Out of the Shadows (The Runsfield Academy Series) Read online

  Out of the Shadows

  The Runsfield Academy Series

  E.R. Hendricks

  Copyright © 2021 E.R. Hendricks

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: E.R. Hendricks

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my husband for supporting me and encouraging me to write my first book. Thank you baby.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Authors Note

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  Chapter 1

  Kat

  As I speed down the road on my Kawasaki Z1 (the only good thing I got from Kilas and I had to steal the fucking thing), the cool breeze is on my face, ruffling my leather jacket—not that I need it; one of the advantages of being supernatural is not feeling the cold.

  I squeeze the handlebars tighter as I think about how I came to be here in the countryside, just outside of Cluj, Romania. How I had to practically beg my stepdad to use his ‘connections’ to get me into a new school—but never in my wildest dreams did I think he’d be able to get me into Runsfield Academy. This school is the best of the best as far as supernatural universities go, super rich, and as pretentious as they come.

  Maven must have some serious connections to be able to pull this off, especially with my not-so-stellar track record of fighting. From the age of fourteen till now, I’d been living on the streets, a night in a random sleazy motel here and there, only when I could afford it. Fighting is just what you had to do to survive—to eat, to even sleep without men thinking you’re fair game—so it just came naturally to me when girls in school kept running their mouths.

  I shake my head as I focus back to present, and realize I’m already at the school entrance gates. I turn in and drive up the long driveway to a huge parking lot filled with crazy expensive cars. I roll my eyes and ride past the rows of Bugattis and Lambos.

  When I finally look up, I see the most beautiful old gothic-looking castle, all dark stone with ivy growing up the sides. It's got tons of beautiful arched windows, and the roof has taller towers that protrude past the rest in tall peaks. I would not be surprised if there are gargoyle statues found up there. So much detail and, I’m sure, so much history.

  When my mind finally comes around to the fact that I’ll be living here for the next two years, it makes me wonder again how Maven pulled this off. I pull my bike up to the side of the grandest staircase and set of front doors I’ve ever seen.

  I park my bike, slide my keys in my backpack’s side pocket, and proceed up what has to be a dozen stairs to the massive ornate front doors; they’ve got to be at least fifteen feet tall and eight feet wide. How is it that I went from living in a roach motel to a fucking castle! I glance around to make sure no one is watching me drool over the building. Luckily for me, I see no one.

  I open the door. In front of me is even more grand staircases made of stone and what looks like some expensive marble, along with dozens of corridors and hallways. Above me are huge cast iron candle chandeliers that hang four stories up from the cathedral-style ceiling and tons of beautiful old-world moldings depicting all the supernatural's: shifters, demons, angels, necromancers, witches and wizards, ghosts, and of course vampires.

  The Runsfield Academy has been a school since the fifteenth century, when Nathaniel Runsfield, a necromancer, opened it in hopes of protecting what few were left of his kind from being slaughtered by vampires. Necromancers have always been feared and despised for many reasons—a few being that some have become unhinged, and it is thought that since they are so close with death, being on both sides of life is too much for the mind to handle. Of course, it doesn’t help that they can see and communicate with the dead. Plus, they are able to kill even immortal beings by ripping their life force from the body. To say the hatred is still prevalent today would be an understatement, which is why I can’t let anyone know that I’m part necromancer—to everyone I’m just Katerina Philips, the vampire from Chicago here on scholarship.

  I walk to what I hope is the administrative office off to the right. Shit! I hope they have a map because I am definitely going to get lost. I thank whatever gods are listening when it turns out to be the office which I was hoping, and walk up to the friendly-looking witch at the front desk.

  “Hello, my name is Katerina and I was coming to pick up my class schedule,” I smile awkwardly before continuing, “and perhaps a map?”

  She looks at me and chuckles softly to herself. “First time here?” she asks.

  I give her another awkward smile. Geez, is it that obvious? “Yep. I just transferred in from the US to start my junior year.”

  She nods her head in understanding as she types what I assume to be my name into her computer, bringing up my information. She nods her head again and retrieves my schedule from the printer. She looks at me and says, “Okay, so here is your class schedule and your dorm room number. You’re in the Westwood dorm building with the rest of the female students. Eastwood is the boys' dorm, and Northwood, which is the building you are currently in, is the academia building where all your classes, apart from Magical Defense, will be held. The arena, gym, dining hall, and feeder rooms are all in Southwood building.”

  Okay, that doesn’t seem too difficult. She hands me my printed schedule and a map, and I thank her. I look down at my schedule for Monday and notice my first class is Supe History in room 206. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I realize it starts in 15 minutes. I shoot her another hurried ‘thank you’ as I haul ass to search for this classroom. I feel the anxiety growing already; I hate getting lost.

  I look at the map and see that the rooms correspond to the floors, making my search a little easier. I head up to the second floor and down the hall on the right looking for signs or arrows—anything to point me in the right direction. Instead of arrows, I find room numbers above the doors, but soon realize I’m heading in the wrong direction, and quickly turn back around, but not before I run face first into a stone wall.

  Shit, that hurts. I look up to see it wasn’t actually a wall, but none other than Cain Straford. Fucking great—I forgot this douche canoe goes here, too. He looks at me with utter disgust, like I’m dog poop on his fancy overpriced dress shoes, because of course the pretentious asshat is wearing a three-piece Brioni suit.

  I show him my most blank facial expression so he doesn’t get the pleasure of knowing the fact that I am also irritated at the sight of him, and instead stare into his malevolent beady black eyes, watching them as they rake me in from bottom to top; from my black boots straight up my authentically-ripped black jeans, my carefully ch
osen t-shirt which says “Bite me”—get it?—to my full matte black lips and double-braided black hair with a patch of white at the front, which trail down past the middle of my back, and then I smirk as he stops dead at my bi-colored eyes.

  Perfect.

  Being a necromancer means some traits are unavoidable, like my snow-white hair, which I dye mostly black, and my ice-blue eye.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks with as much disdain in his voice as physically possible. I roll my eyes, straighten my spine so it isn’t apparent how much he annoys me.

  “Well, I was wandering in the woods and happened to stumble upon this big ass castle and thought, ‘hey, that looks like a fun place to hang out’ and walked right in the front door,” I reply, my voice oozing with sarcasm.

  He sneers and lets out a noise that sounds suspiciously like a growl. “I mean, there’s no way your whore of a mother or gang-banger of a father could afford to send you to a school like this, and you sure as shit ain’t smart enough to get in on a scholarship. So, unless you started whoring like your mother… oh, but then again no one would pay enough for ugly, used up, nasty pussy.” The look of extreme loathing crosses his face, as I’m sure matches mine.

  Maven, the so-called ‘gang banger’, is my stepdad, but I didn’t have the desire to correct him—no one knows about Kilas, and I’d like to keep it that way. And technically, Maven is the VP of a motorcycle club, and he would probably laugh at being called a ‘gang banger’. I’m not even touching the whole whore-mother thing because, well, she is, among other things. I let loose a smile I know makes me look criminally insane and internally crack my knuckles because this motherfucker needs to be taught a lesson.

  I take a deep breath to prep for my comeback. “First off, it really wasn’t all that hard to get the money. All I had to do was fuck your dad once and he was so excited to have someone who actually responded to him, unlike your drugged-up mother—what is it she’s on these days? Prozac? Or has she just gone straight to combining copious amounts of alcohol with meth?” I tilt my head to seem like I genuinely care about the answer, and smile again to show my fangs.

  He growls again, low in his chest, and slams me up against the stone wall, hard enough that some dust sprinkles down around us. As his hand goes to my throat, my hand is already on my knife that I retrieve from my boot, and in the time it takes him to tighten his grip on my trachea, my knife is poised at his dick. If there is anything I know for sure about men, it's that they hold their dick above their own lives. Once Cain feels the sharp tip of my blade near the spot between his legs, his hand loosens. He growls in my face, his voice like ice, and quietly, just for me to hear, he says, “I will fucking kill you!”

  I refrain from rolling my eyes. He thinks this is the first time I’ve heard that. I chuckle. At least when I heard it before, it wasn’t from a spoiled rich asshole. “I'd like to see you try,” I respond, feigning boredom. Cain looks around, only now realizing we are still in the middle of the hall with other students watching as they pass by, and he lets go of me. I put my knife back in my boot—this chance encounter is precisely why I always keep one on me. He backs away and turns and heads to his class. Cain is also from Chicago, but not the same Chicago as me; his family is from old money and his parents are on the Supe committee. We went to high school together and he’s hated me since then, because I, the daughter of a whore, dare to grace his presence. Like I have any say in the womb which I happen to come from.

  I race down the hall to room 206, which I can now see up on my right. I walk in and take a seat in a desk toward the back of the room. Once I’m sitting and my laptop (which the school supplied as part of the scholarship) and notebook and pretty pens are pulled out and set up, I take a second to look around. More cast iron candelabras and chandeliers cast shadows and provide a comfy glow around the room. There are more depictions of supes and battles on the walls around the room, as well as two large windows to my left, draped in heavy thick cloth. As a vampire, we can go out in the sun—thank the gods we’ve evolved from our ancestors who could not, but it's still not our favorite place to be. The huge stone pillars along the walls rise up to the ceilings to create a cathedral-like feel. I notice along the front of the room behind the professor's desk are huge bookcases, which I guess makes sense since I am in Supe History.

  At the front stands a podium, from which, I’m assuming, the professor will give the lecture. I watch as more and more students file into the room, and from the looks of it—how they are dressed, more specifically—they have money, and a shit ton of it. Awesome… so there goes any chance of blending in.

  Then, of course, I spot what I can only imagine to be the supe version of the cast of Mean Girls. They are all vampires—that much is apparent. Vampires are built for seduction, with our generous curves and model-esque good looks; we are literally designed to tempt our prey with little effort. The main girl, clearly their leader, whose name is very likely Veronica or Vanessa or something similar, has long blonde hair, pretty blue eyes, perfectly pouty lips, and curves for days —just absolutely gorgeous. As she walks past, she looks down her nose at me and heads for the next row over. I glance around to confirm she’s actually looking at me—yup, definitely me. I raise a brow in confusion.

  She must realize she’s giving me some serious resting bitch face, and plasters on a fake smile. “Hey,” she looks down at my clothes. “You must be new here, my name is Victoria,” she says in a condescending tone.

  I knew it!

  Before I even get to respond she’s talking again. “I saw you talking to Cain Straford, and I just wanted to make it very clear that he is mine.” She gives me a look that I’m pretty sure she thinks is threatening. Wowzers, this bitch. Obviously, she didn’t see the whole interaction.

  “Yep, my name’s Katerina,” I say, choosing to ignore the rest of her introduction. She sneers at me one last time while her friends do the same, in some sort of strange camaraderie.

  I roll my eyes and look to the front of the room, just as the professor walks in, followed by one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen. With snow-white hair styled short on the sides and longer on top, he snags my eyes for a second and I notice his clear ice blue eyes returning my gaze; and was it my imagination, or did his cheekbones and jaw sharpen even more for just a split second? Just like the rest of the class, he is dressed in a three-piece suit, though somehow makes it feel like he’s in jeans and a t-shirt. He is very clearly a necromancer, and since he’s not hiding it, that can only mean one thing: he is the dean’s son.

  Chapter 2

  Kiazer

  I notice her as soon as I step into the classroom. How can I not, she’s the only one in this room—hell, probably this whole school—who isn’t dressed in designer clothes that cost more than a typical month’s salary.

  But it isn’t just that; she’s fucking gorgeous with her unique bi-color eyes, one similar to mine, and the other the color of the sky during a storm; those paired with a full, sexy mouth I instantly picture wrapped around my cock. Her long black and white hair I can see fanned out around her as she lies in my bed. I can see tattoos that creep out from under her shirt collar, and barely hidden by her sleeves on her hands and fingers—makes me wonder where else on that sexy body she has tattoos.

  I clench my jaw and follow professor James Sterling over to his desk, discreetly adjusting my now-hard dick. This is my second year as his teacher’s assistant. Being the dean’s son means I have high expectations to meet, while everyone else thinks I have an easy ride.

  Frederick Runsfield is insanely strict, and a tyrant, when it comes to this school, and he finds his reputation important to uphold. Because he is the dean and a member of the supe committee, he expects me to be the absolute best at everything, so as not to tarnish his reputation. I’m supposed to be next in line to inherit his positions on the committee and as dean, regardless of my disinterest in any of it. In fact, I would rather do literally anything else.

  I hate my fathe
r with an unbridled passion, not just because I’m held to ungodly standards, but also because we have never gotten along. We butt heads at every opportunity and never agree on anything. Not that we talk often enough to fight that much; my mum, Claudia, and he are never home—constantly working or traveling doing committee work. My childhood has been spent in the care of a slew of various nannies and housekeepers.

  I sit down at the small desk next to James, get out my MacBook, and open his schedule for the week. Because he’s a wizard, he also teaches first-year Spells and Potions and fourth-year Advanced Magic.

  As I do this, I continue trying to discreetly check out the intriguing new girl. She appears to be a vampire, if her generous curves are anything to go by, but her right eye doesn’t seem to match the rest of her. She catches me looking and gives me a sly smirk.

  I look away, turning my focus back on my computer as James starts class. I tune it all out; I’ve heard this all before. I run my lip back and forth over my lip ring and smile, knowing how mad it drives my dad every time he sees it. I chuckle softly to myself; if he only knew about my two full sleeves, chest piece, and the huge back piece that’s still in progress, he would probably have a coronary. I smile at the thought of my silent rebellion. My way of fighting back against the family I just don’t seem to fit into.

  I think about how this is my last semester at Runsfield before I start my apprenticeship under my father. At 22, the last thing I want to do is follow my father around all day and, essentially, be his bitch, I know he’ll end up overworking me, use me like his assistant, and still complain about everything being done wrong anyway.

  I have yet to come up with a valid excuse to put it off; I won’t say ‘get out of it’ because that’s not even a possibility. No—as a Runsfield, it's my responsibility, my destiny to become the dean, and eventually settle down with another necromancer and produce an heir. That’s all it will be about—keeping the bloodline pure. There are so few necromancers left, we don’t really have a choice to mate for love.