The Oxford Inheritance (28 page)

“I told you, I won't hurt you!” Hugo struggled upright, breathing hard.

“And I don't believe a word you say.” Cassie pulled her legs up against her chest, looking frantically around for a weapon or escape. Hugo was blocking the way to the door, rubbing his cheek, his hair disheveled and his shirt askew. “What do you want? How did you get in here?”

“I told you, we need to talk. You've been avoiding me.” Hugo stepped closer, his face suddenly creasing with concern. “Christ, what happened to you? Are you hurt?”

Cassie stared at him in disbelief. “What happened . . . ?” she echoed. “You know what happened. Your grandfather sent someone after me, to shut me up for good. Have you decided to do your own dirty work for a change?”

Hugo blinked. “No, I swear, I had no idea . . .” He moved toward her, but Cassie jerked back again. “I promise,” Hugo said again, spreading his hands in front of him. “I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help!”

“I've heard that too many times today,” Cassie said sharply, but she faltered, seeing the sincerity in his eyes.

“Then let me show you.” Hugo swallowed, looking anxious. “Let me show you what this is all about. I swear I won't hurt you.”

Cassie slowly exhaled. She didn't trust him, she couldn't, but she wanted answers. “Okay,” she said weakly. “We'll talk.” She ignored his hand and pulled herself onto her feet, but a wave of dizziness washed over her and she stumbled hard.

In an instant, Hugo was at her side, holding her up. “God, Cassie, what did they do?”

“I was lucky.” Cassie met his eyes. “The porter, Rutledge, they killed him.”

Hugo frowned. “I heard that was a heart attack.”

“Sure,” Cassie said, tired. “And Evie committed suicide. Don't tell me you don't know how this goes.”

Hugo swallowed. Up close, she could see his skin was pale, shadows under his eyes. “I was so worried about you,” he murmured, guiding her out of the room. She felt his body pressed against hers and forgot for a moment the angry accusations whirling in her mind. Was this the reason she felt such a connection to him, because deep down, they were the same? Cassie tried to push the discomforting thought aside.

Hugo helped her into the living room and turned on the lights. Sebastian was sprawled on the couch, unconscious.

“What . . . ?” Cassie's whole body tensed. She turned to Hugo. “Why did you—?”

“You want to know what this is about,” he said, his dark eyes silently pleading with her. “There are things I can't explain. But I can show you, if you'll let me.”

Cassie took a breath, and then another. She looked from Sebastian's slumped body to Hugo and back. This was it, the moment she'd been waiting for. Ever since that night in the maze. She sank into a seat opposite the couch. “Explain.”

Hugo took a short breath. “We've always been this way,” he began. He didn't sit, but instead started pacing, slowly. Uncertain. “At least, I have. They told me it's in the family. When Raleigh founded the college, he and his friends made a pact. A bargain. They wanted knowledge, more than anything else. Pursuit of a higher purpose. It wasn't meant to be—” He broke off. “It wasn't meant to be like this. But they called up something, some dark power. It gave them that knowledge, but at a price. Power, it isn't created, you see, it can only be taken.” Hugo met her gaze, conflicted. “Taken from somebody else.”

Cassie swallowed. “Go on,” she told him quietly, glancing at Sebastian.

“The School of Night kept their secret hidden,” Hugo continued, raking one hand through his hair. Cassie wondered if he'd been rehearsing this speech. “They passed it down through the ages. There's a ritual, a ceremony of sorts that happens every generation, reconnecting with the original darkness. A way for each new member to pledge his loyalty and renew his gift.” Hugo's voice twisted on the last word, and he paused before continuing, “If you don't take part, your powers fade, you become a shadow of yourself. So to prepare, you have to build your strength. You have to feed.”

“And give an offering,” Cassie said, quiet.

Hugo looked up. “How did you . . . ?” He stopped. “Yes,” he admitted. “An offering. Each member has to bring someone, a willing sacrifice. The darkness uses them as a vessel, for the new member to feed. The power comes from the consent, the risk the chosen take to become one of us.”

“You can create new members?” Cassie struggled to follow. “I thought this was hereditary.”

“It is.” Hugo nodded. “But there's a promise that if you're strong
enough you can become a member, even if you weren't born into it. But nobody . . . Nobody has ever survived the ceremony.”

“That's what they offered Rose,” Cassie realized. “They told her she could become one of them.”

Hugo hung his head. “The stronger the offering, the more power granted to the family.” He paused. “The more power we have to take.”

Cassie felt a twist of sick fascination. All those willing sacrifices, blinded to the danger, hoping they would be the lucky souls to ascend to the privileged few. Hoping they would be the one exception.

“How does it work when you feed?” she found herself asking, looking to Hugo again. “That's what you were trying to do to me, wasn't it? When I had those nightmares, when I was sleeping at your house. Did you plan it from the start?” She paused, thinking. “The break-in, that was you too, wasn't it—stealing Evie's research?”

Hugo looked ashamed. “Olivia said we had to make sure there were no loose ends. But it wasn't part of the plan when I ran into you. I just wanted to make sure you were safe.”

“So you took me back to your house, and tried to . . . tried . . .” Cassie couldn't even find the words.

“I'm sorry.” Hugo met her stare head-on. “I never meant to hurt you. I just needed to know why I felt this way. The connection between us, you feel it too.”

Cassie looked away.

“I didn't feed from you, if that's worth anything at all,” Hugo added, sounding remorseful. “I couldn't. Your mind is too strong. I've never felt anything like it before. It's like you're one of us.”

Cassie didn't speak. She wasn't about to tell him what she'd learned about Tremain; she'd barely begun to accept it for herself. She nodded to Sebastian's unconscious body. “Why did you bring him here?”

Hugo turned. “I want to show you. How we feed.” Hugo raised his eyes to Cassie's with a new intensity. “You won't understand until I show you. Will you let me, please?”

Cassie gaped at him. She wished she could deny him, tell him to leave and take his twisted games with him, but the truth was, she wanted to know. She needed to see it for herself.

She swallowed, watching Sebastian's chest rise and fall. “How does it work?” Her voice was surprisingly steady.

Hugo blinked, as if he wasn't sure what she was saying, but then he crossed to Sebastian's figure and sat beside him on the couch. “I need contact,” he began, reaching to place his fingertips lightly against Sebastian's temple. They came to rest on his scar, the thin line of red Cassie had already marked. “And then . . . It's hard to describe, but I feel the power, reaching out into his mind.” Hugo met Cassie's eyes across the table. He inhaled a sharp breath and then exhaled. Cassie watched, transfixed, as the air around Sebastian's head began to shimmer and shift. Just like before, in the maze.

Hugo licked his lips and relaxed back against the couch cushions. The pulsing became stronger, until Cassie could see the energy flowing from Sebastian, up through Hugo's hand. Hugo's face changed, his skin glowing with health again, the shadows melting away. His eyes snapped open, holding Cassie's gaze—their darkness gleaming with power, with possibility. “It feels . . .” he breathed. “It feels like nothing else. I can taste it, the power. All his mind's potential, everything. It's inside of me now.”

Cassie felt something pull in her chest. A hunger. A need she'd felt before, and never known why. She slowly rose to her feet and approached them, settling on the other side of Sebastian. Tentatively, she placed her hand on his head, her fingertips overlapping Hugo's.

Hugo stared at her. “You can't . . . You're not like us.”

“Try me,” Cassie said, and closed her eyes.

Up close, she could feel the energy pulsing out of Sebastian. The air was thick with it, a shimmering, seething force. Taking a long breath, she tried to relax. She didn't know what she was doing, only that some instinct drove her on, reaching, dismantling her body piece by piece
until she was nothing but power and thought and dark intent. She felt Sebastian resist, but she pushed on, slipping deeper past his defenses until she was everywhere, surrounding him, invading him. Sebastian's mind split wide open, and it all came rushing out to her. Raw power, glittering in her veins.

Cassie gasped, her eyes flying open. Hugo was staring back at her, his own gaze steady in the dim light. He twisted his fingers through hers, both of them clasping to Sebastian.

The darkness consumed Cassie, blossomed within her, the blaze of hunger sharp and wild. She felt it pulse, loud enough to drown her dizzy heartbeat. An anger. A wretched need she knew by heart. She'd been hiding it for so long, even from herself, but there was no avoiding the truth anymore.

This was right. This was her purpose.

Nobody would ever hurt her again.

“I'll do it,” she told Hugo, snapping back into focus. He stared at her, not understanding. She dove deeper into the rush, shuddering as the energy coursed through her system. “I'll be your offering at the rising,” she clarified. “I want to be one of you.”

CASSIE STEPPED OUT OF THE COLLEGE GATES AND WALKED
quickly down High Street in the direction of the main lecture theater. Pausing at the lights, she cast a sweeping glance behind her. There. The slim young man in a dark jacket and baseball cap. She recognized him from the previous morning: trailing her to the sandwich shop and back, keeping a casual twenty feet between them but never letting her out of his sight. He'd been outside the Radcliffe library too, leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette when she emerged after her shift, and she'd caught a glimpse of him behind her as she returned to Raleigh that night. Now, as she crossed the street in a tide of students, he picked up the pace, carefully stalking her through the morning traffic, following her every move.

Cassie felt her stomach skip with nerves as she kept walking, careful not to let her unease show. She wore a bright red winter cap, making her easy to spot in the crowd. She clutched a set of notebooks to her chest, just a regular student on the way to her morning lectures. At least, that's what she needed him to believe.

It had been three days since she'd arrived back in Oxford from her trip to Wales. Three days since that night with Hugo and Sebastian. She hadn't been able to get away to figure out her next move. The School of Night may have figured out that Charlie was her contact in the police force, but she couldn't risk revealing her connection to Tremain.

Not if her plan was going to work.

Cassie paused outside the lecture halls and pretended to check her phone, making sure her tail got a good long look at her. Then she headed inside, but instead of following the other students up to the lecture auditorium for the morning program, she ducked down the hallway, weaving her way through the building until she emerged through the back doors. There, the gates opened on a narrow cobbled alleyway that ran from Merton College all the way to the back entrance of Christ Church. She glanced around, but her tail was nowhere to be seen. Clasping her books to her chest, she pulled off her hat and quickly walked away, keeping her head down.

She ducked through the gates of Christ Church College and traversed the grid of lush green quads and grand old buildings. It was considerably larger than Raleigh, and it took her five minutes of wrong turns before she managed to find her way to a back stairway and climb to the room on the third floor. She tapped lightly on the door. It swung open, and Charlie ushered her inside. “Did you lose him?” he asked, looking past her, out the window to the quad below.

“I think so,” Cassie said, stepping inside. Tremain was pacing by the fireplace of the old study, the office of a colleague, he'd said, someone who was out of town for the semester. “I've got an hour before the lecture is finished.”

“We won't need that long.” Tremain's face was set in a scowl. He glared at her from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “We shouldn't be meeting at all. I told you, you need to leave Oxford, for your own safety.”

“And I said I'm not going anywhere.”

Charlie came behind her, touching a gentle hand on her arm. “What's this about, Cassie?” he asked, glancing back at Tremain. She'd spoken with him over the phone to fill him in on what had happened in Wales, but he still didn't trust Tremain—and had been vocal about it. “This cloak-and-dagger shit, he's right, it's not safe.”

“I needed to see you to tell you what I've decided.” Cassie took a breath. “The rising is in five days. It's the one time where the connection to the darkness will be open. It's the only time they'll be vulnerable, open to attack. So I'm going to be at the ceremony. I'm going as Hugo's offering. I'm going to end this for good.”

There was silence as her words sank in. Cassie braced for their reactions.

“You stupid, foolish child.” Tremain got to his feet. “You've lost your mind.”

“He's right.” Charlie scowled, crossing his arms. “You said yourself, nobody survives that ritual.”

“But it's possible,” Cassie objected. “That's the promise, isn't it? That if you're strong enough, worthy, then you'll be accepted. It's my chance: if I can destroy that connection—”

“In five hundred years, not a single soul has made it out intact.” Tremain looked at her, clearly aghast.

“But I'm different,” Cassie pointed out, a note of bitterness in her voice. “It's in my blood, the power. Your blood. They don't know that you're my father, and that gives me the advantage. They've never tried this with one of their own as an offering. And Hugo promised to protect me.”

Charlie made a snorting noise of derision. “You believe him?”

“I don't know.” Cassie glanced down. “But he says he wants me to make it through. He tried to talk me out of it at first, but I insisted.” She looked back up at the two of them. “This is my chance. Our only chance to stop them. I'm right, aren't I?” she asked Tremain. “The connection to the original darkness, that's their weakness.”

Tremain looked ill. “I won't have any part of this. I warned you!”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Cassie demanded, her anger rising. “Run for my life, sit idly by, like you have? How many times have you looked the other way?” she said scornfully. “How many bodies have you ignored?”

Tremain looked away. “I've made my choices,” he said quietly. “I know my limits.”

“Fuck your limits!” Cassie yelled. “Year after year they've been destroying lives. Not just here, but all over the world. Mandeville will be prime minister; he'll run the whole country. You might be able to ignore that, but I can't. Tell me what happens in the ritual, how we can defeat this . . . this power. There has to be a way to—”

“No! It's a suicide mission.” Tremain cut her off, his face pale. “They can't be stopped.” He shook his head, then grabbed his coat and made for the door. “It's madness, all of this.” His eyes moved past Cassie to Charlie, his face softening in a twisted plea. “Talk some sense into her, please.” Then he left, closing the door behind him.

Cassie fought to stay calm. She didn't know why she'd expected more from him. For years, Tremain had done nothing but take the easy way out, cowering in the shadows while Henry Mandeville and his ilk ran rampant across the city, leaving a trail of devastation in their wake. She turned to Charlie. “You understand, don't you?”

Charlie unfolded his arms and walked toward her, his expression grim. “I understand that you want to go blazing in there, but that doesn't mean you have a hope in hell of pulling it off!” He reached her, staring down into her eyes. “Cassie, think about this, please. You don't know anything about this ceremony. How many there'll be, or what—”

“Two dozen for the ritual at least, I'm guessing,” Cassie interrupted. “Plus the offerings. This is a big deal, renewing their power, so there'll be representatives from every family, and the new members they want to induct. I don't know where it'll be held, but it has to be somewhere on Raleigh lands. Somewhere they can hide. Underground, maybe, in the catacombs. Rose talked about the tunnels.”

“And how will this go down?” Charlie demanded. “How can you even be sure what to expect? You can't go in there unprotected.”

“Hugo will be there—”

“Hugo's one of them. He won't have your back.”

“It's the only way,” Cassie said quietly. She looked at him, pleading. “Can't you see? There's no way to stop them if they just keep renewing their power. Tremain was right; there are too many of them, the bloodlines don't just fade away. But if I interrupt that power somehow, find some way to sever the connection to the original darkness—”

“If,” Charlie spat. “Why don't you just admit you don't know what the hell you're playing at. You've seen what they've done!”

“I've seen it, and I've felt it too.” Cassie swallowed, not wanting to admit what she'd done with Hugo. “I know how their power works. I know I can beat it.” She'd felt the hunger, knew what it took to invade someone's mind. She could turn that ability back on them when they'd least expect it.

Charlie walked to the window and took a ragged breath. “You won't back down,” he said, sounding resigned.

“I can't.” Cassie took his hand, pulling him back around to face her. “Don't you see? It's already too late. They know I've seen too much. I can run, but we both know they'll find me. Some day my body will show up: here, or in America. My mom had to change her name, take on a whole new identity just to get away. They won't let that happen twice. I would spend my life running, Charlie, but . . .” Cassie took a breath. “But it's not too late for you.”

He looked up sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“You can't help me anymore,” she said simply. “This is my battle now.”

“No, Cassie—”

She squeezed his hand. “I have the invitation. They think I want to try and achieve power and glory like the rest of them. They'll never see it coming.”

“It's too dangerous,” Charlie argued.

“Since when did that ever stop me?” Cassie smiled weakly.

His brow knitted. “If you find out where the ritual is taking place, I can find a way in. We could—”

“No, Charlie,” Cassie said firmly. “You have too much to lose. If they know you're in this with me . . . Think about your family. Are you going to put them at risk too? Laura and Kirsty and little Daisy and Liam too?”

Charlie stared at her. “That's a low fucking blow.”

“The School of Night doesn't care about morals. I'm only saying what you already know. You've done so much for me already,” she added, softer. “I couldn't have gotten this far without you. But this was always my fight. I have to see it through alone now.”

“Don't bullshit me.” Charlie tried to pull away, but she held tight.

“I mean it. You've had my back, and nobody . . .” Cassie felt a lump in her throat, a wave of emotion she fought to keep back. “Nobody has ever done that for me before. Thank you, okay? You always do the right thing.” She dropped his hand and turned away. It was true. Charlie was the first person she'd trusted in years, perhaps her whole life. He'd put himself in harm's way simply because it was right, risking everything to help her, no matter the cost.

“I didn't do it because it's right. I did it for you.” Cassie felt his hand on her shoulder, and then Charlie yanked her around, lowering his mouth to capture hers in a kiss. She froze against him in surprise, feeling his lips hard on hers, and the ragged desperation in his tense body. His mouth searched hers, searing, before abruptly pulling away, cool air where his lips had been. “Don't go getting yourself killed,” he said gruffly. And then he was gone, leaving her alone in the study with the sound of his footsteps on the stairs and the burning imprint of his lips on hers.

Cassie's sneakers pounded on the frostbitten dirt the next morning. She
ran hard, her lungs burning, her body not yet recovered from the attack in Wales, but she pushed it on regardless. She needed the space to clear her head, the action to distract her from the itch in her veins.

She was hungry. Not for food, or sleep, or anything else she could so easily satiate. This was a darker craving, one that clawed in her system,
demanding and sharp. She wanted to feed again. To taste the power. It had been building ever since that night with Hugo, blossoming in her a little more with every passing day. She was trying to ignore it, drown it out with her determined plans for the ritual, but after four days, it was loud enough to taste. She'd woken with it screaming in her veins.

Cassie ran on, sprinting hard. The route was busy, students out for a stroll, and some tourists too, idling at the lookout points to snap photographs of the meadow view, the Raleigh tower looming above the quiet sandstone walls.

She wondered how their minds would taste.

She'd only had a moment with Sebastian, only begun to explore the depths of his mind before Hugo pulled her out of the daze. But it had been enough to awaken that wild hunger. If this was driving the School of Night, they would never be stopped. It had been unlike anything else she'd ever felt before. Except . . .

Cassie stumbled on the hard earth, coming to a sudden stop. Her breath steamed the frosty air, and memories she'd fought to keep back invaded her mind. A dark night. The sound of her bedroom door. Her stepfather, drunk, the way he'd been every night since before her mother died. But this time, he didn't just pass out on the couch like usual. This time, he wanted something more.

He didn't get it.

She'd told the local sheriff he'd been unconscious when the fire started, and that much was true. They said he'd probably left the gas on, knocked a candle over. A drunken shame. But she still could hear the rough grate of the match striking, bright in her rage, and feel the victory that had pulsed wild in her chest as she watched it all burn to the ground.

She'd always been this way.

At least she had a reason now. The things that had made her different, made her wrong, they were because of this. She couldn't have fought them if she'd tried.

Cassie forced herself to breathe deeply, turning to begin her run back in the direction of Raleigh. It may have been in her nature—this hunger, this ruthless violence—but that didn't mean she couldn't make a choice. She'd been fighting the legacy of her mother's undoing her whole life; now, it was a new inheritance she had to resist.

She would stop them all, before it was too late. It was the only chance she'd have. Tomorrow would be the end, one way or another.

She ran on—and prayed her hunger would fade.

Cassie was still aching from the run when she let herself in the apartment
and went to the kitchen to run a glass of water.

“Good morning, Miss Blackwell.”