Death's Academy (21 page)

I pick up speed and circle around to the far side. “Here goes nothing,” I say and start moving toward the bank again. I step. It holds firm. I step again, no
problem. I take a third step and nothing. Maybe the booby trap is only straight through the center of the pond? As soon as this hopeful thought crosses my mind, I take another step. The pole begins to plunge underneath my foot.

My right foot dips below the water and dozens of fish streak for my shoe. I push off the top of the pole and jump to the next. It immediately sinks beneath my weight. I keep moving, leaping from top of pole to top of pole. I can feel the gnashing and chomping of razor sharp teeth tearing at my shoes and socks. I hop to the next pole and then with all of my might throw myself onto the bank.

I tumble across the ground. My cheek smacks the hard stone floor. I give the earth a quick kiss and a thought pounces into the forefront of my mind.
Mal!

I scramble to my feet and tear toward where Brilliance is beckoning Mal forward. Mal is jumping furiously from pole to pole. Suddenly, Mal screams and sinks beneath the surface of the water.

“Mal!” I yell.

Splash!
Brilliance has dived in after her. My heart is thundering in my chest.

“Brilliance!” I’m almost there when, like a cannon shot, Mal is thrown from the water. She flops onto the stony bank, spluttering and coughing.

My heart leaps, but then I look for Brilliance. She’s still underwater! A swarm of glowing fish swirl like a tornado just below me. Brilliance’s head pokes above the water, and she lets out a scream. She kicks and flails her arms, propelling herself forward. She collides
headfirst with a jagged rock that juts out from the bank. In a terrible moment that seems to freeze in time, I see her eyes roll back and close. Her head slips below the churning water.

“Brilliance!” I scream, thrusting both arms into the tornado of fish. I catch her just underneath each arm. Thousands of needles prick both of my arms as the fish sink their teeth into my flesh. I cry out in pain but pull with all my might. Her body surfaces, and I heave her onto the shore.

Brilliance is facedown, her eyes closed. Hundreds of scratches and bites dot her arms, neck, and legs. Mal crawls over to us, covered in bite marks. I turn Brilliance onto her back, and Mal gasps.

“She’s dead!”

“She’s unconscious,” Mal says.

I drop my lips to hers again and taste sugar cookies. I blow.

Brilliance coughs.

“Seriously?” Mal says and grabs my shoulder “Night she’s breathing fine. You can stop making out with her.”

“What?” I say, confused.

“You’re not even doing it right, moron,” Mal says, bristling.

Mal’s face is bright crimson and her teeth clenched.

“Oh. Uh …” I stammer.

My eyes flick to the staircase. I squint. A shadowed
form is pressed up against the wall a few stairs from the bottom. Whatever it is stays just out of the light. “Help me.” I cradle Brilliance in my arms and lift.

“What are you doing?” Mal asks.

“There’s something at the bottom of the stairs watching us.”

Mal lets out a yelp and looks in the direction of the staircase.

“Come on!” I say.

She crawls forward, and together we lift Brilliance. We scurry to the door. I push my back against it, I hear a creak, and the door swings open.

A blast of sweet-smelling air breezes over us.

“What is that smell?” I ask.

Mal drinks in a long breath. “Cotton candy?” she says.

I follow my nose and see a narrow torch-lined tunnel extending even deeper into the mountainside. At the extreme end of the tunnel, a shining speck of light twinkles and dances. I stare at it for a moment and then shake my head to clear it.

“We’ve got to move faster. Whatever was behind us might still be following. I think I can carry her by myself, but I need your help.”

Mal helps me drape Brilliance over my shoulder, and we turn into the tunnel. With every step the light grows in intensity. It not only grows brighter but also shifts between colors like gazing through a prism.

The tunnel’s stone walls evolve into crudely laid brick.

“Stop,” Mal says, holding up her hand in front of me.

“What is it?” I say and peer behind us.

“Do you hear that?”

I go silent. All I can hear is Brilliance’s shallow breathing in my ear. I take a couple of steps forward. Carnival music squeaks in the distance, coming from the end of the tunnel.

“Is there a circus down there?” I ask.

“I hope not. A unicorn circus isn’t something I would ever like to see.”

We stay close to the brick walls, keeping to the most shadowed parts of the tunnel.

“Get down,” I say and drop to my knees. I resituate Brilliance over my back and crawl forward, staying as low as I can. My eyes slowly adapt to the blinding light. Mal and I gasp in unison.

An underground city lies before us. But it is unlike any city I’ve ever seen. The cavern is three hundred feet high and at least a mile wide and a mile deep. The cavern walls are made up of purple, green, and red crystals, like the city was built inside of an enormous geode. Along one side of the cavern wall are hundreds of gears and wheels of all sizes like the ones in the piñata room. They are rotating and cranking at different speeds and directions. Sparks and electricity jump and hum between the wheels. They must be powering the entire city.

About a half mile from us, in the center of the city, is a mountainous Ferris wheel that nearly touches the ceiling. The squeaky music is coming from it as it turns like a tired bicycle wheel. Swarming lights twinkle up and down each one of its rotating spokes. Instead of
passenger cars at the end of each spoke, there are two-story rainbow-colored gingerbread houses.

On each side of the Ferris wheel are football field–sized carousels. They sparkle gold and silver. Like the Ferris wheel, instead of ornate horses and creatures to ride on, unicorn homes spin slowly around and around.

Between us and the distant Ferris wheel are rows and rows of one-, two-, and three-story gingerbread houses. Each one is decorated and designed differently. Narrow roads wind in between them with foot-long jelly beans dotting the streets like cobblestones. Running the length of each road are soccer ball–sized Christmas lights strung from candy canes as tall as telephone poles.

“Where are all the unicorns?” I whisper.

Mal peeks around. “They might be asleep; it was dusk when we went through the waterfall.”

It’s then that I notice a wall of Jolly Ranchers separates us from the city. The six-foot-high wall stretches from east to west along the outer edges of the city. An iron gate is fastened shut in the center of the wall and a lone unicorn guard paces behind it.

“We’re going to have to climb over the wall,” I say.

Mal takes a deep breath and opens her mouth to speak when I hear something coming from behind us. I grab Mal by the arm and hold my finger up to my lips. I mouth, “Listen.”

It’s quiet for several moments, and I’m about to let out a sign of relief when I hear it again. But this time it’s closer. It’s footsteps.

Mal’s eyes bug out, and panic leaps across her face.
I jerk my head for her to follow me. We tiptoe out of the tunnel and dive behind a green-colored crystal stalagmite that sticks out of the ground like a jagged coffin.

“Give me your other hound-retriever,” I say and lay Brilliance down. Mal tosses it to me, and I level it toward the shadowed tunnel exit. We wait. The rocky cavern floor digs into my knees, and they start to ache.

I turn to Mal and see a white flash. Something darts out of the tunnel. I fire the suction cup, but it soars high, missing its mark. I do a double take, and my chin drops to the floor. It’s Lightcrest Michaels.

He sees us and skids to a stop. He stares at us, his head cocked to the side and brow furrowed. He blinks once and a second time. He shakes his head like he’s trying to get rid of some pesky fly buzzing about him and then dashes toward us. He catches me by the front of my shirt.

He jerks me toward him, our faces inches apart. I smell sea foam and piña colada.

“What are you two hoodies doing here?” he hisses. His eyes wander, and he notices Brilliance. If confusion and surprise got together to make a record, the sound that came out of Lightcrest’s mouth would have been the opening chord to their song. The color is sucked from his face until it matches his gleaming white shirt. He looks at Brilliance and then at us and then at her again. He lets go of my shirt and pulls Brilliance into his arms.

“She’s okay, just unconscious,” Mal says.

The color in Lightcrest’s face returns as quickly as
it vanished. But it turns a shade of crimson fury that I hadn’t seen since I blew up my mom’s prize-winning hydrangeas … accidentally.

He clenches his jaw. “What is my daughter doing here? Why are you here? What happened?”

I splutter and try to answer all three questions at once, but it comes out a garbled mess.

Lightcrest shoots a fist toward my chest and catches hold of my shirt again. He gives me a shake. Mal jumps forward. “She volunteered to come with us. We’re trying to get the Scythe back. She hit her head on a rock trying to save me.”

He stares at Mal for a long moment and then gives me a shove backward. I topple over.

Lightcrest cradles Brilliance in his arms and brushes her golden hair from her face. He dips his head down to her ear and whispers something. He then lightly kisses her forehead. His eyes flicker up to Mal and me and narrow. He gets ready to say something but catches himself and shuts his mouth. He nods a few times and mumbles to himself like he’s carrying on an internal conversation.

Mal and I exchange nervous looks, and he lets out an exasperated sigh.

“I am beyond puzzled by how the three of you even found this place and got so far past the barriers. How did you do it?” Lightcrest asks.

Mal glances at me expectantly.

“We did it together,” I say. “We knew that we needed to get the Scythe back if our parents and all the other hoodies and halos were ever to get back from the Reapless.”

“So you just decided to load up, find the hidden unicorn city, steal back the Scythe, and bring it back home? That was your plan?” Lightcrest asks with one eyebrow raised.

A spark of anger flashes inside of me. Maybe because of how Lightcrest mocked what we were trying to do. Maybe it’s because he was involved with my dad’s incident with the
Queen Suzanne
. Whatever the reason may be, my teeth start to grind together.

“We got this far, didn’t we?” I say.

He snorts. “On pure dumb luck and a whole bunch of help from my exceptional daughter, I would wager.”

“She did help … a lot. But we did it together,” Mal pipes in.

He sneers. “Uh-huh, I’m sure. You hoodies always like to stretch the truth when it behooves you.” He turns and throws me a nasty look.

I open my mouth to fire back, but he waves his hands in front of both of us. “No matter, no matter, I don’t want to hear any more stories. I’m just going to have to rescue you along with retrieving the Scythe. When we get back home, we’ll squeeze the truth out of you.” Lightcrest sits up a bit taller so he can peek over the edge of the stalagmite toward the Jolly Rancher wall.

I wish I brought that wooden bat we used to break open the piñata. It would have looked amazing broken over the top of Lightcrest’s head.

“But how did
you
get here?” Mal asks, her face screwed up in confusion.

Lightcrest doesn’t turn to face us. He spits out over
his shoulder, “I had four bald eagles carry me. I followed the trail.”

I peek over at Mal and make a face. “See, we could have gotten bald eagles instead of those stupid pigeo—”

“No, how did you get back? You were at the Reapless,” Mal says.

Lightcrest keeps his back to us and doesn’t answer.

I do a double take and scrunch up my brow. “Yeah … I thought that all of you were stuck without the Scythe. How were you able to get back and none of the others?”

Lightcrest spins back around, a scowl on his face. “I don’t need to explain myself to a bunch of snot-nosed hoodies. I’m Lightcrest Michaels; I’m exceptional. You two wouldn’t understand what that means.”

Mal shakes her head. “But it doesn’t make any sens—”

“Listen, little hoodie, I was able to get back! I have my ways. You two are going to shut up and do what I tell you, right? Or after I get the Scythe, I’ll leave both of you behind. Got it?”

Mal nods a couple of times, her eyes fixated on the floor. I glare at him.

“This is what we are going to do. You two stay hidden here. Keep Brilliance safe. I’m going in there to find the Scythe. After I get it, I’ll come back and get us out of here. Understand?”

I open my mouth to speak, but he cuts across me. “I don’t want any more lip from you hoodies. Just keep your mouths shut and nod your heads,” he says.

Mal nods and I frown.

“Good. Now stay here,” he says and dashes forward to the wall. He scales up the Jolly Ranchers, throws his leg over the top, and disappears.