Nightshade Academy Episode 3: Auras and Colors, page 1
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Kestra Pingree
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Any unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This is a work of fiction.
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Summary
My mom is dead. She committed suicide.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I was going to beat my bloodlust and go back to her.
Now I have nothing except for an addiction to Kian’s blood and a twin I didn’t know about.
My twin’s name is Archer, and our Colors are reactive. I’m dangerous enough on my own. With Archer, I’m worse.
We drain the auras of living things.
I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want to know if my feelings for Kian are more than my bloodlust.
For once in my life, I want to choose.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Newsletter
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Message from the Author
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Gray and black stones touch the edges of royal-purple roll-out carpets laid out like in a medieval castle’s throne room. We’re on our way to see the king. Except we’re not. We’re going down, not to anywhere I’ve been in the dungeon, but somewhere just as secluded. Thick curtains disappear along with the windows they hide during the daylight hours, bathing us in darkness if not for the electric lights.
Kian walks close to me, close enough his hand would brush mine if he wasn’t consciously keeping it away. Archer lags a couple of steps behind, a twin who looks almost exactly like me on the outside, but her Color couldn’t be any stranger; it’s sky blue and barely there. Madeline takes the lead, her pace brisk, little childlike legs no hindrance to her. She stops when we’ve walked down a few narrow steps and reach a heavy black door.
Madeline flings it open with a delicate flourish of her wrist. It’s silent as a shadow as it glides across the craggy floor; it hits the doorstop just as silently.
A stainless-steel table sits in the center of the room with a lump of white fabric spread atop it. It’s a lump because it’s hiding a body. I don’t notice anything else aside from the biting cold and pungent smell of antiseptic. I hardly even notice Zanza’s fuming violet-red Color mostly concealed by a white lab coat.
My throat goes dry and something gets stuck in it. No matter what I do, I can’t swallow it away.
“Kian, Archer, go inside,” Madeline says. “Nova and I will be a moment.”
Kian’s chartreuse takes on anemic yellow. All over. “But—”
“No buts. Inside.”
I think Kian’s looking at me. I see a dual flash of red, but I stare at my waterproof black boots. Just a couple hours before this, I was fishing. What I wouldn’t give to get back to that now.
Archer steps past us and into the room. She turns her head here and there until she settles on a plain metal stool. Without asking, she drags it across the stone floor with a screech; there’s no carpet to muffle the noise in here. Zanza’s Color twitches and a hand pinches a lock of long black hair, but Archer is otherwise ignored.
Archer sits down and Kian steps inside the room. Madeline grabs the door and closes it before he can turn around to face us again, to offer a last fleeting glance.
This time the door makes a sound. It’s a dull thud. I think Madeline wanted it to do that for emphasis.
My skin crawls, and I think of thousands of spiders. They aren’t biting me yet, but they’re about to. The first twinge of their venomous little fangs will send me spiraling. I’m already spiraling. I want to drop here, to take a few breaths. Supposedly, my mom is in Zanza’s lab. Dead.
On that table. She’s on that table.
“Nova.” Madeline whirls on me. The puffy skirt of her gothic dress roils like angry thunderclouds. “You drank Kian’s blood again.”
“I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie. Just because he’s healed some isn’t enough. I’ve had years of experience, and the signs are there.”
I purse my lips, but they betray me by trembling anyway.
“And he simply let you?”
I don’t say anything.
“Nova.” Madeline sighs and opens the door again. Kian is right there. “You were listening.”
Kian nods. “I let her.”
“Why?” Madeline half-breathes the word.
Archer practices leaning back on her stool, balancing on one leg. It looks precarious, but she’s impressively good at it.
“Because I can’t drink anyone else’s blood,” I say. “I’ve tried, okay? I’ve really tried, but it doesn’t work.” My eyes wander to the lump of white. Zanza turns toward me, arms folded. Why pay attention to me? You’re supposed to be communicating with my mom. You’re supposed to talk to her ghost.
My jaw pops because it’s wound up so tightly.
Kian says. “Nova needs to learn it’s okay to come to you when she needs help.”
“Then you should have come to me. What you did set her back.”
“But she was so sick, Madeline!”
“This is wrong.”
Kian’s Color takes on a mossier green. “She was sick. Bad sick.”
“It’s like a drug addict going through withdrawals. It isn’t going to be pretty no matter how we go about it. It’s going to hurt. Nova is going to hurt, but she must persist.”
“Then why did you give me Kian’s blood in the first place?” I interject. “Even you didn’t think I’d last without it.”
Madeline’s vermilion sand flutters inside of the hourglass-like container of her Color. It turns into a torrent, a tornado, bits catching on some otherworldly light and gleaming like shards of glass. “Archer, have you had fresh human blood? Have you bitten anyone?”
“Nah.” Archer’s Color doesn’t change, but I also have to squint to see any details.
“You awakened to your vampire side about a month ago, right?”
“Yep.”
“You’ve been on your own.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you haven’t broken? “
“Apparently not.”
“I find that highly unusual.”
Archer leans forward so the stool is safely standing on all of its legs again. “Believe what you want to believe, dolly. I happened to break into a blood bank the first night and drank more than enough blood for ten people. I’ve been traveling around on my own like I always do, with blood banks as my new grocery stores, since then.”
“All without being caught.” Madeline’s skepticism oozes from her Color. I think the vermilion sand might melt and start bleeding.
Archer smiles. It’s a lazy smile that leaves her features slack and carefree, the opposite of how I must look. I’m pretty sure I’ve never made that expression before. Looking at her now, trying to mimic it, I still can’t escape the tension in my jaw.
Archer’s azure eyes glint my way. They seem somehow brighter, maybe because of her sky-blue hair.
She says, “I’m used to being on my own.”
Madeline is silent for a moment, but her Color continues to rage. Around and around vermilion sand swirls until it freezes, suspended inside the top half of her head. “We need to stop this thing between you two.” She turns to me and Kian.
“I don’t mind it,” Kian says.
“So, you’ll be Nova’s personal blood bank for the rest of your life? You’d have to stay with her forever to keep her alive. Or she’d have to stay with you. She wants to leave, Kian. Are you going to leave, or will you make her stay? Worse, you’ll die before her at this rate. If she drinks too much of your blood, it takes your very own life force, your time, to heal from it. We can heal from rather grievous wounds, yes, but it’s not without a cost.”
She holds up her hand when Kian opens his mouth. “No. I don’t want to hear it. We will wean Nova off your blood, one step at a time, and Nova will meet with me or Zanza more often to check in. It’ll work.
“Zanza, are you having any luck?”
“None. Her spirit is long gone, I’m afraid.” Zanza’s Color plumes, pushing up a big purplish cloud. Zanza walks by, head tilted toward me and Archer, before disappearing behind some lightweight white curtains acting as a divider into another room.
“Don’t touch Zanza’s things,” Madeline warns as I walk forward.
Fuck that. Like I would. I don’t care about all the stuff on the counters. Rotten blood, chlorine, and other vaguely stomach-turning chemicals I can’t identify. My eyes are glued to the lumpy white sheet covering a body. When I reach it, I freeze.
“Be warned,” Madeline pauses, “it isn’t a pretty sight, Nova.”
“I’ll pass,” Archer says.
Kian comes up behind me. I smell his honey-sweet, chai-spices, mint-leaf scent. I feel the heat radiating off his body, too, but he doesn’t touch me. I grip the closest corner of the white sheet.
“Are you sure, Nova?” he asks quietly.
I answer by tearing the whole thing clean off. It flutters in the air, trying to take flight, but gravity wins. It falls and muffles the sound in the room for a split second before dying on the floor. I blink a few times at the mess on the table. It’s a human. A woman. But she looks wrong. Her flesh is bloated and discolored. Worn clothes, a sweater and jeans, stick to her like a crusty shell, crunchy with salt water. Her blond hair is much thinner than I remember, her face not quite the right shape. I recognize her, but the longer I stare, the more alien she seems.
She smells like the dumpster in the alley behind Elysian Fields. Her blood is dead in its veins. I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow again and again to fight the bile rising in my throat.
Something rustles behind me, fabric rubbing against more fabric. I think Kian might touch me, but he doesn’t.
“Nova,” he says.
My voice is hollow when I ask, “What?”
He grabs the sheet from off the floor and starts at my mother’s feet. The way he gently lays the fabric over her body, one inch at a time, shocks me. He should be disgusted. I’m disgusted—but this is my mom. This is really my mom.
I go to the other side of the table and assist Kian. When we’re about to cover up her face, I know this is the last time I’ll look at her. So, for a moment, I hesitate. I burn the image of her watery death into my brain.
“If you want to stay in the lab, you may,” Madeline says as she grabs some things from inside a cabinet. “These are the journals I was talking about. Or, if you wish, we can return to my office instead.” She picks up a black bag. “We also brought some belongings from your home, Nova. It isn’t much, but you’re more than welcome to take anything you want and to leave what you don’t. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“We’ll stay,” Archer says. “No point in going all the way back. Besides, spooky lady isn’t so bad when she’s covered. Right, twin?”
I shoot Archer a glare. It’s an emotional reflex, one where my eyebrows work downward and I feel the creases in my skin.
Archer’s lips form an O shape and she lets out a low whistle. “Scary.”
What is this tight feeling in my chest? My eyes aren’t burning, but my hands have suddenly formed fists and they’re shaking.
I think I’m angry. I always knew not to count on anyone. Mom wasn’t supposed to be part of that—I didn’t want her to be included in that—but she left me anyway.
I’m angry.
“Yeah,” I say, “Archer and I will stay here.”
“Very well.” Madeline sets the things down on a stainless-steel countertop with a clear space. “Everything in this bag is yours, but everything else is off-limits. What I said before stands. If Zanza finds anything out of place, there will be hell to pay—and not by my initiation.”
Archer drags her stool over to the stainless-steel counter; it screeches the whole way. My chest gets tighter, and my heart pounds harder.
Zanza comes out of the back room, curtains chasing after practical heels, and goes to the opposite side of the room to mix some chemicals. Something starts fuming a lot like Zanza’s Color.
“Kian, come with me,” Madeline says.
I have this urge to grab Kian’s wrist, but I don’t. I don’t turn around to watch him go either. I listen, though. As soon as the door closes with its dull thud, I grind my teeth together and stare at the lumpy white sheet.
“I don’t know about you,” Archer says, “but I’m ready for some answers.” Papers flap and draw me over.
Maybe it’s the same morbid curiosity that got me to tear the sheets off my mom before, or maybe it’s because of this sudden deadness I feel, but what more do I have to lose?
I want answers, and this is the only way I’m going to get them.
CHAPTER 2
So, Madeline thinks this poem sounds like a suicide note. I guess she wouldn’t have known that it came with the house or the fact we were renting that house without an official contract. Mom always did her best to find the kind of people who would take some money and agree not to ask questions.
The homeowner said we could stay in the house if we cleaned it and repaired it while paying rent. Mom said the price was right, and the guy mostly left us alone; we saw him once a month for rent and a progress report.
We lived there longer than anywhere else. I spent my last three years of high school at the same school because of it. It was the only place that felt almost like a home, I think.
I pinch the slick laminate that protected the poem from the water. Somebody liked this poem enough to protect it way back when we found it. I don’t know why Mom kept it, but I’m positive it held no real meaning to her.
I read it again anyway since I’m fuzzy on the details.
Rain pour down in silver sheets
Gold outline abstract gray clouds
Lightning flash with thunder rolls
Frothy white and oily black seas
Slippery, buffeted once-polished wood
Hold fast
Monster pursues
Never stops
Save sails
Spin wheel
Don’t look
Bow breaks
Mighty ship snaps
In two
Fall
Take stock
Wet and icy
Deepest, darkest depths
Embrace of nothing
Inviting, numbing pain
Struggle, fight, fail
Accept
End
It does seem to weirdly match up with what I saw. Accepting death by a merciless sea. Suicide.
Damn it, Mom.
I tear one of the journals away from Archer and rip it open.
“Watch it,” Archer says and grabs another.
Journals? These are more like cut-and-paste projects.
I flip through page after page of newspaper clippings and articles. These take up the majority of the “journals.” They all have to do with rabid-animal warnings or cults or claimed vampire sightings. The journal with the earliest date has some normal entries, though. Handwritten. I recognize the hasty scrawl.
I give the cut-and-paste journals to Archer—who flips through the pages one at a time while staring off at something else—and skim through the journal with the oldest entries before lingering on one that catches my attention.
August 28, 1997
I saw him do it. He drank that man’s blood.
I’m on a bus, getting as far away from Texas as I possibly can.
I’ll leave this as a record in case I’m found dead.
He told me his name is Eduardo Thorpe. It could be a lie, but it’s all I have to go on. The timing couldn’t be worse, though. What am I supposed to do about—
The rest of this short entry is scribbled out so fiercely the paper’s been torn through.
September 15, 1997
Eduardo Thorpe is a real person. I even found a picture, but it was taken in 1956. It’s a memorial photo that went along with an article about a mansion—the Atkins Mansion in Reason, Virginia—that burned down later that same year, killing almost everyone inside.
The young mistress and heiress to the fortune left behind survived along with some servants—including Eduardo. Since she was a child at the time, a certain portion of that money was left to Eduardo in her parents’ will to ensure her care. The mansion was also rebuilt and stands today under the heiress’s name: Madeline Atkins.
I’ll put a copy of the article on the next page as proof.
Madeline Atkins? I don’t know Madeline’s last name, but that’s a damn weird coincidence otherwise. It has to be her. Eduardo must have screwed her over somehow. Why else would she want him dead? Because she cares about me and my mom? Doubtful. Even with everything going on in this place, the apparent goodness of it all, people always have an ulterior motive.
But Eduardo. The Eduardo in that 1956 photo looks just like the Eduardo I slept with.
He’s still alive, hasn’t aged a day, and he’s drinking people’s blood.
I looked up vampires. Apparently, around this same time, the Atkins Mansion was accused of cult activities. Dark things: blood rituals, attempted necromancy, demon summoning. Everything I found is outlandish and likely superstition or wild rumors fabricated by those envious of the Atkinses’ fortune. It makes my skin crawl. I saw something just as absurd with my own eyes, concerning the very man I made love with.
