Hungry Earth (Elemental Book 2) (22 page)

We made it to the underground level to find something
equally horrifying as the condition of the dorms; there were holes in the
ground. There were five-foot-wide, perfectly circular holes straight through
the floor and even through the tunnel walls.

“What the hell could have done this?” Darwin asked.

“I don’t know, but I’m really leaning towards it
being the same thing that caused the earthquake.”

We knocked on every door and found most of the
vampires scared out of their minds, having seen the creatures. They described
them as slick black troll-like monsters that killed everyone in sight and could
tunnel through earth like it was water. Three vampires had been killed, four
were missing, and twenty were badly injured.

We found Dr. Martin in the infirmary, trying to
stitch up Jackson’s thigh by candlelight. “What happened to you?” I asked
Jackson.

His expression was eerily blank. “Headmaster Hunt
assigned me to be the permanent vampire assistant for leaving the school
without permission. I was waking up the vampires for their morning routine when
the monsters attacked. One of them tried to eat me, but a vampire shot a gun at
it.”

Do any of the vampires follow the rules? And I’m
supposed to leave my gun at home?

“It missed me and clawed me as it turned and chased
down the vampire.”

“Are you not in pain?” Darwin asked. We were both
unsettled by his calmness.

“Dr. Martin gave me something to help me calm down.”

“And that helped with the pain, or are you just too
stoned to worry about it?”

He shrugged. “He started giving me sips of vampire
blood when I got back. I didn’t really need anything for the pain, but the
doctor gave it to me anyway.”

“Dr. Martin, I don’t think you should be drugging the
students.”

“The vampires were threatening to kill him. It was
either this or lock him in a cell for his own safety.”

Jackson gazed at the stitches and started giggling.
“I still don’t think–”

“On the other hand, Devon, shut up,” Darwin
interrupted. “I like him better this way, creepy or not.”

“At least the fire acted as a warning,” Dr. Martin
mumbled.

“What?” I froze, my heart stopping.

“Fires just randomly cropped up everywhere. We all
thought we were going to suffocate to death because they couldn’t leave with
the sun up and I couldn’t… well, I couldn’t just leave them here. The monsters
came after that and the fires were just not a big deal. The fires died when it
was over, so I went and relit all of the torches.”

Darwin looked at me, also seeing the strange
similarity to my dream.

Clara entered at that moment with her arm around the
waist of a woman who was limping heavily due to three long cuts across her
abdomen. “Darwin, can you help them while I talk to Hunt?” I asked.

“Don’t bother,” Clara said. “The sun is far enough
down now; we need help getting everyone out.”

“I’ve been up and down these halls and some of these
people cannot be moved.”

“If they’re not moved, they could get eaten!” she
barked. I realized then that there was blood across her neck. As Dr. Martin
started to help the woman, I gestured for Clara to sit down on the exam table.
She did, clearly exhausted, and I checked her throat. It wasn’t her neck but
her shoulder that was bleeding, which looked about like chewed up hamburger
with blood seeping out of it.

“Okay, I agree. You’re right. Get everyone out of
here ASAP. Not you,” I said when Clara tried to get up. I put my hands on her
knees, as if that could possibly stop a vampire. “We need to get your bleeding
stopped before you try to do anything. Darwin, look for bandages. I’ll try to
heal you as soon as everyone is outside.”

She nodded and her eyes slipped closed. I patted her
in the cheek, making her blink her eyes open and sit up straighter. I knew she
needed blood to heal. Donating blood was perfectly reasonable and I had done it
before, but there was a huge difference between a needle and a set of fangs. A
nurse wasn’t going to try to accidentally take too much.

Hunt, Remy, and Flagstone arrived a couple minutes
later, just as I was finishing Clara’s bandages. It wasn’t pretty, but it
helped. It took an hour for us to get the vampires outside, and by then the
entire school was gathered in the practice field. Amelia, Nightshade, and
Langril were all still missing.

Most of the fae helped to heal the injured and since
they were much better than me, I took the chance to rest. I sat in the grass,
listening to everyone around whimpering or whispering, all seemingly afraid to
make any noise. Many of the shifters changed into their beast forms to
accelerate the healing process, including Li Na and Brian. Someone had found
spare blankets in the castle as well as some canned food from what was left of
the kitchen and it was distributed to the neediest first. Several students were
soaked in blood and needed the blankets to prevent hypothermia.

Darwin sat beside me and we were joined a few minutes
later by Henry. “I hate that I’m a throwback,” Darwin said. “If I were a wolf
like my dad or a fae like my mother… if I were anything but this, I could have
done something to help. I couldn’t even take someone’s hand to help them
because I left my gloves in my room.” He pulled his hood up over his head.

“I only met your father once, but I believe if he
heard you berating yourself like this, he would smack you. He is so proud of
you that I don’t think you could be any more perfect to him. I bet your mother
is just as proud.”

“Am I too old for your parents to adopt?” Henry asked
him, trying to break the tension. It worked and Darwin laughed.

Hunt entered the group then. The sadness in his eyes
seemed to age him by ten years. Even the whimpering and shivering fell silent
as everyone looked to the headmaster for some sort of hope. I could hear only
the wind through the wintery trees in the forest as we waited for any kind of
direction.

“For the past few weeks, there have been blatant
attacks on paranormals outside of the school.” His voice carried easily and all
ears and eyes were on him. “We thought it was specifically vampires who were
targeted, but we recently discovered otherwise. I believed everyone at the
school was safe. Unfortunately, that also appears to be incorrect. Because of
this and the latest structural damage to the school, I am closing the school
and all of the classes for the rest of the semester.”

Cries of confusion and disbelief filled the air and it
took a few minutes for the students to calm enough for him to continue.

“Some of you don’t have homes or apartments to go
home to and some of you are safer here. For the time being, anyone who wishes
to stay is welcome to do so. You can use the classrooms to sleep in. The rest
of you will be taken at first light by the teachers to the nearest town, where
you will be able to call your families or otherwise secure rides to your homes.
All vampires are required to return to Stephen Yocum’s coven tomorrow evening.”

“But if paranormals are getting targeted, how can we
return home?” one of the vampires asked.

“I suggest staying very close to the coven.”

“You cannot order vampires to leave!” Kale demanded.
Grayson looked more thoughtful than angry.

“I will do whatever I have to do to ensure the safety
of my students.”

Up until that very moment, I believed his sincerity.
However, the look in his eyes was off. He wanted his students safe, yes, but
that wasn’t why he was forcing the vampires to leave. This was a convenient
excuse for him.

He wanted the students away from the tower.

*          *          *

I knew I was dreaming, just as I had with the fire. I
also knew it was going to come true if I didn’t stop it. In my dream, Astrid
was lying in an extravagant bed. She was gorgeous, but strangely creepy as she
was dressed in an old-fashioned white nightgown. I sensed his approach, not
from his eyes, but from my own… yet I wasn’t there.

The amulet that hung around his neck, hidden by his
thick, black, leather jacket, was the reason Astrid didn’t wake up. Without her
supernatural senses in her favor, Gale was far too quiet. He pressed his gun
against her forehead and cocked it. The sound woke her and her eyes snapped
open.

Too late.

*          *          *

I woke screaming something unintelligible. Henry and
Darwin were there, trying to calm me by telling me it was just a dream.
Fortunately, we had the classroom to ourselves, because I couldn’t find any
calmness in me. That wasn’t me. I wasn’t the person who woke crying and yelling
like a banshee. I realized that I was upset because I loved Astrid, and I was
upset about
that
because I also hated her. This amount of emotional
depth wasn’t me. I had spent too much time in other people’s heads.

That was the only excuse I had for taking off in
Hunt’s SUV. The other students hadn’t been taken to the town yet, so I told my
roommates to keep a lookout. Thus, I went alone. The two-hour drive only took a
little more than one, and it had not been my intention to arrive bright and
early in the morning. Nevertheless, a wolf shifter was waiting as if he had
expected me. “The master is currently sleeping, Mr. Sanders. However, I can
direct you to the nicest hotel for the day.”

I had no idea how he knew my name, but I didn’t think
I had ever met him before. Of course, I also didn’t spare him more than half a
glance out of the corner of my eye. “I’m not here for Stephen.” I pushed past
him, slammed open the door, and reestablished my connection with Astrid. Even
though I could feel that she was deeply asleep, her mind recognized and
welcomed mine easily.

Using the connection, I found her asleep in her bed
and, although her magic was intact, she didn’t wake because she was physically
exhausted. She also wore a dark red t-shirt, not a white nightgown.
It’s the
wrong damn day.

Relief and frustration overcame reservations, so I
locked the door, took off my shoes, and crawled into bed beside her. She
wrapped herself around me instantly and the adrenaline finally started to
drain.

*          *          *

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I wished I hadn’t
immediately when another dream began. I saw the castle again, only it was from
the outside this time. It was dusk, raining lightly, and the battle taking
place in the courtyard was horrendously one-sided. Waves of black shadows
consumed everything in its path. Even grass was destroyed in its wake. Unlike
with the dream of Astrid, this one was vague, twisted, and confusing.

I woke calmly with Astrid pushing my hair back from
my face. “You slept all day,” she said.

“I think my dreams are draining my energy. I had a
vision that you were shot. It wasn’t just a dream,” I said when she opened her
mouth. “You have to trust me. I think you’re in danger.”

“Just because Henry and the tiger had a problem with
my smell?”

“Astrid, you know my instincts are always right. I
came here because I had a dream that Gale shot you in your bed.” She rolled
away, got up, and started shuffling through her dresser. “Where are you going?”

“Well, if your dream showed me getting shot in my
bed, I’ll just have to stay out of it until I kill him. I trust you, but there’s
always danger in this world. You of all people should know that.”

She pulled her t-shirt over her head. Astrid wasn’t
the little girl she was in my childhood. She was a small woman at
five-foot-four, with long, waving, brown hair and hazel eyes. Her features were
symmetrical and gave her a rare balance between pretty and beautiful. Her body
was actually exactly as I had imagined it to be; shapely on the athletic side.

“If Clara is Stephen’s daughter… I thought vampires
didn’t age,” I said, trying to distract myself.

“Converted vampires don’t.” She put on a black satin
bra and a blue dress shirt over it. “If a human child is converted, they will
be stuck that way. A born vampire will age slowly until maturity. Once we reach
maturity, our growth will slow further; about the equivalent of one year every
ten years. At about thirty, we stop aging altogether and that’s when age
matters. Vampires over a hundred years old gain power fast.”

“So that’s why you aged? You were born a vampire?” I
asked. She stopped dressing and turned to me. Her black jeans were unbuttoned
right in front of me, so I got out of bed to put some distance between us.

“Stephen isn’t sure I’m really even a vampire. I
can’t thrall like vampires can and sometimes… I can do things others can’t.
Stephen thinks my parents were two different paranormals.”

“What kind of things can you do?”

“For one thing, I have survived full exposure to
sunlight.” She turned away again to grab her cell phone from the night stand.
“So a man named Gale is behind all of the killing? What is he?”

“Well, I thought he was human, but he was obviously
powerful enough to steal the amulet from the wizard council. I think he also
gets the powers that the amulet takes from people, and he can keep them if he
kills them.”

“Does he get their weaknesses also?”

“I doubt it. I figure that he would be smart enough
to choose two paranormals whose strengths overcome each other’s weaknesses. I
had another dream just now that the school was attacked. We need to talk to
Stephen.”

“He should be up by now, but you can’t bother him
with dreams–”

“He asked for my help in this case. The least he can
do is call Hunt and give him a heads up.” I left her room before she could
argue. She followed after me and then led me to the coven master.

Stephen was sitting at his desk in the library,
speaking on the phone. The worry on his face told me he already had bad news.
He hung up a few seconds later. “That was Clara’s assistant. The school was
attacked a few minutes ago by what they’re saying was an unstoppable and
invisible force. Clara hasn’t been found.”