“What do you know about them?” she asked.
“I know that they like death and destruction. They have no purpose other than to inspire fear.”
“I suppose some of that is true,” she conceded, “but they certainly do have a purpose. I believe they have a clear purpose. They aren’t just running around willy-nilly - to borrow Ricky’s words.”
“They want what the Nocturns wanted before Premier Verlans got hold of them,” said Keegan. He held up his hand as if to inspire anticipation and added, “Death and destruction and artifacts.”
Eighellie’s right hand flexed over the papers she was looking at. “Okay, I get it,” she said. “You lack imagination. Fine. I’m still going to continue. It’s the part about the artifacts that’s interesting.”
She picked up a sheet of paper from near the bottom of the pile, then rooted around for two others that seemed to go along with it, at least in Eighellie’s mind. We had learned a lot about the Hunters and artifacts from the two lectures my sister had hosted, but Eighellie seemed to think she had more to add.
“I’ve been looking at articles about black markets,” she said. “There isn’t much, but a couple of reporters have managed to sneak into them. Ricky, it would help if at some point you could tell me exactly what happened at yours, but meanwhile, I’m noticing a pattern.”
“I can tell you,” I said, “but I don’t know much. Lisabelle took a music box from the market when she rescued me. That’s about it.”
Eighellie nodded. “That makes sense. Instrument-related objects appear to be a target of theirs. Does she still have it?”
“You don’t really ask Lisabelle questions about her behavior and expect to live,” I said. When Eighellie kept looking at me I said, “I don’t know if she does or not.”
Eighellie looked back at the paper and said, “There are four major black markets every year, and then a bunch of smaller ones. At least, I’m pretty sure there are four, because the that’s how many the reports consistently list. What I think is that there is one more besides the ones that are being reported on. I think there is a super-secret black market.”
“What gets sold there?” I asked. “Counter Wheel?”
“Look,” said Eighellie. “There are a lot of artifacts, a lot of objects with power and historical meaning. The objects on the Wheel, which is so important to the paranormals, are a good example. Those objects are rare and important, yes, of course, but there are many others besides those. Some are well-known and others less so. I think what’s relevant is that the Hunters are trying to control shifts in power by controlling objects like those on the Counter Wheel. If paranormal power alone isn’t enough, using ancient artifacts to amplify power, either to gain an advantage or to destroy an opponent, is the way to go. Just for the record, I don’t know where any of the Counter Wheel objects are or if they’ve been sold at black markets.”
“Eighellie, why are you going on about this now?” said Keegan. “Did the lectures get you started on this? Does it have something to do with President Valedication? Or anything else besides shoring up the tracks for your pink crazy train.”
“Well, I do think Dobrov is protecting artifacts. I think that’s why he’s here. He’s a hybrid and he’s Daisy’s brother. He’s not a wuss. President Quest assigned him here to protect artifacts. That’s what he was doing in the Museum of Masks that night we ran into him. Charlotte probably knows all of this already.” Eighellie looked at me when she said the last bit.
“No, no way,” I interrupted immediately. “I’m not taking any of this to Charlotte like some kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Fine, I wasn’t ready for the information to be presented anyway,” she said.
“Fine,” I echoed, shaking a little. The idea of bothering Charlotte with theories about the Hunters at a time like this bothered me, not that Eighellie knew what she was suggesting. If Dobrov really was the only thing standing between the artifacts at Public and the Hunters, my concern about Dobrov’s precarious tenure as president of Public was only intensified.
“Can you get back to answering my question?” Keegan asked. “I don’t know if any of this information matters, or if it’s even accurate.”
“Yeah, sure, hate to keep you waiting,” she muttered. “Dobrov may be protecting artifacts, and if the Hunters get their hands on some of these objects, like the Golden Rod, who knows what could happen.”
“Do you have any theories about where the authentic Golden Rod might be?” I asked.
The girl shook her head. “No idea, but I’m not alone. I don’t think anyone knows, just as Judge Yeast said; I think she was telling the truth. But that’s the big ticket,” she said. “It’s always mentioned in the articles as the get of all gets, but no one really knows anything about it. Paranormals have built entire careers around trying to find it.”
“I suppose it’s easy to become legend if no one actually knows what you do,” Keegan mused. “Anyway, I’m going to my room to listen to music.”
“Wait!” she said, getting excited. “There’s more!”
“There’s more,” Keegan mouthed to me before he rolled his eyes. I tried to hide my amusement. I knew he was more interested than he wanted Eighellie to believe.
“Look at this timeline,” she said, thrusting a sheet of paper into my hands. “Everything started a year after the Nocturn war ended.”
“So?” I demanded.
“So, that’s when Lisabelle Verlans officially became the premier of all darkness.”
“So?” I said again.
“The Hunters are after Lisabelle. They want to take her out and they decided this was the best way to do it. Nothing was formed or happening until she assumed an official role in which she held power. Something happened one year after the Nocturn war ended to change of all of that, and it was Lisabelle.
“But she harnessed darkness right from the end of the war,” Keegan argued. “That’s why her tattoo started going all kinds of crazy and she was ordering demons around. She took over from Premier Erikson.”
“I know that,” said Eighellie. “She didn’t assume everything unofficially, though, until a year afterwards. I’m sure that must be it! Someone wants her out of the way, and they think using the Golden Rod is their ticket to making it happen.”
True, Fussfus had said a lot of this yesterday in his lecture, but somehow Eighellie bringing out the timeline and sharpening our attention on the Golden Rod brought more of the danger home to me.
“I don’t know if you know this, Eighellie, but Lisabelle can take care of herself,” I said, pacing. “She’s terrifyingly good at it, in fact.”
Eighellie might be right, but we needed to take one problem at a time. The Hunters were bad, but I was more worried about the immediate problem of having Dobrov at risk of being fired and the artifacts being exposed. No way anyone was crazy enough to try and take down Lisabelle now. Just no way.
Chapter Twenty
We decided to go to the dining hall for breakfast the next morning, and the first thing I saw was a copy of the Tabble with a full page advertisement that only deepened my worries about artifacts. The headline blared:
CHANGES AT PARANORMAL PUBLIC UNIVERSITY
The oldest paranormal university in the world, a pillar of honor and respect, has been forced to change. Throughout the tenure of the so-called last elemental, Public was subject to arson, the burning down of Public’s famed Tower, and then the sight of the final and desperate last stand of the Nocturn War, not to mention many other difficulties and battles that took place in between those two events. The withering of Public’s old fabric is not surprising and no one is here to say that it isn’t sad, but the truth is, with Public’s fall from grace, changes to the way things are done at the famed university must be considered.
Just because Paranormal Public has always been there does not mean that it should continue to always be there, is my belief.
Lost in a confusing dream late that same night, I h
eard a cry. Someone slipped and fell, then yelled. I cast around to see what had happened, tossing and turning as I did so. At first I tried to stay asleep, because I was used to bad dreams, but at some point the distractions became too much, so I let myself wake up, more or less, and rolled over to glare at the dark window. I hadn’t shut the curtains, because I felt as if the moon keeping vigil over me helped me sleep.
At that moment, though, I wasn’t looking at the moon. The shock of seeing a rope stretched across the window jolted me fully awake. I waited a few seconds to see if I’d really wake up, then I saw a dark figure blot out my view of the moon and I knew this was no joke.
The power was still being turned off at night so that work could be done, and it made the grounds very dark. But still, something was now crystal clear: Astra was under attack.
As soon as the figure’s head was out of view, I jumped out of bed. I assumed the attacker must not have known whose room he was passing, since the room was dark and the only other students who had been in Astra were Eighellie and Keegan.
My ring blazed, but I ordered it to quiet. A slight feeling of unease overcame me, but only briefly. I was worried that because I didn’t have clear control of my powers, I could hurt whoever was attacking Astra. But I quickly concluded that since they were breaking in, that just wasn’t my problem.
A slight tremor of excitement went through me. It had been a while since I had been in a fight.
“Sorry, Dacer,” I muttered. I grabbed a hoodie and zipped it up, then pulled the hood over my head and crept toward the hallway.
The hallway was silent, but the carpet was so plush that I wasn’t sure I would hear any paranormals who might be approaching anyhow. I saw ropes across more windows, so it wasn’t just one paranormal attacking, but many. My heart thumped faster in my chest.
Had they snuck in using false TPs? Was that where the missing identification patches had gone, so that the deadly purpose of the theft was now revealed? Were the attackers looking for objects on the Wheel or for objects on the so-called Counter Wheel?
Breathless in suspense, I couldn’t be sure.
Soon I saw four more dark figures climbing past the windows. Because they were going higher, it looked like they were planning to break in on the floor above where they thought I slept. I mean, it wasn’t that hard to figure out. At night I had lights burning on the second floor, but not the third.
Were these paranormals here to take artifacts? All semester everything had always come back to artifacts, so that’s where my mind naturally went. But realistically, stealth was required for theft, and with all these paranormals, including one who had fallen, yelled, and awakened Astra’s resident elemental, I didn’t think that could be what was happening.
Suddenly, a dark shape loomed in front of me and I stopped breathing entirely.
“What’s all this then?” Keegan whispered, creeping up the stairs. In theory he slept in the room next to mine, but in practice he almost always fell asleep in the fire lounge in front of a roaring fire every night. I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that they hadn’t gotten to him yet.
“No idea,” I whispered back. “We’re under attack.”
“You’re under attack, I’m going home to Airlee,” said Keegan. Then, after a pause, he added, “Just kidding.”
We were both crouched low in the space between my door and his.
“Should we go to the third floor and stop them there tree sprite style?” Keegan asked.
“I’m not sure they can get in,” I whispered.
“I wouldn’t have thought they could climb the walls either, and yet they are,” Keegan pointed out.
I shook my head. I had to think! There was no time! I didn’t know what to do and I needed to make the decisions right this instant, yet rushing never helped! Keegan was looking at me expectantly, as if I had all the answers. I didn’t like what I was about to say, but we didn’t have a choice.
“We have to split up,” I said grimly. “You go upstairs. I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but they’re definitely trying to get in up there. The stairs, the back hallway, maybe the attic or the library.”
“So, not a lot for me to cover at all,” said Keegan dryly.
The essence of any paranormal dorm was known to rise up and defend its own when it felt threatened. Martha was that incarnation for the entirety of Paranormal Public; that she also really liked baking and weird glasses were just extra features.
“The essence isn’t attacking the intruders,” I whispered. I heard a crash downstairs and Keegan and I exchanged worried glances. “We have to move.” With that I pushed off my knee, but Keegan grabbed my arm.
“Be careful,” he said. “If these are Hunters, we’re in big trouble. I don’t want anything to happen to the second best elemental on my watch.”
Without giving me a chance to respond, Keegan was gone, racing away down the hallway, being careful to avoid being seen through the windows as he went.
I hurried toward the stairs, with only the shadows for company. At first the moon was huge, shining through a grand window opposite the stairs. Then, suddenly, it was blocked by a dark shape looming in front of me. He (I figured it must be a “he”) wore a hood, so I couldn’t see his face, but before I could even react, he raised his arms above his head and a club flashed before my eyes. He was about to punch it through my face.
“What’s happening?” Eighellie asked, seemingly still half asleep as she wandered out of one of the bedrooms, not the one I had thought she was staying in. She wore a dark nightgown and even a nightcap. I had never seen her look less menacing, but she took both me and my attacker by surprise.
The attacker and I both froze, but the darkness mage didn’t.
Eighellie lurched forward, attacking. In an effort to fit in, she wore a ring instead of concentrating her magical power in some other way, as with a tattoo or a wand. She put the ring to good use now. Her hand hit the attacker squarely in the back, and I saw him jolted aside as if struck by lightning. Grimly, he stopped all movement and fell sideways. I pushed him in the shoulder and felt a slight prickling sensation, but this way at least he avoided hitting the walls.
“Sorry,” she panted as I was forced to rush out of the way of her forward momentum.
“No worries,” I said. “I didn’t really believe you when you told us you were a badass, but I do now.”
We didn’t have time for any more chitchat, because suddenly another attacker rose up behind her. Without even turning around, Eighellie pointed her ring over her shoulder and blasted the paranormal into the wall. He hit it with a thud and slid down. Maybe I imagined it, but I rather thought the whole floor shook a little. She gave me a shrug and a rueful smile.
“Who’s next?” she demanded, racing past me. “Third floor or first?” She asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re coming in from everywhere. Keegan went up and I need to get to the ballroom.”
Before we could move, a tremendous explosion lit up the windows as if a bright sun had suddenly popped through the veil of darkness.
Eighellie and I exchanged looks. Then, moving as if we were both being pulled by the same string, we hurried outside to see what had happened.
The first paranormals I saw were the four Burble siblings. Buck Burble, Berry Burble, Beth Burble, and Benlch Burble were scaling the wall. For large and bulky vampires they were surprisingly agile. Frances, Fog, and Hannah were swarming around the back. There were about ten other dark figures in cloaks. What the devil was happening?
There were students swarming all over the grounds of Astra.
Dashing left and right, they were pouring in from every angle. Whatever protections had been in place on the dorm to repel unwanted guests seemed to be in place no longer. For a second I couldn’t figure out why, but then I understood. They weren’t being activated because all of the invaders were my fellow students.
Magic raced through the air in a widening circle. It sparked like lightning and flick
ered like gold flames. I hadn’t seen so much raw concentrated power since the final battle of the Nocturn war. I gulped.
Only one mechanism for generation this much power came to mind: the Astra attackers must have used powerful objects to harness magic and then release it, to achieve deadly consequences.
Waves of gold power were racing through the air, lashing the winds, and paranormals were scattering in every direction. In all the chaos, one figure stood out. Averett was hovering off to one side, watching the mess unfold, her black robes flapping and her eyes cold.
I looked for a source, a paranormal with an object, but I saw no one.
Screams and cries filled the night as the airborne power struck students and they fell to the ground. There was no telling whether they were stunned or dead. The power circles were increasing in both size and frequency, and at the rate they were being magnified, they would kill us all.
“What happened?” I asked Averett.
“They tried to attack Astra using artifacts. I’m on the fence about whether or not they failed,” she said dryly.
“What artifacts?” I said.
“Oh, let me consult my list here,” she pretended to examine her palm. I rolled my eyes.
“DUCK!” Eighellie cried, coming out of nowhere and slamming her shoulder into me. Averett merely floated upwards while the darkness mage and I collapsed to the ground.
The next circle rolled through Astra and I watched my home shake.
More cries filled the air, but now they were accompanied by moans. Many of the students who had tried to attack Astra and lost control of their own power were now on the ground, writhing in pain or not moving at all. My heart was in my throat. If I didn’t do something soon they were all going to die.
Elemental Havoc (Paranormal Public Book 11) Page 15