Demon Accords 8: College Arcane (32 page)

My training with Chris and the demon-fighting
crew had been short but jam-packed. I met the telepathic vampire,
Nika, on Thursday, and spent most of my training time learning
about defending my mind although class ended with more sparring.
Friday, they made me use all my glyphs, individually and all at the
same time. I’d worried about the fate my aunt had predicted.

“For those warlocks, who came into their
tattoos in combat and only knew combat, that makes sense. It
actually afflicts regular soldiers and warriors, too. Adrenaline
junkies. But if you are trained to use the glyphs and use them in
practice with care and thought, you shouldn’t have a problem.
Somehow, Declan, I doubt you are headed for a life of boredom,”
Tanya said after my last workout ended.

We were all standing on the rafters of the
second floor. Suddenly, three sections of wooden beams near our
feet snapped and shattered as a gigantic furry head and shoulders
burst up from the first floor. “Awasos! You’ve broken my floor,”
Tanya admonished.

“He’s hungry and impatient,” Chris laughed.
“Me too. Let’s go get breakfast.”

The waitress and the customers in the diner
had bugged out when they realized that God’s Hammer and the woman
the media was calling the Night Angel were sitting among them with
a massive wolf that was just as famous, along with some scruffy
college kid. It would be only a matter of minutes before the media
arrived.

“I was glad to find out that you came back to
check out the witch murders,” I mentioned as Chris and I shoveled
eggs and hash into our mouths.

“Well, we were here anyway. Might as well
check it out,” Tanya said, sipping water while she read the local
paper. A middle-aged lady at the counter was blatantly snapping a
picture on her iPhone. I glanced at Chris and raised my eyebrows,
flicking my eyes at the woman. Maybe I should whammy her camera? He
shook his head.

“You were here anyway? I thought you came
back from Europe to find out about the murders?” I asked.

“No, we came back to train you. Katrina told
us about what happened and we had to make sure you were okay and
also that it wouldn’t happen again,” Chris said.

“But, what about the demon outbreaks? People
probably died?” I asked.

“They happen… maybe less often, but they
still happen. We cover the ones we can, but we can’t be everywhere.
We have to prioritize,” Chris said, frowning.

The waitress was hovering nearby, clearly
wanting to approach the table, but as our coffees had just been
filled and extra toast and bacon delivered, she didn’t have a valid
reason.

“I think,
zayka,
that Declan is
feeling that we should put demon outbreaks over his safety and
wellbeing,” Tanya said, her blue-blue eyes spearing me over the top
of the paper.

“Oh. Well. I see. Listen, Declan, I don’t
think we’ve been super clear with you. The idea for Arcane came
about because of you and Caeco. First, because of what you did for
Toni, but then later, when you and your aunt made the necklaces, we
realized how very unique the two of you are,” he said, going so far
as to put his fork down. “The world’s most powerful witch is a
young male who can talk to computers. Have you thought about how
valuable that makes you? To witches, to supernatural groups, to
entire governments? We want you trained and educated to be able to
protect yourself. We also are dead set on winning you to our team.
I… we feel that the future holds other dangers that are just as
nasty as demons, maybe more so. We think you might hold some of the
answers to them.”

“Oh,” was all I could come back with. “What
is it you fear?”

“A number of things, most of
them for another time. But one thing is we think that ritual murder
in New York involved
Sorrow.
”

It took me a second to realize he meant the
book and not the emotion.

‘Sos’s wolf head popped out from under our
table, massive and furry, and lay on the vinyl seat beside me. Huge
brown eyes implored me and my hand automatically grabbed three
strips of bacon from the side order and dropped them into his
mouth.

“He’s marked you as a soft touch, you know?”
Chris commented.

“He is alarmingly large and
toothy and I want him to think friendly thoughts about me,” I said.
“Why do you think
Sorrow
is involved?”

“Stacia’s witch friend said the spell traces
we found were written in old German. As far as we know, the suspect
witch doesn’t know German of any kind.”

“You think the book is controlling the
witch?” I asked.

“Could it?”

I thought back to my brief
exposure to the
Book of Darkest
Sorrow.
I couldn’t stop a shudder. “Yeah.
Yeah, I think it could.”

“So that’s one small item. The Garth
Administration is another. Also, I don’t trust the Fae, there are
wacko organizations popping up all over, and the Coven has been
extraordinarily quiet. So there’s plenty to consider,” he said.

He wouldn’t talk about his other fears but
steered the conversation to the school and our classes. Finally,
when the media arrived, we hit the car and they dropped me off at
Arcane, promising to be back soon and I, in turn, promised to have
the drawings for the anti-restraint tattoos done.

My friends and I did venture out on the mean
streets of Burlington both Friday and Saturday night. Despite
failing at crashing any parties Friday, we persevered and got into
a party for a couple of hours on Saturday. It was pretty much a
letdown. The frat guys running it had been hammered by the time we
got there and were happy to let four pretty girls into their
domain. They weren’t as excited about letting Mack, T.J., Justin,
or myself in. It was Jetta who rescued us, sliding into a very
surprising persona, effortlessly distracting the upperclassmen by
flirting at a professional level. I hadn’t seen her put on sex
appeal before—none of us had. It was… effective. Till Mack leaned
over and whispered in my ear, “How do you think we lured all those
werewolves away from their pack?”

Instantly, the allure was gone, replaced by a
healthy respect for her lethal abilities. She really was the
perfect roommate for Caeco… who was studying her performance a
little too closely. Uh oh.

After discovering that the party was a bunch
of drunken fools, we left.

I returned to Jenks’s class on Monday
morning, coming back as he began to introduce knife techniques. He
ignored me, I worked with Mack, and Delwood stayed away. But now it
was Wytchwar time and while my aunt was teaching the other kids how
to control their spanking new golems, the witch girls were putting
me through a hell of a rematch.

“Flank him!” someone shouted, the high pitch
of the voice making me think it was Michelle. The odd thing about
running avatars is the double echo of senses: both your own and
your avatar’s.

The witch pack had me on the run, climbing as
fast as I could for the top of the concrete ridge. They were way
more threatening with their new dirt girls.

Double D made it to the top of the concrete
and I spun him around. Below me, the feminoid forms the witches had
chosen scrambled after me, two pairs spreading out to either side
to follow Michelle’s suggestion.

I dropped a rock from my vine vest, but the
dirt girls split apart and let it fall past them. Good tactic, but
when their blank dirt faces peered upward, most likely feeling good
about avoiding the spelled rock, they found another stone already
in their midst. This one took a page from the reactive shield
spell, exploding kinetic energy outward and bowling three of them
over. Not wasting a second, I jumped back down the slope I’d just
climbed and ran through the gap in their lines and all the way to
the bottom till my forward progress was blocked by the little river
and its terminal pool. During the last week, all of the snow and
ice had fully melted and the resulting water had been pulled by the
water witches’ spells into the lake and river. It was kind of a
raging torrent now, at least from Double D’s perspective. Going
around would slow me enough for the flankers, who were running
downhill after me, to catch up. I had to cross, but my dude
couldn’t jump that far.

I dropped my last reactive rock on the edge
of the river, backed up, and ran. My final step was onto the
spell-encrusted stone and an instant later, I was sailing through
the air and over the river. Over a decent portion of the remaining
landscape as well.

I crash landed right in what everyone was
calling Tornado Alley. The Air girls had spelled it to form a
constant series of mini-dust devils that could rip a dirt dude
apart.

Pulling my dude out of the sand, I turned to
face into a dirt-and-pebble-nado that would have eaten me for
lunch. Double D executed a rapid exit dive and rolled upright in
time to dodge a second tornado coming from the other side. A fast
burst of speed and I was out of the Alley and headed for the finish
line. Then something hit Double D from behind and knocked me down.
I stood up and looked at the ground behind me. A stone, pebble
really, except to Double D, it looked like a boulder. A glance up
showed two more in flight, headed right for me. I dodged left and
right, missing one and getting clipped by another. Some of my dirt
was gone, knocked off by the stones and by the rules of the game, I
couldn’t fix D until the match was finished. I turned and jogged
forward, one leg showing way too much brass. Water sprayed across
me, hard enough to tear off dirt and I turned, ready to cry foul
only to find two of the dirt girls standing on the far edge of
Tornado Alley, lobbing balls of water from little plastic baggies
tied to their hips. They threw the water blobs at two more gals,
who were holding up dirt hands. A strong wind came off those little
palms and blasted the water into streams like little fire hoses.
People had been doing some out of the box thinking.

I ran on, my pace slowed by the eroded dirt.
The gals were now all crossing the tornado section as two of the
Air witches held up rune-carved clay hands that stopped the
cyclones in their tracks.

Dirt was falling off in clumps and my left
leg was dragging, but I was almost there. Ten more hobbling paces
and I reached the stone that marked my goal. The rest of the class
who had stopped to watch either yelled their pleasure at my win or
Bronx cheered if they were more inclined to favor the witches.
Double D fell down in a heap as I pulled my consciousness back from
him and took a deep breath. Damn. These ladies were tough and
learning way too fast.

“If yer done wit yer little rematch, Declan,
I could use some help with these others,” my aunt said.

A few of the kids had their golems in motion,
Delwood surprisingly one of them. Most of the class, however, was
looking frustrated and upset, their clay avatars standing
motionless in front of them.

Darina, the foreign werewolf, crossed her
arms across her chest and looked angry.

“These things don’t work,” she said with a
slight accent. “You made them wrong.”

I glanced at Delwood, who
was making his dude dance around like a drunken clown, then I
looked back at the werewolf girl. She was maybe sixteen and always
wore a slightly snotty expression, at least whenever I had seen
her. Jetta called it
resting bitch face
syndrome
. It reminded me of someone from
Castlebury High School, an old nemesis of mine who had once been an
even older friend. He got that look when he was out of his element
and even when he was… scared.

“You and your brother are from the Carpathian
Pack, is that right?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she sneered.

I nodded and looked back at her avatar.
“Someone told me your pack is renowned for your abilities to scent
track and for leading into battle,” I said.

“It is commonly said,” she answered. Behind
her, Janek, her older brother, frowned at me. Most of the rest of
the class was now paying attention as well.

“Touch your avatar with your finger and
breathe in through your nose,” I said.

She frowned at me and looked at her brother
uncertainly. I nodded at both of them. “Go on, just try it. Tell me
what you smell.”

Brusquely, she unfolded her arms and with a
put-upon sigh, reached one finger to touch her avatar. Either
unconsciously or otherwise, she happened to touch it right where
its nose would be if any of them had noses. Then she took a
breath.

Surprise was chief among the emotions that
crossed her face, wonder and maybe a little excitement, as well,
followed. Definitely a trace of fear at the end. “Earth, and sand,
melt water, and loam.”

“Tell me, when you Change, is it like losing
yourself?” I asked her. Her brother’s frown deepened.

“No, more like finding one’s true self,” she
said.

“Ah well, for me, taking control of an avatar
is like submerging myself into a really good video game. But I can
snap out of it whenever I want. I think if you start with the
senses, scent first, you will quickly find yourself sliding into
her. Just as quickly, you can pull back out,” I suggested. Around
us, I could see a couple of other kids touching their clay people
and sniffing. Jetta, Mack, and Caeco were already operating their
golems. I had made theirs first and had them link up with them to
make sure the golem program worked. Caeco smiled at me, even as her
golem tackled Mack’s from behind and proceeded to sit on him.