Page 5

Chapter

Four

Bloom

The Damned

A military-grade jeep idled on the tarmac, its matte-green paint swallowing the sunlight. I barely had time to gulp the humid American air before they shoved me inside. The jeep roared to life, tires spitting gravel as we careened down backroads so rough, my teeth rattled like dice in a cup.

Ten years of quiet, of tending to Mom and whispering to snapdragons, shattered in a single day.

I clutched the jeep’s roll bar, knuckles bleaching white. Maybe the school won’t be so bad. I clung to the fantasy like a prayer: kind classmates, gentle professors, a library where I could vanish for hours.

The jeep tore through crumbling towns, their boarded-up windows like closed eyes. Then the valley swallowed us whole.

Noon turned to twilight.

Dante craned his neck, scanning the suddenly bruise-dark sky. He’d sulked in the passenger seat after Morrigan wrested the wheel from him.

Orren’s thigh pressed against mine in the backseat, warm as a hearth.

Strange, how his quiet presence soothed me and made the cramped space bearable.

His glances lingered, not like Dante’s rude stares, but with the soft intensity of a loyal sheepdog.

If I patted my lap, he might just rest his shaggy head there and thump his tail.

The thought tugged a near-smile from me.

Dante’s gaze locked onto the roiling clouds.“Something’s changed.”

“Is it going to rain?”I clenched my robe tighter.“Please tell me this jeep comes with umbrellas. Or a roof. Or basic common sense?”

Orren’s voice dropped.“Those aren’t clouds. Shit, we’re being watched.”

I scoffed until a shadow streaked across the road and slammed onto the hood.

Crimson eyes burned into mine. A forked tongue flickered, grazing the windshield.

“What the hell is that?!”I screeched in terror and recoiled, my spine hitting the seatback.

Morrigan wrenched the wheel. “Get it off!”

“Be gone, creature!” Dante surged up, a blade flashing in his grip—where had it come from? I didn’t remember seeing him carrying it. He was more dangerous than I thought!

The thing ignored him, its voice a hiss.“My queen.”

Shadow and flame swirled around its skull as it dashed along the side of the jeep, gunning for me.

“Be gone, creature!” I kicked out blindly, my heel connecting with its jaw. “I’m nobody’s lame queen!”

The thing shrieked, morphing into a wailing child mid-lunge. Dante’s sword pierced its chest. The jeep lurched forward, leaving its fading screams behind.

My hands trembled. My heart hammered. And yet?—

A thrill surged through me, wild and unfamiliar.

“Good kick, Bloom.” Orren grinned at me.

Dante gave a curt nod. For the first time, I didn’t feel like glass.

“That thing—it turned into achild,” I said, my hands shaking as I gripped my inhaler. “Tell me I didn’t just kick a kid.”

Orren’s calloused hand covered mine. “Illusions. Demons love their games.”

“Demons.” I blinked. “You’re saying demons arereal?”

“As real as that kick you landed.”

Then the wailing began. Hundreds of skeletal fingers clawed up from the earth, followed by bony corpses, the hollow sockets of their skulls fixed on me.

“Morr, faster!” Dante barked.

Morrigan floored the gas.“They can’t cross the academy’s ward.”

Orren hefted a spiked flail.“It’s never happened before.”

“Are they after you…or me?” I asked.

“You,”Morrigan said mercilessly. “You woke them.”

“No kidding,” I said sarcastically.

The jeep crunched over bones.

The gates loomed ahead against the storm-choked sky. Iron spikes towered, woven with shimmering silver light.

“Open the gates!” Morrigan roared.

Two armed guards swung the two sides open, just as a skeletal hand grazed the jeep’s bumper.

The jeep rolled through, the ward’s energy prickling over my skin like static.

“The ward accepted you,” Orren said.

“What if it rejected me?” I asked. “Would it kill me?”

“Anyone with a drop of divine blood passes,” Dante said.

Divine blood. The words lodged in my chest. Then a wave of pain hit as a new reality sank into me.Mom. Alone in her grave.

An ocean away.