Jade
A blur of matted black fur and too many teeth bursts from the tunnel.
Its eyes burn like coals, its claws scrape sparks against the obsidian walls, and smoke curls from its muzzle with every breath. When it opens its jaws, sulfur and rot pour out of its throat, ancient and hungry and wrong in a way that makes me gag.
This isn’t real. This can’t be real.
But it is real, because it’s lunging, and someone’s screaming, and I think that someone is me.
“Hellhounds!” someone shrieks from my left. “They’re hellhounds!”
I don’t know what that means. I don’t know anything except that more of them are pouring from the tunnels, red eyes multiplying in the darkness like a Mirror Vault nightmare.
Five. Ten. Twenty.
I lose count.
Logan’s hand closes around my wrist so hard it hurts, yanking me backward as claws slice through the air where my face had been. And even though Logan would go back in time to save my life, that doesn’t make the near-death experience any less terrifying.
Maybe Logan did go back in time? Maybe that’s why the claws missed?
Time traveling boyfriends are great. Ten/ten recommend.
Before I can check for his telltale signs of time travel, his arm wraps around my waist.
“What are you—”
Orange flames engulf us both, and then cold air’s biting at my exposed skin, moonlight’s washing over us, and the distant crash of waves against rocks echoes from below.
He brought us to the cliffs on the far side of the island.
I stumble away from him, my ears ringing from the chaos we left behind. “What the hell?”
“You’re safe.” He’s breathing hard, his face pale in the moonlight. “We need to—”
I don’t hear the rest. I’m already pulling on my magic and picturing the cave where monsters are attacking my friends, flames rising around me until the cliffside glows orange.
Oliver died because I wasn’t fast enough. I refuse to live with anyone else’s death on my hands. I refuse to run when I could have fought.
The cave reforms around me, and the screaming hits like a wall. People are everywhere, some pressed against rock, others not moving on the ground. Fire blooms from a dozen palms at once, lighting the cave in violent orange bursts.
I fumble for my dagger, nearly drop it, then manage to get a grip on the leather handle with fingers that won’t stop shaking.
Kieran’s voice echoes in my head from Applied Flamecraft.
Feet planted. Blade up.
Don’t die.
One of the creatures charges from the left, and Logan must have fire traveled back immediately after me, because black-lined flames hit the hellhound mid-leap. But it keeps coming, barreling through the flames, its jaws snapping at my arm.
My dagger sinks into its eye socket.
The resistance is soft then hard then soft again. Hot black blood sprays across my hand, my arm, my face, and even into my mouth. The taste of copper and sulfur coats my tongue, the creature crumples to the ground, and I’m standing over it with my dagger buried in its head.
Dead.
I did that.
I killed it.
My stomach heaves. I yank the blade free and the blood keeps coming, coating my hands up to the wrists.
There’s fire everywhere. Screaming everywhere. Garrett’s blade is catching the light. Vera and Nina are back-to-back, hurling flames at anything with red eyes. A third-year whose name I can’t remember is going down under three of the creatures at once.
“What are these things?” I ask, my heart racing with panic. “Logan, what the hell are these things?”
“Hellhounds. Ancient and drawn to dark magic.” He blasts black-lined fire at one, driving it back. “They shouldn’t have been able to cross the island’s wards.”
Shouldn’t.
Shouldn’t is doing a lot of heavy lifting right now.
A scream cuts through the chaos, louder than the others and more commanding. It’s from the left, where Deidre Mitchell is standing on a raised platform, her dark hair wild, her hands raised like she’s about to save us all. Fire spirals around her in elaborate patterns.
“Everyone get behind me!” she screams across the cave. “I’ll create a barrier! I’ve studied advanced defensive formations!”
“Deidre, no!” Lauren calls out from about twenty feet away, just as Vera saves her by driving a dagger into a hellhound lunging for her throat. “You can’t hold that alone!”
Deidre’s barrier expands, bright and fierce. Several creatures skid to a halt, red eyes reflecting the flames.
Maybe it’ll work. Maybe she actually—
One of the creatures leaps over the barrier.
Deidre’s eyes go wide as her barrier flickers and the creature lands on top of her. Her mouth opens in surprise, like she didn’t expect this, like she genuinely thought she could handle everything because she got an A in Applied Flamecraft.
Its jaws close around her throat.
Her body jerks once, then twice, and then stops moving entirely.
The creature raises its blood-soaked muzzle and howls, and Lauren’s screaming her sister’s name, running to the body, getting dragged back by people trying to save her life.
Then Logan’s in front of me, his face locked down tight. He reaches for me, and I move out of his grasp before he can teleport me across the island again while my friends are in mortal danger.
“People are trapped.” I point at the far wall, my hand shaking. “Sam and Elizabeth are surrounded.”
“I know.” He scrubs a hand over his face, and when it drops, whatever he was feeling is gone. “Let’s go.”
The distance to my friends feels like miles. A creature lunges at me, and I duck too slow, pain ripping down my shoulder as its claws rake my skin. I stab blindly and hit something, and I don’t know if I killed it, because I don’t have time to check.
A boy with dark hair goes down on my right. His fire sputters out, and the creatures are on him, his screams cut shorter and shorter until there’s nothing.
“Leo!” someone wails.
Oliver’s friend, my brain supplies. The one they made fun of at the Halloween Ball.
We keep moving, reaching Elizabeth right as a hellhound lunges at her. Francis Willingham throws himself in front of her, and the creature’s claws catch the torchlight as they tear through his chest like he’s made of paper.
Blood sprays across the obsidian. Francis crumples to the ground. Elizabeth screams, an animalistic sound that doesn’t seem like it could come from a human, and then she’s throwing herself at the creature with her tiny flames and bare hands.
It catches her by the throat.
Her flames sputter out. Her body jerks, then goes limp, and she crumples next to Francis with her eyes staring at nothing at all.
Her too-big sweater is soaked with blood. One of her braids is undone.
I was ten feet away, and I held back because I’ve been training to repress my electricity to stop myself from being noticed by the Council, and it’s become muscle memory by now.
Sam’s scream cuts through the chaos. He’s pressed against a wall, three creatures stalking toward him. His dagger shakes in his grip, tears streaming down his face as he tries and fails to call on his flames.
The creature bats the dagger aside like it’s nothing.
“Sam!”
Its jaws close around his shoulder, an awful wet tearing sound echoing through the space as it drags him down. His strangled scream cuts off, followed by the thud of his body hitting the stone.
Sam Reeves, who memorized every text on mythological creatures. Who helped me during the Hydra trial. Who rambled useful facts when he was scared.
He’s dead because I froze instead of unleashing my magic.
Silver electricity tears from my hands, arcing across the cave and slamming into the hellhound that killed Sam. It convulses, and then it’s on the ground, smoke spiraling up from the seared fur on its dead body.
The remaining creatures freeze. Their red eyes fix on the electricity crackling around my fingers, and for the first time, they look uncertain.
They should be afraid. Of me.
Rage, grief, and guilt tangle together, burning hotter than any fire, and I raise my hands.
Electricity answers.
Each tiny bolt strikes where I aim, focused and precise, driven by fury so pure it feels almost calm.
One creature down. Two. Three.
They fall in rapid succession—smoking, silent, and dead.
Deacon Park watches me with his mouth hanging open. Vera’s looking at me like I’m a stranger. Even Nina’s frozen midway through creating a giant fireball, her eyes wide as they scan my body, as if staring long enough will answer her questions.
“Go!” The word tears out of me. “Get out of here! Now!”
They scramble over bodies and debris, heading for the tunnel that leads to the surface.
I turn to another cluster of trapped people. Rebecca Gibson’s hunched in on herself, and Henry Baker’s bright green eyes are wide with terror, his eternal enthusiasm gone.
Electricity arcs from my palms. Four bolts hit four creatures, and four smoking bodies drop to the ground.
“Move!” I scream at them. “Get to the exit!”
They run, and we run with them, our footsteps echoing off the stone walls as the tunnel to the surface stretches on and on with no end in sight.
Logan clears a path with fire while I watch our backs, throwing lightning at anything with red eyes. Others run alongside us, their faces pale and tear-streaked, their clothes torn and bloodied.
The air changes first, turning cooler and fresher. Soon, moonlight spills down from an opening ahead.
We burst from the cave, and for a second, I think we made it.
Then the howling starts, hellhounds pouring out behind us. Way more of them than should be possible are coming out of multiple cave exits, red eyes flooding the rocky hillside.
A girl goes down screaming to my left. I spin and throw a bolt of power that electrifies the hellhound, but her throat’s already torn out, her eyes staring at nothing.
That’s Margot. Well, it was Margot, the fourth-year who was desperate to replace Logan as proctor, who drove me crazy with her overly perky personality.
Now, she’s dead.
Hellhounds are swarming the hillside, red eyes in every direction, and people are falling, dying, and screaming for help that isn’t coming.
The clouds start churning, and the wind picks up, whipping my hair across my face.
My small electrical bolts are too contained to cut it out here.
In the cave, I could aim. I could pick off the hellhounds one by one, methodical and controlled. Out here in the open, with creatures swarming from every direction, one blast at a time isn’t enough.
I need more power.
I need lightning.
I need the sky.
Thunder rumbles from swirling clouds, as if the storm’s talking to me, calling to me.
Logan’s hand closes around my wrist. “Don’t.”
“It’s the only way to kill them all.” I try to pull free, but his grip is iron.
“I can compel a few witnesses, but this is too many.” He gestures at the chaos around us, at the forty-plus people fighting for their lives. “The Council will find out.”
The wind howls, the temperature plummets, and static builds in the air until my skin prickles with it. Fire and red eyes scatter the hillside, and everywhere I look, people are fighting and falling.
But they’re not just people. They’re my friends, and I can save them.
So I plant my feet on the ground, raise my hands to the sky, and reach up with every ounce of power I can gather.
The first bolt slams into my upraised palms, and electricity fills every vein, every nerve, and every cell of my body with raw, crackling power.
I’m a lightning rod. A conduit. A weapon.
And I have targets.
So, I thrust my hands toward a pack of hellhounds closing in on Vera, Nina, Callie, and Alessandra. Lightning explodes from my fingertips. Four bolts, four creatures, four piles of ash.
Vera scrambles backward. Nina’s already gathered fire in her hands, ready to keep fighting. Callie’s eyes are huge as she hurries to check on Alessandra, and I’m already turning, already reaching for the sky again.
Another bolt crashes down. I catch it, power coursing through my arms, my chest, and my racing heart. I’m holding a piece of the sky, and it’s wild and screaming.
I release it.
The lightning arcs across the hillside and finds two hellhounds circling Garrett. One second they’re snarling, and the next they’re nothing.
More. I need more.
I reach up again, bolt after bolt slamming into my hands, channeling through my body, exploding outward to every red eye I can see.
A hellhound lunges at Deacon Park. I catch a bolt from the sky with my left hand, redirect it with my right, and the creature vaporizes mid-leap. Deacon screams, but he’s alive.
Three more hellhounds break for the tree line. I pull down a massive fork of lightning, split it into three separate streams, and send each one to its target.
They fall. They burn. They die.
I catch another bolt. Redirect it. Catch another. Redirect it.
The last hellhound falls.
My ears are ringing. My whole body’s vibrating with residual electricity. Smoke rises from the ground around me, from my clothes, and from the ends of my hair. The smells of charred earth and burning skin fill my nose as I catalogue who’s still alive.
Vera’s on her knees, gaping at me like I shouldn’t exist. Garrett stands frozen with his blade forgotten on the ground beside him.
Nina looks at a loss for the first time in her life, and Alessandra has tear tracks cutting through the ash on her face as she stares at me like I’m either a god or a monster.
Tyler Brennan, who took Avery to the Halloween Ball, made it. So did a handful of second-years, Avery, Callie, some other third-years from the dining hall, and fourth-years who’ve never given me the time of day.
Every single one of them is staring at the girl who caught lightning with her hands and annihilated every hellhound on the hillside.
My hands are smoking, wisps of vapor rising from my palms. The skin should be destroyed, but they’re just my hands, same as always, minus the silver glow fading from my fingertips.
Logan’s right behind me, close enough that I could fall into his arms if I wanted to.
“I’m taking us as far back as I can,” he says, cutting through the ringing in my ears.
His hand closes around mine, residual electricity shocking where our skin meets. A sharp inhale cuts through his composure as his body goes rigid for a fraction of a second, but when I try to pull away, his grip tightens.
“You can’t expose yourself like that,” he says, fierce and determined. “I’m bringing us back so we can do it differently.”
Silver electricity crackles across my skin where our hands are joined, and the storm answers with a low, rolling growl. “Do it,” I tell him, as fierce and determined as he is. “Take us back.”