Nightshade Academy Episode 4: Den of Demons

by Kestra Pingree

  “Wait.” I reach out for her this time, but she darts away. Helena giggles. She grabs a bottle and smashes it against the ice floor, shattering glass. An amorphous indigo Color ascends. Archer catches that one and sucks it in as easily as the first.

  “Archer, please,” I say.

  She doesn’t listen. My words are arrows missing their mark. Kian’s going to jump in. His too-yellow chartreuse is dividing into one-part yellow and one-part green, but I beat him to it. I’m much closer, and I lunge at Archer.

  “What are you doing?” she demands when I grab her wrist.

  I grab her other one before she can twist free. We face each other, and I try to look into her azure eyes, but her opaque Color is making it difficult. “Let them go,” I say.

  Familiar reactive lavender flares where we touch. But instead of turning explosive, it seems to heed my words. It digs around inside Archer’s Color, worms burrowing underground, and pops. Two abstract Colors bloom out of Archer’s sky blue and drift high into the air. Helena follows their path with the line of her nose.

  Archer steps on my foot. My boots are sturdy, but so are hers. I stumble back and bite my lip against the pain. I almost fall over, slipping on ice. Kian catches me, though.

  “What is your problem?!” Archer’s eyes flicker like a fire.

  I steady myself, but instead of stepping away from Kian, I grab his hand. “You’re… It’s like killing people. Do you want someone else’s soul inside of you?”

  Archer goes silent.

  Helena exaggerates a sigh. “Ginzo, baby, take Nova for a walk.” She grips Kian’s bicep with one hand and my wrist with the other, tearing us apart like two LEGOs that were jam-packed together. She shoves me forward, and I slide into a rock wall. No, Ginzo’s chest. He wraps a steel-bar arm around my waist and holds me close. My fingers shake against his hard skin, nails digging in, but nothing penetrates.

  “The next time I ask you to do something, you’ll do it without question, because it’ll be your last chance.” Helena crawls bare fingers up Kian’s neck, long nails creating divots in his skin, and grabs his jaw. His too-yellow chartreuse rushes like scattering insects fleeing from a noxious gas. “Make sure she knows, Ginzo. Kian will stay here with me.”

  “Yeah, all right,” Ginzo says and picks at his ear with his free hand. He slides me forward as I try to dig in my heels. It’s hardly any resistance to him, and then he lifts me off my feet so I can’t even do that.

  I try to peek around his mountainous frame to glimpse Kian again. Blood floods my ears as my heart pounds in my face. A flash of heat prickles on my skin, raging against the cold. I know why he said we needed to stay. I know he needs—we need to—find a way to save Nightshade from the fire, but what’s going to happen to us in the meantime?

  My jaw screws up tight when Helena drapes over Kian, tapping her fingers against his cheek. But his red eyes lock onto me, and they don’t waver.

  “Start walking,” Ginzo says, voice flat. “I don’t want to carry you.”

  I do what he says, but I remember Kian’s gaze.

  I’m not alone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ice fires flit by as Ginzo walks me toward the cavern’s entrance (the only one I’ve seen anyway); they give the demon a wide berth. Their song does something for my nerves, soothes them, I guess. I focus on their haunting lullaby instead of Ginzo’s raucous heartbeat.

  I try to ignore his smell, too. Sometimes it’s overwhelmingly strong, but right now there’s just a hint of it. When his blood is exposed, it hits me like a tidal wave. Then again, there are times his blood isn’t exposed and it does the same. I wonder if it has to do with his skin, when it’s really hard versus when it isn’t.

  It’s a thing. When we started walking, his skin was hard. Right now, as he’s holding my wrist, it feels like normal human skin.

  He lets go, stands behind me, and crushes lost bones under his weight with bare feet. Then he pushes the small of my back. I almost trip on the first step leading out of the cavern but manage to catch myself before jarring my teeth loose.

  Ginzo’s strange body heat radiates off his skin as we climb higher and higher. As with the hard and soft quality of his skin, his body will either emit a sweltering heat or a deathly cold chill.

  Since walking me through the cavern, I’ve experienced all of that. It’s giving me whiplash.

  “Faster, mortal.”

  I pick up the pace to avoid Ginzo touching me again, and then I reach the surface, where the ice slab hiding these “ruins” remains tossed to the side.

  “At last.” Ginzo brushes by me. He stands tall under an aurora, lifts his chin up to the sky, and cracks his back; it’s the sound of a sledgehammer striking stone.

  He stays like that for a few minutes, without saying a word. I think his eyes might be closed. Pink and green dance in the air, the distinct beauty of an aurora ever-changing, but I take this opportunity to look at Ginzo. To just silently look.

  His Color scares me.

  Maybe he isn’t basking in the aurora’s light at all. The ocean waves of his Color are quiet and unassuming on the surface, but beneath them are the great dark depths of the unknown. Helena is unpredictable, but I think Ginzo might be more so.

  I try to swallow the lump in my throat, but it won’t go away.

  After finally straightening his back, Ginzo cracks his thick neck. He rubs the back of it with his fingers and sighs. “Let’s walk.”

  He doesn’t push me ahead of him. He just goes, expecting me to follow—which I do. His pounding heartbeat, thump thump, demands it. Hardly any other sound registers out here in the cold nothing, aside from the distinct crunch each time my boots crush ice; none of the ice fires followed us.

  The aurora overhead tangles up, pink and green ribbons. Then it undulates like the ocean waves in Ginzo’s Color, a strange visual resonance.

  Suddenly, Ginzo flops. He pillows his head with an arm and rolls onto his side, top leg bent and extended forward at an almost ninety-degree angle to keep him balanced. He starts producing cold like a refrigerator, stealing all semblance of warmth I felt before.

  I shiver and my teeth chatter, but Ginzo’s ocean waves get smaller. The glassy sheen of his silhouette thickens. A low rumble rattles his chest as a snore cuts into the silence. He chokes on it and clears his throat.

  “Oh, right. I’m supposed to talk to you about something,” he says. “Do you remember what?”

  I bite down, mashing my teeth together.

  “No? You didn’t listen either, mortal?”

  This time I open my mouth to respond, but no words come out. It’s a thin raspy squeak.

  “I remember.” Ginzo rolls onto his back. “Helena isn’t very patient. If you want to protect your skin—Kian’s, Archer’s, whoever’s—it’d be a good idea to do as she says.”

  “But what if I’m incapable?” I’m trying to gather information, so it’d be great if my voice would stop shaking like a coward’s. “What if we mess with the ice fires and the souls in Helena’s containers but still don’t discover any of the ice ruins’ secrets?”

  Ginzo starts picking at his teeth. It sounds like pinging glass. “Helena won’t stop until she gets what she wants. If Archer can and is willing to do this without you, then it’s bye-bye.”

  “Like… you’ll kill me? You were never going to take us back to Nightshade?” The ice kept safely outside by my thick layers seeps into my skin and settles in my veins. “So when you attacked Kian, you were serious?” The cold starts to burn.

  “No. I was never going to kill Kian,” Ginzo says, and my heart stops for just a second, because maybe we still have a shot at living and saving Nightshade. “Hell. I don’t know. Helena’s never been big on killing. Not really. Maybe she does intend on returning you to Nightshade. It’s not like she wants to cause them trouble. Like she said, she wants to keep it. She also wants the secrets of the ruins. Which does she care about more, I wonder.”

  This conversation is making an a
lready muddy understanding of our situation clear as shit. “And all of this so she can find a way into your world?” I ask.

  “Perhaps.” He huffs. “I don’t care either way. All of this is a nuisance. Talking to you is a nuisance. Killing is a nuisance. If you do as Helena says, I won’t have to break Kian’s bones, and then all of us are happy.” He props himself up on an elbow and scratches his ass. “Such a fucking pain. But it’s your choice, not mine. You want to know why Helena sicced me on your mate in the first place? Because fear usually works.”

  “Mate,” I repeat.

  “I forget you mortals don’t call it that. Boyfriend, then, though it’s not the same.”

  “He’s not.”

  “Whatever you say.” Ginzo yawns. “I’m taking a nap before we go back.” He rolls so his back is to me.

  I look at the still-lingering aurora. Then I look at the helicopter not too far away. If I become super compliant, Helena won’t have a reason to use her fear tactics anymore. That’s about all I got out of Ginzo’s “explanation.”

  I don’t want Colors that should be dead mixing with mine. I don’t want anyone else’s Color mixing with mine. If I could get Archer on the same page, maybe we could deceive Helena. Archer and I don’t automatically destroy everything in sight when we touch now. I think it’s all about the intention when we’re touching, like when I forced those two Colors out of Archer before Ginzo took me out here.

  And I have more say because Archer’s Color is a mess that keeps getting messier. She’s volatile, but I’m pretty sure she cares about Emery. I don’t think Archer would intentionally set Nightshade on fire.

  Helena wants what she wants and may or may not be responsible for Nightshade’s fire, but I think she’s a more likely candidate than Archer—or maybe by using Archer…

  If we’re going to play this game, we need Archer on our side, and we have to put on a show.

  CHAPTER 5

  By the time Ginzo decides to return to the ice cavern, I’m pretty sure a few hours have passed. What did I do out on the tundra by myself all that time? Explore, mostly. I tested how far I could go before Ginzo would tell me to come back. Had a mini heart attack doing it, too.

  The answer? Pretty far. Actually, really far.

  I messed around with the helicopter, but Ginzo never came. I even tried to start the thing, but I couldn’t get it to turn on for the life of me. Then I kept walking until green dusted the horizon and the impending rising sun scared me underground.

  The end result? Ginzo never had to get me. I was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs by the time he decided to come back.

  “The sun doesn’t hurt you, huh?” I asked as I sat on the bottom step.

  “It’s unpleasant,” was what he said in return before finally adding that it was time to return to the lab.

  This familiar long tunnel is dark without the presence of ice fires, but the circular hole leading into the lab shines with their light. I anticipate Helena conducting some crazy experiment, but when we step inside, the only ones in there are a horde of ice fires, Kian talking to them, and Archer sulking at one of the counters while staring at an “empty” glass jar.

  Archer flicks her gaze to us. “Helena said she got tired of waiting for you. She also said you’d give us proper bedding.”

  “Did she now?” Ginzo nudges me with his knee, because I was standing just a little too close, and presses his hand against a perfectly smooth block of ice wall. He flattens both palms against it, and it moves. It screeches, scrapes like two concrete blocks rubbing against each other, and disappears into the ice below.

  It’s a secret room. I want to take a closer look at all the things inside, but Ginzo starts launching sleeping bags at us. I catch mine more with my face than my hands. By the time I get a chance to look again, like, within two seconds, the ice wall replaces itself. It’s thick as hell, so it’d take forever to chip through, especially without the proper tools.

  “Enjoy your cozy little cocoons, fragile creatures.” Ginzo waves his hand lazily over his shoulder and cracks his back again.

  “Are we allowed to leave this room?” Kian asks.

  “Do what you want.” Ginzo doesn’t give us a chance to ask any more questions. He uses his superspeed to disappear down one of the tunnels.

  The pod (school?) of ice fires sings a soft set of low tones. I could be wrong, but I think they’re all facing Kian. It’s as if they want him to conduct their choir.

  “Do what we want?” Archer murmurs. She holds the glass jar up to her face and squints. “Should’ve left that damn crystal, then.”

  I drop my sleeping bag and go to Kian. One of the ice fires flares, startling me. I bump into his side. “Sorry. What are you doing?”

  “Trying to make friends.”

  “I wonder if Helena has thought about nicely asking them to reveal the secrets of this place.”

  “Who knows?”

  “I bet you could. You seem to have their attention.”

  Kian holds out his right hand in a fist. At the same time, the ice fires cluster closer together. They follow his fist wherever it goes, mirroring it.

  “Rapt attention,” I revise.

  “They’re soft creatures.”

  “Have you touched one? They don’t seem all that soft to me.” I glance over my shoulder at Archer. She rolls her eyes.

  “I mean in their nature. They do have a pretty spectacular defense system.”

  “Are you some mythical-creatures whisperer?”

  “Hardly.” He holds his fist tighter; he even chases away the bit of green he had in his hand. “This means yes.” He raises and lowers his fist slowly, the ice fires following the motion. “This means no.” He takes his fist side to side this time. After releasing his fist, he asks. “Can you understand me?”

  The cluster stays together, though they’re no longer focused on Kian’s fist. I think they’re watching his face now. They bob up and down.

  “A coincidence?” I say.

  “Will you help us?” Kian asks.

  The cluster bobs up and down again.

  Kian lowers his voice to a whisper. “Even if we ask about the secrets of this place and give away the information to Helena?”

  The ice fires break apart. They scatter across the room, but they all make the same motion, side to side.

  Kian hums.

  “What are you doing?” Archer demands. “They could be listening to us. Do you want to be a demon’s punching bag again?”

  “Is Helena listening to us?” Kian asks the ice fires. “Maybe Ginzo?”

  They become a cluster again, bobbing side to side.

  “You sure?”

  They bob up and down.

  “Satisfied, Archer?”

  Archer huffs again, meaning not remotely.

  Kian stretches out a hand for one of the ice fires. I snatch his wrist before he can. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s fine. Trust me.”

  My fingers slide off his wrist, but I hold my breath.

  An ice fire comes forward and rubs against his hand like a cat. I expect Kian to recoil, to cry out, but he laughs.

  “Thank you. Friends change everything. Nova, hold out your hand.”

  I vigorously shake my head.

  “They want to thank you for breaking them out of the ceiling before.”

  Even though I didn’t do that on purpose. “Wait, you can understand them?”

  “Maybe. Sort of. They’re not too sure about Archer, though, I think.”

  “I’m right here, you know.” Archer straightens out her sleeping bag and buries herself inside.

  “Well?” Kian holds out his hand.

  “What?”

  “Take my hand.”

  I do, and then Kian betrays me by holding my hand out to one of the ice fires. “Kian!”

  “Trust me.”

  My wiggling fingers go slack, my breath catches, and an ice fire brushes against my skin. It should freeze, b
urn, hurt. It doesn’t. It soothes, like the water from the pond back in Nightshade.

  The ice fire produces a high tone and floats back toward its school. They disperse around the room, and some leave through the tunnels.

  Kian lets my hand go. “See? You can breathe again, by the way.”

  I gasp and choke on that bit of air because I wasn’t prepared for it. “You scared the shit out of me!”

  A line of too-yellow chartreuse highlights Kian’s smile. “What happened with Ginzo?” He walks around me, inspecting. “You look okay.”

  “He didn’t touch me. He talked to me for two seconds and then took a nap out on the tundra, so I explored. I have no idea how to start that helicopter. I think it might need some sort of key.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Based on what Helena and Ginzo have said, I also think Helena doesn’t want to kill us. Any of us. Ginzo said fear usually works. Helena’s impatient to get what she wants and doesn’t like resistance. I think we should pretend to go along with her plans. We’ll have to be convincing, though. I don’t think she’ll be easy to trick.” I watch the lump that’s Archer in her immobile black sleeping bag. She looks like a slug dead on the floor. The ground used to be pristine and blue, but parts are forever pink and cracked thanks to the blood spilled and bodies thrown before.

  “She’ll probably let us go if we can’t do what she wants,” I continue. “If we show progress, she’ll keep pushing. We should pretend we’ve hit our limit already and stand our ground.”

  I crouch down and hug myself. “I don’t want to be her toy, and I don’t want to give her a reason to retaliate. If we make it so we’re not interesting anymore, I think that’s all it’ll take to be free, to guarantee Nightshade stays safe too. But if she found out we were deceiving her, that could be the trigger for the fire. If she is the cause of that fire in your visions.”

  I curl my fingers, focusing on the fleece inside my gloves. “I don’t know. I don’t want other people’s souls crawling inside of me. I don’t want to hurt anyone, ice fires included.”