Descending Into Darkness (Moonlight Academy Book 2)

Ripley’s expression changed, growing from calm and euphoric to panicked. Once I saw that mark, I put all the missing pieces together. This whole thing made perfect sense. He must have been working for Leonidas from the very beginning, even when he was in Moonlight.

“Ripley, what the hell is she on about? Are we doing this or not? They are waiting for me,” Adrian was saying, trying to get Ripley’s attention.

My magic was fading and I needed it to use it to concentrate on my internal energy and healing. That moron couldn’t see beyond Alexa’s spell, could he?

“Oh dear, dear, I should have seen through that cheap spell much sooner. I knew that there was something odd about your aura earlier on when you showed up with Lachlan,” Ripley finally stated.

He’d figured it out. He must have recognised my spell.

“I thought you were on our side. Why are you helping him?” I shouted, feeling worse with every passing second.

He must have been in Bucharest all this time, right under our noses and we’d had no idea.

Damn Oldman, why had she trusted him in the first place?’

“Poor Miss Clairmont thinks that Oldman is going to keep her safe. Well, she has never truly cared about any of you. The new supernatural order has been planned for some time. Once Adrian gets accepted to Elite everything is going to change,” Ripley continued, walking up to me.

“Why did you kill them? Marisa and her friend? Those girls didn’t need to die!” I asked, wanting to know everything.

He was going to kill me and I accepted that now.

I had no idea how he knew who I was. I must have blown my cover somehow.

Ripley was sweating and he looked very flustered. His energy was infiltrating mine, slowly breaking down my wards. Alexa’s magic was inside me. Her spell was strong, but I was weakened from the blood loss, and now I couldn’t even defend myself.

“Those girls were fooling around and they saw me that night with Mr. Brooks here and they needed to be eliminated. They both heard too much and I couldn’t risk the exposure,” Ripley stated. “I knew that Oldman was going to get this case, so I decided to stay here in Bucharest. That shifter, Chris was supposed to take the blame for their murder and I would carry on with my task.”

“How long? How long have you been working with that scum of a demon?”

Ripley didn’t answer. He looked around like he was expecting to see someone else.

Adrian was pacing around, staring at me with confusion. He seemed clueless. I needed to heal quickly, but couldn’t whilst under Alexa’s spell. Besides, I was still losing too much blood.

“Miss Clarence, you’re asking too many irrelevant questions. You don’t understand what is going on in here. I have been working for the other side for a very long time, since way before Oldman became the principle. Then you arrived and I began to get suspicious of her motivations. Soon enough, I received new orders,” professor Ripley explained.

“What has that got to do with me?” I shouted, losing it now. It was a hallucination earlier on. It couldn’t have been my mother. It had only happened in my head.

“Well, I think it’s time for you to know the truth. You were Jonathan Moore’s experiment. After he fed you with his blood, he brought you over to the fae,” Ripley stated as I just stared at him, unable to comprehend what he said.

No … he was lying to me now. Jonathan Moore, Lachlan’s father and sire couldn’t be the one that ruined my life all these years ago. It was a lie.

“No, you’re lying to me,” I whispered.

“I’m afraid I’m not. You weren’t supposed to survive that ritual and the fae told him that the transformation didn’t work, so he tossed you away. That wasn’t the first time he’d tried it.”

My vision was slowly fading and I was getting weaker. No, damn it. This couldn’t be happening to me. From all the evil people in this world, I couldn’t be the product of Jonathan Moore-the ancient.

“He wants to take over the control over Elite. He has been trying to do this for years, and then you showed up at the school. At first I couldn’t believe it and then I recognised your genes. I sensed your power,” Ripley whispered, leaning down towards me.

He put his hand around my throat and began squeezing it. My thoughts were racing away.

How could I have not figured out this sooner?

“You were supposed to die on the street when the transformation didn’t work. That was his objective and he was certain that had happened.”

I had no strength to fight with him anymore.

What was the point? I’d lost everything and everyone at the same time. My life was ripped away from me, because of that monster.

I was never supposed to survive or even remember him.

“Fuck you,” I barely whispered, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

“He should be pleased with me for getting rid of his problem,” he continued speaking, suffocating me.

It was over for me. I had no strength left to fight him. The blood was draining from my wound.

“You motherfucker!” someone’s voice echoed through the space. I must have passed out, and when I blinked myself awake, something was rolling towards me.

My pupils dilated and I screamed, seeing that it was Adrian’s head. With every last bit of strength that I had, I moved away from it. Then I saw Karina.

She looked like her typical crazy self. She must have somehow broken Alexa’s spell. And she was fighting with Ripley now.

I crawled away from the head, breathing hard and trying to call out for my magic. My wound was near fatal but I could still fight. I just needed to tap into my energy.

Karina shifted into a bear and she was attacking that son of a bitch. He was defending himself with magic.

“Come on Jaymin. You can do it. Get up and finish him off. This is your only chance,” someone was speaking to me again.

I turned around, seeing my mother once again. She wasn’t real.

Then she leaned close to me. She smelled nice; like rose petals. Then she put something into my mouth, right under my tongue.

“This should help,” she whispered and then she was gone again.

I laid there, trying to breath in, feeling my strength slowly coming back. Magic rushed through my core igniting the fire inside me.

I stood up on my own several minutes later. I didn’t know how and why, but I just had to do what my mother asked me to.

The bear was pinned to the wall with Ripley’s magic. The professor looked truly possessed in that moment. His eyes were black and he was using his most potent magic to crush Karina. I always knew that he was skilled, but I was no longer afraid of him.

He was forcing Karina to shift back to her human form. She started screaming as he was burning her skin.

“Hey Moron!” I shouted, shaking like a leaf. The sparks started shooting through my hands and I was charged with so much magic. I felt exactly the same as during the night when I killed everyone–powerful and unpredictable.

“You shouldn’t have killed him, you ruined everything you bitch!” Ripley roared at Karina.

He blasted her with his fire magic and she was screaming covering her eyes.

In that same moment I released my fireball. It started rushing through my blood, through my joints and skin until it exploded. All I wanted to was to make him suffer.

The energy was rushed out, bouncing around until it found its target. My fae light connected with his, but Ripley reacted way too late.

When he turned to look at me, my light hit him, breaking through his wards immediately.

I wasn’t controlling my body any longer. My energy ripped him apart. The blood was pouring out of him, he had large cuts across his chest and face. Karina was screaming, she was naked and she was covering her eyes.

All I wanted to do was kill him, to finish him off forever, so he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone else.

Then the storm picked up, it came out of nowhere and it nearly knocked me off my feet. All the objects in the room started to levitate all around me.

There was no more pain. The blood around my stomach had dried up and my wound didn’t bother me anymore. It was the fae magic that created this chaos.

I walked up to the mage that was laying on the ground, his eyes were scarily wide. He was afraid of me. For the first time, he was scared of dying.

This was satisfying enough for me. I smiled at him.

“You’re done professor,” I whispered. “It’s over. You’re going to stand in front of the High Council. I’m not going to kill you. And it will be up to them to decide what they are going to do to you. I bet they will turn you into a human and then send you away to prison without magic.”

It was the perfect punishment for him. I realised that this was much better than death.

He didn’t deserve to die, he had to suffer.

“Jonathan Moore was your sire. He created you, which means that Lachlan is your half-brother,” Ripley sneered, a blood trickling down his mouth and then he smiled at me.

I just stared at him, thinking that he was crazy.

“We have the same sire, that doesn’t mean anything,” I replied calmly, back to being myself. The energy was gone. The fire inside me faded. I was so done with punishment.

“Oh yes it does my dear, because Jonathan Moore had an affair with your mother and he’s not only Lachlan’s sire. He’s also his real father,” he whispered, waiting for my reaction. “Yes Jaymin. Jonathan Moore is your father too.”

I didn’t want to believe him. He was lying through his teeth; he had always been a lying bastard. At the same time, I started connecting all the little dots together.

Maybe that was the reason why I’d felt this connection towards him when he was around.

And why on earth did Lachlan not tell me about this? Moore was his real father.

In that moment something broke inside me as I stared at that scumbag. He was enjoying himself watching me suffer. I grabbed the knife and just stabbed him directly in his heart with overwhelming fury.

I have never in my life felt so cheated, so lost and so betrayed.

“Jaymin nooooo!” someone shouted, but it was already too late. The deed was done.

Professor Ripley was dead and I couldn’t change that now. Hands grabbed me and pushed me away. I recognised the scent. Someone was shouting to stop this, to end this.

Other people flew inside the room and then everything went black.

* * *

I woke up several hours later in what appeared to be a hospital. White walls and sheets surrounded me. My vision was a little blurry and everything hurt.

There were some things connected to me, a drip maybe or something else. I didn’t know, I was so disoriented.

“She’s waking up,” someone spoke, and then that someone leaned over me.

It was Lachlan and he looked very concerned. He had bruises all over his face.

Split seconds later, the memories started rolling through my head and I had to take a deep breath.

The images from the trials were so vivid. I suddenly remembered everything, the one-eyed monster, my mother and Ripley. Damn that was a lot to process, and why did everything hurt so much?

Someone else entered the room. The guy looked like a doctor and he came over to join Marco and Lachlan.

“How are you feeling Jaymin?” he asked me. My muscles were stiff and very painful. I tried to find that wound around my stomach area, and yes, I felt some bandages there.

“Rough as hell,” I answered, because this was the truth. And then I suddenly remembered. “Karina, what happened to her? She was injured by that bastard!”

“Jaymin, calm down. We are going to explain everything in due course,” the guy with the white scrubs and strange accent said.

“Doc, just give us a minute please,” pretty boy insisted. I swallowed hard remembering everything that Ripley had told me right before I killed him. None of this was supposed to happen. He was meant to answer for what he did.

When the doctor left, a dead silence filled the space. Lachlan and the rest of them had no idea that Ripley was the killer.

“Jaymin, before we ask you to explain everything, you need to know that Karina was injured badly. She’s lost her eyesight,” he finally said and I moaned, realising that it was all my fault.

She was going to be an invalid for the rest of her life because she’d tried to help me.