With a heave, I pushed him against the side of the cottage. His arm swung as though he was going to slug me. It stopped mid-air. He released his fist, the human inside still struggling to contain the violence. If I left him here, who knew what might happen to him. I drew a containment circle around him.
When the circle was complete, it shone in a deep blue-green. Where the circle touched the grass, it began to grow tall. Seeds sprouted into weeds that formed a dense clump of plants. If a demon came this way, hopefully all it saw was an overgrown patch of earth that hadn’t been mown in some time.
Then I did what he told me to do: I ran.
Beating a path to the closest guard tower, I pushed the door aside. The tower was empty but that didn’t matter. On an ivory pedestal in the centre of the room sat an everlasting flame in a golden cauldron. Every tower had one. I passed my hand over it. When the flame licked my palm, the heat of it drew my hedge magic.
“Alessia Hastings,” a disembodied voice identified.
“Raise the alarm,” I screamed at the flame. “The Academy is under attack!”
Immediately a clarion call roared out into the silent night. It wailed like a banshee, making my molars ache. Within seconds, Marshall and Curtis appeared.
“Alessia?” Marshall asked.
“Professor Mortimer!” I pointed to the professor’s cottage
In the blink of an eye, they were both gone. I gave myself a minute to catch my breath before I sprinted back to the dorms. Overhead, streaks of multi-coloured lights flew by in the direction of Professor Mortimer’s cottage. I frowned. Not enough streaks of light. Not even close to the amount of guards we had at Bloodline, let alone the ones from the other Academies.
At the beginning of each term, the Academy went through disaster drills with us. It was one thing to be put through the paces without the threat of danger looming over you. It was another to know that at any second a demon could come barrelling at you. I knew what I was supposed to do. I just couldn’t comprehend it. My movements were sluggish.
I wanted to go back to make sure the professor was okay. This was mixed with a bone-deep shuddering that threw layers of terror at me. Through sheer stubbornness, I pressed it back. I was sick at the idea of running when somebody I cared about was in mortal danger. In a sea of disapproving supernatural jerks, Professor Mortimer had always been kind to me. The thought of losing him to a demon made me pause mid-run. My mind was made up to turn back when a streak of green light filled my vision. The brightness of it had me shielding my eyes.
Kai landed for all of a heartbeat before he grabbed me. We spiralled towards the junior school. “Wait!” I screamed. It was snatched up by the wind whistling past us. The Academy flew by so quickly I could barely see anything but a blur. Kai pressed my head against his chest, holding me in place. At this speed, if I made a jerky movement, my neck would snap. We landed just outside the front door to the dorms. Nephilim and Fae guards were already circling the perimeter in the air. There were shifters in the tree line nearby.
The kids were always the first priority. The very same runes and glyphs I’d seen outside the senior campus blazed in a column around the junior campus. By now, portals would have opened up in the senior school and the older kids would be streaming into the building. It made it easier to defend one central spot. And if all other defences failed, we would be their last protectors.
“Get inside!” Kai snapped.
“But–!”
He turned on me, his green eyes molten. “Get inside.” It was a snarl. “Don’t you dare put a foot out the door until I come back.”
The front door opened. Somebody yanked me backwards just before Kai’s wings unfurled. He shot straight up into the sky. I caught sight of the horizon. The breath whooshed out of me as I stumbled into a pair of cold hands. I spun to face Sasha as he dragged me towards the spot at the windows where the rest of my friends were gathered. The older students formed a clump three deep around the windows. The younger ones sat along the staircase railing. A few wolf pups and a fox prowled around in circles. Their fear had made the shifter kids transform.
“Thank goodness,” Sophie hissed when she saw me. I felt her hug me, but my attention was too scattered to really register it. In the reflection of the window, my eyes were two big saucers. The slack expression on my face was mirrored by everyone else around me. I saw now why there were so few guards who had gone to Professor Mortimer’s aid.
In the air around where Nightblood Academy sat, was a portal the size of a football oval. It spun in a slow orbit like a spaceship bereft of light. Where the perimeter of the portal kept expanding, it ate up every scrap of light around it. A chill skirted down my spine.
A roar reverberated through the Academy. It was a soul-crunching sound like meat and bone going through a grinder. Sophie dug her nails into my arm. A skeletal claw the size of a spear pierced through the centre of the portal. The ground shook beneath us. If I hadn’t been holding on to the window ledge, I would have lost my footing. Boom! Another claw. Boom! A monstrous head. Boom!
Hairline cracks ran along the wall. The world vibrated around me. It was lucky I had a low centre of
