The Circle Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Find me online

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Hellbent Academy

  1: The Circle

  Val St. Crowe

  THE CIRCLE

  © copyright 2019 by Val St. Crowe

  http://vjchambers.com

  Punk Rawk Books

  Hang out with me on Facebook.

  Join my group to hear me babble about what I’m watching and reading.

  facebook.com/groups/valstcrowe/

  Join my email list

  To find out information on new releases and all the Val St. Crowe news first!

  Join here.

  Check out other Val St. Crowe books here.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I wedged my shoulder against the door frame, trying to get a hand free to get at the door knob. I was loaded up with bags and luggage. I had tried to get as many things as I could on my first trip up the stairs here to my new dorm room at Hellespointe Academy. It wasn’t really a college, and it wasn’t for normal people.

  If things had gone according to plan, that’s where I’d be right now instead of here. With normal people at a nice public state school where all the rest of my high school graduating class had gone. But you know what they say about the best laid plans, right?

  That they usually end in your sister’s sudden death and sobbing over her casket and waking up with this hole in your chest that feels like it’s never going to be filled with anything ever again. Something like that, right?

  I managed to wiggle a hand out to grab at the door knob, but to my surprise, the door wasn’t latched. I touched it, and it opened three or four inches. I leaned into it, and it swung open wide.

  I smelled cigarette smoke.

  I dropped all of my stuff on the floor at once. What the hell?

  “Hello?” I called.

  I wasn’t supposed to have a roommate. No one did, not at Hellespointe. It was a very exclusive school. There were never enough students to warrant anyone needing to double up in student housing. My dorm room was more than a room. It was a small suite with a separate living area, complete with a kitchen and a small separate bedroom in the back. Sure, it looked as though it had been constructed sometime in the 1800s, with newer appliances shoved into the kitchenette like mismatched Tetris pieces, and sure, it had a gloomy gothic thing going on, but I had to admit it was better than freshman housing at a normal state school.

  A low laugh came from the interior of the suite. From the bedroom area.

  I stiffened, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was not a good feeling, someone being in your living space. But what the hell did I know? Maybe this was some bizarre welcome ritual for new students. Knowing what I did about my fellow students, I doubted it was a very nice welcome ritual. It was probably more like hazing.

  I grimaced.

  One thing about coming to a school like this? No one in the administration was afraid of a lawsuit from parents, so anything went.

  Smoke drifted out of the bedroom first, and then he appeared.

  He looked too old to be going to college. He was too muscled, and his shoulders were too broad, and I could see both of those things really well because he was only wearing a clingy black tank top and a pair of jeans. He had long hair and a five o’clock shadow—even though it was morning—and he sauntered out of my bedroom and leaned against the door and sucked on the cigarette he was smoking and looked me over. His eyes were half-lidded, dripping with dark lashes that warred with the rest of his jagged masculinity.

  “What are you doing in here?” I said, and my voice was shaking, which I hated.

  “Funny,” he said. His voice was deep in this rich way that seemed to reach inside me and curl around my insides. I liked it. I hated it. “I was going to say the exact same thing to you.”

  “This is my room,” I said. “I belong here.”

  He laughed a raspy laugh. He should probably quit smoking. “That’s even funnier, Sutherland. I’m here to tell you the exact opposite thing. You don’t belong here. You really don’t. You need to leave.”

  I was a little thrown by the fact that he knew my name, but that was probably all part of the hazing. I lifted my chin. “Look, can we just get this over with? Whatever embarrassing, difficult thing I have to do to get through this welcome thing? Let’s go.”

  He dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it.

  “Hey,” I said. “Come on. You’re going to make burn marks on the floor.”

  He moved closer to me. “This isn’t a welcome. I’m telling you now, nicely, to get the fuck out of here. Leave this school and never come back. This isn’t the place for a girl like you.”

  “That’s nicely for you, hmm?” I raised my eyebrows. “Wow. You sure you understand what nice means?”

  He laughed again, and he took two steps closer to me, and now we were close, very close. There were only inches between us, and he was looking down at me, and he was huge, and I was dwarfed by his height and the breadth of his chest, and I could smell him, and he smelled like cigarettes and sweat and leather.

  I wanted to take a step back, but I couldn’t afford to show any weakness, so I held my ground.

  His gaze flitted to my lips and then back up to my eyes, and I had the sudden strange sensation that he was going to try to kiss me.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  He leaned down, his face moving closer to mine.

  What the hell? Was he going to kiss me?

  But no. He put his lips next to my ear. He whispered. “Have you ever been in a magical fight? Have you ever been in any kind of fight?”

  My lips parted, but no sound came out.

  His fingers against my jaw, just the barest of brushes.

  And suddenly, my knees buckled and I was on the ground. I had no will to stand. He had done something magical, turned off my muscles’ ability to work. I gasped, and then I remembered a spell to ward off magical attacks, and I murmured it, getting to my feet at the same time.

  I knew magic. My sister Enid and I had trained together once we’d figured out what we were. Maybe I hadn’t been in a real, honest-to-goodness fight, but I wasn’t helpless either. I gathered power into my fists, and it crackled over my fingers. I stared him down.

  He gave me a sour look. He raised a hand.

  All of the power in my fists was sucked into his open palm. Just like that.

  I gritted my teeth.

  He turned his hand, watching the power spark over his fingers and up his arm. Then he pointed at me, and the power leapt back at my body.

  I steeled myself for an attack, but it wound around me instead, tightening around my torso, crisscrossing over my breasts, pulling my t-shirt tight.

  He arched an eyebrow, smiling as his gaze dragged over my body.

  Furious, I used another counter spell, and the magic dissipated. My shirt went back to its normal shape.

  He shook his head. “I had a feelin
g you were going to be like this.” He pointed at me. “I just want to remind you, I tried nice. I really did.”

  “Nothing about this has been nice,” I said. That trick with the shirt had been low. He’d made me feel exposed and vulnerable, and he’d enjoyed it. He was an asshole, and I hated him.

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and his fingers flew over the keyboard.

  “Can you leave now?” I said.

  “Leave?” He shook his head. “I’m moving in. Me and Tess. You want to stay here, you’ll need to share.”

  The door opened.

  I whirled.

  A girl came in. She had blond hair and she was wearing a lot of makeup. “Oh, my God, Phist, it took you long enough to text me the room number. I’ve been wandering around, waiting, and if you think that I’m just going to—”

  “Shut up,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her. He was still looking at me.

  “Your name is Phist?” I said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Blake Mephistopheles,” said the girl. “I’m Tess.” She sidled over to him.

  He draped an arm around her shoulder. He still hadn’t looked at her. He was staring at me. “Tess and I, we were thinking we’d try out your bed.”

  Tess giggled. “Oh, God. Seriously?”

  “You don’t mind, right?” said Phist to me.

  “Well, it is a crappy first-year room,” said Tess, “but—”

  “Shut up,” said Phist again, turning to her this time. His voice had a lilting quality to it. It took the sting out of his words.

  “You’re such a cock,” said Tess, but she didn’t sound that annoyed.

  Phist kissed her. He kept his eyes open and stared at me the whole time he was doing it.

  Tess ran her fingers over his bare biceps, making a small noise against his mouth.

  I swallowed, taking a step back.

  Phist pulled his lips away from her, turning his eyes on me, gazing at me beneath his heavy lashes. Tess kept kissing him, her lips trailing over his chin, down to his throat, over his collar bone.

  I sighed. What the hell was this? If this was a hazing ritual, it was weird. It was kind of gross. And I didn’t like it.

  So, I did what anyone would do in a situation like this.

  I tattled.

  * * *

  “Um, what?” The head girl of the dorm was Jenny Baphomet. I’d met her fifteen minutes ago when I’d gotten my room assignment. She was an upperclassmen with long black hair that she wore pulled into a ponytail. She had light, light blue eyes, which were startling against her dark hair. She was very pretty. She didn’t seem to understand what I’d just told her.

  “There’s a guy in my room,” I said. “He and his girlfriend are having sex on my bed or something.”

  “That’s what I thought you said.” Jenny made a face. “That’s so gross.”

  “I know,” I said. “Right?”

  She squared her shoulders. “Well, I’ll just have to go up there and tell them to stop. And they’ll both get demerits and they’ll have to wash your sheets.”

  “I didn’t even put sheets on yet,” I said.

  “Even better,” she said. “Come on.”

  I followed her up the steps again and back to my room. All my stuff was sitting out in the hallway. I guess Phist had put it there.

  “Hey!” said Jenny, pushing open the door. “What the hell is going on in here?” She stalked into the suite.

  I followed her.

  We went back through the kitchen and living area to the door to the bedroom.

  Sure enough, Phist and Tess were making out on my bed. His shirt was off. She was straddling him. Her underwear were hanging off the ceiling fan.

  “Oh,” said Jenny in a different voice. “It’s you, Phist.”

  “Mmph,” said Phist, who was still kissing Tess.

  “Okay,” said Jenny, backing out of the room.

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  Jenny looked back at me. “We’re going to get you a different room.” She raised her voice. “Phist, Tess? You both have so many demerits right now. Holy hell, you are liked buried in demerits.”

  “Oh, fuck,” came Phist’s voice from within, sarcastic. “Not demerits.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said to me.

  “Wait, you’re not going to get them out of here?”

  “There are other rooms,” she said. “Seriously, it’s not worth it.”

  We left the room and she helped me pick up my stuff. We carried it back downstairs to the office where she was giving out room assignments.

  She set down my suitcase and sat down behind the computer in there. She typed a few things and stared at the screen. “Okay, let’s see. All I’ve got is something on the first floor, which isn’t supposed to be for first years, but who the hell cares?”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling thoroughly confused.

  She looked up at me. “What the hell did you do to get on Blake Mephistopheles’s bad side?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “I never saw him before today. I take it this isn’t some typical hazing thing?”

  “Hazing is so not allowed on campus,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Okay, right, well, the Black Circle might get away with it, but they get away with everything. Which is why I can’t get him out of your room. He practically runs the Circle.”

  “What’s the Circle?” I said. It actually sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “A secret society that’s not very secret,” she said. “Kind of like a fraternity, only they let girls in too. They get away with murder.”

  I licked my lips. I had a feeling she might mean that literally, considering the state of my sister’s body.

  “Almost everyone in the Acclasia was once in the Black Circle,” she said. The Acclasia was the ruling body of the occultist community, kind of like a magical parliament or something. “Just stay away from the Circle. You know, unless you happen to be lucky enough to be tapped, which almost never happens unless you’re a legacy.” She furrowed her brow. “Hey, wait a second, what’s your last name again?”

  “Astaroth,” I said.

  “Are you Enid’s sister?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Well, hell,” she said, shrugging. “Enid was in the Black Circle.”

  “She was?” I said. That didn’t seem like something my sister would do. How could she hang around with a guy like Phist? How could she be part of a secret society that broke the rules?

  “Maybe you’ll get tapped after all. Maybe that was hazing. Who knows?” She eyed me. “You want to go back up there and endure whatever it is they have planned for you? See if they let you in?”

  I shook my head. “No, I really don’t.”

  She laughed. “Right on. Okay, then, follow me.” She picked my suitcase back up.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My new room was bigger than my last one, and I didn’t have to lug my stuff up all the stairs, but it didn’t seem that much better than a first-year room. It still had ancient furniture and ornate wood trim on the windows and doors. It still seemed a little too gloomy and old for me to be excited about it.

  Jenny deposited me there and then left me to my own devices.

  No one was in my new room, but I wasn’t entirely sure what this change of venue had really done to solve the problem. Phist had found out which room I was originally assigned to. Presumably, he could figure out the location of this room too and come and continue doing whatever it was he was intent on doing to me.

  He didn’t want me at the school.

  My sister had been in the Black Circle.

  My sister was dead.

  He ran the Black Circle.

  Gee, I wondered why he didn’t want me here.

  Well, too bad, because I wasn’t going anywhere. And if he was, in fact, responsible for my sister’s death, I was going to take care of him one way or the other. The thing about the
occultist community was that there wasn’t a lot of well, law enforcement. Things tended to devolve into blood feuds and that sort of thing pretty quickly.

  So, yeah, I was here for revenge.

  That Phist guy, he was more powerful than me, so it wasn’t going to be easy, but I wouldn’t let that stop me. First, I needed to find out exactly what had happened to my sister. Maybe Phist wasn’t the only one involved. Everyone who had hurt her would pay. I would make sure of it.

  I got all my stuff out of my car, and then I sat down on the couch in the living room and stared at it, afraid to start unpacking. What if I had to move to yet another room?

  There was a knock on my door.

  Phist?

  Great, that had been fast. I considered not answering it, but since he hadn’t knocked before, I doubted that was going to stop him. Steeling myself, I crossed the room and yanked the door open.

  It wasn’t Phist.

  It was a guy with spiky dark hair. He was wearing eyeliner and his fingernails were painted sparkly purple. He had big hoop earrings in each of his ears. He waggled his fingers at me in greeting. “Hi, neighbor. I’m Lev.”

  “Hi,” I said, feeling a little wary.

  He pointed behind himself, across the hall. “I live there. The last guy who lived across from me was really homophobic, so he got moved away from me. I think he was afraid he would catch my gayness if he stayed, you know? Probably deep down, he kind of wanted me. But he was ugly, so…” Lev shrugged. “What’s your name?”

  “Sutherland,” I said.

  “Sutherland,” he repeated.

  “In my family, it’s tradition to name the firstborn son with the first name of the mother’s maiden name,” I said. “But my mother was done having kids when she got to me, and there were no boys. So…” I spread my hands. “Most people call me Suther.”

  “I like Suther,” he said, grinning. “I like Suther a lot. So, you want to be besties?”

  I laughed. “Um, just like that?”

  “Well, if we decide we hate each other, I reserve the right to take it back,” he said. “Come on, let me in. I’ll help you unpack.”

  I laughed again, moving away from the door. “I don’t know if I’m really going to have a lot of time for, um, friendships.”