Page 190 of Caelum

“Mulder and Scully.” Her nose wrinkled. “I didn’t like it.”

He snickered. “No. You didn’t.”

She yawned, then rubbing at her eyes, mumbled, “I think I remember. They’re files on nests, right?”

“Yep.” I ran a hand down her arm, relieved she wasn’t tensing up or trying to pull away. “You’re going to start your real training.”

“I am?” She stretched and sighed. “Ugh, no more talk of serious stuff before food.”

Both Nestor and I shot each other a glance and began laughing—there were shittier ways to start a day, that was for damn sure.

TWENTY-TWO

EVE

Deren Livings had skin as dark as ebony wood, and it gleamed like he polished it. I was fascinated and he knew it. I kept studying him, studying his beauty, and knew only my strange origin, my unusual heritage, excused my stare.

I was really trying not to be rude, and in Caelum, I’d come across such diverse skin tones that I shouldn’t be taken aback, but Deren was beyond beautiful. It was like asking me not to stare into the facets of a beautiful gemstone. Not to look at the petals of a flower and wonder what they felt like against my skin.

It didn’t make for the best of starts for my ‘N-Files’ lesson. Or, as was the actual name of the class, Nest Origins.

The class demographic was noticeably female. Not a single male was in the room except for the teacher, which was kind of stupid in my mind. I knew the faculty consisted of creatures who were high up the ranks, supremely low in the ranks, and too useless to be out in the field, or those who were injured too badly to return to their original positions or were healing. And I wondered what had put him in this classroom, in a class that was aimed at girls.

I’d been coming to learn about ‘-ists,’ and though I’d like to claim the class was sexist, having seen the girls train and the boys too, I could see why girls had different roles. There was no doubt we could kick ass—hadn’t I done that last night?—but the men held distinctive differences. Their bodies were weapons, and while I had no doubt that some of the women weretrained to the highest degree, there was just something missing from their makeup.

It made me feel like a traitor to say that, but it was the truth. Their souls were just less deadly than the males’ on a physical front, whereas mentally? Things were skewed—there was a reason we had a propensity to turn Ghoul, after all. I believed it made us shrewder, smarter, apter at dealing with things with our brains and not our fists. Which, in the grand scheme of things, was just as important.

Everything in its proper place, after all.

We’d already spent half the day picking through the cultural differences between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland in Ghoul Theory. Why? Because there were three major nests in the country, and for a Pack to blend in, there was vital information that was required. It could be down to the certain twang on a word, the certain use of a slang word in one town that was out of touch in another. Simple things that would help a Pack blend in, slip into the cracks.

It reminded me of a scene inInglourious Basterds—a movie the guys had insisted I watch a few weeks ago. Michael Fassbender had gotten shot because, in German territory and undercover as a German officer, he’d raised three fingers when placing an order for more drinks. Germans did it one way, the British another—at least according to Quentin Tarantino—and Michael Fassbender had been no more for that one small mistake.

There was so much information to process that my brain was in heaven.

But now, things had taken a different turn.

Sure, there was information, heaps of it, but it was darker.

Learning about the cultural heritage of a group of people was fascinating. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I’d be able to get my hands on such detailed reports about people a world away, but this? The turn we’d taken? It wasn’t interesting. It was scary.

“There’s a strict hierarchy among Ghouls,” Deren was saying as we flicked through the folders he’d handed us on a nest Caelum called ‘O’Neill.’ It was one of the Irish nests we’d spent the morning learning about. “It might not seem like it,” he continued when no one said a word, “in fact, they go out of their way to look like there isn’t, but it’s nonsense.

“These nests are extensive, and over the years, they have taken over villages and morphed them into towns. Towns full of flesh-feeding suckers that need eradicating?—”

“Then why don’t we, sir?” a girl called Agathe asked, interrupting the instructor’s flow.

“Because slaughtering an entire town of Ghouls would raise questions.”

“But they killed a town in the first place,” Agathe countered.

“Yes, and replaced them with their own kind. The numbers didn’t alter that much, and a lot of these towns were established before the digital age. Some colonies have been around for hundreds of years or more. Destroying one brings attention to them and to us, and we don’t need that.”

Agathe scowled but nodded, and Deren’s lips twitched before he continued with his earlier speech. “So, we have the head honcho, simply known as the ductor.They are the leaders, the kings or queens of their nest. They are treated as such as well. They’re royalty—Juliet McAllister is one such ductor. Then, there are the Ghouls beneath them. The bules—” He pronounced the word ‘boo-ley.’ “It’s a bastardized version of the English word for ‘bully.’ They have a position like a government official. Then, there are the legatus, the Enforcers for the bules, the praefectus, and finally the pecus. The majority of the nest are pecus. They are sheep. Nothing more, nothing less. In another time, they’d be called cannon fodder.”

“That’s what happened at Aboh, isn’t it, sir?” Josefa, a Chilean girl, queried.

“Yes. Unfortunately, mostly pecus were sent in, a few praefectus to manage them, and a single legatus. We had hoped for a handful of bules, but no such luck.” He reached up and rubbed his chin. He had a small beard that sat under his bottom lip. The hair was thick, and he tugged at it as though he were in the middle of a thought. “Those hierarchies are important. With each nest, and there are thousands, you must come to know who is who. By name and even by face.

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