Chapter 6 #3
“I must have you, darling,” she told me while I was pinned on my back. She held my ankles like a wheelbarrow now, pushing me into the ground with such force I feared my ankles would snap any second.
I bucked hard, trying to dislodge my ankles, but she loomed over me, breath hot against my face, with saliva dripping from her mouth.
In one swift movement, she spread my legs and dropped down between them, hovering over me with a feral grin that made dizziness wash over me.
“Asher!” Professor Walters screamed from somewhere in the room.
Asher?
Oh no.
He was taken too?
My last dying thought was going to be about the hot boy who’d gotten me into this mess and now wouldn’t talk to me.
Just before the vamp could lean forward to feed off me, a bolt ripped into her chest, the impact jerking her backward.
She screeched and then keeled backward as I peered up in relief.
Asher stood over me, holding Jane’s harpoon gun. He slung the gun over his back and, in one swift move, reached down and hooked me under the armpits, yanking me upright so fast my feet barely touched the floor.
He spun me, and I came face-to-face with him as he peered down at me with a clenched jaw. “Please stop almost dying. I’m trying to focus.”
Pfff. Like I did this on purpose.
“Asher!” Professor Walters barked, and then Asher was dragging me back to the V formation, his grip firm on my arm.
At the same time as he did, the student Nate was back with a wafer tackle box, breathing hard. It was similar to the one I’d seen Asher have, but bigger. Nate fought his way across the room and handed the box to the professor.
I looked over at the people standing left and right of Professor Walters, who covered him so he could rifle through the box and toss something in his mouth, bodies stationed protectively around him.
When the professor was done, he stood and passed the box to the student on his right and then burst from the formation.
Holy crap.
He was lightning fast.
No, vampire fast.
The professor whizzed around the room, stabbing, beheading, and dropping vamps like flies, barely more than a blur between targets.
I was currently in another tussle with one, but before I could even stab him, Asher took him down, blade flashing past my shoulder.
“I can handle myself,” I snapped beside me where he stood.
When we’d rejoined the formation, we’d all gotten scrambled up, and now Harper and Luna were to my right with Asher on my left.
“Sure you can.” He groaned as another wave of vampires appeared through the shadow portals, bodies spilling out of darkness.
Make it stop!
Before I knew it, the little tin of wafers was handed from Harper to Asher.
“I’m not allowed to take these. I didn’t pass my final,” he said to her.
She pinned him with a serious look, her eyes glowing purple. “Special circumstance. Only take the tier-one Ignis wafers.”
She then broke from the formation, and I noticed we were no longer in a V shape.
The rest of the group had taken a rune wafer and were now fighting with extreme speed and strength.
Harper picked up a vampire and threw him across the room with her bare hands. He sailed twenty feet before slamming into a wall and falling to the ground, neck broken.
Her father zoomed over to the fallen vamp and staked him before he could rise.
It was pandemonium, and all the while, the siren from the fire alarm was blaring.
But even with the vamps coming in by the dozens, we were winning.
Asher popped a wafer onto his tongue and then slid the tin into his back pocket.
“Stay behind me,” he ordered me, stepping in front of me like a shield.
Like hell!
Bastard.
Did I look like a damsel in distress?
I yanked the tin out of his back pocket just as a bloodsucker pounced on him.
He tussled with the vamp as I was looking over the Ignis rune wafers. They all looked like a tiny flame on top of a group of lines or circles.
What did the images mean?
I’d breathed fire before, but that was a Celestis wafer.
What did these do?
Before I could reach in and grab one, Asher snatched the wafer tin out of my hand.
“Hey!” I snarled.
He grabbed something from the Ferro category and handed it to me. “Take this if you insist on acting like you’re one of us.”
My head reeled back like he’d slapped me.
Insist that I was one of them?
That wasn’t what I was doing. I was just trying to help.
Hurt sliced through me, but I swallowed it down. This wasn’t the time for caring about feelings.
I peered down at the image on the wafer. It almost looked like a vampire stake with bursting lines behind it.
I put the wafer on my tongue and shot Asher a glare. “Next time I’m about to die, don’t save me,” I growled, and his face fell.
He had the good sense to be horrified by my comment as I spun around and ran over to Luna, who was cutting down a vampire that was grasping her shoulder.
I grabbed the vamp by the ponytail and ripped her backward just as Luna plunged her sword into the vamp’s chest.
“Thanks,” she said with relief.
I didn’t feel anything from the wafer yet.
I wondered if he gave me a bunk wafer. Something stupid like sharpened sight or some useless ability like that.
Suddenly the fire alarm turned off, and in the open doorway was Harper’s mom with two dozen other hunters fanned out behind her, weapons already raised and ready. She tossed a steel ball into the room, the metal clattering once as it hit the floor.
“Light bang!” she yelled as Luna put her hands over my eyes.
Even with her hands there, I saw a flash of bright buttery yellow light and heard a collective hissing and growling of every vampire present, the sound echoing off the walls.
Luna removed her hands, and I blinked at the carnage before me, my vision slowly clearing.
The two dozen hunters were in the room now, hunched over the remaining vampires, who writhed on the ground with boils and sores all over their skin as the hunters quickly ended their lives, blades rising and falling in fast, efficient motions.
One female hunter in her mid-twenties walked into the center of the room and stood there very still, the chaos moving around her.
Her bright red hair was tied into a topknot, and she was absolutely covered in tattoos from her neck to her knuckles.
Her skin was alabaster white, and her almond-shaped eyes told of her Asian heritage.
She took in a deep breath and pulled out…a pen?
Not just any pen. It was like one of those old ink bottle pens with the metal pointed tip.
I watched in fascination as her eyes clouded over, going white, and she pointed the metal tip at the ceiling.
Blue light poured out of it as she then began to draw a shape—no, a rune—into the ceiling itself, the glowing lines carving into the surface like they belonged there.
Luna watched in wonder beside me while the adults began to do damage control, checking bodies, calling out to each other.
When the rune was done, it sat on the ceiling like a glowing beacon.
As I looked closer, it didn’t just look like one rune but multiple overlapping.
“What is it?” I whispered to Luna.
“Voidlock runes. Seal entry points, block vampire passage, sever portal links, protection. There is a bunch in one. She is a master arcanist.”
I stared at the multiple overlapping runes, angry-looking runes with sharp lines and pointed edges.
Whoa.
That was a lot to unpack.
What was an arcanist? It sounded cool.
“Is everyone okay?” Celia asked, her voice shaking a little. “If you are injured, please come forward so we can get you to the hospital ward.”
Four kids stepped forward, bleeding, limping, holding a damaged arm or side.
Celia’s face swept over me, Luna, and Harper with relief.
I noticed her pants were covered in dirt.
It looked like she’d been digging up my grandfather’s grave when she’d been called to help us.
“Girls.” Professor Walters’s voice pulled Luna and I from the scene.
Harper stood beside him.
“I’m going to take you to my house now. Luna, your mother is going to work the night watch and will pick you up in the morning.”
Luna nodded robotically, and I followed her gaze to a woman in her mid-forties with blond hair and the same shape nose as Luna.
Luna crossed the space, and her mom pulled her in for a quick hug, whispering something in her ear.
Luna nodded and then pulled away, keeping a tight grip on her sword.
Maybe her mother told her not to let it go.
I allowed Professor Walters to shepherd me out the door, only taking one second to look over my shoulder and find a pair of green eyes watching me go, steady and unreadable.
Asher.
Most confusing man on the planet.
Why did he look full of regret?
Who cares?
I shook my head.
We jumped in Professor Walters’s SUV, and he drove us silently to his house, the engine humming beneath the heavy quiet. None of us said a word. I just sat there replaying every crazy thing I’d seen over the past hour, my hands folded tightly in my lap.
Did they have trauma counselors here?
Because I definitely needed one.
Students died. I counted at least three. It was gut-wrenching.
When we pulled into the driveway, the professor turned off the ignition and spun in his seat to look at all of us, his face drawn tight with worry.
“Are you sure none of you are hurt?” He scanned our bodies as if looking for injuries, eyes lingering on each of us.
“No, Dad,” Harper said, her voice a little shaken.
“No, Mr. Walters,” Luna confirmed.
“No, sir,” I said.
He exhaled the air he’d been holding and scanned the street as if looking for vampires to jump out at any second, shoulders tense.
“We’re supposed to be safe here,” he mumbled.
“Dad. Stop. I’m scared,” Harper blurted, hugging her arms.
He swallowed hard and nodded. “Let’s get inside.”
“We’re supposed to be safe here” was a chilling thing to hear from a grown man. I had only known of this world for a day, but I gathered it was the only place where hunters felt protected.
Until now.
When we stepped inside, Professor Walters stood in the living room, not quite ready to let us out of his sight.