Unclaimed: The Master and His Soul Seer Pet: A New Adult College Vampire Romance (2 page)

He smirked down at me.
As always…you lie.

I turned away, not wanting him to see me smile. Another moment, and I had no reason to smile at all.

“Alexandru, wait.” The voice was familiar,
too
familiar.

I stiffened.

“
Katarina.
” His voice was stiff.

I closed my eyes.

Poor Master,
I thought dully. Torn between his pet and his first love, and honor required him to stick with me.

“I know you said you won’t be working today, but this is important. We’ve received news about a sighting…”

I knew what that meant. And I knew what she was doing.

While the news about a demon sighting was sure to be true, I had no doubt it was also something she brought up now in order to prevent him from coming with me.

Forcing a smile, I turned around to face them. “Master, it’s all right.” I forced myself to keep smiling even though I hated seeing Katarina’s fingers on his sleeve. Like Alexandru, she was a skilled vampire hunter, and it gave the tall brunette a certain kind of confidence that made her appear extremely attractive.

Alexandru frowned. “What—”

I didn’t let him finish, curtsying instead as I murmured, “I will see you Monday, Master.” I hurried away.

Zari, wait.

I pretended I didn’t hear him.

When I reached the bus I was assigned to, I handed my consent form to the professor. Pets weren’t allowed to leave the campus without permission from their Masters.

“Your Master will follow soon?” the professor queried. “He knows we’re about to leave anytime now?”

“He knows, and no, he won’t be accompanying me.” I struggled to keep my voice even.

“I see.” The professor struggled to keep the pity from hers.

Unfortunately, we both failed.

It was clear in her expression that she, too, had caught sight of my Master, had seen he wasn’t alone, and had probably even understood why he wasn’t coming with me.

I managed a bright smile. “May I go up now, Professor?”

“Oh, yes, yes, please!” The professor was flustered as she waved me away.

As I took the first step leading to the coach’s passenger section, I heard it.

My Master’s voice.

Zari, let me—

It’s really okay, Master. And I don’t want to keep talking about it.
This time, I closed the mental connection between us, which was like slamming the phone down on his ear.

I hate him. I love him. I hate him.

I threw myself into my assigned seat, fidgeting.

I wished I had brought even a single flower with me. I needed something to keep me hoping, and even a little bit of false floromancy could do. Fumbling inside my schoolbag, I pulled out a blank sheet of paper and started tearing it into pieces.

Papyrumancy should still work, right?

I took out another sheet of paper from my bag and began tearing it into pieces as well.
He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not.

When the last strip would have ended on a negative, I stripped the last one into two.

He loves me.

I repeated the words to myself even though I knew it was a lie.

~~~~

We arrived at
Key Moarte
a little before dawn. There, I met up with my friend Rhapsody, who was part of another class. I didn’t have a hard time looking for her. It was just a matter of finding someone who looked like a life-size porcelain doll, thanks to her ebony hair, expressionless face, and exceptionally fair skin.

“Rhapsody!” I found her standing under one of the trees lining the boardwalk.

She returned my wave by moving her hand…
once.

I frowned. “You okay?”

“New places make me uncomfortable,” was all she said. “I’ll get better in a bit. I just need to…
acclimatize
myself.”

Big words for an eighteen-year-old, but they were pretty much the usual for Rhapsody.

“Your Master is not with you?”

I glared at her.

“But did he not promise you—”

“Our school doctor needed a word with him about important stuff.” I couldn’t make myself say her name. “So I thought it was better if he just stayed behind rather than waste his time babysitting.”

“Ah.” My friend nodded knowingly. “You cut your nose to spite your face again, did you not?”

“Shut up.” I snatched the book she was holding and started flipping the pages. I needed something to distract me from the truth, needed something to—

The photo on the page caught my eye, and I swallowed at the sight of it.

Oh, drat. Here we go again. I really should be more careful about what I wished for. Most times, they came true, but in the most nightmarish forms.

“What is this?” Even though the photo was sickening, I forced myself to take a closer look.

The grainy image was of a broken, fire-scarred, wooden life-sized doll. It was missing one eye, and red paint had been smeared haphazardly on its lips, creating the illusion of a bloody, crazy smile.

It couldn’t be a voodoo doll, could it? We had studied about voodoo last week as part of our defense class. Although a pet’s main responsibility was to provide blood for her Master, LSL took pride in teaching its students various healing arts that enabled them to keep their Masters alive in more than one way.

Rhapsody peered at the book over my shoulder and shook her head. “How can you not know that?”

I was even more stunned. “I should know about it?”

“It’s what this trip’s about.” She tapped on the page. “That’s Elsa, the most infamous haunted doll in Key Moarte.” She took the book from me. She’s our case study.”

Oh God, she was talking gibberish as far as I was concerned.
Haunted dolls? Case studies?
Where was I when all these had been tackled?

As if hearing my question, Rhapsody said matter-of-factly, “You were probably in your rebellious phase when Professor Martin discussed this.”

I winced at her term.
Rebellious phase indeed.
She made me sound like a seven-year-old kid throwing a tantrum. Then again, that was a good definition of how I had been last month, with the way I had acted out, and all because I had learned my Master already loved another woman.

I squeezed my eyes shut in mortification. “I’m so pathetic.”

Rhapsody hesitated then patted my hand awkwardly. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Lady Zari.”

I glanced at her gratefully even though I was pretty sure she was just practicing how to be empathetic, which was part of the practical exams for social graces. It was her weakest point, the only subject she got a lower grade than A for.

“You are anything but pathetic.”

I smiled at her.
I really hope she’ll pass this year’s exams
, I thought. She was trying so hard—

“Rather, you’re just a girl who may be clinging too hard to the illusion of love.”

I take it back
, I thought.
I hope Rhapsody fails.

~~~~

An entire resort, exclusive to otherworlders, had been reserved by LSL for the trip. This was necessary since each student was provided her own room. Sharing was not an option, for there was always a chance a Master might drop by and require privacy for feeding.

It was nine in the morning when we finished with breakfast and the professors had us boarding the buses again. Our first stop was the public hospital. It was located in the old district of Key Moarte and was one of the many abandoned buildings that made up the key’s ghost town. It was also Elsa’s birthplace, and that was the reason why we were visiting it.

Glancing outside my window, I had to shield my eyes from the sun, which seemed to burn more brightly than usual.

As the driver steered the bus into its parking slot, the professor with us came to her feet and clapped her hands to call for our attention. “Listen well, ladies. Once we reach the hospital, I want you girls to note down all your observations. If you are one of the more sensitive types, I caution you against touching anything if you do not wish to have any unwanted glimpses into Elsa’s past.”

The professor smiled, revealing her fangs, and I flinched. She had such a gentle manner, such an unassuming face, that I had forgotten she was only pretending to be harmless.

I glanced outside the window again, and the hospital where Elsa had been born stared back at me, a sad, decrepit building with broken windows, unhinged doors, and long, spindly cracks that spread across its façade like black veins.

Just a harmless old building, but this time I wasn’t fooled.

Rhapsody was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs leading to the hospital entrance. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I grimaced. “Not yet.”

She blinked. “Pardon?”

I shook my head, mumbling, “Nothing.” We’d be doomed if I ended up scaring Rhapsody, too, with her paranoia. We’d never get anything done if so.

“You’re a little red in the face, too,” she noted. “Are you sure you’re fine? You’re not suffering from heat stroke?”

I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my handkerchief. Thank God we weren’t required to wear our school jackets for the trip or I really might pass out from heat exhaustion. “I’m okay,” I told Rhapsody. “Let’s go?”

Rhapsody nodded. We ascended the stairs side by side, and I frowned when I caught a glimpse of the vandalized walls in the hospital’s lobby.

ELSA.
The letters on the wall were spray-painted in orange.

Rhapsody paused at the doorway when she saw me frozen on the third step. The other students filed past her, most of them chatting noisily while the others were busy taking photos and peering at their haunted surroundings through the zoomed lenses of their cameras.

“Lady Zari?”

I started to feel faint. Oh no, not here, not now—

Someone bumped me from behind, causing me to lose my balance.

I started to sway.

It was the last sign.

I started to see.

~~~~

Heat. Such scorching heat, burning my skin like the sun was next to me.

Orange. Everywhere was orange.

Swaying. It was hungry and uncontrollable, dancing like…a flame.

FIRE.

I screamed in my mind as my vision burst into life.

La Scala Legaturia was burning in the distance.

I sank to my knees. Sobs of guilt tore out of me.

Katarina was in front of me. Crying. Burning. Dying.

Noooooooo—

I reached out to her, but the flames kept me away.

This was all my fault, all my fault, all my fault.

Chapter Two

ALEXANDRU

“This is not like any demon we have dealt with.”

Alexandru couldn’t count the number of times he had heard that line before, and yet every time it was uttered, it proved to be true. It was as if Hell had nothing to do but birth demon spawn one after another, and they always came out more evil than the last one.

“We don’t know what it looks like, but we’ve seen enough of its victims.” In front of him, Sir Richard clicked on the pointer for the next slide to show up on the wall, revealing human corpses whose eyes were gouged out, ears torn from their heads, and their tongues ground into pieces. But the worst thing about it was that these wounds were not mortal, and autopsy reports had showed that they had been made to suffer the pain until they had finally bled to death.

The human enforcers in their midst looked fit to throw up. Beside him, he heard Lord Erou suck in a deep breath in reaction, which didn’t surprise him. The baby vampire’s experience with human warfare might be considerable, but humans could never be as evil as demons.