Last Chance Academy

by Alex Lidell

  Bryant’s face softens. “There is one other option,” he says quietly. “That’s one of the reasons it took me several days to get back with you. I needed to see if you’d qualify. It’s no more pleasant than jail, but it’s only four years, and you’d come out with a new life. A new chance.” Leaning forward, he braces his forearms on the table. “It’s called Talonswood Reform Academy. A private rehabilitation institution. I may be able to pull some strings to secure your attendance.”

  I lift a brow. I’ve learned to look for the hook in men’s proposals the way obsessed helicopter parents dig for razor blades in Halloween candy. A skill I should have remembered with Ellis.

  “I am not a juvenile, Mr. Bryant,” I tell him.

  “Talonswood isn’t for juveniles. The average first-year student is in his or her early twenties. But it isn’t your typical school either. To begin with, enrollment means you agree to become a ward of the Academy, subject to its rules and discipline. Privileges to leave campus must be earned and often can’t be obtained during the first year.”

  Bryant produces a sheet of paper which, though it comes out of a clear plastic folio, has the feel of thick parchment. The words on it are penned in the neat hand of someone who has way too much time to form pretty letters.

  “This is the contract, which you’d sign and I would present to the judge on your behalf. You need to understand that there is no release clause. You may not simply decide you no longer wish to be there. Should the Academy decide to expel you before graduation, however, you would be going directly to prison.”

  “Ten years in federal prison or four at Talonswood.” I grip Bryant’s calculating gaze. “What the catch?”

  “Talonswood believes that, given proper discipline, education, and opportunity, troubled young men and women can become highly productive members of society. The same cannot be said of many released inmates. Talonswood skews the results in its favor by selecting only candidates who appear to match the program. The most attractive part is what happens upon graduation—a new life. Many inmates reoffend after traditional prison because their pasts come back to haunt them. Talonswood will not have that. Call it witness protection without the witness part.” Bryant smiles.

  I don’t smile back. He hasn’t answered my question.

  The attorney runs his fingers over the parchment. “Moreover, Talonswood has the funds to pay off students’ debts before they enter the program and, upon successful completion, ensure that you have what you need to start a new life. Your record will be sealed, your baccalaureate diploma issued in a new name. Some of the students stay on to obtain master’s degrees, and many return to teach.”

  “Sounds like paradise.”

  “Not in the least,” Bryant assures me. “But I would propose that there are worse alternatives to be had.”

  Like the one facing me now. I swallow. There is a catch. There always is. But… Funds to pay off debts. Finagled correctly, I might parlay that into a year of home and bed for Janie. Bryant has hit a bull’s-eye, and the sparkle in his eye says he knows it.

  He wants me in Talonswood. I don’t know why—or what’s in it for him. But the asshole is right, the alternative is worse.

  “Where do I sign?” I ask.

  Bryant takes out a small knife and pricks the tip of his index finger, smearing the bead of blood over the finger pad before placing a bloody fingerprint on the parchment. Then he passes the knife to me.

  5

  Ellis

  She’d scratched him. With her nails. And he’d bled like a human.

  Bringing his practice blade down on a guardsman’s shoulder, Ellis ignored the male’s howl of pain. The male should have been faster with the parry, and Ellis was done treating the royal guard like a pack of pups. Spinning around, he blocked a blow intended to split open his skull, the force of the contact echoing through his bones. The guards were not pulling blows either. There was little love lost between King Bryant’s guard and his bastard son.

  Far above the training yard, a full moon ruled the evening sky, just as it had in the human realm. That was where the similarities between Talon—the immortal sanctuary that the fae carved out for themselves in the fae-vampire wars—and the mortal world ended. The humans’ technology couldn’t penetrate the portal membrane, just as Talon’s magic would not flow back into the mortal realm. If Ellis never set foot in the human world again, it would be too soon. Bryant shouldn’t have sent him there to begin with.

  No matter. It was good to be back in Talon. Ellis was happy here—well, not happy—he hadn’t applied that word to himself for centuries—but he was comfortable. And he was away from the petite loudmouthed mortal who robbed him of his good sense, made him freeze on the job even before she’d broken his skin. He blamed it on her big hazel eyes, those mouthwateringly full breasts she tried—and failed miserably—to hide under baggy clothes.

  So the witch was beautiful. Nothing he couldn’t handle. She was still a bloody witch.

  Kicking his second opponent in the chest, Ellis sent the guardsman tumbling to the ground, whipping his practice blade down toward him in a bone-shattering arc. Ellis was strong enough to shatter another fae’s bones with a practice blade.

  But even he couldn’t draw blood from a fae male with a little clip of a fingernail the way Samantha Devinee had on his cheek. She made him wrong. She made him vulnerable.

  “Ellis, enough!” The bellow came from the side of the practice ring, and Ellis blinked, realizing he’d been about to land a devastating blow on a male who was already down and clutching his ribs. Striding into the practice ring, the captain of the guard put himself between his downed underling and Ellis, mouth twisted under a thick black mustache. “Get the hell out of my training ring, Your Highness,” the captain said, spitting on the ground. “I don’t give a bloody damn that you are good enough to put down five of my males. I don’t need a rabid wolf nipping at my pack.”

  Tossing his blade to the sand, Ellis stalked from the sparring ring. If the royal guard couldn’t keep up, it was their problem. After spending eight months in the mortal world tracking down a little witch, Ellis had every right to burn off some fury. To do anything that might quiet his mind from the constant whispers of Sam’s name, the memory of her citrusy scent making his head swim, no matter what he did. Not even the ire in his father’s face when he learned how Ellis had botched the operation could shove the witch from Ellis’s mind. That Samantha Devinee had no idea what she was somehow made it worse.

  As if drawn by thoughts of his father, a servant appeared with a summons to the royal antechamber before Ellis was twenty paces away from the guard’s training yard. Changing course midstep, he strode toward the palace without bothering to change, the neatly mowed moonlit grass dewy beneath his feet. The six immense white towers of the castle shone with glittering lamplight from every window, King Bryant’s pristine influence stretching far over the land even in the dark. If the king didn’t want to see sweat and blood, he could let Ellis be on his way. There was always some borderland to patrol, some stray vamps who needed killing.

  That was Ellis’s role in court after all, to go take care of whatever dark deeds needed to be done so everyone else could keep their hands clean. A royal assassin. A royal punisher. A royal bounty hunter. If it was a task the king didn’t want to admit to, Ellis got it.

  “I managed to clean up your mess, Ellis.” King Bryant boomed by way of welcome as Ellis strode into the large study off his father’s throne room, the gilded candelabra casting dancing shadows on the plush carpet. The king’s blue eyes flashed. “I had to go down and do it myself.”

  Ellis stuck his hands into his pockets. “How verra inconvenient.” It was his own minor little rebellion to hang on to the Scottish accent he’d picked up with his mother’s family in the Scottish islands before Bryant decided to keep his bastard closer. The king’s own accent had a North American cadence, just as did Asher’s—Ellis’s half brother. Another bastard and the only thing of Bryant’s that
Ellis cherished.

  “It was inconvenient. Do you want to know how I did it?” He waited placidly for Ellis’s answer, never lifting his eyes from the paperwork spread across his desk.

  “So long as the witch is dead, I couldna care less for the details,” Ellis said.

  “I’ve pulled her out of what passes for a human legal system,” Bryant answered as if Ellis hadn’t spoken. “The Council would raise hell if I brought her here directly, but the witch will be on her way to Talonswood shortly. Not ideal, but best current option. We’ll be able to keep a proper eye on her there, keep her out of the bloodsuckers’ hands. Count Victor would love nothing more than a pet witch to do his bidding.”

  Ellis’s stomach clenched. Talonswood Reform Academy—located on Talonswood Island where the gateway between the human world and Talon hung—would chew Samantha up, spit her out, and do it all over again. And that would just be in the first week.

  The place was erected to get demifae and demivamps—and the occasional full-blooded immortal adolescent—under control, and made most bootcamps look like spa retreats. The enhanced strength and speed of immortal blood made such measures practical, but what would they do to a mortal witch? There weren’t witches around anymore by the time the reform Academy was built on Talonswood, so Ellis never gave it much thought. Until now.

  Though, for the life of him, he didn’t understand why he was thinking of it now either. So long as the witch was nowhere near him, Ellis didn’t care whether she went to Talonswood or the Arctic.

  True, she’d be Asher’s problem in Talonswood Reform—Ellis’s half brother was the only horseman who still liked lost causes and was now the lead instructor there—but that was what the chump volunteered for.

  Finally looking up from his desk, Bryant spoke with enough force to eclipse the room itself, his broad face twisted with cold fury. “You had one task—track down a witch so she could walk past the wards, have her retrieve a box, and bring the whole thing to me. I could have sent a bloody squirrel in your place for all the good you did.”

  Ellis clenched his jaw to keep himself from lashing out, the darkness inside him spreading with pulsating rage. Tracking down a witch with nothing to go on had been akin to threading a needle in the dark. After the witches exposed themselves to the humans a few centuries back, the race had been all but exterminated—the ones who remained didn’t know what they were or what they could do.

  For months, he’d kept his ear to the ground, listening for any sign of strange behavior, exceptional ability. Finally, murmurs. Whispers through the criminal network of a young thief for hire who seemed able to open any lock, do any job without detection, enter a building with only one blocked entrance and somehow find an exit. An uncannily talented young woman who had never been apprehended by the cops or incarcerated. So Ellis had traveled to the unlikely city of Newark, New Jersey. And waited. And waited.

  Finding her at last—a small, round-eyed girl with messy red-streaked brown hair, torn skinny jeans, and the reflexes of a drunk toddler—had been almost laughably anticlimactic.

  Yes, finding a witch was bad enough. But to go with only half the facts was insulting. Dangerous.

  “You could have told me there was a damn egg inside,” Ellis ground out finally when he could speak without screaming epithets.

  “You didn’t need to know what was inside.” Moving faster than a male his size had any right to, Bryant crossed the room and gripped Ellis’s throat. The strong fingers tightened like a vise that cut off blood and air as the king lifted Ellis off his feet. “But you can’t follow simple instructions, can you? As useless a cur now as you’ve always been.”

  Ellis focused on drawing in the small stream of air he could, the world around the edges of his vision already becoming blurry. He knew better than to challenge his father outright, especially not when the bastard got it in himself that a reminder of the hierarchy was in order. If he were smarter, he wouldn’t challenge his father at all. Unfortunately, Ellis had never been the smart one—that was his half brother, Asher.

  As the world began to swim in earnest, Bryant let him go. Which should have been a relief, but wasn’t.

  “Why did you do it?” Bryant demanded. “You were supposed to slit the witch’s throat, not let her open the box. Given your history with witches, I thought that would be the one rewarding part of the assignment.”

  Ellis’s jaw tightened. The way “history” dripped from the king’s lips so blithely, as if Ellis had merely had a series of bad romantic interludes. Not been held captive and tortured by a witch for ten years, along with Asher and the two vampires they’d allied with to try to end the species war, Reese and Cassis. The four horsemen, they’d called themselves. They’d thought it a clever jest. In the end, the jest was on them.

  And yet Ellis didn’t understand his body’s reaction to Samantha either. Everything had been on track, the girl having passed the initial trial with flying colors. But the way the air had crackled when she had crept into the room, the tight dark pants and shirt accenting her perfect curves, had made Ellis falter. It might have been her eyes, the fire and rebellion in them burning bright enough to singe him, that made Ellis feel alive for the first time in centuries. Curious.

  Even as he’d shifted from his wolf form, Ellis knew that the girl and whatever was inside that box belonged together—had been unable to deny them that one moment of connection before destroying everything. And after that, things got…out of control.

  She scratched me, and I bled.

  “I needed to know what I was dealing with,” Ellis said, lifting his gaze to meet his father’s even as he knew such impertinence could earn him more blood. “To know it was the right box at all. It was the first one she picked up.”

  “Of course it was the first one she picked up! The whole reason the damn urchin was sent there was because we thought she was a witch and could thus hear its call.”

  Ellis rolled back his shoulders, straightening his sweat-stained shirt. “So what’s the problem now, Father? You have the box. The egg. You got to enjoy forcing me to skulk around the human world like some lost dog for months. Why are you still unhappy?”

  “Because the bloody egg’s imprinted on her, you idiot.” Bryant rubbed his hands over his face, his jaw tight. “Whatever hatches from it, it’s going to be tied to a damn witch now.”

  Ellis’s eyes widened, the hot ire inside him turning to ice-cold rage. So that was the reason Bryant never told him what he was after—to ensure that Ellis felt no temptation to handle the relic. His father had wanted the hatchling for himself.

  “You are going to fix this,” Bryant said, and this time, the softness in his voice was deadly. “You deprived me of a hatchling, so you will break the handler to bridle. I hope you enjoyed your time in the human world, Ellis, because you are going to be spending years there. Four, to be exact.”

  No. Hell no. “Father—”

  “And since you insist on acting like a pup with no brain to spare, you’ll be treated as one. Asher has already received orders to enroll you as a first-year student. If you want to stay out of a dungeon cell, where you by all rights belong, you will keep the witch alive until she becomes competent enough to be useful to me, and you will ensure she learns obedience. Am I clear?”

  6

  Sam

  The black-tinted-out Suburban that stops to pick me up in front of the county jail looks like the kind of car they send for important people, usually with an armed driver. I’m sure the last part of that is true here as well. The officer escorting me looks skeptical as he speaks to the driver, but his eyes get a glazed look a moment later as he obediently hands over some paperwork and motions for me to get in.

  Right. Point of no return. It isn’t as though I didn’t know it was coming, but somehow that step into the car feels much longer than the three feet it is, my chest tightening painfully around my lungs. I don’t know where I’m going, whether this strange reform school is even in New Jersey. Or in North America,
for that matter. Not that it matters. I belong to Talonswood Reform Academy now. Their latest delinquent to rehabilitate.

  At least I’m out of those scratchy prison scrubs and back in my own clothes. My loose green cargo pants, cotton tank, and leather jacket have never felt so luxurious.

  The driver honks at me, and I shift the backpack on my shoulder—which effectively holds all the possessions I now have, including a homemade key chain from Janie and a letter from Mrs. Leonards promising that Joey will move out now that a stipend is coming. Then I open the door and slide into the back seat.

  Which is not empty.

  The fresh forest scent greets me right before simmering golden eyes meet mine, taking on a predatory yellow cast in the car’s warm light. The man who tried to kill me two weeks ago now glares at me from two feet away. Dressed in black jeans and a gray V-neck that hugs his corded chest and biceps, his white hair loose and slightly mussed, he looks every inch the carefree rich bro—which I would believe if dizzying power weren’t pulsing off him in waves.

  I try to pull the car door back open, but find it locked. My heart squeezes, my hands tightening into fists. I might be a third Ellis’s size, but I’m not going down without a fight.

  “Happy to see me, I see,” Ellis says, his tone no longer that of a suave gentleman but something rawer—darker—as if the man I met in the Lone Moon was merely playing a part.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I ask as the driver, hidden behind a tinted glass partition, hits the gas, launching the Suburban into motion. All of a sudden, unease gives way to fear, a slowly rising panic buzzing in my veins, the knowledge that there’s more going on here than Bryant let on dawning on me with a sickening vertigo.

  A muscle along Ellis’s jaw tightens, and he leans one shoulder against the window on his side. The fancy signet ring he wore back in the diner is gone, a slight tan line showing where the band used to be. “Being punished. Because of you.”