But I was nobody’s fool and wasn’t going to lie to myself. We’d tripped something the night before, only we hadn’t realized it at the time. I was sure of it.
I jogged to catch up to the others, stepping beside Wally. She glanced at me.
“The House of Night will be interesting,” she said.
I made myself grin at her even while my body and mind churned with worry like they were trying to make butter. “You looking forward to it? This will be your house.”
“No, I am not,” she said softly. “They treat necromancers poorly. The vampires, that is. So, while it is the best fit for me, I am not looking forward to the schooling.”
I frowned. “Just like those three girls.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “If I could slide into one of the other houses, that would be ideal. But you will see soon enough what I am capable of. No other house would have me. My magic can’t be anything but what it is. No matter that it is weak.”
Before I could respond, Jared led us out through a back door of the mansion and into a courtyard where two buses waited, idling in the darkness.
“You sure that’s enough buses?” Pete asked.
“Do not question your betters, boy,” Jared said. His eyes landed on each of us in turn, as if daring us to go on. I straightened up and so did Wally. Orin and Pete froze, and Ethan looked away. So be it, the girls would lead the way.
Again. My lips twitched a little at that. It amused me that the guys in our group were so willing to let the girls lead.
We loaded up as two more troops of kids arrived—one of them the trio of girls who’d beaten Wally up two nights previously.
I saw them coming and walked to the front of the bus, waiting for them to take the first step in. “Bus is full. Use the other one.”
One of them hissed at me—full on viper hissed—but they did as I said, backing down and moving to the other bus.
The driver shivered. “Thanks, they give me the fecking willies. Shoot! Sorry, fudging. Not supposed to swear in front of you kids and your delicate freaking ears. Likely never heard a word like that before. Am I right or am I right?” He grinned, and the smile stretched from ear to ear, his eyes bugging out a little. Goblin then. His voice had a lilt to it that tugged at me.
I grinned back. “Yeah, never heard a bad word in my life. Surely would never use one. Do you think adults really believe that if they don’t swear in front of us, we won’t ever use them ourselves?”
He shrugged, grabbed the door handle and pulled the folding doors shut. “Who knows what adults think? I’m just paid to drive the bus.”
I crouched down beside him as he pulled out of the mansion’s grounds, watching where we were going as he droned on about the different kids he’d seen come through in all his years of driving for the academy.
“The only one that ever done impressed me was a tall kid, Shade, I think he was, but really he ended up being something else.” He gave a low whistle and my attention shifted fully to him.
“What do you mean he ended up being something else?”
“Nah, not supposed to talk about it. Like talking about the boogeyman before you put the kiddies to bed.” He grinned and winked again. “But if you come back on my bus, I’ll tell you all about him.” We’d begun to slow, and I could see the gates ahead of us, lit up in unnatural night. Our driver cranked the wheel to the left, taking us to a gate that I would have known was the House of Night even if I’d not been told. Massive wrought iron, solid black, partially covered in the thorny ivy, the gates were right out of a horror movie. Right down to the skulls set up on the spikes at the top. A lovely touch to be sure.
I stuck out my hand. “My name is Wild.”
I hadn’t thought his grin could get wider, but I’d been wrong. He clasped my hand. “Mighty fine to meet you, Wild. My friends call me Gory.” He braked smoothly, rolling the bus to a stop.
Pete pushed up behind me, waiting for me to step down. “Gory goblin? You related to Gregory? I heard all the clans named their people alphabetically. Like if your dad is a Luke, then all the kids have to start with an L.”
Gory laughed. “True, that be true. And often the women who marry in change their names to the same letter. So yup, I am related to Greggy. Where is he anyway? His mam asked me to let her know should I see him. Bit on the pretty side that one, but a right smart head he has on his shoulders.”
I shot a look at Pete, whose eyes popped open wide. I grabbed him by the shoulder and all but pushed him down the stairs.
“Thanks for the ride!” I called over my shoulder.
“Say hi to Greggy if you see him! Tell him to keep on keeping on!” Gory called back.
Sweet baby Jesus in a manger of spoiled straw, Gregory’s family hadn’t been told that he was missing? Just like we hadn’t been told anything about Tommy’s death. The blood in my veins turned sluggish, not something I needed only moments before stepping into the next trial. One that was bound to be worse than the others we’d faced. How could it not be when it was run by vampires and necromancers and who knew what else?
“We gotta go.” I kept moving, forcing my way through the funk. “Come on guys. Let’s get this done.”
Ethan tried to push to the front of our group, but Orin blocked him.
“This is not your house, Ethan.”
Wally bobbed her head. “Exactly.”
He cleared his throat and lowered his voice, drawing us all in close. “I remember some of my…paperwork.”
My eyebrows went up, but I motioned him forward. Fair enough—if he thought he could lead, let him lead. Orin and Wally let him pass, but I could see Orin, especially, was reluctant to do so.
“And?” I asked Ethan, “what exactly do you remember?” Part of me wondered if he’d actually tell us anything. Other than taking note that the cheat papers were exactly that, I hadn’t actually looked at them. To be fair, if I’d not slept the previous day away, I would have.
I had never claimed to be a saint. I needed to survive this to keep my siblings alive and well, and for them I’d break all the rules.
Ethan went for his wand holder, pulled out his wand, and lowered his voice further. “Necromancers first. Then ghost walkers. Vampires last. That’s the order.”
“Then let Wally lead up there with you,” I said. “You really want to be the first to get hit by a— Wally, what will the necromancers send after us?”
“Zombies,” she said without hesitation. “Lots and lots of zombies. You can take their heads, that will slow them down, but it won’t kill them like in the movies. You have to knock out or kill the necromancer to stop them completely. Otherwise, the body parts of the dead things will just keep on coming. I mean, if Ethan wants to try and go first, that’s fine by me.”
That slowed Ethan and he tipped his head. “Fine. You’re right, this is your house, after all.”
This morning, no beautiful woman greeted us atop the gates. In fact, no one else was around. Had all the other kids slipped ahead of us? Or had they left? I turned around, realizing that there was no other bus. We were here alone.
A warning shot down my spine. Something was off.
The gate creaked open on its own, and we stepped through, the air around us tensing and cooling rapidly as if we’d stepped not only through the gate but from summer into autumn. I blinked and took in what awaited us.
It looked like a pastoral scene straight out of some fairy tale villain’s playbook. A stone wall well over twelve feet high in some places wrapped around what could only be a graveyard, a huge metal gate locked at the front, skulls and crosses welded to it.
“The graves of the five houses,” Wally whispered. “It’s protected so the dead who served our world can rest.”
“That can’t be right,” Ethan said. “Because we know they’re going to raise the dead to challenge us. They would never stick us here.”
That warning tingle intensified.
“Could it be an illusion?” Pete asked.
Etha
n lifted his wand and did a swooping swirl, whispering a word under his breath. Sparks spat and fizzled. “No,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s not an illusion.”
“These zombies…they will be stronger than anything any necromancer could ever raise in the real world,” Wally said. “Their strengths when they were alive will be available to them in death. Which is why they are kept here. They are supposed to be kept safe from being raised. They would only send us here if they want to test whether we can rise to an impossible challenge...or if they want us to fail.”
Slowly, the four members of my crew turned and looked at me. Ethan actually looked upset. Pete horrified. And Wally had tears in her eyes. What the hell?
I shook my head. “What? Why are you all looking at me?”
Orin smiled, slow and sad. “You’re supposed to be missing,” he said with more than a tinge of sorrow to his voice. “What better way to have it happen than for you to go missing in the middle of the House of Night’s trial?”
I shook my head harder. “No, no, no. That makes no sense. The other kids that went missing, they were all asked.”
“And what would you say if you were asked?” Orin countered.
“No. She’d say no and we all know it. Anyone who’s spoken to her once would know it,” Wally answered for me. She wasn’t wrong.
Especially now that I knew what had happened to the kids who’d taken up the offer to skip ahead. Or sort of knew what had happened to them.
“Fine, so this is my fault? You want me to go first?” I took a few steps and Wally sighed.
“I want you to walk with me at the front, not Ethan. Your warning system is going to help us get through this. Our odds increase incrementally with you in our group, even if this is a set up.” She turned away from me and headed toward the locked gates. They swung open, welcoming us in.
“My warning system?” I stepped up next to her and slowly pulled my knife from my belt. A flicker from that very warning system cut down my spine like tiny little needle jabs. Not enough to hurt but enough to make sure I was aware of what was about to happen.
Wally plucked at a long stalk of grass as her eyes roved the space ahead of us. “I’ve been reading up on Shades. You have a built-in warning system, better than any of the other houses, as you are meant to survive attacks from many different quarters. You are meant to be aware of the world in a way the rest of us are not. Of course, not all Shades have it. About fifteen percent of Shades have a faulty warning system. Less than five percent have a heightened warning system, one that provides a wider range.”
I didn’t tell her she was wrong. That warning system, as she called it, had been saving my butt most of my life and since I’d arrived here, it had kicked into high gear.
She stepped to the right, her hand trailing over the tops of the gravestones closest to her, a sigh slipping from her lips. “The dead are so quiet, so simple. So much easier to talk to than the living.”
“How big is this magical graveyard?” I asked.
“Acres and acres,” she said. “Miles upon miles.”
Pete let out a groan. “I’m shifting. If we’re going to be running for long distances, I’d prefer to do it as a honey badger.”
I didn’t disagree with him—he was much more agile in his animal form, and far more aggressive, which wasn’t a bad thing in the least. The fact that he said nothing about his clothes told me just how worried he was. He just stripped, tossed his clothes to the side and shifted to his four-legged form.
I reached out and put a hand on Wally, slowing her. “Just take it easy. We don’t want to fight or run until we have to.”
“Agreed,” she whispered. “There is another necromancer here. He is starting to call the dead to life. I’ve only ever tried to handle two or three at a time. Zombies that is.”
“Crap,” Ethan whispered, his fear all but tangible. I glanced back at him. He and Orin were side by side, Pete waddling along between them and us, sniffing at the graves. Orin’s eyes glittered in the darkness, and for the first time I was worried about him.
Not that he wouldn’t make it.
But that he might have been setting us up. According to Rory, vampires were in on this, maybe even behind it. Mason’s roommate also thought a vampire was involved with his disappearance. Could Orin have been playing us all along? Vampires hated necromancers, so why had he defended Wally? Thoughts and questions rolled through me like tiny bolts of lightning.
A slow grin spread across Orin’s face, and my heart picked up, adrenaline lacing each beat.
What if the vampire Rory had warned me about wasn’t Jared, or some nameless blood sucker?
What if it was Orin?
Chapter 3
I didn’t have time to consider just how deep a game Orin was playing, if he was friend or foe, or whether he would stand by us now that we were here in his house. The graveyard we stood in trembled beneath our feet, the ground rumbling and rocking. A roll of earth rippled toward us like a wave in the ocean, and with it came a warning that was so thick it seemed to smother my lungs, freezing the air in them.
We were in serious trouble.
“Jump!” I said as the wave in the ground got close, and we all leapt into the air. Well, with the exception of Pete, who was tossed up by the rolling earth, flipped like an oversized pancake. His paws scrabbled outward as he twisted, reaching in four separate directions, his teeth bared and his tail jutting straight up before he fell back down. I landed in a crouch, fist to the ground.
The ground gave beneath me, like it had turned into a pile of quicksand. I quickly rolled away, but there wasn’t far to go. All around us the ground sunk and dropped around the different markers. “The graves.”
“The dead are being wakened!” Wally stood in the center of our group, her head thrown back, her hands outstretched. “The necromancer…oh God, he’s so strong! How can he do this? This isn’t supposed to be possible!”
“You said two or three zombies at best, that’s what you can handle?” I spun in a slow circle, counting the graves coming to life. Five, six, seven… ten, twelve, fifteen.
I stopped counting when I realized every single grave was stirring.
Every. Single. One.
Hands, elbows, tops of heads and shoulders pulled themselves free of the now softened ground, clawing their way toward us. Most hands were partially decomposed, others were straight up skeletal with tattered rags hanging off them. Only a few were solid, still holding muscle and bone together with actual flesh—even if that flesh was more than a little decomposed. The smell that wafted up with the emerging bodies sent us all stumbling back, Ethan gagging, and Orin pulling a face. I tried to breathe just through my mouth, but I could taste the rotting flesh which was far worse than just smelling them.
Time to move. “Wally, tell me you can slow them down!” I grabbed her arm and dragged her through the middle of the graveyard, assuming the others would follow, picking up speed as I searched for the best path between the dead, grasping bodies. The three guys stuck close, Orin falling to the back as I tried to find us a way out that didn’t involve going over graves.
A hand shot out toward my ankle and I kicked it away, snapping it off at the wrist.
Fore! Pete’s voice reverberated through my head as his honey badger form chittered.
“Not playing golf, Pete!” I sidestepped a pair of hands that came at us, closer to knee height. “Keep your wand out, Ethan!” I hollered.
“Really, Sherlock? I thought I’d let them take us.” He snapped back then yelped and a burst of light shot up behind us. The darkness and fog faded for the space of two strides, and in that brief moment I could see, we were in far bigger trouble than I’d realized.
Acres of graveyard was an understatement. There was no end to it that I could see, no wall at the far side. And every grave was moving, every occupant climbing out.
We’d been running before. But now… “As fast as you can. Orin, take the lead!”
The vampire shot ah
ead of us, Wally falling way behind him, Pete at her side.
“Ethan. You and me at the back.”
We ran, dodging hands and snapping teeth, and my adrenaline ping-ponged inside me. Because I was severely out of my element. I didn’t know how to stop the dead.
“Wally, what do we do?” I shouted, and she slowed and looked over her shoulder.
“We have to fight.” Her eyes were wide, shell-shocked. “We have to fight our way out. Running will only make this go on and on. In that it is an illusion, like a hamster’s wheel that keeps going and going. The only way to make it stop is to face them.”
A howl went up behind us, gurgling and wet. I dared to look back in time to see shapes bounding across the graves. Clumsy, limping, but bounding.
“Werewolves. Dead werewolves,” Ethan snarled.
“Real wolves are afraid of fire,” I said. “Can you do anything with that?”
“No problem.” He waved his wand with a quick flick of his wrist, and three fireballs popped out of his wand like a roman candle, growing in size as they flew toward their targets.
The first fireball hit the lead wolf square in the chest, knocking it to the ground, lighting it up like a Christmas tree.
“See? This is easy.” I could hear the smirk in Ethan’s voice.
But I kept my eyes on the burning wolf. It shook itself and slowly got back to its feet, its fur singed in patches and still burning in others. The undead beast bared broken teeth before charging toward us once more. Now we had a werewolf on fire coming at us.
Brilliant.
We backed up until we bumped into Wally, Pete at our feet. “Orin?”
“You told him to run. He ran,” Wally said. I turned around to face her.
So much for staying together.
“Best case scenario, what are our odds?”
She closed her eyes for a brief second, squeezing them shut, and then looked at me once more. “The odds are not in our favor. We can fight, but they will keep coming until we are overrun. Thousand to one. Maybe worse.”
Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, Book 3 Page 2