I press my hands against the demon’s face and he laughs as my fingers explore. Like I’m pathetic. Like I’m nothing.
He tried to bring out my worst nightmares, but little does he know, I’ll behis.
I dig my thumbs into his eyes, hard and deep. He screams, tightening his grip around my throat, and I feel his warm burst of blood that looks more like smoke dribble against my skin. I dig in and he cries out, and the illusion of Phoenix shatters until he’s that same smoking demon from before.
“You bitch!” he hisses.
“No…” I choke out and let my powers sing.
Osmodeus screams then as my magic consumes him from the inside. The blank holes where his eyes should be fill with the power of my fire. It expands inside him and ripples out to make him bleed. Red slides from his eyes like blood and trails down his mouth in rivers of unfathomable pain.
He releases me and I drop to the floor, heaving painful breaths into my lungs. When I look up through the strands of hair plastered against my face, it’s to watch Osmodeus claw at his rippling body and scream in agony. Smoking fingers try to capture the fire spreading through his insides.
But it’s useless.
I stand up on shaking feet. “You will die today,” I rasp through the pain in my throat. I tilt my head and watch as he drops to his knees and writhes.
“You—bitch!”
AndIsmile maliciously down at the King of the Sixth Circle of Hell and say, “No. As you said, I am a Princess of Hell.”
Osmodeus lets out a final scream before his body explodes into wisps of twirling gray smoke and he disappears for good. The illusion of the Academy around me shatters.
With him gone, a shimmering portal appears with a bold number five above it. Images flicker on the other side, but none I can really make out.
It doesn’t matter.
Anything is better than staying here.
And I’m not going to let another demon fuck with me again.
So I take a breath, and I jump through the portal.
Five
Syko
The faculty housing resides on a slight hill just behind the elite’s dorms. The fine brick estate looms over the others and I’ve never wanted to throw a brick through a window as badly as I do right now.
The shining metal plate just beneath the key card lock lists each teacher’s name and their apartment number, which seems like an incredibly stupid thing to state out in the open with an academy full of criminals.
Not that I’m complaining at the moment.
“Professor L. Shade Room 606 B,” Saint says, his finger trailing along the gold plate just near the door.
“So... we just going to… break the door down?” I give the metal handle a pull and it’s locked, but nothing’s ever really locked, is it?
“Yes,” Phoenix says but then Saint’s shoving his chest so hard that they both go tumbling down into the billowing green bushes to the left.
“What the fuck?” I look to Malek and when he looks at me, his gaze drifts to something behind me, and then he too dives into the thick tangle of greenery.
My palms lift in confusion but when I turn on my heels…
Shit.
“Syko, sweetie, what are you doing out here so late in the middle of the night?” Professor Henn hums my name as her glossy eyes rake down my body with so much slowness that my cock tells me I’m a dumb fuck for not making a jump for it when I had the chance. Seriously, fuck the three of them and their amazing sense of hearing and smell.
“I was just—” A crazed bird like noise chirps at me from the bushes. I glance to Saint and he does an extensive head bobbing motion to the plump woman in front of me before extending his neck toward the locked door. He. Does. It. Four. Fucking. Times.
