Chapter 36
Crane
When I first saw the horseman silently approach us from outside the cathedral, I immediately pulled myself deeper into the shadows, wanting to wait until he was almost at Kat before I roasted him in flames.
But then Brom’s voice came inside my head.
I’d never been so overjoyed to hear him in all my life.
Never felt so proud as a teacher either.
He quickly filled me in on the plan. For the time being, he had complete control of the horseman.
He was able to control the Hessian’s physical form, and he was able to take the Hessian’s strength and use it for himself.
The coven didn’t know he had already made a bargain with the horseman, for what I’m not sure, but we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.
So the coven was intent on using the horseman to capture Brom and bring him to them, which he did.
With Brom controlling both the Hessian’s physical body and his own, he was able to do some acting, pretending that he was possessed and ready to do their bidding.
Their bidding, of course, involved capturing Kat, drugging her with laudanum, and then having Brom essentially rape her, spreading his demon spawn inside.
He told me all of this as he captured Kat, holding her safely by the throat in a way that I know was modeled after me, and then brought her over to the sisters, acting like the dutiful soldier in their control.
I was delighted to find that I could still use my voice too, which meant I could use it inside other people’s minds.
I wanted more than anything to tell Kat what was really happening, but instead I trusted her with Brom.
I trusted her life in his hands. And I sank back into the shadows, and started running around the campus and projecting my voice into everyone who could hear me.
I told them all that their magic was needed. That they had a chance to fight back against the powers that held them at the school. And I told them that if they didn’t do this, they’d all flunk my class.
I don’t know if anything will come from that. I didn’t have time to wait around and see if some student was going to come out waving elemental magic. Even if they’re too scared to do anything, I at least let them know what the dangers really were, and what they were up against.
I just wish I had done that a long time ago.
But now I’m running back inside the cathedral, wondering what scene I’m going to find.
Sheer chaos.
The physical horseman is being fried by lightning that’s coming out of Leona’s palms, Sister Ana is missing a head, and Sister Margaret is flying through the air at Brom.
Brom, who is naked, with a broadsword raised, looks every inch the glorious warrior, making my blood run hot despite the circumstances, while Kat is being kept back behind him. She looks ready to use her own magic on Margaret, but Brom beats her to it, slicing off Margaret’s head with the sword.
I plan to slink through the shadows until I’m close enough to Leona to set her ablaze without her seeing me, or perhaps I have enough time to load my gun, but then I realize that there’s a huge bloody mess on the floor by the altar, and what looks like the decapitated head of some humanoid creature.
My eyes follow a wide smear of blackish blood over to the wall, just behind Kat, then up the wall and…
Before I can yell, a horse-sized spider descends from the rafters of the cathedral, right behind Kat, eight spindly legs shooting out and wrapping around her.
She screams as it yanks her up into the air.
I shout, running forward, my palms raised, ready to ignite the thing, but I can’t do that without setting Kat on fire too.
“Ichabod Crane!” Leona yells at me now, having defeated the Hessian soldier who lies in an electrocuted heap beside her, his body twitching. She comes at me, hands out, flying through the air toward me until Brom takes his sword back behind his head and whips it forward at her.
The sword goes flying through the air, doing several rotations, until it strikes her in the back and she lets out a blood-curdling screech as it pins her to the ground.
Get Kat, Brom says to me, running over to Leona to finish the job.
I’m already sprinting toward the opposite wall, staring up at the rafters where that beast has Kat in its grasp, wondering how I’m going to get up there.
Then I notice the thick string of a spiderweb dangling in front of me, leading up the way the spider went.
I take in a deep breath and put my hands around the sticky string and shudder profusely.
Hold on, sweet witch, I project into her head. I’m coming for you.
I start climbing up the sticky silk strand, the disgust turning into anger the farther up I go.
They won’t take her from me, no one is taking her from me.
Almost there, Kat, I cry out, hoping she’s still alive. From the quick glances up above, her feet are dangling, seemingly lifeless in the spider’s bloody grasp.
Finally, I reach the bottom of the spider, a disgusting hole where the silk web comes out, and I reach out for Kat’s foot to let her know it’s me. She jerks it from my grasp involuntarily and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Until the spider throws back one of its legs, spearing me through my shoulder with a burst of blinding pain, pinning me against the wall.
The air leaves my lungs, the agony immense, and I’m trapped.
Who goes there? the spider without a head says in an inhuman voice. Who disturbs Goruun?
Jesus. This thing is Goruun?
But the thought starts to fade as pain begins to overtake me, blood running from the hole in my shoulder and dripping down, down into the cathedral below with sickening splats.
Hold on, Crane, Brom’s voice comes from somewhere, and I’m starting to feel delirious. Where is he?
Save Kat, I plead with him tiredly. Forget about me.
Like I ever could, he says.
Suddenly there’s a thump from the roof above, and I look up to see fragments of it falling on top of us, and then the edge of an ax breaks through. Another swing and then Brom’s face appears above us.
“Remember me?” Brom says to the demon.
Then he crawls through the hole and lands on one of the wooden rafters, brandishing the ax and coming toward Goruun. Because the spider can’t see him, it flails around trying to face its attacker, and for a moment Kat comes closer to me.
She meets my eyes, looking dazed but all right otherwise.
Kat, I tell her. On the count of three we’ll light him up. He’ll let go of you before you catch fire.
She nods.
You hear that too, pretty boy? I say to Brom.
Loud and clear, sir, he says, and I can’t help but smile.
One, I count down.
Two.
Three.
With all the strength I have, I coax the fiery energy through me and set the bottom of the spider on fire, flames catching, and Kat moves around enough in its grasp to do the same to where the missing head should be.
Goruun screeches, letting go of Kat enough for her to wriggle out of his grasp, though at the same time he’s yanking his spider leg out from my wound, leaving both of us about to fall to our death.
At the last minute I reach for the rafter, wrapping my good arm around it, and grabbing Kat before she falls.
I groan, pulling her up to me so she can hold on, the pain in my shoulder making me feel faint, and we watch as Goruun starts coming after Brom along the wooden rafter, its body on fire.
Brom takes his ax, and as he balances on the beam, moving backward, he starts slicing into the spider with merciless hacks of the blade.
The spider cries out, falling in bloody chunks onto the altar and the dead bodies below, but now the fire that was burning him is burning along the rafter, the flames coming toward us.
“Shit,” I swear, and look up above at the hole Brom made in the roof. “That’s our only shot.”
I carefully lift Kat up to her feet on the beam, and I go to the hole, pulling myself out and onto the roof, then reaching back down and grabbing Kat and pulling her up alongside me.
“Brom!” I yell toward the hole. “Get out of there!”
But Brom doesn’t answer.
“Brom!” I scream again, Kat screaming along with me, and I lie flat on the roof, looking over the side into the burning cathedral. Brom is standing on the rafter as the flames creep toward him, cornered.
Damn you, pretty boy! I yell inside my head. Run through the fire and get out of there, now!
But Brom just shakes his head.
Holds my eyes for an agonizing moment.
Just as the rafter crumbles beneath him.
He falls through the flames, disappearing to the cathedral below.
“Brom!” I scream so loud that my eyes feel like they’re bleeding.
Kat is crying and sobbing beside me. “No, no, please no!”
And in the distance I hear people yelling.
“Professor Crane, Professor Crane!”
In a daze I get up and look over the edge of the roof to see the students gathered below, dawn beginning to rise from the east.
“The building is going to collapse!” Paul yells up at me. “You need to get down from there!”
“Brom is inside the building!” I yell back. “You must save him!”
“We can do both!” yells Josephine, and she runs inside the cathedral with a few other students.
“Jump off the roof, Professor Crane!” Paul yells up at us. “I have you. I have this. You taught me well!”
I don’t know what the hell I taught Paul at this point, and I can’t seem to move, I can’t seem to meet my fate, but Kat grabs my hand, gives me a small smile, despite the tears running down her face, and says, “You at least have to trust your own students. You’re the one who taught them.”
I nod, swallowing hard, and look over the edge again.
The vision of my tarot card comes into my head.
The Tower.
It was like this, but it wasn’t.
I saw the future, but I also didn’t.
So much of our destiny is in our hands.
“Jump?” I say to Paul.
“Leap of faith!” he yells. “Learn to let go and trust.”
I sigh heavily. Of course there’s a lesson in this for me.
“Oh, to hell with it.”
With Kat’s hand in mine, the both of us jump off the edge of the cathedral.