I will find you, Brianna! Celestria’s voice sounded in my head just as the Goddess’s had so many times before. Her pale face swam towards me out of the darkness of unconsciousness, and even though I tried to flinch away from her, I realised that I couldn’t move. Black tendrils whipped all around us, snaking around my face and with a sick sensation in my stomach, I realised that it was her hair.
“No! Get away from me!” I screeched even as those same tendrils began to wrap around my limbs.
Pain lanced through my ribcage, and I suddenly burst awake, the sensation drawing me from the dream as if I was being pulled from the bottom of the deepest ocean.
“Whoa! Steady on!”
Hands gripped my arms and pinned me down. Even in my weakened state, I struggled against them, kicking and screaming.
“No! Get off me!” I screamed from deep down in my gut, and the hands were suddenly gone from my arms, this time landing on my shoulders.
“Brianna, wake up! It’s me!” Archer’s familiar voice did little to calm me, but it did make me open my eyes. I barely managed to stop myself from screaming and struggling as I realised it was him pinning me down.
“Archer?”
“Yes, it’s me.” He smiled down at me though concern had bleached all of the colour from his usually radiant face.
“What’s going on? Where are we?” I glanced around and realised that I was no longer in the storefront of Sage Apothecary.
Instead, I found myself in a large bedroom made up of dark oak furniture and white walls. The light was too bright, bouncing off the walls as if it was trying to attack me.
“It’s okay. You’re safe now,” Archer assured me as he stroked the hair away from my sweaty forehead. “We’re at my apartment on the far side of London.”
He finally released me, and I sat bolt upright only to drop back against the pillows when I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my ribs.
“What happened?” I asked as I glanced down to see that the bed covers had fallen away from my torso to reveal my bra and a thick wad of bandaging around my midsection.
“You were clawed up pretty bad during the werewolf attack,” Archer explained. “Your tutor cast a spell to help you heal more quickly, but a werewolf’s claws cut deep, and it’ll take a few days for you to fully recover.”
“Merrin! Where is she?” I glanced around again, half expecting her to appear at the bedroom door. My heart sank when she didn’t.
“She and Zoe went back to your Academy,” Archer told me softly.
“What? No! They can’t!” I gasped and pain jolted through me all over again.
“They told me they were going directly before the council before your Grand Priestess could do anymore harm,” Archer sighed. “Whatever that means.”
“They won’t get through the front door!” I protested as I shoved the covers off my legs and tried to get down from the bed.
Archer gripped hold of my shoulders and shoved me backwards, causing yet another wave of pain.
“I’m sorry, but you aren’t going anywhere.” He shook his head and gazed at me with sympathetic eyes. “You’re just going to have to wait for them to make contact.”
I leaned back against the pillows with a huff as I reluctantly realised that he was right. I really had no idea where I was, and even if that didn’t make it difficult to get back to the Academy, I was in no fit state to go anywhere. My head was pounding again, and I knew what that meant. My power was running low after what little I’d used during the werewolf’s attack. I would be no good to anyone.
“Where is Mathew?” I asked as the memory of the attack swam back to me.
“He’s in the guest room resting,” Archer told me. “Grandma Sage gave him something to help him sleep after all the excitement.”
Excitement? Is that what you call it?
“And where is she?”
“She came with me to help you both get settled, but now she’s returned to the store. There was some major cleaning up to do after Mathew destroyed the basement and that goddamn feral messed up the storefront,” Archer snarled. He looked more than a little annoyed that he’d allowed the other werewolf get away.
“There was nothing you could have done with all those humans standing around, gawking,” I pointed out even as I reached for his hand and tried to comfort him.
Damn, when did I start referring to them as ‘humans’? That was a definite shock to the system. Only a few weeks ago, I had believed that I was one of them.
“Don’t worry about him,” Archer said as he snatched his hand away from mine, looking as if the last thing he wanted was to be comforted. “I’ve got my team tracking him.”
“Didn’t you say you had a team tracking him last night?” I asked as I remembered that nobody had shown up to help us at the store. “They can’t be doing a very good job.”
“Luckily for us, he left some of his blood behind on the blade you got him with.” Archer smirked at the memory. “Nice job by the way. You should have been a hunter. You were fearless.”
“Yeah, and it almost got me killed.” I gestured down at the bandaging around my abdomen.
“A wound received in battle is something to be celebrated.” Archer shrugged and pushed himself up from the bed.
“How will they track him using his blood?” I asked as he began to look like he was going to leave.
“Like I said before, us hunters have a few tricks up our sleeves.” He shrugged again, ever the mysterious hunter man. He looked down at me again, his eyes once more darkening with concern. “You should get some rest. You look like crap.”
“Urgh, thanks. I feel like it too.”
Archer certainly had a way about making a girl feel good about herself.
* * * *
Even though he had told me to rest, I’d known that he meant to sleep, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was no way in hell I wanted to be caught in a dream with Celestria again. That was if it was even a dream. Who knew what she could do with all the power she’d been syphoning off her poor students.
Instead, I turned my attention to my phone, which Archer must have put on the bedside table next to me. The urge to call Zoe and check that she was alright was almost impossible to ignore, but I knew that if her phone went off during something important I might mess everything up even more than it already was.
Ignoring the sensation in my gut that told me not to do it, I instead pressed the voicemail key and pressed the phone to my ear.
The automatic voice welcomed me and told me that I had several new messages, so I pressed to listen to them.
Okay, so the first one wasn’t too bad. It was a message from Pete telling me he was sorry for how he’d reacted to my being at the pool party. I sighed, regretting my own behaviour. I should probably have called him right back, but instead, I deleted the message and continued on to the next one.
It was from Nicola.
“Brianna, call me when you get the chance. We need to talk. I’ve just spoken to Peter, and he says he’s seen you. Call me!”
Throughout the voice message, she seemed to grow more and more frantic, and I could tell she was worried about me.
I deleted that too, promising myself that I’d call them both back as soon as I’d listened to all the other messages.
There were a few more that turned out to be pocket dials or a few seconds of recording before the call ended.
The last one couldn’t have been more different than the others.
It was the person I seriously didn’t want to hear from yet wanted to see more than anything in the world: Booth.
“Brianna, there’s some seriously weird crap going on at the Academy. Celestria has made an announcement to the entire school. She says you’re alive and that you are the one behind all of the deaths. If you are alive, please call me, damn it!”
My heart stopped as his message cut out, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
She can’t be serious! It was one thing to try to kill me. Well, she had killed me. But it was quite another to accuse me of doing all the killing! I mean, come on, how could I kill all those students when I’d been one of the victims?
I couldn’t sit still anymore, not knowing that Celestria had accused me of such a horrendous crime.
Struggling to sit up, I swung my feet off the edge of the bed and barely managed to stand up. It took several short, sharp breaths to ease the pain in my ribs and then I was on the move towards the door.
I had just managed to open it when I almost walked smack bang into a wall of hardened muscle.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” Mathew demanded as he gripped hold of my shoulders to stop me from stumbling backwards in surprise.
“I….I thought you were resting?” I said through more short breaths.
“I was, but now I’m up.” He shrugged and looked down at me. “I think you’re the one who needs rest. You look terrible.”
“So I’ve been told,” I grumbled back at him.
“You’re still beautiful though,” he added as he reached up and stroked hair away from my face. His fingertips brushed my cheek, and I felt a familiar wave of warmth spread through my face.
I smiled up at him weakly, but it barely touched the edges of my lips, and Mathew looked down at me, just as worried as Archer had been.
“Come on, let’s get you back to bed.”
Before I could make any kind of protest, Mathew picked me up into his arms and carried me as if I was a baby, right back to the bed.
Great, back where I started. I thought with a huff even as he placed the covers back over my legs.
When he sat on the edge of the bed and frowned at me, I asked, “What?”
“Something’s wrong, and it’s not just your wound,” he sighed. “What’s wrong?”
“My friends are in terrible danger, and everyone thinks I’m a murderer!” I gasped and suddenly felt hot tears streaking down my cheeks.
“Whoa! Hey!” Mathew leaned forwards and wrapped me in his huge arms. I sobbed into his chest even though every movement made my entire body hurt.
“What do you mean everyone thinks you’re a murderer?” he asked as he moved back just enough to look down at me again.
“The Grand Priestess at the Winterwood Academy has been killing students, and now she knows that I didn’t die during her attack on me and she’s using me as a scapegoat to save herself.”
Mathew’s eyes widened in astonishment, and he shook his head.
“Okay, you’ve seriously lost me,” he continued to shake his head as he gazed down at me. “You’re going to have to start from the beginning.”
And so I told him about everything that had happened before he’d found me on the road outside of the Academy. I told him about the students that had died and their unmarked graves. I told him how Booth had revealed the entire thing to me and how Celestria had attacked me (twice!) and how I’d died, and the Goddess had brought me back to stop her. But how the hell was I supposed to do that if Celestria had turned the entire school against me?
“So Zoe and Merrin have walked right back into a shitstorm?” Mathew asked. His expression growing gravely concerned.
“I’m so sorry, Mathew. This is all my fault.” I sobbed, and I was surprised when he hugged me all over again.
“This isn’t your fault at all! You’re the victim here,” he assured me. His voice was so filled with surety that I almost believed him. But how could it not be my fault? Celestria’s attacks had increased since my arrival at the Academy, and if I’d just died as she’d meant for me to then, Zoe and Merrin wouldn’t have walked right into a trap. Who knew what the psycho Priestess would do to them if she knew they’d met me today.
“I have to go back,” I gasped but even as I said the words there was a feeling in my gut that told me I was wrong.
“There’s no way in hell that I’m letting you go back there.” Mathew pulled away from me then and placed his hand on my leg. Even through the bedsheets, I could feel the warmth of his touch. “You need to recover, and then we’ll figure something out.”
“Neither of you are going anywhere.” Archer’s voice made us both jump. I couldn’t help but snarl against the pain as I turned to look at the doorway where he was standing. “My brother just called. He’s on his way right now.”
“You’re brother? Is he another hunter?” I asked. Maybe it was the hunters who could help me fix this mess. After all, they were supposed to put an end to bad supernatural creatures, right?
“Not exactly.” Archer shrugged, and he gave no answer to what exactly he meant by that.