by Eden Beck
There’s some muttering, and Novac waits for it to die down before continuing.
“Unfortunately, we must wait for crews to get up the mountain to restore our power. The snow isn’t expected to stop for several days, so there’s no telling when that might be.”
At this, there’s an uproar. I look around as people get to their feet, shouting in protest. I never knew the students here felt so strongly about this sort of thing. Beside me, Erin looks pale.
I think it’s stupid to raise a fuss, especially when there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Novac waits for a moment and then shouts “SILENCE!” Everyone calms down immediately. He glares at us before continuing. “Classes will continue as normal. The school has a large supply of candles, and we’ll use those for the time being. Grab some before you head back to your dorms. Dismissed.”
There’s a rush for the pile of candles Novac indicates, but there’s staff to make sure no one takes more than they need. I push my way through the crowd and grab a handful for me and Erin and head back to the dorm with her.
“This sucks,” I mutter. “It’s already hard enough to study. Next thing you know, they’ll be telling us to take the menagerie monsters to bed with us to keep them warm.”
Erin nods. She’s still pale. I set a hand on her shoulder.
“Hey. You okay?”
“I don’t like the dark,” she whispers.
I smile at her. “You’re such a scaredy-cat,” I tease, and finally, she smiles back.
I find myself wanting to talk to Sawyer about the power outage, but every time I pass by the door to his and Bennett’s room, I pause, but I can’t bring myself to knock. I don’t know where to begin with Sawyer yet.
Studying becomes its own kind of torture. Our days change dramatically, starting later and ending early. The kitchens resort to canned goods and rations—as if the usual fare wasn’t barely palatable already. We take to studying in the library with a bunch of other students. With all the candles combined there’s more light; but it’s still hard to read anything with the flickering shadows.
After three days of getting dirty looks from the librarian, Erin and I finally give up on that too. I know she’s just watching out for her many precious books, but I can only take so much.
I’m exhausted and at the same time, fidgety. We haven’t been able to do proper PW training since the break-in, which must be going on two or three weeks now.
Erin and I gather our things and head out of the library. The halls are lined now with old-fashioned posts holding candles, but that doesn’t help much. It’s still dim, the shadows dark and flickering.
We turn a corner down the hall and spot Sawyer, alone, walking with a candle and a bottle of something under his arm, and I make a snap decision.
“You go on ahead,” I tell Erin. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
Distracted, Erin just nods and keeps walking. I break off and head after Sawyer.
I can’t stand this thing between us. I can’t stand not being near him. I can’t stand not talking to him. I haven’t decided if I’m ready or even able to forgive him for what he did, but I need answers.
I quicken my pace. He glances over his shoulder, sees me, and speeds up.
“Sawyer!” I call out. He breaks into a run. So do I.
If it’s a chase you want, it’s a chase you’ll get.
He leads me through the dim halls, the candles throwing weird shadows around corners. I have to rely on my instincts to hear his footsteps. He comes to a door and throws it open, darting out into darkness. I follow.
We plunge outside into the night and are immediately slowed by the snow, but he keeps going. I trudge after him, only briefly wondering why there’s no guard at the door. He’s fast, but I’m small and light—the snowbanks are no match for me.
“Sawyer, please!” I gasp, and he finally stops.
We’re in the middle of the forest not too far from the training grounds. The air is frigid and the wind biting, though cut by the branches overhead.
Sawyer whips around to face me, his face cast in shadows. His candle has blown out. Smoke rises from the wick.
“What, Avery? Are you just going to insult my sex skills again?”
“No,” I pant, still catching my breath. “Sawyer, I—I miss you.”
My own admission surprises me, but I don’t take it back because … it’s true.
His face changes. “Avery, what …”
“What you did sucks,” I tell him, taking a tentative step forward through the snow. “But I think we can get past it, eventually.”
Sawyer takes a deep breath. “I miss you, too,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too,” I say, walking toward him. “I’m sorry that I … have feelings for those douches.”
My second admission is no less true than the first, and though this one makes him wince, he doesn’t draw away.
“I guess that’s something I’m just going to have to get used to,” Sawyer says, carefully.
I nod, the cold air numbing my cheeks. “Yeah, me too.”
“And mostly, I’m sorry I drugged you.” He opens his arms and I step into them, dropping my candle, and he holds me close. The tiny light goes out, leaving its own narrow stream of smoke to waft up towards the treetops. I close my eyes and breathe in Sawyer’s scent, thinking of that night in the cabin.
“Well, isn’t this sweet?” a voice sounds from behind us.
I know it well. It’s Piers.
I turn and Sawyer’s face goes pale. Piers, Owen, and Bennett seem to have followed us. They stand in the brush just out of reach, their faces glittering darkly in the shadows.
I cross my arms across my chest. “What?” I snap at them.
“She has no idea,” Owen says with a grin.
Bennett looks impassive. Like always.
Piers nods at the bottle in Sawyer’s hand, which I’d forgotten about until this moment. “Sawyer’s been doing a great job, don’t you think, boys?”
“Maybe too great,” Owen tells him.
“What are you guys talking about?” I demand.
“Sawyer came to us with a little … problem, a couple weeks back,” Piers laughs. “He thought something might be going on between us, and he wanted answers.”
A pit forms in my stomach. I don’t like where this is headed. I take a slight step away from Sawyer.
“Sawyer, what is he talking about?” I keep my gaze trained on Piers, but I catch Sawyer shuffling his feet out of the corner of my eye.
Piers is watching him too, and under his gaze, Sawyer begins to squirm uncomfortably.
“I’m talking about how Sawyer here traded a piece of valuable information in exchange for some of his own,” he says.
“Shut up, Piers,” Sawyer says again. His hands have started to tremble, making the liquid in the bottle he carries slosh inside its container.
“Are one of you going to tell me what’s going on?” I ask. I’m about fifteen seconds from assaulting Piers or Sawyer, or both.
“Go on Sawyer, tell her,” Piers says, “Or shall I?”
Sawyer clenches his fist, but he doesn’t wait for Piers to explain. I just keep looking between the two of them as that pit in my stomach grows deeper and takes root.
“I … I told Piers we were running late to creature handling,” he says, avoiding looking at me.
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you …”
And then it hits me.
“You’re not saying … Sawyer …” The horrible realization of it all dawns on me.
It was Sawyer. He told Piers when I’d be out to the menagerie, giving him the time to lace my gloves with whatever substance made Aurora act up the way she did.
“And now?” Piers says, goading.
Sawyer holds up the bottle. “I was disposing of the evidence,” he says, quietly, his eyes flickering over to Piers and narrowing. “Even though it wasn’t part of the original deal.”
I ta
ke another step away from Sawyer and wrap my arms around myself. I stare at him in disbelief, shaking my head.
“All this time, you just watched me sit here and suffer … and it was your fault to begin with?” Tears well up in my eyes, and I don’t know if they’re from shock or anger, or both. I jab a finger at him. “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”
He doesn’t answer. He isn’t denying it. He just looks at me, sadness in his eyes.
Sawyer hangs his head, and I just stand there in the cold. I don’t know how to describe how I feel. Numb, angry, sad … manipulated. I’d started to have real feelings for Sawyer, too.
I throw up my hands and turn away from him. I thought the devil’s breath was betrayal, but now I know what real betrayal is.
At least, for all they’ve done to me, Piers, Owen, and Bennett have always been honest about it.
I’m about to leave them here to sort things out themselves while I stalk back to the school when I hear a noise. In my sluggish, disbelieving state, I turn to see a figure sprinting around the corner of the school and out of sight. I frown.
We’re not supposed to be outside, so no one else is, either. And then I hear it—the sound that immediately makes me forget all the hurt, betrayal, and pain—and replaces it with fear.
What I hear is the bone-chilling roar of a manticore.
Chapter Twenty-Three
All of us freeze. My mind is racing. The Menagerie is underneath the school. There’s a lot of extremely dangerous monsters under there, and I just heard a manticore.
If the manticore … or any of the other creatures … have gotten out, the school is in danger. Grave danger.
There’s another noise, and my worst fears are confirmed. The manticore isn’t the only creature escaping into the night.
My eyes scan the darkness as the boys gather beside me. All my instincts kick in, drinking in my surroundings. I don’t see any guards. The power is out and it’s just us, alone in the dark, with monsters escaping from the menagerie.
“We have to go warn the professors,” I say, and I sprint toward the door, all anger forgotten in my panic. The boys follow quickly.
I burst through the door that we left through. It’s dark. All the candles have been blown out since curfew must have started nearly a half-hour ago now. From behind me, one of the boys clicks on a flashlight, illuminating an empty hallway.
Almost empty.
At the far end of the hall there’s a yule goat just standing there, chewing on a candle.
It’s not a good sign.
“Okay, he’s not dangerous,” I say, and I whirl to face the boys. “Do you all have lights?”
Bennett is holding a flashlight, and the rest of them hold up their candles. Sawyer brings out a lighter and starts trying to light his. I grab a candle off the wall and touch my wick to his flame once it lights.
“We have to warn everyone,” I say. “Do any of you know which professors live in the school and which live in the village?”
“I can call my dad,” Piers says immediately. “My phone still has battery.”
“Great. Do that. He can reach out to the professors living in the village,” I tell him. He immediately pulls out his phone and walks a bit away.
“I know where the professors’ quarters are,” Owen says.
“You go there,” I say. “Warn them.”
“I have weapons in my dorm,” Bennett says in a low voice.
Sawyer glances at him in surprise. “You do?”
“I do too,” I tell them. “We’ll head toward the dorms. We need to get everyone up and out.”
The manticore roars again, mingling with the sound of some other monster I can’t identify. The sound echos down the hallways until it reaches us.
“Piers, go with Owen!” I shout at him as he hangs up the phone. “Sawyer, Bennett, with me.”
We take off in different directions. More sounds are starting to bloom out of doorways and hallways; monster roars and human screams. I’m running full-tilt toward the residence hall. I can only think of Erin.
We have to skirt several semi-dangerous monsters we run into in the hallways, but they seem to be preoccupied fighting each other. When we get to the residence hall it’s full of students, all holding candles, flashlights, and makeshift weapons, fighting off monsters who’ve already swarmed the hall. I’ve no weapons yet, however, so I’m basically useless. I dodge and weave my way to my dorm, losing Bennett and Sawyer in the chaos.
I burst through my door to find Erin cowering in the corner of our room. Cleaver sits in front of her, hackles raised, growling … but he wags his tail when he sees me.
“Avery!” she gasps. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” I admit to her, rushing to my dresser. I pull out all the gear I can grab - the knife Professor Helsing gave me, a couple daggers from my parent’s cabin, my rope, my flashlight, and after giving it a second thought, the container of iratxoak I used to get Piers’ blood. I’ve been feeding them crumbs and using them to do little tasks all year, so I’d hate to see them get gobbled up by some bigger, more ferocious monster now. I turn back to her. “You need to get out, Erin. Take Cleaver and escape. He’ll protect you.”
She glances down at Cleaver, who’s still standing resolutely in front of her.
We’ve made a few weapons in PW—I grab some and shove them into her hands. “Take these in case things get bad,” I tell her. They aren’t great, but they’ll do in a pinch. “I’ll help you get out of the school. Right now, it’s the most dangerous place you can be. It’s filled with monsters.”
She looks so frail, huddling on her bed and clutching a spear we built together, her face pale. “I’m scared,” she whispers.
“So am I,” I tell her. I kneel down and pet Cleaver. “Stay with Erin, boy,” I tell him. “Protect her. Okay?”
He licks my face. I suppose he understands.
“We have to go, Erin,” I tell her.
She swallows and nods. She gets off the bed, shaking, and throws on her winter clothes. I go to the door and wait until she’s done, but every second makes the line of tension inside me draw tighter. The screaming and shouting in the hall grows ever louder.
“Outside and into the woods,” I tell her. “I’ll try and help you along.”
Erin clutches the spear and nods again. I throw open the door.
It’s chaos. There are more monsters clogging the halls, with students fighting through them; blades swinging, claws slashing. I yank Erin behind me just as Cleaver leaps onto an al mi’raj—the rabbit-looking monster with a two-foot-long horn somewhat like a unicorn’s—and tears its throat out before it can get to us.
We push our way through the bedlam. I keep Helsing’s long knife out in front of me, slashing at any monster that gets in our way. As we stumble out of the residence hall and into a more open area, I hear someone calling out.
“Singer! Black!” Luiza de la Cruz blocks a vicious attack from a swooping harpy, slashing across its belly with a longsword. The half-bird, half-woman shrieks and tumbles to the ground in a bloody heap. Luiza runs up to us, covered in the harpy’s fresh blood.
“I’m trying to get Erin to safety,” I tell her.
Luiza’s eyes lock onto Erin’s face and she nods. “To the forest?” she asks, not even looking at me.
“Yeah,” I tell her. “Can you get her there? You guys can take Cleaver.”
Cleaver wags his tail at Luiza and she spares him only a glance before taking Erin’s hand and squeezing it.
“We’ve trained for this,” Luiza says in the softest voice I’ve ever heard her use. “Do you trust me, mi cantante?”
I look from Erin to Luiza. Erin nods. She hasn’t spoken since we left the dorm. I’m pretty sure if she opens her mouth, she’s going to spew vomit.
Luiza finally turns to me. “I’ve got her, Black,” she says, and I watch as they sprint away.
“Avery!” Sawyer’s voice calls from behind me. He and Bennett have
returned. Bennett is strapped down with almost an entire arsenal; axes, spears, swords, maces.
“I want to find Piers and Owen,” Bennett says as they approach.
“I’ll go with you. Lead the way.”
He does. Sawyer and I follow, side-by-side, occasionally slashing harpies out of the air or ghouls and draugrs out of our path. I even run my knife through a chupacabra. I had no idea there were this many monsters in the menagerie. We carve a path through the chaos until we stop short, seeing a crowd of actual humans.
Piers and Owen have done their jobs, They rush toward us, grabbing weapons off Bennett’s body, from a crowd of professors. The headmaster wields a giant scythe, which he slashes down to behead a gorgon. Professor Helsing whips his crossbow around to shoot three quick bolts into some ghouls before whipping out a knife and stabbing an approaching weasel with wicked-looking blades for limbs.
“We must protect the students!” Headmaster Novac bellows. “The manticore is loose!”
“The lycanthrope may be loose, too,” Helsing shouts back. I shiver. I didn’t know the school had a lycanthrope held in captivity. They’re dangerous creatures; basically werewolves in their wolf form full-time. One bite from a lycanthrope could turn anyone into an actual, full-moon shapeshifting werewolf.
“To the Menagerie!” yells Novac, and charges off.
With a yell, the professors follow him with Piers, Owen, Bennett, and Sawyer in their wake. I’m about to follow when a flicker of movement catches my eye. I try to ignore it, but then I see it again.
I swear I just saw someone dart out of the fray and down the trophy corridor.
Suspicious, I let the others go on ahead while I follow the figure. I pause at the entrance to hide from a troll as it lumbers past. It’s much smaller than the one we faced during the entry exams, but I still don’t want to face one alone.
I don’t breathe until it’s gone. When I turn back to the hall, it’s empty—even though I swear I saw someone come down here.
And that’s when it hits me.
This hallway … it isn’t supposed to be empty. Ever.
