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Story: Rogue (Assassin’s Magic #7)
T he scene around me is as simple as a painting.
I’m levitating four feet above the bloodied ground in the garden at the front of Bloodwing Academy. The grass is strewn with bodies, and the fence is blasted apart in places.
I spent a year imprisoned here, at this Academy run by Lady Tirelli, a woman who tortured, maimed, and killed others to make herself more powerful.
Right now, a powerful witch and a dangerous man with icy blue eyes bar the gate behind me. They’re my enemies, but they aren’t the ones holding my attention.
A hellhound lies broken and dying in the dirt below me.
He has four fatal bullet wounds in his chest and another in his thigh. While three of the bullets must have passed through his body, I can sense the metal of the other two bullets lodged in his flesh. One of them is dangerously close to his heart.
I drag up his name from my memory: Striker Draven.
After everything I went through… all the torment… he was the one who created me.
The echo of his fists returns to me—every punch that, only moments ago, broke my ribs or busted up my face.
In those moments, he forced me to hate him.
He created a hatred in me that could only be so strong because it was once love.
I had loved him. With all of my heart. More than my own life.
And he had loved me. For months, he endured beatings, keeping the violence hidden from me and taking the brunt of it in my stead.
I came back here to this dark academy to save him, but now…
Well. I am a Fury now.
A full Fury.
My hair has turned crimson-red, the strands lifting around my face, their color matching that of my claws. Several of them have extended to form three snakes, two of which now circle my waist while the third is nestled around my shoulders.
The scent of wildflowers wafts around me, my power of compulsion filling the air.
My broken bones have snapped back into their places, and my skin, now luminescent, shows not a sign of the bloodied welts from the bites and scratches I endured only moments ago.
But most important are the changes within my mind.
Guilt and innocence are sharply distinct and there is no gray in between.
I have a sense that my former self grappled with many doubts and many choices. Her heart tugged in different directions, but now my thoughts are uncomplicated.
I am unburdened by emotion. Even names mean little to me.
“Striker Draven,” I murmur, my voice soft, its cadence feeling new within my throat. “How did I ever love you?”
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. The streams of fiery lava crisscrossing his bare chest are cooling and becoming dark. His hellhound form is fading.
When he becomes fully human again, he will die.
The resignation in his eyes tells me he has accepted his fate, but still, he looks up at me as if I am somehow his final salvation.
I’m forced to refocus on the threats around me when, from behind me, the powerful witch jolts toward me.
Her name is Vulture. It isn’t her real name, but it’s a fitting choice. She used to wear a glamour that made her appear to be an elderly woman with glasses. Then she revealed her true appearance: tall, slender, with luxurious blonde hair, sparkling green eyes, and no older than in her forties.
Now, her face is pale, and her voice is a scream as she points her wand wildly between Striker and me. “Striker Draven! What did you do?”
At her scream, a resigned smile flickers around Striker’s mouth. “I released a Fury,” he says, his body seeming to sink more heavily against the ground. “And she’s fucking beautiful.”
At his words, a single tear slides down my cheek.
It’s a remnant of the emotions I used to feel.
But no longer.
I will do what my true nature dictates.
Within seconds, I calculate the remaining dangers around me.
Human men with guns stand at intervals around the grounds. One of them is pointing a gun at an unconscious panther shifter, who goes by the name of Harrison. For months, Harrison trained me in combat and weaponry. He was working for Vulture before he switched sides and started helping me.
Near him, a group of monsters has gathered.
They’re all students whom I once called my friends.
In a flash, I recall the names of those who once meant the most to me: Lucinda, Joseph, Ashley, Lachlan, Bree, and Ryan. Like me, they all came here to Bloodwing Academy as Unknowns—their power not yet manifested—but over time, I identified them as powerful monsters.
I fought for them, nearly died for them, so many times.
And yet, only moments ago, they betrayed me. Tried to kill me. They were the ones who bit and scratched me, attempting to tear my limbs from my body.
It’s only because their eyes are glazed that I don’t wreak justice on them now.
They aren’t in control of their actions.
Vulture commands them against their will. The wand she holds is called the White Wand. Bright, white light flows from it. Even though she screamed at me when I first arrived back here, taunting me with how afraid of the wand I should be, I can see its true nature.
It isn’t a wand at all, but a bone. An ancient bone of the primordial deity, Typhon. He was the father of all monsters, and because of that, Vulture can use the wand to control every monster in this place. My power of compulsion can’t compete with it.
Every one of these students will do Vulture’s bidding. Even if they don’t want to.
With one powerful exception.
Striker.
He alone is unaffected, and for that reason, he remains the axis around which my life turns.
As I take in the threats around me, my judgment for each of them comes swiftly to my mind.
Vulture has tormented the students and must be punished.
The human men with guns must all be killed. Especially the man with the pale blond hair and icy blue eyes who stands beside the witch. He is Vulture’s husband, Adrian Hadrix. His soul is a twisted, shriveled thing, and he must die screaming.
The panther shifter, Harrison, leaning unconsciously against the fence, may live.
The students will reveal their true natures once they’re released from the White Wand’s thrall, and then I will decide what fate they deserve.
As for Striker, the hellhound with the broken heart…
I must give him the wand. What he does with it will determine if he, too, must meet his end.
He is the one who must claim the White Wand.
Only a monster with the darkest heart can control it.
He is that monster.
But first, I must wrest the wand from the witch.
Turning my back on Striker and the other students, I rise higher and soar across to Vulture, where she stands with her husband, her feet planted in the bloodied grass. She clutches the White Wand in a holster coated with bone shards—human bones, more crimes for which she must be punished.
My power allows me to see that the holster is a conduit between the wand’s limitless destruction and her own desires. I sense the mere trickle of power from the wand into her body. Without that holster, the wand’s power would destroy her.
She isn’t strong enough to control it otherwise.
My feet have barely touched the ground in front of her when she screams at the men with guns. “Shoot her!”
Shoot me?
Does she not realize where she’s standing?
I arch my eyebrows at her. “Is that a good idea?”
My question is drowned out by the sounds of gunshots.
The men didn’t hesitate to obey her, even though they should have.
Bullets pluck at my body, piercing my back, ripping through my body, causing terrible damage before they fly through me. Straight at Vulture herself.
Her husband shouts in alarm, and Vulture’s eyes widen a split second before the White Wand creates a glowing shield around them both.
Each of the flying bullets sizzles and dissolves as soon as it collides with the shield.
Even if the men haven’t ended their masters for me, I can’t help but smile.
I suppose I used to feel pain, but the ammunition created mere tugging sensations through my body. The damage appeared catastrophic until my body instantly healed, making the bullets an annoyance more than anything else.
I’m not exactly sure what could kill me, but at least it isn’t bullets.
As the gunfire ceases and the shouting behind me increases—the men are clearly unhappy about their limited impact on me—I take a step closer to Vulture and the wand.
Before I reach her, a shadow looms over me.
Hadrix, the man with the icy blue eyes, closes the gap between us, his face and body changing as he rages toward me.
An ancient instinct puts me on my guard.
I sense the power rising within him as he reaches for the two axes strapped to his back, while his chest and thighs expand so rapidly that his clothing tears. Muscles ripple upon muscles, and his icy eyes become furious, soulless orbs.
The men with guns shout, first in apparent alarm, and then in jubilation, their rising chant a meaningless echo in my ears. “Hadrix! Hadrix!”
As he strikes his blade toward me, my three snakes hiss, and I know I should be worried, but in that heartbeat, I’m suddenly struck by a memory that isn’t mine.
It’s a memory of a quiet village, not so quiet anymore, of fire and blood and innocent lives taken.
Three other voices sound in my head, and I gasp, surprised, as I…
…connect with my sisters for the very first time.
Sisters.
Three other Furies.
It isn’t my first introduction to them. The whip I carry at my hip belonged to one of them. It was stolen by Hadrix’s son, Raptor, who terrorized me and convinced me that these Furies had been killed by a female assassin—a Valkyrie named Hunter Cassidy.
The voices of these Furies sounding within my mind confirm that all three of them are alive. Just like Hunter claimed. She didn’t kill them.
Their voices whisper like a hive mind inside my head, their thoughts becoming my thoughts:
Be careful of this one.
But be even more careful of the hellhound.
Use your claws and your snakes, not your whip.
Be safe, sister, and come home to us.
Table of Contents
- Page 1 (Reading here)
- Page 2
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