Dark Water: A Collective World Novel (Academy's Rise Book 2)

by Lia Davis

  Relief flooded me. "Thank you. Just get away from the fighting. Think about the baby."

  As she walked off with Fenton she said, "And we’ll talk about this mating thing when this is over."

  "Yes, Mom. Love you!" I darted down the hall in the opposite direction, using my connection to my sisters to go the right way.

  Meda, Mom is safe, and I’m headed to you. Grief beat at my heart as I thought about Elijah.

  Thank Lucifer. Meda fell silent then added, Hurry. We’ll need the power of three with this crazy bitch.

  I used my inhuman speed to race across the mansion into the large study-like room in the opposite wing. I entered the room as Calista blasted Harper with a stream of magic. It hit Harper in the chest and she flew across the room, hitting the wall and sliding down to the floor, limp.

  Ami screamed, rushed to her and touched her face, her pain and rage washing over me, adding to the hatred I felt for Calista. With a low growl I turned and stood shoulder to shoulder with Meda, facing off the blonde demon.

  This ends now.

  18

  Ami

  Holding my power close, I followed Meda. Harper brought up the rear of our trio, ready to defend me with her life. Things had sure taken an about-face since Meda mated with Sterling, Peter, and Dorian.

  I didn't have time to think about my mates and how I'd been completely ignoring that they even were my mates. Sure, I'd taken to letting Harper and sometimes Noah hang around a lot, sleep in my bed and whatnot, but we hadn’t had sex or bonded, so weren’t we actually mates yet? Even Grandma Tina hadn't said anything about it.

  The top of the stairs opened up into a series of hallways, as well as a landing area that looked down on the entry room below. Meda pushed against the far wall, getting us out of sight of anyone that came in below. We didn't know if all the demons were outside or not, or even if Calista was actually here.

  Footsteps had me pushing back against the wall. I heard them a split-second before Harper did. She positioned her body slightly in front of mine, protecting me.

  A demon ran out of the hallway closest to us, but he was moving so fast he didn't see us. He did, however, see Tala, Elijah, and Fenton sneaking away across the huge room, directly opposite us. As he ran down the stairs then back up the set on the other side, I reached into Meda and drew on her power, creating a powerful ball of magical energy. Using my wind, I carried it across the room, faster than the demon could run, and slammed it into his back.

  He evaporated, his dust particles floating to the carpeted floor. "Gonna have to vacuum this place well before we move in."

  "And get new carpet," Harper said, inching past Meda and me to look down the hall the demon had run from. "Seems like this is a likely direction to go," she said.

  The hall went deeper into the wing, then split, going to the left and right. The left was the front of the house, and the right was the back.

  "If I was leading a demonic army, I'd want to watch...," I mused as I considered which direction we should go. Meda nodded, and Harper grinned.

  We went left, each of us focusing our energy on listening and smelling to see if anyone or anything was behind any of the doors.

  "Should we open them and look in?" I whispered.

  "No." Harper shrugged. "This is a trap. She wants us to come to her. She's not hiding. Wherever she is, she's waiting on us to walk in. She won't do that behind a closed door."

  We reached the front of the house and skirted around a window. I took a chance and looked out. "The battle is going strong, but reinforcements have arrived," I whispered. More vehicles were parked haphazardly in the lot, and hundreds of Collective battled the demons, but the demons seemed more plentiful as well. I tried to find Noah down there, but in the mess of fighting bodies, I didn't see him.

  Meda sidled up beside me and peered down. "Oh, I see Dorian," she whispered. "I hope they're all okay." I felt the desperation in her voice down to my soul. At least I had Harper with me. Meda's mates were scattered with Tala’s other two, fighting the horde of demons.

  "I hear something," Meda said so softly I almost didn't hear her. We took a defensive stance as an enormous demon stepped out of a room far down the hallway in front of us. He grinned, all horns and teeth, and ran toward us.

  Meda rolled her eyes, producing an impressively large energy ball in the palm of her hand. I felt her tug on my magic as it grew. With him being so far away, we had all the time in the world. The ball grew larger than any we'd thrown in practice, yet she still didn't throw it.

  The demon ran faster, bending at the waist and pointing his large horns toward us. "Uh, Meda?" I asked, wondering what the hell she was doing. "Throw it?"

  "Just making him feel like he's safe."

  What the heck? He could see the energy ball. No way he thought he was getting out alive.

  She waited until he nearly bowled us over to throw it, and hit him squarely in the face. It killed him instantly, dust shooting toward us with the momentum of the run he'd built up. No desire to be smacked in the face with dead demon dust, I threw my hands up, freezing everything in front of us.

  The demon's remains, a poof of black ash, froze in the middle of the hall. "Press yourselves against the wall, fast," I whispered.

  They did as I said, and when the magic ran out, his dust drifted almost entirely past us.

  "Yuck." I wrinkled my nose at the mess. "But I think we know where to go now."

  "Let's get this done." Meda swung the sword off of her back and stalked down the hall toward the door. I scrambled to follow, Harper on my tail, keeping an eye on our backs.

  Once at the door the demon had emerged from, we discovered Harper had been right. The door was actually a huge doorway, the room wide open.

  We walked in cautiously to find Calista sitting in a grandiose desk chair behind an oversized, old-fashioned desk.

  Two more of the gigantic, horned demons stood on either side of her. Harper took a defensive stance in front of Meda and I, but both of us formed a ball full of energy and our elements, as Tala had outside.

  Calista wore an evening gown. Like...what? Why? "Hello, sisters. Tell me, where is your lovely water sprite? I'd hoped she'd be joining us today."

  Her words betrayed her. She had done something to affect Tala. We'd suspected it, but had no way to figure out what it was.

  "Don't worry about her." Meda snarled and raised her sword, the ball of energy growing in her opposite hand.

  I didn't have a sword, but I had my air. Ignoring Calista, I looked at the demon closest to me. Calling a bit of wind, I reached out to Tala and, like Grandma Tina had instructed, pulled on her water. Outside in the hallway, I pulled moisture out of the walls and created a sliver of water. Freezing it with my air, arctic cold when I needed it to be, I raised it up. As it drifted past me, even I had a hard time pinpointing it in the air. It was too thin, almost invisible.

  It was also deadly sharp. Raising it to the right height, I shoved it into the closest demon's eye, pushing hard and fast with a gust of air until it drove into his brain. Then I broke part of it off and yanked it back and forth, turning his brain into a jumbled mess.

  Demons were magical creatures, sure, but once the icicle severed his brain stem, he was totally dead.

  His body hit the ground as Calista and the other demon stared in shock. Quickly, I formed another shard in front of the remaining demon and did the same process with him, not bothering to be sneaky.

  He hit the floor before Calista managed to rise from her chair. Probably should've tried doing that to her first.

  Swinging my gaze to her eyes, I grinned and formed one more shard, shooting it at her as fast as I could make my air move. It hit an invisible wall inches from her face and shattered. Well, shoot.

  Calista narrowed her eyes on me. "Ami. When did you grow a pair?"

  "They've always been there," I said, soft and sweet as I smiled. "I choose to keep them under wraps." Not even my sisters knew what I was capable of, not really. Har
per had a bit of a clue. At least, she hadn't underestimated me yet.

  Without warning, Calista threw a lightning bolt of magic toward Meda. I threw up my hands and froze it, but it didn't freeze her. Meda stepped to the side, and the bolt unfroze. My magic hadn't kept it in one place for long, but it was long enough.

  Tala popped into my mind as Meda and Calista followed the progress of the bolt. It slammed into the wall behind us, leaving a smoky, charred mess. I smothered it in oxygen-less air, something I'd learned to do as a child to help combat Meda's fire. I hadn't known what I was doing then, but learned later that fire can't survive without oxygen.

  Hmmm. That's an idea.

  Focusing on all the air around Calista's head, I sucked the oxygen out of it.

  Her eyes widened as her mouth opened and closed wordlessly. "It's hard to talk when you have nothing to breathe in, isn't it?

  Calista waved her arm, another bolt of lightning shooting out of her hand. It happened faster this time, probably due to her desperation, and I didn't react in time. It hit Harper square in the chest, lifting her off her feet and throwing her across the room and into the wall. She slid to the ground. As sure as I knew the sun rose in the morning, I knew she was dead.

  Screaming, I launched myself at her. When I touched her face, it was lifeless. She was gone.

  The world warped then. I wanted to fall to my knees and weep, but white-hot rage filled my veins. Whirling, I looked past Meda and Tala, who had appeared while I was focused on Harper. They stood together, facing away from me.

  I barely registered that Tala had something clinging to her back as I pointed at my sisters, my hands turning to claws as I mimicked the actions my brain was making.

  My psyche reached into them and yanked as much of their power toward me as I thought they could handle losing. Then, I twisted my hands, palm out, and threw as much of my freezing power as I could at Calista, backed by my sisters' magic.

  Something strange happened then. She didn't freeze. She went into some sort of slow motion, her white-blond hair floating around her face. As she did, Tala walked backward past me. When she stopped, eyes on Harper's body on the floor, I moved close and realized the thing on her back was a demon, about the size of a loaf of bread. The extreme clarity of the moment had exposed the demon to me. I followed her for a second as she moved backward. The demon had its claws sunk through her shirt into her skin. Fuck. This was what had been making her act funny, and none of us had seen it.

  Reaching out as she drifted past, I plucked it from the center of her back, the strength of my hybrid grip no match for its small body. I didn't bother trying to use any magic as I watched Tala leave the room, still walking backward. I ripped the demon apart, throwing the two halves in different directions. My eyes moved back to Harper, still dead on the floor. I didn't know what was making my sister walk backward out of the room, but as I considered turning and shooting Calista with all the magic I could suck out of the air, my sisters, and Poppy, Harper's chest began to glow.

  The slow motion continued, Harper's chest glowing brighter and brighter.

  As Harper's body moved, sliding up the wall, I finally realized what was happening.

  Time was reversing. Time was reversing. Sweet nectarines, it was going backward. And it had started when I tried to freeze Calista with an enormous amount of power.

  What if it stopped reversing too soon? What if it didn't go back far enough. I gathered more energy from my sisters, tapped into that spot that let me connect to Poppy and tried to grab his magic that way. It worked for my sisters, why not him?

  We'd been trying to get ahold of him all day, but he'd been blocked off. Finally, I got through. Poppy, we need you. And I need your magic. Now, Poppy, Now!

  His reply was instantaneous, and my grasping reach for more magic and energy was rewarded. Take what you need, child. You only ever had to reach out.

  Power like I'd never felt in my life filled me. This was the sort of power we were supposed to wield. All of our teachers always told us we had more power inside than they'd ever seen, but we'd never been able to tap into it.

  This was it. We had access to the full might of Hell, and we'd never known.

  Harper moved forward until she stood between Meda and I again, a shocked expression on her face. I sucked on the power from Poppy, keeping it at my fingertips, ready to react the second the reversal stopped. Harper stood, alive and breathing, a shocked expression on her face as she watched a lightning bolt shoot toward, well, away at the moment, from her.

  I felt the shift coming. The time-reversal was almost complete. I smiled and waited.

  Taking a small portion of the magic I held, I slammed a wall of energy and power up in front of the three of us. When the slow-motion stopped, and time righted itself, the lightning hit the wall and fizzled out instead of slamming into Harper. Calista's eyes widened in shock. "What just happened?"

  She looked around, actually scared. Tala ran in as Calista started to realize she was in over her head. "Help," she called. "Mother!"

  Tala stopped between us, pulling Harper out of the way. "Sit this one out, friend."

  I checked her back, but the demon hadn't returned. "How do you feel?

  "Like I was dying, and someone breathed new life into me."

  "Wait till you get a load of this." Laughing, I moved around Tala, into the center of my sisters, and took both of their hands. When we touched, we connected, and they felt the power coursing through my veins.

  "Everyone had it wrong," I said, and I felt my vision change. Glancing at my sisters, I realized their eyes were pitch black. "We didn't need to find our power," I said, my voice booming and deep. "We had to find our heritage."

  I nodded, funneling power from the deepest recesses of Hell to my sisters. Meda lifted her free hand and clenched, and Calista rose into the air.

  "Tala," I said, my voice still amped. "This bitch had a demon sucking the life out of you. It was attached to your back like a leech, but none of us saw it until I went into a weird time-space place."

  Tala's face swung to face me, comical with shock painted over her black eyes. "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," she said with a snarled lip.

  "Do the honors." I took my attention back to Calista and smiled. "It's been nice knowing you. We'll remember you in our prayers."

  Tala made a small ball in her hand, but it shone so bright it would've hurt my eyes if I hadn't been powered up. Calista closed her eyes against the brightness.

  Slowly, we walked forward to the spot Meda held Calista immobile with her power, and when we were close, Tala blew on the ball, using my air to drift it to Calista's face. It crept into her forehead painfully as she screamed.

  We knew when she was dead, because the screams stopped. She hung limp in Meda's power until she let her go. Her body fell to the floor with a thud.

  I funneled the power back to Hell. Thanks, Poppy.

  His chuckle answered me. Any time. It's always there for you.

  Huffing, I turned to see the doorway filled with family and friends, mates and sentries, all crowded in, watching. Their eyes were wide and mouths open.

  You could've told us, Poppy. The last of the power trickled out. I looked at my sisters to make sure their eyes were back to normal. They were, thankfully.

  "What in the world is going on?" My mom pushed her way forward.

  From the back, I heard one of Tala's mates, Kevin's voice, whispering. "That was fucking awesome. She's hot as fuck."

  Laughter overwhelmed us as all the important people in our lives crowded in to check on us and make sure we were okay.

  19

  Tala

  "I can’t believe Elijah is gone," Ami whispered beside me as entered the Collective Manor, following behind Meda, who followed our mother into the great room.

  I took her hand and leaned my head on her shoulder. "I...there was nothing I could do. He saved Mom’s life and our new little brother or sister." I sighed and pushed the emotions away a
gain. I’d have to deal with them soon. "I tried."

  Ami’s squeezed my hand. "I know. He will be honored as a hero."

  Now that the adrenaline had left our system, we were tired and emotional. It was like the what-the-fuck-did-we-do type of thing with a holy-shit-we-killed-someone thrown in for good measure.

  I felt my mates at my back, and that comforted me. Yet, it didn’t help my anxiety of knowing Mom was going to give us hell for scaring the life out of her. It was expected. She was High Alpha and our mom and extra emotional thanks to being pregnant.

  When we entered the great room, my gaze landed on Poppy, looking out the large window into the back yard. Meda, Ami, and I rushed to him and were instantly wrapped in his arms. He touched each of our faces and smiled wide. "I knew you’d find your powers."

  "We had them all along. We didn’t know that pulling on the power from Hell would amplify them that much." Ami bounced on her toes.

  He tapped her on the nose. "And you had to learn it on your own."

  Mom cleared her throat. My sisters and I looked at her at the same time. Her arms were crossed and her lips were pursed as she stared at us. We sighed and pulled out of Poppy’s embrace. Even Poppy had a sheepish look on his face as he looked at the mother of his grandchildren.

  It wasn’t until that moment that we realized almost all of the sentries had followed us into the great room, filling up a good portion of the space.

  Mom noticed too, because she said, "If you are not related to, or mated to, my daughters, please get out."

  Her voice boomed through the room, and I shivered. When the sentries that weren’t our mates left the room, Dad closed the double doors to give us more privacy. I knew better. I could feel a few nosey asses outside the doors, listening.

  Mom pointed at us. "Sit."

  We sat on the sofa. Dorian and Peter stood behind the it, by Meda. Sterling stood beside her on the end. I was in the middle so my mates stood behind me. Harper and Noah were close to Ami.