Clash (Academy of Unpredictable Magic Book 6) Read online

  Clash

  Academy of Unpredictable Magic #6

  Sadie Moss

  Copyright © 2019 by Sadie Moss

  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, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  Chapter 1

  It’s just Agustin and me.

  We’re standing about ten feet apart from each other, and I can see lightning and flame crackling to life between his fingers.

  Hoo boy.

  I grit my teeth, reaching out, trying to mirror him properly through the jumble of powers that are coiled inside of him like so many snakes. It’s like I’m trying to make my way through a funhouse mirror hall.

  Okay. Okay, I can do this.

  The lightning whip appears in his left hand, snapping in the air, and I try to duck, but it’s as if I’m frozen. I can’t move.

  Dammit! Why can’t I move?

  The whip wraps around my arms and torso, burning my skin. Then the burn starts to seep inside of me, like the weird almost-ticklish feeling of being zapped with static electricity, but so much worse. It hurts like a son of a bitch, and I still can’t move, and—

  I wake up in a sweat.

  The sheets are twisted around my legs and chest. I practically rip them off and shove them down to the end of the bed, my lungs heaving, my pajamas sticking to me.

  Fuck. Fucking fuck.

  I keep having the same nightmare. Every night in my dreams, I find myself facing off with Agustin, trying desperately to beat him, but I can’t. The reasons why are different each time. This time, apparently, it was because I was frozen in place like a damn block of granite. And every time I fail and die a horrible death, I go back to the beginning again. The setting might change—sometimes it’s on a random street, sometimes it’s at Griffin Academy, sometimes it’s even at the bar where I used to work—but it’s always just the two of us, and we’re always facing off, and I always die.

  Yippee.

  I scrub at my eyes to make sure I’m actually awake, then pinch my arm for good measure. Ouch. Okay, so, definitely awake.

  On my right, Roman lets out a snore that Asher, also asleep, unconsciously kicks him for. On my other side is Dmitri, and on the far end is Cam, who sleeps like a vampire. No, seriously, sometimes I have to check to make sure he’s really breathing, he lies that still and quiet while he sleeps.

  We’ve gotten a room to ourselves since the whole “eighty-five percent of the government being put into a suspended animation coma” thing went down. The Unpredictable holding facility has been rearranged so that couples and friends can sleep together. There aren’t really any beds big enough for two people, never mind five, so we’ve just laid a bunch of mattresses on the floor and made do.

  I have to admit, part of it is kind of nice. I had worried the men would have problems sleeping together—you know, bed hogging or blanket stealing or whatever. But it’s been good. Everyone’s totally comfortable with each other. I mean, Asher and Cam will actively cuddle anyone who gets close, and Dmitri hasn’t murdered any of us yet, so I’d call it a win.

  Besides, none of us want to really be away from each other. Even in sleep. Not with what’s been going on.

  The government—our entire magical community—is crippled. People are terrified. Nobody knows how Agustin managed to put the overwhelming majority of our local and highest government officials into a coma-like stasis, but it sure says a lot about how powerful he is.

  Nobody knows what to do. Agustin’s in the wind for now, but it’s only a matter of time until he pops up again. Whether that will be to deliver a list of demands, to claim he’s our new leader, or just to murder indiscriminately, I don’t know. I don’t have a clue what his next move will be or even what he wants, although he did a damn good job of evil-villain-monologuing about how all-powerful he is for like five minutes straight a few days ago.

  I know he wants power. He thinks he’s the pinnacle of evolution, the next step in the world order.

  He believes that since magic users are more powerful than ordinary humans, humans should bow to us. And that since Unpredictables are the next step up from regular magic users, and his Unpredictable ability is to steal other people’s magic, that makes him the most powerful magic user ever and, ergo, he deserves to be wearing a crown on his head.

  Typical megalomaniac bullshit.

  But what his next step is to actually achieve any of what he says he wants? I don’t know. None of us do.

  Everyone seems to be looking to me as if I should have answers. Although I’ve faced off against the guy a few times before, that doesn’t mean I can read his mind, but everyone’s acting like I should be able to. My classmates who are all still stuck at this holding facility with us whisper about me in hushed voices, and I can hear snatches when I walk by—about how I must know something, or I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry everybody! Elliot Sinclair has it covered!

  Not.

  Agustin might have somehow turned into my arch-nemesis, through no goddamn fault of my own, I might add, but that doesn’t make me particularly special, and it definitely doesn’t mean I know how his twisted psyche works or anything.

  God, the room feels small and stuffy all of a sudden. I need a damn drink. Or at least a walk.

  The sky outside is that weird pre-dawn blue color where everything feels saturated but also not quite real. I slip out of bed, grab a sweater, and walk quietly to the door.

  The hallway is empty. Nobody else is awake. We’re all kind of sitting ducks here, so there’s been a guard rotation set up, but it’s only at the perimeter, nothing actually inside the building. We’re no longer prisoners here—not that the Circuit would ever admit that we were prisoners in the first place, but hey, if the shoe fits—and you’d think that would mean everyone wants to leave.

  And honestly, some of us did want to.

  But we know now that Agustin has been killing off Unpredictables and taking their powers for years. That he’s been the one targeting our school. Our kind are the only ones with magic strong enough to defeat him, so he’s been trying to eliminate us before we could do that.

  If we all left, we’d be alone. Sitting ducks for Agustin to take out one by one. It’s what he’s already been doing with Unpredictables who passed their tests and graduated from Griff
in, after all. He’s been systematically going after isolated individuals for years.

  So maybe we are kind of making ourselves one big target by sticking together and staying in the same place, but I’d rather take that strength in numbers than have us all go it alone, especially when most of us haven’t even passed our final exams and gotten licensed to practice magic. Not that the government’s really checking up on that sort of thing at the moment, but it’s a reminder of how much more we have to learn. A reminder of how weak most of us are compared to Agustin.

  And I like to think that despite his power, Agustin wouldn’t dare attack an entire massive group of Unpredictables. I don’t think he’s powerful enough to take on dozens of us at once.

  Not yet, anyway.

  I keep my footsteps light as I walk down the hallway. I’m not entirely sure where I’m going or what I want to do now that I’m out of bed. I don’t have a plan. I just need to move, to do something to distract myself from the nightmares, the worries, the ax hanging over all of our heads.

  Footsteps sound behind me, and I turn around to see Dmitri slipping out of the makeshift bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him. His dark hair looks almost black under the overhead lights, and he’s got a bit of scruff along his angular jawline. It makes him look dangerous and ruggedly handsome, even though it’s probably just a sign of stress.

  He’s also the lightest sleeper out of all of us. I should’ve known that no matter how quiet I was, I still would’ve somehow woken him up.

  “Hey,” he whispers, walking up to me and gently taking my wrist in his hand. “Nightmares?”

  “How’d you guess?” I whisper. “Was it the sweating and jerking upright that gave it away?”

  He smirks, and we walk down the hallway together toward the dining area. Nobody’s sleeping in that room, so we can talk quietly without worrying about disturbing people.

  I’m grateful for Dmitri’s presence, even if I don’t love the hovering he and the other three men have been doing lately. I wasn’t even the one that got most beat up in our fight with Agustin. Roman holds that dubious honor.

  It was fucking terrifying, actually. Agustin kidnapped him—okay, only for an hour or so, but still—and he would’ve killed Roman if the rest of us hadn’t found his lair and stopped him. The two of them fought before we arrived, and then we all fought Agustin together. It got pretty hairy, and Roman was in rough shape by the end of it.

  But are the guys hovering around him? Making sure he’s okay? Making sure he’s never alone?

  Nope. Instead, they’re doing it with me.

  It might be because Agustin seems to hate me in particular for foiling all of his schemes against Griffin Academy, the school for Unpredictables like us. But frankly, it’s getting on my nerves.

  Still, after the nightmare I just had, it’s soothing to have Dmitri here with me. Especially since out of all of my boyfriends, the quiet, serious mage is the one who isn’t going to do a lot of talking. He’s okay to just sit with me.

  “The protective wards are still holding,” Dmitri says. He doesn’t ask me what my nightmare was about, and I’m grateful for that. “Or at least, they were when I was on watch a few hours ago. Everything’s still going strong.”

  Everyone here has worked together to put as many layers of protective wards up around the building as we can. To be honest, I doubt it could really stop Agustin if he’s determined to get in, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s helping everyone else to feel safer. So what’s the harm, right?

  Dmitri lets go of my wrist as we walk and puts his hand on the small of my back instead, gently guiding me around a corner.

  “That’s not what’s keeping me awake. It’s not that I think he’s going to burst in here at any moment,” I whisper, leaning into his warm, reassuring touch. The scent of cloves tickles my nose as I draw in a deep breath. “It’s that I have no clue what the fuck we’re supposed to do about him. And the world seems to be looking to us—to me, especially—for answers. But they shouldn’t. I didn’t do anything particularly special to earn them looking at me like that.”

  Dmitri wraps his arm around my waist a little tighter, squeezing me gently, then opens the dining room door for me, putting his hand at my elbow to usher me through. “People want to have a hero. They already have a villain, so now they need a champion. That one gritty hero who can stand up and take charge and save all of us. The Superman. That’s how people are seeing you. Because it gives them hope.”

  “I suppose that makes sense.” I wrinkle my nose as we sit down on a bench at one of the long tables. “Can I say something that might make me sound like a horrible person?”

  “I don’t know if you could say anything that would make you sound like a horrible person.”

  “Aw, thanks.”

  He shrugs. “Wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

  I rest my hand on his for a second, giving him a lopsided smile. Then my smile fades as I try to figure out how to articulate what I’m feeling.

  “It’s just crazy that right now, when everything is in chaos and we’re all pretty much terrified for our lives… I’m really happy. Not that I like the situation we’re in. Agustin can go fucking die in a volcano or something if you ask me. But I am really happy with you guys. I get to have all four of you here with me all the time. And I mean—of course I want space to be myself, and I want you guys to have the space you need. Spending all of our time together can’t be good.”

  Dmitri’s dark eyes narrow slightly, and I can see him trying to piece together what I’m getting at from my jumbled words.

  I laugh at myself, shaking my head. “Crap. I’m saying this horribly.”

  He gives me a small smirk but doesn’t contradict that assessment. I flip him off.

  “The actual world around us feels like it’s crumbling,” I continue. “But I’m happy because our relationship is amazing. That’s what I’m trying to say. And I worry that it makes me sound selfish. How dare I be happy with all this bullshit going down, you know?”

  “Well…” Dmitri scoots a little closer to me on the bench. “I’m not Asher.” He chuckles. “As you know. But when I was growing up, my dad went out of his way to make me miserable. Not all the time. But when he thought I’d disobeyed him. And in those times… the most radical thing I could do was find a way to stay happy.”

  He runs his free hand through his hair, his gaze growing a little unfocused as he loses himself in thought.

  “I haven’t always succeeded. I used to be miserable a lot of the time. Until I went to Griffin and met Asher and Cam. And then you. But the world will try to keep you from being happy. It’ll try to get you to be miserable, to take whatever is in you that’s soft and ruin it. Turn you into an asshole.”

  He flips his hand over under mine so our palms meet, his fingers brushing my wrist.

  “Agustin doesn’t just want us out of his way. He wants us to suffer. So I think daring to find happiness is a radical thing. It’s a beautiful thing. And all of us should be clinging to it. Because it’s the things that make us happy that give us reasons to fight. Someone who has everything to lose fights a hell of a lot harder than someone with nothing to lose.”

  “Well, well, well,” I say, teasing a little to cover up my shock. Every time I think I have Dmitri figured out, he surprises me with new layers, new depths to his character that just make me love him more. “That was dangerously close to being profound, sir.”

  “I have my moments.” He chuckles, the corner of his mouth curling up into a soft half-smile.

  I can’t help myself. I am happy, in spite of everything else. I lean in and kiss Dmitri softly, pressing my lips to his like a reassurance.

  He kisses me back, his hands coming up to frame my face, and God, I could just sink right into this kiss. I want to live here and never—

  Raised voices cut through the air, and we both yank our heads back. Fuck. Is there a breach? Is Agustin here?

  The bench scrapes against t
he floor as we stand quickly, and Dmitri puts himself in front of me as we head for the door.

  The voices are louder in the hallway, not enough for me to make out what’s being said, but enough to tell me this doesn’t sound like some kind of attack. It sounds like an argument.

  I follow the noise, Dmitri with me, until we reach a meeting room a few doors down and push the door open.

  Yeah, it’s definitely not Agustin.

  It’s Tamlin and Brodie.

  And they both look spitting mad.

  Chapter 2

  Tamlin and Brodie hardly notice as Dmitri and I enter. They’re too busy getting up in each other’s faces.

  They’re practically nose-to-nose, Tamlin up on her high heels so that she’s only about an inch shorter than Brodie when normally he’d have about three or four on her, and they’re snapping and snarling back and forth like starving alley cats.

  Huh. Okay. Not what I expected to find at six-thirty in the morning, but I can work with this more easily than a surprise attack from Agustin.

  Tamlin, as usual, manages to be dressed impeccably with her hair and makeup on point even though the rest of the world full of normal people are all asleep and have been for some time. Brodie looks like he never actually went to bed, wearing jeans and a soft gray t-shirt with a plaid button-up shirt over it—all of which look rumpled and worn, as if he’s been tugging at his clothes in irritation. It’s kind of a hilarious contrast to Tamlin’s heels and soft pink skirt and chic blouse top. She looks like she stepped out of a magazine, and Brodie looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in ten years.