Zodiac Academy: The Awakening As Told By The Boys

My right hand was locked so tightly in a fist, it was starting to shake. My gaze was riveted to two people on the dancefloor, and it was taking every ounce of willpower I had to remain standing there in favour of destroying the man touching Darcy Vega.

Seth Capella’s hands were roaming all over her as they danced like there was no one else here but them. They were staring at each other, exchanging flirtatious smiles and their mouths were getting all too close all too many times.

Through the thump of the music and clamour of voices, it was difficult to focus on the words that passed between them, but I managed to catch a couple of sentences.

“Fuck being enemies, I wanna be your friend tonight,” Seth purred in her ear, his fingers twisting into the blue ends of her hair and making me spit a snarl.

Darcy laughed, clearly drunk as her fingers slid down his arm while his other hand dropped onto her ass, drawing her even closer and squeezing hard.

No.

“What kind of friends act like this?” she laughed again and he nuzzled the side of her head, a carnal look entering his eyes that made my canines sharpen.

All rational thought was exiting my mind until I was nothing but an animal about to attack. I knew in that second I was going to do it. I was going to shoot over there, tear Seth Capella off of her and make him bleed for touching her like that. She was my gir- Source.

“The best of friends,” he answered with a wolfish grin and I took a step forward, but suddenly Darius was there with a scowl the size of a Dragon’s tail, blocking my line of sight.

“Well?” he demanded irritably like I’d just punched him in the cock.

“Well what?” I sniped back and he frowned. “Oh right, yeah. We need to go hunting.”

I gritted my teeth, crushing them to dust in my mouth as I forced my feet to move towards the exit, refusing to let myself look back. Darius walked stiffly at my side, seeming as pissed off as I did to be leaving and judging by how hard he’d been grinding himself against Tory Vega, I had to wonder if she was the reason. I glanced at my friend and caught him looking back.

“What?” he snapped and I looked away again.

“Nothing,” I grunted. “I’m just in the mood to kill something.”

“Same. Let’s find the fucking Nymph and make it suffer.” His eyes turned to reptilian slits and a group of guys in our way scarpered aside as they saw us coming.

We made it outside and Francesca nodded to me further up the road, beckoning us towards an alleyway there.

I uncurled my still clenched right hand, my knuckles white as I flexed them and brought magic to my fingertips. Is she gonna go home with him? Is she gonna fuck him?

She can’t. He’s a fucking Heir. The worst fucking Heir.

The urge to go back was rising in me and I had to force my legs to keep moving away from that nightclub. There was a Nymph out here somewhere, that was my priority. Not whether or not Darcy Vega chose to fuck an Heir. My heart thumped a painful tune in my chest, continuing its plea with me to go back. To stop her from making the most stupid decision of her life. She was too good for that Wolf asshole. Too sweet. He didn’t deserve to get his hands on her flesh. I pictured her pinned beneath him and stopped dead in the street.

“Lance,” Francesca hissed frantically as Darius glanced back at me. “I spotted it. It’s gone this way.” She pointed down the alley and my mind shifted back into gear.

I kept going, taking a breath to clear my head and trying to force all thoughts of her out. But she wouldn’t leave.

A scream pitched through the air that made my blood chill and suddenly I was running, tearing along with Darius and Francesca into the alley behind the nightclub.

I put on a burst of Vampire speed, shooting down into the darkness and feeling the rattling suck of a Nymph’s presence just before I saw it. Its hulking form was hunched over a girl on the ground, its probes in her back, the red glow of its eyes igniting the side of her face.

Geraldine Grus.

She looked unconscious and panic slashed through my chest as I took the switchblade from my pocket, removing the concealment spell so it grew to a large silver sword in my hand. I leapt forward and slammed it down into the Nymph’s back with a surge of energy, aiming for its heart with one powerful strike but a shriek left the monster as it jerked aside before I could hit my target. Shit.

It swung around and I blasted a furious wave of air magic at it before it could lock my power down with its rattle and cursed as I realised how low on power I was running.

The Nymph’s rattle filled my head and worked to shut down everything I had and I snarled, running forward and stabbing my sword at its chest instead, using my speed to outmanoeuvre it this time and slamming it hard and deep into its heart.

The Nymph exploded into ash and shadows before my eyes and relief fell over me as I won the fight.

“Darius get out of here!” I barked at him, turning back to find him running up behind me.

“But-”

“No fucking buts,” I snapped as I fell to my knees to try and heal Grus. “You can’t be found at the scene of another attack. Even your father can’t save you from this if the FIB find you again. Francesca get him out of here.”

She grabbed his arm, obeying immediately and Darius swore as he stared at me before giving in to my glare and running back down the alley. I kept one hand pressed to Geraldine’s back as I did my best to heal the holes carved into it by the Nymph and pulled my Atlas out with the other, dialling star-star-star.

“Stay with me, Grus,” I barked.

“Babbling brooks, don’t kill me you fantagoon,” she mumbled before passing out again.

“Come on, wake up,” I growled.

My magic poured out of me in wave after wave as I gave her everything I had left, fighting to keep her alive as the well inside me hollowed out and left me utterly drained. The wound had been deep and it still wasn’t close to healed. She needed a special healer for an injury placed there by Nymph probes and she needed them fast. I couldn’t do it myself but I was sure as fuck going to try.

“What’s your emergency?” a woman answered.

“Nymph attack. Havenfire Street, Tucana,” I barked. “Hurry.”

“A team have been dispatched via stardust, they’ll be with you in three…two…one. May the stars be with you.” The call disconnected and I shot a warning message to the professor group chat I was a part of to ensure the students in town got rounded up ASAP. This Nymph might have been dealt with, but we still had a suspected nest close by and what was to say there weren’t more of them on the hunt tonight?

I scooped Geraldine into my arms as she started to come round again, a breath of relief leaving me.

“Goldfish in a ganderbush,” she mumbled, pawing at my chest. “What muscular beast has me in its grasp?”

I shot out of the alleyway, finding an ambulance there with paramedics spilling onto the street and rolling a stretcher towards me as I came to a halt. I laid Geraldine on it and her fingers curled around my arm.

“Where are my queens? Are they safe? Tell me my dear queens are safe from harm and I shall go into the stars’ embrace without fear.” She looked delirious, staring up at the sky like she really was about to die.

“What happened?” a paramedic demanded of me.

“A Nymph,” I growled under my breath and his eyes widened in shock as he nodded, hurrying to attend her with his colleagues.

A shriek sounded from behind me and I glanced around, finding Marguerite Helebor there with a couple of dolled up junior girls while people started pouring out of the nightclub behind her. “Oh my stars! Geraldine Grus is dying!”

“Calm down,” I barked. “No one’s dy-” I tried, but she was already running into the nightclub, screaming out, “Geraldine Grus has just been attacked! They’re saying she might die!”

For fuck’s sake.

A crowd made up of mostly Zodiac Academy students and some professors was growing on the street and I backed up as Geraldine was cared for by the paramedics, my heart rate slowly coming down.

“Oh sweet mother, I am coming to you. My darling dote of a damselfly, how I’ve missed you,” Geraldine said in a shuddering voice, passing out as one of the paramedics injected her with something. They lifted her into the back of the ambulance and some of them climbed in after her and pulled the door shut.

“You saved her life,” one paramedic said to me. “It’s a good thing you found her before her attacker could finish the job.”

“I was only just powerful enough. I haven’t got a drop of magic left,” I muttered. There were too many witnesses to say more than that right now; it would cause a mass panic, but I knew it wouldn’t be long before the report came out that this was a Nymph attack.

The paramedic moved away, giving me a line of sight into the crowd and my gaze latched onto Darcy. I was so starved, I moved before I was even aware of making the decision, colliding with her and driving my fangs into her neck.

She squealed in fright and I growled deeply as I drank the sweet nectar of her blood, shutting my eyes and enjoying every second of it. She felt connected to me by it, her spiking pulse seeming to thump within my own body and I relished the feeling of having her power in my grasp. I lost all sense of everything as I fell into the needs of my Order and the desire to devour this girl’s magic. I wanted every last drop. I needed more of her. Everything.

She clawed at my arm and I enjoyed the contact, holding her firmly against my hip as my cock began to throb. I was in the middle of a crowd of students and this was the wrong fucking time to get turned on for so many reasons. But hell she tasted so good. And it was more than that, I had her in my arms again and I didn’t want to let go. She was the summer sun after the longest winter of my life and all I wanted to do was bask in her glow. Especially after I’d seen Capella touching her. This girl didn’t belong to him. I’d staked my claim and maybe that should have only been about her blood, but it was becoming clear to me that it was far more than that. I didn’t want anyone but me getting this close to her. And I’d fight any rival I had to to keep it that way.

“Hey,” Tory snapped, shoving me roughly to try and force me off of her sister but I was in a frenzy and I couldn’t stop. “That’s enough!”

I released a growl in warning for her to back off, but then she shoved me with fire in her palms, the power behind the blast sending me staggering backwards and freeing Blue from my hold. My head was spinning with so much power I felt drunk and my breaths came heavily as I realised how much blood I’d just taken. Far too much.

There were two hand marks singed into my chest, my shirt smoking and my flesh reddened, and Tory looked ready to burn me alive if I took so much as a step closer to her sister again.

“You’ve had enough!” Tory snarled and I bared my fangs at the challenge in her voice.

“Maybe you want to donate to the cause then?” I snapped, but I was just trying to deflect from how much I wanted her sister, how every student close by had witnessed me go fully savage on Darcy Vega like I had no self control at all.

Caleb appeared, dropping an arm around Tory’s shoulders and releasing a deep growl in the back of his throat. “You might want to rethink that statement, Professor.”

I stared at them when I really wanted to be looking at Darcy, but I feared if I did, I’d lunge at her again. And I wasn’t sure I’d stop this time. Fuck. What’s wrong with me?

I shook my head to try and clear it, taking a breath as I realised my magic reserves were full and I didn’t need any more blood. This craving left in me wasn’t anything to do with my power reserves. It was purely about the girl I could see glaring at me in the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. I’d taken too much blood and it was wrong. It went against the Vampire Code.

I swallowed the lasting taste of her and finally glanced her way, finding so much hatred in her eyes it scolded me.

“I haven’t been drained that low in a long time. I shouldn’t have tried to take so much all at once,” I muttered, wanting to apologise but not quite finding the right words beyond that statement.

“Well feel free to just steal all of mine then,” Darcy spat icily, clutching her neck tighter. I had the urge to heal her, but knew if I tried to touch her again, she’d only recoil.

The ambulance pulled away and I glanced around, double checking Darius wasn’t here and I was glad to find he’d listened to me for once. That was something anyway.

“Come on, I can drive you girls back in my car,” I offered. I’d left my Faerrari parked at the Acrux Hotel when I’d last visited Tucana, opting to stardust home because I’d been too drunk to drive. But I hadn’t had any magical drinks tonight, so I’d healed myself of the effects of the whiskey I’d consumed before coming to get Darius from the nightclub.

Tory’s lip curled back as she glared at me with poison in her gaze.

“We’re not going anywhere alone with you,” Darcy said bitterly, distrust in her eyes.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, stepping forward to get hold of her. I’d protect her tonight whether she liked it or not.

Tory moved to intercept me and Caleb joined her too like a prime asshole.

“You don’t fucking touch her again,” Tory growled.

I narrowed my eyes at her, about to object, but as my gaze slid to Darcy over her shoulder and I saw the wall in her eyes that told me to get fucked, I knew I wasn’t going to win this fight.

“Bastard,” Darcy hissed at me, looking woozy. Shit, I needed to heal her. And I could get her a blood replenishing potion back at the academy.

“Come on, girls. The bus is gonna leave soon,” Caleb said, tugging Tory after him but she dug her heels in, waiting for Darcy.

I opened my mouth to try and find the words that would convince Blue to stay with me, but she walked straight past me with her cheek turned and Tory threw me one more filthy look before they all headed down the street to the bus stop where mountains of students were gathering. Professors were among them and I knew they were safe enough in numbers, but my feet were still rooted to the pavement as I watched Darcy leave.

You drank way too much. You have to get a grip. How are you going to keep feeding from her if you act like a monster every time your teeth are in her?

I’d never had this problem before. The only thing I could compare it to was when my magic had been Awakened and my Order had Emerged. That first feed had made me feel like a ravenous beast with a bottomless stomach, and yet it still didn’t have a pinch on what it was like to feed from Blue.

Caleb led Tory and Darcy past the queue straight onto the bus and my hackles rose as they joined Max and Seth on the back seats. And as Seth pulled Darcy close to him and nuzzled against her cheek, that feral animal in me awoke once more.

I took out my Atlas and shot an update to Francesca, anxiously scoring my fingers through my hair.

Just as the bus pulled away and rounded a corner, the FIB appeared on the street and I was immediately surrounded by three agents with dark frowns on their faces.

“Lance Orion, you need to come down to the station and make a statement,” Captain Hoskins said and I sighed, knowing it was going to be a long ass night.

I agreed and as I was stardusted away to the precinct, my heart was tugged in another direction, nearly forcing the stars to guide me elsewhere. But the captain ensured I made it to where he wanted to take me and I made a silent prayer to the stars that Darcy wouldn’t end up in Seth Capella’s bed tonight. Because I wasn’t sure I could control the demon in me who’d want his head for that.