The Puppet Master: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 4

by Savage, Vivienne

  Something struck the side of the train, the heavy sound of a large object against steel. I flinched, jerking toward the dull thud. It happened again elsewhere. Passengers gasped, startling in their seats.

  “What the hell was that?” Holden asked, his booming voice carrying to us.

  “Trouble,” Stark replied grimly.

  “Stay down, Pilar,” I said as I stood and pulled my own weapon. A little bit of glamour had kept my gun hidden during our trip. My friend didn’t argue. “Everyone, please stay calm and remain in your seats.”

  “What’s happening?” Lia asked.

  “Not sure yet, but alert campus security. Let them know we’re—” The call dropped. “Lia? Shit.”

  Pilar shoved the phone into her purse.

  “Next stop, we get off,” Anton said into the radio, alerting Holden and Stark on the distant end of the train. “We—”

  A small girl shrieked, pointing to the window. “Monster!”

  Monster?

  Attention darting that way, I tried to see what she’d noticed. Only shadows.

  Someone else shouted, and a group of people shuffled back. “What the fuck is that?”

  This time, I caught a glimpse of a human-shaped body crawling over the window, there and gone within a second. Fast.

  “Nosferatu,” Victor said in a grim voice. “Several. I can…”

  He sensed them, didn’t he? Had giving up his light, the gift that allowed him to walk in the sun, brought him closer to the nossies? I swallowed the hard lump in my throat, my chest tight with tension.

  “How many are there?” Anton asked.

  “About nine. Some of them aren’t as noisy as the others.”

  Anton swore in Russian. I didn’t need to know the language to realize that. In the next breath, he called out orders to Holden and Stark. The latter and Victor exchanged places, placing our vampire friend alongside Holden. They ascended to the upper level.

  We couldn’t protect everyone on the train, but we’d die trying.

  Shattering glass and screeching metal announced our attackers. They came from multiple directions, crashing through windows and ripping open the train doors. I’d always known nosferatu were strong, but even I was startled by the power of this group.

  Anton struck one of them down before it made it fully on the train, separating the darkling’s head from its wretched body with his cavalry sword. Another instantly took its brethren’s place and leapt at the mage, but then Stark was there with a stake.

  Two down, but there were still more, and barely a moment had passed.

  Pilar held a Prismatic Barrier around herself and a nearby family, but she couldn't shield everyone alone. Trusting in her ability, I joined the fight, vaulting off one of the vinyl seats and slamming my feet into a nearby nos. The vampire hit the floor, but he didn’t stay there long, and his fury turned on me.

  Magic flew and sparks ignited within the confined space, spells clashing against semi-translucent barriers. A twisting inferno of Faerie Fire rushed at us in plumes of green and yellow flame from what had once been a brownie—now a treacherous boggart. The amorphous blob had a vaguely humanoid shape, a figure of shadow and concentrated evil who thrived on terrorizing humans and devouring their fear. Most dwelled in children’s closets or under their beds.

  But the truly powerful ones planted awful ideas in the minds of the mentally vulnerable, driving them to commit atrocious acts.

  They were the nightmares who created human monsters.

  This one had become so large that it oozed over the seats and changed form on a whim, each of its ghoulish faces more terrifying than the last. It was a cannibal clown. It was a grim stalker with a knife. It was a rotting wendigo. It was death himself, a grinning skull striking terror into each person it faced, turning the features of onlookers pallid with fright.

  The train passed through the 95th Street Metra Station, breezing past a crowd of people no doubt bewildered by its failure to stop.

  “They must have gotten to the conductor!” Stark shouted.

  “We need to stop this train,” Anton remarked, one second prior to blasting the face off of a nosferatu stupid enough to challenge him in close quarters.

  “Here?” came Victor’s startled voice, “We’re in the middle of the residential area.”

  “There are no other options.”

  The older sentinel twisted around and lunged for the emergency brake, giving it a sharp tug. Precious seconds ticked by and then the train car lurched. The ear-splitting shriek of metal on metal drowned out everything else. I could see the flash of sparks outside and smell them through the broken windows and gaping doors.

  “Skylar, barriers over the humans!” Stark shouted to me.

  “Got it!”

  Strenuous hours of practice had allowed me to split my Prismatic Barrier into two bubbles, but that was it. The frightened passengers had huddled into three groups. I couldn’t get them all.

  “I’ll get them,” Pilar volunteered.

  My friend moved while holding her barrier, shepherding the terrified trio she protected along with her toward the rear of the car. As they moved, a darkling rammed past Anton and leapt at her. The father she was protecting panicked and bolted, leaving the shield while his wife and son screamed for him.

  “No!” Pilar pushed the mother and child forward and sent her barrier with them, sacrificing her own defense.

  The moment she was vulnerable, a nosferatu seized Pilar by the throat and pressed her against the wall, its ghastly white face moving closer to her cheek.

  “Pilar!” I screamed, torn between shifting my Prismatic Barrier from the passengers to her. She would never forgive me if I did. I watched, helpless, certain I was about to witness my friend’s death. And it would be my fault.

  “Poor, poor Skylar,” a familiar voice taunted from the shadows. “Too helpless to save her friends.”

  “Tricia, stop this!” I yelled. “This is between you and me.”

  Her laughter came from all around me, and I spun around, trying to find the vampire mage. Pilar struggled against the nos pinning her, Stark had blood dripping down his face as he battled another, Anton was in a magic battle with the boggart, and Holden and Victor were fighting above us. We were outnumbered, with too many innocent lives to worry about.

  “You’re nothing without your light. A dim sylph with no real power.”

  “And you’re a coward hiding in the shadows!”

  A dark shape coalesced near Pilar, spectral fingers wrapping around her throat from behind. My friend whimpered and my resolve wavered. Maybe I could still help her. Maybe I could be fast enough to shift my shields.

  One glimpse at the hungry nosferatu standing over the crying passengers made it clear I couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouthed at Pilar.

  “Save them,” she whispered, then closed her eyes.

  I didn’t want to watch, but I owed it to my friend. The shadow jerked Pilar’s head back and the nos holding her growled and bared his fangs, ready to plunge them into her neck.

  A camera flashed.

  Or maybe it was something else. The light was so blinding—so sudden—that I couldn’t see, dazzled by the prolonged intensity. I shrank back from it instinctively and raised one hand to shield my eyes against the pure white radiance flooding the car. And then the heat came. Scorching, blistering heat that I felt for one flash second before Anton’s Arcane Shield joined my Prismatic Barrier.

  Together, they were almost not enough. When one of my knuckles brushed past the thin pane of magic, I recoiled sharply, gasping from the startling amount of heat radiating through the magical wall.

  Please, please, please, I begged, praying Pilar was all right. I couldn’t lose one of my friends. We’d lost enough pals throughout the years.

  Yet, all throughout this, the sounds of shrieking nosferatu filled my ears with the nails on chalkboard cry of them dying.

  And then, silence.

  I opened my eyes, bl
inking away the stars in my vision, and tried to make sense of what I was looking at. The nosferatu were gone, nothing more than charred husks lying on the floor. A vaguely feminine shape had scorched through the side of the train car where Pilar had been held by the nosferatu. The edges were red-hot, dripping slag.

  “What the fuck?”

  I glanced up at Anton, wondering the same.

  Holden vaulted over the rail from the upper level and landed beside me. “Pilar! Holy fuck, what happened?”

  The effort to maintain my barrier was too much after holding off whatever the hell magical attack that had been, so I released the spell and bolted for the open doors without answering him. A light snowfall had started, dusting the sparse stretch of grass nearby with white. Pilar wasn’t far, standing two yards away with her arms held out before her as she stared down at them in disbelief.

  Her body resembled a constellation, a midnight silhouette accented by a network of beautiful stars twinkling in and out from head to toe, her hair as beautiful as a golden nebula.

  I ran to her but halted mid-step, recalling the heat. It had seemingly subsided, the air around her warm but pleasant. Before I could ask if she was all right, Pilar threw herself into my arms and hugged me tightly.

  “Yo, Tinsel, you’re glowing big time!” Holden called out, shattering the moment.

  We both laughed, at least until Victor emerged from the train in a stumble, bringing the odor of burned flesh with him. He sagged against the train near the door, scorched down one side. His skin was crispy, blackened around the edges of where the light had seared him worst. Flecks of his skin continued to peel and blow away in the evening breeze like pieces of ash, and embers still glowed on his shirt.

  I broke away from my friend and hurried to his side. She hung back, perhaps frightened she would hurt him again.

  “Are you okay?” No amount of healing salve or first aid that I knew could fix this. I winced and gingerly touched his face with the pads of my fingers.

  “It’s fine,” he rasped out. “Looks worse than it is. I just need…” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. His teeth had never seemed so long, gums pale and bloodless, almost white. “Fuck, my mouth is so dry right now.”

  “Dude, do you need some blood?” Holden asked.

  Victor turned his dark eyes on Holden, blinking slowly. “Yeah, but—”

  Holden was already shrugging out of his jacket and rolling his sleeve up to the elbow. He thrust out his left arm at Victor. “That’s just what bros do for each other, man. I don’t give a shit. Take what you need. I got plenty of it.”

  Appearing somewhat reluctant, Victor sank his fangs into the offered wrist.

  Shifter blood must have been potent stuff. Over the course of a few seconds, the charred flesh and bubbling blisters began to flake off, revealing normal, healthy skin. I watched, fascinated by the display.

  He finished after about fifteen seconds of deep drinking, during which Holden didn’t even grimace once. When he let go, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, not that he’d dripped any, and awkwardly avoided eye contact with any of us. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “No big deal.”

  “Wait, does this mean Tricia is…”

  “No.” Pilar shook her head. “She wasn’t actually holding me; it was another illusion.”

  “Then where is she? I heard her. She was here.”

  Pilar pointed to the north. “I saw a shadow fleeing up the tracks.”

  “Then we need to destroy that vampire now before she puts too much distance between us,” Anton said, reminding me of the last time an authoritative voice demanded we leave someone. Was this real? I rocked onto the balls of my feet, ready to spring after him in pursuit of Tricia, but also petrified of what we would return to when—if—we returned at all.

  “But the people—”

  “I’ll stay behind with them,” Pilar said, stepping inside the train again.

  Stark grimaced. “So will I. Just in case Annalise shows up. Uh, Victor should go with you guys. You’ll need his speed to take her on.”

  “For real, for real,” Holden agreed. “Takes a kickass vamp to fight a vamp.”

  I read between the lines. If Pilar turned Human Torch again, they didn’t want her to nuke Victor too. I didn’t have a chance to agree, because Anton and Victor were already leaving.

  “Are you sure you guys are going to be okay here until help arrives?”

  “I am positive. Someone is coming.”

  I had to let go of that night in the park. Trusting them, I turned and sprinted after the other two sentinels.

  “How can we track her?” I asked.

  “I can smell the blood she left behind,” Victor said. “Pilar must have done some damage without realizing.”

  “And there is this.” For a guy who could have cosplayed a Russian villain, Anton was in amazing shape and kept pace beside us as we hurried up the tracks. He reached into his coat and removed a heavy vial, easily the width and size of a flashlight. Phosphorescent liquid shimmered inside, along with a single crystal. When he shook it, blue light shone over the ground. Each blood droplet and particle of ash glowed like a ruby, the specks illuminated and amplified a hundredfold.

  We followed them to a storage facility and found the gate blown apart by magic. Blood splatters stood out against the pavement.

  “She’ll need blood to recuperate from Pilar’s starburst,” Anton said. “She was in the vicinity when the flare went off. Close enough to take damage, but not as near as Victor.”

  “Then why come here?” I argued. “There are homes on the other side of the tracks. This is more like an ambush site.”

  “Then we stick together. No separating, no matter what.”

  “Right,” I agreed.

  The whole situation bothered me. There was no way Tricia could have traps set up ahead of time, not knowing where the train would stop, but it made no sense for her to avoid the easier meals across the tracks. Unless Pilar had done more damage than we thought and Tricia was simply looking to run.

  A cornered, wounded animal was the most dangerous.

  Just then, a shadow parted from the storage building to our left. Victor reacted first, twisting around in an acrobatic display that made him a blur to my eye. He caught Tricia by the wrist, forcing her to drop the blade she held. She twisted away, releasing a violent plume of fire into his face.

  The skies overhead boiled and swirled, but whether Anton or Tricia caused the building storm, I had no idea. Nor did I have time to stare and figure it out. Tricia came at us like a wildcat, with fangs, claws, and magic. Her spells burned like hellfire, filling the air with the stench of sulfur and molten metal. Even with three of us we had trouble. Every time she tried to flee, either I or Anton blocked her path with a magical barrier while Victor engaged her in physical confrontations.

  Until she tried to barrel through us.

  Anton whirled, whipping a crucifix out from his coat with one hand. Immediately, Tricia recoiled from the sight of it. “I thought so.”

  “I don’t get it, she’s not a nosferatu.”

  “She’s not, no, but she’s changing. You do enough bad shit, it doesn’t matter if you don’t outright drain a few bodies.”

  To evade the holy symbol’s power over her, Tricia spun aside and vanished into mist. She was gone, tiny little specks of moisture in the air that I saw only hanging suspended in the lights of the storage grounds.

  If I had my light, I could have snapped her out of it.

  But my light was gone. My wings were dull gray streams of energy that emitted nothing beautiful at all, no longer warm against my back or useful against a vampire.

  I wasn’t as fast as her.

  Yet I was.

  My shadowstride took me in and out of the Twilight, putting me in her path of escape. A well-aimed burst of Faerie Fire forced her back into corporeal form, and she came punching. I dodged away into the Twilight, side-steppi
ng her blows, until something came over me and I realized something Dain had been telling me all along.

  I did not need the Twilight to evade Tricia.

  I’d known it for months, ever since one fateful fight beneath an old farmhouse in the Louisiana bayou. I became as incorporeal as mist and her fist went through me, only for my body to solidify again and my roundhouse to catch her chin. She cried out, startled. I wasn’t done yet.

  Lightning sizzled in my hand, creating a weapon of pure electricity that crackled and roared when I drove it through her chest.

  I must have missed her heart by inches, a mistake that cost me when she punched me in the nose. Pain exploded from the center of my face, my broken nose gushing blood. Tears blinded me, and I stumbled, unable to see more than the hazy blur of my opponent. Her teeth gnashed and she snarled.

  My blood was calling her.

  “Duck, Skylar!” Victor called.

  Unable to see him, I stepped into the Twilight. From the other side, I heard his shotgun roar.

  Tricia shrieked.

  In the safety of the Twilight, I flitted to an empty space unoccupied by the shadows of my companions and stepped into the mortal plane again as a blizzard ripped down the lane between the storage buildings.

  Most of the condensation in the air gathered into huge chunks of hail and spikes of ice. I knew who had summoned it the moment one of the jagged icicles speared Tricia in the abdomen. Just in case, I channeled my Prismatic Barrier around the three of us.

  I hadn’t seen anyone with this kind of elemental control since watching Simon fight against the Plague Doctor last year.

  “She’s losing blood like crazy,” Victor muttered. His dark eyes gleamed red and hungry, reminding me of how much blood he’d lost despite Holden’s donation. He’d probably spent most of that just recovering from the injuries, and even more during the battle with Tricia.

  “Then it’s time to end her. Are you ready?” The older sentinel shot me a look.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. I don’t see anyone else here able to hold lightning with their bare hands.”

  Tricia started to run for it, but I jerked my Prismatic Barrier away and slammed it in her path. She bounced off of it and ran another direction, but Anton had it covered with a wall of frost. The next time she turned, Victor was there. She tried to run toward us, as if she’d barrel through Anton and me, but he casually brought out the crucifix and penned her in again.