I sucked in a breath, willing down the heat that flared in my palms. Beside me, Trey gripped the edge of his chair so hard his knuckles glowed white.
“I also knew that if I told him this, Vincent would cast me aside. I’d lose access to the god forever. I was the only scientist to make these breakthroughs in the study of souls, and the only one who would have access to this new energy. I alone had the opportunity to reveal the deepest hidden secrets of the universe. I couldn’t allow the Eldritch Club to close off my access to the god. This discovery was bigger than them and their petty squabbles for dominance.
“And so, I did what no one else had done since they discovered the god – I asked him whathewanted. The answer was also obvious, although not to Vincent Bloomberg. If the god had come to colonize our universe, he must have had a mate with him. But his mate died on the journey. The god was unable to complete his mission, so he slumbered beneath the earth until he was awoken by Parris. More than anything else, our god wished for progeny to carry on his dynasty of star-eaters.”
“What does that even mean?” Trey demanded.
“It means, boy, that I saved your pointless livesandgave the god what he wanted. Instead of killing you like Vincent would have demanded, I blessed you with the god’s gifts. You were to be his firstborn – the first generation in an evolutionary chain that would lead eventually to a race of new star gods. Your teachers volunteered to leave their lives and accept immortality – without the associated gifts of his energy – to act as your nursemaids and tutors, to ensure you continue the god’s race to the next generation, and the next. Your father – yournewfather – is patient. He can afford to wait a millennium or two for the last of your frail human genes to be flushed from the system.”
Trey stalked across the room, his eyes ablaze. He grabbed her shoulders, yanking her forward on her toes until her face was an inch from his. “Stop trying to make poetry from your butchering. What have you done to us?”
Cold realization sliced through my chest as Ms. West’s words clicked into place.
I knew. I understood.
The Edimmu. The undying. Human, but not human. All my questions about how the Kings were dead and yet they breathed and hurt and acted as living people. About how they saw cruelty as the answer to all their problems.
They weren’t dead at all.
They werechanged.
This is madness.
“You’re not dead,” I whispered. “You were never dead. This school… it’s a nursery. You’re the god’s children.”
Chapter Seven
Ms. West nodded. “I knew you would understand, Ms. Waite.”
Trey’s eyes blazed. “That’s absurd. How could my mother have slept with a creature made of shadow and malevolence?I am Vincent Bloomberg’s son.It’shiscruelty that runs in my veins.”
Ms. West laughed, the sound like shattering glass. “Cosmic gods do not rut in the dirt like humans. His reproductive process involves an exchange of energy. Some of yours for some of his. You were born of your parents as a boring human and then we created you anew, the god and I, from his recipe and my skills. In some ways, you might say I am your real mother.”
Trey’s face betrayed his horror and disgust. The Deadmistress tossed back her head and laughed – an unhinged, maniacal sound.
“Trapped in this school, at the mercy of your teenage hormones, you were supposed to breed like rabbits, and your children would have been less human than you, and on it would go until the god’s race reigned over our universe. But of course, we didn’t know how human physiology would react to the god’s energy – it appears the ritual has made you all sterile.”
“You’re sick.” Trey grabbed her shoulders and shook. This only made her laugh harder. Quinn finished his drink and poured another. He still wouldn’t look at me.
My mind swam with thoughts and memories, putting together everything she said against what we already knew. “Only the teachers knew about this… thisbreeding.”
“The Eldritch Club wanted the god’s power for themselves, not to create a race that would one day rise up to surpass them. They could never know the truth. And so, I told the stories I had to tell to make myself indispensable to them. I told Vincent what he needed to hear – that I could obtain this power for him, but it would come at a price. For the first three years, I conducted preliminary experiments on lower life-forms – rodents, dogs, sheep, the vagrants Vincent found to act as caretakers at the school. I moved souls around between bodies, carving them into pieces, mingling them with the god’s energy to see how they reacted. Then I experimented on the ghosts and ghouls that haunt this house. These old stones contain a lot of restless spirits – the perfect vehicles for further experiments. I achieved exceptional results, but none that pleased the god as his first progeny. Interestingly enough, it was the family history of an old work colleague that gave me the final answer.”
Deborah?I leaned forward. “Let me guess – something to do with Parris and his final ritual.”
“Indeed. Parris had figured out some aspects of the god’s being. Back in his day, science and the occult were intrinsically linked – both concerned with knowing the secrets of the natural world, and with controlling it. Parris also conducted experiments, sacrificing many members of his coven in his quest to uncover the god’s secrets. Finally, he thought he had the answer – he’d designed a ritual that was a crude version of the one we used on you boys, only he thought it would bind the god’s power to himself so he could control it. One of his foolish acolytes, a Rebecca Nurse – from whom my colleague was descended – decided to stop him. From across the country, her ritual blocked Parris’ at the exact moment a mob from the town set fire to this place. Parris died in the blaze, but the fire also raged through the connection between the two rituals, burning Rebecca and her coven to a crisp. And so, my idea was born.”
“The fire,” Trey said bluntly. A shudder ran through Quinn’s body.
“Indeed. Fire is raw, pure energy. It also acts as a conduit that can carry different types of energy – that’s why it’s used so often in ritual magic. I wondered, what if I repeated that ritual, but instead I used the fire to bring the god’s energy into the bodies he had chosen?” Ms. West beamed. “I know. It’s genius, and somewhat above your comprehension. Allow me to attempt to explain. As you writhed in the flames, the trauma made your souls pliable. I pulled out pieces of your soul and gave to you a piece of the god in return, then I bound you together and placed you in the ground while the binding took hold. When you rose from your grave like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, you were born anew.”
The sigils carved into their tombs were the binding.I remembered how Ayaz explained that sigils could be used to control a demon or spirit or to bind them to a place.I knew the sigils had to be important.My legs wobbled from the horror of it. I slumped into the chair and sat on my hands, hiding the curls of smoke that rose from my palms as my anger bubbled inside me.
Across the room, Quinn squirmed. He grabbed the Scotch from Ms. West’s desk and took a glug straight from the bottle.
Trey’s fingers dug into Ms. West’s shoulders so hard he tore the fabric. “You’re saying that… that you chopped offa piece of my fucking souland replaced it with a piece of the god?”
“You should be proud to be chosen by him! I told Vincent that every Eldritch Club member who wanted power from the god would have to offer up one of their own children for sacrifice. I knew that the child they each chose would be a product of their own cruelty and avarice – the perfect receptacle for the god’s first offspring. Everything you have been tasked to do from that moment on has been designed by me to mold you in the god’s image.”
