Solasta Academy: Blood & Moonlight

Chapter Fourteen

The moment Calia snapped back into consciousness, she felt the cold wind form goosebumps on her skin. She only wore simple baby blue pajama shorts and a white T-shirt as her hair was pinned up into a bun. Looking down, she glimpsed at her bare feet where scarlet red liquid covered them. Her eyes wandered a few feet away where a girl lay in the middle of the woods—dead. She recognized her as Jenny Hu, whom she competed against only yesterday. Calia was seconds away from collapsing until warm hands caressed her cheeks gently, distracting her from her own grief. Arzhel's moss green eyes bore into hers with such intensity she almost forgot what happened. Why they were here, of all places. "The blood isn't yours," he whispered. "It'll be okay. I promise."

Tears sprang down her eyes again as it mixed with her silver blood that somehow appeared whenever she was in a different state. It was almost like she was in a dream. "What do you mean?" Arzhel silently handed her a piece of ripped paper stained with tiny splotches of blood but the message was clear.

You will be mine, Calia Nox.

P.s. Consider this your gift.

Bile formed down her throat when Arzhel moved to give her a better look of the ground in front of her where a broken vile now emptied with Jenny's blood lay in front of her. She must have stepped on it. Calia switched back to the note and read it twice before glancing up at Arzhel, who was actually seething—like he wanted to kill the person who did this. Calia wasn't sure what to make of that. Or what this murderer wants from her and why they gave her this sick idea of a gift. Whoever this person was thought of Calia as an obsession. As something to take when she was only a girl with a unique ability. It was the way Arzhel was clenching his jaw so tight that Calia worried it might break that made her caress it gently, causing him whirl to her eyes where his own softened entirely. "We have a motive, Arzhel," she explained. "Yesterday we didn't. This killer sees me as an object of their desire and that means they will not hurt me. Not now, anyway."

"But they will eventually," he whispered. Arzhel stood like a statue as she cupped his jaw—almost like he never wanted to end. And she was absolutely sure she liked this moment between him. Whatever happened tomorrow or a week from now, she knows Arzhel will be right next to her. "They will get to the point where they cannot control their desire for you any longer, and it will be the most dangerous."

"As long as you're next to me, I don't think the killer will have the confidence to hurt me," she admitted, setting her hand down finally but she was still inches away from Arzhel. Calia breathed in his cologne like it was her own. Arzhel raised a brow but said nothing and she fought off a blush rising from her cheeks. "Maybe the only way to stop all of this is to indulge in his fantasies,"

"No," he argued.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry? Did you take college-level psychology classes with an emphasis on serial killers? This is what happens to all obsessive killers like the one on campus. Once this person makes themself known, it is the only way to survive. To capture them," she sighed, thinking about her mother again. Calia and her mother would spend days watching true crime documentaries and trying to find the killer before it was revealed. Of course, Calia thought ten steps ahead and figured it out before her mother—earning her pride but the choice to pick the next topic. "Whether or not we are humans or monsters, the chemistry is the same."

Her and Arzhel started to walk back to the house when he asked, "How so?"

"Our brains have the same desires as a mortal," she explained. "As it is the same for our hunger and ability to sleep. We would be nothing without it. And the killer...they would be nothing without their obsession for me."