Elemental Fate (Paranormal Public Book 12) (18 page)

“Happy now?” I managed to ask Keegan, through lips that could barely move.

“E-c-s-t-a-t-i-c,” he said.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” said one of the Burble twins as they came trundling up. I couldn’t remember their names, so in my head I called them Idiot One and Dummy One. Their square faces and slack jaws gave them a dopey look, but I knew there was malice hidden beneath the stupidity.

I tried to shrug, but that forced me to remember that I couldn’t move.

“Stuck, are you? Who did that to you?” Idiot Burble asked. “Cat got your tongue? Cat got all of you stuck in the middle of the Public grounds? It’s not safe out here at night,” he said with a wolfish grin, as if to imply that he was what was dangerous. If I could have moved I would have scoffed. I knew that Keegan felt the same way.

This couldn’t last forever, I told myself. I tugged at my feet and hands, but they remained motionless.

“What should we do with them?” asked Dummy Burble.

“Um, we could dump water over their heads,” his brother replied.

“Wow, isn’t that creative,” scoffed his sibling.

“What are you two doing?” It was Professor Korba, fluttering up to us with his small face scrunched in concern. The Burbles faded away at the sound of his voice.

“Taking a minute,” said Keegan.

“Were women involved?” Professor Korba asked knowingly.

“Yes,” Keegan and I chorused.

“They are a delightful bunch, but I rather find that once they decide to lock you in place it is time to keep your distance,” Professor Korba said, still fluttering around as he examined us.

“Ah, here we are,” he said. He pulled a large supply of dust out of one of his pockets and threw it over us along with the observation that “What one pixie does, another can undo.”

As the dust touched us we were able to move again. I stumbled forward and Korba fluttered out of the way, saying mildly, “Let us proceed. I shall accompany you, lest we meet any more scary ladies along the path.”

“He isn’t even trying to be funny, is he?” Keegan muttered once we were walking again. My legs felt stiff, as if it had been hours since I’d moved them instead of minutes.

“I think we have ample evidence that pixies don’t have a great sense of humor,” I muttered.

“What’s the game plan?” Eighellie asked, appearing next to us. “Uh,” she said as she got a closer look, “you don’t look too great.”

“We’re staying away from Hannah,” said Keegan.

“I meant what’s the game plan for the Surround battle?” said Eighellie, looking confused.

“So did I,” said Keegan.

“Ah, Ms. Woodward, how are you this evening? Did you know that your friends here are afraid of pixies?” Professor Korba said.

There are three solutions to getting beaten in a fight. Don’t fight anymore, fight harder, or fight even harder. The Lightmares had chosen the last of the three options, which was why, a short time later, we could be found standing on the outskirts of Surround, staring in.

The second Cornerstone involved students fighting the Surround militia. At first I had thought we were supposed to attack the village, but that would have been pure craziness, and it didn’t turn out to be the plan. The Razorhawks were the ones who had come up with this particular Cornerstone, and they were going to be on the militia’s side.

When we got to the site of the Cornerstone, all the students who weren’t Razorhawks were lined up facing the town. The militia stood in a line outside the walls, facing us. Their faces were hidden in shadow, but I saw that they all held weapons of some kind.

“Did we bring weapons?” I whispered to Greek.

“No, we didn’t,” said the fallen angel. “I guess we should have raided our dorms and taken artifacts off the walls,” he muttered. He didn’t like the look of this Cornerstone any more than I did.

“That’s probably just what the Hunters wanted us to do,” I said. I thought about what might be in the basement of Cruor and shuddered at the idea of the vampires ever bringing it to light.

Students were now darting glances at each other; Eighellie was the only one who continued to be entirely uninterested in what her fellow students were doing. Instead, her eyes were flicking from one end of the line of Razorhawks to the other.

Before anyone could react in a practical way, President Valedication walked out between the lines and raised his arms, looking from one side to the other. I was expecting some kind of introduction, but there was none.

“Begin!” he cried. Then he strode to the sidelines, where many of public’s professors were standing watch.

As I watched him go, the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end and I felt a desperate urge to look behind me. I turned around and swallowed hard.

“Um, guys,” I said.

“We’re a little busy right now,” said Eighellie.

“Yeah, well, you’re about to be busier,” I said.

Frowning, my friend turned around and gasped. We had miscounted, or maybe more accurately not counted at all. Half the Razorhawks and half the militia had snuck around behind us and were closing in on the line of students. We had already let them get too close, and before we could react, the front line of militia started to race forward.

“We’re done for,” Greek yelled.

Because of my warning, the Lightmares had a split second more warning than the other teams. Without thinking, I plowed my hand into the ground, feeling the earth instantly come alive. We didn’t have a plan for this, but maybe we didn’t need one. Instantly the ground started to shake and rumble, and the Razorhawks attacking us from behind paused, now uncertain about what to do. They all knew the movement was coming from me, but that didn’t help them much, because they didn’t know how to counter it.

“Bring it,” I muttered. If I drew their attention it would give my teammates more time to deal with the weapons heading toward us from the other direction.

“It’d be nice if the place had some trees,” Keegan yelled as he turned around to fight the militia coming from the front.

“Or a dragon,” Eighellie added.

I had been looking forward for a long time to seeing Keegan talk to dragons. I imagined that he would do it in front of me someday, given that at some point we’d probably need them to save our lives. But it didn’t seem like right now was going to be the time.

Right now, my distraction of the Razorhawks didn’t last long. They sent blasts of raw power spiraling at me, forcing me to withdraw my hand from the earth, then tuck and roll to escape their blasts. Each attack blasted a hole into the ground and sent earth shattering upward. The Razorhawks surged forward, and I gasped when a handful of dirt hit me directly in the face.

The Hellcats were the most prepared team, and, as I was just realizing, our main competition in terms of doing well against the Razorhawks and the militia. Palmer, the white-haired fallen angel, started moving with grim excitement on his face. He was looking forward to beating the Razorhawks to a pulp.

A heavy hand on my shoulder made me turn. I sprang away from the next blast just in time, then darted forward again to place my hand on the earth, disrupting the nearest attack with my own power.

The hand had belonged to Greek, and when I thought I could safely turn away from the attack I raised my eyebrows at him.

“Let the Razorhawks and the Hellcats dwindle each other’s numbers, and then we’ll strike,” he advised.

I nodded, but I wasn’t sure how we were going to accomplish that. The Hellcats were actively trying to attack the Razorhawks, which was more than we were trying to do, but the Razorhawks were still attacking indiscriminately. We were in the line of fire, and if we didn’t defend ourselves we would lose immediately.

The Razorhawks kept throwing powerful bombs, exploding the earth and filling the air with smoke and fire. My throat burned and swelled with irritation and my eyes felt dangerously dry.

“Fall back,” Averett yelled.

“To where?” Eighellie demanded.

Before Averett could answer, three Razorhawks attacked Eighellie, but Averett was having none of it. She flew through the air to land by the darkness mage’s side, grabbed a Razorhawk by the throat, and tossed her out of the way. She didn’t have those muscles just for show.

In what I was realizing was her signature move, Eighellie kicked another one. The third turned and ran away.

Without thinking, I looked around for Palmer and found him fighting with a couple of Razorhawks, his movements practiced and perfect. I hadn’t seen Palmer in action before, but his eyes were blazing and his lip curled upward as his hands moved almost faster than I could follow.

“Regroup,” Greek yelled. The Lightmares didn’t need to be told twice. We quickly gathered together, drawing close to one another and pressing our backs together.

“What now?” Keegan yelled over his shoulder.

“No idea,” said Greek. “We just have to keep fighting!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the militia got involved. For the most part they had hung back, letting the youngsters do the work, but now they raced forward with their weapons out.

“Duck!” and then “Run!” filled the air, but we didn’t have a chance. Just as it had in the coach on our way to school that semester, all our magic stopped working. Eighellie nearly tripped and fell as we tried to get away, and it wasn’t until I grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet that I realized we were running right into the other Razorhawks. The Hellcats hadn’t dealt with them at all. In fact, they were just standing at the side, smirking, as we were caught in the winners’ net.

President Valedication held another de-briefing in which he was as terse as he’d been in the first, except that he was not critical of the winning team this time. The Hellcats were a close second, since the Razorhawks’ grading was harder. They had to mount an effective attack, but we still could have defended better. Dobrov looked like he barely knew what to say to the other teams. We had still been woefully unprepared.

“Maybe it’s that I’m used to seeing wars and battles, where you have to think quickly on your feet, and none of that happened last night,” he added thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s as much a failure of my leadership as it is a matter of student unpreparedness.” With that we were dismissed to our classes.

After a long time without any news, the Tabble had finally printed the results of the investigation into Ms. Cernal’s death.

“It’s interesting that it’s coming on the heels of the Cornerstone,” mused Eighellie. “It’s almost as if keeping news topics together was more important than reporting a story in a timely manner.

“I’m not the least bit surprised if that’s true,” I said. “What does the Tabble have to say, anyhow?”

Eighellie was reading quickly. She knew other students would be reading as well, and she always wanted to be the first to the punchline. Most of the time, she was. Soon after I asked her what the article said, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.

“Don’t ruin it for me,” Keegan ordered. He was also reading, but at a much slower pace.

Eighellie did as he asked and stayed silent, but she looked at me with her eyes huge. She couldn’t even sit still; she kept moving around on her seat in excitement. I told myself I could have read my own Tabble, but why bother when so many of my friends were excited to share the information with me?

“Wow!” Keegan also gasped as he looked up and his eyes met mine.

“What?” I demanded.

“An arrest was made,” he said. “One of the Surround militia.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. “No wonder the investigation took so long.”

“You can say that again,” said Eighellie.

I leaned over to read about it.

BREAKING NEWS

Late last night, during the hullabaloo of the Cornerstone competition, a singular and singularly embarrassing experience for most Paranormal Public students, an arrest was made in the death of Ms. Cernal.

You’ll remember that Ms. Cernal was the murdered TP office worker. She had gone to the TP office after hours to gather some of her things, soon after the miserable TP experiment was shut down. Her body was discovered after she failed to show up for a planned appointment. For months the investigation has been stalled due to a lack of information. Ms. Cernal had no outward signs of injury, and at first it was a mystery as to how she had died. To make matters worse, no one had seen a thing. The paranormal police aren’t revealing their secrets, but rest assured that they have since discovered who performed the terrible and dastardly crime of Ms. Cernal’s murder.

His name is Hamrock Hammock. He was a member of the local militia, a group sworn to PROTECT the paranormals, not kill them. The police aren’t revealing details or their sources, but they feel confident that they have indeed caught Ms. Cernal’s killer, so that her family can finally have some peace.

What this publication finds so unbelievable is that he was resident of the town. Theories abound, but not one of them considered the possibility that a militia man would turn on the very people he had sworn to protect.

Now the townsfolk of Surround can rest easy, knowing that there is no longer a murderer in their midst.

“I can’t believe it was one of the militia,” I said. “Think it was the creepy little one from last semester?”

“I hope so,” said Eighellie. “I mean, I guess I don’t really care, though, I just want whoever did it to be caught.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that they aren’t releasing any information about why they think he’s the one?” said Keegan.

“We’re at a paranormal university,” I said. “Nothing is strange to me anymore.”

“So jaded so young,” Eighellie tsk-ed.

I felt just the way I did after the first Cornerstone defeat; that is, the last thing I wanted to do was go to class. But Professor Heather had decided to administer a test that day, claiming to have forgotten that we might be tired from spending hours fighting for our lives the night before.

“Good morning, students,” she chanted when we walked in.

“Morning,” we mumbled, ignoring her bright smile.

“Please, everyone, take your seats,” she said. “I’m very excited for today’s exam.”

Once we were all sitting down, she went to the front of the bright room and started to explain what we had to do.

“Each of you will get seven objects. The interactions with the objects are what we’re after. Depending on how you put the objects together, different magics will result. Many of the combinations will have mundane results. Butterflies will dash around the room, the air will turn a light blue, that sort of thing. However, given what I heard about the poor magical performances of last night, I have one other aim. There will be two objects which, when they interact, will explode. It is how you deal with that explosion that will form the basis for your grade on your final exam. Now, I have it set up so that at each table, every student gets a different mix of objects. That way you can’t wait for one student to go first and be the scapegoat who ends up getting his face blown off.” She said it with a sort of chirp, as if it was the most cheerful thing in the world.

The students sat there stunned. Keegan leaned over me as if he was about to ask whether she had just said what he thought she had just said, but then he thought better of it. Obviously we all knew what she had just said.

“This is insane,” said Eighellie, eyeing the objects in front of her with distaste.

“Maybe she’s trying to teach us something about the objects on the Counter Wheel,” I mused.

“Not everyone cares about nothing but the Counter Wheel,” said Keegan. “Anyhow, it’s much less complicated that that. She’s trying to get us killed.”

The seven objects in front of me offered no clues to which combination would blow my face off. There was a pen, a coaster with a cat on it, a piece of chalk, a lightbulb, a quarter, a baseball cap, and an earring in the shape of a frog. I glanced at Keegan’s pile of random junk, just to confirm that it was as random as mine. It was.

Bemused by the bright light from the window, I sat wondering how we were going to figure any of this out. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one who was concerned. Eighellie raised her hand and asked, “Can you offer any clues as to the pairings?”

“But my dear, doesn’t that ruin the fun of it?” asked Professor Heather, her voice syrupy.

“I wasn’t under the impression that magic was fun. I thought it was life or death,” my friend responded.

“Oh, all the magic in the classroom is limitless amounts of good time. Enjoyment is the hallmark of academia,” said the professor.

“She’s talking crazy,” Keegan whispered. “She’s just talking totally crazy.” Keegan’s expression conveyed deep concern, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of the random objects or Professor Heather’s nonsense. As for me, I was concerned about both.

No one wanted to be the first to go, so we all sat motionless, staring at our objects. Professor Heather didn’t notice at first, since she was busy flitting around the room, straightening the already straight decorations.

Suddenly she skidded to a halt and looked around at us in wonder. “Ricky, why don’t you start?”

I swallowed hard. Not for lack of trying, but I couldn’t think of any excuse to get out of it. The eyes of a few other students were gleaming at me, clearly relieved that they weren’t the ones who had to go first.

I picked up the piece of chalk and the coaster. Considering both separately, I had no idea what to do. With all eyes on me I kept going, all I could think of to do being to scrape the chalk against the coaster. Nothing happened. I kept scratching and several students laughed.

“What are you doing?” Professor Heather asked me.

“Magic, according to you,” I muttered.

“What was that?” she said, leaning forward.

“Nothing,” I said.

I picked up the lightbulb and the earring shaped like a frog. The lightbulb didn’t light up, nor did the ring.

Okay, so four objects down. Three to go. I put the coin and the pen in the baseball cap. Again, nothing happened. I shook the hat a little and the coin jangled, but still nothing happened. Some of the students giggled.

I put the baseball cap down and looked up at Professor Heather. She was leafing through a stack of papers on her desk. When she heard silence she looked up questioningly.

“Well?” she said, looking back at me.

“Nothing happened,” I said. Well, the chalk created some dust, but that was about it.

“Magic,” she said. “I don’t believe that I saw any magic.”

“I didn’t think we had to make anything blow up,” I said.

Carefully, I picked up the white chalk and the pen and pressed their sides together. I felt really stupid, especially when the other students started to laugh even louder than they had before.

Then there was an explosion.