by Laura Wylde
“Help!” I screamed… or at least I tried to. I couldn’t get any sound out, which wasn’t good. I needed the guys to hear me. I wasn’t sure if they were in a position to help me or if they were in danger themselves, but I couldn’t get out of this. If I kept shoving myself around, I was only going to end up hurting myself.
You are alone, my brain screamed at me. You need to find a way to deal with this by yourself.
I had always done everything alone. I was proud of being self-reliant. I didn’t even like working on group projects with other people because I preferred to only have myself to rely on… I saw needing others as a weakness. I liked having Evan around before, but I didn’t used to need him. But now I felt like I did.
“You are weak,” something hissed inside my brain. “They have made you weak. You need to get away.”
“No,” I muttered back “No, I’m not weak. I’m strong. I’m still strong, even now.”
But as I thrashed about some more with no luck, the beast laughed at me and continued to repeat it’s words. I knew what it wanted to do, it was playing on my biggest fear that I had become weak, but I was going to prove my inner strength by not getting sucked in to what it was saying to me. I wasn’t weak, letting people in wasn’t like that. I knew that now. In fact, as I twisted and thrashed violently, I wanted to let them in more.
“I got you…” All of a sudden, the vines of demon shredded around me and I could move once more. As the familiar face of Andrew came to light, relief flooded me, I could hardly remain standing. “I got you, Felicia. Are you okay? What was that about? You were talking in a weird language…”
“Thank you.” I threw my arms around him and tried to ignore the comment about me probably speaking in the same language as the demon. It was horrible being able to understand them, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want any of their dark evil magic near me. “Oh God, Andrew, thank you.”
“Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him. “No time to lose. We can’t leave Evan and Trent fighting anymore. They are getting over powered. Even with Joshua assisting them it isn’t enough. We need that evidence and we need to get out of here. This is… well, it’s too much and I’m to blame.”
“No!” Of course Andrew felt that way because he was the one to insist that we get the evidence before returning to the academy. But we had all agreed with him. We all wanted to come. “This is down to all of us.”
I only let go of Andrew when it was time for me to use more defensive magic, when the hell hounds and demons descended on us once more. He snuck in front of me, aiming for the pile of evidence and I kept near him while trying to keep them away. This was the exact reason why it wasn’t weak to let other people in and to sometimes rely on them as well. It was okay because team work could achieve a lot more. As long as you could trust the other people with every single part of you, fully knowing that they only had your best interests at heart, it was fine.
“You can do this!” Andrew yelled over his shoulder. “Keep this up and I will get it all.”
There was so much going on around me, it was hard to pin point anything in particular, I didn’t stand a chance in hell on focusing on any of the others and checking that they were okay. Which left me with the only option that I had. I needed to keep this magic going, keep Andrew and myself alive. If I got distracted, then neither of us would live.
I love them all, I thought sadly to myself. I don’t know why I keep fighting it when I know. I really know.
I should have told them, that was for sure. I should have just said it. Now, if anything did happen to any of us, they wouldn’t know how special they were to me, how much they all meant. Evan, and his intense powerful love for me, a friendship that we had shared our entire life. Trent and his lovely smile, the way that his jokes always made me laugh… not that we had been given much time for jokes recently. Andrew, and our shared passions which always gave us something to talk about, and Joshua with his bouncing infectious enthusiasm too… not only were they incredible people, their personalities made them even more gorgeous than they were at first sight, which seemed impossible since they were lovely anyway…
Why didn’t I tell them? Why did I insist on being quiet? What an idiot! Things could have been so different…
“Stop!” It was Andrew trying to drag me from my thoughts again. “We need to get out of here. I have it.”
He grabbed on to me and I immediately ran a transportation spell to get us back to the academy. We could get our evidence there first, then I would come back for the others…. but nothing happened. Just a few steps ahead. It actually would have been quicker for me to walk where I wanted to go. The same thing happened a second time.
“Let me try. You must be exhausted,” Andrew offered. “I will get us there…”
But the same thing happened to him. It was almost as if there was some sort of magical trap around here not allowing us to get away using our usual transportation spells. Considering this was some kind of demon hang out, it probably wasn’t too far from the truth. We got in okay, but I suppose that was their way of allowing prey in to their walls before they destroyed them. But what did that mean for us? How would we escape?
“Run!” Andrew screamed. “Just run, we don’t have any choice.”
For a smaller creature, his elf legs sure ran fast so it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to keep up with him. Especially as he darted in and out of the demons, expertly avoiding them. It also didn’t help that I didn’t want to run anywhere without the other guys because there was no way that I could make that journey twice. If only I could find them in all of the carnage. I randomly yelled out their names a couple of times, but my energy supply was running low and I didn’t have much volume left within me. I wasn’t sure that I could save them.
I can’t live without any of them, my brain told me desperately. I need them. I have to save them…
My feet lifted from the floor. For one horrifying moment, I assumed that yet another demon had me and was putting me in another trap that I definitely wouldn’t be able to escape from this time around, but thankfully I soon heard the whoosh of wings. Joshua had me. I didn’t even know that he was this strong as a hawk, but it seemed that I was wrong. He managed to take me away from the fight without any struggle at all. Impressive!
Don’t look down. I was grateful for the rescue, but the higher I got, the sicker I felt. I wasn’t built for flying up in the clouds. Don’t look down. Don’t worry about the other guys. They will be fine. They have to be.
Chapter 16
Trent
“We need to find Felicia.” Evan said to me desperately, as soon as we felt a little safer, out of the reach of the demons and remaining hell hounds. Safe, for the time being. Somehow, we had managed to out run them for the moment, but I wasn’t going to relax enough to think that we had done it forever. “Where is she?”
“Joshua grabbed her!” Andrew called over his shoulder at us as he continued to run. He hadn’t run out of energy yet, which was impressive for his small size. “She was running with me but couldn’t keep up, so he grabbed her and flew up. I think that they might be this way though. I can sense them. Or Felicia at least…”
I knew what he meant; I could feel it too. It was like we had developed some kind of deep bond by declaring how we felt for Felicia. Of course, she hadn’t given us an answer, so we didn’t know what her answer was going to be, but that didn’t seem to matter. We were linked now in a way that I hoped would last forever.
It was slower, running in our human forms which wasn’t ideal, but we needed to communicate with one another and this was the only way. I could ignore the pain in my body if it took me to her anyway.
Please be okay, Felicia, I thought desperately to myself. I can’t have anything bad happen to you…
Evan shot me a knowing look as if he could tell exactly what I was thinking. Our friendship had definitely taken a much deeper turn recently, so much so that I was okay with him knowing about my feelings to
wards his childhood best friend and the woman that he was in love with, and he was fine about it too. I never thought that we would end up in the same harem, it didn’t seem like a plausible thought, what with me being a fox and him a wolf. But it was kind of perfect in so many ways. It meant that I also got to keep my best friend for life.
Well, that would only be if we could get out of here alive. I didn’t want to get my hopes up yet.
“Are you sure this is the right way?” Evan asked Andrew. “Joshua can’t have brought her this far. Surely.”
“Trust him,” I hissed to Evan. “I really think he knows what he is talking about.”
Evan huffed and let out all of the tension. Not only the tension in his body but the tension that he’d had with Andrew this whole trip. Sure, their arguments had subsided, and things were much better because of that, but they hadn’t exactly gotten to the best place. They weren’t the greatest of friends yet, which was a shame. I wasn’t Andrew’s biggest fan either at first, but getting to know him had shown me a whole other side to him.
“Oh my God, there she is.” Evan pointed out in to the distance. “But she’s alone.”
Not knowing what had happened to Joshua freaked us all out, so even though I was exhausted, I pushed through that barrier and kept on going. I kept up with Evan and almost Andrew as well, until we all nearly crashed in to her.
Felicia flung her arms around us in turn, listening to us all ask her if she was okay and what had happened to Joshua in panicked tones. I wasn’t sure how any of us would handle it if he was hurt… or worse. I shook the image from my mind, not wanting to think about what Evan had seen in his vision.
“I’m okay, are you all?” Once Felicia had established that we were fine, she continued. “Okay, good, well Joshua couldn’t carry me for much longer, so I made him leave me behind. He’s gone to the academy to get help. He thinks that the demons will follow us for the evidence all the way there so we need all the help that we can get.”
“Can we use your transportation magic to get out of here?” I asked, not liking the sound of demons chasing us.
“Not yet.” She shook her head sadly. “I have been trying and it doesn’t work. We must be in range.”
I glanced behind myself nervously, practically feeling the sensation of the demons coming at us. “Okay, well we need to keep going then. Get as far away from here as possible. Keep trying the spell as we go.”
Andrew took a few moments to quickly store everything that he had picked up from the Loch Ness in to his bag, and we got going. We didn’t run, none of us had that kind of energy left, but we moved as fast as we could.
“Why haven’t they caught up with us yet?” I demanded as I began to panic. “That’s weird, right?”
“I have a theory,” Andrew piped up, unsurprisingly, considering the way that his brain worked. “I think that they are just tracking us now, wanting us to lead them to the academy where they think that not only can they take us down, but they can use the magic of the place to help them as well. There may well be something there that they need to continue on with… well, whatever it is that they are doing. That, I’m still working on.”
“We shouldn’t go then” Was I the only one who thought that? “We don’t want to play right in to their hands, do we? Should we head off somewhere else and protect the academy? Save everyone else.”
“I have a theory about that as well.” This time as Andrew spoke, I almost rolled my eyes. Of course he did! Sometimes it would be useful if he shared these theories with us instead of us trying to work it out ourselves. This wasn’t class, he was definitely allowed to just give us the answers. “We can’t take them out on our own, we have already proven that. Even less so without Joshua. We need the help from everyone at the academy.”
“You think they will fight as well?” I gasped. “Try to defeat them all?”
“Of course they will. With all of those students and the professors as well, we will be fine.”
I pondered on this for a while, considering it a real moral dilemma. I didn’t want to walk in to a death trap, and trying to take on these demons alone again would be, since we were weaker now and one down. Plus, even without us they would probably find the academy on their own, it couldn’t exactly be too hard, could it? But at the same time, I didn’t like the idea of leading all the others in to a fight that they might not be ready for. What if people were killed in the battle? I would feel awful…
“Worry less,” Evan told me with a serene smile that didn’t usually belong on his very serious face. “Joshua is going to the academy ahead of us. He’s warning them right now. They will be ready to do battle as soon as we get there, and able to help us without any trouble. You know how the academy works. The professors won’t make any student fight, who doesn’t want to. They will hide those who can’t face it. But can you honestly imagine anyone missing out?” He patted me on the back. “Would you miss out if you were there?”
I shook my head knowingly, finally understanding. If I was at the academy now instead of out here, then I would have been excited by the idea of joining in the fight and doing something useful. I would have been sharpening up all of my skills to make sure that I was ready. I could just imagine everyone else doing the same thing.
“Hey, and you never know,” Evan continued, sensing that he was breaking down my barriers a little bit. “Maybe Megan and the other harem who took down the demons before will be back from their trip. Who knows better than them how to do this… except maybe us since we have been at it for what feels like forever!”
“I just want to get there now,” I told him darkly. “Get this over and done with. Get back to normal…”
Whatever the hell that was going to look like.
We made it to a place where Felicia and Andrew could finally get their travel magic working again, without being attacked by the demons, which made me even more suspicious that Andrew was right. We had the evidence which they wanted badly, and we weren’t going so fast that they couldn’t have caught us… so they definitely wanted to be pulled with us to the academy, which wasn’t good. Even with Evan’s little speech from earlier, I was scared. I didn’t think that I would be able to let go of this guilt until it was over.
“Evan and Felicia have gone,” Andrew reminded me,. We had decided to go in two separate groups for practical reasons, because everyone was too tired to use the full force of their magic, so we wanted to put as little pressure on Felicia and Andrew as possible. “Are you ready? Do you need anything?”
I turned down the anxiety and made my expression as steely as possible. Hey, they always said ‘fake it until you make it’, didn’t they? So, that was exactly what I was going to do. I figured that if I kept acting like I had everything completely under control, then soon I just would. Hopefully, it was going to work.
“I’m ready. Let’s just get there already. The academy needs us.”
Magical transportation wasn’t my favorite way to go, I much preferred running but that wasn’t an option, so I just had to suck it up and get on with it. I slid my eyes closed and prepared myself for the worst. For the journey and for what we were going to face when we got there as well. This was going to be life changing…
Sickness encased me so much as we whipped through space and time that I fell to my knees as soon as we hit land once more. I gasped in a few deep breaths, trying not to lose the contents of my stomach everywhere.
“Shit, Trent.” Andrew shook me, which didn’t help at all. “Look. This is bad. Real bad.”
As I glanced up, I saw what he was trying to tell me. The demons had beat us here. They must have attached themselves to Felicia and Evan which meant the battle had already begun. We had only just come from one and now we weren’t going to have any time to rest before the next one.
“Well, we do look better,” I had to admit. “With everyone fighting for us, the demons are struggling.”
Andrew smiled and even laughed a bit. “That was nearly a joke, Trent. You are
almost back to yourself.”
But that wouldn’t come for a while. I wasn’t sure if I would ever fully go back to the class clown. Knowing what was out there in the world and what we had faced affected me, I couldn’t deny it. I didn’t know if I could ever be as care free as I used to be…
“I don’t know about that.” I shrugged. “But I do know that you need to get inside right now. You’re the one with the evidence, so we need to get you inside and safe as quickly as we can. So, first, let’s focus on that.”
Andrew opened his mouth as if he was going to argue, but I shot him such a determined look that he seemed to think better of it. Instead, he grabbed his bag tighter to his back and nodded. “Okay.”
“So, I will battle every demon that comes your way. Don’t you do anything unless you absolutely have to because I don’t want you to be distracted. They might do that to try and steal the evidence from you. Trust me that I will protect you no matter what. We will get you inside the building and then hide the evidence then come back out and join the battle. Then you can do whatever you want…”
“I trust you,” Andrew declared without hesitation, something that never would have happened not so long ago. “I do. I bet you can’t believe that I am saying this, and nor can I, but I do.”
“Good, well I got your back. I will get you inside that building safe and sound. You don’t need to worry about that.” I nodded determinedly. “So, let’s take the right-hand side entrance because I think that will be less busy.”
“Good thinking,” Andrew agreed. “That’s exactly what I thought as well. Great minds think alike.”
“Huh,” I chuckled. “Who would have ever thought it. Next it will be you and Evan.”