A Hellish Year One: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Bully Romance (Academy of The Devil Book 1) Read online

  Eva Brandt

  A Hellish Year One

  Academy of the Devil 1

  Copyright © 2019 by Eva Brandt

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Eva Brandt has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

  Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book.

  Cover art is for illustrative purposes only. Cover design by Fantasia Cover Designs.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  A Hellish Year One

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue

  The Unlikely Messenger

  Hellish First Impressions

  Arrival

  Abandon All Hope

  Demonic Sloth

  Deadly Introductions

  Creatures, Connections and Computers

  Through Anger and Envy

  Familiar Confrontations

  The Scholomance

  Collapse

  Through Weakness and Hatred

  White Ruin

  Sacrifice

  The Choice

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon: Academy of the Devil 2 and 3

  Also By Eva Brandt

  Withered Rose Excerpt

  About the Author

  A Hellish Year One

  Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The Academy of the Devil is waiting, and there will be no mercy.

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the girl who didn’t fit in, the girl who collapsed in the middle of class, just because my brain decided to turn on me. I can’t really complain, though. We don’t live in the Middle Ages, so I have yet to be subjected to an exorcism. I can get treatment for my condition. Epilepsy aside, I can mostly be a normal person and have a normal life.

  There’s just one problem. I’m not a normal person. I never have been. And the first time I find this out is upon receiving an exclusive invitation to The Academy of the Devil.

  Unfortunately, The Academy of the Devil isn’t like other schools and the current princes of the school have a lot of experience in ripping whatever contender they have to shreds. First, there’s Callum, incubus extraordinaire and leader of The House of Lust. He thrives on making students fall in love with him and then breaking their spirits. Then there’s Mikael, the envious cambion, rumored to enjoy feeding students to the school’s dragon. And last, but not least, the leader of The House of Wrath, the hell hound Stefan. I hear he doesn’t bother with the dragon and just takes care of pests himself.

  All of them despise humans. All of them sneer at anyone who displays any kind of weakness. All of them hate me and everything I stand for. That’s fine. I don’t need friends, lovers, or even valued mentors. All I need is to survive my school years with my soul, my sanity and my brain intact.

  It’ll be a challenge, but I’ve dealt with worse. I might not be ready for the Academy of the Devil, but they’re not ready for me either.

  The Academy of the Devil is a 74k words paranormal bully reverse harem romance. All characters involved in the pairing are 18+ years old. But be advised! The series will contain dark themes, including extreme violence, ableism, torture, and other similar content that may be disturbing for some readers. Approach with caution. Once you enter The Academy of the Devil, you will never be the same.

  A Note from the Author

  First of all, thank you for picking up Academy of the Devil. As mentioned in the blurb, this story contains some pretty heavy themes. It is the story of a disabled character who suffers a great deal because of her condition.

  Keep in mind that epilepsy is a complicated illness. While writing this series, I relied heavily on my own experience. Two types of generalized seizures are mentioned: convulsive seizures—which you may be familiar with from depictions in the media and basically involve the patient losing consciousness and starting to seize—and absence seizures, when the patient loses track of their environment. I didn’t go too in depth, as I’m actually not an expert at all the medical terminology. In other words, it is the perspective of a patient, not a doctor. But for people not in the know, epileptics need to avoid flashing lights, anything involving caffeine (coffee, chocolate, black and green tea), alcohol, smoking (passive smoking is included), excessive amounts of strain, both physical and mental. That’s only a part of it, but every single epileptic is different, so I won’t go further.

  The series as a whole will contain other dark content, including, but not limited to torture, mutilation, and gore. There will be no rape, but you can expect some dubious consent.

  If you start feeling the urge to throw your e-reader at me, don’t. I promise it’ll get better. I do plan to give Alyssa and her harem a HEA. I’m a romantic like that, even when the pairings I write are painful and twisted.

  Finally, a brief shout out to the reader who won my Facebook group competition (whose name I will not mention, for privacy purposes). I hope you like what I did with the character you imagined!

  Prologue

  Waking up after a seizure was always the same. There was always an overwhelming feeling of confusion, one that the worried people nearby often made worse. Usually, the people in question tended to be my panicked parents, but there were exceptions to that. I still remembered a notable episode when a random homeless guy had dragged me off the street so the cars wouldn’t run me over. I’d been very grateful, of course, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t confused me to wake up to a stranger with no teeth peering down at me and asking me if I needed an exorcism.

  Anyway, most times, there was a doctor. I didn’t need it for every single seizure, but when my parents did take me to the hospital, the doctors always asked the same questions.

  “What is your full name?”

  “What day of the week is it?”

  “What is the month?”

  “Who is the president?”

  Three-quarters of the time, I could never get the latter right, although I doubted it was because of brain damage. Some things, you just had to block out of your mind to stay sane.

  All these similarities aside, the most important thing that stuck with me was the crushing feeling of failure, inadequacy, and defeat. No matter how hard I tried, it was never enough.

  “You should have slept more, Ms. Michaelis.”

  “You shouldn’t have gotten so worked up over your school issues.”

  “You shouldn’t have stayed at the comput
er so long.”

  That was what they always said, and I would have liked to tell all of them that it wasn’t so easy, that I couldn’t just turn off my feelings and not get stressed, that I wanted to get my degree, damn it, and the computer was a little necessary for that. But it was all stupid and pointless, because the fact remained that every time I fell apart, it was my own fault.

  In my heart, I knew I was lucky. There were countless other people with my condition who couldn’t even function at all. My epilepsy was at least manageable with medicine. For the most part, I could lead a normal life.

  I would have still liked to have at least one birthday in which I didn’t have to worry about such things. One day in which I could celebrate and simply... be. For my eighteenth birthday, I would have liked to relax and not worry.

  I didn’t want fancy gifts or parties. I just wanted a migraine-free day, one I could enjoy with my parents and my dog. We were looking forward to our picnic. We’d had it all planned out.

  Suffice to say, it didn’t work out. Then again, very few things ever did for me.

  Because as it turned out, migraines and seizures were the last thing I had to worry about on my eighteenth birthday and maybe that homeless guy hadn’t been wrong in mentioning exorcism.

  The Unlikely Messenger

  “Lyssa, did you remember to put the napkins in the basket?”

  “I told you before, Mom. Yes, I did.”

  “Well, they’re not here. Where did you hide them?”

  I rolled my eyes and leaned against the tree trunk, not bothering to reply. Shiro padded to my side and placed his massive head on my knee. I scratched his ear, reveling in his familiar, steadying presence. “I bet she took them out of the basket because they were the wrong color of something and she forgot. Don’t you think so, Shiro?”

  Shiro woofed at me and gently tugged on my jacket with his fangs, ushering me to get up and play with him. “Shiro, now is not the time to play,” I told him. “Come on. No, don’t you dare… Don’t you dare give me the eyes.”

  Shiro ignored my request and proceeded to do just that, staring at me with a pleading expression that made my resistance crumble. “All right, but just so you know, if you get yourself dirty, mister, you’re taking a bath.”

  I picked up a stick, threw it, and smiled as I watched Shiro bound after it with enthusiasm. I’d had him for a little over three years, since he’d been only a puppy the size of my fist. I’d found him after the homeless man incident, abandoned and almost freezing in a box, and to this day, I had yet to identify his breed. The vet claimed he was some kind of German Sheppard-Husky mix, but I couldn’t always see the resemblance. Half the time, Mom just called him a wolf, although that wasn’t accurate either. I had abandoned all attempts to identify him in any other way except “my Shiro.”

  He’d saved my life on more than one occasion. Even if he wasn’t a trained dog, he still sensed my seizures and knew to warn me that something would happen, so that I wouldn’t fall over in a dangerous place and do more damage to myself.

  It also helped that once he’d grown into his current size, everyone interested in bullying me had found other hobbies. He was my best friend, and without him, I probably wouldn’t have been able to survive high school with my sanity intact.

  As such, I was naturally inclined to indulge him. The end result was that he’d ended up quite a brat. I was good at plenty of things, but not spoiling my dog didn’t make the list. Shiro knew it.

  It took about ten more seconds for him to make my resistance crumble. It was a little irresponsible and childish of me to go play with Shiro while my parents were preparing the picnic, but hey, it was my birthday. I could afford to celebrate, even if only through something simple.

  Truth be told, it was the simple things I’d always found most comforting and reassuring. I enjoyed being in this small forest with my family, feeling the breeze pass through my hair, so refreshing and different from the scent of the city. I enjoyed throwing around a stick for Shiro and seeing him respond with such joy. Later, I would certainly enjoy eating my mother’s delicious cooking and reading a good book in the shade of a tree. Maybe these weren’t remarkable, celebratory activities, but I didn’t need anything more.

  It was probably a good thing, because throwing wild parties or visiting more exciting venues could’ve led to me having a seizure, which was something I sought to avoid.

  So far, everything was going well. The sun was shining. My parents had yet to start bickering over nonsense. I didn’t have a migraine. There was no need to dwell on things I couldn’t change and spoil my enjoyment.

  It would’ve been difficult to hold onto any kind of negative feelings anyway when faced with the determination of a certain dog. He rushed back to my side, holding the stick in his mouth. He dropped it at my feet and looked up at me, looking very proud of himself. “Yes, thank you,” I told him with a snicker. “You did very well. Do you want me to throw it again?”

  Shiro woofed and wagged his tail in response. At such moments, I could’ve sworn he really understood what I was saying, and I could almost understand him in turn.

  “Okay, you pest,” I told him. “Let’s see how fast you are this time.”

  I threw the stick again and Shiro shot after it like a bullet. I watched him go with a smile, his white fur standing out in the tall grass like a beacon.

  “Lyssa!” my mother called out again. “I still can’t find those napkins! Where are they?”

  Huffing, I turned to look in her general direction. As soon as we’d reached the forest, I’d fled our little camp site, retreating to a tiny grove nearby. From my current position, I could only see the top of her head. I had no desire to go back to help her look for such a trivial item, but at this point, it seemed I wouldn’t have a choice.

  “I don’t know,” I replied with a sigh. “Just give me a moment. I’m coming.”

  Before I could do exactly that, my father rescued me from my predicament. “Never mind,” I heard him say. “Found ‘em.”

  Of course he had, because just like I’d expected, they’d probably been in an obvious place. I rolled my eyes and turned toward Shiro, ready to throw the stick for him again.

  There was just one problem. Shiro wasn’t there.

  A jolt of shock coursed through me at his absence. My exchange with my parents had been short, but Shiro should’ve come back by now. I started looking around the small grove for him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I did my best not to panic and focused on staying rational. I’d only turned away for a few moments. If he’d fallen or had been hurt, I’d have realized it. He would’ve made a sound that would’ve alerted me he was in trouble. Since I hadn’t heard anything, it was safe to assume that he must’ve gotten distracted by something far more interesting than a stick. He couldn’t have gotten far. It should be easy enough to find him.

  “Shiro?” I called out. “Where are you?”

  My faithful dog didn’t react to my call. A shiver coursed down my spine. Could he have been incapacitated in a way that had kept him from whining or barking? It wasn’t out of the question.

  Now struggling not to hyperventilate, I rushed toward the area where I’d last seen him. Since Shiro wasn’t visible in the grove, maybe he’d gone deeper into the forest.

  I didn’t have to look for too long. I found my canine companion at the edge of the meadow, snarling at a tall, dark-haired man dressed only in a white leather suit that looked like something straight out of The Matrix.

  He was eyeing Shiro with an undecipherable expression, but he immediately lost interest in my dog when he saw me approach. “Alyssa Michaelis?” he asked without preamble.

  I didn’t know what I found eerier, the fact that he knew my name or his odd, golden gaze. I’d seen people wearing contacts who didn’t look that way. On the other hand, him being aware of my identity was far more dangerous than his eye color. Was he some kind of weird stalker? If so, I needed to get out of here at once.

>   I instinctively took a step back. Sensing my wariness, Shiro positioned himself in front of me, as always my faithful guardian.

  The man didn’t seem taken aback by our reaction. “You are Alyssa Michaelis, aged 18, parents Charles and Frances Michaelis. Please confirm your identity.”

  I had no intention of doing such a thing. He hadn’t attacked me yet, but I should still be running away to alert my parents of his presence.

  And yet, there was something about him that kept me rooted on the spot and prevented me from leaving. “Who are you?” I asked.

  The stranger let out an irritated sigh and gave me a look that suggested he was questioning both my intelligence and the reason for my existence. “My name is Lenoir and I am a cherub.”

  For a few seconds, I thought I’d heard him wrong. “Excuse me? A cherub?”

  “That is correct. Class III Cherubim, to be more specific. Not that you’d know anything about that. Humans.”

  I ignored his disgruntled tone and eyed his leather-clad form from head to toe. He looked more like a bouncer from a fetish club than a cherub. “Pardon me for saying this, but... you don’t look very cherubic.”

  Lenoir’s eyes flashed with visible fury at my comment. “Ah, yes.” He smiled tightly, displaying a hint of fang. “I know all about that. The... charming portrayal of us cherubim in human paintings. Young children wearing diapers and carrying a bow and arrow? Really?”

  Oh, shit. I’d accidentally hit a sore spot.

  “I mean, all right, we did use a bow and arrows, one time. Two thousand years ago. But we don’t actually need them. It’s absurd to think that divine creatures of any kind would have to resort to something so primitive.”

  All right then. Clearly, I was having a very strange dream. I had no idea what could’ve made me conjure a leather-clad fetishist who claimed he was a type of angel, but my imagination had spawned weirder stuff.