ROMANCE: Mason (Bad Boy Alpha Male Stepbrother Romance Boxset) (New Adult Contemporary Stepbrother Romance Collection) (255 page)

A few moments later, Christian got up and started shuffling to past the other students toward the end of his row, muttering apologies as he moved along. 

A tussle on stage pulled my attention away from him. Two guards, magic wielding vampires that could detect Walkers and Shifters more easily than we could, walked up on stage. One of them whispered something to Kirilov, who nodded.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said over the microphone. “I’m going to have to cut this short. Please move towards your home rooms in an orderly fashion, and wait for further instructions. Don’t leave your class rooms until you’re told to.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd. When I looked for Christian again, he was nowhere to be seen. Students started getting up, but before anyone got a real move on, a dark shadow shot from the side of the stage, launching itself at Kirilov.

The guards were ready, this time, and the creature was tackled to the floor. A wild squeal tore through the hall, and all the students stood rooted to their spots, gaping at the stage.

It was another Walker. It was in the form of a man now, but its red eyes gave it away. He stood in a strange crouched position, almost like a hunchback. He had a pudgy body, but his face looked like he was ready to kill. It wasn’t hard to see what he would look like in the creature he transformed into. I would have bet money that it was the same Walker I’d seen in the forest the day the school broke up for summer.

“Well done,” I could hear Kirilov praise the guards.

“This is exactly the thing these new security installations will take care of.” Cole stood looking at the man, shaking his head in disapproval, or disbelief. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Kirilov. It seems every time you come to our school, something awful happens. I don’t know what to say.”

“Not to worry. This will be the last of the damage, I’m sure.” Kirilov ordered the guards to take the prisoner away. “I’m just glad nothing serious happened.”

His words hung in the air for only a second before the atmosphere was ripped apart by a horrific howl. With it a cold blast of hair shot through the entire hall, making it feel like it was in the dead of winter, and not the back-end of summer. That shriek sent shivers down my spine, followed by the eerie feel that seemed to always accompany these kinds of things.

From behind the curtains, on the opposite side of the stage the Walker came from, someone tackled Kirilov down to the ground. He was tall and scrawny, skin and bones, and his face was twisted into a snarl that promised death. But those dark eyes, glaring down at Kirilov who was thrashing on his back, the skin that stretched over the hands that wrapped rightly around his throat… I knew them.

It was Christian.

And he looked awful. It was like his mask was peeling away, showing the monster underneath. And that’s exactly what it was. His fangs were bared and he made a hissing sound while he squeezed Kirilov’s air out of his lungs, but that was where his resemblance to the vampire I knew him to be ended. It was very clear he wasn’t a vampire.

Christian was a Shifter.

The whole school realized this about the same time I did. I’d hated myself for suspecting it before. I’d hated myself for thinking that his differences would mean he was the enemy. No I realized I was right. So many questions suddenly spun around in my head, and locking it all down was the sight in front of me, of Christian strangling Boris.

Not everyone was frozen to the spot. The guardians jumped into action like they’d been trained to do. Principal Cole was on their heels, quick with his commands, a pillar of strength in the midst of chaos. They pulled Christian off Kirilov, and Kirilov gasped for air, coughing and choking rolling on to his side, his hand on his own neck.

I felt like my blood was frozen in my veins. I couldn’t breathe, the chill and hatred in the air was suffocating, and my own shock was like two hands on my own neck, squeezing just as Christian’s had.

Christian shifted into his true form, dropping every façade. He was much taller, thinner. It was impossible to think how he could be alive. His skin was a sickly green, and his black eyes became even more so, the dark brown irises eaten up by his pupils until there were only two black holes left, soulless and empty.

He managed to shove two guards off him. He had insane strength. More guards arrived, and they jumped on him. He flung one into the wall, and another he grabbed by the throat and slammed him into the ground. The guard’s body went slack, his eyes draining of life.

Black spots started dancing in front of my own eyes, but I couldn’t make myself or sit down. The guards were using some kind of magic to try and subdue him, and it was affecting me. I heard groans around me. Others were feeling it too. But the students around me faded away. I was focused only on the fight in front of me, the horror that presented itself. The fact that I’d been dating a Shifter. And that he was probably the one behind all these attacks on Kirilov. It was the only thing that made sense.

One of the guards pulled out a Taser and the little wires shot into Christian’s chest. His body may have been strong, but no one could stand against electricity charging through their system. If magic failed, there was always the old stand-by.

Christian sank to his knees, and the guards were all over him. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and he was dragged off stage by four of them. Boris stood up and dusted his clothes, looking white in the face. No one knew what to say. Silence hung in the room that started warming up now that Christian had been taken away.

The spots in front of my own eyes grew bigger, and I could see less and less. Students around me started talking among themselves, and I was aware that somewhere Beth was calling my name, but her voice sounded like it was at the far end of a tunnel. I could hear the echo of it, but not the words she was speaking.

I felt myself fall, and a chair dug into my back before hands caught hold of me and laid me down on the ground. I tried to breathe but it didn’t work very well, so I stopped trying and gave myself over to the darkness instead.

I heard student voices around me. Beth’s was closest and I could hear what she said now.

“I don’t think it’s just shock. If she was with him so often, maybe he did something to her, too.”

I wanted to argue with them. I wanted to tell them that they were wrong, it couldn’t have been Christian. It had been a trick. It had to be. They were all wrong. He would never have done something like that.

But I couldn’t make my lips move. My tongue was thick in my mouth.

“Let’s get her to the sick bay,” another voice said.

“Maybe someone should ask Kirilov to see her?” Beth’s voice again.

Like a warm blanket the blackness finally folded around me. It was safe. It was far away from everything that had just happened. I let it take me away.

3

When I opened my eyes again, the clinical white of the sick bay surrounded me. The ceiling, walls and floor were all scrubbed to a sterile white, and the smell of detergent pinched my nose.

We called it a sick bay, but it was a full on medical center, even if it was on a very small scale. The Academy needed it for the amount of students that stayed in the residence. Also, if anyone got sick too close to sunrise, the vampires could be taken care of at the center until nightfall.

A nurse leaned into my view, smiling but her eyes were scanning my face, not really looking at me.

“How are we feeling?” she asked. We?

“I’m…” I did a quick inventory. I was fine, actually. Everything felt normal. And empty. There was a strange hollow feeling inside of me, like something had been there for a while, and now it was absent.

“How is she doing?” a doctor’s voice sounded, and when I looked up he smiled.

“You’re awake, that’s good news,” he said. He actually spoke to me.”

“What happened?”

“You were brought in here unconscious. Our scanners picked up nothing that could vouch for your loss of consciousness, until one of the guards was called in. We’d heard the story about the Shifter.”

A pang shot through my chest when he said that. The Shifter. Christian.

“Apparently you were under some sort of spell,” the doctor continued, not noticing the shift inside of me after it all. But I was aware of it. “The guard was brought here, and he confirmed the magic. That’s why we couldn’t find it. It broke once the Shifter was locked up.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“He’s kept in a secure room on campus, I’m afraid. They wanted to keep him for questioning, and with the daylight it’s not possible to transfer him to the local prison.”

Daylight? How long had I been out for?

“Can I see him?” I asked. The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no one’s allowed,” he said. As he spoke a guard appeared in the door. He nodded at me, a sort of acknowledgement, and then he shuffled over to the doctor, whispering something in his ear.

“Well,” the doctor said after he left again. “Apparently you can. He’s asking for you.”

I followed a guard down a narrow passage. We’d gone down a set of stairs, and the dank smell and the pressing feeling of the concrete walls around me gave me the feeling we were underground. There were no windows, and the air was so humid I felt like I was drowning when I breathed in. We walked on for what felt like forever, until we finally reached a heavy metal door.

The guard knocked on it and the hollow sound echoed down the tunnel that we followed. A hatch opened, another guard’s eyes appeared, and then the sound of heavy bolts clicking open. It was like I’d been transported to another world. It was almost medieval down here, with the prison looking more like a dungeon, and nothing to show that we were in the twenty-first century, except for the fluorescent light on the ceiling.

We stepped into a room, and the heavy door bolted shut behind me. I was aware of how much metal surrounded us. No matter what kind of creature you were, there was no way of escaping. Not by dematerializing or any other form of magic. The walls sang with its own supernatural hum, and I knew the guards were controlling this place not only by bars and heavy doors, but by spells, too.

We passed through another heavy door, and finally I was led up to a row of four cells. Only one was occupied. I was surprised the school had a prison – dungeon – at all.

Christian sat on the cot in the corner, head in his hands. His skin was a normal color again, and his size the way I knew it. He was in vampire form, the form I had come to know and love. There was no evidence of the Shifter he’d turned out to be.

For a moment it felt like it had all been a dream. Like this was one big mistake, and the vampire behind those bars was misunderstood.

But then I focused on the tingling that settled at the back of my skull, the hair that stood on end on my skin without any good reason, and the void inside me that was filled again with that tangle of fear and awe. This was Christian, but it wasn’t the Christian I thought I knew.

The feelings I had mistaken for young love, for affection and attraction, had been warning signs. How could I have been so stupid?

I cleared my throat, and Christian looked up at me. His dark eyes locked on mine, and something inside of me leapt. I didn’t know what to think of it. I still had feelings for him. I didn’t think that would just change.

“Adelaide,” he said, standing up and moving towards the bars. The guards around me brace themselves.

“I don’t think he’s going to get through those bars,” I said. “Back off.”

I had no authority to give them orders, but still they obeyed.

For a while Christian and I stood, staring at each other. Neither of us said anything. There were a million things that flew through my mind. How much I cared for him. How much I hated him. How he’d betrayed me, the school, all of us. He’d tried to kill Boris.

In the end, when my mouth opened, none of that came out.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Christian looked at the guards around me. “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.

“Could you guys give us a little privacy?” I asked. They looked at each other, unsure.

“I doubt he’s going to be able to do anything. I can feel the magic, too, and I’m not even a wielder.” The guards finally nodded. Three filtered out of the heavy door, but one stayed on the inside, just in case. He stood far enough for us to have a semblance of being alone.

“I’m sorry,” Christian said.

“For what? For trying to kill Boris? For lying to me?” I looked down at my hands. “Or for loving me?”

“All of it. For doing this to you. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I didn’t want to get anyone else involved. I didn’t mean to get so close—“

“You meant to get in here, and kill Boris without blinking an eye?”

“No. I meant to get in here and do the minimal amount of damage.”

“Boris’s death is minimal!?” My voice rose, and from the corner of my eye I saw the guard, ready to jump to action if he needed to. I raised my hand to the side, waved him off. I was alright.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Christian said. He was still looking at my face. I could feel his eyes burning my skin, even though I refused to look at him.

“Then explain it to me. I’d love to know what was going through your mind every time you kissed me, knowing you were going to rip away the last thing I had left.”