“What if we get paired up with vampire scum?” Cheryl asks innocently, waving her hand in the air to capture Dimitri’s attention. He pauses mid-lecture, the full force of his icy blue gaze barreling down on her.
“Then you better hope your partner is a better person than you, Cheryl Ness,” Dimitri lectures. “Or else you’ll both be dead.”
She huffs, clearly not having expected that answer, before crossing her arms over her chest and leaning back in her seat.
“Today, we’ll start with something simple,” Dimitri declares. “Everyone pair up and—”
“I call Pinkie!” Mason jumps to his feet and grabs Violet’s arm. Immediately, she releases a pained whimper, wrenching her arm free from Mason and rubbing it inconspicuously.
What the heck…?
Hux notices it at the same time I do and roars in my head, demanding to be released. I turn towards Frankie, who looks pale and sick, as if he’s seconds from expelling the contents of his breakfast across his desk.
“What the fuck did you do?” Vin rises to his feet, every inch the dangerous predator. There’s a reason the other monsters fear the Van Helsings. They’re hunters, through and through. When they smell blood, they’ll latch on to it with all of their teeth and bite down.
Mason is slower to understand what is happening, eyes darting between all of us, before understanding dawns in his eyes. He moves swiftly to his feet as well, standing shoulder to shoulder with Vin, an impenetrable wall of muscle.
Hux has gone quiet in my own mind, but it’s not because he has disappeared. It’s because he’s filled to the brim with a blistering rage, one that surpasses anything I have ever felt before. It’s the calm before a storm. The eye of a hurricane, where you can look in every direction and see rapid winds and piercing rain. It’s a subtle type of anger, but one that’s capable of igniting an inferno.
“Knock it off,” Violet hisses softly. She intertwines her fingers with Frankie’s and gives him a reassuring squeeze.
“Did he hurt you?” Vin asks dangerously, already taking a threatening step forward. I can see the violence in his eyes, teetering on the brink of absolute destruction, like a tornado rapidly approaching an unsuspecting town.
“What the bloody hell is going on over here?” Dimitri steps forward, eyes spewing frost, before focusing intently on Violet. “I’m in the middle of a class, Ms. Dracula. If you would like to have a conversation, please do that on your own time.”
“You’re right.” Violet folds her hands on her desk, flashing an innocent smile. “Please proceed.”
“Not until you tell us why you flinched!” Vin demands.
Dimitri cocks an eyebrow, eyes narrowing even further.
“What is he talking about, Violet?”
She fidgets under our combined stares, reaching for Frankie’s hand as if she’s drifting away at sea and he’s the only one who can steady her.
“Oh for fuck’s sake…” Cheryl sashays forward with a wicked grin, Alex following closely on her heel. Before we can do anything, she grabs Violet’s arm and pushes up the loose sleeve.
“Holy shit!” Vin curses, eyes widening in horror. Cheryl releases Violet’s arm as if she has been stung by a wasp, mouth agape. She looks physically sick as she reads the words etched into Violet’s pasty skin. Only one weapon would cause the scars not to heal.
A god-blessed blade.
A myriad of emotions flicker across Dimitri’s face—a storm brewing and gathering speed—before he turns on his heel with a brisk “class dismissed” and exits the room.
“Violet?” I ask gently, grabbing her scarred arm. I rub the pad of my thumb gently over the crude words, anger vibrating through me. My anger, though? It’s nothing compared to Hux’s. “What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says scathingly. She pulls her arm free and bends down to grab her backpack.
“Violet…” I say gently, ignoring Vin’s curses and Mason’s death threats.
“Seriously, Jack, drop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about it.” I’ve never heard Violet sound so choked up before. Usually, she acts as if she’s grabbing life by the balls and making it her bitch. This is a shell of the woman I know and love. Whatever those assholes did broke a fundamental piece of her.
On her way out the door, she shoulders past a still silent and gaping Cheryl and a pale-faced Alex. Before I can follow her, I’m pushed to the side by the force of Vin’s assault on Frankie. He grabs the man by his shirt collar and pushes him against the wall.
“Why the hell didn’t you stop it?” he screams, spittle flying from his lips. Frankie allows the hunter to manhandle him, not even lifting a finger to stop the barrage of fists. I recognize the look in his eyes too well—self-loathing. His dark eyes are rife with frustration and anger.
“Vin, that’s enough,” I say tiredly, grabbing my friend’s shoulder to pull him back. He shoves at me, causing me to lose my footing before I quickly right myself.
“Don’t tell me what’s enough! Did you see her fucking arm?” he roars, pounding another fist into Frankie’s face.
“Of course I did! We all did! But this isn’t the correct way to handle it. We should save our anger for the assholes who hurt her.”
I want nothing more than to follow Violet and comfort her, but I know that if I leave the room, Vin might actually kill Frankie.
“Did you see them?” Mason whispers, shaking himself out of whatever daze Violet’s scarring put him in. “The assholes who did that to her?”
At Frankie’s barely perceptible nod, Vin drops him to the ground.
“Then we find them,” he snaps, tone laced with acrimony. “And we kill them.”
“Wait!” We all turn at the same time to see an ashen Alex standing in the doorframe. His dark eyes swirl like a bottomless black pit. “I want to help.”
“Fuck you!” Mason hisses, storming forward and pressing his arm to the man’s throat. “It’s people like you—”
“People like me?” Alex scoffs once, the sound pained due to his obstructed airway. “What those monsters did is sickening.”
“And making her shit her pants wasn’t?” I ask softly, and his head swivels in my direction. For a brief moment, I see guilt in his eyes, but it’s there and gone too fast for me to comment on.
With one last glare directed our way, Alex storms out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
“I’ll stay with Violet,” Mason whispers, for once forgoing his usual nickname for her. “She might not know it yet, but she shouldn’t be alone.”
Frankie nods once in understanding, his face already beginning to bruise in some areas from Vin’s fists. “I need to finish the potion in my lab,” he explains. “It’s designed to help with the scarring.”
“Good. That’s good—” Before I can say another word, I’m shoved to the back of my own mind with a ferocious roar.
“Hux.” Vin nods once in greeting, but my brother is too far gone to acknowledge him. His mind is focused on one thing and one thing only—revenge.
“Let’s go kill a little piggy, shall we?” he questions darkly.