Called by Darkness

by Sean Fletcher

  Hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

  But for me, the missions were more of a reprieve. I loved the Academy, the wide hallways and vibrant, bustling classes. I loved hanging out with my friends at the Smoking Lamp coffee shop and eating lunch with Mia beneath the giant oak tree in Remembrance Hall.

  Lately, though, a shadow had fallen over all that. Most of the students were blind to Kasia’s near-successful attempt on taking out the Academy. I wanted to pretend like there was no way she had the kind of manpower to almost pull it off again, but one thing I’d learned about the Society of the Fallen Star was to never underestimate Kasia Armani and her acolytes. The woman was seriously messed up, seriously powerful, and had a serious grudge against my mom. Which, of course, was why she wanted to use me to get her revenge.

  The Dark Prince had been—and still was—part of that plan. Kasia might have cursed me with him, but the guy was…actually useful. I might be forced to resist his influence, but there were some perks to having an immensely powerful, unbelievably good-looking, arrogant-beyond-all-belief curse lodged somewhere in your chest cavity. Go figure.

  “Here, pig, pig, pig…” I stopped to get my bearings before I kept jogging. There weren’t any walking paths this far away from the tourist spots so I was forced to pick my way along the game trails and space between the rocks and scrub brush, following the hoofprints of my quarry. The ground grew steep. The mountains rose and closed in on either side. I paused again to make sure I was going the right way.

  I nearly missed the cave.

  It looked as though the outline of a door had been carved straight into the mountain’s wall, everything beyond it pitch black. I carefully approached. I couldn’t help being wary. The shape looked too perfect, kind of like the Farcast portals we used to travel across the world. Why on earth would anything like that be out here?

  I stepped inside, trying to reassure myself that there was nothing too out of the ordinary about it. There were pockets of hidden magic all over the place. Maybe this was one. Maybe it was an extremely eclectic tourist trap not marked on any maps. Maybe I was being overly paranoid and just needed to suck it up and stop being a scaredy cat. The hoofprints led in here, after all, and I wasn’t going back to Asher without a job well done.

  I drew Valkyrie again, the blade’s glow creating a small circle of light around me while I made my way through the narrow tunnel. The farther in I walked the brighter it grew up ahead.

  As the tunnel continued narrowing I was forced to lean against the wall, struggling to take a breath. My heart pounded in my chest. My eyes swept every corner.

  “Keep moving,” I growled. “Just keep walking.”

  But my body didn’t obey. I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe. In. Out. In. Out, until the images of the caverns beneath New York slowly faded from my mind. I wasn’t there right now. Kasia wasn’t bearing down, trying to kill me and Asher and everyone I loved. She wasn’t here and I was safe.

  I opened my eyes again. The cave was just a cave. It looked beautiful, not dark and dismal and potentially full of death.

  “Look at you sniveling. You’re weak without me,” the Prince whispered.

  I ignored him.

  I heard a pig’s distant squeal as I emerged from the tunnel into a larger cavern. The enormity of it nearly took my breath away, as though the entire mountain had been hollowed out, leaving a space the size of a football stadium in its place. Thin waterfalls of sun-kissed sand cascaded from holes in the ceiling, puddling in piles below. Groundwater had collected into shallow pools between, creating islands of dirt.

  More squealing from across the cavern. I took off after it at a run. I could play gawking tourist later.

  I waded through one of the shallow pools and onto the next island of sand, eyes scanning for the boar. But something else stuck out to me instead, something I couldn’t believe I’d missed before. I squinted, expecting it to go away like some crazy mirage. It didn’t.

  It was a mansion, smack dab in the middle of the cavern. It looked like it wouldn’t have been out of place in a German fairy tale; you know the ones, the kind where everyone dies and there’s pretty much no life lesson except that life sucks and you should never leave your bed. This house even fit the vibe: dark and gloomy, crawling with vines and crafted with worn brick, rounded arches above the windows, the works.

  I took a hesitant step closer, as though doing so might finally break the enchantment I must have set off. The house still didn’t go away. And now I’d spotted something else. No, someone else.

  Someone was standing in one of the windows.

  It was like my eyes were drawn to them, a faint figure in white, blurry at this distance. As I watched, they waved at me. A chill ran down my arms at the same time I felt an inexplicable pull toward the front door. The entire experience was eerie, but there was something else tugging at me; something in that house I couldn’t help but want to reach for.

  I took another step.

  Squeeeaaall!

  I must have been more out of it than I realized because the boar had snuck up on me like a ninja. I didn’t move in time, taking the full force of its charge that sent me flying. Water and grit splashed in my mouth when I landed. I sputtered and spit. I was ninety-nine percent positive I’d have a boar-faced indent in my ribs tomorrow morning.

  Wheezing, I forced myself to standing as the boar circled back around. It lined itself up with me. I leveled Valkyrie, risking a quick glance back at where I’d seen the house.

  It was gone.

  Zilch. Kaput. Nada. Like it’d never been there at all, as though taking my eye off of it for even a second had broken whatever spell caused it to appear in the first place. An uncomfortable sense of loss welled up inside me. I whirled back to the boar.

  “You’re going to pay for that, hammy.”

  The boar let out an angry squeal. I didn’t wait for it, raising Valkyrie and lunging—

  Right as the ground shook and the earth collapsed beneath my feet.

  Chapter 2

  There’s something strange about finding yourself plummeting through the air with nothing beneath to catch your fall. Something that makes you think:

  HolycrapholycrapholycrapI’mgonnadieI’mgonnadieI’mgonna—

  I plunged Valkyrie into the side of the sinkhole, the magic blade biting deep into a semi-solid section of dirt. The earth trembled again and thousands of pounds of rocks and sand cascaded down into the oblivion below my desperately kicking feet. I spat out dirt as it clogged my nose and eyes. I heard a faint squeal and looked down just in time to watch the boar fall to his doom.

  And if I didn’t hurry, that was going to be me.

  “Stay calm, just stay…”

  Valkyrie jerked in my hand. I slipped down another foot. The wall I’d lodged myself into was starting to collapse, as though an earthquake was tearing through this place. I wasn’t an expert in geographical abnormalities, but spontaneous earthquakes? Weren’t there usually warnings for things like that? What the heck was going on?

  Valkyrie sank a bit lower. I forced myself to focus on the increasingly common task of trying not to die. My mom had a spell that’d saved her and Headmaster Lucien in a pinch. I was sure it had a fancy name but all I could think to call it in the moment was the sticky tack spell (what, there’s a billion spell names, you expect me to remember all of them?)

  I sheathed Valkyrie and thrust my hand up. The unstable wall glowed with light. I pressed my palm into it and my hand held, like I’d found a ledge to grip onto. I took a deep breath and wrenched myself up, using alternating hands to cast more of the light above me as I climbed.

  But the sinkhole continued to suck me in. I swore I sank three feet for every two I gained, but still I climbed, not thinking, putting my body into autopilot. The lip of the hole was just out of reach. I was almost there…

  My top hand slipped. I scrambled to regain my hold but I was already falling back, the dirt crumbling in on me. I cast a last, desperate spot of
light at the top of the hole and launched myself up. My hand brushed it, began to stick, then began to fall—

  “Gotcha!”

  Asher’s hand closed around mine. With a great heave, he yanked me out of the hole and we both stumbled away from it. All around us, the cavern floor was splitting, large ravines opening in the earth, sinkholes swallowing water and sand alike. Typical end of the world stuff.

  Asher let out a whistle. “I didn’t expect this when I came back to check in. You’re just a walking harbinger of destruction, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, you know, just thought I’d do a little remodeling while I was here.”

  The sound of something cracking came from above. Both Asher and I looked up in time to see the ceiling splitting apart.

  “Maybe we should catch up later,” I suggested.

  “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  I raced after him as we dodged falling rocks and leapt over splitting ground. Asher tripped once and I caught his arm and shoved him ahead of me. My feet struggled to find solid ground. The destruction was getting so bad that if we fell now then it’d be the last fall we ever took.

  The entrance to the cavern was just ahead. It was closing fast.

  “Heava!” Asher’s lifting spell caught debris that had been about to cover the exit, holding it long enough for us to slide under before he let it fall. A cloud of dust rolled over us. I stumbled away from the cavern, watching as rocks closed up the entrance. The ground trembled once more before falling silent.

  Both of us backed away until we felt safe enough to stop and catch our breath. Asher dusted himself off while I hacked up what felt like half the cavern I’d breathed in.

  “Okay, not that I’m blaming you for destroying the inside of a mountain…” Asher said. “But it was there before you went in, and now…” He pointed back at the now-blocked entrance.

  “Sounds an awful lot like blaming to me,” I said, hands on my hips.

  He held up his hands, smirking. “Just saying. What happened?”

  What had happened? I’d been walking along on my pig-hunting mission, minding my own business, when—

  Wait.

  “There was a mansion,” I said.

  Asher paused, halfway through un-caking the dirt that’d built up on his forehead. “What do you mean a mansion? Inside the cavern?”

  “Yeah. Kind of like—you know, like from a scary movie.”

  “Inside…the cavern?” Asher repeated

  “I swear it was there, Asher. One second it wasn’t and the next it was, and it had vines, and big windows, and…and…There was someone inside, waving to me…”

  I stopped, realizing how crazy I sounded. I had to be wrong. Maybe one boar hit too many had addled my brains. Either that or I’d been reading too much Architectural Digest.

  But Asher was thinking, brows furrowed. I felt an immense swell of gratitude that, for all the crap we gave each other, he at least didn’t dismiss my ravings as complete crap. He might not have seen it, but he had my back.

  “I swear it was there,” I insisted.

  He motioned for me to follow. We started making our way back down the mountain toward Kalamata, where the Farcast portal would blip us back to New York. “I believe you. I’m just trying to think of why…Wait.” He snapped his fingers. “You remember the cavern we came across when we fought Kasia the second time?”

  I shivered, the grip of fear I’d felt inside the tunnel momentarily sweeping over me. “Not like I could forget, Asher.”

  “Right, right. But remember how the first time we found it, the place was like a normal cave, but the second time was like some sort of Amazonian jungle? My dad said it must have been—”

  “An abandoned city hidden by magic!” I said. “The kind the Supes of New York used to hide in. That has to be it. The mountain must have been where they used to hide and I accidentally revealed it.”

  “Yeah…except it wasn’t a city, just a single house. And why’d it collapse as soon as we found it?”

  I had no answer for that. Asher made me describe the mansion again and we lapsed into silent thought as Kalamata came into view. The water still looked as perfectly blue as ever, the sand blazing white. I could practically feel the cold drip of condensation against my hand as I sipped on a drink, lounging beneath the shade of a cabana.

  Sigh…

  “Reminds me a bit of Calypso,” Asher said, breaking my vacation daydreams.

  It took me a second to catch up with his runaway train of thought.

  “The Greek legend?”

  He nodded. “The lone house, the lone figure, both of them hidden away from the rest of the world. Kind of like Calypso. Her father was one of the Titans and she fought alongside them against the gods of Olympus. But when the Titans lost, the gods banished her to live on an island by herself.”

  “That’s so sad,” I said, feeling a small ache of grief for someone who’d never even existed.

  Asher gave me a funny look. “I’m not saying it was the right punishment, but she fought against them.”

  “Yes, but she did it to help her family. Wouldn’t you fight with your dad, even if you thought he was wrong?”

  Asher shrugged, but I could tell the question had made him uncomfortable.

  “I’m just saying,” I went on, not wanting to get into another argument over something as stupid as a myth, “Maybe she made the wrong choice, but it wasn’t her fault to begin with.”

  “Fine, fine, fine, you’re right,” Asher conceded. “Happy?”

  “As long as you keep saying I’m right I’ll always be happy.”

  Asher made a face that was half grin, half grimace.

  We eventually reached the outskirts of Kalamata and made our way to the trafficked sidewalk bordering the ocean. The spray of salt water tickled my nose. Kids splashed and played in the sand while their parents read nearby. The Farcast portal was further inside the city, hidden inside a convenience store guarded by a grumpy water nymph named Terry. We reached our street and I cast one last, longing look back at the nearest tiki lounge, cold sodas sliding down the bar, people laughing and drinking from coconuts with little straws sticking from the center.

  “You know, technically we don’t have to be back to the Academy until tonight,” Asher said.

  I turned to find him grinning at me. He nudged his chin back toward the beach. “I’d say we deserve a break. Why not here?”

  I could have kissed him.

  Don’t miss Skylar’s next adventure in Book Two, The Cursed One! An ancient being has been discovered, a being who can grant whoever finds it incredible power for good. Or for evil…

  * * *

  Grab it here: The Cursed One

  Author’s Blathering Note

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  Thank you so much for reading Called by Darkness! This has been an amazing book to write, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of spectacular readers like you. So thanks. Seriously.

  * * *

  Writing is one of my biggest passions, and I love connecting with readers and creating stories they love. If you’d like to learn more about my latest books, promos, and a bunch of other super awesome stuff, Join My Author Newsletter

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  Want to make extra sure you never miss a new release? Follow me on BookBub!

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  Website: https://seanfletcherauthor.com

  More Books by Sean

  The Mages of New York Trilogy

  Mage’s Apprentice

  Mage’s Trial

  Mage’s End

  * * *

  New York Academy of Magic Series:

  Called by Darkness

  The Cursed One

  * * *

  The Heir of Dragons Series:

  Dragon’s Awakening

  Dragon’s Curse

  Dragon’s Bane

  Dragon’s Fate

  * * *

  The I Am Phantom Series:

  I Am Phantom

  We Who Rema
in

  Subject Number One (An I Am Phantom Novella)

  * * *

  In the Depths of Darkness Series:

  In the Depths of Darkness

  Shadows of the Swarm

  * * *

  Website:

  https://seanfletcherauthor.com

  About the Author

  Sean Fletcher was born in the broiling, arid state some people lovingly refer to as Texas. He is the Amazon bestselling author of YA urban fantasy, in addition to other forthcoming books whose characters will not give him a moment's peace until they get their turn in the spotlight. When not making things up and putting them on paper, he can be found hiking, biking, or traveling, sometimes all at the same time.

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Sean Fletcher. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Covers by Juan

  Editing by Regina Dowling, Haunted Unicorn Editing

  Brutally Honest Feedback from The Mother

  As always, a huge thank you to my amazing fans!

  The New York Academy of Magic characters, names, and related items are trademarks owned by Sean Fletcher

  The setting, characters and story used in this book are completely fictitious and come from the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and are not intended by the author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.