Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (33 page)

Darina reached out again and touched her
avatar, sniffing and closing her eyes as she did. Her body turned
as if trying to catch the direction of a scent and her golem girl
turned exactly the same way.

“Dri, you did it. You made it move,” Janek
said.

“I did?” she asked, eyes popping open.

“I think, Darina, you may have found the way.
The others can all follow what you’ve done,” I said. Janek nodded
slowly, light dawning on his expression, before he too reached down
and touched his golem. A couple of breaths later, his avatar
shuddered and shook.

“You’re doing it too, Janek,” she said before
lapsing into Romanian or Hungarian or whatever language it was that
they spoke at home.

I left the brother-sister combo and moved
about the others, all of whom were already trying the nose trick.
Once one sense was linked, the rest followed quickly, or so it
seemed. Probably the reason that Delwood had picked it up so
fast.

“Look out, bitches,” T.J.’s voice sounded
like it came from over by the game plot. “The Wychinator is coming
through.” A whirring clicking followed his words, along with
protests and some curses from the witch girls.

A glance showed a crawling mechanical
creation swarming into the midst of the witches’ avatars, knocking
some of them flying. T.J.’s robot was six legged and bigger than
any of the dirt people. Pointed steel feet dug in, giving it hefty
traction in the loose dirt, which in turn let it run rampant over
the witches. T.J. was taking huge delight in knocking them down as
he operated the metal beast from what looked like a modified video
game controller.

I sidled back over and whispered in
Michelle’s ear. She went from pissed and uncertain to determined in
a split second at my suggestion. Her avatar tossed a stone at the
robot, only to have it fall at the monster’s feet.

“Ha, sticks and stones, Michelle,” T.J.
taunted. Then the ground around the stone opened up and sank,
taking three of robo-crab’s feet with it. Immediately, the soil
came back up and solidified, trapping the robot.

Ryanne, who’d seen me talk to Michelle,
grinned and started to pound the robot with gobs of water from her
baggie, clearly looking to short the thing out.

Tami took a more direct approach, igniting
the pieces of wood strapped to her avatar’s arms into jets of fire
nine inches long, and advancing on the trapped robot.

T.J. desperately tried to get the spider-crab
bot free, but nothing happened and as Tami’s flaming avatar got
close, he started to yell, “Yield, yield.”

The fire snapped off, but the dirt remained
packed tight around the robot’s legs.

Michelle shrugged. “It’s an Earth grenade.
I’m not allowed to directly use my power on the game course,
remember. So trapped is trapped.”

“Tis true. Once yer beastie or avatar is
trapped or down, yer done till the game concludes. Then one o’ the
witches can set ye free,” my aunt said, nodding to me to release
the robot.

It was no sooner out than I found myself
surrounded by witches looking for repairs to their golems. The rest
of the class had gotten their avatars activated and were now
climbing up and about the game course. The whole thing reminded me
of a kindergarten class gone amok. Aunt Ashling apparently felt the
same way.

“Enough,” she said loudly. “Witches, see
Michelle or Declan for repairs and then help the others learn to
navigate the course. The rest of ye bring yer dirt people over to
the game pitch and climb on up. Time to get organized, don’t ye
think?”

“Listen,” I interrupted the concerned gaggle
that surrounded Michelle and I. “You helped make these things,
remember? Most of the damage is self-repairing with a little dirt.
Here. Just grab a handful and pour it over the wounded area and
watch,” I said, dropping soil onto the upper thigh of Erika’s dirt
girl, which was missing some patches. Most of it fell off, but
some, just enough in fact, stuck to the leg and filled the leg back
out to its pre-damaged proportions.

“Ooh, that tickles. Do it again,” Erika
crooned, vamping it up and smiling at me in a way that made me
nervous. “Pour some on her chest,” she said.

“It’s not damaged,” I replied.

“Yeah, but I like it,” she said through
lowered lashes.

“Next,” I said, not liking being made fun of.
She pouted and flounced away, her avatar copying her motions
exactly.

Britta was already pouring dirt on her own
gal’s arm, watching the repairs happen all by themselves.

“That’s truly very cool,” she said, smiling a
normal smile. “Will they fix any wound?”

“No,” I said, calling my Double D to me. He
came, limping the whole way. “When your avatar has had the shit
kicked out of it, you may have to bring her to either Michelle or I
to recode the spell that holds it all together. You may be able to
do it yourselves, as it’s not that complex and we’ve already laid
the foundation,” I told the remaining witches. I found Ryanne was
right next to me, just about pressing up against me in the crush of
witches.

I demonstrated the spell and then pulled the
dirt off of D so some of them could give it a try. Michelle was
standing at the back of the pack, watching and listening, none of
the witches having gone to her for help. I raised eyebrows at her
lack of patients and she grinned, silently pointing at her friends,
then putting the back of one hand to her forehead, mimicking a
swooning Southern belle. I frowned, first at her then at the
witches around me, some of whom were just looking up from Ryanne’s
attempt. Instantly spotting me sharing a look with Michelle, they
snapped around to see her expression, but she was too fast, pulling
her arm down and assuming an innocent look.

“How’s that then, do ye think?” Ryanne asked
me, looking up from Double D, who looked mostly normal except for
the repaired leg, which was bigger than the other.

“Pretty good, although he’s a bit out of
kilter,” I said, tweaking her spell slightly to bring him back to
normal. “There, now he won’t walk in ever-decreasing circles until
he disappears up his own ass.”

“Oh, yer the ass, that’s fer sure,” she said,
but she was trying not to laugh as she said it.

Most of the witch damage was minor, so they
poured soil on their loam ladies and then went to help the other
students learn the game.

Tami’s avatar needed new wood fuel sticks for
her avatar’s arms. “Here, let’s try something new,” I said,
retrieving my book bag. Inside was a box of fire starter sticks I’d
picked up at an outdoor gear store on Church Street for just this
purpose.

The classes’ avatars were all built over
heavy wire cut from clothes hangers. I pulled the dirt away from
both arms of the dirt girl and removed the charred remains of the
sticks. Then I pulled two short pieces of small diameter copper
pipe from my pack. I had had a couple of ideas and this was a good
time to try them out. Each pipe was two inches long and I quickly
fastened them to the arms of Tami’s girl with wire. Then I
respelled the arms and poured enough dirt for the pipes to be fully
covered, except I left the ends open by the dirt girl’s hands. It
made her forearms bulky like Popeye but Tami didn’t protest and
Zuzanna had drifted over to see what we were doing. Snapping a fire
starter in half, I put a piece in each tube.

“Okay, fire her up and let’s see how that
works,” I said. Tami moved her avatar to an open space and raised
both arms. A full foot of flame shot out both pipes, burning hot
like a propane torch. She directed it at the soil in front of her
dirt doll and little sparks of organic matter flared into light as
the flames washed over the ground. The whole class stopped to
watch, eyes wide.

“That’s so not fair,” one of the telepath
kids said.

“No, that’s awesome,” Zuzanna said. “I want
that too.”

The pipe was from a piece I’d liberated from
a pile of junk in the far corner of the basement. The head
maintenance guy had lent me a little pipe cutter, so my only cash
outlay was for the box of fire starters. I cut enough pipe for both
Zuzanna’s and my avatars, fixed them both up, and told the girls
where I bought the starters.

By the time I was done, most of the class was
playing king of the hill, with Delwood most often the winner,
probably from sheer aggressiveness. Then the robo-spider crawled up
there and no one could dislodge it.

“Technology is the future, bitches,” T.J.
said as his creation held high ground.

“Teamwork time,” Aunt Ash suggested and the
werewolf pack instantly stopped fighting amongst themselves and
with the help of Jetta, Mack, and Caceco, jointly assaulted the
bot, tossing it off the concrete ridge.

“Okay, that’ll be fine fer
tonight. Next week, we divide up into teams and play capture the
flag.
I’ll
be
assigning the teams
and
the captains,” Aunt Ashling said. “Study the
spells you’ve learned tonight if yer inclined to the Craft and all
of you should be practicing using yer avatars between now and next
week. That’s it. Good night.”

A couple of kids thanked her and the rest
joined in, even Delwood. I helped her clean up while the others
sent their dirt people off the course and onto the long wooden
bench where we lined them up.

“You’ve got a bit of a teacher inside you,
Declan. You were quick to figure out how to get the kids linked up
with their dollies,” she said to me.

“Maybe. If so, it’s because I’ve had good
teachers,” I said.

“Ahh, there’s the blarney coming back. It’s
good you can speak again, although the blessed silence was nice,
too,” she said with a wink. I hugged her and then helped her with
her stuff, walking her out to her car. This time, she hugged me and
gave me a kiss on the cheek, leaving with a cryptic, “Stay on your
guard.”

Chapter 30

A pattern settled in of classes and work. I
saw no more elf princesses or mysterious men in dark clothes, but I
did see a lot of computer code, English essays, math problems, and
I continued to build out my website assignment. Survival class was
always interesting and when Jenks had a three-lane pistol range
built in the basement, it got actually fun. The range was only
twenty-five yards and built as far from the Wytchwar course as
possible. As the basement matched the full size of the Arcane
building, that put it pretty far away.

After spending one morning going over safe
gun handling in class and using dummy weapons for practice, Jenks
started to take three people at a time to the gun range. Caeco
would put the rest of us through hand-to-hand drills while Jenks
oversaw the target practice. Each of us got to shoot at least once
a week and a competition of sorts developed.

Oddly, the three highest ranked shots were my
friends. I did fine, having been trained to shoot by Darci and
Levi, but I wasn’t going to win target matches against Jetta and
her brother, who’d grown up shooting, or against the surprise
deadeye of the group, Ashley. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been
a surprise: her grandfather had been an ex-DEA instructor and her
father was a crack shot as well. The worst shot in the class was
Delwood, who couldn’t for the life of him stop yanking the trigger
like he was crushing a beer can.

Each week, Jenks would post the current class
rankings for shooting and while I stayed in the top ten or twelve,
the first three spots were always some combination of Jetta,
Ashley, and Mack.

Caeco wasn’t allowed in the
competition, which was only fair, as she was a freaking machine
with a gun in her hands. Once a week, she got to shoot at the end
of class and Jenks would give her all three lanes.
Our
practice was
two-handed and some one-handed shooting, but nothing fancy. Hers
was timed multi-target drills, using the standard black B-27
human-shaped qualifier targets that law enforcement agencies used.
We used the same targets, just not four to six at a time, set to
varying distances and in multiple lanes. Jenks would go so far as
to put a yellow sticky note on a different part of each target
while keeping Caeco facing away from the range. Then, at his
command she would have to turn, draw, and shoot each note with a
double tap.

It wasn’t much of a challenge for her, and
she took no real pride in it, but the rest of the class was in
complete awe.

T.J. started to call her Oakley, for Annie
Oakley, and the nickname stuck.

In Wytchwar, things were
progressing fast. Aunt Ash made me a referee for the first
half-dozen games of capture the flag and manhunt and kept changing
teams up every week. She also rotated captains, choosing the least
likely candidates to run the course. At first, it resulted in some
stunning losses and temper tantrums, particularly from some of the
students who thought that they should naturally be boss. But then
as avatar skill grew, people got a little better at accepting
orders… emphasis on
little
.

When she finally let me into the games, I
ended up on Delwood’s team and it was his first chance at the
leadership he’d so craved. I thought his pride would be his
undoing, but he proved a capable leader and won the match. His
tactic was simple: send me out into enemy territory to draw their
fire. The other team had almost all of my friends on it and was led
by Britta.