Do I wait? For a few minutes, I hover near the wall expecting someone else to appear in a flash of light. Nobody arrives.
With shaking hands, I check the dagger in my jacket hasn’t dematerialised during my trip down, relieved when my hand folds around the hilt. I rub my aching head. Daniel said we’d be paired for our first mission. Where’s my partner, Sarah?
Blood thumps through my ears as I approach the end of the alleyway and peer out. A sleek black car passes, and a group of girls walk by, chatting and oblivious. There’s nothing remarkable about them—they could be Fated since we look human. Maybe demons.
No, they’re nothing like the Fated. The easygoing aura and colourful variety in their clothing isn’t available to the Fated. Whether they’re demons or humans, I don’t care. My reaction is a hateful jealousy; these humans are free and look at what I have to face to achieve their freedom.
The place is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time—as if someone took the Fated world and injected a rainbow of colours into the space and poured in happiness. I back against the wall, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds around me. How can I hunt demons in a place I don’t understand? This first mission is for a few hours with no time to acclimatise. I chew on a nail, wondering how long until the Sarah arrives.
Footsteps approach from the alley behind, and I automatically curl my hand around my dagger as I turn. Daniel. He’s changed into soulhunter clothing, and the litheness of his movements and his long legs draw my gaze as he approaches. My heartbeat picks up further. When I look to his face, Daniel’s expression indicates he’s aware of my scrutiny. I look away relieved he can’t see my heating cheeks in the dimness of the alley. Fear of this situation is enough to deal with.
“Where’s Sarah?” I ask.
“Just you and me.” He grabs my arm.
“But I thought...?”
“Finish this and quickly.” Daniel drags me back into the alleyway and drops his grip.
What does he want me to do? I spin around, searching the shadows. Nothing. “Finish what?”
“Wait over there.” He points to a space opposite, in the shadow of an overhanging building.
I pause, and Daniel shoves me in the small of the back. I spin around. “Don’t push me!”
“I said you have to listen and do as you are told.”
Daniel’s eyes glint through the darkness, and his tone pisses me off. “Tell me what’s happening. Why am I on my own?”
“I need you to succeed on your first mission, which involves making sure you don’t do anything stupid.”
“Such as?” I bristle.
“Wandering off, acting on instinct, rather than thinking things through. Killing yourself.”
I lick my dry lips, and Daniel chews the edge of his. Why does he need me to succeed?
“The girl they paired you with is weak. You need someone stronger than Sarah the first time, in case the demon gets the upper hand.” He crosses his arms. “I spent five years hunting demons. That’s why I’m now a trainer so you’re safe with me.”
“But your freedom? If you collected all those souls why aren’t you free and living your new life?”
In the dim of the alleyway, I can’t read him, but the pause is telling. “I chose to be a trainer. Now move the hell over there and wait.”
Daniel’s anger flashes in as quickly as ever, and the conversation shuts down. Did I hit a raw nerve? Biting back my desire to retort, I stomp towards the space he indicates, rest against the wall, and grip my dagger.
For a few moments, Daniel remains in the centre of the alleyway. I want to ask what he’s doing, but I can’t gauge Daniel’s true mood, and I don’t want to be on the receiving end of his ire if I piss him off.
Suddenly, he strides to the entrance and disappears around the corner. I inhale. The constant fear since I arrived spins my head, and I concentrate on breathing through the rising panic. What the hell is he doing?
When Daniel doesn’t return after a few minutes, I walk from the shadows into the alleyway, to the spot he vacated. I stare up into the clouds obscuring the stars. My stars. The ground lurches as the reality of how far from home I am hits.
Someone slams hard into my side. I fall, skidding across the ground on my back, and banging my head as I drop. A male figure approaches and stares down at me. The demonic aura surrounds him, an invisible force sucking energy from the world around. Amber eyes shine through the darkness, confirming his race. I size him up. Around six feet tall and slim built is all I can make out in the dim.
“More cannon fodder?” he sneers.
I push up and scramble backwards, head pounding. The demon watches with amusement as I back against the wall. “You need to watch your back down here, girl.”
What now? Run at him? Attack him? Practicing how to locate the exact spot to pierce a heart on dummies is one thing, but this is reality. Leaving the dagger in my pocket, I run towards him. To my surprise, I knock him to the floor as if he weighs less than I do. I hesitate in surprise, missing a chance for the upper hand. The demon grabs his opportunity, jumps back to his feet, and seizes me by the throat. I stagger into him and he traps my arms between our bodies.
“Get the fuck off me!” I try to yell, but the words are strangled.
An instinct I never knew I had takes over as I summon the strength to fight back against the powerful creature. I slam my head forwards, colliding with his face. With a howl of pain, he releases me and stumbles, holding a hand across his nose. I pull out my dagger as he wipes the blood from his face. I try to disguise my doubt I’ll win, but the demon has the measure of me.
“Aww, sweetheart. Am I your first?” He rubs the blood from his hands onto his trousers.
I hesitate too long again. The demon charges back over and pins me against the wall. I gasp, chest burning as the breath is knocked away. This is nothing like the rehearsed fights with Derrin back home, or those I trained with recently. This bloody hurts.
With an arm across my throat, the demon’s amber eyes confuse and captivate, and his scent turns my stomach. Why do the angels give soulhunters their angel strength but limit powers that could help in combat with demons in the human world? There’s no sense in that. He grabs my arm with his other hand and claws the dagger from my grip. The dagger clatters to the ground.
“I’m your first and last,” he jeers, kicking the weapon across the alley.
In a swift movement, the demon grips my throat again. His nails slash my skin as he does, and the wound stings as if he’s poured acid into the flesh. In desperation, I struggle to pull his hands away, and in response, he pulls my head back and cracks it on the wall. The pain sears across my skull, and my vision blackens towards unconsciousness.
Daniel was wrong about me. I won’t survive.
The demon’s grip loosens, and I slump to the floor as someone pulls him away. Through my dull vision, I see. Daniel kneel on the creature’s chest, dagger in hand. Before the demon or I have a chance to register what’s happening, he plunges the knife into the creature’s heart. Seconds later, a grey cloud spirals slowly from the demon’s mouth.
A soul.
The cloud shimmers in the darkness, hovering around the demon’s head. Daniel pulls a crystal from his pocket and holds the sphere in the palm of his hand. The soul shoots towards the crystal, and the cloud disappears into the orb. When the soul was free for those fleeting moments, the alleyway hummed with a different energy as if someone else was with us. I blink. What exactly are souls?
Daniel climbs to his feet and drags the body into the corner where he told me to wait for him. Wiping his hands on his jacket, he storms over.
“I obviously made a huge fucking mistake with you!” he growls, pulling me to my feet.
I stare back in dazed confusion. “Okay, so I can’t do it. I can’t kill demons.”
“Not that! Because I told you where to wait for me, and you moved. He was looking for us.” Daniel’s fury matches that of the demon—and my fear of him is as grea
t.
“You left me.” My tiny voice annoys me.
“I was looking for him—finding him before he found you. If you’d just fucking waited where I said…” He trails off and pushes both hands into the front of his hair.
“Let me go. I need to sit down.” I pull his hand from my jacket and slide down the wall to the ground.
My head pounds, and I hold my temples, pushing against the pain. Each heavy breath I take burns my lungs.
Daniel crouches next to me. “Let me see your head.”
I lean forward, wincing as his fingers probe beneath my hair. “No blood,” he says.
“A bloody big headache though,” I mutter.
“Oh, you certainly are.” My vision is blurred, but the expression I see on his face looks more like disappointment than anger.
The sickening scent of the demon is on my skin and clothes. Everywhere. I rub my throat, and the skin is wet. Blood covers my fingers as I take my hand away.
“The bastard scratched me!”
“If I hadn’t arrived he’d have done more—that demon would’ve slashed your throat!”
“I think you’ll find he’d choking me to death was his method of choice,” I snap back.
An unfathomable look crosses Daniel’s face, and he rests his hands on his knees, inhaling sharply.
“What?” I ask.
“You.”
“Me what?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure about you anymore.”
“Don’t talk in riddles. If you mean you don’t want to single me out and help me, fine. I’ll die soon anyway if this is how good a soulhunter I am.”
Daniel rises and holds a hand out. I take it and pull myself up. Snatching my hand from his, I curse my wobbling legs and the cough erupting from my wounded chest. I sound so bloody weak. News flash: I am.
Daniel’s tone softens after the terse words. “Soulhunters don’t usually confront demons on their own, the first time in the field. You did well to stay alive as long as you did, but the word “hunter” should indicate how you’re supposed to find demons, Ava.”
What a fuck-up. This isn’t what I expected. A fight with a demon—yes. Pain and almost losing—no. I stare at my boots, bravado gone. Tears threaten, but I keep them from spilling. Daniel can’t see my weakness. If there is any chance of surviving this, I need his help. And I’m damn sure he won’t bother assisting a pathetic soulhunter who almost dies on her first assignment.
10
“What happened to you?” asks Tom.
I spin around, pointing my dagger at him. Since the return from my disastrous trip to the human world, my level of alertness remains high.
Tom steps back and raises his hands. “Whoa!”
“What do you mean?” I demand.
Tom still wears his soulhunter uniform too, but his is clean—no demon ripped his apart. I walked into the training room as soon as Daniel returned me to the institute without changing, and my clothes are dirty and torn. All I wanted was to practice, so next time they send me out there I’m not humiliated—or almost killed.
Tom looks from the training dummy to me, then focuses his eyes on my neck. “You weren’t with the group. There should’ve been four of us: you and Sarah plus me and Zeke. You never showed, and we thought you’d chickened out.” He draws his eyebrows together. “You caused us a big fucking problem. Did you go off on your own?”
I self-consciously rub my injured neck. Daniel told me not to say anything about being with him. I already figured out whatever happened is unusual, and I know not to mention the incident. But Daniel didn’t explain everything, and my aching head can’t figure out why he put me in the situation he did.
“Yeah, I got lost. Zapped to the wrong place, I guess.” I gesture at my neck. “Met a not so friendly local.”
“Human?”
“Demon.”
Tom’s eyebrows shoot up. “On your own? How did you manage to escape?”
“I guess I’m a better soulhunter than you think,” I lie.
“Ava took it upon herself to go off on her own, yes.” I startle at Daniel’s voice and look over. He rests against the wall near a training dummy, arms crossed over his chest the way he did in the alley. “I should’ve expected this. Stupid girl.”
Daniel changed into new clothes; his soulhunter uniform replaced with simple jeans and black shirt. I know for a fact demon blood stained his hands and clothes after our encounter. He’s clean. Unlike me, standing covered in demon scent and a mix of the demon’s and my blood.
He crosses the room. “You need to watch that behaviour, Ava. Darius doesn’t appreciate soulhunters stepping outside their allocated duties. Fancied a trip around the human world did you?”
He’s lying to Tom about what happened and in a patronising way. In frustration and to avoid them seeing my reddening face, I spike my dagger into the training dummy behind me. An alarm sounds to indicate I’ve hit the heart.
“Nice shot, Ava,” remarks Daniel.
Withdrawing the knife from the soft chest of the demon effigy, I shove the weapon into my boot. “I came here for some peace and to train.”
“And I came here because I want to talk to you about your conduct,” says Daniel sternly.
I narrow my eyes and run my tongue along my teeth. No. Not after how he spoke to me in the alley. “Later, I’m tired.”
Daniel looks to Tom. “Please leave us. I need to talk to Ava about her transgression.”
Tom surveys me once more, then smirks. I resist the urge to smack his smug face. “Sure. See you later, Ava.”
Daniel closes the door after Tom. “Why haven’t you changed your clothes?”
“Why did you lie to Tom?”
He leans against the door, crossing his legs at the ankles. “Do you honestly expect me to tell the truth about us?”
Us. I snort. “Truth? Tell me the truth.”
As Daniel approaches, I shrink back. I’ve crossed a line again. The guy who saved me in the alley is now my trainer again. Distant. Aloof. Hiding something.
“What do you want to hear, Ava?”
What can he tell me? Nothing. One moment he treats me like shit. The next he’s hauling my ass away from demons and saving my life. Or looking into my eyes as if he wants me. I swear this guy is deliberately screwing with my head.
“Doesn’t matter,” I mutter.
Daniel nods. “Prove to me you’re worth my help.”
What the hell? I skirt around him, attempting to leave the room. “I don’t need to prove anything to anyone, apart from myself.”
“Really?”
Daniel isn’t much taller than I am, but his presence is larger because of a confidence I can only attempt to match.
I ignore my dry mouth. “Yeah, the only person I can trust is myself. I don’t understand why you’re screwing around with my head, and I don’t trust you.”
“I saved your backside.”
“You put me in the situation.”
“And one day you’ll thank me.”
I laugh, a false bark of a sound. “Thank you. Now leave me alone. I can do this myself.”
When Daniel steps back and allows me to walk through the door, I’m surprised.
A girl sits on a bench close by, her black hair hanging over her knees where she has her head in her hands. Sarah. Is she hurt? I stride over and sit beside her.
“Sarah. What’s wrong?”
She peers at me from beneath her hair and sniffs. “I screwed up,” she croaks.
“You and me both,” I say. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”
Sarah pushes hair from her face with both hands and looks at me through puffy eyes, her red cheeks streaked by tears. I look around in alarm—we can’t show weakness—but nobody is around. “Didn’t you hear? Zeke was hurt by a demon. He’s in medical and Tom blames me.”
“How was that your fault? You didn’t hurt him, did you?” I shift closer and lower my voice. “What happened?”
Squeezing her eyes
closed, Sarah shakes her head. “I don’t know what I expected, but tonight was hard. I froze when I was supposed to be helping Zeke.”
“They’re sending us out there without enough training,” I say. “That’s not your fault.”
“Try telling Tom that,” she whispers. “He’s pissed off with me, but at least Zeke came back.”
I touch my sore neck. “Everybody came back, right?”
“No. At least five trainees are missing.” Her voice wavers.
I stare at my scuffed boots. “Shit.”
“You must be good if you survived on your own, Ava. I heard Tom telling people that you got lost. I worried anybody could hunt on their own, but you’ve proved we can.”
I meet Sarah’s hopeful eyes. Even if I could tell her Daniel helped me, I wouldn’t. Stupidly, my failure has given Sarah hope. Once news spreads about my misdemeanor, I’ll either be a villain or a hero.
I’m a fraud. A confused, frightened fraud.
“We’ll have more time to practice,” I say and pat her hand. “They won’t send us out alone without more training. Nobody is a hundred percent ready yet.”
Sarah’s shoulders relax. “Did Daniel tell you that?”
“No. They can’t send us into the field yet. We wouldn’t survive.” I pick at my ripped sleeve.
Daniel’s words in our first class roll around my head. More soulhunters die than survive.
11
I wake and stare at the ceiling, trying to figure out how long I’ve slept. After returning to my cell of a room, the adrenaline finally left my body, and I drifted to sleep. The evening events replayed as I sank into sleep, with nightmares of demons and death accompanying me.
What disturbs me the most is a dream about Daniel. We’re in the training room, the day he humiliated me by turning on his seduction. But in my dream his lips meet mine.
I jerk awake, blinking away the image. Why would I want to kiss him? His arrogance matches my attitude, and his need to humiliate me at every opportunity should dampen down my childish crush. I wrap my arms around myself. Lack of comfort, fear of what might happen next, and the fact I could die anytime soon—this is all enough for me to desire something physical from a guy. That’s what’s happening here.
Paranormal Academy Page 5