Graduating (Covenant College Book 5) Read online

  “Paris.”

  I swiveled, my hands outstretched. I might not want to kill Rafael, but I had to save Paris.

  Rafael wasn’t going after Paris, though. He was on Will, his fangs extended and sinking into his flesh, before I could even register what was happening.

  Will screamed, ineffectively pounding his fists against Rafael’s chest. Rafael was drinking, draining Will. I had a choice. I could save him, or I could let Rafael finish the job. I lowered my hands, meeting Will’s terrified – and pleading – eyes across the room.

  “Save me,” he begged.

  In the end, it wasn’t a hard decision to make. “Have a good afterlife.”

  It was over within minutes, Rafael dropping Will’s lifeless body to the floor with a loud thud when he was done. Paris edged her way around the room, joining me at the opposite end, and waited.

  Rafael’s face was hidden in shadow. He lifted his arm and wiped it across his mouth, not even glancing in our direction. “I’ve been dreaming of doing that for months.”

  I sighed, relieved. “You’re not going to try and eat us, are you?”

  “Not right this minute.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been kept in a cage and starved for months. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re crabby.”

  “Don’t push me. I don’t have a lot of control right now.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you can use your lack of impulse control and knock that door down, can you?”

  Rafael regarded it wearily. He lifted his leg, kicking it hard and completely knocking it off its hinges. He peered out into the outer room, and then motioned for us to follow. “It’s empty.”

  “Once you took out Will, and it became apparent you weren’t going to kill us, Blake and Mark probably ran,” I said. “Reagan has a rally to get to. They’ll probably go there for protection.”

  “I’m going to kill each and every one of them,” Rafael promised, jogging toward the stairs.

  “Wait!”

  Rafael’s face was twisted with rage when he turned back to me. “What?”

  “It’s light out.”

  He hit the wall in frustration, chipping a huge chunk of brick out of the wall.

  “Just … wait here.”

  “I am not staying in this basement a second longer,” Rafael said.

  “Just let me check upstairs.” I glanced at Paris. “Stay here with him.”

  “You said my mom was here.”

  “She is,” I said. “I just need to make sure no one is up there.”

  “And, if they are?” Rafael asked.

  “Then I’m going to fry their asses,” I said. “I’m sick of this crap.”

  “If you get into any trouble … you need to yell for me,” he said.

  “If I get any trouble, I’m going to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  The house was empty – or it appeared so – when I made it to the top of the stairs. Instead of risking a walk through the dark house, I moved to the back door and threw it open. Someone had obviously closed it in their haste to get out of the house.

  Four figures were instantly rushing up the back steps – causing me to take a step back and stumble into the back wall. God, Blake had called for reinforcements.

  “Don’t touch her! She’s with me.”

  The sound of Aric’s voice filled me with relief. The four men in front of him – all dressed as commandos – stilled at his order. Aric pushed past them. He had a cut on the side of his face, and his shirt was ripped, but otherwise he looked healthy.

  “I thought you might be dead,” I admitted, throwing my arms around him.

  He pulled me close, burying his face in my hair. “Join the club. What happened here? Where is Paris?”

  “She’s in the basement with Rafael.” I pointed, and Aric’s cohorts immediately started trotting down the steps. “Don’t you dare hurt him!”

  Aric linked his fingers with mine, tucking me in at his side to keep me close. “They won’t hurt him.”

  I followed him back downstairs. One of the men was already leaving the small room at the back of the basement when we reached the bottom. “There’s a body,” he said. “He’s definitely dead.”

  Aric sent me a questioning look.

  “It’s Will. I let Rafael eat him.”

  “You let him eat him?”

  “Hey, it was either him or us. They’ve been starving him for months.”

  Aric glanced at Rafael. “Are you all right, man?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Well, we’ll get you out of here. There’s some protective sheeting in the van. We’ll lead you out under that and get you back to your house. I’m sure Fiona will be happy to see you. She’s been looking for you.”

  “We were, too,” I said. “We just didn’t know where to look.”

  “You seemed to find Paris,” Rafael pointed out, a touch of bitterness in his voice.

  “Her mother found her,” I said. “I was just along for the ride.”

  “Where is my mom?” Paris asked, her lower lip trembling. “I want to see my mom.”

  “She’s upstairs in the back yard,” Aric said. “She wanted to come into the house, but we made her wait.”

  “Can I go?”

  Aric nodded. “We secured the area. It’s safe.”

  Paris moved to run up the stairs, stopping long enough to give me a quick hug. “Thank you for coming for me.”

  “I’ll always come for you,” I said.

  Once she was gone, Aric wrapped me in another tight hug. “I was worried I was too late.”

  “It was a piece of cake.” My words had more bravado than my heart did.

  “How did Will end up in there with you?”

  “When I got here, Blake, Mark, Will and Governor Reagan were waiting for me. They were expecting me.”

  Aric’s body tensed. “Reagan?”

  “It’s him. It’s always been him. He wants to wipe out the werewolf population and put his own minions in power here.”

  “He admitted that?”

  “Yeah. He admitted sending the vampires after us, too. He bartered with them to get them to do his bidding.”

  “What did he barter?”

  “Food.”

  “The bodies at the library?”

  “Yeah. He admitted he arranged them that way to give me something to focus on so I wasn’t focusing on Blake and the Academy.”

  “I need to call my dad.”

  “He’s having a rally on campus today,” I said. “We can still catch up to him before he has a chance to leave.”

  Aric ran his hands up my arms, ultimately cupping my chin, and then kissed me. “We have to end this today.”

  “I’m so ready to end this.”

  “Well then, we’ll do it together. No more getting separated.”

  “Baby, the last thing I want to do is get separated from you again.” I tightened my arms around his waist.

  “Right back at you.”

  This time when he kissed me, it was with ferocious determination. Things were finally coming to a head at Covenant College – just in time for graduation.

  Thirty-Eight

  “My dad is going to meet us there,” Aric said, glancing around the back of the van, his gaze finally falling on Rafael. “Do you want us to take you back to your place first?”

  “I want to see them die,” Rafael growled.

  “You can’t join the fight,” Aric said. “It won’t be dark for another three hours.”

  “I can be close enough to hear as soon as it’s over,” Rafael said. “That will have to be enough.”

  Aric gripped my hand in his tightly. “We have to decide now who is going to die and who isn’t.”

  “They all die,” Rafael spat out.

  “I agree that Reagan and Blake need to die,” Aric said, his tone neutral. “What about the other members of the Academy? Some of them could be innocent. They might not know better.”<
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  “I don’t care about them,” Rafael said. “They’re sheep. Once the leadership is gone, they’ll find something else to latch on to.”

  “They’re not all sheep,” I said quietly. “Some of them – Nick and Paul, for example – they know exactly what they’re doing, and who they’re hurting in the process.”

  “We can take them into custody,” Aric said, inclining his head to his commandos. “We can question them and make individual assessments.”

  I nodded mutely, the realization of what I was agreeing to washing over me.

  “I don’t want to put you on the spot, but what do you want to do about Mark?”

  I moved to pull my hand away, but Aric’s grip was too strong. “I’m not sure I can make that decision.”

  “You have to be the one,” Aric said. “If it were left up to me, I’d kill him. I think we all know how Rafael feels. This one is your decision, though.”

  “You want me to decide whether to kill him or not,” I said, shifting my head back and forth.

  “You made the decision when it came to Will,” Aric said.

  “And it was surprisingly easy,” I replied, my voice low. “Of course, that might have had something to do with the feral vampire in the room.”

  “I wouldn’t have attacked you,” Rafael said. “I only let them think they broke me.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that, but I let Rafael keep his pride. “Take Mark into custody,” I said finally. “Let him rot there. Guilt will hurt him more than death.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. Aric lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it quickly. “Okay.” He glanced at the seven other men in the van. “Everyone understand? Blake and Reagan are going down? If we point out a few others to you, they’re fair game. Take the rest of them into custody. My dad is going to have at least eight more men with him as reinforcements. No one gets away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I fought the mad urge to laugh. The situation was surreal. “How are we going to take down Blake and Reagan? We can’t exactly kill them in the middle of a rally.”

  “I’ve already got that taken care of,” Aric said.

  “How?”

  “With a little help from our friends.”

  “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “I think it will be more fun for you to be surprised. Trust me.”

  JAMES WINTERS was waiting for us at the back of the University Center. His usual suit and tie were gone, replaced by simple khakis and a black sweater. He hugged his son briefly, and then pulled me in for a longer one.

  “I was worried about the two of you,” he said. “I knew Aric was all right after the sentinels called in. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about you, missy.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You look a little pale.”

  “It’s been a long twenty-four hours,” I said.

  James glanced into the back of the van. “And the vampire? Is he a danger? I understand they were starving him.”

  “He’s fed,” I replied blandly.

  James looked to his son for confirmation. “The new leadership of Alpha Chi is no longer a problem.”

  James arched an eyebrow. “Ah. Let me guess, they turned on him.”

  “And then Rafael ate him,” I said.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I swear James looked like he wanted to laugh.

  “The guy was an ass,” Aric said. “He got what was coming to him.”

  “Yeah, even at the end he was complaining because Reagan reneged on their deal,” I said. “I tried to tell him I would have been the kind of wife who tried to kill him in his sleep, but he was deranged.”

  Aric frowned. “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “Oh, did I forget to tell you that? Yeah, Reagan promised me to Will for his first wife.”

  Aric gripped the door of the van angrily, snarling as his hands clenched. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d rip his head off.”

  “Calm down, son,” James said, patting him on the shoulder. “Zoe is obviously fine – and not engaged.”

  “I still want to kill him,” Aric said. “I hope he died hard.”

  Rafael shrugged. “I think he was more upset when he begged Zoe for help and she told him to have a good afterlife.”

  Aric cupped the back of my head and dropped a quick kiss on my forehead. “Well, at least we know he got what was coming to him.”

  Something was bothering me, and I couldn’t quite pin it down. Suddenly, my memory clicked into place. “Reagan said they took Rafael because he was poking around where he shouldn’t be,” I said. “What did you find out?”

  Rafael’s dark eyes brightened. “Oh, I had almost forgotten about that, what with all the starving and killing.”

  I waited.

  “I was doing a search on Blake when I came up with something interesting,” Rafael said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t think he is who he says he is,” he said. “As far as I can tell, Sam Blake isn’t a real person. He’s someone that was created.”

  James nodded knowingly. “I told you. Did you figure out who he is?”

  “No,” Rafael said. “I just know that Sam Blake isn’t a real person.”

  “Which means Caitlyn Blake wasn’t either.”

  “I think they were really brother and sister,” Aric said. “I just don’t think that Blake was their last name.”

  “There has to be a clue there,” James said. “Blake’s real name has power somewhere.”

  “We don’t have time to figure that out,” Aric said. “I’m done playing with these assholes. We’re never going to get a better time. Reagan thinks he’s won. Even if Mark and Blake fled here, they haven’t had time to regroup. We can’t give them that time.”

  “I agree,” James said. “If we get a chance to question Blake before killing him? Great. If not? Just kill him and be done with it.”

  Aric linked his fingers with mine before casting one last look at Rafael. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  “Good luck.”

  EVERYONE split up once we got to the lawn in front of the University Center. James took half of the commandos with him, while the other half moved to the other side of the crowd. Aric and I were taking the problem head on – and yet I still had no idea how any of this was going to happen with almost a thousand students standing between us and Reagan.

  For his part, the governor was playing to the crowd on the stage. A quick scan of his entourage told me that Nick, Paul, and Brittany were all on the stage with him. I felt a small twinge for Brittany. She had no idea her meal ticket had literally been someone else’s meal this afternoon. I pushed the thought out of my mind, though. I wouldn’t feel guilty for the choices Will had made.

  A hint of movement caught my attention to the right, my eyes landing on a furtive Blake and Mark as they tried to force their way to the front of the crowd.

  “They’re here.”

  Aric followed my gaze. “It’s too late now,” he said. “Even if Reagan realizes he failed, he has nowhere to go.”

  “How are we going to get rid of this crowd?”

  Aric smiled. “Look to the sky.”

  “What?”

  Aric pointed to the far side of the clearing, where Angela and Paris had suddenly appeared. Their hands were clasped, and from where I stood I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I had an idea that it was a spell.

  “What are they doing?”

  The cloudless sky opened up, a torrential downpour deluging the crowd as a frightening clap of thunder echoed throughout the campus. The deafening roar rendered the crowd momentarily silent, and as the sky turned purple and lit up with lightning, realization dawned on me.

  “Oh, that’s what they’re doing.”

  Aric drew me closer to him, making sure we weren’t separated as the squealing academic populace fled. It only took a few minutes for the crowd to disappear, and when the horde had thinned, only those with a dog
in the fight were left standing. During the melee, I’d seen Aric and James’ commandos make swift work of any security guards that tried to get in their way. Their bodies were discarded amongst the overturned chairs.

  Reagan’s eyes were full of rage when they settled on me. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I told you that you didn’t have what it takes to kill me,” I said, bolstered by Aric’s presence at my side. “Maybe you weren’t the one who was one step ahead of everything.”

  Aric snickered. “Is that what he told you?”

  Mark and Blake had joined Reagan on the stage, and Blake was explaining the events of the afternoon with a series of big hand gestures. Reagan’s rage was palpable. “So, you’re saying you failed? The only one who died in our trap was the one who set it up?”

  “Who died?” Brittany asked.

  “Brittany, you should go,” I suggested. “There’s nothing left here for you.”

  “Who died?” She repeated, her tone fearful.

  Since Reagan and Blake weren’t answering her, I did. “Will is gone.”

  Brittany’s lower lip trembled. “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “He was part of this from the beginning. They turned on him in the end, tossed him in a trap with us, and he didn’t make it out.”

  “But you did?” Brittany challenged. “How did you manage to make it out?”

  “Because I sacrificed Will to save myself,” I replied honestly.

  “You sacrificed Will to save yourself? You sacrificed my boyfriend to save yourself?”

  “Oh, shut up, girl,” Reagan chided her. “Your voice is like nails on a chalkboard.”

  Brittany balked. “Excuse me?”

  “Brittany, go.” I knew I couldn’t protect her. I knew I would never like or trust her. I also knew none of this was her fault. “This is going to get ugly.”

  Brittany must have read something in the expression on my face, because she slowly made her way down the stage stairs. She cast one more look at me, and then disappeared in the direction of the University Center.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you survived, Aric.” Despite his plan falling at his feet, Reagan didn’t look like a beaten man. I didn’t like it. “I’m going to enjoy killing you with my own two hands.”