The Plague Doctor: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 3

by Savage, Vivienne

  “No Anji?”

  “She’s at work. Couldn’t get away,” Cole whispered back.

  “Damn.”

  Holden grinned and nudged me with an elbow, almost knocking me off balance. “About time we saw some action together.”

  I missed the chance to reply when Simon strode to the front of the room with a remote in his hand. A hush fell over the us as the large screen powered on. “In the interest of saving time, I’ll cut to the chase. We’ve received a video.”

  Oh shit.

  A biohazard symbol filled the screen, neon-green on charcoal gray. It lingered for a second then faded to reveal a man in a dark cloak, wide-brimmed hat, and plague doctor mask. I took in everything I could about the figure and his stone surroundings, down to the flickering light glowing golden against his leather attire.

  Candlelight. I saw another hint of color, something glowing far behind him in a beaker. An alchemist, no doubt—definitely a mage.

  “By now, you most certainly have been searching for me,” the figure said in a rasping voice. “And you have failed. But I am here to tell you that this evening, you shall have the opportunity to apprehend me and end this epidemic before it begins.” Then he laughed. “And again, you will fail.”

  My arms broke out in goosebumps. I hated the sound of his voice. It was oily and slick and it crawled into my brain, making me shiver.

  “There will be an epidemic,” he continued in his disgusting voice. Listening to him made me want to puke.

  “At this very moment, I prepare to unleash the second phase of my lovely new gift to humanity.”

  “He speaks like a DC villain,” Cole muttered under his breath.

  “Marvel villain,” Holden whispered. “DC’s villains are bet—”

  Holly made a threatening magic gesture with her hand, and the boys silenced.

  “The culling begins this evening at seven in Millennium Park.”

  “Oh shit,” a bear shifter girl whispered. “That’s the World Music Festival.”

  Sam was there! I jerked around, searching for Gabriel but saw him off to the side with his phone to his ear and clear panic on his face. Around the group, a few other sentinels removed their phones.

  “You may wonder why I am telling you this and providing warning.” I envisioned a grin behind the grim mask, as he leaned forward and dropped his voice to a hiss. “I doubt you’ll have time to evacuate the park before the true show begins, but I do enjoy a challenge.”

  The screen went dark.

  Sebastian crossed his huge arms against his chest. “This video reached the Cook County Field Office minutes before we called you here. Sentinels are already en route, but this bastard was right. There wasn’t any time to evacuate. It’s a quarter after seven, and the park is already a bloodbath.”

  “Given the increased risk,” Simon said, “we sought special permission to take a small number of students into the field. You’ll be assigned in pairs to shadow one licensed sentinel for the duration of this operation.”

  “Follow instructions. Listen to your team leader. Their experience could be the difference between returning to the school unharmed or going into quarantine for a night.”

  We broke into groups, a few of my classmates going off with Sentinel Marsh, a skinny werewolf dude with a pair of sawed-off shotguns bigger than him, while Rachel joined me and Gabriel. His eyes were dark and troubled. I touched his arm.

  “Hey. Did you get in touch with Sam?”

  “No. He’s not answering.”

  “Shit. I mean, he has wings. Soon as shit went down, they probably flew off.”

  “He mentioned Ashley is human. He wouldn’t leave her there.”

  “Sam carries, remember? He has a gun and sentinel training. I bet he got her out safely. There are so many reasons for him not answering, especially if he dropped his phone in the panic or disabled his ringtone for time alone with her. He just hasn’t had time to unmute it.”

  “Yeah.” Gabriel nodded tensely, breath shuddering from him. “You’re right. Thanks. I needed to hear that.”

  “Good luck, guys,” Cole called in passing as he joined Alistair and their licensed werebear mentor. “Stay safe.”

  “You too.”

  We did final firearm checks, and even though Gabriel maintained our weapons, I stepped forward after Rachel and let him look mine over again. Poor Rachel was almost shaking with nervous energy.

  “How fast are they?” she asked.

  “28 Days Later fast,” I replied. “But you’re faster. Just remember that.”

  She nodded tightly. “I’m excited and scared out of my wits. I know my kind were never at risk, but it’s still… I’ve only gone out on a few unrelated operations. This is my first big one.”

  “We all gotta start somewhere, right?” I asked as we filed into the line for the portal. “And obviously they trust you to be good since you got an invitation.”

  “That’s right.” She dragged in a deep breath. “You’re right.”

  An enormous halo of power glimmered on the floor where Simon had prepared our passage to the safe zone outside of Millennium Park. Idly, I wondered if it exhausted him to maintain the portal for so long, but as I walked past him, he looked as resilient and resolute as ever. Somehow, that inspired me, filling me with confidence.

  We stepped out in the bandshell at the adjacent field, and into immediate chaos. It wasn’t just an attack or an isolated situation, it was a full-blown battlefield. Hard-eyed mages hurried us away so the rest of the sentinels could come through, leading us to a guy who was even bigger than Sebastian. Bigger than Rodrigo. I guessed bear, until I noticed the staff at his side and the glint of fangs in his mouth.

  Damn. That was one big vamp.

  “Fujimoto, you and your students take quadrant on North side,” the vampire directed. “There are already many zombies to take down. We cannot let this spread into Chicago streets.”

  Gabe nodded. “On it, Sentinel Petrov. Sky, provide air support. Rachel, stay close to me. Safety off.”

  Our fight began the moment we left the protective barrier around the field. Teams of sentinels extracted civilians from the carnage, their coordinated efforts guiding humans to the quarantine zone, but the number of zombies kept growing. Magical barriers and sorcerers’ shields could only extend so far. One man fell beyond the protection of the battlemage, and was promptly swarmed despite a desperate attempt to reclaim him. From the air, I watched him rise and join the horde as his murderers were picked off by sniping sentinels.

  And then a bullet penetrated his skull, and he was also gone.

  I hated this. I hated every second of it.

  I hated the misery and the rising swell of panic in the air. I hated that these people had come here for a night on the town of fun and celebration, good music and friendship, the evening ruined by a sadistic bastard playing games with their lives.

  I hated this anonymous Plague Doctor hiding behind his mask.

  There was so much to hate, but no matter how much I loathed the circumstances, a sense of belonging surrounding me said I was in the right place.

  “It’s faster!” I called over to Gabriel. “That guy wasn’t on the ground for more than two minutes!”

  “I know. Three shamblers about to breach the perimeter.”

  “I’ll get them.”

  The best thing about possessing wings was that I always had the advantage of being their aerial support. From above, I picked off the stragglers with neat headshots—it took five bullets total to down them all, so maybe it wasn’t as neat as I wanted—then five more rushed from the trees.

  Two of them went up in flames, seared by an impressive dragon-shaped fireball. They didn’t have a chance to stumble around and create a fire hazard, the spell reducing them to skeletons within seconds. I expected to see a senior mage, or even Simon behind it until Holly, accompanied by Holden and a lanky vampire sentinel, stepped into view. The bear shifter used his shotgun to take out the third, leaving the last
two for Gabe and I to handle.

  “Thanks,” Gabe said when we had a moment to breathe.

  A badge on the vampire’s belt identified him as Sentinel Davis. He slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “We have your back. C’mon, we should tighten up the net, keep these guys contained around the Bean.”

  We had to fight for every foot of ground. Every inch. For as many humans as we found alive and unbitten, there seemed to be more who were deceased and soon to rise.

  Every so often from the air, I caught sight of Cole and Alistair. I tried to keep tabs on all of my friends, but the hectic pace of the evacuation didn’t allow for more than the occasional glimpse.

  “Area clear!” I called at last to Rachel and Gabriel. They were both covering a pair of survivors we’d found hiding in a tree. The ones bordering the square were all lush and green, reflected in the enormous metal sculpture at the center.

  “About time,” Davis said, mopping his brow with the back of his hand. “All right. We’re moving farther in.”

  “We’ll stay over here,” Gabriel said. “Petrov wanted us to hold the barrier.”

  “Ah. Yeah. He’s big on maintaining a perimeter. Catch up with you later, man.”

  They bumped knuckles, then the three of them moved away.

  Rachel gazed at our surroundings with an overwhelmed expression on her face. “I’ve never seen so many dead humans before. At the mall, it wasn’t this bad. A few here and there.”

  “Most people managed to get to safety and throw down individual store barricades before it reached this point,” Gabriel said. “Plus, there were a couple mages shopping inside. This? Same thing, but hundreds more and nowhere secure to hide.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed.

  I tried to ignore the disappointment ebbing from her, but it tightened in the pit of her soul like a growing tumor, pulsating with disgust and anger and the bleak, dark notes of dissatisfaction.

  Rachel did not want to be a sentinel anymore. Whether this change of heart would be temporary was something I couldn’t determine. Later, we’d talk. But now was not the time for a heart-to-heart about my teammate’s future.

  Short on time, I squeezed Rachel’s shoulder in passing then expanded my wings and caught the breeze, gliding into the air again. Gabriel remained grounded with his sword in one hand, handgun in the other.

  The more I flew, the better my eyesight improved, and I became adept at picking out familiar shapes, recognizing faces, reading colors in auras instead of expressions. I noticed a cluster of sentinels working as a team to extract some humans from the stage and reported that to Gabriel.

  In another direction, I saw Holly moving alongside Holden. They moved among the deceased at Sentinel Davis’s instruction, placing bullets in heads as necessary to guarantee the dead remained down. I listened to them reporting in that they were almost done.

  Behind them, one of the bodies turned pink and began to swell. I almost missed it, remaining vigilant to the rest of our surroundings, but I caught it from the corner of my peripheral vision and spun around.

  Two more began expanding with it, bloating rapidly like balloons attached to a helium tank.

  “Gabe? Gabe, look!”

  At my shout, he flew up beside me into the air. “They’re going to explode!”

  “Holly, get out!” I screamed.

  She turned, sweeping the area, but her eyes were at chest level and not on the expanding corpse between her and Sentinel Davis. The mentor saw it first, and in slow motion, I watched everything unfold. He was moving toward Holly in a blur, but he wasn’t going to be fast enough.

  Giving the situation no further thought, I swooped in like I’d never flown before, warping into and through the Twilight at light speed. I practically tackled Holden to the ground, taking Holly with me as my Prismatic Barrier flared in an airtight dome.

  At that moment, the corpse exploded in a cloud of red mist and yellow-green gas. The particles hung in the air around us and clung to my barrier like pollen on a windshield. And somewhere beyond it, Sentinel Davis was engulfed in potentially lethal gas, if he’d survived at all.

  We were trapped. The moment I released my glamour, we’d be in the same trap.

  “What the fuck?” Holly screamed. “The bodies are exploding now?”

  “Holden to base, a body just exploded near us. Exercise extreme caution when moving among bloated corpses.”

  All radio chatter ceased, and silence fell over the channel before someone asked, “Exploded?”

  Through the fine haze of color, I saw Sentinel Davis at last. He lay on the ground, mostly obliterated, a bone fragment protruding from his chest. There was no saving him.

  “Sentinel Davis just—he—” Holden swallowed. “He’s gone, and there’s gas everywhere.”

  “What’s your status, Holden?”

  “Junior Sentinel Corazzi has us under a Prismatic Barrier. We’re good for now.”

  “I can take them through the Twilight to a safe place.”

  A warning went out over all channels advising sentinels to take caution and to presume any clouds of gas were highly infectious and dangerous.

  I took Holden and Holly by the hands then dragged them backwards into the Twilight. There, the virus couldn’t harm us. Others weren’t so lucky and as the only fae present, it was impossible for me to be everywhere at once. While I managed to drag two other sentinels to the safety of the Twilight, another pair across the park ended up in a fog.

  “Here is good,” Sentinel Petrov said when we reached the defensive perimeter. “Thank you, little one.”

  “No problem.”

  Simon was waiting for us when we stepped back onto the mortal plane. Sweat beaded his brow and I detected the faintest tremor in the hand wrapped around his staff. Energy pulsed from the magical tool, feeding the protective barrier standing between us and a frenzied horde.

  “Skylar, how well can you control the wind?”

  “Erm…”

  Simon grimaced. “I see. Well then, that nixes that idea.”

  “Why? What’d you have in mind?”

  “We need to siphon the gas away so it doesn’t pose a danger to anyone. Preferably into a container, or high atmosphere.”

  “I can conjure up a decent-sized wind funnel,” I ventured. “But I don’t know about the rest.”

  “I can help,” Holly said. “If we work together, you siphoning and me guiding, we should be able to make it happen. We just need a place to put it all.”

  “I’ll handle that,” Simon said.

  My miniature tornado spun through the park, gaining a sickly green color as it funneled up the virulent fumes. Beside me, Holly and Simon worked in tandem to capture the gas in a bubble. I tried not to look at the thing, too grossed out by the nauseating shifts in color—green, yellow, and brown. By the time we finished, we had three giant beach-ball-sized bubbles floating over our heads.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Holly, you’re good with a fireball. Do the honors?”

  My friend’s face lit up at the suggestion. Simon directed the targets over a clear area of the field and then Holly cut loose. Watching her conjure a fireball out of thin air never grew old. The flames burned around her fist, bright blue in the center before cooling to gold and orange. The first projectile struck the nearest gas bubble and slipped through, setting the contents ablaze. That’s when I realized the depth of Simon’s capabilities, because a shield was supposed to keep attacks out. He had transmuted the properties of his magic so the fire could pass through without freeing the gas.

  Absolute genius.

  The gas sizzled and ignited within the magical containment, burning in an inferno hotter than any sterilizing medical furnace. Simon didn’t release the spell until nothing remained, not even a black speck of residue. Certain we’d properly destroyed it, Holly did the same for the next two gas pockets.

  At the end, Simon’s shoulders sagged in relief. In two years, I’d never seen an exhausted Simon before, his face
creased with lines I hadn’t known existed.

  “We need to make sure no more bodies are at risk of exploding. The research team will want a sample, too, but we’ll handle that once everything is—”

  “You think you’ve thwarted me, but I’ve only just begun.”

  The Plague Doctor’s voice boomed across the stage speakers. Contrary to movies, time didn’t slow down, but I gained sudden clarity, becoming hyperaware of my surroundings. The sky took on a strange yellow cast and tendrils of fog rose from the ground. An unnatural silence hung over the area, the typical bird and insect sounds oddly absent.

  Sentinels closest to the stage sprang into action. A vampire blurred forward, but less than a foot from his adversary he was blasted back by an explosion of green fire.

  “Gabriel, get these students back now,” Simon ordered. “Keep them safe.”

  “What? I can’t go with—”

  “Do as I say.”

  Gabriel nodded tensely. In direct contrast to his disappointment, all I felt was relief that he wasn’t charging in to fight alongside them. He jerked his head toward the path behind us. “We’re going that way. Come on.”

  Was this how I was doomed to spend the rest of our career together?

  More sentinels appeared, bounding over in animal forms with speeds I’d only seen during boot camp. Enormous bears and wolves raced over the ground and ravens swooped in, landing as men and women in Kevlar, armed to the teeth with guns.

  But weapons did nothing against choking gas.

  The miasma rising from the ground thickened and made it hard to breathe. My Prismatic Barrier did nothing to shield us, too small to encapsulate so many in a complete bubble, so we hurried as fast as we could to an area beyond the fog.

  “Do you think they can bring him in?” Rachel asked once she caught her breath from a coughing spell.

  I followed her gaze to the battle. The Plague Doctor fought dirty, with gas grenades and exploding flasks. Then he multiplied, and suddenly there were over a dozen of him.

  “Illusion magic,” Gabe said in disgust.

  “Can’t you break through it?”

  “Not from here, and Sebastian will have my ass if I get anywhere close to all that,” he said, though I could hear the frustration in his voice. “Dammit, has anyone seen Cole?”