Page 65 of Escaping Hallow Hill Academy
“What does that mean?” Styx takes a step closer, and I’m all too aware of how his big body is positioned just in front of mine.
“Oh, would you care to find out?” That lashing smile slashes over her red lips, and the warlock’s blinding magic is splaying through the white room without warning. Magic that’s too powerful for any one of his kind to have. And I know, just by the force of it, that it’s unnatural. That they gave it to him.
It clashes into Styx, and before I can reach for him, he’s slammed to the floor in a crack of broken bones and pain. His body explodes in skin and blood and where the man was, a wolf now stands.
In a stunning display of ancient magic, Rueren shifts into his darker form. His muscles grow impossibly huge until he’s a hulking figure. Leathery wings flash out, and he’s on Marcen with deadly fangs, cutting skin like a knife. Blood sprays. Marcen cries out his pain.
My body reacts, and my sword is striking out at the woman in front of me before my heart even remembers to beat again. The sharp edge slams down, and it’s enough to take her head off. I could end this so, so quickly.
But long metal fingers clash against the blade. She wraps her eerie palm around the weapon. Blood, vile and black drips down my blade and she doesn’t even wince. Like she feels no pain at all, and she fucking smiles at me.
“You’re strong, Miss Lucero. But you’re too cocky for your own good.”
A thump hits the ground in a splatter of disgusting sounds, and then Rueren and Sialen hit the bitch from either side.
The three of them go tumbling down, and she clings to my blade as I follow them to the floor.
It’s all a clatter of chaos and colliding bodies. Sharp nails dig into my face. A lethal tail lashes against my back. Blood mats my hair. All I hear is my heaving breaths.
Sharp teeth sink into a pale throat, and I relish the screams she makes. Sialen’s quiet runes bloom in golden colors as he strangles the life from her soul. Growls tumble through the room, and I feel the sweet wolf behind me dragging her body beneath me as I slide my blade up through her delicate rib cage.
It all happens in a bloody mess of death that I’ve never been prouder of. I stare down on empty blue eyes.
Spatters of her life lie in crimson flecks across her angelic, pale face. It oddly still looks like a smile is against her lifeless lips.
A faint worry flits through my mind:can you really kill a walking dead? What will happen to her? Will she be put back together again after this?
I shove those anxious thoughts away and try to cling to my victory. Sia bends low and takes her limp hand in his. My heart warms as he harshly pulls a ruby stoned ring from her finger. His features smooth as he slides what I know is a sacred gift from our Holy Lady onto his finger.
That’s what Krist took from him.
After all this, he finally has it back. And that is something to find happiness in among all this blood and violence.
My heart is relieved. My sword is fed. My Lady is happy.
And then . . . white smoke fills the room
It clouds my vision. It seeps into my lungs. It bleeds into the foggy edges of my mind.
“Remarkable. You four are just as remarkable as Headmistress Krist promised you’d be,” the voice says in total awe and adoration.
A voice I recognize. A voice that clatters down to my soul and threatens to shred me apart with the sound.
I peer up at beady eyes as they stare down on my heavy head. I reach for the stranger. I hold my hand out just as I fall backward against the warm fur of the wolf.
The white poison drifts around his distorted features, but I can see his electric golden eyes. “I told you we have other ways of testing our rarest creatures. Now you’ll get to find out first hand. You’ll do wonders in the Hallow.” His smile is flashing. Vicious. And it’s one of the only parts of him that I take with me.
And his words are what echoes through my mind over and over and over again.
The Hallow. The Hallow. The Hallow.
Chapter Eighteen
Stinging pain flickers in where hazy consciousness clings to the corners of my mind. I expect the pain of the lab to assault my flesh, but that's not it.
This is different.
Incoherent voices boom within my head, and I flinch away from the throbbing sound of them. My palm comes up to push across my face, but stabbing pins pierce the flesh before it fully makes contact.
