by Oxford, Rain
* * *
I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wished I hadn’t immediately when another dream began. I saw the castle again, only it was from the outside this time. It was dusk, raining lightly, and the battle taking place in the courtyard was horrendously one-sided. Waves of black shadows consumed everything in its path. Even grass was destroyed in its wake. Unlike with the dream of Astrid, this one was vague, twisted, and confusing.
I woke calmly with Astrid pushing my hair back from my face. “You slept all day,” she said.
“I think my dreams are draining my energy. I had a vision that you were shot. It wasn’t just a dream,” I said when she opened her mouth. “You have to trust me. I think you’re in danger.”
“Just because Henry and the tiger had a problem with my smell?”
“Astrid, you know my instincts are always right. I came here because I had a dream that Gale shot you in your bed.” She rolled away, got up, and started shuffling through her dresser. “Where are you going?”
“Well, if your dream showed me getting shot in my bed, I’ll just have to stay out of it until I kill him. I trust you, but there’s always danger in this world. You of all people should know that.”
She pulled her t-shirt over her head. Astrid wasn’t the little girl she was in my childhood. She was a small woman at five-foot-four, with long, waving, brown hair and hazel eyes. Her features were symmetrical and gave her a rare balance between pretty and beautiful. Her body was actually exactly as I had imagined it to be; shapely on the athletic side.
“If Clara is Stephen’s daughter… I thought vampires didn’t age,” I said, trying to distract myself.
“Converted vampires don’t.” She put on a black satin bra and a blue dress shirt over it. “If a human child is converted, they will be stuck that way. A born vampire will age slowly until maturity. Once we reach maturity, our growth will slow further; about the equivalent of one year every ten years. At about thirty, we stop aging altogether and that’s when age matters. Vampires over a hundred years old gain power fast.”
“So that’s why you aged? You were born a vampire?” I asked. She stopped dressing and turned to me. Her black jeans were unbuttoned right in front of me, so I got out of bed to put some distance between us.
“Stephen isn’t sure I’m really even a vampire. I can’t thrall like vampires can and sometimes… I can do things others can’t. Stephen thinks my parents were two different paranormals.”
“What kind of things can you do?”
“For one thing, I have survived full exposure to sunlight.” She turned away again to grab her cell phone from the night stand. “So a man named Gale is behind all of the killing? What is he?”
“Well, I thought he was human, but he was obviously powerful enough to steal the amulet from the wizard council. I think he also gets the powers that the amulet takes from people, and he can keep them if he kills them.”
“Does he get their weaknesses also?”
“I doubt it. I figure that he would be smart enough to choose two paranormals whose strengths overcome each other’s weaknesses. I had another dream just now that the school was attacked. We need to talk to Stephen.”
“He should be up by now, but you can’t bother him with dreams–”
“He asked for my help in this case. The least he can do is call Hunt and give him a heads up.” I left her room before she could argue. She followed after me and then led me to the coven master.
Stephen was sitting at his desk in the library, speaking on the phone. The worry on his face told me he already had bad news. He hung up a few seconds later. “That was Clara’s assistant. The school was attacked a few minutes ago by what they’re saying was an unstoppable and invisible force. Clara hasn’t been found.”
Chapter 11
Stephen got in the driver’s seat of the SUV and tossed a cell phone at me when I got in the passenger seat. “Call Maseré. The number is in the phone.” Stephen was speeding down the driveway before I could close the door.
Astrid stayed behind to try to make progress on defeating Gale, which I didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved about. I found the name and called it. The long beep was immediate. “Busy.”
“God, no. If his son was hurt, there will be a bloodbath.”
It was almost automatic to connect to Darwin’s mind by then. “Darwin? Can you hear me?”
“It’s bad. You have to get back here.”
“I’m on my way. Call your dad and tell him you’re not hurt.”
“I can’t. I hid in a closet… I’m not hurt, but there is something barricading the door. Henry’s out there… I don’t know if he made it. I don’t know if anyone made it.”
I dialed the number again… busy. I redialed over and over.
“I’m going to run out of oxygen eventually.”
“Just keep calm. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.” I finally got a ring and it picked up a second later.
“I can’t talk now, Stephen!” Maseré barked.
“Darwin’s okay!” I yelled. The silence was instant and I was afraid he had already hung up.
“You’re with Darwin?” His words were soft, hopeful, and disbelieving.
“I’m not with him, but I can talk to him. He’s in a closet and it’s barricaded, but he’s uninjured.”
He tried to say something, but it came out as a choking sound of relief. “I will be there in half an hour,” he said, then hung up.
“Maseré is heading to the school and he knows Darwin is safe.”
“You can talk to Darwin in your mind? Can you talk to Clara?”
“I don’t know her mind.” I reached out for another mind I was familiar with and felt her recognition as she sensed me. “Remy, are you okay?”
The image of Flagstone standing guard by the window of a motel room came to mind. So he had gotten her out.
“Have you seen Clara?” I wished I hadn’t asked when the scene flooded my vision. It was dark and raining, just like in my vision. Remy was trying to get everyone back into the castle, but the attack came too fast. Swarms of darkness, impenetrable by light, took people right out of the air. Then there were the creatures; massive monsters as black as space with mouths full of teeth and no eyes. They didn’t need eyes.
One of them had Clara pressed into the thick mud by huge, clawed hands. The creature opened its mouth to eat her…
And that’s when Flagstone got Remy out.
I couldn’t tell Stephen that his daughter was probably dead.
* * *
Stephen broke all speed limits as he drove us back to the castle, but it was still a long drive. The constant math, probability, and smattering of foreign languages going through Darwin’s head actually helped me to calm down. I also sensed when his father found him. The huge wolf busted into the closet with all the ferocity of a raging grizzly bear and then softly coddled Darwin like a teddy bear. This confirmed to me that Darwin could touch an animal without problems, which was why Maseré didn’t shift back for a while.
When we pulled into the driveway, Stephen abandoned the car without even turning the engine off. I shut it off and pocketed the keys.
Once again, the castle hadn’t really sustained any damage. The lawn, however, had massive holes in the ground and was littered with debris. Some students were unable to get up because they were too injured or trapped under something. Maseré and his wolf pack were already working on treating them. They had removed several bodies as well. Darwin was sitting on the front door step with a blanket wrapped around him.
I crouched in front of my roommate. “Most of the survivors are inside,” he said, shaking. “Hunt got a lot of students out this morning, but there were still about a hundred left. He did get all the vampires out last night except for Clara and her assistant, who refused to leave. The teachers are all with the students who went home. The council also left. The death count is at ten and we have at least twenty missing.”
“Where is Hunt?”
He shrugged. “He was helping Dad find people. A lot of the survivors said they were saved by Henry. They’re saying he was twice the size of a normal jaguar, blacker than the monsters that attacked us, and fast enough it was like he could appear and disappear. He’s missing.”
I stood. “I should have been here.” I would have just been one more person for Henry to protect without my powers, though.
“This wasn’t Gale,” Darwin said, hearing my thought. “Nobody lost their powers. This was something worse, and there was no stopping it. No magic worked on it. It came from the ground and killed for no reason but to kill. Even Hunt’s magic barely fazed it. Without Henry, we would probably all be dead.”
* * *
I joined the search and used my powers to look for minds outside of the survivors in the castle. It was difficult with Maseré’s pack all spread out, but they were making a lot of leeway with their scent tracking abilities. Between my psychic coverage and his pack, we found twenty-five students, including Henry.
Henry was unconscious, so I couldn’t see his location and his mind was nearly impossible to track. I sensed his general location and Maseré sniffed him out. We discovered him in his person form in the dining room, where part of the ceiling had collapsed and trapped him between the small pantry and a huge hole in the floor. Behind him, shielded from glass that had fallen from the second floor, were Mack and Brian. Stephen never found Clara.
Everyone gathered in the lecture hall, which I didn’t know we even had. It was the largest room in the castle with row after row of long tables. Since no one was willing to light the gas lights after the earthquake, we used torches.
Once again, everyone turned to Hunt for guidance. “At first light, the remaining students and professors will be relocated to the nearest town. We will provide you with housing and food, but we cannot keep the castle open.”
Henry was sitting to my right and Darwin was at my left. Brian, sitting in the seat right in front of me, put his head down and sniffled. Henry was quiet, though seemingly unhurt. Although Addison was one of those who had left with the majority of the students, there was a dark gloom in Henry’s eyes as if he had just been through war. He wasn’t the only one.
I stood up, surprising myself and getting everyone’s attention immediately. “When the threat has been defeated, you will need people to help rebuild. Does anyone here have a home to go back to?”
“I gave up my apartment and job to attend the school,” one shifter said. Others nodded their agreements.
“I’m from Kyoto; I can’t just go back,” another student said.
“If you have nowhere to go, you can help rebuild,” Hunt said. “I will even make your tuition free for the next term.” There was a small cheer and he held his hand up until it fell silent. “However, you must leave until the threat has been–”
“I want to fight!” one of the students yelled, interrupting the headmaster. It was one of Flagstone’s wolves who stood, shaking with anger instead of fear or shock. “I’ve been living on the streets between the semesters since I graduated from the sapling! This has always been my home and I am not getting chased out by something in the dark!”
Other demands to stay and fight joined his until a short vibration, like a shockwave of the earthquake, struck the castle. Everyone fell dead silent, but it didn’t come again. “Everyone will be sent away at first light. No student is fighting this, no exceptions. Please try to get some sleep.” Hunt walked out, ignoring the protests.
Henry, Darwin, and I went back to the classroom we used as our bedroom; the potions classroom. Darwin sat on the teacher’s desk while I sat in the chair. I jumped up, pulled out the red ball that I had sat on, sat back down, and threw it at Henry, who caught it and tossed it to Darwin.
“Between the deaths here and the deaths out there, I think we’re more likely to defeat Gale than the shadows and the monsters that attacked the school,” I said.
Henry nodded. “We need to split up the force,” Darwin said. “My dad should have all of the shifters go after Gale. Like Henry said, it doesn’t take any magic to be a wolf, just to shift.”
“But he can use your shifting magic. First and foremost, we need to keep the fae and wizards away from him. Henry, did you get a bite or scent or anything on what attacked the school?” I asked.
“I bit the creatures several times. They are solid and smooth as glass, but they’re as strong as stone. Despite the fact that my bones are much stronger than those of another shifter and my bite force can crush rock, I couldn’t injure the creatures. Not only were they too smooth to get a grip on, they were also colder than ice.”
“Does that sound like any creature you know?” I asked Darwin, who shook his head. A sharp meow warned us a second before Ghost appeared in front of me, sitting on Vincent’s book. “Where the hell have you been?”
The cat scowled at me and stepped off the book, which suddenly flipped open. The pages turned themselves and stopped about three quarters of the way in. I ignored the words and focused on the picture.
It was a brown beast, similar to what I thought of as a troll. It was roughly shaped, huge, but not what I would call fat or muscular. It wasn’t even what I would call humanoid, although it was bipedal, had two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. It also had way too many teeth and no eyes.
“That’s what attacked everyone!” I said, pushing the book to Darwin. He frowned at it.
“That isn’t what either of you described. That’s a golem.”
“What the hell is a golem?” I asked. “Like from Lord of the Rings?”
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t you ever read? A golem is a creature made of the earth.”
“Like a gnome?”
“Not at all. A gnome is an elemental. There are wild elementals, which are the essence of nature, and there are man-made elementals. An elemental can be created for any purpose and can look like anything. In the case of an elemental that you create, you share your soul with it and it does whatever you created it to do. However, the longer you maintain it the more powerful it becomes, until it’s more powerful than you, at which point it stops obeying you. A golem is a different matter entirely; it has no soul. You create it with your power, but you don’t give it a name or a soul. Golems are simple servants, or sometimes guards.”
“Why are there golems here?”
“Because they are the school guards,” Hunt said from the doorway. Ghost vanished.
“Why are your guards destroying the school?”
“They’re not mine anymore.” He entered the room and shut the door behind him. “The golems have been guarding my school since I opened the place, which is why I didn’t believe Jackson that he was attacked right inside the campus. I assigned the golems to search the underground, which is why I thought it was safe to send the vampires back down there. Until I saw them tonight, I had no idea they were behind the killings. My golems were normal and mud-brown. These golems were turned black when they were possessed.”
“What would possess golems?”
“Something that could not get here on its own.”
“So you can just dissolve them and be done with it, right?” I asked. The book vanished as I tried to reach for it to see if there were any instructions.
“Unfortunately not. I already tried to dissolve them, but they are no longer mine to control. I have even tried to destroy them, but the shadow walkers are too strong.”
“What are they?”
His expression was resigned as he opened his mouth, finally going to tell me who this enemy was…
And another earthquake struck.
We ran into the hall and were almost run over by students trying to get out. The shaking was violent, but the castle was much better designed than the dorms, so it wasn’t completely falling apart.
“Inside or outside?” Henry asked me.
I understood; he trusted my instincts on whether everyone was safer in or out of the castle. A deafening roar echoed in the hallway. “Outside.”
I unleashed my power openly on everyone. “Get outside,” I told them. Hunt’s mind was closed, but Henry and Darwin shuddered as they both fought to resist my order. “Hunt and Darwin, guard everyone outside. Henry, help me get everyone out.”
I didn’t really think Darwin could do much protecting; I just wanted him to be by his father. Darwin had just turned twenty-two, which was way too young to be fighting. It wasn’t at all that I thought he was helpless, for I had seen his “throwback” handicap. I believed he was a lot more powerful than he knew.
Darwin and Hunt went outside without argument while Henry and I started getting everyone out. It would have been easier if the castle wasn’t shaking. Fortunately, no one was injured. We had just gotten the last group outside when Henry shoved me out of the way, the floor burst upward, and we came face to face with a golem.
It stood about ten feet high and was about five feet wide. The creature roared, displaying row after row of long, sharp teeth. The distinct roar of a jaguar answered an instant before the golem fell back several steps. Henry faded from invisible to black. He was a little darker than the black jaguars I had seen in pictures, but it was his size that could have stopped anyone in their tracks.
He stood nearly as tall as a horse. Two sharp fangs stuck out of his mouth, not as long as a saber-tooth cat’s, but a lot longer than a normal jaguar’s. He pounced again, struck the golem’s short neck, and toppled the larger creature over. The golem tried to grab Henry, who was too fast for him, while Henry tried repeatedly and failed to break the golem’s skin.
The castle finally stopped shaking.
Knowing I had to do something, I thought of Regina and the words she screamed at me after I caught her cheating on me. When Marcus had called me to tell me to go home, I had known already what I was going to find. I just couldn’t believe the woman would blame me for it. In my own home…
