Fang and Claw: Nocturne Academy, Book 2 Read online

  Fang and Claw

  Nocturne Academy, Book 2

  Evangeline Anderson

  www.evangelineanderson.com

  Fang and Claw, 1st Edition,

  Book Two of

  The Nocturne Academy Series

  Copyright © 2020 by Evangeline Anderson

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art Design © 2020 by Reese Dante

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to a retailer of your choice or evangelineanderson.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.

  Any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Contents

  Fang and Claw

  Nocturne Academy Map

  1. Kaitlyn

  2. Ari

  3. Kaitlyn

  4. Ari

  5. Kaitlyn

  6. Ari

  7. Kaitlyn

  8. Kaitlyn

  9. Kaitlyn

  10. Kaitlyn

  11. Kaitlyn

  12. Kaitlyn

  13. Kaitlyn

  14. Kaitlyn

  15. Ari

  16. Kaitlyn

  17. Kaitlyn

  18. Ari

  19. Kaitlyn

  20. Kaitlyn

  21. Ari

  22. Kaitlyn

  23. Kaitlyn

  24. Ari

  25. Kaitlyn

  26. Kaitlyn

  27. Ari

  28. Kaitlyn

  29. Kaitlyn

  30. Kaitlyn

  31. Kaitlyn

  32. Kaitlyn

  33. Kaitlyn

  34. Kaitlyn

  35. Ari

  36. Kaitlyn

  37. Ari

  38. Ari

  39. Kaitlyn

  40. Kaitlyn

  41. Kaitlyn

  42. Ari

  43. Kaitlyn

  44. Kaitlyn

  45. Kaitlyn

  46. Kaitlyn

  47. Kaitlyn

  48. Kaitlyn

  49. Kaitlyn

  50. Kaitlyn

  51. Ari

  52. Kaitlyn

  53. Kaitlyn

  54. Kaitlyn

  55. Ari

  56. Kaitlyn

  57. Kaitlyn

  58. Kaitlyn

  59. Ari

  60. Kaitlyn

  61. Ari

  62. Kaitlyn

  63. Kaitlyn

  64. Kaitlyn

  65. Kaitlyn

  66. Ari

  67. Kaitlyn

  68. Ari

  69. Kaitlyn

  70. Kaitlyn

  71. Kaitlyn

  72. Kaitlyn

  73. Kaitlyn

  74. Kaitlyn

  75. Kaitlyn

  76. Ari

  77. Kaitlyn

  78. Kaitlyn

  79. Ari

  80. Kaitlyn

  81. Kaitlyn

  82. Ari

  83. Kaitlyn

  84. Kaitlyn

  85. Kaitlyn

  86. Kaitlyn

  87. Kaitlyn

  88. Ari

  89. Kaitlyn

  90. Kaitlyn

  91. Kaitlyn

  92. Ari

  93. Kaitlyn

  94. Kaitlyn

  95. Ari

  96. Kaitlyn

  97. Kaitlyn

  98. Kaitlyn

  Kaitlyn

  The End? Of course not!

  Stone & Secret

  1. Emma

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  About the Author

  Fang and Claw

  Nocturne Academy, Book 2

  My name is Kaitlyn Fellows and I'll never be the same.

  The Fire stole everythign from me.

  My home...my family...even my beauty...

  The right side of my face is normal—even pretty. But the left side, I hide in shame. That's where The Fire marked me...scarred me forever.

  At Nocturne Academy I'm nothing—just a little Norm girl with no supernatural powers and a disfigured face.

  Which is why it's so strange that a big, Handsome Drake like Ari Reyes should take an interest in me.

  But it isn't only Ari who's interested in me.

  For under his high cheekbones and clear amber eyes, he hides another, much more frightening visage—A Drake, the fire-breathing monster that lives within him.

  A monster who has decided I should be his alone.

  Can I survive Ari's love for me? And more importantly, can I survive the love of his Drake?

  Because once a girl has been claimed by a Drake, the only way out is through The Fire.

  What am I going to do?

  Nocturne Academy Map

  1

  Kaitlyn

  The flames come for me—vivid orange and yellow. I can feel the heat baking off them and their bright fingers reach for me hungrily—wrapping around me, enfolding me in the terrible searing pain I can never escape…never forget.

  Outside the door, I hear my mother and father screaming.

  The door bursts open at last and they are there, but the flames already have me—I can feel them licking up the back of my nightgown like hungry tongues, setting my hair afire with light. They are ravenous—insatiable. They intended to eat me alive—I know that just as I know there is no escape from them.

  “Katy!” my mother screams as she runs to me, heedless of the wall of fire between us. “Katy—my baby!”

  She dives through the flames, not caring that they catch her too, wrapping around her like the wings of a great and terrible bird enfolding her. She pulls me close and begins to beat at the fire that is trying to eat me, all while my father is shouting for us to hurry, yelling that we have to run…have to get out…

  Get out, I think. We have to get out!

  We will never get out.

  And then I smell the awful scent of burning flesh and know it is my own…

  * * *

  I woke up with tears in my eyes and my throat closed tight with panic, as I always did when I dreamed of The Fire.

  I thought of it that way—capitalized in my head. Why not? It was certainly important enough—it had taken everything from me. It was probably what my English teacher would call “the seminal event” of my entire life and though it had happened over two years ago, when I was barely fourteen, the dream made it seem as fresh as ever. I could still hear my parents screams, echoing above the roaring flames…

  A sob caught in my throat and then another as a vast sense of loss filled me. They were gone—they had left me all alone and they were never coming back. My wonderful, wise mother and my handsome, smartass father, who was always cracking dad jokes to make us groan. I would never see them again—not on this side of eternity, anyway.

  I know lots of teenagers don’t get along with their parents—and my relationship with mine hadn’t been perfect. But we had laughed toget
her and loved each other and really, almost never disagreed.

  I wondered if it would hurt less if we had fought more.

  The vast ocean of grief—its waters as deep and black and cold as space—threatened to overwhelm me. I felt like I would drown in it sometimes.

  Sometimes I even wanted to.

  The loss of my parents filled me for a moment and my heart ached almost as much as my scars, which covered my arms and the entire left side of my body. Sometimes I tried to remember what I had looked like without them—back when all of my face—not just the right side—was pretty and pleasing to look at. Now the left side looked melted and what used to be smooth, light brown skin had been replaced by pinkish-white scar tissue, knotted and lumped and ugly…so ugly.

  I avoided mirrors these days and, except for when I was alone with my Coven-mates at Nocturne Academy, I kept to myself as much as possible.

  I wished I was there now—wished I could reach out to Emma or Megan, the newest member of our little clan—for some comfort or at least some distraction from my bleak thoughts and the awful memories.

  But it was the weekend and I was home. Well, at Mr. and Mrs. Breedlove’s home, anyway.

  I had been babysitting their little girl, Allegra, almost from the time she was born. After The Fire and the weeks I spent in the hospital, I had no home of my own to go back to so Alastair and Anastasia Breedlove had taken me into their house and given me a room of my own—right next to Allegra’s. They had even sponsored me for Nocturne Academy—paying the extremely expensive tuition out of their own pocket.

  I was grateful for their kindness though, being Nocturnes, neither one of them was exactly very warm. But Allegra made up for her parents’ coolness and distance by being sweet and bubbly and incredibly lovable. I knew what my friend Avery said—that I was basically the Breedloves’ nanny, at least on the weekends—but I didn’t care. Allegra was a ray of sunshine in my dark life and I loved her as though she was my own.

  As though my thoughts of her had called the little girl, I heard the light patter of footsteps in the hall outside my room and then the door creaked open. In the darkness of the hallway, I saw the soft glow of her pale blue eyes.

  “Katy?” she whispered, approaching my bed. “Katy, I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you?”

  “Sure, sweetie.” I opened the covers for her and she slid into bed beside me and snuggled close. Like all Nocturnes, her body temperature was about ten degrees below human normal so she felt like a cold little lump beside me until my body heat warmed her.

  “Was it a bad one?” I asked as I wrapped my arm around her. “Your nightmare? Do you remember what it was about, Allegra?”

  “Don’t know. Just…it was scary.” She snuffled and pressed closer, her back to my front. She had on the expensive white lace nightgown her mother insisted she wear and her long, pale blonde hair mixed with my own black hair on the pillow. In the moonlight spilling through the window, I thought it looked like silver.

  I barely noticed when she pulled my wrist to her mouth and sank her little fangs in. The skin there was deadened and knotted with scar tissue—it was a wonder she could find a vein at all. But she always seemed to manage and though she never took more than a few mouthfuls of blood, it relaxed her enough to go back to sleep.

  This time, however, I felt a strange little tingle run up my arm as she sucked my wrist. I frowned in the darkness—what was going on? I usually didn’t feel a thing after she had first sunk her fangs in. Maybe some of the nerves in my deadened skin were regenerating at last? It seemed like too much to hope for so I shrugged the idea off and ignored the burning tingle.

  If this sounds weird—the babysitter letting the kid she’s watching bite her—well, it was pretty routine for us. As I said, I’d been watching Allegra since she was a baby and she was four now—almost five and a “big girl” as she liked to point out. But big girl or not, she was a Nocturne and they live on blood—though they mostly drink bagged and chilled animal blood. Allegra, however, tended to get hungry between meals and I didn’t mind letting her “snack” on me from time to time.

  I knew my friend Megan got wonderful intense sensations when her Nocturne boyfriend, Griffin, bit her. But when Allegra bit me, all I felt was a mothering-kind of love for the little girl. In fact, I had been surprised when Megan talked about how pleasurable she found it when Griffin sank his fangs into her flesh—“better than sex” she’d called it. Though, as Avery pointed out, she wouldn’t know since she was still a virgin and Griffin refused to do anything about said virginity until she turned eighteen and was completely legal.

  “Oh, shut up, Avery,” Megan had snapped, half-laughing as she shot him a glare. “Like you’ve had so much experience yourself.”

  “Like any of us has,” Emma sighed, staring into the fire—a fire I stayed well back from, despite the fact that it was small and friendly—nothing like the blaze that had taken my parents and house and changed my life forever.

  We had been staying up late one night, not long after Megan and Griffin had Blood-Bonded—which was supposed to be a big no-no, since the main law of Otherkind—the Edict—stated that Others of different races must never mix. However, Megan had broken the magic of the Edict when she became the Witch Queen and Griffin became her Blood Knight. They tried not to flaunt their new relationship but it was easy to see, by the way they looked at each other, that they had found a love that would last forever.

  I sighed and shifted in my bed as I thought of my Coven-mate and her Nocturne. I was never going to find a love like that. Not with the ugly scars I wore.

  You might think that as a human going to a magical school, I could have the scars removed easily but it wasn’t so. Both medical and magical treatments had been tried and even Megan’s immense magic hadn’t been able to make them fade, though she had tried several times to help me.

  “I’m sorry, Kaitlyn,” she’d said after the last attempt when my scars stubbornly remained in place, though she had cut herself three times for me. (Megan does Blood magic—something else that’s supposed to be outlawed in the Other World but she has a habit of making her own rules, as Avery puts it.)

  “It’s okay.” I sighed and shook my head. “It’s not your fault—thank you for trying.”

  “It almost feels like they’re resisting me magically—your scars, I mean.” Megan had frowned, a furrow forming between her green-gray eyes. “But how can that be? How can I have enough power to abolish the Edict but I can’t get rid of your scars?”

  I could see the frustration on her pretty face and knew that my Coven-mate wanted to help me so badly she could almost taste it. But I had no answers.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged helplessly. “But, well…thank you for trying.”

  “I’m not giving up,” Megan had declared. “I’m going to have a look in Corinne’s grimoire. There are tons of healing spells in there. Maybe one of them will work for you.”

  The book she was talking about had belonged to her ancestor, Corinne Latimer—one of the most powerful witches to ever have lived. Megan seemed to have all of her power and then some…and yet she couldn’t heal my scars.

  As Allegra slipped her fangs out of my scarred wrist with a contented sigh and the tingling faded, I wondered if Megan was right—if my scars were somehow magically resistant to healing. But that didn’t make any sense, did it? The house fire that had taken my parents and marked me so horribly had been caused by faulty wiring—or so the fire marshal’s report had said. There was nothing magical about it—it was just terrible luck.

  That was what I told myself, anyway, as I cuddled Allegra closer and slipped back into sleep. I might be scarred for life, I told myself, but at least I had people who loved me. People who cared enough to stick by me—no matter what I looked like. My coven mates, Megan and Emma and Avery to name a few, and sweet little Allegra who was already fast asleep in my arms to name another.

  People who loved me. People who wanted to protect me…

&nb
sp; A new thought entered my mind—the image of a vast black shadow with wings like sails hovering in the sky, looking down on me…

  Watching over you. Protecting you, whispered a strange little voice in my head.

  I shivered and pushed the disturbing thought away. I didn’t want to think of that shape—of what it meant—of who it might be. Better, far better, to snuggle under the covers with Allegra and let myself drift back to sleep knowing the nightmares were in the past and that nothing worse than The Fire could ever happen to me.