Nightshade Academy Episode 5: Deadly Contract Read online

  Coats and Colors pop up along the rim. Engine roars, shouts, and hisses contend with the storm, and I shudder too. Ginzo’s stone skin and water Color undulate. He growls back at them, many times louder. My hands fly to my ears as I dig my knuckles into them. The sound punches my internal organs.

  So this is a demon.

  One of the people standing on the rim screeches. Suddenly, they’re careening into Ginzo’s crater. Ginzo lumbers toward them, mouth open and ready. He swallows the unlucky person whole.

  “Holy. Goddamn. Fuck,” Archer murmurs.

  “Hello!” Helena’s tiny voice barely carries from the crater’s rim. She’s waving and standing where Ginzo’s lunch had been. She must have pushed them.

  And these must be Eduardo’s vampires.

  Who else would attack us like this?

  Several of them point guns at Helena and fire, but she evanesces. They hit each other, and a couple more fall into the crater. Ginzo snaps them up as easily as the first. He twists and turns in a surprisingly small circle for someone his size, but his beach-ball-round tail almost knocks me over anyway.

  Kian catches me and says, “We should move.”

  Helena reappears beside Archer and claps her shoulder, startling her nearly half to death; she swallows so hard she chokes.

  “Yes,” Helena says as her form flickers. “Climb up and out and deliver the food. We have a hungry demon, and they have silver bullets. Ginzo’s favorite.” And she’s gone again.

  Ginzo huffs and gags, spitting out a couple of guns he must have swallowed along with the vampires.

  “Yeah, sure,” Kian grumbles at no one. “And how are we supposed to get out of here without them shooting us down? Do they have more of those drones? Bombs?”

  Just as he says the words, several sparking objects come tumbling down into the crater. Ginzo snorts, scoops the three of us up in two of his arms, and curls around us like a dome. His Color ebbs and flows, calm as ever. His skin is so hard, body so thick, that the explosions sound off with inconsequential pops and thuds. I don’t feel a bit of them.

  When the sounds have stopped, Ginzo uncurls. He lowers us as if to set us down again, but then he launches us toward a small clear space on the crater’s rim. The ground comes fast. I almost miss the ledge, but I hold out my arms and hands and grip frozen earth as my body smacks into the wall; my ribs ache, and I barely hold on to the air in my lungs. Kian and Archer roll onto safe ground. Then they reach over to pull me up.

  “Thanks,” I say and shove them both out of the way to catch an incoming vampire’s arm. I remember what the Crow taught me and use my adversary’s own weight and momentum to toss them over my shoulder. They scream as they fall. When their scream is cut off, I know Ginzo swallowed them whole.

  I did that. I didn’t eat that vampire, but I killed them.

  CHAPTER 3

  Kian shoves me to the side with his elbow. I’m off balance and land on my ass, but Kian spared me from a deadly set of vampire teeth. Kian snarls and wrestles with the smaller vampire. The vampire throws a punch. Kian catches it and throws one of his own. They block and strike until Kian grabs both of the vampire’s forearms and jerks to his right. He flings the vampire off their feet and twirls, gaining speed with each rotation, before launching that vampire into the crater.

  Five more vampires take that one’s place. And these ones shoot. We manage to dart around them, barely. Bullets dance at my feet, and then they change directions, aiming down at Ginzo. He’s their real target. Red pocks his flesh, the tiny bits actually penetrating his armored skin. He roars and smashes into the crater wall below us. The vampires shooting at him lose their balance and fall in, but another group grabs a huge weighted silvery net from a sun-resistant UTV. They throw the net into the hole. It doesn’t look that heavy, but when it envelops Ginzo, it crushes him like a bug under a boot. He drops to his stomach with a pained whine.

  I shiver.

  These vampires came prepared to take down a demon. A demon. They’re losing numbers over it, but Ginzo is on his knees.

  “Get those guns!” Helena flashes in and out of existence, taking down a row of guns with her. One of them is huge, a fucking bazooka.

  Ginzo struggles, silver burning spider-web patterns into his body, but he gets loose. He grabs the net, balling it up as it sizzles against his skin, and throws it out of his hole. It flutters and drops. Several vampires get trapped underneath it, but it doesn’t burn them. It just holds them down.

  “I need to shift,” Kian says. “Cover for me.”

  Archer and I step up as the vampires close in. Five become ten. My mouth goes dry, and my hands shake, but I can’t back down. Archer and I drop our gloves as five vampires crowd Archer and five more crowd me. They make a predatory circle, stepping slowly. At least they don’t seem too interested in shooting us.

  “Now!” one shouts.

  The vampire circles snap like bear traps, ensnaring me and Archer. Archer screams out her frustration as she tries to wrench free, but they’re too strong for her. When I do the same, I find a break. Right. Technically, I’m stronger than Archer.

  Hazy purple catches my eye. Helena condenses, figure short and hardly imposing, but she buries exposed nails into a vampire’s throat, drawing blood and freeing one of Archer’s hands before disappearing again.

  Archer reaches out for me, fist holding the tourmaline, and our hands brush through the slightest gap in our captors’ bodies. Sky blue and lotus pink merge into lavender, then pink-lavender. It extends out and touches the rainbow of Colors around us. The vampires drop us, confused and scared, breaking our connection. It’s just as well. Kian’s rejoined the fight, and I wouldn’t want him caught up in a Color blast.

  “Stop!” I shout as I rise to my feet. “If you stop, we won’t hurt any more of you.” Isn’t this enough? How many more are they willing to let Ginzo kill? This whole situation is insane.

  Kian barks and snaps his jaws, standing beside me as the pony-sized hellhound he is. None of the vampires listened to a word I said. They attack, and Kian leaps forward. He smacks into a group of them like a bowling bowl. They roll like pins, but some recover quickly. Kian bites the ones in the front and whips the ones in the back with his long, rope-like tail.

  Helena kicks a vampire’s backside the moment she appears, sending them tumbling into the crater. “I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now, but these are Eduardo’s vampires. They won’t be reasoned with.” She flashes a smile before bursting into ephemeral purple particles.

  A vampire jabs at me from behind. I think it’s the heel of their hand at first, but then warm and wet liquid oozes out of my coat as they withdraw a well-placed silver knife. My hands automatically search the new ache in my side. I’ll heal if they don’t keep stabbing me, but if they do this to Archer—

  Archer touches my neck with the bare hand holding the watermelon tourmaline. Our Colors react again, faster, and the vampire who stabbed me gets sucked inside. Their Color, a pea green, is devoured by a sea of pink-lavender. They scream. Their Color flees their body and joins ours. Pink-lavender becomes more lavender. But I recoil. I don’t want this vampire’s soul. I didn’t want any of this, but I’ve already become an accomplice of death. Archer holds out her hands, accepting as the foreign Color flows into her, converting it to sky blue. The vampire’s body drops to the ground, empty of its soul.

  When Archer opens her almost-hidden azure eyes, she says, “I’ll let him go when we’re done here.”

  And I don’t argue, because suddenly Archer is much faster than me. She has a fighting spirit. The only thing that was stopping her was her barely there Color.

  “Oops,” Helena says as she reappears, foot extended into the line of someone’s running path. The unfortunate vampire trips, flies over the crater’s rim, and down into Ginzo’s mouth, probably all without knowing what just happened.

  I gingerly probe my knife wound, but it doesn’t hurt much, and there’s no new blood. It’s mostly healed. I don’t think I was cut very deep thanks to the layers I’m wearing.

  The blizzard wind picks up, tossing up opaque white everywhere I look. I can hardly see my hand in front of my face. Instead of wandering aimlessly, I stay put and slowly turn around, listening for anything beyond the howl of the wind.

  It turns me into a ball of nerves. I think I see a shadow coming toward me and steady myself, but it’s an irregular pattern in the snow flurries. The wind picks up again, a high-pitched whine, before stilling. The storm cuts out. Within seconds, the air is clear. The only snow left is what gathered on top of the tundra. I can see for miles, and there are no unfriendly vampires in sight, just their abandoned vehicles and weapons. Then I see Kian, Archer, Helena, and that crater.

  Hesitantly, I look over the edge. At the same moment, Ginzo leaps out, as if hundreds of feet mean nothing. His big, roundish body lands on the tundra far enough away from the rest of us not to crush us, but his immense weight shakes the earth and jostles blood from his bullet holes. All of us stumble with the aftershock. I’m the only one who falls, and the ground below me splits. Thank God the fissure is only a few inches wide.

  The ocean waves of Ginzo’s Color roll against his silhouette as he flexes, muscles bulging. Silver flecks drop out of the bloody holes pocking his body. Then, like magic, the holes seal up perfectly, leaving no indication he had been wounded in the first place. He roars, blowing the silver bits away with breath as cold as the absent blizzard. One of them hits my cheek. It doesn’t hurt any more than a pebble, and it definitely doesn’t eat into my skin the way it did his.

  Ginzo opens his big mouth wide, spreads out his four arms, muscular and somehow ill-defined as if covered by fur, and flops. When his back hits the tundra, the rest of us jump in time with another aftersh
ock; I land on my feet this time.

  Kian, a hellhound still, and Archer join me as Helena storms forward. Her hips sway with a purpose, though I’m not sure whose eyes she’s hoping to catch when Ginzo isn’t looking.

  “Ginzo!” she trills.

  The gigantic demon snores.

  “Now is not the time for a nap!” She kicks his side. It probably feels like one of those little dogs biting and yapping at him based on the size difference. Not even that. His skin is too hard. Helena doesn’t cry out or anything, but she shakes out her foot as if it hurts.

  As she continues yelling and Ginzo continues snoring, I search the area for Kian’s clothes. I manage to find them but get distracted by the abandoned UTVs and way too much silver to comprehend. How did they get their hands on that stuff?

  Eduardo’s vampires are gone. Very gone. Did Ginzo eat all of them? Another shudder racks my body.

  I return to Archer and Kian. Kian presses his bony skull into my ribs, and Archer says, “I think Ginzo is sleeping off a food coma. Or all those wounds he healed.” She scowls. “Maybe he’s not so invincible after all.”

  “They’re all dead, aren’t they?” I ask quietly and hold Kian’s clothes closer, as if squeezing them will make things better.

  Archer closes her eyes and Colors separate. She’s left with hardly any sky blue as pea green drifts off into the sky and vanishes. Archer grimaces, hunches over, and grabs her thighs. “We had to, Nova. They were going to kill us. That’s only a taste of what Eduardo has in store for us at Nightshade. He has way more vampires than that. We wouldn’t have even made it out of this if we didn’t have Ginzo on our side.”

  Kian whimpers, and I don’t comment. She’s right.

  “Nothing’s changed,” Archer says.

  “We have to get back to Nightshade,” I agree. “But how?”

  “I guess we wait for Ginzo to wake up.”

  CHAPTER 4

  When Kian shifts back to human and is dressed, he says, “Maybe I should have stayed in my hellhound form. I could carry you both back to Nightshade.”

  “You’re a big dog,” Archer says, “but I don’t think you’re big enough to carry both of us, and we don’t know how far away we are.”

  “I could. No matter the distance, I’d make it.”

  “We can’t do this on our own,” I remind, but I get why Kian is restless. I am, too. Ginzo needs to wake up. Every second that goes by is a second someone could get hurt or worse.

  Another chainsaw-loud snore disturbs the silent tundra, but this one’s interrupted. Helena’s standing on Ginzo’s chest, and her hand lies limp above his humongous mouth. I think she just dropped something inside.

  Ginzo coughs and bolts upright, throwing Helena off him. She flips through the air and lands on her tiptoes, arms extended above her head, hands and fingers touching delicately in a mock-ballerina pose.

  When Ginzo coughs again, something shoots out of his mouth. Silver cuffs and chains? They clatter on the tundra, and Ginzo roars. He rounds on Helena, on his paw-like hands and feet. He stalks forward until he’s right in front of her. He opens his mouth, big enough to eat Helena whole, and roars again.

  The resulting wind lifts Helena off her feet along with the snow around her, higher and higher. Hazy purple disperses into snowflakes, and Helena blinks out of existence. She reappears a second later, on top of Ginzo’s head. She pats one of two rounded ears, and then she practically sticks her head inside of it.

  “Are you awake, darling?” she calls.

  Ginzo snorts and scratches at his ear with one of his razor claws. Helena neatly steps to the side. “What? You think they got those from Nightshade? You’re probably right. I doubt they got them from angels.”

  Ginzo shakes his head, but Helena holds on to his ear. “We could have taken them from Nightshade first? Of course, darling, but then what? And I suppose you would have preferred I dismantle the dungeon and therefore destroy the castle while I’m at it, because you know that silver likely extends into the walls.”

  Ginzo chuffs and nods.

  “There’s no way in hell I’m touching that angel-blood-infused silver. Ever.”

  Angel-blood-infused silver. That’s what burned me when I was in Nightshade’s dungeon? And those silver restraints came from Nightshade, too? I’ve never seen them before, but that’s probably a good thing.

  Helena waves at us, both hands spread wide and arms extended as far as they’ll go. “We’ll ride Ginzo’s back the rest of the way. He’s our quickest option.”

  Kian sighs. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

  “Now you’ll get to see what it’s like,” I say.

  “This is nothing like riding on my back.”

  “You’re right, because I actually like you.”

  That makes Kian smile, which is worth all the stupid comments I could make.

  “Save it for later, lovebirds,” Archer says.

  Ginzo holds out a clawed paw to us. When none of us make a move, he scoops us up and dumps us on his back. His skin is smooth and slippery like ice and there’s nothing to hang on to. Archer, Kian, and I lose our footing and tumble into each other.

  “Ginzo, change your skin texture,” Helena says.

  The smooth disappears, replaced by something more like the texture of concrete. There’s still nothing to hold on to, but my boots get traction.

  “Best to sit down and huddle close.” Helena disappears and reappears with a line of rope. “And tie this around yourselves.” She proceeds to lay the rope around the back of Ginzo’s big neck, and then she climbs onto his offered paw to complete the loop around his throat. “Ready?”

  “I guess,” I say as I check my knot.

  Helena leaps up to Ginzo’s right ear, grips it with one hand, and points with the other. “To Nightshade!”

  Ginzo takes slow steps, shoulders sloping each time he does. He’s big enough the ride won’t be too uneven, but the way his flesh rolls underneath my butt and legs is unnerving. Maybe it doesn’t bother me so much with Kian because he’s covered with fur when he shifts.

  “Faster, pet!” Helena shouts into Ginzo’s ear.

  He shakes his head, as if to remove an annoying fly. A big fly, but a fly all the same.

  “What are you worried about?” Helena asks when he’s stopped. “Angels? No angels would bother patrolling all the way out here. They’re in the cities if they’re here at all, much too far away to feel your presence.”

  Presence. Ginzo definitely has that, and it’s ten times more terrifying now that he’s a big hairless bear with four arms. Or maybe I’m just remembering how he swallowed vampires whole, one after the other. He’s going to have major indigestion. I shake my head and push the memory aside. I don’t want to think about it.

  Ginzo takes another step, but he doesn’t seem interested in going any faster than we’d be going if we were jogging below him.

  Helena taps her lips. “That’s not it? You don’t want to expend the effort, then. Typical. You know, the faster we get this done, the sooner you get to sleep. I’ll let you sleep for a week straight if you do this for me.”

  Ginzo rumbles. It bubbles his skin, and I can’t tell if he’s happy or angry.

  “An apology, maybe,” Helena muses. “I had to wake you up somehow, pet.”

  Ginzo buries his claws into the tundra and shakes like a dog. Kian, Archer, and I hold fast to each other and the rope tying us to Ginzo’s neck. There’s not much slack, so we shouldn’t fall off the side—unless he spins us around so we’re dangling from his throat.

  Helena sharply smacks his ear. “Enough. I apologize.” She rubs her cheek against his ear, then she kisses it. Ginzo stills. “You know you’re my favorite, Ginzo. And you’ll stay my favorite, won’t you?”

  A long exhale stirs the snow at Ginzo’s paws. He arches his back, and then he springs forward.

  “Hold on,” Kian says, head bobbing.

  “A bit late to say that,” Archer replies and clenches her teeth.

  Thankfully, most of the wind is blocked by Ginzo’s neck. I try to look off to the side, to watch where we’re going, but it speeds by so quickly it makes my head spin, and that spin goes straight to my stomach. I close my eyes instead, hold fast to the rope and Kian next to me, while Archer does the same to me, and wait for it to end.