Phoenix Academy: Madness: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance (Blue Phoenix Book 1) Read online

  Phoenix Academy: Madness

  Lucy Auburn

  Contents

  Get Updates

  Author’s Note

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  35. It continues…

  Read Next: Phoenix Academy

  Read Next: Fae Like Me

  Read Next: Three for a Witch

  Also by Lucy Auburn

  About the Author

  Copyright 2019 Lucy Auburn.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Author’s Note

  This book contains some violent scenes, and mentions of parental abuse.

  Phoenix Academy: Madness contains a reverse harem romance. I hope you enjoy!

  Chapter 1

  It all started when he ate his own dick.

  Well, not literally. I mean—gross. But he thought it was his own dick. He was screaming and crying, tears dripping off his cheeks as he choked on pieces of what was actually a slice of sheet cake. He was fully convinced it was his own mutilated genitals he was scarfing down.

  It's not like he chose to do it, though. He was forced to eat it against his will by feral magic with a taste for violence. My magic.

  It took control of him completely.

  That's what the madness does to them.

  That's what my touch does to men.

  At first I thought it was a curse. But I'm starting to realize now that it's a blessing. Some things in life require violent revenge. And sometimes the best way to get that is to make a man mad.

  Literally.

  My world wasn’t always severed genitals and sobbing men.

  Two days ago I was in a very different place. I had a rifle in one hand, walking through the woods as the sun crested over the distant horizon, my little sister Lizzy mere steps behind me, our mother ahead of us forging a path. There was dew in the air, and with our witch senses we followed its scent towards fresh water, looking for signs of young rabbits and other prey in the foliage.

  We'd been on the run for three months, after the Heretic found us in our modest cottage in rural Washington. Leaving that little house behind was incredibly difficult; it was where Lizzy attended her first full year of school. The garden was flush with the fruits and vegetables Mom and I planted in the early spring, and I was on the verge of falling in love with the boy in the house down the road, who let me keep my secrets without asking questions I couldn't answer.

  But all things come to an end. Despite his lack of magic, the Heretic was a superb tracker, and he found us, his prey, just as Lizzy was about to enroll in high school. Mom sensed him a mile away—only a mile away, when usually she felt him coming on the wind, or heard his voice in the dead of night. Either her witchy powers were failing her, so far from a coven, or the Heretic was growing more powerful in ways we couldn't comprehend.

  So we returned to the wild. I showed Lizzy how to set a snare to trap a hare, and whispered the spell in her ear that called them close, unaware of the danger. We stood at the edge of riverbanks fat with fish and shoved our hands into the cool water, coaxing fish to leap into our grip, thanking them for lives given willingly.

  I tried to teach my sister how to survive. Like my mother, who taught me everything, I passed down knowledge: how to skin a wild rabbit, cook a fresh fish so it's safe to eat, forage for wild onion, and even how to string a bow, though we'd both been carrying rifles since our hand-eye coordination was strong enough to aim and shoot.

  Mouth tingling with magic, I gave her all the secret spells I knew: spells to start fires, reverse a stream's direction, tame the wildest of animals, and scent danger on the wind. I prepared her for everything I knew how to face.

  Or so I thought. Now I wonder if I should have just taught her how to run without looking back. It would've served her better.

  I always wanted her to have a different life. One with friends in it, maybe even a first kiss and a boyfriend. I never cared about those things—life showed me that attachments are risky to indulge in—but I thought Lizzy should have something different. Something worth standing her ground for.

  "Lizzy, do you feel that?" I asked her, as the sun's warm rays stretched across the sky, the woods dappled with their light. "We're getting close."

  "I know how to sense fresh water, Ari. I'm not a dumbass," she groused. "You don't have to bother teaching me again."

  Lizzy was on the edge of puberty and increasingly ill-tempered because of it. Sometimes I wanted to smack her in the mouth because of it, but I settled for grinding my teeth and shooting a glare in her direction.

  "Not the water. The doe. Do you sense her spirit?"

  This got Lizzy's attention. Though she was an excellent herbalist, and could brew a potion to make the coldest heart fall in love, what my sister wanted more than anything was to be a naturalist like me.

  "Show me," she said, skipping ahead and reaching out to grab my hand. "Where is she?"

  Our mother eyed us from further up on the trail, where she was clearing debris. "We don't have storage space for venison," she reminded me. "So don't even think of coaxing her over here to take a shot, you show-off."

  I grinned at her. "I would never!"

  Closing my eyes, I let my senses dive out into the world and find the young doe. She was maybe half a year old at most, coming up on her first breeding season. Far from the herd, which I could sense traces of downstream, she wandered boldly from their protection in search of her own story.

  My heart ached to be like her, to set out on my own and discover myself far from my mother and my sister.
As much as I loved them, I'd just turned nineteen years old and found myself restless and hungry for adventure—or love. But I couldn't break away from them, not with the Heretic on our tail. So instead I let myself live vicariously through the young doe. She knew there were predators in these woods, but she set her own path anyway, despite the dangers.

  "I can feel her," Lizzy said, awe in her voice. "I think I can even sense her heartbeat."

  "Good. Now I'm going to let go of your hand, and I want you to try sensing her on your own."

  "I can't! I'm not strong like you."

  "You can," I told her firmly, slipping my hand away from her. "I believe in you."

  I watched her bite her lower lip and try to do what I'd just done. Our mother studied us from up ahead on the trail, her grip on her rifle relaxed, staring off into the distance with her eyes unfocused. I knew she was tired; we both were, after so many nights spent sleeping in motel rooms or under the stars, making every dollar stretch, hot-wiring cars and ditching them every few hundred miles. But we did it all to keep Lizzy safe, and one day hopefully we wouldn't have to anymore.

  "I can feel her," Lizzy whispered, voice pitched low with awe. "She's moving closer towards us. I think she got our scent on the wind. Someone must have fed her once, because she's not afraid of people."

  "Good." Pride burst in my chest for my baby sister. "Focus in on her. Let go of everything else, and see if you can tell me more about her."

  She nodded eagerly, face screwed up in concentration. "I can tell she's curious. But timid. Something has gotten her attention... there's something else in the clearing..."

  Her voice trailed off, brows drawn together. I waited for her to say something, but her mouth was twitching, something off all of a sudden. I gripped my rifle tight as I felt the air shift around me.

  "Ari." My mom's voice was sharp; she walked towards us on quiet feet. "What's she doing? I don't like the way she's drifted off."

  "She was just with the deer." I snapped my fingers in front of Lizzy's face, but she didn't even twitch, lost as she was. "I'll get her back."

  Grabbing my sister's hand, I let my senses wander, our magic joining together again. This time, though, when I reached for the doe I went cold all over.

  She was dead.

  Someone shot her in the head.

  And I figured out quickly why Lizzy was in such an off state. There was a hole in the fabric of the natural world, a blankness where life should've been.

  It was a black force that pulled energy towards it and left nothing but death and darkness in its wake.

  The Heretic.

  He'd found us yet again.

  I opened my eyes to find my mother's gaze on me, face panicked. Jerking Lizzy out of her trance, I slapped my hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out.

  Our mother mouthed the word, "Run."

  Like the rabbits we'd skinned just the day before, we fled through the trees, prey running from a ruthless predator.

  We knew that we wouldn't survive him.

  But still we ran, death at our heels.

  We fled through the woods for hours, Mom turning the wind to sweep our scent away, Lizzy sending the undergrowth across our footprints to hide them from trackers, while I charmed the birds from the trees and sent them at our pursuers' heads to distract them.

  Somehow, the Heretic had followers.

  We'd noticed them sometime in Lizzy's childhood, when things started to get harder and he found us more and more. First it was just a few crazed loners like him, loosely organized, but soon he'd gathered an entire congregation to him. They were with him in the woods, tracking us, flanking our path in an attempt to cut all escape routes off.

  I could feel Lizzy flagging, and knew that she wouldn't be able to walk, much less run or jog, for much longer. She was too big for me and Mom to carry her on our backs as we once did when she was little. And though we had dozens of spells at our fingers, none of them were powerful enough to turn away the Heretic and his flock.

  Mom stopped for a moment, her hand up to signal us to stop as well, head tilted back. She scented the air like a hunting dog. Behind me, Lizzy stumbled, and I doubled back to help her up.

  "Do you need me to take some of the weight in your pack?"

  "No," she said, sullen and flushed with heat. "I can do this."

  I exchanged a look with Mom. We both knew that Lizzy couldn't go for much longer. I didn't need to close my eyes and reach my senses out to feel the Heretic's followers on either side of our trail, pinching inward, ready to cut us off.

  The only way out was to face them.

  But I didn't think we would all survive the encounter.

  "I'll draw them out," Mom said. "You and Lizzy head towards the highway and hitchhike out of here. Use your trustworthy spell before you get in a stranger's car, though. I don't want you getting axe murdered."

  I shook my head in denial. "I'm not leaving you behind."

  "You have to. Someone needs to protect your sister."

  Lizzy looked at us with wide eyes, lower lip trembling. "We can still escape, can't we? There's got to be a way out. We always get away from him."

  I didn't have the heart to tell her that the Heretic was minutes away from trapping us, his pace relentless, strong beyond all reason despite the fact that he was no supernatural creature I'd ever heard of in my life.

  He'd been hunting us for years, and each time he got closer to his ultimate goal. We'd come to the end of the line. Either we died, or we finally killed him.

  Mom and I met each other's eyes. And I knew, in a moment, that this was it. She was going to face him, even though she wouldn't live to tell the tale, just to give Lizzy and I time to get away.

  "We've got to say goodbye," I told my sister, taking her hand and tugging her close. "There isn't any time to spare."

  "No!" She jerked from my grip, stumbling back with horror in her eyes. "I'm not going to just leave Mom to die. I can fight! We can both fight!"

  Then she turned and fled into the woods, straight in the direction of the men chasing us. Foliage leapt up beneath her feet, blocking off her path.

  "Lizzy!" I screamed her name, frantically running after her, pushing wild vines out of the way. "Lizzy, come back!"

  I pulled my machete out of its sheath at my back and hacked at the overgrowth keeping me from my sister, frustration making magic leak out of me.

  Then I saw her, yards away from me. One of the men had her in his grasp, and though she squirmed and thrashed, she was too little to fight him. He was dragging her away, no doubt to deliver her like a package to his master.

  "Ari!" My mother's voice jerked me back before I could plunge further into the trees. "Get out of the way!"

  I ducked as she aimed her rifle at the man and clipped the side of his head. He bellowed, dropping Lizzy, and she ran back towards us, her face white and drained of blood. I put her behind me and pulled my own rifle, sighting down it to put his chest square in my view.

  I'd never killed a man before. Rabbit, fish, birds, deer, and even, one memorable afternoon, a brown bear. A man was an entirely different thing to shoot.

  But I didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. The rifle jerked in my hand as the round buried itself in his chest and tore him apart, flesh and blood alike.

  Lizzy whimpered. I relaxed my grip on the rifle and grabbed her hand, pulling her in my wake. Mom ushered us towards her, scanning the horizon with her rifle in one hand. We got straight back to business, ignoring the fit Lizzy had just thrown in favor of planning our survival.

  "There's a clearing fifty yards away. I can feel it. If we make it there and make a barricade, we can face him."

  "And Lizzy?"

  "Will climb as high as she can in the highest tree she finds, and not make a single sound." Mom gave Lizzy a glare of warning. "No more running away. Got it?"

  She nodded, biting her lip. "Got it."

  We dashed through the trees, undergrowth lashing our legs, hearts beating as fast as possibl
e.

  We left a body behind us. My first kill.

  Unlikely to be my last.

  Chapter 2

  We reached the clearing. I shoved Lizzy towards a tree. Mom and I grabbed deadwood and turned it into a barricade which we knelt behind, rifles in our hands. She gave me the signal, and I closed my eyes to let my senses travel through the woods.

  Wild foxes hid in their dens. Rabbits in their warrens. The trees were full of little birds: woodpeckers, songbirds, and a few hawks here and there. I let my senses touch each of them, leaving a bit of my magic behind in their fur and on their feathers. Then, with the web of awareness they created, I tracked the Heretic and his followers.

  "Two from the east... maybe a minute away. Three on the west, two minutes. The Heretic..." I swallowed, uneasy. "I can't tell how far away he is. Could be five minutes, could be five seconds."

  "If he were five seconds away I'd be able to see him." Mom set rounds in the grass beside her, ready to reload her rifle at will. "Any predators you can turn against him?"

  She meant my naturalist skills, which let me tame animals for a short period of time. With prey, that meant taking their ingrained fear of humans away from them so that we could hunt them. With predators, I turned their aggression against others instead of me.