“I’m sure that if you tried the door and it didn’t work, it won’t work for me either,” said Hannah.
“No, do you think so? Are you sure? Because, I mean, you’re an important and powerful pixie, so the door should really just open for you.”
I stepped forward and put my hand on Averett’s shoulder. “Not now.”
She nodded without looking at me and said, “We have to make our way through this level, and when we’re not busy getting killed we have to make the Hellcats seriously regret that they ever existed.”
“We’re going to have the best Ring Race ever,” said Matthew.
Suddenly Torace, who was not in our group, tumbled in from the stairwell. He was closely followed by a girl with curly brown hair whom I had seen around campus but didn’t know much about.
“What is WRONG with you?” she was yelling at Torace. I had some sympathy for the pixie, who seemed to be getting yelled at every time I saw him.
“One, I don’t chew my food long enough. Two, my feet smell after a long day. Three, I have a tendency to repeat stuff people said that I shouldn’t. Four, I argued with my mom once three years ago . . .”
“You forgot that you talk too much,” cried the brown-haired girl.
“No I didn’t, that’s number seven. Does that mean that one of your vices is that you interrupt?” Torace asked, blinking his large, nearly white eyes. He was a very strange-looking pixie; he must have had some faery in him. His voice was low and husky and reminded me of the Oggles. Now he turned around to see all of us staring at them. “Oh, hi,” he said.
The brown-haired girl scowled at us. “Well, we’re clearly alone. If you want to win, you might as well go on with getting rid of us.” She stamped her foot, her curls shaking a little.
“We’re kind of busy trying to beat the Hellcats,” said Averett. “Can you help us with that?”
The brown-haired girl looked at Torace. “I’d have an easier time of it if I wasn’t saddled with this one,” she said, “but yeah, I can try.”
It turned out that the girl’s name was Tules and she was a pixie. She hated Hannah and Hannah clearly felt the same way about her, because my group-mate turned on her heel and walked away as soon as Averett offered to help Tules and Torace.
“This is awful,” Hannah stormed.
Averett just rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind her, she thinks she’s important.”
Tules nodded. “Oh, believe me. I know.”
“What do you know? Did you see Greek?” I asked. “Or Keegan?”
“The gorgeous guy and the tree sprite? Yeah, they were down there. That’s how we got away. They were distracting the magic, and we saw you all make a break for it. We tried to get in another door, but it didn’t work.” She gave Torace another dirty look, as though it was somehow his fault.
“I was trying to tell Tules that I heard them saying rumble floor,” said Torace. “I was trying to tell her, but she didn’t listen.”
“There’s no such thing,” said Tules. “Besides, where would they even do something like that?”
Averett glanced over her should at the dark space beyond us that we hadn’t yet tried to explore.
“I have an idea,” she said, her voice suddenly filled with concern. All of us exchanged looks.
“Rings ALOFT!” Averett yelled in a rarely used demand for light. All of us held up our rings, illuminating the darkness beyond.
“Um, it just looks like a floor,” said Hannah. She was holding her ring up, but she looked skeptical.
“Looks can be deceiving,” said Eighellie. “Just look in the mirror.”
Hannah gave my friend a sour look. Eighellie had recovered from her mad dash up the stairs and was now eyeing the floor, looking for clues or weaknesses.
“This is stupid,” said Fog. “I’ll go check it out.”
“No,” Eighellie yelled, but Fog wasn’t going to listen to a mere darkness mage. She strutted forward, seemingly forgetting that downstairs a massive attack using magical powers was still under way.
Averett’s head snapped around to me. “If Fog wasn’t risking us losing, I’d say I’m about to enjoy this.”
Before I had a chance to respond, an earsplitting scream ripped the air. Unfortunately, Fog’s terror was nearly drowned out by fresh explosions from below.
The floor was shaking, but it wasn’t from bombs, the floor itself was rolling up and down. Waves of gold power exploded all around us, reminding me sharply of the attack on Astra last semester. No matter what the stupid Tabble had called it, there had been an attack, and I had been a witness to it.
“She set something off,” someone yelled.
Eighellie was crouching low now too. None of us knew what to do, but just as suddenly as the waves had started they stopped again, leaving Fog kneeling motionless in the middle of the floor, sobbing loudly.
“Well, what did you expect!” Averett yelled to her.
“Shut up,” Hannah snapped. “She didn’t know what was going to happen. Fog Pooky, come back!”
“Under no circumstances should you move,” Averett said harshly. Clearly she thought that whatever the gold power was, it had been triggered by Fog’s movements.
Fog was too busy crying to move anyway.
“I told you there was a rumble floor,” Torace murmured. Tules made a face but kept quiet.
Then the floor started shaking again. My legs tightened as my muscles fought to keep me upright. All around me, my teammates had started to totter and yell, stretching their arms out to keep their balance. One voice was yelling louder than the rest.
“I’ve had enough of this,” cried Hannah. The pixie lurched forward, looking furious.
“Come back!” yelled someone from nearby. The smoke and darkness made it impossible to tell who it was.
Realization dawned on me that Cornerstone wasn’t anything like what I had thought it was going to be. My sister had done Tactical, but when she told stories about it she always made it sound awesome. I wondered if she had gone through this. All those times she’d had to fight, had she been unable to see? Had her senses been assaulted as she fought for air? Had she known she was going to lose and had to search for the motivation to keep fighting anyway?
My eyes had gone unfocused, but they were still keeping track of the pixie who was trying to save us. Suddenly Hannah made a dramatic gesture, reached toward her waist, and pulled out a pouch of pixie dust. Without wasting another second, she sprinkled some directly in front of her, then took a step. Astonishingly, the rolling floor quieted. She took another step and then another, methodically moving forward, spreading pixie dust directly in front of her as she went. When she reached her cringing friend, she put a comforting arm around her.
There was another rumble and I nearly collapsed, barely regaining my balance before Hannah turned around in the middle of the floor. The outer edges of the space continued to roll, but her path stayed solid. The pixie dust had taken on a sort of glow that almost looked as though it was physically holding the floor in place.
Hannah looked like she was about to yell at us to follow, but Averett was already doing just that. The vampire stepped forward, not floating but putting one foot in front of the other as the pixie had done, demonstrating, for anyone who was still afraid, that the floor was safe.
“Eighellie, you go first,” I yelled in her ear. She gave one sharp nod.
The floor on either side of us was rubbing against itself, creating friction and sparks that lanced right and left. The sparks looked like they would be painful if they touched bare skin, so I did my best to keep my hands and arms close to my sides. Otherwise I watched the back of Eighellie’s heels, making sure I stayed close to her as we moved in single file through the room. If we’d had any other options, I would have questioned whether putting all our faith in Hannah was a good idea.
Chapter Nineteen
We raced up to the top floor. Below us there still came a steady roar of explosions, above us only one route was open. I had
an uneasy feeling in my gut, as if this was too easy, and I could tell from the others’ faces that some of them felt the same. But we really didn’t have a choice. I hoped Keegan and Greek would appear soon. I hadn’t realized how worried I was about Keegan until he disappeared in a hail of honor.
A heavy hand on my shoulder made me spin, and there he was. He was covered in dirt, he was breathing hard, the arm of his shirt sleeve was ripped, and he was blasting a grin from ear to ear.
“This is awesome,” he said. “I like other teams trying to beat me to a pulp, because it justifies my doing the same in return.”
“Congratulations, you just voiced everything that’s wrong in the paranormal world,” said Eighellie, who had turned around as soon as she realized I wasn’t behind her.
“I’m okay, too, thanks for asking,” said Keegan, giving her a lopsided grin.
I couldn’t see her face in the dark, but she didn’t say anything further.
“Greek?” I asked.
“He’s trying to bar the door so that none of the other teams can get through,” said Keegan, “then he’s going to help the stragglers from our team. He said to come and find you, because Eighellie always has good ideas and you two are always together.”
We had kept moving while Keegan talked. The rest of the line, especially Hannah, had no intention of waiting for us to catch up. “I should have an idea,” said Eighellie, ignoring the latter part of Keegan’s comment, “but there’s been too much noise to even think.”
“That’s how battle is,” said Candace, turning around. “If you take the time to think, you’re dead.” She turned right back around and kept going without giving my friend a chance to respond. Eighellie hadn’t been in the war, because her parents had wanted her to hide. Now I wondered if maybe she would have been better served by having a chance to fight. Candace clearly had, but then again the fallen angel didn’t look like she had any good ideas either.
“Door,” Averett called from up ahead. Before we could react or even think, we were streaming through a door and leaving the strange room and the waves behind.
The stairwell we entered now looked much like the one we had dashed up moments before, except that this one had finished stairs. Hannah was still in the lead, a fact that she was about to regret. A moment later she screamed, whether in pain or fear I couldn’t tell, and I realized that the first step must have been booby trapped. Since it was against the rules to actually kill or maim anyone during the game, I wasn’t sure what they had done, but Hannah quickly switched from screaming to cursing.
“What do you think happened?” Keegan whisper-yelled to me.
“Cherry juice to the face?” I offered.
“Gum sticks her to the floor?” Eighellie threw out. The line kept moving and so did we, until we reached the stairs and could see what had happened to Hannah. She was covered in something that looked like mud, something that started with her head and was working its way down over her shoulders and her formerly glossy hair. She was glaring bloody murder at everyone.
“Watch where you step,” she said venomously. “I’m going to make the Hellcat regret this if it’s the last thing I do!” Fog and Frances tried to comfort their friend, but she slapped them away.
Since Hannah was just standing there and Averett was nowhere in sight, I concluded that the vampire must now be in the lead. I’m not going to lie, that made me feel better about following a line of paranormals I didn’t trust to somewhere I didn’t know on steps I couldn’t see.
“There’s no sign of Greek,” Keegan called over my shoulder. “He should have joined us by now.”
“I’ll go back and look for him,” I said.
Keegan seized my arm. “It’s too dangerous,” he said. “What if you’re caught?”
“If Greek needs help, we can’t leave him or he’ll be caught, and we’ll lose,” I said.
Suddenly, everything around us split and changed. The line had been moving more slowly, backing up, and once I reached the last step I found out why. We were all trapped on a landing. Tolace, Tules, Averett, and the others were trying to open the three doors that the landing led to, but with no success.
The lights were now a bright white and they were making me blink. I looked around, but all I could see was a collection of black walls. Then, from below, I heard laughter. Eighellie and I exchanged looks; we both knew what had happened.
Slow, dragging footsteps sounded from the stairs, and after a longer time than any of us was comfortable with, Greek appeared. He looked disheveled, and he had a bloody lip.
“Hey,” he said. “I got caught.”
All three of the doors on the landing opened at once, framing the members of the Copper team. They were all looking awfully smug.
“You all got caught,” smirked the ridiculously blond fallen angel who had been at the lectures my sister hosted last semester. He had seemed nasty then and I knew he was nasty now. “Welcome to the losers’ circle.”
“You know what I really hate?” Keegan muttered.
“What?” I said.
“Losing,” he said.
We had lost, but it was worse than that, we’d been trampled. Those words of my friend’s were what I woke up to the next morning.
We’d had a very long night, with the promise of more to come. After the loss we were sent off to shower and sleep, but our groups eventually had to debrief, and furthermore, the next time we were all in the dining hall President Valedication planned to call a mandatory school meeting to discuss the good and bad points of the exercise.
The only positive takeaway, according to Eighellie, was that our team hadn’t done any structural damage to the Skeleton Tower. That at least was a relief, because damage that was our fault would have opened up a whole new can of worms.
Keegan had said that that didn’t make him feel much better, though, and I had to side with my friend. I truly hated to lose, and when it wasn’t just a loss but a total and utter takedown, we surely had to come up with something totally different for Cornerstone II.
I decided to skip the dining hall that morning, since I knew I’d be happier sitting in the Astra kitchen reading the Tabble and eating a muffin. Dobrov’s debriefing of our intense failure in the first Cornerstone wasn’t scheduled until Monday’s breakfast, and I appreciated the delay. Maybe he knew I couldn’t show my face.
It wasn’t until that morning that I realized how dependent I had become on the Tabble for news. Sure it was inflammatory, but at least it kept me entertained. Unfortunately, that was also the morning when the Tabble’s updates made me sick to my stomach.
STILL NO NEWS, trumpeted the first headline, which related to Ms. Cernal’s murder. They still didn’t know who the killer was or have any leads. In other Surround news, the militia was still doubling up on patrols and there were still hints and rumors of dark shapes and attacks, but the Tabble’s theory was that it could all be chalked up to frightened townspeople. “This paper will report anything the paranormal police might find, but they’re stumped,” said the article.
The next bit related to our loss in Cornerstone I. It made me so angry I could barely read the article, but it said something along the lines of how I had put on a ridiculous show that didn’t really mean anything.
After that was out of the way, the next two articles were startling in their stupidity. The first explained that if President Quest didn’t return to work soon, a special election would have to be held. The government could not run without a president, especially when the government did not know where she was or what had happened to her. The procedures were clear and an interim president would have to be voted on to serve at least until a new one could be named.
I couldn’t believe they were getting to that point, but I read on anyway.
The last article was the one that really did me in. It went like this:
Unnamed sources have revealed that the paranormal government considering going to war with darkness! Rather, considering going to war with darkness again!
Many believe that the war never really ended, and that what truly happened was that an opportunistic darkness mage seized power when she had no right to do so. Now, as it stands, she holds all the power in the paranormal world, while the rest of us scrape to get by. Why was she justified in taking over darkness? Where is Professor Erikson now? These are questions that the darkness premier should have to answer to. She cannot live outside the law and yet she thinks that she can.
Lisabelle Verlans MUST BE STOPPED is the message that the paranormals have come to. President Quest defended her, but can defend her no more.
There will be a special vote after the election to decide whether or not we should go to war.
I sucked air in through my nostrils. Were they insane? FIRST of all, we couldn’t fight Lisabelle, no one could fight Lisabelle. Up until that moment I had always thought that the insane hatred of Lisabelle was some stupid silly thing that would be dealt with through useful channels if it ever got serious. Trying to go to war with the strongest paranormal in the world as soon as Sip was gone was not that. SECOND of all, we didn’t have any power left to go to war with. There was no magic strong enough, nor were there enough paranormals, to fight the premier of all darkness.
What had she decided her job title was? I couldn’t remember as I sat shaking my head over the Tabble.
Finally I decided that I needed to get some air. I flung the door of Astra Dorm open in a fury and stopped dead when I saw someone standing there.
I met the eyes of Lough Loughphton.
Chapter Twenty
Without a word, the burly dream giver slipped quietly past me and headed into Astra. He had the same ruddy cheeks as always, and a hood drawn up over his blond head. His features were more weathered, showing signs of what he had seen and the years he had lived through. He pointed toward the stairs that led to the basement of Astra and I nodded. A stream flowed into Astra underground, and my sister had told me some ridiculous story of how they had once used it to get in. Some sort of secret tunnel or something.
Elemental Fate (Paranormal Public Book 12) Page 14
