Spearwood Academy Volume Four (The Spearwood Academy Book 4) (2 page)

T
he air grows colder. Shadowy energy appears in the palm of both of his hands, swirling like whirlpool. My muscles grow tight, and my heart drops heavy in my stomach. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to do anything. “Get Avalon out of here. She has to survive, at all costs!” Elex orders. The guys go into an attack stance. How do they have the will to move? I loll my head to look back at Amr, whose eyelids are heavy. It’s only affecting us.  Whatever magic Aibek’s doing ’sucks the will to function out of me. I fall to my knees. Maybe if I just curl up and rest for a while, I’ll feel better.

“Lon!” Maverick yells.

“Amr!” Horace screams at the same time.

“Innocents, like you, can’t handle the pull of pure darkness,” Aibek laughs.

“Attack his hands!” Dante yells.

The crumbling rock and the elements moving around alert some small part of my brain to the chaos happening. I know I should care. I should be doing something to help, but the rest of my brain could care less. I close my eyes. The heaviness of sleep falls over me like a wet blanket. Yes, this is nice.

Strong arms pick me up. I try to open my eyes, but I can’t bring up enough strength to even crack them.

“Shift! We need more power!”

Who’s talking? I wish they would be quiet. I want to sleep.

“Get down!”

“Cover her!”

All the voices swirl together in my mind, forming one monstrous sound: The Boogeyman. My body meets the cold, hard dirt. I gasp. A heavy body presses down over me.

“Your body won’t protect her!”  Aibek’s voice ’echoes, the only voice I can differentiate from the others.

The person on me grunts in pain. The need to sleep eases off. Something hot and wet hits my cheeks. I force my eyes open. I need to know what’s going on. Maverick’s body shields mine from the assault of Aibek’s attack. Fire rains down on his back, burning away his shirt. His tears fall on to my cheeks, but he doesn’t make a sound. I glance around at the rest of the room. Everyone lies on the ground: dead or unconscious, I can’t tell.

“It’s okay, Lon. I’ll protect you if it’s the last thing I do. Now that you’ve returned to yourself, I never want us to be at opposite ends again,” Maverick gasps. My own hot tears course down my cheeks. I use a finger to cover his lips. He shouldn’t be talking right now. Aibek’s shadow falls over us. The force of his fire grows stronger, burning the tops of my hands. His black eyes look into mine.

Maverick’s arms shake and give away. His full body weight falls on me. No, he’s not dead. He can’t be. “No!” My voice rings off the walls, causing cracks to form everywhere.  I have to get them all out of here. I won’t let’ them die for me. My vision goes white.

T
he rush of running water, the scent of a murky river and a cool breeze creating goose bumps on my arms alert me to the fact I’m somewhere else. The dirt room disappeared. My eyes open. I lie in the bank of a river. Maverick’s body remains on top of mine, my arms around his torso, holding him to me. The side of my face presses into his chest. His natural scent invades my senses. A calm rushes over me, filling my mind with the images that wanted to burst forth in the dirt room.

“Don’t let that wuss take you, Lon,” Paden calls. My eleven-year-old arms hold onto Maverick’s, as we try force each other to the edge of the made-in-the-dirt ring we created in the barn.

“You’re supposed to cheer me on, brother!”

Paden laughs. “Nah. I know she’s going to win. She always does. “

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Den. Mav is easy to beat, though.”

I push my weight forward, forcing him to stumble back. He stops inches from the edge of the ring. Damn, almost had him. “Don’t call me Mav.”  He pushes back, making my feet slide as they try to get traction with the dirt. He grins. He must think he has me this time.

I smile. “You’d you rather we call you Ick?” I laugh, as another burst of strength enters my legs. This time, I get him over the line. I laugh and use more power to push him to the ground, straddling his stomach. I lick my finger and shove it in his ear. He groans and tries to rub away my spit. I laugh more. He hates when I do that, but he’ll get me back later. I look down at him, waiting for him to start his normal tickle war. His light blue eyes stare back into mine. He swallows hard. I frown. What’s up with him? He looks like he just saw ghost. His cheeks grow red.  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

The red grows a deeper shade. “Get off!” he snaps.

I frown. “But you normally tickle me when I give you a wet Willy.”

He growls. “I said, get off!” He shoves me back. Not ready for the force of his push, I fall off him and onto the ground. He stumbles as he stands up.

“Why are you being mean?”

“Stay away from me!”  He runs out the barn doors. I stare after him.

I look to Paden. He stares after Maverick as well.

“What did I do?”

He turns his dark blue eyes on me. “Nothing. I’ll go talk to him.”  Paden runs out of the barn, leaving me in the dirt: alone. A tightness grows in my chest. What did I do wrong? Tears blur my vision.“”

My cheeks flush as the memory ends. Being older now, I know what caused him to lash out at me. Logical sense rushes back to me. “Maverick!” I try to wiggle out from underneath him. I have to know if he’s okay. There’s no way he let a guy like Aibek kill him. He’s too strong willed. I just know it. He has to weigh almost 200Lbs in muscle. I push with all my might, but not even the adrenaline coursing through me is enough to get leverage. I don’t want to hurt him more by forcing him off me like a log. “Maverick! Are you okay?”

A soft groan escapes his lips. At least, I hope it’s a groan and not air escaping. Warm breath drifts over my ear, as he turns his face toward my head. “I’ve felt better,” he croaks.

A sigh of relief bursts from me. “Thank the Sun god.”

Something clicks in him, and he’s off of me faster than a jackrabbit. He looks at me with wide eyes. “Are you okay?”

I sit up. I glance around at the nearby trees and the apples on the ground. I know where we are: the Orchard. How did we get here? I look to Maverick. He’s still hurt. I need to help him. “I’m fine. I need to heal you. What were you thinking? You could’ve been killed!” Guilt rushes through me. I know he only did it to protect me as a member of the Vox, but I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to have my own guard.

I crawl around him. Sitting on my knees, I survey the damage. I hover my hand over it. Heat radiates in waves from his skin. He flinches, as if he can feel my hand just inches away. I swallow hard.

“I want to protect you, Avalon. I meant what I said back there. I will give my life for yours. I’ll never let you die in my arms. I don’t think I could live, if you were no longer walking this Earth. I’d rather have you walking just ahead of me, like you did when you hated me with false memories, than no longer have you here at all. The world would lose yet another light that keeps the darkness from swallowing it whole.”

I swallow hard. Hot tears rush into my eyes and down my cheeks. I quickly brush them away. He never talks to me like this. I try to push down the giddiness that sparks in me over his confession. I need to focus on how to heal him right now.  “How are you still conscious?” I search for something that will heal his burns. The river runs next to us, but I don’t think I can heal him with water like I did Bullock. Nothing in my gut pulls me in that direction. 

My bare knees scrape on the dirt, causing a noise. I look down at it. ‘
Mud,’
something inside me echoes.  I scramble to my feet. Rushing to the water, I splash it onto the drier dirt. I don’t need the sand at the bank.

Maverick watches me with glazed over eyes.  “What are you doing?”

“Making mud to heal your burns. They’re bad, Mav.”

His upper body wavers, as he gets onto his hands. He tries to crawl toward me. “You haven’t called me that in such a long time. You’ve remembered more?” His arms shake as he collapses, scraping the side of his cheek along the dirt and rocks. He tries to push himself off his stomach, but doesn’t get very far.

“Yes. Stop trying to move. You’re only hurting yourself more. We’re out of danger, for now.” I move to kneel next him and form a soft mud out of the water and dirt, focusing my energy on how I want it to heal all of his wounds. “I don’t know if this will hurt or not. I apologize in advance, if it does.”

Cautiously, I place my mud-filled hands over his back. I wince, when I make contact with his hot flesh. I don’t want to cause him more pain, pain caused by me.

He winces, but makes no noise. I spread the mud in a thick layer over his back, covering every inch of his back. “Oh,” he moans, as the last bit of skin gets covered. “That feels incredible.”

I smile. I hope it works.
Water,
the instinctual voice speaks again, not like the split part of me from before. This part of me seems primal—gut instinct—with a voice. I shake my head. I don’t want to go crazy again. “Get into the river and wash it off.”

Without questioning me, he pushes himself up to stand, as if the pain from minutes before never existed in the first place. He pulls his shredded shirt off his body and walks half-clothed into the waist-deep river.

He cups the water in his hands and tosses it over his shoulders. It runs down his back, carrying the mud down to the water. It runs into it like blood. My cheeks flush. Watching him—half naked—bath in the water, brings forth the memory of the barn again. My imagination replaces both the younger versions of us with our current age, and he remains half-clothed. I shake my head, trying to dispel the thought. I’ve never thought about one of the guys like that. There’s more pressing matters to concentrate on now that he’s healed. Like, how did we get here? Where are the others? Did they come with us? I stand, turning away from Maverick. I look around the surroundings, as if the others are just going to pop out of the ground like gophers and be there. I shiver. Are they okay? Oh, Sun god, please don’t let them be dead. 

I walk toward the tall grass field. A line of thick apple trees stand just a few meters ahead.  We aren’t that far from where Edgar’s house should be. If it’s still standing after Spearwood got their hands on it. I used to come down to this river to read and play with Maverick and Paden during the summer. Cold wind rushes over my face, pushing my hair back. Winter has just started to set in.

“That was refreshing,” Maverick says, coming up behind me. I grab his hand and pull him forward, so he stands in front of me. Only a slight-pink tinge mars his skin. I frown and touch the hand print on the middle of his back. I align my right hand with it. It fits perfectly. “What is it? I feel healed.”

“Nothing. Well, not nothing. It’s my hand print in the middle of your back.”

“What? Like the one that’s on Bullock’s skin?”

“Yeah, but this one is brown.”

He watches the trees ahead of us. “You teleported us to the Orchard. Why?”

I join him. His hand grabs mine. We link our fingers, as if we’ve done it a thousand times before. I have no desire to pull away from his hold. “I don’t know. I don’t even know how I did it. I don’t think Edgar taught us anything like this.”

He shakes his head. “He didn’t. No dragon shifter has that ability. We can only cross distances like this through Void magic.”

“Do you think what they said back there is true? We’re . . . Amr!” Panic fills me. Is he all right? “Where are the others? You don’t think they’re still trapped back there with that manic, do you?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t explain it, but I think they are nearby. I think we just scattered. You and I were together because we were so close.”

“How do you know that?”

His hand tightens around mine. “I don’t know. I can just feel it. I know they’re here and not somewhere else. Take a moment to think about them, to think about Amr. You’ll see what I mean.”

I close my eyes and picture Amr in my mind. I smile when the memory of him staying by my side when Aibek asked him to join his side comes to light. A small tug on my navel makes me take a step forward, as if a lasso has encircled me. “I think I know where he is.” I lead Maverick by the hand into the shallow wood area of the first batch of apple trees. Within a few moments, we’re standing in front of Edgar’s house. It still stands with the rundown, brown barn a few hundred feet away. I go toward the barn. Amr’s in there, I just know it. The pull gets stronger, practically dragging me across the ground. I sprint.

“Help me.” Together, Maverick and I open one of the massive barn doors. Light from the hayloft door pours in the room, illuminating all out them lying in the dirt, unconscious.

I run to Amr. He lies on his back. A relieved sigh leaves me, when my eyes catch the slight rise and fall of his chest. I fall to my knees next to him. The Sea Witch said whatever happened to one of us would happen to the other eventually, so shouldn’t I know if he’s hurt or not? I should feel it. Does that mean he got out of the whole thing unscathed? Maybe falling asleep under Aibek’s power saved him? I touch his shoulder and gently nudge him. “Amr, wake up. Are you hurt?”

He frowns at my prodding, but opens his brown eyes. “Avalon?” he sits up. “What happened? Where are we? I don’t remember anything after that guy asked me if I wanted to join the dark side.”

“He did something evil to us; sucked up our energy. If it had happened for much longer, I think we would’ve gone into comas. Are you hurt?”

He pats himself down. “I don’t think so.” He looks around, his eyes falling on Horace, who liesunconscious a few feet away. “Horace!”

He crawls over to him. Horace’s glasses are gone. Blood trickles down the side of his forehead. His right wrist curves at an odd angle. Amr moves the hair out of Horace’s eyes, gently, like a whisper, as if he doesn’t want to wake him up. I look between the two of them. Is there something going on there? A smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. A white light emits from Amr’s hand, as it hovers above the cut on Horace’s forehead. The blood and cut disappears. Amr gasps and looks at me. “I don’t know how I did that.”  He moves his hand over the broken wrist. At first, nothing happens, but then a light appears. The bones shift under the skin, moving back into place. He can heal like I can.

Horace shifts. His emerald green eyes open and look at Amr’s. “Amr?” he frowns and sits up. He looks around and touches his face. “I can see without my glasses,” he mummers. “Where are we? What happened?” Another glance around at everyone. “Where’s Triton?”

My brother’s shoulders fall at the mention of Triton. “You don’t remember, do you?”

Triton’s betrayal rings fresh in my mind. He let Aibek out, and I don’t think he’s a harmless kind of evil. Why would he do that? Why would he help a man like that?

“Avalon!” Dante yells.

I turn my head. Dante sits up. Maverick crouches next to him and Paden. Lusk staggers into a stand by using one of the support beams in the center of the barn.

“She’s fine; you can calm down,” Maverick says, touching Dante’s shoulder. Dante flinches away from his hand.