Chapter 8
SADIE
“Wolves are the enemy,” Reed—not Winslow Reed—bellowed as the four of us and five other slayers—presumably the shittest ones—lined up before her.
“Never—ever—feel sympathy for a shifter. If I catch you feeling sorry for those rabid mutts, I’ll toss you over the boundary line so you can get up close and personal with them. ”
That was her favourite threat, I’d noticed.
“They’re mindless scum who exist only to fight, fuck, and destroy civilisation so their crude pack traditions can eradicate ours. You’re lucky that you’ve found yourself here in Lunova Academy where we’ll teach you how to defend yourself against their kind.”
I raised an eyebrow—and quickly flattened it back into place before Reed could see.
But I couldn’t help the scepticism. Anyone who’d taken a single history class or done one Wikipedia deep dive knew those were the words thrown around by the oppressors to belittle other cultures.
But what did I know? Maybe the werewolves were as vicious as she said they were.
Or maybe the shifters had their own warnings about vampires.
As far as I’d gathered, they had their own academy where they trained wolves to kill vampires, so they couldn’t be as mindless as Reed liked to think.
I didn’t dare say that to the woman, though. I kept my mouth shut when her glare swung my way, and exhaled in relief when it moved onto Paige, then Lawrence, and Elix.
“There should be five of you,” Reed barked. “Where’s the other one?”
I shook my head, clueless. I’d been waiting for Fioranna to catch up to us; I figured she’d got lost in the labyrinth of rooms. But it had been an hour now. Maybe she’d decided to run after all.
“Useless,” Reed muttered. “Who are we missing?”
“Fioranna,” I spoke up when it was clear no one else would. “I don’t know her surname.”
“Names are meaningless anyway,” Reed replied, every word a blunt weapon. She took a piece of paper out of her bra and barked, “Which one are you?”
“Sadie,” I replied quickly, not wanting to draw her ire lest she volunteer to fight me instead of one of the lower-ranked slayers. “Sadie Blackhouse.”
“Sadie will do.” She clicked her fingers at Lawrence, and snorted when he provided his full name, noting it down along with Paige’s. “And you?”
“Elix,” I offered when my friend’s signed reply got a blank look from our tutor. “Her name’s Elix.”
“Elixir,” Reed muttered, scratching something on her paper. I gave Elix a look; her name was Elixir, and she called herself Elix? I’d never shut up about it if I was called Elixir. I wanted to say something about that, but when Reed put her paper away and regarded us, I snapped my mouth shut.
“Right then, what are you waiting for?” she barked. “One of you, get in an arena. I don’t care who goes first, or which arena you choose, just get inside a damn circle.”
“Lawrence should go first,” I said politely, smiling at the pompous prick. “Since he’s the highest ranked socially.” When he glared at me, I added, “Your father works in parliament, doesn’t he?”
His eyes narrowed, and if I hadn’t earned myself an enemy in him last night, I certainly did now.
“Thank you for volunteering for the first fight, Smartass,” Reed said, marching over to grab my arm and tow me towards the ring. “It shows real courage to offer yourself as the first opponent.”
“I didn’t,” I protested.
Reed’s smirk became a lopsided grin. “I don’t disagree about Lawrence,” she said so he could hear her. “He’s a haughty brat by all accounts. But since you were the first to open your mouth, you’re the first to fight. Now choose your arena.”
I eyed the flattened bit of grass she’d led me to, and the others arranged around it. Six in total, all surrounded by a pebbled border. Like the seating area around a firepit in someone’s back garden, minus the fire pit. And the seats.
“They’re all the same,” I pointed out.
Reed raised her eyebrows. “Then there’ll be no consequences for choosing badly.”
I glanced back at Elix and Paige for help. The latter gave me a double thumbs up and a wince. The former… Elix was looking at the stone rings, at the stones themselves. She met my eyes and deliberately looked at the arena two across from the one Reed had led me to.
The trainer laughed as I walked through the grass between arenas and only hesitated a split second before stepping inside the one Elix indicated.
I better be able to trust that woman. If I was betrayed by my gran and my newly minted bestie in less than twenty-four hours, my trust would never recover.
“Surly, you’re up,” Reed barked at the line of slayers waiting to fight us.
“It’s Suri,” a woman with tawny skin replied, her voice as sharp as a razor. She strode towards where I waited inside the circle, her movements loose and sure, black hair braided down her back almost as tightly as Reed’s hair.
Like the others, she was dressed in dark, tight fitting clothes.
Nothing loose that might get tangled, or caught by an opponent.
I was suddenly glad for the well-stocked drawers in my new room, because the black jeans and long-sleeved shirt I’d thrown on, half asleep, would work in a fight a lot more than my damn work uniform.
My hair, though… falling loose around my shoulders as it was, it’d be so easy to grab a fistful and rip it out.
A quick glance at my wrist showed Ezren hadn’t thought to confiscate my hair band like he had my phone.
Or maybe Gran had kept that to pawn for more tequila sunrises.
As Suri strode closer, in no hurry, the wait making my nerves keen enough to cut me, I ripped the bobble off my wrist and tied my hair back.
A low ooh went through the crowd, and I blinked. Huh. Maybe putting my hair up was a power move.1
I assessed Suri as she stepped over the pebbled outline of the arena—the space was no more than twelve feet across, which put her unsettlingly close—but I had no idea what to look for.
She certainly moved like a killer, all smooth motion and loose arms. It was hard to believe she was one of the worst fighters in the academy, and that her head was on the chopping block, not mine.
No, wait, I stand corrected. This was a fight to the death, so we were both mincemeat.
It occurred to me as Reed barked at a crowd member trying to get a closer look, keeping our audience several feet back, that this was a fight to the death.
I’d been a little fixated on the likelihood that these were my final few minutes on Earth,2 and it didn’t hit me until right now that if I wanted to survive, I had to kill someone.
“This can’t be right,” I muttered, shaking my head as Suri rotated her shoulder, then her wrists.
She didn’t attempt to trash talk me, which was nice, instead keeping a steely, silent exterior, which was less nice.
To Reed I said, “If you need slayers so badly you’re kidnapping us from other worlds, surely you need both of us.
A fight to the death is a waste of life. ”
“A bad slayer is a waste of life,” she replied, frowning as Sidonie paced closer, over some invisible line Reed had decided was close enough. Her sister looked concerned for both of us within the circle, but I noticed she didn’t step in to plead my case, or Suri’s. Like I thought: complicit.
“Begin,” Reed barked.
Begin what? I wanted to shout. I’ve never fought anyone in my life!3 But the ground changed under my feet, suddenly shifting, loose like sand. But from the corner of my eye, I saw it was grey.
Dust? Or ashes from the bones of slayers who’d be murdered here?
Suri lunged at me. I stumbled backwards, throwing up my hands in pure instinct to knock her arm aside.
Actually, I did get into one fight in high school.
Angie Ripon called my then-bestie a toad-faced cretin, and I ripped her cheap extensions out.
But I stood no chance of beating someone trained to be a slayer, even if they were at the bottom of the list. Then again, Reed had said nothing about a clean fight.
I tried to keep light on my feet like a boxer,4 and watched Suri evaluate me. She probably knew what she was looking for. Her stare dragged down my body, finding every strength, every weakness, and I narrowed my eyes at her calculation.
Alright, enough foreplay.
I flung myself across the arena at her, swallowing a squeal when the ashes made me skid. It gave me a little extra pizazz as I threw my fist at her side, managing a messy feint she really ought to have seen right through. I wasn’t subtle.
I grabbed her braid and yanked hard, Suri’s scream equally of rage and hurt as strands pulled from her scalp, and I wrapped the long braid around my wrist.
“I will not be beaten by a slug,” she snarled with so much force that spittle flung from her mouth.
“Hey,” I complained, balling my fist5 and driving it into her ribs. Motherfucker, that hurt. Fire blazed across my knuckles, and only my ego kept me from shaking out my hand in front of an audience of fifty skilled killers. “Who are you calling slug?”
“You,” Suri hissed, and drove her elbow into my gut.
With a grunt, I folded over, but my hand tightened instead of loosening.
By happy accident, I yanked so hard that Suri was forced to the ground.
Not one to look a gift assassin in the mouth, I threw myself down on top of her, using my grip on her braid to drive her head into the ground, once, then twice to daze her.
“End it, Sadie, or free yourself, Suri,” Reed barked from the side line.
“I’m not killing someone,” I argued, more shrieking than I planned. “Wolves are one thing, but a humanish woman is something else.”
“Humanish?” Suri bucked under me, and I sucked in a wounded breath when a punch hit my ribs, first on the left, then the right.
Tears stabbed into my eyes; one escaped and trickled down my cheek as pure, white-hot fire ripped through my body.
The pain was so startling and sudden that I could only process it as heat. “I am a twin, you fucking slug.”
Clearly that was a slur.
“Yeah, well, I’m an only child,” I threw back, as if that meant anything. It meant about as much to me as twin.
“You’re nothing more than shit under my shoe,” Suri seethed, but I saw it in her eyes as she fought to unseat me.
She was terrified. She might not even mean what she said; under different circumstances, we might even be cordial.
We might even be friends. But this was not a place for friends; it was a school for killers.
A pathetic little moan came from me when Suri hammered blows on my ribs, my chest, and my stomach.
A particularly brutal one knocked all the air from my lungs, and I frantically tightened my grip on her hair, sure this was the moment she’d overpower me, get her hands around my throat, and choke me to death.
Instead, she changed tactics, first attempting to push me off her with all her strength.
She was trained, and knew how to punch, but I must have been twice her weight, and I wasn’t going anywhere.
I drove a sad attempt at a punch into her stomach, wanting her to feel the spiky pain I did.
My lungs were tight, pained, and still hadn’t recovered.
There was no part of my upper body that didn’t burn, scream, or howl with pain.
The shock of it had begun to wear off, or maybe I’d burned through my adrenaline supply, because I was starting to feel it now: the agony.
The sharp, grinding bite of excruciating pain.
Was something broken? There was no way this was just bruising, surely. I could hardly breathe, and it hurt to hit her, to ball my fist and slam it into her toned stomach.
“I am a trained slayer,” Suri snapped, seemingly to herself.
“A shit one,” I input, fighting the heaviness of my arms as pain raged to punch her again. It was weak, clumsy.6
“I will not be killed by a slug.”
“How about a snail?” I snarked, wasting valuable breath. It kept me sane, grounded me in the moment, and gave me enough strength to hit her again. “I’ve always liked snails.”
By sheer luck, my mouth had closed when she grabbed a fistful of ashes from the arena floor and threw them into my eyes. Positive: I wasn’t choking on ash. Negative: I couldn’t fucking see.
My eyes streamed, burning, gritty, and with a throaty growl, I wrenched hard on her braid until something snapped. The pain clearly debilitated Suri because she allowed me to climb off her, rubbing at my eyes even though it only made the scratching, scalding, knifing sensation worse.
“We have a victor,” Reed’s powerful voice boomed over the murmur of the crowd. “Sadie has won a place at Lunatic Academy.”
“By sheer dumb luck,” a woman sneered, her voice beautiful but the tone pure ugliness. I could guess who had spoken, and I bet she wore a brown leather jacket.
“And here I thought eating the damn pudding had won me a place,” I muttered, tears flowing, helping to clear some of the grit from my eyes. I still didn’t dare open them.
“Rogue, assist Sadie out of the arena,” Reed ordered. “Elix, you’re next; choose an arena. Fritz, I want you fighting her.”
“Why do I have to fight the mute weirdo?” a guy complained in a thin, reedy voice.
“Say that again, I fucking dare you,” I snapped, opening my eyes even though that was a dumbass thing to do. Ashes scraped my eyeballs, but I could see.
Through a blurry haze, I saw the silver-haired, sculpted-face prick who’d insulted my friend.
I saw Elix where she walked, resigned, into the arena in front of mine.
I saw the curvaceous, drop-dead-beautiful redhead I’d spied at breakfast stepping over the boundary of the ashen arena, her hands raised to help me.
“Easy, kitten,” she said, half laughing. “That’s Elix’s kill, not yours.”
I might have replied, but now I could see, there was no missing where Suri lay in the arena, her braid a snake in the ash and her eyes empty. Dead.
“What?” I breathed, the word slipping out unintentionally.
I stared, and stared. “She—there’s no way she’s dead.”
“You snapped her neck with her braid,” the redhead—Rogue—explained, her voice as beautiful as the rest of her. “Come on, let’s get your eyes healed.”