Assassin's Academy: Book Two: Revenge: (A Dark Academy Romance) Page 2

  As soon as Tansy floats it back to my waiting arms, Kaitlyn says, “We’re done now, right?”

  I shake my head. “Not even close. You’ve given me the target’s details and made your offer. Now, I get to decide whether I’ll accept the mission. After that, we wait to see if the Guardian sanctions the kill. That won’t happen if your grievance isn’t justified.” I glare at her. “Or if you’re trying to target an innocent person.”

  She huffs, but genuine nerves enter her expression as she glances up the street, as if she’s worried about being seen. Tansy’s storm has chased most passersby off the street into nearby cafés and shops, but there are still some stragglers braving the suddenly chill wind.

  Kaitlyn’s lips press together, disgruntled. “Well, I don’t have long, so make it quick.”

  I take my time opening the ledger, sensing her increasing frustration. “You either want this or you don’t, Kaitlyn. It takes as long as it takes.”

  She huffs again and folds her arms across her chest, tapping her forefinger against her arm. Her fingernails are painted black, but each one oozes with magic. A casual glance at Tansy tells me she’s noticed them too.

  I open my ledger and carefully consider what Kaitlyn wrote inside it. Each column in the ledger requires a different piece of information to allow me to make my decision: her name, the name of the target, her offered payment, and the reason why services are required. There’s space for my signature if I accept the mission as well as a place where the Guardian’s verdict will appear.

  I look to Kaitlyn’s offered payment first—the place where she hesitated. She wrote:

  I will tell you where to find him.

  I consider the cryptic promise with caution rising inside me. She must mean the target’s location, but why would his location be of value to me…?

  My focus flashes to the target.

  Striker Draven.

  My body suddenly becomes cold. Striker Draven is heir to the weapons manufacturing company that supplies all of Lady Tirelli’s weapons. While he himself never pulled the trigger, his guns and daggers have been used to strike down countless innocents, leaving them bloody and dying in back alleys or on their loved ones’ doorsteps. I myself felt the bite of armor-piercing Draven bullets that nearly cost me… too much.

  Until now, nobody has come forward to write Striker’s name in an assassin’s ledger, not even in Slade’s.

  Striker Draven dropped off the grid over three years ago, his location unknown ever since. Even though he disappeared, his family trade has continued, supplying advanced weaponry that is used to terrorize innocents. Now Kaitlyn has promised to tell me where to find him.

  In the ‘Why?’ column, she wrote:

  Because he took away the only good thing in my life.

  She could be lying. Playing me to make me feel sorry for her. There’s no way for me to tell whether what she wrote is the truth.

  In the column that asks when services are to be rendered, she wrote:

  At a future time of my choosing.

  I give her a hard stare. She returns it with a cold scowl.

  Given that I can’t kill Striker unless I can find him—and she is the key to his location—her timing means she can come back with his location when it suits her.

  I don’t like it. Not at all. It makes me a puppet on her strings.

  However, she doesn’t know how good I am at finding targets. I couldn’t devote time to locating Striker before. Now that his name is written in my ledger, it’s my chance to go after him.

  Nothing can make me pass up the opportunity to wipe that man off the face of the Earth.

  I pick up the pen she left in the ledger’s fold and sign my name to accept the mission.

  “Now we wait,” I say. “The Guardian will take as long as she needs to determine the way forward. If she sanctions the kill, you will see her writing glow golden. If not, her writing will glow sapphire.”

  Now that Kaitlyn has finished writing in the ledger, she can’t read her own entry in it any longer. Only I will be able to see what the Guardian actually writes. Even Tansy, with all her power, can’t read my ledger. She can’t even read the target’s information. This is to maintain full secrecy, which is essential to an assassin.

  A light shines from my open ledger.

  It’s golden.

  A smile breaks across Kaitlyn’s face. “Sanctioned,” she whispers. “I’ll be back with the information I promised.”

  She taps the ring finger of her left hand against her arm. There’s a flash from her fingernail and she disappears.

  I blink at her sudden departure.

  “A transportation spell,” Tansy says, her eyes narrowed at the space Kaitlyn occupied. “Her own magic isn’t strong enough to do that. She’s conjured dark magic and adhered it to herself: on her fingernails and probably at pulse points around her body. You can’t trust her, Hunter.”

  “I don’t,” I say. “Not for a—”

  A sudden whoosh of air gusts around me, stronger than the storm. My heart speeds up but not in fear.

  The air flickers with radiant silver light as Slade appears beside me. I’m tall, but he’s taller, and right now he’s looming over me in the most intensely protective way possible.

  “Where is she?” he demands, his assassin’s ring glowing and his eyes filled with silver that tells me his killing power is at full force. His power is the same as mine and can’t hurt me, but Tansy wisely takes a step away from him. At least he’s gotten better at not cracking the pavement when he arrives.

  “Gone,” I say, taking his arm. “We’re okay.”

  His protective instincts must be in full swing because he doesn’t relax. “What did she want? Did she threaten you?”

  “She wants an assassination.”

  His gaze flickers to my ledger. Some of the tension leaves his body. “Did you accept the mission?”

  If any other assassin asked me to divulge confidential information like that, I’d slug them in the face, but Slade and I… we don’t have secrets. We learned the hard way that secrets can only tear us apart. Truth is at the heart of our relationship now.

  “I did.”

  “Then she’ll be back.” He swings to Tansy. He’s all business, in Master Assassin mode, but even so, his big hand finds the small of my back, stroking in slow, comforting swirls, easing out the tension in me as he addresses Tansy. “Can you trace the path she took to find her location?”

  Tansy bites her lip. “Not now that she’s gone, I’m sorry. But I can prepare for when she comes back.” Her forehead creases in thought. “I can probably attach a spell to her—have it uncoil like a thread if she gets away—but it will have to be undetectable or she’ll sever it.” She nods to herself. “I’ll start looking through my spellbooks so I’m ready next time.”

  “Thank you, Tansy.”

  As soon as Tansy strides toward her brownstone at the corner of the Lane, the storm clouds clear above us and the sunlight shines through.

  Slade checks me over, his hands running over my cheeks and back. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I sigh, but not in exasperation. He’s been busier in the last month than I would like. I understand why—he wants to make sure the Legion is in a good place so that he can focus on us when our baby arrives, but even so, we haven’t seen enough of each other lately.

  I soak up his touch, murmuring, “Dark witches should show up more often if it brings you to my door.”

  The corner of his mouth hitches up and the sudden heat in his eyes takes my breath away. He presses a tantalizingly gentle kiss to my lips, but when he draws back, I read the worry in his eyes.

  I lean into him. “What is it?”

  “We located another one of Lady Tirelli’s warehouses—but this one was empty by the time we got there. Even the vault was cleaned out. They’re anticipating our moves better than they were before.”

  “What are you saying?” I search his eyes. “Does the underground have a new leader?” br />
  “No,” he says, but his denial is a little too fast. He sighs. “I don’t think so. But Oliver Draven and Adrian Hadrix are both still out there.”

  “Still no luck locating them?”

  Slade shakes his head. “Oliver and his daughter are demons. They can manipulate others to hide them. And Adrian keeps moving around. Every time I have his location, he’s moved by the time I get there.”

  “You’ll find them,” I say.

  His hands lower to my stomach. “I want our daughter to grow up in a place where she has no need for her power.”

  Our power is death. Justice for those who can’t seek it for themselves. I wish I could believe that such a place will ever exist.

  I reach up to kiss him. “We won’t give up.”

  Once he’s gone, I carry my ledger back to the shop before I open it again and stare, perplexed, at what the Guardian actually wrote in it…

  Hunter, we need to talk about Striker Draven. Immediately.

  Striker’s assassination wasn’t sanctioned. Not yet, anyway.

  But the Guardian was smart enough to use her gold pen to deceive Kaitlyn and make her think she was successful. The Guardian is an intelligent, remarkably compassionate, but strong-willed woman and I’ve always respected her.

  I close the book and turn my gaze to the plaque on the wall. Words my mother lived by:

  Just because you are born into darkness doesn’t mean you can’t overcome it.

  I’ve fought through a lot of darkness to find the light. I want peace just as much as Slade does, not only for myself, but for my unborn daughter. But the Guardian’s message is a warning that I’m not going to get it any time soon.

  1. Peyton Price

  I know what I am now.

  When I first arrived at Bloodwing Academy, my power was Unknown. I didn’t know what I was capable of, but Striker Draven challenged me to face my true nature. He drew out every emotion of fury, violence, and determination that I’d caged inside myself and he woke the rage inside me.

  I despise Bloodwing with every fiber of my soul, but this place has forged me out of fire and pain into what I am: a Fury.

  The girl I was…

  She’s gone.

  The sun dips behind the horizon and darkness creeps across the Academy’s front entrance as I stand with Striker and the other students—Lucinda, Joseph, Ashley, Lachlan, Bree, Ryan, and the others. We’re surrounded by men wearing body armor and carrying an arsenal of weapons.

  Moments ago, we made a deal with their leader, Adrian Hadrix, that ensures our mutual survival.

  Outside these grounds, beyond the forest that surrounds the Academy, the assassins are hunting us. We are their enemies, not because of anything we’ve done, but because of who we’re associated with. Bloodwing Academy was founded by Lady Tirelli, a woman whose criminal operations the assassins have vowed to destroy. We are her students. We were destined to be her soldiers. That puts us squarely on the assassins’ kill list.

  Hadrix offered to train us to prepare for their attack. In return, he, his family, and his men will take shelter inside the Academy, which is hidden from the assassins’ eyes by protective magic.

  Bloodwing is the last safe place for any of us.

  Striker’s body heat burns against my left side, heat that I welcome—can never get enough of—but his increasingly rapid breathing tells me he’s struggling to stay in control.

  Instinctively, I reach for his arm, wrapping my fingers across his bicep as far as they can go. Not far, as it turns out. Striker is a man of formidable height with bone-breaking strength, his black hair and piercing amber eyes a warning of his hellhound power.

  I meet his gaze, demanding that he focus on me. Demanding that he ignore the woman standing opposite us—Hadrix’s daughter, Kaitlyn. Her hair is an icy blonde and her eyes a bright blue. She’s tall, slender, and part of the deal we made with Hadrix. She gets to stay here too, whether we like it or not.

  Not.

  Hell not.

  I don’t need to read Striker’s mind to know what he’s thinking. His incisors descend as his gaze rakes over her, the growing firelit glow in his eyes telling me he’s seconds away from revealing his beast and taking a deadly swipe at her.

  Kaitlyn taught Striker the meaning of betrayal. She clawed apart the last of his humanity and left him to piece together what was left of his heart. Hatred and fury are as much a part of him as they are of me.

  I turn my back to Kaitlyn, catching her reddening cheeks when I deliberately ignore her. Moments ago, I warned her that I am her worst nightmare.

  I intend to make good on that promise.

  Striker, I mouth, barely whispering his name. Do you hate me?

  His pupils dilate and his snarl shifts into a smile. His chest is splattered with blood. It’s in his hair and sprayed across his neck, although there’s only one smear across his cheekbone, the deep carmine color accentuating his jaw. His scent reminds me of cedarwood and balsam, warm and intense.

  Always, he breathes.

  I search his amber eyes for the fire he reserves only for me, finding it glimmering in the corners of his lips and the heat of his gaze, a slow burn that promises to ignite when I want it to.

  I return the heat in his expression with a faint smile of my own. “Then trust me.”

  With a twitch of his lips, his incisors disappear, his arms stop thrumming beneath my grasp, and I sense he’s in control again. Barely. But it’s enough for now.

  Leaning into his side, I maintain physical contact by pressing my thigh to his. Quickly tucking my whip into the top of my skirt where I hope it will stay put, I keep my hands free in front of me.

  I hazard a glance at Hadrix and his wife—the teacher we know as Ms. Vulture. Vulture used to wear a glamor, disguising herself as an old lady so nobody would guess her true identity. Now she stands tall with blonde hair and sparkling green eyes, wearing black leggings and a tight sweater. Hadrix’s hair is also white-blond, his eyes a striking blue. Like Vulture, he appears to be in his mid-forties.

  For now, they haven’t stepped between me and Kaitlyn. That’s probably because they’re confident they can subdue me. Vulture’s hand hovers near her wand and Hadrix’s palm rests openly on the handle of a handgun clipped to his belt. Neither of them saw me at my most dangerous, so they have no idea their weapons can’t hurt me.

  Projectiles will sail right through me. My body absorbs and dispels magic. As a Fury, I can survive any attack, healing myself instantly. I am built to withstand the attacks of even the strongest warrior and the most powerful supernaturals.

  I am hell’s executioner—the monster who judges other monsters.

  Only Raptor knows the extent of my power. Remaining at a distance from all of us, he folds his arms across his chest, his blond hair falling across his eyes and a cruel smile growing on his face. As the teacher who was my primary tormentor at the Academy, he stabbed me multiple times during the fight, including once in the neck, blows that should have killed me. I was preparing to end his sadistic existence when Vulture emerged from the building and Hadrix and his men arrived in trucks at the front gate, stopping me.

  It’s a little disconcerting to me that the focus of his cruel smile right now is not me, but Kaitlyn. It looks like he’s content to sit back and wait for her to suffer the carnage I’ll unleash.

  Unaware of Raptor’s gaze, Kaitlyn renews her smug smile as I return my attention to her. Her confident blue eyes descend in a condescending wave from the top of my head to my left shoulder, lingering on the patch of blood staining my white shirt above the location of my heart.

  She leans a little closer, speaking in a loud whisper. “Someone who needs medical attention as badly as you do really shouldn’t get in my way.”

  She must think the blood staining my shirt is mine. I’m sure I look a mess, but she couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, not a single drop of my own blood was spilled in the battle Striker and I fought against our compliance officers and teachers bef
ore Hadrix arrived.

  Kaitlyn’s focus remains on Striker, her sultry gaze dismissive of me. “Run along now, Peyton. Striker and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  She flicks her hand at me. Her fingernails are painted black with sharp white runes etched across them. As she waves them at me, a sense of repulsion slides through me, a pushing sensation that tells me the runes are active spells. Dark magic.

  Only one of her fingernails is normal, but the others are overly bright. I’m not sure what the spells are intended to achieve, but I’m suddenly wary. She’s had time to prepare for this moment. She must have a plan to subdue Striker. The spells on her nails could be anything from love spells to mind control. Striker can resist magic, but he’s not immune to it like I am.

  I slip directly in front of him, turning my body into a full physical barrier, keeping my voice clear and audible to everyone. “We’re done here, Kaitlyn. If you value your life, you’ll stay away from all of us.”

  She didn’t only hurt Striker. She betrayed every student at the Academy. Beside me, Lucinda’s arms are lifted at her sides, her fingers outstretched. A mottled hazel sheen grows across her cheekbones that indicates she’s about to summon her dryad power. I hope she turns the nearby rose bush stems into paddles and smacks Kaitlyn across the butt like she deserves.

  Kaitlyn snarls. “We’ll be done when you’re screaming on the ground.”

  She darts forward and shoves the flat of her hand against my chest. A spark of light flashes where her pinky rests against my sternum. It’s the smallest burst of power, but the impact hits me hard.

  I gasp at the sudden agony in my chest as if a blade shot clean through me, ripping apart my bones from the inside. I scream out the pain, expelling it from my lungs, harsh screams that echo around the space all the way up to the hidden shield that rests across the Academy high in the sky. To my shock, my feet become heavy, pinned in place so I can’t jump back from her or levitate into the air to break the contact between her hand and my chest.

  Striker mobilizes beside me, a moving mountain of muscle coming to my defense, stepping out from behind me before his fist swings at Kaitlyn’s head.