“Maybe there’s a way,” Maddy mused as she walked to the wall.
“What are you thinking?”
“I…I’m not sure,” she said as her hand trailed across the stone. “When Rhys and I were stuck in here before, something strange happened.”
“Strange like what?” Aidan asked.
“There was writing on the wall—it would show up, then disappear. I couldn’t read it, but I felt like it had a purpose. I thought maybe it was about the source, but now...now I’m wondering if it was something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, but maybe it could help us. Maybe it was trying to help us then, too, and I just didn’t know it.”
“But how? By telling us how to get out of here?” The second the incredulous question left my mouth, I started to realize that maybe I was right. Maybe that was precisely what the magic had been trying to tell them. And judging by the look on her face, Maddy was coming to the same conclusion.
“Can you make it do it again?” I asked. “Can you make it appear?”
“But,” Rhys mused, “if the writing was on the wall, and the wall is part of the building that seems to be as possessed as Janie, then why would it do that? Why would it try to help us leave?”
“Maybe it isn’t the building,” Aidan said, standing to join Maddy. “Maybe it comes from something else entirely.”
“Like what?” Rhys asked.
Aidan looked from Maddy to Rhys. “Think about what this room was used for—what happened here. Maybe that writing wasn’t sent by the being possessing this place, but by those who suffered to fuel the wards.” His eyes drifted back to me. “Feel up to finding out?”
I stood and stumbled, falling forward awkwardly. The marble flew out of my hand and fell to the ground, where the others saw it for what it was—a crystal ball rolling across the room it used to call home.
“Shit!’ I said as I caught my balance. Aidan moved to pick up the ball, and a sense of panic washed over me. I dove to scoop it up before he could reach it. His jaw flexed as he watched it disappear into my hands, out of his sight, but not mine.
“Cece,” he said, voice tight, “give me the ball.”
“It’s fine, Aidan—”
“Give me the ball.” He took a step closer, and I took one in retreat.
“Why? It’s not for you. You said so yourself.”
Sarah, finally seeing the magical orb that remained invisible in my presence, took a worried step forward. “Do you guys have any clue what that thing even is?” she asked. For once, there wasn’t an ounce of smugness in her expression. Just genuine fear.
“It’s a crystal ball,” I said. “Some of the older supernaturals used to have them.”
“Yeah,” she said, taking a cautious step closer, “but those crystal balls answer to only one being.”
“It amplifies the magic of the one who wields it,” Aidan said, “which is why it affects Cece so strongly.” Sarah shook her head. Aidan frowned. “I read it myself.”
“Then you read it wrong. The one who wields it is its creator, and its creator only. Cece isn’t using the ball,” she said, stopping right in front of me. “ It’s using her .”
CHAPTER FIVE
Maddy
“You need to get rid of the ball, Cece,” I said, “and this is a good place to dump it. I never should’ve taken it from this room to begin with.”
“I need it,” she said in a soft voice, her gaze taking all of us in, one at a time, before landing on her cupped hands. She ran her fingers across what must have been the ball’s surface. Kinda creepy watching her pet the air. “Don’t you see? With the ball, I’m more than just an empath. I can do something for a change.” Her gaze met mine. “You know what I mean.”
Maybe. I’d always had so much more power than I could handle. What would it be like to feel as if I had so much less?
“Except the power isn’t really yours, witch,” Sarah said with a smirk.
“Give it to me,” Aidan said with infinite patience. His soft voice said that he understood what she was feeling, that he only had her best interests in mind. “You can trust me.”
The internal war waging inside my sister played on her face, a mixture of sorrow and resolution.
“I’ll take it,” Sarah said, thrusting out her hands.
“You’d be the last person I’d give it to,” Cece snapped, tucking her hands close to her chest.
Sarah lifted one eyebrow. “Why not me?”
Cece’s chin rose. “Um...maybe because you’re you?”
“And maybe that’s why you should.” Sarah wiggled her fingers as she stepped closer. “Give it to me. I’m sure I’ll be better able to handle the type of energy that thing puts out.”
“What kind of energy are we talking about?” Rhys asked. He moved to flank Cece, as if a battle were brewing and we needed to choose sides.
“Something an empath can’t deal with.”
I still stood near the wall, watching to see what my sister would do. She knew I had her back already, but would this truly turn into a battle?
Aidan watched Cece, his hand still outstretched, but his gaze kept sliding to the wall.
A muffled voice erupted from beneath my arm, and I jumped as if I’d spied a spider crawling up my shoulder. The rolled-up portrait from the attic fell to the floor with a crackle. It unfurled, and the dragon blazed forward from the top of his tower, stopping a second before he erupted from the portrait. If he ever did, would he remain the same size, or would he morph into something equal to my own dragon?
“Listen to the girl,” the creature said.
My lips twisted. “Which girl?”
“The one who knows.”
“Still not getting it,” I said with a sigh. Would anyone ever give us a straight answer?
Aidan turned away from us, his hand dropping to his side. Shivers lit up my spine when I noticed where his gaze was directed. The writing had appeared on the wall in the same place I’d seen it the first time I’d visited the death room. Did he see it, too?
As I stepped past Cece to approach the wall, she gasped. Her gaze followed the ball as it rolled into the corner of the room. In a blink, it was gone.
“Fuck. See what you did?” Sarah growled.
“I didn’t do anything! It has a mind of its own,” Cece said.
“You should’ve given it to me. I could’ve handled it, could’ve made it behave.”
Ignoring them, I stepped up beside Aidan. “Do you see the writing?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read it?”
“Yes...” The apprehension in his voice made my body quake.
“I’m not sure I want to know what it says,” I said in a tiny voice.
Rhys tucked the chair leg into the back of his pants and joined us. “What are we staring at?”
“The wall,” I said with a flick of my hand. “The writing is there again.” Was it different? I couldn’t tell. I gnawed on my lower lip until it bled, but I couldn’t stop. Something had to give.
“I still don’t see anything,” Rhys said, taking my hand and squeezing it. He tugged me close to his side and put his arm around my shoulders. “You okay? You’re shaking.”
“Yeah.” No . But there wasn’t anything he could do about it. “It’s right there.” I pointed. “Two lines written in big black scrolling letters.”
“Maybe I'm not supposed to see it,” he said. “It’s interesting that Aidan can.”
“Maybe he and I actually have something in common,” I said.
Aidan flashed me a smile, and in that one second, I could see why Cece was drawn to him.
I wondered if anyone else could see the writing, but Cece and Sarah were still arguing and hadn’t noticed that our attention had shifted.
“What does it say?” Rhys asked Aidan.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But it’s written in ancient fey...”
Rhys shifted forward, and I moved with him. “So…?”
“I c
an’t make it all out,” Aidan said softly, “but I recognize some words.”
I braced myself. “Words that can tell us how to get out of here?”
"No. Words like ‘revenge’ and ‘power’ and…’reunion’.” Aidan turned to me and shrugged. “That’s all I know.” He walked over to Cece and took her hand. “Come look at this.” But when he gestured to the wall and asked if she saw anything, she shook her head.
Not to be left out, Sarah joined us. “Are we going to do something or stare at a blank wall all day?” She stepped forward and placed her fingers on the wall. Closing her eyes, she hummed three notes. “Interesting,” she mused.
“What?” Rhys asked. “Can you see it now?”
She shot hin an irritated look. “No, but I sense something.”
Rhys rolled his eyes. “You’re no empath.”
Sarah huffed. “Doesn’t mean I don’t feel sensations and emotions every now and then.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“A tingle. My fingers tingled .”
“And that’s it?” Jeez, why were we wasting our time with her?
“What do you sense?” Aidan asked Cece.
“About the wall, the room, or this pain in the ass?” Cece asked, gesturing to Sarah.
“Preferably the first two.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I don’t feel a thing. It’s like the room blocks out everything but what’s inside.”
I moved around Rhys and approached my sister. “Which is…?”
“Hold on.” She lifted her hand, and her face scrunched. “I am sensing something. I feel... hunger .”
The tension in my body released, falling to the floor like a bucket of sand. “How can you be hungry at a time like this?”
Cece’s eyes closed. “I also sense...rage.”
That, I was not surprised about.
“And desperation.”
Before she could explain, something slammed into the door, and I jumped. Whirling around, I faced the panel that had a literal dent in it that hadn’t been there a second ago.
Aidan frowned. Sarah crept behind him.
Rhys took a step toward the door, lifting his chair leg.
There was another thud, and a bigger dent appeared in the metal door. This wasn’t good.
Tiptoeing closer, I plastered myself to the wall beside the door and inched sideways until I could peek through the keyhole. A gray face stared back at me, its mouth gaping, its eyes wide and fixed. Behind it, other zombie students crowded closer.
Then, as if parted like a zombie Red Sea, the ones in the front shuffled sideways, revealing a group of others holding what looked like a yule log. They stumbled forward, their gangly legs tangling together, yet somehow keeping them on their feet.
They launched the log toward the door.
I shrieked and leaped backward, stumbling into Rhys, who’d rushed toward me, thrusting his chair leg forward like a sword.
I scrambled to my feet and grabbed his arm. “It’s them.”
“Them?”
“The dead students who chased us in the basement. They’ve found us.”
“How do we do that fun flash from room to room thing again?” Sarah asked, her lips curling downward. “Because it’s time to get out of here.”
“Kinda hard to do when the ball that makes that happen is gone,” Cece grumbled under her breath.
“We need to find another way out,” Aidan said, his neck crooking backward as he studied the ceiling and walls.
“Think we can pop out a panel?” Rhys asked, joining Aidan. He shoved upward with his chair leg, but the dropped ceiling panels remained fixed. “Lift me up. Maybe I can find a way out.”
They moved to the wall, and Aidan braced himself against the solid surface. Using magic, he boosted Rhys a few feet. He smacked at the ceiling with his chair leg, but the panels seemed like they were made of concrete. Despite the weight of his blows, he didn’t make so much as a nick or dent in the surface. Closing his eyes, he sent magic at the panel, but it still remained in place.
Jumping to the floor, Rhys growled. “There’s got to be a way out of here.” Leaping over to the outer wall, he spun and added force to his arms, driving the chair leg against the wall. The surface absorbed the shock like he’d hit it with a feather duster. The chair leg was nearly ripped from Rhys’s hands on the rebound. Panting, he scowled.
“Ideas?” Sarah said to Aidan, as if this were a tea party. I fumed. Zombies were about to break through the door and overrun us. Why wasn’t she panicking like me?
Hunger. Rage. Desperation.
My sister hadn't been reading the energy in the room; she’d sensed the horde approaching.
Bang ! The log hit the door again, and it strained against the frame. A few more impacts and it would be projected into the room. Could we get around the zombie kids and out into the hall before they knew what was happening?
Probably not.
“Let her out,” a voice said with a snarl. “Do I have to do everything for you kids?”
Another bang on the door. It shifted.
My pulse thudded in my throat like thunder, and my palms had gone clammy.
“Let her out !” the voice shouted.
My eyes fell on the canvas. Stooping down, I lifted it.
“Spit it out, stupid painting,” Rhys said. “We don’t have time for games.”
“I am much more than a painting, and you know it.” The dragon’s fiery red eyes met mine. “ You know what I mean, shifter. Let. Her. Out.”
I took in our surroundings, and my mouth went dry. “There’s no room. If I change, I’ll crush everyone. My body will slam against the walls.”
“You’d think even an untrained dragon could see the benefit of that,” the painted creature said. Smoke curled out of its nostrils.
Oh . Yeah. I did see.
“Stand back,” I said to the others.
Aidan tugged Cece into a corner and shielded her with his body. Sarah grinned at Rhys and wiggled her eyebrows, nudging her head toward a free corner. He moved over to the wall, ignoring her.
She huffed, but those were the breaks. He was already taken.
“Do it, Maddy,” Rhys called out. “Break us out of this hellhole.”
After gathering myself, I closed my eyes and called the beast— my dragon.
CHAPTER SIX
Cece
I knew shit was about to get real the second Maddy’s amber-colored reptilian eyes met mine. We’d been down this road before, and I wasn’t super geeked about going there again. If memory served, she’d kinda tried to kill me then. Hopefully, my bond with her dragon was a bit more solid now.
But possibly not.
“Get back!” I shouted as her skin began to shimmer and blur, scales replacing flesh as her body grew at an impossible rate. Human limbs took on dragon form, and her torso expanded until she was nearly folded in half to fit in the death room. And that left next to no room for the rest of us. As her thigh pressed me into Aidan, his arms tightened around me. Then a tendril of his black magic wove around us, and the grating of her scales against my arm abated.
The echo of the door being rammed was eclipsed by Maddy’s dragon cry—a sound that blended a lion’s roar and wolf’s howl together in a bone-chilling way. I shuddered as the walls themselves seemed to quiver and cower under her ferocity. It would only be a matter of seconds before something had to give. Whether that would be the walls or the door, I wasn't sure.
“Maddy!” I screamed over the din. “Maddy, you have to break us out!”
Another deafening shriek rent the air, and I feared my eardrums might explode.
“I can’t hold her back forever,” Aidan winced, and I felt his magic buckle under the sheer bulk and pressure of Maddy’s dragon.
“How have the walls not caved yet?”
He shook his head as he stared down at me. “If this doesn’t work…”
The wall digging into my back wavered in a distinctly non-stone sort of way, and I craned
my head to see it. I couldn’t make out much in the scant light, but damn, could I feel it. Fury and frustration and fear coursed through that wall like a silent scream that made my skin crawl.
“It’s the building!” I shouted up to the contorted dragon-Maddy, whose face I couldn't even see. “It’s fighting you! You have to push harder!”
The tip of her tail poked past her leg somehow and grazed my hand, as though she were intentionally looking for me. I carefully took it and gave it a light squeeze. In that brief moment, I channeled all my love for her into her scaly appendage and prayed that she understood—prayed it would reach my sister inside the beast.
Then she roared as the door blew off its hinges. The clatter rang out through the overstuffed room, and the crumbling of stone followed. The interior wall keeping the horde from us must have given way—not that I could see it—and Maddy sidestepped to give us some space. But she kept herself between us and the enemy while she worked to force her way through the exterior wall. With a bit more room, I could better see how it bowed under her assault, the stone not breaking, but bending, as though it weren’t stone at all. As if the walls themselves were made of magic that couldn’t be broken, which was par for the course at Wadsworth, really. She rammed it with her head repeatedly until a ray of moonlight shone through the rip she’d made in that magic and lit the darkness.
“Keep going, Maddy!” I roared. “We’re almost free!”
Blow after blow, she tore through the bizarre fiber of the building, ripping a hole large enough for us to slip through. But I wasn't leaving without her.
Aidan pushed me toward it as Sarah squeezed through from the opposite side of my sister. Rhys met my eyes between Maddy’s attacks on the wall, and I nodded. He jumped through the growing hole as Maddy’s dragon claws caught hold of the edges of the gap and forced it wider still.
“Cece!” Aidan yelled, urging me forward with his hand on my back. “You have to go.”
“Not until I know she can fit through!” I turned to face him. “Go. I’ll be right behind you.”
“This building split us up last time,” he said, staring at me with those fearsome blue eyes. “I won’t let it separate us again.”
Rogue Reformatory: Breakout (Supernatural Misfits Academy Book 3) Page 4
