Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (38 page)

“That’s awesome, Ryanne. I’m looking forward
to your show,” I said.

“We’re opening act on Saturday night, but
that’s not what I want to tell you. See, my parents are bringing
guests. Official circle guests. It was a major request, one that me
mum couldn’t deny.”

I suddenly didn’t like where she was going
with this. She read my reaction on my face, but she drew a deep
breath to tell me the rest anyway. And then she disappeared.

Not totally, like Beam me up Scotty, but in a
blurry rag doll sort of flight that blasted her away in into a
parked F-250 pickup that I think belonged to one of the guards. It
was like a rope had been tied to the back belt loop of her jeans,
the other end tied to a rocket car.

She hit the truck with a brain-jarring thud
that left a dent in the passenger door and slid boneless to the wet
icy pavement.

Spending four days training with Tanya
Demidova is like a month of mixed martial arts fights in the middle
of a SEAL BUDs camp. My shields snapped into place even as I jumped
backward while turning to face the presence that was suddenly
making my witch senses scream.

I landed six feet back, facing the threat. A
slender woman wearing stained jeans and an even-more-stained grey
Yankees hoody stood stock-still, staring at me through her bangs.
Her long dirty blonde hair hung in greasy lanks over her face,
almost hiding her pale blue eyes. Almost. Frankly, I could have
done with having them hidden. She looked at me, chin tucked down,
insane eyes locked on me like a brain-starved zombie about to munch
down.

But the waves of power that
leaked from her pores told me she was a witch. As did the book. The
small, eye-warping, vision-twisting book that she clutched in her
left hand. The one that was pressing on my senses, yammering for
attention.
Sorrow.

Her right hand flung out at me and a ball of
pure kinetic energy flashed out.

I think my shields might have protected me,
but my magic-fueled glyphs made the point moot. I jumped forward at
an angle, closing the distance between us but avoiding the blast,
which hit the flag pole behind me and smashed it flat. It fell into
the lexan doors to Arcane, wedging them shut even as the two guards
on duty tried to open them.

I sent a shock wave through the ground, hard
enough to lift her off her feet, except she rode the earth tsunami
like a world class surfer, her filth-covered shoes never leaving
the asphalt.

Another blast came my way, which I dodged,
but she was adapting as my dodge took me right into a Prius that
she threw in my direction.

My shield reacted, blasting the car to a halt
and throwing me hard in the opposite direction. Tanya had beat my
reflexes into shape for this very event. I landed, parkour rolled
to my feet, and flung out my own kinetic blast.

She brushed it aside, not bothering to dodge,
then blew a hurricane wind under my feet, lifting me off the ground
and away from Earth. Frantic, I threw fire her way, just to
distract her, but she didn’t even react, letting the ball of plasma
wink out when her own shields absorbed it. She chose instead to
feed power to the wind that held me off the ground.

I couldn’t touch the Earth, what little heat
was in the air had just been expended in my useless fireball, and
she was working some spell to break my shields.

It was a bright, beautiful, pre-Spring day
and this bitch was getting ready to suck me dry of power while the
warm sun beat down on my face. I had to do something fast or this
skank was going to zero me out. The sun gave me an idea.

Archemedes supposedly used mirrors to burn
Roman ships. I didn’t have mirrors but the whole of the parking lot
was soaking in the Spring sunshine, the black asphalt warm over
about an acre. I took all that warmth and pressed it into a beam of
light. The effect was almost immediate as her face blistered and
her eyes seared.

Her scream shattered car windows all around
me.

The column of air holding me up vanished and
I fell eight feet to the hard asphalt, breaking my fall by
instinct. I came up fast and rushed around behind her, focusing on
her own shields. There was no time to draw any nearby power; I had
to cancel this bitch now with my own reserves.

She held her right hand out toward where she
thought I was, her left hand dropping the book and automatically
covering her burned eyes.

My kinetic blast lifted her off her feet and
smashed her into another car, a Passat, maybe. It didn’t stop her;
instead, she turned and fired one back, blindly, along the path of
my blast. Which I wasn’t standing in anymore. Instead, I was
standing four feet to the right, focusing on the moment she
released her attack. In that instant, when her energy was blazing
forth, I slipped through the tiny opening it created in her shields
and planted a burst of power deep in her brainstem, like planting a
hook. Then I pulled with everything I had. Instead of immolation, I
removed the heat from her skull… all of it.

A rippling wave of hot air flashed out of
her, leaving her frozen in place, literally. Her greasy hair was
frosted to her head and a snotsicle connected her nose to her upper
lip. She teetered before falling backward, her head shattering into
a hundred shards of frozen flesh, bone, and brain.
Wow—disgusting.

Ryanne groaned, the sound jolting me into
motion. I scooped up the fallen book and stuffed it under my
t-shirt, then I moved to Ryanne. A glance at Arcane showed the
guards still struggling with the door, so I flicked enough power at
the lamppost to shift it off the Lexan.

Ry was breathing okay, but she had slammed
into the truck really hard, her torso catching the full brunt of
the witch’s kinetic blast.

Voices hollered, footsteps stampeded, and
then people were there. The guards, Dr. Rosewell, Gina, and Jenks
all arrived. Rosewell pushed me gently out of the way and began to
examine Ryanne. I stepped back to give her room, Gina taking my
place for a moment.

Under my shirt, the
book
squirmed
slightly, almost making me hurl right there. The waves of
wrongness coming off it were overwhelming, and yet for some reason,
I kept it hidden.

Gina stood up and turned to me. “What
happened?”

Chapter 33

I told her the whole story with the omission
of the book. The witch had been hellish strong, but I told her my
guess was that this would turn out to be the missing New York City
witch, the one who had murdered her whole circle and stolen their
powers. Why was she here? No idea, unless she had somehow heard of
a school in Vermont with young, naïve witches fresh for the
draining.

“Declan, the guards, Jerry and Sean, saw you
pick something up after the witch died. What was it?” Gina asked. I
remembered belatedly that she used to be an NYPD detective.

“My phone,” I said, pulling it from my jeans
pocket.

“You grabbed your
phone
before
checking on Ryanne?” she asked, managing to question my
intelligence and friend value in one shot.

I felt my eyes narrow.

Schinden sie für ihre Frechheit.

What? What the fuck was that? Was it out
loud? Where’d that come from?

My face must have twitched or something. “It
was on the ground, between me and Ry. If I needed to call 911, then
I needed it in my hand, don’t you think?”

She studied me carefully. I could tell she
wasn’t buying it. Not only that, but she was trying to decipher
whatever emotions my face must have just flashed at her. After a
few seconds, she turned and looked at the headless corpse.

“She almost beat you?” she asked. Again she
managed to convey disbelief and disappointment in a single
sentence.

“She attacked from ambush, which is why
Ryanne was flattened first,” I said.

Gina glanced at me, eyebrows raised before
the answer came to her. “Oh, a female would be the greater
threat.”

I nodded. “If she was the missing witch, then
it explains her power… she was carrying a full circle’s worth with
her. She was also pretty skilled. She threw some stuff around that
I’ve never seen before.”

“
You
didn’t recognize it?” Gina
asked.

“Just because I’m strong
doesn’t mean I know everything,” I said. “My mother died when I was
eight. She didn’t have time to teach me a lot, and Aunt Ash didn’t
know as much as Mom. I never met another witch until six months
ago. The
only
reason I won is because Chris and Tanya chose to spend four
days beating me senseless and I seem to have learned
something.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry, Declan. I forget how
young you are and as you say, we sometimes mistake raw power for
experience. I’m afraid my old police instincts took over for a bit.
How are you doing? With all that?” she asked, waving at the
now-blanket-covered body.

I shuddered, but before I was forced to say
something about it, the doctor popped up from examining Ryanne.

“I think she will be okay. Might have a
concussion, but nothing is broken. Massive bruising on her back,
buttocks, and legs, though. She’s gonna hurt. I think it would be
best to keep her here, at Arcane, rather than a hospital. I can do
a better job of monitoring her than the hospital would.”

I looked over at Ryanne, whose eyes were
open, looking dazed. Dr. Rosewell had laid her out next to a
stretcher and Ry was staring straight up. I moved over and leaned
into her field of view.

“Hey. How ya doing?” I asked.

She focused on me, recognition coming a
second or two later. “Did ye get the tag number of the tractor what
busted me dial?”

“Actually, you’re the one that attacked the
truck… with your butt. Put a big dent in Jerry’s pickup.”

She winced. “What happened?”

I gave her the short version as Dr. Rosewell
and Gina finished their private conversation and came over.

“Let’s get her inside,” the doctor said,
waving a couple of security types to pick up the stretcher.

“Declan, we need to get you inside as well
and let Mr. Jenks and the Oracle people clean this up before local
law enforcement or media get wind of it. That fight was noisy,”
Gina said to me, putting her hand on my shoulder to guide me back
to Arcane.

I glanced back at the parking lot and saw
what she meant. Broken glass everywhere, at least three smashed
cars, the broken flagpole, and last but not least, the headless,
blanket-covered body.

I let her turn me toward the
building. Faces peered at us from the first, second, and
third-floor windows. Not
all
the students and staff, but a hefty chunk of them
stared right at me, most looking like they were seeing me for the
first time.

I went to my room, finding it empty, which
was good because I needed time alone to think about what had
happened and to look over the book.

It was small, about the size
of paperback, maybe just a bit bigger. Bound in pale skin, the
inside pages also a light tanned animal skin. The outside was
blank, but the first inside page was labeled in beautiful
cursive
das Buch der dunkelsten Trauer.
The Book of Darkest Sorrow.

It pressed on my mind, pushing to get in.
Then the damned thing writhed in my hands, literally squirmed. I
threw it on my bed and it squealed. Maybe screamed is a better
word, a soundless cry that tore through my head. Clapping hands
over ears did no good. The cry was noiseless but so loud.

I grabbed the book and it instantly stopped.
It had been so loud, and I lived on a floor of witches and
psychics. I opened my door and poked my head into the hall. Half a
dozen kids were looking out their own doors, confusion on their
faces. Paige, down the hall, caught my eye. “What was that? It
sounded like a mental scream,” she said.

“I know, right? Not sure,” I said.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked, making a head
waggle toward the wall nearest the parking lot.

“Yeah, I guess. Not sure yet,” I said, then
waited for at least one other kid to shrug and pull back into their
room before doing the same.

Sitting on my bed, I held Sorrow in both
hands and considered it. It considered back. The damned thing was
alive or aware or something. And it wanted me. But if it wanted me,
why did the witch attack?

Ein Test.

The words just popped into
my head. No sound, just words floating in the dark of my mind. Ein?
What the hell was Ein? Test I understood. I Googled it on my
phone.
A test
. A
test of what? Me obviously, but that witch had meant business. She
wasn’t playing tester; she’d wanted my power.

Wenn sie es haben Sie es
versäumt
.

Again with the head-popping thing.

More Googling.

If she got it, you failed.