“Oh, crap, she’s got an infection from the bite!” Ethan growled. He grabbed my face with his hands and peered into my eyes, pulling my lids up with his thumbs. “It’s moving fast. I can’t even believe I’m going to say this. We need to pick her up and carry her.”
“I’ve got her,” Orin said.
“Thought I was too big.” I mumbled as he flipped me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
“You are too big to throw a hundred feet. Not too big to pack around,” he grumbled back.
The world spun as he stepped, my head bobbing, their voices fading in and out.
We walked through a fog that swirled all around us, the whispers of unfamiliar voices crawling inside my ears like bugs, like mosquitoes trapped in my skull. I swatted with my one hand, heat rushing through me even though I was no longer walking.
Distantly, I knew it was fever. Maybe the zombie’s mouths had been deliberately infected with something? Possible. No matter how I looked at it, someone had done this on purpose. No one else had been bitten, just me. Did they really want me dead? Or was it still possible they only wanted to kidnap me? The questions rolled through me, and I fought to stay awake. I was so tired. I just wanted to sleep, to rest.
“Her heart is slowing!” Orin said, and then we were bouncing along. Running. They were running. That couldn’t be good.
My crew was trying to save me. Something warm and fuzzy flowed through me. They really were family. No matter that none of us seemed to fit.
You’ve got to hang in there, Wild! Pete’s voice burst through the static, and then the other voices were back. The whispering voices.
I could almost make out words through the static. The harder I listened, the more I could pick up.
Orin lowered me to the ground, and I somehow found my legs strong enough to stand. We were in front of a castle, the drawbridge closed, and fog rolled all around us. No, not fog. Ghosts. We were surrounded by ghosts.
“You see them?” I held a hand out and one of the ghosts reached for me. A woman.
“See what? We can’t see anything in this fog. Stay close!” Ethan snapped, fear thick in his voice.
The woman in front of me smiled, her features slowly coming into focus.
“Mom?”
“We’re losing her!” Orin yelled. “Her heart rate just dropped!”
Only they weren’t losing me. I was with my mom and my mom was here and I was…
“Oh, my sweet Wild girl, it isn’t your time,” Mom said, her smile gentle and sad at the same time. “You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s so hard, Mom. This place is so hard. And the people are assholess.” I drew a breath and reached for her, and miracle of miracles, she was solid under my hands. She grabbed me and pulled me tight to her chest and the smell of lilacs and baby powder surrounded me. Safe, home, love, family. This was all I needed.
“I know it’s hard, and yes, people are always going to be assholes.” She laughed, her chest shaking lightly. “You’ll have your days too, my girl, where you’ll be the asshole. The one to get the job done. Because you are the only one who can protect them all, Wild. Do you understand? You are the best of me. The best of your father. The best of our family.” She pressed her lips against my forehead and I clung to her, already feeling her pushing away. A burst of energy flowed from her into me, pushing back the infection, pushing back the fatigue. “Go, my girl. Go and don’t forget. You must get up now. Get up.”
“Get up!” Pete screamed in my face, his breath smelling vaguely of death. Was it from biting the zombies? Gross, that’s exactly what it was from, I was sure of it. “You have to get up!”
He was back on two legs, his freckles bright from the strain of his yelling in my face. I rolled onto my belly and lifted my head. Across the drawbridge stood Ethan, Orin, and Wally. The captured necromancer sat behind them on his knees.
Pete grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me hard. Something had happened while I’d been out cold. Apparently. We’d passed through the ghosts like they were actual mist.
Or maybe they’d had to face the ghosts on their own?
“If you don’t cross the bridge under your own power, it doesn’t count,” he said. “You have to get up, Wild. You have to. I won’t finish this trial without you, not after everything we’ve been through together.”
I pushed to my hands and knees. My guts rolled, my bad arm shaking and buckling under me, but I sat back on my knees and then slowly got to my feet, Pete hovering like an old lady the whole time. He had sweat pants on, thank God. That was about all I took note of besides the planks under my feet as I took step after step toward the others. Though I did wonder where he’d gotten them from.
This was the worst time to be at my worst. The vampires came last, Ethan had said so, and I was pretty much useless. With my good arm, I went for my knife and pulled it out, fingers trembling. If I was going to have to fight, I needed to be ready.
My footsteps echoed loudly on the wooden planks, and as soon as my boots reached cobblestone, I stopped. The world around me swam, sweat dribbling off my face and onto the stone.
“Is this real?” I asked, my words still thick and slurred. The castle around us was massive, and even in my very addled state I could appreciate the scope of it. My heart skipped a beat.
“How are you even standing?” Wally asked softly. “A few minutes ago, your heart was faltering, even Orin felt it.”
“The ghosts,” Ethan said. “They can give energy. She must have known one of them. That’s why they let us through. Damn it, even when she’s out of it she’s getting us through this.” He shook his head, and I just kind of rolled with it.
“My mom,” I said. “She gave me energy.”
“Yes,” Orin said. “This part, this castle is real. This is where the council of the undead oversee their portion of the magical world.” He paused. “They allow us to use it for the purpose of the Culling Trials as they want a chance to view the contestants in person.”
Pete grumbled under his breath and hitched at his sweatpants. “Contestants or new play toys?”
Orin didn’t so much as miss a beat. “Either. You, though, they’d likely put on a spit and slow roast for their next gathering.”
I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not and didn’t have the energy to tell him not to be a dick.
Apparently, Pete wasn’t sure if it was a joke either. He dropped back next to Wally, grumbling, “What a jerk. He’s lucky I don’t mind him so much now.”
“Statistically speaking, he’s not wrong,” she said. “Four to six percent of the trial entrants fall under the spell of one of the vampires and chose to stay here as servants. They aren’t strong enough to live in the magical world anyway if they can be taken that easily, but the statistics don’t lie.”
“Wish they would once in a while,” Pete said.
Orin and Ethan led the way, and warning tingles danced up and down my spine with each step. I let out a low groan as my stomach rolled with nausea. The vampires had better hurry the hell up, or I was going to be flat on my back again before I could be of any help to my crew.
The two guys approached the center of the courtyard, Ethan with his wand raised and Orin with his hands clasped at his back as he float-walked along. One day he’d make a fine Dracula. I grinned at the thought, feeling the crazy that came with a high fever and infection. Then another warning blared through all that crazy, demanding my attention.
I pushed Wally and Pete ahead of me, still trying to guard the rear. “Eyes open.”
“As if I’d close them now,” Pete muttered.
“It’s a saying, Pete,” Wally said, “and as she is our resident Shade, we should listen to her. As I mentioned before, she has a highly tuned inner warning system.” Wally continued on in that thread, giving stats about how many Shades made it through the trials versus the rest of the blood lines.
That warning system was ringing a thousand bells at once, my adrenaline pulsing so fast, it pushed back t
he fog of the infection, clearing my mind. I struggled to keep my breathing normal, slow and even. Ethan and Orin stopped in the center of the courtyard.
“Which way?” Ethan did a slow turn, pointing at each of the four doors leading out of the castle. Four doors, none of which we needed to go through.
This was the wrong way.
“Stop!” I whisper-yelled the word.
Ethan and Orin slowed, and I motioned for them to come back to us. Ethan took a step, but Orin didn’t.
“I think I would know my own house,” he said, turning away from us.
Ethan looked between me and Orin. “Yeah, he should.”
Wally and Pete backed up until they were beside me. “Listen to her,” Wally said. “If she’s picking up on something, then we need to—”
The slightest creak of hinges squeaked through the air, and four figures emerged from the four doors.
I grabbed Wally and Pete and dragged them farther back. Maybe it was because I had missing stamped on my file. Maybe it was because of Rory’s warning about the vampires. Maybe it was because I was so close to death. But this was bad, beyond bad.
“This will be worse than dealing with the necromancer,” I said.
Please, God, let me be wrong for once.
Chapter 6
The four vampires rushed out at us from the doorways in the castle, their speed blinding. There was no way I could fight, no way any of us could physically best them. We had to outsmart them instead.
“PARLAY!” I screamed the word and the vampires came to a dead stop.
“We are vampires, not pirates, you stupid girl.” The one to the left of us laughed, and the other three joined in, their laughter rolling around us, amplified by the stone walls until it felt like a hundred vampires were laughing at us.
“And if we have a necromancer who can control vampires? How much would that be worth to you?” Ethan asked, taking over.
“Necromancers can’t control vampires,” one of them said. “That is an old myth to scare the young ones into being obedient.”
Orin shrunk where he stood, just a little, but I saw it. “It is true.” He shook the necromancer at his feet and the vampires seemed to really see him for the first time. With his heavily lined face and thick beard, he was for sure no kid.
“I can do no such thing,” the necromancer purred.
“Then how did I learn it from you?” Wally held out a hand and her necromancer power crawled down her arm and latched onto the vampire closest to us.
“I would never have figured it out if I hadn’t seen you control Orin.”
Orin nodded. “He made me attack my crew. He was inside my head and I couldn’t stop him.”
Three of the vampires laughed. The fourth tried to join them, but Wally made a fist. The laugh strangled, and she pointed at the other vampires. “Protect us from them.”
Pride suffused me as my crew closed ranks. I only wished Gregory were here, that he could be a part of this moment. Ethan and Orin went shoulder to shoulder, keeping the necromancer on the ground in front of them. Pete stayed near me, and Wally was to our left, directing the vampire she’d taken hold of.
“Damn it, she’s in my head!” He stepped forward, claws extended at his fellow blood suckers. He put his back to us and let out a snarl. “This should not be possible!”
A moment of tension, and then the world seemed to explode in a flurry of movement, shouts and emotion.
People burst through the doorways, not all of them vamps. One was Director Frost, and another was Ethan’s dad, his wand out as he blasted one of the vampires away from our group, flipping him end over end.
Behind them strolled the Sandman, his eyes on me. He gave me a slow nod, and I knew who’d sounded the alarm that something was wrong with our trial. The only question was, why?
Why had Sunshine helped me? Was it because Rory had died?
I went to my knees, the chaos around me white noise buzzing along my skin. Yelling, flares of magic, vampires hissing...it all unrolled around me as I stayed there on my knees.
Pete grabbed one arm, and Wally the other. “We’ve got to get you to the healer,” Pete said.
I closed my eyes and let them carry me.
“She dropped her knife,” Ethan called from behind us, slipping the blade back into its sheath. Only he’d said the wrong thing.
She. He’d said she.
A new burst of excitement whipped up behind us, but I couldn’t bring myself to care as I was hauled through a doorway, out of the House of Night, and into the bright sunshine of upstate New York, as if everything behind us had been a dream.
“Nightmare more like it,” Pete said. “Holy cats. Wild, that was…do you really think they were trying to kill us all?”
They laid me on a table and the healer shushed him, the same healer as that first day. What was her name again? Was I mumbling?
“It’s the infection,” the healer smiled down at me. “It’s almost to your brain. They got you out just in time.”
“What would happen if it reached her brain?” Pete asked.
“Zombie,” Wally said.
The healer—Mara, that was her name—tsked. “Don’t go upsetting her. She’s here and that’s that.”
Of course, she knew I was a girl too. She had from the beginning but hadn’t said anything. But every other thought scattered as her hands pressed against the bite wound. I arched my back as pain rippled outward from her touch.
“This will not be pleasant,” Mara said, her voice grim.
Fire and ice, knives and snapping teeth, tearing flesh and broken limbs, I couldn’t think past the pain that erupted through my veins. “Bite down.”
Something was shoved between my teeth and I bit down hard, snapping it in half.
“Holy cats, are we sure she isn’t a shifter?”
A chunk of leather was shoved in next and I bit into it, my teeth almost touching through the thick material as I screamed.
For a moment, I thought about just letting it go, because the pain was surely not worth the prize. We still had one more trial to go through, one more chance at being killed. Because I was sure that this botched attempt wouldn’t be the last. Whoever was doing it would try again, and again, until they had what they wanted–our deaths, a kidnapping, it didn’t matter. They would not give up.
Was that why the Sandman had been there? Was he after me? The pain receded and my mind went into overdrive with theories and questions. Had the Sandman killed Rory for looking out for me?
Had my friend died trying to protect me, or had he been just thrown under the bus to throw me off the track?
The shakes took me, starting in my legs and working all the way up through my middle to my chest and arms. A heavy blanket was tossed over me, and then Orin and Ethan swept into the tent, followed by…Colt.
His eyes shot to me, one still bruised from his encounter with Rory in the forest. It felt like a lifetime ago even though it had been less than a day.
“She can stay here,” Mara said, dusting her hands. “She needs rest and food. And I fixed her nose while I was at it, seeing as…” As everyone knew I wasn’t a boy. That thought tripped through my brain.
Ethan shook his head. “No, she comes with us. Colt, can you pick her up?”
Orin took a step, but Colt beat him to it. “Yeah, of course.” He scooped me up, blanket and all, as if I weighed nothing.
“I can walk.” I moved to push him away, but my arms were weighted lead and I couldn’t so much as lift them.
Colt held me tightly to his chest as he walked out of the tent, the others falling in around us. All the way to a bus that took us back to the mansion. I dozed, unable to keep my eyes open.
I was warm, safe. I fell asleep in Colt’s arms.
When I came to, we were back in the room, and I was tucked into my bed. My crew was there, talking softly.
“What are we going to do?” Wally asked. “We know someone’s after her, the whole school knows she’s a girl now, but
they haven’t kicked her out. Why? That makes no sense.”
“You want her to be kicked out?” Orin countered.
“No, of course not.” Wally huffed. “But they are acting like they don’t know. Why? What do they want with her?”
“She’s strong,” Ethan said. “It’s possible they want her for a specific job. That’s…” he cleared his throat, “that’s what my dad said. That maybe someone wants her specifically. That’s why she’s being tested so hard. Maybe it wasn’t a trial meant to kill her after all.”
Pete paced beside my bed, identifiable by his footsteps. “But for what?”
They were all quiet at that, and I sat up. Colt was there too, surprising me. He gave me a smile and I tried to smile back.
Except that when I looked at him, all I could see was Rory.
I swallowed hard. “I need to shower. Can…I get some privacy?”
“I’ll be just outside,” Wally said. “Pete and I will guard the door.”
Colt grabbed Ethan. “And we’ll get some food.”
Ethan rolled his eyes. “I should never have told you she was a girl.”
They filed out, all of them, except Orin. I looked up at him. “What?”
“We all passed that trial. But we shouldn’t have. You tie us together in a way that is not normal.” He frowned. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. I do not think these ties will be easily broken. I should be bothered by it. Vampires are by nature loners, but…now I don’t want that.”
I stood, hanging on to the bed to make sure I didn’t fall over. I wasn’t hurting anymore, but I felt like I’d been sick for weeks. “That your way of saying we’re friends?”
He tipped his head to the side. “I suppose it is. I’ve never had friends before. Is it normal to want to protect them?”
I wanted to laugh at him, but he was serious. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“I see.” He sighed. “Well, I will guard the door with Wally and Pete then. Because you are my friend.”
He did his float-walk to the door and closed it quietly behind him. Call me crazy, but the doubts that had ghosted through me about Orin slid away with the last of our conversation. He might be weird. He might be bloodthirsty, but I didn’t think he’d turn on us. I headed to the bathroom, peeling off my clothes as I went. The smell of the undead, of sweat and blood and fear, clung to them and I just needed them off.
Shadowspell Academy: The Culling Trials, Book 3 Page 5