Monster Awakened: Blood Moon Academy Book 2

by Demi Dumond

  I looked at Malachai who had discreetly hid his sword back in his clothes somewhere. One of these days I was going to have to frisk him.

  “We can just go right back to our room if you want, no harm no foul, right?” I asked.

  “She’s the one,” one of the guards said, and the chase was on. The chase meaning I turned and ran. There were too many of them, though and the chase was short-lived and very anticlimactic and ended with me in the arms of four different guards trying to bite and kick and scream to no avail.

  Once they had a good grip on me, they started moving me. I knew at once where we were going. They were taking me to the dungeon.

  I felt bad for Malachai as they dragged him along as well. He had the shit luck of being with the wrong person at the wrong time. “Let him go,” I said, struggling again. “You said it was me you were after.”

  It made no difference. I thought about screaming, but I didn’t see another soul out in the hallways. No students, no teachers, nothing. How the hell had they evacuated everybody so soon? And what the hell was going on? “Okay, here’s a fun topic. Why are you guys after me?”

  “Dark magic violations,” one of the goons said, tutting and shaking his head. “This is not going to end well for you, sweetheart.”

  I swung a leg in that particular goon’s direction, but unfortunately, I didn’t land a kick into his groin, which was what I was aiming for. It wouldn’t have freed me, obviously, but it would have made me feel better.

  The goons continued to haul me toward the dungeon, and I continued to resist.

  The whole way there I tried to fight the flashbacks of Ian bleeding out on the floor of the dark, smelly cell.

  My stomach churned just thinking about that night. I wondered if this was about Tor. Had he confronted the headmaster like he wanted? Had he been captured? Had he ratted me out? Then I wondered if I would survive the night in that dungeon.

  Then I thought about Rafe, and Ian. I had people who cared about me now. Maybe they’d find a way to help. A sliver of hope rose in me, just before we turned down the final hallway to where I knew the trap door entrance to the dungeon was.

  The whole noisy journey through the school we had never seen another soul. Where the hell was everybody? And if the headmaster really had this level of control at the school, how was it that a fucking dragon was able to run around eating students?

  “Don’t do this,” I said to the guards. “I can pay you. I have, like seven dollars in my savings account. That’s three full sized candy bars!”

  They laughed as they opened the hatch. The next thing I knew things got dark as they dragged me down the stairs.

  The floor hatch, now above me, shut with a loud reverberating clank.

  35

  Kiera

  My heart sank at the sound of the hatch closing. Would I ever get to go to class again? Or see my friends? How had things gone so wrong so fast?

  The dungeon looked different this time. Light, that was it. The lights were on this time. If anything, being able to see upped the fear factor down here.

  The place looked old and was covered in several layers of dust, like it hadn’t been used in centuries.

  Desks sat unused in front of us. There was what looked like a sign-in sheet on the closest desk. As I stared at it, I realized the pen on top of the paper looked like a quill. It had been a very long time since things were on the up and up in this dungeon.

  The goons who had a hold of me pushed me toward the back of the room to where the cells were. And then I heard the shuffling of feet coming from that direction.

  When I had been here before there was only Ian. And the door was open. And he was left for dead. It sounded like there were people in here now.

  “My name’s Keira, that’s e-i-r-a, and it’s with a K and not a C,” I said.

  “What?” one of the goons asked.

  I nodded at the sign in sheet. “That’s my name, aren’t you going to sign me in, assign me a cell, that kind of thing. I want my phone call.”

  “Keira?” a voice rang out. It came from the direction of the cell. It was Ian. Shit. I had dragged him into it again.

  Only the entrance of the dungeon was well lit, and as the guards pulled me toward the cell and I struggled, I squinted to see who else was there.

  Fuck. It was everyone I was counting on to save me. Ian, Rafe, Ivy, me, and Malachai. Even Tor. The gang was all here. We were fucked. That’s when I knew I was going to die in this dungeon. At least I wouldn’t be alone.

  A guard pushed me forward so hard that I fell face first onto the cold, gray stone dungeon floor.

  “Leave her alone,” Malachai said, struggling in vain against his own guards.

  I rolled over to look the dick guard in the face. And that’s when I saw it, a blue light flashed in his eyes. I’d seen that flash before. My mind raced back in time, to that night. The night I was first brought to the academy.

  The guard laughed as the realization washed over me. He was the same guy. The robber from the night I used my magic the first time, the same night I got here. The one who the guards who brought me in let go. No wonder. Now it made sense. This whole thing was a setup from the very beginning.

  Still laughing at the joke, the guard picked me up roughly and threw me in the cell with the rest of them, followed by Malachai.

  The guys in the cell were already glaring and circling each other. Great.

  The heavy, cell door clanged shut on all of my hopes, dreams, and future.

  “I have bad news,” I said to them all. They deserved to know. “We’re going to die here. And the whole thing was a setup. That guard there, he’s the one who tried to rob me the night I was brought here. I’m guessing I’m not the only one. We were all probably tricked into using our magic, then dragged here only to be trapped by the magical wards.”

  I pointed at the guard who now joined the others taking up guard positions in various parts of the room. Having that many guards seemed excessive considering we were all trapped behind the heavy iron door and all, but whatever.

  “What are you saying?” Ivy asked.

  “We’re not the elite, we’re the dregs, the outcasts, the misfits of magic. We’re in here because nobody’s going to miss us. Nobody even cares that we’re gone.”

  The room started to spin when the full weight of the realization hit me. I sat on the floor to keep from falling down.

  Ian sat down next to me and put a hand on my shoulder, his face was a mask of concern. “You okay, love?”

  I ignored the question.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m doing a lot better than I was the last time you found me down here.”

  I know he was trying, but I just couldn’t bring myself to find the bright side of all this.

  To make matters worse, Rafe and Malachai were circling each other and snarling. The guards were laughing and taking bets on the winner.

  The whole situation didn’t feel real. Reality didn’t feel real. It couldn’t end like this.

  I heard one of the guard’s radios squawk, but I wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. They grumbled, something about missing the fight.

  I looked up to see them organizing and packing up. It looked like they were leaving. I let myself perk up with a little bit of hope.

  If there weren’t a dozen guards in here watching our every move, maybe we could find a way out of this.

  My hope went to confusion when the guard who tried to rob me approached the cell with a small, blinking device in his hand. He winked at me. “You guys are going to love this part.”

  He stuck the device to the cell door lock. What the fuck was happening? Why would he break us out? Or is he blowing us up?

  Either way, as soon as he had placed it, he signaled to the other guards and they all filed out of the room and up the stairs quickly. And noisily.

  All of us got up and backed up as far as possible to the back of the cell wall hoping not to get blown to smithereens.

  The loud clunk
y boots of the guards were making a racket that could probably be heard all the way on the upper floor.

  We students never made that much noise down here. Because if we did, it would draw the monsters.

  Despite the obvious explosive device beeping faster and faster, my ears ignored it. I listened intently for the one noise I wanted to hear right now. The closing of the upstairs hatch.

  I waited. The sound of steel toed boots echoed off into the distance and then disappeared. Still no loud door clank. Every passing second without that sound raised my anxiety level.

  And then there was the boom. I should have covered my ears. Once the blast hit, I couldn’t hear anything except muted ringing.

  I checked my body, but I didn’t see or feel any injuries. I looked at the others and they seemed okay too. The iron door seemed to have taken the brunt of the blast.

  The cell door didn’t just blast open, it blew off its hinges and fell over with a very loud clank. Too loud.

  We were free. Celebrations broke out around me. I couldn’t hear it, but I could see the fist pumps and the smiles. I didn’t join in. I was trying to warn them to be quiet.

  Those guards hadn’t freed us, they had trapped us. And if I was right, the monsters were coming.

  36

  Keira

  Like me, the rest of my friends probably couldn’t hear very well. I knew this because they were still smiling when the first of the monsters came down the open hatch above us.

  Then I saw their expressions change as they scattered. We regrouped at the back of the room, out of the cell, and waited for them to advance.

  The monster hadn’t come down the stairs alone. In fact, our only advantage was that they generally had to come down the hatch in single file in order to fit.

  Very soon we’d be outnumbered. I saw Ivy and Rafe shedding clothes and Ian poking around looking for weapons. Tor joined him. He had been a dragon, but he wasn’t a shifter, he was just a mage.

  The monsters advanced toward us, shrieking with glee. They were a mass of colors and tentacles, horns and spikes, fangs and venom.

  Anger rose inside me. At the headmaster, at the guards and the monsters, and at the magical wards trapping us in this place. And mostly at the futility of it all.

  I stepped forward, between my friends and the monsters and assumed my magic stance.

  My hearing must have started to come back, because I heard my friends yelling for me to get back to the relative safety of the wall.

  There wasn’t a chance in hell of that happening though. If I was going out today, I was going to take a shit ton of monsters with me.

  The spell rose inside me with the anger. I didn’t even remember reading this one. It was just there, inside me, waiting to get out.

  I released the spell in a wide angle at the monsters. They screamed as the blast hit them. Even though my hearing hadn’t fully returned, I still had to cover my ears at the noise.

  When I looked up again, there were no monsters left to attack. Not whole monsters anyway, my dark magic had cut them to pieces.

  I went down on one knee, sucking in air. Whatever that spell was, it knocked the wind out of me. Ian and Rafe rushed to my side.

  I looked up and managed a weak smile. Malachai was right there too.

  “How did you do that?” Malachai asked.

  I decided to come clean. “You were right, Malachai. Using the forbidden magic is changing me. It’s taking over. I might as well use it to help you guys.”

  “No,” Ian objected. “Let us defend you, Keira. Don’t do this. Not if it’s going to hurt you.”

  “Haven’t you been listening?” I snapped. “We’re dead anyway. I guess I’m just stubbornly prolonging the inevitable.”

  As soon as I got the words out, I heard the skittering of monsters above us. A new wave was coming down the stairs of the hatch. Break time was officially over.

  This time, as soon as the monsters came down the stairs, Malachai, Ian, and Tor raced forward. I heard snarls behind me, and I knew that Ivy and Rafe had shifted.

  They raced ahead to take on the first wave of monsters before they could even get to the mages.

  I took a step back. There was no way I could let loose a blast of my dark magic with my friends in the way. I looked around for anything that I could use as a weapon.

  One of the guards must have dropped a billy club. I grabbed it and joined the fray. It felt good to fight back. For a moment, everything didn’t feel quite so futile.

  Then I heard Ivy scream. A monster had stabbed her leg with a horn. A quick glance around told me that we were once again surrounded, and monsters continued to shove themselves down the stairs.

  “Get back!” I yelled to them. “Behind me, quick!”

  Rafe helped Ivy get to the back of the room. Once again, my dark magic was bubbling inside, trying to get out. This spell was different, and fire came out of my fingertips.

  The heat was so intense and the flames so bright that I had to close my eyes. The screaming of the monsters was the same.

  Then the light and the screaming and the heat died down. I scanned the monster bodies for signs of life and saw none. Then everything went dark.

  37

  Kiera

  I blinked and saw Malachai’s face. His lips were moving, but the words weren’t matching up, or they were moving in slow motion. What was wrong with him?

  Then in a rush everything came back into focus. “What happened?”

  “You passed out, I think,” I heard Ian’s voice say.

  “What about the monsters?” I asked.

  “It’s quiet for now, but they’ll be back,” Rafe said.

  “Get the hatch,” I practically screamed. Sure, we’d be stuck down here without food and water for who knows how long, but the one thing I knew for sure was that I was pretty much out of magic for now.

  Rafe, naked and in human form now, rushed across the room and started to climb the stairs.

  Then he froze. We all heard the clackety-clack of the skittering monsters. I let out a heavy sigh. This was it. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t survive another blast like that last one. I looked at my blackened fingers.

  “Rafe,” I whispered, “come back.”

  “Wait!” he said.

  We all waited, wondering what was going on at the hatch. Then Rafe backed up to let whatever it was come down the stairs. What the hell?

  Then the last person I expected came into view. It was Professor Kiln. She looked around at our battle worn faces, the blown cell door, and the piled-up monster carcasses and tutted. “This has gone too far.”

  I looked at her, pointy hat and all. She had just uttered the understatement of the year. And yet, I was so happy to see her.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you back to your rooms.”

  We all stood there unmoving. I was glad that she was helping us, don’t get me wrong, but even if we get out of the dungeon, where do we go from here?

  “Um,” I said, clearing my throat. “What good is it going to do us to go back to our rooms if the headmaster is still trying to kill us?”

  “He won’t know you survived yet. I’ll report back that his stupid plan worked. Then I have to figure out how to turn the tables on him.”

  “Hey,” I said to her. “You should know that this whole thing is a setup. It’s a trap. The headmaster looks for loner kids or castoffs and then attacks us, forcing us to use magic. Then he kidnaps us and takes us here. The guards are in on it. I recognized the guy who attacked me in the real world.”

  Professor Kiln thought about it and her eyebrows knotted together in concern. “That’s not good news at all. What are you up to, Julius? My working theory is that we’re all stuck in some sort of time bubble. Until we can find a way out of here we’re screwed. Okay kids, I’ll get to work on this, and you guys lay low.”

  She looked lost in thought for a moment, like she forgot we were all here as she stared at the dismembered body of a spotted purple horned monster. �
��Or you can wait around here for another wave of monsters. Your choice.”

  Her idea of getting back to our rooms sounded great to me. It was Way better than staying here. I had never been this tired in my life.

  And if she was going to stand up to the headmaster with us, then maybe we had a chance after all.

  Malachai helped me up the stairs and we all made our way back to the upper level, constantly looking over our shoulders, fearing another wave of monsters.

  “Where do the monsters come from?” I asked Kiln.

  “You don’t want to know,” she said. “Just be aware there’s a never-ending supply down here. Don’t trifle with them.”

  “For the record, we weren’t trifling with them, they were trifling with us.”

  38

  Keira

  And then we were upstairs to relative safety. No sirens were blaring, no lights were flashing, and there were no weird sentinels roamed the halls.

  Everything had gone back to normal without us. It was a chilling thought.

  “You kids try to stay out of trouble for a few hours,” Professor Kiln said as she clomped her way down the hallway in her sensible block heels.

  After a moment, the rest of us huddled.

  “Maybe we should all stay here at me and Ivy’s place?” I asked. “Strength in numbers?”

  “I think we should split up,” Ian said. “Just for now. Why make it easy on the headmaster and be all in one place?”

  “Good point,” Ivy said.

  “I don’t want to leave you here,” Malachai said to me.

  I looked around at the worried faces. Then I got an idea. “We have to get out of here, right? And the one safe place for us is the woods.” I turned to Tor. “The woods are safe, right? I mean, you were the scariest thing out there.”

  “I know those woods like the back of my hand.” He smiled. “If we grab some supplies, we can stay out there as long as we need to.”