Smoke and Mist (The Academy Book 1)

by Kate Hall

  “You stay here on the East end. Mark, you take the West.” Mark immediately starts walking, setting their current location on his phone. “Alex, I want you on the Southern side. Do what Mark’s doing and take note of where we are so you know when you’re there. I’ll go North.”

  Alex follows Mark to the right, and they’re quickly out of sight.

  When she’s in place, she starts a conference call with everyone and sets her phone on the ground, shivering in the December chill. “Alright, let’s go. Hit it as hard as you can as often as you can. And if you get through, find Sarah.”

  “If you get the chance,” Alex says, his voice breaking up over the shoddy reception, “kill Helen. This ends today.”

  Gabby doesn’t know many offensive spells, so she uses a basic attack—a thin wisp of magic that’s made to burn its target like acid. She goes through the movements in quick succession. Her phone is on the ground, and Mark is mumbling a spell followed by the crashing of thunder, and a loud whooshing sound must be Alex’s fire. Whatever Elizabeth is doing, she’s completely silent.

  We’re coming for you, Sarah. Just hold on, Gabby thinks even though her friend can’t hear her.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Sarah

  HELEN IS SPEAKING AS SHE CUTS. NOT A SPELL, but mad ramblings that Sarah tries desperately to ignore. “He doesn’t even love you. He’s under a love potion that I gave him. It was so he would stay near you, and the tracking spell I added is nearly undetectable.”

  No, it’s not true. Helen is lying. She has to be.

  “It’s really a shame that you take so many photos of your friends. It made it so much easier for me to choose the remaining ingredients for my ritual,” she says.

  Sarah’s phone. It hadn’t been found. The attack on Kendall was her fault. If she hadn’t kept the pictures from the dance, if she hadn’t left her phone in the woods...

  Cut.

  Her throat is raw as another scream comes out, although her eyes are out of tears now. She keeps her eyes to the sky, which is hinting at the beginnings of a sunrise.

  Then, as the tip of the knife grazes the top of her sternum, another scream pierces the air.

  Sarah knows what it sounds like when a dragon is screaming, ready to attack, to dive down on its prey and rip it to shreds. She’s been educated on that sound her whole life. And, mere months ago, she heard a similar scream from a different dragon, a scream of pain. This is utterly different, and it penetrates down to her bones. This isn’t a creature in pain, begging to be saved. This is a creature determined to kill.

  It plummets from the air above them, and Helen drops the knife in shock when she turns up to see it. A green arrow diving through the morning freeze.

  Sarah half thinks that it’s after her, coming to put her out of her misery. But then, when it slams into Helen, she sees the red feathers raised on the back of its neck.

  Arthur tears and snaps at Helen, but she’s cunning and capable of holding him off. With years under her belt training animals, it makes sense that she can keep a juvenile dragon from ripping her throat out, even if he is sixty pounds. Still, he claws at her arms and bites anything he can, pulling out small chunks of skin and tearing at her clothing.

  And, Sarah realizes after a few moments of dazed thought, keeping her distracted. She stumbles to her feet, but collapses to her knees as the world spins around her. She looks to her arms for the first time, and the same symbols that have haunted her for years are now carved down her arms. All but the one on her chest. She could vomit. Blood is streaming down, pooling in the crevices of her elbows.

  She forces herself to stand once again, and Helen tries to chase her, fingers clawing the air inches from her face, but Arthur is upon her once again, gouging at her every chance he gets. Her face still has the same blackened, wild eyes and pale skin, but from her collarbone down are stains and splashes of red, similar to those marring Sarah’s body.

  The fastest Sarah can move is a sort of walk-jog toward the dilapidated house, her head still trapped in dizziness, either from the blood loss or the head trauma.

  The house isn’t the greatest plan, but if she can hide long enough, then she will be rescued. With every beat of her heart, she loses more blood, and just the sight of it is making her faint, but she keeps going.

  One of the steps breaks beneath her, and she has to catch herself on the porch to keep from falling in toward the ground. When she pulls her leg out, her calf scrapes against a nail that’s sticking out, and it buries its way into her flesh. A shooting pain rips its way up her body, and she has to stifle a scream. She glances behind her, and Arthur is going after Helen’s legs, and Helen’s black eyes embed themselves into Sarah’s.

  After carefully unhooking the nail from her skin, she limps into the house, and, aside from the musty smell and the layer of dust, nothing has changed from that night six years ago. The ceramic coffee mug Helen had been drinking from is even sitting in the same place she left it, resting on the counter, waiting to be picked back up. Footsteps—recent ones—trail through the dust on the hardwood floors. So Helen has been in here, then. A good deal of the footsteps lead to the basement, and the visceral stench of rot that weaves through the evening is stronger in here. She shudders.

  When she slams the front door shut behind her, she goes to sit at the kitchen table to stifle the bleeding. Hiding will be useless if there’s a trail leading right to her. She takes a pair of kitchen scissors out of the knife block and cuts all the way up the leg of her pants, then rapidly chops around in a circle around her thigh. The skin is torn, and a chunk of fat hangs out of the hole. She gags, but she has to do this if she wants to make it out of here. How did she think, even for a minute, that she would be able to bear the pain Helen would put her through?

  She puts the scissors in her mouth and carefully wraps what is now a long strip of cloth around her calf, covering the hole three times. When she ties the knot tight, she groans against the cold metal in her mouth, a dull pain throbbing up her leg and into her torso. She takes a coat of the rack by the kitchen door, covering the markings on her arms. That will have to do. She rinses her hands in the sink for just a moment, but Arthur can’t hold Helen forever.

  Now, all she has to do is hide until help arrives. Thunder echoes in the distance. She uses the sound as an opportunity to sprint up the stairs before sneaking through the hall, avoiding any soft spots in the wood. She goes into the guest room, locking herself in the closet and burrowing deep under a pile of musty blankets and pillows. She whispers as many spells as she can think of—protection spells, her favorite barrier spell, even a sound muffling charm. Anything that will give her even a second of extra time. It all seems so flimsy in the face of Helen’s darkness.

  Just as orange morning light begins to seep in through the cracks in the slatted door, Helen’s footsteps make their way into the house. Sarah is tempted to send a mental call for Arthur, to find out if he’s okay, but it may be a beacon straight to her position if Helen catches the telepathy.

  Helen stomps through the rooms—she wants Sarah to know she’s there, wants her to be scared. The worst thing is, it works. While her leg throbs and her arms sting, Sarah freezes, holding her breath for as long as possible to make no sound. She can still feel sharp magic weaving its way through the cracks in the floorboards, and she only hopes that it can’t tell Helen where she is. The entire house is holding its breath along with her, waiting for her to slip up so that Helen can hear her. It doesn’t make even the faintest of creaks, despite its disrepair. It wants Sarah to be found, so she has to be better.

  At the same time that something heavy thumps on the roof, the shelf that’s been tirelessly supporting Sarah’s weight cracks, the sound utterly deafening in the silence.

  The stomping makes its way to the bedroom, and her spells dissipate instantly. The closet door is ripped off its hinges, and Sarah cries out. When she’s uncovered, Helen drags her out by her hair. Sarah kicks and screams. She sends telepathic cries
to Arthur, begging him for help. This time, she will not go quietly. Her head throbs and her wounds ache, but she will not take this. Helen drags her all the way through the house, down the stairs and out the front door.

  “Running just made it harder for you, sweetie. It’s going to hurt a lot more now, you know. You really have nobody to blame except for yourself. You’re the one who ruined everything that night and made me do this the hard way.” Her voice is still sweet, but with hints of bitterness.

  Sarah thrashes and bucks, kicking and grabbing for something to keep her from being taken back outside, back to the bloodied spot on the ground that has never quite healed from the dark ritual Helen performed all those years ago. The grass is black, and her mouth is filled with the coppery taste of blood.

  She fights as hard as she can, her energy somewhat restored from a combination of decreased bleeding and increased adrenaline. Still, it isn’t enough. Still, she’s pulled along like nothing more than a little dog on a leash. No matter how hard she fights, she isn’t going to win.

  When Helen flings her to the ground, back to the spot where her blood is now frozen to the Earth, she cries. There’s nothing dignified about it—she doesn’t want to be hurt anymore, but no matter how hard she tries to save herself, she’s still not going to make it. Nobody is going to save her—that much is clear by now. A weak whinny sounds from the direction of the barns, which once used to house some of the most expensive horses and unicorns in the world. Sarah turns her head, and, just past the first barn, her eyes catch the glint of an opalescent unicorn horn, although the animal it’s attached to is faded and malnourished, its features hollow. This isn’t the same one from before—this creature wasn’t lucky enough to escape.

  “After you’re gone,” Helen says, her breath hot in Sarah’s ear, “I can finish what I started.” She picks up the knife gingerly, like someone might pick up a dropped phone. She inspects it, although Sarah can’t think of why she’d need to. “I was hoping to get you after I killed you parents, but I was too weak back then.”

  The accident. The truck driver had insisted that he didn’t remember a thing. That there was no way he could have done it. That he must have been possessed. Of course.

  She considers begging for her life, but that won’t help. Helen doesn’t care about her. “Why, Helen? What made you hate us—hate me—so much? Why are you summoning demons? You were so good. I loved you so much.” Sarah whispers.

  A dissonant laugh scrapes out of Helen’s mouth. “Helen? She hasn’t been around in years. You know, she gave up fighting me so easily. She begged me to spare you. If nobody else, she wanted you to live. But that just isn’t possible.”

  Everything clicks in that moment. The sudden change, the black eyes, the darkness that pulsates around her. This was never Helen. It’s someone—something—else. So there’s no hope for Sarah to reason with her.

  With it.

  She leans over her legs, holding her head in her hands. Tears stream down her face. This isn’t a dignified way for her to die—covered in blood and tears and snot—but she can’t stop.

  “No,” she moans, mostly to herself. Her shoulders rack with pain and tears, and she says it again, a little louder. “No.” It isn’t a whine, more like a command. Something she’d tell Arthur when he’s caught chewing on her bedspread. The tears keep falling, but her voice only gets stronger. “No.”

  Helen grabs her by the wrist and laughs. “Yes,” she hisses. “Don’t worry. It’s almost over. I’d say that you’ll see your parents again, but your soul won’t even exist anymore.”

  She draws the knife up to Sarah’s chest, and just as a tiny bead of blood trickles down her chest, Sarah screams, the word coming out with a power that she’s never felt before.

  “NO!”

  It bursts out of her, a shout of defiance. A white light shoots out in all directions, blinding her. Everything around her burns cold, her skin blistering. It hurts. The pain is so much worse than everything else. Worse than the accident, worse than her leg injury in the woods, worse than her head, worse than the markings...

  The thud of the knife falling into the dirt is the last sound in the entire world.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Alex

  WITH A FLASH OF NUCLEAR WHITE LIGHT, THE barrier is gone. One moment, Alex is throwing all the fire he can at it, and the next, it sheds away, flaking like ash. The one thing he can say for certain is that this has nothing to do with the futile magic they’ve been throwing at it. This destruction had come from inside.

  He doesn’t question it—he just runs, blind for a moment as he sprints through the sparse woods on his side of the barrier. He focuses his telepathy on the center, searching for any sign of life. It’s only a minute or two before he sees the house—or, more accurately, what used to be a house.

  His heart races as he slows at the treeline. Everything here has been shorn to the ground, like a bomb went off in a bubble. One of the barns is nothing but wood and metal past the first horse stall, and that path of destruction follows all the way to the tall oak that still stands just behind the collapsed home. He searches the center of this destruction, anything that could explain what happened, when he sees a heap right in the middle, a girl with short brown hair lying on the ground in blood-soaked clothes.

  He dashes toward her, falling to his knees behind her. She doesn’t move at his arrival. He counts to ten, hoping beyond hope for just one breath, but nothing comes. Not again. Please, not again. He wants to touch her, but he’s isn’t sure he can survive what he’ll find if he turns her over.

  Holding his breath, he leans down and gently rolls her onto her side. Her eyes are shut, her face peaceful. He puts his fingers gently against the side of her neck to feel for a pulse. If she’s breathing, he can’t see it. His hand is shaking too much to find anything in her veins that might show him she’s alive.

  “Please,” he whispers. “Please be okay.” A drop of water drops on her face, but it’s not raining. There aren’t even any clouds. It takes a moment for him to recognize the tear as his own.

  He brushes her hair out of her face and tries checking for a pulse again.

  “Sarah, where are you?” Gabby’s voice calls from the woods across from him. She emerges from the trees, Arthur dragging her by her sleeve as he hovers in mid-air. She freezes the instant her eyes land on Alex’s, her face paling.

  He looks back to Sarah, who still hasn’t moved.

  “It’s alright,” he says, choking on his words. “We’re gonna get you home now.” He picks her up and caresses her. The least he can do is carry her back. If he hadn’t left her alone earlier, maybe this wouldn’t be happening. He has to believe he would have been powerful enough to stop Helen when she came for Sarah at the house.

  “What’s going on?” Gabby asks, her voice desperate and close. He doesn’t look at her, doesn’t answer. He won’t put words to his fear. That would make this moment real. If he doesn’t speak, Sarah still has a chance.

  While his eyes rest on her face, he catches the slightest flutter in her eyelids.

  He stops breathing.

  She opens her eyes.

  “You’re alive,” he says, the words coming out in a rush of air. His knees go week, but he can’t fall over. He still has to get her to help.

  He looks at Gabby, who has tears welling in her eyes. “She’s alive,” he says louder.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Sarah

  SARAH IS ONLY IN THE HOSPITAL FOR A FEW DAYS, but she doesn’t return to St. Merlin’s. She’s been ordered to remain on bedrest for the rest of the semester, and a psychologist comes to the house once a week. At first, she doesn’t talk—not about anything that matters, anyway. She discusses Arthur, her new room decor, her favorite shows, but not the incident.

  After a few sessions, though, she opens up, words tumbling out of her faster than she can think of them. The doctor collects them into a glass ball, and Sarah can finally breathe again.

  Alex an
d Gabby are at the house every single day, and they even spend most weekends with her. They help her with her homework and keep her updated on all her classes.

  “Mr. Thompson put me with Lionel Schmidt in Potions,” Alex tells her, rolling his eyes. “She’s literally the worst.”

  One of the perks of having a guardian who’s a teacher is that Sarah is excused from attending classes easily, as Mark seems to know all the rules and paperwork and loopholes to exploit.

  The marks carved into her arms are wrapped in bandages so she doesn’t have to look at them, and, when they’ve healed into angry red scars, she covers them with long-sleeved shirts. Before he goes home for winter break, Alex gives her an oversized grey sweater as a birthday and solstice gift, which she wears every day to stave away the loneliness. It smells smoky, like a campfire, so she suspects that it has some sentimental value. He promises to return as quickly as possible, and he video chats with her every night until she falls asleep. She doesn’t ask about the things Helen—no, the demon—told her.

  Over break, she doesn’t see Gabby as much as she’d like, but she knows that her family is acclimating to having Rudy back in the house after his time in the hospital. At least Sarah has Mark and Elizabeth, who shower her with attention. For her birthday, they spend the afternoon at the zoo, lying in the false summer field of the dragon aviary while Arthur frolics with the other dragons. They marathon bad Hallmark movies throughout December, and they even open presents under the plastic tree that Elizabeth brought home one afternoon for them to decorate together.

  Carefully, Mark asks, “Do you want to try seeing your aunt in the hospital today? Since it’s a holiday?”

  The room goes from jovial to serious in an instant.

  Twelve bodies had been recovered on the property, all girls around Sarah’s age with the horrible marks embedded in their arms. Some had decayed, others hadn’t.