by Lucy Auburn
"Let's try this again," Grayson says calmly, advancing on Lionel with just the tiniest bit of a limp. "You can't use your powers. They've escaped you completely. When you reach for them you find... nothing. When you try to use them, nothing. They're gone completely."
"No, no, no!" Lionel's wails are high-pitched and frightened, a strange sound coming from a serial killer's mouth. "You're just like her, but I won't let you have them. You can't take my powers. I won't let you! Get out of my mind!"
Grayson looks surprised as Lionel throws himself at him, still strong enough to launch a physical attack even though his complexion has gone decidedly grey from Levi's poison. Pure rage and paranoia seems to make him push past the pain.
But I won't let him attack Grayson. Stepping in, I throw a force field up to protect him. Lionel hits it and falls to the ground moaning, curled around on his side.
"Let's do this," I tell Wyatt. "I don't want him getting away again."
My words are like a curse, because the second they leave my mouth Lionel starts to change shapes, growing smaller, trying to get small enough to escape like he did last time. I rush towards the spot where he is even as he becomes small enough to disappear.
Mason says, "I have him in an illusion, but that doesn't mean he can't shift."
"He's got a strong spirit," Levi adds. "I've drained years off his life but he's still going."
"I've got this." Grayson narrows his eyes at the floorboards, where Lionel was only a moment ago. His voice goes deep and almost hypnotic as he says, "You're a human. Shaped like one. You look like one. It's all you can be, all you've ever been, because you lost your powers. They were stolen from you by the woman you fear."
It works. One moment there was no sign of him as Lionel turned into an animal small enough to slip between the floorboards, and the next moment he's curled up on his side, moaning in pain once more. His eyes flutter open as I stride over to him and put a hand out, ready to use my force field to end his life. Wyatt cracks his knuckles and joins me, looming over the killer.
Lionel's eyes are feverish. "She'll get you too one day. She's going to come for all of us. Every single—"
I throw my force field at his head, and he cries out in pain, blood pulsing from his damaged ear. Wyatt kneels down, grabs his arms, and jerks them behind his back, holding him still. We meet eyes, and as Levi drains more and more of Lionel's strength, as Grayson crawls inside his head to keep him in human form, and Mason convinces him he's not in the house at all, I take a step forward. Put my hands on either side of his neck. And turn my telekinesis into a dagger that severs his arteries in an instant.
Blood pours from the slash on his neck, and his mouth goes slack, his eyes fading as life leaves him. It's a quick death in the end—quicker than he deserves, given all the things he's done to women. But we pulled it off. I almost don't believe it. Even as Wyatt slides Lionel's body to the floor, I'm somehow convinced he'll get up again.
Something occurs to me, and I step back, shaking blood off my hands in disgust. "We don't really have to cut his head off and take it with us to prove we killed him, do we?"
"No. That's what this is for." Mason pulls a small camera out of his pocket and takes a photo, which immediately prints. He smiles at my raised eyebrows. "Hipsters. They come up with the best trends. This way there's no evidence we were here once we've cleaned the scene, but we still have proof we got our Mark."
"Speaking of." Grayson moves back from the blood collecting on the floor, a grimace on his face. "Time to start scrubbing."
By the time we're done at Lionel's house it's dark outside, and I've learned a thing or two about getting rid of bodies that would've been helpful when I dealt with Jack. We even released the mice he was keeping on the counter—I never figured out their purpose, though I can guess experimenting had something to do with it—and got rid of any signs he'd ever squatted in the house. Thanks to a thorough shower and scrub, I'm even starting to feel a little more like my normal self, though I can't stop counting the tally in my head.
Jack. Richard. Lionel. I've killed three times. Once for myself, the second time for another woman, and this time, for countless victims—and because it was a homework assignment. By the time I graduate, I'll have at least three more Marks under my belt, which means I will have killed half a dozen people. Deserving of death or not, I still feel the blood crusting my hands, which I scrubbed over and over again in the shower, the water sputtering at the end as the hot water heater emptied.
It's hard to believe how different my life is now. In college I thought I was going to be some kind of Broadway star. Those days are long behind me, those hopes as dead and buried as Lionel Copenhagen.
"Let's go home."
Grayson uses the transporter stone Headmaster Shu gave us, which disintegrates as he uses it. He wanted to keep the stone and use his illicit cane instead, until Mason pointed out that there'd be a record of the stone's use the instant it disappeared. Apparently the school is starting to try to curb offsite visits without permission, which means Grayson's use of his cane's transport stone may be numbered.
The doors appear in front of us, right against the back fence of the big backyard behind this impossibly large house. We go through them together, the movement from one place to another barely jarring me anymore. It's just like any other day to me now.
On the other side of the door, the campus is quiet. That's not a big surprise—it's nighttime in the pocket dimension too, which seems to live somewhere on East Coast Time. We have to report to Headmaster Shu, even though it's after hours, but she should be around. The only time she's not in her office, a flask of whiskey at her lips, is when she's out killing someone.
"It's so quiet," Levi says, and it takes me a moment to realize that he's talking about himself, not the campus around us. "I forgot what feet are supposed to sound like when they hit the floor. I wonder how long it'll last."
Grayson murmurs, so low I think he didn't mean to be overheard, "Hopefully forever."
He has his cane at his side, but he's barely using it, his left leg taking most of his weight now. My heart aches to see the bitter hope on his face, and I have to look away, force my eyes on the headmaster's door and the task at hand.
Now that I've actually taken down a Mark on purpose—and a powerful one at that—I almost feel like I could actually take down my mother's killer. It's time to double down completely on finding him and killing him. If I can't rely on information from the Shadow Fold or the headmaster, I'll just have to find some clues myself. Even a man who vanishes into thin air can be found.
The headmaster doesn't open her door, which isn't surprising. She's usually too lazy to do more than grunt instructions from the other side of her desk. Hearing such a grunt now, I roll my eyes and grab the doorknob myself, prepared to stride through and declare that we're victorious.
Only when I open the door, the headmaster isn't alone.
And she isn't in great shape, either.
Blood spurts from an angry slash in her neck. Her eyes find mine and widen in fright. The figure at the other side of her desk flicks blood off a knife and sheathes it.
My pulse races at the sight of the man standing there, because I recognize the coat he's wearing, the hood, even his stance. It's just like that night. I even feel cobwebs closing around my head, like I'm being dragged down towards unconsciousness again.
I tighten my hand around the knife at my waist and grab the clasp to my backpack, waking the snake with a thought.
Wyatt's hand closes around my shoulder.
Three things happen all at once: I get yanked out of the doorway, the man turns as if hearing me for the first time, and Headmaster Shu slumps down dead in her chair.
As the man turns, his face cover falls to the ground, slashed in the middle, his cheek bleeding—Shu must've fought back.
The eyes that stare at me are so familiar, and not just because I've seen them in visions and dreams of my mother's killer.
I've seen them
in her closet too, in a shrine dedicated to the man who came before Herb, the one who died with all of her love for him intact.
It's not just the eyes, but that jawline, the nose, that mouth—every feature is just like I've seen a thousand times.
Vincent Arizona is standing in front of me, a knife that killed Headmaster Shu sheathed at his back, his eyes hard, wearing identical clothing to my mother's killer.
Shaking off Wyatt's grip, I raise my palms to attack—
He turns into fog.
And I topple forward, over my own feet, as the impossible happens.
My vision goes completely black.
I hear, but don't see, Levi yell, "Get him, Wyatt! I'll help."
"Mason, look out!"
"My mind control, it's not working—it's like his mind isn't here—"
"Shit! Wyatt, grab Mason—someone help Ellen!"
"Where'd he go? Where is he?"
A scream of pain. A bellow of rage. Hands turn me over and stroke my face; I stare up, briefly, into Wyatt's warm eyes, before he says, "I have to go help. Stay here, where it's safe."
Then he goes away, and with his touch, my vision leaves me completely. I hear a door shut—I hear something move in front of it to barricade it off completely.
Followed by the worst sound of all: silence.
After a terrifying moment of this, I admit to myself that my vision isn't coming back. It left me all at once as I tried to use my powers, shortly after I finally connected to my four Conduits at once and fully embraced my Affinities.
It took a while, but my weakness came. Hopefully the only one, and not the first of four, because I don't think I can take that many.
Despite my fear, I force myself to get up onto my hands and knees, crawl towards the door, and stand with the help of it as a guide. I keep one palm out, arm trembling, hoping I can muster enough fight in me to put up a force field if it comes to it.
Opening the door takes a lot of muscle, because someone—probably Wyatt—put a heavy object against it to keep it shut, and wedged it just beneath the knob. As I yank it open, what sounds like a dorm regulation bookcase tumbles to the ground at my feet, and books go flying. Wincing as a few hit my shins, I move around them, still prepared to throw my force field up.
But nothing, and no one, attacks me.
Not much of anything happens at all.
"Levi?" No sound, no response. "Wyatt? Mason? Grayson—fuck! Where are you? What's going on?" Eventually I start to yell, "Is anyone here!? Anyone at all!?"
I can hear my voice echo around me.
The campus is quiet and still.
Like death.
Want to know what happens next? Preorder Final Kill now!
Want a finished series? Phoenix Academy: Awaken is the first in a five book series. The final book comes out in January 2020!
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Read Next: Phoenix Academy
If you like sassy heroines, paranormal romance, and a lot of humor, check out my Phoenix Academy First Years series!
I’m just a girl trying to survive. Dying? Unexpected. Coming back to life? Even more so. Now these four snarky demons are haunting me. Shirtless.
It turns out you can die and live again. At least I can.
When a night out goes murderously wrong, I chose leaping to my death over getting tortured. Except it turns out I don’t die like everyone else.
I’m a phoenix — or so they tell me. Apparently I need training at the Phoenix Academy.
What I really need is to get rid of the four demons haunting me wherever I go, showing up when my heart is beating fast — whether I’m nervous, afraid, or well... other things.
But I also wouldn’t mind learning how to light things on fire with my mind or take out a man twice my size with my bare hands. All things the instructors at the academy want to teach me... if I can survive long enough.
Because there’s something deadly lurking in these halls, and it’s coming for me next.
Welcome to the first year at Phoenix Academy, a place where the paranormal lives — and dies — and lives again.
Excerpt:
It all started with a severed dick.
Not in the way you’re thinking; I’m no Lorena, poor thing. I wasn’t the one slicing and dicing. If I had, I would’ve picked a nice julienne, really gone to town on the thing until it was unrecognizable ribbons of flesh. Leaving it whole, swinging bits and all, just seems... cruel. Especially when the dude it was attached to was still (mostly) alive at the time to see his family jewels get taken and dangled in front of his face. What a last image to have seared into your retinas as you die.
Not that he didn’t deserve it. Richard was like the worst version of your shittiest ex-boyfriend. Imagine an actual pile of garbage given human form.
And his nickname was Dick, after all, so the demons were clearly going for something when they took his actual dick from him. It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t been so incredibly fucking disgusting. Demons do have a sense of humor, apparently.
I just wish they hadn’t killed me too.
Coming back to life was a real bitch.
Read Phoenix Academy: Awaken now!
Read Next: Blue Phoenix
Want more Phoenix Academy? Read the Blue Phoenix spinoff!
Life was hard as a witch on the run. Then my psychotic father killed me. I came back. Now my touch drives men mad… and I’ve got three shifter familiars. Whoops?
Special powers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Especially when you can’t control them.
The headmaster at the Phoenix Academy says she can help me with that—along with some teachers and students.
One of those teachers? A witch hunting mage.
Three of those students? Are now my familiars.
What I want more than anything is to get revenge on the Heretic—the powerful man who took everything from me. Also known as Dear Old Dad. First, I need to get control of what’s happening to me.
And try not to kill anyone.
Including my new, sexy familiar trio: Xavier, Reggie, and David. We’re stuck together, whether we like it or not. That is, if we can survive the semester.
There are secrets lurking beneath the ground of the academy, and thanks to my magic, they’re coming for us. We might not survive to graduation.
Welcome to another year at Phoenix Academy, a place where the paranormal lives—and dies—and lives again.
Read Next: Fae Like Me
If you like new adult romance, especially urban fantasy and paranormal romance with a kick, check out my Selena Pierce series!
I just learned I’m a part fae succubus. And I need to find the men to sate my sexual appetite...
Here I thought I was a normal college girl with a high libido. Turns out that’s wrong—I’m so much more. I have powers, and if I don’t learn how to control them, I’ll wind up killing someone.
Baton Rouge has never been so hot as it is when I meet Leon and Naomi. And Tae Min, Petyr, Elah, Vincent: all fae. Here to guide me into my new life.
A life that includes hunting down the demon summoner who framed my best friend for murder. Catching bad guys, meeting dark fae, making a harem—my new life is different.
Worst of all, now I know my parents lied to me. I was never theirs. And my real parents?
Well, they’ve got a hell of a surprise in store for me.
Life isn’t easy for a fae like me.
Read Fae Like Me now!
Also by Lucy Auburn
Phoenix Academy
The First Years
Phoenix Academy: Awaken
Phoenix Academy: Unbound
Phoenix Academy: Forged
Phoenix Academy: Reborn
Phoenix Academy: Freed
Blue Phoenix
Phoenix Academy: Madness
Phoenix Academy: Mayhem
Cain University
First Kill
Kill
or Be Killed
Final Kill
Coleridge Academy Elites
The Snake in the Grass
The Pawn
The Knight
The King
Selena Pierce
Fae Like Me
Hell Sucks
Godspring
Seven Trials
The Black God
Wild Heart Chronicles
Primal
Feral
Savage
or… get all of the above as the
Wild Heart Bundle (free!)
Standalones
Three for a Witch
Queen Sector
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About the Author
Lucy Auburn is an urban fantasy/paranormal romance writer who lives in the Southwest. She loves writing interesting stories about strong women. Some of the writers who inspire her include Patricia Briggs and Sarah J. Maas.
