Zodiac Academy 5: Cursed Fates: An Academy Bully Romance (Supernatural Bullies and Beasts)

by Caroline Peckham

  “I heard,” Fran said coolly. “But you’re still just a freshman who’s going to be a liability. This isn’t child’s play.”

  “Firstly, I’m almost nineteen, and secondly, I’m well aware it’s not child’s play. I was aware when I battled for my life and the lives of my friends at the palace. I was aware when I fought at Lance’s side when the academy was attacked. I was also aware when I turned a bunch of Nymphs to dust because they can’t stand the power of my Phoenix fire. So just to be clear, I’m aware.”

  Orion fought a smirk, glancing at Fran as she clucked her tongue in annoyance. “Well this is on your head, Lance.”

  “Noted.” He saluted her and she rolled her eyes.

  “What’s the intel?” Darius asked, looking seriously impatient to start killing Nymphs.

  Fran stood up straighter, looking more professional. “Some kids were playing in the abandoned house down there. Their parents said they showed up at home screaming, saying they saw a Nymph. I wouldn’t have taken it seriously only we’ve had a few sightings out this way the past week. It’s probably nothing, but I thought we could check this one out together just to be sure.”

  “Why would Nymphs be here?” Orion asked with a frown. “There’s hardly any Fae to feed on. That’s not their usual style.”

  “Beats me.” Fran shrugged. “There’s a town not too far from here, maybe there’s a few picking off anyone who strays into the woods. But this far out? Doesn’t seem likely to me. We’ll probably be back in our beds within an hour.”

  “Well there’s only one way to find out,” Darius said. “Come on.”

  He took off into the trees sloping down toward the gothic building and I followed with Orion and Fran. The trees were thick and the path we followed was so overgrown that I couldn’t imagine anyone had used it for years.

  Orion lit a dim Faelight to guide the way forward, the amber glow just enough to ignite the path. Fran moved behind him so I was forced to the back and I had the feeling that was intentional.

  The hoot of an owl made my heart tick faster and I gathered magic in my palms to steel my nerves.

  I am a Solarian Princess with a bucketload of power in my veins. The Nymphs should be afraid. Definitely not the other way around. Definitely definitely.

  The trees opened up at the base of the hill and we emerged before the huge manor house which looked long abandoned. Moss was climbing the dark brick walls and the ancient door was hanging off its hinges, blowing in the wind and making a creaking noise that sent a chill into my blood. Most of the windows were smashed and the inside was thick with shadow.

  “What is this place?” I whispered, feeling Darius casting a silencing bubble around us.

  “The only information linked to it is that it belonged to someone called Kreevan Dire,” Fran answered and Orion turned sharply toward her, his brow creasing.

  “Dire?” he questioned, his jaw tight.

  “Yeah, have you heard of him?” she asked curiously and I glanced over at Darius as he strode up to one of the windows and peered inside.

  “He was an old friend of my dad’s,” Orion murmured as he took the sword from his hip, his taut expression making me certain there was more he wasn’t saying. Which meant he was keeping it from Fran. Which also meant he kept secrets from her. Which made me even more curious about what it was he was hiding.

  We strode toward the house and Fran took hold of Orion’s arm. “Let’s do a sweep and head in around back.” She directed me toward Darius. “You two check out the front rooms. If you find anything, Darius, use the usual signal.”

  “I’ll stay with Darcy,” Orion said immediately.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Lance, it’s just a sweep. Besides, she said she’s aware, remember?” Fran insisted, tugging him on and I had half a mind to yank her ponytail for that sarcastic comment.

  “It’s fine,” I promised Orion, not wanting Fran to think I was some scared little mouse who needed to hold her teacher’s hand on this mission. But I knew Orion wasn’t going to leave me that easily, so I looked into his eyes and ignored the beautiful Fae clinging to his arm. “I’ll be with Darius.”

  He clenched his jaw then turned to his friend. “She doesn’t leave your sight.”

  “Got it,” Darius agreed, then heaved himself through a window and dropped inside, beckoning me after him.

  Fran led Orion towards the other end of the house and he glanced back over his shoulder at me with a frown. I gave him a thumbs up and he scowled, apparently not comforted by that. But if he thought I was so capable then he really shouldn’t have expected to babysit me through this.

  I walked up to the window, taking hold of the ledge and hauling myself up into the house. Darius held out a hand to help me, but I ignored it, landing on the floor beside him a second later, brushing the muck from my hands onto my jeans. I didn’t know if he was being nice or if he thought I was incapable, but I was sure as shit gonna prove him wrong if it was the latter.

  The room smelled musty and old furniture was rotting around the space. Pictures hung at awkward angles on the walls, layered with dust which concealed whatever was in their frames. To say it was creepy was the understatement of the decade.

  “Stay close,” Darius murmured, tightening his silencing bubble around us and casting a low Faelight above us. I brought magic to my fingertips as he led the way out of the room, every footstep we took making the floorboards creak, sounding achingly loud in my ears. Despite the silencing bubble, it still made my breath quicken and my heart pitter-patter.

  We moved into an old hallway where a wooden staircase led up to another level, but headed past it, moving strategically through the front rooms and checking they were clear.

  We arrived in a large kitchen and a vile smell hit the back of my throat. An old refrigerator stood open and mould clung to everything inside it. It must have been years and years old, yet the scent was still pungent enough to make me gag.

  “What the hell happened here?” I hissed.

  “Looks like whoever lived here upped and left in a hurry,” Darius murmured.

  “Or died in a hurry,” I said thickly, covering my mouth.

  “Yeah, or that,” he grunted, glancing around the room then ushering me back the way we’d come. “Nothing here.”

  “There’s a door there.” I pointed behind him. It was just beyond the fridge and had no handle, but there’d been a door just like it in one of my foster homes that led to a hidden games room.

  Darius frowned, moving to the wooden door which blended with the panels, but it was clear there was a slight gap around the edges. He rapped his knuckles on the wood and the hollow noise that came in response made him look to me in surprise. “Well aren’t you an observant little shrew.”

  “Less of the shrew,” I said, pursing my lips.

  “Can’t call you Gwen, can’t call you shrew…” he muttered under his breath as he pushed the door to see if it would open.

  It didn’t give and I fought a smile as I closed in behind him. But I wasn’t going to offer him the satisfaction of seeing it.

  Darius placed his fingers against the wood and a flicker of light pulsed across it. A lock clicked and my heart lurched as he beckoned me closer before opening it.

  I took a steadying breath, ready to cast magic at any second as he pushed it open. A line of dust cascaded over him and the hinges protested as the door swung wide. An even more disgusting scent slammed into me and I wrinkled my nose, my eyes burning. Death hung everywhere. I didn’t even have to see the body to know it was there. But as I moved into the room with Darius, I saw it.

  The dead guy was hunched over a desk, his skeletal frame still wearing tattered, moth-eaten clothes. His bony fingers rested on a piece of paper and curiosity got the better of me as I raised a hand to my face and cast a bubble of air around my mouth and nose to keep out the smell. Cringing at the eyeless sockets of the dead Fae, I tugged the piece of paper from under his hand, sending his thumb bone cracking off and tumbling o
nto the floor. Oh shit.

  A humming filled my ears and I gasped as the familiar tingle of Astrum’s magic called to me in the air. It made no sense at all to feel it here, but I knew it was true down to the depths of my bones. There was a Tarot card close by and as my gaze raked down the dead body, I spotted it clutched in his other hand. Darius was already turning to the door, clearly done with this room and I snatched it fast before tucking it into my back pocket.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Darius just as a clattering noise sounded somewhere beneath our feet.

  “The cellar,” Darius hissed, turning and racing from the room. I darted after him, folding the page and stuffing it into my pocket as I took chase, my heart hammering like mad.

  A creepy noise had come from the cellar so that was where we were headed. Great. Perfect. Not at all an issue.

  We made it to the dark hallway and Darius ran toward the door under the stairs. It stood ajar and my heart stumbled as he pushed it open. I kept close to him, my arm rubbing his as we stepped into the space, his Faelight just illuminating the top of the shadowy stairs that descended underground.

  A bang came from somewhere down there and my heart jolted. Shit shit shit.

  “It’s probably just an animal,” Darius whispered despite not having to in his silencing bubble. “But we need to be ready.”

  I raised my hands and gave him a nod of solidarity. He started descending the stairs and I stayed as close as his shadow, taking slow breaths to try and calm my rampant heartbeat. Another bang made my chest constrict and as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Darius extinguished his light, plunging us into total darkness.

  His hand curled around mine, pulling me tight to the side of his body. “Here,” he breathed then his fingers brushed over my eyelids and magic tingled across them. When I reopened my eyes, I could see the way ahead. It wasn’t like daylight, more like the shadows lifting just enough to see where I was going.

  Darius moved forward through a stone archway and I followed him into a huge cellar piled high with boxes and lined with rusted shelves. There was a scent of damp in the air and the cold was biting.

  We moved into the labyrinth of decaying rubbish; there were piles and piles of mouldy newspapers, metal tools filled the shelves and all kinds of useless objects were stacked everywhere.

  A clang rang in my ears and my heart thundered against my ribcage.

  Something is in here with us.

  We rounded the end of an aisle of shelving and I held my breath as my gaze landed on the man kneeling on the floor at the far end of the room, a mountain of stuff surrounding him. He was shirtless and frenzied, digging through boxes and throwing handfuls of garbage aside. Whenever he found anything metal, he looked closely at it then threw it onto the floor with a clang that echoed through my skull. His lank hair was long and sticking to his sweaty skin. He started grunting, panting, seeming desperate as he upended more boxes and ripped the contents apart. It was clear he was looking for something, but what?

  Darius raised his hands and my throat tightened as flames flickered at his fingertips.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed. The guy might have been crazy, but that didn’t mean we should attack him.

  “Nymph,” he growled, the hate in his voice clear.

  “How can you tell?” I breathed as the man threw a box of screwdrivers against the wall and they clattered everywhere.

  “I can’t,” he growled, then stepped forward and sent a blast of fire through the air.

  I gasped as it ringed around the man, taking root in an old mattress and flaring angrily at his legs. The guy shrieked in horror, his eyes finding us in the dark as he wheeled around and my heart rocketed into my throat. There was something so unFae about him, something that proved he was nothing but a creature of darkness.

  “Fae!” he spat, then his skin ripped apart, giving way to a huge monster fresh out of my last nightmare. His huge, tree like body towered up towards the cellar roof and his dark red eyes gleamed with bloodlust.

  Darius raised his hands higher and the fire roared around the Nymph, licking his bark-like skin and drawing a shriek of pain from him. A rattle started up in his body and I knew we only had seconds before it started weakening our magic.

  I lifted my hands too, bringing Phoenix fire to my palms, heat blazing under my skin like an inferno. It exploded from my body in a torrent of red and blue flames, twisting around the Nymph and tearing through it until it turned to a pile of ash. The cloud of embers it left behind swirled through the air and all fell dark once more as mine and Darius’s fire extinguished.

  I took a heavy breath, my eyes finding Darius’s in the dark. I opened my mouth to speak, but a horrible splintering noise sounded like a whip in my ears. We looked up in unison and I spotted the huge, spiderweb crack tearing up the centre of the ceiling. I gasped, my lungs labouring as the entire floor above came crashing down. I saw my death as a ton of rubble tumbled toward us and I threw up my hands on instinct, casting an air shield around us in a dome and forcing as much magic into it as possible. A bathtub slammed into the top of it, bouncing off and smashing to pieces amongst the rest of the bathroom suite as it continued to crash over us. A pipe burst and water cascaded down in a torrential flow, my heart juddering as the carnage piled up around us.

  A flash of movement caught my eye and I spotted Orion in the doorway to what once had been the bathroom high above us. His eyes were frantic with fear but the second he spotted us down below, encased in the solid dome of air, his shoulders sagged.

  “Just so you know, Plan B was me turning into a Dragon and taking the brunt of that,” Darius pointed out and I turned to him with a relieved smile.

  “And yet here you are, Fae sized and safe.”

  He cracked a grin, but it didn’t meet his eyes and that made my heart twist.

  I looked back up at Orion just as a shadow fell over him and I screamed, “Look out!” but my voice only rang around Darius’s silencing bubble. Orion spun around anyway and dove out of sight with his sword raised.

  My lungs compressed with fear and I forced air magic beneath us, elevating us up to the next floor. Our feet hit the mouldy carpet in the doorway and I released the air shield as we both ran forward, fighting to get ahead.

  Orion was nowhere in sight, but I could hear the thump and shouts of a fight somewhere close by. A thwack sounded against the wall of the room down the hall and we ran straight toward it in desperation, passing the mildewed wallpaper as we tore into the bedroom.

  Orion was pinned to the wall by a Nymph, its probes angled toward his chest as he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed at its gut. The creature stumbled backwards with a screech and I released a line of Phoenix fire with a yell of defiance, cleaving it in half before it fell to dust.

  A ragged breath left me as I ran to check that Orion was alright and his arms closed around me for half second. Fear soaked into my veins as I pictured him lying on the ground in that cave again, blood pooling out around him.

  No no no, god no.

  “We’ve gotta move,” he growled. “This place is overrun.”

  “What are they all doing here?” Darius shook his head just before a blood curdling scream pitched through the air, the noise carrying from downstairs.

  “Fuck!” Orion gasped and he shot ahead of us while Darius and I raced for the door, tearing along the hallway and down the narrow staircase.

  Francesca was on the floor before us, the Nymph’s foot pressing down on her ribs as it reached for her, the rattling, sucking sound it emitted stealing her magic away. I felt my own power subdued and growled as I raised my hands to fight. But Orion was already there, throwing his blade so it wheeled end over and end through the air before slamming right through the creature’s skull. The Nymph exploded into a cascade of ash and Orion sped forward, catching the blade out of the air before it hit the ground.

  He dropped down to kneel beside Fran, resting a hand to her side and working on her wounds.

  “There’s mor
e outside,” she groaned before she was fully healed.

  “I’ll deal with them,” Darius growled, pulling off his clothes as he raced for the nearest window.

  I jogged after him, my heart in my throat as he dove from the window ledge and burst into his enormous golden Dragon form with a deafening roar that shook the entire building.

  Six Nymphs were tearing into the trees in Fae form and I frowned at the sight of the bags they were carrying, all fit to bursting with items they must have taken from the house. What the hell did they want from some rotting old mansion?

  Darius’s Dragon fire lit up the night, cutting a path through the trees as he followed them. Shrieks of agony said he’s gotten at least one, but there was no way he’d be able to catch them all beneath the canopy.

  I turned to find Fran back on her feet, clutching onto Orion’s arm as she thanked him. She was giving him the kind of doe eyes that made me want to slap the look off her face. But I didn’t think I’d have a decent enough explanation to get away with that.

  “They had bags,” I said. “They’ve taken something from the house.”

  Orion scrubbed his knuckles across his jaw, his brow creased with thought.

  “We need to check they’re all gone,” Francesca said, straightening her spine as she took back control of the situation.

  “If they haven’t run from that Dragon out there, I’m sure they’re about to,” I said.

  “We must check all the same,” Fran said firmly and I nodded, moving across the hall and sticking my head in the nearest room.

  A creepy display of dolls stared back at me from a shelf beyond the bed, but no Nymph. Not that that could have been any more disturbing right now.

  “All clear,” I announced, finding Orion right behind me as I turned back.

  His eyes raked down me like he was checking me over and I gave him a half smile as we headed through the rest of the house together, making sure there were no more Nymphs.

  “There’s a dead body in a room off of the kitchen,” Fran said as she reappeared in the hall. She sighed like that caused her a headache. “I’ll have to get a Cadaver Disposal Crew out here to incinerate the bones. I’m not sure what power level Dire was, but even low level Fae bodies need to be dealt with. I just need a good alibi for being out here.”