Paranormal Academy Book 3: Elemental Blood

by Jody Morse

  Copyright © 2019 Jody Morse and Jayme Morse

  All rights reserved.

  Paranormal Academy Book 3: Elemental Blood is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are products of the authors’ imaginations or have been used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons or locations is coincidental and not intended by the authors.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Jody Morse and Jayme Morse.

  Click here to visit Jody & Jayme’s Facebook fan page for updates about the Paranormal Academy series.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 1

  I lay there on the ground, completely frozen in place, watching in sheer horror as the raven shifter carried Avery further and further away from me.

  The sky had suddenly turned to a shade of dark gray; it reminded me of the storm that had begun to brew inside my heart.

  I was unable to move, but my tears trickled their way down my ice-cold cheeks.

  I let out a scream then, surprised that I was able to make any noise through the paralyzed state I was in.

  And then I shot upright in bed.

  It was just another nightmare of that day—the day I had watched a raven shifter carry Avery Tate, my professor at Paranormal Academy and potential soulmate, away from me. I had tried to save him by controlling the elements, the same way I had saved Kaden in the past, but it hadn’t worked. My magic had somehow been blocked.

  Ever since that day, the scene replayed in my mind like a bad movie when I was awake, and at night, the nightmares consumed me. It was complete torture.

  Reliving this nightmare every single day was just a painful reminder of the fact that Avery was dead. Raven shifters never spared anyone who they carried off like that. And for that reason, I had spent the entire summer completely heartbroken.

  I’d had all these big summer plans about discovering myself and awakening my magic. And while I had awakened some of my magical abilities, a lot of my plans had completely fallen through the cracks. I’d spent more time being haunted by Avery’s death than I had trying to unlock my own abilities.

  I still had so much to learn about myself and who I was. And one of the worst parts about it all was that before the raven shifter had gotten to him, Avery had all of the answers about me. He had already managed to tell me so much about myself—like the fact that I wasn’t blood-related to my grandfather, Harrison Montgomery, at all. My real grandfather was Rubeus Draco, which was apparently where I had inherited the dragon shifter gene from. Avery had told me this was also where I had inherited another gene, too. I had elemental blood, which meant I was able to control all of the elements.

  Of course, all of this left me with more questions than answers about myself. If Rubeus Draco was my grandfather, did that mean my father wasn’t actually my biological father? Or did it mean that his father wasn’t who he had believed it to be?

  So far, it felt like there was no hope of finding these answers. Avery had spent an entire semester trying to find all of the answers. I didn’t even know where he had found any of them.

  Sighing, I climbed out of bed and headed out of my room and into the kitchen where Ambur and Ondraia were already making breakfast in the kitchen. There was a light blue glowing light between Draia’s fingertips and the pancakes she was magically flipping in the air. Ambur was using a fairy wand to crack eggs over the frying pain.

  Draia glanced over her shoulder at me as I entered the room. “Hey, Juli, are you okay? We heard you scream.”

  “It sounded like you had another nightmare,” Ambur added.

  “I did. I’m okay now.” Opening the fridge, I pulled out some fruit—a watermelon, some strawberries, and kiwi—and then grabbed a knife.

  “Slicum fructus,” I said in the witch language and then watched as the knife began to go to work on the strawberries entirely on its own.

  “You guys, this is the life,” Ambur said. “I can’t believe we go back to school in just two days.”

  “It has been a really amazing summer,” Draia agreed with a nod.

  “Yeah.” Even though my summer had completely sucked because of what had happened to Avery and because I hadn’t heard from Kaden even once, I was so relieved that I had decided to spend it at Ambur’s family’s summer cottage. Saltwater at the local beach, gossip at all hours of the day, and my friends’ shoulders to lean on when the nightmares really got to me had been exactly what I’d needed to make it through this summer. I was seriously dreading going back to school… back to the place where Avery had been taken from me.

  It felt like a part of me was missing, almost like there was an empty hole inside my heart. That feeling only made me further believe that Avery had been my soulmate. Now that he was gone, it was as if a part of me was missing; I wasn’t whole without him.

  But that wasn’t the only reason I thought he was my soulmate. The spark, the connection I had felt with him had been unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. And then there was the fact that right before he had died, Avery told me we both had elemental blood—even though he had less of it than me.

  I still didn’t know much about what having elemental blood meant, but I got the feeling that it was rare. Special. That the two of us were connected in this unique way because we were both extremely different.

  I had hoped my friends would know something about elemental blood, but neither Ambur nor Ondraia knew anything about it. That was one of the only good things about going back to Paranormal Academy soon. I would actually be able to access the library there. I just hoped the answers would be easy to find, considering Avery hadn’t found them easily.

  The doorbell rang then, completely snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “They’re here!” Ambur exclaimed as she raced for the front door to open it.

  A moment later, I heard the sound of Gavin and Marcus’s laughter fill the air.

  Draia left her last pancake to cook on the stove with magic before she headed out into the hallway, where Marcus scooped her up into his arms.

  Ambur and Gavin came back into the kitchen holding hands.

  I glanced away from all of them.

  I wasn’t going to lie. I sort of felt like the fifth wheel. Don’t get me wrong. I was happy that both of my friends had amazing boyfriends, but me?

  Well, my love life was a hot mess, to say the least. I had started out at Paranormal Academy with three potential options. And now?

  Well, now Avery was dead, obviously…

  Then there was Brett, who had asked me to be his girlfriend before we’d left school for the summer. I had told him I would think about it over the break, but a lot of things about him wanting us to be together confused me. For starters, kissing Brett had ignited me to shift into a dragon for the first time ever, which I would have thought was some sort of sign… if it weren’t for the fact that he was a werewolf. And that led to a huge question: How could a dragon shifter and a werewolf be mates?

  I didn’t know much about
dragon shifters yet, but as far as I knew, we could only be mated to our own kind. I was pretty sure that was the way it worked with all shifters. So, assuming that was true for dragon shifters as well, that meant there was no way Brett and I could actually be mates.

  At one point, Brett had told me that he only wanted to be with me if I was his mate. But now he knew that we probably weren’t mates, and he still had still asked me to be his girlfriend.

  And that led to even more confusion for me. I couldn’t help but wonder if he only wanted to be with me because I was The Chosen One, the most powerful paranormal being in the universe. Did he just want access to my abilities? I didn’t want to believe that Brett would use me like that, but I couldn’t allow myself to forget that he was one of the only students at Paranormal Academy who knew I was The Chosen One. It was something that he had even told his parents.

  We had done a bit of texting this summer, but I hadn’t put my heart into it—partly because I was still grieving the loss of Avery, but also because there was so much uncertainty about Brett and his motives.

  And then there was Kaden. Kaden, who I hadn’t heard from even once this summer. Honestly, it hurt. Some days, it killed me. But it wasn’t entirely unexpected, either.

  Kaden hadn’t spoken to me since we’d narrowly escaped death last semester. We had entered the portal in the lake in the Enchanted Forest, which was strictly off-limits to students. It had taken us into the woods, which led us to a red castle. We didn’t know who had owned the castle, but we had questioned if it may have been Headmaster Crane’s home.

  When we were there, it had looked like the castle was being attacked by raven shifters. They caught wind of the fact that we were there and chased after us.

  Fortunately, there was a gold dragon statue that guarded the portal in and out of the lake. When I had asked it to close the portal behind us so the raven shifters couldn’t follow us, it had listened to my command—and that was only thanks to my ability to speak Draco, the dragon language. If it weren’t for that, Kaden and I both probably would have been killed.

  Kaden wanted to go back to the castle to see what was inside. Even though I had felt weird about going back, I had made him promise that he wouldn’t go back there without me. He hadn’t only promised; he’d also told me that he didn’t want to go anywhere without me again.

  Not that his words had actually meant anything. I hadn’t heard from him since that day. When we saw each other during our classes together, he was weird and distant. I wasn’t sure why he had seemed to hate me, but one thing was for sure. He really did seem to. I wasn’t sure what had changed between us or why. The whole thing was so baffling. Thinking about it made both my head and my heart ache.

  I did know that Kaden had joined the Dark Coven, which was made up of warlocks—or dark magic users—who were planning an attack on Paranormal Academy. Even though Everly thought he couldn’t be trusted because he’d joined, a big part of me had questioned the real reason why he’d joined the Dark Coven.

  I had a couple of theories on why he might have joined.

  For starters, I knew that Kaden’s older brother, Corbin, had joined, even though Kaden and his sister, Kayla, hadn’t wanted him to. It was possible that Kaden had joined the coven simply because he wanted to keep tabs on his brother and make sure that he was safe, considering the Dark Coven was notoriously dangerous.

  But I didn’t believe that was why Kaden had joined. I was pretty sure that it actually had everything to do with me.

  See, Kaden had told me that the reason the Dark Coven was planning this war was because of me. They knew there was a good chance that I would become the most powerful witch of all-time, which they wanted to stop—in addition to weakening all of the good magic users so that their dark magic would be more powerful.

  By joining the Dark Coven, Kaden would continue to get inside information about what the Dark Coven had planned—and any, and all, information pertaining to me. Ever since I had found out that he’d joined the Dark Coven, a big part of me had believed that this was the entire reason he’d became a member.

  Then again, I could have been wrong. He hadn’t spoken to me in months. I also knew Kaden’s secret; he was half-witch (or good magic user) and half-warlock (or dark magic user). In the end, that meant he could either up being a witch or a warlock. So, it was completely possible that Everly was right and that the reason Kaden had joined the Dark Coven was because he actually was evil.

  “Hey, Juliana,” Marcus said, snapping me out of my thoughts, as he put Draia back on the ground.

  “Hey.” I smiled back at him as we all sat down at the table for breakfast.

  “Are you going to the movies with us?” Gavin asked me.

  “Nope,” I replied as I popped a piece of watermelon into my mouth. “I actually have to go to a Vixen meeting.”

  “How’s that going?” Marcus asked as he poured syrup on his pancakes.

  “It’s… going.”

  “I can’t believe they make you guys have meetings over the summer. That’s, like, beyond an extracurricular activity,” Gavin said with a mouthful of egg.

  “It’s just to keep our sisterhood going,” I replied with a shrug. But that was a lie. Our summer meetings were about far more than sisterhood—like life and death.

  But since the Vixen was a secret sorority, certain things had to remain a secret. I couldn’t tell any of them—not even Ambur and Draia—what the Vixen and I had been doing all summer. Technically, I was sworn to secrecy… but that wasn’t the only reason I hadn’t told them.

  If they knew that we had been preparing to fight against the war the Dark Coven was waging against Paranormal Academy, Ambur and Draia would have been worried about me.

  But if they knew that we were planning an attack against the Dark Coven, an attack that was going down tomorrow night, they would have been scared shitless.

  Chapter 2

  That evening, my friends all left for the movies and I headed to the flower garden in the backyard.

  Turning over the bench, I jumped into the hole in the ground underneath of it.

  It wasn’t just any hole. It was a portal.

  Traveling through this hole in the ground made me feel like I was stuck in Alice in Wonderland and was about to go chasing after the white rabbit.

  Normally, traveling through the portal didn’t really scare me. But today was different. Today, the Vixen and I were going to finalize our plans for tomorrow. Our plans for beginning the next Paranormal World War. Attacking the Dark Coven wasn’t going to be pretty. It was going to lead to a lot of disaster, a lot of destruction, and a lot of retaliation.

  But it’s all going to be worth it, I reminded myself. This is for the greater good.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured Everly’s house, and the ground that I was in began to shake, spilling dirt all around me.

  A few moments later, I opened my eyes, and I was standing in front of Everly’s, a large mansion that sort of resembled the White House.

  I glanced at the house across the street at Brett’s house. The lights were out, which made me think that no one was home. It had been that way for the majority of the summer.

  Truthfully, I was sort of relieved. The last thing I wanted was to bump into him. I didn’t want to have to deal with the whole being his girlfriend thing, so the longer it took for the two of us to see each other again, the better.

  As I extended my wrist to knock on Everly’s front door, she pulled it open. There was a nervous look on her face as she looked past me. “Are any of the others here?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come inside.” She held the door open for me and then quickly shut it once I’d stepped inside.

  I glanced over at Everly. Her raven black hair was in a wild, messy bun, and she was wearing sweatpants and a graphic t-shirt. She was a bit of a perfectionist, so it was really out of character for her.

  That also wasn’t to mention the fact that her naturally ivory cheeks looked like they’
d been completely drained of all their color.

  “Everly, are you okay?” I asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “That’s because I did see a ghost.” She rolled her light gray eyes.

  “What?” I just stared back at her, confused. “Like an actual… ghost?”

  “Yup. She left right before you got here. She came to deliver a message. She was so… transparent. And so cold. Her coldness just radiated throughout the room.” Wrapping her arms around her shoulders, Everly shuddered.

  “What did the ghost say, Everly?” I knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t have been good—not with how freaked out she seemed to be.

  “I’ll tell you once everyone else gets here, but this changes literally everything.”

  “Everything like what?” I pressed.

  Her eyes met mine. “How and when we attack the Dark Coven.”

  “Wait, we’re not attacking them tonight?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  I just stared back at her. “We’re not attacking them because a ghost told you not to?”

  “Okay, I know how it sounds, but you did not see this ghost or hear what she had to say, Juliana. Don’t judge.” Everly rolled her eyes at me.

  The doorbell rang then, the chiming sound interrupting our discussion.

  When Everly opened the door, Kadence was standing on the other side. Her long, dirty blonde hair was pulled into a slick ponytail with a black headband, and she was dressed completely in black: black leggings, a black hoodie, black sneakers even.

  “What’s with the weird attire?” Everly asked her.

  “We’re attacking the Dark Coven,” Kadence said, as if the answer should have been an obvious one. “I thought I should be discreet. Inconspicuous. You know?”

  “You look like you’re going to rob a bank,” Gina, who had just stepped onto the front porch, said.

  Kadence grinned. “That’s exactly the look I was going for! I was also thinking. Before we attack them, we could slash all their tires first.”

  “And what, exactly, will that solve?” Gina asked.