“In fact, that is my only mission until it is complete.”
Lisabelle turned around and handed me the envelope. The vampire started forward again. “Don’t let her do this. I gave you what you wanted,” he said to me.
“I might have advocated for you if you could have turned over Sip’s killer. Since you can’t, there’s really nothing I can use as a reason for her to keep you alive. It isn’t as if she ever listens to me anyway,” I said.
I was surprised at the coldness in my own voice. Then again, this was Sip we were talking about. And Hunters. Paranormal Public had enough problems without having to deal with Hunters.
They had infused and blotted every moment of my education and my future. I did not intend to let that continue. I was grateful for the fact that others as powerful as Lisabelle did not intend to either. Even if our motivations did not entirely align, our goal was the same.
“Ricky, go out the door first,” said Lisabelle.
Reluctantly, I did as she asked. She stood by the doorway and turned. The vampire was still standing there as well. Lisabelle waited only half a second before she said, “I told you to sit.”
“Please don’t kill me. I gave you what you wanted. I gave you everything I could,” he said.
“There’s one more thing that I want,” Lisabelle said. “Hunters must gather at some time. They don’t come here, it is clear enough. This is a small gathering place for you and the Undead and soon to be dead,” she said.
Her meaning was clear.
The vampire briefly closed his eyes. “You want to know where the Hunters will be?”
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” said Lisabelle. “To be honest, I wouldn’t mind the hard way. I’m getting out of practice, and no one likes to be rusty. Especially given what we have in store over the days and weeks ahead.”
The vampire didn’t say a word, but his eyes flicked to something on the table. Lisabelle stepped toward it. The vampire started in that direction as well, but a low snarl from one of the hellhounds stopped him. She picked up a piece of paper and scanned it quickly. Her eyebrows rose. “Interesting. This is very interesting. I might even have to find a dress.”
The vampire let out a soft moan as Lisabelle turned away. The next instant we were sweeping down the staircase, hellhounds all around us. The raven had landed on my companion’s shoulder and my ring was humming as if it had awakened. Power was gathering around Lisabelle, and I knew something dreadful was about to happen.
I was waiting for it.
“Did you get what you wanted?” I asked.
She sighed and said, “I would have preferred Sip’s murderer waiting there tied up, but short of that I got what I needed.”
We swept into the courtyard, where more hellhounds were waiting for us. Overhead were at least a thousand crows.
We made for the darkness in the forest beyond. Crackling heat at the nape of my neck brought my attention back to the school. I glanced over my shoulder to see the tower in the night.
Burning.
Chapter Seven
After that we returned to the castle. For most of the journey, Lisabelle appeared to be deep in thought. I was tired but my mind was churning. I wanted to know what had been on that piece of paper.
When we landed, the hellhounds melted into the night, as did the crows. The raven stayed with her master. Zena came out of the house to take our brooms. He gave me a venomous glare as he did so.
“What now?” I asked Lisabelle.
“Now you return to school. I do believe you have an assignment of your own that is very important. Or am I wrong in thinking that you’re looking for the objects on the Counter Wheel?” she asked.
“It’s not as if I care that you know. I just didn’t think you cared,” I said.
She laughed softly. “If the Counter Wheel is put together, I can be challenged for dominance. To the death. Even I am not so foolish enough as to think I can defeat such ancient artifacts all on my own.”
“You have never been on your own,” I told her.
For a moment she looked appreciative, then that melted into something else. Devastated. “You have to return to school,” she insisted. “Get your friends to help you. Keep an eye on the darkness mages. There is more going on there than I am ready to admit. You will see me soon enough.”
I thought of the two darkness mages I knew at school.
Ostelle, in fact, was never far from my thoughts. All through school break she had been bubbling up in my mind. What had she been doing shining the white light into the sky? Did she know there was an unknown elemental on campus? She had disappeared at the exact moment when we had been attacked by one.
President Yeast was tightening her grip with every day that went by. I had no expectation that Paranormal Public would remain free for long.
Still, I was excited to return. I missed my friends. Keegan would meet me there, as would Eighellie.
I could only assume that Averett would be around as well. What she would make of my winter break I didn’t know. Then again, I probably wouldn’t tell her most of it. Or maybe I would, if she told me what she herself had been up to. I rather thought that her hanging around with a vampire queen could prove informative.
“Do you know where my sister is?” I asked Lisabelle.
We were standing in her dark doorway. There were bags under her eyes, and I knew she needed to rest, even if she would never admit it.
“Of course I do. I told her you were visiting. They are well looked after. She is happy,” she said. Then she took on a distant look. I wondered if she was thinking about what it was like to have a family. I couldn’t really imagine her with a family.
I watched my sister’s best friend disappear into the darkness as if she and darkness were one.
Of course, they were.
When I woke up the next morning I was lying in my bed in Astra dorm. Lisabelle had said even the simplest of goodbyes. I wondered what she had seen in that tower, what she had learned about where the Hunters were going next. Clearly she’d had no intention of telling me. Instead she wanted me to work on my own assignment. She wanted me to discover where the artifacts were.
Easier said than done, of course. Nobody had seen the Golden Rod since it had disappeared with Helen centuries ago. How I was supposed to find it now I had no idea. Why anybody thought it was at Public, I also had no idea.
But that’s what we had been told.
We had been told that all of the objects were at Paranormal Public. I wondered even now if Rake knew that.
After all, he was the artifact seeker.
I threw off the covers and hurried down to the kitchen, my stomach grumbling. Apparently destroying large buildings made me work up an appetite. And I hadn’t even done anything but spectate.
To my surprise, there were a dozen freshly baked muffins waiting for me on the kitchen counter. I looked around, but I didn’t see Martha. The personification of the powers that were the university, Martha liked to come in and out and cook things. But it had, in fact, been a while since I had seen her. The attacks on the school had damaged her. She wasn’t the same as she had been during my sister’s time at school.
I sat down with a muffin and a glass of milk and started to eat. I was just feeling relaxed and comfortable when I heard a step behind me.
My magic hadn’t reacted, so surely I was safe, yet I still spun around in fear.
To my total shock, there stood Ostelle. Her red hair flowed over her shoulders and her dark blue eyes sparked.
“How did you get in here? What are you doing here?” I demanded.
My brown hair was sticking up horribly at all angles and I was still in my pajamas. I was not ready to see the world, friends, or especially crushes.
Ostelle looked exactly the same as she had a few weeks ago, before I left for winter break. When I had last seen her she had been fading into the night with a smirk on her face, her bright red hair easy to track even in darkness.
“I t
hought you’d be hungry,” she said.
“How did you know I was coming back now?” I demanded.
She shrugged, then appeared to decide not to play coy. “I didn’t. In fact, you’re back early. When I heard you come downstairs I jumped. I was talking to Sigil in one of the studies.”
“So you just made yourself comfortable here while I was away,” I said.
She came around the counter and examined the muffins. She chose one and took her time putting it on a plate and pouring herself some milk as well. Then she joined me at the table.
Unlike me, she was fully dressed for the day in a comfortable-looking sweater and jeans. Her red hair was pulled back, and as far as I could tell she had been awake for a while.
“Yeah, it’s quiet here. Everyone leaves me alone, and I can get some work done. I like to read. This is by far the most comfortable dorm,” she said, looking around in appreciation.
“Thanks. I think,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me. “What?”
When I didn’t answer, she tried an easier question. “How’s the muffin?”
“Delicious. Just what I needed,” I said. “Are my friends here?”
“You mean other than me?” she asked.
“I mean like the ones who don’t break into my dorm,” I said.
“I don’t think you can break in here. Either the dorm lets you in or it doesn’t. I guess your dorm happens to like me,” she said.
“I guess my dorm doesn’t know where the threat is,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said, sounding pleased. “Anyway, how did you get in here without my noticing? And what did you do over break?”
A vision of the darkness premier flashed through my mind. Scenes from our visit to Golden Falls surrounded by hellhounds and crows quickly followed. “Is the Tabble here?” I asked.
She pointed her chin in the direction of the Tabble. Without answering her questions, I grabbed it up to see what it said. She waited patiently, eating her muffin.
“I thought that headline was interesting,” she said. My eyes had already found what she was referring to. “Golden Falls Attack. Former school may no longer be in Undead hands. Lisabelle Verlans suspected.”
There was no mention of Hunters, which was why we had gone there to begin with. Lisabelle was determined to find out what had happened to Sip, convinced that Hunters had been behind the attack on her friend.
Another headline read, “Dobrov barely hanging on at Public. President Yeast wants new management at premier paranormal school. Unlikely to get it.”
“I can’t believe he’s still here,” said Ostelle, following the track of my eyes down the page.
“I can’t either, but I’m not going to complain,” I said. “Who knows how long it will last.”
“We did lose one professor from last semester,” said Ostelle conversationally.
I stared at her, still trying to wake up. I put the newspaper down and continued eating my muffin, waiting for her to continue. She wasn’t usually so chatty, especially with me, and I didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe she wanted something. Maybe she was using me for my awesome dorm. To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t blame her for that. My dorm was awesome.
“Who did we lose as a professor?” I asked at last, hoping against hope that it was one of the professors I hated.
“I guess Trafton won’t be a professor any longer,” she said. “He’s very busy doing something for the government. Some sort of consulting work. I guess dream givers are in demand lately.”
“That’s not really a surprise. He doesn’t tend to sit still for very long,” I said. I tried to act casual, but behind my plain words my mind was churning. Trafton was part of my sister’s friend group. He was also the only other powerful dream giver besides Lough.
What could he be up to?
“When are you going to tell me what you were doing with that light?” I asked Ostelle.
Her expression instantly soured. “I’m not going to tell you anything. You’re not going to mention it again. It’s my own business,” she said.
“If it’s your own business, why did you tell me about it?” I asked.
She blew out a breath and stood up. “I guess this place is only quiet when it’s empty.”
“Whatever you’re doing, stop. It’s only going to get worse. Hunters are coming for Public, and Lisabelle isn’t playing around,” I told her.
She laughed softly. “Don’t you think I know that? Every place I’ve ever felt safe has been obliterated. I don’t put that light into the air to cause trouble, I put that light into the air to stop it.”
Before I could ask her what she was talking about, she turned on her heel and stomped away. Before I heard the front door slam I called after her, “The muffins were delicious.”
There was no response.
I figured Keegan and Eighellie wouldn’t be returning until at least the next day. That gave me one whole evening to search for the Counter Wheel.
I stretched. My work had only just begun.
Chapter Eight
That night I headed out into the cold evening. I had been perusing the information I’d collected on the Counter Wheel and decided to start searching the campus systematically whenever I had time. There was no snow on the ground, but it was only a matter of time. I spent hours wandering around the grounds of Paranormal Public.
Campus was different when I was all alone. My memories flashed back to the Nocturn War’s great battle, when I thought I was going to die.
When I thought that we all were.
Charlotte had screamed my name, so many had died, and yet here I was, re-walking the well-worn footpaths of generations of students.
The buildings stood silently. Some were damaged, some were old, some were new and plain, but put them all together and they made up home.
For now.
Lisabelle had sent me back here to find the objects on the Counter Wheel. She knew the Hunters were desperate to find cracks in her power. If they could find a way to configure the Counter Wheel, we were all in trouble. Well, even bigger trouble.
I tried to imagine Hunters marching on the darkness premier, but I couldn’t. All I could see was Lisabelle’s arms sweeping through fields of fire as others tried to attack.
She would rebuff all challengers.
But would anyone else survive?
The wind picked up and I zipped my coat tighter. In the hours I spent wandering around the grounds that night, I saw only a handful of others, mostly employees of Public.
I had found a map of how campus used to look, and that was my guide. There had once been a lot fewer buildings, clustered in a more central location around Featherton. Some of the buildings were no longer standing. A few others I had never been inside.
As I walked, I told myself that Lisabelle shouldn’t be going to attack Hunters. From what she’d said, I had the impression that an attack might be part of her plan, to confront them at the event she’d heard about, whatever it was.
Even she couldn’t fight off a whole room of paranormals, could she?
When I looked up from my reverie I saw that my footsteps had taken me to Volans, a diamond of a building in the middle of crumbling damage. I didn’t see the smooth walls or the perfectly manicured lawns, instead I saw the crumbling house behind it.
Once used as a groundskeeper’s residence, the hut had long since been abandoned. Half overgrown by the forest that always reclaimed what had been taken from it if given half a chance, I imagined that soon the building would be torn down entirely.
Inside it there were long, sweeping beams that had been cut from trees so tall and imposing that even Keegan would have been impressed.
I searched everywhere around the old cottage, figuring I had to start somewhere. If a mug could be found at the bottom of a pond, there could be anything at all in an actual building.
But there was no sign of any of the objects on the Counter Wheel. All I saw was some rusted spoons and a few moldy ol
d books.
As I emerged from the cabin, I almost ran into another figure. I stepped back quickly as my ring beat a pulse against my finger.
A cool rain had started to fall, making the vampire in front of me harder to see. A mist surrounded her feet and legs.
“Evening,” I said, keeping my voice even.
I stuck my hands into my pants pockets to show her I wasn’t about to attack her.
Not that I couldn’t move quickly if I needed to, but as a vampire, so could she.
She was short and thin, not as powerfully built as Averett but not a pushover either. She stood with her feet planted and her long black hair falling in a braid over one shoulder. Her thin mouth split into a grin as she looked at me.
“You’re Ricky Rollins,” she stated.
“And you are?” I asked.
“Beatrice of Roar,” she said. She stuck out her hand.
I quickly gripped her fingers and felt ice stab into my hand.
“Sorry. I’ve been wandering around for a while trying to get my bearings.” She apologized as if she knew her hands were freezing.
“It’s a big place. I was just headed home.” I didn’t tell her where I’d just been, but wandering kind of covered it.
“I haven’t been over that way yet. I mean to Astra. That’s where the elementals live, isn’t it? Care to escort me?” she asked.
For a moment I hesitated. I hadn’t exactly set out tonight with the aim of escorting transfers around.
“Sure. Let’s go. Why are you just arriving?” I asked. She must be new to Cruor, the vampire dorm.
“Transferred. My parents thought I’d be better off here than where I was. Public is still the best education in the world. With everything going on they thought I’d need the best to survive and thrive over the course of the next ten years. I figured, ‘Why not?’” She smiled again as she said it.
She was much friendlier than most vampires I’d come across recently. Averett would just as likely throw you across a field as say hello, but at least she came by it honestly. Her cousin Vital was one of the best fighters in the world.
Elemental Unity Page 5