting cramps my style. I’ve got shit to do.”

I had no idea what she meant but I was getting used to that.

As we stepped toward the front door, it opened and a man appeared. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and covered in drawings. I stared at him, wondering what the drawings were. Were they permanent? I gaped at the image of a skull covered in flowers with a snake protruding from the eye sockets and wondered why he’d want that on his body.

When he caught me looking, he smirked. “They’re called tattoos.” Then he cut Merinda a glance. “You weren’t kidding.”

She grumbled, “When do I kid around? She belongs on the Mayflower. She doesn’t know what anything is or what anything means.”

That had the man frowning. “Is she slow?”

“No, just backward,” Merinda retorted with another grumble. “But she’s smart and advanced. She helped me sing.”

I had?

My eyes widened because that was news to me.

“How many did you knock out?”

“A couple of hundred. ”

“Three hundred and sixty-four to be precise,” I told them both softly.

The man whistled. “New record for you, Merry.”

“Hardly. She helped. A lot.” Merinda shook her head, and something shifted in her voice again. “ A lot , Damon.”

His eyes darkened with something I couldn’t discern. “That’s unusual.”

“She’s seventeen.”

Damon grunted, but whatever had darkened his eyes lessened, and with it, my chest stopped feeling like it was seizing up. Had he been angry with me? What had that look been in his eyes? I’d borne the brunt of rage before, but it had never been like that. His eyes had…

No. They couldn’t have glowed red beneath the dark brown, could they?

“We’re a few years late,” he commented, breaking my train of thought and making me blink as I saw his eyes were normal again.

“Yeah. But she has good control. No one knew. Everyone I spoke to had no idea what she is.”

“Fuck, really?”

“Really.” Merry’s tone turned grim as though that were a bad thing when it was the only reason I was still breathing. “We can’t dump her in the first year. She’s too advanced. Second or third year would be best for PT, with her picking up the slack from the other classes with tutoring. No regular classes until she’s up to speed. I’ll help out. She might be a Lorelei with that voice of hers. I’m the closest to her age with a similar power level so that would help her.”

Damon’s brows rose as he leaned against the door. I couldn’t help but notice the play of his muscles under the white shirt he wore, and his legs were thick like tree trunks in the smart pants that covered his lower body. With his muscles, the drawings, and the spiky hair on his head, he was like no other male I’d ever seen in my life.

His words were droll, however, when he teased, “You’re willing to help someone other than yourself? How novel, Merry.”

Merry squinted at him, then she raised her hand, lowered her index, ring, and pinkie to leave her middle finger standing. I stared at it, wondering why Damon snorted at the sight. When he shot me another look, and read my confusion, he shook his head. “She’s an innocent.”

“They’re going to eat you alive, kiddo,” Merry noted again. She’d already given me that warning four times so far this past hour.

It was growing wearisome.

“I don’t think I’d be very tasty,” was all I said .

In a world where people could eat things like those fries I’d had, I doubted anyone would eat someone as boring as me. Alive or not.

Even though it was evidently a threat, I knew I was in no danger, so I wasn’t sure why she kept saying it. But it wasn’t like I could do anything anyway.

Merinda had called the New Order a cult and had explained what that meant. What a cult truly was. Caelum, with its promise of truth, couldn’t be as dangerous as what I considered ‘home,’ could it?

“Was that a joke?” Merry asked, nudging me in the side with her elbow. “Good for you, kid.” Then, to Damon, she inquired, “You going to let me in, or are we going to stand out here all day?”

The muscles in his arm bunched as he straightened up and stopped leaning into the doorway, saying, “Nicholas will want to see her.”

“Of course. I knew that. Not my first rodeo, dude,” she grumbled, grabbing my arm again and dragging me down a foyer that had me gaping at the myriad items in the space.

There were hundreds of chairs lining the walls, and above them were thousands of paintings that soared toward the ceiling, which was at least twenty feet above me and made of glass—another patchwork quilt of color that I wanted to see the sun shining through. Along the walls, there were more colors to be found in the dozens of paintings adorning them. There were images that belonged in nightmares, then others of handsome men and beautiful women who were obviously important to the Academy’s history.

We moved down another corridor that was intermittently decorated with clothes made of metal. They stood there like silent warriors, somehow different than the stone monsters on the edifice itself. A different kind of watcher. But, as I studied the metal suits, I wondered if people wore these once? Goodness, talk about uncomfortable.

I wasn’t sure if someone was inside the outfits, but they were scary as well as old. Some had horns and others had carvings engraved into the metal that made their chest plates look like dancing flames.

Merinda didn’t let me pause to discover the joys of each new room, instead she dragged me through more of them, tens of them, until we finally reached one that was paneled in a dark wood, had a large circular rug on the ground in a color that reminded me of cherries, and was topped with a table that had a vase of the most beautiful flowers adorning it.

I wanted to reach out to touch the petals, but Merry apparently didn’t have time for that. She headed toward the set of over wide double doors, rapped on it, and then headed inside without waiting for an invitation.

Back home, she’d have been slapped for just going in, but the man on the other side of the desk didn’t appear agitated at her appearance. If anything, he just sighed and placed a thin box on the desk.

“I was in the middle of a call,” he groused.

“Nicholas, I want you to meet Eve.”

Merry cut me an expectant look, and unsure of what to do, I dipped down into a curtsey. She grabbed me and dragged me up again—she had a habit of doing that. I knew I’d have bruises on my arms later. “I didn’t mean to greet him like he was royalty,” she complained. “You really need to stop doing that, kiddo.”

“Oh.” I blinked at her. “What did you want me to do then?”

“Say hello?” She rolled her eyes.

Clearing my throat, I shot the older man a wary smile. “Hello.”

Merry grunted, but Nicholas cocked a brow at me, and I felt him scan my body. It wasn’t like Father Bryan’s stare, though, so I only stiffened up for a second. “What are you wearing?” he asked, surprising me with the question.

“They were all wearing that.” Merry’s tone was back to being grim. “It was as we expected.”

He sighed then pinched the bridge of his nose. “We were lucky to get the intel on her before it was too late.”

“She’s seventeen, Nick.”

“Shit.”

Why did they keep saying that like it was a bad thing?

I’d prayed for my eighteenth year for so long, and the way they made it sound, seventeen was the worst year imaginable.

Even though I wanted to ask, I didn’t. Interrupting my Elders was worthy of a slap, and I didn’t fancy being on the end of Merry’s true temper.

“She’s strong too.” Merry left me hovering in the doorway and headed to one of the two chairs in front of the desk. She slumped into it, then when I remained standing, shot me a glower. “Come on then. Sit down.”

I followed her impatient orders, perching on the edge of the seat and tucking one foot behind my other ankle. Resting my hands on my lap, I sat as straight as I could.

At home, I would have lowered my gaze also, but I was too curious about what was happening. The way I sat drew both Merry and Nicholas’s attention, making me wish I could sit like Merry—her back touched the armchair and she’d crossed her legs in a way that made her already short skirt ride up. I’d seen Nicholas’s eyes drop there too and wondered if the skirt was for her or for him.

Perhaps men in general .

How strange.

Damon had looked at Merry’s legs as well, whereas at the compound, we all wore long dresses that hid our more intimate selves from sight.

“She has to learn how to live in the real world in more ways than one,” Merinda told him sadly, as though the way I was sitting was something to pity. As though I wasn’t even in the room.

In the short time I’d come to know her, I was used to being confused, so I just let it wash over me, focusing instead on Nicholas. To be dragged to this office, which was beyond grand with furniture so richly opulent, I felt as though I were in some kind of den of iniquity, and I recognized that he had to be powerful.

The luster on the desk alone was like silk, and if I peered into the grain, I knew I’d see my reflection. In contrast to the grim cabin where I’d lived all my life, the desk alone spoke of untold luxuries.

Even though I’d told myself I’d be quiet, the desk, this room, and the air of wealth in this place had curiosity prompting me to ask, “Are you the equivalent of Father Bryan?”

“Yeah, Nick, are you like that old pervert?”

Nicholas grunted at Merinda’s amusement. “In the sense that I am the head of the Academy, yes. I’m the leader.”

“Will I have to marry you?”

Merry chuckled at that, but Nicholas’s eyes turned stormy. “No. Marriage isn’t required to be instructed here.”

That had me relaxing and my smile deepened with relief.

“I know Merinda has told you the basics, but now that you’re here, I wish to explain your situation more.”

“I’m grateful for that. I don’t really understand everything Merinda says.”

“That’s because she talks like Jane Austen,” the woman complained.

I had no idea who Jane Austen was. “If you say so.”

Nicholas’s lips curved before he flattened them into a thin line. It was interesting how the move hardened his face.

He was older, in his forties, I thought, and even as I wondered what relationship Merry had with him to be so at ease in his presence, he began to explain, “Most of the children who come here are already at a disadvantage. But it’s different than your situation. You are of this world but also not of this world. Everyone speaks like Merry. It’s the common vernacular. We’re not formal, and although we have rules we have to follow, you won’t be beaten if you break them.

“You won’t be married off at eighteen. You won’t be confined to your room or to this island once you’re of age. You’re here for your safety, and while I’m certain Father Bryan told you something similar, that the outside of your compound was filled with dangers, you’re here by choice. You know that you’re different, and those things that make you different are why you need to be here.”

Because he was right about what Father Bryan said, I believed him more. “I’m here by choice,” I told him softly. “I need help. Merinda says I have great control but that it won’t last forever.”

“It won’t.” His jaw clenched. “You need help, and we’re here for that.”

“What disadvantages do other children have who come here?” I questioned, ashamed that I felt relief to know they were strange too.

“They believe they have something called schizophrenia.”

“What is that?”

“It’s a mental disorder.”

Merry clucked her tongue in disgust. “Until we’re eleven, we’re pretty normal. Then it hits us. All of a sudden, we start acting out and hearing voices in our heads. Making decisions becomes hard. We experience blackouts. If we were sociable before, we become unsociable. It’s like a switch. One day we’re normal, the next, we’re not.”

Because I remembered those times clearly—the memories were enough to make me want to scurry away and hide—I understood. “Schizophrenia is bad?”

Nicholas hesitated. “Not bad, but it’s a disorder. Most don’t understand it, and some even fear it. It can cloud people’s opinions of you.” Hello judgment, my old friend, I thought sadly. “Children with the disorder take medication—it’s a substance that helps heal us, or in this instance, makes us appear more normal—and for a time, it works on us until it just stops.

“We don’t have schizophrenia; we just appear to have it. That isn’t to say it doesn’t exist. It does. But in humans. We’re not like them.

“After a while, the meds that lulled us into some semblance of normality do nothing more than exacerbate what they were supposed to control. That’s when our parents truly begin to fear us.” He reached up and tugged at his bottom lip, and I knew that even though this had all happened to him a long time ago, the memories were as fresh as if they had happened yesterday. “The voices in our head, Eve, aren’t just hallucinations. They’re souls.”

My eyes widened at that. “ Souls ?” I rasped, my voice breaking as I recalled the New Order’s teachings.

His smile was lopsided. “Not like the ones you know of. There are seven of them inside us, Eve. Until we are twenty-one, those seven fight it out amongst themselves until a single, dominant one takes control. Until that happens, we teach and guide you. Help your souls discern which is the strongest so that you can fulfil your true potential.”

Mouth gaping, I stared at Merry, and when she nodded, the gesture one of encouragement, I swallowed and shut my mouth. They didn’t bombard me with more words, just allowed me to come to terms with everything he’d said. When I didn’t feel like I was about to go insane, I whispered, “So, the things I hear?—”

“They’re real.”

Along the journey, Merry had only told me that I wasn’t crazy, that I had nothing to fear, and that the Academy would help me get myself under control. She’d said nothing about souls. I think I’d have remembered that .

“I’m surprised you’re not having a panic attack,” Merinda joked, her lips curving in a mocking smile. It infuriated me, but then I realized she was being blasé on purpose. There was concern in her eyes.

As well as fear.

I blinked at her, wondering why she’d be scared of me. Or was that for me? I wasn’t sure I’d ever know.

Swallowing, I whispered, “Just let me catch my breath and I might.” Her fear tumbled away at my statement, and it was replaced with her apparent enjoyment of the situation. Annoyed again, I mumbled, “I at least like to be halfway entertaining.”

Merinda’s grin didn’t surprise me even if her words did. “You’ve got fire. Maybe they won’t eat you alive.”

Dear Lord. I refrained, barely, from rolling my eyes. Warning number five.

My voice was husky as I directed my next question at Nicholas. “You said there are seven souls.”

“There are. We have seven breeds.”

“I-I would have said eight.”

Nicholas cocked a brow, but he shook his head. “No. There are seven. If you experience eight, then it’s a repeat of one of the others.” He beamed a smile at me, and I could sense his relief even if I didn’t understand it myself. “That’s your dominant soul. It’s not a surprise. You’re old enough for one to be stronger than the others. Even if it’s only a little.”

Reaching up to rub my temple, I asked, “The aim here is to have a dominant soul, correct?”

“Yes. We must all have one dominant soul by the time we hit twenty-one.”

There was a warning in his words, a warning in his expression, too, if I were being honest. The handsome man who wore an outfit that appeared tailored to his frame had exuded power before, but now? It seemed to pollute the air around me.

“And that’s normal? There aren’t people who have, say, two?” I argued.

He shook his head, and for the first time, Merinda appeared serious, and she too shook her head.

“No. One. If there is not one, singular dominant soul, you won’t be allowed to leave the Academy.” Before my heart could start to race, he murmured, “It would be far too dangerous for the humans.”

Though I understood his meaning, I wasn’t a fool. All my life, I’d been reading between the lines to save myself from a worse fate in the compound. I’d known that if the barest hint of my condition had slipped into the congregation’s awareness, they’d have worked up ways to ‘free me’ from my situation. Like little Sister Jessica who’d been in a prayer circle and had been bitten by a rattlesnake to purge her of her evil ways.

The only purging that had happened had been the soil in the cemetery where she’d been buried after an agonizing passing.

Though the promise of death was a whisper at the compound, here, it was an all-out roar.

I could see it in both Nicholas and Merinda’s faces.

The only trouble was—and I wasn’t about to highlight this salient point considering they were wrong—perhaps they had seven souls, but I didn’t.

I had eight.