Chapter VII
VII
As the soldiers of the Order, Sentinels must display extreme command over both magical and non-magical forms of combat.
Of the initiates who attempt the Sentinel Exam, only a fraction succeed.
The leader of the Sentinels is selected by the Elders, and the Chief Sentinel must be the most capable of the offerings.
To further this goal, the Chief Sentinel is reevaluated by the Elders each year, and a new Chief Sentinel will be appointed should any of the Sentinels advance beyond the capabilities of the current leader.
Like the Elders, the Chief Sentinel will be deposed should a worthy challenger arise.
“How did you know I’m not a witch?” Vic asked when she caught up to Sarah. They followed a narrow hallway down a flight of stairs.
“The same way I knew your name, and your brother’s name, and that you would be in class today confusing the hell out of the other recruits,” Sarah said.
“Max told you,” Vic guessed.
“Max warned me. Right after he ordered all the members and recruits not to hurt you,” Sarah said.
“I’m sorry—did they want to?”
“The Order’s not used to humans in our business, so he wanted to make sure no one got any ideas.”
“Why?” Vic demanded, stuck on the revelation that her presence was so disruptive as to cause violence.
But Sarah wasn’t listening. “Did you know the Order had an outright ban on Made witches until about thirty years ago? And women and minorities weren’t admitted in any significant numbers until the eighties, and all the Elders are still old white men.
Max is the only Made on the Council, and they fought his admission tooth and nail even though he’s by far the most powerful among them. ”
“The recruits looked at me like I had two heads,” Vic said.
Sarah scoffed. “The recruits don’t know anything.”
“So the older members will be more accepting?”
Sarah made a sound halfway between a laugh and a snort. “Fat chance,” she said. “Did Max tell you anything about Orcans?”
“About ‘organs’?” Vic asked.
“Of course he didn’t. I swear, for a genius that man is remarkably forgetful.” Sarah looked sideways at Vic. “Orcans are beasts from the Other World. Monsters, creatures of myth and legend, creepy-crawlies, whatever you want to call them.”
“ ‘Whatever I want to call them,’ ” Vic repeated. She wanted to call them nonexistent, but she’d given up on that years ago.
“We hunt them.”
“I’ve heard about this part,” Vic said. She remembered the filthy man’s words from the night before—before he realized Vic was listening.
I can keep putting them down easy enough.
She recalled the blood dripping from his weapon as he unsheathed it and wondered what, or who, he had been putting down.
“Turn right,” Sarah said, and she led Vic down another staircase. Vic realized with a jolt that they had reached the octagonal supply room where she’d been caught last night.
“This is the load-out room,” Sarah said.
“It’s basically your standard mudroom, with a touch of added violence.
” Sarah gestured vaguely at a rack of weapons with a contrite look on her face.
“The Elders don’t like us tracking who-knows-what through the front entrance, so we come in the side and drop our gear here. ”
Vic stopped to examine the weaponry. Torches hung at eye level gave a flickering quality to the light, which danced in the rough metal of the more medieval weapons.
She noted the absence of the blood and muck she’d seen last night and grimaced at the thought of the shrouded servants having to clean this place.
“Why do you need so many types of weapons?” Vic asked.
“Not everything dies the same way.”
Vic picked up a dagger and twisted it in the air. It was about the length of her forearm, gleaming metal with a hard rubber handle. She imagined using it against some faceless monster, the blood of something inhuman coating her fingers.
“Your mother was Meredith Wood?” Sarah asked.
The question took Vic by surprise, and she replied, “Yes,” with more ice than intended.
But Sarah still looked pensive. “Your mother was a Sentinel, once upon a time. You really didn’t know any of this?” Sarah looked at the weapons behind Vic, the dagger in her palm.
“No,” Vic lied, replacing the blade in its sheath. She didn’t want to share the complexities of her half knowledge about her mother’s life. Vic couldn’t very well say that she knew only what her mother had seen fit to tell ten-year-old Henry. That Vic knew only enough to be afraid.
Even before Henry’s revelation, Vic had picked up enough hints to assume that something strange surrounded her mother.
Vic had known from a young age that having a gun and learning how to shoot it would never suffice to keep her safe.
The same way she had known not to call the cops when her mom disappeared, and, after she’d been missing for a few days, that Meredith was dead.
Vic thought of the sound she heard the day she disobeyed Meredith. The wet slap of monstrous feet, the way the air curled around the noise. Hadn’t Vic known, even then, that something other than a person approached around the corner?
When she’d seen the shadow racing toward the castle last night, her first thought hadn’t been surprise. She’d known what it was. She’d known it was something new.
A monster.
“Well, you seem to be taking it in stride.” With a last quizzical look at Vic, Sarah strode to the opposite door, through which the giant and Nathaniel had left the night before.
Vic stuffed the dagger into the back of her jeans and jogged to catch up.
“This is the main hallway of the training wing,” Sarah was saying as Vic pulled her clothing over the pilfered knife. “And technically Xan’s domain.” Sarah threw her another roguish look. “He is not going to like me bringing someone new around, I’ll tell you that.”
“The sadist?” Vic asked, raising an eyebrow.
“The very same,” Sarah said with a grin.
“Are you trying to get in more trouble?” Vic asked.
“I’m trying to teach him to lighten up.”
“It doesn’t seem to be working,” Vic pointed out.
Sarah shrugged. “The training wing is actually the largest in the castle, though most of the connecting corridors are underground.”
Like the hallway housing their earlier classroom, this one was adorned with elaborate inscriptions on the walls, the stone marred by symbols.
“Recruits work their way down this hallway,” Sarah said, pointing to the door labeled with a bronze 8. “Once they’ve mastered Level Eight, they can apply for full membership in the Order.”
Vic noticed a ninth door at the end of the hallway on the left. “How about that one?”
“That’s the lift,” Sarah said, her tone suddenly stern. “It goes straight down to the cages. You don’t want to go in there—it’s as good as a death sentence.”
Vic pulled back at Sarah’s intensity, as if the door would reach out and grab her.
It was more heavily inscribed than the other eight, and Vic had the strangest sense that the words were intended to keep her away.
An instinct, deep in the back of her brain, warned her to steer clear of those markings.
She watched the door out of the corner of her eye as they approached.
“When you’re finished with training, you become a Sentinel?” Vic asked.
“Only the dedicated fighters become Sentinels,” Sarah said. “There are other positions for those who want to work for the Order. But most members go back to their regular lives afterward.”
Vic pictured scores of witches reentering society, newly armed with the ability to wield magic.
It lightened her spirits to know that Henry could go through all of this and still have a normal life.
She found herself wondering how many witches were out there, masquerading as normal people.
She wondered how the power they cultivated here—to destroy, build, manipulate, and who knew what else—got used in the real world.
“How long does training take?”
“It depends. Not all the levels are the same difficulty. Level One, for instance, is relatively simple, and usually only takes a few weeks. People get stuck on the later levels.”
Vic nodded along as her eyes caught on two massive wooden doors ahead. Like the doors to the entrance hall, they loomed tall and important.
“Most people take a few years,” Sarah said. “It took me four.”
Vic’s mouth fell open at the thought of four years in this hallway.
“But the record is eight months. That was our Chief Sentinel—he’s insane.”
Vic was forming a picture of the man Sarah described. She imagined someone middle-aged, trim, and proper, like Max without the whimsy. Overcontrolled, a little ruthless, a drill-sergeant type. Vic couldn’t say she was eager to meet him.
Sarah laughed to herself, her eyes dancing with mischief. “He is gonna hate this.”
Vic didn’t know what Sarah meant, but she was distracted from asking when Sarah approached the two stately doors at the hall’s end. Her throat felt tight as Sarah placed a palm in the center of one of the massive panels.
The door inched forward with a slow creep, and Vic took a step back.
“Now, this,” Sarah announced with a wily grin, “is the Arena.”
The gloom was overwhelming. The only light in the massive room came from high windows lining the walls.
Though the space might have been well lit on a sunny day, clouds covered the sun and gave the room a muted, shadowy appearance.
Symbols similar to those in the hallway covered the walls, deep gouges cut into the stone.
“Only Sentinels and Level Eight recruits are allowed to use the Arena,” Sarah said in a low voice.
Vic didn’t immediately register why Sarah would call this room an arena. At first glance she spotted only the spanning windows and vaulted ceilings.
Until she looked down—and started back in alarm.