Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) (12 page)

After that it was time for dinner. Hot dogs roasted over the campfire, and Mr. Bishop said no camping trip was complete without S’Mores. And there was soda, too, and it was ice-cold, although Tomas didn’t see any ice anywhere.

“Magic,” Mr. Songmaker said, and winked at him.

After they’d all eaten—and cleaned up, too, burning the paper garbage in the campfire and packing up the plastic and metal trash to take out with them later—Mr. Songmaker took out his banjo and played them a couple of songs. They were about ghosts, of course, about what Tomas had expected. Then Mr. Bishop told them a couple of stories. He said they were local legends, but of course they were ghost stories again.

And by then the moon was coming up.

“We’re at the edge of the area where the disturbance was reported,” Mr. Songmaker said. He reached into his pack and began removing objects. “Ah’m giving each of you a radio. Ah want you to stay in touch with us and with each other. If’n you see—or Sense—something, let us know. We’re going to pair up Mages and Psionics, because a lot of the time, one of you will notice something the other doesn’t. So… Tomas and VeeVee, Lalage and Kurt, Aimee and Ethan, Brian and Annabelle. If you haven’t found anything by midnight, come back.”

Okay, things were definitely looking up, if he was going to spend several hours alone in the dark with VeeVee, Tomas decided.

“Aw, c’mon, chica. Why don’t you just admit there’s nothing out here to find? We’ve been walking around in circles for hours.”

VeeVee sighed, coming to a stop. She had a flashlight clipped to her belt, but there was enough moonlight she didn’t want to risk using it and ruining her night-sight. Although right now, the idea of using it to beat some sense into Tomas was seeming more attractive by the minute…

“We still have two hours before we have to check back in. And there is something out here to find. We just haven’t found it yet.”

Even with her back to him, she heard Tomas sigh.

“Oh, come on. You’re not going to tell me that—”

Suddenly their walkie-talkies both crackled to life.

“Help! Help!”

“Aimee? Where are you?” VeeVee demanded. Each of them had been given a search area to cover, but they were fairly large, and even with a GPS to guide them there was no guarantee any of them would stick to their own search areas if they found a hot trail.

There was no reply.

Suddenly the sky—which had been clear a moment ago—boiled over with clouds. Oh, this isn’t good. That had to be Annabelle. But Annabelle was supposed to be with Brian. Brian was a Water Witch—their Gifts would compliment each other on a Hunt. Because Aimee was a Sensitive, she’d been paired up with Ethan—Ethan was an Astral Warrior, who should be able to protect her no matter what they ran into.

“Come on!” VeeVee shouted over the wail of the rising wind. She pulled out her flashlight—by now it was pitch dark—and ran. She might not have been able to find what they were hunting for, but she could certainly locate her classmates.

To Tomas’s credit, he didn’t waste any time arguing. He followed VeeVee at a dead run, grabbing his own flashlight as he did—and a good thing too, because a moment later there was a crack of thunder and the rain started—hard, driving, ice-cold rain, and neither of them was dressed for it. A month ago Tomas wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her, but now they charged through the darkness side by side, their flashlights bobbing, illuminating sheets of rain and the uneven ground ahead of them.

Where is she—where are they—where is it—?

Suddenly there was a blur of white faces. Aimee was lying on the ground with Annabelle crouched over her, sobbing hysterically.

“Annabelle!” VeeVee shouted.

Lightning sheeted across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder. Annabelle stared up at her, wild-eyed. “She screamed, and then she—We traded—”

VeeVee gritted her teeth over the harsh words she desperately wanted to say. They wouldn’t do anybody any good right now. It was obvious what had happened. Aimee and Annabelle had traded partners, so Ethan and Brian were out here somewhere together, Powers help them. Then Aimee had Sensed whatever it was, and Annabelle had panicked.

“Annabelle, you’ve got to calm down—” she shouted desperately.

“No!” Annabelle said, shaking and sobbing as she clutched her friend tighter. “You didn’t see it!”

Well, so much for that. And the storm was only going to get worse until Annabelle calmed down enough to dispel it. VeeVee pulled her athame from its sheath in the waistband of her jeans.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Tomas demanded.

“Drawing a circle of protection around the four of us,” VeeVee snapped. “You heard Annabelle. That thing is around here somewhere close.”

“So let’s go looking for it!” Tomas said eagerly, taking a step away from her.

VeeVee grabbed him with her free hand. “Didn’t you ever watch any horror movies?” she demanded, raising her voice to be heard over the howl of the storm. “We stay together!”

Just then—even over the roar of the storm—they both heard the sound of a full-throated scream. Lalage! VeeVee thought in horror. Lalage was a Green Witch, with strong powers, but her partner for tonight—Kurt—had no combat abilities at all. Kurt was their Healer.

There was the sudden blue-violet flash of a spell-shield in the distance.

“No we don’t!” Tomas said. He went running off in the direction of the flash, breaking through her half-formed Circle.

VeeVee stepped outside the perimeter of her Circle and sketched it closed with a quick gesture. “Don’t move,” she told Annabelle firmly.

She ran after Tomas.

As she ran, she tried her walkie-talkie once—just for luck—but as she’d expected, Annabelle’s storm had pretty much fried their communications. It didn’t really matter. The moment that storm had hit, Mr. Songmaker and Mr. Bishop would have started out looking for them. The trouble was, VeeVee couldn’t afford to wait for them.

He was freezing and he hated rain, and he didn’t know where he’d dropped his flashlight. It was a good thing it didn’t matter. The sky was lighting up like a Fourth of July gone really wrong, and straight ahead there was a purple light flashing on and off like some kind of mad neon sign.

Lalage hadn’t screamed again, and Tomas knew that was a bad sign. If you screamed, you were alive.

When he got there, the first thing he saw was Kurt on his hands and knees puking his guts out and covered in mud.

The second thing he saw was Lalage. Even though she was soaked to the skin, her hair was flying around her like she was bone-dry. And she was glowing.

The third thing he saw was what she was pointing at.

It was maybe fifteen feet tall, and for one long moment Tomas was perfectly calm, because it didn’t seem to be real at all; maybe one of those wacky sculptures like the Art Students liked to make. It was shaped sort of like a person, and he could see pieces of twisted metal, and a couple of sets of antlers, a lot of sticks, and a bunch of leaves and vines-

Then it moved, reaching out toward Lalage, and he saw there were some kind of body parts hanging down from the inside; that it was shaped kind of like a man; that the vines were writhing all over it, alive-

When it tried to hit Lalage, there was the same purple flash he’d seen from a distance, and she made a sound like the thing had hit her, instead of something about five feet away from her. And Tomas knew if it ever got past that thing he couldn’t see, it was going to rip her to pieces.

And he knew he’d been wrong. The monster was real.

Burn it! You’ve got to burn it!

But he was freezing and soaked to the skin and he didn’t think anybody on Earth could start a fire in the middle of a freakin’ monsoon.

He had to try.

“It’s all about control, Tomas. You control the fire. The fire does not control you.”

Tomas took a deep breath. He shut out the look on Lalage’s face and the sight of the monster she was facing. He shut out the way he felt and all his doubts. He concentrated on the fire. His fire. His Gift.

Burn!

A thin tendril of smoke coiled up from the body of the nightmare.

This was the point at which Tomas had always stopped before, since everything he’d ever tried to burn in the past had been dry and flammable, and as soon as he’d kindled it he hadn’t needed to do anything else. But this time he couldn’t stop, because the moment he did, the rain would quench his fire. He kept pushing with his power, pouring whatever it was he did that Called Fire into the monster, willing it to burst into flame. Whatever he was doing, the thing seemed to notice, because it stopped trying to get at Lalage and turned toward Tomas.

Lalage sank to her knees with a gasp as it stopped attacking her. Tomas didn’t dare stop to look at her to see if she was all right. He kept pouring everything he had into that thing. Now he was sweating like a pig and starting to shake. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up—everything he’d practiced so far had been about control, not about force, but right now that was what was needed. And when the monster’s patchwork body finally went up in a rush of fire Tomas still couldn’t stop. As the flames licked over its body it reared back, slapping clumsily at itself, just as if it were alive. But to Tomas’s horror, it didn’t burn up. It just changed shape as parts of it burned away, getting smaller, reforming….

“Stop! Tomas, stop!” VeeVee ran past him, her dagger in her hand. “You can’t kill it! I can!”

Black spots were dancing before his eyes now, and he felt like he was about to pass out. Tomas didn’t know if he stopped because she told him to, or because he couldn’t keep pouring Fire into the monster another second. By now it was only about the size of a man, but it was all black and charcoally, and the metal parts of its body had melted and fused under the heat of Tomas’s flame to make a weird sort of armor over half its body.

He sank to his knees in front of Lalage, gasping for breath. He didn’t even have enough air left to yell at VeeVee to stop before she got herself killed. All he could do was watch as she ran right up to the monster, body covered with a kind of pale blue flame, and plunged her dagger into its chest.

Everything about the monster suddenly seemed to… blur… for just a moment, and then it was crumbling. The wind and the rain whipped pieces of it away. Heavier pieces—metal, bones, antlers—fell to the ground.

All of a sudden it stopped raining.

“Are you all right?” VeeVee demanded.

Tomas just stared at her.

“Gaia and Bhride!” Lalage groaned, shaking her head. Her red hair was plastered to her skin. “What was that?”

“Some kind of hybrid spirit, I think,” VeeVee said. Tomas watched as she wiped the dagger on her jeans and tucked it away again. “Kurt? You okay?”

“I am now,” Kurt said, sitting up with a groan. “Sorry. I… When it showed up, it was just like a punch in the gut.”

Tomas saw VeeVee nod, as if what Kurt was saying made sense to her. “You saw that metal?” she asked VeeVee. “It looked like part of an ultralight—you know, one of those little one-person sport planes?” Lalage said. She got carefully to her feet and put out a hand to help Kurt up.

“If the pilot managed to crash in the wrong place—and died—his death energy might have woken up something in one of the old hidden burial mounds around here,” VeeVee said. “The result has probably been wandering around for weeks, feeding on animals and getting stronger.”

“Working its way up the food chain,” Lalage said, shuddering.

“What are you talking about?” Tomas demanded. He scrambled to his feet. His head hurt, but aside from that—and being wet and cold—he didn’t feel too bad.

Except, of course, for having been wrong about the monster.

“They’re talking about magic,” Kurt said. He took a deep breath, and groaned, shaking his head.

“Hey! Are you guys all right?”

Brian and Ethan came running toward them, slipping and sliding through the wet grass, their flashlight beams bobbing everywhere. Oddly, Brian’s clothes and hair were completely dry.

“Better than you’re going to be when Mr. Songmaker and Mr. Bishop find out what you did,” VeeVee snapped, turning on them in a fury. “Did it ever occur to either of you idiots you could have gotten Aimee and Annabelle killed?”

Both boys stopped where they were, their looks of worry changing to expressions of guilt. Kurt flinched, and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Well, uh, Aimee wanted to switch, and, um, Ethan and I figured, well, she and Annabelle…” Brian said slowly.

VeeVee opened her mouth again, and Tomas had the idea that whatever was going to come out of it just couldn’t be good. “Hey, chica, come on. Maybe we ought to be getting back and see how the others are? Besides, it’s cold out here,” he said.

VeeVee shut her mouth with a snap, but he could tell she was still furious. He couldn’t really figure out why. They’d killed the thing, hadn’t they?

“So what have we all learned tonight?” Mr. Songmaker asked.

An hour later everyone was back at the campsite, changed into dry clothes and gathered around the campfire again, this time with mugs of hot cider.

“That magic sucks,” Tomas said feelingly.

Lalage and VeeVee glared at him.

“Well,” Mr. Songmaker said, “there’s good magic and there’s bad magic. Ah guess you got a sample of both tonight. VeeVee was pretty much right, it looks like—there was a flying accident up here about six weeks ago, and some fella managed to get hisself killed—probably on top of an old burial ground, as far as Jeanette an’ Ah could tell. The energy released with his death grabbed a hold of something that would otherwise have stayed safely asleep—like pouring gasoline on a fire that isn’t quite out. It made something that wasn’t quite one thing or the other, but what that it was, was hungry. It was able to feed itself on plant, insect, and animal life—which is why your Green Witch powers weren’t having much effect on it, Lalage; they were just feeding its energy. And once it took a human victim…”

“Its power and ability would not only have increased tenfold, but its intelligence would have, too,” VeeVee said grimly.

Mr. Songmaker nodded. “Just as well we caught it in time. If it fed on a human, that would be bad enough. If’n it got its hands on someone with Talent…”