Heaven's Fall: A Paranormal High School Bully Romance (Pandorax Academy Book 1)

by Ember Hollis

  Knox jumps back. His face is ashen and hard as he stares at me, his emerald eyes glittering like stones in his face.

  “How dare you?” he whispers.

  I open my mouth, but no words come out. Just a low moan as the full pain of the headache returns. I sway on my arms for a moment before they give way, spilling me onto the altar again. The cold stone makes my nipples harden into pebbles, and I groan as I reach a hand up to cover myself.

  I can feel Knox still staring at me. When I look at him, his mouth is a thin line and his face unreadable.

  “I need to punish you for that,” he says. “And I know exactly how. The way you are now is perfect for settling a little debt of mine. You’re just a little over wrapped to be an ideal present.”

  Knox snaps his fingers again and a thrall falls over me once more. This time it feels familiar. I’m reminded of the sensation of falling, and the soggy press of a blood-soaked ground beneath my body. My back begins to ache where my phantom wings used to be.

  “You will obey me, poppet,” Knox tells me. I nod and listen carefully when he leans down to whisper a set of instructions in my ear. He straightens. “You will do exactly that, won’t you?”

  In answer, I sit up and nod. Knox’s lips twist in a cruel smile as I slip off the altar and walk slowly to climb the stairs leading away from the Ballroom, shedding a shredded piece of clothing with each step of the way.

  Chapter 24: Heaven

  The bedroom I enter is dark and draped in heavy deep maroon. It’s larger than the one I share with Sibyl, with high windows and polished bronze furniture. Weapons of all sorts hang in customized brackets on the stone walls. I drag my eyes over a morning star, a javelin, and a sword so large, it could skewer a shark.

  Then my gaze lands on a bed on the far side of the room. It’s a four poster affair with a red velvet canopy, and massive bear rug under it. There. My destination.

  I pad across the floor, naked as the day I was born. Inwardly, my mind is gibbering at how I could have walked the length and breadth of the school to get here, all without a stitch of clothing on. I’m hysterical at the fact that someone might have seen me, and my mind is almost unable to grasp what Knox is making me do next.

  All the same, I feel my bare feet step onto the bearskin rug. My arms peel off the covers and my legs rise to lift me up to climb onto the bed. I feel myself edge closer to the boy lying on his back in the center. He’s sleeping naked, and his heat radiates towards me like a furnace. After the chill from being underground and my naked trek across the castle, I’m almost relieved when I have to crawl onto him and straddle his body.

  I run my palms down his hard chest, feeling the smooth planes, the rise and dip of his firm muscles. His hips are not quite beneath mine, so I scoot a little lower until I feel him there, right between my legs. As I move, he stirs a little, and I reach out to his stubbly jaw. I smooth my hand over his cheek, then reach up to brush flame colored hair off his forehead.

  Once he settles, I begin to move. Slowly and firmly, I grind myself against him, using a hand on his thick, muscular thigh to brace myself. Up and down, forwards and backwards. The slickness between us builds and I feel him begin to harden, rising under me like a flag pole. He’s almost ready for me. It’s almost time.

  Despite my instructions to be silent, I release a soft moan of despair or pleasure… probably a mixture of both. I can feel him, stiff and huge beneath me, already bobbing at my entrance. All it would take is one more rise, one thrust.

  Like in a dream, I tense my thighs and lift myself. I’m so ready, I’m wetter than I’ve ever been. Yet, I’m also terrified. This will be my first time! But I’m not yet eighteen, and I’m not ready!

  Still, like a pendulum on a clock, I can’t stop myself from descending. I release my trembling muscles and allow myself to fall, to take him in…

  Golden eyes slide open, and large, strong hands shoot up to grip my hips, halting me just as his tip brushes my lips.

  I gasp, and wriggle in his grip, needing to push down, to complete my task. The sensation of his flesh against mine is titillating, almost enough on its own to make me come. But his hands dig into my flesh like iron cuffs, stopping me from moving further, and his eyes have me like a butterfly helplessly pinned to a board.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, angel?” Malek growls.

  Chapter 25: Knox

  I watch the angel leave, lithe and graceful as she bares herself for all to see. She doesn’t look like much in her uniform with her mop of red curls and slight body, but naked… every eye in the Ballroom follows her, tracing the slim lines of her legs, the perfect curve of her hips, the perk of her breasts. She’s a beautiful specimen, and I can already feel the resentful gaze of my Children as I let her go.

  It makes me annoyed that I wonder too if this was the right thing to do.

  “Denise, you will entertain us tonight,” I tell the girl who had her hands on the angel. “And Angelo and Micah will help you.”

  “Me? But Sire, we didn’t know she was your pet, we just found her here, sacrificed—”

  I ignore their protests. They are quickly drowned out anyway when the rest of the horde descends upon them. Poor substitutes, but it will be enough to satisfy them, at least for tonight.

  My thoughts turn again to the angel as I stroll around the altar. There’s nothing left of her but the rags of her clothes, so I manifest one of her feathers in my hand.

  It’s white and small, dainty like its owner, yet full of vigor and power. It was more amusing than necessary at the time to take her wings from her, yet now I’m glad I have something to play with.

  “Surprising…”

  “What is surprising, sire?” one of my minions, Jacque, asks. He is a toadie, but an attentive one at that.

  “Never you mind,” I say, stroking her feather against my cheek.

  What’s surprising is how she managed to use the Darkness against me. No other Whisperer has had the talent, let alone the daring to try it. It makes me wonder about her. It makes me curious to see what she might do next, so much so that I almost regret not keeping her down here with me.

  How odd.

  I shake my head. I will not second guess my decision.

  A debt is a debt, and I always pay my debts. All that remains is to see what’s left of my poppet once he’s done with her, and to assess how valuable she may still be.

  I smile as I realize yet another surprising thing. I’m actually looking forward to it.

  Chapter 26: Heaven

  Malek’s grip on my hips is excruciating. He’s so near and yet so far. I want to be even closer and I want to run, all at the same time.

  “Who sent you here?” he repeats. I hadn’t even heard him the first time, as overwhelmed as I feel at his touch.

  Malek isn’t a patient person. When I don’t answer and just squirm, he grimaces, then flips us neatly on the bed, so I’m literally pinned beneath him now. A tantalizing position, my body and most of my mind says, yet the rest of me isn’t so sure.

  The flame-haired boy leans down close and peers deep into my eyes. Whatever he sees makes him frown and get off the bed. I lie there, gasping like a fish, unable to disobey my thrall and run.

  When he returns, he’s holding what I can only describe as a flat, leathery bat. At the sight of it and his grim face, my heart begins to race, as sick, twisted thoughts run through my mind while I consider its shape.

  “I can’t remove it the way he can, but this will work just the same,” Malek growls at me, sounding like the bear whose skin is beneath us. He climbs back onto the bed, his big frame causing a dip that sends me sliding to him. He picks me up as easily as if I weighed nothing, then pulls me over his knee.

  I have one second to register that one of the frames on the wall beside the bed is missing its weapon, when his hand descends.

  The paddle slaps the bare skin of my butt, leaving a stinging pain in its wake.

  “AH!” I squeal, feeling a fiery heat sprea
d through me. Malek doesn’t stop, and keeps raining smacks on my rear until I’m screaming at the top of my voice for him to stop.

  “That’s done it, huh,” the Horseman says grimly. He lets me slide from his lap and I collapse in a huddle on the floor.

  The thrall Knox placed on me is gone now, burned away by a haze of pain that nearly rivals my returning headache. My skin tingles all over, and I can barely withstand the tickly soft feeling of the fur beneath my legs. For all that pain, the desire I’ve felt for what seems like hours now, still hasn’t abated. Yet, now that the compulsion is gone, I’m too embarrassed to act on it.

  “No doubt he thinks this makes up for what he’s done,” Malek glares at me. “But it hasn’t. Not by a long shot.”

  I stare angrily back, hating him for seeing me like this, for being the whole reason I’m in this situation. Though that’s not wholly true is it? Knox, and the girls are also to blame. I cringe as a memory of what happened down in the Ballroom flashes through my mind, then remember that Malek is still watching me.

  “I hate you,” I hiss at him. “All of you, you think you can do anything and treat everyone like garbage. You’re wrong. I’ll make you pay!”

  “Empty words, angel, or rather, puny human,” Malek shoots back. “You’re not even worth my time now!”

  The reminder that I’ve lost my powers throws me over the edge. I gather up everything I have and launch myself at him, arms out and fingers curled into claws.

  Malek catches me easily in his big strong arms, but like with Knox, there’s something else within me he hasn’t accounted for. A purplish black glow shoots from me to him, twining around one of his arms like a glowing snake.

  Anger, disappointment, guilt. The shame of being helpless, of having to dance to Their tune. To my tune. It’s all my fault, and he can’t stand to look at me, to see me looking so bright and innocent and pretty, when deep inside, I’m just a—

  I’m flung off of him, so hard that I fly beyond the rug and skid over onto the stone floor. The cuts and scrapes and bites all over me break open and begin to bleed again, while my head swims.

  As the room rights itself again, I find to my surprise that my headache is almost gone. I raise myself to my elbows, feeling some slight relief, only to get a faceful of sheets in my face.

  “Get out,” Malek bellows. He hauls me up by my arm, nearly wrenching it out of its socket, then slams his door open and throws me out into the hallway.

  This time, I’m slower to regain my senses. And when I do, I realize I’m in the boys’s dorms, obviously naked and barely covered by a bloodied sheet. Doors are opening and heads are poking out to stare at me after the loud exit I just made out of Malek’s room.

  * * *

  I gather the sheets around me as jeers and laughter hit me from all sides. Boys are everywhere, flinging insults, eyeing me, or propositioning me with lewd suggestions. Some even tug on my sheet then laugh when I snatch it back, while others clutch their packages to taunt me.

  “Slut!”

  “Whore!”

  “Ready for round two?”

  “Good old Malek for sharing!”

  “Come and give us some pussy, whore!”

  “Show us a glimpse of Heaven, you know you want to!”

  I want to cover my ears as I run past, but my fists are too busy trying to hold up my sheets. Tears burn their way down my cheeks are they call me names. My reputation is so far down in the dirt, I might as well die right now.

  It’s no better when I get to the girls’ dorms. The ruckus from the boys’ dorms means that they already know what to expect and are lying in wait for me. Some just stare silently, while others scream at me, throwing insults just as nasty as the boys.

  Somehow it hurts even more, coming from girls who should understand what I’m going through. Who should know how it feels like to be treated like an object, or like less than nothing.

  But if anything, they’re worse than the boys.

  I’m almost done running the gauntlet through my walk of shame, when I reach Briley and Vivette’s group. These lot don’t say anything. They just glare at me like vultures as I come closer. I can’t walk away, not if I want to reach my room, so I just huddle down, expecting slaps, pinches, and hair pulling.

  What happens is somehow, so much worse. As I near Briley, she gives me a filthy look like I’m worth less than the dirt under her toenails.

  Then she hacks up and spits on me, sending a gob of saliva shooting straight at my cheek.

  It’s like a signal. All the girls in her retinue come up to me, one by one, to spit in my face, my hair, and on my body. It’s all I can do to stand there and do nothing, but I do, knowing it has to stop eventually.

  When everyone’s taken their turn, they step aside, finally letting me pass. I take the last step to my room, feeling like I’ve just walked through the gates of hell.

  Chapter 27: Heaven

  The rest of the week passes in a blur. I try to stay as far away from everyone else as possible, but invariably, someone corners me to leer, taunt, or spit on me. It gets so bad that I try to spend as little time as possible out of my room. When I’m not in classes, I hide in the library, or I find a way to get into the cafeteria, grab what I need, and eat somewhere else. Sometimes this means my room, and other times, it means hiding out in a corridor, or even the toilet to eat to avoid the group of girls who are out for me like piranhas searching for prey.

  I’m the school pariah, and it feels worse than almost anything else in my life. The only reason I don’t just walk down the mountain and leave the academy is because it isn’t the worst thing I’ve been through. Still, telling myself that nothing they do to me can top finding my Mom dead with her lover doesn’t really comfort me, especially when I’m not quite over that either.

  The only thing that brightens the days is when I come back one evening after hiding out in the library and find Sibyl curled up in front of her bar fridge, stuffing chocolate and cheese into her face.

  “Sibyl!” I exclaim. I’d almost given up hope of her coming back, she’d been away for so long. I’d told both Madam Wilkins and Professor Chiros about her, but both had been reluctant to launch a search party, saying she’d be back eventually. “You’re back!”

  I reach out and pull her into my arms, only to pause when I notice how bad she looks. There are broken twigs and leaves in her tangled hair, and her greenish-silver scales look dull with a gray sheen. Her skin is covered in dirt and scrapes, and her eyes are bound with a blindfold she’s made out of her ripped up shirt. “Oh my God, don’t tell me you’ve been in the forest all this time? And did you hurt your eyes?”

  The minute I say that, I immediately feel foolish. Of course she hadn’t. She just doesn’t want to accidentally turn me to stone. My heart goes out to her for even that basic courtesy, and I hug her so hard, she nearly chokes.

  “Let me go, Heaven,” Sibyl groans. “I didn’t hurt my eyes, but I almost wish I did.”

  “Where were you?” I demand.

  “First, some water,” Sibyl asks. She grimaces when I hand a cup to her, but empties it and another in quick succession. When she’s done quenching her thirst, I finally get to sit her down to answer some questions.

  “I’ve been in the Shattered Forest this entire time,” she tells me. “After I ran away, I kept going, hoping to wait till dark to come back. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, and I’m sorry I almost turned you to stone,” she says sadly. “Did you get hurt? Was Bane very pissed? Did he take it out on you?”

  “It’s okay, nothing happened,” I reassure her, though its not exactly the truth. “But I want to know what happened to you.”

  “It’s really embarrassing,” Sibyl moans. “I don’t want anyone to know.”

  “You’re telling me,” I say in a quiet aside, before I urge her to go on. “Don’t worry, I won’t judge.”

  “Well, I thought I’d make it back at night when nobody would be around for me to freeze. So I waited till sunset to lea
ve, but then I remembered the curfew and how our Weres would be patrolling the forest. So even after waiting, I had to navigate with my eyes closed!”

  “You poor thing,” I run my hands up and down her arms, soothing her. “Did you lose your way?”

  “No, I have an excellent sense of direction, plus an unrivaled sense of smell,” she tells me matter-of-factly. “But that’s the thing. I was halfway here when I felt something dangerous close by. I don’t know what it was, but it felt… ominous, and dark. Evil even. It felt like it was watching me, or following me. It sounded huge too, and smelled bad… like old blood mixed with ashes. It made me sick,” Sibyl clutches at her stomach, turning pale just from the recollection.

  “I had to get away, so I ran. I kept going until I came to water. I was so thirsty, I just had to have a drink. But when I bent down, I felt something behind me, approaching fast. I was so scared, I opened my eyes without thinking… and then I saw my own reflection and turned myself to stone.”

  Sibyl sighs and flops down onto the floor limply, while I gape at her. “You what?”

  “Yeah,” she nods. “It really sucked being a statue in the forest for three whole days. I thought I’d be there forever. The only good thing is that whatever it was that was after me left me alone while I was frozen, and I knew I’d turn back eventually. I just didn’t expect it to take so much longer than the last time,” she complains. “I’m starving!”

  I hand her more food from her fridge as I contemplate what she said.

  “Was it the first night that you felt it following you?” I ask, recalling how Bianca and I had also been chased by something dark and evil-looking.

  “That’s right,” Sibyl says. “Though I think it’s still out there somewhere. Even as a statue, I felt things. It just didn’t come close to me anymore.”