Novel - Arcanum 101 (with Rosemary Edghill) (24 page)

Tomas took a deep breath, holding on to VeeVee’s words. But he still blamed himself. “But if she’d never come here at all, none of this would have happened, VeeVee.”

VeeVee shrugged, just a little. “No,” she said seriously. “Something much worse would have—and far from any possible help. Think about New York. You know how mean it is there. Figure just what else might live there, now that you know about things like magic and psi.” She looked off in the distance for a moment, and shuddered. He guessed she was remembering something.

He decided he’d rather not know what it was.

“Got him!” Gareth said excitedly. He pointed, and they headed off in that direction.

“And I’ve got her,” Aimee said a moment later. “She’s scared—but she’s alive!”

If the creature had been trying to hide—or, oddly, had been less powerful—the hunt would have taken them longer, but apparently it was doing nothing to conceal its presence. Gareth kept muttering and shaking his head, as if he smelled something bad, but he didn’t waver at all in his pursuit.

On their way here, they’d come up with as much of a plan as they could manage in advance. Find the Trollking, and—somehow—get Rosalita away from it. Once they did that, Mr. Bishop would have to shut down her power, and VeeVee and Lalage could destroy it. Until the link was severed, they couldn’t actually try to harm the creature—not only would it be able to draw power from Rosa, but it would be linked to her: if they harmed it, they’d hurt her as well.

There were a lot of points in this plan at which things could go horribly wrong.

“This isn’t good,” Mr. Bishop said after a few minutes.

“No,” VeeVee answered tightly.

“What?” Tomas demanded. He was doing his best to stay calm—VeeVee was right; he might not be able to hurt the Trollking, but the whole plan really did depend on him, because he was the only one here Rosalita knew, and right now she was terrified.

“There’s an old graveyard up this way. The dead there are at rest—but your sister’s strong enough to wake them up anyway,” VeeVee said. “If she’s scared enough.”

“We’ve got to hurry,” Tomas pleaded, though they were almost running now.

Up ahead, the trees were already thinning out, and now Tomas could hear his sister’s exhausted sobbing. Gareth stopped, clutching a tree and panting. Aimee went to his side, putting an arm around his shoulders. Tomas wanted to rush forward, but VeeVee put a hand on his arm.

“Wait. Tomas, if you trust me—we have to go slow.”

Tears of frustration burned in his eyes, but he did trust VeeVee. He’d given her no reason to trust him, lately, but he would always trust her. He forced himself to nod.

“Okay. Come on.”

They walked forward slowly. Lalage and Mr. Bishop followed.

The clearing held what had indeed once been a small burial ground. The wrought-iron fence that had once surrounded it was red with rust, canted crazily in places, and lying flat on the ground in others. It surrounded perhaps a dozen old marble tombstones.

Standing in the middle of the burial plot was the Trollking.

Despite everything he’d seen since he’d come to St. Rhia’s, it was hard to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Something like that didn’t belong here, in the middle of an ordinary meadow in Upstate New York on an afternoon in July. Monsters like this belonged in the movies or on television. They were supposed to be unreal—fantasies—not standing just a few yards away. But it was real. Terrifyingly real. He could even smell it, a smell like sulfur and wet stone.

It was hunched over, but if it stood upright it might be as much as twelve feet tall. Its skin was grayish black, and it had a flat face with a protruding jaw, almost like a bulldog’s, but there was nothing in the least comical or friendly about it. Even though it was standing in direct sunlight now, Tomas still couldn’t tell whether its skin was smooth or hairy; it seemed to shimmer and smoke, as if it were a cake of dry ice, so the creature’s outline was always blurry. He could see it breathing, hear the grunting noises it was making, and hear Rosa’s frightened sobbing, too. But still, he couldn’t—quite—see it. He clutched his hands into fists until they ached.

It was larger now than the first time Tomas had seen it; Rosalita looked like a child’s doll in its hands now. It was holding her in front of its face, shaking her and growling. It was obvious to the observers that it wanted her to do something. It was equally obvious that Rosalita didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was. She kicked and struggled feebly in its grasp, sobbing and whimpering, out of her mind with terror.

“We have to make it let go of her,” VeeVee said in a low voice. “Until it does, there’s no way Lalage and I can destroy it.”

Suddenly the Trollking threw back its head and bellowed, exposing long yellow fangs. The sound was deafening, and Rosalita screamed in unison with it, a high cracking wail that came close to breaking Tomas’s heart.

“Let’s do it,” he said grimly.

He lashed out at the Trollking with the same kind of Fire he’d used before—his attack might not have hurt it, but maybe he could annoy it, and at least his fire was controlled enough to definitely not hurt Rosa. At the same time, Lalage struck with her Green Magic: the grass around the creature’s feet suddenly came alive, growing longer, whipping up around its stubby legs. An individual blade of grass might be easy to break, but there were hundreds of these, and soon they were joined by tree-roots. Every time the Trollking tore itself free of one web of clinging vegetation, more grew up instantly wherever it set its foot down.

VeeVee had her athame out and was sketching symbols in the air. Lights began to dance around the creature’s head, but while it had welcomed the lights Tomas had seen before, it didn’t like these. It roared and tried to bat them away. First it held Rosalita in one hand and used the other to swat at the lights, but then, after VeeVee hit it right in the face with something particularly unpleasant, it dropped her completely.

But the ground was already starting to shimmer with a glowing fog.

If Tomas hadn’t had it explained to him—what this place was, and what Rosa’s power was, and how it manifested—he wouldn’t have known what he was seeing. But he had, and so he did know. The Trollking had terrified her enough that she was summoning the dead up out of their graves, and once the creature had eaten them, it would be even more powerful—hadn’t somebody said once that the energy of dead humans was the most powerful spirit energy there was?

“Rosalita! Mi hermana! Here! Come here!”

She pushed herself to her hands and knees, but she was obviously too disoriented and terrified to be able to move. Tomas ran out into the clearing. When she saw him, she staggered forward a few steps. He lunged for her, snatching her up as the Trollking grabbed for her. An entire full-grown tree slammed up out of the ground between Tomas and the creature, keeping it from grabbing both of them, and Tomas ran for the edge of the woods with Rosalita clutched in his arms.

“We’re good,” he said, panting, as he crashed to his knees. “We’re good, right?”

“Not yet,” Mr. Bishop said grimly. “They’re still linked, and while they are, she’s feeding him power—and any harm to him is harm to her.”

Tomas looked back over his shoulder toward the abandoned burial ground. The Trollking was wrapped in a cage of light now, and surrounded by a forest of trees, but it was systematically smashing its way through them, reducing them to splinters. And the glowing fog was rising up from the graves, moving toward the creature as if it were some kind of psychic vacuum cleaner.

“This won’t hurt,” Mr. Bishop said reaching for Rosa. “You have to trust me, Tomas.”

“I do,” Tomas said steadily. Trust had never come easily to him. So many people had failed him, all his life. Lied to him, betrayed him, even tricked him to get him to do what they wanted. But he trusted Mr. Bishop. He held Rosalita tightly, holding her face against his shoulder as Mr. Bishop placed a hand on her head. When he touched her, Rosalita gave a surprised squeak and then went completely limp.

“Go!” Mr. Bishop shouted to the two Witches.

VeeVee and Lalage stepped out into the clearing. Tomas clutched his sister tightly. It went against every instinct he had to just let the two of them walk into danger like that. But this was their kind of fight, not his.

Suddenly VeeVee was wreathed in flames, a shimmering pillar of fire. Beside her, Lalage glowed with a faint but visible emerald shimmer, and around her feet, the summer-dry grass turned deep green and bloomed with tiny flowers.

The moment Daniel Bishop had shut down Rosa’s link to the Trollking—and her power—the shimmering fog over the graves vanished as if it had never been. The Trollking howled in rage, lunging for the intruders who had deprived it of its meal. But suddenly it found itself trapped in a cage of interlocking magics—Fire Witchery and Green Witchery.

Again and again it broke through the cage of spells. Each time they were rewoven. And each time it broke through it was smaller. Weaker.

But each time it broke free, it gained a few feet of ground. And neither VeeVee nor Lalage was retreating. It was only about six feet tall now, but it was still bigger than the biggest football player ever born. that Once more the cage of magics crumbled before its assault. It lunged forward.

And Kurt came rushing out of the woods toward it.

“Kurt!” Lalage screamed, but he didn’t slow, didn’t stop. Everyone always thought somebody Kurt’s size was slow and stupid. Tomas knew he wasn’t stupid, and now Kurt proved he wasn’t slow, either. He hit the Trollking with a tackle any football linebacker would have been proud of, stopping its rush and even making it stagger.

And it picked him up and threw him. Hard.

Once more the cage of magics surrounded the Trollking. But this time was different. There was a hum in the air that set Tomas’s teeth on edge, a high whine just at the edge of sound. No matter how hard the creature tore at the bars, they kept re-forming.

Tightening.

Now they were pressed against the Trollking’s shadowy skin, and—Tomas blinked—it was shrinking away from the bars of the cage. But they kept closing in on it, in every direction at once, and now they were writhing, in a way that made his eyes hurt to look at them.

The spellcage shrank, and kept shrinking, and then it was the size of a basketball-

And then it was gone.

Lalage gasped, and dropped to her knees, and VeeVee staggered over to the nearest tree and leaned against it. Mr. Bishop got up and walked out to them, making sure they were all right.

And finally Tomas felt as if he could breathe again.

It was over.

The seven of them walked slowly back the way they’d come. Tomas carried Rosa. She was sound asleep; Mr. Bishop said she’d probably wake up in an hour or so, but he’d had to shut her Talent down quickly and thoroughly. Tomas didn’t mind. Sleep was the best thing for her right now. And she was all right. Oh, her dress was ruined, and she had some minor bumps and bruises, but she was here, and she was safe. That was what mattered most.

Kurt walked along at the back of the group, with Lalage beside him, rubbing his head. He’d hit a tree when the Trollking had flung him off, and Lalage was still scolding him about trying to take on something so much bigger than he was, but considering everything—and considering what they’d been facing down—a few bumps and bruises—and a bad headache—was a small price to pay. And maybe somebody would eventually figure out how the creature had gotten here, but right now Tomas didn’t care. It was gone now, and that was the important thing.

Just before they reached the road, they heard voices up ahead.

“Hey! You guys all right?”

Kayla Smith, Señora Davies, Mr. Songmaker, several of the other students, and a woman Tomas didn’t know, walked toward them through the woods. The strange woman had blonde hair, green eyes, and every instinct Tomas had told him that this woman was money. She wore casual clothes that looked as if she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine, but not the kind in the news-stands in the barrio. Every single seam and stitch she wore was perfect in a way that was more unreal than all the magic he had seen so far. And that took money.

“Ms. Llewellyn,” VeeVee said, sounding surprised.

The blonde woman smiled. “Hello, VeeVee, Daniel. And this must be Tomas Torres. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Señora,” Tomas said, feeling a little bewildered. Was this the famous Ria Llewellyn who was responsible for the school? She didn’t look anything like he’d imagined.

“I like to come up every once in a while to see how my money’s being spent. I seem to have picked a particularly interesting day to come,” Ms. Llewellyn said.

“So to speak,” Ms. Smith said.

“But I see everything’s turned out well,” Ms. Llewellyn added, indicating Rosa.

“We got rid of the Trollking,” VeeVee said. “And maybe we can figure out how it got here in the first place.”

“Oh, Mr. Moonlight has a few theories. But we can talk about them later,” Ms. Llewellyn said. She eyed them all again, and Tomas got the unnerving sensation that she was learning every detail of everything that had happened to them with that sweeping glance. But she reacted as if she had simply expected that they would handle everything, and was pleased, but not surprised. “Let’s get you back to the picnic before all the food is gone.”

It was the end of a very long day. One that—when he’d gotten up this morning—Tomas could never have imagined taking place. So much had happened. His mother had found out about his powers. He’d saved his sister from a monster. And… VeeVee wasn’t mad at him any more.

According to Mr. Moonlight, the monster they’d fought had been almost here ever since their fieldtrip to Underhill. His theory was that it was one of the creatures that had been left behind in the Chaos Domain they’d nearly been trapped in: it had gained power from the unformed essence-of-magic that had surrounded it, but it had wanted out. It had been able to follow them out of the Chaos Domain itself, but not back to the World Above. Rosa’s wildly out-of-control temper tantrum had provided it with the last link it needed to make its way into the World Above, since her Talent formed a bridge between worlds. Apparently they were lucky that nothing worse had come through. That was a chilling thought.