Chapter 46
Forty-Six
Asher
“We’ll follow your lead.”
At Elodie’s words, my heart skips a beat.
I shouldn’t be so nervous. I’ve spent years training to take down void creatures on the front lines.
But I never expected to be facing an onslaught like this. I never expected I’d be facing it with my match and the other members of our union around me, counting on me to get us through the disaster.
Elodie was careful not to say why she turned to me. I’ve never told anyone about my training outside of school, my plans to follow the same kind of path my education at Beacon Prep would have taken me down even though Cole has much bigger dreams for me.
But her endorsement is all it takes for the others to trust me. Even Salvatore Cosgrave—king of the combat club, brutal heir to two mafia empires—glances back at me for guidance, his sword hovering between him and the mindless dog.
The void raccoon that’s crouched just a few steps away lets out a fierce hiss, and my instincts kick in through the alarm clanging through my body. I hold out my hand at my side, concentrating on the ephemera tickling at my senses from the forest around us.
None of my hopes or secrets matter if we don’t survive the night. The pain rippling through my other forearm where a roving void kestrel clipped me brings that fear into stark focus.
Maybe I can ask the other guys not to say anything to my brother once we’ve made it through the mayhem. First, we have to actually make it through.
A glinting translucent sword of pure magical energy forms in my grasp. A pinching sensation digs into the back of my skull at the effort it’s taking to condense the ephemera that solidly, but I’ll take the pain if it gets us through the next hour.
The raccoon springs at Elodie. I leap into its way, whirling before slashing down and across in one of the techniques my friend Jesse helped me practice.
The wavering blade slices through the creature’s spine.
My conjured weapon doesn’t carve through flesh as easily as the illusionary body of the bear I fought during the previous seminar. A sharper jolt of pain radiates through the back of my head.
The raccoon topples over. Its head rolls away from its body into the grass.
Salvatore gives a whoop of a laugh and extends his free arm. “Nice one, Raith, but I bet you’d like a real sword.”
Glinting particles shiver out of the soil from all around us. They converge into a length of metal with a leatherbound handle lying on the ground by Salvatore’s feet.
He scoops up the second sword just as the dog launches itself at him.
The guy is no slouch, even if most of his training has been focused on fighting other people rather than savage animals. The two blades whip through the air.
One skewers the dog in the chest. As it holds the beast still, Salvatore swings the other sword through its neck.
As the void dog crumples, the mafia heir wipes the newly constructed blade on a patch of grass and tosses it to me. I manage to catch the grip without fumbling, letting my conjured weapon disperse back into the air.
Salvatore’s construction is sound, possibly because of how much time he’s spent handling weaponry. I test the sword’s weight in my hand.
A smile tugs at my lips with the fading of my headache. “It’s perfect.”
I lift my head to scan our surroundings. No other creatures have charged toward us through the dim moonlight yet, but shrieks and yelps ring out from several directions in the forest.
My gut twists. I rest my free hand against my hip, against the stone in my pocket I’ve always considered lucky.
Is luck enough to get us through tonight?
Maybe not, which means I have to be.
I reach for all the lessons I was taught during my early years at Beacon Prep and everything I’ve picked up from Jesse and my other extracurricular studies since then.
No one teaches strategies for dealing with a horde of void creatures, because no patrol has ever had to do that before. There are pieces specific to working with a group of hunters that should help, though—pieces the Luminary students will never have learned.
I square my shoulders. “Okay. Our first priority is keeping the creatures away from us and the other students. We don’t have to kill all the voids—Salvatore, if you can wall them off like you did with Professor Jovak, that’ll be good enough.
But the more we can herd together, the less strain it’ll be on you. ”
“I can handle plenty,” Salvatore insists.
I ignore his bravado and go on. “Void creatures get confused if there’s a lot of intense stimuli coming from multiple directions.
Bright lights, loud sounds, even intense smells.
If they’re disoriented, they won’t attack, and we can drive them in a general direction.
Byron, you can help with the lights. We can all make a lot of noise.
Once we see what we’re dealing with out there, try to get the other students on board too. ”
Byron nods and sends a few sparks crackling between his raised hands.
Elodie scoops something off the ground. When she adjusts it in her hand, I see it’s an unusual knife—with a foot-long blade that’s oddly jagged along its cutting edge.
“Captain Ross tried to slash my neck with this,” she tells me, touching her throat where a couple of disturbing ruddy smudges remain. “I guess… it would have looked like a void creature tore into me rather than a human being. This whole mess is to cover their murder attempt.”
For a second, her shadowed face looks haunted. Then she lifts her chin and shifts the weapon into a defense pose, more than ready to tackle whatever threats we might encounter next.
More affection than I knew I had in me swells through my chest with a heavy pang.
She’s been through so much, and she’s still fighting—for herself, for us, for schoolmates I’m not sure she even likes.
I wish I’d known this Elodie for all that time before she stumbled into our world. That I’d been the one to befriend her and have her back through my years at Luminary, the Asher who must have known her so well and built so much history with her.
But that Asher failed. He tried to save her and ended up dying in her place.
He left her with a different kind of wound—one I see every time she looks at me, no matter how hard she tries to hide the trauma.
I can do better than that for her, can’t I?
I’m going to get all of us out of this hell alive.
A shriek breaks the air from somewhere nearby. I motion for the others to follow me.
As we hurry between the trees, Byron clears his throat softly. His voice is equally quiet. “We still want to draw out the woman who orchestrated this attack and anyone else here who’s working with her.”
Elodie’s expression tightens. “Yes. I’m still bait. We can’t make me look like too difficult a target. And be ready to put a spotlight on the attack when it comes.”
My heart squeezes at the thought of leaving her vulnerable, but that was already the plan. And she’s proven over and over that she’s the least fragile out of all of us.
I aim a smile at her that I hope is reassuring.
“You can still pitch in. We’ll fan out around the creatures to confuse them and herd them together.
Hang back a little more than the rest of us and keep some distance from any of the other students.
Like you’re in a position where you could be picked off. ”
Salvatore bares his teeth. “Just don’t actually get picked off by a void. These fucking things are all over the place.”
As if to confirm his statement, we emerge from the thicker trees onto one of the paths to find a couple of our classmates standing back-to-back, hands extended to ward off the three void animals prowling around them.
Stella Kingsley and Heath Ridley haven’t gotten through the onslaught of voids unscathed. Blood streaks down Stella’s gray leggings from a cut on her lower thigh, and one sleeve of Heath’s hoodie is shredded and drenched in scarlet.
The bobcat in the middle of the trio of voids is bunching its muscles to pounce.
“Shout and stomp your feet, as loud as you can,” I holler to my classmates while motioning for my companions to circle the creatures.
Elodie grabs a fallen branch and whacks it against the ground as she walks. Salvatore lets out several threatening whoops. Byron joins in with a couple of flashes of lightning on either side of the path that make Stella flinch.
He’s showing off his glim in public for the first time. Can he get any satisfaction out of the moment when it’s under circumstances like these?
I slam my own feet into the earth, keeping my sword at the ready. When the void weasel in the bunch scuttles as if to dash past us, I lunge in with a swipe of my blade.
The weapon misses, but the weasel wheels backward. Heath has started yelling at the creatures too, and Stella adds a boom of ephemera to the mix.
The bewildered creatures stumble closer together, just as I hoped.
Salvatore’s eyes narrow. I’m a little afraid he’s going to jump in and attempt to chop all their heads off rather than sticking to the safer plan, but he must have some sense to go with his bravado. He thrusts out his empty hand rather than his sword.
Another solid wall of clay surges up from the ground to box the creatures in. The bobcat heaves itself upward, just as Salvatore caps his cage off with a matching roof.
In a matter of seconds, we’re staring at a domed structure like a miniature clay igloo. It’s dense enough that I can’t make out any sounds from inside, but I doubt the voids are chumming up to each other in their captivity.
“What the fuck?” Heath mutters.
Salvatore waggles his fingers in the air with a manic-looking grin. “I’ve got my glim, bro. Luminary better watch out.”
I wave him farther down the path, toward the cries carrying from deeper within the park.
“There are more voids to tackle.” I glance over my shoulder at the two classmates we just rescued.
“Get out of here and call for help. If you run into any more creatures, you might be able to convince them to run off if you make a lot of noise from different sides.”