Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Elodie
Salvatore ends up in the first wave of students Captain Ross sends off. My sense of his presence fades alongside the streaks of flashlight beams, but not by much. He’ll be proceeding slowly, not wanting to get too far ahead of me.
I end up in the middle group with Asher nearby. We part ways without glancing at each other, but I can’t help rubbing the links of his bracelet under the sleeve of my hoodie.
Stella flashes me a smile as our paths diverge too. “Good luck, and hope you don’t need much of it.”
My laugh comes out a bit shaky. “Same to you.”
As I pick my way between the trees not far from one of the official paths, I register when Byron must head out as well. His presence follows mine, not tracing my route exactly but staying close by.
None of my matches can see me, but the three of them in this exercise should be able to run to my side in the space of a minute. Now I need to provoke the attack that’ll bring them running, or we won’t get any closer to ending this conspiracy.
More security lamps push back the darkness along the pathways. I purposefully veer deeper into the forested stretch, aiming the thin beam of my flashlight toward the ground.
My enemies will prefer to strike when there’s the least chance anyone will see what’s happening.
As the night thickens around me and my feet crunch over fallen twigs, a yelp carries from the distance. A faint sizzling sound filters through the trees from the opposite direction.
The official challenges of this exercise have started. All the better to conceal any noises of alarm I make when the unofficial attack is launched.
The chilly breeze ripples through my hair. I force myself to breathe slowly and evenly, my ears perked and my awareness testing the ephemera around me.
Professor Jovak couldn’t have known which direction I’d head in or where I’d be most vulnerable. Whatever his plan is, it must be something that’ll happen in the moment rather than a trap already laid, or a different student might stumble onto it.
The second there’s a shift in the energies around me, I need to defend myself. The less damage he manages to do, the fewer of my own secrets will be exposed.
Will the attack even come from him? For all I know, he’s got allies all over the park, lying in wait for me. I’m not sure how many co-conspirators could manage to escape Cole’s notice, but this group has already pulled off magic beyond anything I’d have—
My only warning is a soft warble that wavers through my thoughts. My muscles have only just started to tense when a wallop of energy slams toward my head like a sledgehammer.
The wallop would slam right into my head, except the bracelet around my wrist flares with sudden warmth, and the blast hits a shield that’s shot up inches from my skin. Both the barrier and the assault shatter apart with a hiss of scattered energy.
The impact shakes the air and the ground beneath my feet hard enough that I stumble all the same. My ears are ringing.
The flashlight slips from my fingers and rolls across the ground, splashing smears of light across grass and shrubs.
I’ve barely had time to cast out a shield of my own before a sharper lance of magic slices through it and knocks me right on my ass.
My gathered ephemera shudders apart. My hip jars against a tree root with a jolt of pain.
Wincing, I shove my back against the nearby trunk and grope for more energy from the forest around me.
Any doubt about whether this attack might be a regular part of the challenge vanishes an instant later. My hasty attempt at a second shield only partly deflects the next slash of caustic magic.
It scrapes across my throat to draw a burning line through my flesh. Blood streaks down over my collarbone to the top of my shirt, cooling in the night air.
Through the throbbing ache, one clear realization hits me. If I hadn’t managed to repel the blow that one small bit, it’d have gouged right through my neck.
My thoughts scramble. I slump as if the assault hit me harder than it actually did while yanking even more ephemera around me.
Let my attacker pause thinking they succeeded. Let them give me time to protect myself and my men time to reach me.
My glim doesn’t know how to wait. Even as I let my head droop, the unwelcome giddy heat blooms across my throat.
I aim my attention desperately in the direction the strikes came from.
My power races through my nerves, and my glim latches on to a body creeping toward me through the brush. It sucks the healing energy I need out of that body in a slash across another throat. A grunt reaches my ears.
The blare of one of the shocker machines goes off, splintering my concentration. As I harden my focus, footsteps thunder toward me—from more than one side.
“What the fuck is going on over here?”
I lift my head at Salvatore’s growled question. His immense frame has appeared between the trees some ten paces away.
Just a few paces from the bulky form that’s stalking toward me with a strange, serrated blade gleaming in the glow of Salvatore’s flashlight.
Captain Ross’s head jerks around, his jaw tensing against the gaping of the cut on his neck. Blood has already seeped into the collar of his jacket.
So he was part of the conspiracy. This whole time, the whole intensive combat program was aimed at getting to me.
His hand jerks toward Salvatore, and a protest leaps to my lips. But at the same moment, Byron charges over from the other direction.
“Elodie? What happened? You’re bleeding.”
He drops to his knees beside me and reaches for my neck, with a subtle twitch of his shoulder that tugs his sleeve up just a bit.
Just enough that a band of bare skin shows between his glove and the cuff of his sleeve.
Just enough for that skin to graze my jaw in his not-entirely-feigned haste.
A surge of sparks crackle through the air. Byron sucks in his breath as if startled—and lightning roars down from the sky.
That first strike will catch Cole’s attention, let him know it’s time to call in the troops.
It should also let anyone watching Ross and Jovak’s progress know something’s gone very wrong with their plans.
Byron could have reined in the power of his glim with just that. We have plenty of other strategies at our disposal.
But Ross gives a cry and hurtles toward us with his jagged blade aimed at my throat.
I don’t know how much thought Byron puts into the next surge of his glim. He has more control now than when we really did first awaken it, but maybe he’s acting more on instinct than anything else, seeing me in danger.
Another streak of lightning careens down from above and smacks straight into the top of the captain’s head.
Ross’s body spasms and crumples. The dagger drops from his fingers.
He slumps over on the grass, limp as a sack of laundry.
Nothing’s left of his face but a blackened wreckage. If you can even call it a face anymore.
As I stare at the charred remains, Salvatore drops down at my other side.
He acts his part well for the benefit of anyone who might be watching. “I just felt—holy fuck! You’re my match.”
“She’s my match,” Byron snaps back with another crackle of electricity through the branches overhead, maybe not entirely feigning his possessiveness either.
Salvatore yanks at his glove as if to confirm the bond mark is there. I tug off my own, stare at my palm, and then grasp his hand as if without thinking.
Just in time. A wave of magic crashes into the shields we’ve all wrapped around our huddle, potent enough even with the protection to set my teeth jamming against each other and all my nerves jangling.
Salvatore whips his arm out, and a wall surges up from the ground around a form who was invisible until that moment. With a pained gasp, Professor Jovak snaps into view with the cracking of his concealment spell.
His eyes narrow with concentration, but Salvatore heaves the makeshift prison all around the professor, pinning him up to his chin.
Byron whips out a lash of magic of his own. Jovak’s eyes roll up and then dim. His head sags, unconscious, against the structure now holding his body in place.
Byron’s gaze flicks to me. “I figured it was better not to fry him so the police can find out what he has to say for himself.”
His mouth twists with a hint of regret. We hadn’t planned on him frying anyone tonight, but Captain Ross was coming at me so quickly.
Salvatore heaves to his feet with a beckoning gesture. “We’re not done here.”
No, we’re not. Before the police arrive, we need to make sure the woman who prodded Jovak down this path realizes she should step in.
Or, rather, the men beside me need to. My glim won’t make the right kind of spectacle.
Lightning blazes across the darkened sky, overwhelming the paler shine of the moon. Clumps of material stream out of the earth to merge into a spiral staircase that soars up higher and higher until it’s twice as tall as the neighboring trees.
Salvatore keeps a defensive stance, glancing around in search of a new threat. But the next sound we hear reverberates from somewhere far beyond our view.
A shriek pierces the night, followed by a pained cry. A panicked shout travels from somewhere farther to the left.
Something like a snarl filters through the sounds of human distress.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I scramble to my feet, swiping at the blood drying on my neck with one hand while I grope for my flashlight with the other.
Where did it end up? I can’t even see its glow anymore.
The underbrush rasps, and Asher bursts into our small clearing. A tear has left the sleeve of his sweatshirt gaping over a red-streaked cut.
He stumbles to a halt, his eyes wide. “There are void creatures—all over the place. I saw a whole bunch of them. I’ve never heard of so many being in the same place at once… They looked like they were coming from the west end of the park.”
With those last words, his expression turns more solemn.
My mouth goes dry.
Those storage containers Cole observed—could they have been holding voids?
Why—how—?
There isn’t time to even fully form all the questions spinning in my head. Another scream rings out, this one closer by.
And a dog with vacant eyes and drool staining its jowls leaps out of the brush.
Salvatore flicks the switchblade already in his hand, and it extends into the sword I’ve seen him use against a void creature before. That was a much smaller creature than this hound, though.
As he steps between me and the dog, it growls ominously. Its muscles bunch as if to pounce.
Its gaze never leaves Salvatore, even as a hawk drops out of the sky toward us.
Byron curses and shoves me to the side. At the same instant, electricity sizzles.
The bird jerks. The smell of burnt feathers and flesh floods the air as the hawk plummets to the ground much less gracefully than its initial dive.
It thumps against the earth, head jerking. Its scorched wings keep twitching as if it’s attempting to take off again.
How is it still alive?
Byron grimaces and aims another zap at the bird that disintegrates it into outright ash. Salvatore swipes at the dog, and it jumps to the side with a gnash of its jaws.
Hollers and cries are carrying from all across the park now.
Asher’s hand flexes at his side—wishing for his own sword, I have to imagine. “We need to help everyone else. No one could have been prepared for this.”
As if to prove his point, yet another void beast trundles toward us—a bushy raccoon with pointed teeth bared. I grasp a ball of ephemera between my hands, ready to hurl it at the creature.
My mind is already tracing the path we’d need to run to get out of the park, to find a car that could whisk us far away. I don’t want these vicious creatures sinking their fangs and claws into my matches.
What’s the point in seeing our plan through if the men I love don’t survive to the end?
What was the point in putting them in all this danger if we don’t get the one outcome we came for?
The second question freezes me in place.
How much more blood will I have on my hands if we run away and abandon all the other Luminary students in the park?
However Ross and Jovak arranged to bring the void creatures here, it has to be part of their scheme to murder me tonight.
No one who showed up for the seminar would have their lives on the line if it wasn’t for me.
And the threat is very real. Patrols usually only deal with one void at a time, and they’re specifically trained for the job.
No one here except Asher has done much combat practice against voids.
No one at Luminary ever expected to be fighting them beyond the occasional, carefully controlled school demonstration.
I have no idea how anyone else will cope.
Another scream reverberates through the night. From the sounds of things, they aren’t doing so well.
I meet Asher’s gaze, my stomach churning even harder than when I woke up from my nightmare. The image of his limp, bloody body—the other Asher, the one I killed—flashes behind my eyes.
Every particle in my body balks at leaving him in danger.
I force myself to speak anyway. To say the words I know he’d want to hear.
“You’re right. We have to stay and stop these things. How would you tackle this many? We’ll follow your lead.”