Chapter 42
Deacon goes back to Fever Dream, confident that as long as he is there, Caspar will not lay siege to his club. He texts me when he arrives to say that Penny, Hound, and everybody else are fine and that he’s having everyone he’s ever met look into the location of this ring.
I call Fiona and tell her as much as I can.
She says she got a little bit of information from the Elders and will go to the archives first thing in the morning to try to make it make sense.
I debate getting my mom on a plane tonight but come to the grim realization that if Caspar wanted to hurt my mother to get to me, he would have already.
Clearly, he needs her, or cares for her more than he wishes to see me dead.
Mostly, he’s already got his shiny new syrabraxa. Ada.
I fall asleep sick with worry over what Caspar will do to the world in just two short days.
Caspar Harlock sips his morning coffee from the comfort of his seaside vacation home.
He’ll never have a cup as good as the roast he used to drink in hell.
Something about the fine grounds, pulverized by the bleeding fists of damned souls.
Sometimes he misses his homeland. But then he looks out on the tranquil sea and the tall grass.
He comes to the conclusion that real men of industry shouldn’t have to settle for any kind of compromise.
When he’s finished, the two worlds will exist as one.
He can have his coffee born of blood, sweat, and tears and look out at this same view.
When Finn enters, he doesn’t knock, something that has aggravated Caspar since Finn was a boy. He reminds himself that his brother, Mouric, who he took the Throne of Bael from, held such disdain for his youngest he almost had him killed. Caspar would often like to see Finn pummeled, but not killed.
“How many times have I asked you to knock?”
“You’re going to want to hear this, Father—” Finn’s claws click together. A nervous habit that Caspar finds grating.
“Stop that.” Caspar’s eyes are still focused on the rolling sea outside the kitchen window.
The clicking stops. “I cannot reach Orin.”
At that, Caspar turns from his view. His most powerful warlock is never supposed to be farther than a few feet from his son. “What do you mean?”
Finn stands taller, grateful for Caspar’s attention. It only makes him wish to withhold it more. “I have been calling him for the last few hours. None of our enforcers, transport, or procurers have seen him.”
“You think he’s been killed? Fled the Brood?”
Finn can’t help how his eyes light. Any kind of chaos is a turn-on for him. “I don’t know.”
“If you can’t form an opinion, you are of no use to me.” Caspar turns back to the sea. “Up security on the home. The syrabraxa, especially. And find us a new warlock. When Orin returns, kill him.”
“But we have no proof he—”
“You can never be too careful.”
“Yes, Father,” Finn says.
“And, Finn—”
“Yes, Father?”
“Buy our host a nice dress for tomorrow night.”
The screams are not coming from my dream.
But they are what wake me.
I bury my head under my pillow. The syrabraxa is making me hear things again, surely. But they don’t dissipate. Something is wrong—
I don’t bother palming through the bed. Not only is Reid out, as he always is this early in the morning, but he’s started sleeping on the couch. Ever since the night I had an episode before we could have sex.
When I throw myself from the bed to grab my daggers, my father is standing in the corner of Reid’s room.
I blink twice. Stunned. Not breathing.
He’s not bloody. Not drenched in rain like the night he died.
He looks warm. Happy.
Go, he tells me. Do what you do best, kitten.
Tears prick at my eyes. I know better than to talk to him. I know better than to indulge the syrabraxa. To let the madness consume me. But it’s nearly impossible not to crumble beneath his gaze as I throw on my coat—
Only then do I realize that I can’t go toward the shouting. I’m in hiding. Caspar, Ada, the Elders—
Whatever is happening, I tell myself, this school of hunters is more than equipped to handle it.
But my father just watches me as I press my ear to the glass of the cottage window and try to listen. Metal singing against metal. Snarls and shouts.
Something is happening.
Someone is attacking Harker.
Go, he urges again. Fight.
“You aren’t here,” I bite out.
I check my phone—no messages from anyone. Not Soph. Not Reid.
Maybe the fighting is in my head. Maybe I’m still dreaming—
But when another bloodcurdling scream rings out into the morning, my aeon nature takes over. I’m off into the fresh spring air, hood pulled over my face, before I can think twice. Before I can say goodbye to the vision of my father. We take care of people.
The second I’m sprinting through Old Campus I know the screams are coming from Mortimer Tower. Navy-clad Citadel hunters are racing up into the old stonework building right alongside me, too driven by their own need to protect to even notice me.
I scramble up the stairs beside them as the sound of the fight grows louder. “Call the dean,” I yell to a mousy girl bolting up the stairs behind me. “Now!”
On the seventh floor I find Elliot in his gym clothes with his sword out, a gladiator clad in Nike hurtling into the arena.
“What are you doing?” he hisses, yanking me out of the way of a furious Citadel hunter.
“Something is happening.” I pull my hood closer over my face and cut my eyes up toward the screaming and the deviant roars. “We have to help.”
“I have to help,” he whispers. “You have to get back to Reid’s cottage.”
“I’ll bet you a lot more than twenty bucks I don’t do that.”
Elliot doesn’t even respond. We take off up the stairs.
Two floors up we pass the library but find nothing.
The sounds are getting louder. More whining, the crash of steel on steel.
More students hurrying to help. We bolt up another flight, which spits us out before the carved double doors of the archives. And there, before the entrance…
Elliot charges directly into the massacre. But for a second, I can do nothing but gape.
No deviants—no Brood singed with that unholy mark. But Harker students. Attacking other students. Fighting without mercy. Arrows and silver slice. Blood pools, sticky and slick on the marble floors…Students are being slain. By their own peers.
As my daggers sail into limbs and stop other blades from severing arteries, I try to get a handle on the situation.
It doesn’t seem to be a brawl over anything specific.
There’s no fighting, no shouting, no crowd cheering anyone on.
But the students who are attacking—not defending themselves or others—have gone misty-eyed and dead faced.
No changes in their expressions, despite how I or Elliot or anyone else take them down.
They’re spelled. Possessed. Blocking the doors of the archive from any students who try to get through. I open my mouth to tell Elliot, to tell everyone, to save lives—
“Viv!” a low, furious voice calls.
Reid barrels into me, shielding me from the short sword of that second-year, Ingrid. Her eyes are as fogged as glasses in steam as she drives her silver into Reid’s wrist.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” he manages, wincing.
“The archives,” I breathe. “Fiona said she’d come here first thing this morning to help us find the ring.” I struggle to get free of his grip. “If these students have been spelled to block the doors, we have to get in there. Fiona could be in there.”
“What?” His face is ripe with fear I’ve never seen in him. Not since that day at the docks. “Go. You can’t be seen. I’ll take care of her.”
But my brows pull together. Run? From my fellow students when they need me? From Fiona, who might need me? Has he met me?
I wrench free from his grasp and lunge for the archive doors, dodging blows and arrows.
Elliot is throttling a student who’s got a bowie knife lodged in another student’s sternum.
More Citadel hunters have breached the floor, wielding daggers and bows.
Possessed fourth-years take them down without as much as a grimace.
“Viv!” Reid roars. Desperate, horrified. I’ve never heard his voice like that before.
My key card swipes through, and I shove into the archive doors.
One possessed student is inside—Matt Peverell. But my skin tingles at the man beside him. The redheaded, narrow-faced warlock I’d seen with Finn. And in my dreams…Orin.
But that’s not what threatens to bring me to my knees. Despite how I try to tell myself my mind is playing tricks on me, that the sight before me can’t be right, can’t be real—
Fiona is on the ground, wrists tied, mouth taped over. Matt is holding her down, glossy eyed, while Orin leers over her. Her double-sided spear has been cast aside, and her face is bloodied. She’s been beaten.
“I’m not going to ask you again,” the warlock snarls, grasping her shirt in his hand. “Tell me what the Elders told you, or your kneecaps are next.”
White-hot rage sluices through my veins. Bloodlust like I’ve never felt. I charge at them, daggers poised, only to find myself yanked back by Reid.
“What are you—”
“Wait,” he hushes in my ear. He’s closed the door behind us.
“She’s not giving up anything,” Orin says, turning toward us. “You want me to start removing fingers?”
A cloud of confusion swarms like wasps. Biting, suffocating…“What? Why are you asking me that?”
“I’m not asking you anything,” Orin snarls at me. Then he eyes Reid with what I can only describe as deference. “I’m asking him.”