The Chronicles of Kerrigan Prequel Series Books #1-3: Paranormal Fantasy Romance Read online

  “Hey! Kerrigan!”

  Simon froze like someone had poured a glass of icy water down his back. He knew that detestable voice. After one and a half years of acute loathing, he’d know it anywhere.

  With a look of the upmost derision, he slowly turned around. Sure enough, Wardell was jogging towards him across the grass, followed by his usual band of sycophants. He skidded to an ostentatious halt, ‘accidentally’ spraying Simon with a wave of wet grass, and waited for the rest of his friends to catch up.

  “What do you want, Wardell?” Simon asked pre-emptively.

  He didn’t want to be late and call attention to himself on this day of all days. And although he hated to admit it, the aggravating fox made him more than a little nervous. Both of them were tall and fit, but if Wardell wanted he could most likely lay Simon out cold. Between his ink and the four or five friends who were constantly at his back, it wouldn’t be that much of a question.

  Or would it? Who knew what new powers Simon had up his sleeve.

  Wardell lifted his hands innocently, standing just out of reach with an unbearable twinkle in his eyes. “We’re touchy this morning, aren’t we?” There was a collective chuckle as the rest of the group filed in behind. “And here I’d have thought you’d be in a great mood.”

  Simon’s eyes darted nervously from person to person, sizing them up while refusing to surrender an inch of ground. “Yeah? And why is that?”

  Wardell cocked his head to the side, a playful, animalistic gesture he barely seemed aware of himself. Like a cat playing with its food. “Because it’s your birthday, that’s why.”

  It felt as though the entire campus fell suddenly quiet. Birthdays might not have been that big a deal at any other boarding school, but Guilder was different. At Guilder, the day you turned sixteen was a day that determined the rest of your life.

  “How did you know that?” Simon asked quietly.

  Wardell shrugged, tossing a pebble back and forth between his hands at lightning speed. “A little bird told me.”

  Behind him, Robert Fletcher, a shifter with the power to turn into an eagle, crossed his arms with a smirk. Simon’s eyes narrowed. Yeah, he bet a little bird told him. He bet a literal bird flew right into the admissions office and lifted his file from the records.

  “So how about it?” Wardell pressed impatiently. “What did you get?”

  A secondary bell chimed, a warning not to be late, and Simon fell a step back, trapped between a rock and a hard place. “You know,” he said casually, glancing behind him at the old brick building, “same as my dad’s.”

  Wardell grinned and took a step forward, enjoying their game immensely. “Yeah, except no one around here really knows what your dad has either, do they? Because the guy never leaves the house, like a freak.”

  “Like father, like son,” one of the boys behind him muttered.

  But Wardell didn’t have time for petty insults. He was here for a reason, and, like Simon, he had a class to get to and professors he didn’t want to upset. “So what is it? Show me.”

  Simon jutted up his chin. “It’s none of your business.”

  The grin came back. “Really? You think you can hide it all year long?”

  “I think if you’re so concerned with ink, you should really focus on figuring out the rest of yours,” Simon sneered. “Still haven’t mastered that super-strength bit, have you?”

  Wardell’s eyes narrowed as his skin blushed a delicate shade of pink. While the skills he had now might be impressive, it was true that he, along with most other Guilder students who already had their ink, hadn’t yet been able to unlock the rest of it. It was a touchy subject all around.

  “Tell you what.” He took a sudden step forward, flexing his hands into fists. “Why don’t you help me try it out? You stand there, just like that, and I’ll—”

  “Professor Mallins is coming.”

  A sudden voice replaced one threat with another as a tall boy in his late teens came walking towards them. His dark hair was cut at a strict angle, and despite wearing the same casual attire as the rest of them, there was something somehow formal about the way he presented himself, an odd rigidity to his otherwise-handsome face.

  “Shit! AJ.” Wardell whipped his head around, searching for a direction. “Where?”

  “Science building.” Andrew James’ voice was flat, inflectionless. And yet, even while Wardell and his friends scattered to the wind, Simon could have sworn he saw him wink.

  “He’s not really coming, is he?” Simon asked the second they were gone. Truth be told, he had waited an extra second after that. No telling how far Wardell could hear at this point.

  Andrew shrugged, shifting his bag to another shoulder. Of all the students at school besides Argyle, Andrew James Carter was the one Simon favored the most. Well—tolerated. Favored was a bit of a stretch, considering the guy was a year older and they had no classes together.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. He didn’t like being put in the position of owing anything to anybody. Even if it was well-intentioned.

  “No problem.” He gestured casually to Simon’s arm. “They seemed to be giving you an especially hard time. Is it your birthday?”

  Simon stiffened defensively, but gripped automatically at his forearm.

  Carter simply nodded, bowing his head. “Hey, it’s none of my business, but the day I turned sixteen I had some serious questions. There’s a book, you know, in the library. A chronicle of every tatù that Guilder has ever seen. Might be worth checking out.”

  Simon blinked in surprise. Coming from a family that bent over backwards to show as little compassion or sympathy as possible, he could never quite understand why Carter occasionally stuck out his neck just to help him. The premise behind the action simply baffled him. But he had never heard of such a book, and would check it out immediately. With any luck, it might shed some light as to who this mysterious warlock was, and what exactly he could do.

  “Uh…cool. Whatever. Maybe I will.”

  As close to gratitude as Simon Kerrigan would ever come.

  A hint of a smile flitted across Carter’s face before he shook his head and took off across the grass to his own building. “Happy birthday.”

  Simon waited until he was gone before he slowly released the death grip on his arm. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding on so tight, but the second he let go a rush of blood and feeling flooded back to his fingers.

  “…Thanks.”

  * * *

  Instead of going to history class that day, Simon took a slight detour to the library. The woman who guarded the books was known for her rather vicious policy towards rule-breakers and truants, not to mention anyone who spoke at a volume above a whisper, but she was already yelling at a terrified-looking first-year when he walked in, so Simon was able to slip up to the top story without anyone being the wiser.

  He had never been to this section before—this section coated in layer upon layer of dust and neglect. But he figured there was a reason for its place of both isolation and prominence. This was where the ancient volumes were stored. Those books so fragile and precious that they’d been deliberately set away from the eager hands of the children and relegated to the stacks.

  It was here that Simon began his search.

  As fate would have it, the ‘search’ turned out to be hardly a search at all. The anthology of tatùs Carter had told him about, while being as venerated and decrepit as the rest, was the only book in the lot of them not coated in a decade’s worth of grime.

  Simon picked it carefully off the shelf, glancing this way and that to make sure that no prying eyes had followed him. Then, when he was completely satisfied that he was alone, he slowly rolled up his sleeve. He wasn’t sure if it would ever fail to surprise him, the sudden vibrancy of the design hidden just below. He supposed, in a way, he was lucky at simply a cosmetic level.

  He’d seen kids pass through who’d gotten something weird, like a bone or a hand. There was even a guy once wh
o got something that looked suspiciously like a rose. Like it or not, those tatùs would be stuck on their bodies forever. Just staring back at them when they woke up every morning. At least his design was something cool.

  It was also, apparently, something very rare.

  An ever-deepening frown clouded Simon’s face as he flicked faster and faster through the aged pages. First you had all your basics: water, wind, ice, animals. He saw the etched drawing of a fennec fox and resisted the urge to draw on a moustache. Then you had things that were a bit more unique: an all-seeing eye, an intricately-detailed skeleton, perhaps most terrifying—a single drop of blood. But nowhere, in all the hundreds of drawings, did he see his warlock.

  What does that mean? He slumped down against the table, holding his troubled head in his hands. Could it be something brand new? Was that even possible?

  More importantly…what exactly would the folks at Guilder have to say about that?

  For what had to be the millionth time, Simon wished again that he had any kind of relationship with his father. How unfortunate that literally the only person on the planet who might have any sort of understanding to what he was going through hadn’t said more than a five-word sentence to him from the time he was three. Simon had never really understood why. There had never been any sort of open conflict between them. The man simply seemed to have no interest whatsoever in having a son. Neither did his mother, for that matter.

  They took off without him every holiday they could, and counted the days until he was to go back to school. As if that wasn’t indication enough, the first time he’d come home from Guilder he discovered that they’d converted his room into a secondary office for his father. While that might not be so strange in and of itself, the fact that they had done so while there were still six empty rooms in the house made him wonder.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t like he could just call up and say, “Hey Dad, can we talk a minute about this weird warlock that just popped up on my arm?” To be honest, he’d be rather blown away if his parents even remembered it was his birthday.

  “Who’s up there?” a shrill voice sounded from down below, making Simon jump.

  Without stopping to think, he slammed the book shut and took off down the opposite staircase, disappearing from sight the second that the ghoulish librarian appeared on the other side.

  He didn’t stop running until he was safely across the sweeping lawns of Guilder, and back within the safety of his dorm room. The second he got inside, he locked the door, barricaded a chair against it for good measure (not that a chair would stand a chance against Brick), and flopped down on his bed, panting as though he’d run a marathon.

  The shimmering warlock seemed to burn the skin on his arm; itching to be seen, itching to be used. But instead of rolling up his sleeve again to see it, he pulled on the cuff.

  He might not know exactly what his tatù was, but if he’d learned anything from his time at Guilder, it was this: Different was not good. Different was to be feared. Different was to be hidden.

  At all costs…

  Chapter 2

  The day took forever to get through and then Simon didn’t sleep well that night. With the warlock still burning on his arm, he was plagued with dreams that were a bit too close to reality.

  It started out very much like the daydream he’d taken such pleasure in just the day before. He was walking across the Guilder lawns, when Wardell and his gang came up to hassle him just like they always did. They shoved him around a while, drawing a bit of a crowd, when all at once Simon shoved them back and slowly lifted his arm.

  But it was here that the dream took a sudden dark turn.

  Instead of simply tossing Wardell through the air, felling him to the ground in a glorious feat of strength, a jet of what looked like liquid fire poured forth from Simon’s hands. In a matter of seconds, the utopic Guilder grounds turned into a virtual blood bath. Bloodcurdling shrieks and screams echoed from every corner as Wardell and his group of miscreants fell to the ground in front of Simon, bowing in ironic submission, dripping blood and flames, until, one by one, they died.

  Simon woke with a terrible chill, bolting upright in bed, panting and shivering.

  “Oh, hey, man. Sorry if I woke you. I was just on my way out.”

  Still reeling from the ghastly images, Simon swiveled around in shock to see Brick staring at him. From the look on the giant’s face, he must have been quite a sight.

  “No, it’s fine,” Simon said quickly, embarrassed to have been caught in a bad dream in front of the mindless boy. “I…was already awake.”

  Brick raised his eyebrows but let it go with a shrug, waving a half-hearted goodbye as he picked up his gym bag and headed down to the Oratory to train. Like so many other before him, Brick had simply gotten an anonymous invitation one day, along with a locker and a key. The word ‘anonymous’ couldn’t have been more ironic, because everyone knew that the invitations came to those who the Privy Council had a vested interest in training. Those with advanced abilities, intellect, or fighting skills were usually snapped up at the end of their second year to begin the process. The only question left in Simon’s mind was why Brick had been selected for such a position.

  Simon stared after him for a moment, before slowly lowering his gaze to his arm. He was almost worried as to what he might find there. Blood? Cinders? A tiny etching of Wardell’s severed head dangling from the warlock’s hand?

  Not a thing. The tatù stared back as innocently as ever, the warlock’s expression slightly muddled by the almost imperceptible smudging of the ink. Why hadn’t the professors been all over him to see what he could do? Didn’t they want to know what he had? For a school hell-bent on creating strength and power, a sixteen birthday was huge. Maybe they were letting him figure it out himself. His gaze moved along his arm again. Why was his ink kind of blurry?

  Why can’t I get a clear view?

  Simon sighed in exasperation as he pulled himself out of bed and started getting dressed for the day. His alarm had yet to go off, but he wanted to get to history a little early to apologize to Professor Lanford for missing the previous class. Plus, there was a chance that if he jumped a few minutes ahead of his daily schedule, he might miss the rematch that Wardell was surely gunning for.

  He wore just as many layers as the day before, carefully masking any trace of the ink. But this time, he found himself glaring back at his reflection with growing resentment.

  It shouldn’t be this way. He shouldn’t have to hide. This ink should have been the greatest thing that ever happened to him—he had certainly waited for it long enough. He should have been parading around half-naked so that the entire world could see. Shoving his arm into Wardell’s face and gloating that, unlike his wretched nemesis, he’d been gifted with something extra-special.

  Moreover, he shouldn’t be skulking around the library, searching for answers on his own like the whole thing was some kind of secret. He should be talking openly with his teachers, seeking their counsel, soliciting their advice. Asking them seemingly harmless questions.

  For example: “Is it possible that this warlock on my arm is somehow manipulating me into having Alfred Hitchcock dreams?”

  But questions like that had never really been welcome at Guilder. To be honest, questions of any sort other than ‘how might I be of service?’ were usually regarded with the greatest suspicion and disdain. Simon never knew why. Never understood why a place of learning insisted on dancing around the one topic it should be promoting the most. But no one else seemed to mind. In fact, no one else seemed to think anything of it. They were content to be the mindless drones that Guilder seemed content to produce.

  After the first week of his freshman year, Simon had learned to stop raising his hand.

  But there had to be something in place for this, he thought with frustration as he grabbed his bag of books and headed briskly down the stairs. Surely they couldn’t just toss the kids out into the deep end of the pool and expect each one of them
to come out on the other side. Even the ones with a weighted warlock on their arm.

  “Simon—hey!”

  Instead of walling up with his usual defensiveness, Simon relaxed his shoulders and turned around with a smile. There was only one person at this school who called him by his first name.

  “Morning, Argyle. You’re looking especially nerdish today.”

  Argyle pushed up his glasses with a good-natured grin. They magnified his impossibly blue eyes for a second before slipping right back down. “I do what I can to represent.”

  His Scottish accent had significantly lessened in the three months since their disaster winter vacation at his house. The one where Simon had been thrown out for daring to fall in love with Argyle’s sister. He supposed it was a sort of latent rebellion against his father.

  “So listen,” he dropped his voice cautiously and glanced around, “happy belated birthday!”

  Simon followed his gaze and bowed his head with a shy smile. “Thanks.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you sooner, but I was stuck in Luther’s biology midterm for the first half of the day, and by the time I got out I couldn’t find you.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I…” Simon shifted uncomfortably. “…I turned in early for the night.”

  Argyle raised his eyebrows. “Must have been pretty damn early indeed. But hey,” his face lit up with scarcely contained excitement, “did you get it?”

  Simon’s hand drifted automatically to his arm, before he forced it away. “Uh…yeah, I did.”

  “Well,” his best friend tapped his foot impatiently, “let me see!”

  “You know what,” Simon spotted the top of Wardell’s head making its way towards him through the crowd, “later, alright? After class today. We can meet in my dorm.”

  Argyle’s face fell incredulously. “Are you serious?! Come on—just a quick look!”