The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(13)

Pete slammed into Wally’s legs. Tell her she can do this, I believe in her!

“Pete believes in you, Wally. You can do this!”

Ethan fell next to me, shooting backward. “Wally, even I believe you can do this. Your family isn’t weak, or I wouldn’t have let you stay on this team!”

Orin groaned. “Me too.”

Wally lifted her hands, her breath coming in huge gulps, her chest heaving, and I watched as the pink glow suffused her body and jumped from Pete, to me, to Orin, and even Ethan.

“I won’t let you hurt my friends,” she said. The green energy from the other necromancer pulsed as he laughed.

“You are untrained. You can’t beat me.”

“You don’t need training to have heart,” I said. “To have the grit to see this through. You just do it.”

Nice, now we’re a Nike commercial? Pete said.

Wally smiled, as if she’d heard him too. “Yeah. I can beat you. For my friends.”

There was a moment of complete and utter silence and then light erupted from her, blasting into the zombies and knocking the other necromancer off his feet.

I wasn’t sure what the others saw, but to me, Wally looked like she was on fire, the magic flickering up around her, protecting her as she walked toward the other necromancer. Each zombie she touched sighed and slid down into the ground.

“Thaaaank youuuuuu.”

Wally stood over the necromancer. “Nobody hurts my friends. Nobody hurts my family.”

“This is impossible.” His eyes were wide. “Impossible.”

I stood and made my way to Wally’s side. “Not a word we know.” With a swift move, I bent and slammed the butt of my knife into his skull.

His eyes rolled back, and he slumped to the ground.

The remainder of the zombies sunk back into the earth, one by one.

I took a few steps back. “Well done, Wally, well done.”

Her eyes were shining, and a grin trembled on her lips. “I’m not useless.”

“Nope.” I grinned back, my own eyes stupidly full. “Not for a second did I ever believe that.”

Knew what you were made of all along, Pete said.

Wally bent and scooped him into her arms, squeezing him. “Thank you. All of you.”

Ethan grunted something and stood, holding a hand out to Orin. The vampire blew out a breath as he rose, his eyes his own. He gave a full-body shudder. “That’s not allowed, you know. Necromancers taking over vampires.”

Wally nodded. “I know. He was not a good necromancer.”

“What do we do with him?” Ethan asked. “I mean, we can’t kill him.”

I arched an eyebrow, still breathing hard, my body shaking from the beating it had taken. “What do you think he was going to do to us? Take us out shopping for new clothes and lunch at Mickey D’s?”

They all looked at me. Of course, they did—I was the killer. And I didn’t particularly feel bad about killing someone who’d been set on us. But he was knocked out.

“We’re going to see vampires at some point, right?” I let the idea tumble out of my mouth. “What if we hand him over, like an offering of sorts? They’d believe you, Orin, right? If you told them what he’d done?”

Orin’s face slowly transformed into a wide grin that flashed his fangs. “Oh, they would love that. Yes, let’s take him along.”

And just like that our five turned into six, although number six was, to be fair, bound and gagged with Ethan’s magic. He kept the necromancer in front of him, kind of a human shield as we made our way out of the graveyard. With the necromancer muzzled, we could see the exit clear as day.

“He had a spell with him,” Ethan said. “To cloak the exit.”

Wally shook her head, a frown creasing her eyebrows. “That means this was more than just a necromancer trying to kill us. Someone from the House of Wonder must have given him that spell.”

“They weren’t really out to kill us, to be fair,” Orin pointed out. “Just Wild. We were collateral damage.”

I looked back once we reached the gate. The graves were silent, quiet…and a figure stood among them. My heart picked up speed as I watched Tommy staring at us. His arm was twisted where I’d broken it, but his eyes…his eyes were his own.

He tipped his head to me, and when he lifted it, he mouthed two words. Keep fighting.

My heart beat so hard, I thought it would leap out of my chest. I glanced at Wally, to ask her if she was holding him up, and then back to Tommy, only he was gone. Back into the grave he’d been assigned.

And what about Rory? I knew that he was gone—there was no surviving the way the zombies had taken him down—but there was no sign of a body.

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep the sob back. I was not a crier. I usually didn’t give myself over to my emotions, but seeing Tommy and losing Rory…it wasn’t just losing him. It was losing Tommy all over again. Losing my mom.

Three of the most important people in my life were gone, their lives blown out like candles. I drew a slow breath and nodded. “Let’s go.”

This trial wasn’t done, and if the first test was any indication, I needed to keep my crap together. When we were out, when I was in the shower washing away the dirt and blood, then I could let the tears fall, then I would sob my heart out. But not before. Not while we still had dangers to face.