Fallen Academy: Year One

by Leia Stone

Shea’s face fell and clouded over. “It’s sad. Most of the girls are barely eighteen. Some have kids to support or contracts to fulfill. I’m lucky Grim doesn’t make me dance. I’m surprised he hasn’t noticed that I was blessed with incredibly amazing boobs.”

  I grinned. “And a nice booty.”

  She chortled, turning to look behind her. “It is nice,” she agreed, making me smile wider.

  “Are you nervous?” I inquired, changing the topic. “What if we’re both Gristles?”

  Shea shrugged and reached over to hold my hand. “Then we’ll be the best damn Gristles Demon City has ever seen.”

  I smiled again but it didn’t reach my eyes. On a day when we were supposed to be getting special powers and new careers, we were selling our souls to the wrong side.

  “Do you think the war will ever stop, that one side will win? That the fallen might win?” I asked her. The sunlight was shining up ahead as the bus made its way to the border of Angel City. The place I had once lived in, until my dad got sick. I barely remembered it now, but I recalled that the majority of people were happy.

  Shea’s gaze followed the rain streak down the window, her blue eyes looking out behind her bronze skin. She let go of my hand. “I dunno. I try not to hope anymore. It only leads to disappointment.”

  Wasn’t that the damn truth. We could pass for normal on the streets now, but after today, a red crescent moon slave mark would mar our looks for eternity. Would show everyone who we were, and what we’d signed up for.

  The bus slowed as it reached the border gate, and a security guard stepped out from behind the tall cement wall that closed off the two warring cities. After a few words and a scan of the driver’s badge, we rolled on through. The sunlight burst through the windows and heated my chilly skin. Driving into Angel City was an immediate mood lifter. I took a deep breath as I felt the tension in my shoulders recede.

  Shea chuckled. “You love this place.”

  “Don’t you?” Angel City was the normal side, the side with the good people.

  “It’s not home to me like it is to you,” she added with a shrug. “I don’t feel any different about either side.”

  That was true. Shea was from New Orleans, and after moving here, she’d only ever known Demon City as home. She loved the rain and gloomy days, whereas I was dying for a sunny day at the beach.

  The bus stopped in front of the Awakening Center, and Shea and I disembarked. My hands clung to my messenger bag tightly, as we crossed the busy downtown street, and made our way to the line of teenagers walking into the open double doors.

  “I saw a Lakers game here once with my dad. I barely remember, but we have a picture,” I told Shea.

  “The Awakening waits for no one!” a slender woman, in her twenties, called out to us as the last of the kids went through the double doors.

  “Why do they insist on dressing us up? This isn’t prom,” Shea muttered, running to catch up. I didn’t want to know what happened if you didn’t make it on time to the Awakening. I’d heard stories and they weren’t good.

  “Because it gives them something to do,” I whispered back, then was met with a glare from the female officer holding the door. I looked down at the silver spiral insignia on her jacket. She was a Light Mage. She also had a silver FA patch right beneath it, the logo of the Fallen Army.

  The line of my fellow Awakening ceremony companions began to tighten as we walked single file back to the dressing rooms. The fallen angels who hosted the ceremony every year insisted we dress up, and after we had our Awakening, they threw a big catered party for everyone, even the demon bound.

  “I heard there’s a chocolate fountain at the party after.” Shea’s eyes lit up as she told me the rumor. She was obsessed with chocolate—and guys, but mostly chocolate.

  The Fallen Army officer hung back until she was walking with Shea and me, giving us a side glance as she tsked through her teeth.

  Shea pinned her with a glare as we walked. “Can I help you?” she asked her in the bitchiest tone possible. The fallen and all of their officers were high and mighty, acting better than everyone, especially better than us. The demon bound.

  The woman shrugged. “It’s a shame to see so many firstborns pledge their lives to the demons.”

  Another woman up ahead had started roll call at a set of double doors. Shea stopped and faced the officer. Her blood was boiling. I could see that in the way she clenched her fists, and I hoped I didn’t have to hold her back, if you struck an officer, it was a criminal offense.

  How did she even know we were slave bound? She’d probably looked at all of the files beforehand, specifically looking for the ones like us.

  “You think we pledge ourselves? Wow, you’re stupider than you look,” Shea spat.

  I froze, unsure what the woman’s reaction would be. I didn’t spend a lot of time around the Fallen Army and their human consort. I’d heard they were more forgiving than the demon patrol officers that roamed our streets, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

  “No.” The officer stepped closer to my best friend. “What’s stupid is that your mothers, the people in charge of your safety and security, pledged your life to a demon for their own gains.”

  I stepped out of the line, ready to give this girl a piece of my mind, but the officer at the front called Shea’s name then.

  “Shea Hallowell. Demon bound.”

  Shea gave the officer before her one last glare before stepping in line and raising her hand.

  The officer at the front typed something into her tablet and pointed for Shea to step out of the line. There was a small group of three others I recognized from Demon City. All demon bound.

  “Brielle Atwater. Demon bound.”

  The way she said ‘demon bound,’ like it was dirty, made me hate them more. The self-righteous Fallen Army.

  I raised my hand, and held my chin high. Yes, my mother sold herself to a lifetime of demon slavery to save my father’s life, but what other choice did we have? That’s what you did for love, for family. The fallen angels didn’t heal the dying—free will, destiny, and all of that bullshit. They said the humans who were terminal were meant to pass, and no one should interfere. Pious bastards.

  I stepped out of line and followed Shea to stand with the others from Demon City. Five of us. The rest were free souls and would exit stage right and be recruited to enter Fallen Academy. Mages, the Sighted, Centaurs, and of course, the rare and mythical Celestials were all of the Angel Blessed powers and were looked at as the ‘good ones.’ There hadn’t been a Celestial in five years. It was said they were endowed with so much angel energy during The Falling, that they were kin to the fallen angels themselves. They were easy to spot with their big large white wings, smaller yet identical to the wings of the fallen. The only difference was that the Celestials could retract their wings at will, and the fallen couldn’t.

  I saw one once. A fallen. I was nine years old, right before my dad’s diagnosis while he was in the hospital. Raphael, the Archangel of Healing, was going around blessing the sick—he must have skipped my dad. I’ll never forget what he looked like, and the way he looked at me, like he could see right through me. It was unnerving.

  “Free souls this way. Demon bound that way,” the lead officer called out, and we all entered the hallway.

  The free souls started walking into a dressing room to the right as we headed left, where a demon slave with the red crescent moon was waiting for us. She had a cattle prod in one hand, and Shea and I raised our eyebrows at each other. She was a slave minder. If one of us chickened out or tried to run, we’d be shot up with electricity.

  Icing on the cake.

  We were led into a small dressing room—coed from the looks of it—and the slave minder pointed to a rack of dresses and men’s suits. “Get yourself presentable, and then we’ll go out into the main reception hall. You have five minutes.”

  She left the room and closed the door, presumably locking us in from the sound of the click.

>   “Five bucks says Steph is a Gristle,” Ben told the room, and we all laughed as Stephanie gave him the middle finger, but then smacked his butt. Steph and Ben had been dating for over a year now. They didn’t live in the same housing building as Shea and me, so I only saw them at school in one shared class, but they were cool people.

  Shea started flipping through the dresses. “Reality is we could all be Gristles. No sense in worrying about it.”

  Steph and I shared a look. Shea was my little pessimist. She never saw the silver lining or had hope that anything would work out. Only on rare occasions did that happen.

  James, the fifth person in our group, was quiet, sitting in the corner while staring at the wall. He was one of those perfect guys—smart, utterly gorgeous, and gay.

  “What’s up, James?” I asked, dropping into the seat next to him as the others spoke in soft voices near the dresses.

  “I had a bad dream last night, that’s all.” He stood abruptly, and walked over to get dressed.

  I stayed still. James had the gift of future sight. When the fallen angels quickly closed down the powers of anyone below the age of eighteen, there were a few glitches, and not every child’s power was caught 100 percent.

  James had prophetic dreams.

  One day he came into school screaming for everyone to get out, even pulled the fire alarm. We all ran out of the building, and not ten minutes later a Fallen Army helicopter crashed into the side and blew up our school. He said he’d dreamed about it and just knew it was real. So if James had a bad dream last night, I was all ears.

  Absentmindedly, I grabbed a black silk dress in my size, and followed James to the corner of the room where he was disrobing. I started to take my shirt off and James looked at my chest. “Eww, boobs.”

  A chuckle escaped me as I rolled my eyes, stepping into the dress and pulling the delicate straps over my shoulders. “So… your dream? Should we expect a helicopter crash landing later today or what?”

  I could usually make James laugh, as he had a good sense of humor, but this time he was just stone-faced. Dark.

  “You need to be careful,” James whispered, as I shimmied out of my pants.

  I stopped dead. “Okay, elaborate please.” What the hell did that mean, and why me? He said I needed to be careful. I was already nervous for this ceremony, and now my heart was jackhammering in my chest.

  James side-eyed the rest of the group, who seemed to be laughing at Shea’s impression of the Fallen Army officer. Then he leaned in closer to me. “You’re different. They—”

  The door swung open then, and James straightened as the slave minder walked in.

  “All right, it’s time,” she growled, pointing her cattle prod at us.

  Frick. Mental telepathy would be a good skill to have right now.

  I followed my group out of the dressing room with my knees knocking together in fear. If James said I needed to be careful, I was royally screwed.

  Chapter Two

  We were sat apart from the free souls in alphabetical order, and I was sitting next to the wench with the cattle prod. That meant I couldn’t ask James what the hell he’d meant, nor could I even freak out with Shea. I had to just sit there, and let my wild imagination dream up crazy theories.

  After I turned around I found my mom and Mike’s faces in the crowd. They were standing in the nosebleed section, but seeing their faces only made me more nervous. Now the ceremony was starting, and I was pretty sure I would faint from the amount of adrenaline pumping into my veins.

  “You’re different. You need to be careful,” James had said. If that wasn’t an ominous warning, I didn’t know what was.

  I hadn’t been watching the stage, but at the sound of the booming voice, my gaze was drawn upward.

  “Welcome, Citizens of Earth!”

  A shock ran through me as I saw the fallen angel before me. Archangel Raphael. Standing over six feet tall, with wavy golden hair, and piercing blue eyes, he looked to be in his early thirties; the same as when I’d met him. I had forgotten until now that the fallen didn’t age. His long white gossamer wings glowed so brightly that it was hard to look directly at him. He stood to the right of the stage on pearlescent white tiles, while the left half was tiled in a black onyx stone, and a Grimlock demon stood there, glaring at the fallen.

  “Thirteen years ago today, a war raged in Heaven, and we mistakenly brought that war to Earth,” the angel admitted as the Grimlock demon rolled his eyes. “We could not take back what we had done to humanity, but we could at least let your power lie dormant for a time, so you could come of age. Now is the time to let that power free so you may train with your assigned academy, and earn your rightful place in society.”

  I’d heard rumors of a kid who fled the Awakening ceremony. He lasted about two years on the road before his powers started to emerge by themselves. He had the power of a Beast Shifter, predominantly demon although he was a free soul. With no one there to train him, he’d attacked an entire town and then was killed when the Fallen Army showed up to contain the mess. Moral of the story: Go to the Awakening, get your power and train at your given academy. The powers could only be contained for so long.

  The demon stepped forward, casting a long shadow upon the archangel. “When we call your name, you will step up to the stage and walk to the white area. After Raphael unlocks your power, you will exit right, and be enrolled in Fallen Academy if you are a free soul, and left to be enrolled in Tainted Academy if you are demon bound.” He grinned, giving us all a view of both sets of his razor-sharp teeth.

  The angel hit the Grimlock demon with a glare that gave me the chills.

  “Let’s begin,” Raphael announced, and the demon stepped back, exiting center stage to sit at a table with another demon I recognized.

  My mom’s boss, Master Burdock, a Brimstone demon.

  The one who held our contracts sat smugly in his seat, his furry black horns came off his head and went straight up like ears. I’d heard many stories of how he gored those who upset him. He was a cross between a bull and a man, and he was about to be my new Master. A demon with the most haunting black shiny eyes you ever saw.

  “Tilly Anderson. Free soul,” Raphael announced, and my attention was pulled to the center stage again.

  Raphael stood inside of the white half of the stage, and just over his left shoulder was a guy in his early twenties. A Celestial. He was tall, with dark brown hair that was long and spiky on top, with short buzzed sides. The ethereal wings he wore had me spellbound. They glowed at certain angles, and the white feathers looked like they contained electricity as they danced with blue light.

  I knew who that guy was. He was the Celestial from five years back. Lincoln something. He’d made it in all of the papers. He was very rare in that he held the power of two Celestials within him, Archangel Michael and Archangel Raphael. They said he’d changed the face of the war, that his demon kill record was one of the highest, and he’d taken back part of the valley for Angel City. Even though demon and fallen were in the same room for the Awakening ceremonies, the war between them was still waging outside of these walls.

  Tilly walked nervously up to the stage, and my heart went out to her. Being the first to be called for something like this sucked. It sucked bad. I leaned forward a little, and turned my head to the right, trying to catch Shea’s attention, but the slave minder’s hand clamped down on my thigh, forcing me to look forward. I bit my tongue to keep myself from lashing out at her. Tilly looked ridiculous in her large yellow evening gown. We all did. But the fallen were sticklers for ceremony and respect, so I imagined it was for them.

  As she stood before the fallen archangel, I could feel her anxiety from where I sat over fifty feet away. The Awakening was a terrifying thing. To be turned into a monster at random for the rest of your life—how could anyone look forward to that? I noticed a bunch of other Fallen Army officers waiting to the right of the stage to greet her once she was done. Once her powers were revealed, she would imm
ediately be enrolled in Fallen Academy, the illusive and fancy training school for the free souls. Unless she was a Gristle. That was the only supernatural race that didn’t get schooling; you just exited the stage and were given a job working for the city sanitation department.

  Raphael held his hands above her head and a golden orange dust began to fall from his palms, saturating her body. We all stared in shock at the golden dust that coated her skin, making her glow like an angel atop a Christmas tree. I saw the appeal of the dresses now. She looked breathtaking. But the beauty was short-lived. Soon, she started breathing roughly, her body lurching forward as she doubled over in pain.

  I had never seen an Awakening ceremony, since it was only for the families of those involved, and was never televised. Now I knew why. Tilly made a whining noise and then, as if it had never existed, the dust disappeared. She stood shakily and looked out to the crowd. Holy shit. Her once blue irises were black, her skin looked as white as paper, and her canines were more pronounced.

  Raphael took one look at her and nodded. “Tilly Anderson. Nightblood. Welcome to Fallen Academy.”

  I heard weeping in the upper deck, and guessed it was Tilly’s mother. Nightbloods couldn’t go outside in the day or they had some type of allergic reaction. They were trained, and used in the war for their extreme strength and speed, but to the free souls, they were seen as an offspring of the tainted. Nightbloods were demon gifted, along with Beast Shifters, Necromancers, and Dark mages. Tilly would be feared by those in her community for the rest of her life, and she would probably end up moving to Demon City just to feel normal.

  Tilly cast her head down in shame and exited the stage, walking across the white tiles, and down to the waiting Fallen Army to get her new government-issued identification. She would be matched with a Nightblood master teacher for her training.

  “Brielle Atwater. Demon bound.” Raphael’s voice snapped me from my remorse for Tilly.

  No. Fricking alphabetical order!

  I stood, a wave of dizziness hitting me as the adrenaline coursed through me, and my heart rattled against my chest. I walked numbly to the stage, trying not to trip over my too-long black silk dress.