Root Rot Academy: Term 1

by Rhea Watson

  Fair enough.

  When I said nothing further, Alecto scoffed. “What is this, the nineties? No, I don’t have chalk in my—”

  “Well, find some.” I clapped her hard on the arm in passing, jostling her, and then grinned over my shoulder as I added, “And then meet me down there when you’re done. Don’t worry… I know my way around the locks.”

  She flipped me off.

  And I blew her a kiss, my laughter ringing through the courtyard.

  My, my, she certainly kept a tidy desk considering the rest of her overgrown workspace.

  As Alecto stalked down the center aisle of the main greenhouse, tables on either side, every bit of exposed skin red from the cold, she held up a trio of chalk for me to inspect. White, pink, and green. I’d only need one, but I certainly appreciated the effort. Eyes locked, I offered a little well-done nod, then swept everything off her desk in one go, stacks of parchment parachuting to the ground, along with pens and quills and her inkpot, which shattered on impact.

  Her shoes stopped clacking. “Oh my gods, Gavriel, was that seriously necessary?”

  I smoothed my hand over the surface, clearing away the bits of loose soil that coated every inch of these buildings, and then looked up at her again, deathly serious. Eyes earnest. Jaw clenched enough that the muscles danced. She stilled, her anger ebbing—just for a moment.

  “No,” I remarked, maintaining that mask for a few moments longer before breaking out in a smirk, “but it was fun.”

  She flipped me off again, and I hoisted up the V in return, both of us scowling. Cape billowing with every step, her hair looser and angrier by the minute, Alecto marched forth and hurled the white chalk stick at me. I caught it without looking, already in ritual mode, and got to work, roughing out the academy grounds across her desk, every building, every tree, then those beyond the walls—all the way to the coast, as far as our property extended. Temper cooled, Alecto hovered across from me, watching and nibbling on her thumbnail, the other two chalk sticks abandoned on the corner of her desk.

  “That’s a filthy habit, fury,” I muttered, adding the squiggly lines of the sea in at the north end, just for context. She huffed, arm dropping to her side briefly before she crossed them both under her cape.

  “Are you done?”

  Appraising my map of all the surrounding lands that I knew, hills and glens and moors and lochs and clumps of very unforgiving foliage, I tossed the chalk toward its bedmates, the stick clunking on the desk and rolling right off the side. With a nod, I straightened and twisted this way and that to alleviate the ache in my lower back, the slight twinge between my shoulders. Really, the height of this desk was hardly the most ergonomic.

  “I’ll need your blood now,” I told her, exhaling exasperation all over my artwork when her nose crinkled.

  “Use your own blood.”

  “It needs to be a sacrifice’s blood.” I tapped the desk to hurry her along. “Someone with a connection to the missing person. You are friends and flatmates, are you not?”

  The witch made no move to offer anything I could cut into. In fact, she leaned back with a scoff. “That’s crap.”

  “Fine.” Shrugging, I pushed away from the desk, all the while eyeing her basket of gardening tools tucked neatly under it. “Don’t give a shit about Bjorn, or just keep putting on this stupid façade—”

  She groaned, clearly unimpressed to have her own guilt-laced words thrown back at her. “Ugh, screw you, Gavriel—”

  “You have.” I raised two fingers again, grinning. “Twice.”

  Cheeks sunken—if she wasn’t careful, she’d bite clean through them soon—Alecto stuck out her arm and offered me an open palm. Excellent. After grabbing the smallest, sharpest pair of pruning scissors in the basket, I went for her wrist to keep her steady, but she grabbed mine in a flash, shockingly quick for her kind, and yanked me halfway across the desk.

  “Don’t use the leftovers for anything gross,” she warned. I chuckled—like I’d tangle with her twice. Besides, I wasn’t one for blood magic outside of extraordinary circumstances, even if it was some of the darkest and most effective at our disposal.

  Smirking, I leaned in close enough that her breath whooshed across my lips, our noses nearly brushing, our eyes locked.

  “As if your blood has such value, fury.”

  Before she could back out, I flipped our grips, twisting my hand and clamping it around her wrist, then slashed the shears across her palm. She hissed and tried to tug free, then stilled when I tsked and turned her hand over. Seconds later, two fat, useable droplets plopped onto the wood, right in the heart of my Root Rot map—the courtyard—and I let her retreat without a word.

  Fae-driven rituals were as vast and varied as the hundreds of courts across our realm. Some located debtors, others mates. Some were for stealing, some for retribution. This was a union, one that relied heavily on the connection Alecto shared with Bjorn. The words spoken in a language older than dirt, older than the first sprinkling of ash that founded my home court, urged for the return of one’s heart to another. Loosely translated: Bring these wayward hearts home.

  And what a connection they shared. As soon as the incantation trickled from my lips, Alecto’s blood merged into a single drop, then crept across the desk, showing us the path Bjorn had trod to reach his current location.

  “It’s headed for the back gate,” Alecto murmured, drifting around the desk, her eyes locked on the dot. I shrugged. Bjorn wouldn’t be the first of Root Rot’s staff to bail on a particularly rowdy student event. The droplet dribbled out into the highlands, into the wilds of the moors, moving at a steady clip.

  Changing color.

  My frown swiftly mirrored hers, and Alecto sucked in a sharp breath, pointing at it like I couldn’t see with my own fucking eyes.

  “It’s turning black.”

  “I—”

  “Why is it turning black?” she demanded, smacking at my arm a few times. “Vampires don’t bleed black, and I sure as shit don’t—”

  “It’s turning black because…” I tripped over the answer even when it blared like a foghorn inside me. No. It couldn’t be. He… This man was a true immortal, rare and sacred in this underwhelming world, yet the proof was right there in front of me, Alecto’s blood darkening by the second. Panic buzzed in my fingertips, fluttered in my chest—panic for him, for the one creature I almost considered a friend.

  “Gavriel—”

  “It’s turning black… because he’s dying.”

  28

  Bjorn

  Thunk. Pain bloomed in my left palm, the air scented with whiskey and iron, and a dreary black sky greeted me when I finally pried my heavy lids open. Everything hurt. Nothing responded to my cautious movements, and after filling my useless lungs with the frigid night air of the highlands, I lolled my head to the side.

  The corners of my mouth kicked up.

  They had decided to crucify me.

  As if that shocked me—offended me. I grew into a man amidst a religious bloodbath, Christians against Norsemen. My people, my raiding party, had strung up our enemies in every manner imaginable. Let their guts drip down their legs. Nailed them to upturned crosses just for fun. Centuries later, this symbol had no effect on me.

  Vampires didn’t fear the cross.

  We feared the wood.

  And they had nailed me to it with iron stakes, one for each palm, another driven into my stacked feet at the base. Figures lorded over me, around me, faces slowly crystalizing as the remnants of those barbed spikes filtered through my system.

  Students.

  Children.

  “Why?” I croaked, throat raw, voice scratchy and hoarse. A whoosh of air accompanied the figure crouching by my head, silhouette outlined with the orange glow of a nearby bonfire. I blinked hard, focusing unfocused eyes on his face, his hair, his expensive suit.

  Leroy Adamson. American. Wolf shifter. Not an alpha despite his father’s lineage—that had been highlighted in his fi
le. Still, the pup liked to pretend. Acquired a handful of popular sycophants to hang on his every word.

  “Why?” he parroted back, adding a pathetic accent as if to sound like me. “Is that a serious question?”

  “One less leech in the world,” his girl remarked, loitering near my feet with a hammer in hand—a mallet, almost, styled to look like Thor’s hammer. Honestly. The symbolism in all this was just suffocating. The witch tossed her bright green hair over her shoulder, red lips twisted in a sadistic sneer. French, this one. Malorie Leroux. Here because she liked to hex her human neighbors, against her coven’s wishes and the Parisian high council’s law. She always put her feet on her desk in my classes and smacked bubblegum noisily until I made her spit it out. Every. Fucking. Time.

  “And that’s a better world,” someone added out of sight. Brain hazy with pain, with the lingering wood in my bloodstream, I couldn’t make out who, exactly, but I knew the clique. Everyone did. A band of fourth years peppered with the odd third and fifth year. The cool kids. The rude kids, more like. Pampered assholes who thought they were above Root Rot and all we stood for, all we did to help them.

  “No one’s going to miss you, leech,” Leroy mused, smoothing the hair away from my forehead with the razor-sharp tip of a massive wooden stake. “Just like that baby leech Fiona…”

  He flinched when I jerked toward him, but my strength came trickling back slowly, drips and drops, not the floodwaters I was used to. Fuckers. Fiona had been a sweet, misguided girl. Lost. Broken. Searching for purpose in her new life and struggling to navigate our shared disease.

  “W-what did you d-do to her?”

  Someone mimicked my stammer—a female voice, the others shrieking with laughter. To the left, another bonfire sparked. A shadowy pair tossed liquor bottles between themselves, guzzling the acrid-smelling liquid down fast enough to send their balance straight to hell.

  “We didn’t do anything.” Leroy dragged his wooden stake’s tip down the center of my face, over my chin, along my throat until he reached my Adam’s apple—then he applied a little pressure, his inner wolf’s eyes gleaming in the firelight. “We just talked to her. She made her own choice to meet the sun.”

  Furious, I lurched at him again, almost ripping my hand free from the spike driven into my palm. Just as I reared back to fully tear my flesh clear off the iron, one way or another, Malorie struck.

  Drove a wooden stake deep into my thigh.

  Pain knocked the wind out me.

  Wood stole the fight out of me.

  The witch twisted it in deeper, just grazing bone, and let out a giggle as the sedative effects took over. My muscles went slack. My brain fuzzy. Words—failing. Agony the bright center of a blackening world.

  The rest of the clique closed in. My uncontrollable gaze jumped from one to the next, sloppy in the way my eyes flicked up and down, side to side, never focusing on much for long and struggling to stay open.

  But they managed to process one thing above all else: each student had a stake in their hand.

  Even little Lucy Eastwick—smartest witch in her class. Best in the school if she ever bothered to step out from under Malorie’s shadow.

  Shame. She could be so much more than this.

  “Consider this educational, Professor,” Leroy sneered, leveling his stake just over my right collarbone, my button-up peeled open, flesh exposed. “None of us have ever seen a leech shrivel and burn in real time before.”

  He then plunged the pointed tip in deep, and the last thing I saw, the last insult I felt before the shadows took me, was every one of this wolf shifter’s pack raising their stakes—and driving them down toward my crucified body.

  29

  Gavriel

  Cresting the top of the jagged hill, I slowed to a stop and scanned the horizon, zeroing in on the twin bonfires flickering against the black. There. So close and yet so fucking far when someone’s pride got in the way.

  “You know—” I rounded in place, hands on my hips and eyebrows up. “—things would go a lot faster if you just let me carry you—”

  “I’m fine,” Alecto snapped as she scampered up the slope after me, looking utterly deranged with her springy curls everywhere. Cheeks red. Forehead sweaty. Cape askew. Bloody palm sloppily wrapped in a cotton dressing she had nabbed from her desk. She was an absolute mess yet still insisted on marching through the highlands on her own two feet—in ridiculous shoes for the terrain. Once she made it to the top, she shouldered by me, all huffy and puffy and seconds away from a gust of wind blowing her down. “Move.”

  Ordinarily I would have let her struggle until the end of time, zero fucks given in the process, but this was too much. Based on the outcome of the ritual, something was seriously wrong with Bjorn. We had the location of his impending demise narrowed down to a stretch of land close to the coastline, and I knew the precise way to get there as fast as possible, cutting through the rugged landscape in the dead of night, on the cusp of winter’s first frost…

  But Alecto wouldn’t stop all this rah-rah women’s power rah.

  Honestly. She might despise me for what I’d done to her in the past, but she cared for Bjorn deeply enough that the ritual drew her straight to him. Their hearts sparked for each other, and this was just a fucking waste of time. Rolling my eyes, I shrugged off my moss-green suit jacket, then folded it over to avoid creases. Not a chance in hell I’d shred the luxe fabric; I set it aside carefully over a boulder, vowing to come back for it later.

  Alecto, meanwhile, trundled down the hill alone, ankles rolling and breath thundering—but she must have noticed I wasn’t behind her making snide comments anymore. Attacking her ridiculous hair with both hands, she wheeled around, looking like she was about to order me to hurry up, and then tripped over something—probably her damn shoes. While she managed to stay upright, her eyes still widened, and she leveled her wand at me.

  “Don’t fucking touch me, Gavriel.”

  “Oh, shut up, fury.” With that, I lowered the magical walls that kept my wings hidden in this realm. The envy of fallen angels everywhere, they burst forth, tearing through my undershirt, my crisply ironed dress shirt, and lastly the trim vest tying the outfit together. Black and huge, they most certainly weren’t compensating for a damn thing, and in the right light my wings glittered with streaks of silvery white just like my hair. No one knew what they were made of, though we fae insisted they were forged of starlight. Soft as a fox kit’s fur, strong as steel, these babies were a hot commodity amongst unscrupulous collectors and potion makers in this realm.

  And not a feather in sight. No need to groom them. Really, far superior than those adorning the feathery bastards in the Silver City.

  Briefly, Alecto seemed as smitten with them as everyone else was at first glance, but once I gave them an experimental flap, her hands shot up.

  “Wait, no—”

  I was on her in seconds, swift as the howling east wind, a blur of ash in the night. Only vampires compared to fae speed, and some fucker had kidnapped the one I sort of gave a shit about. The time for Alecto to show how tough she was stalking through the highlands had come and gone.

  Without a word, not even a tiny sneer, I chucked the protesting witch over my shoulder, our positions strikingly familiar to our last rendezvous. That wand might have kept me in check back then, but my speed and strength surpassed hers tenfold tonight. Squirm all she liked, this fury of mine didn’t stand a chance.

  “Mind your face,” I said, tossing the remark over my shoulder before shooting into the air. Alecto shrieked and twisted, mindful of my flapping wings and scrambling for something to hold along my back. The highlands blurred beneath us, a wash of browns and dying greens and muted greys, and what would have taken us thirty long minutes to traverse was done and dusted in thirty seconds.

  Stubborn thing.

  We could have touched down ages ago amidst bonfires and music and dancing students—

  Oh.

  Oh. And Bjorn.

&nbs
p; They had crucified him.

  My arms dropped limp at my sides, and Alecto finally flailed off my shoulder, cascading to the ground with a squeal. There, some twenty feet on, stood a massive wooden cross—upon which they had nailed him into place, the iron spikes emitting an unsettling vibration in the ether that set my teeth on edge. To add further insult to injury, the little group had stuffed ten or so wooden stakes into the vampire’s body, the highest in his neck and the lowest shoved clean through the meat of his right calf.

  Anger ripened in my chest.

  Indignation churned in my gut.

  This man was worth a hundred of these little shits—

  “Bjorn!” Alecto gasped at my side, staggering to her feet with her hands over her gaping mouth, those amber marbles round and horrified. To the left, the music lowered, though that did nothing to dampen the stench of whiskey and vodka in the air. Teeth gritted, I looked to the perpetrators, and of course there was Leroy Adamson’s gang of cool kids.

  With Lucy among them.

  Fuck. This sort of thing—fire and blood and violence and alcohol—was precisely how I would have celebrated my Samhain had I not been contracted to behave by the academy’s code of conduct.

  But this was Bjorn.

  And that was taking it a step too far, especially when every little fucker out there thought they were better than him, higher up the supernatural food chain because they weren’t a vampire.

  Idiots.

  Alecto raised her wand to the black sky, to the clouds swelling with freezing rain and hours from bursting. “Opus auxilium.”

  A blast of light shot skyward and hovered a good fifty feet up, the pulsing orb alternating between red and blue. A call for assistance—a spell first years mastered before all others. Hopefully someone spotted it before things got out of hand.