Heaven's Fury (Pandorax Academy #3) Read online

  Contents

  Heaven’s Fate

  Copyright © 2019 Ember Hollis

  Quote

  Chapter 1: Heaven

  Chapter 2: Heaven

  Chapter 3: Heaven

  Chapter 4: Heaven

  Chapter 5: Christian

  Chapter 6: Heaven

  Chapter 7: Heaven

  Chapter 8: Heaven

  Chapter 9: Heaven

  Chapter 10: Heaven

  Chapter 11: Heaven

  Chapter 12: Heaven

  Chapter 13: Heaven

  Chapter 14: Heaven

  Chapter 15: Heaven

  Chapter 16: Heaven

  Chapter 17: Heaven

  Chapter 18: Heaven

  Chapter 19: Heaven

  Chapter 20: Heaven

  Chapter 21: Heaven

  Chapter 22: Heaven

  Chapter 23: Heaven

  Chapter 24: Heaven

  Chapter 25: Heaven

  Chapter 26: Heaven

  Chapter 27: Heaven

  Author's Note

  About the Author

  Heaven’s Fate:

  Pandorax Academy Book 3

  By

  Ember Hollis

  Copyright © 2019 Ember Hollis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.emberhollis.com

  Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will.

  - Paul Gauguin

  Chapter 1: Heaven

  The forest is awash with chaos. Earth falls like rain as explosions boom about me and burning trees light the sky as bright as day. I fight like a whirling dervish, using my wings to beat aside any who might approach, then release my feathers like darts to fell them from a distance. There are so many enemies that I’m forced to be sparing. Even my feathers won’t last forever.

  The good news is, I’m getting better at aiming.

  The bad news is, they’re getting used to my tricks.

  A fish-like monster with horns like a goat’s dives out of a tree over a blast of air from my wings, it’s scimitar slashing for my neck. With a desperate flick I send a feather zooming for its heart. But the wily creature slides its chest sideways and my feather streaks past it into the leaves of a nearby tree.

  “Shit!” I bring up an arm, shielding myself as I beat my wings forward. The blade slices shallowly into the flesh of my arm, and I cry out in pain as I skim back across the grass.

  I would have escaped but for the fact that I trip over a fallen body as the creature bears down on me. With a splash, I fall to the ground, muddy with blood mixed with dirt. It charges again and I try to roll away. But my wings are huge and heavy with mud now, and my hands can’t find purchase on the slippery floor.

  I shriek half in anger and half in fear as its blade comes whistling through the air again. I can’t die like this!

  The ground starts to quake and rumble, and I glimpse a figure approaching us through the trees, its figure limned in a purple glow.

  Like quicksand, the earth beneath the creature shifts beneath its feet. Its eyes meet mine, and for a moment, the flames behind them dims, allowing me a glimpse of fearful black eyes ringed with white.

  A second later, the creature is gone, sunken so deep beneath the soil that not a trace of it remains, not even the sulfurous stench of its body. When I look around, I see that all the other creatures and bodies are gone too, leaving behind a shallow forest of spindly, twisted limbs that poke out of the mud as if still reaching for the sky. A finger twitches on a hand nearby, but even that stills as the arm sinks deeper, until all that remains moving is the wind whipping the white hair of the figure still approaching me.

  I brush a strand of hair from my eyes, then jump as a voice rises over the sounds of battle: “All remaining students are to fall back to the castle! I repeat! All remaining students, fall back to the castle!”

  Bane and I exchange looks as Chiros’ voice blares through the forest. Then he reaches an arm down to help me out of the dirt.

  “Thanks,” I say, clinging to him. My wings are heavy and stiff with drying mud and I have no choice but to dismiss them, or else tip over. As I send them away, earth falls back to the ground and I stagger forward into Bane’s chest.

  “Oh, you’re hurt!” I gasp, when my fingertips come away red. His black uniform is soaked through with blood.

  “It’s not mine,” Bane reassures me. “But… there have been many casualties.”

  I stare at him, horrified and yet somehow unsurprised. So many of us had trusted that the Dome would keep us safe. And it hadn’t.

  “Where did all these creatures come from?” I ask. “Themis?”

  Bane shakes his head. “These are hellspawn. They don’t dwell among humans or supernaturals. There’s only one way they got here.”

  Before he can say more, the air in front of us coalesces into mist that rearranges into a three dimensional face. I stare at it, recognizing the features as belonging to Madam Wilkins. Her dark wavy hair wafts in messy tendrils in an unseen breeze and a fuzzy blur over one of her cheekbones and eyes makes me wonder if she’s been hurt.

  “Horsemen, we have found a breach to the Underworld in the depths of the Shattered Forest. Follow my beacon and regroup here as soon as possible. We need to seal the portal before Pandorax is overrun.”

  The mist dissolves into an orb of white light that immediately starts to move through the forest. Bane takes off after it and I move to follow, only to stumble into him again when he turns towards me.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Heading with you to the breach.”

  “You’re not a Horseman,” Bane points out unnecessarily. “And you weren’t summoned.”

  “Yes, but I have powers of my own,” I sweep my hand out to encompass all the bodies that are still littering the earth between the yellow cocoons that house injured students. “I killed all of these hellspawn before you arrived. You could use my help.”

  “No,” Bane puts a hand on my shoulder and turns me to face towards the academy. “You heard what Chiros said. It’s not safe. You should return to the castle. If you want to help, do it there.”

  “I’m going,” I shrug his hand off and dart around him to where the white orb is waiting. “Didn’t you say I’m prophesied to die at the end of the year? Well, it’s not the end yet, so the way I see it, I’m protected.”

  “Before the end of the year,” Bane stresses, jogging to catch up with me. He glances to the ground, then flicks his hand slightly. But before the earth can rise to block my way, I’ve summoned my wings again and leapt up into the sky.

  “Bane Holloway,” I call down, “Don’t think that just because we slept together, you have any right to tell me what to do!”

  The Horseman of Death sends me a death glare that may have frozen my marrow once upon a time, but only serves to heat my blood now. It’s a touch less intense than the hungry way he’d looked at me when we’d slept together, less than an hour ago, and the potent reminder makes my pulse start to race.

  Down girl.

  “Fine,” Bane says cuttingly. “I guess there’s no point in reminding you to put on some pants before you start flying then.”

  He gives me an evil smile as I gasp and dive back to the ground. There aren’t any pants or skirts within reach—all the students nearby are securely sealed in the cocoons, and the hellspawn are buried deep under the earth—so the best thing I can do is to t
ug Bane’s jacket lower while I run, and resolve not to bend over anytime soon.

  We rush through the forest on the trail of the white orb until we approach the depths of the Shattered Forest. The trees are denser here, with branches hung with long, draping skeins of glowing blue black moss. I suck in the heavy humid air and almost retch. It’s spiked with a hefty helping of something that smells like burned rotten eggs, and the air is littered with floating specks of what I discover to be ash when I pinch two fingers over a fat flake.

  “Brimstone and hellfire,” Bane confirms when he sees my disgusted expression. “Be alert.”

  So far, we haven’t come across live hellspawn, though the bodies littering the forest floor are more numerous.

  We walk a little further, until Bane discovers the body of a student. The werecat died with her face twisted up in pain and her mouth open in a silent scream. Half her body is missing, and the other half is in transition, with abraded features that are barely distinguishable as part human and cat. The ugly wound below her waist is raw and messy, unlike a cut made by the spears and scimitars the hellspawn wield, and a putrid, odorous liquid is pooled on the ground where it had oozed from her body.

  “What killed her?” I whisper.

  Bane opens his mouth to answer me, but before he speaks, a twig cracks ominously behind us.

  Chapter 2: Heaven

  I jump what feels like ten feet into the air, my wings sprouting with sharpened feathers that angle towards the darkness.

  Then, Malek and Christian step out from between the trees. I breathe a sigh of relief, almost collapsing as my tense muscles relax.

  “About time you arrived. Where’s Knox?” Malek asks without pre-amble.

  “Skimming the shadows, escorting stray students back to the castle,” Bane answers. I glance at him, puzzled. But neither of the other two Horsemen seem confused, so I decide not to question him.

  “What’s she doing here?”

  Bane shrugs, “Too stubborn to leave, as usual.”

  I feel a heated gaze on me and find Christian staring intently at me. He takes a step towards me, closing the distance even more.

  “You feel different,” he murmurs, his eyes running up and down my body. My skin prickles under his gaze, as if he’s physically touching me despite the few feet between us, and I feel heat start to gather between my legs. I gulp, wondering how I can still feel this way so soon after being with Bane and Knox. If I don’t watch myself, I’ll end up just like Mom.

  Christian lifts a hand to take my hand, but before his fingers land, Bane slips an arm around my waist and heaves me forward.

  “No time to waste,” he says over his shoulder at the other two. “We need to find that breach.”

  I walk quickly, feeling Christian’s eyes still burning into me. I wonder if he already knows I’m no longer a virgin. If he doesn’t, I dread his reaction when he finds out.

  But what does it matter? I don’t care what he thinks!

  That may be true, but I’m more self-conscious than ever of my bare legs, so I keep my wings low and tug at the hem of Bane’s jacket in a useless attempt to conceal myself. But the dense trees mean that we have to climb up and over huge networks of roots, and sooner or later, I have to crawl into the space between a low hanging branch and a massive root that’s arcing into the air. As I squeeze through it, I feel the touch of a humid breeze on my nether regions, and realize I’ve failed.

  The next time I glance back, Malek is steadily looking everywhere but at me, while Christian’s expression is dark and menacing as he glares at Bane by my side.

  I’m trying to figure out an excuse that might explain why I’m half-dressed with Bane’s jacket draped around me—the real reasons seem too outlandish to be believed, and I don’t really want Christian shifting his anger to Noah—when something slimy wraps itself around my ankle and yanks me off into the darkness.

  “Heaven!”

  I try to reply to Bane’s shout, but dirt, twigs and stones smack against my face as I’m dragged across the forest floor. The thing around my ankle burns like fire, but the true pain comes from the way my wings get twisted and caught up by the roots underneath me.

  A second later, the pain of sticks and stones catching at me lessens when I get hauled into a clearing. I push myself up onto my elbows and see a huge red circle with a cave-like maw looming in front of me. It’s lined with hundreds of sharp, yellow teeth, hooked inward in rows, and a long whipping tongue extends from its dark depths out to my leg. The smell is rancid, so rotten, that my eyes start to tear and I immediately gag.

  I stare in horror at the creature’s mouth. It gets bigger and bigger as I near it, until it looks as long and wide around as a gas tanker. Despite the stench, I suck in a huge lungful of air and scream at the top of my voice, clawing at the floor, spreading my wings out to slow my speed. But the ground here is slick with the creature’s saliva, and though my wings slow my progress down, it doesn’t stop it.

  Desperate, I summon my lightning. It comes, less easily than before but just as potent, licking around my hands and fingers. I release a ball of it with a desperate cry and it sizzles through the air to smack into the gullet of the creature.

  Immediately, the huge thing shudders and screams. A long spiked tail emerges from behind it, smacking into tree trunks and gouging out huge chunks of wood, sounding like thunder. I thought that would do the trick, but even though there’s a blackened patch where my lightning hit the creature’s flesh, I feel myself jerk forward even faster than before. The coat drags up to my shoulders and I can’t help a twinge of dismay of being completely exposed, even in the midst of my terror.

  Then a flash of silver catches my eye, and the tension pulling me abruptly stops.

  The maw looming in front of me heaves and roars in pain, its severed tongue lashing in the air. Another spear streaks over my head and into its depths, and I look up as Bane, Christian, and Malek vault over me in their pursuit of the worm. It turns and thrashes away into the trees, with them hot on its trail.

  I’m too shaken to follow, so I sit up, pulling the jacket down over my body and clutching at the seared skin around my ankle. After a moment, the shadows part next to me, and Knox steps out to kneel by my side.

  He kicks away the serrated tongue that had been looped around my foot, then swings matching sickles in his hands with a practiced air.

  “Careful, poppet,” he smirks, “As amusing as it is to see you dancing from strings, you don’t want to be eaten by an Abyss Worm. They like to digest you while you’re still alive.”

  I shudder as I recall the Werecat’s melted flesh. “How many came out of the breach?”

  “Enough to take out our top Weres,” Knox replies with a grim smile. “And too many for you to stay out here on your own.”

  “I’m heading to help with the breach anyway,” I force myself to stand.

  I expect Knox to tell me to return to the castle like Bane did, but all he does is shrug. “If you’re sure. The more the merrier.”

  He slides a sickle through the air, causing the air to crack and part like a gash in reality. Then he steps into the gap beyond and holds a hand out to me.

  Stepping into the space feels like climbing into a closet with frozen clothes. The air is thin and chilly, and every sound I make sounds muffled and yet amplified at the same time. As soon as we’re in, Knox slides the sickle back up and starts running. When I follow, I see that everything around us looks the same but gray, and the scenery flashes past faster than I’m used to seeing.

  “Is this how vampires move so fast?” I ask Knox. I’d seen him move as quickly as one before. Now we both seem to be doing it.

  “Not exactly,” he replies. “The energy that sustains them is similar to what makes this place, but they can’t access it the way I can.”

  We hurry after the other three.

  On the way, we pass what’s left of the worm. It’s chopped into pieces—probably by Malek—with the rest of it buried in the ground—c
ourtesy of Bane. Next, we pass a group of hellspawn, all of whom are collapsed on the ground with not a single mark on them except for their faces.

  I slow down as I near one of the creatures. Its eyes are burned out and blackened, and there are deep furrows on its cheeks, as if it had clawed itself in an attempt to gouge out its own eyes.

  Was this Christian’s doing? It looks so painful…

  With a shudder, I turn and scurry after Knox.

  We arrive at the portal soon after.

  It looks similar to Knox’s except that it’s two stories tall and the air around it shimmers and glows with a red, suffocating heat that I can feel even from within our tiny little pocket of reality. The ground beyond the portal is a fractured wasteland, with a sky lit up by a bloody moon, and a hot howling wind that stings my eyes as it gusts out through the portal to whip at our hair.

  Surrounding the portal is a huge spell circle scorched into the ground. Several students and teacher sit in a semi-circle in front of it, with their hands or wands glowing as they chant in unison. At first it seems like there’s nothing beyond the portal. Then, a group of dark figures appear on the horizon like tiny ants. They look as if they’re approaching from a huge distance, but a second later, they’re stumbling out of the portal and into the forest.

  Most of them don’t get far.

  I watch as two huge dogs and a group of hellspawn leap out of the breach. The dogs are double-headed, but one is immediately wrestled to the ground by Malek, who crushes both its skulls between his bare hands. Christian touches the other on its shoulder just as it leaps for him, causing it to yelp in agony and collapse on the floor, writhing as its eyes burn. Bane buries a large group of the hellspawn with a flick of his hand, while several Weres tackle the stragglers before they can stumble too far into the forest.

  “Make yourself useful and join the witches,” Knox tells me, pushing me towards the circle. Most of the students are unfamiliar to me, which means that they’re probably seniors. Then I catch sight of Meg and Amelie in the second row facing me. Amelie’s eyes widen at the sight of me, but neither she nor Meg stop chanting when I move to join them.