Page 157 of Caelum

“Does anyone know?” Jenny asked, and with a weather eye, monitored the three hands who’d shot up to answer her question. They were the same three hands that had surged each time she’d questioned the class on something.

Know-it-alls.

Yeah, it sucked to be jealous of fourteen-year-olds, but I was still in the dark about so much. Even though I was reading ahead of them in humanliterature, most of my class material was still controlled by the faculty. Sure, I could grab anything from the library, but it was like throwing something at a wall and hoping it stuck.

The library contained books the faculty themselves used as reference material, for goodness’ sake. How was I supposed to know what to read and what to ignore?

I hunched my shoulders and settled into the seat, hoping Jenny bypassed me. This was my first day of being a regular student at the Academy, and I’d already come to sense how teachers picked their prey in class.

Miss Justiss was out for blood like a shark in the ocean hunting food, and I didn’t want to be caught in her line of sight.

I blew out a breath when she said, “Jean-Paul, how are Ghouls formed?”

Even though I knew the answer to this question, I was glad I didn’t have to speak it aloud.

He hesitated, and his voice cracked before he replied, “Mostly they’re formed because they aren’t brought to Caelum.”

“You’re right. Why?”

Jean-Paul licked his lips then rubbed at his zit-pocked temple—not even creatures were spared the irritations of teenage acne. “Because life outside Caelum isn’t geared toward our creatures being allowed to form naturally?” He answered it like a question and released a relieved sigh when Jenny nodded, then tensed up when she motioned with her hand for him to carry on. “Leading high-stress lives, not doing enough exercise, eating junk food, watching too much TV… they’re all poor lifestyle choices that make the souls inside us rebel. Then, when you throw in the fact that most parents drug us up from the start, that makes things worse.”

“That’s right, Jean-Paul. Well done. How do recruiters find us and bring us here, Eloisa?” Jenny asked another girl, who had shoulders more hunched than my own.

“It’s more by luck than anything else,” the girl whispered. “Other creatures sense us nearby and inform Caelum who sends recruiters to bring us home. But it depends on the soul. We have to correspond. If we don’t, then they won’t sense us.”

“Yes. We’re surprisingly sensitive to others of our kind, but each soul works on its own wavelength. A Vampire, for example, would never be able to sense a Lorelei. It would be like a dolphin in the ocean communicating with a horse. It just doesn’t work.

“It’s hit and miss, which is why each of us is lucky to be here. It might so easily have worked out differently for us. We might have easily been likethe Ghouls, forced down a path of darkness with no alternative because someone didn’t sense us one particular day.”

As the class absorbed that grim tale which, in my opinion, was enough to give anyone nightmares tonight, she turned to me and inquired, “Eve, tell us what you know about the formation of Ghouls.”

My stomach twisted and, feeling the others’ eyes on me—with nearly half the kids having twisted in their seats to gawp at the oddity in the class—I stated, “Without the freedom of Caelum, it drives us mad. We truly become what the humans believed us to be. No medication will cure us. There is no way of preventing it. The souls don’t fight among each other for dominance as is the way with us here. Instead, they fight the human part of us and take over.”

Jenny tilted her head to the side. “Correct. Do you know why they feast on human flesh?”

If my stomach had churned before, that was nothing compared to now. I thought about the books Nicholas had me reading, about what Damon had taught me, and whispered, “It’s a bastardized form of what the Vampire needs. The Vampire is nourished on blood, and in a Ghoul, it becomes more than that. They need flesh.”

“Why? And why humans in particular? Why not anyone? A cow or a deer? Something that would keep them under the radar?”

I swallowed. “Because humans are grounded, connected to the Earth in ways that we aren’t.” I remembered Damon’s words verbatim. On the day my Chosen had flown to Aboh, had engaged in whatever they’d done across the ocean, he’d told me about Ghouls for the first time. I’d tried to learn about them as much as I could, but there was so much to learn and not enough time. “The seven souls in a Ghoul never stop warring, and only the flesh provides them some peace.”

Jenny narrowed her eyes at me but nodded in agreement with what I was saying. When she looked elsewhere, relief swarmed through me, and Jean-Paul shot me a rueful and understanding smile before he turned back toward the blackboard.

“It’s like when we’re hungry,” Jenny said, continuing with what I’d been saying. “When our belly is gnawing away at us as though we haven’t eaten in a lifetime. They say that’s what a Ghoul feels like when they haven’t fed.

“But, there’s more to it than that. The more flesh a Ghoul eats, the more stable they become… Who can tell me about how Ghouls live?”

The usual suspects, three girls who always stuck up their hands at every question thrown down, jiggled in their seats with eagerness. Jenny finally took pity on one of them, and the girl started a pious explanation. “Ghouls live in nests. Like how we were brought here, they do the same with their fledglings. Ghouls are constantly sweeping their districts for fledglings to pad their nest because rogue Ghouls cause nothing but bad press when they’re on the loose, so it’s imperative that they’re brought into the fold.”

“That’s right, Kirsty. And who reigns over a nest?”

I held up my hand this time, and when Jenny nodded, I answered, “A Nest Leader. The more flesh a Ghoul eats, the more control they gather until they can lead their nest.”

“That’s when they cause havoc,” Jenny concurred. She pursed her lips as she folded her arms across her chest. “Ghouls are dangerous. Not just because of how they feed, but because of their inclinations.

“They’re covetous. Angry. Misfortune had them turning Ghoul, whereas, with us, we were fortunate enough to be allowed to fulfil our destiny. That makes them bitter, and in truth, is why they loathe us. We are the only thing that stops them from overtaking the Earth, from decimating human populations, and although they hate us for that, they detest us more because we are what they long to be and what they can never be.

“And that is why you must work hard. You must train hard. You must learn all you can. The Ghouls are out there. For every ten of us, there are forty of them. Those are terrifying numbers, and they’re only going to increase.

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