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

by Savage, Vivienne

  “Skylar!” the voice shouted again. “You are stronger than her. You are strong.”

  A fog surrounded me in a haze and my head felt a thousand pounds. I struggled to remain in control of what I saw despite the army of imposters closing in. None of them were real. None of this was real.

  Pitting my willpower and all that I had against the treacherous thing, I struggled to find a weakness in the spell, given strength by my friend. It was pushing in on me, my head was screaming, throbbing in a way I’d never experienced before. Despite that, I pushed back.

  Not real. It isn’t real. This superpowered illusion can’t hurt me!

  Screaming, I thrust out with my wings. They lacked the luminescence of my former glow, but an explosive ball of electricity surrounded me on all sides. All at once, the phony world shattered. The image—the people, the gorgeous courtyard of PNRU, and the great big amphitheater where I’d graduated—splintered into thousands of pieces, each of these individual fragments raining down to the ground and evaporating like smoke afterward.

  What remained was darkness. I was lost. Surrounded by bleak nothing.

  “Gabriel? Simon?” No matter which direction I turned, no light existed. I ran, desperately reaching with my senses and my hands for something, anything at all. I tried to find the Twilight but failed to hook anything more than a distinct void.

  “Skylar!”

  I ran toward the sound. A voice in the darkness was better than stumbling lost in the vacuum.

  “Skylar!” cried the same person again. A drum beat in the distance, slower than my racing heart.

  Blindly, I ran, listening to snorting noises around me, feeling the brush of something against my ankles. I screamed and stumbled to one side.

  What if this is another illusion? Another trap?

  Something in my soul said it wasn’t. I trusted that kernel of hope and faith and ran. The drums picked up speed, had a distinct rhythm. They were joined by a dazzling bamboo flute and a shamisen, by other instruments I knew well but couldn’t name.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity of darkness and fear, I saw a blip of gold. It grew in size, shining and bright, until it was utterly resplendent against the darkness.

  Resplendence in the shape of a bird.

  “Ama?” I stared in amazement at the enormous creature coasting from the edge of shadows. A year ago, Ama had been no larger than my hand. The fae who landed on my upraised arm surpassed the largest eagles. She shone radiant gold, her eyes brighter than embers, and a long tail draped down to my knees. She was magnificent warmth, like living sunlight and feathers. I buried my face in her breast and fought the urge to cry.

  “I came to help. I will light your way.”

  I wanted to hug her more than ever. This wasn’t illusion. I felt the silken feathers, smelled the sweet cinnamon musk I had come to associate with birds, and sensed the magic pulsing in her veins. “Thank you, Ama. Thank you.”

  “The others cannot fight her magic. They are trying, but she is too much.”

  “Then we’ll have to get out of here and go to their rescue.”

  With Ama as my guide, I ran down a path illuminated by her plumage. No lantern or flashlight could have shone as brightly as she did. To our left and right, skeletal fingers reached toward us, recoiling each time her gilded light fell over them.

  A sense of safety and security came to me.

  “Do you know where are we, Ama?”

  “A bad place for fae beyond the Twilight. Gamayun calls it a place for doubt and misery. Formless and lightless. Dead. This place has no soul. No life.”

  “How do we leave it?”

  “We find the place where I entered. My body is here, but this is only your soul. She has your body. Follow me!”

  Ama took off and flew ahead. I spread my wings and followed behind her, noticing for the first time that wherever her light touched them, they sparkled and glowed with warmth, like an ember reigniting an extinguished flame. We flew through darkness and shadow, evading grasping fingers as we went, until at last, her light shone over a prismatic surface that shimmered like the Veil. I dove toward it, she and I both sailing through the rift that opened.

  * * *

  I awakened at once, bathed in mystical cold light.

  In place of the warehouse, tree limbs spanned overhead between me and the night sky, cold dirt under my back. Turning my head to the left brought a gravestone into view. Looking to my right I saw my friends sprawled out on the ground the same way I was. Our bodies had been arranged in a circle. Ama was nowhere in sight, but a single golden down feather lay on the soil beside Gabriel’s head.

  Two voices chanted in unison nearby. Slowly—so slowly—I leaned up to try and get a better look. Cole stood roughly two yards away, proving that part of the dream had been real. He was a traitor, and he wasn’t alone. Annalise moved into my line of sight, tracing symbols into the air with her long, pale fingers.

  They moved closer so I laid back down and closed my eyes to slits.

  Annalise and Cole stood over someone, I couldn’t see who, the former speaking in guttural tones that sounded nothing like the impressive cadences used by Simon and Holly in their spellwork. The vessel Cole held in his hands glowed, pulsing as if it were alive. Tendrils of energy ran from it down to the ground, and the end of each connected to one of my companions, ensconcing us in a frigid blue glow.

  Somewhere, far in the distance, I heard someone screaming.

  “Hurry, Gran. Once the fae manage to break through Delores’s protections, we won’t have a chance of finishing it.”

  The body they stood over convulsed, and jerked upright, mouth open in a wordless shriek. Christian’s wide, bloodshot eyes reflected terror and pain. The energy around him flared crimson and streamed into a tight beam that spiraled directly into the vessel.

  “Yes!” Cole shouted.

  Seconds later, what remained of Christian fell towards the earth as a formless, blackened husk. He broke away into ashes and the breeze blew that away.

  It took everything bit of self-control I had not to scream.

  The vessel Cole held floated from his hands to the center of the circle, powered by whatever grisly ritual they’d begun. The tendril linking the next body pulsed red.

  Unwilling to lose another teammate, I did the only thing I could and kicked up into a standing position. My Faerie Fire stuck a spell ward and parted, doing nothing to damage my foes, but alerting them to my awakened state. Annalise twisted, fast as a cobra, and fixed her dark gaze on me.

  “Kill her, Cole.”

  “With pleasure.”

  He came, guns blazing, emptying an entire clip at my Prismatic Barrier. In the moment he ejected his clip and reached for another I launched myself at him, knocking the gun from his hands with my forearm. The weapon hit the dirt and I kicked it away, blocking with the left hand while striking with my right. We’d sparred enough for me to know we were evenly matched, but I’d never shown him all my tricks. On his next swing I twisted aside and dropped to a crouch, spinning out with one leg followed by a kick upward. Cole reeled backward, blood pouring down his face from his broken nose.

  The vessel pulsed faster.

  “I will fucking kill you.” Cole came at me again, shifting to his raven form at the last second to swoop past me. Then his feet struck against my back, sending me stumbling forward. When I turned, he was gone, but I could hear his wings flapping in the dark. He took another dive, sharp claws dragging across my scalp, creating a difficult target to strike. He was smaller and faster, able to blend into the darkness of the night sky.

  A second dark body hurtled through the sky and crashed into the raven. Cole and Gabriel hit the ground and rolled, leaving me to face Annalise.

  “You’re too late. Far too late. It can’t be stopped. The ritual is well underway and nothing can stop it. These souls and all the power that they possess belong to us.”

  As if to punctuate her words, the next body jerked upright and the pulsing
magic drained them until only ash was left. Farther away, an explosion lit the sky like fireworks.

  “Sky, that was the campus!” Gabriel called out.

  His words made no sense, until I took another look around the cemetery that had become our battlefield and recognized the landmarks. Bachelor’s Grove. I hadn’t been back since freshman year, when curiosity had driven me to drag my new roommates out to investigate a vandalism.

  “Yes, you see now,” Annalise cackled, hiding behind her corrupted Prismatic Barrier. “You cannot escape destiny. This all goes back to you.”

  “And it ends with you.”

  Drawing on my lessons with Dain, I lashed out with lightning whips, doing everything in my power to put Annalise on the defensive. Her shields crackled beneath the onslaught, but no matter how hard I hit, she parried with magic I couldn’t compete with, using fae glamour and mage spells. The ground softened beneath my feet, forcing me into the air, which she then twisted into a vortex. Anyone else would have been buffeted around, but I was a sylph, and she’d chosen a poor element to cause me harm. Taking the winds under my control, I turned them back on her, rewarded when the valravn tumbled through the air.

  It came to me all at once. All along, I had known what to do. The wards kept out any backup from the school or SBA, they kept me from leaving—but they couldn’t keep me from reaching the skies directly above the cemetery. With this loophole in mind, I spread my wings and hurtled through the air. Faster than I’d ever flown before, I left the ground behind me. I spread my mind into the clouds and felt for the seeds of a storm, stirring it and channeling my willpower midflight.

  My companions became pinpricks against the dark ground, illuminated by Annalise’s insidious spell. I soared higher, propelling myself higher than I had dared to travel, until the air grew thin and I touched nebulous cloud cover.

  Desperately, I gathered them together, rolling it into a thicker bank and funneling my energy into them. Through each cloud, I reached another, until it became a chain reaction that provided access far beyond the range of the wards in the cemetery.

  Eat this, Annalise. A storm couldn’t be contained, and neither would I. Flickers of light danced across the sky. It may have been less than a minute since I left the ground, but it felt like centuries.

  How much longer until the vessel claimed another soul? That fear fueled me and provided new strength.

  Bolts of electricity arced out from me and struck the clouds, spawning another chain event of lightning. The sky turned dark and gorgeous, a deep slate-gray color stretching into the distant horizon. Flashes of intermittent electricity charged the air and invigorated me, like a feedback loop of magic. The more I gave to the sky, the more it gave me in return.

  The sheer magnitude of its power reached far across Chicago in a swirling tempest. The storm had its own soul and life force twisted with my mine.

  From high above, I observed the world from the viewpoint of the bleak cloud blank, swirling within a mass of energy and roiling electricity. I felt almighty as Zeus, or even Thor, commanding the skies and reaching out across the city. I saw everything and nothing—sensing thousands, if not millions of lives below. I became as insubstantial as mist, reduced to vapor.

  PNRU was under attack. I watched Eldan lead an offensive against a teeming force of nosferatu. The darkling ranks were thick with them, as they could recruit from even the human population. I watched Oberon fighting with all that he had to penetrate the barrier keeping him from the cemetery. His magic created fractures and chips in the spellwork that renewed within seconds. His flames melted away portions of barrier, only for them to regenerate as quickly.

  I watched SBA agents in the streets clashing against darklings of different types, fighting for the very soul of the city. Everywhere I looked through this strange awareness, I saw conflict.

  I had to help them.

  I had to save my friends.

  Pressure built within me and exploded from my fingertips in fractions of the current I had the potential to generate. I hoarded it, saved the bulk of it, gathered even more. Lightning sizzled into the world below, each bolt with a purpose, a darkling swarming onto our school grounds or pillaging Chicago’s streets. Now I understood why no one from the CCSBA had come to our aid, why no one realized we were trapped in the cemetery. Their hands were full against other rising horrors.

  One by one, I struck them, my lightning faster than the quickest nosferatu.

  Another scintillating arc raced through me, infusing my body with power. I sucked in more and released more, a conduit for something greater.

  Down below, Gabriel and Simon fought for the lives of our unconscious friends.

  I had one shot.

  I hurled my voice into the storm and swept it through the wind toward my mate and mentor, where, if I was fortunate, it would reach them on a single whisper.

  “Watch out!”

  Faster than I knew he could move, Simon teleported to Gabriel’s side and drew him close.

  Then I unleashed the storm, a hyper-bolt of condensed power that came sizzling from the sky.

  I had one shot. I poured everything within my Dream Box into it, exhausting years of hoarded faerie dust.

  Annalise saw it too and she dove out of the way, tucking and rolling, but I gritted my teeth and redirected the powerful bolt, curving it instead and blasting through the arcane shield she’d created. After that, my assault became a salvo of electrical current. Bolts struck with the rhythm of a Gatling gun and pummeled her.

  “Gran!”

  It blew her off her feet. Recuperating as fast as I could knock her down, she got up again. Simon had all of my friends shielded beneath an arcane barrier, but my aim was so precise it didn’t matter. She caught fire, extinguished the flames, and foiled me anew.

  Though I felt myself weakening, perhaps from channeling too much, too quickly, I held on.

  I am the storm.

  My friends were relying on me. Chicago, and all of our community, was relying on me. I knew nothing about arcane rituals, but I knew enough from studies with Holly to recognize that anything requiring the sacrifice of fourteen magical adults would be bad for more than our city.

  As I prepared to launch another bolt, Simon dropped the shield. He teleported behind Annalise and brought a rod from within his robes. He drove it through her back so hard her scream practically reached me in the heavens. I released a final bolt, and the power of my strike lit her up from within.

  This time, we weren’t dreaming.

  The loss of his grandmother must have broken Cole. He screamed in short-lived anguish, abruptly ended when Gabriel dropped him with a hard right cross. It surprised me none when Gabriel didn’t stop hitting him. My mate kept pummeling him, hitting him over and over again as Annalise erupted, reduced to a font of blue and green flames.

  And then the bits of me that had become insubstantial cloud matter coalesced and I became Skylar once more, no longer an all-powerful sky goddess.

  I lost my grip on the clouds and plummeted from the air.

  21

  Shadowed Wings

  I’d put too much into the storm. For a while, we had fed one another, trading energy back and forth, building and cresting like a typhoon.

  Then I spent it all, leaving nothing for the storm to return.

  Wind whipped through my hair. I was falling helplessly, my wings too exhausted catch the current and keep me aloft. They billowed around me like streamers, useless.

  My descent abruptly ended as claws grasped the back of my shirt and wrapped around me.

  “Ama?”

  “I come to help!”

  I could barely lift my head to stare in wonder at her. She’d been an eagle in size only minutes ago when she guided me out of the dark realm. Now she may as well have been the roc of legends.

  “I will not let you fall.”

  In a rescue that could have been taken from Lord of the Rings, Ama brought me to the ground and set my limp body on the cool grass. My
legs refused to cooperate with my desire to rise, but I managed to roll over.

  Annalise lay on the ground, wheezing out her final breaths. They left her in ragged, wet gasps, difficult intakes of air. The chemical reaction between her darkling skin and the rod of twisted iron around silver had scorched her from head to toe.

  Holly was the next victim trapped beneath the pulsing energy. At some point during the fight one of the Cook County officers had been killed by the dark energy, the vampire’s ashes still floating on the breeze. Gabriel tried to drag Holly away but it only made the vessel pulse faster.

  “Shit,” Simon muttered. “It’s all tied in together, the spell feeding the shields keeping help out and their bodies fueling the vessel.”

  “Then how do we stop it?” Gabe demanded.

  “The spell is still going,” Annalise rasped. “I told you, it’s too late to stop it. I will have my victory, even in death. Tir na Nog is ours. It belongs to the darklings. To the ones you loathe and despise.” She laughed bitterly through her tears. “They will have their sanctuary.”

  In that moment, I didn’t hate her, even after everything.

  I just pitied her. I pitied that she’d felt this was necessary. I pitied the daughter who took her own life after a wrongful, unfair judgment. I pitied the grandson who turned from the light for revenge.

  Simon unleashed a fireball at the vessel. The flames parted around it, like water sliding through an oiled surface. It picked up speed, the hum of impending sacrifice filling me with terror. “Goddammit,” he growled under his breath.

  Gabriel drew his gun and fired. The bullet ricocheted off the enchanted surface. “Is it a spell protecting this vessel, or is the vessel charmed?” Gabriel asked.

  The thin threads of magic still connected my companions to the vessel. I stared at it, hating it, wishing I had enough magic for one more bolt. Instead, I lay there and tried to gather myself.

  “Can’t be…can’t stop it. The realm…is…” Annalise’s uneven breaths slowed and hitched. “Theirs…”