by Ivy Hearne
Hunters’ Academy
8: Year One Final Exam
Ivy Hearne
About Hunters’ Academy 8
She’s survived this long—but her final exam’s a killer!
Kacie squares off against the Lusus Naturae and ends up in a fight for her life. If she survives, she’ll never be the same again.
And neither will the Hunters’ Academy.
Chapter 1
It would be really wrong of me to say the campus was dead.
But that was the word that came to mind as I stared out across the empty quad from my dorm-room window.
Especially since so many of my classmates and schoolmates and instructors had been killed in the wake of the attack by the Lusus Naturae.
No matter how hard I tried to push it away, the macabre thought kept creeping back in.
I couldn’t say it out loud to anyone, though.
There weren’t that many people around to say it to, anyway. The students who could had already taken their final exams of early and headed home. So that left the graduating upperclassmen, the instructors, and the lower classmen who, like me, were either a little behind because they didn’t come from magical using families or who had nowhere else to go.
I could always go home to my family. My grades were okay—good enough that I could have asked for the option to take those early finals. And I’d definitely learned at least enough to pass my first-year finals.
But I wasn’t willing to leave campus. Not yet. There was something dark headed toward us. I could feel it is if it were drawn directly to me.
For all I knew, it was.
I wasn’t willing to draw that thing, that violent darkness, toward my parents, who, as far as I knew, had no knowledge of the supernatural at all.
I’d learned a lot during the last eight months. I wasn’t about to let my family get caught up in something they didn’t know how to deal with. Not when I could protect them simply by remaining at school through the rest of the term.
Besides, I had a secret weapon.
Well, semi-secret, anyway.
Three of the Lusus Naturae academy students had broken their own rules to bring it to me—a pendant holding a green stone that amplified my own power, sending it out in whipping coils to attack my enemies.
Like Tony, the Hunters’ Academy student who’d followed me to my meeting with the Lusus Naturae students. I’d wrapped him up in power coils and dragged him back to the headmaster, while Jolie and her two male companions headed back to their school to try to keep anyone from discovering the disappearance of the weapon.
As usual in this place, I was left with more questions than answers—like why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned that our enemies had an academy, anyway?
Every time I tried to talk to one of the adults about it, they brushed me off.
Well—not brushed me off, exactly. Dr. Novak, our new headmaster, had told me he wanted to meet to discuss everything with me. But that hadn’t happened yet.
Ms. Hush, the former Lusus Naturae wraith had promised she’d tell me about their academy.
After final exams.
But every instinct I had was screaming that we didn’t have that long.
Outside, the tall, stone buildings surrounding the central quad cast long shadows, creeping across the school grounds.
I could almost feel the darkness headed my way sliding alongside the shadows, preparing to wrap itself around the buildings and slip inside.
If I didn’t do something to stop it, the darkness would be inside us, infesting us, controlling us before we knew it.
That’s what it wanted. I was sure of it.
I could almost feel its cold, dark fingers, pushing at the edges of my consciousness, trying to discover the best way in.
With one hand, I reached up and gripped the pendant I wore constantly now, despite several instructors suggesting I should let Dr. Novak keep it safe.
The clammy touch of the dark slid away again.
Blowing out a relieved breath, I turned from the window toward my half-empty room.
My roommate Erin had taken her finals early and gone home to the safety of her family—all magic users and several active hunters. I didn’t blame her. I didn’t blame anyone who’d left.
But I knew it was going to be dangerous for all of us if the world’s hunters were spread out and disconnected when the darkness attacked.
I couldn’t simply sit here and wait. I had to go try to talk to someone again. Grabbing a jacket off the back of my desk chair, I headed out to find an ally in my push to convince everyone that the danger I sensed was both very real and immediate.
* * *
I went in search of Souji first. Although his family was also magical and could perhaps have protected him, his brother Reo had recently been assigned to the Hunters’ Academy as our hunter-in-residence—a position I hadn’t even realized had been open since before I’d arrived.
So it was perhaps no surprise that I found them together. They were sitting the in The Rathskeller, the upperclassmen’s bar and grill, their table full of empty plates and glasses.
“Hey, guys,” I said as I slid into the booth next to Souji, waving at him to move over to make room for me, then bumping him with my hip when he didn’t go far enough. He waited until I was settled in, then dropped his hand down so it rested on my leg just above my knee.
We hadn’t had much time to discuss the fact that we had kissed.
And we hadn’t done it again. I had been afraid that he was worried I would pull energy from him, use him as a conduit for power.
The fact that he was willing to touch me at all sent a little flutter down through my stomach. Maybe he didn’t hate me for doing that to him, after all.
I saw Reo notice the interchange, and one of his eyebrows quirked up slightly, but he didn’t say anything. I don’t know what his relationship with his hunting partner had been, but I know he’d been hurt when she decided to break up their team.
“What’s up?” Reo asked. His dark eyes bored into me. I wasn’t surprised Reo had instantly picked up on the fact that something was bothering me—I’d gathered that he was really young to have risen through the Hunters’ ranks so quickly, and his ability to instantly size up a situation was part of what had made that possible.
“I don’t think the administration is taking my concerns about the darkness I’ve been feeling very seriously.” I blurted the words out as if holding them in any longer might make me explode.
My statement floated in the air between us, just sitting there, waiting for or a response. Reo stared at me—but not like someone who didn’t believe me. More like he was trying to figure out the dimensions and possible ramifications of the problem I’d laid out for him.
My hand crept down and clasped Souji’s tightly. He gave me a reassuring squeeze.
Finally, Reo nodded. “I’m afraid you might be right. Let’s see what we can do about that.”
Chapter 2
I hadn’t realized how terrified I was that no one would believe me until a wave of sheer relief passed through me at Reo’s words.
“Where first?” Souji asked.
“Dr. Novak, I think,” Reo said. “If we can convince him, we can drag everyone along. If not, we’ll need to gather up a few more allies and go to the Council.”
I could have kissed Reo in that moment—for an instant, I had feared that he would say that if Dr. Novak didn’t believe us, we’d have to face the darkness alone.
That was the last thing I wanted to do, in part because I suspected the darkness would like it if I had to try to fend it off all by myself.
I didn’t think I could resist it without help.
As we waited outside Dr. Novak’s office fifteen mi
nutes later, I realized I hadn’t even checked in to see how Tony was doing—or what Dr. Novak had arranged to have done to him.
Does that make me a bad person?
I turned the idea around in my head.
No. Tony’s the one who turned on us. That makes him the traitor. He’s the bad person.
Deciding that didn’t make me feel any better, though.
At least my propensity to broadcast things psychically when I was stressed seem to have calmed down a little bit—no one seemed to have overheard my internal struggle. Apparently, wearing the pendant around my neck seemed to tamp down that tendency at least as well as having a Lusus Naturae worm in my head.
Admittedly, I had considered what it might mean that the necklace had been in Lusus Naturae possession for who knew how long.
In the end, though I supposed there was a chance that our enemies had put some kind of spell or curse on it, I had decided to wear it, anyway. All the Academy adults who knew about it had run various tests, and they assured me they hadn’t found anything.
We all knew that wasn’t necessarily the end of the topic, but it at least gave everyone some small peace of mind.
And more to the point, they didn’t try to talk me out of wearing and using it.
“The headmaster will see you now,” his secretary, Anna Tate, said.
I wondered for a moment how she had coped with the continually shifting nature of her job. In only the eight months I’d been here, we’d had three different headmasters.
I guess Hunters’ Academy positions were different from those out in the rest of the world.
Or at least they had been since I arrived.
I sighed at the thought as the three of us—Reo, Souji, and I—filed into Dr. Novak’s inner office.
Not much about the office had changed since I’d met Headmaster Finnegan in here the first day I’d learned of the Hunters’ Academy. It was still full of books and academy gear featuring the school’s crest and motto—Survive or Die—still covered almost every otherwise open wall space.
Only the person behind the desk was different.
Dr. Novak, a tall, thin man, was also extraordinarily pale, even for a vampire. Ms. Hush had suggested that perhaps he coped with his blood addiction by denying himself sustenance.
I suspected he was just ascetic by nature. If I hadn’t known he was a vampire, I still would have pegged him as an academic type. He looked like he belonged on a college campus—one where he could wear his robes every day.
He looked like he belonged on a magical campus. Like this one.
It was more than I could say for most of us. Even though we wore uniforms, we still looked more like boarding school kids than anything magical.
“I understand you have some concerns about Ms. DeLuca’s visions regarding the dark power that seems to be headed or direction,” Dr. Novak said. As openings went, it wasn’t all that bad. I hadn’t realized that he had paid attention to my warnings at all. So was much better than it could’ve been.
“Yes. And we’ve been wondering what has been done about the issue,” Reo said in his most professional voice.
Dr. Novak leaned back in his office chair and steepled his long, spidery fingers. “Since we don’t have any evidence for Ms. DeLuca’s claims, we’ve had some difficulty deciding what to do.”
He stood and moved toward the door. For a second, I worried he was about to usher us out without giving me the answers I needed. Instead, he stuck his head out the door and murmured something to his secretary.
When he returned to his seat, he gazed at us appraisingly before finally speaking again. “The Council is sending the best seers in the country to consult with us.”
“The best seers on our side,” Reo corrected.
“Pardon me?” Novak peered at the hunter.
“I’m assuming the Lusus Naturae have seers on their side, too. Right?”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” But Dr. Novak continued to frown.
He had thought of that, right?
Because if he hadn’t, we were all pretty much screwed.
I was still trying to decide if I thought the new headmaster might not be fit for the job when the secretary opened the door and said, “The Sisters are here, sir.”
“Show them to the conference room,” Dr. Novak said. As she turned away, he stood and said to us, “Let’s see what our seers have to say about Kacie’s darkness.”
The Sisters. Of course the best seers in the country (on our side) were called “The Sisters.”
I wanted to object that the darkness we were going to ask them about wasn’t mine—but even as I thought it, I knew it was a useless argument.
I didn’t really care whose darkness it was as long as we were able to fight it effectively.
Dr. Novak stood back and held open the door to the conference room so the Souji brothers and I could file in. Reo went first, his broad shoulders blocking my view into the room for a few seconds, so it wasn’t until he’d moved around the center table to greet The Sisters.
I blinked when I saw them. They wore long blue robes with hoods up over their hair. I couldn’t tell anything more than that there were three of them, one tall and two shorter.
Most of the people associated with the Hunters’ Academy didn’t bother with any kind of arcane clothing. Over and over, our instructors told us that our best defense was simply to blend in with the rest of society.
Even our school uniforms were designed to help us look like normal—albeit obscenely rich—boarding school students.
I closed my gawping mouth and moved toward the three women, Souji right behind me.
And then I had to remind myself to shut my mouth again when the women began greeting Reo in Japanese.
I liked to think I wasn’t stupid. I knew that the brothers’ family was in Japan. But not once had it occurred to me to try to learn any Japanese from them. We had never discussed Japan.
I didn’t even know if they were homesick for their home country.
I am an absolute, complete, selfish heel.
Inhaling deeply, I prepared to say hello to the cloaked women. But as I drew even with them, the one on the end closest to me—the tallest one—leaned down and whispered, “It’s all right, my dear. Your young gentleman like you just as you are.”
The words I’d been preparing to say sputtered out of me incoherently and I glanced around frantically.
Had I broadcast that last thought? Was my psychic shielding failing?
“No, Kacela DeLuca,” said the Sister, still quietly. “Your shields are intact.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Let me see you, child.” She took my chin in one hand and turned it up toward her face as she swept back her hood. I managed to suck my gasp back down before it escaped—though she probably heard it in my head, anyway.
The face she turned to me was fine-boned and probably even pretty. But I couldn’t tell for sure. I was far too distracted by the two dark, empty eye sockets that stared down at me and the ropy, elaborate designs in the scarification around where her eyes had once been.
Chapter 3
As the Sister stared at me with the holes where her eyes should have been, the other two swept their hoods back, as well, revealing the same empty eye sockets and designed scarring that trailed down their cheeks.
“Yes,” the Sister who held my face answered my unspoken question. “In our sect, we give up our eyes in order to See.” I could hear the capital letter in the final word.
She finished examining me. I wanted to ask what she’d Seen, but I was more than a little afraid to ask. She answered me, anyway. Patting my cheek gently, she whispered again. “It is well, my child.”
I didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but I felt better for hearing it.
I greeted the other two Sisters, then Souji said hello, and we all moved to take seats at the conference table.
All three of the women wore their long, white hair in braids that snaked down their backs. If
I’d seen them from behind, I would have assumed they were all old women.
But they weren’t.
The same ceremony that robbed them of their eyes and given them the scars on their faces turned their hair white.
I suddenly knew it as certainly as I had ever known anything.
“Yes,” the tall sister said to me, a simple confirmation of my thought.
Suddenly, I was glad to have the three of them on our side.
When we were all seated around the conference table, Dr. Novak spoke first. “Sisters, what has your order Seen about the darkness Kacie has sensed?”
One of the shorter Sisters leaned forward. “Although we cannot See the darkness itself, there is a kind of blank spot in our visions, a place into which we cannot see.” She turned her sightless eyes toward me. “Therefore, if Kacie will allow it, we would like to join our Sight to her power. Perhaps we will then be able to See what she has.”
Dr. Novak raised an eyebrow as he glanced toward me. “Ms. DeLuca?”
“Yes. Whatever it takes.” As long as the Sisters didn’t want to gouge out my eyes and tattoo me with scars.
One of the sisters coughed, hiding a small grin behind her hand.
Great. They heard everything I thought, apparently. Even with my pendant.
“Shall we?” The tall Sister pushed back her chair so the other Sisters could scoot in closer, then reached out her hand to me. I took it, and the other Sisters linked hands, the last Sister closing the circle with me.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on finding the darkness again.
* * *
It was like it had been there waiting for me all along.
And, like the last time I had seen it, the darkness slipped around me like pure comfort. Like a blanket of everything right in the world. It didn’t matter how much I knew the security was a lie. It lulled me, anyway.
You can’t win. Come to us. Be ours.
Part of me wanted to fight it. But I knew on another level that the best way to figure out what it wanted was to let it talk to me.
