The Oxford Inheritance

by Ann A. McDonald

  The hum grew louder, whispers rising in the dark, snaking all around them. The torches flickered on the walls, plunging them into dark as Cassie fought to stay calm. Her instincts were screaming at her, every muscle vibrating with panicked need. She shouldn’t be here. This was all wrong.

  And then she felt it, a deep shiver of sickness that rolled through her entire body. An awareness of something cold. Something ancient. Something evil.

  The torches wavered again, and in the dark, Cassie saw something twist, churning in the pool in the center of the room. As she watched in horror, something dark began to rise.

  Hugo tensed behind her, but Cassie couldn’t tear her eyes away from the apparition in front of her. It was blackened, formless, darkness in its purest form. This was it, the hunger made manifest. And even through the fear, Cassie felt it call to her, awakening something deep in her chest.

  The group fell silent as the darkness twisted, a shadow above the pool.

  “We make these offerings to you,” Henry called. “Take them, and grant us our knowledge.”

  The darkness spread. Cassie stayed frozen in place, watching as it shifted and divided. It spanned out from the pool, like spokes on a wheel, snaking across the floor toward her, toward Lewis, to all the offerings. She recoiled, but Hugo’s grip tightened on her shoulders. He held her in place, his fingers digging into her skin as the shadow rose from the floor in front of her, a dark column that swayed and hissed.

  And then it took her.

  Cassie felt the invasion, the darkness creeping into the edges of her mind. She’d thought she’d felt power when Henry had visited her that night, but his was just a faint echo of this obliterating force. It was a hundred times stronger, wilder. Ravenous with age and neglect. She felt it, a cold, dreadful thing, and she fought it with everything she had. She struggled, sending a desperate look to Tremain, but he shook his head and mouthed, Not yet.

  Cassie gasped for air. She couldn’t hold it back, not even for a second. It was too much, too dark; it slipped through her mind, wrapping around her very soul. She shuddered, feeling the blackness seep through every part of her, a sharp pain blooming behind her forehead.

  And then she felt a second force, slipping through the gaps the darkness had forced wide open. Hugo, reaching, feeding on that power through her, as if she was nothing but a vessel for the darkness. Cassie felt him splintering through her and dropped to her knees with a cry, overwhelmed. All around her, she could see the other offerings falling to the ground, their masters shimmering with black energy beside them. She felt her mind overlap with every other in the waves of darkness. Hugo, Olivia, Henry, feeding, frenzied and dark. The offerings, panicked and in pain . . . They were one. They were it. It passed through them, and around them, taking everything they had.

  Cassie fought to stay conscious. This was the moment she’d been waiting for, the moment they were all linked. Taking all her courage, Cassie forced her panicked mind to still. She ignored the cries of pain around her and took a shaking breath, focusing on the darkness, tracing its contours with her mind, feeling for its shape. It shifted under her focus, ephemeral, but she clung tight, searching for some sure point in all the chaos: a root to its form.

  There.

  Beneath the whirl of hunger, she felt a seam in the form: a jagged edge, the split in reality that was letting the darkness through. Cassie grasped the shape, holding tight even as she felt her strength draining, forcing herself to keep hold of that one point, the beginning of everything. And the end.

  Ripping herself from Hugo, she shut her mind against him and fought the darkness with everything she had. She felt its surprise, rearing up to turn on her, hissing and seething in the dark. The very ground beneath her rumbled and shook as the darkness released the others, severing their connection. There were shouts of confusion and pain as they were ripped free from the power. Out of the corner of her eye, Cassie saw everyone fall to the ground. Tremain, Hugo, Olivia, sprawling in the dirt alongside the wasted bodies of their sacrifices.

  She was the only one left. Except . . . Henry. Still standing, rigid at the altar. But he wasn’t standing. Cassie gasped, seeing him rise, inches from the ground. The darkness was channeling through him now, fighting her, invading deep within her mind. The pain was unbearable, splitting her brain apart, so thick she could taste the blood in her mouth, hear her own screams as it carved deeper, taking everything she had.

  The walls shook again, rocks and debris crumbling from the cavern ceiling. The torches fell, one catching a corner of a tapestry, blazing up in the dark cavern. Some members were recovering now; Olivia dashed past her, racing for the door, but still, Cassie didn’t dare drag her eyes away from her target. She dropped to her knees and crawled toward the altar, fighting for balance as the room shook.

  Henry was all blackness and shadow, a terrifying specter as he turned to her, his eyes the darkest she’d ever seen. Cassie grabbed the knife from the altar and lunged. The knife slid into his stomach, and he let out a chilling scream, reeling back. Inhuman. Unsatiated.

  The blackness recoiled, the dark shadow hissing and flickering as it snaked out of him and into the pool. But Henry’s power didn’t fade. His hand thrust out, grabbing at her neck, choking the breath from her lungs. Cassie flailed against him, but his grip was too strong. “Hugo,” she heard him call, blood pounding in her ears. “You must complete the ritual. You can’t let it go!”

  Cassie gasped uselessly, her lungs burning as she dangled over the ground. Above her, the cavern boomed and crumbled, the floor beneath Henry shaking as if the earth itself was giving way. Hugo pulled himself up and crawled toward them, scrambling over bodies of the offerings that lay groaning, motionless on the floor.

  “No,” Cassie gasped. “Please!”

  But Hugo’s eyes were dark as the night. He reached out and grasped Cassie’s hand, and Cassie shrieked as the force drove through her again. Hugo drove inside her head, latching on to the dark power that Henry was supplying, drawing it through her until Cassie was nothing but a vessel. She struggled to hold on, but it was too much. “Hugo,” she whispered weakly, feeling the life slip from her body. But his face was a mask of ecstasy, a stranger in the dark. She didn’t know this man, or his earlier promises; all was lost in the surge of heat and power.

  Lanterns fell to the ground; paintings slipped from the walls, crumbling around them; but still, Hugo held tight. The darkness streamed through Cassie, ravaging, until she could barely feel herself at all. She was no person, no mind, nothing but a portal, feeling the power fill her up and empty out, over and over as Hugo grew stronger, clambering to his feet, holding her tighter. “Please,” she gasped again with her last breaths. She looked to him, her vision blurring. His face was alight with rapture, eyes wild and black.

  Cassie sagged in Henry and Hugo’s cruel embrace, darkness filling her, blotting out the last flickers of light. The ceiling crumbled, rock raining down as the few survivors cried out and crawled for cover. She would have wept, if she’d had the strength to muster tears. This was what she’d come here for, to die an ignoble death on a dusty cavern floor? She’d let them down. Her mother. Evie. Rose. She’d failed them.

  As if from far away, she heard a desperate, guttural cry, and then someone dragged Hugo from her body. The connection weakened, and she surfaced in time to see Tremain charging back to knock Henry to the ground. He released her, stumbling back. Through her daze, she saw Tremain, scrambling wildly to hold him down. “Go!” Tremain yelled hoarsely, his hands at Henry’s throat. The body beneath him twisted and hissed, screaming an unnatural cry. “You have to destroy the portal!”

  “But—” Cassie gasped for air. Another chunk of rock fell from the ceiling, crashing to the ground between them. She quickly turned to the pool, the dark shadows seething within. She grabbed a torch from the ground and thrust it in the water.

  The flames flared high, an unnatural blaze in the dim cavern. She stumbled back from the heat as an inferno roared, mingling w
ith screams that echoed from the pool, a century of darkness boiling in the depths. Cassie stared, transfixed by the flames. The portal was burning up, the connection severed at last.

  Suddenly, another chunk of rock fell from the ceiling. The flames spilled from the pool, rearing higher to block Tremain and Henry from view on the other side of the room. “Go!” she heard Tremain cry. “You have to get out of here!”

  “What about you?” she screamed back.

  Another section of the ceiling toppled down. She leaped back, watching with horror through the flames as Tremain and Henry were buried under the rubble.

  “Tremain?” she cried, as the room shook and trembled. “Where are you?”

  But there was only the sound of screams and fire burning out of control. She was all alone.

  34

  THE EARTH LET OUT ANOTHER VIOLENT RUMBLE. CASSIE REELED back, shielding her head from the storm of debris raining down around her. She grabbed the bloody knife from the floor and stumbled across the room, skirting the flames just as another quake gripped the cavern. She clutched onto the door frame as the world shook, watching in horror as the tunnel caved in ahead of her.

  Wheeling around, she tried to remember what Tremain had said. There was another exit, right from the main doors. She felt along the wall until she found the ridge of a hidden door. She wrenched it open and raced into the tunnel just as the ceiling gave way behind her. Stumbling and gasping, she ran, grabbing a torch from the wall to send shadows bouncing along the wall as she plunged deeper into the dark.

  Cassie felt a black fear grip her heart as she ran. This was the place of her dreams. The tunnels, the torchlight. Her feet were bare on the dusty ground and she gripped the knife tightly in one hand. She heard echoes of the ritual chanting humming off every wall, and she told herself it was all in her mind. It had to be. A shadow suddenly reared up in the gloom, and she stumbled in fear, falling hard on her hands. But there was no time for pain, not with the knife gripped, slick in her hand, or the faint clatter of footsteps getting louder. Closer.

  Scrambling to her feet, Cassie plunged on, climbing higher up the twisting staircase until she stepped through an open door and emerged with a gasp in a dungeonlike room. There was light through a slim window ahead, the surface at last, but Cassie’s relief only lasted for a split second.

  Inside the room, Olivia stood over Charlie’s crumpled body, her eyes black, her smile a mask of cruel delight. “You’re too late,” she told Cassie, breathing heavily. “He was delicious. Like Evie,” she added with a smirk.

  Cassie had no time to think. With a cry of rage, she launched herself at Olivia, sending them both crashing to the ground. Olivia clawed at her, nails scratching at Cassie’s skin, but Cassie still held the knife. With all the force she could muster, she thrust the knife into Olivia’s stomach.

  Olivia let out a cry, going rigid against her. Cassie pulled the knife out, and Olivia flinched back, whimpering in pain as she clutched at the wound.

  Cassie scrambled away from her, her hands wet with blood. “Charlie?” she cried, panic freezing her blood to ice. “Oh God, Charlie?” She crawled over to him, reaching out, cradling his head in her hands. “Please,” she whispered. “Oh God, please, Charlie. Please wake up!” Terror and guilt crashed over her. He was the one good man, the one good soul in all this.

  He let out a low moan. Her heart surged. “Wake up,” she whispered. “It’s okay, I’ve got you now.”

  Slowly, his eyes fluttered open. Cassie let out a sob of relief. “Are you hurt?” she asked, brushing his hair back from his forehead. “What did she do to you?”

  Charlie stared back blankly, his blue eyes empty and expressionless. Cassie felt her blood turn to ice. “No,” she gulped. “No, you’re going to be okay. You have to be!” She tried to reach out with her mind, to smooth and mend the damage Olivia had left behind, but she was too weak. She could barely touch the edges of his broken mind. She shook him, desperate, but he just lolled back, a rag doll, unseeing. Unthinking.

  “Charlie!” Her sob broke. She felt the earth quake again, but Cassie didn’t care. She clutched his body, sobbing, as grief shattered around her. He shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have paid the price for her fight. She was the one who deserved this, not him.

  There was another violent shudder, and the door from the tunnels burst open. Hugo stumbled into the room. His eyes landed on her, frantic. “We have to go!” he ground out. “The foundations gave way. The whole place is caving in!” He moved past her, toward the last steps to the surface. “Cassie, come on!” Hugo grabbed her hand, trying to drag her to her feet.

  Cassie resisted, blind with tears. “I can’t leave him!”

  “It’s too late,” Hugo exclaimed. “Cassie, we have to go!” He pulled at her, but she clung to Charlie, refusing to let him go. She was suspended between them, strung taut.

  And then she realized.

  Cassie sucked in a breath, and before she could think twice, she reached out with her mind again—not to Charlie this time, but to Hugo. She latched on tight to his mind, clawing deep in a savage sweep that made him cry out in pain. Cassie gripped deeper, pulling at all that darkness, that ancient force, so fresh and ripe in his mind. She drank it in, dizzy with the sudden rush of power, filling her up to the brim.

  Then she cast it out. Into Charlie, into his empty mind. She poured everything she had into Charlie and then more besides. She reached with her mind, smoothing over the broken, jagged edges, filling him with power and potential again.

  “Cassie,” Hugo gasped, falling to his knees beside her. But Cassie didn’t stop, didn’t pause for a second as the life rushed out of him, flowing through her in a thick rush. It glittered in her veins, channeled into Charlie, making him whole and new until his eyes flew open and he lurched forward with a gasp.

  “What . . . ?” he panted, clawing at the air. His gaze met hers, widening with blessed recognition this time. “Cassie? What are you doing to me?”

  It beat around her, a crescendo in her ears. She felt it flow, calling to her, demanding.

  “Cassie?” Charlie’s voice seemed distant and weak. “Cassie, let me go!”

  She jolted awake, wrenching free from the darkness with a gasp. Charlie gripped both her hands, searching her gaze, alert. “Can you hear me, Cassie? What did you do?”

  She gulped, her heart racing. “I brought you back.” She turned. Hugo lay motionless on the ground beside his cousin, Olivia’s blood pooling around them both.

  The earth gave another shake. “Come on.” Charlie pulled her to her feet and dragged her to the stairs. She stumbled upward behind him, her limbs like a deadweight. “Almost there,” he urged her on, half carrying her up the stairs.

  They stumbled through the doorway into the shock of freezing night air. Cassie looked around, blinking. They had emerged on the far side of the college, through an opening in the very walls of Raleigh itself, the thick stone hiding their tunnel escape. Across the meadow, she could see the sandstone of the college lit up. The North Tower was engulfed in flames, blazing against the dark night. Sirens sounded, noise and commotion filtering through the dark. Cassie sank to the wet grass.

  “It’s over.” Charlie gripped her tightly. “You did it. You’re okay.”

  Cassie didn’t reply. She held him in the darkness and listened to the sirens scream.

  AFTER

  MATTHEW TREMAIN WAS BURIED ON A BRIGHT SPRING MORNING, in the churchyard overlooking the river. Cassie stood at his graveside and watched the casket lower into the earth. They’d found his body in the rubble, along with the rest of the School of Night. A cave-in, the official report had said. Unsound foundations. A private supper club gone terribly wrong.

  Nobody objected to the official investigation verdict, Charlie had made sure of that. The TV news networks ran glowing obituaries to Richard Mandeville, a promising politician whose great career had been cruelly cut short. There were murmurs about what exactly had led to his demise, but nobody wa
nted to raise any more questions about the goings-on at Raleigh College. Soon, attention turned to the next scandal: another government minister in a compromising position, a new celebrity feud to fill the column inches. The deaths faded to memories; they would not be mourned for long.

  Except by her.

  Cassie listened to the priest read and felt the sting of tears in her eyes. She’d barely known him, but in his final moments, her father had proven his worth. He’d sacrificed himself to save her, just as her mother had done so many years before.

  She hoped she had made their selflessness worthwhile.

  The ceremony was small, just a collection of professors and students from the college come to pay their respects. There was to be a reception too, at a tutor’s house, but Cassie ducked away after the service, walking to meet Charlie on the edge of the graveyard.

  “So what now?” he asked, as they strolled slowly toward the street.

  “I could use a drink.” Cassie gave a rueful smile. “And wasn’t your mother promising to cook me Sunday roast?”

  “I meant, after that.” Charlie stopped. “You’re all wrapped up here, aren’t you? I mean, the society is destroyed, isn’t it?”

  She nodded slowly. “The hunger to feed, it’s fading every day. The members out there who weren’t at the ceremony should be weaker already. Eventually, their power will be gone.”

  “They won’t be able to feed off anyone else?”

  “I don’t think so. The connection is gone; it changed. I just hope it’s over for good.”

  “So are you heading back home now, or what?” Charlie looked away, casually, but Cassie could see through his façade.