Chapter Twenty-One
Erin
We’ve just gotten back to the room after breakfast, none of us have lessons this morning thanks to some sort of compulsory meeting or training I’m not entirely sure. They were a bit vague on the details.
“So is this normal?” Jett asks Harry and the guys as we all walk into their room.
“What the training?” Ty replies putting air quotes around the word training. “Yeah it’s normal, about once a month they have them, no one is really certain what they’re about apart from a few of the eldest students.”
“Fair enough.” Nate replies, “Yet another mystery for this damn place.”
“Do you want a drink?” Dash asks everyone, we’ve gotten comfortable enough to help ourselves to stuff in each other’s rooms.
“Guys?” Kyle asks when none of them reply to Dash.
“I think they’re talking to Sen, they’ve got that glazed look going on again.” Damon chuckles as he stuffs another chip in his mouth.
“Yes we are, now shhh Dude.” Asher admonishes lightly.
Damon chuckles and mimes zipping his mouth shut.
“I hope they’re ok, last time he properly got in contact it was because Levi had been bitten.” I mutter worriedly. “And then again when Sage got shot with a damn arrow.”
“I’m sure they’re fine.” Jett says rubbing a hand comfortingly down my back.
Even so we just sit there in tense silence whilst we wait for them to finish their conversation and fill us in.
The frowns that mar their features at first are not promising although the excited grins that soon follow are an intriguing follow up that has several of us sitting forward in our seats in anticipation.
As their eyes finally clear there’s a sudden glow of magic that has all of us up and into defensive positions, Harry and the others too, all of us with our weapons drawn.
“Knot! Ghost!” I exclaim excitedly shocking Asher and his brothers as I rush up to the two familiars that have just appeared in a swirl of magic.
Ghost flaps his wings excitedly as he caws at me and I bend down so I can stroke him. Knot almost immediately turns into her fox form and start to bound around the room in excitement before she hops into my lap knocking me backwards.
“What the fuck is happening right now?” Ty exclaims for once caught out and not predicting this.
My guys fall back onto the couch and chuckle at the surely amusing scene in front of them.
“Seriously, what the hellfire?” Harry chimes in none of them having dropped their weapons yet.
Not that I can blame them, this is a pretty weird situation.
“Sorry, sorry, guys this is Ghost and Knot,” I say pointing to them respectively “they’re Sage’s familiars.”
“Ok that makes more sense but one she actually has familiars and two she’s got more than one!?” Asher exclaims.
“And why are they here, you forgot that fairly important question.” Ty adds.
“Yes and yes to the first two questions.” Dash starts to explain whilst I fuss over Ghost and Knot. “Although Nyx gave Ghost to her when he was sacrificed by the Director at the Earth realm academy.”
“By the way I still find it odd and strangely hilarious that the Fae and Demon worlds have such fancy names and the Earth realm one is just called Earth realm and all because the Director decades ago lost the true name in a bet!” I chuckle interrupting Dash’s explanation.
He rolls his eyes at me before continuing, I have brought it up regularly since learning about it so I can’t really blame him.
“Of course that makes total sense,” Asher replies sarcastically.
“I’m guessing that whatever Kysen just spoke to you guys about means that we’re going to be seeing Sage and the others really soon?” I say.
“Yeah actually.” Harry says. “They’ve located all of the missing Centre’s in the Cursed City.”
“Isn’t that the criminal city that we learnt about the other day. You know the ‘under no circumstances must you go there’ city?” Kyle asks his eyebrows hitting his hairline.
“That would be the one.” Ty replies lazily lounging back on the couch next to Cole. He is very much like his Jaguar supernatural side.
“Of course it is.” I reply, “So when are we rescuing them?” I get up excitedly.
“Now, they need us now and they want the Centre’s and their Bonded out by tonight.” Asher adds in.
“Sen has found a short cut that will cut our trip down to about five hours, they set up camp an hour away from the Cursed City.”
“Ghost and Knot can lead us to them.” I say and then turn to Ty. “We are coming Ty before you start any psychic stuff.”
“You are but none of you tell him yet.” Ty says to his brothers, “I don’t know why but it’s important that none of them know you are with us or that you are coming.”
“Fair enough.” I reply deflating, I was fully prepared for an argument then.
“We need to tell him about Cole.” Harry says sounding anxious.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, you know what Sen is like. Probably best to just let him meet Cole first.” Asher says.
Cole looks over Ty worriedly.
“Should I be worried?” He asks Ty, “you’ve told me all about him and I’m not confident that his reception to me being with all of you is going to be great. I don’t want to cause problems with you all.”
“It’ll be fine, Cole.” Ty says wrapping his fingers in his own and squeezing, they’re all so damn cute together. “Sen hasn’t had an ease life especially when it comes to love, so any sort of feelings make him a bit prickly.”
“Understatement.” Harry scoffs.
“He knows that we’re keeping something from him so he’s going to be on edge anyway.” Asher says sounding concerned.
“It won’t be for much longer.” I reason. “Remember what I said Cole it will all work out how it’s supposed to.”
“You’re starting to sound like me.” Ty smirks lazily.
“Well damn.” I smirk.
Everyone shares a look but thankfully chooses not to question us. And Cole shoots me a thankful look for reminding him what Sage saw.
“Ok so how’re we sneaking out, there’s no way that the Director is going to let us go.” Nate asks.
“We do need to tell them because they all need to be ready for the Centre’s and their Bonded, no one is certain what condition they’re going to be in, fortunately we have the building that we use when there’s a natural disaster or attack.
Sen said to wait until we’ve got them out and then Harry needs to send a couple of us through in order to warn them before he sends the rest.” Asher explains.
“Are you up to that?” Dash asks, the two of them have grown close both enjoying the research opportunities here.
“I don’t know but I think they’re going to try to lend me power so that it will be possible.” He replies.
“Ok, so back to the issue for right now how’re we going to sneak out?” Jett asks leaning forward.
“Well it actually works in our favour that the academy is working on a skeleton staff right now since everyone else is on a training day or whatever the fuck they call it.” Damon says.
“Good fucking point. Ok, everyone get your go bags, thanks for that suggestion Ty,” Jett says and Ty winks clearly he knew something, “Then I suggest that we split up into twos and take several exits. We can meet at the stables but I’m not sure how we can convince the stable guy to let us take the horses. ”
“I already bribed him, he and the others should be leaving right about now and will be gone for twenty minutes only. We should probably get going.” Ty says, kissing Cole firmly and then hopping up and striding to the door.
We stare after him in shock for a few moments, sometimes his gift is utterly amazing and has the potential to be quite damn scary too.
“Come on, chop chop you lot.” He says raising his eyebrows and smirking.
Fortunately all of our clothes are pretty much battle ready and we are always armed so that’s one less thing to do.
His words have us all up and moving across the hall to our room to get our go bags as the guys get theirs.
Once we’ve gotten our go bags we automatically split up into pairs and take as many different exits as we can.
We barely have five minutes left by the time we get to the stables but Ty must’ve bribed the guys pretty damn well because all of our horses are tacked up and ready to go.
“Harry you lead, your best with directions. We need to get there as soon as possible especially if they want to get them out as soon as it gets dark. It’s going to be one hell of a mission. Everyone ready?” Asher asks.
Ghost caws in response making me grin widely.
“I’ll take that as a yes, let’s go!” He chuckles before nudging his horse into a gallop and ours follow suit.
Just before we leave I hear Cole mutter, “I hope he likes me.”
“He’s going to fucking love you the prickly bastard.” Asher mutters back before we make our way out of the gates.
Sage here we come