Gabriella Poole - Blood Ties (Darke Academy)

Damn it, if only she could focus, work through this pain … Cassie blinked hard, shaking her dizzy head. She was sure she knew those

two figures behind Katerina; she’d seen them so recently. Lurching forwards again, still incapable of standing upright, she squinted into the

driving rain and the dancing shadows. Contemptuously, Katerina turned her back on Cassie and stalked towards her comrades with

Isabella hanging like a rag doll in her arms.

As Cassie crawled desperately forward, digging her fingers into the muddy grass, blinking rain out of her eyes, she saw the figures in the

distance more clearly. The taller one had pale platinum hair, trimmed shorter than Katerina’s but otherwise the same. The other was a

broad, muscular figure, crop-haired and thick-lipped, his eyes pale and cruel. Those features were all that distinguished them from a

nightmare. But she definitely knew them.

Brigitte and Vaughan, her tormentors from the Council.

Each bore a fiercely burning firebrand that didn’t so much as gutter, despite the howl of the wind and the lashing rain. Dizzy, able only to

gape in horror, Cassie watched the flames flicker and leap. They looked alive: squirming, jumping with life. She saw eyes, tails, wings, fangs

… wriggling creatures in the flames. Their blazing shapes swirled amidst the darkness, illuminating another form, barely moving, lying on

the sodden ground.

Jake!

With an angry cry of despair Cassie dragged herself forward. She didn’t care about Brigitte and Vaughan; she didn’t even care about

Katerina. She needed to get to her friends.

Cassie opened her mouth to shout their names, but a whimper of pain was all that escaped her lips. She stared, helpless, as Brigitte

lashed her foot into Jake’s side and he stifled a groan. Cassie tried again to move, but there was no strength in her limbs.

Katerina dumped her burden beside Jake. Isabella was limp as death.

‘There’s a tear in my eye,’ the Swedish girl rasped. ‘Sweet of the lovely Sara to let me know you were coming, girls. And lucky too –

Richard was supposed to be keeping an eye on you all for me, but he seems to have changed sides. I’ll have to deal with him later. Still,

maybe it hasn’t worked out too badly. Now you Three Musketeers can be all for one.’ She threw a scornful glance over at Cassie and gave

a merciless laugh.

‘Touching, ain’t it,’ growled the warped Vaughan, grinning like a skull. Cassie saw his white teeth flash in the lightning.

‘Yes, well we can’t separate these two lovebirds,’ cooed Katerina, gazing down at Isabella and Jake. ‘Don’t worry, darlings, you’ll be fed to

the earth together. Unfortunately, your little half-breed friend will have to make do with a good old-fashioned killing. We can’t have whatever

bit of her can claim to be Few corrupting the Living Soil now, can we?’

With one foot, Katerina rolled Jake’s body another metre along the ground, and Brigitte and Vaughan lifted their flaming torches high. The

leaping light caught the edge of a shadow that was deeper than any of the others.

‘Oh God,’ whispered Cassie.

Jake lay on the lip of a black gouge in the earth. There was something strange about the pit, something evil. Cassie crawled closer. The

damp earth inside it had a crimson shade, a glow. Blood red. She blinked the driving rain out of her eyes.

Cassandra, what did I tell you?

‘What, Estelle?’ Cassie’s voice was no more than a croak, drowned by the clatter of the rain. ‘What did you tell me? Should I have

listened, you old bitch?’

Of course you should, dear girl. There was a strange sorrow in Estelle’s voice along with the irrepressible thrill. The Living Soil, my dear.

The cruellest prison of all. Centuries of burials, feeding it, feeding those who dare to draw its power …

Now she could see, but all she wanted to do was look away. Run away. The earth in the pit wasn’t just earth – there were bodies in there

too, tangled together, moving and churning, too many to count. Limbs, torsos, straggling blood-soaked hair. As the twisted pile turned, a

hand clawed hopelessly at the air. Then, with a muffled scream, it was dragged under once more.

‘They’re not dead,’ whispered Cassie, as pain thundered in her skull and her body shook. She felt sick. ‘They’re not dead!’

Yes, my dear. Yes. Now you understand.

And she did.

Isabella and Jake were going to be buried alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

‘An expensive schooling is all very well.’ There was cruel laughter in Brigitte’s voice as she raised her torch. ‘But there’s such a thing,

dear Miss Caruso, as Too Much Information. And you have it.’ She spat on Isabella’s prostrate body.

‘And then of course there’s Jake,’ smiled Katerina. ‘Poor, nosy little Scooby. Don’t you know curiosity killed the cretin?’