Chapter 4
SADIE
Iknew instantly that the severe, silver-haired woman who stood in the middle of the circular chamber was the one in charge of this place.
The robed piece of shit was just the welcoming party, and her lackey.
I eyed her warily as I took careful steps, still helping carry the brunette woman who moaned, her head lolling onto her shoulder.
That taser thing had seriously fucked with her. It was probably set on vampire level.
I kept my mind in the present, even if I was so close to spiralling, and fixed my stare on the silver-haired woman who stood with a stillness and poise that made me think she was a vampire until I registered the lack of screaming, instinctual warning.
Still, her arms were gloved from fingertip to elbow, giving her a timeless appearance.
That, or she was covering bloodstains and she’d just been up to her elbows in someone’s sternum. Vampire or not, she was a threat.
The hooded prick was something. A vampire, or a shifter.
But despite the aura that surrounded the woman who waited for us to join her beside the veiled woman sculpture, I had a feeling she was as human as I was.
Had she been dosed and dragged into this place once, like the rest of us?
Or was she a twin like my new kinda-friend?
I wanted to ask what the hell that meant, but I liked the thought of keeping my throat intact more than I craved answers, so I stayed silent as we halted a few feet away from the woman.
“Thank you, Ezren,” she said crisply, addressing the robed fucker. Ezren. Pretentious name. Was Ezra too ordinary for the knobhead kidnapper? “I know you must be confused,” she said to the rest of us. “Some of you will be angry, because you’ll already know where you are and for what purpose.”
“I’m plenty angry, and I have no idea what’s going on,” I muttered under my breath.
“You have all been recruited for Lunova Academy, where you’ll enrol tonight and begin your studies tomorrow.”
Huh. Guess Gran wasn’t full of shit when she mentioned going back to school after all. But what kind of academy drugged and abducted people?
“What if we don’t want to enrol?” the male kidnappee asked sharply.
The silver-haired woman smiled. It wasn’t a reassuring smile meant to put his mind at ease; it was the smile of a wolf who’d sighted her dinner. “If you choose to leave tonight—which you are free to do—you’ll be left outside the boundary.”
For the wolves to rip us apart and gnaw on our intestines. Pass.
“If you choose—wisely—to remain,” she went on, meeting each of our stares, neatly passing over the now-unconscious brunette as if it was a normal sight, “you will be provided with accommodations, meals, and all the equipment needed for your studies. You will also be paid a stipend equal to twenty thousand pounds or twenty-three thousand euros for every term.”
My eyes widened, and I blinked once, then twice. Twenty grand for every… I lifted my hand and waited for the woman to nod at me. “How long is a term?”
“Three months.”
Damn, okay. Twenty grand every three months. That was ninety for a year, assuming the vampires didn’t eat me before I could enjoy the money. Ninety thousand pounds and no rent due.
“Are bills covered?” I asked in my most polite voice.
“You will have no bills.”
Twenty thousand every three months, free rent, and no bills? Well, shit. Gran might have done me a favour by drugging me.2
“When you say studies,” Nose Ring Girl said suspiciously. There was an accent there, soft and musical, that made me think the euros applied to her. “You don’t genuinely mean we’ll be killing werewolves?”
“I do.” The woman’s expression didn’t waver.
“That is Lunova Academy’s purpose. This is a war academy, where the finest warriors are trained to kill the vampires’ mortal enemy.
More will be explained at your initiation tomorrow, but I’ll warn you now.
Wolves are ruthless, monstrous, and without mercy.
We’ve been at war with the four packs for ninety three years, and if they aren’t defeated, their kind will overrun Lunova and tarnish any culture, community, and goodness we have here. ”
She definitely believed in her spiel, I’d give her that.
But I was naturally resistant to impassioned speeches, and cynical enough to see it as propaganda, so it didn’t exactly inspire me to take up a gun and shoot silver bullets into the wolf pack apparently lurking outside the boundary.
Still, I nodded like a good little kidnappee.
Talk of ninety thousand pounds had made me shockingly well behaved.
“And when they’ve sullied everything good here,” she went on, looking at me, Nose Ring Girl, and the guy who now looked like he’d swallowed a lemon, “they will pass through the cracks into your world.”
Interesting. I bet those cracks were how we’d been smuggled here.
Into wherever the fuck Lunova even was. Maybe it was somewhere on the edge of Earth; maybe it wasn’t a new world, after all.
I felt better when I thought I was still somewhere within a flight’s distance of home, even if those seven moons lurked in my mind, accusingly.
And there were vampires in this place, training to murder freaking werewolves.
Just let me have my delusion, dammit.
“So it is in your interest to work with us to defeat them,” she added.
Ezren was definitely picking up when she was putting down; he nodded emphatically.
Definitely a wolf hater. I’d never met a wolf, even a regular, non-shifting kind in a zoo, so I couldn’t say I had any strong feelings either way.
I had big feelings about that stipend, though.
A year at Lunova Academy and I’d go home with enough money to set me up somewhere new, far from the flat where I’d lived with—and been betrayed by—Gran. My mind was already made up, but I made a token effort at listening to her recruitment speech.
“So, if we stay, we’ll be made to fight wolves?” the sneering male said, his head at a cocky angle. Something about him reminded me of Derek, and that alone made me wish to see him eaten by wolves. “What if they kill us?”
“They won’t,” the woman—headmistress?—said with steely confidence. “We only train the best at Lunova.”
“The best, plus all the people you’ve kidnapped,” I said under my breath. Apparently not under my breath enough, because her stare pierced me and sent my heart into a clattering beat.
“You were all volunteered for this position,” she said with something like affront, and I laughed loud enough that the sound carried around the circular room. “Your families were paid very handsome finders fees.”
“Shame none of that finders fee made its way to me,” I drawled, and waved a hand when she began to launch into another speech.
3 “Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in. Sign me up for wolf killing and generous stipends.
But if you want us to act like this is a normal academy, and you’ve done us a favour by bringing us here, you might want to switch up your mode of transport.
Prison wagons tend to put people in a bad mood. ”
Nose Ring Girl edged closer to me, as if she’d decided I’d make a good ally. Or maybe my big mouth would get me in trouble and take the heat off her.
The male kidnappee stabbed his finger at me. “Exactly. This is bullshit.”
“I don’t speak for you, cocksleeve,” I quipped.
He paused in the middle of a reply, and didn’t seem to know how to finish.
“You want us to sign up to kill people we’ve never met,” Nose Ring Girl said, wrapping her arms around her middle. “I’ve never even killed an ex-boyfriend; I can’t kill a wolf.”
The silver-haired woman raised her hand to indicate the corridor behind them. “You can be taught how to fight, you can be moulded into a slayer the likes of which can never be defeated in battle, but what we can’t do is change an unwilling attitude. If that’s your choice, you can leave.”
And get attacked by the wolves she refused to kill. What a lovely choice. Nose Ring Girl dropped her stare to the floor and said nothing else.
“The wolves are not innocent,” the headmistress, boot camp instructor, whatever she was, said with feeling.
“They have slaughtered countless innocents, both human and vampire. The history of their packs is bloody and ugly, and they have their own fortress where wolves are raised to kill innocent vampires.”
Innocent vampires, or the killers from this academy? I could recognise political spin when I heard it. I gave her an unimpressed look.
I startled, my heart throwing itself into a desperate lurch when the brunette leaning against me groaned and crashed back into consciousness all at once.
She looked from me to the blonde holding her, to the rounded room around us and the statue of the veiled woman with her head in her hands, and then her mouth dropped open when she saw the severe, silver-haired drill sergeant.
“Blood and silver,” she said with the ring of a curse. “So this really is Lunatic Academy.”
“Lunova Academy,” she was sharply corrected.
“And you’re Laura Mortem,” the brunette whispered, terror shining in burgundy eyes.
She said her name the same way I’d breathe a serial killer’s name if I found myself in a dead-end alley with them.
Laura—with the Lau rhyming with vow, not law the way I was used to.
It made the name harder somehow, gave it edges sharp enough to cut if we pissed her off.
I really should be running for my life. It was the only sensible thing to do. But that taser remained firmly in my memory, and I had no desire to meet the sharp end of a wolf’s fangs, either. My common sense waged a battle against that glowing sum of money, and I blamed capitalism for which won.
“Now that you’re all conscious,” the silver-haired woman—Laura Mortem—said crisply. “We can begin. If you wish to run, do so now. Otherwise, follow me.”
I waited to see if anyone would run, but even the guy and the terrified brunette stuck around.
Guess we were all doing this. Enrolling at an academy that trained captives to murder wolves.
I hope your cabana boys are worth it, I thought in a hiss at Gran. If I make it through this training, I’m coming right for you.