Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (45 page)

Another listen to check my bearings and I
repeated it with a second kinetic pebble.

My second landing was better, but it still
made a whole bunch of noise. I paused, holding very still. More
rock noises, maybe someone climbing my way. I broke out the
werewolf hearing aid. The thing about the hearing chip was that it
didn’t work like a simple sound amplifier. Instead, it actually
gave the avatar, and therefore the driver, werewolf hearing—with
positional analysis so that I could now tell that one individual
was climbing toward the peak and the other three waited below,
spread out, while the stream rushed and thundered far down at the
bottom of the mountain.

Blitzkrieg?
Sorrow asked. Good idea.

Pulling out some rope, which was actually
Kevlar thread I had taken from our personal survival kits that
Jenks had us all building, I let a long strand hang between DD’s
brass hands.

Then I waited, still listening. The climber
closed the distance and when I judged him two body lengths from the
top, I jumped.

Chapter 39

I jumped to the summit then jumped again,
letting gravity take me over the surprised avatar’s head. The loop
of Kevlar string hung down, about neck height to him as I went
over.

He must have been one of the weres as his
reflexes were excellent, much better than a human’s. His steel
hands came up and one of them snagged the rope, preventing it from
catching on his neck.

In the regular world, that would have been
crucial to survival… even werewolves need to breathe. But here in
Wytchwar world, it was impossible to choke out or strangle an
avatar made of dirt and wire. It was, however, possible to yank one
off the steep mountainside with the momentum of your own falling
body.

Pulled from his perch, he flew over me as I
fell flat on the mountainside, my feet and hands bladed into the
dirt. He fell past his colleagues, down to the rushing river
below.

One down. I jumped again, flipping DD over to
land on his feet between two of the remaining three. Both hands
came up, each pointing at a different golem. A squeeze of the
mental trigger and my gun tubes went off, the results better than I
could have hoped for.

Each tube was steel wrapped with copper wire.
The wires fed back into DD’s body. Runes all over the place created
the magical equivalent of circuits. It was an idea I got listening
to T.J. rattle on about gauss guns for his robot avatar. The spells
on DD’s skeleton picked up electrical ions as I moved him about the
landscape, storing them like a capacitor. When I fired the tubes,
three steel BB’s flew out of each like machine gun fire,
accelerated by the electromagnetic field on the tubes, blasting big
chunks off the avatars.

The one on my left was all done, my aim good
enough to destroy all the clay around the golem’s pelvis, which
caused it to collapse.

The one on my right had a useless left arm, a
wobbly right leg, and a big chunk missing from its gut. The
unaffected avatar behind it was raising its right palm as I kicked
the damaged avatar in its good leg and punched its shattered gut
clay.

As the wounded one fell, I recognized the
remaining avatar as belonging to one of the telekinetic kids,
Raymond. I had helped him modify his dirt dude with runes to allow
him to send out telekinetic bursts from his right palm and if I
recalled right, they packed a serious punch.

I no sooner processed all that than his hand
blurred and a freight train hit my chest… and dissipated. Actually,
it was absorbed into the copper plate on DD’s mesh vest. The runes
caught the blast like a shortstop snagging a hard-hit baseball,
converting the kinetic energy to electricity, which I sent right
back at him, directly into the upraised steel palm. He really did
pack a punch because there was enough electricity arcing back his
way to weld his wire skeleton together. He straightened, froze up,
and fell over.

“Game to Caeco’s Commandos for simultaneous
capture of flag and elimination of all opposing team members. Game
time four minutes, seventeen seconds,” Miss Berg’s voice boomed
out.

A second later, the rest of my squad, minus
Ashley, came trotting around the base of the farthest mountain,
flag in Caeco’s soil soldier’s hand. They pulled up and looked at
me and the scattered, shattered avatars at my feet.

My physical body heard Mack ask a question
from our team bench. “Feel better?”

I raised one brass hand and wobbled it back
and forth. Caeco snorted, then led the team back to get Ashley.
Mack’s avatar shrugged at me as it went by and I fell in
behind.

Moments later, our avatars were lined up on
the edge of the game course and we were accepting congratulations
from our classmates and the family members they brought over for
introduction. I tried to stay out of it, helping the Swarmers
repair their wounded veterans, but kids came over anyway, dragging
mom and dad for a quick intro. Apparently my little temper tantrum
on the course had been fun to watch, as they were all admiration
and compliments.

Still angry at Caeco, I vowed to get away
from the course as fast as I could, but my plan was interrupted by
Ashley’s sharp, “Oh no!”

Turning around I found her looking at her
iPhone, her face looking stricken. Before I could ask what was the
matter, she looked up at the rest of us, head swiveling until she
found both Caeco and me watching her.

“Ariel texted like fifteen minutes ago. She
was coming back from Henry’s Diner, where she had breakfast with
her parents. She says someone started to follow her, then several
someones. Her last message says they got between her and Arcane, so
she was going to head up hill to the college campus. We have to go
get her.”

“Beast is right outside,” I said.

“We’ll take our truck, too,” Mack said,
turning to get his keys.

“Ashley?” a male voice said. “What’s the
matter?”

It was her dad, along with that tough-looking
elvish bodyguard, Neeve.

She explained quickly about our missing
friend.

“You’ve done your part, Seeker,” Neeve said
as soon as Ashley announced we were headed out to the rescue.

“I’m going, Neeve,” Ashley said, a steel tone
in her voice.

“No,” the elf said, grabbing Ashley’s arm.
Before her father could intervene, I did, grabbing the elf woman’s
own arm.

It worked and it didn’t. Neeve let go of
Ashley, but a sudden sharp pain in my side made me let go of the
dark elf like she was made of lightning. Her left hand held a black
spike that poked into my side. I never saw her draw it, but some
part of me noticed that the fancy bracelet was missing from that
arm.

“You don’t have a say,” elf woman said, voice
cold as death. The needle-like blade somehow hit Sorrow, but must
have hit hard enough to still feel like it was sticking me. Which
begged the question, what would have happened if Sorrow wasn’t
there?

I grabbed her spike where it entered my shirt
and pulsed enough electricity through it to make her jump back. The
weird blade began to morph into something bigger and badder while I
pulled power from the building hard enough to shake the
foundation.

“Enough!” Ashley yelled, jumping between us.
“You are here to protect me, not rule me, Neeve. I’m going to find
my roommate. So you can go with me or stay here.”

“Let’s get going,” Ian said, then turned to
Neeve. “I told you that arguing with her doesn’t work.”

We piled into the two vehicles. Caeco jumped
into Beast, mostly just because, I think, she had her ax in it.
Ashley, Ian, and Neeve were in the back. Jetta and Mack were in
their truck with Justin. I tried to ignore the itch between my
shoulder blades that had Neeve’s name on it and started the
car.

Racing out to Main Street, we headed uphill
toward the university. The lights were maddening, but shortly we
were in the center of the campus, just in front of the Davis
Student Center. There’s a bus loop there, not meant for cars, but
we pulled into it anyway. Jumping out of Beast, I headed straight
for the Student Center. With the college on Spring Break, it was
one of the few buildings guaranteed to be open.

The campus was strange, empty of the hordes
of milling, moving students that normally flooded this space. Now
it was void of people, except a pair sitting on a low wall near the
entrance to the building.

I glanced at them, then glanced again. What I
had taken to be a girlfriend-boyfriend combo was now rather
obviously a daughter-father pair. And I knew the daughter—Zuzanna.
The man with her, who had the same dark hair and dark eyes was
oddly familiar. Then it hit me: he was the man I had seen staring
at me from across this very campus more than a month ago. I stopped
so fast that Mack ran right into me.

“She’s not in there,” Zuzanna called.

“Who?” I asked, glancing about to see who
else might be up here. The others were spread out, looking for
Ariel. A campus police car pulled into the loop, its lights
flashing as it came to a stop behind Mack’s truck. Ashley and her
father headed for the officer. I pulled my attention back to
Zuzanna.

“Ariel… she’s not in there. I was trying to
call you, but I don’t have your number. So I was calling Ryanne to
get it,” she said.

Caeco, who was fifty yards away, well within
her personal hearing zone, cocked her head. Great. She had to love
the fact that Ryanne had my phone number.

“We will tell you what you need to know, if
you but make a promise,” the man suddenly said.

“No, Papa. Not like this,” Zuzanna
protested.

“Hush, child. Declan, if you promise to hear
me out without an act of violence toward me or my daughter, I will
tell you about your Ariel,” he said.

Not liking the direction this was going and
not liking someone who bartered with the safety of a girl, I
reluctantly nodded. “Say it please,” he requested.

“I promise,” I said, getting angry.

“My name is Perun,” he said. Wait, that
sounded familiar. “I am your father.”

Right, that’s where I had heard it. The man
who raped my mother. Got it.

The cop car’s lights died, the traffic lights
all went dark, and four eastbound cars and five westbound cars all
stalled.

“You promised,” Zuzanna said, jumping up to
put herself between me and her father.

“You do need to hear of your friend Ariel,”
the man, Perun, said.

“Declan, we need the intell,” Caeco said from
her new position ten feet away. Damn, that girl can cover
ground.

I took a deep breath and released it,
simultaneously releasing the borrowed power. The cop’s lights came
back on and the drivers of the stalled cars were able to start them
just in time for a red light.

“What did you do to her?” I asked.

Zuzanna looked offended, but her father… I
refused to think of him as mine… waved his hand. “We did nothing.
We could do nothing. There were too many of them.”

The campus cop killed his lights and drove
away. Ashley, her father, and Neeve all headed our way.

“What do you mean
them
?” Caeco asked.
“Who?”

“The Fae. Like her,” Perun said, waving a
hand toward Neeve. “But different.”

“Different how?” Neeve asked.

“They all either wore red and black or had it
painted on them. There were seven on some type of steed, like great
lizards. Then there were the goblins.”

“They took her?” Caeco asked.

He shook his head. “No, your aunt pulled up
into that same circle. The same policeman came along and then you
aunt took Ariel and headed that way,” he said, pointing east,
toward Castlebury.

“How did the cop not see the Fae?” Mack
asked.

“Glamour,” Neeve answered.

Perun nodded. “They looked to be men on
motorcycles and the apes appeared as children.”

“How did you know them?” I asked,
suspicious.

“My mother—your grandmother—is German. She
had experience with the Fae as a child. She made me this necklace
and I have always worn it,” he said, holding up a iron medallion
around his neck. “I sensed something off about them and held it.
Then I held your sister’s hand so she could see them, too.”

Sister. Zuzanna was my sister. I had a
sister.

“Who are they?” Caeco asked Neeve.

“The Wild Hunt,” Ian answered instead, his
voice angry. “The last time I met them was when they took
Ashley.”

“They killed my grandparents to get me,”
Ashley said.

“Why are they after Ariel?” I asked.

“She is a Seer. Their skills are valued above
all others,” Neeve said.

“How did your aunt happen to be here?” Jetta
asked me.

“Ashling Irwin is an Air witch of much renown
and as such is also a seer. It would be very like one of her
caliber to feel the need to be here,” Perun answered before I
could.

Jetta raised her eyebrows at me, clearly not
trusting Perun.