Jon handed me a small gardening shovel, which I took carefully in my wet hands so I wouldn't drop it. Then I stepped forward, feeling three pairs of eyes on my back. Especially Ramsey's, but his silent pleas went ignored.
Inch by slow inch, I knelt, begging my knees not to creak like Mom and Dad's sometimes did. Then with the shallowest of inhales, I stuck my index finger toward the gaping plant. Five inches...four... At two, I started to tremble, but I kept going. One inch. Closer and closer still.
It chomped down on my finger. I wrenched it away, and the thorny teeth sliced over two knuckles. I sealed my lips closed against a gasp, but the pain didn't register until I'd yanked my hand free and saw the damage from the glow of the lightning above. The sight made my stomach spin. The skin across the top of my finger had been peeled away, and bone peeked through the damaged flesh. I'd never seen my own bones before. Never wanted to again. There might have been more damage, but that was all I could handle. The lilywort had closed.
I slicked my finger down the thick stem to the root, my nerves screaming. Then with the shovel in my other hand, I attacked the dirt around the plant. The sound was deafening in the silence, and Quiet immediately reacted. Before I freed the plant, arms shot closer and snatched at my hair, my cloak, and hauled me toward the pond. But I didn't let go of the lilywort, and three other pairs of arms surged forward from behind and grabbed me. It was an insane game of tug-of-war, and I refused to lose.
Finally, the roots tore free, and without the help of that anchor, Quiet nearly dragged me in. I clutched the flower to my chest, still tucked in a squat, and my boots slid closer and closer to the pond's edge. I lashed out with one leg and wielded the small shovel like a weapon, fighting some arms off. More and more came, though, their impossible grips squeezing tighter. Jon, Echo, and Ramsey wrenched me backward so hard I fell on my butt. They gripped my arms now, pulling, pulling, while Quiet yanked at my legs. I feared I'd be torn in half.
Both my boots popped off, which gave me a split second of freedom. That was all I needed. My friends hauled me up, and I scrambled backward to safety. With the lilywort and with my life.
Ramsey laid me behind the sign post out of Quiet’s spell bubble and tried to rip the flower from my fists. "Let me see, Dawn," he hissed.
"I got it," I said hollowly, as a reminder, as an assurance. "I got it."
Ramsey finally tore my hand free, and when he saw the state of my finger, I closed my eyes at the horrified look on his face. "Seven hells. Bind thee in health, Protect mind and soul too, Boost vigor and happiness, Make it all renew."
"Let's not do that ever ag—" The word lost itself on my tongue.
Too much adrenaline. There was too much, and it was making me hallucinate. Because over Ramsey's shoulder, the naked old woman with horns stared back with red eyes.
I released a single word before a dark chill swallowed me up whole: "Run!"
Chapter Ten
TOO SLOWLY, RAMSEY, Echo, and Jon turned to look at the naked woman—and then snapped into action. Ramsey swept me up into his arms. Jon and Echo took off running.
"What does she want with us?" Ramsey shouted.
Our bones. To crunch down on them with her unhinged jaw. Just the thought of it scurried up my flesh.
Tree branches snapped at my hair and my bare feet as Ramsey plowed through them. But with the weight of me in his arms, he was falling behind Echo and Jon. Over the crash of their combined footsteps, the old woman's heavy breathing came louder. She was gaining on us.
"Put me down," I whispered.
"No way,” Ramsey ground out. “You don't have boots on, and you can't go as fast as I can while you’re barefoot."
I hissed through gritted teeth. Damn it, he was right.
"Almost to the kitchen."
Echo screamed ahead, and my body tensed, zeroing in on her form in the dark. She grabbed Jon's arm behind her and dodged to the left. "Not that way!"
A pair of red eyes peered between the dead branches from ahead of us. How did the woman get there so fast? And why wasn't she attacking? She appeared to be herding away from something, or toward something.
Instantly, Ramsey pivoted away and poured on speed in the direction of the main path that led to the front door.
"Ramsey—"
"I know,” he said, his voice more tight than winded. He sensed it, too, that something was happening here, something other than what it appeared to be. "Straight ahead," he told Jon and Echo. “The front doors are surely locked, but I know another way into the school."
The woman let out an ear-splitting screech, from in front of us and on the other side of the path. But...how?
Just before we burst onto the path, the door to the school banged open. Ramsey jerked to a stop behind a tree, and Jon and Echo stopped behind the next one over, their bodies tense. They could sense it, too, this horrid sensation pouring from the doorway. It scraped across my awareness and rooted me to the ground. No one stood there inside. Only a penetrating darkness so thick and oily it slimed its way down my throat and choked me.
"No," I squeezed out.
I knew that feeling. I knew the mage it belonged to. It was him. It was Ryze. Inside my school once again.
The naked woman with horns stepped out onto the path from the other side, carrying a long bone in each hand. The shimmery rainbow air that surrounded her died, and her body flickered. She stopped at the base of the steps.
A dark chuckle rolled from the front doors, so dark and sinister that I recoiled. Ramsey gazed down at me, his face washed of all color. I nodded, confirming his unasked question. His grip on me slackened as he blinked hard, and I slid as quietly as I could to the ground.
We didn't need to have any part in this, whatever it was. We needed to go. Now.
But Ryze stepped out of the swarming shadows to meet the woman, dressed similarly as the last time I'd seen him with an old-fashioned black, ruffled shirt and tight, dark pants. Dark brown hair whipped around his broad shoulders. It was what he carried that hitched my breaths, though. A long, slender staff, his fingers curled around the top part so I couldn't see it. He hadn't had that last time—The Staff of Sullivan. It had to be.
I jerked my head to Ramsey who stared without blinking at it. I didn't think he could move. Maybe he forgot how. Why did Ryze have his family's staff?
"Professor," Ryze said with a cruel smirk to the woman.
No, not a professor. Was she?
"I must say, I'm surprised you still have a job after all"—he waved at her—"this. A bit unorthodox, even for this academy."
The woman began to climb while tightening her grip on the bones. She wasn’t acting like a minion. If she wasn’t one, what was she thinking facing off with Ryze?
Behind the next tree over, Echo waved at us to go deeper into the forest, her eyes wide. I shook my head. Even if Ramsey could move, he wouldn't, not without his staff. We'd have to get it away from Ryze, but the thought of doing that sawed at my taut nerves. I'd lost in a face-to-face with him before, alone, but with my friends, there was too much at risk.
With a hard flick of her wrists, the woman launched the bones at Ryze's head like spears. They flew so fast, they might've severed his neck—if he hadn't caught them first. In a blur, he crossed toward her and brought the bones over his head. Then he swung them down, puncturing her through the shoulders all the way to her bare back. The bones jutted out in an X, dribbling blood to the stone steps behind her. She stumbled to her knees before him.
"What a stupid thing to do, Professor." He lifted his shoe and pressed it lightly to her bowed head.
She tumbled down, down the steps and lay still at the bottom...but she looked different now. Younger, with long brown hair. Familiar...
"Margo Woolery," I whispered, and while Ramsey stood frozen, I stumbled out onto the rain-drenched path.
That shook him into action, and he made a grab for my cloak, but I was already shrugging out of it and rushing toward the professor. My brother's ex. She was the
old naked woman?
She lay so she saw me coming, and the lightning glistened on the tears in her pretty eyes and the blood coating the stone around her. Ryze towered over me at the top of the stairs, watching, smirking, billowing his dark energy which pushed me back. I resisted. I ignored him. I hated him.
My dying professor grimaced as I approached. "Dawn. Go."
A sob forced its way out of my throat. There was nothing I could do for her as a healer. Healers couldn't help those on the brink of death, but as a mage with a beating heart, I could do something. I could be there for her and cover her with my cloak for modesty and to keep her warm and comfortable and safe when she passed through the spirit door.
"I'm sorry, but I can't go." I smoothed my cloak over her and brushed the hair back from her eyes. My fingers rubbed away large skin flakes from her face, leaving patches of wrinkled skin behind. It was like she was a young and old woman at the same time.
"I’m a crone,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t yet asked. "I wanted to make a difference as a female mage. A big difference. But I was too old. The academy caught on to what I was and the magic I was doing, but I assured them I just needed bones every month or so to keep my young flesh from falling off. I could leave their hideaway whenever I was me again, but their magic began to fail when I was still in my crone form. I kept escaping."
The professor brought her hand out from under my cloak and took mine, and there was a bandage wrapped around her wrist. The same wrist I'd sliced open with my dagger in the library. To keep her young flesh from falling off... Had that been what she’d searched the floor in the Gathering Room for? Her flesh?
"I didn't tell him what I am..." she said, her whole body trembling, "and to him, that turned out to be worse than not telling him."
I blinked, my mind trying to keep up with her. She wasn’t talking about Ryze. Leo. She was talking about Leo.
"I loved him." Her eyes fluttered. "How could I not? I..."
The agony drained from her face, and the light went out behind her eyes. She was gone, the woman I'd imagined could be a sister if she and Leo had stayed together. If Leo were alive. If... All of those ifs simmered from way down deep, stirring up all that I'd lost once again.
Ryze sighed loudly as he came closer, the Staff of Sullivan tapping down the stone steps. "Looks like you have something to say."
I snapped my head up to retort but realized he wasn't talking to me.
Behind me about twenty feet stood Ramsey, flanked by Jon and Echo. I stood and backed toward them, keeping my glare on Ryze.
"That's my staff," Ramsey said, his voice edged with cold malice. "Give it to me."
Thunder boomed in the sky, and the rain fell harder.
Ryze arched his eyebrows, a flicker of irritation sparking in his eyes. "I don't take orders, boy. I give them."
"It's the Staff of Sullivan.” Ramsey held out his hand, his gaze ticking between Ryze and the staff. “It's been in my family for years and was stolen from my grandfather while he was a student here. Without it, my family is dying."
"How do you know this is yours if yours was stolen?"
"Give it to me," Ramsey shouted.
Ryze's face twisted into something dark and dangerous as he took another step down, close enough I could now see the scar running down his left cheek. "Or what?"
My body tensed, prepped to throw every spell I knew at him. It might not make a lick of difference, but that and my dagger were all I had. I would never let him touch one single hair on my friends’ heads.
"What are you going to do?” Ryze tilted his head, mocking him. “Take it from me?"
Ramsey stared at him, his whole body vibrating with intense anger. Taking it was exactly what he intended to do. My head spun and I felt sick with dizziness because I wanted him to have it, but Ryze wouldn't allow that. He wanted it for himself...but why?
I sidestepped in front of Ramsey and faced off with Ryze. "You don't even know what it can do."
"Wrong," he hissed. "I know exactly what it can do. Left in the wrong hands, this staff is too powerful." He tipped his chin at Ramsey. "Even for you, boy. You wouldn't know the first thing to do with it."
"It's in the wrong hands now." Ramsey lunged forward, but Echo and Jon pulled him back and I blocked his bulk the best I could.
"Why do you have it?" I fired at Ryze.
"It was given to me." A cruel smile turned up his lips. "Just handed over by someone familiar with it."
The person we'd run into in the catacombs who'd tried to kill us? But again, why?
"No, that’s not what I meant," I said, stepping closer to the steps and the professor’s body.
If I screamed loud enough, would someone from inside the open doors come running? But no, then I'd be putting more lives in danger. Ryze had already killed someone tonight. He needed to leave, and then when he came back, we needed to be ready. Which meant he'd have to take the staff with him. There was no other way.
"She meant why do you need it when you're already so powerful?" Ramsey asked.
Ryze regarded him coolly.
"You like to be in control of the things you fear, don’t you? Amaria, its people, the stones, your death?” Ramsey nodded as if answering his own questions. “You're afraid of all of it, aren't you?"
Lightning reflected over Ryze's face and lit the warning in his eyes. "I fear nothing."
"Then you're lacking in some other area you don't want anyone to know about," Ramsey fired back.
"Ramsey," I hissed. "Stop."
Echo and Jon shot him horrified looks.
This would not make Ryze hand over the staff or leave. I wanted him powerless and gone more than anyone, but pissing him off wasn't the way.
"My little sisters are dying without that staff, and you basically just admitted you don't need it.” Ramsey held out his arm again. “So hand it over."
Lightning crackled overhead, and thunder boomed seconds later. Rain pelted down, but none of us moved. Tension thrummed through the air, tightening painfully until I thought my chest would burst.
"You know what?" Ryze said with a little smile. "You're right." He tossed the staff high into the air.
I sucked in a breath as dread bottomed out my stomach. No, it couldn't be that easy. This was a trick.
"Ramsey!" I shouted.
But he was already moving toward it with graceful ease. Because why wouldn't he? He'd been searching for it for years to save his family, and Ryze had just handed it over to him. With his gaze aimed at the falling staff, he didn't see Ryze's face fill with wicked intent.
"No!" I dodged toward Ramsey, but my legs moved too slowly like I was running through a nightmare while Ramsey flowed toward the staff like water.
He caught it before I could get to him. He gazed at it with shocked elation, and for a moment, I was happy for him too. For a moment.
Then the next shattered it into jagged pieces.
"Et percutiamus eum,” Ryze said, his tone sharp as glass.
A bolt of lightning speared down from the sky and struck the wooden staff. The white light bounced down the length of it and slammed into Ramsey. He shuddered and jerked, his whole body glowing.
Bile torched its way up my throat. I reached out to help him, but the lightning buzzing over him snapped at my fingertips and drove me backward.
Echo screamed and leaped back.
Jon said something unintelligible, his eyes bugging from his head.
"Stop it! Stop it!" I whirled on Ryze. "You made your point!"
"Wrong," he said calmly and brushed past me as though I were nothing more than a dead tree. He plucked the lit staff out of Ramsey's hands, and the lightning buzzing through him immediately ceased. "Now I've made my point."
Ryze vanished in half a blink, with the staff.
Ramsey's eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he slumped to the ground.
I stumbled as though a burst of wind had crushed into me sideways. My mouth moved with everything I wanted to sa
y, the questions I needed answers to, but no sound came out. I swallowed several times as I searched his body for movement. My hands shook violently in front of me. I hadn't even realized I'd reached for him again.
A loud shriek cut through the night. I thought for an instant it was me, but it was Echo kneeling at Ramsey's side, Jon next to her with his arm around her shoulder. We were all blood bound. We could feel each other’s lives like our own, and now—
"Ramsey," I tried to whisper, but his name snagged around my wrecked heart.
He was mine. Impossibly, he'd become mine.
A broken sob choked up from my throat as I lurched toward him, blinded by own tears. As if driven by my healing ability, I checked for a pulse automatically, felt for a breath with my palm. Nothing.
There was nothing.
I rocked back on my heels, sure I was going to be sick as I tilted my head, and that was when I realized there was something. Pebbles lay scattered across the path near his boots. All I needed were six of them.
"No. What are you doing? Stop." Echo surged toward me, but I threw out my hands before she could touch me and screamed.
It poured out of me in a piercing wail, as sharp and painful as what remained of my heart, and the night sky answered it with thunderous booms and a brilliant lightning display over my head. It ended with a broken gasp and made me feel...rage. Exactly how I’d felt after Leo had died.
"I have to hurry," I said, continuing to collect rocks. "The Book of Black Shadows. It said I have five minutes max before the spirit crosses through the spirit door."
"Think about this," Jon pleaded. "This spell could kill you or put you in mage's oblivion again. And if you do this and the memory grenade?” He shook his head hard.
“You have to ask yourself if this is what Ramsey would want," Echo said firmly.
"What he wanted was to save his little sisters and return his family's staff to them," I insisted.
"This too? Or is this what you want?" she asked.
"He can't return the staff if he's dead," I shouted. But I could. It was the least I could do for Ramsey. I could get it back from Ryze and give it back to Ramsey's family...without him. The thought brought on a fresh wave of tears. No, I had to do this. His family had already suffered so much. I had suffered, too, and I was done.
Necromancer Revealed: Book 3 Page 10