Pride X Familiar ReVamp (Pride X ReVamp Book 1) (30 page)

The girls jerked back. The girl who’d spoken first said, “No, no. It’s just—well, we were wondering if we’d get the chance to eat.”

“You eat on the job.” The woman referred to as the Countess pointed at bag full of assorted breads. “There, dig in. All of these have to be moved to the new shelves before lunch break ends.”

I saw the quartet look about ready to revolt, but then they spied me, and for some reason they grew uneasy.

What have I ever done to them?

“Let’s go,” the Vice-President declared, and picked up the box she’d chosen to carry.

I picked up the other box and walked out of the storeroom with her.

The box wasn’t that heavy, but I was certain I wouldn’t have been able to carry it before I became an Aventis. The extra strength was a bonus I never failed to appreciate.

“Vice-President, why did you call for me?”

“Call me Countess. Everyone else does.”

“Really, why?”

The girl took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, my last name is Alucard. If you spell it backwards its Dracula.”

I blinked. “You mean, as in Count Dracula?”

“Yes, for that reason people began calling me Countess Alucard behind my back. This started a few years ago. But it wasn’t until I took office as Vice-President of the Student Council that the student body became widely aware of it. Now I’m called Countess as both a sign of respect, and lack of respect.”

“Do you mind it?”

She shook her head. “Not at all.” She gave me a puzzled look. “You didn’t know?”

My turn to shake my head.

She muttered a loud humph, and focused her eyes ahead. “Maybe I’ll use it in my campaign slogan….”

“Why did you call for me?”

The Countess was looking away, and I followed her line of sight.

We were walking out in the open space between the gymnasium and the high-schoolers building, a stretch of ground some hundred meters or more. Out in the distance, the medical buses were visible where they remained parked on the eastern sporting field. First year high-schoolers were waiting in line by the dozens, possibly even a hundred.

The Countess mused, “Why did I call you? Well, I thought we could chat.”

“About what?”

“About Caelum and Caprice’s work here at the Academy.”

“Ah…the Student Council President spoke to us about that.”

The Countess stumbled and landed on her box. I lowered my box to the ground quickly and went to help her up, but she was already on her feet. “He did ‘what’?”

“He spoke to us last week. He said Caelum and Caprice were part of the Lanfear Pride’s special Corp of Familiars that used Fragments. He explained they were assigned duties to protect the Academy. I didn’t know what he meant, but then I heard about the accident at the restaurant in Habitat Three. At first people believed Crimson Crescent might be involved, but the news reports all denied that Crimson Crescent had a hand in it. And there’s been no declaration by Crimson Crescent to support the rumors.”

The Countess’s face had grown pale.

I frowned a little. “Is that…true?”

“Regarding the explosion, what have you heard around Galatea?”

“Not much. A few of my classmates talked about it on Monday, but everyone seems to have forgotten about it.”

The Countess muttered, “Thank the gods for short attention spans.” The girl started dusting herself down, then stepped up to her box lying on the ground.

I asked, “Are Caelum and Caprice really helping the Academy? Does that mean we’re at threat from Crimson Crescent?”

The Countess stopped moving. She straightened smoothly. “Yes, but it’s not a direct threat to the student body.”

I felt my heart jump and my stomach grow heavy. “What does that mean?”

“It means that Cee Cee has an interest in our Academy, but it doesn’t affect the students in a direct way. In other words, the students are out of the line of fire.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“To keep you safe. And so that you don’t think badly of Caelum and Caprice should they distance themselves from you.”

The Countess glanced in the direction of the sports field where the medical buses continued to process the students.

I asked her, “But you said the students weren’t in danger.”

“The students…no. But, Cee Cee know of Caelum Desanto. They certainly know of me and the Princess.” She glanced again at the sports field, then once more.

When her eyes narrowed, I paid the sports field another look.

Galatea Academy had two sports fields, side-by-side, one to the west and one to the east. There was a girl standing on the grassy rise bordering the western sports field, and she was looking in the direction of the buses to the east. She was dressed in a Galatea uniform befitting a high-schooler but not a senior. She wore the midnight blue jacket, not the white jacket.

The Countess muttered, “What is she doing there?”

I didn’t think the girl was doing anything wrong, though I did find it a little odd to be just standing there all alone.

“Maybe she’s waiting for someone?”

The Countess began walking toward her, apparently forgetting about the box at her feet.

“Ah, Countess?”

“I’ll be right back,” she said, and began walking a little faster toward the sports field. I decided to hurry after her. I had to jog to catch up to her. How could she walk so fast wearing heels like those?

The Countess called out to the girl. “You there. What are you doing here on the field? Are you with the Track-and-Field club? If so, your club will resume field practice next week.”

The girl half turned to face us, however she offered no reply.

The Countess asked, “What are you doing here?”

The two of us stopped a few meters away from the girl. I didn’t recognize her. Was she a transfer student to the Academy this year?

She had long, messy auburn hair, and large brown eyes that gave her a doe-eyed appearance. She was cute, rather than pretty, with definite curves under her uniform. I guessed her to be roughly my height of five foot five.

She smiled at us, but I noticed the smile was anything but friendly.

No, I would describe it as predatory.

My heart began to beat a little nervously.

There was tension in the Countess’s voice. “You….”

The girl pointed at herself. “Me?”

“Yes, you. I remember you. You were outside the restaurant. You looked at me and smiled that same smile when I walked by. I was surprised Caelum didn’t notice you, but then I realized you’d turned away in a hurry.”

The girl cocked her head. “I wondered if you’d forgotten. After all, you did hit your head pretty hard when the floor caved down.”

The Countess inhaled sharply. “You murderous bitch,” she hissed.

The girl’s predatory look intensified. “Oh, that’s rather lame coming from the sister of the Raynar Witch.”

“What?” the Countess blurted.

“Didn’t the Familiar give you the message?” The girl laughed and then looked disappointed. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you. I made it very clear to him.” She shook her head, and her shoulders rose and fell as she took a deep breath. “What a pity. Well it doesn’t matter now. He probably just forgot.”

“No. He gave me the message.” The Countess clenched her hands. “Why are you here?”

The girl pointed at the distant medical buses. “I’m here for them.”

“What?”

I heard a popular pop song play in the air, and realized it was coming from the Countess’s skirt. Was that her palm-slate?

“You should answer that,” the girl said. “It could be ‘really’ important.”

The Countess glared at her with a mixture of anger and fear. She pulled out the palm-slate, thumbed the screen and held it up to her ear. “This is Simone…what…when…is it still happening?”

The girl held up six fingers. “Six down. One more to go.”

The Countess lowered the palm-slate away from her ear. “So there’s more than one of you.”

“What a stupid thing to say. Of course there’s more than one of us. Really, how much of an air head are you?”

I saw the Countess swallow. “Very well. You’ve reached the final layer. That doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

The girl looked puzzled. “Layer? What do you mean layer? They’re not layers at all. They’re seals.”

The Countess repeated her question. “Why are you here?”

“I’m here to ensure my comrades finish the job.” She wagged an index finger at the Countess. “No interference. We can’t hide where or when the breach takes place, but we can stop you from making a move on my comrades.”

The Countess nodded at the medical buses. “If you want the medical data on our students, you’ll have to wait until it’s collected.”

“Is that what you think? You believe we want the medical data?”

“There’s nothing else of value in our Academy’s network. Aren’t you looking for Familiars to subjugate into your cause?”

“Familiars for the cause? Nothing else of value?” The girl tipped her head from one side to the other. “So you really don’t know what’s hidden deep underground.” She laughed for a handful of heartbeats. “You mean the Raynar Witch didn’t tell you about the Vault? Her little sister has no idea about the treasure trove hidden under her beloved Academy?”

I wasn’t following the conversation that well, but I could tell that this girl wasn’t here for fun and games. The Countess was taking her seriously – very, very seriously.

“This is just an Academy for Aventis,” the Countess stated with forced calm.

“And the perfect and most obvious place to hide an Artifact.”

An Artifact? Was she talking about a complete Fragment?

The girl kicked at the ground playfully. “In saying that, it’s not just any old Artifact. It’s a very special one. After all, there are a lot of Artifacts out there already in use. We have them, and so do you. But this one is really, really special. And that’s why they put it very deep underground.”

I felt my mouth fall open.

The Countess said, “Yes, I know that Crescent and the Prides have a number of Artifacts already out in the field. But do you seriously believe the Prides would place something dangerous under the Academy. There are two thousand students here. Two thousand Aventis, the future leaders of the Prides here in Pharos, and possibly elsewhere.”

The girl nodded. “A monumental risk, right? But depending on who’s attacking the Academy, those students are either a human shield, or a liability.”

The Countess shook her again. “No, that isn’t true at all.”

“Oh, but it is. In fact, the Raynar Witch suggested putting the ‘dangerous’ Artifact here, and precisely for that reason. Because who would ever consider putting something so dangerous under so many Aventis? It’s just ludicrous right? Totally insane, right? But it’s also the last place anyone would look if you didn’t know where to look.”

I glanced at the Countess. Who did this girl mean by the Raynar Witch?

The Countess had a frown on her face. “What are you saying?”

The girl looked annoyed. “I said, the Raynar Witch suggested that ‘she’ put the Artifact into the Vault buried under the school and the Primogens all agreed.”

The frown on the Countess’s face deepened. “She? Who put the Artifact under the school?”

The girl quickly smiled without mirth. “Isn’t it ironic, that her little brother would awaken as a Familiar and attend the same school
she
sent us to break into.”

Suddenly the Countess dropped her palm-slate. Rather, it fell from her limp fingers. “No. No…that can’t be.”

“She was the
best
of them.”

The Countess was shaking her head slowly like those plastic heads at an amusement park, the ones you throw small balls into their open mouths.

“You’re lying,” she said. “She’s dead. I was told she was dead. The records state she is dead!”

“Not dead. Just indefinitely away without leave.” The girl smiled maliciously. “And she’s been watching over him from time to time.”

The words left my lips before I realized it. “…Celica Desanto….”

The girl looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. “That’s right. You must be Haruka. She remembers you quite well.”

I was starting to feel cold and more than a little sick. “Celica disappeared more than a year and a half ago.”

“Yes. Disappeared, went into hiding—that sort of thing. She had no choice. The moment the Powers-that-be chose to purge the Artemis and Paladins suspected of treachery, Mistress Celica and all the girls that were part of her crew were as good as dead, and simply because they carried out the mission they were given.” The girl leaned forward and wagged a finger at us. “In fact, almost a third of the Sanctum’s Artemis ranks were considered liabilities and marked for incarceration or termination. And the job to kill the Mistress was carried out by the very person the Mistress held most dear to her heart.”

The Countess took a step back. “What did you say?”