The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(40)

“We are not done here.” The Sandman turned and strode away, and I thought about shooting him in the back with the wand.

Well, screw it. I’d never second-guessed myself before—why start now? I whipped the wand in a circle, then pointed it at the Sandman’s back. The sparks that shot out were a mix of black and red, and for a moment—just a split second—I could see my rage in the magic, my anger and strength propelling it forward to slam into the Sandman’s back, spinning him around. He fell back and through something, like an invisible fence that was keeping us in. One minute he was there, the next he was gone.

“Wild!” Pete was all but on top of me when he yelled my name, and I startled. “Holy cats, what…is Ethan…dead?”

I dropped to my knees, tucked the wand down the back of my pants and put my fingers to Ethan’s neck. The blood that had pooled out from his puncture wounds seeped through the knees of my jeans. Warm, his blood was still warm. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was part of my crew, because I’d already lost so much, or because of that tiny spark that had jumped so unexpectedly between us.

A single pulse of his heart thumped under my fingers. That was enough for me. “Help me get him up, Pete!” I got my arms under Ethan’s and Pete grabbed his feet. “We need to get him over there.” I pointed at the place I’d seen the Sandman fall through.

Wally came running, bursting out of seemingly nowhere. Her face was scratched and her clothes sizzled, but she was intact. “Oh my God!”

That was all she said as she caught up to us, and her silence scared me more than if she’d spewed off all the numbers, all the reasons why Ethan wouldn’t make it. She took one of his hands and just held it.

We reached the place where the Sandman had fallen out of the test…and nothing happened. We kept on running across the open plain with Ethan bouncing between us.

“We do not have time for this!” I snapped.

“Where are we going?” Pete struggled to speak as we ran. “Why isn’t this over?”

I didn’t have an answer. What I had was a dying boy and…a couple of wands in my back pocket. One of which would work for me, even if I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

“Wally, come grab Ethan.”

“I can help.” Orin slid in from the right, out of shadows that hadn’t been there a moment before, his face beyond pale and green in spots.

“Why can you all get in, but we can’t get out?” I raged as Orin took Ethan’s arms from me. I grabbed the wand from my back pocket. Ethan’s wand. I pointed it in front of us at nothing. But there had to be something there. Something holding us in.

“I need a word, a trigger word, something!” I yelled and the others startled.

“Bascilium-oroco,” Wally whispered. “It can break another person’s spell.”

I didn’t hesitate, trusting her. Trusting my crew. Hell, I didn’t even stumble over the word for once. “Bascilium-oroco!” The word tasted like copper pennies on my tongue as I pointed Ethan’s wand at the landscape.

The tip glowed like a lighter, heating brighter and brighter until it was like a mini sun in both light and heat. I couldn’t look at it, but felt it drawing strength from me to make this spell, whatever it was, work.

“Say it again!” Wally yelled. “Three times, you have to say it three times with a pause in between!”

“Bascilium-oroco!” I shouted the word and the light grew impossibly brighter until I was on my knees and the others were yelling. The wand began to heat in my hand, burning into my flesh. It smelled of charred meat, and still I hung on.

My friends were depending on me.

Billy and Sam were depending on me.

Ethan’s life depended on me.

If there was a chance this would work, that it would break the spell of this place, then I had to hang on.

“Bascilium-oroco!” I put everything I had into that final scream, every ounce of energy and then some. The world around us shattered into a thousand colors, the light from the wand bursting through everything around us, splintering images and throwing them back in broken reflections. When I opened my eyes, the plains and the T-Rex were gone, and we were sitting on a chunk of land that looked very normal.

Other groups of kids huddled at various points around us.

I hadn’t just shattered our test, but everyone’s test. Someone was going to be pissed.

But that was the least of my worries. “We need a medic! A healer!” I yelled, stumbling to my feet. I would have dropped the wand, but it was seared to my palm. Orin was running, carrying Ethan in his arms easily despite whatever poison he’d ingested in the first challenge.

The teachers and testers were like an ant nest that had been kicked repeatedly. I wanted to believe it was because Ethan was a Helix and Helixes were important. But the number of eyes that went to my hand, still glued to the wand, told me otherwise.

I didn’t care. I ran after Orin, Wally, and Pete right with me. We hit the medic station at full speed, and the woman who’d cared for us each time was there. Inside the tent was hushed, for all the world like we were alone.

Mara had her hands on Ethan in a flash, her eyes closed and eyes moving rapidly under her eyelids. “Bad, this is bad.”