Fallen University: Year Two

I was right. Something is wrong.

A warning was crawling up through my throat like a snail through mud, too slow to do any good.

It was over before I’d made a sound.

A flash of red, a flash of blue, the stench of long-dormant magic and burning oxygen. My eyes flew shut as the blast hit, and when I opened them again, I thought I had died. I wasn’t touching anything and the ground was a good twelve feet beneath me. Branches and leaves hung around me, but I couldn’t touch them.

Panicking, I looked around for my men. I found them suspended like me in red and blue electric orbs above the ground.

“Xero!” I called. “What is this?”

But my voice didn’t seem to make any sound at all. It didn’t bounce back at me, it just sort of disappeared into nothing, like it had been swallowed up by a dull silence. I watched as the guys started to talk, then shout, then scream at me and each other, but there was no sound I could hear.

We were trapped. Isolated.

My ribs seemed to constrict around my lungs and heart as I reached out with my feelings, but it was like the guys weren’t even there. Like they had never existed at all.

Fuck. No!

The succubus power inside me screamed for them, fear and grief ripping through me at the sudden, complete loss of connection.

I clutched my hands to my chest and sobbed.

Darkness tinged the edges of my vision, creeping in slowly, and I knew if everything hadn’t been muted, my screams would’ve filled the air like the dawn sounds of the underworld.

I screamed until my throat was raw and blackness claimed me.

“Oh, stop that noise! What are you, human?”

My eyes snapped open in shock at the smoky voice.

Consciousness flooded me so fast I jerked, instantly awake and alert. My gaze darted around, taking in my surroundings at a glance.

I wasn’t hanging over the ground any longer. Somehow, I had ended up in a little cave, still floating over the ground. The guys were there too, and they all looked just as confused as I was. I wondered how the stranger’s voice was getting through, then I realized that a small hole had formed in the electric membrane. It was growing quickly, and I scrambled to get my feet under me before it dissolved completely.

All five bubbles popped, and I inhaled my guys’ scents like I hadn’t breathed in ages. The demon woman in front of me wrinkled her delicate purple nose and narrowed her large, shark-black eyes at me.

“Succubus. Should I put you back in the cage, or can you leave those boys alone?”

I was aching—actually physically aching—to run to my men for comfort and power. The broken connection had affected me so severely that I honestly thought I was going to die. But I would rather breathe their air without touching them than be so utterly isolated again; at least I had practice with the former.

“I won’t touch them,” I told her, swallowing hard.

“Good.” She gave each of us a hard look. “Hellhound. Dragon. Demon. Ugh. And a vampire.” She wrinkled her nose at Kai, which made me irrationally angry. She shot a warning look in my direction before the emotion had even fully registered with me.

“What are you? Siren?” I asked. “Or witch?”

“Witch is a profession, twit, not a race. I am a demon.”

“You’re an empath,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a fact?”

“Is that a problem?” I answered.

She tilted her head slightly. “You tell me.”

“I’m not psychic.”