There was a click followed by a scraping sound. The desk split in half, cracking open like an egg and revealing a large hole in the floor. A platform rose from its depths, rising, rising.
A figure rose with it and, a moment later, Cruise Knightley stood in front of us.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
FALL SEMESTER
LATE OCTOBER
Rowan sprang into action before I had the chance to stop him. One second he was beside me, and the next, he was a blur of motion sailing right at Cruise.
They collided like two freight trains. Rowan sacked Cruise around the waist, pushing him backwards and slamming him into the wall on the far side. The bookshelf rattled, spilling its contents on top of the wrestling men.
“Rowan, stop! Don’t hurt him,” I cried out, rushing forward. I thought of the time Cruise had saved me from having to further torture Tempest. Even if there was any chance he wasn’t fully with Nyquist, we couldn’t hurt him. And Rowan’s renewed vampire qualities made me think he intended just that.
Without thinking, I wove an immobilizing spell and shot it forward.
The fighting ceased as wizard and vampire were hit with my spell. Frozen, they waited as I jogged over and knelt beside them. Cruise was pinned underneath Rowan’s body. Bloody and disheveled, he looked like he’d been in a dozen fights, not just one.
How in the world had he sustained such damage in such a short time? He’d just come up from whatever reality awaited underneath that desk so maybe something had happened down there. Was he Nyquist’s guard come to stop us? Or did his injuries indicate he’d switched sides for good?
“Rowan, stand down,” I said as the rest of the group gathered behind me.
Rowan’s eyes flashed, dark and veined, as his vampire instincts festered, even in his immobilized state. Slowly, though, the wildness receded from them.
I turned to Cruise. “We’re going to unfreeze you in a second, but if you try anything or attempt to alert anyone, things will go very badly for you. Understand?”
I waited for him to nod, but then remembered he couldn’t. Brilliant, Charlie.
Getting up, I removed the immobilizing spell.
Rowan jumped up, shaking himself as he glared at Cruise.
The regent’s son sat up, looking a little dazed and confused. “How did you get in here?” he asked. “They only allow hand-selected guards through the wards.”
“We have our ways,” I said. “Now, tell us what’s down there, Cruise. If you lie, we’ll know and then we might have to take drastic measures.”
He stared up at me with a sort of sadness on his face. “Lie to you? Charlie, I thought you knew I’ve been trying to help you.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Bridget cut me off. “You and your little Nazi party aren’t trying to help anyone, Cruise. I saw you down on that field during Homecoming. You were there when they cut that werewolf and you did nothing. I bet you were ready to wear their heads like trophies!” Bridget’s hands flexed and sparks crackled between them as if she were about to zap Cruise into oblivion.
I stepped forward and blocked Cruise’s body with my own. “Sometimes you have no choice but to stand by when bad things are happening. Sometimes you have to bide your time in order to help more people when the time is right.”
My eyes slid over to the fae who were watching this whole exchange with detached annoyance. My little speech didn’t seem to sway them one bit.
Bridget, too, didn’t seem moved by my words, but Disha put a hand on her arm. “Look at him, Bridge. Does he look like a kid who’s had a cush job of guarding the entrance? He’s all beat up.”
Everyone turned and regarded Cruise who turned his head away.
“I don’t need your pity,” he said. “My father and his group are… They need to be stopped. I was just down there trying to do just that.” He pointed to the cracked-open desk and the glowing violet light trickling out of the opening.
“What’s down there?” Rowan asked.
Cruise’s eyes shifted to Rowan before returning to the entrance. “A lot of bad shit is what’s down there. I’ve managed to figure out the first part of the magical blockade, but the rest…” He shook his head, his hand straying to a nasty cut on his forehead.
“It’s bad,” he said to me. “Worse than you could imagine.”
“I’ve been inside before,” I replied, though my blood had gone cold. What could be down there that made Cruise Knightley turn as pale as bone?
“We waste time,” Anama said, gripping her spear. “Let’s go.”
I offered a hand to Cruise to help him up. “Can you show us what you know?”
Rowan growled, but I flashed him a look. We needed all the help we could get.
Cruise’s gaze searched the group until, finally, he took my hand. When he stood, he met everyone’s eyes. “I’m sorry for, you know, any part I had in hurting people you care about.”
After letting his apology sink in, I charged my cuffs and turned to face the entrance. “Alright, no turning back now.”
The platform Cruise had risen up on was as wide as the Underwoods’ desk. If we squeezed together, the seven of us could fit on the wood slab, but it was tight quarters. Awkwardly, we shuffled onto the platform. Disha, Bridget, and I held onto each other while Sinasre and Anama huddled together in a far corner. Cruise and Rowan shot each other eye-daggers from their spots on either side.
“We’ll drop for a while,” Cruise said. “When we land, let me take the lead.”
Rowan cleared his throat, unhappy with that plan. I could tell from Bridget’s body language she wasn’t thrilled with this pairing, either, but what choice did we have? The more clues we knew going into the dreamscape, the better.
Remembering being inside it last year turned my already icy blood into a glacier. The nightmarish creatures that had attacked us had felt so real. Only Fedorov had been able to convince me I wasn’t suffocating to death. Without him, I’d likely be dead right now. Was I strong enough to do that for my group? Or even for myself?
I gripped Disha and Bridget and tried to remain calm as the platform began to descend.
We traveled down into a narrow hole in the earth for what seemed like miles. Soon, I was beginning to wonder if we’d be going down all night when a small jolt of the platform beneath my feet indicated we’d reached the bottom.
A flash of light illuminated us as Cruise held a witch light aloft. It grew stronger and brighter as he stepped off the platform.
“This way,” he said.
Rowan leaned close to my ear. “How do we know this isn’t a trap?”
I shook my head. “We have no choice.”
He glowered, not liking my answer, but Cruise was already many steps ahead and the fae were right on his heels. Anama looked fierce with her spear gripped in her fist, but Sinasre just seemed wary. He didn’t trust me and he didn’t trust Cruise, but he had to go forward for the women he loved.
Bridget and Disha were waiting for us, so, tugging Rowan by the hand, I led the four of us to catch up.
The cavern was huge and echoey. I knew it was likely a magical illusion, but Nyquist had done his best to make it appear as if we were inside the bowels of the earth. Stalactites and stalagmites jutted like prehistoric teeth, reminding me of the fae cavern where I’d met Kiana. Water trickled and an eerie wind whistled past, slithering down dark, unseen corridors.
“Damn,” Bridget whispered. “Super spooky.”
Disha wrapped her hands around my arm. “I am going to have nightmares for weeks.”
Just wait until you see where they hold the Loopers, I thought.
As we walked, the sound of rushing water grew stronger. Then, up ahead, Cruise’s light illuminated a change in the cavern. At first, I mistook it for some sort of shimmering wall, but as we walked closer, a waterfall took shape, tumbling from the ceiling and disappearing into the rocky floor.
Someone had conjured a wall of water thirty-foot wide that seemed to go up infinitely.
Mist dampened our clothes and hair as the torrent rushed on.
“We go through?” I asked, having to nearly shout over the sound of cascading water.
Cruise shook his head, damp hair clinging to his bruised face. “Watch.”
Placing one hand out, he attempted to feed it through the waterfall.
As soon as his fingers touched the surface, a jet stream blasted out like a firehose that caught Cruise in the chest and shot him backward. He flew twenty feet, skidding into the dirt.
When he sat up, soaking wet and filthy, he gave us a shrug. “Kind of brilliant magic,” he said.
“Brilliant magic or not, how do we get through?” Disha asked. She eyed Cruise like he was crazy. I wondered it, too. He could’ve just told us the water would blast us backward. Why demonstrate? To earn our trust?
“Can we transport through?” I asked. Disha’s spell would come in handy here, but Cruise shook his head.
“For this one, you have to think simply. Everyone assumes the answer is very complicated. Whatever magician created this, he knew sometimes simple is better,” Cruise said, standing and using a cleaning and drying spell on himself.
Walking back to the waterfall, Cruise stopped just as it ended and turned towards the rocky wall beside it.
And walked straight through.
He was there one moment and gone the next. As we stared at the spot where he’d been, his head appeared. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
“Simple,” Disha said. “Brilliant.”
“Whatever,” Bridget responded. “I’d much rather smash things.” As much as she had matured in some aspects, she was still the same.
Quickly, we stepped through the rock wall, feeling only a cold shiver as we passed.
Senses alert, I scanned our next challenge and immediately spotted two figures inside a small rocky room. A jolt of shock zapping through me, I readied my cuffs. Disha gasped and Rowan stiffened.
Two of our classmates stood beside a slit of glowing purple light along the wall. I extended my hands to attack, but Cruise stopped me.
“No! Don’t hurt them,” he said. “They’re frozen.”
I paused, noticing their stiffness and black stares. I recognized Pierce right away but took a moment to place the other senior boy as Franklin Smith, another of Nyquist’s gladiators. Both were locked in odd positions, hands folded together to keep them from being able to cast.
Cruise stepped over and placed his fingers on Pierce’s neck first, then Franklin’s. “They’re out cold. They will be until morning. That’s why I told you we need to hurry.”
“You did this?” Rowan asked. “These are your friends.”
Cruise stared down at them with a strange expression on his face. “Not after tonight.”
The gravity of this statement seemed important, but I didn’t have time to ponder it further because the glowing slit in the wall was opening.
As we watched, the vertical line of purple light began to widen until it looked like a violet pupil from a cat’s eye. Dark magic pulsed out of it as did swirling smoke that clogged the air. A foul smell rolled out, sending shivers up and down my arms.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the dreamscape.” Cruise gestured towards it like a sadistic tour guide on the world’s worst tour.
I stepped up, body stiff and heart thundering.
He held out a hand. “Nothing I’ve done, no magic I’ve tried since I got here has allowed me to go much further than this. It plays with your mind.” His expression grew pained as if the idea of trying again terrified him.
Anama shouldered past. “Get out of the way, weak human. I was trapped in here for weeks. You think it scares me?”
“Anama,” Sinasre said in warning, but she slipped through and disappeared.
The rest of us glanced at each other, then followed after her one by one.
Inside was like being in the center of a diseased rainbow. The trippy colors and swirling lights of the dreamscape dazzled my eyes, but I didn’t have time to examine further because a scream cut through the silence.
Turning, I spotted a massive, black, spider-like creature lifting Anama up with one lobster claw. She kicked and swiped with her spear, screaming fae obscenities, but it made no difference.
The creature lowered Anama to its pincer-rimmed jaws.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FALL SEMESTER
LATE OCTOBER
Time slowed as I stared up at the creature about to chomp Anama in half. It was horrible, a mix of spider and lobster with grotesquely long, thin legs covered in bristly hair and spiked barbs. The front two appendages were tipped with knobby, black lobster claws the size of boulders. One held Anama aloft. She kicked and screamed as the beast lowered her toward its grotesque mouth.
This isn’t happening, my logical mind thought. None of this is real.
Yet, my body was having a very real reaction. My cuffs were charged, hot and pulsing. My heart felt ready to explode and my legs longed to run, either at the spider to battle it or away. I could barely stand to look at the horrible creature. It was a nightmare on steroids. One of the worst things I could imagine.
As I stood frozen in shock, the creature dropped the screaming Anama into its jaws.
And swallowed her whole.
“No!” Sinasre shouted, running forward. He jumped onto one of its three-story-tall legs, trying to scale it. The spider jerked to shake him off, whirling with a dexterity that an animal of its size shouldn’t poses while Sinasre did all he could just to hang on.
Rowan ran forward, too, a blur of speed. He zipped around to one of the pincer claws and launched himself up, climbing toward the creature’s head. Bridget shot blue, fiery sparks at it, and Disha started weaving. Cruise, for his part, stared in awe. He’d likely tried all this before and failed.
I stood frozen, paralyzed by my own thoughts.
If the spider was an illusion, should we even fight it? Or was Anama in peril, being digested as we spoke? My body and mind warred until I thought I might split in two. What should I do? What had Fedorov done last semester?
I’d been suffocating, attacked by something horrible my own mind had conjured up. Fedorov had talked to me, explained that it was all a dream, and told me to breathe. But had he used a spell of some kind? I had been too incapacitated to notice.
“Arg!” I grabbed my head as my friends battled the spider.
The monster whirled, snapping its giant maw and pincers, which clapped together in an awful cacophony. One big claw grabbed Rowan around the waist and hurled him across the technicolor dreamscape while the other battled with Sinasre who’d made it up to the creature’s spiny back. Twisting and turning the spider managed to fight everyone at once.
I tried to focus on what Fedorov had done to help me as the spider battle waged. Had he used the canceling case? I didn’t know. I pulled on my hair in frustration.
Bridget screamed as a long leg swept around and knocked her on her ass. Disha rushed to her side and wove a healing spell.
I had to act. I couldn’t just do nothing.
Conjuring a reveal spell with a twist of my fingers and power from my cuffs, I hit the spider with my magic.
It continued to thunder around on long, spindly legs as it attempted to dislodge Sinasre from its back.
Frantic, I pressed the buttons on the canceling case, but it did nothing to stop the monster from doing its best to kill us. “Shit!”
I glanced around. Anama had been inside of the spider for at least two minutes now. Rowan limped up and attempted to climb another thrashing leg but was quickly shaken off. Rabid, the spider swiped its lobster claws and snapped its jaws, trying to tear people in half.
It swung my way, a blur of gross, black hair and sharp mandibles. I ducked, scrambling to the side and rolling into the rainbow swirl that served as the ground.
None of this is real. My brain pushed the thought forward again even as the rest of me refused to believe it.
Maybe that w
as it. Maybe I needed to act as if none of it was real. Fedorov hadn’t let it infect his mind. He had stood up to it, whatever it was.
Trembling, I rose to my feet.
This was a stupid, stupid idea.
One that just might work. Or get me killed.
When the spider swung its ugly, multi-eyed face my way, I glared at it. “You aren’t real. None of this is real.”
Hairy pincers angled my way, snapping shut with a horrible crunching sound that shook the very air around me.
“Charlie!” Rowan called, panic in his voice as he saw what I was about to do.
“It’s okay,” I shouted, trying to reassure him that I hadn’t lost my mind. “None of this is real. It can’t hurt me.”
“Charlie, what are you doing?” Disha called, still kneeling over the injured Bridget. “It definitely can hurt you.”
But it was too late to stop me. When the spider lowered its jaws and closed its pincers around my waist, I didn’t fight. I let it take me.
The smell was horrible, like freshly turned earth and creepy crawling insects. The pincers pressed on my ribcage, threatening to suffocate me. Up close, the spider’s face was even more horrible. Dozens of eyes inspected my body as if savoring me.
It’s not real. It’s not real.
But it felt very real as the spider tilted its head back and swallowed me whole.
Everything went black.
Fear was the only emotion I felt as I sat in darkness. Fear that I was wrong. Fear that it was all over. Fear that I would never hold Rowan again. Never joke with Disha or Bridget. Never cast a spell.
But, then, why was I able to doubt myself? When you died, you didn’t have all these pesky thoughts to distract you, right?
I opened my eyes.
I wasn’t inside of a spider’s stomach, digesting slowly. Instead, I found myself in a blank room, no furniture, no exits, nothing except a bit of light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Beside me, Anama lay unconscious on the ground.
Senior Witch, Fall Semester Page 19
