The Broken Academy 3: Power of Blood (A Paranormal Academy Reverse Harem Romance)

by Jade Alters

  I shoot in the straightest line possible to Helena’s classroom. Whether that means through walls or other people, I don’t discriminate. All I need to avoid are other Astrals. Doors? What a waste of time. I get there faster than I could have imagined. Faster than I’m prepared for. Before I know it, I face the unknowing Helena Bartos over a few rows of desks.

  She scratches down notes on how the nature of energy directly affects a spell. She smirks at every new tidbit. How can the Kyrie use her as a battery? How can I invade her mind, bend her to my will? I have to chase the doubts out before they take root. Before they can stop me. I can’t give myself a choice. Helena’s a gifted Witch – she might well sense some sort of disturbance if I float too close to her for too long. I close one eye to focus on the resonance of her spirit, just like Stephanie taught me.

  As soon as it reveals itself, I let in a sharp little breath. The sheer energy coming off of her! She has not one little trail of blue mist behind her like the deer, but a hundred flicking tentacles. It takes me a few hesitant seconds to even get a hand near one. I fight the urge to clamp on with every ounce of my being. I remember Stephanie’s words. I have to let myself go. Going over all the ways we are already connected, I invite the bond between us. Powerful women. Two-natures. Oddballs.

  I feel the change in my hands first. I look down to find them dissolving into Helena’s flicking tails of energy. It’s nothing like I thought it’d be, possession. It’s not her will being consumed by mine, rather the assimilation of both of us together, in her body. I close my eyes just before my Astral form completely dissipates to mist.

  I blink back to life at an Academy desk. I watch the last dregs of Astral smoke wisk up the sleeves of my frilly new shirt. My bust is twice the size it ever was before, and I’m considerably less muscular. A little twist of blonde hair bounces down over one of my eyes. I’m in. Now Helena and I just need to wait until class lets out, to avoid suspicion.

  At the instructor’s dismissal, I stand with the rest of the class. I fade into the flow of bodies down the hall to the courtyard. Now all I need to do is make my way around to the Tether. I just have to walk. It’s a more formidable task than it sounds for a budding Astral performing her second intentional possession. Helena’s body sweats out my own nervousness. Her eyes droop with my sudden fatigue. I don’t know why I never thought moving around the Blue Plane would expend this much energy. Projecting a body of pure energy from myself? It drains me by the second.

  “Helena!” a familiar voice calls out from behind me. Not just familiar to Helena, either. Shit. I consider shuffling along like I didn’t hear her, but with the dissipating number of students in the courtyard, that might be more suspicious. Against my every instinct, I turn around and force a smile. Why do her lips feel so heavy? Why is it so hard to get a word out?

  “Emery,” I manage to get Helena to mumble. The distorted sound of it is enough. It raises one of Emery’s eyebrows. It reminds me instantly how bad of an idea this was. Too soon.

  “You…” Emery’s golden-brown eyes flash over my whole stolen body. “You alright?”

  “Jus… tire,” I slur together with a crooked little smile. Whether it’s her abilities as a Magician or simple intuition toward a friend, something clicks in Emery’s brain. It lights her eyes with panic and anger at once.

  “You’re not Helena,” Emery states in a voice so cold, it chills my spine even in the Blue Plane.

  “No… I…” before I can concoct a halfway-sentient answer, Emery flicks her wrist and snaps out a trick. It looks like some kind of airborne portal, but when it strikes Helena’s chest, nothing physical is teleported. I, however, am evicted from her body. I jerk back a few inches to hover over Helena as she collapses in her friend’s arms. Emery kneels to lay her gently in the grass while her eyes scan the skies. She looks past me several times, I notice. So she can somehow sense me, but she can’t see me.

  “Emery Dalshak is onto me,” I shoot back to the rest of the group back in the Sierras through the numb lips of my own body. “Need support!”

  “Where are you?” Emery’s shout calls me back to the courtyard. She flings a glassy disk to the sky a few feet off my misty blue chest. “Don’t make this harder for yourself!” Emery’s shouts and repeated sling of tricks calls the eyes of students from around the courtyard. A few wandering instructors swoop in from the outer halls to check on the commotion. I just have to hold out until the others get here. I just have to shut her up before she calls in the whole Academy.

  I swoop down into Helena’s flickering energy tails. Her eyes pop open and flash neon blue with the occupancy of another. My first act as resident of her body is to jerk her skull up unto Emery’s.

  “Agh! Get out of her you bitch!” Emery shouts. She slaps a palm to my forehead and, before I know it, I don’t have a choice in the matter. I’m flung out of Helena again. I spin up through the air to evade Emery’s pursuant slew of projectile tricks.

  “The blue light in her eyes!” Fey Hartgen shouts on her arrival. A thorny whip grows from her wrist. Damn, can that touch me? I hardly have time to wonder before she lashes it out through the air, just below my spectral tail. “She was possessed! It’s an Astral!” Come on, guys… I grit my teeth. It’s only a matter of time.

  Serge,

  The Broken Academy, D-Wing

  I was just wrapping up notes with Fey Hartgen when my Room Monitoring Amulet lit brighter than it ever has before. The heat of it almost burned a hole through my pocket. By the time I got it out, the sound of whatever was happening was loud enough to reach the classroom. Fey Hartgen and I left the classroom together, but split ways at the turn for the courtyard, where students and other instructors were rushing in.

  “I’ll go outside. You check whatever that is,” Fey Hartgen issued when we saw smoke billow out from around the corner of the hallway.

  I peer around that corner to find a handful of silhouettes in the smog. I also see the source of all the gray cloud. The unhinged door to the Adjustment Lounge. In all my years of composure training, I was never prepared for a moment like this. An actual invasion. A moment that makes shitting in one’s pants a reasonable possibility. I flatten my back against the wall and try to listen over the thunderous thump of my heart. Footsteps. I take a deep, smoky breath, and step out ready for a fight.

  A Vampire flies up on my left. I snap a portal into existence right in front of her. She stumbles through into a thousand-foot freefall from the bottom of the Academy. A few slower trotting footsteps echo through the smokescreen, straight for me. I conjure a glassy blade and shield from the light coming through the hallway to me. A robed Warlock raises his hands to unleash a jolt of lightning my way. I take the brunt of it with my illusory shield and counter with a swipe of my trick blade. It shatters on impact, blasting the man off his feet and casting levitating shards into the air. With my now free hand, I send them sailing down the smoky opening to the Adjustment Lounge. A few grunts of pain jump out to confirm I’ve hit my unseen targets.

  I pull back around the corner to regroup and plan my next move. Before I can, however, a searing plume of smoke and flame jumps down the hallway straight for me. I crouch behind my shield and let the heat surge by me on all sides. It’s a different kind of intensity than anything a Warlock can conjure – Dragonsfire. When the attacker stops for a breath, I plan to stand and unleash a trick javelin. But, through my translucent shield, I get a glimpse of Lee. My own breath catches in my throat. I have seconds before he makes out who I am, through the smoke. Just long enough to slip through one of the archways to the courtyard.

  And here I thought I’d escaped. I don’t know what I’d have done – waited out the whole battle? Let the struggle between the Kyrie and the Academy play out without choosing a side? Right. It hardly matters now. I find, the second my eyes take in what’s happening in the courtyard, that I’ve walked right into the heart of the struggle. My sister cradles her best friend on the ground with one hand, sending tricks sailing into
the sky with the other. Fey Hartgen lashes her thorny whip in the same general direction. Their patternless strikes can only be for one purpose – to flush someone out above them.

  “Serge!” Emery calls me. “Someone possessed Helena!” My blood freezes in my veins. No…already? I’m not ready. None of us are ready. This can’t be.

  “We’ve got bigger problems!” I shout back. Anything to avoid this situation. “The Kyrie somehow got in through the Sierra Tether!” No sooner than I say it, a traveling black line of grass shoots across the courtyard at my sister. An orange crack sears in the center of it, corrupting all it crosses.

  “Serge!”

  “Damnit!” I scream, and leap in front of it. Emery lets Helena down to conjure a two-handed trick along with me – a wall of solid light dug into the ground. The black line grows no further. I trace it along the ground to Bryant at the other end of the courtyard. The light-shield lowers between us. For a second, my eyes say I’m sorry. Then they tighten to a firm get out as I fling a projectile portal at him. Bryant retreats behind a stony corner pillar, which is half-vaporized by my trick.

  On the other side of the courtyard, Magister Reynold and Sorceress Lily trot in. The latter unleashes a frigid cone of tundra air to chase back all advancing around Bryant. The former erects an illusory wall with both hands, wide enough to divide the courtyard. I leap behind it before it solidifies, but Emery is stuck on the other side.

  “Get her out of here!” Reynold shouts to me. I know who he means. I wheel around to find Helena Bartos up on her feet already. Her eyes flash blue at me. The Magister can’t lower his hands, lest surrender to the influx of Kyrie operators flooding the courtyard on the other side. Emery and Fey Hartgen hardly have a second to breathe between whipping and tricking to cast them out. It’s just me and her. We stare.

  “Serge!” Emery screams when she notices my hesitation. “What are you doing? Stop her! Serge?” Her voice might as well be coming from another life. I just keep on staring into those haunted blue eyes. Eyes that don’t belong to the girl in front of me.

  “Is…is it really you?” I choke, “You’re actually doing this? Cece?” Helena takes a stumbling step backwards. I take one forward, a half-hearted hand out to trick her. A blur of color streaks across the courtyard to her side.

  “Sorry, Serge,” says Bart before my eyes even have time to focus on him. I snap my fingers, but there’s no one left there to be tricked. Bart, Helena and Cece are gone.

  Through the Gate

  Cece,

  The Sierra Nevadas

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired in my life. Between possessing two people and the walk back to the Stronghold, I never would have made it without Bart and River. After we slip through the Tether back to the Sierra Nevadas, I walk Helena across the clay until her legs buckle. When they do, Bart is there to catch me.

  “Take this rare opportunity to let someone else bear the burden,” he tells me. “You have more work to do, when we get back.” He hoists me up over his shoulder, knowing damn well I can’t operate Helena’s mouth well enough to argue. I rest my eyes and enjoy the ride, but I can’t fall asleep. If I do, the other occupant of the body might wake up. So I watch River ferry my physical body behind us on her horse’s back. What an odd thing to be able to do. She, Lee and Bryant lead the procession of survivors from the Academy attack. We lost about thirty people before Bart and I got Helena out.

  The only person who looks more tired than I am, when we arrive at the Stronghold, is Dorian. His eyes fill with a terrified light at the sight of both my body and Helena’s, both unconscious. He rushes from the cavernous mouth of the fortress to cry out:

  “What happened?”

  “They’re both alright,” I hear Bart assure him for me, while my lips hardly twitch at my command. “She’s just exhausted. We…asked a lot of her, for her first operation.”

  “I know we did,” Dorian nods, walking over to my physical body. He lifts a hand before Bart stops him with:

  “She’s still in this one.” He gives Helena’s body a hefty lift to show what he means.

  “Oh,” Dorian makes his way over. I feel his hand like a blazing brand on my shoulder through the skin of a non-Dragon. “You did what no one else could have… Thank you, Cece.” Dorian’s hand slides away over the course of a few proud seconds. He helps Bart get me on Helena’s feet again. “I received a message from the Dragonlord, before you returned.”

  “Already?” Lee calls out from behind us. Dorian nods.

  “I suspect the loss of students and teachers hit her just as hard as our own losses hit us… She wants to parlay,” he says. Bodies of survivors break around Dorian and the others like waves on a jetty, dragging themselves down inside the Stronghold. “I’m going to meet her.”

  “You are?” Bart asks.

  “The Dalshak boy even knows our exact location. If ever there was a time for retaliation, it’s now, while we’re weakened… I’ll take a parlay over that. Just because I’m gone at the meeting doesn’t mean the Kyrie’s plans come to a halt.” Dorian pauses for a grim moment of consideration. I know he’s weighing up his trust for the other members of this loose alliance. I would, too, in his shoes. “Calibrate the Runic Gate for what you need. Get your Blood Farm to where it needs to go… And Cece.” Dorian puts his arm on my- Helena’s shoulder again. “Find us the power we need. To be free.”

  My father’s hand slides away from me. I hear his footsteps, distant and quiet. Then Bart helps me down into the darkness of a cave.

  Cece,

  The Kyrie Stronghold, Runic Gate Chamber

  The first time I stand on my own in hours, still in the body of another, is in front of a translucent alloy pod, not unlike the ones at the Blood Farm. But inside waits no feeding tube. No trick will be cast over me. I’ll step in, and the body I’m in will become a battery. I wonder what Helena will feel. What I’ll feel. It isn’t exactly like I can just let her go once she’s inside. She might thrash her way out. I swallow hard when Bart’s arm slips out from under mine. I wobble a little, but manage to stay upright. Bart moves to a monitor off to the side of the pod.

  Massive, multicolor cables sweep out from under it in every direction, like the roots of an ancient tree. A concrete ramp leads down beside it, to the biggest Runic Gate I’ve ever seen. The top of its engraved archway is the height of a small building. A swirl of violet light inside it glows blank, a portal to nowhere, until it has more power. Until it has Helena, and possibly me.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” I say inward, without my lips and yet louder than any words, “But…Helena. We don’t want to hurt you. I promise I won’t let this go on for a second longer than it needs to.”

  “Hey,” Lee’s voice calls from behind me. I struggle to turn Helena’s head toward him. There I find not only Lee, but River and Bryant. Stephanie materializes beside me. “If anyone can rip a hole open to another Realm…it’s you.”

  “Since Cece is indisposed,” River cuts in, “let me say for her: if you say because she’s out of this world, we’ll both kill you.” A snort escapes Helena’s nose in place of my full laugh.

  “But he’s right.” Stephanie smiles.

  “Let’s help her in,” Bryant suggests. I feel arms all over me, across my back and hips. My body or not, my friends are there to lower me into the pod. At the type of a few commands from Bart, the metal shield closes around me. I can just barely make them all out through its frosted display window. Then Bart asks:

  “Dorian can only keep Thise and the others occupied for so long. Are you ready?” It takes everything I have just to nod to him through the glass. He hammers the sequence across the keyboard, and he and the others vanish. The same bright violet light of the Runic Gate fills my sight. My heart stops as Realms outside our own are revealed to me through Helena’s eyes. Each one Bart peers into in his search for the Vampiric Realm of power appears around me as he draws on Helena’s immense power.

  As if everything wasn’
t a haze already. A land of rich blue, pock-marked stone, like coral, unfurls around me first. Arches, fields and columns of the stuff appear as far as I can see. But nothing alive. Not a single plant or beast. A shadow, vaguely in the shape of a very small person, emerges from beneath one of the arches for all of a second, before the world disintegrates back to the dust whence it came. Bart takes me to a new Realm.

  He doesn’t linger in any one too long. I see these bizarre new worlds for just long enough to get an idea of the landscape, sometimes the hint of life. Before I can even take my first breath, they’re gone. He must have an idea of what the Vampiric Realm looks like, and it isn’t any of these.

  It isn’t the one where I wade ankle-deep in a teal pool on the summit of a steep, prominent mountain peak. A massive flock of something flaps in the air over me as a whole region of thin, pond-topped spires appears in the distance. Just like that, the place is gone.

  It isn’t the Realm with a field of grass so tall it outsizes me. The blades of it grow and shrink together, as if sharing one pulse under the hard ground I stand on. Bart cycles to the next Realm. I wonder how much time has passed, and if Helena is in any pain. If she is, I can’t feel it.

  It isn’t the Realm that appears, even more than the previous, to be alive itself. The dark landscape, splotched with orange cracks, changes by the second. Stone formations twist together in ways I’ve never seen rock behave. Odd colored liquids rise in concentrated orbs from the ground, like rain that rises instead of falls. I look around to see who’s responsible, only to find the dark armored skin of someone who seems familiar. His face isn’t exactly the same, and his eyes glower emerald instead of orange, but I’m definitely looking at a Demon. Is this…Hell? Before an answer visits me, Bart changes Realms again.

  “Bartholomew, wait!” I hear Lucidous’ voice echo across the sky, through my mind.