by Eva Brandt
The ritual she’d cast wasn’t bad and her power levels remarkable. She was definitely more than she’d tried to appear during classes. If she and Jax were related, she also had the potential of becoming an even bigger threat in the future.
But for now, she was a girl who didn’t like the academy and wanted out. I’d seen hundreds of thousands of people just like her throughout my life.
“You should probably realize, Ms. Masters,” I said, “that even if you do destroy The Academy of the Devil, nothing is going to change. It’s only a physical location. Its dissolution wouldn’t grant Jax the position of a permanent Satan.”
If anything, he’d be looked down upon for having to resort to a young nephilim to finish what he’d started. It was dumb that she’d even consider the idea, at a time when we were in the ruins of the previous Academy of the Devil.
“He’s right, Darling,” Jax said. “This wasn’t in the plan. Step away from the body.”
Darling bit her lip, but complied. It was much too late.
She’d completed her ritual and already imbued the construct with too much power. The process couldn’t be stopped any longer.
The construct’s eyes shot open and it—or rather, she—made a grab for Darling’s arm. Darling screamed and bright light emerged from her fingertips. Not-Lyssa recoiled and freed her creator, but quickly recovered.
She got up with striking fluidity and rubbed her hands over her neck. Despite my mild amusement with the situation, I found it difficult to watch. It was still Lyssa’s body doing these things, the same body I’d worshiped so many times with my own.
To make matters worse, the construct wasn’t moving in unnatural ways. As one of the darkest arts in the world, necromancy was usually messy and the results never satisfying or life-like. This was different.
There was someone in there. It just wasn’t Lyssa. The thought killed any anticipation I might’ve felt for what was about to happen.
Lilith was far more hopeful than I was. “Eve?” she tentatively asked. “Is that you?”
Not-Lyssa tilted her head at Lilith, as if she didn’t understand the question. She probably didn’t. Even if Eve was the one in possession of Lyssa’s body, it always took time for an alien soul to adjust to another vessel. Some never accommodated, which was part of the reason why necromancy had such dreadful results.
But Lilith ignored that. Even knowing how badly this could end, she rushed to embrace the construct.
“I can’t believe this. I thought Alyssa had killed you. Welcome back.”
Lilith pressed her mouth to that of the construct and, much to my shock, Not-Lyssa kissed her back. It was very strange to see. A part of me wanted to stop Lilith and tear her apart for daring to abuse Lyssa’s body in this way. But something held me back.
The magic I could feel coming off Not-Lyssa was familiar, but I couldn’t for the life of me recall where I’d sensed it before. It didn’t belong to Eve, though, and I had a feeling that Lilith’s blindness toward this simple fact wouldn’t end well.
It didn’t take long for me to be proven right. Well, sort of. Lilith noticed something was amiss and she pulled away from the kiss, stumbling back and eyeing Not-Lyssa like she’d just been burnt. “You… Impossible.”
Not-Lyssa didn’t answer. She blinked at Lilith, her face devoid of all emotion. On the third blink, a large spike of bone emerged from the ground and speared Lilith from behind.
Oh, ouch. That had to hurt.
Despite being a very powerful demon, Lilith had her weaknesses too and no one who had any kind of physical form could survive having their hearts destroyed. In the blink of an eye, the life of Adam’s first wife was extinguished.
I felt no sadness or satisfaction at the sight. In her own way, she’d been a good woman and she’d once salvaged hope when none of us had been able to. But she’d also betrayed Lyssa and that was something I could not abide.
If she’d died now, it wasn’t because of me, but because of the new unknown factor of the mysterious necromantic construct. I kept my distance, watching the creature with caution. The others were just as wary. “What just happened?” Stefan asked.
“I don’t think that’s Eve,” Mikael replied. He was smiling slightly and I knew that was a problem I needed to handle before it escalated.
I didn’t want another crazed nephilim on my hands.
“Eve or not, I won’t have this!” Satan growled. “It’s time to end this ridiculous game.”
With a furious roar, he shook off the hold of Mikael’s power and reached for Not-Lyssa. She didn’t bother moving. Instead, she just looked at him, her eyes glowing.
The ground started to shake and out of the ruins of The Scholomance, a host of ghosts emerged. Screeching, they lunged toward Jax.
Okay, that was our cue to get out of here.
I made a beeline toward the still unconscious Callum and freed him from the cuffs. The spell on him was still active, but it had been damaged during the fight. I cracked it with minimal trouble.
Meanwhile, Mikael secured Lyssa’s soul. Leaving her body behind was terrible, but at the end of the day, the flesh was only a shell. If we could preserve her essence, we could still bring her back.
Waving my hand, I reached out to the power of the school. A spatial anomaly manifested in front of me. We all jumped through and landed on the other side, in the courtyard.
The gateway closed behind us, but I knew better than to think we were safe. “We need to take Lyssa elsewhere. Mikael, do you think you can contact your father?”
“It’s doubtful. He’s never come before when I asked. But I will try.”
“Do so. The rest of us have to evacuate the school. It’s not safe here anymore.”
Normally, I wouldn’t have been too worried about the students. They could protect themselves. The Watchers and the spirits of the school would help them.
But if I was right about what had happened, the nature of the school had been corrupted. Its main guardians were no longer here. And there was no telling what the creature that inhabited Lyssa’s body would do.
I might not have cared about the school itself, but I doubted Lyssa would’ve wanted her body to be used in a massacre.
This had happened before, in the days of The Scholomance, although at the time, it hadn’t been because of a Satan upstart who wanted to consume my lover. There was always something about demonic academies that unavoidably spawned death and destruction. Maybe it was time to make a new one. But to do that, we still needed the students.
I needn’t have worried. They had already realized something wasn’t right and were streaming out of the dorms, half-dressed, in a panic, but ready for battle.
“What’s going on?”
“Are we being attacked by The Celestial Realm?”
“Dean Mephistopheles, what’s happened?”
At least they were still looking to me to guide them. I took advantage of that and hoped I’d be fast enough to get them out of here before disaster struck.
“There’s been a conflict in The Infernal Realm and it’s spilling into the academy. You will all make your way to the transport point in an orderly manner, as quickly as possible. You’ll wait in the anchor points in the human cities, to be retrieved later.”
“But Sir, we can help!” someone protested. To my surprise, it was Gemma Grim. “If someone is trying to destroy the academy, we can protect it.”
“No, you can’t. Trust me on this one.”
They did not trust me, or if they did, they still wanted to stay behind. Mikael stepped in and glowered at them. “Gemma. Leave, now.”
His cold voice shouldn’t have made a difference when my request hadn’t. If anything, the opposite should have happened, since he was no longer making any attempt to hide his divine nature.
But Mikael was still holding the sphere with Lyssa’s soul. Callum was still unconscious in my arms. Stefan had not turned back into his regular form.
It didn’t take a genius to figure o
ut what had happened.
The last time Lyssa had gotten seriously hurt hadn’t ended well for the students. Several of them had been killed while approaching us. It was one of the few situations when I’d done very little to protect them, since I’d had other priorities at the time.
“All right, guys,” Gemma said. “Time to go.”
I should’ve known better than to think anything—even a simple evacuation of the school—would go well for me today. Before the students could do what I’d told them to, the ground in the courtyard exploded, and Satan’s massive figure emerged from below. In the dim moonlight, he glowed like a beacon. Darling was on his shoulder, bruised and cradling her arm to her chest, but otherwise unharmed.
The students didn’t have the sense to realize Satan was hostile. They were too in awe with his presence. “Is that Satan?”
“Oh, wow…”
“I never thought I’d see him so soon.”
“Do you think we could approach him to enter his service? If we’re lucky, we might not have to finish our classes.”
I twitched in irritation, wondering why I’d been cursed to have to worry about demons with less self-preservation than a suicidal gnat.
“Now is really not the time to look for employment,” I snarled, slapping them with my tail. “Back away.”
“But Sir,” one of them cried, “it’s Satan!”
“Yes, I’m aware. We have other more pressing issues to—”
Before I could finish my sentence, a glowing figure emerged from the crack Satan had created with his body. It was Not-Lyssa and she was surrounded by the spirits of The Scholomance. Her complexion had gone almost translucent and her eyes had turned milky white.
“What in Satan’s name…?” Gemma asked, looking from Lyssa’s sphere to her body.
“There was an incident of necromantic nature,” I told Gemma, wanting her to just go away already. “Now go, before I turn you into necromantic material too.”
Gemma complied, ushering her housemates along. The ghosts were faster.
As I watched, the spirits swept over the students and passed through their bodies. The young demons fell, the death energies obliterating their lives.
“Well, shit,” Stefan said, echoing my thoughts. It had already been a fucked up situation and it was only growing worse by the second.
Some of the ghosts tried to attack me, Stefan, Callum, and Mikael, but they quickly changed their minds when I extended my wings. “I think not. I’m a High Lord of Hell. It’ll take more than a spirit to kill me, you little shit.”
Mikael helped, once again resorting to his celestial magic to drive the ghosts off. He never let go Lyssa’s soul, but he saved quite a few students, buying them enough time to make their escape. But it wasn’t a solution, not really.
There were far more ghosts at The Academy of the Devil than there were people. They’d never been a problem before, as they tended to stay within the ruins of The Scholomance. If a roaming soul was caught outside, Ammit tended to devour them.
But Ammit was gone now, and for whatever reason, these ghosts obeyed Not-Lyssa. To make matters worse, the construct seemed intent on building herself an army.
Some of the dead bodies came to life in a process that mimicked what Darling had done earlier. They were nowhere near as graceful, but I had no doubt they were dangerous.
The remaining corpses of the ghosts’ victims cracked open and their skeletons crawled from inside. Covered in blood and gore, they stared at us with eye sockets that burned with poisonous dark magic.
The leftover flesh started to come together in a second necromantic construct worthy of Morrigan herself.
This was already exhausting and I hadn’t even started to fight them off.
Satan had a problem with having someone else steal the spotlight. “Enough!” he shouted. “The souls of these people belong to me. You can’t have them.”
His chest glowed and his body started to shake, as if he was a volcano about to erupt. The comparison proved to be apt, since mere seconds later, Satan opened his mouth and spat out a stream of fire at Not-Lyssa. He reminded me a little of a dragon, but he was far less efficient, at least in this case.
The power of the blast carbonized the casual clothes Lyssa had been wearing before her death. Her body was left untouched.
The necromantic construct blinked at him, and then stared at her pale, unscathed arm. She seemed surprised that she hadn’t been hurt.
Her lips twisted into a wicked smile. “Look at that. The Sacrifice has more promise than we thought she did.”
The voice that spoke belonged to Lyssa, but didn’t sound exactly like her, possibly because her vocal cords had been damaged when she’d been decapitated. It was also the first time the necromantic construct had said anything at all.
She was clearly aware of what was going on, and she remembered her previous identity as well as Lyssa’s. It was so strange. Who could she possibly be? Who would have the power to turn Lyssa’s body into something like this?
Ironically, it was Darling who provided me with the answer to my question. “Berta? Is that you?”
Darling’s words chased away my confusion. I wanted to kick myself for not noticing the truth before Darling had pointed it out. I took note of all my students, especially those with the potential to become dangerous. Somehow, I’d forgotten about two particular ones.
Berta and her brother Bartholomew Bones had been first year students with Lyssa. They belonged to a long line of necromancers and had shown great promise. After Lyssa’s epilepsy had been revealed to the school, they’d been among those who’d bullied her worse. I’d tried to limit the damage they could do and had pulled them aside to have a conversation with them. They hadn’t listened and they’d ended up dead because they’d tried to attack Lyssa in Ammit’s class.
It had been a pretty messy affair. Ammit had forced the boy to kill the girl slowly and painfully. After that, she’d consumed his soul.
The duo had also been among the students Lilith regularly slept with. It appeared Berta hadn’t forgotten that and she hadn’t appreciated being forgotten.
Worse, she was going to take out her frustration not just on the now dead Lilith, but also on the rest of us.
She smiled pleasantly and the expression made me nauseous just because she was using Lyssa’s body for it. “Hello, Darling,” she said. “Thank you for helping me. Just for that, I’ll let you live. You’re terrible at necromancy, though. Don’t try it again. You might end up with even bigger problems on your hands in the future. Granted, creating a foe impossible for your ally to defeat is already a remarkable accomplishment. Congratulations.”
As expected, Satan didn’t react well to this sarcastic comment. “You’re so arrogant, little necromancer. Do you really think you can defeat me?”
“You never had a chance of winning in the first place. Even assuming you had absorbed this vessel’s power instead of giving it to me, The Celestial Realm would’ve never allowed you to run amok and do whatever you wish.”
That was completely true. She sounded far more rational than I expected. There were no threats of obliteration like Darling had uttered or grandstanding similar to Satan’s. It took me by surprise, and I’d had quite enough of surprises today.
“I have to agree with you on that, Ms. Bones,” I said. “But I get the feeling you have your own interest in that vessel’s power. Why do you think The Celestial Realm won’t attack you? What is it that you want?”
“Oh, I don’t have any significant ambitions,” Berta replied without missing a beat. “I just want my brother back. Can you give me that, Dean Mephistopheles?”
No, I couldn’t. I had no idea what had happened to his soul after Ammit had eaten it. Maybe she’d consumed it and destroyed it. Maybe she’d eventually let him go, granting him freedom and the ability to start over. In any case, finding him wasn’t in my power.
“I don’t monitor the souls of the dead, Ms. Bones,” I told her. “You know that
. Perhaps you should double-check with Professor Grim. He might know more.”
“I doubt it,” she replied. “He likes to pretend he’s all-powerful, just like every other deity in the world. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
In my opinion, there was no one in the world who was all-powerful. Even The Supreme Being had his limits, as crazy as the concept might have been. “Power has nothing to with it. That’s his duty and his affinity. He’s bound to know.”
“But he’s not here now, and I don’t have the patience to go look for him.”
I’d have thought I’d misjudged the levels of her sanity, but it didn’t take a genius to realize the little brat was afraid of Grim. And why shouldn’t she be? Grim might teach necromancy, but he tended to take it personally when someone practiced it without his permission or abused it. Berta was doing both and it wouldn’t end well.
For the moment, she didn’t care about that. She did want her brother back. I could understand her desire, since the duo had been uncommonly close, even for siblings. But there was nothing I could do to help her and I wasn’t happy about her stealing Lyssa’s body.
“So what are you going to do if you don’t have the patience for that?”
“I’m going to force you to tell me where he is. I’ll kill every single person on this island if I have to.”
Mikael let out a disgruntled sigh. “You know, I appreciate wanton destruction as much as your regular nephilim, but this won’t solve anything.”
“We’ll see. I personally think you’d be an interesting target. I’m curious what your father would do to get you back. And you’d make a pretty corpse.” She tilted her head and licked her lips. “In fact, you all would. No wonder the little Sacrifice was willing to become your fuck hole.”
I didn’t appreciate her revealing the details of the time we spent together with Lyssa, but if she was trying to make us feel ashamed, she needed another approach. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Ms. Bones. I thought you said you wanted your brother back. I don’t think he’d be very happy with you if he found out you were eyeing other men for your collection.”