Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2)

by Oxford, Rain

  Ten minutes later, I opened the door to my room and froze in shock. If it weren’t for Darwin sprawled out on the floor with his manga, I would have jumped to conclusions and walked right back out. Henry and Addison were in bed together. Fortunately, Addison was asleep with her head on Henry’s chest and his arm was around her while he read a book. He gave me a look that warned me not to wake her.

  I shut the door quietly, got in my own bed, and fell asleep.

  * * *

  I smelled the smoke before I saw the fire. I was in one of the underground tunnels beneath the castle. Fire spread from room to room and illuminated the halls as vampires ran around helplessly, trapped by the sunlight.

  Part of me was aware that I wasn’t actually there; the same part of me that knew this was real. I could see into the minds of vampires who passed me. Whereas they were looking for an exit, I was looking for an answer. I didn’t try to decipher their thoughts; I just wanted an image. Someone started this, and someone saw them.

  I shuffled through the minds of every vampire within in my mental reach… which was all of them. There was a man that nobody looked twice at. Although they all thought he looked very creepy, nobody understood the danger he presented as he strolled calmly among the flames and terrified vampires.

  It was the man Amelia had seen in the shadows.

  * * *

  “Matar esse gato!”

  I was out of bed before I realized I was awake. A furious hiss met a violent roar. Henry and Ghost were facing off in the middle of the room as the relentless cat tried to get to Darwin. Or more specifically, the pillowcase full of books in Darwin’s arms. The cat was still trying to get Baldauf’s journal.

  There was suddenly a familiar sense of suppression and dread in the air. Ghost’s fury kicked up a notch and his back arched, his hair standing on end, but he was no longer focusing on my roommates. The flame in the gas lamps died and Henry quickly moved to turn the gas off. Fortunately, the moon was full enough to shine some light into the room… at least enough to see the impenetrable shadows spill across the north wall.

  They were going after Darwin.

  Darwin jumped off the bed and dived behind Henry. Ghost took his chance, snatched the pillowcase out of Darwin’s hands, and vanished. The shadows retreated as soon as the cat was gone.

  “The shadows are after Ghost?” Henry asked doubtfully.

  “The shadows are after the books,” Darwin answered.

  “Then I’m glad Vincent got them and not the shadows,” I said. “Where’s Addie?”

  “She went back to her room.” Henry took a light stick from the match box on his desk and lit the gas lamps. “We must do something about these people we are supposed to blindly trust who refuse to tell us the truth.”

  Darwin and Henry both sat at their desks, so I sat down and told them what happened since I left.

  * * *

  I realized on Sunday that I wasn’t completely healed from whatever happened to me in the library; my chest was aching. What was really strange was that it felt better when I patted the small earth figure that Professor Langril gave me.

  Langril was still missing. Fortunately, Dr. Martin turned up, albeit with a new collections of scrapes and scratches. He was acting substitute for Langril, which we all realized was a bad idea. The doctor was undoubtedly brilliant, but “dangerous” was not a concept he grasped. Neither was “Please stop! It burns!” as Mack begged.

  On Wednesday, when Henry felt the effects of the full moon, Addie’s roommates kicked her out in jealousy, which meant she and Henry had to find another place to meet. That other place was our room, so Darwin and I planned for long hours in the libraries.

  On Thursday, Dr. Martin made us prepare the blood for the vampires, which consisted of over fifty ingredients aside from blood. None of us were surprised when Mack managed to accidentally ingest about eight ounces of it and then passed out from the sedatives.

  “Put him in the corner or something, will you?” Becky asked as she nearly tripped. Someone put him in the closet.

  I had tried over our first semester to be nice and help Mack, but he was the kind of guy who wanted to do everything on his own and would screech at anyone who attempted to assist him. Most of the class couldn’t deal with it anymore.

  “Do you like working down here?” I asked Dr. Martin when the other students were busy measuring out and combining ingredients.

  “Not really. I like it mostly because there aren’t too many people to deal with. It would help if I wasn’t attacked every day.”

  On Friday, about an hour from sundown, I was in my room with Darwin, Henry, and Addison. Henry was trying so hard not to kick Addie out, and she was trying so hard not to bug him. Her roommates let her back in after the full moon, but she was in the process of trying to switch rooms with another C-Four female. When Darwin suggested she switch with one of the girls across the hall, Henry growled at him.

  “I’m going to class early,” I said, grabbing a mystery novel off my shelf. Just as I opened the door, the building shook with an earthquake. “What now?”

  “The vampires!” Darwin said.

  Darwin tried to pass me, but I grabbed his arms, careful not to touch his skin, and wouldn’t let him go. The ceiling panel in the hallway collapsed and I heard several gas lamps explode in other rooms. Henry pushed Addie under his desk, pulled the mattress down, and covered the opening with it. I imagined if the ceiling tiles on the fourth floor were collapsing, they were on other floors as well.

  Several students ran out of their rooms, as if anyone could make it down the stairs when they couldn’t even stay on their feet where the floor was flat. Before anyone could reach the stairwell, part of the deeper structure of the ceiling collapsed and a mixture of cinderblocks and wood boards crashed through the floor in front of it.

  “Back in your rooms!” I yelled. Most people couldn’t hear me, but those closest instantly obeyed. I let out my power again. This time, my ability seemed to be driven by my instinct; I saw through the minds of dozens of other students and commanded them to get wherever it was safest, whether it was under their desks, in their closets, or in the doorways. My instincts were strong enough to know what was safe and what wasn’t, which spots were safe to step in and which weren’t, for each student.

  It felt like twenty minutes before the quaking stopped, although I knew it couldn’t have been more than two.

  “Those poor people…” Darwin moaned, referring to the vampires.

  “They’re in an older building; I’m sure it was built better. They’re also stronger and faster than us. Henry and Addie, you two work on getting everyone out. Get others to help you if you can. Darwin and I are going to check on the castle.”

  Henry nodded and Darwin and I left. It wasn’t easy to make it outside when everything that wasn’t destroyed was weakened. The destruction was horrendous, both in the shock of seeing students bleeding out in what was left of the hallways and in fact that this was basically our home. For C-Five students, they had lived in these dorms with all their friends, partners, and siblings for more than four semesters. Just from sitting in the cafeteria, I knew that many of them had no real lives at home.

  The human world wasn’t always easy for paranormals.

  We slowly gained a following of others who hadn’t been able to find their way around the debris on their own. Each lower floor was worse. Fortunately, I was able to help many of them with my instincts as opposed to theirs. Even then, by the time we were safely outside, I knew not everyone had survived.

  Becky was soaked when she found me. “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “I was in the dining hall when the earthquake started. Fortunately, I knew where the boiler room was, so I got the gas lines shut off before anything ruptured. Some of the water pipes burst, though.”

  As terrible as the earthquake was, it could have been much, much worse. It was in the middle of the day, so most of the students and teachers were in the castle, which was almost com
pletely intact. Only the newer structures had collapsed, such as a few of the towers. The side-door, completely constructed of glass, was broken so we walked right through it. The teachers and students we passed in the castle were shocked, but relatively unharmed.

  We made it to the underground level to find something equally horrifying as the condition of the dorms; there were holes in the ground. There were five-foot-wide, perfectly circular holes straight through the floor and even through the tunnel walls.

  “What the hell could have done this?” Darwin asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m really leaning towards it being the same thing that caused the earthquake.”

  We knocked on every door and found most of the vampires scared out of their minds, having seen the creatures. They described them as slick black troll-like monsters that killed everyone in sight and could tunnel through earth like it was water. Three vampires had been killed, four were missing, and twenty were badly injured.

  We found Dr. Martin in the infirmary, trying to stitch up Jackson’s thigh by candlelight. “What happened to you?” I asked Jackson.

  His expression was eerily blank. “Headmaster Hunt assigned me to be the permanent vampire assistant for leaving the school without permission. I was waking up the vampires for their morning routine when the monsters attacked. One of them tried to eat me, but a vampire shot a gun at it.”

  Do any of the vampires follow the rules? And I’m supposed to leave my gun at home?

  “It missed me and clawed me as it turned and chased down the vampire.”

  “Are you not in pain?” Darwin asked. We were both unsettled by his calmness.

  “Dr. Martin gave me something to help me calm down.”

  “And that helped with the pain, or are you just too stoned to worry about it?”

  He shrugged. “He started giving me sips of vampire blood when I got back. I didn’t really need anything for the pain, but the doctor gave it to me anyway.”

  “Dr. Martin, I don’t think you should be drugging the students.”

  “The vampires were threatening to kill him. It was either this or lock him in a cell for his own safety.”

  Jackson gazed at the stitches and started giggling. “I still don’t think–”

  “On the other hand, Devon, shut up,” Darwin interrupted. “I like him better this way, creepy or not.”

  “At least the fire acted as a warning,” Dr. Martin mumbled.

  “What?” I froze, my heart stopping.

  “Fires just randomly cropped up everywhere. We all thought we were going to suffocate to death because they couldn’t leave with the sun up and I couldn’t… well, I couldn’t just leave them here. The monsters came after that and the fires were just not a big deal. The fires died when it was over, so I went and relit all of the torches.”

  Darwin looked at me, also seeing the strange similarity to my dream.

  Clara entered at that moment with her arm around the waist of a woman who was limping heavily due to three long cuts across her abdomen. “Darwin, can you help them while I talk to Hunt?” I asked.

  “Don’t bother,” Clara said. “The sun is far enough down now; we need help getting everyone out.”

  “I’ve been up and down these halls and some of these people cannot be moved.”

  “If they’re not moved, they could get eaten!” she barked. I realized then that there was blood across her neck. As Dr. Martin started to help the woman, I gestured for Clara to sit down on the exam table. She did, clearly exhausted, and I checked her throat. It wasn’t her neck but her shoulder that was bleeding, which looked about like chewed up hamburger with blood seeping out of it.

  “Okay, I agree. You’re right. Get everyone out of here ASAP. Not you,” I said when Clara tried to get up. I put my hands on her knees, as if that could possibly stop a vampire. “We need to get your bleeding stopped before you try to do anything. Darwin, look for bandages. I’ll try to heal you as soon as everyone is outside.”

  She nodded and her eyes slipped closed. I patted her in the cheek, making her blink her eyes open and sit up straighter. I knew she needed blood to heal. Donating blood was perfectly reasonable and I had done it before, but there was a huge difference between a needle and a set of fangs. A nurse wasn’t going to try to accidentally take too much.

  Hunt, Remy, and Flagstone arrived a couple minutes later, just as I was finishing Clara’s bandages. It wasn’t pretty, but it helped. It took an hour for us to get the vampires outside, and by then the entire school was gathered in the practice field. Amelia, Nightshade, and Langril were all still missing.

  Most of the fae helped to heal the injured and since they were much better than me, I took the chance to rest. I sat in the grass, listening to everyone around whimpering or whispering, all seemingly afraid to make any noise. Many of the shifters changed into their beast forms to accelerate the healing process, including Li Na and Brian. Someone had found spare blankets in the castle as well as some canned food from what was left of the kitchen and it was distributed to the neediest first. Several students were soaked in blood and needed the blankets to prevent hypothermia.

  Darwin sat beside me and we were joined a few minutes later by Henry. “I hate that I’m a throwback,” Darwin said. “If I were a wolf like my dad or a fae like my mother… if I were anything but this, I could have done something to help. I couldn’t even take someone’s hand to help them because I left my gloves in my room.” He pulled his hood up over his head.

  “I only met your father once, but I believe if he heard you berating yourself like this, he would smack you. He is so proud of you that I don’t think you could be any more perfect to him. I bet your mother is just as proud.”

  “Am I too old for your parents to adopt?” Henry asked him, trying to break the tension. It worked and Darwin laughed.

  Hunt entered the group then. The sadness in his eyes seemed to age him by ten years. Even the whimpering and shivering fell silent as everyone looked to the headmaster for some sort of hope. I could hear only the wind through the wintery trees in the forest as we waited for any kind of direction.

  “For the past few weeks, there have been blatant attacks on paranormals outside of the school.” His voice carried easily and all ears and eyes were on him. “We thought it was specifically vampires who were targeted, but we recently discovered otherwise. I believed everyone at the school was safe. Unfortunately, that also appears to be incorrect. Because of this and the latest structural damage to the school, I am closing the school and all of the classes for the rest of the semester.”

  Cries of confusion and disbelief filled the air and it took a few minutes for the students to calm enough for him to continue.

  “Some of you don’t have homes or apartments to go home to and some of you are safer here. For the time being, anyone who wishes to stay is welcome to do so. You can use the classrooms to sleep in. The rest of you will be taken at first light by the teachers to the nearest town, where you will be able to call your families or otherwise secure rides to your homes. All vampires are required to return to Stephen Yocum’s coven tomorrow evening.”

  “But if paranormals are getting targeted, how can we return home?” one of the vampires asked.

  “I suggest staying very close to the coven.”

  “You cannot order vampires to leave!” Kale demanded. Grayson looked more thoughtful than angry.

  “I will do whatever I have to do to ensure the safety of my students.”

  Up until that very moment, I believed his sincerity. However, the look in his eyes was off. He wanted his students safe, yes, but that wasn’t why he was forcing the vampires to leave. This was a convenient excuse for him.

  He wanted the students away from the tower.

  * * *

  I knew I was dreaming, just as I had with the fire. I also knew it was going to come true if I didn’t stop it. In my dream, Astrid was lying in an extravagant bed. She was gorgeous, but strangely creepy as she was dressed in an old-fashione
d white nightgown. I sensed his approach, not from his eyes, but from my own… yet I wasn’t there.

  The amulet that hung around his neck, hidden by his thick, black, leather jacket, was the reason Astrid didn’t wake up. Without her supernatural senses in her favor, Gale was far too quiet. He pressed his gun against her forehead and cocked it. The sound woke her and her eyes snapped open.

  Too late.

  * * *

  I woke screaming something unintelligible. Henry and Darwin were there, trying to calm me by telling me it was just a dream. Fortunately, we had the classroom to ourselves, because I couldn’t find any calmness in me. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t the person who woke crying and yelling like a banshee. I realized that I was upset because I loved Astrid, and I was upset about that because I also hated her. This amount of emotional depth wasn’t me. I had spent too much time in other people’s heads.

  That was the only excuse I had for taking off in Hunt’s SUV. The other students hadn’t been taken to the town yet, so I told my roommates to keep a lookout. Thus, I went alone. The two-hour drive only took a little more than one, and it had not been my intention to arrive bright and early in the morning. Nevertheless, a wolf shifter was waiting as if he had expected me. “The master is currently sleeping, Mr. Sanders. However, I can direct you to the nicest hotel for the day.”

  I had no idea how he knew my name, but I didn’t think I had ever met him before. Of course, I also didn’t spare him more than half a glance out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not here for Stephen.” I pushed past him, slammed open the door, and reestablished my connection with Astrid. Even though I could feel that she was deeply asleep, her mind recognized and welcomed mine easily.

  Using the connection, I found her asleep in her bed and, although her magic was intact, she didn’t wake because she was physically exhausted. She also wore a dark red t-shirt, not a white nightgown. It’s the wrong damn day.

  Relief and frustration overcame reservations, so I locked the door, took off my shoes, and crawled into bed beside her. She wrapped herself around me instantly and the adrenaline finally started to drain.