Sacrifices (19 page)

There was the sound of a shot.

Loch screamed.

Spirit turned back quickly, almost dropping the shotgun she held. She saw the shotgun in Loch’s hands slew around as if it was dragging him. It swung back and forth—as if he was fighting with it but was unable to drop it—and Loch didn’t look furious now. He looked terrified.

The other students holding shotguns shifted uncertainly, milling about in place and bumping into each other. They weren’t quite scared enough to run—or maybe they were as scared as Spirit was of the shotguns they held accidentally going off. While everyone was still shifting nervously, Loch stopped moving.

The shotgun in his hands was pointing straight at her.

He’s going to shoot me,
Spirit realized numbly. She wanted to run, but she was frozen in place.

Then …

There was the sound of a shot.

Spirit screamed and clutched the shotgun in her arms, too terrified to drop it.

Everything happened so fast.

Beckett Green jumped in front of her. The load of heavy steel shot struck him, knocking him backward. He fell against her. She staggered backward, and would have fallen if someone behind her hadn’t caught her.

Mr. Green took a step, then fell to his knees. Then he collapsed, facedown, on the ground. Everyone was screaming.

Loch, Loch, what about Loch—

She looked up just in time to see Loch take his shotgun by the barrel and swing it at Ovcharenko as hard as he could.

*   *   *

Spirit was huddled on one of the couches flanking the fireplace in the Main Hall. She’d chosen the one facing the oak tree that formed the central pillar of the space. Sitting with her back to it—now that she knew what it was—gave her the creeps. Muirin and Addie both seemed to agree; they were sitting on either side of her. Burke was standing in front of the fireplace, not looking at any of them.

Only Loch was absent.

Loch was in Doctor Ambrosius’s office with Bethany Mitchell and Thomas Carter, the two detectives from the Sheriff’s Office who’d investigated—or
not
investigated—the disappearance of Nick and Camilla last October. Spirit had been angry then, thinking they just didn’t care. Now she was pretty sure they’d been bespelled into dropping the case.

Spirit knew Addie and Burke—if not Muirin—had places they were supposed to be right now, but as soon as the word had swept through the school about the disaster on the shooting range, they’d shown up. They’d been waiting with Loch when Spirit finished giving her statement. She’d kept it brief:
I was waiting to shoot. I heard someone yell. Then Mr. Green jumped in front of me.

It was the truth. It just wasn’t all of it.

“Why couldn’t someone save him?” Addie asked, her voice nearly a whisper. “A Greater Healing can do everything short of raising the dead.”

“There wasn’t anything to Heal,” Muirin said flatly. “His body started dissolving almost immediately—and what it dissolved into was sticks and mud.”

It was true—or at least it was what Spirit thought she’d seen before someone had thrown a tarp over the body and hustled them all into the gym. (This was Oakhurst; even when you saw something, you couldn’t believe your eyes.)

Burke winced slightly at Muirin’s words. Spirit felt sorry for him and angry with him at the same time. He’d lost a friend. But he shouldn’t have had …
that
friend.
But maybe Burke was right and I’m wrong. Mr. Green sacrificed himself to save my life … I think. Would a Shadow Knight have done that?

“That isn’t possible,” Addie said, shaking her head. “It must have been…”

“An illusion?” Muirin asked. Her tone was mocking, but Spirit could tell it was a put-on. “Ads, Dave Griffin came and got me to talk Anastus down off the ledge—and incidentally keep him from going after Loch, you can thank me later.
I saw the body.
You know a Gift can’t fool someone with the same Gift. I might not be able to see through an illusion, but I’d know it was there. That means—”

Suddenly the door to Doctor Ambrosius’s office opened. Loch stumbled out, white-faced, looking as if he’d been crying. He saw the four of them—his face twisted in revulsion, and he turned to head off the other way. But he wasn’t fast enough. Burke was across the expanse of the Main Hall before he’d taken more than a few steps. He put a hand on Loch’s arm, and Spirit thought Loch might have shrugged it off if the two detectives hadn’t come out next. Ms. Corby was with them. She looked over at Spirit, Muirin, and Addie, giving them all a venomous glare.

“Mr. Spears, you can’t blame yourself for any of this. Mr. Green’s death was a terrible accident, but that was all it was—an accident,” Detective Mitchell said. She waited a moment, but if she was expecting a reply from Loch, it didn’t come. Detective Mitchell shook her head and walked quickly after her partner.

*   *   *

Spirit was on her feet before she thought. As she neared Burke and Loch, she could hear what Loch was saying. “—I’m fine. If you want to be a little friend to all the world, there are a number of more suitable—” He broke off as he saw Spirit. “Is there any possibility you’ll all go away?”

“Look, I have to talk to all of you,” Muirin said. “It’s important, and it can’t wait.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not really in any mood to hear about your new friends and your new clothes right now,” Loch snapped waspishly.

Burke looked irritated, obviously thinking Muirin was just trying to make herself the center of attention at the worst possible time. Even Addie—Spirit glanced toward her—looked long-suffering.

Muirin looked at all of them and her face lost all expression. “Fine. See you guys around,” she said coldly. She turned to walk away.

For an instant, Spirit wondered if they should just let her go. Was Muirin taking advantage of Loch’s grief and misery to make another pitch for the Shadow Knights? But … no. If that were the case, she wouldn’t have asked to talk to all of them.
And didn’t Ms. Groves say the whole place is full of “don’t think” spells? This is the first time Muirin’s asked for a meeting since before we defeated the Wild Hunt.

“I think we should listen to her,” Spirit said quickly. She turned and ran after Muirin.

“Wait, Murr!” she said, catching up to Muirin. “You’re right. If you say it’s important, I believe you.”

“Why should I bother?” Muirin said. Her voice was harsh, but her expression was lost and unhappy.

“Because we’re friends,” Spirit said. “Because we believe each other. Because we believe
in
each other.”
That’s what faith is,
Spirit realized in surprise.
And if we don’t have faith in each other, who will?
“If we don’t all stick together, what’s going to happen to us?”

To her relief, Muirin let her turn her around and walk them both back to the others. “This is a good time, really. Nobody’s going to think much about the five of us being together right now,” Spirit added.

“Right,” Muirin sniped. “We can go off and practice our Care Bear Stares and that’ll give them time to figure out how they’re going to off you next time. Because if you can’t see the way this was supposed to play out today was with you dead and Loch killing himself—or
supposedly
killing himself—in remorse, you’re even stupider than most people from Indiana.”

“Hey,” Burke said, hurt.

“Okay, so was that it? Are we done now, Muirin?” Addie asked coldly.

Muirin gave her a sneering look that didn’t go past her lips. Behind the sneer, she was terrified. Spirit saw the fear in her eyes. “We haven’t even started yet. Hope your fancy company makes a lot of Androstenediol. You’ll get even richer. Come on.”

She stalked off, clearly expecting them to follow.

“Androstenediol?” Burke said blankly. “What’s that treat?”

“Radiation poisoning,” Addie answered.

*   *   *

It was only the fact that whatever had happened on the Skeet Range had knocked Breakthrough for a loop that let the five of them slip away from their watchers so easily. Muirin led them to the basement level under the classroom wing. It was a part of the school Spirit had been in only rarely, because it held the soundproofed magic practice rooms where you practiced your magic if you happened to have some. If one of the rooms was occupied, the light over the door was red. Today none of the lights was lit.

“Come on,” Muirin said, leading them to the room at the end. When they were all inside, Muirin picked up a heavy wooden bar and slid it through the braces on the door.

“I didn’t think there was a room in the entire school you could lock,” Spirit said in surprise.

“This is the practice room for Jaunting and Apportation,” Muirin said. “You don’t
want
to be able to open the door accidentally.”

Spirit looked around curiously. There was no furniture. The floor was covered with heavy rubber matting, and the walls … looked as if people had been throwing things at them. Heavy things. Hard. A lot.

She leaned against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor. Burke lowered himself to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. Addie and Loch stood.

“As you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time with our new Breakthrough overlords,” Muirin said. “But what you don’t know is that Teddy Rider and Anastus Ovcharenko don’t get along at all. I’ve been using that. I flirt with Teddy, steam starts coming out of Anastus’s ears.”

As she talked, Muirin paced back and forth, practically bouncing. Her tone of voice was chirpy and upbeat, as if this was all a big joke, but looking at her, Spirit knew she had been right about what had been behind that sneer. Muirin wasn’t just unhappy.

Muirin was terrified, too afraid to stand still.

“I don’t care—” Addie began.

“Wait!” Spirit said quickly. “Addie, you owe it to Muirin to listen. You know you do.”

Addie nodded shortly, her black hair swinging forward over her face to hide her set expression.

“And I wouldn’t bother to tell you all this—since you’re so fabulously interested in my life and all that—except for the fact you’d probably want to know how I ended up all on my own in The Fortress.”

“‘Alone’ is the part I have trouble with,” Loch said.

“I love you too,” Muirin shot back. “But listen you guys: Mark and everyone keeps pretending there’s a lot of work still to do on The Fortress. They’re lying. It’s almost finished. And it really is a fortress—it’s set up for people to live in there, at least for months—maybe years. And I know why. You remember how none of us could figure out what Mordred and the Shadow Knights wanted?”

“Yes,” Spirit said quickly, before anyone else could speak. “Because nothing they’ve been doing has seemed to make any sense.”

Muirin gave her a grateful look.

“Get to the point,” Loch snapped wearily.

“They’re going to start a war,” Muirin says. “A
big
war. Missiles, bombs. Like their
game,
for god’s sake:
Final Battle: The Rise of the Black Dragon
!” She plucked a copy of the advance CD out of her jacket and waved it.

“Oh, Muirin. You’re getting this out of a computer game?” Addie said reproachfully.

“No!” Muirin said. “They put it
in
their game—you’ve met Mark, do you really think he wouldn’t take the chance to gloat?—but they’re working to make the game scenario really happen! Breakthrough is hacking its way into the computers that launch the missiles. There are missile silos all over this part of the state, and some of them still have missiles in them. And before you ask, Smart Boy,” she said to Burke, “they’re going to hack the software so they can’t be called back or destroyed in flight.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Addie said. But she didn’t sound as convinced as she had a moment before.

“Okay,” Muirin answered, “
you
come up with a good reason for there to be stacks of Department of Defense documents all over Hacker Heaven and the whole place set up like the Pentagon. Once they crack the encryption, it’s all over.”

“It can’t be,” Burke said, sounding sick. “You must be wrong, Murr. You—”

“No,” Spirit said quickly. “Muirin’s right. We wanted to know what Mordred wants, and this is it. Muirin, what’s that saying you’re always quoting? About technology and magic?”

“‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,’”
Muirin said. “Arthur C. Clarke.”

“So … any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology,
too,
” Spirit said. “Burke, you’ve always said if the Outside World knew about Oakhurst and Magic, they’d grab everyone they could and make them be soldiers for them, and we wouldn’t have much choice. Because there’s a lot of Outside World, and it’s full of technology, and—if we’re the grand total of all the Magicians in the world, we’re outnumbered.”

“Right,” Burke answered cautiously. “The side with the most guys usually wins. Basic tactics.”

“But Mordred’s been stuck in a tree since the fall of Camelot. He doesn’t care about the modern world, and—like
you
said, Muirin—he can’t possibly declare himself King of Earth. Not the way it is now. But if he’s the only one with real power…”

“Then Magic replaces Technology, and Mordred and the Shadow Knights are the only ones with Magic,” Loch said, sounding horrified. “And they rule … everything.”

The silence that followed Loch’s words was heavy with fear—and belief. Burke stretched out his free arm, and Muirin stumbled toward him gratefully. She sat down beside him and he wrapped his arm around her, hugging her.

Loch crossed the room and sat down with his back to the door. His face looked bruised, and he rubbed his eyes. “They can do it,” he whispered, as if to himself. “A Kenning Mage, a good one, one that’s a computer expert too, that’s all they need. What he can’t hack, he can magic his way into, and what magic can’t do, hacking can. Add a little luck, and they’re in.”

“Can’t we
do
something?” Addie asked, shaking her head desperately. “It’s a construction site—there has to be dynamite around. If you blow up their computers…”