SWNOVELS Forged in Blood: Chapter 5
The scent of her blood—of her—still fills my senses. My mouth waters, and I tell myself that it is nothing more than the shadow of a memory. It has nothing to do with the girl.
I scan the text on my computer screen before lingering on the headline: “Teen Girl Burns Down High School”
The article reveals the cause of the fire was never confirmed, but an ambiguous title will not sell nearly as many newspapers. I make it a personal mission of mine to know about every student who attends this college, and the unfortunate fate that met Miss Hart’s dorm mate a few weeks ago was bizarre enough to bring them both to my attention. At the time, as gruesome as that whole affair was, it seemed entirely unrelated to Ophelia. Thanks to the university’s efforts to keep the incident under wraps, Melinda Navarro never existed as far as any of the students here are concerned. But perhaps I was remiss in not doing a more thorough background check on Miss Hart. There is more to her than meets the eye.
I pulled up her records as soon as she left the house. We have a mix of human and nonhuman students at Montridge, and the humans are usually selected from a curated list. Chosen because they are easy prey or ripe for recruitment, the students are then seduced to enroll. When I saw the pink-haired girl with incandescent-blue eyes who showed up without a friend in the world, I assumed Ophelia Hart was human, but on closer inspection, she appears to meet neither of the requirements.
There are no clues on her application as to what—or who—led her here. Perhaps the fire at her high school was enough to convince one of my colleagues that she possessed some kind of magical power.
Her story is not an entirely uninteresting one. An orphan raised in the foster care system. She was expelled after the fire during her junior year of high school, and she did some kind of self-paced program to graduate. But nothing in her records suggests that she is anything special. In fact, Ophelia Hart is an average student with moderately above-average grades. She has been on campus since the dorms opened a week and a half ago, but I failed to pay her much attention beyond noticing that she sits in the second row of one of my ancient Greek history classes.
Until tonight. When I walked through the door and caught the scent of her blood, hunger burned in my veins as strongly as if I had tasted her. And the memories of all the other times I have felt such hunger and power threatened to devour me whole.
Perhaps she has some latent power she is unaware of, because the alternative is unthinkable. Not just unthinkable—impossible. Fall is always a time of reflection. That is all this is. A familiar scent invoked powerful memories that have nothing to do with Ophelia Hart.
Axl walks through the open door of my study, his movements cautious. “So … you want to tell me what that was about?”
Although I am thankful for his company and the distraction it brings me, I keep my eyes on the screen. “I gave you an order. I expect you to follow it without questioning me.”
He takes a few steps closer, running a hand over his square jaw. “It’s just … I can’t recall you ever having given us an order like that before. Not to bite someone. Why now? And why her?”
I run my tongue over my lip and suppress a sigh.
“Alexandros?” he asks again, but there is a wariness in his tone, as there should be when questioning me.
“There are thousands of women on this campus. Bite any one of them, Axl, just not her.”
He nods, his head dipped and his shoulders slumped in a show of compliance. “Then we won’t, okay. But just tell me why.”
My eyes drift back to the screen, and he wanders behind my desk. “That was her?” he asks, staring at the yearbook photo of the plump seventeen-year-old girl with dark braids and braces on her teeth. “Ophelia’s the girl in the article?”
I nod.
“So why did she burn her high school down?”
“Nobody knows for sure that she did. But she was the only one in the room where the fire started, and she walked out of the blaze without a mark on her skin.”
He whistles between his teeth. “Is she a demon? A witch? But if she can control fire, why didn’t she use any of her magic on us tonight?”
I shake my head. Creatures who can channel fire magic are considered some of the most powerful beings. “I believe she is unaware that she possesses any magical abilities, if indeed she does. And as for what she is, that is complicated.”
“How complicated?”
I ignore his question, partly because I am unwilling to confront the potential answer. But something about the girl has piqued my curiosity. Even without her heady scent scrambling my senses, it is clear that somebody invited her to this school, and I want to know why. “If she has any power at all, then it is worth keeping a closer eye on her. I want you and your brothers to monitor her. And no biting means I also expect you to make sure nobody else bites her.”
He scowls. “So we have to be her fucking bodyguards?”
“No. Simply monitor her movements and warn others away from her. Discreetly. She’s a loner by nature. Ensure that she stays that way. Feed into her insecurities. The fewer friends she makes, the easier it will be to exert control over her should we ever need to.”
Axl’s eyes light up, and I wonder if he is excited at the prospect of torturing the girl or because her scent calls to him and his brothers the same way it does to me.
I growl a reminder. “No biting.”
He nods. “Noted.”
My attention is drawn back to the screen, but my mind swims with images of her kneeling in our basement, my boys standing over her, salivating at the mere prospect of a taste.
The psych report summary attached to her application file says that she consistently denied any knowledge of what started the fire at her school. But she did disclose an incident with a group of bullies that left her feeling humiliated and upset. Emotions and power are inextricably linked, especially for—
No. I will not go there. Cannot.
My head spins with the wave of anger and grief that washes over me, and I force myself to focus on the facts I know rather than wild speculation. And the facts lead me to one conclusion regarding the little orphan who lived in the foster system her whole life—someone bound her magic when she was a child. And that someone must have been a powerful witch with an even more powerful reason to inflict such a cruel fate.