Shadowblade Academy 1: Darkness Calls

by KC Kingmaker

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Sunny grunted after every parry and sidestep. “What do I do?!”

  “That monster isn’t Quentin Argyle,” Dax repeated. “We have our orders.”

  My brow drew inward, angry at his callousness. Dax Kilmeade truly came off like a sociopath at times.

  “Screw that!” Venn said. “W-We . . . no!” He sounded close to tears.

  “I’m not killing Quentin,” Sunny growled. “I won’t have that hanging over me.”

  The monster creaked with every move. He punched and swung and kicked. To be honest, it looked sad.

  I racked my brain, trying to think.

  “If we disobey the orders, we fail,” Dax said matter-of-factly. “This whole assignment will be for naught. We were told to eradicate all enemies.”

  “We were also told to find Genevieve, and we haven’t done that yet either,” Venn snapped. His eyes veered to the upper level of the prison.

  Sunny finally threw his sword down in frustration. On the next punch from Quentin, he spun and wrapped himself around the man and pinned Quentin’s arms back in a half-nelson.

  The zombie-man writhed in Sunny’s grip, baring yellowed teeth. His arms flailed uselessly at his sides, trying to get Sunny off him.

  Sunny swung him around, chest-first toward Dax. “If you want to obey the orders, then you do it. Stick that sword through your Glovemate’s chest, Dax!”

  At that, Dax hesitated. Even he couldn’t pull the trigger when push came to shove. Not when it was someone they all cared for so deeply.

  Still, he took a hesitant step forward, mustering his courage to strike the felling blow.

  “Wait!” I cried. “I have an idea.”

  For some reason, it just made sense. Everything seemed to fall into place. Plus, it was the only thing I could think to do.

  “What is it, princess?” Sunny demanded, still holding Quentin back.

  I found the nearest patch of shadow and braced myself, flexing my hands into fists.

  “I need to Slip again.”

  THE PURPLE BLOT OF the Shadow Realm took over, skewing my senses. I located the nearest dark patch in the distance, up the stairs, and ventured toward it.

  My feet trudged on their own volition. I was carried toward the shadow, my body desperate to find a place to shadowwalk into so I could come out the other side.

  That’s when I stared over the railing of the stairs. The trajectory was leading me forward . . .

  So I jumped over the railing, out of the trajectory.

  Everything broke, twisting on its head as my sight went hazy.

  I didn’t land on the slatted floor beneath the stairs, but rather passed through it and tumbled into darkness.

  A silent scream tore from my lips as I somersaulted through limbo—

  Then emerged on the red couch.

  Dreamwatcher’s—Quentin’s—back was to me.

  “Dreamwatcher!” I shouted, rising from the couch.

  He turned, a curious and amused look on his face. “Moonwalker.”

  “No.”

  He harrumphed.

  “I found your body,” I said, my face lighting up.

  “You . . . what?”

  “You have to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know!”

  My mind was reeling. Something twisted inside me and for some reason, in a way I couldn’t explain, I knew what I needed to do. It just came intuitively, all at once.

  “Take my hand,” I said, reaching out.

  His lids fell, hooded with suspicion. “Are you really who you say you are?”

  I didn’t know how to answer that. “Quick, before they kill you! Again!”

  “By the spirits, woman, that makes no damn sense.”

  “I know. Just . . . please trust me. Remember, you can feel my touch here. We established that.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve been trying to figure out how the whole time. I’ve never met another spirit in the Spectral Realm that I could touch.”

  “I think it’s because I’m not a spirit. I think I’m a visitor.” I circled my hand in the air, trying to think of a way to explain. “My soul hasn’t been severed, Quentin.”

  Anxiety flashed in his wide eyes. “How do you know my actual name? Just who are you, lass?”

  “My name is Coralia Hargrave. I’m Myria Hargrave’s—”

  “Sister. Yes. I see the resemblance now. Why didn’t I see it earlier?”

  “Now do you trust me?”

  He reached out and took my hand, our fingers threading together. When they connected, a spark shot through my body, zinging down my spine and spreading out to my extremities.

  Power surged in my belly.

  Both times I’d come here, I hadn’t stepped past the main room. But I pushed open the door next to Quentin and ventured forth, dragging him behind me.

  We jogged into a murky corridor, unlit and spooky. Shadows danced on the walls, moving on their own but cast from nothing at all.

  “Careful of this place—”

  “I know. I don’t know how, but I do.”

  I went with the flow and moved, sprinting through the eerie corridor that trapped shadows on the walls. We made it into another winding room. Then another.

  I felt like I was sliding through a labyrinth, deeper and deeper into the pit of an abyss. The shadows playing all over were vaguely humanoid in shape.

  They couldn’t have just been my imagination—I figured they were lost spirits trying to find a way out, but not able to. They had no body to return to.

  We reached a door, the purple blanket of the Shadow Realm inching its way back into my vision. We were cresting some type of crescendo in the Spectral Realm where Quentin had been trapped—a fusion or interwovenness of the two worlds. I used an arcane, innate sense inside me as a guiding light to lead us. To bust him free.

  When we went through the door, I was standing on top of the platform above my mates. Purple and black patterns swept in all around me, marking my return to the Shadow Realm.

  “There they are,” I said.

  “There . . . they all are.” Quentin’s voice sounded lost, adrift as we stared down at the men he knew like brothers.

  “And there you are.” I pointed at the monster Sunny held back, struggling to break free.

  Quentin followed me down the stairs. When we reached the bottom, I slid up behind Sunny and moved to the front. No one could see me due to the Shadow Realm enveloping me like a quilt.

  Except the zombie. It stopped writhing. It looked right at me through its vacant, black eyes, and cocked its head curiously.

  I reached back and took Dreamwatcher’s hand. I felt his soul in my palm, and when the spirit inhaled sharply I felt a thrilling spark rush through me.

  Leatherwings are “soulless,” Dawn said. Maybe that stands for Quentin as well—whatever he is in this state.

  With Dreamwatcher still holding my hand, I pushed my empty palm against the zombie creature’s chest in front of me.

  The three of us became connected, with me as the conduit. But since the zombie was in a different realm, my hand sank right into his chest, to the wrist.

  The black eyes brightened. The slack mouth closed.

  Quentin’s zombie made a gurgling sound, and then all my mates were shouting, though their words were lost to me in the Shadow Realm.

  I smiled wide and began to turn. “Dreamwatcher, I think it’s work—”

  He was gone.

  No one held my hand.

  The sickly pallor of the zombie began to fade. Color came to the man’s cheeks. The black eyes turned a mellow green, like the Dreamwatcher I knew from the Spectral Realm. Then they rolled back, closed, and Quentin slumped in Sunny’s grip.

  The vampire gently brought him to the floor. Dax and Venn knelt over him, all of them with concerned, baffled looks on their faces.

  I found a shadow behind me and jumped through it, emerging in the human world a minute later.

  At the
sound of my return, my feet smacking the floor, my Glovemates faced me.

  “Wh-What did you do?” Venn asked.

  I shook my head. “I think I, um, returned his soul to his body.”

  Chapter 43

  Coralia

  “WE NEED TO BRING HIM home,” Sunny said. “His pulse is weak. He needs healing.”

  At the same time, Dax wrapped scraps of his clothes around his waist and pulled the shadowmap out of his backpack. He traced his hand over the empty parchment and it filled with a shadowy construct of the prison we were in.

  I squinted, eyeing the staircase. “Okay,” I said to Sunny. “Hold on. We came here for another reason too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  I jumped the stairs three at a time. Even with the elation of recovering Quentin soaring through me, the pain of losing Myria again dragged me down.

  I couldn’t let it swallow me whole. At least I knew Myria was alive. Officially. The Leatherwings had dragged her off and kidnapped her when she was right at the tip of my fingers . . .

  It was something I wouldn’t get over for a while.

  Dax and Venn joined me on the upper level of the prison. We walked the honeycomb platform and checked inside the cells. Most of them were empty.

  Then we came to one and Dax stopped, his face twisting with recognition. He stared into the gloomy darkness, hands wrapping around the bars. “Desmona?”

  His voice sounded confused.

  The girl who approached the bars was draped in dirty rags. Her face was lighter than Dax’s midnight hue, but still dark. She looked about our age, and pretty.

  Someone he knows from the past?

  “H-Help,” a parched, dry voice called out nearby.

  I couldn’t stop to listen to Dax’s conversation. I lurched around the corner to another cell.

  Genevieve was on her side, sitting up and rubbing her head. She wore the same clothes as when she had been taken. At this point they were disheveled and filthy. A slip of her shirt hung off her shoulder, exposing half her breast.

  She craned her neck. “W-Worm food?”

  “Hello, Vivi.”

  “Only my friends can call me that.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I . . . I think someone drugged me,” she continued. “I’m all woozy. Where am I?”

  “Can you stand?”

  “Probably not.”

  “We’re going to get you out of there.” I slapped the bars and turned to dash away to find someone to help.

  Her voice stopped me short. “You . . . came to rescue me?”

  I gulped. “Not just me, Genevieve.”

  “Why?”

  “Because not everyone is a . . .” I let my frustrated mind slow down before I said something stupid.

  “Because not everyone is a bitch like me?”

  “Because no one deserves this, girl.”

  Her face froze. A second later, she choked back a sob. Her pretty face was smudged with grime, and she looked so damn tired. I had to lean my head into the bars to hear her next words.

  “I guess there are some good ones left.”

  “Good ones, Genevieve?”

  “Humans.”

  I clenched my jaw, tucking my tongue into my cheek. “There are.”

  I spun to leave.

  “I didn’t always hate your kind, you know.”

  Again, I froze. My curiosity was piqued.

  “I was the daughter of a well-respected family, Coralia. The Jades are renowned throughout the Seelie Court. I was a maiden with a promising future.” Her smudged face twisted with venom. “Then we took in that struggling family of humans . . .”

  As she trailed off, I cleared my throat. “You don’t have to tell me, Genevieve.”

  “No,” she said, crawling toward the bars. “You saved me. You deserve to know why I give you so much shit.”

  I nodded slowly. “What did the humans do, Vivi?”

  This time, she didn’t stop me from calling her by her nickname.

  “They stole something priceless from us. Turns out they were outlaws from their world. Earth. Because I was the one who took them in, my family blamed me. The Seelie shunned me for allowing such a thing to happen. I was exiled.”

  A held breath slipped past my lips, understanding dawning on me. “So you’ll never trust humans again because of that. Damn, I didn’t know—”

  “Until you.”

  “Huh?”

  “By coming here, you’ve shown me there are trustworthy humans out there. You’re not all scum.”

  I smiled as warmly as I could. “We’re just people, Vivi. Like anyone else.”

  A clatter to my right had me turning to find Venn running up beside me. “Genevieve!”

  I locked eyes with Vivi Jade one more time, and wondered if, by some strange twist of fate, we could become friends after all this.

  After all the shit she put me through.

  After all the shit her people put her through.

  I stepped away to let Venn handle the bars. I was in a daze, mind whirling, wondering about Genevieve; about the identity of the prisoner Dax recognized; wondering where Myria had been taken; how I’d transferred Quentin’s soul back into his body—Is that the “special” thing Dawn Rose saw inside me?

  So many questions.

  A smell hit my nose like a drainage pipe, instantly killing my mood. I found myself creeping up to the next cell in the block. Hesitantly, I stepped toward it, and the sickly stench only grew worse.

  I poked my head through the bars, trying to see into the murky blackness inside the cell.

  Flies swarmed a corpse on the ground, body positioned at an awkward, unnatural angle.

  I screwed my eyes shut on a sharp breath. Images scored through my mind like a gruesome PowerPoint presentation: Evisceration. Piles of innards. Black gashes. Naked female. Legs akimbo. Pale, flaky skin. Blood.

  So much blood.

  Bile rocketed up my throat. Sweating, I leaned over and vomited. I wiped my mouth and stepped away from the cell on a shaky breath, stumbling backward until my butt hit the railing of the balcony.

  Venn called out, “Coralia? Are you all right? What is it?”

  “It’s, uh . . . f-fuck. I w-wouldn’t come over here if I were you, Venn.”

  Chapter 44

  Coralia

  WE RETURNED TO SHADOWBLADE Academy beaten but victorious. We weren’t hailed as heroes, by any means. The nature of the Academy meant no one even knew what we’d been up to.

  We took Genevieve and Quentin to the infirmary to rehabilitate. Venn also joined them for a short stint from the wound he’d taken during our fight with the Leatherwing.

  We had returned with two Shadowblade Academy students. They just weren’t the ones we expected to come back with.

  Myria was still missing. She had slipped through my grasp, right at the end. I vowed to find her again, and bring her back once and for all.

  Though the thought of losing Myria made me depressed, sticking around the guys helped me out. Charli was ecstatic to see me return, and even Bruce Kittenson gave me a well-deserved lick on the face my first day back.

  My thoughts kept drifting back to that horrible sight in the prison cell next to Vivi’s. Who was that girl? What story of hers is lost forever with her gruesome death?

  Rumors spread. Supposedly, Academy higher-ups had returned to the site and recovered the dead girl’s body. Also, some experts on the subject—not Dawn Rose, however—had come to the Academy to analyze the situation. As usual, everything was kept tightly under wraps.

  Dax’s friend from the prison—Desmona, I believed?—promptly vanished after returned from Asberald City. He didn’t speak about her after that, except to say she had left before she could “become another test dummy for those scientists.”

  I thought that was odd, but it really was none of my business. I figured she was perhaps a former lover of Dax’s. And since she wasn’t enrolled at Shadowblade Academy, she couldn’t have stayed even if she’d
wanted to.

  I played Shadowball to keep my mind occupied. Dax and Sunny grew on me. Venn came back from the infirmary and we were a foursome again. Genevieve took a while to heal, so we played some four-on-five scrimmages for a while and got our asses kicked. It was all fun and games.

  I thought about Vivi and what she had been through at the hands of her own people. How could she have been shunned by her own family like that, after being kind and trusting to humans?

  The Seelie Court was sounding just as wicked as the Unseelie Court, the more I learned about them. Venn of the Unseelie Court, meanwhile, was as nice and respectable as they came. Still, he’d also been exiled.

  I made a promise to not hang out in the Fae Realm if I could help it. They all sounded too sketchy. Too uptight.

  A week after we returned, things slowly mellowed out and went back to the way they were before the midterm fiasco in the woods. That seemed to have been the catalyst for everything I had experienced.

  What was it I said? Oh yeah: What could possibly go terribly wrong with a party in the woods?

  My classes started back up. I struggled to pass them. I knew I had an ace in the hole though, because I’d already passed my final exam. Eat that, Ghosts.

  I was given a formal meeting by Jace Hudson. He congratulated me on a job well done and told me I was officially a Phantom. Hooray.

  I couldn’t get the dead girl out of my head. I wanted to know more about her. What had those Leatherwings been doing in that spirits-forsaken place?

  Professor Hudson wasn’t about to tell me.

  As I walked out of the dojo Jace Hudson called home, Sunny, Dax, and Venn greeted me with a round of applause. I blushed and shook my head, telling them to fuck off. I hated the attention.

  As I tried to hide my smirk and step past Sunny, he stood in my way like a sexy oak tree, barring my path.

  My eyes veered up to his amber irises. “What?”

  “We’ve been talking.”

  “We?”

  “The guys. Hudson’s Glove.”

  “Oh.” I scratched my scalp, nerves pinching my arms. “What about? Have you finally decided to join the priesthood and cast aside all your earthly possessions?”