Field training: Day 48, hour 7
“The ungodly have taken over the castle and decimated the entire town.”
Rain poured around us.
We stood on a gabled bridge that arched dramatically toward the ivy-covered palatial structure. A castle. With its arched windows and breathtaking spirals, it was like walking into the pages of a storybook.
But the dark-gray clouds, cold rain, and monsters inside made it a dark fairy tale.
I cracked my neck back and forth. Inhaled deeply and exhaled the tension that had returned as soon as Jinx and Sadie left a week ago.
Fuck, I missed them.
Jinx’s sarcastic voice countered in my head, “How exhilarating. You have attachment issues. Groundbreaking. Now concentrate.”
I rubbed at my temples.
Among the dark thoughts, monster, and now Jinx’s voice, my head was getting crowded.
My overactive imagination was officially going to be the death of me.
“At this rate, that’s not what’s going to kill you,” Jinx replied with a chuckle.
A lump stuck in my throat as I breathed erratically.
If the moon goddess was the voice in Sadie’s head, is it possible…
No! I pinched my hand and let the pain center me. The odds of both of us having voices in our heads were basically zero.
Sadie was chosen by the gods.
I was just crazy. Which I was cool with.
Instead of panicking like a wimp, I concentrated on Lothaire, who was handing out daggers and giving instructions.
“I want to see fucking improvement. Last battle, you all performed well individually, so now I want to see strategy. Teamwork.”
Lothaire looked at us with something that resembled pride.
Ew. He was making it weird.
Lothaire’s expression darkened like he’d read my mind. “If you fail to improve, we will spend seventy-two hours in the Black Ocean.”
There he was.
“GO!” Lothaire bellowed and pointed to the castle that was allegedly overrun with ungodly.
Hopefully he had the wrong address.
We jogged in formation up the arched bridge to the grand castle entrance. Unfortunately, the doors were thrown wide open, so there was nothing to slow our entrance.
“Stop.” Malum held up his hand, and we stopped.
Two dozen elegantly dressed people sat at long dining tables. Only a handful. This was nothing.
Fireplaces roared at the four corners of the room. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought we’d interrupted a royal feast.
An elegant soiree.
Women were draped in decadent shawls that sparkled in ruby shades, with crepe veils that covered their faces. Men wore similar clothes, except their shawls were thicker and covered their necks, their veils only covering their eyes.
Rain slammed against the castle walls.
Thunder rumbled, and the pitch was deeper than during any storm I’d heard before. It was deep and rolling like a cornered animal howling.
At the tables, the skin that was exposed beneath the gorgeous clothes was shockingly pale. Through the veils, flashes of yellow glinted.
Wait, there’s no food at the table.
An irritating scent lingered in the air, and it reminded me of brass.
No, not brass.
My subconscious brain put the pieces together before I fully processed what we’d walked into.
Copper.
Scorpius flexed his arm, shoulder tensed as he prepared to throw the first dagger like he always did when the ungodly were feigning domestic bliss.
I grabbed his forearm and whispered, “No.”
Startled, he narrowed his eyes at me and scowled down like he was debating stabbing me instead.
I breathed out as quietly as I could. “Vampyres.”
Pale eyes widened as he cocked his head and listened to the silence. Malum shifted toward Horace and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
Horace breathed in deeply, nostrils flaring wide, and his yellow eyes began to glow.
He nodded slowly.
Malum’s posture straightened, and for a second, it seemed like his muscles expanded.
Prebattle jitters transformed into something more sinister as we all processed the danger.
Eight of us against two dozen vampyres.
All we could use were daggers.
Even if they weren’t soldiers, we were extremely outnumbered. If we charged forward like usual, they’d beat us with their speed and numbers.
Vampyres were disturbingly fast and possessed unmatched strength.
None of us so much as blinked as we tried to process just what the fuck we were going to do.
A woman tilted her head to the side as she stared at us. She pushed her chair back slowly, and the loud scraping sound was akin to a battle cry.
My heart raced with such intensity that it hurt my chest.
We need a plan. Think, Aran. Fucking think.
Static.
Now my head was dead silent.
My hands spasmed around my daggers as I held my breath from fear.
Another vampyre stood up and slowly pushed back their heavy chair. One by one, they all stood.
We watched.
“Each of us must take down two-to-three vampyres,” Malum whispered.
That wasn’t a plan; that was farting into the wind and praying for results.
We need a plan. Think, Aran!
As more vampyres stood, the monster in my head whimpered. I didn’t know if it was because it was scared or excited.
Jinx’s spoke, and I nearly shot out of my skin at her booming voice, “Let your monster out, but keep control.”
The made-up voices in my subconscious were becoming a little too sentient.
“I can’t,” I whispered out loud.
The first time I’d let my monster out, I’d lost consciousness.
The second time, I’d kept consciousness but had lost all self-control and had gotten my fucking arm ripped off.
“DO IT, YOU CANNIBAL!” Jinx ordered.
I’m not a fucking cannibal. Agitation coursed through me, hot and bright, and my vision wavered at the edges as her words spurned me to act rashly.
I freed my monster.
As I licked my lips, the tang of copper in the air was delicious, and I vibrated on the balls of my feet with excitement.
I was going to kill them all.
Slaughter them with my bare hands.
Bathe in their gore.
Wait… Something irked at me like there was something I had to do.
I smiled as I stared at my future kills and planned just how I was going to snap their necks. Dancing back and forth, I buzzed with excitement.
Malum narrowed his eyes as he glared down at me.
Motherfucker thought he was in charge. What a fucking joke. I was going to show him how to lead.
Lead. That’s it. I need a plan.
Plan to snap their bones. That’s the plan.
No. Need something more.
I bounced back and forth faster. The tension was about to snap. I could practically taste how fun it was going to be.
Concentrate.
Four fireplaces. Twenty-six vampyres, which meant twenty-six ungodly. Fifty-two total. Eight of us. Sixteen daggers.
One massive foyer.
Five doors.
If they spread us out, we were 100 percent dead.
Backing up slowly, I inched away from the other recruits, back toward the metal box next to the door.
“Get back here, Egan,” Malum whispered harshly.
“What are you doing?” John mouthed as he turned to me with wide eyes.
I punched backward, and everyone in the room jumped as the massive metal door slammed down with a crash.
“Five of us guard the doors. Three of us break the tables,” I whispered with urgency as the vampyres started to inch toward us.
They weren’t completely mindless, but they also weren’t completely present. Their yellow eyes had a green tint. The ungodly were inside them.
“Why would we break the tables?” Malum whisper-shouted like I was an idiot.
“Fire.”
Recognition sparked in his silver eyes.
John whispered back, “What are you talking ab—”
Malum held up his hand and cut him off. “He’s right. Orion, Scorpius, and I will break the tables. The rest of you grab a door. No one leaves.”
Everyone nodded, but Scorpius snarled quietly, “If everything burns, then how the fuck are we supposed to avoid the fire?”
I shrugged. “Don’t be a pussy?”
Yep. He loved that.
“I’ve got this door,” John whispered as he backed up in front of the massive entranceway.
“GO!” Malum bellowed, and his voice cracked through the room like a whip. Everything erupted.
I threw my head back and laughed as I sprinted toward the door at the far side of the room.
A vampyre slammed a chalice against my head.
Slipping in the spilled blood, I slammed both my daggers into his eyeballs and fell to the ground atop him.
Rip.
An ungodly threw me backward, and I just managed to pull my daggers from the vampyre’s corpse. It stalked toward me with clacking pincers.
Come to momma. I sprinted at the creature, launched myself at its neck, and used all my strength to saw through its neck and decapitate it.
Vampyres screamed, the ungodly bellowed, and tables splintered.
It was beautiful. Like art.
Pumping my arms and legs, I sprinted toward the door, chucking the severed ungodly’s head at a vampyre like it was a weapon.
Running as fast as I could, I wasn’t able to stop my momentum, and I slammed into the metal door.
A few feet away, Horace was already posted in front of the other exit and fighting two vampyres.
“Let’s fucking go!” He grinned at me as he sliced them to shreds, his dagger moving impossibly fast.
“Fuck yeah!” I smiled back as a vampyre launched itself at me.
That was the last thing we spoke.
For hours.
Backs against our doors, we fought the vampyres and ungodly that tried to escape from them. Only problem was the stronger vampyres didn’t die easily.
Six hours into the battle, most of the tables had been smashed to smithereens and were piled up in the center of the room in a bonfire.
The room was unbearably hot.
I would have been amazed that the three kings had managed to smash wood while fighting off the ungodly, but I was too focused on protecting my door.
The blaze pushed all the vampyres to the outskirts of the room, and they charged at us, mostly because they had nowhere else to go.
Now that the blaze was set, the three kings had joined John guarding the main entrance, where the most vampyres were trying to escape from.
I’d been dancing with a particularly fast vampyre for the last hour, and frustration made me want to scream.
Red-and-orange flames leaped in a wall behind him.
He slammed a foot into my stomach, and before I could recover, I was tossed away from my door. NO!
Quicker than I could follow, Horace sprinted over and slammed the door shut with the vampyre halfway through.
He banged the metal door back and forth until the vampyre’s head popped like a grape.
“SWITCH!” Horace shouted.
I was a few feet from his door, and I threw myself at it. I got there before a vampyre could realize it was unguarded.
Thick smoke made it hard to see.
My lungs burned.
“Nice work. I like your use of the door!” I yelled and gave Horace a thumbs-up, then coughed as smoke filled my lungs.
“Thanks, man! Nice jab!” Horace complimented as I disemboweled an ungodly with one yank of my knife.
He yelled, “Try this!” Then he launched himself off the door and used the height to stab through the top of a vampyre’s head.
“How about this?” Springboarding myself off the door, instead of jumping downward, I dove over the top of an ungodly and sliced its head off from the back using both my daggers.
The head rolled beside me.
“Fucking sick, I like the way you move!” Horace grinned, eyes bulging out of his head like a maniac as he was surrounded by multiple vampyres.
“Whoever kills the most, wins!” I shouted back. “I’m at seven.”
“I’m at six! It’s on, Aran. You’re going down!”
Four hours later, I had twelve kills, and Horace had thirteen.
I was covered in sweat, hair stuck to my forehead and nape. My lips tasted like salt and blood, and my vision was nearly nonexistent as smoke irritated my eyes.
“NOOOOO!” I fell to my knees with horror as I realized what had just happened.
The room was silent, and no one charged at us.
“Fuck yeah!” Horace punched the air, then licked at the blood coating his hands. “I WON!”
“Stupid fucking ungodly.” I kicked at a dead body.
I should have won the challenge. I’m stronger than Horace. It was mine to win.
“Loser,” Horace mocked as he held his finger and thumb up in an L shape on his forehead.
I launched my sweaty body at him but slipped in the gore and ended up throwing us both to the ground.
“You suck, Aran.” He pushed guts into my face, and I growled as I threw blood back at him.
“What the fuck are you two doing? Are you serious right now? How fucking old are you?” Malum roared.
He stood in front of the flames, with his own shooting off his shaved head like a dark creature from a forbidden realm.
“Get up,” he ordered through gritted teeth.
Horace shoved more gore in my face, so I grappled with him until I had him in a choke hold.
Abruptly, there was pressure on my nape. Malum had pulled me off Horace by my neck.
“Dude, chill. We were just playing.” Horace wiped green-and-red sludge off himself.
Malum’s silver eyes were molten steel as he pulled my face closer to his. “I gave you an order, Egan, and you disobeyed me.”
I rolled my eyes and kicked at his solar plexus. “Put me fucking down.”
“Kick me again, and I’ll throw you into the fire.”
I kicked him.
The bastard didn’t pick Horace up by his neck and shake him around.
Flames leaped higher off his head until Malum smoldered.
I totally called him on his dare.
“Put Aran down!” John shouted across the room.
I fell to the ground as Malum complied.
Horace walked up and threw his arm around my shoulder. “Great fighting with you.”
“Same.” I smiled up at him as Zenith opened the main door and we all headed out into the rain.
Lothaire was standing on the bridge, waiting for us.
“I was wrong about you. You’re not weak like I first thought,” Horace said thoughtfully.
“I know.”
Horace grinned down at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
Just like that, I made my second friend at Elite Academy.
