Page 27 of Caelum

TWENTY-SIX

EVE

Having never been loathed by someone, it came as a great surprise for Dre to consistently show his hatred.

I wasn’t entirely sure why he hated me, but hate me he did. It was in every look, every gesture, every ungracious touch.

In fact, I felt certain Samuel liked me more than Dre did, and it was an inconvenience considering I spent a lot of time with Stefan, Nestor, and Eren.

He was so obvious with his dislike that I’d taken to avoiding all the men, but whenever I did that, there was an ache in my chest that couldn’t be cured with any of the miraculous medicines that were on hand in Caelum.

I was half certain Ibuprofen was magical, but Eren had assured me it wasn’t, just chemical.

The ache only went away when I was with the guys, and since they were with Dre all the time, I had to ration how often I was with them.

It sucked.

I truly understood the vernacular now.

It completely, and utterly, sucked.

Because of Dre’s terrible attitude, I couldn’t be with the three men who had made the transition from the cult to the Academy so much easier.

And having watched them fly away on a trip that I hadn’t been included in just hurt all the more. I felt their absence so keenly it made me realize what Dre was making me miss out on.

Damn him .

It also made me realize that when they made it back, I was done avoiding them just to please him.

“Are you concentrating?”

I frowned at Damon, the Enforcer who was tutoring me. “I already know all of this,” I grumbled, unsure why this ‘emergency’ class was necessary. He’d hauled me away from the runway where I’d watched my friends take off in that flying death trap, insisting that I was late for a class that hadn’t even been scheduled.

I was never late.

Lateness was a sin in the compound, and because I didn’t want to be anywhere near Father Bryan’s belt, it was a sin I never committed.

“If you already know it then why are still drinking our emergency supplies of blood?”

“Because I don’t know how to ask someone to feed me.” As far as I could tell, there was no correct way to ask for someone’s blood, but it wasn’t covered in the books I’d been reading.

Damon rolled his eyes. “You just ask. I’m sure your friends would oblige.”

That had me feeling hot deep inside. Exactly where the ache bloomed at the thought of them not being close by.

“Wouldn’t that be awkward?” I hedged.

He shrugged. “Better to be awkward than weak. The bagged stuff isn’t as good as the vein. It’s like…” He blew out a breath and eyed me warily, “You know what peanut butter is, right?”

“Butter and peanuts mashed together?” I joked, purposely wide-eyed to tease him.

“God,” he grumbled. “I know you lived in a cult, Eve, but seriously, I’m starting to wonder if Merry was right. Jane Austen knows more about today’s world than you do.”

I shot him a grin. “Only joking. Nestor introduced me to it.”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so too,” I told him smugly. “Strawberry and grape jelly are new to me, though. I haven’t had those before.” My buttocks attested to the fact that I’d tried nearly everything in the kitchens at least once.

“How come?”

“They didn’t grow in the land where we lived.” I shrugged. “There were some berries, but we made a different preserve with them. It was thicker. Not as jelly-like as what you eat. It took hours to make as well.” Usually in the thick heat of summer, too, and it hadn’t been as sweet.

“Sounds tasty. Jellies are one of the few things we don’t make here, so I know that had to taste really good. Think about it though, which do you prefer? The jelly from the jar here or your preserves?”

I pursed my lips as I thought about it. “Mine. I see what you mean.”

“The stuff in the jar might taste good, it might nourish you and fill you up, but when you try the real deal?”

“That beats it.” I nodded. “Okay, I’ll ask Eren.” He was the one who helped me with all the things I couldn’t seem to grasp when it boiled down to technology.

For someone who didn’t sleep all that much, he was surprisingly patient. More so than Nestor, for example, who’d just ask me why I didn’t understand something when a three-year-old could handle the tech on my phone. Stefan would usually end up doing it for me rather than showing me. Eren was definitely the most patient.

“As easy as that?”

“You presented an argument that made sense,” I reasoned.

Damon narrowed his eyes at me as though he were waiting for me to tell him I was joking again. When I didn’t, he sighed, his shoulders relaxing as he pointed at the board where he’d scrawled some intelligible words about the digestive system of a Vampire. “How can you know all this stuff?”

“I’ve read all the books.”

“Already?” He frowned. “You couldn’t have.”

“I’ve read the first two years’ syllabi,” I informed him, well aware that at the compound, I’d have had a switch to the back for the pride in my voice. But they could switch me as hard as they wanted. From the reading material alone, I was caught up.

“That’s thirty-four books, Eve,” he rasped. “It still feels like you’ve only just arrived.”

Didn’t I know it? Everyone still saw me as the new freak in school. “I read fast,” was all I said.

“Did you absorb the information?”

“Of course. Ask me anything.”

“Why do humans believe Weres shift with the full moon?”

I snorted. “Apparently because a creature sold a screenplay to Hollywood about a Wolf Shifter that turned at that time of the month and now everyone believes it.”

“You don’t?”

I shook my head and used Stefan’s favorite phrase. “Do bears shit in the woods?”

Damon’s lips twitched. “Why does each soul take over a day in your week? ”

“So that each one can stretch its legs.”

“Two points for that one considering you used an idiom too.” When I beamed at him, his mouth curved into a small smile, then, he stared at me, and his eyes darkened in a way that had me sinking back into my chair.

It wasn’t lust or anything like that. It was sadness. I wasn’t sure why he would feel that around me, but it had me asking, “Damon?”

He turned away and stared out the window onto the rocks that were being crushed by the ocean’s might. “Yes?”

I was used to staring at my tutors’ backs. They often stood so they weren’t facing me. “What’s wrong?”

It took him quite a while to reply, and when he did, I’d admit to being surprised. “Are you the kind of person who likes to be kept in the dark, Eve?”

I pondered that, thought about the reason I’d been reading nonstop since I’d arrived here. There were plenty of practical lessons I’d missed, and I was so unfit it was beyond a joke, but everything that was down on paper I had slotted somewhere into my memory banks.

The things in the large textbooks, some as thick as six inches, were far easier to understand than the conversations I took part in with the boys. It was a joy to dive into something I could read without needing to have every second word translated.

Though my memory was good, and I usually remembered sayings the first time I heard them, there were so many of them. Each with different meanings.

Fuck up and fuck off? They were totally unrelated.

Sweet vibes had nothing to do with a vibration.

And when they started talking about movies and shows? I’d only figured out that Daenerys wasn’t real after reading the entire set of GRRM’s work. The way they talked about her? I was half certain someone truly had given birth to dragons. And in this crazy world I found myself in, I still wasn’t sure if that truly was fiction.

“I like to be kept informed.” That was the only way I could describe it.

“That’s good,” he stated softly. “What if it’s something you wish you could unlearn?”

“Knowledge is power.”

He shot me a look over his shoulder. “Who told you that one?”

“Nestor.”

I only used it though because it made sense to me. If I was completely out of the loop—that was one of Eren’s—then how would I ever be able to face this new world head on? How would I ever be able to escape it and to find myself a haven where my life wouldn’t be in danger?

Keeping my head tucked under the pillow would do me nothing but set me back.

“Do you know why everyone fights so much?”

“Because we have a lot of energy that we need to burn off?” I reasoned. “Which makes sense. When I hit Samuel, I thought I was going to explode if I didn’t punch him.”

Damon snorted and turned around to face me. “I heard about that. Did it feel good?”

I nodded. “Very good. The jerk deserved it.” I tacked on, “Nestor.” He was the one who taught me ‘jerk.’ Which, quite naturally, had nothing to do with the action but a person who was intolerable.

A description that befit Alexandre quite perfectly.

The big jerk. The biggest jerkiest jerk of all Caelum.

“What did he say to you?”

“That my friends weren’t truly interested in me as a person.”

Damon’s brow puckered at that, but as I watched him, I saw, deep in his eyes, him skid away from the topic. He didn’t want to get into it, and I wasn’t sure if I blamed him. There was nothing he could do or say that would indicate whether Samuel was speaking the truth or not.

I could only go on the way my friends had treated me, which was with kindness. Only Dre was mean, and it highlighted how much the others did for me and without any irritation.

In that, I could actually thank the boy whose moods made my father’s look friendly.

“I’m glad you stood up for yourself. I wasn’t sure with your past whether that was possible or not.”

I shrugged. “It was a Were day.”

His lips twitched and the snake coming out of the eye socket tattoo wriggled like it was alive as he bunched his biceps when he folded his arms across his chest. “Ouch. Totally a bad day for Samuel.”

“He’s lucky Nestor held me back,” I confirmed.

“You’re almost right about why we fight so much,” he stated after a few seconds. “We do have a lot of energy we need to burn off, but we’re also in training for something specific.”

Something flashed in his eyes that had me sitting straighter in my seat. “What? Like a competition?”

He shook his head. “If only it were,” he said on a sigh as he headed over to the table and took a seat opposite me .

The tutors rarely sat. It was almost as though they were too edgy to rest even for a second.

“Okay, so why then?”

“When you’re twenty-one, the main soul will surge forward. It might be before your birthday or after it. It’s just around that time. One soul decides it’s had enough of sharing its space, and poof, it cannibalizes the others.”

My eyes widened. “That sounds painful.”

His grin was sheepish. “It is. But it’s just as bad as being punched in the face by a girl on a Were day.”

I snorted. “Touché.”

Though he smirked, it swiftly died as he carried on explaining, “The portal you passed through, it’s special. Unless you’re like Merry or me, creatures only go through it twice in their life.”

“When?”

“In and out. In, when they’re ready for the protection and education Caelum offers. Out, when their main soul is in full power.” He sighed. “Even creatures with as much knowledge as we have can’t really explain why the portal exists, but it’s why Caelum was built here. Back in the eighteen hundreds, a ship meandered this way on a scientific mission and they discovered the island as well as the fact we’re on an oceanic trench. Some say that’s what fuels the portal, but?—”

“You don’t agree?” I prompted, intrigued by what he was telling me.

“No. It’s not magic, but I don’t know what it is. I just know that it spits you out one way and you can speak tongues . Then, when you’ve just the one soul to worry about, it spits you out onto the other side and suddenly, that soul can manifest.”

I studied him for a second. “What are you, Damon?” I’d never asked, not wanting to be rude. Damon was intimidating sometimes. Nicholas was the same. I had a feeling he was a Sin Eater but wouldn’t know for sure until I built up the courage to ask him.

He made a face that let him reveal his fangs. I reached up and touched my own teeth, and he nodded. “The fangs appear after you’ve crossed through the portal. As does the animal if you’re a Were or a Hell Hound. Then with the gouilles , they can pull that freaky shit with their skin. Sin Eaters can do their business and so can the ‘Buses.” That was what most people shorted the Incubi and Succubi down to.

“Only the Lorelei can sing and use their voice to the max pre-portal?”

“Yes. We don’t know why. Another mystery. While there is much we understand about our species, there is a lot we don’t, and although we investigate our beginnings as much as we can, we don’t always have the time to. ”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re at war.”

I jolted back in surprise. “We are? With who?”

His smile grew pained. “Ghouls.”

“Like ghosts?”

He shook his head. “No. Not like ghosts. I wish they were.” I watched as he reached up and rubbed his brow and realized that something had happened with one of the Ghouls. Something that had affected him personally.

“What are they?”

He was silent for a long time until he rasped, “What happens when we hit twenty-one, Eve?”

I frowned. “Our one soul cannibalizes the others.”

“Exactly. A Ghoul is a creature with no dominant soul and, as such, is our enemy and needs to be destroyed.”

For a second, the words wouldn’t penetrate, and when they did, my mouth worked because I knew I had eight souls, not seven like everyone thought. And if I was weird in that, what if I was weird when I turned twenty-one, exactly like I’d been imagining?

My plan had always been to escape Caelum at some point. Once I’d figured out how the real world worked, I’d intended to find a way back onto the plane that had brought me here. I hadn’t known how I’d do it exactly, but desperate times required desperate measures.

But, if what Damon was saying was true, even if I did escape, there was no escaping myself.

I reached up and rubbed my temple. “What happens if you have more than one soul?”

“You become a monster.”

“The portal… it makes sure you only have one soul, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “It does.”

“And if you don’t, what? It eradicates you?”

Another nod. But it wasn’t his silence that was irritating me; it was the way he was looking at me. That sadness was back. Was it aimed at me or was it aimed at someone he’d known who’d turned into a Ghoul?

Confused, I asked, “Why do you consider them monsters?”

“At the moment, each soul plays nice. They let you adapt, and they want you to evolve with them. So each day, you get to handle one of them. Each day, you get to experience the quirks of the soul you’re handling. Of course, you don’t get the full hands-on experience, like with a Were you don’t shift, and when you’re a Vampire, you need blood but you have to use a knife to cause the cut, but it’s enough. It’s a learning curve.

“After you’re eighteen, the souls converge en masse. One of them ekes it out as the dominant one, and over the next three years, that dominant soul begins to take power. The Academy is a good place for our kind. We’re safe here, at peace. It’s a good place for that to happen. But in the outside world?” He shook his head. “It’s not so easy. Creatures who deal with this alone are usually eating crap loaded with chemicals and are taking medication for their supposed mental health issues.” He shrugged. “It messes with them. The battle for dominance just doesn’t happen, and instead, all seven souls just rage on endlessly. They say that it’s equivalent to a cerebral war.”

“But they survive… Obviously, it doesn’t kill them. Otherwise they wouldn’t be at war with us. So, how?”

“They eat living flesh.”

Having watched a show about a forensic pathologist who was a zombie with Nestor the past few days, I blurted out, “They’re zombies?”

“It’s a name for them, but they’re not. They’re Ghouls. They rely on human flesh because humans are grounded in a way we’re not. They’re connected to this Earth in ways we’ll never understand. The more flesh they consume, the quieter the din in their head is. The longer they live. The smarter they are.

“Ghouls can live as long as we do so long as we never catch them. They live in nests with others of their kind and run around causing destruction wherever they go.”

My mouth wobbled as I contemplated what he was saying. Would that be me? Would that be my ultimate end? A monster?

I wanted to ask Damon about my eighth soul, wanted to ask about its bizarre power, but I’d seen no mention of it in any of the textbooks. And I’d scoured them for knowledge, reading them like each one would be burned and forever forbidden to me so that I could attempt to be on the same level as my peers, but also so I could begin to understand why I could do what I could do.

But this? There was no amount of wishing or praying or dreaming that the truth would go away.

I was different.

I knew that. Was just fortunate that it was still hidden from everyone else. Barely. My eighth soul had already been busy at work, but no one had noticed.

Yet .

If I was different before I hit twenty-one, I saw no reason for that to change after.

My future had started to appear bright, but now?

It was darker than I’d ever anticipated, and even though knowledge was power, I wished I’d never let this conversation go down this road because the options open to me were suddenly far bleaker than they’d been even back at the compound.

Even as fear began to turn my blood to ice, I realized something. Something major.

This was the first time I’d learned about any of this stuff. Ghouls were a new concept to me. The fact we were waging war on a subspecies? That was also new.

What books were they keeping from me?

What information were they withholding?

They obviously were keeping me in the dark on some matters, introducing it to me on a need-to-know basis. I had a feeling my eighth soul wouldn’t appear in any textbook but I couldn’t lose hope yet. If I did, then I might as well just toss myself off one of the cliffs, and that was something I’d never do.

For too long, I’d been passive. For too long, I’d let life whirl on around me.

No more, and that was a promise I had to keep because if I didn’t? The portal would see to it that I paid for my sins anyway.