Academy of the Devi- the Complete Collection

by Eva Brandt

  I had no idea what Bartholomew Bones would’ve thought about it, but that didn’t matter. The sexual relationship between the Bones siblings had been famous throughout the school, since they’d blatantly displayed it more than once. If she was going to attack our relationship with Lyssa, I’d do the same with her incestuous romance.

  The pleasant smile on her face twisted into a furious snarl. It was a strange moment, since I’d never seen that ugly expression on Lyssa’s face, even when she’d been angry.

  The school started to shake and more ghosts appeared from beneath the soil. Stefan shot me an unimpressed look. “Was it really a good idea to taunt her?” he asked.

  “Probably not.” I shrugged. “But she was going to attack us anyway. When she’s angry, she’s unfocused and off her game.”

  “I don’t think that’ll help us very much,” Mikael protested.

  Of course it would. If she made enough noise, the Grim Reaper would pop up, remove her and get rid of the problem for me. Right now, I didn’t see any of the professors, and I suspected that wasn’t a coincidence. The necromantic disturbance would alert anyone who wasn’t permanently incapacitated and provide us with reinforcements who could do more than just stand around and act as material for necromantic constructs.

  I also hoped it would give my additional allies enough incentive to get their asses down here before something even more regrettable happened. I understood their inclination to stay out of most fights, but sometimes, they took it to ridiculous lengths.

  It might also send enough reverberations through the earth to notify Lucifer that shit was going down and he didn’t have time to waste on those idiots in The Seven Circles of Hell.

  For the moment, it was up to me to minimize the damage and keep us all from becoming fodder for the undead. Satan was clearly too busy marveling at how badly his plan had gone sideways to do much. I wondered how he’d ever gotten picked for the position. The standards down below were really dropping.

  One of these days, I’d convince Lucifer to go back to take his rightful place, because this was ridiculous.

  To give Satan credit, when the army of undead rushed toward us, he successfully cremated at least three-quarters of the skeletons that were trying to approach him. But the undead had that name because they didn’t stay dead. The ashes the skeletons left behind came together and reformed into clusters of skeletal spiders.

  Berta sighed. “Bartholomew always did like spiders. They’re so interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

  She sat down on a rock and crossed her legs, looking like she was in the middle of her dorm room, about to do her homework. “I’ve always been fascinated by arachnids. They’re both so easy and so difficult to animate. But turning different material into an arachnid form… Yes, that is something I enjoy.”

  At this point, she wasn’t paying attention to us anymore. That happened a lot to necromancers. Their magic made it more difficult to perceive other beings as real and they often lost themselves into their arts. Bartholomew and Berta had anchored one another before their deaths, but now that anchor was gone.

  Berta’s minions followed her subconscious will, but she kept summoning more and more, seemingly without paying attention to them at all. The massive fleshy blob grew to alarming proportions and lunged at Satan. He ended up awkwardly grappling with a magic-resilient creature that bled slime and was far more powerful than it had any right to be.

  In the chaos, fire and death magic came together and I felt the school protest as the pillars of its wards were threatened.

  For a few seconds, I considered the merits of just allowing them to fall. The Academy of the Devil had cost me Lyssa. If I’d been High Lord of Hell and not Dean Mephistopheles, I would’ve acted sooner and in a different way. I could’ve protected her from ever being hurt.

  I looked around at the still living students. Leaving aside everyone who’d survived the first attack, Mikael and Stefan remained by my side. Callum was still unconscious. As resentful as I felt of what had happened, I couldn’t let it blind me to the truth.

  I might hate admitting it, but I couldn’t blame the school for my own stupidity. Everything that had happened had been my choice. I needed to take responsibility for my decisions. Today, I was both High Lord of Hell and Dean Mephistopheles, and I had to show it, once and for all.

  Taking a deep breath, I reached into the ground and summoned my own powers once again. I might not be at my best. I might still have serious problems with the academy. But it was still my domain and my bond with it remained in place.

  The figures of the ghosts started to flicker as I pooled all my power into the protective shields that kept the academy safe. The demonic symbiotes that lived on the island responded to me just like they had to Mikael. The buildings began to sharpen and morph, turning into gigantic swords.

  The surge in power snapped Berta out of her conversation with what appeared to be thin air. “Oh, that is a nice trick. I should’ve known better than to underestimate you.”

  “Yes, you should have. But people underestimate me all the time. It’s okay. You’re not the first.”

  It came with having served under Lucifer for so long. After being the lieutenant of The Brightest Star for centuries, people had started to associate me with him. Since his power was greater than my own, I was always overshadowed. That didn’t make me bitter. Only weak-minded fools were insulted when someone stronger than them received more attention. I supposed I might’ve thought differently if envy had been in my character, but I’d always been a little more aligned to wrath.

  Once I let go, the fury came out and it was so satisfying. From the shadow world, I summoned every single creature that had ever listened to me—and they came.

  Contrary to what Lyssa thought, my shadowy summons weren’t just extensions of my magic. They were individual beings, fragments of souls left behind after someone had passed on. Sometimes, in a place like The Academy of the Devil, the essence and magic of a dead being could come together to grant a spirit substance—which I suspected was part of the reason why Eve had been able to do so much damage.

  I could exploit this as well as they had. I’d been casting shadow magic before the current Satan had been a spermatozoid in his father’s loins. He might have the natural boost of the throne of a ruler of The Infernal Realm, but I had the advantage of age, experience, and anger.

  Shadowy creatures emerged from my portals, some humanoid, others monstrous or completely undefined. Satan wasn’t happy and he glared at me with such hatred I was surprised I didn’t burst into flames on the spot. “You want to play this game, Mephistopheles? You can’t win against me.”

  “So you keep saying, but I haven’t lost yet,” I pointed out. “And you’ve yet to succeed in anything.”

  “I killed your little slut, didn’t I? It’s only a matter of time until I claim her for myself, as I was supposed to. The necromancer is a temporary obstacle.”

  Berta sighed, as if exasperated with him. “Oh, Bartholomew. Why is every other man except you a complete idiot?”

  Meanwhile, I tried to control my temper, to remind myself that Lyssa’s death wasn’t permanent. Her body was right there. Berta’s presence wasn’t ideal, but the fact that she was moving around normally would make it easier for us to return Lyssa’s soul into its vessel. In this situation, the body would be in a better condition simply because it had been used.

  That knowledge would’ve helped me more if I hadn’t caught sight of the flickering light of Lyssa’s soul. We’d been fighting for a while now and without being able to communicate with Lyssa, I couldn’t be sure she’d stay. For the moment, she remained in Mikael’s hands, but that was no guarantee. She’d already tried to leave. We couldn’t keep her from drifting off if she decided to do that again.

  Satan had done it once, but I doubted he’d be able to now, and I wouldn’t have wanted him to anyway. We were running out of time and we needed to end this, as soon as possible.

  Maybe Satan realize
d this too, because thick, dark clouds gathered in the sky, hiding the bright moon. All around me, the temperature started to drop. Satan was still emanating heat, just like before, but it didn’t seem to reach us.

  Black snow started to fall and I extended my hand, allowing one of the flakes to fall into my palm. The moment it made contact with my skin, I sensed the magical charge hidden inside. It reminded me of that fateful snowy day when Lyssa had gone to innocently play in the snow with her dog and had fallen ill mere hours later.

  I’d known there had been something weird about the weather anomaly that had almost taken her from us. The first time it had happened, during the raining cats and dogs incident, I’d been unnerved that someone had managed to modify the wards enough to change the weather without my knowledge. I’d kept the information from Lyssa, not wanting to scare her. It had been stupid of me, since if I’d told her, she’d have been more cautious around the snow that had fallen.

  But there was no point in thinking about my past idiocy. This wasn’t news. Satan had repeatedly tried to kill Lyssa. He’d succeeded today. We’d get her back anyway, because the alternative was unthinkable.

  As I thought this, the snowflakes started falling harder. Despite my best attempt to throw up a shield, some of them landed on Callum.

  For Callum, the magic in Satan’s weather anomaly had an unexpected side effect. He cracked his eyes open, looked around, and said a single word. “Oh.”

  He didn’t have to say more. I knew he understood and realized exactly what he needed to do.

  Just like Mikael, he had to use the true powers of his nature. I could only hope we’d survive it intact.

  Callum’s Choice

  I’d never told anyone, but I wasn’t a huge fan of being an incubus. I enjoyed the sexual nature of my powers well enough and feeding was always fun, but I’d have preferred to be a different species of demon.

  Most of the time, incubi were underestimated. Hell hounds could shape-shift and manipulate hell fire at will. Nephilim could be as destructive as worldwide cataclysms when crossed. Compared to that, my sexual manipulation powers weren’t that remarkable. I might have elemental magic too, but my aura was my most important skill—and it wasn’t even that unique. Mikael’s symbiote background had given him something similar.

  Despite that, I’d become a prince of the school. If I’d done so, it wasn’t because of my ability to give good head and break hearts. And at the time, I hadn’t had the incentive of grief and fury.

  When I woke up, it took me less than five seconds to realize what had happened. Lyssa was standing in front of us, surrounded by ghosts and necromantic summons. The current Satan was attempting to fight her in some way. Or maybe he was trying to fight us. That wasn’t clear.

  Lyssa’s soul was in Mikael’s hold, as vibrant and beautiful as always, but filled with a terror that should’ve never been there.

  Someone had killed my princess. They would pay dearly.

  It wasn’t complicated. I didn’t have to think about it. It was a natural process, an extension of me. My aura expanded and twisted, flowing over the courtyard of the academy like an unstoppable wave. This time, it had nothing to do with sex, and as soon as it touched anything and anyone with a soul, the effects were devastating.

  When an incubus felt grief, everyone else did. We didn’t just manipulate sexual energy, but also every other emotion—except, perhaps, hope. Hope had never been something I could touch, because, like Lucifer had said, it was a pure emotion.

  I knew hopelessness, though. I felt it in every inch of me, ricocheting into my soul like an avalanche of bullets. I tried to tell myself that as long as her soul was still there, our story didn’t have to be over, but that thought slid out of my reach as soon as it processed, replaced by the bitter torment of having lost her.

  I hadn’t been there for her. We’d tried so hard to keep her safe, but in the end, it had been pointless. What guarantee did we have that we could bring her back?

  For all we knew, resurrection spells worked differently on Lyssa. Lucifer had said that she wasn’t meant to be a person at all. He hadn’t fully meant the words, but he hadn’t been wrong to say them. When Lyssa had been ill, our attempts to heal her had been unsuccessful. Morrigan had tried and failed to bring her back, and she was a goddess.

  That couldn’t be a good sign.

  And so, my hopelessness took over and spread out like a disease, a noxious fume nobody could escape. The air crackled as my aura made contact with Satan’s black snow, but I ignored it.

  The taste of desperation filled my mouth as everyone in the courtyard started to fall like domino pieces. The only ones who were spared—other than Mikael, Callum, and Mephistopheles—were the skeletons. The ghosts screeched and fled, retreating into the depths of the school. The necromantic blob started to crawl away. It had just enough soul to experience my misery and couldn’t endure it.

  The creature who’d stolen Lyssa’s body cried out and burst into heart-wrenching sobs.

  “No!” she shouted. “You can’t do this! Not again! Leave him… Leave him alone.

  “I made a mistake. If you want someone to pay the price, take me. Leave him alone.”

  Confused, I threw a glance toward the others. I had a feeling I was missing something big. This wasn’t just a random ghost or angry spirit. Who was it? Eve? Something else?

  “Berta Bones,” Mikael said.

  That explained the presence of the necromantic summons. Berta had always been powerful and she’d had a lot of potential as a first year student. Now that she’d stolen Lyssa’s body, she’d received a significant boost from my lover’s lingering abilities.

  If I’d been a good person, I would have felt bad for her. Her grief at the loss of her brother wasn’t unlike mine. She was legitimately mourning him and wanted him back.

  But I wasn’t a very good person and I didn’t care about what Berta Bones wanted or needed. She’d chosen the wrong person to possess. I doubted she had anything to do with Lyssa’s death, but her lack of involvement in that didn’t make me more inclined to forgive her for her crime.

  Taking advantage of the weak spot I’d found, I pushed more power into my aura, willing every single drop of my grief to spread over the courtyard. By now, even Meph, Mikael, and Stefan were starting to look uncomfortable.

  They didn’t tell me to stop. If my grief echoed theirs, they also took comfort in it. We found support in one another, in knowing that we felt the same for Lyssa.

  Strikingly, the aura also had an effect on Lyssa’s soul. The anxiety coming from the sphere lessened, although it was replaced by an echoing sorrow, a feeling of apologetic loss and regret.

  I wanted to tell her she had nothing to be sorry about, that we could still mend our broken relationship and pick things up from where we’d left off. But I had no idea if that was possible, so instead, I focused on making her enemies suffer.

  “Sometimes, I really hate people,” I said. “I’m supposed to love them, I know. At least sexually. But sometimes, you all just disgust me. Every single humanoid species on this planet is an utter waste of space. The Supreme Being would be better off giving souls to maggots than to pestilent wretches like you. Everything you are—from your magic to your emotions—is a corrupt piece of filth. Just being in your presence makes me feel like I’ve fallen into a cesspit full of shit and I’ll never be able to wash any of it off.

  “You think you can take Lyssa’s body? You think you can take her life and power? It’s not going to be that easy. I might have failed at protecting her. I might have failed at everything in my life. But I will die before I let you get away with this.”

  “You do realize that it was your clan who wanted her dead in the first place, right?” Satan asked. “Eve was your ancestor too, Callum. Don’t you care?”

  “Care? Who do you think you’re talking to, a Guardian Angel? I can count the people I care about on the fingers of one hand and still have fingers left.”

  “Why don’t
we end this little show?” Meph suggested, interrupting our conversation. “Jax, we’ve all established that you won’t get anywhere with your attempt to take over the school. Berta, return Lyssa’s body to her and we’ll see what we can do about your brother.”

  “No!” the necromancer shouted. “I refuse. You’re lying. You’re all lying! You’ve stolen Bartholomew from me and now you want to steal everything else.”

  That was the danger of using incubus magic. There were times when the people I targeted lashed out and lost control of their powers. Berta had already been in a bad situation, since her soul wasn’t completely compatible with Lyssa’s body. Between that and the grief I’d induced, her mind completely cracked.

  Dark light manifested from her fingertips and a whirlpool of magic swirled around her, growing more and more with every passing second. The magic shoved back Satan’s fire and consumed the still falling snow. It swallowed the unconscious students, the skeletons and the few ghosts that remained in the courtyard.

  Mephistopheles’s shadowy creatures were dragged into it too and he winced. “Okay, time to go.”

  One of his morphed buildings slid in front of us, slashing at the darkness with its sword-like edges. It didn’t work, but it bought us some time. Mephistopheles created a portal and we all jumped through, escaping before we could be consumed as well.

  The portal took us to the roof of the great hall. Like the other structure, it had taken the shape of a sword. We were standing on the hilt. From up here, I could get a clear panoramic view of what was going on beneath us and I didn’t like it. “What are we supposed to do now? Any ideas?”

  “We have to make a choice,” Mephistopheles said. “We need to stop her. That surge of magic around her isn’t normal. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but it might have devastating consequences.”

  “How devastating?” Mikael asked with a frown.

  “There are some powers even I hesitate to meddle with, Mikael,” Mephistopheles answered. “Death magic is one of them. If pushed to the limits, it can twist the very fabric of reality. And it looks like Berta might have accidentally stumbled into it.”