Chapter 40
“E verybody, gather ’round!” Yarrow called from the academy gates.
Levi stood next to him with his arms crossed, sleeves rolled up to expose his strong forearms. A backpack hung off his shoulder.
“Willowman has set up a warp zone outside the walls which we’ll be using to get to our destination today,” he said.
“Why am I so nervous?” Palia muttered.
“Because bad things happen every time we leave campus,” Ginia replied.
I couldn’t deny the moths in my belly.
The last time I’d gone through these gates I’d been with Bax, and I’d come back alone. “We’ll be okay. We’ll be together.”
“You’ll need to work together to get to the extraction point,” Levi said.
“There will be threats along the way, and each will have a metallic plate on its body fixed to an area which represents its weak spot. You’ll need to strike the plate to disable the creature.
Sometimes more than once. The threats are real.
They can, and will, hurt you. I’ll be on hand to step in, if need be, but if I intervene, then that’ll be marks off to the goyles that needed assistance. ”
He was coming with us?
He didn’t look at me, not once, and I should be glad, but it bothered me. I’d have to get over that.
He couldn’t be a friend.
He was merely a tutor now.
The gates swung open, and we filed into the mid-afternoon sun, gravel crunching beneath our lastonflex shoes.
Yarrow and Levi led us onto a stretch of grass occupied by a stone circle.
I’d seen pictures of similar stone circles in books from the past. There were sites like this all over the rim.
“Everyone inside,” Yarrow said.
Levi led us into the circle.
There were twenty of us, ten from my dorm, including me and Derek, and the rest from the other dorm—faces that were familiar. But I was still working on remembering names.
“I protect you, my Cameron,” Derek said to me.
“It’s okay for some,” one of the gargoyles from the other dorm muttered.
“You have something to share with the class, Hamlin?” Yarrow asked, his tone cold.
“How is it fair that she gets… that as protection?”
“Aw.” Ginia tracked an invisible tear down her cheek. “You need someone to hold your hand?”
“Shut up, Hamlin,” a goyle from his dorm said. “That’s her shield. We all have one, just not like him.”
“I’m just saying, it isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Curi snapped. “Get over it.”
Hamlin flinched.
“I’m going to activate the warp now,” Yarrow said, pressing his hand to the stone pillar in front of him. “Good luck.”
“Hold tight,” Levi said from somewhere close behind me.
I was tempted to look over my shoulder and find him but resisted. He was doing his part. I needed to do mine.
The world tipped and shattered as the warp ripped us out of the circle and away.
* * *
I came to on all fours with bile shooting up my throat. I gagged and swallowed, wincing as it burned a path back down my throat. “Bleurgh.”
“You’re okay.” Derek helped me to my feet.
Around me, several of the other goyles were also busy dry-heaving. I guess I wasn’t the only one who had issues with warping.
Sharniza stood with her back to me, hands on hips, surveying the terrain—an abandoned parking lot with rusted vehicles and several boarded-up buildings to our right. There was a road beyond the broken barriers and an ominously silent settlement beyond that.
“Where are we?” Ginia asked.
“Test Zone 33,” Levi said. “The Stone Council uses it for training exercises for the alpha teams. They agreed to let us borrow it today.”
Touron and I locked gazes, and he arched a brow, probably thinking what I was—that Levi had used his connections to get this zone.
“And what are we up against?” Sharniza asked him.
“Out there, in a real-world situation, you’d never know for sure.”
“In other words, you’re not gonna tell us,” Curi said. “Fine.” He rolled his shoulders. “I like surprises.”
Levi walked to the parking lot barrier. “Beyond this point, there is danger. Navigate it, reach the other side of this settlement, and you pass the test. The exit warp is due northeast.”
He shrugged the pack off his back. “I have compasses. Take one as you pass.”
Hamlin went first, trailed by a couple of the goyles from his dorm. Levi handed them each a compass, and as they stepped past the barrier, the air rippled. It looked like this was a protected zone.
Shar and the twins passed through, followed by Touron then Curi. Then it was me and Derek.
A breeze kissed my face, cold enough to make me squint. “I thought you were coming with us.”
“I’ll be on hand if needed.”
He’d be watching somehow. Monitoring us?
He handed me the compass but didn’t let go of it. The tips of his fingers grazed mine, and gentle warmth bloomed between us along with words unspoken. “Be safe,” he said finally, letting go of the compass.
I dropped a nod and joined the others outside of the safe zone.
“This way!” Hamlin held up his compass and strode off down the road.
“Someone’s overcompensating for his earlier cowardly comment,” Shar said.
“Who put you in charge?” Dayn demanded.
“Fuck you, Lowther,” Hamlin said.
“Fuck you.”
“Why don’t you both fuck each other?” a goyle with a square jaw and angry eyes growled. “Or shut the fuck up. This is a training exercise. There’s danger out here, and we need to be stealthy.”
“Who’s that?” Ginia whispered.
“His name’s Hawke. He’s a Foxe,” Palia said.
“He certainly is.” Ginia caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “How did I not notice him before?”
“He’s one of Farnell’s cadets so isn’t in our regular classes.”
Now that I thought about it, there were a couple more faces that I’d never seen in any of our classes. “Farnell has special cadets?”
“It would seem so. But from what I gather, this is his first year doing it.”
I made a note to ask Serath about it. He was close to Farnell. He’d know.
Hawke’s admonishment seemed to have shut Hamlin and Dayn up. We trudged down the road and into the town in silent vigilance.
The world here was gloomy, the sky heavy with rain clouds.
The sun broke through here and there, lancing down to dapple the earth with golden light.
The buildings were worn but patched up. You could see that someone had gone to the effort to put in a new door here or fit a new window there.
The Stone Council took care of this settlement because they needed it.
Had there been people living here before the council commandeered it?
The sky darkened as the sun was obscured by a cloud.
A clatter and scraping sound brought us all to a halt, drawing our attention to the rooftops of the nearby buildings.
“There’s something up there,” Curi said under his breath.
“No shit,” Dayn muttered.
“Whatever it is, this is a test,” Palia reminded us. “So it has to be something we might come across as guardians.”
“Well, that narrows it down,” Hamlin said dryly.
“Shut up,” Hawke said. “Listen.”
Over the past two weeks, we’d learned about shifters, vamps, graynites, grotesques, and a host of minor tulpa, like boogeymen, the men in hats, shadowmen, and sandmen.
But we’d also learned about creatures I hadn’t known existed, like wraiths and ghouls.
Levi had gone over the properties of each and how they could be bested.
The information scrolled through my mind now.
Another clatter above broke my concentration.
“How long till sunset?” Shar asked.
“Two hours,” Palia said.
They expected us to fight the threats here in human form not goyle. Not that it mattered to me.
All I had was my talons if needed, but flight would have been a bonus to our team right now. “We keep moving and stay alert. We can’t do anything while the threat is above us. It’ll have to come down for us to deal with it.”
“No shit,” Dayn sneered.
“Shut your mouth, Lowther,” Curi growled.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll break your face,” Hawke said before Curi could reply.
Dayn snapped his mouth closed, his jaw so tight I was sure he would grind his teeth to powder.
“What’s your name?” Hawke asked Derek.
“Derek, and this is my Cameron,” he said proudly.
“Yeah, I’ve heard.” Hawke dropped his gaze to me. “Impressive.”
His eyes were like chips of ice, his demeanor not much better. “You’re on a special team with Farnell?”
He blinked sharply as if surprised by my direct question. “Yes.”
“What’s it for?”
Now he looked mildly amused. “Private things.”
My scalp tightened, gut twisting in warning a moment before dark gray shapes leapt off the buildings and landed on the street ahead of us.
I’d seen these creatures before, hunched and taloned with wings that looked too small to take them into the air but that, through some mystical power, could carry them anyway.
Grotesque, once our allies, now our enemies, growled and snapped, pawing at the ground.
I caught the glint of metal on their ankles.
Cuffs of some kind. And in the middle of their chest was a contact point—a diamond-shaped metallic plate.
It covered the area where the stone would be soft enough to break through, the spot where their hearts could be torn from their chests.
We had to strike them there to disable them. Or evade. Whichever worked.
“Grotesque…” Touron said softly. “They have grotesque?”
He looked pale, his eyes darker than usual. Shit, his brother had been killed by one of these creatures.
“I count ten on the ground and maybe seven above,” Curi said.
“Agreed,” Hawke replied.
The creatures waited for us to approach, waiting for us to come to them . “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“I think there’s an attack zone,” Palia said. “Look at the ground. There’s a black painted line up ahead.”
“You mean they won’t attack unless we pass that line?” Dayn asked.
“I think so.”
“What are these things? Trained grotesque?”
Not trained. Maybe restrained. “Look at the cuffs on their ankles.”
“A restraint of some kind.” Hawke’s assessment matched mine.
“Cameron, what you want to do?” Derek asked. “We go through, or we take a new route?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Palia said, answering for me. “I think whichever route we take will have a threat on it.”
“I say we take these fuckers out,” Touron growled. His body rippled with tension, eager to do some damage.
I hadn’t seen him like this before, with such a desire for violence emanating off him. He needed this fight.
But if we were going to do this, then we needed to work together. “Once we cross that line, those things will attack. Not just the ones on the ground, but those above as well, and who knows how many more are up there?”
Hawke’s stocky frame blocked my path as he scanned the rooftops. “We need three units. One to focus on disabling the ground attack and two for dealing with the threat that falls from the sky.”
“Agreed,” Curi said. “Touron, Cameron, Shar, Palia, Ginia, Waxen and Saffe will take the ground forces.”
Hawke nodded. “The rest of you are with me.” He rattled off names, splitting his team into two. “We watch the ground team’s six.”
“Shields at the ready,” Shar said. “We’re going to need them.”
Derek’s feet left the ground, and he loomed above me, my own personal cloud.
“Let’s do this!” Touron let out a battle cry and burst into motion. We followed at a jog, crossing the dark line to meet the threat head on.
The grotesque let out a collective scream and attacked.