Big Bad Academy

“You’re her stalker,” I suddenly realize. Searching my memories, I try to remember the name she gave me. “Blake.”

“Ah, so you aren’t a complete dolt.”

“Never said I was.”

“Doesn’t matter,” the vampire says. “Now that you’re all here, Heather is certain to come, and when she does, I will claim her as my own mate instead.”

“What the fuck?” I say, and I jump to my knees because the cage is too small for me to stand up in.

He was trying to get a rise out of me, and it worked, and I hate that it worked.

“Ah, you don’t like that idea, do you?”

“She’s my mate.”

“Not anymore. I’ll take her as my own and you’ll be doomed to have your mate dreams continue until you go crazy locked up here in this tower.”

“You’re going to leave us up here forever?”

“That’s what happens in Heather’s book, and since it’s essentially a prophecy, who am I to tempt fate?”

He looks at me smugly, as though he’s won, but he hasn’t won.

All I’ve gained from this interaction is the knowledge that this dude is definitely a total, complete psychopath, but it doesn’t matter because I know something he doesn’t.

While he was monologuing, the pack arrived, and they circled the tower. They’re everywhere. There must be at least a hundred wolves outside of this place, and Heather is with them. Judging by the tension in Frank, Angela, and Leah’s bodies, they can smell our packs, too. They’re trying not to get their hopes up. I can tell.

Still, we aren’t out of the woods yet. Blake hasn’t gotten this far by making mistakes. He’s gotten this far by evaluating every possible outcome and figuring out what’s going to allow him to win.

But then something happens he wasn’t planning on.

“Blake, darling? Are you up there?”

It’s Heather’s voice.

She’s here.

And she’s calling to the vampire.

Instantly, his eyes light up and he runs to the window.

“Heather?” He asks. “You came.”

“Of course, I came,” she says. “I’ll always come for you.”

Even though I know this is a ploy to get Blake’s guard down, her words still make me wildly uncomfortable, if not a little sick.

“How did you know where to find me?” Blake sounds excited, and his back is turned to all of us as he looks out of the window and down to Heather. He’s so distracted that he doesn’t notice the trapdoor sliding open. He doesn’t notice Gaston carefully climbing out of it. He doesn’t notice the stake that Gaston has in his hand.

“It had to be here,” Heather calls out. “Because of the book. Tell me you read it, Blake. You did, didn’t you?”

“Of course, I did,” he says. “I did it all for you.”

“Well, I did this for you, too,” Heather yells out.

“What?” Blake asks, confused. He doesn’t even have time to turn around before Gaston leaps forward and jams the stake into his body. He doesn’t even cry out before he’s killed. He just dies. Gaston jumps back as Blake’s body ages all at once. All of the years he spent as a vampire catch up with his physical form and almost instantly, he’s no longer young and handsome, but old and shriveled, and then he’s nothing more than a skeleton.

Gaston looks at his handiwork before turning back to me.