Student Bodies Read online

  “I hear you,” I replied. “You ready?”

  She opened her eyes and nodded once. “Ready.”

  I took a deep breath and concentrated as I stared hard at the first camera. I felt my magic build and then I held out my left hand and whispered, “Hexus!” There was a loud pop and a spray of yellow-orange sparks lit up the darkness as the first camera went up in smoke. I turned my attention to the second camera and hexed it with the same results.

  “Let’s go,” I said firmly as I climbed over the small chain link fence and dashed across the parking lot. Twyla was less than a second behind me as we raced to the second fence alongside the tracks. We dropped down to one knee and were gazing out across the parking lot when I noticed our footprints.

  “There’s not much we can do about our tracks,” said Twyla. “I can see the camera above the entrance to the terminal. Are you sure that’s the only one?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I basically live at Southland station when I’m not at home.”

  Twyla grunted and then made a sweeping motion with her right arm. She whispered a word of power in her native tongue and hexed the camera. It lit up the darkness with a blinding flash and then a plume of blue smoke billowed in the air.

  “A little overkill there on that hex, Twyla?” I chuckled mildly.

  She gave her pouch a small shake and made a snorting sound. “Whatever, it’s done. Let’s get on with this tracking spell.”

  “Right,” I said as I quickly scrambled over the chain link fence. I raced across the track and then scrambled up on the platform with a loud grunt. As I got back to my feet I watched as Twyla leaped over the fence with the grace of an Olympic hurdler. She then sprang onto the platform, landing with a small roll.

  “That was easy,” she said as she stood up.

  “Uh, you gotta teach me how to be more graceful,” I said.

  I pointed to the spot where Mike Olsen was attacked.

  “Good genes,” said Twyla. “It’s always the genes when you think about it.”

  We walked over to the spot I’d pointed out and I quickly scraped a three-foot area of the platform clear of snow. I knelt down and placed the small swatch of cloth from Willard’s backpack onto the concrete and then reached into my pocket and grabbed a nub of chalk. I drew a circle around the cloth and then squatted at its twelve o’clock position.

  “Kneel down opposite me and join your hands with mine,” I said hurriedly. Above me the supernatural field of energy crackled. It was almost as if it knew what Twyla and I were about to do and was showing its disapproval. She did as instructed and I joined hands with hers.

  “I don’t do tracking spells,” she said. “This one’s on you, Julie.”

  I nodded. “Fair enough. Just close your eyes tightly and reach for your magic. I’m going to try and channel our spirits through the cloth and straight into that mass of energy.”

  She exhaled heavily and looked warily at the small circle that I’d drawn. “The bad guys aren’t going to like this very much.”

  “Bad guys don’t like anything, that’s why they’re bad guys. Now concentrate.”

  Twyla gripped my hands and I felt a nearly painful jolt as her magic blended with mine. I gazed down at the cloth, intensifying my focus. Our supernatural auras fused together and a ghostly, shimmering wave of golden light began to take shape just above the circle. It was a crapshoot as to whether my spell would even work because in order to physically locate a living, breathing soul, you need a something that is a part of them. A fingernail clipping or a hair would work. The best conduit would be blood; I’d be able to locate someone down to the square meter if I had just a drop of blood. The best I could hope for in the case of the swatch of cloth would be that some skin cells from Willard’s scalp might have fallen on it. If that didn’t work, my backup plan was to draw on the spectral energy high above the C-Train station and hope that a counterspell wouldn’t come our way, because we’d be completely exposed and vulnerable.

  I took a deep breath and called out. “Ostraca Obscondus!”

  The tiny piece of cloth immediately burst into a bright green flame that flickered for less than ten seconds. A thin finger of smoke wafted up above our heads and that was the exact moment when I learned just how powerful Adriel must truly be. There was a flash of white light and a thunderous roar shook the platform. I looked up in a panic to see the magic that had lingered above the train station for more than two days begin to churn as it fell on Twyla and me with the fury of a hurricane. The massive, billowing cloud of energy sizzled with electricity as small bolts of lightning started smashing into the platform. There was another flash of light followed by a concussive wave half a second later. I lost my grip on both of Twyla’s hands as the explosive force from the lightning blast sent me flying backward. I crashed into a metal post and banged my head so hard that I saw stars.

  I tried to get up, but when I opened my eyes, it was everything that I could do to stop myself from screaming as dozens upon dozens of ghosts of children – each wearing garments of a fashion that hadn’t been worn in more than a century – stood on both edges of the platform. A thick fog comprised of the spirits rolled forward. They reached out with clawed hands that beckoned me to join their mad procession. I was blind to everything on the platform save for the haunting, tortured faces of the murdered children, their mouths hanging open; frozen in place as if each was screaming.

  And that’s when I saw a white light flashing in the middle of the platform.

  “I’m over here, Julie,” shouted Twyla. “Run toward my beacon.”

  I stumbled forward, the back of my head aching so badly that I had to bite my lip to stop myself from crying out.

  “What am I seeing?” Twyla whispered as she stood with her back against mine.

  “Adriel, a black mage. She’s centuries old and these are the ghosts of all the children she has killed.

  “Come again?”

  “She’s the bad guy in all of this,” I said as I pushed back a wave of panic. “She has gained unnaturally long life by killing children and drawing on their life force at the moment of death. We think she plans to kill all the students who go to the dance tonight. She wants immortality and what better way to kill a bunch of students than to enthral them with Soul Worms? She’ll have a small army of souls that she can kill, one by one.”

  I gazed out at the spirits of the dead children and they stood motionless; silent witnesses to nearly three centuries of murder. Those clouds of energy my mother and I had detected at the McDonald’s and the C-Train station were amalgams of ghostly power, vessels for the souls of all the children that Adriel had murdered over the years. The malice we’d tapped into was the rage each spirit still carried at having their lives cut short by one of the vilest witches ever to draw a breath.

  Why they’d chosen to reveal themselves to Twyla and me was a mystery, but I had a hunch the spirits were out for vengeance.

  “Are they going to attack us?” said Twyla.

  “I don’t think so. They’re ghosts and they can’t do anything to us.”

  “But I can!” a woman’s voice rang out of the fog.

  As the words reached my ears I felt another ringing blow to the back of my head.

  And the lights went out.

  CHAPTER 19

  I came to in the darkness. The smell of engine oil and rubber filled my nostrils and my stomach pitched and heaved with a brutal wave of nausea. My hands were bound tightly behind my back and I could feel another body pressed firmly against me. A raging headache screamed through my brain like a freight train and I could taste the salty copper tang of blood in my mouth.

  “Twyla, are you OK?” I whispered. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Remind me never to go slamming evil with you again,” she answered. “We’re in the trunk of an unmarked police cruiser. You got whacked on the head by a lady cop and she took my fetish before I could let fly with a curse. I don’t know how long we’ve been trapped in here, but thank God for ba
d automotive craftsmanship. The seal on the trunk door must be shot because I can see a bit of daylight and there’s fresh air filtering in.”

  “Can you feel for my wrists?” I said, trying desperately to stop myself from hyperventilating. “We need to get out of here.”

  “No. My face is where your butt is so I’m pretty much useless. By the way, you’re still armed to the teeth. The lovely police woman tried to get your copper band off your wrist, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she tried to tear the amulet out of the little recess in your band, but it wouldn’t come off either. It’s like the damned thing is fused to your body somehow.”

  I closed my eyes tight and reached for my magic.

  And it hurt like hell.

  The freight train in my head morphed into the launch pad of the space shuttle at the moment of ignition. I gritted my teeth, trying desperately to blot out the pain. With a series of long, deep breaths I forced myself to focus and in a few moments the pain subsided enough for me to speak a super-concentrated word of magic.

  “Hexus,” I whispered, and the tape on my wrists fell apart. I flipped over onto my side and got a mouthful of Twyla’s knees. “Turn over and I’ll get your hands undone.”

  Twyla twisted her body around and I felt for her hands. I could feel the thick wrapping of duct tape that had bound her writs together and I whispered another word of magic. The tape tore apart and Twyla let out a quiet, controlled sigh.

  “Listen,” she whispered. “If we’re still in the trunk and not dead it means that cop must be waiting for instructions.”

  I held my breath and closed my eyes again, concentrating on the sounds around us. With my Shadowcull’s band enhancing my magic, I could hear sounds so remote the police woman could be more than a football field away from us and I’d still hear her.

  “What do you want me to do with the pair of witches?” asked a female voice. It was clear she was talking into a cell phone. There was a long pause and then she answered, “Right. I’ll take care of them both. Nobody will find them.”

  Twyla and I were stuck in the trunk of a police cruiser and the cop was clearly one of Adriel’s blood coven members. She’d just received instructions to kill us both – probably as soon as she opened the trunk. But she’d made a huge mistake. She didn’t kill me when she had the chance and I aimed to take it out on her ass.

  “Twyla,” I whispered. “Stay quiet and scoot back so that you’re not in contact with my body. The shit is about to hit the fan.”

  “Gotcha,” she answered as she pushed herself away from me the best that she could given the cramped environment. I intensified my focus and could hear the police officer’s feet crunching on the snow. And I did something completely unexpected: I tapped into Twyla’s own built-in malice toward the police. It crashed into me like a rogue ocean wave crashing into a shoreline. There was a hollow sounding thunk as the trunk release engaged and then daylight flooded the inside of the trunk.

  I squinted the moment a figure appeared and let fly with a barrage of compressed force that hit the cop square in the chest. I formed a dome of protective energy as I rose from inside the trunk and stepped onto the frozen ground. We were in a field, somewhere outside of town, from what I could gather amid the brightness of sunshine glinting off snow. I could see her now, standing in front of a thick stand of poplar trees. She started firing her weapon. Six quick shots rang out; the kinetic energy inside each bullet was easily absorbed by my dome of power. My eyes blazed furiously as I raised my hand and sent a thick pillar of supercharged energy that smashed into the ground with a clap of deafening thunder. The devastating wave from my magical attack nearly blew the cop right out of her winter boots. She careened through the air and crashed into a poplar tree, then slid onto the ground.

  She quickly got back to her feet and instead of firing her weapon at me she reached into her pocket and threw a handful of pebbles my way. She whispered a toxic word of power and the pebbles grew to the size of shot put balls. They sped toward me so I dug deeper into my magic and pushed more of my spirit into the protective dome of energy.

  This was going to hurt like hell.

  The stones slammed into my protective dome, each one sending a ripple of energy flowing around it. My Shadowcull’s band burned against my skin with each impact, like someone was pouring acid onto my wrist. But the dome held and the stones fell into the snow a few feet in front of me.

  By now Twyla had climbed out of the trunk. She stood next to me and then tore off her bone bead choker. She clutched it tightly in her left hand and began to shake it as she sang out in a voice as clear and crisp as the freezing air that we were breathing. She cried out in the ancient tongue of her people and golden light radiated from the middle of her chest forming a pool at her feet. I knew what was coming next so stepped aside as the light formed into the bloody, pulpy mass I’d seen the day before. Seconds later, Twyla’s dlézi, her grizzly bear protector, thundered across the open field. The cop fired her weapon at the massive beast, but the creature simply absorbed each round. The bear stopped mere inches from the cop and reared up onto its hind legs, towering over her. It opened its mouth and roared in a voice so primal that I could feel it in my bowels.

  I lashed a binding onto her spirit and she cried out in pain. I seized her very essence and held it tightly in my magical grip and squeezed. Hard.

  She raged in an unholy voice as Twyla and I tramped through the snow. The dlézi dropped onto all fours and sat in the snow; the breath from its nostrils shooting out in a pair of thick columns of steam.

  “Where is Willard Schubert?” I demanded, giving her spirit another tight squeeze.

  She cried out again and roared, “Fuck you!”

  I took another step forward and then I pulled back my sleeve to reveal my Shadowcull’s band. “I’m a Shadowcull and I carry my father’s spirit in this copper band. You’ve seen what I can do and lady, my friend here just summoned a freaking bear! She can probably summon the whole of the animal kingdom if she feels like it. Now where did you take Willard Schubert?”

  The dlézi roared again; this time curling its lips back and baring its teeth. By now I could read the officer’s nametag – Ewanchuk. She flashed me a defiant glare and I could tell by the glint in her eyes that she still regarded Twyla and I as mere children. I decided it was time to show her that it was a massive miscalculation on her part.

  “Constable Ewanchuk, huh?” I said, still keeping her firmly in my grip. “I know that you’re Adriel’s adherent. You were at Mike Olsen’s house, probably trying to figure out if he remembers who the hell it was that saved his ass at the C-Train station on Saturday. I don’t know a lot about black mages and blood covens, but I do know one thing, you were once a witch’s adept. I should release you and mark your spirit like my father did to your mistress.”

  Twyla placed a hand on my shoulder. “She’s got my fetish. I can feel its energy.”

  “Hand it over, Ewanchuk!” I ordered. She maintained her defiant glare and reached into the pocket of her trousers. She tossed Twyla’s fetish toward us and Twyla knelt down to pick it up out of the snow.

  “Adriel has the boy now,” she spat. “There’s nothing you can do about it because tonight we’re going to destroy every stinking witch in your coven. And here’s one for you to chew on – the city police service hasn’t heard from me in more than four hours. They’re already scouring town looking for me and when I turn the GPS on in my cruiser, they’ll immediately know our location. Won’t it be a party then, huh? They’re going to take you in for questioning. You’re screwed now, kid. Both of you are royally screwed!”

  “You abducted us, bitch!” Twyla shouted. “There’s duct tape in the trunk of your car and marks on our bodies. If anyone’s going down, it’ll be you.”

  I motioned for Twyla to calm down. “Where did you take Willard Schubert? I heard you talking on a cell phone, now where the hell is he?”

  She started to laugh. A wild, maniacal laugh that could have been a put-on for
all I knew. This was my first encounter with a blood witch and I wasn’t about to drop my guard.

  “You won’t find him. But Adriel will find you – our entire coven of more than thirty witches will find you and when they do, they’re going to wipe every last one of you off the face of the earth. So, do what you have to do, Shadowcull. I’m under a geas. I couldn’t tell you where to find that kid even if I wanted to.”

  “You’re under a geas, huh?” said Twyla as she opened her pouch and pulled out a single tiny white bead. She walked up to the policewoman with a look of murder in her eyes and dropped the bead on top of Ewanchuk’s head, covering it with her palm. I felt a strong surge of magical energy as Twyla began to whisper in her native tongue. Ewanchuk struggled against Twyla’s will; she twisted and turned in a weak attempt to break Twyla’s iron grip, but it was no use. Seconds later the native sorceress turned her back on Ewanchuk and calmly stood behind her dlézi.

  “Nobody said that a geas can’t work in our favour, Julie. She’s under another geas – this time it’s one of mine. So, here’s what’s going to happen, constable, you’re going to take us back to the city. And while you’re at it, you’re going to smooth things over with your superiors long enough for Julie and me to make a quick exit from your cruiser. You didn’t see us, you’ve never seen us, you’ve never heard of us and if anything lands on our doorstep, you’ll admit to having abducted us. That’s my geas, that’s what you’re going to do. Now march!”

  Twyla Standingready was full of surprises. She’d laid out what was going to happen in no uncertain terms and she did it in a way that would ensure both her ass and mine were covered. I maintained my grip on the constable as she got back to her feet and brushed the snow off her legs. She didn’t reach for her weapon; she didn’t fire off another diatribe about how the end was nigh when the moon was high on the longest night of the year. Instead she simply walked back to her cruiser and climbed in the front seat. She grabbed a handset and hailed her dispatcher on the radio.