Rise of the Fey (6 page)

“But I don’t—”

“I’ll find my own way out,” Nibs says, bounding down a narrow tunnel that opens up under the stairs.

I let out a grunt of frustration—after all the pain Puck and I went through to get us out, he’s going to blow it by going solo!

I’m about to go after Nibs when a long, dark shape slinks into view and meows. With an excited snort, Puck bolts towards the cat, but the feline avoids his outstretched arms and the hobgoblin falls, skidding to a stop at the foot of the stairs, stunned.

I refrain from crying out and quickly look up the staircase, but nobody seems to have heard him.

“Puck, get back here,” I whisper harshly, drawing the cat’s attention.

It’s all Puck needs and, with a wide grin, he grabs the cat’s tail in his pudgy hands and yanks down. With a furious snarl, the cat rakes its paw across Puck’s bewildered face, leaving deep gouges behind.

Suddenly, the metal door at the top of the stairs opens, and I dive for cover inside the tunnel, my heart pounding wildly. Then, motioning for the two creatures to stay with me, I run down the dark passage after Nibs, my booted feet barely making a sound on the flagstones. A moment later, Puck and the cat scurry by, but too late: As I look over my shoulder I see a guard’s outline delineated in the passage’s entryway.

“Ring the alarm, the prisoner’s escaped!” the woman yells.

Crap
. I speed up, mentally cursing Puck for causing trouble so quickly. The tunnel veers suddenly right, a single torch sputtering feebly in the corner. But as I reach the bend something whooshes in the air above me, ruffling my hair, then hits the ceiling in a thunderous explosion, showering me with debris and extinguishing the torchlight.

Coughing on the billowing clouds of dust, I stumble through the rubble, feeling my way around.

I gasp as a small hand grabs mine.

“Over here, stupid!” Nibs hisses.

The clurichaun pulls me after him, and we both hurtle down the now completely dark passageways until the guards’ muffled shouts die down in the distance.

“Ouch,” Nibs exclaims when he runs into a wall.

“Are you OK?” I ask, slowing down.

“Just keep moving,” he breathes, turning left.

We sprint forward, ever deeper into the tunnels. Occasionally, I look behind us as the faint sounds of pursuit drift over, but the guards must have gone down another passage and soon, only our footsteps and harsh breathing can be heard.

Nibs lets out another string of curses as he slams into a wall for the sixth time.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” I ask. “I mean, I feel like we’re just going around in circles down here.”

I feel Nibs glower at me. “Well why don’t you light the way for us then, stupid hybrid?” he snarls.

“Look here, mister,” I say, fear and frustration making me raise my voice. “I don’t need you to be all attitude-y because I can’t just call on fire like Fey do!”

I punctuate my outburst with a snap of the fingers and a flame bursts to life above them. I swallow back a shout of surprise.

“You couldn’t have done that sooner?” Nibs asks, spitting at my feet in disgust.

“I didn’t,” I start, my mouth suddenly dry. “I’ve never…. It isn’t….”

Nibs snickers. “Well, that’s all well and pretty,” he says, “but can’t you do something more useful, like whisk us out of here, by any chance?”

It’s my turn to glare at the clurichaun.

“Then I suggest we keep running,” he says, bolting, Puck and the black cat on his heels.

Holding my hand as far away from myself as possible to avoid burning my head off, I run after them.

“Shhh,” Nibs says, skittering to a stop at another fork in the tunnel.

Breathing heavily, I perk my ears up. Over my heavy panting can be heard a faint, rhythmic buzzing as if thousands of bugs are trapped inside the walls and desperately trying to fly free. Nibs shudders visibly and I’m about to ask him what he thinks it is when the cat meows loudly, startling us.

“Where the hell did that thing come from?” Nibs asks, looking more and more frightened.

“Relax,” I say. “It’s just a stray that’s been following us.”

Nibs throws me a murderous look. “Just a stray, huh?”

The cat purrs loudly, circling my ankles, then heads down the right-hand passage where the buzzing is distinctly louder.

“I think it wants us to follow it,” I say.

“I’m not going anywhere near that beast,” Nibs says.

The cat comes padding back for us, then meows questioningly before trying to herd us down its chosen path again. But for once I agree with Nibs: We need to avoid people and eerie, unknown thingies trapped inside walls, not run headlong into them.

To the cat’s frantic hisses, we engulf ourselves into the left tunnel and run until the cat and the freaky buzzing are but distant memories. After what seems like hours, Nibs finally stops.

“What is it?” I ask, holding a stitch in my side.

Nibs sniffs the air then his lips thin out, stretching his scarred face outward, and I realize with a mixture of disgust and guilt that he’s smiling. “Up,” he says, pointing with his finger.

I lift my hand higher so the flames can illuminate a greater portion of the underground corridor and find a ladder has been carved into the stone wall leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

“What do you think is up there?” I ask.

“Only one way to find out.” Nibs jumps onto the first rung and, nimble as a monkey, makes his way to the top.

My arm shakes with the effort of keeping my hand up to light his way. But the moment Nibs pushes the trapdoor open, I hear him squeal and a gust of wind rushes inside to snuff my flickering flame out.

“Nibs?” I call out tentatively after the clurichaun has disappeared through the trapdoor.

I wait for an impossibly long minute, anger broiling within me as the seconds tick by. Finally, I’m forced to come to the only conclusion left: The little rat’s run away without me!

“I should’ve known he’d betray me,” I say through gritted teeth as I grip the ladder’s rungs and start climbing, “that’s what he was locked up for to begin with.”

Heart pounding somewhere in my throat, I crack the trapdoor open and momentarily close my eyes to bask in the last rays of the sun, breathing in the scent of wildflowers carried over by the playful breeze.

I hear a sharp ring followed by the clatter of wood and I quickly duck back into my hole before I realize the sounds are coming from the reconstruction site at the landing docks five hundred feet away.

I peer through the gap, the rung’s metal digging into my hand, as one of the workers bellows a shout and another pan of the burnt-out pier comes crumbling down.

I let out a breath of relief—it appears the general alarm hasn’t been sounded yet and the construction team is too busy working to notice one student wandering about the school grounds, even if she does pop out of the earth like some gigantic mole.

I carefully hoist myself into the open air then let the trapdoor close behind me, its grass-covered panel merging seamlessly back into the hillside. I take one quick look around: Behind me is the school, tall and foreboding, a machine to crank out soldiers in the knights’ ongoing war with the Fey; left of me are the landing docks; and to my right are the yet untouched remains of the asylum with, behind it, a tall mound of bones and ashes, the burned up remains of our enemy fallen in battle.

Shivering, I shift my gaze to the empty fields ahead of me and, lying beyond them along the hazy horizon line, Avalon’s forest.

My key to freedom.

“OK, keep your cool, Morgan,” I tell myself as I set off, my heart speeding up, urging me to walk faster. “You’ve gotta keep your cool or you’re gonna look suspect.”

But my legs won’t listen to me and I’m soon tearing down the hillside at full speed. As I round a small copse of trees, a loud blast shakes the ground and I duck behind an oak’s large trunk, scanning the area for any sign of pursuit. A second later, I spot Nibs’s small figure rolling down the hill, his red jacket now ripped to shreds. He gets back up with obvious difficulty, then starts running again as half a dozen guards appear from around the construction site.

There’s a shout and the guy in the lead lifts his arm, sending a beam of green, sylphid air shooting through the air. The bolt hits Nibs in the back and the small clurichaun falls sprawling to the ground.

“Come on, get up,” I mutter under my breath. “You can’t let them take you like this. Not after all the trouble I went through to get you out!”

But Nibs isn’t moving and the knights are closing in on him. With a loud swear, I sprint out of my hiding place towards the clurichaun.

“There she is!” a girl shouts, and I speed up.

“After them!” someone else yells, sounding closer, as I stoop down to help Nibs up.

“Get away from me, wench,” Nibs spits, feebly batting my hand away. “From here on out, we’re going our separate ways.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I retort, pulling him after me despite his objections. “There’s only one way out of here, and it’s the same for both of us.”

I glance over my shoulder to find the group of guards has doubled in size and, with a burst of fear, spot Percy and the cousins in their midst.

“Crap!” I say, redoubling the pace. “Here comes the cavalry.”

Nibs and I scamper away as if our bums are on fire. Already I can distinguish the large shape of one of the school’s markers detaching itself from the darkening sky.

“Keep running,” I tell Nibs who sounds like an old steam engine running out of fuel. “Just a few more fields, then we’ll be safe inside the forest.”

If you can call ‘safe’ a place crawling with Fey avid for my blood. But I don’t voice my concern; that’s something I’ll worry about when I get there.

A bolt of fire hits the ground in front of us, leaving a wide crater in its wake, and I swerve around to avoid it.

“They’re catching up!” I yell, panting.

The tall standing stone quickly grows larger, dwarfing all in its surroundings. But just as we’re about to reach it, a sentry
appears from behind the monolith, sparks of fire blooming from her outstretched hands.

“Down!” I scream.

I throw myself to the ground as a ball of fire detonates above our heads, showering us with embers.

“They certainly aren’t playing around, are they?” I say, sweat dripping freely down my face.

“Great observation, Sherlock,” Nibs retorts, spitting mud back out of his mouth.

I flatten myself down as another flaming missile flashes past my head, singeing my hair in its passage.

“Are you trying to kill me?” I cry out to the guard.

“That’s what knights are for,” the woman says, “to kill demons like you two.” She flings her hand again and a third flaming ball hurtles straight at me.

I instinctively raise my hands before me and my stomach heaves in response. A glowing orb the size of a soccer ball blazes into existence from the tip of my fingers then shoots out towards the oncoming projectile. The two spheres of power collide in a sizzling explosion that knocks me backward.

“Wendy’s down!” someone shouts in the distance, the voice breaking through the ringing in my ears.

Blinking tears out of my eyes, I get back up into a low crouch, expecting another attack. But I find the sentry lying on the ground, knocked out cold by the force of the blast.

A fat ball of red rags moans a few paces away.

“Nibs!” I shout, rushing to his aid.

The clurichaun emerges from under the remains of his large jacket, sputtering.

“That bitch is gonna regret it!” he snarls, pumping his fists at the unconscious knight.

“No time,” I say, dragging the dazed clurichaun after me.

But the closer we get to the forest, the more Nibs keeps tripping over his own two wide feet, robbing us of precious seconds.

“Come on,” I urge him as I backtrack to help him up again. “We’re almost there!”

I shield my eyes as a sudden beam of light flashes in front of us then fades away, leaving a soft, glowing circle in the ground behind, runes twinkling along its circumference.

And, standing next to it, is a small boy. “Over here!” he shouts, waving at us excitedly.

The gleam of the magic circle reflects off his sharp teeth and I instantly recognize him: The Fey boy who took me to Avalon.