I had to get out of the tunnel. I needed help.
But leaving him there like this wasn’t an option.
There was only one thing to do.
“Sorry, Madam Latrou. I’m going to have to do this. Again.” I ran at him, ducking under his swing to snag him around the waist and propel him back into the darkness. The fortress … I needed to get to the fortress.
The familiar tingle of the phasing washed over me, and then we were landing in a heap on flagstones.
Brady roared, and then his fists came down, intent on smashing me. I rolled off him in time to avoid being flattened and landed on my butt.
The dining hall, we’d landed in the dining hall. Brady was up and charging at me. My body was too weak to run. I scrabbled back on my ass, chest heaving. Shit, shit.
Exclamations lit the air, and then knights were on Brady, knocking him onto the ground and holding him down.
“What is this?” Henrich glared from me to a thrashing, bellowing Brady.
I pulled myself up. “Something attacked us in the tunnels. It gets into your head. The black veins …” I pointed at Brady. “I used the weave to break free of it. I need to touch him. I can help.”
Henrich had paled. “Hold him still,” he barked at the knights.
The knights obeyed. Faces I’d never seen before watched me carefully as I approached Brady.
“Hey.” I straddled him best I could. “Hush. I got you.”
His eye whites had bled to black. He bared his teeth and snapped at me.
I laid my hands on his face. “Come on, Brady. Come back to me.”
I locked onto the power inside, the glowing, warm ball that pulsed at my solar plexus, and then closed my eyes and imagined it unfurling. Imagined the power traveling down my arms, into my hands, and into Brady.
Please. Please, let this work.
It was a gut feeling. A long shot.
My hands tingled and grew warm, and then Brady screamed.
My eyes snapped open to see the veins in his face burning white, and then grainy black shit shot out of his mouth and rose up into the air. It hit the ceiling and then was engulfed in white flames.
Brady’s body relaxed, and his eyes fluttered closed. My body trembled with the need to collapse.
The inky veins were gone.
“It’s over,” one of the knights said.
“No.” I looked up at Henrich. “Those things are out there. We need to figure out what they are.” The edges of my vision darkened. “You need to find out what—”
The world went dark.
I opened my eyes, and I was on something soft, a chaise longue. A study, not the dining room.
“She’s awake,” a female voice said. Deana’s face hovered over me. “You’re all right.”
I sat up slowly. “Brady?”
“He’s fine. Unconscious but alive.”
“Where’s Henrich?”
“They’ve lost contact with several bases. Communications to the Academy are down too. Uncle has taken a few men and headed to the Academy to fetch Madam Latrou.”
“How long ago did he leave?”
Deana licked her lips and looked nervous. “Deana? How long ago?”
“Two hours. You’ve been out for three hours.”
Two hours. “If he’d gotten help, he’d have been back over an hour ago.” I stood and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Back into the mist. I have to get to the others. I have to stop this.”
“How? By now, those things will have infected everyone. Can you cleanse them all? You passed out for three hours after cleansing Mr. Stonewall.”
Shit, she was right. I reached inside myself, searching for my connection to the weave to find only a flicker of light. I was drained. I needed to recharge, and I couldn’t do that without an amulet, and I couldn’t fucking use an amulet. My training with Latrou hadn’t progressed as far as learning to recharge directly from the weave. I’d demanded help, manipulated the weave, and it had exacted its price by knocking me on my ass. I was useless right now.
“The knights have their orders,” Deana continued. “We’re to remain in the fortress. The grounds are warded against those things, as is the Academy.”
Warded against them … “You know what they are?”
“No. I didn’t, not until today. Uncle told me.”
“Tell me what we’re dealing with.”
“Have you heard of will-o-the-wisps?”
“Huh? Yeah, but those things were not will-o-the-wisps.”
“They were. Once. During the wars between the Tuatha and the fomorians, the Tuatha created a supernatural virus, an infection that affected anyone with fomorian genes. They used the wisps as carriers of the virus. They called it rage. It affects the minds of the fomorians, and it drives them to kill anyone and anything. They would unleash it in small areas, populated by fomorians, and in a matter of hours, the villagers would have killed each other. Wipeout. And the Tuatha didn’t have to lift a finger.”
“What is it doing here?”
“They used it centuries ago when the shadow knights fought the fomorians. Orion gave us rage to use as a weapon, but something went wrong. It had evolved. It started infecting not only the fomorians but the shadow knights and the Tuatha too. It began to speak through its victims. It wanted to live. It wanted a body.”
“Oh, shit. What did the Tuatha do?”
“Employed the aid of the most powerful weavers to bind rage to an object and bury the object hundreds of feet beneath the earth.”
“They buried a supernatural virus here? In the fucking mist?”
“It was the safest option. No one was likely to dig it up.”
“No, except maybe a critter or two. Shit. The explosions probably busted the thing wide open.”
She nodded. “Henrich only knows all this because the knowledge is passed down from shadow master to shadow master.”
“Shame he didn’t think about it when he ordered fucking explosives.”
“People make mistakes,” Deana snapped back.
“Yeah, and some of those mistakes cost people their lives.” I headed for the door. “I need to do something. I can’t just sit here twiddling my thumbs.” I began to pace. The thing was bound, and we needed a weaver to rebind it, which was why Henrich had gone to get Madam Latrou, but he obviously hadn’t made it. I needed to get her and tell her what was happening. I needed the weavers.
The ideal thing would be to shadow cast to the Academy, right to Madam Latrou, but I didn’t have enough energy to establish a connection to the weave right now. I didn’t know how to reach for it. Fuck, if only I’d had a few more lessons.
There had to be a fast way to the Academy … A safe way … An idea bloomed in my mind. “Does rage affect fomorian hounds?”
Deana frowned. “What? No, I don’t think so, why? Wait.” Her brow cleared. “Do you have a hound?”
No, I didn’t, but Brady did. “I can get to the Academy.”
“If you leave the fortress grounds, you will die.”
“And if I don’t, countless others will.”
Her throat bobbed. “Archer is out there.”
My stomach felt queasy. “I know. I have to try, but I’m going to need your help.”
Her throat bobbed, and she nodded quickly. “Tell me what you need.”
* * *
I could ride a horse. I could ride a motorbike. But a hound was a different thing. I’d checked on Brady, still unconscious, and then Deana and I had slipped out of the fortress and down to the stables.
The plan was simple. Deana would distract Jemima while I stole Athos. If the beast allowed himself to be stolen. I mean, he could just decide he wanted to eat my face instead.
No. Positive thoughts only.
As we got closer to the stables, I veered off into the shadows while Deana stuck to the moonlit path.
“Deana? What are you doing here?” Jemima asked. “You shouldn’t be out. There�
��s an alert.”
“I needed some female company; the males are driving me crazy over this alert.”
“That’ll be men for you,” Jemima said with a smile in her voice.
It was obvious these two were familiar with each other. Good.
The voices drifted away.
I waited a few long seconds and then, keeping low to the ground, loped around the low building to the back of the stables and through the doors.
Laughter drifted on the wind.
Okay, they were busy. Good.
I slipped into the gloomy confines of the stable. Which pen had it been? Shit. Ah, yes, the last one on the right. I sidled up to the aperture and peered in. Athos was a hulking shape at the back of the pen.
All right, here goes nothing. “Hey, Athos, remember me? Brady’s friend.”
Glowing eyes appeared in the darkness, fixed on me.
I gave him a little wave. “Look. I need your help.” Okay, so I was speaking to a beast, but Jemima had said how intelligent they were, right? “Brady and I were attacked by something.”
He blinked sharply at the mention of Brady’s name and slowly rose to his feet. Fuck, he was huge.
I tensed, ready to back up if he attacked. “It was a supernatural infection. Brady is still unconscious, but I managed to get the infection out of him. There are others in danger, though. I need to get through the mist and to the Academy. There could be raging cadets out there, and fuck knows what else. I need to be moving fast.”
He was watching me intensely, almost as if he understood every word coming out of my mouth.
I unlatched the door. “I need you, Athos. I need you to carry me through the mist. Please.” I locked gazes with him. “I’m going to open the door now. I’m going to enter the pen.”
Please, don’t hurt me. Please, don’t hurt me.
I slipped inside Athos’s pen and waited.
He didn’t move.
“Will you please come with me? Will you help me?” I held out my hand and closed my eyes.
Long seconds passed, and then something nudged my palm. I slowly opened my eyes to find Athos’s ridged snout pressed to my hand and his glowing, red-rimmed eyes fixed on me.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Footsteps clicked down the aisle outside.
“Shit!”
Athos made a rumbling sound and nudged my hand with his snout. He jerked his head to the side as if to say get back, or … get on?
“Jemima! Where are you going?” Deana called out, super loud.
Probably to alert me.
Fuck. There was no time for fear or indecision. I scrambled up onto Athos’s back.
His body vibrated as if urging me to hurry. I was on, but how the hell did I stay this way. I ran my hands over his back, looking for something to hold on to, and then my hands skimmed hard, raised ridges. The perfect handholds. I’d barely grabbed on when Athos was in motion.
The door swung open as Jemima made to enter, and Athos bounded forward, knocking her back. He skidded across the aisle, turning his body in time to stop himself from slamming into the opposite pen.
“Justice? Justice!”
Jemima’s cry followed me as we ran into the night.
Twenty-One
The night rushed by as Athos took the lead. The fortress rose up to our left, and then it was behind us. The mist rolled toward us, surrounding us, and then we were flying. Shadows whipped past us. AM posts? People? I didn’t know. I leaned forward, pressed my torso to Athos’s back, and hung on for dear life.
He didn’t slow or falter. He knew exactly where he was going.
Long minutes passed as we ran. How long until we reached the Academy? I’d always taken the bioprint entrance behind barracks one to get back to the Academy, but there was another way which cut across the mist itself. It led to an abandoned paddock with broken fences that backed onto the edge of the forest.
How long did it take on foot to cross the mist? A couple of hours? On Athos’s back, the journey would take minutes. We’d be there in—
Something slammed into me. Hard. My grip on Athos loosened, and I went flying off the hound.
Hard ground met my back, and the air was smacked out of my lungs. I couldn’t move. My body was in stunned shock, and the pain hit, giving me the strength to roll onto my side and cough up a glob of blood.
Shit.
Internal bleeding.
Boots appeared out of the mist and stopped a foot away from me. Oh, shit. I raised my head slowly. One armored leg and one feytech.
Hyde?
“Hyde, thank God.” I looked up, noting the black veins crawling across his cheeks a split second before the huge axe came swishing toward me.
“Fuck!” I rolled out of the way as the blade buried itself in the hard earth with a thunk.
Shit, it had him. The rage had him.
I stood and faced him. “Hyde. It’s me. You know me. You don’t want to hurt me.”
His expression was blank. Unemotional. Whereas Brady had been berserker rage, Hyde was calm, deadly. He advanced on me.
My blood crystalized to ice. “Hyde …” I drew my blade. I had to fight. I had to defend myself. “Please, don’t make me hurt you.”
He attacked.
As I defended, as I fought to survive, I realized for the first time that no matter what he’d said during training, he’d been holding back then. This was the true force of Hyde’s ability, the full force of each blow. I was strong. I was skilled, but Hyde was a cut above.
They called him a legend, and now I realized why.
His blade caught my shoulder but was deflected by my armor. Where there should have been a cut, there would be a nasty bruise. I stumbled, righted myself, and brought my sword up just in time to block another blow. But the force of the attack knocked me to my knees.
I was still weak from using the weave. I needed more time.
As Hyde raised his axe and swung, I realized it was time I didn’t have, and a yawning pit opened inside me. This was it. The end.
And then Hyde was swept off his feet by a roaring, angry hound.
Hope flared hot and potent inside me. Athos had come back for me.
The hound landed on Hyde, jaws ready to bite.
“No!” I rushed forward. “Don’t hurt him. We have to save him.”
Athos roared in Hyde’s face and then slammed a huge paw into the side of his head, knocking him out cold.
Shit. I couldn’t leave him out in the open. Another infected might find him and attack him. The infection was only spread by the touch of the wisps, not by physical contact. Otherwise, all the knights at the fortress would have been infected by Brady.
It was safe to take him with me.
“Athos, help me.” I hauled Hyde up, and Athos growled, backing away. “We have to get him help like we helped Brady. The weavers at the Academy can help.” I adjusted my grip on Hyde. Shit, he was heavy. “Please.”
Athos’s chest rumbled, and his ears perked up as if sensing danger. He walked closer and lowered himself enough for me to shove Hyde onto his back and climb on behind him.
I grabbed hold of the ridges on Athos’s back, and we were off.
The mist was thinning. We were almost there.
Shit, how was I going to get a fomorian hound into the Academy?
* * *
Turned out I didn’t have to try. Brunner and Madam Garnet met me at the entrance to the Academy. They were pale and shaken, and they weren’t alone. Two knights sat on the step behind them, bloody but uninfected.
I slid off Athos’s back and ran toward them. “Hyde is hurt. You have to help me.”
Brunner climbed down the steps. “Is he infected?”
“Yes, but we can cleanse him. I just need the weavers. I need Madam Latrou.”
Brunner’s gaze traveled over my shoulder to where Athos was standing with Hyde thrown over his back.
“You have to get him off the grounds,” she said.
“Athos won�
�t hurt you. He helped me. He’s a trained hound.”
“Not the hound. Hyde. You need to get him off the grounds, now.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
An inhuman scream ripped the air, and then Athos was snarling and backing up toward me, his huge body vibrating with the need to act. Hyde had fallen off the hound and lay on the ground, his body contorting and convulsing.
I took a step toward him. “What’s happening?”
“The wards are activated by the infection,” Brunner said. “They will kill him if we don’t get him off the grounds. They’re attacking the virus, and if it detonates while inside him, it will kill him.”
But Brady had been fine … Wait, had he? He’d been convulsing too until I’d cleansed him. Shit.
I turned wide-eyed to Brunner. “I need Madam Latrou. Now.”
“She isn’t here,” Brunner said. “She’s on portal leave, and right now all communications are down. This virus is affecting all the feytech.”
The doors burst open, and the familiar figure of Payne ran out followed by several others.
Kash, Joti, Harper, Minnie, and a few others I recognized; the rest were blurred smudges.
“Henrich is infected and ran off into the mist,” Brunner said. “We’re cut off. There’s nothing we can do.” Brunner was always composed and in control, but there was wild fear in her eyes now.
Behind me, Hyde’s screams had escalated.
No. There had to be a way. “Kash, Joti, I need you guys. Help me.” I rushed over to Hyde. His eyes had rolled back in his head. “We need to cleanse him. If we work together, we can do it. We need to connect to the weave and draw power through it and into him. I did that for Brady, and it worked.”
Joti looked at me in awe. “You did? We haven’t learned how to channel raw weave power into another object yet.”
Is that what I’d done? Shit, there was no time to dwell on it now, especially as I was too weak to do it again.
Shadow Weaver: The Nightwatch Academy book 2 Page 14