She nodded gratefully and moved away from the shelf enough to lay down on the floor and curl up. Before long, I could hear her breath lengthen and even out. She’d been able to doze off. Good. One of us needed to be clear-headed if something else happened in the next few hours.
I sat there in the darkness, propped up against the shelves. The noise from the familiars died down a little, although it didn’t stop completely. Whatever was scratching at the east doors continued, but the pace slowed…scratch….scratch…..scratch. In my mind’s eye, I could visualize one of the familiars dragging a dirty fingernail down the door over and over. Something continued to knock lightly at the west doors as well. I resigned myself to the fact that the noises probably wouldn’t stop. But the good side of that was that as long as we could hear those noises, we knew the familiars were still there and not getting into more mischief. I didn’t want to get up to peek at the other doorways. Seeing all those familiars lined up and looking in would be too depressing. The best we could do I figured was to stay quiet and still to keep from giving them any more information.
Gradually I became aware of the change in the shadows from the moonlight in the parts of the room I could see. The moon had started to rise. It wasn’t quite full tonight, but by the time it was directly overhead and visible in the glass dome, it would be pretty close to midnight.
I rubbed my eyes and decided to lay back on the floor and watch the moon. Quietly I laid down, positioning myself parallel to the bookshelves, avoiding Gypcie’s sleeping form. I didn’t want to bump her accidentally and have her cry out or think we were being attacked. She continued to breathe evenly, her ribcage rising and falling, where she lay curled with her back against the shelves.
I laid back on the floor and looked up into the glass dome—quite a bit of light was already coming in from the moon—obscuring most of the stars, but the velvet blue-black of the night sky filled my view.
My eyes adjusted slowly to equalize the change in the light. As the detail in the shadows became more evident, I noticed something swaying back and forth from the second-floor atrium balcony. I blinked my eyes hard several times then opened them more fully to try to make out what was moving.
Familiars lined the balcony railing on the south side of the second floor, all of them peering down into the library, trying to find us. I looked straight up from where I was laying. Moonlight glinted off of dozens of sets of eyes, bent over the railing, looking down.
I stifled a gasp, and my heart raced wildly. Fear coursed like fire through my body and my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t dare move a muscle, although it took all of my willpower not to jump up and run around screaming. All I could do was wait for morning and hope that in the meantime they didn’t defy their own natures and learn to jump.
I shuddered, closed my eyes tightly wanting it all to go away, and strained to hear any change in the sounds in the darkness.
The moonlight poured in, illuminating the tall bookcases of the library below in a ghostly phosphorescence. The wraith floated slowly around the balcony of the atrium, while its minions stared unceasingly at the library floor, attentive for signs of movement or the faintest noise. At least that much was within their capabilities.
The wraith was nigh unto blind in the darkness—the creatures’ ability to see was limited, and that handicapped it. The only two humans they had been able to find were somewhere down in the library below. Its minions had lost track of them as night fell. Still, the creatures continued to listen. The occasional noise betrayed the girls’ presence below.
The wraith clenched its fist in frustration. Here it languished as the hours ticked by, stranded on this plane longer than was advisable. The Peacock King would not be pleased.
Neither of the girls was the one it sought! The wraith could sense its quarry nearby, but the damnable wards kept it from searching every corner, every crevice, every hole to flush this little mouse who dared violate the Master’s law without the proper sacrifice. Retribution was the wraith’s duty and right. Failure to exact it was not an option. Blood, it reflected, would be spilled.
But at the moment, the wraith was blocked. Blocked by the limits of these frail drones with their pale simulacrum of senses, their mindless chattering, and dim intellects. Why was it burdened with such a faintly skilled company? Better that it had an army of imps or demons at its beck and call to flood this vermin from the nest.
One creature, the wraith noticed, followed with its eyes as it moved around the atrium. A creature more pathetic than its fellows, missing an arm. It gestured pitifully to the missing appendage. Or did it? The wraith stopped in its circumambulation and turned its attention fully to the one-armed beast peering across the darkness. Perhaps this was not a chance twitch of its limb.
Another taller creature standing to its left crooked a finger. Was that a parody of a request to follow? The wraith grew interested. Could it be not all of the creatures were cursed with the same dull wit? The wraith retraced its path, and approached the two. They bounced excitedly, glad of its notice. The one-armed figure pointed again at its missing limb, while its larger companion gestured toward the opening to the hall.
The wraith nodded, and slowly floated after them as they shuffled toward the exit, gesturing that it should follow. Out to the hall and left, then down the staircase to the front foyer. Now the wraith was curious. What message did they have?
The one-armed creature scrambled to the middle of the floor where it retrieved something and brought it back, like a dog playing fetch. An animated arm, writhing and twisting. No doubt its own, the wraith reasoned. What was the creature trying to communicate? The wraith took the proffered arm, and with a burst of heat, turned it to ash.
The larger creature grunted to draw attention and pointed to a ward-lined doorway on the right. The wraith turned to look at the threshold, and its spectral senses were filled with the thaumaturgical scent of its quarry emanating from the room that lay beyond.
The wraith laughed with dark glee. Finally, the help it had been seeking! The wraith nodded at the two eager beasts in praise. Then, reaching out to all of the creatures within its mental grasp, it whispered in a voice too low for human ears, malignant and compelling.
“Come be my eyes and ears, my darlings. Come here to me. Come to me… Come to me… Come to me….”
I awoke to the sound of gunfire and Gypcie shaking my shoulders.
“You fell asleep,” she scolded me with a scathing look.
I shook my head to clear it and then hung it in shame. I had promised to watch and I’d fallen asleep. My eyes widened as I remembered that the familiars had surrounded us on all sides.
“Oh shit!” I looked directly over my head squinting at the sunlight that streamed in the dome, but the figures I’d seen last night on the atrium balcony were gone. I scrambled to my feet and ran to the end of the bookcase to look at the south entrance. They were gone from the doorway. I stepped from around the case into the center of the room and confirmed they were no longer at the northern threshold either, although the blue of the wards still gleamed brightly. I could see the American flag suspended from a pole on the upper west wall but no familiars lurching along the atrium balcony.
“Where did they go?” I asked, whirling around to look at Gypcie, who’d followed me around the bookcase.
There were more shots fired, and I could hear men shouting and familiars screaming. I ducked into a crouch by reflex.
“I don’t know, but I think we should try to have a look. The shooting started up a few minutes ago,” Gypcie blurted.
The sound was coming from the front of the building, and the east doors were the closest route. We unbarred and unlocked them, and Gypcie cracked the right one while I peered into the opening.
“No familiars. Open it, and I’ll open the other one. If something is hiding, it will still be stopped by the ward.”
“Bullets won’t, though,” she said. “So we should try to stay low.”
I agreed and grabbed the
handle of the left door and pulled. It opened readily, and the hallway was clear, but the sounds of fighting increased.
“They must be just on the other side of the false wall,” I said. “Let’s take a look.”
Crouching, we closed the doors behind us and made our way to the north side of the wall where it opened up into the main room foyer. In the hall, we could see dozens of familiars—maybe a hundred or more. A whole army of creepy dolls. I rubbed the back of my neck while Gypcie blew out a breath beside me. This was not good. Some of the familiars were lined up in front of the entrance to the Administration Office. Others were apparently trying to see through the gaps in the blockade at the service window.
Most, however, were attacking a group of soldiers that occupied the entrance to the Main Hall. The soldiers were dressed in white combat gear with a light blue beret that was the uniform of the Council of Venice.
“The Council of Venice has arrived!” I said, relieved. “Sheriff Bannerman said she was going to ask them to deploy some support.”
Gypcie gave a small smile and rubbed her hands together.
The soldiers were holding their own at the front entrance, but there were a lot of familiars. We stayed carefully to the side of the false wall, but I was still concerned that we were going to get caught in friendly fire.
From where we were crouched, I could see Surgical Specimens and Anatomical Specimens, which were typically running around inside the hall and so it was no surprise to see them gathered here.
More chillingly there were also familiars from outside on the campus grounds. Sparring Partners and Corrective Familiars from the Rec Center and tennis and soccer fields were in the noisy shrieking crowd, as were Unfinished Familiars. There were always some of them running around in the Alchemy Lab, but there appeared to be more than that particular classroom could hold. It was rumored that there were plenty of those down in the basement in storage. I also saw groups of Object Lessons, although I never quite understood their purpose in the curriculum. They only seemed like a practical example of what ought not to be left running around in the zombie apocalypse, but certainly, that could apply to all the familiars now swarming the foyer like angry wasps.
Rat…tat…tat. Rat…tat…tat…tat. The Council of Venice soldiers—I could see four of them from here—kept a nearly constant barrage of suppressing fire aimed at the swarm to keep them at bay. It wasn’t making a dent in the numbers, though. The bodies of the familiars were absorbing the bullets with no particular indication of stopping, although the impact of the bullets was raising a fine mist of purple-black blood in the room. I winced. Gross.
“Don’t aim for their bodies. Take head shots!” I growled with frustration at the soldiers, who had no way of hearing me over the noise. “They’re not doing anything but wasting their ammo as it is.”
“It’s just covering fire,” Gypcie said. “They are trying to hold the familiars at bay, to keep them from getting too close. Maybe they’ve got more reinforcements coming.”
She made to pull out her own pistols, but I placed my hand on hers and shook my head.
“You can’t risk pulling some here, Gypcie, or we’ll have to run back to the library, where we’ll be trapped again. Let’s make our way to the Faculty Lounge,” I said. “There’s less of a chance of getting hit by a ricocheting bullet behind the ward in that doorway and we can still see the action.”
She nodded her agreement and we both ran-walked in a crouch to the lounge, giving the supply closet door right next to it a wide berth in case more familiars were waiting there. Although, given the sheer numbers of them in the foyer, it seemed unlikely at the moment there were any more familiars anywhere on campus.
We ran into the room that was more or less a reversal of the layout of the administration offices. The near area by the door had a couple of low couches and some red over-stuffed chairs around a dark wooden coffee table. On the west wall, an ancient refrigerator hummed while a surveillance monitor attached above the door hissed static. Suspended fluorescent light fixtures lined the ceiling, but only about a third of the long, thin bulbs were actually lit. A tiny side table with a fax machine sat on the west wall beside the fridge. Papers were scattered around the room and on the round wooden table and chairs in front of us, which appeared to be the same make as the ones in the library. The north wall was brick and featured tall window casements, rounded into an arch at the top, similar to those in the administration office, overlooking the yard toward the girls’ dormitory building. There was another room in the back, but I was too focused on the fighting in the foyer to look further. Thankfully there were no obvious threats in the room.
We finished glancing around cursorily and turned back to the entrance. Unfortunately, from behind the safety of the ward on the Faculty Lounge doorway, our view of the combat between the familiars and the Council of Venice soldiers was vastly reduced. I shook my head. I just couldn’t see. I strained to look around the doorway past the ward but still couldn’t see. We needed to get up higher. Gypcie and I looked at each other in frustration.
“This isn’t going to work.” I said.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, immediately causing the gouge there to sting. As the pain subsided, I fixated on the foyer rug on the floor in front of us—it was benign and mundane amid the cacophony outside. The carpet was a cornflower blue, with the Innsmouth Academy seal: the logo of the Illuminated Eye triangle set in the center, surrounded by a circle of graceful banner-shaped swirls, the words “Innsmouth Academy 1798” in capital letters around the outside of the inner circle. I knew the blue and white letter jacket I was wearing had the same logo on the back between the shoulders. There was a second rug at the entrance to the front door, we just couldn’t see it from here. I looked across the floor toward the Administration Office, but could hardly see the top of the doorway above the gathered familiars. I knew under all those shuffling bodies, a similar rug was in front of the southern set of stairs.
Stairs.
I pumped my fist. Yes! That was the ticket. We could run up the north set of stairs to the first landing, and that would get us a bird’s eye view of the fighting.
I pointed at the stairs and took off running, trusting Gypcie to follow me. I ran up the first flight to the landing. The guard wall on the landing was tall enough to provide us some cover, but now we could really get a close look the scene laid out below us. Gypcie climbed up next to me and gave me a thumbs up.
Beneath us was a loud thump, like something ramming a steel door. That was probably because something was ramming the steel door, which contained the basement entrance directly below us. I looked at Gypcie with alarm.
She shrugged helplessly, “If the basement door has held so far,” she said, “hopefully it will hold a little longer.”
From the landing, we could see there were five, not four, Council of Venice soldiers. One hung back on the south side and was talking on a handheld receiver, a rotting jack-o-lantern adorning the top step by his feet. The other four were in the threshold. Both of the front doors were propped open, the glass panes shattered. The soldiers stood two to each side, and one of each pair kneeling with the other standing behind him. Each of them had assault rifles trained in on the swarm of familiars in the lobby.
As far as the administration office went, we could see the glow of the ward at the service counter, but nothing else. As I had suspected earlier, the familiars there appeared to be trying to look into the back of the office, presumably trying to get a glimpse of the headmaster. From up here, we could also see that the familiars menacing the entrance door to the administration offices were utterly out of the line of fire, tucked behind the stairs. I hoped they wouldn’t decide to start committing seppuku. It wouldn’t take that many familiars disintegrating to weaken the ward enough that some could get through into the office itself.
I bit my lip. It was incredibly frustrating not to know what was happening with the headmaster, Ms. Usher, and Carter. Were they still safe behind the wards in the b
ack corner of the office or were they plotting something themselves?
“We’ve got to help!” Gypcie said, wringing her hands. “What if we engage the familiars from up here? Can we get back down the stairs and into the lounge before they surround us?”
“How many shots have you got?”
“My clips hold 9 rounds each, and I have two spares, so 36 total. I have a range of about 100 yards, so I can pretty much hit about anything in here I can get a clear shot at. The question is, what do I shoot at? Particularly since the bullets will go toward the offices. I don’t know if I dare.”
“Do you have any elemental spells that would work?”
“Fire spells seem like a bad plan with that many of them, and I’m afraid chained lightning would just tickle. I could flash freeze them in place, but I don’t see how that helps.”
“I’ve got similar problems. To use chaos magic, I’ve got to be up close and personal. Or, there’s blood. I guess I could cast some dread sigils on them, but there are so damn many.”
From behind us came a sudden screech. Startled, I spun around. “Shit!”
In our desire to get a look at the battlefield in the foyer, we had forgotten entirely about the phantasmal Magus patrolling the balcony directly above us on the second floor. She apparently had not forgotten us. From the look in the beady black pools of her eyes and from the sounds she was making, she was a split second from charging down the stairs to join the fray.
We both scrambled back down the stairs, jumped the rail to the floor, and dove into the Faculty Lounge. The magus chased us down the stairs shrieking, vomiting green ectoplasm at us in a violent cone, catching us in the spray. We dodged out of her line of sight from the doorway. She attempted to follow us into the lounge, but the ward at the door held and she disintegrated on the stoop.
“Yuck,” I said with disgust, shaking the remnants of the ectoplasm off my hands and clothes. “I knew I needed a bath, but not in ghost goo.”
To Sir, with Love: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 1) Page 6
