Rise of the Red Queen: A Why Choose Academy Romance (Major Arcana Academy Book 2)

by Ana Calin

  But as I approach Lucia I realize her fear has shifted to willing focus. The table behind her lies askew on the floor, her friends helping each other up from the ground. Giselle keeps screaming threats at the warlocks, but they don’t care, and why would they. They’re acting on orders of the Headmaster, and half of this whole damned Academy is on their side.

  I slink close, determined to help her, but her head snaps to me, her eyes striking—they’re glowing like precious stones. She holds up her hand.

  “Don’t.” Not even her voice is like I know it. She speaks with the deep, evil voice of someone from the pit. I freeze in my tracks.

  Wind suddenly pulls at my jacket, and cools my scalp. Something’s happening, like a tornado forming in this room. The Headmaster stands up, dead eyes so big they might just pop out of his head.

  “This is it, it’s happening,” he calls over the whirling sound, cutlery clinking and flying through the room. He spreads out his arms, his cape billowing behind him. “That’s it, Red Queen, show us your true face.”

  When a thick black point appears by her side, expanding into a whirling black spiral, the very thoughts freeze inside my head. There are gasps and screams everywhere, but Lucia stares at the hole with such a cold expression, there’s no doubt she summoned it.

  Gnarled arms like the branches of black trees reach out, straining greedily to grab someone, shrieking. My skin crawls when I realize they’re hungry demons.

  This is it. The Headmaster has achieved his purpose—the entire Academy is witnessing Lucia summoning demons, and opening a portal to Hell. Students and teachers start to run towards the exit, screaming, when the Headmaster and Vanessa step in. They spread out their arms, chanting an echoing spell to close the portal. But it doesn’t work, and they panic.

  Lucia just stands in front of the portal as if she’s waiting for something. And when a demon arm reaches far beyond the portal to grab one of the warlocks, I finally understand. By the cursed realms, she’s lost her mind. I run over to her.

  Lucia

  I GRAB THE DEMON’S wrist, and pull to make it tumble over into my reality. But the thing pulls its arm back, shrieking, its sharp black claw scraping my skin, and leaving a thin trail of blood behind.

  I curse in pain, but it’s that blood that incentivizes the demon to reach for me again. I have to do this, if I am to ever get to the bottom of this. I give it my hand, letting it pull me into the portal. My face sinks into the swirling black liquid that stings my skin, as if eating away at it. I grit my teeth, and focus to keep my body from disintegrating. I say the spells I learned by heart, at first in my head, and then out loud.

  I’m being pulled deeper into this spiraling tunnel. I gather all my strength, trying hard to remember what I memorized, namely the spell to open a portal to another realm, where I can isolate just this one demon, restrain it, and ask it questions. I know it’s insane, because I’ve never done such a thing before, but I’m the Red Queen, and that has to count for something. It’s all I can rely on, because there’s no way I could have asked my three protectors how to do this. They would have never agreed to my plan.

  But this demon and the portal are pulling me down into Hell, and panic makes my memory freeze. I forget the words of the spell. A hand wraps around my ankle, and even though I try to kick myself free, I’m aware no one can save me now.

  But then a masculine voice chants the spell I couldn’t remember but easily recognize, and I realize this is someone from the Academy. I can feel his power add to mine, and I take heart. My lips open again and my voice joins his, the spell filling the portal like a flooding echo.

  The blackness funnels to the side, and spits us out. I hold on to the demon with both hands, because it’s desperate to free itself from me. But I can’t let it go no matter what.

  We tumble into a world that seems strange at first. I squint against the setting sun and look around, but try as I may, I can’t kick-start my brain. By God, we’re in the mortal world, the very same spot where I first opened a portal.

  I turn around to see Zillard pick up a black shape from the ground, and shield it away from me. I can only see Zillard’s back in a tuxedo that hugs a lean but clearly strong frame. I try to crane my neck and see the demon, because all I see are flailing black arms like tree branches.

  “Stop trying to look the demon in the face.” Zillard’s voice betrays that he’s straining to keep the creature restrained. The cursed thing is shrieking like a dying smoker choking on his own lungs. “It can kill you.”

  “I doubt it. I’m the Red Queen, I summoned it.”

  “As the Red Queen, you have the power to open portals to Hell, summon demons, and even sentence people to death in the pit, yes, but we don’t know for a fact that demons wouldn’t attack you. This one did hurt you.”

  I look down at the scratch that’s no longer bleeding. Being a witch adds blessings every day, such as rapid healing, but the biggest question in my head now is another—why are we in the very same park where Blade and his guys attacked me months ago, right by the same bench?

  “This is where the first portal opened,” I whisper.

  “This place must have been active in your emotional memory when we cast the spell to open the side portal,” Zillard says, still restraining the shrieking demon.

  “Don’t kill it,” I call when I realize what he’s trying to do.

  “What do you mean don’t kill it? I have to kill it.”

  “Please, Zillard, I risked all this because I need answers.” I sound desperate. “I have the entire Academy on my back for this, I can’t let what I’ve done be for nothing.”

  He glances back at me as he keeps restraining the demon, confused.

  “What in the cursed realms could this creature know that’s valuable to you?”

  “I need to ask it who I am, Zillard. Only these creatures can tell me. They’re born in Hell, like I supposedly was. I need to know who my parents are, and what exactly my mission is.”

  The demon shrieks again, and Zillard slams it against the ground, causing the crusty winter earth to crack. Then he pins it under his knee.

  “Ask it, now.”

  I do, but I don’t understand what the thing is saying. It speaks in a strange language, and its voice is like chalk on a blackboard. I feel the need to press my hands to my ears, and it’s hard to resist.

  “I’m afraid that doesn’t help,” I manage.

  “It spoke demon language, that’s why you don’t get it.”

  “Damn it.” Frustration engulfs me, but then...

  “You’re lucky that I speak the language.” Zillard glances at me over his shoulder, his dangerous psycho face flushed with effort. He gives me his disturbing crooked grin. “He said your ancestors are Adam and Lilith. You’re welcome.”

  “Say what?” I babble around for seconds. “But, but, it can’t be. The women in my vision, they were talking about parents.”

  “Parents and ancestors are the same thing to supernaturals, Lucia.”

  “Adam and Lilith,” I repeat. It feels so alien.

  “You’re a descendant of Adam’s first wife, Red Queen,” Zillard says. “No wonder you’re such a lusty lay.”

  “Whattt?”

  “Come on. It’s no secret to you that I know, is it? You’re fucking two guys, the demigod and the warlock, sometimes both at the same time.”

  Anger rises in me, sending a flush up to my neck and my face. “Three,” I say, deeply satisfied to shock him. “I have three lovers. I’m sleeping with the Lord Protector, too.”

  “You’re what?” Zillard’s head snaps back to me, shock in his eyes. I enjoy it, but the creature uses the moment, and struggles to come to its feet. By God, the thing is so ugly, my eyes snap away from it in an instant.

  Zillard jumps up to his feet, and slams the thing into the ground, this time so hard that it almost deafens me. He rams his knee into its chest with such force that I hear its ribcage crack. Before I can try to look at it again, the demon
has turned to dust that the wind is now sweeping away. Never will a human know that a demon has been slayed on this spot. How fascinating, how incredible, and yet how true.

  “Sorry if you had any more questions for our prisoner,” Zillard says through his teeth. He breathes hard, his normally perfect hair falling into his eyes. He now looks even more like a psycho killer.

  Only that this killer will find himself in as much trouble as me when we re-emerge in that bar on the Flipside. I tilt my head as it hits me.

  “Wait a minute, why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”

  “It was pure instinct. Those things would have pulled you with them into the pit.”

  “You mean to tell me you actually cared?”

  He doesn’t answer, he just stares at me.

  “Thank you,” I whisper. “You saved me.”

  “Now don’t go overboard with your gratefulness. It’s not like I’ve done it for free.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  He comes back to his feet, and stares at me from under the gelled strands of his hair with his old darkness.

  “You’re fucking three men, Red Queen. It won’t make much of a difference if you take a fourth one, will it?”

  My lips curl over my teeth. “You son of a bitch.”

  I grow so mad that another portal starts to open, but I manage to control myself at the last moment. But before I get to send him off to fuck himself, there’s giggling and laughter behind the bushes. People coming. Shoot, they’ll discover us, and supernaturals can’t expose themselves to mortals!

  Zillard doesn’t hesitate for a split second. He grabs my waist and opens a new portal that he plunges into with me basically under his arm.

  The portal spits us right back into the bar where we came from.

  “There she is,” the Headmaster’s voice reaches us. It’s loud, and declarative. “The Red Queen! Opener of portals to Hell, conjurer of demons. A Trojan Horse that the Lord Protector himself has infiltrated in our Academy.”

  “It’s not like that,” Zillard says, stepping protectively in front of me.

  “Get out of the way, or you’ll share her fate,” the Headmaster threatens.

  “She. Is. Not. A. Demon.”

  “Zillard, have you lost your mind?” Pandora intervenes.

  “She is the Red Queen,” Vanessa decrees, raising her chin proudly. Boy, she looks satisfied. “She opened a portal to Hell, she summoned creatures from there into our world, and everybody saw it. She is to be sentenced to the pit, immediately!”

  “You have shown yourself for what you really are, Red Queen,” the Headmaster says, seeming even bigger and darker with that cape on his shoulders. The entire Board gathers behind him, the students and teachers to the sides, while all I have is Zillard, Giselle and my two nymph friends. I wish I could just push them back, make sure they don’t go down along with me.

  I gather my courage and step by Zillard’s side, not letting him shield me with his body. I dared to grab a demon; I’ve been on my way to Hell, pulled by shrieking creatures; if I could stand up to that, I sure won’t let this lot scare me. I make a conscious decision not to let them get to me, this gathering of wolves with fangs dripping poison that they want to pierce my neck with.

  And I won’t let Zillard stand up for me. What he asked in the mortal realm is vivid in my mind, and I know he’ll want to cover when this is all over. What does he think, that I can be with just any man because I have three lovers, all three of whom I love with all my heart? I’m automatically a whore?

  I bump into his arm as I step forward, a sign he should move aside.

  “Don’t worry, Pandora, he’s only doing it for selfish reasons. In the brief moments we had alone, he asked a price from me, but I’m hereby refusing to pay it.”

  Pandora steps back at the sound of confidence in my voice. Others glance at each other in surprise, while Zillard grunts under his breath,

  “What are you doing, you need all the help you can get.”

  “Throw her into the pit,” a student yells from the back, starting a commotion.

  One thing I learned about supernaturals, they’re a ravenous lot. They crave blood and punishments, and this kind of trials are like reality shows to them. I can only hope the need for such entertainment changes with age, as it does with humans, and that they still get a chance to learn what compassion is.

  The Headmaster turns to me with a triumphant look on his face. Vanessa stands close behind him, her face visible over his shoulder. She bites her lip, her eyes wide as if greedy for the spectacle that follows, making it obvious how long she’s been plotting this.

  “Stop,” a male voice thunders over the commotion, and the crowd moves out of the way to make room for the Lord Protector.

  My heart swells in my chest as I see him, tall and radiating shadows, his piercing hazel eyes directed at the Headmaster’s skull. Streaks of metal glint between folds of shadow, and those can blend together to form his scythe. Good Lord, he’s brought it with him, which can only mean he’s here to reap heads.

  “She has proven what she is,” the Headmaster defies him just as Silas and Maverick appear from behind Ramses, flanking him. The warlock fixes his dark gaze on the Headmaster, the leather tight on his bulky frame, while fireballs start to form in Silas’ hands.

  “She’s a child, that’s what she is,” Ramses argues.

  “Really,” Vanessa chimes in, jealousy distorting her face. She spits the words. “Was she a child when you fucked her, too? All three of you?”

  There are gasps everywhere, but Gordon prepared us for this. He told us that he’d informed Vanessa about my simultaneous affairs with Silas and Maverick, and they speculated together that I would come to sleep with the Lord Protector as well because I was a product of Hell, and that could only mean I was an evil seductress. She doesn’t actually know that Ramses and I slept together, but neither of us can deny her words. It must be clear to everyone that it’s true.

  To be fair, I’m not entirely sure I’m not a product of Hell. In any case, it was Gordon’s confession that determined my decision to isolate a demon, and interrogate it. How else could I prove I wasn’t Lucifer’s daughter, and save Ramses, Silas and Maverick from the Headmaster’s plots against them.

  “More proof that she’s a Trojan Horse,” Vanessa declares to the entire room. “She’s made her way into the beds of three powerful men. The Lord Protector doesn’t even deny it—of course, as the Holy Grim Reaper, he cannot lie.”

  “Throw her into the pit,” voices surge.

  “She is the Whore of Babylon!”

  “She is the product of Hell, Lucifer’s daughter!”

  Zillard steps in as if he can’t take it anymore. “She is not Lucifer’s! She is a descendant of Adam and Lilith! The reason she followed the demon was to find out the truth.” Silence falls, and he turns to look at me briefly. The Headmaster starts to say something, but Zillard stops him.

  “I was there Headmaster, I heard the demon say it. I translated it from the demon language myself, and I have no reason to lie about it.”

  People murmur, as if this turn of events was the last thing they expected.

  “I admit to offering her my help, in exchange for sex,” Zillard adds.

  Pandora and Vanessa gasp, and all three of my lovers tense. Silas’ amber eyes glow like fire, while the Lord Protector gives Zillard a murderous look. I shiver, my tongue numb.

  “Lucia Reid is a descendant of Adam and Lilith, his first wife,” Zillard continues. “Before Lilith had demons with Lucifer, her children were human. Lilith was a mistress of darkness from the start, which is probably why Lucia has her dark streaks. It’s also why she can open portals and summon demons. It’s why Professor Jones traced her power down to the volcano of the Forge, which is ruled by Lilith. It’s also why she could become the mother of the whore of Babylon—because the whore of Babylon is supposed to be a descendant of Lilith.

  “But we don’t know there aren�
��t other people like Lucia. It seems her foster parents were looking for kids like her, and you know what—they haven’t stopped.” He moves his hand in a circle, and opens a portal that functions as a screen showing my foster parents with a government worker, discussing a new adoption. There aren’t many supernaturals who can offer windows into the other realms, but this is Zillard Dark, son of Hades.

  “But,” I mumble, “the women from the vision I had of my past, the witches who first found me at the orphanage, they said—” I pause just to replay the scene in my head. “They said ‘they didn’t have a boy, they had a daughter.’”

  “I bet they meant your biological human parents, the line that they followed. It doesn’t mean you’re Lilith’s only descendant, in fact, that wouldn’t be even plausible.”

  “Do you hear yourself, Mister Dark?” Vanessa says pointedly, backed up by her sister and her crew. “Everything you say incriminates the Red Queen even more. I say we throw her into the pit, and you, Lord Protector, and your two wing men won’t be able to do anything about it.” She frowns and points her long witch finger at him. “You are bound to do the Council’s will, and the Council will surely decide to send her to Hell when they hear all of this.”

  “I agree,” I put in, which causes all eyes to find me. Vanessa’s frown deepens.

  “Are you saying you admit to all these accusations?”

  “I will, if you insist that I do,” I state calmly, feeling sure of myself. I just had the most brilliant idea. I might as well enjoy the show a little longer, but it hurts me to see Ramses, Silas and Maverick in pain and distress, ready to fight for me to the last drop of blood.

  “We all insist,” the Headmaster says.

  “Before you make your decision, I would like you to consider one thing, Headmaster.”

  “There is nothing for me to consider,” he dismisses, waving his hand. “I do want you to admit to the accusations.”

  “Very well,” I say, allowing the anger to rise from my chest to my throat. I give in to it, relaxing in its embrace and allowing myself to fall into its blackness. My vision changes like shifting water until I face the heat of Hell again, a burning black tree that moves like a living thing. It pierces the Headmaster from behind, it’s pointy stake sticking out of his chest while black blood seeps into his shirt.