Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials: Books 1-3 Omnibus

by Shannon Mayer

  The airport staff at the mouth of the parking garage waved me to a stop, redundant given the lowered wooden arm next to the ticketing kiosk.

  “How long ya gonna be?” he called.

  I fought past my heart lodged in my throat. “No time at all. Short. Short time.” I grimaced. When had I forgotten how to talk to people? “Just real quick.”

  “Yup.” He waved me on. “Second level. First level’s all full up.”

  I grabbed a ticket, nearly took out the wooden arm as the truck lurched forward too quickly, and parked in a no parking zone on the second floor that was faster than finding a spot big enough to easily fit the badly maneuvering truck. I left the truck running. Maybe someone would steal it. Again.

  I bolted for the stairs. I needed to figure out a way past those sedans or I needed to head to the next terminal.

  Movement too close behind me fired through my senses. On pure instinct, I dodged right, putting distance between us. A brick of a man pivoted, not thrown off for long. Another from the other side ran between two parked cars.

  The first man lunged for me, nearly grabbing me. I danced away and clipped a car with my hip. The car alarm blared and lights strobed in the dim interior of the garage. My blood pumped through my veins as I spun and landed in a crouch in front of my assailants, two men in suits identical to the one Sideburns wore. They had the same look going on—military short haircuts, aviator sunglasses, and jackets bearing the red Web of Wyrd patch—except these men were both clean-shaven. Apparently, terrible facial hair wasn’t standard issue.

  The man on the left smiled, but it was cold and reptilian. “Billy. Don’t make this harder on yourself.”

  Billy. They knew who “I” was.

  I stayed crouched but scooted backward, feeling my way with one hand. I tried to deepen my voice. “I got a flight to catch, boys.”

  The two men smiled in tandem and a prickle of a warning snapped me around. A couple of additional men had crowded in behind me and one had what looked like a black canvas sack aimed for my head. I came up with an uppercut that snapped his head back so hard, his sunglasses flew off as he fell backward. My clenched fingers throbbed from the contact. That was going to hurt tomorrow but more for him than me.

  I didn’t stick around to watch the fallout. I put on a burst of speed as I raced through the parking garage, once more using the cars as leverage, setting off alarms left and right.

  I didn’t care. Down the stairs and I could see the doors to the airport. I was almost there. Though it wasn’t exactly like I’d be home free. They were audacious enough that they’d attacked me in a packed parking garage—why stop?

  I dared a glance at the stairwell behind me. Empty.

  But that one look back was my undoing. I turned forward to face the main doors as a black bag settled over my head and tightened around my neck.

  “Tie him up good. He’s a slippery brat.”

  Hands grabbed at my limbs, pinning me down, and my panic ratcheted into the stratosphere. What the hell was happening? Sideburns had brought the manila envelope that had started this whole mess. Presuming these guys were with him, shouldn’t they want me to go to the school?

  Suddenly, I was thinking they didn’t.

  I kicked out, snapping my booted feet free of their hands and driving them into anything I could reach. I connected twice, one blow right after the other. Score one for the girl with long legs.

  “He’s a big bastard for fifteen!” one of them grunted.

  He was an even bigger bastard for a girl, I supposed. Amazons didn’t make for easy kidnapping.

  I bucked and rolled to the side, getting another shot in on a joint. A knee. Cartilage cracked. Someone swore.

  I rolled to the side and broke free, pulling my hands in front of me in time to smack against the hard ground. I was reaching up to rip the sack off my head when coarse, ridiculously strong hands grabbed me again. These fellers were strong and fast, experienced, and there were too many of them.

  I knew when to give quarter to a bigger beast. Just like Whiskers. You had to know when to smack him with a two by four, and when to offer him his favorite treat.

  For now, I would give them a mint and let them think they’d won.

  Because if I couldn’t outfight them, I’d have to outsmart them. I’d have to outwait them.

  And then I’d bust their balls when my moment came.

  Chapter 7

  “I’m done,” I said, my breath heating up the space inside the bag they’d stuffed my head into. “I won’t fight.”

  “Got some sense in you at least,” one of the men growled.

  I slumped in their hands, letting them take my weight. The bag over my head stunk like a hippie’s armpit and my nostrils flared as I clamped my mouth shut. My wrists were still held out in front of me. I wanted to ask what they were doing but I resisted the urge. I could have fought and yelled, maybe gotten the attention of the other people at the airport, but I had a strong feeling it wouldn’t have helped. Which meant silence was going to be my friend.

  “Hold him tight,” one of them said and I tensed as my wrists were squeezed so hard, the tendons rubbed over the bones. With the blood flow to my hands constricted, I barely felt the prick of a blade on my right hand, right in the center of my palm. There was pressure, and then a faint warmth.

  I kept my mouth clamped shut, but my eyes caught a glimmer of light from a small hole in the bag. Twisting my head slightly—not enough to alert them but enough to shift the bag—I lined up my left eye with the opening. Through it, I watched as a paper was brought up to my right hand. A contract if I ever saw one.

  On impulse, I jerked backward, straining away, but they were ready for me. My body was thrown to the ground. What felt like two guys crouched to either side of me and a knee found the center of my back, pinning me hard. My palms were twisted up painfully, at the edge of breaking, and the brush of parchment paper against my right palm said it all.

  I’d signed something, even if I hadn’t wanted to.

  “Got him. Let’s load him up so we can get this run over with.”

  “Seriously. I need a drink and a healer,” another guy grumbled.

  I was pulled to my feet and my wrists were shoved together as a hard piece of plastic was set around them. Zip ties. Until now, I’d only seen them used on captives in movies.

  I strained my wrists apart, to give me space to wiggle if I had to. I was going to be fighting my way out of this as soon as I could, zip ties or not.

  The only good thing regarding the bag over my head was it helped me hide the fact that I was a girl. And my sports bra was doing its job seeing as no one had noticed anything in all the wrestling.

  I was marched along after that, my feet barely touching the ground, the men around me talking to one another as if I weren’t even there.

  “Where to next?”

  “Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.”

  “No Kentucky? I thought that was part of our run.”

  “No.”

  “Do we need to give Shamus a minute to fix his nose?”

  “We’re running late. He can do it on the flight. He should’ve known better than to underestimate one of these kids.”

  I frowned and sweat beaded up again, sliding down the sides of my cheeks.

  One of these kids?

  Did that mean I wasn’t the only one they were intercepting? What did they want with us?

  I pushed the questions from my head. I could ponder them later. The bigger problem was that all those stops would take time. Time I didn’t have.

  I wasn’t going to make my new deadline if I didn’t do something.

  My mother’s voice seemed to float on the air, whispering to me words she’d spoken long ago. I’d been complaining about Rory and Tommy out-fighting me. “Patience. Wait for the moment to strike. If you hurry the blows, you’ll be stuck chasing your prey. You need them to step into your fists.”

  At the time, I’d been learning to hun
t, but the advice seemed a better fit for this situation. It struck me that a lot of my mother’s advice had been…well, let’s call it more violent than motherly. Maybe she’d suspected all along that the academy wouldn’t leave us alone.

  As I was hiked along, a whiff of something tugged at my nose, even through the bag. The new scent was a smell of home, of the farm and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A scent of spice and vanilla, easing my fears.

  I relaxed, really relaxed, and waited for my moment to come. I had to believe it would show up, and when it did, I would have to be ready to grab it with both hands.

  The distant sound of thumping reached my ears, like the rotors of those big helicopters in the war movies Dad and Tommy loved. No, strike that, these were helicopter rotors, and I was being led toward them.

  If I’d been sweating before, it was nothing to the droplets that slid down my body now. Heights I could do if I kept my concentration on the task at hand, but the idea of being in the air with what equated to a giant food processor above me was not on my bucket list. It was far too easy to imagine being pushed into those blades. Or to remember how easily helicopters crashed in those war movies.

  I wasn’t sure I could stay relaxed for this part. I slowed my feet, digging my heels into the ground, but I was picked up the minute I put on the brakes, hands on either side of me digging into my biceps and under my armpits.

  “Jesus, he’s slim but solid,” one of my lifters grumbled, and I swung my boot out, catching him in the thigh. He yelped but didn’t set me down.

  “Knock it off, kid, or we’ll throw you out once we’re in the air,” the man on the other side of me said.

  “Yeah, right,” I snapped. They would not go to all this trouble just to throw me out. Hopefully.

  The spinning rotors were going harder now and the wind that washed off them blew the bag tight to my face. The little hole gave me a quick glimpse of the interior of the helicopter, and the sight made my blood run cold.

  A dozen other kids lay on their sides within the flat deck of the enormous helicopter, many in the fetal position. All had their hands tied behind their backs and bags over their heads, just like me. They lay free in the middle of the cleared space, without straps to keep them put or handles to awkwardly grab. As if they might indeed be thrown out for causing trouble.

  I did not like this and couldn’t think of a way to get out of it.

  “Drop him there, next to the girl on the end.”

  I was boosted into the helicopter and dropped like a bag of grain, left without any restraints like the other kids. The helicopter rotors picked up more speed and then we were moving, lifting into the air. The doors were still open.

  This was insane.

  “Are you serious?” I yelled as I flattened, the lift of the helicopter making my stomach roll as we rose rapidly.

  “You must be from Texas. I can hear it in your accent,” the girl next to me said over the din, something that should’ve been impossible for me to hear without headgear. “You know in Texas, there are places where the number of alligators outnumber the number of people?”

  I did a slow turn of my bagged head toward her. Was she serious? We’d been tagged and bagged and left for luggage in a moving helicopter, and she wanted to talk about alligators?

  Through my little peephole, I saw her nod as if hearing me. “Death by alligator is a terrible way to go. Not quick at all. First, they pull you under the water, usually clamping down on a hand or foot, which will give you the impression you might be able to escape. Of course, you probably won’t. Very few people do, you know.”

  Good God, how did I get her to shut up? And how was I hearing this over the wash of the rotors?

  Magic. The single word whispered through my mind in my dad’s voice. No, it couldn’t be—

  The girl went on, oblivious. “Once they have you under the water, they begin to roll, twisting around and around so they can ideally rip off your limb and bleed you out while at the same time drowning you. Rather effectively called a death roll.”

  I turned my head away from her, trying to see if there was something within reach I could use to cut through the zip ties. I tried reaching for the knife on my hip, but wasn’t flexible enough.

  “Then, usually while you’re still alive,” the girl continued, “they stuff you into their underwater food stash. They prefer their food to be marinated in swamp water and mostly rotted. I think it would make the flesh taste better, to be honest.”

  “Shut the hell up!” I snapped. “Nobody wants to hear about how alligators eat people!” What in the world was wrong with her?

  “I don’t want to die!” someone down the line yelled, a guy, I thought, but it was hard to tell with how high pitched his voice was, drunk on panic. “Please. I don’t want to die!”

  I lowered my head to the floor, pressing my forehead to the only solid thing around, and breathed carefully through my nose. Why had the doors been left open? To scare us? Or did they really intend to throw us out like they’d threatened?

  I shivered and found myself thinking about how long it would take to hit the ground, wondering if the bag would come off my head first for one last look at the world. Crap, that girl’s death babble had gotten to me after all.

  “Death can come in many forms,” the girl next to me said, her voice dipping into a monotone that reminded me strangely of Walter Cronkite. “But it is up to us if we embrace it or fight it. I suggest embracing it. We all die. But do we all truly live?”

  “Shut up, Wally!” I yelled. “Just shut up!”

  “My name isn’t Wally—”

  “You sound like Walter Cronkite,” I said and promptly burst out laughing. Hysterical, hyena-like laughter that ripped out of me. I was in a helicopter with a bag over my head, and the girl next to me was obsessed with death and sounded like flipping Walter Cronkite. This was not real; it couldn’t be.

  There was only one thing I was sure of. I was going to die.

  The laughter cut off as suddenly as if I’d flipped a switch. “I’m not going to die.”

  “Of course not,” Wally said. “And I like that name. I think that will be my nickname from now on. Thank you.”

  “I don’t want to die!” the other fellow yelled again as the helicopter tipped to the side, aiming us toward the open door. I rolled and shimmied, ending up on my ass as I dug my boots into the slick metal for traction. Wally began to slide next to me, the sound of her body scooting across the floor tipping me off.

  I stuck my leg out, catching her against my thigh.

  “Thanks,” she said, as calmly as if I’d offered to hold a door open for her. “Splatting from this great of fall would end my life, I’m quite sure.”

  Laughter bubbled up again, anxiety-driven and incredulous. Walter Cronkite meets Professor Obvious, this chick couldn’t be for real.

  “Oh no! Oh no!” the guy from earlier yelled over the sound of a body sliding. “Oh no! Noooo!” His voice reached an octave I hadn’t thought possible for a boy of any age before the sound drifted away, along with, apparently, his body. “I’m falling!”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered. “He fell out. Holy—He really fell out!”

  His screams echoed through the space around us, fading, disappearing, and then weirdly returning, louder and louder. As if he were above us now, still falling. Falling toward us.

  “Noooo!” A thud rocked the helicopter, followed by a grunt. “Holy cats!”

  It was the guy who’d just fallen out! Was I on drugs? Had they pricked me with a needle when they’d taken my blood?

  “Holy cats,” he repeated, out of breath. “Am I dead?” The sound of rolling preceded a body knocking into mine. “It doesn’t hurt. Oh no, it doesn’t hurt. Does this mean I’m dead?” His voice crested to a high soprano. “AM I DEAD?”

  Wally laughed. “The dead tell no tales. So you are not dead. It’s a miracle, too, given your level of hysteria. I’m surprised your heart didn’t stop. You must have a strong
ticker. Now, if you’d kept falling and had reached terminal velocity by the time you hit the ground, your bones would have cut through your organs as you would’ve literally exploded on impact. Messy, but effective in terms of making sure that someone dies. There isn’t much that can bring you back from that kind of injury. The body is all but useless at that stage.”

  “Whu…what?” the guy stammered. “WHAT? WHAT’S HAP—"

  There was a thud, and I wiggled my hood to see that one of the men with the aviators and a black jumpsuit loomed behind him with a billy club.

  “What happened?” Wally asked.

  “He got knocked out. One of the guards whacked him,” I said.

  “Too bad. I found his fear fascinating.”

  I shook my head slowly. “You are seriously weird.”

  “Of course, I am. So are you. We all are.”

  “Weird or not, I’m not falling out.” I lowered myself to my belly, flattening to the floor as best I could. Behind me, I found a seat leg and I tucked the toes of my boot around it. I didn’t know how they’d brought the soprano guy back, but I didn’t want to assume they’d do the same for me. I was pretty sure I was on their black list, and maybe letting me fall would be an easy way out.

  The sudden pressure on my side said Wally was following my example. “I like you,” she said.

  “Thanks?”

  “I’m going to stick close to you, I think. I have a good feeling that you’ll be strong.”

  I grimaced. “Lucky me.” But the strange thing was, something about Wally was calming. Her knowledge of how people could die was nothing short of morbid, and yet the more she talked, the less it bothered me. I didn’t mind. Not really. Maybe she wasn’t so bad. At least her babbling helped distract me as we landed and picked up someone else, also in a black hood from what I could see through my peephole. Unlike me, though, the other kids weren’t fighting the men. Why not? What did they know that I didn’t?

  Time. Which I had to be nearly out of, although I had no way to check with my hands zip tied behind me.