Hunter's Alpha (gxg) ✓

3. Dark Academia

The Toulouse Academy of Fine Arts is a private school in New Orleans that, if I had had a choice, I would have never gone to.

It wasn't my decision, though. When it comes to my mother, it usually never is.

But as much as I hated the thought of attending, when I first saw it, I was speechless.

Have you heard of dark academia? If you saw the Toulouse Academy, you would understand. It was an old building—maybe from the 1500s—and it used to belong to a duke and duchess before they were guillotined.

It stands tall in the shadow of the church, built from gothic stone and arching doorways and majestic obsidian statues of strange creatures that are perched at every window.

Beautiful. And terrible.

When I saw it for the first time, I stopped in my tracks.

"What?" my mother asked. Teasing. "Not what you expected?"

I had been expecting a one-story, red-brick community college with ceramic white floors and cheap wooden desks. Not this—whatever this was.

Strangely enough, there were no students anywhere on the campus. No one laying in the grass. No one moving hurriedly with books. No one studying against one of the old, tall willow trees.

"Mom," I said. One last try. "Why can't I stay with you? You only live five minutes away from here. Why bother spending all this money for me to stay in a dorm?"

"It's the experience, Jude," she told me, her brown eyes swirling dark as she looked up at the gray sky. "I want you to have the memories I had."

Which was exactly how, last night, I was walking through the deserted campus after class ended, hands full of books, when someone tapped my shoulder.

I turned around, and I remember her eyes—pale green—before someone from behind pressed a cloth to my mouth.

I never should have been caught off guard. I never should have let two private school sorority girls get the best of me.

But I had. And now I was in this mess.

"Listen," I say calmly to the girl with green eyes. The other chanting sorority girls have stopped, and now they stare, wide-eyed. I bet no one has ever done this in the history of their initiation.

My switchblade is pressed to her throat, and she swallows. There is hot fury blazing in her eyes. "Just tell me how to get out of here."

"This is the Crescent sorority house," she spits at me. "Just take the stairs up."

As I let go of her and she stumbles a few back, I know one thing: I've made an enemy out of her.

Before I can think better, I'm at the door to the stairwell. With one last glance back at the room—the slender candles, the goblet of red liquid, the row of blindfolded initiates—I take off, slipping my switchblade closed.

I can't believe I was just kidnapped.

Compared to the Satanic cult vibe from the basement, the rest of the Crescent sorority house seems normal enough. It is nighttime now—almost four in the mourning.

The stairs are dark wood and as I make my way through the empty floor to the door, I notice the couches are a lush, wine-red. And so is the blood on the carpet and the frames on the wall.