Dark Academy

Chapter 26

At some point the club doors swing open, and there is an influx of goths and the supernatural in disguise, flooding the whole area and sucking the oxygen right out of the room. What little oxygen is left, is burned by the rusted dagger chandelier blazing above, setting the room's temperature soaring while everything is tarnished with the deep and penetrating crimson hearth above us.

It was Hell in the Crypt.

The people in the club aren't dancing, but feasting and gyrating. Vampires are drinking and gorging into the innocent. People are fucking with their clothes on while standing. Those who do dance, look like they're losing their minds to possession. But it wasn't drugs, it was just the evil so pure and putrid at the same time, poisoning everyone's minds cohesively.

Sanity did not exist tonight.

The ring leader was Satan himself.

Phantasy is one with it all, anointed by people offering their bleeding parts.

The smell in my throat is iron. It's disgusting.

Even my own Ancient Vampires, who love drinking blood for sustenance – look uncomfortable with the smell of rust and iron and ash driving every participant mad.

Thankfully I'm not thrown into danger. My possessive and freaky brotherhood flank me at all times, standing around me, keeping the others away from me as the satanic music starts to bleed through the walls, not just the speakers.

This club was turning into a fever dream.

I should be glad I had a cocktail that would sever my memory with tonight, but I want to remember it and I wish Darc and Solomon didn't coerce me into swallowing the curse.

We've managed to stay close to a pool table the entire night so far, but at some point I'm planning to slip away toward the cauldron, where people are donating blood freely.

Because it's escalated, and it's been escalating for the last ten minutes.

When I dare to look across the Crypt, there's already bodies littering the area all around near the cauldron. Dead mortals, mostly females, who fell victim to Phantasy's charm as he lurked around said cauldron, looking lonely and sexy and foreboding. He slit their throats, casually throwing the corpses into the cauldron, where they disappear.

The dead should be bothering me, the souls trapped and hurting inside the Crypt. But I feel nothing of the sort. And I can't stand it anymore. I don't know where he's taking their souls!

I know it's bait. I know it's all a carefully conceived trap. And I tried to ignore it, but my conscious was alight with the need for justice. I needed to do something about Phantasy's blood thirsty mania.

I wait for the opportune moment that my vampires are distracted by the end of the next pool game, focusing on who will win. When they're focused on the shot being lined up, I slip backward into the crowd and then turn toward Phantasy, stalking straight toward him before another girl falls victim to his sad puppy eyes luring them forward one by one.

One such girl looks underage and out of her mind, stumbling toward him.

Fuck!

I sprint forward and immediately put myself between her and Phantasy, but she doesn't take no for an answer. She tries to skirt around me, to reach the devil – so I have to step closer to Phantasy who is sitting against the rim of the bubbling cauldron, cooking a damn stew.

"Get out," I face the girl and grab her shoulders, trying to shake her out of the hypnotic trance, "LEAVE!" I scream it at her in a brief lull in the music, and when she doesn't answer me, I feel a blade touching the inside of my palm.