Of Beasts and Blood: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Arcane Arts Academy Book 3)

by Elena Lawson

  I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. My sides were splitting, and the darkness laughed too. It held me, caressed me, whispered things…

  The sound of my own broken laughter was foreign to my ears. As though it was coming from someone else.

  My head jerked to the side and bright stars sparked in the dark spots around the edges of my vision. A screaming pain stung at my cheek and my ears rang with the sharp sound.

  I blinked, the laughter stopping. I realized what I was doing, and what was happening in a brief moment of clarity and pushed with every ounce of my strength—driving the dark tendrils of magic latching onto me like vines back down where they came from. Into the bones of Rosewood Abbey, and further, into the foundation of the earth. The house shuddered and groaned. For a second, I was afraid the force of my release would tear it to splinters.

  But it didn’t. After a moment the shaking of the floor was gone, traded in for the shaking of my hands as I came back to myself.

  “You’re okay,” Elias said and crushed me against the solid, steady warmth of his chest, holding me tightly as though he was afraid I might fall apart in his arms.

  His body quaked against me as the weight gradually lifted from my bones and the air in my lungs started to do what it was supposed to again. I took a long breath and but stopped mid exhale, pushing myself out of Elias’ grasp.

  Bianca.

  On wobbly legs I stood and moved to where Cal was laying her limp body on my bed. No. What have I done?

  Rose knew this would happen… I was going to kill her. Could you kill a ghost? My hands tightened into claws at my sides. I knew one thing for certain—I would try.

  “Move,” I said to Cal after he’d set her down, and shoved my way through to her, my pulse unsteady. It raced and then slowed and then skipped beats altogether.

  “Is she…?” I heard Draven ask from somewhere behind me.

  “No,” I snarled, and laid my hands on her chest, letting go of a sob when I felt the faint beating of her heart beneath the layers of lace on her corset. She’s alive.

  Drawing on the little bits of energy I had left in my body, I gathered them for one more spell, twining all the scattered tendrils of magic cowering from the darkness inside into one healing sigil that grew from my still-bleeding palm in an orb of beautiful golden light.

  I pressed it down into her chest. Please.

  Please wake up.

  Bianca sprang up a second later, gasping for breath, the whiteness staining her iris’ fading back to their usual light brown. “Harper?” she said, her voice weak. She squinted as though it were difficult to see me. Like part of her was still elsewhere.

  “I’m here,” I said, grabbing her hand, realizing a little belatedly that I was getting my blood all over her. “I’m here. You’re okay.”

  She swallowed and some of the color returned to her face. “No,” she said, her eyes finding mine, fixing me with a fearful stare. “It’s not okay.”

  “B?”

  “I know where she is,” Bianca said, and her hands stiffened in mine, grabbing hold of me tighter, her terror seeping into me, too. “Donovan has her.”

  23

  “Are you sure?” I asked her for the fifth time. She couldn’t remember everything, just pieces, but she remembered following Donovan into a cold place. A large chamber that was accessed by a long turning staircase made of damp stone. The doorway to access it was in the library… or maybe the faculty wing, she wasn’t sure.

  “I think there were two entrances because I can remember him leading me through both before he…” she couldn’t finish, and I didn’t think I wanted to know what exactly he did to her down there.

  “To a—a sort of basement?” I was trying to wrap my head around what she was saying, we all were. My guys stood around her and I in a loose circle, listening. Waiting for instruction.

  Bianca nodded, her blonde waves falling to shroud her face. “I think so.”

  “Can you explain to us where it is?”

  She peered up at me, and I saw hesitance there, but she plucked up her courage with a sharp breath. “Yes.”

  “Elias,” I said, turning to him. “Open the portal. We have a killer to catch.”

  He seemed to be debating something internally, looking down at the floor with a clenched jaw. “Harper, I think we should—”

  “Open the damned portal or I’ll do it myself. We don’t have time to argue, Elias.”

  “She’s right,” Cal agreed. “There’s a girl in danger. We need to go.”

  Thank you, I mouthed to him, so happy he understood, even though he knew how little I cared for Kendra.

  A life was a life. If we could save her—we had to try.

  “For the record,” Draven said. “I think this is a terrible idea.”

  “Again,” Adrian said, a note of impatience in his voice. “No one asked you.”

  Draven put his hands up. “Fine. Fine. I’m at your disposal.”

  “Elias?”

  He nodded tersely and turned to set up the portal on the opposite wall.

  “I need to get you home,” I said to Bianca. “You should be safe there.”

  “But—”

  “Nope,” Cal said, stepping in. “I realize you weren’t fully conscious for what just happened to you, but trust us, you aren’t in a state to be going anywhere.”

  Bianca lowered her head, knowing she couldn’t argue. She’d already played her part. Her very important part. Now it was our turn.

  “You too,” Cal said, and I cocked my head at him, confused. He reached out as though he would try to touch me. Caress me. But ultimately, he pulled his hand back, grimacing. “You scared the shit out of me,” he said, and his green eyes glistened. “You aren’t in a state to go walking into a fight, either.”

  Like hell I was staying here.

  “I’m going,” I said, definitively. “And I’m going to kill whoever is responsible for this.”

  Cal was taken aback at my words but said nothing. “Give me your strength,” I said after a moment, softening my voice, hoping he heard the apology there. “As my familiars, you and Adrian lend me strength and power when I need it. It’s why when we’re close,” I said, reaching out to brush my fingertips over his arm. “It feels like this.”

  Right now, I needed all the strength I could get.

  Adrian, having overheard, came nearer, pulling me against him. He gave Cal a pointed stare and Cal relented after a moment and hugged me to him, creating a Harper sandwich.

  Bianca began to explain how to get to the secret room beneath the academy, how there was a section of wall next to a bust of a dude with an angry-looking expression that would open if you spoke a simple incantation to reveal what was hidden.

  I was listening intently to her, but I was also reveling in the warmth and surge of strength and power given to me by my familiars. “Channel it,” I told them once Bianca had finished explaining, remembering what I’d been teaching myself about familiar lore. After I’d had to connect with them mentally to warn them not to return a couple weeks ago, I thought it might be a good idea to learn all the other things that a witch-familiar bond could do. This was one of them. “Share your energy.”

  “This is so messed up,” Cal groaned.

  “Just do it.”

  It took mere seconds to take effect. They already strengthened me just with their contact as they always did, but with them actively trying to lend me more of their energy, it was as though I could feel myself charging up like some sort of magical battery. I shivered as the weakness within me was replaced with an insurgence of strength and power. As the bits of lingering darkness were replaced with light.

  “The portal is ready,” Elias said, and the three of us separated, sighing.

  I rolled my shoulders back and cracked my neck, a slow smile slithering over my lips. I clenched and unclenched my fists, reveling in the renewed vitality I found there.

  Oh yes. I was ready.

  “Where’s Marcus?” Bianca ask
ed, rising from the bed so quickly she almost lost her balance. Panicked, she nearly shouted. “Has anyone seen him?”

  “B, I’m sure he’s fine,” I told her, keeping my voice level so she would stay calm. “Go find Martin,” I told her. “He’ll help you find Marcus and get you home.”

  She rushed to the door, turning back once her hand closed over the knob. “Be careful,” she told me. “He’s more dangerous than you understand.”

  “Not as dangerous as I can be,” I said, trying to reassure her.

  “No. No one is as dangerous as you,” she said and left the room in a flurry of pink and silver and gold.

  Beyond the portal against the wall beside where Elias stood was the portaling room in the academy, dark and ominous. And so, so quiet it was almost deafening.

  I stalked through it first, followed closely by the four men I now trusted more than any others.

  I only hoped we weren’t too late.

  24

  The academy was quieter than a graveyard at this time on a Saturday. Everyone either gone home for the weekend or to my birthday party. We crept as one single unit through the hallways and down the south corridor to the library.

  The librarian I’d grown accustomed to seeing in her high chair behind the desk was also missing, and somehow the lack of her presence made the situation seem more dire—more serious than I was considering it.

  This was bad. We were alone here. There was no one else to come and help us. No Arcane Authorities—no matter what little good they’d do—and no other students or professors. We had us five and that was it.

  Five against one, though. I liked those odds. I just had to pray to whatever gods could be listening that Donovan was down there—somewhere beneath our feet—alone.

  I led the charge to the back of the library as Bianca instructed, through stacks and more stacks of books, past the little study area and through the last two maze-like rows of bookcases until we reached the back wall.

  Where is it…

  “There,” Draven said, pointing out the busk atop the pedestal. The carving of the man’s head portraying an expression that said he was right pissed off.

  Yeah, that had to be it.

  I laid my hands against the rough stucco of the cream-colored wall and closing my eyes felt the hum of power from within.

  Elias laid his hands against it, too.

  “Can you feel that?” I asked him.

  This is definitely the spot.

  But Elias’ expression darkened. “No. I can’t feel it. Most people can’t feel magical presence like you can,” he said and removed his hands. He stepped back and raised his hands and I could feel his magic rising through him as it’s divine conductor like a shockwave of power blasting from his core.

  How could he not feel that? I thought everyone could feel it.

  “Abscondito revelare!” he spoke the incantation and a section of the wall pressed in on itself, vanishing to reveal a darkened stairwell and a smell like rusted metal and wet dirt.

  The tang of it wrinkled my nose.

  “Blood,” Draven whispered, confirming my suspicion, his fangs sliding free of his gums.

  I placed a hand on his chest. “You can wait here if you need to,” I told him. “Keep watch.”

  He raised an eyebrow and the edge of a grin pulled up the corner of my lips. I didn’t know why I thought for even a second he would stay behind. “Don’t think so,” he said with a smirk. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

  Elias took the lead, stepping into the dark. I followed behind him, and the other three filed in after me. We descended the staircase as silently as we could, listening for any sound that could be human. The stairs wound down into the bowels of the academy, and the stink only grew stronger, and the air colder the further we went. I was not dressed appropriately for this.

  And my five-inch heels were slipping all over the slick stone steps. “Here,” Adrian said from behind, stopping me and pressing me flat against the wall. He knelt and deftly undid the straps on my heels and removed them, discarding them on a step back the way we’d come. When my bare feet met the wet, icy stones, I winced, the cold felt as though it was seeping right into my bones. But it also served to strengthen my magical connection to the earth, and I sighed at the little rush I got.

  When we hit the bottom, there was only one way to go—forward. And down the wide corridor, we could see the bluish glow of witch light, and the flickering orange glow of torchlight against the gray rock walls.

  It was as though a great beast had chewed its way through the mountain itself to make this place. The walls were left jagged and sharp, and the floor felt as though it was coated with a layer of thick slime, though really, I was sure it was just condensation.

  “I can hear him,” Draven said, his voice grim. He pulled off his jacket and let it drop to the wet floor, revealing the two lines of small blades in an X on his chest that he’d had that night in Elk Falls. I remembered how he used to break the UV lighting overhead. If he was good enough to hit that small of a target from that far away, I could be confident that he wouldn’t miss.

  My heart began to race again, and my renewed magic coiled up through my feet, shooting out through my limbs. Warming me. Strengthening me.

  I inhaled deeply, but the breath was broken. I still couldn’t believe that the asshole Sigils professor was the one to blame for all this. I didn’t like him from the first moment I saw him, but this? Wait until Granger found out. Did she hire him? Or had it been the council who placed him here?

  Didn’t matter now, I supposed, since I was going to kill him.

  A small amount of the contamination from the blood magic remained inside me. I could feel it intertwining with the natural energies in my core, forming something that was part dark and part light. I shivered in ecstasy at the potency of it, wishing I could release it back to the earth—get rid of the black marks the blood magic spell had left… but I had a feeling I would need it.

  “Let me go first,” Elias said, not really asking, but telling.

  I nodded. We would be right behind him.

  I threw up a ward around us, and Elias nodded his thanks, impressed by my ability to call the sigil so easily and to hold it around a group so large as we moved. A few weeks ago, I couldn’t even have dreamed of pulling something like this off. How much power and focus it took to maintain the ward was so hard back then. Now it was almost second nature, and the enhancement of the blood magic only made it even easier.

  We moved through the chamber like silent wraiths in the night, soundless save for the beating of our hearts and the hissing of air as it sawed into and out of our lungs.

  The wide corridor-like section of the underground chamber was coming up on a wide circular space. That was where the light was emanating from. And if I listened very closely, I could hear the shuffling of papers and sense the presence of a formidable power pulsating and crackling in the surrounding atmosphere.

  Bianca was right. Donovan must’ve been more powerful than he looked. The magical energy was so strong, even from this far away.

  Worried, I stopped Elias, whispering as quietly as I could. “I think I should go first.”

  He shook his head once, sharply, his gaze fixed, and mind made up. It was a hard no.

  Stubborn ass.

  He stepped forward to cross the threshold into the larger space and his body stiffened as though he’d been shocked. The ripple of silvery magic interspersed with threads of green wavered in the mouth of the corridor. It was a ward, but not the kind that gave invisibility. Sloane told us about these kinds of wards—they were infused with strong magic to weaken, stun, or injure any who tried to pass through.

  Elias’ breath caught in his throat in a strangled gasp and he dropped to the ground. I stuffed a fist in my mouth to stifle my scream and fell to the ground next to him. “Elias?” I whispered, feeling for a pulse, brushing his hair from his face so I could see if he was alright. His breathing was shallow, but he was breathing
. And though his pulse was stuttered, it beat strongly against his ribcage. I leaned my head down and pressed my forehead to his, sighing my relief.

  “He’s alright,” I whispered to the others.

  There was the unmistakable shuffle of feet in the other room at my words. Shit, he heard me.

  No.

  We couldn’t let him get away!

  Using the defensive spell I learned only days ago, I blasted a hole in the ward large enough for all of us to pass through, but the magic came out so strong it obliterated the whole thing.

  I lunged over Elias’ unconscious body and into the round chamber, blinking into the sudden brightness of the witch light and so many fire-burning torches around the room. The stun sigil I had committed to memory sprang to my fingertips, glowing amber, ready to be wielded. I shouted my fury, searching for him.

  “Harper,” Cal shouted, pointing, but I already saw what he was looking at.

  In the middle of the room were Kendra… and Marcus.

  Neither was conscious. They hung from the ceiling on the invisible strings of magic holding them up. Their feet pointed up and heads positioned toward the floor. Kendra’s hair rippled in the air, making it seem as though they could be suspended in water. But they weren’t.

  And that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the blood. Identical wounds marred their necks. The distinct two puncture wounds that were consistent in both murders. Their lifeblood flowed out from the wounds as though drawn on by some unseen force and dripped in a steady stream down to a raised basin below them.

  Oh god.

  I sprinted, ready to pull them down. Heal them. To stop this madness.

  Bianca couldn’t lose anyone else. I wouldn’t allow it. And Kendra didn’t deserve this. Whatever the fuck this was.

  My left foot caught in my dress a second before my hand could close around Kendra’s wrist and I tripped, my body knocking into the basin—spilling its bloody contents all over the floor. The warm liquid coated me in a wave of ichor and I gagged. In the same breath, a resounding blast shook the cavernous room, booming in my ears. An attack sigil missed me by mere inches, finding purchase in the stone wall instead.