Dark Huntress

by Nia Night

  I wasn’t sure when exactly the Sisters had collected the child after I’d dropped her off at the police station, but by my estimations, Vida had already been at the Academy over two weeks at least. Thinking back to my own first two weeks there, I knew that this was more than enough time to leave a lasting impact on the child’s character. Whether that impact would be good or bad was yet to be seen, but every day she was there counted.

  Hell, every minute.

  At one point in our travels, it was as though Kieran plucked this concern from my head.

  “The Academy,” he began slowly, “no one knows much about it save for the Sisters who go there.”

  I was driving this time, and I kept my eyes on the road, gave a single nod of affirmation.

  “Is it…is it as bad as they say?” he asked.

  “Bad is a relative term,” I answered. “People can get used to anything.”

  I could feel his eyes on me, but I kept mine ahead, my grip purposely light on the steering wheel and my back relaxed into my seat.

  “I’m just wondering if the child will be okay. What state we’ll find her in.”

  I nodded, letting out a short breath. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”

  18

  Conversation died for a while after that. I was glad for it.

  When we were still about a day’s drive from where we would need to leave the car and trek the rest of the way to the Academy by foot, I suggested we get a hotel and have a good night’s rest. We’d been driving and sleeping in the car for what seemed an eternity. This would also give us a space to make plans, for me to draw out a map of the Academy, for us to go over essentials.

  Kieran didn’t argue, though I could see the anxiety lining his body when we first pulled off the road and chose a location.

  “She’s made it a few weeks,” I told him. “She can make it another day so that we can do things right.”

  The Angel nodded, his shoulders relaxing a touch.

  We checked into the hotel, making sure there were two beds in the room, and unfolded atop the respective mattresses. After so many hours in the car, stretching and lying on the soft surface was like heaven. Kieran must have felt the same way, because the Angel let out a low sigh from the opposite bed.

  I made the mistake of looking over at him. His arms were propped behind his head, the muscles of his biceps flexed and the hem of his black shirt riding up over his torso, revealing a washboard of muscles there, too. The profile of his face was lovely, a strong chin and straight nose and stoic countenance. I pulled my eyes away when he turned his head and caught me staring. If he noticed, he didn’t comment on it.

  “It’s strange, because I don’t usually get emotionally attached to others, but I feel a connection to the child, and that’s part of why the pull to get to her is so strong. It must be.”

  My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “The person who is chosen to be the guardian is supposed to be granted certain abilities to help ensure that they are equipped to do the job. That’s why her guardian can be anyone—her last guardian was human, as you recall. It’s strange for me, because I can feel a connection to her, like a sense of where she is in space and time, and though I’ve never seen her face in person, it’s in my mind’s eye, and I can see her clearly if I think about her. There is this undeniable urge to protect her, to keep her safe. I’ve never felt that way about anyone before.”

  Upon hearing this, it seemed to me very sad, but when I thought about it, I supposed I was much the same way. There had never been anyone in my entire life that I could say I’d felt the need to protect. I had no parents, no siblings, no children. Sisters looked out for each other when it was convenient, but for the most part, we were an every-female-for-herself sort of group, people trained to work and live in solitude.

  “Sounds awful,” I replied.

  Kieran chuckled, resting one hand on his stomach, the other still propped behind his head as he turned to look at me. I’d been staring at the ceiling, the fatigue of the trip setting in, but I glanced over at him now, too.

  “It is kind of awful,” he admitted. “It’s making me anxious, and that’s not usually me.”

  “Such tasks require a strong stomach,” I said, recalling the last Mark, the farmer I’d shot dead in his field, and the way I’d spewed my guts after.

  Once one crossed the bridge into the land of giving a shit, it seemed, there was no way of crossing back over. So I understood what he was saying, what he was suffering. I also understood that it was a show of vulnerability to admit to these feelings, and that it must have taken some courage on his part to do such a thing.

  “All we can do is try,” I added.

  Kieran grunted. “Aye.”

  I flipped off the lamp on the table between us. We slipped into sleep that would be needed for what lie ahead.

  The rest in a real bed went a long way in refreshing my mind and body, and so did the shower. I went in first and dressed completely before emerging. Kieran showered next and came out without a shirt.

  I would have rolled my eyes at this display if not for the fact that I really didn’t think he considered it, that he truly didn’t have some sort of agenda other than obtaining the child. I couldn’t decide if this made me like him more or less, but when he turned and I got a full view of his back, I couldn’t help but stare.

  “That’s how you hide the wings,” I said, rising from where I’d been sitting and coming over to examine him.

  Kieran glanced back as if he’d forgotten what was there, looking down at the raised markings and back up at me. “Oh, yeah. That’s how we tuck them away, anyway.”

  I resisted the urge to lift my hand and run my fingers over the markings, which ran over his shoulders and covered his entire back. They were carved in the shape of two massive wings, the details of the feathering all the more breath-taking the closer I got. It was like a tattoo without ink, and instead, raised and textured scaring that blended in tone with the skin. Draped over muscles that could have been carved from stone, it seemed to me that those markings would feel like actual feathers—feathers laid over rock.

  I cleared my throat and stepped back, pretending that I had not just been nearly entranced. Again, if Kieran noticed my attentions, he did not comment on them. I was admittedly glad for this.

  A moment of silence followed. I wandered back over to my bed, gathering my Calidi chain from where I’d left it on the nightstand and winding it about my hips.

  Now I was the one who had his attention.

  “That’s a beautiful weapon,” he said, blue eyes locked on the links about my waist.

  “Yes,” I replied. “It is.”

  “Whose were they?”

  “My great grandmother’s,” I said. They were the only physical thing I had of my descendants’, though I didn’t feel the need to share this.

  Kieran drew a few steps closer, studying the chains the way I’d studied his wings. “And your fire magic, it runs through them?”

  I shrugged, a small smirk coming to my lips. “When I want it to.”

  He raised a brow. “That first night I met you, you burned the shit out of me with them.”

  “You didn’t even wince.”

  “I’m stoic like that.”

  “Impressive.”

  I finished coiling the chains and pulled my jacket down over them, breaking whatever spell they seemed to have cast over him. Crossing to where there was a table and chairs, I pulled out the paper and pencils we’d bought at a gas station and began to sketch the layout of the Academy, trying to recall every detail.

  I knew the place well, had spent most of my life there, so the task was not too difficult. There was the black wall that encircled the place, the main hall and the dormitories, the Superiors council building and private quarters. Surrounding these buildings were the training fields and the marshes, the forest and the quarry.

  Each location held its own number of dangers and obstacles. There was really
no good way in, just a less shitty way than all the others. I explained as much to Kieran.

  “We’ll do whatever you think is best,” he said.

  I’d been thinking about it the whole ride across the country, running every possible scenario I could imagine, trying to locate the one that had the highest probability of success. I’d finally narrowed it down to a couple of possibilities, and I explained them both to Kieran as I pointed out specific locations on the map I’d drawn.

  I expected him to question me a little more, to suggest alternate plans based on what he was seeing on the paper, as males are wont to do when a female is heading a project. I expected him to say, “But what about this? How about if we did this?” But Kieran did not. He only nodded, staring down at the layout intensely, clearly trying to commit it to memory.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll follow your lead. I’ll do exactly as you say.”

  I blinked at this submission, not sure if it was a compliment to me or a testament to his character or both. Then I realized that trying to figure that out was stupid, and I refocused on the task at hand.

  “The area around the Academy can only be traversed by foot,” I said. “The skies are patrolled, so there will not be much use for your wings there. The landscape is unforgiving, with creatures from the darkest corners of the realms, and magic that is trickster in nature. If we make it past that and to the wall, we’ll consider ourselves lucky.”

  “I’ve been to such places,” Kieran said, something along his brow darkening.

  “Not like this, you haven’t,” I said. “Not like this.”

  Leaving the hotel and heading into the tall redwoods where we would soon need to ditch the car and carry on by foot was more difficult than I had anticipated.

  Up until this point, I felt like there was still an option of turning back. Though I’d left my phone behind in the loft in Carson City—for obvious tracking reasons—there was a possibility that I hadn’t yet been texted my next Mark, that my desertion was still unknown by the Superiors, that if I so chose, I could head back now and return to my old life.

  When I considered it, really considered just telling Kieran I’d changed my mind, and going back to the way things had always been, I realized that perhaps that ship had sailed a while ago. Perhaps it had set out of port the night I’d found the child in the park, and I just hadn’t known it yet. I could not go back to question-less killing. There was only forward.

  Still, it was a strange feeling, a twisting in my stomach and lightness in my chest, when we ditched the SUV, donned the backpacks of supplies we’d picked up, and headed in the direction of the barrier that shielded the Academy and the cursed land on which it sat. Every Sister returned to the place annually, to be evaluated and debriefed, so I knew the trek well, treacherous as it was.

  But Kieran and I would need to go off the beaten path so we would not be tracked, and that would only add to the danger. The land on the mortal side of the barrier had swallowed up many a human hiker in the past. Once we crossed to the other side, the hazards would only multiply, the perils becoming magical in nature.

  I adjusted the straps of my backpack and ran my fingers over the Calidi chains concealed under my jacket. Their presence gave me comfort. Beside me, Kieran prepared himself as well, grabbing the last few essentials from the car and closing it up.

  We stood on a cliff, an overlook not too far off the main highway. It was a rest stop and location for those who site-see, and the view was indeed breathtaking. With daring cliffs and palms, the scent of the ocean a little further to the west, and the rising sun, it seemed to me like a manifestation of the calm before the storm.

  I pointed to the massive redwood forest that abutted the north. “If you fly us to the base of that cliff we can enter the forest,” I said. “We’ll have to travel by foot from there.”

  Kieran nodded, already removing his backpack and taking off his shirt so that he could free his wings. I scooped up the pack and refused to let myself stare, stealing just a glance at sculpted golden muscles before turning back to the landscape.

  But as his wings burst free, there was little I could do to keep my gaze from drawing to him. Massive and powerful and covered in ivory feathers, the wings stirred the air as they shot out of his shoulders, lifting my hair around my face.

  He looked at me with a small smirk after seeing whatever expression was on my face. I schooled my features and slung his pack over my shoulders along with my own.

  Kieran opened his arms to me. “You ready?” he asked.

  I stepped into his embrace and held for dear life as he shot up into the air like a rocket.

  19

  I’d flown in airplanes before, but that was not comparable to flying with Kieran.

  My stomach lifted as we gained altitude at a rate that made me squeeze my eyes shut. I tucked my head into his shoulder as we continued up and up and up, and heard a chuckle reverberate in his chest.

  “I got you, Iliana,” he assured me.

  I swallowed and willed myself to calm down.

  Then I looked down.

  That was a mistake.

  The entire landscape spread out beneath us, nothing keeping me from hurdling toward it save for the Angel’s hold on me. My grip on him tightened, and his thumbs stroked my lower back gently, his fingers kneading at the tension there. I relaxed a little more as we continued onward, until finally, I was enjoying the sensations, rather than clenching my cheeks in fear.

  “Not so bad, then?” Kieran asked, his lips against my ear as we neared the place where we could land.

  I couldn’t help a small laugh. “Not so bad,” I agreed.

  Finally, we set down near the spot I’d directed him toward. My legs wobbled as my feet found the earth again, and Kieran placed a hand on my shoulder to steady me. My first instinct was to shove away his help, to deny that I needed such assistance, but I resisted the urge. He’d been nothing but kind to me before, and I realized that I might want to trust him.

  Then I realized how badly this idea frightened me.

  And was it any wonder? I’d grown up at the Academy, where there were absolutely no males. On top of this, all of the Sisters received education about how males were nothing more than distractions, and dangerous distractions, at that. They’d insisted that Sisters who got emotionally involved with males made poor choices, acted out of impulse and altered their entire behavior in order to please the male for whom they’d fallen.

  They’d told us that we would want to have sexual relationships with males, and that we could certainly satisfy those urges, but by no measure, under no circumstances, should a Sister ever trust a male. Trusting a male would only lead to trouble.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Kieran as we pushed into the trees, thinking that though this may be a fucked up doctrine to infest in someone’s mind, it also held a note of truth in it. I mean, would I even be here right now if not for Kieran’s persuasion? I couldn’t be sure, but these thoughts had me drawing up my shields, rallying my boundaries around me.

  The terrain was good for this, because it required focus that didn’t lend well to deep conversation. There were trails that cut through these trees, but none that would lead to the barrier, on the other side of which the Academy sat.

  I’d had us start out toward the barrier in the morning, and we would reach it within a ten-hour hike, so daylight would accompany us most of the way. That meant it would be night when we crossed over, and though the night on the other side brought with it the more vicious of the predators lurking between the trees, we would also need its cover to make it to the Academy unseen.

  It was a good thing both Kieran and I were in good shape, because the ground sloped and dipped and was covered in deadfalls and hazards. Several times we had to climb over and out of things, to leap from one spot to the next. After four hours of onward movement, we stopped to eat some of the food we’d brought with us.

  “It’s not an easy trek,” Kieran said as he bit into a protein bar. “
It would be a lot easier to fly over this shit.”

  With a constant upward slant and the thick bramble of the forest, he wasn’t wrong. I swigged some water and wiped the back of my hand across my chin before answering.

  “The area over the trees is always observed,” I said, gesturing around me. “And the trees are too dense to fly through them very effectively here. But we’re nearly halfway. This is the easy part.” I raised a brow. “I’m surprised to hear a divine soldier complain.”

  “I’m not complaining,” he said. “Merely making an observation.”

  “Right. Let’s keep moving.”

  On we pushed, picking our way closer with each step. The nearer we drew, the more my heart picked up in pace. After all those years of living beyond it, and coming back to it every year since, it was almost as if I could feel the pull of the barrier, almost as if it were calling to me.

  The sun slowly made its way across the sky and began sinking into the trees. The terrain only grew steeper, more challenging. By the time we reached the barrier, one would think I’d be a little fatigued. Hell, I was usually tired after making the trek, but my anxiety was too high to notice any physical exhaustion.

  I paused in my tracks, staring up at the barrier with leagues of trepidation.

  Kieran came to a stop beside me, following my eyes but not seeing what I was seeing. The ability to find the barrier was one that had to be passed on by someone who already possessed it. It was a willing exchange of trust, an initiation.

  That was why only Sisters could find the Academy, just one of the many obstacles in place protecting its location. If I wanted Kieran to pass through, I would have to let him see it. I would have to give him the Sight. Once he had it, it could not be taken back. I couldn’t be sure because of the abnormality of the situation, but I knew in my gut that this knowledge was such that the Superiors would kill him for it.