Descending Into Darkness (Moonlight Academy Book 2)

“Oh dear Lord, please you cannot die … no, no, no” I mumbled, attempting to use my magic to help him, pressing my hands over his ripped throat, hoping that I could at least stop the bleeding. His head wasn’t cut off, so technically he wasn’t dead yet, but he was a shifter. He was going to bleed to death.

Chris didn’t have long. His lips were moving, but no sounds were coming out and I needed to know the name of the spy in the academy.

He started to choke and I realised that I couldn’t really do anything else for him.

“Let’s swap the sides, shall we. This will be so much fun,” a voice whispered from behind and I felt someone’s hands on my throat. I was pulled backwards, losing control of all my energy.

That someone was a witch and she’d caught me completely off guard. She spun me around, spreading her magic around the cave like wildfire. I couldn’t fight back; I was so weak.

She laughed out loud, spinning me around in place. Chris was gone, he would bleed to death while that bitch threw me all over this cave.

I painfully slammed against the cave walls. My bones cracked and I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds. I could still hear her laugh echoing in the cave.

“He told me that you would come, and he told me that I could have some fun with you,” she said, walking around me.

I focused, at least attempted to bring back the fae side of me when she grabbed my hair and dragged me forward. Then I felt a sharp blade around my neck. She was using her wand; no witch was so powerful without an object to channel.

She had dark hair and I had never seen her before. She had darkish skin and strange markings on her arms.

The smell of sage was overwhelming.

“Screw you,” I whispered, seeing that my fingertips had started to sparkle finally, so my magic was swirling through me once again. The wind picked up and I heard thunder and lightening in the distance.

“With pleasure,” she laughed pushing me forward.

I fell on the rock, cutting my knee getting even more furious with her. I couldn’t do much, because I was trapped in her spell. Her magic was like glue, it was sticking to me and knocking the oxygen out of my chest. This invisible energy was choking me from the inside out. The blackness started to obscure my vision and I was going to pass out soon. I didn’t want to die like that. Half of my genes belong to fae, so I had to do something.

Leonidas must have known that I was around, he must have sensed me, so he’d sent her to finish the job.

This couldn’t be the end. I still had so many questions about who I was now and about my past, yet to be answered.

She was smiling, lifting her wand and raising more power around her. Heat spread all over my body, the pain intensified. I was so close to just accepting my fate, to giving up, but my inner voice reminded me that I was better than that and urged me to fight.

She held me in the spell, but then turned slightly trying to get something off the floor and that small distraction was enough for me. The warmth began trickling down my thighs.

My energy shifted and I roared, breaking her spell. I was on her before she knew it, holding a fire ball in one hand and choking her with the other one. I’d lost way too much energy earlier on but I had just enough to make her drop her wand.

She was lost without it.

“I’m part fae too, you know. I bet the ancient forgot to mention that to you,” I whispered to her, smiling. Chris was dead, so we weren’t going to get anything out of him anymore.

She widened her eyes and opened her mouth, probably to tell me to just finish her off already, and I was ready. Frankly, I had never been more ready in my entire life. I smiled and was just about to blast her with everything I had when I realised that she wasn’t herself when she’d attacked me.

Leonidas must have used a compulsion spell on her, he must have ordered her to kill me. Everything about her energy said so, and I would have been a real arsehole if I hurt her right now. For some reason, the other part of me told me to stop. I just couldn’t do it.

We were staring at each other for a long while, me with the large fireball in the middle of my hand and her slowly losing her manic smile.

I decided to cease my magic, I leaned over and touched her. It was a risky move. That witch was programmed to kill me, and I was trying to bring her back. I used the warmth, the fae energy to clear the spell that Leonidas had cast on her. The magic pounded through as she tried to get away from me, swearing and screaming at the same time.

It was a struggle and it made me realise the power that filled me from the inside out. Even her aura was filled with darkness. The craving for blood came back, I thought about drinking from her briefly.

The wind picked up again and my ponytail started rising above my neck.

I wanted to bite her, there was no other way. The tiny voice inside my head was telling me to stop, but I couldn’t. Part of me was seeing the witch as a victim. She was affected, poisoned with dark magic and it wasn’t fair for me to kill her. She wasn’t herself. She wasn’t doing this because she wanted to.

I wrapped my fingers around her neck and began squeezing. Everything was trembling, the ground and some stones began falling down from the ceiling. My energy pounded through me, it almost felt like my inner nature was forcing me to do it.

Her own energy was disappearing, leaving her with no more than a few seconds before it was going to be all over for her.

Then, an unexpected blast of power rushed through me. My energy connected with hers, spreading over her chest until she stopped moving.

I was breathing hard, grateful that I knew how to stop myself. I didn’t hurt her; I was only trying to break the ancient spell.

However, lately, my emotions had been wildly out of control. It was the fae inside me, that had become unpredictable.

I shut my eyes and focused on the goodness inside me, shutting off the darkness and gloom. It was all done, and when I opened my eyes the rest of the energy faded.

“Are you all right?” I asked her, still telling myself that I had to be careful. Maybe Leonidas was still around, maybe he was waiting for her, but I doubted very much that he would risk staying behind.

He’d got what he wanted.

“No, who are you and why the hell are you sitting on me?” she asked, looking horrified. Only then I noticed that her features had changed.

She was very pale and her hair was changing colour to blonde. Was it possible that all the darkness had left her forever?

I quickly lifted myself off her, feeling a little lightheaded. The others were probably wondering what the hell happened to me. I hoped they were all right and that no one had been seriously hurt. We were strong together, but apart, there were so many shifters around that could easily overpower any one of us. I truly wanted to make sure that they were all okay.

“Sorry, you tried to kill me and I just had to defend myself,” I said, still feeling sorry for her. Maybe the old me, the old Jaymin, would have stabbed her on the spot, but right now, I was a different supernatural.

“That vampire promised me lots of money, but I can’t remember much else since meeting with him. He must have used compulsion on me. I should have never trusted him,” she snapped.

Seconds later, we both heard the howling in the distance. The shifters were back.

“What the hell was that?” she asked, looking terrified.

She didn’t seem very experienced at all. Now I was kind of glad that I hadn’t killed her.

“Shifters. Let’s go, my friends are in the woods and I need to find them,” I said, gesturing for her to follow me. She didn’t object at all. I had a feeling that she didn’t have any other option. All her memories were gone and now that I had spared her life, she had no other choice, but to follow me.

The forest was eerily silent, I felt some magical vibration in the north so I decided to head over that way, hoping to see some familiar faces there.

“What’s your name?” I asked her, trying to break the awkward silence between us as we were walking through the forest. It was pitch black too and the mist had started to drift between the trees. I never in my life thought that I would get lost in deep Transylvania’s forest, in the place that had become the iconic origin of most ancient vampires, with some random witch by my side.

“Alexa, what about yours? I do apologise that I tried to kill you. Normally I don’t act in such a manner,” she joked. It was strange but I no longer felt like I was afraid of her. Her aura was much more friendly.

“I’m Jaymin, you can call me Jay.”

“We have company, someone is coming,” she said, taking her magic wand and creating fire around her hand. My eyes widened. I had no idea that witches could do this.

She was right, a moment later we saw three figures but it was way too dark to be able to see anything.

“Don’t move or I blast you on the spot,” a familiar voice shouted and I relaxed a little.

“It’s me you idiot,” I said, approaching Lachlan, Karina and Judas. At least Alexa’s magic was useful closer up to them, showing me the bruised and wounded faces of my dear friends. “Where the hell is Marco? Please tell me that he’s all right?”

“We don’t know, we lost him, but I presume he’s looking for us. That guy can take care of himself. Most of the wolves are dead, but where the hell have you been and who is this chick?” Lachlan asked, pointing at the witch. He didn’t look too good, he must have lost a lot of blood during the battle.

“It’s a long story. Let me explain everything on the way back,” I said, and then stopped. “Hold on what about Marco. We can’t just leave him here?”

I felt so exhausted all of a sudden and my muscles were very stiff. Alexa put her magic wand away, but she kept giving Judas suspicious looks.

“Marco is alive and you saved our ass out there, burning Samuel alive. I killed that motherfucker afterwards. And now we really need to get the fuck out of here before more shifters show up,” Lachlan said with pride in his voice.

“Okay, well I have huge news,” I said, realising that Claude was missing too.

“Claude vanished along with Marco,” Karina quickly explained, probably reading my mind somehow.Owned by NôvelDrama.Org.

“I hope that clown is dead. I’ve had enough of him trying to poke his nose into our business,” Lachlan added, and then spit out something that looked like blood. He was going to heal quickly, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t worry about him. “Go on talk hen. It’s been a shitty night and I would like to hear something positive for a change.”

I didn’t wait any longer. I just explained everything that had happened after I started chasing Chris. We walked through the deep, dark forest as I talked. Karina exhaled sharply a few times when I mentioned the ancient. She kept looking back at the witch behind us.

I wasn’t concerned that she heard it all. After what happened with Leonidas she wasn’t going to turn against us.

“That makes perfect sense. We should have figured out sooner that he had his rats around the Elite,” Lachlan sapped, shaking his head.

“That’s why we need to get back to Bucharest. That shifter was just a puppet. The murderer is still in the academy,” Karina muttered.

It was the middle of the night and we had no idea what had happened to Marco. He could always take care of himself, but these shifters were ready to kill anyone that crossed these lands. Plus, we had killed their leader, so that wasn’t going to go over well. These parts of Romania weren’t controlled by the High Council.

“There they are, look. I see someone by the car,” I shouted, sensing another fae. I had started to learn to recognise the different scents and signs.

“Son of a bitch,” Lachlan swore, noticing that Claude was with him. He seemed all right. They were both having a cigarette. He had multiple bruises running over his bare arms. At least Claude looked in much better shape. He gave me a smile when we approached and Lachlan growled like a crazed animal.

“Good, I’m glad to see you’re all okay. We were worried,” Claude said, staring intensely at Alexa.

“Well we weren’t, I was hoping that you were shredded by those motherfuckers,” Lachlan said, taking a cigarette from Marco.

This was the end of our trip in Transylvania and yet again, we were coming back to Bucharest empty handed. At least I believed that we’d made a little progress in figuring out who had ordered these murders. I had been right all along that Leonidas was behind it.