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Whatever color I still have in my face fades. She tilts her head and runs her hand over my cheek. “I won’t let them hurt you, Diana. You’re my little sacrifice, not theirs. Your poor friend Tina, however, is not going to survive that party. She’s a dead girl.”

My stomach drops. “What do you mean?”

She merely shrugs. “What do you think?”

I lean into her, sliding my arms around her and leaning my head on her chest. Loyal, like I’d do anything for her. For a second, I think she may recoil, but she doesn’t. “What are we going to do?”

Her eyes flicker, and for a moment, it seems like her mind is lost. “Right now, you and I are going to go retrieve my book.”

DIDI

“What is so important about this book?” I ask Talia as we walk up the dark, dank stairwell of an old sandstone building to the fourth floor, where the psychology department is located.

She turns to face me mid-stride. Her onyx eyes are like black pools of ink. “Beyond the fact that it’s ancient and worth millions of dollars, I’m the rightful owner. My father is an imbecile for giving it to them to begin with. I’m positive there are others involved, and the entire trust will be compromised if we don’t stop them. These people, Cindy among others, foolishly believe that killing will grant them access, and now they are acting on it—that’s what’s happening at that party this weekend. People are going to die. I must figure out a way to stop it. Believe it or not, I do not welcome the death of innocents.”

I pause mid-step, wondering about something. “Where does the money come from?”

She lifts her chin and pauses as if she still doesn’t trust me. “It all started with Matteo Vital, my ancestor. He was a scholar who came here in the 1700s from Italy when Kinsmen was nothing but a poor hamlet. He brought with him an ancient Codex he stole from an archive where he studied in Europe. It was a book on the dark arts and devil worship, written by heathens. He spent the better part of his life decoding and translating it.”

She pauses on a step and catches her breath, swallowing a pit in her throat.

“The sickness started with him. As he decoded the original text, he started hearing the voice of a dark god and seeing him in the shadows of the trees. The god whispered to him and promised him riches if he brought him the heart of his one true love and left it on a stone. During this time, Matteo founded Kinsmen University. He implored others to dedicate their lives to learning. The townsfolk, however, scoffed and jeered, believing that working in the fields was their only hope during the famine and disease. Matteo persevered, and eventually, some joined him. He went on to establish a fund by stealing money from the handful of students who came to study with him. He killed his wife and sacrificed her to the shadow in the trees, but not before she bore him three children…three bloodlines that tie directly to him. Three hundred years later, the fund is now worth billions, and the interest grows every year. To this day, every student who attends this school unknowingly pays into it. Each member of his bloodline inherits this money, but only if they kill as outlined in the creeds he left for us.”

I take this all in, her words and the enormity of what she’s telling me. How dark and twisted it all became, stemming from the ramblings of a madman who did nothing but steal from others.

“He was a man once,” she continues staring off, “with a beating heart, and human emotions, but when he died his words lived on and he turned into our God, demanding blood and flesh in return for the riches and power he left for his children.” She finally looks at me, a desperate plea bleeding from her eyes. “I need your help, Didi. I’m losing control of everything.”

My heart rate spikes. “So, it’s your family and Tommy’s who are the descendants. Who else? You said there were three.”

Her eyes twist into something dark. “I have my suspicions, but they’ve done a good job keeping a low profile. I think it might be Stephen Garcia. It would make sense; his father is the president of this university.” She pulls away and continues walking.

“So, you’ve never actually seen this book?” I ask, following her, the stairs creaking beneath me and echoing off the empty walls.

“I know the rules,” she says, effortlessly making her way through the dark. “My father told them to me, but I’ve never seen them written down. I need that book to understand everything.” She stops walking for a moment. “I killed my boyfriend because of all this. I’ve been marked, mauled, raped, and killed. I lost my innocence as a young girl.”

I glance up at her as she keeps her pace up a couple of steps, the pleasant scent of her perfume teasing the stale air behind her. “So why do this all, then? Why not fight it? Stop the cycle?”

She blinks twice. “I fought it for years. I thought I could be stronger than it all. By the time I killed Daniel, the darkness had already taken its hold inside me.”

I part my lips and snap them shut, but she catches my hesitation.

“What is it, Diana?”

“Remy told me what happened to you. That you believe Cindy and her mother buried you alive.”

She blinks up at me, her dark eyes finding light. “Yeah… I figured he would tell you, eventually. I have no proof that it was them. They were wearing masks when it happened.”

From one broken soul to another, I just want to comfort her. My hand finds her arm, and she flinches but then leans into my touch with a heavy sigh. “She looks at me with those soulless eyes—though I now understand that her soul was ripped from her.

“I was still awake when they buried me. I lost consciousness shortly after they threw dirt on my face, and I lost my ability to breathe.” Her face pales as she recalls the memory. “It was only a minute or two before Remy found me and brought me back to life, but to me, it felt like years had gone by. When I woke up, I felt him inside me…and I’ve never been the same.”

The serpent. The insidious darkness that never leaves.

“I feel him, too,” I whisper.

Her lips twitch upward, and she wipes some moisture from her eyes. “So, you understand me, then?”

I let out a shaky breath. I understand so deeply. “Let me help you.”