by Lan Chan
In order to exorcise the soul, my great-grandfather had to destroy the amulet. The only problem was that by then it had become infused with great-grandmother’s body. The amulet had grown spines that burrowed into her heart. That was how she’d died. Grammy never spoke about it, but I’d learned the truth from the diary after she died. My gaze landed on Professor Mortimer.
Heaviness blanketed my chest at the thought of sacrificing his life to exorcise the demon. Great-grandfather’s account of what happened confirmed what I’d learned in Demonology. I had to find the relic. At this point, I didn’t even know what the focal relic could be. Instinct had me walking over to where Kate’s necklace was still being stored. Professor Mortimer was right. The pendant had pretty much crumbled into dust. There were still a few pea-sized chunks but they couldn’t possibly contain a demon. Hers wasn’t the only necklace she’d brought back, though. Three of her friends had been gifted necklaces.
There was no seal around the cabinet that held the necklace. There was no reason for it to be magicked. Professor Mortimer’s presence was usually enough to dissuade anyone from attempting to steal.
I approached him once more and shook him. What can I say? I was an eternal optimist. “Professor, please wake up.”
Nothing. I remembered him telling me things were going to be all right. I balled my fists and stepped back. The leather knots in Kate’s necklace dug into my palms. I shoved it into the pocket of my jeans. Not knowing when I’d be back here, I put the diary into my backpack. Blinking back tears, I walked out the cottage.
I hadn’t seen any of Kate’s friends in the infirmary. If they were asleep like everybody else, I’d have to ransack their rooms. I was halfway across the portal field heading towards the girl’s dorm when a fledgling roar filled my ears. It was like a quieter version of Max’s roar. I could only think of one little shifter who could make that sound. Veering to the left, I pushed myself into a sprint.
I burst through the door of the dorms to find myself engulfed in absolute darkness. When I’d left, the Fae lights were still on. At least one or two lights always burned in the common areas. Most of the supernaturals had enhanced night vision but the humans and para-humans didn’t.
I could try to take the staircase using muscle memory but I’d probably break my neck. Calling forth the magic, I allowed my palm to catch fire. Keeping the glow to a minimum, I used the light to navigate up the stairs and through the common area to the entrance of the boy’s dorm. As I passed a sconce on the wall, I stood on my toes to glance inside the glass bauble. The fireflies inside the lantern were lying on their sides. They were curled up in imitation of sleep. What in the hell was going on here?
I had no idea where Charles’s room could be. There were plaques with our names on the door, but I didn’t have time to go searching. The one and only roar I’d heard had ceased just after I’d come running into the dorm. As far as I was aware, a directory to the dorms didn’t exist. Still, I pressed my palm against the cold stone. “Charles Thompson.”
There was supposed to be a built-in directory that helped visitors navigate the warrens of the Academy. When I’d first started, I’d used the network of magical footsteps on the ground to help me find my way around. Right now, it didn’t respond. Either the network was down or what I was asking for wasn’t catered to.
I swallowed hard. The network couldn’t be down. It was maintained by the Nephilim in Seraphina along with the MirrorNet. If the mirrors didn’t work, it meant something was very wrong. Racing to the mirror beside the fireplace in the common area, I placed my palm on the cool glass. “Sophie Mwansa.”
The reflective glass wavered. “Welcome, Sophie. How may I help you?”
The knot in my chest unravelled. “I need to contact Jacqueline Pendragon.”
The mirror personality didn’t respond. “Hello?”
“Hello, Sophie Mwansa. How may I help you?”
I repeated the query with the same results. “Ummm…how about Malachi Pendragon?” I didn’t know anyone else on the Council. Kai was the closest thing to authority now that Jacqueline seemed to be out of the picture. I was this close to picking up the mirror and smashing it on the ground when it gave me nothing. Fuming, I smashed my fist on the table. I felt like roaring myself.
“Max. Find me Max Thompson.”
To my utter astonishment, the mirror projected a picture of Max onto its surface. It must have been captured when he first started in the senior campus because his dark hair was clipped like he’d just had a haircut.
“This better be good,” his voice shot through the empty common room a second later. He appeared on screen from what looked like the armoury on the senior campus. Behind him, some of the other seniors were gathered. They appeared to be picking through the weapons. His eyes shone a bright, beaten gold. “Sophie?”
I almost wept. “Max! Everything’s gone dark on this campus. I can’t find anyone!”
“Stay put. We’re coming. I have no fu –”
A wild, gargling sound ripped through the commons. It was followed by the same blood-curdling roar of agony that I’d heard earlier. Max’s face twisted into a mask of furious recognition. “What number is Charles’s room?” I asked.
“Wait!” he screamed at me. “Don’t go –”
I heard it again. The roar was more of a muted grunting now. I shook my head at Max’s wide-eyed terror. And then I was tearing through the corridors towards the sound.
16
My palms blazed with pink light as I sprinted down a dark corridor. The guttural wrenching sound of Charles being choked drew me first to the right and then farther down the warren of bedrooms.
As I neared, the air temperature dropped to the point where condensation appeared as I exhaled. An icy wind brushed up against my arms, making my skin break out in goose bumps. Humans had the depiction of hell all wrong. It wasn’t a fiery inferno of blistering heat but a cold, lifeless place that sucked the joy from everything.
I was drawn to a room in the middle of the next corridor. My foot slipped as I turned. The ground was glazed over with frost. Charles’s doorknob was coated in ice. My magic was a tiny flutter of defiance against the impending dark. I allowed it to coat my palm as I reached and turned the knob.
When I threw open the door, the darkness inside was beyond anything I had ever encountered. It wasn’t just dark but dense. Like I was wading through jelly made of tar. The small bit of light from my hands did nothing to illuminate the room. But I knew that this darkness had nothing to do with an actual lack of light. It wasn’t even evening outside.
Drawing the magic back inside me, I drew a magical sight circle around my mind. I blinked and the world became a picture of varying shades of pink. I drew a protective circle around my body, but that was a temporary shield. As a kitchen witch, my circles weren’t anywhere close to strong. I could probably hold out in a defensive struggle for a minute. Enough time in a battle to raise the alarm. Probably not enough time to save myself from getting killed.
Over on his bed, Charles lay with the sheets tangled around him. In his distress he was caught in a mid-shift. Long hairs splayed around his head while the muscles on his legs bulged. He clutched at his own throat and gurgled. He was fighting so hard with whatever had hold of him that he was tearing into his own flesh with his claws. Around him, a dense cloud of dark pink motes sparkled. In my dreams, I hadn’t been able to look directly at the ephemeral beast. In reality, I didn’t want to look. Where Charles’s mouth gaped open, a funnel of energy was stripping him of his essence. It was like a vacuum sucking out his soul.
It had no body. No shape. But when the edge of the cloud reared up and twisted in my direction, I knew it had sensed me. Stupid. That’s how Grammy would have categorised the way I’d come bungling in here without any kind of plan. Charles emitted a sound like a bleat. Somehow it was more terrifying than a scream. Like he’d been doing that for so long this was all he could manage. His throat was being constricted so that he laboured with ev
ery breath he was taking.
The temperature in the room dropped even further so that my teeth were chattering. Shrugging off my backpack, I watched the cloud splinter down the middle. Frantic, I tore open the zip and rummaged around inside for the salt. Stuff dropped all over the floor but I didn’t have time to worry about losing my shit. I also didn’t have time to worry about anyone finding out the extent of my alchemy.
I tossed a handful of salt in the air as the cloud soared over my head. Directing the magic into my hands, I swept the salt into a dense ball and commanded it to reshape itself. The cloud of darkness brushed up against my magic circle tentatively. As it did so, I felt the entity in my thoughts. The familiarity of the touch had me gagging.
We’d met before in my dreams. Only those times, I’d woken up without remembering what had happened. It had tried on many occasions to put me under like it had everybody else. Its thwarted attempts to wear me down were an irritant I felt now in its thoughts. I saw then this entity was responsible for the mess in the kitchen and the warning in my room. The cloud reformed into a mass of sharp spines.
I gathered moisture from the icy air to turn the salt into molten shards of my own. My magic collided with the entity in a crushing chasm of power. I screamed as its ill intent broke the magic circle around me. At the same time, I asked the liquid salt to disperse into grains again. Each grain pulsed as it embedded into the cloud. Salt was the poster child of low magic. Made in our oceans and fed into our earth, every grain hummed with power. As the entity forced me to my knees, I directed the salt into a swirling mass of a tornado. It gathered up every scrap of the cloud in its wake, growing bigger and bigger until it started to drag at the other half.
Charles croaked. I grabbed another handful from the packet on the floor and threw it over him. The entity hissed. In my mind I heard it screaming as the salt burned it with low magic. The whirlwind continued to pick up grains. When it moved over Charles’s bed, it gathered speed and momentum. The added grains caused the cloud to become dense.
Shoving myself up into a standing position, I threw my arms up into the air. I wiped a trickle of blood from my nostril. Charles sputtered as the salt cyclone dragged the last vestiges of the demon from his throat. I heard him gasping for air but couldn’t take my eyes off the thing in front of me.
The demon tried one last time to bore into my thoughts. It attempted to wear me down with images of fatigue and restlessness. A chill of impending doom stirred in me. The demon showed me the plans its master had for the Academy. I caught a brief glimpse of thousands of one-eyed demons before the image was rebuffed by the clarifying power of the winterflower still flowing through my body. I wouldn’t be sleeping for a while, but it was completely worth it. Taking a step forward, I bent down and broke off an icicle that had formed on the lip of the desk beside the door. I tossed the ice into the swirl of mist. When it hit the cloud, it sizzled.
That was all the moisture I needed to turn the swirling mass into saline. The creature in my head screamed anew. Saltwater burned like crazy, I was told. Taking my lead from the demon itself, I directed my magic into transmuting the liquid into ice. In my thoughts, I heard a voice that belonged to an old man long dead. Whenever I read my great-grandfather’s diary, I imagined him as a doting old man. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to function. Great-grandfather instructed me to picture the grains of salt solidifying as though kissed by the winds of the arctic. The magic in my mind grew heavy.
With a muted whimper, I made a forward motion. The chunk of salted ice fell to the ground and smashed into a million tiny shards. I heard a pop like all the air was being sucked out of the room. I sagged on one knee and gulped in heavy breaths. The Fae lights turned back on. Ice cracked as the cold in the room began to recede. I had every intention of checking if Charles was okay, but my progress was halted by claws biting into my shoulder.
“I knew this would happen sooner or later,” the deputy headmaster rasped. He sounded drowsy. It didn’t dampen his strength much. He ripped me back towards him and caged me with one arm around my chest. In his other hand was my great-grandfather’s diary.
“Get off!” I screamed. He dragged me aside as seniors funnelled into the room around me. Their eyes were all puffy. One of them yawned. A couple of Nephilim guards followed suit. Their movements were sluggish.
“Let her go,” Max snapped. His voice was the only one still sharp. He stood in the doorway, blocking anybody else from entering. He took a step towards us.
The deputy headmaster waved my great-grandfather’s book in the air. Max stopped in his tracks. His grey eyes had turned golden as he took in the name embossed in silver in the brown leather. He glanced at me, his jaw tight.
“What are you doing with this?” the deputy headmaster demanded before Max could speak. His arm was crushing my lungs. “What have you done to everyone?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I huffed, trying to push at his hold. It wasn’t working.
One of the Nephilim snatched the diary from the deputy headmaster. Max’s expression had turned stony. He marched over to the bed where his little brother was passed out.
“This is contraband,” the Nephilim announced.
“Yes I know but –”
“Take her to the dungeon,” the deputy headmaster ordered.
“Wait! No, you don’t understand.” The Nephilim reached out to grab my arm. I locked my sights on Max.
“This isn’t the end!” I screamed as the world rippled in front of my eyes from the teleport. “Don’t let them take over!”
Charles’s room disappeared as the Nephilim and I dematerialised. When next I opened my eyes, I was in a cold cement room with no windows. A single Fae lamp stood in the far corner. Its wan light was just enough to highlight the stark room. There were chalk marks on the floor like someone had been using the room to practice their magic circles. The Nephilim placed me in the corner of the room. He waved his hands and glowing white bars appeared around me. The effect was that I had been placed in a cage.
“Let me go!” I begged. As my hand made contact with the bars, a spasm of electricity burned my skin. “Ow!”
“Don’t make a fuss,” the dark-eyed Nephilim said. “You won’t be in here long. Once the Academy is sorted out, you’ll be taken before the Council for sentencing.” Every word of what he’d just said struck me like a hammer.
“But I haven’t done anything wrong!”
He crossed his arms over his chest. The action made his already bulging muscles pop. I would bet my life he was one of Michael’s bloodline. I decided they were the meatheads of the Nephilim race. “You had possession of a banned magical artefact.”
“It was my great-grandfather’s diary! It was bequeathed to me as part of my grandmother’s will!”
“Your great-grandfather was a notorious serial killer. You know all of Enock Mwape’s belongings should have been destroyed or requisitioned to the vault in Seraphina.”
“It’s just a diary.”
“Does it contain accounts of his killings?”
“No. Besides, the Book of Beasts contains accounts of his killings. Everybody is still allowed to read it.”
“If you can’t understand why what you did was wrong,” he said, yawning. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
He sat down with his back against the opposing wall. I knew then he meant to watch me until somebody arrived to signal that things were okay. Except no one would be coming. That much was hammered home when he rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm.
“Can’t you see what’s happening?” I pressed. “Something’s making everyone unconscious. Don’t you think it’s strange that the headmistress and the professors aren’t here?”
He tapped his head back against the wall a couple of times. “They are here. I saw them this…” He trailed off as though losing the stream of consciousness. The fact that a Nephilim was affected by whatever was happening told me this was demonic in origin. If I didn’t already know that based on what
happened in Charles’s room.
I stomped my foot on the cement floor to make some noise. Inside the confines of the room, it sounded like I was a wildebeest. The Nephilim startled but he didn’t make a move towards me. The distraction was momentary. It was overtaken by another yawn from him.
“Stay awake!” I shouted. I tried to look for something to prod him with. There were small butts of chalk on the floor. I threw one at him but it had no effect.
He dropped his head in between his knees. The bars around me flickered. I dragged in a breath. Maybe him falling asleep would be a good thing. If the bars required his concentration, maybe I could get out of here if he fell unconscious. I had never hoped so badly for a man to fall asleep in my life.
That was until a small speck appeared in the wall beside his shoulder. It began as a single spark. My eyes bugged out of my head as the spark raced along the wall in an arc. I recognised it as the beginning phases of a portal opening. “No,” I breathed. “Wake up!”
The Nephilim’s eyelids shuttered. I could see him trying to drag himself awake. Like so many of the others, he was losing the battle. Above his shoulder, the spark gained momentum. It grew in size until the lines looked like a blowtorch mark. The air in the room cooled. I drew a protection circle around myself with the butt of a piece of yellow chalk. To double the strength, I drew the same circle in my mind. It was a race to complete the circle and one around the Nephilim before the portal opened.
The deputy headmaster had dragged me away from my backpack. I didn’t have any salt or any ingredients at my disposal. There was no door in this room. No way out for a low-magic witch.
“Wake up!” I screamed once more. Terror had me flailing about. For a second, I wished Mama had relented and allowed me to learn blood magic. The words in the preface of my great-grandfather’s diary came back to me: When there is nothing else left, there is blood. The meaning of those words finally resonated with me. I was helpless. If I had known blood magic, I could perhaps do something to defend myself.
