A Hellish Year One: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Bully Romance (Academy of The Devil Book 1)

by Eva Brandt

  I didn’t need to be told twice. My body practically moved on its own. Like an automaton, I let go of Shiro, shoved my manual, notebook and pens into my bag and fled the classroom like Satan himself was after me.

  Considering the way my day had gone so far, that was actually a real possibility.

  I didn’t know what made me stop. Maybe it was the memory of the earlier conversation between the blue-skinned boy and Gemma, or the fact that I couldn’t forget about his screams. Still, I ended up staying behind and waiting in the corridor. I cursed myself for not being able to leave well enough alone, but I didn’t have the heart to just leave without making sure Darling was okay.

  I didn’t know her actual name. I hadn’t been able to do anything for her friend, and my support would be meaningless, especially in this place that seemed designed to weed out all weakness. But surely, there had to be something I could do.

  It was arrogant of me to think like that, but before I could dwell too much on my self-doubt, Darling emerged from the classroom. “What are you doing, Sacrifice?” she asked, just as coolly as before. “Did you want something?”

  Now that she’d seen me, I had no idea what to say or do. I doubted expressing my concern for her mental state would go over well. “I was actually wondering... Does that happen often?” I asked. “The thing the Demonology teacher did.”

  I mentally flinched at my own words. Out of everything I could’ve said to make her feel better, I’d gone with such a stupid approach. I half-expected her to attack me for such an insensitive question.

  Weirdly, the complete opposite happened. The tension seemed to drain out of Darling’s stance. “I have no idea,” she replied. “Nobody said anything about it, although I did hear that the number of student deaths is pretty high in their first year.”

  Together, we started making our way down the corridor, in the general direction the other students had taken when they’d left. “Did you know the boy who died?” I inquired, hoping it wouldn’t piss her off.

  “He was my cousin,” she whispered. “Part of why he came here was because I wanted to go.”

  I wanted to offer her my condolences, to comfort her in some way. I wasn’t close to my own cousins, since we didn’t live in the same state, but still, I’d have been devastated if something like this had happened to them.

  Even so, I kept my mouth shut. Darling wasn’t human and wouldn’t appreciate the kind of well wishes I’d have provided to people who didn’t expect getting killed when they went to class.

  “Jax was an idiot,” she said, saving me for having to come up with another way to continue the conversation. “I told him this was dangerous and that he needs to be careful, and he had to go and fall asleep. On the first day. In Ammit’s class. What the actual fuck?”

  I let her rant and rave, although I also kept a close eye on her. Magic flared dangerously at her fingertips and I made sure Shiro was on her other side, so she wouldn’t be able to reach him if she lost control of her powers or something.

  “Anyway,” she said, “it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s just as well that he died now. With his temperament, he’d have been killed by the end of the year, and at least this way, Ammit might let his soul go once she chews on it a little.”

  The imagery was disturbing in the extreme, but it seemed to bring Darling some comfort. “Think of it this way,” I said on a whim. “Once you become Satan, you can do whatever you want, even bring back people from the dead, right? So that’s something to look forward to.”

  For a few seconds, I thought I’d crossed the line with my comment. Once again, Darling’s reaction took me by surprise. Her eyes lit up with something akin to hope and when she looked at me again, she was smiling. “You know what, Sacrifice? You’re all right.” She grabbed my arm, but her hold was warmer and less tight than Gemma’s. “Come on. Don’t dawdle. We have to get to the next class.”

  I allowed her to drag me in the right direction, feeling a little better about the horrible thing I’d just witnessed. I might not have been able to help the dead boy, but I could at least help his cousin. And maybe, if I got really lucky, I could keep other people from dying young at the hands of their own teachers.

  I was just a powerless human, but if I was here at The Academy of the Devil, I might as well change that.

  * * *

  The second class for the day was Herbalism. It was held by a man called David Jones. The shockingly common name took me by surprise until I entered the greenhouses and saw him.

  Pale-skinned and milky-eyed, the man looked like a drowning victim. Seaweed covered half his face, but his clothes looked rich and well kept. The buttons alone glinted almost as brightly as the dome that protected the school and his black boots were adorned with the same type of stone some of the school buildings were made out of.

  My immediate reaction upon seeing him was to ask myself who the hell had put the dead body in an outfit designed by Versace. Since I did have some self-preservation, I hoped he couldn’t read minds.

  “So... David Jones?” I asked Darling, who’d sat down next to me. “As in Davy Jones’s locker? How exactly did that happen?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest,” she replied. “I know he’s a water spirit of some kind, because he also teaches Elemental Magic to upper years. Beyond that, he’s a mystery. But my mother said to not call him by his human nickname where he can hear.”

  I’d have appreciated her telling me that before I’d mentioned said nickname in the man’s classroom. Fortunately, we were seated at the back of the greenhouse, so the teacher didn’t hear our little exchange.

  Unlike Ammit, David Jones took roll call. He enunciated each name very carefully, and his voice echoed around the greenhouse as crisp and clear as the stream in the gardens outside. He also had each student get up and repeat their names.

  I was grateful for it, since I’d missed dinner the day before and hadn’t gotten the chance to speak to any of these people. This way, I could find out their names without having to actually socialize.

  One by one, the students got up and introduced themselves. The first ones were a boy and a girl, Bartholomew and Berta Bones. They were twins and the alliteration alone made me flinch. The name was not a coincidence, though. “Oh, necromancers, those two,” Darling said, rubbing her hands together. “They’ll be fun to play with.”

  Vincent Drake was followed by Olympia Fleece. “It’s pronounced Felis,” she announced snootily, and I knew on the spot her name wasn’t a coincidence either.

  Other people didn’t have last names at all, or pretended they didn’t. A guy who was wearing a strange, hook-nosed face mask just introduced himself as L, like yet another anime character. No one seemed to find this strange. A girl who’d turned our already skimpy uniform into something that looked like a bathing suit smiled prettily as she claimed her name was Flight from Death.

  “Is she joking?” I asked Darling. “Surely that can’t be her real name.” Was the school going to let a girl officially call herself Voldemort while attending classes?

  Darling shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to the teachers. They all know our actual names and identities. This is more like a session of allowing us to get to know one another, but a lot of students don’t cooperate with that and come up with false names and the like.”

  She seemed to be one of them, since Darling Masters was right before Alyssa Michaelis. Leaving aside the fact that I now knew my new friend’s name—and it was pretty weird too—I deemed myself lucky we were so close together in roll call. When the students turned to stare at me, I felt like the attention was divided between me and Darling.

  Still, I couldn’t help but note that Darling’s dead cousin had been skipped, which suggested that the teacher already knew about Jax’s demise. And yet, he hadn’t deemed it in any way odd and hadn’t even bothered to mention it. After what Darling had told me earlier, it wasn’t that surprising, but still, it disturbed me.

  I was relieved when the process was over and
we could go back to the actual class. I only hoped it wouldn’t be as bad as what we’d had before, in Demonology.

  Ironically, once I stopped thinking about the fact that he looked like a corpse, Professor Jones turned out to be a pretty good teacher. He distributed our manuals himself, then started us out on something simple—the use of plants in witchcraft and demonic rituals. “Herbs might seem boring to many of you,” he explained, “but the gifts of nature can be a dangerous weapon. A powerful demon hunter can use blessed herbs to shake off our influence, which is why it is important for us to understand all the properties of plant life. It’ll serve you well later.”

  That made sense in a way very few things at the academy had, and while I’d never been a good student in botany, I found the lesson comforting. Yes, the information he was providing might’ve been a little weird, and I didn’t actually intend to ever craft potions potent enough to destroy an angel’s wings. Still, Mr. Jones displayed no hostility toward us, which was a huge improvement compared to Ammit.

  We didn’t plant anything, but I suspected we eventually would and looked forward to it. Darling agreed with me.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” she said as Professor Jones dismissed the class. “After what I heard about the teacher, I’d expected far worse. Maybe he’s harsher on the students in elemental magic.”

  “Well, I don’t know, but it was interesting. Also, nobody died, which is always a plus.”

  The moment those words came out of my mouth, I froze. I couldn’t believe that within the expanse of an hour, I’d gone from being horrified by Jax’s demise, to making jokes about it. But it looked like this was just the kind of place the academy was, because Darling took it in stride and smiled. “True.”

  “Next class won’t be so easy, though,” someone else said from behind us. It was the Voldemort girl, and she was glowering at me for some reason. “We have Creature Control.”

  Darling grimaced, as enthusiastic about our schedule as the would-be Dark Lord. Dark Lady. Whatever. “Fuck. That’s going to be unpleasant. Well, not for you, Alyssa.”

  I hadn’t expected being drawn into the conversation in such a way. “Huh?” I asked intelligently. “Why not?”

  “The whole class is dedicated to helping us find our familiars,” Olympia offered, joining our small group without being invited. “You already have yours, so you’re practically halfway through the curriculum.”

  Err... Okay, then.

  It was becoming increasingly obvious that I’d need to point out Shiro’s true nature to someone soon. Maybe I could talk to this teacher and hope he or she understood where I was coming from. Shiro was amazing and my best friend, but that didn’t make him a familiar. Did it?

  “It doesn’t really matter that you don’t know how to control his powers,” Olympia added, as if she could guess my thoughts. “They’re not expecting you to, especially not so soon. Satan help me, even upperclassmen have trouble with that, and they’ve known about magic all their lives.”

  I thought about TB and Mikael, and surmised Olympia was telling the truth. “So where does that leave me?”

  “No idea. You might go into a class with the second years. But your best bet is to ask the teacher today.”

  Her words meshed with my earlier plan, but that didn’t make me any less nervous about it. Like Olympia had said, I didn’t know anything about magic. What if I ended up accidentally hurting Shiro?

  Lost in thought, I followed Darling out of the greenhouse. I hoped and prayed Creature Control would be more like Herbalism than Demonology, but all of a sudden, I knew things wouldn’t be that simple.

  Creatures, Connections and Computers

  The teacher in charge of our next class was a beautiful woman named Lilith, and her classroom was located inside the amorphous mass that indeed contained a demonic entity. Lilith herself had no problem with this. In fact, when we entered her domain, we found her naked on her desk, with her legs spread and a shadowy figure vigorously pounding between them. Her sweaty dark hair fell around her cheekbones in perfect curls and she clung to her demonic partner with clawed, slender fingers.

  I let out an alarmed squeak and suppressed the urge to cover Shiro’s eyes. By my side, Darling snickered. “Don’t laugh,” I snapped at her. “What are we supposed to do? Just stand here?”

  “Well, that, and enjoy the view,” Bartholomew Bones said. “I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He was lazily rubbing a white, bony talisman between his fingers, and I had a feeling it wasn’t just a good luck charm. Did that count as masturbation? Magical masturbation? Did such a thing exist? Dear God, I was losing it.

  Things got even stranger when the twin sister took the talisman from him and started licking it, right in front of us. The noise that escaped Bartholomew’s lips confirmed my earlier guess. His body shuddered and he whispered his sister’s name under his breath. “Yeah, Berta. Just like that. Suck it.”

  Berta did. She took the talisman in her mouth and started fellating it, paying no heed to the fact that we were still there, watching. Bartholomew leaned against the wall, panting and groaning. I could see the line of his erect cock through the fabric of his uniform, but he made no attempt to touch himself.

  Suppressing all thoughts on the incestuous romance taking place in front of me, I turned away. Left with no other option, I looked at the ceiling and waited. The episode with Gemma and Callum had clearly not been an exception, but still, watching my teacher fucking a manifestation of magic was a bit much, at least for now. Granted, watching a guy get murdered in front of me had been far more shocking, but I’d been so terrified at the time that avoiding the sight hadn’t occurred to me. I had the choice here and I’d use it.

  I suspected the other students might have been interested in engaging in sexual activities as well, but the teacher wasn’t completely irresponsible. Less than a minute later, she cried out and came. A surge of magic similar to Callum’s swept through the room and I shuddered, my body responding to it despite my best attempts to control myself. Bartholomew let out a small ‘ah, yeah’, and even without looking at him, I knew that he’d followed her over the edge.

  Now that it was all over, I dared to look at my teacher again. The shadow had disappeared and, as I watched, she swept her hand over her skin, cleansing herself of all the fluids left behind by their intercourse. Once she was clean, a sheer garment that looked more like a negligee than a dress manifested on her body. It showed more of her than it covered, and I mentally thanked whoever had designed my uniform for at least making sure all my privates were shielded from view.

  “Welcome, class,” she said, clapping her hands in cheerful enthusiasm. “I am Lilith, and I will be your teacher for Creature Control and Familiar Bonding. Now, I see we have a new, wonderful student here. Miss Alyssa Michaelis, is it?”

  I wanted to cry at having everyone’s attention on me again. “Yes, Professor. I’m Alyssa Michaelis.”

  “Call me Madam Lilith,” she replied with a wide smile. “Professor is much too formal. And oh, it’s so wonderful to see you here. I knew your ancestor. Ah, we spent some excellent moments together. He was a wonderful lover, once he forgot about all his misgivings.”

  She waved a hand, as if physically pushing away the memories of her long-dead beau. “More importantly, what wonderful creature do we have here? Please, introduce us.”

  She glided to our side and knelt in front of Shiro. I was immediately alarmed, but when she made no attempt to touch him, I decided to obey. “This is my dog, Shiro.”

  “And what a lovely familiar he is,” Lilith said, once again beaming brightly. “Such a bright demonic spirit. Yes, I’m sure you’ll do excellently.”

  I appreciated her enthusiasm, since I felt this was always the appropriate response to my Shiro. However, I still believed I needed to point Shiro wasn’t a demon.

  I opened my mouth to do just that, but Lilith didn’t give me the chance. She got up and shot me a regretful
look. “I’m afraid this means you don’t quite belong in this class, Ms. Michaelis. Join the advanced group on Friday. That class takes place in the evening, at six p.m., so you should have no problem with conflicting schedules.”

  Still feeling a little dazed, I nodded, thanked her, and fled the classroom. It was only when I was already outside that I realized Lilith’s dismissal left me with a free period and I had no idea where to go.

  Returning to the dorms was out of the question. With my luck, I’d get lost and become unable to come back to the school in time. I had lunch and one other class after this, so I couldn’t just go off on my own. Waiting here for Darling would be lame, especially since students at this school were supposed to be independent. Maybe I could find someone else to ask for advice. But who?

  No sooner had I asked myself this than a male voice snapped me out of my musings. “Ms. Michaelis? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in class?”

  I turned, only to see Mikael had at one point appeared in the corridor. He was as impeccably put together as the day before, when we’d met, with one exception.

  TB lay curled on his head, apparently dozing off. It was kind of cute, if strange. TB was a large snake, and I had no idea how Mikael managed to hold her like that.

  I realized I’d completely ignored Mikael’s question when he repeated his inquiry. “Ms. Michaelis? Why are you here?”

  “I was in Creature Control, but the teacher said that, because of Shiro, I need to take advanced classes. So I’m stuck with a free period now.”

  “I see,” Mikael said. “Well, if you like, I can show you to the library. I’m sure you have a lot of questions you haven’t found an answer to. I’ve always found books helpful with that.”

  I remembered Gemma’s comment about kindness and shook my head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly ask you to do that. I mean, I appreciate the offer and all, but I wouldn’t want to put you out.”