The Oracle's Locket Page 14

  Suddenly, a massive Lycan burst out from the tunnel, followed by Quintin and Ezra. Raphael, the Lycan lurched forward toward the tall bounty hunter and thrust him to the ground. His huge talons entered the belly of the bounty hunter, and blood spurted across the dungeon walls.

  Quintin tore toward the other bounty hunter, his muscles bulging—somewhere between human and quasi-dragon. He punched the bounty hunter in the face. The bounty hunter’s nose seemed to come undone from his skull and smear toward his ear. As he fell, he shrieked, and Ezra was suddenly upon him, his large fangs cutting out as he inserted them into the bounty hunter’s neck and sucked him dry. His blue eyes glowed brighter than I’d ever seen them.

  I’d never seen him feed on anything before.

  It was terrifying and exciting and it filled me with so much lust and this urgent desire to leap on him and fuck him until both of our eyes glowed like that.

  We were the most powerful beings on the planet.

  And they’d come out of the tunnel to save me. They’d found me. They’d known all along how to save me.

  Zelda screamed as the last of the blood suckled out of the short bounty hunter and into Ezra’s mouth. He lifted his lips from the man’s neck. Little droplets of blood came down his chin and over his chest and he beamed at Zelda. “You’re jealous. I can see it.”

  Zelda swept her hand across her lips and blinked at the other guy; the one Raphael had attacked with his Lycan talons. Raphael remained there beside him, watching as the last of his life was drained from him.

  “It’s never as good when they’re so close to being gone,” Zelda muttered to herself.

  “Ha. Like you’ve ever killed before,” Ezra said. He stood up and stretched out his neck.

  Zelda turned her eyes to the ground. I figured this was standard, actually. To keep up some kind of protocol between the humans and the supernaturals, it wasn’t exactly appropriate to have vampires just out and about, killing humans.

  Of course, there were rogue ones everywhere—and they feasted on whoever they liked.

  “Like you had before this, either,” Zelda spat back.

  Ezra shrugged and glanced back at his meal. The man was now completely pale, his skin void of any kind of life. The other had died, as well. My stomach quaked. Death wasn’t exactly a pleasurable thing to witness.

  But better them than me.

  I knew that it should have been me. And only moments before, I’d almost made peace with that fact. I’d felt it in every cell of my body. I’d been on my way to the other side.

  Quintin dropped down on the ground and lifted my back, supporting me so that I could sit like that, my legs outstretched but still attached together. He stroked my curls behind my ears and said, “Ivy, are you all right? Your back...”

  It was true that my back was torn up from the stones and the dirt. I scrunched my face, feeling the tremendous pain for the first time. The boys exchanged worried glances. As time ticked on, I genuinely felt that something inside of me had been bruised very badly—a kidney or my liver or something like that. With every breath, I winced.

  Quintin drew forward and dotted a kiss on my forehead. I closed my eyes and let a single tear fall. Here, still tied up on the dungeon floor, I allowed myself to really feel the terror. Two dead bodies were stretched out only a few feet away.

  Quintin brought his large arm over my shoulder, prepared to carry me. He gave Ezra and Raphael another worried glance and said, “I think we should get her to the hospital immediately. She needs to rest and recoup and...”

  Raphael nodded as he slowly descended back into human form. He shook out his muscles and glanced back down at the horror he’d created. Blood lined his fingers. He wiped them over his pants, as though that would make any difference. Maybe nobody else could tell, but I could see it: it bothered him that he’d killed.

  But they’d done what they had to do to save me. And I knew that I would be forever in their debt.

  As Quintin began to lift me, there was another rustle in the tunnel. Everyone froze with fear as a lantern appeared in the darkness, far down. Raphael cut toward the opening and called out, “Don’t come any closer until you identify yourself! We will kill you. We’ve done it before.”

  The words were so ominous and so heavy and so true. I shivered in Quintin’s arms.

  The lantern stopped moving. There was silence and it was overwhelmingly eerie.

  “Raphael? Is that you?” the voice called.

  I knew exactly who it was.

  “Professor? Is that you?” I cried. This was the first time I’d used my voice in what seemed like a long time, and I was surprised to hear how normal it sounded—just like every other day, the same one I’d carried around all my life.

  Except now, everything seemed so fucking different.

  “It’s Professor Binion,” I told everyone, as the lantern drew closer. “It’s all right.”

  Even still, the boys seemed apprehensive. Raphael looked ready to change back into a Lycan at any minute. Ezra stood with his arms crossed over his chest, and Quintin seethed.

  But moments later, Professor Binion stepped out of the black with his lantern raised. All the blood had drained from his cheeks. Although I’d only seen him less than an hour before, he seemed totally different.

  The moment he saw me, he looked like he might fall over. Ezra actually rushed toward him to steady him. He looked almost as pale, now, as the dead man Ezra had drained of blood. The lantern fell to the ground, but landed on a patch of soil and luckily didn’t burst into many glass pieces.

  “Ivy! My god,” he said. “What’s happened?” His eyes then scanned the boys and the dead bodies there splayed out across the stones. He took in the blood across the walls and then he turned to Zelda. A look of understanding played out over his face.

  Zelda dropped to her knees beside me. Her hand wrapped around the bond at my ankles as she burst into tears. The mood in the room was the tensest feeling I’d ever experienced. Zelda seemed to think she was going to go to prison or something; the boys were ready to attack whoever came near me, and Professor Binion seemed out of his mind with shock and fear and this sudden realization.

  Professor Binion fell against the wall to steady himself. He collected his fingers over his stomach and took a staggered breath.

  “You told me, Ivy, that you suspected someone might have infiltrated the school,” he said. His voice was terribly low, almost too difficult to really hear. “And it really got me thinking.” His eyes clicked toward Zelda as he continued. “Zelda Maroney. She’s your age, living in your very dormitory area, and what’s more—she’s a brand new vampire, relatively speaking. Your family remains human, isn’t that right?”

  Zelda nodded. Although I hadn’t touched her, I got a strange, flashing image of her entire family in England, bombarded by bounty hunters—another in a series of nightmares in the wake of Zelda’s attack and change. How horrible.

  Of course, I had the idea that she wasn’t exactly a joy to be around as a human, either.

  “That makes your family much more vulnerable, I suppose,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “They’re unsure about the rules of this world. And what’s more, they’re outsiders, aren’t they? England. Far, far away from here. Making it difficult for us to ever suspect you.”

  Zelda’s bottom lip quivered. “I didn’t want to do this, Professor. I swear. They threatened to kill every member of my family. My mother hasn’t been able to stop crying for weeks. She’s petrified. I—I have a younger brother, Professor. When I asked myself what it meant to me... I just had to do it. I had to go through with it. I’m so ashamed...”

  Professor Binion didn’t say anything for a long while. I pressed my head against Quintin’s chest and willed this horrible night to be over soon.

  “I wanted to come to check on you immediately when I figured this out,” Professor Binion said to me. “But when you weren’t in your bedroom—and Zelda wasn’t in hers, either, I returned to the foyer to see tha
t the door down toward the tunnel was wide open. We never tell students about the tunnel. They must have informed you.”

  Zelda nodded. Her cheeks were now stained with tears.

  “Well. I’ve found you now. It’s over,” Professor Binion said. “As for them...” He pointed toward the bounty hunters. “I’ll have someone come to deal with them in the morning.”

  Professor Binion slowly crept onto his knees and placed himself in front of me. He extended his hand flat out in front of him and closed his eyes and muttered an incantation, one I could hardly hear. When Zelda had said hers, she’d articulated every single syllable, the way you do when you’re speaking a language you don’t really know. It was obvious that Professor Binion had spent much of his life speaking these words.

  Suddenly, my ankles and my wrists sprung apart. It happened so quickly that my legs fell with a thud and my arms flung down from Quintin’s side. I couldn’t help it: I gave Professor Binion a huge smile. When I mustered enough strength, I stretched forward and gave him a hug. I couldn’t remember hugging him before this. I wanted him to know how much it meant to me; I wanted him to really see that I understood what he’d gone through to keep me safe.

  And I knew he would continue to go through it. This was probably only the beginning.

  When the hug broke, I could see that Professor Binion was a little embarrassed. He wasn’t the kind of man to show emotion in any way. He gave a delicate nod, then turned back toward Zelda.

  “When it occurred to me what your family might have gone through, I immediately sent protectors to their home,” he said. “There won’t be any sort of incident there, not from any follow-up bounty hunters. Don’t worry yourself. It’s over.”

  Zelda’s cheeks reddened as she thanked him.

  Professor Binion requested that we all walk down the tunnel together. He led the charge, holding onto the lantern while I went behind him, the three boys behind me, and Zelda in last. The walk seemed much shorter, now that I wasn’t dragged over it. Even as I walked, the muscles and bones in my back quaked with pain. On the way, I asked Professor Binion about some kind of herb or medicine to take for it, and he said he’d bring me something from his office when we arrived back home.

  The stairs back up to the girls’ dormitory were bizarre. It seemed like we’d first marched down them several days ago, rather than only an hour. When we reached the top, we collected ourselves in the foyer. We reeked of soil and muck and blood and fear.

  “Can I ask you something, Professor?” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “Can I ask that Zelda not be punished? It seems like I would have done the same thing in her shoes and I really don’t want her to be accountable for any moment of any of this. It was just bad luck.”

  Professor Binion scratched his chin contemplatively. Beside me, Zelda shifted. Even without touching her, I could feel her mood grow darker.

  “Of course. I know what you mean, Ivy. I think it’s appropriate that we don’t string this along much more.”

  What was this darkness in Zelda? It felt like odd resentment.

  Professor Binion turned toward the door. “I’m going to grab that medicine for you, Ivy. Everyone, please, return to your bedrooms at once. It’s imperative that we move forward from this and not allow ourselves to be bogged down by the horror of what we’ve seen—or what we’ve done.” He tipped his head a final time and turned toward the door. When he reached it, he turned back toward the three boys—arching his brow. “Aren’t you coming?”

  The boys had wanted to stay with me. I could sense it. But one-by-one, they marched out into the night, leaving Zelda and I back in the foyer alone.

  The moment the door closed, Zelda turned toward me, totally enraged. “What the hell,” she demanded.

  I really should have been the one to say that. I arched my brow and said, “What the fuck do you mean?”

  “You really think you’re such a goody-goody, don't you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for, you know, trying to murder me. That doesn’t seem like a huge thing.”

  “Just stay away from me,” Zelda said, her nostrils flared. “You can take your forgiveness and shove it straight up your ass.”

  She shot up the staircase toward our dormitory. Exhausted, I let out a deep sigh and watched her go. I had no energy to fight her or bicker with her or point out how absolutely fucking stupid her reasoning was. All I wanted to do now was sleep.

  I waited in the foyer for Professor Binion to arrive back with the medicine. It was a kind of cream, which he told me to smear on my back twice per day—once when I got up and again when I went to bed. I thanked him and then thanked him again. It really felt like I couldn’t say those two words enough. Then, he disappeared again into the night.

  Back upstairs, I was grateful to see that Zelda had latched herself away in her bedroom. Everyone else seemed asleep or else tucked away, reading, or watching TV. I wanted to see Celeste, but I also felt that what had just happened was way too heavy to explain. She would ask endless questions and demand to know more and I would probably just collapse with the weight of it all.

  When I reached my bedroom, I creaked open the door to find—to my complete surprise—Raphael, Quintin, and Ezra. They sat on my bed, waiting for me, their faces stoic. Raphael remained shirtless, and Ezra still looked a little too bright in the face from all that energy he’d sucked out. I clipped the door shut quickly, just in case.

  I’d never been more grateful to see anyone in my life.

  I flung toward them and let Ezra hold me for a long, long time. Quintin’s hand stretched out over my knee. Raphael played music from his phone and we lay back on my bed, me between Ezra and Quintin and Raphael seated at the very end. Nobody could speak for a long time.

  It felt like we’d been through war together.

  “Thank you for coming,” I whispered to them. “I don’t think I could have fallen asleep without you guys.”

  “Neither could we have, knowing that you might be in danger,” Quintin said.

  “I wanted to kill her,” Ezra murmured, speaking about Zelda. “When she had your wrists and ankles locked up like that.... I’d never been so pissed at anyone in my life.”

  “Ivy, we really did want to save you that second,” Raphael affirmed. “But we all knew that she was only the tip of the iceberg. If we got you there, then those bounty hunters would have remained out there.”

  “We had to kill them,” Ezra said. “But I never could have imagined what that might do to me: watching you be dragged all the way down the tunnel like that.”

  “I think Zelda thought maybe we were in on it with the bounty hunters,” Quintin said. “She kind of looked at us curiously, like maybe everything had been an act.”

  That’s what I had thought, too. I didn’t let on about that, though. It was in the past.

  Before I fell asleep, Ezra tenderly smeared the medicinal lotion across my hurt back. I then lay down under the covers, wrapped in the warmth of the boys who protected me. We’d gone to hell and back together.

  I was grateful I didn’t dream. It had all been too much of a nightmare. I just wanted peace.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rumors circled around school the next few days. Nobody seemed to get everything exactly right. I had only told Celeste a few details, all of which she’d nearly fainted at, and the boys had kept their mouths shut. I guess Zelda had given a few brief words to Margot and Riley—probably the source of most of the gossip. Regardless, everyone seemed to keep a big distance from me, like I was some kind of poisonous pariah. Honestly, this wasn’t so different from most other days at Origins Supernatural Academy, and it let me focus on my powers.

  Zelda’s resentment toward me took on new ground after that, though. I could feel her hate for me coming off of her in waves. She seemed to translate this feeling over to Margot and Riley, and together, they formed a second and stronger alliance with a single purpose: to bully the shit out o
f me.

  I mean, it wasn’t like it mattered that much anymore. There were bigger things I had to deal with than, say, when they started a rumor that I had an STD, or when they said I was pregnant with Raphael’s half-Lycan baby, or when they shoved themselves against me in the dining hall, which made me drop my tray to the ground and cover myself in mashed potatoes.

  In relation to everything else, it didn’t matter. Honestly, I could dismiss it as just another bullshit thing in my life. Zelda felt she needed to “prove something” to me, and fuck it if that gave her some kind of inner pleasure, then I had to let her have it. She’d been through her own version of hell the past few months, and really, she could point the blame fully on me for all that. It wasn’t like I wanted me dead, but the whole world did, it seemed like. She’d just been a pawn in a game I’d never wanted to play.

  Raphael, Quintin, and Ezra made it pretty fucking clear that they wouldn’t let me far out of their sight after the incident in the dungeon. They sat with me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and frequently one, two, or all of them snuck into my bedroom at night to sleep next to me. I sometimes urged them not to do that, worried it put them at risk for attack or punishment. But they shrugged me off and said that we’d already been through too fucking much. I couldn’t push them away.

  Early April, Celeste and I walked to math class together when Zelda and Riley whipped out of nowhere, colliding with me so that my books fell out across the floor. I couldn’t control my face: I glared at Zelda and Riley and wanted to say something really fucking spiteful. They smirked. I knew they wanted me to say something like that, too. Something that would show just how much they’d gotten under my skin.

  Celeste snapped her fingers and muttered a spell that whipped the books back into my hand like that. She glared at them, then at me, and grabbed my arm and yanked me the rest of the way to class. I could tell she was pissed. She hovered outside the door for a second and leaned against the wall. Her nostrils flared, she said, “What the hell is going on with you, Ivy? Why don’t you ever stand up for yourself anymore?”