Shadow Caster: The Nightwatch Academy book 1

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “Wait, what? This place is fucking freezing. There is no humidity.”

  She looked over her shoulder, and when she turned back to face me, there was a deep weariness etched onto her face.

  She gnawed on her bottom lip. “Dammit, child.” She raised a hand, and green power jettisoned toward me.

  Unconsciousness claimed me.

  Twenty-Eight

  “Indigo? Indigo, wake up.”

  My eyes snapped open to Payne leaning over me. His blond hair had flopped onto his forehead, and two lines of concern sat between his brows.

  The lab, the amulet. Madam Mariana. “Shit.” I sat up quick, and my head spun.

  “Easy.” Payne steadied me. “The residue of Mariana’s enchantment will take a moment to wear off completely.”

  I scanned the room through the bars of the cell we were in. The shelves and counters housed strange-shaped glass vessels with tubing running between them. A long counter with stuff on it. A lab. Alchemy? There was a counter with feytech armor balled up on it--feytech skin to be precise. The ceiling was rock face, the ground rough stone.

  “Where are we?”

  “Mariana’s secret lab,” Payne said. “It sounds like a bad joke, but I doubt whatever she has planned for us is funny.”

  “You found something, and she’s involved?”

  He nodded, his expression grim. “When we were examining the residue, she was dismissive. She kept saying it was nothing, but there was something too defensive about it all, so I did some more research. Florina showed me to the books on endangered supernaturals, and there was a book missing. She checked the catalog, and the missing book was on the history of morphs.”

  “Morphs? As in the creatures that can mimic organic matter?”

  “Yes.”

  I was confused. “What has a morph got to do with anything?”

  “I’m not sure,” Payne said. But Florina helped me find another text with a page on morphs, and it mentioned a bright yellow secretion that morphs leave behind after they’ve adopted a form.”

  “What are you saying? That Minnie is dead? That the Minnie at the Academy is a morph?”

  “No.” Payne shook his head. “We did her bloodwork. She is definitely a nightblood.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m not sure. All I know is that there was a morph in that library and that it somehow took Minnie’s memories.”

  “Leaving her intact … but that isn’t how morphs work, is it?”

  “Not from what we understand about them, no.”

  “So, then … we could be wrong?”

  “Yes.”

  The door to the room opened, and a figure staggered in carrying something. No, not something, someone. Madam Mariana to be precise. She hung limp and lifeless in Redmond’s arms. He laid her carefully on one of the countertops then stroked her hair back from her face.

  Payne gripped the bars. “Redmond, what the hell is this?”

  The Trial Master turned to us as if seeing us for the first time. “Oh, yes. You two.” He looked down at Mariana. “Cora wanted to wipe your memories and let you go. But it isn’t that simple anymore.” He tugged at his hair. “Everything is messed up.”

  “Redmond.” Payne’s voice was calm and soothing. “Talk to me, man. Maybe we can work this out together.”

  Redmond shook his head vehemently. “There is no other way out. I must get rid of it all. I can’t leave any evidence.” He stroked Madam Mariana’s cheek. “At least she won’t feel a thing. It’s one of her strongest concoctions. She just never expected me to use it on her.”

  “What is this place?” Payne asked.

  “My lab.” He looked to Mariana again. “Our lab. This was our project, our way out of this fucking place, and now …” His voice cracked. “Now, I’ll have to do it alone.”

  “Do what alone?” Payne prodded. “Redmond, come on.”

  Redmond fixed his eyes on Payne. “Just six more years, that’s all I have left before I can leave, before they give me what’s owed to me. I’ve worked too hard to let anything come between me and my freedom.” He looked down on Madam Mariana. “Not even you, my love.”

  My love … So, Redmond and Mariana were a thing, and not Payne and Mariana. Was it those two I’d overheard in the lab the other day?

  “Redmond.” There was a snap to Payne’s voice. “What do you know about the morphs?”

  Redmond smiled weakly. “Everything. They were my ticket out of here. Did you know that morphs reproduce asexually when in their natural form? No? Not many people do. They breed once a year. All it took was one to breed an army of hounds, but I didn’t think far enough ahead. I should have kept a couple of morphs aside in their natural forms, as backup, just in case my breeder died. But I was rushing. Wanting to get the trial ready last year. I had Mariana bind all the offspring into hound form. I should have asked her to leave a couple in their natural form,” he chided himself.

  “Wait,” Payne said. “Are you saying you created hounds out of morphs?”

  “Have you any idea how dangerous it is to catch a fomorian hound? I want to live to reap the rewards of this fucking position, and the damned knights at the fortress are adamant that we use feral hounds in the trials. Otherwise, I would have just taken some of our stabled ones and bred them, but the fucking stable hands keep track of everything. They’ve even named the hounds, and every knight is allocated one, so if any went missing, they’d notice. The bullshit they feed the cadets about the catacombs being a breeding ground is only half right. Like hell they’d allow it to grow out of control. They expect fresh hounds each year and slaughter the ones left alive after the trials.”

  “Archer always made it look so easy. Replacing the slaughtered hounds in a matter of days with fresh feral until he had his little … accident.” He cleared his throat.

  Why had he said it that way? With that inflection … Wait a minute. “Did you have something to do with it? Did you have something to do with the accident?”

  He leaned back against the counter. “I needed that position. It should have gone to me, not a cadet just out of training.”

  “What did you do?” Payne’s tone was hard.

  He shrugged. “Mariana enraged the hound, which interfered with Archer’s little hound whisperer trick.”

  I felt sick. “And then you played the hero and got him back to the barracks.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean for him to lose a whole leg. Maybe a hand or just be badly injured. Long enough for me to step in and prove myself.” He winced. “But it worked out more permanently than that, and I can’t say I’m sorry. Mariana and I used the hounds Archer had already caught as templates to create our army. No one noticed. The trials since have gone smoothly, and the morphs have taken well to their new roles, even killed a couple of cadets. It was perfect.”

  Oh, God. He was crazy.

  “Then what went wrong?” Payne asked.

  How could he be so calm, so reasonable when talking to this madman?

  Redmond scratched at his head. “The morphs in hound form started to lose it. Not a bad thing if they were going to be taking part in the trial, but then they started shifting in and out of hound form.” He sighed. “The binding was losing its grip. Mariana ran some tests and realized the issue was with the breeder morph. The binding had somehow linked it to its offspring, and it was hungry. You see, morphs feed off the memories of the dead creature whose form they take, but these morphs hadn’t been given that option. We’d manipulated them into existence and bound them using weaver magic, and they were slowly unraveling, so we had to get them memories.”

  “You brought the breeder onto Academy grounds,” Payne said. “You let it feed.”

  “Yes, but we didn’t kill anyone. Mariana put the student into a deep death like slumber, which allowed the morph to feed on the memories, and because the breeder was bound in its natural form, it couldn’t take on the student’s form.”

  “You used the vents to get the breeder into the Acade
my?” Payne asked.

  “It was the easiest way.”

  Anger bubbled up my throat. “The easiest way? You think any of this has been easy on anyone? You fucking wanker, you took their lives from them. You took my best friend away from me!” I rattled the bars, wanting nothing more than to grab him by the throat and squeeze.

  His lip curled. “You have no idea what it’s like. You’re a child.”

  “Fix it. You have to fix it. Give them back their memories.”

  He looked at me blankly. “There is no fix. It’s done. And that’s why I must follow through, or they’d have lost their memories for nothing.” He smiled, as if that was explanation enough, as if his words should reassure me.

  The urge to break his face burned down my arm and coalesced in my fist.

  Payne placed a hand on my shoulder. “Indigo, please …”

  His soothing tone took the edge off my anger, reminding me of the precarious position we were in. I took a deep breath and stood down.

  “What are you going to do, Redmond?” Payne asked carefully. “Talk to me. Maybe I can help.”

  But Redmond had that stupid dazed expression on his face again, as if he was fucking high, and who knows, maybe he was. “I couldn’t have done any of this without Mariana’s weaver power. We were going to have a wonderful life, but she’s lost her resolve. The breeder died a week ago, and the plan is unraveling. The morphs will soon break out of the bindings. There is no option but to get rid of them and start afresh. With the catacombs gone, I can offer the knights a fresh trial, one that doesn’t involve my having to catch feral hounds.” He stroked Mariana’s cheek. “But you’re not a killer, are you, my love? I can’t blame you for that. But I can’t let you warn Archer either.”

  Wait a second. “What do you mean with the catacombs gone?”

  He blinked slowly at me. “Oh, it’s all set up. I planted the explosives an hour ago. I’m going to cause a cave-in.”

  Twenty-Nine

  A cave-in. He was going to blow up the catacombs?

  Oh, crap.

  How long had I been unconscious? “What time is it?”

  Redmond headed to the door. “It’s time I left. The cadets will be here in a moment, and I need to open the doors and then seal them in.” He had the grace to look guilty. “Seal you all in before the bombs go off.”

  Seal us all in. That meant … We were in the catacombs. The lab was in the fucking catacombs.

  “Wait, Redmond,” Payne said. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll help you get rid of the morphs. We can keep this between us. If you do this, you’ll be killing innocent students.”

  “That’s what Mariana said.” He took a step back into the room, his expression earnest, as if desperate for us to understand why he was about to murder us. “But don’t you see, this is the only way to clear up this mess. A tragedy like this will make the knights rethink their trials. How many cadets have died in this trial in the past? Too many. It’s pointless death. This way, I kill two birds with one stone. I cover up the mess I’ve made, and I save future cadets from this pathetic ritual. In a few minutes, the cadets will be sealed inside, and two hours later, the bombs will go off. They will be martyrs to a greater cause.”

  “Is that what’s going to help you sleep at night?” I felt sick. “You’re a murderer, plain and simple. A greedy fucking murderer.”

  Redmond ignored me and opened the door.

  “Redmond, stop. Please, reconsider,” Payne implored.

  “I’m sorry, I wish it hadn’t come to this.” Redmond’s mouth turned down. “But I can’t risk losing my position.”

  The door closed behind him with a firm click.

  Payne grabbed the bars and tugged. He began to examine the cell, looking for weaknesses. Looking for a way out. My attention was drawn to the pocket of shadow in the corner of our prison.

  Fucking hell. I’d had an out all along. I could have leapt out and smashed Redmond’s smug face in.

  I made a sound of exasperation, which drew Master Payne’s attention.

  “Don’t worry, Indigo. We will find a way out of this.” His mouth said one thing and his eyes another.

  He was right, we could get out of here, but it would mean exposing my secret to Master Payne.

  There was no choice.

  If I didn’t act now, cadets would die. “I know we will because I can get out of here, but you have to promise me you’ll keep what you see to yourself.”

  He frowned. “If you can get out of this cell, then do it.”

  “Promise me.”

  He made a sound of exasperation. “I promise.”

  I took a deep breath, visualized the other side of the room, and then ran into the shadows.

  I stepped out facing Master Payne, still locked in the cell. His mouth was hanging open.

  “I call it shadow phasing.” I searched for a key to the cell.

  There, by the weird test tube thing. I grabbed the key and raced to the cell to let Master Payne out.

  “We have to get to the entrance to warn the others,” Master Payne said. He looked at Mariana’s sleeping form. “The catacombs are a maze. You’ll need to go without us. Phase out to the entrance. Can you do that?”

  “What time is it?”

  Payne looked at his watch. “Ten after nine.”

  “It’s too late. The cadets are already in here. There is no way out.”

  “This place is used for trials. The seal is on a timer, so once it’s shut, it won’t open until the trial is up. But there must be another way in. A back door. But only someone who ran a trial would know.”

  My pulse leapt. “Hyde.”

  “Yes.” His eyes lit up. “You need to get to Hyde. Tell him what’s happened. He might have a map. We have two hours before the bombs go off. You can do this, Indigo.”

  “I don’t want to leave you here. Maybe I can take you with me?” Although I hadn’t thought about carrying a passenger, what harm was there in trying.

  “No.” Payne shook his head. “This ability is new, right? Untested?”

  “Well, I know I can get from one pocket of shadow to another if I focus on a place or person. I end up as close to them as the shadows allow.”

  “But have you carried anyone?”

  “Not yet, but …”

  “Then we can’t risk it.” His tone was firm. “Every ability comes with a consequence. It’s why weavers have the amulets to recharge when they use their weaver power. Whatever this ability is, it will have a cost. Usually a cost to your energy levels. Carrying someone could drain you and make it impossible for you to get back in with a map.” He cupped my shoulders. “You have no choice. You need to leave me here. You’re our only hope.”

  He was right.

  As much as I hated to leave him there, there was no other choice.

  I grabbed the feytech skin off the counter. “You’ll need to turn around while I get changed.”

  He obliged. “Why?”

  I quickly shrugged out of my slacks and shirt and pulled on the feytech. “The mist isn’t kind on manmade materials. Makes me wonder how Marianna got us here. She couldn’t have gone through the mist without armor.”

  “Weaver enchantment?”

  “Possibly. I’m done.”

  He turned to face me and nodded curtly. “You can do this, Indigo.”

  I blew out a breath and latched on to a pocket of shadow. “I’ll be back.”

  Picturing Hyde in my mind, I ran into darkness.

  * * *

  Cool air and mist surrounded me. I was outside, but where was Hyde?

  An arm pressed to my throat, and I was hauled back against a breastplate. Citrus aroma tickled my senses.

  “Hyde. Shit, it’s me.”

  He released me abruptly. “What the fuck are you playing at, Justice? You missed the trial. Do you know what that means?” He looked me over. “Where the fuck is your armor?”

  “I didn’t miss it, I was kidnapped.” I filled him in using the cliff not
es version, watching the confusion melt into comprehension across his face. “And Master Payne and Madam Mariana and all the cadets are going to die if we don’t get them out.” I scanned his face, watching the cogs turning. “Is there a back door to this place?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you draw me a map?”

  “No.” He tapped his head with an index finger. “The map is up here. I need to be inside the catacombs to use it.”

  Shit. The door was sealed. There was no way for him to get in … unless … unless I took him with me. Master Payne had said there could be a cost to carrying someone. It could leave us stranded inside …

  But that wouldn’t matter if we had a way out. “Maybe I can get you inside.”

  “What?”

  “I mean this shadow phasing thing … Maybe I can take you with me?” I threw up my hands. “Look, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Fine, let’s give it a shot. But if it doesn’t work, if you find yourself alone in there, you get your arse back out here stat, you understand me?”

  I nodded mutely.

  “How long till the bombs go off?” he asked.

  “Two hours after the start of the trial.”

  He glanced at his watch. “We have an hour and a half. We can do this.”

  I scanned the mist for shadows and settled on the mouth of the cave that was dripping with darkness. Harmon … I needed to visualize Harmon because if I knew that guy, he’d be leading the troops.

  I held out my hand. “Are you ready?”

  Hyde slipped his hand into mine, palm to palm, his long fingers wrapping around mine. My heart sped up.

  “Let’s do this.”

  We ran into the shadows together.

  Thirty

  Rock surrounded us, and the scent of death and decay pressed in on me. We were in a narrow tunnel with a ceiling low enough to jump up and touch, or for Hyde to just reach up and press his palm to. Soft green light illuminated the tunnel. It was coming from a glowing mossy plant that covered the rock in patches.