Broken Angel (Book 1 in the Chronicles of a Supernatural Huntsman series)

When Creatures and Beings class was over, Holly came to visit me. It was about six-thirty in the morning and I was still awake. Dahlia never left my side the entire time. She remained curled up in a ball, rested on my shoulder with her beak nuzzled into my neck.

  “Who’s your friend?” Holly laughed as she pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “Her name is Dahlia. Apparently she’s going to make me feel better.”

  Holly gasped and leaned in to get a closer look. “Oo, she must be a Caladrius!” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard about them from my godmother. Her mentor owned one. They can be really handy in a pinch.”

  I smiled and pet a finger across the small bird’s head. It gave a little coo, like the purr of a kitten, and nuzzled in closer. In the ten hours I had been there with her, the burning sensation in my foot had already dulled. The wound had stopped bleeding and both holes where the bullet penetrated and exited were smaller.

  “She’s been a big help so far. David said I’ll be completely better by the time I wake up for class,” I informed my friend.

  “Good. Until then, you can look this over.” She tossed a heavy binder into my lap. “It’s everything you missed today with Rashne.”

  I rolled my eyes and groaned. “How is it possible to go over so much in only a few short hours?”

  Holly shrugged her shoulders and laughed. “We went over some pretty crazy stuff today. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  “What was it?”

  “Demons mostly,” she said, her voice softening.

  At that, I sat up straight and grasped the binder in my hands. My eyes were wide with anticipation. It was just the subject I had been hoping for. I wanted to learn everything there was to know about demons and how to find specific ones. If I could figure that out, I could find Danny’s killer and have my sweet revenge. The thought sent a shiver down my spine—not one of fear, but of excitement.

  “Thanks so much for bringing me this,” I said with a smile.

  “I know how much you love to study,” she smiled back and relaxed in her chair.

  I opened the binder to the first page and read through the introduction typed up on the stark white paper. Rashne sure liked to be organized. With everything I learned about him, I liked him more and more.

  “You know, you don’t have to stay with me and study. I know you’re probably exhausted,” I said to Holly as I situated myself further down into the bed and propped the binder up on my legs.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I want to stay here with you until you get better.”

  My gaze softened as I took in her smiling, freckled face. I was thankful to have her.

  “If you insist,” I said without protest.

  Like the night before, we stayed up and quizzed each other on demon knowledge. It was fascinating. There was so much information in that binder that most humans had no clue about. Even if I asked Cara, someone who had heard about demons from the bible and church, she probably could’ve only told me a few sentences about them. In my hands I had at least a hundred pages on their traits, origins, hiding places, habits, and more.

  Before long, Holly curled up in her chair, resembling a cat settled down for a long nap. I closed the binder and set it down on the bedside table. My foot had no more pain throbbing through it. I lifted it up to inspect. Small scars on either side was all that remained of the two bullet holes.

  When I awoke at four in the afternoon, the bird had left my side and was nowhere to be found. Holly remained slumped over in the chair next to me. My foot felt completely better with only two small rough patches on the skin to show it hadn’t been a horrible dream. It looked like it had happened years ago.

  “Holly,” I whispered as I leaned over and shook her shoulder. “Time to get up.”

  She groaned and rubbed at her eyes, her thick, curly hair smooshed against the side of her face. “What?” she said as she tried to force her eyes to open.

  “My foot is completely healed. Let’s go back to the room and get ready for breakfast.”

  I helped her out of the chair. Her legs were like noodles, limp and unwilling to take any weight for the first few steps.

  “You’re probably going to have to open your eyes to walk,” I said with a sigh.

  “Right. Walk,” she mumbled as we left the ward.

  There was no one there to check out with, so I just left. Once, when Holly and I were studying, an older woman came in and asked if either of us would like anything to eat or drink. We happily accepted as our stomachs growled. Other than that, I hadn’t seen a single soul the entire time I was in there besides Holly and Dahlia.

  I pulled Holly by the arm as I raced down the hallway to our room. Somehow, I was quickly learning my way around the complicated corridors. As we sped around a sharp turn, we stopped in our tracks. Foggy, blue mist the shape and size of a large human floated toward us. The closer it drew, the more it took on a solid form. It was Rashne. He stopped and towered over my small frame.

  “I heard about what happened to you, Miss Kamlyn,” he spoke in a deep, apologetic voice. “I hope this does not discourage you from training. Your intentions are honorable and you should not allow anyone to make you feel inadequate simply because you are different.”

  I smiled up at the blue Djinn. “If anything, it only makes me want to try harder.”

  “Good,” he said with a simple grin. “That is what I wanted to hear.”

  He continued past me down the hall. The further he walked away, the less defined his form became until he was nothing more than an indistinguishable, human-sized clump of blue drifting smoke again.

  “Well, that was weird,” Holly commented.

  I had almost forgotten she was there and what we were doing. “Yeah, it was,” I said absently.

  Every day I spent underground in the Chamber’s headquarters, the weirder things seemed. Before the life-shattering incident with the demon in Danny’s bedroom, and before the devastating car accidents that took my parents, life had been pretty normal. It had its moments, but nothing as strange as the things I saw in my few days with the Chamber of Darkness. The instructors taught their classes like we were students at college. It made me think about all the real students somewhere in the world above, stressing out over their biology notes for upcoming finals. They had no idea what pressure really was.

  We made it to the cafeteria with five minutes to grab our food and shovel it in. I slopped the colorless mush into a bowl and poured a glass of milk in a hurry. Holly did the same and we both parked ourselves next to Atticus and Achilles. They were arguing vivaciously with each other.

  “If you exorcise a demon, it goes back to Hell,” Atticus said.

  “No, dumbass. All it does is get it out of the person’s body. There is no Hell to send it to. It just goes back out into the world.”

  “No, no, no, that’s wrong!” Atticus cut in.

  The two went on like that for an entire minute before they realized Holly and I had sat down. We looked at each other with small grins as we listened in. It was our only form of entertainment in the windowless mess hall.

  Suddenly, the two brothers stopped and looked at us.

  “Ah, the beautiful Miss Paige and Miss Everest have finally graced us with their presence,” Achilles said with a coy smile.

  “Are you two ever on time?” Atticus laughed.

  I chewed the food in my mouth and held up my index finger. When I had swallowed enough, I answered. “Getting shot in the foot tends to slow you down.”

  They both pulled their mouths back in grimaces.

  “That was brutal,” Atticus said with his face twisted in disgust. “So much blood.”

  “That boy’s lucky he’s surrounded by trained Huntsmen and instructors or I would tear him apart for what he did,” Achilles growled from across the table.

  “That’s sweet, but unnecessary. I can handle myself.”

  “Let’s just hope he doesn’t try anything funny from now on,” Holly said through a mouthful o
f mush.

  I didn’t care if Ryker had anything else planned for me, or if he acted on impulse out of jealousy again. He couldn’t put me through anything worse than I had already dealt with. He couldn’t hurt me. I felt nothing, except the intense desire to get through training and destroy Danny’s killer. It was the one thing that kept me going when the stress piled up on my shoulders, threatening to crush me. I would get through training whether that pompous, privileged prat liked it or not. There was nothing he could do to stop me.

  The mentor meeting