Holden came with us because Lia insisted that we’d need him. And since she was Queen Titania of Tir na Nog, Simon didn’t argue with her.
We began our search in Hoffman’s office. The room had a mild rank odor, and a dozen flies buzzed around the window. I kicked myself mentally for not noticing it.
“His lair appeared to be underground. How is searching his office going to find us the way?” Victor asked.
“What did we teach you about mages?” Simon asked him.
“Fuck, I don’t know. This dude’s place is a fucking mess.”
Holly turned her eyes on him. “Remember what I told you I wanted one day?”
Victor’s expression went blank for a moment. “You said you wanted a secret tunnel. A bookcase tun—Oh.”
“It’s okay,” Simon assured him. “Shifters, put your noses to use. Victor, vampires have the best sense for finding drafts. Search for any potential openings.”
“Got it.”
I crouched by the desk, searching for magic and traps before testing the drawers. I crawled beneath it and then with Gabriel’s help, even lifted it. Simon checked the bookshelves while Holly tapped ceiling tiles. Cole ran his fingers along the edges of portraits as Matt and John sniffed around the walls and floor, searching on their hands and knees.
This was ridiculous.
“There’s a draft here,” Victor called, inspecting the wall beside an enormous potted tree with big fake leaves covered in cobwebs. No one had dusted it in a while. I wondered if the cleaning staff had been ordered to avoid the musty office, or if they’d felt the wrongness too and avoided it.
“Is that salt?” Gabriel asked suddenly.
“Huh?” I blinked and watched him crouch beside the wall with Simon. The latter used a knife to wedge a bit of salt from beneath the wall.
“Well, I’ll be damned. Look at this.”
“Backup in case his other spells didn’t work?” Stark asked.
“It’s more than that, man,” Victor replied. “Know how Superman can’t see through lead walls? A fae can’t see the magic beyond a salt-warded perimeter.”
Holly did something by the desk that I didn’t see, and then the wall slid open with a gentle rumble, particles of dust coming down. The passage was narrow and cramped, spiraling steeply downward. We had to go one at a time. Simon took the lead, and Matt—being the biggest dude remaining in our group who wasn’t a student—brought up the rear.
It seemed like we traveled for miles, but it could have been the tight space and the darkness disorienting us. Magic buzzed in the air, making my skin crawl. My heart pounded in my throat. I could barely breathe, fear forging an iron band around my chest. We came to a big stone door with angry-faced horned creatures carved into its frame. Torches glowed.
We were here.
It was too quiet.
Simon stood for a moment in front of the door. “Perhaps the students should remain behind. None of you are trained for taking on a lich.”
“How many liches have you fought before, Simon?” Gabriel asked quietly.
“Two.”
“Then this will be a first for all of us. Don’t shut them out now, man. We’re in this together. You need us all.”
“I do. But if this goes as I suspect it will—”
“Then we’ll have died doing what you trained us to do,” Cole cut in. “You aren’t getting rid of me that easy.”
“Besides,” I said, “Sebastian is counting on all of us.”
“Hell yeah,” Holden said. “You and Sebastian are my heroes, man. We owe him this. We gotta try.”
“We do,” Holly agreed. “I can’t go back up those stairs without giving this my best. You have my staff, Simon.”
“And my sword,” said my mate.
“And my axe,” Holden cheerfully said, accent and all. “My life is now complete for having said that. I love you guys.”
Simon’s brown eyes turned suspiciously glossy. “Bless your geeky hearts,” he said quietly. “All right. As a team. I’d remind you not to do anything heroic, but I know you won’t listen. Remember, we need to find his reliquary. Pretend you’re bulls in a china shop and fuck anything up that looks remotely valuable. That’s where he’ll be hiding his heart. Remember, he’s skilled in illusion. Keep your rebreather masks handy in case he begins tossing flasks. Holly, I want your best offensive spells, but reserve your energy. We need to wear him down and it won’t do any good if we exhaust ourselves in the beginning.”
“Recommended spell?”
“Use your Force Bolt. Sky, you’re our defense. I’m relying on you to cover us with Prismatic Barriers as needed instead of one sustained wall. Can you do that while searching for his notes?”
“I can. I’ve had a moment to rest. Multitasking is what fae do best.”
“Gabriel, as a lich, he’ll be able to regenerate from any damage we cause him. But it may still buy us time. Go for his arms whenever you can. He doesn’t need them to cast spells, but he’ll be hindered.”
“Got it.”
“Holden and Matt, your jobs are to press him in your bear forms any time you get the chance. One ton of grizzly will be a distraction. If there’s no space, apply pressure with your shotguns.”
“Understood,” Matt replied.
Role by role, Simon gave us our orders, and then he faced the door with determination blazing in his eyes, and he blew it in with one spell. We stormed the room, wary of magical traps. Something hot scorched toward us, but Simon knocked it aside with the casual ease of batting a fly.
A zombie dove from the shadows, snarling. Gabriel’s blade sliced through it neatly.
A crawler clinging to a stalactite tried to drop toward Holly, but one tilt of her staff created a dome that repelled it. It bounced off into the path of a slug from Victor’s gun.
As a team we pushed through the entrance to the Plague Doctor’s lair, assaulted by rotting flesh and the sour notes of bile. A row of four stone tables each held a motionless corpse, each of them fae. One was fair and milky, another dark as obsidian but dull, lacking luster, the third like brown sandstone. The fourth was blue, a naiad, her fishlike eyes dead and unseeing. Her hair may have once shone like diamonds, but it was now dull and silver, stained with blood. Death had bloated all four sidhe, and salt-encrusted manacles engraved with spellwork must have bound them during life.
I hated him. I’d had every reason to hate him before, but seeing confirmation of Cole’s theory worsened it.
“Looks like you were right, son,” Simon said in a quiet voice.
“I wish I weren’t.”
Though it hurt me to do it, I raised my machete and brought it down just in case. Better to be safe than sorry.
My team did the same to the other corpses, then we strode into an alcove connecting the hall to another wide room, where gemstone obelisks shone on small pedestals and canopic jars lined the shelves. It was enormous, with six other entrances, each leading to another area of the lair. I recognized the room from the video.
The man himself worked casually over a weak, though still-living fae in manacles. His fearful green eyes turned toward us, and I heard his voice in my head.
Help me. Please.
I will.
“At last. I knew what few of you remained would eventually find me.” A lazy smile curved Hoffman’s mouth. Aside from the gaping wound in his chest and the pallor of his skin, he looked no different than before.
“You can make this easy for yourself and surrender to us, Hoffman. Provide the cure for this abomination you’ve created, and we’ll give you a quick death.”
“I have no intention of dying.” Hoffman’s smile turned cruel. “Can your pup say the same?”
Simon barely twitched a finger. I wouldn’t have known he cast anything at all if not for the tremendous force wave that manifested between us and the Plague Doctor. The spell hit like a sledgehammer, ripping chunks from the wall then carrying those heavy pieces with it before smashing the lich. One piece of ston
e after the next pummeled a magical barrier, warping it with the ferocity of Simon’s attack. By the end, he should have been pounded to a pulp, but he floated in place laughing at us.
“I have achieved what my ancestors could only dream about when they built this hospital,” Hoffman gloated. “The power over life and death is mine. Your primitive minds could never understand.”
“You were always a pompous ass in school,” Simon sneered. “Should have figured death wouldn’t change that.”
Hoffman flicked a finger and the resulting power surge threw us all off our feet. Gabe shifted, swooping high, then came down with both guns in his hands and filled the lich with bullets. I watched them hit, three, four, five blooms of blood staining Hoffman’s white coat, but he didn’t even flinch. He aimed his next spell at my mate, throwing him across the room. Gabe barely managed to shift again and save himself from smacking into the wall. Just in case, I tracked his movement, prepared to cast a glamour to catch him. It wasn’t needed.
Victor moved in a flash, vanishing and reappearing around the room as he dashed from one area of the lair to the next, blasting precious objects with shotgun pellets and kicking over fragile containers. Then he reached the first stone and shattered it.
Something in the air immediately changed, like an oppressive weight had been lifted. The resulting blast knocked Victor off his feet. Unprepared to shield him, I cried out and rushed to his side, helping him up. A crystal shard protruded from his chest. At that moment, Holly’s gaze darted to us, worry in her eyes.
I got this, I tried to convey back to her, with all of my focus and hope that even if she couldn’t hear me, she felt my intention.
Her bolts continued, unwavering.
“Christ, that almost got my heart,” Victor muttered. He gulped and pulled at the crystal fragment, but his fingers slipped on the blood oozing around it.
I drew it out with a glamour instead. After that, we worked together, him blasting and me timing a barrier in front of him.
Meanwhile, Cole charged in with Matt, using their shotguns. The slugs hit another magical barrier. The lich lashed out at them, channeling putrid beams of black magic that snaked and coiled around them. They choked on the miasma until I thrust a Prismatic Barrier between them, cutting it off.
Wheezing, they fell back in a tactical retreat, their veins black and visible in pale faces.
Then Gabriel and John moved in again. His sword slashed and John swung with his machete. Successfully, two limbs fell. Between the two ravens, they made short work of Hoffman, severing limbs from his torso and hacking him to pieces.
That should have been the end of it.
That should have freed us to find Sebastian’s cure.
The pieces vanished in a flash of light, then seconds later the lich’s silhouette appeared in another corner of the room, a dark and translucent outline surrounded by an eldritch glow. Our spells passed through it harmlessly, until suddenly, with great clarity, he reappeared as he had been prior to the two sentinels chopping him to bits.
His most recent victim—the helpless fae strapped to the table—melted into bloody sludge.
I screamed.
John charged him.
“No, don’t!” Gabriel cried, reaching for the other sentinel.
I wasn’t fast enough to project my shield to cover both, but I saw the spell coming before it landed. John’s head twisted at a sickening angle.
“Fuck!” Matt roared.
Another sentinel gone. The battle raged around us, magic waves and sparks and sizzling bolts dancing across the open space. For a moment, it was too difficult to track which spells originated from Holly and Simon and which were from our enemy.
“Nothing’s working,” Gabe panted. Ahead of us, Simon kept up his magical assault, using spells and his staff.
Victor fell back, bleeding from another deep chest gouge that could have been his heart if it was deeper and to the left. I hadn’t even seen how it happened, too busy shielding Simon through a funnel of power that pulverized his shield into mana particles. Victor wiped away the blood dripping from his nose and groaned. “I can’t keep this up. I have too many open wounds right now, and he tried to leech me. We have to find his heart. It’s the only way.”
“How? It could be anywhere.”
“Limited radius. He just made the transformation, so it has to be in the hospital.”
That still gave us too much ground to cover and way too many places to hide something as small as a heart. Unless…
I did know.
I’d seen it a few times already.
“I think I know where he hid his heart. I can get it. I can end this.”
For a moment I thought Gabe was going to argue with me. Then his gaze darted toward Simon and the others as they battled. “Don’t take any chances, Sky. Light that thing on fire.”
“I will.”
Before I could move away, he gripped the back of my head and pulled me in for a kiss that I felt to the tips of my toes. As we parted, he pushed Shōki into my hands.
Then the buzzing began. A low and terrifying noise that preceded what had be thousands of insects swarming into the room.
“Go!” Gabriel shouted as the black cloud surrounded us.
They needed me here. They needed my wind magic to control the swarm, but more than that, Chicago needed the Plague Doctor’s defeat.
I have to believe in him.
With the Twilight once again open to me, I stepped through the Veil, praying that I wasn’t making a huge mistake.
* * *
The hospital lobby was a whole new battleground. A gleaming portal stood open behind the front desk, leading through to what appeared to be a warehouse. I gave it less than a passing glance, gaze drawn instead to the fresh corpses on the floor. I recognized a few sentinels who should have rejoined us.
Beyond the doors, the rest of our backup stood ready but unable to contact us since the radio was still down. A few startled faces tracked my movement, then one of them moved and banged on the glass. The noise drew the horde.
“Get out of there!” the woman yelled. “Cerberus Protocol!”
“No!” In matters of extreme danger, the SBA was authorized to cleanse an area by detonating magical explosives, even if it meant killing innocent people in the process. “We have the Plague Doctor. We can end this!”
“That is an order!”
“Simon and Sebastian are still in here!” Surprise registered on the woman’s face. Pressing my advantage, I dropped the bomb that I absolutely knew would stop their plans. “Queen Titania has been reborn and she is inside. And if you detonate this fucking building, you’ll bring the wrath of Tir na Nog down on us.”
With that said, I shot away from the window and returned to my mission. They could figure out what to do on their own, but I refused to waste any more valuable time. Magic pulsed in the air, an unmistakable thrum that made my head and teeth ache. The protected displays hadn’t been disturbed in the attacks beyond a few blood splatters on the glass. The central case featured the canopic jars I was betting all our lives on.
Hovering above the horde, I drew on my powers, feeling the air thicken around me. Little arcs of static flickered down my arms and the glow from my wings grew brighter, until the entire lobby was lit up without a single shadow to be found. When it seemed I couldn’t hold any more energy, I released it, aiming the lightning bolt at the central display case. If it was anything like the other goodies in his lair, then it would—
Glass exploded outward in a lethal blast that took down the nearest zombies. I blinked away the lingering afterimage in my vision and zipped down to the artifacts scattered across the floor. The moment I reached for the largest canopic jar, a surge of fear struck me. Spiders swarmed from beneath it, some as big as my hand. They scuttled forward, front legs raised menacingly, and despite myself I screamed and lifted back into the air.
Was I seriously going to let a few spiders stop me from saving my friends?
A b
etter question was, were there really any spiders at all?
“No,” I whispered. “No, there is nothing there.”
Nothing except zombies, some of which were getting up on their feet. The spiders faded away like wisps of smoke, nothing more than manifestations of my imagination and a wicked fear spell.
This time when I grabbed the jar, no creepy-crawlies emerged. There was no mistaking the undeniable sense of wrongness emanating from the reliquary. Rather than fight with the bespelled lid, I held it between my hands and released another lightning blast. Crimson runes flared, the spells of protection resisting, but they were no match for me. The vessel turned white-hot, sandstone turning to slag. It should have been enough to kill the heart, but the blasted thing beat on, a malignant undead force of its own. It writhed in my hands, startling me so much I dropped it.
And then it started to crawl. The vessels throbbed and shot out like the legs of a great arachnid, and it skittered away from me.
Disgusted, I unsheathed Gabriel’s sword and brought it down in a powerful swing. Shōki sliced cleanly through the heart, severing whatever vile spells Hoffman had used, and struck the marble floor. Another magical blast rocked through the building, a soundless thunderclap that snuffed out the open portals. Beyond the windows, the sentinels braced themselves as the ground rocked beneath them. Runes I hadn’t seen before crackled against the hospital doors then broke apart. The sentinels surging inside made quick work of the zombies.
For a moment I hovered, torn between returning to Gabriel and Simon, or rushing to Sebastian, Lia, and Pilar. The decision was taken out of my hands when flames swirled around me, whisking me away from the lobby to the underground lab.
29
A Beacon of Hope
Lia shone like a beacon against the dismal backdrop of the Plague Doctor’s lair. Everyone spun around, as startled by her appearance as I was by my sudden teleportation. I had only a moment to register the charred remains on the ground—presumably Hoffman’s—before Gabriel dragged me into his arms and held me tight.
The Plague Doctor: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 3 Page 25
