Fallen University: Year Three: A Paranormal Romance Read online

  Fallen University

  Year Three

  Callie Rose

  Copyright © 2019 by Callie Rose

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Contents

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “There’s nothing here.”

  The despondence in Jayce’s tone was amplified by the cold echo of the empty cave. It surprised me, in an absent sort of way. He sounded like he’d lost a brother. I’d had no idea he cared so much.

  “There’s blood,” Kai said grimly. He gestured around at the dark smears and splatters on the walls and floor. Then he inhaled deeply through his nose, and his eyes flashed predatorily for an instant. “It’s not all Xero’s.”

  “How long has it been like this?” Kingston asked.

  Kai glanced at him, confused. “Uh—less than a day? We ported back here directly, did you forget?”

  Kingston cocked an eyebrow at him blandly. “The inter-planal whatever the fuck, remember? The whole reason we kept missing Dru?”

  The dark-haired vampire with toffee skin blinked as realization seemed to strike him. Time worked differently in the underworld than on earth, and we still hadn’t quite figured out how the two timelines functioned.

  Kai examined the blood more closely, transforming into his vampiric form in order to maximize his senses. “Hm. Still less than a day. This is all recent. Some of it is still wet.”

  My stomach churned. I didn’t want to think about Xero’s spilled blood at all, but the thought of there being a wet puddle of it just about killed me.

  But he was still alive.

  I knew it in my bones.

  I could feel his presence somewhere out there in the wide expanse of the universe, even though I couldn’t manage to pinpoint where he might be within it.

  “Search for clues,” I said, pushing down the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm me. “There’s got to be something here that’ll tell us where he went. Or at least give us a vague direction.”

  The awful truth was that even if we found something, I wasn’t sure how much good it would do.

  None of us knew the underworld like Xero knew it. He had been the only reason we’d made it as far as we had the first time we’d come here. Without him, we were lost. We were all powerful and magically talented. Kai’s blood sense, Jayce’s hellhound tracking skills, Kingston’s wings, my persuasion and shapeshifting abilities were all useful, but I didn’t know how far that would get us without Xero’s knowledge.

  The guys fell silent as they did what I asked.

  They were still working together, but the unit was fractured. I could feel it, and it seemed to me that they could too; none of them had complained about coming back here, not even Kingston with his business to run or Jayce with his claustrophobia or Kai with his distaste for the war between the Custodians and the fallen in general. I wondered if they missed Xero for his own sake, or if the fracture of my succubus bond with the fire demon was affecting them as well.

  Forcing myself not to fall into a pit of helplessness, I went over every inch of the cave twice, and so did each of the men. There was nothing but the smears of blood and singes of fire from the battle.

  “We’ll check the other chambers,” I said briskly.

  Jayce and Kingston shared a glance, but they didn’t argue. I ignored it. I couldn’t afford to sit here and try to read their feelings, not with Xero missing. I didn’t have the energy to waste, magical or emotional. I needed my group to be whole.

  Over the next several hours, we combed the fingers and cracks of the cave with no more success.

  Even the main chamber was empty, except for the rotting evidence of our last battle there. It sickened me that Gavriel would’ve just left his minions to disintegrate without so much as a burial, but I wasn’t surprised. The guy was pure evil. And sadistic.

  And holding my Xero somewhere on this godforsaken hellscape.

  We reached the mouth of the cave with no luck at all. Tears sprang to my eyes and I shoved the heels of my hands against their burn.

  Where are you, Xero? Damn it, why didn’t I come back sooner? I will find you, I swear it.

  “We must have missed something,” I said. My voice trembled, and I bit my lip. Fuck. Not a good leadership look. “We have to check again.”

  Silence hung in the air. I could feel the men’s hesitation, but also their willingness to do as I asked—not because I was using persuasion either.

  I didn’t wait for them to convince me that I was wrong, that we’d seen all there was to see. I just turned around and went back the way we’d come, back to the site of the battle where we’d lost Xero. They followed behind as I made my way back to that small, hidden cave at the very end. When we reached it, I stood in the center and focused.

  The magic mist was gone. It must have been attached to the stones somehow. The ground was bleached in the spot where we had opened the portal back to Fallen University. Blood spatters dappled the rocks everywhere, except in the natural little nest-like divot where the Temple Stones of the First Order had been before we’d collected them.

  I let the scene wash over me, wishing with every fiber of my being that Xero had still been here when we returned. We’d come back as soon as we possibly could, but between getting the school back to earth and getting our asses chewed out by Headmaster Toland, it hadn’t been fast enough.

  Fuck, I should’ve come back right away. How could I have been so stupid?

  I’d thought maybe Toland would send us back with help, give us reinforcements to go find Xero. But instead, he’d forbidden us from returning to the underworld at all. We were supposed to be taking our final exams right now, leaving Xero to his fate as an “unfortunate casualty of war.”

  Yeah. Fuck that.

  You know when you were a kid and you would wish for something so hard it almost made you want to throw up? That’s where I was. I was writing letters to Santa in my head, praying to all the gods, putting a wish under my pillow for the tooth fairy that I could find Xero and bring him home. I squeezed my eyes shut and let the wish fill my consciousness.

  My sudden gasp had the guys running to my side.

  “What’s wrong?” Jayce held my elbow, his blue eyes shining with worry.

&nb
sp; “I can feel something. It’s like—like a hook in my gut.” I pressed my hands over my navel, which only amplified the sensation.

  “Does it hurt?” Kingston asked, his glittering green eyes narrowing, looking almost academically curious.

  “No—it’s like a pull.” I took a few steps to the left and doubled over. “Ugh! Shit. That hurts.”

  “Walking toward the pull?” Kai asked.

  I shook my head. “No. Away from it. I think—God, it almost feels like my radar, but weird.”

  “Everything’s weird in the underworld,” Jayce pointed out, a humorless chuckle falling from his lips. “Do you think it’s Xero?”

  I stepped to the right, where the pull was leading me, and almost passed out with relief. Yes, this was Xero’s vibe.

  “I know how to find him,” I said, a spark of hope lighting in my chest. “We need to get to higher ground.”

  They didn’t question me. I could feel beats of hope and excitement emanating from them, proving again that they wanted Xero back almost as much as I did. It fueled my determination. We were going to get our fifth back, no matter what.

  We raced out of the cave and into the canyon, and as soon as we emerged, I held up a hand.

  “Anybody sense danger?” I asked, my voice low.

  They were all quiet as they put out their various feelers. I put out my own, searching for any presence besides my guys. I couldn’t feel anything but the pull in my gut, leading me irresistibly forward.

  “All clear,” Kai said after a moment. Then he grimaced. “I don’t know about the higher ground though. The walls aren’t climbable from here, and we can’t get around the waterfall.”

  He gestured toward the thick, oily liquid that was pouring off the high ledge of the canyon to our left. He was right. We could cross any of the three converging streams, but the river and waterfall would have been dangerous even if it had just been water. I wasn’t even sure what this was made of. Probably something fucking deadly.

  Kingston scoffed. “Um, hello?” He morphed into his dragon form without another word, then lowered his wings and tail, jerking his head to indicate that we should get on.

  “All three of us?” I gave him a doubtful look. He could adjust his size when he shifted, and at the moment, he was a big dragon. I’d seen how capable he was of carrying a single passenger when he’d flown Hannah into battle, but I didn’t think his snake-like torso could hold all of our weight.

  He gave me a flat look. Even in dragon form, I could read the expression on his face easily—or maybe it was just because I could feel his emotions almost as strongly as if they were my own.

  “All right, all right, big man. Wasn’t trying to question your prowess.”

  I grinned at him, although I knew it didn’t reflect in my eyes. I wasn’t sure anything would seem funny again until I had Xero back. Until I had the missing piece of my soul back.

  He huffed out a breath of smoke, and I shrugged and climbed on his back, followed by Kai and Jayce. Kingston took to the air with a little more force than was strictly necessary. I clung to him, terrified that I was going to slip off his slick scales.

  “Okay, you proved your point!” I shouted over the wind. “Level out, would you?”

  He snorted a burst of flame into the sky but did as I asked. We were on top of the mountain less than five minutes later, looking out over a part of the underworld we hadn’t seen before. I could see farther into the distance than I’d expected, and ice filled my belly as I caught my first glimpse of an underworld city. It was as blackened and savage as the wilderness we’d traveled through before. It was so far away that the buildings looked tiny, but my gut pulled in that direction.

  “Over there,” I said. “Pick a spot we can all see clearly. We’ll open a portal.”

  “Not inside the city?” Kai asked, sounding horrified.

  “No, of course not. But close to it.”

  “You see that big tree with the red branches?” Kingston asked, pointing.

  “I see it.”

  “Me too.”

  “Yeah, me too. Good. That’s where we’ll go,” I decided. “Come on.”

  I focused hard on the GPS signal in my gut, holding onto it desperately. I’m coming, Xero. Please hold on.

  “Three…” I started the count, grasping hands with the three men. “Two… One.”

  The portal opened on my final word, and we blew through it. A moment later, we were standing beneath the tree my dragon shifter bond-mate had pointed out. The city loomed close on the horizon now, just as intimidating as the mountain range we’d come from.

  “Where to now?” Jayce asked, his voice quiet and hushed.

  “Hang on,” I said, lifting a finger as I closed my eyes, trying to refocus on the connection I could feel to Xero.

  But it was gone.

  What? No!

  Panic clutched at my heart. I pressed on my navel but got no reaction. I focused every bit of my energy on Xero, on wishing him back into reality, but nothing happened.

  “Shit.” Kai rubbed a hand over his face, reading my expression.

  “No! I lost him. I lost him! Fuck!” I buried my fists in my hair.

  How could I have been so stupid? Of course a portal would disrupt the tracking! I couldn’t track him from earth, and now I’ve screwed up the signal here.

  “Okay, so we go back,” Kingston said calmly, laying a hand on my arm.

  “What?” I whirled to face him.

  “You picked up on him at the cave, right? So we just go back and pick up his trail again. Gavriel probably had his minions march Xero on foot. He’s sadistic like that. Just means we have to do the same thing. Track him the old fashioned way—no portal jumping.”

  Oh, Jesus Christ. Thank fuck for these men.

  I grabbed him and kissed him hard on the mouth. “You’re a genius.”

  “Yeah.” He grinned, his emerald eyes half-hooded. “I know.”

  I poked him in the side, then kissed him again for good measure. As a thank you. As a connection.

  Just because I could.

  “So let’s go back. Everybody ready for this?”

  “Let’s do it,” Jayce said, shaking out his shoulders.

  “Tracking always was my favorite part,” Kai said, his pupils shifting into slits as his vampire form rose to the surface.

  I took a deep, calming breath.

  Xero was still missing, still a captive of Gavriel. But I had my other men with me. They wouldn’t let me fall apart. More importantly, they wouldn’t let us fall apart.

  We were going to do this together, even if we had to do it on foot.

  Chapter Two

  Kingston was right.

  As soon as we returned to the cave where we’d left Xero when we returned to earth, I went back to the spot where I had originally picked up the pull toward him. Immediately, the gentle tug flared to life inside my belly again.

  The pull dragged us through the wilderness for weeks. It was slow going though, navigating the wild landscape and trying not to lose our bearings.

  After fourteen days, the city didn’t look any closer than it had before, although we’d covered a lot of ground. I wasn’t even sure that it would be our final destination. I had no idea how close or far away Xero was; I just knew when I went in the wrong direction, it hurt.

  We hadn’t brought provisions this time, but our first time in the underworld had lowered our standards significantly. I lived on love—literally. Kai lived on me, and the occasional small underworld rodent, although he kept those to a minimum; he didn’t want to accidentally go feral again.

  Kingston and Jayce both hunted and ate in their demon forms, but quickly discovered that morphing back into their human forms too quickly after eating turned their stomachs. Meals were saved for the end of the day because of it, so they could eat and sleep in demon form and wake up refreshed and nourished the following day. We got used to the pattern, but it wasn’t exactly cheerful.

  It was hardest on Ja
yce, I think. Not the feeding my succubus powers part—he loved that as much as always, especially with a gentle nudge or two from me to break him out of his funk. But he was tired of death and killing to survive. It hurt his gentle hippie soul, and I did whatever I could to comfort him. Whenever I had the presence of mind to do that anyway.

  As we neared our third week of searching for Xero, we trekked across the wasteland one afternoon as the dull red sun shone down from high overhead. Harpies screamed in the distance like vultures. Red dust kicked up around our ankles with every step, and there wasn’t a bit of shade or comfortable ground to be found anywhere. I followed the pull toward Xero blindly, barely paying attention to my surroundings. It took all my energy just to maintain the connection with him.

  My muscles were weak. Every breath was a struggle.

  I stumbled over a rock and nearly went down, but Jayce caught my elbow.

  “Hey! You okay?” His cobalt eyes looked stunning in the ruddy light, I noticed dizzily.

  “Yes,” I lied, my tongue feeling numb and too thick as I spoke. The truth was, I was feeling shittier and shittier by the day. I had never been this far from any of my guys for this long. Even when Kai had been ignoring me, he was still around. Still within the walls of Fallen University and in range of my feelers.

  Xero was just—gone. He was so far away that moving a foot in the wrong direction felt like ripping my own heart out. His absence was killing me.

  Jayce’s brow furrowed, and I could tell he didn’t believe me for a second.