Page 32 of Soul Bound (Cursed Descent (MistHallow Academy) #2)

32

DRAVEN

“How so?” I ask, trying and failing to get the mental image out of my head of the ritual we used to ravage Tilly in a consensual, meaningful, intimate way that was used in such abhorrent rituals.

“She threw the curse from within a magickal cage. It went sideways and swept her, the Praxian and the male Druids into the ground, binding them to the earth.”

“And her daughter?” Morrigan asks after a beat.

Tilly shrugs. “I don’t have that memory. Obviously.”

She narrows her eyes as if she doesn’t believe her, but before anyone can make another comment, the whiff of death catches my attention, drawing me towards the door. I shove past the people crowding in the doorway of the bathroom,

“What is it?” Tilly asks, coming up behind me.

“The undead,” I murmur, striding towards the bedroom door, flinging it open before I look back with a question.

“Go,” she says. “There isn’t anything else we can do here.”

I nod once and step out of the room, closing the door behind me. The trail of death magick leads me through the academy’s halls like a ribbon of decay. Something’s different about Blake’s undead signature. It’s stronger, more focused. Corrupted in a way I’ve never felt before.

“What did Laurent do to you?” I mutter, following the trail down into the academy’s lower levels and taking a wild stab in the dark that he wasn’t acting alone in this amateur endeavour.

The answer hits me as I round a corner and find myself face to face with what I assume used to be Blake Sterling. Never having met the guy, I find it hard to tell under the rotting flesh, but I’m making an educated guess.

His neck is at an unnatural angle, and there’s a gaping wound in his chest that oozes pus and blood. The undead signature coming from him is wrong, twisted, as if something’s interfering with the natural flow of death magick.

“Necromancer,” he rasps, his voice like gravel on glass. “I felt you here.”

“That’s nice. Now you will feel me finish you off. You’re an abomination.”

Blake lunges at me, his movements unnaturally quick for a reanimated corpse. I sidestep, easily avoiding his grasping fingers. The stench of decay intensifies as he whirls to face me again.

“You don’t understand,” he growls. “Laurent promised me power. Real power.”

I scoff, channeling death magick into my palms. “She is a nothing in this. You were played, Blake. A rotting puppet on someone else’s strings.”

Blake’s eyes flare with an eerie green light. “No strings. I’m free now. Free to take what I want.”

He rushes me again, but this time, I’m ready. I release a blast of necromantic energy, aiming for the centre of his chest. Annoyingly, it does nothing. If anything, it makes him stronger, like he’s feeding from it.

Blake grins, revealing blackened teeth. “See? Power. Real power. And soon, I’ll have even more.”

“If you think you’re getting to Matilda, you clearly have no idea who you have to get past first.”

“The Prince of Hell,” he snarls. “I know.”

“Not just me,” I say with a smug smile as I sense Luc and Vex at my back. “You sadly overestimate your chances.”

“Eww,” Luc mutters. “What’s with all the zombies all of a sudden?”

“Fuck knows,” I reply, not taking my eyes off Blake as he sizes us all up.

“What is he even doing here?” Vex asks.

“I don’t know. Something about Laurent. He seems to think she has some kind of power that she can hand out to whichever fucker asks nicely.”

Vex snorts. “She’s powerful, but she isn’t that powerful. Merely a pawn, I would say.”

Blake’s eyes narrow. I think. It’s hard to tell in his mashed-up face.

“Sorry, buddy, looks like you backed the wrong horse,” Luc states, Hellfire already dancing on his fingertips.

“Don’t fire,” I murmur. “He is feeding on the magick.”

“Oh, is that why he’s still here?” Vex asks. “Thought you were going soft on us.”

I growl in response as he steps forward and throws a mean hex at the zombie. He howls when it hits him in the chest, and he looks down as the black magick that slashed through the air rips through his cells in what appears to be an agonising slowness.

Blake staggers back, his rotting flesh sizzling where Vex’s hex struck. The acrid smell of burning decay fills the air.

“Interesting,” Vex muses. “So necromantic energy feeds him, but other magick still hurts.”

“Let’s see how he likes this, then.” Luc lobs his orb of Hellfire and it explodes when it hits Blake, disintegrating him completely.

As the flames die down, all that remains of Blake is a smoldering pile of ash. The stench of charred flesh lingers in the air, making me wrinkle my nose in disgust.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Luc says, dusting off his hands. “I was hoping for more of a fight.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” Vex warns, his eyes scanning our surroundings. “Something tells me this isn’t over.”

I nod in agreement, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. “Laurent, whatever the fuck her role is in this, wouldn’t have sent just one zombie after us. This feels like a distraction.”

An inhuman shriek echoes through the hallway.

“Oh, you just had to, didn’t you?” Luc hisses at me, and I shrug.

We spin around to see a horde of undead creatures shambling towards us.

I reach out with my necromantic senses, trying to get a read on these new threats. The corruption in their death magick is even stronger than Blake’s, as if Laurent has been perfecting her technique.

“Don’t let them touch you,” I warn. “Their decay might be contagious.” With that said, I then dig deep, reaching for the Praxian magick that I know touched me out in the forest. It wants to be part of me, it wants to use me and have me use it.

The spark ignites my soul, and the rise in power is immediate and intense, death magick and Praxian energy intertwining. The undead horde hesitates, sensing the change in me.

“Yeah, you see, we need to talk about this,” Luc comments as darkness ripples over me, and I shift to my enhanced dead self, wings and all.

“Later,” I growl and flex my fingers, feeling the combined energies respond. “Let’s see what this can do.”

With a thought, I reach out to the undead, expecting to take control as I usually would. Instead, something else happens. The Praxian magick decides it doesn’t want them under control. It wants them dead. It unmakes them, breaking down the corrupt magick holding them together.

“Okay, I’m with Luc on this one,” Vex comments. “Fucking eww.”

Even I have to admit that the pile of goo melting into the floor is a disgusting sight, but fortunately, it vanishes. Clean-up is not my forte.

“Right,” I say, letting my enhanced form fade as the immediate threat is dealt with. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Laurent might, or might not, have raised them, but she’s not the mastermind here and neither is Bronwen, seeing as Matilda consumed her.”

“So, back to Matilda?” Luc asks.

I nod. “She’s got Bronwen’s memories now. Maybe there’s something there that explains why we suddenly have corrupted undead showing up.”

“And why they’re able to feed off necromantic energy,” Vex adds as we head back up through the academy halls. “That’s not normal.”

“None of this is normal,” I mutter, picking up my pace. Something about this whole situation feels wrong, like we’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle.

When we get back to the room, Matilda is still there with Morrigan, both of them looking up as we enter. The tension in the air is thick enough to cut with a knife.

“What was it?” Matilda asks.

“Blake and some other undead. Not normal ones, though. They were enhanced…” I clench my jaw as it all makes sense now, “… by Praxian magick.”

“Oh?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “Why does that annoy you?”

“Annoy me? It doesn’t annoy me, it pisses me off that these fuckers are uncontrollable. The Praxian just wants to get rid of them.”

“And that’s a bad thing because…?”

“We need to know who is behind it. Any ideas in that expanded brain of yours?”

She narrows her eyes at me and moves closer to Morrigan. Whatever went on in here when we left is still simmering in the air, and I don’t like it. I look around for Blackthorn, but he has disappeared.

“Where’s Blackthorn?” I ask before she can answer my other question.

“He has gone to see if he can enhance the locator spell he has running to get a location on Laurent,” Morrigan says. “Her role in all this is vague, and we need to know more.”

“What went on in here when we left?” Luc asks suspiciously.

“Woman stuff,” Morrigan clips out, arms crossed defensively.

I chew the inside of my lip and drop it. The memories that Matilda has seen are horrific, and I can’t even imagine what she must be feeling right now. “Are you okay?” I ask, going to her.

She stiffens but nods, also crossing her arms as a shield. She doesn’t want us to touch her. But is that Matilda or Bronwen?

“I’m fine. A bit shaken. Morrigan and I need to train. It’s past dawn.”

“Go,” Vex says. “We will be in the library when you finish.”

We back out because there isn’t really anything else we can do or say right now. Matilda has closed off, and I just hope it hasn’t got anything to do with us, but rather the horrors that happened in the ritual chamber.

“She needs time,” Luc murmurs, pressing his hand against the closed door. “She is reeling.”

“Is it any wonder?” I ask bitterly. “Hell is a terrible place, but that… I can’t even imagine. I understand why Bronwen went feral.”

“Yeah, but we still need to figure this out from the new perspective,” Vex states. “Learning that the curse came from Bronwen and that Night, Chris and Xanthos were the ultimate bad guys changes everything.”

“We need to find that Xanthos fucker and tear him a new one,” I snarl. “Death alone isn’t good enough for that piece of shit.”

“We will,” Vex says. “But first, we have to turn this entire situation on its head.”

“Yeah,” I say and follow him outside. Everything has changed now, and we are even further behind than we were an hour ago. That shit has to change. Now.