Page 202 of Caelum

Stefan began to stir, his body sluggish as he awoke, and outside the door, I heard more shuffling. Not enough for it to mean the rest of the school had started to awaken, but for it to be our Pack.

“The alarm?!” Stefan blurted out, his words slurred. He fell off Eve, tumbling onto the mattress before slamming into the bed. The light dimmed for a second when he’d moved, but then, Stefan screamed, and I knew she’d done the same to him. Called on his soul, enticed it, intoxicated it, then squeezed it. Not to choke it to death, but to bring it to life.

As the light reappeared, the shuffling outside turned into thuds of heavy feet as the rest of my brothers ran into the room.

When I saw our Pack was awake, looking disheveled and half-baked, I was still relieved.

“We’re under attack,” I bit off. “Helicopters. Nearly two dozen of them are coming our way.”

“Friendly or enemy?” Dre rasped as he blinked at me, his eyes showing the strain of being awake through the haze of the drug. That stupid question was enough to tell me he was still loaded down with whatever had been used to poison us.

“Enemy. Who the fuck flies in at eleven at night?”

Dre blinked at me again, and when they all did the same, it was like some creepy ass scene from a horror movie.

Frustrated and scared for Eve’s life, I blurted out, “We’re going to die if you don’t get your shit together.”

The words stirred them as nothing else could, but even then, they weren’t firing on all cylinders. Sluggish and strained were the only ways to describe them. Even as I wanted to ram their heads together, I couldn’t blame them. I was feeling exhausted too.

Desperate to do something, I turned to Eve. “If we make a wish, can that stop it?”

Her eyes were big, wide, and even though she’d donesomethingto us, the drug was hitting her hard. Harder than it had us. How had she managed to wake the Pack up when she was still under the power of the intoxicant?

“Doesn’t…” She clenched her eyes as though that would make her mouth start to work. “Takes time. Not. Instant.”

I gnawed on my bottom lip then cast a glance at my Pack. Nestor, already injured, had slouched to the ground with his back to the wall. The vibration from the rotor blades seemed to surge through my body, making all of me tremble with it.

“We don’t have an option. We have to try.” I stared at them all, tried to imbue the importance of what I was about to say. “We all want Caelum safe. Don’t we?”

I received some slow nods and a few garbled, “Yessssses.”

Then, I said, “On the count of three, we’ll all wish at the same time.” It waswishfulthinking, but with only God knew how many people were about to enter our territory, under cover of night, after the entirety of the school had been drugged, I needed all the luck I could get.

“Three,” I rasped, hoping everyone would stay awake for this. “Two,” I carried on, cutting everyone a look, trying to make sure they were on board. “One.”

“I…”

“…wish…”

“…Caelum…”

“…was…”

“…safe.”

Five words.

All of us saying them at the same time, slurred and shaking. It wasn’t magic, but fuck, that we spoke simultaneously when my brothers were hopped up on whatever had poisoned us? It was a minor miracle.

I cast a look at Eve but her eyes were closed. Had she heard the wish? Was that how it worked? Did she have to do something? Wave her wand and say ‘abracadabra?’ I didn’t know. Only knew that the helicopters sounded closer than ever and my heart had just taken root in my throat.

Staggering over to the windows, I heard the various thuds as my brothers gave up, conceding defeat to the poison. I prayed they’d sleep it off, and prayed that when they awoke, we weren’t imprisoned by whichever nest had discovered our lair.

It had to be the McAllisters.

We’d managed to make them miss out on a hundred-million-dollar deal. They’d been stationed in Nigeria and we were close by. Maybe one of the praefectus had gotten to an air traffic controller, made them speak about where we were… I didn’t have an answer, and when I stared up at the sky and saw the helicopters were so close to landing, I thought for a half a moment I was about to puke.

Aside from my nightmares and losing Eve, I was pretty hard to scare. But now? The repercussions of what this meant petrified me.

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