I don’t know she’s okay.”
Dove hesitated, but only for a
split second. Just as he was about to say something more, one of the demons
streaked past us, then another, with a furious-looking Zervos chasing after
them. A vampire in attack mode was a scary thing to behold, and Zervos was
probably scary when he was sleeping.
Watching his fellow chaperone
somehow decided Dove. The vampire straightened his shoulders and looked at me
with calm, determined eyes.
“Can you give me a lift?” Dove
yelled as he floated closer. At first I didn’t know what he was talking about,
but then I realized he wanted the wind. I called a special gust just for him
and sent it up. As he took the current and sped upward he gave a sharp kick to
the head of the demon that was pulling us. The thing slowed even more.
“We’re going to hit,” said
Lisabelle. My attention came back to the inside of our carriage and I saw with
amazement that while I had been dealing with Dove, she had dealt with the
flames.
“The impact will kill us,” Kia
cried, scrabbling next to me like a frantic mouse.
“Can you get us into the air?”
Lisabelle asked me. I nodded. There weren’t a lot of winds left, but there
might just be enough.
Luckily it didn’t take much; the
winds were confused by the battle and wanted to help. I just tumbled out, using
the winds to pull Kia and Lisabelle out after me.
For a brief second we soared. The
air rushed around us, cool from the winter but warmed from flowing over so many
burning demons. Kia screamed, and Lisabelle and I each grabbed one of her arms
to steady her, but she continued to scream.
At first I thought she was
screaming because we were randomly flying through the air, but that only lasted
a few seconds before I heard the crash of what was left of the carriage. The
demon had plowed both itself and the carriage right into the ground.
I managed to get the gusts to
move us just far enough away from the wreckage so that we didn’t land on the
rubble.
Glancing down calmed me. It was
like a sea of green trees, some topped with a light dusting of snow. At least
if we fell there would be something to break our fall.
“Ground incoming,” Lisabelle
yelled hoarsely. The words were barely out of her mouth when we slammed into
the earth. I had thought it would hurt, but it didn’t. The dirt, grass, and
roots should have been frozen solid, but it felt more like we had landed on a
soft mattress.
For a second I just lay there,
but I knew I didn’t have the luxury of time. We were on open ground, making us
a far easier target than when we had been in the air.
I pushed myself up until I was
kneeling. Lisabelle was already standing, while Kia lay on her back. The small
pixie was petrified. She was staring up at the sky, her eyes wide, her long
hair splayed around her.
“Demons,” she muttered over and
over, worrying her hands together. “So many demons.”
I glanced up at the sky. If I had
been hoping to see Keller or Sip with Dove, I had another thing coming. All I
saw was demons. Dotted here and there were some of the other carriages, and my
fellow students, though besieged, were fighting back as best they could. Still,
I saw several carriages tumbling out of the sky.
“Why’d we land so softly?” I
asked Lisabelle. “What’d you do?”
The darkness mage had one black
streak of soot down her cheek, but as far as I could tell she was otherwise
unharmed. She glared at me. “Um, geez, I have no idea, Elemental.”
“That was me?” I demanded. “How?”
“Let’s add it to the list of
mysteries we have to figure out.”
Kia sat up. She looked white
beneath her green skin, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she had had a
heart attack right there.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
she said. “She’s an earth elemental too, right? The ground isn’t going to kill
its own.”
She examined herself closely,
checking for injuries. “We really did land on a mattress,” she breathed.
Kate Metz
Sean McLachlan
J. Todd Scott
Ali Spooner
Morticia Knight Kendall McKenna Sara York LE Franks Devon Rhodes T.A. Chase S.A. McAuley
Darlene Panzera
Gertrude Stein
Natasha Blackthorne
Kristi Avalon
Richard Lupoff