The Culling Trials (Shadowspell Academy #2)(11)

The gargoyle zipped past me, right into the rest of my crew. Wally screeched and Gregory hissed and pulled back, skittering across the stone like it was second nature to him. The gargoyle slowed and turned, focused on its target—me. But between us was Ethan, stuck to the wall with one hand and one foot, his wand out and his baby blues wide. I knew that look. He’d frozen in panic.

“Do a spell,” I hollered, reaching with my left hand to secure my position before starting back up. “Hurry! Anything!”

Growls and hisses drew my attention upward. I fully expected another gargoyle to launch into us. Instead, surprise stopped me cold as an incensed honey badger dropped through the air, all four legs spread out like a flying squirrel. Pete landed on the gargoyle’s shoulder and scrambled to get purchase, claws digging in, tiny pebbles dropping from the stone beast.

The gargoyle made an ear-splitting sound, a cross between a shriek and a high-pitched baby’s cry. Pete, incredibly ferocious in this form, ripped and tore with his mouth and claws, biting off chunks of the gargoyle and throwing them into the air. Rocks shed from the creature and it shuddered. It reached up to slap at Pete, making him slip and scramble to stay on its back.

“Help him!” I yelled, nearly there but blocked by Orin.

Ethan started out of his stupor, closer than any of us to Pete.

Lightning fast in a way only someone from this house could be, Gregory crawled across the wall with ease. Long and incredibly strong fingers fit into tiny pockmarks and divots no normal human could use. He pulled himself up to just below the shrieking and distracted gargoyle before reaching in and raking his fingers across the stone beast’s belly.

The gargoyle froze, its face twisted into a mask of agony. Its limbs slowed and hardened.

“Grab Pete,” Gregory called, raking his fingers across the stone creature again for good measure.

Ethan, finally reacting, stowed his wand and reached out, grabbing the spitting and growling honey badger by the tail. He flung Pete upward, just barely getting him onto a ledge jutting out the side of the tower, startling a kid standing on it. The other kid fell backward, arms windmilling as he went down.

“Hang on, buddy,” I called out as Pete hunkered against the wall, teeth chattering away with enough profanities that I was shocked the others couldn’t hear him.

“Clearly, we’ll need to head in that direction,” Wally mumbled.

The gargoyle finished its metamorphosis back into a statue, stuck on the side of the stone wall like it was glued there.

“Knowing how to disable them would’ve been nice,” I grumbled, heading in Pete’s direction.

“You need claws, and the more blows the better,” Gregory said, following me. “Let’s hurry. It will only stay immobile for a little while.”

“You don’t have claws.” Wally grunted as she found the next handhold.

“My nails are as hard as claws, if not as sharp quite yet. They will be, though. Eventually,” he answered. “Wild, your magical knife will probably work. Ethan’s magic would too, if he’d use it.”

I said, “My knife isn’t magical—”

“Yeah, nice reaction time, Helix,” Orin said below everyone and apparently not at all remorseful about it. “Daddy can give you the winning magical spell, but Daddy can’t teach you courage, can he?”

“I saved the badger, didn’t I?” Ethan ground out. “Besides, I didn’t see you do anything, blood sucker.”

Orin didn’t miss a beat. “This is not my house. I expect to fail here. It will hinder neither my transformation into full vampire nor my eventual acceptance into the academy.”

“Ten percent of vampiric recruits are not accepted into the fold because of their inability to work with others, and of that ten percent, ninety percent are eventually staked by fearful magical folk afraid the vampire will go rogue,” Wally said, relaying the stats in her perfect monotone as she climbed. Her voice dropped to that of her namesake. “There is a fine line between confidence and delusion. One will help, and the other will hinder.”

“Fascinating,” Ethan said, sarcasm dripping from the word.

A yell caught my attention, to the right. Someone else fell from higher up, his arms swinging through in the empty air. Another scream on the distant left, a girl plummeting to the ground.

I pulled myself up, my hands and muscles screaming. “A lot of people got here before us.”

“Doesn’t mean they’ll finish,” Ethan said, strain in his voice. “Now move it. Let’s get to the top.”

Reaching Pete, I grabbed a hold of him and swung him up. Unfortunately, I botched the release and he sailed out too far right, hitting the wall and sliding until a small ledge stopped his fall.

Several feet above him, just below the lip surrounding the top of the building, the three stone creatures perched on the large overhang shuddered. One by one, their limbs stretched away from the wall, no longer stone. And one by one, they all turned their stone heads to look at Pete, clinging to the tiny ledge above a whole lot of empty air.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” I said, reaching for the next hold, pulling myself up as fast as I could.

“That was a terrible throw,” Ethan chuckled. He didn’t follow me. Instead, he climbed straight up where the coast was clear. He was going to let us be the distraction so he could get to safety.