This Is My Kingdom Come by Megan Rees (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

“Calm yourself, sweetheart. I will alert the Council and make sure they conduct a search.”

“Thank you, Rosco.”

“No problem at all, Luna. Go and take some deep breaths and talk to someone about it who can offer you some confidence about the situation. I’m sure little Cody is safe, wherever he may be.”

Luna rose from the chair in the library and made her way out, tears forming her pastel blue eyes. All she had wanted to do was hide in there and bawl, but she didn’t want to look weak in front of the elderly man. She admittedly hadn’t cried when Rune died, but if anyone had messed with little Cody… she couldn’t imagine life without her little brother being there, even if she’d known his existence for a little over a month. He had become part of her life in ways she couldn’t possibly explain.

Once she was out of the library, she leant against the wall before suddenly sinking down to her feet and held her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably like a young child. She couldn’t hold it back any longer; she had to let it out.

“Are you okay?” a voice asked a little awkwardly.

Lifting her head, Luna saw Ash standing a few feet away from her, his dark green eyes lost and staring down at his shoes. He had a small brown paper bag in his hand which he offered out to her. “I thought you might want something to eat. Food is the world’s best antidote for anything and everything.”

“Food isn’t going to bring back Cody, Ash!” Luna yelled at him through her tears. “He won’t come back unless we do something!”

Ash raised an eyebrow suspiciously. “We? What are you implying, Luna?”

“I’m implying that we go to rescue him, stupid!” the blonde girl replied a little fiercely as she wiped her eyes. “If we go and ask at The Lodge, they could help us find Cody and we could use Adele to search Oscar’s past. Everyone’s a winner!”

“I point blankly refuse,” Ash responded firmly. “Rosco’s going to talk to the Council to send out a search party of experienced Purebloods. We don’t need to get involved.”

“I am part of the Council, if you remember correctly. I probably have more knowledge of the wide world than most Purebloods twice my age too: someone’s going to get hurt unless I go.” Luna sniffed, turning away from him.

“You do not need to throw your life out on the line to be the hero all the time.”

“I’m just proving myself as a brave older sister looking out for her brother. This mess is partly my fault for not keeping an eye on him and I’m going to redeem myself by being brave.”

“You have nothing to prove and nothing to be sorry for. Bravery is not defined by throwing yourself into the fire – putting out the flames is true courage.”

“Sitting on the fence and observing is cowardice. If you don’t want to go, then I’ll go by myself and prove you wrong.”

Luna heard Ash sigh irritably as he walked round and crouched in front of her, looking her dead in the eye. “Look, you have nothing to prove to me and never will. I know of your abilities and don’t doubt them at all. I just believe that you should calm down and let the Council deal with Cody. They’ll find him in no time.”

“He’s my brother, Ash. You don’t understand,” Luna murmured, not meeting his concerned green gaze. “Right now, he could be scared and alone. Assembling a search party will waste too much time – if I go now I can prevent his suffering.”

The brown haired boy tapped her lightly on the chin with his thumb. “No one said he was in pain. With his unknown whereabouts, I highly doubt that he’s injured or-”

He was cut off by an ear-splitting crash coming from the forest, unleashing a chorus of screams from the surrounding Purebloods. Luna leapt up to her feet rather quickly yet clumsily, eyes widened curiously. “What the heck was that?”

Ash frowned as he got up, grasping the hilt of his dagger on his belt. “Please tell me that was someone’s stomach growling on a megaphone.”

“I won’t even ask why on earth you said that,” Luna mumbled, getting a curved long sword out of her own belt. “It sounded like an earthquake of some sort, but there was no damage caused apart from that bang.”

Ash’s emerald eyes darkened. “Only one creature can move like that, and that creature happens to be a Demon. It appears we are once again being attacked.”

A mound of earth suddenly appeared just on the edge of the forest before collapsing to reveal a giant black worm-like thing with tiny orange eyes and gigantic razor sharp teeth. It unleashed a mighty roar which shook the trees and buildings around slightly. Luna found herself frozen in horror as she stared up at the beast. Is it here for the Phoenix’s Treasure again? Has it taken Cody?

“If you want to be smothered to death by that mutated earthworm, by all means stand there blankly and stay in whatever planet you’re on,” Ash grumbled, elbowing her hard in the side. “I’m going to try and lift something which might injure it. Cover for me, will you?”

Nodding, Luna kept her sword clutched in her right hand as Ash concentrated on a large window from the infirmary not too far away. He managed to yank it out of the wall with no damage sustained, so he thrust his hands towards the Demon and the window flew through the air, smacking into the Demon’s face and sending shards of glass flying onto its black skin. It somehow didn’t let out any sort of pained cry – it just glared fiercely at Ash with its orange pinprick eyes and let out a fierce growl which made Luna nervous. What’s it planning?

The Demon worm sucked up all the glass into his mouth casually before turning back to the two young Purebloods, opening its jaws wide and spitting the glass shards out at them.

“Duck!” Ash yelled as he pushed Luna roughly down to her knees before crouching beside her as the shards flew over their heads. Luna let out a slight yelp of pain as she felt a slightly smaller piece scrape her face, leaving a cut on her left cheek which did let a trickle of blood dribble out. Her friend shuffled over after hearing her yelp. “Did you get hit by the glass?” he asked warily.

“It only grazed my cheek. It’ll heal quickly enough,” the Pureblood girl assured him. “You weren’t hit, right?”

The pale skinned teenager shook his head. “I’m fine. Sorry I threw the window.”

“We didn’t know it could fight back like that,” Luna insisted. “Anyway, I’m going to see if I can find something to slice through the worm. My sword could work, but I’m concerned the worm will eat it and Rosco told me this was my father’s sword.”

“You could use barbed wire. There are loads next to the training targets,” Ash suggested thoughtfully, pointing to a relatively large pile of the sharp wire. “Doesn’t one of the girls in your cabin possess the power to make some objects come alive?

“Yes: Meena Durain.”

Meena was a sixteen year old Pureblood who had originally been born into the Normal world. She’d been sent to boarding school, but she had few friends there because she was different. Rather than attempting to build a friendship group like all the other children, she had slumped around the hallways by herself because she was unwilling to make friends. The school had received reports of Meena bringing tables and such to life and had injured one girl when she was eleven; she was thrown out after that little fiasco and left home in fear of hurting someone because she couldn’t control her powers properly. Her parents were exiled from their previous sanctuary and didn’t fancy stepping foot in another one, so they suggested to Meena that she should travel to Nighthollow and return to them once she had completed training. Luna was quite friendly with the troubled child and enjoyed her company, but she would be graduating from her training soon because she was too old to continue and she should have fully developed her powers by now.

“We should find Meena to ask if she could do it for us.” Ash decided, nodding his head encouragingly.

“You wanted me?”

Luna nearly had a heart attack when the curly haired girl appeared behind her. She was quite small and petite for her age, with thick curly black hair tied up in a ponytail and light green eyes. Among her various scars from Demons and training, she had a light dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose and under her eyes.

Ash acknowledged her with a quick nod. “Would you be able to make that barded wire come alive? Luna and I were thinking that it could kill the Demon because we really aren’t going to be able to fight it off for long.”

“I can try, but these things can develop minds of their own and the outcome isn’t always pretty,” Meena responded, sucking in her breath thoughtfully. “The last time I brought something similar to life, I had to kill it myself because it tried to kill Thorn. It’s amusing thinking about it, but it really wasn’t funny at the time.”

“We may have no other option,” Ash sighed. “Go for it.”

Looking a bit wary, Meena stepped forward towards the tangle of wire and flicked her wrist upwards, summoning up the sharp metal in a snake-like manner. She flung her hand towards the worm Demon, allowing her barbed wire snake to let loose and attack the intruder, its spikes digging into the Demon’s black skin and unleashing splatters of black blood. The wire snake wrapped itself around the Demon’s neck and thus cutting off its air supply.

Luna nodded at Meena. “Good work. I don’t think we have anything to worry about now. You can stop now.”

The curly haired teenager threw her hands down, and the barbed wire snake went limp around the Demon’s neck as it faded away with a cry of anguish.

The Purebloods let up a loud cheer as the Demon vanished from existence, but Luna didn’t feel any urge to join in. She could see families grieving over some of the younger Purebloods who had bravely lost their lives fighting against the giant worm Demon, which sent a wave of guilt over the young girl. She usually did feel guilt when others died, but something wasn’t adding up.

The Demons hadn’t bothered Nighthollow for several weeks now since a group of them were killed during the battle at the Land Of The Lost and Alpha had disappeared. They usually wouldn’t go into battle unless motivated by their leader. A chill passed through Luna as one question hung in her mind.

Has Alpha returned?