The Broken Academy 3: Power of Blood (A Paranormal Academy Reverse Harem Romance) Read online

  The Broken Academy

  Power of Blood

  Jade Alters

  Contents

  1. The ASTF

  2. Bartholomew

  3. Entangled Souls

  4. Lunch Dates

  5. Human Touch

  6. Family Ties

  7. The Stronghold

  8. The Tour

  9. Wide Open

  10. Corruption, Connection

  11. The Big Briefing

  12. Watchful Eye

  13. Dinner Plans

  14. Setting the Table

  15. A Good Impression

  16. The Other Side

  17. Fumbling Path

  18. Broken

  19. Home

  20. The Missing Spark

  21. Left Behind

  22. Stolen Witch

  23. Through the Gate

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Also by Jade Alters

  © Copyright 2019 - Starchild Universal Publishers Inc. All rights reserved.

  It is not legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  The ASTF

  Cece,

  The Broken Academy, Room D-42

  For the time I’ve spent at the Broken Academy, I can say one thing: I never thought I’d be here. I don’t mean the specific location, our newly upgraded suite at the opposite side of D-Wing. I mean here, sitting on the floor of a room I actually requested to be in with an Astral spirit and a Shapeshifter. And me… Something I denied through gritted teeth all through my first year as a student here at the Broken Academy, has finally become a part of me as inescapable as breathing. I’m a Dragon. And, little as I can believe it all, I’m damn proud of it.

  “I don’t know… Kryel seems like a likely candidate,” Stephanie supposes as she pretends to sip her wine with River and me. Her misty blue wisp of an arm tilts the glass back. Dark ruby fluid runs straight down through her misty, non-physical neck. It plunks into the little iron bucket we use for these ridiculous pregame gatherings. River and I will pick up the slack later by pouring the bucket out into our own glasses. I think Stephanie is the only one of us that goes to the ASTF meetings without a buzz now, and not by preference.

  “Kryel,” River drawls, like it’s the first line of a horrible joke. That’s because really, it is. “The only thing he’s terrorizing is the clearance aisle at party city.” I snort so hard I’m surprised two beams of wine don’t fire from my nostrils. They do sting a little.

  “Hey,” I jump in, “Anyone could be a Kyrie insurgent.” The gravity of my voice only serves to deepen the implied humor. River’s fist curls over her lips, about to break.

  “Maybe there’s a sinister purist underneath that pink boa he’s always wearing,” Stephanie insists. That just about pushes us over the edge of what sanity we have left. We laugh so hard that, at the end of it, I wait for the knock from Serge. It wouldn’t be the first time we got a noise complaint, or the tenth. The only times louder than River and my disagreements now are the times we get along.

  It’s all we can do to laugh. After the battle at Point Arena a year ago, we came together to defend the Academy in spades. The ASTF formed overnight, ready for a full-scale war right on school grounds while the Council searched elsewhere. Then a week passed with no action. Then a month. Even Emery and Serge couldn’t track what little trace their family had left behind. Darius Jecks, who finally got some level of what he deserved in a cell under the Academy, had no information on the VampKing’s involvement. Fey Rorelia left behind nothing that even implicated her involvement in the Kyrie. Her and the VampKing’s seats on the Council have yet to be filled, even a year later. But that’s part of the ASTF’s mission, too. We’re not just here to watch students, but instructors, too. Anyone who might be in league with the Kyrie, or even susceptible to the group’s supremacy recruitment tactics. We are the ones charged with gathering who, if anyone, is trustworthy enough to fill the Council’s empty seats.

  Then my memory overpowers the wine, and I snap back to reality. I remember that Serge isn’t around to knock on our door. He’s probably already on his way to the same meeting we need to get to. Shit- the meeting! Stephanie knows by the sudden panic in my eyes exactly the thought striking lightning in my mind.

  “We’re late for the meeting again, aren’t we?” she says. I answer by tossing back the rest of my wine and leaping to my feet. Instant disorientation rocks my world. I’m forced to grab my bed for support while River steadies herself on her desk chair. “Am I going to have to possess one of you again?”

  “Not me,” I declare as I wobble back upright.

  “I- I’m good,” River starts to slur, then clears her throat to exude more confidence. Stephanie sighs and floats away from her excess bucket, for the door. River and I stumble into line behind her.

  We file out the door, which River forgets to close and turns back halfway down the hall to go take care of. The thumps of her trot to catch up to us turns a few heads as we make our way through the dismissed classes of D-Wing. If not through word-of-mouth, they know who we are by the patches on our altered Academy uniforms. We wear navy polos with white collars that say ASTF in place of the traditional Broken Academy above the chest pocket.

  Even in our buzzed rush, I notice something odd. Something that prickles the scales under the skin on the back of my neck. A set of footsteps. It looms behind us like a cautious stormcloud, military in pace, yet gracefully quiet. Normally, I’d dismiss it without another thought. But this particular set of footsteps has been trailing us almost since we left our room. We’re nearing the courtyard now. The last classes have let out for the day, so the only people heading this way should be the Wing Supervisor and us. I happen to know where D-Wing’s supervisor is, so then who…

  “Someone’s following us,” I murmur over my shoulder to Stephanie and River.

  “What?” River blurts.

  “Would you shut up?” I hiss, as if our tail didn’t hear it already. We’re on the fringe of the last students out, now. Whoever it is can probably hear everything we’re saying.

  “You don’t think…they’d attack right here?” Stephanie whispers back.

  “Isn’t that why we have a Security Task Force?” I whisper back.

  “Holy shit…” River mutters to herself. Her fingers curl up in two clubs-for-fists. She deep breathes to keep from shifting before she needs to. It’s an admirable difference from when I met her. A year ago, she’d have been eight different animals already from the stress.

  “Stephanie,” I whisper as we approach the turn into the courtyard. A high stone arch and a sharp left are all that separate us from the perfect grounds for a showdown. “Go ahead and tell Thise. We might need everyone that’s supposed to be at the meeting.”

  “Leave the two of you to handle it alone?” Stephanie counters. “No chance.”

  “We don’t have time to debate it!” I insist.

  “Great, it’s decided. We’ll handle it together,” Stephanie declares. I sigh at her impossible stubbornness.

  “A full room or an empty one, at the end of the night,” River agree
s. We keep a tight formation as we turn left into the D-Wing courtyard.

  “We cross completely before we turn around,” I suggest. “It’ll flush whoever it is out, to follow us into the hallway on the other side.”

  “Yeah, we’re so convincing murmuring to one another like we’re planning an ambush the whole way across,” River drolls. Damnit. Annoying or not, she has a point. Our shoes smush down one patch of overgrown grass after another. We make it about as far as the aisle of flowerbeds through the center of the courtyard before River blurts, “So, have you slept with Bryant yet?”

  “What?” I cough. I’m no sexual hermit, and most of the people who know me know it, but to hear it broadcasted over the courtyard for everyone to hear… Then I catch on. I just wish she’d picked any other topic for a cover. I clear my throat and do my best to compose a convincing answer through the blush. The easiest thing to use in the moment happens to be the truth.

  “Not yet,” I tell her. I’m sure to turn back over my shoulder as I do, so our follower can hear every word. So he can see for himself how “distracted” we are. “He’s doing much better in terms of human understanding, but…I’m not quite sure he understands courtship yet. Intimacy between Demons is…different.”

  “That must be weird,” River nods. Her acting is a little too spot-on. I try not to let myself get too distracted as she adds, “I mean, he can see the way you are with Serge and Lee. What’s not to get?”

  “Ye-ye-yeah. I try not to remind any of them about the other men too often, though,” I cough. I say a silent prayer of thanks to whatever God is listening when we near the archway on the opposite side of the courtyard. I count the seconds until the tip of my shoe crosses the threshold to the hallway. Any lingering sway from the wine evaporates from me with the boiling of my blood. I turn my head to show River and Stephanie two glimmering sapphire eyes. “Now,” I growl.

  The three of us wheel around instantly. I catch the vaguest glimpse of a man-shaped shadow before it zips off behind a wall of bushes. A wake of gusts and leaves swirl behind it. A movement I’d recognize anywhere. Vampire. I try to trace movement in the brush, but there is none. He could be anywhere behind it now. I nod to Stephanie. Her misty Astral frame floats high for a better vantage point. River cocks two muscular arms up for a tussle.

  “Interesting play. Coming right into the Academy. Targeting the ASTF directly,” I announce, to prod a reaction. At the end of each sentence, I pause for a breath, to listen for sounds of movement. I don’t hear so much as a breath. That’s fine. I just need to make one. I turn to River to give her the silent signal. Be ready. She nods in confirmation.

  I suck down a gasp big enough to fill my chest. A wave of heat rises up through my throat. I let out a puff of flame at one end of the shrub wall, then one at the other. Inferno spreads through its sticks and leaves, instantly trapping our follower in a corner. I thought it did, anyway, before Stephanie cries out,

  “He’s heading around left!” Somewhere around the time she said the word heading, another wake of gusts shot through the flames and around our backsides. I didn’t even have time to be shocked that he passed us right by without a strike. The haze of motion shot behind the opposite corner shrub wall.

  River falls to the ground on all fours without a word. I know by the darkening of her skin to a black, glossy sheen what she is. A puma leaps from the ground in her place, sprinting for the far end of the shrubs. Right around the time she got there, I sprayed another breath of fire to flush him towards her. River’s fanged jaw snaps inches behind the figure as it zooms out from behind the shrubs.

  “Stephanie! Eyes?” I call up to our overwatch. Her mouth is open, mid-gasp when a very different voice calls out:

  “Behind!” Serge. I don’t have time to register where he’s come from, but there he is, in the center of the courtyard, with a hand out towards me.

  I turn about halfway around, to find the attacker. A tower of long legs and arms looms over me, two red eyes gleaming. They seem more to glow scarlet than shimmer ruby, like the VampKing’s. His arm rises towards me. My own glare over with violet scales of armor. But we never connect. The sound of a snap separates us. The Vampire falls through a hole that instantly appears in the ground. The corresponding portal drops him in a heap on the grass in front of Serge’s feet.

  “Cece!” Lee’s voice shouts through my ears and soul at once as he trots in through one side of the courtyard. Bryant is only a second behind him on the other side. That completes the ASTF, surrounding the collapsed Vampire on every side. He props himself up on his arms, scarlet eyes bolting between exits. Each one he glimpses glows a haunted blue before their iron gates slam shut with Stephanie’s power of possession. River puts the finishing touch on his capture by thumping a massive, clawed paw in the grass between the Vampire’s lanky legs. He looks up at each of us but says nothing. He only smirks and raises his hands in surrender. “Well, look at that. Only took a year,” Lee announces, hands on his hips. The back of his head jostles off the palm of my hand.

  “And what are you so proud of?” I cut him down, “It’s not like you did anything!” He rubs his wounded head and pride with such childish innocence that I can’t help a chuckle. He opens his mouth to retort, but Bryant speaks up first.

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Make him less agile, for one,” Serge decides. I can’t help but agree. I pull the Vampire’s wrists behind his back for Serge to weave his fingers around them. After a few rotations, he’s bound with a glassy loop of illusory bindings. Serge repeats the process around the Vampire’s ankles before we hoist him up on his feet. Only once he’s completely bound does Stephanie dare retract her essence from the gates of the courtyard. One by one, the stone archways open again. Her smoky form congeals back into the shape of a spectral woman with hazy features.

  “This does seem like the sort of thing we should report to Thise,” she suggests. It’s met with resounding nods all around. I take a step toward the Vampire to plant a hand on his shoulder. Only then does the draconic blue glow fizzle out of my crystalline eyes.

  “Looks like you’ve got a meeting to catch,” I tell him, and pull him along.

  Cece,

  The Broken Academy, Dragonlord Thise’s Office

  It’s hot in Thise’s office, even for me. Everyone else is practically a thinning popsicle, sweating out every last bead of toxin inside them. It’s one of the many times I’m sure Stephanie is grateful for her lack of a physical body. If someone would have told me the first thing out of Dragonlord Thise’s mouth would make me forget about the heat, I’d have said they were crazy. Then we line up in a perfect rank across her stony desk, the ASTF, with our captured prisoner proudly before us.

  “I see you’ve met Bartholomew,” Thise announces. Suddenly, pooling sweat around our shoes is the last thing on any of our minds. Even the veins of lava creeping down the walls around seem inconsequential.

  “I told you, Dragonlord. Just Bart,” the scarlet-eyed Vampire corrects. Bart is uncannily comfortable for having his wrists and ankles bound, in a chamber that mimics the heart of a volcano.

  “And I told you,” Thise adopts her scolding tone every member of the ASTF is familiar with, “to be forthright with them. I warned you they would react this way if you gave them reason to suspect you.”

  “Hearing it from you and seeing it for myself are vastly different experiences,” Bart points out to Thise. He turns back to the line of befuddled students behind him. I’m hardly able to resist the urge to boot his feet out from under him when he gives me that charming smirk. “I apologize for my…disconcerting behavior.”

  “You’ve got no idea who you just disconcerted,” Lee laughs. “You’re lucky you’re not a pile of cinders or have all your body parts in different mirror-dimensions right now.” To this, Bart answers with a shrug. I almost laugh at how nonchalant it is. Six supernatural powerhouses converge to snag him, and he shrugs.

  “You don’t survive long as a Vampire witho
ut making a good friend of luck,” he tells us. “I only wanted to see who I was casting my lot in with here. What your abilities were. How you worked together. Trust isn’t something that comes easily to me… I apologize, truly.” That’s about all I can take. Much as I admire his candor, my mouth pops open to let him have it. It may not be good form to incinerate him right here, in the Dragonlord’s office, but a few verbal scorch marks might do him some good. Bart seems to have absolutely no idea how much danger he’s in. My mind fences out an even more mortifying thought on the matter – he knows exactly how much danger he’s in.

  “Academy Security Task Force,” Dragonlord Thise breaks in, probably because she sees my face turning red. I snap my heels together to simmer on in silence, along with the rest of my roommates and lovers. “Meet your newest member. Barthol- er- Bart. It’s his first year at the Broken Academy, but hardly his first year in the world we prepare you all for.” With this, Bart turns fully around to address us.

  “Once you’ve had some time to sleep it off, I hope my behavior won’t prevent us from becoming-”

  “Shut the hell up and turn around,” Serge cuts him off. Bart frowns at him with astonishingly authentic disappointment. I can tell Serge wants to console our newest member about as much as I do, but he sighs and puts a hand on his arm. “So I can unbind you,” he tells Bart, who finally complies. Serge runs his fingers through his illusory bindings, which dissolves them into nothing. Bart flexes his newly freed joints until Thise calls us all back to attention with:

  “Bart has access to certain avenues of information we couldn’t hope to access without him. You will forgive him any offense.” Her word is final. It’s not that I bear Bart ill will. After hearing the truth of the situation, I’m actually worried for him. It was only a little over a year ago I was in his place. New at the Academy. Uninitiated to the dangers of poking my nose where it didn’t belong. I mean, he looks younger than me. But then, with Vampires, there’s no way to be sure, short of asking. Sometimes even then. “Let’s hear your reports then.”