Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (48 page)

Her eyes went from my stomach to my face.
“What be ye talking about?”

I reached to her desk, shoving aside my
sweatshirt to reveal the grimoire. She sucked in a sharp
breath.

“Is that the Sorrow book then?”

“It was,” I said. I opened the cover and
showed her the bloodstained pages and the little round hole that
went all the way through the upper corner.

“I don’t understand? Where be the words and
spells and such?” she asked when she saw that every page was
blank.

I held up my left palm and thought about a
spell, a simple one. Black cursive appeared on the skin of my hand,
scrolling through the spell.

She just raised her eyebrows at me while her
face went white. I explained the book’s presence when I threw down
with the witch and the fact it wouldn’t let me put it down. I
explained that we tried to burn it and cut it but couldn’t. I
explained that it spoke German to me by making the words appear in
my head, only now it was speaking them in English. That Neeve’s
otherworld weapon had somehow pierced it and me and now Sorrow
seemed to be inside me.

“Declan, that spell you used outside the
wards, that I could feel right through them, be that one coming at
the suggestion of the book?”

“Yes,
Ignis Solis.
Aunt Ash, I don’t trust
the spells it shows me. I used that one only because it was simple,
and then I used only a tiny bit of it,” I said.

“Show me the spell, lad, and don’t ever trust
the book.”

I pulled up Sun Fire on my palm and showed
her. She sucked a breath. “Declan, don’t be showing your fellow
Fire witches this spell, ever. It uses only your reserves, and it
be using them up completely if you go a second too long.”

“What could happen?”

“The massive destruction from that much raw
energy aside, it would like to either kill or permanently drain a
witch of her power. At the least, it would leave a witch vulnerable
to anyone. Even with your bigger bucket o’power, you would only
last a few tens of seconds longer than, say, Tami. This spell is
dangerous.”

Well, yeah. I mean, I knew that from the Hunt
Leader, whose blue blood must have been superheated to steam in a
microsecond. And I had sensed an issue with the structure of the
spell when Sorrow had presented it.

“Why would the book go to all this trouble to
find me and bond with me and then drain me useless?”

“I don’t know, me boy. Unless draining
yerself would leave clear a path for the book to take ye over,
complete like.”

“Okay, how do we get Sorrow out of me?” I
asked.

“I don’t know, lad. I don’t know,” she said,
then she firmed up. “But I will. Count on it, lad. Between Levi’s
library, his connections for other rare books, and me own small
knowledge, I’ll be finding the heart of it, don’t you worry.”

I actually was worried. Quite a bit. But I
also had faith in Aunt Ash. If anyone could find the answer, it was
her and she had one of the best rare book hunters in the world as a
resource.

“Does the book try to control you directly,
lad?” she asked carefully.

“No. It sorta hangs out and throws in
comments from time to time, then when things are tense, it’ll offer
up a spell, like when I met Macha and her girl. The book gave me a
spell to extract their power right through that shield. I’m not
gonna be some witch equivalent of a vampire, Aunt Ash,” I
vowed.

“No, no yer not. You already showed that you
can ignore it, but tell me, lad, what made ye choose to use the Sun
Fire spell?”

“We were pretty outnumbered. I didn’t know
the other witches and Delwood’s pack was coming. I didn’t want to
lose any of my friends, Aunt Ash. The Sun Fire spell seemed like a
nuclear option. If I used it once, for a short burst, maybe I could
stop any more fighting. At least that’s what went through my head
in that instant.”

“Declan, ye made a good decision, but I fear
the book will look for ways to trick ye, particularly in time of
stress and strife,” she said. “Promise me ye’ll use yer mom’s
grimoire for spells and not what Sorrow offers ye. Don’t go asking
it for spells, either. It’s an evil book.”

I nodded, then changed the subject. Abruptly.
“Aunt Ash I have a sister. Zuzanna is my half-sister. I met her
father… my father just before coming here.”

“Did ye now? Tell me that tale, if ye
would?”

I explained about seeing a man watching me on
campus a few months back and then meeting Perun.

“The bastard still be alive, do he?” she
mused. “Ye did leave him alive, right?”

“Yes. Zuzanna made me promise before he told
what he knew about Ariel.”

“That’s fine, lad. I don’t want ye thinking
about killing yer father, Declan. Ye are not him and ye never will
be. Unless he be threatening ye or yer friends, ye should not be
killing yer own father. It’s not a right thing.”

“Jeeze, Aunt Ash. You put conditions on
everything,” I mock protested. “Can’t blow up towns with my death
ray spell, can’t let Sorrow teach me spells of mass destruction,
not allowed to maim or kill my rapist dad. Where’s my freedom to
express myself?”

“I’ll knot yer head if ye be expressing
yerself in any of those ways,” she growled.

“Miss Ashling?” Ryanne called.

“Yes, dear?” my aunt responded.

“Oh, there ye be, and Declan too,” Ryanne
said, coming into the kitchen with the other witches behind her.
“Darci was telling us that Declan has a picture of his mum in his
room. We wondered if we could may like get a peek at her?”

“Ye all be wondering about me sister, are
ye?” my aunt asked.

“Yes ma’am,” Erika said from just behind
Ryanne. My aunt was the only teacher that the bossy blonde treated
with real respect.

“What say ye, lad? Would ye let them into yer
inner sanctum?”

I was busy pulling my hoodie back on and had
to wait till my head popped through.

“Yeah, sure, why not,” I said.

“Oh, is that a grimoire?” Jael asked,
spotting the bloodstained book.

“No, it’s just a ruined old book with nothing
of any matter to it,” my aunt replied.

I led the witch pack outside to my shipping
container room and showed them my man cave.

“This is cool and all, but isn’t it lonely?”
Paige asked as the others looked at my mom’s photo and the painting
she’d done of the Cliffs of Mohr.

“When I hit puberty,” I began, ignoring the
smirks that shot my way at that image, “ I had trouble with
thunderstorms.”

“Scared of them?” Ryanne teased.

I smiled, not taking the bait. “Not really.
More like I was scared of burning down the restaurant or blowing up
our apartment. Lightning seeks me out. Before I learned to control
it, we had some near misses with catastrophe. This container is all
steel and quadruple grounded. Actually, it grounds into our wards.
If I forgot myself, the lightning just hit the container and bled
out into the grounds. Nowadays, that doesn’t happen, but now I like
the privacy.”

“Ummm, yes, it’s very private and well
insulated. Soundproof?” Erika asked with a sultry voice.

“And now it’s time to go get the others. You
all have a game against Delwood’s crew in an hour or so.”

“Wait. Lightning would strike you? And not
kill you?” Britta asked.

“It never really hits me. Just looks like it.
It runs down around my aura and then into the ground or wherever I
choose to send it. Unless I direct the strike first.”

“You can direct lightning?” Ryanne asked.
“Fer fecking real?”

“Only in a storm. I can’t just call it out of
thin air. But if the condtions are right, then yeah. Just a bigger
taser, that’s all.”

“Yer a fecking menace O’Carroll,” she said,
shaking her head but smiling.

“I’ve been getting that a lot lately.”

Chapter 42

The Were-machines beat the Witch Slap by the
hair of their backs. Matthew grabbed the witch flag two seconds
before Britta grabbed the weres’ own flag.

T.J.’s mechanical avatar made the difference,
his construction of steel and titanium stronger than dirt people
and pretty resistant to magic. Lots of players had protested his
unique avatar to my aunt over the last few months, to no avail.

“Anything in this game that pushes ye harder,
makes ye think faster and smarter, and causes ye to build yer
abilities is a good thing, don’t ye agree?” she’d responded.

It was true. Teams went out of their way to
come up with counters to his robot and he, in turn, kept building a
better machine.

So the final game came down to Delwood’s crew
versus Caeco’s Commandos on Saturday afternoon.

Caeco and I hadn’t fully sorted out where we
stood, but it definitely wasn’t the same. I think we both knew that
we needed space but before we could figure it out, we needed this
last game behind us. Whatever anger I’d held toward her before was
long gone, cut away by a sweep of her ax when she’d had my back
against the Hunt. We could work together, particularly in the face
of Delwood’s trash talking.

So I had listened while she outlined our
strategy and nodded when she told me I was the flag’s keeper for
this game. She didn’t have to explain, but she did anyway.

“If we leave you to guard the flag, the rest
of us are clear to hunt the weres and their flag. By yourself, you
are enough of a pain-in-the-dirt-posterior to keep them off our
flag.”

This was the final match of the tournament,
and the two sets of bleachers were packed with additional chairs
set up in front of a bank of monitors for the overflow. They were
full, too.

General Creek was there with his cronies, as
were Agents Krupp and Mazar, and, of course, Nathan Stewart and
Adine Benally.

Neeve and Eirwen flanked Ariel and Ian. Every
parent and all our other classmates were crammed in like crayons in
a box. The werewolf parents carefully sat in different parts of the
room; there was more than one Alpha present, which could create a
dominance situation if care wasn’t taken. Luckily, care sat in the
middle of the main bleachers in the form of Chris, Tanya, Stacia,
and the rest of their crew. Every person in the room, with the
possible exception of the players and my aunt, were watching him
and them. The camera flashes that went off were more often in his
direction than ours.

Aunt Ash sent us to our opposite sides to
start the game. Caeco had won the coin toss and selected the side
nearest the bleachers, furthest from the outside overhead door. I
had wanted this end because it had the windy plains and a lot of
sand.

I chose an open spot in soft sand and set the
flag upright for all to see while Caeco gave the team their final
directions. Next, as the whistle sounded and they trotted off, I
set a ring of spelled rocks around the flag. Then another further
out and finally a third.

With everything set, I stood in front of the
flag and mentally worked through the new spells and tricks I had
put together just for this game, specifically with T.J.’s
monstrosity in mind.

After about five minutes, I heard the crowd
oooohh at the same time the sounds of fighting broke out over the
mountain range. Thirty seconds later, T.J.’s metal creature came
spidering over the side of the closest mountain, all six legs
clicking as it moved. A black-painted dirt dude followed it, this
one with a molded canine snout and stainless screws placed as
fangs. Delwood.

They paused and looked over my situation,
appropriately cautious. Then the crowd ooohhhed again at something
on the monitors and they headed forward, pushed by the time. Caeco
was giving the rest of the weres hell and they knew it.

“Hi guys. Ready for a whupping?” I said with
my human mouth on the bench. Microphones placed in front of the
bench broadcast my words to the crowd, which threw me for a second.
I had been counting on werewolf hearing and mechanical
amplification for my words to reach them. The public broadcast was
a new feature of the games.

“We didn’t want you to sit out here crying in
loneliness,” Delwood said, his avatar rubbing its blank eyes with
little hands in a boo hoo move.

This time, the microphone and speakers worked
for my benefit, making it easy to hear him.

“Looks like you’ve had a lot of practice
making those motions, Smellwood,” I said. “Lonely childhood?”

“Reusing old names, Decimate?” he asked.

The robot spider cocked itself slightly
toward Delwood’s avatar and T.J.’s voice came over the sound
system.

“Dude, do you know what that word means?”
T.J. asked his partner.

“Yeah, it has two meanings: to kill one in
ten, which is the old Roman meaning; and the newer meaning, to kill
or destroy a large portion of something,” Delwood said. “I’m not
stupid, nerd.”

“No of course not. It just doesn’t sound like
an insult?” T.J. backpedaled