Shadowspell Academy: Year of the Chameleon, Book 1 by Mayer Shannon

Author:Mayer, Shannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hijinks Ink Publishing
Published: 2021-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

11

Rory was not wrong about the training. It started just a few too-short hours later, when we were still asleep.

The slow hiss of something . . . insidious . . . reached my ears, along with a tingle of danger along my spine as I was on the cusp of waking. I jerked to the side, moving and yelling before my eyes were even all the way open.

“Everyone off the floor!”

Snake, it sounded like a snake. Like a really big rattler. Like the hiss could fill your chest with the weight of it. I’d dealt with them more than once on the farm, and the big ones always sounded like that.

There was a scramble as we all moved to stand on the wide headboards of the beds, the same way I’d snuck away from everyone the night before. Pete jumped up, still in his honey badger form, spun and snarled at the snake that was slithering through the room.

The thing was at least six inches around with a diamondback pattern in greens and black rippling down its muscular, twenty-foot-long body. Twenty feet of snake was no small thing. Its tongue flicked out, tasting the air as it slithered toward us, body undulating across the floor.

Imma eat that. Pete’s voice flowed into my head as he snarled, his muscles bunching.

“Pete, don’t!” I yelled as he launched his body out in a perfect arc, landing on the back of the snake’s head, his mouth latching onto its neck.

They rolled together, Pete’s claws digging in hard as he went into honey badger berserker mode, thrashing and slashing. Blood sprayed the floor, and a stream of it flowed by as the door was yanked open by Rory.

The tail of the snake wrapped around Rory’s ankle and yanked him off his feet. He grabbed the edge of the doorframe, which was the only thing that kept him out of the coils of the snake.

I yanked my knife from its sheath and lunged toward the bundle of thick muscle that was slowly wrapping around Pete despite his hold on its neck. A red, baleful eye rolled toward me, and the snake’s head shot forward, mouth wide open.

I dodged to the side and brought my knife down on the back of its skull, driving the blade straight through the brain. The snake dropped, and its twitching coils slowly unwound from Pete and Rory.

“What the hell was that?” Gregory whispered.

Rory pushed to his feet and dusted himself off as the snake evaporated into . . . nothing. Even the blood was gone. He handed out a sheet of paper to each of us—our revised schedules. “Welcome to your first day of training. Expect to be pushed harder than anyone else. Just like in the trials.”

“Sandman?” I asked the one-word question, and Rory nodded.

“Yes. He wants you all trained up as fast as possible.”

I grimaced and there were a few sharp inhales. This was going to be . . . tough.

Much as it might be hard to believe, things went downhill from there.

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