He didn’t say anything, but he did point to my right and then turned back around. I took off in that direction, even though I couldn’t see Petros. I was still running when all of a sudden Petros stepped out from behind a building. I would’ve crashed into him if his strong arms didn’t stop me at the shoulders.
“Oomph,” I said as my body jerked backward.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What’s going on? Liam said something’s happening in the forest.”
“A couple of Vykens were spotted on the north end. They’ve already been taken care of.”
“And that’s all it was?”
He paused and cocked his head to the side. “There’s more coming from the east.”
I swallowed, but the action did nothing to remove the hard lump in my throat. “How many more?”
He looked down at me. “Get everyone ready. It’s time.”
FORTY-ONE
I raced through Chadni Hall and directly into Dr. Han’s office. He was awake, a single lamp turned on. I was breathing hard and struggled to speak the words that needed to be said.
“They’re coming, aren’t they?”
I nodded.
“Is the front gate locked?”
I nodded again. Liam and I had walked past it a couple of times already. Unless an explosive device was used, no one, specifically Sophie, was getting through. Vykens could probably jump it, but I wasn’t particularly worried about them. Our biggest priority was keeping Sophie and the Shadow off the property. If that happened, we wouldn’t stand a chance, unless . . . I didn’t want to think about what I would have to do.
He stood up. “I’ll sound the alarm. Make sure that no matter what happens, no one gets through the underground entrance.
“You got it,” I said, finally finding my voice. I turned to leave to find May and the others.
“Llona,” Dr. Han said, stopping me.
I looked back at him.
“It’s been an honor knowing you. I couldn’t be more proud.”
“Save that for after we win.” I hurried out. A few seconds later, the chimes rang, but it was like nothing I’d ever heard at Lucent before. The sound was high-pitched and whining and not at all pleasant. It sent fear into every part of me and pushed me faster.
I skipped the elevator, opting for the stairs instead. It was a good thing too, because by the time I reached the third floor, the dorm room halls and elevator were packed with girls and women all trying to get downstairs. I pushed my way through them, saying, “Hurry! Everyone in your assigned places.”
I reached my room. May was inside, dressed, but sitting on my bed. “Kiera already left.”
“I came to see you,” I said.
“I’ll come down soon enough.”
“You don’t have to do this. You can go into the dining room with the others.”
“I just need a minute.”
I waited a few seconds, trying hard to think of the best words to say. There was so much I wanted to tell her, but there just wasn’t time. I growled. “This is so frustrating! I’m so sorry for all of this. I wish there was more time.” She didn’t look at me. “Right, well, I’ll see you downstairs then.” I turned to leave but she stopped me.
“Promise me something, Llona.”
“Anything.”
“If my father or Vykens capture me, please don’t let them take me again. Even if that means killing me.”
I rushed back and threw my arms around her in a tight hug. “No one is going to get you. We are going to win this, do you understand?” I pulled away and looked at her. “We’re going to survive this. That is one thing you and I know how to do, right?”
She barely nodded her head.
I straightened. “You are a fighter, May. You are the toughest girl I know. Now let’s go light some shiz up.”
FORTY-TWO
The air was still but full of anticipation. Auras, both mothers and daughters, stood every ten feet along the top of the wall circling Lucent Academy, their dark silhouettes shadowed by torches positioned below them. I stood with them.
Just outside the wall, Lycans paced, their bodies tense and alert. I glanced behind me toward the clock tower. The windows at the top had been knocked out and a wooden deck had been constructed to circle the top of the tower. May and Dr. Han walked it now, keeping an eye on the entire campus.
Just below them were Charlie’s people from the Deific. Two of them were passing a small metal ball back and forth to each other, all without touching it. Telekinesis. Very cool. Not far from them, the vampires stood together. They were as still as the Lycans, their presence just as disturbing. Their skin was pale, almost translucent, and their stares reminded me of the eyes in some paintings that follow you wherever you go.
I looked past them to the east side of Chadni Hall where Lizen men wielded what looked like Samurai swords. They stood ready to prevent anyone from entering the old building where younger Auras were being kept while their mothers or older sisters fought outside. Their presence was also to help prevent any Vykens from gaining access to the basement where they could open a thick metal door that had been installed, blocking the underground tunnel that Cyrus had secretly built over the last several decades. The tunnel gave him the ability to sneak himself or other Vykens in and out of Lucent Academy.
I looked up into the night sky, spotting only a few stars in the west. It was cold, cold enough to snow. So far it had been a mild winter, but maybe that was all about to change. A gust of wind came toward me. A second later Liam appeared at my side. Together we looked into the forest.
“How bad is it?” I asked, my voice low.
“It’s going to be rough.”
Just then several Vykens ran from the forest and right at us. There must’ve been about twenty or so, but it was hard to tell in the darkness.
“Over there!” an Aura to my right yelled.
Several streams of Light shot from their hands, effectively hitting their marks. Vykens fell to the ground, stunned. Lycans were on them within seconds, decapitating their heads. The small scuffle lasted less than a minute. Cheers erupted all around me.
“What happened?” an Aura from another part of the wall called.
A girl yelled, “We did it! And it wasn’t that hard at all!”
“Is that it?” someone else asked.
“Be quiet!” I said. “That was just the beginning.”
The girls quieted down and stared into the distance. A sound, low at first, began to rumble from deep within the forest.
“Do you hear that?” someone whispered.
The tops of the trees some distance away began to vibrate as if something was shaking them. The motion was coming toward us, an unseen monster of epic proportions.
“What is that?” someone else asked, her voice loud.
I looked around. Several of the girls were looking behind them like they wanted to jump from the wall. One of them did.
“Stay where you are!” I yelled. “Have courage!” The older women echoed encouraging words to the younger girls, quieting their fears.
The rumbling grew louder and soon the whole forest was shaking. And then, as if they’d been shot from the forest, Vykens appeared. Hundreds of them. They descended upon us like hungry locusts.
“Now!” I yelled.
Light tore through the darkness from every Aura in magnificent ribbons of white. It slammed into the wall of Vykens, slicing through them as if it were a giant sword. The air filled with an electric charge, making the hair on my arms stand tall. I moved my hands back and forth, blasting the hordes of Vykens. Some of them burst into ash on contact, and I wondered if it was because they were newly made Vykens or whether I’d hit them just right.
Liam was no longer by my side. He was rushing through the swarms as a violent wind, slicing the heads of Vykens in his path with a machete. Over the tops of our heads, fireballs flew and crashed into Vykens.
In just a short time the night air was filled with what loo
ked like smoke, but in actuality was dust billowing up from the dead. There was so much of it that, at first, I thought we were winning, but then a whole new round of Vykens would appear.
Through it all I spotted the Shadow, darting in and out of the haze as a wisp of darkness no bigger than myself. It would come close to the wall as if testing its boundaries and then would disappear again. So far it had yet to attack the Lycans whose backs were pressed up against the wall as they fought. The Shadow’s only goal seemed to be getting inside.
A scream erupted on the other side of the campus. Vykens had breached the wall and were jumping over. A girl lay still on the ground, blood pooling around her.
“Stay where you are!” I shouted as I jumped from the ten-foot wall. I sprinted across campus to try to secure the border. I glanced up at May. She was tossing fireballs in their direction. I added my Light to the fray.
Along with Vykens, a few Lycans jumped the wall to continue the fight inside. Once May or I stunned a Vyken, his head was removed. We just about had the area secure again when several cries sounded at another part of the campus. More Vykens were coming in.
I raced along the inside of the wall, shouting orders at the Auras to stay where they were, to continue using their Light against the Vykens. Near Lambert House, several girls had fallen to the ground and were attempting to fight Vykens in hand-to-hand combat. Because they were so close together, I didn’t dare shoot any Light for fear of hitting one of them.
Liam appeared just then, killing two Vykens, but it barely made a dent. More poured in as if coming from the devil’s faucet. Liam continued to fight with a ferocity I’d never seen before. I did my best to keep up with him, shooting at the ones I could, and when I got close enough, I removed the sword hanging on my back and began to slice at heads. Kiera was there too, using a combination of Light and her own sword to wreak havoc.
Just then I saw the back of a familiar head running away from me. Christian. He was sprinting toward Chadni Hall with several other Vykens. Before he was too far from me, he glanced over his shoulder and winked.
“They’re going into the school!” I shouted and took off after them. I looked for Liam, and our eyes met briefly. He was in the middle of trying to secure the wall. For now, anyway, I was on my own.
FORTY-THREE
I raced up the steps of Chadni Hall and through the broken front doors. It looked as if Christian and the others had just smashed right through them. I turned down the hallway to my left and sprinted hard. There were only two things they’d want in here. Either the younger Auras who were being guarded in the dining room or access to Cyrus’s old office where they could reach the basement and potentially let Sophie in.
I turned another corner. The dining room was just up ahead. I ran past it, glancing in the windows as I did so. There were at least a few dozen girls huddled together in the corner. Most of the teachers were standing around them, while several Guardians blocked the entrances. Alex was one of them. When he saw me, he stuck his head out, and called, “Need some help?”
“Yes!”
His footsteps pounded behind me. The elevator doors were just around the corner. I turned into the next hallway, my feet sliding along the marbled floor. The elevator doors were closing just as I reached it. Christian was inside with at least six Vykens. He blew me a kiss before I could stop the doors from closing.
“What’s going on?” Alex said when he caught up to me.
“Vykens are trying to get to an underground passage to let in Sophie.” I pushed open the door to the stairs and hurried up them, skipping two at a time.
“Underground passage?” Alex was right behind me.
“Later.” Move faster, I thought, afraid that there were too many Vykens for Arik and Aaron to handle. The twins had been strategically placed inside Cyrus’s old office to protect the entrance into the basement.
By the time I reached the top of the stairs, a fight was already underway. A Vyken came flying out of Cyrus’s office and crashed into a wall just in front of us. I jumped over him, leaving him for Alex, and ran into Cyrus’s office.
With seven against two, Aaron and Arik should’ve been overwhelmed, but they were fighting as if this was their last day. Christian was there, trying to get at Aaron’s face. I lit up my hands and tossed a ball of Light as hard as I could. It hit him in the back and knocked him forward into a wall.
The flash of bright light got the attention of the other Vykens in the room, and they turned to see who had caused it. This fraction of a second gave Aaron the time he needed to gain the upper hand. He took hold of a nearby Vyken and, with a quick twist, tossed him up to the twenty-foot ceiling. The Vyken’s body cracked against plaster and molding and fell back to the ground along with chunks of the ceiling. I sliced my blade across his neck until his dust mixed with the rest of the debris.
Across the room, Arik was struggling to get a Vyken off his back. He cried out when the Vyken shoved something into his side.
A familiar sound made me turn around. The wall was opening, and Christian was about to go inside. I glanced back at Arik. The Vyken behind him was raising his arm, a sharp dagger in his hand.
I jumped on top of Cyrus’s old desk and took two steps before I leapt into the air. I landed on top of the Vyken and ignited my hands with Light directly onto his bald head. Within three seconds, his entire body cracked into a thousand pieces until he exploded.
Arik fell to his knees, gasping for air. Blood poured from his side. I didn’t have time to check the seriousness of the injury. Aaron was fighting three Vykens alone, and by the looks of his bloodied face, he wasn’t winning. I shot a stream of Light from each hand, knocking two of them away.
A scream echoed from the hallway. I was afraid it was Alex’s, but just then he appeared, panting hard. He was limping but otherwise unharmed.
“Help Aaron,” I said and took off behind the wall after Christian. I could hear him running down the circular staircase just two floors below me.
“You won’t be able to stop us, Llona!” he called up to me.
I pushed harder, causing me to slip on the circular staircase. A metal edge of a stair hit me in the back, and I yelped.
Below me, Christian laughed. “Careful!”
I gritted my teeth and jumped to my feet. I wanted to kill him. Every part of me. He deserves to die. I sprinted down the steps.
I reached the bottom. At the end of the long hall was the steel door. Still closed. I breathed a sigh of relief. But where was Christian? I took a hesitant step forward, listening for any sounds.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said, my voice calm. I kept walking, glancing inside each cell as I passed. “We both knew it would come to this.”
He stepped out from within a room, two doors down. “What happened to second chances?”
“You’re out of them.”
“It didn’t have to be this way,” he said. His voice was soft, gentle. I wished he wouldn’t speak that way.
“You’re not the man I fell in love with,” I said, more to remind myself than for any benefit of his.
He took a step toward me. “So you’re going to kill me?”
“I haven’t decided. I want to.”
“After everything we’ve been through together?” He took another step. “You’d just end it all?”
A light bulb flickered above his head; the shadows distorted his face, reminding me of the mask he wore. “There’s a cure, Christian.” I said it before I knew what I was doing.
He stopped moving. “Who said?”
“Rose. She said there used to be a cure, something that destroys a Vyken’s poison. She told me where I could find it. It could heal you.”
He moved forward again. “I don’t believe you.”
“Would you take it? If I found it?”
“It would change things.” He breathed in and exhaled as if considering the idea. He was almost to me. “You’d be with me then, wouldn’t you?”
His question took me off g
uard. “So much has happened. You hurt me.”
His hand rose to my face and touched it lightly. “But it wasn’t me, right? If you could fix me, then we could be like before.”
I didn’t want to think about this right now. “Just tell me, will you take it if I find it?”
“Will you be with me if I take it?” he asked back, his voice turning hard. He took hold of my upper arm.
“Let go of me,” I said, igniting my hand with Light.
He glanced down at it. “You’re such a liar. You never loved me, did you?” His grip tightened.
I punched my hand forward, hoping to hit him with Light in his gut, but he anticipated my move and dodged to the side, taking my arm with him. My body smashed into the wall. Blood burst from my nose.
“You never loved me!” he cried out again. He took hold of my shirt and tossed me into an open doorway. I stumbled to the ground but quickly stood up and produced two balls of Light. I tossed each one, but he easily dodged them.
“You can’t beat me, Llona. I’m the one who taught you to fight, remember? I know your moves before you can make them.” He smiled big, exposing that stupid dimple.
I ran at him and swung left, then right, as hard as I could. I missed both times. He was behind me. I turned around and punched low, then high. Again he dodged and laughed. He danced around me, taunting me. His movements were quick, much quicker than he had been as a Guardian.
I thought quickly. I couldn’t fight him the way he knew me to be—as an Aura. I needed to fight him as a Vyken.
I concentrated hard on the dark parts of my mind that I normally avoided. A familiar power, both intoxicating and bitter, rushed through me. In a lightning-quick move, I kicked back at Christian, taking him off guard. He doubled over, and I continued to kick at him until his back was up against the wall. I wanted to hurt him so badly.
One after another, I used my fists against him, pouring painful emotions into each blow. “Why couldn’t you just have died?” I yelled. “I hate you!”
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