Fallen Academy: Year Two (Fallen Academy #2)(19)

I nodded. He was letting me go in, giving me a big job, and I wasn’t even nervous. That was weird.

Noah crossed the space, and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re the only healer here besides Lincoln and me. Remember that. If the girl is injured and it’s minor, you can help heal her while we’re battling the Succubus.”

I gave him a curt nod. I forgot sometimes that I was all of those things: fighter, healer, part angel, part dark magic wielder.

Lincoln threw a sideways glance at me. “Don’t be a hero. Let us handle this, and you just extract the little girl. Do you understand, Atwater?”

Me? Be the hero? Never.

I grinned. “Yes. Sir.”

Our bus pulled up to the curb, where I could see two Fallen Army soldiers comforting a grieving mother.

Lincoln held the walkie to his mouth. “All available units make your way to Madison Apartments. We’re going in to sequester the Succubus.”

The radio squawked. “I’m inbound, but I’m a good twenty minutes from you,” said a familiar voice over the radio. Darren.

“She’ll be dead by then,” Lincoln told us. Over the radio, he simply acknowledged Darren, and then we were moving out.

“Luke, can you shift for me? I might need you to knock the door in,” Lincoln asked the Beast Shifter.

Luke nodded. “Men, always using me just for my body,” he joked and then disappeared behind some bushes. The two Fallen Army soldiers helped the grieving mother onto the bus, then gave Lincoln and the group a rundown of the situation.

“She’s powerful. She chucked me across the room like a tornado,” one soldier said. I glanced down at the insignia on his chest to see he was a Necromancer.

Lincoln nodded. “Let’s move. We don’t have a lot of time.”

We quickly split up into the groups of three, while the driver stayed behind to keep the mother on the bus.

As we were taking the steps up to the second floor, Luke roared behind us, announcing his presence.

“You scared the shit out of me!” Shea shrieked at him as his fur brushed against my leg. He bounded along beside us and then squeezed past me, knocking my body into Shea. Soon he was at the front of the line, right beside Lincoln.

It was in that moment that I heard the small, yet mighty scream of a child. Adrenaline pulsed through me, and emotion tightened my throat. I wasn’t sure there was anything else in the world that motivated a soldier more than the wail of a helpless child.

Lincoln jiggled the door handle and then nodded to Luke.

“We’re on borrowed time!” Lincoln shouted, pulling his sword as blue splinters of light shot from the blade.

Luke wasted no time, rearing up on his hind legs, and then charging the door. Putting all of his probably five-hundred-pound weight into the push, he came down on top of it. The door was one of those cheaper aluminum ones, so instead of cracking or falling apart, it simply burst off the hinges and then fell flat onto the floor, revealing an apartment.

Lincoln waited for no one, charging past Luke and running headfirst into the house. My man was fearless. I hadn’t yet decided if that was a good or a bad thing.

We all waited as Lincoln, Noah, and the other two Fallen Army soldiers ran into the apartment. Then the first team went in—the one tasked with removing the dead little girl’s body. My heart ached at the very thought of seeing a dead child. I had every intention of being a good girl and awaiting Lincoln’s next instructions until I heard Bonnie’s call for help.

“She’s not dead!” my classmate screamed.

Instinct took over then. Bonnie was a Necromancer—she knew death. If she said the little girl wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dead. I was the only healer available, so if the little girl needed help, it was going to have to come from me.

The second I started for the door, Shea and Luke trailed behind me without question.

“What are you doing?” the second group whispered. They were waiting by the door for Lincoln’s okay to come get the second twin.

“Don’t worry,” I told them, and then I was in the apartment.

As I entered the space, the first thing that hit me was the smell. It was surprisingly sweet and alluring—vanilla, but with an underlying decaying odor.

There were some gnarly battle sounds coming from the bedroom, and it took everything in me not to go in there, and try to help out. I had to trust that Lincoln had this handled.

‘If he doesn’t, I’m ready,’ Sera told me. I patted her hilt in an effort to calm her. I had every intention of not seeing that Succubus.

“In here!” Bonnie whisper-screamed, and I turned toward the sound. They were all hunched over a small child’s form, and the familiar swirls of purple and orange Necromancer magic—that I’d grown up seeing with my mom—were dancing around the little girl’s body.

I frowned. “I thought you said she wasn’t dead?” The little girl’s brunette hair was cropped short and splayed out onto the carpet behind her, and she was seemingly lifeless. If she wasn’t dead, why was Bonnie using Necro magic? Even if she was, why the hell was Bonnie using Necro magic? Besides it being forbidden to raise the dead in Angel City, it was doubly forbidden to raise a child.

Bonnie held her hands over the girl. “She’s kind of half in, half out. Her soul keeps jumping from that room back here into her body. I’m trying to pin it into her,” Bonnie explained.