Chapter 3
SADIE
Academy, the hooded bastard had said. Lunova Academy.
It certainly seemed more like a university than some pervy lord’s abode when we crested the wide grey steps, swallowed into the high-ceilinged interior.
Golden light shone from metal uplighters, and the sconces on the wall were filled with pools of light, not the fire I expected.
That was promising. Electricity meant there’d be modern plumbing, too.
Staircases crisscrossed the space above our heads, the grey stone turned warm by the golden light, and framed diplomas were hung on the wall alongside paintings that looked as old as the ones I’d seen in the National Gallery—and medieval weapons.
Axes, flails, spears, and things I didn’t even have names for.
What a wonderful sight to inspire a sense of safety and calm.
Just what a girl wanted to see when she’d been kidnapped and taken to a place that apparently had seven fucking moons.
1 Weapons sharp enough to wage wars. Some of them were speckled with darker patches, as if they had been used to wage wars.
Plaques beside them probably detailed which battles, but I wasn’t keen to look too close.
I kept my attention on the many staircases, the stone mezzanines above—four floors of them—and the arched ceiling. Like something from a cathedral, it caught our low murmurs and amplified them until our jailor barked for silence.
I didn’t know the name of the woman I helped carry inside, or the blonde who supported her other side, and I wasn’t yet brave enough to ask.
I kept my wide eyes on the archways we passed as the robed jailor bastard led us through the airy atrium, past statues of women in armour and men wielding swords, and alcoves that houses busts of important-looking people.
One of them had their mouth parted in a hiss, the stone of their canine teeth sharpened into threateningly sharp points.
Fangs. That bust had fangs, and my overactive imagination hit an all time high.
My mind spiralled faster than a rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and plummeted quicker than my standards when I was horny.
“Fangs,” I whispered, as loudly as I dared, which wasn’t loud at all. My heart thrummed faster, fear making a wreckage of my breathing.
Stay calm, Sadie. There’s nothing to worry about. The rich fucker who owns this place has a vampire fetish, that’s all.
But the blonde woman nodded, looking paler than even outside which was impressive. She didn’t speak, but just having someone to make silent conversation with made me feel less alone. I could cope with anything as long as I wasn’t alone.
Well. Maybe I couldn’t cope with vampires.
My glances into the alcoves and arched doorways were less curious now than terrified. Did vampires lurk in the shadows, waiting to leap out and make us their midnight snack?
“Hey,” one of the others said, a black woman with dark hair streaked green in the front, a nose ring, and jeans that looked like they were meant to be ripped, instead of the result of the abduction.
“Sir,” she tacked on, as if stroking the robed fucker’s ego might save her. “You said this was an academy.”
“I did,” he replied, an ominous vibration of noise. It made my hindbrain scream again, but running hadn’t turned out so well for the brunette slumped against me. Listening to that terrified voice would get me shot, incapacitated, and still stuck in this godforsaken place.
The only thing worse than being here, in this moment, with no idea if the next turn in the corridor would deliver me onto some vampire lord’s banquet platter, was being weak and unable to defend myself while I was delivered onto that vampire’s banquet platter.2
“An academy where?” Nose Ring Girl asked, keeping her voice a level of politeness I appreciated even if I knew I stood no chance of emulating it.
The hooded man paused where the narrow corridor met a circular chamber made of silver stone, the blocks that made up the walls bigger than my head.
I still couldn’t see within the shadows of his hood even with golden light emanating from lights all around the chamber, but it illuminated just how broad our jailor was.
A good foot taller than me, too. Practically impossible to beat in a fight.
Which made running and fighting off the table.
But what was left? Surrender? Obedience? Fuck, no.
“This is Lunova Academy,” the hooded prick said, and seemed to scan each of us, his head swinging from one of us to the next. “How many of you are human?”
“Is that optional?” I blurted before I could stop myself, and in the pause that followed, I imagined a snake’s smile crossing his face.
“Yes,” he replied. Steely. Cold.
“Human,” Nose Ring Girl said, holding up her hand.
I did, too. So did the man who’d clearly realised his life was at stake because he’d been quiet for minutes.
The brunette didn’t, which was understandable.
Poor woman was probably woozy as hell. But the blonde beside me didn’t indicate that she was human. Which made her… what?
The hooded fucker’s gaze lingered on her, and protectiveness made me want to break his nose even as I got stuck on the not human answer the blonde gave.
She was the closest thing I had here to a friend, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about being besties with a…
a what? I thought of the bust, the fangs, and gave her a wide-eyed stare.
She didn’t look like a vampire. But if I wasn’t completely fucking insane, if I actually entertained the thought of vampires existing, I had to admit I didn’t know what vampires even looked like. Probably not like Dracula cosplayers, which was my only experience with them.
“Twin?” our jailor asked, still focusing on the blonde.
I narrowed my eyes in warning, but doubted he saw.
Or cared even if he did see. I had no power here.
And if this place really did belong to a vampire lord, I was hardly a threat.
What was I going to do? Jab my pen into his jugular?
It’d be like fighting a lion with a toothpick.
My kinda-friend nodded, confirming whatever twin meant, and the jailor’s attention swung back to the rest of us.
“In your world, your only intelligent species is human,” he began.
“Actually, that’s not true,” the human man input. “There have been multiple studies—”
The hooded guy just spoke over him. “In Lunova there are vampires, humans, and shifters.”
I laughed. He didn’t.
“Shifters,” I repeated. “As in shapeshifters.”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “They are the scum of this world, as you’ll come to learn. That’s why you’re here.”
Why we’ve been kidnapped, I thought, but managed not to say out loud.
“You’re feeding us to werewolves?” Nose Ring Girl snapped, her voice echoing into the rounded chamber where a newcomer now waited beside a statue of a veiled woman with her head in her hands.
I startled at the sight, wondering if she’d snuck into the room so soundlessly because she was a vampire. I’d been going about this all wrong. It wasn’t a rich vampire lord who’d brought us here, it was a vampire lady.
“Not feeding you to them,” the woman said, drawing the attention of everyone else. “Training you to kill them.”