The Soul Bond (Rite World: Blackthorn Hunters Academy Book 3)

by Juliana Haygert

  “I’m guessing he didn’t want to help you this time.”

  I shook my head. “No, he did. He said he would research how to locate my siblings for me. But then … we kissed and I thought …”

  “You would have sex?”

  My cheeks warmed. “Yes. I thought he had finally given in, but as usual, he ended up pushing me away before things progressed. But worse than that was his answer to my question.”

  “What question?”

  “If he liked me. He said no.”

  Claire frowned. “I’ll be the first to admit that is odd. I always thought Rey was holding back because of something else, like honor, or like because he thought being around him put you in more danger.”

  “The last one was the professor thing. He’s a professor; I’m a student.”

  “Oh, yeah, that too.” She tsked. “But he said he didn’t like you? Are you sure he wasn’t lying?”

  I shrugged. “Does it matter? He looked straight at me and said he didn’t like me. I’m done with him. Even if I’m dying and he’s the only one who can help me, I won’t go to him. I’m completely done with him.”

  “Oh, Erin.” Claire hugged me. “That must have hurt. I know how much that hurts.” I hugged her back, both of us mourning relationships that had barely started.

  How I wished Claire would take notice of Harper, who was completely starstruck, and move on. As for me, I was seriously considering becoming a nun.

  “Is there such thing as a demon hunter nun? Or maybe a demonic princess nun?”

  Claire pulled back, a puzzled look on her face. “Both titles sound fun, but unlikely to happen.”

  I let out a long sigh. “I know. I’m just … I’m done. That’s all. No Rey, no guys. At least for a long while.” I rubbed my chest, right above a certain mark. “I wish there was a way to break the soul bond, so it would be easier to move on, you know?”

  “You don’t mean that,” Claire said, her voice low.

  “I do.” I nodded. “What good is this bond if he’s completely ignoring it? There’s no reason to be linked for life like this if we won’t be together. I bet that if I didn’t have this mark on my chest, I wouldn’t feel so drawn to him, I wouldn’t feel the need to seek him out. Life would be simpler.”

  “If you say so,” Claire said, clearly unconvinced.

  Maybe I wasn’t either, but that was only one way to work this through.

  I puffed my chest. “From now on, I should focus on studying, and practicing, and finding King Brikan’s children.”

  “That spells research and I love research.” Claire hopped off my bed. “Come on. Get dressed. Let’s have lunch and then hit the library. We need to find a spell to locate your siblings.”

  I glanced out the window. The sun was high and bright, promising a beautiful day. Spend one of the last warm Saturdays of the seasons stuck in the library? It wasn’t as if I had anything else to do.

  I jumped out of bed. “Sounds like a plan.”

  14

  Rey

  As a raven, I was perched on the roof of the Aster building, waiting for Randall. The full moon was back, and I was certain he would soon walk out of the building, wearing his long cloak, and head into the woods.

  And I would follow him again. But this time, I was going to enter the portal with him. I had stashed my phone inside my pocket before shifting to record it all.

  If Randall really performed the Bloodsbane ritual, or anything like that, it would be his end.

  From here, I could get a glimpse of the Gardenia building. A couple of hours earlier, I had seen Erin entering her room through her window, with Claire and Harper. The three of them ate chocolate while talking. While Claire and Harper seemed animated, Erin was putting on a show. Whenever they weren’t looking, her smile faded and her shoulders sagged. She had been like that ever since that night at my house a couple of weeks ago.

  She hadn’t showed up to my class anymore, which to be honest was good for me, because I wasn’t sure I could handle being in closed quarters with her again. She was a walking temptation and my control was fading. Even with her mother’s threat hanging over my head.

  But her absence made me a little worried. How would she graduate if she failed my class? By now, I should have reported her for skipping, but I was hoping a miracle would happen, and things would resolve themselves.

  I hadn’t seen her face-to-face anymore, but I still followed her around when I thought it was necessary. Despite knowing we could never be, my feelings for her only got stronger every single day, and my need to make sure she was okay consumed me if I didn’t check on her every few hours.

  I felt like a complete motherfucker for putting that permanent frown on her pretty face. I wished we lived another life, where she wasn’t a demonic princess and I wasn’t a half-demon. We could have met under normal circumstances, while we both attended college, fallen in love between classes and parties, and lived happily ever after together.

  Why the fuck I was thinking about that? These thoughts only made me hurt more.

  Finally, when it was almost midnight, Randall walked out of the building. Like a month ago, he simply strolled through the academy, and no one crossed his path, no one saw him. At the outpost, the guards marched a few feet away and turned their backs, as if enchanted, and only after Randall had crossed through the gates, they woke up and returned to their post.

  I followed Randall through the forest, to the same spot I had seen him before. He chanted some words under his breath, and the portal appeared under the same arched tree trunk. He walked in.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and followed him in.

  The portal opened to faint sunshine over a wintery scenery. Snow covered the ground and the treetops, and a small, old, ramshackle cottage sat a few feet away. Randall walked into the cottage.

  Where the fuck were we? The book said the ritual had to take place in a tainted place. Could this be Randall’s first home? Where demons killed his family? I didn’t know the details, no one knew, but I had heard rumors about it.

  I flew closer and peeked through a window, the glass broken and jagged. Randall stood inside what looked like the main room of the cottage, and three figures cowered before him. All three of them had chains around their wrists, ankles, and neck that connected to a newer concrete wall in the back of the cottage.

  I shifted into my human form and crouched lower.

  Randall paced before the three figures, making it hard to see them, but by now I was sure what or who they were. A human, a witch, and a demon. Just like the book described.

  I fished my phone from my pocket and started recording.

  “Please,” the female human cried. “You don’t want to do this. Please let us go.”

  Randall halted before her. He had his back to me, but I could bet he was snickering at her. Without a word, Randall summoned his Dawnblade and slit the woman’s throat, just above the metal band around her neck.

  Blood oozed from the cut as she tried speaking, tried crying. Gurgling sounds filled the room. The woman’s body fell forward, the chains keeping her from crumbling to the ground.

  Beside her, the witch screamed and retreated as much as the chains would let her. “Randall, don’t do this, please.”

  “It’s for a noble cause, Brielle.”

  Wait … he knew this witch? How? And why was he killing her if he knew her?

  Randall caught the witch by the hair, pulled her head up, and slashed her throat.

  Then he turned to the demon.

  The muttmaug demon snarled at Randall, as if he could put the demon hunter off with his sharp teeth and his big, curling horns. Randall wasn’t fazed. Not getting too close, he stabbed the demon’s chest with his blade. The demon roared, shaking the cottage. A half-broken window next to the one I was hiding fell and broke on the floor. I lowered myself behind the wall, in case Randall looked this way.

  My heart hammering in my chest, I counted to ten, then went back to the window.

&nbs
p; Randall had already pulled his sword out and slit the demon’s throat.

  His three victims were dead.

  Next, Randall stood back and looked down. I had to stand up to see what he was staring at.

  A pentagram was etched on the cottage’s floor, and it now filled with the blood sipping from the three bodies. When the ridges of the pentagram were full, Randall picked up a golden chalice and used it to take a little of the blood from the human, the witch, and the demon.

  Holding the chalice, Randall stepped into the center of the pentagram. He brought the chalice high and began speaking, his words in a demonic language.

  It was a prayer of sorts, asking the powers of the universe, the gods if they existed, to give him ultimate power and eternal life.

  Red light shone from the pentagram, bathing the place with the color and scent of blood.

  Then, Randall drank from the chalice.

  Blood slid down Randall’s mouth, to his neck, staining his clothes. With arms open wide, Randall let out a satisfied gasp, as if he had just satiated an incredible thirst.

  My stomach turned and my hands shook, barely being able to keep the camera straight.

  Like snakes, the red light swirled up, circling Randall.

  It was working. He was gaining more power and immortal life. Randall smiled, satisfied. Powerful. Immortal.

  The lights faded.

  The ritual was done, but Randall wasn’t.

  He stepped forward and unchained the three bodies. He grabbed the arm of the human and dragged her back to the concrete wall. I lost sight of him for a moment, but I changed windows and saw a heavy metal door on the concrete wall.

  Randall opened it. The groans and shrieks of demons burst through the opening. I could see their claws trying to swipe at Randall. But he simply raised his hand and the demons retreated, as if they were being pushed by an invisible shield.

  Randall threw the human body among the demons. They fell over the body, devouring it like piranhas. I pressed a hand over my mouth before I spilled my guts on the ground. I had seen plenty in my long life, and I thought nothing else could make me sick or repulsed.

  I had been wrong.

  Randall repeated the process with the other two bodies. Then, he locked the metal door and wiped his hands on his cloak.

  And I crouched again.

  I was done with all of this. Even if he did more, even if he killed more, drank more blood, whatever, I had recorded enough.

  I pocketed my phone, shifted into a raven, and flew out of there.

  My first instinct was to find Crimson and give the video to him right away. If I showed this to Crimson or the school board, Randall was done for. But I wanted leverage over Crimson too. I could do this for him, and he could still threaten Erin—or worse.

  Instead, I went back to my townhouse, where I took a long, long shower, as if I could wash those terrible images from inside my mind, and then paced my room, thinking.

  I would wait awhile more to show this to someone. Didn’t the ritual have to be performed whenever there was a full moon, and Randall’s powers drained as the month progressed? Then, I would act when Randall was at his weakest.

  Only then would the academy have a chance of surviving him once I exposed the gruesome truth. Because I was sure Randall wouldn’t go down quiet.

  15

  Erin

  The research about how to locate my siblings wasn’t going well. Claire and I met at the library several times a week, but it seemed no book there was about those spells. The restricted area probably had it, but I wasn’t up to sneaking into it—at least not yet. Claire had also searched her father’s books and found nothing.

  Meanwhile, I also researched how to break the soul bond.

  A few weeks had gone by since my last encounter with Rey. Now that I wasn’t going to his class, I hadn’t seen him at all, and that made me both relieved and utterly sad.

  I missed him. That was a fact. I missed everything we were and could have been. The few times we lowered our guards and had a real conversation or worked together, we had been great. We had been more than great. We had been perfect together. This soul bond wasn’t a joke. We were soulmates; I knew and I felt that.

  But that wasn’t enough.

  I wouldn’t force him to be with me if he didn’t want to.

  However, the search for a way to break the soul bond was going even worse than the first one. Every book Claire and I found was vehement that the bond couldn’t be broken.

  One morning before my other magical beings class, I sat down on the bench under the blackthorn tree. It was still early and the campus was quiet. There was no demon hunter student out to bother me yet. I leaned back on the bench, enjoying the serene start of the day, even if I had to tighten my jacket with the chilling weather. If I wasn’t mistaken, the forecast was for snow soon. I wasn’t ready for that.

  Though nothing in my life was going as I hoped, I tried taking breaks when I could to appreciate the little things. I hadn’t done this in a while.

  I had never had reasons to believe in God or any other deity, and my aunt hadn’t told me about any or taught me about anything like that. To be honest, I had no idea if demon hunters worshipped a god, or many, or none.

  So, I looked up at the twisting, thorny branches of the blackthorn tree. I wasn’t sure that if it was because it had given me a Dawnblade, but I felt connected to it. Maybe this tree was my deity.

  Staring at the many thorns all over its branches and trunk, I wondered … what would my life be like right now if I hadn’t been so stupid and offered myself as a tribute for that dare? If I hadn’t walked into the haunted house. If Aunt Paula wasn’t dead.

  Would I still be stuck in Spring Hill? Would I still be living with Aunt Paula? Would I have finally run away? Gone to college? Found a job?

  Found a human guy who actually liked me and treated me well?

  For some reason, I doubted it. Knowing what I knew now, I was sure it was just a matter of time before my doomed fate found me. There had to be a reason why my aunt and I moved closer and closer to the academy, right? To be near this place when all the chaos ensued.

  I was sure she, and my mother for that matter, hadn’t planned for everything to go down so soon, but they knew it would happen, sooner or later.

  The campus started waking up, and students walked from the dorms to the other buildings for class.

  Soon, Claire halted before me. “I knew I would find you here. Everything okay?”

  Nothing was okay, but I had to trudge on, hadn’t I?

  I nodded at her. “It’ll be.”

  She beckoned me to get up from the bench. “Come on before we’re late for class.”

  Feeling slightly less bummed than before, I dragged my feet to our other magical beings class with Claire. Ava was in this class too, but she hadn’t been sitting with us lately. She had gone back to being the blond bitch and sitting with Stella and Ruby a couple of rows in front of us.

  Professor Adeline, a tall, lean woman with long blue hair who apparently despised the half-demons, started the class a second after the last student came inside the classroom.

  “Today we’ll talk about witches,” she said. While lecturing, she always looked at all the full-blooded demon hunters, ignoring my kind completely. I tried not to let that get to me and pay attention to the class. “There are several covens here in North America, but the most powerful ones are the Silverblood, the Bluemoon, Blackmarsh, the Wildthorn, and the Bonecrown covens.”

  She went on explaining their differences, like different magic, different customs, and different habitats. She told us that the current queen of the Silverblood coven, Thea, married Drake, the vampire lord of DuMoir Castle, the most powerful vampire coven on this side of the globe, forming an alliance between not only witches and vampires, but also werewolves.

  Their daughter, Aurora, was a unique being. Before her birth, an old witch told them that Aurora was the next Queen of All Witches—a title given to the
most powerful of all witches. The Queen of All Witches was supposed to rule above all other witches, regardless of their coven.

  But it was when she got to the Wildthorn coven that my interest piqued.

  “One of the unique powers of the Wildthorn witches is the ability to break any curse or bond,” the professor said.

  Claire and I exchanged a glance. What? They could break any bond? Like the soul bond? So all I had to do was find the Wildthorn witches? I knew that wouldn’t be easy, but it was a start. A direction.

  I almost raised my hand and asked if the professor knew if any of those witches had a locator spell that didn’t require something from the missing person, but I remained quiet. We had learned one thing, at least.

  The professor dismissed the class and I rushed to her desk. I knew she didn’t like the half-bloods, but as a professor under the headmaster’s orders to treat all of us well until the Shadow Trials, she had to be nice to me, right?

  “Yes?” she asked as I halted in front of her desk. Claire was right by my side.

  “Professor, I was wondering, these witches, do they live close by?”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “The powerful covens? No, they all live in the north.”

  My chest deflated. “So, no Wildthorn nearby?”

  “No,” she said, her voice taunt. “If there are, they are strays in hiding. Unless a demon hunter is hunting them on purpose, there’s no way of finding them.” She lifted her chin. “Is that all?”

  I could tell when I was being dismissed. “Yes. Thank you.”