Escaping Hallow Hill Academy: A Supernatural Prison Academy Romance (Dr. Hyde's Prison for the Rare Book 1)
Page 16
It clashes into Styx, and before I can reach for him, he’s slammed to the floor in a crack of broken bones and pain. His body explodes in skin and blood and where the man was, a wolf now stands.
In a stunning display of ancient magic, Rueren shifts into his darker form. His muscles grow impossibly huge until he’s a hulking figure. Leathery wings flash out, and he’s on Marcen with deadly fangs, cutting skin like a knife. Blood sprays. Marcen cries out his pain.
My body reacts, and my sword is striking out at the woman in front of me before my heart even remembers to beat again. The sharp edge slams down, and it’s enough to take her head off. I could end this so, so quickly.
But long metal fingers clash against the blade. She wraps her eerie palm around the weapon. Blood, vile and black drips down my blade and she doesn’t even wince. Like she feels no pain at all, and she fucking smiles at me.
“You’re strong, Miss Lucero. But you’re too cocky for your own good.”
A thump hits the ground in a splatter of disgusting sounds, and then Rueren and Sialen hit the bitch from either side.
The three of them go tumbling down, and she clings to my blade as I follow them to the floor.
It’s all a clatter of chaos and colliding bodies. Sharp nails dig into my face. A lethal tail lashes against my back. Blood mats my hair. All I hear is my heaving breaths.
Sharp teeth sink into a pale throat, and I relish the screams she makes. Sialen’s quiet runes bloom in golden colors as he strangles the life from her soul. Growls tumble through the room, and I feel the sweet wolf behind me dragging her body beneath me as I slide my blade up through her delicate rib cage.
It all happens in a bloody mess of death that I’ve never been prouder of. I stare down on empty blue eyes.
Spatters of her life lie in crimson flecks across her angelic, pale face. It oddly still looks like a smile is against her lifeless lips.
A faint worry flits through my mind: can you really kill a walking dead? What will happen to her? Will she be put back together again after this?
I shove those anxious thoughts away and try to cling to my victory. Sia bends low and takes her limp hand in his. My heart warms as he harshly pulls a ruby stoned ring from her finger. His features smooth as he slides what I know is a sacred gift from our Holy Lady onto his finger.
That’s what Krist took from him.
After all this, he finally has it back. And that is something to find happiness in among all this blood and violence.
My heart is relieved. My sword is fed. My Lady is happy.
And then . . . white smoke fills the room
It clouds my vision. It seeps into my lungs. It bleeds into the foggy edges of my mind.
“Remarkable. You four are just as remarkable as Headmistress Krist promised you’d be,” the voice says in total awe and adoration.
A voice I recognize. A voice that clatters down to my soul and threatens to shred me apart with the sound.
I peer up at beady eyes as they stare down on my heavy head. I reach for the stranger. I hold my hand out just as I fall backward against the warm fur of the wolf.
The white poison drifts around his distorted features, but I can see his electric golden eyes. “I told you we have other ways of testing our rarest creatures. Now you’ll get to find out first hand. You’ll do wonders in the Hallow.” His smile is flashing. Vicious. And it’s one of the only parts of him that I take with me.
And his words are what echoes through my mind over and over and over again.
The Hallow. The Hallow. The Hallow.
Chapter Eighteen
Stinging pain flickers in where hazy consciousness clings to the corners of my mind. I expect the pain of the lab to assault my flesh, but that's not it.
This is different.
Incoherent voices boom within my head, and I flinch away from the throbbing sound of them. My palm comes up to push across my face, but stabbing pins pierce the flesh before it fully makes contact.
And then my eyes open.
A tangle of shadows is strung all around me with bright white light trying to crawl in from somewhere to my left. Through the bruises all over my body and the blood that’s still wet against my palms, I claw my hands into soft dirt and head in the direction of the sunlight.
And those ominous blurring voices. The intensity of them is like fireworks, but the clarity of them is like smoke. My mind may be alert, but it’s lagging to process my bizarre surroundings.
Bizarre, indeed.
Thorns and vines wrap around my wrists. My legs. My heels. Every inch of me is caught up in the tangle of nature that’s slicing into my flesh with every move I make.
I just. Have. To Get. Out.
My breath shudders, tears prick my eyes, and I keep going. Every inch of me is scraped and stinging, but I have to keep going.
A long rope of vines snags my skin, but I shove off with all my might against the mud.
And I fall face-first into the warm white sunlight.
As well as the booming voices that are now filling my mind.
“Welcome, newcomers,” the unseen speaker says, the tone carrying through the open wilderness.
A man with a long scaly tail stands at my side. His flesh is adorned with scratches and blood, just like my own. Except he doesn’t look at me with pity. He glares down on me with hate and maliciousness in his dark gaze.
“Get up,” he growls.
“Fuck you,” I whisper. But it barely comes out.
My palms push against the dirt, arms shaking and breath heaving.
That voice haunts me with every move I make.
“Thank you all for joining us,” it says vaguely.
It’s then that I notice just how many others are surrounding me.
Hundreds.
Hundreds of men and women, creatures and supernaturals of all kinds stand in the mossy expanse. They’re just as battered as I am. Just as tense. Completely unprepared.
But for what?
They’re all wearing dirty and bloody Hallow Hill uniforms.
The sight of the slashing golden colors of the school's insignia triggers panic within me.
Where’s Sialen . . . Rue . . . “Styx?” I ask, not able to stop the name from slipping out.
“Get up,” the dragon-tailed man at my side growls again.
“Fuck. You.” I curse him louder this time and force my body to find enough strength to push myself to my feet and meet the asshole at eye level. “What the fuck is your problem?”
His lips thin into an impossible line as he shakes his head slowly at me.
“Get ready,” he commands.
I turn away from him with a jerk of my body, my eyes scanning the wall of supernaturals around me. There are so many, but I have to find Rue, Sia, and Styx. We have to figure out what’s going on together.
My heart nearly stumbles out of my chest when my gaze snags on a trembling figure amongst the hoard. She’s wearing a uniform and her blazing animalistic gaze darts around with obvious fear.
Kira. She’s here.
“Kira!” My scream is drowned out by the roar of the crowd, but all I hear is the pounding of my heart in my ears and the sudden pulsing adrenaline kicking through my veins. I can’t explain the suddenness of it.
It must be the intensity of her eyes.
Or the worry in my tone.
Or the fear in my magic.
Because the ground beneath us starts to rock. The tree’s leaves shiver like a cry in the night. The earth itself breaks away. A cracking hole jars through the dirt, and I’m thrown to one side as the dragon man is forced to another. Screams echo among the clatter of rocks and debris. My entire life is literally ripping at the seams.
Long, deathly fingers reach up from the darkness of the pit. White bone and hanging flesh are all I see as my heart freefalls into the depths of my stomach.
And that dire voice calls out to us once more.
“Two teams. There can only be one victorious team. A team to p
rove they possess the rarest and most powerful magic in all the world. The Hallow Hill Prison Games begin now.”
Epilogue
Rueren
It isn’t the screams of death or the storming of boots over uneven ground that wakes me. It isn’t even the way Styx keeps pulling desperately at my arm.
It’s my heartbeat.
Her heartbeat.
It’s slamming against my ribs and chest so hard, it takes my breath away.
Fear.
She feels fear.
And that wakes me instantaneously.
“Where is she?” I demand, and in a flash of movement, I’m on my feet in a cluster of supernaturals covered in blood and armor.
They scream at a group of people on the other side of a deep-etched cliff. The jagged hole in the ground separates us from them. I don't know who the us are here or who the them are, but I can sense that they’re a threat. Those assholes over there, they're not one of us.
“Fucking Extinction Pack,” A man at my side spits as he glares daggers at the enemy across from us. “It’s us or them, and it’s time we wipe out their rare race once and for all.”
I don’t nod, but I do feel his hatred.
I can feel the vibes of violence rising all around us.
We’re in this terrain to kill one another? Another of Krist’s classes, it seems.
That’s not my problem right now. My only focus is finding her. And finding what’s causing her fear.
And ripping that threat to fucking oblivious pieces.
Nothing’s going to hurt her.
Not while I live.
My jaw clenches painfully, and when my gaze lifts to that space across the dark cliff, I lock eyes with the purest dark eyes. Beautiful. Innocent. Deadly.
Everything that Emmera Lucero is made of can be seen in her eyes.
And it just makes my heart pound harder when I realize that she’s one of them.
The Extinction Pack.
The others.
The enemy.
The End.
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A.K. Koonce is a USA Today bestselling author. She’s a mom by day and a fantasy and paranormal romance writer by night. She keeps her fantastical stories in her mind on an endless loop while she tries her best to focus on her actual life and not that of the spectacular, but demanding, fictional characters who always fill her thoughts.
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Aleera Anaya Ceres is an Irish-Mexican mix who enjoys reading, writing, art, and heavy fangirling. When she’s not dreaming up stories about mermaids, she’s daydreaming about all sorts of fantasy creatures. A proud Slytherin from Kansas, she currently lives in Tlaxcala, Mexico with her husband and son.
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