Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, Book 3

by Breene, K. F.

  “Pick a table, and best the dealer, who’ll use magic to try and confuse you,” Ethan said, determination in his voice. “They use mind tricks. Persuasion. It’s a test of your strength of mind. You need to be able to throw off the magic. Or you can choose the bar. See if you can do the same with the potion you ingest.”

  Orin drifted to the bar. “It is rare the House of Wonder can concoct a poison that can befuddle a vampire. That ability is usually limited to the House of Shade, poisoners of the highest calibre.”

  “It really doesn’t make sense that two houses would rely on the same craft when the House of Wonder thinks so little of Shades,” I said, wandering through the tables.

  “Two sides of the same coin,” Orin said. “The same result, but different methods. Anyone from the House of Wonder would consider it an insult to create a potion without magic.”

  “Snobs,” I said.

  Something else was at work here. I could feel it. Something...not right. Much as I wanted to believe this trial wouldn’t be rigged after the last disaster, I didn’t trust it.

  “It is the same craft, but with different intentions,” Orin said.

  “One has no morals,” Ethan added, but without any heat, placing his elbows on the green velvet of the card table.

  “So, then…” Wally pulled out an empty chair, but the players at the table weren’t looking at her. They were all looking at me.

  My head pounded. My heart thudded. My sense of warning, slower to develop than usual, flared, so intense it nearly made me scream.

  The man in the wizarding hat jumped up from behind the bar, wand out, and blasted me before I could dive to the side. The spell wrapped around my body, holding me in place as Pete shed his clothes and changed shape.

  Orin turned from the bar with a sour face, an empty glass held between his fingers, his eyes on the bare bottom. “Shade,” he said in a strangled release. The glass fell from his suddenly lifeless fingers. He grabbed at his throat, eyes bulging, and took two staggering steps. “The Shade…infiltrated….”

  “What’s he saying?” Wally yelled.

  The Shade had infiltrated the House of Wonder. They were coming for me. Sideburns was finally making his move.

  Almost as the thought formed, a man in black burst from behind the group of women in the corner. Limbs and skirts went flying.

  Anxiety riding me like an unbroken horse, I forced myself to calm down and focus. The throb in my head drifted into the background. My intense desire to break free surged, firing hot through my blood.

  The spell holding me cracked like an egg.

  I snapped my eyes open and yanked out my knife. A split second later the man was on me, his own knife already slashing for my face.

  I dodged to the side and slapped at his hand, using his momentum to knock him off balance. My blade parted black fabric. He turned and thrust, slower than I would expect, clearly not the best of his House. I knocked my forearm against his before ripping it down, following with my blade. It slashed against his wrist and over the top of his gloved hand. Red welled up in the cut and he jerked back.

  People jumped up from chairs, wands or weapons raised. Wally grabbed the edge of the table and flung it, overturning everything. Money and cards rained down as she charged forward, a little alley cat of power. I could see the pink of her magic lighting her up. I wasn’t sure what good it would do against the living, but she was embracing it.

  Honey badger Pete snarled and dove under the heavy green skirt of a woman with a hard expression and a poised throwing knife. Another dagger thudded to the ground from under her skirts, followed by a small hand-gun—her hidden weapons. She gasped and kicked out before staggering to the side in an effort to dislodge the honey badger latched onto her legs.

  “We gotta get out of here,” I called as a glint of metal flew through the air, end over end. There was too much going on, too fast. I couldn’t keep up with it all.

  A knife, the blade gleaming in the saloon light, sped toward my chest. I dropped and rolled before popping up again and grabbing a shocked trial worker who clearly hadn’t gotten the memo regarding the change in plans, and shoved him in front of me as a human shield.

  “Ethan, shrug it off,” I yelled, seeing him frozen in his seat, his eyes dodging all around but his body still. “Don’t let the panic rule you. You rule you. Shrug it off. We need you!”

  “Raaaaahhhhh,” I heard before a body went flying. Wally straightened, a strange glowing sheen around her, and I took a moment to marvel that a little chick like her had just thrown a grown man across the room. Something in me said that the spells they were trying to use on her were being deflected by her magic.

  A spell tore at me from the bar. I swung my human shield around, and he raised his wand to deflect the assault.

  “Good choice in shields,” I murmured, marching him forward.

  Another spell hit his legs from the side. His legs stopped moving, frozen stiff. I continued pushing him forward anyway, his heels skidding along the wooden floor, hoping his brain and muscle memory would override the spell.

  They didn’t.

  Timber. Pete said.

  “Crap.” I threw aside my now useless shield and reached Orin as Pete, growling and spitting, chased a wand waver out of the swinging saloon door.

  Orin’s eyes stared up at the ceiling from his position flat on his back. Tex, the English Wizard with his stupid hat, smirked from behind the bar.

  “Didn’t expect that, now did he?” Tex said, leaning against the counter.

  “Wally, get my back,” I yelled as I reached over, grabbed Tex’s shirt, and yanked him toward me. His eyes widened then narrowed and his hands flew out to protect himself. I was one step ahead. I rested the blade of my knife against his throat and dug in, drawing blood.

  Tex’s hands lifted into the air.

  “Is he dead?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Is the vampire dead?”

  “Not eternally, no. The vamps want him after all this is over. The necromancer too. The wizard and the weird raccoon thing got placements as well already. All this is for you. Don’t you feel special? Let them take you, and your friends go free.”

  A beam of red blasted him in the face, ripping him from my hands and sending him flying. His back hit the shelves of bottles and his eyes rolled back in his head. He sank to the ground, bottles tumbling down after him, breaking against the ground or thunking on him.

  Ethan stood behind me, his wand held in a steady hand and his eyes alight. “That was the strongest persuasion spell I’ve ever pushed off,” he said, taking two quick steps to me, his expression triumphant. “I broke it, thanks to you.” He grabbed me around the middle and pulled me toward him, his soft lips a contrast to his hard body.

  Electricity sizzled through me, but not from him—from the sense of victory. Two combatants sharing a win.

  He broke away. “No way in hell are you going to turn yourself over in this trial,” he said. “We’ll beat this like we beat all the others. I have a reputation to uphold.” He winked. “So let’s go. Hurry.”

  I liked this new Ethan better. The confidence was real. Whoever’d beaten him down had lost their hold on him. I grinned. “Let’s.”

  He spun and cast a spell, slamming a woman dressed in black center mass and dropping her. Clearly, he had been thoroughly tutored on attack spells.

  “Leave Orin,” Wally said, shoving a frozen woman out of the way and heading toward the door. “He’ll understand, and we can’t carry him.” Her voice dropped. “Always question your drink of choice when there is danger afoot.”

  “That voice… It doesn’t get any less weird,” Ethan mumbled, running at my side.

  We shoved out of the door, and Pete looked back at us as a woman took off running for a stand of horses. The scene melted into a dusky prairie, not unlike the savannah scene from the shifter trial, before changing yet again with a flicker, like a computer screen glitching. The Old West town flickered back to life.

  “This
trial is being tampered with,” Ethan said, slowing and looking at the sky. He brought out his cheat sheet, running his finger down the page.

  “How was it?” Wally asked me quietly, standing very close. Her eyes roved my face as she waited for me to answer.

  I palmed my head as the pounding returned, feeling a vague sort of danger but nothing imminent. Not yet. That last trial probably hadn’t gone the way they’d expected. We were a helluva lot stronger and quicker than most other trial goers. Working together made us shine.

  “How was what?” I asked, smelling lilac on the air, a strange fragrance for the Old West town.

  “Kissing a Helix. I mean, he’s the worst, don’t get me wrong, but he’s hot. Can’t say I’m not curious…” She waggled her eyebrows at me.

  I ignored her, focusing on Ethan and his notes. “Let’s concentrate on getting out of this trial. Not winning it, but just getting out of it with all of us alive.”

  Ethan looked up at me, and for a wonder, I didn’t see disappointment in his eyes. “Are you sure about that?” he asked.

  All eyes turned my way, and I hated that Orin wasn’t there to lend us another strategic brain. I hated that we’d have to leave him behind. It went against everything in me. Just like Rory, though, I couldn’t fix this. He would live. We might not.

  “Nothing we encounter is going to go how your cheat sheet tells you, Ethan,” I said, feeling the urgency to get moving. “It won’t do us any good, and I doubt we’ll be able to beat any of the challenges. We didn’t even get to do the last one.”

  “You did.” Wally pointed at me. “And he did.” Her finger swung to Ethan. “Orin failed at it, but they cheated—”

  “The best course of action is getting out of here and getting to safety,” I said. “No amount of gold or glory is worth our lives.”

  Ethan nodded and looked down at his sheet. “We can stick to the easier challenges, then. After what just happened, my father will understand the rationale behind that. He can push for a retesting if necessary. I can all but fast track us through the next one, but we’ll all have to do the final one.”

  “What’s the final—”

  As if on cue, an enormous roar ripped through the air, sparking fear in my heart.

  “T-rex,” Wally said, suddenly out of breath. I knew how she felt. “We’re going to take on the T-rex.”

  “How the hell is that magical?” I asked as Ethan started jogging, heading northwest. “And do you know where you’re going?”

  “The scenery isn’t how it should be.” He picked up his pace. “I don’t know who you pissed off, Wild, but you sure don’t have many friends in the magical world. My father won’t be impressed that the security is so lax. Going after you is one thing, but dragging me into it isn’t a good look. Not when he’s on the board.”

  “Sometimes you’re a good guy, Ethan, and sometimes I want to bitch slap you.” I increased my speed, knowing it wouldn’t be long before the next attack came.

  The scenery around us changed again, turning rocky with surprise dips and falls dug into the landscaping. Mountains rose on one side and waves crashed away on the other. It was like the engineers had gotten into a fight about what they wanted the scene to look like, and settled it by drawing a line and each doing their own thing.

  “This isn’t an easy one, Ethan,” Wally said, frustration ringing loud and clear. “You’re the only one that can do it.”

  “What?” I asked as white lines appeared near our feet, rolling to a stop ten yards away. Sand filled in between the lines. Four people, two men and two women in robes of all shades, decorated with stitched moons and stars and a dusting of glitter, stood at the end of the white lines, facing our way. Like a weird bowling alley...and we were the pins. “What can’t we do?”

  “He’s planning to leave us behind again,” Wally accused, grabbing his arm and getting in his face. “You low-life, cheating—”

  “We’re a group,” Ethan yelled over her comments, shaking her off. “As long as one member can defeat the enemy, the group can continue on.”

  “Then why do we each get our own lane?” Wally demanded amid Pete’s growling.

  Ethan gestured everyone toward the lines. “Trust me. Just keep yourself from being taken down until I deal with this guy. You’ll see.”

  “We’ll see? Trust you? What kind of a stupid idea is that?” Wally screeched, closer to losing it than I’d thought possible. “We trusted you on that tower. We trusted you when we faced that troll. We trusted—”

  “Okay, okay.” I put out my hands, eyeing the people on the other end of the lines. Their robes hid their bodies, but these were mages—trained to attack with magic, not their bodies.

  They expected to face off and trade spells. That was it.

  “Whoever is messing with these trials probably expected us to go for gold. They planned for the wrong contingency. So this is just a simple challenge, like Ethan said.” I wished I felt as confident as I sounded.

  “There’s nothing simple about this, Wild. Do you know the type of spells they hit people with in these—”

  I put up my hand to quiet Wally. She’d clearly reached the end of her rope. I couldn’t blame her, but I also couldn’t let her give in to it.

  “This is fine,” I said, walking along the end of the lines, reading our opponents. I silently noted their stance and balance, judging how they’d react to a charge and, more importantly, their general stance on violence. All the information I needed was right there in front of me—in the way they held themselves, in the way they sized us up or didn’t.

  “In poker, they say play the player, not the hand. This is the same.” I pointed at the line leading to a man in a black robe with more glitter than was really necessary. “Wally, you here. Act like a damsel in distress. He’ll take it easier on you. Deflect his spells like you did back at the saloon. Ethan…” I pointed at a woman with a bob and a pink robe. “She’s the meanest. You’d better take her.”

  “No.” Ethan pointed at the man across from him, with a drab brown robe and impatience written all over his face. “I’ll take him. He’s the highest magical worker.”

  “He’s bored, look at him. He won’t try as hard as—”

  Ethan didn’t wait for my assessment. He stepped up to the lane, aligning each foot with the lines on either side of it. With a snap, he, the lane, and the man on the end disappeared.

  “Damn it,” I whispered, shoving Wally to her lane. “I’ll take the pink robe then. Pete, you’re the last. The woman in purple. Charge her, move fast, lots of snarling.”

  “Watch yourself, Wild,” Wally said, her eyes solemn. “If you fail this challenge, you don’t come back to the trial. They’ll have you alone. We won’t be able to get to you.”

  Wally’s words sunk in slowly, casting a new light on Ethan’s sudden interest in being a team player. He was passing up an opportunity for gold. He was taking an easy challenge.

  He was not acting like he’d always acted, and I’d fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker.

  You’ll see. Trust me.

  Chapter 13

  “I’ll be fine.” I put a hand on Wally’s shoulder. “You watch you, okay? Use your power. Charge him. Dodge his attacks and throw him around. Knock his wand away—anything you can. Try to beat him, or hold out until Ethan finishes and saves us.” Maybe he was playing us, maybe he wasn’t. All we could do now was hope for the best. Orin wasn’t even there to point out a logical solution.

  She gave me a dry look, as though asking, He kissed you and now you believe in him?

  I was thankful she didn’t ask me outright. It seemed shallow to blame my lack of judgement on my continuously pounding headache.

  Pete snarled, snorted, and trotted to his lane, kicking at the dirt with his back feet as though prepping for a race. Wally gave me a slow wave before doing the same, minus the dirt kicking.

  I faced off against the woman in soft pink before purposely placing my feet on either side of the lane. The scene
around me dizzied, but I ignored it.

  Play the player.

  “You love that color, don’t you?” I asked in an easy tone, my feet magically stuck to the ground. I didn’t know if it was a preliminary measure, keeping everyone put as the challenge got underway, or I’d have to leave my boots behind when I charged her. “Not because of the actual color, but because that color tells people certain things about the wearer. It makes you seem more feminine, which people read as softer, gentler, more eager to please.” The woman’s expression didn’t change. “But I bet you’re an old battle-axe under that godawful robe, aren’t you?”

  Her lips pressed together and her eyes tightened at the edges.

  A farm spread out around us, and with a start, I realized it was my farm back home, my house hunkering in the distance and the barn not far away. No cows grazed in the fields, though, and no horses flicked their tails in their pens.

  “Ah. Trying to make me homesick?” I guessed. It was working. At least the place wasn’t burning like in my dream.

  “More comfortable, actually,” she responded in a flat, dry voice. “But Shades are always comfortable, are they not?”

  “No, but it’s interesting that you think so.”

  “You must make contact with me with three spells,” she went on as though reading from a rule book. “The types of spells do not matter. They simply must get past my defenses. In addition, you will need to counteract my attacks. Any questions?”

  “Yeah. What happens when your opponent doesn’t have a wand and can’t hit you with a spell?”

  “You lose.”

  “Right.”

  “And…”

  A small chime sounded. My feet came unstuck. She brandished her wand like a quick draw and flicked her wrist at me.

  But I was already off and running.

  I dove under the beam of magic, rolled, nearly stood, and realized she’d already gotten off another shot. I flung myself to the side, hit an invisible wall, and rolled the other way as a flare of green dug into the ground at my side.