Fearless (The Blue Fire Saga) Page 6

  Leesa nodded. The black waziri would know Dominic had not defeated Josef in front of the dorm. She guessed they were talking about going to that site next. What they would do after that, she wished she knew.

  “I think they’ll go next to the place where we fought Josef,” she said. “Let’s go somewhere we can watch them from a good distance, so we’ll know when they leave. I’m not going back to my dorm until they’re gone.”

  They headed back up the street the way Dral had come, so they could put another block between themselves and the black waziri before returning to Leesa’s street to watch the wizards from afar.

  Leesa wasn’t sure what the next day or two might bring, but she was certain of one thing. She was not going to practice any magic while the waziri were nearby.

  8. DOMINIC’S TRAIL

  The three black waziri moved slowly through the trees, observing every detail like forensic experts examining a crime scene. The remnants of magical vibrations were everywhere—the wizards would have found this place easily even without the trail left by Dominic’s passage that they had followed out here from the college. The battle between Dominic and their brother Josef had clearly been a mighty one.

  They still found it hard to accept that Dominic had defeated Josef, but the evidence could not be denied. Nothing at all remained of Josef’s essence. Only the vibrations of his expended magic showed that he had ever been here. Dominic had obviously destroyed all traces of Josef’s being—making sure there was no chance his essence could ever be reanimated.

  Nor was there anything here to tell them exactly how Dominic had managed to defeat Josef. They knew Dominic was a mighty wizard—he had been more powerful than any of them until they gave themselves to the black magic—but they thought their dark powers made them stronger now. Perhaps the same thought had made Josef overconfident. All three silently resolved not to make a similar mistake.

  That Dominic had survived the fight was beyond any doubt. The trail of magical energy winding through the trees to the north was proof of that. The stream of tiny, shimmering golden motes floating in the air was invisible to anyone but a wizard, but to them it might as well have been a trail of florescent footprints. The black wizards could hear the magical trail as well. It gave off a faint buzzing, like a nest of swarming insects. Day or night, in any kind of weather, they could follow this trail, whether Dominic walked, rode or flew. Having once again used his magic, there was no way he could now hide his path.

  When their meticulous examination was finished, the three black waziri gathered near the spot where Josef’s existence had winked out, superstitiously avoiding touching the ground where their fallen comrade had last stood.

  “There’s nothing more we can learn here,” Viktor said. “How Dominic defeated Josef will remain a mystery. It’s time to report back and get further orders.”

  They opened their jackets and pulled out identical golden amulets from under their shirts. The amulets were round, about three inches in diameter, and hung from their necks on thin silver chains. The surface of the gold was etched with elaborate runes.

  Almost in unison, they flicked a hidden catch on the side of the medallions with their thumbs and the faces sprang open, revealing a smooth, shiny black surface inside. The ebony interior was fashioned of the same material as the table in the Necromancer’s castle.

  Together, the three wizards began chanting a soft, rhythmic incantation. Each focused his gaze on the black mineral.

  Their call was heard thousands of miles away. Deep in the bowels of his castle, the Necromancer dragged his corpulent body to his magical table as quickly as his size allowed. The four novitiates were already seated there, awaiting him. He dropped heavily into his sturdy chair and took a moment to catch his breath, then stretched his thick arms out over the table, palms down, and began to chant softly. The incantation was the same one being used by the black waziri.

  Once again, the dark surface of the table began to change and the pairs of trapped, haunted eyes materialized deep within the glass. The eyes steadily brightened, and a moment later, the spectral forms of his three lieutenants appeared in their chairs.

  “What news do you bring me?” the Necromancer asked.

  “Nothing too useful, I’m afraid,” Viktor said.

  “You found the place?”

  “Yes, my lord. But there was nothing to tell us how Dominic defeated Josef. Vast amounts of magic were used by both, but that is all we were able determine.”

  “And Josef? Is there anything left of him we can use?”

  Andre replied this time. “No, my lord. Dominic wiped out Josef’s essence completely. There is not a shred of his power left to reanimate.”

  The Necromancer scratched the back of his fleshy hand. “I expected as much. Dominic is no fool.” He looked at each of the three black wizards in turn. “His trail is clear to you?”

  “Like a fire in the blackness of midnight,” Tomas replied. “We will have no trouble following it.”

  “And you can sense his general location?”

  “Yes, my lord. At present, he is hundreds of miles to the west.”

  “As long as his trail is visible, he will have to remain on the move,” the Necromancer said. “Last time, he eluded us because you could not travel any faster than he could. But this is a new age—you three can narrow the gap by traveling by air when necessary. You all have papers that allow you to fly; Dominic does not.” His empty pink eyes narrowed. “He must not escape us this time. We are too close to our goal. The seal between the world of the living and the world of the dead grows weaker every day. Soon we will be able to break it permanently.”

  “There is one more thing,” Viktor said.

  “Tell me.”

  “We found one other place where Dominic used magic. Not nearly as much, probably just one spell. It was done before his battle with Josef.”

  The Necromancer thought for a moment. “That is interesting. I had assumed Josef had somehow found Dominic, and that’s why Dominic used his magic. But it seems more likely now that Dominic’s magic drew Josef to that place. I wonder what caused Dominic to use his magic and reveal himself after a century of quiet.”

  “There is no way to tell, my lord,” Tomas said.

  “Perhaps Destiratu played a part,” Viktor suggested, “making Dominic less able to restrain himself when he saw a need for his magic.”

  “Perhaps,” the Necromancer replied. “If so, maybe it will make him careless again. Tell me about this second place where you sensed his magic.”

  “It was on the campus of a small college,” Viktor said, “near the edge of a street. There were no visible marks left from the magic, so it’s impossible to know what Dominic did there.”

  “Tell me about that street,” the Necromancer said. “What’s there?”

  “The spot was directly in front of a dormitory,” Viktor replied.

  The Necromancer edged his bulk forward on the chair. If he’d had eyebrows, they would have raised in interest. Instead, his milky brow merely wrinkled. He wondered if perhaps Dominic had at long last chosen a disciple. Maybe the magic his servants had detected was Dominic imparting his magic to a young college boy.

  “A boys’ dormitory?” he asked.

  Viktor shook his head. “No, my lord. It appeared to be a female dormitory.”

  The Necromancer eased back into his chair, disappointed. A female dormitory did not support his theory. Still, he wondered if there was something there that had drawn Dominic.

  “Let me think,” he said.

  The Necromancer closed his eyes. This new information about the first use of Dominic’s magic was perplexing—but he wondered if it could also be useful. He sensed that perhaps it might, but he wasn’t sure exactly how yet. There was little to go on, but he was not yet ready to discard it.

  Finally, he opened his eyes. His spectral henchmen and the novitiates watched him curiously.

  “Andre and Tomas, begin your pursuit of Dominic immediately. Tra
vel separately, so you can best narrow down his location. Do not confront him alone, though. Make sure you’re together before you attack. If Viktor has joined you by then, all the better. If not, the two of you should be more than enough to destroy Dominic, provided you are careful and make no foolish mistakes.”

  “What do you wish of me?” Viktor asked.

  The Necromancer’s thick lips curved into what passed for a smile, but on his face looked much more like a hideous grimace.

  “You, my friend, are going to cause a bit of mischief at that college, to see what we might learn.”

  9. MONSTERS IN THE DORM

  Sitting at her desk Tuesday evening, Leesa flipped the cover of her history book closed. For the last half hour she had been studying the causes of the Civil War, but she didn’t think she was going to retain much of what she read. Every time she came across Abraham Lincoln’s name, her mind wandered to the popular book and movie about Lincoln being a vampire hunter. With all she had learned since arriving at Weston, she wondered if it could possibly have been true. She doubted that Lincoln had actually been a vampire hunter, of course, but she had once doubted her mom’s story about the one-fanged vampire, and look how that turned out.

  It was doubly hard to concentrate on her reading with Rave sitting patiently on her bed behind her. She could almost feel his beautiful brown eyes warming her back and neck. What she really wanted to be doing was sitting next to him and talking, or lying cuddled in his arms. They had shared a long, fun walk that afternoon, after the black waziri had departed, but that was then and this was now. She wondered where the evil wizards had gone, guessing they had probably begun their pursuit of Dominic. She whispered a quick prayer for his safety.

  Warm hands softly clasped her shoulders and she sighed. She hadn’t heard Rave cross the room, of course, but that was nothing new—he moved so silently. Twisting her head around, she smiled up at him.

  “Done with your studying already?” he asked, his fingers gently massaging her shoulders.

  Leesa sighed again. If the volkaanes ever needed to earn some money, they could hire themselves out as massage therapists. With the heat in their hands—and their amazing looks—they would be a sensation at even the most exclusive spas.

  “Yeah, for now, anyhow,” she said. “I wasn’t getting much out of it. If I have to be studying with you here, I’d rather be studying Dominic’s book. I think the information in there might be just a bit more important than the causes of the Civil War.”

  “Those were very sad and very dangerous times,” Rave said.

  Leesa swung around on her chair so that she was facing him.

  “I forgot that you were there.”

  “I was pretty young, but I still remember the suffering.”

  Suddenly, Rave’s body stiffened. Dral and Bain were instantly on their feet beside the door.

  “What is it?” Leesa asked, her voice filled with alarm.

  “Girls are screaming,” Rave said. “Somewhere downstairs.”

  Before Leesa could say anything, Pink’s “Perfect” erupted from her cell phone. “Perfect” was Cali’s ringtone. And Cali was downstairs!

  Leesa grabbed her phone. Cali’s voice was loud and urgent.

  “We need Rave and his friends down here, fast. There’s freakin’ zombies in the hall.”

  Leesa could not believe her ears. She had dreamed of rotting corpses rising from the grave several times in the last few months—dreams which had apparently come true in one way or another. But that wasn’t the same as hearing that zombies had invaded her dorm. What the heck was going on? And why hadn’t she dreamed of this?

  Rave’s keen ears heard everything Cali had said. He grabbed Leesa by the shoulders again, this time a bit more firmly.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Leesa frowned at him. “How long have you known me?” she asked. “I’m not staying behind. I’m coming with you.”

  Rave looked into her eyes and knew better than to argue. “Keep behind us, at least.”

  Leesa smiled sweetly. “Of course, sweetheart. Now let’s get down there.”

  Bain already had the door open. Leesa and Rave followed Bain and Dral down the stairs. Leesa could hear the frightened, panicked screams now. Suddenly, the heavy fire door flew open. A crowd of girls rushed through and raced madly down the stairs as if all the demons of Hell pursued them. Some of the girls were sobbing. Leesa could tell that the fleeing girls accounted for less than half the number who lived on the third floor. The rest had to be trapped in their rooms, or worse. She wondered why Cali was not among the girls in the stairway. Cali had had enough time to call—surely she should have had time to get away. A feeling of icy dread began to grow in Leesa’s stomach.

  When the fleeing girls were out the way, the volkaanes stepped carefully through the doorway. Leesa peered into the hallway from behind them.

  Despite what she’d expected, she was still surprised by the sight that greeted her. There were three of the creatures, about halfway down the hall. One was standing facing Leesa, the others knelt over what Leesa was afraid was the body of one of her dorm mates. One of the kneeling zombies looked up, and Leesa was pretty sure she saw blood dripping from its mouth.

  Leesa shuddered. Even if she had never dreamed of the walking dead, she couldn’t have failed to recognize them for what they were—thanks to the movies and television every teenager in America knew what zombies looked like.

  These three seemed fresher than the ones she had seen in her dreams, as if they had not been buried very long. Still, the skin of their faces and hands was a ghastly yellowish gray, and patches of it had already decayed away, exposing pockets of white bone of their skulls and hands. The sockets of their eyes seemed to have somehow expanded, revealing far more of their eyeballs than normal. The bulbous eyes were far from pleasant, but nowhere near as disgusting and frightening as the creatures’ mouths. Their lips had peeled back or fallen away, revealing hideous yellow teeth all the way to the roots.

  Leesa took all this in with a glance. The zombies were horrible, but it wasn’t their presence or appearance that surprised her. It wasn’t even that they had apparently killed one of her dorm mates. No, it was Cali who truly shocked her.

  Cali stood with her back to Leesa, facing the standing zombie. The creature towered over her, but Cali had grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and was spraying blasts of white fog into the creature’s face, keeping it at bay. Dressed in a camouflage T-shirt and black sweatpants, Cali looked like a miniature soldier.

  “Cali, we’re here,” Leesa shouted. “Get the hell out of there!”

  Cali gave the zombie one long, final blast from the fire extinguisher, then hurled the metal canister at the creature’s head. She spun and raced back to Leesa and the volkaanes. Heedless of the new arrivals, the zombie lurched slowly after her.

  Cali gave Leesa a quick hug and then stepped back.

  “They’re stupid and slow,” she said, “but dangerous just the same. They got Amber before we could do anything.” She looked at Rave. “You guys can take them no problem, right?”

  Rave nodded. He didn’t sense any true life force coming from the creatures, so he wasn’t sure how useful his inner fire would be, but volkaane speed and strength should be more than enough.

  “Don’t let them bite you,” Leesa warned. “I don’t know if their bite can turn you into a zombie, and I don’t want to find out.”

  “Don’t worry. Not getting bitten is what we do best. We fight vampires, remember?”

  Leesa nodded, feeling a bit foolish. Avoiding bites would be rule number one when fighting a vampire.

  The oncoming zombie had cut the distance between them by half. Rave turned to face it.

  “You have to do something to stop their brains,” Cali said, recalling every zombie movie she had ever seen. “In the movies, they shoot or stab them in the head.”

  “You girls stay here,” Rave said. He looked at Dral and Bain. “I’ll take care of this on
e. You get the other two.” The two volkaanes nodded.

  They bounded down the hallway. In the enclosed space, they could not move at full volkaane speed, but they were still little more than a blur. Rave launched himself at the nearest zombie, while Dral and Bain literally ran three steps up on the hallway walls to get past him and on to the other two. Their speed seemed to allow them to defy gravity.

  Leesa watched as Rave grabbed the gruesome creature by the shoulders and held it at arm’s length. A low growl rumbled from the zombie’s throat as it tried futilely to reach Rave with its teeth, but Rave was much too strong. His hands moved quickly to the sides of the zombie’s head. Rave gave the thing’s neck a sharp, powerful twist, snapping it. With its body no longer connected to the brain, the zombie collapsed to the floor. The creature’s horrid eyes still moved and its gruesome mouth still moaned, but it could do nothing else.

  Farther down the hallway, Dral and Bain dispatched the other two zombies in the same manner.

  Leesa heard sirens wailing outside. The police were finally arriving.

  “We need to get back upstairs,” she said. “You don’t want to have to explain how you snapped their necks like that.”

  Dral and Bain hurried back up the hallway.

  “Just a minute,” Cali said.

  She pulled a pen from behind her ear and bent over the zombie Rave had crippled. The pen was typical Cali, fashioned of sparkly purple metal with a tuft of bright lavender fur hanging from the end. Without hesitation, she plunged the point into the thing’s eyeball, and then used her palm to push the pen deep into its brain. Nothing was left showing of the pen but a bit of purple and the lavender fur. The creature’s eyes stopped moving and the moaning ceased.

  Cali looked up and smiled. “Rule ninety-one: Never leave a live zombie at your back.” She stood up. “Now we can go.”

  Outside the dorm, Viktor watched from among the crowd of onlookers who had gathered at the arrival of the police and campus security. At least ten cruisers and three ambulances blocked the street now, their flashing rooftop lights painting the grass and the front of the building in dabs of blue and red. Yellow wooden sawhorses and crime scene tape kept the gawkers back.