by Rain Oxford
He knew she would break his hold soon and attack. He knew she would win if she did. Instead, he attacked first and without thought or restraint; he pulled a kitchen knife out of his pocket and steeled himself to charge.
“A teacher is coming!” a student shouted. The kids scattered. None of them wanted to be expelled or punished, not even Jamie, so he ran for the archery equipment to hide behind. Kita snapped out of her daze and ran as well.
From Jamie’s vantage point, he saw that no teacher was coming, but he was relieved. He hadn’t actually wanted to kill someone. Not yet, at least. Not her, anyway. His first kill would be someone he really hated.
There was still time for me to turn him around. I needed to deal with his anger, but he could be reasoned with.
“You should have killed her,” said a voice behind him. He spun around. His adrenaline spiked and calmed his aggression. This was an odd reaction to me, but I ignored it to focus on Veronica. I knew she was her because she looked like me.
Jamie somehow knew he wasn’t talking to me, even though he didn’t know her. Instead, he thought she was Krechea. “I’m not going with you again. I’m tired of other people wanting to use me.” He regretted helping Krechea and Vitalis after he realized that he couldn’t become as powerful as he wanted to be by following others.
Veronica smirked. “You have me confused with someone else. I don’t want to use you. I want to help you.”
He realized that he wasn’t talking to Krechea and stumbled over his next words, trying to pretend he knew all along. “You want to use my power, and in exchange, you’ll teach me something, right?”
“I want you to use your power to get what you’ve always wanted. I can help you do that. If we happen to have the same enemies, that’s all the better for me.”
“I’m not stupid. Everyone only cares about what they want. I’m going to learn how to get what I want without anyone’s help.”
She sighed. “I can see that you’re going to be fun to break. Your power is useless to me without your brother, but I don’t need you. I can get everything I want by killing your twin parasite.”
“Don’t touch my brother!”
“You’re not special, boy. There are others like you, but with more power, and who aren’t limited by their proximity to a twin. Everyone knows Jason is stronger and better than you. Why were you even born?”
“Shut up!”
“Why should I? You can’t stop me; you’re too weak.”
“I’m not weak!”
She scoffed. “Really? You can’t even kill a stupid shifter child. I clearly came to the wrong person. You’re not strong enough to take what you want.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you better than you think. It doesn’t make you weak to have a teacher.” With that, she vanished.
What the fuck? I pushed myself out of his mind to have the privacy of my own. I had faced elementals and magical creatures that could straight up vanish, but no people. Even demons were enveloped in shadows and required a measure of darkness. Whatever Veronica was, she was a tough bitch.
* * *
I couldn’t just wait for Darwin to come up with a solution. Obviously, Veronica was responsible for most if not everything that was going on. I needed to find out who she was, why she was after John’s children, and how to stop her.
I was pretty sure she put up this ward and cursed the school, which meant she was extremely powerful. I went to Darwin first, but he was busy, so I left him to find Remington in her office.
“Hey,” I said. She and Murphy were flipping through thick books.
“Hey,” Remy answered without looking up. “I remembered reading about elementals attacking. It was in another country and they had to call in a number of wizards before one actually came up with a plan to stop them. I remember that the land had been cursed or something, but I can’t remember how the elementals were stopped. I read it in an old book from the West’s library fifteen or so years ago.”
“That sounds promising. I take it you can’t remember the title?”
She shook her head. “We’ve been through every damned book in the school. I thought we had better books than this. Maybe it was at Quintessence, or even part of my father’s collection, but that doesn’t do us any good.”
“Do you remember that tribe of fae that attacked five years ago?” Murphy asked.
“The students who turned on the school?”
Murphy nodded. “They were all from the same tribe and their tribe wanted this land.”
“Yes, that’s why my father changed his admission requirements so that we never have more than five students from the same tribe or pack attending a school at once.”
“I always wondered why there weren’t more of Darwin’s pack at Quintessence,” I said.
“My father trusts Maseré, but it’s important that our students get experience outside of their pack or tribe. Stephen’s coven is the exception because Quintessence and this school both fall under his territory. When we have vampire students, most of them will be rogues or part of his coven. What about them, though?” she asked Murphy.
“You were already at Quintessence, so I don’t know what you remember of it, but the wizard council confiscated many of our books because of it.”
“That was when John was still a member,” she said.
Murphy shrugged. “I’ve only heard about him, so I don’t know if he has anything to do with this.”
“He doesn’t. He’s dead,” I said. “This would be so much easier if I had Rocky. She could find out things for us.”
“I actually wish I had treated Dorian better,” Remy said.
“He’s not dead.”
“Are you sure?” Murphy asked.
“What?”
“Familiars shouldn’t be separated from their wizards for long. It’s bad for them, and dangerous for some.”
“We don’t need anything else to worry about right now. We have to break the curse, and then we can worry about them.” That being said, I knew Rocky would outlive me easily.
* * *
I went to my bedroom and started to lock my door before my intuition warned me it was a bad idea. Instead, I connected to Darwin’s mind. “Just a heads up, I’m going to induce a vision.”
“Okay. I’ll put some problems on the board and come over.”
Although I didn’t like the idea of being babysat, I was vulnerable during my visions and didn’t have a death wish.
Instead of waiting for him, I pulled out my ring and sat on my bed. Ahz was the main person in my visions, so I concentrated on him and the house. When I slipped on my ring, I was immediately pulled into a vision.
* * *
I was with Ahz again, and he reached for me immediately. “Can you talk to me?” I asked instead of taking his hand. He didn’t answer me. “Are you hurt? Can you tell me about Veronica?”
He didn’t react at all to my words. I didn’t have many options, and he was obviously important somehow, so I took his hand. Once again, I was thrown into a vision inside my vision. In fact, I was right back where we had left off.
His mother shouted for John to stop, but he told her to get out of his way and shut up. Ahz didn’t hear anything out of her. John’s leather shoe landed on Ahz’s drawing and he was flooded with anxiety. He felt that if he couldn’t draw, everything in the world was wrong. He needed those colors. He marked on John’s shoe, but it came out wrong and made him physically ill.
“Stand up,” John said. Ahz felt John’s power invade his mind and his command to stand… and he ignored it. Although he didn’t register the command as words, his body knew what John wanted him to do. Ahz wanted to draw, though, so he ignored John. If he didn’t calm down, things would go wrong. This wasn’t a mental warning but an impression based on his anxiety.
I would have loved to have seen John’s face when he was blatantly disregarded, but Ahz wouldn’t look at him. Then John grabbed Ahz by the shoulder painfully. It wasn’t skin
contact, so John’s emotions weren’t as strong as Ahz’s mother’s had been, but it was still overwhelming.
Hate, anger, pride, and greed filled Ahz. They weren’t new emotions to him; he had sensed them in other people. However, the combination and potency of John’s evil nature hurt Ahz. He screamed.
His extreme anxiety overflowed, and I felt him connect with the world around him. I felt the strength of earth, wisdom of air, love of water, and passion of fire. I felt everything that the elements were and could be fill him in an instant. It was impossible to describe. It wasn’t even something I could truly understand.
The next thing I knew, the world was shaking and the wind was whipping around him threateningly. It was answering him. The elements were answering his call for help. I didn’t need words between us or investigative skills to understand what he was telling me. I could feel it. Not only could he control the elements, but he had a bond with them.
He was more powerful than an elemental, he was immune to John’s powers, and he was my brother.
We were standing in the room again. He broke contact with me and lowered his hand. He looked at my chest.
“Ahz, the school I’m at has been cursed and the elementals are hurt. Can you help them?”
He held out his hands and stared at them for a moment. In a split second, a sheet of paper appeared in his hands and he held it out for me. I took it and examined the painting.
His skill was up there with Henry’s, but his style was more abstract, so it was difficult to make out the school grounds. However, the sigil drawn across it was not. He knew about the school.
“Do you know who’s doing this?” I asked.
The painting disintegrated in my hand.
* * *
Suddenly, I was being shaken. I jerked up and gasped. I was overheated and my throat was raw, like I had been inhaling smoke. Naturally, I looked around for a fire, but there was none. I was in my room with Darwin, who had put on gloves, removed my ring, and woke me.
“I think your visions are getting more and more dangerous,” he said, concerned. There was none of the usual humor in his voice and his accent was nearly gone. He wasn’t trying to hide his intelligence or overcompensate because he felt uncomfortable. He was genuinely worried for me.
“I think I’m getting more powerful the more I use them. I know how to save the school… but we have to get someone here.”
“Who?”
“His name is Ahz. He’s a child, but I think he might be more powerful than Langril and as intelligent as you.”
“He sounds catastrophically dangerous.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s also autistic.”
* * *
I told Remy, Henry, and Darwin about Ahz. Instead of brainstorming with us, Darwin decided to finish his project. “If his I.Q. was not higher than all three of ours combined, I would be insulted by that,” Henry remarked.
We were in the library, surrounded by books that offered us no solution.
“I.Q. tests aren’t accurate tests of intelligence,” Remy said.
“Thanks, Darwin.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, he wouldn’t shut up about it when I suggested we offer them to the students for fun.”
“Maybe there’s a spell to track down everyone with John’s blood,” I suggested.
“There is absolutely one, but it would require John’s blood,” Remy said.
“You can’t use mine?”
“Sure, but it would only work to find your children.”
“When we escape, we can use the shadow pass to find Ahz,” Henry said.
“Yeah, I’m just worried that there might be more of Veronica’s little pawns, waiting until I leave to attack.”
“Ah, you’re worried about us?” Remy asked, teasingly.
“Maybe we should be more worried about Veronica,” I said. “There’s got to be someone who can tell us what she is.”
“Are you sure she’s not a ghost?” Henry asked.
“No, I’m not. Darwin said ghosts weren’t that powerful, though.” Surprisingly, he didn’t have an answer based on the little information I could give him. He said there were elementals and elemental-like creatures that can appear and vanish, but without knowing exactly, we can’t find her weakness. However, even an elemental shouldn’t have had the power to create this curse on her own.
“Maybe you can summon her,” Henry said.
“If she is an elemental of some form, that would be a bad idea,” Remy argued.
“She appeared to the twins before the curse,” I said. “She had four of my siblings already signed up to do her bidding. Maybe she can’t get in here either.”
“It would make sense,” Remy said. “Having more power doesn’t make you less susceptible to this kind of damage.”
“Then now is a good time to get some investigating in before we break the curse and she can stop us.”
A deep rumble erupted in the ground and we all grabbed onto the tables an instant before the room shook. When the quake finally settled, I felt tension in the air and realized it was the unbalanced magic.
“If we don’t stop the curse soon, the elementals will tear this school apart,” Remy said.
“I’ll go check on Darwin,” Henry said.
“I’ll make sure there’s no damage,” Remington said.
“I’ll check on my siblings,” I volunteered reluctantly. However, as I started to follow them out, my intuition stopped me cold. When my ghost mark suddenly tingled painfully, I turned to see Eugene.
“I have to wake them. They’ve been asleep too long. It’s not good for them.” He wasn’t looking at me, and he seemed to be talking to himself.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. He didn’t respond. “Can you even hear me?”
This time, he looked right at me for a moment with a desolate expression before slowly sinking through the floor. After a moment, my mark stopped tingling, yet my intuition pushed me harder. I briefly considered putting on my vision ring, but decided to follow him instead. I got out my penlight, pulled the lever, and descended the steps into darkness.
The entrance room was empty of furniture with concrete walls. It would have made a good storm shelter, except that we had major doubts about its safety. The tomb of an ancient wizard was down there. There were also dozens of rooms, many of which were full of books, magical supplies, furniture, and general storage.
It was creepy, but not nearly as ominous as the booby-trapped underground tunnels of Quintessence. These rooms weren’t meant to kill intruders.
I stopped at a wall between two doors to study what I first thought was decorative brick. It was actually hieroglyphs. I pulled out my notebook, put the light in my mouth, and sketched the symbols as best as I could. Although I could bring Darwin down there to see it himself, things like this had a habit of disappearing.
Afterwards, I continued my exploration. I only covered five rooms when I felt Darwin pushing his way into my head. I let him in. “Where are you, bro?”
“In the underground.”
“You really need to get out more. Come out here. I’ve got a plan.”
“Another ritual?”
“Not really. It involves a bit of modern magic, a bit of ancient magic, and a bit of weird science.”
* * *
I met up with Henry, Remington, and Darwin next to what had to be the ugliest plan he had ever come up with, smack dab on a sigil.
The contraption was mostly metal with some crystals, sigils, and a sheet of leather stretched over it like a ceiling. It vaguely resembled a ten-by-ten dog pen with straps of fencing, metal pipes, and metal mesh nets. On top of the leather was a metal pole with used soda cans taped, glued, and tied to it. Wooden floor panels covered the floor of it. There were three old wind-up clocks and a stopwatch hanging from the leather top. There were also gears and wires that operated the door/gate into it.
It was part steampunk, part abandoned recycling plant.
“Alright. Second verse. The plan
is just a little different than last time, with a very different goal. We were sabotaged by your siblings last time, and I want to keep this plan between us. It’s a lot more dangerous with a much smaller chance of success.”
“How small?”
“Twenty-two percent, not accounting for mistakes, mishaps, and misfortunes.”
“Is that your way of saying that anything can go wrong?”
“I’m saying that something will go wrong if we take too long. It’s a matter of time. Hopefully, we’re successful before it does.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Remy said.
“I don’t like the idea of dying here,” Henry insisted.
“I wouldn’t be risking our lives if I didn’t think I could do it, but it’s Devon’s decision in the end.”
“I’m the headmaster here, shouldn’t it be my decision?” Remington asked.
“There’s a fifteen percent chance this will kill you, and I can’t place the blame on someone who got killed, so…”
“He’s joking,” Henry said. “Devon is the most objective one of us regarding this risk, and he has the most experience in making life-or-death decisions on a moment’s notice.”
“How am I not objective?” Remington asked.
“It’s your own life, which you would sacrifice for your students in a heartbeat.”
“I’m not going to sacrifice my girlfriend,” I said.
“For the sake of nearly two hundred children?” Remington asked.
“Well…”
“Plus, if we don’t get out of here, we will die, too.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“It’s a matter of time,” Darwin said. “We’re literally running out of time. We may have a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, or a few months, but unless we get out, we’re going to die. At any time, the magic will become so unbalanced that everything inside the ward will start to come apart. You think these storms and monsters were bad? That’s just the beginning. I can’t say how fast it will happen, but the more magic people use, the faster it will descend. In the end, there will be nothing but death.”
