Page 4 of Wolf Trial

I shook my head at myself, and didn’t care if I looked like a loony. I’d been drugged and stuffed in a wooden box; insanity was the least of my problems. But there was no way this was a different planet. It was a trick, an illusion. I’d seen Scooby Doo, alright? There was a villain with a cherry picker shining lights in the sky, trying to trick us all into thinking we were isolated far from home. Probably so any hope we had of getting out of here would die.

There: a plausible explanation. I loved plausible explanations.

“Where the fuck am I?” a male voice demanded, crisp and full of importance that really didn’t fit our prison wagon circumstances. I stared down the row of wagons to see we’d all been evicted from our wooden boxes. Four women. One man.

Well. I guess the Lord who’d had us abducted had varied tastes, because we were all different in appearances.

When the hooded figure turned to the man who spoke, I casually felt for the pockets of my pants—I was still in my damn Direct Sports Shoes uniform—and kept my expression even as my fingers brushed the outline of my silver pen. Good, I was armed. Like fuck was I becoming some rich fuck’s sex slave. Neither would I allow the others to be, either. If we had to burn this mansion down to escape, so be it. I’d always loved a bonfire.

“Did you hear me?” the man demanded. A few years older than me, with a square jaw, aristocratic face, and slicked back golden hair. “Where are we? I want to know—”

The cloaked fucker backhanded him so hard he went to the ground.

“We don’t abide disobedience at Lunova Academy,” he said in a cold voice that raised all the fine hairs on the back of my neck. A voice in the back of my mind screamed at me to run, some deep-buried instinct howling so loud I backed up a step and bumped into the wagon that brought me here. “You will learn to follow orders, or you will be left at the edge of the boundary.”

“What boundary?” one of the other women dared to whisper, voicing my exact question. I would have used more swearwords, though.

“The boundary that protects our slayers,” he replied, as if any of those words made sense together. “Outside the boundary, the wolves will rip you apart and feast on your organs.”

Oh, that sounded delightful. My teeth knocked together when they chattered, a sudden deluge of fear hitting my system and making my throbbing knees weak.

Run, that inner voice screamed. Turn around and run.

But I wasn’t the only one being screamed at by my instincts, and a brunette woman in her thirties did exactly what I wished to do. She threw herself into the space between wagons and burst into a run, her dress vintage and floral, the cut of it like nothing I’d seen before even when I worked at a wannabe Oktoberfest in Manchester.

The cloaked prick took something from his pocket—a gun, I thought, and went deadly still—and a burst of golden light burst from the tip. Like a taser, it took down the running woman and she screamed.

Right, fuck, got it. No running.

“Back in line,” our jailor barked, but the brunette woman was too weak and shaky to stand.

The blonde beside me took a tentative step and gestured at the woman on the floor, and though the jailor said nothing, he stepped back, allowing her to help the collapsed woman to her feet.

“Do not run,” he warned the rest of us. “Do not speak out of turn. Follow me.”

What the fuck have you signed me up for, Gran? I thought in a hiss, hugging myself around the middle as the cloaked bastard gestured us forward, away from the carts and towards the looming building.

No fucking way was I putting my hands on some old guy’s slimy dick, but my attention slid to the brunette as she slipped. Whatever that stun gun was, it was powerful and painful, and I had no intention of getting on the wrong end of it.

So I ducked under the brunette’s arm and helped carry her across the courtyard, into the foreboding building. And if my teeth chattered, everyone else pretended not to hear.

CHAPTER 3

SADIE

Academy, the hooded bastard had said. Lunova Academy.

It certainly seemed more like a university than some pervy lord’s abode when we crested the wide grey steps, swallowed into the high-ceilinged interior. Golden light shone from metal uplighters, and the sconces on the wall were filled with pools of light, not the fire I expected. That was promising. Electricity meant there’d be modern plumbing, too.

Staircases crisscrossed the space above our heads, the grey stone turned warm by the golden light, and framed diplomas were hung on the wall alongside paintings that looked as old as the ones I’d seen in the National Gallery—and medieval weapons. Axes, flails, spears, and things I didn’t even have names for.

What a wonderful sight to inspire a sense of safety and calm. Just what a girl wanted to see when she’d been kidnapped and taken to a place that apparently had seven fucking moons.1 Weapons sharp enough to wage wars. Some of them were speckled with darker patches, as if they had been used to wage wars. Plaques beside them probably detailed which battles, but I wasn’t keen to look too close.

I kept my attention on the many staircases, the stone mezzanines above—four floors of them—and the arched ceiling. Like something from a cathedral, it caught our low murmurs and amplified them until our jailor barked for silence.

I didn’t know the name of the woman I helped carry inside, or the blonde who supported her other side, and I wasn’t yet brave enough to ask. I kept my wide eyes on the archways we passed as the robed jailor bastard led us through the airy atrium, past statues of women in armour and men wielding swords, and alcoves that houses busts of important-looking people.

One of them had their mouth parted in a hiss, the stone of their canine teeth sharpened into threateningly sharp points. Fangs. That bust had fangs, and my overactive imagination hit an all time high. My mind spiralled faster than a rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, and plummeted quicker than my standards when I was horny.