The Culling Trials (Shadowspell Academy #2)(25)

The sound, his tone, and the sudden tension in his body dried up my protest. A moment later, warning flared through me again, this one so brightly hot and blinding that I couldn’t think for wanting to run. Being stared down by a wolf, stalked by a mountain lion, kidnapped and tossed onto a magically enhanced chopper, even forced to endure the first two trials—nothing compared to the intense terror I felt in that moment.

Those other things had been dangerous, this was death incarnate. Someone was stalking us, and I knew this person was the reason I’d needed to take Billy’s place. He—somehow I knew it was a man—was the reason Tommy had died.

Now he was coming for me.





Chapter 10





Below me the ground was hard and cold, and around me were Rory’s arms—warm and solid, but neither of those helped ease the fear of knowing an assassin was only feet away and looking for me. “Easy, now,” Rory whispered, his words barely riding his breath like he was talking to a spooked horse. “Easy, Belle.”

Rory had made up his own nicknames for us when we were kids. I was Belle, the beautiful Maribel—his way of teasing me for the name I hated and for my appearance, which had never mattered to me. Tommy had been Tank, tough and stupid. Those names were Rory’s way of claiming us and pushing everyone else away. Only those he trusted implicitly got nicknames. Only Tommy and me.

History was a hard thing to eradicate. Rory had always been my shield when I needed one, my fist when my own wasn’t strong enough, and my tormentor when I wanted to get stronger. He’d been my rock through turbulent times, just as I’d been his. I’d always trusted him as hard as he’d trusted me.

No matter how angry I wanted to be, history made me trust him now.

I relaxed in his arms and let my head fall back against his shoulder, awaiting further instructions.

“Good,” he said, just as softly. I could feel the fear in his words and knew instinctively that it wasn’t fear for himself, but for me. “Now curl up your legs, real slow. Nice and quiet.”

He lifted his legs to free mine, letting his thighs and calves hover in the air, a Pilates instructor’s dream. I did as he said, closing my eyes in an attempt to regain focus. To ignore my pounding heart and my sweating palms. The desire to throw him off and sprint toward the mansion.

“Good, just like that.” His volume dipped until I struggled to define the deep rumbling in his chest.

He lowered his legs back on top of mine.

“I’m not going to try to get away,” I whispered, tilting my head back until my lips grazed the stubble along his jaw. He tensed, his hold on me tightening.

“You may have raw talent, but I have two years of training on you.” His voice was strained. “I’ll keep you alive. You’ll get you dead.”

“Taking vocabulary lessons from the Sandman, I see,” I said beneath my breath, facing front again.

He must’ve heard because I felt his body shake with silent laughter.

The sense of warning outside the enclave of the tree sharpened, erasing any mirth until sweat coated my forehead. A presence lingered beyond the tree branches. I could feel it moving slowly out there. It was absolutely silent, which somehow made it worse. There were no footsteps this time. No swish of fabric. No padding of paws. No more cries from Gregory.

The night around us held its breath.

“Breathe deeply,” Rory whispered. His arm shifted, a slow movement, and his fingertips touched down on the pulse in my neck, throbbing away as fast as a rabbit’s feet. A strange little shock of electricity rolled through me, there and then gone. “Easy, Belle. Nice and easy. In just a moment, I’ll need you to control your breathing. Feel my body. Do what I do.”

I closed my eyes and sank into the strength and comfort surrounding me, feeling the slow rise and fall of Rory’s hard chest. His smell tickled my senses, reminding me of home. Of safety, and a million close calls we’d braved together. His breaths were long and slow, as though we were napping in a meadow and not hunkered down next to some homicidal, magical maniac.

I can do this. Calm the eff down, you idiot!

The tiniest of sounds interrupted my focus. My eyes snapped open. I spotted it immediately.

Beyond the reach of the pine branches brushing the ground, movement cut through the static plane. A black boot stepped into view, polished to a high shine. Absolutely no sound accompanied the movement, though it was less than twenty feet away.

An explosion of fresh fear pounded through my body. No one had to tell me—the ultimate predator stood just outside our easily pregnable stronghold. His stealth was incredible, and I knew his strength and speed would match it.

House of Shade.

The thought bleeped into my mind, unbidden. This wasn’t a student, either—this was a graduate, an expert. A killer.

And I knew without a shadow of a doubt he was stalking me.

My heart ramped up. My breathing turned shallow. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to master the panic and return my focus to Rory’s breathing, but only a fool turned a blind eye on a killer. I snapped my eyes open again in time to see the second shoe silently hit the grass.

There he paused. Listening.

Rory didn’t whisper now, and thank God for that. He simply tapped my throbbing pulse and brushed his lips against the shell of my ear.

Memories washed over me, flushing away the worst of the panic. Hiding from shop owners. Causing trouble in the town green and then hiding in the shrubbery as the out-of-shape sheriff tramped around bellowing our names. Cowering in Rory’s closet when his dad was on a drunken rampage. Rory had always shushed me in the same way: his lips against the shell of my ear, willing me, the younger, inexperienced troublemaker with a crooked angel’s halo, not to give us away.