Half-Blood Academy 4: Magic Unchained: an academy reverse harem paranormal romance

by Meg Xuemei X

  In a blink of blinding light, Ares and Lucifer broke through the wards and materialized in my quarters, rocks raining down from the ceiling at their battering force.

  Paxton and I traded a furious and frustrated look. Lust still swam in our blood, and the mating frenzy raged within us, uncaring that the situation had changed and it would be hard to continue under the dire circumstances.

  CHAPTER 20

  __________________

  His amber eyes searing with murderous rage, Axel lunged at his father, thrusting his longsword toward Ares’s chest to impale the god’s heart.

  The God of War ducked like a flash and shoved away his son’s blade with his gold shield made by the God of Blacksmiths as he propelled his spear toward Axel’s throat.

  “No!” I cried in fear and fury as I charged toward Ares to defend my mate.

  But Axel twisted away easily, brought his blade from the side, and rammed it into Ares’s spear.

  Father and the son charged, parried, and crashed in a flurry of movement. Steel crossed and fists pounded.

  Ares laughed. “I taught you well, son.”

  “You tortured my mate.” Axel spat with hatred. “You nearly killed her, motherfucker! I’m going to kill you for what you did to her.”

  “The title is quite fitting,” Ares said with an ironic smirk. “I did fuck your mother, and you’re the unfortunate result.”

  Axel leapt, bringing his sword down toward Ares’s head to split it into two. Ares slammed his shield toward his son’s blade, but Axel changed the direction of his attack. His long sword made an arc and sliced from Ares’s shoulder to his arm guard.

  Blood spilled from the god.

  Ares snarled, wheeled, and thrust his spear toward Axel’s chest, aiming for his son’s heart. Axel bent backward, shooting his foot out, and kicked Ares in his kidney.

  Ares staggered back. “I’ll finish you off today, you ungrateful brat.”

  Axel hissed back. “And I’m going to cut you into pieces and eat your heart. You made an enemy out of me the moment you laid your claws on my mate.”

  They crashed into each other, drawing blood once again. When they separated, the war god stabbed his spear toward his son’s eyes.

  The sadist fucker wanted to blind my mate.

  Axel lashed out his hand, faster than light, and caught the shaft of the spear, the spearhead two inches from his left eye.

  Héctor zoomed in to them, sailing his broad blade toward Ares’s neck.

  “Guard our mate!” Zak shouted at Paxton as he flew toward Ares, too, his sword raised high.

  I did not need to be guarded. I was not a damsel, as I had told them hundreds of times. I wanted my share of stabbing my enemies in the back.

  Bloodlust boiled in my veins, temporarily replacing my carnal lust for my mates.

  A war cry tore from my throat.

  I twirled my twin swords, my fingers itching for violence. Hellfire whooshed onto the blades, hissing, looking for prey.

  On the other side of the room, Loki and his dukes battled Lucifer to hold him back, trying to buy me time to flee.

  “Run, Celeste!” Loki shouted.

  “There’s nowhere to run in Hell, cousin,” I said. “I thought you knew that. Let’s just fucking end this.”

  Reeling, Lucifer hacked his black sword left and right at his son and the dukes, like a great serpent trying to throw off a pack of coyotes. Loki was still holding his ground, but the dukes had all been wounded within a minute.

  They needed my help.

  Paxton nodded at me. He always trusted my abilities and never held me back.

  “Stay alive, Buttercup. We have unfinished business,” he said, his violet eyes flashing both heat and battle frenzy.

  “And I look forward to giving it a final fine touch,” I promised back.

  We divided. He charged toward Ares with his ice power, joining his cousins to besiege the war god.

  I stalked to Lucifer, gave the dukes a pointed look, and thrust my chin at the archdemons and their demon army that had just flooded into the room. The dukes peeled off and engaged the demons while I took their place beside their prince.

  After giving his black fur a good shake, my hellhound leapt in the air, his fangs locking into the throat of a yellow-horned demon.

  “To Icy Dagger!” Lisa called from outside my quarters and hurried in, tossing spells at the demons nearest the door.

  “To Princess Icy Dagger!” Our half-blood classmates and some mages shouted and joined the battle.

  Everyone in Hell was terrified of Lucifer, yet my friends in Hell’s Academy still threw their lot in with me, choosing to die for me.

  I hadn’t thought I’d find this kind of loyalty in Hell, and my heart warmed.

  Rocks kept plummeting from the ceiling. And now they twirled through the room like an asteroid belt under the influence of all sorts of force fields erected by different combatants.

  Carefully avoiding the paths of the rocks, Loki and I flanked and charged Lucifer in sync.

  The fallen archangel fended off us easily. He was one of the most ancient creatures in the universe, and he’d been living, breathing, and shitting on the battlefield for eons. Loki and I were atoms compared to him. We weren’t even fetuses.

  Yet Loki and I managed to latch onto him. As soon as he threw us off, we got up and charged him again like two too-stubborn bulldogs.

  Our blades crossed with Lucifer’s in different arcs and angles. I even booted the devil in the knees twice, but poor Loki got punched in the nose once and glared at me. I blamed his father for ducking too fast.

  After a few bouts, Lucifer had given us more slices on our skin than we’d graced the fucker with, but we still didn’t retreat. I shouted encouragement at Loki and threw insults at Lucifer until both of them yelled for me to shut up.

  “Which side are you on, Loki?” I barked, driving one of my swords toward Lucifer’s tendon and the other to his waist so Loki could hack at the top of the devil’s torso. I expected him to give Lucifer’s throat a nice, deep cut.

  “Your amateur pep talk is annoying,” Loki sneered, swinging his blade toward Lucifer’s armpit. “You keep forgetting who the pro is here.”

  Lucifer spun like a dark, vicious wind and deflected our assaults with his twin swords.

  “Loki, why the fuck did you choose to aim the tip of your dagger at the devil’s armpit?” It caused my good moves to be wasted. “It isn’t like it smells good or something. I gave you an opening to cut his upper torso and above. You should stab him in the eye or run your blade through the hollow of his throat!”

  Loki snickered. “You think it’s that easy to get my blade close to the hollow of his throat? I didn’t see you succeed in running your very long sword through his guts either, even though his belly is much broader than his neck.”

  My face reddened in anger. “This isn’t going to work if you don’t know how to work with me. When I go low, you should go high. And then you should distract and engage him long enough for me to sneak to his blindside and stab him in the back.”

  “You should not reveal our secret plan in front of the enemy,” Loki warned.

  “I need you to get it!”

  “I got it, but my strategy is different than yours, and I’m taking the lead here.”

  Lucifer snapped. “You two are the most insufferable brats I’ve ever been unfortunate enough to deal with. You two are the worst examples in Hell.”

  Loki and I lunged at the devil to deliver new strikes.

  Lucifer moved like dark lightning from a deep cave. Suddenly, he was faster than my eyes could track. He sliced a five-inch gash along Loki’s thigh. Blood gushed from the prince’s leg through his ruined armor.

  I moved in, like the wind, to stab the fucker’s sides, my swords closing in on him. But he inserted his blades near his body, pushed outward, and blocked my steel.

  His leg kicked behind him as Loki dashed toward his back, and made contact on Loki’s forehead before the
prince could land a blow. Loki stumbled back with a painful yelp.

  I jumped back before the devil could twirl his swords at an angle that would cut me in half.

  The motherfucker was too strong.

  “You shouldn’t have betrayed me, son,” Lucifer said, his cold, cruel voice brimming with something worse than a death threat.

  Loki shuddered, though I knew he didn’t want to. For a second, his old and new fear of his father permeated the air.

  He swallowed, pushing down his apprehension.

  “What did you expect, father? Like father, like son,” Loki said defiantly.

  “If you turn against Celeste and hand her over to me, all will be forgiven,” Lucifer said.

  Loki answered by attacking his father with white-hot fury. I backed him up with my hissing twin swords.

  “Loki is nothing like you, Lucifer,” I said as our weapons locked in a parry. “He’ll be more of a ruler than you can ever be, like my mother.” I raised my voice and let it reach every corner of the room while the battle raged. “Queen Lilith built the realm of Hell. You were jealous of her great power, so you stole it.”

  Ares turned in our direction with a vicious grin on his face, listening. The God of War loved chaos and conflict more than anything.

  “Who told you that false story?” Lucifer snorted. “Was it my unworthy, treacherous son here? Was that how he turned you against me so he could use you?”

  “He didn’t need to do a damn thing,” I said. “I already knew what you did to me. You and Ares tried to steal my power as you did to my mother, but you failed. And Loki isn’t the only one who duped you.”

  I jerked a thumb toward Ares, who dueled against my mates on the other side of the room.

  “Your old pal over there cheated on you with your queen, and you didn’t even suspect,” I said, a savage grin on my lips. “How could Queen Lilith, who was stripped of her power, get into the Void? Only a powerful Olympian god could help her.”

  Lucifer snapped his head toward Ares—he must have already been pondering how Lilith had outmaneuvered him. A little lie wrapped in a half-truth could easily deteriorate their weak alliance. And the devil and the god had many common traits—they were both extremely suspicious, paranoid, cruel, destructive, and utterly arrogant and selfish.

  I watched the seed I’d just planted in the devil’s mind grow.

  A blind rage flashed across Lucifer’s eyes. Red horns suddenly protruded from his temples. My mother was still his weakness—probably his only weakness.

  Ares narrowed his eyes at me and growled. “That cunning little whore is lying. She’s trying to drive a wedge between us. I never banged Lilith.”

  I chortled. “Of course you’d say that, Ares. You’re the notorious conqueror, and Queen Lilith is even more beautiful and interesting than your former lover, Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty. In every woman’s eyes, you’re more attractive and shrewd than Lucifer. They say you have a bigger dick.”

  Lucifer’s horns were turning dark crimson.

  “And you’ve competed with Lucifer from the moment both of you came to Earth,” I continued. “You were with Lilith when she was most vulnerable, when she was having a marital issue with her king. Didn’t you tell me, when you took me to your magical castle and shamelessly flirted with me, that the devil’s ultimate goal was to reclaim the heaven he lost? You mocked his falling and told me how sorry you felt for my mother, the beauty of the universe, for being tied to a loser. You only allied with your rival again after you realized that you couldn’t tear me away from my mates without Lucifer’s help.”

  “Lies!” Ares interrupted me rudely. “I met Lilith only once and shared a glass of wine with her. That’s all.”

  A trace of hellfire sparked on Lucifer’s horns.

  “I’ll have a word with you after this is over, Ares,” Lucifer said softly.

  The God of War wasn’t Lucifer’s match in Hell’s realm, so instead of going against Lucifer, as I’d planned for him to do, he snagged his attention on me while fending off the demigods.

  “I await the day I will truly break you and make you scream, you lying bitch!” he hissed.

  “You won’t lay your filthy claws on my mate,” Axel snarled. “You fucking filthy old dog! We’re going to end you today.”

  My demigods battled the god in a blur again.

  “I’ll kill you, brat.” Ares’s voice reached me while he fought my mates in the vortex. Yet none of them could have their full power in this realm. “And I’ll take your woman.”

  “You’ll die, fucker,” Paxton told the god. “We’ll cut you to pieces and feed you to my mate’s hellhound.”

  I sailed my swords toward Lucifer’s middle. “Your queen got back at you for your betrayal, too. Instead of giving you the most powerful heir, as you’d dreamt of for ages, she chose to mate with a more powerful male and birthed me. But without your friend Ares, she could never have gotten to the Void and had her revenge on you.”

  Lucifer pulled his lips back and snarled like a beast. “Silence!”

  Loki chuckled in delight, loving every minute of it, but he shouldn’t have laughed.

  Hellfire blasted out of Lucifer, hotter than heavenly fire. Loki’s and my hellfire surged out to meet Lucifer’s.

  My Titan power stirred at the depths of my magical well. Since my mates had fed me, I was starting to break through the dark spells Lucifer and Ares had placed in me, but I needed more time to completely break free and get stronger.

  My Living Flame was still not activated, though I could feel it twirling inside me as it tried to rise and defend me.

  Beads of cold sweat dotted my forehead, and I breathed icy steam as Lucifer’s hellfire overcame the combined hellfire from Loki and me.

  We staggered back at the devil’s brutal force, and he smiled coldly.

  “Hold on, Loki,” I called with effort. “Just hold on a little longer. We can do this!”

  Loki nodded, his teeth clattering and clenching.

  Burning, pressure, and agony filled my body as Lucifer’s power kept pressing on us.

  Just as my bones felt like they would shatter, a stream of cool strength flowed into me. New powers were forming inside me like springs of water.

  The buried spark caught, blossoming into a tiny fire. My Flame of Rainbows finally came around, though it wasn’t strong enough to do anything yet. A wild wind twirled around the tiny rainbow flame, fueling it. An ice storm came next, pushing the flame up. Death light popped up, shielding my flame. And then lightning appeared, entwining with my fire and infusing it with demigod power.

  My mates’ magics had just joined my Flame of Rainbows to create the Living Flame.

  A sense of joy brimmed in me, but then worry also washed over me.

  The Living Flame was only half-formed since my last mate and I hadn’t finished the mating ritual. And I wasn’t sure if an incomplete Living Flame could take down the devil and the god.

  With only half of the Living Flame, I had only one chance to strike my enemies. I had to wait for the perfect window.

  I was tempted, but there was no way that Paxton and I could finish mating while the battle raged on in every corner of the room.

  Lisa, her mage friends, and our half-blood classmates fought beside the dukes against the pureblood demons. Some of my allies had fallen.

  My hellhound had lost an ear, and there was a long gash on his massive shoulder, the blood from it coating his shiny fur. My valiant hound jumped onto another giant demon, snarling and clawing and biting his foe.

  My demigods pushed the sheet of their joined energy beams at Ares. The god countered with his Glory, but his power was weakened in Hell. They were at an impasse for the moment.

  Lucifer’s hellfire grew even more powerful, caging Loki and me. It singed us and blistered our skin. Loki groaned in pain.

  “Hold on,” I hissed.

  My mates roared in rage, sensing my pain through our bond. They tried to reach me, but they were still in
the vortex with Ares, locked with the god.

  I’m fine. I got this, I shouted through our bond.

  Mind over matter.

  I shut my eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and opened myself to this realm, just like Mom had taught me how to feed.

  The core of the inferno connected to me, showing me its riches and letting me draw from its pure energy. My hellfire powered up, forming a shield around Loki and myself, and the pressure on us dropped to a ripple.

  Loki gave me an appreciative nod, his tired eyes sparking with renewed hope.

  Maybe we stood a chance after all.

  Lucifer widened his eyes, then his nostrils flared and fumed, emitting a puff of smoke and fire.

  “It can’t be.” He spat like a barbarian. “I’m the sole master of the domain. I do not share power. Only I can feed from this realm.”

  I shrugged. “It seems the realm doesn’t agree with you, dude. It no longer owes you absolute loyalty. Hell belongs to my mother, too, and I’m her heir. If I’d learned that truth earlier, I could have kicked your ugly ass sooner.”

  Loki chortled. “No one has called him ‘ugly ass’ before.”

  Lucifer’s nostrils fumed again, his pitiless eyes burning with a fallen archangel’s rage. He started murmuring a string of ancient chants and curses.

  “Don’t let him finish, Celeste!” Loki shouted and tossed his Hell power at his father, endeavoring to stop the chanting.

  I threw a spare dagger toward the devil’s eye, but Lucifer swatted it away. He was good at multitasking. Then, a dark purple wave surged out of him, pierced through Loki’s and my combined hellfire and force field, and crashed into us.

  The purple light wrapped around Loki, twirling until it bound him like chains.

  When the purple light tried to chain me, it bounced right off me, as a wave of crimson light bled out of me, forming a cocoon around me. However, my new shield didn’t extend the same courtesy to the prince.

  I’d never had a good grasp of how to use my shield. It had automatically shielded me when I’d passed out after dueling Paxton, when the sea demigod had let Jack beat me near to death. But my shield had failed to protect me when Lucifer and Ares combined their forces to attack me in the Ever Realm. I had no idea why or how it popped out to resist Lucifer now.