“Everything you told us and made us do – hurting the scholarship students so they would make fitting sacrifices… it was a lie.” Trey’s hand slid away from her throat. He stepped back, anger rolling off him.
“Oh, please. You stepped so easily into your role of chief torturer that if I’d told you the truth, it wouldn’t have made a difference. You’re cut from the same cloth as your father – he thought I was his loyal servant, but I’ve manipulated him this whole time. It was so easy – you were all too consumed by lust for power and control that you could not see my deception. The whole trick was too easy. I told the Eldritch Club that any member who wished to partake of the ritual should invite their sacrifice to the dance, and that they must be prepared to bury their corpse. I thought we’d have a handful of willing parties, but in the end, the temptation proved too great for any of them to resist.
“245 students with souls to be sacrificed. 42 faculty members who volunteered to run the school and nurse the god’s children in exchange for immortality. And a freshly dug graveyard, ready for a second birth. We organized the dance, invited the chosen students, and made sure the doors were locked. We stoked the flames and lay down beside you, knowing the fire would bring us greater rewards on the other side. While the god’s servants gave us his immortal touch, the Eldritch Club did the rest – carrying the corpses down to the graveyard and burying the bodies in their designated places so the severed souls would find their way back to the right vessels.
“Then the god took over. For three days he roared and screamed, gorging himself on the most innocent and delicious parts of your souls. The earth shook with such violent earthquakes the fire investigators could not get their vehicles up the peninsula to study the fire. When he was finished, the god gave of himself, reducing himself to a fraction of his own power, carving his own essence into 245 pieces and placing one inside each of you. You became his – no longer innocent, no longer entirely human. Then, he returned to his slumber.
“The god spared the faculty from the flames so we could watch over your graves. For three long days we stood vigil, long after your parents grew bored with their tears and returned to their lives. We helped the first of you to claw your way to the surface, and then left you to free the others.
“Every year since, the god has demanded four sacrifices – just enough energy for him to provide the boost of power the Eldritch Club needs to keep them in the dark about what’s really going on. Meanwhile, you fulfill your true purpose. You feed the fire of the god inside you with your cruelty and vice. Each day you become more like him, and your children – once we figure out how to make you viable – will be even closer to his image. Now, we don’t even have to guide you – you torture the students for your own amusement. I kept detailed records observing your behavior.” Ms. West’s gaze fell on me. “I must say, you two boys have made a fascinating study.”
“We’re… we’re lab rats?” Trey growled. I was amazed he was able to cling to a single element of the litany of horrors she’d just outlined.
“Inaccurate. My experiments have shown rats do not possess the brutality to be the chosen children of the god—”
SMASH.
Quinn tossed the bottle across the room. It hit a portrait above Ms. West’s fireplace. Glass exploded everywhere. The gilded frame fell to the floor, bent out of shape. Slivers of glass glittered on the rug – beautiful in their capacity for cruelty, like my Kings.
Shattered glass for a shattered soul.
I expected Quinn to yell, but instead, he stood frozen. His eyes focused on something behind Ms. West’s head none of us could see. I longed to embrace him, but the rage rolling off his body called to me, begging for permission to be unleashed – for a spark to set him off. If we touched now, the explosion of emotion might burn this place down.
Ms. West continued talking as if all these rending souls and immortal children were completely normal.
“As I said, I’ve never before acted as midwife for the birth of a new race, and as such, we’ve had some hiccups; namely, the fact you haven’t yet bred. I’ve tried everything, including using my own body as a vessel, but it appears what makes us immortal also makes us unable to bear children.”
“Ayaz.” Bile rose in my throat as I realized why she had pursued him, why she was prepared to use her position of power to sleep with him. She was trying to have his child.
It’s sick. She’s sick. And mad. In this whole fucking wackadoodle school, she’s the craziest of them all.
“Mr. Demir did his duty with enthusiasm.” She laughed again, and the sound turned my stomach. “Alas, it was in vain. And then, Hazel Waite appeared and affected our god, and I started to wonder if perhaps the god sensed something in her that would be perfect. And once again, you boys did your duty without prompting from me. All three of you! The god inside you must be attracted to her cruelty.”
No.
My heart plunged to my toes.
That can’t be true.Everything I feel for the Kings – it means something. It can’t simply boil down to me being a vessel for a fucking god-baby.
It can’t it can’t it can’t.
Trey looked ready to explode. “You can’t force us tobreed.”
“I don’t have to. All these years you’ve carried off our plan perfectly without my prompting, excited to do your parents’ bidding and torture the sacrifices in a state fit to be fed to the god and fuck like rabbits as the teenage hormones continued to rush through your veins. Don’t act as though you’re a victim here, Trey. You’ve had free will to resist at any time. But the god is inside you. He is part of you and you of him. Youwantedto hurt and torture and bully, just as you now want Hazel. At least with her, you get to have your fun at the same time.”
“Only because we were lied to!” Trey cried. “If we knew the truth, we never—”
“You never would have tortured those who had less than you to raise your status? You never would have lashed out because you were afraid of something different? You never would have done his bidding if you knew your father’s empire was built on the god’s brutality?” Ms. West silenced Trey with her penetrating stare. “Is that true? I think Hazel would tell a different story.”
I bit back my answer. I didn’t want to admit it in front of the guys, but Ms. West was right. The Kings of Miskatonic Prep didn’t need their parents’ encouragement or the knowledge of the god to bully the scholarship students. They’d been raised to believe that was their right. The choices they made belonged to them.
Just as my choices – myterriblechoices – belonged to me.
Ms. West steepled her fingers together, studying me with that hard, cold face. “The god very much wants you, Ms. Waite, but not as fuel. He reads your crime on your soul as easily as you might read words on a page. Long before I figured out what you and Ms. Putnam were hiding, the god had set his sights on you as his consort.”
“Yeah, well, he can keep on dreaming. He’s so not my type.” I wanted to steer her away from that line of thought, in case the guys started to suspect the relationship I had with the god. “If the god has his children, why raise the pillar?”
The Deadmistress’ mouth tugged up at a corner. “As I said, the pillar is a mystery. Perhaps it is part of a fertility rite from the god’s own culture, meant to inflame the loins. Tell me, Trey, does staring into its blackened depths bring the stirrings of lust?”
