Root Rot Academy: Term 3 Page 30

  And Jack…

  He stood there, staring at where Alecto had once been, hand out at roughly her shoulder height—stunned. Still shell-shocked.

  Then furious.

  “Seriously,” Gavriel snapped, head whipping back and forth between Jack and me, “what—just—happened?”

  The many windows of Hammond’s auspicious classroom rattled, fae fury swirling around the room like a tornado, destroying all in its path. Desks overturned. Quills and pens flew everywhere. Hammond’s laptop exploded in a cloud of black smoke, and I hastily smacked out the tiny fire that slithered across his desk after. My palm took the brunt of the third-degree heat, but the blisters faded fast.

  “I…” Jack groped the air where our girl once stood. “He…”

  So rarely at a loss for words, Jack Clemonte.

  Bit unnerving, actually.

  As Gavriel stalked to and fro, gaze frantic, gears whizzing, Jack snatched his mobile from his pocket, then swiped at the screen and tapped away, brows knit and mouth in a thin, harsh line.

  They could be anywhere.

  Anywhere in the whole fucking world.

  Magical transport was a complex feat that few could do under dire circumstances, but apparently Hammond had practice. Skill. Tenacity and determination to get what he wanted—and Alecto had always been his prize. Ever since he butchered his last obsession, he must have felt a hole, a gaping pit in his soul that needed to be filled.

  Then along came Alecto with her eyes like gold…

  Her mother’s eyes.

  She never stood a chance.

  But my elskling was tough. She had faced down many dangers in the last six months alone…

  Not one of those reassuring thoughts, logical and practical and very much the Bjorn of this decade, soothed the beast within. Hands in fists, I marched to the north-facing windows and glowered across the highlands. Quiet tonight, a soft breeze whispering through the gardens and the long grasses—

  Did he watch her from here?

  Stare into her domain, plotting the best way to conquer, to claim his prize?

  A snarl tore up my throat.

  No—think. Succumbing to bloodlust did nothing for Alecto.

  “Why didn’t you have a better hold on her?”

  And neither did that.

  I wheeled around to glare at the pair, at the two men in my elskling’s life who rarely saw eye to eye but could hopefully put their fucking differences aside for her sake.

  “It’s not his fault,” I growled, the objection only redirecting Gavriel’s ire my way. “Enough, Gavriel. It’s no one’s fault—”

  “He’s right,” Jack said roughly, head bowed, texting away—no doubt sending orders to everyone who could possibly do something. But she was ours. We ought to do something. “I should have grabbed on. It happened so fast—”

  “And you lost her,” I finished for him. “It happened. It’s done. Move on and stop acting like children, both of you. It isn’t helping.”

  Nor was the hellfire lapping up my windpipe. I knuckled the center of my chest, only then noticing the way my arms trembled, my legs itching to run until I crashed headlong into Benedict Hammond—and then straight through him. Feel his guts explode around me, body in pieces and soul destined for the pit.

  Lips peeled back to avoid my fangs, I returned to the window, pacing, thinking, ruminating—imagining all the places he could have her right now. What was meaningful to him? A scoff worked my throat. Like I knew anything about the shitstain beyond his penchant for cruelty. It was a trait we would have shared in an age gone by; tonight, it made my gut sour.

  Would he take her back to Canada?

  Back to where it all began?

  Possibly to the ruins of the family house—had someone built over it, or had they left it like that, destroyed and full of horror?

  Was I giving him too much credit? Maybe they were just beyond the perimeter walls, over the coiled razor wire…

  Maybe he was torturing her in the highlands.

  I closed my eyes and listened, tuning out Gavriel’s frantic stalking and the tick-tick-tick of Jack’s phone. Not a scream on the winds tonight. No howling. No banshee cries.

  Silence wasn’t always good, either.

  Shoved up against the glass pane, I then scanned the black horizon, a low growl clawing up from the beast—and then a light.

  A blinking light.

  Red and blue, flashing, out of the corner of my eye to the far, far left of the Root Rot grounds.

  The sight tickled a hazy memory: when I came to, Alecto weeping softly over my stake-riddled corpse, the same magical signal pulsed in the sky. Her magic scented the air, not Gavriel’s, which meant—

  “There,” I bellowed, stabbing at the window so hard it splintered. I shifted over a few panes with a scowl, locked on the orb, a beacon in the night at the crest of a jagged stretch of steep landscape. Gavriel was at my side in seconds, materializing to the right and shoving me aside to get a proper look, while Jack appeared slightly after, just as pushy to see what I’d found.

  “The opus auxilium incantation.” The warlock’s dark gaze narrowed with scrutiny. “A call for assistance—”

  “Alecto cast that with you,” Gavriel insisted as he smacked my arm, shifting from raging fae to giddy boy in a flash. “That’s her.”

  “What’s even out there?” I smooshed my face up against the window, searching the harsh horizon line. Northwest. Paths I rarely trod. Hadn’t trod in years, actually, ever since I learned—

  “Fort Dàn,” Jack admitted roughly. Fire sparked in my chest again, and when I shot it at him, he shook his head with a Not now expression that had me grinding my teeth.

  That thing had been used for years before Jack and Gavriel’s arrival at Root Rot—a place of torture for already tortured students. Given no one ventured out there anymore, detentions civil under the Clemonte regime, I’d thought someone would have torched the place by now.

  “Why the fuck would she be out there?” Gavriel muttered, oblivious to the wordless conversation behind his back. Jack’s cheeks darkened somewhat, and he cleared his throat, attention back on the red-blue orb.

  “Alecto and I have… gone hiking around the loch.”

  Before I could get a word out, the fae snorted, his breath briefly fogging the window. “Sure.” He shot Jack a smirk with his reflection. “Hiking.”

  “Never mind.” I took one last long look at the route I’d take to reach her, mapping the terrain, committing it to memory even if that bastard found a way to snuff her SOS signal. “Jack, teleport in. I can be there within a minute or so. Gavriel—”

  “On it,” the fae rasped, already halfway across the room, wings knocking over anything in their breadth. I was on his heels in a burst of speed, the pair of us nearly out the door when—

  “I can’t teleport.”

  We whirled around to find Jack stalking after us, ditching his coat, wand drawn and deadly.

  “You’re a fucking headmaster, scholar, trust fund baby,” Gavriel snapped. “What do you mean you can’t teleport?”

  “I can,” Jack fired back, anger articulating every word, clearly uncomfortable with sharing the weakness at such a crucial moment, “but it makes me sick.”

  My eyebrows shot up. What—

  “Violently sick,” the warlock clarified when he joined us at the door, his heart beating harder than I’d ever heard, fueled, no doubt, by all that powered Gavriel and me: adrenaline and rage and fear, and, above all else, love. “I need to be helpful when we find her.” Jack spoke with a flash of teeth, slowly succumbing to his own darkness, his own monster. “I want to flay him alive—not squat in the corner puking my guts out.”

  I glanced at Gavriel, and after a moment of judgmental scowling, the fae rounded on me. He and I swapped a bit of silent back-and-forth while Jack glared, white-knuckling his wand and chomping at the bit for a pound of Hammond’s flesh. Initially, I sensed Gavriel preferred to just leave him behind, but that was u
nacceptable.

  He loved Alecto.

  We loved Alecto.

  She deserved the very best from all of us.

  “Ugh, fine.” Gavriel motioned to the door. “I’ll give you a lift, then.”

  Jack hesitated. “Uh—”

  “It’ll be easy-peasy,” the fae grumbled. “Like carrying a massive lead teddy bear.”

  “If you drop me—”

  “Pinky promise I won’t.” He offered his pinky, which Jack blew by as he stalked out the door. The fae chuckled and hurried after him, and I left them to fend for themselves, headed for the hills faster than I’d ever pushed this vampiric body before, the world a blur.

  Alecto on my mind and in my heart as I prayed to Odin that we weren’t too late.

  28

  Alecto

  Ugh, fuck.

  Stupid weak ankles.

  The fall wasn’t as substantial as I’d expected, but it still hurt like a bitch when the floor and I shook hands. Anticipating the blinding pain of broken ankles, I had tried to land as lightly as I could, but something still crunched on impact, and I folded to my knees, then slumped to the side, hissing and groaning. Leftie hurt way more than the right, but seated in the darkness, fire raging overhead, at least I could roll them both. Sure, pain ripped up my calves, and my knees had absorbed a lot of the fall, but everything was… intact.

  Huzzah.

  “Gods,” I rasped, eyes still watery from the flames. At least there hadn’t been any smoke—just raging heat. Sniffling, I swiped a thumb under each eye, then slowly, gingerly, pushed to my feet. It might not have been broken, but my left ankle screamed whenever I put my full weight on it, forcing me to limp-hobble around wherever I’d fallen into.

  Refusing to navigate this crumbling fort blind, I cast a few floating orbs—then shrieked when the final one illuminated a loitering Benedict in the nearby doorway.

  “Shame,” he said with a patronizing sigh. My thundering heart picked itself off the floor, the shock of seeing him there nearly knocking me on my ass. “That scarred face, now the ankles? Not having a great week, are we?”

  “This is nothing.” I gestured to myself, swallowing hard to get rid of the raw, hoarse quality staining my words. “I’m a survivor. You made me that way.”

  With a crooked grin, he sauntered into the small square space, expertly dodging the potholes like he’d been here before. “Then I suppose a thanks is in order—”

  “Everto,” I whispered as I lobbed the ejection hex underhanded, stunned that it nailed him right in the chest. The warlock flew back and out the door, smashing into something outside—hopefully knocking him out for good, but after everything, that seemed like a pipe dream.

  Still, as I hobbled for the doorway, dragging one of my trusty light orbs with me, I couldn’t believe that had worked.

  He lay in a crumpled, groaning heap just over the threshold, probably after slamming into the wall on the other side of a suffocatingly narrow corridor. Fingers ghosting along the stonework, I sidestepped him, holding my breath, and then limp-jogged for the base of a tower stairwell at the far end. By the time I reached it, I was out of breath and in a world of hurt, ankles full of loose shrapnel, but I pushed forward.

  I needed to get up and out.

  Find a defensible position with multiple escape routes.

  You know, in case he tried to trap me in a room of fire again.

  A chuckle reverberated up the winding stairs, followed by a rough cough. “Where are you going, Alecto?”

  Okay, so, not down for long. Awesome. Teeth gritted, I pushed harder even as my body begged for slow and steady. Despite knowing the level with the kink playroom best, I clawed up another two floors, eventually stumbling out onto what might have been a loft space—maybe even a rooftop courtyard between the four towers. My spire came to an end here, but the three others soared higher into archer stations, the pointed roofs open, their walls fractured. Greeted by a starry night sky and a gust of cool, dry air, I staggered along, light orb hovering in front, and hastily mapped all the yawning crevices that opened to more steep drops and the promise of permanently fucked ankles.

  “Darling, there you are.”

  Halfway across the open roof, exterior walls roughly hip-high on all sides, mountain looming to my right and a glistening loch to my left, I stumbled around. Of course he looked fine. A little rumpled, sure, his hair less neatly swept than usual, his dress shirt dusted with floor. Otherwise, Benedict Hammond exuded an air of perfect control, totally in his element as the predator stalking his wounded prey.

  Because that was exactly me: wounded, blood dribbling from my nostrils. Sweaty. A little shaky. In a world of hurt.

  Just keep him busy.

  The bigoted narcissist loved the sound of his own voice, and since he had removed my SOS signal at some point, I needed him distracted and lost in a tangent.

  “Did you bring the demons to Root Rot?”

  His lazy amble across the roof stalled. “I… What?”

  “Lucifer is pissed, just PS,” I told him with a cavalier shrug, like the Devil and I were such besties. “So, when you’re finished here, I’d run… like out of this realm, run.”

  Even though the moonlight washed us both out, Benedict managed to pale a shade lighter, expression blank, before he bounced back with a sneer and big, howling guffaws that made his eyes glisten. Forcing a bored expression, I just stood there and took it, waiting for the show to be over.

  “You’re lying,” he remarked, suddenly flat and suspicious as he eyed me. I pursed my lips and picked at my nails.

  “Am I?”

  Let him think what he wanted: unless he was Team Lucifer, how he thought the Devil would be cool with him co-opting his minions for an unsanctioned attack on an academy was beyond me.

  “Well.” Benedict tipped his head to the side, arms limp, the rapid-fire tap of his thumbs to each finger the only sign that I’d rattled him. “It was a team effort, I suppose. Iris wanted something monumental she could defeat—show her worth as headmistress.”

  Unable to stop myself, I snorted. Seriously? That coward hid in her panic room the entire time, but okay.

  “I found possession demons who also wanted to make a name for themselves, hopefully get their bodies back,” he prattled, barely paying attention to me, as if determined to get his story straight. “It wasn’t…” He shook his head, scowling at the stars. “They went a little off the rails, unfortunately—”

  “People died, you asshole.” A sick feeling settled in my stomach, disgust conquering the teleportation nausea once and for all. “A little off the rails? You traumatized students for life.”

  “Oh, blah, blah, blah.” Benedict waved me off. “As if those cretins actually matter. Castoffs and rejects, defective—like your little Alice. Her fate in the cave was kinder than anything this world would have shown her—”

  He deflected the three hexes I hurled his way, one right after the other, rapid-fire and deadly, the kind that would strip his stomach lining and make his eardrums burst if they landed.

  “Don’t you dare say her name,” I hissed, righteous fury claiming the throne inside me, the rest just background noise. When my hands shook now, they shook with rage. “Did you put that fucking portal into the academy?”

  “For a bunch of filthy, hick sirens?” The warlock snorted, his fake upper-class English accent gone now, his true self on display. “Gods no. That was all Iris… Meant to be a nail in Jack’s coffin, as it were. You think a Hammond holds a grudge? Clearly you’ve never met a Prewett on a mission.”

  “You—”

  “Now, stop being foolish,” he gritted out, wand raised, his stance flawless. “I’m the better dueler, and you’ve only got a few good bits left. I’d hate to damage them before we have any real fun.” His black gaze raked my figure, cataloguing the parts he deemed good. “End this with some dignity—”

  A shadow darted out of the tower and blurred to Benedict’s side, and a blink later the warlock sai
led screaming across the rooftop. Hurled with such strength, such ferocity, his body bounced like a stone over still waters, narrowly missing one of the holes as he skidded to a stop.

  In his place, Bjorn.

  My Bjorn.

  My vampire.

  My Viking.

  My heart.

  Every muscle sagged, like I could finally just let go—hand the burden of survival off to someone else. With his back to me, I drank him in, from his broad shoulders down to his tapered waist, a perfect ass and tree-trunk thighs that had whisked him across the highlands. He had never struck me as hulking before, all bulky muscle and overt power, but standing before me now, he was all that and more. The apex predator come sunset. King of the Night. A bloodthirsty warrior seconds from ripping Benedict apart, those exquisite shoulders heaving, his bare hands the deadliest weapons of all.

  “You found me,” I choked, nothing more than a strangled whisper, lost on the wind and carried away—but he heard me. He always did. The vampire peered over his shoulder, his handsome Norse features hard as steel, his eyes gone from ice blue to a violent indigo. Even in a borrowed black suit from Jack, he looked every inch an ancient vampire, savage and terrifying and unf. Under different circumstances, I’d demand he take me, right here, right now.

  “Of course, elskling,” he growled, his voice deeper, harsher, guttural and dark. Such a jarring contrast to the light, singsongy Norwegian lilt he spoke with, words like honey, smooth as silk. This was—monstruous. And I loved it. “I’ll always find you.”

  Across the roof, Benedict Hammond rolled over and spat out a mouthful of blood. “Pathetic little leech.”

  Much to my surprise, Bjorn let the warlock stand, then just watched, fists at his sides, as Benedict stumbled left and right, struggling to find his sea legs—like a wolf watching a wounded elk, waiting for them to keel over and die on their own terms.

  But Benedict was so adept at playing the victim—the martyr.

  Just as I was about to open my mouth, a warning about his teleportation skills on the tip of my tongue, Jack Clemonte fell from the sky. He landed nimbly on the roof, more graceful than his massive frame implied, almost elegant as he dropped into a barrel roll. As Benedict tried to stagger back to the tower, Jack rolled and bounced up right in front of him—and then clocked the bastard square across the jaw.