I took a step forward. “Rowan. Disha!” I called out, my voice echoing as if I were in a cavern.
There was no reply.
Shining my cuffs all around, I started walking. A strong smell like that of decomposing flesh filled my nostrils. I wrinkled my nose and fought against my gag reflex. My light illuminated a broken, wooden crate and next to it… a body.
I jumped back, my mind reeling.
Before me lay the decaying flesh of a man, big and hairy. I realized, in my mounting horror, that he was naked with a wide, black gap where his abdomen should be. His eyes were closed, thank God, but I recognized the hairy eyebrows and the set of his jaw. This was… this was the werewolf Disha had killed, the one we’d thought was Ze German’s dog.
I was back at the abandoned warehouse in Hilton Head. How in the hell had that happened?
But where was Rowan? Where was Disha?
The answer to my first question came in the form of a moan. I shone my light in the direction of the sound. A crumpled body rolled toward me, damp hair hanging in his eyes.
“Rowan!” I ran to him.
He was on the ground, laying on his side, his soaked leather jacket heavy on his body. As I reached him, he started coughing. I helped him sit up. Trickles of water spilled down the corners of his mouth. He was as soaked as I was and just as battered, but he was alive.
Resisting the urge to hug him, I said, “We have to find Disha.”
He blinked at me, looking confused.
I hurried to share what I’d figured out. “We’re back in Hilton Head, in the warehouse. I think this could all be Mink’s fault. Just another trap.”
Rowan shook his head, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Hopelessness took shape in his expression, filling me with more fear than ever before. I’d seen him desperate and frustrated before, but this hopelessness seemed deeper, bigger than any other emotion I’d seen on his handsome features before. A chasm we would all tumble into if we weren’t careful.
“Rowan,” I shook him, “Disha needs us.”
Whatever he was feeling, he needed to push it aside. Our friend needed our help. We were going to find her and get out of here. And we would never, never be this stupid again—not even if we thought we’d done our homework and had all the answers.
I’d gotten her into this. If anything happened to her...
Without a word, Rowan staggered shakily to his feet. I pushed a bit more magic into him, even if he hadn’t asked for it, nor had tried to draw it from me. He nodded in thanks.
“We should split up,” he said, pushing wet hair away from his pale face.
“No! We’re not splitting up.”
He didn’t argue and, instead, walked by my side.
Hugging myself to ward off cold and exhaustion, I scanned the room. We went a few steps, Rowan sniffing and peering into the darkness, far beyond the reach of our lights. He turned right and stopped, then kept going in that direction.
“There,” he said and ran into the darkness.
I followed and soon my cuffs illuminated a prone shape. Disha!
Rowan reached her first. He knelt by her side, examined her face, then pressed two fingers to her throat. She was still and waterlogged with blue lips beneath closed eyes. My feet stopped, along with my heart. Why was he doing that? Did she look dead? Was she dead?
“She’s alive,” he said, glancing in my direction.
I let out a loud breath.
Rowan’s eyes widened and he stood very, very slowly.
I swallowed, my cuffs pulsing in warning. A tension filled the air that hadn’t been there before and all my hairs prickled.
“There’s something behind me, isn’t there?”
He nodded.
Slowly, I turned around.
The truth demon was hovering above me.
The creature seemed to have tripled in size and ugliness. Its bull horns and knife-like fingers were now Rowan’s height. Silvery smoke surrounded the creature, twirling around the enormous skeletal face. Huge, thick limbs seemed to vibrate under some kind of magical restraint. Rows of small teeth snapped together as if threatening to eat me. He was solid now, not a mere smoke monster like last time. This time he could tear us apart.
A tremor of fear ratcheted up my spine. I took several steps back until I ran into Rowan.
Placing his hands on my shoulders, he moved me aside and took a step forward.
“Get Disha out of here,” he growled.
As soon as he said it, my mind knew that was the right thing to do, but my heart couldn’t wrap itself around the idea of leaving Rowan to his own fate. So, instead, I used a quick spell to push Disha back and behind a thick column where she would be safe. Then, against my better judgment, I turned around and faced the monster.
Rowan gave me a sidelong glance that seemed to indicate he didn’t approve of what I was doing, but he knew better than to try to tell me what to do.
The demon’s skeletal face glowed, illuminated by my cuffs. Only its nostrils remained dark, like depthless caverns. Yet, its eyes smoldered a dull red, making the dusty warehouse look like a horror movie set.
“What do we do?” I asked.
As if in answer, Ava Marie stepped from behind the demon.
What?! She was here?
She was smiling, swinging the summoner in her hand. Something about her entire demeanor was different than the meek girl I knew. Now, she walked with confidence, and her expression suggested cockiness. Her hair was no longer limp and wet. Even her leather pants and black tight-fitting shirt were nowhere close to the clothes she normally wore.
“Maybe something like this would help,” she said in a thoughtful tone, the same she had used while telling me all those lies about the compass.
“Why?!” I demanded. “I trusted you.”
She tsked, tsked. “One would think that, after all you’ve been through, you would have trust issues, Charlie Rivera. But you must be brain-dead. God, you were so easy to fool.”
“And Bridget? Is she also in this with you?” I glanced down at the summoner as rage and confusion mashed together in my gut.
She waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, I just borrowed this from her before she shared it with you. Then Professor Fedorov wasn’t very careful keeping an eye on it. God, that girl is even stupider than you are, which was helpful. Her brother was the only one who saw through my disguise.”
“Bobby!” I exclaimed. “You were the one who hurt him! Not Mink.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I hated to do it. I like werewolves. But I had no other choice.”
“I guess he sniffed the rat out,” I said.
Ava Marie smiled. “It seems it always takes a Lesser to do a stupid witch’s job.”
“That’s enough,” Rowan said, jumping to my defense.
Ava Marie batted her eyelashes innocently and brushed a hand down the demon’s side as if it were her pet cat and not a nasty creature from the underworld. I wondered what she had done to make it solid, and how she’d tamed it. At her touch, the demon huffed.
“Mink wants me, so leave the girls out of this,” Rowan shouted at Ava Marie. “I’ll go with him.”
“No, Rowan!” I pulled on his sleeve. “He’ll kill you.”
“I may as well be dead already,” he said, barely tilting his head in my direction.
Illuminated by my cuffs, the pain in his expression sent a stab of a similar agony into my soul. He’d lost his desire to live. I didn’t know why I was able to tell, but there was no doubt in my mind that he would sacrifice himself willingly, whether or not it was necessary.
Ava Marie laughed. “Very honorable of you, Rowan. And though Mink would be happy with the trifling matter of your death, it will be harder to please me.”
“You want my cuffs,” I said, remembering how the vortex had pulled at them. “The Tempest isn’t real. You and Mink made it all up.”
She tapped her temple. “You are a bit slow, but you finally figured it out. Maybe I can arrange for a pr
ize or something.”
“And you’re a lot crazy,” I said. “The cuffs chose me, so you can’t have them. They vaporize people who try to use them, so be my guest and put them on. No one who has tried to take them from me has succeeded, and you won’t either.”
My words seemed to hit a nerve because Ava Marie shuddered, her blond hair swaying behind her as she shook her head.
“About that,” she said, her voice growing deeper. Her legs elongated as if she were a crouching spider that had finally decided to stretch her limbs.
Rowan and I exchanged a glance as Ava Marie’s body continued to change, growing taller by about five inches, her hair turning from blond to deep black, and her features acquiring an exotic beauty.
“Remember me?” she asked in her new, fuller voice.
I shook my head in disbelief, my mouth going dry. It was the woman from the mausoleum, the same one who had blasted me with a gust of wind as I tried to take my revenge on Smudge Face. She had been working with Henderson to steal the cuffs from me, and she hadn’t given up.
“You two have cost me too much,” she said, her now-dark eyes full of hatred. “You killed Henderson,” she gestured in my direction. “And you…” She seemed to reserve the most hate-filled look for Rowan, “You killed Adam.”
“Who?” Rowan stared back in shock. “I didn’t kill any… Adam.” He sounded uncertain and seemed to figure out who she meant just as he spoke the words.
“The werewolf?” I asked, remembering the creature Rowan had shot the day his father prevented my kidnapping and took me to the Academy, the werewolf who would have killed Macgregor if Rowan hadn’t acted. “He’s the werewolf friend Ava Marie told me about, right?” It was stupid to use that name, but she was the person I had trusted and had felt sympathy for.
“There is no Ava Marie!” she yelled. “My name is Tempest, and I will show you my power.”
Just as she said this, a violent wind blew from her hand and struck me in the chest. As I slid backward, I held up my hands and pushed back with my magic. Beside me, Rowan fought against the same strong wind and, with his preternatural strength, broke free from it.
Blurring as he ran in her direction, he rammed against Tempest and knocked her to the ground. As he did, the summoner flew out of her hand and rolled away into the darkness.
As if breaking free from its leash, the demon stomped his enormous feet and swung his arms like a gorilla, bearing his throat in an unearthly howl.
“Catch,” Rowan said, throwing the summoner in my direction after retrieving it from the shadows.
I caught it and stared at it dumbfounded. What was I supposed to do with it? Last time, the demon had just gone back in on its own.
Unsure of what to do, I held the device above my head and pointed it toward the demon. It had no effect. Instead, the creature ignored me and walked around me, shaking the ground as it came, causing the decaying ceiling to fall in chunks and stir up dust that clogged the air. A window popped and shattered, sending glass spewing through the warehouse.
I tilted the summoner and urged it to work, begging my cuffs to help. Nothing. The creature kept on its way, rattling the ancient building with each step as if he meant to take it all down with him as he headed toward—
Disha!
Dropping the summoner to the floor, I ran in her direction.
Catching sight of me, the demon stopped and extending one of his long, meaty arms reached behind the column, pulled Disha from her hiding place, and dangled her up in the air by one leg—a small, helpless doll in the claws of a giant.
“No!” I screamed and glanced around as if expecting a solution to this mess to spring out of the ground.
“Let’s talk now,” Tempest said.
My eyes found her at the edge of the shadows, one side of her face dark and ominous as she leaned over a fallen Rowan, her magic holding him in place.
In Tempest’s hand, a stake poised directly above his heart.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
SPRING SEMESTER
LATE MARCH
“Put the stake down. I’ll talk.” I took a step toward Tempest with my hands up in surrender. Rowan stared up at me from the ground, looking weak and defeated, but there was no way I was giving up that easily. How had she managed to subdue him?
With a flick of my wrist, I sent a magic pulse straight at Tempest, but it hit an invisible shield and fizzled away. I wasn’t dealing with some commonplace non-wizard here. This Elemental must either be bonded to a witch or warlock or had some other way to wield magic.
She smirked. “You really are dumb. You think I can’t do magic since I’m only an Elemental. I can do more than you think, silly witch.” She let that sink it, leaving me to wonder what other things she was capable of and why. Glancing greedily at my cuffs, she added, “You’ve barely scratched the surface of what those cuffs can do. They are more powerful than you are capable of imagining. That’s why I want them.”
“Never,” I hissed, trying to rush through the spells I’d learned.
“Never?” she asked. “Are you sure?”
At that, she tore open Rowan’s shirt and pushed the tip of the stake into the skin above his heart. His face twisted in pain as it began to slice his flesh.
“Stop!”
I rushed forward, but she held a hand up, so I skidded to a stop. My heart beat like a frightened bird as I waited for her next move. She could kill Rowan in an instant and I wouldn’t be fast enough to stop her. I needed to think.
Her dark eyes zeroed in on me as she withdrew the stake. Rowan’s black blood dripped onto his chest as she spoke. “First of all, I need you to stop the vigilante bullshit.”
I nodded, lowering my hands.
“Good. Second, you need to listen carefully or I’ll shish kabob your boyfriend and tell my demon friend over there to bash your Indian princess into bits. Capisce?”
I nodded slowly, flicking a glance to where Disha still dangled in the truth demon’s fist. Thank God she was unconscious so she wouldn’t have to know the horror of what was happening.
“Great,” Tempest continued. “Now, I’m a fair woman. I want to make a deal with you. I get what you’re saying about the cuffs choosing you. I don’t have to take them from you, but you can join me.”
I barked out a laugh. “Join you? Are you kidding me? That wind must’ve swirled your brains if you think I’d ever turn my back on my friends to join you and whatever other evil, power-hungry group of subversives you’re in league with.”
Tempest smiled as if she was way ahead of me. “You don’t have to leave your friends. They can join, too. We know how talented Ms. Khatri is. Henderson made that very clear. And Rowan has untapped potential. He has no idea how to thrive as a vampire and we have people who can show him. If we join all our powers, we could accomplish so much.”
Rowan’s attention was locked on Tempest, drinking in her every word. Had she hypnotized him? That had to be it because there was no way he was buying any of this crap.
“All that about a vampire cure was a lie?” I asked, glancing pointedly at Rowan, hoping he didn’t forget we’d all been victims of a big charade. He couldn’t trust these people. None of us could.
She smirked. “Who needs a cure when what he has isn’t a sickness? It’s power. Untapped power that he can learn to use as soon as all three of you join our cause.”
“And what is your cause, exactly?” I didn’t give a shit about her cause. I was stalling her to give me some time to think. We were on Hilton Head Island and no one knew. No cavalry was coming. Maybe if Disha woke up…
“You know our cause, Charlie. We simply want what any group of have-nots wants: a piece of the proverbial pie. You must know that your so-called ‘Academy’ stole the most powerful portals around the world and has kept them for themselves for centuries. They used to be available to everyone, even us Lessers. Any Supernatural creature could travel through them or draw energy to make more powerful spells than they were capable of. It’s a cla
ssic power grab scenario. They wanted everything, so they took it all and left the rest of us in the cold.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” She cocked her head to the side, letting a curtain of jet black hair cascade down. “What have you been learning in that school of yours? I bet they don’t tell the students that in the 1800s, the very group of witches and warlocks that founded the Academy used their magic to find the seven most powerful portals in the world. Once they located them, they put incredible wards around them to make sure no one else could access them. Your little Enlightenment Fountain was the first one.”
I shook my head, not sure what to believe. But, if I knew anything, it was that Dean McIntosh and her sisters, though weird, were also some of the most honest and upstanding people I’d ever met. They wouldn’t be a part of something so sinister and underhanded.
“All we want, Charlie,” she continued, “is to free the portals. Let everyone use them. It isn’t fair only a select few can wield such power. They took it from the Lessers and they tried to take it from you, didn’t they?”
I narrowed my eyes.
She turned her attention to my glowing cuffs. “When the Aradia’s Cuffs chose you, the deans weren’t very happy, now, were they?”
“They were worried for my safety,” I stammered.
“Is that what they told you? It’s a clever lie.”
Stepping back, she held her hand out to Rowan and helped him stand. He blinked, surprised to find that he could move as if whatever magic that had kept him in check had dissipated.
Tempest turned her full attention to him. “And when you became a Lesser, they didn’t want you anymore, did they? Even though you can have more power in this form than you ever could have had as a human warlock. I have friends just like you. They can show you how to live as a vampire and have magic. Your own magic.”
Rowan’s eyebrows arched as if her words were more than enticing. They were everything he had ever longed to hear.
I chewed my lip. She was baiting us, using our anger and frustration to turn us against the people we trusted. I had no idea if anything she’d said was true, but one thing was clear, the tactics they had used to get what they wanted—murder, lies, and manipulation—made them the bad guys. Not the Academy.
Supernatural Academy: Sophomore Witch Page 20
