Shadow Master: The Nightwatch Academy book 4

  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

  Epilogue

  Other books by Debbie Cassidy

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019, Debbie Cassidy

  All Rights Reserved

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

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover by Carol Marques

  One

  “Hyde!” I clawed through the rubble of the wreckage that had once been the fortress. “Hyde, please!”

  Blood caked my fingertips as I dug, looking for something, anything, that would give us hope, but tears kept blurring my vision.

  He had to be here. He had to be alive. Part of me knew this was impossible. The gore, the shards of bone, and the mist of blood that hovered in the air told me there was no life here any longer. But if I stopped digging, if I stopped looking, it would mean admission. It would mean giving up.

  Brady was gone, taken by the fomorian with the violet eyes. Carlo was dead, killed by the green fog. I was done with loss. No more.

  Not Hyde.

  Not him too.

  “Justice?” A hand on my shoulder halted my scrambling search.

  “No!” I shrugged it off and continued, climbing over the rubble, digging, searching.

  There was no smoke. No curling black residue in the air and no fumes. Nothing. The explosion had been unlike anything we’d ever seen. It had been fomorian. The enemy had entered the mist, slaughtered cadets, taken my mate, killed my friend, and blown up the fortress.

  Nothing left but death.

  “Hyde!”

  “Dammit, Justice!” An arm snagged me around the waist and hauled me to my feet. “Pull it together!”

  Lloyd’s icy blue eyes were filled with pain and determination. His words were like a slap, like a cold bucket of water dousing the raging inferno in my mind. What was I doing? Shit, what was I becoming?

  I caught sight of Devon and Aidan over his shoulder. They stood with their arms loose at their sides, expressions dazed.

  Too much… This was too much.

  I took a shuddering breath and wiped at my leaking eyes. “No survivors?”

  “No one,” Lloyd confirmed.

  I nodded, my neck stiff, teeth aching from clenching so hard. My chest ached—a byproduct of my heart shredding. Pain would have to wait. We were under attack. With the fortress down, with the knights gone, it was only a matter of time before the fomorians succeeded in breaking through our final defense.

  The mist.

  How had they known? How could they have known the knights would all be here, all in one place? Because they had to have known to attack now, on this day, at this moment.

  They’d taken out an army in one hit.

  What was left?

  The answer stumbled toward me across the barren plain. Cadets making their way toward the carnage, mere dots on the horizon. Not enough. Not nearly enough. How long before we were attacked again? Were the fomorians still here?

  “Justice?” Lloyd’s grip on my shoulders tightened.

  When had he taken hold of me? A shadow darted low across the ground to my left. A figure, three feet tall, bald, and naked, ran across the ruined earth.

  “Hey!” I broke free of Lloyd and sprinted toward it.

  My boots slipped on the rubble, and I almost lost my footing. Up ahead, Devon was in motion. He cut off the creature and brought it down. He held it there with a hand around its throat.

  “Meee, meee freee,” the creature screeched.

  Its eyes were huge, taking up most of its face, and its mouth was thin-lipped and small. It thrashed, trying to get loose.

  “Stop!” Devon pushed down harder, and the creature froze.

  “Freee,” he repeated, almost pleadingly.

  “A hobblood…” Aidan joined us. “Has to be.”

  Brady had explained how they were bound. Had they been bound to the fortress? Had the building’s destruction set them free? If so, how the fuck had it survived?

  “How are you alive?” Devon asked it, obviously on the same train of thought as me.

  “Free,” the creature whined.

  I stepped closer. “You may be free, but if you don’t tell me how you survived and what happened here, you’ll be dead.” I pulled a dagger from my thigh holster and held it up so the hobblood could see it. “How did you survive?”

  “Magari dust. We use it. We be unharmed. We help. We be free. We just want be free.” His eyes welled.

  Dust…Some kind of magical shit to protect the hobbloods? A pact with the fomorians? “The fomorians made it to the fortress. The traps were just the tip of the iceberg.” A memory sliced across my mind. A shadow cutting through the kitchen, then again across the grounds. I sucked in a sharp breath. “Oh, God. They were here the night before. I think… think I might have seen them.”

  “They used the hobbloods,” Aidan said.

  The hobbloods had let the fomorians in. Let them plant their explosives. They’d kept quiet, and now everyone was dead.

  “We want free,” the hobblood whined. “Please.”

  Something bitter and dark twisted inside me, and my hand tightened around the hilt of my blade. “And what about everyone else? What about all the knights? You let them die.” I raised the blade, rage burning a path through my veins.

  “Justice…” Lloyd’s voice held warning. “Don’t.”

  I wanted to stab the hobblood. To kill it and watch it bleed. I wanted to end it like it had ended the knights, like it had ended the man I loved.

  “It’s a victim too,” Lloyd said. “You know it is.”

  Fuck this. “Fuck you, Lloyd. Fuck you.” I lowered my blade, chest heaving, blood simmering with the need to do damage. I fixed my attention on the hobblood. “What’s their plan? Are they still here? When do they intend to attack?”

  The creature shook his head, his eyes bugging as Devon applied more pressure. Devon was a man after my heart.

  “Answer her,” he growled.

  “No. Don’t know. Just be free, we just want be free.”

  “Let him go,” Lloyd said softly.

  Devon looked to me for instruction, and my heart swelled with gratitude. He was letting me take point. Letting me decide. Maybe not the best decision considering the murderous thoughts swimming through my mind right now, but I appreciated the gesture and recognized it for what it was. A vote of co
nfidence that I’d make the right choice.

  Fuck it.

  I exhaled, and I nodded sharply. Beside me, Lloyd relaxed slightly.

  Devon released the hobblood, and the creature darted off so fast he was nothing but a shadowy blur.

  “Cadets incoming,” Aidan said.

  There were indeed figures headed our way, six. A troop? Their footsteps slowed as they took in the scene, and then they broke into a run.

  I pushed down the anger and turned to Lloyd. “We have to get to the Academy and warn them. We need to contact the Nightwatch Council. We’re going to need reinforcements.”

  “Agreed,” Lloyd said. “Devon, Aidan, you guys make a run for the fortress while—”

  There was a roar like thunder, and then the rubble ten meters to our left exploded outward. Dust flew, and I threw up an arm to shield my face. A long second passed before I lowered my arm to stare at the spot. My heart stalled, and then blood rushed in my ears, blocking out the cries of alarm around me.

  Harmon stood there, his gray, stone-like body shrouded in rubble dust. It settled on his skin, almost reverently. His piercing green eyes located me and then focused sharply.

  “Justice.” His mouth moved in my name, and then he fell to one knee.

  It was only then I noticed the bundle cradled in his arms. A person. A knight.

  The knight turned his head to look our way, and recognition shot through me. “Henrich?”

  * * *

  Devon, Aidan, and Lloyd were in fight mode, weapons ready to attack. It took a second for my brain to make the connection why. They didn’t know this was Harmon, they didn’t know how he’d changed.

  “Stop!” I strode over the rubble. “It’s Harmon.”

  “Shit,” Devon said.

  But I was already by Harmon, crouching to take Henrich from him. Harmon’s eyelids fluttered. He was about to pass out.

  Devon and Aidan got to him first, bracing him as he keeled over onto his side.

  “What did they do to him?” Aidan muttered.

  The other cadets were almost on us now. As I adjusted my grip on Henrich, the troop flanked me. The cadets joined us a moment later, gasping at the sight of Henrich.

  “Justice.” Henrich clutched at my arm. “You have to stop them.” Blood bubbled out of his mouth, staining his lips and cutting off his words for a moment. He coughed. “You need to take over. Lead. Lead with your head.” He clasped my hand, and warm blood coated my fingers. Something circular was pressed into my palm. “Take it. Lead. Stop them. Promise me.”

  What was he talking about?

  “Promise me!” He tried to sit up, and his eyelids fluttered with the effort.

  Shit. “I promise. Just rest, and we can…”

  But the light had bled out of his eyes, leaving them glazed and lifeless.

  He was dead.

  I lowered him gently to the ground and slowly unfurled my palm to reveal a metallic disc coated in Henrich’s blood. Even smeared in crimson, the emblem was unmistakable. A raven wreathed in tendrils of smoke. It was the Shadow Master symbol.

  It was the Shadow Master pin.

  Two

  “He’s gone,” one of the cadets said.

  I stared at the pin, then up at Lloyd, who was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher.

  “More cadets incoming,” Aidan warned.

  I stood and held out the pin to Lloyd. “Here, take it.”

  He frowned and shook his head. “No. He gave it to you. He wanted you to take over. He wanted you to be Shadow Master.”

  “What?” one of the cadets said. I recognized him as a second-year. “He was dying. He probably would have given it to the first person he came across.”

  Devon growled low in his throat, and the cadet held up his hands and backed up.

  More cadets surrounded us, their faces distraught. Twenty, no thirty. Were there more?

  “I’m just saying that Henrich did what any desperate, dying man would do,” the second-year said. “Handed it over to the first person he saw.”

  He had a point. I looked to Lloyd.

  “No,” a gravelly, deep voice said from behind us. “Henrich decided before.”

  All eyes went to Harmon, who was sitting up now. The cadets backed up, noticing him for the first time. I guess when he was lying down, his gray body must have blended with the rubble, but now…

  “Whoa!” The second-year fell into a defensive stance, which in any other circumstance would have been comical.

  The clink and clank of swords being drawn filled the air.

  “Drop them!” Aidan ordered, his voice an authoritative snap. “He’s one of us.”

  “Like fuck,” the second-year cadet said. “That thing isn’t one of us. It’s one of them.”

  It was true in a sense; Harmon was more fomorian than moonkissed now, but he was still one of us.

  I stepped in front of my friend. “He is one of us. The fomorians altered his DNA, but he’s still Harmon. He’s still a cadet.”

  Hesitation skimmed the cadet’s features, but in the next instant, his jaw clenched in determination. “Nah. He’s one of them now. Look at him.”

  I drew my sword, allowing the rage to peer out from my burning eyes. “Touch him, and you die.”

  An excuse was all I needed. Just one tiny excuse to unleash the monster that wanted to pound and stab.

  “What the fuck, Justice?” the cadet said. “I don’t take orders from you.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Aidan said. “Henrich gave her the seal. He handed her the title.”

  “A first-year,” the cadet sneered. “I don’t think so.”

  “A shadow caster,” Aidan countered.

  “He wanted her to have it,” Harmon said.

  His voice was like the rumble of thunder. It stalled all conversation and pulled all attention to his hulking form. The air rippled with tension as he rose to his feet. I shot him a quick glance, biting back my shock at the size of him, the seven-foot height of him. I stood in his shadow, my blade ready to defend him. Yeah, that sounded pathetic now.

  “What do you mean, Harmon?” Lloyd asked.

  “Henrich tried give me seal to give to Justice,” Harmon said. His words were slow, his speech almost painful, as if he was forcing out the words from a throat not built for speech. “Henrich with me when explosion. He hurt. He give me seal, tell me take to Justice. Tell me to make Justice lead. Make her Shadow Master. He set me free to carry message.”

  “But you brought him out with you,” Lloyd finished for Harmon.

  Harmon nodded. “He choose Justice.”

  There was a deep silence in which the only sound was the howl of the wind. I stared at the seal in my hand. The seal Henrich had chosen to give me.

  Shadow Master.

  Lead with your head, he’d said. Both now and once before in the dungeon when he’d shown me Harmon. He’d said I had potential, that maybe one day I could rule with my head and not just my heart.

  But that day couldn’t be today.

  I wasn’t ready.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. I didn’t want it. I wanted to gather supplies and go into the mist, into fomorian territory after Brady. I wanted to get him back.

  “Justice…” Lloyd touched my elbow lightly. “Henrich chose you. He saw something in you, and he believed you could lead us.” Lloyd looked up at the cadets. “He believed you could rally us and stop the threat.”

  The cadet who’d been arguing against my unwanted promotion lowered his blade. “They’re all dead.” He said the words softly, achingly, as if he’d only just realized it. “Fucking hell. It’s just us now.”

  Just us, a ragtag group of cadets who hadn’t even graduated yet. In his last moments, Henrich had slapped on the shackles. My heart urged me to run, to drop the seal and fucking run after Brady, but my head warned me to stop. Think. Even if I got to Brady, even if I saved him, what would we have to come back to? If I left now, like this, if I didn’t fortify our stance, what world w
ould I be coming back to?

  “Justice?” Lloyd prompted again.

  I could feel all their eyes on me. Feel the weight as it settled on my shoulders like a deadly shroud. I closed my eyes and summoned Brady’s face. I was going to find him. As soon as we rebuilt our army. As soon as we fortified, I would find him. I’d avenge Hyde’s death. I’d—

  “Justice!”

  My eyes snapped open, and my pulse went into a full-blown gallop. That voice, that fucking voice. I found him running toward me across the barren, dusty land, through the crimson-tinged air. I saw him, and yet my mind refused to believe it.

  How could this be?

  How could he be alive?

  But then my heart took over, and I was running across the ground toward him.

  “Hyde!”

  Three

  We met in an embrace, lips crushing together in a kiss desperate to affirm that yes, this was real. This was us. Together, unharmed. He breathed me in, his hands cupping my face hard, his body crowding mine in a welcome invasion.

  Voices filtered through the rush of blood in my head, through the heat that flooded my body, and then Hyde pulled away, just enough to look into my eyes. Enough to whisper, “You’re alive.”

  “I thought you were dead.” My voice cracked, and I swallowed the sudden rush of relief and grief that surged up my throat. “I thought they got you, too.”

  “We saw the smoke and heard the explosion. The earth trembled with it.”

  “We?”

  “I was in a meeting with Brunner that ran later than anticipated when it happened. Garnet and Latrou were there, too.” His expression was shell-shocked.