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Sindri is there, though, and is starting to lose consciousness. I see him listing, see Mia go to him, put her hand on his bleeding wrist. Right now, he’s the last of us who could help me, already weakened by the last few days’ events, but I’m grateful to him for coming.
Even if he kills me tomorrow.
The light is starting to fade from my eyes, my knees starting to buckle, when two figures appear in front of me and I recognize the two assholes who switched sides and…
And they came.
A belated jolt goes through me.Damn. They’re really here. Jason and Emrys. They mutter something about a party and being late, and then Emrys bites into his wrist, lifts his hand, and lets the blood flow, chanting softly. Of the four of us, he has always had the most demonblood, and that hasn’t changed, despite the spell placed on us.
Jason is staring hard at us, at Mia especially, though the anger in his eyes when he glances at me is obvious. But then he follows suit, sinking his sharp canines into his wrist and closing the circle, whispering the words of the finding and opening spell under his breath.
I feel the surge of demonblood magic—so different from the softer and yet deeper and more intense elemental magic. It’s like… the difference between a quick orgasm at your own hand when you’re tense and aching, sharp and almost painful and over in a flash, leaving you empty and mostly annoyed… and an orgasm with a partner where you’ve teased each other for hours, hovered on the edge for so long you want to weep and then when it comes, that long release that never seems to end, that leaves you shaking and sated and smiling… That’s the difference between demonblood and elemental magic.
But just like having a partner in bed as opposed to being alone, elemental magic is more complicated, more temperamental, and unpredictable. Almost a living thing…
“Ash. Don’t pass out.” It’s Mia, shaking me gently, one hand on my arm, the other on my face. “Wake up.”
I blink, and the world spins around me. “I’m awake,” I breathe.
Sindri is leaning against Jason, his eyes closed, still whispering the words of the enchantment. Emrys is standing straight, hand raised before him, his demonblood magic pulsing. A puddle of blood has formed in our middle, slowly sinking into the ground, steaming in the cold night air.
I resume the spell weaving, my voice hoarse, joining the others. The magic fence around us is starting to crumble. I put my hand over Mia’s on my face, keeping it there as I struggle to go through with this to the end.
It happens suddenly, the release of the spell. My ears pop as the pressure changes. The seal placed on the Academy strains against our joint attack, then loosens, the invisible walls falling around us.
Leaving us in the middle of an avenue, rows of streetlamps marking its length. Mia gasps, glancing around with round eyes.
A car swerves to avoid hitting us, honking madly, barely missing us.
We’re out.
“I can’t believe it,” Mia is saying. “The Academy is in the middle of the city? I remember walking through a huge park to find it.”
“It’s glamoured to look like a park. You went to the only entrance visible to humans. But in fact, seeing it without being invited means that you have magic. Just from that, you’d have known.”
She frowns at me. She still has trouble believing she is a witch. It makes sense, I guess. If you went through your whole life believing yourself to be one thing and then found out you are something else altogether… It has to be a fucking shock.
It’s like the damned shifting thing. I still have trouble believing I could shift into a beast. I always thought it was a legend, a myth.
I take Mia’s hand, pull her back, out of the way of oncoming cars, and I’m relieved to see Emrys doing the same for Sindri who still looks dazed. I pull a roll of gauze from my pocket, throw it at them. “Help him,” I tell Emrys who nods.
Jason produces a roll from his back pocket and comes to wrap my wrist.
“Thanks,” I mutter, glancing up to find him frowning, green eyes fixed on the task at hand. “For this. And for coming along.”
He finishes binding up my wrist in silence and I let go of Mia to bind his. He stretches out his arm and I take out my own roll of gauze, carefully wrapping it around his strong wrist.
This was risky, in so many ways. We normally don’t use so much blood. A drop from a finger is enough to cast a small spell, but even with all this blood, we barely got enough demonic essence to open the gate.
“Which way?” Emrys comes to stand beside us, hands in his pockets. “I’m not from around here.”
Even if he’s from this city—and I’m guessing he’s not—the demons have settled on the outskirts of town, where it touches the desert, in what used to be an industrial area. Now not many people venture that way.
Few humans are left in this town, in fact. The rich live in enclaves by the sea or in the mountains where they are more protected. The less fortunate live among us and try to blend in, to pass unobserved, unnoticed. They have their own enclaves inside the cities, ranging from ugly ghettos to fenced neighborhoods.
“Follow me.” I grab Mia’s hand again and start toward the west. “It’s near the Mogul Tower, in the center of town.”
The tower belongs to my family—well, to my uncle, as does the hospital. Most people aren’t aware of the connection between the vampire clans and such buildings. Though we’re out in the open now, for a very long time we moved under the surface, controlling the affairs of the country, fully aware that once humans found out about us, they’d lynch us. Hadn’t history shown us what humans do with anyone outside their own little group, especially if this someone has wealth? I mean, look at all the genocides, all the massacres. With elemental magic we couldn’t control we wouldn’t have been able to defend ourselves and keep our way of life. We’d have to flee.
