Fallen University: Year Two: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by Callie Rose

  Jayce shook his head. “Nope. But there was this one crazy vine thing that tried to grab me. Oh, and there are these toads that are like, this big.” He held his hands up, indicating a circle bigger than a dinner plate. “They’re pretty too. Kind of a teal color, I guess?”

  “Pretty dangerous,” Xero warned. “They won’t chase you down, but they will bite you if you get too close.”

  “I feel like getting bit by a toad is the least of our concerns,” I said.

  Kai dropped down behind us, landing without a sound. “That’s because you’re thinking of earth toads. One of those little fuckers tried to get me. Its teeth are bigger than mine and their mouths smell like formaldehyde.”

  “You smelled its mouth?” Jayce wrinkled his nose.

  Kai blinked at him with exaggerated patience. “Kind of hard to avoid when something’s trying to bite your nose off. Are we going to stand here talking or are we gonna go? Because I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t really feel like being in the middle of the woods come nightfall.”

  Of course everybody agreed with that sentiment. Kai and Jayce led the way to the path they’d found while Kingston kept watch over us from above. Xero was our field guide, pointing out plants and animals that could kill us—which, honestly, was pretty much everything. Jayce was the scout, darting back and forth every so often to check out the path ahead. Kai crept along like a shadow, watching everyone’s backs.

  I might have brought us all together, but they had grown into a cohesive unit all on their own. Pride and adoration swelled up inside of me. A lot was still up in the air between us, but they were my men, and they were going to save the fucking world.

  “Stop!” Jayce was breathless from his most recent scouting venture as he darted through the trees toward us, holding out a hand. “There’s something up ahead.”

  Kingston circled around once, then dived down between the trees limbs and landed on his human feet. His shifts were becoming seamless. He’d had a hell of a lot of practice the past few weeks.

  “A whole herd of something,” he added.

  My eyes widened, and I peered deeper into the forest. “What kind of something?”

  “Like moose? But way bigger. And scarier. With big, sharp teeth and glowing eyes.”

  “Harpy eaters,” Xero grunted.

  My eyes widened. “Like… little harpies?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “But the full-grown ones can take down an adult harpy. I’ve never seen one in person, but I’ve heard about them. They use their antlers to catch the harpies mid-flight, toss them around and slice them up a bit, then tear them to shreds with their hooves and teeth.”

  I shuddered. “Can we get around them?”

  Jayce and Kingston looked at each other for a millisecond before each one shifted and darted away. Kai leaned against a tree and shook his head.

  “I’ll pass on this little competition,” he said. “Not a fan of moose.”

  “Harpy eaters,” Xero corrected absently.

  Kai shrugged. “Potato, tomato. Who’s got the food?”

  “You just ate.”

  “Yeah, and it’s lunch time. If we’re going to have to wait for a herd of demon moose to pass us by, we might as well eat.” He sat down on a lumpy root and crossed his arms definitively.

  Kingston and Jayce returned less than a minute later.

  “They’re moving pretty fast, but there are a lot of them,” the dragon shifter reported. “We should probably just wait them out.”

  Kai shot me an I told you so look.

  We settled in for lunch, but I couldn’t eat much. I’d felt sick since we’d left the cave. I’d assumed it was just nerves, since we were entering an unknown world full of danger, but the longer we were out here, the more comfortable I became with the hazards we faced. Not that they’d become less terrifying, but at least they weren’t unknown anymore.

  But the sick feeling twisting my stomach hadn’t eased up. If anything, it’d gotten worse.

  As I washed my tiny meal down with water, the hairs on my arms stood up. I froze, then silently rose to my feet. The guys instantly picked up on my vibe and fell silent as well. The damn moose or whatever were still crashing through the undergrowth in the distance, but there was something else.

  Kingston nudged me and questioned me with his eyes. I shook my head, putting a finger to my lips. I could feel eyes on me. I slowly spun in a circle, looking all around for the source, but saw nothing. I’d watched enough horror movies to know when to look up, and I did, but there was nothing there either. The feeling passed as quickly as it had come. Frowning, I sat back down.

  “Felt like someone was watching us,” I explained.

  Xero nodded. “I felt it too. It was probably an animal. Keep a sharp eye, but don’t worry too much. Human hybrids are outside the food chain.”

  “I’ll go up and check it out,” Kingston offered. In one fluid motion he rose to his feet and shifted, taking flight the instant after he stood.

  “He’s getting good at that,” Jayce said appreciatively.

  “A little too good.” Kai frowned up at the sky where Kingston was no longer visible. “He likes it here too much.”

  I shrugged. “Who wouldn’t like a power boost? He’s not going to turn evil, you know. I’m convinced that’s just a myth.”

  “Why would they do that?” Jayce asked. “Wouldn’t spreading a myth like that just make people give up as soon as they got here? Seems like it would weaken our side.”

  “It does, doesn’t it.” I gave Jayce a meaningful look, but he just shot back a confused one. I sighed. “I’m saying, what if the myth didn’t originate with the Custodians?”

  He puzzled on that for a minute, then his eyes widened. “Oh! Gavriel’s army?”

  “Got it in one.” I nodded, ignoring the little butterflies that flapped in my stomach when Jayce grinned at me proudly. For some reason, seeing him happy always made me happy, as if even in the most fucked up circumstances, all was right with the world. “I mean, it makes sense. A rumor like that would be enough to keep the underworld free of trained demon hunters. And it’s worked, hasn’t it?”

  “Better than any ward or defense.” Xero scratched his chin thoughtfully. “If you’re right, it’s honestly brilliant.”

  Kingston returned just then, pooling back onto the ground the same way he’d gone up. As his humanity returned, he shook his head. “Saw a few harpies hunting some kind of serpent, but nothing’s paying attention to us. Not that I could see from up there anyway.”

  Kai’s eyes suddenly changed and he sniffed the air. “We should move anyway. The moose are gone.”

  “Harpy eat—oh, never mind.” Xero shook his head. “You’re right about moving on though.”

  We kept moving through the jungle all day and into the night. None of us wanted to sleep in the forest if we could possibly avoid it, though Kai and Jayce ran laps around us every few hours to make sure we weren’t being hunted, and Kingston frequently took to the sky to make sure we were heading in the right direction. Xero showed us which plants were venomous, which were poisonous, and which were mobile, pointed out different kinds of animals’ droppings and prints, and showed us how to identify various nests. The Harpy nests were easy to see once I knew what to look for, since they were primarily made of hair with bits of unfortunate scalps still attached.

  When the forest had grown too dark for me to see anything in either form, I squeezed Xero’s hand. “We should probably give in and make camp.”

  “Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “We’re under—Piper!”

  He hissed my name because I had just tripped over something hard and landed on my face. He found me in the dark and lifted me into his arms.

  “You good?” he whispered.

  “Yeah. We’re under what?”

  “Harpy nests. Dozens. We have to keep going.”

  Kingston, whose night vision was as poor as mine, had relegated himself to the sky. Kai, Jayce, and Xero had no t
rouble at all, though Jayce had shifted into his hellhound form. Sometimes I could see him if I looked hard enough in exactly the right spot, since his fur had a purplish glow to it.

  After we had been walking for what seemed like hours, I heard a rustling in front of us. Xero stopped, wrapping a protective arm around me.

  “Guys?” Kingston’s voice came through the darkness. He sounded tired.

  “Right here,” Xero answered.

  “Good. We’re half a mile from the edge of the forest. There’s a big pile of rocks over there. I think it may be a cave.”

  “Sounds like camp,” Xero said.

  “Yeah. Just keep walking straight. I’ll meet you guys there.”

  Another rustle and a rush of wind, and he was gone. I had never been afraid of the dark, but existing without sight for so long was beginning to get to me.

  “How long will it take to walk half a mile?” I asked, trying to keep the whine out of my voice.

  “Not long,” Xero said, rubbing my shoulder comfortingly. “We’ll be there before you know it.”

  Half an eternity and change later, we finally exited the forest. My eyes had been straining for light for so long that the weak starlight in the inky night sky was enough to make me wince. I turned my head to press a kiss to Xero’s cheek, then wriggled out of his arms and looked around. The area we’d emerged in appeared almost normal—just a rolling prairie tucked between two swatches of forest—but there was something eerie about it. The breeze that blew through the long grass seemed to whisper words I could almost make out, and there was a stench in the air that I couldn’t identify.

  “Over here,” Kingston called.

  When we got to the cave he’d spotted, we found it dry and empty except for the fire that he’d built while waiting on us.

  “Took you ground walkers long enough,” he said with a grin.

  “So fly us all next time,” I countered through a yawn.

  We each took turns keeping watch while the other four cuddled together in a messy pile of limbs and shared body heat. My turn was last, in the hours before dawn. For the first time since we’d been here, I was going to get the full effect of an underworld sunrise. I expected it to be similar to earth’s—a drop in temperature, the sounds of animals waking up, and a slow fade to warmth—and ached for that normalcy. I stepped outside the cave and sat on a flat stone, waiting.

  The heat hit first, rushing past me like a tidal wave. Something screamed in the forest behind us, then something else. Soon the whole forest was screaming, as if a hundred thousand tortured souls were dying. There was no rainbow of color as the sun rose; just black, which slowly faded to a muddy sort of yellow, and a yellow that exploded into an angry red. The grass around me—which I had erroneously assumed was green in the dark—came to life in shades of red and purple, looking more like billions of bloodied swords than plants. The sun glared down mercilessly, but the grass didn’t droop. It stood sharply erect, miniature swords at attention.

  Shuddering, I went back inside. I thought I would have to wake the guys up, but they were all fully alert and scrambling for their things. All except for Xero anyway. The fire demon was blearily rubbing his eyes and brushing Kingston off as the man with the angular features tried to wake him up.

  “What happened?” I asked, my heart lurching in my chest. What did I miss?

  The three panicking men stopped and stared at me with their mouths open.

  “You didn’t hear that?” Jayce’s eyes were like dinner plates.

  “What, the screaming? Oh, yeah, I did. But I figured it was just the birds or whatever waking up. Like back home.”

  “I told you,” Xero muttered grumpily.

  “It sounded like a war,” Kingston argued. “Straight-up, flat-out war.”

  I shrugged. “The whole underworld goes to war when the sun rises, apparently. It’s wild out there. Let’s eat, I’m starving.”

  He shook his head with a bemused look but grabbed the pack and started distributing our meager breakfast. We’d learned at least a few useful spells during our time at FU, most notably a much weaker version of Professor Shen’s cleaning spell that we could use to freshen up our clothes, and a replicating spell that worked on organic substances. So as long as nobody ate the last of our food supply, we could keep replicating it pretty much indefinitely.

  The screams continued to echo from outside for another thirty minutes, but by the time we finished eating, none of us were paying any attention to them. They had become background noise.

  As we grabbed our gear and left the cave and headed back out into the threatening landscape beyond, it occurred to me that although the “atmosphere turning you evil” thing might be a myth, there was no denying a simple, obvious truth.

  Our time in the underworld was definitely changing us all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Over the next several days, we grew even more accustomed to the morning screams and the pitch black of night, but I never could quite shake the anxious feeling of being watched. It was so bad that in spite of the ridiculous amount of exercise we were getting daily, I had stopped sleeping for longer than an hour or two at a time.

  But there was one silver lining, even in these dangerous, stressful circumstances; the guys were growing closer than ever, and the five of us had turned into a functional group.

  I’d worried for a long time that they would never get along. They had been forced into each other’s lives just like they’d been forced into mine and had become a sort of weird unit because of my power. For a long time, I had lived with the guilty thought that maybe I had ruined their lives, social and otherwise. But the longer we traveled together, the more they bonded on their own, without any magic on my part. It eased my conscience, even if it couldn’t ease my anxiety.

  One day—I didn’t know which one, I’d lost track by this point—I woke up in a panic just before dawn with the worst feeling of foreboding I had ever experienced. I fully expected to wake up with a knife at my throat and all of my guys dead. But when I glanced around quickly, my heart thrumming in my chest, I found that everything was as I had left it when I’d gone to sleep, except that Kai had replaced Xero on watch.

  “Can’t sleep?” he asked, arching a brow at me.

  I shook my head, fighting back the sick twist in my gut. “I feel like something terrible is about to happen. Is happening.”

  Early morning light glinted off his black hair as he pointed into the near distance. A harpy eater was silhouetted against the ugly red light of dawn. He’d just caught his prey and was busy shredding it as it screamed.

  “Terrible things always happen here,” he said matter-of-factly. Then his gaze softened a little as he took in the lingering panic on my face. “Eat something, you’ll feel better.”

  I did as he suggested, but it didn’t help much. I crawled back into the pile of bodies and made out with Jayce for a while as Kingston sleepily groped my ass and boobs, sliding his hands under my tunic and down my leggings. It charged me up, but it didn’t help the anxiety at all.

  Something was coming. I could feel it on the horizon like a cloud bulging with rain and lightning. I was antsy to get moving, but everyone was tired by now and reluctant to continue on our seemingly endless journey. I paced around our campsite, making sure everything was in its place and that evidence of our presence here was completely obscured. Finally, after about a billion years, everybody else was ready to go.

  “You seem grim this morning,” Jayce commented, pulling me in close for another kiss before we headed out. He brushed my hair back from my face. “Cheer up! It’s a beautiful day.”

  As he gestured with his chin toward the sky, some big bat-bird thing snatched a smaller bird thing out of the air and ripped its head off. I shot the hellhound a dark look.

  He grinned sheepishly. “Uh… circle of life?”

  I sighed and adjusted the pack on my back. “Let’s just focus on getting there.”

  The mountains, which had loomed in the distance
for days, were finally close enough to see clearly. Not that I wanted to. They were covered in twisted black trees and jagged red rocks—or plants, it was still hard to tell—and almost looked like they were alive and waiting for a meal.

  “God, I hope you’re right about this, Xero,” I said as I stepped up beside him. He had taken the lead today, guiding us through the rough terrain.

  “I am. I think I am.”

  “You think?” I almost stopped walking to stare at him.

  He slid me an uncomfortable glance. “The foliage isn’t exactly what I expected it to be. There’s a chance the landscape is different on the two sides, like the Sierras, but…” He let the rest of that terrible thought hang, shrugging helplessly.

  “Well, shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Have you told anybody else?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.” He shook his head firmly. “Looks like a clear path through the trees up there,” he called back to the others. “Once we’re through there, all we gotta do is find a hole.”

  The trees had become so thick and dense around us that our pace had slowed considerably over the past several hours. But as I craned my neck, squinting slightly, I caught sight of what Xero was pointing at. Up ahead, there was an opening between the gnarled roots and branches, something that looked almost like a tunnel through the dense forest.

  As we stepped into the natural—or supernatural, I supposed—tunnel, my heart pounded hard and heavy. Time seemed to slow down around me as reality caught up to my intuition.

  I was right. Something is wrong.

  A warning was crawling up through my throat like a snail through mud, too slow to do any good.

  It was over before I’d made a sound.

  A flash of red, a flash of blue, the stench of long-dormant magic and burning oxygen. My eyes flew shut as the blast hit, and when I opened them again, I thought I had died. I wasn’t touching anything and the ground was a good twelve feet beneath me. Branches and leaves hung around me, but I couldn’t touch them.