Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance
Nocticadia: Chapter 39

I awoke with a start and jolted upright. At the restriction of my arm, I looked down through the dim light to see it tethered by a handcuff to the steel frame of a bed.

My gaze shifted to the dress I wore, which carried small flecks of … food?

Confusion settled over me, my head throbbing with the task of trying to catch up to my eyeballs.

Piano music. Moths. Dinner. Spencer. Bramwell. The masked man.

A gurgling nausea churned in my gut as I slowly trailed my gaze over the surrounding room. My vision wobbled with the ache in my brain.

The darkness. The stone walls chipped with age and covered in moss. A gravelly floor. The air, so cold, it felt like I’d been cast into a tomb. The heavy, damp scent of earth and decay invading my sinuses. And the bars. Not a room. It was a cell. A prison.

No. No!

He’d captured me. The man in the mask.

My pulse raced as I thought about all those sick, serial killer movies, where the victim ended up chained in a basement. The horror of that goaded my escape, and I tugged at the cuffs, trying to slip my hand through it. Skin raw and burning, I shook with the effort, folding my hand to make it as small as I could.

The ache in my skull intensified with my stress, and I abandoned my escape to rub my throbbing temples.

“You could just ask for a key.”

At the sound of the deep voice, I sucked in a sharp breath, and the shadows to my right shifted as a form came into view. A strange current snaked over my skin, devouring my fear, as I took in the sight of him.

Black slacks. White, button-down shirt. Devastatingly handsome face. The pressure in the room seemed to change, as his presence pervaded the space like a dark storm.

Professor Bramwell?

My head spun with a million possibilities, nothing springing forth a familiar memory of what had happened the night before. My professor kidnapping me?

I thought back on the way he’d defended me at dinner. No way.

Still, tension wound in my stomach, as he strode toward me, my fight or flight buzzing with the urge to do one, or the other. Light glinted off a metal key as he held it up for me to see. The sleek, black, leather gloves he wore had me questioning things. Perhaps I’d watched too many crime shows, but there was only one reason that came to mind for why someone would wear black gloves. He knelt down beside me, and at the click of the handcuff, I yanked my hand free and backed myself to the headboard, away from him.

“You cuffed me?”

“You apparently sleepwalk.” He pushed up from the floor and, hands tucked in his pockets, made his way toward the cell door, which he pushed open as if to let me know I was free to leave.

“And the prison?”

“I couldn’t exactly take you to my office. Or your dorm. These cells are connected to my lab. The midnight lab is two floors above us.”

“You don’t store corpses in here, do you?”

“No. I don’t store corpses in here.”

My stomach settled only slightly, seeing as nothing made any sense still. “What happened?”

“You were drugged.”

I rubbed at the red mark that’d been left on my wrist from the cuff. “How? With what?”

“Noxberries.”

Air whooshed out of me. Noxberries? Shit. Shit! “How do you know?”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the iron bars of the cell. “You had a few bouts of vomiting in the night. I performed a litmus test on it. One specific for the enzymatic reaction found only in the berries.”

Oh, God, not only was the thought of that humiliating, but the tickle in my stomach and chest told me he might’ve been looking at round two any second. “So, I’m … I’m infected with Noctisoma?”

“Just as every moth isn’t doomed for infection, neither is every noxberry.”

“How do you know, though?” The moment I said the words, the answer came to me. “You studied my puke?”

“There would’ve been trace larvae. Eggs. I saw neither under the scope.”

Again, the thought of Professor Bramwell studying my puke somehow seemed worse than him handcuffing me to a bed inside what must’ve been a prison at one time. Crazy, but that was my state of mind right then. “Oh, God. I don’t remember anything. Throwing up. Being brought here.”

“Noxberries are a very strong hallucinogenic. More powerful than any natural drug in existence. It’s only their association with Noctisoma that keeps them from being abused more frequently. Otherwise, I suspect they’d be making the rounds at frat parties across campus.”

I rubbed a hand across my forehead, trying to imagine at what point in the evening I might’ve been drugged. The cheesecake. It had berries. And the drink. It’d tasted like the cheesecake. “Why would anyone drug me?”

Brow furrowed, he drew in a deep breath, and—God, strike me down—I glimpsed the deep grooves of muscle in his chest where he’d unbuttoned his shirt. It brought to mind the day I’d spied on him throwing knives in the woods. The muscles in his arms. The sweat. But he was damned good with those knives. Would he throw knives at me?

Unfortunately, a thick fog still muddled my head, making it impossible to stay a step ahead of the man if he did have something sinister up his sleeve.

“Why is inconsequential at the moment. The question you should be asking right now is who?”

Was this where he confessed that it was him?

“I don’t suppose you’d have any idea?”

Again, he stuffed his hands into his pockets and paced toward the wall across from me. “Spencer Lippincott was accused of giving another student noxberries. After which, she claimed he assaulted her.”

“Mel.”

“Yes.” He turned and paced toward the cell bars again, back and forth, as he had a tendency to do whenever he lectured.

“She never mentioned the berries. Neither did he.”

Pausing his pacing, he shot me a look as if to say, Come on, Lilia, you’re smarter than that. Ordinarily, I was, but in addition to feeling woozy, I was freaking starving, for some reason. “He wouldn’t have, for obvious reasons. And I suspect she didn’t know.”

“How do you know?”

His jaw shifted, his eyes unreadable as he stared at me. He wasn’t going to tell me.

Arms crossed with stubborn resistance, I shook my head. “Spencer wouldn’t do that.”

“I told you, nice and genuine don’t mix when it comes to Spencer. And now, we’re right back into a scandal.”

“How?”

“Cameras caught me carrying you away.”

The torment of that visual sliced through my concentration. Me, passed out in his arms, as he carried me through the gardens. The gardens. Yes, I remembered that much. Walking through the gardens with Spencer. And a man. A man in a mask. “Canterbury garden has cameras?”

He rubbed his jaw as if frustrated with my lack of brain power, as if it was my fault. Whatever I’d been given may not have infected me, but it’d surely killed a few brain cells. “The lot where my car was parked has cameras.”

“No, I’m asking because I saw someone. In the garden. A man wearing a bird mask.”

“A bird mask?”

“Not a bird mask, one of those plague masks that docs used to wear.”

Frowning again, he stared back at me. “You saw someone in a plague mask?”

“Yes. He was standing by the mausoleum.” An irritating, slow drip of memories trickled in, feeding me one scene at a time. “Then Spencer ran off. Toward him. I got dizzy and fell. The man in the mask was standing over me.”

“Did Spencer see this masked attacker?”

Had he? Or was he only going after him for my benefit? “I can’t say for sure.”

“Did he take his mask off at any point?”

“No. I kept blacking out. Did you see him when you found me?”

“Unfortunately, no. I heard a scream. When I found you, you were lying passed out. There was no one else. Did he touch you, at all?” The question carried a hard edge, like the thought of such a thing angered him.

Touch me? Not that I recalled. I couldn’t summon so much as the memory of fingertips on my skin. I shook my head, flexing way too many brain cells trying to remember a single detail past that mask. “I swear I saw him.”

“The noxberries are fairly strong. Perhaps you were–”

“I’ve seen him before. All over campus. Watching me.”

He stared off, as if deep in thought. “You sleepwalk.”

It wasn’t a question, yet I answered anyway. “Yes.”

“Do you take any medication?”

“No.”

“Do you replace yourself tired during the day?”

I knew where he was going with that, and with a roll of my eyes, I answered, “Sometimes. Look, I’m not hallucinating the guy, okay?”

“I’m merely teasing out a possibility, Miss Vespertine. Have you come across anything plague-related recently? Perhaps a reading? A picture of the mask?”

I had read about Dr. Stirling when I’d first arrived on campus. Admittedly, that was about the time I first began seeing the man in the mask. “I have, yes,” I answered honestly. “You think I am hallucinating him?”

“I’m only suggesting that exhaustion can fuck with your head. I know this from experience.”

Maybe I had dreamed it up. The sickening possibility that it might’ve been nothing more than another hallucination smothered the argument cocked at the back of my throat.

“If that’s the case, then I feel silly. About all of this.”

“Hallucinations don’t drug individuals. There’s still the mystery of who accomplished that, and I suspect that I will replace myself on the chopping block once again.”

“But they didn’t catch you bringing me here.”

“I brought you through the cadaver entrance. So, no.”

God, the thought of that twisted my stomach inside out. But I was alive and untouched. Although, as disturbing as it may have been, the visual of him touching me while I lay passed out didn’t quite sicken me as much as it probably should have.

“So, it’s only my word that would get you in trouble.” It wasn’t a question, and just like that, my horribly manipulative mind shifted back into gear, because it was in that moment, I realized that I had something on Professor Bramwell. A bargaining chip.

Eyes narrowed, he did that annoying studying thing, where I couldn’t read what the hell was going on in his head. Maybe he wanted to throttle me for saying that aloud. Or throw knives at my skull.

“Make me your assistant, and I won’t speak a word,” I quickly added.

“No. I told you before, I don’t take assistants.” Arms crossed again, he ran his thumb over his bottom lip in a way I found mesmerizing, unintentionally seductive. “I can offer you money. A significant amount.”

“No.” The answer came out faster than I’d have expected at the prospect of money, especially when I desperately needed to catch up on Bee’s tuition. But I desperately needed to know more about the worms, too—and faster than I was learning in Nocticadia. “I’ll leave. I’ll take off for a few days, and you won’t have me here to clear your name.” I didn’t even know who was talking at that point. Maybe I had been infected and the parasite was steering the ship, because no way in hell was Lilia Vespertine that bold.

His dark chuckle tickled the back of my neck, and his eyes held a ruthless glint that slid through my bones. “My, you are a wicked little moth.”

I hated the way my stomach fluttered when he said that. “I want to work in your lab. Not the midnight lab, not some lame duck lab, where I’m assigned to washing dishes and making agar. I want to work on the toxin with you. And I want to be paid in cash for my time.” I swallowed a gulp. While, on the outside, I might’ve looked cool and calm, my insides were screaming right then.

He tipped his head, and I caught a flicker of intrigue in that coppery gaze. “Look at you. Such a bold moth. Far bolder than I gave you credit for.”

“Make me your assistant, and I’ll make you the hero this time.”

“Or I can lock you in this cell and toss the key. No one would replace you. And after a while, no one would care.”

I’d forgotten the part where I hadn’t yet confirmed whether, or not, he was a psycho killer. Damn the fog still thick on my brain.

My gaze flicked to the cracked cell door and back to him. In a pathetic effort to beat him to it, I scrambled over annoying tulle and satin, getting caught up in the skirt of my dress for a moment, and dashed toward my only exit. The moment I reached the barred door, the world tilted on its axis, and the iron spindles crashed into my spine. His gloved hand pressed into my throat, sealing off the oxygen.

A rush of adrenaline pounded through me, colliding with an inexplicable titillation that had my nerves flaring like livewires.

“You will take the money that I’m offering. And you will not say a word about this. Do you understand?” Eyes trained on my lips, he leaned into his grip, his tongue sweeping over the edge of his teeth.

Mouth gaped for air, I stared back at him, studying the flicker of fascination that slipped over his otherwise stern expression.

Chaos exploded inside my head, as I tried to make sense of the fact that my professor had his hand to my throat, had just threatened to lock me in a cell and toss the key, and that I still had no intentions of accepting his offer. Perhaps I was the psycho. After all, I could’ve negotiated the answers I was looking for about my mother and maybe he would’ve told me.

But maybe he’d have lied, too.

Or subjected me to some three questions only rule.

I only just managed to shake my head. “Imprisoning me … doesn’t … cover your … ass.”

His hand squeezed harder with his frustration. “Fucking hell, why do you have to be stubborn!” Jaw flexing with his rage, he released me on a growl.

I threw my hands to my neck, rubbing the spot where he’d choked me, and bent forward as a cough sputtered out of me. “It’s a curse. But I promise not to annoy you, and to be helpful. And I won’t say a word to anyone about it. No one has to know that I’m working for you.”

Another frustrated growl told me I was whittling him down. “I knew the moment you arrived at this school that you were going to be a major fucking headache for me.”

I straightened, ignoring the annoying blossom of hope that warmed my chest. “That’s a yes, then?”

He ran his hands through his hair, ruffling the ordinarily thick and smoothed strands into a disheveled mess that I found painfully attractive. “Fine. You’ll work as my assistant. You’ll do as I say. You will not touch anything, or venture where you’re not wanted. You use the cadaver entrance only. And should you decide to break any of my rules or speak of this arrangement to anyone, I will make you regret the moment you tried to blackmail me.”

“Did you just threaten me? Like, with death that time?”

He didn’t flinch beneath the accusation. “Don’t fuck with me, Miss Vespertine. You want to play hardball? Know that mine are made of steel.”

“That sounds painful.”

His lips twitched as if he were trying to hold back a smile. “Leave through the back entrance. And don’t return until tomorrow at eight in the evening.”

“Can I ask one more question before I go?”

He let out an almost pained groan. “What?”

“Are there any buildings on this campus that don’t have cameras?”