The Culling Trials 3 (Shadowspell Academy #3)(7)

We’d been running before. But now… “As fast as you can. Orin, take the lead!”

The vampire shot ahead of us, Wally falling way behind him, Pete at her side.

“Ethan. You and me at the back.”

We ran, dodging hands and snapping teeth, and my adrenaline ping-ponged inside me. Because I was severely out of my element. I didn’t know how to stop the dead.

“Wally, what do we do?” I shouted, and she slowed and looked over her shoulder.

“We have to fight.” Her eyes were wide, shell-shocked. “We have to fight our way out. Running will only make this go on and on. In that it is an illusion, like a hamster’s wheel that keeps going and going. The only way to make it stop is to face them.”

A howl went up behind us, gurgling and wet. I dared to look back in time to see shapes bounding across the graves. Clumsy, limping, but bounding.

“Werewolves. Dead werewolves,” Ethan snarled.

“Real wolves are afraid of fire,” I said. “Can you do anything with that?”

“No problem.” He waved his wand with a quick flick of his wrist, and three fireballs popped out of his wand like a roman candle, growing in size as they flew toward their targets.

The first fireball hit the lead wolf square in the chest, knocking it to the ground, lighting it up like a Christmas tree.

“See? This is easy.” I could hear the smirk in Ethan’s voice.

But I kept my eyes on the burning wolf. It shook itself and slowly got back to its feet, its fur singed in patches and still burning in others. The undead beast bared broken teeth before charging toward us once more. Now we had a werewolf on fire coming at us.

Brilliant.

We backed up until we bumped into Wally, Pete at our feet. “Orin?”

“You told him to run. He ran,” Wally said. I turned around to face her.

So much for staying together.

“Best case scenario, what are our odds?”

She closed her eyes for a brief second, squeezing them shut, and then looked at me once more. “The odds are not in our favor. We can fight, but they will keep coming until we are overrun. Thousand to one. Maybe worse.”

“You’re the necromancer,” Ethan snarled. “Shouldn’t you be doing something other than giving us cruddy odds?”

For the first time in these trials, he was right. This was Wally’s world and we needed her to pull it together. “We’ll protect you while you figure this out.” I put my back to her. “We’ll stand our ground.”

“That’s suicide!”

I grabbed Ethan by the arm and gave him a shake. “And Wally’s right. Running will get us nowhere. Orin is out there by himself figuring that out right now. We stand together, we fall alone.”

“Or he’s made it to the exit.” Ethan turned and squared himself. “Damn vampire. They can’t be trusted.” We faced the wolves together, the pack of three moving faster than the other undead. As they drew closer, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t help it. They looked to be not fully wolf, but not fully human either. Like the wolfman out of the old horror movies we’d watch on Saturday nights. Only they were hunched forward, not running on two legs but four.

“Are they only partially shifted?”

Ethan nodded. “Stuck between shapes in death.”

There was no more time for words as the weirdly shaped animals launched at us, snarling and snapping. They were not acting like normal wolves, or even the shifter wolves we’d faced in the previous trial.

These just came straight at us with no effort at stealth or subterfuge. All three of them came for Ethan, ignoring me.

Mistake number one on their part.

He went down under the weight of them with a shout. I grabbed the one closest to me by the scruff of its neck and heaved with everything I had in me. The skin stretched and pulled, tearing as I yanked the dead wolf off Ethan, flinging it to one side and taking down two more zombies with its thick body.

A burst of light cut through the air, sending one of the wolves straight up into the air in pieces that scattered like a burst pi?ata at the worst kind of party. Ethan rolled from the third, and I went in with my knife, driving it down and into the thing’s neck.

The wolf tried to turn his head, and I yanked the handle hard to the side, tearing the blade through the bone and rotting tissue, popping its head off like a daisy.

The dead wolf wobbled, fell to its all-too-human knees, and rolled over as its head tumbled away from its body.

Ethan and I backed up.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Don’t mention it.” I swung my blade to the right, catching a zombie that had risen partially from a grave. “We need to get our backs against something. Stuck in the center like this, we have no chance at all.”

“There’s a mausoleum in the center of the graveyard,” Orin said. “We can climb on top of it.”

Ethan and I whipped around at the same time.

“You came back?”

I couldn’t help the question. Orin tipped his head, looking like nothing more than an oversized black bird, right down to the flat black eyes.

“We’re a team. We’ve established that. Frankly, I’m surprised at your surprise.”

“You’re a vampire,” Ethan said, “Don’t be surprised that we’re surprised that you didn’t just leave us here.”